The Last Son of Dorn Read online

  From the crowded levels above there came the squeal of metal being torn, a reverberating clang as of a square of bulkhead that had been ripped out of a wall crashing onto a companionway. The torrential whine of an assault cannon carved through the orks on the left-hand walkways like a cutting beam. From the right, a wave of fiery promethium hurled a pair of incinerated greenskins through the handrail, back from the huge, flame-lit bulk of a Dreadnought in Dark Angels green. It stamped through a ventilation grate and shredded an ork in its power fist.

  The Dreadnoughts Maloch and Azazael had been inserted into the hive by drop pod once the orks’ attentions – including that of the witch – had been focused on Umbra. The Vlka Fenryka were savage when savagery was demanded, but nothing pleased them like the chance to secure a victory through cleverness.

  Kjarvik looked left to where Azazael tore through the remaining orks, too hemmed in to escape. There would be no reasoning with the ancient one now. Not until every greenskin in reach was jelly under his feet. He turned to Maloch. ‘Get down here and lift. Azazael will clear our path to Penitent Wrath.’

  ‘You are a sly wolf, I will not deny,’ Phareous laughed.

  ‘We have won nothing yet,’ said Bohr. His augmetised voice was the material doppelganger to the Sister’s null-psychic chill. ‘Let us move. And pray that our brothers do as well.’

  Valhalla – Kalinin, north

  Check 3, 01:19:45

  ++CHECK+++

  ++VERIFIED+++

  ++ TRANSLATIONAL DISCREPANCY CONFIRMED+++

  ++18:59:02+++

  Tulwei’s attack bike sped over over the pot-holed terrain. Combatants flashed through the snow and disappeared. Vehicle wrecks lay skewed on the ice, Chimera and Leman Russ hulks belching smoke. Valhallans in ice-world camouflage streamed in the opposite direction. Amplified, inhuman bellows set the snowfall to trembling. Tulwei gunned the accelerator and pulled ahead.

  The approach to Kalinin had been contested for almost a year and the deep holes of Demolisher and Earthshaker shells were themselves riddled with mass-reactive craters and stubber casings. The vivid red bodywork of pursuing ork vehicles swept in and out of view. Buggies bounced over the devasted tundra, breaking, swerving, screeching through channels between the larger craters. Kill-Team Tigrus’ durable suspension and shock-responsive tyres tackled the terrain better than the orks’ overpowered machines ever could.

  ‘How could they have predicted our approach?’ yelled Sentar, pivoting the sidecar’s heavy bolter to maul an ork bike as though it were a ration can attacked with a fork.

  ‘I do not know.’ And then, voxed on the squad channel, ‘Keep to the coordinates that the general fed back.’

  ‘Where is the general?’

  ‘I lost his signal in the retreat. Keep to target,’ said Tulwei.

  Vehuel’s gunner pivoted his heavy bolter until it was as close to directly backward as it could turn, and fired. A stream of accelerated rounds puffed up the ice and ripped through a mob of manoeuvring bikers. Snowmelt and bits of engine housing rattled down over the surrounding craters, not nearly enough to fill them. A truck packed with bawling ork warriors ploughed into the hole and flipped over. More vehicles veered around the obstacle and gunned the throttle. Scores of bikes, half a dozen troop trucks and half-tracks were just behind. The orks bellowed, mad with speed, firing wild with sidearms and mounted weaponry, pennons flapping madly from whipping flagpoles.

  For all the machines’ technical failings, their raw acceleration was incredible.

  ‘Where is the psyker?’ Tulwei shouted, and swung a left between two particularly deep, thermically glassed impact craters. Grigorus zipped after him, then the Sisters of Silence in their sleek-bodied vehicles, and finally Abathar and Vehuel on bikes at the rear.

  A dark smudge appeared under the snow ahead. It was at the point where the two craters were at their closest, practically touching, barely metres apart. It grew out of the ice as he raced towards it: a battlewagon, parked side-on to Tulwei’s approach and effectively blockading the pass. The orks piled into the back hooted and shot into the air as Tulwei yelled a curse and swerved.

