Praetorian of Dorn Read online

  Bhab Bastion

  The Imperial Palace, Terra

  ‘It is holding course for surface impact,’ Admiral Su-Kassen called across the command chamber.

  ‘Distance from the nearest vessel?’ said Archamus. Above him the holo-projection showed the Primigenia trailing fire as its engines pushed it deeper into Terra’s orbit.

  ‘Two thousand and fourteen kilometres,’ said a human officer.

  He nodded. Calculations sped through his thoughts.

  ‘Still too close,’ he said. ‘Get them clear.’

  The quiet of the chamber had vanished. Amber light flashed. Distances and velocities spun through the holo-displays. Ships, stations and shuttle craft blinked back at him in cold light. Every officer in the room was speaking, calling information and orders over each other. The servitors were rocking and rattling in their cradles, fingers dancing over systems. The tech-priests stood amongst them, twitching as they and the machines flooded their synapses with data. And above them the image of the Primigenia fell down and down through the dark.

  ‘Reason of Truth confirms it has range and lock on the target...’

  ‘Orbital rotation bringing it above the horizon in thirty-five seconds.’

  ‘Gannemus defences have firing solution.’

  ‘I have request for order to fire...’

  ‘Minimum safe distance.’

  ‘A reactor of that size...’

  ‘Target three seconds away from the medial orbital layer.’

  ‘Still no reply signal from the bridge...’

  It had been forty-one seconds since they had come to full alert. But in the compressed instant of Archamus’ awareness it felt like the blink of an eye. He could hear each voice in the chamber, and his eyes and mind were reading data from the displays faster than the tech-priests and humans could process it. He saw and understood it all.

  The Primigenia might have suffered a catastrophic accident. Its crew might have overcome the pilot cadre, and set the ship to crash into Terra’s surface. There were dozens of possibilities, and none of them mattered. The ship would die, before it touched Terra’s atmosphere. Its reactors and fuel would stain the sky for a few moments. Those other ships close by might suffer superficial damage, but no more. That was the cruelty of necessity, and, to the praetorians of Terra, acceptable.

  ‘Signal the Reason of Truth,’ he said. The sound dimmed for an instant, and then a vox-link crackled into life.

  ‘The Reason of Truth stands ready,’ came a voice like a growl of thunder.

  ‘This is Archamus. I speak with the Praetorian’s voice.’

  ‘We hear and obey, Archamus. What is your order?’

  ‘Last vessel is approaching outer edge of target ship’s reactor explosion radius,’ buzzed one of the tech-priests.

  Archamus blinked, watching the Primigenia fall.

  ‘Fire,’ he said.

  There was a pause as the signal reached up to the Reason of Truth. And then the warship fired. It was a battle cruiser and its weapons could break star fortresses, but for this execution it used a fraction of that strength. A pulse of turbo laser fire struck the Primigenia’s engines an instant before macro shells ripped into its hull. The unstable plasma cylinders and explosive compounds hidden within the crates packed into its holds detonated.

  And fire ripped across the heavens like the burning laughter of a cruel god.

  Damocles Starport

  Terra

  The gas flowed up though the branches of Damocles Starport’s ventilation system. Colourless and odourless, it poured through every duct and trunk.

  The first to breathe the gas in was a man in one of the labour pens. He straightened from where he crouched over his workbench, and tried to shake the pain in his neck. It was not good. His father had suffered pain in the same place before he had begun to waste from the inside. It might not mean the same thing, but the man knew it did. He was sure. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

  He took a breath. He coughed. Those nearby did not look around from their workbenches. They never did. Others had died at their stations, and no one even turned a head. Not their business how each other lived or died, as long as they did not interfere with each other’s work.

  The man coughed again. Something was tickling in his throat. Another cough. The pain in his neck was suddenly much worse. He brought his hand up to rub at it.

  And froze.

  Something was moving under his skin. Something with legs.

