Void Stalker

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  : almost close enough to touch

  That prickled at the prophet’s skin. He looked up at Ruven’s crucified remains.

  : you are not the warrior you should be

  : but you and i must speak

  : it must be here and it must be now

  : there will never be another chance

  Talos remained seated, the very picture of stoic patience. He refused to let his anger or doubts rise to the surface. Targeting reticules slid by without gaining a grip on Ruven’s shattered skeleton.

  : you made my corpse into the finest decoration

  : that is almost amusing

  Talos reclined in the throne the way he did on the true bridge.

  ‘Can even death not render you silent?’

  : your own life is measured in months prophet

  The skull, suspended on chains, leered with empty eye sockets. ‘Is that so?’ Talos asked it. ‘And how do you come by this precious lore?’

  : do you pretend this moment has no significance

  : do you believe i cannot hear your heart beating faster

  Talos stroked the hilt of the relic blade resting at his side. The restraint needed to resist demanding an explanation brought his headache to a crescendo.

  ‘Get on with it,’ he said, continuing his facade of bored indulgence. He had to collect his thoughts. At best, this was a trap. At worst, it was sorcery. More than likely, it was both.

  That wasn’t good.

  : you remember nothing do you

  : you have come to seek a pure war

  : a noble war

  : but you should never have returned to the eastern fringe

  : others have been waiting for your return with revenge in their hearts

  The prophet remained as he was, still stroking the blade’s wingspread hilt. The Eastern Fringe. He couldn’t think of anything that would ever drive him back there.

  ‘I think you lie, husk.’

  : why would i lie

  : you run from the eye

  : you run from the eldar

  : you run from doom at the hands of alien witches

  : where better to flee than the other edge of the galaxy

  Perhaps there was truth in that, but the prophet felt no urge to confess it. He remained silent.

  : how long have you waged this war talos

  He shook his head, feeling the sudden need to swallow. ‘A long time. The Heresy was the bloodiest decade. Then, the Raiding Years, when we called Tsagualsa home. Two centuries of bitter glory, before the Imperium came for us.’

  : and how long since we left the carrion world

  ‘For the Imperium?’ He narrowed his eyes at the question. ‘Almost ten thousand ye–’

  : no

  : how long for the traitor legions

  : how long for you talos

  He swallowed again, beginning to sense where this was leading. The warp stole all meaning from the material realm, even banishing all pretence of physics and temporal stability. The Great Heresy was days in the past for some of the Traitors within the Eye, and fifty thousand years gone for others. All of them, each and every soul to betray the Emperor in that golden age, could claim a different scale of time for the years since.

  ‘A century since we left Tsagualsa.’ Less than many, but more than some.

  : a century for you

  : a century for first claw

  : that makes you over three hundred years old prophet

  Talos nodded, meeting the skull’s hollow eyes. ‘Close enough.’

  : still so young for a traitor

  : still naive

  : but long enough that you should have learned certain lessons by now

  : and yet you have not

  The prophet stared up at the wreckage of crucified bone, and the letters superimposed over it. They flickered across his retinal display almost impatiently, as if awaiting an answer.

  ‘If you find me lacking, revenant, then by all means enlighten me.’

  : why are you fighting this war

  The prophet snorted. ‘For vengeance.’

  : revenge for what

  ‘To avenge the wrongs done to us.’

  : what wrongs do you speak of

  The Legionary rose to his feet, feeling the skin crawling at the back of his neck. ‘You know what wrongs. You know why the Eighth Legion fights.’

  : the eighth legion doesn’t know why it fights

  : you conceive excuses to justify a lifetime of wasted hate

  : the legion fights only because it is amusing and pleasurable to dominate weaker souls

  ‘Unadulterated fantasy.’ Talos laughed, though he’d never felt less like laughing. He considered shooting the chained skeleton down from its ungainly crucifixion, though it was doubtful whether the act of spite would achieve anything. ‘We rebelled because we had to rebel. The Imperium’s pacifism was destined to fail. Order can only be maintained through keeping its souls fearful of retribution. Control, through fear. Peace through fear. We were the weapon mankind needed. We still are.’

  : the legion never fought for those ideals

  : your delusion was never even popular among our ranks

  : but it faded when the truth came

  : you cling to your illusions now because hate is all you have left

  ‘Hate is all I need.’ He drew the bolter now, aiming both barrels up at the corpse’s shattered ribcage. ‘My hatred runs pure. We deserve vengeance against the empire that abandoned us. We were right to punish those worlds for their sins, and threaten others with destruction if they ever broke our laws. Control. Through. Fear. The systems we pacified…’

  : the systems we pacified were barely human anymore

  : we made the populations into cowering animals dispossessed of free will

  : living in terror of breaking the law

  : like the weeping herds of humans living in the bowels of our warships now

  ‘I stand by what I did.’ The prophet was aware of his own maddening stance – he couldn’t aim for much longer without making good on his threat to fire, but nor did he wish to strike in useless anger. ‘I stand by what we all did.’

