Old Wounds, New Scars Page 3

  Even as Alivia watched, the view began to darken to the void of space as the ship finished its transition.

  Almost immediately, Magos Cervari’s station lit up with chiming blooms of noospheric indicators.

  Threat markers, auspex sweeps, target acquisition runes.

  ‘Multiple contacts!’ said Cervari.

  ‘Identify,’ ordered Sulaiman.

  ‘So many…’ said Cervari. ‘Multiple capital-class assets, thirty plus squadrons of destroyers, flotillas of cruisers and gunboats. Throne, there is firepower here to conquer entire sectors!’

  The viewing bay cleared enough that the numbers and volume of contacts Cervari was reporting could be rationalised. Even over the vast distances involved in a void engagement, it was clear to see that space around the Elysian Gate was awash with warships.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alivia, trying her best to sound calm. ‘That’s a lot of firepower aimed right at us.’

  Glowing darts of capital ships were moving to bracket Molech’s Enlightenment with their grand batteries, and swarming packs of piquet ships were moving to intercept. Scores of torpedo sweeps blitzed the hull with ranging pings in preparation for launch.

  Void-anchored gun platforms painted Molech’s Enlightenment with so many auspex returns it would be comical if their macro-cannon weren’t about to destroy them. Hunter-killer mines locked on to the ship’s hull signature and fired their one-shot boosters.

  ‘Emperor’s mercy…’ whispered Sulaiman, and Alivia gave him a sidelong glance. Clearly the words of the Lectitio Divinitatus were not confined solely to the refugees.

  ‘Can we get back through the gate?’

  Sulaiman didn’t reply, his augmetic eyes fixed on the campaign-scale of the fleet arrayed before him.

  ‘They’re launching!’ cried Cervari, and the surveyor station blossomed with scores of torpedo launches. Squadrons of bombers scrambled into the void, knifing through space towards them.

  ‘Captain,’ she snapped. ‘Can we get back through the gate?’

  He squared his shoulders and shook his head.

  ‘A Cobra-class destroyer is fast, Mistress Sureka, but it’s not that fast,’ he said, his augmetics flickering as they tracked the numerous incoming torpedoes arcing towards his ship. ‘In any case, making another translation so soon would tear us apart.’

  ‘Then can we stay alive long enough?’

  ‘Long enough for what?’

  ‘For me to ask a favour.’

  ‘A favour from whom?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ snapped Alivia, dropping the shot-cannon to the deck and trusting that Sulaiman wouldn’t take the opportunity to blow her away. ‘Just… don’t let us die.’

  Sulaiman marched swiftly back to his command podium and cricked his neck, fixing his gaze upon the incoming torpedoes, myriad weapon locks and swarming packs of ship-killing mines.

  ‘I cannot promise such a feat lies within my power, but I will try,’ he said.

  Alivia smiled and said, ‘I have faith in you, captain.’

  She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing.

  No time for fancy mental compartmentalisation.

  Okay, John, you win,+ sent Alivia, hurling her psychic call into the void. +I’ll tell you where you can find Oll.+

  Alivia’s words echoed in her mind, but she heard nothing in reply, not even a whisper.

  The mass of her body shifted as Sulaiman fired the ship’s engines, the reactor burning hot as he manoeuvred the vessel hard.

  Molech’s Enlightenment groaned as its battle-stanchions shouldered explosive torsion and compression baffles endured stresses they hadn’t felt in months.

  Come on, when did you ever give up this easy?+

  The staccato warnings of incoming ordnance were distracting, and she tried to shut them out. A klaxon sounded and binharic proximity alarms screeched from wall-mounted vox-horns.

  ‘Impact in thirty seconds!’ announced Magos Cervari.

  Please, John,+ she sent. +Help us. Call them off!+

  You’ll tell me where Oll is?+

  The breath burst from her at the sound of John’s voice in her mind.

  I will,+ she said. +As soon as we’re safely on Terra.+

  Tell me now. That ship’s going to be burning void debris in minutes.+

  Then you’d better work fast,+ she sent, snapping off the connection between them.

  ‘Impact in twenty seconds!’ announced Magos Cervari.

