Apocalypse - Josh Reynolds Read online

  It dragged him forward, and slammed him back, hard enough to daze him. His half-melted blade slipped from his grasp as the thing tightened its grip on his throat. His armour cracked, and he felt his bones do the same.

  ‘Be gentle with him.’ The voice was harsh. Inhuman. A bulky shape stepped into view. Spiros recognised the enemy commander. The traitor’s tattooed features split in a ghastly smile.

  ‘I need him in one piece.’

  Almace, Primaris-grade cardinal world

  The hunt was all.

  Torag sang softly to himself as his Stormtalon banked, assault cannons painting the sky in the colours of death. He hunted the enemy through fields of fire, stalking them with a persistence that he’d been told reminded his brothers of the berkut – the hunting eagle. Torag found the comparison flattering, if a bit obvious. He flew, so he was an eagle.

  The gunship was not an eagle, but a hare. It was called Red Hare, after the beast of legend. Its machine-spirit murmured softly, pleased to be stretching its engines. It enjoyed the hunt as much as he. More, perhaps.

  Together, they had hunted on many worlds, through many skies. Skies thick with toxic clouds and through floating forests of airborne algae. Skies full of hungry predators. And always he had been successful. Always, he had proven the superior hunter to his foes. This time would be no different.

  With the orbital strikes concluded, the enemy had begun to land troops on the surface. Drop-ships and troop carriers of all patterns and sizes fell slowly through the burning atmosphere, making for the few landing zones left to them. Torag and his hunters had been tasked with clipping the wings of as many of them as possible.

  Below him, the city cried out in anger. It lashed out at the invaders, tearing at the sky. Streamers of anti-aircraft fire followed him upwards, punching targets from the air. He stroked the controls and the Stormtalon rolled gently aside as a broken hulk plummeted groundwards, its ruptured hull venting smoke. He caught the thermals of its passing and rode them upwards, letting his assault cannons herald his coming.

  ‘Easy meat,’ he muttered. Drop-ships fired at him, but their guns were bulky and slow, meant for clearing landing zones rather than trading fire with aerial opponents. Red Hare rolled, thrusters burning. He tapped the trigger-rune.

  His display showed his fellow hunters, above and below him, spreading out around him like the wings of an eagle. A traditional formation, once used by the nomadic horsemen of Chogoris, now employed by their descendants. Sometimes he wondered what they would think of their sons now, those wild riders. Would their hearts swell with pride, as they saw what the Khan-of-Khans had made of them? Or would they shake their heads in dismay at all the traditions left trampled in the dust? Maybe both.

  He took the Stormtalon up, angling the thrusters to carry him high. Hull-mounted missile launchers twitched, unleashing a salvo. The missiles streaked through the air, impacting multiple targets. He didn’t have to destroy them; wounding them was enough. Slowing their descent so that the flak-towers could catch them or causing them to lose control was almost as clean a kill as eliminating them himself. The kill-counter on his display ticked over regardless.

  ‘Eight so far,’ he said out loud. His vox crackled with the voices of his fellow hunters as they replied with their own counts.

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Six – no – seven.’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Two, Golchin. Two of those you claim were mine.’

  ‘The skies are full of prey, Yakut – why seek to claim mine?’

  ‘Fair is fair, brother. With the two, I have eight.’

  Torag grinned. ‘Trying to best me, Yakut?’

  ‘I but strive to follow your example, Uquillian.’

  ‘Strive harder,’ Torag said with a laugh. ‘I just caught my ninth, while you were talking.’ He leaned back in his control-cradle as Red Hare’s engines hummed, carrying him farther and faster. The stars were almost close enough to touch. Or so it seemed.

  ‘Still too many,’ Yakut replied. ‘And us too few to get them all.’

  ‘You are right, Yakut. Let us return to base. Leave them to it.’

  ‘I was merely pointing out–’

  ‘I do not care. You are a hunter. So hunt.’ Torag thumbed an activation rune and stitched the hull of a drop-craft with an autocannon burst. The flimsy vessel caught fire, and its descent became uncoordinated. As it broke apart, tiny figures slipped from it, spinning upwards as gravity played its cruel games. He grinned in pleasure at the sight, imagining their screams. It was more than they deserved.

