[Night Lords 01] - Soul Hunter

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - (ebook by Undead)

  “Crythe was days away…” she said. “Weeks, even.”

  “My masters know many secrets. They know the warp and the pathways through, in the shadows away from the False Emperor’s light. These will be the paths you will also learn to walk.” He paused, as if considering her. “Are you coming?”

  Eurydice watched him for several moments. Was that a joke?

  He didn’t look like he was joking.

  She rose on unsteady legs, hesitantly taking his offered hand. The ship juddered again and she knew that, at least, was not the warp drive catching its breath.

  Septimus led her from the room, his lamp pack beaming the way. He noticed the look on her face as the ship rattled and shook.

  “It is weapons fire,” he said, reassuringly. “We are under attack.”

  She nodded, but had absolutely no idea why he seemed so calm about it.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “My master told me of the Legion’s attack plan.”

  “So?”

  “So we are going to be ready in case that plan goes wrong. Do you know what a Thunderhawk is?”

  Ringing a world called Solace, the vessels of Battlefleet Crythe were stalwart in their defence, punishing the invaders for daring to assault an Imperial planet. It would be recorded as the largest void engagement ever to occur in the sector, with casualties in the millions.

  The Covenant of Blood had torn back into realspace in the middle of an orbital war.

  The Crythe Cluster.

  Five worlds, spread across five solar systems, allied in profit and a shared defence. Brought into the Imperium of Man during the Great Crusade ten thousand years before, it was an empire within the Imperium—a lesser reflection of fair Ultramar in the galactic east.

  Hercas and Nashramar: two hive-worlds with productive, stable, sprawling populations forming the core of the star cluster. These were supplied in turn by Palas, an agri-world with a climate so ideal and harvest potential so rich it exported enough resources to feed the entire cluster.

  The fourth world was Crythe Prime itself, named for the Imperial commander responsible for bringing the region into compliance with the Emperor’s will after the decadent years of Old Night. Once, it had been a populous hive-world—the third of the trinity: Crythe Prime, Hercas and Nashramar. Several thousand years ago, its mineral deposits were exhausted by the ceaseless efforts of the Mechanicus and the planetary economy collapsed. Refugee transports left the world in increasing numbers over a number of decades, and rather than leave the barren world alone, a recolonisation was undertaken by the Adeptus Mechanicus itself.

  The Crythe Prime of late M41 was an industrious forge world, equipping the sizeable and well-trained Crythe Highborn regiments of the Imperial Guard, and serving as the manufactorum home world of the Titan Legion, the Legio Maledictis.

  The fifth and final world was Solace. Here, based around an orbital shipyard fortress, was the heart of Imperial strength.

  The planet below the starfort was a third populated world, though unlike Crythe Prime, Solace had always been devoid of mineral worth and natural resources. The world was a barren rock, empty but for the hivelike prison complexes rising from its surface, home to hundreds of thousands of criminals drawn from across neighbouring sectors and the hives of the Crythe Cluster. A penal world, guarded by the might of the Imperium, used as a base for Imperial Navy and Astartes counter-piracy efforts in the star cluster. Only Crythe Prime, in the augmetic grip of the Mechanicus, was a stronger target.

  Lord Admiral Valiance Arventaur commanded the unbreakable might of Battlefleet Crythe. Countless escorts, dozens of cruisers, all led by the jewel in the battlefleet’s crown: the colossal Avenger-class grand cruiser, Sword of the God-Emperor, a city of cathedrals running down the ship’s spine, home to thousands of souls.

  Had this been the entirely of the Throne’s might in the sector, still it would have stood as a defiant and implacable foe, but the lord admiral could also count on the support of a garrison of the noble Astartes Chapter, the Marines Errant, who were permanently on deployment to crush the piracy rife within the sector. Their vessel, the Gladius-class frigate Severance, was a lethal blade used against the heretics that dared prey upon the trade routes of the Emperor’s loyal subjects.

  It was to Solace that the Warmaster first brought his wrath. Break the defences of this fiercely guarded world, tear the strength from the Holy Fleet, annihilate the Astartes presence here… and the Crythe Cluster would surely fall. So went the great Despoiler’s plan.

