by John French
‘Will you serve me, Abaddon?’ Horus had asked, the coin held out in his open palm.
‘I will,’ he had replied, and taken the coin.
‘All ships,’ he said, hearing his voice echo as it reached across the void through the vox. ‘By my word, and the word of the Warmaster. The blade falls.’
One by one, the ships lit their engines and slid down towards the waiting sun.
Admiral Niora Su-Kassen.
Wake and remember
Son of Horus
Blood and luck
Prison ship Aeacus, Uranus high orbit
Sleep came for Mersadie like a thief stealing the light, closing her eyelids and pulling her down into the dark. She had tried to stay awake. Even though she knew that she would never be able to outrun it, she had stared at the caged lamp in the ceiling of her cell, stood up and paced a tiny circle between the walls when she felt her eyes fluttering shut.
She wanted very much not to sleep. The dream of the night before had left a shiver of fear in her. Loken, the Vengeful Spirit… It had seemed so… vital, and she knew that you could not dismiss what happened in dreams as insignificant simply because they were not real. She had spent years living her memories again and again, trying to recall and hold on to every detail she could. Now it was all she could do not to smell the blood and hear the screams. So, she had fought back sleep, and tried to think through what was happening as she walked the scant metres of her cell and stared at the light.
She tried to keep her mind filled with questions about the present: why had she been moved from the prison around Titan to a ship? Was that Loken’s doing? Or was there another reason?
She shook her head as she felt herself contemplate stopping for a moment and sitting down. There was no night in this box of metal, but it must have been almost a day’s worth of hours since she had slept. She had to stay awake.
She was on a ship and guarded. Was she alone or were there others with her? An instinct told her that there would be more prisoners on the ship, but she could not be certain. If there were others, where were they going? It would not make sense to move prisoners that were a threat to the Imperium. Unless…
She blinked up at the caged lamp, swaying. She had to stay awake. She had to…
Unless…
She raised her head from the pillow and looked up at the ceiling. Painted birds soared through a painted sky of clouds and sunlight. She sat up. The window was open, and the wind was blowing warm from outside. She could smell citrus blossom. The trees under the hydro-dome enclosure were in late flower, heavy with scent and pollen and the promise of fruit. She stared around her for a moment, taking in the nightstand, the bookshelves of catula wood and the half-drunk glass of water left on the windowsill.
‘No,’ she said out loud, testing to see if she had a voice. ‘This is a dream.’
The breeze coming through the window slackened, and in the quiet she heard a distant, soft clacking, as though someone were placing pebbles on a sheet of plasteel.
She rose and went to the door. The corridors of the manse opened in front of her as she followed the noise. She did not look around her as she went. She was sure that in this dream every detail would be as perfect as her memory.
At last she stepped from a wide spiral of stairs into the Sunrise Gallery. It was set at the highest point of the manse; from here you could look all the way across the Aska mountain range and see the distant towers of Terra’s equatorial hives. High, peaked windows were open to the air outside, and translucent curtains stirred in a wind that carried the smell of rain drying in the first heat of a new day. She could see the sunlight glinting off the great chrome-and-glass dome that enclosed the gardens beyond. Held back beyond it, the upper strata of Terra’s blanket of pollution tinted the air a vivid mauve. A woman sat on the floor at the centre of the room, her back to Mersadie.
‘Hello,’ said the woman, half turning her head. A rush of fleeting recognition passed through Mersadie, but she could not grasp it. ‘Where is this place, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘Home…’ said Mersadie, pausing to touch a leather-bound volume sitting on a shelf. ‘My home on Terra, before I left.’ She opened the book. The Edge of Illumination, from the hand of Solomon Voss ran across the title page in hand-brushed script.
‘You have not dreamed of it in a long time, have you?’ said the woman sitting at the centre of the room.
‘It was not a place that made happy memories,’ said Mersadie, and closed the book.
‘You never went back.’
‘No,’ said Mersadie. ‘Home was not somewhere I ever wanted to return to.’
‘So, you followed your talent, and it led you out to the stars and into the company of wolves.’
‘Yes, it did,’ said Mersadie. She turned towards the centre of the room. The other woman still had her back to her, but Mersadie could see that she was busy with something that sat on the low table in front of her. ‘Who are you?’ Mersadie asked. ‘I don’t remember you. So why am I dreaming you?’
The woman laughed, the sound brief and clear.
‘Don’t you recognise me?’
Mersadie blinked, then started forwards.
‘Euphrati?’
The woman on the floor turned to look at her and smiled.
‘It is good to see you.’
Mersadie stopped. Even in this dream, Euphrati Keeler looked different to how she remembered. The smile on her face was sad, her features lean and drawn, her hair cut short and streaked with grey and white. The beautiful remembrancer who had shared Mersadie’s time amongst the Luna Wolves, and their fall to darkness, was gone, replaced by something harder, something defined by purpose.
Mersadie looked around again, then back to Keeler.
