Valdor: Birth of the Imperium Read online

  ‘No, it was not.’ As Valdor spoke, more of his dark grey warriors fanned out from the smog-drifts, ready to pile more pain onto those enemies still on their feet. They were utterly remorseless, a grinding wave of metronomic destruction. ‘You could have chosen to trust.’

  Kandawire laughed, watching the ranks of warriors trudge past her. ‘But I wasn’t wrong, was I?’ she said, dryly. ‘This is the future. The Senatorum, the Lex, it’s all a front. These are the faces of the Imperium now.’

  ‘Conquest remains.’

  ‘Where? The globe is all but in the Emperor’s hand.’

  Valdor drew closer. As he did so, Kandawire saw the damage he’d taken – the smashed jewels and dented auramite. ‘There is more to the Emperor’s ambition than Terra. This is just the start – already the ships are being built that will carry this army into the stars.’

  She started. ‘Is that…? Why were we not–’

  ‘Come, now. Did you really think that the Emperor was still fighting warlords?’ He leaned heavily on his spear. ‘Luna is next. There are gene-scientists there, ones who can turn these thousands into hundreds of thousands. That is the task now, the one that must not fail. In future years, perhaps we will be able to indulge debates over the niceties of the law, but for now, and for all days I can clearly foresee, the task is survival. If that requires a few gentle myths – of choice, of determination – then so be it.’

  Kandawire took that in. ‘You can tell yourself that,’ she said, doggedly. ‘It may even seem right to you. But a myth will spin out of control. You let these things run loose now, you will not be able to rein them in later. I believed in Unity.’

  ‘You still should.’

  ‘But what is it, then? How are you different from all the others, except in power?’

  At that, Valdor slowly reached up, activated his helm-seals, and pulled the auramite mask from his face. He looked at Kandawire with sombre eyes, letting the sleet run down his face. ‘Because we are a necessity,’ he said, grimly. ‘We stand between ignorance and annihilation. To prevent the latter, we enforce the former. It is a bitter draught, and one you have been schooled to hate, but it must be swallowed.’

  Kandawire looked up at him, defiantly. ‘I will not believe that,’ she said.

  ‘I admire you for your persistence.’

  ‘What happened on Mount Ararat?’

  ‘What good can knowing that do now?’

  ‘I want to hear it from your lips, just once. The truth.’

  Valdor smiled coldly. ‘For truth to be worth anything, it must be preserved. Within a lifetime, no one will even know the name Ushotan, even though he was greater than most of those who will take the credit for building this Imperium. It matters not what is done, by who, to whom, unless it is remembered. So I can give you nothing here, High Lord, nothing of any worth, for what you ask for is destined to be forgotten.’

  ‘You are a coward.’

  ‘Believe that, if it pleases you.’

  Kandawire shook her head in disgust. Her shoulders slumped. A great weariness descended on her, and for the first time since leaving her quarters in the Palace, she felt the cold. ‘Arguing with you is like arguing with a stone,’ she muttered.

  ‘Go from here. You will not be harmed. There may be a fate for you that I cannot see, and it would be a waste to extinguish it.’

  Kandawire looked up at him, feeling old and useless. ‘Why bother? Why not finish what you started?’

  Valdor drew in a weary breath, and extended his hand to help her up. ‘You were right about very much. But not about me. I desire nothing, power least of all, and certainly not vengeance.’

  Kandawire hesitated, then took his hand.

  ‘I wondered why you came back to the Palace,’ she said. ‘Alone, when the Emperor was still far away. At the time, it seemed strange.’

  ‘He cannot always be with us,’ said Valdor.

  ‘And you, captain-general?’ she asked. ‘Can you always be with us?’

  Valdor let go of her hand. The storm was beginning to blow itself out, exposing the rain-soaked walls of the Palace in the distance. Smoke was rising over the summit of the Senatorum Imperialis, staining the turbulent skies above. The structure, for all its novelty, seemed strangely old then, as if carrying the weight of countless years before it had even been completed.

  ‘I expect so,’ he said. ‘In truth, I do not really know where else I would go.’

