The Path of Heaven

by Chris Wraight

  ‘Many who kill are not soldier. You have killed, I think, in your own way.’

  Veil turned to face him. Yesugei saw a creased, pale face. The man’s cheeks were still hollow, his eye sockets ringed with black.

  ‘I cannot tell you what you wish to know,’ Veil said. ‘She has asked me many times.’

  ‘Then tell me of your work.’

  Veil shuffled away from the viewport. ‘What do you wish to know?’

  ‘Everything.’

  Veil laughed. ‘That would take a long time. Longer, I think, than you have to spare. They are hunting you, she tells me.’

  Yesugei felt a small but significant sense of disappointment. The man’s voice was arch, the kind of cultivated Terran accent that spoke of entitlement and boredom. It was hard to square with the terrified, famished soul they had rescued from Herevail.

  ‘All wars can be won,’ Yesugei said. ‘This no different.’

  ‘No, I think this one is very different.’ Veil shot him a cold smile. ‘The woman–’

  ‘Her name is General Ravallion.’

  ‘–told me of your predicament. You are a Legion Librarian, not a fool, so I do not need to pretend with you. The warp is home to more than storms. If they can speak to those things, then they can hem you in. You will not be going home.’

  ‘The Khagan has ordered it. It will be done.’

  Veil looked incredulous. ‘You truly think that?’ He turned on the Stormseer, jabbing his bony finger for emphasis. ‘He may be a primarch, but he does not command the tides. This is how they work – they are movements of souls, of minds, caught in patterns set by the living while they still draw breath. You cannot force a path – if you try, the aether responds. The great conduits will thicken, the lesser ways will wither. Your enemies will slide through the dark as if through water, while you wade through pools of the dragging mire.’

  ‘I do not know the warp as you do,’ said Yesugei. ‘But I know is not that simple. Otherwise, no movement is possible at all.’

  ‘There are layers,’ said Veil, impatiently. ‘Yes, there is stratum aetheris, the shallow ways. There is stratum profundis, the greater arteries, plunging deeper. There is stratum obscurus, the root of the terror. How does this help you? No living man can navigate the deep ways. Even he could not.’

  ‘But you try to map it.’

  ‘It could not be done.’ Veil shook his head with frustration. ‘He was wrong about that, at least. It is not a mirror. It moves like a living thing. It is a living thing. Touch it, and it trembles.’ He briefly lost his certainty. ‘I do not have the Eye, but still I have seen things. I have studied what they study. The complexity is… immortal.’

  ‘Try to explain.’ Yesugei spoke softly. ‘I am fast learner.’

  Veil exhaled, his eyes widening. ‘The Seethe is an ocean. All know this – it has currents, it has depths, it has storms. Near the surface, you can see the Cartomancer’s light. You can follow it. You can use your Geller aegis, and you are kept barred from the Intelligences. But even then, you are just below the upper limits. Go deeper and the aegis shatters. The lights go out. The Eye is blinded. When men say that they traverse the warp, they boast, for no mortal does more than skim across eternity’s face, like stones thrown by a child. We do not belong there. It is poison for us, and the deeper in, the worse the poison.’

  ‘Achelieux try to go deeper?’

  ‘Who knows? Maybe. He did not succeed. Do you know why not? Because it is impossible. It takes the power of a tormented sun just to puncture the shallowest shoals. No energy in our arsenal could possibly pierce further. String the reactors of a dozen battleships together, double their potential, and still it would not be enough. So no, he did not succeed.’

  ‘General Ravallion had trust in him.’

  ‘She should not.’ Veil looked disgusted. ‘Believe me, she should not. They are all the same, the Oculi. They spend too long gazing into it. You know what they say? About the abyss?’

  Yesugei did not reply at once. He studied Veil carefully, noting every tick, every mannerism. The man was not being deceptive – Ilya was right about that. Still, there was something. He had spent a long time inside the Nobilite’s counsels, and that left a mark. He might not even be aware of it himself. Every moment with them had left a trace, perhaps even one that could be detected.

