The Solar War

by John French

  ‘Helm control is intermittent and deteriorating,’ he replied, his voice raised. ‘If we push her further out, we won’t be able to bring her back into the battle sphere of Luna.’

  ‘That does not matter now,’ she said, and saw the glimmer of understanding flash in his living eye. ‘Begin contingency for reactor self-destruction.’

  ‘Admiral, this is the Phalanx! She–’

  ‘Would you rather she became a weapon for the enemy?’

  ‘Lord Dorn–’

  ‘This is his will, shipmaster.’

  She looked around as a boom of shearing metal echoed through the chamber. Doors and sections of walls blistered with heat began to buckle. Darkness poured in, coiling like soot blown on the wind. Shapes formed in it as it billowed inwards. Wings and legs and arms unfolded. Gunfire streaked the air. The Imperial Fists scattered through the chamber were forming gun lines. Bolt shells ripped half-real creatures apart even as more came.

  Servitors rose into the air from their cradles and chairs, cables and pipes snapping free, blood and waste drooling to the floor. The creatures forming at the edge of the wave of shadow surged forwards. Su-Kassen had her pistol out. Shipmaster Sora was shouting orders. Swarms of winged daemons rose high above them. Su-Kassen put two rounds into a creature with a body and wings of grey skin and sinew. The deck was trembling under her feet. Something dropped onto the top of a console next to her, and leaped at her with open mouth and splayed claws. Her shot-blast punched it back in a spray of black foam.

  Down on the deck, the wave of darkness broke over the Imperial Fists. Claws tore at helms. Armour split.

  ‘The Phalanx is moving away from Terra,’ called Sora from beside her, but she only half heard. She was looking down the slope of the command dais.

  Rogal Dorn stood amongst his sons. He had a sword in his hand. The weapon was forged for a Space Marine, long-hafted with a blade as tall as a mortal human. The warrior that he had taken it from would have borne it to battle with both hands. Dorn wielded it with one, carving it through congealed flesh and bone without cease, flowing from cut to cut. He was advancing against the tide, cutting a path into it, his Huscarls following with blades and bolters. No step took him backwards.

  And in that moment she understood something of what the Khan had said of his brother. It was not just Dorn’s choices that were charged by duty, but his nature – his will a chain holding back a storm that could pour out and break the world.

  ‘Samus is the only name you will hear…’ the voice growled amongst the static and the sound of battle. The billowing darkness was rising, reaching up and out like a thunderhead. Su-Kassen could smell offal and blood. The substance of the walls and floor was distorting, stone burning, metal cracking with frost. A shape moved within the cloud, pulling its tendrils of vapour into an image stitched together from the oldest of fears. Fur and flayed muscles and eyes that glowed like burning homes on a moonless night. This was not just a prince of the Ruinous Pantheon now; it was an arch-herald of destruction.

  The head of a mortal crewman five paces from Su-Kassen exploded. She felt her mind shrink, felt herself fighting not to collapse as her thoughts fled back into a place where the world was simple and small.

  The daemon of the storm stepped forwards. Ash cascaded from its tread. The tide of daemons at its feet pulled back before it.

  ‘Samus… Samus is all… Samus will be your end… Samus is the end…’

  The Huscarls began to fire up at it. Bolts burst in the congealing shadow of its torso. Casually, with speed that somehow blurred like an image drawn in a flick-book, it lashed out with a clawed hand. Bodies flew back, split open, blood showering from them. It picked one of the warriors up, cradling him as the legionary fired into its face. It closed its hand. Red sludge and shards of armour fell from its fingers.

  Rogal Dorn looked up at the daemon. He paused for an instant and then ran to meet it, sword in hand and face set in rage.

  The daemon laughed in a voice stitched together from static and gunfire.

  Dorn leaped. Claws blurred towards him, but he was already past the blow, already slicing – once, twice, a dozen times. Black fluid and ash fell to the floor and the daemon seemed to recoil. Then it snapped forwards and its claws were tearing sparks from Dorn’s sword blade.

