Hammer and Bolter 13

by Christian Dunn

  The praefector lay on his bunk, his eyes closed, wishing the ventilators could be activated to siphon away the filth of his perspiration. His hands trembled on his chest, his hair was lank across his brow and the pillow and sheets were soaked beneath him.

  All it would take was one warhead to find the Avenger and they would all be killed. Valerius was certain of it; the reflex shields provided no defence against a dozen megatonnes of atomic destruction. The walls vibrated with the shockwaves of distant detonations – thousands of kilometres away, yet all too close for the praefector’s liking.

  Pelon was in the antechamber. Marcus could hear his short, panicked breaths and imagined his servant sitting in the corner of the room hugging his knees to his chest. The praefector understood well the dread that gripped his man, because he shared it.

  The bombardment had started less than half an hour ago. He had been sent from the strategium by Corax as the first nova cannon shells had erupted, far from the battle-barge yet too close for comfort. As he had hurried down the corridors and descended seemingly endless stairwells, he had felt the ship vibrating beneath his tread, the metal of the handrails quivering under his fingers.

  He had tried not to run. The Raven Guard he had passed were unperturbed by their predicament, trusting their existence to power of the reflex shields in a way that Marcus simply could not. He was Imperial Army, a Therion, and he was used to fighting an enemy he could see, his life entrusted to power fields or tank armour or the metres-thick walls of a bunker. He had endured artillery duels and orbital attacks, but nothing compared to the helplessness he felt right now.

  The darkness was absolute. No lights could be lit. In a way, he was grateful. It was better that he was confined to quarters, where Lord Corax and the others could not see his cowardly reactions, could not hear his suppressed whimpers with each rattle of a passing shockwave.

  Yet it was also a nightmare to be alone. Pride might have helped him master the fear, had he been within sight of others. With just himself to impress, his resolve was revealed to be woefully weak. The darkness was as cloying as the sweaty air. It weighed heavily on his chest, pushing the wind from his lungs, throttling him.

  He choked and gasped and swung to the edge of the bed, booted feet touching upon the bare decking, arms hugged tight around his chest as he winced at another vibration that rattled from starboard to port, accompanied by creaks and cracks from the bulkheads around him.

  ‘This is insanity,’ he muttered.

  His words were a whisper, but echoed inside his head. Sanity had been a scarce resource of late for the praefector. At first he had been relieved that the nightmares had ended. The blissful oblivion of sleep had been returned to him and he had embraced it.

  The sensation of relief had not lasted long. Barely a few days after the evacuation of Lord Corax and the Legion, Marcus’s empty dreams had started to nag at him. He woke in the middle of the night watches, a void in his thoughts, feeling dragged down into an abyss. Soon he had come to fear the nights as much as when the fires and the cries of dying ravens had haunted him. It was not the searing hot terror, the paranoia that had gripped him before, it was a cold dread that trickled down his spine and sank to the bottom of his stomach.

  Alone in the dark of his cabin, that dread had returned, seeping out of the darkness while missiles and shells lit up the firmament beyond the steel and rockcrete walls. The nothing that awaited him was too much like the vacuum of space. In his dread, Marcus was convinced that he was going to die. Just as he had dreamt of the Raven Guard’s predicament, now his sleeping thoughts were bringing him a vision of his doom. He would die alone, freezing in the void, swallowed by the emptiness of the universe.

  Marcus let out a whimpering moan and threw himself face-first into the pillows and covers, trying to bury his head, striving to block out the emptiness that was leeching away his existence.

  ‘That was a little too close,’ remarked Branne as a nova cannon shell blossomed into nuclear life a few thousand kilometres off the starboard bow.

  ‘Too close is a hit,’ replied Agapito. ‘Anything we survive is far enough away for me.’

  ‘Hush,’ said Lord Corax. His voice was calm, his features expressionless, as he watched the dull glow of sensor readings on the primary display. ‘I am thinking.’

  The primarch had taken over the helm controls as soon as the latest raitor fusillade had started, guiding the Avenger along a safe course that only he himself could see, his mind constantly calculating and adapting with each launched torpedo salvo and nova cannon detonation.

