by Various
Its skin was dark and puckered with greying scars. It swung a huge, iron-headed hammer in two hands, and the weapon growled with moving blades.
I swerved away, missing the grinding teeth by a finger’s width. Then I span back in close, my guan dao shivering with angry energy as it worked. I hit it twice, taking chunks of its heavy plate armour, but it didn’t fall.
It swung again, hurling the hammerhead in a bludgeoning arc. I ducked sharply, using the pitch of the platform, veering away and down, with the back-sweep of the glaive to balance me. We were like dancers at a death ceremony, weaving back and forth, our movements fast, close, heavy.
It lashed out again, its face contorted with frothy rage, piling its immense strength into a shuddering, whistling transverse sweep. If that strike had connected I would have died on Chondax, thrown from the moving platform and driven into the dust with my back snapped and my armour shattered.
But I had seen it coming. That was the way of war for us – to feint, to entice, to enrage, to provoke the slip that left the defence open. When the hammer moved, I knew where it was going and just how long I had to get around it.
I leapt. The glaive glittered as it cartwheeled, the blade turning in my hands and around my twisting body. I soared over the ork’s clumsy lunge, up-ending the shaft of the guan dao and pointing it down, seizing it two-handed.
The beast looked up groggily, just in time to see my sun-flashed blade plunge through its skull. I felt the carve and slap of its flesh and skull giving way, gouged into a bloody foam by the plummeting energy field.
I clanged back to the deck, wrenching the glaive free and swinging it around me in a gore-flinging flourish. The ravaged remains of the warlord slumped before me. I stood over it for a single heartbeat, the guan dao humming in my hand. All around me I could hear the battle-cries of my brothers and the agony of our prey.
The air was filled with screams, with roaring, with the grind and crack of weapons, with the swelling clouds of ignited promethium, with the hard burn of jetbike thrusters.
I knew the end would come quickly. I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to keep fighting, to feel the power of my primarch burn through my muscles.
‘For the Great Khan!’ I thundered, breaking back into movement, shaking the blood from my weapon and searching for more. ‘For the Khagan!’
And all around me, my brothers, my beloved brothers of the minghan, echoed the call, lost in their pristinely savage world of rage and joy and speed.
We did not move on until all of them were dead. When the last of the fighting was over, we stalked through the wreckage with short blades in our hands, finishing off any xenos who still breathed. When that was done, we doused the vehicles in their own fuel and set them alight. When that fire died down, we went back over the remnants with flamers of our own and plasma weapons, atomising anything bigger than a man’s fist.
You could not be too careful. They were good at coming back, the greenskins, even after you thought you had killed them about as completely as you imagined possible.
Sometimes, in the past, we had not been careful. Being careful was not in our blood, and it had cost us. We had tried to learn, to better ourselves, to remember that warfare was not always a matter of glorious pursuits.
By the time we left, heading back north, the mounds of charred metal were already being eroded and smothered by wind-carried earth. Nothing remained, nothing endured. It was like a dream. Or perhaps we were the dreams, sliding across the blank surface of an indifferent world.
We left four brothers of the minghan behind us, including Erdeni, who had escaped penance by having his chest knocked inside out. We did not burn them. Sangjai, our emchi, extracted their seed and stripped the armour from their bodies. Then he laid them out, their bare skin open to the suns and the wind, and we took their bikes and equipment with us.
On Chogoris we had observed such customs so that the beasts of the Altak had something to feed on when the moons were up. We had never been a wasteful people. No beasts lived on Chondax save us and the hain, but the custom had followed us out into the stars and we had never changed it.
We had tried to learn, to better ourselves, but we did not change everything. The core of us, the things that set us apart and made us proud, those were the things we had carried from the home world and kept safe, guarded like a candle-flame cupped in a palm. I thought then that all of us in the Legion felt the same way about such things. Back then, though, I was blind to many truths.
A day later, and we reached our resupply coordinates.
Yes, we saw the bulk lifters from a long way out, descending and ascending in columns. They were huge: each one carried hundreds of tonnes of rations, ammunition, machine parts, medicae supplies; everything needed to sustain a mobile army on the hunt. In the years that the Chondax campaign had been fully underway they had been in ceaseless demand, plying their routes between the carriers hanging in orbit and the forward stations on the ground.
‘We will have no use for them soon,’ I observed to Jochi as we passed a lifter coming down – a bulbous leviathan buoyed by shimmering heat-wash from its landing thrusters.
‘There will be other battlefields,’ he said.
‘Not forever,’ I replied.
We swept past the landing sites. By the time we reached the main garrison complex only one sun still remained above the horizon, burning orange in a deep green sky. Shadows barred our path, warm against the pale earth.
The supply station had always been temporary, built from prefabricated components that would be lifted back up to the fleet when no longer needed on Chondax. Only its defence towers, looming up from the outer walls and bursting with weaponry, looked like they would take any time at all to dismantle when the time came. White dust ran up against the walls in smooth dunes, wearing at the rockcrete and the metal. The planet hated the things we had built upon it. It eroded them, gnawed at them, trying to shake off the specks of permanence we had hammered into its perpetually shifting hide.
