Ashes of the imperium th.., p.44
Ashes of the Imperium: The Scouring, Book 1, page 44
Prayto looked down at his palms. Under his gauntlets, he could feel the welts, the scarred patches where the power had briefly returned. He flexed his fingers, closed, open, closed again.
‘Come here, Librarian!’ he heard the Salamander call to him. ‘This will make your sour face smile.’
Slowly, slowly, he let his hands drop. He glanced over at Abidemi’s blade, the one he had taken from the witch’s corpse. Its jewels looked brighter now, somehow.
Then he lumbered back to the balcony’s edge. He immersed himself in the atmosphere of celebration.
But he didn’t smile. And he never unclenched those fists again, the whole time.
The grind of the engines was a comfort to him. Not now the sporadic, choking rhythm of drives that were a hair’s breadth away from failure, but instead the low, confident thrum of a line battleship’s core plasma reactors, steady, colossal, reliable.
They were powering their way through realspace, the squadron deployed in standard convoy formation. Sol was just another star, already indistinguishable without augmentation on the viewers. It felt too easy, somehow, after all the trouble Theokon and the others had had in making any progress at all, but then these ships were full Legion battleships, fast and powerful, piloted by a primarch who had studied the navigational paths of the Solar System more completely than any of his brothers. And even then, the evasion patterns had been more complex than he’d have thought possible. Only Perturabo could have done it. Only he could have slipped under Guilliman’s ever-prowling squadrons, performed the task he’d set himself, then extracted his forces without loss or detection. The Mandeville limit was reached, the enemy left far behind, and soon the plasma drives would be extinguished and the warp drives powered up. It was a breath-taking achievement, and no annals would ever tell of it.
The passage thereafter would be harder, they said. So many of the Navigators had died in that single hour, the hour when everything had been interrupted. Those who had survived said the warp was uncanny now – too flat, like a plane of glass stretching off into the abyss. The beacon was weak too, they said, just a flicker against the endless dark. You couldn’t rely on the old storm’s force to propel you, so everything was slow and painful. For all that, they would try, they said. It would be done. The primarch demanded it, so they would find a way.
Perturabo himself was out there, a few hundred kilometres ahead, brooding on the throne of his flagship, the Iron Blood. That ship had taken more damage than any other, having been lowered into Terra’s atmosphere during the first assault on the Lion’s Gate space port. Getting it out under fire had been an immense task, and it still bore the scars of the withdrawal. The rest of the squadron was in better shape, having had time to make repairs after the inferno of the Solar War, but nothing had escaped entirely unscathed. Other IV Legion assets would be rendezvoused with in time, putting back together what had been broken apart. The primarch had been right. Where other armies of the Grand Armada were now mere fragments of their former selves, this was a capable fighting force still, one that could still accomplish something.
But what? That was the question. No one spoke of the future. No one spoke of the past. They were merely running still, just faster now, powering away from Sol as fast as they could across the glassy expanse of the galaxy.
Theokon stood in one of the main observation galleries running along the starboard flank of the warship. Alescu, the only one of his warband who had made it out, was with him. For a long time neither of them said anything.
Eventually, Alescu turned away from the view of the void.
‘I don’t know what comes next,’ he said.
Theokon had nothing to say to him. He didn’t either. The certainties of the great rebellion were all gone, and in their place was nothing – just ludicrous schemes like the Word Bearer’s, or new wars of nihilism out in the reaches, or the last flickers of ambition from the few remaining titans of old. No one, it seemed, wanted to admit that it was over. All of it. You couldn’t get back to Terra, and even if you could, what would it be for? Just more betrayal.
For a moment, back on Laomedeia, he’d come to terms with things. You ran, you fought, you died. No more schemes, no more plans. Then Perturabo had come back, against all hope – but then again, Theokon had done what he could to summon him, so what had he really wanted?
