Void Stalker (37 page)

This time, he was hunting her, in his own slow, limping way. The blade in his hands rang with ancient resonance, the crude metals used in its forging dating back to the Humans’ Hubris, when their arrogance burst open the Gate of Sha’eil like a great eye in the heavens. She did not fear it. She feared nothing. Even her damaged accoutrements would manifest whole once more, when the fates aligned.

She ran faster, the rain cold on her skin, the blade high in her hand.

Talos offered no
resistance.

The black spear cleaved through him, finishing the work his own sword had started in her hands. He didn’t smile, or curse, or whisper any last testament. She kept him at arm’s length, the impaling spear forcing him back.

As the sword dropped from his grip, Talos opened his other hand. The grenade in his fist activated the moment his fingers slipped from the thumb-plate. It exploded, triggering the three grenades he’d taken from Cyrion, the two he’d taken from Variel, and the power generator on his back.

With the exception of the fire that incinerated half of an alien immortal’s physical form, Talos Valc
o
ran of Nostramo died much the same way he’d been born: with black eyes open, staring at the world around, and silence on his lips.

Marlonah limped into
the rainstorm, closing her eyes and letting the cool water rinse her body of hours of sweat. She felt like weeping. Running her hands through her soaking hair was a pleasure she couldn’t put into words.

The Dreadnought preceded her, but took no similar joy. The war machine dragged one leg, scraping sparks with every step and leaving a mangled engraved path along the ground. Its armour-plating was blackened in places, melted to sludge and hardened again in others, or riddled with silver shuriken discs like misaligned fish scales. His joints no longer whirred with confident, heavy grinding – they crackled and sparked and clanked, as gears and servos slipped across each other’s loose teeth, finding only occasional purchase.

The construct walked onward, out onto the battlements, both its arms lowered and loose. Dozens of cables linking the sarcophagus to the main body were severed, either venting vapour, leaking fluid, or simply dried up completely.

She didn’t know how many of them Malcharion had killed during their journey and ascent. They’d come at him with chainswords, with knives, with pistols, with rifles, with laser weapons and projectile-throwers and claws and spears, and even rocks and curses. He showed the impact of every single one of them on his ruined adamantite hull.

‘I heard a gunship…’ the Dreadnought growled. ‘I… I will contact it. Talos’s human slaves. They will come back for you. Then. Then I sleep.’

On the battlements ahead of them, she saw the devastated body of a
l
egionary slumped against one wall, his armour burned black and every joint melted and fused. Smoke rose from the corpse, tangling with the downpour.

Closer to where they walked, one of the alien maidens still moaned and crawled across the stone. She only had one arm, the other lost to savage burn wounds, and one leg that ended below her thigh. The other was nowhere to be seen. All hair was seared from her body, as was most of her flesh. She writhed and groaned and bled, shivering and twitching in the rain.

‘Jain Zar,’
she whisper-croaked, struggling to speak with a scorched tongue.
‘Jain Zar.’

Impossibly, the only unharmed part of her body was her left eye, which watched Marlonah with sour, sentient malice.

‘Jain Zar,’
the dying alien rasped again.

Malcharion crushed the living wreckage under his armoured foot, smearing it across the battlements. He lifted a protesting arm on whining joints, to gesture to the
l
egionary’s corpse.

‘I… have to finish everything… for that boy.’

NAMES

The slaves huddled
together in the darkness, the male cradling the female. It wouldn’t be long now. Their confines shivered as the shuttle rose, labouring on its way back into the atmosphere.

The evacuation began five days before, when the Navy’s first envoy made planetfall. A hundred other refugees sat in the near-dark, speaking in quiet voices, several weeping with relief, others with fear. The people of Darcharna had never left their world. Even those taught to cherish the distant Imperium as their saviour were bound to be frightened now they were finally in the empire’s less than tender care.