Once the jetbikes were in the armoury hangars, I gave the order for my brothers to go to the garrison’s hab units and make the most of their short rest period. They looked happy enough to do so; their endurance was immense but it was not infinite, and we had been on the hunt for a long time.
I headed off to find the garrison commander. Even as night fell, the dusty streets of the temporary settlement were thronged with activity – loaders moving between warehouses stacked with munitions and supply crates, servitors scuttling from workshops over to armoury bays, auxiliary troops in V Legion colours bowing respectfully as I passed them.
I found the commander in a rockcrete bunker at the heart of the garrison complex. Like all the other mortals he wore protective clothing and a rebreather – Chondax’s atmosphere was too thin and too cold for ordinary humans; only we and the orks tolerated it unaided.
‘Commander,’ I said, ducking under the doorway as I entered his private chamber.
He rose from his desk, bowing clumsily, hampered by his environment suit.
‘Khan,’ he replied, speaking thickly through his helmet’s mouthpiece.
‘New orders?’ I asked.
‘Yes, lord,’ he said, reaching for a data-slate and handing it to me. ‘Assault plans have been accelerated.’
I glanced at the data-slate he gave me. Text glowed on the screen, laid over a map of the warzone. The symbols indicating enemy formations had shrunk together, falling back toward a single point to the north-east. Locator symbols of V Legion brotherhoods followed them, coming in from all directions. I was pleased to see that my minghan was at the forefront of the encirclement.
‘Will he participate?’ I asked.
‘Lord?’
I gave the commander a hard look.
‘Ah,’ he said, realising to whom I was referring. ‘I don’t know. I have no data on his whereabouts. The keshig keep it to themselves.’
I nodded. That was to be expected. Only my burning desire to see him in battle again
– this time at close quarters – had made me ask.
‘We will leave as soon as we can,’ I told him, affecting a smile in case my manner with him had been excessively brusque. ‘Perhaps, if we make good progress, we will be the first at his side.’
‘Perhaps you will,’ he said. ‘But not alone. You are to combine with another brotherhood.’
I raised an eyebrow. For the whole length of time we had been on Chondax, we had operated on our own. Sometimes we had gone without resupply or redirection for months at a time, out on the endless flats with nothing but our own resources to draw on. I had enjoyed that freedom; we all had.
‘You have full orders waiting for you, security-sealed,’ said the commander. ‘Many brotherhoods are being combined for the final attack runs.’
‘So who are we joining?’ I asked.
‘I do not have that information. I have location coordinates. Forgive me; we have much to process, and some data from fleet command has been… lacking in detail.’
I could believe that, and so did not blame the man before me. I must have let my smile broaden wryly, for he seemed to relax a little.
We were not a careful people. We were bad with the details.
‘Then I hope their khan knows how to ride,’ was all I said. ‘He will have to, to keep up with us.’
It was not long before we met.
My refitted brotherhood powered smoothly north-east. Many of our jetbikes had been replaced or repaired by the armoury servitors, and the sound of their engines was cleaner than it had been. We had always taken pride in our appearance, but the short break in operations had allowed some of the grime to be scrubbed from our armour plates, making them dazzle under the triple suns.
I knew my brothers were restless. As the long kilometres passed in a glare of white sand and pale emerald sky they became ever more impatient, ever more anxious to see signs of prey on the empty horizon.
‘What will we do when we have killed them all?’ asked Jochi as we sped along. He was powering his jetbike casually, letting it slew and buck in the headwind as if it were a living thing. ‘What is next?’
I shrugged. For some reason, I was not much in the mood to talk about it.
‘We will never kill them all,’ said Batu, his face still purple with bruising from his fight on the platform. ‘If they run out, I will breed more myself.’
Jochi laughed, but the sound had a faint edge to it, a faint note of trying too hard.
They were skirting around the issue, but we all knew it was there, sliding under the surface of our jokes and speculations. We did not know what lay ahead for us once the Crusade was over.
He had never told us what he had planned; perhaps, when alone with his own counsel, he shared the same quiet misgivings we did. I found it hard to imagine him having misgivings, though. I found it hard to imagine anything approaching uncertainty in his mind. Whatever the future held for us when the fighting was done, I knew that he would find a place for us within it, just as he had always done.
Perhaps Chondax had got under our skin. It made us feel ephemeral and fleeting sometimes. It made us feel like we had no roots anymore, and that the old certainties had become strangely unreliable.
‘I see it!’ shouted Hasi, riding out ahead. He stood up in the saddle, his long hair streaming out behind him. ‘There!’
I saw it then myself – a puff of white against the sky, indicating vehicles travelling at speed. The trail was nothing like that produced by the greenskins – it was too clean, too clear, and moving too fast.
I felt a tremor of unease, and quickly quelled it. I knew what drove it – pride, an unwillingness to share command, resentment that I was being ordered to.
‘Let us see who they are, then,’ I said, adjusting course and making for the plume of dust ahead. I could see them slowing up, wheeling around to meet us. ‘This brotherhood with no name.’
I dismounted to greet my opposite number. He did the same. Our warriors waited some distance behind us, facing one another, still perched on their idling mounts. His force looked to be the same size; five hundred mounts, give or take.
