by Various
Before he was even fully aware of it he was climbing steeply, breathing heavily, feeling the air grow more coarse and cold. His eyes were slits now, screwed against the dust. Something was bleeding he could feel the hot trickle down his chest but he kept putting one foot on each new step before him, inching his way upward.
Only once did he look back. He saw the plains stretch away from him far below, webbed with metal and punctured with gaspluming wellheads. He saw concentric rings of walls, as solid as the sacred mountain, each one studded with defence towers. When the lightning whipped across the obsidian landscape he saw the detail there, picked out in neon, markers of a manufactory of infinite power and strength.
He never remembered the final ascent, the one that ripped the skin from the soles of his feet and made his lungs burn. He must have passed through many portals, each one opened for him by the machineguardians of that place who recognised a supplicant and allowed him passage.
By the time his senses returned he was in a great hall, lined with iron columns and lit with orange sodium lamps. He had fallen and was on his knees, but he still shuffled onwards, knowing that he would either reach the place of testing or die like an animal.
He looked up, blinking through the filthsmear across his eyes. There were bodies all around him then skeletal figures with metal parts embedded in their ghostly flesh, spidery amalgams of mortal and machine, and dwarfish attendants that scuttled between the legs of the greater constructs around them.
And then there were the Lords of Medusa, clad in blackened iron and attended by scores of robed menials. They were looking down at him. He could hear their maskfiltered breathing, scraping like the wind of the plains over stone.
One of them came closer, stooped, and took his chin in one gauntlet.
He lifted his head, painfully, trying not to wince. Just as at the gate, he heard the whirr of instruments. He was being scanned, judged and assessed.
The iron knight before him said nothing until the scans were complete. The grip on his chin was icecold.
'Pass the gate,' said the knight, 'and your trials will be eternal.'
He could feel his heart beating weakly.
'You will be Sorrgol. None will own you but us. When you learn secrets, you will never share them. You will fight alone, you will take no allies. We are the Iron Tenth, and we are alone. Outside this place is weakness. We alone are strong.'
He believed those words as soon as he heard them. A fierce joy kindled in his breast, and for the first time he became sure that he would survive to take the trials.
'You will never trust. You will never dilute your strength by fighting alongside another who is not of Medusa. We are the Iron Tenth. We alone are strong.'
There was moisture on his cheeks. He would listen, he would learn. He would break free of the shackles set upon the world by fate, and see the iron collar in all its voidset majesty, and to accomplish this he would absorb every maxim given to him.
He would learn. He would believe.
'You understand this?'
'I… do,' he rasped, his lips dry and bleeding.
'Then repeat it. Say it, and never forget it.'
'We are the Iron Tenth,' he said, burning with both pain and pride, yearning for nothing more than it to be true. 'And we alone are strong.'
HE FOUND HIBOU down in the Talon's practice cages. The Khan had been working nearconstantly since the assault on the Inexorable Conquest, believing that faults in his killteam's tactics had led to the failure. Unlike Henricos, he could take little satisfaction from the arrival of Meduson, since his actions had done nothing to bring it about. The redemptive mission he had embarked upon had brought him neither deserved victory nor honourable death, leaving him dependent once again on the intervention of others.
Henricos watched him for a while, remaining in the shadows. The White Scar fought just as he had done on the frigate a blur of speed, far surpassing anything that the common warriors of the X Legion could summon. There was a virtue in that, just as there was a virtue in the more solid techniques that the Medusans had been schooled in.
Eventually the Khan stopped, glistening with sweat, panting heavily. He must have been working for hours.
Henricos came to meet him at the cage's entrance, offering him an oilstained cloth.
'I did not think to see you again,' said the Khan, wiping his brow.
'You thought I'd take a place on the Iron Heart.'
'It is a fine ship.'
They walked together, heading for the chamber's exit. 'It is a long time since I was on a Medusan vessel. Perhaps I remember them differently.'
