by Ben Counter
It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
Astral Knights Order of Battle
Varv Deliverance Mission – Battle-barge Tempestus
Chapter Command
Chapter Master Lord Artor Amhrad
Chaplain Masayak
Chief Librarian Hyalhi
3 Veteran Squads
Dreadnought Ancient Keldohran
Dreadnought Ancient Vhortaas
Land Raider Squadron Penance
Stormraven Gunship Maxentius
Stormraven Gunship Damoclean
Techmarine Sarakos
Techmarine Methelian
Second Battle Company
Captain Pelisaar
Chaplain Khurz
8 Tactical Squads
1 Assault Squad
1 Devastator Squad
Third Battle Company
Captain Sufutar
6 Tactical Squads
2 Assault Squads
2 Devastator Squads
Fourth Battle Company
Captain Mohari
6 Tactical Squads
2 Assault Squads
1 Devastator Squad
Sixth Battle Company
Captain Sheherz, Master of the Fleet
First Sergeant Kypsalah
8 Tactical Squads
2 Assault Squads
Seventh Reserve (Tactical) Company
Captain Ifriqi
Lexicanium Dehaarz
9 Tactical Squads
Eighth Reserve (Assault) Company
Assault-Captain Zahiros
9 Assault Squads
Ninth Reserve (Devastator) Company
Devastator-Captain Khabyar
Codicier Valqash
8 Devastator Squads
Tenth Scout Company
Scout-Sergeant Faraji
7 Scout Squads
Orbital Supply Station Madrigal 12
High Polar Orbit, Safehold
Varv System
Encryption Code Hemlock
Inquisitorial Eyes Only. Ref. Lord Inquisitor Quilven Rhaye
Scrivened: Medicae Obscurum Kalliam Helvetar
The package was received from an Aquila shuttle bearing the livery of the Ultramarines Chapter, and the seal of Captain Venetius placed upon the reception altar. The package was disembarked without incident.
The package was an oversized chamber 4x2.5x1.5 metres, equipped with cryonic actuator and suspensor unit. It was taken by an orderly party from the shuttle bay to the Menials’ Mess Hall of the orbital station, this space being judged by this functionary as sufficient for the required procedures.
The package was identified as a cryonic storage unit, containing the corpse of one human. This corpse was oversized, approximately 2.5 metres in height with the remaining bone and muscle structure exaggerated. This functionary identified the corpse as belonging to a member of the Adeptus Astartes.
Captain Venetius is logged as remarking ‘He is not one of ours’ during the handover process. The corpse is not believed to originate with the Ultramarines Chapter.
The corpse suffered extensive injuries, described in detail in the addendum attached. They were not survivable and this functionary believes them to be the cause of death pending a full mortisection. The summary is of one penetrative chest wound, one penetrative abdominal wound, and radiation burns across the majority of the skin. Facial identification will be difficult, but sufficient dental and bone structure remains to make identification by speculative reconstruction possible.
The corpse was washed and non-biological material removed from the skin. The orderlies were set to cataloguing the injuries which, as they included healed injuries presumably inflicted during past engagements, took approximately six hours.
During this time a message was received from Varv Deliverance Mission Command, bearing the information seal of Lord Inquisitor Rhaye, requiring an autoseance on the corpse. As this was not the procedure anticipated by this functionary, a further five hours was required to equip the Menials’ Mess Hall sufficiently, during which time the cryogenic unit was reactivated to preserve the condition of the corpse. This functionary also adjusted the cranial electoos of all orderlies present to mark them for mind-wiping at the earliest convenience following the completion of the autoseance.
The autoseance began approximately twelve hours after reception of the package. This functionary performed the initial tech-rituals to please the spirits of the psychoconductive coil, the semantic cogitator, and the holomat servitor. Sacred machine oil and void-whale wax candles were deemed appropriate, as was a ceremonial dodecagram of iron filings and bone powder. Upon the depression of all three activation panels the machine-spirits proved willing and the equipment commenced function.
Initial contact was troubling. The upper layers of the consciousness were damaged by the violence of the subject’s death, as is common in deaths by combat or accident. This setback was anticipated. This functionary suffered sympathetic cardiac fluctuations and administered two ampoules of somatic stabilisers.
The procedure was commenced after a further eight hours. More cardiac monitoring equipment was set up and the orderlies engrammed with the machine-rites required to operate it along with resuscitation techniques. The next contact lasted approximately six minutes. Fragmentary sensory patterns were located. The upper levels of the consciousness were penetrated and the uppermost layers of residual personality encountered. This functionary lacks experience of the personality-constructs of a member of an Adeptus Astartes. They exceeded the training subjects in intensity and complexity. The sensory patterns were as follows.