  ‘Lord, we are heading to danger-close proximity with an enemy cruiser,’ warned one of the attendants at the scanner array.

  ‘I know,’ replied the primarch, eyes locked on the display.

  ‘Lord, they will detect our plasma wash if we pass that close,’ Controller Ephrenia added, her tone quiet and respectful, yet tinged with concern.

  ‘That is not all they will detect,’ Corax replied, turning to smile at the woman. He paused for a moment and then held up a finger. ‘I judge that we have reached safe distance for translation.’

  ‘Lord?’ Ephrenia’s confusion was matched by Branne’s. A sideways glance at Agapito and Aloni showed that his fellow commanders were tense, eyes narrowed.

  ‘We will not be fleeing without a last remark to our enemies,’ said Corax.

  ‘Should we power up the void shields and weapons batteries, lord?’ asked Ephrenia, hand hovering over the command terminal.

  ‘No,’ said the primarch. ‘I have something more dramatic in mind.’

  On the strategium of the Valediction, Apostle Danask of the Word Bearers was finding his latest duty a stretch on his patience. The joyful anarchy and slaughter of the dropsite attack seemed a distant memory after days of fruitless searching for the fleeing Raven Guard. His latest orders were no more exhilarating. For more than a day his ship had been sporadically firing torpedo spreads into the area the Warmaster had ordered, with no result at all. It was a waste of time, and made all the more insulting because his brother legionaries were already en route to Calth for their surprise visit to the Ultramarines. It was hard not to feel that this was in some way a punishment for some breach of Legion rules of which he had not been made aware.

  Danask wondered if perhaps he had not been dedicated enough in his devotion to this new cause. He had noticed Kor Phaeron looking at him strangely on occasion, and was sure that the Master of Faith was testing him in some fashion. He had offered no complaint when he had received his nonsensical orders, and had offered effusive praise to the primarch for considering him for such an onerous but essential duty.

  ‘Energy signature detected!’

  The words of Kal Namir came as a triumphant shout from the scanner panels, snatching the Apostle from his thoughts.

  ‘Where?’ demanded Danask, rising up from the command throne. Sirens blared into life, shattering the quiet that had marked most of the patrol’s duration.

  ‘Almost on top of us, two thousand kilometres to port,’ announced Kal Namir. ‘Weapons batteries are powering up. Void shields at full potential.’

  ‘Mask energy signature and get me a firm location. Brace for impact,’ snapped the Apostle, realising that the enemy would only reveal himself to open fire.

  He heard Kal Namir mutter to himself, swearing under his breath.

  ‘Speak up or stay silent, brother,’ rasped Danask. He was in no mood for his subordinate’s grumbling. He punched in a command on the arm panel of the throne and brought up a real-time view of the enemy’s rough location. A shimmer against the stars betrayed the presence of the Raven Guard ship.

  ‘The scanners must have malfunctioned. This makes no sense,’ Kal Namir said. He checked his displays again and then turned to look at Danask with eyes wide from shock. ‘Signature is a warp core spike, commander…’

  On the screen, the enemy battle-barge came into view, dangerously close, black against the distant pale glimmer of Isstvan’s star. M
oments later the space around the vessel swirled with power, a writhing rainbow of energy engulfing the ship from stem to stern.

  ‘Take evasive action! yelled Danask, but even as he barked the words he knew it was too late.

  The Raven Guard ship disappeared, swallowed by the warp translation point it had opened. The warp hole roiled wider and wider, washing over the Valediction. Danask felt the flow of warp energy moving through him, a pressure inside his head accompanied by a violent lurching of the cruiser.

  ‘We’re caught in her wake,’ announced Kal Namir, somewhat unnecessarily, thought Danask.

  The Valediction shuddered violently as the spume of warp energy flowed past, earthing itself through the void shields. Tendrils of immaterial power lashed through the vessel, coils of kaleidoscopic energy erupting from the walls, ceiling and floor, accompanied by the distant noise of screaming and unnatural howls.

  More warning horns sounded a moment before an explosion tore apart the stern of the ship, the void shield generators overloaded by the surge. Secondary fires erupted along the flanks of the Valediction, detonating ammunition stores for the weapons batteries, opening up ragged wounds in the sides of the vessel.

