by John French
I was of the Crimson Walkers,+ said a voice inside his skull. +Did you honestly think that a psy-clamp could hold me?+
Kestros felt his gun arm begin to rise, but now it was not his will that moved it. Pain coiled down his arms as invisible cords yanked his muscles into movement. Around him, the rest of his squad were still moving, oblivious as they fought. He poured his will against the presence in his skull. Blood was running from his tear ducts.
The Luna witch is right. You really are very simple creatures.+
‘The Luna witch is also stood close enough to do this,’ said Andromeda. Incarnus spun, as Andromeda brought her knife up into his gut. Incarnus gasped, blood splattering the inside of his visor. Kestros felt his limbs unlock and aimed his bolt pistol.
‘Get clear!’ he shouted. Andromeda ripped the knife free and leapt back. Kestros fired. A bolt hit Incarnus in the chest and ripped his torso into shreds. Scraps of void suit and bone pattered against the banks of machines.
He looked up at Andromeda and tilted his head in question.
‘The Alpha Legion are not the only ones with secrets,’ she said.
‘What–’ began Kestros, but Chayo’s voice cut him off.
‘Something is happening.’ Static boiled up. ‘...fleet...’
‘Repeat,’ shouted Kestros. ‘What is the strength of the enemy fleet?’
A burst of gunfire hit him from his right as more Alpha Legion warriors came from a passage opening. He gunned his chainsword and leapt towards them. Chayo’s voice was a static-cut shout in his ears.
‘...the fleet is...’
His feet shook the floor. His armour sang with the kiss of shrapnel.
‘The fleet is ours.’
Blood was iron in his mouth, and he could see the enemy, dark-armoured silhouettes behind the veil of flame.
And then Chayo’s voice came again, though what he said seemed utterly impossible.
‘The Phalanx is here.’
Plutonian orbit
The Phalanx came from the trans-Neptunian gulf like a comet. She was the largest ship that had ever served mankind. Others had made warships that tried to rival her size: the Vengeful Spirit, the Furious Abyss and the Iron Blood. None, though, could match the flagship of the Imperial Fists. A fortress set to move amongst the stars, she possessed enough firepower to destroy fleets and break empires. Fortress clusters crowned her bulk, rising in black stone and gilded metal. Vast cannons extended from her spine. Tiers of weapon batteries and launch bays marched down her flanks. Within her heart rode thousands of Imperial Fists, and tens of thousands of mortal soldiers. Alone she was a sight that had brought civilisations to surrender.
But she was not alone.
The Monarch of Fire cut through the night. Plumes of plasma trailed from vents on her prow and cage-topped towers. Arcs of blue lightning wreathed her guns as they built charge. Within her hull, reactors – which were a mystery even to the highest initiates of the Machine Cult – poured raw plasma into the cannons that studded her prow. Vast doors peeled back along her flanks. Racks of bombardment launchers slid into the starlight. In any other fleet she would have been a queen of devastation, but in the armada of Rogal Dorn she was the herald to her monarch.
Behind the two great ships an armada followed. Battle-barges, grand cruisers, destroyers, gun barques and frigates cut the night into shreds with the fire of their engines.
All of them had been travelling on momentum from the inner system. Slingshotted through the Solar System’s competing gravity wells, they had arrived at the system edge unseen by both Pluto’s garrison and the Alpha Legion. Now they lit their engines and fell from the dark like burning arrows.
The Phalanx and the Monarch fired as one. Three Alpha Legion ships ceased to exist. Spherical explosions blinked into being. Waves of force and energy rippled out. Gunships launched from the Phalanx, a cloud of black-and-gold specks, spreading out and out. The ships circling Pluto slid on, frozen in movement, trapped in an instant of shock. And then the Phalanx fired again. Void shields collapsed across multiple targets. Fresh clouds of fire added to those already glowing like bright inks poured into clear water. Guns roared and roared, fire pouring into the dark without pause. Light flared and strobed as hulls tore and reactors poured their life energy into the vacuum.
