Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero

by Graham McNeill

'Don't you?'

  Atharva had to admit he was tempted to give way before Hathor Maat's insistence. To be the discoverer of a relic from before Old Night, from the Golden Age of Exploration itself, would be a great honour.

  A distant tremor rocked the ground. Dust and steel pipework fell into the shaft.

  'Come on, Atharva,' said Hathor Maat. 'Who knows how long this place will last? We have to go in.'

  Though he was loath to proceed without the proper protocols and equipment in place, Atharva knew they had no choice.

  'Very well,' he said at last. 'We will open it.'

  They both took hold of the locking bar, its metal smooth and cold to the touch. The edges of the hatch had been welded shut, the line of the seam ragged and uneven, as though done in great haste.

  Atharva flexed his fingers on the bar, an artefact that had been forged thousands of years ago by men who knew nothing of the great expansion their efforts would precede.

  A moment such as this ought to be savoured.

  'Ready?' said Hathor Maat.

  'I am,' replied Atharva, and despite his dislike of the legionary, he was elated like a neophyte on his first excavation.

  'Pull!' said Hathor Maat.

  They hauled the locking bar, and legionary strength and psychic power vied with the resistance of the welded seam in a one-sided battle. Atharva's Pyrae focus weakened the fusion bonds of the weld, as Hathor Maat altered his biochemistry and muscle density to exert greater power. The seam gave way moments later, cracking where the locking bolts would sit.

  A sulphurous breath of pressurised air vented from the opening as they swung the hatch wide on protesting hinges. A groaning sound, as of ancient metal settling, echoed from deep within the starship.

  'I am a fool,' said Atharva, instantly waxy. 'This is no relic, and this is no excavation site.'

  'What do you mean?'

  He pointed to the exposed lock mechanisms of the hatch. 'Someone was in a great hurry to seal this hatch behind them. Why? The air inside is under pressure, which means this place still has power.'

  'Why would someone do that?' said Hathor Maat.

  'I do not know,' said Atharva. 'But let us think logically. The presence of this shaft and the structure overhead tells me that someone discovered this ship long ago. They must have already explored it, but why seal the hatch?'

  'Maybe they finished their exploration?'

  'Even so, why weld the hatch shut?'

  'Contamination?'

  'Perhaps, but it is probably safe to assume that any pathogens within will be long dead.'

  Hathor Maat laughed, picking up on Atharva's enthusiasm for exploration. 'You want to go in as much as I do, don't you?'

  'Yes,' admitted Atharva.

  'Well, now we definitely need to get inside.'

  Six

  LEVIATHAN RISES • IDLE HANDS • HAMMER OF THE GODS

  Tensions were high in Calaena's orbital command centre. The moment Vashti had been planning for the last six days had finally arrived. She chewed the inside of her mouth, glanding a mixture of stimms and mood-stabilisers almost non-stop as the plates of the windows vibrated with powerful gravitic waves from the landing fields.

  'Come on, come on, come on…' she muttered under her breath for the tenth time in the last two minutes. 'Lift, damn you, lift.'

  The monster of steel that was the subject of her imprecations sat in a haze of distortion, making it difficult to see whether or not her words were having any effect.

  'A little respect might help,' offered Magos Rom from the centre of her entoptic sphere of data light. 'The Machine knows all. The Machine hears all.'

  'Fine,' snapped Vashti. 'Lift, damn you, lift. Please.'

  'Not quite what I had in mind, but it will have to do.'

  'It's all I've got, Tessza,' said Vashti.

  Her every nerve and sinew was bowstring-taut. All of her staff were fixated on their data-slates, watching for signs of trouble in the launch. Tens of thousands of vital elements needed to go right for the Lux Ferem to get off the ground, and only one had to go wrong for the launch to fail.

  Then… it happened. The ship and the ground parted company.

  The console nearest her chirruped, indicating sufficient height had been gained to engage the platform repulsors.

  'Yes,' said Vashti. 'Kick the platforms to negative four-gee, increasing to ten-gee in twenty-second increments.'

