‘I can usually be found,’ said the Khan. ‘In the end.’
It was not a long encounter. Horus had places he needed to be, and the Khan was already restless for onward movement. They discussed deployment to Chondax, but in a curiously impersonal way, as if it were merely the afterthought of a completed task rather than the next stage in a Crusade that was not yet over.
Yesugei said nothing. Ravallion said nothing. The Khan and Lupercal spoke on, perhaps too freely, as if they were acting out the part of brothers now, having forgotten what it was to truly be in the role.
‘The galaxy is changing,’ said the Warmaster, amiably enough. ‘There is much I do not understand about it, and much I do not like. Warriors should remain close. I hope that I can call on you, if the time comes.’
For a moment, Yesugei wondered what the response would be. No one else, perhaps not even the Emperor Himself, would have spoken to the Khan in that way.
‘You know you can, brother,’ said the Khan. ‘That is always how it has been between us. You call, I answer.’
And that was it. That was the substance of it. No formal treaties, no arrangements for rendezvous within a specific time frame. No doubt the details could be ironed out later, but even so, it was a paltry basis on which to proceed.
Yesugei and the Khan left the chamber after that, escorting Horus back to his shuttlecraft from where he would go on to command the entire network of expeditionary fleets. On the way down to the hangar level, the Khan caught Yesugei’s eye, and for a moment a wariness could be glimpsed there. The two primarchs embraced formally, exchanged further promises to campaign together, and then the Warmaster stalked up the long ramp and inside the intra-fleet shuttle.
Once the lander had boosted up, swivelled around and pushed down the length of the long hangar, the White Scars primarch turned to his counsellor. Yesugei looked back.
‘What do you make of that?’ Yesugei asked.
‘He came to warn me,’ the Khan said. ‘That, at least, was good of him.’
‘Even now, they try to destroy what has been created.’
‘He remained neutral for too long. Now he has to remain so. Of all my failures, that may be the greatest.’
‘He knew what he wanted,’ Yesugei said. ‘He knew it from the start.’
The Khan smiled grimly. ‘Prepared for the challenge, though, zadyin arga? I have another world in mind for you now.’
‘Baal was disagreeable.’
‘This one is barely habitable.’
‘I begin to wonder if you select them deliberately.’
The Khan started to walk. ‘They see us as no more than ork hunters. We did that job too well for them, and now they give us nothing else. I cannot refuse Chondax, but someone must represent us at the conclave. We always knew it would come, and I would have wished you to be there anyway – you are the most eloquent of us all.’
‘Not in Gothic.’
‘Then you must work harder. We all must.’ They entered the glistening corridors, thick with decoration. ‘This is all we have left now. Horus cannot be an ally, for he is no longer an equal. What is a Warmaster but another Malcador? And what is Malcador but the voice of his master?’
‘Then we will hunt on our own.’
‘It’ll take us away from the scheming.’ The Khan’s lips curled in distaste. ‘My brothers are already jockeying. Some are jealous. Some see their chance now.’
‘And you, Khagan?’
‘I want no part of it. It sickens me.’ He halted at twin golden doors, each marked by fine calligraphy. ‘That woman. She has a fierce soul. You think she’s strong enough?’
Yesugei thought back to her expression at the clifftop. ‘Undoubtedly.’
‘Make her an offer, then – whatever she wants. We need to be more self-sufficient, and for that we’ll need help.’
‘By your command.’
The Khan reached out, tracing the line of the glyph on the left hand of the doorway. The Khitan figure Xianoa glistered under the lumens. It denoted warning and foreboding, but also misplaced caution. The glyph was inscribed at the beginning of journeys as both a guard against pride and an injunction against faint-heartedness. Many of the fleet’s starships had it beaten into the prow in gold-chased adamantium, the first thing an enemy would see before the lances ignited.
‘I should never have engaged,’ the primarch said, half to himself, half to Yesugei. ‘I never believed in Unity from the start, but now even my Father has given up the pretence. What were we fighting for, for so long, to merely become the xenos hunters of another general?’
