by Dan Abnett
With his squad drowning in death below, Porphyrian finally hauled himself onto the roof of the towering hab-stack. Exhausted, he dropped his warblade and pushed himself to his feet. When he turned around he found that Sholen Skara was watching him from the opposite hab-stack with great amusement. His Kith acolytes were spitting and roaring at the Iron Snakes Space Marine, while the magister simply brought the vox-thief to his lips.
‘This snake can climb,’ Sholen Skara’s silky syllables boomed across the open space above the thoroughfare. ‘Where do you think you’re going, serpent?’
Porphyrian unclasped his helm and dropped it to one side. Skara smiled as though he were supposed to be impressed. Brother Hyperenor had had the magister in his sights, but he had not fired, and now Porphyrian had no boltgun with which to deliver justice. Surrounded by death and destruction, there was one thing of which Porphyrian was certain. Sholen Skara was too dangerous to be allowed to live. He was a monster, and on Ithaka there was only one thing to be done with monsters.
Slipping his second sea lance from his back, Porphyrian brought the power spear to life and balanced it in his grip. It was an incredible distance, but with several heavy steps and a power-armoured launch from the roof of the hab-stack, Brother-Sergeant Porphyrian hurled the crackling spear across the impossible distance between the two towers. The Iron Snake watched the magister’s smile contort into an ugly, horrified snarl as the lance sailed home, slamming through the heretic’s muscular chest and impaling him against the side of the humpshuttle.
As Sholen Skara stared down in disbelief at the spear shaft protruding from his chest, his Kith acolytes fought frantically to remove the sea lance from the shuttle, or their magister from the lance. The impact of the power spear had been just enough, however, to knock the craft from its precarious perch on the hab-stack roof. With Sholen Skara staring on in disbelief and the Kith screaming around him, the humpshuttle tipped and slid from the roof’s edge. Porphyrian watched with satisfaction as the tumbling shuttle crashed down the side of the building, tearing Sholen Skara with it until finally both shuttle and Skara erupted in a ball of furious flame as the wreckage hit the elevated thoroughfare below.
Porphyrian heard the roar of engines. Behind the hab-stack, Brother Salames had managed to work through the spider’s web of cables and walkways to bring the Ithakariad level with the roof. Jabbing a ceramite finger down at the thoroughfare below and Squad Orpheon buried alive in dead bodies, Porphyrian directed Brother Salames and the Storm Eagle down to offer assistance. The Space Marine recovered his helmet and cycled through the vox channels.
‘Patch me through to the ship’s steward,’ the sergeant ordered.
‘My lord?’
‘Leodocus,’ Porphyrian said. ‘I need you to send an astrotelepathic message to the Inquisitorial fortress on Khulan.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Inform them not to expect the heretic Sholen Skara.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Send another to the Warmaster,’ Brother-Sergeant Porphyrian said grimly. ‘Tell him… Tell him that he’s lost another world.’
My turn again. This is another small, quiet piece, but there’s plenty of menace. I just imagined an unlikely conversation between two very different characters from the Ghosts books, then realised it probably was a conversation, and a relationship, that was far from unlikely after all.
Some of the stories in this book are from the Imperial perspective, and others see the Crusade through the eyes of the Archenemy. This is, I suppose, the still point in that vast storm where those two things meet. And it features two of my favourite characters.
This story is set nine days after the end of Salvation’s Reach.
Dan Abnett
You Never Know
Dan Abnett
The Highness Ser Armaduke, nine days out from Salvation’s Reach, 782.M41
(the 27th year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade)
‘Where are we?’ asked Mabbon Etogaur.
Sergeant Varl waited until the cell’s heavy, armoured shutter had finally closed behind him, then glanced around the tiny cell, his eyes narrowed in concentration, his lips pursed.
‘I can’t be sure,’ Varl replied, ‘but I think it’s the brig.’
‘Oh, Sergeant Varl,’ said Mabbon. ‘I had almost forgotten your rapier wit.’
