Night Lords Omnibus

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘It… it is done,’ breathed the dying huntress. ‘Kill me…’

  ‘What defences are on the surface of Uriah Three?’ repeated Talos.

  ‘Nothing… Just my sisters. Fifty… fifty daughters of Callidus. A lone fortress-temple… in the mountains.’

  ‘Coordinates?’

  ‘Please…’

  ‘The coordinates, assassin,’ insisted Talos. ‘Then I will end this.’

  ‘Twenty-six degrees… Eighteen… forty-four… point fifty-six. The heart of the tundra. Seventy degrees… Twenty-three, forty-nine point sixty-eight.’

  ‘Is the temple shielded against orbital attack?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘And the hololithic recording is there?’

  ‘I… I saw it myself.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Talos.

  The warrior drew a golden blade. Its craftsmanship was exquisite, forged in an age of inspiration long-forgotten by the Imperium. On a ship of ancient relics, this was by far the most revered. The Night Lord stepped closer to the husk on the apothecarion table.

  ‘Jezharra…’

  The warrior let the assassin’s name hang in the air. With his free hand, he disengaged the seals of his helm, pulling the death-mask off with a serpentine hiss of venting air pressure. The assassin’s eyes were gone, taken from her in the interrogation, but she sensed what he had done in the way his voice changed.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said softly.

  She spat at him before she died – one final act of defiance. In a way, it was hard not to admire her. But Talos’s blade fell, embedding itself in the table as the assassin’s head rolled free.

  The warrior stood in the stinking chamber for an indeterminate number of heartbeats, before replacing his war helm. His vision drowned in the red wash of the eye lenses’ tactical display. White runic text scrolled across his retinas. He blinked at the jagged symbol on the lens display – the Nostraman hieroglyph meaning brotherhood. A muted click signalled the opening of a vox-channel.

  ‘This is Talos.’

  ‘Speak, Soul Hunter,’ growled the Exalted.

  ‘The assassin has broken. Set course for the Uriah System. Her temple is on the world most distant from the sun. I have the coordinates.’

  ‘We have been chasing this ghost for decades, Talos. The Legion has hurled itself at temple after temple after temple, across a hundred systems. You are certain the hololithic is there?’

  Talos looked down, his targeting reticule locking on to the motionless, tortured body, then the severed head on the blood-slick floor.

  ‘Summon the Legion, Exalted One. I’m certain it’s there.’

  Some worlds, by ill-fortune or intent, fall far from the countless billions of trade routes and pilgrimages that shape the Imperium of Man, linking untold numbers of stars in an astral cobweb. These worlds may be forgotten or ignored, but are never truly unknown. Every secret is laid bare somewhere, even if only a single reference in an abandoned archive in distant Terra’s librariums.

  Uriah was an unremarkable sun. It seemed notable only for the fact it scarcely burned bright enough to be called a star at all. The worlds turning around it in their measured, heavenly dance were all frost-locked spheres of eternal winter.

  Above the third such world, a vessel fell into low orbit. It was a crenellated blade of darkened bronze and midnight blue, proudly displaying the skull insignia of the VIII Legion. It arrived alone, but did not remain that way for long.

  Other vessels, warships all, tore holes in reality as they broke from the hell-space of the warp. Each bore the same insignia, each was armoured in the same colours – and each was an echo of a much finer age. The design of each warship was ancient, as if they’d burst from the Sea of Souls after travelling for millennia, rather than mere weeks.

  Many of the warships were twisted, darkened, more brutish in aspect than their original architects had envisioned, but their lethal grandeur remained. As they came together, the fleet appeared to be something from ancestral memory, when humanity had reached out to rediscover the stars ten thousand years before.

  Contact between the ships was hesitant. Greetings passed over crackling signals, many with tones of guarded reluctance. The Legion rarely gathered, and many of these captains were rivals. A hundred centuries of bloodshed, defeat, predation and pain made for short tempers and shorter alliances.

  While warship commanders exchanged hails and veiled threats, the decks of every vessel came alive with preparation. Thousands upon thousands of warriors swore oaths of moment, machined armour into place and readied drop-pods and Thunderhawk gunships, as well as grievously rare teleport platforms.

