Apocalypse - Josh Reynolds Read online

  Suboden gave a rumble of laughter. ‘I warned you, brother. These priests are to words as we are to war.’ Another slash across propriety’s knees. Calder wondered whether Suboden understood what he was doing, or whether he simply scented metaphorical blood. The murmurs were louder now, and even the cherubs looked startled.

  Eamon gave the White Scar a wary glance. ‘Bi unigk magtahk gij bainah,’ he said, somewhat haltingly. Suboden stared at him for a moment. Then, with a wide smile, he leaned towards the cardinal-governor. Eamon twitched, but did not retreat.

  ‘Chiy shudargah kheleer yaridago… Very good, cardinal-governor. Though your pronunciation could use some work. Khorchin is not an easy tongue to learn, for one not born of Chogoris.’

  Eamon bowed his head. ‘My thanks, O khan. Your praise enlivens my soul.’ He straightened and stepped back. ‘I formally welcome you both to the cathedral-city of Almacia – heart of this world, and bastion of the Faith Imperial.’ He extended his hand, and the ranks of soldiers split with a crash of boot-heels, forming themselves into a corridor extending from the landing pad to the portico and the archway.

  ‘Please follow me. We have much to discuss.’

  Calder turned to one of his Intercessors. ‘Kenric. Watch-pattern epsilon. Easy stance.’

  ‘Acknowledged, lieutenant.’ The five Intercessors broke off from the formation and took up positions around the edge of the landing platform, marking the official limits of the Space Marines’ jurisdiction. It was a purely ceremonial gesture, but would serve to put their hosts at ease. He nodded in satisfaction as Suboden and Karros conveyed similar orders.

  ‘This is now the most heavily guarded landing platform on this planet,’ Suboden said as Eamon led them away. Calder nodded, even as he glanced up at the cherubs bobbing awkwardly in their wake. The creatures were still recording everything.

  ‘We won’t need them,’ he said.

  ‘Speaks the confident man.’

  ‘Easy to be confident with you at my back, khan.’

  Suboden laughed, causing several of the cardinal-governor’s coterie to toss wary glances in their direction. The three Space Marines ignored them.

  At the archway, a pair of warriors were waiting. They wore red robes and stylised carapace armour, and carried heavy suppression shields, marked with sigils of faith and purity. Each had a sword sheathed at their side, and featureless golden helms beneath their cowls. The pair fell into step with Eamon, scattering his lesser companions, and the cherubs fluttered over them, tracing contrails of incense about their heads.

  Calder glanced at Suboden, who shrugged. It was a minute gesture, but spoke volumes. The cardinal-governor had left his most impressive bodyguards at the archway – much could be read into such a choice. Perhaps he was attempting to appear humble, or possibly implying that he had no fear of Guilliman’s envoys. Maybe it was simply a ceremonial decision, and of no more import than the presence of the cherubs.

  ‘I had you land here because I thought we might visit the primus strategium,’ Eamon said, glancing at Calder. ‘My military advisors are waiting for us there. There will, of course, be a feast in your honour, but I’d hoped to bring you up to speed with the situation beforehand. If that is acceptable?’

  ‘It is preferable, in fact,’ Calder said. Even as he spoke, his power armour’s auto-senses scanned and recorded his surroundings for later study. All information was grist for the mill. The more he accumulated, the more successful his eventual strategy would likely be.

  Already, a rough schematic of Almacia was forming in his mind’s eye, just from what little he’d seen so far. Areas of weakness were noted and catalogued, as were potential strong-points. The soldiery was well equipped and adequately drilled, the equal of any Astra Militarum regiment he’d seen. A point in Eamon’s favour.

  But the city itself was a warren. Like many Imperial cities, it had not been so much built as grown. It sprawled across Almace’s main continental land mass, stretching in all directions. That would make it difficult to defend. Parts of it would need to be sacrificed in order to preserve the whole, in the event of a siege.

