Age of Darkness

by Christian Dunn

  Someone was moving below her. Not a servitor – its movements were not syncopated enough. Too large as well, and much bigger than one of the cyb-organic drones. It worked at one of the consoles, attaching something. Persephia was too far away to see what it was. Something about the figure made her pause. She felt disquieted as she watched its bulk shifting subtly in its work.

  She suddenly realised why there were no active guards, why the route to the nuclear core was open. Persephia wondered how far up the auditorium level now was and how far away. She’d lost track of time.

  There was danger here. Her instincts screamed it. To let the figure see her was to invite that trouble to her. It was to invite death.

  A bead of sweat ran down Persephia’s brow and into her eye. She gasped.

  The figure looked up, hard eyes glaring through crimson lenses. It was grey; grey like the walls. The figure’s armour was fringed in a dirty gold and a skull icon emblazoned its left shoulder guard like an omen. It saw the woman and crouched.

  It took Persephia a few seconds to realise what was happening. Boosting from a squat position, the figure had climbed the gantry immediately above. Then it repeated the motion and did the same again. Underfoot, the metal shook her.

  She ran.

  Another tremor rippled through the gantry, stronger this time, perhaps only a few levels down. Clanking footfalls followed, resonating behind her, and Persephia realised the figure was now pursuing directly. She heard the hard chank of metal slamming against metal and ducked behind a servitor. A second later there was an almighty boom and the menial exploded in a shower of bone and machine-parts.

  Persephia picked up the pace. Her ears were still ringing. Death was behind her. It wore a face of iron and she couldn’t outrun it.

  A hard engine growl assaulted her ears, as the sheer size of the Iron Warrior engulfed her.

  The engine growl became a wet churn and then a scream as Persephia let out her death cry. She spat a torrent of blood over her clothes and then her slayer before her eyes became glassy and still.

  Enemies Among Us

  I

  Heka’tan was listening to more of the iterator’s diatribes against the Imperium and the Emperor, watching Arcadese slowly losing his cool. His mood was agitated too, but for a different reason.

  ‘She’s been gone too long.’

  Arcadese half-turned as he heard the Salamander begin to move. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To find her.’

  ‘What?’ he hissed, only half hearing the iterator’s continued verbal assaults. ‘I need you to speak of Isstvan V. As a witness, your testimony is crucial.’

  ‘I have to find her, Arcadese.’

  The Ultramarine’s face creased with confusion. ‘Why?’ He grimaced. Arcadese’s injuries had not fully healed; they would never fully heal. His bionics gave him motion but at a cost in pain. No human could bear it. For a Legionary such as the Ultramarine it left him debilitated. Even had he awoken from his sus-an membrane coma in time for the muster to Calth, Arcadese would not have gone. He was no longer a front-line trooper. Denial raged in his words and his manner but his eyes couldn’t hide it. Heka’tan saw it as easily as he did his own failings.

  ‘We were charged with her protection, brother. We swore an oath, both of us, in case you don’t remember. An oath of moment. I’m assuming that still means something to you.’

  Arcadese straightened suddenly and for a moment Heka’tan thought he might strike him. Then he relaxed, bionics cycling down to a low hum from their agitated squeal.

  ‘I’m not sure what anything means, any more,’ he conceded in a low voice, not referring to his honour parchments. ‘I remember,’ he added, louder, ‘but this is our duty too.’

  ‘I just want to know she is safe.’

  Arcadese sighed, resigned. ‘Do what you must, but when Bastion swears for Horus and we are ejected unceremoniously from its atmosphere, do not lay the blame squarely on my shoulders, brother.’ The Ultramarine’s face and demeanour changed abruptly. ‘What’s wrong with your hand?’

  It was shaking, so slightly Heka’tan hadn’t realised.

  ‘Nerve tremor,’ he lied, ‘probably from the crash. Soon as I find the artificer, I’ll return.’

  There was no time for a reply. All eyes were on Arcadese again as he took his turn to try and sway the clave. ‘I need battle, not debate,’ he muttered, totally unaware that he was about to get his wish.

  II

  A blighted plain of ruined cities and virus-scoured landmarks scrolled before the clave-nobles in grainy panoramic. The recording had sound as well as image but was eerily quiet.

