The Death of Antagonis

by David Annandale

  Setheno retreated another step. The light in the cell was altering, the rays of the biolumes becoming individually discernible and bending towards the hole in the air. The point was now a circle, pulses growing it by tiny fractions. Tendrils coiled out of it, insubstantial as smoke but strong as madness, fishing for more prey. From a protective case on her belt, Setheno withdrew an aquila. Like her sword, it was a relic. It was porcelain, fired from clay made from the ground bones of a dozen saints. She held it up before the floating void, and began to speak a rite of banishment. The thing fought, but she was strong. She knew it for what it was. It wasn’t an actual tear in the materium. That would have been beyond anyone’s ability to seal without destroying the ship. The sphere was a thought construction, an abstract idea given substance and a rudimentary intelligence. If it developed past its current embryonic form, it might in time become a daemon. But for now it was too dependent on its creator’s conception, and there was only one individual on board who could be responsible for it. Lettinger’s pride and ambition coated the thing like a signature, and Setheno tailored the rite to be a counter specific to the inquisitor.

  The tendrils reached towards her, wrapping around the aquila. They pulled. She resisted. Her chanting never altered from a calm, inexorable monotone. The tendrils found no emotions to feed on, and the prayers ate away at their strength. Setheno felt the warmth of her blood running between her bodyweb and armour. She held herself rigid and straight, and saw the rite through. The sphere stopped growing. Each pulse now saw it smaller. Setheno poured denial on the construct, and at last, instead of a pulse, there was a blink, and it was gone.

  The light in Volos’s chambers became normal again. A smell like old nightmares and new bones lingered for a few moments, then faded. There was blood on the floor, and a few slivers of wood. The room was otherwise untouched.

  Setheno’s wounds began to weigh her down, and she staggered as she left the quarters. More blood on the floor of the corridor, and battered stonework on the walls and ceiling. Now, too, the heavy boom of running, booted feet. The battle had lasted less than a minute.

  Volos and Toharan, monster and god unarmoured above the waist, were the first to arrive. Concern and suspicion flashed over Volos’s face as he took in her injury and the signs of battle. Toharan’s expression was less conflicted. He simply looked at her with naked hatred before stalking away, a retinue of Space Marines at his heels.

  CHAPTER 23

  DEPLOYMENT IN FORCE

  The trap was twofold. Setheno’s words, echoing in Volos’s mind as the Immolation Maw transited back to real space in the Abolessus system. It was meant to kill you and disgrace you. You would have been eliminated, and corruption would leak from your cell until the inquisitor dispelled it. You would have been destroyed by your own daemonic magic. That would have been the narrative, one to convert those who still doubted Toharan’s leadership, and to silence those who would resist it. The naked pretext of the practice cage duel was laughably obvious now.

  You must stop him. Do what is necessary.

  The words of mutiny and sedition, spoken by a legend of the Holy Ecclesiarchy. But he had no argument with them now. They had become the expression of common sense, and of fidelity to the truth of the Black Dragons and to the Emperor. Yes, he would do what was necessary. But he still needed the means to do it, and what had happened in his quarters had left nothing but questions, few of which did him any good. A battle-brother was missing, somehow killed by a canoness whose reputation was as much for cold-bloodedness as it was for righteousness. The whiff of the daemonic fed into the darker stories about the penitence crusade on Aighe Mortis. It was becoming harder for Volos to act against Toharan.

  The captain of purity was winning. Not as quickly and decisively as he desired. But he was winning.

  In his cell, Volos said a prayer over the last of the rounds that he loaded into his bolter. Then, blades out, he crossed them over his chest, making an aquila of them, and he prayed some more. There was an anger to his prayers now. He prayed for the violent end of those who would hurt his Chapter. ‘Make me your monster,’ he begged the Emperor. ‘Make me your dragon.’

