Crusade & Other Stories - Dan Abnett Et Al.

by Warhammer 40K

  SIGNIFICANCE OF “GEHENNA”. BUT THE SILENT KING IS HERE,

  NOW. HE WOULD TREAT WITH YOU, DANTE OF THE BLOOD ANGELS,

  IN THE FACE OF OUR COMMON ENEMY.’

  More motes of light spun out to create a topographical map in the projection, with a specific ridgeline highlighted in a brighter green from the rest.

  ‘SEND YOUR EMISSARIES TO THIS LOCATION AND MIGHTY

  SZAREKH, LAST AND GREATEST OF THE SILENT KINGS, WILL

  RECEIVE THEM.’

  With a sudden flash that left blooms of colour on our retinas, the necron avatar vanished. After a single heartbeat of silent darkness, the lumens and hololith stuttered back into life and left us blinking in the pale light of the strategium once again.

  I spun to face Tycho. ‘My lord, I know where they want us to go.’

  Though Commander Dante still stared at the now empty space above the table, the captain’s expression was stern. ‘Speak, Brother-Sergeant Machiavi.

  Where is it?’

  ‘It’s where my squad landed in the last assault – the Devil’s Crag.’

  Szarekh would have it known by every phaeron of every dynasty, that he is a just and noble ruler. Before the Great Sleep, he realised his failings and

  vowed to atone for them. He is humble enough to learn from his own mistakes. The necrons will rise once more, and he will lead us into a new and glorious age as the pre-eminent masters of creation. Not because it is his right; it is privilege that he would first re-earn.

  Yet, his benevolence has its limits.

  That is not to say that he harbours the humans any particular malice. Simply, their supposed destiny is incompatible with our own. Perhaps if they had ascended more powerfully in an earlier epoch, then they might have claimed this galaxy out from beneath the slumbering dynasties while the Silent King still dwelt in self-imposed exile.

  And perhaps not. Their propensity for self-destruction is… troubling.

  The tyranids are anathema to all life, and life is what the necrons require for supreme domination. So too, then, is the primal destiny of the Devourer incompatible with our own.

  The humans create.

  The necrons maintain.

  The tyranids consume.

  There can be no lasting symmetry in that triumvirate. One must fall. The great Szarekh has decreed that it shall be the tyranids, and none can refute the word of the Silent King.

  It is unlikely that the humans see things as clearly as we do, Lord Anrakyr.

  Ironic, is it not, that they gnash their teeth and cry out at the injustice of a new alien race polluting ‘their’ empire with brash, unwitting conquests? We have seen this before, and doubtless we will see it again. When all of this is but a footnote in the annals of our great triumph, who will even remember the name of a dead human Emperor, or the ignorant miseries doled out in His name?

  The court awaited the humans openly. There could be no suggestion of deception. We had returned to the ridge where last the Dante-Angel had resisted us.

  Beyond the unnumbered ranks of common warriors and the Immortal Legions, a full nine hundred of the Triarch Praetorians stood sentinel before the Silent King’s throne. Not in the living memory of the Imperium would such a gathering of our order have been witnessed by any human, and likely it never will be again. Our Judicator-Prime attended noble Szarekh at his right hand, and the High Chronomancer, whose techno-magicks had so

  confounded the humans, stood at his left. Beyond were arrayed the seven phaerons who had sworn themselves to the Silent King’s purpose in secret –

  each of them wearing a bronzed mask to hide their identity from all but their own household guardians.

  The first we saw of the humans was a haze of chemical fumes and plains dust kicked up by their primitive transport. It trundled over the terrain on wheeled treads, its bulky armour caked in red paint and crude, winged glyphs. As it drew nearer, the Judicator-Prime descended the polished steps of the courtly dais to bar the humans’ path.

  At Dante’s command, the hastily installed servitor driver brought the Rhino as close as possible to the necron herald. The engine idled for a moment, then cut out. Cooling metal on the exhaust stacks ticked and clicked in the dismal morning sun, but aside from that the silence felt absolute. Though we could see the necrons standing in their uncounted thousands, not a sound did any one of them make, nor was there any hint of movement.

