Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero

by Graham McNeill

  Magnus shrugged and said, 'We are warriors, Perturabo. Who among us can make such a promise?'

  Perturabo released him and turned back to the screen.

  'Heroic as it was, we are now faced with the burdensome task of recalculating the tally on who yet remains to be evacuated from Morningstar.'

  'Are you saying I shouldn't have saved the Lux Ferem?'

  'Not at all - we came here to save lives.'

  'Then I do not understand.'

  Perturabo called up a view of Calaena's port facilities. The Lux Ferem lay shattered across the landing platforms, its keel split and gaping wounds in the hull exposing the vessel's iron guts. Mechanicum breaker units under the direction of the wounded Tessza Rom swarmed the ship, cutting it apart like oceanic hunters harvesting a slaughtered leviathan.

  'You saved the ship, but its wreckage now blocks fully a third of Calaena's platforms,' said Perturabo. 'Mistress Eshkol informs me it will take at least four days to render them usable again, and even with the newly constructed landing facilities beyond the city walls, my best estimate predicts only a third of those who boarded the mass-conveyor will escape.'

  Magnus was appalled. 'So even though I saved the Lux Ferem, most of the people it carried will still die?'

  'Regrettably so. We have not the ship assets nor, as it turns out, the time to save them.'

  'But we had months before Morningstar became unstable.'

  'We did. Now we do not.'

  'Were your calculations in error?'

  A flash of irritation crossed Perturabo's face. 'They were not. Something fundamental has changed.'

  'How is that possible?'

  'I do not know. See for yourself.'

  The primarch of the Iron Warriors swept away the image of the Lux Ferem's hulk and replaced it with a wavering hololithic image of Morningstar. Innumerable cyclone-like storms swirled over the sphere's volume, growing and multiplying with terrifying speed and ferocity. Their motion was unpredictable, each changing direction at random, joining with others or breaking apart into hyper-violent local tempests.

  'These are Morningstar's geomagnetic field patterns,' said Perturabo, rotating the globe with deft swipes of his palm.

  Magnus studied the patterns shifting over the globe. The motion of the undulating storm fronts and magnetic dissonance put him in mind of a deep and turbulent ocean. The normal flow of energy around the planet was hideously disrupted, and patterns that ought to be regular and unidirectional were jagged and inconstant.

  And yet…

  Magnus stepped closer to the command table, shifting the lambent globe and drinking in the information. He let the ebb and flow of the magna-storms wash over him.

  'I see something,' he said, trying not to let the elusive thought slip away. 'Something in the depths of the flow, something unnatural Magnus shifted his mind into the fourth Enumeration, the realm of abstraction, coaxing revelation instead of forcing it into the light. Something in the evolution of the growth patterns shared by the storms felt awry, as though it were governed by an equation so complex, so fractal, it was all but invisible.

  'This is not random,' he said, now seeing the beauty underpinning it all. 'The patterns move like music or deep ocean currents, but they are not the result of natural interactions. The source of these storms is man-made.'

  'Man-made?' said Perturabo. 'Someone did this deliberately?' Magnus nodded, seeing more of the pattern emerge as the grammar of the storms coalesced in his mind.

  'If Magos Tancorix can develop an inverse algorithm capable of breaking down the mathematics of these flows…'

  'We can find the source,' finished Perturabo.

  Wind-driven rain fell in torrential sheets over the platforms atop the Sharei Maveth, lashing the hulls of the two Stormbirds, one gunmetal grey, the other vivid crimson. Lingering propellant fumes choking the upper atmosphere made the rain pitch black and mildly acidic. Portions of the gunships' hulls were streaked where the paint was thinnest.

  'It looks like Morningstar is stripping them of their identity,' said Ahriman.

  'But no such damage is accruing to your war-plate, brother,' said Phosis T'kar, cupping his hands and letting them fill with dark rain that looked like oil.

  Ahriman looked down at his armour and saw that Phosis T'kar was right. Even in the gloom of the oncoming storm and the flickering lightning, the hue of his plate was still vividly crimson.

  'I will try to take that as a positive sign,' he said, trying not read anything into this peculiarity.

