Reborn - Nicholas Wolf Read online

  ‘The Emperor’s sons didn’t betray Him,’ I say slowly, unable to reconcile how preposterous the notion of a primarch turning traitor even sounds.

  The Dark Apostle inclines his horned head. ‘There were nine who embraced the truth of the Pantheon, human. Lorgar was the first, chosen by the Dark Gods to liberate humanity from the False Emperor’s lies.’

  It’s unfathomable. I remember the statue of the noble Guilliman in my village square, hearing the stories of steadfast Dorn from the local priest. I’ve celebrated Sanguinala since I was a boy. To even imagine nine dark parallels to these mighty heroes, cast in the horrific image of the Dark Apostle, makes me want to vomit.

  The wrongness, the defilement of such beauty…

  The demagogue is speaking again, demanding my attention merely by existing. ‘After Horus slew the Emperor, the Imperium’s corrupt hegemons needed a way to continue mankind’s enslavement, but how could they, small, petty men, compete with the living, breathing gods that had nurtured our species since we’d first stepped beyond our caves? They turned to the Lectitio Divinitatus, a book of worship forbidden by the Emperor Himself, to form the Imperial Cult, posthumously deifying the Emperor.’

  I hear hissing like a thorny worm wriggling in my ear. It hurts.

  ‘You said the Emperor… forbade His worship?’

  ‘We do not pretend to have known the Emperor well, but twice we shared His company during the Great Crusade, once on Monarchia, and once on Terra. He knew He was no god.’ He sounds almost… disappointed? ‘Powerful, yes, and captivating in an inescapable way, but the Emperor was nothing but a man, jealous of the strength of true divinity. That’s why He tried to hide the Pantheon from mankind.’

  The room spins. Cold sweat drenches me. I can’t speak. The whispers grow louder.

  ‘Your Emperor perished ten thousand years ago, human. Think of everything you suffered on Tarshish, every poor soul you watched die in His name – it was all so that cruel men could lord over the bones of a rotten empire just a little bit longer. Nothing more.’

  Cold horror floods my mind.

  Ripped-open bodies.

  Dying soldiers wailing for their mothers.

  The insane feeding on the living and the dead.

  Misha as I say goodbye, thinking I’m never coming home no matter how many times I promise her I will.

  Grudenov calmly informing me that the entire 224th is going to die on Tarshish.

  My hands clench into shuddering fists. It’s not possible. Even now, after the unspeakable things I’ve seen aboard this ship, it can’t all be for a lie.

  ‘You know that we speak the truth,’ the demagogue rumbles, loud enough to drown out my frantic breathing. ‘Think of how many times you prayed for the Emperor to save you, and what did you receive? A butcher ordered to shoot you in the back if you didn’t obediently die for your Imperial masters.’

  The moment swims to my buzzing mind: the click of Grudenov’s bolt pistol cocking at my back, the wet slurp of my bayonet ripping out of his chest, the whimper that escaped his lips.

  ‘I… just… wanted to go home,’ I hiss through clenched teeth.

  ‘Lies.’

  ‘Lies?’

  The heretic fixes me with his penetrating stare. I can feel my doubt, my insecurity, burning away. ‘You killed him because, in that moment, you finally realised how completely the Emperor had failed to save you from the horrors of the galaxy. And for the first time in your life you called out to something else for salvation.’

  ‘The Pantheon answered,’ I breathe.

  ‘We too had such a moment, ten thousand years ago, when we rejected the lies of the False Emperor, spat out His poison, and turned to the truth. For one brief, shining moment, Andrik, you were strong. Strong enough,’ he hisses, monstrous face cracking in a too-wide parody of assurance, ‘to see your son again.’

  He reads the dawning horror on my face and nods slowly. Patiently. ‘The Imperium has deceived billions, human, including the greatest of the Emperor’s own sons. Do not chastise yourself unduly, we were once deluded too.’

  His words are relief and agony, like having a rotten tooth ripped out. I’m confronting a lie I feel I’ve known ever since I set foot on Tarshish: I hadn’t been praying to some divine, righteous guardian; I’d been talking to myself because it made me feel safe, and I was afraid to die without seeing my son.

