by Nick Kyme
Adanar ignored the proffered data-slate. ‘What good do you think they will do us, corporal?’
Besseque was genuinely confused, ‘The Space Marines, sir. They are a cause for hope.’
‘They cannot protect us.’ Adanar’s bile was really flowing now. All his grief, his sense of impotence and futility, it came out toxically. ‘We cannot even protect ourselves.’ The chamber was rocked by a close artillery impact outside but both men managed to keep their feet. Adanar slapped the wall where the dust and debris were still rolling downwards. ‘What use are defences if our enemy can merely pass through them? What good are guns if our foes stand up again after we’ve killed them? What use is hope, Besseque, tell me that!’
Another tremor hit the chamber as the necron bombardment increased. A chunk of debris parted from the ceiling and struck Besseque across the forehead preventing his reply.
As the corporal fell in a heap, Adanar picked himself up and ran to him.
‘Besseque!’
A heavy contusion marred the corporal’s forehead, spreading like a bloom of purple ink across his skin. The cut was only shallow. It left a thin trail of blood but Besseque was dead. An internal haemorrhage had killed him instantly. The data-slate he’d been carrying slipped tamely from his lifeless grasp.
Exasperated, Adanar sat down cross-legged next to the corpse. He laid one hand on Besseque’s still chest. It was ridiculous. The horrors of the invasion, the bombardment – all the things the corporal had survived only to be killed by a chunk of rock, and not even a large chunk at that.
Adanar threw back his head and laughed. He laughed uproariously until his throat was dry and his eyes stung from the tears. All the while, the room shook and the necron guns thundered.
Adanar met Rancourt on the stairwell. The acting lord governor was shadowed by Sergeant Kador, who looked less than thrilled with his posting.
‘Commander Sonne,’ he said, slightly tremulously, ‘I am glad I’ve found you.’
Adanar moved past him, and Rancourt went with him walking at the commander’s shoulder. ‘What is it?’
‘I have been trying to get a meeting with you. Your aide – Becket is it? – was supposed to inform you.’
Adanar took the stairs two at a time. They led up to the battlements. He was making it deliberately difficult for the Imperial official. ‘He’s dead.’
Rancourt let out a little gasp. Adanar had to begrudgingly give him credit – he was keeping pace. ‘Dead? The necrons killed him? Are they inside our defences?’
Adanar stopped halfway up the stairs and glared straight ahead. ‘No, acting governor, he’s back there.’ He thumbed over his shoulder. ‘A rock killed him.’
‘A ro– A what?’
Adanar faced him, ‘A piece of debris fell from the ceiling and he died.’
Rancourt peered upwards, as if expecting a similar fate.
‘What did you want?’ Adanar pressed.
When Rancourt saw the undisguised contempt in the commander’s eyes, he reacted. ‘Respect, firstly. I am an agent of the Imperium, the highest authority on this world. And I–’
‘No,’ Adanar replied flatly. ‘You are not.’
Rancourt practically screeched at him, ‘I am the lord governor! I demand–’
Shaking his head, Adanar interjected. ‘You are not. You are acting governor and your authority at this time is meaningless. I will grant you a guard detail, but your demands will not be met.’
Kador’s face darkened further at the news.
Rancourt grasped the commander’s lapels. ‘Let the Adeptus Astartes fight. That is what they were made for. We should make all haste to the Crastia Shipyards and evacuate.’
Adanar looked down at Rancourt’s scrawny fingers. He let the commander go.
‘Secure your evacuation, you mean.’
Rancourt made a plaintive expression. ‘As the lord-gov– as the acting lord governor,’ he corrected, ‘I should, by Imperial dictate, be amongst the first, yes. But–’
‘Look around you, Rancourt. Look at the skies. What do you think those tremors are that shake the walls? What are you listening to when the air booms? It’s not thunder, not in any natural sense, anyway.’ Adanar leaned in close. His alcohol breath wafted back at him. ‘The necrons control the skies. They fill it with emerald death. Even if we could reach the Crastia Shipyards, even if they were still standing, we would not get off the ground. Our vessels would be destroyed before they even breached the upper atmosphere.’
