Iron Warrior Read online

  Moriana snatched at him, slicing the skin of his cheek, and Honsou flinched, more in surprise than pain. Blood welled briefly from the cuts, running down Moriana’s curling nails as she brought them to her mouth. The seer’s tongue flickered out, like a snake’s, and she moaned in pleasure at the taste of his blood.

  ‘Ah…’ she sighed. ‘Yes, I feel the fire of your ambition, it reminds me of my own foolish dreams of youth, when all I could see was the path before me and not the world around me.’

  ‘Then you will tell me what I want to know?’

  Moriana nodded, moving from beside the fire to where a stack of scrawled parchments, scrolls and dusty books were piled beside an obsidian statue of some nameless creature that defied identification. ‘I shall, but first… tell me what you know of the Thrice Born.’

  ‘Very little,’ admitted Honsou. ‘After the destruction of Khalan-Ghol, I emptied the libraries of the ruined fortress before taking the Warbreed from the Crooked Tower and setting off into the stars.’

  ‘You sought a weapon to use against your enemies,’ stated Moriana, lifting a wadded armful of leaves, roots and pouches towards the fire.

  ‘I did. The Warsmith before me was a meticulous records keeper, and since he had bound the Heart of Blood to his fortress, I hoped to find knowledge of other lords of the abyss I might bind to my cause.’

  ‘And what did you find?’

  ‘It was frustrating work, for each book was ancient beyond imagining. All were fragmentary, archaic and couched in language that defied easy interpretation.’

  ‘Many were penned around the time of the rebellion of Horus,’ explained Moriana. ‘Many men and women lived then to tell tales of those times, but none now remember them.’

  ‘I spent every waking moment with those books,’ continued Honsou, ‘and I had all but given up hope of finding anything of value when I came across an oblique reference to a daemon prince known as the Thrice Born, the father of the Blue Sun.’

  ‘Yes… the Keeper of the Red Word, M’kar.’

  ‘M’kar? That is its name?’

  ‘One of them,’ said Moriana. ‘A fiction to deal with mortals and protect its true name, but one it has gone by in these last few millennia. What else do you know of it?’

  Honsou hesitated, unwilling to show how little he had gleaned from the books of his former master, but sensing that to lie to Moriana would be dangerous in ways he couldn’t imagine.

  ‘Only that the Thrice Born is the bane of the Gatekeeper of Zalathras,’ said Honsou, letting his frustration show as Moriana crouched beside the purple fire. ‘And that it would rise again in the Time of Ending to wreak bloody revenge on those who paid homage to his sons.’

  ‘And do you know the identity of the Gatekeeper?’

  ‘I do,’ said Honsou. ‘Ardaric Vaanes told me of the Siege of Zalathras, a war fought a century ago on the southern arm of the Ghoul Stars. It’s said that Marneus Calgar of the Ultramarines supposedly held a greenskin horde at bay for a day and a night. Ridiculous, of course, but just the sort of overblown nonsense Guilliman’s warriors would put about. And if the Thrice Born is the bane of the Ultramarines, then I want to know more of it.’

  ‘And that is all you know?’

  ‘I could learn little more, for the cunning or madness of the writers buried the secrets of the Thrice Born in allegory, metaphor and riddles.’

  ‘They were written to confuse the unwary or the unworthy. Only those with true vision could see the truth. So tell me, Honsou, do you have vision?’

  ‘I’m here aren’t I?’

  ‘Then tell me how you came here, for I make it my business not to be easily found.’

  ‘The prophecies of the Thrice Born wilfully contradict one another, and apocryphal tales spin lurid sagas of its depravities, but they all agree on one thing; that a former handmaiden of the Imperium’s master, who dwells in endless darkness on a nameless world, knows how to find it.’

  ‘That alone led you to me?’

  ‘The warp whispers your name, Moriana, and I am not without means to listen to its gibberings. The Newborn led us here, though I don’t know how it knew of this place.’

  ‘It knew because its mind is collapsing,’ said Moriana. ‘Its brain is a gestalt organ; a hybrid creation of a damaged child’s psyche, implanted doctrine, warp-spawned knowledge and stolen memories. An imperfect thing, it has begun to unravel since leaving New Badab, you must know that?’

