Contents

Cover

The Abyssal Edge – Aaron Dembski-Bowden

About the Author

A Black Library Publication

The Abyssal Edge

Aaron Dembski-Bowden

I

‘Whatever the officers of the Eighth Legion are recording in their own archives at this moment is a matter for their own black consciences. I am a legionary of the Thousand Sons. I deal only in truth.’

II

‘Part of me wonders if my primarch will soften his own accounting so as not to speak ill of his brother, the barbarian Curze. I do not believe for a moment he will be anything but honest, but honesty can be naked, or it can be dressed in veils of mercy. Lord Magnus is a forgiving man – wise, where his brother is spiteful. Beneficent, where Curze is bitter.’

III

‘The Devastation of Zoah marks only the second time I have stood by my primarch’s side in battle. I am not blind to the honour done to me during this compliance, when I was in the presence of not one but two of the Emperor’s sons. Nor am I blind to the mistakes made that led to the campaign’s catastrophic failure.

I seek not to shift blame according to subjective whim. I intend instead to assign fault, objectively and thoroughly, where it belongs. The Night Lords have already disengaged, leaving us alone. Doubtless they go to take their moronic viciousness elsewhere, parading their ignorance as the ultimate virtue, claiming they did only what had to be done.’

IV

‘And so it comes to be that we stand here in the ashes, sifting through the powdery remains of revelation. It is too late to change a thing. Too late to do anything but mourn what was lost.

Everything is gone. All is dust.’

Ulatal lowered the data-slate. For a time there was silence, or at least something close to it. The sound of his own laboured breathing was wet and tidal, punctuated by occasional draws on his aspirator. Beyond the gentle, unhealthy sounds of his own continuing life, the chamber had fallen entirely quiet.

‘What do I do with this?’ He tossed the data-slate onto his work desk, feeling the fluid in his respiratory tract shift as he leaned forward. Ulatal was more than a little weary of that liquid gurgle in his chest.

‘Forgive me,’ said the servitor standing in the corner. ‘I am having trouble parsing your query. To what are you referring?’

Ulatal looked over at the dead-eyed, monotone creature, and waved a hand in the vague direction of the data-slate.

‘This. What exactly am I supposed to do with this?’

‘Forgive me, I am having trouble parsing your query. You appear to have indicated the chamber wall. Is this accurate?’

Ulatal resisted the urge to scream. Instead he jabbed his finger against the data-slate’s screen, hammering it half a dozen times with his fingertip. ‘No, you piece of… This. This. The report. What do I do with the report?’

The servitor didn’t move, didn’t even blink. ‘Reports are to be organised, notarised and filed for pre-archival secondary processing.’

‘Why did they assign you to me?’ This wasn’t the first time Ulatal had asked the question. ‘You’re as much use as a rock in a game of regicide. How do I deal with a report like this?’

‘Reports are to be organised, notarised and filed for secondary processing.’

‘Shut up,’ Ulatal said with dangerous calm.

‘Compliance,’ the servitor replied obediently, and entered silent running.

‘And if you speak again in the next day cycle, I’ll shoot you. That’s not just a promise, it’s a solemn vow.’

He could do it, too. They’d not taken his sidearm away. Admittedly, he was never likely to use it in an occupational capacity again, but its familiar weight on his hip did a little to counterbalance the feeling of helplessness from the bloody fluid in his lungs and guts.

The servitor stared at him, caught between conflicting imperatives. ‘I must remind you that destruction of Expeditionary Fleet resources and materiel is prohibited under the codes of cond–’

A needle-thin beam of concentrated energy speared through the servitor’s chest. There was no dramatic impact, no bodily momentum crashing the cyborg back against the wall, just a scorched hole about the size of a thumbnail directly through the servitor’s heart. It tried valiantly (or irritatingly, from Ulatal’s perspective) to finish its sentence, then slumped down where it had stood. The bionic plate of its skull clanked almost tenderly back against the wall.

Ulatal lowered the laspistol, cursing softly. Another thing the damn crash had taken from him: he’d been aiming for the bastard’s head.

Annoyed, and using that annoyance to mask his unease, he holstered his sidearm and rubbed his temples.

‘Now shut up,’ he said to the twitching servitor.

It said, ‘Compliance…’ on the third attempt. Then with blood bubbling from its mouth, the servitor obeyed its final order.

Perdita came to see him later that day. A maintenance crew had cleaned the servitor away by the time she arrived. Ulatal’s gaze flicked to where Perdita wore her new rank insignia on her shoulders and chest – and damn if that didn’t hurt a little. She picked her way through the tumbledown chaos of his chamber, glancing at the las-burn scorch in the wall.

‘Don’t,’ Ulatal warned her. ‘Maintenance already lectured me.’ He gave a nasty little smile that only lifted one side of his face. ‘I told them it was an accidental weapon discharge.’

‘I wasn’t going to say a word, sir.’ After a moment, she wrinkled her nose. ‘Except that it smells like something died in here.’

Ulatal took that judgement in the spirit it was intended. Bathing hadn’t been all that high on his priorities since the crash. Bathing took three times longer than it used to, and hurt an order of magnitude above that. He could’ve taken the nerve-suppressors allotted to him by the medicae, but they left him dazed and exhausted.

‘It’s not sir any more,’ he pointed out.

She could have flinched at his bladed tone, and he was surprised she didn’t. It probably would’ve been better if she had; then he’d have been spared the gentleness in her reply.

‘It will always be sir,’ she said.

‘Don’t patronise me, Dita.’ Ulatal practically grunted the words. ‘How’s the squadron?’

‘Adjusting. Did you see we’re flying fleet patrol again?’

Of course he’d seen. She was still sending him the bloody duty roster every week. He didn’t know how he felt about that. Was it charity? Sympathy? Pity?

He nodded to her question, not trusting his voice for a moment. Perdita straightened her uniform as she looked around the room again, not meeting his eyes. Throne, if Dita was coming in here and looking awkward, things really were bad.

