Praetorian of Dorn

by John French

  Myzmadra threw her knife in the space that it took Morhan to blink. It hit the nearest hussar in the neck just below the bottom of his visor. He staggered. Ashul fired from behind her. A line of las-light hit one of the Black Sentinels in the head. The soldier fell, and Ashul raked into the other coal-armoured figure. Myzmadra swung her volkite around and fired it point-blank through the face of the astropath. Vaporised skull and flesh exploded around the path of the beam. The man’s body was reduced to ash. The beam lanced on into the hussar behind. Fragments of armour, bone and exo-rig ripped out hitting the other hussar as burning shrapnel. One Black Sentinel and one hussar remained between the auxiliaries and the open door of the sanctuary.

  ‘Through the door!’ shouted Morhan. The Black Sentinel was fast and was already running back towards the opening. The surviving hussar braced and fired his shot-cannon. Clouds of pellets exploded through the auxiliaries, ringing off armour and ripping through blast fabric. Two went down. The cannon roared as it swallowed shells. Morhan leapt at the hussar, sword pulling free of its scabbard, and sawed the blade up under the soldier’s chin. Gloss blood sheeted down the white-and-red plates of armour.

  Myzmadra dropped to one knee, aiming her charger at the Black Sentinel. He was ducking and weaving without rhythm or pattern.

  Good training, she thought. Very good.

  Three strides separated him from the open doors. She breathed out and pulled the trigger. The beam hit the running man in the small of the back and exploded through his torso. Myzmadra was up and running before the corpse hit the floor. The auxiliaries were sprinting next to her, now lugging the metal bulk of the two caskets.

  They cleared the doorway. Morhan was already at the door controls. The layers of plasteel began to slam shut. The auxiliaries were spreading out, covering the archways leading off the entrance chamber. They had left two wounded outside. There was no helping that; neither time nor circumstance was on their side.

  It was suddenly quiet, the blare of alarms and flash of warning lights shut out as the blast doors sealed. Ashul was already snapping the seals around the lid of one of the caskets.

  ‘Atmospheric protocols in force,’ she called over the vox. ‘Make sure your masks are sealed.’

  The lid came off the casket. Beneath it lay the corpse of a man. Dark veins marbled the pale skin of his face, and the green silk of his robes lay over his limbs. Pale mist coiled from inside as the coolant gases within met the warmer air of the chamber. Ashul reached in and yanked the corpse out onto the floor. Four quick movements, and two metal panels snapped free from the bottom of the casket. Beneath them, a dozen cylinders of brushed steel nestled in neat lines. Ashul began pulling out the cylinders, throwing them to Morhan and the auxiliaries.

  Myzmadra caught one. It was heavy and cold even through the padding of her gloves. She found the release trigger.

  ‘Stand by to arm and disperse on my order,’ she said into the vox.

  The Black Sentinels fired without warning. She had not even seen them approach. Las-fire snapped through the air. An auxiliary went down, a hole burned through his faceplate. Another was punched backwards off his feet. Myzmadra was moving and firing before any of the rest, snaking from side to side as she pulsed the volkite beam into the passage opening where the fire was coming from.

  ‘First section, release!’ she shouted. ‘Release now!’

  Silver cylinders flew over her head and crashed down into the passage openings. The hiss of releasing pressure cut through the sound of gunfire. A shot buzzed past her head from behind, so close it blurred her sight. She saw the splash of its impact and a figure slump from beside one of the entrances.

  ‘Nice shot,’ she snarled.

  ‘My pleasure,’ replied Ashul.

  The auxiliaries were firing back. Morhan was shouting at the section forwards.

  A fresh squall of las-fire breathed towards her, and she jinked aside. Her blood was singing with reaction enhancers. Her augmented heart was beating out a machine-gun rhythm. The Legion had given her many things, and taken much in return, but the full range of those gifts was something she rarely had the pleasure of using. The first passage opening was in front of her. A Black Sentinel crouched low in the lee of the arch, a carbine pointed dead at her. The face behind the sights was a lacquered mask of a grinning beast, its cheeks painted silver with swirled tears. The Sentinel began to squeeze the trigger. She snapped to the side. The muzzle of the carbine wavered and then flared. Las-bolts spat past her as she kicked from the floor.