  Honsou nodded. In the months since leaving the fortress world of Huron Blackheart, the Newborn had suffered agonising fits of madness and lucid nightmares of a life unlived.

  ‘Its mind is at war with itself,’ continued Moriana. ‘It is remembering things from its past life, but imprinted memes are slowly destroying what it once was. But more than that, it knew because the one you hate has been here before, and thus your creature knows of it.’

  ‘Ventris was here?’ hissed Honsou. ‘When?’

  ‘Less than two decades ago,’ said Moriana. ‘When he wore the armour of black, he and his warriors were sent here to kill me. Naturally, they failed.’

  Honsou fought to contain his excitement.

  ‘Tell me how I may find the Thrice Born,’ he demanded.

  ‘It last walked this realm many years ago,’ said Moriana, ‘when its host of the damned stormed the star fort Indomitable, a vast fortress anchored in the stars that rivals even the Blackstones coveted by the Despoiler. The Lord of the Ultramarines led his greatest warriors in battle, and they defeated the daemon prince, banishing his army to the warp where they await his return to the material realm.’

  ‘Then how do I summon the Thrice Born back?’

  ‘It cannot be summoned, for it was never banished.’

  ‘Speak plainly,’ said Honsou, tiring of the woman’s oblique answers.

  ‘M’kar was defeated, but the Lord of the Ultramarines was unable to destroy it, for the daemon was too strong, even for one such as he. Instead he and his allies imprisoned it within the molten heart of the Indomitable, bound with chains a thousand times stronger than adamantium. And while the mighty prince slumbers, his daemon army haunts the swells and currents of the warp in readiness for their master’s return.’

  ‘Where is this star fort?’

  Moriana smiled, a thin-lipped expression of triumph and venom. ‘It orbited a world with a poisoned sun, a world whose atmosphere was burned away in a long ago age of heroes.’

  ‘Calth…’ whispered Honsou.

  ‘You know this world?’

  ‘It is the home world of Ventris,’ said Honsou, feeling his skin flush with the thrill of a hunt nearing its end. Such synchronicity could not be accidental, and he felt himself closing in on his quarry like a flesh hound with the scent of blood in its nostrils.

  Honsou turned to leave, but Moriana’s words halted him in his tracks.

  ‘You think the Lord of the Ultramarines would be foolish enough to leave so dangerous a foe tethered to one of his dominion worlds? No, the Indomitable is long gone from Calth.’

  ‘Then where is it?’

  Moriana shrugged. ‘The Lord of the Ultramarines was cunning. To move so vast a leviathan is no small task, for it cannot move without help. A small fleet of ships attend it, like sucklings around a sow. The Indomitable jumps at random through the Empyrean, never stopping for long, and forever on the move. None save its master ever knows where it will appear next.’

  ‘So how do I find it?’ said Honsou bitterly.

  Moriana threw a handful of herbs and roots onto the fire, and Honsou gagged as the flames consumed them hungrily. Narcotic smoke billowed from the fire and he tasted the actinic tang of warp energy as it filled the cave.

  ‘So strong is M’kar’s hatred of Guilliman’s sons that no matter how distant a course its Navigators plot, the Indomitable remains forever shackled to Ultramar.’

  ‘That’s still a lot of space to search,’ said Honsou.

  ‘Only if you do not know where to look.’
/>   ‘Then tell me where I should look,’ demanded Honsou, tiring of Moriana’s evasiveness.

  ‘I cannot,’ said the blind seer, ‘but the denizens of the warp will know. Past, present and future are all one in that realm of gods and monsters. They will know where you must go, for the daemon horde of M’kar watches over their master still…’

  Chapter Two

  It began as a flickering point of unlight in the outer reaches of the Triplex system, a little travelled region of space at the furthest extent of Ultramar. Distant from Macragge and comprising only three uninhabited worlds, few cartographers even counted the Triplex system as part of the Ultramarines’ realm.