‘You forgot to say I’m looking better,’ he goaded her.

As easily as that, the tension vanished. She grinned. ‘You look no different from a week ago.’

‘Yeah, I’m a prince these days. I hear they’re going to put my face on the two-credit coin.’

She stood at sudden attention. ‘Permission to lie, sir.’

Now that was more like it. Ulatal found himself smiling too. ‘Permission denied, commander.’

‘Yes, sir. Then it’s with regret that I inform you that you look like shit, sir.’

Ulatal chuckled. The slime in his lungs and guts chuckled with him, and he could’ve lived without that, but it still felt good to laugh.

‘At ease, commander.’

Perdita stood at ease, then wordlessly used the edge of her boot to scuff some of his smallclothes under the bed. In her eyes, he read the disapproval she was too polite to speak aloud. His officer’s quarters, once so ordered and pristine, were becoming a little… domestic.

‘So why am I here?’ she asked.

‘Because I need a new archival servitor. The last one died in an accidental weapons discharge.’

She raised an eyebrow and hiked a thumb at the door. ‘I can just leave, you know.’

Ulatal smoothed his palm down his unshaven face and, with the awkward gait of the newly-mutilated, he limped forwards on the bionic limb that replaced his lost leg. He had to suck on his aspirator, and after that wonderful indignity, what was left of his face twisted into a half smile amidst the burn scarring.

‘You’re here because I think I’m in trouble, Dita.’ He handed her the data-slate. ‘Look at this.’

About halfway through, the colour drained from her face. By the time she lowered the data-slate, disbelief was fighting with discomfort for control of her expression.

‘Is this real?’ she asked.

Ulatal thumbed a code into his workstation, bringing up a hololithic display of a world with three moons, ringed by icons depicting two battlefleets.

‘This is Zoah, and… whatever its bloody moons are called. And this is the 3,283rd Expeditionary Fleet. It’s broken up now. It wasn’t a true Expeditionary Fleet at all, just another ad hoc armada forming when two Imperial fleets find their spheres of conquest overlapping.’

He gestured to two of the icons, lighting them on the display and bolding their names. The first read Photep. The second, Nightfall. The flagships of the XV and VIII Legiones Astartes.

‘At Zoah, the unified host resulted in not just two Legions being forced to work together, but two primarchs.’

She handed the data-slate back to him. He took it, though he didn’t want to. Neither of them seemed to want to hold it for long. ‘So Zoah is real,’ Perdita ventured, ‘but what about the veracity of the events in the report?’

Ulatal raised a finger, a teacher making a point. ‘That’s the question.’

Perdita was watching him with an expression he couldn’t quite read. The ambiguity surprised him, given how long they’d flown together.

‘What? Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Did you ask for this assignment, sir? Or did they give it to you?’

Ulatal snorted. ‘I didn’t want to be removed from active service while I convalesced. I think they agreed because they were scared that if I had too much time to think, I’d swallow a round from my sidearm. If you’re asking whether I specifically asked for archive oversight duty, then no. I just wanted something to do.’

He gestured around the chamber, in all its sparse grandeur. ‘What amazes me is that there are ranking Crusade officers who spend their lives overseeing this work.’

Perdita fixed him with a disapproving glare. ‘It’s a vital duty. This work is integral to the Great Crusade. To humanity itself. These are the records future generations will read, learning how we conquered the stars.’

How grand. Ulatal’s inner voice was slick and sly with the thought. How very grand that sounds.

‘It’s a dull duty, Dita.’ He grunted something that was almost a laugh. ‘At least, it was until I got a report saying two primarchs now despise each other. None of the other missions I’ve archived were anything like this.’

‘I don’t understand you, sir. You’re diminishing the work with one breath, and fixated upon it with the next. You’re shaking with unspent energy.’

‘I notice you’re delicately avoiding the word obsession.’

Her smile was a thin, sympathetic slice that softened her eyes. ‘You said it, not me. So… what are you going to do?’

Ulatal dragged in a breath through his aspirator. ‘I don’t know. I can’t find anything like it anywhere else. And how does one follow up this Thousand Sons legionary’s ramblings? I’d need to go to the flagship and speak with the Nightfall’s archivists, but that’s no guarantee of getting the truth.’

‘You suspect a cover-up?’

Did he? Did he, honestly? ‘I suspect something went on out there, something between the two primarchs, and they don’t want any of the little people knowing about it. This legionary broke ranks and filed his report out of… I don’t know. Vanity, perhaps. Superiority. Like he had something to prove.’

Having Dita here was good. He was barely even talking to her now, but her presence let him work the problem through out loud, from another angle.

And she knew it, too. She knew him well enough to know how he worked.

‘Sir?’ she prompted.

‘I have the authority to investigate, but…’

He let the words hang. Perdita didn’t take them up in agreement, which he’d been hoping for.

‘And?’ she asked. The woman was merciless when she wanted to be.

‘And I should. I need to. It’s my duty.’ Saying it out loud plascreted it into reality. ‘It’s my duty. I was hoping you’d talk me out of it. Maybe even suggesting the file could’ve got lost or corrupted along the way.’

Perdita retightened her already immaculate ponytail. When she moved, Ulatal couldn’t help but notice her brass rank insignia pins again, flashing as they reflected the light from the overhead lumes.

‘Would you listen to me if I tried to talk you out of it?’ She looked him dead in the eyes. ‘Honestly, sir?’

He didn’t reply, which was itself an answer.

Perdita wasn’t blind. Ulatal knew she recognised the threat of fixation in her commander’s behaviour: the feverish need to see this through to the end. She’d seen it before. They all had, at one time or another – that need for a warrior to achieve something in the wake of going down in flames and crawling back up from the rubble.

She gambled in the silence that followed. ‘The Remembrancers have taken hold of pict-footage from the Juuvaur engagement.’

