Old Earth

by Nick Kyme

  Vulkan turned so he could regard them all.

  ‘To Caldera, to the eldritch gate Ferrus and I left behind.’

  A flight-ready gunship awaited the Salamanders in the launch bay, Meduson true to his word. Vulcanis purred in its docking ­cradle, eager to be loose.

  Vulkan and his warriors boarded without incident. Gargo took the pilot’s throne and the others sat silently in the troop hold.

  The Iron Heart’s guns still sounded as the launch bay doors opened, venting the air even as they admitted the cold of the void. The thunderous retorts were distant, merely ranging shots, a second engagement not far off.

  The ready lumen flared red to green and they were away, spearing into the darkness with engines at full burn. None challenged them; the battleships and their escorts had fiercer enemies to concern them. No one cared about a lone gunship angling for the breach in the line.

  ‘They have passed through the blockade,’ said Aug, his attention on the hololith display and the departing icon representing the Vulcanis. Matched against the great warships it barely registered, but Aug saw it. He saw much.

  ‘And so ends our alliance with the primarch,’ replied Meduson.

  ‘You sound bitter, Warleader,’ noted Aug.

  ‘I am sanguine enough, Iron Father.’ Meduson never moved from the oculus. ‘Besides, I have no time for bitterness. I have a war to fight. And win.’

  ‘We could hold them here,’ suggested Mechosa. ‘Keep them at arm’s length and slowly break them apart with our guns.’

  Meduson shook his head.

  ‘That will take too long. The renegades have enough strength remaining to make this awkward if we allow it.’ He paused to consider his plan. His eyes drank in every detail afforded by the oculus. The Iron Hands had effectively enveloped the surviving Sons of Horus ships. They even had the Horus Triumphant amalgamated with their fleet. Overall fighting strength had been tipped in their favour. Distance remained a factor, however, with the Iron Hands dispersed over a huge tranche of the void, whereas the renegades had regrouped into a much tighter formation.

  A large number of enemy ships still opposed the Iron Tenth and showed no signs of capitulation.

  ‘We attack in two wings, and make the most of our positioning. As soon as the first wing has engaged, the second moves in. The Sons of Horus will face an attack on two sides. Our refused flank will then–’

  A shriek of vox distortion interrupted him.

  Several members of the mortal crew grimaced as Meduson and Mechosa regarded the vox-hailer that served the bridge.

  Aug looked to the master of vox, a grizzled man with a balding pate, dark stubble around his chin and cheeks, his left ear a bionic.

  ‘Malfunction, Baelor?’ Aug asked.

  ‘No, lord, the signal is external to the Iron Heart. It is coming from the renegade fleet.’

  ‘Perhaps they wish to surrender?’ suggested Mechosa dryly.

  Meduson did not answer. He barely heard him. ‘What is this now?’ he whispered to himself instead as a familiar voice crackled across the feed.

  ‘Meduson… This is a message for the beggar-lord known as Shadrak Meduson.’

  ‘This again,’ snapped Mechosa. ‘He goads us, Warleader.’

  ‘He goads me.’

  The recording continued as it had before, declaring Marr’s intent, mocking Meduson’s prowess, signing his death warrant.

  ‘Silence it!’ demanded Aug, the master of vox already trying and failing to root out the infiltration and end it.

  Aug stepped from his post to advance on Baelor and the vox-station.

  ‘Do it, or I shall.’

  And then something happened that had not happened before, and everyone stopped what they were doing to listen.

  ‘You have made a fight of it,’ said Marr, breaking from the script. ‘I salute you for that, Meduson. It is you, isn’t it? I hope so. I thought our paths had crossed before but you proved elusive. This time, I think it is you. Yes, no need to answer. You are here. So am I. Shall we finish this then? Or are you just a beggar-lord after all?’

  The message ended, and the vox returned to normal.

  ‘How?’ demanded Meduson.

  The master of vox shook his head, unable to explain.

  ‘Aug?’ snapped Meduson.

  The Iron Father had shuffled Baelor aside to conduct his own investigation into how the Iron Heart’s communications had been so routinely hijacked.

  ‘I have no answer at this time.’

  ‘Is it him?’

  Again, Aug interrogated the signal, then performed a swift analysis.