  Seventeen

  The orbital lander burned its way through the clouds, surrounding itself with a gusting corona of re-entry. By the time it broke into the open its flanks were blackened and its retros whining on full power. It reduced speed, banking heavily to assume a priority approach vector, and then came down over the Palace’s northern spire-zone. Soon it was hovering above a wide landing platform, part of the growing structural embryo that would one day rear many hundreds of storeys up into the air and be crowned with racks of battle cruiser-class macrocannons.

  The lander kicked out a skirt of steam. Once touched-down, its stabiliser legs extended, the engines vented, and the shimmering heat-haze over its sloped sides gradually dissipated. An access hatch cracked open, and four blank-masked guards descended through the steam, each one wearing dark red robes and carrying a barbed power spear.

  Finally, the main access ramp hissed open, spilling a rich yellow light across the slush-heaped apron. A lone figure – an old man – shuffled down to ground level, clutching at a long wooden staff as he hobbled. The cowl of his robes was thrown back, exposing a raptor-scrawny head.

  All present on the stage bowed immediately – the guards, the port sentinels, the menials who had rushed to service the lander’s fuel lines, the protocol and customs officials hovering on the edge of the platform with their auto-quills and data-slates.

  All but one, who bowed to no one but the Emperor.

  ‘My lord Malcador,’ Valdor said.

  ‘Captain-general,’ the Sigillite replied, smiling warmly. He came up to Valdor and placed a bony hand on his gauntlet. ‘It is good to see you. Though, from the air–’

  ‘The damage, yes,’ said Valdor, withdrawing the gauntlet and ushering Malcador towards an open doorway surmounted with a gilt allegory of Unity – an idealised man and woman overshadowed by a benevolent angelic protector. ‘We shall speak of it privately.’

  The two of them went inside, at first shadowed by the robed guards, then, once within the snaking corridors of the immense Palace interior, left alone. They ascended through silent and deserted rooms, climbing a twisting well of marble stairways before finally emerging into a high gallery lined with plundered statuary. The winter light, uncertain still due to the storm clouds piled up in the west, bled the colour out of the fine tapestries. Through the tall windows, the far peaks could be clearly made out – a wide circlet of stone, glowering under turbulent shadow.

  ‘I am pleased to be back,’ Malcador said, walking over to a polished ahlwood cabinet and taking a crystal pitcher of water. He poured himself a glass, offered one to Valdor, then took a sip. ‘Luna really is not how I remembered it. There is a horror there still, just as there was in so many places here. The Selenar have made themselves mad, I think.’

  Valdor nodded. ‘Did they receive you in person?’

  ‘We are not there yet. Emissaries will be required for the next stage.’

  ‘It will not be enough.’

  ‘No, I reckon not. Which is why I come back now – how did the Legion perform?’

  Valdor’s expression was hard to read. ‘Well enough,’ he said. ‘There are weaknesses, of course, but they will do better next time. Recruitment and training remain… taxing.’

  ‘Then we must redouble our efforts,’ Malcador said. ‘Having seen their forces, we will need more than one detachment. Three, I think, should do it.’

  ‘We do not yet have three.’
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br />   ‘Then we must work harder.’ Malcador put the glass down and padded along the gallery, his soft shoes sinking into the carpet as he went. ‘Were there Cataegis in the rebel forces that reached here?’

  ‘A few,’ said Valdor, walking alongside him.

  ‘So they cling on.’ Malcador pursed his dry lips. ‘It will be harder to like their replacements, I fear. Still, we are not making them for companionship.’ He reached a life-size replica of an ancient Graeco-Roman discus thrower, rendered in molecule-perfect facsimile in imperishable stone. ‘Always, He insists on this haste. He wants us to take the gene-cults now, construct the fleet now, bring the Legions up to full combat readiness now. It is no good trying to tell Him how difficult such things are, for He only sees the objective, not the trajectory. That could get us into trouble, one day.’

  ‘High Lord Kandawire was removed from office,’ Valdor said.

