by Guy Haley
Understanding that information was both the coin and the vitae of the machine priesthood’s domain, Sanguinius bowed his head. ‘We thank you, Fabricator General, for your gift.’
Sanguinius sealed himself back within the private world of his battleplate. With his vision closed in and overlaid by sensorium data, the sense of claustrophobia returned, and he yearned once more for the sky.
An incoming vox request chimed in his helm, appended with the Titan’s ident code.
Sanguinius opened communications. A voice whose softness was at odds with the giant plasteel being spoke directly into his ears. And yet, despite the voice’s humanity, Sanguinius knew he was talking, in a real sense, with the Titan itself.
‘My Lord Sanguinius,’ Esha Ani said. ‘I am grateful you are here, for there is something I believe you need to know.’
‘I thank you,’ he said.
‘Before I do,’ she said, ‘please know that I stand with you and your brothers. Many of our kind bear ill will towards you for the losses our Legios took. I do not. I understood the need. I pledge now that if you have uses for my Legio, you have but to ask.’
‘Again, I thank you,’ he said.
‘Then it is done. An oath to you. Now, my story.’
And then she told him how, on the slopes of a nameless mountain, she had witnessed Horus Lupercal fall.
Sanguinius emerged from the subterranean fortress to find the Mandragora gone, leaving his men alone on a windswept plaza that seemed vast now it was empty. The bombardment patterns had shifted. Whereas before every void shield sparked with displacement, now it was the edges of the city, around the walls, that bore the brunt of the attack, ringing the fortifications with fire, but leaving the sky over the Palace clear. Clouds churning with thermal vortices and dancing with lightning caused by the brutal ionisation of the air were now visible over much of the Palace. The wind switched about constantly, conflicting gusts battling one another and twisting themselves up into short-lived whirlwinds. Snow melted to rain by the bombardment spotted his face.
Sanguinius wasted no time crossing to his transport. His men filed in behind him without a word. The doors clanged shut, and the Land Raider lurched as its tracks bit the road.
‘Dorn,’ Sanguinius voxed. Cogitators in the Palace comms network heard his voiceprint and opened a priority channel to his brother.
Rogal Dorn responded immediately. ‘Sanguinius,’ he said. The vox crackled in time with the lance strikes slamming into the outer shield network. ‘Be quick. Events proceed.’
‘I see the enemy has altered his attack patterns.’
‘Horus has finished testing the aegis,’ Dorn said. ‘They fire now in earnest.’
‘Then I shall be brief. I have news, from Kane. There is a princeps of the Legio Solaria who, while close to death, saw our brother Horus on the mountain of the Carthegia Telepathica.’
‘That is only news if something of note occurred,’ said Dorn.
‘It did,’ said Sanguinius. ‘She saw Horus survey the battlefield as a conqueror, then fall suddenly, though no blow was struck. A wound opened in his side with no identifiable cause. She saw it clearly. His aides panicked, and bore him away by teleportation.’
Dorn was silent as he digested the information.
‘If this is true, then Horus is not invulnerable, as some have suggested.’
‘Perhaps it is evidence of Russ’ success. Maybe the Wolf bit,’ said Sanguinius. ‘It could be that Horus is wounded still. That spear of our brother’s…’
‘This is supposition,’ said Dorn. ‘Though if Russ did manage to wound the Warmaster, and the injury troubles him still, it would explain why our forces at Beta-Garmon were able to withdraw as easily as they did.’
Sanguinius remembered the bitter fighting to get out of the doomed cluster. Denial of communication cost them dearly. Isolated battle groups were annihilated piecemeal. Millions dead, millions more scattered beyond hope of returning to Terra, and the rearguard he set to cover the retreat of the IX and V Legions lost.
Nevertheless, Dorn was right. It had been easier than it should have been.
‘This changes nothing,’ said Dorn. ‘Horus is here. If he was wounded, we must assume he has recovered.’
‘I can only agree. I suggest we do not allow this information into wide circulation. Fabrication will fill the gaps in the story. Rumour may grant Horus additional power – to recover from Russ’ attack, surely he must be omnipotent.’
‘That is one interpretation.’
‘It is the one we should worry about,’ said Sanguinius.
‘We shall discuss this later, if needs be. For the moment our plans are unaffected.’
