by John French
‘Lupercal! Lupercal! Lupercal!’
It could not be...
Archamus could feel himself calling out orders, slicing the crisis up into portions, ringing each with the logic and experience of sixteen decades, reducing disaster to grains of action.
Could it be?
‘Lupercal! Lupercal!’
The Primigenia had exploded two and a half minutes ago, but in that slice of time chaos had fallen on them like a tidal wave. The ship had detonated not with the strength of a solitary reactor, but with the force of a dozen nova shells. Half of the heavens were burning. Ships rolled in confusion in the clutter of Terra’s orbits. There had already been twenty-five catastrophic collisions.
‘We have no word from the...’
‘...they expected us to fire on the ship...’
‘...Damocles is reporting rioting on all levels, casualties...’
‘...Lupercal!’
He shut out the whirl of noise and turned to Halik. The old seneschal’s face was a mask of control as he looked up at Archamus.
‘The Three Hundred and Fourth Company are in the air?’ he asked, and received a nod of confirmation. ‘They go to Damocles. Immediate deployment, maximum speed.’
‘Force discretion?’ asked Halik.
‘Contain and cleanse,’ said Archamus, and turned back to the blur of the unfolding moment. The sight of the holo-display caught his eyes.
‘Riots under way in Corona Hive Conurbation...’
‘The Ionian Basin is burning...’
‘Macro plasma detonations across Atlantian population zones...’
It could be. He felt his skin prickle inside his armour, and the words he was about to speak catch in a dry throat. The invasion is starting now. Here. From within.
Alarm signals were flooding in from across the eastern face of the planet.
‘The primary vox trunk is jammed!’
‘We have come for you...’
‘...Eighth Legion methodology...’
‘They are using Fourth Legion signal base...’
But if the enemy was coming, then what he was seeing was just the fire set within the walls, the arrows falling from the night to send the screams and flames rising while out beyond the gate and parapet...
‘What is the status of the Outer Sphere defences?’ he called, but he could see the answer blinking on the edge of the projection of the Solar System.
‘Last report was that they were engaging intruder ships, but signal delay is currently two hundred and forty-six minutes.’
Over four hours. Four hours in which an armada could have begun to drop from the warp and hit their defences.
‘Mistress,’ he called, pacing forwards, eyes dancing across the tactical information. ‘Have the warnings come from the rest of the system?’
Armina Fel, astropath-adjutant to Rogal Dorn, followed him, stick-thin limbs shivering beneath the green silk of her robes as she moved.
‘No,’ she said. ‘There is no word.’
The first axiom of defence, he thought, is to understand what you defend against.
‘...Lupercal!’
‘Security alarms sounding in northern levels of the Palace.’
‘Damocles Starport is not responding...’
Archamus saw the lines of defence Dorn had placed around Terra, the fixed points of strength around the planets and moons, the shoals of ancient debris and fields of mines. He saw the Imperial Fists, spilt into five forces spread from Terra, through Mars, Jupiter and Neptune to Pluto. Each force was ready to move to counter an enemy as they fought into the system. Unless they were looking somewhere else.
‘Mistress,’ he said, pitching his voice so that only the astropath could hear him. ‘Send word to Lord Castellans Camba Diaz, Effried and Halbrecht, and First Captain Sigismund.’
‘Lord?’ said Armina Fel, and her voice pulled his gaze from the shrunken sphere of the Solar System. She was looking at him, empty eyes wide holes within a mask of control. He had never seen such an expression on her face. ‘Lord,’ she said again, ‘the signal?’
He breathed out.
‘Fire on the mountain heights,’ he said, and paused.
She bowed her head, and then looked back up at him.
‘Truly? Is this it?’ she asked, and for a second he thought he saw a tremor pass under the skin of her cheeks. ‘Is this the invasion?’
Archamus stared at her, an answer failing to form on his tongue.