  It all makes the most sickening sense, and a bleak universe grows somehow bleaker.

  ‘Why me though?’ I ask, reluctantly voicing the splinter in my mind. ‘I’m nothing to somethi– er, someone like you.’

  His hideous face contorts in what might be amusement or something else entirely. ‘You truly wish to know?’

  I don’t, but some desperate part of me overwhelms my exhausted body. I nod.

  ‘Even our gene-forged mind is unable to count how many mortals we have killed across the Long War, and never once did the gods stay our hands,’ he intones. ‘But on Tarshish they did.’

  My mouth hangs open. The Dark Apostle seems vaguely amused.

  ‘The faint whispers you hear are but a fraction of what graces our ears,’ he says with no trace of arrogance, only a statement of fact. ‘Did you not wonder how we knew where to find you on Tarshish?’

  ‘I… I guess I hadn’t.’

  The towering demagogue fixes me with his burning gaze. ‘Though some call the Pantheon “Chaos” we believe it to be a misnomer, as it implies randomness and disorder. The gods do nothing idly. They led us to you so that you could fulfil a purpose.’

  ‘What purpose?’

  The Dark Apostle holds up a clawed finger. ‘When the time is right, Andrik. For now be content with our grace, and repay it by leading your men in battle against the Imperium that betrayed you.’

  I fall to my knees, pressing my head against the floor.

  ‘I swear it, my lord.’

  III

  They’re retreating. A few fools lay down desperate fire from the last remaining gun emplacements, but it’s an anaemic defence at best and a morose ceremony at worst.

  The Imperials of Corvan III were dead long ago, only now are they finally dying.

  ‘Advance! Let none survive!’ I snarl through my rebreather vox as the echo of artillery fades.

  The 224th charges from the ragged trench line beside me, pouring fire into the shell-shocked defenders as their courage finally breaks. Too late the Imperials try to scurry from burning trenches and overrun foxholes, trailing shredded entrails, dragging wailing comrades, floundering in the blood-soaked chem-snow with eardrums ruptured by shells and grenades and worse. A scant handful stand their ground. We kill them first.

  Hundreds of bodies jerk like marionettes as the 224th ruthlessly cuts them down, ending the fight in minutes. My lip curls as we slowly march through the frozen aftermath of the battlefield, prodding corpses, shooting anyone unfortunate enough to still cling to life.

  It’s getting easier.

  ‘It’s done,’ I say to my men as they finally gather to me. ‘You fought well. All of you.’

  ‘Did we?’

  I turn, although I already know the voice. How could I not, after all these years? ‘Speak plainly, Aleksandr.’

  I see the hesitation on his face, guiltily hidden behind a soldier’s scowl. I remember seeing it before, on Tarshish, when I’d stood over Grudenov’s corpse.

  ‘What did we accomplish here, captain?’ he asks. ‘These men. We cut off their reinforcements weeks ago, all their supplies. They probably had a commissar at their backs keeping their guns pointed at us, same as we had. And we slaughtered them.’

  I’m tempted to make a speech but as I look down at the dead boys at my feet, gaunt faces frozen in anguish, I can’t. I place a comforting hand on Aleksandr’s shoulder. ‘I understand how hard this has been, private. I didn’t want to believe
it either, but it’s the truth.’

  He shrugs me off. ‘How do you know it’s the truth, captain? How do you know we haven’t been tricked?’ His voice is raw with sudden anger. ‘Because that… thing told you?’

  For a moment the question takes me aback, because no one from the 224th has ever asked me before – not when I’d emerged from Lord Jarak’s chamber, not ever.

  But the eyes of my regiment are on me, and they’re asking now.

  Why do I trust Lord Jarak? Why did I kneel at his feet?

  How long had it been since I’d left the Dark Apostle’s sanctum? How long since I’d shared the horrific revelations with the 224th?

  It already felt like it had happened a lifetime ago, to a different person.

  Because I had been a different person. The Andrik Petrov I’d been before hadn’t died on Tarshish, he’d died aboard the Enduring Truth, prostrated before an ancient creature wiser than I can fathom.

  But that’s more than I can convey, right here, with all of the 224th watching me. ‘On Tarshish you trusted me, Aleksandr,’ I say firmly, loud enough for my voice to carry over my men. ‘I ask you to trust me now.’

