Old Earth

by Nick Kyme

  ‘Let them come…’

  Epilogue

  Fates, rewritten

  Eldrad Ulthran sagged in his chair. His private chambers aboard the ship were modest but offered a modicum of solitude. He wore a simple black robe of light cloth and had divested himself of his armour and staff, his witchblade placed in a sealed vault.

  The path had taken much out of him, perhaps even some mote of his soul, but he told himself it had been worth it. Fate had been rewritten. Eldrad wished dearly he could tell Lathsarial of it, but he had felt the other seer’s death long before his journey had ended.

  And so he spoke to no one of what he had done. He confessed nothing to the other farseers of Ulthwé. They had not aided him, but it was still his craftworld and the time had come to be ­reunited with it.

  Much remained uncertain, beyond Eldrad’s power to influence further.

  The human, Grammaticus, had a role yet to play, as did the Bearer of the Word, Narek. Each still would need to find his part.

  Feeling weary beyond his years, Eldrad closed his eyes and let the vision come. He watched the future unspool before him, a mere observer to fate, a passenger to destiny. He watched the ending of the war and he saw what followed, some ten thousand years hence.

  And he wept.

  The cell’s walls felt cold to the touch. Voices echoed in the corridor beyond the door, which was locked and barred. The occupant of the cell had no knowledge of how he came to be there, but he had been beaten and his armour removed.

  A fight had recently ended, one which he felt certain his captors had lost.

  The lumen above the door glowed red and hazy in the clouded atmosphere. He smelled smoke, heard the report of distant gunfire.

  Red turned to green. The door slid open, its locking bolts retracting, and a warrior in cobalt blue staggered in, a bolt pistol in his hand. A shot resounded, and the warrior fell, his chest blasted open.

  Footsteps sounded on the metal deck underfoot. A second figure emerged in the narrow aperture of the cell doorway. The occupant had already stooped to retrieve the dead warrior’s knife. The pistol had been empty. He need not have worried.

  The second figure wore armour too, but crimson. Prayer parchment flickered, disturbed by the failing air recyclers of the starship.

  ‘I’ve found another one,’ he said in perfect Colchisian, calling to someone out of sight. Then he turned his attention on the occupant.

  ‘You are of the Word,’ he said, approving, and nodded. ‘That is good. We are bound for Terra, to fight at the primarch’s side. Lorgar has decreed it. Horus will march on the Throneworld at last. What is your name, legionary?’

  And the occupant smiled, for he saw in all of this a design, a thread.

  ‘Narek,’ he said, his eyes cold. ‘Barthusa Narek.’

  Afterword

  Every journey has its end… This phrase rings oh-so-true when considering where we are in the narrative of the Horus Heresy. Within sight now are the walls of the Emperor’s Palace, as the grandest possible stage in the entire saga makes ready for its dramatic opening and thrilling final bow.

  For me, the ending that most concerns my contribution to the Horus Heresy is happening now. In fact, it has happened. This is it. This book you hold in your hand is the very end.

  Through his many trials: physical, mental, moral and spiritual (Konrad ensured he faced them all), Vulkan has reached the end of his story in what is considered the ‘open period’ of the Horus Heresy, prior to the colossal finale of the Siege.

  I’ve lived with Vulkan as a character in my head – as a story I had the honour and privilege of telling – for over six years. I feel a profound attachment to him, to his fate, to his story, and so it feels only right that I use this afterword to talk about that and the journey it has taken me on.

  I hope you’ll forgive the indulgence.

  It’s hope, I’ve always felt, that Vulkan represents. It’s fair to say that he’s not considered to be one of the ‘main’ primarchs. He’s not the poster child for either the Imperium or Chaos. He doesn’t have wings, nor is he possessed of a serpent’s tail or an undeniable charisma that could bring the galaxy to its knees; he isn’t a feral wolf king or an unstable rage-gladiator. Vulkan was already regarded as one of the ‘others’, only worthy of remark because he was one of three primarchs who got royally brutalised, along with their Legions, at Isstvan V.