  Tennesyn stood on the bridge. He kept himself out of the way, near the seat-bound servitors, far from the traffic of war near the strategium. His eyes were glued to the viewport, and the revelations of Abolessus. Before the recovery of the data from the Metastasis, he had never heard of the system. Afterwards, he had only known the name. Now, he saw the most impressive finds of his career reduced to the scale of pottery shards.

  The monuments of Abolessus floated past the Immolation Maw. They crowded the space of the system. There were too many orbits, too many objects of planetary scale swarming around the aged red sun. Tennesyn’s jaw hung open. He had never experienced such absolute awe. Every object was a massive demonstration of staggering pointlessness and power. The geometrical assemblages were not for habitation, and they were not bases. They were engraved art, and existed only for the sheer excess of being.

  Or so Tennesyn thought at first. But as the ship moved deeper into the cyclopean gallery, the monuments began to speak to him. As he watched their slow ballet of endless, dead tumbling, what he heard was a silence. It wasn’t the simple silence of airless void. It was the quiet of a mourning too deep and too vast to be expressed in words or cries. These objects were the creations of grief and despair. A species of unimaginable power had produced a valediction to itself. It had marked the fact of its existence on an entire solar system. It had transformed worlds so it would not be forgotten, and then, after all, it had been forgotten. The deeds and histories written in runes the size of mountains would never be read again. What really mattered – the content of the memory – was lost. Only the shape remained.

  The lesson was humbling. Before Tennesyn’s eyes, the past became a landscape of extinctions stretching back to infinity. The xeno-archaeologist quailed at the hopelessness of his vision. He tried to redirect his attention, but then wished he hadn’t. When he looked away from viewport toward the strategium, he was reminded of the atmosphere on the ship. He knew that he was a trivial figure. Nithigg did him the honour of engaging in research with him, and Setheno had questioned him a few times on his theories, their evidence and his speculations. But most of the Black Dragons seemed to regard him, if they noticed him at all, as an underfoot nuisance. But even as far removed from the pulse of the Immolation Maw as he was, he could sense the tension aboard. They were going to battle. He knew that without being told. And they were going into battle deeply divided.

  He didn’t like thinking about that, either.

  So he turned back to the view of the immense cenotaphs, and wondered how long he would be remembered when the inevitable happened.

  Nessun felt the minds he owned arrive in-system. He had known, through them, of the demise of the Metastasis and its crew. Though his grip on the souls was growing strong, there was no pretending that the Immolation Maw had come for anything other than his destruction. So there were decisions to make. He needed a bit more time. He had to do whatever would gain him an edge, even if it were no more than seconds. In the end, he sent the bulk of his forces to Gemini Primus. It held what he was looking for. The rest, a bare minimum, accompanied him to the Gemini moon. Whatever happened on Primus, success or failure, that was the result that would determine the victory or loss on the moon.

  Nessun wriggled into his captive minds. He planted suggestions, creating contingency plans for himself.

  ‘Multiple contacts,’ the servitor reported, its voice a dehumanised monotone. ‘Deployment by troops of the Revealed Truth. Soulcage and primary ship moving from Gemini Primus to position of low anchor over moon.’

  ‘What are they doing?’ Symael wondered.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Toharan answered. ‘What matters is that we stop them.’ He spoke more from rote habit than belief. He wanted to know what was so important about Gemini to the Swords of Epiphany. For the greater glory of his Chapte
r (his Chapter), he would take their prize and wield it himself.

  In the meantime, his gut told him that he was seeing the moment when he must begin the purge of the Dragons. His smile tight with hatred and anticipation, he gave his orders.

  Volos walked across the launch bay toward the Battle Pyre. Around him was the cacophony of a war machine throwing itself into high gear. Munitions servitors ran their burdens to gunships. Space Marines performed last-minute weapon checks and spoke oaths of moment. New purity seals were affixed to armour. Second Company’s largest mobilisation in years was under way.

  Nithigg and Setheno walked with him. There was no hesitation in the canoness’s stride. She had recovered from her wounds with great speed by the standards of mortals. Volos credited her ferocious will. He caught himself thinking this, and wondered why he was more aware of Setheno’s will than of her faith.