  That flicker of blackness, that veiled region of space where light was swallowed, expanded and swirled with colours radiating in spectra beyond those of the material universe. Like a needle pricking at a black cloth from a lighted room, more light spilled from the crack in reality until it grew wider and wider and eventually tore the curtain of space apart in a thunderous, silent explosion of light and inimical matter.

  A trio of blunt, wedge-nosed craft vomited through the tear, giant slabs of iron and stone worked into the form of enormous, columned fanes. Each was a kilometre long, an escort vessel decorated in the blue and gold of the Ultramarines, and each trailed a frothing scum of immaterial detritus. Sparkling clouds of waste matter spalled from their hulls, crackling and hissing as it slowly dissipated in the face of stubborn reality.

  In the midst of the escorts was a sleek, dart-shaped vessel whose sprawling silver and gold etchings along her forecastle named her the Omnis Videre. The proud ship bore the heraldry of the Castana family, one of the most respected Navigator clans of Terra, and a dynasty said to have served the Ultramarines since the earliest days of the Imperium.

  Behind the escorts and Navigator ship came a host of smaller craft, each similarly wreathed in wastelight from an alternate universe. Little more than giant plasma drives with a rudimentary crew compartment attached, six hundred of these tugboats trailed enormous iron chains with links fifteen metres thick.

  The tear in reality widened still further as something impossibly vast forced itself through, a huge, monstrous city in the stars that glittered with light. A colossal gothic basilica of iron spires, graceful flying buttresses, crenellated towers and golden statuary reared at its centre and towering martial structures spread outwards to its furthest extremities. Four mighty piers extended from the central basilica, each a carved metropolis of docking bays, temples, armament assemblies, impregnable bastions and weapon emplacements.

  Shimmering plates of rich blue and gold and pearl identified the star fort as the Indomitable, a Ramilies-class star fort that had served the Ultramarines faithfully since before the Wars of Apostasy. Its design, according to Mechanicus legends, came from the hand of Artisan Magos Lian Ramilies from materials captured in the purgation of Ulthanx. The Indomitable was no longer shackled to the defence of a single world, yet it still served the heirs of Guilliman, though in a far different capacity.

  Space around the vast star fort heaved and bucked, its rebirth back into the material realm a tortuous and shrieking translation of protesting reality and tortured physics. At last the star fort heaved its way through, followed by a flotilla of supply ships and yet more escorts towards the outermost planet in the Triplex system, a world named Aescari Exterio.

  A striated bronze gas giant largely composed of hydrogen, with a volatile magnetic core of iron and ice surrounded by a thick layer of metallic hydrogen, Aescari Exterio was encircled by a prominent system of rings, composed of ice particles, rock debris, dust and hundreds of enormous asteroids trapped by its gravitational field. Frothing spurts of electromagnetic radiation from the planet’s atmosphere were amplified and scattered by the planet’s rings, making it the perfect place to conceal the Indomitable’s presence.

  Or the perfect place to lie in wait for prey.

  Rust coloured light filled the command chapel of the Indomitable, situated in the Basilica Dominastus, the mightiest structure at the heart of the star fort, and leering gargoyles on vast corbels watched the bustle of the crew below impassively. Great stone arches supported the enormous domed ceiling, and silver statues of Ultramarines heroes were rendered gold by the fierce light of the ringed world.

  Pict-slates hissed with static as the hull surveyors fought to penetrate the hash of interference that surrounded the star fort from its recent translation. Automated servitors clattered and swapped data packets in blurts of binaric code, while mortal crew correlated anticipated star patterns with the information slowly coming from myriad sources.

  Overseeing everything from a specially widened bay towards the rear of the chapel was the master of the Indomitable, Brother Altarion, a giant in ceramite, armaplas and steel who viewed the world around him through technology no less sophisticated than that employed by the star fort itself.

  ‘Translation complete,’ said the pilot, a skeletally thin man seconded from the Omnis Videre. His name was Pater Monna, and he spoke with an ethereal lilt, as though travelling through the warp were no more difficult or interesting to him than walking through a door.

  said Brother Altarion, his command carried on numerous channels.

  ‘Of course,’ said Pater Monna, his truculent tone passing over Altarion without comment. His fingers danced over the clacking bronze keys and a faint blue glow lit his pallid features as scrolling lines of telemetry flickered on the slate beside him.

