Bastion Wars

by Henry Zou

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘I will not commit my soldiers to Aridun. I will not commit my soldiers to this war,’ Lord Marshal Khmer announced to the assembly of senior commanders.

  Those were the historic first words for the last Council of Conclusions of the Medina Campaign.

  There was a stir of unease but none of the officers objected.

  The lord marshal, naked of his medals and ceremonial trappings, wearing the starched uniform of a Cantican rank-and-file, stalked across the podium, playing his audience like a grand thespian.

  ‘As Aridun has fallen quiet, the last of the core worlds of Medina are potentially lost.’ He paused, allowing this fact to sink and settle.

  He continued imperiously. ‘There is nothing left for us here. Gentlemen, let us not forget the first rule of military engagement. Fight with objective. We have lost any and all objective in Medina.’

  Polished boots clapping across the grated decking, Khmer walked to where Forde Gurion sat in the front bench. He levelled his gaze on the inquisitor and said with great clarity, ‘For us to stay, we would be fighting out of emotional ties, out of moral obligation. We would not be fighting as military architects, but rather men blinded by loyalty to our home. We would not be generals, we would be guilty of being civilians.’

  The last words were twisted and spat at Forde Gurion. The implication was clear.

  There was some truth to Khmer’s words. The silence of Aridun had been brutally abrupt.

  The last message, received by long-range vox, was transmitted from a listening station in the Cage Isles of Northern Aridun directly to the Ninth Route Fleet. That had been at 13:00 hours, on the first day of the new Medinian moon. The transmission had reported low-level enemy activity across the demarcation line, nothing out of the ordinary.

  By 14:00 hours that day, communications ceased. All vox systems were down and astropathic signatures in the Governor’s palace on Aridun were dreadfully cold and empty.

  General Cypus Tanbull of the CantiCol 12th Division remarked that the planet had, for lack of a better term, ‘fallen quiet by providence of the God-Emperor.’ It was a sanguine way of saying something sickeningly dreadful had occurred on Aridun, and High Command had no intelligence to go by.

  The Council of Conclusions was called, but conclusions had been the antithesis of what they had achieved. They had no intelligence to align their debate. Orbital reconnaissance showed nothing across the continental plates. Nothing at all, not even the twinkling constellation of lights that illuminated a city at night. Just blackness. It was as if Aridun had been wholly abandoned in the span of several hours.

  That had been four days ago. Ironically, and truly by the providence of the God-Emperor, the situation had changed.

  With a hydraulic hiss of his legs, Gurion rose from his seat.

  ‘Lord marshal, there is logic in your words,’ he mused. ‘But the situation, I believe, has changed dramatically. I have come as swiftly as time would allow, to report to the Command a critical piece of intelligence unearthed by my Task Group.’

  Something hardened behind Khmer’s eyes but he allowed the inquisitor to continue.

  ‘The Old Kings have been discovered.’ It was Gurion’s turn to play the theatrical role. He even sharpened his words with a touch of his mind so it reverberated in the minds of those seated around him.

  ‘The Medina Corridor, the very star system, forms the fabric of the Old Kings. It has been before our eyes the whole time if we had bothered to see it.’

  Gurion pushed past Khmer, ignoring him and addressing the assembly as he touched the hololithic projector. An orrery orbit of the Medina System flickered into grainy translucence, the image hovering like an inverted pyramid from the projector lens.

  ‘If we study the equator lines and surface markings of the planets, we can see wide globe-spanning lines on most of the planet clusters,’ Gurion said, indicating each of the planets in turn with his finger.

  ‘Now, if we allow the planets to shift through their cyclical rotations, the equator lines form distinct patterns.’

  Steadily, the planets spun on their heliocentric axis. The equator lines, like scars across the planets’ surfaces, shifted until finally Gurion paused the projection. The projection showed the planets in the first moon cycle, with the triple suns at contrasting angles.

  There was a rustle of discussion amongst the officers.