  I peered out through the forward viewing block, scanning the grand dais for sign of our host.

  It was absurd – a monolithic ziggurat, easily forty metres at the peak, dropped onto the surface of Gehenna Prime as a monument to xenos vanity.

  Cast from some achingly black, polished metal, it was edged with glinting golden runes and glyphs that ran in interconnecting patterns up the long flight of steps to the summit. Upon its tiers stood the more elite warriors of the necron horde, elevated above their kin and presumably enjoying the prestige of greater proximity to their monarch. Gleaming statues of alien deities towered at the cardinal points of the structure, and the two greatest of them held their arms out to form an arch over the peak of the dais, heads bowed in symbolic supplication.

  This was a king, their posture said, who had once held even the gods in his thrall.

  And this was his court that travelled wherever he went.

  I glanced back into the darkened interior of the troop compartment. Captain Tycho reluctantly put up his combi-melta in the overhead stowage, and edged around the tarpaulin-covered bulk in the middle of the floor. He had pleaded for the honour to undertake this endeavour alone. Nay, he had almost begged for it. It was his right, and he had insisted. His privilege. His duty. But Dante

  would not hear of it.

  The commander’s face was set, almost as serene as the golden mask that he held so carefully in his gauntlets. It was the face of a man who knew that destiny had smiled upon him, no matter what the cost of that fortune might ultimately prove to be. How like our father Sanguinius he seemed in that moment.

  ‘Brothers,’ he said calmly, ‘let us go to him.’

  I eyed the open palm of my gauntlet warily – it felt so heavy – and tried to keep my voice low.

  ‘My lord, is this necessary? We are here. We could–’

  Tycho silenced me with a hand on my pauldron. ‘This isn’t about tactical positioning, Machiavi,’ he muttered, squinting at me sidelong through the eye of his half-mask. ‘This is about respect. No matter how much we may despise the xenos, the Chapter Master would at least meet this Szarekh face to face.

  No one else will ever get this chance again. We have to at least see him with our own eyes.’

  Dante nodded. Tycho managed a wry grin, and reached for the rear hatch controls.

  ‘Besides, I think noble Dante wants to hear the supreme ruler of the necron race beg for our help, first.’

  The ramp opened on powered hydraulics, and the three of us stepped out onto the dusty ground at the foot of the ziggurat, defiant in the face of the ten thousand enemy warriors who watched from all sides.

  The Judicator-Prime stood before us, a tall ceremonial glaive held rigidly in both hands. As well as the high crest of his office that had been visible in the hololith projection, he wore a mantle of smooth metal links that hung from his shoulders like a cloak. He regarded us coldly for a moment before inclining his head in a condescending gesture that we should follow him.

  My hearts began to hammer in my chest. I could taste the acrid tang of xenos energy weapons in the air, feeling the dead gaze of the machines upon us as we ascended the steps. I walked to the commander’s left, Tycho to the right. The captain glared, but said nothing.

  Dante simply followed the herald, the Death Mask of Sanguinius held in the crook of his arm.

  We reached the summit and passed beneath the archway of the god-statues.

  Beyond, shimmering silk drapes fluttered in the breeze between ornate

  electro-flambeaux that cast the various necron lords of the court in an ev
en more eerie light against the Gehenna sun. I looked to each in turn, wondering which of them was him…

  Without warning, the Judicator-Prime halted, and whirled around.

  Reflexively, the fingers of my gauntlet closed, but I managed to catch myself before it was too late.

  ‘Kneel, humans,’ he commanded. ‘Kneel before mighty Szarekh, last and greatest of the Silent Kings.’

  The visible half of Tycho’s face appeared unimpressed. He rested his thumbs at his belt, and tilted his head. ‘We will not. He is not our king.’

  The Judicator-Prime bristled, but did not repeat himself. Instead he turned solemnly and sank to one knee. The move was echoed first by the masked nobles, then by their retainers, and then by every other necron warrior upon the dais and beyond. Again as one, they knelt.

  Except for one figure.