Ulatal’s throat worked. He tried and failed to swallow, hoping against hope he was keeping his emotions from his unshaven face. ‘How?’

‘How does classified military intelligence always hit the public eye, sir? Someone leaked it.’ She took a breath before speaking more. ‘They’re calling you a hero. They’re writing poems about it, painting impressions… It’s already spread to other fleets.’

He snorted, resisting a pull on his aspirator. Let his last lung clench up. Let it shrivel in his scarred chest, for all that it mattered. Anything to stop Dita sensing the thrill of fearful discomfort snaking its way down Ulatal’s spinal column.

‘Idiots,’ he said.

‘Sir, no. No. You are a hero. That fight was…’

She kept talking but Ulatal was no longer listening. He stared at her, his guts aching at the thought of all those ludicrous chroniclers and poets and artists watching him, watching his final mission, watching the fight itself, watching the way it ended in blood and choking smoke and shrieking engines and blood and burning iron and blood, so much blood and–

Ulatal opened his eyes, unsure of just when he’d closed them. He limped back to his chair, hating the instinctive exhalation of relief when he took his weight off his abused hip. Perdita politely pretended not to notice.

‘It suits you,’ Ulatal said at last.

‘Sir?’

‘My rank. You wear it well and we both knew it was coming. At least this way I didn’t have to lose you to another squadron when they promoted you.’

Perdita smiled. ‘Is this the part where you tell me I’m the best pilot you’ve ever known and that you’re ever so proud of me?’

‘Throne, no. I was the best. But you were a decent wingmate.’

‘You’ll be back with us–’

Ulatal raised a hand. ‘Spare me the groxshit, please. My flying days are done, unless they rig up my next cockpit with a seat to counterbalance all the nausea from my broken skull, and an irrigation system to handle the fact I seem to crap blood now. Throne, half my organs are synthetic clone-copies that barely function. If they cybernetically replaced everything that was wrong with me, I’d be a servitor.’ He showed his new metal teeth to illustrate the point.

‘Perhaps they’ll give you a ship. A frigate to command.’

He felt a moment of genuine horror filter into his ever-present irritation. ‘I’m a starfighter pilot. I don’t want a bloody ship, wallowing in the void with its fat arse hanging out.’ Ulatal trailed off, hearing the petulance in his own voice. ‘Although… a battleship, maybe? One of the big Glorianas. That might be fun.’

Perdita laughed, and it was music to her former commander’s ears. No charity or sympathy in that laugh. None in her eyes, either.

‘Aim high, sir,’ she said with a grin. ‘So, when do you leave?’

Ulatal rocked in his restraint throne, doing his best not to grunt in pain each time the ship buckled around him. The first moment he’d felt the engines engage and shunt the vessel forwards, all of his injuries awoke at once, determined to punish him for taking this little trip. The supply transport pulled none of the high-grav manoeuvres he’d spent a life acclimating to in the cockpit of his Rage-pattern fighter, but it was still anything but a smooth ride. The cargo-hauler felt like it rattled its way through the warp, held together more by luck than by skilled piloting or a decent hull.

Few military vessels were en route anywhere near where he needed to go. That meant he’d needed to be creative. Three weeks transit on a resupply carrier here, a month-long warp jump on a pilgrim ship there… Through a mix of decent planning and good fortune, Ulatal had managed to make it to the final leg of his journey.

None of the ships had been much fun for his weakened constitution, but this one was the worst yet. At a particularly nasty shudder, his pained grunt melted into a teeth-clenching groan. Several of the other passengers cast a glance his way. He licked the acid taste of nausea off the back of his teeth and swallowed, too irritated to be embarrassed.

Every time he breathed in, he inhaled the sweat-stink of the other passengers. Every time he moved, he felt their eyes on him. The uneasy glances were fine; he could take those as they came. It was the looks of pity that knifed at him. The sympathetic, half-scared gazes of lifelong civilians seeing a warrior brought low.

Well, there was nothing he could do about it now, apart from not throwing up in front of them. He’d certainly not be marching in any victory parades any time soon.

‘Are you all right?’

Ulatal lifted his head to the man in the restraint throne across the thoroughfare. He drew breath to reply, and managed three words before his breakfast rations and chunks of stomach lining blasted against the cage of his clenched teeth. Ulatal sagged against his restraint buckles, and when he moaned he painted the gantry floor with vomit. Groans and curses sounded out around him.

‘Yeah,’ he panted, head down, staring at the floor between his knees. ‘Never better.’

Ulatal was in no fit state to spend too long gazing out of portholes as they glided in to dock, but he still spared himself a smile at the sight of all that void plating cast in dirty cobalt and tarnished bronze against the endless black. She was filthy from her journeys and bloodied from battle, but the Nightfall wasn’t without her charms. If she ran out her guns, she was capable of levelling cities in minutes, and killing worlds within hours.

Disembarking took place without a hitch, and the fleet liaison had assigned him quarters. Better quarters than his own back aboard the Serpent of the Black Seas, which was a surprise. The liaison had known he was coming, of course. He’d followed protocol and sent word ahead of his arrival. No sense making a bad first impression.

‘Wing Commander Orthos Ulatal, assigned to the Eighth Legion, seconded to Crusade Battlefleet Archival Resources. Thank you for coming. I’d like to speak to one of your ranking Legion archivists,’ he’d said to the portly, officious fellow duty-bound to welcome him aboard. ‘At his earliest opportunity.’

The liaison was of Nostramo, his skin the near-albino of the bulk of that world’s unhealthy population. He spoke Gothic with the mellow flair typical of the Night Lords themselves, and kept to the common tongue of the Imperium despite the fact Ulatal spoke several Nostraman dialects as fluently as any native.

‘I will do what I can,’ the liaison replied.

‘This is important,’ Ulatal stressed in the face of the other man’s placidity.

‘As I said, sir, I’ll do what I can.’