  ‘What do you hear?’ Arcadese asked, leaving a long pause to emphasise his point. ‘It is the sound of death. It is Isstvan III, where Horus Lupercal committed genocide and set in motion a galactic war. An entire planet destroyed by viral weaponry. Fratricide amongst the Legiones Astartes themselves, conducted on a massive scale. Only by the efforts of Captain Garro of the Death Guard, escaping on the frigate Eisenstein, is anyone alive to tell of this atrocity. No fair warning, no order to stand down. Just death.’

  Arcadese signalled for the image to be shut off. He pressed his palms together. ‘These are the deeds of a dictator, one who has turned from the Emperor’s light and embraced darkness.’

  The Ultramarine scowled. ‘Isstvan III was a ploy to draw out those still loyal to the Emperor and cull them in one blow. Ally with Horus, and you join forces with a madman.’

  Vorkellen spoke up quickly. ‘Isstvan III was a planet in open revolt. Its lord commander was a psyker-mutant called Vardus Praal that had declared against the Imperium. It was on the orders of the Council of Terra itself that the Sons of Horus and their brother Legions were sent there.’

  ‘What is your point, iterator?’ asked the head high-noble.

  ‘That Horus was ordered to the Isstvan system by the agents of the Emperor’s will and yet it is claimed this was somehow part of the Warmaster’s plan to rid himself of internecine traitors? He was sent there,’ his gaze went to the Ultramarine, ‘Sent. There. By Terra.’

  Arcadese clenched his fists. ‘He slew billions, bombarded the surface and then unleashed his mad dog upon those warriors still loyal to the Emperor.’

  ‘A world in the thrall of a dangerous defector from Imperial Law, a psyker-mutant no less – a creature with the ability to affect the minds of men,’ the iterator continued. ‘We were not at Isstvan III – your fighting days were done at Ullanor, were they not?’

  Arcadese didn’t answer. His teeth were clenched and he glowered.

  Vorkellen went on. ‘I have testimony that a vein of disaffection ran through the Imperial forces, and that the Emperor sought to rein in the Warmaster’s pre-eminence. Certainly, his cult of personality was growing ever since the Emperor abandoned the Great Crusade. Can gods be jealous?’

  ‘This is idiotic,’ Arcadese pleaded to the clave. ‘These are facile notions designed to muddy the truth – that Horus committed genocide and staged a pre-emptive strike against warriors in his Legion and the Legions of his traitorous brothers that were still loyal to the Emperor.’

  ‘Horus only acted when forced,’ Vorkellen replied, ‘when he realised factions within his own ranks, warriors sworn loyal to him, were gathering against him, he did the only thing he could. He stopped them.’

  ‘And in so doing, slew thousands,’ replied Arcadese, ‘scribes, poets, imagists and iterators from the Remembrancer Order into the bargain. He is a monster.’

  III

  The word was hard to use.

  Monster.

  Horus was still a father figure of sorts to this Legionary, Vorkellen saw it described in the anguish on the Ultramarine’s face.

  He is still struggling to understand, he thought. The Emperor was a fool to send warriors such as these. They are broken soldiers, gratefully forgot
ten by their Legions. He has doubts, and if he has doubts… well…

  ‘It was your beloved master who put these men and women in danger. Sent to document the Great Crusade, to cement forever in living memory the deeds of the Emperor and his primarchs. Their deaths were a tragedy, but war, a war brought about by an absent father who failed to attend to his sons, has many casualties. It hardly makes the Warmaster a monster.’

  As the Ultramarine’s face screwed up into a snarl, Vorkellen allowed himself a tiny smile. Go on then, now is the time – seal my victory.

  ‘What has been promised you, eh, Vorkellen is it?’ The Ultramarine couldn’t keep the venomous sneer from his lips.

  ‘I am merely a humble servant, here to see that my master is fairly represented.’

  ‘Do you honour a pact with some fell power, a concubine perhaps?’

  Vorkellen’s eyes were icy. ‘You would like to crush me, wouldn’t you?’

  Arcadese nodded slowly, drawing an objection from the clave that Vorkellen waved down.