  : many of our brothers never cared for any of those ideals

  : that is no secret

  : it is why curze destroyed nostramo

  : to stem the flow of poison into the eighth legion

  : and it was why we were punished by the imperium

  ‘The lesson of the Legion.’ Talos lowered the weapon. ‘The primarch said those words many times.’

  : we became the very thing we warned whole worlds about

  : we were the killers and the murderers we told them never to be

  : free to slay at will and free from retribution

  There was a long pause. Talos felt the ship give a shudder, in sympathy to some external torment.

  : the blood ran cold in that age before the galaxy burned

  : and it ran in rivers from the veins of the guilty and innocent alike

  : because we were strong and they were weak

  ‘He hated us, I know that for certain. Curze loved us and hated us in equal measure.’ Talos returned to his throne, his voice softened by contemplation. Ideas danced and died behind his black eyes, hidden beneath the monochrome red of his helm’s eye lenses.

  Much of it was true, and no mystery to the prophet. Curze had annihilated their home world in a melancholic decree, seeking to end the recruitment of rapists and murderers, but it was far too late by then. Much of the Legion was already given over to the very criminal scum he sought to purge from humanity. This was no secret. No revelation. Merely shameful truth.

  But they’d still been right to fight. Pacification through overwhelming force, and ruling forever after by fear. It ha
d worked, for a time. The resulting peace across dozens of systems had been a beautiful thing to behold. A population only dared rise in rebellion when the boot was lifted from their throat. In such cases, it was the fault of the oppressor for showing weakness, not the oppressed for rising up. To resist was human nature. The species couldn’t be hated for it.

  ‘Our way was not the way of the Imperium,’ Talos quoted the ancient adage, ‘but we were right. If the Legion had stayed pure…’

  : but it did not

  : the legion was tainted by sin the moment the first nostraman-born warrior swore his oath of service

  : and we deserved the hate of our primarch

  : for we were not the warriors he wished us to be

  Another pause. Another tremor quivered through the ship’s bones.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  : reality is slipping through now

  : the echo of damnation arrives at its destination

  : but you should never have come back to the eastern fringe

  Talos looked up again. The corpse hadn’t moved. ‘You said that before. I still don’t recall ordering such a thing.’

  : you ordered it in search of a pure war to elevate the warband

  : and seek answers to the doubts that plague you

  : by walking upon tsagualsa once more

  : nothing I say now is a revelation

  : i speak only the same truths you are too proud to speak aloud

  : you have been hollow for a long time brother

  ‘Why am I seeing this?’ He gestured around the chamber, at the body, at himself. ‘What… what is all this? A vision? A dream? A spell? The tricks of my own mind, or something from the outside crawling into my thoughts?’

  : all of those and none of them

  : perhaps this is merely a manifestation of your doubts and fears

  : in the waking world you have been unconscious for fifty-five nights

  : you are close to rising

  He was on his feet again, as the ship began to shake in prophetic earnest. He heard the hull groaning with the sincerity of a gut-shot soldier. Cracks began to lace their way across the occulus, sprinkling glass to the decking. ‘Fifty-five nights? That cannot be. How did this happen?’

  : you know why

  : you have always known

  : some human children are not meant to carry gene-seed

  : it breaks them apart at the genetic level

  : some die fast

  : some die slow

  : but after three centuries of biological flux your genetic incompatibilities are finally catching up to you

  ‘Lies.’ Talos watched the ship coming apart around him. ‘Lies and madness are all you ever uttered in life, Ruven. The same holds true in death.’

  : variel knows the truth

  : centuries of injury

  : centuries of endurance and pain

  : centuries of the visions born of poisonous primarch blood

  : your body can take no more punishment

  : enjoy what time remains to you brother

  : duty awaits in the waking world and you will remember precious little of our talk

  : rise talos

  : rise and see for yourself

  II

  AWAKENING

  Light, muted and bleached by the red of his visor display, filtered into his eyes.

  The first thing he saw was the last thing he expected. His brothers. His crew. The strategium, with its two hundred souls engaged in their duties.

  ‘I…’ He tried to speak, but his voice was a dehydrated vox-rasp. Talos slumped in his throne, though a chain collar around his throat prevented him from falling too far forward. Voices babbled all around him, along with the growl of armour joints moving closer.

  ‘I am not in my meditation chamber,’ he said. He’d never woken from a vision anywhere else, let alone to rise and find himself on the warship’s bridge. The prophet was struck by the image of his surroundings, wondering if he’d sat here in his armour the entire time, unconscious and screaming his delusional chants across the vox-network.

  Chains rattled around his throat, wrists and ankles as he sought to rise. His brothers had bound him to the throne.

  They had much to answer for.

  Whispers of ‘He returns’ and ‘He awakens’ wove their way through the mortal crew. From his seat of honour on a raised dais at the heart of the bridge, Talos could see them pausing in their assigned duties, face after face turning to regard him. Their eyes were bright with surprise and reverence in equal measure. ‘The prophet awakens,’ kept leaving their pale lips.

