by David Guymer
‘And?’ The question was so ludicrous that Lydriik had to laugh. ‘You bastardised us.’ He waved his hand angrily over the open book. ‘There is more of Mars here than Ferrus Manus.’
‘Is this true?’ Verrox growled.
‘What if it is?’ said Palpus. ‘Ferrus proved to be flawed. The stories we wrote for you were simply reflections of that newer truth.’ He sighed, gazing at the tome. ‘Destroying the original would have been deeply unorthodox, however. I could not quite bring myself to do it.’
‘Do not think yourself so important in this, Palpus,’ said Lydriik. ‘Your counterfeit is thousands of years old.’
‘Call it a figure of speech.’
There was a snarl as Verrox plodded forwards, the Helfather his enormous shadow. ‘Why?’
‘You ask why? You are no simpleton, Iron Father. To make you better. Mars wants the same thing you want, it always has.’ The logi-legatus took a neat step back, placing Sara Valorrn between himself and the furious Iron Father. ‘You know, of course, that I cannot let you leave.’
The assassins around the hall stepped out of concealment, hellguns whining as they came up to their chests.
Verrox bared his grinding teeth. ‘You want to do this, Palpus? I have been waiting five hundred years for an excuse.’
The Voice of Mars nodded as though they were old friends, skirting around the need to say goodbye. ‘We have all been alive too long.’
‘You.’ Verrox motioned with his gauntlet to signal the Helfather behind him. ‘Kill him.’
The Helfather’s chainfist buzzed to life. The stacked barrels of his assault cannon rattled as they loaded, the combi-flamer hissing as the pilot light ignited.
And touched the pallid skin at the top of Verrox’s neck.
Palpus tutted. ‘You Iron Hands are all the same, though some of you always manage to surpass your genetic predilection for self-importance. Kristos for instance. You are a lot like him, you know. You never wanted to see where the real power lay.’ He spread his palms in a gesture of apology. ‘Well now you see. Cherish your enlightenment.’ He nodded to the Helfather. ‘Kill him.’
>>> HISTORICAL >> THE BATTLE FOR FABRIS CALLIVANT
Information pertaining to the fate of Fabris Callivant is sketchy and it is entirely plausible that by the time this exload arrives you will have a more complete understanding than I.
Fabricator-Locum Exar Sevastian was reported to have made it off-world in a Taghmata gunship although his ultimate fate remains unknown. The orbital aegis was beginning to disintegrate at this time, with the Alloyed and the Shield of the God-Emperor both being confirmed destroyed shortly before the report was logged.
The fate of Iron Captain Draevark is unknown.
The fate of Princeps Fabris is unknown, his last reported coordinates placing him in Fort Callivant’s lower quadrants, firmly in the vicinity of the orks’ ground assault.
The fate of Mirkal Alfaran is unknown.
For all our sakes, pray that you never cross paths with a Hospitaller after Fabris Callivant.
The Knight world is far from Medusa and any world of import. Let the affairs that were conducted there be recorded as belonging wholly to Kristos’ folly…
Chapter Nineteen
‘We all have our weaknesses.’
– Autarch Yeldrian
I
Rauth wasn’t sure what offended him most. There’s too much going on at once. He was still coming to terms with the sensation of traversing the warp without technically being ‘at warp.’ There was no nagging itch under the skin, no whispers in his ear, no moments of heart-stopping dread, fuelled by the certainty he was being followed, only to turn, pistol drawn and find the passage behind him empty.
‘My people seldom risk voyaging through the warp as do the mon-keigh,’ Yeldrian had explained.
‘Human’ suits him well enough when he’s talking about me, personally.
‘Mon-keigh’ is for everyone else.
I should be flattered.
‘You are the last person I would expect to suffer a fear of the warp,’ Rauth had replied, indicating the pack on the eldar’s back.
Yeldrian had smiled at that, the fleeting condescension that came so naturally to his race. ‘Small distances, a heartbeat of cosmic time. She Who Thirsts dwells in the warp, but She is not the warp. I would have to be reckless or unlucky.’ His mood turned in an instant, a blackness rolling in. ‘But it happens.’
