Eidolon: The Auric Hammer, page 7
‘Another gift of your gods?’
‘Amongst other things,’ Eidolon said. ‘The galaxy changes by the day. Life and death are no longer as they once were. The Phoenician has shown us as much. Just as I’m sure the Warmaster has shown you.’ Eidolon’s eyes had grown hooded, the dull orbs regarding the praetor with glee. ‘I saw him at Ullanor. Such a burden to take onto himself. Command always is, but that level of power? It would tear anyone else apart. I suppose the constitution that a life lived amongst gang scum and failed miners conveys would be most useful, containing that much grandeur.’
‘Watch your tongue, monster. The Warmaster is–’
‘Glorious. Transcendent. Tediously godlike and the blade that will end the great Tyrant, and so on and so forth.’ He sighed. ‘I am weary of having our lords and masters, already so vaunted and potent, grow so far beyond us. Embracing the warp, becoming the godlings they always played at. Don’t you yearn for something that belongs to us, before Terra is claimed? Something final. Something pure.’
Gherog’s image paused and tilted its head. He clicked his tongue thoughtfully. ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘This world.’ Eidolon gestured. ‘Rich. Verdant. Practically unspoiled. I am not sure about you, but we will require time while our Navigators decide on who will lead us onwards into the dark and towards Terra. There is opportunity here.’
‘Opportunity?’
‘Tatricala was a proud world in defeat, and prouder still when given the chance to rise again as part of the Imperium. It will not have turned its cloak, if it is even aware of the wider war. The Ruinstorm has isolated it. Perhaps since Calth. They may not know there are sides to be chosen,’ Eidolon said. ‘Regardless. We can descend. Take what we want and bear the spoils back to Terra. This place had a potency. There will be materiel we may well need, slaves aplenty. I’m surprised you haven’t already tasted its promise.’
He will betray you… The voice drifted through his awareness with all the suddenness of nightmare. Eidolon looked around sharply. No one had spoken. Malakris stood and smirked. Vocipheron watched on with his quiet detachment. Plegua burbled quietly, his life made of noise and pain. None of the mortals had dared to speak. Only the shadow and the whispered hiss of the Shattered King.
Do you truly think it is coincidence that he is here?
Eidolon would not show weakness. Not here and now.
‘Bring your command cadre aboard and we shall speak of the war to come.’
They hosted the Sons of Horus in the largest of the Sin’s audience chambers. Faded murals swept across the ceiling, Palatine Aquilae soaring amidst cracked thunderbolts and weeping stars.
Like all beautiful things upon the ship, the taint and tarnish had crept into it, ruining the wonder it had once evinced.
Under the sullied ceiling the officers of the Third Millennial gathered. Eidolon stood at the centre of them, flanked by Malakris and Vocipheron. Otvar and Plegua lurked behind them, while other soldiers of the Kalathesians had taken up their places about the edges of the chamber.
Gherog blustered into the room, all ganger swagger and unearned confidence. Two others came with him – sergeants, Eidolon assumed.
Gherog simply nodded to Eidolon. ‘Tathron Vryn and Catrigos Sarek. Two of my finest.’
‘I’m sure,’ Eidolon said. ‘Malakris and Vocipheron. Two of mine.’ He stepped forward and waved a hand, triggering hidden hololithic projectors.
A world blossomed before them, born of light, orbited by visualisations of the fleet and their current dispositions.
‘Tatricala,’ Eidolon said. ‘An early conquest of the Third. Human basic, not too dissimilar from ourselves in terms of technological ability. Lesser, of course, but a very precise form of warfare. They employed a rather remarkable commitment to defence in depth.’ He waved his hand and the hololith zoomed down to the continental level. ‘As can be seen here.’
The representations of the cities burned with light, each cone dense with sub-sections, hidden redoubts and plunging foundations. The cities were vast, hive-scale, yet constructed with a martial eye that would have made Dorn or Perturabo envious.
