Vanguard, page 5
By the magos’s decree the cohort did not linger on the island. There was a storm coming and the skitarii were required back at the Iron Diadem. In the haste of their departure the shadow haunted dome at the heart of the xenos enclave was forgotten, along with the broken ranger who stood beside it with his eyes fixed upon the sky. Long after his brothers were gone, Rho-IR01 was still looking.
And in time the sky looked back.
‘Together we possess the heart and the mind,’ Caul cajoled the ancient ship. ‘Now we only await the eye.’
I was a fool to let myself be blinded to the stars, he admitted.
Losing his Navigator had been a grave error. He had guarded her from the planet’s perils fastidiously, but she had simply worn out with the passage of time. Distracted by his research, Caul had forgotten that mortals were so vulnerable. Without a Navigator his ship would have been lost in the immaterium, so he had been trapped on this world, biding his time until a replacement could be found. But once again his work had consumed him and the urgency of escape had faded until the coming warp storm forced his hand.
It is a sign from the Omnissiah, he decided. A push. It is time that I returned to the Mechanicus.
With renewed focus he had directed his intelligence network to scour the planet for a replacement Navigator. Countless Imperial and rogue factions had spiralled down to Phaedra during the long war. Perhaps one of the precious mutants could be found among their detritus? And with perfect, almost ironic concordance, he had found his prize in the enclave of his former associates, obliging him to expunge his shame in order to escape.
Yes, the Machine-God’s iron hand was undoubtedly at work here.
The Alpha Primus escorted the prisoner alone, for only she and the Diadem’s consecrated cyborg guardians had access to the magos’s sanctuary.
They are a wretched breed, she thought, regarding the wizened creature limping ahead of her, yet the Imperium would collapse without their gift.
Her prisoner hadn’t spoken, but she could read the fury coiled up inside his puny frame, though its focus was unclear.
‘If you attempt harm upon the magos you will suffer,’ she warned in sibilant fleshspeak. Despite his fragility she knew her charge was potentially lethal, for it was certain death to gaze upon the thing locked away behind his metal circlet.
The xenos were wise to bind this creature’s void eye, she thought.
‘I have a ship,’ the magos informed the withered mutant without preamble. ‘You will guide it through the immaterium.’
The prisoner was silent.
‘Repeat: I have a ship and I require a Navigator.’
A harsh laugh burst from the Navigator’s lips. A moment later the sound became a low, almost feral whine. And then he was giggling. It was a wild, hopeless sound that had nothing whatsoever to do with humour.
He is dead to fear, the Alpha Primus realised. Dead to everything… With a flash of blood-deep insight she sensed the truth of things: their prize was quite insane.
‘They stole it,’ the mutant snickered. ‘The tau… they stole my eye… you see…’ He trailed off uncertainly and his gaze slithered to the Primus, fixing her with sudden calculation. ‘Can you get it back, do you think?’
With a howl of white noise the magos lashed out with his mechadendrites, snaring the creature and hauling him into the air to hang suspended above his data throne. His noospheric aura blazed and delicate arcs of electricity played about his form as centuries of self-control fractured.
‘You lie,’ he said. His flesh voice was the rasp of a desiccated corpse. A swarm of mechafilaments surged from his cowl and wrapped around the prisoner’s skull, insinuating needle-sharp points into his flesh.
‘I’m blind,’ his captive said solemnly. Delicate rivulets of blood were leaking from his torn scalp, but he was as dead to pain as he was to fear.
‘You lie,’ the magos repeated, but under his denial the Primus sensed a gnawing dread.
‘They said my eye was too dangerous,’ snickered the prisoner. ‘They said it had to go… for the Greater Good.’
The magos’s words distorted into a jagged howl of null-code as he gazed upon the terrible truth the mutant had been hiding. His noospheric aura flared into a brief, bright nova then imploded in nothingness.
Silence.
‘I lied,’ he said. And then he was laughing again.
About the Author
Peter Fehervari is the author of the novel Fire Caste, featuring the Astra Militarum and Tau Empire, and the Tau-themed Quick Reads ‘Out Caste’ and ‘A Sanctuary of Wyrms’, the latter of which appeared in the anthology Deathwatch: Xenos Hunters. He also wrote the Space Marines Quick Reads ‘Nightfall’, which was in the Heroes of the Space Marines anthology, and ‘The Crown of Thorns’. He lives and works in London.
A discovery of ancient technology sends a skitarii legion, commanded by Alpha Primus Haldron-44 Stroika, into battle on a forge world overrun by Chaos.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS UK.
Cover illustration by Bagus Hutomo.
Vanguard © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. Vanguard, Adeptus Mechanicus, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.
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ISBN: 978-1-78251-815-0
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Peter Fehervari, Vanguard