‘Agreed, brother,’ Sanguinius said, then ventured, ‘It may have been a mistake for you not to attend on Kane yourself. The magi chafe. Every other utterance is of injustice. They blame me for the loss of their god-machines. Kane alluded openly to the possibility of war between Terra and Mars if their grievances are not addressed.’
‘I am aware of their displeasure,’ said Dorn. ‘Unrest will last only until they are committed to the fight – thereafter they may vent their anger on the foe. The presence of our mutual enemies will cement our alliance until the battle is won, and it is far from won. The time is now. We have detected large manoeuvres within the blockade fleet.
‘The enemy is about to attempt his first landing.’
Beastherd
Faithless
Ground assault
Herdship, Traitor fleet, Terran near orbit, 25th of Secundus
For too long, you have suffered!’
The Apostle’s voice rang over the vox-speakers, fighting with the rising bleats of the herd. Azmedi strained to listen. Comprehension was slipping away into animality. He considered the part that listened his human half. The other part, the beast part, jerked against the leashes of shame. Soon it would break free and consume his reasoning mind, but for now he could still understand.
‘You have been cast out and consigned to the fringes of ten thousand worlds, fit only for the noisome places where pure-bloods will not go,’ the Apostle said. ‘You are the lords of ruin, for ruins are all you have ever had to call your own. The citizens of the Imperium, those upright tyrants who shun you, have another name for you, a shameful name, a name that is soaked through with their contempt.’
Azmedi didn’t need to hear the word. It was uttered the moment he was born to his horrified mother, and chased him out of the bright places into the haunts of freaks and criminals. There the word had been shouted again, and he had been driven further on, despised even by other creatures who bore the stigma of mutation.
The word. The Apostle was going to say the word.
‘No! No! No!’ Azmedi shouted, his speech losing its shape, becoming a warbling, caprine bleat.
‘Beastmen,’ said the Apostle. The hold erupted with shouts and cries; there were those who raged, but most voices cried out in despair. ‘They call you beastmen.’
There had been Imperial iterators, down in the deeps where Azmedi had found his own kind, who had come to teach their secular religion to every branch of mankind, no matter how devolved, in mean schools they carved out of compressed, hive-bottom junk. The Apostle’s words evoked those lessons, fifteen years ago. So long, for one of his kind. The lives of the beastkin were short.
‘In the beginning, when man left the world you will soon conquer, he had but one form. Many places moulded the genome of our species, and one form became many!’
Azmedi’s breaking mind reeled with the sermon. His memories intruded into the present, words said to him, words that were more than sounds on the air, but chains to bind him.
‘Homo sapiens variatus,’ the smiling man had said, as if that explained everything.
‘Others retain the name of human, but not you. Not you!’ the Apostle railed. ‘Your dignity was taken from you. You were decreed as less than human, abhuman, mutant. Undesirables on worlds you called home for hundreds of generations!
The Emperor meddles with mankind’s form, and they call His monsters heroes, yet you – you, the rightful children of change – are branded beasts!’
There were those who tried to follow the rules. There were those who tried to understand. There were those who tried to atone for the sin of being born. It made no difference. All Azmedi’s kind were hated. Though their forms were no more aberrant than other human strains, their appearance evoked folk-memories of devils and they were treated accordingly.
‘If a man is treated as a beast, then he becomes a beast!’
The beastmen roared out their pain. They locked their horns and butted heads. The hold reeked of droppings and rage.
‘Beasts!’ shouted a beastman close to Azmedi.
‘Beasts!’ bleated another.
The cry spread through the herd, until the hold shook with stamping hooves and the chant of ‘Beasts! Beasts! Beasts!’ The Apostle’s sermon rose in volume to compete.
‘But to the Pantheon, you are holy beings! You are pure! You are the children of Chaos! You are the living example of mutability! Go out! Go out into the fire, and cast down those in thrall to the False Emperor! Trample His works beneath your feet, wet your horns with the blood of unbelievers!’
‘Beasts! Beasts! Beasts!’
The stink of aggression filled the world. Azmedi’s nostrils flared to breathe it in. He resisted joining the call for violence until the very last. His senses reeling, memories of oppression crashed upon him in waves, threatening to drown his sanity in misery and injustice.
