Artefacts - Nick Kyme Read online

  Artefacts

  Nick Kyme

  ‘At the edge of the Ghoul Stars, at the very fringe of Segmentum Ultima, my brother and I united on a mission of mercy. We emerged from warp transit wreathed in tendrils of psychic corposant that clung to the scarred hulls of our ships – but we arrived too late. We had come to rein in a madman, yet could only bear witness to an atrocity.’

  Fire crackled beneath the primarch’s words, though T’kell found it hard to discern if the dulcet sound came from his lord’s voice or the flaming torches on the walls. Whatever the cause, the air was filled with the reek of hot ash and cinder, carried along by Vulkan’s deep and rumbling baritone.

  ‘It wasn’t much to see, though I’m not sure if I expected it to be. So different from our home world, one to the other as night is to day… Nocturne is a terrible place to behold and, though I felt no fear as I emerged from my own capsule into the burning dawn, I could appreciate its feral majesty. Tall peaks of fire mountains, long plains of ash and sun-baked deserts, the stink of sulphur from the oceans – it was bracing, deadly. From the void, Nocturne is a deep red orb, a blazing iris of fire. His was a dark, unremarkable world. It looked like a black marble, flawed by the grey smog of its polluted atmosphere.’ Vulkan scowled at the memory, as if he could taste those noxious fumes on his tongue. ‘To be able to see it from orbit, those clouds must have been dense, but I am told they hid a plethora of sin. Even so, it doesn’t justify what he did. What we saw him do.’

  A shadow passed across the primarch, the encumbent silence that followed this declaration filled by the sound of his heavy breath. T’kell realised the heinous act that Vulkan was describing had left a mark deeper than any brand – though whether the perpetrator or the act itself was the cause, he did not know.

  ‘Darkness veiled it, a curse met out by an ugly moon called Tenebor. Its name meant “shadow”, an apt appellation. Here it was literal, for the moon cast a shroud of night over a world desperately in need of illumination. Before that moment, I hadn’t ever seen his home. Now I never will, and I cannot say I’m sorry. By every account I’ve heard, it was a wretched place, without possibility of transformation.

  ‘It began as a starburst, noiseless flashes in the vastness of space. They came from a dark, dagger-like vessel – his own flagship. At first, I could not quite reconcile what I was seeing with the deed. Great beams of stabbing light and swarms of torpedoes hurtled down onto his dark world. All attempts to hail his ship failed, of course. Our brother was in the mood for vengeance, not reason. He wanted to smite it, he would declare later, and expunge it of all sin in a single, purifying and insane action. The surface erupted in a chain of stark, flaring blooms and for the first time in its long, benighted history the world saw light. But it was the light of ending.’

  Vulkan paused, as if wanting to choose his words carefully and recount what he remembered as clearly as he could.

  ‘You have to understand, my son, because this is the where the real horror of it all lay – there was precision in that orbital bombardment. He wasn’t just venting his wrath. He knew. Some flaw in the tectonic structure, it doesn’t matter how or where, was targeted directly. I had thought we were witnessing petulance, the immature act of an immature soul with tragic consequences. But it wasn’t. What we saw was premeditated.’

  And so it was the perpetrator and the deed that had left the primarch so disquieted. T’kell could not imagine having to accept the reality of that. Vulkan went on.

  ‘Cracks split the outer crust along fault lines, then spread, webbing in all directions. Fire colonised the landscape, virulent as a plague, until the entire surface of the world was burning. Then it was no more. In one cataclysmic explosion, its moon and every minor celestial body in sight of this destruction were gone.’

  Lowering his head, Vulkan took a moment to regain his composure. When he looked up again his eyes blazed like the fires he had just described, the physical expression of anger he felt towards his brother for unleashing planetary genocide.

  ‘Debris rained against us, stripping shields and battering the armour of our vessels. We rode the shock waves that emanated from the detonation but emerged scathed in ways that went beyond the dents and scrapes clawed into the ship’s hull. An immense expulsion of heat faded and in its wake was dust and floating rock.

