by Gav Thorpe
Neridiath recognised that what she wanted more than anything else was revenge.
She felt tainted, broken by the realisation, but it did not make the desire go away. It was a part of who she was, a seed sown by recent events. She could allow it to become a cancerous growth, poisoning her thoughts, driving a rift between her and her daughter, or she could accept that she was not perfect, in thought or philosophy.
‘I don’t know how to fight,’ Neridiath murmured, but even as the thought occurred she realised it was not true. She was part of the Patient Lightning and the battleship had been fighting for longer than its pilot had been alive.
She opened herself up to the starship, letting herself become its consciousness, the mortal link needed for its immortal spirits.
28
Asurmen watched as the battleship slowed and turned, twisting through a curving course to bring the forward batteries to bear on the closest Shard. The holofields activated, turning the sleek warship into a fractured cloud of light and conflicting sensor returns. The Chaos ships tried to adjust for the battleship’s sudden change of tactic, but they could not match the manoeuvrability of the eldar vessel.
The targeted ship opened fire, lashing out towards the Patient Lightning’s last position with a flurry of shells and laser beams. Their woeful firing went far adrift, targeting systems sent awry by the dislocating effect of the holofields. Unscathed, the battleship pounced on its prey and unleashed the full strength of its forward turrets. Red energy lanced across the void, striking the Shard close to its centre. It possessed no protective shields and split almost immediately, the strange surface of the hull blistering like scorched skin. Debris and burning gas flared from the gash torn into its flank, explosive decompression hurling hundreds of charred bodies into the void.
Asurmen was still in psychic contact with Neridiath and allowed her feelings to pour into him. Together they felt like shouting and singing and crying, all at the same time. She knew that this was the delight that had scared her so much, but the fear had been erased by the desire for vengeance. Asurmen assured her he was proof that the pain, the anger and the hatred could be mastered, but not if they remained hidden. The pilot allowed the joy of killing to wash through her, and from her it swept through the Patient Lightning’s matrix.
Buoyed by her enthusiasm the battleship turned gently, the weapons systems down its right flank rippling volleys of plasma and missiles into the stricken Chaos vessel as the Patient Lightning circled the doomed ship. Explosions tore chunks of armour from the superstructure, stone-like material breaking away in jagged fragments that looked strangely like the Shards themselves, as they too had once been a piece of something far larger.
The path to open space was clear and for a moment it looked as if Neridiath would head for the gap. Asurmen was sure that all three Shards had to be destroyed. He used the memory of Tethesis’s death, seizing hold of the pilot’s thoughts of freedom, dragging her back to that moment in the storage bay, the terrifying vulnerability she had felt when her mother had left for the last time. She stood on the brink of the abyss and stared into it again.
Bring out that darkness against those that trapped you, Asurmen told Neridiath. Find strength in the weakness, purpose in the fear. Master the anger, do not flee from it.
Her focus returned to the remaining Chaos ships. Sharing her determination, the Patient Lightning headed back towards orbit, picking up speed. Beside the battleship swooped Stormlance, the much smaller ship’s weapons bristling with power, evidence of the starship’s growing excitement.
Neridiath plunged the Patient Lightning directly towards the two remaining Shards, guided by the instincts of the battleship’s matrix.
More fire erupted as the enemy tried to target the incoming eldar vessels. A few lucky shots impacted on the battleship’s hull. Wildly veering missiles passed under the Patient Lightning while hundreds of unguided rockets exploded uselessly behind Stormlance. Asurmen shared the sensation of the diffraction of the holofields increasing as the Patient Lightning continued to pick up speed, the erratic fire of the enemy becoming even more inaccurate.
The two eldar detected the same malign intelligence they had felt when they had first arrived in the star system. The Chaos ships were not wholly things of material and mechanics, but fashioned from some stranger substance that possessed a life, a desire of its own.
