Reborn - Nicholas Wolf Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Reborn – Nicholas Wolf

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Honourbound’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Reborn

  Nicholas Wolf

  I

  He’s dead.

  He’s dead, and I killed him.

  I slowly back away from the convulsing, gasping form of my commissar, my serrated bayonet sliding from his chest. I lock eyes with him, truly meeting them for the first time. He’s angry, yes, but beneath the pious rage, I finally, after years of watching him shoot men in the back for cowardice, see human fear.

  He knows his life is over, and all that’s left is to die.

  As soon as my blade rips free of his heart his knees buckle and he slumps to the ground, splashing face first into the gore-soaked mud. In my moment of clarity I’ve transformed Commissar First Class Vasili Grudenov from a vicious, pitiless executioner to a banal hunk of flesh, no more righteous or terrifying than a slab of grox meat.

  ‘I’m not dying here,’ I growl to the corpse. ‘None of us are.’

  My lasgun falls from my hands, joining the body at my feet. My fingers are shaking, not with fear or rage, although I feel both beating hot through my veins like combat-stimms. No, they’re shaking, coursing, with…

  …hope.

  I’m no longer Acting-Captain Andrik Petrov of the 224th Kelbran Janissaries, insignificant cog of the Astra Militarum, abandoned to die by an uncaring Imperium on this forsaken battlefield. I’m something greater.

  ‘You saved my life.’

  I reluctantly tear my eyes away from the body at my feet. Private Nikyta Povich, who a moment before had been staring down the barrel of Grudenov’s bolt pistol, slowly opens his eyes. Urine trickles down his leg. Despite the horrors of war he still looks not a day older than sixteen. He may not be.

  I can’t think of anything to say. I hadn’t been thinking of Nikyta. Not really. I’d been thinking of myself, because I knew it would’ve only been a matter of time before I was the target. I nod and make a face that I hope looks hard and stoic, like Captain Luvchenko made. I probably just look tired.

  The silence in the bunker stretches on, punctuated only by the drumming boom of artillery and the chatter of gunfire, both growing closer.

  ‘You killed a commissar,’ someone says, stating the obvious.

  ‘You heard what Grudenov said – the war for Tarshish is over. The heretics broke our lines, we aren’t getting reinforcements, and we aren’t getting evacuated,’ I say quietly, feeling rage aching in my chest even as I say it. ‘The Imperium left us to die, and he was here to make sure we bought enough time for them to evacuate the more important assets off-world.’

  ‘Yeah, but–’

  I round on the speaker. He’s young, just a little younger than me. His ill-fitting blue jacket says ‘corporal’ but I’m guessing he took it off a corpse. ‘Do you have anyone back on Kelbra, soldier?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you have anyone back on Kelbra?’ I ask. ‘Anyone waiting for you?’

  He looks confused, like I’d just asked him to recite the Uplifting Primer from memory. ‘Of course.’

  ‘You, Aleksandr, you’ve got a wife and three children,’ I say, pointing to the men of my old squad. ‘Sava, how many more years do you think your old father can work in the factorums so your mother doesn’t go hungry? Do you even know if he’s still alive?’

  I let my words sink in, watching as familiar face after familiar face nods in solemn understanding. ‘Who else has family waiting for them?’

  A hundred ragged, bloody hands rise.

  I caress the swollen curvature of Misha’s belly, so warm even in the pre-dawn chill of our hab. Little Nicolai is already awake, kicking and squirming. I wonder if, somehow, he knows what’s happening.

  Why did he have to be late?

  I stop. The boy I’d been when I left Kelbra would’ve cried, but that part of me died long ago. I still feel my throat closing though, my eyes stinging. ‘I have a son waiting for me who I’ve never met. No one, not even a commissar, is going to stop me from getting back home to him.’

  I see realisation slowly dawning in their eyes, an awakening. I think all of us at some point stopped truly believing we were ever going to see home again. How had I envisioned it, all those years ago?

  It’s been so long I don’t even remember.

  ‘So… what do we do now?’ someone else asks, breaking the silence.