Hibou raised an eyebrow, and the movement made the scar on his cheek twitch. 'Then you are staying on the Grey Talon?'
Henricos shrugged. 'This is a lucky ship. And I do not trust you to fly it.'
'That may be wise you have fouled half the systems.'
They reached the exit, and Hibou paused at the doorway. 'Teji is dead. Three others. Their blood was wasted we would have lost the action.'
'That is war.'
'We must do better.'
Henricos nodded. 'We will.'
He reached over his shoulder and drew a sword, the first he had carried since Isstvan. It was no curved piece of Chogorian steel, but an augmentedfunction Medusan zweihander, the length of a mortal man, riddled with power feeds and linked disruptor field generators. It was the kind of weapon he had dreamed of owning again, far better than a bolter or a borrowed powermaul.
'Next time we fight, I will be at your shoulder with this. A single strike can carve a legionary in two.'
Hibou looked at the longsword cautiously. The heavy construction was the antithesis of everything that his own Legion practised in weaponry. 'Impressive, certainly,' he said, doing his best.
Henricos laughed. 'It was the condition of my taking Meduson's command. That, and captaining the Talon. I see potential here. I see a melding of philosophies.' He sheathed the sword again. 'Your kind move a blade fast. You could teach me how to do that.'
Hibou didn't manage to hide his surprise. 'Teach you?'
'And the reverse.' Henricos hit the door release, and the blastpanel slid back. 'Meduson is serious. He's going after the Sixteenth now, right to the top. You are correct we need to find a way of doing better. Perhaps this is it.'
'That is madness.'
'In all likelihood, but what strategic use is sanity now?' Henricos fixed Hibou with a steady glare. 'If the chance comes, I will take it. I will look on the Warmaster's face as I end him. Will you be beside me then?'
Hibou stared back warily, seemingly unable to decide if he was being mocked. 'You will never get the chance.'
'You're probably right.'
'But if you did…'
Henricos waited patiently. In the end, though, Hibou never finished the sentence. The Chogorian's eyes moved back to the hilt of the zweihander.
'So how does it handle?' Hibou asked.
Henricos stepped back from the door and unsheathed the blade again. He nodded over to the practice cage.
'Draw your own blade,' he said, wondering how well his wounds would hold up if things got too strenuous. 'I will demonstrate.'
THE KEYS OF HEL
JOHN FRENCH
'The true danger of the unknown lies not in its existence, but in knowing that it exists.'
Kyril Sindermann, in his speech to the Symposium of Nessus
What are the Keys of Hel?
I sleep and the question rises in my thoughts like the moon above a black sea. I do not know what the question means, and if I know the answer then it is lost to me.
My limbs are a dull echo on the edge of my awareness. My thoughts move with creaking slowness through my mind.I see a face of dead flesh, its lips moving though no words come. I feel the cool flash as a blade punches through my ribs. Pain skitters down my nerves.
The clink of chains.
WAKEN.
Warm blood. Thickening beat by slowing beat.
I
see…
Nothing.
Thoughts are echoes. Have I had them before? Have I asked this question before? Is this slow cycle of consciousness a wheel turning without end, repeating again and again?
I know who I am. My name is Crius. I was Lord of the Kadoran. I am the banner bearer of the X Legion. I am the emissary of Ferrus Manus. I am the Iron Hand of the Crusader Host. I am all this. But these are answers to questions I have not asked.
Where am I?
Am I still beneath the mountain? Do I lie still in the gaol of the Emperor for the crime of being a loyal warrior in a war of betrayal? Is the coldness of this sleep a prison?
More questions, but still not the right question.
WAKEN.
I see a face. It is set in goldenyellow armour, and it looks down upon me. A black cross on a white field, and the clink of chains.
Friend…
The word comes to me, but I do not know why. What is a friend?
I am not a creature of friends of brothers, perhaps, but not friends. I am one of a kindred. We are bound by what makes us strong, by the flesh of our father.
