Xa’ven looked back at Ledak. The legionary was smiling still, though his filed teeth were black with blood.
Yesugei withdrew his fist and clasped his gauntlets together. A pearl of electric-blue light kindled between his fingers. He opened his palms and lightning leapt from his hands to Ledak’s face. Crackling spears lodged fast, jutting into Ledak’s eyes and sparking across his exposed skin.
The smell of crisping flesh filled the chamber. Ledak screamed, writhing in his bonds, spasming and jerking. Yesugei kept up the pressure for a few seconds, pouring on more pain, letting the lightning dance across the legionary’s body, before halting abruptly.
Ledak slumped, breathing hard. He looked disorientated. A large chunk of his left cheek had burned away, exposing the sinews beneath. Wisps of smoke rose from his body.
‘Do not do that again,’ said Xa’ven.
‘Fleet movements,’ Yesugei told Ledak. ‘Communications. These things can save you.’
Ledak’s face hung forwards. He looked to be having trouble focusing. He blearily stared at Yesugei, then Xa’ven.
‘Le… dak. Two… Fifty-Sixth… Comp–’
Yesugei unleashed more lightning. The screaming was wet and gargling this time, hampered by a throat that was being burned away. It seemed to go on for longer.
That was enough. Xa’ven drew his bolter and trained it on Yesugei.
‘No more, brother,’ he said quietly.
Yesugei turned, shocked. The lightning died out, and Ledak’s charred face slumped again.
‘You draw your weapon?’ asked Yesugei, incredulous.
‘Do not make me use it.’
The White Scars legionary hesitated, as if wondering how many enemies he truly had in the chamber. ‘We have no time. They know deployments. We need to know.’
Xa’ven nodded. ‘We will discover them. Henricos is working on the machine.’
‘You think they would not do this to us?’
‘That is my point, brother.’ Xa’ven held the bolter steady. ‘You have seen what is on this ship. You have seen what they have become. You were as disgusted as me.’
Yesugei shook his head in frustration. ‘We need to know. Cannot fight without information. Cannot locate Legion.’
‘I agreed to join you,’ said Xa’ven steadily. ‘I will fight with you to find your Khan. I will die to do it, if it takes the war to the enemy. But we both have our primarchs’ example, and when I see him again I will not look Vulkan in the eye and tell him I forgot my vows.’
For a moment, Yesugei looked defiant, as desperate as a cornered animal. The thirst for knowledge, for more speed, burned in his every gesture.
Ledak coughed then, choking up blood and bile. His face was ruined, a mess of muscle and raw fluids. If he had been a mortal such wounds would have undoubtedly killed him.
Yesugei looked at his handiwork, and the fervour left his face. He lowered his gauntlets. His golden eyes betrayed a brief sense of horror, as though he were seeing the contents of the room for the first time.
‘You shame me,’ he said. ‘For a moment–’
Xa’ven holstered his weapon. ‘I have lived with it for longer, that is all. At the start, I too would have done it and not cared.’ He looked at Ledak’s open sores. ‘Become like your enemy, though, and he has your soul.’
‘Something Vulkan said?’
‘It is something he might have done.’
Yesugei drew in a deep breath. He looked tired. Xa’ven guessed that expending his power on the station and during the aetheric teleportation had drained him badly.
‘We need to know,’ Yesugei insisted.
Xa’ven pressed the rune to open the doors. ‘We will, weather-maker.’
‘Time is against us,’ said Yesugei.
‘Trust in Henricos,’ said Xa’ven, ushering him from the chamber. ‘I have learned to. Iron Hands are a strange breed, but, believe me, they never give up.’
He glanced back at the prisoner hanging from the shackles.
‘We all have that in common still, at least.’
The jetbike tore down the tunnel, roaring like a living thing. Shiban drove it hard, tilting over in the saddle to avoid the obstacles as they rushed to meet him. The space around him was tight – just a few metres wide in the sharpest sections – and spiteful with lethal polyps of metalwork.
