'Fight or flight? I know which I'd rather do,' said Vashti, watching the Harvest Dawn's trajectory as it passed from the troposphere to the stratosphere. In around sixty seconds, it would be someone else's responsibility.
'Fight,' said Rom, and Vashti grinned.
'Always,' she said. 'But for now, I think I need something to take the edge off a little.'
Vashti pressed her hand to the skin at her collarbone, haptic implants beneath her fingertips activating the implanted reservoir of bio-stabilisers. She blinked at the sudden clarity of her vision and felt her pulse steady.
'And now you are calm again,' said Rom. 'Good.'
Rom's station was elevated behind hers, the Mechanicum adept's chimeric form suspended in a full-body harness at the centre of a sphere of noospheric data streams. Ocular-neural implants allowed Vashti to perceive what Rom was seeing, and she winced every time she saw how dangerously overcrowded her airspace had become.
Her thirty-strong staff of techs and servitors were strung out and exhausted from coordinating the enormous volume of traffic from ground to orbit. Most were working on stimms and would suffer terrible withdrawals when the evacuation was done. Some might not even survive, but not one had complained at the daunting task before them.
She quickly identified the Harvest Dawn's track, a steady climb towards the low anchors of the Iron Warriors fleet lines. Barring something catastrophic, the agri-hauler would soon be unloading its eight thousand passengers.
'The Dawn is more than six centuries old,' said Vashti. 'She's a rust-bucket that ought to have been mothballed decades ago. It's only hope and blind faith that keeps her aloft.'
'The Harvest Dawn is well past its allotted service years,' agreed Rom, 'but such tolerances must be waived in the face of current circumstances.'
'She's made twelve round trips already, and we're pushing our luck asking her to make a thirteenth.'
'Is that superstition?' said Rom.
'Common sense,' answered Vashti.
'It is much the same thing.'
'Is that humour?'
'Experience,' said Rom.
'Circuit hub Epsilon-Five-Alpha requesting hand-off,' said Rom as the Harvest Dawn's orbital track flashed amber.
'I see it. Authorisation granted. Let them have her.'
'Preparing to hand off to orbital controllers aboard the Iron Blood,' said Rom. 'In five, four, three, two, one. Mark.'
The flashing amber track changed to a solid blue.
'Another one away!' cried Korinna Moreno, one of Vashti's senior orbital controllers. She punched the air, revealing a porcelain-smooth augmetic arm painted with coiling serpents, and a hoarse cheer went up from the command centre staff.
'What's next on the slate?' asked Vashti.
'The Gallant and the Vos Shermentov,' replied Moreno, bringing up a pair of wireframe hololiths and technical specifications. 'A pair of dirty promethium rigs that limped clear of the equatorial magna-storm.'
'Promethium rigs. Wonderful,' sighed Vashti. 'I'm sure they'll be totally safe to launch.'
Ahriman and Forrix passed into the grand processionals of the western districts en route to the starport. Vapour pillars of departing vessels columned the volatile sky and a nimbus of flickering energy hazed the air above the cliff-like dorsal surfaces of the Lux Ferem.
Rain was still falling in an ionised flood, and Ahriman felt a momentary flicker of prescience, seeing another storm-wracked city lashed by rain in its final moments.
With names exchanged, a bridge of sorts had been established between Ahriman and Forrix, and they spoke now with the halting cadences of men who might yet be brothers.
'Were you born on Olympia?' asked Ahriman as they passed beneath a polished ouslite arch commemorating the arrival of the Crusade fleets in Morningstar's system.
'No, I am one of the few remaining Iron Warriors to have been born on Terra,' said Forrix. 'I spent my boyhood in the shadow of the great mountain of Eite Mohr, but my heart is Olympian. As soon as I set foot on its rocky uplands, I knew I was home.'
'What is it like?'
'Ah, how can I describe our home?' said Forrix, fond memories rendering his aura a warm honeyed colour. 'It is a world to lift the soul, Ahzek. Endless mountains of dark beauty and sweet-smelling stands of highland fir as far as the eye can see.'
'It sounds magnificent,' said Ahriman.
