by Guy Haley
The equerry turned his head left and right, taking in the frantic level of activity. ‘Lord Curze intends to go through with it.’
‘Do you think it could be otherwise, Shang?’ said Sevatar. ‘In fact, forget it. Here’s another question for you instead – why do you feel the need to say such asinine things?’
‘I don’t have time for your jibes, Jago,’ said Shang.
Sevatar frowned. ‘Don’t call me that.’
‘I’ll call you what I damn well please, First Captain,’ said Shang. ‘I am equerry to the primarch. Look at this. Look at what we are doing. We are about to wage war on our own home world.’
‘The dog can bark, but do you bite, Lord Shang? I say not. This is why Lord Curze favours me for this task. It is down to me to ensure that the punishment of Nostramo occurs.’
‘This isn’t right,’ said Shang. ‘This is the world of our birth. Billions of people. A valuable contributor to the Imperium, wasted. We were created for more than this.’
‘No we weren’t,’ said Sevatar. ‘This is exactly what we were created for. To commit the deeds others shrink from.’
‘This is wrong, you know it. Ask your men to stand down. If I can just have a little more time–’
‘To convince the primarch he is wrong? Konrad Curze is our lord. This is his command. His mind is made up.’
‘Damn Curze. We serve a higher power. We serve the Emperor and mankind! This is madness!’
‘You serve a higher power? Do you now?’ said Sevatar. He held out his arms. Sweating menials wrestled the upper parts of his arm plating into place. Power drivers whirred bolts home. ‘I find you irritating, Shang. In particular, I find it annoying the way you present a confident face to the primarch and that of a worried grandmother to the rest of us. I have seen you, strutting about in front of him. You wear his approval like paper armour, dazzled by its glory, always sure some other will snatch it from you, then scurrying off behind his back. You are not his nurse, Shang. You are equivocal. Certain until uncertainty takes you, which it always does. How do you rest?’
‘Better than you,’ said Shang. ‘I do my duty. I question these orders because of my loyalty, not because of my lack of it.’
‘I’m doing my duty, too. The amusing thing is the way we regard our duties so differently, when they should be the same. That is because you are wrong. History will vindicate me, Shang. You will feature only a little in its pages.’
‘Sevatar, listen to me. We have to stop this.’
Sevatar leaned back a little to allow power lines to be clipped into place. ‘Curze thinks you’re weak, you know that? Actually, that is wrong. He knows you are weak.’ Armoured gauntlets were slipped onto Sevatar’s hands.
‘I serve him loyally. I know he thinks my devotion to him is weakness, but it is my strength.’
‘And yet you are here, in my arming chamber, questioning his orders. Do you think you coming to me and waving your finger in my direction, barking your toothless bark about morality and higher purpose, will work? Why? There are innocent people on Nostramo, but we have gladly slaughtered innocents before, to ensure compliance. As individuals, they may be blameless, but as a society Nostramo is beyond redemption. It must die in the name of justice. The light of its burning will act as every other sacrificial town, planet or system we have ever burned has, and bring the majority into line. It will halt the activities of the criminal few in our Legion. This is a purposeful atrocity. I do it gladly so future atrocities can be avoided.’
‘What has got into you?’ hissed Shang. ‘You sound like a fanatic, Sevatar. This isn’t your way. The Sevatar I know is cynical, cold. He wouldn’t see the sense in any of this.’
‘What do you know about my way?’ said Sevatar. ‘Nothing, because it is the way of the strong.’
‘Sevatar, I haven’t come to you because you are First Captain,’ said Shang in exasperation. ‘I come to you because you are one of the only other warriors who holds our master in his heart the way I do. The others are jackals, or disillusioned if they once had honour. I am not weak. I’m the only one who is strong enough to see that the primarch is ill and to voice it openly.’ Shang spoke quickly, aware he had limited time to convince Sevatar. ‘He’s beginning to lose his mind. You can’t see it yet, but I can. You saw what he did on Cheraut.’
‘He went to Fulgrim for help, and was insulted.’
But Sevatar was uneasy. He’s seen it too, Shang realised.
‘He nearly killed Rogal Dorn! He butchered warriors from other Legions, and now this mad charge to our home system to mete out justice without first establishing the facts.’
