He drew his bolter. ‘Check for targets,’ he voxed, gently expanding the range of his proximity detectors.
Ledak moved towards the centre of the circular chamber. An empty throne swivelled loosely on a short plinth. Rovel stomped down to the perimeter pits.
‘Abandoned?’ he speculated, sweeping his bolter muzzle lazily from side to side.
‘We’d have been told,’ said Kal, moving down to the dual sliding doors and scanning the other side. ‘Are you getting anything yet?’
‘Nothing,’ growled Ledak, falling in alongside him. ‘How big is this place?’
Kal remembered the floor plans. It was a self-sufficient station designed for long-term relay augmentation. Several dozen levels, a big power plant. Could take a while to sweep it.
‘Not that big. Stay with me.’
The doors hissed open jerkily, jamming halfway across. Ledak grabbed the near edge and yanked it, nearly ripping the metal clear of the frame. They entered the corridor – a long, segmented tube with a metal-mesh floor. It was as empty and echoing as the command chamber.
‘Getting nothing,’ complained Rovel, bringing up the rear. ‘Nothing at all.’
Kal turned on him, ready to reprimand. As his did, something flashed across his vision: a spectre, stark white, death-eyed, furious.
‘What was that?’ he hissed, jerking around with his bolter.
Ledak kept walking. ‘What was what?’ He arrived at another dual set of doors at the end of the corridor.
‘Stay where you are,’ ordered Kal. He suddenly felt like he did during battle. His hearts were pumping, flooding his body with hyper-adrenaline. ‘I got something. Briefly.’
But he hadn’t. The corridor was empty, save for the three of them.
Rovel paused, still standing astride the ruins of the first set of doors. ‘Nothing,’ he said again.
‘Enough of this,’ snarled Ledak, and hit the release on the second set.
‘Do not–’ began Kal.
The doors slammed open, flooding the corridor with light. In the fraction of a second it took for his helm to compensate he saw something standing in the glare. Something immense and blocky.
Then the space filled with bolter fire.
Kal threw himself against the wall, returning fire blindly. He heard a throttled roar from Ledak behind him, quickly quelled. Suddenly his helm was filled with targets – more than ten of them, swarming close.
A bolt hit him hard, sending him crashing onto his back. He kept firing. From somewhere nearby he could hear Rovel roaring. His voice was bestial and strange, using words that Kal had never heard.
Kal pushed to his feet and sprinted back for the command chamber, ducking through the pursuing storm of bolts before leaping over Ledak’s body. As he staggered through the doors he took a shell in the back, smashing him forwards. He hit the floor awkwardly, rolling to his left to keep firing.
He saw the blurry outline of power-armoured warriors charging after him down the corridor, followed by the sharp stink of the aether. He raised his weapon to fire, watching as a target-rune zeroed in on the lead attacker.
‘Away,’ came a voice, seemingly from by his ear.
Kal’s bolter flew from his grip, clanging against the wall and rattling out of reach.
He twisted around to see a white figure standing over him, outlined in flickering lightning. The figure’s head was exposed, showing a pair of eyes blazing with gold.
Kal tried to get back up, to push himself at him, to get his hands around his throat. He was blasted back, smashed against the metal. His helm clanked down as though magnetised, and he felt worm-like strands of aetheric energy snaking across his armour. As he hit the floor, Rovel’s ranting finally gave out.
The white warrior lowered himself over Kal’s outstretched body.
‘I never liked Lorgar’s dogs,’ he said, his accent strange.
Kal stared up blearily at a weathered face dense with tattoos. He wanted to speak – to spit curses at his killer – but his tongue would no longer move.
As the last of the bolter-echoes died down, others came to join the witch; some in Salamanders armour, one in an Iron Hands augmetic shell. Kal raged at his bonds.
The witch glanced coldly at him. ‘Do not struggle. Is pointless.’
The whole place reeked of warp energy. That surprised him. The faithless Legions were meant to have renounced all that.
The Iron Hands legionary stomped up to the witch. His armour had been extended with a bizarre array of flamboyant mech-additions. His shoulder plates bulged massively, each one humming with electrostatic charge.