  The Night Lords Legion was going to war.

  Proximity alarms wailed only once, when a Navy patrol fleet ghosted within range of auspex sensors. A single Endeavour-class cruiser, its hull resplendent in Imperial gold, sought to come about and break into the warp, seeking the only realistic route of escape. Its lesser escorts remained behind, seeking to slow any pursuit. Despite the gesture’s futility, every second the destroyers could buy for their retreating flagship was precious.

  A single vessel broke from the Legion fleet formation, an agile strike cruiser bearing the name Excoriator. What followed was a massacre unworthy of record within any Hall of Remembrance. Stunted torpedoes crashed against Excoriator’s void shields, as effective as broken glass raining against plasteel. In reply, precise lance strikes cut into the adamantium meat of the three Imperial escorts, bursting their thin shields in a heartbeat and scoring the metal skin beneath. A second volley, mere moments after the first, carved them apart in dispassionate surgery.

  Excoriator’s shields briefly lit up again, kinetic pulses of light rippling across their surface as the cruiser glided through the debris.

  With a shark’s silent pursuit, the Legion battleship loomed close behind the fleeing cruiser. With game desperation, the Imperial vessel unleashed its meagre weapons, batteries of plasma and solid shot spilling into the void, clashing as they dissipated across Excoriator’s shields.

  The Legion warship returned fire, its lance strikes rupturing the patrol vessel’s shields with impunity. With the prey’s shields down, the predator didn’t leap upon its quarry with a hunger to destroy. Excoriator’s lances fell silent, and drew alongside the fleeing vessel. Instead of broadsides opening up and hammering the smaller ship into drifting scrap, the Legion warship disgorged boarding pods in an overwhelming wave. A dozen, spearing across space and digging into the vulnerable skin of the Imperial ship.

  Excoriator didn’t wait. Its engines fired, and the great warship veered in a lumbering arc, heading back to the fleet waiting in orbit. Aboard the Imperial ship, over a hundred warriors of the Night Lords Legion went about the business of purging any crew too loyal or weak to be of use.

  It took only three hours for the Endeavour-class patrol cruiser to pull into formation with the Legion ships, joining its might to theirs. It bore a new name, the Faithless Song, to go with its new allegiance.

  The cold sun began to fade over the ice-rimed mountain range below the Legion’s geostationary coordinates. Night was falling on the surface, and at last, with all in readiness, a voice carried over the fleet’s communal vox-network. The words came in a dead language, spoken by no living soul outside the fractured brotherhood gathered here.

  ‘Acrius Toshallion. Jasith Raspatha vorvelliash kishall-kar.’

  Seated inside her sealed chamber at the prow of the Covenant of Blood, Octavia looked to Septimus.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘It doesn’t translate easily,’ Septimus replied.

  ‘Humour me,’ insisted Octavia. ‘It’s important. What did he say?’

  ‘“Vengeance, as night falls. By dawn, none will ever recall the Legion’s shame.”’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said the Navigator, frowning. ‘Why has the fleet gathered? What’s so vital about one world out on the Rim?’

  ‘If I knew, I’d tell yo
u. I’ve never seen this many Legion ships in one place before. If I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes, I’d never believe it could happen.’

  He moved to the bank of viewscreens adorning an entire wall. His gloved fingertip tapped ship after ship, each one a different class and size.

  ‘These are supply ships. Promethium tankers, mostly. These look to be slave ships… Imperial Guard troop carriers, taken by the Night Lords over the years. These are Legion warships. There, the Hunter’s Premonition. That’s Excoriator, sister ship to the Covenant of Blood. This, here, is the Serpent of the Black Sea, one of the Legion’s flagships from centuries ago. It was supposed to be lost in the Hades Veil. The Legion battleships alone could carry… ten, maybe twelve thousand Space Marines.’

  ‘I didn’t know they had that many warriors,’ said Octavia, her voice tinged with worry.

  ‘No records show how many there are. I doubt even the Exalted knows. These are just the ships close enough to answer the call, but even so, outside of the Warmaster’s crusades, this is a gathering of rare significance.’

