by Guy Haley
Shortly after, Khârn emerged onto the observational gallery of a long, hexagonal hold. The walls were punctuated by four sets of doors down the sides, also hexagonal, and surrounded by hazard striping splashed with blood. Corpses lay about like storm-tossed leaves. When he descended stairs to the hold floor, his feet splashed through deep puddles of blood. The hold had been exhausted of supplies some time ago. Thralls had set up tents in the corners and more elaborate homes in empty containers, turning it into an ugly shanty town. If they sought sanctuary there, it had done them no good. Their bodies were sprawled over the wreck of their possessions.
‘Lotara,’ he voxed. His voice was obscenely loud in the confines of his helm. ‘Lotara, this is Khârn. Have you any sign of him?’ The vox-beads hissed in his ear. ‘Lotara?’
The vox clicked. ‘Khârn. We’ve lost him.’ Lotara’s voice was faint.
Khârn stopped walking.
‘Where?’
‘Before he reached the enginarium. He’s gone to ground. We can’t find him on any of the augurs. Most of the internal systems are out. We’re…’
Lotara’s voice dropped out in a burble of static dominated by the pulsing of an electromagnetic heart. He was so close to the reactor it interfered with the vox. Its beating sounded uncannily like the throb of the Nails.
‘Lotara?’ he said.
Her voice reasserted itself over the pulsing hiss. ‘The vox-relay downdecks must have been compromised. Shielding around the reactor blocks signals from outside. You could try to find a hardline.’
‘I see none,’ Khârn said. ‘Will Skraivok be able to receive my notification?’
‘Keep your vox-channel open to me,’ said Lotara. ‘I will relay the order when you have him.’
‘Do not trust the Night Lord,’ said Khârn.
‘This is the best chance we have. Stop your father, or our war is over.’
Khârn left the channel open, and moved on again.
More holds came and went, all emptied long ago. The dried-up corpses of past rampages lay black in the corners. The pulse of the reactor on the open vox-channel grew louder. The temperature rose. Khârn reached the edge of the thrall decks and stores, beyond which the enginarium sections began.
In a hold half a kilometre long, he found his father.
Khârn felt the primarch’s presence as a great warm patch of rage welling up from the dark spaces between stacked cargo containers. In the hold, a place of silent cranes and dusty supplies, Angron’s fury was as obvious as a volcano spewing lava. But exactly where the primarch was, Khârn could not say. Every avenue dividing the supply stacks was a potential ambush site. He could not fight his father and win. When Angron was united with his Legion, many years gone by, he had killed every captain sent to speak with him apart from Khârn. None of them had fought back. Khârn vowed to defend himself this time, but even so he would die. Though he was renowned as the greatest warrior among the Legiones Astartes, even Khârn could not beat Angron before his transformation. Now, infused with the power of the warp and sharing the God of War’s infinite rage, Angron was practically invincible.
Khârn unhooked the teleport beacon and proceeded in a crouch with his axe ready. He did not need to fight to win, only long enough to tag his genefather with the device.
The sooner it was done the better. There was no honour in skulking around in the shadows.
‘Father!’ he called. ‘Father! It is I, Khârn!’
His amplified voice echoed through the hold.
‘Father!’
Something huge moved way off in the dark. Khârn turned around while his auto-senses struggled with the echoes in their attempt to triangulate the movement.
‘Father!’
‘Khârn,’ Angron’s voice rumbled from the dark, so low and powerful the deck trembled. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I have come to find you, father. The Conqueror is at risk. We can afford no more deaths among the crew.’
Angron laughed. ‘Khârn, Khârn, Lord Khorne demands blood and skulls. Do you not hear his cries? Blood and skulls.’
Khârn felt a stir of unease. He heard the whispers. The words remained elusive, but the furious insistence that murder be done and blood spilled was clear enough. He feared hearing what the words would say. He knew that enlightenment would come in time.
‘I do not hear him, my lord,’ said Khârn.
‘You will. He values you, my son.’
Heavy footsteps thumped deep in the stacks. Knocked chains jangled.
‘These slaves are unworthy offerings for the Blood God, but you, Khârn… Your skull will make a fine gift.’
