JAGHATAI KHAN WARHAWK OF CHOGORIS

by Chris Wraight

  The Khan observed it all. He said nothing, but his eyes, sunk deep within his drawn face, took everything in. Giyahun knew better than to speak to him when he was in such a mood. The primarch was studying the ship just as he studied every weapon he possessed – searching for weakness, appraising it for strength, considering where it might be employed.

  ‘These sections are within a few weeks of being finished,’ Slavomar announced as the shuttle rose up through a circular opening, exposing the spars of a great hall standing like ribs against the starry void. ‘In time this will be your strategium, lord. And above that, the command bridge itself.’

  The Khan leant forwards in his seat, placing rangy elbows on his knees. A greater chamber slowly swam into view, domed with armourglass and studded with concentric pillar rings. Mechanicum lifters were pirouetting over the centreline, many hauling cogitator cores ripe for depositing into the pits below. There must have been thousands of menials labouring within this single space, most vaguely humanoid, but others bearing the arcane ironwork improvements of the Red Planet.

  The shuttle’s deck shuddered, as if they had been buffeted by an atmospheric disturbance, and the viewscreens briefly crackled with static.

  ‘A temporary oxygen-gravity blister,’ Slavomar explained. ‘To allow a closer look. Will you be pleased to descend, lord?’

  The Khan grunted assent, still studying the superstructure around them, peering at the beams and skeletal bracings like a priest pulling apart the flesh of an augur sacrifice.

  The shuttle pulled down towards the floodlit deck level, now swathed in a trembling teardrop of breathable air maintained at a survivable temperature and with the worst of the background radiation filtered out. Its legs extended and clouds of steam spilled over the matte-grey plates below.

  Waiting at the bottom of the unfurling ramp was a delegation from the Mechanicum. A phalanx of twenty skitarii Protectors bearing long weapon staves accompanied a limping magos dominus clad in crimson livery. The magos was a crab-like slitherer with a distended and ribbed thorax, overhung with a gaggle of knife-thin mechadendrites. Beside him was a humanoid figure in steel grey, her face a smooth mirrored mask.

  The Khan descended from the shuttle, followed by Giyahun and the Terran entourage. His long hair lifted from his shoulders in the low gravity, and the steel-faced woman bowed before him.

  ‘Be welcome here, Fifth Iteration of the Omnissiah’s Will,’ she intoned. ‘I am the intermediary of Galithium Vo-Phoex, creator of this vessel.’

  The Khan looked down at the creature, not bothering to hide his distaste. Chogoris was a world of few machines, and since discovering the Imperium, little had been more unnerving to the Chogorians than realising the extent to which variant strains of humanity permitted themselves to be enfolded within the chuntering sarcophagi of ironwork devices.

  ‘You made this?’ the primarch asked.

  ‘Galithium Vo-Phoex and his priests. And his manufactoria. It is no small endeavour – close to five per cent of the entire output of Sacred Mars may be consumed by the creation of a Gloriana war vessel for the duration of its construction.’

  The magos inclined what passed for its head, and long trails of binaric indicators on rolls of parchment wobbled.

  ‘We trust,’ said the steel woman, ‘that you appreciate its capabilities.’

  Only then did the Khan turn to her. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘It does not matter, lord.’

  ‘Tell me your name.’

  ‘I no longer have one.’

  The Khan exhaled wearily. ‘You people.’

  ‘Lord?’

  The Khan turned to Giyahun. ‘Impressed, noyan-khan?’ he asked.

  Giyahun shrugged. ‘I only see its bones.’

  ‘I also.’ He looked the steel woman in what passed for her eyes. ‘We’re savages, you understand. A year ago, none of us had seen a combustion engine. Forgive us.’

  The intermediary bowed, and her smooth face modified into a human-proximate smile gesture. ‘There is nothing to forgive, lord.’

  ‘Oh, but there is,’ said the Khan. He turned away from her, and addressed the magos directly. ‘Because you’re going to remake this one. You’re going to rip out that drivetrain and put in a new one. I’m going to show you what I need, and you’re going to do it all within a standard year.’

  The magos’ mandibles withdrew, clawing back to its body-husk. The intermediary tried to interject, but was ignored.