Varl grinned. He slung his lasrifle across his back, then gestured with both hands, palms up, fingers flapping.
‘Up, pheguth,’ he ordered. ‘You know the drill.’
Mabbon sighed. He put his book down on the bare cot, and slowly rose to his feet from the metal stool. He raised his arms. Shackles clinked, dangling from his wrists. The chains around his ankles were secured to the deck by a steel floor-pin.
Varl reached forward to start the search. He hesitated at the last minute.
‘Play nice, all right?’ he told the prisoner.
‘Don’t I always?’
Varl started searching. Pockets, hems, seams, cuffs. He was meticulous. He was practiced. He’d done it many times before.
‘Really, sergeant?’ said Mabbon patiently, arms wide. ‘Do you think, in the six hours since that cell door last opened and this pantomime last occurred, that I have somehow managed to obtain and conceal a weapon?’
‘You never know,’ said Varl. ‘You might have finally worked a splinter of metal off the deck plates. Or forced a screw out of the bed-frame and cunningly sharpened it.’
‘Oh, I wish I’d thought of either of those things,’ said Mabbon, looking up at the ceiling as Varl worked.
Varl started checking the manacles and the ankle hobbles.
‘Or picked the lock of my shackles?’ Mabbon added.
‘You never know.’
Varl moved behind him.
‘You might have dismantled the bed and the stool,’ Varl said, ‘and ingeniously fashioned them into a lasweapon.’
Something akin to a smile passed across Mabbon’s scarred face.
‘You really overestimate my abilities, sergeant,’ he said.
‘Well, that was an exaggeration for illustrative purposes,’ replied Varl.
Varl came back round to face him.
‘Open,’ said Varl.
Mabbon opened his mouth. Varl peered in. Then he slid his index finger inside.
‘No closey-closey,’ Varl said. Mabbon said nothing. Varl ran his finger around Mabbon’s gums, around his cheeks, and under his tongue.
When he was done, Varl removed his finger. Mabbon closed his mouth. Varl moved to the side, and scrutinised Mabbon’s ear.
‘No autocannon concealed in there?’ Mabbon asked.
‘Ha ha,’ said Varl. ‘Oh, wait.’
‘What?’ asked Mabbon.
‘I think I see light shining in through the other ear,’ said Varl. Mabbon did not react to the quip.
Varl stepped back.
‘All right. Sit.’
Mabbon sat. Varl began to sweep the room.
‘This really isn’t necessary,’ said Mabbon.
‘You know the drill. Standing order. A search every six hours.’
‘I know the drill,’ said Mabbon. ‘I have remarked on its pointlessness before.’
‘Yet, as you can see, we are still going to do it,’ replied Varl, busy.
‘And I am still going to remark,’ said Mabbon sadly. ‘I have reached a point at which I am prepared to both criticise and mock the practice.’
Varl was checking the cot.
‘Look, you know fething well,’ said Varl, ‘it’s not really shards of metal or sharpened spoons we’re worried about. You could get up to all sorts in here when you’re unsupervised.’
‘All sorts of what?’ asked Mabbon.
‘Badness,’ said Varl, gesturing vaguely. ‘Crazy Archenemy badness. Ritual shit. I’ve seen sh
it in my days, mister, and I know what’s possible. You could summon something.’
‘Summon something?’
‘Yeah,’ said Varl. ‘We could open the hatch and find you’ve conjured up some daemon-spawn of arsebag to sick on us.’
‘I am a soldier, Varl,’ said Mabbon. ‘An officer. I have commanded hosts of men. I am not, however, a warlock.’
‘You never know,’ said Varl. ‘We’ve only got your word for that.’
He picked up the book Mabbon had been reading and leafed through the pages. Then he shook it to see if anything would fall out. Nothing did.
Varl studied the spine.
‘The Spheres of Longing?’ he read.
‘It’s an intriguing read.’
‘Never heard of it,’ said Varl.
‘I’m improving my mind. I am trying to learn the mindset of the Imperium. To… understand and remember its ways.’