  'You should,' advised Phosis T'kar. 'You have become too glum of late, Ahzek. We are almost done with this place, and soon we will be back on the Crusade, doing the Emperor's work!'

  Phosis T'kar stood and let the rain fall from his palms. He rubbed his gauntlets together as if washing his hands. Ahriman turned his head to the sky and the coruscating atmosphere.

  A planet-wide lightning storm was brewing, the sky blazing in all directions as if a distant conflagration were slowly closing on the city like a noose. Ahriman knew that wasn't literally true, but as a metaphor it was perfectly apt.

  'This is how a planet ought to meet its end,' said Phosis T'kar. 'Fighting to the last and raging at its extinction.'

  'I have had my fill of worlds ending,' said Ahriman. 'We embarked on this endeavour to save the Emperor's realm, not to watch it die.'

  'Not every world can be saved,' said Phosis T'kar. 'Maybe not every world deserves to be saved.'

  Ahriman rounded on Phosis T'kar. 'What do you mean by that?'

  The Raptora adept shrugged. 'This planet's roots are weak. The Imperium should not be built on worlds whose foundations are crumbling.'

  'And who would make that decision?' asked Ahriman. 'You?'

  'Why not? Are we not the foremost Legion in intellect? Do we not divine the future? If we cannot know better than any other which worlds will provide good footings for the Emperor's dominion, then who else can? Would you trust them?'

  Phosis T'kar nodded in the direction of the Iron Warriors, giants with reflected bolts of lightning glittering upon their armour. Before Ahriman could answer, his mouth filled with the taste of blood and ash, of melting glass and steel. The recurring image of rain falling in endless sheets sent a jolt of horror through him, a sense of foreboding so strong it all but overwhelmed him.

  Perturabo conferred with his Techmarines as his warriors boarded their Stormbird, and Ahriman's gaze was drawn inexorably to Forrix, a warrior who had been as good as dead and ready for interment in a Dreadnought sarcophagus until Ahriman's unchecked power had healed him. The only sign of the warrior's near death was a slight limp, but Ahriman saw a dark halo wreathing him, an effect that ancient shamans had known and feared as a death mark.

  Could any of his brothers see it? Or was this merely an echo of the vision he had seen of the monstrous destiny ahead of Forrix?

  He turned away, the sight of the Iron Warrior stirring a bone-deep nausea within him.

  'Is something wrong?' asked Phosis T'kar.

  'What?'

  'Your weapon.'

  Ahriman looked down and saw he had his hand on the grip of his bolter. He eased his finger carefully from the trigger.

  'Apologies, brother,' he said, wishing to make light of the lapse in weapon discipline. 'Ever since the attack on the Lux Ferem, my seersight has me jumping at shadows.'

  'Good. That's your survival instinct kicking in,' replied Phosis T'kar. 'One of those shadows might be dangerous.'

  Ahriman nodded, already well aware that Forrix was something supremely dangerous, even if he could not yet understand how.

  He let out a breath and forced himself to look away.

  XV Legion Techmarines tended the hull of Magnus' gunship, prepping it for a flight into hostile atmospherics. They fitted deflection conductors, ceramite insulators and ablative plates over sensitive components that could be burned out by a rogue electromagnetic burst.

  'We're ready,' said Phosis T'kar, standing taller and pushing
out his chest as Magnus emerged from the belly of the Stormbird. The primarch conferred briefly with his Techmarines, then nodded and waved them aboard.

  The Thousand Sons marched onto the gunship, twenty-five in all, and swiftly took their assigned seats along its up-armoured fuselage. Ahriman and Phosis T'kar were the last to board and were standing on the embarkation ramp when Perturabo came over to speak to his brother.

  'Good hunting, Magnus,' said the Lord of Iron. 'May you find your missing sons alive and unharmed.'

  Magnus nodded and said, 'And may you find the source of Morningstar's pain, brother.'

  'I will,' said Perturabo. His gravel-voiced certainty left Ahriman in no doubt he would. 'And then I will destroy it.'

  'Even if you do, there is no saving this world.'

  'I know,' said Perturabo, offering his brother his hand. 'It will be an act of vengeance, nothing more, but that will be enough for me.'

