by John French
He was as blind as his enemy now, but he had the advantage. His mind and perceptions had narrowed, principles of war and strategy shrunk to tactics and choices made in the blink of an eye. He had to complete the kill. He had to confirm it.
Anything else meant failure. And he would not, could not fail.
He was Alpharius. He was Legion.
Archamus had almost been in reach of the cluster of guards around Hyrakro when the wall blew in behind him. The blast caught him in mid stride. The guards around Hyrakro were eleven paces away. He could see the wobble of the man’s jowls, see the stain of wine on his greying beard and the pupils blooming wide in his eyes. If he had had to kill the human, he could have done it then. He could have put a bolt through the man’s skull before the man realised he was dead. That was not an option, though. Hyrakro had to live.
A blind missile detonated against the wall. Dull white-grey fog poured through the room. One instant he could see and the next, whiteness was pressing against his eyes.
Time slowed for him. His mind sharpened to a few simple thoughts and instincts.
A new enemy had entered the situation. It did not matter who it was. They were irrelevant. All that mattered was that he did not fail.
In part of Archamus’ mind – a part that he was aware of but not listening to – he knew that it must be the Alpha Legion. That they had shot his gunships from the sky, and that they would make sure Hyrakro died before speaking his secrets. He knew all this and listened to none of it. Purpose needed no reason.
He stopped. Armour, bionics and muscles locked steady. His bolter replaced the mace and pistol in his hands without a thought. He did not need to look at Kestros to know that the sergeant was standing at his back, facing outwards, bolter in hand. Their thoughts in that instant were a mirror, fused by the blood in their veins and the way of war they were both forged in: If in doubt, hold ground. If in confusion, wait for the enemy to show their hand. Old truths that were as much a part of him as his blood and breath.
They waited as the instants slid into seconds.
Alpharius could hear the buzzing purr of power armour thrumming through the fog, and the shallow breaths of the humans trying to control their fear. The fog stole all but the most basic sense of direction, but it was enough. He swung the barrel of the missile launcher up, selected a frag missile and fired.
The explosion pulsed through the fog, staining it black and red for a second. He ducked to the side. Las-fire buzzed out, wild and undirected. He could hear screaming. Enough to guide his aim again, though. He thumbed the launcher’s selector to the last of his bio-acid missiles.
A burst of bolt-rounds ripped through the fog. Explosive shells tore the chamber floor in front of him. Stone splinters spun into the smoke. A round exploded beside his foot and pitched him sidewise. The bolter fire switched tone, as a second gun picked up after the first without a missed beat. It sprayed high.
Alpharius began to move forwards again. Too late he realised his mistake.
Another burst, waist height, shells buzzing as they cut the air. The blind fog was thinning. Light flashed through the murk, sounds became sharper. His advantage was dissipating. He pulled his serpenta free and began to fire, pulsing the beam though the fog, feathering it at random. Then he was up and running.
Archamus stopped shooting. Kestros laced fire into the smoke without missing a beat. The magazine fell from Archamus’ bolter as he snapped a fresh one into place.
‘Back, five metres,’ he called.
Kestros’ fire hammered out as they pivoted and stepped in unison.
Volkite beams scattered past.
Archamus opened the vents in his helm. He could smell spilled alcohol on the air. Glass and crystal crunched beneath their feet. The blind fog was thinning, his sight pushing further out by the second. The pool of silk cushions was next to them, folds of fabric stained by wine and scattered with rock dust.
The volkite fire ceased. He heard the noise of heavy strides and buzzing power armour at the same instant that the thinning fog parted before him. Hyrakro was there, his cluster of guards ringing him, guns raised, heads and eyes twitching. They saw Archamus and the gun muzzles turned.
He heard a shout of alarm from behind him and turned his head in time to see an armoured figure loom into sight. Fog clung to the indigo-blue armour, scattering light from green eyes in a blank helm. The bulk of a hip-slung missile launcher hung in its hands.
Kestros swung his gun around. Archamus surged towards the ring of guards.
