The Solar War

by John French

  ‘Where is she?’

  The bloody woman on the floor laughed.

  ‘Really? At this point, you are still worried about your friend?’

  Mersadie began to take a step forwards, anger rising. She froze, locking in place.

  ‘My, my, there is still some strength in you,’ said the image of Keeler, standing, the shard of glass still in her hand, held loose, dripping blood. ‘Euphrati Keeler, the real Euphrati Keeler still lives, still follows her lies about the false God-Emperor, but it was never her speaking to you.’ Mersadie felt a hollowness open in her. ‘Oh, you are wondering about before – about the dream and message about Loken… about “saying goodbye”. Did you like that touch?’

  Mersadie tried to force her jaw to open. The mouth in Keeler’s face twitched and she shrugged. Mersadie gasped.

  ‘When…’

  ‘On the Vengeful Spirit, of course, in one of those slivers of time that you don’t even realise you don’t remember. That is the strange thing about being so sure of your memory – it makes hiding things easy. You never doubted because you believed in yourself.’

  ‘Maloghurst…’

  ‘A little bit of sorcery used for a simple task. They really did just want to know where Garviel Loken stood – as though it weren’t obvious.’ The image of Keeler snorted. ‘They wanted an eye on him, watching from where he would not expect.’ The thing raised the shard of glass and pointed it at Mersadie’s left eye. ‘So they put that eye in you. It didn’t turn out to be much use in the end. But it was there…’

  ‘But now… Maloghurst could not have known that I would be here.’

  The thing was shivering slightly. Its grin was wide, too wide, and leaking red at the corners. The wind was moaning as it rose outside of the windows.

  ‘Of course not, but the connection was there, the door made. This path you have walked, this end that you serve is a later improvisation by Horus, a use of available assets.’

  ‘The message… the design in the warp… None of it was real.’

  ‘No, all of it was real,’ said the thing. It was looking at its arm like a child at a toy that it did not understand. It placed the tip of the glass against the skin. Black ran from the point. ‘The best lies are truth. There is a great design in the warp that is undoing the barrier between worlds and delivering the Warmaster to the heart of the Solar System. You are a part of it – a small part, but a part. Dorn could see the edges of it and he is disposed to trust messengers. Especially messengers bearing the truth, especially messengers he has trusted before.’ It looked up at her. Its eyes were red, blood-red, and smoking. ‘Especially you.’

  The wind exploded through the windows around them. Shards of glass spun through the air, struck the thing that looked like Keeler, ripped through flesh and bone. And it was stepping forwards, skin and blood falling off it in the razor gale. The image of Nilus was underneath, tall and spindle-limbed.

  And Mersadie saw herself again on the prison ship, alone at the controls of the shuttle, arriving on the Antius alone; talking to herself in her cabin; following the blood trail to find the enginseer hiding on the ship’s bridge.

  She had been alone all the time, part of her mind locked from noticing that Nilus was never mentioned by anyone else, and never there when she wasn’t by herself.

  ‘It was all me…’ she said, feeling the shock roll through her as the creature got closer. Nilus was gone now too. It was a juddering shadow now.

  ‘We are here for you…’ said a voice, a voice that sounded like it was stitched together from a chorus of howls. She saw the red light blinking through the corridor of the Antius, the troopers who had come to kill her becoming red splatter and shreds as the shadow tore them apart.

  ‘It was not trying to kill me,’ she said. ‘It was–’

  ‘No, we are the end and the death, but not yours… Not yet…’

  The flashes of red memory vanished.

  Somewhere far off someone was shouting. She could hear the rattle of gunfire, and the boom of explosions.

  It was dark, the night air frosted. A red, sickle moon curved just beyond the reach of bare branches. A pool of black water lay before her. Ice ran around its edge. A figure that looked like a wolf crossed with a skinned man rose from the water. Freezing water scattered from matted fur as it grew.

  ‘We are here,’ it said.