  'It will need to be enough for all of us,' said Magnus, taking Perturabo's hand.

  As the Lord of Iron returned to his gunship, Ahriman saw a look of profound sadness in his primarch's face.

  'My lord?' he said, and the moment passed. 'Is something wrong?'

  'Nothing,' said Magnus, turning and striding down the troop compartment to take his place at the head of his warriors.

  What had Magnus seen when he gripped his brother's hand?

  Did he see every secret thought hidden? Would such knowledge be a blessing or a curse?

  Looking over at the Iron Warriors Stormbird, Ahriman knew exactly which it was.

  Vashti watched the Stormbirds lift off in a haze of jetwash and vaporised rain through the toughened glass of the makeshift control centre. Mechanicum adepts had built it on a cleared gun platform on the highest tower of the Sharei Maveth and hurriedly wired it into the operating systems of the fortress.

  Barely functional was the expression that leapt to Vashti's mind when she first saw her new working environment.

  Together with Tessza Rom and a staff of calculus logi, she had resumed her duties coordinating airspace around Calaena after only ten hours in the medicae levels to treat her grievous wounds.

  An atomiser misted aerosolised water and counterseptic over her burned face. She tried to blink then remembered she couldn't. The fire in the command centre had vaporised the protective layers from her eyes, and until grafts and augmetics could be sourced, she relied on the atomisers.

  Her arms and back had been scorched black, but dropping behind her command console had saved her life from Korinna Moreno's treacherous blast. A constant flow of stimms kept the worst of the pain at bay, but even so, she hurt in a dozen places and her every movement was cripplingly slow.

  Still, she had been inordinately lucky: only she and Tessza Rom had made it out alive.

  If what Tessza had become could be called living.

  The scraps of her friend's ruined body hung suspended, foetus-like, in an amniotic tank in the centre of the makeshift control centre. Cognitive enhancers hung like pulsing snakes from the rear of her cranium, boosting her ability to sift the cascades of data surrounding her in twitching fog banks of noospheric light.

  Princeps of the Collegia Titanicus sometimes commanded their giant war-engines in a similar manner, and it was said the connection to the Omnissiah was sublime. Vashti could understand that, but the thought of her life spent as a wraith preserved in bio-suspension gel made her skin crawl. Tessza's body was broken beyond repair, but her mind was more agile than ever.

  'Gunships will be safe-distance clear in six seconds,' said Tessza, her voice grating from the brass vox-horn hung from wires in the corner of the bare plascrete chamber. 'Operational timetable resuming in ten seconds.'

  'Handoffs logged and ready,' replied Vashti. 'I have fifty-four ships making stacked figure of eights overhead. Let's use the extra time they've given us.'

  Vashti had suspended flight operations for seven minutes to allow the Legions a window to get their ships prepped and beyond Calaena's airspace. As it turned out, they'd only needed half that time.

  With the downing of the Lux Ferem and the loss of the platforms for at least another two days, what trans-orbital ships they had were being pressed into making faster and more frequent trips between the fleet and the surface Pushing ships and crews so hard was beyond dangerous, but what other choice was there?

  Vashti studied the crackling, static-washed panels before her. Calaena was all but abandoned, the people who'd thronged the city's streets now camped at the foot of the Sharei Maveth's walls. For a time, the sky over the fortress had remained clear and still, even as Calaena burned and localised magna-tempests sent lightning ripping along its streets.

  Tens of thousands had pressed against the distant edges of the fortress' outworks, seeking safety in the lee of its towering walls. The Iron Warriors had been forced to deactivate the minefields and open the gates on the outer walls to allow Morningstar's people to approach.

  Now an ocean of humanity pressed up against the fortress, stretching all the way back to the edges of the city. At least a hundred thousand or more, though with census information woefully out of date, it was impossible to know for certain.

  'Focus, Mistress Eshkol,' replied Tessza, all traces of the humanity she had once possessed in abundance now absent from her voice. Her friend's body endured, but what had made her human was all but gone.

  Vashti nodded and turned her attention from the thousands of people at the foot of the walls to the orbital tracks and streams of data being updated every second.

