Old Earth

by Nick Kyme

  ‘I recall a time, not so long passed, when the Iron Tenth were not so fearful,’ Meduson replied, his teeth already at the throat of his detractors.

  ‘Tread carefully,’ Aug warned, his voice a whisper across the vox.

  Meduson ignored him, his eyes on Rawt, though it was the Iron Father of Atraxii who responded.

  ‘You mistake fear for prudence,’ said Norsson. ‘Perhaps you do the same with courage and arrogance,’ he added coldly. Norsson had come with a cohort of helmed Immortals, whose breacher shields, while at rest, still acted as a bulwark around him.

  Allowing himself a rueful smile, Meduson gave a slight shake of the head but refused to be baited.

  ‘Then let us cut to the meat of it, shall we?’ he said, his words very deliberately chosen. ‘We are winning.’

  He looked around, challenging every gaze, be it organic or bionic.

  ‘Allow that to sink in. Victories, brothers. Do you remember the taste of them? I do. And I remember the bitter ash of abject and humiliating defeat. Of the massacre perpetuated against our kith and kin,’ he said, his voice rising in volume. ‘We were humbled. Broken. There can be no other words to describe it. But we endured. We lived. And then we fought.’ He began to pace, looking up and down the gathered warriors, meeting the gaze of each and every one, speaking to them as one legionary to another.

  ‘It served… for a while,’ he admitted, nodding as if he were gauging the worth of that service in his memory. ‘But the war has reduced us. Could any here deny that we are less than we used to be? Not as individuals,’ he added, forestalling a vehement denial from a few officers, ‘but as a brotherhood – as three brotherhoods.’ Here he regarded the small cadre of Salamanders and Raven Guard present. They made up less than a tenth of the Iron Hands’ fighting strength.

  ‘It offends me,’ he said through gritted teeth, and then gestured to the warrior throng. ‘It should offend you also. I feel a deep and abiding resentment for our position. I can no longer tolerate it.

  ‘We have raided them. We have murdered them. We have stolen from them. And still… Here. We. Are.’ He gestured expansively with his arms, encompassing the entire gathering.

  ‘Look at us. Look at yourselves,’ he said, and some did, for deep down they knew of what Meduson spoke. ‘Hiding in the dead wrecks of old ships, too afraid to show our strength for fear of attention. Let them see it. Let them come.’

  An old line captain spoke up. His name was Arkul Theld.

  ‘You speak of alloying the Legion, Warleader,’ he said, an augmetic in place of his right eye flaring briefly in the half-dark. He gripped a sheathed sword to his breast with a bionic arm. Scars Theld had in abundance, but not so belief. ‘I find that rash beyond countenance.’

  Meduson sighed, and his head went down for a moment, but he soon rallied and raised his chin defiantly.

  ‘Suffering has ever been the Medusan way. Hells, it has been the meat and drink of every Medusan, Nocturnean and pale-skinned son of Deliverance since the galaxy first drew breath. And we have suffered. Perhaps it is beyond our ability to withstand.’ He smiled ruefully, and looked Theld in the eye. ‘Perhaps. Yes, I want to make us a Legion again. All of us. It is not without risk, and it will not happen immediately. I merely suggest a first, forward step.’

  He had their attention now, and so he went on.

  ‘We have fought in the shadows long enough. No more shall we hide like beaten dogs, wary of those who impose themselves as our masters and destroyers. Sons of the Gorgon do not lurk in shadows.’

  The declaration provoked heartened affirmations from some. Captains and lieutenants, even some Iron Fathers beat their plastrons with their fists or nodded in vigorous, fervent agreement. Theld gave a near imperceptible nod.

  The Raven Guard Dalcoth kept his own counsel, and if he felt any chagrin at the Warleader’s words he was wise or disciplined enough not to show it.

  The Drake, Nuros, was less circumspect. His teeth clenched at the deliberate exiling of any non-Iron Hands amongst the ranks, ­biting back his hot tongue.

  ‘What then do you propose, Meduson?’ asked a bald-headed Iron Father Meduson did not recognise at first. Despite his ostensible youth, his hooded eyes carried experience. And something darker.

  ‘I suggest you adopt the proper tone, Frater,’ uttered Lumak dangerously. ‘He is your Warleader.’

