Warhawk, p.24
Warhawk, page 24
Valdor ghosted across the high places, his cloak rippling in the acrid smoke, before dropping down steeply through the empty carcass of a storage silo, plummeting down shafts that had once carried industrial elevators and were now pits into pure blackness. He broke out near ground level, tearing along a parapet filled with silenced artillery pieces, their crews scattered face up, sightless eyes open to the heavens, outstretched hands locked in a rictus of supplication. He slipped through a long gallery of burned-out armour, all twisted barrels and broken tracks, overhung with a static fog of promethium vapour. Mist banks rose up on all sides around him, thick and curdling, smelling of chems, munitions and the dead.
He soon laid eyes on the enemy again – warriors of Lorgar’s Legion, advancing through the unnatural dusk with raw confidence, surrounded by the spectral flicker of half-instantiated daemonkind. Their armour was carved with words of power, decorated with the bones and the flesh of those they had slain, their helms deformed into outstretched maws, or serpent’s mouths, or the leer of some Neverborn warp prince. Their cantrips stank and pulsed around them, making the natural air recoil and mist shred itself into appalled ribbons.
They were engorged with their veil-drawn power, sick on it, their blades running with new-cut fat and their belts hung with severed scalps. For all that, they were still warriors, and they detected Valdor’s presence soon enough. Nine curved blades flickered into guard, nine genhanced bodies made ready to take him down.
He raced straight into the heart of them, lashing out with his spear, slicing clean through corrupted ceramite. The combined blades danced, snickering in and out of one another’s path as if in some rehearsed ritual of dance-murder, all with the dull gold of the lone Custodian at its centre. A poisoned gladius nearly caught his neck. A fanged axe-edge nearly plunged into his chest. Long talons nearly pulled him down, ripe to be trodden into the mire under the choreographed stamp of bronze-chased boots.
But not quite. They were always just a semi-second too slow, a fraction too predictable. The gap between the fighters was small, but it remained unbridgeable. His spear slammed and cut, parried and blocked, an eye-blink ahead of the lesser blades, a sliver firmer and more lethal in its trajectory, until black blood was thrown up around it in thick flurries and the lens-fire in the Word Bearers’ helms died out, one by one.
Afterwards, Valdor withdrew, breathing heavily, taking a moment to absorb the visions he had been gifted with each kill. Lorgar’s scions were little different to the true daemons in what they gave him – brief visions of eternal torment, wrapped up in archaic religious ciphers and a kind of perpetually forced ecstasy. They were steeped in some of the purest, deepest strands of Chaos, wilfully dredging up the essence of its mutating, despoiling genius and turning it, through elaborate tortures, into a way of war. To fight them was to be reminded, more acutely than with most others, of the consequences of defeat.
But he could not linger. He pushed on again, clearing his mind. He ran harder into the maw of the advancing enemy forces, fighting his way through the scattered warbands. None caught him. Some of them barely knew he was there before he slew them. That couldn’t last – when the main formations of Traitor Legions reached these regions then even he would have to withdraw – but for now the ragged interlopers scarcely slowed him.
He plunged below ground level, following his memory of all the installations east of the Clanium District. He slipped through narrow gaps blocked up by fallen arches. He slipped down deeper wells, on rickety steel clamber-frames, on spiral stairs, until it felt like he was almost back into the Dungeon stratum again, suffocated deep under the layers and layers of old construction and forgetfulness.
He finally entered the target laboratorium and witnessed for himself the destruction. The walls were cracked, the floors strewn with rubbish, the long tables covered in broken instruments. He walked through it all, and saw that some stations had been used very recently – the machine-spirits on the auspex devices were still functioning.
He paused at a station, brought the tip of his spear up, holding it laterally over the worktop. He closed his eyes, and listened to the resonances in the airspace.
Fo had been here. But he had not been alone. Valdor concentrated harder, letting his armour systems process every morsel of pheromone left in the stuffy atmosphere, letting his mind settle on the environment and its unfolding story.
His eyes snapped open. He moved further back, along the workbenches and into the deeper darkness. He saw blood on the far wall, and a broken door, and some fragments of an Imperial officer’s uniform hanging below long gouge marks on the bare walls. Those marks were familiar, both in scale and style – a gauntlet-mounted claw, slashed wildly at a fast-moving target.
Night Lords.
He started to run.
They had to put down eventually. As much as John wanted to keep going, there was a hard limit on their progress. No one else – as far as any of them had admitted, anyway – could fly the lighter. He had been exhausted before they had taken off. It had to stop.
Keeping going, though, had felt like the easier option for most of the journey. It had meant that the memories could be pushed out, deferred in favour of keeping their little craft in the air. As soon as he set it back to earth, on top of a flat mesa of blasted scrub and blown weeds, he knew it would all come back.
The turbines wound down. The hold locks snapped open, the environment controls turned off. John deactivated the main power lines with a soft click, and then they were done, back out into the fresh air, their scant protection taken away again for the time being.
