Horusian Wars: Resurrection

by John French

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Warhammer 40,000

  Prologue

  Divided Unity

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Heretic’s Wake

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Lost Dreams

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  A Black Library Publication

  Warhammer 40,000

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  ~ Dramatis Personae ~

  Those who are of the Inquisition

  Covenant, Daemonhunter of the Ordo Malleus, disciple of the Thorian Dogma

  Malika Quadin, Scholar of the Gorgonate Collegium

  Vult, Daemonhunter lord of the Ordo Malleus, follower of the Amalathian Principles

  Goldoran Talicto, Adherent of the Xanthite Methodology

  Idris, Daemonhunter of the Ordo Malleus

  Argento (deceased), Disciple of the Thorian Dogma

  Those who serve

  Cleander von Castellan, Rogue trader, inheritor of the von Castellan Dynasty

  Viola von Castellan, Seneschal of the von Castellan Dynasty

  Josef Khoriv, Drill abbot of the Scholar Progenium

  Severita, Sister Repentia of the Order of the Bloody Rose

  Koleg, Specialist

  Enna Gyrid, Warrior acolyte, persecutor

  Mylasa, Primaris psyker, disciple of the Nepenthe, Bringer of Oblivion

  Kynortas, Master at arms of the Dionysia

  Arabella Ghast, Void mistress of the Dionysia

  Glavius-4-Rho, Magos

  Those who are other

  Orsino, Judge of the Adeptus Arbites

  Galbus, Lexarchivist of the Adeptus Administratum

  Kade Zecker, Captain-commander of the Valour’s Flame, Battle Fleet Caradryad

  Yasmin Unshar, Intermediary for House Yeshar

  Livilla Yeshar, Navigator, third heir apparent to the Paternova of House Yeshar

  Titus Yeshar, Navigator, scion of House Yeshar

  ‘You have been told of the Inquisition: that shadowy organisation which defends mankind and the Emperor from the perils of heresy, possession, alien domination and rebellion.

  You have been told the Inquisition is the ultimate defence against the phantoms of fear and terror which lurk in the darkness between the stars.

  You have been told the Inquisition is the bright saviour in an eclipse of evil; purest and most devoted warrior of the Emperor.

  You have been told the Inquisition is united in its cause to rid the galaxy of any threat, from without or within.

  Everything you have been told is a lie.’

  – Inquisitor Kessel, remarks in The Battle for

  the Emperor’s Soul, all records sequestered

  Prologue

  VISAGES

  The daemon watched the lone warrior through stolen eyes. Walls of rock, smoothed over time by the passage of water, rose from the floor of the cave. Fingers of slime-covered crystal reached down from the roof. Water dripped from their tips, thick and pale with salts. A soft light rose from the pools of liquid caught in the ripple of the cave’s floor. Bones lay in clusters, some dry, some still clad in tatters of skin. The warrior moved through the gloom and past the pools, eyes moving steadily over the darkness beyond his sight. On his shoulder a weapon-machine pivoted and spun without cease. Crimson armour encased his chest, and a tome sat on his back, bound by locked chains. Lightning crawled down the blade in his hands, its flicker marking his hawk-like features with pale light.

  The daemon watched as the warrior paused beside a luminous pool. It could see the fire of the human’s mind coiling in the realm beyond his flesh, bright with strength, threaded with the cobweb shadows of secrets. The daemon smiled, and felt its host’s lips pull back from its teeth.

  ‘You are Covenant,’ it said in the voice of its flesh prison.

  The warrior remained still, but the weapon on his shoulder flicked around, barrel and targeting lens sweeping the dark.

  ‘I am glad you are here, boy,’ it said. ‘We have met before, but you would not remember.’

  Covenant shifted the grip on his sword. On his shoulder the gun linked to his mind slowed its scanning, like a dog waiting for scent to come to it on the wind.

  ‘Of course,’ said the daemon. ‘That is a lie. I am not glad to see you. I have no soul to loathe or love you.’

  Covenant took a step forwards, sword rising slightly, head turning to look to his side.

  ‘I am a creature that exists by theft. Everything we are, we take from you, our shapes from your nightmares, our words from your mouths, our existence from your weakness.’

  The daemon paused. Its flesh shuddered in its wrapping of shadows. The fat, skin and sinew of its host would have rotted to nothing decades before, but the daemon’s presence sustained it, just as the flesh and the cold iron hammered into that flesh had held the daemon like a prison.

  ‘You know this, of course,’ it said. Covenant had stopped again. He was so close that the daemon could feel the life radiating from his soul. ‘You know what I am. You know that I speak to you because it is my nature, my ordained purpose in the courts of what you might call Chaos. You know I speak because I must. You know all this of me. But what do I know of you, boy? What do we know of you?’

