Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero Page 11

  'This is what I saw,' he said. 'This is how it ends.'

  'In fire… and blood,' said Forrix. 'As… it should be. For warriors… like us…'

  In a matter of minutes, Calaena would be obliterated.

  Perturabo and his senior officers stood upon the highest bastion of the Sharei Maveth, watching helplessly as the Lux Ferem fell from the sky. Perturabo gripped the edge of the parapet with force enough to crumble its stonework.

  They had watched in horror as anti-aircraft ordnance had raked the belly of the mass-conveyor and raged impotently as an entire squadron of Thunderbolts blasted the gravitic tugs from the sky.

  Those same fighters had, one by one, destroyed themselves in an inexplicable paroxysm of self-immolation. His warriors had speculated on a schism within the traitors' ranks, but Perturabo alone had seen the faintest nimbus of something incorporeal streaking between the fighters before each explosion.

  There could be only one explanation.

  'That is the work of the Thousand Sons,' he whispered.

  'My lord?' said Barban Falk. 'The Fifteenth caused this?'

  'No,' said Perturabo. 'They are trying to stop it.'

  'What is about to happen is beyond anyone's power to stop.'

  Perturabo did not reply, knowing that Falk was entirely correct.

  Thousands of refugees were fleeing in panic through Calaena's streets. Others stood in enraptured horror, staring up at their doom as it fell from the sky. But stand or run, none of them would survive the mass-conveyor's impact. The faint sound of terrified screams was carried on the winds blowing in off the ocean.

  The Lux Ferem shuddered like a wounded beast as its captain fought a futile battle to keep it aloft. Glittering debris rained from its wounded flanks.

  'Come on,' urged Harkor, staring at the ship and slamming a fist on the parapet. 'Fight, damn you. Keep her in the air!'

  Barban Falk shook his head. 'An impossible task, Harkor. When that ship hits, everyone in the city is going to die. The Sons of Shaitan have been thorough in their betrayal.'

  'Faithless cowards,' said Harkor. 'Their treachery has condemned tens of thousands.'

  Hot anger surged through Perturabo at Harkor's words, a primal fury that roared with the need to hit back at those responsible for this atrocity.

  'That is the least of their sins,' said Perturabo. 'They have broken their oath of loyalty to the Emperor. That oath is an inviolable covenant, one that can never be reforged once broken. For such betrayers there can be no forgiveness, only the most painful of deaths.'

  Perturabo looked away from the doomed starship, feeling himself inexorably drawn to look up at the malignant sky. Vivid magna-storms burned in the upper atmosphere, hurling spears of lightning to the planet's surface and painting the line of the horizon with electric fire.

  Even through the nightmarish storms, Perturabo - and Perturabo alone - could still see the distant star-maelstrom, its unnatural energies swirling like a whirlpool in a stagnant ocean. It stared down at him like the eye of a patient hunter, as it had since he had first seen it clinging to the rain-soaked cliffs of Lochos.

  Were its energies brighter around Morningstar?

  He tore his gaze from the heavens, his mind racing to calculate the likely force and radius of the Lux Ferem's impact.

  Calaena would be destroyed, that much was certain.

  The Sharei Maveth would suffer severe damage, yes, but it would endure, lie briefly considered opening the gales to those civilians nor enough to reach them, but almost immediately rejected the notion. How could he be certain he would not be admitting the same traitors who had brought down the Lux Ferem?

  With a heavy heart, Perturabo knew only one logical course of action was open to him.

  'Pull every warrior within the Sharei Maveth,' he said. 'We batten down the hatches. I want every gate sealed, every portal locked and every blast shield engaged. And power up the void generators.

  'I think we're going to need them.'

  He turned away from the coming catastrophe.

  The evacuation was in ruins, but Perturabo's mind now turned to ways it might yet be salvaged. If Magos Tancorix's calculations were correct, time remained to construct temporary landing fields on the plains around Zharrukin. They were wide enough to bring trans-atmospheric troop-ships down from the orbiting fleets. It would be a fraction of how many they could have saved, but—

  'Throne!' yelled Barban Falk, pointing at something over the parapet. 'Coming in from the south. What is he thinking?'