  The massacre was more famous than the massacred.

  Then.

  Not so much now.

  Vulkan had a story. His supposed ‘death’ was a mystery, his sub­sequent reappearance at the Second Founding even more so. I wanted to know what had happened to him. I cared about his journey. I wanted other people to care too.

  Vulkan is the epitome of hope. He’s also – with the exception of Guilliman who has arch-statecraft to fall back on – probably the one primarch who could easily adapt to a universe without endless war. He’s arguably the most human and yet one of the least human-looking, (aside from the one with the angel wings… oh, and pre-Chaos, of course).

  He believes in humanity. He cares about humankind. He is a true hero, and in part that’s what Old Earth represents. Showing Vulkan as the hero.

  In Vulkan Lives, he played the victim, the dupe. Yes, he was defiant. Yes, he triumphed against the odds and escaped the trap set for him, learning in the process that he could never die, but he was always on the back foot.

  Deathfire was about Vulkan’s Legion, his sons, and what they would do when faced with the loss of their father and the complex belief that he could, somehow, return from the dead. Vulkan is in the novel and his presence is felt throughout, but as a character he’s restricted to the odd weird dream sequence and a ‘fist pumping the air in triumph’ cameo right at the end.

  In Old Earth, Vulkan finally gets to shine. He also begins to understand his purpose, and as observers to his fate, we get to see his destiny satisfyingly fulfilled.

  No longer just one of the others. I wanted to make Vulkan’s story pertinent, for it to matter. That ending, that reveal of what his true purpose is could only happen on Terra and thus that is where his story concludes. The chapters set on the Throneworld were perhaps the toughest I had to write across all three novels and all three novellas.

  It would be remiss of me, though, to say that Old Earth was just Vulkan’s story. There is a very significant chunk of the book devoted to the Iron Hands, in particular a certain Shadrak Meduson and the fate of the so-called ‘Shattered Legions’.

  At one point, I remember, during one of the Horus Heresy planning meetings, there was a mind to have an entire novel solely devoted to the Iron Hands. It was going to be called The Iron Tenth (I admit, that’s somewhat on the nose, but, hey, it’s the Iron Hands).

  I’m sure we could have easily filled a novel with a wall-to-wall Iron Hands saga, but as time marched on and the Horus Heresy series began to grow longer in the tooth, a sense of urgency that wasn’t there at the start began to manifest. Momentum became important, and the question that was so often posed in these meetings of far greater minds than my own changed from ‘what can we do next?’ to ‘what must we now do before the end?’ So it was then that plans for The Iron Tenth were jettisoned. It was only a little while later, as Imperium Secundus began to take shape in the series following The Unremembered Empire, and Vulkan had been returned to Nocturne, that Laurie suggested I could tackle the really meaty part of The Iron Tenth (i.e. Meduson’s fate and that of the Shattered Legions) in Old Earth. His suggestion was for a two-pronged storyline, one that both served as a finale in terms of Vulkan’s journey as well as giving the Iron Hands some closure.

  I had to ditch some things. There are parts of Vulkan’s journey that I’d planned that you’ll probably never get to read. I had an entire subplot that would have incorporated the ageing Thunder Warriors on Terra, and the sections in the webway would
have lasted longer.

  I have no doubt at all in my mind that the approach we went for in the end was the better option and makes for the better story. Meduson’s tale is a tragic one, as is the story of his Legion, but in many ways it led to Vulkan’s triumph and says something about the cruel dichotomy of the universe which they inhabit. I like the symmetry of that. I like how they both get to be heroes in the end, but with completely different outcomes.

  I’ve never written a more challenging book than Old Earth. It incorporates many different settings, and balances two hefty story­lines and then weaves them together. It has an absolute beast of a subplot that embraces a lot of big ideas about the universe and ultimately sets up some pretty significant story beats that will get realised on that big stage I mentioned earlier.

  It also ties in to each of the three novellas: Promethean Sun, Scorched Earth and Sons of the Forge. Maybe one day the whole damn saga will be bound up together, in the appropriate order, and you can read it as I envisaged it.

