The Ascension slammed sideways, nearly contacting the mountain, and sinking into the turn, like a ship listing after taking on water.
‘What the hells?’ she yelled. She tried to right the craft but it felt wrong, unsteady. Had they been hit?
‘It’s the sarcophagus!’ said Stavven. ‘It’s broken loose.’
The deck tilted at fifty degrees. Handholds in the ceiling racks hung diagonally. Stavven, for the first time, doubted whether he was right to serve the dead.
A multi-laser pulse had pierced the crew bay and scored a line down the coffin. For a moment, Stavven thanked the dead man for having saved their lives. Taken a hit for them.
Then the two-tonne block slid right with the bank and cracked into the mortis drawers, fracturing the thick white porcelain and nearly throwing him out the opposite door.
He’d had a sickening glimpse of how close they were to the mountain peak.
‘Lock it down!’ said the voice in his vox-bead. ‘Lock it down!’
Stavven clambered over, using handholds, and checked underneath to see if the sled was still engaged. It was.
‘Level out!’ he shouted.
Another multi-laser hit bored through the back hatch, blasting open the ammunition hopper on the left door gun and cooking the bolts off like firecrackers.
He could feel the Ascension struggling to right itself but lopsided and pinned by the big sarcophagus. Another hit, shaking the craft. A mortis drawer opened and spilled a body.
He prayed to the God-Emperor, the risen Sabbat and Saint Kzacja. The floor began to level, and he reached underneath the coffin to find the sled’s activator stud.
Over the vox, he heard the lock tone.
And felt the Ascension dive.
The great sarcophagus slid towards him with a squeal of obsidian on metal decking.
With the centre of gravity thrown so far to the right, there was nothing Dzeck could do but dive.
Rise and vector, and they’d hit the mountain on their right side. Yaw left and they’d never get away in time. The missile was coming in one second, maybe two. The Valk was tracking close. Right on her arse.
So Dzeck pointed her nose down the slope and burned, using the weight of the sarcophagus to her advantage. She felt her stomach flip as the thing squealed forward in the hold, slamming into the bulkhead behind the cockpit with a crunching bang that felt like a missile impact. The weight dipped them almost level with the downslope, their passage kicking up a swirl of silica deposit in their wake.
And over the vox, she heard screaming.
Stavven howled in pain and shock. He gripped the heavy bolter mounting for all he was worth.
His top half hung out of the open door, mere metres from the rushing dust deposits, world fading and coming into focus like an adjusting pair of monoculars.
He feared falling, but would not fall, because the sarcophagus pinned his right leg to the bulkhead.
Behind him, in the slipstream of the Ascension’s passage, he saw the enemy Valk come over the ridge and angle down on them, hunting. It was so close he could see the snarling mask on the pilot’s rebreather. See the turbofans rotate, drinking the smoke they trailed from the multi-laser hits. And the billowing cloud of dust they threw in their wake.
No intake shrouds.
The Valk’s left engine coughed flames and quit. Its left skid dipped and its nose angled upward so the missile rushed out high, passing above the Ascension by three metres, unable to arm due to the proximity.
The Archenemy pilot’s eyes went wide as the crosswind caught them, engines stalling and gagging, the craft coming down on its edge so one wing dug sand, the momentum cartwheeling them down the slope, shedding parts. One wing gone. Tail boom snapped. Canopy crunching against a boulder.
It was the last thing Stavven saw before the dark closed in.
Dzeck supervised the loading herself, ensuring it was done right. Directing the servitors, making sure they handled it with care.
‘Careful with that one,’ she said, laying a hand on the heavy glass lid. ‘It’s been through hell.’
The mortuarian looked her up and down. ‘Looks like you all have.’
Dzeck shot her eyebrows. ‘Some of us more than others.’
She looked to Stavven, who was watching the bone container roll onto the packet ship. He leaned heavily on the cane, his temporary augmetic still too painful to walk on.
‘Didn’t expect you to care much,’ Stavven said, nodding to the sarcophagus, ‘about that.’
‘He saved us, I think. Snapping loose. We would’ve been splashed, for sure, if we hadn’t unintentionally dived so hard. Just a little shallower we’d be all over that slope.’
