The Unremembered Empire
Page 1
The Horus Heresy
It is a time of legend.
The galaxy is in flames. The Emperor’s glorious vision for humanity is in ruins. His favoured son, Horus, has turned from his father’s light and embraced Chaos.
His armies, the mighty and redoubtable Space Marines, are locked in a brutal civil war. Once, these ultimate warriors fought side by side as brothers, protecting the galaxy and bringing mankind back into the Emperor’s light. Now they are divided.
Some remain loyal to the Emperor, whilst others have sided with the Warmaster. Pre-eminent amongst them, the leaders of their thousands-strong Legions are the primarchs. Magnificent, superhuman beings, they are the crowning achievement of the Emperor’s genetic science. Thrust into battle against one another, victory is uncertain for either side.
Worlds are burning. At Isstvan V, Horus dealt a vicious blow and three loyal Legions were all but destroyed. War was begun, a conflict that will engulf all mankind in fire. Treachery and betrayal have usurped honour and nobility. Assassins lurk in every shadow. Armies are gathering. All must choose a side or die.
Horus musters his armada, Terra itself the object of his wrath. Seated upon the Golden Throne, the Emperor waits for his wayward son to return. But his true enemy is Chaos, a primordial force that seeks to enslave mankind to its capricious whims.
The screams of the innocent, the pleas of the righteous resound to the cruel laughter of Dark Gods. Suffering and damnation await all should the Emperor fail and the war be lost.
The age of knowledge and enlightenment has ended. The Age of Darkness has begun.
~ DRAMATIS PERSONAE ~
On Macragge
Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the XIII Legion ‘Ultramarines’, Lord of the Five Hundred Worlds, now known as ‘the Avenging Son’
Drakus Gorod, Fief commander of the Invictus bodyguard
Maglios, Lieutenant, Invictus bodyguard
Valentus Dolor, Tetrarch of Ultramar (Occluda), Primarch’s Champion
Casmir, Captain, equerry to the tetrarch
Titus Prayto, Master of the Presiding Centuria, XIII Legion Librarius
Phratus Auguston, Chapter Master, Ultramarines First Chapter
Verus Caspean, Chapter Master, Second Chapter
Niax Nessus, Chapter Master, Third Chapter
Terbis, Captain
Thales, Captain
Menius, Sergeant, Ultramarines 34th Company
Zyrol, Sergeant, posted to Helion orbital plate
Leaneena, Deck officer, Helion orbital
Forsche, Consul of the senate
Tarasha Euten, August Chamberlain Principal
Vodun Badorum, Captain of the Praecental Guard, household division
Percel, Praecental Guard
Clenart, Praecental Guard
On Sotha
Barabas Dantioch, Warsmith of the Iron Warriors
Arkus, Sergeant, Ultramarines 199th Aegida Company
Oberdeii, Scout, Aegida Company
From the storm
Eeron Kleve, (rank deferred in mourning), X Legion ‘Iron Hands’
Sardon Karaashison, X Legion ‘Iron Hands’
Timur Gantulga, V Legion ‘White Scars’
Verano Ebb, Captain, Silence Squad, XIX Legion ‘Raven Guard’
Zytos, XVIII Legion ‘Salamanders’
Alexis Polux, Captain, 405th Company, VII Legion ‘Imperial Fists’
Faffnr Bludbroder, Watch-pack master, VI Legion ‘Space Wolves’
Malmur Longreach, Space Wolves watch-pack
Shockeye Ffyn, Space Wolves watch-pack
Kuro Jjordrovk, Space Wolves watch-pack
Gudson Alfreyer, Space Wolves watch-pack
Mads Loreson, Space Wolves watch-pack
Salick, ‘The Braided’, Space Wolves watch-pack
Biter Herek, Space Wolves watch-pack
Nido Knifeson, Space Wolves watch-pack
Bo Soren, ‘The Axe’, Space Wolves watch-pack
Aeonid Thiel, Sergeant, Ultramarines 135th Company
Narek, Former Vigilator, XVII Legion ‘Word Bearers’
Barbos Kha, Unburdened
Ulkas Tul, Unburdened
Lion El’Jonson, Primarch of the First Legion ‘Dark Angels’
Holguin, Voted lieutenant, Deathwing
Farith Redloss, Voted lieutenant, Dreadwing
Stenius, Captain and master of the Invincible Reason
Lady Theralyn Fiana, Navigator, House Ne’iocene
John Grammaticus, Perpetual
Damon Prytanis, Perpetual
Ushpetkhar, Neverborn
Sanguinius, Primarch of the IX Legion ‘Blood Angels’
Diverse other lords, potentates and commanders,
as the actions unfold
‘No man will ever be forgotten so long as he has children.’