  The Exalted’s plan fit neatly within this framework. To succeed before the Warmaster’s eyes, he would call upon his calculating, tactical genius.

  Talos viewed the interior of the pod through the ruby hue of his helm’s eye lenses. His squad didn’t even take up half of the twelve thrones within the confines of the pod. They needed to recruit soon. The losses incurred the past few decades had hurt the remnants of the VIII Legion’s 10th Company to the point where—at best—the Exalted could raise no more than fifty Astartes.

  The process to engineer new warriors was painstaking and slow, and the Legion’s forces aboard the Covenant of Blood were severely lacking in fleshsmiths and technicians capable of gene-forging children into Astartes over the course of a decade.

  Xarl always commented on the empty thrones. Every time the squad came together in a drop-pod, a Thunderhawk, a boarding pod, their Land Raider… anywhere they stood ready in the moments before an engagement, he would bring it up.

  “Four of us,” he grunted, right on schedule. “This is bad comedy.”

  “I’m just aggravated it was Uzas that survived on Venrygar,” Cyrion said back over the vox. “I miss Sar Zell. You hear me, Uzas? It’s a shame you made it instead of him.”

  “Cyrion, my beloved brother,” Uzas growled in reply, “watch your mouth.”

  For a moment, Talos was back in his vision, seeing Uzas’ axe rise as he approached from the rabble behind Cyrion…

  “Sixty seconds,” a mechanical voice blared over the pod’s speakers. It jolted Talos back to the present with a sickening lurch of perception.

  “I’d like to state,” Cyrion said, “that this is the most foolish use of our forces I can recall.”

  “Noted,” Talos said softly. It wasn’t his idea to use a pod deployment, but complaining about it now wasn’t going to change a thing. “Stay focused.”

  “Furthermore,” Cyrion ignored his brother’s reprimanding tone, “this will see us all dead. I guarantee it.”

  “Be silent.” Talos turned in his throne, making his restraint harnesses pull tight over his bulky war-plate as he faced his squadmate. “Enough, Cyrion. The Exalted gave us our orders. Now sound off.”

  “Uzas, aye.”

  “Xarl, ready.”

  “Cyrion, aye.”

  “Acknowledged,” Talos finished. “In midnight clad, on my mark. Three, two, one. Mark.”

  All four back-mounted power generators clicked live, feeding artificial strength through their suits of armour, boosting their physical levels far beyond even the inhuman power already within their gene-engineered bodies. Talos’ visor display powered up, filtering his crimson vision with scrolling white status text, ammunition counters and dozens of stylised icon runes scattered at the edges of his sight. He blink-clicked three specifically, frowning as one of them kept flickering in and out of focus.

  “Uzas,” he said, “your identification rune is still unstable. You said you’d get that fixed.”

  “My artificer… suddenly died.”

  Talos clenched his jaw. Uzas had always been murderous with his slaves, be they Legion serfs or augmented servitors. He treated them like worthless playthings, toying with them to sate his own private amusements, and the only reason his armour was even sustainable was because he plundered his fallen brothers with a diligence few other Night Lords adhered to.

  “We do not have the resources for you to entertain your bloodlust with the murder of slaves, br
other.”

  “Maybe I can borrow Septimus to repair my armour.”

  “Yes, maybe,” Talos said. Not a chance, he thought.

  “Forty-five seconds,” the launch servitor’s voice crackled.

  “Stow weapons for transit,” Talos ordered.

  He checked his bolter one last time, turning it over in his fists. A beautiful weapon, and one that had served him well since before the Great Betrayal. He’d fired the weapon on Isstvan V, and scythed down countless numbers of the Salamanders Legion as part of that fateful battle. Just holding the boltgun in his gauntlets was enough to give him a thrill of pleasure, as real and tactile as a flooding rush of combat stimulants from his armour’s drug infusion ports in his spine and wrists.

