by Guy Haley
‘Make time. Look, listen, damn you, Khârn. Wake up! Look at what you have done.’
A cylindrical projection sprang on. Blood red from top to bottom, it appeared to be malfunctioning. It was not. An awful roaring emanated from the audio projectors, accompanied by screams so thin they were barely audible. A huge, inhuman hand swept by, taloned fingers spread, slashing downwards. A tumble of limbs and gore spread across the floor.
‘And?’ said Khârn. The Nails thumped softly in his skull at the display, tempting him to indulge in a similar slaughter on the bridge. The crew left were below half-strength. All of them knew what he was capable of. They expected him to kill them. Why should he disappoint? His forefinger twitched towards the switch that would send the mica dragon’s teeth into a blur. He estimated he could cut down twenty of the bridge crew before they raised a single gun against him. ‘The mortals die. The legionaries do not.’
‘Angron is rampaging through the thrall decks!’ Lotara said. ‘We’ve too few men left. We can’t afford losses. Not like this.’
He imagined taking her skull. She was physically weak, but her efforts had sent millions of men to their deaths. She would be a worthy offering to the brass throne.
The idea horrified him, only a little, but enough to make him force his thoughts back under control.
‘He’ll kill them all, I’m sure, and we have a more pressing problem.’
‘Explain,’ breathed Khârn, a dangerous, throaty whisper.
‘Since you shut him down there, Angron has been butchering his way through the ship. He is getting dangerously close to the enginarium. If he gets in there and slaughters the transmechanic clades the whole ship could go up. Or he’ll get bored and find his way up here, then you’ll have to fight him.’
Khârn stared at the image. Angron’s daemonic face swung into view. A yellow eye squinted into the vid augur. A giant fist followed, punching it into nothing and sending the projection cylinder into a fuzz of static. He would fight Angron. He could.
‘Cut the feed,’ Lotara said. The projection cylinder winked out. ‘Can’t you stop him? We have come this far. I don’t want it to end before we have the chance to fight.’
‘My father is doing what he wants,’ said Khârn, swallowing a mouthful of coppery saliva. ‘Nothing can restrain him. He will not go back into the vault. He has become too strong to contain. I… I…’
Blood. Angron spilled blood. A voice in his head demanded to know why Khârn did not.
Lotara took a step closer to him.
‘Khârn? Khârn! Listen to me!’ she snapped.
‘I am listening,’ he said, with difficulty.
‘Khârn, I know this is hard for you,’ she said gently. ‘But I know you can hear me and that you understand. Angron has to be stopped.’
Khârn looked down on her. His pulse thundered in his brain, each beat of his hearts a terrible agony. ‘You were his favourite. He gave you the blood mark himself, and you want to lock him away. Our father wished to be first on Terra. He was on the verge of rage anyway. Seeing Mortarion’s Legion sent in before ours is an insult. We are fortunate he did not leave the Conqueror to attack the Death Guard.’
‘This is not a good situation,’ she said.
‘He is contained. You sealed him in as I ordered. Let him alone. He can do little harm where he is.’
‘That is little harm?’ she said. Her face wrinkled in disbelief. ‘Little harm does not encompass the slaughtering of our tech cadre and the resulting reactor death.’
‘What do you suggest?’ said Khârn. He looked at her through a red haze. Sarrin was renowned for her cool head, but she too was feeling the effects of Angron’s influence. The crew had suffered the attentions of the Legion for a long time. He thought it likely they would soon turn on each other as the legionaries had. ‘We are changed, Lotara. This ship is a crucible of rage. The pull to violence in my mind is so strong that the slightest faltering of concentration will see a scene on this command deck similar to the one below.’ He moved. The chain binding his weapon to his wrist clinked. Lotara’s gaze flicked to the head of the great axe. ‘I think now of how much pressure would be required for me to crush your skull, how many shots your armsmen will have time to fire before I cut them down. Let Angron vent his fury on the thralls, better them than more legionaries. I can spare no more thought for the matter.’