  Perturabo snapped from his calculations and looked to where Falk had indicated. He saw a lightning-struck Stormbird arcing in over the coastline. Its engines were on fire and it was heading straight to the heart of the landing platforms, as if seeking to join the vast bulk of the Lux Ferem in death.

  The Stormbird's hull rippled along its length with burning fuel and it shuddered as it passed through the tortured magnetic fields surrounding the Lux Ferem.

  He knew instantly who was on board.

  'What is that pilot doing?' asked Harkor. 'Is he insane?'

  'Perhaps,' said Perturabo. 'It's Magnus.'

  Curiously, Ahriman felt little fear as the vastness of the Lux Ferem closed in, a crushing sky falling to end him and everyone in Calaena. He eased his mind into the third Enumeration, finding solace in the clarity it brought.

  If this is death, then it is not so terrible.

  He looked over at Forrix, his flesh burned to the bone, and reconsidered that thought. Blood pulsed from the Iron Warrior's many wounds, grievous hurts even transhuman biology could not undo.

  Despite Forrix's wishes, Ahriman turned his power upon him. He subtly closed the pain gates in the Iron Warrior's spine, hearing a groan of relief escape his scorched lips.

  'This is what you saw?' asked Forrix.

  Ahriman nodded. 'Yes.'

  'And do such visions always come to pass?'

  'Most of the time.'

  'Only most?'

  'Sometimes, by knowing the future, you can change it.'

  'The implication being that you never actually saw the future, merely a potential future, yes?'

  Ahriman smiled. 'I underestimated you, Forrix.'

  'Most people do, but am I correct?'

  'I cannot give you a definitive answer, my friend,' said Ahriman. 'We hold conclaves within the Fellowships that seek to answer such questions, but none have yet found a satisfactory answer.'

  'I have one,' said Forrix.

  'You can answer a riddle that has confounded the greatest thinkers of the Thousand Sons?'

  'There's that arrogance again.'

  'Apologies.'

  Forrix shook his head. 'We have only a few moments left to live. Don't waste them asking for forgiveness.'

  'Then tell me your answer so I do not die in ignorance.'

  'Very well,' said Forrix. 'These visions you have? You see them and you act to thwart them or see them come to fruition.'

  'If everything you see is merely a potential future, then the very act of seeing it changes the outcome in one of two ways. First, if your vision is of, say, my death and it still comes to pass, no matter whether you let it happen or resisted it, then the future was set and nothing you could have done would have made any difference. Or, if by acting, you change it so I live, then was it truly a vision of the future? By seeing me die, did you change the future because you were then compelled to save me? So my question is this - are you changing the future by seeing it, or are potential futures changing you?'

  Ahriman nodded, pleased at Forrix's insight, basic though it was. Did he truly believe the brightest minds of the Thousand Sons had not already debated this thought experiment a hundred times over?

  'You pick a strange time for a discussion on matters theosophical, my friend,' said Ahriman.

  'I don't often get the chance among the Fourth,' said Forrix. 'The Dodekatheon is a place of hard realities, not matters intangible.'

  'The Dodekatheon?'

  'O
ne of our mason's lodges within the Legion,' said Forrix. 'A meeting place for builders and strategists to come together and test which of the newest theories of fortifications - their raising and razing, if you will - are in ascendance.'

  Forrix looked up and Ahriman saw the acceptance of death in his one remaining eye. Perhaps there was something to the myths of Old Earth of surrendering an eye in return for wisdom after all.

  'I wish I had more time to know you, Forrix,' said Ahriman. 'To learn of your Legion and its ways. I suspect there is a great deal we could teach one another.'

  'If only we had more time,' said Forrix, 'but that is the one resource we can never recoup.'

  'In the Great Ocean, all things are possible,' said Ahriman, holding out his hand.

  Forrix took his wrist in the warrior's grip.

  And a roaring tide of power surged through Ahriman. The scarab on his armour's chest-plate blazed with light, and he felt a connection between him and every single warrior of the Thousand Sons.

