Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion

by Chris Wraight

  She trailed off. It took me a moment to realise what she was suggesting – abandon the planet to ruin and confusion. If I’d heard it from any other lips, I would have snorted in derision.

  ‘Then you’re saying we can’t hold this world in its entirety?’ I asked, wanting to be sure I understood.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘This is Terra.’

  ‘I’m aware of that.’

  ‘We have billions under arms. We have Titans. We have Naval support.’

  ‘Indeed. And they’re all going quite, quite mad.’

  She said it so calmly. I knew she was right – Throne, I’d seen the reports from overrun Arbites stations and watched the vid-feeds of hab-towers descending into anarchy. The age-old grip of the priests was breaking. Reality had cracked. The skies were on fire and no one had slept for days.

  ‘You’ve spoken to Haemotalion about this?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ll do that. You’ll speak to the others too. It’s about priorities. We can’t afford to make mistakes now.’

  I had that horrible sinking feeling then – that she was right, and that very few others would see it, and that all that lay ahead was more grind and conflict.

  ‘We’ve lost the beacon temporarily,’ I said. ‘We’ve some work to do to restore order. You can’t be suggesting we cede our control just when things get difficult.’

  At that, Arx leaned forwards, resting her elbows on her knees. She was a hard woman to look at – all bones and severity.

  ‘I had a man delivered to my care some weeks ago,’ she said. ‘He was sent up to me by a watch division of the south-eastern wall sector. I think he was detained by a Custodian, one whom you may possibly know, but that is unimportant. What is important is this – he was no ranting demagogue. He was steeped in the kind of corruption I’ve only seen on worlds far from here and riddled with the warp. And once we applied the instruments, we began to understand what has been happening.’

  I couldn’t look away. Arx had the air of a woman who had nothing more to lose – the almost fey resolve of the damned.

  ‘He knew so much,’ she went on. ‘He knew things even my adepts don’t. There’s a blind and mutilated sorcerer down in the gaols calling himself Iskandar Khayon, and others, and they’re all in agreement to a startling degree. They’re telling us all we could ever wish to know, these people, because they aren’t afraid of anything any more. They’re telling us of the Crimson Path. They’re telling us of the Great Rift. They’re telling us things that weren’t possible before are possible now, and it’s becoming hard not to believe them.’

  ‘They’re lying.’

  ‘No, chancellor. They’re not. Why would they?’ She pressed her palms together. ‘Every war we’ve ever fought, every crusade we’ve ever launched, every Black Crusade we’ve ever fended off, it’s all been leading up to this. Ask your Custodian friends – they know it too. That’s why they’re paralysed by doubt. They know things we’ve forgotten. It all rests on this moment. Our decisions now can damn us.’

  As she spoke, I felt increasingly sick. I had lived for so long at the epicentre of the empire, far from the wars and the squalor, and it had made me flaccid.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m telling everyone the same thing,’ she said. ‘We have anathema psykana returning, some running ahead of the storm, others caught in its approach. We’ll need as many as we can gather, and the Captain-General has been active in bringing them back.’

  I hesitated. ‘He didn’t know we’d ordered them home.’

  ‘You believed that? You’re losing your touch, chancellor. He’s been doing everything he can to collect them for some time. They always fought together, those two. He recognised the signs a while back, and I suspect only he had the knowledge to get a message to them in time.’

  I felt foolish. Events were racing ahead of my ability to comprehend, let alone influence. I wondered how long this had been going on, and how much it had been governed, if at all, by my entreaties to them.

  ‘Then Lamma was right,’ I said. ‘We’re going back to the old templates.’

  ‘Some of them.’ Arx stood up then, brushing her long robes about her. I did likewise. ‘I supported you in Council, chancellor, because you were right. This changes nothing – for now. Things will have to alter in time, but first comes survival. You understand this?’ She came closer, and I saw the fine lines of care around her eyes. ‘You’ve seen us all come and go. We must keep the Council together on this.’

