SONEKA REQUISITIONED A light atav from the supply line, and they headed south-west across a patch of open desert that resembled a dried seabed. The daylight had taken on an even more unsettling cast, and the sky had turned the colour of beaten copper.
‘It’s not getting any lighter,’ muttered Soneka as he drove.
‘You noticed that?’ Heniker replied.
‘What’s going on? What’s a “black dawn”?’
‘Something unexpected. Something vile. The Nurthenes’ last gift to you.’
‘To me personally?’
Heniker laughed. ‘To the Imperial expedition.’
‘Interesting choice of words,’ Soneka replied, fighting with the wheel as they shook over the uneven crust. ‘It implies you are not Imperial.’
‘I’m not.’
Soneka risked a glance at him. ‘What the hell are you, then?’
‘I’m human. At least, human enough for your needs. I’m not the enemy, you have to understand that. I’m fighting for the same cause as you.’
‘Which is?’
‘The survival of the species. My one wish is to save the human race from the slow and tormenting death that is about to overtake it.’
‘It would be great if you started dealing in specifics,’ said Soneka.
‘There’s a war coming,’ said Heniker.
‘We’re at war all the time. It’s the natural state of mankind in this era.’
Heniker looked out at the desert scrub flashing past. ‘This is a special kind of war. It will make all others seem futile and small. The Imperium is simply not prepared for it.’
Soneka checked the chart display, and turned them a few points west, along the edge of a great sink, where the wind was lifting white sand off the rim like steam.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ Heniker said.
‘You can try.’
‘Is Rukhsana alive?’
Soneka hesitated before answering. ‘Yes, I think so. She was when I last saw her.’
‘The Astartes got you to deliver her to them, didn’t they?’
‘Yes,’ said Soneka, ‘for her own safety.’
‘If that’s what they said,’ Heniker remarked, ‘it must be true.’
‘She—’ Soneka began. ‘I’m sorry. I was reluctant to bring her to them, and I have regretted it since. Army Intelligence was close to taking her. They had discovered the link between you and her.’
Heniker nodded.
‘Peto Soneka—’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. It’s funny. Not long ago, I’d almost decided to be you.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Soneka.
‘I’m talking about borrowing identities from the dead. But it turns out you’re not dead.’
CR583 WAS A ruined Nurthene bastion on a sandstone crag overlooking a wide dune sea. The crag ran north in jutting steps, and joined the lip of the continental shelf where it dropped away into the Mon Lo coast-lands. The dimpled expanse of the dune sea stretched away to the south, and had turned silver grey in the malevolent light, like a sheet of chainmail spread out and stretched as far as the eye could see. There was no heat, just a cold, restless wind.
Soneka brought the atav up under the shadows of the crag, and they dismounted. The bastion was one of a chain of ancient Nurthene watchtowers that had once guarded the threshold of the open desert, but it had been abandoned and left to ruin centuries before the expedition arrived. It was built of large hardstone blocks, sagging and crumbling in places. The upper levels were gone, and blank spyholes looked out over the dunes like empty eye sockets.
They clambered up the slopes of weathered scree and jumbled boulders. Many of the larger fragments were blocks from the tower that time had pulled down. The place was full of chilly echoes. As their boots disturbed loose pebbles and stones, the clatters repeated around them, spectral and hollow.
‘This feels wrong,’ said Soneka, drawing his pistol.
‘They’re just not taking any chances with me,’ Heniker told him.
Soneka looked up at the crude walls of the bastion above them. He didn’t seem convinced.
They clambered up a little further, to the foot of the bastion.
‘There, you see?’ said Heniker. This is the right place.’ He pointed. A small but distinct mark had been heat-scored into the face of a loose block just ahead. The symbol matched the one branded on Soneka’s flesh.
‘Another house of the hydra,’ Heniker muttered.
‘What?’
Heniker pushed past him, and climbed up a bank of sand silt to the tower’s open gateway. As he passed the marked block, he touched it. ‘Still warm,’ he called back. ‘They haven’t been here long.’
