Dreams of Unity - Nick Kyme Read online

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  Dreams of Unity – Nick Kyme

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  DREAMS OF UNITY

  Nick Kyme

  We are the thunder,

  we are the lightning,

  We were His first,

  but now amongst the last,

  We lived too long,

  and now we wish to die,

  The only death that matters,

  the Honoured Death.

  – Dahren Heruk, hymn of the Honoured Death

  As I looked down onto the fight below, I knew Kabe was going to die. And I was powerless to do anything about it.

  He would not yield. He roared, a broken jaw distorting his shout of defiance. The man trying to kill him remained undaunted. Even when Kabe spat blood onto his war-plate, the gold-clad warrior would not be goaded.

  Instead, he levelled his spear and Kabe readied his falchion in kind. The sword’s blade had become a ragged saw, notched by repeated ineffectual blows against the other warrior’s armour. Kabe did not know how to lose. He had never retreated in his life. Even when the oligarchs of Kievan Rus had rained atomics from their black citadel and bathed the Sibir ice plain in radioactive fire, Kabe had advanced. He had fought without rest during the siege of Abyssna, and marched the length of Albia to bring the warlord clans of Hoth Grendal to heel.

  ‘For Unity!’ Kabe roared, his broken sword aloft in salute.

  He charged, but his left leg failed him and he slipped, his body not as stubborn as his mind.

  Kabe stopped when the spear impaled him, his armour easily pierced. The spear haft lodged in his guts, the leaf-bladed edge having punched right through and out of his back on the other side. He dangled there for a moment, blinking dumbly, before the gold-clad warrior kicked his body loose. Silence hung in the air, suspended by shock and disbelief.

  Then the crowd roared. Light flooded the arena, a cold and harsh sodium glow that threw grim shadows over a shallow pit of sand and half-crushed bones.

  Blood pooled under Kabe’s body. He trembled, still alive, mouth agape and trying to catch air like a landed fish.

  ‘Damn it,’ Tarrigata murmured. ‘It’s over then.’ The old man standing next to me suddenly looked frail. Perhaps it was the thought of the money he had lost betting on Kabe, or perhaps it was because his ludus had just lost another fighter. His once fine garments had begun to look a little threadbare of late.

  I spared him a half-glance as I leaned in to the arena barrier, ignoring the jostling crowd around us. I saw enough grief in his face to suggest his apparent fragility stemmed from something deeper than a blow to his ever-diminishing revenue stream. Fewer and fewer patrons turned up to the fights these days. They had other concerns on their minds, about war, about the killings and the riots. For the rest, this was how they forgot.

  The gold-clad warrior advanced, whirling around the spear as he poised to stab down at Kabe.

  The crowd roared louder in anticipation of the kill.

  ‘Heruk, is it over?’ Tarrigata asked, and I felt his thin fingers brush against my naked arm. ‘I can still hear them baying. Is it over? Has that chrono-gladiator not killed him yet?’

  ‘Stay here,’ I said, and felt Tarrigata’s fingers fall away as I leapt the plate barrier and jumped into the arena. The sand underfoot scattered as I landed.

  A few onlookers noticed me and began to chant. I heard my name and felt the chill of hollow glory that came with it. Battle was glorious, Mount Ararat when Arik Taranis raised the Lightning Banner and declared Unity, that was glorious. This was gutter glory. There was no honour is this.

  The gold-clad warrior’s spear stabbed down before he realised there was another fighter in the ring. Kabe screamed, the leaf-blade stuck in his thigh. A second thrust pierced his shoulder and brought another scream.

  ‘If you’re going to kill him, kill him,’ I growled, glowering at the hulking warrior’s back.

  We had all suffered enough already. This was needless.

  The crowd roared louder, their faces hidden by the darkness now, and I was half-blinded by the glare of sodium lights anyway.

  My eyes were better than Tarrigata’s, but they were not what they once had been. I blinked twice, trying to banish the blind spots as the warrior turned. A chrono-gladiator, over-muscled on stimms and sheathed in gold armour plate. I saw a parody of His Adeptus Custodes in the grossly swollen fighter before me and could not resist a smile. Down here beneath the Maw, we were far from the Throne’s light, but we still found humour despite our misery.

