by Various
And nor had he.
The vox was still consumed by static, but Koparnos had confidence that he would know brother from enemy. He depressed triggers to the left and right, and the Titan’s great arms rose, weapons cycling up.
He had no illusions. He was entombed within the Warlord as thoroughly as Benrath was. He would never leave this cursed place. But his war was not over. He was in command of a terrible wrath indeed.
This was a triumph, of a kind. It was the one that he had sought.
And so he wondered about the new dread that descended over him as a battle lost and finished now lumbered once more into a grey, nightmare un-life. He felt the shadow of the future fall over him – the shadow of a war as futile as it was eternal.
The war on Tallarn is far from over…
The Final Compliance of Sixty-Three Fourteen
Guy Haley
‘The Emperor has lied to you.’
The Warmaster’s voice sounded from every public address system, vox-horn and comms device on the planet. His face spoke from the giant screens on the sides of starscrapers in place of exhortations and announcements. Rich with reason, mellifluous and persuasive, Horus addressed the world of Goughen, once known to him as Sixty-Three Fourteen.
‘I request your fealty. We bring no rebellion against righteous authority, but make a stand against a tyrant who cares only for himself. Join with us. You have been deceived. Throw down your arms and follow me as a peacemaker upon the path of truth. Pledge yourselves to our cause and be free of the great deception. The Imperial Truth is a rank falsehood. The Emperor has lied to you.’
Planetary Governor Mayder Oquin glanced from his cabinets of trophies to his adjutant, Attan Spall. ‘Is there no way of turning that damned racket off?’
‘No, sir, I’m afraid not,’ said Spall regretfully.
Still he called him sir, even thirty-six years after the compliance. There were some habits you could not leave behind.
‘A pity,’ muttered Oquin. He stood tall despite his age, with his wrinkled hands clasped behind his back. His uniform – he still wore his Imperial Army dress uniform when acting in an official capacity – exhibited all the hallmarks of a military man’s habitual neatness, as did his moustache, still black, and his otherwise unruly shock of white hair, which he battled into submission daily. The gallery was intensely lit, full of mirrors, with light-coloured walls and gleaming floors of marble, so that the objects within the cabinets might be fully appreciated. Such illumination would make even the smartest man look shabby, but not Oquin. Instead, it highlighted his immaculate appearance. Age had garlanded him with wisdom, not frailty.
His voice, gruffer than it had once been, was nevertheless still strong and commanding.
‘What to take, what to take?’ he murmured.
‘Sir?’ asked Spall. Every word Oquin spoke sounded like an order, and demanded a response whether he desired it or not.
‘Hmmm? Oh, I intend to take something with me. Perhaps as a gift for our visitors. Something to remind them of our shared history.’
‘Is that really necessary, sir? Only, we should give them an answer soon.’
‘Oh, it is, Spall! Very necessary.’
The governor let his eyes wander over his collection. Items taken from a dozen worlds. Relics from long-dead civilisations sat beside artefacts from societies incorporated into the Imperium. The blackened mementos of those who had resisted.
‘…the Imperial Truth is a rank falsehood…’ the Warmaster’s voice repeated.
Oquin examined them all, carefully displayed in their crystal glass cabinets. They were his pride and joy. An austere man such as he had little use for trinkets or adornments – the decoration of the palace was the work of his subjects, not to his taste at all. The collection was Oquin’s only indulgence, memories of a life given gladly in service to a higher ideal.
‘Lest I forget,’ he always said. Spall had heard it many times, and he knew exactly what Oquin meant.
The governor pointed to a stone mask – a long, oval grotesque of exaggerated lips and fangs and wide, staring eyes carved from glossy carnelian.
‘That one, I think, is my favourite.’
‘Sir?’ asked Spall.
‘The Bathranin war mask,’ Oquin explained, although Spall knew perfectly well what it was. ‘Before your time, Spall. Tribesmen of Sixty-Three Three.’
