The Last Son of Dorn Read online

  ‘If it makes you feel better, I am not sure either.’

  Asger snorted, amused, as Thane’s gorget bead chimed. He held up a finger to forestall any further conversation. ‘Thane here.’

  ‘Lord Commander Koorland reports aboard, lord.’ The vox-whisper barely made it through the interference bands, but Shipmaster Weylon Kale was an old hand. A little inevitable physical deterioration was a fair price for almost three centuries of experience. ‘The shipmasters of Bulwark and Faceless Warrior also report ready. Lord Bohemond’s flotilla has cleared the exit lanes and is under way for the Mandeville point, and Lord Issachar signals that he now waits only on us.’

  ‘Inform Punished that we are ready.’

  ‘Signalled, lord. Lords Cuarrion and Verpall forward their regrets.’

  Asger smirked, his hearing sharper even than Thane’s, and good enough to pick out the scratch of another man’s gorget bead over the flight deck’s clamour. ‘I do not envy the Iron Knight his chance to play guard dog over Terra, though I envy the Crimson Fist the opportunity to warm Koorland’s seat in the Great Chamber even less.’

  Thane chose not to comment.

  The loss of Quesadra remained too raw to properly acknowledge whatever difficulties his successor faced in filling his boots. So complete had been the Crimson Fists’ destruction on Ullanor that Cuarrion had barely made sergeant before his elevation to Chapter Master. They would stand guard over the Palace under Chapter Master Vorkogun and his similarly depleted Executioners, alongside the sentinels of the new-formed Imperial Fists.

  ‘There is also a personal communication for you, lord, from the Anokrono.’

  Leaving Heroth to his duties with a nod, Thane withdrew to a stack of munitions crates beneath a little-used catwalk where it was marginally quieter than the rest of the deck.

  ‘Put it through.’

  There was a click as the shipmaster switched channels and then a garbled hiss, the signal no longer a wired ship line but a ship-to-ship transmission through an intensely busy orbital space. There were vox-protocols, but they were poorly enforced and civilian transports rarely adhered to them.

  ‘Forgive the indulgence, Brother Thane,’ spoke the uncommonly cultured tones of Euclydeas, Chapter Master of the Soul Drinkers. ‘But after our last meeting I felt a “good luck” was in order.’

  ‘It is welcome.’ Thane and Euclydeas had fought side-by-side on Ullanor, two of seven Chapter Masters that had formed Vulkan’s vanguard into the Great Beast’s temple-gargant. A day that would live on in future histories, if the Imperium endured to retell it.

  He sighed. Quesadra was not the only one to fall. Odaenathus of the Ultramarines had also been slain, a mantle that was still to be taken up.

  ‘We will both need plenty of it,’ Thane said, ‘I have no doubt.’

  ‘Agreed, and I intend to buy my share with ork blood.’

  ‘I hope to fight beside you again come the end, brother.’

  ‘Likewise. I have already spoken with Issachar. My fleet will follow you out. For Dorn. For the Emperor. For freedom.’

  There was a click, and then silence as the Chapter Master severed the line.

  ‘To the war then,’ said Asger.

  ‘To test Koorland’s new weapon.’

  ‘I have heard of it. And if it does not work as he hopes?’

  Thane gestured to the row of towering launch bay doors and their view of Terra, as though this alone explained every­thing. ‘Then nothing changes.’

  ‘The Emperor protects. Kill every last one.’

  – attributed to Ezekyle Abaddon, Ullanor Crusade, M31

  Eight

  Incus Maximal – orbital

  Check 5, 2017:09:28

  It always took a ship’s real space systems a few minutes to recover but, despite his own post-Geller-collapse nausea, Urquidex had been sufficiently drilled in the procedure to get himself aboard the Thunderhawk and strapped in when it had occured. The skitarii ranger, Alpha 13-Jzzal, had checked his harness, then slotted in alongside.

  The post-event syndromes made Urquidex’s mind squirm as though his skull had been opened for an augmentation procedure that he had not submitted to, memories of his time on the lobotomisation slab, implanted electrodes making his skin tingle and his limbs jerk. He could taste vomit in his mouth and thought he could smell it on his robes. There had barely been time to realign his senses to the restored reality before the Blood Angel, Gadreel, had guided the gunship from its hangar.