‘You established the facts. War rips through the hives. Balthius is dead.’
‘Then it at least deserves a trial. You’ve seen what he becomes, how violent his visions are. He is changing. He needs our help, not our complicity in his crimes.’
‘Konrad Curze is not mad,’ said Sevatar with deadly, threat-filled certainty. The look in his eyes belied the tone of his voice, however.
‘For the Emperor’s sake, Sevatar, no one is more devoted to the Night Haunter than I!’ Shang gritted his teeth. His frustration growled from his voxmitter. ‘He is not in his right mind. He is deteriorating. You’ve seen the way he keeps himself now, the darkness of his mood. If we allow this madness to continue, we will accelerate this malady. There will be no turning back from this. You have no idea what he sees. None. Stop this now.’
‘I didn’t think I would ever see the day,’ said Sevatar. ‘Shang traducing our noble lord.’
‘Listen to what I am saying.’ Shang looked about with desperate eyes to the other hulking warriors. ‘What do you say, Atramentar? This is your world. If your captain cannot see sense, perhaps you will.’
The Terminators remained unmoving.
‘They think what I tell them to think,’ said Sevatar, amusement playing around his lips. ‘They are the most loyal to the primarch’s vision. That is why they are the Atramentar. A position of honour you have never held yourself, for obvious reasons.’
Sevatar’s serfs finished shutting him into his armour, driving the last bolts home, so that he was fully encased from the neck down. The menials quickly checked their work, then stepped back. With a snap and a building whine, the armour’s reactor came online. Sevatar seemed to physically grow as fibre bundles tightened and pistons pushed out of their sleeves. Other serfs stepped forwards armed with an array of devices, and plugged them in to external ports to test the armour.
‘You are as insane as he is.’
‘I am not,’ said Sevatar. ‘I know what you are talking of. He is unstable, but he is not mad.’
‘Then why are you doing this?’ hissed Shang.
‘Will you indulge me, Shang?’ said Sevatar, ‘by answering a single question?’
‘If you will give some credence to what I am saying, then yes,’ said Shang.
‘The government of Nostramo has been usurped by criminals,’ said Sevatar. ‘The hive lords pay lip service to unity while openly warring on each other. The streets are filled with screaming victims of violence and rape. Misery is the sole experience open to the vast majority of population. All are complicit in supplying our Legion, this organisation of the Emperor you hold in such high regard, with the worst examples of humanity they can find.’
‘How?’ said Shang. ‘How can the common people be held guilty of that?’
‘Oh, but they are. Mothers are glad their sons remain at home. Friends are relieved their gang mates are not taken. Those not worthy are pleased that those who should be recruited are not. This is a crime of the whole society. Do you not agree?’
Shang said nothing.
A clamp bearing the heavy Terminator helm wheeled along a track set into the arming alcove roof, coming to a rest over Sevatar’s head.
‘So tell me, in your honest opinion, is Nostramo – as a society – guilty, or innocent?’
Shang shut his eyes and shook his head. ‘Do not do this, Sevatar. There
is no way back from here.’
‘Answer me, please, Shang, honestly.’ Sevatar’s voice remained cool, but lost its edge.
Shang raised his head and flicked back his cloak over his arm. Red helm lenses locked with black eyes.
‘It is guilty.’
‘The guilty deserve to be punished,’ said Sevatar. ‘That is the one immutable fact of civilisation, for without punishment, there can be no civilisation. This is what our gene-father teaches us. We kill the few that the many can live, whether they be strangers, or our own families.’
The serfs stepped back. One depressed a button on a control box and the helm descended, swallowing Sevatar’s head.
‘Ave dominus nox,’ he growled through his suit voxmitters. ‘Gernoth, Karash, remain with Lord Commander Shang until the verdict has been passed upon the home world.’ He lifted his arms, testing the armour himself. ‘Nothing can escape justice, Shang. Nothing should.’
The two Atramentar Sevatar had summoned clumped forward to stand either side of Shang.
‘I spare you the pain of taking part in this, seeing as you are so clearly undecided as to what is just and what is not.’
Shang stood proudly between his towering escorts. ‘I will stand on the bridge with our lord as honour demands, and watch the sentence carried out.’