  ‘Not all of us did.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The soldier shakes his head. ‘We didn’t have a choice. Sergei would’ve shot anyone who didn’t follow you, just like he murdered Mikhail.’

  My eyes flick to my trusted lieutenant, hunched over like a ghoul, knife drawn, staring hungrily at the dead. He turns from his grisly reverie at the sound of his name. His rebreather hides his face, but the rage in his eyes is unmistakable.

  I shake off a shudder that has nothing to do with the cold.

  ‘I didn’t order Sergei to kill anyone,’ I say slowly. ‘He would’ve done no such thing.’

  Aleksandr chuckles, as though mocking a bad joke. ‘At least Grudenov had the guts to execute people himself.’

  I slowly pull off my rebreather. The air reeks of boiling blood and scorched flesh, but I need them all to see my face. I need to end this.

  But Nikyta ends it for me. He lumbers up, swollen musculature bulging through his ripped uniform, covered in blood from another front line charge.

  ‘Regardless of what happened on Tarshish, Captain Petrov has led us and kept us alive,’ he calls over the 224th, his voice now a wet, canine growl. ‘I ask you, brothers, will you still follow him?’

  Assents and concurrences bubble up from the soldiery, snatched by the wind.

  ‘No.’

  I turn slowly, avoiding the inevitable a moment longer.

  Aleksandr looks at me with tears running down his face. ‘I followed you out of that bunker on Tarshish because it was the only way I stayed alive. But this…’ he says, gesturing to the thousands of corpses cooling at our feet. ‘I can’t do this any more.’

  A deep, deep sorrow settles in my chest, and I can’t help but think about his wife, his three children. I wonder how old they are now? How old my son is now?

  I sing a lullaby to my wife’s stomach, in hopes that one day he’ll recognise my voice.

  ‘I see. Does anyone else feel the same?’

  For a long moment no one moves. Then, by ones and twos, then by tens, hands start to rise.

  I sigh. It’s more than I’d hoped, but less than I’d feared. A hollow blessing. ‘Very well. Kill them.’

  Too late the doomed realise what they’ve done. They fight back against their brothers with las-bolts and bayonets, fists and feet, biting and thrashing and cursing and kicking, but they’re gravely outnumbered.

  Within moments it’s over, but for the wailing of the dying.

  I pull my old friend aside as the echo of the last las-bolt fades into the wind.

  ‘Sergei–’

  ‘Did you really think they were going to follow you back on Tarshish because of a speech?’ he snarls, cutting me off.

  ‘Did you threaten them?’

  ‘The only reason the 224th gives a damn what you have to say is because you killed Grudenov. Death is the only strength that matters,’ Sergei growls. ‘I figured you would’ve learned that by now.’

  ‘I’m not a tyrant,’ I snap, cutting him off. ‘And shooting an innocent man is not strength.’

  Sergei’s gaze hardens, his pupils contracting into points. ‘Mikhail would’ve killed you, you know.’

  I resist the urge to shake him, to scream at him, to hit him. ‘You don’t know that,’ I whisper, choking down my anger. ‘We’re not butchers, Sergei. We’re better than that.’

  My old friend pulls off his rebreather and cackles. There’s something strange about his mouth. It’s wider than it should be. Much wider.

  ‘You think yourself above this, do you?’ he sneers, spreading his arms to encompass the men we’ve just massacred.

  Misha smiles at me. She loves seeing me in my uniform. She thinks I look handsome. She tells me she hopes Nicolai has my blue eyes.

  ‘We have to be, damn it, otherwise we’re not better than the Imperium we left behind!’ I shoot back. ‘We have to be better. For Kelbra. For our families.’

  Sergei stares at me like he’s meeting me for the first time. I have the strangest sensation that I’m meeting him for the first time as well. ‘Why he chose you I’ll never know.’

  Before I can say anything else Sergei turns and stalks off across the battlefield.

  I know this isn’t over, but right now I have to deal with my men, who have just murdered their brothers. Some look physically disgusted, some look stoic, and some look ecstatic. All three bother me.

