by Dan Abnett
He raised his head, acknowledging Stenius, and looked at the main display. The light was astonishing: a beacon of some sort, a world thoroughly illuminated. His ship, miraculously, with all of its fleet in sequence behind it, was ploughing into a stellar system lit up by the greatest intergalactic lighthouse that he had ever seen.
The system was armed and defended. Already, challenges were coming in on all channels. He could read starforts heating up weapon banks on the strategium display, interplanetary bands of defence, mine-belts, gun-stations powering batteries, and interceptor fleets turning hard in response to the pulse of their abrupt arrival.
Of course they would. Of course they would react so urgently. What the huntsman was bringing with him was one of the greatest war-fleets in the Imperium; perhaps the greatest.
‘This isn’t the Terran Solar System,’ he said.
‘Not even slightly, my lord,’ replied Stenius. ‘It’s not even the Solar Segmentum.’
‘Answer me, now. Where is this?’ asked the huntsman. His voice was barely audible.
Lady Theralyn Fiana of House Ne’iocene, the flagship’s Navigator, stepped off the elevator platform from the navigation pit and approached the huntsman’s throne. The nephilla had much damaged her. Her withered form was supported on either side by her brothers Ardel Aneis and Khafan.
‘You are correct, lord,’ she said, in the whisper that was all she could manage. ‘This is not Terra, and that is not the light of the Astronomican. I cannot yet account for the presence or nature of the beacon, but it has drawn us out of the storm. It has done it in ways that–’
‘What do you say to me, lady?’ asked the huntsman.
Fiana shook her head.
‘I cannot explain, my lord,’ she whispered. ‘There is something at work here, some technology I cannot explain. Not psychic. Empathic. It is as though the light showed itself to us because it knew what we wanted. It knew where we wanted to be.’
‘Expand on this,’ the huntsman said.
‘Despite the storm, my lord,’ the Navigator whispered, ‘despite the turmoil of the warp, we have arrived precisely where it wanted us to be. This is Macragge. This is the heart system of Ultramar.’
The huntsman rose. He stared at the planet ahead of them.
‘By my father’s dead gods…’ he breathed.
‘Orders, my lord?’ asked Captain Stenius. ‘We are bombarded with challenges – vox, pict-feed, psychic and sub-vox. We have been target-locked by sixteen of the starforts and platform systems, and two of the three nearest intercept fleets are moving in to acquire firing solutions. They will start shooting very soon.’
He shrugged.
‘Of course, my lord,’ Stenius added in a more hushed tone, ‘our shields are raised. We can cut right through them. We can burn and splinter Macragge if you so wish. An order is all I require.’
The huntsman held out his left hand. ‘Vox,’ he said.
Servitors, gilded and cherubic, flew a master-vox horn into his grasp and braced it for him.
‘To my brother, Lord Guilliman,’ the huntsman said, ‘on all channels. I bid you welcome from afar. I wish to alight at Macragge and parlay with you. It is I, Roboute. It is the Lion. Respond.’
9
Traitor to
Mankind
‘Those who affect masks, and steal their way through shadows, and take the names of others as their own, are more deadly than any blooded warriors.’
– Gallan, On Espiel
‘The Lion?’ asked Warsmith Dantioch softly. ‘The Lion himself? Is it true?’
A degree of trial and error had allowed them to permanently stabilise the vision of Primary Location Alpha in the Chapel of Memorial, adjacent to the newly founded Library of Ptolemy in the Fortress. The chapel, now an oddly lustrous place thanks to the permanence of the Pharos link, was the site for all audiences with far-away Sotha.
‘The Lion himself, sir,’ Titus Prayto replied. ‘His fleet translated in-system just a few hours ago.’
‘So the Lion emerges,’ murmured Dantioch. ‘He comes to support Lord Guilliman, I trust?’
‘It would appear so, though he brings with him a fleet force of Dark Angels that might have split the planet in two,’ Prayto said.
It was a curious experience to be at once standing in a candle-lit chapel and looking into a gleaming, abyssal cave of the tuning floor.