  ‘I do not doubt you, Veil of House Achelieux,’ Yesugei said at last. ‘We do not belong there. I often consider, in the night, wisdom of building empire on such foundation. But there was no other way, no?’

  Veil shrugged again. ‘Not one that worked,’ he mumbled.

  Yesugei held his gaze for a few moments longer, then released him. ‘You educate me, so I do not despair yet. Ilya was right to chase down this man.’

  ‘You still think you can find him,’ Veil said, irritated. ‘How many times must I tell you – I do not know where he is. Break me, if you choose. It will not help you.’

  ‘I would not break you. That is not our way. But there may be another.’ Yesugei looked back up to the real-viewer. Far ahead, six points of light were moving across the starfield – escorts racing to engage them and take them into the heart of the fleet. ‘I have not skill to seek traces you have forgotten. This is mind-work. But I have a friend. He has these things. When we arrive, I shall introduce you.’

  Yesugei caught Veil’s wary expression, and laughed.

  ‘Fear not,’ he said. ‘He is last survivor of a world too. I think you and he will find much to talk about.’

  By the time the Kaljian reached the outer edge of the muster-system, the bulk of the fleet was already in position. The great white warships prowled high across Aerelion III’s stormy troposphere, circled by packs of their hunter-killers and formation-breakers.

  Shiban had planned to take his ship into tight alignment with the Swordstorm, in the expectation that he would be summoned to the flagship within a few hours of arrival. Instead his path was blocked by an inter-fleet shuttle. Once it became clear that the interloper had no intention of standing down from the Kaljian’s incoming vector, hails were issued and met by a standard Army protocol burst.

  Once he had heard that, Shiban gave the order for full-stop.

  ‘Bring it in,’ he told the ship’s master. ‘I will meet her in the forward tower.’

  Then he waited, alone, up above the great command bridge facade. Narrow real-viewers gave a glimpse of the foredecks, long and rangy like all ships of the class, ridged and rigged for gunnery. He paced across floors of stone overlooked by walls marked with Chogorian runes. A long crack ran up one side – evidence of the structural stress caused by the flight from the Emperor’s Children. That might get repaired before the fleet was deployed again, though most likely it would remain a mark of battle to add to the hundreds of others.

  He was not waiting long. As ever, she made her way efficiently from the hangars, escorted by an honour guard from the brotherhood. They left her at the door, bowing before sealing the two of them in together.

  She looked painfully thin. Her frame, always spare, now barely filled out her uniform. Her grey hair had whitened, and the lines around her tight mouth had deepened into dark cracks.

  Shiban bowed low. ‘Szu-Ilya,’ he said.

  She made the aquila in return. ‘Tachseer.’ Then she looked his armour up and down, like a mother appraising a wayward son. ‘I always wondered, could they not have painted it white?’

  ‘I asked them not to,’ said Shiban. ‘It is not battleplate. It is a machine.’

  Ilya smiled. ‘You people and machines. You use servitors. You fly starships.’

  Shiban tapped his gauntlet against his chest. ‘Not in here. That is the difference.’

  ‘Then wear Legion colours.’

  ‘I will. When I can wear power armour again.’

  Ilya said nothing.

  ‘So then,
why are you here, general?’ Shiban kept his voice amiable. ‘Do you not have a thousand tasks? We are still a rabble of disorganisation, are we not? There must be matters to set straight.’

  ‘I arrived here just before you did,’ said Ilya. ‘I have my work before me, to put the muster in its order.’ She looked around her, at the scars of battle on the chamber walls. ‘By the looks of things, it will be needed.’

  Shiban laughed lightly. ‘Just what did we do before you came among us, szu?’

  ‘Just what you are doing now.’ Her voice was harder than it had once been. ‘Killing yourself for no reason. Wasting potential that could be used where it is most needed.’

  Shiban lost his smile. ‘I think I do not understand you.’

  ‘You understand perfectly.’

  ‘I lost brothers in the last action. I would not have ordered them to fight if it were not worthy.’