  Sulaiman sweated as he threw the ship into sharp turns, burning the engines and manoeuvring jets harder than its Jovian shipwrights had ever intended.

  Alivia felt the terror of the thousands of people in the cargo decks and transit chambers. Their fear surged through her as they wept and held tight to their loved ones, not knowing what was happening.

  ‘Ten seconds,’ said Cervari.

  ‘I am afraid I can run no farther, Mistress Sureka,’ called Sulaiman. ‘So if you have any miracles to work, now would be the time.’

  ‘I’m sorry, captain,’ said Alivia. ‘I’m all out of miracles.’

  ‘Five, four, three, two…’

  Alivia squeezed her eyes shut, awaiting the pain and horror of a ship-death. She expelled the breath in her lungs, awaiting a sudden and explosive decompression in the hard vacuum of space.

  The moment stretched.

  One by one, the sirens, klaxons and binharic alarms ceased.

  Silence fell across the bridge, the only sound the angry hissing of overheated logic engines, the groans of settling metal and her own laboured breathing.

  Alivia unclenched her fists and peered into the shimmering starfield in the viewing bay. She tried to make sense of the corkscrewing contrails of aborted torpedoes and fading smears of light, all that remained of the incoming hunter-killer mines.

  Thank you, John…

  A bark of static crackled from the vox, making her jump.

  ‘Molech’s Enlightenment, this is Captain Vihaan of the Cardinal Boras. You are ordered to assume a coreward heading and come abeam of us at dead slow. You will follow my ship back to Terra. Any delay or deviation will result in your immediate destruction. Indicate your understanding of this order or we will open fire immediately.’

  Sulaiman stared in open-mouthed wonder at Alivia.

  ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘Never mind just now,’ said Alivia. ‘Answer him!’

  Sulaiman swiftly signalled his assent to the Cardinal Boras, and Molech’s Enlightenment swung around as Magos Cervari complied with Vihaan’s order.

  Alivia sank to the deck, resting her back against the warm metal of a cogitator bank. She lay her head back and released a long, relieved breath.

  She looked up as Sulaiman stood over her. His eyes were augmetic, but she swore she could see reverence in them.

  ‘Now I know why the people call you a saint, Mistress Sureka.’

  ‘I’m no saint,’ snorted Alivia. ‘Far from it.’

  ‘Then how did you do that?’

  Alivia closed her eyes and said, ‘I made a promise I can’t possibly keep.’

  XI

  The skies of Terra were what Alivia remembered the most.

  Now iron grey and laced with clouds, but at least it was sky.

  She tilted her head back and drew in a deep breath of air that hadn’t been recirculated through ten thousand throats for months on end.

  It tasted of metal and lightning.

  She’d never tasted anything sweeter.

  Behind her, the suborbital lander that had brought them down to the surface hissed and creaked as it cooled. Steam blistered from the blocky hull after its swift drop through the atmosphere.

  Far, far in the distance, like ramparts against the sky, the endless edifice of the Emperor’s Palace held Alivia’s attention. Titan
ic and grotesque, it was a shrine to one man’s colossal arrogance and monstrous hubris.

  Alivia felt a cold chill travel the length of her spine at the sight of that terrible place. To some, it was a wonder of the galaxy, but it held only bad memories for Alivia.

  Vivyen and Miska stood next to her. Miska looked around in wonder, trying to take in the overwhelming sight and scale of an Imperial space port, and the fleets of landers, fuel tenders and darting skiffs criss-crossing the sky. Vast loader cranes swung overhead, carrying bulk containers of supplies, building materials or heavy blocks of reinforced permacrete.

  Armies of servitors and augmented migou traversed the sprawling city-port, hauling crates of ammo, food and who knew what from depot to destination. Actinic blue sparks blinked and sputtered on the newly fortified walls surrounding the port as fresh sheets of armoured plasteel were shuttered to the outer defences.

  The unimaginable scale of the place took Alivia’s breath away; it was not so much a port as a vast city unto itself, a colossal industrial sprawl of galvanic and atmospheric processors, and teeming districts of workers and supply cohorts.

