Horus Rising (4 page)

The blade rebounded off Loken’s helm. Loken struck low with his chainsword, ripping the lance out of the Invisible’s silver gauntlets and buckling its haft. At the same time, Loken lunged, shoulder barging the warrior against the chamber wall so hard that the friable piaster of the ancient frescoes crackled and fell out.

Loken stepped back. Winded, his lungs and ribcage almost crushed flat, the Invisible made a gagging, sucking noise and fell down on his knees, his head lolling forward. Loken sawed his chainsword down and sharply up again in one fluid, practiced mercy stroke, and the Invisible’s detached head bounced away.

Loken circled slowly, the humming blade raised ready in his right hand. The chamber floor was slick with blood and black scraps of meat. Shots rang out from nearby rooms. Loken walked across the chamber and retrieved his bolter, hoisting it in his left fist with a clatter.

Two Luna Wolves entered the chamber behind him, and Loken briskly pointed them off into the left-hand colonnade with a gesture of his sword.

‘Form up and advance,’ he snapped into his link. Voices answered him.

‘Nero?’

‘I’m behind you, twenty metres.’

‘How’s the hand?’

‘I left it behind. It was getting in the way.’

Loken prowled forward. At the end of the chamber, past the crumpled, leaking body of the Invisible he had disembowelled, sixteen broad marble steps led up to a stone doorway. The splendid stone frame was carved with complex linen fold motifs.

Loken ascended the steps slowly. Mottled washes of light cast spastic flickers through the open doorway. There was a remarkable stillness. Even the din of the fight engulfing the palace all around seemed to recede. Loken could hear the tiny taps made by the blood dripping off his outstretched chainsword onto the steps, a trail of red beads up the white marble.

He stepped through the doorway.

The inner walls of the tower rose up around him. He had evidently stepped through into one of the tallest and most massive of the palace’s spires. A hundred metres in diameter, a kilometre tall.

No, more than that. He’d come out on a wide, onyx platform that encircled the tower, one of several ring platforms arranged at intervals up the height of the structure, but there were more below. Peering over, Loken saw as much tower drop away into the depths of the earth as stood proud above him.

He circled slowly, gazing around. Great windows of glass or some other transparent substance glazed the tower from top to bottom between the ring platforms, and through them the light and fury of the war outside flared and flashed. No noise, just the flickering glow, the sudden bursts of radiance.

He followed the platform round until he found a sweep of curved stairs, flush with the tower wall, that led up to the next level. He began to ascend, platform to platform, scanning for any blurs of light that might betray the presence of more Invisibles.

Nothing. No sound, no life, no movement except the shimmer of light from outside the windows as he passed them. Five floors now, six.

Loken suddenly felt foolish. The tower was probably empty. This search and purge should have been left to others while he marshalled Tenth Company’s main force.

Except… its ground-level approach had been so furiously protected. He looked up, pushing his sensors hard. A third of a kilometre above him, he fancied he caught a brief sign of movement, a partial heat-lock.

‘Nero?’

A pause. ‘Captain.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Base of a tower. Heavy fighting. We—’ There was a jumble of noises, the distorted sounds of gunfire and shouting.

‘Captain? Are you still there? Report!’

‘Heavy resistance. We’re locked here! Where are—’

The link broke. Loken hadn’t been about to give away his position anyway. There was something in this tower with him. At the very top, something was waiting.

The penultimate deck. From above came a soft creaking and grinding, like the sails of a giant windmill. Loken paused. At this height, through the wide panes of glass, he was afforded a view out across the palace and the High City. A sea of luminous smoke, underlit by widespread firestorms. Some buildings glowed pink, reflecting the light of the inferno. Weapons flashed, and energy beams danced and jumped in the dark. Overhead, the sky was full of fire too, a mirror of the ground. The speartip had visited murderous destruction upon the city of the ‘Emperor’.

But had it found the throat?

He mounted the last flight of steps, his grip on the weapons tight.

The uppermost ring platform formed the base of the tower’s top section, a vast cupola of crystal-glass petals, ribbed together with steel spars that curved up to form a finial mast at the apex high above. The entire structure creaked and slid, turning slightly one way then another as it responded phototropically to the blooms of light outside in the night. On one side of the platform, its back to the great windows, sat a golden throne. It was a massive object, a heavy plinth of three golden steps rising to a vast gilt chair with a high back and coiled arm rests.