  His bike skidded on the ice. White snow, black truck, round and round. As he wrestled with his steering bars, he saw an armour-fronted ork gun ’copter rise up over the lip of one of the craters like the breaching topfin of a shark. Its gun mounts blazed. Shells chomped through the ice towards the snarled-up bike squadron, loud, slow, as though its underslung machine cannons were driven by a hand-crank that spat out rounds. The stream of fire carved through Grigorus and Abathar and slugged the ice on the other side before either of them had a chance to reverse. The lead Sister slammed into Grigorus’ back and died in a cartwheel of black and gold. The second had time to swerve, and sped away from the pile-up, bouncing and skidding as she brought her bike under control.

  Tulwei turned into the spin and screeched out of it, gunning for the hovering ’copter just as a krak missile corkscrewed from a shoulder launcher carried by one of the orks in the battlewagon and disintegrated Vehuel’s machine. The Dark Angel tumbled into the ice.

  Of the Sister of Silence there was no sign but a brake mark at the lip of the crater.

  Firing up at the ork ’copter with his bolt pistol as it veered and began to climb away, he slowly reduced speed. He stopped, surveying the wreckage, aware of the ork fighters storming over the ice from their battlewagon. Ork bikes rumbled in from the other side in low gear.

  A trap. They had known he was coming.

  Without a word between them, Sentar opened fire on the bikes. Tulwei loosed rounds into the charging infantry.

  Kalinin was going to fall. The Imperium could follow.

  He could only hope that someone had succeeded where he had failed.

  Six

  Terra – the Imperial Palace

  Check 0, 01:02:09

  Koorland’s armour was polished, perfect, garlanded with every honour and citation ever worn by a Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, so high a yellow that it sparkled under the wall-bracketed lumen bulbs like gold. If his predecessor, Cassus Mirhen, had ever encased himself in such ostentation then Koorland would have thought him ridiculous. No one laughed now. He was just himself beginning to realise that perhaps they were right not to. It had been Ullanor that had changed him, standing in Vulkan’s presence, hearing his words. The primarch had taught him the power of symbols.

  Ironic, if that were not too light a word, that the Imperium’s darkest day since Isstvan should be the day on which Koorland, last of the Imperial Fists, finally understood his role.

  Senatorum ushers and Palace staff with pinched faces and grubby uniforms waited fractiously by the staircases to the Great Chamber’s few standing galleries that remained open. Hektor Rosarind, the Chancellor of the Imperial Estates, had outlawed the use of water for washing. Koorland had even heard of Chartist vessels returning to the asteroid belt and the Jovian moons in search of water ice and – the odd floating rock aside – they had been exhausted millennia before the Great Crusade. The tired officials drifted out of the way as Koorland walked towards the Great Chamber.

  No one made a path for himself like a Space Marine with a purpose.

  ‘Word is in from Kill-Team Stalker,’ said Thane, marching in step behind his left shoulder. ‘The Adeptus Astra Telepathica interpreted the message this morning, and it was handed to me personally by Anwar’s staff.’

  ‘Thank him for his alacrity and tell him to begin forwarding messages to the Inquisition from now on. Meme-banks containing the kill-teams’ rendezvous coordinates, and our subsequent destinations, will be couriered to your ship at once.’

  ‘This clandestine skulking sits ill with me,’ muttered Bohemond.

  The two Chapter Masters walked a step behind, garbed in plain robes. Those of the Fist Exemplar were grey, the Black Templar’s bone white, a black surplice over the top wi
th the Sigismund cross emblazoned across the breast. In accordance with convention, the pair had surrendered their arms to the Lucifer Blacks before entering the Inner Palace, but Bohemond, as always, retained the Sword of Sigismund, belted at his side. The High Marshal regarded the genuflecting mortal dignitaries with a curl of his melted lip, his lidless augmetic eye picking them off one by one.

  ‘I despise every second,’ he finished.

  ‘The Beast must not be allowed to become aware of our plans,’ Koorland said. ‘Not until it is too late.’

  ‘I am scarcely aware of them. How then can I fairly call them plans?’

  ‘You will have coordinates of your own, brother. I trust you will be with me at the finish.’

  Bohemond’s good eye spasmed. ‘You will find Abhorrence there ahead of you.’

  ‘I will hold you to your word, brother.’ He glanced over the other shoulder. ‘I will be making Alcazar Remembered my flagship. You will cede the remainder of your fleet strength to Issachar’s command.’

