Ruinstorm

by David Annandale

  The Destroyers threw themselves into the fight with an enthusiasm that might have troubled Guilliman in a different context. When he monitored the communications between Hierax and his company, he heard tones verging on savage joy. Yet the discipline of their attacks never wavered. What he heard was the brutal satisfaction of no longer fighting a defensive war. He understood. When he pumped the Arbitrator’s double stream of bolter shells into the abominations, when the explosions vaporised warp flesh, he felt the same satisfaction. And when the Destroyers pulverised the heaving mass of the enemy with rad artillery barrages, there was more satisfaction. The worst of weapons for the worst of foes. That logic was unassailable.

  Then use the weapons you have acquired. You know what the athames can do to these beings.

  He brushed the thought aside. The daggers were in the vault aboard the Samothrace, beyond the reach of temptation. There was no need of them here. The weaponry of the Ultramarines was effective in destroying the abominations.

  Then Gorod, marching with Guilliman beside the Flame of ­Illyrium, challenged his certainty. ‘Chainswords and axes are felling these things more readily than bolters,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve seen this before,’ Guilliman answered. ‘But they are falling quickly enough.’

  ‘I could almost wish we had brought even more primitive weapons.’

  Guilliman didn’t answer. He punched the Gladius Incandor through the skull of a glistening pink monster, then finished it with two more stabs as it tried to divide itself.

  For more than one hundred hours, the battle raged. Then the manu­factorum cried out. A mountain chain of infernal creation screamed with a throat of stone. Fissures snaked up the heights of the walls. Chimneys three miles high wavered. Their bases crumbled, and they dropped like broken spines into the pyres of chaotic lightning. The fissures widened. Howling light burst from them. The warp lightning punched holes through the towering doors. The daemons in the field moaned as one, and abandoned the attack. Their reduced army melted away, flowing back into the secondary foundries. Soon the high towers on both sides of the battleground began to flash. Streaks of corrupted light shot upwards to the base of the fortress.

  ‘They flee,’ the Lion voxed.

  Guilliman turned to the primary foundry’s doors. They were still closed. ‘Brother,’ he called to Sanguinius. ‘Can you hear me?’

  There was no answer at first. It wasn’t long, though, before one came. When a huge split appeared the entire height of the doors, Sanguinius’ voice reached Guilliman. ‘We are coming out, Roboute. We have done what we came to do.’

  ‘I can see that.’ The manufactorum was a volcano about to be blown apart by its internal forces.

  ‘Can you clear the terrain for the Stormbirds to land?’

  ‘That will not be a concern. They have quit the field. Focus your efforts on escaping the site of your triumph. Don’t let it be your tomb, Sanguinius.’

  ‘It won’t be.’

  Guilliman was struck by the ringing confidence in Sanguinius’ voice. He had become used to hearing his brother’s iron fatalism. Sanguinius sounded different now. For the first time since they had been ­reunited on Macragge, Guilliman heard the Angel speak with real hope.

  The manufactorum convulsed. A series of explosions mounted the pillar joining it to the keep’s gate. They began as pinpricks on the umbilical length, then became a pulsing river of fire. A blast at the base of the fortress gate was larger than Pyrrhan itself. The terrain before the manufactorum shook with constant tremors. A widening web of fissures extended from the foundations. To the south, for as far as Guilliman could see, clouds of dust erupted as the ground cracked.

  ‘Withdraw, brothers,’ Sanguinius voxed to Guilliman and the Lion. ‘This battle is finished, and greater victories will come.’

  ‘You saw something in there, Sanguinius,’ said the Lion. He sounded almost accusatory.

  ‘I did,’ said the Angel. ‘I saw hope. We are not slaves to fate, brothers.’

  The end of the manufactorum arrived as the combined fleets came over the horizon, putting them once more in the line of fire of the keep’s guns. The surface of Pyrrhan flared white. Coronas of warp energy whipped up the pillar, growing vaster with every slashing coil. Pyrrhan imploded, vanishing in an instant, the tiny growth at the end of the pillar sucked into the climbing disintegration. Blasts the size of miniature suns rocked the pillar, and then the dissolution reached the gate itself.