‘So, he is our salvation,’ Dantioch said.
‘He is our hope,’ Prayto corrected. ‘It appears he has twenty thousand Dark Angels with him. That number could turn any tide.’
Prayto paused.
‘I sense unease in you, Titus. You greet me with today’s momentous news of the Lion’s arrival, but there is another reason for this conversation.’
‘You “sense”?’ Prayto replied with a quizzical smile.
‘Now, now, sir, I am no psyker,’ replied the warsmith. A heavy, high-backed seat had been set on the tuning floor so that Dantioch did not have to stand throughout the audiences. Some of his tactical conversations with Guilliman lasted for hours. The warsmith eased his position a little and succumbed to a rasping cough. ‘The quantum tuning of the Pharos device is empathic, and the more I use it, the more I am aware I can read demeanor. What do you hesitate from saying?’
‘Alexis Polux of the Imperial Fists has requested an audience with you, sir.’
Dantoich stiffened slightly as the hulking Imperial Fist stepped into the communication field beside Prayto and became visible. Polux had removed his helm. He gazed directly at Dantioch’s masked face.
‘Captain,’ said Dantioch.
‘Warsmith,’ Polux replied.
‘I have been advised of your actions in the Phall System, sir,’ said Dantioch. ‘I am used to the sons of loyal Legions regarding me with suspicion, but I imagine you have more cause to distrust me than most.’
‘I reserve judgement,’ replied Polux.
‘This means of communication,’ Dantioch said, ‘as I was reminding the Librarian, enhances empathic vibrations. You hate me. I can feel it.’
‘I have not quite done killing Iron Warriors, sir,’ Polux replied.
‘I am quite sure the Iron Warriors have not done killing Imperial Fists, either,’ Dantioch said, ‘but I stand apart from their actions. Do not judge me by–’
‘Sir,’ said Polux, ‘Primarch Guilliman has asked me to assist in the provision of security and fortification for Macragge and its system. I have made it my business to personally inspect all potential flaws and weaknesses.’
‘You feel that I am a weakness?’ asked Dantioch.
‘Your Legion has turned,’ said Polux, ‘yet you are here, charged no less with the control of a device at once vital to Ultramar’s survival and yet technologically still a mystery. That is a dangerous combination. The navigational viability of the Five Hundred Worlds is entrusted to a man who might be an enemy. How better to undermine the fortress of Ultramar than to get inside, and gain a position of trust and vast responsibility? I would know if this is your siegecraft, purposed to bring Lord Guilliman’s domain down.’
‘You are direct at least,’ said Dantioch, ‘but if you learn to read the tuning field’s vibrations, you will see my true intent well enough. Besides, if I had been seeking to undermine Ultramar, captain, it would have fallen already.’
‘You seek to distance yourself from your traitor-kin,’ said Polux. He pointed at Dantioch with his crimson, grafted hand. ‘That mask is not helping.’
Dantioch’s iron mask was fashioned to resemble the emblem of the IV Legion.
‘The mask hides nothing, Polux,’ said Dantioch, ‘and it does not come off. Rather than reminding you of my association and origin, it should remind you how far some will go to remain loyal. This tells you something about mettle, sir. This mask shows you that some men will wear a badge of shame forever,
so that no one forgets the bonds they have broken in order to remain true.’
Dantioch slowly rose to his feet.
‘The Imperial Fists and the Iron Warriors, Polux,’ he said, sadly. ‘Let us not debate, let us simply agree that of all the Legiones Astartes, they are the greatest in warcraft, the finest exponents of fortification, either of building defences or of overwhelming them. Together, sir, with our talents and vast experience pooled, we can make Macragge impregnable.’
He coughed again, looked to his side and took up a data-slate from the heavy arm of his seat. His gauntleted hand shook slightly at the effort.
‘Now that the Pharos is operational,’ he said, ‘I have been giving time to the consideration of defence in the Macragge system. Speculation, really. Some suggestions. A number of integrated schemes that might work well.’ He looked at Polux. ‘This might be the way to prove my loyalty to you, captain.’