  Across the bridge, corpses lifted into the air. Red fire lit in their dead eyes. Sora had drawn his serpenta pistol and was firing down at the dead as they rose. Su-Kassen found herself reloading and firing without thought. The daemons were clawing up the command dais.

  Rogal Dorn was a figure of gold half-submerged in a sea of darkness. There was blood on his armour, but he was still striking, lightning flaring from where his sword met the daemon’s claws.

  ‘Can you see?’ asked the voice just next to her. Mersadie tried to turn her head but could not. ‘No, out there,’ said the voice that sounded like Nilus and Loken and Keeler and Horus, and like the wind sawing through the teeth of dry skulls. ‘Do you see?’

  She looked. It was all she could do. She was still there, but separated from everything around her, a shadow out of sync with the reality it watched. It was like staring out through a window at a fog-filled street. And her senses stretched beyond. There was the great slice across the night, stretching wide, breathing out swarms of ships and spills of energy. There was the Phalanx, engines burning to push it wide of Luna and Terra even as it tumbled. Beside it, clouds of winged and clawed things scrabbled through the wreckage of its escorts. Across the dark, the barbed shapes of ships that had just come through the rift came closer, racing each other to be the first to cut the last threads of hope from the flagship of the VII Legion.

  And down and down through the layers of stone and metal that were the ship, she saw the black tide boiling through cracks and walls. It was a flood, a mass of daemonic energy that would swallow the Phalanx and all in it. Then it would seep into its bones and make the mighty fortress its own. And she was the gateway.

  ‘I did not do this,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said the voice behind her, ‘perhaps not, but you have been very helpful…’

  She saw herself then. She was walking down one of the corridors of the ship. She was still there, still whole, but darkness unfolded from her shadow. The walls were blackening as she passed, tapestries and banners burning, stone cracking as ash danced in the air. Daemons were all around her, floating, spinning and gliding, a court following its queen. She looked old, her skin cracked parchment over a skull, her right eye boiled away, her left eye a pit of red fire. A ragged shadow walked at her side, its hands hanging low, its smile an arc of bloodied teeth.

  ‘You have made this last moment possible,’ said the voice. ‘As the storm reaches into reality, you are a lightning rod and we are the thundercloud. All you needed to do was be here and we could find a path. You are our tether, our door, our messenger. Your thoughts are our way in…’

  ‘They will turn you back.’

  ‘Do you mean Rogal Dorn?’ chuckled the voice, and she felt warm, rank breath on the back of her neck. ‘This is not a matter of arms and might, or did you think that a hero shouting on the seashore can truly turn the ocean back?’ She felt the laugh shiver through her. ‘Watch…’ said the voice.

  Massak formed his mind into fire. The thought flooded him. He held it still for a second, tasted smoke in his mouth, felt the flames roar through his sight, consuming it, blinding him. The sound of Archamus and his Huscarls firing, of the warp creatures howling, all of it faded. The fire was everything. He held its image, and felt its power grow millisecond by millisecond.

  ‘Massak, we can’t get through!’ The voice was Archamus’, close but distant, dimmed by the voice of the fire.

  He let go.

  A white-hot inferno rushed from his outstretched hand. His view through his helm dimmed. Warp creatures in the fire’s path boiled to slime. He strode forwards,
panning the flames across the space before him. Daemon flesh unravelled to smoke and embers. Archamus and his Huscarls followed, with his two brother Librarians. Lightning arced from their swords as they cut daemons from the air.

  Massak felt his will fight to control the power flowing through him. He could see the inner blast door to the bridge just ten strides away. It was no more than a gaping hole of torn and fused metal.

  As he ran forwards, bubbles of colour formed and burst at the edge of his sight. The ether was burrowing through his mind. Cold sweat poured from his skin inside his armour.

  ‘It is… everywhere,’ called one of his brothers. Massak could feel the same truth. The warp was pouring through the ship, twisting through its substance, grasping it like a claw.

  They were at the broken door. Archamus was at Massak’s side, firing and reloading without cease. Massak knew what waited for them, seeing with his mind before he saw it with his eyes. A wave of heat broke over him. Images drowned in his thoughts: a wolf; a range of mountains, their canyons piled with skulls; the hiss of water falling into a shrine-pool, down, down – skulls looking up, grinning with promise…

  ‘Brother!’ shouted a voice close by.

