Spear of the Emperor - Aaron Dembski-Bowden Read online

  ‘Hear me out first,’ argued Brêac.

  ‘My brother, the decision is already made. I am not here to listen to you, I am here so you may listen to me.’

  The Spear lord spoke through gritted teeth. ‘But we can draw our defences away from Nemeton, and–’

  The Warlord cleared his throat. That was all it took to silence the respected and mighty Lord of the Third Warhost. It was done without anger, with visible sympathy, and all eyes returned to Ekene’s scarred face. The Warlord spoke his next words with measured gravity, knowing the true weight of them better than any other soul present.

  ‘Brêac, my brother. Your loyalty breeds an ache in my chest, and I love you for it. But I will not have Nemeton and half the Veil put at risk for the chance we can hold Elysium. Even if we hold it, what will be left of the Armada?’

  Silence. Not absolute silence, for all across the bridge armour still hummed and joints still purred and robes still rustled. But it was as close to silence as a thousand men and women can come.

  ‘What are you saying?’ asked Brêac.

  ‘I am saying nothing you do not already know in your heart.’ Ekene nodded to the slowly turning world composed of trembling light. ‘Elysium has always lain within the Exilarchy’s reach. We knew this day would come. Now is the time for us to face reality, not cling to our rage.’

  ‘No.’ Morcant stared wide-eyed at his Warlord, helpless in his denial. ‘No. The Armada will crush whatever is coming. We. Can. Hold.’

  Ekene was braced for this. ‘Elysium cannot be defended, Morcant of the Arakanii. And more importantly, I will not let you try.’

  ‘You coward,’ the battleguard snapped. ‘You dare give in like this? We can protect you!’

  Ekene met this fury with fire in his eyes and serenity on his lips. ‘This is not about you, my brother. It is not about what you can or cannot do. It is about the Veil. Elysium is one world. Just one world. I will not sacrifice twenty planets and vast reaches of territory for a single world. Not even the world of my birth.’

  Throughout the chamber, Spears warriors were turning to their Lions brethren. Brêac let out a slow breath.

  ‘Ekene…’

  The Warlord raised a hand to forestall yet more prideful protests. ‘Brêac, please. You and your Spears have bled in rivers, shouldering the burdens of three Chapters these last decades. You are not seeing this with a tactician’s clarity. Instead, you see it as a loyal brother, all heart and no rationality. You see this as your failure, do you not? If Elysium falls, the Spears have failed, after all this time, to protect their wounded brothers.’

  Brêac said nothing. The truth was etched, damningly clear, across his face.

  ‘That is noble of you,’ Ekene said. ‘Noble and worthy and every Lion thanks you for it. But we are not children, to be protected from all harm. Death is coming with the Storm Tide. This much we know. Now is the time to plan for what will come, and not mourn what we wish would be.’

  Brêac tried one last time. ‘Zvarin,’ he appealed to the Black Templar at Ekene’s side.

  ‘The decision is made,’ the old knight said at once. ‘Though I commend you for your loyalty and zeal, Spear. I expected nothing less from you.’

  ‘He warned me,’ Ekene said with a half-smile, ‘that you would be difficult to convince. As if I could not have guessed, myself.’

  With those words, a hush descended on the command deck once more. Ekene took advantage of it.

  ‘We will gather as much of the Armada as we can spare without ceding territory to the Exilarchy. No current campaigns will be abandoned. No worlds will be left undefended.’

  ‘This is the death of your Chapter,’ Brêac said at last.

  ‘That may be true,’ Ekene admitted. ‘But there is hope yet.’

  ‘Hope?’ Morcant narrowed his eyes. ‘Why gather any of the Armada if you don’t intend to fight for Elysium?’

  Amadeus grasped it before anyone else.

  ‘Evacuation.’ With the single word, all eyes settled on my master.

  ‘As the Mentor says,’ Ekene confirmed. ‘We will evacuate as much of the population as we are able in the time that remains. We cannot defend our world, but we may be able to preserve some of our culture.’

