by Nick Kyme
He remained silent, and the sound of the draining water filled the stillness. At last she looked around at him. She gave a cold laugh and shrugged.
‘Not the most comforting thought, I’ll admit.’ He shook his head but did not answer. She frowned, her gaze steady on him.
‘You are thinking–’
‘We are not ready,’ he growled softly.
‘You were never going to be ready,’ she said. ‘None of you – not Dorn, not you, not all the guns of Terra. You were never going to be ready.’
‘With more time–’
‘There is not time enough to prepare for this.’ She picked up a loose chip, and dropped it over the edge. She leant forwards to watch for the splash. ‘It is a matter of the soul, that is why you are not ready.’
He felt himself tense. Andromeda laughed at his discomfort.
‘My kin of the Selenar believe that the soul lies not outside us but in our blood, in the memory of our genes. They would say that there is no way for mankind to be ready for this. What is happening and what is to come will leave a scar in the blood. It will change the soul of mankind and all of its offspring. In ten thousand years this will be the memory that sings in the soul of all. If that time comes, then we will be ready to face this again.’
‘If we fail now then that future will never come.’
‘You doubt that you will survive? And there I thought that I – with my gene-witch ways and strange insight – was supposed to be the pessimist.’
‘Failure is always possible even if you never surrender to it.’
Andromeda glanced at him, an expression he could not read on her face. She was rolling another shard of rock around her hands.
‘You did not fail him,’ she said. ‘And he did not fail even in the end. You bear his name but there is no burden that you must carry. I did not say you will fail. I said that you would never be ready. The two are different.’
Archamus did not reply, but shifted. The black cloak hanging from his shoulders suddenly seemed as unfamiliar as the name that still did not seem to belong to him.
He let out a breath to speak.
The signal system in the collar of his armour hissed, and whispered a series of coded clicks. Archamus turned, clamping his helm onto his head.
‘He is coming,’ he said. Andromeda dropped the stone over the edge, but did not watch it fall. She slid to her feet beside him.
Archamus’ brother-huscarl came out of the dark first, bolter ready. Identification signals clicked between him and Archamus as he advanced. Caution, even amongst brothers, was a lesson the last years had taught well.
Will our blood remember that death of trust, too? he found himself thinking.
Rogal Dorn stepped into sight, the burnished gold of his armour seeming silver in the moonlight. Archamus bowed his head briefly. The huscarls never knelt in the presence of their lord; they were his praetorians and war companions, and the duty of their office was sign of deference enough. It was another change that Archamus still found unsettling.
‘My lord,’ he said. Dorn met his gaze as Archamus raised his head.
‘Follow,’ said the primarch, and moved past them, his strides swift but unhurried.
Andromeda dropped off the balustrade and followed with Archamus.
‘You know why you and Archamus were summoned, Mistress Andromeda?’ asked Dorn without slowing or turning.
‘You find it reassuring to have him at your side,’ she said without hesitating.
Dorn glanced over his shoulder, and Archamus thought he saw a flash in his lord’s eye. Andromeda shrugged.
‘Yes, Lord Praetorian, I know why.’
‘And you know where I am going?’
‘You are going to look at the sky,’ she said.
Dorn did not answer, and they followed him through the echoing dark of the Palace.
Two Hours to Midnight
‘Strength and truth shall be its future, but for now it will serve us as a place of slaughter. And this will be a slaughter…. That is the price of that future.’
Rogal Dorn’s own voice followed him as he walked beneath the Dome of Unity. The voices of others wound through his thoughts, on and on, shouting from the silence. He thought of all the steps he had taken in his life, all the decisions made, and all those that now seemed to have a different meaning to what he had thought at the time.
‘It will never end, don’t you see that? Hate only breeds hate and the Imperium cannot be built upon such bloody foundations.’
‘You are not my son. And no matter what your future holds, you never will be.’
