by Various
The astropath tried to remove a cloth-wrapped body from a moving rack, cutting her hands in the process. Qelvyn saw a face frozen in death peering out of the shroud, an older male with the same style of ornamental electoos on his cheeks that Pau Yei sported on her face.
Gallor dragged the dead man to the floor and laid him down as gently as he could. Frowning, the legionary opened the cloth wrapping further, revealing the ugly remains of a lasgun wound. Qelvyn watched Pau Yei swallow her grief and push the Space Marine’s hands away. Gallor let her, taking a step back and guiding her down with his hand. ‘You are sure it is Yaang?’
‘Aye.’ Pau Yei’s long, delicate fingers peeled back the shroud and ran over the dead man’s flesh, the ruined sockets, the taut skin across his face. A gasp escaped her.
Qelvyn saw something – a glitter of metal embedded in the corpse’s neck. ‘What is that?’
‘Mechanicum implant,’ answered Gallor. ‘An agoniser. I’ve seen them before, but rarely on a human.’
The soldier scowled. Such devices were made for domesticating animals, bionic modules half-buried in flesh. Operated by remote control, an overseer could use one to send a governing pulse to the nerve clusters of a wild beast, cracking it like a whip. But they had other uses; it wasn’t unknown for them to be implanted in dangerous prisoners.
‘Someone was tormenting Yaang,’ Pau Yei insisted. ‘Hurting him to ensure his compliance. Now they want his body destroyed so that this evidence is lost forever!’ She leaned closer and clasped the dead man’s skull in her hands, and Qelvyn sensed a peculiar metallic tang in the air as the astropath’s head tilted back, her mouth falling open.
‘What is she doing?’
‘Reading him,’ said the Death Guard. ‘It is said that the mind-speakers can read the psyches of their brethren as well as you or I would page through a…’ The warrior fell silent as something clanked off a nearby platform. He reached for his boltgun.
Qelvyn’s laspistol was already in her hand, and she thumbed off the safety, her attention flicking between Pau Yei and her surroundings. ‘What is it?’
‘Company is coming,’ said Gallor, in a low voice.
Before he could elaborate, Pau Yei released a strangled sound deep in her throat, and let go of Yaang’s head as if it had scalded her. Her face was pink and filmed with sweat.
‘What did you… see?’
‘Only pain and anguish,’ said the astropath, barely holding in a sob. ‘At the end… He was so lost and afraid. How dare they do that to him!’
More noise reached Qelvyn’s ears and her head snapped around to look in the direction of the sound. Shadows were moving towards them.
The legionary reached for a manual tab on the neck ring of his armour and spoke into a vox-bead there. ‘Kendel, this is Gallor. Do you hear me?’ Static hissed back at him, and Qelvyn knew the sound of a jammer when she heard it. ‘Kyda? Velox? Anyone who reads this transmission, respond.’
‘They won’t let us reveal what we have found,’ Pau Yei said darkly.
A flood of brilliant light washed over them from above and the approaching figures were made clear. Warden Habeth and a large force of his men moved in to surround them.
The Proximan noble aimed a richly decorated sword-gun at the trio. ‘I knew it from the start,’ he hissed. ‘Disloyalty in each and every one of you. And now you steal into our city like criminals, violating the dead!’
‘No!’ cried Pau Yei, staring blindly into the dazzling illumination. ‘This matter is not ended – there is untruth at work! Yaang was forced to do what he did, don’t you understand? This is proof!’
‘This is treachery!’ he shot back.
Qelvyn saw a cold choice being made behind the Warden’s gaze, and she knew that Kendel’s instincts about Habeth had been right from the start. ‘He understands well enough,’ she told the astropath. ‘Better than anyone.’
A heartbeat later, Gallor opened fire.
Kendel waited for the explosion of fury and self-important bluster that she had come to expect from the Proximan highborn, but instead Proge showed her an oily smile. He glanced at the marshal and the other nobles in the room, and the witch-seeker felt a moment of doubt. Had she misjudged them?
As a former Silent Sister, she was an expert in understanding communications that were unspoken, and now she saw exactly that passing between the Proximans. Kendel suspected that Proge was holding something back, and chalked it up to his priggish nature, to his dislike at being forced to acknowledge her authority.
