The Ebonite Archymsts 14 страница

Thamatica’s reply was cut off as the main access doors to the bridge opened and the booming footfalls of a Dreadnought broke the solemn silence of the bridge. Septus Thoic and Ignatius Numen walked either side of a slender figure in a shimmering robe of fuliginous hues of black. His hood was drawn up over his face, but there was no mistaking the alien poise of his race. Though he was counted as an ally, the Morlocks still had their guns drawn and held across their chests.

Behind the guide came a thunderously proportioned warrior, towering and armoured in heavy plating that had once been black, but which was now almost entirely stripped of paint by gunfire and flames. Brother Bombastus marched with mechanical weight, his Dreadnought body wheezing and leaking from the numerous patch-jobs and repairs done to his enormous body. A retro-fitted missile rack was rotated down over the rear plates of his armour, but the storm bolter slung beneath his enormous powered fist and the perforated nozzles of the monstrous flame cannons on his other arm were aimed squarely at the guide.

The guide was not a prisoner of the Iron Hands, but nor was he entirely trusted.

Trust was in short supply in the galaxy, and alien species were yet to earn humanity’s.

‘Here he is,’ growled Bombastus, the tearing fingers of his fist snapping and rotating in their housing. Dubbed ‘Karaashi’ after the peak into which Ferrus Manus had crashed in Medusan legend, Bombastus had been a warrior of great passions and furious charges. With a temper to match the bellicose temperament of the volcano and a love of fiery destruction, the name had stuck, even after his interment in a Dreadnought sarcophagus. If anything, the transition from mortal flesh to iron had only increased his aggression in battle.

Escorted by the Morlocks, the guide walked to stand before the captain.

‘Captain Tyro,’ he said, his voice soft and empty of emotion. ‘It is an honour.’

‘Remove your hood,’ said Tyro. ‘I don’t like it when people conceal their faces. It means they have something to hide.’

‘As you wish,’ said the guide, reaching up to pull back the velvet of his cloak.

Their guide was eldar, with sharply defined features, generous lips, and shimmering eyes of glacial blue. Wayland moved from the surveyor station to stand alongside him.

‘What’s it called?’ asked Tyro.

‘ He is called Varuchi Vohra,’ said Wayland. ‘And your tongue will not shrivel up if you talk to him directly.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ snapped Tyro. ‘But I have met his kind on the battlefield before and seen Medusan lives ended on their blades. I don’t trust him.’

‘Then why are we here?’ demanded Wayland. ‘There is no way into the storm without him.’

Varuchi Vohra spoke again. ‘I assure you, Captain Tyro, I mean you and your warriors no harm. Quite the contrary. It is in my interests to stop your enemies as much as it is yours.’

‘Convince me,’ said Tyro. ‘Wayland’s told me why, but I want to hear it from you.’

‘As Sabik Wayland has said, I am a scholar, a poet and an explorer amongst other things. I belong to an academic order of my people known as the Ebonite Archymsts. We study the stars and the matter of the universe from which we are all derived. I know this region of space intimately, for I was the first of my kind to sing of its currents and its tempests.’

‘Sing them?’ asked Tyro.

‘It is the closest approximation I can give for how we communicate and store information,’ said Vohra. ‘It takes decades of training in our order’s shrine to master the technique, but I suspect you have neither the time nor inclination to learn of it.’

‘At least we agree on that,’ said Tyro. ‘I’m still not clear on why you’re helping us.’

‘The warriors you call “traitors” are dangerous beyond imagining. Not just to your race and your empire, but to all life. They serve the Primordial Annihilator, though only a handful of them truly appreciate what that means. Your goal and mine are in harmony, but we must not hesitate or our enemies will reach the citadel of Amon ny-shak Kaelis before us.’

‘ Amon ny-shak Kaelis? What does that mean?’

‘In an extinct dialect of my people, it means the Forge of Sun and Stars. ’

‘And you say they have a guide like you?’ asked Tyro.