  Seventh Fane of the Selenar, Luna

  The gunfire ripped through the servitor. Abaddon rammed through the wreckage of its torso. Pieces of armour and flesh splattered across the ground. Another half-machine clanked forwards on tracks. It fired. A stream of rounds struck Abaddon. His helm lit with damage. Chunks of armour tore from his chest. He ran into the gunfire. Behind him, his Justaerin were firing down into the side corridors.

  They were deep under the surface of Luna, in the warren of smooth black stone divided by circular doors and twisted into spirals like the inside of a seashell. The air was still and cold. Mica and crystal flecks gleamed in the walls as gunfire shattered the dark. Even echo­ing with the sounds of battle the warren seemed quiet, as if the weight of its silence dragged the sound from the air. Abaddon felt it pull memories into the moments between the muzzle flashes, old memories held deep but not forgotten: sharp silver and flesh, water and blood, darkness and blinding pain. This was the domain of the Selenar, the seat of the Luna gene-cults, the place of his rebirth.

  Before him lay a circular door set in the curve of the passage wall. Low relief images moved across its surface in silver, figures with crescent headdresses and burning torches. Spiralling haloes of symbols wreathed them: tau-aleph, gamma-kaf. Beyond lay one of the last fanes of the gene-cult, a sanctuary against time and decline. They had come this far, hacking and killing without pause. Most of the resistance came from servitors following blunt battle programs. But those half-machines still had weapons that could kill a legionary.

  A figure of piston limbs and armour plates unfolded from a niche in the wall and launched itself at Abaddon. The human flesh that guided it was lost beneath a frame of tarnished silver and black carbon. Stretched out it would have stood taller than Abaddon, but its power had been bunched and folded into the shape of a monstrous feline, six-limbed and blade-clawed. Its head was a fanged mask, with a mane of chromed hair. It was a sacred sentinel, one of the guardian beasts of the Selenar’s inner sanctums. Lightning wreathed its jaws as it leapt.

  Abaddon jerked backwards. The guardian beast landed in the space where he had been. He raised his power fist. The beast sprang at him, fore and mid-limbs wide, jaws open. It was quick – very, very quick. But he had killed quicker prey. He punched his fist into its mouth. The fist’s power field activated as it made contact. Its head exploded. Shards of silver and brain matter struck the tunnel walls. Its movement did not stop. Nerve clusters and brain segments drove it on. Damage runes lit in Abaddon’s helm as the beast’s limbs fastened on his arm and shoulder. He snarled and lifted the creature from the ground. It was twisting, its hind limbs reversing to arc up over its back like scorpion stings. Abaddon pivoted, battering it into the tunnel wall. Armour splintered. He could see the lightning wreathing the thing’s claw blades.

  Heavy rounds tore through the thing’s body. Pulped meat and twisted metal showered in every direction. It lashed out. Abaddon brought up his bolter and fired a stream of rounds into it. Chrome and carbon splinters rang against his faceplate. He hurled the remains against the wall and dumped another burst of bolter fire into it before what was left of it could move.

  ‘Hard kills,’ growled Urskar, closing with Abaddon, reaper cannon still smoking from the fire he had poured into the beast. ‘But you didn’t need all that much help.’

  Abaddon looked at the chosen warrior’s red helm. The silver-filled scars glinted across its snout, like teeth behind a grin. Abaddon laughed, the sound blending with the sound of gunfire. For a second he felt the weight
of the moment lift; he had come back to the place that had made him, that had made the Legion that was everything; unlike that moment of birth he was not alone.

  ‘Will you ever be anything but a jackal, brother?’ he said over a direct vox.

  ‘I doubt it,’ growled Urskar. Then his head twitched as he looked beyond Abaddon. ‘I smell the dung of gods and priests.’ Abaddon turned to see Layak advancing down the passage. Shapes made of shadow and cold light spiralled around him. The blade slaves walked behind their master, swords drawn, bodies bloated with power as the daemons within the blades rode their flesh.

  ‘A last temple to old lies,’ said Layak, looking up at the doors.

  Abaddon felt his lip curl but did not answer.

  ‘Breach it,’ he said. Reavers in black power armour ran forwards to clamp clusters of melta charges in place. Abaddon’s chosen formed around him, guns braced, weapons lit and sweating lightning.