  ‘What we once were we are no longer,’ I announce aloud, feigning a surety I hope reaches my voice. ‘On Tarshish we forged our bonds of brotherhood in blood. So too have our new bonds been forged in blood. This is the law of the universe, the truth of the Pantheon.

  ‘We are the 224th Kelbran Janissaries no longer.’ I say it loud enough for every man to hear. ‘Today we are reborn!’

  Thousands of cheers, howls and war cries rise up from my Reborn.

  Beneath my jacket, beneath my skin, I feel something like worms writhing. My hand starts to ache.

  The whispers grow louder in my mind.

  IV

  I’m… changing.

  I gaze in wonder at my hand, examining every thorny knob of chitinous skin. I snap closed my huge fist: the joints crack like muffled gunshots.

  I remember when I first noticed the change. I’d been scratching at the scales pushing through my skin and my fingernails had fallen off. At some point my fingers had lengthened and hardened, the flesh peeling away to give birth to something new. My new arm began to bulge with pulsing muscle to accommodate the mutation. I tried cutting away my sleeve to make room, but eventually had to abandon my blue uniform jacket entirely as I swelled.

  At first I was horrified, but slowly the compulsion to hack off my arm and scrape off my skin faded.

  I am strong, stronger than I’ve ever been before.

  And my men are changing too.

  I have come to realise that time is meaningless within the warp, even less so within the stifling, perpetual gloom of the Enduring Truth. Sometimes I wake and my soldiers are as I remember them when I fell asleep. Sometimes I wake to faces twisted by jutting tusks or dotted with eyes, men I’d trained with on Kelbra transformed into hunched, snarling beasts.

  Once I dozed off talking to Anatoli Kivar, the 224th’s chief medic. I woke up next to a pile of screaming meat.

  There are millions of mortals crammed into the lower decks of the Enduring Truth, a thousand petty kingdoms ruled by a thousand petty warlords, ravenous for blood and plunder. We fight for food, for clothing, for trophies, for artefacts, for narcotics, and, for those who didn’t openly worship the Plague Father, medicae supplies. In the end, though, weapons are the only commodity that really matters, because with enou
gh weapons, and the blessing of the Dark Gods, you can have anything you want.

  I try to keep the Reborn together, as much as a warband here can be. Though we sealed a new pact in the spilling of fraternal blood I can still sense their sickness, their unease, their horror. I feel it too sometimes, the animal desire to turn from a burning light rather than stare into it.

  But time passes, and the pain of betrayal has become the anger we need to survive. As soon as we returned from Corvan III I led the Reborn in carving out a territory in a chemical sump near the plasma cores, forging a domain we called the Sanctum. We march to war time and again, each time growing stronger, even as many began to drift.

  And some have drifted further than others.

  Sergei strolls through an enormous bulkhead into the Sanctum, a cohort of his fiercest lackeys sauntering behind him.

  ‘Andrik?’ he bellows, rasping voice echoing through the cavernous chamber. ‘Andrik, my old friend, where are you?’

  I sigh. ‘Bring him to me,’ I command wearily. Kiril, one of my honour guard, grunts and obeys.

  My old lieutenant, my old friend, has changed as much as the rest. His left arm has mutated into a wriggling, barbed tentacle, and his face has taken on the leering image of a rodent. The Holy Octed is carved into his forehead, matching countless runes gouged in his leathery skin. Blades jut from sheathes cut into his flesh. Rotted fetishes hang from rusted chains.

  Some had taken time to adjust to life on the Enduring Truth. Not Sergei: he’d seemed unabashedly thrilled, as though he’d been waiting for an opportunity to shrug off the trappings of decency and immerse himself in the violence of the mortal decks.

  And immerse himself he did.

  I still remember when I understood I was truly losing him, after Corvan III. We’d just finished carving out our refuge, and I’d realised I couldn’t find Sergei. At first I thought maybe he’d fallen in the fighting and I hadn’t seen it happen. Then, when I couldn’t find his body, I thought maybe he’d been carried off by one of the myriad horrors that haunted the shadows of the Enduring Truth. Then I’d asked the sentries, and they said he’d left.

  He’d returned some time later, drenched in clotted blood, hands and ears and tongues dangling from his belt.