Upon a city drenched in sun, whipped by the salt-heavy winds off the ocean, the gilded roofs of a thousand palaces glitter like a scattering of coins. A mountain rises, its sides carved into towers and battlements, a fortress cut from the living rock hung with the banners of a mighty house. The city bears the heraldry of its lords as boldly as a coat of arms written into the land. Hunting parties sally from its walls into the forests beyond. The cries of the heralds speak of the comings and goings of this world’s blessed sons.
A world hangs in the void, an obscenity of glass and steel. A sun burns beyond it, but the world’s heart is cold. A lifeless planet rolls by, dragging a trail of shattered continents and corpses. The death of a thousand men is no more than a flicker against the void.
A staff, topped with a silver eagle, engraved with the words of a High Gothic prayer. It is singing, a high harmony that fluctuates along with the thoughts of the man who carries it. Into this weapon is poured all the power of the construct in the wielder’s mind, a form of mental light in the shape of a many-limbed beast. This beast lies in the staff now, a predator hungry for release.
Father and mother watch as you kneel. This is not a moment to be proud. This is a moment to be humble. But pride is our sin, and it comes unbidden, demanding the mind’s attention. Mother’s armour is polished. Father carries his bow. Members of the family none have seen for a decade line the courtyard. You lay down your sword at your parents’ feet. They say you are not their son any longer, but everyone here knows that is not true. The stag’s antlers on the house banners are emblazoned across your heart. Not even the trials to come can carve that symbol out of you.
Corpses are split and reformed, knitted back into blocks of bloody meat. Humanity is erased more completely than mere death could do. The body of a man is now an object. The body of a woman is now a commodity, worth a pittance, to be stacked and moved like something that has never been alive.
This functionary suffered full cardiac and respiratory arrest. The menials present administered the tech-rites and activated the resuscitation equipment. This functionary was rendered morituram totalis for two minutes and twenty-three seconds. The procedure was suspended.
Following resuscitation, the patterns above were noted down and submitted to a menial engrammed with a symbolic filter function.
Rites of mental purification were observed approximately eighteen hours later. The ritual texts were consulted and corruption was deemed of a low enough probability to continue. The procedure commenced once more, the corpse having been again placed back in the cryonic unit during the intervening time.
Additional rituals of mental preparation were undertaken. Pre-emptive somatic stabilisers were administered by a slow drip. This functionary, having suffered muscular pains following the previous session, elected to be restrained by two menials prior to the commencement of the procedure. Machine-rites were observed as before.
The subsequent contact through the upper conscious and personality levels proved uneventful. Sense-fragments previously located were not present and could not be found. This functionary concluded this was only possible through the use of extensive mental conditioning and psyniscientific training, as evidenced further by the layers of mental protection still present through the systematic configuring of neural pathways. This made navigation lengthy but not hazardous.
Three hours after the commencement of the third contact, this functionary located a shielded cache of contiguous sensory information within the subject’s deep personality. A holomat servitor was mated with the psychoconductive coil and this functionary began the rites of unravelling. As a selective memory autoeraser protects the Inquisitorial autoseance protocols engrammed into this functionary, the details of this procedure cannot be related by this functionary. Selective recollection permits the memory of the shielding being removed layer by layer, with the endorphin spike associated with each causing subsconscious activation of further protocols.
Approximately four and a half hours after the commencement of the third contact, acquisition of contiguous sensory relay was achieved.
ONE
Battle-barge Tempestus
Varv Deliverance Mission Command
Outer Solar Orbit, Varv System
Captain Sheherz, Master of the Fleet
‘That was the Perilous,’ said Sheherz. Through the viewscreen mounted on the bridge of the Tempestus, he watched the slow disintegration of the fleet’s flagship. Its long, ridged hull, crowned with a wedge-shaped prow and covered in hundreds of close-defence emplacements, was skewered on a silver lance of power that flashed into existence and fizzled to nothing a moment later. The Perilous simply drifted apart as if some keystone had been removed and the ship had fallen to pieces of its own accord. The prow tumbled away, the sides of the hull peeled off and the entrails of the ship poured out in a waterfall of sparks. In that torrent were the seven thousand souls who crewed the Perilous. One of them was Lord Admiral Corus, the supreme commander of the Varv Deliverance Fleet.
‘How many Stormfronts does that leave?’ asked the shipmistress of the Tempestus, Lady Demi-Admiral Gereltus. Around her the bridge crew continued to work their navigational cogitators and communication helms, trying not to stare mesmerised at the death of the flagship. Their despair was all the more intense for being silent and hidden.