  It was called Anathema. The name, in flowing Nostraman script, was embossed along the side in black iron. Talos held the weapon lengthways against his right thigh, as if holstering a pistol. He blinked at a small icon on the edge of his display, and the thick electromagnetic strip along the firearm’s edge went live. With a clank of metal on metal, the bolter clamped to his leg, waiting to be drawn in battle once the release icon was confirmed with another blink.

  With his bolter secured, he checked the sheathed blade—too long to be tied to his hip while he was seated—secured to the pod’s sloping wall by strips of magnetic coupling. The angel wings of the crosspiece hilt were the white of fine marble. The ruby teardrop between the wings glittered in the red gloom, darker than its surroundings, a drop of blood on blood.

  Aurum and Anathema, the tools of his trade, his relics of war. His lip curled as his heart started to beat faster.

  “Death to the False Emperor,” he breathed the words like a whispered curse.

  “What was that?” voxed Xarl.

  “Nothing,” Talos replied. “Confirm weapon check.”

  “Weapons stowed.”

  “It is done.”

  “Weapons, aye.”

  “Thirty seconds,” the voice issued forth again. The Dreadclaw-class pod began to shake as its thrusters cycled up to full power. Although it would be fired from its socket, the pod’s attitude thrusters still needed to be burning hot to guide them on target.

  “10th Company, First Claw,” Talos spoke into the general vox-channel. “Primed for deployment.”

  “Acknowledged, First Claw.” The voice that replied was low, too low for even an Astartes. The Exalted was on the bridge, speaking to the squads preparing for battle. Talos listened to the other squads sounding off as the pod started to shake with increasing violence.

  “Second Claw, ready.”

  “Fifth Claw, ready.”

  “Sixth Claw, aye.”

  “Seventh Claw, primed.”

  “Ninth Claw, prepared.”

  “Tenth Claw, ready.”

  None of those squads were complete, Talos knew. The centuries had been unkind. All of Third Claw had been slaughtered at the Battle of Demetrian, by the accursed Blood Angels. Fourth and Eighth Claws had both died piece by piece, battle by battle, until the last surviving members were absorbed into other under-strength Claws. Uzas had been Fourth Claw once. Talos hadn’t been thrilled by that particular inheritance.

  “This is Talos of First Claw. Give me a soul count.”

  “Second Claw, seven souls.”

  “Fifth Claw, five souls.”

  “Sixth Claw, five souls.”

  “Seventh Claw, eight souls.”

  “Ninth Claw, four souls.”

  “Tenth Claw, six souls.”

  Talos shook his head again. Including his own squad, it racked up to thirty-nine Astartes. A skeleton crew would remain with the Exalted aboard the Covenant, but it was still a grim figure. Thirty-nine of the Legion were ready for deployment. Thirty-nine out of over one hundred.

  “Soul count confirmed,” he said, knowing every Astartes on the vessel was patched into this vox-channel. He doubted the significance of the figure was lost on any of them.

  “Ten seconds,” the servitor intoned. The pod was shuddering in its cradle now alongside the six others, like a row of jagged teeth pushing from a giant’s gums.

  “Five seconds.”

  The vox was filled with a frenzy—dozens of roaring Astartes, calling out for vengeance, for blood, for fear, and the memory of their primarch. Inside First Claw’s pod, Xarl howled long and loud, a sound of unrestrained glee. Cyrion whispered something Talos couldn’t quite make out, most likely a benediction to the machine-spirits of his weapons. Uzas cried out a string of oaths, promising bloodshed in the name of the Ruinous Powers. He invoked them by name, crying out like a fanatic in ecstatic worship. Talos bit back the urge to rise from his restraint throne and shoot his brother dead.

  “Three.”

  “Two.”

  “One.”

  “Launch.”

  IV

  VOID WAR

  “It has been said by tacticians throughout the ages of mankind that no plan survives contact with the enemy. I do not waste my time countering the plans of my foes, brother. I never care what the enemy intends to do, for they will never be allowed to do it. Stir within their hearts the gift of truest terror, and all their plans are ruined in the desperate struggle merely to survive.”

  —The Primarch Konrad Curze,

  Allegedly speaking to his brother,

  Sanguinius of the Blood Angels

  The Exalted saw void warfare as infinitely more graceful than any surface attack.

