Apocalypse - Josh Reynolds Read online

  ‘Practising?’ Lorr snarled. ‘Practising?’

  Tyre placed a hand on her shoulder, and leaned over to murmur something. She shrugged him off and turned her glare on Eamon. ‘We must preserve the library, no matter how many lives it costs.’

  ‘And how would you have me do that, canoness, when we are here, and it is there?’ Eamon said. ‘Captain Keel is taking the fleet – it is in the God-Emperor’s hands now.’

  Lorr bared her teeth. ‘We have a fleet of ore-haulers, of pleasure-yachts and trading vessels in orbit right now. Commandeer them all. My Sisters will board them, and we will meet the foe with fire and steel.’

  ‘Even if I could do that, it would take too much time.’ He met her glare without faltering. ‘I need you and your Sisters here, to protect this world and all that it contains.’

  Calder expected Lorr to protest further. Instead, she stiffened and turned away. ‘Pergamon is lost,’ Eamon said. ‘But its loss can buy us victory. We must begin the work of the final hour and make of Almace a rock which might withstand the tides of abomination.’

  His voice rang out, and scribes, officers and servants stopped to listen. Calder saw that this too was a test. Eamon was readying himself for the grand speeches to come. The cardinal-governor looked at Tyre. ‘It is time, I think, to make my flock aware of what faces us.’ He looked at Calder. ‘Past time, perhaps.’

  Tyre frowned. ‘There’ll be unrest. Every world in the core will be screaming over the vox for troops and ships that we can’t give them.’

  ‘Let them scream. They might distract the foe.’ Suboden peered at the star map and stroked his beard. He looked at Calder. ‘How much time do you estimate we have before they arrive, brother? A few days? A week? Or only hours?’

  ‘If they’re stopping at every world between Pergamon and here – a week. Perhaps less, depending on how much of a fight the remains of the system defence fleet can put up.’

  Suboden nodded thoughtfully. ‘Time is a valuable commodity in any campaign. The more time you have, the higher your walls grow. How much time do you need to make Almace impregnable, brother?’

  ‘More time than we have.’

  Suboden laughed. ‘No false pride there, then. Fine. How much time to make the defences adequate for purpose?’

  Calder answered immediately. ‘Two weeks. Possibly three.’

  ‘That, I can buy you.’ Suboden traced a line across the hololith, causing the image to flicker. ‘There are a number of points between here and the enemy where we might meet them to our advantage. Give me command of the system defence fleet, and I’ll take the Silent Horseman, Raven’s Valour and half of the escorts we brought. With that, we might be able to bloody them sufficiently for our purposes.’

  ‘What about Pergamon?’ Eamon asked. Suboden’s plan would leave him only the Capulus and a handful of escorts to defend Almace. Workable, but unpleasant.

  Suboden fixed him with a steady gaze. ‘You said it yourself – it is lost. But its loss will buy us the time we need to get into position. The enemy will be drugged by victory – overconfident. Easy meat, if we are clever.’

  ‘You will not be able to beat them,’ Calder said. ‘Preliminary reports put their fleet at numbers far in excess of our own.’

  ‘Yes, but you are assuming their fleet will maintain integrity as it travels coreward.’ Suboden’s smile was hard, and cruel. ‘If they were us, they might. But they are not, and it will not. I have hunted this prey before, brother. They will not be able to resist the outlying worlds, any more than orks could. It is their nature to prey on the defenceless and the weak. And we will use that to our advantage.’

  Calder paused. ‘How?’

  ‘Refugees,’ Karros interjected.

  Suboden nodded. ‘Some always escape. Sometimes they allow them to do so, if only to prolong the hunt. So as they hunt the refugees, we will hunt them.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘We will drag our prey into the dark, like the great cats of the plains, and the enemy will have little idea what has occurred.’

  Calder nodded. The White Scar’s plan was simple and effective, if callous. ‘And if they investigate…?’

  ‘Then we flee. We draw them off, further and further from Almace. Some will press on, but we will peel away their numerical superiority, if all goes well.’ Suboden turned from the projection. ‘We of Chogoris are as the wind. Always moving, always racing. We chill the blood and steal the breath of our foes. It runs through us and carries us to victory.’ He made a fist. ‘Let me be the wind, Calder. I will run our foes to their deaths.’