  She glanced over at the tension ratio in the tug cables.

  'Increase thrust on the tugs four points. They need to lift smooth as glass or they'll tear loose.'

  'Yes, commander,' said Korinna Moreno, transmitting the order from her station by flicking a series of a mother-of-pearl switches. 'Order sent.'

  'Airspace clear?'

  'Clear,' answered Moreno and an exhausted cheer went up. Hands were shaken, backs were slapped and tearful embraces given. Vashti smiled and her chin sank to her chest as she let out a relieved breath. She wiped the back of her hand over her forehead.

  'Right, people,' she said. 'I want everyone to stay sharp - we're not done yet. This old girl's just stretched her wings, but we still need to see her all the way.'

  The chatter died down a little and Vashti walked to the edge of the command centre, peering down onto the platforms through the vibrating armourglass.

  No matter how many times she laid eyes on it, the colossal scale of the Lux Ferem still defied comprehension. The hard vacuum of the void was this vessel's natural home, not the crushing gravity of a planet. Though she knew it was possible and - according to her command centre's instruments - was actually happening, common sense told Vashti it should be impossible for something of such inhuman scale to achieve escape velocity.

  And yet it had. She could see it right in front of her.

  Vashti laughed in delight and hammered a fist on the glass.

  'Yes, damn it! You're actually flying, you beautiful girl!'

  A shadow was forming beneath the colossal starship, a black footprint on Morningstar's surface, with radiating lines from the tug fleet helping to drag the ship's unimaginable mass into the sky. Under normal circumstances, the Lux Ferem's engines would be fully capable of lifting it into orbit, but with every hold packed to the gunwales with evacuees and supplies to keep them alive, the old girl needed a little help.

  Vashti's eyes drifted from the rising leviathan to the hordes of frightened people still waiting behind lines of demarkation and strategically deployed groups of Space Marines. An augmetic implant in her right eye did a swift calculation based on how many people they'd managed to get away and how many remained. She factored in projected loading times, number of civilian ships available and the Magos Geologicus' best estimate of the time Morningstar had left.

  She came up short, and her delight at the Lux Ferem's imminent departure evaporated. She didn't have enough ships to carry everyone to safety.

  'So many people are going to be left behind,' she said.

  She remembered the briefing where the grim-faced titan who led the Iron Warriors had spoken of the unavoidable loss of life the evacuation would incur. He spoke as if people were simply statistics, but by the end of his briefing - even through his stoically logical facade - she felt his genuine regret. Vashti told herself she could deal with it. They couldn't save everyone.

  Saving some was better than saving none.

  But seeing just how many would never escape Morningstar, she wasn't sure she could ever forgive herself for leaving them to die.

  Could anyone?

  * * *

  The heavily laden Stormbird followed the coast northwards towards Calaena, keeping beneath dashing atmospherics that, more and more, were sounding like screaming. Morningstar was entering its last days and howled its pain on the wind.

  Magnus tried to shut it out, but even with his eye closed and his senses blunted, he could still hear the psychic echoes of the world's doom. His flesh shimmered with heat as the alchemy wrought by the Emperor's gene-wrights worked mir
acles within his flesh to renew him. The damage was extensive, more than he had ever suffered before, so he tried to hang on to how it felt.

  More than that, he still carried the immense power he had drawn from Morningstar's volatile heart. It simmered just beneath his skin, potent and seething with the desire to be unleashed. He kept it locked within, chained like suppressed rage or a buried secret. Such power needed to be released slowly, like a deep-sea diver decompressing on his way to the surface.

  The process would be painful, agonisingly so, but Magnus had borne worse before and endured. Teeth gritted against the repercussive pain filling his bones with broken glass, he let his gaze roam the Stormbird's interior.

  A hundred or more bloodied survivors pulled from the wreckage of Attar packed the troop compartment alongside weary, dust-covered legionaries. Mortal and transhuman sat side by side on bulkhead benches or slumped upon the swaying deck plates, their auras sapped of vitality.

  His warriors had driven themselves to the very edge of their abilities in Attar, employing every aspect to save as many of its people as they could. Every one of them would be changed by what they had seen and done.