  He yelped and brought his hand away. The skin of his arm was bulging as he looked at it. He shrieked. Shapes flowed up the limb. Some of the others turned to look. The skin of his fingers split before his eyes. Feelers and legs reached out from beneath. He shrieked again and ran, tearing at his flesh. The bugs were everywhere, running over the floor. More poured from the mouths and eyes of those who turned to look at him. Their skin was coming off, peeling back from a mass of brown, clicking bodies. His hand found a metal bar, and he swung and swung.

  As the first blow landed another person’s world exploded into nightmare, then another and another.

  And so it went, on and on, with each poisoned breath of air, as fears and desires buried down beneath sanity and obedience rose up and became real.

  Within ten minutes half of the population was screaming. Within twenty, the starport was howling as it tore itself apart.

  Down in the cavern where the cargo crawler had dumped its payload into the air, the masked figures worked quickly. The communication systems for the port were beyond their abilities to subvert or damage, but the speaker horns mounted throughout the structure were a different matter. As the gas flooded through the levels above, the speakers began to proclaim a single message again and again.

  ‘We have come for you...’

  Northern Circuit

  The Imperial Palace, Terra

  The three infiltrators broke cover as the siren sounded and began to sprint up the tunnel towards the distant daylight at the top of the ramp. There was no way of avoiding this moment. For all their stealth in coming this far, they could only take this last step in the open. A gun-servitor barred their path. Its heavy bolters armed as targeting beams reached from its eyes. The first stalker round punched through its targeting lens and blew out the back of its skull. A second and third round tore chunks out of the exposed flesh of its neck. The trio of infiltrators were already past the servitor as it fell. A blast door began to drop across the passage. They rolled beneath, came up and kept running. Another servitor shrugged free of its niche in the passage wall. They put a cluster of rounds into it and vaulted over its body as it collapsed.

  Sirens boomed through the air. They could see the daylight was getting closer. The walls shivered as armoured doors slammed down across openings to either side. Lights cut out. Their visors switched the darkness to monochrome twilight. They had five seconds before the scanning beams flooded the passage. Their feet rang on the stones beneath their feet. The Palace’s guardians would know they were here within minutes. As long as those defenders were not busy elsewhere, of course.

  Dome of Illumination

  The Imperial Palace, Terra

  The Imperial Fists squad swept into the Dome of Illumination. There were twelve of them. Their left shoulder pads were bare iron. Black lightning bolts marked their chests.

  Veterans, thought Silonius as he watched them.

  They were good, very good in fact. The squad split, trios of warriors running in different directions, vanishing through doors to other parts of the Palace. Now there were just three on the walkway. One of them had a portable auspex in his hand. Silonius could almost feel the sensor waves reaching for him, itching across his skin. They moved as one, firing arcs overlapping seamlessly as they ran along the walkway, eyes and boltguns sweeping the vast chamber. They had not seen Silonius, but they would. It was only a matter of t
ime, unless...

  Light flashed through the opening in the dome above.

  Brilliant white. Blinding. Strobing.

  The Imperial Fists looked up, and then froze, staring at the fire pouring from Terra’s sky. The siren screamed louder, and shifted in tone.

  Silonius triggered the charges he had attached to the underside of the walkway. Stone and metal became smoke and flame. One of the Imperial Fists vanished in the explosion. A section of the walkway broke away from the chamber wall. Another yellow-armoured warrior went with it, spinning end over end down into the dark. The last of the squad was blasted backwards off his feet, hit the walkway floor and rolled. Silonius swung down from the ledge above, and stabbed with a shard blade as the warrior came to his feet. It was a good blow, a killing blow, smooth and precise.

  But the Imperial Fists legionary was fast and was not used to dying. The point of Silonius’ blade glanced across yellow armour, and the warrior was up and ramming his gun into Silonius’ chest. Force shuddered through Silonius’ ribs and flesh. They were so close that he could see his reflection in the green lenses of the warrior’s helm. He twisted aside as the gun roared. A cone of flame skimmed his side. He cut as he moved, once, twice, three times. Blood sheeted down. The warrior’s left arm sagged. Blood was pouring from the inside of the elbow and wrist.