  A red veil fell over Ahriman's eyes and he saw Forrix relentlessly marching across a bloody battlefield, the bones of millions ground to ash beneath his boots. The Iron Warrior was wreathed in the corrosion and dust of an unending war fought in the darkness of a far future.

  Engulfed in storms of iron and fire, wading through blood and death with burning banners raised all around him, this Forrix was a monster.

  'You live…' breathed Ahriman, his limbs swelling with power the likes of which he never imagined he might feel. 'You will not die on Morningstar.'

  The vision of Forrix as a dark god beneath a black sun returned to him and he lowered his gaze towards the wounded Iron Warrior. 'But you must.'

  Ahriman raised his arm, ready to kill Forrix where he lay, but cried out as yet more agony suffused his limbs.

  This was dangerous, lethal power. The kind each flight in the Great Ocean promised in its hollow blandishments, but which every initiate was warned never to touch. It pulled him to his feet as if he were a puppet moved by the will of a cruel master. Fire blazed in his eyes as all his arts, in all their most potent forms, erupted from his flesh. Raptora energies warped the metal of the Hydra like softened wax. Athanaean insight revealed every banal secret within Forrix's single-minded skull.

  The Iron Warrior howled in pain as Ahriman's Pavoni arts restored life to his flesh, remaking shattered bones, regenerating scraps of organs and slathering fresh-grown skin over previously scorched meat.

  Corvidae prescience showed him Morningstar shattered, its core sundered, its air stripped away and the void echoing to the disbelieving screams of its people.

  His neck snapped around as he felt the approach of something incredible, something brighter than a thousand stars - a psychic fire that could burn the entire world then work miracles with its ashes.

  It came in like the phoenix of legend.

  A Stormbird, its hull burning from prow to stem.

  And standing upon its frontal assault ramp was a messianic figure of red fire, a cyclopean titan of unimaginable power and infinite majesty.

  +Father,+ said Ahriman.

  The dying steel leviathan filled the sky, its impossible length stretching to the horizon, a hammer of the gods come to smite the earth and bring about its ruination. Burning metal and screaming flesh fell from ruptured compartments. Men and women leapt to their deaths rather than be consumed by the fires raging within the starship's belly.

  The power filling Magnus, the seismic force dragged from the heart of the planet, still raged within his breast. Any thoughts of ritual dissipation, of a gradual psychic decompression, were moot, for now he had the perfect release.

  Phosis T'kar stood beside Magnus on the burning Stormbird's assault ramp, his aura ablaze with exhilaration and fear.

  Will this work or has my arrogance sealed our fate?

  'Can you really do this, my lord?' asked Phosis T'kar, echoing the primarch's thought.

  'I truly don't know,' said Magnus, moving through every one of the Enumerations to prepare for the impossible feat he was about to attempt. 'But nor can I simply leave the tens of thousands of people aboard the Lux Ferem and in Calaena to their doom.' Phosis T'kar nodded, the decision made. Then what can I do?' 'You are already doing it.'

  The scarab upon Phosis T'kar's chest had been hewn from the crystalline walls of the Reflecting Caves below Tizca and now served as a conduit between him and his gene-sire. Through these psychically resonant gemstones, Magnus could touch the soul of every one of his sons.

  He felt as they felt, shouldering their every emotion.

  He took on their indignant rage at what was being lost on Morningstar and shared their unquenchable thirst for new knowledge.

  But most of all he shared their deep longing to reveal their true selves. Their powers were as much a part of them as breathing, and to keep that hidden from their brother Legions was to keep a part of their soul in chains.

  From one son, Magnus felt the barely acknowledged fear that his primarch was leading them down into a darkness from which there could be no return. He knew who that was, of course Magnus had known since their first meeting on Prospero, when he had tried to hide the agony he was suffering, that the future would set them on altogether different paths.

  This intimate connection between Magnus and his sons allowed no secrets to be kept, no truths to be unacknowledged or desires hidden away.

  The power was intoxicating.

  To know everything. Who would not wish such a boon?

  Their power and love flowed to him, augmented him, a thousand conduits to the Great Ocean. He took that energy and shaped it, wielding more power than any had before him.

