The Omnibus - John French Read online

  ‘I have an honour for you, Horkos.’ Red steam breathed from funnels on Gzrel’s back in time with his words.

  ‘My lord,’ said Ahriman, looking at the deck. Once armies had bowed to him, and primarchs had heeded his word. But that was a past he had broken with his own hand. Now he was nothing more than a shadow cast by the light of his memory. So Ahriman, once Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons, answered to a false name and knelt to an unworthy lord.

  ‘See,’ said Gzrel, and Ahriman could tell that the lord was gesturing to his other sorcerers. ‘So submissive, so pliant to the hand.’ Ahriman could see the bladed tips of Gzrel’s fingers flexing on the edge of his sight. ‘I could not bend you to meekness so easily, could I, Maroth?’

  ‘Not so easily, my lord,’ purred Maroth. Gzrel chuckled.

  Maroth means to kill him, thought Ahriman. Not now, but soon, he plans to take Gzrel’s life and then his throne. Ahriman could read the soothsayer’s intent as if he had shouted it to the chamber. None of the other sorcerers seemed to notice. Had Maroth already turned them, or could they simply not see what Ahriman could?

  ‘But not you, Horkos. You take what falls from my hand and lick my fingers.’ Gzrel paused, and raised Ahriman’s chin with a bladed digit. ‘Do you think your meekness pleases me? I thought you might rise to better, but no. You are a whipped dog among wolves, Horkos.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’ Ahriman did not meet Gzrel’s eyes. He would have to flee soon. There would be no place for him under Maroth’s rule, except as a skull hanging from a champion’s armour. Once he could have stopped Maroth, could have taken the Harrowing from Gzrel and taught them the limits of their knowledge. It would be a simple matter for Ahriman. But he was not Ahriman. He was Horkos: the penitent, the exile. He would have to flee and find another place to shelter. He was not even sure if he could wield the powers that had once been as much a part of him as his own flesh. It was as if a portion of his soul had shrunk to a wasted shell.

  Perhaps that is why they do not see me for what I am, thought Ahriman. He had not used his powers to their full extent for many years, lifetimes to some; at first it had been a denial, but now he wondered if they had died as the memory of Ahriman died. He could still feel and touch the warp, but it was an ember remaining as the sign of a smothered blaze. They do not see transcendent power because it is not there. The shell of my weakness hides my past; they see only a half-broken creature and do not ask what it once was.

  ‘Yet, I keep you,’ said Gzrel. ‘Why do I keep you, Horkos?’

  ‘For my service, lord,’ replied Ahriman. He could smell the offal and iron reek that gathered around his lord.

  ‘For your service,’ repeated Gzrel carefully. ‘And now I give you the honour of paying me with that coin. We have prey, and you are to help me take it.’ Gzrel paused. ‘You will be part of the opening assault. You will join Karoz’s pack in the first wave.’

  Ahriman thought of Karoz, of the Harrowing champion chained in one of Maroth’s cells, mewling to himself, unable to remove his armour. Maroth had seeded something in Karoz’s soul, something that was eating him from within. Ahriman glanced at Maroth. The soothsayer smiled back.

  My fate is to die in this battle, thought Ahriman.

  ‘A great honour,’ said Maroth. The soothsayer’s aura was red with malice in Ahriman’s eyes.

  ‘Thank you, my lord.’

  Gzrel let go of Ahriman’s chin.

  ‘I give this honour to you, Horkos. Repay my kindness well.’ Gzrel turned and walked away through the parting ranks of slaves and the clamour of the Harrowing readying for war.

  ‘I will, my lord,’ said Ahriman, but no one was there to hear.

  ‘We have to find her. We owe her that. Our oaths still stand.’ Astraeos looked at each of his brothers in turn. They stood in a loose circle at a junction of five passages close to the Titan Child’s engine decks. The light was so scarce Astraeos’s eyes saw the three warriors as monochrome statues, their bronze armour reduced to grey, the lines and scars of their faces valleys of shadow. They stared back, their eyes moon-white discs of light. Kadin shook his head, and looked away. Thidias kept his face impassive. Cadar looked like he was stopping himself from saying something. Astraeos noticed Thidias’s hand move to brush the scarred ceramite where the aquila had once spread its wings across his chest.

