Deathfire

by Nick Kyme

Gargo frowned, uncertain. He appeared younger in that moment. ‘Father?’

  ‘Our father, yes. What of Vulkan? Are you glad to be furnished with the truth?’

  ‘What truth do you mean?’

  ‘That he is dead and we are ferrying a corpse into the deadliest warp storm in known history.’

  ‘Numeon believes he lives.’

  ‘And is that the truth you choose to believe?’

  Gargo had no immediate answer.

  Ushamann made to leave the apothecarion. His back to Gargo, he stopped at the threshold.

  ‘Ignorance helped me to believe our father lived. I strived for that belief. It gave me hope. Then hope died and I had vengeance, but now Numeon tells us our father lives in spite of the evidence of our eyes. I saw a vision, I beheld the primarch, but do you know what I felt when I searched Vulkan’s mind, Gargo?’

  His silence suggested he did not.

  ‘Emptiness. A tomb. Truth was not so appealing after that.’

  ‘You think it’s false hope?’

  ‘Have you ever looked out onto the world and felt a profound sense of unease?’

  ‘Sometimes. Before battle. Before Isstvan V. I think we all did that day, as if we could taste it on the air. Is your vision a warning of calamity, Ushamann? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘I saw fire… endless, life-eclipsing fire. Immolus.’

  ‘The Unbound Flame?’

  ‘It was his epitaph, was it not?’

  Gargo averted his gaze. It had been Vulkan’s epitaph, but it was different now. Numeon had returned. If he lived, then so could the primarch.

  ‘I feel a profound sense of unease, Gargo. It grows the longer I am on this ship.’ He paused, perhaps wanting to find words of reassurance but deciding he had none, then changed the subject. ‘I am needed on the bridge.’

  Ushamann left. Gargo watched him depart in silence.

  It would be easy to succumb to doubt. Numeon’s beliefs defied the rational and embraced a kind of faith that bordered on religious.

  Ushamann had chosen not to trust in the evidence of his rational mind, but Gargo had seen something too. He had seen Numeon endure a baptism that should have killed him, and the only explanation was a scrap of armour clutched with such conviction that it turned away flame and defied death.

  He decided to seek solace in the forge, where the fire and smoke would cleanse him of all doubt.

  Gargo could mend bones to a degree. He could staunch the flow of blood and knit flesh where necessary. With metal he could perform the miraculous, but only Numeon and his belief could mend their broken Legion.

  Everything he knew told Gargo that the dead didn’t return. Every­thing he felt allowed him to arrive at a different conclusion.

  His declaration was quiet and spoken to an empty room, but it was not weak.

  ‘Vulkan lives.’

  Twenty-Three

  Our legacy

  Battle-barge Charybdis, embarkation deck

  Mercifully for the intake of refugees, the ship they cowered aboard was more than large enough to accommodate them.

  Upon the return of the Draconis, Zytos had informed the shipmaster of the civilians crammed aboard the gunship’s hold. Almost fifty of them, survivors of Rampart.

  They looked sickly, weak and broken. The sergeant had assured Adyssian that none were infected by the Death Guard toxins unleashed upon their kith and kin. Even after he had read the report from Igen Gargo, Adyssian still wanted to see for himself.

  A shipmaster must know the cargo of his vessel, every last scrap of it.

  A glas attached over his left eye allowed Adyssian to observe each refugee in detail from the high gantry overhead. They could not see him – who would look anyway? – but he could see them well enough. Men, women and even some children wearing overalls and the remnants of atmosphere suits stared dully around the vast, shadowy hold.

  Their saviours had since departed, leaving the Draconis for the enginseers to run maintenance over. Zonn would be back again soon. He always was.

  Adyssian watched the refugees move in a herd, huddled together by fear, desperately clinging to one another. It saddened him to see it, what the galaxy had made of his species. The lesser, non-­genetically enhanced version of it.

  ‘Is this what we shall become?’ he whispered to himself, but the words almost caught in his throat when he saw the girl.