  The auxiliary armour she wore was bulky, made to weather damage rather than allow the wearer to dodge it: not ideal, but still not a real hindrance. She struck the Black Sentinel in the chest with both feet. His chest-plate cracked beneath the impact. He cannoned into the passage wall as she landed. He rebounded without a pause and brought his gun up to fire. Myzmadra landed and rammed the barrel of her gun into his painted mask. The lacquer split. The man within sucked a breath, struggling to bring his weapon up to fire. The gas that was flooding through the air flowed in through the crack in his mask, and down into his lungs. He slumped to the floor, dead before the muscles of his legs had finished folding.

  The auxiliaries were storming into the passage openings. Myzmadra followed them, triggering the release on her canister.

  ‘Second section, release,’ she shouted, and threw the gas canister through an unsealed blast hatch.

  Five minutes later the gas had flooded the sanctuary. The ten astropaths of the choir lay on the floor of their communion chamber, utterly still, their mouths open in the act of taking their last breath.

  Myzmadra checked the last of them and then activated a new channel on her vox.

  ‘The blind are silent,’ she said. ‘Alpha to omega.’

  Three

  Warship Lachrymae

  Trans-Plutonian region

  The VII Legion strike fleet plunged into the ragged ships coming from the dark. The Imperial Fists were few – thirty against over a hundred, but the numbers did not matter. The thirty gold-and-black-armoured warships struck the ragged fleet in a tapered cone. Broadsides battered down the attackers’ few active void shields, and lances sliced at their engines. The enemy ships began to tumble, their momentum pushing them forwards even as they spun over and over.

  At the tip of the Imperial Fists’ formation, three ships cut between the enemy vessels. They were the Three Sisters of Spite, and at their head – trailing the fire of her engines like a wound cut across the dark – was the Lachrymae. Fire crashed after her and her sisters, cutting the empty void as she plunged deeper and deeper into the cloud of enemy ships. Behind her, her sisters began to loose boarding torpedoes. Schools of silver darts the size of hab spires slid from launch tubes on jets of flame. Each torpedo held a contingent of warriors in the rattling dark of its hollow core.

  In the belly of the Lachrymae, Sigismund stood in silence at the edge of the launch bay. The words of his oaths threaded through his mind, as he wrapped the links of chain around his wrist and pulled them tighter. The largest of the enemy ships grew in his eye, its shape projected across the eyepiece of his helm. It was vast, an ugly block of metal. Craters pitted one side of its hull, as though it had borne the brunt of a storm of asteroids. It was still a warship, though, no matter how wounded. Macro batteries fired down the vessel’s length even as Sigismund looked at it. A moment later he felt the Lachrymae tremble as it rode the edge of a blast wave.

  He tightened and fastened the last link of chain, and then raised his blade, feeling its balance settle in his grasp.

  ‘Is it secure enough yet that you will not drop it?’ growled a voice from behind him. He glanced, and in his clear eye the face of Rann grinned at him. His armour was clean, but the marks and dents of battle still marred the yellow lacquer.

  Sigismund nodded at Rann, but did not answer as he rose from where he had knelt on the deck. He looked behind h
im. A hundred Templars rose as one. Rann’s chosen – his head takers – stood in loose order beside them. The air rang as they beat their fists against their battered shields. The air was keening with the rising whine of engines. Servitors and serfs were moving back from the dozen gunships. Fuel lines were snapping free of wings. Heat was shimmering across the deck as thrusters lit.

  Sigismund looked at his strike force, moving his eyes across each legionary. Then he raised his sword in salute, turned and strode to the waiting gloom of his gunship. The warriors followed.

  ‘So, this is the day, brother,’ growled Rann from his shoulder, as they swung up the gunship’s assault ramp. He could hear the snarled grin in the words.

  Sigismund gestured, and the hatch began to close. The frame of the gunship began to tremble as it strained against its tethers.