‘How?’
‘We talk,’ said Dantioch. ‘Every day, if necessary. I share every plan and idea I have with you. Every secret of my warcraft, including concepts the Iron Warriors have regarded as private lore since their foundation. I will betray my traitor-kin, captain. I will tell you all of my secrets, until you see through this mask and believe that only a truly loyal warrior could give up so much.’
Guilliman finished reading the report, and then looked at Euten.
‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ he asked.
‘You needed rest. Besides your injuries, you spent too long drinking that foul brew with the heathens last night.’
‘Mjod is… an interesting concoction,’ Guilliman agreed. ‘As for the Wolves, I like their honesty. I like much less battle-brothers who hide their intentions and make guile a weapon.’
‘Battle-brothers in general?’ Euten asked. ‘Or one in particular?’
‘I am thinking of one brother especially,’ said Guilliman.
He rose from his day bed.
‘Is it really the Lion?’ he asked.
‘In such strength,’ she replied, ‘that he could have been a serious threat, had he not come peacefully.’
‘Of all of them… Why did it have to be him who found a way through the storm?’ Guilliman whispered.
Euten pretended she had not heard. She waited patiently.
‘I admire him,’ Guilliman said, more audibly, looking at his stoic chamberlain. ‘Throne, who wouldn’t? It’s impossible not to admire him. But there is always a shadow on him. He dwells in secrets, he plays his cards too close, and he walks by himself when he pleases. There is… too much of the wild forest in him. He should be as noble as any of my beloved brothers, but we have never been close, and there is too much about him that is sly. This will be an interesting reunion. I wonder what agenda brings him all the way to Ultramar.’
‘It could be nothing more sinister than shelter from the warp,’ replied Euten. ‘You’ll find out. The Lion is coming. I suggest you put on full plate and welcome him in a manner that befits his eminence. Any loyal son, you said. Well, one has come to you out of the storm.’
In the opinion of most rational observers, the Primarch of the First Legion Dark Angels was the most potent and potentially dangerous individual to visit Macragge since its illumination.
There was another strong candidate for that title, however, though his arrival was rather more clandestine.
Sometimes, he used the name John.
The immigration halls of the Helion orbital plate were vast, but now they were overcrowded and had begun to smell. Helion was the outermost grav-adjusted hard anchorage circling Macragge, and the largest and oldest of all the capital world’s orbital plates. Battleships, bulk carriers, barges and gross tenders clung to the edges of it like piglets to a sow’s teats.
Macragge, a gleaming grey marble whorled with white cloud, rolled slowly beneath the floating island.
John had been trying to find a way off the Helion plate since he’d arrived there six days before.
‘This is cruel! Cruel, I tell you!’ sobbed Maderen, holding her hungry baby against her neck. She was twenty-one, Terran standard. Her baby – John forgot the name of the poor thing, but knew he could fetch it out of her mind in a moment if he had to – had been born aboard the filthy refugee ship from Calth. The newborn’s father, an Army regular in one of the Numinus regiments, had died back on Calth, and had never seen his son. He had never even known he was going to have a son.
Maderen was marked, a sunburn blush on the right side of her pretty face. The child was marked too, John noticed. An extra toenail on the underside of the second toe, left foot. The Mark of Calth, legacies of a biome corrupted by toxins, munition dust, heavy metals and solar radiation.
‘Cruel,’ she whispered, subsiding.
‘I know it is,’ John said, soothing her. He could smell the stale odours of his own body, and the reek of the hall around them. There was crying and wailing everywhere, echoed by the orbital’s unforgiving acoustics.
‘What is Guilliman thinking?’ asked old Habbard. He coughed, shaking his head. ‘I thought he was a kind king, a noble man. But he keeps us penned like animals.’
‘I thought he was a warrior,’ grumbled the sulking youth, Tulik. ‘Some warrior. He let Calth get scoured to ashes.’
‘Come on, hush, all of you,’ John said. ‘We’ve all been through hard times. Our beloved primarch… and let’s be respectful, shall we, old man?’
John looked at Habbard, who shrugged and nodded in apologetic agreement.