‘The Imperium will not survive if it does not die, brother…’
‘Ash running through our fingers…’
‘I am not your son…’
‘Lord Praetorian.’ His personal vox cut through the voices of ghosts.
‘Speak, mistress,’ he said, subvocalising into his armour’s vox so that neither Archamus, Andromeda or the other huscarls would hear.
‘Word has come,’ said Armina Fel. ‘As instructed, it has not been broadcast to the astropaths across the system. Do you wish the signal sent?’
‘When will the first lights appear?’ he asked.
‘Two hours,’ she said.
Two hours…
‘Thank you, mistress,’ he said and cut the link.
He turned to Archamus. The sight of a young warrior’s face bearing that name pulled another voice from the edge of night.
‘What are you afraid of?’
‘That others will die for my weakness. That I will fail.’
‘Prepare a signal to all Legion formations,’ he said.
Above the Palace the Arcus orbital plate drifted on the edge of the atmosphere. Captain Demetrius Katafalque watched night slide across the face of the viewport. Pinpricks of light dotted the spreading dark, clustering in the shapes of the great city drifts, space ports and hive clusters. He knew every detail of that view at night, in day, and reimagined in the endless strategic holo-displays that filled the hours he was not on the wing with the rest of his Assault company. The hours that remained were given to waiting.
In the distance he heard the hiss of a hatch release, but did not turn.
On the other side of the plate he could have looked out and seen the reaches of space. Long ago, the first ancients to touch the void beyond the sky would have had only the stars to greet them. Now the night side of Terra glittered with the lights of warships. System monitors; converted trade tugs; mass conveyors carrying Terra’s void-borne reserve forces; war-barques whose keels had been set in a time before Unity and empire was a dream; missile pinnaces so young that their weapons had never spoken in anger: all arranged in constellations that crowded the blackness as the light of Terra spidered the darkening ground.
‘Captain,’ said the voice of Getterax, from behind him. He turned, surprised. The master of signal assigned to the Arcus orbital plate rarely left the command cluster at its core.
‘A signal has come from Terra, direct transmission from the primarch’s Legion communication channel.’
Katafalque blinked. He was not given to surprise, or at least inside his mind the gap between surprise, assessment and clear action was so short that it barely existed. But the communications that controlled the intersecting layers of defence around Terra were precise. The signals and command channels were designated, as were the contingencies and backups. None of them included communication directly from the primarch.
‘It was sent to all Legion area commanders throughout the first through third spheres.’
‘Only to the Legion?’
‘Yes, captain.’
He blinked again.
‘What did it say?’
‘It is gene-encrypted for you alone,’ said Getterax, holding out an iron-framed data-slate. Katafalque took it, released his armour gauntlet and pressed his thumb against the aperture at the base of the frame. A needle stabbed into his flesh and withdrew with a sip of his blood. Green static f
illed the screen and then coalesced into script. He read the words, and was still for a long moment.
‘Bring the Legion contingents in the plate to full readiness. It is to be done quietly and thoroughly. Check that all command-and-control functions are at optimal.’
‘Of course, captain…’ Getterax paused. The bulbous signal and vox-module ringing his head did not hide the signs of the frown he was suppressing. ‘You wish this done without bringing the other forces on the plate to equal readiness?’
Katafalque nodded. ‘That will happen but before it does we must be ready. We are the rock that the storm surges around, Getterax.’
He turned back to the viewport. Night had now run across all the visible surface. He recognised the lights of Bhab, Dhawalagiri and Gravula.
None of them know, he found himself thinking. Those sleeping this night do not know what truth they will wake to.
‘If I may ask, captain–’
‘Full system invasion alert to be issued in two hours. Stand ready. Look to those who will look to us. The hour is come, my sons.’ Katafalque spoke the words he had read, and looked around at his Legion brother. He thought of the warriors of the IX and V Legions scattered between Terra and the dark beyond. He thought of the billions of mortal soldiers, some who were only soldiers by a few weeks. He thought of all the nights and days when it had seemed that the enemy had come to the heart of the Imperium. All had been false, some provoked, some dreamed from fear and fatigue. But now, on this quiet night, the dreams would end.