Alpharius’ targeting runes locked on to the man ringed by guards. Hyrakro, dowager-son of the Hysen Cartel, looked up, his face painted red by the converging crosshairs. Alpharius’ thumb tensed on the trigger stud.
One of the Imperial Fists leapt forwards, and the target vanished from view. He switched missile instantly and fired. The krak missile kicked free of the launcher as a second legionary burst from the remaining fog. He began to turn but the warrior cannoned into him. He staggered. The Imperial Fist was bare-headed and snarling, face marked with dried blood and soot. Alpharius pivoted, caught his balance and kicked out, stamping into the warrior’s chest.
The son of Dorn was faster. The bolter in his hands roared, ripping through the missile launcher and shredding the front of Alpharius’ armour. Alarms screamed in his ears. He could feel numbness washing through him as his body hid the damage from his awareness. Instinct snapped in. The Imperial Fist had dropped his spent bolter and pulled a chainsword from his waist. The blade spun to life and rose as Alpharius drew and fired his serpenta. The beam hit the legionary in the side of the chest and blew the ceramite to dust. Flesh flashed and cooked beneath. The chainsword blow crashed into Alpharius’ shoulder guard. Sparks churned into the air as the blade skidded across ceramite.
He lashed out, hammering a knee into the wound in the Imperial Fist’s torso, and forcing the warrior back. Alpharius pistoned his knee into the wound again and again. Burned blood and scraps of flesh stuck to his knee plate. Ribs and carapace cracked. Shards of bone punched into soft meat, and blood speckled the ground. The legionary tried to grip him, but Alpharius shifted his weight and ripped the warrior from the ground, sending him skidding back towards the door. He did not rise. Alpharius turned, his blood splattering from his wound.
The other Imperial Fist was almost amongst the bodyguards surrounding the target, blocking a clear shot. The dissipating blind smoke was a haze in the air. He aimed and fired. The head of one of the bodyguards exploded, fragments of skull and flesh hitting the human’s comrades and ripping into their exposed flesh. Alpharius moved forwards, pain screaming from his dying flesh.
Archamus struck the surviving bodyguards. Oathword’s power field was deactivated, but the first human it struck broke and fell like a sodden rag. He felt the blow as a tremble through the servos of his bionic arm. He reversed the blow and crushed the head of another guard, and stamped another to red ruin. Dowager-son Hyrakro was screaming now, keening like a wounded animal. Blood flecked his face as he scrabbled away from Archamus, half falling, bare feet skidding on blood. Archamus knew that the Alpha Legionnaire was closing behind him.
He did not need to look. He dropped his bolter and lunged across the last metres. His hand closed on Hyrakro’s arm. The volkite beam struck his back as he enfolded the screaming human. Energy burned through the casing of his power plant. His armour screamed. Servos and fibre bundles fired and locked, spasming like the muscles of a dying man. Cooling fluid vented. Sparks sprang from the exposed power stacks.
Archamus could feel the skin of his back burning. The smell of cooking flesh and muscle filled his mouth and nose. But his grip on the human did not slacken. He began to stand, muscles straining against the weight of his dying armour. Oathword was still in his hand, the bronzed digits of his machine hand wrapped around the haft of the mace.
Alpharius fired again, but the beam skidded wide
. His world was greying at the edges, the numbness spreading inwards from his skin. The legionary who had shielded the target was rising, straining with effort. They were almost close enough to touch, but the bulk of the warrior hid the human. Alpharius shifted angle. He might live to fire one more shot.
A bolt shell hit him in the back of the hip and punched him forwards onto the floor. He fell, twisting. Blood scattered from the ripped join between hip and thigh. As he landed, he saw the other Imperial Fist, lying on the floor where he had fallen, bolt pistol gripped and aimed. The other warrior – the one who had grabbed and shielded the target – loomed above him, the human clutched in one arm, the mace in the other.