  ‘What was the purpose of this fly-through?’ the Khan asked. ‘To awe us? Fyah, you iron slug, it takes more than that. Gut an empire from the gizzard to the neck, then come to me and treat as an equal. I’ve learned fast since my Father pulled me from the grass, and what you show me makes my stomach turn. You’ve done this a dozen times, and think that this horse-tamer will roll over and lap up your warmed-up designs like a grateful cur. No. No, he won’t. Now listen.’

  The Khan drew closer, and the magos visibly shrank back. Giyahun watched calmly, enjoying the spectacle.

  ‘I want double the plasma capacity on those primary manifolds. I want the boost lines shortened. I don’t give an aduu’s shit for warp drives, for they are the matter of dreams and mumbling, but I want speed from my real-space engines. I want this thing to boost from nothing to full burn in the time it takes for one of my chosen to draw their curved blade. Noyan-khan.’

  Giyahun pulled his tulwar from its scabbard and slashed it in towards the intermediary’s neck, catching her off guard and making her freeze with the killing edge lodged a millimetre under her chin.

  ‘That fast,’ said the Khan, never looking anywhere else but into the multiple eyes of the magos. ‘I want to be moving before my enemies have even given thought to my intentions. I want to be moving before the gods themselves have registered my presence in the heavens. You will do all this, you will remake this vessel, and you will do it perfectly within twelve of these Lunar months.’

  The magos flustered.

  ‘But… it is impossible, lord,’ the intermediary objected, stiltedly, conscious of the curved steel at her chin.

  Still the primarch didn’t look at her.

  ‘All things are possible,’ the Khan said. ‘Is this not the lesson of my Father’s empire? You will do it, or you will find my ignorant kindred landed on the Red Planet, and they tend to break what they don’t understand.’

  The magos sent some kind of hurried signal to his speaker.

  ‘If you have a schema in mind–’ she started.

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘Very much so. And once this one is done, you’ll do the same for the entire fleet under my command. What use is a single good sword, when we have the galaxy laid before us? I wish to have a storm of them. I tell you, priest of Mars, this is our creed, and the galaxy has seen nothing like it yet. Enable it, or show me one of your foul kind who can.’

  There was a pause. The magos was clearly communicating, perhaps with its simulacrum helper or perhaps with something else. The skitarii never so much as twitched. Giyahun held position calmly, enjoying himself.

  Finally, the intermediary indicated assent.

  ‘I have preliminary clearance,’ she said, her flat voice sounding close to annoyance. ‘These things will be done. To return to the matter of this day, all we require of you now, at this juncture, is a name. A name for this vessel.’

  The Khan gestured to Giyahun to stand down, and the tulwar was withdrawn. Then the primarch turned away, strolling out towards the centre of the great unfinished command bridge. He looked up at the semi-completed terraces and the exposed matter of the great supportive beams. Above them all glittered the forcefield holding the breathable air in – beyond that was emptiness, a frigid waste lit by a harsh sun.

  For a while the primarch gave no answer. He looked over his future domain, a star-borne citadel created for a conqueror, and the old covetousness kindled across his tight features. Already there was something there – desire, perhaps.

  ‘We’ll wait until it’s d
one,’ he said. ‘The name will come.’

  THREE

  Days later, and they gathered in the Palace again. The chambers they had been given were capacious but bland, used for housing any number of dignitaries at the hub of Imperial power and so stripped of any ostentatious signs of particular allegiance. The floors were polished wood, the walls scoured sandstone. From below and above and around them came the layered hums of constant activity, the grind and hammer of machine tools and tramping boots. There was never any rest within the Palace, never any respite from the churn, churn, churn of constant preparation. A ship left for the void every second. Another arrived to take its place. It was the greatest movement of personnel and equipment in humanity’s history – nothing before had come close, and most believed nothing would ever come close again.

  Yesugei paced around the chamber’s perimeter, peering through the windows as the sun set. The sky was criss-crossed with contrails, lit up by floating defence stations on heavy grav-plates and pierced by the twinkle of a billion spire-lights.