‘What do you mean, “understand and remember”?’ Varl asked.
‘To better assist you,’ said Mabbon.
Varl paused.
‘When you were a man–’ Varl began.
‘I am still a man,’ Mabbon said.
‘Not so much. When you were a man, why did you… I mean, how… How does a man become what you are?’
‘The blood claimed me,’ said Mabbon.
‘The blood?’ asked Varl.
‘Sergeant, for all the “stuff” you claim to have seen, I assuredly know that you have no grasp of what life is like in the Sanguinary Worlds. I was Astra Militarum once, just like you. Then the Archon took me, and the blood claimed me, and I became an officer in his Pact.’
‘Then the Sons. You change sides a lot, don’t you?’ asked Varl.
‘Every chance I get,’ replied Mabbon. ‘Every effort I make is to reclaim my humanity. To purge the blood. To make amends. To become again the person I once was. That is why I read. I am gradually remembering what it is to be a human of the Imperium.’
‘You say that like it’s a good thing.’
‘You never know,’ said the etogaur.
Varl pulled a face.
‘You know the real reason this search drill is pointless?’ asked Mabbon.
‘Surprise me.’
‘It’s pointless,’ said Mabbon, ‘because if I wanted to escape, I would have done so by now. And I could have done. You do not have to search me, because I want to be here. I am willingly assisting the Imperium, because it is the only thing I have left in my life that means anything. I will not destroy that one last, fragile thing by doing something stupid or disruptive.’
‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ said Varl. He took out a pack of lho-sticks, lit one and, after a pause, offered the pack to Mabbon.
Mabbon shook his head.
‘Whatever happens,’ said Varl, exhaling smoke, ‘I mean, whatever you do, you know things aren’t going to end well, right? Things are not going to end well for you at all.’
‘Things are not going to end well for anybody,’ replied Mabbon.
‘I’m just saying.’
‘Apart from some small measure of redemption,’ said Mabbon, ‘death is the only thing I have to look forward to.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Varl abruptly. He stepped forward, studying the wall.
‘What’s what?’
‘These scratches here. These marks. Did you do that?’
Mabbon hesitated.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘With what?’ asked Varl, sharp.
Mabbon raised the heavy cuff of his manacles.
‘Why?’
‘I make a scar on the wall every time I am searched,’ said Mabbon. ‘You search me every six hours, thus I have some measure of the passage of time.’
‘What good is that?’ asked Varl.
‘I am no man,’ said Mabbon. ‘I am no thing. I have no liberty. No self-determination. No comfort. No knowledge of where I am or what I am any more. But I can at least know when.’
‘This is just a tally, then?’ Varl asked, touching the row of scratches.
‘Just a tally.’
‘Not the fethed-up markings for some ritual?’ asked Varl, looking at him sharply.
‘No, they are not the fethed-up markings of some ritual,’ said Mabbon.
‘I’ll have to tell Rawne,’ said Varl.
‘I understand,’ the etogaur replied.
‘He’ll probably–’
‘Move me to another cell and have a servitor grind the wall-plate smooth again. I understand.’
Varl nodded.
‘Sorry,’ Varl said.
‘Thank you,’ said Mabbon.
‘For what?’
‘Sorry is the most human thing anyone has said to me in a very long time,’ said Mabbon Etogaur.
Varl stared at him for a moment.
Then he turned to the shutter and banged on it.
‘Open two!’ he yelled. ‘I’m coming out!’
The shutter began to grind open. Varl looked back at the seated etogaur.
‘It’s 0417, day 18, 782. Just ask me. Just ask.’
‘And you’ll tell me?’
‘You never know,’ said Varl. ‘See you in six hours. You’ll still be here, right?’
‘You never know,’ replied Mabbon Etogaur.
I love John French’s writing. I really do. There is a grim poetry to it, and he handles the dark themes and content of Warhammer 40,000 with great confidence and insight. I was so pleased when he agreed to write a story for this anthology. As with Rob, this is John’s first visit to the Sabbat Worlds (now he gets a club tie too).
