Khârn: Eater of Worlds

by Anthony Reynolds

  Before Isstvan, those legionaries who fell too far, who were deemed incapable of controlling the homicidal rages induced by the Butcher’s Nails, those deemed too dangerous to let live, were simply euthanized. There was none of the hand-wringing and pointless ethical dithering that would have occurred in many of the other Legions. They were World Eaters, after all. They had simply been culled. But not any more.

  Why kill them when they could still serve a function? When they could still kill for the Legion?

  As his vision continued to clear, Ruokh saw a figure coalesce into being before him. He knew this individual, but it took him a moment for the name to form in his rage-addled brain.

  His mind was sluggish, and his eyes heavy. He was having trouble focusing, and not just because of the effects of the Nails.

  ‘Jareg,’ he drawled, a thick rope of drool dripping from his lips.

  The hulking Techmarine turned at his name, looking up at Ruokh suspended five metres above the deck floor.

  He was massive. Even bedecked in his immense prison-armour, Jareg would have loomed over him had they been standing on a level, and he was almost as wide as he was tall. Indeed, he was roughly the size of one of the newer-model Dreadnoughts that had begun to supersede the mighty Contemptors towards the end of the Great Crusade.

  ‘You are lucid, finally,’ said the behemoth of metal and ancient flesh. ‘It took a considerable dose of stimulants and electro-shocks to rouse you from your insanity.’

  ‘What are you doing aboard the Defiant?’

  ‘I came at Dreagher’s request,’ said Jareg. ‘A favour called in.’

  Ruokh had never had time for the Master Shellsmith. Too obsessed with machines, war engines and seeking battle from afar. Too many years away from the Legion learning his arts on Mars. He’d never once heard of Jareg fighting in the cages, either. The Butcher’s Nails worked within his head, just as they did in every other World Eater’s, but he wasn’t the same as the rest of them. One look at him made that obvious.

  His ancient body, or whatever was left of it, was encased in baroque, heavily augmented armour he had designed in collaboration with a coterie of rebel hereteks of Mars. He stood upon a trio of heavy-duty, mechanised legs, each tipped with powerful, retracted dew-claws. His body was bulked-out exo-armour, powered by a humming plasma core built into his back. A sextet of mechanical, insectoid arms were poised at his back, as if ready to strike, each of them ending in heavy weapons, pincers, welding spikes and diamond-tipped drills. An array of mechadendrite tendrils wafted around him, like blood-sucking parasites seeking a fresh host to drain.

  Thick, ribbed power couplings emerged from his temples and the base of his skull, plugging directly into his power source. A trio of lenses had replaced his left eye. Those lenses rotated and dilated as Jareg focused on Ruokh.

  His face was largely organic, however. Wolf-lean and hard, it was nevertheless as unforgiving as his mechanised body. His cheeks were a tortured canvas of burn-scars and pockmarks, and the deep, shadowed crevasses and valleys carved in his skin gave him a permanent scowl.

  An armed servo-skull held aloft on humming grav-suspensors darted up towards Ruokh. It hovered before him, tiny digi-lasers and a shrunken volkite flayer protruding from its skeletal jaws. Lenses set deep in hollow sockets clicked and whirred. Judging him no threat, it flew back down to circle around the immense Master Shellsmith, who thumped over to Ruokh.

  Jareg’s cracked-leather face settled in a thin-lipped smile.

  ‘How do you like your new home, Destroyer?’ said Jareg.

  ‘We go to war?’ said Ruokh.

  ‘No,’ said Jareg.

  ‘Then why do you rouse me?’

  ‘Dreagher,’ said Jareg.

  ‘There is nothing left to be said between us,’ growled Ruokh. ‘He made that very clear.’

  ‘Situations change,’ said Jareg. ‘He must have some use for you. Or else he’s agreed to Brond’s request and you are to face his pet swordsman of the Emperor’s Children in the pits.’

  Seemingly of its own accord, one of the Techmarine’s sinuous mechadendrite tendrils reached out to a panel set into an iron pillar and stabbed the release switch.

  The chains maglocked to Ruokh’s armoured hood released their hold, and he dropped like a leaden weight. He landed in a low crouch, making the deck reverberate thunderously.