'It is,' agreed Forrix. 'But it is not a world to take lightly either. Olympia is a harsh and testing world, a world that is not kind to the weak. The black rock of the mountains is hard and unforgiving, and it does it yield easily to pick or hammer. But prove your mettle and you will know what it is to be a worthy man. Yet even as Olympia lifts you, it reminds you of your place in the universe.'
'How so?' said Ahriman, feeling a flutter of discord somewhere within the trudging crowds. The sensation was fleeting, for the people of Morningstar had minds blunted to psychic probing. Ahriman eased his consciousness into Corvidae thought-forms, hoping to catch a stray future-echo.
'The mountains of Olympia have existed for millions of years and they will exist for millions more,' said Forrix. 'No matter the affairs of men, their struggles and their triumphs, the mountains will endure. To know that makes a man humble, for he will be long gone before the mountains are dust.'
Ahriman was surprised by the poetry of Forrix's words, having not suspected the Iron Warriors of having much of an appreciation of life's transient nature.
'I should like to see Olympia someday,' he said.
'You should. It would do you good to feel humility.'
'Are you suggesting I am arrogant?'
Forrix laughed, the sound like metal grinding on metal. Ahriman sensed Forrix did not laugh much.
'Can any of us say we are not? But you Thousand Sons hold yourselves above all others as scholars and visionaries, warriors who put a greater price on knowledge than all else.'
'You say that like we are to be viewed with suspicion for qualities most would consider a virtue,' Ahriman pointed out.
Forrix shrugged.
'I do not say this to anger you, Ahzek. Only to point out that any man who ascends to the ranks of the Legiones Astartes needs to be humbled every now and then. We transhumans are like gods unto mortals, but we all need a little humility to remind us of the purpose for which we were wrought by the Emperor, beloved by all.'
Anger touched Ahriman, and he sought to quell it by rising into the first Enumeration. Forrix had pleased Ahriman with his insight, so he had no right to be angry with him for speaking honestly.
'You are right, my friend,' he said. 'The Thousand Sons are sometimes guilty of hubris, for we are seekers after truth and such a quest sometimes requires us to set ourselves apart from our brothers.'
'Nothing should set a man apart from his brothers,' said Forrix. 'That is surely the greatest truth, but I see my words have angered you, and that was not my intention. Accept my apology and we will talk of your world, yes? I wish to hear of Prospero.'
Ahriman's humours were still unbalanced, but it was not the bilious fire of choler that came to the fore, but the black confusion of melancholia.
'Prospero is a place of… mixed emotion for me,' said Ahriman, startling himself with his need for honesty. 'When we first came to our primarch's home world it was as a broken Legion. I remember it imperfectly, but what I do remember is that we were dying.'
'Dying?' said Forrix, genuinely shocked.
'Yes. A… a sickness of a sort had taken hold of us. I think it almost destroyed us.'
'This is why there are so few of you?'
'Yes. The Emperor led us to Prospero, where we were reunited with our primarch, but in truth I remember little of that meeting or much of what happened in its aftermath.'
'Aye, it is said that men in the presence of the Emperor find their memories afflicted,' said Forrix.
That was not what Ahriman meant, but he did not correct the Iron Warrior. Slick sweat like a layer of frost sheened his skin at the memory of the agonies
he had been enduring at that moment, every fibre of his being directed at holding back the honor of something so terrible he dared not name it.
'All I remember is Magnus the Red taking a knee and swearing an oath before his father. It was a glorious time for us, a time of rebirth, but I barely recall the months following that meeting.'
'I fell the same thing,' said Forrix. 'We met the Lord of Iron in the rain. Rain just like this. Dammekos presented his adoptive son to his true father atop the Blinded Citadel. What was your primarch's oath?'
'That I remember,' said Ahriman, pleased to be asked a question he could answer without a vague feeling of unease or the notion he was revealing his Legion's secrets. 'I shall never forget it Magnus said, 'As I am your son, they shall become mine' Then he took the Emperor's hand to accept primacy of our Legion. That was the moment we truly became the Thousand Sons.'
'But tell me of your world, Ahzek,' said Forrix. 'Speak of Prospero s heart, the soul that lives in its stone.'
