The Damnation of Pythos

by David Annandale

  Galba glanced at the other Tactical squad sergeant, trying to read his tone. That was never easy with Darras. The legionary was forever deadpan. He did not have a bionic voice box like Atticus. He just spoke without expression, machine-like in his soul. His face, Galba had long thought, was that of a corpse, as if it were a flesh mask hanging off a metal skull. He was, like all the other legionaries aboard the Veritas Ferrum, from the Ungavarr clan of northern Medusa. But Darras was more visibly a product of the glaciers than his brothers. He was beyond pale. His skin was sallow, his hair sparse. Were he a non-genhanced human, he would have seemed sickly. But his thick, corded neck and the bunched muscle of his pate said otherwise. He was the death of his enemies, and he looked the part.

  He was also the death of the polite lie and the meaningless turn of phrase. For unfortunate emissaries from the Administratum of Terra who crossed his path, he was the death of diplomacy. In the past, Galba had laughed at their discomfiture when Darras had punctured their unctuous patter. On this day, though, given the balancing act in which he was engaging, he was nervous about his friend’s mood.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  To Galba’s relief, Darras nodded at the doorway. Rhydia Erephren and Bhalif Strassny had arrived on the bridge together. It was unusual to see either of them away from chancel or out of the nutrient tank while the Veritas Ferrum was on active duty. The two of them present at the same time was unheard of.

  Atticus was standing before the primary oculus. ‘Mistress Erephren, Navigator Strassny,’ he said. ‘Please join me.’

  The two humans crossed the floor of the bridge. Galba was surprised to see Erephren walk ahead of Strassny, unguided, her step sure. In her left hand, she carried the two-metre-high staff of her office. The haft was of a wood so dark it was black. It was topped with an ornate, bronze astrolabe. Her right hand wielded a cane of silvered steel, its head the Imperial aquila. Its tip was sharp enough that she could have used the cane as a sword. The rhythm as she tapped the decking before her was so subtle, it seemed impossible to Galba that she was using it to find her way. Strassny, two paces behind her, was slumped, and looked like he needed a cane more than she did.

  They were both Terran-raised. Strassny was born there, a member of one of the second-tier Houses of the Navis Nobilite. His long hair, pulled back and braided in the helix fashion of his family, was both lank and so fine that stray strands floated around his head like smoke. His features were as fragile as thin porcelain. He was the result of centuries of House Strassny’s intermarriage. The blood that made him a superb Navigator also made him so weak a physical specimen, it took a conscious effort on Galba’s part not to regard him with untempered revulsion.

  Erephren was a different case. She had been brought to Terra in a Black Ship while still an infant. No one, herself included, knew the planet of her birth. Her robes bore no family markings, but were rich in the awards of service. A bronze receiving plaque, engraved with the emblem of the Astra Telepathica, was embedded in the top of her bald skull. The soul-binding ritual had robbed her of her sight, and altered her eyes in a manner that Galba had never encountered in any other astropath. He had seen many whose eyes had become clouded, some so milky it was as if they had turned into pearls. But hers were utterly transparent. They were immaculate, crystalline orbs with nothing inside. Viewed face-on, they were invisible; Erephren’s eyelids the open doorways to sunken hollows of tissue and darkness. Blasted by constant exposure to the warp, she appeared to be in her late-seventies, almost twice her real age. Though he was centuries older than she was, Galba found it impossible not to see her as a venerable figure. She had paid for every message received and transmitted with a piece of her life. Strassny’s weakness had been his from birth. Erephren’s infirmity had been acquired in the performance of duty. There was honour in that.

  Yet Erephren carried herself as if there were no infirmity. Her posture was pitilessly straight, her stride sure, and her robes the black-and-grey scheme of the Legion she served. She was regal. She deserved Galba’s respect, but she also commanded it.

  ‘An unusual day,’ Galba said to Darras, agreeing with his first assessment.

  ‘For you especially,’ Darras said.