‘So it’s a he now, is it?’ Stavven shook his head. ‘A multi-laser hit broke it loose. The missile was too close to lock. No saints or spirits involved. Just… war.’
Dzeck thought of the man murmuring into his book, then looked at the mortuary chief’s clumsy augmetic. ‘Maybe, yeah. Probably right.’
‘We’re lucky we made it out. Because you’re a good pilot, and can keep being one.’ He tapped the augmetic with his cane, wincing. ‘No gunner’s seat for me.’
‘Is it strange?’
‘What?’
‘Knowing it’s going to Balhaut,’ she said. ‘Going home, when you aren’t. In the container with the rest of the bones.’
He took a breath. ‘I’ll join it soon enough. I haven’t given enough yet. Not like Malkov. Shoka. Everyone from Eternal. The Imperium hasn’t done with me yet.’
‘That reminds me,’ said Dzeck. ‘We’re doing another flight from Tercius. Martyr flight, special. Recovered remains, mostly partials. Casualties from the attack, but also Xaj, Malkov, Shoka. I made special requests, called in a few favours. Got us the assignment. Kazaran and Calkoi are in, I’ve got an alternate co-pilot, but I could still use a door gunner if you’re okay going up. Thought it might… kakk, I don’t know, exorcise all this. Provide closure.’
Stavven looked at her, eyes hooded.
‘Come on,’ she clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Let’s bring our people home.’
THE DEATH OF THE PROPHET
WRITTEN BY MARC COLLINS
PREFACE
Like Rob Rath, Marc Collins might be considered something of a newcomer, but that’s only because there are still dinosaurs like me lumbering around the place, checking the sky for impending meteors, and wondering how we’re ever going to develop rudimentary stone tools with these tiny little arms.
With the confidence of a real veteran, Marc turns his attention to the Chaos side of things. His story, set post-Anarch, is a perfect companion piece to the first two stories in this book, but it looks at the impact of a major Imperial victory from the point of view of the losing side. What does defeat feel like? If you are part of a ritualistic culture slaved to dark faith and conditioned obedience, what do you do when commands you are so used to obeying stop coming?
Marc’s story is a chilling one, but surprisingly sympathetic. And never let it be said that I don’t let people play with the toys. How could I not, when someone like Marc plays with them so well?
RIMWARD, TOWARDS XERXES
794.M41
‘The Anarch is dead.’
Gerik Damogaur was almost surprised that the words had come from his own lips. It was his duty to bear the pronouncement, every hateful syllable of it, to his fellows. The few remaining packsons had gathered expecting hope and revelation and instead were faced with the incontrovertible truth. There were no more than twenty in the chamber, only those most trusted to hear the painful revelation, though others waited beyond.
The Anarch, Great Sek, He whose voice drowns out all others, was dead. They had heard whispers of it, no matter what front they had fled from. Worse still was the fact they had failed to hear His whispers in their minds as an antidote to this poison. Instead, there had been only silence. Not as a sacrament but as a loss. The void within them had only grown in the long flight of exile and
so they allowed themselves, at last, to grieve.
Some wailed. Their animal ululations echoed about the Administratum foyer that they had gathered in. Others threw themselves down onto the tiled floor and beat at themselves as though penance could restore him. If the Anarch could have been brought back by the mere shedding of blood, then they would have unleashed oceans of it.
They would have bled the galaxy white for him.
The walls of the chamber shook with the distant thunder of artillery, warring with their howls. It was still too far away for Gerik to tell who manned it. He knew the timbre of the guns, the weight and fury of them, but there were enough Urdeshi guns on both sides.
‘How can this be?’ Kyresh asked. He was stocky, yet his features were sharp and lean like a fine blade. A scourger, Gerik deduced, from his fine chainmail and pallet helm. The man shuddered as though with palsy, every part of him in motion as he sought to still his agitation. ‘He was the light and the Voice of the warp. He spoke and it was the Kings who whispered through his lips. How can such a man be dead?’