They walked under the heavy stone lintel of the gate and entered the tower. Its internal floors and staircases had gone, leaving an empty sleeve of stone open to the sky. It took a moment for their eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. Through the window slots and open roof, they could see patches of cold, dull sky.
‘Hello,’ said Heniker.
‘Hello, John.’
Two Astartes stood in the darkness, waiting for them. They were in full war plate, but their helmets were off. In the half-light, Soneka realised that he couldn’t tell them apart. They were like twins.
‘Herzog, Pech,’ Heniker said, nodding to them.
‘How—’ Soneka began.
‘John Grammaticus is a marvellously perceptive being,’ said a deep voice behind them. A third Astartes came out of the shadows.
‘Alpharius,’ said Heniker. Soneka heard the confidence slip slightly from the spy’s voice.
‘Can you be certain?’ asked the third Astartes.
Heniker recovered his composure slightly. ‘Yes. I have heard your voice before, at the pavilion. I never forget a vocal pattern, and your build is appreciably larger than that of your captains. You are the Primarch Alpharius. Lord, it has taken a great deal of time, effort and trouble to meet you.’
‘From the way you have evaded us, John, it would seem that you were keen to postpone that moment,’ Alpharius observed.
‘Things have changed,’ said John Grammaticus. ‘More than ever, I need to speak to you, and you need to listen.’
‘Then let us withdraw and speak,’ said Alpharius. The two towering captains stepped forwards and flanked Heniker, leading him towards the tower’s doorway. Heniker looked back over his shoulder at Soneka. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
Soneka shrugged. The Astartes led Heniker out of the tower.
‘Well done, Peto,’ said the armoured giant.
Soneka holstered his gun, and made a solemn namaste. ‘I must return to my unit, lord,’ he said. The quicker I can resume my duties, the—’
‘No, Peto. I’m sorry. You can’t.’
‘Why not?’ Soneka asked.
‘Peto, there is a question you haven’t asked yourself.’
‘And that is?’ Soneka replied.
‘How did Konig Heniker know that you were an operative of the Alpha Legion? How did he know how to find you?’
THIRTEEN
The last day on Nurth
IT WAS COLD underground. Soneka had believed the deserts of Nurth to be arid and waterless, but deep in the rock cisterns and chutes, moisture gathered on the walls and dripped off the ceiling like black saliva.
The tunnels they followed were fresh cut, no more than a few weeks old. The walls and floor displayed the tell-tale marks of fusion borers and rock cutters. How long had the Alpha Legion been here, Soneka wondered, and just how much careful preparation had they made before revealing themselves formally?
Quite suddenly, as it seemed to Soneka, they left the darkness of the tunnels and the echoes of their footsteps behind, and came out into the open air. He looked around, blinking.
They had emerged into a deeply scooped bowl of rock. A crown of fossil-dry cliffs rose all around. Overhead, the copper clouds bloated and knotted into tumorous shapes, and there was a foul reek on the wind. Ev
en the Astartes seemed to notice the way the climate was rapidly deteriorating, as if the planet was sick and distempered.
‘This world is unravelling,’ remarked Grammaticus.
Alpharius cast him a look. It was Soneka’s first opportunity to see the primarch’s features in daylight. His face was handsome and strong, his scalp clean shaven. In the strange light, his dark skin appeared greenish grey and his eyes hard tungsten.
John Grammaticus was busy studying the details of their surroundings. He could not see Shere or any of the Alpha Legion’s pet psykers, but he could feel at least two of them close by, watching him, ready to shut him down if he ventured so much as a millimetre outside his own skull.
In the rock bowl below, Grammaticus saw twenty Alpha legionnaires, the most he had seen in one place. They were armouring into their plate, checking their bolters, and uncasing support weapons from steel drop canisters. A dozen or so regular humans moved amongst them, assisting with the armour fittings, or fetching munition packs and tools. Most of the regulars were dressed in Army uniforms of various kinds, but some wore the shawls and robes of local desert costume. None of the Astartes or the operatives looked up as the party emerged from the cliff tunnel.
On the far side of the deep bowl, a heavy drop-ship crouched on thick claw-footed stanchions under dense camouflage netting. The drop-ship was of a nonstandard pattern, or at least no pattern Grammaticus was familiar with.