‘Wonderful constructions, the great spiral cities of Tatricala. We would breach one sector, only to have the defences close around us and the enemy pour from their hidden sally-ports. There is a beautiful logic to them, once you unravel their mechanisms.’ Eidolon beamed with momentary pride, his twisted features contorting with exaggerated joy. ‘And we did unravel them. Not too much breaking, of course. The Mechanicum wanted to exploit so much of their old knowledge. Casualties and destruction were kept to a minimum. You would have been proud to see it, really. Elements of the dependable spear-tip assault, so beloved of your own primarch. We struck simultaneously at the three greatest cities, cut our way to their predictably insular leadership caste, and took their heads.’
‘And you intend to lead its reconquest?’
‘A wasteful undertaking. The age of idle crusade is at an end.’ Eidolon sighed. ‘We will descend, take what we need to see us to the Throneworld – slaves, materiel, and the like – and then leave them to the wretched ruin of their lives. When Terra is ours and we sweep back out into a compliant galaxy, then there will be time enough to make our mark upon it proper.’
He hesitated. He could feel the need to descend, to once again walk the surface of the world where he had… become. More than a mere twang of nostalgia. It echoed in the chambers of his soul, resonating like the music of the Kakophoni.
Gherog turned to whisper with his officers before his gaze swivelled back to Eidolon. The light of the hololith cast his features half in shadow, the crimson radiance rendering him ironically daemonic. There was no god-touched glory in Gherog or his men. They seemed to cling to the desperate physicality that they believed yet underpinned the war.
Fools. The hololith rippled and shifted. Refracted patterns of broken glass and white-hot fire flared momentarily in the furnace of artificial light. A grin made of shadows and smoke. A passing flicker of a barbed tongue moved across the projection, faded, broke apart, and was gone. Or are they more than they appear?
Eidolon swallowed back his bile.
If they survived to Terra, they would know all the illumination of despair. They would see what the war had become, the depths and heights of their transformed fathers. These phantasms were nothing by comparison. Hollow taunts.
Some men would break at the revelation, the warp’s knowledge burning through them and leaving only bones and ashes. Perhaps the barbarian would endure a while, buoyed up by his belief in the Warmaster. Eidolon knew it for what it was. All stale promises and dead dreams. There was only whatever base pleasures could be wrung from the galaxy’s corpse, bled from its occupants, sanctified in the holy obscenity that had become their lives.
He had passed far beyond belief in his father, in the Warmaster, in the truths of their arguments or convictions. Now there was only the call, the pull that echoed in his soul. Drawing him onwards, away from the morass of the past and into the fire of the future.
The first of Fabius’ works. The culmination of the Laeran campaign. I am all these things and more. Evolving. How can these blunt little creatures understand what we are all becoming?
‘Then show us your plan, lord commander,’ Gherog growled. ‘Let us see if it matches your bravado.’
Eidolon clapped his hands, and great sweeps of light arced across the image at his signal. There were six in total, vast assault projections that at once encircled the enemy and drove in to overwhelm them. The tiered fortresses of the Tatricalans were surmounted and surrounded, harried by fast assault units even as they were buffeted by massed armour. A storm of sea green and ruined purple consumed them, burning them down to nothing.
‘Our primary target should be the Palace Militant,’ Eidolon began to explain. ‘The seat of their government and whatever Imperial command remains. The other cities will be less challenging, yet will bear sizeable rewards in their own way. An even-handed state of affairs,’ he stated proudly. ‘Assuming you have the manpower to back it up, of course.’
‘We do,’ Gherog snapped back. His warriors jostled forwards to his side, hands upon their weapons. Eidolon stepped forth to meet them, weaponless, arms raised. Gherog was face to face with him now, his own hands still at his side, balled into fists. ‘You presume much here, lord commander.’
A shadow moved behind Gherog, drawing Eidolon’s eye. Motes of flame trailed through the air like shed feathers, drifting just out of sight. The reflections in the gloss of the walls were not returning his gaze.