  I won’t claim to have known every detail, or how it would end up, but that scene with Vulkan right at the end, the hero, the guardian, both saviour and destroyer? I’ve had that pegged since my 40K novel Salamander.

  Six years is a long time, and there’s a sense of the bittersweet about finally reaching the end. I’ll miss Vulkan, though I’d never say never to seeing him again.

  Perhaps during the future? A far future. Now wouldn’t that be something?

  Nick Kyme

  Nottingham

  June 2017

  About the Author

  Nick Kyme is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Old Earth, Deathfire, Vulkan Lives and Sons of the Forge, the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, and the audio dramas Censure and Red-Marked. His novella Feat of Iron was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection, The Primarchs. Nick is well known for his popular Salamanders novels, including Rebirth, the Space Marine Battles novel Damnos, and numerous short stories. He has also written fiction set in the world of Warhammer, most notably the Time of Legends novel The Great Betrayal and the Age of Sigmar story ‘Borne by the Storm’, included in the novel War Storm. He lives and works in Nottingham, and has a rabbit.

  An extract from Vulkan Lives.

  Traoris was described by some as a blessed world. Blessed by whom or what was open to interpretation. The facts that were known were simply these. In the year 898 of the 30th millennium of the Imperial calendar, a being came to Traoris who was known as the Golden King.

  Hailed as a liberator, he banished the dark cults that ruled before his coming. He slew them with sword and storm, an army of knights at his command that were both magnificent and terrifying. The cabal of sorcerer-lords that the Golden King vanquished had enslaved the Traorans, a people who had not known peace or freedom for many centuries, their ancestors having ventured from Old Earth long ago. Alone, isolated during the time of Old Night, Traoris fell victim to a primordial evil. Sin made the minds of weaker men eager vessels for this darkness and only glorious light would remove it.

  And so it was that the Golden King banished darkness, preaching freedom and enlightenment. He touched this world with his mere presence. He blessed it.

  Many years passed, and between the Golden King’s departure and the recolonisation that followed, Traoris was slowly transformed. Gone were the bastions of the sorcerer-lords, great factories and mills rising in their stead. Industry came to Traoris and its people.

  Eight cities stood upon its grey earth, built upon the ruins of the old, their tenements teeming with workers. Anwey, Umra, Ixon, Vorr, Lotan, Kren, Orll and Ranos – they were islands of civilisation, divided by many kilometres of inhospitable ash desert and storm-lashed lightning fields, raised up where seams of ore coveted by Mars were in their greatest concentrations.

  Yes, Traoris was described by some as a blessed world. But not by any who lived there.

  Though she knew in her heart it was futile, Alantea ran. It was raining hard, and had been ever since the ships of ebony and crimson had been spotted in the sky over Ranos. Underfoot, the rain-lashed street was slick. She had fallen twice already and her knee throbbed dangerously with the past impacts.

  Alantea had been working a manufactorum shift, so was only wearing green-grey overalls and a thin cotton shirt darkened from white to grey by manual labour. A plastek coat kept out the worst of the rain, but parted as she ran. Her hair was drenched and hung down in front of her face in blonde clumps, obscuring her vision in the dark.

  Phosphor lamps hissed and spat as the raindrops touched them. Shadows clawed away from the dingy light, revealing square structures of grey granite beneath them. The whole city was grey, from the fog that oozed from the foundry stacks to the stone slabs under Alantea’s feet. Ranos was dark iron, it was industry and strength, it was an engine that ran on muscle and blood.

  It was also her home.

  The phosphor lamps glared like beacons, hurting Alantea’s eyes. But she welcomed them, because they would lead her to the square.

  If she could just reach Cardinal Square…

  Heavy footfalls drummed behind her, a noisy refrain against the frenzied beating of her heart, and as she turned down a side street she dared to glance back.

  A shadow. Just a shadow, that’s all she really saw.