  ‘I am reading a ship’s ident that was not present before,’ he said.

  Meduson said nothing. He glared.

  Aug turned to face him, looking up from the vox-station.

  ‘It is the Lupercal Pursuivant.’

  ‘A false signal, it must be,’ said Mechosa, but without confidence. ‘If they can breach our vox, what else are they capable of?’

  ‘It’s definitely the ship,’ Aug replied. ‘I am in no doubt. It cannot be a coincidence.’

  Meduson had turned back to the oculus, as if by sight alone he could cut to the truth of it.

  ‘To goad us just as Vulkan leaves? How could he have known, Aug? Why wouldn’t he have stopped him?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t want Vulkan. He wants you, my brother.’

  ‘It is him,’ said Meduson, nodding.

  ‘He wants you to engage, Warleader,’ said Aug. ‘We should obliterate the fleet from distance. Wound them and then withdraw.’

  ‘And let him escape again.’ Meduson shook his head. ‘I can’t allow that, Aug. He’s here, now. I must end him, end this. For good. We cannot be the Iron Tenth until he is dead.’

  ‘We are the Tenth, Meduson. You forged us thusly,’ said Aug. ‘It’s not logical to engage at close quarters.’

  ‘I am sorry, old friend, but if there’s even a chance he will slip by us… It’s not about logic any more. This is something more primal that that.’

  ‘You want to kill him yourself,’ said Aug, and the mild rebuke in his tone saw Meduson turn and give him a warning glance.

  ‘I will kill him, Aug. I will do it to save this Legion. You said yourself, the Legion must survive. It will not unless Tybalt Marr is a festering corpse, his neck severed at the edge of my blade.’

  ‘Then cripple his ship first, destroy his outriders and sunder his fleet,’ said Aug. ‘And when he has nowhere to turn, then we kill him. Then you kill him.’

  Meduson waited silently for a few seconds then nodded.

  ‘You’re right, Aug. My humours are getting the better of me.’ He addressed Mechosa. ‘All ships to engage from distance. Let’s crack them open on our long guns, and fight a war of attrition. It’s what we Iron Tenth excel at.’

  Mechosa relayed the orders, as Meduson and Aug shared a glance before the Warleader returned to the oculus.

  He could not deny the logic, but he would not allow Marr to escape. This ended now.

  Him dead or me, thought Meduson.

  Twenty-Three

  Sword names, given in memoriam

  Aboard the Horus Triumphant, the orders came through from the Iron Heart.

  In the short time it had taken to assume control of the ship, Lumak and Nuros had set about ensuring they had its guns, its engines and its shields. The warp drive was also guarded and any remaining rogue elements loyal to the Sons of Horus were systematically being rooted out and captured or killed. The process was not unlike hunting down rats, for although the Iron Tenth and their allies controlled the ship, they did so by dint of possessing its vital areas, rather than through numerical superiority. That, for now, remained with the renegades.

  Nuros had no taste for void war, so Lumak took the throne and overall command. Without
a bridge crew, he put fresh servitors to work and had his warriors oversee everything they did.

  ‘We might not be agile, but we are battle ready,’ said Lumak as an armature descended to remove his power generator and cables snaked into ports on his armour, jacking him in to the ship’s many systems.

  Nuros faced the oculus, his arms folded.

  ‘Shall we get underway, iron brother?’ he asked.

  Lumak looked to the ship’s helm.

  ‘All ahead full. Bring us to within lance range and then commence persistent bombardment.’

  With a lurch of engines the Horus Triumphant began to move, coming abeam of the Enduring Tenth and Morlock.

  Lances began to prime, building to optimal power.

  Engagement with the remaining Sons of Horus fleet showed across the oculus. Silent prow guns and broadsides flashed in the darkness. Shield flare rippled across the Horus Triumphant’s front aspect.

  ‘Battle stations,’ intoned Lumak, and the lights on the bridge dimmed. They flickered once, and Nuros looked up at the sudden staccato flash but the lights normalised quickly enough.

  ‘Prepare to fire,’ Lumak said calmly, the captured ship still driving forwards. ‘Reduce speed to one-third.’

  The engine thrum eased. Tremors underfoot lessened, even as the hull groaned with the diminished pressure on its physical integrity.