He would not drown. He wanted to remain a man. He wished to stay human.
He could not.
His muzzle shaking, Azmedi opened his mouth and threw back his horned head.
‘Beasts!’ he roared. His human mind sank into rage.
There were two colours to the world: red and black. All other hues existed to be drenched in the former or cast into the latter. The first came with violence, the second with the end of life. There was nothing in between blood and death.
Azmedi welcomed such oblivion, for there was no pain there.
When the clamps released the herdship from its carrier, and the nose pitched down for the desperate rush to Terra, the beastmen were already fighting each other.
Loman’s Promise, repurposed fleet tender,
Terran near orbit, 25th of Secundus
The butt of Hanis oFar’s lasgun was made of hyperdense plastek. Scratching an octed into it was incredibly hard, and had become boring well before he had finished the initial cross of the eight-pointed star. Hanis had a reputation for doggedness to uphold, and so kept at it, dragging the sharpened end of his mess spoon back and forth, cursing when the plastek crumbled and the edges roughened. It wasn’t something he enjoyed, but there was precious little else to do.
He’d long since blocked out the smell and constant noise of five hundred men living in close proximity. What he couldn’t cope with was his tiny little sliver of private space being invaded. When the blanket that separated his cot from the next man’s was tugged back, he stabbed himself with the sharpened spoon and swore colourfully.
The nervy figure of Fendo stood in the gap. Behind him the rest of the regiment, what was left of it, went about the mind-fraying tedium of shipboard life – arguing, smoking, fighting, sleeping and swearing.
‘For the Warmaster’s sake,’ grumbled Hanis. He sucked at his cut hand and yanked at the curtain with the other.
Fendo wouldn’t let him close it. ‘We’re going in,’ he said.
Hanis oFar scowled at Fendo’s moronic face. He was the kind of man who wore a look of slack-mouthed wonder ninety per cent of the time. He gaped at everything, a tendency that had only got worse since he’d embraced the Eightfold Faith. It was the less intelligent ones who had done so first, and Fendo was right at the front of the queue.
‘We’re going in,’ said Hanis flatly.
Fendo nodded encouragingly.
Hanis sighed. He shook his wounded hand and pressed a rag to it. ‘We’re not going in. Whispers promising battle have run through these barracks over and over again. We haven’t gone in.’ He took away the rag. Blood dripped into the unfinished octed on his gun, and he scowled.
‘But we are this time, Hanis. I heard.’ Fendo scratched around the octed branded onto his cheek. The flesh around it was still inflamed weeks later. It didn’t seem to bother him. ‘Everyone’s talking about it. Everyone.’
‘Is this the same everyone who said so last time?’ Hanis picked up his spoon and recommenced work. The edge cut more smoothly now it was greased with blood.
‘Come on, Hanis!’ Fendo implored.
‘Get lost, Fendo, I’m busy.’
‘I see! I see!’ He pointed at Hanis’ work, only now noticing it. ‘The masters will be pleased. You take the mark!’
‘Don’t get excited. I’m not fool enough to do that to myself.’ He jabbed the spoon at Fendo’s brand, then hunched back over his weapon. ‘I’m just doing this so I’m not singled out. And because I’m bored.’
‘It doesn’t matter why you’re doing it, just that you are! The gods, Hanis. They’ll watch over you, protect you. They care! The Emperor lied to us – there are gods. They want our worship. They can make you powerful!’
Hanis looked past his comrade into the wider hall. Loman’s Promise was a fleet tender. The Thernians had lost most of their transports three years ago and since then the cargo hold had been their home. ‘Look at this place, Fendo. It’s cramped, smoky and always either too hot or too cold. The air is hardly breathable, we’ve barely enough pots to piss in and next to nothing to eat. I’d say if the gods granted wishes none of us would be in here.’
‘They look over me.’
Hanis blew out a curl of plastek. He must be getting the hang of carving, because it was getting easier.
‘Fat lot of good it’s done you,’ said Hanis.
Nothing could dent Fendo’s idiotic ebullience. ‘If you believe that, why are you fighting the Emperor?’
‘I’m fighting for the Warmaster, not for these so-called gods of yours.’
‘Why? They’re gods. The Warmaster’s just a man.’