  He pushed the calculations to the back of his mind. There would be time to worry later, when he had a clearer picture of the troubles facing the system. He concentrated on his immediate surroundings, taking in the great murals which decorated the longest stretches of wall. They depicted the great victories of the Ecclesiarchy, in the eternal war for the soul of man. Heroic paladins trod across the broken bodies of heretics and idolaters, as priests spoke to the faithful, urging them to stand and die in the name of Holy Terra. In other murals, angels, clad in golden armour and crimson robes, spun in through sunlit skies, casting roses and ammunition down upon these eager penitents.

  ‘My father was a patron of the arts,’ Eamon said. Calder looked down at him, and the cardinal-governor gestured to the murals. ‘Quite a famous painter – Tertius Arcenoux. Do you know him?’

  ‘No.’

  Eamon frowned. ‘No. I suppose you wouldn’t. I’ve heard of your kind, you know. Giants among giants. What do they call you?’

  ‘Primaris.’

  ‘Is that your name?’

  ‘I am Calder. Heyd Calder, Lieutenant of the Third.’

  ‘Would you prefer that I refer to you by your rank, or by your name?’

  Calder hesitated. It was an unusual question, and one he had never been asked. ‘Rank,’ he said after a moment. ‘Familiarity might become an obstacle to our goals here.’

  Eamon nodded. ‘As you wish.’ He turned away. ‘We have arrived.’

  Ahead of them, a pair of withered servitors, wearing censer-masks that seeped sweet-smelling smoke, and heavy robes of crimson, hauled open a pair of doors. The cherubs hurtled into the room ahead of the procession, their pict-recorders whirring.

  The chamber beyond was large and circular. Great windows of stained glass occupied the far wall, looking out over the northern districts of the city. The light streaming through them threw a shroud of colour over the stone floor. Tables of dark, polished wood were scattered about, covered in paperwork and surrounded by small crowds of Administratum and Ecclesiarchial officials. Ordinators and curators argued over some point of data, as scribes hurriedly recorded the debates. Priests in red vestments prowled the edges of these conversations, interjecting when appropriate. Servo-skulls darted through the air, competing for space with the cherubs.

  All discourse ceased, however, when the cardinal-governor and his guests arrived. As the servitors shoved the doors open, every eye turned to watch. Calder heard the intake of breath, and murmured conversations. He knew that at that very moment, a thousand calculations were taking place. Almacia was a centre of power, both secular and spiritual. Politics was as natural to its inhabitants as breathing.

  ‘They’re eyeing us like hungry vespids,’ Suboden said, over the vox. ‘I can feel the knives in my back already.’

  At the chamber’s heart was a recessed section of the floor, encircled by a wide walkway of thick wood. The wood had been artfully carved with scenes illustrating the Emperor’s divinity. Cogitator alcoves had been built into the wood, and intricately decorated control nodes jutted from its inner ring. Floating above the recessed part of the floor was a massive hololithic display. A circle of the censer-helmed servitors had been hardwired into the floor, and their articulated, arachnoid limbs of brass and steel plied the display, rotating it and changing it, at the commands of those standing on the walkway.

  Eamon led them up the steps onto the walkway. Calder was surprised to find that it could bear his weight. As promised, the cardinal-governor’s military advisors were waiting for them. Eamon gestured respectfully to the first of them.

  ‘Honoured guests, may I introduce Canoness Solana Lorr, of the Order of the Broken Sword. She is my good right hand, in these troubled times. Her order has missions on most worlds in the system.’ Lorr bowed
shallowly, and Calder dipped his head in respect. He had fought alongside the warriors of the Orders Militant before, and so he studied her with some curiosity.

  Lorr was a tall woman, built broad and heavy. Her battleplate was the colour of ash, and her hair was shorn to the quick. Lines of tight script had been tattooed along the curve of her skull, trailing down from her hair line to vanish beneath the gorget of her battleplate. Robes of crimson hung loosely over her battered armour, and several smoking censers swung from her belt.

  One of the cherubs alighted on her shoulder, cooing in a voice like a crackle of static. She idly rubbed the creature’s chin with a knuckle as she regarded Calder. ‘It is an honour to meet you. My order, small as it is, stands ready to fight at your side. Our blood is your coin – spend it as you must.’

  Calder nodded, slowly. ‘It may well come to that, canoness. If it does, you may trust that I will seek the best price possible.’ She smiled at his joke, but the expression was a brittle thing, and sharp, as if she were only doing what was expected of her.