‘You told him you would answer.’
The Khan looked at his counsellor. ‘We’ll be on Chondax for a long time. We may never come back.’
Yesugei smiled. ‘Eternity is a long way off.’
The Khan snorted a laugh. ‘You should find the general again before she runs away. She’s of the Imperium – if we aren’t going to be a part of it, we can still learn from it. After that, the conclave on Nikaea – that’s the last strand of this I care about, and when it’s settled we’ll forge our own path, just as we always did.’
‘You do not mean that,’ Yesugei said. ‘You are Terran-born, Khagan. One day that world will call you back.’
‘So what if it does?’ said the Khan, passing under the archway, leaving the sigil behind. ‘I care nothing for it.’
‘I do not believe you,’ Yesugei said, calling after him.
The Khan continued walking.
‘You are too indulgent towards them,’ he said. ‘Learn to let them go.’
From Ullanor the fleet pushed hard spinwards, pulling all resources out-system and into the deep void. It was met three days later by the secondary attack group, long engaged in conjunction with the Luna Wolves during the final phases of the push towards ork-held fortress asteroids, but now freed up for new tasking.
Three weeks after that came another rendezvous, this time a long way into scarcely charted space – seven line battleships fresh from a long-planned assault against a different xenos species, the mjordhainn. More than sixteen had been expected at that nexus, but the Khan could not wait for all of them to muster, and so the fleet pressed on, picking up momentum. Others would have to follow when the tidings reached them, whenever that was.
There were more points of meeting as the long-scattered segments of the White Scars Legion came together again, dragged into a great conglomeration, ship after ship, brotherhood after brotherhood. There had never been a gathering of such size, and in its wake they left only a network of scattered garrisons and contingents running too far beyond comms range to be hastily recalled. The Legion was pulling its full strength together, and over the years that strength had grown indeed.
Once mustered, the navigators held conclave and set the coordinates, settling down into the trances that would guide them through the substrate of dreams. The warp engines ignited, thrumming down long energy conduits created on Mars decades – even centuries – ago and sending the knife-prowed battleships hurtling towards their destination.
Transit was prolonged, hampered by a steady turbulence in the warp. Naranbaatar said it was as if something vast were turning uneasily in its sleep, and it made progress dangerous. In the interim, the brotherhoods trained and re-equipped, restoring their physical condition and putting both weapons and armour through the forges. Squads that had never before heard of one another were thrown together into new attack groups, organised under the auspices of the general taken so recently from the Imperium’s Departmento Munitorum. Some were Chogorian, some Terran, some a mixture of both, and hasty work was done to consolidate the various divergent command doctrines that had emerged over a hundred and twenty years of continuous operations. It would not be enough, and there was never enough time, and no doubt things were missed or looked over, but it was a start.
Eventually, the fleet slid back through the veil on the edge of its destination: the sprawling Chondax system, a scatter of many dozen worlds thrown out
in a long thick-starred arc spreading from the Paraban Deeps out towards the extreme fringes of the Alaxxes meta-quadrant. The Swordstorm was first, as ever, swimming up from the abyss with its bridge levels shimmering in aether residue. Then came the Tchin-Zar, the Lance of Heaven, and the rest, one after the other, the great starships gliding in formation out from the netherworld and into the visible.
The Khan watched the formation take shape, an elegant void dance that showed off his warriors’ shipmastery to good effect, and the first twitch of a smile flickered across his tense-held lips. He stood up, leaving the command throne and walking to the rim of the terrace that overlooked his many-tiered bridge. Hundreds of menials, servitors and naval staff worked in the pits below, some on suspended platforms, others attending to the vast semi-circular banks of sensor nodes and cogitator clusters. Warriors from his keshig stood sentinel amid the echoing spaces, their glaives held rigid like the halberds of ancient Qo fortress guardians.
Ahead of them, heavy shutters pulled back, revealing an armourglass aperture with a dazzling view of the pure void ahead. Stars glinted in a vivid band of silver against black, a tiny fragment of the galactic arm that still remained for conquest, the undiscovered country now marked off for them alone.