  Giyahun was seated in one of the low plains-chairs they had brought down from their ship, christened the Tchin-Zar a year ago after its delivery from the Martian Legion reserve. The Khan sat, poking unenthusiastically at a dish of broiled meat. The Palace kitchens had endeavoured to produce something approximating Chogorian food, but it wasn’t easy to match the remorseless diet of flesh and fermented dairy products that fuelled the warrior clans of the Altak.

  A chime sounded in the corridor outside, and Hasik entered. The lord commander of the V Legion bowed to his primarch, then raised a quizzical eyebrow at the food.

  ‘You have it,’ the Khan said, sliding the bowl towards him. ‘How goes the work?’

  Hasik sat down, took a spoon and dutifully made inroads into the stew. ‘They’re tough,’ he said, chewing. ‘Skilled. Disciplined. Everything you’ll want.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Solid.’ Hasik snorted a laugh. ‘Never seen one smile.’ He swallowed. ‘Some things I’ve learned. This Legion is machine heavy. They go to war in transports, and rely on the armour to get them in close. After that, their infantry tactics are standard. Remember the Qo battalions at Sha’ang? With the armoured faduun? That’s what they remind me of.’

  The Khan looked at him with heavy eyes. ‘Can they be led?’

  ‘Of course they can be led,’ interjected Yesugei, standing on the far side of the chamber. ‘They have been led for eighty years already, and conquered more worlds than we ever conquered nations.’

  ‘Aya,’ said Giyahun, idly, ‘what use is that to us?’

  ‘I need to know if they can be moulded,’ said the Khan, sitting back in his low-slung plains-chair. ‘It will be years before our own kind enter this Legion. Even then, they’re already changing. No child of Altak ever saw a starship before we did. Now one hovers over the Khum Karta every week. What does that do to them?’

  Yesugei turned to face them. ‘It changes everything. Their minds are opening up. That is what He wants. It is why He does this.’

  Hasik swallowed again, then pushed the bowl away. ‘It can be done,’ he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Just won’t be easy. They have city minds. They guard walls.’

  ‘And the zadyin arga?’ asked the Khan.

  Hasik shrugged. ‘They don’t talk about it.’

  ‘Because that is terror to them,’ said Yesugei, walking over to where the others were gathered. ‘We were lucky. I have spoken to others. They call it Strife, or Old Night. Tell them of powers, and that is what they think of. I have been reading the accounts, the few they salvaged. I can see what they are scared of.’

  ‘An empire can’t be built on fear,’ said the Khan, looking up at his counsellor sceptically.

  ‘That is why they never speak of it,’ Yesugei said. ‘They push it away, pretend it never happened. For now.’

  The Khan pondered that. As ever, his fingers strayed to his blade, catching at the wound leather of the hilt. He was restive here, caged within walls placed within walls.

  ‘I know what you counsel,’ he said.

  ‘We are running out of days,’ Yesugei said. ‘Soon we will be back in the emptiness, and then there will be no more chances.’

  ‘But what can he tell me that my Father did not?’

  ‘I do not know. But he is only a little less powerful, and is the joint architect of this place.’

  ‘He is a slave.’

  ‘Perhaps. I counted myself powerful before I came here. I enjoyed the mastery of the storm. I enjoyed what I could do with it, for you, for the ordu. But I felt his presence as soon as we entered orbit, and knew that I had felt it already, only in dreams. I have met the Sigillite’s people now, and smelled the residual energy on their bodies, like pollen caught on silk. Maybe he is a slave. That may be true. But his power still dwarfs mine. Perhaps it dwarfs everyone else’s, save your incomparable Father’s.’

  The Khan smiled back, a weary grin that briefly illuminated his features. ‘I’d trust you to best him. Anyone, for that matter.’ He stretched out his long arms, grimacing as his muscles flexed. ‘But I don’t have the stomach for more argument. Let them order their city here. Best we’re free of it.’

  ‘You can’t escape Him,’ Yesugei said. ‘None of you can.’

  ‘Sure of that?’

  ‘More than sure.’

  For a moment the two of them tested one another, a teasing contest of wills. There could only be one winner, though, and the seer’s gaze fell away. He glanced ruefully at Hasik.

  ‘Speak to him, brother,’ Yesugei said. ‘If he will not listen to me–’

  Hasik laughed. ‘He never listens to me either.’

  Giyahun chuckled, toying with the long edge of his dagger. ‘He listens to Qin Xa.’