  Break one oath and the rest crumble, thought Astraeos. He remembered Hadar, the old Chaplain, speaking those words. ‘The hearts of warriors hold as one,’ he had said, ‘or they break one splinter at a time.’ The Chaplain had died in the fires of treachery a year later.

  They are lost, thought Astraeos as he stared at the last of his Chapter. And I am no Chaplain. I do not know how to lead them out of the dark. He opened his mouth to speak, but the deck heaved, and the metal walls rang like a struck bell. Rust fell from the ceiling, spicing the air with a gritty iron tang.

  ‘The witch has finally killed us,’ snarled Kadin.

  ‘Another hit, lower port towards the bow,’ said Cadar. Thidias nodded.

  ‘Low yield. Whoever it is, they are just testing, seeing if we are as dead as we seem.’ Thidias paused. ‘They will board the ship to take it.’

  They all looked back to Astraeos.

  They look to me, he thought, but I have no answers. Inside he muttered his own curse on Carmenta. The tech-witch must have left the bridge after they exited the warp. She had left them defenceless, floating in the void on the edge of an unknown star system. After the first strike he had tried to reach her. Static had filled the vox, and when he reached into the warp, a wind that had seemed to laugh had been his only answer. Kadin was right, she had killed them, but she still held their oaths.

  ‘We make for the bridge,’ said Astraeos. ‘If the mistress is still alive, that is where she will go.’ He clamped his helmet over his head, and his eyes lit with the familiar glow of tactical and environmental data. He reached over his shoulder and drew his sword. The crystal at the blade’s core sang in his mind at the touch. For a second he felt a deep, familiar stillness as he connected with the blade. This remains true at least, he thought.

  ‘And if whoever is out there targets the bridge as a beachhead?’ asked Cadar. Astraeos looked at them again. They all had their weapons drawn, bolters held loose in their hands, the blunt snouts of their helmets hiding their faces. For a second, it was possible to remember what they had all once been.

  ‘Then we die with one oath unbroken, brother.’

  Thirty of the Harrowing filled the boarding torpedo’s cramped compartment. Ahriman could smell a reek of rotten meat and sweat. He checked the fill of his boltgun and clamped it to his thigh. He looked up. Locked to the walls by snaking cables, the Harrowing stared back at him with glowing eyes. Fresh-spilled blood glistened on the armour of some, tar-black in the pulsing red light. At the far end of the compartment, hunched slave beasts growled and tugged at their iron collars and chains. Larger than a Space Marine, each of the beasts had once been one of the Harrowing’s slaves before mutation had twisted their bodies. Maroth’s cruelty had wrought further changes. Jagged tattoos crawled over their sweat-slick skin, and Ahriman thought he could see their muscles and bones changing shape even as he looked at them. Their presence made him want to put a bolt shell into each of them.

  The metal frame of the torpedo creaked. Ahriman could hear the rattle of chains lifting them into the launching breech. The torpedo rang like a gong as the breech closed behind them. He wondered whether they would survive the brief run through the void to the target. For a second he could feel the answer opening in his mind, like something glimpsed through a crack in a closed door. Then he slammed it shut with a snarl of will. All the predictions of the past, all the lore he had learned, had been a lie which brought him nothing but ashes.

  Ahriman blinked. He had felt something shift in the warp around him, something vast, like a shark gliding through dark water. He realised he was shivering inside his armour. Suddenly he wanted to be out of the cl
ose, red-lit space of the boarding torpedo. He looked around at the rest of the Harrowing. They were still, frozen in mid-movement. He felt a chill spread across his skin. The warp was screaming around him, roaring and churning like a cyclone. Frost was spreading across the compartment. Karoz was staring at him, his eyepieces glowing blue in his horned helm. The Harrowing warrior was pushing against his restraints, hands clenching and unclenching on the grip of a chainglaive. Runnels of thick, blood-spotted mucus seeped from the snout of his helm.

