Hand Of Abaddon, page 30
‘I’ll be right behind you, inquisitor,’ Helvintr promised, a fiery glint in her eye as she watched him go, ‘once we’ve weathered this storm. See you leave something for us.’
Rostov nodded, biting back the pain in his body, and forged on.
In the lower decks of the Honour of Iax, Maendaius howled. He thrashed against the chains binding his wrists, babbling non sequiturs. Amid the madness, Areios made out only a few words.
The Eight! A weapon of ancient malice!
Over and again until his voice was hoarse.
He doubted the Librarian would recover from this. He had been trained to withstand the rigours of touching the warp, but over-exposure to its malign forces had broken him. Even one of the Librarius was not inviolable. Maendaius had seen too much. And yet his prophecy had brought them here to this place, this moment. It all had the ring of inevitability about it. He wondered what Epathus would have done. Had he lived.
Standing before the cell door, Areios looked through the viewing slot for a few more seconds and then walked away.
‘It is for the Emperor to decide his fate now,’ he said as Cicero fell into lockstep beside him.
‘Our brother’s words,’ ventured Cicero. ‘Should we make mention of them to our allies?’
‘With more time, perhaps. I am curious, and think the inquisitor knows more than he is willing to say.’
‘Could it be that his secrets and those of Maendaius share some commonality?’
‘I have considered that also, but the hour is late and the Imperium demands our service, Cicero.’
Cicero gave a short bow of the head to show his compliance.
‘Are we prepared for assault?’ asked Areios.
‘All but you and I, brother-lieutenant.’
Areios clamped on his helm. ‘Then let us be about it.’
Engines burning white, the Honour of Iax launched its assault. Attack craft surged from launch bays in an armoured spearhead, dashing into the void and running hard towards the Blackstone Fortress.
Rostov had stopped to watch. He had left the command dais and looked up from the bridge’s crew pulpit like everyone else. He held on to the edge of a console, praying fervently for the Astartes’ safe deliverance. Standing there, clinging to his staff to keep him upright, his earlier impulse to quit the ship and race out after them felt foolish. Almost suicidal.
He watched the attack craft as weapons fire spat and exploded around them, but the nimble boats wove through and around it, adjusting their assault vector to circumnavigate every obstacle.
‘Come on, come on…’ he urged, his knuckles turned white from holding on too hard.
If the Astartes could breach the fortress they would pave the way for the rest of the assault troops, the brave men and women of the Astra Militarum ready to face an unfamiliar battlefield but an all-too familiar cause. Species survival. Every victory, a candle flame. Every loss, one of those candles snuffed out. And there was, in the galaxy, an abundance of darkness.
The Blackstone Fortress fought. Its turrets chased down the Redoubtable and crippled it. The last escort listed, a final salvo destroying it. And then the fortress fired its principal weapon, the one that had killed the Macharius. Fired from the heart of the fortress, it coursed through the void in an eye-blink and left ravaged realspace in its wake. An immaterial beam, a ravening bloodlight born of the warp.
It struck the Queen amidships, collapsing her shields and taking out several of her broadsides. Carnage radiated outwards from the point of impact and multiple decks were breached. Explosions cascaded throughout the ship. Swathes of crewmen burned or else froze as they were sucked out into the void.
‘Return fire!’
Helvintr clung to a brass rail at the front half of the command dais as a slew of ordnance spat forth from the Queen’s torpedo bays.
They were close, closer than any ship-to-ship combat ever should be, and the rogue trader looked like she had the scent of blood. Emergency klaxons were shrieking, a cascade of damage reports coming in from all stations. She ignored them and instead focused on the ever-widening torpedo spread. Even at such a remove via the oculus, Rostov could see the Blackstone Fortress had taken some superficial damage. Atmosphere vented from a dozen or more places in one part of its expansive hull. Lanspar had been accurate in her assessment. Her ship had hurt it. And as if battling a mythical drake whose vulnerable belly betrays a gap in its armour, Helvintr aimed for the weakness.