  ‘Only because Qin Xa never opens his mouth,’ replied Hasik.

  ‘Enough,’ said the Khan. He shot Yesugei a sour glance. ‘I know you, shaman. You’d wear at me every hour until the fleet was ready. So I’ll do it. I’ll speak. I’ll let him say his piece, and try not to show him the long edge of my tulwar when he angers me, which he will. Will that be enough? Will that make you happy?’

  Yesugei bowed in gratitude. ‘I will only be happy when we are home again, Khagan.’

  The Khan snorted, and turned away.

  ‘Then you’ll be waiting a long time,’ he said.

  The woman Niasta guided him into the fortress. For all her self-assurance, she did not look directly at him, but lowered her damaged eyes whenever there was risk of contact. At first the primarch hardly noticed her, but as the long procession wore on, taking them deeper down into the Palace’s depths, the silence between them became harder to sustain.

  ‘It is an honour to accompany you, lord,’ she ventured, as they passed through the last of the courtier-inhabited levels and into colder arteries of hard-delved stone. ‘I have heard much of your home world, and it intrigues me.’

  A thousand people had told the Khan that. At the start he had found it hard to countenance. Later on he had realised it was only a kind of courtesy – a way of initiating conversation. They no doubt said the same to all visitors from far-flung planets, scattered like jewels across the crumpled fabric of real space. Chogoris was obscure, but far from the most eccentric of worlds. Fenris was more savage, they said, and Colchis more extreme. Barbarus was almost unimaginable. Chogoris didn’t intrigue them. Nothing did, save the strata of power and their place within them.

  ‘What have you heard, then?’ he asked, not greatly interested in the answer. What did keep his attention was the stone around him – it was old, terrifyingly old, sunk into the bedrock long before the spires and domes that now formed the outer profile of the Palace were built. He breathed in the musty air, and its flavour reminded him of something far off and semi-forgotten, as if from childhood, except that his childhood had been experienced a long way from Terra.

  ‘That your warfare is conducted at speed,’ Niasta replied. ‘Not just a
s necessity demands, but as a founding principle. That is unique. No other Legion, not even the Fifth itself under its previous commanders, has adopted that core doctrine. There is an open question as to how well the Legiones Astartes template can accommodate it. After all, a single suit of power armour weighs several tonnes.’

  The completeness of the answer surprised him. Perhaps her interest had been more than casual.

  ‘How long have you served him?’ he asked.

  ‘My adult lifetime. Since he became First Lord.’

  ‘And when was that?’

  She turned to smile at him. It was the cool smile of a courtier used to living among those who were more powerful, used to delivering them bad news and remaining alive, massaging egos and assuaging anger.

  ‘He is the last,’ she said. ‘There were once many, now there is only one. Just as the Crusade reaches its apogee, only he remains. One day, he too will be just a memory, but not yet. Consider what that means.’

  But there was no time. They reached a door, a naked slab of rock cut roughly into the face before them, pocked with the ancient marks of the chisel. Niasta placed her hand against it and hidden cylinders pulled it open, revealing a softly lit sanctum within.

  The Khan looked at her a little longer, considering whether to press the question. Niasta looked up at him, her damaged eyes glistening in the dark, almost as if she were daring him to ask.

  ‘There is danger in your soul,’ he said eventually. ‘Watch where it takes you.’

  Then he turned away, ducking under a lintel made for human dimensions, and the door slid closed behind him.

  The chamber was small, less than ten metres in diameter. Candles had been set into alcoves within the rock, flickering and guttering as eddies of air moved like spectres across the flags.

  Waiting for him was a grey-skinned ghoul, a living cadaver draped in heavy robes. His claw held a staff, and a cowl obscured his thin, flesh-stretched face. The man’s movements were stiff, as if arthritic, and his breathing was a rattle.

  It was as if the Imperium were governed by the two faces of a single man – one preternaturally healthy, the other irredeemably sick. Perhaps being in the presence of the Emperor for so long did that to a mortal. Perhaps that was what Niasta had meant about him being the last – the last to survive proximity to that great dark star about which the fate of humanity revolved. Or maybe all the others had simply died of old age. Maybe they had never lived at all, and these were just more Terran lies.