  Magnus had never been more proud of his sons than now.

  To see such devastation and to take in such innocence lost was difficult for all of them, Magnus especially. His sons were suffering and he could not help them. Not this time.

  Helplessness was anathema to him. When he had last felt this way he had made a decision he always knew might haunt him in years to come. Today was not that day, but seeing his sons bloodied and all but broken sent a tremor of unease through his furnace-hot body.

  He opened his eye as the sound of roaring engines screamed past the Stormbird. From the tone and pitch, he identified promethium-based ramjets, most likely a Primaris Thunderbolt fighter squadron. An escort for the governor, perhaps, or additional protection despatched by Perturabo?

  Neither, it seemed, for the jets roared onwards to Calaena.

  Magnus glanced towards the rear of the Stormbird's troop compartment, where Konrad Vargha was being treated. The man was weeping and incoherent with pain. His legs were extensively damaged, but thanks to Magnus' intervention, he would likely keep them. The governor's survival was miraculous, and while it had been brave of him to venture out into Attar, his duty was in Calaena, putting a human face on the sacrifices necessary to save as many of Morningstar's inhabitants as possible.

  But Magnus could not fault a leader willing to dirty his hands in order to save those he loved.

  Ahriman barged through the crowds, pushing his senses into the throng of refugees. He had not the time for simply skimming thoughts. Instead he punched through the flimsy mental barriers mortals wove around their minds, which they believed impervious.

  Everyone who met his gaze fell back, crying out as he tore into their thoughts for signs of the treachery he had seen. Men and women dropped to their knees, screaming and clutching their skulls in pain.

  Who will it be? From where will they strike?

  He pushed deep into the crowds, scattering them like herd animals with an apex predator in their midst. He spread his psychic net wide, seeking one path among millions that might lead to the vision he had seen, a fleeting trace of future echoes in the thoughts of tens of thousands.

  'Where are you?' he muttered.

  Forrix followed him through the crowds, bolter ready to take out any threat the instant it was revealed to him.

  'Anything?' he demanded. 'Give me a target.'

  'I don't have one.'

  'Find one.'

  'One mind among so many…' said Ahriman, taking deep breaths, but trying to calm himself in the face of such desperation was all but impossible.

  'It will not be one mind,' said Forrix.

  'What?'

  'What you saw - it will not be one mind, it will be many.'

  'How can you know that?' said Ahriman, turning on the spot.

  'What you described was too devastating and too complex for one person. There will be others helping whoever is going to do this. Seek connections and you will find them.'

  Ahriman took a calming breath, using the cantrips of the lower Enumerations to balance his humours. Forrix was right: an operation of this magnitude would take numerous individuals to execute, with many moving parts and traitors within the very institutions set up to protect these civilians.

  The scale of such treachery was hard to fathom.

  He nodded and curled his fingertips together, one palm above the other.

  'Seek not the psychneuein,' he said. 'Follow the threads of its mind web, and you will be led to the host.'

  'What's that?'

  'An old cautionary tale of Prospero,' said Ahriman, turning to face Forrix. He put a hand on the Iron Warrior's shoulder guard and looked him square in the eye.

  'I need you to watch over me, Forrix,' he said.

  'What do you mean?'

  'To do what I need to do, I need to detach an element of my psychic awareness. My consciousness will be… elsewhere. That will leave my body vulnerable, so I ask that you protect it.'

  'I don't know exactly what that means, but I swear no harm will come to you while I watch over you,' promised Forrix.

  'Thank you, my friend,' said Ahriman. 'You honour me.'

  'Go,' said Forrix. 'Find them and stop them.'

  Ahriman nodded, then let slip the bindings of flesh and soared into the sky.

  Perhaps a hundred metres of clear air separated the Lux Ferem from the ground. Vashti was trying not to hold her breath as it climbed. Every metre from the surface was a victory that saw every life aboard it closer to safety. Its vast bulk shivered like a newborn taking its first steps. The glowing repulsor plates on its belly were hazed with building energy.