  ‘I…’ I stumble, grasping for words that just aren’t there. ‘I don’t know.’

  I hear an ominous hum behind me.

  ‘I know what we do.’

  I slowly turn, staring down the barrel of a lasgun.

  Sergeant Mikhail Velkov, grizzled face set in a lopsided snarl, glares at me. ‘We shoot this traitor right now.’

  I glance at my own lasgun at my feet. I’d never make it. ‘Stand down, soldier.’

  ‘You’re not my captain,’ he growls back from the vox-caster built into his throat. ‘You’re only wearing that rank because Captain Luvchenko is dead.’

  ‘I said stand down,’ I repeat, firmly. I keep my hands visible though. He’s standing too far away for me to grab his weapon.

  He spits at my boots. ‘You just killed your commissar. You’re nothing to me now.’

  ‘This war is over, Mikhail, you heard it from Grudenov himself! He was going to make sure you died, right here in this damned bunker, because General Volsk decided our lives weren’t as important as munitions and tanks!’

  He blinks. Slowly. ‘I swore an oath to the Emperor, boy.’

  Something breaks inside me, a brittle dam overflowing with hate. ‘And where was the Emperor, Mikhail?’ I scream. ‘Where was the Emperor when the heretics bombed Forward Command? Where was the Emperor when those… things massacred the eastern front? Where was the Emperor when Tarshish Hive went mad? Seventy million people slaughtering each other, Mikhail! Where was the Emperor when the commander we spent the last four years fighting for sent a commissar to make sure we didn’t run when we figured out we’d been left to die? Where? Where, Mikhail?’

  I see him wavering. ‘I… it’s not that simple. The Emperor protects.’

  ‘No He doesn’t, Mikhail,’ I shake my head angrily. ‘You can die for the Emperor, but I won’t. Put the gun down.’

  The barrel drops. Slightly. I can see his hate melting away.

  ‘Think about your family, Mikhail,’ I say softly. ‘Don’t leave your children orphans. Not for them. Not for this. The Imperium doesn’t deserve our blood.’

  ‘We… we can still rejoin the rest of the battle group before they leave Tarshish. Say you shot Grudenov and we shot you. Volsk would take us back.’

  I take a slow step towards him, still keeping my hands up. ‘Volsk was perfectly content to let us die here. He’d cull the 224th to make an example, just like Grudenov would’ve done to Nikyta.’

  ‘You don’t know that!’ he yells, vox-caster cracking. ‘We can… we can try… we have to…’

  I take another step towards Mikhail. He’s almost close enough for me to grab his gun. He’s no longer pointing it at me. He’s not even looking at me. ‘Put the gun down, Mikhail. Let’s go home.’

  ‘You’re insane…’

  Bzzrt.

  Mikhail Velkov stays standing for just a moment before he notices the hole burned through his face. My gorge rises at the scorched-bone reek. The betrayal in his eyes is too much. I can’t look. His gun bru
shes my fingers as it slips from his hands. His legs crumple. He’s dead before he hits the ground.

  Sergei Meglev, my trusted lieutenant and oldest friend, slowly lowers his laspistol. ‘Andrik… er, Captain Petrov is right. We aren’t going back.’

  There’s something frightening in Sergei’s eyes, something I’ve never seen before, not as boys growing up on Kelbra, not as men fighting on Tarshish. I’m torn between thanking him for saving my life and screaming at him for shooting a scared, innocent man.

  But I’ve been his friend far longer than I’ve been his commanding officer, so I simply offer a solemn nod. He doesn’t return it. He’s glaring at the rest of the 224th. His finger is still on the trigger. No one moves.

  Nikyta finally breaks the fragile silence. ‘So… what are your orders, Captain Petrov?’

  That damned question. I’ve never really known how to answer it, not once. Poor Mikhail was mostly right: the only reason I’m a captain is because I was better at surviving than my predecessors. Sure, I’m resourceful, I can fight and I can plan well enough, but I never felt a desire to lead, beyond a vague understanding that I could probably save more of my men than someone who thought of them as a resource to be spent.