  He was taller than the rest, yet not as tall as I had imagined he might be. His mechanical body was a work of unspeakable xenos artifice, more finely wrought than any I had ever seen upon the field of battle. Where they might be skeletal, he was lithe. Where they were animated with grim, unyielding purpose, his every movement possessed an undeniable vitality. His form spoke of musculature and clean-limbed strength, perhaps touched by the divine, and his finery was simple and yet impossibly elegant.

  His face, though…

  Brothers, I can scarcely put into words what I felt in that moment. What all three of us must have felt. It was not reverence or awe, I can tell you that much.

  It was closer to hatred.

  Framed by a cowl of shimmering light and the traceries of his intricate collar, Szarekh – heralded as the last and greatest of the Silent Kings, and undisputed overlord of the necron race – wore a golden mask fashioned into the likeness of our Lord Sanguinius.

  A rank blasphemy, indeed.

  The humans were surprised. Their flesh-forms took time to process what they were seeing, though it clearly stirred their indoctrinated racial hatreds at a fundamental and subconscious level. The Judicator-Prime was the first to

  rise, transmitting a sub-etheric signal to the Praetorians to be ready. No matter that they had sent the Dante-Angel and the Tycho-Angel, their most respected battle leaders, as a gesture of good faith. The human warrior castes can be unpredictable and nihilistic when pressed, and may act illogically in the face of insult or overwhelming adversity.

  We may speak more of this later, Lord Anrakyr. After all, you will need allies. Learn their strengths as well as their weaknesses, and turn all to your advantage.

  Wise Szarekh knew this. He saw the truth of it when first he encountered the humans squatting upon the tombs of the dynasties and the ruins of the eldar empire. They believed that their stars were in the ascendant, and that they would soon conquer the galaxy. Of course, this was not to be. It will never be. It cannot be.

  It is curious what the humans choose to know of their past, and what remains unremembered. They do not heed the lessons that they have already learned, because they often elect to forget them. Perhaps, had he not fallen to illogical and prideful infighting, their Sanguinius-Angel might have steered them towards a more enlightened destiny.

  Certainly, he would have made a more amenable emperor than a preserved

  witch-corpse.

  If ever there were a human to be mourned, noble Szarekh would say that it was him. That alliance – the first alliance, perhaps? – might have ended the threat of the Devourer before it ever surfaced. At least, the tyranids might never have been drawn to this galaxy in the first instance.

  Like the humans, the Silent King was blind to this possibility at the time.

  But unlike the humans, he is humble enough to learn from his own mistakes.

  The High Chronomancer’s temporal mastery merely afforded him the insight that he required, and the opportunity to prepare a new truth for them.

  The Chapter Master’s grip tightened around the golden helm in his hands, and he quaked with a barely suppressed fury. This time I saw Captain Tycho’s fist clenching, although he too managed to restrain himself. We had to see how this would play out before doing anything premature.

  Dante looked from his own mask – the Death Mask of Sanguinius, holiest relic of the Chapter – to the benign, alien representation of the primarch worn by the Silent King. The similarities were astonishing, brothers. Though

  elongated and curiously more androgynous, the features were mournful and angelic in the way that every Blood Angel knew and recognised even from the first day of their Adeptus Astartes induction. The proud and noble brow.

  The suggestion of tumbling hair swept back from the face. Even the stylised halo crowned Szarekh just as it did the commander.

  But where Dante’s mask was crafted into a defiant, righteous battle snarl, this was Sanguinius at his most benevolent and peaceful.

  The face of a king. A ruler supreme.

  More beautiful, perhaps, than any sculpture or cast had any right to be that was not the work of human hands, though it pricked at my soul to admit it.

  Dante’s blood was up. Finally, he found his voice.

  ‘How… dare…’

  Ignoring the commander’s outrage, the Judicator-Prime spoke again in his strident and uncaring tone. ‘Dante of the Blood Angels, the Silent King bids you welcome. None among us shall harm you while you respect the sanctity of this court.’

  Captain Tycho’s eyes widened, and he looked to me in disbelief. The Silent King remained still, regarding us all with the eyes of our primarch.

  Through gritted teeth, Dante cursed.

