by John French
He liked it here; of all the places that existed in the Sycorax, it was one of the few where he felt at peace without having to impose that state on his mind. The hum of the machines washed through him, and above it the clicking and hooting of the Cyrabor calling to each other, the mingled sounds rising and falling like the break and retreat of waves on a seashore. Above him the sphere of crystal hung like a great pearl of night.
He closed his eyes, and dipped his awareness into the web of telepathic voices stretched across his fleet. All had arrived, all were ready. They were a fusion of disparate renegades, traitors and outcasts, bound to his will by oaths, by hope, by the desire for power. Some were his brothers by blood, Thousand Sons like himself. Others were simple warrior bands whose only loyalty was to the promise of power. Of these he trusted few, liked even fewer, and found most vile, but they were a distasteful necessity; for what was to come he would need every weapon no matter the hand that wielded it.
‘Overkill,’ the voiced rasped behind him, its human tones riddled with static.
He did not answer, but watched the Cyrabor machine-wrights scurry through the bridge, yellow robes rippling around their bloated or spindle-thin frames. The image in the crystal sphere dissolved into blackness. Behind him his ears picked up the whisper of fabric as the figure on the great brass command throne turned her head. Metal-sheathed cables clinked as they shifted against each other. He heard the click-hiss as air sucked into metal lungs.
‘Are you ready, mistress?’ he asked.
‘Have you told them what you intend?’ asked Carmenta, electronic clicks wheezing between each word.
‘No,’ said Ahriman. ‘Not all of it, not yet.’ He turned to look at her. The green light of her eyes gleamed from the cracked red lacquer of her face. Crimson velvet swathed her, and cables swarmed over her like strangling vines. The brass and brushed plasteel of the throne rose around her like the setting for a queen of a forgotten age.
‘Do you tell any of us the whole truth, Ahriman?’
He watched her but did not reply.
She looks smaller. Every time I see her she always seems smaller.
‘You should trust them,’ said Carmenta. ‘At the least you should trust Astraeos.’
Ahriman shook his head.
‘That would be unwise,’ he said.
‘Trust, Ahriman. It is the only thing you do not have, and cannot buy or take by force.’
‘I trusted you,’ he said, and let the words hang in the heavy air.
‘You did,’ said Carmenta, and her machine gaze was steady under Ahriman’s blue eyes. ‘And we know where that led us. So why is it that you tell me things you keep from those bound to you by oaths and blood?’
‘It is necessary.’
‘Necessary that you keep secrets from them, or necessary that you tell some of those secrets to a dying traitor?’
‘You are not dying,’ he said.
A cough of distortion and clicking code came from Carmenta’s hood.
‘A good lie. The Sycorax is older than I am – older, stronger, and an unkind child. As much as I have made it mine, it has taken from me, and it takes more with each passing cycle. One day I will be gone.’ She seemed to nod, and breathed a stream of machine code to herself. ‘But of course you know this – you are Ahriman.’
He did not answer. She was right; he did know. He could feel the shape of her mind changing, breaking apart into islands of awareness and madness. Damaged long ago by the attempt to become one with a machine the size of a warship, the bond with the Sycorax was now pulling the old cracks wide. The ship was not only vast, but had grown ancient swimming the tides of the Eye of Terror. The warp was in its bones, chuckling in the fires of its reactors and whispering in its data links. Its spirit was corrosive and pernicious. Carmenta could not leave the embrace of the Sycorax, not now, but every day she lost a little more of herself. Sometimes – times like this moment – she would seem as she had once been, but more often she would not respond at all, or if she did it was only to look at him in confusion while she burbled in mangled machine code.
Her head began to loll towards her chest.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked again.
Carmenta’s head came up again. The light of her eyes fluttered, brightened, and became hard and steady.
‘To destroy a world?’ Somewhere far beneath the bridge, the Sycorax began to tremble as breeches swallowed shells, landing bay doors opened to the void, and the engines began to push the ship towards the lone star burning brighter than the rest of the heavens. ‘Yes, we are ready.’
