The Solar War

by John French

  ‘Martyrdom…’ said Layak from his position on the bridge’s command dais. Abaddon kept his eyes on the sea of fire and Luna waiting beyond. He blinked.

  He was gasping, amnion-fluid pouring from his mouth as he struggled for air. The world around him was black. He vomited and tasted iron on his tongue.

  ‘Do you wish this to be the end?’ came a voice. It rolled and echoed, bouncing off bare stone.

  Abaddon became still. The voice was not one of the gene-witches. It was strong in a way that made ice run down his spine. He had been in the black caverns for weeks, maybe months. He had tried to hold on to time but it had fled from him as he bled, and grew, and felt the scalpel arms and needle saws do their work. And between the flesh work, he floated in a sea of images and voices as the hypno-units deluged his mind with learning. When he slept, it was in a lightless pool, drowning in oxygen-infused amnion while his body healed and accepted what it was becoming. Every time he had woken, it had been to the grey and silver presences of the Selenar dragging him up from the water. This was the first time he had woken to pitch-dark.

  ‘Who are you?’ he managed as a shiver rolled through him. The warm fluid was cold rather than warm, its sheen like ice on his skin.

  ‘You killed your father,’ said the voice, ‘or that is what I have been told.’

  Abaddon went still, trying to feel what direction it was coming from.

  ‘I did,’ he said, and heard the words echo and re-echo in the blackness.

  ‘Are you ashamed of that?’

  ‘No,’ said Abaddon. ‘He was less than a man.’

  ‘He was a king.’

  ‘A crown means nothing.’

  Laughter, warm and rich in the dark.

  ‘And what does have meaning, son of Cthonia?’ asked the voice.

  ‘Truth.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said the voice.

  A pause in which he had just heard his breath slowing and the soft ­ripple of the pool around him.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Abaddon again.

  ‘I am the one who has come to bring you illumination.’

  A clatter of gears, a hiss of pistons and then light. Brilliant light, pouring down on him, swallowing his sight. He made to shut his eyes, but they were already diluting the glare, dragging it down to brilliance that illuminated but did not blind. He turned his head. The amniotic pool was circular and set into a floor of perfectly smooth black stone. The ceiling above was a dome of the same material. An iris had opened at its centre and a beam of light shone from above.

  Primary starlight, said a whisper of new hypno-implanted knowledge at the back of his mind. This was the light of the sun shining down through a shaft through the surface of the moon. He felt radiation fizz across his skin.

  There was only one other figure standing beside the pool, a huge figure in a black tunic. His head was bare, his features broad and strong. But it was his eyes that held Abaddon: dark, unblinking.

  ‘You are Lord Horus Lupercal,’ said Abaddon.

  Horus nodded, not shifting his stare.

  ‘And you are the son of Cthonia of whom I have heard much…’

  ‘There are thousands of us, thousands and thousands. I am just one.’

  Horus gave a snort of laughter, then shrugged.

  ‘You will be amongst the last to be reborn here. The forging of our warriors will happen out there now, amongst the stars we conquer. For decades we have stepped from these pools into our new lives. Soon that will not be the case. We will take the name and the memory. Luna Wolves… that is our brotherhood. Wolves made by the moon, and raised from night to illumination…’ The primarch reached out with an open hand to Abaddon. A mirror-coin glinted on the open palm.

  ‘My sons are not given to exaggeration, and Sejanus says that, of all this last generation, I should be here to welcome you into our brotherhood.’

  Abaddon looked at the hand of the being whose strength now flowed in his own veins.

  ‘My lord,’ he said, and felt the truth of it in the space left by all that he had burned and left behind.

  ‘Rise, Abaddon,’ said Horus.

  ‘Why does this feel like dying?’

  ‘Because it is. Because when you take my hand you will not be a son of Cthonia, or the heir of a dead king…’

  ‘I will be a Luna Wolf.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Horus. ‘You shall.’

  And then, from a place that he had forgotten, came another word, one that felt like an oath.

  ‘Father,’ said Abaddon.

  Horus nodded once.

  ‘Will you serve me, Abaddon?’ Horus asked.

  ‘I will,’ he had replied, and taken the coin from Horus’ proffered hand.