The autarch would say no more, and Rauth was content for the eldar’s daemons to remain the eldar’s business.
The experience of hurtling through the endless branches of the eldar webway in a merchant schooner devoid of Geller field or warp drive might have been one he could contend with, had it been taken in isolation.
Were the hold itself not geared to the sole purpose of driving me mad.
It was a kind of motion sickness, all the more intolerable for being unrelated to any physical evidence of actual motion. The looming stacks of boxcrates did not so much as creak. Indeed, given the incalculable speeds at which the Lady Grey must have been moving, the sense of being becalmed in the warp was disconcerting in itself. Rather, the view from the corner of his eyes never quite tallied with what he saw directly ahead of him. He had already lost track of the number of times he had startled at the approach of some half-glimpsed nightmare, only to see the phantom vanish the moment his sidearm was turned on it.
Screams and bolter fire faded into the labyrinth of the hold, echoing through the creases and folds of his brain.
Again, Yeldrian had sought to explain.
‘Holofields and hallucinogen barriers. I have protected you,’ he had added, pre-empting the inevitable question. ‘But those Iron Hands who made it aboard before we lost Kristos in the webway will be beset by every nightmare of their psyche.’ An unpleasant thought. No one has nightmares like mine. ‘Killing them will be a mercy.’
Even that disturbs me. A little.
Not killing them, of course. That was mana for his soul, the least he could give back after the years he had endured.
It’s the prize that troubles me.
After all he had seen and heard, he had been expecting something hideous: garish alien plasteks studded with discoloured gemstones and dripping with fell energies, peering into his soul, probing for weakness. Being surrounded instead by standard template Departmento Munitorum boxcrates was both anticlimactic and more than a little unnerving.
Rauth wasn’t sure what offended him most.
Perhaps it’s not even just one thing. I have ample cause for offence.
‘Where is my brother?’ he asked, every so often.
‘Almost there,’ was all the reply the eldar would give.
After ten to fifteen minutes of brisk walking, they found him.
Four staggeringly high walls of bronzed boxcrates stamped with warding runes and aquilae defined a chamber of sorts at the middle of the hold. A set of large crystals dappled the sides, like luminescent alga at the bottom of a well. A matrix of semi-organic cabling, an amalgam of alien plastek and artificial bone, ribboned the decking, and hooked the crystals into an organic, pulsing series. Rauth’s eyes adjusted quickly to the changing light levels. The boxcrates were filmed by a web-like material, phantasmal creatures crawling over them like spiders. He shivered. The worst thing is, I don’t even know if they’re real or not.
‘Is this more like what you were expecting?’
Rauth nodded.
‘This was the vessel of a wealthy merchant. Its hold is more secure than its bridge or its engines.’ The eldar pointed to the glowing crystals. ‘These stones generate the holo-defences throughout the ship.’
Wordlessly Rauth looked around, assessing the place for defensibility and vulnerabilities.
Then he turned towards his brother.
Khrysaar was la
id out on a levitating slab of bone-plastek, stripped to his loincloth, his scarred, muscular form orbited by blinking, chirping gemstones about the size of a coin. They appeared to be communicating with an array of smooth-bodied, elegantly inhuman gem diodes set up to one side. There were no drip lines or knives that Rauth could see. Just a softly chiming geode sitting on the unconscious Scout’s forehead. Rauth started towards the grav-pallet, odd feelings of protectiveness and affection bubbling up inside. Yeldrian reined him back with a light touch to the shoulder.
Rauth almost turned and struck him.
He stared at his clenched fist as if someone had pressed a short-fuse grenade into it. What am I thinking? If he knew one thing for a fact, it was that a fight between him and the autarch would have only one outcome.
With an outstanding effort of will, he lowered his fists.
‘He is in no danger,’ said Yeldrian, calmly, as if he could smother Rauth’s temper with his words as he would a flame with a blanket. ‘You have both been guests here many times.’
Guests. It sounds so agreeable. ‘How many times?’