‘They do,’ agreed Vohra. ‘A renegade who was cast from our order. My brother.’

‘What do you have to do to be exiled from a bunch of scholars?’ asked Vermanus Cybus with his grating, mechanised tones.

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said Thamatica. ‘Both the Mechanicum and the Iron Fraternity has threatened me with expulsion many times. Dangerous experiments, radical thinking, untested weaponry, that sort of thing.’

‘The amount of times you’ve almost blown us up, I almost wish they had,’ said Cybus.

A ghost of a smile hovered on the lips of the eldar as he continued. ‘Frater Thamatica is correct – my brother developed an unhealthy interest in the darker aspects of knowledge, the things that are kept hidden for good reason.’

‘Things like what?’ asked Thamatica. ‘Give me an example.’

‘You know I cannot do that, Frater Thamatica,’ said Varuchi Vohra. ‘Suffice to say that there are things in this galaxy that should forever remain shrouded in the past. What lies in the heart of the citadel is but one of them.’

‘And this renegade can guide the traitors to this citadel?’ asked Cybus, the red optics of his eyes unwavering in their scrutiny.

‘He can, but he does not know the paths I know,’ said Vohra. ‘The Paths Above are safer, but the Paths Below are quicker. With my help, you would steal a march on your foes through the spaces that are not warp-touched and arrive at Amon ny-shak Kaelis long before they could hope to reach it.’

‘Our instruments aren’t detecting any break in the storm front,’ said Tyro. ‘We’re not seeing a way in at all, let alone a safe one.’

‘Your instruments are incapable of seeing the Paths Below,’ said Vohra, ‘but they are there.’

‘Captain,’ said Wayland. ‘We don’t have a choice. We have to let Varuchi Vohra guide us.’

‘You said yourself there was no clear way in,’ snapped Tyro and the mech-eagle shivered its wings at his sudden outburst. ‘He could fly us straight into a warp squall and destroy us.’

‘He could, but why would he?’ countered Wayland. ‘He would die too, and I don’t think he sought us out to kill us in such an elaborate way. The Iron Warriors and the Emperor’s Children will be here soon, so we have two options: trust him or give up.’

It was an obvious gambit, and Tyro saw through it in a heartbeat.

‘You think you can goad me into giving the order you want?’

‘No, but it’s that stark a choice,’ said Wayland. ‘And we don’t have time for a debate.’

Tyro glowered, but Wayland already knew the captain would agree to letting the eldar scholar guide them. To give up was anathema to the Iron Hands. A task once begun was never abandoned, even in the face of insurmountable odds. That mindset had kept them fighting in the face of their grief, in the wake of their loss and against the pall of desperation that sought to engulf the remnants of the Legion.

Even so, for long moments, Cadmus Tyro stared at the billowing clouds raging at the edge of the storm surges and thunderheads of malignant light. He too was well aware of the dangers inherent in attempting to navigate such a dangerous region of space. Ships avoided such anomalies, especially when they bled through from the unknown alternate universe in which they existed. To entrust his ship and everyone on it to a xenos species known for their treacherous wiles and unpredictable nature went against every warning voice in his skull.

But what choice did he have?

‘Take us in, Varuchi Vohra,’ said Tyro. ‘But know this. If I think, even for an instant, that you are betraying us, I will have Bombastus here burn you to ashes. If you are leading us to our deaths within this warp storm, you will die first. Am I being clear?’

‘The warning is entirely clear, but it is unnecessary,’ said Vohra.

‘Not to me,’ said Tyro.

ELEVEN

A Heavy Burden
The Dodekatheon
A Memory of Flesh Nearly two thousand Iron Warriors stood in unmoving ranks before Kroeger, and the idea that they were his to command staggered him. Since leaving Hydra Cordatus, a moment that had given him an un-accountable sense of relief, he had wrestled with the idea that he was a warsmith of the IV Legion. Orders were his to give, and lives his to command. Until now his only power of life and death had been that which rested on the edge of his chainblade or in the magazine of his bolter.