  ‘Once, perhaps.’ She looked at him straight-on, her tired eyes never wavering. ‘Now you would fight at every turn. You would fight while the stars went out, brawling over a universe empty of joy. If the orders did not come, you would find some way to seek them out and hunt them down.’

  ‘You describe a warrior,’ Shiban said, softly.

  ‘You were once more than that.’

  ‘Since you have known me,’ he said, gesturing to his exoskeleton again, ‘this has been everything.’

  ‘You had a life before, so they tell me.’

  ‘Szu, with respect, I asked you why you were here.’

  Ilya’s glare never wavered. Her body might have weakened, but her spirit clearly had not. ‘You know he will call the khans together for kurultai. You will speak, just as the others will. I come here to ask you to change the counsel you give him.’

  Shiban turned away and walked over to the real-viewers. As he did so, the pistons in his right leg clicked – they would need to be re-aligned. ‘If you think I have the power to sway his judgement, you are mistaken. He will already know what he wishes to do.’

  Ilya followed, hovering at his side, coming up to little more than chest-height against his posthuman bulk. ‘Tachseer, I do not speak to you with disrespect, so do me the same courtesy. You command factions all across the ordu. Twenty brotherhoods would follow you to war against their own noyan-khans. Yet more heed what you say and weigh the words.’

  Shiban listened. He had once found her voice – mortal, breathy from age – almost endearing. Now it sounded merely shrill.

  ‘We have been making these arguments for more than a year,’ she went on. ‘To maintain the resistance, or find a way back. You have kept up the campaign to fight on, pushing him harder, pushing your brothers. They remember what you did at Prospero, and they listen. But it cannot go further, not now.’

  Shiban smiled, though with little warmth. ‘Then you have an alternative?’ he said. ‘If you do, speak now. If you do not, what else remains?’ He drew closer to her, looking down at her tight-drawn hair, noting how her hands shook when they moved. ‘You know us by now, surely. We made oaths. We swore over the blood of our slain brothers.’ He felt the beginnings of the rage stir again, so quickly now. ‘That is why we were created, szu. I believe this now. We are the judgement of the free on the corrupt. We are the vengeance of heaven. While one of us lives to wield a blade, they will not know peace. And that is enough, for it is all that remains.’

  ‘No.’ She remained defiant, fragile and stubborn. ‘There is the Throne. There is the promise your primarch made himself, the one that will bring us back to it.’

  ‘Ha! You think he cares a damn for the Throne?’

  ‘He is of Terra. Why do you always forget this?’

  ‘And we are of Chogoris.’ Shiban found he had involuntarily curled his metal fingers together, and forced his hand to relax. ‘If we could not defend our own world, the world we were forged on, what matter the world of emperors? We have lost our home. It lies beyond the fleets of the Traitor, and no one is saying let us break all vows of honour and return to our own lands, and drive the enemy from our towers, and purge his filth from skies that were once the purest of all skies claimed by humanity.’

  Ilya waited for the words to stop spilling out. When he had finished, she looked up again, wearily. ‘If I could bring your home world back, I would. If the Khagan gave me the order, I would break open heaven and hell to bring the fleet there. But your lord is not a fool. He knows that it cannot be done, and if he sent his sons into that furnace then none would return. I have seen him plan for your survival, Tachseer. I have seen him garner every last scrap of strength he possesses to keep the Legion alive while the greatest warhost ever assembled hunts it down.’

  Shiban shook his head. ‘Alive is nothing. We were not made to grow old. We were made to ride, to chase our enemies to exhaustion and burn their high places.’

  ‘Yesugei told me the same thing.’

  ‘Then you should have listened.’

  ‘He also told me, a long time ago, that you did not have a centre. That wherever he was, that was the centre.’

  That was indeed just the kind of thing Yesugei would have said.

  For a moment, Shiban was back at the walls of Khum Kharta, long ago, with the hot wind of the summer on their faces, he and the zadyin arga. They had spoken there, before the great change, when Shiban’s body was a half-formed bridge between man and super-man.

  I can only imagine Terra, Shiban had said.

  You may yet witness it, Yesugei had told him.