‘Status, general,’ the Khan said.
Ravallion looked up from her station. She had not quite lost the air of half fear, half exasperation that had been with her since her appointment, but she was getting better at hiding it.
‘Anomalous readings from all ships,’ she reported, her brow furrowing. ‘I’m having problems with the comms. Astropaths reporting significant difficulties.’ She looked up towards him. ‘Unless this clears up, we’ll have trouble restoring contact with the Imperium.’
The Khan nodded. ‘Excellent.’
From further down in the bridge depths came the telltale hiss and crackle of teleportation energies. Moments later, two warriors clad in Terminator battleplate lumbered up to the command level, each bearing the markings of noyan-khan, their ivory war-plate decked in the tribal insignias of their respective Hordes.
The first was Jemulan, Giyahun’s replacement; the second was Hasik. Both bowed before the primarch, then turned to face the star field ahead.
Finally, as the last of the real-space protocols were completed and the warning chimes faded away, Qin Xa emerged to join them, and the quartet lined up along the great balcony overlooking the bridge terraces.
For a while, no one said anything. The worlds they had come for were out there, still a long way from visible range, but nestled within that cascade of light and dark. The names were known to all of them: Gamanio, Phemus, Jion, Epihelikon, Chondax. Those were prey-names now, markers for a waning species destined to die at their hand. Just as it had been at Hoadh, at Ullanor, at a hundred other sites across the growing Imperium, the anticipation of the hunt coursed like static electricity across every bridge of every ship in the fleet.
The Khan placed his gauntlets on the railing.
‘Prepared, noyan-khan?’ he asked Jemulan.
‘Absolutely, Khagan,’ he replied.
‘And you, Hasik? Last to the muster again?’
‘I slay faster when in a hurry.’
Qin Xa smiled. For all his unmatchable calmness, even he was poised for the plunge now, just as they all were. Down below in the hangars, drop pods and gunships were already being lifted into position, ready for the deadly cargo that marched towards them through the muster halls.
‘Far from reach now,’ the Khan said. ‘I didn’t realise how much I missed it.’
The deck trembled underfoot as machinery shifted and slotted into place. Orbital weaponry was being prepared by the deck gangs, and the plasma drives were keying up to full efficiency.
‘We never needed anyone but ourselves.’
The sensorium began to calibrate the first ingress runs. Gamanio was first, a world they said was crawling with hain so thickly that the ground was barely visible. Then the others would follow, in ordered procession, ending with Chondax itself, a mini Ullanor and the last known stronghold of xenos in the segmentum.
‘They’ll come back for us, Khagan,’ said Qin Xa. ‘One day.’
The Khan nodded.
‘That they will,’ he said, gaze fixed on the void ahead. ‘But not this day.’
The first augur soundings returned, pinpointing the target world and giving readings for the gravity well. The run-in sequence would commence within moments, and after that the old cycle would begin again, the one rehearsed for a lifetime on the plains and now elevated to the total war of the heavens.
They had always been star hunters.
‘On this day, brothers,’ the Khan said, ‘we show them the storm.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Wraight is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Scars and The Path of Heaven, the Primarchs novel Leman Russ: The Great Wolf, the novellas Brotherhood of the Storm and Wolf King, and the audio drama The Sigillite. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne, Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion, the Space Wolves novels Blood of Asaheim and Stormcaller, and the short story collection Wolves of Fenris as well as the Space Marine Battles novels Wrath of Iron and War of the Fang. Additionally, he has many Warhammer novels to his name, including the Warhammer Chronicles novel Master of Dragons, which forms part of the War of Vengeance series. Chris lives and works near Bristol, in south-west England.
An extract from Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa.
Amadeus DuCaine thumped shoulder-first into the rockcrete wall. He dropped to one knee, turned his back, calmly ejected the spent magazine from his bolter and snapped home another of the specially tagged sickle-mags. As he did so he noticed the las-burn on his vambrace, cursed aloud, and took a moment to buff it out using the wrist of the opposite gauntlet. He’d been taught to go into battle looking as he’d want the Apothecaries to find him. Today was no different.