  Evacuating a city is a process of infinite complexity and punishing slowness. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and seen it fail as often as I’ve seen it attempted. Evacuating a whole world is a feat of supreme effort that defies words. Truthfully, it simply can’t be done. Ekene and his Lions knew that, and I knew what they really meant. Their civilisation was doomed, but their culture might yet survive in bands of refugees. Crucially for the Chapter, future generations of children might survive to become Lions.

  Hope is often a slender thread, but that never stops anyone reaching for it.

  Ekene looked to Brêac, for the first time seeming reserved. ‘If we save enough of our people, there are worlds elsewhere… Worlds that lie deeper in the Veil. Places we might settle.’

  ‘Nemeton,’ said Brêac.

  ‘That would create significant tensions,’ Ekene said ­guardedly, ‘and no few difficulties with the population displace­ment. But if there were enough land…’

  ‘Bring them to Nemeton.’ Brêac was adamant.

  ‘We have considered it,’ the Warlord admitted. ‘I am drafting a petition to offer the High King. If the Swordbearer allows it, it is a tempting possibility.’

  ‘Arucatas won’t refuse you.’

  ‘Your confidence girds me, my brother. May I ask, will the Hex sail to Elysium? Will you protect the evacuation convoys?’

  Brêac offered his hand. ‘You insult us by even asking, Ekene. We’ll sail at once.’

  Ekene grinned and took the offered hand.

  Then his head rolled forward, and his body toppled back.

  5

  If you’re reading these words and have never seen a Space Marine in the flesh, I hope my efforts so far have managed to capture some of the unreal speed with which they move in battle. If you’re reading these words and you are one of the Adeptus Astartes, then try to contextualise the speed with which the rest of us act and react to the world.

  I used the word unreal, and it’s the best match for what they do. Over a hundred of them stood together in the command deck that day; a hundred transhuman warriors with preternatural reflexes and cognitive senses that processed information faster than unaltered biology allowed.

  When I relate this now, it’s with the clarity of hindsight, analysis and data-spooled memories. When it happened then, it took place in the time it takes to blink. All that transhuman speed and power meant absolutely nothing.

  6

  Ekene’s head tumbled from his shoulders and his headless body began to fall. The Warlord’s blood flecked Brêac’s armour and dappled across his face.

  Warriors tore weapons free from holsters and scabbards. Lions and Spears roared in the same breath. I screamed something that may have been a useless denial or an equally worthless warning. I know I shouted Kartash’s name more than once.

  None of it mattered. Shock had stolen the first second from all of us, and the first second was the only one that counted.

  A chorus of explosives detonated around the central dais, blasting meat and bionics and bloody bones in every direction. A servitor’s iron claw crashed and skidded along the deck scarcely a yard from my foot, while around the dais smoke poured up from the grated flooring: a platoon’s worth of gas grenades, ruining any hope of seeing clearly.

  But I’d seen the sword that cleaved the Warlord’s head from his shoulders. I knew it by memory and from my recurring dreams. There was no chance I could forget that blade of circuit-laden xenos-iron, the colour of jade.

  7

  The machinery that serves as my memory shows everything in excruciating detail, pict by pict, frame by frame, and ev
en in these perfect recollections Ekene’s assassin is a ghost. One moment she is there. The next, she is gone.

  Poison gas whirled around the central platform, thick as exhaust smoke in a tank bay. The warriors slammed helms over their heads, insulating themselves from the toxins. Such was the speed of all this that Ekene’s headless body hadn’t yet tumbled back. If I freeze my recollections, I can track the black smears of the murderess’ silhouette as she plunged into the smoke. When I let the scene play out as it did on that distant day, everything is reduced to gas and mist and the roaring voices of warriors ­unable to believe the evidence of their eyes.

  She was fast, faster than any living being or robotic invention I’d ever seen. Witch-fast. Nightmare-fast. Bolters kicked and roared, firing into the smoke. More than one human crew member died in the assassin’s place that day.

  Intrusion protocols took hold. Doors sealed, room by room, hall by hall, deck by deck. Castigation-teams, the Armada’s naval soldiers, deployed from their barracks across the ship, closing in around the bridge. War-horns howled down the Hex’s great corridors, a call to hunt and fight in an hour of direst need.

