From that encounter, Saul Tarvitz began to understand why Khitas Frome had named the world Murder.
THE GREAT WARSHIP exploded like a breaching whale from the smudge of un-light that was its retranslation point, and returned to the silent, physical cosmos of real space again with a shivering impact. It had translated twelve weeks earlier, by the ship-board clocks, and had made a journey that ought to have taken eighteen weeks. Great powers had been put into play to expedite the transit, powers that only a Warmaster could call upon.
It coasted for about six million kilometres, trailing the last, luminous tendrils of plasmic flare from its immense bulk, like remorae, until strobing flashes of un-light to stern announced the belated arrival of its consorts: ten light cruisers and five mass conveyance troopships. The stragglers lit their real space engines and hurried wearily to join formation with the huge flagship. As they approached, like a school of pups swimming close to their mighty parent, the flagship ignited its own drives and led them in.
Towards One Forty Twenty. Towards Murder.
Forward arrayed detectors pinged as they tasted the magnetic and energetic profiles of other ships at high anchor around the system’s fourth planet, eighty million kilometres ahead. The local sun was yellow and hot, and billowed with loud, charged particles.
As it advanced at the head of the trailing flotilla, the flagship broadcast its standard greeting document, in vox, vox-supplemented pict, War Council code, and astrotelepathic forms.
‘This is the Vengeful Spirit, of the 63rd Expedition. This vessel approaches with peaceful intent, as an ambassador of the Imperium of Man. House your guns and stand to. Make acknowledgement.’
On the bridge of the Vengeful Spirit, Master Comnenus sat at his station and waited. Given its great size and number of personnel, the bridge around him was curiously quiet. There was just a murmur of low voices and the whir of instrumentation. The ship itself was protesting loudly. Undignified creaks and seismic moans issued from its immense hull and layered decks as the superstructure relaxed and settled from the horrendous torsion stresses of warp translation.
Boas Comnenus knew most of the sounds like old friends, and could almost anticipate them. He’d been part of the ship for a long time, and knew it as intimately as a lover’s body. He waited, braced, for erroneous creaks, for the sudden chime of defect alarms.
So far, all was well. He glanced at the Master Companion of Vox, who shook his head. He switched his gaze to Ing Mae Sing who, though blind, knew full well he was looking at her.
‘No response, master,’ she said.
‘Repeat,’ he ordered. He wanted that signal response, but more particularly, he was waiting for the fix. It was taking too long. Comnenus drummed his steel fingers on the edge of his master console, and deck officers all around him stiffened. They knew, and feared, that sign of impatience.
Finally, an adjutant hurried over from the navigation pit with the wafer slip. The adjutant might have been about to apologise for the delay, but Comnenus glanced up at him with a whir of augmetic lenses. The whir said, ‘I do not expect you to speak.’ The adjutant simply held the wafer out for inspection.
Comnenus read it, nodded, and handed it back.
‘Make it known and recorded,’ he said. The adjutant paused long enough for another deck officer to copy the wafer for the principal transit log, then hurried up the rear staircase of the bridge to the strategium deck. There, with a salute, he handed it to the duty master, who took it, turned, and walked twenty paces to the plated glass doors of the sanctum, where he handed it in turn to the master bodyguard. The master bodyguard, a massive Astartes in gold custodes armour, read the wafer quickly, nodded, and opened the doors. He passed the wafer to the solemn, robed figure of Maloghurst, who was waiting just inside.
Maloghurst read the wafer too, nodded in turn, and shut the doors again.
‘Location is confirmed and entered into the log,’ Maloghurst announced to the sanctum. ‘One Forty Twenty.’
Seated in a high-backed chair that had been drawn up close to the window ports to afford a better view of the starfield outside, the Warmaster took a deep, steady breath. ‘Determination of passage so noted,’ he replied. ‘Let my acknowledgement be a matter of record.’ The twenty waiting scribes around him scratched the details down in their manifests, bowed and withdrew.
‘Maloghurst?’ The Warmaster turned his head to look at his equerry. ‘Send Boas my compliments, please.’
‘Yes, lord.’
