Old Earth

by Nick Kyme

  ‘A plague that feeds the greater disease!’

  ‘And what did we do but give birth to a facet of it, or is that stone around your neck an affectation only?’

  Slau Dha touched the spirit stone, suppressing a mental shudder at the thought of what would happen were he ever to be separated from it.

  ‘So why come, Eldrad?’ he asked. ‘You must know the peril you are in just by being here. How did you even find me? How did you find any of us?’

  ‘Fate revealed it to me, just as it has revealed what I must do to bring about the survival of mankind.’

  ‘And the slow, lingering death of a universe condemned to depravity and damnation.’

  ‘It can be saved.’

  ‘And can I, kinsman?’

  ‘I do not believe you want to be.’

  Slau Dha sneered. ‘The revelation of fate again…’

  ‘Actually, on account of your arrogance and belligerence.’

  ‘And you expect me to believe my death serves these ends?’ Slau Dha gave a snort of contempt. ‘You are a coward, farseer, hiding murderous intent behind an altruistic facade.’

  ‘Perhaps, but that is for me to know alone.’

  ‘And the men and women you have killed, the agents slain by the hand of the beast you ally yourself with…’ Slau Dha spared a curt glance to the shadows and the unmoving statue lurking there. ‘What of them?’

  ‘I think you are stalling, autarch,’ said Eldrad, taking another forward step and gently wrapping his fingers around the grip of his witchblade.

  ‘I am, but answer me anyway.’

  The statue stirred, as if sensing an end to the conversation.

  ‘I need to see,’ said Eldrad. ‘I am searching for a particular soul. Fate is obscured around him.’

  ‘A human soul?’

  ‘Profoundly so, and yet entirely not.’

  Slau Dha scowled. His sword rested in the lee of the statue, laid reverently upon a sash of red velvet. ‘If I craved riddles, I would summon a Harlequin for my pleasure.’

  Eldrad glanced at the statue of Khaine and then back to the blood-stained prince.

  ‘I suspect your pleasures are less whimsical and more visceral, Slau Dha.’

  ‘Oh, they are,’ he said, his low voice thick with menace. ‘But allow this final indulgence, a last curious inquiry. This soul, it eludes you then?’

  ‘I cannot see it. Yet. But the skeins are unravelling now. It won’t be long before I know what needs to be done.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Slau Dha, a smile of revelation curling his lips, ‘hence the human chattel.’

  ‘Yes, you have made them your slaves, haven’t you?’

  ‘And I would do so again.’

  ‘You’re not getting that chance, autarch.’

  ‘Oh, I think I might.’

  ‘And why is that?’ asked Eldrad, unsheathing his sword. Psychic lightning coursed down its edge and snaked along the runes etched into the blade.

  ‘Because you are not the only one who has seen the future. I have friends too…’

  A cloud of myriad colours manifested around Slau Dha, kaleidoscopic at first but slowly resolving into a band of masked figures in long coats and motley garb. Each carried a pistol and a blade, their design exotic but not unfamiliar, and saluted the seer in eerie and mocking unison.

  The foremost, a lithe figure with a grotesquely grinning mask that had three teardrops down the left cheek, sketched the most profound bow before regarding his prey. His eyes shimmered playfully with the prospect of imminent violence.

  ‘Enter the heroes,’ he said, in a ludicrously grandiloquent voice, and then in a harsher, entirely more menacing fashion, ‘Shall we begin?’

  Twenty-One

  Fire and iron, tempered

  Blistering las-fire ripped between the two fleets, turning night to day or some actinic version of it. Shields flickered psychedelically to the relentless volleys of cannons and torpedoes. Armour cracked as shields surrendered and broke apart, leviathan warships shedding their scales as they bled out into the endless darkness.

  Battleships and escorts, nimble destroyers and diminutive fighters engaged as two Legions fought across a vast gulf of space, fuelled by mutual hatred and an unquenchable desire to kill one another.