  Galba kept his face neutral. ‘Yes,’ he said. So Darras had been digging at him after all. He had reached the bridge only a few moments before Erephren and Strassny, and he had not come alone. Khi’dem and Ptero had accompanied him. They now stood at the rear of the bridge, near the entrance. They were out of the way, but they stood with arms folded, their body language asserting their right to be there.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be keeping your new friends company?’ Darras asked.

  ‘I’ve come to relieve you.’ Darras had been manning his station, monitoring the scrolling hololiths that tracked the vessel’s health.

  ‘No need. I believe your services as diplomat are still required.’

  ‘You do me an injustice.’ Galba managed to keep his voice steady, doing his best to refuse Darras’s bait. Diplomat was a term of immense derision among the Iron Hands.

  ‘Do I? Then enlighten me, brother. What is it, exactly, that you are doing?’

  Galba almost said, Trying to keep the peace. He caught himself. ‘A lack of unity will not help our war effort,’ he said.

  Darras snorted. ‘I will not fight alongside them.’

  ‘Then you’re a fool,’ Galba snapped. ‘You speak as if there were a choice.’

  ‘There is always a choice.’

  ‘No, there is not, unless you see failure as a choice. I do not. Our situation is what it is, brother, and if you think we can dispense with allies, then you are refusing to see clearly.’

  Darras paused, then nodded, once, in bitter acceptance. ‘These are cursed days,’ he muttered, venom dripping from each clipped syllable.

  ‘They are.’

  ‘The captain doesn’t seem to be objecting to the presence of our guests.’

  ‘He knew I was bringing them.’

  Darras opened his mouth slightly. It was what passed for a laugh with him. ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘I said much the same things to him as I did to you. I told him that we must not turn from reality.’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  It was Galba’s turn to laugh. He was glad for the familiarity of banter. ‘Not in so many words, perhaps. I did say “reality” at one point. I remember that because it seemed to strike a chord.’

  Darras raised an eyebrow. ‘You detected facial expressions in the captain?’

  ‘No. But after I used the word, he agreed to my request.’

  ‘Then we are in for a day of wonders.’

  Galba turned with him to watch Atticus speak to Erephren and Strassny. The Navigator said little, contenting himself with brief assertions in support of the astropath. Filling the view from the oculus was Pythos, the innermost planet of the Pandorax System.

  ‘This world is the source of the anomalous warp effect?’ Atticus asked.

  ‘The source lies on it,’ Erephren corrected.

  Atticus contemplated the planet. ‘Could such a thing be natural?’

  ‘I cannot conceive of how it could be. Why do you ask, captain?’

  ‘There is no civilisation here.’ The Veritas Ferrum was in orbit above the terminator. The nightside of the planet was utterly dark. There were no lights of cities below. The dayside revealed blue oceans and green landmasses.

  Galba was looking at a garden world. He thought about all the planets he had fought on over the centuries of the Great Crusade. They had all borne the disfigurements brought by intelligent life. What turned below was pristine. It did not know the machine, and its order and strength. He knew what all that green meant: organic life in full riot, undisciplined, chaotic. His lip curled in disgust.

  ‘I cannot explain what you are seeing, captain,’ Erephren said. ‘But
what we seek is there. I know this as surely as I breathe.’

  Atticus did not move. He had so completely given his physical self to the reign of metal that his stillness was absolute. He stood as a statue, an inanimate thing that would spring to terrifying life if confronted. He faced the sight in the oculus as if it were an opponent. Iron challenged the garden. ‘Can you pinpoint the location more precisely?’

  ‘I believe I can. The closer we come, the more intensely I experience its effects. If we pass over it, I am convinced that I will know we have done so.’

  ‘Then, with your guidance, that is what we shall do.’

  The Veritas Ferrum began a slow orbit of Pythos, level with the equator, moving with the rotation. Strassny left the bridge, returning to his tank. Erephren remained at the fore, standing beside Atticus, facing the oculus as if she could see the object of her scrutiny. She called out directions with the certainty of someone who could see something, and see it more clearly with every passing second.