‘No, mistress, not this day.’ The voice cut through the sound of the room. Archamus turned, and every eye in the chamber turned with him. Rogal Dorn swept forwards, his steps swift, his face set.
‘There will be no signal,’ said the primarch. He looked at where Admiral Su-Kassen stood. ‘Send word to Hector on the Reason of Truth. He has orbital command. Bring the Terran fleet to full inward and outer alignment. His guns cover outer system approaches and surface targets. After that clear every other ship that is intact out of the debris zone. No shots fired unless necessary. If a ship does not respond, take it with the blade rather than shoot it from the void.’
Dorn looked up at where the vox-horns shouted.
‘Lupercal! Lupercal! Lupercal!’
‘Magos Crusix,’ he said, without looking at the senior tech-priest, ‘silence that.’
A second later the vox cut out.
‘This is a dark moment, but this is not the coming of the Warmaster. Be strong in yourselves and unstinting in your duties, and this shall pass.’
The silence that had fallen with his words became a heated murmur of exchanged orders.
Archamus came to stand by his lord, mind still parsing through the last few moments and the scraps of information still filtering in. He had been wrong, and he would review the reasons for that later. But for now it was irrelevant. Even if the invasion was not beginning, they were still in the middle of a crisis. And there was something else happening, something hiding under the surface of the noise and destruction. He pulled a data-slate from a tactical cogitator and spun the dials on its case. Signal and security data spun across the screen. His instinct had been right; he had just been looking in the wrong direction.
‘The First Axiom, Archamus,’ said Dorn softly, and Archamus glanced up to see his lord looking down at him. ‘You were right. What we are defending against here is not an attack by ships or troops. We are fighting...’
‘Anarchy,’ said Archamus.
Dorn nodded once.
Archamus’ eyes were scattering across the surface of the data-slate in his hand. ‘Everything that has happened, the ship breaking the cordon, the orbital cascade, whatever is happening to Damocles, the explosions, the riots, the triggering of our defence alarms, the saturation of our communications, it means nothing. There is nothing to take strategic advantage of. Except–’
‘Except for the fact that it makes us blind,’ finished Dorn. The primarch was looking at the chamber around him with almost casual control. The panic had drained from the chamber and been replaced by a tense focus. It had happened the moment Dorn had spoken, radiating from him like cold from ice. It was like a cloak that he could fold over the world around him.
‘Polar orbital batteries request permission to fire,’ called one of the officers, twisting to look at Su-Kassen and the primarch.
‘When there is something for them to fire at I will let them know,’ said Dorn, the ghost of a smile softening his face. The officer bowed his head, and Archamus could almost feel another layer of fear peel from the chamber. Dorn turned his head fractionally and continued in the same soft tone as before, so that what he was saying was said to Archamus alone. ‘The question is, what are we not supposed to see?’
Archamus was skimming though the torrent of alerts crowding in. What was he discounting or not considering? There was so much. Panic was seeping into the m
ajor population sinks as warning sirens rang out. Military garrisons across the planet were scrambling to full alert. Damocles was tearing itself apart. We have come for you – the murder cry of the Night Lords – was echoing over its screams. What did that mean? He felt the tug of the question and then discounted it. This was not about what he could see. It was about what he was not letting himself see.
He stopped. His skin prickled cold inside his armour. He looked back at the flow of confusion and saw. There it was, buried amongst the vox-logs scrolling across a bank of pict screens. Every check and confirmation from every military unit under the Praetorian’s control passed across those screens. There were hundreds of thousands of signals from the last few minutes alone. But he knew what he was looking for: an absence, a missed part of a pattern.
He saw it. The cold on his skin pinched deeper.
‘Lord,’ he said, keeping his voice low and controlled. ‘Squad Labrys, deployed to the Dome of Illumination at first alert, and then split to cover the approaches to the Northern Circuit. The element left in the Dome should have checked in one hundred and eighty-eight seconds ago. They did not. Sensors registered vibration and sound elevation. They also registered a low-grade explosion in the approach tunnels of the Investiary five hundred and three seconds ago.’
