The Omnibus - John French Read online

  +Time, my brother. Choices. Time and choices change all things. As you well know.+

  Ahriman thought of the ninth sun rolling into the sky of the Planet of the Sorcerers, of the rest of the Legion surrounding him and his cabal in the dawn light. He had last seen Menkaura then, standing amongst those he had not trusted to be a part of his conspiracy.

  ‘I am sorry, for what I did to you, for what I did to all of you.’

  The oracle tilted its featureless head.

  +Are you sorry, or are you sorry that you failed?+ The oracle shook its head. +What I am is not your doing, Ahriman. Your sin is that you cannot see the limits of your power. Even in despair, you gather all woes and faults to you, and claim more than is your due.+

  ‘I destroyed the Legion.’

  +Did you? Was that your choice?+

  ‘It was no other’s.’

  Again Ahriman felt the oracle’s chuckle shiver across his mind.

  +Fate is a web that catches all, Ahriman. Each choice spawns thousands of possibilities, those possibilities birth more, until what began and what ends cannot be told so easily.+

  Ahriman felt patterns form in his mind’s eye as he absorbed the message. He saw golden strands, thousands, tens of thousands, millions of strands burrowing through black time, overlapping and branching even as he watched. He felt his mind reel, then kindle with awe. It was magnificent. He was seeing the consequence of actions small and great, all connected, all tumbling like cards falling through air. It felt terrifying and beautiful. It felt like returning home. He plunged into the image, following strands of consequence, hungry to see ever finer connections. But even as he reached, the connections changed, broke, and multiplied. He spun on, unheeding of anything else. He must see, he must understand. As he spiralled through the golden web, he felt the brush of feathers and heard the laughter of ravens.

  ‘No!’ he shouted. The image dimmed until it was nothing but a lingering memory of a glowing web. The oracle nodded slowly.

  +My fate could have been yours, my knowledge your curse. Perhaps if you had not enacted the Rubric, you would be as I am. Perhaps others would stand before you and ask what you see.+

  ‘You have fallen far.’

  +We all fell, brother.+

  ‘I would not have made the same choices as you.’ The oracle shrugged, the gesture fluid and inhuman.

  +But you did not come here to debate such matters.+

  ‘What will happen to our Legion?’

  +Another question you did not come here to ask.+ Ahriman did not move, but held his gaze steady. After a second the oracle turned its head and looked up. The gesture was exactly as it would have been if it was looking into space while considering how to answer, and the movement of the featureless face made Ahriman’s skin crawl. +The Legion will die. It will become less than the dust. Those that remain will be as I am, creatures rather than the warriors we once were. Over time, no one will remember us, we will become a memory covered over by time.+

  ‘That is what you see?’

  +Isn’t it what you see?+ The oracle’s thought voice paused. +You were our seer, Ahriman. You were master of the Corvidae. You taught us all. What can I tell you that you could not grasp for yourself if you wished? Why did you not read the tides of the future yourself? Do you mistrust yourself so much that you dare not?+ The eyes had stopped orbiting the oracle. Each one hung in the air, stationary, looking at Ahriman. +Or have you looked and fear to see more?+

  ‘Answer me.’

  +It is as I said. Or it might be. The future is a diamond, each possibility a facet to be perceived by a different eye. The Legion may end as I have said, or in countless other ways. It may survive, it may rise. You know this. You have seen some of it for yourself.+ Ahriman remembered the vision, the whispers of the crow. ‘Time is not fixed, nor is flesh, nor is fate,’ it had said.

  ‘An uncertain prophecy is worthless.’

  +That is their nature, my teacher. You asked only because you wished me to deny the truth you already knew.+

  ‘No part of my teachings remains in you,’ said Ahriman, his voice flat and cold.

  +No? But you are here nonetheless. Ask yourself what you truly wish to know: the truth, or the lie that forgives you your choices?+

  ‘A question is no answer.’

  +You know that is a lie.+ The oracle fell quiet, and the two stared at each other as the moment extended in buzzing silence. +Come. Ask the real question you came to ask.+

  ‘Firing,’ called Carmenta, and the Titan Child shook. The screens flashed white and dissolved into pixellated snow in front of Astraeos’s eyes. The view an instant before had been the curdling clouds rushing out to envelop them. The white and yellow vapour had brushed against the hull of the Titan Child as if caressing it. Carmenta had started to fire a second later, even though there was no target.