‘The others are dead,’ he reported in a machine-thin voice. ‘This one?’
‘Not yet,’ said the witch, gazing at Kal like he might look at a rotten slab of meat.
For some reason Kal’s mind felt sluggish, and he found it hard to place the emblems on the witch’s armour. Space Wolves? No, too clean.
He got it. White Scars. Now that – that – was a genuine surprise.
The witch glared at him.
‘I will prise open his mind,’ he said, and Kal felt the first stabs of pain at his temples.
‘Go swiftly,’ came a third voice – rich with the mournful timbre of Vulkan’s sons. ‘We should take the ship now.’
‘We shall do no such thing,’ said the witch. ‘Better to persuade.’ He leaned in close, his golden eyes glowing. ‘Now, you will listen.’
Ilya waited outside, wondering if she had intruded, unwilling to retreat without being given a signal. She felt like a fool, hovering on the margins.
Qin Xa seemed oblivious to her presence. He knelt behind screens of translucent paper, robed in silk, surrounded by coils of incense smoke. His bare head was lowered before a hung scroll, blank save for a single Khorchin character drawn in the ancient Chogorian manner.
Ilya knew that he would have drawn the device himself, dipping a thick aduu-hair brush into soot-bound ink and tracing swiftly over the paper. He might have done it a thousand times, discarding each attempt until it became perfect.
There was no arduous labour involved in such work. It was a sudden movement, dragged straight from the soul. It was either perfect or it was not; once drawn, there was no way to improve or correct it.
Ilya wondered whether Qin Xa knew that she was there. It was hard to imagine that he did not, but Halji had told her once that meditation was an absolute thing. Perhaps even Space Marines let their guard down from time to time.
So she stood in the shadows, breathing as quietly as she could, trying not to do anything to break the spell.
After a long time, Qin Xa’s head rose. He stood in a single movement and bowed before the scroll. The gesture was curiously religious, like something that might have taken place before Unity, though there was no iconography to draw upon – just the scroll, the incense in its brass censers, and the layers of paper hanging in a perfect square from the dark walls of the isolation room.
Ilya swallowed self-consciously as Qin Xa pushed the screen aside and emerged into the open. His craggy face gave no hint of surprise.
‘Szu,’ he said. ‘You are early.’
Ilya could have argued about that – she was not, she was perfectly on time, as ever, and he had no chrono – but chose not to. ‘I can come back.’
‘No need. I am finished.’
She wanted to ask him what he’d been doing, but guessed that would have been impertinent. It might have been part of the warrior rites that had made Qin Xa the most lethal swordsman in the Legion after the Khan himself, or it might have been some hangover from the old days of Chogoris. Few of those who had been with the Khan from the beginning still lived; most had died before the Emperor arrived, and others had attempted Ascension when too old, disregarding what they had been advised by the Terran Apothecaries.
Qin Xa had made it, as had Yesugei. Perhaps Hasik was another.
‘You have completed the fleet audit,’ he said.
‘I have.’
&n
bsp; ‘The Khan wished to know the results.’
Ilya took a deep breath. ‘Seventy-three per cent of Legion’s assets were committed to the Chondax campaign. During the fighting, five brotherhoods were sequestered for other duties, though none were able to leave. Of those not committed to Chondax, twelve per cent remained on Chogoris, six on secondment with other Legions, and six were unaccounted for.’
Qin Xa nodded. ‘You are short by three per cent.’
‘No, your records are. I also did not allow for special deployments, such as those on Terra, on Mars or with the Navigator houses.’
‘Tell me then, is this standard?’
‘You mean compared to the others? No. Most Legions were deployed more thinly, led by lord commanders across a variety of fleets. As far as I know, based on the figures I saw two years ago, only the Space Wolves and the Blood Angels were more cohesive.’
Qin Xa nodded thoughtfully. His expression was serene, as it was so often with the Scars. ‘So, if someone wanted us out of the way – all of us, as a Legion – sending us to Chondax would have done the job well for them.’