  What are my orders?

  I block out their imploring eyes for a moment while I think, but in my heart I know there’s only one answer. Only now do I see it clearly, my oath to the Emperor washed away in Grudenov’s blood. In my mind I hear a voice, a silent symphony of new thoughts subtly playing beneath my own. Whispers.

  Strange. I’ve only heard it before in my private, darkest moments, the jittery half-sleep between artillery barrages. I thought they were thoughts, but now, in the brittle silence of this pivotal moment, I’m actually… hearing them.

  I look at the 224th: gaunt-faced and hollow-eyed, blue uniforms caked with so much blood, sweat and grime that they look like corpses. These men gave everything they had for the Emperor, and received nothing but abandonment for their reward. My heart breaks for them, because my only idea sounds like madness, even to me.

  But it’s the only choice we have.

  ‘Anyone who wants to throw themselves on Volsk’s mercy, I won’t stop you. Anyone who doesn’t can follow me.’

  Before I can talk myself out of it I throw open the door to the bunker and walk out into the ashen waste of Tarshish. I half expect someone to shoot me in the back.

  With every step I take towards the approaching enemy I feel the quaking in my hands stilling, the tightness in my chest loosening. With every step I take away from the Imperium I hear the whispers growing ever so slightly louder in my mind. Strengthening my steps. Strengthening my limbs.

  I walk beyond the blood-soaked trench line and wait. My men appear through the dust beside me, first in ones and two, then the whole of the 224th. They look at me with terrified, searching eyes, but I say nothing. Somehow I know, without even knowing how or why, that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

  And then I see him.

  The monstrous figure emerges from the choking miasma of gun smoke and ash, his Stygian silhouette impossibly huge, regal, commanding, carrying a spiked mace bigger than me. His crimson armour is etched with runes that hurt to look at, and streams of parchment rustle around him like vulture’s wings. I swear I feel the ground tremble with his footsteps, but it might be my legs quaking. I force myself to face him as he approaches. I have to, or I’m dead.

  His visage is a horror of stretched skin and erupting bone, corpse-white with cruel eyes that burn like embers. But beneath his mutations is a patrician mien, the macabre reflection of the Emperor’s Angels of Death.

  The ones the priests on Kelbra preached about.

  The ones they promised the Emperor would send if I prayed hard enough, but who never appeared.

  ‘Kneel.’

  His voice is bloodstained gravel and rusted blades, death-rattle whispers and grinding bones. I realise now I’ve heard it so often in my most desperate moments that it’s as familiar to me as my own voice.

  I drop to my knees and my loyal regiment kneels beside me. I feel words slithering painfully through my chest, bubbling up in my throat, words I’ve heard whispering through my mind ever since I came to this world, and can no longer choke down.

  ‘Death to the False Emperor.’

  II

  Misha. She’s afraid, heartbroken. The time has come. I brush back her long, black hair and kiss her cheek, praying to the Emperor this won’t be the last time I see her face.

  ‘Lord Jarak requests your presence.’

  My eyes snap open.

  A revolting mutant, decayed face bloated in a lopsided lamprey grimace, looms over me. I stifle my instinctual scream. A clawed hand yanks me upright faster than I can respond.

  ‘Now.’

  The towering creature turns and stomps away without turning to see if I’m following. I have to run to keep up.

  I sprint down gangways and walls, through sewage dumps and throbbing reactor chambers. Here tentacles flail blindly from warped steel walls, there a mound of corpses writhe as obese worms bigger than hounds devour them from the inside. Everywhere I look something is eating someone, or someone is praying to something, all of it caked in blood and filth and misery and darkness. Everything we encounter scurries away at the sight of the enforcer.

  I rub my eyes. I don’t know how long it’s been since Tarshish, how long my men and I have been on this cursed ship, sailing the warp. It feels like years.

  I can’t remember the last time I slept without being awakened by horror.

  The mutant suddenly opens a door and stands still until I take the hint and walk through. The bulkhead slams closed as soon as I do.

  The Dark Apostle’s chamber is nothing like I expect.

