by John French
‘Move the homer in. We need to be done and clear of here fast.’
‘This is it?’ said Ashul as he stepped through the hatch. ‘This is a lot of emptiness to have as a key objective.’
‘It’s a volatile munitions vault,’ she said, eyes still scanning the gloom. ‘Near impregnable once sealed. Vox can’t even get through without a link.’
‘I know what it is. It just seems a strange place to set up a teleport homer. We have just spent a long time shutting down the teleport jammers built into this place. I mean, why would we want to shunt troops through the immaterium and then have them appear, very precisely, here?’
‘Who says it’s for our troops?’
‘Oh...’
‘Get set up,’ she said, looking around as Morhan and another auxiliary lugged the second casket through the door. The dead astropath was long gone from inside, and the panels beneath peeled back to reveal the equipment within. ‘We don’t have long.’
Plutonian orbit
The Alpha Legion fleet twisted around Pluto and squeezed tight. At the instant that Hydra fell, Silonius’ fleet had split into three distinct parts.
In the gulf beyond the system edge, eighty warships had spiralled around the Imperial Fists vessels as they came about and clawed back towards Pluto’s orbit. The afterglows from the fireships’ detonations were spreading and changing colour, like bruises left on the skin of space. Fire and debris bled from the Imperial Fists ships. Blades of macro fire cut to and from them, latticing the dark.
Closing with the moons of Pluto was the swarm of intruder ships that had drawn the defenders out. The wrecks of their sisters lay in their wake, sacrificed to the Imperial Fists guns.
The main Alpha Legion assault fleet cut through the sphere of orbit. One hundred and fifty-six warships followed the Alpha into the curve of Pluto’s gravity well. They swept past Hydra, pausing to drop troops into the already stricken station. That task done, the fleet bore down on the next fortress moon in its path. Nix poured munitions into the path of the warships, and fire churned the darkness around the Alpha Legion vessels.
For a moment it looked as though they would have to run the gauntlet of the wall of fire, as they had with Kerberos; but then Kerberos itself emerged from behind the bulk of Pluto and fired on its sibling moon. Ordnance hammered into Nix’s surface, burning through its crust and breaking scabs of armour from its bastions. Its own batteries fired back, and the space between the two moons became a bridge of burning light.
If the garrison of Nix had hoped for help from Styx and Charon, their hopes guttered even as Kerberos mauled them. Hydra had poured contradictory firing and target information into the communications network. Commands to treat the attackers as friendly, different firing orders and competing priorities warred for attention. It took the fortress seneschals and tech-priests on Styx, Charon and Nix several minutes to sift the false from the real, and give true firing orders. Not long, but long enough for the Alpha Legion strike fleet to close and launch a wave of assault craft. Kerberos switched fire as the gunships and torpedoes powered towards Nix, and its fleet-breaking firepower began to hammer into the surface of the next fortress moon.
In the outer layers of Nix, the Imperial Fists and their vassals were waiting as the torpedoes crashed through armour and rock. The tips of the torpedoes blew open, blasting molten armour and stone through vaulted chambers and passages. Bolt-rounds hammered out from firing points to greet the warriors who emerged from the torpedoes. They stepped into the light, the deep, iridescent blue of their armour stark in the blinking flare of gunfire. They were the Lernaeans, the teeth of the hydra, and they had come to claim the kill for their Legion. Each squad raised their weapons as one, reaper cannons arming, chargers activating with a buzz like the promise of a lightning strike.
Out in the deep dark of one half-dead enemy vessel, First Captain Sigismund emerged from the mouth of a passage. Blood covered his armour and tabard, daubing him in gloss shades of red and orange.
‘Get everything back to the fortress moons,’ he shouted as soon as his vox came in range of the Lachrymae.
And the reply that stole the feeling from his limbs came from far Hydra, cutting through vox-traffic with a rasp of cold static.
‘Pluto has fallen,’ it said. ‘You are broken. You are alone.’