‘Our noble primarch,’ John went on, putting his hand on old Habbard’s shoulder to reassure him, ‘he’s been through a hard time too. He’s hounded here. Enemies at his door. I’m sure he’s doing his best to look after us all.’
‘This is his best?’ Maderen asked.
‘I was talking to the guards, last shift,’ John said.
‘Guards, now? Guards, is it? Why would they have to guard us, poor damned victims in all this?’ Habbard asked.
‘Shhhh, now, old fella,’ said John.
He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, and edged up the persuasion in his psyk.
‘Enemies at the door,’ he told them, the wide-eyed circle of desperate refugees crowded into the corner of the gloomy hall. ‘The guards are as much for our benefit as anything. These are bad times, we all know that. Bad, dark times. God knows, an age of darkness. Security’s tight. It’s got to be. They want to let us down to the welcome camps in the city, but they have to hold us here while they check us out. Check identities. Confirm our status as metics.’
‘Metics?’ Tulik asked.
‘Resident aliens,’ John said. ‘It’ll be a temporary classification until we are assigned full citizenship. Anyway, they’re using the orbitals as way stations, to process us as we come in. That’s what the guards told me last shift, okay?’
Some of them smiled because they were reassured. Some of them smiled at the comfort of his odd vocabulary, the ‘okay’ thing. Some of them smiled because he had managed a subtle adjustment of their amygdalae.
‘Please,’ said Maderen, ‘can’t you talk to them again, Oll?’
‘Okay,’ he said.
He trudged up the grilled staircase to the main landing deck. He heard moans and complaints from below as the ghostly blue light of the ultraviolet sterilising lamps came on. Every few hours, the lamps bathed the holding halls in a radiance that made everyone feel nauseous. The ultraviolet wash was meant to keep them clean of lice and bacteria.
He fought to hold back the misery of the thirty thousand refugees in the deck pens below. The weight of it could easily unbalance a mind as sensitive as his.
Yet coming up was harder still. On the main deck, he was obliged to contend with the constant pain of the Thallax guards. The towering Mechanicum meat-borgs watched over the entire yard area, brutal and spare, glowering like butcher-birds, stridin
g around on piston-limbs.
John wasn’t sure what was harder to handle, the empathy or the knowledge. He hated the psykana backwash of the Thallaxii. He could smell their pain. He could feel and see that behind every polished, blank faceplate was a human skull, with its spinal column still attached, screaming in agony, neurally threaded to the unforgiving steel frame that it wore.
He also knew why the orbital was being guarded by a Thallax-heavy retinue, however, and that fact was difficult to deal with. He could read the order sequence plainly in their howling, fizzling brains.
The plate had been staffed by Mechanicum automata with a skeleton staff of Ultramarines supervisors in case it had to be sacrificed at short notice. Helion could be auto-destructed with a minimum loss of Legiones Astartes.
‘Return below!’ the nearest of the Thallaxii commanded, pistoning towards him, pneumatics puffing, weapons cycling.
‘I want to talk to the officer in charge,’ John said.
‘Identify yourself,’ the automaton said.
‘You know me, Khee-Eight Verto. We talked just a while ago,’ he said.
‘Accessing records,’ the machine replied, hesitating.
‘What’s the problem here?’ asked the bay supervisor, approaching them. The supervisor was an Ultramarines sergeant. John hot-read him in a flash. Ambitious.
‘Sir, I was just asking about waiting times and conditions,’ John said.
The Ultramarine looked down at him. Helm off, the warrior was oddly out of proportion, a too-small head on a too-big body.
‘What’s your name?’ asked the Ultramarine.
‘Oll Persson,’ said John. He’d been wearing his old friend’s identity ever since he’d joined the refugee ship during a stop-over at Occluda. Oll was an easy role to play. He’d been a farmer on Calth after all, and his name would be on the population lists. It was easier to play an old friend. There were fewer cover details to remember.
‘You’ve come from Calth?’ asked the Ultramarines sergeant. Zyrol, John read. His name was Zyrol.