One Hour to Midnight
The ice wind coming up the valleys of the Himalazia greeted Dorn as he took the last steps onto the parapet. The smell of the work camps, which had scented the air while he was making the Palace into a fortress, had gone. Now the air smelled of smoke and the promise of snow. They were burning the last of any structures within a kilometre of the wall, clearing a killing ground.
He paused after he took the top step. Then nodded once and climbed up onto the parapet. Plasteel plates now hid the view beyond, allowing only a firing slit view for most of the length of the wall. On this small section, pistons had lowered the plates so that the sky above and the night horizon were visible. His brothers waited for him there.
The Khan’s armour was ash-white, with fresh marks of red on its plates. His face was solemn and his stillness seemed to vibrate the air around him. Beside him stood an angel in burnished gold armour and crimson cloth. Sanguinius turned to look at Dorn, and a conversation passed in the meeting of their gazes. Around the pair stood warriors of their Legion, and a small clutch of humans. Archamus, Andromeda and the huscarls formed a loose ring behind Dorn as he stopped two paces from his brothers.
‘Praetorian,’ said Sanguinius, bowing his head. The Khan gave a short nod.
‘It is true,’ said the Khan, as though cutting to the end of a conversation that had passed unspoken. ‘My astropaths brought me word half an hour after your message arrived.’
Dorn thought of the news Armina Fel had brought him as the sun had set above the Bhab Bastion.
‘The auguries all confirm it. There is a quieting in the warp, a silence moving and growing like a storm cloud. It has been growing darker and darker. It is a warp displacement, the bow wave of something approaching through the skin of dreams. It is like… On worlds where there are oceans, the seas become flat before the coming of a tidal wave. The waves draw down the shore as the deeps draw breath.’ She had paused. Shivered.
‘I understand,’ he had replied.
Dorn looked at the Khan and nodded. Along a near section of the wall, the void shields began to test fire, crackling through the dry air as midnight drew closer across the Palace.
High above them – almost hidden by the flash of the shields and the lights of warships – a new star formed in the darkness, growing brighter and brighter.
On the walls of the Imperial Palace the three loyal sons of the Master of Mankind looked up as the first notes of sirens began to sound.
DREAMS
OF UNITY
Nick Kyme
We are the thunder,
we are the lightning,
We were His first,
but now amongst the last,
We lived too long,
and now we wish to die,
The only death that matters,
the Honoured Death.
– Dahren Heruk, hymn of the Honoured Death
As I looked down onto the fight below, I knew Kabe was going to die. And I was powerless to do anything about it.
He would not yield. He roared, a broken jaw distorting his shout of defiance. The man trying to kill him remained undaunted. Even when Kabe spat blood onto his war-plate, the gold-clad warrior would not be goaded.
Instead, he levelled his spear and Kabe readied his falchion in kind. The sword’s blade had become a ragged saw, notched by repeated ineffectual blows against the other warrior’s armour. Kabe did not know how to lose. He had never retreated in his life. Even when the oligarchs of Kievan Rus had rained atomics from their black citadel and bathed the Sibir ice plain in radioactive fire, Kabe had advanced. He had fought without rest during the siege of Abyssna, and marched the length of Albia to bring the warlord clans of Hoth Grendal to heel.
‘For Unity!’ Kabe roared, his broken sword aloft in salute.
He charged, but his left leg failed him and he slipped, his body not as stubborn as his mind.
Kabe stopped when the spear impaled him, his armour easily pierced. The spear haft lodged in his guts, the leaf-bladed edge having punched right through and out of his back on the other side. He dangled there for a moment, blinking dumbly, before the gold-clad warrior kicked his body loose. Silence hung in the air, suspended by shock and disbelief.