  Abaddon’s eyelids blinked open.

  The War Oath ran on into the fire. The ruin of the vanguard spun past, chewed pieces of metal tumbling, stray impacts exploding against shields. Behind it, the bulk of the armada followed it down.

  Martyrdom. Another word for suicide, for slaughter in the name of empty ideals.

  ‘Sub-spears, begin your assault runs,’ Abaddon said.

  Hundred-ship-strong formations cleaved from the armada’s bulk in blade-shaped configurations. They curved out and began to unleash their own payloads of torpedoes and bomber wings.

  The defence batteries of the Luna Ring and defence shoal fired in a coordinated volley. The first of the attackers’ munitions exploded in the void.

  The sub-spear fleets were moving to try to stab through the edge of the defending fleet. They fired their second volley. Boarding ­torpedoes flew free of tubes. Clouds of escort wings formed around them. The defenders assessed the manoeuvre and opened fire with macro-cannons. The volumes in the path of the boarding torpedo waves boiled with explosions.

  Alarms filled the inside of the torpedoes and bombers as they plunged into the blaze. Shrapnel ripped into armour panels. ­Torpedoes tore in two. Figures in sea-green armour tumbled into the fire and night.

  The bulk of the armada was still holding around the War Oath, a column formation of a thousand ships. The ships of the defenders spread before it in a convex disc. Fire cut into the armada’s flanks. Shields flared, and the flash of cannons shone around the waning sickle of the moon in the night skies of Terra.

  Battle-barge Fortress of Eternity, Mars high orbit

  The Guardians of Mars had watched the light of the attackers grow in the sky for days. First had come word from the Falcon fleets, winding their paths above and below the disc of the Solar System. The eyes of the Fourth Sphere fleet had turned to the abyss above them. Ocular and sensor arrays peered into the dark, sifting starlight and the dance of asteroids for the signs of the enemy. The first light of engines glimmered in the dark, fresh stars igniting beside those that had formed the patterns of heroes and monsters in ages long past.

  On the surface of the planet beneath, silence had fallen, and stillness settled across the red plains. For over half a decade, rocket launches and beams of energy had criss-crossed the thin atmosphere as the disciples of Kelbor-Hal’s New Mechanicum threw fire at the blockade fleet. Mars had blistered with explosions and swum with the dust of fallout as the factions on the surface tore at each other. Now, silence and stillness spread across its surface, as though the planet of war was holding an inhaled breath.

  In Mars’ orbit, the Fourth Sphere fleet reformed. It was the largest of the four defence fleets in the Solar System. Monitor craft from the Solar Auxilia and the Jovian Void Clans bulked its numbers, and with them were the great orbital assault and bombardment craft of the Imperial Fists. The gun-studded bulk of the Blade of Inwit lay beside the Blade Absolute, Fist of Judgement, Truth’s Warden and Tyrant Bane. Sub-fleets of gunboats, destroyers and lance cruisers orbited the largest vessels. For years they had fought and held the enemy to the surface of the Red Planet; now they broke that cordon.r />
  On the battle-barge Fortress of Eternity, Lord Castellan Camba Diaz waited. He had recalled all his forces from the surface of Mars. Raiding expeditions had been pulled back. Reconnaissance companies had shed their wargear and taken up the weapons of void war. Lexmechanics and magos-ordinators zeroed in guns. Minelayers swept the volumes of space that the enemy would have to move through. Faint and broken signals reached out to the Falcon fleets of the White Scars that were tracking the enemy as they closed on the planet.

  Camba Diaz listened to the scratched, crackling words alone in his arming chamber. Other than the sounds of the signals, he waited in silence. That was his way, the way of the planet that bore him, the people that had raised him and the Legion that had been his life. Inwit, by turns burning and dark, had been a remorseless teacher and cold parent to men of stone who bore the burdens and pains that others would not. He thought of all those who could have faced this moment. Pollux, thought dead at Phall, now half a galaxy away; Sigismund, sent to watch the edge of night with a sword in his hand; Halbract; Rann – all of them brothers, all of them warriors that another age would have made masters of war.

  Rogal Dorn had told him why the Fourth Sphere command was his, though.

