Horus Rising Page 31

  His smile was infectious. Both Loken and Aximand nodded and laughed. ‘Now tell them the real reason,’ a voice said. They turned. Sanguinius stood in an archway at the far end of the chamber, behind a veil of white silk. He had been listening. The Lord of Angels brushed the silk hanging aside, and stepped into the stateroom, the crests of his wings brushing the glossy material. He was dressed in a simple white robe, clasped at the waist with a girdle of gold links. He was eating fruit from a bowl. Loken and Aximand stood up quickly. ‘Sit down,’ Sanguinius said. ‘My brother’s in the mood to open his heart, so you had better hear the truth.’

  ‘I don’t believe—’ Horus began. Sanguinius scooped one of the small, red fruits from his bowl and threw it at Horus.

  ‘Tell them the rest,’ he sniggered.

  Horus caught the thrown fruit, gazed at it, then bit into it. He wiped the juice off his chin with the back of his hand and looked across at Loken and Aximand.

  ‘Remember the start of my story?’ he asked. ‘What the Emperor said to me about the stars? Make no mistake, and they will be ours.’

  He took another two bites, threw the fruit stone away, and swallowed the flesh before he continued. ‘Sanguinius, my dear brother, is right, for Sanguinius has always been my conscience.’

  Sanguinius shrugged, an odd gesture for a giant with furled wings.

  ‘Make no mistake,’ Horus continued. ‘Those three words. Make no mistake. I am Warmaster, by the Emperor’s decree. I cannot fail him. I cannot make mistakes.’

  ‘Sir?’ Aximand ventured.

  ‘Since Ullanor, little one, I have made two. Or been party to two, and that is enough, for the responsibility for all expedition mistakes falls to me in the final count.’

  ‘What mistakes?’ asked Loken.

  ‘Mistakes. Misunderstandings.’ Horus stroked his hand across his brow. ‘Sixty-Three Nineteen. Our first endeavour. My first as Warmaster. How much blood was spilt there, blood from misunderstanding? We misread the signs and paid the price. Poor, dear Sejanus. I miss him still. That whole war, even that nightmare up on the mountains you had to endure, Garviel… a mistake. I could have handled it differently. Sixty-Three Nineteen could have been brought to compliance without bloodshed.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Loken emphatically. ‘They were too set in their ways, and their ways were set against us. We could not have made them compliant without a war.’

  Horus shook his head. ‘You are kind, Garviel, but you are mistaken. There were ways. There should have been ways. I should have been able to sway that civilisation without a shot being fired. The Emperor would have done so.’

  ‘I don’t believe he would,’ Aximand said.

  ‘Then there’s Murder,’ Horus continued, ignoring Little Horus’s remark. ‘Or Spiderland, as the interex has it. What is the way of their name for it again?’

  ‘Urisarach,’ Sanguinius said, helpfully. ‘Though I think the word only works with the appropriate harmonic accompaniment.’

  ‘Spiderland will suffice, then,’ said Horus. ‘What did we waste there? What misunderstandings did we make? The interex left us warnings to stay away, and we ignored them. An embargoed world, an asylum for the creatures they had bested in war, and we walked straight in.’

  ‘We weren’t to know,’ Sanguinius said.

  ‘We should have known!’ Horus snapped.

  ‘Therein lies the difference between our philosophy and that of the interex,’ Aximand said. ‘We cannot endure the existence of a malign alien race. They subjugate it, but refrain from annihilating it. Instead, they deprive it of space travel and exile it to a prison world.’

  ‘We annihilate,’ said Horus. ‘They find a means around such drastic measures. Which of us is the most humane?’

  Aximand rose to his feet. ‘I find myself with Ezekyle on this. Tolerance is weakness. The interex is admirable, but it is forgiving and generous in its dealings with xenos breeds who deserve no quarter.’

  ‘It has brought them to book, and learned to live in sympathy,’ said Horus. ‘It has trained the kinebrach to—’

  ‘And that’s the best example I can offer!’ Aximand replied. ‘The kinebrach. It embraces them as part of its culture.’

