Know no fear. The Battle of Calth hh-19 Read online

  Lorgar leans forward. The light catches his teeth.

  ‘I’m here to remove you from the game, Roboute.’

  Guilliman steps back.

  ‘Either you’re insane, or the galaxy has gone mad,’ he says with remarkable steadiness. ‘Whichever, I am coming for you, and I will put you and your heathen killers down. Excommunicate Traitoris. You will not have any opportunity to reflect upon the monstrosity of this crime.’

  ‘Oh, Roboute, I can always rely on you to sound like a giant pompous arsehole. Come and get me. We’ll see who burns first.’

  Lorgar turns to step out of the light, and then hesitates.

  ‘One last thing you need to know, Roboute. You really don’t appreciate what you’re up against.’

  ‘A madman,’ snaps Guilliman, turning his back.

  Lorgar alters.

  His holocast form shifts, like fat melting, like bones deforming, like wax dripping. His smile tears in half and something rises up out of his human shape. It is not human.

  Guilliman senses it. He turns back. He sees it.

  His eyes widen.

  He can smell it. He can smell the pitch-black nightmare, the cosmic stench of the warp. The thing is growing, still growing. Lorgar’s empty skin sloughs off like a snake’s.

  It is a horror from the most lightless voids. It is glistening black flesh and tangled veins, it is frogspawn mucus and beads of blinking eyes, it is teeth and batwings. It is an anatomical atrocity. It is teratology, the shaping of monsters.

  Filthy light veils it and invests it like velvet robes. It is a shadow and it is smoke. Its crest is the horns of an aurochs, four metres high, ribbed and brown. It snorts. There is a rumble of intestines and gas, of a predator’s growl. A smell of blood. A whiff of acid. A tang of venom.

  The things that hovered behind Lorgar are transforming too. They turn beetle-black, gleaming, iridescent blue. Their boneless limbs and pseudopods writhe. They stir vibrissae and clack like insects. Multiple faces fold and ooze into one another, mutating into ghastly diprosopia. Overlapping mouths pucker and lisp Guilliman’s name.

  Guilliman steadies himself. He will know no fear.

  ‘I’ve seen enough of his charlatan tricks,’ he says. ‘Break the lithocast link.’

  ‘The… link…’ begins the Master of Vox. ‘Sir, the link is already broken.’

  Guilliman sweeps back to face the nightmare, the thing-that-is-no-longer-Lorgar. His hand reaches for the hilt of his sword.

  The thing speaks. Its voice is madness.

  ‘Roboute,’ it says. ‘Let the galaxy burn.’

  It lunges, jaws wide, spittle flying.

  Blood, many hundreds of litres of human blood, suddenly sprays the walls of the flagship’s bridge under pressure. The crystalflex window ports blow out in blizzards of shards, voiding into space.

  The bridge tower of the immense battleship Macragge’s Honour explodes.

  TARGET // ENGAGEMENT

  ‘In the Phase of Open Warfare, especially when one is placed in a position of defending or countering, one must be proactive. Determine what commodities or resources you will need to gain the advantage and place your opponent on the defensive. Establish which of these commodities or resources your opponent possesses. Take them from him. Do not chase glory. Do not force unwinnable confrontations. Do not try to match his strength if you know his strength over-matches yours. Do not waste time. Decide what will make you strong enough, and then acquire those things. Your most desired commodity is always your continued ability to prosecute the war.’

  – Guilliman, Notes Towards Martial Codification, 14.2.xi

  1

  [mark: 4.12.45]

  It gets light early. Another beautiful day on the estuary. The light’s so good, Oll reckons they can get an extra hour or so’s work done. An hour is an additional two loads of swartgrass. A day of hard labour for good returns.

  His hands are sore from the harvest work, but he has slept well and his spirits are good. Strong sunlight always lifts him.

  He rises, says a prayer. In the whitewashed lean-to at the back of the hab, there’s a gravity shower. He pulls the cord and stands under its downpour. As he washes, he can hear her singing in the kitchen.

  When he goes into the kitchen, dried and dressed, she’s not there. He can smell warm bread. The kitchen door is open, and sunlight streams in across the flagstones. She must have just stepped out for a moment. Stepped out to get eggs. He can smell the swartgrass straw on the warm air.