  This, he decided with a crawling feeling of spinal discomfort, was what being worshipped must feel like.

  His brothers clustered around the throne, each of their faces masked behind their helms: Uzas, with his painted bloody handprint across the faceplate; Xarl, his helm crested by sweeping bat wings; Cyrion’s eyes painted with streaking lightning bolt tears; Mercutian’s helm topped by brutal, curving horns ringed with bronze.

  Variel knelt before Talos, the Apothecary’s bionic leg grinding and seizing, making the movement awkward. He alone wore no helm, his cold eyes fixed upon the prophet’s own.

  ‘A timely return,’ he said. His curiously soft voice held no shade of amusement.

  ‘We have arrived, Talos,’ Cyrion qualified. There was a smile in his voice, at least.

  ‘Fifty-five nights,’ said Mercutian. ‘We have never witnessed such a thing. What did you dream?’

  ‘I remember almost none of it.’ Talos looked past them all, at the world turning slowly within the elliptical frame of the occulus screen. ‘I remember little of anything. Where are we?’

  Variel turned his pale gaze upon the others. It was enough to get them to move back a little, no longer crowding the reawakened prophet. As he spoke, the Apothecary consulted his bulky narthecium gauntlet. Talos could hear the auspex scanner crackling with static and chiming with results.

  ‘I administered supplemental narcotics and fluids to keep you in adequate health without activating your sus-an membrane these past two months. You are, however, going to be extremely weak for some days to come. The muscle wastage is minor, but significant enough for you to notice it.’

  Talos tensed against the chains again, as if to make a point.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Variel. ‘Of course.’ He keyed in a code on his vambrace, deploying a circular cutting saw from his narthecium. The kiss of the saw along the chains was a high-pitched, irritating whine. One by one, the lengths of metallic binding fell free.

  ‘Why was I restrained?’

  ‘To prevent injury to yourself and others,’ explained Variel.

  ‘No.’ Talos focused on his retinal display, activating a secure vox-link to his closest brothers. ‘Why was I restrained here, on the bridge?’

  The members of First Claw shared glances, their helms turning to face each other in some unknowable emotion.

  ‘We took you to your chambers when you first succumbed,’ said Cyrion. ‘But…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘You broke out of the cell. You killed both of the brothers standing guard outside the door, and we lost you in the lower decks for almost a week.’

  Talos tried to rise. Variel fixed him with the same glare he’d turned on the rest of First Claw, but the prophet ignored it. The Apothecary had been right, though. He felt as weak as a human. His muscles burned with cramps as blood trickled back into them.

  ‘I do not understand,’ Talos said at last.

  ‘Neither did we,’ replied Cyrion. ‘You’d never acted in such a way while afflicted.’

  Xarl took up the explanation. ‘Guess who found you?’

  The prophet shook his head, not knowing where to begin to make assumptions. ‘Tell me.’

  Uza
s inclined his head. ‘It was I.’

  That would be a story in itself, Talos reckoned. He looked back at Cyrion. ‘And then?’

  ‘After several days, the crew and the other Claws began to grow uncomfortable. Morale, such as it is among we happy and loyal dregs, was suffering. Talk circulated that you’d died or were diseased. We brought you here to show the crew you were still among us, one way or the other.’

  Talos snorted. ‘Did it work?’

  ‘See for yourself.’ Cyrion gestured to the rapt, staring humans around the command deck. All eyes were upon him.

  Talos swallowed the taste of something acrid. ‘You made me into an icon. That treads close to heathenism.’

  First Claw shared a low chuckle. Only Talos was unamused.

  ‘Fifty-five days of silence,’ Cyrion said, ‘and all you have for us is displeasure?’

  ‘Silence?’ The prophet turned to look at each of them in turn. ‘I never cried out? I never spoke my prophecies aloud?’

  ‘Not this time,’ Mercutian shook his head. ‘Silence, from the moment you collapsed.’

  ‘I do not even remember collapsing.’ Talos moved past them, leaning on the rail ringing the central dais. He watched the grey world hanging in the void, surrounded by a dense asteroid field. ‘Where are we?’

  First Claw came to his side, forming up in a line of snarling joints and impassive, skullish facemasks.

  ‘You don’t recall your orders to us?’ Xarl asked.

  Talos tried not to let his impatience show. ‘Just tell me where we are. That is a familiar sight, yet I struggle to believe we truly stand before it.’

  ‘It is, and we do. We’re on the Eastern Fringe,’ said Xarl. ‘Out of the Astronomican’s light, and in orbit around the world you repeatedly demanded we travel to.’

  Talos stared at it as it turned with indescribable slowness. He knew what world it was, even though he could remember nothing of these events his brothers insisted had happened. It took a great deal more effort than he’d expected to resist saying the words ‘It cannot be’. Most unbelievable of all were the grey stains of cities scabbing over the dusty continents.

  ‘It has changed,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand how that can be true. The Imperium would never build here, yet I see cities. I see the stains of human civilisation scarring what should be worthless land.’