  But then, Space Marine physiology tolerated translation better.

  ‘Are you all right, magos?’ asked the Inquisitorial storm trooper, a colonel named Rothi, in the opposite harness, holding on to the vertical bars.

  Urquidex nodded, trying hard not to be sick again as the Thunderhawk passed through her parent ship’s void shields with a bump. Thrust rippled through his flesh organics as the gravitational forces pushed him hard against the restrictor bar.

  Seeking something fixed to settle his churning stomach, his telescoping eyestalks sought out the nearest viewing block. Behind them, more troop ships streaming from its launch bays, the castellated bulk of the Inquisitorial flagship, Verisimilis, was a bulwark of darkness against the steady light of the stars. More heavily armed than the standard Black Ship template, and several times more massive than the spartan menace of Alcazar Remembered, the Inquisitorial flagship had been born black. Enveloped by an aegis of literal and metaphysical wards, and with a standard crew complement now supplemented with Deathwatch Space Marines, it was as formidable a foe as any, at arm’s length or in close.

  The gunship altered course and the view swung. Inquisition and Excoriator ships crowded the orbital anchorages of a pearly hyper-industrial ice world. Drop pods smoked a small slice of the upper atmosphere in blacks, greens, and reds. A few other vessels were mixed up with them. Though no expert in Adeptus Astartes vexillology, Urquidex recognised warships of the Blood Angels, Aurora Chapter, and the Brazen Claws. They had been hastily, in some instances partially, reworked in black. The realisation of just how much manpower and materiel it would require to convert a million square metres of just one void-scarred warship to Deathwatch black had clearly come too late for some.

  A vast manufactorum tender of the Basilikon Astra hove to alongside an Aurora Chapter cruiser with a spitting contusion from a gravitic lash in her port quarter. Manipulator claws and laser sculptors were setting to work, cutting and cauterising, even as the Space Marine vessel disgorged drop pods. The visible Navy and Mechanicus ships he could count on his one hand. They hung back from the planet.

  The planet was one he had visited before, though he had never yet personally set foot on it. He had been part of the sample-retrieval mission dispatched after its fall. The memory did not settle his stomach at all.

  An alien growl and a clank of chain drew his attention from the viewing block.

  The Veridi mysticus was bolted to the wall, chains running through thick iron hoops that had been welded to the deck. Even tranquillised, it was terrifyingly strong. The storm troopers shifted in their seats. In slots designed for the transport of superhuman warriors they looked like nervous children at an adult’s table.

  ‘Be calm,’ said Tyris and the outward display of nerves diminished. Huge and fully sealed in his black armour, the Raven Guard surveyed the mortal soldiers. Under the infernal red of his lenses they found another object for their fear.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ said Rothi.

  Urquidex glanced to the warriors either side of Tyris that made up the reformed Kill-Team Stalker. He was not yet adept at telling armoured Space Marines apart, and recognised them from their training exercises by Chapter marking – or lack thereof – more than any other feature. Hakon Icegrip of the Space Wolves. Vega of the Doom Eagles. Gadreel of the Blood Angels. Numines of the Fists Exemplar.

  Unlike the others, the Fist Exemplar’s wa
rgear carried no markings.

  Urquidex could speak at length on the nature and variation of biological hierarchies. He could explain how the Leo of ancient Terra asserted their dominance over a breeding pool, or the socio-genetics of Veridi giganticus’ rigidly absolutist dominance structure. The ancient eldar too, from the few fragmentary treatises he had seen, held to a model of subservience and command that, for all its inherent alien-ness, was more remarkable for its similarities to human norms than its differences. Even amongst the adherents to the Cog Mechanicus, the exact same structure could be seen in the makeup of the Synod, the diagnostiad, and the alpha station of the Fabricator General himself. The instinct to dominate was as fundamental to biological life as the nucleotidal structure that underlay it. This man was quite plainly a leader.

  A discussion of the flaws inherent to Oriax Dantalion’s philosophy would have made a fascinating diversion just then.