  He nearly missed her, she was so small, so young. She hid behind a woman’s storm-shawl, not her mother judging by the disregard the older woman showed her. It wasn’t the fact the girl was orphaned that gave Adyssian such pause. It was her face. Her timid, but gentle bearing. She clung to that storm-shawl so tenderly…

  ‘Throne!’ Adyssian gasped. He had to brace himself against the rail of the overlooking gantry to stop from falling forwards. Heart racing. Breath hammering through his chest.

  ‘Maelyssa…’

  Tears ran down Adyssian’s face but didn’t interfere with the visual feed from his glas.

  Before the Charybdis, before service to the Great Crusade, he had had a daughter. But the universe had been cruel, and her life was abruptly taken. Religion was a fading concept back then but Adyssian had prayed. He had prayed to the Throne, clutching a proscribed treatise in his hands. He had it still, in spite of the danger it represented to his career and his freedom. Lectitio Divinitatus. The posited belief that the Emperor on Terra was a god.

  Adyssian’s prayers remained unanswered. He had put the book away, and forgotten about its lies. Until now.

  ‘Not her…’ he mumbled, gripping the rail so hard his knuckles whitened. ‘Not Maelyssa.’

  He took off the glas and left the gantry. Ever since her death, Adyssian had become better at compartmentalisation. He called upon that skill again now, and by the time he had reached the bridge, he was utterly composed. No one would ever know the secret pain hidden away in his heart.

  No one.

  Cartographs and old vellum maps lay strewn about the strategium. Several pairs of compasses were scattered amongst the star charts.

  Adyssian stared at them. He had being doing so for the last few seconds. It was coming up to a full minute when Gullero broke the silence.

  ‘Without the Astronomican or the Pharos to guide us, we are confined to short, calculated jumps.’

  ‘Breaching the storm more than once turns my blood cold, Arikk.’

  Adyssian looked up from the charts to his first officer.

  Arikk Gullero was young, like Adyssian, but with wispy blond hair and pale grey eyes. A Terran, seconded to the Charybdis’s service.

  ‘I’m not sure Circe could take it, either.’

  ‘What other choice is there?’ asked Gullero.

  Adyssian sighed, resigned to their fate. His hands were braced against the table, his fingers splayed across the maps as if hoping he could discern some strategy by merely touching them.

  ‘It would be arduous, shipmaster,’ said Circe.

  She was hooded, and lithe in her dark robes. The Navigator kept her head bowed throughout the exchange. Her bare feet made almost no sound on the deck as she had slowly circled the strategium table to review Adyssian’s charts.

  She looked up, revealing sharp green eyes like milk-jade and the plain silver circlet she wore around her head to conceal her mutation from the shipmaster and the rest of the crew.

  ‘But I am strong enough to bear it.’

  Adyssian’s expression suggested he had his doubts.

  Circe’s body was feeble, drained by her exertions in guiding the Charybdis. An ash-wood walking cane supported her skeletal frame. Thin fingers, not unlike talons, curled around the serpent head at its top.

  ‘We have no knowledge of what we’ll face once we jump. You’ll be blind, Circe.’

  She smiled, her blade-thin lips curling up like wire
.

  ‘A Navigator is never blind.’ She gestured to the strategium table and the swathe of calculations and equations scribed upon several leaves of parchment resting upon the various maps. ‘Between your cartographic expertise and my sight, we shall prevail. We will reach Nocturne. As Lieutenant Gullero says, what other choice do we have?’

  Adyssian returned a weary smile to Circe.

  ‘None, milady. I just wanted to be sure you knew what this meant and that you were agreeable to it.’

  ‘Had I not been,’ said Circe, ‘what would you have done?’

  ‘Turned the Charybdis around.’

  She laughed gently.

  ‘Defy the fearsome Drakes? You jest.’

  ‘I do,’ Adyssian admitted. ‘You will need Ushamann’s help.’

  Circe’s expression soured at the mention of the Librarian.

  ‘Yet I do not wish for it. A cloak of shadows hangs about his neck.’

  ‘Aye, he’s bleak, but he’s also strong. Use him as a crutch.’

  Circe nodded, composed and dignified as ever.

  ‘Is that all, shipmaster?’ she asked.