  He excelled in personal combat and had reaped a bountiful harvest of life with his own claws, but it wasn’t the same. Such savagery lacked the clarity and purity of a void hunt.

  Even in the years before he became the Exalted, when he had simply been Captain Vandred of the Night Lords 10th Company, he had taken his greatest battle-pleasures from those moments of orbital and deep space warfare where everything played out to perfection.

  And he was no simple observer in those moments. He prided himself on making the perfect battles come to pass, and it was a pleasure he’d taken with him through all his changes. It was a matter of attuning one’s perceptions to the realities of scale and dimension involved within a void war. Most minds, mortal and Astartes alike, could not truly fathom the distances between ships, the sheer size of warring vessels, the scars left by each and every type of weapon against hulls of different metals…

  This was his gift. The Exalted knew void war, seeing its grandeur within his swollen mind the way other men saw the weapons in their hands. His vessel was his body, even without the primitive tech-links engineered by the Mechanicum to merge man and machine. The Exalted bonded with the Covenant by familiarity and his modified perceptions. Merely by standing on the bridge, he felt the ship’s heartbeat in his bones. Simply gripping a handrail allowed him to hear its screaming voice as it fired its weapons. Others would feel nothing more than vibrations, but others were blind to such nuances.

  The Covenant of Blood had a fine history of pulling through engagements against long odds and taking part in some of the most savage conflicts to involve the VIII Legion. Its reputation—and, by extension, the reputation of the warband that had once been the 10th Company—was assured through a record of space battles won, largely thanks to the void warfare skills of the Exalted.

  As his precious, prided vessel broke into realspace, the creature that had once been Captain Vandred stared at the eye-shaped occulus screen that dominated the forward wall of the strategium deck. His own eyes were unchanged by the mutations that had twisted his physical form, remaining the pure black of the Nostramo-born, and these obsidian orbs glittered with reflected light from the dozens of crew consoles and the detonations lighting up the occulus before him.

  By necessity, the strategium endured a greater level of illumination than the rest of the ship, so the mortal crew could perform their duties with ease. The Exalted spared a sweeping glance around the multi-layered chamber now, ensuring all was in readiness.

  It seemed so.

  Servitors slaved to thei
r stations jabbered and droned and worked consoles with a mix of bionic and human hands. Mortal crew, including several former Imperial Navy officers in service to the Legion, worked at stations of their own or supervised teams of servitors. Few consoles or strategium positions stood empty. Operations here were far too critical to suffer under a lack of manpower. It was almost the way it should be, the way it had been before the Great Betrayal, before the slow decline of the Legion’s strength had begun, and the Exalted revelled in this echo of a greater age.

  He took all of this in within the space of a single thump of his heart, before returning his attention to the occulus once more.

  And there it was. War in its grandest form. A theatre of destruction where hundreds, even thousands of lives were lost with the passing of each second. He allowed himself several moments to drink in the sight, to relish the sight of the life-ending explosions, no matter which side sustained the casualties.

  The feeling threatened to edge into euphoria, and the Exalted clawed his focus back. He had not earned his title by weakness and self-indulgence. Duty came first.

  The Exalted likened void war to the feeding frenzy of sharks. Few memories of his pre-Astartes life ever bubbled to the surface of his warped memory, but one in particular returned to him each time he brought his passions to bear in spaceborne battle. As a child, on several coastal journeys with his father, he had witnessed the eyeless barrasal sharks that would group together to hunt the great whales of the open ocean. They would form a pack, yet without any real bonds, for they rarely aligned their movements or worked together—they simply did not kill each other as they hunted the same prey. When each shark would strike at an exposed killing point on the great whale, it was instinct, not cooperation, that drove them. Instinct for the quickest kill.

  Void warfare seemed much the same to the Exalted now. Each ship was a shark swimming in the three-dimensional battlefield of space, and only the most talented fleet commanders could harness their instincts and bring their forces together into an efficient hunting pack. The Astartes creature smiled, baring black gums and fanged teeth as he watched the occulus. He was no fleet commander. His own talents had never been in bringing about such a pack unity.