‘Sire.’ The voice was close and insistent. Hemellion, 251st Bearer of the Regency of Vohal, heard the voice, shook his head, muttered, and rolled over in his bed. He had been up well after sunset, trying to persuade that old cur Setar that it was best not to march south as soon as high summer came. The discussion had not been successful, and there had been a good deal of soured wine before Hemellion had finally given up and withdrawn. ‘Sire,’ said the voice again, louder now. ‘Sire, please wake.’
Hemellion opened his eyes. His chatelaine Helana was leaning over him, her scaled and lacquered armour looking as though it had been donned in haste. He blinked, trying to clear the fog of sleep and wine from his eyes. Helana waking him rather than one of his bondsmen: that was odd. He sat up. The fire had burned low in the hearth, but the wicks of the oil lamps were alight. It was still night then. That was not good, not good at all.
‘Have the Western Clans begun to march?’
Helana shook her head.
‘No, sire.’
She looks shaken, thought Hemellion. No, not shaken, frightened. That was bad; that was very bad. He pulled himself out of the bed, and felt the cold air wrap around him as he reached for a fur-edged robe.
‘Well, what–’
‘There are lights in the sky,’ she said. He stopped still, hands tying the robe around his neck. His flesh prickled, and cold sweat formed in the creases of his skin.
‘You are sure?’
Helana did not answer, but walked to one of the high windows and pulled the heavy shutters open. The night sky was a star-brightened strip across the horizon. In the east the curdled light of the Eye of Woe waxed against the darkness.
Hemellion stepped forwards, forgetting the coldness of the flagstones beneath his feet. He stopped before the window and stared. New stars burned in the night, pulsing with ragged light, moving even as he watched them.
They have returned. After all this time, the Imperium has returned to us again. The thought fell through him, spreading cold fear and elation. The Imperium had not come to Vohal since the time of the 203rd Regent, and now they came again during his stewardship.
Vohal was a world of the Emperor, a seat held in trust as part of His realm amongst the stars. Long ago mankind had found it, and those few desperate settlers had given their new home a name from their species’ ancient past: Vohal, they called it. Wrapped in wind, cloud and clear blue skies it was much like the world the settlers had left, but though they came in a ship from across the stars, they found their new home was not a kind master. When the Great Crusade had discovered Vohal, its population was small, its cities few, and despots ruled its scattered cultures from fortresses of stone that stood on the horizon like broken teeth. The Imperium claimed Vohal, recorded its name, and left an official to ensure that it remained compliant. That official, remembered only in the pages of books, had been Hemellion’s ancestor, and his line had borne the stewardship of Vohal ever since.
Hemellion let his eyes dip to the fortress beneath the window. It had been built into the side of a mountain, and the result of hundreds of generations of stonecraft descended from his tower to meet the plains at the mountain’s foot. The outer walls were thick enough that three carts could drive abreast along their tops. Within those walls chambers extended back and down into the mountain itself, held safe behind iron-bound doors. The fortress’s purpose was to dominate a world in the name of the Emperor. He
mellion looked back to where that Emperor’s servants now filled the night with strange stars.
‘Light the signal fires,’ he said, his breath misting in the cold air. ‘Send riders to the near holds.’
‘Yes, sire,’ said Helana, and he heard the question left unspoken at the end of her words.
‘Yes?’
‘Why do they come now?’
‘Who knows?’ he said with a shrug. ‘They come when they will.’
‘What do they want?’
‘The same as any ruler wants from his lands and vassals – they come for tribute. The records speak of them taking armies to serve in wars across the stars, or coming to cull those with the witch-sight.’
‘And we…?’
He rubbed a hand across his face, feeling the stubble that had accumulated on the wrinkles of his face. He suddenly felt very tired. Forty years of life, twenty since his mother had died and left him the regency, and in all that time, in all the decisions and crises, nothing had made him feel as burdened as those small points of light shining in the sky.
‘We give them everything they ask for,’ he said. He was about to say something else when Helana gave a cry. He looked up. The stars were falling. As he watched they birthed smaller stars, until a net of fire fell through the night. Cries rose from the fortress, and more stars fell.