  Calder gazed at the White Scar. Releasing Suboden’s brotherhood to hunt would leave him down almost a third of his force. But, by the same token, forcing them behind walls had its own disadvantages.

  Joint operations between Chapters had ever been fraught affairs. Even the most congenial of Chapters had its own preferred method of war. To ignore it was to risk angering allies. Too, his command, though ordered by Guilliman himself, was a tenuous thing. He was outranked by both Suboden and Karros. Though they had bent the knee to him thus far, they would only obey so long as their experience was not dismissed out of hand.

  All of this flashed through Calder’s mind in moments, followed by rapid calculations. ‘Air power,’ he said. ‘I will need pilots capable of keeping the skies clear, for evacuation and extraction.’

  Suboden grinned. ‘Of course. I can leave you as many wind-riders as you like. So long as the rest of us are free to hunt the stars.’

  Calder nodded. ‘Your plan seems solid enough.’

  Suboden glanced at Karros. ‘Solid, he says. High praise, from a son of Dorn.’

  ‘But I cannot give you command of the system defence fleet,’ Calder added. He pointed to Eamon. ‘Only he can.’

  Suboden wheeled about and fixed the cardinal-governor with a patient stare. ‘Well?’ he rumbled. ‘Shall I take your scraps of steel and forge a blade from them?’

  Eamon looked away from the projection, his face tight and pale. ‘Do I have a choice?’

  Suboden’s smile was not friendly. ‘You always have a choice, cardinal-governor. As the Khwarzm were known to say, the tree of woe has many branches…’

  ‘But it has only one trunk,’ Eamon recited, absently.

  Suboden nodded. ‘Even so.’

  ‘I will need to convene the Ecumenical Council. The things you want – I must put them before the councillors.’

  ‘And if they say no?’

  Eamon frowned. ‘They will not.’ There was an undercurrent of savage anticipation in Eamon’s voice, and Calder thought of what the cardinal-governor had said earlier. Whatever his past weaknesses, Eamon seemed determined to erase them.

  Calder nodded. ‘Good. Then we can begin.’

  Chapter Five

  18:00:00

  Pergamon, Secundus-grade tithe world

  Alarm klaxons pierced the air, echoing through the rockcrete halls. A tide of humanity filled the corridors of the Administratum building, shouting, shoving, weeping and whispering. Most were menial drones or Ministorum scribes, about the business of their diverse masters. Palatine Shalla Cern ignored them, and they parted before her like minnows in front of a shark. They knew her, at least by reputation, and feared her.

  The commandry Cern led was small – less than a hundred Battle Sisters, their remit extending only to the grounds of the Apostolic Libraria. At least, in times of peace. During war, she was second-in-command of the planet’s military. It was in that capacity that she and her bodyguards had made their way across the city from the library.

  The journey had not been without incident. The city was breaking down – panic ruled the streets, despite the best efforts of the enforcers. The evacuation efforts were taking too long and the city’s defence bunkers were already full. But Cern had no time for such concerns. There were other matters that required her att
ention. The enemy were on their doorstep, and she intended to greet them with fire and steel.

  Cern was a tall woman, and willowy beneath her grey battleplate. She was young, for her rank, but had earned it the hard way, as her augmetic arm attested. It was a fine thing, artfully wrought and without the glitches common to such prosthetics. Holy verses had been etched into its panels, and a miniature promethium cylinder was hidden in the forearm. A flick of the wrist, and a spurt of cleansing flame would wreathe her artificial hand.

  Besides the hand, she had a bolt pistol holstered at her side, and a power maul in her fist. Two Battle Sisters of her commandry followed in her wake, boltguns held at the ready. They swept the corridor with hard, flat gazes, and no one dared hinder them.

  ‘Witless grox,’ one murmured, as she stepped past a trembling scribe.

  Cern glanced back. ‘They’re frightened, Cassila. A day they thought impossible has come.’ Cassila flushed slightly at Cern’s chiding tone.

  ‘Forgive me, palatine. I spoke out of turn.’