‘There will be gaps in your memory. This is why.’ The eldar indicated the grav-pallet. ‘You were correct. Before. I did not recruit you and your brother for your abilities. Laana was perfectly capable of locating the technology alone.’ He smiled thinly, as if missing the human assassin. ‘I believe she resented your assistance, but she trusted me. You and your brother had been touched by the artefact on Thennos. If I had let you return then the corruption might already have decimated your planet. Lydriik arranged for your secondment, interceded with an Iron Father named Verrox on my behalf.’
I don’t know this Verrox. Presumably I saw him on the Iron Moon. Rauth reached up to touch the single iron vertebra of Clan Dorrvok and winced at the memory of its installation. Oddly enough, I remember little else of that day.
‘Bringing you with me also gave me the opportunity to monitor you, and it gave me access to your mind.’
I remember none of this. ‘What’s so special about my mind?’
‘I believe that you saw the artefact on Thennos, or at least came close. Kristos’ psyker blocked your memories. Lydriik tells me that it is a well-worn technique amongst your own, for eradicating unwelcome thoughts and behaviours.’ The eldar sighed, lowering a hand to sit on Khrysaar’s bicep. ‘It may repress the contagion, if it exists, but it cannot destroy it.’
A shadowy eldar in darker armour that Rauth had failed to notice amongst the cherubic lights and the horror of his unconscious brother approached the grav-pallet. Rauth stared, dumb. My brothers are not the only ones being confronted by their nightmares. Something about the figure’s physique told him that it was a female. Something less prosaic screamed ‘witch’. She stood taller even than Yeldrian, taller than Rauth. Her helm was high and fluted, her visor a featureless black plate, long neck studded with aquamarines. Her form-fitting body armour was a muted yellow, similar to the autarch’s albeit of a bleaker shade, replete with osseous runes and partially shrouded by a pale flax cloak.
‘Imladrielle Darkshroud,’ said Yeldrian, and the alien woman dipped her head. ‘Any word from Lydriik, or from Elrusiad?’
A shake of the head.
Rauth shuddered.
Doesn’t she speak?
A pair of slender armoured warriors flanked her. They were tall and willowy, and yet their stillness was absolute. They remind me of Medusan stick insects, waiting years and years for a pheromone-whiff of prey. They stood a head higher than Darkshroud, and broader too for all their apparent delicacy. Their plastek helmets were swept back and perfectly smooth, no ports for eyes or mouth. Their only feature was a rune that, despite its alienness, reminded Rauth of the old Medusan symbol for infinity. Each stood in a posture of eternal, near-statuesque readiness, a long-barrelled heavy cannon of alien design in their large hands.
‘Darkshroud has been working to remove the blocks that Kristos placed over your memories,’ said Yeldrian.
‘What?’ Rauth dragged his gaze away from the looming ghost warriors. ‘Why?’
‘Either you were affected or you were not. Denying the event will not change your fate. Ayoashar’Azyr will out, in the end.’
Rauth felt his anger drain from him to pool around his toes. He glanced towards Khrysaar. ‘And is he…?’
‘He is untainted.’
Rauth breathed out in relief, but something in the eldar’s manner made his heart lurch.
‘I am sorry.’ Somehow, Yeldrian already had his laser pistol in his hand and pointed at Rauth’s chin. ‘On some level, I suspect you have known for some time.’
Rauth’s eyes locked with Yeldrian’s.
Sweat from his fingers ran around the grip of his bolt pistol, still down by his side. He was quick, his reactions pushed to the limits of human physiology. But only to the limits. I’m not that quick. Emotions began to spill out of him. Impossible to tell where one ended and another began. Fear for himself. Love for his brother. Relief that Khrysaar would live. Rage that he would not. Hatred. Hate I know. It was the mantle that bubbled under his skin. Hatred of Yeldrian. Hatred of Kristos. Hatred of his brother for living. Hatred of himself for not. Myself most of all. Turning into the monster that Tartrak and Dumaar had wished of me, even as I swore I was stronger than that, vowing I would fight back as soon as I had the strength to win. Well this is it. Fight and die, or surrender and die. I know what I should do.
The inevitable can’t be fought.
With a howl of blind rage, Rauth drew his pistol.
