by John French
‘In the Solar System...’ I added for good measure.
You see, two other things had been ticking away in my head for a while. One was that I really enjoy writing about the Alpha Legion (remember those first two stories?). The second was a logical extension the timings of the Horus Heresy. Put simply: as shown in Legion, the Alpha Legion began their fall years before Horus virus-bombed Isstvan III. They had time to prepare, time in which they could move into the heart of the Imperium freely. Given that, why would they not have left assets wherever they liked?
In the Solar System.
On Terra.
I explained this, a bit nervously, to the assembled editors, honoured writers and guardians of lore. I waited. This was a story that had been growing in my mind for a good while at this point, and some of the ideas that went into it even longer. I really, really wanted to tell it.
‘Okay?’ I asked after a moment. ‘I mean–’
‘So it’s going to be from Dorn’s point of view?’ someone cut in, probably Nick Kyme.
‘No,’ I said, slightly wrong-footed, and thinking only as I spoke. ‘I don’t think so. Someone close to him. One of the Fists, definitely.’
‘Any idea who?’
I thought back to ‘The Lightning Tower’. By this point I had read it enough times that I could quote sections word for word. A few lines spoken to Rogal Dorn by an incidental character occurred to me.
‘Can I ask you a question, sir?’
‘Of course.’
‘Who are you really afraid of?’
‘Archamus,’ I said. ‘It should be about Archamus.’
John French
January 2016
Acknowledgements
This book owes its existence to Laurie Goulding and Nick Kyme, who saw it safely through the storms.
Thank you, guys.
About the Author
John French has written several Horus Heresy stories including the novellas Tallarn: Executioner and The Crimson Fist, the novel Tallarn: Ironclad, and the audio dramas Templar and Warmaster. He is the author of the Ahriman series, which includes the novels Ahriman: Exile, Ahriman: Sorcerer and Ahriman: Unchanged, plus a number of related short stories collected in Ahriman: Exodus, including ‘The Dead Oracle’ and ‘Hand of Dust’. Additionally for the Warhammer 40,000 universe he has written the Space Marine Battles novella Fateweaver, plus many short stories. He lives and works in Nottingham, UK.
An extract from I Am Slaughter.
The Chromes were relatively easy to kill, but they came in ferocious numbers.
Eight walls of Imperial Fists boxed one of their primary family groups into a scrub-sided valley east of the blisternest, and reduced them to burned shells and spattered meat.
Smoke rose off the hill of dead. It was a yellowish air-stain composed of atomised organic particulates and the backwash of fyceline smoke. According to the magos biologis sent to assist the undertaking, sustained bolter and las-fire, together with the chronic impact trauma of blade and close-combat weapons, had effectively aerosolised about seven per cent of the enemy’s collective biomass. The yellow smoke, a cloud twenty kilometres wide and sixty long, drained down the valley like a dawn fog.
The magos biologis told Koorland this as if the fact had some practical application. Koorland, second captain of Daylight Wall Company, shrugged. It was a non-fact to him, like someone saying the shape of a pool of spilled blood resembled a map of Arcturus or Great-Uncle Janier’s profile. Koorland had been sent to Throne-forsaken Ardamantua to kill Chromes. He was used to killing things. He was good at it, like all his company brothers and like every brother of the shield-corps. He was also used to the fact that when things were killed in colossal numbers, it left a mess. Sometimes the mess was smoke, sometimes it was liquid, sometimes it was grease, sometimes it was embers. He didn’t need some Terra-spire expert telling him that he and his brothers had pounded the Chromes so hard and so explosively that they had vaporised part of them.
The magos biologis had a retinue of three hundred acolytes and servitors. They were hooded and diligent, and had decorated the hillside with portable detection equipment and analysis engines. Tubes sniffed the air (this, Koorland understood, was how the magos biologis had arrived at his seven per cent revelation). Picting and imaging devices recorded the anatomies of dead and living Chrome specimens alike. Dissections were underway.
‘The Chromes are not a high-factor hostile species,’ the magos told Koorland.
‘Really?’ Koorland replied through his visor speakers, obliged to listen to the report.