  ‘Temperament,’ the Praetorian had said, and Camba Diaz had thought that he had understood his lord’s meaning. In the years of conflict around and on the Red Planet – sapping endless war, thousands of cuts drawing blood bit by bit – he had felt his stillness and patience become the foundation of his command. His temperament allowed him to bear those trials and rise to conflict each day afresh. He had thought that was what Dorn had meant. He thought he had understood his lord. He had not.

  Temperament… the stone-soul of Inwit, and the will to look up at the stars falling from the sky and not blink. This was a moment that tested temperament, the moment when the heavens were falling.

  The lights of the descending fleet grew. Auspex readings and reports from the Falcon fleets began to build a picture of what each growing mote of light was, of what was coming for them – seven thousand ships counted at an estimate…

  They were not Legion ships either. These were ships of the Mech­anicum, each one a relic and expression of their master’s power and knowledge. All of them were disciples of the new path of the Machine Cult. Somehow, this new creed had spread far beyond Mars, beyond the Solar System. It had infected forge worlds and tech-fanes and remade those that embraced it into something new and terrible. The things that they made were not mysteries or wonders; they were abominations. Machines that broke reality, and creatures that were neither flesh nor machine yet lived – all these things came from their craft. Time and simple sentiment had given them a name that followed them across the stars and clung to the shadow of their passing. The Dark Mechanicum they were named, and now they had returned to claim the seat of their empire.

  The first shot was theirs. Fired from beyond the range of Camba Diaz’s weapons. A beam of cold light a hundred metres wide bored down through the dark. The ships in its path tried to move, but the beam twitched and coiled through the void like a snake. It struck the cruiser First Truth. The energy flowed over its void shields and hull like water around a stone. On board, its crew had seconds to watch as their system readouts spiked. Then the flow of energy sank through the void shields and into the ship’s hull. Every system and machine cut out. Light vanished. Engines died.

  There was a moment of silence filled with the breaths of the crew. Then every machine on the First Truth screamed. Cogitators melted. Power governors exploded. Vox-processors howled static. The ship came apart, components scattering out as gravitic generators reversed. Layers of metal and stone peeled back until its reactors spun free, arcing with power, an exposed heart still beating in an opened chest. Then the reactors overloaded and a wave of burning light tore through the broken hull.

  The beam snapped across the void, seeking another victim even as ships burned thrusters to move out of its way.

  The Fourth Sphere fleet began to loose torpedoes and maximum-range shots at the oncoming Dark Mechanicum. The guns of all their ships spoke and the space between the two fleets became a blaze.

  Rockets and beams of energy rose from Mars towards the ships in close orbit. Its thin atmosphere flashed and shivered. Craft built in the forges of the fallen magi rose from caverns hidden under the Red Planet’s crust. They were things from the fever dreams of tortured machines. Wings of brass feathers spread from under cases of steel and black glass. Tails and necks uncoiled from fuselages, and multicoloured flame roared from engines.

  The ships of the Fourth Sphere fleet watching the planet opened fire with torrents of shells that exploded in low orbit. Waves of haywire energy and shrapnel ripped swarms of machines apart and sent them tumbling back down to the red dust below. Some remade themselves as they fell, flame-wreathed metal knitting together, wreckage gathering into new shapes that clawed back up into the sky.

  Long gone was the silence that had wrapped Camba Diaz as he waited for this battle. Every ship and every channel echoed with the shaking roar of war. He heard it all, a deluge of sound: shouts echoing over breaking vox-channels, orders given with last breaths, the metallic howl of beast-machines rising through the air. Shells and munitions were exploding amongst the ships now. Scrap code bored into communications signals and spilled over into sensor units.

  Camba Diaz listened, then cut the links and spoke to the warriors that had followed him through half a decade of war.

  ‘Break them,’ he said, his voice not loud, but weighted, a promise as much as a command.

  Chaos spread through the defenders’ battle line. A wave of ­torpedoes, launched from a quartet of monitor ships, detonated as they exited their tubes, ripping the ships apart. The macro-carrier Daedalus vented atmosphere from two-thirds of its decks as scrap code flooded its ­cogitator systems. Squadrons vanished in spheres of cold light.