  ‘Silence reigned for a while, until Horus conquered our collective sense of disbelief and gave us purpose. He was incensed at what our brother had done. He was also determined to run him down. I gave chase alongside, not knowing that Horus had tasked another primarch to slip around undetected. Between the three of us, we bracketed the world-murderer with our ships. There could be no escape. I thought Horus might open fire and kill him for what he had done, but in fact he was determined to redeem him. I wonder had there been one of us to do that later for Horus, would events have taken a different course now?’

  Again, Vulkan paused in his iteration, as if imagining a reality where that was true – Horus the loyal son, instead of the rebel.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now. Nostramo died in those moments and though none of us could have realised it at the time, so did any chance for Curze’s redemption. It all began with him. I think it will probably end that way too.’

  T’kell watched his primarch closely, being sure not to speak until Vulkan had finished. Around them, the atmosphere of the forge was soothing, the heat and the penumbral darkness adding solemnity to the primarch’s words. Ash and the smell of warm metal were redolent on a shallow breeze, but the sound of hammer strikes against the anvil was quiet for now; the forge’s blacksmith had paused in his crafting.

  ‘I can’t fathom what must have been going through his mind, my lord. I have seen destruction on such a scale before, but to turn your guns on your own world with the express purpose of destroying it… We are generationally set apart from our sires, but at least I can understand your motivations.’

  ‘But not in this?’ asked Vulkan. ‘Not in the task I have asked of you?’

  ‘I’ll do my duty, primarch,’ T’kell answered, somewhat defensively, as though not wanting Vulkan to think he was a poor son.

  ‘But you don’t understand the reason.’

  T’kell confessed, ‘I do not. Not for this.’

  Vulkan leaned back in his seat. It was a simple block of stone, carved from the face of the mountain, worn to the primarch’s shape by the many hours he had spent sitting and toiling over the artefacts he wrought with his Emperor-given craft. One particularly magnificent specimen was lying on his workbench, now finished. The hammer was a true work of art, and T’kell found his own crafts humbled by the weapon’s beauty.

  Vulkan saw him admiring it.

  ‘Do you know why my father made all his sons different?’ he asked.

  T’kell shook his head. His war-plate whirred and groaned in sympathy. He had forged the armour himself, and it was as finely artificed as any suit of ceramite and adamantium in the XVIII Legion. Usually, it was crowned with a drake’s head helmet, but T’kell would not dream of wearing that when in conference with his lord. The primarch always insisted on meeting the gaze of his warriors and expected the same in return. He would have reprimanded the forge master if he had hidden his eyes behind retinal lenses.

  ‘I cannot even pretend to understand the depths of the Emperor’s design or colossal intellect,’ T’kell said humbly.

  ‘Of course not,’ Vulkan replied without condescension. ‘I believe he did it as part of his vision for the galaxy. Though I know my brother Ferrus would disagree, each of us has an important role to play. Guilliman is the politician, the statesman. Dorn, the keeper of my father’s house, and
Russ is the dutiful watchman that keeps us all honest.’

  ‘Honest?’

  Vulkan smiled coldly. ‘A joke that is no longer funny.’

  ‘And Curze?’ asked T’kell, his desire for knowledge a symptom of his Martian training. ‘What is he?’

  Vulkan’s faced darkened.

  ‘Necessary. Or so we all believed once.’

  Mars was the reason for Vulkan’s return to Nocturne and his brief reunion with his forge master. Resupply from the Mechanicum had been sparse and the primarch forced to deviate part of his fleet’s course to the one munitions store he could rely on – his own home world. The fact that T’kell was stationed there on the fortress-moon of Prometheus only made it more timely.

  ‘And Horus, and you?’ T’kell pressed, his eagerness to understand interfering with his sense of propriety.

  Vulkan indulged him. ‘Horus was the best of us. Although, in our father’s eyes, we were equals. I always felt like a child in his presence. Unless you’ve met him, it is hard to describe but my brother had this… way about him, an undeniable charisma that made you listen to his every word and then believe it without question. Back then, none of us thought anything but absolute loyalty lay in his heart, otherwise we might have realised just how dangerous his persuasive aura could be.