The remaining two Shards took up position abeam of each other, slowing down as they poured energy from their strange reactors into their sensor screens, desperately sweeping the nearby void for a solid sign of the eldar vessels. Asurmen felt probing lasers and radiation waves scattering from Stormlance’s holofield like rain on a glass canopy. Still blinded, the other ships approached cautiously, keeping close together in the hope that their overlapping fire would deter their foes.
Neridiath steered a course directly for the gap between the two Chaos vessels, absorbing the wisdom from the ship that they were as likely to hit each other as they were the Patient Lightning if they opened fire while the battleship passed between them.
The eldar gunners directed the remaining power coursing through the matrix to the front lances, unleashing a blistering salvo of energy bolts into the closest enemy ship.
Asurmen watched with satisfaction as the hull of the ship cracked along its length, the flicker of human lives within fading quickly as air escaped into the freezing vacuum of space. Neridiath shared the moment with him, relishing the accomplishment.
The Shard was not wholly crippled and returned fire. Dorsal turrets spewed out a torrent of explosive shells that threw immense hunks of shrapnel and secondary explosives onto the closest solar wing of the battleship. The golden sail shredded and the mast split, splinters of wraithbone skeleton and outer housing scattering into the void.
Stormlance darted ahead, its weapons discharging a torrent of laser fire into the already damaged ship, opening up further welts in the outer hull. The salvo obliterated weapons turrets studding the outer hull as it sped along the flank of the Shard. Another burst of fire from its keel turret sliced through the engines, setting off a succession of explosions that culminated in a spectacular reactor breach. A plume of superheated gas fountained as blue fire into the darkness and arcs of leaping electricity coruscated across the remnants of the ship as they spun away from each other.
To Neridiath the damage to the mainmast felt as though someone had stabbed a knife into her lower back, piercing the spine. Asurmen felt the same through their psychic link, though much reduced. The battleship pilot suppressed a groan and compensated for the loss of power, sliding the Patient Lightning towards the last Chaos vessel. The gunners siphoned as much energy as they could into the right-flank batteries, powering up the shorter-ranged but more powerful sunstorm batteries. A tempest of crackling plasma erupted from the battleship’s flank as it moved past the Shard, the enemy ship’s decks buckling as the stream of star matter slammed through its ebon hull.
The lance turrets added their strength, beams of red carving apart the Chaos vessel, turning stone-like matter into glittering dust and burning vapour. Looping over the battleship, Stormlance raked the exposed innards of the ship with more laser fire, cutting through support spars and armoured bulkheads so that the centre of the ship collapsed under its own artificial gravity field.
Almost unexpectedly, the last Shard broke apart into three tumbling pieces of wreckage. His instincts dulled slightly by Neridiath’s combined psyche, it took a few moments for Asurmen to realise that the battle was over. Relief more than any other emotion surged through the Phoenix Lord.
With the three Chaos vessels destroyed, Neridiath’s thirst for death started to abate, but the Patient Lightning was not yet done. From the spirits of the ship welled the desire to strike back at the weapons platforms that had forced the battleship to crash. Giving in to the vessel’s desire, Neridiath guided the ship down to lower orbit.
Aware
of the danger posed by the orbiting forts – five of them had been reactivated by the Chaos followers – the eldar vessel easily avoided their salvoes of torpedoes and missiles. Patient Lightning and Stormlance made short work of the stationary weapons satellites, cutting them apart with brisk lance fire, the shattered remnants left to spiral down and burn up in the atmosphere.
29
The battle was over, leaving Neridiath feeling cold and numb. She disconnected from the battleship’s systems and almost fell out of the piloting cradle. Her legs weak, her heart hammering, she toppled to her knees on the deck of the command capsule, unable to stop her body shaking.
She felt disgusted, at herself and what she had done. The memory of the happiness the deaths of her enemies brought her flooded back, but she could recognise the bitterness behind it. She sensed Hylandris standing close at hand, but dared not look up, afraid of what she would feel when she saw Manyia. Her daughter had lashed out in infantile ignorance, but Neridiath had just murdered thousands of humans in cold blood. What message was that for her daughter?