  Later, we would learn that the assassin had lain in wait in the high rafters, her body contorted and her joints dislocated in order to stay hidden from view below.

  Later, we would learn that she had been accosting command deck servitors for months, forcing dozens of the mindless cyborgs to ingest toxin grenades and smoke incendiaries. The lobotomised slaves’ stunted digestive tracts were unable to excrete the explosives, which locked inside the abdominal cavity and lay dormant, waiting for the signal to explode. When the assassin downed her prey and sought to sow confusion, she triggered the detonations, many of which were in the guts of servitors slumbering beneath the grated floor. Smoke and poison gas steamed from the burst-open bodies, adding hallucinogens to the anger and confusion.

  Later, we would learn everything. But what use was the knowledge by then? The deed was done and everything was fated to change.

  They blamed us, of course. And why wouldn’t they? We were the outsiders there.

  A ceramite fist closed around my throat and lifted me from the ground. I felt my spine crackle from the pressure, and gasped for breath as I looked into the eyes of an enraged Lion. His armour was polished to such a sheen that I could see my flailing struggles reflected in his golden ceramite.

  ‘I have the False Scorpion’s slave!’ he called out. I don’t know if any of his brethren heard him in the press of screaming humans and armoured bodies. He dragged me away with no effort at all, ignoring the crash of my bionic claw-foot scraping against his plating like an industrial talon.

  Lions and Spears alike were convulsing around us. A high-pitched screech, sickly undulating, made the insides of my ears throb fit to rupture. Covering my ears did nothing to ward my senses against that sound. The precious slivers of air I fought into my lungs tasted of acrid chemicals. Either I would die of asphyxiation in this warrior’s grip or I would die of the poisonous gas.

  ‘You will pay for this,’ the Lion snarled at me.

  It wasn’t us! I lacked the breath to plead my case, all I could do was cry the words inside my mind. It wasn’t me! In a moment of inspiration, I tried to signal my denial in Codex-standard battle-sign. He ignored the movement of my hand and the message I was trying to impart. He saw I carried no weapon, and paid no further heed.

  I had no idea where he was dragging me. I couldn’t see anything through the smoke – nothing but the huge forms of Adeptus Astartes warriors swinging blades or falling to the deck, clutching at their heads. Whatever that pulsing screech was, it was slowing the Spears and Lions down to the level of mere mortals.

  My eyes were on fire. The mist was getting into them, whatever that gas and smoke really were. My augmetic eye stung behind the eye socket where the bionics met biology. My real eye gushed with what I hoped were tears and what I feared was blood.

  The Lion holding me saw my master in the same moment I did. Amadeus charged from the smoke, his eye-lenses glowing, his fist cannoning into my captor’s helmeted head. His armour joints barked in mechanical protest as he pounded his fist another three times into the Lion’s faceplate, cracking it on the last blow and sending the warrior down to the deck.

  ‘Traitor!’ the Lion bellowed.

  ‘Fool,’ Amadeus grunted back. He didn’t waste time arguing or pleading our innocence; he dragged me by the wrist, moving at a lope that required me to maintain a dead sprint to keep up with him. My chest was tightening. My lungs were rocks in my ribcage. What little I was managing to breathe in was probably poison.

  ‘Master!’ He was just an impression ahead of me now. Just a smear of movement in my dying sight. I stumbled, and he dragged me another ten yards before snarling a curse back at me.

  ‘Run, damn you!’

  ‘I can’t see! Amadeus, I can’t breathe!’

  He lifted me. It was like being in the cold embrace of a lifter-Sentinel, crushed against his armour plating like that.

  ‘Hold your breath. Keep your eyes closed.’

  I did.

  He ran.

  As his boots hammered on the deck I thought, just for a moment, that we would actually make it.

  I don’t know who brought Amadeus to the ground, only that it was several armoured bodies raising a storm of sound. He held on to me until I was pulled from his arms. He struggled until he was subdued. He swore his innocence until they levelled a boltgun at his face. I didn’t see it, but I heard its stock crunch against the bearer’s shoulder as he drew aim.