The slaves had spent two long months in the Last City. Two months of lying to blend in with the other survivors; two months of hiding her third eye; two months of hoping Variel wouldn’t appear in the doorway of their scavenged shack. She dreamed of that confrontation all too often, picturing his red eye lenses, hearing the snarl of armour joints. She always woke the moment his gloves of cold ceramite stroked across her belly.

But he never came.

In quiet moments, she still recalled Talos’s words: ‘If Variel escapes this madness alive, he will come for the child one night, no matter where you run.’

But where was he? Had he fled Tsagualsa with Deltrian after all? She didn’t dare believe they were safe from Variel’s knives, but she was beginning to hope.

Octavia’s hands rested on her stomach. The baby would be with them soon – a month or two at most. She wondered if he’d be born in the void, like that poor girl on board the
Covenant,
or if she’d first breathe the air of whatever world they’d call home once they’d lied their way through Imperial processing.

He’d agreed to act as a manual worker from one of the smaller southern cities. She was going to claim descent from the planet’s original Navigators, from the colony fleet four hundred years before. It still amused her, in her calmer moments, to think that with Navigator biology, her story was technically the more likely one. She doubted she’d have any difficulty with whatever dubious authority finally processed the survivors of Darcharna. As a Navigator – precious as she was – they’d be likely to send her to a stronghold of the Navis Nobilite in a nearby sector, but pilgrims and refugees were one of the Imperium’s many lifebloods. Losing themselves among the teeming billions would be no trouble.

They’d be fine, she knew, as long as the Inquisition didn’t get involved.

Octavia nodded to Marlonah across the cargo hold. She nodded back, returning a nervous smile. It’d been good to have her around these last months, and she shared Octavia’s amusement that all three of them only still lived because the Legion had – at various points – saved their lives. Such bizarre behaviour from soul-sworn murderers. Even after a year and more in their company, she’d never understood any of them.

Well. Perhaps Talos.

For the first time in longer than she cared to remember, she let let her thoughts drift to the future.

‘I just had a thought,’ she said, in a strange voice.

Septimus kissed her sweaty forehead. ‘What is it?’

‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You
know
what I mean. Your real name, before you were the seventh.’

‘Oh.’ Septimus smiled, and though she had no hope of seeing it in the dark, she heard the grin in his whisper. ‘Coreth. My name was Coreth.’

Eurydice – once Octavia – tasted the word, then turned to taste his lips. ‘Coreth,’ she said, her mouth against his. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

THE MONTHS OF MADNESS

[EXCERPT BEGINS]

…from the rogue trader vessel
Quietude,
that the eldar of Segmentum Obscura name that specific date “the Night of Sacred Sorrow”, with no record of…

[EXCERPT ENDS]

[EXCERPT BEGINS]

…personally report contact lost with subsector guild interests on thirty-seven worlds, nine of which still remain dark. We await the reports of scout vessels and Imperial Navy forces in the area, but…

[EXCERPT ENDS]

[EXCERPT BEGINS]

…don’t trade there, anymore. Rumours of warp storm geneses, and temperamental tides. It’s not worth the money in repairs. The
Iago
’s
Navigator went blind…

[EXCERPT ENDS]

[EXCERPT BEGINS]

…without confirmation of this “sizeable Archenemy fleet” on the Eastern Fringes, it is a fool’s crusade to petition for…

[EXCERPT ENDS]

[EXCERPT BEGINS]

…Golar, the second world of the system of the same name, simply no longer exists in any habitable capacity. The population of the capital city was recorded in the last referenced census as four million. Extensive planetary tectonic activity left the city…

[EXCERPT ENDS]

[EXCERPT BEGINS]

…which is why, if you will heed the archival data, you will see fluctuations in the quality of astropathic contact, alongside severe…

[EXCERPT ENDS]

[EXCERPT BEGINS]

…is meaningless. Tell the Mechanicus representative that we’ve scryed the region
twice
now, at a cost in fuel and crew lives I struggle to tally without a cogitator…

[EXCERPT ENDS]

[EXCERPT BEGINS]

…in the region of one of the dead wor
l
ds, but no recognised Imperial tongue…

[EXCERPT ENDS]

[EXCERPT BEGINS]

…Viris colratha dath sethicara tesh dasovallian. Solruthis veh za jass…

[EXCERPT ENDS]

PROPHET OF THE EIGHTH LEGION

1

The prophet looked
up as the bulkhead opened on squealing hinges. He wasn’t surprised to see who stood there.