The throne was empty.

Loken lowered his weapons. He saw that the tower top turned so that the throne was always facing the light. Disappointed, Loken took a step towards the throne, and then halted when he realised he wasn’t alone after all.

A solitary figure stood away to his left, hands clasped behind its back, staring out at the spectacle of war.

The figure turned. It was an elderly man, dressed in a floor-length mauve robe. His hair was thin and white, his face thinner still. He stared at Loken with glittering, miserable eyes.

‘I defy you,’ he said, his accent thick and antique. ‘I defy you, invader.’

‘Your defiance is noted,’ Loken replied, ‘but this fight is over. I can see you’ve been watching its progress from up here. You must know that.’

‘The Imperium of Man will triumph over all its enemies,’ the man replied.

‘Yes,’ said Loken. ‘Absolutely, it will. You have my promise.’

The man faltered, as if he did not quite understand.

‘Am I addressing the so-called “Emperor”?’ Loken asked. He had switched off and sheathed his sword, but he kept his bolter up to cover the robed figure.

‘So-called?’ the man echoed. ‘So-called? You cheerfully blaspheme in this royal place. The Emperor is the Emperor Undisputed, saviour and protector of the race of man. You are some imposter, some evil daemon—’

‘I am a man like you.’

The other scoffed. ‘You are an imposter. Made like a giant, malformed and ugly. No man would wage war upon his fellow man like this.’ He gestured disparagingly at the scene outside.

‘Your hostility started this,’ Loken said calmly. ‘You would not listen to us or believe us. You murdered our ambassadors. You brought this upon yourself. We are charged with the reunification of mankind, throughout the stars, in the name of the Emperor. We seek to establish compliance amongst all the fragmentary and disparate strands. Most greet us like the lost brothers we are. You resisted.’

‘You came to us with lies!’

‘We came with the truth.’

‘Your truth is obscenity!’

‘Sir, the truth itself is amoral. It saddens me that we believe the same words, the very same ones, but value them so differently. That difference has led directly to this bloodshed.’

The elderly man sagged, deflated. ‘You could have left us alone.’

‘What?’ Loken asked.

‘If our philosophies are so much at odds, you could have passed us by and left us to our lives, unviolated. Yet you did not. Why? Why did you insist on bringing us to ruin? Are we such a threat to you?’

‘Because the truth—’ Loken began.

‘—is amoral. So you said, but in serving your fine truth, invader, you make yourself immoral.’

Loken was surprised to find he didn’t know quite how to answer. He took a step forward and said, ‘I request you surrender to me, sir.’

‘You are the commander, I take it?’ the elderly man asked.

‘I command Tenth Company.’

‘You are not the overall commander, then? I assumed you were, as you entered this place ahead of your troops. I was waiting for the overall commander. I will submit to him, and to him alone.’

‘The terms of your surrender are not negotiable.’

‘Will you not even do that for me? Will you not even do me that honour? I would stay here, until your lord and master comes in person to accept my submission. Fetch him.’

Before Loken could reply, a dull wail echoed up into the tower top, gradually increasing in volume. The elderly man took a step or two backwards, fear upon his face.

The black figures rose up out of the tower’s depths, ascending slowly, vertically, up through the open centre of the ring platform. Ten Astartes warriors, the blue heat of their whining jump pack burners shimmering the air behind them. Their power armour was black, trimmed with white. Catulan Reaver Squad, First Company’s veteran assault pack. First in, last out.

One by one, they came in to land on the edge of the ring platform, deactivating their jump packs.

Kalus Ekaddon, Catulan’s captain, glanced sidelong at Loken.

‘The first captain’s compliments, Captain Loken. You beat us to it after all.’

‘Where is the first captain?’ Loken asked.

‘Below, mopping up,’ Ekaddon replied. He set his vox to transmit. ‘This is Ekaddon, Catulan. We have secured the false emperor—’

‘No,’ said Loken firmly.