Spall was getting nervous. He pressed a finger to the vox-bead in his ear and listened. ‘Sir, the delegation is growing impatient, as is the prime minister. The council insist on knowing what you are going to tell the Warmaster before you leave. I shall not tell you to hurry, sir, because it’s not my place–’
‘Not for any aesthetic reason, you understand,’ Oquin interrupted, ignoring Spall’s concerns. ‘For I’m sure you can see as well as I that it is a damnably ugly thing.’ He shook his head and smiled. ‘You should have seen them, thousands all arrayed against us, voices booming behind the stone. Can you imagine it? Terrifying, in its way. That was my second compliance after my own world joined the great dream of the Imperium.’ He snorted, as if at some private joke. ‘I was a common foot soldier. No idea what to expect. Even having met the Legions and seen their primarchs, even given the wondrous weapons of Terra, it took a while to get over the shock of it. Primitives painted in red mud, riding those beasts of theirs. Hopeless, really. For all that display, they had no chance. The Bathranin were brave and proud and they would not give up, and so we slaughtered them. Bloody work. Sad, in its way – they were savages after all, and knew no better.’ Oquin cast his eyes ceilingwards, as if he could see through the plaster mouldings to the lights of the war fleet in the sky. ‘The unity of mankind. Neither innocence nor bravery is protection against such a vaunted cause.’
Spall cleared his throat. ‘Sir, I do not mean to chivvy you, but we have to give an answer. They’ve been outside for a quarter of an hour.’
‘They can bloody well wait five more minutes, then!’ shouted Oquin. ‘This is my world, given to me to rule by Horus himself!’ His hand snapped up into the air and back, as if he batted a fly away from his ear. ‘If he wants our pledge of loyalty so badly, he could have come down here and not sent his lackeys. I am not an old man who has forgotten what has been asked of him. I am a commander of a planet of the Imperium! Is that clear, Spall?’
‘Crystal clear, sir.’
‘Very good,’ said Oquin, calming himself. ‘And turn your vox-bead off. I have.’
A wing of heavy gunships flew low over the governor’s palace, momentarily drowning out Horus’ echoing address. The vibration caused the collection of trophies to tremble tinkling across the glass shelves. Oquin tutted and smoothed his jacket. The threat to go with the promise. Always the way.
Last time Oquin had checked, there were fourteen warships in orbit. That was threat enough. Beyond the ancient veterans that had settled there, Sixty-Three Fourteen had precious little of a standing army – no fleet, few orbitals. Horus had grown unsubtle. Heavy-handed.
He looked next to a dress of silvermail from Sixty-Three Six, a garment made of tiny rings of precious metals linked together most cunningly. Not armour, but a fashion in the capital at the time of the compliance. He had liked his wife in it. She was gone now. Disease. Peril did not cease with war’s end. Building a world brought its own troubles.
It was a blessing that she did not have to see this day.
‘Beautiful,’ he said at the memory.
Spall followed his master’s eyes. ‘Yes, sir,’ he agreed.
Oquin nodded. Spall had been with him since Sixty-Three Six, first as a sergeant, then his lieutenant, then a captain, and so on, following him up through the ranks, always one step behind. Oquin could not say he liked Spall. The two could never be friends, but Spall was dependable. That was why Oquin had been such a good leader – he could see past personal likes and dislike
s to the real quality of the man beneath. He still liked to think that he was respected for it. He was not mistaken.
Next to the silvermail were tech-armlets from Sixty-Three Ten; deactivated and inert, of course. Oquin had made sure of it personally. By the armlets were worn pieces of metal dug from the forest loams of the barely inhabited worlds beyond Sixty-Three Thirteen. The metal was covered in hieroglyphs that remained undecipherable. The mystery of their provenance was intriguing, but their real interest was that once a year, on the very same day according to the solar cycle of their world of origin, the markings would flow and change.
‘Fascinating,’ said Oquin, taking a sideways step. ‘Absolutely fascinating.’
Displayed now in front of him on a long, purpose-built rack were a host of artefacts of common design: glass, metalwork and technological devices that, if simple, were still beautifully fashioned.
