Behind her, a Legion Stormbird and two Cervantes-class transporters sat sheltered from the oncoming storm in the lee of a debris cliff. Their engines thrummed with noise and power, spooling up in readiness for launch.
‘Conservator Ashkali,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Niko,’ she said. ‘I think we’ve explored these old ruins long enough to dispense with formalities, don’t you?’
‘As you say,’ he replied, both of them knowing he would never refer to her by her first name.
Niko Ashkali was Morningstar’s senior conservator: a Terran by birth, but a native at heart. She led the excavations in and around the ruins of Zharrukin, and she had proven to be a thorough and perceptive academic. Her steel-grey hair was bound up in a patterned headscarf and the glare goggles of a rebreather obscured her features.
She pulled up her goggles, revealing startlingly green eyes set in deeply lined sockets. She shielded her gaze from the billowing dust and pointed to the sky.
‘We have to evacuate the dig site,’ she said, her voice muted by the dust-filter covering her mouth. ‘Meterologicus says the magna-storm is at least an hour out, which probably means it’ll hit us in ten minutes.’
Atharva lifted his gaze to the mountains in the east. The flaring detonations of a colossal magnetic storm marched over their summits. It was impossible to tell which way the planet’s unpredictable weather systems would hurl them.
‘The storm front is moving down to sweep across the plains,’ he said. ‘It will likely pass Zharrukin.’
‘Or it could just as easily change course,’ replied Ashkali. ‘If it hits us, it’s going to tear through this place in a blizzard of rogue magnetics and lightning. Anyone still here is going to die.’
Atharva was loath to leave Zharrukin, but to stay would be to risk the lives of the conservator’s staff of archaeotechs and all they had unearthed thus far.
‘You are correct,’ he said. ‘Prepare for departure.’
‘What of your master? Is he still out there?’
Atharva hesitated before answering.
‘He is. Get your people back to their ships.’
Ashkali hesitated before nodding and speaking into her rebreather’s integral vox to issue the recall order. Atharva turned and walked back to the Stormbird and did the same, though he sent the order to his warriors via telepathic pulse. Within forty-five seconds, legionaries in crimson war-plate emerged from various areas of the ruins. Each was trailed by a bulk-servitor hauling the fruits of their excavations.
They boarded the Stormbird without a word, securing their findings in the hold before strapping themselves into the contoured benches along the gunship’s inner hull.
Ashkali’s people took longer to return, hurrying back to their waiting transports with barely disguised panic. The storm was getting worse, the sky flickering with radioactive sunspots and boiling atmospheric superstorms.
In the face of the worsening conditions, the conservator directed the evacuation with clipped efficiency, ensuring everything they had discovered was inventoried on her bronzed data-slate.
Phosis T’kar was the last to board, and the lieutenant paused as he reached Atharva. Dust caked the grooves of his armour and his aura was bellicose, his mind that of a scholar who attacks a work with brute-force reasoning. His methodology wasn’t pretty, but it got results.
‘Where is he?’ he asked.
‘He is not here,’ replied Atharva, watching the storm descend on the far reaches of Zharrukin.
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘I know.’
‘He should be here.’
‘Yes, indeed he should.’
‘Then where is he?’
Atharva did not answer, lifting his gaze to the mountains as the storm struck the earth beyond the edge of the city. Raging plumes of lightning-shot dust and debris were hurled hundreds of metres into the air, arcing over the city. A mushroom cloud of fire erupted from its shattered outskirts. Another swiftly followed, rubble lifted high by twisting currents of air and torsioning magnetics. A harsh, metallic-tasting wind blew hard from the mountains, making the mechanics of his war-plate hum in protest.
‘We should be in the air,’ said Phosis T’kar.
‘He will be here. And if he is not, this storm will not trouble him.’
‘You can’t know that. What do any of us really know about him? What he can do or what he can endure? We barely know him.’
Atharva did not answer. That Phosis T’kar was right made him only more reluctant to admit to his ignorance. The Stormbird vibrated with potential, the pilot keeping it on the ground with a light touch, ready to lift off in an instant.
‘Give the order,’ said Phosis T’kar.
