Night Lords Omnibus

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘We are leaving,’ said Talos.

  ‘There’s one more,’ she said faintly through slug-fat lips. ‘The big one.’

  ‘We are still leaving,’ he said, reaching down for her.

  With the Navigator over his shoulder and his bolter clutched in his free hand, Talos made his way back through the generatorium chamber.

  ‘This is Indriga,’ the convict spoke into a hand vox. He crouched in the darkness under the foundation support girders of a silent generator tower, his words emerging as a sneering whisper. He wasn’t made to hide. It took all of his willpower not to get out there and brain the armoured monster that was making its escape.

  ‘Speak,’ replied a sibilant male voice.

  ‘Lord Ruven,’ the prisoner said, ‘he came for the witch.’

  ‘This leads me to wonder, however, why you are still alive.’

  The words were stuck in Indriga’s throat for several seconds. ‘I hid, lord.’

  ‘Has he gone?’

  ‘He’s leaving now.’ A pause. ‘He took the witch.’

  ‘What do you mean he took her? Why would he take a corpse?’

  Indriga swallowed, and the sound travelled down the vox. Ruven growled a sigh.

  ‘We brought her with us,’ Indriga said. ‘We wanted to–’

  ‘Enough. Your mortal urges are meaningless to me. You failed to comply with the most basic orders, Indriga. And now, you will die for it.’

  ‘Lord…’

  ‘I would start running, if I were you.’

  Indriga lowered the hand vox, his lip curling in disgust as he heard the armoured killer’s footsteps drawing near again. Evidently, he was coming back to finish the job.

  Must’ve heard me whispering…

  Indriga needed to see. He clicked the shotgun’s underslung lamp active, and leapt from his hiding place with the beam of light like a lance before him.

  The towering armoured form swivelled in the half-dark, no doubt protecting the witch he was carrying. Indriga’s shotgun barked once, twice, a third time and a fourth, each impact blasting a hail of shot that cracked and clattered against the ceramite war-plate.

  Talos turned in the second Indriga’s shotgun clicked dry. Eurydice, over his left shoulder, had been shielded from harm when he’d spun to avoid the gunfire. The massive bolter fired once, aimed low, and the bolt pounded into Indriga’s stomach. It detonated a moment later, leaving the convict in pieces across the walkway. The largest piece, consisting of Indriga’s chest, arms and howling face, remained alive for twelve agonising seconds. Talos ignored its shrieks, reaching for the hand vox the dying prisoner had dropped.

  ‘Prophet,’ said the voice on the other end of the channel.

  ‘Ruven,’ Talos said softly, ‘my brother. It has been a while, brother. I should have recognised your unsubtle handiwork when your four “gods” babbled without sense for so long.’

  ‘Ruven of the Black Legion now, and Eyes of the Warmaster. I assure you, Talos, you do not know of what you speak.’

  ‘The Exalted says the same. I am weary of the protests of the corrupt and the ruined. The Warmaster has betrayed the other Legions before, but this is crude and brazen, even for him.’

  ‘So you say, brother. You have no proof beyond a cracked breastplate that he was even involved. And who would care? The Exalted? He is Abaddon’s creature, and always has been. One squad of the Night Lords walking into an obvious trap is no concern for the coming crusade.’

  At Talos’s feet, Indriga breathed his last. The silence was unwelcome, for the idiot’s howls had been curiously pleasant.

  ‘Your thuggish little cultist is dead,’ Talos said as he moved away.

  ‘I will hardly be weeping over that. Tell me, why was it so easy to refuse the Four Powers? Did they offer nothing that tempted you? Even for a moment?’

  ‘The purpose of luring me to the planet’s surface escapes me, brother,’ Talos said, looking down at the human wreckage. ‘You must have known I would never leave the Legion.’

  ‘The VIII Legion is weak. The Exalted seeks to discard you; you have little love for your brothers; and above all – Abaddon himself takes an interest in you. Does that mean nothing to you? How can this be so?’

  Talos was already moving, cradling Eurydice as he walked.

  ‘I am going to kill you when next I see you, Ruven.’