  Hurriedly, Eamon gestured to the man standing beside her. ‘And this is Swordmaster Domenico Tyre, of the Cardinal’s Crimson, commander of my household bodyguard.’ Tyre was clad in much the same fashion as the warriors who had accompanied Eamon, with golden carapace armour and crimson robes. Unlike them, he carried only a blade, and wore no helm. His face was a mass of scar tissue and bionics, as if he’d been torn apart and rebuilt on more than one occasion. What was left of his hair was a lank, colourless mass that hung untidily down the left side of his skull. One eye had been replaced by some form of primitive targeting array, while the other was of a subtler cybernetic design. When he smiled, his teeth were steel.

  ‘Greetings, noble lords,’ he said, in a harsh, buzzing voice. At some point, he’d sustained injuries to his larynx and had it replaced. ‘I look forward to fighting at your side, come the day.’

  Calder nodded, as he had to Lorr. No lower, or longer. It was clear that they were peers, rather than one being subordinate to the other. Tyre bowed to Eamon, and gestured to the hololith. ‘We’ve managed to reconstruct the pict-signal sent from the mission on Corpal,’ he rasped. Lorr’s face tightened at his words.

  ‘And?’ Eamon asked.

  Tyre gestured, and the servitors stationed below began to chant in binaric. Their limbs flashed, and Calder was reminded of spiders weaving a web. The projection expanded and thinned as a new image flickered into view.

  The pict-feed was distorted by static, but Calder recognised the view easily enough. An agri world – low industry, simple materials. There was no sound, only the image of screaming people, flames snapping in the background. ‘Corpal. A rimward world. There was a minor shrine to Saint Silvana on the central continent.’ Eamon spoke flatly, with no hint of emotion. ‘A population in the low millions, I believe.’

  A woman’s face filled the feed. Older, scarred. Blood matted her greying hair, and obscured a portion of her face. ‘Sister Superior D’vina,’ Lorr said. ‘She transferred to the mission on Corpal five years ago.’ D’vina was speaking, hurriedly, but became distracted by something off-screen. She whirled, a bolt pistol in her hand. Calder saw the pistol kick, and D’vina’s face twisted in a snarl. The pict-feed played around, and Calder realised that it was likely being recorded by another of the cyber-cherubs.

  Figures raced through the smoke. Some wore ragged fatigues, others wore nothing at all, save a profusion of abominable tattoos. They charged towards D’vina, and she gunned them down with lethal accuracy. More Battle Sisters were visible around her, most of them wounded, but all still fighting.

  As for the foe, Calder recognised them easily. Fanatics – the lost and the damned. They bore the signs of their damnation openly. They had pledged themselves to the fell powers that lurked beyond the threshold of the Great Rift, and had become both less and more than what they had been. ‘The Archenemy,’ Karros murmured, from beside him.

  ‘Abominatus,’ Suboden growled.

  ‘The Enemy of All Man, come fast upon us,’ Eamon said in a hollow voice. Calder glanced at him, and saw the telltale micro-indicators of anxiety upon the cardinal-governor’s face. But not fear – almost as if Eamon were seeing something he’d expected at last come about.

  More fanatics poured towards the small cohort of Battle Sisters, and were reduced to pulped ruin. Despite this, it was clear that the Sororitas were falling back, if in disciplined fashion. When something crimson flashed in the smoke, Calder realised why. ‘Look, there – to the left,’ he said quietly. Even as he spoke, there was a muzzle flash, and a Battle Sister’s head burst.

  ‘That was a bolter round,’ Suboden said.

  Something red stalked out of the smoke, its visage at once grotesque and terribly familiar. It had been as they were, in ages past. But now, battleplate that had once adorned a defender of humanity was warped and twisted, like fire-scarred flesh. Thorny growths burst from blistered folds of metal, and abominable sigils had been etched everywhere. Even the boltgun the apparition clutched had undergone a monstrous metamorphosis, becoming a twisted reflection of what it had been.

  ‘Traitor,’ Calder said in the silence that followed the creature’s appearance. ‘Isolate and magnify the image.’

  Tyre looked at him, and then at Eamon. The cardinal-governor nodded. ‘Do it.’