'My world is Terra, and in truth I saw little of Prospero's landscape Our Legion was rebuilding its ranks, learning our true potential from our father and welcoming back to the ranks many we thought lost to us. These were heady days, you understand. Our Legion was on the verge of extinction, but Magnus had saved us. We were reborn and our lives given fresh purpose…'
Ahriman's words trailed off as he sensed a flare of emotion in the crowd once more. Forrix immediately saw the change in him and he brought his weapon up.
'What is it? What do you see?'
'Nothing, I see nothing.'
'Your posture says otherwise.'
Ahriman looked down and saw he had drawn his weapon without conscious thought. A bolt was chambered, his finger curled around the trigger and ready to fire. His Corvidae senses were afire, and he traced the glittering lines he saw in his mind back from a moment where he might pull that nigger.
'There,' said Forrix and Ahriman looked up to see a man break from the crowd to clamber up a statue depicting Damjan Toruń, Morningstar's first Light King. He climbed onto the statue's plinth and threw off his stormcloak to reveal an ochre robe threaded with images of golden snakes.
Ahriman recognised the symbol of the Sons of Shaitan.
'Glory of rapture be upon you all!' screamed the man, one hand holding on to the statue's leg, the other raised in a fist. 'The time of our ascension is upon us! We are the blessed ones. We are the chosen people who can choose to rise to join the Stormlord! His tempests shake the heavens, His return splits the land! Can you not feel Him?'
Few among the crowd paid him any heed, but Ahriman sensed more minds than he would have expected responding to the zealot's words.
'Our world missed its chance once, when a lightless age of strife descended upon the galaxy and raised others to His golden palace among the stars! But the Stormlord is nothing if not merciful, and He bestows His wonder of strife upon us again! He offers us this chance to be with Him! We were denied the chance in the rapture of Old Night, but the Sons of Shaitan beseech you now - look to the skies and see the signs of His coming! Welcome them and embrace this golden apocalypse!'
Ahriman pushed into the crowded street, anxious to shut the demagogue down before his words created panic.
'I can end this with a headshot,' said Forrix, shouldering his bolter. Ahriman heard the dick of a target link and knew Forrix would not miss.
'No,' he said. 'I'll stop him.'
He drew in a breath of power, feeling the energies of the Great Ocean suffuse his flesh. It touched none of those around him as they fled before his swift advance. Some were jeering at the man, attempting to drown out his doomsaying, but many more were, in turn, heckling those trying to shout him down.
The man saw Ahriman and Forrix advancing towards his perch upon the statue's plinth and jabbed an accusing finger at them.
'Look! The warriors of crimson and iron have come to our world to steal this moment from us, to deny us our rightful place at His side. They herd us like cattle into the vaults of ships to take us from our homes. Do you know where they are taking you? Will they tell us? No! They claim they are our protectors, but I tell you they are daemons given human faces! They are traitors who walk in the darkness between the stars come to enslave us!'
Ahriman extended his will and closed the man's throat with the merest nudge of kine force. The man's words were silenced, and his eyes bulged as he fought to draw breath. Ahriman could have killed him, but he had no wish to murder the man, just deprive him of oxygen long enough to render him unconscious.
But the raving demagogue was not to be denied his martyrdom, and he pulled a snub-nosed autopistol from beneath his robes and placed it to his forehead.
'No!' shouted Ahriman, but even transhuman reflexes could not stop what happened next.
The man pulled the trigger and blasted his brains out onto the watching refugees.
At the man's death, a host of people in the crowd threw off concealing cloaks to reveal serpent-stitched robes identical to the dead man's.
Ahriman saw stubbers, auto-rifles, swords and hatchets.
The Sons of Shaitan fell upon the refugees in a frenzy of gunfire and slashing blades.
Three
LET THEM DIE • AHZEK UNBOUND • CRUELTY
Hathor Maat was well aware of the lesser mental capacity of mortals, but this was beyond the pale. The old man before him was trembling in fear, holding himself upright with a wooden staff carved in the form of an elongated viper. Despite his physical frailty, he looked up at Hathor Maat with a defiance that was quite out of character in those facing transhumans.