Now his very words would decide whether men would live or die.

Part of him relished that power, but the bulk of him resisted the inevitable distance that would put between him and the bloody edge of war. His weapons were as much a part of him as his hands and heart. Only in a swirling, bloody melee could a warrior ever feel truly alive. Life was at its most distilled in the spaces between the blades and bullets.

Behind the ranked-up warriors were squadrons of armoured vehicles: Rhinos, Land Raiders, Mastodons and hybrid machines fashioned by the Pneumachina from the wreckage of damaged vehicles and the strange machinery torn from the heart of the dismantled Cadmean Citadel. Since reaching the edge of the warp anomaly, the Pneumachina had worked with feverish intensity in their sealed forges, crafting ever more lethal-looking machines, as if just being in the shadow of this mysterious region had somehow empowered their labours. Some of their creations were blatant in their purpose, little more than towering gun-carriages or infantry crushers, but others were less obvious, festooned with caged machinery and dangerous-looking devices that seemed to serve no clear purpose.

Kroeger marched down the length of the ranked warriors, a vision of burnished iron with gold and jet chevroning. These warriors had brought countless worlds to ruin, toppled the fortresses of the mightiest empires, both human and alien, but who among the Imperium of Man knew any of their names?

At Kroeger’s insistence, none of his warriors wore their battle helms, each man’s stoic face staring straight ahead in iron unity. For the most part they had dark hair, close-cropped to the skull, but here and there he saw a warrior with the long scalp locks common amongst those from Lochos, the tattooed whorls of the Delchonians, the blood-tinted hair of his own folk from the Ithearak Mountains and the forked beards favoured by the Vedric Tyrpechs. He would know the men who fought for him, he would learn their names and tell them that he knew their deeds, for how else would they fight and die for him?

He looked closely at their faces as he passed.

Hard features, worn smooth by genetics, enhancement and war-won knowledge. The Iron Warriors knew the craft of death like few other Legions, and they had made uncounted sacrifices in service of the ideals of the Imperium. These men were mighty, they had fought to bring the galaxy to compliance. Their reward was to be cast aside in favour of those Legions with greater rolls of honour, Legions that had prospered on the broken backs of the Iron Warriors.

Heroes of the Ultramarines, the Blood Angels and the Imperial Fists were lauded and immortalised in art and verse, but where were the parades for the Iron Warriors?

Where was their glory?

The answer was quickly forthcoming: in ashes on Olympia. Blown to the wind from a billion worldwide pyres. Those who should have clamoured for tales of its crusading sons were all dead: the Legion had burned them all, and the despair of that day was etched into their skin, like ashes smeared on the cheeks of grieving widows and faithless sons.

But Kroeger felt no guilt for what they had done on Olympia. What did it matter that it had been the world that the Lord of Iron had called home? His world or another, it was irrelevant. Any other planet would have burned and been razed to the ground and no one would have cared.

Only the name gave it significance, and names were just noise.

Like grief, guilt was rust that ate the iron in a warrior’s soul, and Perturabo had spoken to the entire Legion in the ashen rains of their homeworld, telling them that guilt had no place in his Legion.

Guilt was for lesser men who looked to the past for validation.

The Iron Warriors would never allow the crippling taint of guilt into their ranks, for only the future would give them validation.

Kroeger’s thoughts were interrupted as he saw a familiar face in the front rank of his Grand Battalion. He knew he should walk on, that there was no point in drawing attention to a wound in the pride of the warriors he now commanded. But the spiteful part of him couldn’t resist the chance to rub a little salt in one particular wound.

He paused before Harkor, pleased to see his former warsmith’s stature now much reduced.

‘Harkor,’ he said, only just stopping himself from calling him Warsmith.

‘Kroeger,’ said Harkor.

‘That’s Warsmith Kroeger,’ he said.

Harkor nodded, and swallowed the bile that must surely be rising in his throat.

‘You have found a place in the Grand Battalion?’

