Ashes of the Imperium: The Scouring, Book 1, page 43
It had been clear from some way out that the mission would be a failure. Still, the order was given to make absolutely sure, given the remote possibility of more sensor trickery. Archamus had led the first landing, fully void-suited against the vacuum and extreme low-G. As he’d come down on the shuttle, he’d seen the full extent of it – a featureless rock where once there had been millions living, its every ridge and crevasse ground down to the texture of plasteel. The artistry was impressive in its obsessiveness. They hadn’t needed to be so thorough, nor to make it so obvious that this was an artificial effect. Their primary goal had been to erase the evidence. Their secondary goal had been to rub their noses in it.
We were here. You know we were here. You cannot ever prove it.
Somewhat going through the motions, Archamus had arranged some tests made of various samples, just to see if anything conclusive came up. Nothing. No signature rads, no organic compounds susceptible to further analysis, not even the faintest residual aura of unnatural energies, which of course had been the reason they’d come. It was all dead, just a heap of inert matter drifting in the void.
If Archamus’ ship had not been ordered to withdraw from its initial observations in order to intercept the incoming Invincible Reason, then he too would have been in the same state by now. Whatever had arrived here had been powerful indeed, sweeping in, smashing it all up, then melting back into the void. It had been daring, well planned and perfectly executed. Already reports were coming in of similar sites of destruction across the outer reaches of the system – backwater orbitals and satellites, overlooked during the initial sweeps for enemy activity, now scoured down to rock and metal. Archamus had a feeling that, once the embargo was lifted and the Legions pushed out beyond the system’s edge once more, even more similar sites would be discovered along the proximal warp routes.
He’d sent his findings back to the flagship. Dorn had wanted to see for himself, naturally, and so a lander had eventually reached the surface containing the Praetorian, his two brothers, and a small honour guard from all three Legions. The various retinues had stalked across the empty surface. Eventually the Lion and the Wolf had returned to orbit, barely speaking to their brother before they left. They would return to Terra and continue the process of rebuilding their own forces. Mars would be next, and Russ was already making clear that he regarded it as his prize for the taking.
That left Dorn and Archamus alone again. The Praetorian did not speak to him for a long time. Archamus waited patiently, half-expecting an eruption of fury, half-expecting him to remain lost in sullen silence.
In the end, he chuckled grimly.
‘A miserable rock,’ Dorn observed, looking out across its blasted surface. Storm’s Teeth was held loose in his grasp, still unused in anger since the Siege. ’And we came all this way for it.’
‘I know what I saw,’ said Archamus, maybe too defensively.
‘I believe you. They were here. They were doing just what you claimed they were doing. But that won’t sway any minds on Terra. We remain at my brother’s mercy.’
‘You’ve had word from him?’
‘They say he’s planning his own triumph. The first of the new age.’ Dorn shook his head. ‘If my father does not rouse Himself soon, He may find Himself supplanted. We have a new Emperor, it seems, whatever becomes of the old one.’
By then Archamus had become so inured to his master’s cynicism that the disrespect didn’t seem so shocking. And of course he wasn’t wrong.
‘So what now, lord?’ he asked.
Dorn stared out at the emptiness. It no doubt mirrored his mood.
‘If we do not take the fight to the enemy now, then we are nothing,’ he murmured. ‘Nothing at all. My brother thinks we can become administrators. He is wrong. We were their instruments of conquest. If we do not do that for them, they will do away with us.’ He turned to Archamus. ‘Horus knew that. It was the thing he feared. The extinction of our kind. He was wrong then, of course, but that was another world. Can you imagine this Imperium without the Legions? I can. Those jumped-up scholars and Lex-diviners can, too. That is what we fight against. Every day we linger here, our oaths of vengeance unfulfilled, that future creeps closer. I wonder that he cannot see it.’