But it was more than that.
‘This conspiracy of lies, the astropath Yaang and the suborned signals…’ She eyed the Aristarch. ‘With a culture as byzantine as yours, it is credible that you were unaware of it occurring within the ranks of your underlings.’
‘Yes?’ he offered, willingly giving her an opening.
‘But that’s only one more lie atop the others, isn’t it? You were never ignorant of this sedition.’ At her side, Kyda raised his bolter. ‘I suspect you may be the author of it.’
The carefully pitched mask of pomposity and self-importance slipped as the smile from Proge’s thin lips widened. ‘I have never been party to treason,’ he replied. ‘My loyalty has been firm and unswerving from the very start.’ The Aristarch aimed a finger at Kyda. ‘Unlike you, legionary. You betrayed your father! You betrayed Lord Mortarion and the Warmaster!’
The marshal’s face twisted in a snarl. ‘Sickening. To see a warrior of such potency rotting and weak inside.’
Kyda growled, but Kendel held up a hand to halt him from any immediate act of violence – although she suspected the pause would not last long. ‘That explains what happened when we first arrived…’ She met the marshal’s gaze. ‘You thought that Gallor and Kyda were here on Horus’ orders, because they are Death Guard…’
‘She almost tipped our hand.’ Proge chuckled to himself, amused by the thought. ‘Yes. We await Lord Horus, for it is he we have sworn to, not an Emperor who ignores His closest neighbours, who plunders our world for its sons and daughters to be so much cannon fodder!’
‘What did he promise you?’ said Kyda.
Proge opened his hands. ‘Not power or riches. We have little need of those.’ He shook his head. ‘No, Death Guard, you do not see. The Warmaster is truly honourable. He is not consumed by dreams of empire like his father! He offered us only what we are due.’
‘How many years has Proxima served the needs of the Imperial war machine?’ demanded the marshal, her eyes flaring. ‘And what have we been given in return?’
‘Never enough,’ muttered Proge, and the others in room echoed his words. ‘Never enough.’
‘The Warmaster’s triumph will be our triumph,’ said the other woman. ‘He values loyalty.’
Kendel slowly shook her head. ‘You’re wrong. Horus values victory… and any tool that will bring it to him.’
Something in the witch-seeker’s tone made the marshal flinch, and the woman tore her ceremonial pistol from its holster, spinning it up to put a shot into Kendel’s chest.
The weapon’s muzzle never cleared the tooled leather. Kyda blew her apart with a single pull of his trigger, blood and jewels and splintered wood crashing across the room as the mass-reactive round tore through unprotected flesh and the ornate furniture beyond it. Outside in the courtyard, where the crowds were gathered, Kendel heard cries of alarm.
She drew her own weapon and aimed it at the Aristarch. ‘Bakaro Proge,’ she began, ‘I name you traitor. The sentence is death.’
He continued to smile at her, ignoring the smoking ruin that had been his co-conspirator. ‘You’ll kill an unarmed man? Is that the Sigillite’s idea of justice?’
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But this is.’ Kendel turned to Kyda, keeping her gun on the others. ‘Take him outside.’
Habeth was dead, lost on the Terminae’s co
nveyor along with many more nameless corpses, cut down by Qelvyn’s laspistol. His wardens did not perish so easily, however, and it tested Gallor to keep the soldier and the astropath alive while he returned fire. He wasn’t used to playing the part of protector. It wasn’t a role that the Death Guard had ever excelled at.
Gallor kept his kills metered and steady, moving and firing, firing and moving, until finally they broke out of the tower through a service duct and went across the rooftops of the nearby rendering works. He found himself constantly halting to allow the humans to catch up with him. The soldier did her best, but she was panting with effort and fear.
Finally she shouted at him. ‘Make up your mind! Fight with us or abandon us! But just bloody well pick one!’
‘I…’ A reply began to form in his thoughts, but it was cut short as his genhanced senses picked up the scent of rich, arterial blood. ‘Who is wounded?’