  ‘Show us what is happening,’ shouted Kadin.

  The bridge shook again. No reply came from Carmenta. Howling voices tore through Astraeos’s mind, opening flares of multi-coloured pain behind his eyes. He felt as if he was going to fall again. The cries in his head broke into discordant shrieking. He had tried to close them out, but his will was sand trying to hold the tide.

  The tide. He remembered Ahriman’s cool gaze and the days of training. He remembered the feeling of calm, of rising through deeper and deeper stillness, his mind floating above the flood.

  He was still standing. The deck was vibrating now with a steady drumbeat as the Titan Child fired its weapons again and again. The pict screens had come back into focus and Kadin and Thidias were staring at them. The flare of the Titan Child’s weapons lit the darkness, rolling in discordance with the lightning that crawled through the vapour. There were shapes visible amongst the clouds, like patches of moving shadow cast by creatures with wings and bodies made of knives. One swooped close to the pict-eyes, and Astraeos heard the shriek rise in his mind.

  ‘Why are they not attacking?’ said Thidias.

  ‘What?’ growled Astraeos, glancing at his brother. His head was clearer but it was taking all his effort to keep his mind shielded from the shrieks. Thidias did not look away from the screen. Beside him Kadin nodded.

  ‘Whatever they are, they are not friendly, but they are just watching us,’ muttered Kadin.

  Astraeos glanced back to the screen.

  ‘What are they doing?’ asked Thidias.

  The Titan Child gave a great shudder and the pict screen flashed as a broadside turned the clouds into neon orange sheets. A shriek tore through Astraeos’s head and he growled in pain. This time it felt like a tortured laugh. It sounded like contempt.

  He felt cold. The shrieks in his head felt suddenly familiar. He knew what they were. He had heard men give such cries, and listened as predators howled them into the night as they stalked through the trees.

  ‘They are waiting,’ he said quietly. His mouth felt very dry. ‘They are waiting for their prey.’

  ‘I am hunted,’ said Ahriman softly.

  +A truth both deep and shallow.+

  ‘Tolbek came seeking me, to kill me or drag me to another’s knees.’ Ahriman paused, but the oracle did not move or speak. ‘Who did he serve? Who is hunting me?’

  +Many hunt you, Ahriman,+ said the oracle, shaking its head. +I turn over a rock on any world, and I find another who would hound you to your death.+

  ‘Who did Tolbek serve?’

  +You know. You have known since before they came. You knew at the moment they came for you. You knew when you were banished who would come after you.+

  ‘No,’ said Ahriman, but he could hear the tremor in the word. In his mind a face appeared. Grave, serious, lined by doubt and worry, the face of a friend he had persuaded to follow him into ruin.

  +Tolbek served Amon.+

  ‘Amon.’ The word clung to his tongue as it slid into his mind, and he could not be sure if he had spoken at first. The oracle nodded slowly.

  +Who else? The hardest to persuade, the most doubting, t
he one most loyal to the primarch besides yourself. He followed you, believed you, allowed himself to dream as you did. That trust bought him the destruction of everything he held dearest. He burned his hopes because he trusted you.+

  Ahriman found that he was looking at the sword that lay on the black floor. His eyes moved across the flame-winged bird forming the crossguard, the red stone set in its pommel. It had been Tolbek’s sword, a brother’s sword wielded against him. ‘Vengeance,’ he said quietly.

  +I cannot see his mind or predict his goals, but he dreams still. You gave him that ability, the arrogance to set knowledge against the decrees of fate. He has drawn knowledge and power to himself. He will storm the Planet of the Sorcerers if he has to, and challenge the Court of Change.+

  ‘Why?’ said Ahriman. ‘What does he intend? Why does he need me if not for simple vengeance?’

  +You will have to find that answer for yourself.+

  ‘Do you not know the answer?’ asked Ahriman, but the oracle continued as if it had not heard.