  +Ahriman.+ The voice was distant, like a shout echoing down a cave to its lightless depths. Ahriman felt cold. He could not move. Silence filled the inside of the torpedo. The pulsing red light had frozen. Every one of the Harrowing was utterly still, all except Karoz.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked, and regretted the question as soon as he had spoken.

  Something chuckled with Karoz’s voice inside his mind. Ahriman could feel his heart rate rising uncontrollably.

  +Fate, Ahriman,+ said the distant voice. The light in Karoz’s eyes was the blue of a new-born sun. +I am fate come round at last.+

  Then, total darkness and the weightless sensation of gliding through the void.

  The boarding torpedo hit the Titan Child close to its spine. The melta-charge at its tip fired, turning armour to slag just before impact. The torpedo hit the molten hole and rammed through the outer hull and into the ship’s guts. Ahriman’s vision swam for a second as his ears filled with the shriek of shearing metal.

  I am fate come round at last. The words sounded again and again in his mind. The sound stopped, and he braced himself against the snake-like restraints. Assault doors unfolded at the torpedo’s tip like an iron flower. Smoke flooded into the compartment as the restraints whipped back into the walls. The mutants moved first, ripping free in a shower of chain links. They sprinted away, clawed feet shaking the deck as they ran. Karoz and his pack followed. The growl of revving chainblades filled the air. Ahriman paused, trying to calm his mind, then followed.

  A chamber spread out before his eyes. He could see vast drums wound with chains extending to the ceiling far above. The torpedo had punctured one of the chamber’s walls, flinging the semi-molten remains of the ship’s hull across the floor. Fires burned amongst hummocks of wreckage. There were corpses, too: servitors scrabbling on broken mechanical legs.

  The Harrowing pack was moving ahead of him, firing into the smoke. Ahriman followed, his bolter covering angles in precise arcs. He forced his mind into a pattern of calm and extended his senses through the warp. As ever, the once so easy act made him feel sick. He allowed his mind to flow down ducts and passages, like a light reaching out into the darkness, building an image of the ship around him. The boarding torpedo had struck true; they were close to the bridge, as intended. Others had struck further down the hull, spilling the rest of the first wave into the deeper spaces of the ship. He pulled his attention back to his immediate surroundings.

  +Horkos,+ Maroth’s thoughts breathed into Ahriman’s. +Our lord wishes to know your cadre’s disposition.+

  +Beachhead achieved three decks below the bridge. No significant resistance at present, but likely to increase closer to target.+

  +Advance.+

  Ahriman paused, his mind unsure of what it had just heard. For a moment while Maroth had spoken, he had thought he had heard another voice whisper in his thoughts. For a moment, he thought it had told him to turn back.

  +Horkos!+ The thought shouted into his mind.

  +It will be done,+ replied Ahriman. A crude thought form of contempt and disgust was Maroth’s only reply.

  Ahriman did not give the order to the warriors with him; they were already scrambling over debris towards half-glimpsed doorways. He remembered the mind whisper telling him to turn back. Ahriman shook his head and ran after the howls of the pack.

  Carmenta stopped running. The beast turned its head towards her. Its shoulders bunched and she saw muscle gather across the ribs of its torso. The doors to the bridge waited in the distance, at the far end of the half-kilometre-long antechamber. She had been running towards the doors when the beast had walked out in front of her. It had paced slowly into the centre of the chamber, broken chains rattling behind it.

  Where its face should have been, a blank plate of metal stared at her. A spiked iron collar circled its neck. It straightened to twice her height. Tattoos writhed across its body, changing shape and colour. Her vision pixellated as she looked at the patterns. The beast’s body began to quiver. Carmenta thought that it looked as if it were trying to scream.

  It brought a shaking limb up to its masked face. Its hand opened with a clatter of sharp edges. Slowly, almost delicately, it pulled its clawed fingers down its faceplate. Deep scratches wept blood. Carmenta glanced behind her. She could see other figures sprinting down the wide passage towards them. Guttural howls filled the air as gunfire lit the long chamber. Explosions blossomed on the deck by her feet. She felt shrapnel patter off the metal of her limbs.