  The Iron Father sneered. ‘Not mine, brother. Though it seems the ragged remnants of the Avernii Clan speak in his stead.’

  Now Meduson knew him, or rather the clawed sigil of his clan he wore upon his armour, and the Warleader put up a hand to ward off Lumak’s caustic rejoinder. A side-glance at the captain stayed his blade too.

  ‘Iron Father Autek Mor,’ said Meduson, earning Mor a few dark looks from the rest of the gathering. ‘I know you by reputation, not by eye, but it is you, isn’t it.’

  Mor gave a slow, curt nod.

  ‘I had no inkling I was famous.’

  ‘Infamous,’ growled one Iron captain, who Mor eyed with murderous contempt.

  ‘He has spilled Tenth Legion blood!’ spat another, as the mood of comradeship Meduson had worked hard to foster grew fractious.

  ‘I shall not deny it,’ said Mor, and Meduson almost felt the cruelty and disdain radiating from him. ‘I have duelled my brothers and killed them in the name of honour. Pride is not a sin only reserved for me.’

  Mor had tattooed his flesh, an unusual affectation in the Iron Tenth. Dark angular shapes further deepened his eyes and jagged lines of pseudo-circuitry ran from pursed lips, growing thicker and more uniform at his temples.

  An adamantium hood framed his bare scalp and the Cataphractii-pattern war-plate cladding his frame growled restively.

  ‘I also heard he took his warship into the jaws of battle at Isstvan,’ said Aug, who stepped forwards alongside his Warleader. ‘Trying to reach our stricken father.’

  ‘Aye,’ replied Mor, favouring Aug with brief glance. ‘A futile gesture that cost Clan Morragul much blood and iron. I have regretted it ever since.’

  Angry murmurs rippled through the crowd at this remark, reminding Meduson that Mor’s unlooked for appearance must not become a sideshow. Mercifully, no blades had been drawn.

  ‘I asked a question, Warleader,’ said Mor. He and his dour retinue stood slightly apart from the rest, like outcasts.

  ‘Let me teach this cur some manners,’ muttered Lumak, glaring at the impudent Iron Father in their midst.

  Meduson ignored him. Indulging Lumak’s pugnacity now would undo the entire endeavour.

  ‘My proposition, Frater, is to take the fight to Horus and the traitors who beheaded our Legion.’

  He half turned to Mechosa, who cast a hololith orb onto the deck. It chimed metallically as it struck the floor, adhering magnetically. The sound echoed for a few seconds before the orb began emitting a grainy cone of light.

  ‘Found in the debris left at Hamart Three,’ Meduson explained.

  Not all of the summoned officers, Mor included, had been present at the sacking of the supply camps, but they knew what they saw before them. A screed of data played out from the hololith, reams and reams of tactical information, maps and schematics.

  ‘Those are ship lanes,’ said Borgus, a lieutenant of Clan Vurgaan, known by the icon of the lightning-struck mountain encircled by a cog emblazoned on his armour. ‘Patrols, supply routes?’

  ‘An enemy flotilla,’ declared Meduson, as the star charts changed into familiar schematics of warships.

  ‘A large one,’ offered a captain called Jakkus as each vessel resolved and then faded before the onlookers.

  ‘And there for the taking,’ said Meduson, vehement and assured.

  ‘How current is this data-screed?’ asked Borgus.

  ‘Date stamps indicate it is recent,’ said Meduson.

  ‘No tim
e to change their plans then,’ said Jakkus.

  ‘I doubt they even know the information is compromised yet,’ added Meduson. He let his gaze linger on Rawt, Norsson, Arkborne and Kernag, thinking they would finally break their silence.

  Meduson was right.

  ‘An attack on that scale would require a significant muster,’ said Arkborne.

  ‘And would unnecessarily call attention to our strength and numbers,’ added Norsson. ‘It puts us at great risk. Lest we forget the folly of Oqueth.’

  Meduson had to grit his teeth, recalling the calamity inadvertently orchestrated by their now dead clan-fathers.

  ‘Precisely why change is needed,’ he said.

  ‘And you are the one to drive this change, are you, Warleader?’ asked Rawt.

  ‘If not I then whom? We are in desperate need of singular leadership.’

  Rawt frowned, his features creasing in confusion. ‘We have it. This council of Iron Fathers shall interpret the will of the Gorgon.’