It was a hot night. Or a hot day – no way of telling now. The passengers made their way down the access ramp, going awkwardly with stiff limbs and aching muscles. They soon fell into their little groups – Actae and her bodyguard, Oll and his travelling companions. All of them took the opportunity to break open ration boxes stowed in the lighter’s hold, and slumped wearily onto the baked earth with them.
Leetu brought some for John. ‘You should eat,’ the Space Marine said.
Yes, he should. There were lots of things he should do.
John looked up at the archaic warrior, that strange mix of the familiar and the unknown. He’d been scared of him in the beginning, knowing well enough what such creatures could do. He wasn’t now. Now, he knew the right words. The words that could turn armour inside out, send his bolt pistol flying from his grasp, render his muscles to water.
‘Thanks,’ he said, and sat down.
The two of them ate in silence. To the north-east, the sky was alight – a wavering, flickering blush that never went out. You could smell the mix of chems and cooked flesh from here.
‘I suppose I don’t know why she kept you on,’ John said eventually. ‘I mean, if she hated all of this so much. Aren’t you just… the worst kind of reminder?’
Leetu chewed steadily. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe that was a problem for her.’ He never really smiled. His bull-necked, slab-muscled head was always held perfectly poised, almost expressionlessly. ‘Or maybe she liked to remember a beginning. From when things were more optimistic.’
John raised an eyebrow. ‘But, if you believe her, she was the one behind it all. No Erda, no traitors. Everyone raised properly in father’s secure Palace, given the guidance they always needed.’
‘What makes you think that would have gone better?’
‘Is there a worse outcome than this one?’
‘I would say so. There usually is.’
John chuckled, and shook his head. ‘I envy your cast of mind. And now I wonder who you were, before they changed you.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘I think it probably does. I think that’s what we’re learning, here. You can give someone all the genework you like, but add a shitty upbringing and it all comes crashing down about your ears. Or a good one, we have to hope, and they can prosper through it all.’
‘I really don’t remember.’
‘I guess you probably don’t. I hope she kept some records.’
Something enormous flashed in the far distance then, followed a few moments later by a soft rumble. The scrub-bushes swayed around them, then got back to their shivering in the warm air. Above them, the faint stars burned, although most of the lights weren’t really stars.
‘I think I liked to draw,’ said Leetu after a while, out of the blue. ‘I mean, I still do. But I don’t think the process taught me that. I think it’s something I kept on. From before.’
Almost sheepishly, he drew out some small rectangles of material from a pouch at his belt. They were plascard, roughly cut. He handed them to John, who turned them to face the light of the aircraft’s lumens.
Each one had a picture on them. The images were stylised, bordering on crude, but in an intentional sense. There were ten of them. The likenesses were striking. Under each representation was a caption in an old form of vernacular Gothic.
The Magician. The Empress. The Hermit. The Fool.
‘Very good,’ John said, grudgingly impressed. ‘I recognise all of us. When did you have a chance to do these?’
Leetu shrugged. ‘They do not take long. I have more.’
‘Hobby of yours, is it?’
‘More than that.’ He blinked impassively. ‘Something to… keep on at.’
John looked up at Leetu’s face. It was an Astartes face, the kind of face that wouldn’t blanche at wiping out a village, or a fortress, or a world. And yet, once, it would have been a human face, softer, thinner, capable of going in a different direction if the genecraft hadn’t meddled.
‘Actae thinks we’ve been assembled,’ John said. ‘A spread of human types, off to the Palace to remind someone, maybe everyone, what’s at stake here. You should do a card for yourself.’
‘I would not know what to call it.’
John shrugged. ‘Temperance?’
‘The Devil, maybe.’
John chuckled. ‘Hah.’ He reached for another ration-stick, and started to gnaw at it. He needed to sleep, though that brought the risk of dreaming.
Some things, amid all the nonsense, had really flipped about. In the beginning, it had been John begging Oll to get involved again. Now the old soldier had taken charge, whipping them all into some kind of military shape for whatever came next. John had drifted to the edge of events, he felt, unsure what he was doing now, knowing that the next death would be the end of the line. And yet, for all the horror, Hatay-Antakya had given him the knowledge. His resolve had never been lower, his powers had never been higher.
What a bloody farce.
He got up, slowly and awkwardly. Leetu remained rooted to the spot.
‘We’ll need a plan,’ John said. ‘For when we get closer. It won’t be an easy run.’
‘I shall speak to my counterpart. The new Space Marine.’
‘I think Ollanius will be the one calling the shots. Are you fine with that?’
‘Of course.’
‘My guess is we’ll be improvising, even if a solid plan comes up between here and the Palace. You might think that went beyond the call of duty. If you wanted to bail, get back to Erda, I wouldn’t blame you.’
For the first time, Leetu turned to look directly at him. ‘I am with you now, John. Do not insult me again.’
John held his hands up. ‘Just making sure.’ He forced out a smile. ‘I mean, I’m glad. I’ve seen what you can do with that pistol – better on our side, eh?’
But that was weak, and Leetu looked away again. When he next spoke, though, his voice was the same as it always was – unoffended, inoffensive.