  The death clock in the fighter’s forehead turned. His owner, Radik Clev, would be close and waiting with a key. Victory for the chrono would see another key turn in the death clock. More life for more life. That’s how it worked with a chrono. I only had meagre honour to fight for. What was that against trying to perpetuate one’s existence?

  The spear turned, the change in grip unnecessarily elaborate, and it pointed at me. The chrono’s eyes were bloodshot, the veins threading the sclera describing madness. As the death clock ticked down, its strikes grew louder. Like a heartbeat. He bayed at me, more beast than man. The challenge was deep and vox-modulated enough to make it sound inhuman. But then again, I was not really human either.

  I bared my teeth in a feral snarl, the rekindling of some old instinct, and drew a broad-bladed sword. My thumb activated the disruptor field, which flickered dangerously, once, twice, before snapping to consistency. Heat and ozone filled my nostrils. There was oil and blood, too, but that was coming off the chrono. And Kabe as he bled out. I could see him, reaching impotently for his broken falchion.

  ‘Should’ve just killed him,’ I said.

  The chrono charged.

  I rolled, swinging my broad-blade behind me as I made to move. I heard the crowd gasp and felt the spear miss my head by a few inches. Back on my feet, I managed to turn and see the spear before it gutted me. A hasty parry deflected it aside, but I had been lucky. And too slow.

  A second thrust almost wrenched away my sword, the strength behind the blow horrific enough to rock me on my heels. I rolled again, old bones and tired muscles beginning to work. This time I came up faster, inside the chrono’s guard and well within the reach of the spear. I hacked at the crease in the chrono’s arm, at the elbow. It wasn’t a bad wound, but his armour was weak in that spot and my blade bit deep. The chrono howled and his grip on the spear faltered. Hard to hold on to something that long and heavy when your tendons are screaming.

  He swung the haft crosswise, and though I had prepared for the riposte, it still stung like the impact from a shock grenade and I was smashed across the arena floor.

  Cheers erupted from the crowd. I ignored them.

  My blurring vision fixed on my enemy.

  Bleeding oil and blood, the chrono stomped towards me. He held the spear close to his body and used his other hand to steady it. That would impede his reach. He was six feet away, about to thrust, when I flung my broad-blade. It spun in the air, the slightly curved edge and weighted pommel enhancing the velocity of the throw. It struck the chrono’s centre mass, breaching the gold breastplate and making a mess of whatever was beneath.

  He stared dumbfounded, the spear still poised as if recorded via a pict-feed abruptly set to pause, before slumping to his knees and dropping his weapon. Scooping up Kabe’s sword, I stepped in and swiftly cut off the chrono’s head. The death clock struck zero, presaging a now impotent cardiac impulse that would have killed him on the spot were he not already headless.

  As the crowd went insane at the spectacle, hollering and spitting vicarious fury, I retrieved my blade an
d then knelt beside Kabe to return his.

  I looked down at the blood pool and saw myself reflected there. Tall, thickly muscled and wearing leather half-armour, I had a warrior’s bearing. Facial scarring gave me character some said, and shaved blond hair spoke of a military background. My body was unmarked, apart from the lightning bolt tattoo on my left shoulder. My blue eyes flashed with some of their old vigour. I have been told I am handsome by conventional standards. Vanity was never my curse. I have seen it affect others, allies and enemies. It didn’t change how they died. Death is ugly. It makes no allowances for appearance.

  ‘Brother…’ I said, gently putting the falchion in Kabe’s grasping hand. He seemed to settle, though his mouth still worked in a futile parody of speech.

  ‘There’s blood in your lungs, Kabe. Don’t try to speak. Be still. It’s almost over now.’

  He looked at me and the fear in his eyes changed to something approaching peace.

  I placed the tip of my sword against his heart. With my other hand, I touched the faded lightning bolt tattoo inked onto his left shoulder.

  ‘The honoured death…’ I whispered. Kabe gave a near imperceptible nod. I thrust, and it was done.

  Tarrigata met me on the other side of the arena wall. He looked thin in the stark lights, as if his flesh were partly translucent. He sniffed at the air as I clambered over, head tilted to the side so his left ear angled towards me.

  ‘Is that Kabe? He stinks. Smells dead already.’