The Warmaster rose to his feet. He was dressed in full ceremonial wargear, gleaming gold and frost white, with a vast mantle of purple scale-skin draped across his shoulders. The eye of Terra stared from his breastplate. He turned to face the ten Astartes officers gathered in the centre of the room, and each one of them felt that the eye was regarding him with particular, unblinking scrutiny.
‘We await your orders, lord,’ said Abaddon. Like the other nine, he was wearing battle plate with a floor length cloak, his crested helm carried in the crook of his left arm.
‘And we’re where we’re supposed to be,’ said Torgaddon, ‘and alive, which is always a good start.’
A broad smile crossed the Warmaster’s face. ‘Indeed it is, Tarik.’ He looked into the eyes of each officer in turn. ‘My friends, it seems we have an alien war to contest. This pleases me. Proud as I am of our accomplishments on Sixty-Three Nineteen, that was a painful fight to prosecute. I can’t derive satisfaction from a victory over our own kind, no matter how wrong-headed and stubborn their philosophies. It limits the soldier in me, and inhibits my relish of war, and we are all warriors, you and I. Made for combat. Bred, trained and disciplined. Except you pair,’ Horus smirked, nodding at Abaddon and Luc Sedirae. ‘You kill until I have to tell you to stop.’
‘And even then you have to raise your voice,’ added Torgaddon. Most of them laughed.
‘So an alien war is a delight to me,’ the Warmaster continued, still smiling. ‘A clear and simple foe. An opportunity to wage war without restraint, regret or remorse. Let us go and be warriors for a while, pure and undiluted.’
‘Hear, hear!’ cried the ancient Iacton Qruze, businesslike and sober, clearly bothered by Torgaddon’s constant levity. The other nine were more modest in their assent.
Horus led them out of the sanctum onto the strategium deck, the four captains of the Mournival and the company commanders: Sedirae of the Thirteenth, Qruze of the Third, Targost of the Seventh, Marr of the Eighteenth, Moy of the Nineteenth, and Goshen of the Twenty-Fifth.
‘Let’s have tactical,’ the Warmaster said.
Maloghurst was waiting, ready. As he motioned with his control wand, detailed hololithic images shimmered into place above the dais. They showed a general profile of the system, with orbital paths delineated, and the position and motion of tracked vessels. Horus gazed up at the hololithic graphics and reached out. Actuator sensors built into the fingertips of his gauntlets allowed him to rotate the hololithic display and bring certain segments into magnification. ‘Twenty-nine craft,’ he said. ‘I thought the 140th was eighteen vessels strong?’
‘So we were told, lord,’ Maloghurst replied. As soon as they had stepped out of the sanctum, they had started conversing in Cthonic, so as to preserve tactical confidence whilst in earshot of the bridge personnel. Though Horus had not been raised on Cthonia – uncommonly, for a primarch, he had not matured on the cradle-world of his Legion – he spoke it fluently. In fact, he spoke it with the particular hard palatal edge and rough vowels of a Western Hemispheric ganger, the commonest and roughest of Cthonia’s feral castes. It had always amused Loken to hear that accent. Early on, he had assumed it was because that’s how the Warmaster had learned it, from just such a speaker, but he doubted that now. Horus never did anything by accident. Loken believed that the Warmaster’s rough Cthonic accent was a deliberate affectation so that he would seem, to the men, as honest and low-born as any of them.
Maloghurst had consulted a data-slate provided by a w
aiting deck officer. ‘I confirm the 140th Expedition was given a complement of eighteen vessels.’
‘Then what are these others?’ asked Aximand. ‘Enemy ships?’
‘We’re awaiting sensor profile analysis, captain,’ Maloghurst replied, ‘and there has been no response to our signals as yet.’
‘Tell Master Comnenus to be… more emphatic,’ the Warmaster told his equerry.
‘Should I instruct him to form our components into a battle line, lord?’ Maloghurst asked.
‘I’ll consider it,’ the Warmaster said. Maloghurst limped away down the platform steps onto the main bridge to speak to Boas Comnenus.
‘Should we form a battle line?’ Horus asked his commanders.
‘Could the additional profiles be alien vessels?’ Qruze wondered.
‘It doesn’t look like a battle spread, Iacton,’ Aximand replied, ‘and Frome said nothing about enemy vessels.’