‘Is that what you think happened?’
‘We are still trying to make sense of the Alpha Legion.’
Ilya smiled wryly. ‘You could have engaged them, back at Chondax.’
‘It would not have given us answers.’
‘But were you not tempted to, just a little?’
Qin Xa shrugged. ‘The Khan was. I could sense it, no matter what he ordered. But we are past that now – he has more pressing concerns. Accompany me, please.’
He moved off, opening the door into a conventionally lit walkway. Ilya trotted alongside, struggling as ever with the oversized stride of Space Marines.
‘There is a saying on Chogoris,’ said Qin Xa. ‘Better to be ignorant than wise. Many of us agree with that. We do not concern ourselves with what the other Legions do. So we were ignorant of what the rest of the Imperium was doing, and happy to be so. This is now the problem.’
Ilya raised an eyebrow. ‘You could not have known what was happening. Chondax was isolated for a long time.’
‘Yes, a strange chance.’
‘Such things happen.’
‘No, not this time. We were complacent. If Yesugei had been here he might have warned us.’
Ilya shook her head. ‘You can’t just isolate a whole subsector. You can’t just orchestrate warp storms.’
Qin Xa didn’t reply immediately. When he did, his voice was pensive. ‘You were taught that humanity has moved beyond superstition. You believe it, just like you were meant to. There are no gods, you were told, and what looks like magic is just the growing power of the human mind.’ He glanced at her almost furtively. ‘We, on the other hand, never stopped believing. On Chogoris it is called the Test of Heaven. We have always known of it. How do you think Stormseers become powerful? Our cousins on Fenris work the same source, though they would never admit it.’
He walked easily, fluidly.
‘You do not know what the warp is. None of you do. The Emperor kept those truths hidden, and for all we know he has tried to stamp out those who still understand them. The Khan never agreed with this. The two of them argued. This is the great question, szu, the one they fell out over – can you rest an empire on a lie?’
Ilya didn’t like hearing this. Much of what the Scars had told her had always sounded strange and uncomfortable, and she had learned to ignore the most esoteric of their views. But this… this sounded close to rebellion.
‘I do not–’ she started.
‘Listen,’ said Qin Xa, halting and turning to her. ‘Just listen. The warp is not what you think. It is alive. It is dangerous. It can be used. We of the Fifth would not be told otherwise, and that is why we were never trusted and why we have never been at the centre of things.’
‘That’s not how it is.’
‘It is why Nikaea happened. The Imperium is wilfully blind. Deliberately so. It has never wished to look at what holds it together.’
‘What does this have to do with Chondax?’ asked Ilya, growing flustered.
‘One can orchestrate warp storms.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘It takes enormous power, or devices of ancient origin, but it can be done.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘You need to know the Khan’s mind,’ said Qin Xa levelly. ‘You need to know what the dilemma is.’
‘So what is it? Tell me now – no riddles.’
Qin Xa looked at her with perfect earnestness. ‘When we are told that Russ has gone after Magnus, we can believe it. When we are told that Horus has become a monster, we can believe it. It is the warp, Ilya. It corrupts the finest – the greater the strength, the greater the corruption. Perhaps the Emperor himself has succumbed, perhaps the Warmaster has. In either case, it means ruin.’
Ilya looked into Qin Xa’s eyes and saw the steady certainty there. Whatever the truth of this, he believed it.
‘Then what are you going to do?’ she demanded. ‘You have a whole fleet here, burning through the void, and no one has told me where it’s heading.’
‘I am trying to tell you. We are headed for the source, to the architect. Only one soul sees the warp as it truly is.’
‘Terra,’ said Ilya, relieved. ‘So we are going to Terra.’
Qin Xa looked at her, disappointed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Have you not been listening? We cannot go to Terra.’
He rested a hand on her arm. ‘The Khan has only ever trusted one of his brothers. If Magnus lives then all this can be salvaged – if he is dead, then the Imperium is finished for us. We are going to Prospero, szu. The answers are there.’
Kal recovered himself.
‘Ledak?’ he voxed. His tongue was thick, his head hammering. ‘Rovel?’