– Konor, consular records
‘A capacity for the theoretical is admirable, but a stomach for the practical is priceless.’
– Roboute Guilliman, private writings
‘An ambition to save humanity is almost always a disguise for the desire to rule it.’
– attributed to the Panpacific tyrant Narthan Dume,
in the era of the Unification of Terra [M30]
1
First, the
Apparitions
‘Horatio says ‘tis but our fantasy,
And will not let belief take hold of him
Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us:
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us to watch the minutes of this night;
That if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes and speak to it.’
– from Amulet, Prince Demark (attributed to the
dramaturge Shakespire), circa M2
That phantoms should haunt Macragge, after all the horrors that had been recently visited upon the planet and the five hundred worlds it held in fealty, came as no surprise to anyone.
The population of Ultramar’s Five Hundred World dominion had suffered the atrocity of Calth, the gross treachery of Lorgar, the widespread bloodshed that followed in consequence, and the pan-galactic devastation of the so-named ‘Ruinstorm’. Every single one of those billions of souls was in a state of existential shock. The monumental events had left psychological scars, ghost wounds that lingered in the minds of men: combat traumas, griefs and private losses, physical injuries, bitternesses, grudges, stress disorders, warp-fuelled nightmares, and other, less-classifiable after-effects. Calth, the ignition point, barely more than two years past, had haunted the citizens of Ultramar with such phantoms ever since.
No, when the latest apparitions came, the only surprise was that they should be so very real.
Over ten successive nights, phantoms stalked the high towers and wall-walks of Macragge City, under the shadow of the Fortress, beneath a night sky that had been a permanent, star-less russet, like blood-soaked black cloth, since the coming of the Ruinstorm two years before.
No stars shone, none that looked healthy or matched any charts, at least. Even the brightest of the capital world’s four moons was seldom visible through the inky, cosmological swirl of the enduring warp storm. The corpse of the Word Bearers immense warship the Furious Abyss could sometimes be seen in the western skies as the orbital breakers went about their work, but this was merely a sad relic of past bloodshed. During the day, when sunlight fell upon Macragge, it fell only as a tarnished golden haze, as if through battlefield smoke.
It fell upon
a haunted city: Macragge City, Magna Macragge Civitas, the greatest city in the Imperial East, a city so mighty that it shared the name of the world it stood on, for the city was the world and the world was the city. Filling the vast lowland plains, from the Hera’s Crown peaks in the north to the sea in the south, it was a testament to the power of Imperial mankind, and to one man in particular.
The apparitions appeared only after nightfall. Footsteps were heard in empty corridors where no one walked; voices mumbled from inside block-cut walls or the roots of staircases; sometimes the sound of hasty, running feet rushed down deserted colonnades; once, an odd and mournful laugh was heard echoing through an odeon hall; most often came the aching melody of a bowed string instrument, playing in some cavernous place of eternal echoes.
These manifestations were heard by household guardsmen on night patrol, by cooks and servants, by attachés hurrying to late conferences, by cleaners and servitors, by senators coming to the Residency. They were heard everywhere, from the high Castrum of the Palaeopolis, where the Residency, High Senate and praecental barracks shared the castellated summit with the monolithic immensity of the Fortress of Hera, right down across the demes of the city to the lowliest insulae and worker-habs on the southern coast, from the labouring zones of the eastern wards, and even from the squalid slums beyond the Servian Wall in the west.