Ulatal winced as he leaned forward to unlace his boots, and something wetly unpleasant slipped in his healing guts. ‘You don’t sound confident,’ he pointed out. ‘I’ve served the Eighth Legion for almost two decades, my friend. I know what Space Marine officers can be like. You don’t need to be delicate about this. I trust what you’re trying not to say is that your overseers are standoffish bastards?’

The liaison cleared his throat, seeking the right balance of truth and diplomacy. ‘Well, they rarely fraternise with mortal crew–’

‘Listen to me,’ Ulatal interrupted, looking down at his data-slate again and reading through the info-spillage. ‘I just need to speak to one of the flagship’s archivists. Not the bloody primarch himself, nor even any of the officers. Just an archivist.’

The liaison hesitated, then gave a crisp salute. ‘I think that can be arranged, sir.’

It took three days to get an answer. The liaison didn’t return. When Ulatal contacted him through his quarters’ crew terminal, the replies ranged from evasive to placating, always smooth, never mired by awkwardness. The last time Ulatal reached out, he was politely rebuffed by a servitor, who informed him in a monotone drawl that he should remain in his chambers and await the arrival of someone who would be able to help with his investigation.

‘I can’t help but think your phrasing is a little suspicious,’ Ulatal replied to the lobotomised cyborg on the other end of the link. Instinct had him check his sidearm after the vox-call ended.

The warrior that pounded a fist against Ulatal’s door had come armed and armoured. The legionary towered above Ulatal, who was a tall man himself, standing clad in the brass-edged midnight ceramite of the VIII Legion. Standing this close to a Legiones Astartes warrior was never a comfortable experience, even for those used to the sheer size of them. This one, this close, was a revelation of immensity. In one of its hands, it held a chain-bladed glaive with a haft over three metres long. In its other hand, it held a snarling skull helmet crested with twin wings. The active power generator on the Space Marine’s back made Ulatal’s gums itch. He had to resist the unpleasant urge to rub his eyes; they felt like they were vibrating in their sockets.

Ulatal knew who it was. He’d seen the warrior’s image in countless Imperial inspirational holos relaying the deeds of Legiones Astartes heroes. He’d seen the armoured giant in almost as many classified post-mission picts, describing the VIII Legion’s many victories over the last century.

The Night Lord stared down, his inhuman eyes offering a gaze of passionless, unblinking blackness. When he spoke, his voice was the sound of an avalanche somehow given the power to sneer.

‘Greetings,’ said First Captain Jago Sevatarion. ‘You and I are going to have a conversation.’

For the first few minutes, Ulatal was quite convinced he was going to die with each movement the warrior made. He was no coward. No one could rise to his rank and win the wars he’d won if cowardice ran through their veins, yet he flinched each time Sevatarion’s armour joints snarled at the merest motion. His guts physically clenched when the warrior dropped his war spear on the table with a resounding crash. As spacious as his quarters were, the Space Marine officer took up a threatening span.

When the feeling of imminent death faded, it didn’t retreat far. Instead it was replaced by a certainty that he wouldn’t leave the room alive once his story was told. The idea of drawing his sidearm for protection was a cold and hilarious comfort; using his service laspistol on the first captain of the VIII Legion would be no more effective than throwing rocks at a Land Raider.

He’d offered the Space Marine a cup of tea from his hospitality supplies, and First Captain Sevatarion had smiled, charmed by the offer, amused by it, or doing his best to mimic politeness.

‘No. Now start talking.’

With those words, and the order within them, business had begun in earnest. Both men had sat – one with the grunt of his wounds troubling him, the other with the powered growls of his armour joints adapting to the change in posture. Ulatal handed over a data-slate with the transcribed report and relevant hololithic data. Then all he could do was wait. He sat there while the Night Lord finished reading, doing his best not to cough or clutch his pained stomach. The last thing he wanted was for the warrior to mistake his sickness for nervousness.

Sevatarion’s features were pale above his armour’s ceramite collar, the pallid flesh so typical of all Nostraman-born souls. His black eyes flickered as he read. At one point he ran his gauntleted fingertips through the widow’s peak of his black hair. At another point, his lip-curling sneer melted into a dry chuckle.

A Space Marine’s cognition was a thing of transhuman processes. When Ulatal had shown the text to Perdita, it had taken her almost an hour to read it all. Sevatarion finished reviewing it in less than six minutes.

The warrior didn’t give back the data-slate once he was done with it. He locked eyes with Ulatal from across the chamber’s low table. ‘You’re looking at me as though you expect me to kill you.’

Ulatal gave a cautious smile. ‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

Sevatarion kept his eyes on the human as he nodded down at the data-slate still in his hand. ‘Because of this?’

Careful, careful.

‘With all due respect, lord…’

‘“Sevatar” is fine, in this circumstance. Leave the “lord” elsewhere, please. I am not a king.’

‘With respect… Your reputation isn’t one of patience and mercy.’

Sevatar stared back at him, unblinking, unmoving. A servitor would have shown more emotion.

‘I feel that’s an unfair judgement of my character,’ the warrior said, perfectly calm. ‘Your words grieve me. I’m deeply aggrieved.’

Silence reigned. Is… is he joking? Is this a jest?

Ulatal cleared his throat and drew breath to speak, but Sevatar interrupted him. ‘There is hardly enough information here to be worth butchering you over. This is only a fraction of the story.’

Ulatal leaned forward, feeling the looseness inside his chest and guts squirm in ways he’d rather not have considered. ‘I came for the truth, first captain.’

Sevatar met his gaze without blinking. He stared: judging, considering. ‘You chase revelation with the fire of fever in your eyes, Orthos Ulatal. But such flames char a man’s soul.’

‘This is my duty. That’s all there is to it.’

Sevatar’s lip curled in some flavour of amused disgust. ‘Is it indeed. I saw the gun-picter footage of your crash, by the way. The impact should have killed you three times over. You’re a lucky man.’