Dorn’s face was utterly still, and then he was turning and striding for the door, cloak spilling behind him. The chamber doors opened at a gesture.
‘With me,’ he called, pace quickening.
‘Lord–’
‘Now.’
Archamus followed, locking his helmet in place as he moved. His bionics hissed and clacked as they synchronised with his stride. The five other Huscarls in the room were with him, weapons ready. Ahead of him, Dorn was already a golden blur. The wail of the sirens echoed the sound of their feet as they ran.
Questions poured through Archamus even as he pulled Oathword from his waist.
How had this happened so quickly? How was it possible? What were they facing?
But louder than the questions was a memory, its image and sound as alive as the pounding of blood in his ears.
‘Do you know the old Terran riddle of the tower?’ Dorn had asked all those decades ago, as the wind had shivered off a frost-desert. Archamus had shaken his head, and Dorn had smiled grimly. ‘The riddle goes – Stand on the tower and see far. Raise the tower higher and see all the land. High or low, what does the far looking eye see not?’ Dorn had laughed, the humour brief and bright in his face. ‘Not very good as word play, but the point is sound, do you not think?’
Archamus had nodded, and answered.
‘If you are on a tower looking out then the one thing you cannot see is what is beneath your feet. You cannot see the tower itself.’
Archamus remembered the words, and ran on through the Imperial Palace. The wail of the sirens followed him like the laughter of old nightmares come to the waking world.
The Investiary
The Imperial Palace, Terra
Silonius folded into the shadows at the edge of the Investiary. The blush of dawn was pulling at the black dome of the sky, and the falling embers of the fire above were pulling streaks of flame across the gaps between the clouds of pollution. A cold wind blew across the open circle of the Investiary, slicing the sound of the sirens. He could smell dust, and dew turning to frost. He looked up.
Vast figures loomed against the night sky above him. Shadows clung to the recesses of their faces, and the growing light caught the edges of weapons. There were eighteen of them, standing in a circle around the outer edge of the Investiary. Shrouds covered nine of them, but the white marble of the other nine stood pale and proud in the growing light.
Silonius looked at the nearest statue. A pair of furled wings hung from its back, and a sword rested point down in its hand.
Sanguinius, he thought. The Father of Angels.
He shifted his gaze to the statue furthest from him. The face of Lion El’Jonson stared back from across the open kilometre of stone. This place had once been the heart of the Great Crusade. Oaths made here had forged the greatest empire mankind had ever seen. That empire now burned, and the ideals that had raised these statues were ashes. Yet the statues of the eighteen primarchs still stood, as though somehow the circle that Horus had broken could be whole again.
It almost made him laugh.
He froze, tingles running up and down his skin.
There were others with him in the wide emptiness. He could not see them, but he was certain they were there. He could smell them as a slight scent in the air, and hear them in the sounds hidden by the wind and the noise of distant sirens.
He paused, and then slid across the shadows until he was at the base of Sanguinius’ statue. He stopped, cocked his head and listened. Slowly he began to move around the base.
‘Be very still,’ came the voice from above and behind him. He obeyed, holding himself perfectly immobile. ‘Good,’ said the voice. The speaker was six metres above him and two back. A good position, he reflected, difficult to reach before being shot to pieces. ‘Speak the word.’
He hesitated. So far the memories that had come back to him had been precise and clear, but now he felt others begin to surface from the murk. A new understanding settled into his thoughts.
‘Calisto,’ he said at last, and paused. ‘And you? What word do you have for me?’
‘Hecate,’ said the voice, and he heard the soft noise of several figures moving close by.
The figure that had dropped from the statue’s base seemed to blur into the gloom. Silonius could make out the hints of compact recon armour, infra-sight visors and weapons. He was looking at himself, he realised; not a reflection but a shadow cast by the same outline.