  ‘I will not make another rash or premature decision,’ Horus stated flatly. ‘I have made too many, and my Warmastery is threatened by my mistakes. I will understand the interex, and learn from it, and parlay with it, and only then will I decide if it has strayed too far. They are a fine people. Perhaps we can learn from them for a change.’

  THE MUSIC WAS hard to get used to. Sometimes it was majesterial and loud, especially when the meturge players struck up, and sometimes it was just a quiet whisper, like a buzz, like tinnitus, but it seldom went away. The people of the interex called it the aria, and it was a fundamental part of their communication. They still used language – indeed, their spoken language was an evolved human dialect closer in form to the prime language of Terra than Cthonic – but they had long ago formulated the aria as an accompaniment and enhancement of speech, and as a mode of translation.

  Scrutinised by the iterators during the voyage, the aria proved to be hard to define. Essentially, it was a form of high mathematics, a universal constant that transcended linguistic barriers, but the mathematical structures were expressed through specific harmonic and melodic modes which, to the untrained ear, sounded like music. Strands of complex melody rang in the background of all the interex’s vocal transmissions, and when one of their kind spoke face to face, it was usual to have one or more of the meturge players accompany his speech with their instruments. The meturge players were the translators and envoys.

  Tall, like all the people of the interex, they wore long coats of a glossy, green fibre, laced with slender gold piping. The flesh of their ears was distended and splayed, by genetic and surgical enhancement, like the ears of bats or other nocturnal fliers. Comm technology, the equivalent of vox, was laced around the high collars of their coats, and each one carried an instrument strapped across his chest, a device with amplifiers and coiled pipes, and numerous digital keys on which the meturge player’s nimble fingers constantly rested. A swan-necked mouthpiece rose from the top of each instrument, enabling the player to blow, hum, or vocalise into the device.

  The first meeting between Imperium and interex had been formal and cautious. Envoys came aboard the Vengeful Spirit, escorted by meturge players and soldiers.

  The envoys were uniformly handsome and lean, with piercing eyes. Their hair was dressed short, and intricate dermatoglyphics – Loken suspected permanent tattoos – decorated either the left or right-hand sides of their faces. They wore knee-length robes of a soft, pale blue cloth, under which they were dressed in close-fitting clothing woven from the same, glossy fibre that composed the meturge players’ coats.

  The soldiers were impressive. Fifty of them, led by officers, had descended from their shuttle. Taller than the envoys, they were clad from crown to toe in metal armour of burnished silver and emerald green with aposematic chevrons of scarlet. The armour was of almost delicate design, and sheathed their bodies tightly; it was in no way as massive or heavy-set as the Astartes’ plate. The soldiers – variously gleves or sagittars, Loken learned – were almost as tall as the Astartes, but with their far more slender build and more closely fitted armour, they seemed slight compared to the Imperial giants. Abaddon, at the first meeting, muttered that he doubted their fancy armour would stand even a slap.

  Their weapons caused more remarks. Most of the soldiers had swords sheathed across their backs. Some, the gleves, carried long-bladed metal spears with heavy ball counterweights on the base ends. The others, the sagittars, carried recurve bows wrought from some dark metal. The sagittars had sheaves of long, flightless darts laced to their right thighs.

  ‘Bows?’ Torgaddon whispered. ‘Really? They stun us with the power and scale of their vessels, then come aboard carrying bows?’

  ‘They’re probably ceremonial,’ Aximand murmured.
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br />   The soldier officers wore serrated half-discs across the skulls of their helmets. The visors of their close-fitting helms were all alike: the metal modelled to the lines of brow and cheekbone and nose, with simple oval eye slits that were backlit blue. The mouth and chin area of each visor was built out, like a thrusting, pugnacious jaw, containing a communication module.

  Behind the slender soldiers, as a further escort, came heavier forms. Shorter, and far more thick-set, these men were similarly armoured, though in browns and golds. Loken supposed them to be heavy troopers, their bodies gene-bred for bulk and muscle, designed for close combat, but they carried no weapons. There were twenty of them, and they flanked five robotic creatures, slender, silver quadrupeds of intricate and elegant design, made to resemble the finest Terra-stock horses, except that they possessed no heads or necks.

