Fear to Tread

by James Swallow

  ‘You brought this all the way from Terra…’ Azkaellon said without looking up, absorbing every word on the page.

  ‘No. We were given this tasking as we were the closest to your location. We will come with you to the Red Tear and the Angel’s court. As you can see from the Sigillite’s wording, time is deemed to be of the essence.’

  However, the text Redknife referred to was clouded with vagaries and it said little that could be firmly grasped beyond the core of the order. That this document and these commands were authentic was beyond all doubt – the photic parchment would have been tele-kinetically transcribed by a bound astropathic savant and all relevant codes and cipher-phrases were in place – but there was almost nothing to explain precisely why Malcador had suddenly chosen to send a party of Space Wolves to accompany the Great Angel. At last, Azkaellon looked up and met Redknife’s cool gaze. ‘And what is your mission, captain?’

  ‘It is what it has always been, to serve the Emperor of Mankind and defend the Imperium from all that threatens it.’

  Azkaellon’s noble mien creased into a scowl. ‘A more specific description would be appreciated.’

  ‘I have no doubt.’

  His tolerance fading with each passing moment, the Sanguinary Guard came closer and lowered his voice so that it would not carry. ‘Am I expected to accept that such a thing is beyond my need to know? I am the commander of the Angel’s chosen. There is no rank above mine in this Legion, save for the primarch himself.’

  Redknife nodded, showing no reaction to the Blood Angel’s growing annoyance. ‘This is known to me. All I can tell you is that we are here…’ The Space Wolf paused, searching for the right words. ‘We are here to keep watch.’

  ‘You are observers?’ The idea of it seemed unrealistic; the sons of Russ had never been known to stand sentinel when there was a fight to be had. The very idea of it went against everything Azkaellon knew about their character.

  ‘We will agree to call it that,’ Redknife replied. ‘I have no wish to further lengthen the delay of the flotilla’s departure. If you will provide us with temporary quarters, my squad and I will… stay out of your way.’

  Azkaellon studied the captain’s stoic expression for any sign of subterfuge, but found nothing he could interpret; and as much as he wanted to interrogate the Space Wolf further, out at the rendezvous the Angel’s grand fleet would be waiting for the Hermia and the rest of the Ignis task force to join them. Further delay would not be tolerated.

  ‘See to Captain Redknife’s needs,’ said the Sanguinary Guard at length, summoning a Legion serf with a terse gesture. He turned his back on the Space Wolves and walked away. ‘Secure the ship!’ he snapped. ‘Contact the Ignis and pass on the order to enter the immaterium.’

  He looked up and found the Blood Angels legionary still watching from the gantry above. Meros. The one who was injured. The warrior’s expression was filled with questions, and Azkaellon grimaced, sharing his uncertainty.

  ‘He’s here! He’s here!’ Marshal Zauber’s aide crashed in through the door of his office in a state that was somewhere between panic and elation. Her name was Rozin, and he’d picked her for the job because she was both competent and pleasant to look at. In a marshal’s career, the latter was a rarity, for the colony’s complex political matrix was largely made up of aged types or scarred war veterans. They were people who seemed to make an art of being unattractive despite all the finery they draped over themselves, despite all the high office and ranks that they bestowed upon one another.

  Most of them were dead now. He shook off that thought and scrambled up from behind his desk, ignoring the accumulated piles of data-slates he dislodged in passing. He made for the door and the wide staircase that curved down the length of the council hall to the ground floor.

  The dense, ruddy light that made everything look like old blood seeped over the walls and the carpet, turning the familiar corridors and steps into something dreamlike and unreal.

  No. Not dreamlike, that was the wrong word. Nightmarish.

  It was all that way, everything. The light, the walls and the floor, all of it wrong. Rozin was at his heels as he ran, and he realised that she was wrong too. Her voice was high and brittle in a way it hadn’t been before. As if she was constantly on the edge of hysteria.

  Did Zauber’s voice sound like that to her? He wanted to ask, but also he was afraid to. In case she told him, yes, you do sound as if you’re losing your mind. He wanted to ask her if she were hearing the same noises at the edge of her awareness, like whispers or the rustle of pages being turned. Did Rozin see the odd blinks out of the corner of her eye too? The ghosts of shapes in mirrors or anything reflective?