It is likely they had been occurring for several nights before they were first reported. Junior staffers and servants had become timid and superstitious in this new age of darkness, and were individually reluctant to speak up and tell their superiors what they thought they had heard in some lonely room or deserted wing.
The Lord of Macragge, the Avenging Son, had issued strict orders that all phenomena were to be reported, however.
‘We can’t trust the physical integrity of our universe, anymore,’ he told Euten. ‘Its laws no longer operate the way we think they operate. Everything that might once have been dismissed as a trick of the mind or a figment of the imagination must be taken seriously and investigated. The warp is reaching into us, mam, and we do not yet recognise half of the faces it wears. I will not be taken by surprise again. I will not be infiltrated.’
As I was at Calth. Those were the unspoken words at the end of the sentence. The Avenging Son could seldom bring himself to speak the name of that dear planet. Phantoms of his own haunted him.
Euten impressed the lord’s directive upon the staff of the Residency, and the public officers of the Civitas; but ironically it was she who, the very next night, heard a bowed instrument playing in a side chamber of the counting house where there was no player, no instrument, no bow, nor even the space or conditions to produce the echo that had accompanied the tune.
Stories accumulated for several nights after the chamberlain’s report. Spirits were abroad in Magna Macragge Civitas. Their range was wide, but the focus seemed to be the Residency, and the barracks and parklands adjacent to it. Vodun Badorum, captain of the praecental household guard, mobilised sweep parties to watch for occurrences, and record or even challenge them, and he also consulted with agents of the Astra Telepathica and the Mechanicum for advice and counsel.
The Lord of Macragge studied the reports as they came in, and sought the wisdom of his high officers and senior advisors, looking for explanations that could be grounded in science, or at least those parts of human science that lay adjacent to the unknowable laws of the warp.
He also summoned Titus Prayto, a supervising centurion of the XIII Legion’s newly reinstated Librarius. After Calth, and the hellish losses inflicted on the XIII by psychic warfare and warpcraft, the Lord of Macragge had effectively repealed the Edict of Nikaea, which had stringently outlawed the use of psykers within the Legiones Astartes. The Edict had been the will of the Emperor, and had been enforced as such. However, the Lord of Macragge felt it had deprived his Legion of its most effective weapon at Calth.
The repeal was his decision to make, and he made it with confidence. There were no brother primarchs to consult, no council to convene, no father to turn to. The Lord of Macragge, like the City of Macragge, stood alone in the night, besieged by storms that made communication impossible. The Lord of Macragge, Roboute Guilliman, was his own authority more than ever.
He overthrew the Edict, for the duration of the emergency at least, for the good of Ultramar. This exercise of authority was the action of a lord who believed that he wielded the power of the Emperor himself. Until now, only Malcador the Sigillite had been entrusted with such influence, and he had been the Imperial Regent.
And ‘regent’ was a word used aloud even less often, and with less ease, than was the word ‘Calth’.
Titus Prayto, a hooded giant in cobalt-blue Mark IV armour, came to the Residency directly from the Sacristy of the Librarius, which had been unlocked for use within the Fortress.
His lord awaited in a high chamber overlooking the city. The Avenging Son was working diligently at an antique cogitator. Nearby, his great granite desk was piled with papers and slates. The last rays of smoked gold sunlight shone through the tall, narrow windows. Night was encroaching.
Prayto lowered his psychic hood, unclasped his helm, and stood, respectfully bareheaded, helm tucked under his left arm, the clasps and seal-straps dangling.
‘Apparitions walk, Titus,’ Guilliman said, without looking up.
‘They do, my lord,’ Prayto said, and nodded.
‘Every night,’ Guilliman went on, ‘more footsteps. More muttering. And this music. The music is a recurring manifestation. A bowed instrument, or instruments.’