  ‘You won’t be accompanying us this time, canoness?’ Nithigg asked.

  ‘No. I think I will be more useful on the ship.’

  ‘Useful in doing what?’ Volos probed, not really expecting an answer.

  To his surprise, he received one. ‘Whatever is necessary. You know the rest.’ After a moment’s pause, Setheno said, ‘You do realise you are flying into a trap.’

  ‘Every encounter with the Swords of Epiphany has been a trap of some kind,’ Volos said. ‘Why would this time be any different?’

  ‘I am not referring to one of their ambushes. The trap is Toharan’s.’

  Nithigg grunted. ‘Look at who is going and who is staying.’

  Volos glanced around the launch bay, and saw what Nithigg meant. Toharan had shaken up the squad personnel yet again, but Volos hadn’t noticed the pattern right away. Melus had finally been given Pythios to command, but Omorfos wasn’t part of the squad at all now. Everywhere he looked, he saw that the Dragons heading to the surface of Gemini Primus were all the brothers he thought of as his allies, and any other warrior showing strong signs of mutation. Toharan had split up the company along physiological lines.

  Nithigg pointed. ‘The blessed, too.’

  He used the word with both irony and reverence. Squad Solemnis was being led by Sergeant Lucertus to a drop pod. The abominations had been released from their holding cages. Chained and sedated, they would be unleashed on the planet’s surface to revel in the full extent of their madness, becoming furies of ceramite, teeth, and slashing bone. Toharan was sending every reminder of Black Dragon identity off the ship.

  Nithigg said, ‘I don’t think our captain expects us to return.’

  ‘Then we’ll disappoint him, won’t we?’

  Augurs showed the traitor forces concentrated on the one geological anomaly of Gemini Primus. It was also the only feature that distinguished Primus from its twin. Running for a kilometre along the base of the equatorial mountain chain was a cave opening. It was no more natural than anything else about the planetoid, and in its length it suggested a seam more than a cave. Toharan’s strategy was a triple assault, the Black Dragons coming in from east and west and the sky. ‘Close the talon on them,’ Toharan had commanded, ‘and if they retreat into the cave, pursue them to the last man.’

  And then what? Volos wondered. Reward our victory with cyclonic torpedoes?

  But he had his orders, and more than that, he had a duty. Below was an Imperial world under attack by Chaos Space Marines. There was no alternative but to strike.

  And so they struck. Drop pods rained down on Gemini Primus. The Battle Pyre was joined by its sister ships, the Cleansing Judgement and the Nightfire. With schism and betrayal snapping at their heels, the Black Dragons arrived to put the Swords of Epiphany to flame.

  Peregrine Delacquo had feared the nights since the appearance of the moon. Come the dark, he didn’t harvest. He didn’t set foot outside of his sod hut at all. He didn’t look out his window if he could avoid it. He took what comfort he could in the fact that he was not alone with his terrors. The orchards were deserted after dark. No one on Gemini Primus wanted to confront the moon’s gaze.

  But tonight, Delacquo was drawn outside despite himself by the shrieking roar of the heavens falling. To the west of the township of Fruition, in the dreadful light of the scarlet moon, there had first come ships like molten gold pouring from the sky. Now, iron tears were streaking to earth. Behind them came a trio of ships, black as night, with the force and blunt shape of metal fists.

  ‘What is it?’ His wife, Kaletha, had followed him.

  ‘I don’t know.’ The only ships he had ever seen before were the venerable, barely voidworthy freighters used for what little trade went on between Primus and Secundus. He had never experienced war. The soil of the Twins was so fertile, the divides created by the mountains so difficult to cross, that regional conflicts were unnecessary and impractical. There had been no contact between Abolessus and the rest of the galaxy for uncounted generations. But the word war was now resounding through his mind and heart, and though he barely comprehended the term, it filled him with the same dread as the bloody moon.