  ‘Your Silent King had best learn to speak, and explain to me why he insults us with this… this… mockery of our Lord Sanguinius. It is a travesty, and I shall not suffer it! If he thinks to make his demands more pleasant by skinning them in the face of our holy founder–’

  ‘This is not so, Dante of the Blood Angels,’ said the herald. ‘Mighty Szarekh, last and greatest of the Silent Kings, honours your angel-father and the accord that we wished to strike with him in ages past.’

  Numbness spread through my chest at these words. Even Dante twitched.

  ‘That is a lie,’ he murmured. ‘Our gene-sire would never have treated with xenos filth.’

  ‘The Silent King cannot lie, Dante of the Blood Angels, for he does not speak. He will not speak. Not to you. But your angel-father would have seen the wisdom in this alliance, and we hope that you will also. The tyranids are coming, whether you or we choose to remain, or not. The conflict between us was an error. Our success has already been calculated.’

  I was very keenly aware that the Chapter Master held his gauntlet loosely at his side, with the palm wide open. Both Captain Tycho and I followed suit,

  trying to keep the movement as surreptitious as possible and hiding it from the passing gaze of the necrons.

  All three of the human emissaries kept their right hands open. It was a curious gesture, likely some measure of deference offered to the majestic Szarekh as their natural superior.

  Ammeg later postulated that it signified they were unarmed. I am not so certain.

  Regardless, the alliance was soon agreed.

  The ignorance of the humans is easily turned to our advantage.

  Unable to take his eyes from the Silent King’s mask, I watched Dante consider the herald’s words.

  ‘Why, then? Why seize this world, and defend it from us when we came to

  reclaim it?’

  ‘The conflict between us was an error. Mighty Szarekh, last and greatest of the Silent Kings, did not seize this world. He meant to defend it from the Devourer.’

  Another long moment passed. I regarded the various necron nobles of the court – where living beings might betray their true intentions with subconscious body language or barely perceptible movements, these machines were unreadable. Instead, I wonder if I projected something of my own thoughts onto my perception of them, in their perfect ambiguity. The Silent King continued to gaze plaintively at us. I shuffled uneasily.<
br />
  For the first time ever, in all my days, I felt a tremor of pity for the necrons.

  Had we, in fact, misjudged them?

  The Judicator-Prime raised a hand. ‘The error was yours, Dante of the Blood Angels. But you were not to know, and we did not take the time to make it known.’

  ‘Oh, blood of Baal…’ Tycho whispered, realising the full extent of what was being implied.

  Dante let out a long, measured breath. ‘And in fighting us, you have lost significant forces that might have assured your victory over the tyranids.’

  The Silent King nodded slowly, but it was his herald that spoke.

  ‘Correct. There is no more time. We must form the alliance that mighty Szarekh would have pursued with your angel-father. Join us, and we will

  save this world for your Imperium.’

  The Chapter Master’s brow furrowed, just slightly. ‘What do you care of the Imperium and its people?’ he asked in a low voice.

  The Judicator-Prime swept his arm out to encompass all of the assembled necron Legions. ‘Regardless of what you might believe, Dante of the Blood Angels, we are most concerned with the survival of the human race. There are greater matters at stake here. Perhaps one day these lesser differences can be reconciled.’

  With great solemnity, Commander Dante handed his helm off to me, and I

  took it carefully in my free gauntlet. Then he stepped forwards, holding out his left hand to the Silent King.

  ‘I cannot speak for the Imperium, and I cannot speak for what my blood-father Sanguinius would or would not have done in my place. But my warriors will lend their numbers to yours, if you truly mean to save this world from the Great Devourer.’ He paused, and his expression became more fierce.

  ‘And then you and I will speak of the future, King Szarekh. We will speak of what may be, if this alliance is honoured to its end.’

  The Silent King reached out and grasped Dante’s wrist in a remarkably Imperial manner.

  Then he leaned in with an alien grace that should have been impossible for a machine, and whispered something into the Chapter Master’s ear.

  I speak the truth. The Silent King spoke to him. Tycho and I both strained to hear, but the words were lost to the breeze. Dante recoiled slightly, his face a picture of shock and confusion. Then he composed himself, and nodded to Szarekh.