  He rose to his full height, his armoured mitts forming fists, and glared at Jareg balefully.

  ‘Does Dreagher not worry that I’ll hurt another of his precious mortals?’ said Ruokh.

  ‘You are no threat to anyone any more.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Ruokh, taking a threatening step towards the Master Shellsmith. ‘What is to stop me ripping your spinal column from your body here and now? Your little floating protectors?’

  Jareg’s servo-arms and mechadendrites flared, like pincers and stabbing, needle-tipped tails, ready to strike.

  The shellsmith’s grin turned savage, and he leaned forward.

  ‘Try me,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  His manner gave the Destroyer pause.

  ‘Ah,’ said Ruokh, at last, the aggression easing from his stance. He folded his arms, and a knowing smile that made him look even more savage curled at his lips. ‘I am inhibited.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Jareg. ‘You are Caedere now. You cannot be left uncontrolled.’

  Ruokh chuckled and turned away. Then he swung at Jareg, roaring, utilising every last fibre of strength in his genhanced form, augmented with the awesome power of his newly donned Terminator armour. Had it struck, the blow would have smashed Jareg’s skull like an egg beneath a hammer. It didn’t strike, though.

  His massive fist hung in the air, scant centimetres from Jareg’s face. As much as he strained, he could not move a muscle. His armour had completely seized up.

  Jareg stepped around him, each footfall making the deck shudder. He came in close.

  ‘It works,’ said Ruokh.

  Jareg spat in his face. A thick wad of saliva trailed its way down his cheek, the caustic acids within sizzling as they ate into his flesh.

  ‘This is more than you deserve, you devolved wretch,’ said Jareg. ‘Were it my decision, you and all your kind would be put down like the dogs you are.’

  Ruokh barked at him, and bared his black metal teeth. Jareg laughed.

  ‘I would not even have you lobotomised into servitude,’ he said. ‘I’d just do away with you. Eject you into the void, and forget you ever breathed.’

  ‘There’s a rabid dog in all of us,’ said Ruokh. ‘I can see it, even in you, Master Shellsmith, despite the cage of iron you’ve built around it.’

  One of Jareg’s servo-arms swung around and struck Ruokh hard in the face with the ugly sound of metal striking bone. He toppled backwards, falling awkwardly, his Cataphractii-encased body still frozen rigid.

  He was laughing, even as he hit the ground, laughing through the pain of a smashed cheekbone.

  ‘You hate me, Jareg,’ he shouted, ‘but you know that you will become me, in time.’

  ‘Then we are all damned,’ said Jareg.

  ‘What do you remember?’ said Dreagher.

  He stood with his arms wide, while servitors and Legion serfs, studiously avoiding the gaze of their immense, unpredictable masters, drilled his war-plates into his flesh.

  Khârn was winding lengths of chain around his wrists – an echo of the primarch’s years of enforced slavery and the Desh’ean pit fighters that had been his brothers. Brond’s seneschal, Maven, hovered dutifully nearby, ready to attend Khârn as needed. Though tall for a mortal, and in the prime of his lifespan, he stood barely to the legionary’s sternum. One twist, and his thread would be cut.

  How pitifully frail, short-lived and pointless human life was, Dreagher thought.

  He caught himself, and shook his head. We
are the unnatural ones, he thought. The aberrations, the things that should not be. What right did he have to pass judgement on their lives?

  He and his kin were weapons bred to fight the Emperor’s wars, to expand the borders of the horizon, and then… what? To die out once they had fulfilled their usefulness, like the proto-Astartes had before them.

  ‘Little,’ said Khârn, bringing Dreagher back from his clouded, dark thoughts. ‘The Nails took me well before the end. How long had they held me in their thrall? Hours? Days? Weeks? I have no recollection. It may as well have been a lifetime. You say I was dead?’

  Dreagher nodded. ‘Apothecaries verified it. Your hearts were still when we dragged you from Terra. You were as pale as one of Curze’s ilk. There was barely a drop of blood left in you. Your wounds…’ He shook his head. ‘No one could survive what you’d endured.’

