Horus Heresy: Scars

by Chris Wraight

  He reached his chamber and went inside. His glaive hung on brackets on the wall, surrounded by devotional flags. He glanced at it for a moment, noting as if for the first time the balance in the weapon. Parchment scrolls suspended under the brackets recorded its significant kills, listed in sequence like one of his old poems.

  Looking at the blade, one of the signature weapons of the Legion, Shiban felt a mixture of emotions. Once it would have been nothing but pride. Now, given what he had seen and heard, it was impossible to feel quite the same way.

  He turned away and activated the console over his meditation altar. An access hololith spun into life – Shiban synched his armour’s systems with the altar and called up summary fleet data.

  ‘Khan?’

  He turned to see Jochi in the doorway.

  ‘We have not sparred for a while. I thought it might–’

  Shiban pushed past him and closed the slide-door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Jochi.

  ‘I cannot say,’ said Shiban, locking the door.

  Jochi looked nonplussed. ‘Cannot say what?’

  Shiban looked hard at him. ‘I cannot say.’

  A puzzled frown creased Jochi’s brow. ‘Khan, are you all right?’

  Shiban relaxed. There was no deception there. Jochi was a straightforward soul – a cheerful hunter in the best tradition of the Legion.

  ‘Tell me what you know of warrior lodges,’ said Shiban, walking back to the altar.

  ‘Warrior lodges? Nothing, I do not think.’

  ‘You are aware they exist.’

  Jochi shrugged. ‘I heard stories, from other Legions. They are not present in the White Scars.’

  Shiban snorted. ‘They are. They very much are.’ The hololith danced in front of him. It showed the ship markers of the fleet over Prospero. They were deployed in a standard blockade pattern, spread out widely across orbital intervals. The Swordstorm held position over the site of Tizca, once the planet’s most heavily urbanised zone.

  Jochi drew alongside him. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘One of the dead on Phemus was a lodge member. It has been going on for years. Among the Terrans, to begin with, but it has spread. They meet in secret. They plan in secret.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘They invited me to join.’ Shiban smiled dryly. ‘They thought it would appeal to me. A true warrior, they said.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘You remember the Terran from Chondax? The Brotherhood of the Moon?’

  Jochi nodded. ‘I never liked him.’

  ‘I did, in the end.’

  ‘You must report it. To Hasik.’

  ‘Hasik is a member,’ Shiban sighed.

  Jochi let slip a low whistle. ‘Who is not, then?’

  ‘That is the problem.’

  Jochi thought for a moment. ‘Is this something to be concerned about? What is their purpose?’

  ‘We have been too slow,’ said Shiban. ‘The Khagan has been too slow. They have already made their choice. When the moment comes, they will move, as one, as silently as they do now.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘They are readying the Legion. They have been running some form of communication with the Warmaster – at least since Chondax, possibly even while we were still fighting. By the time the Khagan returns, it may already be over.’

  ‘We do not know Horus is a traitor.’

  ‘Yes, that is the point. We know nothing.’ Shiban looked back over to the glaive, and wondered whether to take it with him. It would draw attention, but might be useful. ‘It is not our decision to make. Why do you think the Khagan brought us to this place?’

  ‘He has been on the surface for a long time.’

  ‘That is his prerogative. We need to move.’

  ‘They invited you,’ said Jochi warily. ‘Will they not be watching? If they have kept the secret for this long…’

  ‘The time for secrecy is over. They showed their hand, they knew the risks.’

  ‘Khan.’ Jochi rested a gauntlet on his arm, halting him. ‘Hasik is noyan-khan. You cannot go against him.’

  ‘No, I know.’

  ‘Then what will you do?’

  Shiban gave him a bleak smile. ‘Find someone who can.’

  The Vorkaudar burned in the void, its engines ignited and its structure leaking atmosphere. The ship-carcass turned slowly in the dark, rocked by secondary explosions.

  It was a strangely eerie sight. Yesugei watched the fires from the Sickle Moon’s observation deck and thought of old cleansing rites. The banishment of a yaksha was always accompanied by flame-ceremonies, and had been for as long as humans had dwelt on Chogoris.