We all serve our masters… the King whispered. Eidolon forced himself to ignore it, to respond as befitted his station.
‘As is my right. Enforced by the fact I could crush you like the gutter worm you are.’
‘You could try,’ Gherog said with a nod, rolling his shoulders as he did. ‘But I would hate to make you uglier than you already are, monster.’
‘Promises will get you nowhere so long as they are idle.’ Gherog glared in response and Eidolon stepped back, letting his fingers drift into the hololith, intertwining his claws into the midst of the war to come. ‘Return to your ships and make ready. When the skies of this world burn with the phoenix’s wings, then you may commit your rabble.’
EIGHT
the victory to come
The skies above Roshan had caught fire, in the hours just before dawn.
Roused from his barracks, Colonel Haslach had thought it was merely the rise of the sun. Till he had checked the chrono. The false dawn stretched across the horizon, a great sweep of light and fury. Crimson and umber warred amidst the black of the night and the distant light of the stars.
Some of the stars, he noticed, had begun to move. Stars that had not been there the night previously. Many of his company had wept, not with fear but with relief.
The Imperium, they had said, over and over. The Imperium’s come back for us. We are not forgotten.
We are not forgotten.
Colonel Haslach had swallowed deep at those words and turned away so that his men could not see his face, or the sudden fear which dwelt there now. How can we be certain we have been found by the right side?
He had quit the walls shortly after that, intent on not giving the burning horizon the attention it so brazenly demanded. He had made his way down through the many flights of stairs, out into one of the vast courtyards of the Palace Militant. Time had changed the purpose of the citadel, but the name had lingered.
He wondered if one day the iterators and bureaucrats would finally change it to something more becoming of the Imperium as it would be. Soon, they promised, there would be an end to war. An end to the tithes of flesh and resources. When the galaxy was compliant, and the Emperor’s dominion was absolute, then all the plenty of the cosmos would cascade down upon them. They would have new opportunities, at home and abroad. Not merely to serve and fight and die, but to thrive.
Years ago the prop-screeds had talked of the opportunities in the east, of Ultramar rising. Haslach knew in his soul that he would never see it. He would never leave this world as anything other than a soldier. There was a certain comfort in that. His family had served as Tatricalan Wallsmen for generations without fail. Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, all had done their part to ensure the continuity of their civilisation.
We endure so that all of Tatricala might survive, his father had always said. A mantra engraved on the man’s heart, carved into his very being by years of loyal service. Their masters had changed, true enough, but Haslach knew in his own heart that their determination remained as strong.
Did it matter that there were fewer bodies upon the walls when the Imperium had sworn to keep them safe? That their children were raised up to Imperial Army regiments rather than given their places within the civil defence corps? He did not know. Such questions remained forever beyond him, and the iterators were always present with their guidance.
The III Legion had left many examples of Imperial artists and philosophers with the Tatricalans after the liberation, the better to bed down the ideas of Terran culture. In time, they assured, it would become galactic culture. Human culture. All would be the Imperium and all the petty divergences of Strife would be set aside and rectified. The Emperor, beloved by all in His infinite mercy and wisdom, had already planned for it.
He had wanted desperately to trust in such pronouncements. That there was a plan guiding them in the infinite randomness of the universe. He heard the whispers in the shadows of the Lectitio Divinitatus and had ignored them. Haslach didn’t need a god. There were no gods. Mortal might and will shaped the galaxy now.
He idled in Liberation Square, distracted again by thoughts of the Imperium – if it was truly the Imperium – returning. A tawdry name for the monument that had risen in the wake of the Great Crusade. A semicircle of marble columns reared up from a central platform of black volcanic stone. Arrayed around the base of each column were beautifully rendered golden statues, each one depicting a warrior of the Legion that had illuminated Tatricala.
Haslach had passed this way many times during his life, making the square into a central cog of the machinery of his days. He drew nearer, gazing up at the renditions of the Astartes.
And their master.