  Adyssian took another look at the charts, quickly reviewing his and Gullero’s calculations. He nodded.

  ‘Rest. It’ll be soon.’

  Circe left the strategium for her sanctorum.

  In her absence, Arikk Gullero spoke frankly to his shipmaster.

  ‘This will likely kill her.’

  ‘She knows,’ Adyssian replied sadly, feeling poorer in her wake. ‘We all know.’

  ‘Are you prepared for that?’

  ‘I am not,’ Adyssian answered honestly, ‘and yet still I will do what must be done.’

  Through the expansive aperture of the ship’s oculus there was a growing turmoil. Lightless black, as if the stars had been smothered by a consuming fog, lurked ahead.

  So immense was the Ruinstorm that entire systems had been enveloped by it. No missive could breach it, and indeed no message had been received from the Throneworld since even before Lorgar had created this immatereological abomination. It was a wound that began at Calth and had spread cancerously across Ultramar, and then the whole galaxy.

  Few doubted that Horus had already reached Terra and sacked it.

  Adyssian had neither the wit nor the craft to see the storm for what it was, but he knew that it was there. As soon as they dropped into warp, he would see it; he would behold a vision of hell.

  ‘Zonn?’ Zytos had been about to leave interrogation when the Techmarine hailed him across the vox.

  Hecht was still in there for now, incarcerated just as he had suggested he would be. Var’kir watched him. Numeon had left much earlier. Mark of the Sigillite or not, no chances would be taken with the grey-armoured legionary. Much during the war had not been as it first appeared.

  ‘Sergeant,’ came the mechanised voice of Far’kor Zonn. ‘I have been examining all the data gleaned from my infiltration of Rampart.’

  ‘You found something?’ Zytos replied.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Then tell me, Zonn. Don’t wait for the next interrogative.’

  ‘A stream of vox-communication. Buried. A pulse or beacon, I have to determine exactly. It originated from the Death Guard ship, the vessel that attacked the Draconis.’

  Zytos felt his blood suddenly turn cold.

  ‘To the starship in orbit?’ he guessed.

  ‘Yes, sergeant.’

  ‘Was it received?’

  ‘Every scrap of data I possess would suggest that.’

  ‘So, our enemies know we are out here.’ Zytos almost said it to himself.

  ‘I am afraid it would appear so.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘One more thing. A second vox transmission emanated from the starship seconds after it received the initial pulse.’

  ‘Vulkan’s blood…’ breathed Zytos. ‘They sent our whereabouts to another ship, possibly even a fleet.’

  ‘The former is extremely probable. Should I convey these findings to Brother-Captain Numeon? I have been having some difficulty locating him.’

  ‘I know where he is,’ said Zytos, scowling. ‘I’ll inform the captain.’

  He cut the link.

  Twenty-Four

  Endless night

  Cruiser Monarchia, the Altar

  The ship had not been difficult to find. Amongst the many monitors, the barges and frigates, the freighters and barques all departing Macragge, it was easily the largest.

  Quor Gallek had smiled when his shipmaster brought word of its discovery.

  ‘Charybdis,’ he murmured, reading the vessel’s designation off a data-slate that he immediately discarded. ‘In Grekan myth it was a denizen of the deep, so massive its maw drank in the sea, a swirling vortex that dragged ships to their doom.’

  Quor Gallek looked up from his kneeling position in the Altar. His crimson robes spilled across the cold, slabbed floor. They were heavy with blood and gleamed wetly in the flickering brazier light. No lumens or phosphor-lamps were permitted here. This was ancient. Primordial. Ritual. Just like the chamber he currently occupied.

  ‘Poetic, isn’t it?’ he asked of his armoured shadow.

  ‘I care not,’ uttered a deep, rich voice. ‘Unless it means a sooner reckoning.’

  ‘Their destination is a maelstrom,’ said Quor Gallek as he was rising to his feet. ‘Surely the irony of that and the name of their ship is not lost on you, Degat.’

  ‘I didn’t say I could not see it. I said I didn’t care. Will it lead us to him?’