  But she’d seen these shadows tear old Yulli apart, gut her dutiful overseer like he was swine and leave his steaming entrails on the ground for him to look upon as he died. The others had died soon after. Throaty barks, accompanied by harsh muzzle flashes from thick, black guns, had ripped them apart. Nothing was left, not even bodies. The manufactorum floor a bloodbath; its various machineries destroyed.

  Alantea had bolted for the gate to the yard. She’d considered taking one of the hauler trucks, until one of the half-tracks exploded, chewed up by a heavy cannon. So instead she ran. Now they chased her, those shadows. Never fast nor urgent, but always just a few steps away.

  Fear was in the air that night. Talk was rife amongst the workers that men had been found and arrested in the culverts. Rumours abounded of strange doings, of ritual suicides and other ‘acts’. The clavigers had apparently found a missing girl with the men, or at least her remains. But what was worse was that the men were just ordinary citizens, workers of Ranos just like her.

  So when the manufactorum was hit, paranoia and terror were already infecting its workers. The panic had been terrifying. But a different kind of fear seized Alantea now, one fuelled by the desperate desire to escape it and the belief that something far worse than death waited for her if she didn’t.

  This district of the city was a warren, full of avenues crowded over with dirty tenement blocks that shouldered up against warehouses and silos. Alleyways and conduits gave way to labyrinthine side streets where even the rats lost their bearings. Except she couldn’t lose them, not her shadows. They had the scent of prey.

  Ducking around a corner, Alantea sank to her haunches as she tried to catch a breath. It was tempting to believe she was safe now, or to give up and relinquish the chase. The city was quiet, overly so, and she feared then that she was the last surviving inhabitant, that Ranos was extinct but for her tiny life spark. She’d seen no sign of the clavigers, no dramatic call to arms from the shield-wardens. No response at all. What enemy force in all existence could achieve such a feat of absolute subjugation with barely any resistance?

  A harsh, grating voice speaking in a language she didn’t understand got Alantea to her feet. She guessed he was talking to the others. The thought of a noose tightening ever so slightly around her pale, slender neck sprang unbidden into her mind. They were closer than before, Alantea knew it instinctively. She thought of her father, and the slow, cancerous death that awaited him. She remembered better days, still poor, but tempered with happiness when her father had been whole. He needed medicine; without it… A few more precious moments with her
father was all she wanted. In the end, that’s all anyone ever really wants, just a little longer. But it was never enough. It was part of the human condition, to want to live, and when faced with our mortal end men rail against it to further that desire. It galvanised Alantea now. Cardinal Square wasn’t far. Another hundred metres, maybe fewer.

  Dredging up whatever stamina she had left, Alantea ran.

  Even with her injured knee she covered the last few metres steadily and at pace.

  Bursting into Cardinal Square, gasping for breath, she saw him.

  Rendered in gold – holding aloft a sceptre of command that would later be given to the Lord Excavator General of Traoris, patron of Ranos and the other seven worker-cities – he looked magnificent. He had come to her world, set foot in this very spot after the liberation, after the Traorans had been freed. He had spoken and all had tried to listen. Alantea was not born then. She had neither seen the one they came to know as the Golden King, nor heard his speech during the triumph, but sitting upon her father’s shoulders as he remembered back to what his father and his father before that told him of the liberation, she had felt the Golden King’s power and benevolence.

  Something had changed since that day with her father. Standing in Cardinal Square now, she no longer felt that reassurance. It was as if something had arisen to challenge it and was even now worming away at all it represented. She could not say why. Perhaps it was instinct, that unfathomable intuition that only the female of the species possessed. All she knew was that a different blessing had fallen upon Ranos, one that felt far from benevolent, and its nexus was focused on the square.

  Five points ran off from the square – though to call it such was a colloquial misnomer for it was actually pentagonal – including the one where Alantea was standing. At each of the other four she saw an armoured form blocking her escape. Phantoms at first, shadows, they advanced slowly out of the darkness. Edged in silver phosphor light their movements seemed almost syncopated and inhuman.