Below the central column were two figures, their gold filigreed with platinum and inlaid with precious jewels. The larger figure was truly immense, a looming presence that dominated even the great open space of the square. Its power and majesty dwarfed even the mighty rendering of an Astartes that knelt before him, marked with rank carvings and intended for some greatness.
It evinced strong and strange emotions in him. He took in every detail, as he always did. The statues were beautiful in such a way that he always found new facets to admire, things he had never noticed before. Like a secret slowly being unravelled before his eyes.
Noble, inspirational figures. Protection from the xenos threats and rebellious elements that lurked beyond the sky. Then the storms had come, and the silence. No ships and no astropathic messages. Only the dark and the cold, closing in about them, smothering them in its unending bleakness.
The thought had haunted them – that they might die alone and unmourned. Many had gone mad and taken their own lives rather than force the slow starvation that might come without Imperial plenty. An empire half built and a culture half demolished, striving for simple survival.
Haslach suppressed a shiver. He tried to focus on the sculptures again, the curve of their features, the immensity of them. At once comprehensible and yet vaster than worlds, too mighty for the confines of Tatricala. He measured himself against their grandeur. He was no longer a young man, and clinging to a post that the years had diminished. There was grey creeping in at his temples, and his aim was no longer what it used to be. Yet he still had his mind, kept sharp by duty and relentlessly honed under the state of emergency they had endured these last years.
The storms had passed, yet the fear lingered. It clung to everything, smothering the world like the gilding of the square. Now there was fire on the horizon, and the twin serpents of hope and doubt were once again writhing in his belly.
The first sirens made his head snap round, the statues forgotten as he staggered in near-physical shock. The clatter of anti-aircraft weaponry realigning rang through the square. His eyes rose to the walls, to the men already moving in their own sudden bursts of momentum. He started to move, stumbling over his own feet.
The first shells began to stain the air. Fire and flak hurled itself into the darkness, seeking targets that never appeared. He could hear confused shouts for clarification, for orders. His vox clicked from channel to channel, before it chirruped with a priority override. One of his opposite numbers from another city… He listened again to the ident-code. It was from Sartros. Down in the equatorial zones. He keyed into the channel.
Only screams greeted him.
The vox-capture mechanisms had been set on a wide band, taking in every moment of human agony as it was splayed across the city’s skin. He could hear the population dying, a culture being wiped out. Wet tearing sounds echoed into his ear, undercut again and again by undiluted, unfiltered pain.
‘Children of the Emperor,’ a voice rumbled over the vox, booming with laughter. ‘Death to His foes!’ The sharp reports of bolter fire drowned out the noise before the crunch of a descending boot finally silenced the transmission.
As though rushing in to fill the silence, the air around him was suddenly screaming. Haslach staggered back, eyes up, watching as the first ships tore overhead. The walls were burning as munitions rained. He saw men, men that he knew, that he had served with for years, reduced to nothing more than silhouettes against the firestorm.
The flames caught on the edges of the howling ships, illuminating the corroded metal, the strangely warped hulls with their eye-searing colours and the lurid murals that still glistened wetly there, as though freshly painted. A great talon and the sweep of a wing.
A second wave swung in low again. Explosions rocked the great slab-sided buildings behind Haslach as he turned. His hand was on his sidearm as he screamed orders into the vox that would never reach his men.
‘Form up! Eyes on the enemy! Weapons ready! Form up, men!’
The roar of the great ships was everywhere around him now, consuming the world in its cacophony. He turned to run when an almighty crash rang out behind him. Shrapnel and debris struck his back. Blood blossomed along one cheek, and he winced back.
He hit something solid and turned slowly.
The figure that had struck the earth towered over him, as massive as one of the statues. A twisted mockery, its nobility distorted. Pale hair clung lankly to one side of its head, its flesh pulsing and writhing with some internal motion. Its armour was a molten ruin of pink and gold, broken only where other riotous colours had been smeared, or had emerged from the metalwork of their own volition. It clung to an immense hammer, its head wreathed in killing lightning.