‘Apothecary,’ he said without a smile. ‘Greetings.’

The Apothecary avoided all eye contact. ‘It is time,’ he said.

The prophet rose to his feet, hearing the healthy grind of his armour joints. ‘I presume the others are already waiting?’

The Apothecary nodded. ‘They will join us on the way. You are ready?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then let us go. The council is already in session.’

As they walked the winding, twisting hallways at the heart of the
Sun’s Scourge,
screams and moans sounded in the distance, on the many decks below. The prophet let his gauntleted hand brush along the ornate steel walls.

‘I will claim a ship like this one night,’ he said.

‘Is that a prophecy,’ the Apothecary replied, ‘or a hope?’

‘A hope,’ the prophet confessed. ‘But it seems likely, if all goes well tonight.’

The two of them continued walking, their armoured boots thudding on the decking. Soon enough, they were joined by a third figure. This one wore the same midnight-blue ceramite, though its helm was a sloping, snarling daemon mask. Twin tear trails graced its face, painted in scarlet and silver. The figure crawl-walked on all fours, hunched over and loping along behind them like a loyal hound.

‘Variel,’ the newcomer said in a burst of crackling vox. ‘And hail to you, prophet.’

Variel said nothing, though the prophet inclined his head in greeting. ‘Lucoryphus,’ he said. ‘Have you spoken to the other Bleeding Eyes?’

‘Yes. Over three hundred of the cult have attended the gathering. I spoke with several Bleeding Eye leaders among the other warbands. A dozen other cults are also in evidence. All is well. A gathering of the rarest significance, I believe.’

‘True enough.’

They walked on, heading deeper. Variel occasionally checked the readings from his narthecium gauntlet, adjusting dials seemingly on a whim. The prophet didn’t bother to ask what was occupying the Apothecary’s mind. Variel’s thoughts were forever his own; he was not a man that enjoyed sharing counsel.

The three figures soon joined another two; both of these stood in hulking suits of Terminator war plate, their tusked, horned helms lowering in respectful greeting. The Legion’s winged skull stood proud on their curving shoulder guards.

‘Malek,’ said the prophet. ‘Garadon. It is good to see you again.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Garadon said. An immense war maul was slung over one shoulder.

‘We would be nowhere else,’ Malek added. His massive gauntlets carried the scythe-like claws retracted in armoured housings.

‘Not meeting with the other Atramentar?’ asked the Raptor, now crawling above them, hanging on the ceiling.

‘That can come after this
,
’ Malek replied. ‘The survivors of the old First Company have precious little to say to one another, these nights. Meetings always degenerate into duels over their warlords’ respective strengths.’

‘The cults are the same. As are the Legions themselves.’ Lucoryphus seemed amused by the idea. ‘Your decades in the Maelstrom were ill spent if you believed anything would change.’

‘The Maelstrom,’ Garadon chuckled. ‘An entertaining guess. How little you know, screecher.’ Malek simply snorted, not quite an argument, and left it at that.

Malek and Garadon fell in alongside the prophet, flanking him as they marched three abreast down the labyrinth of corridors. Variel allowed himself to drift behind. The prophet’s entrance should be alongside two of the Legion’s most respected Atramentar warriors. He had no wish to debate the point.

They came, at last, to the council chamber at the very heart of the ship. The sound of raised voices and cursing could be heard even through the sealed bulkhead.

‘Do they scream or laugh?’ Lucoryphus rasped.

‘Both,’ said Malek, hauling the door open.

The group stalked into the chamber, joining one of the largest gatherings of Eighth Legion commanders in ten thousand years.