She shook her head. ‘No, no, if this is allowed to go on, we are all dead. We have to either confine him or get him off the ship. Only you can do that. You have to pull yourself together. Snap out of your bloodlust, Khârn. Help me!’
‘If he attempts to land on Terra, he will die,’ said Khârn. ‘So say Magnus, and Layak and the other mystics. Insufficient blood has been offered to the lords in the warp. The Emperor denies the Neverborn access. Not until Terra’s soil is damp with vitae will the gates open for their kind.’
‘Daemons,’ she said harshly. ‘How has it come to this?’ She looked at him fiercely. ‘How did this happen to you?’
‘They are our allies,’ he said. ‘Angron is blessed by the gods in the warp, and he is still my genesire.’
She nodded and massaged her forehead. ‘He is still Angron, I know. He is in there.’ She snapped her gaze back up to his face. ‘Do you wish him to die?’ Privation and time had aged her so much while he remained strong. She would be dead in not so many years, he thought, if she managed to survive the war. A poor end for such an accomplished killer. Better to die a warrior’s death, in battle. He could offer her that honour.
‘He might survive the detonation,’ she said. She was speaking quickly, aware Khârn’s thoughts were drifting. ‘Will he survive an attempt to reach Terra? Do you want to find out?’
Khârn shook his head slowly.
‘Then I have an idea. The Nightfall.’ She was gabbling now. She had a limited period while Khârn would remain calm.
‘The Night Lords,’ he said dismissively.
‘A few weeks ago, I received some intelligence,’ she said. ‘From the Twentieth Legion. They told me there is some kind of prison made for a primarch on the Nightfall. If we can get them to take Angron, it will keep him occupied for a while. Long enough until the time comes for him to land.’
The Khârn of old would have interrogated her as to how the Alpha Legion gave her this message, and why, but such finesse of thought was beyond him now, lost under an ocean of blood.
‘How?’ he said. It was all he could manage to say.
‘You’ll have to do it,’ she replied. She rubbed her hand over her face again. ‘You’ll have to do all of it. The arrogant dogs won’t answer my requests for communication. They might listen to you.’
‘Might,’ said Khârn. His sense of self floated on a sea of red, threatening to sink at any time. He could taste the blood. Hear the screams.
‘Yes, curse you!’ she snapped. ‘Might! It’s the best chance we have. Send the message,’ she commanded. Her hololith master nodded and began to direct his few remaining serfs. A floating orb coasted down from the ceiling near to Khârn, ready to capture his image for transmission.
‘I did not agree,’ said Khârn, his voice dreamily murderous. In his mind’s eye he saw Terra burning, and bodies falling before his axe.
‘Another damn thing we don’t have time for,’ she said. ‘Send my request again to the Nightfall. Inform them Lord Khârn, Eighth Captain of the Twelfth Legion, equerry of the primarch Angron, wishes to speak with their leader.’ She turned her attention back to Khârn. ‘There’s some treacherous whoreson in charge now. No sign of Curze. Sevatar I have heard is dead. Khârn!’ she said.
His attention drifted back to her. ‘Who will I speak with?’
An acceptance chime tolled from the hololithic communications station.
‘My lady, I have their assent.’
‘Activate the projection field,’ she said.
/> The hololithic phantom of a youthful-looking Space Marine stood upon the deck, life-size. He was unusually flamboyant in appearance for one of his kind. The long, pale hair draped over his shoulders was more characteristic of Fulgrim’s warriors than Curze’s, and his armour gleamed, sub-surface projection plates making it squirm with lightning effects. He lacked the skulls and fetishes of bone worn by his brethren. Most striking were the vertical black ovals tattooed over his eyes, and the large sword strapped to his left side. Khârn recognised it as a weapon of the warp. He growled instinctively. A weakling’s weapon.
‘My Lord Skraivok, the Painted Count,’ said Lotara, bowing. ‘Might I present to you the Lord Khârn, equerry to the primarch Angron, master of the Eighth–’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Skraivok, waving his hand. ‘Your minions relayed all this. Besides, who would not recognise the great Khârn! Such a reputation.’ He clucked his tongue. ‘My, my, Eighth Captain Khârn, what an unexpected pleasure.’ Everything about the Night Lord howled with insincerity: his posture, his smile, the tone of his voice. ‘What can I possibly do for so vaunted a warrior as yourself?’