Alpharius tried to bring his serpenta up. The legionary swung the mace down. Alpharius heard his hand shatter, and a fresh pool of blankness was added to the numbness of his body. The mace crashed into his head and sent him sprawling on the floor, face down.
‘You have failed, traitor,’ growled the Imperial Fist.
Alpharius heard the words, but felt nothing. He opened his mouth. He could feel fresh blood on his lips.
‘We...’ he said, his voice rasping from the speaker grille of his helm. ‘We are many, son of Dorn, and we... we know you. We know you all...’
The numbness and greyness flowed in from the edge of his sight, and then nothing.
Archamus looked down at the legionnaire at his feet. At the other end of the room, Sergeant Sotaro and nine warriors came through the doors, and spread into the chamber. The human hanging from Archamus’ arm whimpered; his gaze did not waver from the body at his feet. The front of the indigo-blue armour had been ripped open from crotch to mid chest. The explosive impact of multiple bolt shells looked like a swarm of creatures had taken bites out of the ceramite. A wound in the warrior’s thigh leaked a spreading pool of blood onto the floor. It would have taken focus and resolve for the warrior to keep moving, let alone fight.
‘My lord,’ said Sotaro as he came to Archamus’ side.
‘Remove his helm,’ he said, still not looking up. Sotaro hesitated for a second, then bent down and snapped the helm free from the dead legionnaire. The face underneath was hairless – the features strong, but blandly forgettable. The eyes were still open, staring up at Archamus without life. Blood had flowed down the chin from the mouth.
Archamus held his dead enemy’s gaze.
‘Bring in the gunships,’ he said to Sotaro.
‘The Fire Raptor was lost, and one of the others caught a haywire blast, but it is functioning.’
Archamus assimilated the information without pause. He would think about the losses and failures of the mission later.
‘Call them in,’ he said. ‘Then strip this place. Rip the walls apart. Find everything – data-stores, parchment, everything. It goes back to the Unbreakable Truth. You have one hour. Then this place becomes ashes and rubble. No traces. No one sees anything that comes from this place.’
Sotaro brought his hand to his heart in salute and then nodded at the corpse that Archamus was still staring at. ‘And that?’
‘Take it. Put it into stasis and forget that you have seen it.’
‘Lord,’ said Sotaro and bowed his head.
He looked into the dead Alpha Legionnaire’s eyes for an instant more, and then turned and began to walk towards the doors. His armour clanked as it moved. The flesh of his back had passed from numbness to crawling agony. One of Sotaro’s warriors was helping Kestros from the floor. Archamus met the young sergeant’s eye and gave a single nod. Sotaro had already begun calling orders into the vox and marshalling his squad. Two of them fell in beside Archamus as he walked through the manse.
Night had still not claimed the last of the light when he emerged into a courtyard beside the curtain wall. From the moment that the rockets had launched from the gunships less than ten minutes had passed. His mind was sifting back through every detail of the engagement, analysing it for errors, both personal and tactical.
Dowager-son Hyrakro hung unmoving from his shoulder, perhaps finally succumbing to unconsciousness.
‘You have him,’ said a voice from the shadows beside the curtain wall. He looked around as Andromeda stepped into sight.
‘You were ordered to stay out of the battle area.’
‘The battle seems to have passed,’ she said, moving next to him but looking at the slumped form of Hyrakro. She matched his pace and reached up, pulling the man’s hair so that she could look at his unconscious face. ‘Hello, little thread,’ she purred. ‘Let’s see where you lead.’
Five
The battleship Lion of the Last Kingdom
Jupiter orbit
The silence of the chamber roared at Armina Fel. Without eyes, her mind sat in a swell of stray thoughts and feelings. Fully half of the senior commanders of Terra’s Third Sphere of defences stood before her beneath the banners of the dead, and under the gaze of stone warriors. The ghost thoughts of the gathered war leaders washed over her: Solar Auxilia officers, Jovian commodore princes, tech-priests, Ghost Shoal privateers and Callistan militia generals – all were waiting, thinking, worrying.