2

For almost three
hours, the prophet simply listened in silence. His attention drifted from figure to figure around the central table, drinking in the details of their armour, their terror markings, their warpaint and the stories scratched across ceramite in burn marks, scars and dents.

The Legion’s gathered lords and sorcerers were as divided as ever. Many called out for allegiance, no matter how temporary, to Abaddon’s rising Crusade. This would be the Thirteenth, and the first with a goal to truly wound the Imperium’s fortress world of Cadia beyond recovery. Others called out for patience and discretion, letting the Black Legion bear the brunt of the initial assaults while the Night Lords devoted themselves to raids away from the front lines.

Still more would hear none of it, refusing to join the Black Crusade, no matter the prize or threat of retribution. They were souls who’d abandoned the Long War, living only for themselves and the glory they could claw from existence as raiders.

The prophet didn’t judge any of them, no matter their choices – courageous or craven, wise or wasteful, all of them were his brothers, for better or worse.

Talk turned to individual assaults. What fleets could strike where. What slivers of tactical intention the Despoiler had revealed so far. How best to capitalise on it for success against the Imperium, or as a means of betraying the Black Legion and cannibalising false allies in the name of spoils.

When the prophet finally spoke, it was a single word.

‘No.’

3

The Night Lords
didn’t fall silent immediately. Several arguments raged too hot, too loud, for an immediate quiet to descend. Instead, those nearest the prophet turned to him with cautious eyes. The lords and their honour guards – some of warriors, some of Terminators, some of Raptors – watched with sudden and cold interest, as the unknown lord spoke at last. Thus far, he’d not even named himself, yet many of those present recognised the warriors at his side.

‘What did you say?’ asked the nearby lord whose tirade the prophet had interrupted.

The prophet stepped forward, taking a place at the table. ‘I said “No”. You asserted that you will stand triumphant at the coming battle in the Alsir Divide. You will not. You will die aboard your command ship, mutilated and screaming in rage. Your final thoughts will be to wonder where your legs and right arm have gone.’

The lord hissed something low and vile through his helm’s vocaliser. ‘You threaten me?’

‘No, Zar Tavik. I do not. But I have seen your death. I have no reason to lie.’

The named lord barked a laugh. ‘No reason? Perhaps by keeping me away, you hope to secure the victory there for yourself.’

The prophet lowered his helm, conceding the point. ‘I am unwilling to argue. Where you die means nothing to me.’

Silence was spreading around the table now, as infectious as a foul scent. One of the other commanders, a Raptor in silvered war plate, turned his daemon mask to the prophet.

‘And how do I die, seer?’

The prophet didn’t even turn to look at the Raptor. ‘You die here, Captain Kalex. This very night. Your final thoughts are of disbelief.’

There was a moment’s hesitation. Kalex’s claws closed around the hilts of his sheathed chainswords.

‘And how could you possibly know such th–’

The Raptor crashed back from the table, blood spattering those nearest him. Malek of the Atramentar lowered a double-barrelled bolter, smoke coiling from its brazen mouths.

‘As I said,’ the prophet smiled.

Lords nearby were edging away from him now; some in caution, others readying weapons. Kalex was one of the few to lack an honour guard. No warriors pulled iron in a bid to avenge him. Instead, a tense silence flooded the chamber, rippling out from the prophet and his brothers.

‘Many of us will fall in the coming Crusade, whether we swear allegiance or abstain entirely.’

‘Seize the moment…’ Lucoryphus’s voice came over the vox.

The prophet pointed to lord after lord, each in turn.

‘Darjyr, you will be betrayed by the Word Bearers at Corsh Point, when they leave you to face the Imperial blockade alone. Yem Kereel, you will fall in the last charge at the Greson Breach, against the Subjugators. You will be succeeded by your lieutenant, Skallika, who will be killed three nights later, when his Land Raider is toppled by a Titan and overrun by Guard platoons. Toriel the White Handed, the Legion will consider you lost to the warp when you leave here, swearing never to fight under what you call Abaddon’s “slave mark”. The truth is close; you are attacked by one of your own
C
law leaders while under
way in the warp, and as you lose your hold on your ship’s path, the Sea of Souls floods into your warship.’