  The shriek of tearing metal accompanied fiery blasts of igniting atmosphere gouting from the massive holes to port and starboard. The Valediction heaved and bucked, artificial gravity fluctuating madly, tossing Danask and the others on the strategium to the ceiling and back to the floor. To the right of the Apostle, a communications attendant fell badly, snapping his neck on the mesh decking.

  Then there was stillness and silence.

  The shielding of the reactors had held firm and no further explosions occurred. Several minutes of disorientation ensued, during which the strategium staff busied themselves getting damage reports. The scanners were all offline due to the warp wash, the dozens of screens surrounding Danask all grey and lifeless.

  ‘Get me helm control,’ he rasped.

  Anti-damage procedures continued for some time. Danask’s head throbbed, an ache in the base of his skull growing in intensity until it threatened to be a significant distraction.

  ‘That could have been worse,’ said Kal Namir. ‘At least we survived.’

  Blood started to drip from the Word Bearer’s eyes and nose, thick rivulets of crimson streaking Namir’s face.

  The blood vessels in his eyes were thickening and his skin was becoming stretched and thin. Danask held a gauntleted hand to his nose as he tasted blood, and saw a drop of red on his fingertip.

  One of the weapons console attendants gave a scream and lurched away from his panel, his robes afire with blue flames. The man flailed madly as others tried to help him, pushing him to the floor and swatting at the flames with cloaks and gloved hands.

  ‘Get them off me! My face! Get them off my face!’ shrieked another serf, tearing at his eyes and cheeks with his fingers, stumbling from his stool.

  A subscreen flickered into life at one end of the scanning panel. Danask knew what he would see but looked anyway. Outside the ship the stars had disappeared, replaced by a whirling vortex of impossible energies that hurt his eyes to look at, even through the digitisation of the display.

  They were in the warp.

  Without their Geller fields.

  Unprotected.

  As realisation settled in the Apostle’s numbed mind, he felt something clawed scratching inside his gut. He dared not look down.

  A detached part of his brain marvelled at what had happened. To engage warp engines close enough to drag the Valediction into the immaterium yet far enough away not to destroy the cruiser was an incredibly difficult thing to do. He wondered what manner of man could do such a thing.

  Around him, madness reigned. He felt apart from it all as his serfs and legionaries howled and roared, limbs cracking, warp energy swirling through their bodies, distorting and tearing. He realised he had asked the wrong question. Exposure to the warp was the most horrific death that could be visited upon any living creature. It was not what manner of man could do such a thing, it was what manner of man would do such a thing.

  He never got to answer his own question. Moments later, a horned, red-skinned beast erupted from his innards, splaying out his fused ribs and chest, his twin hearts held between fanged teeth.

  Danask’s agonised scream, so inhuman, so unlike a legionary, joined with cries of the rest of his crew.

  They were safe in the warp. As safe as the warp could ever be, though the Avenger’s Navigators had complained about a roiling tempest as soon as they had translated. The Astronomican, the light that guided them through the immaterial aether, was all but obscured by storms of immense proportions.

  Corax had told them to do the best they could. Their goal was simple: head to the source of the Emperor’s light and they would reach Terra.

  The primarch stood on the strategium with his commanders, the pick-up for the internal vox system small in the palm of his hand. Blacklight protocols were over, the reactors running at full capacity. The strategium was awash with light, bright after the days of gloom. The primarch’s disposition did not match the brightening of the environment.

  Hesitating, Corax wondered what he would say to his warriors. What words of encouragement could he speak when he felt so devoid of hope himself? The Traitors had struck so well, their concealed blow aimed with deadly effect; it seemed unlikely that they could be stopped. He had given many speeches in his life, to rouse the weary to fight on, to inspire his warriors to acts of great bravery; all of the words that sprang to mind now seemed to the primarch to be hollow platitudes.

  It did not matter. He drove out the doubt with a surge of will. Now was the time when he needed most to display the leadership for which he had been created. It was at times like this, not in the heat of battle where his physical abilities could sway the day, that his true worth was judged. He was the primarch of the Raven Guard and his legionaries would look to him for guidance and strength. Many had seen rough times before, though nothing compared to the cataclysm that Horus had now unleashed upon them. Some were survivors of the Unification Wars, others the veterans of Lycaeus’s rebellion. All of them were warriors, with the pride of the Legion in their hearts.