Rancourt knew this. Despite his actions to the contrary, he wasn’t a stupid man, just a desperate one. He seemed to shrink with the realisation that Adanar was telling the truth. His voice quivered like a child’s. ‘But I’m afraid…’
At first, Adanar regarded him with disgust – this was the lord governor of Damnos, the one the people looked to for leadership – but then he only felt pity.
‘We all are,’ said the commander and carried on up the stairs.
‘I have never fought beside an Angel before.’
Iulus’s attention was focussed on the battlements. His command was the second wall, the one farthest from Kellenport bastion, the heart of the last city on Damnos. The third was well mined and booby-trapped. He credited Commander Sonne – he had drilled his men well. They had marched from the western gate and assumed the positions on and around the walls as Iulus had instructed.
His keen eye for tactical dispositions picked out gunnery nests, heavy stubbers on pintle-mounts, bolter emplacements and lascannon at enfilading points around the wall. The lines of Ark Guard were not thick but they were steady and every man, woman and child capable of doing so carried a lascarbine, autogun or shotgun. The Damnosian armouries were bare. Everything they had was on the walls or in the courtyards and it was pointed at the killing-fields where the necrons would come. He had named the courtyard below Xiphos, on account of the fact he liked the weapon. It was a cutting, thrusting blade and in the Terran dialect meant ‘penetrating light’ or something close to that – he was no expert in translation. There had been overly much darkness and not enough light on Damnos. The name was a fitting one, he decided.
As if only just realising he’d spoken, Iulus raised an eyebrow at Falka. ‘What did you say?’
The trooper was alongside him, part of the Ultramarine’s retinue, his ‘One Hundred’. ‘I said: I’ve never fought beside an Angel before.’
Iulus returned to surveying the defences. ‘I am not an Angel. I am a soldier, like you. Why must you humans constantly over-venerate?’
Falka laughed. It was a deep and wholly honest sound. ‘Me, a soldier? No. I’m a rig-hand, a miner. Have been all my life.’
Iulus looked at him askance. ‘Then you do a convincing impression of a soldier. I had not thought humans capable of such reckless courage as you showed. Do you crave death? I have witnessed men commit suicide in battle in similar circumstances to this.’
Falka shook his head. ‘No. I want to live but think I will probably not, at least not for much longer. I lost… a friend, and I want my death to mean something so that her sacrifice will too.’
Iulus considered that before resuming his vigil.
‘Those studs in your head,’ said Falka a few seconds later. ‘What are they for?’
Iulus touched the tips of the platinum studs with his gauntlet. He was almost reverent. ‘They signify a century’s service to the Chapter.’
Falka whistled. ‘So, you’re over two hundred years old?’
‘Yes, though I have not really thought about it before.’
‘Are you immortal then?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Long-lived certainly, thanks to the gene-science of the Emperor, but not immortal.’ Iulus kept his gaze ahead, as if drawing inspiration from the silent desolation of the killing-field. ‘Ours is a violent calling. Death is an inevitable fact of our existence
. I’m not sure if an Adeptus Astartes’s mortality has ever been put to the test. I cannot think of one that has ever died of old age. That would be a failure of our warrior purpose, I think.’ Iulus angled his neck to look at him. ‘You ask a lot of questions, human.’
‘Just nervous, that’s all,’ Falka replied. ‘We all are.’
Iulus took a moment to look around the battlements and the Courtyard of Xiphos below. Haunted faces came back at him, with hollow eyes and empty hearts. A revelation struck him. The defenders were not merely guns and bodies, they were people and within they had already lost the battle. He had mistaken fatalism for fortitude, acceptance for resolve.
‘Trooper Kolpeck,’ he said, still scanning the frightened crowds. ‘How can I galvanise these men so they will fight for me as you did in the Courtyard of Chronus?’
Falka followed the Ultramarine’s gaze as it swept the walls and ground below.