  Covenant turned slowly, and the daemon moved with him too, sliding into the space behind him. The lightning glow of Covenant’s sword caught a strata of crystal in the walls and sent a fork of reflected fire through the stone.

  ‘You don’t wish to know, of course.’ The daemon moved forwards, wrapping silence around itself, draggi
ng darkness with it. It reached a hand out towards Covenant’s back. Its fingers lengthened like shadows under a setting sun. ‘But he wished to know.’ The words slid around the chamber, echoing and returning.

  ‘Wished… wish…’

  ‘Know… know… know…’

  It was so close now. Just a little further, and then it could feed, it could grow strong, it could slip the bonds that held it here in this realm of mud and pity.

  ‘The one you call Talicto, the one who bound me here – he wished to know all I could tell him and more, and when I could give him no more he still kept me here in case I had lied, in case there was just one secret that I had not told him.’

  Its fingers were almost on Covenant’s shoulder now. The man’s gaze was fixed on empty shadows.

  ‘And, do you know, there was one thing I did not tell him.’ The words were a wet purr as its host’s jaws distended, glass teeth growing beside its tongue as it tasted the air just behind Covenant’s neck. ‘But if you ask, I will tell you.’

  Covenant whirled. The sword was a sheet of lightning as it cut through the front of the daemon’s face. It felt its host stagger, black blood pouring from its cleaved skull. The cannon on Covenant’s shoulder fired. Shells ripped into the daemon’s host body. Chunks of bone and rancid meat showered to the ground. Pain – pure, bright pain of a kind that did not exist for mortals – tore into its essence. The daemon had no true eyes. But it did not need eyes to see in the realm of the spirit. The fire of Covenant’s soul blazed as he came forwards. The daemon lashed out, blood and pus scattering from the iron nails in its limbs as its flesh split and grew. Covenant met the blow with his blade, turned it, and hacked down.

  The daemon felt the left side of its body drop away, burning to ash as it fell. It staggered, its remaining flesh reshaping. It scuttled across the surface of a pool. Covenant came forwards again, shoulder cannon firing without pause. The daemon twitched aside as the rounds tore shards from the cave walls. It pulled on the tides of power that were its to command, and an arc of black lightning whipped towards Covenant.

  The bolt from Covenant’s cannon caught the daemon in the centre of its remaining flesh, and ripped it apart. In the nailed and bound core of its essence, the daemon heard its stolen flesh try to scream.

  It was on the floor juddering, trying to form the pulped matter of its host into a shape to fight. The shadow of Covenant fell over it. The fire of his cold rage sent a shiver through the daemon even as reality pulled it apart.

  ‘By the grace and power of the God-Emperor–’ began Covenant.

  ‘I will…’ said the daemon, forcing the words into being with the last spite of its existence. ‘I will tell you–’

  ‘I cast thee into the abyss,’ said Covenant, and the daemon saw the man’s soul blaze as the sword came down.

  The sculpting tool scraped a ribbon of red wax from around the eye socket of the death mask. The tool paused, the polished tip poised above a half-formed fold of flesh. The sculpted face was a horror. Quills hung from its bald skull, and weeping sores blistered the sagging flesh beneath a double set of eyes. Its mouth stretched from ear to ear: a crooked grin like an axe wound filled with row upon row of needle teeth. It was vileness and abomination rendered with perfection.

  ‘Does it match the memory?’ Josef stepped from the dark beyond the circle of light which bathed the workbench. Tools lay on its grey stone top, each one set next to its siblings in neat rows. Dry spatters of wax marked the blades and tips of some of the tools. In the bright light the dried wax looked like congealed blood. A jet of blue flame glowed above a silver burner, shimmering slightly with the vibration of the ship’s engines.

  Covenant remained silent for a moment, his gaze steady on the empty holes of the death mask’s eyes.

  ‘He was a scholar before Talicto gave him to the warp.’ Covenant looked up. ‘He lived his life in the histories of saints and heroes, and thought of nothing else.’

  ‘What was done to him happened long ago,’ said Josef, stepping closer. ‘Before you even ascended to the rank, before you could have done anything to prevent it.’

  ‘There is no forgiveness in time. We are responsible. Always.’

  Josef raised a bushy eyebrow, and smoothed the fabric of his robe over his gut.

  ‘Course is set for Ero,’ said Josef. ‘Viola estimates we will be in-system several days before the conclave.’

  Covenant gave a single nod, and flicked his eyes to the side of the chamber. A servitor shuffled forwards from a niche in the chamber wall and took the wax face with long brass fingers.

  ‘Take it to the forge,’ said Covenant. ‘I will follow within the hour. Have the crucibles of silver ready.’

  The servitor bowed, gears clicking in oiled melody. Josef waited as the cyborg shuffled away.

