Praetorian of Dorn Read online

  ‘One person in near vicinity. Human, tense but controlled. No thoughts of storming through the hatch, or luring us out into a gun-line.’

  Phocron nodded, and Orn had moved to open the hatch. All of them had kept their weapons ready. Air hissed out as the hatch released. A cone of bright light shone through the opening.

  ‘It’s clear,’ came a voice from the open hatch. ‘Just me out here.’

  ‘By what word are you bound?’ asked Phocron.

  ‘Orpheus,’ came the reply.

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Sork. Ship’s Captain Sork, if you like formalities. Scavenger King Sork, if you want to flatter.’

  ‘Approach,’ called Phocron. A shadow filled the opening, and then became the shape of a hunched man. Augmetic braces circled his body with struts and pistons. A clattering power pack sat on his back. His limbs were gone thin, and the flesh of his face hung in sagging folds beneath violet eyes.

  Ashul glanced at Myzmadra and raised an eyebrow. She shook her head and looked back at Sork. He looked more like a refuse sifter than an Alpha Legion operative, but that was the point; nothing ever should be what it seemed.

  Sork moved closer, the augmetic braces shortening and lengthening with a clatter of gears. He stopped a metre away from Phocron and raised a hand. The fingers opened with agonising slowness. An electoo of an alpha symbol spread across his palm.

  ‘It has been a long time,’ said Sork, his voice a rasping lilt. ‘Thought the Legion would never actually come back for me.’

  ‘Report,’ said Phocron, as though he had not heard the man’s words.

  ‘I pulled this,’ the man flicked his eyes around the walls of the container, ‘from the drift, right where the instructions said it would be. We are in my main loading hangar now. Don’t worry. The whole thing is empty. No one is coming in here but me.’

  ‘On a ship?’ asked Incarnus.

  The man looked at him slowly.

  ‘Would be difficult to come out to this patch of nothing without one, and it would be hard for me to be a ship’s captain without a ship,’ replied Sork. ‘She’s called the Wealth of Kings.’ He grinned, and Myzmadra saw in that smile that he was not afraid or even intimidated. A rare soul. Just how the Legion liked them. ‘The name’s a little joke, you see.’

  ‘A scavenger vessel?’ asked Ashul from the other side of the container.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Sork.

  It made sense, thought Myzmadra. The Praetorian kept space around Terra tight, and Mars... Well, no one who was not a special kind of insane would go close to the Red Planet. But the Solar System was a big place, crowded with emptiness and secrets from millennia of civilisation and catastrophe. The Emperor had made it His, but parasites still lived in the cracks of civilisation. Parasites like Sork.

  ‘I have this for you,’ he said, unhooking a brass data-slab from his waist and holding it up to Phocron. The casing was dented and scratched through to the plasteel beneath the paint. The Space Marine took it, turned it over and then tossed it to Incarnus.

  ‘Did you look at what it contains?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know how to find out,’ said Sork, watching as Incarnus turned the slab over in his hands. ‘It was in the drop on the Canticle station as per mission parameters. Never saw who left it.’

  Incarnus began pulling cables and machinery out of packs, and plugging them into the slab slots.

  ‘He does not look like one of the Martian priests,’ said Sork.

  ‘That’s because I am not,’ said Incarnus without looking up.

  ‘Do what you need to,’ said Phocron. ‘There will be two more data drops, and they will all need to be sifted.’ Phocron turned back to Sork, missing the look from Incarnus that said that he knew his task in the next part of the mission as well as the Headhunter Prime. That, reflected Myzmadra, put him at a distinct advantage; she had no idea what task waited for them, or her place in it. She did not like that – following was not in her nature.

  ‘Where are we headed?’ asked Sork. ‘The Fists are locking things down tight. The void beyond the sphere of Mars is crawling with monitor craft. If we are going that way it’s going to be slow and careful.’

  Phocron shook his head and detached from a pouch what looked like a pierced brass coin etched with numerals. He held it out to Sork. ‘This will take us to our destination,’ he said. ‘Take us sunwards.’