  The closer the strike cruiser came to the source of the phenomenon she was experiencing, the more it seemed to Galba that she was losing herself. The reserve that had always been her armour crumbled. Her voice grew louder, more ferocious. When the search began, she had simply spoken quietly to Atticus to tell him in which directions the ship should go. But now she gestured with staff and cane as if conducting an invisible orchestra the size of the planet. A rhythm entered her movements. They became hypnotic. Galba had trouble looking away. Her voice changed, too. The furious power was still there, but she was not shouting anymore. She was chanting. Galba was seized by the impression that she held the entire ship in her will, moving its millions of tonnes as she moved her cane. He tried to shake the illusion away, but it was persistent. It clung with the tenacity of something that was perilously close to the truth.

  And then, ‘There,’ she gasped. ‘There, there, there.’

  ‘Full stop!’ Atticus ordered.

  ‘There.’ Erephren pointed with her cane with such ferocity and precision that surely it was impossible that she was still blind. She was motionless for several seconds, as still as the legionary at her side.

  Something immense passed through the bridge. The thinnest of barriers blocked a whisper. There were terrible words that wanted to make themselves heard.

  The moment passed. Galba blinked, disturbed that he had allowed himself such an excess of imagination. Erephren lowered her cane and slumped, using the staff now to support herself. She breathed heavily, and there was a rattle in her chest. Then she straightened, once again cladding herself in the armour of her reserve. She shivered once, and then she was calm.

  ‘Are you well, Mistress Erephren?’ Atticus asked.

  ‘I am now, captain. Thank you.’ But there was a new strain in her voice. ‘I must tell you, though, that this is a place of incredible temptation for the likes of me.’

  ‘What kind of temptation?’

  ‘Every kind.’

  Atticus made no comment, and turned back to the oculus. Galba frowned. Erephren’s choice of words was disturbing. There was something of the superstitious about them.

  Atticus said, ‘Is it possible to pinpoint the location more precisely?’

  ‘Take me to the surface.’

  Atticus made a gesture of surprise. ‘An astropath in the field?’

  ‘I will serve in whatever manner is necessary. This is necessary.’

  The captain nodded. ‘Master of the Auspex,’ he called. ‘I want a deep scan of the region below us. Whatever is affecting the warp, it has a location, so it must have a physical manifestation. We may be close enough to find something now.’ To Erephren, he said, ‘We may have other means.’

  The astropath pursed her lips, doubt on her face.

  ‘Commencing scan,’ Aulus confirmed.

  Several minutes elapsed. The company on the bridge stood by, the only sound the murmuring of cogitators. The spectacle of the Iron Hands waiting was a vista of stillness. Men who had been turned into engines of war paused, inert, until the signal for action would unleash them.

  ‘All returns negative,’ Aulus reported. ‘Auspex banks find nothing–’ He stopped. ‘One moment. There is an irregularity in this area.’ At his command, a large-scale hololith of Pythos was projected to the centre of the bridge. A point in the northern hemisphere, on the east coast of the continent visible from the oculus, began to flash.

  ‘Still too wide an area,’ Atticus said. ‘Narrow it down.’

  ‘Captain.’ Erephren’s tone was a warning.

  Aulus leaned closer to his screens. ‘There is something,’ he said. ‘Let me focus the beam to this–’

  The lights of the bridge went down. The Pythos hololith vanished. Darras grunted. Galba glanced down, and saw that his readouts had gone dead.

  The auspex bank exploded. The framework launched itself at Aulus in a torn ecstasy of metal. A fireball engulfed him, and it was the colour of incandescent flesh. Kaleidoscopic lightning crackled up the walls. Its infection ran down the spine of the vault, jolted open the door and shot down the corridor, spreading an electric howl to the rest of the ship. The Veritas Ferrum shook. The tremor came from the core, a deep, powerful thrum that almost threw Galba off his feet. It was the jerk of the already wounded vessel being stabbed with an assassin’s blade.

  Galba and Darras raced to Aulus’s post. Atticus was there first, reaching the stricken legionary just as the fireball dissipated. Flames quivered along the perimeter of the explosion. They did not crackle. Instead, they made a noise that sounded to Galba like sighs. A choir of thousands pressed against a weakening wall with desire and hatred and laughter. And then the flames died, taking with them the sighs and Galba’s belief in what he had heard.