  ‘Detonating!’ came the call, and the silver door vanished. A blast wave of super-heated, molten metal broke over Abaddon and his warriors. They did not flinch – they went forwards. Guardian servitors bounded through the glowing cloud. Bolt- and autocannon rounds tore through silvered armour. Abaddon saw the head of Gedephron’s power mace crash through the chest of a beast shaped like a bear of black iron. He saw another one fasten its gaze on him and begin to pounce. He fired, pounding its body to shards as it reached for him.

  He was out of the other side of the debris cloud. Actinic light filled the chamber beyond. It was spherical, its walls curving up and up to a circular opening set at its apex. Staircases and platforms spiralled up the walls. Pods frosted with crystal hung from spun carbon cable in the central void. Abaddon could see clusters of vials and silver coolant tubes nested inside the pods. At the far end of the chamber was a lone figure, hovering just above the ground. Grey gauze billowed around her on the currents of false gravity. A crest of silver tubes rose from her back to halo her head. A silver mask moulded into an expression of false serenity hid her face. She twisted in the air as the Justaerin burst from the debris cloud. Abaddon could see a spiralled arrangement of crystal pipes rising from the floor in front of her. Her hands were moving between vials of liquid, combining fluids in a spinning device. For an instant the blank eyes of the woman’s mask met Abaddon’s gaze.

  Buzzing curtains of energy unfurled across the room as Abaddon and his brothers advanced. Figures in segmented black armour with sprung legs bounded forwards. Energy beams snapped out. Bolt-rounds exploded on walls of glowing force. Abaddon was charging forwards, his strides cracking the black stone floor.

  The curtains of energy were changing, flicking out and then ­snapping back into place in different positions. He saw Ekaron from the second Reavers squad split by a sheet of glowing light as it appeared. The halves of his body fell to the floor, burning.

  Black lightning reached from behind him and exploded a guardian servitor as it sprang at Abaddon. He twisted to see Layak keeping pace with him, one of his blade slaves at his side.

  ‘You won’t reach her in time,’ called Layak. ‘This is a void maze. If they have power to keep it active it will protect her until it is too late.’

  ‘There is a way through,’ snarled Abaddon. Part of his mind had already read the shifting pattern of the energy fields as they activated – read them and seen that there was a flaw.

  ‘Too slow,’ was all Layak said. Abaddon felt something shift in the air. The taste of burnt sugar formed on his tongue. A high note, like the sound of breaking glass, drawn out to the point of pain. The world stuttered. Layak was moving past Abaddon, his blade slave charging with raised sword. Abaddon saw a fresh curtain of energy unfold into being across their path in the stopped-clock moment. Shadows were spilling from Layak. The blade slave struck the energy field. Light and dark flashed out. Every scrap of shadow became a pool of blinding light, every light a hole into night. The sword screamed as its edge cut. A hole – no, a wound – opened in the energy field, haloed by cold light and sparks. Layak raised his staff as the sword cut, and spoke a word.

  Silence screamed in Abaddon’s ears. He tasted jagged iron on his tongue and in his throat. The cut in the energy curtain ripped wider, and beyond it the layers of fields parted. Layak had gone still now. His hand was smoking where it gripped his staff. Blood was running from the bottom edge of his mask.

  Abaddon was moving forwards through the opening, gun rising, eyes fixed on the woman at the centre of the room. The devices and vials in her hand were spinning, the fluids inside fusing into dark red. He did not understand the ways of the Selenar, but he did not need to understand their mysteries to know what she was doing. She was Heliosa-78, sole surviving matriarch of the Selenar, and in her hands she was mixing death with which to poison the last remains of all her kind held sacred.

  In these halls the gene-seed of the Legions had been multiplied and implanted, and here the means to do that again remained. It was a prize great enough that Horus had sent his most favoured son to secure it – a victory beyond breaking the defences of Luna. Luna would become a birthplace for warriors again, but now their war would not be in distant stars but on the surface of the world that hung in the sky above. But not if he failed.

  He saw her half turn to look at him as the curtains of energy split.

  Layak was beside him, holding out his staff.

