Dark Imperium

by Guy Haley

  ‘The intent of my father was that I be the best that mankind has to offer. I am not.’ He swept his gaze across the crowd. ‘You are. It is you, the humanity of all the worlds and organisations of this great Imperium, who have done these things. You are the muscles of war – its sinews, its heart and its spleen. Without you, what would I have accomplished? I say to you, I would have accomplished nothing! Yes, nothing! You, all of you, must hold your heads high with pride. Without your efforts, the Imperium would have surely fallen!’

  He shouted now, and it rolled out across the square. Banners snapped in the planet’s dusty wind. It was eerily quiet. There were thousands upon thousands of humans and transhumans arrayed on the martial square. The ranks alone of the Primaris Unnumbered Sons filled a quarter of the space. They were arranged into Chapters, but their armour, coloured in the liveries of their primarchs, formed huge blocks that brought to mind the Legions of old.

  There were twenty thousand Primaris Space Marines here, the rosters said, along with forty thousand Adeptus Astartes of the older type, twenty million men and women under arms, and the cybernetic battle congregations of the priesthood of Mars. War constructs of increasing size lined the distant back of the square, from the war robots of the Legio Cybernetica up to the sky-occluding bulk of the Titans. How could they not win?

  ‘The Indomitus Crusade is a success,’ continued Guilliman. ‘I declare its task complete. By our blood and sacrifice, we have bought the Imperium valuable time to retrench. But we are needed elsewhere. We, who have fought together for one hundred and twelve years, must part ways.’ He paused again. ‘The Indomitus Crusade is over. This Triumph of Raukos marks its great victories.’

  Still no one spoke, but a tension rose off the crowd.

  ‘You are all to be reassigned. Shortly after this triumph, I shall give out new orders. Our forces will disperse, and shall bring ruin to the enemy wherever they might be found! Though I send you away from me, I do so because you have won my respect. You have performed impossible feats of arms. Wherever you go, the warriors of mankind will see the honour badges of this crusade upon your battlegear, but they will not know hope, they will not feel protected – instead, they shall rise up with certainty in their hearts and guns in their hands, and with a mighty roar they shall cast back the enemy into the formless warp for all time! You have done this. You will do this. I stand before you humbled by the sight of you, the men and women who are the heroes of the Imperium!’

  Guilliman held aloft the massive Hand of Dominion, its robotic fingers clenched in victory salute. The square erupted into a rhythmic chant.

  ‘Guilliman! Guilliman! Guilliman!’

  It was deafening, and more. Frater Mathieu felt the crowd’s exultation as a wash of power. The ecstasy he felt from their victorious cries made his faith shine as bright as a star. Where before he nearly collapsed from application of his electroflail, now he swooned in religious ecstasy. The Pit of Raukos seemed to dim in the sky, and the blasted, lonely deserts of 108/Beta-Kalapus-9.2 felt a little cleaner.

  ‘My sons! My brothers and sisters!’ Guilliman called, halting the chant. ‘In a moment, our new militant-apostolic will bless you all, and deliver the words of the Emperor, my father!’ Another cheer, so loud it shook the ground. Mathieu looked at the primarch sidelong; he had yet to say yes to the appointment. He was going to, of course. Now he had no choice. He admired the primarch’s forceful will. They could not fail with him as their lord.

  ‘I have news for my warrior-brothers. The Unnumbered Sons have fought with a strength that would shame the Legions of the Great Crusade. The time has come for you to be rewarded for your efforts. New assignments will be given. New Chapters formed. Some of you will go to join the progeny of your gene-sires, who will welcome you as brothers, and provide you with places of honour both on the battlefield and at the feasting table. But to those of you who are my sons directly, who bear my genetic heritage and the colours of the Ultramarines, I have one last thing to say – when we are done here, we have a new war to fight. My brother Mortarion brings pestilence to our home of Ultramar. I will not allow it to fall.’

  The primarch paused. Slowly, he once again looked across the field.

  ‘We march for Macragge.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Plaguebringer

  Varens was sleeping, and his dreams were strange.