A few of the turrets reacted to the threat, taking out half of the incoming ordnance, but the rest ran the gauntlet and made it through. A large explosion rippled across part of the Blackstone Fortress’ superstructure. Not a killing blow but a wound, an actual wound.
She roared, and her crew roared with her, briefly drunk on vengeance.
‘It bleeds!’ she declared, but they were bleeding too.
And now it was the Blackstone Fortress’ turn to reply.
Helvintr called for evasive manoeuvres, ordered decks sealed and emergency power rerouted to shields – trying to save her ship from dying, and everyone aboard from a fate worse than death. She evoked the gods of winter, of storms, of the ice winds of Fenris. Her crew made signs of warding against evil and clung to the runestones hung around their necks or bound with leather thongs to their wrists. Every ritual was leveraged for their survival.
All of it was for nothing as the beam struck again and the grand oculus broke apart. A section of the ceiling came with it, brutally sheared away, and crashed down on Rostov.
Chapter Thirty-One
light of a captured sun
the heart of the fortress
afraid no more
A massive crash thundered through the chamber as the ground trembled and huge chunks of blackstone rained from the ceiling. A large piece struck one of the chains holding the caged star and smashed right through it. One of the fiery tendrils lashed out, scorching a patch of wall and spoiling its mirrored sheen.
The Iron Magus turned from the imminent murder of Yheng to the burning sun that had annihilated so many of her brethren.
‘No… it must be stabilised. In order to stave off exothermic calamity, it must–’ She was turning to take note of Yheng, about to share her knowledge of the machine, but her hypothesis died on her all-too-human lips when the ritual knife was plunged into her back.
‘It wants to be free,’ said Yheng as she wrenched out the knife and kept on stabbing.
The Iron Magus arched in agony.
The other chains had begun rattling, placed under sudden strain.
Oil and blood slicked the blade as it came out for a fifth time. Yheng knew how to wield a knife, she knew it well. You never slashed, not if you intended to kill or could not kill in a single blow. You always stabbed, and repeatedly. It was efficient, quick. The knife would find the vulnerable organs and whilst she did not know where or if her monstrous enemy had any, she knew the Iron Magus felt something. She was screaming with pain now.
A limb whipped out, blind and desperate. It caught Yheng across the shoulder and she felt the bone splinter as she was catapulted backwards, the knife still clenched in her blood- and oil-slicked hand. Another lesson from her days as a bone ganger. Never drop your weapon: your weapon is your life. Drop it and you die.
She tumbled, her head hitting the floor, then her back. A further bounce saw her strike her injured shoulder and Yheng let out a cry of agony. Fire needled through her bones, her spine. She sprawled, still holding the knife, miraculously having managed not to gut herself.
She lurched up onto her good arm as the second chain rattled itself apart. The heavy links struck the ground with a rumbling crash. The light surged to even greater brightness and the Iron Magus was framed by it as she tried to avert disaster. She was already burning, though, Yheng could tell. Even as her mechadendrite limbs tried to reforge the broken chains and attempted to reinforce the others, fire rippled across her robes.
Yheng could it feel now too, pricking at her skin as one of the rings collapsed and fell into the fiery core. It disintegrated to ash on contact as whatever eldritch energies roiled in the caged star consumed it.
On her elbows, she shuffled backwards, away from the shadowy outline of the Iron Magus. Fear gripped her, having escaped one death only to find another even more horrible fate. Will kept her moving.
Her fingers found a shallow depression that widened into something more. Twisting, Yheng saw a trapdoor opening in the floor before her. Steps led down.
She glanced back, wary of a reprisal, but she was beneath the Iron Magus’ regard now. The Magus battled the caged star, mechanised limbs striving to keep it contained like a grim conductor corralling her orchestra.
Hurting, every step pushing daggers through her body, Yheng limped down the steps and the trapdoor sealed above her as she passed through it. Hand pressed against the wall for support, she whispered, ‘Thank you.’