‘I want a service from you,’ said Khârn bluntly.
Skraivok laughed. ‘How very forwards! You are not speaking with some fame-dazzled captain. I am the commander of the Night Lords in this warzone, perhaps leader of the Legion itself.’
‘By what right?’ said Khârn.
Skraivok gripped the hilt of his sheathed sword with his left hand. ‘By right of conquest. I thought you might respect that.’
I have never respected any Night Lord, Khârn managed not to say. He wanted to challenge the captain to a duel right there. Enough of his wits remained under the punishing thump of the Nails that he refrained.
‘Battle is what we are made for. If you have triumphed, then I will speak with you.’
This seemed to satisfy Skraivok.
‘That’s better. I don’t want us to get off on the wrong foot. Now, to business. This service, whatever it is it will cost you. Times are not what they were. Nobody gains the Night Lords’ aid for free. I have a price in mind, depending on what you require, naturally.’
This fool offended him. The Butcher’s Nails pounded harder in his skull at the affront. Khârn managed, somehow, to keep his voice level.
‘First tell me something, Painted Count. I have heard rumours about your vessel. Before we bargain, I must know whether they are true.’
Skraivok’s eyes narrowed. ‘What rumours might they be?’
‘That in your flagship is a prison for a primarch.’
The Night Lord’s face crinkled with humour. Starting around his eyes in the depths of his tattooed stripes, his smile was entirely dark in nature. ‘Don’t tell me. You’re having trouble with your transcendent lord! Favoured of Khorne, or whatever this god’s name is. I suppose that is what happens when one hearkens to gods. You wish me to take that monster aboard my vessel?’ He smiled condescendingly. ‘My my, what an interesting proposition.’
‘This is getting us nowhere,’ said Khârn. ‘Cut communications before I decide to go and cut off his head.’
‘No, wait!’ countermanded Lotara, holding out her hand to stop her communications officer. ‘Forgive me, Lord Skraivok. Khârn is much troubled by his father’s predicament. At least, let us know if it is true. Is there somewhere upon the Nightfall that might hold our lord until it is time for him to join the battle? Does this prison exist?’
‘A prison? No,’ said Skraivok. ‘It is more than that. It is a labyrinth, devised by Perturabo himself to torment Vulkan. As you might imagine, it is ingenious and deadly in design. The Drake was one of the Emperor’s more intelligent sons.’
‘How do you know this?’ growled Khârn. ‘How do I know you speak the truth?’
‘Mostly because I was put into it,’ said Skraivok.
‘You escaped?’ said Khârn. ‘You. Then it is not fit to hold a primarch.’
Skraivok smirked. ‘It’ll hold your primarch. He is a mindless monster. I did escape, but I confess I had help. The labyrinth will hold your lord. Not forever, I imagine all those little traps and dilemmas will slow him down not at all and he’ll simply batter his way out, but it will occupy him for a time.’
‘How long?’ asked Lotara.
‘Long enough,’ said Skraivok. ‘The moment approaches when he will be able to manifest on Terra, does it not? That is the Warmaster’s plan.’
‘And how do you know that?’ said Khârn neutrally. The Nails burned into his hindbrain. He did not like this Skraivok. He was pompous, melodramatic, playing the villain’s role like an actor.
‘As I said, I have help.’ Skraivok’s hand twisted around his sword’s leathern grip. He thought a moment. ‘I will do it,’ he said. ‘We will take him. But I require something from you in return.’
‘What do you require for this service?’
Skraivok’s unpleasant grin spread wider. ‘This will surprise you, but I want something you have in great supply, Lord Khârn. I want glory, and you have so much of that I am sure you can spare me a little.’