Angron came out of nowhere. Khârn barely had time to twist aside from the blow of his unholy sword. The blade, longer than Khârn was tall, embedded itself in the deck. Green fire sheathed it, eating into the metal. Khârn leapt back too late. Angron’s backhand clipped him, sending him noisily into the side of a cargo container. Khârn’s bulk pushed a deep dent into the metal, and he struggled to get out before Angron wrenched his sword free and whirled it around at his head. Khârn fell forwards from the dent just as the blade hissed through the air, splitting the container’s side wide open. Plastek-wrapped packets bounced off the floor. He pushed up with his legs, parrying the next blow with Gorechild. The impact jarred him from head to toe, and he reeled back down an avenue between the containers, turned, and ran.
Angron pounded after him. Khârn slipped into a dark space, and eluded his father.
He leaned back against metal. Both his hearts thundered. The Butcher’s Nails sang their melodies of pain into the meat of his brain, urging him to fight.
‘You stole my axe, Khârn,’ Angron growled. ‘You took my weapon from me. Now you steal his favour. Khorne’s eye strays from me to you.’
‘I serve only you, my father,’ Khârn called.
‘You serve me by hunting me in the dark?’
‘Only to bring you to the battle, my lord.’
Angron snarled. Khârn risked glimpsing down the avenue. Angron strode past, a monster from myth: horned, huge, red-skinned, nostrils twitching as he sniffed out his son. Blood stink and anger washed off him in hot waves. He was mighty, but his god-given gifts had robbed him of all art other than killing, and Khârn remained hidden.
‘What battle would that be?’ Angron rumbled. ‘The battle against tedium as we watch Mortarion’s sons fight where we should? The battle against my brother’s arrogance? Horus defies Khorne. Khorne demands we fight for him now, yet the Warmaster keeps us caged.’ Metal squealed as he upended a stack of containers hundreds of tonnes in weight as if they were empty card boxes. The boom of them falling to the deck took a long moment to die. ‘I am the avatar of rage. The power of the warp runs through me, my son. I will not be chained like a dog any longer, not by the Emperor, not by Horus, and not by you. You are a fool to come here. I will kill you. There will be blood, there will be skulls. Khorne cares not whence the blood flows!’
Angron threw over another stack. Khârn used the cover of the noise to run out unnoticed behind his father. Angron’s whole upper body heaved with each breath. Leathery wings flexed. Every movement he made revealed a towering anger barely contained. Khârn recognised the condition in himself.
Khârn ran, Gorechild in one hand, the unwieldy spear of the teleport homer in the other. Gathering all his strength, he leapt, the fibre muscles in his battleplate sending him high. He crashed into Angron’s back, and buried the teleport homer deep in his father’s searing red skin between the shoulders where, even with great determination, the primarch would struggle to knock it loose.
Angron’s reaction was immediate and furious. He roared loudly, spinning around, knocking Khârn back. Khârn landed heavily, and scrambled up, while Angron’s hand came up, scratching at his back, but though his black nails brushed the teleport homer, it refused to be dislodged.
> ‘You have no honour! Attacking from behind.’ Yellow eyes blazed. ‘No true son of mine would stoop so low. We are warriors! We face our enemies. We look them in the eye before we take their heads for the skull throne! You are weak, all of you, slaves to my father then slaves to me. I should have killed you that day you first came to me. You are weak!’
Khârn backed away. The urge to throw himself into battle with his father was crippling his mind. ‘Lotara, now!’ He spoke through a mouthful of blood. Fluid ran down his nasal passages from his bleeding brain and drooled from his lips and out of the open vent of his breathing grille. ‘Lotara! Lotara!’ he snarled. ‘Now!’
Static replied. Angron was on him. He jumped, wings spread, half gliding, half falling towards his equerry. All sign of recognition, of humanity, was absent from the primarch’s face, subsumed by the need to kill. His black sword hissed through the air, bringing a thin scream from reality as it too was wounded.