  ‘Artificials,’ Horus whispered aside to Maloghurst. ‘Make sure Master Regulus is observing this via the pict feed. I’ll want his notes later.’

  One of the flagship’s embarkation decks had been entirely cleared for the ceremonial meeting. Imperial banners had been hung along the vault, and the whole of First Company assembled in full plate as an honour guard. The Astartes formed two unwavering blocks of white figures, rigid and still, their front rows a glossy black line of Justaerin Terminators. In the aisle between the two formations, Horus stood with the Mournival, Maloghurst and other senior officials like Ing Mae Sing. The Warmaster and his lieutenants wore full armour and cloaks, though Horus’s head was bare.

  They watched the heavy interex shuttle move ponderously down the lighted runway of the deck, and settle on polished skids. Then hatch-ramps in its prow opened, the white metal unfolding like giant origami puzzles, and the envoys and their escorts disembarked. In total, with the soldiers and the meturge players, there were over one hundred of them. They came to a halt, with the envoys in a line at the front and the escort arranged in perfect symmetry behind. Forty-eight hours of intense intership communication had preceded that cautious moment. Forty-eight hours of delicate diplomacy.

  Horus gave a nod, and the men of First Company chested their weapons and bowed their heads in one, loud, unified motion. Horus himself stepped forward and walked alone down the aisle space, his cloak billowing behind him.

  He came face to face with what seemed to be the senior envoy, made the sign of the aquila, and bowed.

  ‘I greet you on—’ he began.

  The moment he started speaking, the meturge players began sounding their instruments softly. Horus stopped.

  ‘Translation form,’ the envoy said, his own words accompanied by meturge playing.

  ‘It is disconcerting,’ Horus smiled.

  ‘For purposes of clarity and comprehension,’ the envoy said.

  ‘We appear to understand each other well enough,’ Horus smiled.

  The envoy nodded curtly. ‘Then I will tell the players to stop,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Horus. ‘Let us be natural. If this is your way.’

  Again, the envoy nodded. The exchange continued, surrounded by the oddly melodied playing.

  ‘I greet you on behalf of the Emperor of Mankind, beloved by all, and in the name of the Imperium of Terra.’

  ‘On behalf of the society of the interex, I accept your greetings and return them.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Horus.

  ‘Of the first thing,’ the envoy said. ‘You are from Terra?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From old Terra, that was also called Earth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This can be verified?’

  ‘By all means,’ smiled Horus. ‘You know of Terra?’

  An odd expression, like a pang, crossed the envoy’s face, and he glanced round at his colleagues. ‘We are from Terra. Ancestrally. Genetically. It was our origin world, eons ago. If you are truly of Terra, then this is a momentous occasion. For the first time in thousands of years, the interex has established contact with its lost cousins.’

  ‘It is our purpose in the stars,’ Horus said, ‘to find all the lost families of man, cast away so long ago.’

  The envoy bowed his head. ‘I am Diath Shehn, abbrocarius.’

  ‘I am Horus, Warmaster.’

  The music of the meturge players made a slight, but noticeably discordant sound as it expressed ‘Warmaster’. Shehn frowned.

  ‘Warmaster?’ he repeated.

  ‘The rank given to me personally by the Emperor of Mankind, so that I may act as his most senior lieutenant.’

  ‘It is a robust title. Bellicose. Is your fleet a military undertaking?’

  ‘It has a military component. Space is too dangerous for us to roam unarmed. But from the look of your fine soldiers, abbrocarius, so does yours.’

  Shehn pursed his lips. ‘You laid assault to Urisarach, with great aggression and vehemence, and in disregard to the advisory beacons we had positioned in the system. It would appear your military component is a considerable one.’

  ‘We will discuss this in detail later, abbrocarius. If an apology needs to be made, you will hear it directly from me. First, let me welcome you in peace.’