Praise was the last thing he had expected. ‘I… thank you, first captain.’

‘Although you look like you were sewn back together with body parts from half a dozen men. Were you an attractive fellow before the crash, Ulatal?’

The officer hesitated again. He could feel this confrontation slipping through his fingers. He opted to stick with truth over false modesty.

‘Yes, sir. I was.’

Sevatar tilted his head, fluid and animal in his movement. The Space Marine studied the human as if trying to see the man Ulatal had been in the wreckage he’d become.

‘Well, at least they scraped you out of the cockpit, even if they left your looks behind.’

Ulatal said nothing. Holding a conversation with the first captain of the VIII Legion was like trying to ward off an approaching grain thresher with nothing but prayer.

‘Well?’ Sevatar prompted. ‘You said you wished to speak to someone present for the Devastation of Zoah.’ The Night Lord knocked his knuckles lightly against his breastplate. ‘I was there. So speak.’

Ulatal cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know if I should file these reports. The Thousand Sons cast our Legion in a… negative light.’

Sevatar still hadn’t relinquished the data-slate. ‘That they do,’ he agreed. ‘Though it would hardly be the first report to do so. Who filed this miserable poetry?’

‘An officer listed as “Khayon of the Khenetai”, who belongs to something called “The Order of the Jackal”. He’s cited as captain of the warship Tlaloc.’

Sevatar shrugged, the barest movement of his shoulders. ‘Never heard of him. I couldn’t tell you if he was there or not. I paid little attention to the Thousand Sons junior officers at Zoah. They all tended to whine in the same way. They blurred in my memory after a while.’

He paused, reflecting for a moment. ‘“Order of the Jackal”. “Khenetai”. What amusing titles the other Legions use.’

A strange insult, Ulatal thought, from a man known as the Prince of Crows.

Sevatar’s stare was sudden and bestial. Not aggressive, but undeniably animal. Something that might almost pass for a smile infected its way across those scarred lips, inch by inch.

He hears me. Ulatal felt an icy prickle along his spine. Emperor’s blood, he can hear me.

But the Night Lord said nothing, did nothing, beyond gesturing for him to continue.

‘I can’t file the final report in this form,’ said Ulatal. ‘It’s judgemental, melancholic and reads like propaganda. And there’s the risk to morale, as well. First, I need to confirm the report’s veracity. After that, I can gather counterpoints that balance its biased tone.’

Sevatar blinked at last, and his imitation of a smile faded. ‘Here is what you may do. You may file this report as it is, leaving it in the archives for future generations to regard as a mild and anomalous curiosity. Or you can delete it, and no one will know or care. If you do either of those actions, you will leave these quarters, and then leave the Nightfall, returning to what remains of your life. You will never fly a Fury fighter again, but your mind is not broken. Only your body. You will almost certainly be promoted for your service, either to a frigate’s command crew or to the rank of group captain overseeing a carrier vessel’s fighter squadrons. Is that a good life? A bad life? I do not know. My standards are my own, and yours are yours. So humour me as we paint more of this grand picture. You will rise high, yes, of that I have no doubt. Yet you will always piss into medicae bags. You will always taste blood when you eat, from your false teeth and your ruptured insides. You will always labour to breathe with the single shredded lung that remains in your chest. Even if you are granted more vat-grown organs and accept cybernetic grafts, you will heal, but never really recover. Your body was destroyed in that crash, Orthos. You know that. I see the knowledge in your eyes. I may have no gift for reading human emotion, but I promise you, I read truth and lies as easily as other men read the words of a book.’

Ulatal exhaled slowly. He said nothing, nothing at all.

The Night Lord reached for one of his belt pouches and drew forth a fist-sized orb of polished brass. Ulatal raised an eyebrow at the sight of the antiquated holo-projector as Sevatar rested it in the centre of the low table between them. The warrior rose with purring armour joints as he spoke once more.

‘You can leave and live that life, Ulatal. Or you can watch this, and get the answers you’ve come for. Contained within are no vital records that will benefit the Great Crusade, no damning truths that will threaten either of the two Legions involved. Just the words of two brothers at odds. Words that neither brother wishes those outside their Legions to know. This…’ he tapped the activation rune with his thumb but didn’t push it down, ‘…is a matter for legionaries and primarchs. A family matter. Not something for mortal eyes and ears, and certainly not the Crusade’s archives.’

‘Then why offer it to me?’

Sevatar chuckled. ‘Why indeed.’ His tone made it rhetorical. ‘Farewell, wing commander.’

Ulatal watched as Sevatar reclaimed the immense war spear. ‘This recording, first captain. If I watch it…’

The Night Lord fixed his black eyes upon Ulatal’s uplifted gaze. ‘Are you asking if you will forfeit your life by learning the truth?’

Ulatal nodded. Sevatar did not.

‘Let me ask you something, Orthos Ulatal. If you were to die tonight… would you really care?’

The spire at the heart of the city was fashioned from an igneous blue stone quarried only on Zoah’s easternmost landmass. Acknowledged by Zoah’s population as the wonder of their world, it was a dizzying feat of architecture that pierced the clouds – a monument to mankind’s hard work and its capacity to create beauty.

Sevatar looked at the tower, his targeting reticule dancing here and there, tracking for structural weaknesses. Its beauty didn’t figure into his thoughts, nor did the idea that other people would find it beautiful. His mind didn’t work that way.

In the parlance of Zoah’s native culture, the building was called the Ivil’kuuh, translating into Gothic as the Tower of Serenity. The translation was inexact, for serenity in the Zoahn culture implied not peaceful enlightenment, but a condescending sense of noblesse oblige of an educated elite over the ignorant masses.

He knew this because he’d read it in the mission datafeeds, and studying the operational data was what a good soldier had to do. Context was vital in a warzone.

‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ Shang’s voice was a crackling purr across the vox.

I don’t know, thought Sevatar. How do you tell if something is beautiful?