The machine shuddered beneath him. The drives thundered, the exhausts flamed. A bulkhead swept up out of the dark and he angled hard. A crossways strut followed it and he ducked low.
The proving ring on the Tchin-Zar was five kilometres long: over two kilometres on the straights, sandwiched between a pair of fearsome hairpin corners. It was little more than a void between enginarium zones, left empty by a Legion that valued its fast-attack speeders. Mastering a jetbike required hours in the saddle, and the skill could be forgotten, so the battleships maintained training circuits in their depths.
Shiban leaned forward, adjusting his weight fractionally, tipping the nose to avoid a tangle of piping before gunning the power to pull clear again. Iron-dark engineering elements blurred past. He might have been speeding through the heart of some forgotten metallic world.
The bike responded well. It was the last of those that had borne him on Chondax, and the refitters had done a good job of dragging the dust from its filters and cleaning the blood from the ploughshare fairing.
It took him a while to catch the sound of his pursuer. Down in the proving tunnels it was hard to hear much over the echoing growl of his own steed.
Shiban smiled, and depressed the throttle. Locator runes sped by on his helm display – flickering outlines of red against a blurred backdrop of raw black. He saw the signal trailing him, a few hundred metres back but closing.
Try harder.
The end-course switchback approached at speed. Shiban hurtled into it, refusing to brake until the very last moment. The jetbike chassis quivered, barely containing the enormous power booming from the drives.
Only when the corner-apex surged into visual range did Shiban jab on the airbrakes. The inertia threw his body forwards; he felt the blood rush to his head. A heavy metal beam straddled the way ahead and he rolled to one side to slide under it. Beyond that, the tunnel pulled sharply left, twisting hard round under the foundations of immense engine housings. For the first time he heard the hammering of combustion other than his bike’s – the grind of fusion reactors blazing away far above.
In a second he was round, skidding tightly through the confined airspace before kicking the engines into full burn again.
He had nearly taken it too fast. The jetbike’s compensators whined at full pitch; the right flank grazed the tunnel’s inner wall, sparking in the dark.
He laughed out loud, picking up speed. The noise was exhilarating. He could hear nothing but the resounding beat of engines and smell nothing but exhaust-smog.
He glanced at his helm display.
Still being tailed. Impressive.
Shiban boosted under a skeletal gantry before applying another full burst. A long straight yawned away from him, weaving between the vastness of the battleship’s internal structures.
He felt sharp. It had only been a short while since he’d been hunting across the lava-plains of Phemus IV. His reactions, honed upon the backs of Chogorian aduun, were as reliable as his glaive.
But he was being caught. The signal behind him grew, looming out of the darkness like a dogged ghost.
He laughed again, and went even faster. The end of the tunnel swept towards him. Even at forty per cent thrust, a jetbike could eat the distance up on a short track with terrifying speed.
I will lose you at the Pincer.
Shiban let the bike slide left a fraction before feeding it more power and skirting a jutting mass of burned-out cargo feeders. He skidded under the pile-driver foundations of a big fuel conduit and lurched wide.
The Pincer shot towards him out of the dark – a narrow aperture formed by two close-knit brace columns. The hole
between them was barely three metres wide. That was hard enough to thread under normal conditions. In the dark, hampered by the confinement and extreme speed, it was a pleasingly dangerous test.
Shiban accelerated, concentrating hard as he tore into range. Then his engine kicked, rocked by a stray exhaust discharge, sending him a fraction high.
Shiban jammed on the airbrakes, tensing as the Pincer’s top section raced towards him.
There was no time to do anything but duck. Ragged ironwork cracked into the top of his helm, nearly stunning him, but he smashed his way through in a shower of sparks.
The tunnel on the far side spun drunkenly, and Shiban had to work hard to control his mount. Gritting his teeth, he pulled the prow up just as it risked crashing into a solid mass of adamantium deck-bracing.
He recovered position, but his speed had taken a hit. He opened the throttle again, only to see his pursuer shoot past overhead. The rider must have come through the Pincer at insanely high speed.
Shiban laughed for a third time, lost in the glorious foolishness of it. That was riding. It would not have shamed the Khagan himself.