  Horus turned, and made a signal. The entire company of Astartes, and the plated officers, locked off their weapons and removed their helms. Human faces, row after row. Openness, not hostility.

  Shehn and the other envoys bowed, and made a signal of their own, a signal supported by a musical sequence. The warriors of the interex removed their visors, displaying clean, hard-eyed faces.

  Except for the squat figures, the heavy troops in brown and gold. When their helmets came off, they revealed faces that weren’t human at all.

  THEY WERE CALLED the kinebrach. An advanced, mature species, they had been an interstellar culture for over fifteen thousand years. They had already founded a strong, multi-world civilisation in the local region of space before Terra had entered its First Age of Technology, an era when humanity was only just feeling its way beyond the Solar system in sub-light vehicles.

  By the time the interex encountered them, their culture was aging and fading. A territorial war developed after initial contact, and lasted for a century. Despite the kinebrach’s superior technology, the humans of the interex were victorious, but, in victory, they did not annihilate the aliens. Rapprochement was achieved, thanks in part to the interex’s willingness to develop the aria to facilitate a more profound level of inter-species communication. Faced with options including further warfare and exile, the kinebrach elected to become client citizens of the expanding interex. It suited them to place their tired, flagging destiny in the charge of the vigorous and progressive humans. Culturally bonded as junior partners in society, the kinebrach shared their technological advances by way of exchange. For three thousand years, the interex humans had successfully coexisted with the kinebrach.

  ‘Conflict with the kinebrach was our first significant alien war,’ Diath Shehn explained. He was seated with the other envoys in the Warmaster’s audience chamber. The Mournival was present, and meturge players lined the walls, gently accompanying the talks. ‘It taught us a great deal. It taught us about our place in the cosmos, and certain values of compassion, understanding and empathy. The aria developed directly from it, as a tool for use in further dealings with non-human parties. The war made us realise that our very humanity, or at least our trenchant dependence on human traits, such as language, was an obstacle to mature relations with other species.’

  ‘No matter how sophisticated the means, abbrocarius,’ Abaddon said, ‘sometimes communication is not enough. In our experience, most xenos types are wilfully hostile. Communication and bargaining is not an option.’ The first captain, like many present, was uncomfortable. The entire interex party had been permitted to enter the audience chamber, and the kinebrach were attending at the far end. Abaddon kept glancing at them. They were hefty, simian things with eyes so oddly sunken beneath big brow ridges that they were just sparks in shadows. Their flesh was blue-black, and deeply cr
eased, with fringes of russet hair, so fine it was almost like feather-down, surrounding the bases of their heavy, angular craniums. Mouth and nose was one organ, a trifold split at the end of their blunt jaw-snouts, capable of peeling back, wet and pink, to sniff, or opening laterally to reveal a comb of small, sharp teeth like a dolphin’s beak. There was a smell to them, a distinctive earthy smell that wasn’t exactly unpleasant, except that it was entirely and completely not human.

  ‘This we have found ourselves,’ Shehn agreed, ‘though it would seem less frequently than you. Sometimes we have encountered a species that has no wish to exchange with us, that approaches us with predatory or invasive intent. Sometimes conflict is the only option. Such was the case with the… What did you say you called them again?’

  ‘Megarachnid,’ Horus smiled.

  Shehn nodded and smiled. ‘I see how that word is formed, from the old roots. The megarachnid were highly advanced, but not sentient in a way we could understand. They existed only to reproduce and develop territory. When we first met them, they infested eight systems along the Shartiel Edge of our provinces, and threatened to invade and choke two of our populated worlds. We went to war, to safeguard our own interests. In the end, we were victorious, but there was still no opportunity for rapprochement or peace terms. We gathered all the megarachnid remaining into captivity, and transported them to Urisarach. We also deprived them of all their interstellar technology, or the means to manufacture the same. Urisarach was created as a reservation for them, where they might exist without posing a threat to ourselves or others. The interdiction beacons were established to warn others away.’

  ‘You did not consider exterminating them?’ Maloghurst asked.