  ‘This is his will!’ snapped Meduson, not regretting his outburst for a moment. ‘To fight, to kill our enemies. Have you not heeded the reports? Ultramar attacked. Calth fallen, as well as dozens of the Five Hundred Worlds. I have even heard word from our allies that Beta-Garmon, the gateway to the Sol System, has come under heavy assault. Horus and his allies are taking the fight to us. He challenges the Throne of Terra itself. It is not rebellion, Fraters – it is conquest he seeks. For years, we have listened, we have hidden, but now we must act. Destroying this flotilla weakens the War­master’s position. Moreover, it tells him the Iron Hands are not a spent force. We must rejoin the war, as a Legion.’

  ‘Ah, so your goal is a lofty one,’ replied Rawt, and Meduson knew then that this was what had been discussed in his absence, and that he had played into the Fraters’ hands. ‘An empty throne sits before you, and your ambition is to fill it. Not just a Legion…’ he said, gesturing slowly to the Warleader. ‘Your Legion. All hail Shadrak Meduson.’

  ‘You speak out of turn, Frater,’ warned Aug, before Lumak did.

  Meduson waved them both down.

  ‘I would not want such a burden,’ he said to Rawt. ‘I have never wanted it. But if we do not act, then we diminish. Our ire grows cold and we let the murder of our father remained unchallenged. I would not have it so.’

  Support for the Warleader rippled through the ranks. Several outspoken captains, the younger and perhaps more rebellious in demeanour, declared for Meduson at once. A few drew swords in martial affirmation. Autek Mor gave a chuckle of dark amusement, seeming alone in his ability to derive mirth from the solemn occasion.

  ‘We are stronger united,’ Meduson told the four Iron Fathers who seemed most opposed to his will. ‘Unity is derived from common purpose. These ships,’ he gestured to the crackling, grainy hololith, ‘this flotilla of our sworn enemy, is such a purpose. And we must grasp it.’ He held up his bionic hand for emphasis, and made a fist.

  A rousing cry went up, phlegmatic and ardent. Boots stomped against the deck, raising a clamour. Blades were shaken, chests beaten with gauntleted fists. The ghost ship resounded to the sound of warriors eager for war.

  Meduson’s gaze never left the four Iron Fathers. They looked back, as cold and impassive as their black armour. Rawt nodded, so did the others.

  As the roar grew louder, Meduson nodded too.

  First battle won.

  ‘This attack is just the beginning,’ declared Meduson.

  Back aboard their gunship and headed for the Iron Heart, five legionaries sat on grav-benches as close as conspirators. After the furore aboard the derelict Ardentine, plans had been set in place for the disposition of forces. Even though he knew not how many ships and warriors were at his disposal, Meduson had already determined the best course of attack. And he would disseminate that information once he was back at his strategium.

  ‘I fear you will need more than victory to reforge the Legion, Shadrak,’ said Aug, across from Meduson and facing him. ‘You will need the Iron Fathers. All of them.’

  ‘They will accede,’ Meduson replied, his mind already on the assault plan.

  ‘And assuming you are remade as one,’ said Nuros, ‘what then for the outsiders?’

  ‘Nuros,’ said Meduson, turning to grasp the Salamander’s shoulder and meeting his serious gaze, ‘you and your kin are no outsiders. The Legion will accept you as brothers, as I have.’ He looked across the hold to where a sixth legionary sat alone, half his alabaster face in shadow.

  Meduson’s earlier words returned to him. He released Nuros, and did not do Dalcoth further disservice by trying to explain.

  The shuddering hold grew quiet, but for the drone of engines and the rattling of metal. A pensive silence filled the ship, uneasy and at odds with past camaraderie.

  ‘I have already oathed my sword to your cause,’ said Dalcoth, in that harsh, half-spoken way he had. ‘It remains oathed.’ He looked over at Meduson, and his black eyes glittered like pieces of flint.

  Mechosa clapped his gauntleted hand on Meduson’s shoulder.

  ‘Until death, you are the Warleader.’

  Lumak nodded.

  ‘A first step,’ said Aug. ‘One voice, one fist.’

  All eyes then went to Nuros, who looked around the others in turn. He laughed, leaning back against the shaking wall of the hold, and folded his massive arms.