  Terran Militia shuttle,

  en route to Imperial Fists frigate Unbreakable Truth

  Terran orbit

  ‘You are wondering why I’m here,’ said the girl called Andromeda. Across the compartment of the shuttle Kestros blinked. Beside him Archamus turned his head to look at them both but said nothing. ‘You are though, aren’t you?’

  ‘The reason for your presence is a question I do not need an answer to,’ said Kestros. ‘I only need to know my own purpose.’

  ‘And what is that exactly?’

  Kestros looked as though he was about to spit another reply.

  Archamus pulled his own thoughts back from where they circled memories.

  ‘You are both here because to see anything clearly you must look at it from two angles,’ said Archamus. ‘You are here to help me see true.’

  ‘The enemy you are hunting,’ said Andromeda. ‘It is one of the Alpha Legion, isn’t it? That is why you came for me.’

  Archamus held her gaze, seeing the spite and intellect and humour dancing in her eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘There are few who would think to come to the Selenar for insight into the Legions,’ she said. ‘Few who would know, and few who would remember.’

  ‘Only the old,’ he said.

  ‘And those wise or foolish.’

  Archamus nodded once to her, slowly. Beside him he could sense Kestros’ silence crackling like bottled lightning. He looked at the sergeant and then back to Andromeda.

  ‘Tell him,’ he said.

  Andromeda smirked and then bowed her head, the movement an exaggerated copy of his own gesture. Then she looked at Kestros, and the humour had vanished from it to leave her face cold, her eyes hard.

  ‘It was not only the Priests of Mars that the Emperor made bargains with to build His empire. In the early days of His rise there were others. Many others. My kind were one of those who He brought to heel and used. The Luna gene-cults had something that He needed, just as the Saturnine Ordo did, and the Jovian Void Clans, and the Mechanicum. The others made weapons and armour and ships, and supplied armies. We, though, helped Him create the means to conquer not just the Solar System but the galaxy. He created the warriors of the Legions, but the means to increase their numbers were limited. In time He would have built gene-forges with greater capacity, but He did not have the patience. So He looked for those to help Him. He looked to us.’

  ‘And you refused,’ said Kestros.

  ‘Refused and paid the price for our defiance. Your kind came and taught us the Emperor’s capacity for mercy. Once that was done, we took the only choice that remained to us. We helped Him build His dream of war. We took His mysteries and all of the hardy half-feral stock He could drag from the hell-holes of Terra and the ruins of His wars, and made warriors to conquer more worlds in turn. We bought survival by making the weapons by which He would kill others. We turned your kind from armies into Legions.’

  Archamus heard the words and thought of the banners honouring the Luna pacification that still hung in the halls of the Phalanx.

  ‘The Seventh were amongst the first to grow strong from that bargain we made.’ Another cold smile. ‘To the conquerors go the spoils, as they say. The Seventh, the Thirteenth and the Seventeenth, all the high and great Legions of later years – the most favoured, the largest and the most honoured... If other Legions had come to conquer us then perhaps they would have been the ones who others envied.’
>
  Kestros’ eyes glittered.

  ‘That is–’

  ‘Irrelevant,’ said Archamus. They both looked at him. ‘Tell him the rest, mistress.’

  She shot Kestros a sour look, but carried on.

  ‘We had a hand in all of the Legions. Not their creation, you understand, but their growth. We are not their father, but we raised them up, created and refined the means of their multiplication. We were allowed to divine the effects of the twenty strains of gene-seed, and helped match it to stock that would allow it to bear greatest fruit. We helped to speed the processes that took you from human to legionary. And we brought millions of you into being. We know you all, because we were there when you were all infants still searching for identity. In a sense we are your surrogate mother.’

  ‘But the Twentieth Legion was not expanded in the early years of the Crusade. Their full foundation was decades later,’ said Kestros. ‘You cannot know their nature, because you did not help in their growth.’