  ‘Launch,’ he said into the vox. The sound of engines rose, and then gravity hammered through them as the gunship streaked out into the void.

  Primary communication array control,

  Hydra moon fortress Plutonian orbit

  ‘All systems and connectivity functioning within ordained tolerances.’

  Captain Koro of the Imperial Fists acknowledged the Primary Magos’ drone with a nod, but did not look up from the tactical displays.

  ‘Ensure that signal priority is given to fire coordination and the link with Lord Sigismund’s fleet.’

  ‘It is so commanded and ordained,’ clattered the magos from its place in the roof above Koro’s head.

  Twelve magi oversaw the operation of Hydra’s primary communication array. Suspended in webs of cable around the machine column at the centre of the chamber, wrapped in tattered, red shrouds, they resembled chrysalises hanging from the branches of a tree. They did not have individual names, and the designation ‘Primary’ shifted between them. Together they existed to oversee Hydra’s vast communication and sensor systems. Everything from vox communication, to fire-control coordination and auspex readings passed through these twelve. That data, and the systems which created it, were dispersed across the moon, but this was the point through which all data had to flow. Sited beneath the dish of the largest array, it was a quiet place for all of the voices that passed through it.

  Koro glanced at his sergeant. Ten of his company elite were with him in the control chamber, silent and watching from the edges of the walls.

  ‘Full lockdown is complete?’

  ‘Yes, captain. One ship docked before the lockdown, a monitor craft bearing astropaths from Terra. But all other traffic has ceased.’

  ‘Good,’ Koro said, and moved his gaze to where the dull grey of plasteel blast shutters closed off the view of the moon’s surface.

  Jutting out from the crust of structures, the array control had clear sight into the void. Sometimes you could see the light of the fleet engaging if they were close. Koro had watched from here many times as his brothers fought in the void. This time though... he had heard the words of the alert signal.

  Fire on the mountains.

  He felt his fingers flex without consciously willing them to, and realised he had bared his teeth at the shuttered view.

  An alert light blinked at the edge of his sight. He frowned and turned, as one of the servitors wired into the banks of consoles turned its face from side to side, like a dog sniffing the air.

  ‘External sensors detecting movement on surface,’ droned the servitor.

  ‘Which zone?’ asked Koro.

  The servitor twitched, mouth chewing the air, and then spoke.

  ‘This zone. Primary communication array exterior.’

  Koro’s eyes locked on the blast shutters. Cold slid across his skin. His hearts skipped into a lower rhythm as he drew his weapons. His command squad were already moving, weapons lowered, fanning out across the chamber.

  ‘Give me the status of the exterior auto weapons,’ he called.

  ‘Exterior weapons eleven through twenty-four are reading as active, but not responding to direct command.’

  ‘Get me a visual–’

  The shutters blew inwards.

  Koro’s helmet visor dimmed with the flash of the explosion. His world seemed to pause, the blast unfolding before him with all the gradual delicacy of a slowed pict-feed. A point in the centre of a shutter glowed red, then yellow, then white. The glow of heat raced across the grey metal as the centre bulged inwards, and then burst. A hollow cone of blue-hot liquid reached inwards. Servitors and machines ignited beneath its path. A shock wave formed in concentric rings, shimmering as they distorted the air.

  Time snapped back into full flow. The blast hit Koro and slammed him backwards. Heat blew through the front layers of his armour. His helmet display became a cascade of red damage runes. Debris and glowing pellets of metal spun through the air. Servitors and blocks of machinery ripped from the floor. Koro hit a pillar, spun to the deck and rose in time to see the first figure come through the breach in the shutters.

  Bolt-rounds were spitting across the chamber as the air rushed out into the void. Warriors of his command squad were already firing into the glowing wound. Koro braced to fire.

  A shape came through the breach. It moved so fast that Koro saw only a blur of cold, blue armour and a flash of a blade cutting the light of gunfire. The spear struck him below the sternum, punching through armour and up through his left heart. He fell, his sight a blur, his throat filling with his own blood as he tried to rise.