  +There is a choice. The future is fractured. I see lines of choice vanish into darkness and I cannot see their ends. The final death of the Legion may come to pass. I can see the paths that lead to that outcome with greater clarity than any others. But there are other ends, and other paths.+ Ahriman looked up. At his back, he heard a crow’s chuckling call echo in memory.

  ‘You know this? You have seen it?’

  +It has been told to me.+

  ‘By whom?’

  +I cannot say.+

  ‘Cannot, or will not?’

  +Both.+ There was a finality to the thought, and the oracle began to rise into the air.

  ‘Wait,’ said Ahriman. ‘I have more questions.’

  +No. Not yet.+

  ‘But there is another way, a way of saving the Legion?’

  +Perhaps.+ In his mind Ahriman saw an image of Menkaura as a young novitiate looking up at him from the teaching circle, his handsome face split by a crooked smile. +All prophecy is the interaction of the probable and the paradoxical. All is uncertain even when it appears to have been fated.+

  Ahriman smiled, in spite of himself. ‘My own words.’ In his mind, the memory image of Menkaura smiled more widely. ‘Thank you for the reminder.’ Ahriman nodded and picked up the sword from the floor. He sheathed it, his mind turning with thoughts and possibilities. He had renounced the dreams that he had used to destroy the Thousand Sons. He could not go back, not now, no matter the cost.

  But, came a voice out of the jostle of thought and emotion. But it was you that set this in motion. It did not end with the Rubric. Your curse lives on, and yet you dare not face it. You run and let your Legion die because you were wrong once.

  The mist was rising about him, hiding the spherical chamber. He began to walk into it, allowing it to fold over him.

  +My tribute, Ahriman.+ The oracle’s voice was clear in his head, but distant as if being carried from far away. +I will have my tribute.+ Ahriman turned and looked up to the ascending figure that had once been his brother and his pupil.

  ‘Ask your question,’ said Ahriman. The oracle continued to rise, its form seeming to dissolve in the thickening mist.

  +Why did you not allow yourself to die after your banishment?+

  Ahriman’s skin prickled. He thought of the lifetimes he had spent on the edge of the Eye of Terror, never allowing himself to be as he was, always waiting for death that never came but never running to meet it. He thought of what he had to do now.

  Fate is made of paths not taken, he thought to himself.

  ‘Because I still dream of hope, old friend,’ he called into the mist as it took the last sight of the oracle. Then he turned and strode away.

  ‘The shuttle,’ called Carmenta. ‘It’s returning.’

  The bridge was silent. Kadin glanced at Astraeos. Thidias stood watching the screens that now showed just the roiling mass of sickly cloud outside the hull. The shrieks had vanished from Astraeos’s mind a second before Carmenta spoke.

  ‘Where is it?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s just broken the surface of the moon.’

  Astraeos was already moving. Kadin and Thidias followed a second later.

  The warp rose up to meet Ahriman. One second his mind was still and floating amidst the glassy calm of the oracle’s moon, and the next, he was reeling as waves of energy broke over him. The walls of the shuttle compartment shimmered and became translucent. Pale clouds boiled around him like milk curdling as it poured into bile. High shrieks filled his ears and stabbed into his thoughts. The image of the shuttle he sat in stuttered between solidity and transparency. He saw something amongst the clouds, something that was gliding on the storm winds.

  Dark silhouettes appeared in the churning fog. The shrieking was all around him now, filling his mind and ears. He released his harness, and unfolded to his feet. The floor of the compartment felt solid beneath him, but he could see through the metal as if it were glass.

  One of the shadow shapes swooped close. It reached towards him; he could see the shadow of its claws the instant before they punched through the skin of reality. Red and green light wept from the wound as the claws slashed it wide. Ahriman could see light and colour swirling in the space beyond the hole which hung in the rushing clouds. The shrieking was a single high, discordant note. Ahriman felt the hairs on his skin rise as if pulled by static.

  Slowly, almost delicately, a creature pulled itself from beyond. It paused, crouching on the lip of reality, its head swaying from side to side. Armour plates shimmered with an oily rainbow of colours as it moved. Bulbous organic growths had sprouted across its body, like rust blooming on iron left in lightless water. Pale spines ran down the jump pack that hung from its shoulders.