  He sits down at the worn kitchen table.

  ‘It’s time to get to work, Oll.’

  He looks up. There’s a man standing in the doorway, backlit by the sun so that Oll can’t see his face for shadow.

  But Oll Persson knows him anyway. Oll touches the little symbol around his neck, an instinctive gesture of protection.

  ‘I said–’

  ‘I heard you. I’ll get there when I’m good and ready. My wife’s making breakfast.’

  ‘You’ll lose the light, Oll.’

  ‘My wife’s making breakfast.’

  ‘She isn’t, Oll.’

  The man comes into the kitchen. He hasn’t changed. He wouldn’t though, would he? He never will. That confidence. That good-looking… charm.

  ‘I don’t recall inviting you in,’ says Oll.

  ‘No one ever does,’ replies the man. He helps himself to a cup of milk.

  ‘I’m not interested in this,’ Oll says firmly. ‘Whatever you’ve come to say, I’m not interested. You’ve wasted a trip. This is my life now.’

  The man sits down facing him.

  ‘It isn’t, Oll.’

  Oll sighs.

  ‘It’s great to see you again, John. Now get out of my hab.’

  ‘Don’t be like that, Oll. How’ve you been? Still pious and devoted?’

  ‘This is my life now, John.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ the man says.

  ‘Get out. I don’t want anything to do with anything.’

  ‘You don’t have a choice, I’m afraid. Sorry. Things have escalated a little.’

  ‘John–’ Oll almost growls the warning.

  ‘I’m serious. There aren’t many of us, Oll. You know that. You and me, we could set our hands on the table here, and count them off, and we’d still have fingers spare. There never were many of us. Now there are even fewer.’

  Oll gets up.

  ‘John, listen. Let me be as plain as I can. I never had time for this. I never wanted to be part of anything. I don’t want to know what trouble you’ve brought to my door. I like you, John. Honestly, I do. But I hoped never to see you again. I just want to live my life.’

  ‘Don’t be greedy. You’ve lived several.’

  ‘John–’

  ‘Come on, Oll! You and me? Anatol Hive? Come on. The Panpacific? Tell me that doesn’t count for anything.’

  ‘It was a lifetime ago.’

  ‘Several. Several lifetimes.’

  ‘This is my life now.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  Oll glares at him.

  ‘I’d like you to go, John. Go. Now. Before my wife gets back from the coops.’

  ‘She’s not coming back from the coops, Oll. She never went out to the coops.’

  ‘Get out, John.’

  ‘This is your life, is it? This? An ex-soldier turned farmer? Retired to a life of bucolic harmony? Good honest toil in exchange for plain food and a good night’s rest? Really, Oll? This is your life?’

  ‘This is my life now.’

  The man shakes his head.

  ‘And what will you do when you’ve had enough of that? Will you quit it and move on to something else? When you’re tired of farming, what next? Teaching? Button-making? Will you join the Navy? You might as well, you’ve been Army already. What will you do? An ex-soldier-farmer-widower?’

  ‘Widower?’ Oll snaps, flinching from the word as though it was buzzing in his face to sting him. ‘What are you talking about, widower?’
r />   ‘Oh, come on, Oll. Don’t make me do all the hard work. You know this. She’s not out at the coop. She’s not making you breakfast. She wasn’t in here just now singing. She never came to settle on Calth. She was gone, the poor love, before you ever joined the Army. Last time you joined the Army. Come on, Oll, your mind’s a bit mixed up. It’s the shock.’

  ‘Leave me alone, John.’

  ‘You know I’m right. You know it. I can see it in your face.’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Come on. Think.’

  Oll stares at him.

  ‘Are you in my head, John Grammaticus? Are you in my bloody head?’

  ‘I swear I’m not, Oll. I wouldn’t do that uninvited. This is all you. Trauma. It’ll pass.’

  Oll sits down again.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he whispers.

  ‘I haven’t got much time. I’m not here long. Just talking to you is taking a huge effort. We need you, Oll.’

  ‘They sent you? I bet they did.’