‘Mission parameter?’ he asked.
‘Eurydice,’ said the shadowed figure.
Silonius felt a pause in his thoughts as the word brought a strand of action into focus.
‘Confirmed,’ he said. ‘What is our strength and status?’
‘Seven now,’ said the shadow. ‘You are the last. Three others converged with us two hundred and ten seconds ago. If there are any others coming, they fall outside the parameter. The Fists will be here soon.’
‘Then we had better be done before they arrive,’ said Silonius, and began to unharness the explosives from his back.
Archamus, Huscarl-master of the VII Legion
Five
The Investiary
The Imperial Palace, Terra
They ran through the Dome of Illumination. Doors opened before Rogal Dorn, slamming back into their mountings. Archamus sprinted in his lord’s wake, muscle and piston surging in time. Ten Huscarls were with him.
‘Isolate the northern zones,’ shouted Archamus into his vox. The nearest Imperial Fists force was half a kilometre away and five levels down. They could not reach the Investiary in time, but the whole area was now a ground of battle.
The remains of a collapsed walkway barred their path, but Dorn took the gap in a bound. Archamus followed, rolling as he landed. His eyes caught the smears of blood on the floor, and the bolt casings lying amongst the rubble.
One of us died here, he thought, the realisation cutting into his mind. A legionary of the Imperial Fists fell within the Palace.
A wide passage sloped up towards a distant archway. Dead servitors littered the floor. Oil and blood was slick on the pale stone of the steps. Dorn was already a third of the way up. The blast doors had been melted open. A wisp of smoke was rising from the cooling metal. His eyes caught a line of red in the smoke. Dorn was ten strides ahead of him.
‘Mine charges,’ Archamus shouted. Dorn unclamped his bolter from his thigh and fired without pause. Bolts punched into the frame of the ruined door. The charges concealed in the frame detonated. Shrapnel blasted out. The shock wave spilled back down the tunnel, picked Archamus up and thre
w him down. He spun to his feet. Red markers flashed at the edge of his vision. His chest and face were numb. Smoke and dust filled the world around him. Green markers picked out the other Huscarls as they got to their feet and ran on. There was no sign of the primarch.
Silonius looked up as the crack of the detonations rolled around the Investiary. A cloud of dust billowed up and out, enveloping the shrouded statue of Magnus the Red. For a second the world seemed to slow. He could see the chips of stone and metal spinning in the blast wave. He noticed the thin light catch the edge of the dust, and break into a halo of yellow and red.
We have run out of time, he realised. The other six infiltrators were still scattered amongst the statues. The last charges were in place, but they would not all have time to get clear.
That did not matter, though. In fact it made things much easier.
‘Here it comes,’ he muttered to himself.
A figure broke from the cloud of debris. Dust matted the gold of its armour, but there was no mistaking what it was. Who it was.
Rogal Dorn fired as he ran. On the opposite side of the Investiary one of the other infiltrators fell from the plinth of Ferrus Manus. Bright red blood stained white marble. Silonius was already swinging down from where he had been crouched beneath the shroud of the twentieth primarch.
A spray of bolter fire reached out from between the feet of great Sanguinius. Explosions burst across Dorn’s armour. He did not even slow down. He fired again, and another figure was falling in a shower of splintered skull and chunks of brain.
Archamus heard the sound of gunfire and ran towards it. The dust cloud was all around him. His helmet display flickered as it tried to lock on to targets. He was bleeding. He could feel it now, could feel the muscles in his legs squeezing around the pieces of shrapnel that had found the soft seals between armour plates. It was not pain yet, but it would be. He broke through the dust.
An echoing quiet greeted him. Two of his brother Huscarls ran with him. Dorn was ahead of them, moving into the centre of the Investiary’s circle. Archamus signalled the other Huscarls and they formed an arrowhead with their primarch at the tip. A volley of bolts exploded in front of them. Shards of stone chimed as they struck Archamus’ armour.