  Andromeda’s smile did not shift.

  ‘If you say so,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, mistress,’ said Archamus softly, and both of them looked at him. ‘You are correct. We are hunting the Alpha Legion, here in the Solar System. We do not know what they intend, how many of them there are, or how to find them. That is why you are both here, for insight and for strength.’

  Andromeda smiled.

  ‘Tell me everything.’

  Foothills of the Aska mountain range

  Terra

  Alpharius waited for night to fall before he began to climb the mountains. He was armoured, but that was as much of a risk as an advantage. By day he would rest out of sight, and the armour would cycle down to shroud both his body heat and the energy signature of its power plant. That was one advantage. The other concerned the weight he needed to carry. His weaponry was both bulky and heavy, and the suspensor web had only enough power for a few hours. The armour made the weight and bulk manageable. The disadvantage was that the armour made manifest fact of his nature to any who saw him clearly. That meant that he had to ensure that no one did.

  He travelled at night, keeping to the deserted margins of the great population sinks. At a distance, anyone who caught a glimpse of him would see only a broken, pixelated swirl that dissolved into the gloom. Even infra-sight would only detect a wash of residual heat. The field projector that created this effect was alien and rare enough that he had never come across it until he woke to this task.

  The chances of surviving his mission were low, but then he would not have been entrusted with the mission if that fact had bothered him. Personal survival was a constraint, a luxury that others clung to. He had no constraints. He was Alpha Legion.

  After the attack on the tower he had broken off from Phocron’s Headhunter team. No one had questioned it. All of them knew that any or all of them might have different mission parameters. When Phocron had asked him his name, he had given the old, ritual answer and that had been enough of an explanation.

  ‘I am Alpharius,’ he had said, and the implication had been understood; he was a blank cipher, a ghost that existed to do the will of the Legion. One amongst many.

  An objective waited for this Alpharius in the future, and it had to be accomplished before another day passed.

  As the light slid from the sky, he began to move again, blending with the darkness like smoke.

  Imperial Fists frigate Unbreakable Truth

  Terran orbit

  ‘It does not need to make sense,’ Andromeda said, and shook her head.

  ‘It must make sense,’ growled Kestros.

  Andromeda shrugged, but did not speak.

  Archamus waited, but Andromeda was frowning at the glowing data spread across the surface of the table before her.

  They were on the frigate Unbreakable Truth in orbit around Terra. Archamus had commandeered it, and the rest of Kestros’ strike force, in the hours after accepting his duty from Rogal Dorn.

  In the hours since they had returned from Luna, he, Kestros and Andromeda had remained in one of the Unbreakable Truth’s planning chambers. A long table of granite sat at the centre of the room beneath a barrel-vaulted roof. Light flickered across the smoothly dressed stone from glow-globes mounted in wrought-iron brackets. The table had no chairs; that was the Inwit way – warriors stood when they came together. Andromeda had disregarded this sentiment by pulling an equipment crate across the tiled floor and sitting on it, legs crossed, back straight, like a queen making a stool a throne. It had taken an hour for Archamus to tell Andromeda what had happened on Terra. Since then, they had circled through hours of argument alternating with silence.

  Archamus breathed in and allowed himself to shut his eyes for an instant. The smell of the stone walls filled his nose.

  Sandstone, he thought. Pulled from quarries of Ancarin, second world of the Inwit Cluster. In the light of the glow-globes it had the colour of smoke, but under sunlight it would shine grey. Strong, yet more suitable for monuments than fortifications: a stone of subtle grace, rather than rude might.

  He let out the breath and felt calm run through him, and opened his eyes.

  Andromeda was shaking her head again and looked like she was going to say something, but Kestros spoke before she could.

  ‘Destroying statues. A starport sent into a killing rage. Thirty-five craft destroyed but no forces present to capitalise on the damage. There must be another angle, a way that we are not seeing, on why they have done what they have done.’

  ‘The primarch said it was about pride,’ said Archamus.