The thick harness of his Mk I Thunder Armour was so polished a black that it shone under the inconstant light and creeping ice like volcanic glass, covered in company and campaign citations, most of which the Legion no longer officially recognised. Of them all, his pride was the Seal of the Eye of Vigilance, etched in platinum into the cheek guard of his tall helm. He had earned it in the latter years of the Seraphina offensive, campaigning alongside Lord Horus after the X Legion’s annihilation of the ork forces on Rust. Good years. A curtain of chainmail, alternating rings of black iron and silver, hung from his shoulder guards. A collar of iron spikes traced the rear of his gorget ring and rose behind the back of his head. He carried a Clan Sorrgol banner as a cloak. It was heavy velvet, reinforced with a metal weave, weighted with onyx, black spinel and star sapphire, and glazed with ice. The clan device was picked out in silver.
With a series of heavy thumps, his command squad joined him in cover. Techmarine Rab Tannen. Apothecary Aled Glassius. Half a dozen age-raw, hoarfrosted, brutally decorated veterans almost as hard-bitten as their Lord Commander. Storm Walkers all and proud of it. The boy, Caphen, was last.
The lacquered purple of the youngster’s armour was scuffed and bullet-grazed, the palatine aquila that stood proud of his chest plastron burnished with coppery hygroscopic ice. Breathless sounds emerged from his helm augmitter as he crashed into the wall at the far end of the line.
‘They coming?’ DuCaine asked, and checked his vambrace for damage under the passing alchemical light of an aerial flare.
Caphen nodded. ‘They’re coming.’
The boy had been attached to the command squad strictly as an observer, but the old hands all looked at him as they would a stressed bulkhead, something that might give at any second and void the entire proverbial section.
‘The lad’s one of us now,’ said DuCaine, raising his voice to contend with the shrieking fire of the Tarantula batteries dug in on the other side of the wall. ‘That’s the last I want to say on it.’
The lad nodded his thanks. Even if he did flin
ch at being called ‘lad’, ‘boy’, or any variation thereof.
Satisfied, DuCaine looked up, as if he could discern the progress of the battle from the flicker trace of fire and dying flares. Vesta was a sunless moonlet, adrift in the void, cast off by its parent system at some point or other over the last five billion years under circumstances that didn’t interest him, and dark as hell. It was cold enough to flash-kill a primarch. Until a few days ago, it hadn’t had a name. That was why the enemy had chosen it.
Who would miss an orphan moon that no Imperial cartographer had yet bothered to stick a number to?
He turned away to see that Gaius Caphen had worked his way up the line towards him.
‘I am uncertain about this tactic, Lord Commander.’
DuCaine laughed. An inbred respect for the proper chain of command and an innate disapproval of so single-minded an approach to warfare were clearly tying the boy’s head in knots.
‘This tactic is a classic. Did I not tell you of the time that Lord Horus assigned his own First Captain as my equerry after Rust, to see it first-hand?’
‘I think you may have,’ muttered Tannen.
The Techmarine had been amongst the last cohort to learn his craft in the Ural forges. He was among the last to have retained a Terran sense of humour. DuCaine threw him an ironic ‘thank you’ wave.
‘It won’t work against the Emperor’s Children,’ said Caphen.
That single statement soured the mood more than all the artillery of the III Legion ever could.
DuCaine had been trying not to think about it.
But if the lad had any qualms about facing his own brothers in battle, then he wasn’t showing it. DuCaine was impressed. Even if it had been Fulgrim himself who had given the boy his orders. The rest of the command squad picked up on his resolve; their attitudes of suspicion noticeably relaxed.
‘The warlord clans of old Albia have been perfecting this way of war on each other for hundreds of years,’ DuCaine explained. ‘The trick of it is to deploy only the exact amount of strength you need to draw your enemy into a straight fight.’
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