Father…
Pain, bright like a fractured sun. I am the pain and it is my world. I am not alone here because it is here with me.
Why is the pain here?
Still not the right question, but closer. Much closer.
The pain is rising now, spinning around me, flaying the numbness of sleep.
What is this?
The pain is everywhere. The world is not blank now. It is white. Blinding, cutting, burning white.
And the pain is growing. It has a shape. It has a head now, and arms, and a hole that beats where there should be hearts.
The figure of pain reaches for me.
Why is it here?
It is pulling me in.
Why does it want me?
What is it?
WAKEN.
And I wake.
The connections snap into place down my spine. Pain flashes along nerves and cables. My limbs become my own, dead flesh and machine answering with icy snarls.
I know what I am.
I open my eyes. Light pours into my world. Projected data bathes the chamber before me. Vapour rises from icedogged machines. I feel the snaking sensation as the flesh and machine fuse to my mind.
I step forwards. Ice falls from me in brittle scales. Pistons extend and snap my limbs into place. Energy crackles along conduits and I hear iron fingers flex. The pain is everything. Every sensation is a colour of agony.
I am a son without a father. I am a warrior risen from the edge of the grave of all he knew, and all that created him. I am the dead in a war of fools.
What are the Keys of Hel?
I am the answer.
I am a life stolen from the dark, and lived in oblivion.
I walk from my tomb, and behind me my brothers wake from their own sleep and follow me to war.
THE FIRE ROARS and we fall. A shot hits the drop pod's carapace and peels off a petal of burning armour. The air rushes out. Flames roar in the spill of atmosphere and then vanish. We are tumbling, the view beyond flicking past in snatches. I see the starforts sitting at the centre of webs of light, great burning spiders hanging above the blue sphere of the world below. I see our ship, the Thetis, sinking into the pool of fire pouring from them. She is bright with the blood of her wounds, liquid metal and glowing gas spilling from her bulk as she scatters more and more craft into the well of gravity.
I am still clamped to the drop pod's core. Nine stand with me. We are silent as our world spins and spins. There is no air in the pod now. A sensation registers cold on the bare flesh of my face. I neither blink nor move.
I can feel the echo of the animating waves pulse through me, stronger than the beat of blood, sharper than iceladen air. A wall of gouged armour fills the split in the pod wall. The muzzles of vast guns shout silently into the distance. We spin and spin. Explosions throw shards of metal through the pod. I feel one strike my armour and bury itself deep. The sensation passes.
The drop pod's thrusters fire. Our spin is a blur, then a scream of thrusters fighting to steady us. They fail.
The pod strikes the starfort.
Force slams through. A wall buckles inwards. Sheared edges slam into the warrior next to me. He dies for a second time. Black pearls of stagnant blood and oil rise from him as the pod bounces back up from the starfort's surface. The thrusters are firing at random. Lights begin to pulse in time with an alarm that no one can hear. We are hit again, spinning, rolling and glancing over ravines and cliffs of armour.
A plate rips from the pod and I can see the great, crenellated ring of the starfort extending away. Pods and gunships hurtle towards it, and the fire of a thousand guns rises to meet them. The Thetis is no longer sinking through the starfort's bombardment. It is drowning in an inferno.
This is the end.
We will not waken again. Here we perish. This is the last battle that we have snatched from the jaws of death. It is not an end of renown and glory. It was never going to be. All things end. All ages pass, and even the deathless may die.
Our pod leaps high above the starfort's skin, and I know that we will slam down again. I can see the buttresses and ridges of antennae waiting for us, ready to mash the pod to splinters and spill the wreckage back into the void.
'Fire,' I call, and the machines in my throat catch the word and carry it to my brothers. They move like sleepers still half in a dream. We fire our weapons.
Beams and shells rip the shell of the pod from us, and we are loose from the wreckage, diving towards the fort.
We strike the hull. The impact shudders through me as my armour magclamps to the fort's skin. Bones crack in the remains of my flesh.