John Grammaticus could feel the low throb and warble of powerful vox transmitters. He could smell communication all around him: encrypted flows, eddies of communication, estuaries of data flowing into information seas. The Alpha Legion was on a war footing, and this place had to be just one of many bolt-hole reserves preparing to mobilise.
Time was running out…
‘My lord primarch—’ Grammaticus began.
Ingo Pech shot him a hard look, and Grammaticus fell silent. Alpharius turned and walked away from them, down the stone litter of the slope to the floor of the basin where his warriors were making ready. One of them rose, half-armoured, and began to speak with him.
Grammaticus watched with mounting interest. They were too far away for him to overhear, and the angle was wrong for him to lip read, but he could discern their body language. Moreover, he could compare them. The warrior Alpharius had gone to talk to was big, even by the standards of hybrid vigour exhibited by Astartes. He matched the primarch in every dimension. Their body language duplicated, down to the slightest gesture. And their faces… they were like twins.
Grammaticus wondered if he had been wrong, or deliberately misled, in his identification. Who was the primarch here? Who was Alpharius? How many layers of deception had the Legion woven about themselves?
‘Who is that?’ he asked Pech.
‘Who do you mean?’ the first captain replied sullenly.
‘The brother speaking with Alpharius.’ Pech looked at Herzog, who shrugged. ‘Omegon,’ Pech said. ‘Omegon?’ Grammaticus echoed. ‘Commander of the stealth squad,’ Herzog said. He and Pech laughed, as if at a private joke.
Grammaticus realised he knew what it was. His eyes widened. He knew he had to test this. He reached out with his mind.
A telekinetic scream tore into his head and blew the roof off his skull. He squealed, and fell on his face.
No, you don’t, said a voice. The voice belonged to Shere.
Soneka started forwards in alarm. Heniker had suddenly convulsed and collapsed.
‘It’s all right, Peto,’ said Pech calmly. ‘He just got a little too inquisitive.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Soneka. ‘He didn’t do anything.’
‘Nothing you could see,’ Herzog advised.
Heniker lay on his face in the dust, twitching and moaning. Blood leaked out of his ears.
‘Have you killed him somehow?’ Soneka asked.
‘It’ll take more than that to finish the likes of him,’ said Herzog. He raised his heavy bolter in a manner that suggested he knew at least one reliable alternative.
Soneka pushed past the massive second captain and bent down beside Heniker. Herzog laughed at the affront, and glanced at Pech. ‘Het’s got some balls.’
‘That’s why I picked him,’ Pech replied.
Soneka rolled Heniker over into the recovery position, and made sure his airway was clear. Froth drooled from the corner of the downed man’s chewing mouth.
‘Just breathe, Heniker,’ he said. ‘Just breathe slowly’
‘I know…’ the man gurgled.
‘Shush.’
‘I know,’ Heniker insisted, in a wet voice. ‘I know how to recover from a psychic attack. Give me a moment.’
He opened his eyes. One had become very bloodshot. ‘It’s John, sir.’
‘What?’
‘My name, my real name, it’s John. It always has been.’ Soneka nodded.
Alpharius and the warrior he had been talking with were walking up the slope towards them.
‘Time to talk, then, John Grammaticus,’ said Alpharius.
‘He’s hurt,’ Soneka protested.
‘He’s sound enough,’ said the Astartes at Alpharius’s side.
Alpharius raised a hand. ‘Your sympathy does you credit, Peto. Thank you.’
With Soneka’s assistance, John Grammaticus rolled over and sat upright, wiping his mouth and looking up at the towering figures.
‘You’re so alike,’ he said.
‘It plays to our strength,’ said Alpharius. ‘Anonymity in shared identity. We all make an effort to look alike.’
Grammaticus chuckled and coughed. ‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘To the eyes of non-heterosic humans, all Astartes look alike,’ Herzog said.
‘You cannot read our features, or distinguish our dissimilarities,’ said Pech. ‘To you, we are inhuman things stamped out of a single mould.’