  The shields flared constantly now, as an unending barrage came from the Sons of Horus ships fearlessly closing on the Iron Tenth.

  ‘They are trying to provoke us, Drake,’ said Lumak, feeling powerful with the fury of a battleship at his fingertips.

  Nuros did not answer. The lights flickered again, in time with the shield flare.

  The Horus Triumphant, together with the Enduring Tenth and the Morlock, moved in a wedge, a discrete flotilla within the broader Iron Hands fleet.

  Hundreds of glittering contrails lit the void, the wake of a mass torpedo launch.

  The engines trembled again, fed by a sudden surge of power.

  Lumak looked to the ship’s helm.

  ‘Why aren’t we slowing down?’

  The Iron Hand at the helm shook his head. He wrenched the servitor aside, effectively destroying it as he tried to access the engines himself.

  Lumak engaged the vox to the enginarium, hailing the warriors he had placed to safeguard it but a weird static fouled any attempts to reach them.

  He then noticed the lances had yet to fire.

  He leaned up from his command throne, straining at the cables trying to hold him down.

  ‘Nuros…’

  The Salamander had drawn his axe, his gaze on the part of the bridge where the dead crew had lain, executed in ritual fashion.

  The bodies had been removed but the stain of their deaths remained. Vapours rose from the blood. Lumak saw faces within them. They were thickening by the second, coalescing into a murky red pall.

  ‘Gorgon’s mercy…’ he breathed, severing the cables with his gladius and wincing at the empathic pain of separation. For a fleeting moment he felt the presence of the ship, wrathful and utterly alien. ‘All hands–’ he began to say before something materialised in the vapours.

  A flash of light threw Nuros back. He struck the oculus.

  A stink of sour milk and spoiled meat fouled the air. It was hot and heady with the energy release of sudden matter translation.

  Three hulking black-armoured forms emerged through the blood mist, clad in Cataphractii war-plate. A red glow emanated from the vision slits in their helms, promising pain, exuding malice. They proclaimed their allegiance boldly, the eye of Horus emblazoned on their massive shoulder guards.

  Gunfire flared from the figures, scything down servitors and legionaries with abandon.

  Lumak cried out, ‘Justaerin!’ at the same moment as the vox shrieked back to life. Frantic reports flooded the feed, vying with the screams of battle and the cries of the dying. Fear and fury erupted in sudden cacophony. Across the entire ship, the Iron Hands and their allies came under attack via matter translation. And in turn the newly arrived warriors released others, and all too soon the interlopers were overrun.

  At every ritual site, at every fane and shrine the Tenth had shattered under stock and heel, the warriors of the XVI Legion appeared.

  Lumak staggered from the throne, his skull hammering with the pain of forced dislocation. A melta beam speared Kurnox through the chest, halting his brave charge. He fell, left leg severed and most of his torso missing. He died quickly.

  Nuros fought against one of the Justaerin, managing to hold his own against Ezekyle Abbadon’s elite.

  Lumak felt a bolt-round graze his skull as he reached for the zweihander. He leapt from the command dais, landing hard but rising fast as a power fist thundered into the deck where he had been crouched a moment before.

  He slashed, shoulder to hip, parting reinforced adamantium plate with a single devastating blow. The Justaerin recoiled, barely able to comprehend what had just happened. Then his two halves slid apart, the weight of the upper dragging it across the lower, and he collapsed amidst his own steaming organs.

  Two remained, one still carrying the multi-melta.

  Nuros hacked pieces off the other one but as the Horus Triumphant’s broadsides sounded and sent a tremor through the ship, he lost his footing. The Justaerin’s power fist caught him full in the chest, lifting Nuros off his feet and sending him flying back across the bridge.

  The Justaerin turned, slowed considerably by his injuries, and Lumak ran the warrior through with his zweihander. As he wrenched the sword free, the last Justaerin on the bridge saw him. A melta beam caught the Iron Hand’s shoulder, tearing off his pauldron and burning away everything beneath down to the bone.

  Shutting down the agony, ignoring his left arm as it slumped uselessly by his side, Lumak hefted his sword in one hand and cast it like a spear.