  Had the Emperor ever dared so greatly? Perhaps, but He rarely spoke of the full extent of His reach. Would Magnus be the first of the primarchs to eclipse their father's deeds?

  Magnus tried to dismiss the thought as fleeting arrogance, but a thorn of it remained lodged in his heart And who would blame him? What son did not aspire to be more than his father?

  The Stormbird slammed down, skidding in an arcing loop across the platform. Promethium sprayed like rain from its ruptured tanks, instantly igniting in the flames burning along its wings.

  The gunship bounced back into the air, before slamming down onto its belly and breaking its back. The landing gear shattered instantly, sheared away by the force of the impact. Orange sparks flared from grinding, shrieking metal. The Stormbird howled in pain as it finally ground to a halt, billowing smoke and flames.

  Magnus leapt from the downed gunship and his warriors followed him without question. Their power flowed into him, honed and distilled by the scarab gems upon their breastplates.

  The belly of the Lux Ferem was a hundred metres above them.

  Ninety, eighty…

  Clashing electromagnetics from damaged repulsors churned the air. Coolant discharge vented from its colossal drive cores. Hurricane winds scoured the platform in localised tornadoes and burning plasma vortices. Every step onwards became a battle.

  Magnus bent into the storm of gravitic waves and plasma fire, feeling his skin blister in the intolerable heat. His hair charred and crisped as his warriors formed the mandala around him, the paint bubbling and peeling on their war-plate.

  Fifty metres…

  Magnus looked up and thrust his arms to the sky with a word of change upon his lips. He unleashed the vast power roiling with him and let the world's wounded core pour through him. He channelled it, shaped it and bent it to his will. His sons added what little they could, their power infinitesimal next to the energies he sought to master.

  Magnus drew upon his deepest raptures, formulae he had only ever read of in the Emperor's most secret vaults. Unchecked energies wrought him into a being of purest energy, a titan at the end of the world, the great god Donar wrestling the great World Serpent in the last great battle Blinding waves of aetheric raptures poured from him in a thunderous bow wave as his power met the descending force of the Lux Ferem.

&n
bsp; Could his body endure what was being demanded of it?

  The underside of the vast starship crumpled as its weight pressed down on the psychic force pushing upwards.

  Colossal bulkheads designed to withstand the push and pull of void manoeuvring and warp translation bent and split under stresses beyond their power to endure Hull plates thick enough to withstand explosive ordnance peeled back like wet parchment. Hydraulic fluids drizzled and burned in the swirling flames.

  Magnus roared, his mind expanding in a lattice of geometric progression. Every breath was fire in his lungs. He was driven down to his knees, arms upraised like the great titan condemned to bear the weight of the cosmos upon his shoulders in penance for his rebellion.

  The Liu Ferem continued its descent, a falling sky of burning metal. Its dark shadow engulfed them all.

  Thirty metres…

  Magnus' mind buckled under the furious storm of aether raging within him. Gene-wrought flesh stretched drum-taut, every bone unseating from its neighbour as sinews stretched.

  His synaptic connections overloaded to burnout.

  Could anything fly so close to such power and live?

  Magnus reached deep for everything he had left, but he had nothing more to give, no reserves to draw upon.

  Then a solitary legionary limped from the firestorm, the gemstone upon his chest a too-bright beacon that spoke of their shared destiny. +Ahriman,+ said Magnus. +Help us. Help me!+

  The legionary broke the circle of the mandala, and stood before him. The Great Ocean swelled within him, stronger than any of his other sons. How had Magnus not seen this before?

  Ahriman placed his hand upon the primarch's chest and threw his head back in agony as a measure of the power consuming his primarch passed into a body wholly unable to bear such a burden.

  The power he passed to Magnus was fractional, a pebble in a field of boulders.

  But even a pebble could start an avalanche.

  Aether fire raged around them in a spinning conflagration, shrieking and blue like a murderous flock of azure raptors. Howling laughter surrounded them, a choir of voices that cackled with lunatic glee and wept with dour fatalism. Swirling discs of light spun like wind-blown petals, but the power they bore was fed into the combined magicks of Magnus and his Thousand Sons.