  And suddenly Silonius found that he was smiling.

  The sirens were a drum beat. Everything was a blur, but everything was also so clear. The Imperial Fist stepped back. Silonius moved with him, blade flicking out and more blood gushed as the blade opened joins in wrist, elbow and knee. The boltgun fell from the legionary’s hands. Silonius wondered for an instant what it must be like for such a warrior to feel strength flee him, what it was like to feel one’s inferiority. It had always been like that for those who thought themselves strong or gifted when the Legion laid them low. The worst moment was not dying, but realising that there were others who were better.

  The legionary came forwards, shedding blood.

  Silonius lunged once. The point of his shard dagger took the warrior in the throat. The body twitched once, hands grasping nothing. Silonius let the dying warrior hang for a second and then kicked him off over the edge of the walkway.

  He flicked his blade clean, and felt a stab of pain in his left leg. He looked down. He was bleeding. A long splinter of stone had pierced his thigh. He looked at it, frowning at the fact he had not felt it before. He pulled it out. Blood pulsed briefly in the wound then began to clot. He dropped the splinter, glanced around and found the doorway he needed.

  He began to run. There was no need for stealth now. Chaos was his cloak, and all that mattered was speed.

  Four

  Terran orbit

  The Primigenia’s death light spread across the night skies of Terra. Seen from the walls of the Imperial Palace it was a blinding flash that pulsed on and on, stuttering like a corrupted pict image. It sent shadows dancing in the smoke pits of Atlantia. On the heights of Himalazia the cyber-nomads woke and saw the light writhing behind the clouds, and whispered the old legends of the sky dragons that had eaten the sun. On Luna the last of the gene-wrights saw it as a jagged star cut into the face of the mother planet.

  And the explosion did not fade, but rolled out and out through high and low orbit. Gannemus dock vanished. Hundred-metre-long chunks of debris spun out, struck smaller space stations nearby and tore them apart. Blisters of fresh fire flashed into being. The clouds of debris cascaded though the sphere of Terra. Ships twisted and burned, trying to outrun the blast wave. Hundreds failed. Clouds of shrapnel tore into the armour of warships and system monitors. Gas and fire bled into the void. Wreckage began to spin down to the world beneath, burning as it fell.

  Beacon tower 567-Beta

  Gobi tox-wastes, Terra

  ‘What was that?’ asked Incarnus. His bald head twitched up as light flickered down the shaft above them.

  ‘Something that is not our concern,’ said Myzmadra. She nodded back at the silver objects embedded in the mass of cogs and wires. Smoke had begun to peel off the connections. ‘Is it working?’

  Incarnus glanced at her, lip curling.

  ‘It’s working. If you were in the Imperial Palace you would not be able to move for the panic.’

  She frowned, still looking at the box of techno-arcanery.

  ‘Strange isn’t it? That they left a main trunk into their alert system all the way out here, with practically nothing to guard it? Very accommodating.’

  Incarnus shrugged.

  ‘What is that the Legion says? What you assume is strength is weakness. Get access to this and there is not much anyone could do, except bring everything up to maximum alert. What kind of attacker would want to warn their enemy of an attack?’

  He showed her his teeth. The gesture reminded her of the grin of the blind fish in the cave pools of her home world.

  ‘There are others out there, aren’t there?’ he asked, nodding up at the light pulsing from above. ‘Other cells setting their own little fires of mayhem? How many do you think the Legion activated for this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Myzmadra shrugged. ‘Enough to achieve the objective.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Time has expired,’ came Phocron’s voice from above. ‘Send the second stage, and be ready to move.’

  Incarnus blinked and shuffled closer to the open junction boxes. He peeled the glove off his right hand, reached out and stroked each of the chrome objects clinging to the cogs and wires. A high vibrating note filled the air. Myzmadra could feel it in her teeth.

  ‘Done?’ she asked.