Grammaticus shook his head. ‘That’s not what I meant either.’ Leaning on Soneka, he rose to his feet. ‘You’re too alike. More alike than the rest. Face, voice, build, mannerisms. Like twins.’
‘You cannot possibly read or distinguish the subtle differences in—’ Alpharius began.
‘No, I can. I really can. That’s what I do,’ said Grammaticus. ‘Yes, you all look alike, to simple human eyes. They look alike to you, don’t they, Peto?’
‘Every one of them.’ Soneka replied.
Grammaticus nodded. ‘You look the same to Peto, but I can see. Him, he’s three, maybe three and a half centimetres taller than the man beside him. He has heavier cheek bones. He has a thicker neck, and a propensity to grow hair. Those two are alike, except around the eyes, where it is telling.’
‘Gene stock traits,’ said Pech.
‘No,’ said Grammaticus. ‘Cosmetic efforts to resemble one another. Except you—’ he looked at Alpharius and Omegon. ‘You really are identical.’
‘The differences between us are simply too subtle for you to detect,’ Omegon said.
‘I doubt that. I really doubt that. Which one of you is Alpharius?’
‘I am,’ said Alpharius.
‘Very well, let me rephrase the question,’ said Grammaticus. ‘Which one of you is the primarch?’
Alpharius smiled. ‘I think it’s high time we started asking the questions, John. You came looking for us, hunting for us, and you found us. Then you did everything you could to evade us. Now you come to us again. Why?’
‘I was sent to broker terms with you, with the Alpha Legion,’ Grammaticus replied.
‘This would be by the Cabal you described?’ Pech asked.
‘Yes. They sent me. I knew the endeavour would be dangerous, and that you would resist me, so I was wary. However, matters have shifted, and I come to you openly.’
‘Does the Cabal know of your change in tactics?’ asked Herzog.
‘The Cabal ordered me to change my tactics,’ Grammaticus replied. ‘Brokering of terms can come later. I’m here to warn you. This world has about a day of life left in it. Yo
u must flee before it overwhelms you.’
‘WE’LL HEAD WEST,’ said Bronzi. Tche nodded, holding the chart flat against the face of a boulder.
‘West it is,’ he agreed.
‘The service track’s probably—’
Tche shook his head. ‘No, down the wadi and through there. The dry bed. Any further north and we risk getting caught up in this.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Bronzi said. ‘It’s all over, bar the body bagging.’
‘Is it?’ asked Tche. ‘Have you seen the sky?’
‘Fug the sky,’ said Bronzi.
‘Yeah, well, the wadi will keep us clear of any potential action, that’s all I’m saying,’ Tche retorted.
‘Hm. I like that thinking,’ Bronzi admitted. The elements he had gathered around him were too weak and unfocused to get swept up in the main brawl. If he could conduct them west as far as the palace, or at least its environs, the uxors could redeploy them properly to strengthen other sections.
‘All right, we’re moving out,’ Bronzi told his senior bashaw. ‘Wake ’em up and tell ’em where to go.’
Tche ran forwards, calling out instructions. The other bashaws became alert and started to relay them. The Jokers got to their feet obediently, gathering their kit and weapons. The Outremar troopers looked befuddled at the orders.
‘Get lively and move!’ Bronzi yelled at them. ‘Come on, girls, it’s time to go!’
Most of them, the Jokers included, had spent the last forty minutes watching a spectacle they would tell to their grandchildren. Titans and Hort armour, laying into the enemy with full military power, it was the stuff fireside tales were made of, the stuff that made grandpa or great-grandpa seem bigger than life.
An incredible sight, the Titans blasting all hell out of the landscape, slowly advancing into the vapour flume with the tanks of the Zanzibari Hort at their gigantic heels. Bronzi couldn’t begin to guess how many thousand tonnes of munitions had been delivered into the enemy ranks. If there was a Nurthene left alive, he’d be surprised. The Imperial Army, combined with a Titan Legion from Terra’s fraternal twin, Mars – Emperor bless the Mechanicum! – had done what it was designed to do. It had crushed, it had obliterated.
It had overwhelmed Nurth’s last ditch effort.