  ‘Enough.’ I recognised Brêac’s voice. ‘Enough. It’s over, Amadeus.’

  By the time my sight returned, we were in a cell.

  XXIII

  THE BROKEN MAN’S PROMISES

  1

  Nar Kezar watched us with a knowing smile. Even in captivity and stripped of his armour, he looked like a prince. The Spears had foregone shackles, letting him roam his sparse cell with impunity. He was caged by iron and energy fields, but he was held prisoner by the two Spears in full battle armour at the front of his chamber. There was no use in him using his acidic saliva to escape through the floor or the walls when he would be immediately executed for trying. Every minute of his life, he was watched by warriors that ached for a reason to pull their triggers.

  Yet he was handsome and composed as he watched us from across the corridor, in the cell opposite ours. Nude but for a loincloth, he displayed a host of scarification across his body in a runic script I didn’t recognise. It made my eyes water just glancing at them. He sat in a meditative pose, legs crossed, watching us through the two flickering energy fields that separated us.

  ‘How did you upset our hosts?’ he asked, casual and kind. ‘I trust they finally grew tired of looking at the colours on your armour?’

  Amadeus had been disarmed but still wore his war-plate. He hadn’t responded to any of Nar Kezar’s conversational gambits, and this was far from the first that the prisoner had tried.

  ‘Say nothing to him,’ my master told me, ‘and heed nothing he says to you. His words represent a moral threat.’

  The moral threat kept watching us, seemingly amused by our disregard as much as he was enjoying our presence.

  ‘Let me tell you a story of the Spears’ hypocrisy…’ Nar Kezar began. My master’s head snapped towards the closest of our captors.

  ‘Will you please shoot him?’

  The Spear showed his teeth in a brutal smile. The tattoo on his face was a flair of jagged runes that looked almost carved across his cheeks. On his belt, mag-locked to the ceramite, was a white helm – uncrested but marked with a red trident painted down over the faceplate. He was a Paragon, one of the elite First Company.

  ‘Nothing I’d love more,’ the Paragon replied. ‘Sadly, I don’t take orders from you, False Scorpion.’

  Nar Kezar lau
ghed. The sound was irritatingly musical. ‘False Scorpion! I like that. How quaint that is.’

  Amadeus remained in the centre of the cell, standing tall, almost robotic in his conservation of movement. There was no escape worth pursuing, so he simply wouldn’t pursue it. We were innocent, after all. I was certain the Spears would see that.

  ‘I should have believed you, Anuradha. About the sword in Kartash’s hands. About Kartash himself.’

  I look over at him from where I sat with my back to the wall. My eyes were still raw, but at least I could see again. The Paragon, Connath, had given me a cleansing tonic that I was still blinking from my human eye.

  ‘I barely believed myself most of the time, master.’ And true enough, I’d never felt any anger at his refusal to heed me. I decided to spare him the acute embarrassment of his confession. Let it not be said that I wasn’t generous when the time was right. ‘My inner ears are still pulsing. What was that screeching?’

  He grunted and the awkwardness faded. We were back on safe ground now.

  ‘The assassin was using a neural shredder. You were fortunate to be so far removed from the central platform, else you would be dead. It incapacitated several of the Spears. They may already be slain. A weapon like that is anything but merciful.’

  In the quiet that grew after his words, I risked a moment of optimism. It was tempting to think Brêac and Ducarius would believe we had nothing to do with the Warlord’s murder, but the evidence wasn’t in our favour. Would the stern-faced Templar Castellan consider us innocent? Would Morcant? We had come into their realm as strangers, gained enough of their trust to meet the Warlord of the Adeptus Vaelarii, only for the man to be assassinated.

  ‘They may not blame us, master.’ I tried denial, to see if it felt convincing. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t.

  ‘You think they will see us as blameless, then? You think they will believe we were naïve to the murderer in our midst?’

  ‘They may not realise it was Kartash.’

  I was reaching now. I’d told anyone who would listen about the sword I’d seen in my hours of apparent delirium after the Geller Field’s collapse. Any Spear that had seen Ekene die would have caught a split-second sight of the necron phase blade that cleaved their Warlord’s head clear.