  The Night Lord had foreseen the Navigator’s importance, and almost lost her only days later. This foolish venture had also almost cost him Septimus. Might yet still cost him Septimus, if he didn’t survive the restorative surgeries.

  Carelessness. Carelessness beyond reckoning.

  ‘Mark my words, Ruven. Whether you are the Despoiler’s pet or not, I will cut you down.’

  ‘Why did you refuse the Powers? Answer me, Talos.’

  ‘Because I am my father’s son.’ Talos cast the hand vox aside and kept walking.

  ‘It was good to speak with you again, my brother. I missed your simple sincerity and literal nature. Talos? Talos?’

  Talos felt Eurydice stir as he ascended the stairs to the next level.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said softly.

  He had no answer to that. The words were too unfamiliar.

  XI

  THREE WEEKS LATER

  The slave listened at the door.

  From within, he heard sounds of movement, dully penetrating the metal. With a hand he was still not used to using, he pressed the entrance key, triggering a toneless chime within the room. Footsteps came closer, and the door opened on hissing gears, sliding to the left. In the doorway stood another slave.

  ‘Septimus,’ said the room’s occupant with a smile.

  ‘Octavia,’ he replied. ‘It’s time.’

  ‘I’m ready.’

  The two Legion serfs walked down the darkened halls of the Covenant of Blood’s mortal decks, where the illumination strips along the ceilings were forever tuned to twilight. It was enough to see by, even for those unused to a sunless life, but it would hardly pass for twilight on most worlds.

  Octavia still found herself glancing at him every few moments when they were together. The surgeries were still fresh, his skin still adapting, and where his augmetics met flesh, the telltale redness of fading inflammation was still in evidence. His left eye, the one he’d lost to the convicts that stormed the Thunderhawk, was now a violet lens set in a bronze mounting that reached out to cover his temple and cheekbone. Octavia, in her life as the daughter of a Navigator House, had seen a great many augmetic enhancements in the courts of Terra, not least of all her own father’s. By general standards, Septimus’s bionic reconstruction was relatively subtle. It was certainly above the poorest-grade cybernetic ‘slice and graft’ surgeries available to even many wealthy Imperial citizens.

  Still, she could tell none of that was any comfort to him. She watched him hit the door release with his gloved hand – the hand he had lost along with his eye. She had yet to see the augmetic hand and forearm he now bore, but she heard the rough mechanics of its servos buzzing and clicking as he moved. Upon his throat and chest, the outward bruises had mostly vanished, but the memory of the violence done to him was still clear in the way he moved. Although he was healing and the three weeks had shown huge improvement, he was still stiff and obviously sore – walking like an old man in the winter.

  They walked together through the lower mortals’ decks of the Covenant. Octavia doubted she would ever get used to the… the community down here. Unlike the upper decks, which housed valued serfs and officers, the non-essential mortal crew inhabited these darkened decks, occupying civilian quarters much as on any other military vessel, but they were twisted and shaped by their allegiance to the Night Lords. They reminded her of vermin, living down here in the darkness.

  In the untraceable distance, down unknown numbers of winding corridors, someone screamed. Octavia flinched at the cry. Septimus did not.

  As the two serfs moved down the wide steel corridor, a cloaked figure, hunch
ed over almost onto all fours, scrambled across their path from one adjacent passage to another. Octavia didn’t even want to know who or what it was. Cold water dripped in an irregular rhythm from a tear in the metal overhead. A punctured coolant feed somewhere, a hole in the vessel’s veins, slowly leaking icy water through a rusty wound. It was hardly an uncommon sight. Maintenance servitors never made it to this part of the ship.

  ‘Why did we have to go this way?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Because I have business here.’

  ‘Why are these people even tolerated? Do the Astartes hunt them for sport?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ he admitted.

  ‘Is that a joke?’ She knew it wasn’t, and wasn’t even sure why she voiced the words.

  He smiled, and she almost froze in her tracks. It was the first smile she’d seen from him in almost a month. ‘They have their uses, you know. Future artificers. Potential servitors. Failed officers that may be useful one night in a position of lesser responsibility.’