  ‘The Emperor sends warriors when he really needs ambassadors, those who won’t embarrass themselves in unfamiliar surroundings where a bolter and blade is of no import.’

  ‘I don’t need my weapons to break you!’ Arcadese was raging again and stepped towards the iterator.

  And there it is. Vorkellen smiled, just for the Ultramarine. You cannot fight nature.

  A squad of marshals wielding flash-sabres moved in to intercept him.

  IV

  Arcadese knew he could crush them without his weapons, do it so quick and clean he’d be at Vorkellen’s throat before the emergency command be given and the chamber flooded with armed men.

  Instead, he put up his hand.

  The guards backed off.

  Arcadese sagged, feeling the tendrils of defeat tighten around his heart.

  Heka’tan, where are you?

  Bodies

  I

  The levels below the auditorium were vast and labyrinthine. It would take an army of men weeks to find an individual in its depths if it didn’t want to be found. Heka’tan was but one man, and he had a few hours at most.

  At least the shaking had ceased. When he’d forced the guard to let him go below and the dark had enveloped him, he’d leant against the wall and closed his eyes. Images of the dropsite massacre had sprung unbidden into his mind. He remembered his last sight of Vulkan, the primarch engulfed in bright magnesium light.

  Dead? No one knew. It was a mystery that haunted the Legion. Ferrus Manus was dead. A terrible fate for any Legion to lose their father, but at least the Iron Hands had closure, at least they knew. In many ways, for the Salamanders, it was worse. And what now for them? A bit part in a galactic war where the fate of humanity and Terra was the prize and cost.

  Heka’tan put the thoughts from his mind and started to search.

  He found Persephia’s body after thirty minutes.

  She lay discarded like refuse in one of the archive chambers, her innards pooled in her lap like glossy red ribbons. The artificer’s face was locked in a horror-grimace, flecked by her own dried blood.

  She hadn’t died here. There were drag marks on the floor, hastily concealed. Heka’tan held out his hand and detected a tiny prickling sensation on his fingertips. Heat. It was bleeding upwards from below.

  Heka’tan looked back to the corpse. The wound in Persephia’s chest was familiar to him. He knew what had caused it. She had been eviscerated by a chainsword. It was a Legion weapon. Arcadese was right, Horus had sent warriors.

  The Salamander followed the source of the heat.

  II

  The shadow shifted on the balcony. It caressed the rifle in its hands now. The red-eyed one was missing, and it didn’t like that. Made it feel vulnerable, potentially exposed when there was a Legionary unaccounted for. The work below was supposed to be finished, now the second phase began. There were four marshals below, watching the stairways into the lower chambers. Another four stood nearby in the dark. No guns here. No weapons of any sort. How foolish they were. How arrogant.

  The high-marshal was alone and pensive as the proceedings went on. He was blind, just like the clave-nobles and the other onlookers were blind. They would see. Everyone would see. But then it would be too late. Then there was the iterator and his cronies, and the other warrior; the broken one, the half-Space Marine. Little did he realise it wasn’t just his body that had been ripped by the greenskin.

  It was nearly time. The shadow shifted on the balcony, bringing the rifle sight up to its eye. The target sat snugly in its crosshairs. A second and it would be over. Just one second, the time it takes to squeeze a trigger. Soon.

  III

  They were losing. He was losing. Not a bolt fired, nor a blade drawn and still Arcadese knew the battle was being lost, metre by agonising metre. For a warrior, it was a strange sensation, not how he had pictured his service to his Legion.

  The human iterator, despite his outward frailties, had a formidable intelligence; in a fit of pique, Arcadese thought he’d been mind-augmented or hypno-conditioned.

  Dagonet was a disaster. Vorkellen painted Horus as victim and the Imperium as dishonourable murderers. A fortunate twist of fate had allowed the Warmaster to escape a heinous assassination attempt; whilst leaving one of his captains and a vaunted Legionary, Luc Sedirae, slain in cold blood. The massacre that followed was retaliatory, an effort to find and execute the perpetrators. Collateral damage was inevitable. The Emperor’s hand had caused this, or the agents acting in his stead.