Kerberos hurled macro shells and las-fire at the Phalanx. Its layered shields flared with rainbow colours as they burst. Stone bastions shattered. Stone and corpses spun away from it, burning in the wash of energy. The Phalanx bled, but held its fire from Kerberos. Smaller ships darted forwards, turbo lasers reducing the fortress moon’s defence batteries to glowing craters. Bombers swarmed Kerberos, spinning around the torrents of fire pouring from the stronghold.
Light blistered Kerberos’ face. Its batteries fell silent. Targeting arrays became slag, and guns became blind. The assault craft ran into the gaps in the fortress moon’s defences. Storm Eagles flew down canyons gouged in the rock, scattering assault troops from their doors. Breaching pods slammed into the surface, bit through and poured Terminators and breacher units into the warren of tunnels beneath. The Lernaeans met them, and the gloom roared with the scream of chainfists and the howl of volkite beams.
In the gulf beyond Pluto, Sigismund’s fleet pulled free of the tangle of Alpha Legion ships as the Monarch of Fire plunged into them. The Three Sisters of Spite spiralled in the great ship’s wake.
And within Pluto’s orbit, the Phalanx moved with unhurried brutality, an empress of war walking her domain, cloaked in the gold and red of destruction, the light of her guns the glitter of jewels in her crown.
Before her lay Hydra.
Five
Storage Vault 278, Hydra moon fortress
Plutonian orbit
‘You are alive.’
Archamus heard the voice. There was a taste in his mouth, not iron but ozone. His eyelids trembled...
Pain.
A world of sharpness and brightness, and needles and knives. And though his eyes would not open he knew that the chirurgeon rig would be there above him, holding his ribs open as it lowered another portion of his new self into his flesh.
‘One of your hearts is still beating. I can hear it.’
He could feel the pulse, each beat a bladed thread pulling through his veins, each second redder and brighter than the last.
‘Survival is unlikely. I am sorry for that. You deserved better. We all deserved better.’
His eyelids moved.
‘Kinder to cut your throat, but this is not a kind age.’
Air sucked into his lungs, and he felt his last heart’s hammer. The world was a white sphere, holding him, keeping him still, burning him from within and without. He could not go on. It was too much. He was defeated.
‘I...’ he said, the word surprising him as it came from his lips. ‘I... will... not... submit.’
‘No, you will not. That was always your Legion’s problem. Your flaw, and your virtue. I admire it. I always have.’
Something in the words was not right. His eyes opened, and the present poured in.
Alpharius stood above him, bare-faced, looking down, a double-ended spear in his hand, the edges of the blades seeming like shadows cast in smoke.
‘Your secondary assault force is contained and in the process of being slaughtered. Within two hours Pluto and all of its moons will be ours, and no one will know. If any other attempts what you have attempted, they will die here. These are facts.’
‘Pride...’ hissed Archamus, pulling the word from his throat even as his vision swam. Alpharius tilted his head to one side, as though in question. ‘Your flaw, but... not your virtue.’
Alpharius laughed, the sound an echo in the quiet. He looked as though he was about to say something else, but then stopped. Archamus heard the click of the vox in Alpharius’ armour activating and realised that the primarch
must be connected to a link within the vault. Alpharius listened, his face set.
‘Let them get within teleport range,’ he said, but his words were for whoever was on the other end of the vox. ‘Then turn the jammers on.’
His eyes flicked down to Archamus.
‘He is here,’ he said, and stepped back next to the machinery of the teleport beacon.
A wind rose in the vault’s still air. Drops of Archamus’ blood rose from the floor. Bright worms of static ran up the walls. Pressure was building inside Archamus’ skull. His skin felt like fire inside his armour. Alpharius raised his head. Shreds of luminous ash formed and fell. Black cracks ran through the air. The pressure in the Huscarl’s skull was the beat of a hammer.
Reality split. Lightning-bright lines cut into the air. Starlight burst outwards. Pressure waves ripped through the chamber.
A circle of golden-yellow figures stood above him, the plates of their Terminator armour fuming pale light. Clenched fists of jet sat on their shoulders. Emerald laurels circled the black skulls on their chests, and silver lightning bolts crossed their pauldrons in echo of their warrior ancestors who had unified Terra. Archamus knew each of them, recognised them even through the layers of Indomitus-pattern plate and the blur of his failing sight. They were his brothers, the Huscarls of whom he was master. And at their centre stood the only other being besides the Emperor who could bring them to battle.