  He watched himself from outside, as is sometimes the way in dreams, like he were two separate people – the actor and the observer. The observer saw himself hiding by the hospital entrance, spying on the sentries, their conversation puffed out into the cold night air as clouds of steam like smoke signals. The active Varens waited for one to leave his post and go inside to warm his hands. As the soldier passed, Varens clubbed him down with a stone urn. Then this Varens stalked the gravelled forecourt of the hospital, a stolen lasgun in his hands, fulminating against the way the soldiers had treated him, as if the patients were less than they were because they had been injured.

  He hated that. They were all soldiers. They were all owed respect!

  The second Varens simply watched.

  The first Varens raised his lasgun. The remaining sentry’s eyes became shocked round zeroes in the shadow of his helmet.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ he said.

  Varens squeezed the trigger and blasted a neat round hole in the sentry’s chest that smoked as he stepped over the corpse. He dropped the gun.

  This act of violence half woke him.

  He should have been warm, but his feet were freezing and felt wet. A chill wind made him colder still. He tried to go back to sleep.

  There was a sharp pain in his wound.

  How could this be? he thought in his dream. I am ready to go back to the war. I am fit enough to die.

  Another stab of pain made him gasp and wake slightly. He tried to go back to sleep, but there was an irritating rattling noise growing all around him. It sounded like reeds, reeds in the wind.

  Varens’ eyes snapped open.

  He was totally disoriented. Pale strands waved at the height of his nose, filling the world as far as he could see and dividing it into hissing paleness and darkness above. It took him a moment to see the strands as reeds, and the darkness as the sky where clouds sped over stars under the urging of the wind.

  His feet were cold because he was stood in the shallow water at the edge of the marsh. They were going numb. His skin bumped under his hospital gown. His hands were wet too, and his face. He would die out here if he did not get back. It took him a moment to get his bearings and locate the hospital. It looked small, the marble a blue blur in the dark. He had come a long way, well past the edges of the meadows and into the marsh itself.

  His dream came back to him: the dead soldiers. Or was this the dream, and what he remembered in the dream the true memory? It couldn’t be possible. He could not hurt another soldier.

  He suddenly felt dizzy. He reached his hand to his forehead. There was something slimy on his hand, and he wiped it on his gown. His forehead was hot. He had a fever. He should get back; there was something very wrong with him.

  He turned to face the hospital. His limbs were shivering, and his muscles ached.

  Definitely a fever.

  ‘I’ve caught my damned death out here,’ he muttered. He sloshed through the mud, making for the firmer ground of the meadows. He had nearly made it when a familiar voice called out in the marsh.

  ‘Bolus?’ he called back.

  He strained his ears. The last of the year’s insects chirruped in the chilly night. He heard nothing else, and he dismissed the voice as a delusion.

  ‘One! One! One!’

  ‘Bolus?’ Varens said again, more loudly. He could see nothing through the reeds, which grew tall where the marsh turned into meadow. Cursing, he struggled his way onto firmer ground and looked back. Iax’s solitary moon appeared from behind a scudding
cloud, lighting everything silver and black.

  ‘One!’ Bolus’ voice was thin as a distant scream. ‘One!’

  Varens turned back to look at the hospital. If he went back now for help he’d lose Bolus for sure, and when they found him, they might shoot him.

  He scanned the marshes, looking for his friend. Finally, he caught sight of him, a white ghost leaping high to negotiate the mud and water, his night-gown sleeves hanging over his hands and flapping. Behind him, Bolus had left a path of broken reeds. The trail meandered dramatically, but he appeared to be heading towards a thicket of low, willowy trees clustering on a hump at the edge of the marsh’s first mere.

  ‘Damn him!’ said Varens. Ignoring the chills and hot shivers that gripped his limbs, he plunged back into the marsh in pursuit of his friend.

  He soon reached Bolus’ trail. It was so convoluted that he decided not to follow it, instead chasing down the sound of his friend’s voice. He kept his eyes on the low island and its trees when he could, and sure enough it appeared that Bolus was indeed heading towards this point. Whenever Varens was forced to divert around deeper water and lost hearing of Bolus’ eerie shouts of ‘One! One! One!’, he would head towards the island and pick them up again.