‘Not at all,’ the human said, shaking his head, apparently under the impression that Koorland’s obligation was in fact interest. ‘See for yourself,’ he said, gesturing to a half-flayed specimen spread-eagled on a dissection stand. ‘They are armoured, of course, around the head, neck and back, and their forelimbs are well formed into digital blades–’
‘Or “claws”,’ said Koorland.
‘Just so,’ the magos went on, ‘especially in sub-adult and adult males. They are not harmless, but they are not a naturally aggressive species.’
Koorland thought about that. The Chromes – so called because of the silvery metallic finish of their chitin armour – were xenosbreed, human-sized bugs with long forelimbs and impressive speed. He thought about the eighteen million of them that had swarmed the valley that afternoon, the sea of silver gleaming in the sunlight, the swish of their bladed limbs, the tek-tek-tek noise they made with their mouthparts, like broken cogitators. He thought of the three brothers he’d lost from his wall during the initial overwhelm, the four taken from Hemispheric Wall, the three from Anterior Six Gate Wall.
Go tell them not naturally aggressive.
The Chromes had numbers, vast numbers. The more they had killed, the more there were to kill. Sustained slaughter was the only operational tactic: keep killing them until they were all dead. The rate at which the Imperial Fists had been required to hit them, the duration, the frenzy – no damn wonder they aerosolised seven per cent of their biomass.
‘Chromes have been encountered on sixty-six other worlds in this sector alone,’ said the magos biologis. ‘Twenty-four of those encounters took place during compliance expeditions at the time of the Great Crusade, the rest since. Chromes have been encountered in large numbers, and have often defended themselves. They have never been known to behave with such proactive hostility before.’
The magos thought about this.
‘They remind me of rats,’ he said. ‘Rad-rats. I remember there was a terrible plague of them down in the basements and sub-basements under the archive block of the Biologis Sanctum at Numis. They were destroying valuable specimens and records, but they were not, individually, in any way harmful or dangerous. We sent in environmental purge teams with flame guns and toxin sprays. We began to exterminate them. They swarmed. Fear, I suppose. They came flooding out of the place and we lost three men and a dozen servitors in the deluge. Unstoppable. Like the sub-hive rats, the Chromes have never behaved this way before.’
‘And they won’t again,’ said Koorland, ‘because when we’re finished here they’ll all be dead.’
‘This is just one of a possible nineteen primary family groups,’ said the magos biologis. He paused. Koorland knew that the magos intended to address him by name, but, like so many humans, he found it difficult to differentiate between the giant, transhuman warriors in their yellow armour. He had to rely on rank pins, insignia and the unit markings on shoulderplates, and that information always took a moment to process.
The magos biologis nodded slightly, as if to apologise for the hesitation.
‘–Captain Koorland of the Second Daylight Wall–’
‘I’m second captain of the Daylight Wall Company,’ Koorland corrected.
‘Ah, of course.’
‘Forget about rank, just try to remember
us by our wall-names.’
‘Your what?’
Koorland sighed. This man knew more than seemed healthy about xenosbreeds, but he knew nothing about the warriors built to guard against them.
‘Our wall-names,’ he said. ‘When we are inducted, we forget our given names, our pre-breed names. Our brothers bestow upon each of us a name that suits our bearing or character: a wall-name.’
The magos nodded, politely interested.
Koorland gestured to a Space Marine trudging past them.
‘That’s Firefight,’ he said. ‘That brother over there? He’s Dolorous. Him there? Killshot.’
‘I see,’ said the magos biologis. ‘These are earned names, names within the brotherhood.’
Koorland nodded. He knew that, at some point, he’d been told the magos biologis’ name. He hadn’t forgotten because it was complicated, he just hadn’t cared enough about the human to remember it.
‘What is your name, captain?’ the magos asked brightly. ‘Your wall-name?’
‘My name?’ Koorland replied. ‘I am Slaughter.’
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For Graham, Jim, Nick, Chris, Gav, Dan, Rob and Aaron,
who stood at the beginning of the Age of Darkness.
And for Liz, Laurie, Andy, Alan, Greg and Ead, who held the walls within.
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