Her engines roared to full life. She felt the vacuum kiss her void shields. Blast hatches peeled back from guns along her flanks. The rest of the fleet woke an instant later. They accelerated out of the dark.
The Imperial fleet noticed them, and a trio of frigates broke away to intercept them.
She smiled. She would enjoy this.
The frigates fired. She felt the shells hit her shields, felt the shudder as explosions danced across them. It was like hail scattering against a stone roof.
Suddenly her thoughts stopped dead.
Pain cut through her. Her head came up, hood falling away from the cracked lacquer of her mask. She was no longer the Sycorax; she sat in a brass throne beneath the roof of a vast chamber.
Where am I? she tried to scream, but her mouth was droning in clicks and whistles. Cables were strangling her body. Her eyes swam with green static. What is this? What has happened? Where am I? Father? Mother? Breath sucked from the slot of her mouth. She tried to stand. She could not. She saw figures come towards her. They had the faces of metal birds. Hands reached for her, touched her; she felt long fingers grip her, metal pincers lock around her wrists. She did not know who they were. They babbled at her, hooting and clicking like broken vox-casters. She tried to fight them off but they were all around her, holding her and pushing her down. They smelt of cinnamon and burned wiring. What has happened to me? She tried to scream again.
The void snapped back into place around her. She was part of the ship, but she was still trying to breathe, trying to scream without lungs. The Sycorax shivered, its engines spluttering, its shields sparking. She could hear something laughing at the edge of her thoughts – it sounded like the roar of a reactor and the pulse of power cables. It sounded like the ship.
+Mistress?+ came Ahriman’s voice in her thoughts. +Mistress, we are close now. Astraeos calls, we do not have long. We must be closer.+
‘Yes,’ she said in her mind, and somewhere she knew she was muttering on a throne. ‘I… It will be.’
Her engines coughed to fresh life, and the ship shot towards the inner system. The Imperial frigates were closer, their auspex dancing over her hull as they grasped for a firing solution. She reached out with her own sensors, tasted the range to each of them, and laughed with the voice of a thousand guns. The frigates vanished in clouds of growing explosions.
More Imperial ships came to meet her. A plough-fronted cruiser spilled bombers from its flanks as it closed. Beside it a silver-hulled strike ship came around, bombardment cannons hammering her. Carmenta felt her shields fail one after another. She replied in kind, her pulse shaking in time with the rhythm of the barrage. The rest of the fleet was firing, but she was blind and deaf to everything but the roar of her own guns. Explosions danced against the stars. The Imperial ships were burning, but they still fought.
A handful of Imperial destroyers spiralled towards her and loosed their torpedoes. More and more ships were turning to face her, even as she felt the distance to the planet close. The last of her shields collapsed in a silent thunderclap. A macro round hit her hull. She felt her skin crack, felt armour become molten tears. The scream of enemy range-finders filled her sensors. There were at least twenty ships closing on her. All of them had now turned towards her. Even those ringing Vohal had pulled away from the surface, their guns and auspex turning towards the system edge and her fire trail of approach.
A torpedo hit her upper hull just behind her prow. A sphere of white light blinked into existence. Towers ripped from their roots. Crystal domes shattered. Within her guts she heard the chattering cries of the slave crew, pleading with the ship not to take their lives, to spare them. She kept firing at every target that she could see. Fires licked from their hulls, and some were bleeding warm atmosphere and plasma into the black. They were dying, but so was she. She would die here and she would die soon. Her hull would break open. The city within would choke in silence and she would become nothing.
‘Now, there is no more time,’ she said in her own mind, and the message sang through the ship’s systems.
A storm was gathering on her upper hull. Arcs of light ran, snapped and tangled between the tower tops. A cloak of shimmering energy coiled over her hull. She could hear the mind voices of Ahriman and the Circle spiralling together.
A beam of plasma hit her prow. It bored into her. Molten stone and bronze bubbled from the widening hole as the Sycorax’s momentum drove it onto the beam.
A spill of damage data rose through her awareness, became pain, became agony. She cried out. In the bowels of the Sycorax, chained slaves that had never seen the light of stars clamped their hands over their ears as the walls shrieked.