‘Yes, warsmith,’ replied Harkor. ‘Battle-brother, 55th Storm squad.’

Kroeger knew it, mediocre earth grubbers and breach fodder.

‘You will fit right in there,’ said Kroeger. ‘Sergeant Ghasta is competent.’

‘Competent was never enough for me… warsmith,’ said Harkor, and the bitterness in his voice was so rich that Kroeger had to force himself not to laugh in the man’s face.

‘No, and look where that attitude got you.’

‘Permission to speak freely, warsmith,’ asked Harkor.

Kroeger hesitated, but nodded eventually. ‘Speak, but do not waste my time.’

‘It is a heavy burden being a warsmith, I know this all too well. There are a thousand responsibilities that rest on your shoulders alone. And broad as they are, Warsmith Kroeger, you do not have the experience to carry them all yet. I could help you.’

This time he did laugh in Harkor’s face.

‘You would help me? I replaced you after the primarch stripped you of your rank. I can almost feel your blade between my shoulders now.’

Harkor shook his head and said, ‘No, warsmith.’

‘Why would I ever trust you, Harkor?’

‘Because what else have I to lose? The Lord of Iron will never grant me rank as a warsmith again, so what advantage would I gain in betraying you?’

‘Personal satisfaction?’

‘I won’t deny the truth of that,’ said Harkor, ‘but I can help you make this Grand Battalion something legendary. You have the primarch’s ear, you have fire and force. Ally that to my experience and you would be Perturabo’s most trusted triarch by the time Horus sits upon the throne of Terra.’

‘You only aid me to gain standing and prestige,’ sneered Kroeger.

Harkor shrugged. ‘There is no shame in that.’

‘I suppose not,’ agreed Kroeger. ‘But I would take a snake to my bed were I to trust you.’

‘I did not say you should trust me,’ said Harkor. ‘Just that you should listen to me.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Kroeger.

Bare girders columned the bridge of the Iron Blood, and bolted gantries stacked above one another ran the length of it, each filled with augmented servitors to man the more mundane elements of the ship’s operation. A handful of Iron Warriors manned the stations requiring post-human input, though only a few were known to Perturabo.

He stood with his arms folded across his chest, staring impassively at the billowing flares, strange tides and curling bursts of ejected warp matter displayed on the viewscreen. The combined fleets of the Iron Warriors and Emperor’s Children held station at the very edge of the star maelstrom, its firebright core seething like a star in its death throes as the rippling haze of its storm-wracked corona expanded to swallow everything around it. Umber light from the storm’s heart bathed his features, making them ruddy and hale. The warp-born illumination played over Perturabo, dancing in his cold eyes like firelight.

For once in his life, Perturabo looked at the star maelstrom and knew that others could see it too. They did not see it quite as he saw it, but they could at least acknowledge its existence. He saw beyond its dark light to the engulfed worlds within: phantom images that ghosted in and out of perception and fleeting moments of solidity in a realm where such things were anathema.

He saw planets where all reason and Euclidian certainty had been abandoned, where the physical laws that underpinned the galaxy were playthings of lunatic forces beyond mortal comprehension.

Worlds of fire; worlds that were somehow crafted into geometric shapes; worlds wreathed in unending lightning storms; islands of ephemera that were vomited into existence and destroyed an instant later to sink back into the roiling chaos from which they had been birthed. Madness held sway in the nightmarish confluences of this storm, a reign of inconstancy that would break even the hardiest sanity.

Yet amid the endless cycle of creation and destruction, one of the half-glimpsed worlds retained a sickening solidity – a bleak world of lifeless rock and crooked spires, where an impenetrable sun, like the pupil of an impossible eye, held sway in a sky of unchanging emptiness. Perturabo blinked and the dead world and its black sun sank back into the malignant hues of the star maelstrom.