I knew what John was going to write about, but when he delivered the story, I realised that it absolutely had to sit next to ‘You Never Know’ in the running order, because it was such a thematic companion piece.
Prepare yourselves for an intoxicatingly dark and immersive experience…
Dan Abnett
Son Of Sek
John French
Sartusa Shrine City, Cabal Epsilon, 777.M41
(the 22nd year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade)
‘All the sons and daughters, rolled down the red river,
When will they return?
When will they sing again?’
– from the Song of Founding, Vervunhive
I
I will hear his voice.
Knowing this remakes me. There are many deaths and doors which wait for our souls. I will pass through them all, bright and shining, because of what he has already given me. And now I will hear the voice. I will drown in it. I will have no voice. I will come to this existence anew. I will be a son for a second time.
I am waiting. I have waited for many markings of time. The bowls of oil have burnt dry seven times since I came to this antechamber. The smoke from the flames is sweet. It is the smoke of Sartusa, taken from it while it was newly quieted. The first jars of oil drawn from the render-pits are brought to him, so that he can smell the worlds his sons have quieted. That this oil burns now, for me, is an honour.
Sartusa’s silence was a thing of beauty. The flames cupped in the bowls send their shadows shivering up the walls. Each red and golden tongue is a child of the fire we made on that blessed world. We took the city’s voices one by one, cut by cut, shot by shot, until there was red flowing free of the doors, and the streets were red mirrors to the pyre. Its people fought. Oh, how they fought. Bullets and flashes roared at us from windows, from the trenches topped with bags of sand, from the pits that shells had dug in the earth. Many of us fell. Many became the meat that is all that life is when it has no voice. I can see them now, the heaped bodies made red and wet. Their voices are one now, and they no longer hear the lie of their hearts, the lie that life is more than passing instants sliced into seconds by a pulse. We came on,
though, and the unshriven tried to hold on, to deny us, not to cry out even though smoke hid the sky, and the horizon was flame. Ignorance is not without resilience. They fought until it was just one circle around a statue to their god.
The pyre had stolen all sound, and we stood in the magnificence of what we had done, in the rain that fell black with ash. We looked in at the few that still resisted, water running from our blades and from the mouths of our guns. They looked back, and shouted as though fury can banish futility: such defiance, such deafness. Their faces were skin masks painted in dust and soot, their eyes wide windows into fear.
Except one.
One figure stood tall, a sword still in his hand, head unbowed. They call such creatures heroes. He called on us to come to an end by his hand, cursed us in words that have no meaning, spoke of the armour of contempt, and the shield of the soul. His words bought him nothing, though. He ended there, beneath the eyes of his indifferent god. He died by my hand. He deserves nothing, but for now I will remember him. He is why I am here. His death brought me here. The fires of the world he failed to save touch my eyes, and do me honour. He Whose Voice Drowns Out All Others will ask me of this dead man, because I was the one to end him. I heard the last words from between his teeth.
I alone know him.
II
He was born on a world which ate its young. The fume-stacks reached halfway to the sky, and their smoke joined soot-streaked earth to blank, grey clouds. The sound of hammers was the music of this world. Great blank slabs of iron, brushed panels of plasteel, bright wafers of auric, all came from beneath the blows of men and women too old to walk the streets, and children too small to lift a gun. Crammed into honeycombs of workshops at the edges of the foundries, they breathed air spiced by coal and mineral dust.
He was one of them, one of the grey world’s children: his eyes turned to a squint by the forge light, which was never more than a glow, his skin greyed by dust and his hands cooked to pink gloss by forge heat. He never knew his parents. They had gone beyond the smoke, to the wars fought in the stars. He thought of them, though, huddling around the memories of hands holding him, and hair brushing his cheek as he fell into sleep. He slept in the workshop. He would curl up in a rockcrete niche at the back, behind the stacked sheets of finished metal, and exhaustion would drop him into oblivion as the hammers rang on and on.