  Hours seemed to pass before his feet found the harder ground of the island. Shivering with cold and sickness, he slogged his way up the rise. There was about three metres of elevation in it, but the hillock felt as big as a mountain. He doubted he had the strength to return to the hospital. This had been a mistake. He should have gone back.

  ‘Bolus!’ he hissed loudly, unwilling to shout, even though they were a long way from the hospital. He pushed his way through springy branches and down the overgrown far slope. The marsh’s first stretch of open water was on the other side, making the hillock almost an isle.

  ‘One! One! One!’ said Bolus.

  There he was, squatting at the lake’s edge, staring at his reflection in the black water of the mere.

  Though he was sick and cold, Varens felt a surge of relief.

  ‘Bolus!’ he said angrily. ‘What are you doing out here?’

  Bolus looked up from the water. He looked terrible, with dark rings under his eyes and his stubble caked with scurf.

  ‘Two, two,’ said Bolus sadly, pointing at Varens.

  ‘You had reached forty-nine last time I saw you.’ Varens’ attempt at levity came out heavy as lead. He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. As he did, the wound on his back twinged, and he grimaced. ‘Come on, we have to get back. I’m not well.’

  Bolus shook his head and crabbed away from Varens.

  ‘Come on!’ Varens said.

  There was a crack of wood behind them. A man, also in a hospital gown, staggered out of the reeds. He was covered in scratches, and his eyes were blank.

  ‘Three! Three! Three!’ said Bolus, jabbing a clawed hand at the other.

  ‘Oh, that is perfect, just simply perfect,’ said Varens. ‘Hey, hey, you! Soldier! Stop!’

  The man stared blankly at the water. He walked to its edge and, after staring into it for a few seconds, fell forwards face first.

  ‘Damn it!’ said Varens. He was frightened. The man’s actions reminded him of the way the dead had fallen into their trenches on Espandor. He hesitated, fearing the chill might kill him, but his sense of duty got the better of self-preservation, and he floundered into the lake. By then, the man had floated out several metres. Swimming even that short distance in the freezing black water drained the strength from Varens.

  ‘Four! Four! Four! Four!’ shouted Bolus. ‘Five! Five! Five! Five! Five!’

  Two more soldiers, one man and a woman, came out of the thicket. The man plunged into the water. The woman stopped a moment, her slack face clearing.

  ‘Where am I?’ she said, then fainted into the lake.

  ‘Emperor!’ said Varens. He dragged the unresponsive first man back to shore, and hauled the woman out onto the island. The other man fought him, and sank out of sight into the peaty depths.

  ‘Bolus! Bolus! Help me!’

  ‘One, two, three, four, five!’ cackled Bolus, touching his fingers like a child learning to count.

  Swearing profusely, the cold water dripping off him, Varens knelt by the first man, rolled him onto his front and began pumping on his arms. A stream of dirty water welled from the man’s mouth. When it slowed to a trickle, Varens rolled him over onto his back and pressed his lips to the man’s, breathing for him. After three breaths he pulled back and pumped the man’s chest.

  ‘Six! Six! Six! Six! Six! Six!’ said Bolus.

  A sixth person came out the thicket. He moaned, then collapsed and went into a seizure.

  By now, Varens was terrified. This was too much like what he had seen on Espandor. But there were no walking dead here, no traitors, and none of their terrible allies; the ones the officers insisted were xenos, but that rumour suggested were something else entirely. He pumped at the first man’s chest, distracted by the latest arrival. Something tickled his hand, and when he looked back he yelled in horror, and stumbled backwards.

  Sickly coloured insects were crawling from the man’s mouth and nose, pouring in wriggling masses onto the soil.

  ‘Bolus?’ he said, his voice quiet.

  Bubbles erupted out in the mere where the other man had gone down. The water boiled, and fish and other aquatic creatures bobbed to the surface dead, already squirming with the life of carrion organisms.

  ‘It can’t be… Not here. No, not here!’ cried Varens. His own flesh crawled. The wound in his back hurt more than it had when he’d received it.