  A figure stood above him, holding the spear transfixing his chest. The pressure down the blade was like the weight of a mountain, though the armoured figure seem relaxed, as though he were doing nothing but resting his hand on the weapon’s haft. Koro noted the indigo-blue of the armour and the hydra coiling over one shoulder guard.

  Alpha... Legion... he thought, his mind struggling to focus as his body fought to stay alive. The figure pulled the spear free and was gone. Gunfire streaked the air above him. He could hear the sound of detonations and the shriek of a meltagun rising above the rush of escaping atmosphere. Then the gunfire slackened, and suddenly the sound of battle ceased. Somehow that sudden quiet was worse than anything else.

  He pushed himself up. His remaining heart was still beating, struggling to pump blood even as it poured out of him. His armour was critically damaged, a dead weight on his failing frame. Above him the twelve tech-priests hung in their cocoons of cables. Corpses covered the floor, servitors blasted to shreds of meat and metal, and amongst them figures clad in yellow power armour. Blood sheened them all, pumping free from the stumps of severed limbs and punctured torsos. Four Alpha Legion warriors stood in the ruin, three of them moving amongst the dead, eyes and weapons searching for signs of life. The figure with the spear stood still at the centre of the carnage.

  ‘Remove them,’ said the warrior, looking up at the magi suspended from the ceiling. The other Alpha Legion turned and fired into the twelve tech-priests. Bolt shells ripped through cables and red robes. Black oil and blood spilled down, pattering on the metal deck.

  Koro had his bolter in his hand. That fact was all that mattered – not the blood that was filling his lungs, not the shame of failure, not the shock of the enemy he was facing.

  ‘Find the back-up controls for the array,’ said the warrior with the spear, his voice carrying over the howl of escaping air. ‘Send the signal to the attack fleet that the time has come for us to show our hand.’

  ‘By your will, Lord Alpharius,’ said one of the others with a nod.

  Alpharius. The thought began then ended as Koro cut it away. All that mattered was lifting his bolter and squeezing the trigger, just as he had countless times before.

  The gun came up, steady in Koro’s bloody hand.

  Alpharius turned, moving and spinning the spear. A blur of silver and blue was the last thing that Koro saw.

  Unknown intruder vessel

  Trans-Neptun
ian region

  ‘Breach!’ roared Rann, as the melta charge detonated. Droplets of glowing metal sprayed out as the bulkhead door dissolved. Sigismund came through into the space beyond. A thick spray of hard rounds greeted him. He charged. The streaked walls of the passageway were a blur at the edge of his sight. Figures loomed in his helmet display, sketched in the monochrome of dark-vision. He saw bloated muscle beneath blank iron masks and machine-braced limbs wrapped around rotor cannons. The nearest figure dragged the barrel towards him. Rounds danced across the deck as Sigismund leapt across the distance. He took the masked figure with a back-handed blow that carved through its mask, and sliced through the skull and brain beneath. The figure fell backwards, rotor cannon shrieking as its spinning barrels hit the deck. Sigismund was already past the corpse, turning momentum from his kill stroke into a rising cut that took the next enemy in the side, and tore up through its torso.

  Rann was beside him, axes hacking and weaving, as they advanced down the corridor. They were already deep within the intruder ship, and there was no doubt that it was hostile. But something was wrong, something that itched down his muscles even as he carved through those who came to face them. There was something dulled, almost clinical about the ship. They had taken hundreds of intruder ships in the last years, and their insides had crawled with the signs of madness. Not this ship, though. Its darkness was cold and empty, as though it were a skin over something unseen.

  ‘Lord Sigismund.’ The voice sounded in his helm, laden with static from its journey across the void from the Lachrymae and through layers of hull armour.

  ‘Speak,’ replied Sigismund, pulling his sword free of a corpse. The corridor was clear, the sound of gunfire and crack of weapons suddenly absent. Darkness and silence stretched ahead of him.

  ‘Boarding groups across the battlesphere are reporting moderate resistance. But some have found nothing.’

  ‘Explain,’ he commanded.

  ‘Fifteen of the enemy ships are empty, zero resistance – engines running, but no sign of crew besides servitors.’