  How many millions called this steel and stone metropolis home, never knowing it was just one among dozens across the globe?

  ‘Is this the Emperor’s Palace?’ asked Miska.

  ‘No,’ said Alivia. ‘This is just a space port.’

  ‘On Terra?’

  ‘Yes, what do you think?’

  ‘It’s very… grey,’ she said.

  ‘And the air tastes bad,’ added Vivyen, without lifting her head from her storybook.

  Jeph took Alivia’s hand.

  ‘We made it, Liv,’ he said. ‘Did you ever think we’d see Terra? The Throneworld.’

  ‘No,’ said Alivia, looking up at the mountains. ‘I didn’t.’

  She’d intended never to set foot on this world ever again.

  Alivia looked away from the peaks as a hulking tracked vehicle with a cupola-mounted heavy stubber ground to a halt at the foot of the lander’s embarkation ramp. The rumble of its engine set Alivia’s teeth on edge.

  ‘Our chariot awaits,’ said Alivia as a uniformed, dark-skinned man with Terran features and a serious demeanour stepped from the vehicle’s interior.

  He climbed the ramp towards them. From his disciplined bearing, Alivia knew he was, or had once been, a soldier. But in his close-fitting body glove and thick damask cloak, he looked more like a courtier.

  Or a spy like John.

  Whoever this man was, he looked woefully out of place in the industrial bustle of the sprawling port.

  ‘Alivia Sureka,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, well aware he wasn’t asking.

  ‘My name is Khalid Hassan, Chosen of–’

  ‘I know who you are,’ said Alivia.

  That caught him off guard.

  ‘You do?’

  Alivia shrugged. ‘I mean, not you personally, but I know what you are. You’re one of the Sigillite’s errand boys, aren’t you?’

  He grinned and said, ‘John said you would be truculent.’

  ‘Truculent? Nice,’ said Alivia, nodding towards the tracked vehicle. ‘A Saturnyne-pattern Aurox? Bit over the top, isn’t it?’

  ‘My master merely wishes to ensure the safety of you and your family,’ explained Hassan, turning and taking a half-step towards the rumbling vehicle. ‘If you’ll come with me…’

  Alivia tilted her head to the side, as though considering his offer that wasn’t really an offer.

  ‘Actually, I don’t think I will,’ she said.

  Hassan smiled, but she saw the steel beneath it.

  ‘My master was quite insistent.’

  ‘I’m sure he was, but I’m not getting in that Aurox.’

  Jeph released her hand and stepped forward.

  He jabbed a finger into Hassan’s chest, and Alivia winced, half expecting him to break Jeph’s wrist.

  ‘I don’t know who you are,’ said Jeph, ‘but Alivia says she’s not going with you, and you can’t make her. And that’s that.’

  ‘Please, Mistress Sureka,’ said Hassan. ‘Let’s not have this become something it doesn’t need to. I am quite prepared to compel you to come with me if needs be.’

  Alivia heard the tramp of weary feet behind her as hundreds of the refugees from Molech emerged, blinking, into the daylight of Terra.

  Alivia glanced over her shoulder as they came on like a tide.

  Some sobbed, others laughed, yet more looked to her with rapt expressions of unbridled devotion.

  They swept down the embarkation ramp, and Alivia let herself and her family be carried along with them. Clustered around the base of the embarkation ramp were port staff and grey-robed adepts with data-slates, blank manifests and genealogical records.

  Alivia smiled back at Hassan, who shook his head and returned to his Aurox. She had a feeling she hadn’t seen the last of that one, but he was a problem for another day.

  ‘Are we safe now, mama?’ asked Miska, as they approached the nearest of the grey-robed adepts.

  ‘I think so, dear-heart,’ answered Alivia. ‘For now at least.’

  The masked adept held a data-slate and stylus out to her.

  ‘Welcome to Lion’s Gate Space Port,’ he said.