Qelvyn’s face twisted in confusion; then in the next moment she was grabbing the astropath, pulling Pau Yei towards her. The other woman’s hand came away from her side and it was red and wet.
‘A glancing shot struck me as we fled,’ she gasped. ‘I can walk.’
‘Now you’re coming over all brave?’ Qelvyn grimaced. ‘Idiot. You’ll bleed white if we don’t stop that.’ The soldier set Pau Yei down in the lee of an air duct and set to work on dressing the wound.
Gallor shifted, trying to look in every direction at once. His keen hearing picked out the whine of hovercraft engines and the distant slap of approaching rotors. If they could not get off the roof, they would be killed up here.
Qelvyn shot him a questioning look. ‘Any change with the vox?’
He shook his head. ‘We are silenced. There is no way to communicate with Kendel or the ship.’
Pau Yei coughed and gave a mewling cry at the jolt of pain that came with it. ‘No…’ She managed. ‘That is not entirely accurate.’
The Death Guard saw movement at the far end of the roof and fired towards it, earning another kill as a warden was blown back. ‘Explain, quickly,’ he demanded. ‘The traitors are at our heels.’
‘I can reach Mazone. But it will cost me.’
‘The Navigator?’ Qelvyn blinked and tapped her temple. ‘You can… speak to him?’
‘I can try.’
‘You will,’ Gallor told her. ‘Or else we will perish here.’
No one dared to stand in Kyda’s way as he dragged Proge down the stairs and out onto the manicured lawns surrounding the building. A terrible, heavy silence fell, and the legionary scanned the faces of the crowd. Thousands of civilians, all genders and races and ages, but all robbed of their voices by the sight before them.
Good, he told himself. Let them see this and understand.
Kyda threw the Aristarch down and watched as he struggled back up to his knees. ‘The gun or the knife?’ asked Proge.
In reply, Kyda clamped his bolter to his hip and unsheathed his combat blade. ‘Bare your throat. If you refuse, it won’t be quick.’
‘You think this means you win?’ Proge looked at Kyda, then to Kendel. ‘I am not the only one.’
‘Your supporters will be expunged,’ Kendel told him.
The Aristarch burst out laughing and he found Kyda’s gaze again. A warning rang in the legionary’s thoughts, like the sense of an unseen enemy at his back, a threat he couldn’t parse.
‘Everything we did was to make you go away,’ said Proge, taking a breath. ‘The hidden faction in the refinery, the incident at the spire, the execution of Yaang. All of it was to create the narrative that Malcador expected to find here. All so we could begin our efforts anew once your investigation was complete and you departed. But you just wouldn’t leave.’
‘What efforts?’ demanded Kendel. ‘Confess!’
Proge ignored her, concentrating on Kyda, as if he were trying to reach for some common kinship between them. ‘It is not only I who has given my loyalty to Horus, Death Guard – we all have.’ He opened his arms wide to take in his cohorts and his soldiers, and every single one of the Proximan civilians surrounding them. ‘Proxima Majoris itself has sworn an oath to the Warmaster.’
Kyda looked out at the crowd. In each face he saw the same thing: determination, zeal, belief. The same thing, he realised, that he had once seen in himself, a lifetime ago on Barbarus.
The scope of the Proximan betrayal washed over him, snapping into perfect, damning focus. This star system was an ideal place from which to stage an attack on Terra. How deep could it go? How many forces were already here? The Aristarch could have been gathering forces loyal to the Warmaster from all across the segmentum for months. For years.
With a population sworn to Horus’ banner, it could be done and never known by anyone across the light-years towards Terra.
‘You can execute me,’ Proge smiled, ‘but do you have enough blades and bolt shells to execute an entire city?’ He rose slowly to his feet. ‘A whole planet?’
‘We’ll see,’ said Kyda, and cut the Aristarch’s throat.
Then, like the breaking of an ocean wave, the civilians in the crowd came screaming towards him. Before Proge’s body hit the ground, Kyda was mobbed.
He reacted without thought, cutting and stabbing with his blade, his other hand drawing his bolter. A tide of furious faces rose up as the Proximans heedlessly threw themselves upon him, battering their fists against his armour, taking up anything that could be turned into a weapon.