  'Altitude?' she asked, unable to take her eyes from the struggling vessel.

  'One hundred and sixty metres,' said Korinna Moreno. 'Rising at a rate of ten metres a second.'

  'Come on,' said Vashti, chewing her bottom lip and running the numbers in her head. Tessza Rom beat her to it.

  'The Lux Ferem needs at least five hundred metres of clear air before she can safely engage her ventral repulsors,' said Magos Rom.

  'I know that, Tessza,' said Vashti.

  'And even that is much lower than I would recommend.'

  'Two hundred metres,' said Moreno. 'High enough.'

  Before Vashti could correct Moreno, the noospheric globe of light around Tessza Rom flickered an ugly red as eight unauthorised contacts entered her tightly controlled airspace.

  'Who the hell…?' Vashti said, turning her attention to the icons flickering to life at the edge of her panel.

  'Fast movers,' said Rom. 'Coming in from the south. Transponders identify them as a Primaris squadron. Thunderbolts, previously based in Attar.'

  'What the hell are they doing here?' swore Vashti. 'I don't have space for a drop pod, let alone a whole squadron of cocksure aviators. Vox the squadron lead and tell him to get out of my airspace!'

  'I am trying,' said Tessza, data light swirling around her station. 'No reply.'

  'Throne, are they blind or just stupid?' said Vashti. 'Attar might be gone, but I don't have space to land a jetbike here.'

  She snatched up the vox-horn and dialled into the frequency displayed on the transponder read-outs.

  'Primaris Lead, be advised you are entering a highly volatile, controlled airspace,' she said, struggling to remain calm even as she watched the icons of the fighters drawing closer. 'Alter your heading immediately. Do not approach the exclusion zone around Calaena space port You are not cleared to enter, and I am authorised to employ deadly force to keep my airspace just the way I want it.'

  Static was her only answer. The Thunderbolts kept coming, so she pressed the vox-switch again.

  'Thunderbolts Primaris, I say again, alter your heading immediately. A boundary line of three kilometres exists around this location. If you violate that you will be fired upon. This is your final war
ning.'

  The vox crackled with connection static.

  'Finally,' said Vashti.

  'Hail Shaitan!' said Primaris Lead.

  'What was that?' said Vashti. 'Say again, Primaris Lead?'

  'He said, 'Hail Shaitan',' said Korinna Moreno, standing and disconnecting from her cogitator bank as if leaving at the end of a work rotation.

  'What are you doing, Korinna?' said Vashti. 'Link back into your station.'

  Moreno did not answer. Instead, she spread wide her arms.

  Her porcelain-smooth augmetic limb unfolded with machine precision to reveal wads of tightly packed fyceline. In her other hand, she held a detonator.

  'Korinna, what—' began Vashti.

  'Hail Shaitan!' said Moreno, pressing the detonator's trigger.

  In a blazing explosion of white fire and fury, Calaena's orbital command centre went dark.

  Forrix had no clear idea what to expect, but he knew the exact moment Ahriman's presence left his body. The legionary of the Thousand Sons went stiff, his muscles locking him in position. Panicked crowds milled in confusion, shrouded in the shadow of the mighty starship as it fought for altitude. The ordered columns in which they had been made to march through the city were broken, and frightened faces looked to him for direction.

  'Get down on your knees,' said Forrix, knowing that keeping people static was likely the best option for now. 'And stay down until an Iron Warrior tells you to get back up.'

  Those people nearest to him complied instantly. The rest followed suit in concentric waves, making Forrix feel like he stood at the epicentre of their devotion. The notion briefly amused him until the ever-widening circle of kneeling refugees revealed an approaching column of Army vehicles that had no business being this close to the loading zones.

  Four Praetors and two Hydra flak tanks.

  The presence of such armoured vehicles within the precincts of a space port was entirely normal; each was specifically designed to engage aerial enemies. But such mobile artillery was usually deployed towards the perimeter of a defended zone.

  The anti-aircraft tanks ground to a halt, and Forrix's unease grew as he watched their crews begin bracing protocols.

  In readiness to fire.