‘That’s right, Shang,’ rumbled Sevatar. ‘You watch. That’s what you do best. I’ll pull the trigger, because I can. You can’t.’
‘All ships, open fire.’
Konrad Curze’s hissed command echoed around the cathedral spaces of the Master of Darkness’ command bridge. The bruised, tumorous orb of Nostramo turned beneath the fleet. Its sole moon crept around the dark edge of the world. In the tacticarium displayed upon the hololith a single area glowed with hundreds of targeting points, data screed rolling down it in multiple floating windows.
Shipmistress Tolitha Genesh shifted in her command throne, uneasy at the presence of the Night Lord sent to watch over her. She allowed herself only the briefest, uneasy pause, before speaking firmly.
‘Gunnery command, plot immediate target acquisition upon the primarch’s mark, and open fire.’
Several junior officers immediately moved to act upon the captain’s order, but slowed when they noticed many others were not. A dozen of them stood at their stations, staring at the captain. Foremost among them was the Master of Ordnance.
‘Countermand those orders,’ he said. The few officers still working paused. Servitors burbled indignantly at the interruption to their programming.
‘Did you not hear? That was a direct command from the primarch himself,’ said Genesh.
‘I will not do this,’ said the Master of Ordnance.
Murmurs rose from the pits of gunnery command.
‘Nor I,’ said another officer, emboldened by the Master of Ordnance’s defiance.
Activity all over the bridge came to a standstill.
‘This is our home world,’ one said.
‘We will not!’
Nostramo was already under fire. Its defensive orbitals went first, blasted to pieces before their surprised crews could respond. Munitions hurtling towards the planet were swallowed by the clouds. Lance strikes stirred up storms. Return fire from defence laser batteries on the surface was short lived, being ruthlessly suppressed.
‘Look at it!’ shouted the Master of Ordnance. ‘This is our home!’
‘Lord Ilthen?’ Genesh asked the silent Night Lord behind the Master of Ordnance, but the figure remained unmoving, hypnotised by the destruction unfolding on the planet below.
‘We’ll all be killed for this, can’t you see?’ Genesh said. She stood, hand on her service laspistol. Guns levelled at her from behind. Her own armsmen turned against her, and still Ilthen did not move.
Genesh was in the middle of formulating a response when an electric buzz blared from the bridge voxnet. A burst of intense cold preceded a thunderclap of displaced air.
Three Atramentar stood in a haze of dispersing corposant, weapons raised.
‘Why is this ship not firing?’ said the lead. Genesh recognised him immediately.
‘Lord Captain Sevatar,’ she said in relief. ‘Thank Terra you are here. I have a mutiny on my hands.’
‘Unfortunately for you,’ said Sevatar. A single bolt from his gun blasted Genesh apart. ‘You are relieved of command. Does anyone else have anything stupid to say that warrants an answer from my boltgun?’ He and his warriors panned their weapons across the crew. ‘You,’ Sevatar demanded of Ilthen. ‘Why did you not prevent this?’
Ilthen’s ruby eye lenses danced with the reflected light of hundreds of detonations blooming across the cloudy orb of Nostramo.
He stared back at Sevatar for a long time.
‘Because it is wrong,’ said Ilthen, going for his gun.
Sevatar opened fire. His first three mass-reactives hammered into Ilthen’s chest-plate, detonating without penetration. Ilthen’s aim was thrown wide, spraying out half a magazine of shots into the bridge. Sevatar’s fourth bolt punched clean through the centre of his chest, obliterating both his hearts and killing him instantly.
Silence fell for a fraction of a second. Sevatar saw the armsmen’s intentions to fire before they knew they were going to do it themselves.
‘That is a regrettable move,’ he said.
Gunfire erupted again. No shotgun could penetrate his armour, and the racket was over as quickly as it had begun.
The wound glared angry bright in Nostramo’s surface. The clouds, for centuries a uniform black, raged with inner fire that made them squirm. Sevatar watched Nostramo’s punishment from the deck of the Shadowed Blade, the third vessel he and his bodyguards had brought to heel. A significant minority of Curze’s fifty ships had been resistant to the primarch’s orders. Dozens of legionaries had died putting down the mutiny, thousands of mortals. Damage to the command decks of a number of ships was significant.