  ‘Surveyor gear is still showing interference, but known datum points match up to current locations,’ said Pater Monna. ‘Ninety seven point nine three accuracy of jump,’ he added with just a hint of smugness.

  ‘Confirmed,’ said Brother Hestian, a warrior clad in gleaming battle plate bearing the colours of the Ultramarines 5th Company. One ebonite-trimmed shoulder guard displayed the white ‘U’ of the Ultramarines, while the other was painted deep red and bore the black and steel cog symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

  Standing at Brother Altarion’s side, Hestian’s enhanced facility for calculations checked Pater Monna’s figures almost as fast as the Navigator bondsman. ‘We are at the edge of the Triplex system, and are approaching Aescari Exterio.’

  commanded Altarion.

  ‘I am Hestian,’ said the Techmarine without looking up from his work. ‘Lucian attended you over two centuries ago.’

  replied Altarion.

  Watching from the centre of the chapel, Brother-Sergeant Olantor watched the familiar dance of technology and protocol that attended every translation of the Indomitable. Like Hestian, Olantor proudly bore the colours of the 5th Company, though he was Ultramarines through and through and owed no allegiance to the priests of Mars.

  ‘Is that common?’ whispered the slightly-built woman beside Olantor. ‘Brother Altarion seems a trifle… forgetful.’

  ‘When you have lived as long a life as he has, you’re entitled to forget a few things.’

  ‘But is it safe?’ said the woman. ‘Surely there are others more qualified for such an important position.’

  Momentary anger flared in Olantor’s heart and he turned to face the woman, looming over her in his bulky plate armour. What did one such as she know of the immense sacrifices made by Altarion, or the burden his mighty shoulders carried?

  ‘Brother Altarion is one of my Chapter’s Old Ones, Mistress Sibiya,’ said Olantor, looking back towards the armoured bay enclosing the hulking form of Altarion. ‘The polished granite of his sarcophagus bears a bas-relief carving hewn from the mountains of Castra Magna. Marneus Calgar himself presented him with the mighty hammer of his left arm after the Battle for Macragge to honour the sacrifice that saw his mortal flesh all but destroyed.’

  Olantor felt a surge of pride to be stationed alongside such a venerable hero. ‘As such,
he is to be accorded your honour and respect at all times. His word is law on this star fort, and you would do well to remember that.’

  ‘I intended no disrespect,’ said Sibiya Monserat, Interrogator Tertius of Talasa Prime.

  ‘Then see that your tone matches your intent,’ said Olantor.

  ‘Always,’ said Sibiya. ‘I shall see to it that you will never be in doubt as to my intent.’

  Olantor searched her face for mockery, but found none. That didn’t surprise him, for Sibiya Monserat was a woman trained in obfuscation and deception by her masters at the Inquisitorial fortress of Talasa Prime. He made a mental note not to underestimate Sibiya just because he could break her in two with a flick of his wrist or that she was a low-ranking soldier of the Inquisition.

  Sibiya lowered her gaze. She was a fresh face aboard the Indomitable, though the presence of the Inquisition was far from new. Ever since the decades-old battle to reclaim the star fort from the daemons, the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines had deemed it necessary to have a permanent observer on board to ensure that no lingering taint remained.

  It seemed unnecessary to involve an outside agency in the business of the Chapter, but Marneus Calgar and Varro Tigurius had been adamant.

  Olantor turned away from Sibiya. His hair was grey and his face pockmarked with the passage of four centuries of service to his Chapter. A career sergeant, Olantor had not the ambition or desire to advance up the command structure, happy with his role as veteran sergeant in one of Captain Galenus’s Tactical squads.

  Known as the Wardens of the Eastern Fringe, the duty of manning the Indomitable, had naturally fallen to the 5th Company, and though it was a duty carried out with the customary honour and duty of the Ultramarines, Olantor could not help but feel that his skills were being wasted in guarding a star fort that did not protect anything.

  Nearly ten years had passed since Olantor had been seconded to the Indomitable, and he missed the brotherhood of his company with every passing day. With less than a year until his rotation was finished, each day now seemed like a lifetime.