  But Yakut was right. More drop-ships pierced the tattered atmosphere. Almost too many to count. And not just drop-ships, but gunships as well.

  ‘Forget the drop-ships,’ he said, alerting the others to the new arrivals. ‘I have sighted worthier prey. Yakut, Golchin – on me. Good hunting, brothers.’

  The gunships were of an unfamiliar pattern – old things, sleek and alien-looking. In comparison, Red Hare was a box. But boxes were sturdy things, often containing surprises. Torag’s smile widened.

  Rukn had been right. Why prowl the stars when the enemy would come to them?

  If they survived, he might even consider apologising to the old wolf.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  90:00:24

  Almace, Primaris-grade cardinal world

  Amatnim stood amid the hololithic displays, watching as runes representing the troop landers flickered and blinked out. ‘How many?’ Apis asked, from the other side of the primus strategium plinth.

  ‘Just over half,’ Amatnim said as he rotated one of the cartographic images. ‘Well within the parameters for expected casualties.’ Two-thirds of the host’s troop landers had converged on Almacia, with the remaining third spreading out to handle the other cities. The surviving pirate vessels were launching their own raids against the latter with a variety of atmospheric attack craft.

  Pict-feeds from the surface showed hundreds of repurposed infantry assault vehicles, some dating from before the Heresy, rumbling across the rocky ground away from the surviving landers. The vehicles were daubed crimson and marked with ruinous sigils and totems. Vox-casters mounted on the hulls blared atonal hymns. Inside, the mortal followers of the Primordial Truth bowed their heads in prayer or checked their weapons.

  Their orders were to silence the anti-aircraft batteries located in the hills and crags before descending on Almacia. A simple enough task, given that most of the batteries were automated. The enemy would not waste resources defending them.

  Another stream of images showed the landing bays of the Glory Eternal, and the remaining gunships being readied for launch. When the battle-barge had reached optimal orbit and enough of the anti-aircraft batteries had been silenced, the gunships would pierce the atmosphere and head for Almacia. Over half of the Word Bearers under his command would be making the launch. And they would not be alone.

  Apis studied the projections, his brow furrowed. ‘Something disturbs you, brother?’ Amatnim said.

  ‘Why bother landing troops at all, my lord?’ Apis asked. ‘We have attack craft – why not simply strike the enemy’s heart?’

  ‘We will, but only when we are certain of the blow. First, we must soften the city’s defences. That is where the pirates come in. Their holds are packed with the faithful, and they ferry them to their just reward. They will serve to ease our path in their own unique fashion.’ The cultists and diabolists would open the way for the Neverborn, spilling blood and reciting the appropriate chants. By the time Amatnim and his brothers arrived, daemons would haunt the streets of Almacia, making it a more conducive sort of battlefield.

  ‘I dislike leaving so much to lesser warriors.’ Apis looked up as the lumens of the chamber flickered. Distant klaxons whined as the Glory Eternal met the enemy in the void above Almace. Assault craft from the dockyards swarmed the battle-barge lik
e flies, and were swatted aside as easily. Amatnim paid the fluctuations no mind.

  ‘Better to risk their lives than ours.’

  ‘True, my lord.’ Apis joined him in studying the data. ‘Even so, many of us will meet the gods face to face in the coming hours.’

  ‘And so? What more could we desire than that moment of perfect clarity? We were bred to die in service to a holy cause, brother. The cause may have changed, but our ultimate purpose has not.’ Amatnim looked at the other Word Bearer. ‘Now go. Get your war-dogs ready. I would launch within the hour.’

  Apis crossed his fists over his chest and bowed his head. ‘Gloria Aeterna, my lord.’

  ‘Gloria Aeterna, brother.’

  Almace, Primus asteroid facilities

  Lakmhu reached into the dying man’s chest and removed his heart as easily as he might have plucked apart a piece of fruit. He held the red mass aloft, letting the blood stain his forearm and face before tossing it into the brazier with the rest. ‘The hearts of a hundred brave men,’ he murmured.