  Losses had been sustained on both sides, but the vessels in black livery daubed with the icon of a white gauntlet had the better of it. Slicks of fuel and coolant smeared the void, reminiscent of blood. Ships hung open, cold carcasses riddled by rotting wounds. Bodies drifted in frozen, aimless, shoals. Debris gathered, colliding and agglomerating, a nascent graveyard of vessels that stretched for thousands of kilometres.

  The Sons of Horus burned, and Meduson grimaced in private catharsis at the sight.

  The Iron Heart trembled with the sound of its heavy guns. Mass-drivers spoke with thunder, sending noiseless fury into the void.

  A collimated lance strike from the Morlock, Sturmdrang and Ironhelmed speared the renegade ship Bloody Victory through its magazine. Its depleted shields offered scant resistance, its battered armour even less. Something detonated within the Bloody Victory, evidenced by the titanic shudder that briefly took the hull. It limped on for a few moments afterwards, though made no attempt to attack, before its starboard engines erupted in flame. The fire died almost instantly, but not before a chunk of the ship broke away, sheared off by whatever calamity had occurred on board. Crippled, the Morlock gave it another concentrated volley and the Bloody Victory was no more.

  Meduson clenched his fist as he witnessed the ship’s demise – not in triumph, he was wise enough to know they were a long way from that yet, but simply because he had to do something with the tension.

  ‘Another put to the sword,’ said Mechosa from the helm, in a self-satisfied way Meduson found distasteful and ignoble.

  He left his feelings unremarked, his own confused on the matter. Vulkan had demonstrated his, though. The primarch had played his part. Meduson could not worry about his departure now. Enough already demanded his attention.

  As the Iron Tenth had closed in earnest, hundreds of boarding actions took place across the two fleets. Aggression would serve Meduson well now. He needed to strike, and strike hard whilst the Sons of Horus struggled to regather and counter. The Saurod and the two junkers it had been escorting had hurt them. It was arrogance, Meduson realised. The Sons of Horus thought themselves preeminent, inviolable.

  How easy to empathise with that, he thought.

  How much easier to believe it. Harder to bear was the humbling that came after, and the denial that hubris had anything to do with it.

  ‘The Gorgon sends his regards,’ Meduson murmured, a knot of cold spite forming in his gut that made him a hypocrite when he considered Mechosa’s words again.

  Another volley sounded from the mass-drivers. Shield flare briefly obscured the oculus – a desultory blow, nothing more.

  Sons of Horus died in the night-black, trapped in their iron coffins, nothing to do with all their arrogance and superiority. And Meduson forced himself to confront a fact, if silently.

  I don’t need a primarch to win this war…

  ‘Warleader,’ said Mechosa, that prideful conceit colouring his tone again, ‘the enemy is retreating!’

  Through the oculus, Meduson could see a large proportion of the renegade ships had begun to withdraw.

  ‘Aug?’ asked Meduson, his eyes narrowing but failing to discern further detail.

  ‘They are pulling back to extreme range.’

  ‘And from there?’

  ‘They’ll be restricted to lances and torpedoes, but at such distance efficacy will be severely reduced.’

  ‘So, no threat?’

  ‘Minimal, Warleader. It could be a trap.’

  ‘Then we’ll exercise due caution.’

  The faint
stars of warning shots flickered in the distant darkness, growing brighter, but an insignificant threat, as Aug had predicted.

  ‘Should we re-engage?’ asked Mechosa, eager.

  ‘That’s the opposite of caution. Our father’s wrath overspills into your humours, brother,’ said Meduson, and the Sorrgol captain bowed his head a fraction.

  ‘We should dismantle the rest of the renegade ships in this engagement,’ said Aug, ‘and then turn our attention to the greater fleet.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  A sizeable host of vessels still awaited them in the deeper void, in retreat, bloodied certainly, but not without threat. That the Sons of Horus had divided their forces made the Iron Tenth’s task easier, but not a foregone conclusion.

  The shields briefly flared again, untroubled.

  ‘Death throes…’ said Meduson, and knew he could finish the renegades abandoned by their comrades. ‘Recall our boarding parties,’ he decided. ‘Tell them to cause as much damage as they can and then make egress immediately. We can finish this at range.’