The Butcher’s Nails pounded in time with the thumping of Khârn’s hearts. ‘Lotara…’ he managed, but the nails sang louder, and his words snagged in his throat. Roaring, he dodged Angron’s swing, and surged forwards, gunning Gorechild’s motor as he cut down towards his father’s knee. The primarch kicked, sending Khârn hurtling sideways and cracking his breast-plate. He drew his plasma pistol as he rolled out of the way of Angron’s stamping foot. A return swing of the sword took off part of Khârn’s pauldron. Sickly sweet smoke boiled off the damaged ceramite. He rolled again, too far gone into anger to feel the stab of his broken ribs. The plasma pistol whined as it charged. Gorechild blocked another punishing blow. Black sword locked with dragon’s teeth. Ligaments tore in Khârn’s arm as his father forced his weapon down towards his face. Gorechild’s engine screamed, the tooth track locked on to the edge of the daemon primarch’s blade. Priceless mica dragon teeth smoked as daemonic fires ate into them.
‘You are disappointing, Khârn,’ said Angron. The sword was closing on Khârn’s face. Angron grunted with the effort of forcing down the blade. ‘I thought if any of my sons could test me, it would be you. I was wrong. You are weak.’
‘And you… Hnnh,’ Khârn fought to speak. ‘You have lost your mind, my lord.’ The plasma pistol let out a ready note. Khârn brought it up and fired it point-black into Angron’s face.
The heat from the plasma stream seared Khârn’s face within his helmet. Angron roared and reeled back; his eyes cooked to steam and his cheeks stripped back to smoking bone. Khârn pushed himself up, playing the pistol across his father’s chest. The gun let out a warning, but Khârn fired until it overheated and vented superheated coolant all down his arm. Red lights flashed by its charging coils; the gun was useless. He disengaged the power feed and threw it aside. Angron staggered back, crashing into a pile of containers that crumpled like paper under his weight.
Angron roared and thrashed in agony, but already the damage was being made good. Eyes swelled like moist fungal fruits in empty sockets. Charred flesh swelled with rehydration, skin closed over deep burns. Veins and nerves spread across exposed bone, followed by muscle and fat.
‘You cannot beat me! You are as unworthy as these pathetic slaves!’
Khârn readied himself. His muscles burned. Gorechild shook in his weakened grip.
‘Father,’ he said in a drool-soaked growl. ‘I do not wish to fight you.’
‘You have no choice,’ Angron bellowed. ‘There is only war.’
The black sword hurtled down again. Khârn could not block it, he knew, but held Gorechild ready to deflect the blade, and prepared the blow he would land before he died.
Angron’s roar battered at Khârn.
Lightning skittered all over the daemon primarch. Wisps of corposant streamed off his body in a white fog. Then, with a clap of air rushing suddenly into a vacuum, he was gone.
Khârn fell down. His right hand refused to work, and he wrestled his helm off with his left, vomiting blood copiously onto the floor. The Nails hammered at him relentlessly.
‘Kh…?’ The vox-beads in his ears rattled with the reactor’s angry beat. ‘Khârn? Khârn? Can you hear me? Are you still alive? Khârn? The Night Lords have the primarch. Khârn?’
Khârn coughed. His enhancements and armour were working in tandem to repair the damage to his body, and where they could not, to numb the pain. He sat down, legs out in front of him.
‘Khârn?’
‘Hnnnh,’ he said. ‘You took… you took your damn time.’
The Nightfall, Terran near orbit, 7th of Quartus
Angron appeared in a blaze of teleport light. His sword was still chopping down and it smashed into the deck of an unfamiliar room. He wrenched the weapon from the metal, ready to slay his son for the greater glory of the Blood God.
Khârn was not there.
Angron growled. His rage was checked for a moment. The ship smelled strange, its sounds were different.
He sniffed the air. He was alone.
A single portal led out of a featureless heptagonal space. Through this he ventured into a cylindrical corridor. A gate slammed down behind him as soon as he was through. Small laser emitters rolled from apertures in the wall and onto tracks cut helically into the tube. The emitters snapped on, their beams constant and razor-thin, and spun themselves into a whirling vortex.