  ‘We are ready, lord,’ said Lushan.

  Yesugei turned away from the viewports. Lushan stood before him, quietly attentive as ever.

  ‘What is the status of the ship?’ he asked.

  ‘Heavy damage. The Navigator–’

  ‘Warns against it. Yes, that is understood. How about the Hesiod?’

  ‘It has fared better.’

  ‘I am sure it enjoyed some protection, at least until it fell into our hands.’

  Yesugei still could not shake off what he had seen. The Word Bearers had gone from a proud Legion at the forefront of the Great Crusade to a degenerate horde of zealots, and in such a short time. Their ship had been a casket of horrors. He could still see Ledak’s confident leer as he died. They revelled in what they had become.

  Xa’ven had deserved a better death.

  ‘Then will you give the order?’ asked Lushan.

  ‘You may translate when ready,’ said Yesugei. ‘Ensure the Hesiod remains in tandem during the voyage.’

  Lushan bowed, and withdrew to the command throne to begin the process. Alone again on the observation deck, Yesugei watched silent secondary detonations rock the Vorkaudar.

  At least they knew where they were going, now. The daemonic device had shown them just how vast the warp storms were, just how powerful. It would be difficult to get anywhere through them quickly, as it had been before.

  Horus had not only suborned Legions to his cause – he had somehow fractured the skin between realities and made the galaxy erupt in pain.

  What power can do that? What power can rupture the arc of the heavens?

  Even the Emperor, surely, did not possess such command. Magnus did not, nor did any psyker, witch or xenos that Yesugei had ever met. Some questions had yet to be answered.

  Henricos’s outline flickered into being beside him. The Iron Hands legionary stood life-size in hololithic projection. His augmented armour made him look hunched and crab-like.

  ‘A final check,’ he rasped. ‘You’re sure about this?’

  ‘Not sure about anything, Son of Medusa, but will not stay here and wait for war to come to me.’

  Henricos grunted in approval. ‘You know the enemy will have seen those projections too.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘They’ll be heading for Prospero, just as we will.’

  ‘I am aware. We must be quicker.’

  Henricos laughed in his brazen, cynical way. ‘And break our ships apart in the process.’

  ‘That will not happen.’

  ‘So you say.’

  Yesugei smiled tolerantly. ‘We have you, my friend. Have confidence in your abilities, like Xa’ven did.’ He turned back to the viewer as the wreckage of the Vorkaudar slewed out of range. ‘And you have me. Has always been ambition of mine, to guide starship through aether. Navigators are worthy souls, but even they can learn few new tricks.’

  Henricos looked at him sidelong, his helm-outline flickering green. ‘I don’t doubt you, weather-maker, but when we found you, you had no idea what had happened on Isstvan. I have to ask. This thing has already tested loyalties. What makes you think that, if we get there, your Khan will have made the same choice as us?’

  Yesugei started. It was something he had not even considered.

  ‘He w
ould never–’

  ‘Yes, I know – never become like them. But it’s not that simple. We all loved Horus. Ferrus loved Horus. Sometimes all the data just isn’t there, and by the time you find them, your path has already been set.’

  ‘He will know the truth.’

  ‘You dreamed about him dying.’

  Yesugei raised an eyebrow. He did not remember telling Henricos about those dreams.

  ‘Xa’ven told me,’ said Henricos. ‘He was worried. You have to prepare yourself, brother. It was the primarchs who brought this thing down on us. They’re the flawed gods. Here’s the crux of it – how well do you know the Khan?’

  Yesugei could have laughed out loud then. He could have told him of the decades they had spent with one another, hunting under the unbroken blue sky, storming the crumbling walls of palaces. Then, later, taking to the void in the first V Legion starships, charging out to the margins of the galaxy where the light of the core grew dim and the void itself shimmered with alien energies.

  He could have also remembered the restlessness, the frustration with Terra, the closeness to his Warmaster brother.

  You call, I answer.