  ‘Are you waiting for me to chime in, brothers?’ he said, eyes narrowed as he wet his lips.

  Mechosa sighed at the needless, but amusing theatrics.

  ‘No need, Warleader,’ said Nuros with a toothy smile. ‘You had me at “kill our enemies”.’

  Five

  Our path, in shadow

  It was not true darkness, for even in true darkness there is the suggestion of light. This place had none. In its deepest hollows there lurked an abject un-light, not merely its absence but an active negation of it. It gave the dark substance, a presence that went beyond disquieting and entered a realm of wrongness at odds with any natural law.

  The gunship’s fierce lumens could not touch the dark, their light simply absorbed. Even the low drone of the turbofans felt subdued as Vulcanis moved cautiously through the unnatural night.

  Gargo’s voice through the vox confirmed it. ‘I can see nothing out here.’

  ‘And yet you sound troubled, brother,’ answered Zytos, at ease sat in the hold. ‘That’s a good sign, isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ Gargo replied, ‘you don’t understand…’

  ‘He means the utter dark,’ said Vulkan, lifting up his head from where he had knelt in silent meditation ever since they had breached the eldritch gate. ‘This is the shadowed path, my sons. Light has no purchase here.’

  ‘Then how do we see where we are going?’ asked Zytos, beginning to understand Gargo’s concern.

  ‘I can see well enough,’ said Vulkan. ‘It’s not much farther now.’

  ‘You have been here before, my lord?’ asked Abidemi. He had been peering through the viewslits, trying to glimpse something other than the blackness outside, but now turned to Vulkan.

  Vulkan nodded, rising to his feet.

  ‘Years ago. I led a party of hunters across the shadowed path. The gate beneath Deathfire that we passed through to reach this place… We found another much like it. The old tribes of Nocturne had been prey for those we called dusk-wraiths for many years. Each harvest season, when the blood of the world had grown still and the mountains slept, they would come.

  ‘I decided against fear, though the tribal chiefs desperately wanted to hide, to find the deepest caves of Nocturne and wait the raiders out. I knew this was foolish. They had come for flesh, the hardy backs and strong arms of our people. Slaves, my sons. I would not countenance it. I fought the will of the head chieftains, my father N’bel at my side, and gathered the best warriors of the
seven tribes.’ Vulkan smiled grimly at the memory. ‘We ambushed the raiders, at the very place where they breached our world. And we killed them. But the gate remained, a dark and flickering tempest that promised great evil if left alone. I chose to enter it, and to my shame I took our warriors with me.’

  Vulkan’s face fell, his expression darkening with the tone of his recollections.

  ‘We should have destroyed the gate, but I thought I saw a chance to end the suffering. I was wrong. They died. Every warrior I brought with me, slain. None had good deaths. They fell screaming and shrieking, ripped apart or dragged off into the shadows to a fate I cannot even imagine. Only I escaped, by virtue of the gifts my gene-father had bequeathed to me, though then it was several years before the Emperor came and I knew of the Imperium.

  ‘I closed the gate, tore it down with my bare hands, bloodied and ashamed of my hubris. I knew that to do anything other would be inviting immediate reprisal. The laughter of the dusk-wraiths followed me all the way back to Nocturne.’

  Vulkan met his sons’ gaze. Anger hardened his jaw, and his eyes burned as hot as a furnace. ‘The next harvest, the dusk-wraiths returned. I did not realise then that they could find us almost at will. They had many ways onto our world. We fought them off. I killed a great many, but could not atone for my folly.’

  ‘The eldar,’ said Zytos. ‘The dusk-wraiths.’

  Vulkan nodded.

  ‘I have heard the eldar are a divided race,’ offered Abidemi, ‘that there are those amongst them who embrace a cruel, malevolent creed.’

  ‘This is their realm,’ said Vulkan, and engaged the vox. ‘Halt the ship, Igen. We are getting out.’

  The engine sound diminished to a dull growl as Gargo set the Thunderhawk down. The descent had been disconcerting, the depth to reach something solid underfoot uncertain and fraught with peril despite the primarch’s assurances. They landed hard, the clawed stanchions that supported the ship barely extending in time.

  ‘Blood of Nocturne!’ spat Zytos as the heavy blow resonated throughout the hold.

  ‘We are down, brothers, father,’ said Gargo from the cockpit.