  Septimus fell silent as he watched the warships shedding landing craft like a herd of beasts shaking off their fleas. Pods streaked planetwards, trailing tails of flame, each one a meteor burning through the atmosphere. Following them in majestic, arcing dives, gunships and heavy landers swooped through the cloud cover, their hulls gleaming orange with the heat of atmospheric entry.

  Octavia came over to him, staring into the viewscreens, unable to fixate upon a single image. It was all too much to take in.

  ‘They’re not sending any human craft down,’ she noted. ‘No slaves. No cultists.’

  ‘It’s fifty degrees below zero on the surface of Uriah Three. Even colder at night. Only legionaries can survive outside of shelter in those conditions.’

  ‘How many of them are making planetfall?’

  Septimus answered slowly. ‘I believe… it looks like all of them.’

  The drop-pod threw up a torrent of snow and rock as it pounded into the earth. The edges of its dark hull glowed with fierce heat, its ceramite skin hissing and steaming in the air. Door seals spat free with mechanical clicks and vented steam, and like a flower in bloom the ramps opened, lowered, and slammed into the melted slush around the pod’s whining engines.

  Talos was the first from the pod, his red-stained vision scanning the mountain pass ahead. His helm’s auto-senses muted the roaring wind to a tolerable background level.

  The ground trembled, an earthquake’s echo, as more drop-pods came down across the tundra. Already, the sky was darkened by landing craft and gunships fighting the vicious winds.

  An identifier rune flashed white on the edge of Talos’s retinal display. Mercutian’s name glyph, though the vox gave all their voices a similar crackling cadence.

  ‘We could do this alone. The five of us. But look up, brothers. The sky is black with Stormbirds and Thunderhawks. How many of the Legion muster with us? Nine thousand? Ten? We have no need of them to prosecute this war.’

  Now Xarl’s name-rune flashed, bold and urgent as the squad moved across the snow.

  ‘He may be a miserable bastard, but he’s right. This was our glory. We did the work. We sweated for weeks on that wretched world, living amongst that pathetic cult, waiting for the Callidus Temple to open their eyes and fall into our claws.’

  Talos grunted his disagreement. Mercutian was morose at the best of times, and could always be trusted to see the darkest edge of any event. As for Xarl… He trusted no soul outside their own warband, and relatively few within it.

  ‘This is not some personal glory to be etched onto our armour,’ said Talos. ‘This is the Legion’s vindication. The others deserve to be here. Let them redden their claws alongside us.’

  No name glyphs chimed in response. He was surprised the others were letting it slide so easily. Surprised, but grateful. Talos stalked on, his armoured boots crunching through the snow to crush the rocks beneath. Other squads fell into rough formation behind First Claw, but Talos and his brothers were allowed the honour of leading the advance.

  The trek through the mountains would have killed a mortal in moments. Talos felt nothing, protected from even the void of space in his Mark 5 war plate. Even so, to prevent his joints from freezing, his powerpack’s active hum had risen in pitch. The vox-network came alive with technical servitors reporting that the oil pipes and fuel tanks in the landed gunships were already icing up.

  The temperature gauge on the edge of Talos’s visor display remained unmercifully hostile. After only half an hour of trekking uphill, his power pack was humming with almost distracting intensity. He kept wiping frost from his faceplate when it threatened to form a crust.

  The next warrior to speak was Cyrion. Despite the vox stealing all tone and humanity from his voice, his irritation bled through easily enough.

  ‘I could have lived with annihilating this fortress from orbit. That would satisfy my honour, and spare us this tedious trudge.’

  No one replied. Every one of them knew this mission required visual confirmation before it could be considered complete. Laying waste to the Callidus stronghold from orbit would achieve nothing.

  ‘Don’t everyone agree at once,’ said Cyrion dryly.

  Talos scowled behind his visor, but said nothing even as Cyrion continued.

  ‘What if the Callidus bitch lied? What if we’re marching half the Legion in neat formation through these mountain passes and a host of ambushes await? This is the most foolish advance in history.’

  Now Talos replied, his own temper rising to the fore.