‘Ahriman!’ she snarled, and the storm of sorcery forming around her broke.
Bright blue and pink light began to arc from the towers across her back. Deep in her hull, human and once-human crew fell to their knees, wailing prayers to their uncaring gods. And from their high towers Ahriman and the Thousand Sons loosed their minds. Frost and fire spread in sheets and plumes across her hull. Green ghost light spun in her wake. Her hull creaked, straining as the warp tugged on it. And through it all she could hear Ahriman, the focused pressure of his thoughts pushing into the realm beyond.
It began to snow in the desert. Clouds bubbled up across Vohal’s blue sky, hiding the sunlight behind iron grey. On the parapets of the fortress the sentinels looked up as the snow began to spin out of the sky. Sirens began to scream. Shouts echoed in the half-deserted corridors. Autoweapons armed and rotated to face the blizzard. Interference screamed across the vox. In orbit, the warships stationed over the fortress saw the clouds spread across the world beneath them. Some ships began to turn back to the planet, scrambling to turn their guns on the surface. Others rose to face the attack from the system’s edge.
The snow carpeted the desert. On the fortress walls men and women pressed their eyes to their heat sights but saw nothing. Then the first of the soldiers fell, hands clamped over her head. She shrieked over and over again. Those close to her turned, some made to help her. Then the tide of ghost calls struck. On every parapet soldiers staggered and fell, as the waking cries of hundreds of dead souls filled their heads.
Out on the plain beneath the fortress the first awoken Rubricae pulled itself from the ground. Dry dust and powdered snow fell away from its blue armour as it stood. Green light burned in its eyes.
An automated gun fired first. Las-bolts spat from the fortress’s high towers, hammering fire into the white wall of the storm. A line of las-fire hit the Rubricae, slamming into its high-crested helm, making it stagger. It fell to its knees, a molten hole showing the void within. The light in its eyes dimmed. The snow fell faster, tumbling in the rising gale. The Rubricae stood slowly. Light crawled over its armour. The gash in its helmet armour closed. It looked up at the fortress, its eyes bright holes into a furnace. It began to walk forwards. A second later another figure rose from the snow and dust, then another, and another.
Gunfire sheeted from the towers and parapets. Bolts of lightning fell from the clouds, thunder blending with the shout of the guns. The void shields surrounding the fortress blazed under the storm strikes. The Rubricae began to fire. Bolts shrieked as they cut through the blizzard, and smacked into the fortress walls. Kaleidoscopic flames sprang up where they struck, dancing across stone, leaping into the lungs of defenders as they opened their mouths to scream. Falling snow flashed to steam as it met the blaze.
The outer walls began to crack, stone shattering under dozens of impacts. More troops began to recover their senses and ran to the firing steps. Cyborgs with eyeless, gloss-red visors clanked from where they had stood guard deep within the fortress, breaking into piston-driven runs as storm winds and gunfire howled outside. They reached the walls and began to pour multilaser fire down onto the attackers. The Rubricae advanced, their armour rippling and glowing under the deluge, firing without pause.
A tower on the outer wall fell, sloughing away as though it were
sand undercut by water. The Rubricae reached the slope of rubble that had been the tower and began to climb.
Ahriman saw every detail of the assault as though his eyes were the falling snowflakes. The minds of his brothers surrounded him, adding to his awareness, sharpening his focus. Eight minds unequal in strength, but perfectly balanced, perfectly unified. He was all of them, and they were all him. Together they were the Circle. Beyond them the human acolytes knelt, hands linked, white vapour pouring from their eyes as they fed the Circle with power.
The moment was here, the moment he had prepared for. It would not last long. What they did now was a near impossibility, a miracle created through knowledge and foresight. They had created a bridge between two points in space from the High Citadel of the Sycorax to the surface of Vohal. As the Rubricae advanced the Circle would appear within its walls. Astraeos’s mind was the beacon, the thread drawing them through the night.
The human acolytes shrieked as Ahriman pulled the strength from their minds and broke reality with it. The ghosts of stars rushed past them as they streaked through the warp towards the beacon of Astraeos’s call, towards the fortress on Vohal, towards Iobel. Time stretched out without end, and then reality snapped into place with a roll of thunder.