  ‘There is nothing to forgive, Sister. Merely keep such observations to yourself, in the future. You never know who might be listening.’ Cern gestured upwards, where a cyber-cherub crouched atop a lintel, watching them with augmetic eyes.

  The creatures were everywhere, on every planet of the system. Or so Cern had heard. They kept watch for the cardinal-governor, or perhaps even the Holy Synod. Or maybe, they watched only because that was what they were programmed to do. Still, one could never be too careful. More than one Sister had paid for the sins of a loose tongue and a free opinion.

  More alarms sounded. These were different in pitch. As they passed by one of the great stained-glass windows that lined the far wall, Cern saw slow streaks of fire painting the night sky. ‘Debris alarms,’ Cassila said, looking up. ‘They must have reached the orbital defence array.’

  ‘Quicker than we expected,’ the other Battle Sister, Gurna, said.

  ‘They always are,’ Cern said. ‘Calculations are rarely as accurate as we might like. Remember that for the future.’ She stopped and turned. ‘There may come a time when you are in my place, with the fate of your Sisters on your shoulders. Calculations, estimates, auguries and telemetry – all of these are fallible. Only faith can be trusted. Allow it to guide you, and it will always lead you to victory.’

  ‘Or to Pergamon,’ Cassila said with a slight smile.

  ‘No one said victory was instantaneous,’ Cern said sternly. ‘Now be silent, both of you. We have an example to set.’

  But as she continued down the corridor, she couldn’t help but glance at the windows. The ancient glass quivered slightly in its frames. It would shatter at the first impact of the debris falling from orbit. The city itself would buckle. It might survive, but not in one piece. Streaks of slow flame stretched across the dark skies, and she wondered at their number. More than she’d expected. Too many.

  The attack on Pergamon had not come as a surprise to Cern. She had expected it for some time, given the warnings from Almace and Canoness Lorr. In the days since that first, brief astropathic message, she had worked diligently to ready her mission, and Pergamon, for war. She had commandeered vessels, organised evacuation procedures and prepared the planetary defence levies for what was to come.

  But it was not enough. It was never enough. A hard lesson, learned early in her days at the schola progenium. Time was the one commodity that could not be hoarded. It could only be spent, either foolishly or wisely. She hoped she had done the latter.

  ‘The sky is on fire, Duran,’ she called out as she stalked into the strategium. The chamber was circular. A glass dome surmounted the roof, its facets etched with an expensive, if inaccurate, star map of the system. Data-alcoves lined the walls. Within each, a servitor, hardwired into the orbital defence array, rattled off reports in grating monotone. Officers of the planetary defence levy scrambled to calculate potential landing zones and organise Pergamon’s defenders to repel the enemy.

  ‘I had noticed, thank you.’ Pernik Duran was overall commander of the levies for Pergamon, but Cern and her Sisters were outside the chain of command. They’d achieved an easy equilibrium after a memorable, if gruelling, bout in the training cages during her first year on Pergamon.

  Cern smiled thinly. ‘You’re welcome.’ She waved Gurna and Cassila back, and they took up positions to either side of the door. ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘Very.’ Duran was a tall man, and stocky. A scion of one of the oldest Crusader houses of Terra, he showed no sign of worry, despite his assertion. He wore heavy carapace armour over a set of crimson robes and had a power sword sheathed at his side. ‘The defence platforms are antiques, and the enemy are not particularly bothered by losses.’

  Cern bared her teeth. ‘Neither are we.’

  Duran smiled. ‘Unfortunately, they outnumber us.’ He gestured to the hololithic defence projection flickering at the centre of the chamber. A pitiful handful of tacticum analysts surrounded it, making notations and updating the projection as the servitors reported changes. Most of them were older – the upper echelons of Pergamon’s military were retired, or on some form of extended punishment detail.

  Cern shook her head. ‘Not all of them are planning to land. They never do.’

  ‘Not all. But enough. It will come down to blades.’ He looked at her. ‘Are your Sisters ready for what is to come?’

  ‘If we were not, I would not be here.’ She slapped the bolt pistol holstered on her hip. ‘We will fight them for as long as we are able.’