Imperial Fists frigate Unbreakable Truth
Orbital approach, Hydra
Archamus watched the moon grow ever closer. Stitches of light crossed his helmet display. Drifts of burning gas cloaked Hydra’s surface. He blinked the display away. Pillars of machinery rose around him, aching with growing power. Static was spidering up his bionic limbs. The teleport chamber seemed to crowd around him, high walls and ceiling pulling close as though both were suddenly nearer than they should be. His squad ringed him, helmeted, shields and weapons ready. His teeth began to ache. A high-pitched whine grew in the air. Neon worms skipped across the metal disc beneath his feet.
‘Strike force gunships ready to launch,’ said Magos Chayo’s voice, the vox chopping the words into sharp bursts of noise. ‘I have done my best to conceal our approach using the manifold instances of macro destruction and ordnance deployment occurring, but at some point they are going to notice us.’
‘Will we be in range at that point?’
‘Very probably. In fact we should be at optimal launch and teleportation displacement location in fifty-six seconds.’ Chayo paused. ‘Presuming that the ship is not annihilated by enemy fire in that time.’
‘Good,’ said Archamus. ‘You have my command to activate the teleporter and launch Kestros’ gunships.’
‘By your will.’
‘And, Chayo...’
‘Yes, Honoured Master Huscarl?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Twenty seconds,’ said a machine voice from the dark. The pillars began to glow. Cords of lightning flicked into the air. Archamus’ skin felt as though needles were pushing out from beneath its surface.
In other circumstances he would have spoken, would have cast his voice across the vox to his brothers waiting in the dark of the gunships or standing beside him. But now, at this moment, he said nothing. They did not need words, and he had none to give. Not now, not as they all stood on the precipice.
You are old, he thought, old and worn by war. But I will not fail in this. I will not submit to it.
A face emerged from memory. The face of a youth who would never grow to be a warrior, the face of the brother in blood, and then it became the tattooed face of a man who had sat in the dark with him in another life that now seemed a dream.
‘That is why I chose you, Kye,’ said the face in the forgotten dream.
‘Approaching launch terminus in three, two, o–’
Brightness. Blue-white.
A lightning strike that swallowed sight and sound.
Cold blood. Dead sound.
Blackness.
And then a flash of colour and shape, and the feeling of falling without moving.
Silence wrapped around him.
He blinked and sight came back. The chamber walls rose above him, steel spreading up to a vaulted ceiling. High banks of machines marched away into the quiet gloom. Lights winked and flickered across a block of machinery on the floor. Antennae rose from its sides, and the air above it shimmered.
‘Teleport homer,’ said the Techmarine, moving from the rest of the squad. He was called Nucrio. Archamus had brought him to deal with the moon’s reactor controls. Now he bent down beside the homer, head tilting to the side as he examined the cluster of machinery. ‘Pulled us right onto its beacon. We are a long way off target.’
‘Kestros,’ Archamus said, triggering the long-range vox. ‘Chayo, do you hear me?’
Flat static filled his ear in answer.
‘This is a shielded vault,’ said Nucrio. ‘Signals will not be able
to get in or out.’
Spirals of warp smoke rose from the shoulders of his squad as they divided into trios and moved outwards, shields raised, gun muzzles tracking the quiet shadows. Archamus paused by the teleport beacon. The lights blinked on its casing.
Pulse-pulse... Pulse-pulse...
Pulse...
‘Disperse,’ said Archamus. His skin was still prickling from the teleportation, but underneath that he could feel ice running through his skin. ‘Find an exit. Maximum caution.’
Hydra moon fortress
Plutonian orbit
‘Stand ready,’ said Kestros. The gunship’s internal lights blinked red, and the assault hatches peeled back. All sound vanished. Harsh white light flared across his sight. His jump pack cycled to life. The surface of Hydra turned beneath him. Grey towers, armoured domes and spires of aerials flicked past as the gunship dived. Three other craft hugged its wings. Explosions burst high overhead, but this close to the moon’s skin the defence turrets were silent. The Alpha Legion’s taking of Hydra had stolen its ability to defend against a small incursion force, but once they were inside their target it would be very different.