  The gun emplacements on the gate fired briefly. They did not destroy their targets before destruction came for them. On the bridge of the Red Tear, Sanguinius watched the holocaust. Warp-infused flames hundreds of thousands of miles high consumed the gate. The structure lost coherence. It disintegrated. Shrapnel as big as planets spun away from the main body. Solid matter millions of miles thick became vortices, hurling streams of incandescent rubble into the void. The trailing edge of one stream hit the Dark Angels cruiser Claustro, turning the vessel to burning gas. The greatest vortex appeared in the middle of the gate. The eight-pointed star spiralled into fragments. The breach spread wider with ferocious speed. The colossal structure consumed itself like burning parchment, the edges peeling away from the centre, ash that could smash a battleship to dust billowing to the galactic east and west. The sides of the ruined gate glowed, molten. Between them now was a passage millions of miles wide. The void, stained by the Ruinstorm, was visible on the other side.

  Engines powering up to maximum speed, the fleet began the long crossing between walls of infinite fire.

  Eleven

  Resonance

  When the gravitational hold of the fortress weakened, and the fleets prepared to enter the warp again, Sanguinius called Mkani Kano to the Sanctorum Angelus. Sanguinius looked at the golden sculptures that made the space into an oasis of meditation, unable to draw peace from them.

  ‘Do you know how we won on Pyrrhan?’ Sanguinius asked.

  ‘I do not,’ Kano confessed.

  Sanguinius told the Librarian a version of what he had experienced. He was circumspect about the visions. ‘I saw visions of defeat,’ he said. ‘I found a single one of victory, and chose it.’ He described the great fall, and the cleaving of the knots.

  ‘Then you destroyed the manufactorum,’ Kano said, awed.

  ‘And by extension, the fortress gate itself. With a single blow. What I saw has given me great hope. But the implications trouble me, too. I must not believe I wield such cataclysmic power. No one should. The idea is corrupt and corrupting.’

  Kano shook his head. ‘The things we are seeing are beyond anyone’s experience. The scale is simply too vast for easy explanation. They seem more symbolic than real.’ He paused.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sanguinius. ‘Symbolism. That is a key somehow. In the Signus System, that symbol of the eight-pointed star covered a planet. And there are patterns to the beings of the daemons. They represent things.’

  ‘Then perhaps so did your victory,’ Kano suggested. ‘We can use their nature against them.’

  As they do to us, Sanguinius thought. ‘A single blow can change the galaxy, then,’ he said. Or a single choice. That came before the blow.

  ‘For the better.’

  ‘In this case.’ Sanguinius was not satisfied. Too much still flowed from his actions. He dreaded the constellation of circumstances that might grant him even more power.

  ‘More reasons to be on guard,’ said Kano. ‘Even so…’ He trailed off. Blood drained from his face. His eyes widened in sudden pain.

  The Red Tear jerked, a toy in the hand of a giant. The drop from the warp was as violent as it had been before the fortress. The sound pierced the hull in the next moment. High-pitched, vibrating, like a tuning fork struck against madness itself.

  Sanguinius supported Kano from the Sanctorum, fighting through the thrumming in his own skull. He felt warmth on his neck. Blood was runn
ing from his ears.

  ‘Where are we?’ Guilliman called. He wiped the blood from his nose and ears.

  On the bridge below the pulpit, officers clutched their heads in agony. One man’s teeth had chattered so violently they had splintered. Servitor movements were jerking, spasmodic, unpredictable. The resonance hammered through the hull. The Samothrace rang as if the vibrations would shake it to powder.

  ‘Where are we?’ Guilliman repeated. The system was not Davin. Much more than that was ceasing to have meaning in this region of the galaxy. Guilliman called for the information to force purpose into the crew, to give them a way forwards through the pain of the unceasing resonance.