‘They’re ours,’ said Loken.
The Warmaster looked over at him. ‘You think so, Garviel?’
‘It seems evident to me, sir. The hits show a spread of ships at high anchor. Imperial anchorage formation. Others must have responded to the call for assistance.’ Loken trailed off, and suddenly fought back an embarrassed smile, ‘You knew that all along, of course, my lord.’
‘I was just wondering who else might have been sharp enough to recognise the pattern,’ Horus smiled. Qruze shook his head with a grin, sheepish at his own mistake.
The Warmaster nodded towards the display. ‘So, what’s this big fellow here? That’s a barge.’
‘The Misericord,’ suggested Qruze.
‘No, no, that’s the Misericord. And what’s this about?’ Horus leaned forwards, and ran his fingers across the hard light display. ‘It looks like… music. Something like music. Who’s transmitting music?’
‘Outstation relays,’ Abaddon said, studying his own data-slate. ‘Beacons. The 140th reported thirty beacons in the system grid. Xenos. Their broadcasts are repeating and untranslatable.’
‘Really? They have no ships, but they have outstation beacons?’ Horus reached out and changed the display to a close breakdown of scatter patterns. ‘This is untranslatable?’
‘So the 140th said,’ said Abaddon.
‘Have we taken their word for that?’ asked the Warmaster.
‘I imagine we have,’ said Abaddon.
‘There’s sense in this,’ Horus decided, peering at the luminous graphics. ‘I want this run. I want us to run it. Start with standard numeric blocks. With respect to the 140th, I don’t intend to take their word for anything. Cursed awful job they’ve done here so far.’
Abaddon nodded, and stepped aside to speak to one of the waiting deck officers and have the order enacted.
‘You said it looks like music,’ Loken said.
‘What?’
‘You said it looks like music, sir,’ Loken repeated. ‘An interesting word to choose.’
The Warmaster shrugged. ‘It’s mathematical, but there’s a sequential rhythm to it. It’s not random. Music and maths, Garviel. Two sides of a coin. This is deliberately structured. Lord knows which idiot in the 140th Fleet decided this was untranslatable.’
Loken nodded. ‘You see that, just by looking at it?’ he asked.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Horus replied.
Maloghurst returned. ‘Master Comnenus confirms all contacts are Imperial,’ he said, holding out another wafer slip of print out. ‘Other units have been arriving these last few weeks, in response to the calls for aid. Most of them are Imperial army conveyances en route to Carollis Star, but the big vessel is the Proudheart. Third Legion, the Emperor’s Children. A full company, under the command privilege of Lord Commander Eidolon.’
‘So, they beat us to it. How are they doing?’
Maloghurst shrugged. ‘It would seem… not well, lord,’ he said.
THE PLANET’S OFFICIAL designation in the Imperial Registry was One Hundred and Forty Twenty, it being the twentieth world subjected to compliance by the fleet of the 140th Expedition. But that was inaccurate, as clearly the 140th had not achieved anything like compliance. Still, the Emperor’s Children had used the number to begin with, for to do otherwise would have been an insult to the honour of the Blood Angels.
Prior to arrival, Lord Commander Eidolon had briefed his Astartes comprehensively. The initial transmissions of the 140th Expedition had been clear and succinct. Khitas Frome, Captain of the three Blood Angels companies that formed the marrow of the 140th, had reported xenos hostilities a few days after his forces had touched down on the world’s surface. He had described ‘very capable things, like upright beetles, but made of, or shod in, metal. Each one is twice the height of a man and very belligerent. Assistance may be required if their numbers increase.’
After that, his relayed communiqués had been somewhat patchy and intermittent. Fighting had ‘grown thicker and more savage’ and the xenos forms ‘appeared not to lack in numbers’. A week later, and his transmissions were more urgent. ‘There is a race here that resists us, and which we cannot easily overcome. They refuse to admit communication with us, or any parlay. They spill from their lairs. I find myself admiring their mettle, though they are not made as we are. Their martial schooling is fine indeed. A worthy foe, one that might be written about in our annals.’