Nevertheless, the orders had been carried out. No one dared defy the Night Haunter now.
Shells streaming long trails of fire plunged towards the planet, each one a sparking flash that sent lightning-edged shockwaves across the atmosphere. Nostramo Quintus was ablaze from root to tip, as were most of the other cities on the fleet’s side of the world, but it was Quintus, the primarch’s home, close to the fault Curze had made as he crashed down into Nostramo’s long night, that bore the brunt of Curze’s displeasure. The hole in the crust had never healed, and it was into that weakness the fleet poured its fury. Beneath the roiling cloudscape, a lake of magma pooled upon the surface, so huge its glow shone through the clouds above it.
Not long now, the First Captain thought, before the planet broke apart and its core would be open to the cold void. Sevatar had seen this before. Planet-death was eerily beautiful.
This was different, of course, or it should have been. He had been born upon that planet, worthless a place that it was. Within its cramped cities he had grown to early manhood. Its streets were the scenes of his first triumphs, his first failures, several near deaths, his crimes and his passions. Beneath that boiling lid of cloud, in the warm, metal-tainted rain, he had lost friends and made enemies. He wondered how the other Nostramans in the Legion felt staring at the pyre of their home. He wondered if they experienced the stirrings of hatred towards their primarch, or felt sorrow at the world’s passing. He wondered these things because he felt nothing.
Nostramo had erred, and it had been punished. There was no more to it than that.
THIRTEEN
VINDICATION
‘And so, with Nostramo’s murder, I committed myself to the path of darkness,’ said Curze in satisfaction. ‘My monstrousness revealed. What could you do but to condemn me to death?’
He pressed his hands into the sharp iron ridges of the floor.
‘My sons. They are no better. Cursed with my wickedness, they saw the fear I spread and the horror I cultivated as the aim, not the means. They came to exult in the power that it brought
. They forgot what they were. Even Shang, in the end, grew disillusioned with me. Very few did not. Sevatar understood best of all.’
Curze’s head drooped, still pained at his favoured son’s loss.
‘Talos, my Soul Hunter. He knows too. He is among the last of the faithful.’ He looked up at the ceiling. ‘His devotion to my cause will kill him, here. He will wreak his vengeance on your assassin and then depart. When he returns, he will die upon these very walls.’ He snickered. ‘I could tell him, but I will not. If I did, how would he learn? Forewarning him would be pointless, and would not convey the lesson. Warriors like Talos miss the greater meaning of my teachings.’ He sucked in a long hissing breath. ‘It is abhorrent, what I do. I am abhorrent. But my abhorrence is only a concentration of the sins of all men, magnified in me ten thousandfold. You intended us to be exemplars of humanity. You succeeded all too well.
‘They were with me at Nostramo – Talos, Sevatar, Krukesh, Tor, so many others. They unquestioningly followed my orders, and obliterated their own people.’ Curze crawled around the throne on all fours, peering up at the vile sculpture. ‘Not one of them questioned if I did the right thing. Not one of them challenged my decision. We were a Legion. I was their lord. I demanded justice for the world’s undeniable crimes. And these were my better sons! Justice was ever close to their lips. Upon a thousand other battlefields they had committed the unspeakable to further your Imperium. What is one more world, one more population of billions? What did it matter that it was the world of their mothers and fathers?’
He giggled. The sound caught in his throat, and rattled out in an inhuman clicking like the call of a carrion bird.
‘Sevatar once asked me why I hated my sons so. He was right, you know, I loathe them all, faithless and faithful. I despise what they are, these killers who act without compunction.’ His face screwed up tightly. ‘But I hate them most of all because they missed the point! They could not see that they were complicit in a great crime. Had they any insight of my teachings, they would have turned their gaze inward, and condemned themselves accordingly. Execution would have followed. If only it could have been!’ he said, holding up a clawed hand to the ceiling. ‘Their eyes open to their own faults, they would have murdered each other as is only right. Only right.’ He shuffled back a few paces. ‘But they did not, and so I leave them to your crippled empire, so the lesson may be taught again, and again, and again.’