  He snapped back to full awareness. In front of and above him, a figure of burnt flesh and blood-smoke clashed with a golden giant. Red lightning spat from where claw and blade met.

  ‘Father…’ breathed Massak. In his mortal sight, Dorn and the daemon were a blur, a giant of shadow and ghostly flesh and a demigod of war, gleaming against the darkness. Cold control poured from Dorn, cracking the flow of the warp, splintering the folding dark as it spiralled around him.

  ‘Brothers,’ he said, and the word echoed in the warp. +Brothers.+ Cold light was kindling on the edge of his force axe. He heard and felt the other Librarians answer, and fold their thoughts and minds to his.

  Pain enfolded him. He saw the pasts of his brothers as though they were his own; saw the scraps of human lives left behind when they became warriors in a crusade among the stars; felt the pain of remaking over and over again, the trials of mind, terrors faced and overcome, purpose found and then taken away, long years in the dark, dreaming, waiting…

  He was moving forwards, his brothers falling into step around him, force blades rising to mirror his own axe. Behind them, Archamus and the Huscarls were firing back into the throat of the door they had come from.

  Massak felt the creature fighting Dorn become aware of them, felt its gaze turn as the Librarians advanced. Massak formed a thought and gripped it with all his will. The thought lit in the minds of his brothers. They began to glow, light and flame radiating off them in reality and the warp.

  It had been a long time since they had united in this way, and even before the Edict of Nikaea they had been few amongst their Legion. But it had bound them, and now they were as they always had been, as they were always meant to be: a single weapon of many parts, unyielding alone, unbreakable as one.

  A crowd of lesser daemons rushed towards them. Massak shifted his will, and the fire of his soul and the ice and lightning of his brothers’ minds blazed forth. Daemon flesh flashed to smoke; howls and cries spun into the air. He saw the great daemon swell, felt it suck strength into its being from the realm beyond. It lashed forwards. Massak saw the movement as a smear of smoke, and felt the promise of death that it carried. Dorn’s sword dragged lightning as it rose to meet the blow.

  Massak’s will and thought leaped out. He felt his brothers’ pain as he yanked their minds with him. The air shrieked.

  Feathers of burning gold unfolded out of nothing. Rubies of fire fell from etheric claws as the shape of their thoughts flew at the beast. It whipped around to meet it, and shadow claw met beak and talons. Blinding light flared. Daemons burst into showers of ash. Massak fell to his knees, his mind ringing. He could feel wounds opening across his body. The beast was still there, embers falling from its shredded limbs. Then Dorn struck.

  In his dimming sight, the primarch’s sword was a line drawn through the storm of the warp.

  Liquid fire and black blood sprayed out. The beast howled. Dorn struck again, and the daemon’s cry flung Massak down amongst his brothers. His sight was draining from him. He saw Dorn’s sword rise again, saw the great beast coming apart even before it fell. Muscle became bloody slime, bone crumbled, claws dissolved like salt in rain.

  ‘Samus…’ hissed a voice carried on the wind that unravelled the last of its body. ‘Samus is… coming…’

  And then it was not there. And the bridge was a charnel pit of dripping blood and settling ash. Dorn alone stood on the deck. Above them, other figures were pulling themselves to their feet on the command dais. Archamus and two remaining Huscarls were hurry­ing to Dorn’s side as the primarch strode to where Massak was struggling to rise.

  ‘My son,’ began Dorn, but Massak was shaking his head. His mind was a storm of pain and echoes of thoughts that were not his own.

  ‘Lord…’ he began. ‘There is something wrong… The creature…’

  A cry rose from high on the command dais as failed systems sparked back to life.

  ‘Lord Dorn, enemy ships are closing!’

  Dorn was half turning.