Armina Fel felt the apprehension of the gathering shiver over the inside of her skin. Questions, doubts and fears splashed colours across her mind’s eye. The tech-priests stood out amongst the swell, their minds geometric shapes drawn in static. Lord Castellan Effried and his entourage stood to her right, their minds stars of control. But, no matter who they were, every mind focused on the burning presence of Rogal Dorn.
Armina Fel stood three paces behind him, flanked by her Black Sentinel guardians. At this distance the primarch’s presence was like standing beneath a desert sun at noon. She felt it pull at her, rolling her in strength, burning away doubt.
‘For the Emperor,’ Dorn said, and brought his hand to his chest in the old salute of unity. The chamber echoed as hundreds of hands mirrored the movement and echoed the words. The blossoms of uncertainty faded amongst the gathering. ‘Your duty to the Imperium is about to change.’ The words cut through the crowd like a thrown boulder. Dorn waited for a second and then continued. ‘You have been the leaders of the Third Sphere of defence, its builders, its maintainers, the eyes on its walls and the hands on its weapons. You will have noticed that many of your comrades in arms are not here. That is because they will continue the duties that have been yours. The Emperor has another task for you.’
Surprise, cold and sharp, slid through the ranks. Armina Fel tasted the acid tang of fear, present in all but the minds of the tech-priests and the Imperial Fists. In the most disciplined minds the fear was just a pulse at the edge of control, for others it was a black cloud seeping through their surface thoughts. They had all heard rumours of the forces taken back to Terra, or to Mars. Many were never seen again; some seemed simply to cease to exist. Was that now to be their fate?
‘Lord Castellan Effried and his captains will brief you all in the next twenty-four hours, but before then you will prepare the troops under your command for battle, and for warp passage.’
Now shock rose from every mind in the chamber. Even the Imperial Fists pulsed with surprise for an instant. Warp passage meant going out beyond the bounds of the Solar System; it meant leaving the defences of Terra.
Dorn paused again, and Armina Fel swayed as the control radiating from him grew. The silence in the chamber seemed to deepen.
‘Our purpose is to defend Terra, but to wait for the enemy to come to you is to invite defeat. The enemy is coming. They are encircling us, waiting and growing in strength while picking how and when they will attack. We will not allow them that luxury. Terra stands.’
There was a moment of silence and swirled emotion, and then a hundred voices filled the air.
‘Terra stands!’
Pride and aggression exploded across Armina’s senses. She felt it pull her, rolling her own emotions over and over like beach stones caught in
an ocean wave.
Dorn bowed his head briefly and then strode from the chamber. Armina Fel followed, flanked by her Black Sentinels and trailed by Lord Castellan Effried. They passed down through the ship in silence, blast doors parting before them, the Huscarls marching in front to cover every step before they took it. She found herself thinking of Archamus as she watched the bodyguards move. The old war architect’s absence suddenly seemed palpable, a hole punched in the present situation, a pillar pulled from beneath an arch. Why had Dorn sent him from his side?
They walked down and down past walls plated in copper and bronze, over floors of smooth stone. At last they arrived at a chamber lit only by an array of stab lights hung above granite worktables. Dorn nodded to the Huscarls, and they peeled away to stand beside the door and line the passage outside. Armina’s Black Sentinels took their places beside the cloaked Imperial Fists, as she followed Dorn and Effried within.
The doors hissed shut.
‘A pre-emptive attack, lord?’ asked Effried, as the doors locked with a pneumatic thump. Armina breathed, trying to catch her breath from the walk while her mind focused on Effried. Now they were away from hundreds of minds all clamouring at once, she could see the subtle creases to the Lord Castellan’s aura.
‘It is a necessity,’ said Dorn.
‘And you intend to lead it?’
‘I would not ask another to take that responsibility for me.’
Effried breathed out, and Armina heard his fingers scratching though his beard as he rubbed his chin. She could tell that he wanted to question the necessity, to understand how and what could move his gene-father to contemplate leading a force away from Terra.