  Aug spoke up. ‘Lumak and Nuros claim they are nearing the bridge of the Horus Triumphant.’ As well as manning the hololith station, he also routed all vox-traffic through his helm, subconsciously listening for any chatter of import.

  ‘Should they withdraw, Warleader?’ Aug asked.

  Meduson allowed a feral smile onto his face. ‘Let Lumak take it,’ he said proudly. ‘We’ll have the ship for our own.’

  An explosion lit the spinal artery of the upper deck of the Horus Triumphant, first quarter, command section.

  Velig cried out as burning shrapnel tore into his thigh plate and pierced the ceramite. The rest embedded itself in breacher shields, walls, buttressed alcoves and bulkheads, or shredded the deck.

  The glare of the frag grenade faded and darkness reasserted itself. Low-intensity lumens created deep shadows, edging silhouettes in visceral red. Shrieking tocsins dulled the senses, something slightly aberrant in their tone.

  To those infiltrating the ship, the sound could have been mistaken for screaming.

  Lumak bellowed, dragging Velig back into formation, his shield the capstone in an arch of adamantium bearing down on the fortifications protecting the ship’s bridge. ‘Advance!’

  Having fought through the ship, several boarding parties had converged on this section, now led as one by the Avernii captain. Some fifty or so legionaries had gathered, most pressed into alcoves or sniping from behind protruding bulkheads. A force of well-dug-in defenders held them at bay.

  Sons of Horus hunkered down behind auto-palisades that had sprung up from hidden recesses in the deck. Barely visible but for their glowing retinal lenses, sea-green armour plate turned dark crimson in the gloom, the renegades had no intention of giving up the bridge without a hard fight.

  Protected by a foot-thick redoubt of ceramite and sitting at the apex of a long slope, they unleashed a sustained burst of mass-reactive fire in the wake of the grenade. Getting through the auto-palisades was proving difficult.

  Bolt shells caromed off the Iron Tenth’s shield wall. The salvoes caused no significant damage, but stymied attempts to close on the defenders.

  A second shield line followed the first, eight abreast. Their bearers had bolt pistols too and shot through the gaps in the vanguard.

  A hot brass round whipped by Lumak’s head, but he didn’t flinch. He fired his sidearm, leaving dents in the renegades’ high-walled fortifications but achieving little else. A gantry ran around the inner wall of the auto-palisades and from here the Sons of Horus made their stand. Lumak reckoned on thirty or so Legiones Astartes holding the cordon. Defended as they were, it might as well have been a hundred.

  Vox-chatter, barely audible over the unnerving klaxon scream, filtered through to his war-helm. At least eight additional boarding parties had gained the ship and were steadily fighting their way through it. Snatches of voices he couldn’t place suggested there might be more.

  Major sections of the vessel had already been secured or were close to being secured – enginarium, main gunnery decks, armoury, astropathic sanctum, apothecarion all now belonged to the Tenth and their allies. Some of the mortal defenders had put up a fight, loyal to their masters. Those who surrendered had been confined to the brig. None of the renegade legionaries had given quarter, and they were afforded none in return. Many now were either dead or restricted to parts of the ship where they could do no harm. Even so, defenders still outnumbered attackers. In order to take the ship, the Tenth needed the bridge. That meant they had to breach these fortifications and the massive door that lay beyond them.

  Other scattered reports spoke of more unsettling encounters, of mass suicides or strange rituals intended to achieve Throne only knew what. Rumours abounded, even amongst those who had seen little of the wider war, that Horus and his men dabbled in the occult.

  An otherness afflicted the ship, Lumak had to admit that – a symptom of its inhabitants rather than the vessel itself, he thought. Embracing pragmatism, he chose to fight what he could see rather than concern himself with what he couldn’t.

  Only his forces and the few parties he had gathered on the way to it had reached as far as the command section.

  ‘Tenacious, these former Wolves,’ said Nuros. He had leaned in as close to Lumak as he could get, but still needed to shout.

  Lumak snarled as slaved auto-turrets sprang from hidden silos in the deck. Chattering stubber fire raked the corridor, maintaining a relentless fusillade so the legionaries could reload. He swore. ‘Gorgon’s blood! Most of their legionaries are here, protecting the bridge. Tenacity has nothing to do with it.’