  A servitor squalled suddenly and shuddered. The withered creature thrashed in its alcove and slumped, smoke boiling from its contact nodes. Another orbital defence platform had been destroyed. The feedback was hard on the servitors – more than one hung limp from their nest of cabling and nutrient feeds.

  ‘We’ve lost a third of the orbital defences,’ Duran said, as attendants hurriedly tried to douse the twitching servitor with retardant foam, before it started a fire. A moment later, as another servitor convulsed and fell, Duran added, ‘Two-thirds.’ He drew his blade and a whetstone. Slowly, he began to scrape the stone along the blade. ‘They’ll pass through the gauntlet soon, Sister, and then will come a true testing of our faith.’

  ‘You look forward to it.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  Cern ran a hand over her close-cropped hair. ‘No. I am certain in my faith. But I am not certain in my ability to defend the Apostolic Libraria from the forces arrayed against us.’

  Duran nodded. ‘We will die.’

  ‘Those are not comforting words, brother.’

  ‘We will die well.’

  Cern snorted. ‘Better, if not by much.’ More alarm klaxons sounded. Impacts were being registered as the first comets of debris reached the planet’s surface. The murmur of voices grew heated. Heads turned as the doors to the strategium were flung open with a dull boom. ‘Oh look. The lord deacon has arrived.’ She gestured surreptitiously, and her bodyguards relaxed. It wouldn’t do to gun down the planet’s de facto ruler.

  Not yet, at any rate.

  ‘At last. His wisdom has been sorely missed.’ Duran’s voice was utterly deadpan.

  Deacon Holmere was a gaunt, sallow-faced man, draped in crimson and white. He wore no crown of office, but his grey hair was pulled back from his sharp features in a tight braid. A servitor clomped in his wake, filling the air with sweet-smelling smoke from the dozens of censers attached to its withered husk. Cyber-cherubs fluttered about him, squealing to one another in binaric, their optic sensors recording everything for posterity. He was trailed by a coterie of bodyguards and hangers-on. Cern recognised some of them – minor nobility, agri-bosses and traders.

  Most of their kind had fled the moment word of the enemy’s approach had reached them. They’d joined the grand exodus of trawlers, barges, corvettes and yachts making for the safety of Almac
e. Some had even volunteered to carry refugees, once Cern had promised not to execute them and commandeer their vessels for the holy cause.

  Those that remained were either fools or ambitious. Or both. She studied them, noting which ones seemed nervous, and which seemed eager. Either might prove troublesome.

  ‘Greetings, my lord deacon,’ Duran began. The Crusader stepped forward and bowed. ‘As you can see, we have begun–’

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ Holmere snarled, interrupting him. ‘Why was I not informed that the attack had begun?’

  ‘We thought it fairly self-evident,’ Cern said. Holmere had been her burden for almost a decade. A minor functionary given more authority than he could handle, he spent most of his time living well off whatever he could skim from the planetary tithe. He had surrounded himself with a nest of cronies and lickspittles, and paid little attention to anything that did not directly benefit him. The perfect planetary overseer, in other words.

  Holmere rounded on her. ‘What?’

  ‘The sky is on fire and has been for hours. You would have noticed, had you stepped outside your pleasure-palaces.’ Cern met his glare with a beatific smile. Holmere had no concept of what was occurring. For him, war meant pirates, or the workers of some isolated agri-facility getting revolutionary ideas. He was scared. She could see it in his eyes.

  Holmere frowned. ‘Canoness Lorr will hear of your disrespect.’

  ‘If we survive the next few hours, I’m sure she will.’ Cern made to turn away, but Holmere caught her arm.

  ‘I am the ruler of this world. You do not turn away from me.’

  Cern looked at his hand and then at him. He released her and backed away hastily. ‘Don’t threaten me,’ he snapped.

  ‘Did you hear me threaten him?’ she asked Duran.

  ‘It was a very intimidating glare.’

  ‘I should have you both shot for insubordination,’ Holmere said, face flushed with embarrassment. He didn’t understand that he was nothing more than a distraction now, that his authority had been superseded the moment the enemy had been sighted. She traded glances with Duran and he frowned.