  ‘No…’ said Massak, forcing the words from his lips, panting, blood running over tongue and teeth. ‘It is not gone… That was just…’

  ‘Samus…’

  The corpse of one of the Huscarls raised its head from the deck behind Dorn. Its helm was torn. Its eyes were pits of red fire. And the dead rose into the air once more, fire bursting from within, as laughter echoed around them.

  ‘Samus will be your end…’

  Loken paced through the dark. The lights had failed and he had discarded his ruined helm. The world was grey now, its colours drained into shadows. He had heard the sound of gunfire in the distance several times, and had killed things that had taken the flesh of the dying.

  ‘In such visage, they turned upon their kin and gnawed then upon their bloody bones.’ The old words of The Chronicles of Ursh rose from a long-forgotten crack in his memory.

  He had failed, just as he had failed before. He had not seen. He had failed his new oaths just as he had failed the old. He had failed her.

  Cerberus… The old name, the old pull of instincts, which had followed him from madness, drew him on through the dark. He was close. It was close. He could feel it. It was right; Samus was right. It had always been there, the man beside him. The shadow that never left him. But now he would end it. The end and the death for shadow and man alike…

  On he went, on through the dark to an end he could not see.

  Strike Frigate Persephone, Inner System Gulf

  Traitor ships poured from the warp rift towards the Phalanx. Thrusters fired across its vast hull, shaking the vessel as it fell out into the void beyond Terra’s gravity. Her sisters and escorts were gone, burned from being, or left behind. Daemons gnawed her skin, peeling away bites, threading her hide like parasites in diseased meat.

  Torpedoes began to strike her. First one, then a dozen. Then more, and more. Titan-sized warheads struck home, and ripped stone and metal away. Swarms of daemons spun and laughed as they tumbled into the void with the debris. The great ship trembled, its shields misfiring. The traitor ships came on, accelerating towards their prey with hunger. There were ships of all of Horus’ greatest vassal Legions amongst them: the Deathchain of the World Eaters, Sovereign Blade of the Emperor’s Children, and Olympian of the Iron Warriors, and dozens more.

  Sigismund watched them close on the stricken Phalanx.

  ‘They have not seen us,’ growled Rann.

  ‘Attack speed,’ said Sigismund. ‘All guns and all blades ready. Forwards.’

  Rogal Dorn duels the daemon of the storm.

  Now you see

  When swords will not cut

  A story to tell

  The Phala
nx, Inner System Gulf

  ‘Now you see,’ said the voice behind Mersadie. ‘There is no way out.’

  And she did see. She saw the frozen moment as Rogal Dorn swung his blade to meet the claws of the daemon for a second time. She saw the traitors closing on the Phalanx and the few wounded ships of Sigismund’s fleet plunge into them firing, lashing out with desperate ferocity. She saw daemons stalking the Phalanx’s deep holds and machine spaces as Imperial Fists cut them down with bolter and blade.

  And she saw that none of it mattered. This was the end. Dorn could win a battle and Samus would still be there, all around them, a shadow that could not be shed. The warp was pouring into it, sustaining it and remaking it endlessly. The daemons would keep coming no matter how many fell, and the Imperial Fists would die one by one in a fight with an enemy that could not be defeated.

  ‘That is the truth…’ said the voice behind her. ‘Humanity can never be anything but slaves to us. We are made by you, and while you live we walk beside you. Mortals cannot win a war with what is eternal. What you have helped bring into being here, Mersadie Oliton, is just an example of that truth.’

  ‘What…’ she began, hearing her voice echo flat in this realm of thoughts. ‘What do you want of me? Why do you show me… this?’

  A dry chuckle.

  ‘You are our gate, but a gate is just an idea – your mind our way into being. Your memories, remembrancer, are our shape and power. Is it not fair for you to see what you bring into being?’

  She saw again the cascade of vision, and the mockery of Ignace Karkasy’s face in the grin of a creature as it plunged a rusted sword into a crewman’s neck; saw shreds of Keeler’s burning picts spin in the fire-wind as a fuel line ignited on a machine deck.

  ‘All mine…’ she said.

  ‘Yes, all yours…’ said the voice. ‘And now… another relic of the past comes to show you his true face.’

  The visions vanished, and Mersadie saw where she truly was.