His name was Felix Tephra and he was the elected spokesman for this horticultural collective on the fertile slopes of Mount Kailash.
Dormant for millennia, Morningstar's geomagnetic upheaval had transformed the serene mountain into a rumbling powder keg on the verge of a catastrophic eruption.
Tephra stood before his people - some five hundred agri-labourers and techs who were ignoring all sense and reason by refusing to be airlifted to safety in the Stormbirds of the Thousand Sons and Iron Warriors.
The isolated community was little more than a score of simple portal-framed structures with corrugated roofs. It possessed only the bare minimum of technology required to operate the irrigation systems and nutrient atomisers of its stepped fields. A winding rail-track led back down the mountain, but Hathor Maat didn't think it had been used in years.
He tapped the Legion insignia upon his shoulder guard with his gauntlet
'I have been tasked with bringing you to safety,' he said.
'And we thank you,' said Tephra. 'But your efforts were unnecessary. We are—'
Tephra's words were cut off by a hacking, coughing fit. He bent double and would have collapsed but for his staff. When he straightened and took his hand from his mouth, it was wet with black phlegm.
Hathor Maat eased a measure of his psychic senses outwards, his perception of the man's biology superior to any narthecium. Tephra's lungs were all but dissolved by months of breathing pyroclastic ash from the volcano's smouldering peak.
Reaching out to place a hand upon Tephra's shoulder, Hathor Maat let his power - his Pavoni power - flow into the man's flesh. It threaded damaged blood vessels all the way into his chest, where it renewed damaged bronchioles and purged the lung tissue of toxic materials.
Tephra's breathing eased almost instantly, and he looked up at the legionary in wonderment.
'Come back with us and you can all be healed,' said Hathor Maat. Tephra's wonderment fled his face and he took a step back. Hathor Maat had seen that look before, in the eyes of enemies trying to kill him. Surely this man would not be so stupid as to attempt something so obviously suicidal?
'Cease your temptations!' hissed Tephra, his fists clenched in anger. 'Leave our sacred mountain. Right now.'
His voice quavered, rich with a giddy elation, as if he had passed some sort of test by spitting in the face of Hathor Maat's gift, as though dying here
was the culmination of some long-awaited fulfillment.
'You are aware of Magos Tancorix's readings, yes?' said Hathor Maat, attempting another tack. He held out the slate upon which the Mechanicum's data indicating Mount Kailash's inevitable fate was clearly displayed. This volcano is going explode. Not just erupt and pour molten lava down its flanks, but explode. This mountain is going to cease to exist.'
He was careful to enunciate every syllable, lest there be any misunderstanding. 'My men and I have orders to bring you and your people to Calaena for immediate evacuation.'
Tephra shook his head. 'We are staying. That is an end to the matter.'
Hathor Maat let his awareness spread throughout the men and women gathered behind Tephra. He felt their determination to remain here, a blind righteousness impervious to anything so trivial as facts or reason.
'You're all going to die,' said Hathor Maat, struggling to contain his anger in the face of such wilful stupidity. 'Is that what you want?'
'It is not about what we want,' said Tephra. 'It is the will of the Stormlord. We will soon stand in radiance at His side.'
The man's foolishness beggared belief.
Hathor Maat laughed in his face. 'The Stormlord? Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds? You are willing to die and consign everyone here to death over a folktale?'
'You dare insult our faith?' said Tephra.
'When your faith is ridiculous, risks the lives of my men and will get everyone here killed, absolutely.'
'Then we have nothing further to talk about,' said Tephra, turning and rejoining his people. Hathor Maat watched, incredulous, as they made their way to their dirt-encrusted homes.
He sighed, his anger turning to resignation, and turned back to the waiting Stormbirds, two in the crimson livery of the Thousand Sons and five in the steeldust yellow-and-black of the Iron Warriors.
Obax Zakayo marched out to meet him.
'What is happening?' asked the Iron Warrior. 'Why are they not boarding the gunships?'
Hathor Maat climbed the assault ramp of his Stormbird.
'They are not coming,' he said.
'What? Why not?'