  The guardian beast rose from a hole in the floor. Its shape was that of a lion crossed with a scorpion skinned in graphite and oxidised bronze. It bounded into Layak. The priest spun, but the beast was faster. It struck Layak and cannoned him back off his feet. Armour tore, blood scattered across black stone.

  Samus

  Librarius

  Will of stone and fire

  The Phalanx, Inner System Gulf

  Shadows flowed through the Phalanx. The darkness gathered at the edge of flame-light billowed out and up, spreading across walls, swallowing shape, dissolving brightness. The shadows roared as they spread and their voice was the sound of wind blowing through the teeth of skulls.

  ‘The end and the death…’

  ‘We are here…’

  ‘We are beside you…’

  ‘Death is beside you…’

  ‘The end is here…’

  It flowed on, boiling with coalescing shapes. It passed through bulkheads and through the cracks around closed doors. Strange forms clawed across ceilings, and blizzards of shadows boiled down corridors. It was not one creature but many, a tide of murderous power poured into cold reality like ink into clear water.

  Gunfire met the tide. There were over three thousand Imperial Fists on the ship. Ten thousand Jovian and Solar Auxilia elite, and every oath-bound crew member was a warrior.

  In the decks beneath the Phalanx’s strategium fortress, twenty Huscarls in Indominatus Terminator plate met the daemon tide. Assault cannons spun up. Target displays flashed red with threat markers as the shadows became vast hounds and hunched figures dragging swords.

  The Huscarls opened fire. Bolt-rounds and volkite beams punched into the wall of darkness. Brass cases rang on the granite floor. Bodies formed as shadow broke into muscle and sinew. One of the Huscarls brought his cannon around as a hound made of smoke and blood leapt for him, jaws wide. The deluge of shells shredded the creature. A second later, a figure of spindle limbs and bloody skin rammed a sword clean through the Huscarl’s flesh and armour.

  In the primary signal-processing chamber, the darkness came as silence. Millions of cables and noospheric links all converged at this point. Men and woman sat wired into consoles, listening, filtering and diverting the flow of messages from across different regions of the Phalanx. Their mouths moved constantly, hissing echoes of the words and codes passing through them. Auto-scribes clattered. Data conduits beeped. It was never quiet and more than a day in the chamber would leave an unprotected human deaf.

  One of the signal govern
or servitors began to twitch. The words coming from her mouth speaker stopped. She shook her head as though trying to clear it.

  ‘Samus…?’ she said, unsure, as though part of her lobotomised brain had heard the word once before but could not remember where.

  ‘Samus..?’ she said again. The servitors to either side of her twitched and went still. The lights on their consoles flashed amber. ‘Samus… Samus… Samus…’ More insistent now. One of the supervising tech-priests was moving towards her. Alarms were sounding, lights flashing.

  ‘Samus.’

  A ten-metre bank of vox-consoles went silent. The servitors at their stations froze and then exploded.

  ‘Samus! Samus! Samus!’

  The tech-priest dropped to the floor. Smoke poured from his ears as his remaining flesh cooked. Silence spread. The babble of voices and the hum of signals vanished. In her cradle the lone servitor remained, twitching in place, shouting the only thing her slowly melting brain could hear.

  ‘Samus! Samus is here! Samus is the man beside you!’

  Darkness bubbled up out of the hull along the Phalanx’s spine. Swarms of creatures pulled their wings from the dark and launched into the vacuum. Close-defence turrets opened up. Las-bolts blasted ghost flesh to slime. One of the Phalanx’s escorts became a scream of detonating void shields and splintering armour.

  Su-Kassen was shouting as the darkness poured into the chamber she and Dorn had been waiting in. Coiling strands of night flowed through the open doors. Beyond, she had a glimpse of a dark shape, like the shadow of a vast wolf cast against a wall by an inferno. It was growing, stretching. The Huscarls around her and Dorn were firing. She could smell ozone and blood, spun sugar and sulphur. The shadow of the wolf beyond the door turned its head as she looked at it. Red eyes met hers. She raised her shot-pistol and pulled the trigger. A cloud of metal fragments tore into the space between her and the shadows and became flares of light.