  With a sullen growl, the ork psyker lunged for him.

  Chains rattled and pulled taut and the huge beast clattered to the deck. The storm troopers swore. Alpha 13-Jzzal struck it across the jaw with the butt of his plasma caliver. Drugged as it was, ork as it was, the psyker almost certainly didn’t feel the blow, but there was force enough in his cyborgised guardian’s arm to put it back on the deck. It drooled where it lay. One poorly-focused eye rolled drunkenly around Urquidex.

  He suspected that the ork was less interested in him than the trio of gold-armoured women beside him.

  Urquidex was accustomed to the company of emotionless beings, but something about the warrior women chilled him. It was deeper even than the unease he felt in the presence of a mind-wiped servitor. It was visceral, basic; an aversion to something alien that was recognised directly by the soul rather than filtered by imperfect organic senses.

  ‘Can you tranquillise it again?’ said Rothi.

  Urquidex nodded.

  ‘Remain harnessed, magos,’ said Tyris.

  ‘Crossing thermosphere,’ said Gadreel, the Techmarine’s voice coming through the internal vox.

  ‘Armour up,’ said Rothi. ‘Helms on. And check seals. It’s a cold world down there.’

  Incus Maximal – orbital

  Check 5, 2017:55:31

  ‘All drop-ships away, all gunships landed and redeploying to engage targets. Lord Issachar signals limited resistance thus far.’

  Shipmaster Weylon Kale walked the gangway from strategium to command throne under the choral backing of cherubiam serfs of the Fists Exemplar Librarius. Koorland grunted acknowledgement. The tac-screens and data-displays showed the same information.

  ‘Ork vessels?’

  ‘Engaged or destroyed, lord.’

  ‘No sign of anything breaking away?’

  ‘Navy and Basilikon Astra have the Mandeville point under blockade.’

  Koorland reformatted the data-display at his armrest to call up a bi-dimensional gridchart of the planet’s orbital band. Thirty to forty green icons represented ork ships. They were construction vessels and bulk haulers rather than true warships, though all were armed to some capacity and making a fight of it. At slightly under a quarter of the numbers, Space Marine and Inquisition ships were represented in Chapter colours and black respectively. They were true warships, and green icons disappeared fast.

  Also in green, but larger, were the planet’s orbital facilities. The handful of weapons platforms that had been in orbit no longer had the power output or the mass to return an auspex signal. The installations currently showing up on Alcazar Remembered’s screens were dry docks, assembly yards and fuel depots, low-priority targets that the flotilla had ignored while green icons still crowded the board.

  At Koorland’s swiped command, the image on the main oculus altered to one from a starboard viewer. It showed a tangle of aerials and macro-turrets, blanched with void frost, and, through it, one of the orbital shipyards. It was crescent-shaped, one face tidally locked to the planet and the other bristling with empty slipways. The ‘skull’ section of an Opus Machina had been crudely redone in green. Bulky weapon retrofits spewed macro-ordnance. The fire appeared to be manually targeted, much of it sprayed hopefully into space. Impacts flared violet and indigo from the forward shields of the Blood Angels cruiser that manoeuvred alongside. A full broadside from the Space Marine vessel blasted several hundred metres from the shipyard’s void-facing side and sent explosions rocking through the rest. The cruiser fired reverse thrusters, gunners reloading for a second volley. A much-reduced volume of fire blistered her shields.

  ‘Launch a shuttle with a message for the Sanguine to break off her attack.’ The blanket denial broadcast that all fleet elements were transmitting made direct ship-to-ship or ship-to-ground communication impossible. ‘Remind all captains and shipmasters, static facilities are to be disabled only. Dispatch Terminator squads to take recordings, but their orders are not to engage.’

  ‘And how do you propose they do that?’ said Thane.

  The Chapter Master was lit up by the pale glow of the command deck’s vox-turret. He had no specific purpose here. Kale controlled the ship, Issachar the fleet and ground forces, Koorland himself had strategic command. For want of anything better to do, Thane monitored the hardline comm-booths for updates from their planetside forces, and coordinated with the shipmasters of Bulwark and Faceless Warrior.