  Malcador raised an eyebrow. ‘As in… permanently?’

  ‘She will not be returning.’

  ‘Ah. A shame. I liked her.’

  ‘As did I.’

  Malcador smiled – a mix of wry amusement and almost-affection. ‘Really, Constantin? I didn’t think you liked anybody.’ He glanced back out of the window, to where the sun was creeping in broken patches across the far mountainscape. ‘We shall need a new Provost Marshal. I’ll give it some thought. But, now, I am forgetting myself – the damage to the Senatorum, tell me all.’

  Valdor’s expression never flickered. ‘Astarte was given every chance. I held back, right until the last. She could have changed course, had she wished to. If I am honest, I still find the concept difficult to process.’

  ‘As you should,’ said Malcador. ‘For you, treachery is merely an abstract. If it had been anyone else, Astarte would never have been so indulged, but then He always regarded her highly. What of the repositories?’

  ‘Destroyed. The vault was scoured, the levels above and below sealed off.’

  ‘Good,’ said Malcador, and started to walk again. His movements were superficially stiff with age, but under the surface retained a certain brusque vigour. ‘News of that will spread. The many eyes watching us will relax their gaze, for just a while. A high price to pay, for such brief respite, but there will be compensations. I shall tell Him the Dungeon may be repurposed now – He will wish to install the Gate foundation matrix as soon as possible.’

  ‘I did not enjoy concealing the truth from my own kind,’ Valdor said, an element of reproach in his voice for the first time. ‘In the past, the lies were always left to your people.’

  Malcador laughed. ‘You’ll have to get used to it – more will be necessary.’ His crooked smile slowly faded. ‘If but a hint of it had got out, if any soul outside our circle of steel knew that we had taken copies and lifted them to Luna already, then the remaining caches would have been placed in genuine peril. It had to look real. And, as you say, Astarte acted on her own volition – she could have pulled back.’

  ‘But her name remains on the project documents?’

  ‘As far as I know. A mild irony – He seems to enjoy those.’ Malcador reached the far end of the gallery, where the windows gave out and the panelling darkened under the soft glow of recessed lumens, and his voice lowered. ‘But there is one further thing, something genuinely unexpected. He now believes that the Legion primarchs may not have been annihilated after all. He cast His mind upon the ether, and found echoes there. He told me He thinks they may be recovered.’

  Valdor frowned. ‘It cannot be. I was there. The birthing-tanks were destroyed. There was nothing–’

  ‘–left to see. Just like in our repositories. But perhaps they were not ended. Perhaps they were scattered.’

  ‘Not possible.’

  ‘With this enemy, all things are possible.’

  ‘But, if they had them in their power, why not destroy them?’

  ‘Because they couldn’t? Even to reach into that chamber must have tested them beyond endurance. Or, perhaps, they acted for some other reason, constrained by rules of their own. They enjoy games, it is said.’

  Valdor held Malcador’s gaze for a long time. ‘There were no new generals,’ he murmured to himself.

  ‘You seem almost disappointed.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Come, my friend. This is good news. The Crusade would be immensely speeded, were we to recover what was lost that night. Imagine it – the Legions reunited with their primogenitors, just as was always intended.’

  Valdor said nothing for a while, though his brow remained furrowed. When he finally replied, his voice was thoughtful. ‘I remember when I carried those vials from the flames,’ he said. ‘I remember feeling the life flicker within the glass. And after that, I remember seeing the first of them emerge from the amniotic units, glistening like infants. And then, later, I watched them increase in number, be given their weapons and trained to use them. I saw all these things, and I said nothing. And yet, Astarte, who knew them best of all, believed them so dangerous without their primarchs that she tried to destroy them all.’

  Malcador looked at him seriously. ‘What are you saying, Constantin?’

  ‘That if the primogenitors were truly scattered, can it be wisdom for us to seek them out? Should they not be left where they are? Destroyed? If they live, they will have the touch of their captors on them.’