‘This is not a dream, is it? This is like before, when you spoke to me about Loken.’ That dream had come years before, but Mersadie had been able to remember it without effort. It had been more real than real, a moment of connection made possible by means that Mersadie could not explain without reaching for words like ‘miracle’. ‘You are really here, aren’t you, in my dream?’
Keeler was still for a second, then nodded. ‘I need to tell you something, and then I am afraid I need to ask something of you.’
‘What?’
‘First you must understand,’ said Keeler, looking back to what was on the floor in front of her. Mersadie moved around until she could see. She stopped and frowned. A disc of brass sat on the top of the polished wood. It was as wide as a dinner plate and divided into rings. Circles of polished stone and metal had been slotted into depressions in the wood, and Mersadie could see more discs cupped in Keeler’s left hand.
‘Those are the signs of the planets and moons from–’
‘From the time before Old Night, yes,’ said Keeler, slotting more of the discs into place in each of the rings. ‘The Planet of War, the Maiden of Dreams, the Bringer of Joy. And these beside them are the phases of the heavens, the symbols used by the scryers of the Suund – the Burning Tiger, the Bloody Sagittar, the Weigher of Souls, the Crown of Oceans, and so on.’
‘I know them,’ said Mersadie. ‘I read the Chaldeantis scripts while I was in the Conservatory towers of Europa.’
‘Strange to think that part of humanity held on to such things even after we had gone to the heavens they were meant to represent, don’t you think?’ asked Keeler with a humourless smile. ‘Relics of misguided philosophy, but like all of the things that humanity clung to as it aged, there is more truth in them than most would care to admit. It is crude, a lie of sorts, but to describe what is happening it will serve.’
Mersadie frowned. There was something in Keeler’s words that sent a prickle of ice over her skin. Behind her, the curtains stirred as a gust of wind blew in through the open windows.
‘Euphrati, what’s wrong? You never talked like–’
‘As above, so below. As in the heavens, so on Earth. As in the immaterium, so in the material.’
Mersadie found that she could not look away from the blur of symbols.
‘Horus is coming to take the throne of humanity and slay the Emperor. The forces of the warp ride with him. Never has such power been turned to a single goal. In the material, in the world of flesh, the battle is one of blood and fire, but as that battle rages so another battle is being fought beyond. Just as Terra sits at the centre of the cosmos in the beliefs of dead stargazers and fortune tellers, so the Emperor and Terra sit at the centre of the forces aligning in the immaterium.’
The spinning rings of symbols were slowing now. At her back, Mersadie felt a cold blast of air. She almost turned, but Keeler was speaking again, her voice louder than the rising wind.
‘The Emperor is holding them back by force of will and by art. He is holding them back and they cannot break Him in the realm beyond. So, they have sent their champion, Horus, to do with bloody hand what they cannot do in spirit. If the defences in the physical world can stand, He can keep the forces of the warp at bay. But if they fail…’ The last ring of the disc was slowing. The wind was billowing through the chamber now. A book tumbled off a table, pages flicking over. ‘The defences are strong and Rogal Dorn is ready, but he does not see the whole scope of the battle. This is not a battle of three dimensions or even four. It is a war split between realms, in which the actions taken in one world affect the other, in which acts done with mortal hands can echo beyond.’
Mersadie was looking at the arrangement of symbols on the brass disc. She read the alignments, and memory unfolded the meanings in her mind from old parchments that she had thought mere curiosities when she’d read them. She read the position of the planets and the meanings of each of the symbols brought into concordance with them. She looked up at Keeler.
‘This is not just a metaphor, is it? These symbols are not based on the planets, they are the planets. This is a design. A ritual alignment.’ She stopped. The glass was shaking in the window frames. The warm dawn light had darkened.
‘Marked by blood and slaughter. As above, so below,’ said Keeler. ‘This is the dimension that Rogal Dorn does not see. If Horus can bring this into being, then the Praetorian’s defences will mean nothing. You must reach him. You must tell him before it is too late.
‘Remember!’ Suddenly she was shouting. ‘Remember what you have seen!’
And the circles of symbols rose before Mersadie, no longer stone and metal but burning in the air. She felt them press against her mind, unfolding into inference and meaning that she could not comprehend even as they poured into her.
‘Why me?’ called Mersadie over the howl that no longer sounded like wind. Light was draining from the dream. ‘Why have you asked me to do this?’
‘Because I cannot,’ said Keeler. ‘And because Rogal Dorn believed you before and will again. You showed him the truth of Horus turning on the Emperor. He will believe you.’
‘I am in a cell – how can I reach him?’
‘A way will open,’ said Keeler, her voice lifting over the howl of the rising wind. ‘But you will have to walk it.’ The floor of the room was shaking. The sky outside was bruised purple and iron. ‘They will try to stop you,’ said Keeler’s face in the dream. ‘Old friends and enemies alike. They will come for you.’
A vase toppled off a side table. White flowers and water scattered onto the floor.
‘How long until Horus comes?’ she shouted.
‘He is already here.’