‘Was it the Archon?’ another voice piped up. Gerik whirled about to face him. Tyvas. Young and foolish. A rank trooper elevated, though not exalted, because of base cruelty. Held up amongst his peers as a totem of savage defiance. He had right to be here, certainly, as much right as any of them – but his was a crude and clawing ascent. The others looked at him now, with his graceless fumbling, and their meagre respect curdled on their tongues. ‘If he is dead, then we should throw ourselves upon the mercy of the Archon.’ He paused, looking around at the other gathered packsons. The knot of warriors had tightened at his pronouncement. Beasts sensing weakness. Gerik knew teeth were being bared behind their devotions – hidden by the dead fingers of enemies.
‘Coward,’ Kyresh said in response. ‘You speak of surrender as though it were sanctity. I know your kind, as I have always known them, and they welcome the lash no matter the hand that holds it.’ There was a whisper as Kyresh drew his skzerret and another as the ritual blade sang through the air. Tyvas barely had time to be aware of the wound that killed him. His hands groped for his throat, to try in vain to staunch the rush of blood, but he could do nothing to stop the inevitable. His feeble pawing served only to smear bloody handprints along his neck and up over his chin, in mockery of the oath he had betrayed.
Kyresh kicked him back and stamped upon the corpse’s face. He turned and fixed Gerik with his stare. There was a wildness in those eyes. Dedication warring with the simple pleasure of a kill. ‘He got his wish, one way or another,’ the scourger said. ‘He wears the Archon’s colours now.’
‘Enough,’ Gerik said.
Kyresh’s cocky smile faded.
‘It is not for you to say so, brother,’ Kyresh growled.
‘I have rank. It is for me to say.’ Gerik spoke calmly, though the threat lived plainly behind the words. ‘You were not there on Urdesh, Kyresh. You did not fight when the sacrament of war was ascendant. I did. I bear this word and its weight.’
‘Then what do you propose?’ asked another, quieter voice. Dhareg looked at Gerik with measured placidity. The Father of Wolves was at ease, though tears streaked his powdered face. ‘What are we to do in such times?’
‘We have no shaman to lead the ritus, no lekts to bridge the veil into reality’s reflection. No truth will flow from the lips of the warp.’ Another, named Vzar, spoke with force. Gerik expected such things from the Shadow. Few had seen or done the things he had in the service of the Anarch. ‘What guidance is there, save you?’
What guidance is there? Gerik thought. He bit back his doubt.
‘We must listen for the Voice of the warp,’ someone said. They turned. The warrior was plain upon the eye. His head was shaven, his eyes pale green, and the devotion strapped to his chin was yet fresh. He seemed the consummate image of a Sekkite warrior: youthful, proud and unafraid to speak his mind.
‘Yes,’ Gerik said in agreement. He could not turn his eye from the youth. ‘You speak with wisdom, but I do not know you.’ He inclined his head to the fellow warrior. ‘What is your name?’
‘Ekren,’ said the youth. He stood taller at the damogaur’s attention.
Gerik almost shook his head. To be so young and eager in such times…
‘Ekren speaks with wisdom!’ Kyresh brayed.
Gerik turned and levelled his gaze upon the scourger, but he did not return his attention. Kyresh was playing to his audience, flailing at the air as he sought to stir the ashen hearts of the defeated. ‘The Anarch spoke in the warp’s Voice, and we can bid it speak again.’
The packsons rippled in response. Some cheered, others spat insults, but all reacted. That was what Kyresh thrived upon: the adulation and outrage of his brothers. Goading one as he tamed the other and directing it in the service of the Sanguinary wars which defined this corner of the benighted galaxy.
‘Hear me!’ Kyresh bellowed. Gerik let him speak. ‘Where our brothers talk only of doubt and failure, I will give you hope! We will settle this in the way of blood and with those sacrifices we shall honour the gods. We shall stir them until they notice us once again. We shall call forth the Voice of the warp, and it shall choose who it will speak through. Who it will guide us through.’
There was silence then. Still and cold. Gerik broke it. He laughed bitterly and every eye moved to him. Even Kyresh turned in grudging acknowledgement.
‘If,’ Gerik said simply, ‘any of us are truly worthy of bearing its word.’