Archamus remembered Sigismund – how he had been, claiming to have changed, that everything had changed, while Dorn had stayed the same, the fixed point, the one link back to the world they had attempted to build. And still he was doing it – single-handedly trying to revive the Imperium, keep it as it was, fan the flames of its old antipathies and virtues.
But no one was listening. No one wanted that old world back. Dorn was alone, just as he had been in the Palace for all those long years, keeping the faith, fighting the fight. You’d be a fool to bet on him succeeding. But then you’d have been a fool to bet on that before.
‘I saw what you were doing with Urvo,’ Archamus said. ‘The new armies you’re building. The Phalanx is almost combat-ready again. You’re going to do it, aren’t you? Whatever the Council rules, you’re going to move.’
‘And risk a civil war,’ said Dorn wryly.
‘Yes. And risk that.’
Both of them let the irony of that linger for a while. They were still just a stone’s throw from the edge of ruin. Everything was broken, every soul was wounded. And still the lust for violence drove them onwards, goading them, tearing at their flesh.
Then Dorn stirred. He sent the signal for the lander.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Back to the serpent’s nest. We’ll start again, one last time, try to make them listen to reason.’
Archamus moved to follow. Then he looked up at the starfield above. Somewhere out there, still close in absolute terms, the enemy was running. You could almost sense it – the fear, the shame, the collapse of their hopes.
‘Not long now,’ he breathed as he started to walk, speaking to himself, to them, to the universe – a prediction and a promise. ‘No time at all. And then we come for you.’
Hassan sat in his chamber within the old fortress. It was noisier than it had been. Servitors had been found from somewhere – he didn’t know where – to assist with the refits. Heavy equipment had been lifted inside under cover of darkness and was already being installed in the lower halls. It was strange stuff, nothing like the Martian instruments all of them had become used to. Older, probably, and only now maintainable by the priesthood controlled by Sire Vanus. He’d have to involve himself in all that soon, Hassan knew – no sense in having tools at his disposal he didn’t fully understand – and perhaps the equally ancient machines preserved by his old master would be a useful complement to them.
The remaining fortress menials looked at the newcomers askance. That was the case in every citadel across Terra, he knew – the old being replaced, the structures of the Crusade making way for those of… whatever this was.
He looked down at the slate in his hands. The transmission had just come in from the new Chancellor, requesting a full session of the Council to authorise the preliminaries for the conquest of Mars. All the primarchs would be present, of course, plus those of the High Lords able to attend.
He scanned the titles and the names, picked out in the fine archaic Gothic script the Chancellor’s office still used for such things. Simion Pentasian’s name was at the head of the list, as befitted the Master of the Administratum. He looked down, and near the bottom he found the entry he had been searching for.
HL Khalid Hassan, Master of the Sigillite Order, Keeper of the Archives Immemorial, Grand Master of Assassins, Surveyor of Terran Antiquities, Commissioner of the Lex
Some of those titles meant very little now. Most of them, in fact – overtaken by history, buried in that casket with the remains of his master. He let his eyes linger on the only one that carried any weight.
Grand Master of Assassins.
Not something he’d wanted. Not something he’d ever even considered much. But it was his now, and a weapon – any weapon – only existed to be used.
He looked up as the door slid open. Mouhausen came in.
‘It’s done?’ she asked. Her expression still gave away what she thought about all this.
Hassan nodded. ‘It will only need to be done once. Just so they understand we can’t be trifled with.’
Again, her face betrayed her. That’s what you have to say. Only when we absolutely have to. Only when it’s prudent. Only when…
He smiled to himself. He wasn’t a fool – the dangers were obvious. But so were all the alternatives. His eyes strayed over to the parchment scrolls he’d been given, the ones that listed the active operatives still under command on Terra. Most were in some kind of cipher, one he’d have to become fluent in: X-Cordova-Vanus-U, L-Amadi-Eversor-U, M-Shen-Callidus-U, II-Perutio-Callidus-O. The challenge would be good for him. In a world of ruins, something genuinely new.
‘So what next for us?’ Mouhausen asked.