‘A psaltery, we think, my lord.’
Guilliman looked up at Prayto with piqued interest.
‘A psaltery?’
‘From the pitch and tone. A particular high and sharp resonance, though there may be more than one instrument. Some are deeper toned, though the note quality is the same. Perhaps meso or bass psalteries, which have larger sound-boxes.’
‘All this from verbal accounts?’ asked Guilliman.
‘No, my lord. Last evening a high-grade servitor in the pantry of the west dining room made a vox recording.’
Guilliman stood.
‘I had not been told. Do you have it?’
Prayto nodded and activated a vox-module clamped to his belt to play back the audio clip.
A few seconds of haunting, plaintive music played: thin, high, long notes that had an ethereal quality.
The clip ended.
‘Shall I play it again, my lord?’ asked Prayto.
Guilliman shook his head. His mind was such that one hearing was sufficient for him to process all particulars.
‘Assuredly a psaltery,’ he mused. ‘The melody was in the pitch of D, though I do not recognise the tune. So… it can be recorded.’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘This reassures me somewhat. A psychic intrusion, or some assault of the warp upon our imaginations would not leave a sonic fingerprint.’
‘No, my lord,’ replied Prayto. ‘We seem to be hearing physical sounds, transmitted to us somehow. It would explain why, between us, the Librarius and the Astra Telepathica have detected no trace of psychic activity whatsoever.’
Guilliman nodded. He was wearing the dark, heavy robes of a senator or consul, though cut to a different scale of being.
‘Be seated,’ he told Prayto, with a sidelong gesture.
Titus Prayto hesitated for a moment while he selected an appropriate place to sit down. The Lord’s Chamber was part of a suite of rooms in the upper level of the Residency, which, Prayto knew, had been the private accommodation of Konor, the primarch’s adoptive father. Lord Guilliman had changed very little of the decor. The walls were still hung with paintings of people and events that bore significance to the local history of Macragge, but had precious little to do with the greater, galactic narrative of the Imperium.
The main chang
e that Lord Guilliman had made in the decades he had occupied the Residency was to have most of the human-scaled furniture removed and replaced with objects built for a primarch’s dimensions: the desk, four chairs, a footstool, and a day bed. There were other items proportioned for the physicality of a Legiones Astartes battle-brother, and Prayto sat upon such a chair. The room, therefore, contained three magnitudes of furniture to provide for the Lord of Macragge and any of the advisors and subjects who might attend him. Positioned correctly, with one of the lord’s massive chairs in the foreground, a Legion-scaled item of furniture in the middle ground, and a chair for human build furthest away, it was possible to play amusing and impossible tricks upon the mind, as the apparent recession of the furniture suggested a distance in the room that the walls and ceiling denied. Reverse the positions and the room appeared to have no depth at all.
‘The echo,’ said Guilliman, returning to the ancient, brass-fitted cogitator on his oversized desk. Like the chamber, the cogitator was an inheritance from his stepfather, Konor. In the old days of Ultramar, before contact with the crusade fleets of Terra brought new technologies, Konor had effectively run the fiefdom from this room with that cold-gestalt instrument from the Golden Age of Technology.
‘The echo is part of the sound,’ Guilliman said. ‘This has been mentioned by several witnesses about several apparitions. The quality of the echo is not an acoustic product of the environment.’
‘No, lord,’ Prayto agreed. ‘The west dining room’s pantry would not produce an echo like that. I had it tested by the adepts of the Mechanicum.’
‘You did?’ asked Guilliman. ‘Why?’
‘Because I knew you would have ordered such a test if I had not.’
A brief, appreciative smile crossed the Avenging Son’s mouth.
‘We will solve this puzzle, Titus,’ Guilliman said.
‘We will, my lord. Assuredly.’
‘Bring all new data directly to me, day or night.’
‘I will, my lord.’
Prayto rose to his feet, sensing that his audience was ended. Guilliman noticed that the Librarian had been regarding, with some interest, books and data-slates piled on a side table.