‘Yes,’ he said aloud, because he suspected that’s what he was supposed to be thinking. ‘Truly a marvel.’

‘It will be a shame to pull it down,’ Shang added.

‘The law is the law,’ Sevatar replied with the instinct of repetition. Shang’s reply was a grunt of agreement.

Sevatar looked at the tower’s base, and the targeting crosshairs on his retinal display flashed across several far more tempting targets. The Thousand Sons ringing the tower stood in ordered ranks, bolters and blades clutched at parade rest. They waited – no, they stood guard – and the only thing that would change that fact would be the words of the primarchs currently in orbit.

Sometimes the Thousand Sons’ efforts were visible, sometimes they weren’t. Every now and again, Sevatar saw a shimmer of the telekinetic barrier in the air. Each time, the tower wavered like a mirage behind the invisible wall of force that kept it unharmed.

The Night Lords first captain crunched over the broken rock of the conquered city, boots grinding down on the dusty gravel of destroyed homes. He approached the nearest Thousand Sons officer – a dark-skinned man clad in the red and gold of his Legion, his eyes ringed with weariness and an artistic curl of kohl.

‘Ahzek,’ he hailed the warrior.

‘Captain Sevatarion.’ The Thousand Sons legionary gave a Nostraman hand gesture of greeting, palm open and out to show no violent intent, and Sevatar smiled at the courtesy because smiling was something people were supposed to do.

‘Has there been word?’

Ahzek Ahriman shook his head. ‘None.’

Both warriors looked across their opposing ranks of men. Where the Thousand Sons stood in defiant vigil, as rigid as automatons, the Night Lords were grouped in loose flame-unit teams, speaking amongst themselves and eyeing the tower’s defenders with a naked revulsion that curdled their white faces.

The stalemate had stood for three hours so far. Packs of Night Lords occasionally spread apart so pairs of warriors could duel – over abused honour, avenging insults or mere boredom. The Thousand Sons allowed themselves no such laxity in discipline.

‘Is it worth all this?’ Sevatar asked, nodding to the opposing forces. In the last hour, battle tanks had been drawn up on both sides.

This close to the tower, he could feel the telekinetic barrier prickling at his skin. A maddening and unscratchable itch, a pressure that seeped inside his skull and expanded to plump up his brainflesh. He clenched his teeth and swallowed the desire to vomit. For a moment, he thought he could hear the chanting murmurs of the Thousand Sons over the other Legion’s vox-links. They sounded ghostly, foreign, unbearably tired.

‘Yes,’ Ahriman replied. ‘The Emperor would weep if we allowed this knowledge to be destroyed.’

Sevatar exhaled through closed teeth. Other people’s delusions were such tiresome processes to deal with. ‘If that were the case, my primarch would not be ordering us to burn it all to ash.’

There was patience in Ahriman’s expression – patience and sympathy. ‘With the greatest respect, Captain Sevatarion, you speak in ignorance. We have sailed the tides of the Great Ocean in ways no other Legion can imagine, let alone comprehend. The lore within this tower pertains to the realm behind the Veil, and only we are qualified to judge its worth. The Crimson King’s word is the only decree with any weight here. We will take this lore to Prospero and then, once it has been studied, we will take it on to Terra.’

Sevatar managed to unclench his jaw. ‘You have a way of treating brother-warriors like children, you know. The sugary treacle in your tone does not hide the fact you are a patronising Terran shithead.’

Ahriman shook his head a second time, patient in the face of this tirade. ‘It is not my intention to mock you, Jago.’

Sevatar’s features twitched. ‘I am returning to orbit to see if our fathers are any closer to reaching a conclusion.’

‘I will accompany you,’ Ahriman replied, ‘but I would like your assurance that your forces will not open fire on the tower once we leave.’

‘But I’ve brought up all this artillery.’ Sevatar swept a hand across the ruined city, where a battalion of VIII Legion armour rattled and growled on idling engines. ‘It would be such a shame not to use it.’

‘I mean it. I want your word.’

Sevatar stared at his counterpart. ‘If I gave you that assurance, you would actually believe me. Wouldn’t you?’

‘I would hope you would keep your word,’ said Ahriman.

Sevatar snorted, not in mockery but honest surprise. ‘No one as naive as you has any right to be patronising, Ahzek.’

‘Knowledge is neither good nor evil, brother. It gains morality only in its use. If used with malice in mind, it becomes evil. If used to benefit others, it becomes good.’

The two brothers had been speaking for some time, and it showed on their faces. The first of them was a red-skinned giant, armoured in Tizcan bronze and Prosperine gold, both metals possessing the very barest suggestion of scarlet in their metallic hues. Flowing sigils decorated the armour plating in patterns of arcane tracery. Where the giant’s right eye should have been, a clenched slit marred the aristocratic beauty of his features. Of the eye that had once nestled within the closed socket, only speculation remained.

The second brother was rangy where his kinsman was muscled, ragged where the other was grand, with skin the white of unclean ice and hair the dirty black of chiropteran wings. He sat while the other stood tall.

This second brother looked down at his own gauntleted hands. He deployed and retracted a pair of great metal claws, over and over, with nasty hisses of adamantium grating against ceramite.

‘The law is the law,’ said the pale brother. He didn’t look up from his gauntlets. Twin metallic slashes accompanied the deployment of his claws again, flashing from their housings on his forearms.

At the chamber’s edges, several Space Marine warriors stood in silent vigil. Names and faces and helmets that were renowned across the emergent Imperium: each one a hero in his own right. Such a gathering would, in better circumstances, spell the annihilation or subjugation of a culture resistant to Imperial compliance. Now these worthies stood quietly, watching their fathers fight over the right to deliver the final blow to the world below, or to spare it from oblivion.

One of the warriors clad in midnight war-plate, a man as morbidly pale as his primarch, with a blade-scar across his lips, shook his head as he spoke up at last.