  ‘We leave Isstvan in defeat,’ he said, his words broadcast the length and breadth of the ship. ‘It is not a pleasant feeling, but I want you to remember it. Take it into your hearts and nurture this sensation. Let it flow through your veins and fuel your muscles. Never forget what it feels like to fail.’

  He stopped for a moment, taking a breath, letting another emotion replace the hurt and the despair.

  ‘Do not give in to feelings of desperation. We are the Legiones Astartes. We are the Raven Guard. We have been bloodied but we have survived. Take that sorrow and pound upon it with your anger, until you have forged a new purpose. Those who we once called brothers…’

  Corax stopped again, the words catching in his throat as he said them. He glanced at Agapito, then Branne, then Solaro and finally at Aloni. His commanders’ eyes were bright with emotion, jaws clenched with suppressed fury. The primarch let out a growl, giving vent to feelings he had put aside since fleeing Isstvan.

  ‘Those who we once called brothers are now our enemies. They have betrayed us, and worse still, they have betrayed the Emperor. They are dead to us, and we will not give them the dignity of our sorrow. Anger is all we shall have for them. Anger the likes of which we have never unleashed before. Only months ago we still unleashed our fury in the name of Enlightenment. We brought war to the galaxy in the name of the Imperial Truth. Those days have finished. The Great Crusade has been brought to an end by the treachery of those we now call foes.

  ‘Hate them! Hate them as you have never hated an enemy before. Loathe the air they breathe and the ground upon which they tread. There is nothing so cowardly as a traitor, nor anything so worthy of our abhorrence. Hate them!’

  Pain flared through Corax’s chest. In his agitation he had opened up the wounds he had s
uffered, causing blood to trickle down his body. A normal man would have been slain by any one of these injuries, but the primarch bore the pain without visible sign, stoically moving the agony to the back of his mind.

  Corax’s hands were trembling and he took a moment, trying to bring some peace to his thoughts.

  ‘They tried to kill us, tried to annihilate the Raven Guard and erase us from the pages of history. But they made one mistake: they failed. We are bowed but not broken, wounded but not slain. I swear by my oaths to the Emperor and by my dedication to you that we will have revenge on those that have so wronged us! They will pay for their mistake with blood and death, and not until the last of them lies dead by our hand shall we know any measure of contentment or satisfaction. We will destroy them wherever we find them, as only the Raven Guard know how.

  ‘Swear with me now, my children, to follow me wherever this road leads. Swear to show no mercy to the traitors. Swear to slay them with hatred in your heart. Swear to excise this cancer that Horus has nourished in the heart of the Imperium. Swear to bring again the Imperial Truth to the galaxy. Swear that we will never fail again!’

  Deep in the bowels of the Avenger, Alpharius listened to the primarch’s words and could not help but feel stirred by them. Such defiance was noble. Pointless, but noble.

  DEAD CALM

  Joshua Reynolds

  When the wind died and the mist began to roll in across the Sea of Claws, Hermann Eyll knew the captain had come for his due. From the great bay window in his study, the master of Marienburg’s south dock watched as every billowing sail fell limp and the wine-dark sea became as still as glass. Flags from a dozen principalities drooped as seabirds swooped and screamed, hurtling inland in one vast, raucous cloud. On the docks, men and women stopped and stared upwards, watching in wonder.

  Eyll ignored the birds and instead turned to face the thin, olive-complexioned man sitting behind his grandfather’s ancient claw-footed desk. ‘He’s coming. Just as I said, Fiducci. He’s coming for his due and I’m damned if I’ll pay it,’ Eyll said, fear turning his tones savage. A thin man with a whip-like build and clothes of expensive cut, Eyll was every inch the merchant-prince. Pale, manicured fingers did a rap-a-tap patter on the scrimshaw butt of a pistol rising from the colourful sash about his waist, and he began to pace. ‘You’re certain you can deal with him?’ he said.