  Then, they had felt like empty words, the kind of thing said all across the galactic empire of humanity that would never come true. Then, the grassland had rustled in a shimmer-pattern of blue and green, the wind making the pennants snap, the sun baking the mud bricks of the monastery walls into cracked shells.

  Then, his limbs had been clean, smooth, tanned. Then, he had laughed easily.

  ‘I will go to kurultai to listen,’ Shiban said. ‘If he asks me, I will speak. That is how it works.’

  ‘We are striving to find a way out,’ said Ilya, insistent now. ‘The chance is faint, but we only need time. Yesugei believes in it.’

  Shiban locked his gauntlets together. ‘It is in his nature to believe. We cannot all be like him.’

  ‘More’s the pity,’ muttered Ilya.

  Shiban smiled at her. ‘Do your work. Make your case. If you sway his will, then I will fight for you just as I fight for any cause I am ordered to.’

  Ilya finally let her eyes drop from his, shaking her head. ‘You do not see how this has changed you. You used to preach this virtue – ukhrakh, utsakh. Withdraw, but then return. I never hear that said any more.’

  Shiban recognised the Khorchin, spoken strangely by a Terran. It had been a long time since he’d mouthed them himself. ‘Those were words for another age.’

  ‘So you keep telling me, but I no longer believe you. You relish this. You see the war shattering everything you have built, and part of you longs for it. I can see it when you go into battle. It is the easier path, Shiban Khan. I have seen mortal men succumb to it, but the harm you can do is greater.’ She reached out to him, placing her frail hand on his forearm. ‘Remember yourselves. It is not yet all ruined – if Terra is saved, the Imperium can be remade. The storms can be compassed, the way made straight. We have to be there.’

  She really believed that. Seeing that, Shiban hardly knew what to say to her. He might have told her what had been apparent to him for a long time – that it was all gone, that a noble dream dreamt by other minds had been ripped open to reveal the nightmare beneath, and moreover it was a dream that they had had no part in, which had barely included them from its inception.

  He took her hand in his, and gently removed it from his arm. ‘I will do what he orders,’ he said.

  ‘But what will you counsel? Has anything I said made any difference?’

  It was too late
for that now, and she ought to have seen it, but he had no wish to hurt her further than the truth already had.

  ‘I make no promises, szu,’ Shiban said, turning away.

  Von Kalda listened to the hum of the Proudheart’s engines. He pressed his fingers to the slab before him and felt the vibrations radiate through his arm.

  ‘Do you hear it?’ he whispered, lowering his head towards the mass of flesh and sinew below. ‘Do you hear that sound?’

  It was unlikely. The subject strapped to the medicae bench no longer had ears, nor eyes, nor lips. Its face, which had once been mortal, was a mass of bloody wire, punctuated with red-rimmed holes ready for the insertion of sense-units.

  Von Kalda stroked iron-tipped fingers along a trembling ribcage. ‘We are back in the warp. That is what it tells me. The lord commander has his quarry.’

  He reached for a scalpel. All around the operating table, menials worked in perfect silence. Their faces were a study in variety – hairless, grille-mouthed, masks of iron with glittering compound eye bulges, grafted with the mouths of beasts, or as smooth and featureless as eggshells.

  Von Kalda lowered the implant towards its receptacle, and feeder wires splayed like spider’s legs towards the fixing nodes. Just as the needles lined up for slipping under skin, he heard the low thud of power armoured boots.

  He looked up. Konenos had entered the apothecarion.

  ‘Something I can do for you, brother?’ asked Von Kalda, holding the implant steady.

  ‘When you are done. Do not trouble yourself.’

  Von Kalda drew in an irritated breath. He had hours of work ahead. Captured V Legion mortals were hard to subvert, and their blood chemistry differed subtly from Chemosians. Many had died before being improved, so there remained much to learn in order to give Eidolon the extra crew cohorts he wished for.

  The implant slipped into the empty eye socket, clamping tight to the bone. The subject pushed against its bonds, no doubt in excruciation, but no longer with vocal cords to scream. Von Kalda finished the insertion, wiping blood from the neat cut. The microsutures went in, dotting neatly across the join.