‘Sixty-Three Seven,’ he said, tapping the glass. He smiled. ‘I was less discriminating in my choices then. The personal storage I received seemed so capacious after my lieutenant’s quarters. Do you remember? It was there that they made me a captain.’ He had been proud that day, and still was. ‘Such nights! Such joy. After the initial battles, the common people welcomed us with open arms. They were the sensible ones.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Spall. ‘I remember.’ He was becoming less anxious, being drawn in to the former lord commander’s nostalgia. ‘The flowers and the pools.’
‘And the women, eh?’ Oquin added with a smile.
‘I thought it impolite to comment, sir.’
Oquin laughed. He bent low to inspect a set of clay fertility figures bartered on Sixty-Three Four. ‘We’re old,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do not think that I grumble,’ said Oquin standing ramrod-straight again. ‘More than a century of life is far better than I expected. And such a century it has been. I always wondered, when I was a boy, what it was like up there in the void. Did you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Spall replied. ‘Every night, sir.’
Oquin nodded at his aide. Of course, his expression said. Of course you did.
‘Up there, wherever he is, I’ll bet Horus has not aged a day. Such insects we must seem to him, our lives as fleeting as summer days. It can’t be healthy. Men were not meant to last forever – not even men like him.’
‘Sir?’ asked Spall cautiously.
‘This is what occurs when the mighty are immortal, Spall. Inevitable, I suppose. Ambition is poison to loyalty, in the end.’
‘Sir.’
Oquin tapped his upper lip with an extended forefinger. ‘No,’ he said decisively. ‘Sometimes the singing rocks of Sixty-Three Nine are my favourite, but today the Bathranin have it.’
‘Are you taking that then, sir?’
Oquin stopped before the central items of his collection. In a case as tall as a man were the governor’s arms and armour, lovingly maintained. A bronze-coloured cuirass with attached faulds and spaulders, and a helm crowned with the laurels of a conqueror were displayed on an armature, as if worn by an invisible warrior. On an ornate wooden stand in front were a laspistol, a volkite culverin given to him by the Mechanicum component of the 63rd Expedition after the battle for Sixty-Three Eleven, and a power sword. The holsters and scabbard were upon a belt girdling the placard of the cuirass. Oquin passed his hand over the hidden locking mechanism.
‘Not today, Spall. I will greet them as I left them, as a hero of the Imperium. Help me into this would you?’
‘Sir… I…’
‘Don’t just stand there dithering, man. Help me. The armour is heavy and I am not getting any younger.’
Spall hesitantly joined his commander. Together they brought down the armour and placed it over the governor’s head and Spall tightened its fastenings.
Oquin smiled fiercely. ‘It is damned heavy! A lot heavier than I recall. I am weaker, I expect. But…’ He admired himself in one of the room’s many mirrors. ‘It still fits.’ Spall handed him his helm, and Oquin slid it carefully on. He turned right and left. ‘Aha! If I squint, I’m still the crusader I was forty years ago. Dashing, eh Spall?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Hand me my gloves and my weapons. Just the pistol and the sword, if you would.’
Spall did as requested. Oquin looked the blade up and down, wonder upon his lined face, as though it were the first time he had held it. Spall stood back, his stomach knotted with anxiety. As he had feared, Oquin did not sheath his sword or holster his pistol. Instead he stroked the activation stud on the gun, and green lights tracked up its charge indicator. The sword’s disruption field hissed into life, the air crackling faintly around it, generating a smell of ozone.
‘Sir, what are you going to tell them?’
Oquin stared levelly at him.
‘The Emperor has lied to you,’ Horus’ smooth, recorded voice was still saying. The voice of peace. ‘I request your fealty…’
‘Loyalty, Spall. I fought for the Warmaster. He elevated me, he trusted me, and I loved him. But my loyalty is to the Emperor. The Imperial Truth is the only truth.’
Slowly, Spall unholstered his laspistol. The scrape of metal on the leather as he pulled it out seemed monstrously loud, louder even than Horus’ cycling message. He raised the gun with a shaking hand to point at his master. Tears ran freely down his face. Oquin did nothing to stop him.