  Ahriman had heard of such creatures, Space Marines lost to the warp and the sharpness of their blades. If they had a name for themselves none knew it, but to those who knew how to call them, they were named warp talons.

  It flexed its knife-blade claws. Pale green fire ignited in the jets on its back. It looked at Ahriman with red eyes and leapt, dragging a caul of the storm vapour in its wake. Behind it, four more wounds began to rip wide.

  A cliff of pitted iron appeared out of the fog. The lips of blast doors opened wide to greet them. The shuttle’s engines roared and its hull snapped back into solidity, closing off the vision of the storm beyond.

  And then the shuttle rang like a gong, and spun. Ahriman tumbled from his feet as the world turned over. Sparks showered around him as a flake of the hull peeled back. The creature looked down at Ahriman for a second, and then pounced.

  The claws met Ahriman’s kine-shield with a burst of light and a sound like a lightning strike. The creature sprang back, hooking its hands and feet to the opposite wall. It hissed. Ahriman felt the shuttle tumbling around him. He could hear the noise of more claws raking the outside of the hull.

  The creature leapt at him. Ahriman’s mind burned. A white-hot beam flashed from his eyes to meet its assault; it shrieked, and Ahriman felt the warp twist out of his grasp. Surprise was still forming in his mind when the claws met his stomach. They punched though his armour and into the soft flesh beneath. He had long enough to think that it felt cold, like swallowing ice. Then the bulk of the creature rammed into him and slammed him to the deck.

  The shuttle spun and he felt his skin press against the inside of his armour as g-force tried to pull him away from the floor. The creature punched its free claw and hooked feet into the deck, pinning him in place. He looked up at it. The creature’s red eyepieces were looking back at him. It was so close he could see the fumes venting from slits in the snout of its helm.

  I will not die here, he thought. He sank his mind into his body, forcing calm through his nerves and muscle. It felt like plunging into water. He could feel the claws in his guts. He saw the arrangement of molecules, bone and muscle fibre spin symbolically before his mind’s eye, and changed what he saw with a thought.

  His skin tingled and
went numb. In his guts, the blood stopped flowing, organs began to harden, bone became like metal. He felt his hearts stop. Above him the creature’s face split, a wide wet crack running across its faceplate. Ahriman could see sharp teeth in the red ruin of a mouth.

  ‘Alive,’ the creature hissed. ‘Alive. Yes.’ It licked its teeth with a black tongue. ‘Not whole. No.’ It pulled back, and tried to pull its claws from Ahriman’s guts. He did not even feel it. There was just the icy rush as the warp spun through his blood and bone. The creature howled and tried to rip its claws free. They held firm, as if it they were locked inside stone. Behind the faceplate of his helm, Ahriman smiled. He did not have long; he could not maintain the alteration to the substance of his body indefinitely.

  The creature opened its mouth to roar again. Ahriman struck upwards, his fingers splayed as they punched into the open maw. The creature reeled. Ahriman closed his hand, his armoured grip digging into the soft meat of the creature’s throat. He split his mind into two streams of thought; one half continued to breathe stone and steel into his flesh, while the second began to burn. The creature thrashed, glowing cracks running across its armour from its mouth. Ahriman felt his mind brush against what remained of the creature’s soul; it felt withered and rotten, like blood turned to black jelly in a dead heart. Out of the corner of his eye, Ahriman saw the toothed blast door loom into view. He did not have time to move before the impact.

  Astraeos was ten paces into the hangar bay when the shuttle clipped the blast doors. He saw the scene unfold in delicate slowness, as he and his brothers ran forwards. The shuttle flipped over, its stabiliser fins shearing off. Shreds of armour plating spun in all directions. Fuel sprayed in its wake, burning for an instant in the cloud of air from the ruptured cabin. Astraeos saw shapes fling themselves from the shuttle just before the impact. They had been Space Marines once. Lines of power armour could be seen under layers of growth, like polluted coral. Green jets of flame pushed them up into the darkness above. A third fell away with the rest of the wreckage, its body scattering globules of black fluid as it fell to the deck.