  Everywhere I’ve been on this vessel of the damned has been a hideous amalgam of metal and flesh, blood and stone, the baroque bones of whatever it once was suffocated by the horror of what it’s become. This room is still a nightmare of bony protrusions and veined walls, but there’s no trace of malady or madness, only order within chaos; a monk’s sanctum within hell itself.

  It’s as palliative as it is bizarre.

  The Dark Apostle paces around me, impossibly huge, exuding malignant nobility. I only vaguely remember kneeling before him on Tarshish, my body betraying a lifetime of indoctrination, uttering words I could never have voiced, much less thought.

  The heretic demagogue finally speaks; his voice is the sound of rusted gears slowly grinding bones. ‘What is your greatest desire?’

  That voice. When I first heard him speak to me on Tarshish I thought it was his voice I’d heard in the bleak darkness. I now understand it was merely one of them.

  Whispers haunt the very air on this accursed ship. I realise, abruptly, that they’re louder in his dark presence. Despite myself, I’m compelled to stand closer to him, to bask in it.

  His question.

  Suddenly I’m back in a burning trench with blood pooling around my ankles, clutching my dead lasgun, desperate prayers to the Emperor guttering in my rebreather. Unbidden, the answer slithers through my exhaustion and infects my parched tongue.

  ‘Before I die,’ I say, throat closing on a familiar sob, ‘I want to meet my son. Just once.’

  The Dark Apostle’s mutated visage twists into an expression I can’t characterise. His transhuman face already appears subtly wrong, like a crookedly hung painting, but the smouldering horns erupting from his corpse-white flesh destroy any semblance of humanity.

  ‘We do not pretend to understand the sentiment, but we understand strength,’ he intones. ‘The strength of your desire is written upon your soul. We swear by the Pantheon that you shall meet your son before you die, Andrik Petrov.’

  He knows my name. Somehow, this neither surprises nor frightens me. Perhaps the absurdity of conversing with this walking a
bomination has exhausted my sense of incredulousness.

  ‘You lie,’ I sigh. I won’t surrender to hope. Not here.

  ‘We do not lie,’ he growls, zeal flooding from his forked tongue. ‘Truth is all that matters in this universe.’ His eyes burn like embers in the darkness. It physically hurts to stand beneath his gaze.

  ‘What do you know of truth?’

  His baleful eyes narrow, slowly. He’s going to kill me, and I can’t bring myself to care. My eyes flick to the cruel mace sheathed across his back, longer than I am tall.

  For the hundredth time since boarding this damned vessel I close my eyes and wait to die.

  ‘Have you ever heard the story of Yggdrasil?’

  I blink, twice, and slowly shake my head.

  The monster paces his lair, gore-stained boots clumping rhythmically on the ossified floor. ‘It’s a story from Old Earth. The earliest human cultures spoke of the Tree of Life, the root of all things, both good and evil. We had a similar story in the Old Faith on Colchis, before the coming of the Emperor.’

  ‘I… don’t understand.’

  ‘Your Imperium was founded upon a lie, human. Its Tree of Life was poisoned from the moment the Emperor uttered His first falsehood.’ He speaks slowly, as though educating a child. I should feel insulted, but I’m not; I’m… entranced. ‘That is why the Imperium is weak, dying: truth is the only foundation upon which an empire can be founded.’

  ‘What lie did the God-Emperor speak?’

  Embers ghost from his fanged mouth. ‘Do you know why you believe the Emperor is a god?’

  It’s such an obvious question, and yet one I’ve never been asked. My tongue is silent; I know what I want to say, but the thought of voicing it before this terrifying, ancient, majestic thing seems… juvenile.

  He takes my silence as my answer, and seems to have been expecting it. ‘Ten thousand years ago our gene-father, the primarch Lorgar Aurelian, wrote the Lectitio Divinitatus, misguidedly declaring the Emperor’s divinity. We do not expect you to know the Urizen or his works,’ he adds. He must have seen my mouth hanging open. ‘The Imperium buried all knowledge of the primarchs who turned from the Emperor’s lies.’