  I nodded weakly. There was so much to process. ‘Thank you for telling me these things.’

  ‘What we said will remain secret.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Not that there’s much cause for secrets now.’

  She turned to leave. Just as she did so, I felt a sudden surge of irritation. It might have been building for weeks, prompted by my recent failures, or maybe triggered by the exhaustion infesting my system. Whatever the cause, it was most unlike me, but it spilled out nonetheless.

  ‘We’re not done yet, Representative,’ I said, causing her to turn back to face me. ‘I’ve had my aides tell me we’re done for fifty years, but we’re not. There are daemons on Terra? There were before. Damn them. Damn them all. This is our home.’

  I couldn’t decipher her expression then. Was she amused? Contemptuous? Confused? Maybe all of those things. In the end, though, she just nodded.

  ‘It is at that,’ she murmured.

  Then she was gone, leaving me alone in the chamber I had spent my lifetime beautifying. I looked around at the fine things, the objects that had given me such pleasure. I could no longer summon enthusiasm for them. They were fragile. Collecting them seemed more like an indulgence than ever, the compensatory occupation of a weak man who should have been stronger.

  But then my comm-bead clicked, and a dozen new bulletins ran down my retinal-feed.

  So I started walking. Work called. As always, work called.

  At least I had direction now. We called it the Arx Doctrine, the strategy of reinforcing the essential core of the planet: the Sanctum Imperialis, the Palace perimeter, the still-dormant Fortress of the Astronomican and the other capital structures of the Administratum. I spent my time shuttling from High Lord to High Lord, cajoling and persuading and bribing so that dissension was minimised.

  Some saw the necessity of it from the start. Oddly enough, ­Haemotalion was my staunchest ally in those days. He was sufficiently cold that the sacrifice of billions to save the inner core of the Imperium never seemed like a difficult choice to make.

  Others resisted. I could understand why – we had not yet been invaded in any significant numbers, and the unrest across the planet was, while disturbing, hardly critical. Pereth in particular was loath to see the standing defence orders unravel, for she commanded the vast resources of the Imperial Navy within the Sol System, and perhaps was seduced by their huge potential. We had fully equipped squadrons in orbit, including system-destroying battleships stuffed with whole regiments of shock troops. We had thousands of regiments garrisoned across the world’s surface, plus three full Titan maniples, huge volumes of Mechanicus forces, an entire company of Imperial Fists, plus scattered representatives of other Space Marine Chapters.

  So we were hardly defenceless, but neither were we facing normal foes. The madness within the citizenry spread quickly, fuelled by starvation and loss of belief. Reports of daemonic incursions erupted with staggering frequency, and our resident inquisitors were soon run ragged trying to eradicate them all. The failure of the Astronomican meant that the steady run of cargo ships, already interrupted by our defence arrangements, dried up completely. It had long been a maxim that the loss of three meals was enough to send a man feral. For our already starving population, cowed by disease and the incessant whispers of spirits in the night, it didn’t take that much. And, above
all, two words were on all our lips, never uttered but always there – The Despoiler.

  So the Arx Doctrine took shape. Regular regiments were pulled back to the walls, ceding control of massive urban tracts to the Adeptus Arbites. Many of those regions swiftly descended into full disorder, while others only retained a semblance of control.

  I found the experience painful. You can imagine what it felt like to listen to the comm-feeds from desperate sector prefects, pleading for support as their command citadels were swamped by starving mobs of heretics. There was one exchange I remember keenly even now – a young-looking woman with a bloodied forehead and damaged armour, begging me to send reinforcements to her outlying fief.

  ‘There’s no assault on the Palace!’ she cried, outraged. ‘Your walls are secure! By the Holy Throne, what reason do you have not to help us?’

  I could only look at her, powerless to intervene. What could I say? That we knew even worse was coming? That the greatest of our kind believed the End Times were upon us and the Emperor’s halls themselves were at risk?

  ‘Remain stalwart, prefect,’ I said, hating the sound of my voice. ‘Help will be sent when it can.’