  ‘You do not anger me, Bion,’ said Yesugei. ‘You are right to ask. Let me ask question of my own – if you ever doubted Ferrus, deep down, even to point of thinking him traitor, would you not still seek him out, if you could?’

  ‘Of course. That’s not the issue. Here’s the issue – when we get there, if he’s declared for the Warmaster, what will you do?’

  Yesugei did not have an answer. The possibility was so unconscionable, so utterly beyond expectation, that he truthfully had no idea.

  ‘I ask Xa’ven, once,’ Yesugei said, ‘what justify optimism. You know what he tell me? Faith.’

  Henricos snorted. ‘We left all that behind.’

  ‘We did.’

  Yesugei watched as the warp shutters rolled down across the viewports. In his last glimpse of real space before the warp drives geared up, he saw the flickering death of the Vorkaudar, a tomb to those who had believed too much.

  ‘Perhaps, though, we have to relearn it.’

  ‘Why are the shields down?’ Ilya demanded, striding angrily across the Swordstorm’s command bridge.

  Halji followed tolerantly in her wake. ‘We lost teleport locus for the Khagan. We are keeping shields down in case he requires immediate translation.’

  ‘What about the rest? Where’s Qin Xa?’

  All around her, in the many terraces and mezzanine decks of the capacious bridge, serfs and menials worked frantically at their stations. Signals continued to stream in from the planetary augurs, most of them red-lined.

  ‘We are working on it, szu.’

  Ilya turned on him. ‘This isn’t good enough. I didn’t choose to take this work on, I was chosen. You may not like it, but he gave me the mandate.’

  Halji spread his hands in apology. ‘As I say, we are working.’

  Ilya cursed under her breath. The whole thing had been stupid – the Khan must have seen the tectonic readings, known about the aether-burn swirling around Prospero’s ravaged troposphere, and yet he had translated anyway. From what she could see, the planet looked liable to break apart at any time, and yet the fleet still hung in low orbit, shields down and in a loose spread.

  It was all so arbitrary – exactly the failing she had worked so hard to eradicate from the Legion.

  She looked up, over half a dozen marble platforms and balustrades, to where Hasik Noyan-Khan stood, surrounded by his retinue, tech-priests and bridge crew. In the absence of the Khagan he was in command of the battleship and, by extension, the fleet. She could not remember seeing the order given to teleport him onto the bridge.

  ‘It’s as if they’re waiting for something,’ she murmured.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Halji, standing over her shoulder.

  ‘Are we expecting a rendezvous?’ she asked, moving over to a pict-feed and adjusting the feeder dials. ‘Why has the Guang-zho moved out of position?’

  Halji shook his head. ‘You have all data, szu.’

  She did. It was all at her fingertips. More importantly, though, it was stored in her eidetic memory. She had seen and signed off the deployment plans, and knew exactly where every ship was meant to be, how long it was meant to be there and which vessels would come to relieve it when the rotations were programmed.

  ‘Things are changing,’ she muttered, calling up a series of ledgers. ‘Personnel are moving between ships.’

  ‘That is normal.’

  ‘Not in these numbers.’ Ilya frowned. ‘Halji, have orders been given to recombine brotherhoods, like we did on Chondax?’

  ‘Not that I am aware.’

  ‘Look at this.’ She pulled the viewing lens across on its brass support and showed it to him. ‘Khans are moving all over the place. Not just khans – the Starspear’s shuttle-bays are unusually active.’

  Halji took it all in. ‘It has been long journey,’ he said. ‘We are not required to monitor every shuttle movement.’

  ‘But I am.’ She pushed her hair back and called up more data. ‘Hasik should be told. Where the hell is the Khagan? We should authorise a retrieval party, get someone down to the surface.’

  ‘We are–’

  ‘Working on it, yes. You’re taking this remarkably calmly.’ Ilya glanced up at Halji. The White Scars legionary wore his helm, just as all the other White Scars on the bridge did. That in itself was unusual – they normally only donned them on the absolute brink of combat. ‘Is there something going on that I haven’t been told about, Halji?’

  Halji looked down at her. He did not respond immediately, which in itself was out of character.