He sensed her heart wasn’t in this. She’d rather be off with her new companions, reading those books she found so fascinating.
‘We have clades to recover,’ he said, putting the slate down. ‘All across the galaxy. The sooner we find them, the more our power grows.’
‘So you’ll push for the cordon to end.’
‘Oh, they must have their crusade now. They must leave Terra, slaughter who they want to, and never come back. We can use the Legions, allow them to clear the path for us, but that will be an end to them.’
Mouhausen laughed. ‘I think you’re beginning to have delusions of grandeur, Khalid,’ she said.
People must have said the same to Malcador, once. They must have stared at him when he explained his plans, wide-eyed at the ambition. Ripe for mockery, he had always been. Ripe for disrespect, ripe for ill-informed hatred. They had always loathed him, because he made them feel inadequate. And because his plans, far from being delusions, were of a grandeur precisely sufficient to meet the challenge of eternity.
Somewhere within him, he still had the last sigil, the final remnant of that irreplaceable genius. Maybe he would never apprehend it directly, but its working within him could already be detected.
We will have need of these things.
‘Do close the door on your way out, Mouhausen,’ he said calmly, returning to his parchment. ‘I have work to do.’
Now Luna was lit up again, not by fire but by lumens. Banners had been found, hoisted, lining what remained of the streets. The worst of the smog had cleared, though the air tasted of ash still, and you could hear the crackle of burning from close by. Fighting would continue for months yet, just as it would do on Terra, but the main landing sites and the major cities were as secure as they could be.
Prayto looked out at the scene. He was on a balcony with a collection of high-ranking figures. Most were Astartes, but there were representatives of other parts of the war machine too. They had a privileged view of the long causeway below, freshly cleared of rubble and made as presentable as possible by an army of Mechanicus workers. The procession was passing by now, the ranks of soldiers marching carefully across the pitted and pot-holed surface. Crowds lined the avenue on either side. The numbers were impressive – hundreds of thousands of citizens, all imported from Terra, all jubilant in their celebration of liberation. Skulls hovered everywhere, some for security, some storing vid-streams for the propaganda reels. These images would be beamed back to the Throneworld soon, transmitted to every reclaimed city, ready to revive that old pride, that old sense of superiority that had once propelled the greatest campaign in the species’ history.
‘And there he is,’ murmured Abidemi, standing at Prayto’s side, watching it all unfold.
A formation of Legion Shadowswords was rumbling into view. Behind them came a larger tracked vehicle, one modified to support a large open platform. Lamiad was on that, as were Su-Kassen and Adreen, together with a few dozen other high-ranking generals. No one was looking at them, of course – they were looking at the primarch, who dominated not just the grand platform but the entire scene. His armour positively gleamed, its gold chasing winking and flashing under the artful glare of the lumens. He went bare-headed, his strangely youthful face smiling softly as the enthusiasm of the crowd washed over him. Every so often he would lift a hand and the crowd would roar back at him. They were in a kind of rapture now, wholly unfeigned, entirely genuine. In the distance, artillery fired in salute. Overhead came flights of Xiphons and Stormbirds, their heavy contrails marking the skies in black-on-black lines.
‘He gives them victory,’ said Prayto. ‘The more he does so, the more they will love him.’
By the old standards, by the markers of Ullanor, this was a meagre procession, pulled together hastily and still bearing the scars of a brutal, if short, campaign. But by the standards of the age, it was a triumph in all senses of the word. The Imperium lived. And, not just that, it still conquered. Kilometre by kilometre, the rest would follow from there. The worst was over, the vox-emitters blared, and soon better days would come again.
Prayto watched it all unfold, appreciating the artifice. The Astartes might have found them redundant, even vaguely offensive, but weaker souls required it. They drank it up, they sucked it in. Memorial medallions would be forged, billions of picter cartridges would be pressed, all of them celebrating the Great Conquest of Luna. None of them would point out that this was the second time around, nor dwell on what had happened in between those two campaigns, but only bask in what that meant now, on how it surely meant that all would soon be restored again.