  Khârn grunted, pondering this. ‘Apparently they can,’ he said, then shrugged and continued securing the chain around his wrists. His arms he left bare. His flesh was criss-crossed with scars, and he glanced down at them while he readied himself.

  ‘I don’t remember receiving even one in ten of these,’ said Khârn.

  The two captains were in Dreagher’s arming chamber being armoured for the formal meet with the Emperor’s Children. It was as if they were going to war.

  ‘But I remember scattered moments of Terra,’ said Khârn. ‘Brief flashes, mainly, like a series of disjointed pict-images. I remember the sky darkened with drop pods and gunships. I remember the taste of blood on my lips as we stormed the first breach, clambering over the dead, using them as a rampart to reach the Imperial Fists. The bark of bolters. The blazing sunset after the first day’s bombardment. The vision of Angron landing on the walls. Glimpsing the Angel, fighting the voidborn in the dying light. They are fragile things, though, these images. They dissipate into nothingness as I try to grasp them, like dreams upon waking.’

  ‘I don’t dream,’ said Dreagher. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Sometimes I feel our whole existence is just a dream,’ said Khârn. ‘One long, tortuous, never-ending nightmare from which we cannot wake.’

  Dreagher looked at Khârn, unsure how to respond. There was something markedly different about him since he’d risen from his coma, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. There was a brooding intensity to him now that wasn’t there before, perhaps. A strange light in his eyes that spoke of madness and unfettered rage that was utterly at odds with his calmly spoken words and – except for the violence he’d wreaked upon the kill-team in the isolation chamber – his actions.

  ‘I cannot believe that,’ said Dreagher. ‘If that were true, then none of this would matter. There would be no point to anything.’

  Khârn looked at him. Except for those eyes, which burned, his expression was devoid of emotion. Unreadable. Cold. For a moment, Dreagher felt that Khârn was studying him like he might an enemy, assessing his strengths, his weaknesses. Determining the best way to kill him. The moment passed, and the corner of Khârn’s lip twitched in what might have been humour. He shrugged.

  ‘Maybe that is the great secret of the universe; that in the end, nothing matters.’

  ‘No,’ said Dreagher. ‘I can’t believe that.’

  ‘Then what do you believe in, Ninth Captain?’

  ‘I believe in the Legion,’ Dreagher said, after a moment considering the question. ‘And I believe that it can only survive if we rebuild, and if we are unified. I believe only you can do that.’

  Khârn’s amused expression dropped from his face.

  ‘We of the Twelfth are not given to philosophy and metaphysics,’ said Khârn. ‘It is not in our nature. Such things are best left to Lorgar’s priests, and the adepts of the Crimson King.’

  ‘If any of them yet live,’ said Dreagher.

  Khârn grunted in reply. ‘They do. Magnus is too clever to let his Legion be destroyed, and the remaining Word Bearers are like underdeck roaches. Squash them and still more scuttle up from the darkness. They’ll be here when all the rest of us are dust. We – you and I and all of the Twelfth – were made to be destroyers. We should not fight against our nature. We walk the Eightfold Path. It doesn’t mean we have to become slaves to it.’

  ‘How does it feel?’

  Skoral flexed her new arm, freshly oiled gears and servos purring smoothly.

  ‘Awkward,’ she said, looking at the arm as if it was some arcane xenos artefact. It was thinner than her other arm, almost skeletally so with its armoured ceramite plates removed. ‘And I miss my totems.’

  She rolled her wrist, flexing her new fingers, making the metal ligaments in her forearm click. Each of those fingers was made from bonded steel and ceramite, protecting the fine mechanisms within. They made her hand look like a Legion gauntlet, though on a smaller scale – and one that she could never remove.

  ‘It’s uncomfortable,’ she said.

  ‘You’ll get used to it,’ said Maven. ‘It’s a high-grade piece. Dreagher must have pulled in some serious favours to source it. And having Jareg fit it personally.’ He whistled.

  Skoral reached onto the bench and began snap-locking the heavy armoured ceramite plates to her bionic arm. There were three in all, one each for the shoulder, upper arm and forearm. The latter two pieces were hinged to encase the limb completely. All were moulded in a vague representation of human musculature. A vanity.