  Degat remained stock still, arms folded. They were bare in the style of the XII, but Degat was devoted to the Word. It was etched into his skin, dark enough that the hue of his flesh was changed by the religious ink.

  Zealot. Warrior.

  Cut from the same dark cloth as Barthusa Narek.

  Similar cloth, given recent revelations.

  ‘It will lead us to the fulgurite,’ Quor Gallek answered truthfully, ‘which, in turn, will give us Narek. And more besides.’

  ‘Vulkan?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Quor Gallek.

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘I suspected. The soulless talk, if properly motivated. Their knowledge can be useful, if not always trusted.’ Quor Gallek shook his head. ‘Elias always used them as blunt instruments and look where that got him, the fool. A being that powerful, hurtling through the ether… It does not go unnoticed.’

  ‘Macragge is a fortress,’ said Degat. ‘How did you manage to get them to leave?’

  ‘Grief. I did not lie to Numeon when I said I knew his thoughts. I knew everything. His desperation makes him predictable. I knew the threat of Xenut Sul would provide the gentle push he needed.’

  ‘A ship, vulnerable and alone, instead of a fortress…’ Degat’s eyes twitched, as close to an expression of amusement as he ever got.

  Quor Gallek nodded.

  ‘All three for the taking.’

  ‘Narek dies first. Do what you want with the rest,’ said Degat.

  ‘I have already struck the bargain with our allies,’ Quor Gallek replied as he paced the room, padding slowly and quietly on bare feet. A small blade in his hand shimmered as it caught the light.

  The light revealed other things too. He and Degat were not the Altar’s only inhabitants. And this was not the only Altar on the ship. Quor Gallek had named them thusly on account of their ancient heritage and sacrificial purpose. Every one of the eight Altars had been hewn from Colchisian stone, once grey but now almost crimson with the amount of blood spilled over them.

  Several transhuman prisoners were chained up around the octagonal structure, one for each point. Eight Altars, eight prisoners, eight points.

  ‘Eight times eight times eight…’

  Quor Gall
ek recited the ritual words in a solemn undertone. He eyed the first offering, reaching for the gag over its mouth. He liked to hear them first, to hear their confessions and their lies. Death brought out truth. It was their penance for shunning true gods. Primordial annihilation awaited.

  Even for Degat.

  Even for him.

  Quor Gallek accepted that when his purpose had ended, he too would become part of the great cull. The extinction of everything.

  Degat disturbed the Preacher’s inner thoughts.

  ‘What if they endure the Ruinstorm?’ he asked, rasping loudly through the snarling rebreather. It only covered his mouth and nose. His eyes were visible, unshielded by visor glass. They gleamed like ice chips, as searing as cryogen.

  Quor Gallek smiled. He did so pityingly, for he was regarding the defiant face of the warrior in chains before him. Seizing the gag, he pulled it away.

  ‘You won’t break me,’ a legionary growled through clenched teeth. He had the iron-hard skin of Medusa and his oil-black hair shimmered with sweat. A scar savaged his right eye, nearly annihilating the grim tattoo beneath it.

  ‘I know,’ Quor Gallek replied, sadly. ‘I have always respected the courage of the Iron Hands.’

  The legionary frowned, nonplussed. His good eye was drawn to the silver blade in Quor Gallek’s hand. He sneered. ‘Part the veil, unleash your fiends. You’ll find no host in me.’

  This one had experience fighting the Neverborn, then. Or perhaps he had met one of Quor Gallek’s Unburdened like Xenut Sul.

  ‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Quor Gallek told him.

  ‘I fear no ensorcelled blade,’ the prisoner spat.

  ‘It’s just a knife, although one you should really be familiar with.’

  The legionary frowned again, making deep fissures in his craggy brow. His eyes widened when Quor Gallek drew the blade across his neck. The preacher had to carve a little. Medusan flesh was quite unyielding.

  As the blood spewed from the carotid artery, the anticoagulants on the blade inhibiting Larraman clotting and condemning the subject to death, Quor Gallek smiled again.

  ‘The sorcery comes with your blood, my erstwhile brother. Lorgar thanks you for your sacrifice.’