‘Not yet.’
The tallest spires of Zharrukin swayed and groaned, the reinforcement within the stone tearing as alternating fields of powerful magnetics twisted them. Stone and steel peeled from buildings and spun away into the storm as searing winds buffeted the gunship. Dust raged within the Stormbird’s troop compartment, swirling in vortices of geomantic significance.
The vox-bead in his helmet chirruped: an incoming message from Mistress Ashkali.
‘Master Atharva! We must take off. Right now!’
He nodded and said, ‘Go. Get out of here. We will be right behind you.’
‘See that you are!’
The two Cervantes-class transports lifted into the air on plumes of jetfire, swaying and lurching wildly, as if the storm winds actively sought to prevent their escape. The first craft took off in the lee of a shattered structure that sheltered it from the worst of the winds. The pilot feathered the engines and Atharva lost sight of it as rusted-ochre clouds closed in.
The second craft was not so lucky.
It twisted as a magnetic squall pulled its starboard wing down and buckled the metal of its hull. Ultra-rapid polarity shifts swung it around like a leaf in a hurricane. It flipped over onto its side, hurtling towards the ground and certain destruction.
Atharva slammed his mind into the second Enumeration.
Raw kine energy flowed through him.
He gripped the faltering transport with his power.
Help me!+ he cried, the words blurted in a psychic shout.
Phosis T’kar was at his side an instant later, hands extended as he too unleashed his power. Atharva’s lieutenant was a practitioner of the kinetic arts, and his sigil of the Raptora cult glittered in the flickering lightning.
Together they halted the transport’s tumbling fall.
Atharva and Phosis T’kar rolled their wrists in perfect concert, moulding the kine power to their will. The transport mimicked their movements, rotating like a designer’s schematic being haptically manipulated. Its engines flared as the pilot fed every scrap of power to them.
Release!+ said Atharva.
He and Phosis T’kar relinquished their hold on the transport.
It shot skywards like a stone from a sling.
Bone-deep repercussive pain surged through Atharva’s flesh, pain he would endure tenfold later. He let out a charged breath and stepped from the Stormbird’s ramp. He read Phosis T’kar’s confusion.
‘What are you doing?’ asked his lieutenant. ‘Get back on board.’
‘Return to Calaena immediately,’ replied Atharva through bloodied teeth. ‘Assist the Fourth Legion elements in the evacuation. I will rejoin you when I can.’
Phosis T’kar shook his head and pressed his palm against the closing mechanism. ‘I’m closing up, but we aren’t leaving without you and the primarch.’
Atharva saw the determination in Phosis T’kar’s aura and knew that any argument he might make against this course of action would be futile.
‘Then I will attempt to be quick,’ he said.
Hurricanes of abrasive dust fle
nsed the paint from his armour in silver streaks as he turned towards the city where his master awaited.
If he is still alive.
Could any being survive conditions so inimical to life?
The clouds parted and a towering figure wreathed in multi-coloured fire emerged from the storm in answer.
He was a giant in crimson and gold, a warrior and scholar in one. His golden war-plate had been crafted by the finest armourers of Terra, a masterpiece of curling horns, sculpted muscles, carved lions and the finest scriptwork. A kilt of leather hung to his knees, and a hook-bladed sword crafted from Prosperine silksteel was belted at his waist next to a colossal tome of psychic lore.
My lord,+ said Atharva, using his psychic voice.
Magnus the Red was wrought from wrath and wonder, his face a protean blend of features that Atharva had never been able to entirely fix in his mind. A disconcerting attribute in a leader, one that would take some getting used to.
Atharva wasn’t sure he was there yet.
The psychic fire of the primarch’s magnificent aura kept the storm’s fury at bay. Magnus might have been strolling through Tizca’s sculpture gardens, for all the tempest affected him. A trio of servitors followed him, each hauling a high-sided grav-sled.
Cutting it a bit close, are you not?+ said Atharva.
The primarch looked up, as if he hadn’t noticed the storm at all.
I had not completed my work,+ replied Magnus.
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First published in Great Britain in 2017.
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Cover illustration by Neil Roberts.
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