All That Remains - James Swallow Page 2

  The observance of a festival day was cancelled. Weapons of a certain type were recalled. Uniform colours adjusted. Liberty rearranged. Regulations altered in subtle ways with the core purpose left unclear. One tiny thing after another. Each of small weight of consequence, so much so a man might feel almost churlish to question each openly. But measured again in their collective…

  Imagine the navigation of a sail-foil flyer in the cloud-reaches. She moves under the breath of wind toward true north, straight and true. But the hand upon the tiller turns a degree off the line. The sails are angled, oh-so-gently, first by one turn and then another. If no man watches the path of the suns over the bowsprit, in time the flyer finds herself turned to due south and into the teeth of an oncoming storm. And all escaping the notice of the crew asleep below decks.

  I recall the day when the words were finally said out loud. ‘Today we affirm our loyalty to his highness the Warmaster Horus, in defiance of an aloof and uncaring Terra.’ They never used the words Emperor or Imperium, because to do so would confuse the people they sought to assimilate into their acts of treason. I watched the new flags unfurl, the noble aquila replaced in favour of an unblinking, slitted eye.

  We knew it was coming, of course. In the barracks, after lights out, it was all that men spoke of. In those hushed conversations, there was much talk of defiance. I wonder where it went in the cold light of day.

  Here then, was the moment of both my greatest courage and my greatest stupidity. When the words were said, I spoke out – and when I looked across the hall to find the faces of my comrades, the ones that I knew agreed with me, there was only silence and eyes turned away. Dark auras burning in my gaze.

  I knew then the true nature of this war, and the lifeblood of it.

  There was a lot of talk about what we would do. We had come a long way, too far just to timidly retreat back to the ward decks and wait for an uncertain fate. Don’t mistake what we did for courage, though. I think all of us were long past those kinds of ideals. I learned that we shared... things, all the adults on this barge. Not just our shared secrets, but a shared experience.

  Not one of us had been spared a brush with the horrors. Some had fought them, most had run from them. All knew that whatever they were, wherever they came from, the monstrosities that Horus had unleashed upon the galaxy were unlike anything we had ever fought before. In a way, we were all caught by our own natures; the pure animal part of us wanted to flee from them, while the rational, hateful, human part would have given anything for a weapon big enough to kill those fearsome things.

  And so we went on, Zartine joining us, trailing at the back with Yao. The boy might have had some kind of gift too, I think. He kept talking about music when no one else could hear it.

  At last we reached the great crenellated entrance vestibule to the ship’s command centre, and Breng gingerly worked the controls to retract the hatch. For a moment, nothing happened, and then, in the blink of an eye the great iron door dropped open, slamming into the deck.

  A hard-edged shadow, so large that it filled the open hatchway, loomed inside. I think that if I had been quicker of mind, I would have run. Instead, I raised the lasrifle as the shape shifted its bulk to pass through a gap built for men of my stature.

  Into the light it came, and Zartine was proven right.

  A single warrior of the Legiones Astartes came out to meet us. Heavy boots of ceramite clanged against the deck plates, making the floor jump beneath our feet. In aspect, the Space Marine was a giant: I saw a broad chestplate emblazoned with the Imperial Aquila; arms thick as the trunks of great trees; a scowling, beaked helmet that resembled the skinned skull of some giant raptor. The eyes in that face glowed red with combat auto-senses, auspex returns and scrolling data feeds. The warrior’s armour was strangely bereft of any Legion iconography, plain in a hue alike to cut slate. He moved with a fluidity more akin to an apex predator than anything born of humanity.

  At his back, a hood-like construct framed his helm, built more to resemble the archway of some long-lost devotional chapel than any battle mechanism. It was dark, heavy iron studded with crystals that burned with blue light. It drew my sight like gravity pulling upon me, and I glimpsed an aura there made of colours that did not exist in the common world. For my sins, I had seen those shades before.

  The warrior was armed with a massive boltgun, but it remained mag-locked to a holster pad on his thigh. In his other hand he held a staff of polished, flawless silver. I remember thinking that it seemed an odd affectation. With his free hand, he reached up and removed his helm, pressure seals hissing into the cold air.

  A war-god looked back at us, scalp shorn of hair, tattoos of intricate nature adorning his cheeks and throat, scars like red trophies upon his flesh. His eyes – his true eyes – startled me with their jet depths. I saw something in them, something I had often seen in the mirror.