  In her last free second before Vashti took on the burden of getting as many people as she could off-world, she glanced down at the tracks of the two gunships as they slowly diverged. One raced north towards Zharrukin, the other due west towards the centre of Morningstar's last remaining ocean.

  'Find what you're looking for,' said Vashti, angrier than she could ever remember. 'Make the bastards pay for what they've done here.'

  Nine

  SURVIVOR • TO THE GRAVE • WHAT DID THEY DO?

  Planet-wide hurricanes were engulfing the rest of Morningstar, but Zharrukin was now a peaceful eye in the global storm. The city had been all but obliterated, yet enough architectural clues remained for Magnus to picture it as he had last seen it.

  'This region should be suffering shear-force magna-storms and violent tectonic upheaval,' said Ahriman, staring up into the clear, cloudless sky. 'How is this possible?'

  No one had an answer. Not even Magnus.

  Studying Morningstar's magnetic polarity readings on the journey from Calaena had provided no clue as to why this one area among all others should escape the violence. That Calaena too was suffering far less than the rest of the planet spoke of design and intent, but to what end?

  The primarch's new Stormbird sat cooling a hundred metres from another gunship in the colours of the Thousand Sons. Its hull was windblown, its engines cold. Dust swirled around the opened assault ramp.

  'Looks abandoned,' said Phosis T'kar, chopping his hand left.

  Two squads of legionaries moved to flank the gunship. Ahriman gestured right and his squads mirrored those of Phosis T'kar.

  'It isn't,' said Magnus, striding directly towards the gunship. 'Someone is still alive on board. A mortal.'

  They approached the gunship cautiously, every legionary's bolter trained unerringly on the entrance to the crew compartment. Magnus touched the mind within, feeling her fear and uncertainty. He knew her immediately and held up his fist.

  'Stand down,' he said. 'Ahriman, Phosis T'kar, with me.'

  Magnus boarded the gunship and swiftly made his way along the troop compartment towards the cockpit. The door hung open, its locking mechanism blasted open by a mass-reactive round. The weapon that had fired it sat propped up by the open door.

  Magnus ducked into the cockpit and saw Niko Ashkali slumped in the co-pilot's chair, her skin pallid and her lips cracked and dry.

  'How long has she been here?' said Ahriman.


  'Long enough to risk trying Legion-issue supplies,' said Magnus, bending to lift two foil wrappers and a dripping hydration pack discarded at her feet.

  'Throne! Is she still alive?'

  'Barely,' said Magnus, reaching into the conservator's physiology with his power. Her pulse was weak and thready, fluttering like a wounded bird. Hostile interactions from the Legion rations she had ingested ravaged her system.

  'Did she not know our food and drink are poisonous to humans?' asked Phosis T'kar.

  'Maybe she did, but decided it was worth the risk to try and stay alive a little longer,' said Magnus, easing into the seventh Enumeration and driving the chemicals inimical to mortal physiology from her system.

  The effect was almost instantaneous.

  Niko Ashkali bent double and vomited over the console of the Stormbird, retching hard as her damaged system purged itself of toxins. Magnus kept the connection between them open, using his power to renew her struggling cells and undo the terrible damage that the chemical-heavy nutrients had wreaked.

  She took a huge gasp of air and her eyes stretched wide.

  'Easy, Mistress Ashkali, easy,' said Magnus. 'You are safe now. You are safe.'

  'What…' she said, her eyes struggling to focus on Magnus' face. 'What happened?'

  'You partook of Legion combat rations,' said Magnus. 'Such fare is engineered to enhance a Space Marine's biology and boost his effectiveness in combat. It is all but lethal to mortals. You are lucky your heart did not give out under the strain.'

  Ashkali managed a weak smile, wiping the sleeve of her robes across her mouth and spitting an acrid wad to the deck plates.

  'Sorry,' she said, looking over at the dripping mess on the avionics panel. 'I think I ruined your gunship.'

  'Do not fret,' said Magnus. 'We have others.'

  Ashkali twisted in the seat, looking past Magnus to Ahriman and Phosis T'kar.

  'Is Atharva with you? Has he come out yet?'