  I leaned in close, grimacing with Kabe’s dead weight across my right shoulder.

  ‘Show respect for the Thunder Legion,’ I hissed through clenched teeth.

  Despite my massive advantage in both height and weight, Tarrigata looked untroubled.

  ‘Pah! You’re gladiators now, Heruk.’

  ‘Old man, I swear I’ll–’ I began.

  ‘Fewer customers today,’ remarked Tarrigata, breezing past my hollow threat as if it were a fly landed on his collar to be swatted away. ‘A quieter mob.’

  ‘Fewer everyone,’ I said. ‘Even the great Thunder Legion can’t draw a crowd, eh?’

  ‘No crowds to draw,’ said Tarrigata. He sniffed, his withered old nostrils flaring. ‘Fear is in the air. Dark dealings abound.’

  I snorted at that, having heard Tarrigata’s conspiracies many times before.

  ‘Besides,’ the old man went on, a cruel smile on his face, ‘you’re not Legion. You haven’t been Legion since Ararat.’

  ‘He’s right, Heruk. We are nothing now. Just arena fighters, and Tarrigata our dominus.’

  ‘We are more than that, Vez,’ I said, looking into the eyes of the bearded giant who had just stepped in front of me.

  Vezulah Vult carried more scars than any warrior I have known or killed. He wore them proudly. As big as I was, he stood a head taller, his torso and shoulders like an inverted triangle.

  ‘Are we, Dah?’

  I scowled. ‘At least we’re surviving. Here,’ I gently set Kabe down, ‘help me with him.’ Around the arena, a few of the crowd had lingered to catch a glimpse of the fallen gladiator but most had already begun to disperse, back to the Maw, back to their own personal misery.

  ‘Such a waste,’ spat Tarrigata, and rattled the coin purse that he carried looped to the belt around his waist. He shook it three times, listening.

  ‘It’s light,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t need you to tell me that!’ snapped Tarrigata, whirling on me. He jabbed a wizened finger to the hollow sockets of his eyes. ‘I might have lost my eyes, but I still see plenty. Touched by Him above, I was,’ he said, gesturing to the thickening smog that blanketed our sky. I followed with my eye and saw the vague shapes of statues looming like gods.

  ‘Your eyes were burned as an astropath, Tarrigata,’ I said.

  ‘That’s why you should listen when I say dark things are afoot, even here in the Maw. I have seen them… from the beyond.’

  ‘And you are hunted just like the rest of us vermin,’ I added.

  Tarrigata showed his yellowed teeth with an ugly smile. ‘Aye, but you still serve, don’t you?’

  ‘The Legion ever serves,’ Vezulah replied. His voice sounded different as he reached for the axe tethered at his waist.

  I seized his arm. ‘Hold, brother,’ I told him firmly. ‘The war is over.’

  He looked through me at some latter day battlefield, his eyes clouded and unblinking.

  ‘Kalagann has mustered a host on the wastes…’ He struggled against my grip and I clenched tighter, my old Legion ring biting into his skin. ‘The hordes of Ursh will fall this day!’

  A few stragglers amongst the crowd had turned to look at what was going on.

  ‘The butchers of Sibir will yield to the Emperor!’

  ‘They already did. Long ago,’ I said. ‘Take hold of your senses, Vez. Look at me. Look at me.’

  He turned, blinked once and released his grip on the axe. I released him.

  ‘Did I drift again?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘Where to this time?’

  ‘Ursh, the Sibir ice plain.’

  Vezulah looked down as if to calculate what this fresh slip of his sanity meant for the long term.

  ‘Are you back, brother?’ I asked. ‘In the here and now?’

  ‘I am… I am.’

  I felt Tarrigata relax behind me, and heard the rad pistol he carried under his robes powering down. He’d never fired it and I wondered how much of its degrading energy coil was leaking lethal radiation into the old man, but he wouldn’t be parted from it. The last of the crowd moved on, seemingly disappointed.

  A timeworn shanty town lay just off the outskirts of the arena. Known as the Swathe, it stretched for miles across the Outer Palace districts, an agglomeration of broken ships, industry-grade cargo containers, armour plate and anything else that fell from the smog-choked sky. Tarrigata’s hab was the largest in the underbelly, and built to impress. Like the man who owned it, the hab had seen more prosperous times. He was a beggar-king rapidly reverting back to just a beggar.