  Thane bowed in acquiescence. There was no pride in the Chapter Master. Disaster had stalked the Fists Exemplar since the outbreak of the great Waaagh. They had lost their home world, Eidolica, half their fleet at Vandis, been further diminished by the battles for Mars, Caldera, and then Ullanor. They were the wider Imperium in microcosm. They no longer had the capacity to conduct this scale of operation alone.

  ‘For Dorn, brother.’

  Bohemond watched his brother Chapter Master depart with a scowl, arms crossed over his surplice, and glanced towards the heavy adamantium-reinforced oak doors at the corridor’s end. They trembled slightly under the low bass bombardment of a powerful augmitter system. A few dulled words drifted down the corridor like smoke from an impact crater.

  ‘We need to talk about the Ecclesiarch.’

  The reminder brought Koorland a flare of renewed anger and guilt. The anger was partly at himself, the resentment of which only goaded his temper further. ‘He left me little choice.’

  ‘Regardless, your actions leave a hole that needs to be filled, and now. It is in times of darkness and privation that the words of the witch or the heretic will be heeded. The people need certainty. They need the guidance of their Ecclesiarch.’ He dug into his habit and brought forth a data-slate. ‘At my invitation, the Adeptus Ministorum have provided a list of potential successors.’

  With a sigh, Koorland stopped walking. He turned, enclosed his brother’s shoulder in one etched and damascened gauntlet.

  The Black Templars’ conversion to their own variant of the Imperial Creed had, for some time, been the most open of open secrets amongst the sons of Dorn. Perhaps it would be better to stamp down hard, now, before such practices could embed and pervert. Vulkan had shown him a better way, and he would not have the Black Templars recalled as the sons of Dorn who had stumbled down the Word Bearers’ path.

  ‘The Emperor neither recognised His own divinity, nor encouraged His worship. Indeed, He enforced the opposite point with more than mere words. Such practices will no longer be sanctioned in His Imperium.’

  The ruined, semi-augmetic face that glared back at him was expressionless, but the flesh eye bulged with an emotion that Koorland did not believe he had ever felt and did not recognise. Bohemond’s voice was quiet, like a melta beam, as he withdrew the slate and returned it to the fold in his habit. ‘Tell that to Magneric.’

  Koorland let his breath out slowly.

  It had been too late to save Lorgar too.

  Furious suddenly, he turned and flung an arm towards the Great Chamber’s heavy doors. A handful of Chapter serfs in dulled yellow habits stood there with hands clasped, surrounded by a full squad of Lucifer Blacks in mirror-black ballistic carapace and softly humming shock-glaives.

  ‘Open the doors,’ Koorland boomed, stunning the hallway to silence. ‘I did not summon the people to hide from them.’

  Great tiers of seating rose above Koorland on all sides as he strode down the processional to the dais. There were several other aisles through the auditorium seating, bringing in lesser lords, military officers, and senior officials from other wings of the Inner Palace, but most of them were roped off. Rubble was heaped up, sometimes covered with banners, but the attempt at concealment only made the wounds more obvious and drew the eye, from a deep-seated human instinct for self-preservation, to the ceiling. A piece of alien moon-rock extruded through the angelic frescoes. Most of the larger fragments from the attack moon’s destruction had missed the Palace or been broken up by the air-defence grids. This was one of the smaller ones. It was about the size of a Land Raider.

  A large circular dais lit from multiple rigs and occupied by twelve high-backed chairs dominated the centre of the auditorium. It rotated slowly, almost imperceptibly, like the slow tick of a bomb mechanism, but Koorland’s genetics had been painstakingly coded to render him acutely conscious of such subtle changes.

  The noise of several thousand, a fraction of what the intact arena could have held, rose exponentially as Koorland’s arrival was noted. Word spread. The clamour grew. Even with his great genetic gifts he could not separate the individual voices that cried out to him, but he recognised the fear and the doubt that Bohemond had diagnosed, the desperation for some sliver of hope. Whole districts had been lost to hive quakes and the calamities wrought by the unintended destruction of the ork moon. Millions had died in the Proletarian Crusade. Millions more had perished since. Rare skills had been lost forever. People starved. Families froze in the rubble of their homes for want of the fuel or blankets or warm food that Terra had long since exhausted the raw materials to manufacture for itself.