He blinked heavily, clearing the mist across his eyes. He flexed a gauntlet – it worked. That was something.
‘Anyone?’
He pushed himself to his feet. He must have fallen. He was disorientated. Everything around him seemed to move sluggishly.
He blink-switched to the ship channel. ‘Status,’ he rasped.
The Vorkaudar’s communication operator’s voice, when it came, sounded relieved. ‘We had been concerned, lord. Your signal was lost. Is all well?’
Kal didn’t know. He felt nauseous. The space around him was empty and dark. He felt as if he’d forgotten something important.
‘I don’t have a lock on Ledak or Rovel,’ he said.
‘They were with you on the transition. We no longer have loci for them.’
Kal started to walk. The metal walls around him were scorched and dented. He ran a proximity check, and brought up nothing. He couldn’t even detect theVorkaudar on the locator matrix. His skin prickled with uneasiness.
‘Did you find anything over there?’ queried the operator.
‘What?’
‘The outpost, lord. Do you require anything further?’
Kal stopped walking. His head throbbed with pain, slowing his thoughts and making him feel sicker. He had definitely forgotten something. Why couldn’t hethink?
‘There’s nothing here. Nothing. Here.’
A pause. ‘We await orders, lord,’ said the operator, haltingly.
Kal felt like smashing his head against the wall – anything, to clear it.
‘I’m coming back.’
‘Very good. I have a strong signal for you now. Lowering voids. You may transition when–’
‘Wait.’ As soon as the operator uttered the words ‘lowering voids’, Kal remembered. The White Scar. The Iron Hand. ‘Wait!’
It was too late. The aether surged around him again, raging this time, flaring crimson as he dissolved into it. In the fraction of a heartbeat as his body hurtled between realms he remembered it all.
When he rematerialised in the teleport chamber he was not alone.
Kal’s hands leapt for his bolter, but too slowly. The White Scars witch raised a finger, im
mobilising him.
In an agony of frustration, Kal could only watch as the witch reached for a curved dagger. He could only watch as the blade pushed against his throat, nestling at the junction between helm and gorget.
‘How long you been corrupted?’ the witch asked.
Kal found that his lips could move again. He stared defiantly back at the White Scars legionary.
‘Since we knew the truth,’ he replied.
The witch looked at him, bewildered. ‘Truth? What truth drive you to this?’
‘The only one.’
‘One truth.’ The White Scar shook his head. ‘How foolish.’
Then Kal’s lips stopped working again. He heard the klaxons of other teleportation chambers and the heavy clump of power-armoured boots landing on metal. He felt the witch’s power withdrawing from his mind like water running from a glass.
He tried to speak again, to lash out, to get to his bolter.
But the witch wasn’t stupid. He pressed the dagger firmly, slicing clean through the armour seals. Kal felt the blade bite, parting his flesh and sinew with a hiss of faint disruptor charge, before his vision faded to black.
Yesugei pushed the body aside and strode out of the chamber. Henricos emerged from another opposite, followed later by Xa’ven and three Salamanders.
‘Disgusting,’ spat Henricos.
Yesugei looked at him quizzically.
‘Sorcery,’ said the Iron Hands legionary by way of explanation, shaking his hands loosely as if trying to shed some contagion. ‘Sorcery was the root of it all.’
‘No,’ said Yesugei, starting to walk. ‘Not at all.’
Xa’ven fell in alongside him. His hammer, held one-handed, crackled with a soft sheen of energy; he clutched a gold-limned bolt pistol in his other gauntlet. Yesugei’s eyes were drawn to the weapons. The sons of Vulkan knew how to make their tools beautiful.
‘He has a point,’ Xa’ven said.
The doors at the end of the corridor slid open, revealing two robed crew members hurrying towards the teleportation chambers. As they saw the Space Marines, their eyes widened and they scrambled to get out of the way.
‘Iron Hands technology conceals our presence on station,’ said Yesugei calmly, bursting the crews’ hearts with a single gesture. ‘My storm-craft gets us here. Even.’
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