‘We fight or we die,’ Hylandris said, laying a hand on her shoulder. Neridiath shrugged it off but he placed it again, squeezing reassuringly. ‘It is the legacy the past has left for our people. We do not have the luxury of inactivity, or we would become casual observers of our own doom, as we were before.’
Neridiath stood up, grimacing, and took Manyia from him. The child was asleep still, oblivious to everything that had happened, unknowing of her mother’s strife. Untainted, thought the pilot, and the realisation brought tears of relief.
‘What happens now?’ she asked. ‘What do I have to do?’
‘I do not know, but you are not the first to feel this way, and will not be the last. The Path exists for us to manage these emotions so that they can no longer destroy us.’
‘I have to become an Aspect Warrior?’ she asked, the horror of the thought almost choking the words in her throat.
‘Yes,’ said Hylandris, moving his hand from her shoulder to Manyia. ‘For her sake, you must move onto the next stage of the Path. In time it will bring solace and you will become closer to your daughter without the burden of fear hanging on your spirit. You have to banish your anguish in the temples of Khaine. I know that if there is any being that can tell you the truth of this, it is Asurmen.’
‘I need to go,’ Neridiath said. ‘I have to rest. I have to think.’
‘Thank you,’ said Hylandris. He stepped back and took off his ghosthelm, revealing a slender, ageing face. He had dark brown eyes, surprisingly kind. ‘For acting when you were called upon. With the Ankathalamon in our possession, we can save Anuiven. Do not forget that, and know your pain is not without meaning.’
XIV
‘There’s nothing here,’ said Jain Zar as they walked down the ramp of the ship.
‘Air, food, shelter,’ said Asurmen. ‘What else do you need?’
He had tried to find somewhere not tainted by the Fall and it had taken much journeying to find the empty moon colony. All of the essentials – the bio-garden, the atmosphere processors, the psychic circuit – had been grown, but the populace had not yet arrived when the catastrophe had occurred.
‘Something to do?’ Jain Zar suggested.
‘Do?’ Asurmen led his companion from the docking area into the first hab-pod. ‘There is plenty to do. We have to learn how to make weapons, armour, and how to use them. You must discover the means to control your instincts, to channel your rage into a useful purpose. We have food to grow, like-minded survivors to find. We have a shrine to build, the first in a thousand generations. Things to do will not be in short supply.’
‘What is this place, anyway?’
‘The birthplace of a new regime. Its name is unimportant.’
‘You’re wrong. Names are important. Names shape our expectations, give form to ideas. It should have a good name if you want to bring others here. A name that promises hope.’
‘Asur. The silence, the heart, the wisdom at the centre of the universe. How about that as a name?’
‘Asur? Yes, that will be very good. And what is this shrine? A temple of Asuryan?’
‘No, Asuryan has guided me here and will continue to guide me, but there is another god whom we must call upon in these dark times.’ Asurmen paced around the circular chamber. ‘Here will be its beating heart, and about it we will build dormitories and armouries and chambers of reflection and contemplation.’
‘You sound eager, but that is a lot of work for two of us,’ said Jain Zar.
‘I shall teach you what I have learnt. We will find others and teach them. They will find others in turn and teach them, and so the future will come into being as we shape it.’
‘To rebuild our civilisation?’
‘No, that is lost. We do not deserve another empire. We do what we must to survive, to endure long enough that we might fight back against the foe that has laid us low. We shall be the nemesis of Chaos, and though it will destroy us we shall be its destruction also.’
Jain Zar circled the room, thoughtful.
‘A shrine to another god. Which one?’
‘The god of our bloody passions, the lord of war, the deathbringer,’ said Asurmen. ‘Let me tell you of Khaine the Bloody-handed.’