For as long as he could remember, since coming to awareness on that rain-slick cliff, he had felt the gaze of the star maelstrom upon him. It had always looked down upon him; judging him, measuring his worth and spying on his every moment. A life lived beneath its cold scrutiny had made him brooding and loath to offer his trust, ever-watchful and aware of its baleful glare.

It had always been with him and always would be.

And now he was to venture into its depths, following the guidance of an alien seer. What would he find in there and, more to the point, what might find him?

Somehow he had always known he would be one day enter the star maelstrom. Its call had been gentle, but insistent. A reeling-in that had been as invisible as it had been impossible to ignore.

Part of him resisted the idea of summons. He could give the order to turn his Legion around and take its hundreds of ships to where he could more readily contribute to Horus Lupercal’s war effort, but every time the thought surfaced in his mind it was obliterated like a timber palisade before a melta ram.

Perturabo had lived his life under the gaze of the star maelstrom, yet this was the first time his ships had ventured near it. Why should that be so? He had been a primarch in the Emperor’s armies; hundreds of starfaring vessels were his to command and no one would have questioned him had he chosen to lead his expeditionary forces here.

The answer was obvious.

Until now, he had no need to venture within.

Fulgrim may have given him superficial cause with his tall tales of imprisoned war-deities and weapons of the apocalypse, but Perturabo knew that wasn’t the real reason. He had come because now was the time to see what lay within the star maelstrom.

Star maelstrom?

How long had he known it by that description without ever learning its true name?

Perturabo called up the astrogation charts for this region of space stored in the Iron Blood ’s data engines. The viewscreen shimmered as it was overlaid with a neon-bright grid, curving arcs and flickering key labels for those few stellar objects in this region worthy of a name. At the heart of the screen, a vertical black label bisected the fiery orange heart of the star maelstrom like the eye of a great cat. Imposed upon the bar was a name.

Cygnus X-1.

Perturabo knew the star maelstrom was not the first spatial anomaly to bear that name, and whichever lowly scribe had ascribed it again was a fool. Something this powerful and terrible deserved a name to strike fear into the hearts of all who saw it, a name that would resonate down the millennia until the end of time, when the stars went out and the only light in the universe was the nightmare glow of the star maelstrom’s ever-devouring borders.

Perturabo’s fingers danced over the slate from which the charts had been brought forth, and his thin lips curled in an approximation of a smile as the name in the vertical black bar changed. It would change throughout the fleets, spreading to any data engine that called up maps of the galactic north-west.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A name to lodge in the hearts of all who hear it.’

The Iron Blood ’s engines flared at Perturabo’s command, taking it into the star maelstrom.

No, not the star maelstrom.

The Eye of Terror.

They called it the Dodekatheon, after the twelve tyrants of Olympia, and the masons’ order of the IV Legion had met aboard Iron Warriors starships before Perturabo had even been reunited with his gene-sons. There was nothing secret in its formation or gatherings, nothing hidden at its core, and no secrets worthy of keeping in its activities. It was a true meeting place of builders and warriors, where new structural designs were unveiled, past battles refought and new theorems of war given voice.

Every warrior of the Legion was welcome, but in practice only those of rank had the opportunity to attend any of the lodge meetings. Kroeger had known of it, as had every Iron Warrior, but he had never found the time to seek out a meeting. On the approach to the anomaly in which lay the weapons of the Angel Exterminatus, Barban Falk and Forrix had arrived at his arming chamber as he was replacing the blunted teeth of his chainblade.

‘You have bond-serfs to do that,’ said Forrix.

‘I prefer to do it myself,’ said Kroeger, sitting cross-legged in a steeldust habit of hessian and mail links over his bodyglove. A hundred or more razor teeth were spread on an oiled cloth before him, like trophies taken from the jawbone of some mechanised shark. Each one was polished and fresh, oiled and ready to rend.

‘You have better things to do with your time,’ said Falk, as though irritated by a fellow triarch performing such a manual task.

‘Such as?’

‘Coming with us,’ said Forrix, reaching to lift the sword from Kroeger’s grasp.