The glass in the window shattered. The storm wind billowed in. Mersadie could smell ash and fire.
And her eyes opened to a world filled with the scream of sirens.
Void Fortress 693, Trans-Plutonian Gulf
‘Three minutes to impact.’
The voice blared in the dark. Saduran kept his eyes closed, his thoughts still, his heartbeats rising. The double rhythm was still an alien surge through his blood.
‘Blood on the stars,’ came the call from Ikrek, and the echo roared back from the mouths of the twenty warriors in the assault ram. Saduran shouted the words, but behind his eyes his soul was silent. He heard the clink of mirror-coins and kill talismans against armour and weapon cases.
‘Down to the dark, we hold the coins of their lives,’ growled Targo, the Cthonian rough-edged as it came from his mouth. Others barked malformed replies. The words, like the clan runes scored into their armour and the gang talismans rattling against their battleplate, were mass-wrought. None of these warriors had even seen Cthonia, much less earned scars in its warrens. They were a mongrel brood pulled from the dark corners of a dozen worlds: Norane, Vortis, Manhansu, Cylor, Neo-geddon and other places forgotten before they were ever known. Gang killers, clan warriors, murder-cult dross. They were alike in only one way – they all had the capacity to survive what had been done to them.
The Apothecaries and bio-adepts had begun their production in batches of tens of thousands. Drugs and gene-activators had been dumped into the prospects. Thousands had died in those first minutes, their bodies pulled from the racks and dragged to the render vats. The process had continued without pause. Cutting, implanting, injecting, information deluged into their brains by hypno-rigs. And as they left each step, another batch of meat took their place. More died. The remainder survived, grew, were hacked into the shape of Space Marines.
When it was over, when they were bonded with armour and oathed to the Legion, they found themselves Sons of Horus, warriors in a war that they had not seen the beginning of and which would likely end long after their death.
Many of the new Sons of Horus took the traditions of the warriors who had been made before the Emperor’s betrayal, and wrapped those trappings around themselves, children aping adults in the hope of finding a way to belong. Cthonian was the language of that belonging, the emblems of its gangs the signs of status. Warrior cults proliferated in the ranks of the newborn: the Sons of the Eye, the Corpse Makers, the Brothers of the Seventh Crow, and more, all threaded with ritual and the mangled cultures of the worlds that had given the Legion its fresh blood.
Saduran spoke the words and wore the marks like the rest, but he had no need of the comfort of belonging. He could see this universe and this time for what it was – an age of cruelty and killers, and he needed no mark to know his place in it.
‘Thirty seconds, stand ready,’ came the pilot’s voice.
Saduran opened his eyes. The red and blue of his helm display flooded his vision. Ikrek sat opposite, bolter clamped to his harness, a red plume topping his studded helm. The sergeant slammed his closed fist into his chest as the assault ram’s booster fired.
‘For the Warmaster!’
A scream vibrated through the fuselage as the magna-melta engaged.
The ram’s impact snapped through Saduran with bone-breaking force. For a second, he was blind as G-force drained the blood from his eyes. Then the mag-harness snapped free and he was running forwards, the deck ringing under his feet.
His vision cleared in time for him to see Ikrek’s head vanish. Ceramite and bone shards rang on Saduran’s armour.
The chug-boom of heavy cannons. The double thud of his heartbeats rising.
A round hit Ikrek’s corpse as it fell.
Saduran ducked left. His bolter was in his hand.
A round hit the legionary behind him. The warrior gasped as he crumpled.
Target runes flashed red across Saduran’s sight. He fired.
They were in a vaulted junction between three wide corridors. Air was rushing out of the edges of the breach punched by the assault ram through the exterior wall. Blast doors were already dropping across the mouths of the corridors. The automated cannon had dropped from a hatch in the roof. Machine-slaved and shielded with ceramite plates, it was pouring shells down onto Saduran and his squad without pause.
‘Breach the doors!’ shouted Saduran as he fired up at the cannon again. Explosions flashed off its armour plates. Shrapnel scattered from it. Micro-shards pinged from Saduran’s helmet like hail. The cannon barrel twitched around to track him.
Four of his squad mates ran towards the closing doors. The cannon barrel swung away from Saduran and put wide holes through two of them. Saduran saw the gleam of a targeting lens nestled next to the cannon’s barrel. He put a burst of three rounds into it. The cannon spun, firing blind, shells punching into the deck and walls.
There were no troops yet, but they would come. This was one of the star forts that guarded the approaches to Pluto and the volumes around the Khthonic Gate. Like all the rest it was the size of a battle cruiser, a behemoth of stone and metal three kilometres across, studded with batteries and void shield generators. It took a battle group to kill each one, and ships would be lost doing it. There were ships to spare, though, hundreds of them, and if taken, this star fort could protect a corridor towards Pluto’s fortress-moons. Ships could pour through that opening. So, a battalion of newborn Sons of Horus had been unleashed to take the star fort by blade and blood. It was like driving a wedge into a stone sphere – drive deep enough and the sphere would crack, then shatter.