He felt a sudden panic well up within him as he contemplated that, as if he’d plunged into an icy sea, hurtling down and down, with no bottom to it and no possibility of surfacing. He could move in any direction, any direction at all, and it would make no difference – everything would be the same. The more he looked at the stars, the more that sense swelled and grew. They were cast adrift, their moorings gone, nothing to secure a bearing by, just emptiness, emptiness, forever and ever…
‘Warsmith?’
Theokon drew in a sharp breath. His wounds must still be affecting him.
‘The primarch has a plan,’ he said flatly.
Alescu nodded. ‘I saw the cartoliths. He’s already got a route laid in. Kronion, Phelos V, Hord Rath, then Sebastus IV. More of them, I think – I didn’t see all the names. What’s this about?’
They wouldn’t be told. They had never been told about plans before. Perturabo would be obsessing over them even now, alone, his mind racing through every angle of it. Theokon remembered how he’d been on Laomedeia, that look of certainty.
Perturabo didn’t want to run forever. He wanted to do something, to build something. They were all the same, those hells-damned sons of the False Emperor – they couldn’t help themselves. He’d be dragged into it. No escape. All the old madness would creep back in – the daemons in the machines, the witchery in the pistons.
‘Everything was a lie,’ he murmured, partly to Alescu, partly to himself. ‘All the things they told us, right from the very start. And when we try to escape the lie, it comes right back after us.’
Alescu looked at him doubtfully. ‘But they’ll come after us too,’ he said. ‘We’ll need to be ready. We’re lucky – we have a chance now.’
Theokon laughed – a harsh bark in a ravaged throat. ‘A chance. A chance.’ He turned on his lieutenant. ‘Let me tell you something. Let me tell you what I’ve learned, since we ran from Terra. We have lived through a strange time. A unique time. The gods – those Powers we were told were eternal, were told would give us victory – turned their gaze away, just for a moment. A single heartbeat in the expanse of time. Soon they’ll be staring right at us again, but now, just for now, their eyes are closed. And what did we do in that world? The Word Bearer wanted them back. The primarch wants them back. I think the Imperials want them back too. The more we do this – slaughter one another, tear up the old pacts that created us – the sooner they’ll get their wish.’
Alescu listened. From far below, Theokon could hear the warp drives begin their power cycle.
‘And that tells me one thing,’ he continued. ‘Did we stop killing, when the gods’ whispers stopped? No. We didn’t. The enemy didn’t. They want to kill us more now than they ever did before. So do we. We’ll be doing this forever, one atrocity after the other. So it’s not them. It’s not the gods. It’s us. We just want an excuse. We want to point at the heavens and tell ourselves that they made us do these things. Erebus, damn him, wants us looking upwards. Lorgar wants it, Magnus wants it. If there are no gods, there are no excuses. So we need them. We hurry them back. Less painful that way. Less painful, because then we don’t have to look at who we really are.’
The shutters began to clang down, ripping away the view of the stars. The plasma chambers ceased their steady hum, replaced by the harsher rattle of the warp drives.
‘You want to know where Chaos is?’ he demanded, leaning towards Alescu. Then he banged his gauntlet against his chest. ‘Here. This is where Chaos is. But no one wants to hear that. They want to make it all as it was before, because we understood that world. We had our rites and our daemons and our soul-bound machines, and it made sense, and it deflected it all, and it let us forget that nothing, no part of it, means anything without us.’
Ships were beginning to translate now. The hull shivered as the immense masses crossed the threshold, one by one.
‘I thought the primarch knew. I thought that was why he left. But he doesn’t. He’s going to try to do what everybody else is doing, and he’ll end up just the same as all of them. And damn him, I can’t get out. I can’t get out. I’m going to have to serve that delusion, just as I’ve served every delusion that came our way since this thing started.’
Now they were accelerating towards the void-horizon, ramping up for the leap into the impossible. The deck trembled, the roars from below grew louder.
‘But we did get out,’ said Alescu warily. ‘We’re free. Now we run, just like you said.’