  ‘Get him up,’ said Tarrigata, meaning Kabe’s corpse, ‘take what you can use and burn the rest. I don’t want scavengers coming around.’ He turned, listening again, sniffing at the air.

  ‘And for frek’s sake, where is Gairok? I should smell the stink of unrefined alc-grain by now. He’s bloody due.’

  Underneath an awning outside a granite stoop was a heavy wooden slab. Wood is rare, especially in the Swathe. Tarrigata used it as a mortuary block. He said the wood soaked up the blood, which it did. The slab was run through with dark stains, like a patchy veneer.

  Vezulah and I set Kabe’s body on it.

  ‘The next fight isn’t for a few hours yet,’ I said, breaking out the saws and other surgical tools from a caged rack set up next to the mortuary block. I handed one to Vezulah who began to cut. ‘He’ll be here.’

  ‘He had better be,’ said Tarrigata. ‘A death and a no-show… I’ll be ruined!’

  ‘Down here, how will any of us ever tell the difference?’ I muttered, watching Tarrigata climb up the stoop and into his hab.

  Vezulah worked. He had already cut away Kabe’s armour, his trappings, and was harvesting the organs now. We were ghouls, those of us who remained. Our continued existence depended on the deaths and successful appropriation of the parts of our former brothers in arms.

  As well as being our dominus, Tarrigata possessed the means and craft to transplant those parts. In that respect at least, the relationship was mutually dependant.

  Dwelling on the notion of what we had all become, I looked up through a ragged tear in the awning. Yellow cloud cast a filthy pall over everything, but below it I saw the screw-thread circles of the Maw, all the way from uphive to this nadir. If the Maw was the well leading down from Terra above, then the Swathe was the effluvia caught at the bottom.

  Factorums and refineries and bullet farms clung to the rings of the Maw like diseased limpets attached to the gullet of
a deep sea leviathan. Occasionally, one of these structures would fall, cast down to us dregs, and so the shanties would slowly expand, colonising the basin like some septic growth.

  Terra looked very different from down here.

  ‘I still dream of glory, Dah,’ said Vezulah. His voice dragged me back to the present. I feared he might be slipping again, but his eyes were lucid as he butchered Kabe. Machine parts, as well as glistening organs sat amongst the useless offal. Work, even red work, helped to focus the mind.

  He paused, the knife edge dripping, his arms crimson all the way to the elbow. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to determine whether this or the living present is my reality.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said softly. ‘All too well.’

  Deep down, I know. In my marrow, in my cancer-ridden core, I know.

  ‘The old days are gone, I know that,’ said Vezulah. ‘The days of the storm, of Unity. They were killing days, red days, of war and conquest. Empires kneeled to Him, they kneeled to us…’ He paused, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the handle of the saw but making no cut. ‘I miss them.’

  ‘So do I, Vez. But we are not what we once were. We have lived too long. It’s just some of us are too stubborn to die.’

  I took the machine parts, Kabe’s old cybernetics, and started to wash them down using an old handle-operated pump. The liquid was unfit to drink and irritated the skin, but it got rid of the blood just fine. The organs went into large apothecary flasks, and were preserved in a viscous solution of formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde and methanol. This I had learned from Tarrigata.

  ‘You can take those, now,’ said Vezulah. ‘I can manage the burning alone.’ A furnace stood at the back of Tarrigata’s property. Kabe’s final rest.

  I nodded, hefting the organ flask, then asked. ‘You are yourself, brother?’

  ‘I am myself.’

  ‘And if you are ever not?’

  Vezulah met my gaze. His eyes looked steady but resigned. ‘Then grant me the honoured death.’

  ‘The honoured death,’ I replied, and headed for Tarrigata’s hab.

  Inside the hab, the darkness took a little getting used to. It was cramped, the ceiling so low that I had to stoop. Tarrigata was a hoarder. He had shelves of machine parts from old gladiators, and jars of briny liquid filled with slowly atrophying organs. He kept everything regardless of its use. I found him sitting at a battered plastek chair, bent-backed and frowning over his counting device.