  Did she find it hard not to think about stabbing people to death? Did she have nightmares all the time? Did Rozin want to scream and scream and scream until her throat filled with blood, and–

  He shook it off, with a literal gesture and a small ‘no’ sound that perhaps the girl noticed but didn’t comment on. They crossed the atrium and Zauber looked up at the skylights. Shafts of twisted luminosity were here, rods of haze reaching down though the holes in the powdery drifts that covered the crystalflex panes. The ash kept falling, and after days of it, the strange phenomenon showed no signs of abating.

  It was everywhere, like hot snow, embers of it smouldering and never going out, collecting in heaps or wandering the streets propelled by sudden, searing gusts of wind. If there had been a volcano nearby, that would have made sense. If there had been a vent in the earth spitting fumes into the sky, that would have been something Zauber could grasp. But nowhere on the colony was there anything like that. The endless rain of cinders spilling out of the low, menacing clouds did nothing to obey the strictures of meteorology.

  Other planets in the cluster were talking about the same things – or they were in between declarations of alarm and demands that the capital do something. At first, Zauber and everyone else on the council had dismissed the early events as pranks or reporting errors, finally upgrading them in grudging manner to the suggestion of some kind of organised demonstration by activists. Foolish, though, he thought. It’s nature turning against us, not men.

  Alderman Yee, in the hours before he had placed a laspistol between his thin, papery lips and burned out his skull with it, had suggested a different source. Yee was of rogue trader stock, once a well-travelled shipmaster before love and marriage had enticed him to set to surface and live a colonist’s life, and it was to him that they had turned when the first person suggested the question of xenos involvement. The old spacer had said something about the warp, but Zauber had not understood the things he spoke of. Born and raised within the bounds of the colony worlds, the marshal had never crossed into the immaterium, never even set foot aboard an interstellar vessel. He tried now to remember exactly what Yee had said, but Zauber’s thoughts were snagged on the last memory he had of the alderman: the sordid image of him curled around the long shape of the duelling gun, suckling on the barrel of it like a newborn at a mother’s teat.

  The list of what the science commissioners had termed ‘anomalous events’ grew by the day. A five hundred per cent rise in birth defect mutations in the farm communities that was now spreading from livestock to human babies in the hive city medical centres. Entire settlements going silent, some fortifying themselves and cutting off all outside contact, others just... becoming empty. Mysterious broadcasts on the watch-wire that induced vomiting and irrational fear in all those who heard them. A spike in the rates of suicide and murder. Dead birds. A rash of inexplicable graffiti – peculiar geometric shapes – appearing on the sides of hab-towers, on roadways, even cut into hills.

  No single world was immune to it. The strangeness was spreading like a wave, building in magnitude, and Marshal Zauber had no idea how to deal with it. The responsibility had fallen to him only through line of succession. The other members of the council had either taken their own lives or died in the inexplicable arson attack that burned down the
parliament building; only a quirk of fate had ensured that Zauber was elsewhere when it happened, waylaid by a ground-traffic accident on the mainway. At first he thought this had been good luck, but now he was wondering if it was the exact opposite. The burden of duty had come to rest upon him and he was floundering beneath it.

  The colonists called for help, first from their neighbours and then from the Imperial Administratum, the Army, the Legiones Astartes, from any agency that was listening. But none of the courier ships dispatched towards the segmentum core had reported in, and all astropathic messages went unanswered. There had been a moment when they believed a reply was coming in, but the signal had turned out to be a deformed echo of the first distress call, somehow reflected back at them.

  No more signals were sent after that. No more sendings were possible. The astropaths began to die, one at a time, from a wasting malaise that non-psykers were immune to. The last Zauber had heard, the medicae on one of the orbital platforms had the few remaining telepaths in deep isolation. He imagined they had followed their kindred into slow decay.