  But Camba Diaz’s ships had faced and fought the forces of the false tech-priests many times. They heard the word of their commander and rose to meet their enemies without pause.

  Within sight of safety

  Occult resonance

  Old friends

  Freighter ship Antius, Jovian Caul

  Mersadie held her breath for a moment, eyes closed, letting sound recede. The reek of blood and ash was thick on her tongue.

  Blood on matted fur…

  Teeth…

  Vengeful Spirit…

  Maloghurst’s eyes looking at her…

  ‘Loken, these are civilians.’

  She released the breath and opened her eyes. Frightened faces turned towards her. Lights blinked on consoles. Hands trembled where they rested on levers and dials. In her niche, Chi-32-Beta was shivering in her cocoon of cables. The blood had clotted but the enginseer had curled her body into a tight ball. The rest of the crew stood, waiting. There were dock officers, a shuttle pilot, a bonded maintenance adept and landing guides. She had no idea if they knew enough to control a ship in the void for even a brief time. She had no idea whether or not they would fall apart when the next slice of the future fell. She had no idea if she would fall along with them. She thought of the hundreds of people still in the rest of the ship, of Noon and Mori huddled together in their stateroom.

  ‘Go,’ she said. At the helm, the big pilot called Gade nodded and tensed to pull down a brass lever. His skin was ice-pale.

  ‘Reactor output reaching peak,’ said Chi-32-Beta. Gade pulled the lever on the helm console. Lights flared across the bridge. The deck lurched as the reactor dumped its bloated heart into the void, and the ship burned forwards.

  Behind it, the hunter ship that had been watching the Antius fired without hesitation. Las-beams stitched the dark. The Antius began to corkscrew, as the hands on its helm fought to control it. Shouts and confusion filled the bridge. Machines were screaming. Some of those at consoles froze with terror while others screa
med, their eyes wide as fresh banks of red warnings lit. Gade was staring at the helm console, his mouth open like a fish drowning in air. Shouts roared louder than the machines. That chaos saved the ship. As the hunter’s guns fired again, the freighter’s wild course pulled it away from the shots that would have torn its hull apart.

  But the hunter was accelerating. It was a small ship, smaller even than the Antius. A tapered block of metal a little over two hundred metres long, half of it was engines; it was fast. The Antius ­tumbled on. Before it, the glittering sea of the Jovian Caul beckoned. The hunter fired again, and this time its shots struck the keel of the freighter’s hull. Metal and ceramite plating burned away. Gas and bilge fluid sprayed out. The clamour of panic on the Antius’ bridge warred with the shriek of sirens. In her tangle of cables, Chi-32-Beta flinched as bulkheads locked off the damaged portion of the ship. The hunter cut its fire and burned closer, eating up the distance.

  ‘We… The ship…’ gasped Chi-32-Beta. Sparks were flowing over the enginseer. The smell of burning wire and cooking flesh rose. ‘It can’t go on. Its heart and spirit are burning…’

  ‘We must go on or die,’ said Mersadie.

  The tech-priest spasmed, limbs thrashing. Arcs of charge whipped out from consoles. Gade juddered in place at the helm, hands locked to the controls.

  Out in the void, the hunter closed. It was close enough now that its targeters could hold a lock no matter what its prey did. It charged its guns. Power built in turbo laser reservoirs.

  The Antius rolled over. Micro-debris rattled off its hull. A piece of rock hit the hunter and gouged a crater in its armour. Jupiter’s outer cloud of orbital detritus began to ring off both ships like rain.

  The hunter held course. Targeting systems locked firing solutions. Gun turrets swung. It had been following this prey since the first hours after the destruction of the prison ship off Uranus. It had tracked it through the fires of battle and across the dark gulfs between the outer planets. For all those days it had been silent, almost every system cycled down so that it ran cold and dark, without heed to anything besides its prey. As it closed for the final kill, it reached out across the dark to the ships and stations of Jupiter. It knew that the first of the enemy was not far behind and that Jupiter’s defenders could not risk waiting to see if ships coming from the void were friend or foe. Clearance codes flew out to silence the guns that would be turning to greet them. It would make its kill and then burn on past Jupiter, its duty done.