  Symbolically, at least. There was no way to tell if they had been truly brave or not. It was hard to judge with mortals. He watched as a pair of slaves dragged the body off the makeshift altar, adding it to the pile of dead flesh nearby. ‘What is courage, and what is merely chemicals?’ he said out loud. His voice echoed through the chamber.

  It was – or had been – an ore-processing centre. Great conveyor belts ran along reinforced plinths, leading to heavy sorting equipment and other, less familiar machinery. Servitors continued to work in the background, despite the presence of Lakmhu and his warriors. The automata had little concern for anything outside of their labours. Mist issued from the plasma vents in the walls, making the air reek of burnt rubber. Lumens flashed silent warnings about flow-leakage, or jams in the conveyor system.

  Lakmhu had disabled the klaxons in the chamber, irritated by their wailing. Keeping the facility in one piece wasn’t his concern. Taking it from the enemy was.

  He turned to his prisoner. The Raven Guard hung from the ceiling in a web of chains, his broken limbs splayed and his blood pooling into the wide, sacrificial bowl set below him on the gantry. Lakmhu’s blade slave crouched nearby, leaning against its sword. The Space Marine glared down at him through a mask of blood and bruises.

  Lakmhu gestured with his bloody hand. ‘That is one of the eternal questions, of course. Such enigmas are the rocks of our faith. Is it courage or cowardice to serve the gods? Do we have a choice or are we merely walking well-trodden paths? Opinions?’

  The Raven Guard spat. Lakmhu smiled. ‘As expected. Your kind have never been ones to ask the great questions. Or any questions, really. You know neither doubt nor fear. You lack the capacity for philosophical debate. I am sure your masters consider it a fair trade-off, but it is a shame.’ He turned. ‘Bring the others forward.’

  Word Bearers shoved a coterie of mortals towards the Dark Apostle. The miners were bloody and beaten. They cowered like whipped curs and Lakmhu’s smile widened as he took in the scent of their fear. After a moment’s indulgence, he gestured. One by one, their throats were slit and their blood emptied into a waiting trough.

  More troughs – once intended as ore-sluices – had been dragged forward to create a makeshift circle of significant proportions. At each, a handful of captives waited. Men and women, old and young alike. The miners were a fecund lot, and they bred like vermin.

  Despite the defenders’ best efforts, Lakmhu’s warriors had taken dozens of prisoners. After the shock of the initial ambush, the Word Bearers had grown more careful. Old strategies had been recalled, old tactics employed. Lakmhu had been but an aspirant the day Lorgar had sealed himself away. The Heresy was not even a memory to him. But to some of the others, it was still a fresh pain. They remembered the Five Hundred Worlds, and the campaigns in the dark. And they knew the enemy.

  ‘They say your gene-sire still hunts, somewhere in the Eye,’ Lakmhu said, looking up at his captive. ‘The Eternal Shadow, cast by the light of the Astronomican. The wages of our glorious sins. I myself do not believe it. But that is what they say.’

  The Raven Guard didn’t answer. Didn’t even react. They were depressingly stoic, these milk-bloods. Lakmhu sighed and turned to watch as more prisoners were slaughtered and their blood added to the trough. It wasn’t enough yet. But soon.

  He needed reinforcements, but not mortal ones. He also needed them to last longer than it took for blood to dry – long enough to enforce his claim on the object of this crusade. That required a bit more effort than the usual bit of spilled blood and chanting. Most diabolists were content to call up the Neverborn only for the time it took to win a battle, but Lakmhu knew ways to chain them to existence for longer than that. Erebus himself had shown Lakmhu the art of opening an unhealing wound in the skin of reality.

  It required several days of blood and meat. And something more. A sacrifice, not just of a life, but of lives not yet lived. Of potential.

  He looked at the blood congealing on his gauntlet and then up at the Raven Guard. ‘My brother sent me here to die, you know. He must have known you would be here, so he dispatched me, hoping I would be too preoccupied to prevent him from accomplishing his own task. But instead, I will turn his cunning against him.’