  Maven stood to help Skoral fit the heavy armour plates.

  ‘I can do it,’ she snapped, more aggressively than she’d intended.

  Maven held up his hands in appeasement and backed off.

  ‘I won’t always have someone around to help me, so I need to learn how to do this myself,’ she said in a less confrontational tone. ‘Sorry.’

  Maven shrugged and sat back down, kicking his legs up onto the bench. He drew a lho-stick from a pocket and lit it. He took in a deep breath, drawing smoke into his lungs before exhaling it in smoke rings.

  Skoral plucked the lho-stick from his lips and took a long drag. She ashed it onto the floor. A slack-faced servitor moved from a shadowed crevice at once, creaking forward to brush the ash up. She took another pull and handed it back to Maven.

  It was an awkward process, getting the plates fitted one-handed, but Skoral was managing it, slowly. Once each plate was in place she began drilling them secure.

  ‘How do the support stabilisers feel?’ said Maven, after a long moment of silence.

  ‘Fine, I guess,’ said Skoral. ‘I don’t know. My back’s sore.’

  ‘They might not be calibrated correctly,’ said Maven. He jammed his lho-stick between his lips and stood up. They were of a similar height, which was rare. Of the non-Legiones Astartes on the ship, there were few who were as tall as her. Even before her new limb, she heavily outweighed him, however. He was a good fighter, but he wouldn’t bet against himself if ever he found himself pitted against her.

  ‘May I?’ he said.

  Skoral shrugged, and Maven indicated for her to turn around, making a spinning motion with one finger. She did as he bid.

  A metal exo-spine had been affixed to her back, running from the base of her skull to the base of her spine. It was designed to help offset the additional weight of her bionic arm and support her back, with the additional benefit of allowing her to bear heavier loads – specifically her narthecium.

  Maven felt down the ridge of her exo-spine, stopping at a point halfway down. He pinched at it, shifting it left and right. ‘This is the problem,’ said Maven. ‘These are too loose. They’ve settled a little since they were fixed in place.’

  ‘Can you fix it?’ said Skoral.

  ‘Shouldn’t be hard. Lie face down,’ he said, slapping the padded surface of an operating trolley. ‘Uh. I’ll need, ah, access to your back.’

  Skoral turned, her eyebrows raised.

  ‘Ar
e you embarrassed, Maven?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t have to help, you know,’ he said, looking away. He turned his back on her. ‘Tell me when you’re ready.’

  ‘I never realised you were such a prude,’ Skoral laughed. She slipped off her singlet and undergarment support before lying down on the apothecarion trolley, her arms at her sides.

  ‘You can turn around now,’ she said. ‘It’s safe.’

  Maven set to work, drilling each of the exo-spine’s vertebrae in turn, tightening them.

  ‘What do you think’s going to happen?’ said Skoral.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Maven, testing each of the metal links as he worked. ‘I don’t think anyone is.’

  Skoral sighed. ‘I hate this. Sitting around waiting. Not knowing what is going on down on that moon.’

  Khârn and a sizeable entourage of World Eaters, Dreagher and Brond among them, had departed an hour earlier. Khârn had spoken with the Emperor’s Children and negotiated a meeting with them, face to face. The moon above the unnamed orange dust-bowl of a planet had been chosen as the neutral location for this meeting.

  ‘We’ll know soon enough,’ said Maven.

  ‘Who do you think was responsible? You know, for the attack on Khârn?’ said Skoral.

  Maven paused momentarily, before continuing to tighten the exo-spine’s vertebrae.

  ‘There are many who might harbour a grudge against him, I guess,’ said Maven. ‘Legionaries he’s humbled in the pits. Those jealous of his position. Those who… wanted to break the hold he has over the Legion, even when he was comatose. Someone wanting to boast that he killed the mighty Khârn, or to prove that he does not have the protection of the “Blood Father”.’

  ‘You shouldn’t mock the gods,’ said Skoral. ‘They are a vengeful pantheon.’

  ‘Please tell me you don’t believe that the “Blood God” brought him back?’ said Maven, forming inverted commas in the air with his fingers around the name. Scorn practically dripped from his words. The servos in Skoral’s new hand whined as they closed into a fist.