‘Reflect on what you can achieve now, logokine. I will be at your side throughout, just as I told her I would be, but your role is the important one.’ He smiled, in an artificial kind of way. ‘In any case, I wish to be there for myself, because I have not finished the set. How could I have done? No one, to my knowledge, has ever drawn the Emperor from life.’
Skarr-Hei was losing his grip. Skarr-Hei was becoming just a part of the whole, a fleck of fire on the orb of sun-fire. Skarr-Hei had to keep killing to keep the pain at bay, though you never really lost the pain, it only changed character – sometimes a goad, sometimes a reminder, sometimes like an old friend that you felt you needed even though nothing good ever came of knowing him.
The enemy weren’t worth noticing. They were buckling, and had been running ever since the breakthrough at Mercury. Skarr-Hei had heard that Titans were coming through the gap now, a monumental effort given the huge amount of earth and stone that needed clearing. That wouldn’t affect things for a while, though – a Titan would struggle in the cramped and ruined Palace interior, whereas infantry went fast, went hard, swarming across any barrier raised up against them, getting to the blood-spill.
Skarr-Hei had hoped for better fighting, though. He had hoped to find an enemy that would test him, one that would stand up and hammer back at the whirl of chainaxes. Instead, they had died weakly – in clumps, in squads, in droves. The World Eaters’ advance was remorseless. They had no heavy armour to back them up this far in, no particular strategies or tactics, just a howling onslaught that burned its way in closer, closer, closer. They killed without compunction, without thought, out of reflex. Their old formations were nothing to them any more, they barely knew one old warrior from the other. Their armour was black-red, plastered with gore and dirt, all of it looking much the same, of a piece with the trenches of loosed flame that licked and rippled across the spoiled earth.
Skarr-Hei ran down a long viaduct with his many battle-brothers, the ash-wind tearing at them all. Below was murk and rubbish. Around him were the great towers, rising up through the reeking smog. Ahead was the rising massif of the Sanctum itself, still distant but visible now, ringed with fire and smelling of terror. Even as the embers of his rational mind sank into perpetual red-tinged fury, he still understood that this place was the target, the epicentre of the true pain. It had to be destroyed.
And yet, when they reached the end of the viaduct, at an intersection tower where the ways ahead branched out in all sorts of directions, one of his own Legion was waiting for them, uncharacteristically still. His great chainaxe ran with streamers of gore. His bronze helm was splattered with it, his breastplate was covered in it, making the dust coagulate and clump across the ceramite.
Skarr-Hei knew this one. They all knew this one, and by the looks of things he’d been busy.
‘My lord Khârn,’ Skarr-Hei said, the words slurring through his clogged vox-grille. He came to a halt, as did those around him.
Khârn barely seemed to notice them. He barely seemed aware of any presence, even his own. He was facing north, away from the Sanctum’s edge, off into the great cluster of tall spires that broke off from the Palatine urban zone and merged with regions already conquered. His stance was erect, febrile, as if suffused with some kind of electric current.
‘I…’ he grunted. ‘He’s… out… there.’
Skarr-Hei listened, but it wasn’t easy. He had to keep moving, keep killing. The process had been set in motion now, and what little remained of his rational mind told him that it would never stop, whatever happened here – kill, and kill again, or be lost in futile excruciation.
‘What are you saying?’ Skarr-Hei tried. ‘The primarch? You’ve… seen him?’
They all knew Angron was somewhere ahead. Skarr-Hei had heard the bellows from a distance, seen the carnage, but the Legion Master was off on his own, raging in his own private world of slaughter, neither commanding nor commanded, smashing through the unseen barriers against the netherworld. The best you could hope for was to witness it.
At the mention of the name, though, Khârn stirred. His bloody mask turned to gaze on Skarr-Hei. ‘Something… worth our time.’ His voice was breathy, thick with mucus. ‘Something… got up.’
And then Skarr-Hei knew what had distracted him. Some staged fight, some encounter, not allowed to run its natural course, nagging away somewhere in that addled mind. An adversary who had been allowed to escape alive, now out there too, part of the slaughter.
‘Who?’ he asked.
Khârn struggled to vocalise it. ‘The… Black Sword,’ he blurted at last.
Skarr-Hei didn’t know what that meant. There were a million swords out there, a great number of which were probably black. It wasn’t much of a name, and he doubted Khârn would be able to tell him more than that any time soon.
But they had to move. Had to keep going. His own blades were cooling, the blood on them was drying out, the Nails were already spiking.
‘We can find him, my lord,’ Skarr-Hei said. ‘There’s no hiding, not now. We can find him.’
And slowly, dimly, Khârn seemed to understand. He nodded. ‘You come,’ he ordered. He looked at the rest of them. ‘You all come.’
Then they were running again, not towards the centre but careering away like a pack of wild dogs, howling, growling, panting with machine-fervour. The movement would stave off the worst of the pain, but they all knew they needed to fight properly soon, to bury their blades into living flesh again, to kill, to maim, to burn.
Khârn led them now, driving them onwards, thick-painted gore flying free of his churning limbs.
‘Find… you,’ Skarr-Hei heard him mutter, over and over, obsessed now, consumed with it. ‘And finish… it.’
Taking the chance
Learning to doubt
Wallbreak