  The doors opened automatically as Zauber came up to them, Rozin’s shoes clacking over the tiled floor behind him. Two garrison troopers, men with the hollow-eyed look of soldiers who had not rested in days, fell in either side of them and brought up their lasrifles, wary of the swirling haze outside and what it might conceal.

  The hot air tasted like sulphur, and it immediately stole away all moisture in Zauber’s throat and nostrils. Across the great courtyard, the ornamental fountain was caked in dust and the pool beneath it had become a slurry of grey mud. The gardens bordering the square were brown and rotting, grasses and flowers smothered by the ash, choked of sunlight. On a normal day, the marshal would have been able to look out of the courtyard’s great arch and down along the Planetfall Road, the colony’s first highway; but the hab-blocks that lined the wide boulevard were lost to him, with only the suggestions of their carved majesty visible through the ceaseless ash-storm.

  He heard the throaty noise of heavy military engines. Rozin was pointing. ‘There!’ She jabbed a finger at the road, and Zauber saw the flicker of headlights growing brighter as vehicles approached. They were coming from the direction of the spaceport, but they were very definitely not the light half-track rovers of the planetary garrison force stationed out there. Absently, Zauber remembered that the men he had sent to guard the port had not reported in for more than a day.

  The obscured vehicles resolved into shadows, then defined as hard-sided shapes that rolled swiftly towards them, shoving abandoned groundcars out of their way with broad metal bumpers. Dense caterpillar tracks crunched over the rockcrete as the convoy of armoured machines slowed and folded into a V-formation as they halted. They were armoured personnel carriers of a design that Zauber had not seen before, great bricks of metal adorned with weapon sponsons, plated turrets and whip antennae that snapped in the wind.

  Hatches clanked open and soldiers in purple-black uniforms and atmosphere gear disembarked, casting around with the porcine snouts of their breather masks. Zauber made an attempt to smooth back his hair and straighten his brocade jacket, but did little more than smear the ash flakes that had settled upon him.

  From the back of the largest transport came the arrival they had been waiting for. He was tall and thin, and Zauber was put off by the first thought that came to mind as the man approached: he was reminded of something sinuous and reptilian.

  ‘I am Marshal Zauber,’ he announced, pushing the image aside. ‘This is my aide, Rozin.’ It was impossible to pause. ‘Sir, you have no idea how pleased we are to see you.’

  The man gave a languid nod, the broad preacher hat on his head bobbing. ‘My name is Bruja. Emissary of the Imperium.’ His eyes were hidden behind a pair of mirrored glare-shields that seemed redundant in the flat, sunless daylight. ‘Your call has been heeded.’ He wore robes that went from his neck to the ground, hanging off him in a flowing cone of material. The robes were lined with silver and gold threads in a design that suggested either a bending river or a snake.

  ‘You have ships?’ Rozin blurted out the question, her excitement peaking.

  ‘A small vessel brought me here.’ Bruja’s voice had a rough-smooth quality to it, like that of a habitual tabac smoker. ‘Other ships are on the way. A fleet.’

  From inside the folds of the robe came a pale, long-fingered hand. Bruja held up a circular medallion made of bright, mirrored silver, and when he spoke again it was with a ritual formality. ‘You have called for help and I have come as representative of those who heard you.’

  The medallion turned in Bruja’s hand and Zauber found he couldn’t look away from it. He saw the distinct designs on the surfaces of the disc: on one side, the symbol of a wolf and a crescent moon, the other showing a baleful eye. The Eye of Horus.

  ‘The Warmaster?’ The question slipped from him.

  Bruja’s head bobbed. ‘I carry the seal of Horus Lupercal and by extension the authority of the Warmaster himself. He has heard the cries of distress from this world and her neighbours, and dispatched me to take charge in the interim. I will guide you through this emergency.’

  Zauber felt a tremendous flood of relief wash over him. He was a caretaker politician, he always had been. A gentleman of good conduct and slight ambition, but not a leader of men, not a soul with the strength to weather the kind of disaster that was overwhelming his colony. More than anything, he wanted someone to step in and take the weight of that from him – and Bruja was that person. He pushed away the nagging sense of unease the emissary instilled in him and concentrated on that.