  Our weapons were aimed at his chest. He did not order us to lower them, but passed a solemn, measuring gaze over each man before him. The muzzles of the lasguns dropped away without a spoken word.

  When his gaze reached me, I knew that he was taking my measure with senses that I could only guess at. Secretly, I had always thought myself special, better than the rest because of my dash of the sight. I believed that things were open to me in subtle ways, things that ordinary men could not perceive, but now I understood that what I lauded in myself was a fraction of what this giant could call upon.

  ‘Ruafe Hecane,’ he intoned, his voice low and booming. ‘You have come a long way.’

  He knew my name. He knew us all, every single man on the ship, I have no doubt of it. I opened my mouth to speak, but then he raised his head and there I saw the twinned sigils branded into his flesh.

  On one side, a design like a scarab beetle. On the other, a circular star surrounded by a nimbus of rays.

  The grey armour did not hide his true nature from me. The legionary that stood before me was a warrior of the Thousand Sons – the sons of the mage-king Magnus. He was the scion of a traitor Legion. The last time I had seen his kind, their wargear red as madness, it had been at the head of an army of horrors laying waste to my home world.

  The soldiers I had called my comrades did not turn to Horus’s banner from cowardice, know that. The reasons are far more complex. They all turned upon pretexts that to them seemed reasonable. I do believe this. There was no mass mind control, no drugging and warping of self. That happened later, with the arrival of the horrors.

  I had time to think on that while I waited in the brig, imprisoned there amongst the others who had been too slow to agree or too forthright to cover their doubts. Looking back, I was furious with myself. How had I ever been so naïve to think that I could foster rebellion in that moment? I am no eloquent speaker who could rally men with a stirring speech. I was just a fool who disagreed openly, and paid for it.

  They were going to execute us. That was part of the new orders, but they found it hard to carry out the command. I think that was the last part of whatever resistance they had, slowly withering and dying beneath the Warmaster’s eclipse.

  At first I was frustrated and impotent with my anger. I cursed them all a hundred times for their weakness and trite duplicity, but eventually that rage was spent and I could do nothing but ruminate. Don’t assume that I came to forgive my former squad mates – far from it – but I did come to understand them.

  The young lieutenant who was the son of a great general, he who was always a friend to the line-officers like me, who never wore his braids with arrogance but managed to be one of the common men even though he was not like the rest of us – he said he would oppose, and yet he did not. Of all of us, he had the best chance to rally the men, but he kept his silence. He had so very much to lose, after all. He would have fallen so far.

  The braggart sharpshooter who always had the answer to any question, cocksure and handsome, never fazed by any cha
llenge or upset. He carried himself with such utter confidence that I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t slice through any draconian edict like a sword point. He stood meekly, becoming a different, smaller man when the order came.

  And then the bluff sergeant who always raged louder than I ever could, her jacket scarred by the number of times her rank had been broken and then earned anew. Her voice was strongest by any lights, but silent too in that moment. She was a crèche-mother, with two battle orphans as her charges, and I think she saw their faces that day, feared how life would go for them if she were gone.

  It wasn’t hard for my comrades to find an excuse to hate me. By accident of birth, I had already given it to them. A handful amongst the platoon – the sergeant and sharpshooter included – knew I had a touch of the sight on me. In combat, you come to learn such things from the soldiers who fight alongside you, whether you want to or not. Before, I had seemed like a lucky charm to them, some of the men even coming to me, secretive and hushed, to ask for a look-see over their aura. I couldn’t work the gift like my mother had, but I tried, and it had been enough. In return, they had kept my secret from the Black Ships.

  But now it was the reason to disown me. Someone whispered the word ‘witch’, and I knew that I would be executed first. All my life I had lived with the fear that the Silent Sisterhood would come to spirit me away, but now I saw that death would be the more likely outcome.

  That night, I escaped the stockade with six others, and we found the resistance a day or two later.

  ‘You want to kill me,’ he said. There was no judgement in the words.

  ‘Yes.’ I could not, would not, lie. ‘Your kind brought horrors to my world. You destroyed everything I–’

  I ran out of energy, and clutched the lasrifle to my chest. A boiling, churning hatred rose through me, and it made me feel strangely free.

  The warrior smiled thinly. ‘Not I, Ruafe Hecane. Those who did those things are oath-breakers, and my brothers no more.’ He glanced at Breng. ‘You. You know ship-tech, yes? Your skills are needed.’ He walked back into the command centre and we followed him.