Yeldrian moved like light, his laspistol spitting out beams and searing the muscle from Rauth’s shoulder before the bolt pistol was out of its mag-holster.
The flurry had been meant for Rauth’s head.
He may not have been as quick as an eldar autarch, but he was close, and managed to turn his expendable, organic shoulder into the fire, soaking up the punishment even as he pulled his pistol free and fired back.
A combination of the turn and the pain caused him to drag his bolter-burst wide. Shells whistled across the autarch’s body and punched through the boxcrate wall, the detonations rupturing the cheap alloy and throwing out packing plastek as though it had started to snow.
Yeldrian threw a startled glance into the shower and held up his hands, letting his pistol dangle from the trigger guard.
‘No one wishes to die, but do not forget your brothers still aboard this ship. If the emitter crystals were to be damaged, then they will come. They will recover for Kristos what we took from them.’
For a second, Rauth thought he would fire. Why don’t I fire? But when it came to it, he supposed he despised his brothers more than he hated the eldar who wished to kill him. He slid his pistol back into its mag-holster. ‘You should have shot me while Mohr had me in the apothecarium.’
‘He would not have allowed it, and I had no wish to kill him too. I still need him. And besides.’ He gestured to the grav-bed. Khrysaar was still under. Darkshroud and her guardians hadn’t moved. That’s confidence. ‘You deserved a proper farewell.’
Rauth sighed. ‘Weak.’
Yeldrian brought his pistol back towards Rauth’s face. ‘We all have our weaknesses.’
Lasered light burst from the weapon’s jewelled nozzle.
Time seemed to stall, the universe zeroing in on the moment as if Rauth’s life were in some way precious to it, that its passage were an event to be witnessed and marked. The sense of his imminent mortality closed over him like an inflated bladder, being squeezed, squeezed, until it burst.
Time accelerated as an Iron Hands Terminator materialised into the line of fire, laser energy splashing off his backplate like water off a rock. Rauth gaped. Ribs of plasteel bulked out his already massive plastron. Thick metal plates with giant rivets protected extraneous bionics. A vast ammunition hopper was machined to his back. He dominated his space like
a supermassive black hole dominated its galaxy, and Rauth could think of nothing else but to watch as the Terminator raised a pair of assault cannons and opened fire on the holo-crystal array.
Rauth’s mind exploded.
He dropped as though shot in the head, his brain doing everything in its powers to convince him that the deck plates were running from under his hands like sand. The walls rose, fell, wobbled like towers of gelatine. Bat-winged horrors became chitin-plated monstrosities, then died garish deaths as Traitor Space Marines. Twin assault cannons charged his nerves with thunder. He tried to reach his pistol, but couldn’t seem to find his hands. Why isn’t it affecting the Terminator?
He knew why. All the scouts had heard the rumours.
Helfather.
‘He followed us,’ Yeldrian screamed. ‘The arrogance of him.’ The autarch slid his hell mask back over his head. ‘Destroy it. Before it is too late.’
The ghost warriors had already stepped in front of Darkshroud, distortion waves rippling from their cannons and blasting chunks of the Helfather into temporary dimensions. It didn’t even slow his rate of fire. Laser blasts mottled the ancient Terminator plate, to negligible impact. Yeldrian cursed in his own tongue, powered up his blade, and charged.
The eldar had learned from his battle with Draevark. He didn’t pierce or stab, looking to terminate the Helfather with a clinical thrust to a critical organ, instead hacking as much damage into the Terminator as possible before the silent hulk could respond.
The Helfather shouldered the eldar into a crate, and Yeldrian crumpled like a parchment figurine.
Face set, Rauth drew his pistol and pushed himself up against the wall of crates.
He aimed for the back of the Helfather’s head, just as another forced compression ran through his stomach. His ears popped. He held his fire, knowing what was coming and suspecting that he was about to start having to pick his targets.
Six additional figures unravelled out of the empyrean, smaller than the Helfather, but giants still in their own right. Iron Hands. The cogwheel emblem of Clan Raukaan had been etched in silver on their shoulder plates, pulsing under the hellish strobe of the Helfather’s assault cannons. He saw the warrior that commanded them.