‘Please spare us your moral relativism, uncle.’

Several of the Thousand Sons, resplendent in their crimson plate, stiffened at the warrior’s words. Magnus narrowed his left eye as he gazed upon his brother, refusing to look at the Night Lord that had spoken.

‘If your sons cannot keep from childish outbursts, brother, perhaps it’s best if they leave us.’

The ragged primarch retracted his claws once more. The sigh that ghosted through his sharp teeth was weighted by weariness. He said nothing. His posture of tired defiance spoke for him.

Micromovements among the Thousand Sons officers betrayed them as they voxed to one another on private channels while standing at attention. The Night Lords commanders opposite them stood at ease, not bothering to mirror their counterparts. Ahriman, first captain of the XV Legion, held his staff straight as he stood at attention: a transhuman avatar of statuesque perfection.

His dark reflection across the room, Sevatar, was leaning on his chainglaive. It was impossible for a transhuman warrior-murderer to look insouciant, but the first captain of the Night Lords came close.

‘We should–’ Sevatar began.

‘Silence,’ both primarchs said at once. And wonder of wonders, it worked. Sevatar went back to staring at Ahriman, perhaps wondering how skilled the other Legion commander was with his trinket-laden staff. Ahriman, in contrast, ignored Sevatar entirely. His focus was on the conversation unfolding in the centre of the chamber.

Magnus the Red knelt before his brother, eye to eye. His voice softened. ‘Pull your men back from the tower, Konrad. You think me too proud to compromise? I am not. Not over a matter so vital, for knowledge so critical. Give me two weeks to comb the depths of this trove, to separate the truth from the harmful lies. I will destroy anything that bears the stain of deceit, myself.’

The claws slashed free. They slid back into their vambrace housings. They slashed back out again.

‘Do not do this,’ Magnus pressed. ‘Do not commit this lore to flame.’

Konrad Curze lifted his dark eyes to meet his brother’s halved gaze. ‘I will brook no compromise. I will give no ground. The library will burn.’

‘Brother.’ Magnus’ voice was a strangled plea. ‘Let me send word to our father first. Let his word be the judgement we seek. He would never wish this library destroyed, I promise you. And I will remain with you while we wait. Neither I, nor my sons, will enter the Tower of Serenity until the Emperor sends his blessing.’

‘How confident you are,’ the Night Haunter replied. He had gone back to looking down at his hands. The claws slashed out yet again.

‘I am,’ Magnus confessed, passion giving heart to his tone. ‘I am, brother. For decades even before my rediscovery and Prospero’s welcome into the Imperium, I spoke with father across the tides of the Great Ocean. Mind to mind, soul to soul.’

‘Soul.’ Curze’s chuckle was the rasp of a saw blade across bone. ‘Soul. You talk such pretty nonsense, brother. Spirits and tutelaries and Great Oceans and souls.’

Magnus rose to his feet. Gold flashed as he turned away in regret.

Curze’s anaemic visage settled into a miserable mask of indulgence. ‘Do you believe you are the only one to have spoken with father? That you alone know his wishes and his secrets, and what he desires us to achieve out here? Tell me truly, Magnus – do you honestly think we are all nothing but fools, capering in your shadow?’

The Crimson King’s features hardened, as did his voice. ‘I speak of revelation and vision, and you speak petty words of bitterness. Brother, I’d hoped for so much more. Was your hunger to destroy not sated with the massacres you inflicted upon the people of this world?’

‘Massacres,’ Curze murmured the words, ‘that you did not stop. Massacres that spared ninety per cent of this world’s population and reached compliance in half the time Guilliman had estimated. So do not object to my “massacres”, and do not speak the word as if it were some filthy sin.’

Magnus would not be cowed. ‘The campaign was yours to prosecute as you saw fit. But this library, this lore…’

‘That word again. Lore. You clutch at it, investing it with preciousness, holding it out before you as a talisman. What will you do with this lore, Magnus? Take it back to Prospero? Set it free for all to learn and know, believing you enrich their lives?’

Magnus said nothing at first. He looked upon his brother, feeling the cold creep of unwelcome revelation.

‘Such hate,’ he said, almost in disbelief. ‘Such depths of selfish hate.’

Curze grunted beneath that gaze, looking back down at his gauntlets. The claws retracted once more, then flashed free yet again.

‘It isn’t spite that binds me to this course of action,’ the Night Lords primarch said softly. ‘The knowledge in that spire is the crown jewel of a corrupt culture. Their beliefs should be destroyed to aid compliance and prevent a backslide into heathenism. Obedience is what matters, Magnus. They will be taught to obey. Through obedience, they will become Imperial.’

‘No, Konrad.’ Sensing a chance for unity, Magnus matched his tone to his brother’s. ‘You may be right about the people of this world, but not the knowledge they’ve accrued. Let me take it to the Emperor. That’s all I ask.’

‘I’ve already told you. I will brook no compromise. I will give no ground. Drop the kine shield around the Tower of Serenity, for if your warriors seek to maintain the barrier once bombardment begins, I can’t promise they will remain unharmed.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ Magnus sighed. ‘Even your murderous clan wouldn’t open fire on their own brothers.’

Curze looked up at his brother, his expression much the same as Sevatar’s had been when the first captains spoke on the surface of Zoah.

‘All you prove,’ Curze said, ‘is how little you know me. Sevatar, give the order to open fire.’

Magnus’ remaining eye widened. He reached out a hand. ‘Brother–’

‘This is Sevatar,’ the Night Lord spoke across the vox network. ‘Open fire on the tower. Bring it down.’

‘Brother!’ Magnus called, then… ceased. He tensed, wincing as he felt the impacts begin on the psychic shield his sons had raised around their treasure. Several of the Thousand Sons present grunted and staggered in psionic sympathy.