Sanakht’s eyes opened. For a halted heartbeat of time he stood still, weapons undrawn at his side. The Circle had manifested in a high vaulted hall of stone. The storm had ripped the roof open, and the light of gunfire and lightning blinked down through the ragged holes. Snow spiralled in the air.
Ahriman stood a pace away from him, his aura roaring like a blue and white flame above the horns of his helmet. Sanakht felt the heat and focus of the rest of the Circle. Once his mind had burned like theirs. Not any more; his power was a candle beside the inferno of Ahriman and the rest. He wondered, as he had many times before, if it would not have been better if Khayon had burned out all of his psychic ability; at least he would not have been able to see what he had lost.
Better to be broken than to be the weakling amongst the strong.
The first gunshot shattered his thoughts. A pulse of las-bolts smacked into Sanakht’s chest and shoulder. Blue lacquer blistered from the impacts. Thirty humans stood in the chamber, all clad in gloss-crimson armour. Sanakht kicked forwards. His swords slipped into his hands. Both were curved, their blades inlaid with lapis and copper. A black jackal head capped the pommel of the blade in his left hand, a white hawk head the right. Power shuddered through the jackal blade as he sent his will into its crystal core, and a blue power field sheathed the hawk blade.
The crimson-armoured humans were moving, scattering into firing positions. Blast shutters began to slam down across the door out of the chamber. The air sang with the buzz of las-bolts. Sanakht covered the gap in a single double beat of his hearts. Red threat runes covered his helmet display.
The humans tried to pull back while still firing. They were fast and disciplined, but they were still too slow. He took the first one across the neck with the jackal blade. The human exploded. Fragments of cooked meat pattered off Sanakht’s armour. He spun forwards, power and force swords weaving through limbs and bodies. He lifted the intentions from his opponents’ minds in the instant before they became action. Shots and blade thrusts reached for him, but touched only air. Here in the dance of blades and the spiralling of cuts he was still something of what he had been; here he was still a demigod of war.
The blast door shut and sealed with a metallic ring.
+Move, brother,+ shouted Ahriman’s thought voice. Sanakht ripped the hawk blade from a split torso as he felt the psychic pressure wave building behind him. Another human stood in front of him, its plasma gun levelled at his face. +Move now!+ Sanakht dived to the side. The human fired. A bolt of plasma flashed through the air above him.
The psychic shockwave ripped through the chamber. The armoured humans lifted from their feet, spinning through the air, screaming for the second before their bones exploded. Threat runes blinked out inside Sanakht’s helmet display as he rolled to his feet. The blast door was gone. Rock dust filled a ragged hole where it had been. Blood pattered on Sanakht’s armour as he ran through the breach.
Torn pieces of flesh lay amongst the rubble. He saw severed hands still clutching twisted lasguns. Blood seeped into the powdered rock as it settled. Targeting runes spun across his helmet display in search of a threat, but he had already seen the enemy that waited for him.
A tall man stood amongst the rubble, his mind shining in Sanakht’s awareness like a fire on a dark night. A spherical kine shield surrounded the man, glowing where debris had slammed into its surface. A coat of grey leather hung from his thin frame. An axe’s haft projected behind his head from where it was sheathed between his shoulder blades. Augmetic eyes shone from beneath the smooth skin of his scalp. A battle psyker.
Sanakht charged. A ball of lightning rose like a halo around the psyker’s skull. Sanakht threw the jackal sword. It blurred through the air, psy-fire clinging to its edges. The ball lightning catapulted from the psyker’s mind. Sanakht’s sword met the sphere, and a sheet of white light bleached the chamber. The human psyker reeled, and fell to his knees. The jackal sword was falling, its edge smoking. Sanakht caught it as he leapt into the air. The sword blazed at his touch. The human psyker was beneath him, still trying to rise. Sanakht descended, twin swords trailing fire and lightning above his head.
The psyker moved at the last instant, his mind hardening even as he spun to the side. The hooked axe was suddenly in the man’s hands, its edge oiled with warp light, its crystal cores shrieking with fury. Axe and swords met.