  ‘You’ve murdered us, then,’ she spat. ‘You damned dogs! You’ve murdered–’

  I cut the feed. I couldn’t listen to any more.

  Slowly, though, over days and weeks, we built up what defences we could. The orbital grid remained mostly intact even as we lost contact with roughly a quarter of the planetary surface. The priests of Mars, less susceptible to mortal weakness, lent us what aid they could, though I suspect they were also terrified about the precariousness of Mars. Our battleships maintained a tight cordon throughout the Sol System, plying the cold depths even as the Throneworld withered under preternatural flames.

  On the twentieth day of the Blindness came two developments that gave us hope. The first was a flight of silver-grey landers dropped from a strike cruiser newly locked in geostation over the Palace. The occupants of those craft were dispatched directly into the heart of the Sanctum, striding in pale grey robes beneath the bloody storm-light.

  I witnessed their arrival from a long way away, but even a distant glimpse of Grey Knights gave my tired old soul a brief spike of exhilaration. In times past that sight would have seen me mind-wiped, or perhaps killed, but those old strictures seemed pointless now and I did not fear them. They were going to confer with Valoris himself, I understood, and thence to the walls themselves. I could not tell you how many had come. Perhaps fifty? It was not what we needed, but I was mindful of Arx’s words, and knew that their greatest strength had been mustered close by. Still, it was something.

  The second cause for hope was less visible. Had Arx not said anything I might never have known of it, but once the seed had been planted I was relentless in tracking it down. My agents were sent into every sensor station we still controlled, sifting through millions of planetfall records and orbital transfer dockets. The more we looked, the more we found.

  They had been careful, and they had been discreet, but it’s very hard to keep secrets entirely on Terra from someone who knows where to look. Sisters of Silence had been landed for months, sometimes from Black Ships, other times from chartered transports or military convoys. They had disappeared into the Tower of Hegemon, where the trail had died.

  I wondered who else knew about it. Had Valoris informed his fellow High Lords yet? Perhaps some of them had been in on this for a long time, merely playing along with the rest of the Council. In ordinary times I would have delved for more, but the know­ledge that they were here was enough. It gave me some comfort to know that it was not just the Enemy who had been preparing – others had foreseen the darkening of the skies and had set plans in motion to counter it.

  But I doubt that any living soul on this world, save perhaps He who dwells on the undying Throne, had any true conception of what was coming for us next. The Grey Knights, by whatever means they used to peer into the murk of the future, had been closest to the truth – Luna, not Terra, was the first target hit. All we knew of it here was a sudden flash of multihued light that briefly pierced the gyre of clouds above us.

  I had been high up in my private sanctum, scouring the day’s many piles of frantic missives. Jek was with me, as always, and the candles were burning low. Suddenly, shafts of vivid illumination lanced through the high windows, breaking on the stone flags. Both of us dropped what we were doing and raced to the iron-barred windows. Jek gasped out loud. I dropped my quill. We could see the stars.

  I should explain why that was so remarkable. I had never seen stars on Terra. None of us had – the toxic cloud cover was absolute, all the time, and had been for thousands of years. Now, though, we were staring into a night sky of flickering, dancing aurorae, torn open for the first time in living memory. I saw the hulls of the low-orbit defence platforms at guard over the world-city, their undersides blinking with markers and their position thrusters churning blue-white. I saw millions of military aircraft in stark relief, zigzagging across tortured skies on strafing runs against our own kind. But most of all, I saw the moon – Luna, our great naval dockyard, by reputation as dirt-grey and damaged as the world it circled. Just then, though, it was dazzling, a disc of reflected sunlight that made my eyes water.

  ‘By the Throne…’ Jek murmured, her gaze moving over the newly scoured heavens. There was a terrible beauty to it – a stark, cold vista that briefly made it possible to forget all the long-ingrained filth and turbulence.

  ‘Do not look,’ I said, dragging her back from the window.