  The deck steadied. The bridge’s lumen-strips brightened again. Smoke coiled through the space, filling Galba’s nostrils with the smell of burned graves. Aulus was lying motionless. The savage angles of the auspex frame had plunged through his armour in half a dozen places. It looked as if a metal talon had seized him. One claw had gone all the way through his throat, impaling him to the deck. Another had punched the bridge of his nose out the back of his skull.

  Atticus wrenched the twisted framework away from the body. Darras began to say, ‘The Apothecary–’

  Atticus cut him off. ‘There is nothing to recover.’

  He was right, Galba saw. The wounds had destroyed Aulus’s progenoid glands. There would be no preserving his genetic legacy for the future of the Iron Hands. The shape of the ruined auspex bothered Galba. The talon declared that Aulus had not been the victim of an accident. He had been attacked.

  The idea was ludicrous. Galba knew he should not be entertaining it. He was doing an injustice to his fallen brother to engage in irrational fantasies about his demise. Once again, he pushed the impossible away.

  He refused to think about how often he was having to keep such ideas at bay.

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

  Galba ran back to his post. With a stuttering flicker, the hololithic display came back to life. He surveyed the readings. ‘No further damage,’ he reported. His words rang false in his ears. There were no fires burning anywhere beyond the bridge. The integrity of the hull had not been compromised. All life support systems were functioning. Shields were up. The auspex was destroyed, and a battle-brother was dead. Otherwise, the ship was unharmed. Only Galba knew this was not true. This was not a matter of irrational intuition. He had witnessed destructive energy arrive and pass through the vessel. It could not have passed without effect. He did not believe that it had. He could feel a difference in the Veritas, even in the deck beneath his feet. The ship had lost something essential, and it had acquired a new, distressing quality: brittleness.

  Galba willed his impressions to be false. But when he looked up, and saw the expression on Erephren’s face, he knew, with a
sinking in his gut, that they were true.

  The Veritas Ferrum moved into a low geosynchronous orbit over Pythos. The ship had been hit. An enemy on Pythos had drawn first blood. And so the strike cruiser unleashed war into the skies of the planet. Retaliation descended to the surface on the wings of Thunderhawks. With the Veritas strategically blind until its Mechanicum adepts could repair the auspex system, Atticus had to rely on pict-captures of the surface. They showed no clear sign of the anomaly, but they did offer a few landing zones in the area Aulus had designated before his death.

  Three gunships took part in the planetfall. Two of them, Unbending and Iron Flame, carried Erephren and sixty Iron Hands for a reconnaissance in force. The third was Hammerblow, and it was a Salamander craft. It was one of the two recovered, at terrible cost, from the low orbit of Isstvan V before the savaged Veritas had made its escape from the hopeless void war. Hammerblow and Cindara had been among the very few ships of any kind to survive the massacre on the planet’s surface. Khi’dem’s Salamanders had managed to gather a few Raven Guard during their fighting retreat to the gunships, along with some Iron Hands who had been too badly wounded during the initial phase of the battle to advance with their primarch into the jaws of Horus’s trap.

  Seated in Unbending, Darras glanced out the viewing block at Hammerblow as it flew level with them. ‘Well,’ he said to Galba, ‘will they fight with us to the end, do you think?’

  Galba shrugged. ‘If you think I find this conversation invigorating, you are mistaken.’

  Atticus emerged from the cockpit and opened the side hatch of the Thunderhawk. Wind whipped through the troop compartment. Galba freed himself from his grav-harness and joined the captain. He looked down at the landscape rushing past below. They were flying over a solid canopy of jungle. The wind was thick, hot, a blast of steam. Galba’s neuroglottis parsed a cornucopia of scents and tastes. The sensory flood was dizzying. Pollens from a thousand different species fought with the stench of a loam that must have been metres deep with rotting organic matter. And there was blood. Hidden beneath the green was crimson, streams of crimson, an ocean of crimson. The taste of the blood was a corrupted amasec.