Then the crowd roared. Light flooded the arena, a cold and harsh sodium glow that threw grim shadows over a shallow pit of sand and half-crushed bones.
Blood pooled under Kabe’s body. He trembled, still alive, mouth agape and trying to catch air like a landed fish.
‘Damn it,’ Tarrigata murmured. ‘It’s over then.’ The old man standing next to me suddenly looked frail. Perhaps it was the thought of the money he had lost betting on Kabe, or perhaps it was because his ludus had just lost another fighter. His once fine garments had begun to look a little threadbare of late.
I spared him a half-glance as I leaned in to the arena barrier, ignoring the jostling crowd around us. I saw enough grief in his face to suggest his apparent fragility stemmed from something deeper than a blow to his ever-diminishing revenue stream. Fewer and fewer patrons turned up to the fights these days. They had other concerns on their minds, about war, about the killings and the riots. For the rest, this was how they forgot.
The gold-clad warrior advanced, whirling around the spear as he poised to stab down at Kabe.
The crowd roared louder in anticipation of the kill.
‘Heruk, is it over?’ Tarrigata asked, and I felt his thin fingers brush against my naked arm. ‘I can still hear them baying. Is it over? Has that chrono-gladiator not killed him yet?’
‘Stay here,’ I said, and felt Tarrigata’s fingers fall away as I leapt the plate barrier and jumped into the arena. The sand underfoot scattered as I landed.
A few onlookers noticed me and began to chant. I heard my name and felt the chill of hollow glory that came with it. Battle was glorious; Mount Ararat when Arik Taranis raised the Lightning Banner and declared Unity, that was glorious. This was gutter glory. There was no honour is this.
The gold-clad warrior’s spear stabbed down before he realised there was another fighter in the ring. Kabe screamed, the leaf-blade stuck in his thigh. A second thrust pierced his shoulder and brought another scream.
‘If you’re going to kill him, kill him,’ I growled, glowering at the hulking warrior’s back.
We had all suffered enough already. This was needless.
The crowd roared louder, their faces hidden by the darkness now, and I was half-blinded by the glare
of sodium lights anyway.
My eyes were better than Tarrigata’s, but they were not what they once had been. I blinked twice, trying to banish the blind spots as the warrior turned. A chrono-gladiator, over-muscled on stimms and sheathed in gold armour plate. I saw a parody of His Adeptus Custodes in the grossly swollen fighter before me and could not resist a smile. Down here beneath the Maw, we were far from the Throne’s light, but we still found humour despite our misery.
The death clock in the fighter’s forehead turned. His owner, Radik Clev, would be close and waiting with a key. Victory for the chrono would see another key turn in the death clock. More life for more life. That’s how it worked with a chrono. I only had meagre honour to fight for. What was that against trying to perpetuate one’s existence?
The spear turned, the change in grip unnecessarily elaborate, and it pointed at me. The chrono’s eyes were bloodshot, the veins threading the sclera describing madness. As the death clock ticked down, its strikes grew louder. Like a heartbeat. He bayed at me, more beast than man. The challenge was deep and vox-modulated enough to make it sound inhuman. But then again, I was not really human either.
I bared my teeth in a feral snarl, the rekindling of some old instinct, and drew a broad-bladed sword. My thumb activated the disruptor field, which flickered dangerously, once, twice, before snapping to consistency. Heat and ozone filled my nostrils. There was oil and blood, too, but that was coming off the chrono. And Kabe as he bled out. I could see him, reaching impotently for his broken falchion.
‘Should’ve just killed him,’ I said.
The chrono charged.
I rolled, swinging my broad-blade behind me as I made to move. I heard the crowd gasp and felt the spear miss my head by a few inches. Back on my feet, I managed to turn and see the spear before it gutted me. A hasty parry deflected it aside, but I had been lucky. And too slow.