  Malcador nodded. ‘A risk. But we did not get where we are now without taking risks.’ He reached out and clapped Valdor’s arm. ‘We shall speak of this again. You shall speak of this with Him too, when He returns. Hone your arguments – I judge that He is determined to hunt for them. He has taken to referring to them as His “sons”. Can you imagine that? Neither could I, until I heard it from His own lips. There might even be some lingering attachment, there, though how long it will last I cannot say.’

  Valdor hesitated. ‘Then His human sentiments – they are still ebbing.’

  ‘As He predicted. All things have their price.’

  At that, Valdor remembered what Kandawire had said, huddled against the cold as her dreams were dashed from her.

  You let these things run loose now, you will not be able to rein them in later.

  ‘Every step, in every direction, is hedged with danger,’ Valdor said, darkly.

  Malcador looked amused again. ‘That has always been the promise. Do not tell me you regret it, or I might begin to doubt your commitment to the cause.’

  If he had expected Valdor to be angered by that, he was disappointed. The captain-general merely turned away, sweeping his long cloak about him and walking back along the gallery, leaving the Sigillite behind him in the shadows.

  ‘How could you doubt that?’ he said, speaking as if to no one in particular, or perhaps to someone who was no longer present. ‘The cause is literally all I have. I can only hope, if we set out on this new course now, that we can say the same for these… sons.’

  After an indeterminate period of induced coma, Samonas woke again into a world of excruciation.

  Once conscious, it took him some time to recover his senses. At first, there was only the agony, flaring down every nerve and making his skin feel ripped up with hooks. After a while, he managed to control that using the techniques taught by the Order, and his surroundings settled into a blurred mask of just-tolerable pain.

  He was in a medicae unit within the Tower, one he recognised from previous periods of post-battle convalescence. The walls were scrubbed clean and unadorned. Apothecarion drones clicked and whirred, running burbling fluids through their boxy innards. A few Tower menials busied themselves in the background, measuring samples and preparing solutions. Samonas watched them work, his eyes half-lidded, his battered body static on the metal cot.

  That was all he was capable of doing for a long time. And then, just as he felt some strength beginning to twitch again in his prone limbs, the m
enials disappeared. The drones withdrew on their clattering rack-mounts, then shut down. The doors at the far end of the unit slid open, and his master entered.

  Samonas summoned up his reserves, steeling himself for censure. As it was, the captain-general’s bearing did not seem especially dark. If anything, he seemed more at ease than when they had last spoken in person.

  ‘Recovering?’ Valdor asked, coming to stand near the head of the cot.

  Samonas couldn’t move his neck yet, but managed to swallow thickly. ‘I believe so,’ he said.

  ‘The body, surely. It takes more than flame to end that. But the mind? The spirit?’

  ‘Acceptable.’

  ‘You were charged with defending the Senatorum.’

  Samonas felt the cold sliver of guilt strike right at his heart. There was no getting away from it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The failure was mine.’

  ‘No, not really.’ Valdor let the flicker of a half-smile play across his austere features. ‘You wished to act sooner. I countermanded that. No blame attaches to your actions. Your role was not, as you supposed, to prevent her from reaching the Dungeon. It was to prevent her destruction from going any further. You did this with exemplary efficiency. More than I expected, in truth – there were no living Exemplars remaining by the time the Palace sentinels entered the tunnels. And of course, I did not even expect you to reach the Dungeon in time to face her in person. That was impressive, though you will bear some scars as reward for your speed.’

  Samonas listened with gathering confusion. ‘Not to… but I… the repositories–’

  ‘I will say no more on it. You will ask no further questions. All is as it should be.’

  For a moment, Samonas wondered if this were a dream – some kind of wish-fulfilment delirium. But then, he no longer dreamed.

  ‘As you command,’ he said, weakly.

  Valdor leaned closer, inspecting the wounds Samonas had taken. He nodded perfunctorily, apparently satisfied that they would heal. ‘There is a certain value to such activities,’ he said. ‘The risks are real, yet the rewards are significant. Genuine threats cannot be simulated, though they may be contained. I believe this model should be extended. When you are recovered, I wish you to look into it further for me.’