30
Asurmen stood with Hylandris and watched Neridiath board Stormlance. Across the cavernous docking bay the stars shimmered in the open portal, the void kept at bay behind an invisible force field. Asurmen felt smug satisfaction emanating from the farseer.
‘You are pleased with this conclusion of events?’ the Phoenix Lord asked.
‘It is as I have foreseen,’ the seer replied. ‘We leave this world with a victory. The Ankathalamon is in my possession and the machinations of Ulthwé will be curtailed. Anuiven need not die.’
‘You foresaw this moment?’
Hylandris shifted from one foot to the other and back, uncomfortable with the question.
‘Not this precise moment, I admit. I did not see your involvement at first. But that is the nature of prophecy, the skein does not rest, it is ever-changing.’
‘Indeed it is. And yet the skein bends to my path, it does not dictate it. I lead and others follow. One action can spawn a thousand fates for mortals, but my course is determined by my actions alone. There are few that can discern every future and chart the correct course.’
‘It is the burden of the farseer that we must walk that narrow road, but my convictions have been proven correct.’
‘In a sense. Even though you are driven by condescension for Anuiven, you yet desire the craftworld’s forgiveness and acceptance. I speak not of your vision, which has been blinded for a long time by your arrogance and wish to assume the role of your craftworld’s saviour in the hope of an impossible atonement. If the Ankathalamon was the only concern, I would have come here on my own and taken you and the artefact away from the danger. That was not my purpose in coming.’
The farseer stepped back, a scowl wrinkling his brow.
‘I cannot see what other reason you have for aiding us, since the claiming of the Ankathalamon and the subsequent attack on Ulthwé has been my intent all along. I misled Zarathuin and the others but I cannot mask my plans from the skein itself. If, as you say, Asuryan guided you here it is to see my plan fulfilled.’
‘I cannot say for sure what the outcome will be, that is not how the visions of Asuryan are employed. I saw only my part to be played, to destroy the vessels of the Chaos host. What happens next, I do not know. But I have come to understand that you cannot compete with the foresight of Eldrad Ulthran. You may think you have gained the advantage but it will not be so.’ Asurmen looked down at the farseer, fixing him with a stare that Hylandris could feel even through the lenses of the Phoenix Lord’s helm. ‘I also know that when the Rhana Dandra comes, our people will need Ulthwé more than Anuiven.’
‘You think…’ Hylandris seemed too horrified to voice his thoughts. He shook his head in denial. ‘No, I cannot believe that you have helped me only to further Anuiven’s destruction. You would not toss aside the fate of a whole craftworld so easily.’
‘I seek the destruction of nothing, and I did not say that Anuiven must perish. I do not know what part the others of the Asuryata will play or have played in this game of fates. It is a sad state, an impossible choice, when one craftworld must die for another to survive. I will not choose sides, but act only as I have been shown. It is possible that none of us will understand until the Rhana Dandra comes.’
Asurmen walked away and started up the ramp to Stormlance.
‘Wait!’ Hylandris’s desperate call caused the Phoenix Lord to turn. ‘There must be something I can do to save Anuiven. What if I do not use the Ankathalamon? What if that is the threat that Eldrad saw and sought to prevent? I can choose not to act, can’t I? Our destruction need not happen?’
‘Perhaps, perhaps not. It may be too late. Events have been set in motion.’ Asurmen turned and strode into Stormlance. Neridiath was waiting inside, and had evidently heard the exchange.
‘Is it true? Will Anuiven perish?’ She hugged her daughter tighter, fear in her eyes.
‘I would not labour too many thoughts in concern for what may or may not come to pass. You have more pressing lessons that will demand all of your resolve. When farseers play as gods there is no telling what the future holds.’ Asurmen laid his hand on the pommel of his sheathed blade. The blue spirit stone fixed there flickered into life at his touch. ‘But know this. No fate is final, not even death.’