Curze’s claws retracted and deployed in the momentary silence. ‘When the Emperor came to my world, he brought light to Nostramo, a world that had never seen the sun. He brought the light of knowledge, Magnus. Suddenly, my people could see the wider galaxy around them. They could perceive other worlds and other cultures, city after city that didn’t dwell in the endless dark. Civilisations of peace and laughter. That knowledge didn’t free them, brother. It shackled them. It wrapped them in misery. Nostramo heaves with their sorrow, that the cost of their peace is fear and blackness. My people suffer in my absence. Law breaks down as they fight their bindings. And why? Because of knowledge. Because a well-meaning teacher brought a perspective they weren’t yet ready to know.’

Magnus’ features were tight with concentration. Even so, he shook his head, his voice breathy with realisation.

‘You are a hateful, blind creature. The Emperor will hear of this.’

Curze didn’t gloat. He didn’t even smile. ‘How long can you hold that barrier for, Magnus?’

‘Forever, if I wish it.’ Now it was Magnus speaking through clenched teeth. ‘Forever and a day.’

Curze still didn’t smile, though did his eyes glint with cold mirth? It seemed, to at least one observer, that they did.

‘And how long before your legionaries begin to wear out from exhaustion? How long before accidents occur, and all of those detonating shells kill your sons on the ground? A day? A week? A month? I have the ammunition. Or I could pull my warriors back, and open fire with the Nightfall. How long would you keep your Thousand Sons on the surface then? This only ends one way, Magnus. My way. I would rather you stood with me, and prevented bloodshed. Your men don’t deserve to die for their misguided optimism.’

Magnus nodded, the gesture one of acceptance if not agreement. ‘I will remember this, Konrad. I promise you, I will remember this.’

‘Good,’ said Curze. ‘Lessons should be remembered. That is why they are taught in the first place.’

‘Ah.’ Now Magnus smiled. His regal features were a poor foundation for malice, but there was nothing warm in that smile. ‘A lesson, is it? Bold words, from a man that just claimed ignorance was bliss.’

Curze’s jaw tightened; the most emotion he’d shown thus far. ‘I will hold fire for thirty minutes. Get your Legion off the ground. The tower falls in half an hour.’

The claws slashed out once again, and Curze’s image flickered with distortion. Magnus’ did the same. The walls of the chamber blurred with static, and…

…and Ulatal stared at the space where the two demigods had been a moment before. The hololithic recording faded away, and the device on the table still clicked as it cooled. Ulatal felt the stillness of his assigned quarters as a physical caress against his skin.

‘I fear Magnus was right,’ he said to himself.

‘Perhaps he was,’ Sevatar allowed. Ulatal jerked at realising he wasn’t alone, and his reknitted bones throbbed with the sudden motion.

Sevatar was standing in the doorway, his spear in his hand. Ulatal resisted a groan at the fresh wave of pain flowing through him, from moving after remaining still for so long.

He hadn’t heard Sevatar return. Now the bulkhead stood open.

‘Why?’ he asked the warrior. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘You are a military man. You know the weight of classified information, and the many reasons such data is withheld.’

‘The Great Crusade is grander than that, though.’ Ulatal heard the naïve optimism in his own voice, but it didn’t shame him. ‘It’s about… hope. Enlightenment. Truth.’

‘Some minds are not equipped to deal with the truth.’ Sevatar walked into the room, his boots thudding on the floor. With the butt of his spear, he casually pushed the door closed. It sealed with a mechanical crunch. ‘Perhaps both primarchs were right, or both were wrong. It hardly matters.’

‘How can the truth not matter?’

‘Ah, the truth matters,’ said Sevatar. He looked reflective for a moment. It wasn’t an expression that looked at home on his features. ‘But what is true is not the same as who is right or wrong. The tower fell. We burned everything we found inside to ash and cinder, and then we shelled the spire until it was naught but dust. That is the truth. That is what matters.’

He looked down at the human, black eyes unblinking. ‘You learned what you came to learn. Was the recording enlightening?’

Ulatal nodded. ‘It was.’ He smiled suddenly, a rare expression aboard the Nightfall. ‘I’ve never seen demigods argue before.’

‘Yes, it has entertaining elements,’ Sevatar admitted. ‘We are told it would be awful for morale if it ever became common knowledge, however. Primarchs must not be seen to be at odds with one another. The Crusade’s mandate is strict on these matters. I doubt most humans would care about or understand the gravity of the argument, but I did not write the codes of conduct. I merely enforce them. Sit still, please.’

‘Why?’

Sevatar raised his chainglaive. His armour joints growled in chorus. The chain-teeth stayed inactive; they would rend flesh easily enough without the warrior needing to gun the weapon’s trigger.

‘This is why.’

Ulatal set his jaw and refused to close his eyes. He stared up at his killer, awaiting the blur of movement that would herald the end.

‘Sevatar.’

Sevatar stood motionless.

‘Sevatar.’ The voice crackled from the vox-link in the first captain’s collar.

The warrior remained unmoving. ‘What is it, Shang?’

‘The cripple,’ came the vox-voice. ‘We’ve received word that he has been assigned to the Voidmaw as group captain.’

Sevatar, with his spear still raised high, looked down at the man he was about to kill. ‘Is that a rank and role you wish to claim?’

Ulatal didn’t move, not even to nod or shake his head. He honestly didn’t know what he was going to say until he drew a shaking breath, and spoke.

About the Author

Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the author of the Horus Heresy novels The Master of Mankind, Betrayer and The First Heretic, as well as the novella Aurelian and the audio drama Butcher’s Nails, for the same series. He has also written the Warhammer 40,000 novel Spear of the Emperor, the popular Night Lords series, the Space Marine Battles book Armageddon, the novels The Talon of Horus and Black Legion, the Grey Knights novel The Emperor’s Gift and numerous short stories. He lives and works in Northern Ireland.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in Sons of the Emperor in 2018.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

The Abyssal Edge © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. The Abyssal Edge, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78999-616-6

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.