‘Just a man? You’re such an idiot.’ Hanis had a flash of the one time he had stood near the Warmaster, ten years ago, before the civil war. In the wake of 63-10, Horus had walked among the regiment, stopping to talk with men at their fires, easy with them, sharing jokes and giving praise. Hanis had been too dumbstruck to address this giant as he strode by within touching distance. He remembered the moment as clearly as if it were happening again. The sheer presence of Horus had deformed Hanis’ life, like a star’s mass bends space. Everything before and after was rendered meaningless. Some of his comrades had been even more affected. A couple never recovered. Not Hanis. When Horus had gone by, he had known with absolute certainty that he would follow Horus Lupercal wherever he went and whatever he did.
‘He’s not a man,’ muttered Hanis. ‘He’s much more than that.’
‘Well then, lad!’ said Fendo, his overfamiliarity prompting another scowl from Hanis. ‘Best get ready, because you’ll have the chance to prove your worth to him soon.’
‘No, no I won’t!’ The spoon sliced through the plastek. After only a couple of minutes, he suddenly had all eight arms done. He started on the arrow tips for the ends. ‘There’s not enough of us left. What kind of threat could the Thernians present? Eh? We’ve hardly got sufficient guns for every man. What are we going to do, throw our empty ration packs at the enemy?’ Hanis shook his head. ‘Mark my words, he’ll send in his Legions first – we’ll be left to mop up.’
‘I know you’re wrong.’
‘And I know you’re–’
A klaxon sounded twice, cutting Hanis dead.
The vox crackled on. ‘Attention all Thernians. This is not a drill. Prepare for immediate combat deployment. Prepare for battle. I repeat, this is not a drill. We have the honour of securing the beachhead.’ Their commanding officer’s voice wav
ered with pride.
‘That… that was the colonel!’ said Hanis. He frowned. ‘I thought he was dead.’
Fendo nodded, his idiot’s grin spreading wider.
‘We’re going in?’
Throughout the bay every man froze, looking up dumbfounded as if the gods themselves had spoken to them, and would do soon again.
‘By the Four,’ said Hanis.
Suddenly, all at once, the hold exploded with activity. Everybody was shouting. Everybody was moving. Tatty uniforms were thrown on. Battered flak armour shrugged over worn jackets. Guns were snatched up. Crude amulets yanked off hooks and slung about necks.
‘But how… how are they going to get us down there?’ said Hanis. We’ve got no landers. This ship can’t put down! Are we going to be transferred?’
The ship answered his question with a shudder. The background noises of the vessel changed, the grunting whoosh of its plasma thrusters sounding loud, even over the racket of excited men. A faint push upwards told Hanis which direction they were going.
‘No,’ he said, afraid now. ‘No, they’re taking the tender down. It’s not made for it! We’ll crash! We’re all going to die.’
Fendo’s smile turned wicked. Before that moment, Hanis had never really noticed just how ugly the man was.
Traitor fleet, Terran near orbit, 25th of Secundus
All across Horus’ fleet the landing ships departed.
From the carriers and the troop transports, the hulks and the freighters, from vessels of every kind pressed into service by Horus’ armada, a hundred thousand craft set out. Among them went vessels never intended to leave the weightlessness of the void. Sinking determinedly, they pierced the upper envelope of Terra’s dirty atmosphere, bellies glowing with compressive heat as smaller ships plummeted past in a race to the surface. They descended among a hail of mass fire and the discharge of ten thousand lances. The boiling fires around the Palace were visible from Luna, while overworked void shields sparked lightning that crackled from one side of the planet to the other. Outside of the Palace’s protective fields, tracts of Terra burned under heavy bombardment. Dust pillared the heavens. Ash flew streamers in raging stratospheric winds. Every city, every settlement, was under attack. Most possessed their own defences, but none compared to those guarding the Palace, and several hives already burned, as giant pyres that lit Terra with a hellish glow. Debris had yet to occlude the sky completely, though it was only a matter of time before the atmosphere was choked by the ejecta of so many impacts. Steam boiled from young seas. Regenerating vegetation burned. Wherever there were settlements, buildings were reduced to craters and people to ash. Nothing was spared, no matter how insignificant. In his desire to make his father suffer, Horus punished the human race.
