Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

‘This is my life now.’

The man shakes his head.

‘And what will you do when you’ve had enough of that? Will you quit it and move on to something else? When you’re tired of farming, what next? Teaching? Button-making? Will you join the Navy? You might as well, you’ve been Army already. What will you do? An ex-soldier-farmer-widower?’

‘Widower?’ Oll snaps, flinching from the word as though it was buzzing in his face to sting him. ‘What are you talking about, widower?’

‘Oh, come on, Oll. Don’t make me do all the hard work. You know this. She’s not out at the coop. She’s not making you breakfast. She wasn’t in here just now singing. She never came to settle on Calth. She was gone, the poor love, before you ever joined the Army. Last time you joined the Army. Come on, Oll, your mind’s a bit mixed up. It’s the shock.’

‘Leave me alone, John.’

‘You know I’m right. You know it. I can see it in your face.’

‘Leave me alone.’

‘Come on. Think.’

Oll stares at him.

‘Are you in my head, John Grammaticus? Are you in my bloody head?’

‘I swear I’m not, Oll. I wouldn’t do that uninvited. This is all you. Trauma. It’ll pass.’

Oll sits down again.

‘What’s happening?’ he whispers.

‘I haven’t got much time. I’m not here long. Just talking to you is taking a huge effort. We need you, Oll.’

‘They sent you? I bet they did.’

‘Yes, they did. They did. But I didn’t mean them. I meant humans. The human race needs you, Oll. Everything’s gone to shit. So, so badly. You wouldn’t believe it. He’s going to lose, and if he loses, we all lose.’

‘Who’s going to lose?’ asks Oll.

‘Who do you think?’

‘What’s he going to lose?’

‘The war,’ says John. ‘This is it, Oll. This is the big one, the one we always talked about. The one that we always saw coming. It’s happening already. Bloody primarchs killing each other. And the latest round of executions happens here, today. Right here on Calth.

‘I don’t want any part of it. I never did.’

‘Tough shit, Oll. You’re one of the Perpetuals, whether you like it or not.’

‘I’m not like you, John.’

John Grammaticus sits back and smiles, pointing a finger at Oll.

‘No, you’re bloody not. I’m only what I am now thanks to xenos intervention. You, you’re still a true Perpetual. You’re still like him.’

‘I’m not. And I don’t have what you have. The talents. The psyk.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Maybe that’s why you’re important. Maybe you’re just important because you’re here. There are only three like us in the whole Five Hundred Worlds right now, and only one of them on Calth. Ground zero. That’s you. This is down to you. You don’t have a choice. This is down to you.’

‘Get someone else, John. Explain it to someone else.’

‘You know that doesn’t work. No one else is old enough. No one else understands as much. No one else has the… perspective. I tell anyone about this, they’ll just dismiss me as insane. And I don’t have time to spend another eighteen years in an asylum like last time I tried it. You’ve got to do this.’

‘Do what?’

‘Get out of here. They’re going to slide this world. An interstitial vortex. The old Immaterium sidestep. You’ve got to be ready to step through that door when it opens.’

‘And go where?’

It’s fallen dark outside. The sun’s gone in. Grammaticus looks up, and shivers.

‘You’ve got to get something, and you’ve got to bring it to me. Step through the door when it opens, and bring it to me. I’ll wait for you.’

He hesitates.

‘I’ll try my damnedest to wait for you, anyway.’

‘Where am I going, John?’

It’s getting dark so fast. Grammaticus shrugs.

‘We’re running out of time, Oll. With your permission, I’ll show you.’

‘Don’t you bloody d–’

Somewhere. It stinks of the warp, of burning void shields. The walls are polished ebony and etched ceramite, inlaid with crystal and ivory and rubies. Gold leaf edges the hatch frames. The place is so big. So very big. Vaults and chambers, dark and monumental, like the naves of cathedrals. Of a tomb. Of a necropolis catacomb. The ground is black marble.

It’s not the ground. It’s a deck.

He can feel the throb of engines coming through it. Drive engines. The air is dry, artificially maintained. He can smell smoke.

‘Why can I smell smoke, John?’ he asks.

He can’t read whatever it is that’s etched into the polished walls. He realises he’s glad he can’t.

‘John? Where did you go?’

There are starfields outside the windows. There’s blood on the floor. Bloody footprints on the marble, bloody handprints on the walls. Tapestries have been torn down. There are bullet holes in the bulkhead panels: craters blown by bolt-rounds, gouges cut by lasers, by claws. There are bodies on the floor.

It’s not a floor, it’s a deck.

He can hear fighting. A huge battle. Millions of voices yelling and screaming, weapons clashing, weapons firing. The din is coming up through the deck. It’s echoing, muffled, through distant archways and half-seen hatches. It’s as if monumental, cataclysmic history is happening just around the corner.

‘John?’

There’s no sign of John. But he can feel the back-of-the-neck prickle of other minds. Minds as bright as main sequence stars.

‘John, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here at all.’

He moves forward, through an archway twenty times as tall as he is, into a chamber fifty times as tall. The walls and pillars are cyclopean. The air is filled with smoke and dying echoes.

There is an angel dead on the floor. On the deck. The angel is a giant. He was beautiful. His sword is broken. His golden plate is cracked. His wings are crushed. Blood streaks his armour and soaks the carnodon-skin mantle he wears. His hair is as golden as his armour. He has teardrops on his cheek.

His killer is waiting nearby, black as night, made of rage, masked by shadow. The edges of his wargear are chased with gold, giving his darkness a regal outline and shape. The gold encircles the eyes he wears on his chest and harness: baleful, red, staring eyes. He fumes with power. He prickles hot, like a lethal radiation leak. He’s polluting the galaxy just by standing in it. There’s a crackle. A fizzle. Malice so terrible a rad-counter could pick it up.

The killer is huge. His shoulder plates are draped with a cloak of furs and human pelts. A spiked framework surrounds his head: a psychic cage, an armoured box. There is a light glowing inside the box, a ruddy glow. The killer’s head is shaved. He is looking down, his face in shadow. He is looking down at the angel he has just killed. Cortical plugs and bio-feeds thread his scalp like dreadlocks. He is a beast made flesh, and shod in iron. He is made of pure hatred.

Oll Persson realises he should not be here. Anywhere, anywhere in the cosmos but here. He starts to back away.

The killer hears him move or senses him. The killer slowly raises his massive head. Light seeps up from the gorget, underlighting his face. Arrogant. Proud. Evil. He opens his eyes. He stares at Oll.

‘I… I renounce you, evil one,’ Oll stammers. He touches the little symbol around his neck, an instinctive gesture of protection.

‘You… what?’

‘I renounce you as evil.’

‘There is no evil,’ says the killer, his voice a landslip rumble of mountains falling. ‘There is only indifference.’

The killer takes a step towards Oll. The floor – the deck – trembles under the weight.