  Although some of the equator lines were broken, and some planets bore none, a lattice of overlapping lines, oddly abstract but startlingly apparent, seemed to link the planets of the Medina Corridor. There was a symmetry and order to them, but at the same time there was a fluid yet alien regularity to the planetary markings. Gurion had already taken measuring instruments to them and the angles were razor edge in precision. It was extraordinary considering the true scale of those planets. Almost like a series of curving script had been sliced into the skin of each planet, overlapping and dancing.

  ‘Mathematics and patterns, inquisitor?’ Khmer snapped impatiently.

  ‘Let him speak,’ the Space Marine envoy said, his bass voice rolling with thunderous authority.

  Gurion remained placid. ‘This was an orbital map of pre-invasion Medina. I now invite you to study an orbital surveillance of the star system, after the Archenemy conquest.’

  An orrery projection replaced the first. There was little difference, except the monolithic excavations and quarries of the Ironclad were clearly visible. In their new context, the massive quarries and excavation sites lined up with the pre-existing ley-lines seamlessly. On the planets of Ninvevah, Baybel and Cantica, where no lines had existed before, the excavations surfaced new ones, at exact angles with the old.

  At the centre of the symmetry, during the first day of the moon cycle, was the planet of Aridun.

  This was, perhaps, the greatest revelation to High Command since the conflict had begun. The assembly erupted. There was a tumultuous babble of shock. Even a two-hundred-year-old admiral of the fleet, a veteran who had seen everything in his centuries of campaigning, held a hand over his mouth.

  Gurion did not need to explain it, the orbital picts said everything. The Archenemy had never been conducting a blind treasure hunt of the relics. They had never been acting with the irrationality that Khmer and many officers had predicted.

  No. Rather, they had been re-creating the broken equator lines, and finishing the perfect symmetry of new ones. It was a monumental task that spanned the star system. They were recreating the ritual of the Star Ancients with chilling precision and the Imperium had never even known.

  Chaos had been acting with logic and precision. That was what frightened the assembly of warriors so much.

  For the first time, Khmer relented. ‘What does this forebode?’

  ‘Let me explain this precisely. The Old Kings, or rather the Old King, is an embryonic star held in stasis. Aridun marks the central axis. That is where the Old King lies. It has been placed there in line with astronomical and magnetic properties. We believe that is what the old tales refer to when they say the stars will rouse them from dormant slumber. The old mathematical geodesists of Terra would suggest that the magnetic fields and polar motions have disrupted the dormant star’s stasis field,’ Gurion replied.

  ‘And so the Old King has been, in a way, activated…’ a Naval officer from the assembly murmured, loud enough for all to hear.

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. The only way to know is if we deploy an expedition force onto the planet,’ Gurion declared.

  ‘What if they are activated? Then what?’ Khmer pressed.

  ‘Although we do not know what form this star exists as, more than likely, the Archenemy will not unleash an embryonic star on Medina. It’s strategically insignificant. From all our sources, this star seems to be dormant within some sort of a containment vessel. Now we don’t know what this is, but it’s intuiti
ve enough. Once activated by the ley-lines it would suggest that this vesselled container can then be removed and utilised elsewhere.’

  ‘I don’t follow you,’ Khmer said stubbornly.

  ‘Let me put this in terms you will understand. This is a star within a vessel. Think of it as a bomb. Except this bomb, when unleashed, will likely consume an entire star system and expand outwards with radiation and enough kinetic energy to rend rifts in the warp,’ said Gurion. ‘As an example of course. We won’t know until we send an investigative team to Aridun.’

  ‘Out of the question. I will not send soldiers as sacrificial lambs. You said yourself, the Old Kings may already be roused from their dormant state,’ Khmer interjected. ‘This does not change our strategy to reinforce the Bastion Stars.’

  ‘Logical, lord marshal, logical,’ Gurion conceded. ‘Which is why I volunteer to deploy my last remaining Task Group to Aridun.’

  Khmer ground his teeth, ready to speak again when Gurion halted his words with a mechanical hand. ‘As I speak, Inquisitor Obodiah Roth and his task force are en route to Aridun. Once they make landfall, they have forty-eight hours to contact us by long-range vox.’