The force of the psyker’s mind slammed through Sanakht as the weapons kissed. Once Sanakht would have simply pushed his mind across that link and crushed the human psyker’s mind inside his skull. That, though, had been long ago, before the Rubric, before everything had changed. Now victory had to take a different, more mundane form.
Sanakht scissored his two swords through the psyker’s axe. Its core exploded. Metal and crystal fragments rang against Sanakht’s armour. The psyker screamed, his arms truncated stumps, his face a shredded lump of meat. He was strong, though. He tried to rise, tried to find balance in his mind even as it boiled with agony. Sanakht spun the hawk sword through the man’s neck. Behind him he felt the minds of Ahriman and his brothers rush past him into the rest of the citadel.
They were close, very close. All they had to do was reach Astraeos and–
A psychic cry rose up from beneath his feet, sharp with pain, bright with anguish.
Astraeos gasped and stumbled. The shockwave spilled across his mind, shrieking in dead voices as the storm broke and the Rubricae woke. Across the chamber men and woman reeled, and some fell. He suddenly smelled blood, vomit and faeces. He leapt up the stone tiers. Plasma screamed over his head. Iobel stood still, burst blood vessels blooming red across her eyeballs, her arm steady as she aimed at him.
+Ahriman,+ he shouted to the warp. Only the thunder roar of the storm answered him.
Behind him Cendrion leapt from the platform to the chamber floor with a crack of stone. Astraeos was a pace from Iobel. She began to step back, the pistol still raised, gas fuming from its vents.
+Cavor,+ Iobel’s mind roared, her thought faster than her muscles. Astraeos struck her just below the elbow, and Iobel’s arm shattered as she pulled the trigger. Plasma sprayed into the air. Astraeos looped his arm under hers.
The ground shook as Cendrion landed on the lower tiers and charged. Astraeos felt the warp take shape from the Grey Knight’s thoughts. Fire kindled and stabbed towards him. He focused his mind to meet the inferno.
The explosive round hit him from behind, and ripped away a bloody chunk from his thigh. Astraeos turned as he began to fall. Blood was pulsing down his legs. A las-bolt clipped his shoulder.
A figure stood three tiers above him. Astraeos had the impression of a sour face, and a whip-thin body beneath a ragged coat; that, and the silver of the guns in the ma
n’s hands. Iobel twisted in his grasp, still conscious. He heard the gun cylinders turn, and the hammers cock. His mind flicked out to crush the rounds in the chambers.
The guns fired. Astraeos saw the tongues of flame lick from the muzzles. Slow, so slow. He tried to turn aside, to refocus his mind into a shield. Something hit him in the chest. It felt soft and warm. Blood misted in front of his eyes. He felt his control of the warp falter, and the processes of his mind slipped free. He began to fall again. He still could feel nothing. The second round hit an instant later, and blew the front of his skull away.
I am truly blind now, he thought as he hit the stone tier. Still there was no pain. Just a sense that somewhere locked behind walls of pain suppression there was a world of blades and razor edges waiting for him.
+Ahriman.+ The sending was weak, almost a croak. His awareness was fading, his body and mind closing down to the barest essentials. Everything had become a slow surge of sound and movement behind a window of numbed pain. His will scattered into fragments. The warp crashed in. Memories and half-formed thoughts whirled in the tide.
It was never going to work.
Trust me, my friend.
He was on the ground, slumped on the blood-slick stone. He tried to rise, tried to focus his will. There was a centre of calm within his mind, a pool of utter control that would save him if he could reach it. He would be able to heal himself, to see, to fight. It was there, just there, he could feel it in his grasp…
His will slipped, and he felt the tangle of occult formulae bleeding out of his thoughts.
Now, thought part of him. Ahriman will come for me now. I do not end like this. As I came for him, he will come for me. He gave me his oath. He is my master, my brother. He will–
Darkness came down across his mind like a closing gate.
Someone far away was screaming. As the dark took him he realised that he recognised the screaming voice. It was his.
+What was that?+ Ahriman heard Sanakht’s voice rise out of the sea of thoughts. +Ahriman?+
The Omnibus - John French Page 49