  The dead were everywhere here, suffocated by the decompression. I saw where a viewport had been blown out, now made safe by a blast shutter. Too slow to save the bridge crew, it seemed.

  Out of the windows there were alien stars and infinite blackness. Dallos’s cards had played true after all – our ship was alone.

  The legionary directed Breng to work at the drive control. ‘Your vessel suffered damage in warp transit. The rest of the convoy left you here, becalmed. I was summoned to see you complete the rest of your voyage.’ Again, there was the smile. ‘This ship carries precious cargo. I would warrant that none aboard know just how important you are.’

  ‘We’re just soldiers,’ offered Yao. ‘Soldiers and whelps. Fodder for the guns and cubs to be culled.’

  A shadow passed over the face of the Thousand Son. ‘Never say that. No one who fights in the Emperor’s name is without worth.’

  I glared at him. ‘The sons of Magnus march with Horus. I saw it. I saw the fiends and the freaks that your brethren conjured, the–’

  ‘Daemons?’ His utterance of the word seemed to instantly drain all heat from the chamber. ‘Yes, you saw those things. All of you have seen them.’ He shook his head, regretfully. ‘Do you not yet understand, soldier? You see patterns. Can you not see this one?’ He pointed with the silver staff, taking in all of the men. ‘Each of you has the beginning of a greatness. You may call it a sight, or a gift, even a curse.’ He walked forward and deftly plucked Dallos’s cards from the man’s trembling hands. ‘You know the touch of the warp. This is what makes you valuable.’ He glanced at Zartine. ‘That, and one other attribute.’

  ‘We have all seen them,’ said Yao. ‘The… horrors.’

  ‘Every wounded man on this ship has,’ said the warrior. ‘Why else do you fear sleep? But that fear can be taken from you, in time.’

  Breng stood up, nodding to the drive console to show he had done all that he could. ‘Ready.’

  ‘The Navigators still live, safe in their isolation.’ The legionary pointed out toward the ship’s bow. ‘We will set a course. The Regent of Terra, Lord Malcador himself, has need of those aboard this ship. He prepares, and you will all be part of his design. You… and the children waiting below.’

  ‘How?’ I asked, even as the pressure of an answer built itself in my mind’s eye. ‘What good are broken soldiers and war orphans to the Sigillite?’

  ‘Your wounds will be healed. Those fit enough, young enough to bear the glory, may aspire to see their bodies remade, as I once did.’ He touched his chest. ‘You… we can be reborn in new purpose.’

  ‘But why us?’ asked Dallos, his hands knitting.

  ‘You know why,’ said the legionary, his gaze returning to me.

  I don’t know if the words that came next were from some place in my own thoughts, or if the Thousand Son made me speak them for him, but they were true and undeniable. ‘Horus has brought a new kind of war to the galaxy. Bolters and lasguns won’t be enough to end it. A different kind of weapon is needed.’

  ‘Aye.’ The great figure nodded gravely. ‘And those who do not perish in the tempering will be those weapons. You, and hundreds of others – lost child, common man and legionary alike, gathered in silence and secreted aboard ships like this one. Each soul in this room, aboard this vessel, has been declared dead. The lives you lived before this are as dust. Malcador has commanded this. So shall it be.’

  Zartine was pale. ‘Wh-where are we going?’

  The legionary strode up to the navigation controls and laid his great hands upon them. ‘A moon orbiting a ringed world, in the light of Great Sol itself. A place called Titan.’

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  James Swallow is best known for being the author of the Horus Heresy novels Fear to Tread and Nemesis, which both reached the New York Times bestseller lists, The Flight of the Eisenstein and a series of audio dramas featuring the character Nathaniel Garro. For Warhammer 40,000, he is best known for his four Blood Angels novels, the audio drama Heart of Rage, and his two Sisters of Battle novels. His short fiction has appeared in Legends of the Space Marines and Tales of Heresy.

  After escaping the treachery of Isstvan III aboard the Eisenstein, Nathaniel Garro has become a paragon of loyalty and protector of the innocent. Given new purpose and duty by Malcador the Sigillite, he fights at the head of a secretive order dedicated to the eradication of Chaos – the mysterious Knights Errant.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  First published in Great Britain in 2013 in The Imperial Truth anthology.

  This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS UK.

  All That Remains © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2013, 2015. All That Remains, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.

  All Rights Reserved.

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-78251-983-6

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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