  At his side, Rozin was nodding, wiping tears from her eyes. She doubtless felt the same way. ‘Such terrible, inexplicable things have been occurring,’ said the woman, as they made their way back towards the council hall. ‘Order has broken down, Lord Bruja.’

  The emissary’s manner was calm and metered, as if they were taking a walk on a pleasant summer’s day. ‘Balance will be restored,’ he assured them. ‘I swear it to you.’

  ‘Is it... Is it an alien invasion?’ Zauber leaned close, becoming conspiratorial. ‘These anomalies, they seem like attempts to use psychological warfare against us.’

  Bruja studied him for a long moment, then nodded once. ‘Marshal, your insight is great. You are correct. But we must not speak widely of this truth. There would be mass panic.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, indeed.’ There was panic already, of course, but in an isolated fashion, in pockets that could be put down and dealt with. The emissary’s words made sense, didn’t they? Zauber was grasping at them, desperate to find agreement with the new arrival.

  Some of Bruja’s troops were working at the rear of a broad transporter vehicle, and with a sudden clatter, shifting hull plates folded up like gull’s wings to reveal the interior. Rozin caught sight of the activity and slowed, squinting into the dust to watch.

  The emissary cleared his throat with a rasp. ‘I will need to claim this facility for my operations, Marshal, you understand? My men will need a billet and I require a place where I can begin my work.’

  ‘It will be done.’ Zauber nodded. ‘Our resources are yours to command.’

  Rozin was pointing again. ‘What is that?’

  Zauber turned to look. The troopers were guiding a capsule out of the transport. It was the size of a large groundcar, and the flanks of the rectangular object were made of what looked like dense crystal. The marshal thought he saw lines of curious glyphs etched in the panels, and small puffs of red smoke spat from the base of the container to dissipate into the ash-filled air. Suddenly, there was the sting of ozone in his nostrils, and something else along with it. The faint odour of old meat.

  ‘The Warmaster has several… uncommon technologies at his fingertips. That is one of them. The seed of it, at any rate.’ Bruja kept walking, forcing them to turn away and keep up.

  ‘I don’t follow you,’ said Zauber. ‘Is it a weapon?’

  ‘A technology,’ Bruj
a repeated. ‘You need not concern yourself about its function.’ The emissary reached the doors of the council hall and looked up for the first time, into the clouded sky.

  Zauber wasn’t certain, but he thought he saw the man smile slightly.

  Rozin gave a fragile, nervous laugh. ‘Lord Bruja, forgive me, but you seem so composed in the face of our crisis. You have heard our mayday messages, you know the scope of the phenomena we have been experiencing…’ She swallowed a breath and waved at the heavens. ‘Does this not unsettle you?’

  Bruja stopped on the threshold of the hall and gave her his attention. ‘No. On the world where I was born, such a sky would not seem out of place.’

  ‘Terra?’ Zauber wondered aloud.

  The emissary shook his head. ‘A distant colony planet, but I doubt you would have heard its name. Few in this sector know of Davin.’

  It meant nothing to Zauber, that was true. ‘Still,’ he began, ‘that you have come so far to aid us speaks greatly to your–’

  The marshal’s reply was broken by the sullen slap of a thick, fluid droplet striking the ground near his feet. By reflex, he looked up as more fell, dappling his black jacket. A bead exploded against his face and he flinched, reaching up to wipe off the liquid.

  Zauber’s hand came away crimson, and he smelled wet copper. The ash fall had transformed. Now, instead of the flakes of grey ember, a torrent of dark drops came from the sullen clouds, hissing as they kissed the stonework all about them.

  Rozin released a piercing shriek and fled into the building, rivulets of red streaking her face and clothing. Zauber staggered after her, feeling his gorge rise. Blood. The rain had become blood, as warm as if it were freshly shed. ‘Wh-what is happening?’ he piped.

  Bruja walked slowly, unperturbed by the horrific rains. ‘Don’t fear it,’ he said. ‘You will be saved. All these worlds will be saved.’

  ‘Saved?’ Zauber forced out the word. He was afraid now, more afraid than he had ever been in his life.