The gunship banked hard, wings trailing a skin of mist through the moon’s thin atmosphere. The main communication array loomed above them, the arc of its dish cutting into the fire-streaked black of the sky. At the base of the array sat the primary communication control. Kestros’ eyes found the blackened hole blown in the armoured shutters.
‘Explosive entry,’ he said into the vox. ‘It seems you were correct in your assessment of how they took the moon.’
‘Of course,’ came Andromeda’s reply.
The gunships spun closer. G-force thumped through the fuselage as they banked tight around the array.
A rune began to pulse amber at the edge of Kestros’ helmet display. The array was so close it felt as though he could touch it. The rune snapped to green.
He leapt from the gunship. For a second he spiralled, his momentum pushing him on as the moon’s weak gravity caught him. Then he fired his jump pack. Twin tongues of flame breathed from his back and slammed him into a dive. His weapons were in his hands. Behind him, his brothers followed, spiralling in his wake as they dived from the gunships.
The wall of the control centre grew closer, filling his vision. The hole in the blast shutters was a widening mouth into darkness. He triggered the jump pack’s maximum thrust. Force crashed through his body. Blood pulled away from his head and chest, even as his second heart fought it. He triggered his chainsword. Vibration trembled up his sword arm. The breach in the blast shutters came up to meet him, and for an instant he felt that he was frozen – balanced on a point between the starlight and the blackness that lay beyond.
He burst through the breach. He had an instant to form an impression of the circular chamber and banked machines. A burst of gunfire reached up and punched him from the air. He fell, hit the deck, and the thrust of his jump pack yanked him into a block of machinery with the force of a Titan’s kick. His helmet display flashed red with damage runes. Jagged edges of broken armour cut into his flesh. He cut the jump pack as he rolled and came to his feet.
His eyes found a target, a warrior in scaled armour, and he was sprinting forwards, bolt pistol firing, shells exploding across the warrior’s shoulders, shredding silver trim and blue lacquer. The warrior flinched aside, brought his boltgun up and fired. Kestros’ chainsword struck as the first bolt shell kicked from the muzzle. The spinning teeth cut through the warrior’s wrist joint and ripped down through skin, muscle and bone. The boltgun spun away, tumbling with recoil. The Alpha Legion warrior staggered, but the loss of a hand did not slow him. He rammed the crown of his helm into Kestros’ faceplate, and his helmet display cut out. Kestros spun back, instinctively, and felt something sharp slash across his throat.
Blood began to run. Atmosphere hissed from the slit in his neck armour.
His visor display blinked back on. He could taste the air in his helm thinning. The warrior was in front of him, a dagger in his remaining hand. Kestros cut, slashing his chainsword across the legionnaire’s face. The warrior swayed back, the chain teeth snarling as they spun through air, then snapped forwards, muscle and momentum focused behind the tip of the dagger. Kestros slammed the muzzle of his bolt pistol into the warrior’s throat and pulled the trigger. Bolt shells ripped out, sawing the warrior’s head from his body in a shower of detonations. Kestros was already past the corpse as it fell, firing and hacking into the next enemy.
The chamber was a blur of blue and yellow armour, of blades and gunfire. His eyes moved through every detail even as he cut and fired, and the air hissed from his helm. There were only a handful of Alpha Legion in the control centre. Three or four at most. They were good, but they would not stand against the thirty Imperial Fists facing them. And he could see no sign of their target.
By the breach, Andromeda was climbing down to the floor, her movements slowed by the bulk of her void suit. Dragged behind her was Incarnus, his limbs bound to his sides, floating in a suspensor net.
‘Andromeda,’ he said, his voice a hiss in the draining air of his helm. ‘The target, is he here? Is Alpharius here?’
Andromeda moved closer to Incarnus, and he heard the crackle of static.