  Incarnus nodded, pulling his glove back on. She noticed that he had no fingernails and the smallest finger looked as though it had an extra joint. She pulled herself up the shaft. Phocron and his brothers were all there. She looked at him. Up to this point she knew the plan in precise detail, but from here she was in an unmapped future.

  ‘Demolitions?’ she asked, glancing up at the blood-splattered walls of the tower.

  Phocron shook his head.

  ‘We leave it.’

  Myzmadra looked at him sharply.

  The legionnaire tilted his head, face utterly still. His scalp was a smooth dome of bare skin. The only mark on it was a line of scales running from his right tear duct down his cheek. He looked exactly like dozens of the others she had met. She still found it disconcerting.

  ‘They will be able to discover a lot about us if we just leave,’ she said.

  ‘That is the intent,’ said Phocron, and turned, snapping his helmet on over his head.

  Myzmadra blinked and then pulled her own mask back on. One of the warriors was at the door, scanning the horizon. The others gave swift checks to weapons. Behind her, Incarnus hoisted himself up from the hole in the floor and brushed dust from his body glove.

  Phocron glanced around at them all, nodded and led them out into the wastes of Terra. Fire scarred the dawn sky above him. Behind them, beneath the floor of the tower, the chrome devices screamed a single word over and over, battering it into Terra’s vox-traffic like the blows of a fist.

  ‘Lupercal! Lupercal! Lupercal!’ they shouted without end.

  Arcus orbital plate

  Lower Terran orbit

  The sirens rang out across Terra. They blared from the spires of hive towers and echoed through the City of Sight. Hands froze in their tasks. Billions of eyes looked to the skies. Troops and militia scrambled for weapons as officers shouted deployment orders. Those who could see the sky saw lights falling like stars. Defence batteries woke and began to track the skies for targets. Enforcers and civil-marshals surged into the avenues, tunnels and streets of the great conurbations to meet the panicking crowds that shouted of the Warmaster’s coming.

  The Arcus orbital plate crested the skies above the Europan zone as Terra began to scream. Kest
ros ran for the launch decks through the pulse of alert lights. His squad was with him. The blast door slammed open in front of him. Three gunships lay ahead. The yellow of their hulls was black in the beat of red light. Fuel cables were breaking free of their flanks even as he crossed the distance to them. His eye caught Nestor of the 65th squad swinging into the compartment of the second gunship. The junior sergeant spared a second to nod. Then the darkness of the gunship’s interior was around Kestros, and a mag-harness locked over him. The ramp was closing as the last of his squad vaulted on.

  The scream of engines rose. The display inside his helm shone with mission data. It was a full alert, maximum threat level, surface and orbital. It was not just the three gunships and squads in his reaction force. The whole company was dropping straight down into the lower atmosphere. That made Kestros stop for a second. His strike force was one of two hundred stationed on the Arcus plate. Over seven hundred Imperial Fists would be diving down to the face of Terra like a cast of falcons. And he was first, the tip of the arrow.

  Despite himself Kestros smiled. He was going back to the planet that had birthed him, and he was going to war again.

  The ramp closed, and he felt the gunship lurch as the launch cradles gripped its sides. The doors in the floor beneath it broke open. The night side of Terra skidded past beneath. Across the underbelly of the Arcus plate dozens of other launch doors opened. Engines lit. Burning cones roared up into the hangar bays. The launch cradle holding Kestros’ gunship tensed. Force slammed through it. Pistons clenched. The cradle snapped open, and the gunship dropped and cut down through cloud and night.

  Bhab Bastion

  The Imperial Palace, Terra

  Is this how it begins? thought Archamus, and that thought brought quiet to the cacophony. It could be the first blow to fall in the battle to end the war. These moments of sound and shock could be the true and final end of everything that had been. The possibility sank through him, heavy and cold.

  The sound of sirens beat the air. The holo-projections were spinning with tactical and strategic data. Above it all, the rogue signal saturating the vox-link shouted its triumph.