  The lights danced harder, ripping away great sheets of bloody cloud, but I no longer liked the way they shimmered. The shifting colours became painful, and more tears trickled down my cheeks. The full face of Luna was too bright, too lurid, as if its core had been conjured into detonating. I could hear shrieking, too, out on the night’s wind, and the voices did not sound even vaguely human. I pulled the shutters closed and hurried from the chamber, Jek at my side.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, her own eyes bloodshot and blinking.

  ‘Surely you can hear that,’ I muttered, heading as swiftly as I could towards my command nexus. ‘Something bad.’

  By the time I reached the hall, our incoming data-feeds were almost jammed with priority signals. My staff were running between cogitator stands with long sheaves of parchment in sweaty hands. The high armourglass windows were swimming with the same ­iridescent beams of light, cast from a firmament that was no longer obeying natural laws.

  ‘Get shutters down over those!’ I ordered, hurrying for the strategium platform. By the time I made it there, Jek had recovered her habitual poise and was filtering the wheat from the comm-chaff.

  ‘Multiple launches from Terra,’ she murmured, scrolling down long rune-lists. ‘The Adeptus Astartes have been activated. Valoris has issued his own troops.’

  I had orders from Haemotalion clogging my own feed – to free up Militarum assets for immediate rerouting to Luna, to shut down all non-essential comms outside the Palace perimeter, to liaise with Valoris’ command to enact immediate lock-down.

  ‘What’s happening up there?’ I asked, unable to gain any sense from the increasingly panicked series of missives.

  ‘Unnatural activity,’ Jek confirmed, studying our clandestine channel into Arx’s hierarchy. ‘Massive. They’ve got Geller readings off the scale.’

  I leaned on the table heavily. ‘I have to see it,’ I said.

  Jek looked at me with some amusement. ‘I don’t think we’ll be of much use up there, lord.’

  Lord. She hadn’t called me that in days, and it felt wildly inappropriate now.

  ‘I’m sick of this,’ I said. ‘I’ve watched them all go to war, and pulled the strings in safety. Enough. I have to see it.’

  I started to move, and Jek pulled me back. ‘You’re an old, fat man,’ she said crossly. ‘You’ve got
no business there. It’ll kill you quickly and do them no good.’

  I was too tired to argue. It was probably madness, but then we were all going mad anyway, just as Arx had said. The shutters were coming down too slowly, and the vivid lights skipped across the interior of my sanctum like a mockery.

  ‘I’ve lived too long anyway,’ I growled, pulling my sleeve free of her grip. ‘Give the order for my lifter.’

  She glared at me for a moment, disbelief on her face. Then she laughed. There was something crazed in all of us, back then – our moods seemed to sway and fracture like the storm-light above us.

  ‘One more piece of insanity,’ she said. ‘So be it. I’ll come too.’

  We boosted clear two hours later. It took that long to reach the landing pads and prep the lifter – a big, old and cumbersome RE-45 based on a long-obsolete Militarum design. We went with a minimal entourage, just twenty guards from my own retinue, plus a Naval liaison officer and some of my signals officers. The wait for lift-off was tortuous, though we received precious little information of any substance from Luna during that time. All we could clearly ascertain was that an enemy force had somehow broken through our impeccably organised cordon and made a landing on the satellite, and that our defences had immediately responded and that all hell had been unleashed.

  Anything more than that was lost in the general confusion or clamped down on by the military authorities. At times of crisis like this my office was not included in the first tier of communication, and I guessed the Adeptus Custodes themselves, or perhaps even the Imperial Fists, had reserved detailed information for their own use.

  So by the time we finally trooped into the crew hold of the lifter we still knew almost nothing about what we were heading into. We pulled clear of the Senatorum Imperialis’ forest of towers and parapets and were soon powering steadily up into the high atmosphere. I felt the thrusters boom just metres below where we were sitting in our restraint harnesses, and began to curse my reckless decision. I was not a natural voidfarer and almost instantly I felt nausea well up within my strapped-tight environment suit.