Kroeger snatched the weapon away before Forrix could touch it.

‘Don’t touch my blade,’ said Kroeger, fingers curling around its hilt. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To the Dodekatheon,’ said Forrix. ‘It’s time you were known there.’

Kroeger eased his grip on his sword and laid it on a sword rack against the wall, amid a host of blades, bludgeons and firearms.

‘The masons’ order?’

Forrix nodded and they led him into the gleaming, oil-scented hallways of the Iron Blood, through corridors he travelled regularly and chambers he had never known. They crossed vaulted processionals of ranked artillery pieces, with hundreds of heavy armoured vehicles suspended on massive chains from the strengthened roof trusses. They climbed great spiral stairs that wound around thunderous columns of magma-hot power, and super-hardened magazines packed tightly with shell casings, entrenching gear and millions of rounds of volatile ammunition. More than any other Legion, the interiors of the Iron Warriors vessels were given over to supply and logistics, for their way of war depended on a steady supply of high-explosive warheads.

Though it was easy to become lost while travelling through the guts of a starship, Kroeger knew they were heading toward the Iron Blood ’s frontal sections. The high-walled chambers of hot iron and sweating pipework through which they passed became ever more cramped as more and more space was given over to the prow weapon systems: the vast tubes of the forward torpedo arrays and power relays serving the heavy gun batteries mounted to either side of the carved ram of its bow.

‘You’ve really never been to a gathering of the Dodekatheon?’ said Falk.

‘Never,’ said Kroeger.

‘Why not?’

Kroeger shrugged. ‘Always seemed like there were more important things to do with my time than talking about war. I prefer to be ready for fighting.’

‘You are a triarch,’ said Forrix. ‘Talking about war is part of being ready for it now.’

The curving ramp they were descending opened out into a long, lancet-vaulted triumphal way, along which numerous groups of Iron Warriors were gathered in tight knots. Some pored over sheaves of architectural plans, while others clustered around hololithic displays projecting schematics of wall details, projected bombardment patterns and fire schedules. Perhaps a hundred or so warriors had assembled, some in armour, some in their mesh and mail robes.

‘It looks very… informal,’ said Kroeger.

‘Don’t let appearances fool you,’ said Forrix. ‘This is as much of a vipers’ den as ever you might imagine. Alliances are made and broken here, pacts and oaths sworn and forgotten before the night’s end. It’s all very useful.’

‘Doesn’t sound useful at all.’

Forrix grinned. ‘On the contrary, to see who favours whom and where plots are formed is knowledge that will stand you in good stead when it comes to deciding upon your order of battle. Pitch any three warsmiths into battle alongside each other and it’s always good to have some healthy rivalry between them. Judging the right level of rivalry can spur each warsmith to greater heights of endeavour, just as getting it wrong can cause your army to fight itself as much as the enemy.’

‘I see,’ said Kroeger, though the idea of engineering rivalry between warsmiths seemed needlessly antagonistic. ‘Do other Legions have orders like this?’

‘Other Legions have since established similar orders, but the Dodekatheon was in place long before Lorgar’s errand boy thought to supplant it with a lodge of his own making.’

‘Aye, we soon sent that worm packing,’ laughed Falk. ‘We have our order, and we don’t need any other.’

Heads began turning as word of the Trident’s arrival spread through the assembled warriors. Though rank and title were left at the door in the Dodekatheon, some were too important to be entirely left behind. Nods of respect followed the three warriors as they made their way through the press of bodies. Kroeger saw faces he recognised, faces he had never seen before and faces that didn’t look like they belonged in the IV Legion.

One such face belonged to the scarred Emperor’s Children swordsman who had accompanied Fulgrim into the Cavea Ferrum. The same warrior who had put him on his back. Lucius, Fulgrim had called him, and with his twin sword sheaths empty at his waist. Kroeger’s hand flashed to his own scabbard before he remembered that he too was unarmed. Lucius grinned as he read the anger in him and sketched a casual salute.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-13