Ekaddon looked at him again. His visor lenses were stern and unreflective jet glass set in the black metal of his helmet mask. He bowed slightly. ‘My apologies, captain,’ he said, archly. ‘The prisoner and the honour are yours, of course.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Loken replied. ‘This man demands the right to surrender in person to our commander-in-chief.’

Ekaddon snorted, and several of his men laughed. ‘This bastard can demand all he likes, captain,’ Ekaddon said, ‘but he’s going to be cruelly disappointed.’

‘We are dismantling an ancient empire, Captain Ekaddon,’ Loken said firmly. ‘Might we not display some measure of gracious respect in the execution of that act? Or are we just barbarians?’

‘He murdered Sejanus!’ spat one of Ekaddon’s men.

‘He did,’ Loken agreed. ‘So should we just murder him in response? Didn’t the Emperor, praise be his name, teach us always to be magnanimous in victory?’

‘The Emperor, praise be his name, is not with us,’ Ekaddon replied.

‘If he’s not with us in spirit, captain,’ Loken replied, ‘then I pity the future of this crusade.’

Ekaddon stared at Loken for a moment, then ordered his second to transmit a signal to the fleet. Loken was quite sure Ekaddon had not backed down because he’d been convinced by any argument or fine principle. Though Ekaddon, as Captain of First Company’s assault elite, had glory and favour on his side, Loken, a company captain, had superiority of rank.

‘A signal has been sent to the Warmaster,’ Loken told the elderly man.

‘Is he coming here? Now?’ the man asked eagerly.

‘Arrangements will be made for you to meet him,’ Ekaddon snapped.

They waited for a minute or two for a signal response. Astartes attack ships, their engines glowing, streaked past the windows. The light from huge detonations sheeted the southern skies and slowly died away. Loken watched the criss-cross shadows play across the ring platform in the dying light.

He started. He suddenly realised why the elderly man had insisted so furiously that the commander should come in person to this place. He clamped his bolter to his side and began to stride towards the empty throne.

‘What are you doing?’ the elderly man asked.

‘Where is he?’ Loken cried. Where is he really? Is he invisible too?’

‘Get back!’ the elderly man cried out, leaping forward to grapple with Loken.

There was a loud bang. The elderly man’s ribcage blew out, spattering blood, tufts of burned silk and shreds of meat in all directions. He swayed, his robes shredded and on fire, and pitched over the edge of the platform.

Limbs limp, his torn garments flapping, he fell away like a stone down the open drop of the palace tower.

Ekaddon lowered his bolt pistol. ‘I’ve never killed an emperor before,’ he laughed.

‘That wasn’t the Emperor,’ Loken yelled. ‘You moron! The Emperor’s been here all the time.’ He was close to the empty throne now, reaching out a hand to grab at one of the golden armrests. A blemish of light, almost perfect, but not so perfect that shadows behaved correctly around it, recoiled in the seat.

This is a trap.
Those four words were the next that Loken was going to utter. He never got the chance.

The golden throne trembled and broadcast a shock-wave of invisible force. It was a power like that which the elite guard had wielded, but a hundred times more potent. It slammed out in all directions, casting Loken and all the Catulan off their feet like corn sheaves in a hurricane. The windows of the tower top shattered outwards in a multicoloured blizzard of glass fragments.

Most of Catulan Reaver Squad simply vanished, blown out of the tower, arms flailing, on the bow-wave of energy. One struck a steel spar on his way out. Back snapped, his body tumbled away into the night like a broken doll. Ekaddon managed to grab hold of another spar as he was launched backwards. He clung on, plasteel digits sinking into the metal for purchase, legs trailing out behind him horizontally as air and glass and gravitic energy assaulted him.

Loken, too close to the foot of the throne to be caught by the full force of the shockwave, was knocked flat. He slid across the ring platform towards the open fall, his white armour shrieking as it left deep grooves in the onyx surface. He went over the edge, over the sheer drop, but the wall of force carried him on like a leaf across the hole and slammed him hard against the far lip of the ring. He grabbed on, his arms over the lip, his legs dangling, held in place as much by the shock pressure as by the strength of his own, desperate arms.

Almost blacking out from the relentless force, he fought to hold on.

Inchoate light, green and dazzling, sputtered into being on the platform in front of his clawing hands. The teleport flare became too bright to behold, and then died, revealing a god standing on the edge of the platform.