On and on, the prophet spoke, until a full third of the gathered warriors had been named as doomed to die in the coming Black Crusade, or while they abandoned it.

‘This war will cost us. We will pay in blood and souls, night after night. But the price will be victory. The Imperium’s defences will be broken, and we will never need to sneak and fight our way from the Eye again. The empire’s throat shall be forevermore bared to our blades. That is what Abaddon offers us.’

‘He’s offered us the same thing before,’ one of the lords called.

‘No,’ Lucoryphus hissed. ‘He hasn’t. The other Crusades were merely
crusades.
The Despoiler left the Eye to achieve whatever Black Legion madness he wished to achieve. This one is different. It will be a war. We will break Cadia, and forever after be free to raid the Imperium at will.’

The prophet nodded to the Raptor’s words. ‘Some of us have remained Legion brothers down the centuries. Others have splintered from the Legion in all but name, while still others among us have cast aside the colours entirely. I see several warbands now wearing the colours and honours of their own factions, for they’ve been strong enough to rise from the old ranks and claim mastery over their own paths. Yet we are all bonded by the fact that this Crusade, this Thirteenth Uprising, will be the war we’ve waited for. The more of our blood we add to the tides, the greater our triumph.’

‘But so many deaths…’
A
nother lord nearly spat the words. ‘The price is high, if you even speak the truth.’

‘I see these deaths in thick, spiteful dreams each time I close my eyes,’ the prophet said. ‘I dream of nothing else. I see the death of every single warrior bearing Eighth Legion blood in his veins. Just as our primarch knew he was destined to fall – just as our sorcerers suffer visions of their own deaths, and the demises of those near them. But my soul-sight goes… f
u
rther. Your worlds of birth mean nothing. If we are connected by gene-seed, then I have watched your last breaths. If you have Eighth Legion blood beating through your veins, then I have seen you die. Most are vague, indistinct endings, ripe for change with a twist of fate. A few may be ironclad, the same in a hundred visions, and all that remains is for you to sell your lives dearly. But most are not. Fate is not etched in stone, brothers.’

Silence reigned now, almost majestic in its oppressive totality. Variel and Lucoryphus stepped closer, alongside Malek and Garadon, as the prophet drew breath to speak again.

‘Do you know what one of the greatest threats to victory will be in Abaddon’s Final War?’ he asked the gathered warleaders.

‘Each other,’ several of them joked at once. The prophet waited for the laughter to die down.

‘For once, no. The Imperium will claim an ally of desperate strength, and one we cannot afford to leave at our backs. What ancient detritus is caught within the Great Eye’s eternal grip? What haven of alien filth still holds out against the forces of the Enlightened Legions?’

‘Ulthwé,’ said one lord.

‘The Black Eldar,’ said another. Disgruntled murmurs started up, just as the prophet knew they would. The Eighth Legion – like all of the Eye’s forces – had lost their fair share of warriors and warships over the millennia due to the interference of the accursed Ulthwé eldar.

The prophet nodded again. ‘Craftworld Ulthwé. They came for Tenth Company once, decades ago. They chased the Tenth across the stars, feverish in their need to end a single life before prophecy could become truth. They failed in that quest, though they never knew it. Their witches and warlocks scryed a future they could not allow to come to pass: a future where the Prophet of the Eighth Legion rallied his kindred to bring fear and flame upon their precious craftworld in an unrelenting storm. These creatures, with their species so close to extinction, fear damnation more than anything else.
That
is where the Eighth Legion will strike first.
That
is where we will devote our initial assault, raining bloodshed and terror onto the eldar, drenching their dying craftworld in the tears of the slain.’

‘And why should we?’ called Lord Hemek of the Nightwing. ‘Why should we spill eldar blood, when we have hordes of Imperial Guard to slake our thirsts?’

‘Revenge,’ argued another. ‘For vengeance.’