‘Inspire them,’ he said. ‘Give them something to fight for.’
Now Iulus stared at the trooper, nonplussed. ‘There is no greater honour than to serve the Emperor in battle, and die in His name.’
‘We are a courageous people, proud too, but we have long been without hope.’ Falka rubbed the hard stubble on his chin, seeking the right words. ‘Tell a man enough times that all is lost and his world is doomed, and he’ll start to believe it.’
As if prompted, the image of the Herald of Dismay flickered in the sky over Kellenport.
Heed the edicts of the necrontyr, your doom is at hand. Your efforts are in vain. Abandon this futile defence, abandon hope and the–
The heinous image vanished, consumed by an explosion that destroyed the invocation node from which it was being broadcast. There were dozens of others erected throughout Damnos but this one was the closest to Kellenport, within sight of its walls. A stunned silence greeted its demise.
Iulus handed the rocket-tube back to one of the conscripts on the battlements. They had precious little ammunition and a part of him, an old part, regretted the waste of materiel, but it was worth it.
‘That’s enough negative propaganda for one war,’ he told Falka. ‘Hand me the vox.’
A trooper carrying a boxy vox-caster scurried over to the cobalt giant who had turned to address the stunned masses. It crackled loudly and there was a squeal of static before Iulus’s voice came through.
‘I am Brother-Sergeant Iulus Fennion, of the Ultramarines Second Company. I am warrior-born, clad in the Emperor’s metal, bearer of his wrath. You have been under the boot of your oppressors for too long. It ends. Here. Now. On these very walls. In this very courtyard. My brothers and I will bleed with you, and through blood will buy back your freedom. Do not surrender this world without a fight. Show these horrors that you wear the Emperor’s metal too. Show them our faith will not be daunted.’
Iulus drew his chainsword. All of Kellenport, the warriors on the walls and in the Courtyard of Xiphos – his battle-brothers included – were listening.
‘Damnos shall not yield,’ his voice grew in stature and power. ‘We shall not yield!’ He thrust the blade aloft and everyone who heard him cheered. Their fear and anxiety, their long-held despair and heart-gnawing grief came out in a cathartic flood of noise. It resounded off the walls and the barricades. It was a call to arms, an affirmation of belief that they all had needed to hear.
‘How was that?’ he asked Falka when the noise had finally subsided.
He took the receiver-cup – a little dumbstruck – and gave it back to the trooper with the vox-caster. ‘Stirring.’
Iulus looked stern as he about-turned to face the battlefield again. ‘Good. Now I expect them to fight.’
Words, just words that was all they were. Even when spoken aloud and with purpose by an Angel of the Emperor, Adanar could not deny the fact. His faith had been crushed long ago under the tenement rubble that killed his wife and daughter.
He wanted to be uplifted, to believe there was anything else but death for the people of Damnos, but he couldn’t.
Corporal Humis, his new aide, stepped into his peripheral vision. ‘I can hear cheering.’ He was standing at Adanar’s shoulder and turned towards the commander. His face was full of hope. It could get a man killed, hope. It could hollow him from the inside out and he wouldn’t realise he was dead until he dared to hope again. By then it was too late, he was already a walking corpse, a shadow waiting for some hell to claim him.
‘It is just a false dawn, Humis, that’s all.’
The corporal licked his lips. He’d been Adanar’s aide for less than an hour. ‘Perhaps a few words would steel the troops on this side of the wall. Perhaps a rousing speech–’
‘There’ll be no speeches. There’ll be no hollow words.’
‘But, commander… Why not?’
Adanar fixed him with a withering gaze, and as Humis looked into his dead eyes he understood.
‘Because I won’t lie to them, corporal. I won’t lie.’
Chapter Twelve
It had been aeons since the throne room had enjoyed attendance. It was a dust-clogged ruin now, its lustre dulled, its ostentation tarnished and decrepit.
Old statues lined the alcoves, clutching ancient glaives, their appearance skeletal and overly regal. Sickly luminescence emanated from the geometric sigils carved into the floor and walls, the chamber’s only light source. Their emerald glow limned the throne. It was immense, set upon an oval dais and wrought of gold or some superior mineral compound that looked like gold. Rune-sigils marked its every surface.