  ‘Szu, I cannot say,’ he replied.

  Jemulan Noyan-Khan’s chambers were decorated with a mix of Terran and Chogorian iconography. Straight swords mingled with tulwars, literal expeditionary fleet emblems with Khorchin calligraphic versions beside them. Though Chogorian himself, he had never made as much of the heritage as Hasik. His skin was darker than the norm, the legacy of his roots in the Palatine’s old domains of the Empty Quarter, though the long scar on his cheek was as stark as any of his brothers’.

  ‘You are not of my horde,’ he said, looking at Shiban doubtfully.

  The two of them were alone in the chamber. Amber light from Prospero’s old sun filtered through onto the Qo rugs and Khitan altars.

  ‘I know,’ replied Shiban, bowing in apology. ‘I would not have come if I could think of another way.’

  ‘Hasik is your ordu lord.’

  ‘I cannot raise this with him.’

  ‘Really? I cannot think of a reason why not.’

  ‘Noyan-Khan, there are warrior lodges active in the Legion.’

  Jemulan raised an eyebrow. ‘What of it?’

  ‘They have made communication with the Warmaster. They have made him aware of our movements. They wish to force the Khagan’s hand in his favour.’

  Jemulan frowned. ‘Nothing forces the Khagan’s hand in anything.’

  ‘Many khans are involved. They are moving between ships, readying for his arrival. Hasik is a member. Others of the command group are members. For all I know, lord, you are one too, but my options were limited.’

  Jemulan smiled thinly. ‘I am a member of nothing but my horde and my Legion.’

  ‘They are well organised,’ said Shiban. ‘They have been planning for a long time. When the Khagan returns, he will find a Legion ready to answer the Warmaster’s call.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Because they inducted me. They are moving fast now, knowing that time is running out.’

  ‘Then they made a mistake, bringing you into their confidence.’

  Shiban paused. ‘Perhaps they did.’

  Jemulan waved his hand impatiently. ‘Fanciful.’ He walked over to the observation ports. In the far distance he could see the immense silhouette of the Swordstorm, just visible over the dark curve of Prospero
’s turbulent atmosphere. ‘You think I would not know of this, if it were happening?’

  ‘They have been careful.’

  ‘Not really.’ He turned back to look at Shiban. ‘Not with you.’

  ‘The preparations have all been made. They do not think anything can stop them now.’

  ‘All the more reason to be cautious.’ Jemulan shook his head. ‘A Legion is an incubator for gossip and conspiracies. I once heard of a plot to exterminate the Terran aspirants in order to make the Legion Chogorian-pure. Many of my officers believed it enough to come to me with their concerns. It was nonsense, just as this is.’

  ‘I have been to a session, lord. I saw what they were doing.’

  ‘Let me guess. Sitting around, talking about revolution, complaining about the inertia of their leaders, hankering for more fighting. Warriors have done that since there have been swords for them to take up.’ Jemulan turned back towards him. ‘This is a difficult time. There is much we do not understand. It is natural to be impatient, but trust in the Khagan. He came here for a reason. He will choose the right course.’

  ‘I have no doubt in him,’ said Shiban. ‘It is the Legion. There is a cancer at its heart.’

  Jemulan raised an eyebrow. ‘Cancer? A little florid, don’t you think?’

  ‘Could you not investigate?’

  Jemulan’s face remained stony. ‘No, I could not. The fleet is on a war-footing. The Khagan will soon return, and I must be ready for orders. Khan, this is the wrong time. Go back to your ship. Prepare your warriors. There is enough uncertainty here without introducing more.’

  Shiban hesitated. Jemulan’s tone was final. Part of him, conditioned by years of training, moved to comply.

  ‘Will you at least take this?’ he said, handing Jemulan the medal he had retrieved from Phemus IV.

  Jemulan held it up, turning it in the light. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A marker. Please, if you do nothing else, keep it.’

  Jemulan glared at him. A noyan-khan was not used to being petitioned. For a moment Shiban thought that he would hurl the medal back at him, but he stood his ground. Eventually, Jemulan’s gauntlet closed over the silver.