  ‘Do you wish everyone to gather before we make transit?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Covenant. ‘There are plans to discuss.’

  Josef turned to leave, then paused for a second, looking up at the walls. Silver faces gazed down at him, their eyes empty holes, their features set as they had been in the last moments of their lives.

  ‘As you command, my lord,’ said Josef, and left Covenant to the silence.

  Part One

  Divided Unity

  One

  The dust wind sang as it blew through the ranks of silent Titans. Cables rattled against armour plates, and war banners rippled and snapped in the rising gale. Beyond the dust clouds the last light of the sun was fading to an ochre bruise.

  Koleg paused in the shadow of a Battle Titan and looked up. The machine towered into the billowing dust. Vast guns jutted from its shoulders and hung in place of arms. A web of chains bound it to the ground. Koleg could see red beacon lights winking high on the Titan’s carapace. The wind gusted and the chains creaked as the god-machine flexed against its bindings. Koleg lowered his gaze. The shadows of more Titans hung against the curtains of dust. Machines from three Legions had come to the muster, and now stood on the plains as the storms rolled in. Beyond the god-machines, taller than any of them, stood the Reliquary Tower. Generations of pilgrims had raised its walls, block by block, until it stood higher than the mountains that rose behind it. A statue of a robed and haloed woman capped the tower’s top, sword reaching up to the shrouded sky. The fires burning in the statue’s eyes blinked as the murk rippled across its face.

  ‘Halt and identify!’

  Koleg turned at the sound of the voice. Ten figures closed on him, spears levelled over the top of linked tower shields. Lightning crackled around the spear tips. Eye slits glowed in closed helms. Koleg glanced at them, as his mask-visor detected the active weapons and blinked to crimson, outlining each of the warriors in amber.

  Secutarii, thought Koleg, the guardian companions of the Titan Legions.

  He nodded at them.

  ‘Identify,’ came the voice from the warrior at the centre of the shield-wall. Static growled against the wind as a speaker amplified the words. ‘You have ten seconds to comply.’

  Koleg nodded again, and raised his hand, palm up. The lightning wreathing the spear tips crackled. He tapped the ring on his second finger, and a cone of light leapt from his hand. The stylised ‘I’ of the Inquisition rotated in the blue glow, glittering as its image caught the dust blowing through the projection. The lightning vanished from around the spear tips and the shield wall parted. One of the warriors stepped forward, silver weave cloak snapping in the gusting air.

  ‘Your pardon,’ said the secutarius. ‘You were not logged as having crossed the security cordon.’

  Koleg snapped off the projection. He stood, hands in the pockets of his storm coat.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Koleg’s eyes twitched up. Shapes were descending through the dust-covered sky, lights blinking on tails and wing tips. His visor zoomed, picking out the silhoue
ttes of the aircraft in glowing amber lines. A booming roar split the air as the chained Titans sounded their warhorns in greeting. Koleg felt the wind shear as the wall of sound punched through the rising gale.

  Koleg watched the shuttles and gunships sweep low overhead. He clenched his jaw and his vox connection buzzed to life in his ear. He paused, listening to the ping and clatter as encryption cyphers activated.

  ‘This is Sentinel,’ he said. ‘The last pilgrim has arrived.’

  ‘We hear you,’ came the reply. ‘Join us.’

  ‘Acknowledged,’ said Koleg, and the vox-link clicked to silence. Above him the gunships were banking to circle above the ground at the Reliquary Tower’s base. One of the shuttles slid to a halt in mid-air, attitudinal thrusters burning orange to violet. Koleg began to walk towards the landing field, coat snapping in the wind. Dust lightning cracked in the gloom above the Titans’ backs. Arcs of white light ran down the nearest god-machine.

  ‘You should find cover, sir,’ called the secutarii alpha from behind him. ‘The storm’s coming.’

  Koleg kept walking.

  Secutarii Hoplite Alpha-34-Antimon watched the man walk into the clouds of dust. The systems in his helm cycled and tracked the man’s body heat for several seconds. The man was leaning into the wind, hands in pockets, movements purposeful but not hurried. He might have been out for a stroll rather than moving inside a vermillion-grade security cordon on a planet being used to muster a crusade-strength force. Alpha-34-Antimon did not like that; it was against the necessary order of things. The universe existed in divisions of type and authority. The nameless man in the storm coat should have been subject to the power of a greater person, and so on, until the line of authority reached the Omnissiah Incarnate himself. He should not be able to simply walk beneath sacred war engines without permission or care. He should not have been able to answer Alpha-34-Antimon’s challenge with silence.

  He could, though. It was his right. He was under the protection of one of the inquisitors who were gathering in the Reliquary Tower, and that meant that he fell under no other authority.