  ‘And then what?’ Khmer asked.

  ‘If they are able to contact High Command, we will deploy all available military resources to secure Aridun. I do this by mandate of Inquisitorial authority. If they do not, then you can have your withdrawal, lord marshal.’

  Above the piped collar of his uniform, Khmer’s carotid arteries throbbed like hose-pipes. The scarred skin of his face turned a pressurised red. The lord marshal nodded once, very slowly. ‘Excellently played, inquisitor.’

  Gurion snapped the CantiCol salute to the assembly of commanders, clashing a mechanical fist to his chest in the gesture of solidarity. ‘This is the one chance you have to fight for your birth worlds. Have the fleet and the Guard prepare for rapid deployment. You have forty-eight hours, followed by a six-hour notice for mobilisation.’

  Gurion strode out of the war vault, halted at the blast doors, then turned to regard the assembly one last time. ‘This is our time, gentlemen. If we fail now, you will be remembered for it, regardless of the victories and triumphs you have already bled for.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The orbital reconnaissance of Aridun had been accurate regarding the abandonment.

  There were no signs of life, at least in the human sense. The stratocraft skimmed low across the southern savannah belt of Aridun Civic, to avoid radar detection and to survey the city. The maze of streets was empty, and although it was only a bruising dawn, no lights were visible along the skyline.

  What the reconnaissance had revealed were the burning pyres that smoked into blackened embers out in the thousand kilometre reefs of cycad and gingko that surrounded Aridun Civic.

  The pyres were monuments, some as high as sixty, seventy metres tall. The pyres resembled gas nebulae, blackened and swollen and crowned with gaseous flame. The stratocraft had veered in, trying to snatch close observation.

  As they flew through the pillars of smoke, Roth had ordered the pilot servitor to vent atmospheric oxygen and allow air into the cabin. The sour, acrid stench of burning flesh and hair that seeped into the vessel confirmed Roth’s suspicion. It was indeed corpses of Aridun out there in those fields, heaped up and burning. The smell was so pervasive, Captain Pradal had vomited three times before the stratocraft’s venting systems repurified the oxygen and locked down the atmospheric seals.

  But the oily taste still lingered at the backs of their throats.

  ‘I’ve seen the Archenemy do this before but never on such a scale,’ Roth admitted. ‘Once on a mining station in Helm’s Outreach, the Juventist Cult there had murdered almost everyone. They had been desperate enough for the people not to contact the Imperium. The desperation had tallied almost thirty thousand lives.’

  ‘That’s obscene,’ Madeline said, looking out the starboard ports, the flames of the evening light reflecting dancing shades across her face.

  ‘Mmm,’ murmured Roth listlessly.

  ‘Something is eating away at you, Roth. You look morose.’

  ‘I’m fine about Celeminé.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything about Celeminé…’ she said, letting the statement hang in the air.

  ‘Madeline, don’t start. Celeminé and I, we had a working partnership. We were inquisitors. At best we would have stayed together in cooperation for maybe several years, who knows maybe several decades. But eventually the Inquisitorial calling would take us apart from each other. By ideology or by personality we would eventually go our separate ways. For Celeminé, this happened much sooner… and much more regrettably.’

  ‘Very detached perspective, Roth. It’s not like you.’

  ‘That’s because now is not the time to have my head between my legs, figuratively speaking.’

  In truth, Roth had not been well. Most times he kept it together, but at times Celeminé and Silverstein seemed to haunt him. He thought he heard them talking sometimes, but reminded himself it could not be. Yet it was also a time when he could not afford to be anything less than mentally precise, and it was only the fortitude of an inquisitor that had allowed him to go on. Inquisitorial fortitude and chems. He had glanded endorphin pills, dopamine injections and had not eaten properly in months. He barely recognised the blackened hollows around his eyes and pale, gaunt cheeks that sulked at him in the mirror.

  The peals of a tri-tone over the intercom system shook Roth from his contemplation. ‘Preparation for landing in six hundred seconds,’ the servitor pilot announced in his monotone voice over the speakers.