Archamus found a breath come to his lips, and the numbness in his limbs and the pain in his chest receded.
‘Lord...’ he rasped, and the limbs that had refused to move until now, and the flesh that had failed his command, pulled him to his knees, and then to his feet.
Rogal Dorn stood, head bare, flanked by his warrior sons, the gold of his armour luminous with warp smoke, blood rubies glittering in the claws of silver eagles. Black eyes glinted in a face of hard control and harsh shadow.
From across the chamber Alpharius met his brother’s gaze.
‘There are things that we should talk of, brother,’ said Alpharius.
Dorn’s face did not move.
‘Fire,’ he said.
The Huscarls fired. Light and bolt-rounds sheeted out, rattling from barrels. Light flashed through the dark as the gunfire slammed into fields that had snapped into place around Alpharius. Blinding whiteness filled the chamber as the shields flashed under the impacts.
Archamus forced every sensation down, every feeling of weakness, every shred of agony and forced himself forwards. The flaring light met his helmet lenses, and his sight vanished in a blur of stars and static. He reached up and yanked the helmet free. The air reeked of explosions and ozone. There was blood. Blood pouring from him, pooling inside his armour, falling on the deck as he staggered on towards his lord and brothers.
Alpharius was nowhere to be seen. The Huscarls advanced. Archamus could tell from their movements that they were half blind from the light of their shields. The Huscarls kept moving, Dorn at their head, bolters firing as one. The rolling thunder of teleportation blended with the roar of gunfire, as huge figures materialised in the chamber.
Archamus was on his feet. Around him two tides of armour slammed together, golden and blue. Huscarls and Lernaeans crashed into combat, blades shrieking as they bit into armour. Dorn swept forwards, and all Archamus could see was the blurred arc of Storm’s Teeth, rising and falling, blood and sparks and shredded metal. A Lernaean flew back, a bloody canyon in his chest. Another stepped forwards, and the tip of the chainblade met his faceplate and bored into the skull beneath. Shards of metal and bone sprayed out as Dorn lifted the Terminator from the floor and then ripped the blade free. The next blow was falling before the corpse hit the floor.
The Huscarls moved with him in a wedge, hammer blows falling, false thunder pealing. The Lernaeans tore into them. A chainfist sliced into a Huscarl’s chest. Enamelled leaves fell as diamond teeth chewed through the honour laurel and into the armour and flesh beneath. A warrior with a saurian helm of tarnished silver punched the fingers of a lightning claw into a Huscarl and ripped the warrior in half with an explosion of lightning. Sheets of volkite discharge stained the air red.
And suddenly Alpharius was amongst the killing tide, his attacks not following rhythm or pattern. One instant he was in the front rank, the Pale Spear orbiting him, its blade a blur of blood and smoke as it cut through armour and limbs – the next he was retreating and lashing out as the Huscarls moved into the space. Then he was pressing close, hacking and stabbing like the butchers of the World Eaters, then piercing a throat with a thrust that was as light as a breath of wind.
Dorn drove into the Lernaeans, red spattering his face, Storm’s Teeth shedding blood. Then, with a suddenness that halted the shallow breath in Archamus’ throat, Alpharius’ spear thrust up from the press of ranks. Its tip shimmered, silver reflection fading to mist, and Archamus thought that the sound fled from his ears, as it drove at his lord’s chest.
It was a beautiful strike. In all his years of war Archamus had never seen the like, its simplicity like a line drawn by a master artisan on a bare parchment. It was death and ruin, and silence without end...
And Storm’s Teeth met the spear thrust, and reality shrieked. A sheet of silver sparks exploded from the point at which the two weapons met. Alpharius and Dorn stood before each other, and it was as though the universe made space for this meeting of brothers.
‘I came here for you, Rogal,’ said Alpharius as he slid back, spear spinning. Dorn was cutting again and again, and each blow churned the air. ‘This is about victory. True victory.’