  Koorland put his brother’s uncharacteristic attitude down to frustration, and perhaps a little wounded Chapter honour. Most of the Fists Exemplar First Company and all of their Tactical Dreadnought suits had been lost with Dantalion. Out of respect for his and his Chapter’s losses, Koorland chose to let it lie.

  ‘Have Asger mobilise the necessary squads. And remind him that he is not to deploy in person.’ The reminder was necessary. Koorland knew where he would rather be had his position not prohibited it. ‘I want him monitoring the feeds from those facilities.’

  ‘I will remind him, lord.’

  Koorland thought he detected some satisfaction in his brother’s voice. Nothing ameliorated a sense of frustration like spreading it around. Teleportation signals lit up the tactical displays, energy usage spiking on several Inquisitorial ships. He tapped impatiently at the snowy data-display.

  ‘And have one of our low-flying craft relay a message to Issachar. Tell him the weapon is inbound. He needs to draw the orks into the target area and quickly if we are to have a worthwhile test.’

  Incus Maximal – Hyboriax Cryoforge

  Check 5, 2018:09:01

  Issachar could not see the orks yet. The landing zone was surrounded by bronzed manufactorum walls and by the ice-capped pylons through which ran a sky-blackening net of power lines. Cog Mechanicus icons re-cut with tusks, box chins, glowering eyes, and beret-style caps glared down from towering basilicae. A ranting xenos voice blasted out from augmitters set up amongst the buildings. The roadway hissed under an acid snow that tumbled through mechanised guttering, spraying out of corroded effluent pipes in kilometre-high glitterfalls that disappeared through successively narrower-spectrum rainbows to the unseen sump-layer below.

  The local topography was of immense containers that had been broken open and scattered, ordnance potholes from the initial invasion that the orks had not bothered to fill. Yawing cranes swung in the jetwash of overflying gunships. The headlamps of three-score rumbling vehicles lit the ground in harsh white streaks, the periodic wash of electricity through the lines temporarily inverting light and shade.

  Issachar could not see the orks. Not yet. But he could hear them.

  Gunfire rattled far away. The crump of rockets. Bikes and buggies growled through the surrounding districts. He could even hear the orks themselves, and not the cracked voice being pumped through the augmitters. The forward squads were already engaged, just on the far side of those manufactorum walls.

  ‘Orders from Alcazar Remembered, brother-captain.’

  Brother Or
gos of the First approached over the debris-strewn roadway. His armour was rad-pitted. The vox-antennae of his high-powered pack array twanged with countervailing winds, the occasional snap of voltage leaping towards the overhead cables. ‘Koorland demands we engage with all haste.’

  Issachar laughed. ‘Tell him that it would be my pleasure.’

  Armoured fist squadrons of the Astra Militarum, the merged veterans of the Ullanor invasion, and Inquisitorial storm troopers shivered in column to the front, tracks and armour frosted with a yellow-brown ice of sulphates, fluorates and hydrochlorates. Demolisher siege tanks and Hellhounds grumbled at the head of each column. Fully-enclosed Sentinels with armoured canopies strode the flanks, overwatch provided by heavy weapon teams ensconced behind shockboard barricades set up on top of the crumpled superheavy crates. With a sequential whoosh of castellan guided missiles, Whirlwinds loosed. The missiles twirled and parted and spun together, the incendiary barrage crumbling an effluviam stack several kilometres due north.

  The main armoured elements of the Excoriators were already engaged in support of the rapid forward advance. Vox-chatter from the various squad and company-level channels spoke over one another into his helmet feed. His Lyman’s ear could pluck one from the chaos without difficulty.

  ‘Hab-block clear. moving on–’

  ‘Ork vehicles flanking via tau processional–’

  ‘Entering Hyboriax Primus. Heavy fire–’

  Issachar could see the mons temple through the bruised swirl of snow. It had suffered damage concomitant with massive orbital bombardment, but the fortified edifice still stood, some of the damaged wings reconstructed in less than sympathetic fashion. Cannon platforms and bright red runway strips for the take-off and landing of the orks’ big, multipurpose fighter-bombers spidered out from the cracked minaret, like tentacles emerging from a black-veined egg sac.