  He and Kaletha weren’t the only ones out in the night. The good people of Fruition were spilling out of their homes. These were cabins built of logs and sod, the only building material available on an unbreakable world. The people were farmers, loggers, fishermen. Combat was as alien as the things that fell from the sky. But its serpent fascination drew them. Delacquo and Kaletha joined the procession heading west, that they might stare their fate in the face.

  CHAPTER 24

  THE DESCENT

  The valley was so narrow and so straight; there was no way for a large force of the Black Dragons to surprise the Swords of Epiphany. The forests and agricultural lands ended long before the cave, giving way to bare adamantium. Lines of sight from the cave extended east and west to the horizon. The Swords would be able to see an advance coming from kilometres away. If the talon attack was going to work, it had to take advantage of the fact that the entrance to the cave was too wide to defend in its entirety, and it had to begin almost on top of the enemy.

  So it did. The drop pods landed only a few dozen metres from the east and west ends of the cave mouth. The Thunderhawks swooped down over the top of the mountain chain, making a run for the centre of the opening, sending out a massive barrage of missiles and heavy bolter fire ahead of them. The Swords had the bulk of their forces inside the cave. The exterior was guarded by a mass of thousands of cultists. Their firepower was heavy, concentrated, and undisciplined. Rifle and las-fire stabbed out at the Dragons, so many lethal bristles exploding out. Some hit their mark. Most did not. Blind luck saw a drop pod blown up before it landed. But the Thunderhawks’ inferno decimated the cultists. There was no cover, no dirt to absorb the blasts, nothing but the utterly unforgiving canvas of adamantium against which the bodies were splattered and painted by fire and concussive force.

  ‘How close can you get us to the cave mouth?’ Volos asked Keryon as the Battle Pyre raced to the floor of the valley.

  ‘Watch and grovel before me,’ Keryon’s voice came back over the comm-bead.

  Volos watched, and his eyes widened as the ground raced toward the Thunderhawk, eager for the kiss of impact. The doors opened just as Keryon levelled the ship at the last second, piloting the gunship as if it were a high-performance lighter.

  ‘Now,’ Keryon said, and as the Dragon Claws shot away from the hull, the Battle Pyre was already nose-up, its undercarriage breathing against the mountainside. Keryon had dropped them within metres of the roof of the cave mouth.

  Streaking flame from their jump packs, the Claws stormed the cave. The floor, thirty metres below, was a perfect semicircle, reaching back a kilometre into the mountainside. In the middle of the floor was a circular depression, its diameter a third of the width of the chamber. The Swords had withdrawn to the depression, with half of them guarding its southern perimeter, facing the cave entrance. The others were busy slaughtering dozens of unarmed humans while holding hundreds of others at gunpoint. Strategi
cally, the Swords were in an untenable position. There were about fifty of them, and though they had firepower and the buffer of their helots beyond the circle, they had no cover, and no retreat.

  The Black Dragon tactical squads were already moving inside the cave, slicing through the cultists like they were cobwebs. Devastator lascannon shots scorched a path toward the defensive line. The Dragons advanced in a series of speartips, punching through the heretic mob. Moving up the centre of the cavern, ignoring such trivialities as enemy fire, was the whirling savagery of Squad Solemnis. Volos saw a gigantic cull ahead, and his fangs bared in hunger.

  The Dragon Claws came down behind the Swords’ line, between the defenders and the butchers. Bolter and blade bit into the enemy. The defensive formation came apart as the Swords responded to the threat at their backs. Volos stitched a traitor with explosive slugs from groin to head, and as the rounds detonated ceramite and body, he slammed his left arm out, decapitating another with his bone-blade. The jolt of the blade slicing through vertebrae ran up his arms, and he revelled in the tactile feel of the kill. To his right, Nithigg faced the other way, blasting the inner ring of Swords. One Chaos Space Marine made the mistake of coming at him from behind. Nithigg jabbed his arm back, the force of the hit enough to jam the forearm blade through the armour and disembowel the Sword.