He was taller than me by a hand’s width. The skin of his bare head was pale, his chin angular and his neck thickly corded. He wore his hair short, cropped close to the scalp. The long ritual scar across his left cheek was raised and vivid, indicating that the incision had been made in early adulthood. His features were blunt, not the sharp, dark ones I was used to.
He was Terran, then. Most of us from Chogoris shared similar attributes: brown skin, oil-black hair worn long, wiry frames that bunched with muscle even before implantation boosted it further. That uniformity, so we had discovered, came from our lost origins as colonisers. The Terrans of the Legion, drawn from the cradle of our species long before the Crusade had come to us, were more diverse: some had flesh the colour of charred firewood, for others it was as pale as our armour.
‘Khan,’ he said, bowing.
‘Khan,’ I replied.
‘I am Torghun,’ he said, speaking in Khorchin. That did not surprise me; it had been the language of the Legion for the hundred and twenty years since the Master of Mankind had made himself known to us. The Terrans had always adopted it quickly, eager to take on the trappings of their newfound primarch. They found it easier to speak our language than we did theirs. I do not know why that was.
‘I am Shiban,’ I said, ‘of the Brotherhood of the Storm. By what are you known?’
Torghun hesitated for a moment, as if I had asked him something impolite or strange.
‘Of the Moon,’ he said.
‘Which moon?’ I asked, since the Khorchin term he used did not specify.
‘Terra only has one moon,’ he said.
Of course, I thought, chiding myself. I bowed again, anxious to ensure that a state of courtesy existed between us, whatever else might differ.
‘Then I am honoured to fight with you, Torghun Khan,’ I said.
‘The honour is mine, Shiban Khan,’ he said.
It was not long before we were moving again. Our brotherhoods travelled alongside one another, staying in the formations each of us had adopted prior to being brought together. My warriors adopted their arrowheads, his grouped into loose ranks. Other than that, there was not much to differentiate us.
I like to think that I noticed some minor disparities from the start – some subtle way in which they handled their bikes or carried themselves in the saddle – but in truth I am not sure I did. They were as competent as we were, and looked likely to be as deadly.
I and my minghan-keshig rode intermingled with Torghun and his, at my suggestion. I was determined that we should come to know a little of one another before we were thrown into action. We spoke to one another as we rode, shouting over the thudding of the jetbike engines, leaving the voxes off and enjoying the power of our natural voices. That came naturally to me, but Torghun initially seemed awkward with it.
As the plains roared away beneath us, blasted into clouds of white dust by the powerful backdraught of our machines, our conversation opened up a little.
‘Were you on Ullanor?’ I asked.
Torghun gave a dry smile, and shook his head. Ullanor had by then already become a badge of honour for the Legions involved; if you had not been a part of it, you needed a reason why.
‘On Khella, bringing it to compliance,’ he said. ‘Before that, though, we’d been on secondment with the Luna Wolves, so I’ve seen them fight.’
‘The Luna Wolves,’ I said, nodding with appreciation. ‘Fine warriors.’
‘We learned a lot from them,’ said Torghun. ‘They have interesting ideas on warfare, things we’d do well to study. I’ve become a believer in the secondment system – the Legions have grown too far apart. Ours in particular.’
I was surprised to hear him talking like that, but tried not to show it. As I saw matters, he had it backwards – if there was fault on anyone’s part for the V Legion’s isolation then it lay with those who overlooked us an
d pushed us to the margins. Why else were we on Chondax, chasing down the remnants of an empire that had long since ceased to be a threat to the Crusade? Would the Luna Wolves have taken on that work, or the Ultramarines, or the Blood Angels?
But I did not say any of that.
‘I am sure you are right,’ I said.
Torghun drew close alongside me then, narrowing the gap between our moving bikes to less than a metre.
‘Earlier, when you asked me what our designation was, I hesitated,’ he said.
‘I did not notice,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry for that. It was discourteous. It’s just… it has been a long time since we used those names. You know how it’s been – we’ve each of us been on our own for a long time.’
I held his gaze uneasily, not really understanding his intent.
‘There was no discourtesy.’
‘My men rarely call me khan. Most prefer “captain”. We’ve got used to being the 64th Company, the White Scars. It helps, to use those terms – the other Legions, for the most part, use them too. For a moment, I forgot the old designation. That’s all.’
I did not know whether I believed him.
‘Why the 64th?’ I asked.
‘It’s what we were given.’
I did not ask any more than that. I did not ask who had made that choice, or why. Perhaps I should have done then, but such things had never really interested me. The practicalities of war had always consumed me, the demands of the immediate, of the matter-at-hand.
‘Call yourself what you want,’ I said, smiling, ‘as long as you kill hain. That is all he will care about.’
Torghun looked relieved when I said that, as if something he’d worried about divulging had turned out, in the end, to be a minor matter.
‘So will he be there with us?’ he asked. ‘At the end?’
I looked away from Torghun and out to the horizon ahead. It was empty – an unbroken line of bright, cold nothingness. Somewhere, though, they were gathering to face us, to force the final battle for a world they had already lost.