  ‘Enough, Cyrion. Humans cannot survive outside shelter here. How will they ambush us? With thermal suits and hurled rocks from the cliff edges? If that were even a threat worth considering, orbital imagery would have caught it by now. This is a hidden temple. Defending it with a host of cannons upon the walls would require serious generation of power, and attract easy attention from orbital scanning.’

  ‘I still do not like this march upland,’ Cyrion grumbled.

  ‘The march is symbolic, brother. The Legion commanders wished it, and so it shall be. Let the Callidus stare down from their fortress battlements, and bear witness to the doom that comes for them.’

  Cyrion sighed. ‘You have more faith in our leaders than I, Talos.’

  Once more, the others fell silent. Above them, the looming fortress, hewn from the mountain rock, drew ever closer.

  The Siege of Uriah III would enter the annals of the Night Lords Legion for its significance, if not its duration. The fortress rising from the side of the mountains was shielded against orbital bombardment, with multi-layered void fields offering dense resistance to any assault from the skies. As with many such defensive grids, the overlapping shields were considerably more vulnerable to attack from the ground.

  Behind the marching warriors came entire battalions of Legion war machines: massive Land Raiders leading the way for the more compact Vindicator siege tanks, along with their Predator counterparts. Arrayed across ridges, nestled atop outcroppings and landed by Thunderhawk carriers along cliff edges, the Legion’s armour battalions aimed cannons and turrets at the fortress’s walls.

  There was no heroic speech. No inspirational mantra. With a single word of order, the tanks opened fire as one, lighting the night with the brilliant flare of lascannon beams, and the incendiary bursts from Demolisher turrets.

  In the shadows cast by the flickering shield and the storm of assaulting fire, Talos watched the siege begin in earnest. Cyrion approached where he knelt on the lip of a cliff.

  ‘How long do you think they can keep us out?’ he asked.

  Talos lowered his bolter, no longer looking through the gunsight. The fortress itself was blurred behind a mirage of wavering air – a haze that gave off no heat. The void shield distorted the view of what lay behind it, reducing the battlements to uneven silhouettes.

  ‘With over five hundred tanks at the walls? This firepower would cripple an
Imperator in a heartbeat. Blood of the Father, Cyrion… We’ve not gathered this much armour in one place since the Siege of Terra. The walls will fall, and we’ll be inside before dawn.’

  The prediction was true enough. The sky was not yet lightening when, four hours later, the void shield shimmered, fluttering like an ailing heartbeat, before disintegrating with a thunderclap of displaced air pressure. The Night Lords closest to the shield’s edge were thrown from their feet, dozens of squads sent crashing across the icy landscape in the powerful rush of air, adding to the snowstorm’s gale.

  Without pause, without respite, the tanks turned their cannons upon the fortress’s lower walls.

  The first breach was torn exactly thirteen seconds later, a section of rock wall blasted inwards under a Demolisher shell. Squads broke into loping runs, moving around the still-firing tanks. They entered with the freezing wind, chainswords revving into life.

  The defences were broken, and the slaughter could begin.

  Talos led First Claw through the catacombs, his boots crunching on the layer of ice already coating the stone. With the fortress breached, its innards were at the mercy of the blizzards tearing across the surface of Uriah III. Many of the Imperial servants dwelling within the temple died from exposure within minutes of the walls coming down, and those that survived deeper within the complex soon fell victim to the grinding bite of Legion chainblades.

  The Night Lords purged the fortress, chamber by chamber, level by level. In the combat arenas, where the Callidus agents were put through their rigorous training, banks of esoteric machinery lined the walls. Bolters made short work of the priceless bio-manipulation technology, explosive shells ripping apart the machines responsible for shaping generations of assassins.

  First Claw moved through the catacombs, laying waste to the subterranean surgeries, their blades tearing medical equipment into ruin.

  ‘These are the apothecarions where they implant muscle enhancers and the polymorphic compound that allow the Callidus to shapeshift,’ said Talos. He reloaded his bolter, slamming a fresh magazine home and taking aim at an automated surgery table. ‘Brothers. Leave nothing intact.’