  ‘His role was leader and once I would have followed him to whatever end and for any purpose. But that pedestal has fallen, and there will be no righting it. As for me…’ Vulkan laughed humourlessly, spreading his arms to encompass the forge and the vault beyond. ‘I am my father’s weapon-maker, but unlike Ferrus or Perturabo, I specialise in the unique.’

  T’kell’s gaze strayed to the immense vault door that dominated the back wall of the chamber as he recalled the many names and forms of the artefacts within.

  ‘Like the hammer?’ T’kell said, gesturing to the workbench.

  Vulkan turned to regard it, lost for a moment as he ran his hand across Dawnbringer’s head, the haft bound in firedrake hide, the gemstones and the esoteric device he had fashioned into its pommel.

  ‘It is the single finest thing I have ever wrought,’ he told the forge master, ‘but it was never meant for me. I forged it for my brother, for Horus, and that is another reason for the task I must set for you.’

  Vulkan left it alone, but did not avert his gaze from the hammer.

  ‘It was after Nostramo, after Ullanor. My gift to him to commemorate his achievement. With Jaghatai’s help we had captured Curze and brought him to heel. You have to understand, my son, nothing like this had ever happened before. For a primarch to act in the way Curze had, to do what he had done…’

  The primarch shook his head.

  ‘It was unconscionable. Yet, my brother had a solution.’

  ‘Remake him,’ Horus said proudly, and with enough enthusiasm and vigour to make the Lord of Drakes look up from his brooding.

  Horus looked resplendent in his armour, a muscular sheath of pale ivory and jet black. It was a suit so fine that even the great blacksmiter had to admit his envy of it.

  He and Vulkan were alone in Horus’s quarters on board the Vengeful Spirit, sitting in companionable silence when the primarch of the Luna Wolves spoke. They shared a drink together, a heady broth native to Cthonia – Vulkan did not know its name, but appreciated it for its heat and potency.

  He swilled the mixture around the cup, looking into the tiny maelstrom he had made, as if the answer he sought might be waiting for him somewhere within its depths.

  Vulkan looked up, his eyes glowing as they always did in the dark confines of Horus’s private chambers. ‘Tell me how, brother, for no one more than I wishes that to be.’

  ‘We can rehabilitate our brother.’

  At first even Horus’s rhetoric could not sway him, and Vulkan looked more aloof than ever, concealed by the shadows. The first primarch’s quarters were functional but well-appointed, even opulent. A fire raged in an ouslite hearth, a concession Vulkan felt sure Horus had made to make his guest more comfortable. Instead, the Lord of Drakes eschewed the light and heat of the fire, wondering why he hadn’t disabused himself of this conference as Jaghatai had, though his gaze occasionally strayed to the flames.

  ‘After this,’ said Vulkan, angrily jabbing a finger towards the empty darkness and imagining the swathe of atmospheric dust that used to be Nostramo. ‘How?’

  Horus smiled in a way that suggested he already knew this would work, and had but to convince Vulkan of it.

  ‘Each of us shall take him under our wing, nurture him.’ He gestured with his hands, miming the next part, ‘Mould him into the weapon he needs to be, not the jagged implement he is right now.’

  Vulkan frowned, thinking of the midnight-clad prisoner they held, doubting the sagacity of his brother’s suggestion.

  ‘Think of it like this,’ said Horus, his optimism unwavering. ‘You are a weapon maker, the weapon maker. Curze is but an untempered blade that requires its edge honing. Remake him, as you would remake a broken sword, Vulkan.’

  There was a vibrancy to his eyes as Horus made his pitch, his certainty for his wayward brother’s resurgence becoming infectious.

  ‘I believed him,’ said Vulkan, leaving the past behind. ‘Curze was to be separated from the bulk of his Legion, in the hope that – free of Nostramo’s malign influence – he could change. I would take him first, then Dorn… once he was healed.’

  ‘Healed?’

  Vulkan’s expression turned rueful. His eyes met the forge master’s. ‘Curze had tried to kill Rogal.’

  T’kell cursed under his breath at this admission.

  ‘The Praetorian of Terra?’