A week after that, the expedition’s messages had become rather more simple, sent by the Master of the Fleet instead of Frome. ‘The enemy here is formidable, and quite outweighs us. To take this world, the full force of the Legio is required. We humbly submit a request for reinforcement at this time.’
Frome’s last message, relayed from the surface a fortnight later by the expedition fleet, had been a tinny rasp of generally indecipherable noise. All the articulacy and purpose of his words had been torn apart by the feral distortion. The only cogent thing that had come through was his final utterance. Each word had seemed to be spoken with inhuman effort. ‘This. World. Is. Murder.’ And so they had named it.
The taskforce of the Emperor’s Children was comparatively small in size: just a company of the Legion’s main strength, conveyed by the battle-barge Proudheart, under the command of Lord Eidolon. After a brief, peace-keeping tour of newly compliant worlds in the Satyr Lanxus Belt, they had been en route to rejoin their primarch and brethren companies at Carollis Star to begin a mass advance into the Lesser Bifold Cluster. However, during their transit, the 140th Expedition had begun its requests for assistance. The taskforce had been the closest Imperial unit fit to respond. Lord Eidolon had requested immediate permission from his primarch to alter course and go to the expedition’s aid.
Fulgrim had given his authority at once. The Emperor’s Children would never leave their Astartes brothers in jeopardy. Eidolon had been given his primarch’s instant, unreserved blessing to reroute and support the beleaguered expedition. Other forces were rushing to assist. It was said a detachment of Blood Angels was on its way, as was a heavyweight response from the Warmaster himself, despatched from the 63rd Expedition.
At best, the closest of them was still many days off. Lord Eidolon’s taskforce was the interim measure: critical response, the first to the scene.
Eidolon’s battle-barge had joined with the operational vessels of the 140th Expedition at high anchor above One Forty Twenty. The 140th Expedition was a small, compact force of eighteen carriers, mass conveyances and escorts supporting the noble battle-barge Misericord. Its martial composition was three companies of Blood Angels under Captain Frome, and four thousand men of the Imperial army, with allied armour, but no Mechanicum force.
Mathanual August, Master of the 140th Fleet, had welcomed Eidolon and his commanders aboard the barge. Tall and slender, with a forked white beard, August was fretful and nervous. ‘I am gratified at your quick response, lord,’ he’d told Eidolon.
‘Where is Frome?’ Eidolon had asked bluntly.
August had shrugged, helplessly.
‘Where is th
e commander of the army divisions?’
A second pitiful shrug. ‘They are all down there.’
Down there. On Murder. The world was a hazy, grey orb, mottled with storm patterning in the atmosphere. Drawn to the lonely system by the curious, untranslatable broadcasts of the outstation beacons, a clear and manifest trace of sentient life, the 140th Expedition had focussed its attentions on the fourth planet, the only orb in the star’s orbit with an atmosphere. Sensor sweeps had detected abundant vital traces, though nothing had answered their signals.
Fifty Blood Angels had dropped first, in landers, and had simply disappeared. Previously calm weather cycles had mutated into violent tempests the moment the landers had entered the atmosphere, like an allergic reaction, and swallowed them up. Due to the suddenly volatile climate, communication with the surface was impossible. Another fifty had followed, and had similarly vanished.
That was when Frome and the fleet officers had begun to suspect that the life forms of One Forty Twenty somehow commanded their own weather systems as a defence. The immense storm fronts, later dubbed ‘shield-storms’, that had risen up to meet the surface-bound landers, had probably obliterated them. After that, Frome had used drop-pods, the only vehicles that seemed to survive the descent. Frome had led the third wave himself, and only partial messages had been received from him subsequently, even though he’d taken an astrotelepath with him to counter the climatic vox-interference.
It was a grim story. Section by section, August had committed the Astartes and army forces in his expedition to surface drops in a vain attempt to respond to Frame’s broken pleas for support. They had either been destroyed by the storms or lost in the impenetrable maelstrom below. The shield-storms, once roused, would not die away. There were no clean surface picts, no decent topographic scans, no uplinks or viable communication lines. One Forty Twenty was an abyss from which no one returned.
‘We’ll be going in blind,’ Eidolon had told his officers. ‘Drop-pod descent.’