  ‘Yes, they did. They did. But I didn’t mean them. I meant humans. The human race needs you, Oll. Everything’s gone to shit. So, so badly. You wouldn’t believe it. He’s going to lose, and if he loses, we all lose.’

  ‘Who’s going to lose?’ asks Oll.

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘What’s he going to lose?’

  ‘The war,’ says John. ‘This is it, Oll. This is the big one, the one we always talked about. The one that we always saw coming. It’s happening already. Bloody primarchs killing each other. And the latest round of executions happens here, today. Right here on Calth.

  ‘I don’t want any part of it. I never did.’

  ‘Tough shit, Oll. You’re one of the Perpetuals, whether you like it or not.’

  ‘I’m not like you, John.’

  John Grammaticus sits back and smiles, pointing a finger at Oll.

  ‘No, you’re bloody not. I’m only what I am now thanks to xenos intervention. You, you’re still a true Perpetual. You’re still like him.’

  ‘I’m not. And I don’t have what you have. The talents. The psyk.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Maybe that’s why you’re important. Maybe you’re just important because you’re here. There are only three like us in the whole Five Hundred Worlds right now, and only one of them on Calth. Ground zero. That’s you. This is down to you. You don’t have a choice. This is down to you.’

  ‘Get someone else, John. Explain it to someone else.’

  ‘You know that doesn’t work. No one else is old enough. No one else understands as much. No one else has the… perspective. I tell anyone about this, they’ll just dismiss me as insane. And I don’t have time to spend another eighteen years in an asylum like last time I tried it. You’ve got to do this.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Get out of here. They’re going to slide this world. An interstitial vortex. The old Immaterium sidestep. You’ve got to be ready to step through that door when it opens.’

  ‘And go where?’

  It’s fallen dark outside. The sun’s gone in. Grammaticus looks up, and shivers.

  ‘You’ve got to get something, and you’ve got to bring it to me. Step through the door when it opens, and bring it to me. I’ll wait for you.’

  He hesitates.

  ‘I’ll try my damnedest to wait for you, anyway.’

  ‘Where am I going, John?’

  It’s getting dark so fast. Grammaticus shrugs.

  ‘We’re running out of time, Oll. With your permission, I’ll show you.’

  ‘Don’t you bloody d–’

  [mark: unspecified]

  Somewhere. It stinks of the warp, of burning void shields. The walls are polished ebony and etched ceramite, inlaid with crystal and ivory and rubies. Gold leaf edges the hatch frames. The place is so big. So very big. Vaults and chambers, dark and monumental, like the naves of cathedrals. Of a tomb. Of a necropolis catacomb. The ground is black marble.

  It’s not the ground. It’s a deck.

  He can feel the throb of engines coming through it. Drive engines. The air is dry, artificially maintained. He can smell smoke.

  ‘Why can I smell smoke, John?’ he asks.

  He can’t read whatever it is that’s etched into the polished walls. He realises he’s glad he can’t.

  ‘John? Where did you go?’

  There are starfields outside the windows. There’s blood on the floor. Bloody footprints on the marble, bloody handprints on the walls. Tapestries have been torn down. There are bullet holes in the bulkhead panels: craters blown by bolt-rounds, gouges cut by lasers, by claws. There are bodies on the floor.

  It’s not a floor, it’s a deck.

  He can hear fighting. A huge battle. Millions of voices yelling and screaming, weapons clashing, weapons firing. The din is coming up through the deck. It’s echoing, muffled, through distant archways and half-seen hatches. It’s as if monumental, cataclysmic history is happening just around the corner.

  ‘John?’

  There’s no sign of John. But he can feel the back-of-the-neck prickle of other minds. Minds as bright as main sequence stars.

  ‘John, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here at all.’

  He moves forward, through an archway twenty times as tall as he is, into a chamber fifty times as tall. The walls and pillars are cyclopean. The air is filled with smoke and dying echoes.

  There is an angel dead on the floor. On the deck. The angel is a giant. He was beautiful. His sword is broken. His golden plate is cracked. His wings are crushed. Blood streaks his armour and soaks the carnodon-skin mantle he wears. His hair is as golden as his armour. He has teardrops on his cheek.