  She nodded as they approached what looked like a market stall made of scrap metal, raggedly built into the side of the corridor.

  ‘You need power cells?’ the sore-ridden old man at the stall asked. ‘Cells for lamp packs. Fresh-charged in a fire. Good for another month, at least.’ Octavia looked at his withered, gaunt face, at the cataracts milking over his eyes.

  ‘No. No, thank you.’

  She assumed they didn’t need money in the bowels of the Covenant, but she couldn’t imagine how anyone acquired anything new for barter, either. She also had no idea why they’d stopped here. She gave Septimus a look. He ignored it, speaking to the elder in the worn serf tunic.

  ‘Jeremiah,’ he said in Gothic.

  ‘Septimus?’ The elder offered a shallow bow, respect evident in his bearing. ‘I’d heard about your misfortune. May I?’

  Septimus flinched at the question. ‘Yes, if you wish.’

  He leaned closer, and the old man’s trembling hands rose to meet the serf’s face, shivering fingertips lightly stroking across the healed skin, the bruises that remained, and the new augmetics.

  ‘This feels expensive.’ The man’s smile was missing several teeth. ‘Good to see the masters still bless you.’ He withdrew his hands.

  ‘Apparently they do. Jeremiah, this is Octavia,’ Septimus gestured to her with his ungloved hand.

  ‘My lady.’ The elder offered the same bow.

  Lacking anything else to say, she instinctively forced a smile and said, ‘Hello.’

  ‘May I?’

  Octavia tensed just as Septimus had before. She could count on one hand the number of times another person had touched her face.

  ‘You… probably shouldn’t,’ she said softly.

  ‘I shouldn’t? Hmm. You sound like a beauty. Is she, Septimus?’

  Septimus didn’t answer the question. ‘She’s a Navigator,’ he cut in. Jeremiah’s reaching hands snapped back, fingers delicately curled in indecision.

  ‘Oh. Well, that was unexpected. What brings you here?’ the old man asked Septimus. ‘You don’t need to scavenge like we do, so I’m guessing it’s not a need for my fine wares, eh?’

  ‘Not exactly. While I was wounded,’ said Septimus, ‘the void-born must have had her birthday.’

  ‘That she did,’ Jeremiah nodded, absently rearranging the fire-blackened power cells, stringed trinkets and handheld machine tools on his scrap metal stall. ‘Ten years old now. Who’d have guessed, eh?’

  Septimus gently scratched. His gloved fingertips stroked the irritated seam where his bronze augmetic plating met his temple.

  ‘I have a gift for her,’ he said. ‘Would you give her this, from me?’ The artificer reached into his belt pouch and withdrew a silver coin. Octavia couldn’t make out the detail stamped upon its face – Septimus’s gloved fingers obscured the majority of it – but it looked like a tower of some kind. The old man stood motionless for several moments, feeling the cold, smooth disc in his palm.

  ‘Septimus…’ he said, his voice lower than before. He was edging on whispers now. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. Give her my best wishes, along with the seal.’

  ‘I will.’ The elder closed his fingers around the coin. Octavia could tell the gesture was reverent and possessive, but there was a sick desperation in there, as well. It reminded her of the way a dying spider’s legs curled close to its body. ‘I’ve never held one before,’ he said. After a pause, he added ‘Don’t look at me like that; I won’t keep it.’

  ‘I know,’ said Septimus.

  ‘May you continue to be blessed, Septimus. And you, Octavia.’

  They said their goodbyes to the trader and moved on. Once they were around a few corners and safely out of earshot, Octavia cleared her throat.

  ‘Well?’ she asked. Her own fate was forgotten in the wake of the enigmatic gift-giving she’d just witnessed.

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘Are you going to tell me what that was about?’

  ‘Time flows in an uneven river within the void. You’re a Navigator – you know that more than most.’

  Of course she knew. Her look told him to get on with it, and she noticed his false eye whirring and focusing as its socket mechanics tried to mimic the raised eyebrow on the undamaged side of his face.

  ‘There is a soul on this ship, more important than most. We call her the void-born.’