Theokon shook his head. All around him, the hard edges of the ship’s interior were blurring, that shroud of distortion which accompanied the crossing of the veil. In a moment they would be back within the warp, the empty halls of the crippled gods, skating across their vaults as uncanny silence rang in the deeps.
‘There is no way out. Not any more. The further out we travel, the faster the walls will rise up around us.’
The warp translation completed. The blurring fell away; the sharp lines of the dark metal interior snapped back.
Alescu didn’t say anything else. No doubt he thought Theokon had gone mad. Perhaps he would report it. It didn’t matter. Not much did now.
Theokon turned away. He looked up at the huge shutters, as if he could somehow penetrate the layers of shielding and stare into the void once more. They would be hurtling onwards, racing through the empyrean towards their undisclosed destination. Fast – fast beyond belief, fast beyond thought.
Now run, he thought to himself again. Run hard.
But it had all been a lie.
A place will be found. It will.
Yes, it would – the hell they deserved.
So run. Run now.
He could almost see it.
But no, not forever.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Wraight is the author of many Black Library books. His work for the Horus Heresy includes the novels Warhawk, Scars and The Path of Heaven, the Primarchs novels Leman Russ: The Great Wolf and Jaghatai Khan: Warhawk of Chogoris, the short novel Valdor: Birth of the Imperium, and the first title in The Scouring series, Ashes of the Imperium. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Space Wolves books Blood of Asaheim, Stormcaller and The Helwinter Gate, as well as the Vaults of Terra and Watchers of the Throne series, The Lords of Silence and the Dawn of Fire novel Sea of Souls. Additionally, he has many Warhammer novels to his name, and the Warhammer Crime novel Bloodlines. Chris lives and works in Bradford-on-Avon, in south-west England.
An extract from Horus Rising.
‘I was there,’ he would say afterwards, until afterwards became a time quite devoid of laughter. ‘I was there, the day Horus slew the Emperor.’ It was a delicious conceit, and his comrades would chuckle at the sheer treason of it.
The story was a good one. Torgaddon would usually be the one to cajole him into telling it, for Torgaddon was the joker, a man of mighty laughter and idiot tricks. And Loken would tell it again, a tale rehearsed through so many retellings, it almost told itself.
Loken was always careful to make sure his audience properly understood the irony in his story. It was likely that he felt some shame about his complicity in the matter itself, for it was a case of blood spilled from misunderstanding. There was a great tragedy implicit in the tale of the Emperor’s murder, a tragedy that Loken always wanted his listeners to appreciate. But the death of Sejanus was usually all that fixed their attentions.
That, and the punchline.
It had been, as far as the warp-dilated horologs could attest, the two hundred and third year of the Great Crusade. Loken always set his story in its proper time and place. The commander had been Warmaster for about a year, since the triumphant conclusion of the Ullanor campaign, and he was anxious to prove his new-found status, particularly in the eyes of his brothers.
Warmaster. Such a title. The fit was still new and unnatural, not yet worn in.
It was a strange time to be abroad amongst stars. They had been doing what they had been doing for two centuries, but now it felt unfamiliar. It was a start of things. And an ending too.
The ships of the 63rd Expedition came upon the Imperium by chance. A sudden etheric storm, later declared providential by Maloghurst, forced a route alteration, and they translated into the edges of a system comprising nine worlds.
Nine worlds, circling a yellow sun.
Detecting the shoal of rugged expedition warships on station at the out-system edges, the Emperor first demanded to know their occupation and agenda. Then he painstakingly corrected what he saw as the multifarious errors in their response.
Then he demanded fealty.
He was, he explained, the Emperor of Mankind. He had stoically shepherded his people through the miserable epoch of warp storms, through the Age of Strife, staunchly maintaining the rule and law of man. This had been expected of him, he declared. He had kept the flame of human culture alight through the aching isolation of Old Night. He had sustained this precious, vital fragment, and kept it intact, until such time as the scattered diaspora of humanity re-established contact. He rejoiced that such a time was now at hand. His soul leapt to see the orphan ships returning to the heart of the Imperium. Everything was ready and waiting. Everything had been preserved. The orphans would be embraced to his bosom, and then the Great Scheme of rebuilding would begin, and the Imperium of Mankind would stretch itself out again across the stars, as was its birthright.