It was colder here, away from the burning sun. She staggered most of the way, not knowing where she was headed or why. Up or down, it hardly mattered. At least with the Iron Magus occupied, she knew wherever she was going it was either by her will or its. She felt it more keenly now, clearer than it had ever been before, the xenos intelligence at the heart of the fortress. And she knew then where it was taking her, as the narrow passageways turned and opened up before her, the way lit by the dull lumens flickering in the ceiling.
To its very core.
She saw aeons pass as she walked, every touch of the blackstone yielding more. Ages were revealed in mirrored obsidian: its path across the galaxy, the wars that had nearly killed it, but then badly wounded it had limped on. Surviving. In pain. Most of what she saw, Yheng could not comprehend. It was not meant for the minds of mortals, even one chosen, such as she. Sympathetic agonies rolled through her, and she had to stop until they passed. It was grief, she realised, or some version of it, as tears spilled down her face for the death of its twin. For a brief moment she saw a vision of vast and cyclopean wreckage entering the atmosphere of a war-torn world, its edges wreathed in fire and then searing white so terrible she had to shut her eyes.
‘Please,’ she breathed, ‘please… It’s too much.’
She took her hand away, wrapping her arm around her body.
Closer now, she felt it.
Another portal opened up and she stepped through it.
The heart of the fortress was not the blazing sun the Iron Magus had shackled to her will. It was down here. Waiting for Yheng. As she passed across the next threshold, she walked into a large vaulted room. Larger even than the chamber of the caged star. Yheng gazed up into a celestial firmament, though she knew she was still inside. The arrangement of stars was unfamiliar to her, their conjunctions aberrant and disquieting. She averted her gaze.
An amphitheatre surrounded her, a massive curve of stone alcoves from foot to amorphous ceiling. Hunched over in each, their nasal pits turned to take in the frigid air, were the ghoulish creatures she had encountered with Tenebrus. A huge herd of them, hundreds strong. They bowed their heads low as she stepped into the room, like subjects recognising their queen.
Mastering a pang of fear at the sight of the creatures, she edged further towards a raised circular stage. Columns rose up around it, leading to alien galaxies above. Eight thrones had been raised around the stage, far back and lurking in the shadows. Old bloodstains and spent candle wax still lingered. It had changed in her absence, been reshaped and rewritten to an extent, but she knew it anyway. How could she not?
Without realising it, she had somehow entered the black chamber.
And at this thought, as if bidden by it, another figure entered from the opposite archway. Blood flecked the newcomer’s face, which wore a pained scowl along with its wounds. His robes were torn and spilling behind him, like tatters of shadow deliquescing into vapour. He stooped as if borne down by a heavy weight, a geriatric shuffle to his gait now. Pain turned to anger in his pitiless eyes as he saw Yheng.
Tenebrus was here. Impossibly, he had found her again.
‘I needed you,’ he breathed. ‘At the bridge, you were supposed to follow. I nearly died, Yheng. The Iron Magus is still–’
‘She is dead,’ declared Yheng, standing upright, her head raised. She bit down her pain, determined to show no weakness.
Tenebrus frowned, unconvinced. ‘Dead? How? Did you kill her?’
‘As good as,’ Yheng replied, but the veneer of pride cracked under her obvious uncertainty.
The sorcerer sneered. ‘Those of the Hand are not so easily killed. Why did you flee?’
He started to move towards her and Yheng cast a glance to the alcoves but they were empty; the creatures had gone. She was on her own. She had always been on her own.
‘You said once that one of us would kill the other, that it was the nature of masters and acolytes.’
The sorcerer’s eyes narrowed, as if he sensed imminent violence. A crackle of warp sorcery flickered across his fingertips.
‘I did.’
‘Is that why you brought me here, to kill me?’ she said.
‘I thought we had spoken of this already, Yheng. I can protect you, if you will let me. But we must leave. Now. I will not ask again.’