Ignis began to count time after the first salvo. The numbers streamed through his mind, forming shapes and patterns in his consciousness. Triangles became pyramids, spheres became circles, and spirals danced in his awareness as time sliced into ever thinner slivers. Beneath his feet the Word of Hermes shook as its guns added to the second salvo. Fresh streaks of fire began to reach for the world laid out in front of his eyes. This salvo had begun seven hundred and twenty seconds after the first. Two hundred and forty tonnes of active agent filled the warheads in each salvo. There would be three salvos.
The first shells would already be breaking apart in the lower atmosphere. The defoliant-agent would reach surface saturation within nine hours. Even if some of the other ships did not attain his level of precision it was still certain that every blade of grass, tree and leaf would be dust within twenty-seven hours. Once he would have considered that symbolism beautiful, or profound, or perfect. Now, watching the warheads begin to glow as they cut through the doomed planet’s atmosphere, he simply considered it a relief.
Clusters of falling shells formed a pattern in his mind’s eye. His subconscious caught the pattern, and multiplied it into spreading designs of fire, each part of the whole identical to every other part. He felt the pattern slip into the warp, and continue to grow. He let it multiply to the point that he could no longer control it, and then blanked it from his mind. He took a deep, slow breath.
Ahriman had commanded Ignis to engineer the planet’s end, but Ignis knew that the calculations of obliteration mattered little to his one-time brother. Only the result mattered to Ahriman, and Ignis could give him that. It was a simple task, and it let him touch the pattern even if only for a brief time. It was not much, but for now it was enough.
He blinked, eyelids closing for five seconds while he followed the progress of his design one more time in his mind.
He turned from the viewport, and found the blank mask of Credence staring at him.
‘All is well,’ Ignis said, and gave a small nod. The towering automaton clicked, and the gears in its shoulders cycled. Credence clacked another binaric query with its metal insect voice. Ignis thought that there might have been a tone of concern in the machine’s inquiry, but he knew that inferring genuine emotion to a capsule of silica in an armoured shell was madness. But then he did not understand expressions of emotion in humans either. He shook his head and replied anyway.
‘Yes, all is well in a personal sense too.’
He closed his eyes again, and let the voice of his mind slip free.
+Ahriman,+ he sent, feeling the thought reach across the void to the Sycorax.
+Ignis.+ The sending was delicate, but to Ignis it sounded like the low rumble of a rock slide. He flinched, and felt the counting and calculations slip from his focus. He bit off an angry mental retort, as he tried to pull the threads of number and pattern back together. +Ignis,+ came Ahriman’s thought voice. +What do you have to tell me?+
Ignis had no choice but to let go of the calculations.
+It is done. The world will be dust in twenty-seven hours.+
+The third salvo–+
+Is to be sure, though the outcome is now a certainty. Twenty-seven hours, not one minute more. Beyond that, one thousand and eight hours should see the majority of the population depleted, and the rest incapable of impeding us.+
+My thanks, brother. You will join me on the surface once it is done.+
‘Astraeos.’ Izdubar echoed the bound Space Marine’s name into the silence, as though he was weighing it on his tongue.
Astraeos remained silent, his lone eye steady on Iobel.
‘He was recovered from a ship found drifting close to the Cadian Gate,’ said Iobel. ‘The ship was wrecked and warp damaged. Only he was found alive, his life processes in suspension.’ A ripple of glances ran around the chamber.
‘Really?’ It was the girl in the red bodyglove, again. She leant back, shrugging, her face composed into a superior sneer as she looked at Iobel, Malkira and Erionas. ‘Please tell me you have something other than this? A lone traitor, spat out of the Eye, with a name and a claim to serve another traitor who has not been heard of since the dark times? What else do you know of him?’ She turned her sneer to Astraeos. ‘Of what world were you born? What Chapter did you betray?’ She cocked her head to the side. The gesture reminded Iobel of a bird of prey. ‘What was the cause of your treachery?’ The girl smiled as no answer came. ‘Your evidence seems reluctant to answer.’