A Lernaean stepped into Dorn’s path. Storm’s Teeth cut up through the torso of the Terminator. Gut fluid and blood gushed out, as the dead flesh and armour fell. The Lernaeans and Huscarls were a shrinking circle around the two primarchs.
‘Look at this. Look at what I have done here. This is not a war you can win your way,’ called Alpharius. Dorn stood before him, and the spear was suddenly still as his brother loomed above him, a sculpture of vengeance cast in gold. Dorn sliced downwards. Alpharius raised the spear. The weapons clashed, and suddenly the Alpha Legion primarch was spinning close, Storm’s Teeth arcing past him harmlessly. ‘But you are blind to what you are fighting. We are both fighting for the future, Rogal.’
Alpharius lunged. Dorn jerked aside, blink-fast. The spear-tip caught his shoulder and punched through the golden armour. Dorn staggered.
Archamus roared, breath ripping from his lungs as he plunged towards his primarch. A Lernaean slashed at him with lightning-wreathed talons. He brought his pistol up and emptied the clip into the warrior’s face and chest. Explosions punched the Terminator back. Archamus dropped the pistol and drew his seax. The wide-bladed sword slid free of its scabbard and rammed into the Lernaean’s throat. Archamus wrenched it back, feeling the edge catch on bone as blood gushed over his bionic arm.
‘I did this so that you would understand,’ shouted Alpharius. ‘So that you would see that you cannot win. I am not here to kill you, brother. I am not here for Horus. I am here to give you victory.’
Dorn was a stride in front of Archamus, blood bright and scattering as he wrenched free of Alpharius’ spear. The Huscarls fell, their legs cut out beneath them as Alpharius spun wide, spear arcing low like a scythe through long grass. And now Dorn stood alone, blood running down the gold of his armour.
‘I know the enemy,’ said Alpharius. ‘I know your weakness, and theirs. I know the truth.’
Dorn stepped forwards, Storm’s Teeth slamming down, battering into the spear blade in a blaze of light. Alpharius slipped to the side, and Dorn turned the direction of his cut as it fell. But Alpharius was not where his movement should have taken him. He was behind Dorn’s cut, the blade of his spear slicing down.
‘I can give you victory, brother,’ Alpharius urged him again.
Dorn swayed aside, and the spear blade skimmed hi
s chest. Slivers of gold and silver feathers fell to the deck, and Alpharius was overextended, and Dorn was turning, his strength flowing into a wide lateral cut that would never land.
It would never land, because in that instant Archamus saw what was about to happen. Alpharius was not overextended; he was exactly where he needed to be to turn past Dorn’s blow and make another, last, perfect thrust with his spear.
Archamus felt his blood-drained body try to move faster, try to push itself across the few metres separating him from the lord, whose life and service were the reason he did not fear.
Dorn cut. Storm’s Teeth blurred. Alpharius swayed back, pivoting and sliding a hair’s breadth past the screaming edge.
Archamus lunged to his lord’s side, his seax blade reaching for the spear thrust even as it unfolded. His blade caught the haft of Alpharius’ spear, and the force of the connection kicked through his metal arm like the kiss of a lightning bolt. Archamus reeled back staggering to the deck.
And the spear struck home. It rammed through Dorn’s armour and into the flesh.
And stopped.
Dorn stood, unmoved, the spear embedded in his shoulder where he had stepped in to take the blow. His left hand was locked around the spear’s haft. For an instant the two primarchs were an arm’s reach apart, eye to eye.
‘Brother–’ Alpharius began.
And Dorn hacked Storm’s Teeth through Alpharius’ arms above the wrists.
Blood and sparks fell in the flash of gunfire. The world became a slow-sliding tableau of movement.
Dorn’s face, cold stone, marked with blood and strobing shadows as he pulled the spear from his shoulder. Alpharius staggering, lashing out with a kick.
Another cut, scything from left to right. Storm’s Teeth ripping armour like parchment.
Red gloss sheen on indigo-blue, and a demigod falling, his torso an open cave of meat and bone. The only sound the growl of Storm’s Teeth and the clang as Alpharius struck the deck, and began to rise, strength defying the red ruin of his body. Dorn still had the spear in one hand.