  She looked back at the beast. In her mind, something changed. She felt suddenly calm, rational, as if the panic of before had belonged to another person. This was it. It was over, finally. She would not reach the bridge. She heard a cry inside her to keep running, to reach her ship, to reach her child. Part of her was screaming at herself, cursing herself for weakness, but she remained still. It was as if the panicked need to reunite with the ship belonged to someone else, as if a door in her mind had closed on the voice of another mind trapped within. Listening to the shouts inside half of her skull, she felt relief that it was all over, that she would be free of the Titan Child at last.

  The beast charged. It made no sound, but she imagined it howling as its steps sang on the metal floor.

  You have killed us, said a voice in her head. She felt her arms trembling. She could feel something within her willing her feet to run. She held still. You have killed us both, screamed the voice.

  No, she thought to herself. I will be free now. She drew a breath to speak. Her voice was one of the few things she had never wanted replaced by machine components. Her father had said she had a beautiful voice. It was the only thing she could remember him saying.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to the beast as it charged to meet her.

  Lightning struck the beast as it reached for Carmenta. It touched the tips of the beast’s fingers and leapt up its arm. The beast stumbled, caged in jagged lines so bright that Carmenta’s eyes had to dim to near blackness. Its skin blistered and peeled. Its metal mask glowed, flesh cooking around its edge. It swung its arms as if trying to swat away a swarm of stinging insects. Three explosive shells hit it at the same moment and pulled the muscle from its torso. The next volley hammered through its faceplate and turned its head to bone splinters and red vapour. It collapsed, its muscles shivering to stillness as its blood spread.

  She looked to her side where a passage mouth opened. Astraeos was striding towards her, his three brothers following in his wake. Glowing cables and crystal nodes haloed his face. Frost covered the shoulders of his armour and ran down his arm to the tip of his sword. His brothers were still firing, hammering volleys into figures approaching across the chamber. She could see fatigue on his blunt face, and the drop of blood crusting at the corner of his mouth. He was muttering. A veil of cold light shimmered in front of him. Beside Astraeos, his brothers had locked into firing postures, lacing the approach with bolter fire.

  ‘Go,’ called Astraeos. Fatigue and effort edged his voice. She looked to him; his eyes remained on the spectral veil of energy at the tip of his sword and the closing shapes beyond.

  She thought of his face when she had first seen it: coated in ice, the aura of the stasis field leaching all colour from his skin. It had been an impulse to take the survivors from the wreck of their ship, and a risk to release them. They could have tried to take the ship from her, but Astraeos and his three brothers had rewarded her whim with an oath. She never asked what doom they fled from, and they had kept their oath. In
all her life, it was one of the few promises to her that remained unbroken.

  ‘Go,’ shouted Astraeos again. ‘There are others coming. I can sense them getting closer. If you cannot do something, then there is no way out of this.’

  She felt her mouth open to say that it was over, that there was no way back. Then her vision fizzed with static and a screaming wave of panic flooded her mind.

  I cannot fail, she thought. I will not let us die. Not now. Somewhere behind the rolling wave of emotion, another voice cried in denied anger. She did not listen to it. She began to run towards the bridge.

  Something struck Ahriman’s shoulder and exploded. He was falling, his head filled with a high-pitched whine. His armour rang as he hit the floor. The helmet systems cut out, leaving him in darkness with the sound of his own breath. He could feel blood, thick and sticky, rolling down the inside of his right arm. Sound crackled in his ear and the noise of the battle returned. Somewhere close to him, Karoz was howling. There was another burst of fire, a familiar sound of a serrated stream of detonations.

  Bolt-rounds. Ahriman extended his mind and felt the psyches of their attackers burning like an iron-shackled sun. Space Marines, he thought. Not the Harrowing, but the minds of true Space Marines. Maroth has his wish; I will die here.

  And why not let it end here? He had fled and hidden, falling into darkness for a lifetime since his banishment, and for what? He had nothing beside the dust of his ideals and the shell of his life. He should have let himself fade to nothing long before now.