  His killer is waiting nearby, black as night, made of rage, masked by shadow. The edges of his wargear are chased with gold, giving his darkness a regal outline and shape. The gold encircles the eyes he wears on his chest and harness: baleful, red, staring eyes. He fumes with power. He prickles hot, like a lethal radiation leak. He’s polluting the galaxy just by standing in it. There’s a crackle. A fizzle. Malice so terrible a rad-counter could pick it up.

  The killer is huge. His shoulder plates are draped with a cloak of furs and human pelts. A spiked framework surrounds his head: a psychic cage, an armoured box. There is a light glowing inside the box, a ruddy glow. The killer’s head is shaved. He is looking down, his face in shadow. He is looking down at the angel he has just killed. Cortical plugs and bio-feeds thread his scalp like dreadlocks. He is a beast made flesh, and shod in iron. He is made of pure hatred.

  Oll Persson realises he should not be here. Anywhere, anywhere in the cosmos but here. He starts to back away.

  The killer hears him move or senses him. The killer slowly raises his massive head. Light seeps up from the gorget, underlighting his face. Arrogant. Proud. Evil. He opens his eyes. He stares at Oll.

  ‘I… I renounce you, evil one,’ Oll stammers. He touches the little symbol around his neck, an instinctive gesture of protection.

  ‘You… what?’

  ‘I renounce you as evil.’

  ‘There is no evil,’ says the killer, his voice a landslip rumble of mountains falling. ‘There is only indifference.’

  The killer takes a step towards Oll. The floor – the deck – trembles under the weight.

  He halts. He’s looking at something. He’s looking at something in Oll’s hand.

  Oll glances down, confused. He realises he’s been holding something in his other hand all along.

  He sees what it is.

  The killer makes a sound. A sigh. His lips part, connected by tiny strands of spittle. He looks Oll straight in the face. Straight into his soul.

  Oll turns away. He cannot bear to look into those eyes any more. He turns to run.

  He sees the light behind him.

  He was so captivated by the killer, by the prickling, enveloping darkness, he almost didn’t see the light to begin with.

  Now he sees it. It’s n
ot the light it used to be. It’s not the light he used to know.

  The light is fading. It was once the most beautiful light, but it’s dwindling. It’s ebbing away and growing dim. Golden, broken, like the angel. And, like the angel, brought low by the killer made out of darkness.

  Beyond the light is a vast window port.

  Through it, Oll sees the hazy glory of Terra.

  The human homeworld is burning.

  ‘I’ve seen enough,’ says Oll Persson.

  [mark: 4.12.45]

  It’s the shock. It’s just the shock. You’ve been hurt, and I’ve shown you plenty. Plenty. I’m sorry, I really am. No one should have to see that. No one should have to deal with all of that in one go. But there really isn’t time to be gentle about this.

  You saw what you had to see. I showed you where you have to go.

  Now, this will hurt. This will be hard. You can do it. You’ve done hard before. Come on, Oll. Come on, my old, dear friend Ollanius.

  It’s time to wake up. It’s time to w–

  Oll wakes.

  No sunlight. No bed. No singing from the kitchen.

  Grey light. Fog. Cold.

  Pain.

  He’s fallen on his back, twisted. His hands are sore, and so is his back, and one of his hips too. His head feels as though iron screws have been driven into it.

  He sits up. The pain gets worse.

  Oll realises the worst of the pain isn’t his aches and sprains and bruises.

  It’s the aftershock. The aftershock of the vision. He rolls onto all fours and dry-heaves, as if he’s trying to vomit out the memory and be rid of it.

  It would be tempting to think it was just a nightmare. Tempting and easy. Just a bad dream that happened because he’d had a bump on the head.

  But Oll knows the human mind doesn’t imagine things like that. Not like that. Grammaticus was here. The bastard was here. Not in the flesh, but as good as. He was here, and that’s what he had to show.

  It says a lot that John made the superhuman effort, and took such an immense risk, to come. It says a lot, and what it says doesn’t sit comfortably with Oll Persson.

  He gets to his feet, unsteady. He’s battered and bruised. His clothes are caked in mud that’s just beginning to dry and stiffen. He tries to get his bearings.