Aaron Dembski-Bowden - The First Heretic

‘My lord?’ the man asked in his whispery voice.

‘You are among equals, here. Friends. We all sympathise with the pressures the storm has placed upon you. Do not be nervous or hesitant in explaining the details.’

Shosa Delvir, Master of Astropaths, bowed without much in the way of grace. But it was sincere. Lorgar returned the bow, not to same depth, but with a smile.

‘Sometimes,’ the astropath began slowly, ‘mere chance is enough to bring an Imperial fleet to one of humanity’s lost worlds. Blessed are those occasions. More often, we rely upon the few ancient star charts that endured the chaos of Long Night and the Unification Wars that ravaged Terra. But when you rely upon us – when you call upon the astropathic choir – I... I will explain it as best I can.’

‘That,’ Argel Tal watched his father writing the words down, ‘was the first moment my blood ran cold. Anchored above the world, when the astropath told us how his kind saw through the storm. ’

Lorgar nodded. ‘It was the moment I first knew we were reaching the end of the Pilgrimage,’ he said.

‘There’s truth in that,’ the captain sighed.

No longer did their eyes meet as Argel Tal spoke. The delicate scratching of a feather quill on parchment provided the only accompaniment to Argel Tal’s spoken words.

The Master of Astropaths only hesitated for a moment.

‘We hear voices in the void,’ he said. ‘A world is a hive of sound, the buzzing of locusts or flies, but far, far in the distance. It is never easy to make out one world in the endless reaches of space. The Imperium is an ocean of silence, and only the most intense focus allows us to hear the hum of human sentience. Imagine yourselves beneath the water of a great sea. All sound is muted, while the silence is powerfully oppressive. Now try to listen for voices in the nothingness, when all you can hear is your own heartbeat.’

‘Sire...’ Deumos interrupted. ‘Must we listen to this crude prose?’

Lorgar’s answer was to press a golden finger to his smile. ‘Let Master Delvir speak. I find his words enlightening.’

The astropath pressed on, avoiding any of their gazes. ‘If you focus too hard on listening for voices, you will forget to swim. You’ll drown. If you devote all your energy to swimming for the surface and breathing once more... you will hear none of the ocean’s sounds.’

‘You strive for balance,’ said Argel Tal. ‘That does not sound easy.’

‘It is not, but no soul in this room can lay claim to an easy existence.’ The astropath offered a respectful bow to the gathered warriors. Several acknowledged his respect with a salute. Argel Tal was one of them. He liked the scrawny little man.

‘What has changed?’ the captain asked. He felt the primarch’s eyes upon him.

‘This region of space is like no other we’ve seen in our travels. The warp is savage, and our ships are slaves to raging tides of aetheric energies.’

‘We have all seen warp storms before,’ said Lorgar. The glint in his grey eyes spoke volumes: he knew all of this, and was leading the astropath on, letting the psychic sensitive explain it to the fleet’s commanders.

‘This is different, sire. This storm has a voice. A million voices.’

It was safe to say he had the council’s attention. Argel Tal tasted poison as he swallowed. On a whim, he keyed in an activation code onto the table’s hololithic projector.

In flickering imagery, the region of space – zoomed out to display hundreds of suns and their systems – was beamed above the central table. It was impossible to miss what was wrong.

‘This region here,’ the astropath gestured. ‘If the choir closes its eyes and reaches out with its secret senses... all we hear is screaming.’

The area was vast. Bigger than vast. It covered hundreds upon hundreds of solar systems, ugly even on the hololithic. The warp anomaly showed as a gaseous fog staining the stars, coiling down to a centre of roiling, boiling energy.

‘When you all look at this,’ said Arric Jesmetine, ‘does anyone else see an eye? An eye in space?’

Many agreed. Lorgar did not.

‘No,’ the primarch said. ‘I see a genesis. This is how galaxies appear when they are born. My brother Magnus showed me such things in the Hall of Leng, on fair Terra. The difference is that this... birth... is not physical. This is the ghost of a galaxy. You all see an eye, or a spiral. Both are right, both are wrong. This is the psychic imprint of some incredible stellar event. It was powerful enough to rip the void apart, letting warp space bleed into the corporeal galaxy.’

The astropath nodded, awed gratitude in his eyes as the primarch spoke the words he lacked himself.

‘That is what we believe, sire. This is not merely a warp storm. This is the warp storm, and it has raged for so long that it now saturates physical reality. The entire region is both space and unspace. Warp and reality, all at once.’

‘Something...’ Lorgar stared at the bruised heavens, his gaze distant. ‘This is an abortion. Something was almost born here.’

Argel Tal cleared his throat. ‘Sire?’

‘It’s nothing, my son. Just a fleeting thought. Please continue, Master Delvir.’

The astropath had little more to say. ‘The storms that have wracked our journeys these last weeks emanate from this region. Around 1301-12, space is relatively stable. But think of the storm we endured to reach this point of stability. That storm blankets thousands of star systems around us. If we break from this narrow corridor, the energies playing out would be...’

He trailed off. Lorgar looked at him sharply. ‘Speak,’ the primarch commanded.

‘An old Terran term, sire. I would have said the storm is apocalyptic.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Argel Tal.

It was Xaphen that answered. ‘Damnation. The end of everything. A very, very old legend.’ The thought seemed to amuse him.

‘If the storm is nothing but screaming,’ Argel Tal turned to Delvir, ‘then how did we find this world? How could you hear the life upon it?’

The astropath took a trembling breath. ‘Because something on the world below us screams even louder.’

‘Something,’ the captain said. ‘You did not say “someone”.’

The robed man nodded. ‘Do not ask me to explain, for I cannot. It sounds human, but is not. The way you would hear another warrior’s accent and know him to be from another part of your home world, the astropathic choir hears something inhuman screaming in human tongues.’

Lorgar cut off the discussion with a motion of his hand. ‘This region is unmapped and unnamed. What vessels were lost in the journey through the storm?’

Phi-44 answered before the fleetmaster could. ‘The Unending Reverence, the Gregorian and the Shield of Scarus.’

The Word Bearers present inclined their heads in respect. The Shield had been the strike cruiser of their own Captain Scarus and his 52nd Company. Their loss was a savage blow to the Serrated Sun, finding itself at two-thirds strength purely by the warp’s fickle winds.

‘Very well,’ said Lorgar. ‘Ensure all stellar cartography is updated, with records sent back to Terra. This region is hereafter known as Scarus Sector.’

‘Will we make planetfall, sire?’ This from Deumos.

With infinite care, the primarch took a rolled parchment from a wooden tube at his belt. He unrolled it with a precious lack of haste, and finally turned it to face them all. On the papyrus scroll, a spiralling stain was sketched in charcoal. Everyone recognised it immediately. It was already before them – the stain across the stars.

As the commanders watched, a vicious shiver ran through the ship. Emergency lighting stained all vision red for several seconds, and the hololithic winked out of existence. Argel Tal re-keyed the activation code as the lights returned.