Khârn passed through heavy blast doors from the upper levels of the ship into the abattoir of the thrall decks. The doors were multiply layered, and strong. Even with his mind half-drunk on the lust for blood, Khârn saw the irony inherent to those doors. Angron had spent his youth as a slave, fighting for other slaves. His anger towards the Emperor sprang from his inability to save his fellows, yet he became a master of slaves himself, and wary enough of them to keep them under tight control as brutal as that meted out by his former owners. As time had passed and the Legion degenerated, the doors had provided a little safety to the abused multitudes of the crew. This part of the ship was one place where Khârn’s brothers could not easily go.
The decks had been in a terrible state even before Khârn shut Angron in. Now, they were close to ruinous. The lumens were out. Sparks spat lethargically from severed cabling. Bodies clogged every corridor of the thrall decks, not a single one of them entire. The whole warren of workshops, service ways, barracks, food halls and conduits stank – that nauseating battle reek of spilled guts and fear. Viscera festooned the walls like celebratory flags. Scraps of flesh spattered every surface. Khârn paused and swung his head around, tasking his auto-senses with a deep sweep of his immediate surroundings. Boosted by the ship’s internal auspex, his helm senses scried fifty metres in every direction, providing him with an accurate cartolithic display of the area – a long way in the convoluted bowels of a void-ship. Among the maze of corridors he found not one sign of life. It was so quiet. In the dark there he could feel the Conqueror itself. The machine soul of the battleship had grown fierce with the spilling of blood. It was watching Khârn.
None of Angron’s victims could have put up much of a fight. Where the bodies hadn’t been smashed into a pulp by the primarch, Khârn saw only wounds to the rear. They’d died running.
The sight could not disturb Khârn, he who had slaughtered civilisations. For years now blood and death had ruled the corridors of the Conqueror. Angron had despatched him below decks to kill three hundred thralls himself, to build a throne from their skulls. Even so, the extent of Angron’s massacring stirred disgust in his flinty heart. There was no honour in this, no skill, no point, only butchery for the sake of killing. Blood must be spilled, their god demanded it, but there were better ways to make sacrifice than this.
He stopped to let his cartolith update. This part of the vessel had never been legionary territory, and he would be lost down there without the map. More pressingly, he did not know if Angron’s otherworldly form would register on his battleplate’s auto-senses. He had no desire to stumble across his genesire unprepared. He shifted his grip on Gorechild, his axe. Its teeth glinted. His thumb hovered over the activation stud.
‘My lord!’ he called into the darkness. ‘It is I, Khârn!’
The drip of blood and creaking of cooling machinery replied.
Mag-locked to his thigh next to his holstered plasma pistol was a teleport beacon. There were no armourers left in the Conqueror’s ruined workshops, so Khârn himself had fastened a heavy, barbed spike to the shaft. Khârn hadn’t checked the homer mounted at the other end. Its ready light blinked when activated, but he had forgotten how to run the checks needed to ensure it definitely worked, another part of his past drowned in the ocean of blood filling his soul. Either it would perform, or he would die according to the will of his god. He paid it little attention, letting it bump along the ground as he prowled through the under-decks.
Each turn of the corridors, each open door, showed him the same bloody ruin. The steady blink of the teleport homer’s ready light flashed on thousands of lifeless thralls. The dead were scattered everywhere. In places they were reduced by Angron’s ferocity to thick slurries of gore where recognisable body parts were few and far between. In places the primarch’s sword had cut into the walls, and there the wounded metal shone with dark light.
Khârn passed a spur corridor leading to the upper decks closed off at the far end by an armoured door. According to his cartolith, the corridor was over fifty metres long. He could not see to the end, for the corridor was packed by the standing dead. The bodies nearer the main way were smears of red. Further into the crowd, the thralls’ wounds became less severe, until, about ten metres in, they exhibited no sign of physical harm. The mortals had crushed each other in their panic to escape, creating a press so tight that Angron could not get to them all. It had done them no good, for they had suffocated.
Khârn grunted at the sight and moved on.
He neared the enginarium section and several possible routes of escape for the primarch. Blast doors leading out to the lower embarkation decks and stores were scarred by accidental cuts. Evidently Angron had been focused on his quarry or he would have sliced his way out there. No mortal material could stop the otherworldly blade of Angron’s sword for long.