Twice before had the Word of the Anarch graced this world.
The first utterance had been ‘MERCY’, for the inhabitants had willingly accepted the Anarch’s glorious rule. The second had been ‘BLEED’. Now the planet was a nameless world of dust plains and the bleached bones of the old Imperial cities. The Anarch had drunk it dry, drop by drop, until there was nothing left of value.
Save as a nest. A fastness. A bolthole amidst the storm, the tumult that had raged since Urdesh and dogged the heels of every loyal Son. A tide of Imperial fire and Archonate blood.
A single day had passed since their meeting. For some it had been a time of contemplation and meditation, while others had drummed up support, speaking with fire and with poison. Other Sons had tried to coax the warp with blood – of others or their own – though with little success. Merely more raw materials added to the meat foundries. Their deaths would serve the Sons of Sek more keenly than their lives.
The faithful had once again gathered amidst the entrails of the Administratum Hall – where once the legalists and adjudicators of the Imperium had gathered to render their hateful laws and oaths. It had the air of a great performative amphitheatre now, carved from marble, etched with fine frescos and murals. By the main doors of the chamber had been one of particular note and ire. Their Saint had stared out with her hollow cattle eyes, rendered yet more beatific by the fawning hands of artisans. The Sons had spat upon it first, and then over time had worn the nine wounds of her martyrdom into the stone. When that had ceased to be enough, they had gouged her visage off the wall until only a grey absence remained, a smear upon the firmament, as she ought to have been after the Anarch’s great triumph. They did not touch the text beneath it that declared, ‘And A Shepherd Child Shall Lead Them.’
‘Let her lead them,’ someone had said. ‘As all false prophets, she shall lead them to their end.’
Gerik was not sure that the irony of such statements found his kin. Instead he watched as each warrior prepared himself in the sight of gods and brothers.
They stood in the centre of the chamber where the benches and scrivener’s tables had once sat. Tearing them out had been the first consecration. They now formed gibbets beyond the walls, where the wirewolves hung silent and still. The warp’s whispered caress no longer graced the nameless place and the few learned men amongst them – the would-be heritors of this fallen age – considered that a foul omen.
Gerik paced about before his brothers as they readied. He could feel the crun
ch of ash and bone dust beneath his feet, and he trod winding patterns into the second sacrament. They had brought tribute to anoint it, the pyres of worlds, Archonate and Imperial, to sanctify the proceedings. Bowls of burning human tallow lined the edges of the sacred space. Smoke rose from them alongside the stink of old atrocity, the better to render it liminal and veil-thinned, to coax the empyrean into vulgar displays.
Such things made Gerik smile. He did not smile often, and it was not a pleasant sight. His mouth moved in strange ways as though unaccustomed to mortal joy and he was aware of the grey tinge of rot that rimed his lips, where the fingers of his devotion had rested too long, mouldering and wet.
They had each laid their own devotions along one of the sweeps of stone that acted as a handhold down the central staircase. A parade of severed hands, which had cradled the mouth of each holy warrior, was displayed with the reverence due to them. They were taken from common soldiers and from generals, from cardinals and humble ayatani.
Each was sacred.
A promise and a symbol of their devotion to something greater than themselves.
Now they set them aside.
They stripped to the waist, discarding their ochre fatigues and the plates of stolen combat armour in piles, before they coated themselves with fine layers of ash and pale pigment. Some of the piles were more ostentatious than others. Gerik’s eyes drifted over the chainmail that had marked Kyresh’s rank – the helmet long since discarded – and at the scrimshawing which had colonised Dhareg’s flak plates. The art bled from him, it seemed, and it warmed Gerik’s heart to see the gifts of the Prince-Dark-and-Radiant at work in the hands of a true master. Amongst them, only Ekren took the time to pray. The simple piety of it stole Gerik’s voice even as it bound his sight. When the young warrior looked up, he looked away in shame.
To call the Voice of the warp was no easy thing. Even the greatest of the Shydmetkahin ritualists would have struggled with the rites. It demanded the utter surrender of a being’s past and future, the sacrifice of faithful brothers. An offering of the self.
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