  ‘I know of no other,’ said Vulkan. ‘For Horus’s plan to work, it was vital that the relationship between Dorn and Curze be repaired. But after Kharaatan I knew we had erred. I don’t know whom Horus had planned to put Curze with next, but we didn’t get that far. The demands of the Great Crusade and his new position as Warmaster kept Horus in a distant orbit. I couldn’t attend the Triumph at Ullanor, so I had not seen him in person since Nostramo. Years had passed without word between us, but I knew I must disturb him for this. I had seen what was within Curze’s heart. It was nightmarish and broken. I pitied my brother, hated his deeds but not him, and feared what he would do or become if allowed to continue.

  ‘Horus and I met across a lithocast projection. I had already spoken to Dorn, who had returned to Terra by that point, and we were of the same mind. Foolishly, I thought Horus would be too. His initial greeting was warm enough, if a little more prickly than I had once known.’

  ‘Brother Vulkan, what matter of great import do you come to me with that warrants my time and the disruption of our father’s Crusade?’

  The Warmaster stood amongst warriors on the bridge of his flagship, an array of sensorium and auguries suggested along the edges of the hololith. He wore different battleplate to their last meeting aboard the Vengeful Spirit, repainted in the deep sea green of his newly renamed Legion.

  The Sons of Horus.

  ‘The undertone of condescension was hard to miss,’ Vulkan said to T’kell. ‘I have no doubt it was deliberate.’

  ‘I apologise, brother, for taking you away from your duties, but I believe this matter is dire enough that it must come to your attention.’

  Horus’s eyes widened and Vulkan could not deny the sense that his brother was mocking him.

  ‘It must? Well, then you had best speak of it, Vulkan, so I can gauge for myself just how dire the matter is.’

  It was more than just the Warmaster’s tone that worried Vulkan – something deeper, implied rather than overtly expressed. Though little of the ship was discernible behind Horus in the hololith, there was enough to suggest that it had been changed. Markings that had not been there before, strange symbols Vulkan did not know the meaning or significance of, were partly visible.
At first, he considered they might be lodge sigils, as it was Horus who had instigated these traditions within the Legions. Vulkan had eschewed them, despite his brother’s overtures, such bonding rituals redundant in the face of the Drake’s own Promethean Creed.

  But what he saw did not seem entirely related to lodge culture. There was something else, something inscrutable…

  ‘It was as if another being were wearing my brother’s skin,’ Vulkan explained. ‘Yet even that skin, with all its usual trappings, was a darker version of what I knew.’

  ‘You believed him changed?’ asked T’kell.

  ‘It was more than that. I recounted what had happened on Kharaatan – Curze’s mania, his suicidal, nihilistic tendencies. Despite the strange mood I had found him in, I expected Horus to be appalled.’

  Vulkan paused, his jaw hardening at the memory.

  ‘But he laughed,’ he said, frowning incredulously. ‘I was angry and confused.’

  ‘I see nothing amusing in this, brother,’ Vulkan said, wondering what had happened to the noble warrior he had once so admired. ‘We have failed.’

  Horus’s mirth turned to serious intensity. ‘On the contrary. You have succeeded.’

  ‘I do not see how.’

  ‘Curze cannot be tamed. His is a necessary evil, a monster to help us win this long war and keep our hands clean.’

  ‘How are they clean? They are tainted just as his, perhaps not with murder, but with complacency in the full knowledge of Curze’s homicidal pathology.’

  Horus leaned in, his face filling the grainy hololith.

  ‘Every general needs a weapon of terror, an instrument to threaten the hardiest of his enemies with. You have sharpened ours well, Vulkan. From what you’ve told me, Curze has turned fear into a blade that I can wield.’

  ‘This is no weapon we should harness. His mind is broken, Horus. He needs help.’

  ‘He’s had help. Yours. And I am grateful for it.’ He leaned back again. ‘If there is nothing further?’

  ‘I saw something in Horus,’ Vulkan said to T’kell. ‘Something that stopped me from replying. It made me withhold the gift I had made for him. It made me realise that my pleas would forever fall on deaf ears. It has also driven me to my decision about the vault. Some weapons are simply too dangerous, in the wrong hands.’