Ankh toured the dilapidated halls and anterooms with an air of detachment. It did not surprise him that the Undying avoided this place now. It was a reminder of a long-dead age, of a former life. Sahtah bemoaned his loss of skin and blood like a crazed, hungry dog but he was not alone in that malady. It was an affliction that clawed at every necron, at least those whose memory engrams still functioned with lucidity.
He flickered out of time for a moment, bending the chronology of the universe and mocking its laws with his advanced science. Ankh was back in the revivification chambers again, the lowest catacombs this time.
Malady.
The forming of the word in his subconscious had brought something to mind, something aberrant. He regarded the humming caskets of the destroyers. This cancer, the one which the destroyers represented, was everywhere amongst the necrontyr. Ankh would have pitied them if he were still capable of such an emotion. Nihilistic, fatalistic and possessed of the conviction that their sole purpose was to eradicate, the destroyers were a breed apart.
Madness flowed through their mechanised arteries, fed the electric impulses of their cables and hard-wiring. This was the fate of all necrons. They butchered their bodies, removing limbs and replacing them with repulsor platforms, tesla beams and gauss-cannons – all the better to destroy, all in the service of the destroyers’ only creed: annihilation.
Delusion was common, as was a false sense of pre-eminence.
It was at times like these, when confronted with the realities of their existence and its potential corruptions, that Ankh felt the necrontyr’s fall most keenly.
Virus plagued them, more insidious than any disease of mortal flesh. They had exchanged their humanity for bodies of metal, their sinews for servos, their individuality for servitude and base sentience. They had done all of that and still they were not immune to corruption. Little wonder that so many of Ankh’s kind were angry or insane.
He would revive the destroyers soon.
Tens of thousands of caskets lined the catacombs. The tomb went deep into the world’s heart and many levels were surrendered to the revivification chambers. Of all the constructs, the destroyers numbered the greatest. A dull glow emanated from every runic archway to every sarcophagus. To a non-machine mind the vista would be incomprehensible, stretching into infinity in all dimensions.
Th
e role of the destroyers in this conflict was assured and predestined – he had already witnessed it with his own cold, dead eyes. Ankh just wanted to look upon them and remember the shared doom of his damned race.
Another flicker of chrono-dislocation brought him back to the throne room. His true business was here, now that he’d satisfied idle curiosity. The effect of translocating was disconcerting. It pulled at the strands of Ankh’s sense of reality. For a moment, he tried to recall what this place was like before biotransference. But the images in his subconscious mind were far from vivid.
Despite the stability of his memory engrams, he found recollection a little difficult to come by sometimes. He was a master of the elements, a chronomancer, a phantasmal manipulator, a walker between universes, but still he could not always grasp the thread of his former existence. In fact, the more he tried the more it unravelled until he realised his grip on the days before the long sleep was eroding, inexorably.
He regarded a cracked mirror of polished jet along one of the walls. Faces swarmed in and out of focus within its reflective surface. It was not Ankh, nor was it several beings. Rather, it was just one, trapped inside the stone a fraction out of time like the cryptek in his speculum. Ankh liked this particular torture most of all.
He uttered, ‘Awaken.’ It was more than just a word; it was a command, a mechanical imperative that put balefires in the eyes of the statue-guardians. The lych-like creatures arrayed through the hall came jerkily to life. Rimes of filth cracked open as their slow-moving joints stirred. Dust motes spilled from their servos and webs of gossamer parted from their cabling like torn funerary shrouds.
‘We serve the royarch,’ they chimed as one.
Standing in the centre of the hall, within the protective cordon of a ceramic sigil-totem inscribed in the floor, Ankh was surrounded.
He bowed. ‘I am the Architect, the royarch’s vassal and extension of his will.’
The guards did not react. Instead they stood with their pole-armed glaives straight against their armoured bodies, pommel down against the floor.