  But here stood an Imperial Fist, the golden embodiment of endurance.

  A symbol.

  Koorland felt the weight of their attention. A tingle on the back of his neck, under the grizzled skin between his temples and eyes. Was this what Rogal Dorn had felt when he had manned the defences of Terra against the Arch-Heretic? Was it a feeling that the Emperor Himself would have recognised, as He stood upon this very site to declare His Crusade to retake the galaxy for mankind? The feeling that the world about them was about to be changed.

  Tobris Ekharth of the Administratum currently had the podium, but stalled mid-sentence as Koorland took the steps onto the dais. The small man coughed nervously into the forest of pickups, scratchily echoing himself to every corner of the ruined colosseum. He dabbed a few droplets of sweat from his forehead on an embroidered cloth and leaned unnecessarily into the pickup field, blinking under the lights.

  ‘This extraordinary session of the Senatorum can now commence, convened at the special behest of Koorland, Lord Commander, in the wake of the death of High Lord Mesring, Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum.’ Eckharth cleared his throat once more and hurriedly ceded the podium.

  Koorland nodded his acceptance of it.

  To his left, six chairs stretched out in a staggered line. Lansung, Verreault, Wienand sitting with Veritus standing behind her like an empty suit of armour, Gibran, Sark and Anwar. And to the right, six more. Tull, Kubik, Zeck, Ekharth as he nervously took his, and two more that stood empty. One belonged to him.

  And so, ultimately did the other.

  He held that empty seat in his gaze. The banner of the Adeptus Ministorum flapped limply from a rig above it.

  ‘The Ecclesiarch is dead,’ he began, drawing his eyes from the chair to stare out into the lights, their enhanced musculature adapting quickly and painlessly to the glare. ‘He was killed. Here. By my hand.’ His gaze rose, tier by tier of sudden gasps and mortified silence. ‘He thought to frighten you with truth, but what his church has forgotten is that the Emperor… is… truth!’

  He straightened in a whir of servos and looked to those currently sat behind the dais, his own augmitted voice booming ‘truth!’ back to him.

  ‘Believe that you are better than the Ecclesiarchy has allow
ed you to be. As the Emperor believed. Many of you will have been here the day that the great Vulkan returned to us. Who remembers the joy they felt at the reunion, the hope?’

  Murmured cries of assent began to circulate, the rustling of leaves compared to his augmeticised thunder. His voice became a growl.

  ‘Know then that it was a joy he did not share. Vulkan did not recognise the Imperium he saw on his return. He saw the values that the Emperor had given us, that he and his brothers had fought for, corrupted or cast aside. He made plain to me his opinion of those that have led you so low.’

  The rest of the High Twelve looked distinctly uncomfortable. Only the heavily augmented and thus nigh-unreadable faces of Zeck and Kubik showed anything approximating support. No matter. The tide of history had receded for a time, but now it came again and the Lords could turn or they could be swept away.

  He turned back to the fan array of pickups, thumped the lectern with a powered fist to emphasise his next words.

  ‘Mankind. Is. Better.’

  He looked down over the cushioned pews of the minor lords. They would have taken their seats today as the men with most to gain from a reordering of the High Twelve. For all their power, the cocoons of influence that kept them clothed and well fed, they were far more terrified of him than their starving households were of the orks. All but one or two.

  Koorland nodded grimly to the familiar faces in the crowd.

  ‘I know that you are afraid. I know that you suffer. I know that you do not expect me, being as I am, to understand, but know this – I would give my life for any one of yours, as would Vulkan in my place. Mesring feared the Beast, and he was not wrong to do so. I have seen the Beast’s power.’ He licked at lips that were suddenly dry, blinked in the light. ‘I was there when Vulkan fell.’

  The Great Chamber erupted with anger and panic, outraged denials transforming the auditorium into a cauldron of noise. One voice was indistinguishable from another, but he could see people screaming, red-faced, others leaningagainst the chair back in front in fervent prayer. Lansung looked white enough to pass out. To his right, Verreault was on his feet, remonstrating with a junior clerk in the third row, though over what, Koorland could not make out. The primarch’s death was no secret. Nothing so profound that had been witnessed by so many could be kept so, but Koorland suspected that most would not have believed the tales until now. He raised his hands and shouted them down.