  The crew responded to the command in Guilliman’s voice. More officers collapsed, but others found strength in duty. The cogitators were spitting out gibberish scrap data, and the auspex array had to be shut down and restarted. At last, Nestor Lautenix spoke, his voice thick with pain. ‘Episimos,’ he said. ‘It’s Episimos.’

  ‘Thrinos again,’ said Prayto. The Librarian had grasped the railing overlooking the bridge. His posture was straight, but only through a massive effort of will. As painful as the sound was for Guilliman, it was much more harmful for the psyker. Blood droplets had formed on Prayto’s forehead. ‘There were refugees from here,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Guilliman said, sparing him further effort. He had made the connection too. Episimos IV had been well represented in the camp on Thrinos.

  The evidence of the Pilgrim’s passing was obvious.

  Enormous constructs filled the system, dwarfing the worlds. The vessels of the fleets once again had to fight from being captured by the gravitational pull of the gigantic bodies. The objects were so immense, their shapes extended far beyond the limits of the Episimos System, beyond the range of the scans. They might, Guilliman thought, reach as far as other systems. They might be light years in size.

  Objects. Shapes. Constructs. Guilliman hunted for words of greater precision, words that would describe the immensities he saw, and give him a measure of control. The whining, spine-grinding sound made it hard for him to think, but even in silence, language would have failed him. There were no names for these things. The daemon fortress at least had been recognisable. Its obscenity had been in its size. The constructs in the Episimos System were geometry run amok, angles building on and into other angles. On the nearest mass, the side facing the Samothrace was dominated by a formation that seemed to be both an extrusion and a depression. The pounding in Guilliman’s head grew worse when he tried to force sense onto the formation, and he turned away.

  ‘Analysis,’ he said, maintaining order on the bridge.

  ‘Warp,’ said Prayto, breathing hard.

  ‘Granted. But what is the materium correlative? The fortress was stone and brass. The abominations have something we can recognise as flesh. What is this?’

  Guilliman spoke with more frustration than he intended. The surfaces appeared to be smooth. The objects were carved from single blocks millions and billions of miles on a side. Colours swam and rippled across them, deep rotten violets and greens. Patterns like the scales of reptiles appeared and disappeared. The constructs had hides, or they were ice, or they were a dream. Lines curved and straightened, a language of monsters preaching its lessons to the materium. The meaning of the lesson crawled inside Guilliman’s chest. He tore his eyes from the flowing runes before he could understand them and be wounded.

  He was not sure how many of the constructs there were in the system. A few floated alone in the void, serene in their lonely horror. Others were linked to one another, forming complexes so vast, they extended beyond the range of the scanners.

  Even more than the fortress, these monoliths were the death of reason. There was no logic to the structures. Their material was the reification of madness. Their foundation was the bones of the Emperor’s dream.

  ‘What are they?’ said Drakus Gorod. His question had no expectation of an answer. It was an expression of frustrated anger.

  Guilliman gave him an answer all the same. ‘They are the consequences of the loss of this war.’ He wondered if Horus or Lorgar really understood what they had unleashed. Was this what they wanted? They could not rule here. There would be nothing to rule. They would be the slaves of these powers.

  ‘The sound,’ Prayto said. ‘They’re making it.’ He pushed himself back from the railing, wiping blood from his face. He worked through the pain with grim determination. His psychic hood ­crackled as if he were fending off an attack. ‘There are lines,’ he said. He was speaking with difficulty. ‘Psychic lines. Between the constructs. And between them and the worlds.’ He winced. More blood appeared on his brow. ‘I can see it. It’s a web…’ His voice trailed off. There was a flare from his hood, and then he was steadier again. ‘It’s holding us here.’

  From below, one of the ship’s tech-priests, Byzanus, looked up. ‘With respect, Librarian Prayto,’ he said, his bionic larynx hitching and popping with static, ‘this seems unlikely. We cannot detect any source of energy from the constructs. They are inert.’