  About the Author

  Graham McNeill has written many Horus Heresy novels, including The Crimson King, Vengeful Spirit and his New York Times bestsellers A Thousand Sons and the novella The Reflection Crack’d, which featured in The Primarchs anthology. Graham’s Ultramarines series, featuring Captain Uriel Ventris, is now six novels long, and has close links to his Iron Warriors stories, the novel Storm of Iron being a perennial favourite with Black Library fans. He has also written the Forges of Mars trilogy, featuring the Adeptus Mechanicus. For Warhammer, he has written the Warhammer Chronicles trilogy The Legend of Sigmar, the second volume of which won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award.

  An extract from Heralds of the Siege.

  The Martian soil trembled. Beneath the Temple-Tarantyne assembly yards, something was rising.

  Once a glorious spectacle of magna-machinery and Titan production, the southern installation had produced the mighty god-machines of the Legio Excruciata. Now its great production temples glowed with the unholy light of corruption. Chittering constructs went to work on towering perversions – looming monstrosities that should have been Warlord Titans but instead were metal monsters of daemonic infestation and heretek weaponry.

  Row upon row of such beasts stood silent in the storage precincts, waiting for the orbital mass conveyers that would take them to bulk freighters destined for the Warmaster’s forces.

  But those mass conveyors would not come.

  With the Forge World Principal blockaded by the VII Legion, nothing was leaving Mars. Like the monstrous tanks, fevered warrior-constructs and ranks of empty battleplate sitting in storage bays across the surface, the Chaos Titans gathered Martian dust.

  Dust that now rained down about the towering abominations as the bedrock quaked beneath them.

  A Warlord Titan was a walking fortress of thick plate and powerful shielding. As any who had ever faced such an apocalyptic foe understood, it had few weaknesses. As a former princeps of the Collegia Titanica, Kallistra Lennox had the distinction of both piloting and felling such god-machines. She knew that one of the few vulnerabilities the Mars Alpha-pattern Warlord had was a weak point on its command deck, but the deck was almost impossible to reach for ground troops.

  Standing in the gyroscopic interior compartment of the Mole burrowing transport Archimedex, Lennox felt the adamantium prow drilling a phase-fielded tunnel through the Martian bedrock and soil, then finally breaking the surface into the assembly yards. While the large tunnelling vehicle emerged upright, like a rising tower, the crowded troop compartment mainta
ined its rolling orientation within, which would make disembarkation a smooth affair. The princeps had directed the translithope to rise up next to a Warlord Titan identified as Ajax Abominata. Loyal constructs had been watching the installation for weeks from the scrap-littered sides of the surrounding mountains. The construction of Ajax Abominata was all but complete, although its armoured shell was still covered in a scaffold, complete with mobile gantries.

  It was a target ripe for sabotage – and the princeps knew exactly how to do it.

  Not that she looked very much like an officer of the Collegia Titanica any more. While she still wore her uniform amid scraps of flak and carapace, it was tattered and stained with oil. The black leather of her boots was scuffed and her gloves crudely cut to fingerlessness. She wore an eyepatch where her ocular bionic had been torn out, and a short chainblade sat heavy upon her belt where a ceremonial sabre used to hang. Grenades and hydrogen flasks dangled from a bandolier while in her hands the princeps clutched the chunky shape of a plasma caliver.

  ‘Stand by,’ she said, sternly.

  The loyalist Mechanicum cell to which Lennox belonged had been dubbed the Omnissian Faithful. Like all its adherents, Lennox was a Martian survivor. Left behind in the exodus to Terra, she had become a rebel on her own world. While the scrapcode tore through the Forge World Principal, corrupting everything it touched, there had been some Martians and constructs who had followed their instincts. As part of a disgust response – like a person making themselves sick after ingesting a toxin or poison – some true servants of the Omnissiah had had the strength to mutilate themselves. They tore bionics from their bodies, severed hardlinks and burned out wireless receivers. Ports and interfaces were gouged out, their bodies and minds cut off from the code-streams of the Martian networks. They had saved themselves from the infected data that brought madness, spiritual pollution and the warping of flesh and form.

  It was a corruption that had claimed nearly all who had not escaped the Red Planet, even the Fabricator General himself: Kelbor-Hal, now no more than a withered bundle of polluted workings. Like the magi below him and the constructs below them, he had become a slave to darkness. A puppet controlled by the renegade Warmaster Horus, light years distant.