And in truth it had been rapid. Casualties had been much higher than anticipated, thanks to imaginative resistance from the defenders, but the pace of the advance had never dropped. Prayto had seen the initial figures, and found it surprising just how much damage the primarch had been willing to inflict on his own Legion in order to effect a speedy pacification. For a man renowned for his caution, it had been a bold strike, with an edge of ruthlessness to it.
By now the cortège was passing directly below their position. It was an odd sensation to be looking down on a primarch. Guilliman still effortlessly dominated the entire vista, just as all his brothers did – they were like stars, sucking all the lesser satellites into their remorseless orbit before consuming them for fuel. And yet, at this vantage, he looked unusually fragile. No doubt the platform had void shields and motion detectors and whole banks of threat augurs, but still, from that angle, he looked vulnerable, just one point of weakness. Take that out, and you take out everything. It had been done before, after all. They all knew Ferrus had gone, and soon the truth would have to be told about Sanguinius. Would they still cheer as hard, if they knew how easily it could all still be ended? Maybe they would, refusing to believe such stories. Easier to live in deluded hope than accept a harder reality. They would watch the pict-reels again, and murmur to themselves ‘he is with us’, before eating the ration bars imported from Ultramarian agri worlds and drinking the water brought to them by Ultramarines bulk haulers.
Perhaps that should have made him swell with pride, too. For some reason, the spectacle left him feeling somewhat empty.
He turned away, leaving Abidemi and the others to watch the rest of the procession. As he did so, he almost barged into a woman in black robes, and inclined his head in apology. Then he recognised the face – the same one who had been on the bridge of the Courage Above All. She looked momentarily startled, then bowed in turn.
‘Librarian,’ she said. ‘You are to be congratulated. A fine victory.’
Why was she here? Where were her silent sisters, the ones who ran that clandestine order? In the citadel, he guessed, already dismantling the old Selenar looms and preparing to install replacement machines. Old ones, he guessed, constructed of dark metal to ancient templates.
‘I saw some interesting things,’ he said. ‘Ships. Buried, maybe for a long time. Like an animal does, storing food underground in winter. As if all planned, for hard times to come.’
The woman looked at him blankly. She was not one of the soulless ones, the creatures that turned one’s stomach just to look at, but she was unusual, all the same. You’d have to be, to work for those witches.
‘An animal cannot plan the seasons,’ she replied. ‘Though it might make accommodation for them.’
‘Did you know, then?’ he asked. ‘That all this was coming? That we would move here first?’
‘No one sees the future.’
‘But it was all for you, wasn’t it? Everything we did. All for the Sisters.’
Her empty eyes blinked.
‘A fine victory,’ she said again. ‘Well conducted. You should be very proud.’
Then she turned away, showing him her back, and glided off through the press of bodies. He almost went after her.
He didn’t. What good would it do? He could guess well enough, in any case, what was going on. It had been just the same during the Great Crusade – the evasions, the silence at the heart of it all. He was a soldier, just as all his brothers were. It wasn’t for them to ask too many questions about where or why they were being sent out.
But then again, what had history shown them, now? How far had they got before, relying on that silence? It had created a monster, the core of secrecy, and still they were at it. What was it about this place, this interlocked realm of impenetrable wards and sealed doors? Guilliman had been right – it had to change. And yet he himself had been behind all this, working through his deep-rooted network of agents and advisers. Maybe even he would not be able to do it. Maybe he was as trapped as the rest of them.
From behind him, he heard the sudden crack and rush of fireworks. The primarch had passed on by then, and the skies were lit up with celebratory detonations of old munitions. The edges of the ruins were picked out by it, lines of silver against the black skies. He saw Abidemi laughing – a deep-chested rumble of what appeared to be genuine appreciation, or maybe just relief. Other faces were smiling, pointing at the attractive spreads of light, the artful shapes in the dark.