He killed dozens in seconds, their blood sluicing across his wargear, but they kept on coming, ten more for every one he ended, and by sheer weight of numbers they kept him pinned.
His bolter ran dry and still they came. Kyda caught a glimpse of Kendel vanishing behind a wall of screaming faces, the pariah pushed back towards the doors of the Aristarch’s mansion, before a howling youth clambered over his back and beat at his head with a heavy stone. He broke the young man’s neck throwing him off his shoulders, but lost his gun in the action. There were too many of them to fight, more and more piling atop one another with each passing moment.
It was said that one Space Marine was the equal of a hundred common men. Now a revelation, a question, came to him as the huge, riotous mob dragged him down.
How many more will it take to kill me?
The mansion was the only place that she could go.
Kendel fired as she ran, but the shots did little to stop the horde from pouring over the Death Guard, and as she shouldered the doors shut behind her, the final glimpse she had of the legionary was of his bloodied face disappearing beneath an overwhelming throng of men, women and children. As she sprinted up the ornamental stairs, she heard the sounds of tearing metal and ripping flesh.
What kind of zealotry would be enough to make a mortal throw themselves at a Space Marine? Was this the power of the Warmaster? It staggered Kendel to believe that such an impossible compulsion could exist.
The question beat at her as she fought her way past guards through chamber after chamber. Her laspistol grew hot in her hand as it raced towards a critical overheat, searing her skin until at last she had to discard it. The gun fell to the floor, sizzling where it lay, and Kendel kicked open another door to reveal an ascending spiral staircase.
She followed it to the top of a narrow watchtower that grew out of the mansion’s higher floors, halting at the saw-tooth battlements that ringed it. Far below she could see the crowd gathered around a ruined man-shape of meat and ceramite. What was left of Bajun Kyda lay atop a hill of human carrion, a grotesque monument amidst all the delicate finery of the gardens and a poor death, even for one of such uneven temper. She saw the Arvus lighter nearby, already set alight and bleeding plumes of dark smoke.
The rising echo of voices reached her. Proge’s guardsmen were searching the building, and they would not rest until she was dead. Did they already have a scheme, a set of lies engineered
to cover up her death?
How would they explain it away, she wondered? Kendel imagined an account that painted her as a failure, one convincing enough to divert Malcador’s attention away from the true treachery at Proxima.
And there was worse that could happen. Kendel had heard the rumours of the dark acts committed by Horus’s cohorts, of unspeakable things that could warp the minds of the just and good.
Had that happened here? Could it happen to her?
She placed a hand on the stone battlement and considered throwing herself over it. Would it be a better death to die by her own hand, or was her end to suffer the same ignominious fate as Kyda? And what of Gallor and the others? The dead air from her vox-bead spoke ill.
A rare and unwelcome emotion came to her. Doubt.
Kendel could not stop herself from wondering if her kind of spirit – a secular, personal belief in one’s self and a greater good – would ever be enough to fight back against the unquenchable zealotry of ‘true believers’ like the citizens of Majesty.
She imagined the face of Bakaro Proge, with his smiles and certainty; Emrilia Herkaaze, her hard eyes and unflinching conviction; and Horus Lupercal himself, that rising demigod whose rebellion had made him an unstoppable juggernaut.
Everything that Amendera Kendel drew strength from seemed very far away. She put one foot up on the battlements, then another, the breeze whipping at her cloak and caressing her cheeks.
She closed her eyes – and heard the heavy scream of thrusters.
The acrid stench of promethium fumes choked her and Kendel peered up, shielding her face with the blade of her hand. An ugly ingot of black shadow blotted out the Proximan sun as it dropped through the clouds, suspended on jets of white fire.
The Velox turned in place as figures on the ground opened up on it with small arms. Cannon cupolas on the ventral hull rotated with machine precision and strafed the crowd with las-bolts, ending all defiance.
A square of light appeared in the hull as a hatch opened, and Kendel saw a hulking figure appear. The ship drifted over to the watchtower and Gallor’s armour caught the fire-glow from below. He beckoned her as a rescue tether played out.