  It was time.

  Roth led Madeline to the shuttered landing ramp where Captain Pradal was securing a vox array to his backpack with locking straps. His lasrifle was slung muzzle-up across his shoulder and a bolt pistol from the stratocraft’s arsenal bay was tucked into a thigh holster.

  ‘You look ready to start a war, captain,’ Roth smiled.

  ‘I’m ready to end one, inquisitor. Do you think this could really be the end game?’ the junior officer asked. He struggled to shoulder the bulk of his equipment.

  ‘No doubt,’ Roth said, helping the captain weave his arms under the straps of his load-bearing pack.

  ‘Once we touch down, this craft is moving off-world. I don’t want it to betray our presence. Either we make contact with High Command and initiate the grand offensive, or we die here.’

  Captain Pradal nodded contentedly; he jumped up and down to test for loose equipment before flipping his white kepi onto his head. ‘Either way, I’ll die on my home world.’ He moved to the landing ramp ponderously under the bulk of a vox array and webbing, his musette bags of ammunition, magnoculars, rebreathers and water bottles clustered from his hips and thighs.

  ‘Are you sure you’re ready for this, Madeline? This is your last chance, the offer to ferry you off-world still stands. It’s not too late to stay on this craft,’ Roth asked Madeline.

  The xeno-archaeologist had eschewed her finery for more climate-appropriate gear. A frock coat of loom-woven ceramic polyfibre cascaded down her narrow shoulders, winking like fish-scales of opaline green. A scarf of fine chainmail was wound about her neck and head like a coif.

  ‘I’ve made up my mind, Roth, it’s my scholarly duty to see this through,’ she said as she pulled on a pair of kidskin gloves.

  ‘In that case, get rid of that irritant,’ Roth said, pointing to the revolving stubber holstered at her waist belt. ‘It will just annoy the enemy.’

  Roth crossed over to the stratocraft’s arsenal bay and popped open a locked trunk. He retrieved a compact carbine, matt-black with a ribbed foregrip and blunt-muzzled profile. Silverstein used to call it a shard carbine, but the common name was simply ripper pistol. He reversed the weapon and handed it pistol-grip first to Madeline.

  Roth then dumped a
brace belt of magazine cartridges into her arms. ‘This gun belonged to an old friend of mine. It fires a concentrated coil of metal shards at a target, highly accurate up to eighty metres. The recoil is smooth but it can dispatch a tusked mammoth with one shot.’

  Madeline tested the weapon awkwardly, wedging a magazine into place. She looped the belt of spare mags over her arm like a swinging satchel.

  ‘Good enough?’ she asked.

  ‘More or less.’

  The stratocraft made a sharp descent, its steep, curving flight taking them across the reef plains. The insertion point was a matter of mathematical formula. The axis of a stellar map, despite its star-spanning length, had been calculated down to a variance of several degrees. The pilot would land them eight kilometres west from where the Old Kings were believed to rest in buried dormancy.

  Roth nodded to Pradal and Madeline. ‘Whatever happens, know we were doing the Emperor’s work.’

  Angkhora was not an Imperial name.

  Like the names of all the Medina Worlds, their administrative protectorates and city-states, the name was a vestige of the early Medinian tongue. The language had long been suppressed, by dictate of Imperial decree, but names were all-pervasive. Names bespoke history, recognition, a single word that conjured the sentience of a place.

  Angkhora was a place of abandonment. It was one of the forgotten cities of the previous dynasty, a broken link of the Fortress Chain after the millennia-long drought and flood cycles of M36. The rampart wall, which connected Angkhora to the Fortress Chains, was sagging and moss-eaten.

  Perhaps its desolation was fitting. For as long as man could remember, Angkhora, the axial centre of the Fortress Chains, was a place for burial. The unique reverence of ancestors had devoted an entire city to the interment and rest for those who had passed.

  In the early tongue, Angkhora literally translated as ‘The house that the first creators built’. It had been built to represent the island in the sky that deities of pre-Imperial Medina had come from, an early myth of creation.