By then the final corner was approaching fast, and Shiban eased off. The rider ahead of him did the same, and the tunnel filled with the thick smoke of thrusters powering down.
A few seconds later, the whole track flooded with light. Hatches split open above them, hissing from banks of angled pistons, exposing jetbike hangars in the vaults overhead. Shiban continued to decelerate, coasting up to the nearest docking berth. He was still smiling.
The rider ahead of him nudged up into a berth further along. Two segmented claws reached down from the roof-space and grasped his jetbike fore and aft. The rider dismounted before the machine could be hauled up and away to the servicing bays, leaping over to a steel gantry to his right.
Beyond the gantry stretched the main body of the hangar – immense, curving and brightly lit, swarming with servitors and speeder maintenance crews. Other Legion riders strode across the capacious floor space towards their prepared mounts, armoured and ready to descend down to the proving ring themselves.
The claws descended for Shiban’s jetbike. He leapt from the saddle as the machine was pulled past the gantry, and strode over to the victor, worried that he would leave before he had the chance to congratulate him.
‘Brother!’ he cried. ‘Fine riding!’
The rider withdrew his helm with a twist and ran a gauntlet over his sweat-glossed forehead. ‘You make it hard to beat you, Shiban Khan.’
Only when he spoke did Shiban recognise him: the Terran from Chondax, the one who had fought through the Grinder at his back. He looked unchanged under the hard lumens of the hangar – stocky, tall, his scar faint on his cheek. Shiban had not expected to see him again. In a Legion of so many thousands, Brotherhoods came and went like summer sparrows.
‘Torghun Khan,’ Shiban said, reaching to clasp him by the hand, surprised but not displeased. ‘How are you here?’
Torghun shrugged. ‘The fortunes of war,’ he said. ‘You will share a drink with me?’
Shiban hesitated. He had no idea why – it was good to see Torghun again.
‘With pleasure,’ he said, smiling. ‘Lead on.’
‘So what happened for you after the White World?’
Torghun looked equivocal. ‘There was work to do in the canyons. We hadn’t cleared them out. Not all of them.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Or it hadn’t been done properly.’
Shiban smiled. ‘Really?’
They sat at a table in one of the Tchin-Zar’s many refectory chambers. This one was reserved for legionaries, and was empty save for the two of them. Even the White Scars, who were not as slavishly devoted to duty as some Legions, took refreshment only sparsely between the demands of combat conditioning.
Torghun swilled his drink in its metal cup. ‘They recruited a Terran woman after that. She has the ear of the Khagan, I’m told. There was some reorganisation.’
‘Did you see fighting again?’
‘No. Not after the last of the hain were rooted out.’
‘Ah. Sorry.’
‘It’ll come again.’
Shiban tried not to study Torghun too obviously. He looked no different. For some reason, the Grinder campaign remained vivid in his memory even when so many other exercises had faded. It had felt then like the ending of something old and the beginning of something new. Only now was the shape of that novelty becoming more apparent.
‘Did it change things as you hoped it would?’ asked Torghun.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Being there, at the end, with the primarch.’
Shiban thought. ‘I do not know. We were ordered to Phemus. We barely had time for our death rites. Do you remember Hasi?’
‘I do. He died?’
Shiban nodded. ‘And Batu. Only Jochi came with me.’
Torghun cradled his cup in two hands. ‘You took many casualties. That’s the price of speed.’
Shiban smiled ruefully. ‘As you warned me.’
Torghun looked instantly apologetic. ‘I did not mean–’
‘I know.’ Shiban took a sip of his drink. ‘I thought about what you told me on Chondax.’ He caught Torghun’s sceptical expression. ‘Believe me, I did. I have become an exponent of what you said. Your warriors were more flexible than mine. I have tried to teach them these things.’
Torghun raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m surprised.’
‘Do not be. The galaxy is changing.
‘That it is.’ Torghun stared at his drink, still taking none of it. ‘And what do you make of it?’
That was the question. ‘What do you wish me to say?’