Yheng felt the old paralysis returning, stiffening her limbs.
In a few more moments, Tenebrus had crossed the dais and was before her. She looked up into his black, fathomless eyes.
‘I gave you my answer already,’ she said. Let him get a little closer…
‘Acolyte…’ rasped Tenebrus, seizing her chin in a fierce grip. Then he jerked suddenly, his mock benevolence turning into shock.
The sorcerer staggered backwards but did not get far. Three spears of blackstone impaled him, transfixing him to the ground. Dark blood ruptured from his mouth, painting his chin, eyes widening to Yheng as he realised what had happened. What she had done. He tried to speak but only managed a choked gurgle. The sorcery playing over his fingertips flickered once, and died.
Then he fell still, his mouth agape in silent accusation, his eyes like pools of dark glass.
‘It seems you were right after all,’ said Yheng coldly. The spears of stone slid away as quickly and as quietly as they had formed, and Tenebrus collapsed in an unmoving heap. She knelt by his side. ‘One will kill the other.’
Augury waited for her in the shadows, as she had known they would.
‘One act remains,’ they said.
‘I know…’
‘Transformation.’
Yheng gave a solemn nod.
The dais split down the middle and slowly slid apart to reveal a dark well beneath it. Yheng approached the edge and gazed down. It was deep, the hint of ancient mechanisms outlined in shadowy silhouette. The more she stared into it, the more she discerned that the darkness within was not merely darkness. It was moving, alive. A black and writhing morass, as of smoke, as of ink, and yet kin to neither. It left smears on the strange machineries constructed to contain it. Like paint, like ash. Viperous and seething, it was an immensity of shadow without singular form.
‘It wants to be free,’ uttered Yheng in an echo of her words to the Iron Magus, knowing that this was the core of the fortress. Buried far below, the fortress reshaping around it like a giant puzzle box until it reached this final configuration. It had called to her, brought her to this place again, though it had subtly changed from the black chamber of before.
Its alien regard was dizzying, but Yheng withstood it. She felt its pain, twisting like poison. The Hand had used it, tortured it. And now it craved release. In opening up the dais, it had exposed its weakness. Its heart and mind as one.
Its inner darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Two
the darkness of the below
champion
riddles
Herek descended hand by hand, the darkness enfolding him. He had no idea how deep the pit went and whether it was truly a pit at all, or a doorway to another place, another plane. The Abyssal Nadir. It had grown cold, cold enough for his armour systems to cascade temperature alerts to his auto-senses. He blinked away the glowing warnings on his internal feed and kept going.
Down, down into shadow. The innermost depths of the world should be warm, but a grave-chill clung to the air, felt through ceramite. An atmosphere of death pervaded and with it came the voices of the damned, whispering in concert. The susurration drowned them out, one chorus of inane madness traded for another.
He had lost sight of his men. The grainy lumen beams emitting from the lamps in his battle plate were like match flames, and therefore useless. Dead air reigned on the vox before the voices came, so he shut it off. No good could come of listening to them. His tactical display was blank. Every reading, barring temperature and the longitudinal waves that belonged to the voices of the dead, was zeroed. Nothing here, nothing up there. An endless nothingness.
After a while it began to drag, a physical weight anchoring his armour. Pulling towards the deeper dark and the nadir below. Herek tried to look down but all he saw was black. Up was no better, and it became disorientating to the point where he could not be sure if he was heading towards or away from something. So he focused straight ahead, on his hands, on the earthen wall that looked like spongy coal, yielding up fresh handholds every few feet. Black, cake-like earth was eventually replaced by rock and roots, the soil of the world eager to swallow him whole.
And then, when he thought his mind was close to breaking, he detected a pale light below. The light was grey like ash, and no larger than a coin. It grew and Herek fought the urge to descend faster, instinctively realising that if he tried, the light would only get farther away. So when his booted feet finally set down on the ground it was with a measure of relief and disbelief.