  ‘Perceptive,’ Andromeda said, and bit her upper lip. ‘But then perceptiveness is the least that you can expect from a creature like a primarch.’ Kestros’ hand clenched by his side at the word ‘creature’. Archamus kept his own flare of anger smothered. Andromeda carried on as though she either did not notice, or did not care. ‘Yes, pride is certainly a factor, but what the Alpha Legion have done is more than saying “I am better than you”. They are shouting – “I am better and cleverer than you, and I am so clever and dangerous that I can tell you I am here”. This is not just pride. It is validation.’

  Kestros shook his head and snorted.

  ‘Oh, you don’t think that is what drives them?’ said Andromeda, her lip curling around the words.

  Archamus held himself still, eyes moving carefully between both of them.

  ‘It is a waste,’ said the sergeant with a shrug. ‘A pointless and empty gesture. No warrior of worth would take such actions to make such a shallow point. We are missing something, we must be.’

  Andromeda smiled, and her eyes glittered.

  ‘The inefficiency and arrogance of it needles, doesn’t it?’ she asked. ‘It would. Your Legion is practical, so aggressively straightforward that you wear your humility like a crown and don’t see the irony in that fact.’

  Kestros leant forwards, hands resting on the tabletop. Luminous data shifted and swirled under his touch.

  ‘It is still a waste of time and energy for any attacker to do this, Alpha Legion or no. The tactics of the fifth column, of assassins and saboteurs – these have tactical value. What value is there in taking away the advantage of secrecy?’

  ‘It depends on what your objective is.’

  ‘Victory,’ growled Kestros.

  ‘But whose victory?’ asked Andromeda, coldly. ‘Horus’ victory? The victory of traitors over their betrayed father and brothers? Or the Alpha Legion’s victory?’

  ‘Are you saying that they act on their own whim?’

  ‘Whim? No, but they have never played well with others.’ She gave Kestros a broad smile. ‘You have that in common with them as well.’

  Kestros’ lips peeled back from his teeth.

  ‘Enough,’ said Archamus softly, and the sergeant froze. ‘We have a quarry and must act. The only question t
hat matters at this moment is how.’

  ‘Lock everything down,’ said Kestros. ‘Everything from here to the system edge. Search every ship. Secure all traffic passing out from Terra. Prioritise those making passage towards Terra. There is the possibility of them linking up with other infiltration forces, or even trying to breach the sphere around Mars. Either way their most likely behaviour is stealth and evasion. We throw a cordon around them and wait for them to come to us.’

  Andromeda shook her head.

  ‘No. Yes, that is exactly what should be done, but you will not catch even one of them that way. At least not through anything other than blind luck.’ She gestured at the data from the attacks laid out on the table. ‘They have had a long time to prepare whatever they are doing – years, decades. And they will expect a lockdown. They will expect you to do what you have just, so predictably, suggested.’

  ‘If they have predicted it they will have taken account of it and planned to bypass a lockdown. They may be off Terra already,’ said Archamus. He could see something of the structure of logic that Andromeda was building. ‘They may even wish to effect a security lockdown because it plays to their advantage.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Andromeda.

  ‘So why did you say that is exactly what we should do?’ growled Kestros. ‘Why give them the advantage they want?’

  ‘Because we don’t want them to alter their plans,’ said Andromeda. ‘We want them to keep going. We want them to believe that they have won. Pride... It is about pride, as your primarch said. So we take that weakness and use it to blind them.’

  Kestros smiled.

  ‘You said we, not you. Was that an accident?’

  ‘How observant,’ sighed Andromeda.

  ‘So we order the lockdown, just as we would have done,’ said Archamus, before Kestros could respond. ‘And then what?’

  Andromeda bent over the table and began manipulating data.

  A hololith of a pict-capture sprung into being above them. It was of a corpse, its lower lip and neck tattooed with bond-marks. Archamus recognised them – the Hysen Cartel, one of the great trade houses of Terra.