  ‘Their being is enough,’ said Prayto. ‘Their shapes, their positions… The web is created by their conjunctions.’

  ‘So we have no enemy to combat,’ said Guilliman. ‘What is our status?’ he asked Turetia Altuzer.

  ‘Almost immobilised,’ said the shipmaster. ‘The warp drive is inert. We have some power in the engines, but not much. We can manoeuvre to a limited degree, but if we get much closer to any of those objects, I’m not sure we’ll be able to resist their gravitation.’

  The back of Guilliman’s skull throbbed with pain. If the mass, shape and position of the constructs was creating the sound, then he had to disrupt those conditions. But the constructs were too large to destroy.

  ‘My lord,’ said Terrens, ‘vox activity coming from Episimos Three.’

  ‘Human?’

  ‘Yes.’ Terrens stabbed at the screen before her. ‘It’s broken up badly. They appear to be hailing the fleets.’

  ‘Take us closer,’ Guilliman ordered. He looked at the fleet positions. The Dark Angels were nearest to Episimos III. ‘Contact the First Legion,’ he told Terrens. ‘I will speak to my brother.’

  The vox traffic between the ships was rough. The Lion’s voice scratched in Guilliman’s ear, but he could understand the other primarch well enough. The Dark Angels had picked up the same transmission. At their location, closer to the source, it was clearer.

  ‘The Imperial forces planetside are under siege,’ the Lion said.

  ‘I’m impressed they’ve held out this long,’ said Guilliman.

  ‘I believe their time is growing short. They’re asking for liberation.’

  Episimos III was a blackened skull. Its two great hives still burned, embers glowing in eye sockets. Further from the sun, Episimos IV had been the cooler, more temperate heart of the system. Now its surface was a writhing mass of grey flesh. Thin lips pulled back over a continent-wide smile. Teeth showed, then vanished, and another parted, running across the fading scar of the first maw. The world had become hunger. Episimos III, though, still fought. It still screamed.

  ‘We have made contact with a Colonel Eleska Revus,’ the Lion told Guilliman. ‘We will relay the substance of our communications.’ He had hesitated before making that commitment, then decided it would be better for his brothers to know what was being said. In this instance, he would want them to understand the reasons for the actions he sensed he would have to take.

  ‘Who is in command of your operations?’ the Lion asked Revus.

  ‘I am,’ she voxed back. ‘Our lord governor is dead. General Palher dropped out of contact a week ago.’ Her words were slurred with exhaustion and horror.

  ‘And your current situation?’ He could foresee what the import of the answer would be. Liberate us. That was the cry that had first come through on the vox. If t
here had been any trace of hope in those hails to the fleet, it did not sound like the sudden expectation of victory. The Lion had been careful to use the same word when he spoke to Guilliman. Liberation. Not reinforcements. Sitting in the throne above the Invincible Reason’s bridge, he knew that he was, in this moment, a judge more than a military commander.

  ‘Our resistance is confined to isolated pockets.’

  ‘Is there any chance of linking up?’

  ‘No. Even if we could, it would be pointless.’

  ‘Do not try my patience with defeatism, colonel.’

  ‘I am not, my lord. I am stating facts. Ever since the Pilgrim came…’ Revus trailed off, the horror in her voice growing so strong that it strangled her words. ‘It destroyed everything in orbit. We couldn’t escape. Did anyone from Episimos Four get away?’

  ‘They did,’ the Lion told her.

  ‘Oh. Oh good.’ She sighed with dark joy. ‘Then our culture will survive.’

  Perhaps, the Lion thought. The refugees on Thrinos were cut off from the rest of the Imperium. Their long-term survival was doubtful.

  ‘What was the Pilgrim?’ the Lion asked. He had to, though he did not expect to get an answer any clearer than had been found on Thrinos.

  He was right.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Revus. ‘It came like a ship, but it was much too big. It brought the change…’ Her breathing was ragged. ‘Nothing is real any more,’ she whispered to herself.