  ‘Is she human?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why she’s important. The Great Heresy was thousands of years ago. But to the Covenant, it has been less than a century. Less than a century since this strike cruiser hung in the heavens of Terra, as part of the greatest fleet ever amassed – the horde of the First Warmaster, Horus the Chosen.’

  Octavia felt her spine tingle at the words. She was still new to this, new to the Covenant, new to her own developing treason against the Golden Throne. She could barely even frame her own evolving place on this ship in words that confessed to her treachery. To hear of this very vessel that harboured her being part of the Horus Heresy’s final moments, the assault on Terra, and only scant decades ago by the ship’s internal chronometers… She shivered again. The blasphemy made her skin crawl, but there was a delicious edge to the sensation. She was living in the echo of mythology. She stood with the shadows of a greater age, and even being near the Astartes was invigorating. They felt more than any souls she had ever met – their rage burned hotter, their bitterness was colder, their hatred ran deeper…

  It was the same within the metal threaded bones of the Covenant. Until Septimus had spoken the words, she’d never been able to form the feeling into something comprehensible. But she felt the ship. She felt its wounded pride in the rumble of its engines, like an eternal growl. Now she understood why. The Heresy was not mythology to the VIII Legion, not some sequestered insurrection that was more legend than history. It was a memory. A recent memory, seared into their thoughts, just as their ship bore weapon-fire burns that still scarred the skin of its hull. The vessel itself was marked from the war it lost, and its crew shared the grim recollection, their lives stained with the knowledge of failure.

  A mere handful of decades ago, this vessel had rained its fury upon the surface of Terra. A mere handful of decades ago, the Astartes on board had walked the soil of Imperial Earth, screaming orders to each other as they slaughtered the loyal defenders of the Throne, their bolters barking in the shadows cast by the towers of the God-Emperor’s vast palace.

  Neither fable nor ancient parable to these Astartes. Recent memory, twisted by time’s loose grip in the warp.

  ‘You look light-headed,’ said Septimus.

  She had slowed down without realising, and met his unmatching eyes now with a weak smile.

  He continued. ‘It’s easier to understand when you realise where the Covenant makes its haven.’

  ‘The Eye of Terror,’ she nodded slowly.

  ‘Exactly. A wound in our reality. The warp reigns there.’

  Even as a
Navigator, even as one of the rare few with the genetic deviance allowing them to see into the Sea of Souls and know the warp more intimately than any other mortal, it was a struggle for Octavia to cling to this shift in her perceptions. Stories forever abounded of vessels lost in the warp for years or decades, and arriving weeks ahead or behind the intended translation date was an unbreakable, unchangeable part of flight through the immaterium. When ships sailed through the second reality, they surrendered themselves to the realm’s unnatural laws.

  Even so. This was a span of time she could barely comprehend. The differential made her mind ache.

  ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘But what has this got to do with your gift?’

  ‘The void-born is unique,’ Septimus replied. ‘In the decades the Covenant has been active since the Great Betrayal, she is the only soul to be born on board.’ He saw the questioning look in her eyes, and cut her off. ‘You have to understand,’ he clarified, ‘even at full crew complement, this was never a vessel that ran with decks full of conscripted slaves. The crew was always small and elite. It is an Astartes vessel. With the decline over the years… Well. She is the first. That’s all that matters.’

  ‘What was the gift?’

  ‘A seal. You’ll receive one yourself after your surgery tonight. Do not lose it. Do not give it away. It is the only thing that will keep you safe on these decks.’

  She smiled at this habit of his. Every crew member of the Covenant said ‘tonight’, never ‘today’.

  ‘If it’s so important, why did you give it to her?’

  ‘I gave it to her because it’s so important. Each seal is inscribed with the name of one of the Astartes on board. The rarest of them show no names, and ensure the bearer is protected by the entire Legion. In ancient nights, it was tradition for a personal serf to attend to each warrior. They carried a seal marked with their master’s name, signifying their allegiance and dissuading other Astartes from entertaining themselves by harming such a valued slave. The coins mean little now the old traditions are remembered by so few. But they are still acknowledged by some. My master is among them.’