  The Iron Hands advanced another step. Heavy cannon slugs and bolt shells pranged hard against the shields, sparks arrowing kinetically from every impact.

  ‘Traitorous scum,’ Lumak muttered, shoulder rammed tight into the back of his shield as the firestorm intensified.

  ‘Bastards all,’ Nuros agreed. ‘I have a healthy desire to make them die painfully. Bring us closer, iron brother, so we might acquaint ourselves with them.’

  Nuros and the Drakes stayed low and behind the second rank, a warband of variously armed Iron Hands amongst them. They had no breacher shields but if the Salamanders could get in close with their flame weapons, the fight would be over. Two further ranks followed the Drakes, but only the farthest away carried shields, held to the rear, back-to-back with the Iron Hands behind them as they retreated blindly towards the bridge. A strong defensive position, it had proven useful in the close, smoke-choked confines of the ship’s labyrinth. It lacked expedience, however.

  Sixty metres still separated the Iron Hands’ first shield wall from the defenders.

  Lumak scowled, his temper rising in the hot cauldron of the corridor.

  ‘I’ll get us closer,’ he vowed between gritted teeth. ‘Kurnox!’ he bellowed. ‘Take my shield.’

  The Iron Hand pushed through from the rear rank as Lumak fell back and another took his place.

  ‘Hold here,’ he said, as Kurnox met him.

  Lumak holstered his bolt pistol.

  ‘Are you about to name your sword in some insane act of heroism, iron brother?’ asked Nuros, hunkered beside Lumak now he had retreated from the vanguard. ‘Shall it be called Impetuous?’

  Lumak muttered an invective under his breath, not deigning to look at the Salamander as he held out his hand to Kurox.

  ‘Plasma gun.’

  Kurox unstrapped the gun from where he’d mag-locked it to his armour’s generator, and gave it to his captain.

  It was a Thunderbolt-pattern variant from Ryza forge world, its muzzle scorched black by plasma burn. Lumak checked the weapon’s­ powercell and nodded.

  ‘It’ll do.’

  Nuros clapped a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘You might get off a shot, iron brother, but step beyond
this shield wall and you’ll be cut down.’

  ‘Mourn me, will you, Drake?’

  ‘Who else will I mock?’ he said airily, though his retinal lenses burned with fierce intensity.

  Lumak shrugged off Nuros’ hand.

  ‘I don’t plan on dying here,’ he said and set the plasma gun to charge. It whined as it reached optimal and then went beyond, threatening a catastrophic overheat. ‘Not with my sword unremembered.’ Holding the weapon by its strap, he bellowed to the front rankers, ‘Shields up!’, and those in the second line hoisted their shields onto the first, setting them at an oblique angle, tip to base, reaching over their comrades, who had crouched to help affect the formation.

  The whine turned to a shriek, signalling an imminent reaction. Lumak hurled the gun like a tossed grenade. It arced, high to low, less than aerodynamic but driven by the strength of the throw, its parabola quickly lost behind the wall of stacked shields.

  Lumak could imagine the confusion of his enemies. The old Luna Wolves had been disciplined, and the Sons of Horus who they became afterwards had not diminished in that martial aspect, but it only took the slightest hesitation for the flung plasma gun to reach its mark.

  One of the renegades shouted out a warning.

  Too late.

  The powercell detonated, a reaction so volatile it could easily kill a legionary in full war-plate. It killed several. It also tore an ugly breach in the auto-palisade.

  Lumak bellowed the charge, incoherent, wrathful.

  Reverting back to two ranks, the Iron Hands bulled down the corridor, impervious to the renegades’ suppressing fire. They reached as far as the breach, one of the auto-turrets also destroyed by the blast, then parted to admit the Drakes.

  Fire surged through the ragged gap, hungry, eager. It turned molten one of the Sons of Horus who had tried to staunch it. He fought on for a few more seconds as his armour burned and smoke drooled from the eye-slits in his helm, before crumpling to his knees, little more than a brown smudge slowly dying in the flames.