I rise, pistons straightening, and I feel my weapons arm with a tingle of shifting agony.
A hatch blows outwards from the outside of the starfort. Five Death Guard roar into the vacuum in their voidharnesses.
I fire and my brothers follow. They are like me. They died on battlefields from Isstvan to Greydoc and have slept in cold dreams at my side. Most still dream, the echoes of life just tatters. They follow, and they know the pain of this unlife, but they are spared the thoughts that remain to me.
Rounds and beams skid from the Death Guard's armour. A volkite strikes one in the gut. The beam burrows through a join in the plates and into his flesh. He becomes instantly still. The impeller of his harness pushes him upwards for a second and then cuts out. Then a jet of steam and powdered flesh explodes from the wound and spins him over and over.
The rest land. There are four now. They wait until they are on the surface of the fort's hull to fire. Strings of plasma cut through us. The Death Guard shake as the recoil tugs at them. Another of my brothers falls, his body and armour hanging in a shredded ruin, swaying from where his feet are still clamped to the hull.
I charge at them. My boots ring and lock as they strike the hull. My brothers come with me, loping forwards. A boltround hits my shoulder, explodes and shears off layers of piston casing and cables. The impact registers somewhere far off and remote, a sliver of information that does not belong to this moment. The hammer head snaps out from my arm and locks into my hand. The first Death Guard stops firing and a film of cold energy sheathes the shield on his wrist. I raise my hammer, and behind and above me the Thetis looms and glows, like a spear tip hot from the forge fires.
The Death Guard does not wait for me to strike. He slams forward, his shield high, his muscle and armour cannoning into me while my blow is still unfolding. I reel, one foot clamped to the deck and the other loose. His chainsword comes up, tip first, the teeth a silent blur, and I have an instant to know that it will hit and that there is nothing I can do to prevent it.
The chainsword slams into my torso. I feel the cutting teeth bite into the ceramite, and their roar suddenly vibrates through my armour and body. There is a second of resistance and then blood, oil and shreds of dead flesh are churning i
nto the vacuum as the blade saws upward. I feel it, but with a slow, drawnout delay.
I have a jolting instant to see all around me, to see our drop pods and boarding craft disintegrating into motes of fire, to see the Thetis rock in her wrapping of explosions, to see the human troops pouring from the starfort's hatches, guns ready, their movements slowed by void suits. And I have long enough to know that we have reached the end of our war.
We will be no more after this. We will end. I am not sorry. Ours was a war fought from beyond death. It was a war of obliteration not victory, and its end always lay in a moment like this, in fire and ruin.
My eyes find the helmed face of the Death Guard as he prepares to rip his blade from my chest.
It will end now.
But not without a price for our destroyers.
I punch my left hand forwards, metal fingers splayed. My fist closes on the Death Guard's gorget and I yank him close. He is fast, but my strength is not that of flesh. The chainblade is buzzing in the ruin of my chest. His face plate crashes into my shoulder. His eye lenses shatter and the air inside his helm vents outwards with a mist of blood. I would like to think that he feels shock, that he feels doubt and panic, and the cold realisation that retribution has found him. He won't though. The only thought running through his skull will be that he has to kill me. I know this. It is what I would have thought. They made us alike in that respect.
HE RECOILS. THE chainsword rips down. My hammer activates as I strike, and strike, and strike, until red meat and blood scatters with the slivers of his armour.
I stand still, suddenly cold and without the pain that tells me I am still in the land of flesh.
Data is cascading past my eyes like blood flowing from a wound. Somewhere beyond the runes I see the lights of battle. I turn my head up to see the Thetis fall as I know she will.
And a vast, black shape cuts through the lattice of fire. It is another vessel, smaller than the Thetis but still vast a dagger compared to her scorched hammer head.
Fresh flowers of bright, cold light open across the blackness. A great dome of light erupts on the other side of the starfort, and a second later the tremor hits.