Iobel looked at Izdubar. The lord inquisitor was still smiling.
‘Why now?’ croaked another inquisitor from the folds of his robes. ‘Why summon a conclave now?’ continued the dry voice. ‘You venture into the Eye, you find an echo that speaks of Ahriman, and then a traitor to a traitor falls into your hands with the same name on his lips. A coincidence?’ He left the word hanging like a curse. ‘Or is something hearing your desire and answering? And if so,’ his fat, pale lips parted to show emerald teeth, ‘why now?’
‘Why does it matter?’ Iobel said.
‘Diplomatically done,’ muttered Cavor from behind her.
‘You missed a question,’ said Izdubar. ‘All of you should also ask “why us?”’ He nodded again. ‘The answer to why now is meaningless. It is a confluence of time and events. Coincidence, yes, but each of us knows that there is no such thing, not in the world we see. We are all here because we know of the Fifteenth Legion, the warriors of the fall called the Thousand Sons. We have seen the footsteps they left in the ashes of worlds, heard their sins whispered from dry pages. Even if you did not know all of it, you have all seen the scars they have left. We are their enemies.’ He turned his head to the girl in the bodyglove. ‘And while you are correct to challenge this evidence, mamzel, there is of course another way to get answers to questions.’
Cendrion glanced up at Izdubar, then to Iobel. She met his eyes, held his gaze, and then slowly nodded. The Grey Knight moved forwards, his hand rising. The gauntlet on his right hand released, and unfolded from his fingers with a stutter of metallic clicks. He raised his bare hand; the fingers were long, and seemed delicate despite their size. Cendrion closed his eyes.
Iobel braced herself a second before the null field generators shut down again. The warp rushed in like a razor-laden wind. She almost fell as it scored into her mind. The two figures on the platform burned in her senses: Cendrion with bright white brilliance, Astraeos with coiling red flame. Neon swirled across her eyes. Heat prickled her skin, and the smell of cold iron filled her nose.
A storm of oil-black shadow and blue lightning was gathering around Cendrion’s hand. His armour glowed as the script etched into i
ts plates lit. Astraeos was tensing against his bindings, veins writhing under scars. Blood beaded and clotted at the corners of his eye sockets. Iobel could feel the Traitor Space Marine’s mind trying to gather the winds of the warp, trying to shape it. Ectoplasm misted the air, glistening and glowing with sickly light. Cendrion reached out, his hand seeming to push against a great weight. Astraeos bared his teeth. His skin was deathly pale, the veins black worms writhing under his skin. Cendrion pushed his hand forward. The tips of the Grey Knight’s fingers pressed against Astraeos’s skull.
V
Intersection
Silvanus coughed. The dust was everywhere, sucking into his mouth with every breath. He pulled the black silk of his robe closer around him. The wind glided through the fabric, its cold fingers touching his flesh. A shiver took him and his whole body trembled. He really had no idea why he was here. In fact he had no idea why any of them were here, but it was his own presence that troubled him most. He spat and tasted the gritty chemical taste of the dead world mixed with the scent of smoke. It had been called Vohal, and the figure sitting on the cracked stones of the tower top was called Hemellion, and was apparently its ruler.
Had been its ruler, corrected a voice in the back of Silvanus’s thoughts. The world the man had ruled was gone, and its people were dead or would be soon enough. Hemellion looked exhausted, and old, and broken. Dust coated his balding head, matted his beard, and had turned the colour of his rich clothes to dull brown. Ahriman stood above the broken king. His armour was blue, but the diffused light blurred it to aquamarine. Horns curled from the brows and cheeks of his helm, and thin pennants of cloth and parchment snapped in the wind. To his left, Kadin stood, the pistons of his limbs creaking as they clogged with dust. The warrior was bareheaded, the glossy scar tissue of his face set into a frown. The rest of the Circle stood around Ahriman. Sanakht was just behind his master, gleaming in polished blue plate; he seemed stooped even though he stood tall, his jackal-crested helm tucked under his arm, his face a carving of focused calm. Ignis stood further away, flanked by a hulking automaton which clicked to itself.