  The blade punched through the back of the Justaerin’s helmet. The warrior staggered and then collapsed.

  Another broadside rocked the bridge, now cast in the ugly, bruised glow of imminent shield failure. The traitors had retaken the ship’s guns. Lumak would not yield the bridge.

  He put his foot on the dead warrior’s chest and wrenched free the sword with a scrape of metal and bone. Blood spat from the ragged wound.

  The vox had not ceased shrieking. Weary, dying, Lumak shut it off. He would never reach the Iron Heart, and by now they would have realised the Horus Triumphant had been compromised.

  As he staggered over to where Nuros lay unmoving, he noticed the cold carcass of the Morlock drifting across the oculus. Fires burned in its hollows, soon extinguished. A part of its superstructure had broken off and hung forlornly in the void. The broadsides at close range from the Horus Triumphant had gutted it. He tried not to think about the surprise and horror the poor souls within must have experienced when a ship they believed a friend, but wearing the enemy’s face, had turned on them.

  The shields flared again, and he shaded his eyes against the harsh glare. Not long now until total collapse. He sagged down by Nuros’ side. Everyone else was dead. The ship was dead. It had betrayed them, just as their brothers had betrayed them. He should not be surprised, he supposed. Nuros lay on his front. With some effort, Lumak rolled him over.

  The Salamander’s eyelids flickered then opened. His chest was ruined, the breastplate dented inwards and leaking blood. Lumak did not need an Apothecary’s training to know Nuros had suffered catastrophic organ damage.

  ‘You should be dead,’ he whispered, hot tears stinging the cuts on his pale face, as he knelt by the Salamander’s side.

  Nuros smiled, his teeth bloody. He coughed up a gout of blood, phlegm and other organic matter.

  ‘Tell me…’ he rasped with profound difficulty, spitting up dark red flecks with every breath. ‘Have you named… your sw
ord?’

  ‘I name it Firedrake,’ Lumak said, with more conviction and vehemence than he had felt in a long time. ‘In honour of the fallen, and for a bond of brotherhood that runs deeper than blood or Legion.’

  Nuros smiled, then was dead.

  Lumak bowed, the hilt of the zweihander pressed to his forehead.

  The shields failed in a spectacular explosion of light.

  Lumak raised his eyes, determined to meet his end with defiance in his heart.

  ‘Gorgon! Vulkan!’ he bellowed, a shoal of torpedoes moments from impact, and embraced the fire.

  The defection and subsequent death of the Horus Triumphant destroyed both the Morlock and the Enduring Tenth. In turn, their death throes crippled the Sturmdrang and the Strength of Iron.

  Meduson’s advantage, like his composure, dwindled to smoke.

  Sensing weakness, Marr’s fleet pressed their attack but the battle’s outcome still rested on a knife’s edge.

  ‘This is reckless.’

  Aug’s words crackled through Meduson’s helm vox as he made haste to the launch bays.

  ‘It’s vengeance,’ he snarled. ‘For Lumak and Nuros, and every one of our sworn brothers who died on that ship. Marr dies. I won’t run from him anymore.’

  He passed through the spinal corridor, a train of Iron Hands in tow.

  ‘To stand and fight now sees us in a losing position.’

  ‘Does logic tell you that, Aug?’

  ‘Must I answer that?’

  The doors parted with a soft hiss. Light and sound briefly flooded the corridor before the doors sealed shut again behind Meduson and his warriors.

  ‘Asked and answered, I’d say. I defy your logic – it has brought us nothing but pain.’

  ‘It is the Iron Creed,’ said Aug. ‘It is the reason we still survive and shall go on to survive after this. I implore you, Shadrak, turn back. Retreat and salve our wounds. Honour Lumak and the others.’

  Mechosa went on ahead, hailing the enginseers and ensuring every boarding torpedo was ready for imminent launch.

  ‘There is no honour in retreat, Jebez. Bring the Iron Heart within minimum range of our boarding craft. As soon as our forces have breached the Lupercal Pursuivant, engage the rest of Marr’s fleet hard. Borgus and Jakkus are poised to commit every asset they have to this. Make sure their launches are simultaneous with ours. I will need the aid of their warriors once aboard. After I cut the head from this snake, the renegades’ stomach for a fight will diminish.’