‘She was the last of the Stormfront class,’ replied Sheherz.
He could not show emotion in front of these crew members, not even the shipmistress. He was an Astral Knight, a Space Marine, and not a berserker of the Space Wolves or morbid monk of the Dark Angels. Roboute Guilliman had written in the Codex Astartes of what the ordinary men and women of the Imperium must see when they look on a Space Marine – a creature impassive and unshockable, weathering defeat and victory the same, as relentless and eternal as the human race had to be in this galaxy of war.
He could not show his anger.
The silvered arc of the planet breached the edge of the viewscreen. From the void some worlds looked unholy and terrible, some mottled with disease, others blistered with volcanoes or cracked apart by the anger of their core. This world was shrouded with clouds eternally churning in an electrical storm, criss-crossed with lightning. Every visual probe had been obscured by an information haze, as if the planet knew it was being watched and clouded every eye that looked at it.
But it was not a planet – at least not a sterile and dead world such as ninety per cent of the planets in the galaxy. Somewhere beneath that mantle of cloud was a weapon that could knock a starship, even an Imperial battleship like the Perilous, out of the sky like an arrow through a bird. Sometimes it took the form of the silver lance that had speared the Perilous. Sometimes it had summoned, through some teleporter technology or warp magic, masses of rock within the target, tearing apart the Lycomadean and the Viridian Sun. Smaller ships it had crushed as if by a giant invisible fist, hull plates buckling as plasma vented in ribbons of fire.
Twelve times the Imperial fleet had engaged the World Engine. Eleven times it had been thrown back in disarray, leaving a trail of shattered spacecraft, and the World Engine had not taken a scratch.
Do not show anger. They will see it as impotence and despair. Give them something to follow, because to them you are like gods. Thus had Guilliman written. Sheherz kept his anger inside him, and felt its heat boring into the pit beneath his heart.
One of the crewmen looked up from a communications helm, his pale face lit by the green glow of the pict screen. The face was drawn and grey, the eyes dark. These men and women had not slept for a long time, because the World Engine did not sleep either. ‘Captain Sheherz, Chapter Master Amhrad hails us for your attention.’
‘What does he command?’ asked Sheherz. He knew full well what the message said, but communications protocol had to be followed.
‘The Chapter Master requests your presence,’ said the crewman.
‘Stay alert,’ said Sheherz to the shipmistress, ‘and look to the crew. Despair will poison them, you must stem its flow. I shall return to the bridge soon.’
By the time Sheherz reached the Chapel of Intolerance, the commanders of the Varv Deliverance Fleet were already there, some with their honour guard as if showing the might they brought with them still mattered when the World Engine was ploughing through their fleet at that very moment. Some Space Marine Chapters had sent only a handful of battle-brothers and were represented by a single officer,
but most had not come alone. In all, fifteen Chapters were represented there.
Captain Venetius of the Ultramarines took the fore – he and his honour guard wore the characteristic deep blue armour of their Chapter, but so embellished there was more gold than blue. Instinctively, it seemed, the other Chapters had accepted Venetius as a de facto leader. Opposite him stood the Astral Knights delegation, led by Chapter Master Amhrad. Amhrad had brought with him the three veteran squads attached to his command, the most impressive body of men among them.
That was Amhrad’s right. This was an Astral Knights ship.
‘Captain Sheherz,’ said Amhrad as Sheherz entered. ‘It is well that we have the Master of the Fleet in attendance. Matters of war in the void demand your expertise.’
‘My lord,’ said Sheherz.
‘You have seen the latest development, I take it?’ said Venetius. He had the face and manner of a patrician who had gone his whole life getting his own way.
‘We lost the Perilous,’ said Sheherz.
‘And the Magna Pater,’ added Venetius. He folded his arms as if any argument had just been settled. ‘This weapon swats us from the void at will. It is apparent that your formation approach failed.’
The last words were directed at Sheherz. He did not have sole responsibility for the positioning of the fleet, but he had a great deal of it, and with the death of Lord Admiral Corus he was probably the most blameworthy individual left. ‘I did not anticipate the manoeuvrability nor the range of the weapon,’ he said. ‘It has never before shown the capabilities it has this last hour.’
‘And every hour it changes!’ barked Venetius. ‘Each ship we lose in a new way. It learns from us and adapts to every tactic.’
‘Then what,’ said Amhrad levelly, ‘do you suggest we do?’
‘Pull back,’ said Venetius. ‘Regroup the fleet and await reinforcement from the segmentum fleet. Within two months they will be here, and if the Emperor wills it they will bring with them the Adeptus Mechanicus survey teams to tell us what this World Engine is.’