‘You’re the poet,’ said Torghun. ‘You have words for everything.’
Shiban’s eyes flickered up for an instant, scanning for mockery. He had never been able to tell, not with Torghun. ‘I trust the Khagan,’ he said. ‘But you knew that already. He will understand more than we do.’
Torghun smiled wryly. ‘He could share the knowledge a little more.’
‘He will, in time. I am content to wait.’
Torghun pushed back in his chair, and the reinforced metal struts flexed under his armoured weight. ‘I admit, it was enjoyable to see the Alpha Legion scatter like that.’ His mouth creased at the corners. ‘Slippery bastards. I wonder what they thought when they saw the Swordstorm coming at them.’
Shiban shared the smile. ‘They would not have had much time to think.’
Torghun laughed. ‘True.’
A silence fell between them. The clink and slam of menials working nearby intruded, echoing in from a capacious serving area. The floor trembled as a flight of jetbikes thundered underneath them, just a few decks down.
Torghun spoke again, finally. ‘Shiban, what is happening?’
‘I do not know.’
‘No one does. You know we’ve been ordered back to Terra?’
‘I do.’
‘And they’re saying Russ has finally gone rogue?’
‘Not only him.’
Torghun pushed his chair back. ‘I wanted to see you, because you always said that it couldn’t last. I remember you did.’
Shiban did not remember saying that. ‘Everything changes.’
‘Lines are being drawn. Every time we consult star-speakers they give us a different riddle, but it’ll come out soon. Someone is lying.’ He looked carefully at Shiban. ‘And it’s in the Legion, too. I begin to suspect…’
Shiban’s brow furrowed. ‘Say it. You came here to do so.’
Torghun leaned forward. ‘Brotherhood. That’s the tie that binds us. I saw it in the Luna Wolves. They had groups. Informal groups. They would meet, renew warrior vows. It was tolerated. The Warmaster, they told me, fostered them.’
Shiban listened. ‘The Warmaster?’
‘So they said. It’s a good system. It breaks down ranks. Information is exchanged. It helps with trust.’
‘You are in one of these?’
&n
bsp; Torghun nodded. ‘There’s nothing sinister. It’s a fraternity. You must have had them on Chogoris – warrior lodges.’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Well, Chogorians are in them. They outnumber us now. That’s the way things are going, right?’
Shiban didn’t smile. He felt like he was being manoeuvred, and that made him tense. ‘You were part of this on Chondax?’
‘I dip in and out. Have done for a few years. Some have been involved for much longer. But, look, it’s nothing serious. I was just reminded of what you’d said, and I thought you might be interested. We’re all warriors. Some of the finest in the Legion are members. You’d be welcome. I could speak for you.’
Shiban took another sip. ‘I have my Brotherhood.’
‘Of course. As do I. It doesn’t replace that.’
‘Then what is the point?’
Torghun looked nonchalant. ‘Like I said, to talk. To share fellowship. Sometimes it’s good to forget about being a khan and just be a…’
‘Brother.’
‘Exactly.’
Shiban nodded slowly. ‘So, this is why you came to find me?’
‘I heard you were on the ship. It seemed like an opportunity.’
Shiban pursed his lips. ‘You ride a bike fast. I don’t remember you riding that fast.’
Torghun snorted. ‘I had to, to catch you. You came close to taking your head off.’
‘They are built for speed. It would be a shame to waste it.’
‘It’s not all about speed.’
‘Yes, so you keep telling me.’
Torghun pushed his cup to one side. ‘It’s an offer, that’s all. You know as well as I do that choices are going to have to be made. The Warmaster’s sent his request for assistance.’
‘As has Dorn.’
‘Yes, after being silent for… how long? When did Terra last seek us out?’
Shiban felt incredulous. ‘You’re Terran, brother.’
‘I’m Legiones Astartes,’ said Torghun, firmly. ‘I haven’t set eyes on the Throneworld in a hundred years. This is about what’s right.’
Shiban looked at him steadily. ‘The Khagan will decide. We could wait for that.’
Scars Page 20