‘No, he is not, but the turncoat says that he can read something in the surface thoughts of the others.’
‘What?’
‘He was here, and he knew someone would come for him. They are ready.’
Kestros felt numbness spread through him, even as he ducked aside from a burst of gunfire and raised his pistol to fire a reply.
‘Reach Master Archamus,’ he said. ‘He must–’
‘I have tried,’ she cut him off. ‘There is no reply.’
Storage Vault 278, Hydra moon fortress
Plutonian orbit
Archamus let the static buzz in his ear for a second before cutting it off. The storage vault was still quiet.
‘The exit hatches are sealed, lord,’ said Nucrio. ‘The lock mechanisms have been overridden.’
‘Can you break them?’
‘Yes, but not quickly.’
‘Begin.’
‘Lord,’ came the voice of one of the other squad members, ‘there is something–’
A sound like silk rippling flicked through the air. Archamus turned, eyes focusing on the direction the sound had come from, boltgun ready.
‘Squad, converge on chamber,’ he said into the vox. He heard a blurt of static from the vox and then the sound again. No reply came from the vox. He turned his head slowly, vision cycling between threat displays. Nothing. Just the low hum of active power armour diluting the silence.
Archamus lit Oathword’s power field. Lightning wreathed the mace’s head. He was perfectly still, his senses stretching into the stillness of the chamber.
There was a blur at the edge of his sight. He began to turn.
The spear struck him in the chest. The blade passed through his armour without a sound.
Coldness whipped through his torso. He felt blood gush into his throat. Black smoke was rising from the wound as armour and flesh dissolved. Alpharius stood in front of him, holding the spear steady in his chest. The primarch’s head was bare, his eyes dark and without feeling. Archamus gripped his mace and willed it to rise.
Alpharius ripped the spear blade back. Blood and vapour poured from the wound, and Archamus felt himself fall as numbness spread through his body.
He hit the ground, breath bubbling from between his lips. Alpharius looked down at him.
‘Poor Archamus. I wondered which bait my brother would take, but it seems that he has left you to die in his place.’
Primary communication array control,
Hydra moon fortress, Plutonian orbit
‘Is his vox active?’ Kestros snarled as a burst of gunfire chewed into
the machine stack above him. He subconsciously counted the rounds and timing, and rose and fired back as the volley slackened. His squad moved past him, firing their bolt pistols in perfect synchronicity. Bolt-rounds burst in the open door from one of the entrances to the control room. He saw one warrior reel, the front of his armour shredding, before he was up and running forwards.
The Alpha Legion counter-assault had come within seconds of them taking the control room. Kestros and his brothers were engaging enemies in three directions. He had already lost five of his command in scant moments. That the Unbreakable Truth was still active somewhere out in the void, and in vox contact, was a small point of light in a darkening situation.
‘Negative,’ said Chayo in his ear. ‘I have lost all contact with Lord Archamus and his squad. Aetheric sensors detect that the station is alive with teleport jamming and distortion signals. If it seemed plausible I would say that they knew someone would try to teleport aboard and pulled them to an individual location.’
Kestros let out a breath as he reloaded his bolt pistol. He thought of all of the things that Andromeda and Archamus had said about the Alpha Legion: lies within lies, deception within deception, traps within traps.
He turned and looked at where Andromeda and the captured psyker, Incarnus, sheltered from the gunfire behind a bank of machinery. The psyker was looking at him, the iris-less eyes pale behind the transparent visor of his void suit. Incarnus smiled, pupils dark pinpricks in white.
‘This was a trap,’ Kestros said across the vox. ‘We did not follow them here. They led us.’ Andromeda’s head jerked up as she heard his words. Then she froze, her face still inside her visor, mouth and eyes open, as though she were a still pict image. Frost spread across her suit.
Alpha to omega,+ said Incarnus’ voice inside Kestros’ skull.
Kestros tried to raise his pistol, but frost was climbing his arm, and his limbs wouldn’t move. Pain lanced into his skull.