‘Please, sir. They’ll kill us all,’ he said. His voice cracked.
‘Yes. I expect they will.’ Oquin smiled sadly. ‘A harsh reaction when refusal is given, but far from abnormal in a compliance action. That’s what this is. A compliance for the Warmaster’s new Imperium.’ Oquin deliberately turned his back on Spall. ‘But as I learned when I took part in the slaughter of the Bathranin, Spall, some things are worth more than life. Perhaps worth more than the life of an entire world.
‘Now, I am going to walk out of that door and give them my answer. Feel free to shoot me in the back. I am confident you won’t. Not if you remember even dimly what we were fighting for.’
Oquin strode down the gallery, his bearing proud. Spall made a strangled noise in his throat. He kept his gun trained on the governor the whole way. The weapon wavered, his aim blurred by tears.
He couldn’t do it.
Mayder Oquin disappeared through the doors.
Spall was still staring dumbly at his weapon when the din of boltgun fire echoed up the palace halls.
Sixty-Three Fourteen had replied.
The Herald of Sanguinius
Andy Smillie
It takes two deaths to keep a secret.
This truth is as old as time itself, and far more cruel. It is a truth that will see me break the bonds of a Legion. And it is for this truth that I stand here, my blade poised at my brother’s throat.
His name is Hakael, and this is the last time that I shall speak of it.
He is an honoured veteran of the Sanguinary Guard, a stalwart champion of Baal, yet this fate will steal away everything he has fought for. All of his deeds, his triumphs and glories will be forgotten. He will receive no burial, and his name will not be recorded in the Litany of Heroes. He will die here. He will die completely and, like the long-distant past, he will go unremembered and unmourned.
To his credit, he welcomes this fate. He stands before me, his chin lifted, throat exposed, hands loose at his sides. But his eyes are firm with conviction, his pupils the flat black of acceptance.
He senses my hesitation.
‘Duty demands this, Azkaellon,’ he urges me. ‘Do not dishonour me with pity or regret.’
I nod. ‘The Blood keep you.’
My blade removes his head in a single stroke. He is dead before he hits the floor.
I bite down the grief that swells in my throat, and turn to face the chamber’s only other occupant – Aratron, anothe
r of my Sanguinary Guard. His jaw is locked tight, his eyes fixed on the short length of kindling in his hand.
‘It seems ill-fitting that fate and nothing more decided who lived and who died here,’ he murmurs, hesitantly. ‘Had we determined this with a blade, it would be me lying there...’
I sheathe my sword. ‘Your deeds brought you to this room, as did his,’ I remind him. ‘But in the end, Aratron, our skill and zeal only carry us so far. We are all of us subject to the whims of fate.’
Aratron’s face creases, though he says nothing. It is rare for a warrior to admit that his life is not in his own hands, but we have both seen too many stray rounds steal away a life unintended. I give him no time to reflect on that possibility.
‘And make no mistake – from here, you are as dead as he. Your name will never again be spoken or heard, and your life as it was is over. Though my blade will not part your flesh, your fate has already been sealed by the rise and fall of an artificer’s hammer.’
I step to the brazier burning in the corner and reach into the fire for the helm within. Flame kisses my gauntlet as I lift it free – it smoulders faintly, as though angry at my touch. Its faceplate is an intricate mask, a perfect replica of the one worn by our father, Sanguinius. I regard it for a moment, awed by the craftsmanship. The primarch had fashioned it himself.
‘Are you ready?’ I ask, turning back to Aratron.
Aratron nods, and kneels before me. I grip the back of his head with my free hand and hold it firm.
‘The Blood grant you the strength to endure,’ I add solemnly, before pressing the mask onto his face.
The air is over-charged, feeling set to explode. A fight is imminent. Blood may be spilt, and this uneasy alliance of brothers will crumble. The walls of this fortress could be cast down. Imperium Secundus would fall and, with it, all that remains of the Emperor’s realm.
I move to intercept Sardon Karaashison as he tries to force his way past Neria and Vual. There is anger in his glowing eye lenses.