  He didn’t remember how he got the wound, but he remembered the fly he had swatted that last day in the field.

  It seemed horribly significant.

  His head pounded, and there was a roaring in his ears.

  ‘Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven!’ shouted Bolus. He stood, and pointed with a shaking hand up the gentle slope.

  Garstand, the man Varens had met on the hospital balcony weeks ago, came out of the trees, his beard dishevelled and his gown filthy. Varens couldn’t see his face.

  ‘Garstand?’ he said.

  ‘What’s going on? What am I doing here? Varens? I was following Rusen. He told me to come. He said it was important!’ Unlike all the others, Garstand seemed to be in full possession of his faculties, but when he lifted his face towards Varens, Varens screamed. ‘Is it important, what we’re doing out here? I am cold. I should get back to bed.’

  Garstand’s eyes had gone. Fat leeches hung down his face, their pulsing foreparts buried in his eye sockets. A crop of boils deformed his forehead, swelling even as Varens watched.

  ‘Why can’t I see?’ said Garstand. ‘I itch all over. Have I been bitten again?’

  ‘Throne preserve me!’ said Varens. The pain in his back was becoming maddening. He jammed his arm behind his back to scratch at it. His fingertips brushed something hard: there was a lump there, swollen, close to bursting.

  ‘One, two, three,’ said Bolus, counting everyone in turn with grave concentration. ‘Four, five, six.’ He pointed at Varens. ‘Seven.’

  He patted his chest.

  ‘Seven. Seven. Seven,’ he chanted, and as he did so, he pulled out a stolen las-scalpel and thumbed it on. He held it so close to his eyes that his eyebrows curled in the heat.

  ‘No!’ shouted Varens.

  ‘Seven,’ said Bolus, and cut open his stomach. His innards felt out: diseased, putrid and crawling with maggots. ‘Seven,’ he said, and died.

  Foul gas belched from the bed of the mere. More dead fish bobbed to the surface. Garstand was screaming, clawing at his face. Varens felt something moving under his skin. He tore off his gown, only to find the flesh of his chest writhing. Terrible pain lanced through him, and the wound in his back tore open.

 
‘Seven!’ a voice boomed across the marsh, and a phlegmy laugh followed.

  Odd light shone from the marsh, then Iax changed forever.

  Reality tore with a sound like the edges of a half-healed wound parting. The sky ripped apart like flimsy projection screen. Either side of the tear, reality remained, but between the yellowing edges of the rift a realm of madness was revealed: a huge garden in the middle of steamy day, riotous in its decay, stretching out of sight into mustard fogs. Shy things with moist skin peeped from the overgrown foliage at Varens and licked their lips.

  There appeared to be a skin of energy over this tear, but it was full of holes that were getting wider as Varens watched. Rotten gases began to drift through, and then flies rose up from the sickly plants. They boiled through the holes in fat-bodied multitudes, battering at Varens just like on Espandor. Then they were gone, away over the marshes in buzzing shrouds.

  Varens looked to his side at the unconscious woman. He moaned at what he saw.

  Her eyes ran to jelly in their sockets. Her tongue went black and fell from jaws disarticulated from her softening skull. Her necrotic flesh sloughed off bones that, now revealed, shone pink-white for only an instant before accelerated decay turned them slimy grey, and the exposed capillaries that fed them dead black.

  He clenched his eyes tightly. His face turned from the rift. No one who looked into something like that could survive. The movements under his skin grew wilder. He had to stop his hands from ripping at his own flesh to set the things inside him free and bring himself relief, for he knew it would kill him.

  ‘Don’t look at it! Don’t look at it!’ he said, but he couldn’t help it. He looked up into the garden of the Plague God Nurgle.

  A moment of calm fell. Thunder cracked in the suddenly sweltering air. A ripe scent of putrefaction infiltrated everything. A ripple passed over the marsh – tainting whatever it touched, alive or not – and the grasses blackened in zig-zagging strips. Stones crumbled. The trees contorted into horrific new shapes and grew so large that they collapsed under their own weight into mushy ruin. Water turned thick.