  He laughed.

  ‘And you will help me do it.’

  Almace, Primaris-grade cardinal world

  For what felt like the first time in a lifetime, Prince Ganor Kabalevsky set foot on the soil of Almace. What should have been a great moment – a moment of celebration, the streets filled with thronging masses of jubilant citizens – was tainted by clouds of smoke, and burning vehicles. The assault-cutter rested on its landing gear, autocannons swivelling to cover the immediate area.

  They’d landed in what had once been an ornamental garden. The burning skeletons of fruit trees crackled softly in the wind. The blackened grasses were littered with dead birds. The air had been drawn from their tiny lungs in the vortex of the cutter’s landing.

  Ganor stooped and picked one up. ‘This isn’t how I imagined it,’ he murmured. He let the bird fall and turned back to the cutter. The hull was pitted from anti-aircraft fire, and he could smell oil leaking into the soil of the ravaged garden. It wasn’t likely she’d make it back into the air in one piece, but that was a problem for later. And for someone else.

  He was here now, and didn’t intend to leave.

  It had taken every trick his pilots knew to get them down in one piece. Others hadn’t been so lucky. From her last vox barrage, Dheel’s cutters had gone down somewhere in Low Town, well off target. Which was a blessing in disguise, really. Otherwise he’d have had to kill her, and that might have tarnished his triumph.

  Not that it was much of a triumph at the moment.

  He went to the edge of the garden, where some few trees still flowered against a wall of imported marble, and looked out over the city falling away below. A grey spiral of structures, stretching to a horizon now choked with smoke. The city was larger than he remembered. Maybe it had grown in his time away.

  It would grow larger still, once he’d assumed his rightful place. Though the Kabalevsky clan had never been in the line of succession, he suspected such things no longer mattered. This was the beginning of a new era – or the end of an old one.

  The Imperium was coming apart at the seams. A blind man could see it. Amatnim had only confirmed it. The old ways were dying, one by one. New ways – new kings – were needed. He winced and rubbed his stomach. Nausea from the rapid descent. Maybe nerves.

  Or maybe something else.

  The thought frightened him. He’d seen things in his exile that scared him. Men and women warped by Gellerpox. Diseases that seeped from the walls of salvaged ships. Great shapes sliding between the distant stars. But what he’d seen aboard Amatnim’s flagship… And yet, somehow, maybe it had not seemed so awful as
all that.

  Maybe his ambition had overridden his fear. Maybe it had poisoned his brain, as Dheel claimed. He shook his head. It didn’t matter. He was here now. The city – the world – would be his soon enough. He wasn’t so foolish as to think he could trust Amatnim, but something told him he was meant to be in this place, at this moment.

  He remembered something his mother had often said, in her rare moments of lucidity. Every man was a story, but not every story was the same. He’d never really understood what she’d meant by that, until now. Amatnim’s story was coming to an end. But the story of Prince Ganor was just beginning.

  It will be a grand story indeed, Prince Ganor.

  He turned to watch as the slaves of the Word Bearers spilled down the boarding ramps, chanting hymns and ringing great tocsins. He stepped back as they spilled through the garden in their hundreds. Some wore filthy robes, others gemstone-studded armour. There were women as well as men. All were armed, though some carried only the most primitive of weapons.

  ‘Cultists,’ a voice rumbled. Ganor turned. A man stood nearby, watching from the shade of one of the few unburnt trees. He was a soldier – or he had been, at some point, before he’d thrown in his lot with new masters. His uniform had been dyed crimson, and his carapace armour was stained with ash and char. Sigils and runes had been carved into the flat panes with an inexpert hand. Looking at them, Ganor felt a twinge of pain at the base of his skull. His eyes slid away. ‘Just cultists,’ the soldier said. ‘Don’t pay them any mind.’

  He hefted his lasrifle, and joined Ganor unbidden. He had a bit of fruit, plucked from the tree, in hand. He proffered a piece and Ganor took it. It wasn’t as succulent as he remembered. Nor as sweet. He chewed without joy.