As soon as they showed him proper fealty. As Emperor. Of mankind.
The commander, quite entertained by all accounts, sent Hastur Sejanus to meet with the Emperor and deliver greeting.
Sejanus was the commander’s favourite. Not as proud or irascible as Abaddon, nor as ruthless as Sedirae, nor even as solid and venerable as Iacton Qruze, Sejanus was the perfect captain, tempered evenly in all respects. A warrior and a diplomat in equal measure, Sejanus’s martial record, second only to Abaddon’s, was easily forgotten when in company with the man himself. A beautiful man, Loken would say, building his tale, a beautiful man adored by all. ‘No finer figure in Mark IV plate than Hastur Sejanus. That he is remembered, and his deeds celebrated, even here amongst us, speaks of Sejanus’s qualities. The noblest hero of the Great Crusade.’ That was how Loken would describe him to the eager listeners. ‘In future times, he will be recalled with such fondness that men will name their sons after him.’
Sejanus, with a squad of his finest warriors from the Fourth Company, travelled in-system in a gilded barge, and was received for audience by the Emperor at his palace on the third planet.
And killed.
Murdered. Hacked down on the onyx floor of the palace even as he stood before the Emperor’s golden throne. Sejanus and his glory squad – Dymos, Malsandar, Gorthoi and the rest – all slaughtered by the Emperor’s elite guard, the so-called Invisibles.
Apparently, Sejanus had not offered the correct fealty. Indelicately, he had suggested there might actually be another Emperor.
The commander’s grief was absolute. He had loved Sejanus like a son. They had warred side by side to affect compliance on a hundred worlds. But the commander, always sanguine and wise in such matters, told his signal men to offer the Emperor another chance. The commander detested resorting to war, and always sought alternative paths away from violence, where such were workable. This was a mistake, he reasoned, a terrible, terrible mistake. Peace could be salvaged. This ‘Emperor’ could be made to understand.
It was about then, Loken liked to add, that a suggestion of quote marks began to appear around the ‘Emperor’s’ name.
It was determined that a second embassy would be despatched. Maloghurst volunteered at once. The commander agreed, but ordered the speartip forwards into assault range. The intent was clear: one hand extended open, in peace, the other held ready as a fist. If the second embassy failed, or was similarly met with violence, then the fist would already be in position to strike. That sombre day, Loken said, the honour of the speartip had fallen, by the customary drawing of lots, to the strengths of Abaddon, Torgaddon, ‘Little Horus’ Aximand. And Loken himself.
At the order, battle musters began. The ships of the speartip slipped forward, running under obscurement. On board, stormbirds were hauled onto their launch carriages. Weapons were issued and certified. Oaths of moment were sworn and witnessed. Armour was machined into place around the anointed bodies of the chosen.
In silence, tensed and ready to be unleashed, the speartip watched as the shuttle convoy bearing Maloghurst and his envoys arced down towards the third planet. Surface batteries smashed them out of the heavens. As the burning scads of debris from Maloghurst’s flotilla billowed away into the atmosphere, the ‘Emperor’s’ fleet elements rose up out of the oceans, out of the high cloud, out of the gravity wells of nearby moons. Six hundred warships, revealed and armed for war.
Abaddon broke obscurement and made a final, personal plea to the ‘Emperor’, beseeching him to see sense. The warships began to fire on Abaddon’s speartip.
‘My commander,’ Abaddon relayed to the heart of the waiting fleet, ‘there is no dealing here. This fool imposter will not listen.’
And the commander replied, ‘Illuminate him, my son, but spare all you can. That order not withstanding, avenge the blood of my noble Sejanus. Decimate this “Emperor’s” elite murderers, and bring the imposter to me.’