  The terrible image spread, and a low moan swept the chamber as people saw it. Eamon gestured, and his guards sealed the chamber with a crash. ‘Word of this does not leave this chamber,’ he called out, his voice quieting the sudden babble. ‘If one whisper slips from your lips, I will have you hung from the highest spire of this holy city.’

  Calder ignored the resulting murmur. He studied the thing before him, its armour, the way it moved. ‘Not one I recognise,’ he said. He looked at Suboden. ‘You?’

  ‘Word Bearers is what they call themselves,’ the White Scar said after a moment.

  Calder heard an intake of breath, so low that a normal human wouldn’t have noticed it among the ambient noise of the chamber. He caught sight of Eamon, and saw that the cardinal-governor was unsteady on his feet. Tyre caught his master’s elbow, and helped him stand. Eamon bowed his head, hands clasped. He began to pray. Calder turned back to the image. ‘Continue to play the recording.’

  There wasn’t much more. The recording device was plucked from the air by an errant shot. The last images were of D’vina trying to rally her Sisters as the Chaos Space Marine rampaged through their ranks, moving with terrible speed. The twisted warrior smashed Battle Sisters from their feet, even as they tried to bring him down. Then, the image froze and broke apart. For long moments, there was only silence.

  Then, Eamon signalled the servitors. The hololithic projection expanded. ‘The Odoacer System, in all its glory,’ he said softly. ‘As I said, that recording came from Corpal.’ He gestured, and a set of coordinates were illuminated. ‘It’s on the edge of the outer sector, close to where we suspect the enemy entered the system.’

  Calder’s eyes narrowed as he studied the flickering hololith. There were several notable discrepancies, when compared to his earlier briefings. ‘You are missing three worlds,’ he said. He pointed. ‘There, at the system’s edge.’

  ‘The Rimward Sisters, yes. Agri worlds. Barely populated. Most of the work was done by field-servitors.’ Eamon shook his head. ‘They’re gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ Suboden asked.

  ‘Vanished. Consumed by the Noctis Aeterna, as I believe you refer to it.’ Eamon gestured to the holo-servitor, and the image rotated. ‘First contact was reported here, at the spinward edge of the system. Commodore-Captain Ware, commander of the system defence force, reported a celestial anomaly. He took Silvana’s Martyrdom and its escorts to investigate, with the remainder of the fleet divided into defensive pickets.’

  ‘That is not standard Naval procedure,’ Calder said.

  Eamon nod
ded. ‘Standard procedure is rarely applicable these days. We have had to adapt. Ware wished to ensure that the system core was defended. Too, he saw little reason to waste resources – if Silvana’s Martyrdom couldn’t handle whatever it was, the rest of the fleet would stand little chance.’ He frowned. ‘He was a good man. Solid.’

  ‘He failed, then,’ Suboden said.

  Eamon glanced at him. ‘We lost contact. Whether Silvana’s Martyrdom was destroyed, or merely disabled, I cannot say.’ He paused. ‘It could be that she still fights, somewhere out there.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ Suboden said. ‘One antiquated vessel – however dauntless her crew – could not survive against such an enemy unsupported. They undoubtedly perished.’ The White Scar gestured. ‘The enemy entered the system, destroyed Silvana’s Martyrdom and pressed on…’

  Eamon nodded, and the hololithic image rotated again, condensing. Planetary signifiers were illuminated. ‘They burned worlds to light their way,’ he said softly. One by one, three of the signifiers went dark. ‘You saw what happened at Corpal. We’ve also lost contact with Junker’s Folly and Hopewell.’ He glanced at Tyre.

  ‘The planetary defence forces likely had little time to respond,’ Tyre said. ‘With so little warning, they’d probably only begun to mobilise when each attack started. Long-range telemetry suggests orbital barrages in each case. Quick. Decisive. Infrastructure destroyed, communications disrupted… easy prey.’

  ‘They seem to have moved on quickly enough, after the first.’ Calder watched as reams of raw data percolated across the surface of the hololith. ‘Barely slowing to consolidate any gains. The world burns, a few ships break off to land troops, and the fleet moves on.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t they? These worlds hold no strategic value,’ Suboden said.