  Prospero was no better. Wolves unleashed on a cultured world and a son that desired only to please his father. The subsequent razing of the Planet of the Sorcerers was made to show the Emperor’s inability to forgive or grant mercy. Was Magnus really such a threat? Leman Russ and his Legion made sure that question could never be answered.

  None of it added strength to Arcadese’s cause, and he felt the allegiance of Bastion slipping from his grasp. He had only one argument left, but the one to give it was nowhere to be found.

  IV

  Unarmed and wearing robes, Heka’tan knew he was at a distinct disadvantage against another warrior of the Legiones Astartes.

  He could have gone back, raised the alarm, but then Persephia’s murderer might have already escaped and they would never know what was really going on here. He told himself this was the reason but the truth of it was his rage for Isstvan V had been impotent for too long; he needed to vent it.

  It didn’t take long to follow the murderer’s trail. It led Heka’tan to a steel gantry looking down on Bastion’s nuclear core. He recognised the figure still toiling in its depths. Memories of fighting a desperate last stand in the Urgall Depression came back to him.

  ‘Iron Warrior!’

  The grey-metal Legionary turned, his helmet lenses glinting coldly in the reflected nuclear light.

  He scoffed, a harsh and tinny sound that emanated from his vox-grille. ‘Aren’t your kind all dead?’

  Heka’tan roared and threw himself over the gantry. He collided with the Iron Warrior – hitting the ceramite like it was a fortress wall. He didn’t have time to evade the plunging Salamander. He’d only half-drawn his chainblade when Heka’tan knocked it buzzing from his grasp and onto the lower gantry floor.

  Instantly the two Legionaries became locked in a fearsome embrace. But with his power armoured battle-plate, the Iron Warrior was stronger.

  ‘What gave me away?’ he growled, forcing Heka’tan to his knees, the fingers of both combatants laced together in a wrestler’s grappling hold. ‘It was the human, wasn’t it? So like your benevolent, dead Vulkan to come looking for an innocent.’

  A surge of anger leant Heka’tan strength. He pushed with his legs, using sheer brute force to draw level and stand face-to-face with the Iron Warrior.

  ‘Don’t sully his name with your tongu
e, betrayer,’ he spat.

  The Iron Warrior seized Heka’tan’s fingers in his gauntleted grip, causing the Salamander to cry out as he flung him across the gantry and down to the level below.

  Pain blurred Heka’tan’s vision but he saw his enemy coming to finish him well enough. He reached over and his shattered fingers found what they sought.

  The Iron Warrior raised a massive fist, intent on beating his former brother to death, when he found the buzzing teeth of his own chainsword lodged in his gut. He had charged right onto it.

  Heka’tan held onto the hilt as long as he could before struggling to his feet and barging into the flailing, bleeding Iron Warrior. The two of them broke the gantry rail and plunged over the edge.

  Heat radiation coming off the nuclear core warmed Heka’tan’s skin. He was hanging one-handed off the twisted railing several levels down, the Iron Warrior doing the same a few metres away. His armour was blistering, the black and yellow painted chevrons flaking away.

  ‘This changes nothing, Salamander. Vulkan is dead,’ he laughed. ‘You’re all dead.’ He reached for his bolt pistol sat snug in his side holster and made the railing squeal. He was too heavy for it to hold. The metal broke away and the Iron Warrior fell. Heka’tan watched him carom off another gantry, then a piece of piping, before bouncing off into the nuclear core itself. There was a brief flash of azure fire and the Legionary disappeared, burned to ash.

  With some effort, Heka’tan dragged his body back up onto the gantry. He tried not to think about the Iron Warrior’s last words, what he’d said about his father. It wasn’t true. He was merely being goaded.

  The enemy had dropped something when they’d fought. It was a data-bundle of some kind, taken from one of the subterranean terminals. It was smashed up but the last piece of data was still on the recorder: war machine schematics, vast and terrible engines the likes of which Heka’tan had never seen. They’d been kept here in secret and now the saboteur was erasing their existence. Coming to Bastion had never been about winning allegiance. Limping, he went to the terminal screen. It displayed all the other nuclear hubs around the planet, but he didn’t know why.