The door behind Angron squealed forwards, pushing the primarch towards the lasers. One stung his skin, then a second, until he was forced into them and they scored his flesh with a netted pattern that would have cut his original body into chunks. They merely pricked his warp-formed flesh.
Angron snarled, brought up the black sword and smashed them all into oblivion. He strode forwards through the smoke of destruction and into the next chamber, where another trial awaited him.
That too he overcame with the sharp edge of his sword.
Senatorum
Infernal allies
Kinder powers
Senatorum Imperialis, 9th of Quartus
The Senatorum Imperialis had the capacity to accommodate thousands, having been constructed for a vision of civilian rule that would allow voices from all parts of society to be heard. It would never come to pass. Rows and rows of empty seats stared down as blind witnesses to the small gathering on the dais at the very heart of the chamber. No meeting had taken place within for months, and the space had been given over to refugees. They had been removed for a while, and now waited patiently outside in the cold under legionary guard, but their possessions remained behind, heaped on benches made into beds where lords were meant to sit. The smell of cooking and chamber pots lingered.
The last council of the Senatorum Imperialis was done before the invasion fleets arrived. Voluntarily it had ceded control to the three primarchs, yet the High Twelve in particular still had great influence, and many responsibilities.
It had been the Khan’s idea to call them back together, just this once, a show of unity between men and demigods.
Upon the dais of the High Twelve, the Ruling Council of the Hegemony of Terra were gathered around their table of fossilised redwood. Twelve men and women, Malcador as their chairman – the once-rulers of an empire under siege. Dorn, the Khan, Sanguinius and Constantin Valdor stood at the edge of the dais, slightly out of the light, allowing the Council their moment of remembered authority.
‘Thanks to the actions of Jaghatai Khan, we have a better understanding of what the enemy intends,’ said Malcador. He pointed to the holo-captures the Khan had made, which floated before the gathering over the table. ‘Lord Dorn and the others thought it best we were informed, and for that we are thankful.’
‘What are the enemy’s intentions? What is that?’ Jemm Marison, High Lady of the Imperial Chancellory, asked.
‘That is clearly a siege cannon,’ Zagreus Kane said irritably. He was still new to his role as Terran potentate and had yet to master some of the gentler arts of diplomacy.
The others found him abrupt, though preferable to Ambassador Vethorel, whose brash tactics in creating the new Adeptus Mechanicus had left her disliked. ‘The type is quite distinctive. It is shield-bane technology of the Ordo Reductor, a most holy and terrible knowledge. Kelbor-Hal’s traitors are working against the Palace.’
‘It will penetrate the aegis?’ asked Simeon Pentasian, the dour Master of the Administratum. Though all on the Council had renounced governance of the Imperium while the crisis lasted, he worked as they all did in his own sphere of influence, attempting to keep the failing city running while the enemy gathered outside.
‘It has a better chance than a less specialised weapon,’ said Kane. ‘It is far from certain to do so. The aegis is strong.’
‘There are eight siege camps around the Palace. I assume all of them contain similar weaponry,’ said Chancellor Ossian, of the Imperial Estates.
Malcador glanced at Dorn.
‘That is the case,’ said Dorn quietly.
‘I had my Legion survey five of the sites,’ said the Khan. His armour appeared grey outside the area of bright light shining on the table. He moved fluidly, worryingly reminiscent of a predator outside a campfire’s glow. The members of the High Twelve present peered nervously at him. ‘All of them have similar machinery under construction. I chose to overfly the camp facing the Helios Gate myself, because of the tower collapse on that section early in the bombardment.’
‘It is reasonable to assume they will make a determined attempt to break the wall there,’ added Sanguinius. He appeared distant to the Council, as if his mind strayed beyond mortal affairs. ‘They have concentrated their efforts on the Helios section of Daylight, and to the north, at the Potens section of the Dusk Wall.’ His wings shifted, wafting air over the Council that carried sweet scents from a better place. Again they moved in their seats uncomfortably.
‘Then why have they not fired their guns?’ asked Marison.
‘The cannon must be assembled, my lady,’ said Kelsi Demidov, Speaker for the Chartist Captains. She was gentle with Marison, who though expert in her own field lacked breadth of knowledge.