Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus

ONE

Ad Vesperum

There was a beauty in the bitterness of it.

So cold was the surface of the planet that in the lulls between the katabatic storms the very atmosphere itself would freeze, and ice crystals would shimmer in a penumbra of glittering rainbows from one horizon to another.

Phobian was enveloped in gloom for most of its long year, and the planet was called the Dark World sometimes. But in those fleeting days of sunlight, there was a majesty to the place. The Argahasts lived up to their name in a brief blaze of silver glory – brutal, immense and as bright as the ire of the Emperor Himself. Twelve-thousand metre mountains encased in a kilometre of ice; a man might die happy having once seen the sun on them. Even if he were more than a man. Even if he were one of the Adeptus Astartes.

Not on a whim had the Dark Hunters made their fortress there. Phobian was a world made to embed awe within the soul. It brought peace to those who had been created never to know it.

It was his home.

Jonah Kerne turned away from contemplation of the winter mountains, that savage landscape, and resumed his pacing down the broad granite-paved cloister. His bare feet slapped on the stone, and his arms were buried in the wide sleeves of his habit. A deep cowl fell forward to conceal his face; there was a hint of a long, crooked nose and the silver glint of ocular augmentation in the shadow of the hood.

His habit was midnight blue, so dark it was almost black, and on the breast was sewn the ancient symbol of justice, the double-headed axe. It had been the badge of the Chapter since the Founding, three thousand years before.

The symbol, the Founding, the Heresy which had preceded it; these events were historical, but were all now buried so deep in legend that the truth of them had long been lost.

But all legends contain truth at their core. And the Emperor remembers how they began, every one.

An observer, watching Kerne pad slowly down the snow-bright cloister, would see a towering shape well over two metres tall, and broader than a man’s anatomy had any right to be. And yet for all its bulk, this midnight giant moved swiftly and with something approaching grace. There was no lumbering swagger, but instead the poise of an athlete. A staggering sense of innate power which even the dark habit could not wholly conceal.

The observer would have to conclude that Jonah Kerne was not human, and he would be right and wrong in equal measure.

At the end of the cloister the austere basalt-block ceiling reared up and expanded into a huge, vaulted space, a dome thirty metres high and twice that in diameter. At its apogee the dome was open to the sky, a circular opening through which the light poured, and in that light the snow was falling, flakes circling and dancing, disappearing before they reached the floor below.

Dark and light, worn and unworn, the stone blocks of which the dome was constructed were varied in age, consistency and colour, as though massive repair work had been necessary in the recent past. And all around the chamber, a keen observer would notice odd scars and holes in the patient stone. One might almost surmise that a battle had once been fought in this austere, serene space.

There were alcoves set in the walls, and in each a towering shape loomed, half in shadow. Some of these shapes were sculpted in red and grey and slate-dark granite. Others seemed to have the sheen of metal, the gleam of lacquered alloy. At the foot of each a red votive light flickered.

Two cowled figures, their shadow-blue habits marked with a single white stripe, bowed as Jonah Kerne entered, and then turned back to the regard of a statue. Jonah touched thumb to forehead. The sculpted effigy was of a huge armoured warrior bearing a broad-bladed sword in one fist. His other hand was raised, and it grasped a glittering orb of purest lapis lazuli as big as a man’s head. The figure wore no helm, and the face was long, stern, a braided scalp-lock trailing down beside one ear.

The eyes had also been set with lapis lazuli, and they seemed to follow all movement in the great domed chamber, the votive light reflected as a red mote in the twin blue gems.

The figure was resting one foot on the severed, barbarous head of an ork.

On the pedestal which supported it was engraved a single word;

Lukullus.

‘He is with us even now. His legacy is in us all,’ a voice said.

Jonah turned and bowed. ‘My Kharne.’

Beside him stood a shape as massive as himself, but the newcomer’s habit was true black, with only a whisper of blue at the hood. This was thrown back, and Jonah looked upon the features of his Chapter Master.

It was a brutal face, scarred and seamed and stretched with an old burn that darkened the pale skin from temple to jaw. The eye on that side had been replaced by an implant which glittered as red as the votive lights in the chamber, but the other was warm, human – surprising in that grim visage. He smiled at Jonah, and set one hand upon Kerne’s shoulder. Jonah felt the steel approximation of fingers, the flesh long ago replaced by moulded alloys and chromate wire. There was warmth in the gesture, but no humanity in the grip.

‘Brothers,’ the Kharne said softly, ‘the captain and I wish to speak alone. My apologies for disturbing your devotions.’

The two others rose, bowed, and filed silently out of the chamber. They tugged closed the massive doors at its far end with a slow, sonorous boom.

The Kharne looked up at the ocular in the dome, the snow drifting down through it.

‘The light is failing. Soon we’ll have the blue shadows all about us again.’

‘If we had the sunshine all the time, we’d have to find ourselves a new name,’ Jonah said.

The Kharne gave a bark of laughter. ‘Is Fornix teaching you how to joke?’

‘It rubs off on me from time to time.’

‘Take a turn with me round our heroes, Jonah, and let me see your face. We have not spoken in an age.’

Jonah lowered the cowl. He and the Kharne might have been brothers – they were, at any rate, hewn out of the same monumental flesh. He had fewer scars, and his eyes were both his own, so black the pupils could barely be discerned. A silver glint now and then betrayed the optics embedded within them.

His skull was shaven, but a crop of dark hair had begun to bristle on it, except around a whorl of scar-tissue near the crown, which looked like an old bullet-wound.

They walked slowly, side by side, robed twins that in turn were uncannily similar to many of the graven faces on the statues they passed.

‘How are the Mortai?’ the Kharne asked. From such a huge frame, it was odd to hear his light, even melodious voice. He was nicknamed Al Murzim, which in the ancient earth tongue of A’rabik meant the Roarer. The Kharne never raised his voice, even in battle.

‘Mortai is blessed. Brother Ambros is sending me eleven of the Haradai in the next day or so who have passed their Provenance. That brings us up to seventy-eight effectives.’

‘Ah, excellent. Seven-man squads then?’ the Kharne asked.

‘Yes, lord, if we are to remain Codex-compliant.’ There was almost a question in the way Jonah raised his tone at the end of this sentence. The Kharne looked at him quickly.

‘You would prefer to consolidate.’

‘I would. Seven become five very quickly in battle, and when that happens a half-squad is doing the work of a full one.’

The Kharne nodded slowly. ‘Brother Malchai will disapprove… but in this I concur. The fist must be hard-clenched before the blow falls, else it is no blow at all. Seven squads, plus command. Fornix as first sergeant – one might think that he would be restless after a century in the post–’

‘It is as far as his ambition climbs. He would make a fine company commander though.’

‘You would hate to lose him.’ Al Murzim’s mouth quirked up at one corner.

‘I would. We have become used to one another over the decades. He tolerates my temper and I tolerate his jokes.’

Al Murzim nodded, still with that half-smile on his scarred face. ‘Someone must, I suppose. I cannot begin to guess how many times I have heard the tale of how he lost that eye. And like you, I was there when it happened.’

Then his face grew serious again.

‘Brother Venann of the Librarium tells me you look with favour upon Elijah Kass’s petition.’

‘To become Mortai’s Epistolary? Yes. He did well in the border-fights against the Gulbec pirates two years ago. He’s young, it’s true–’

‘Too young, most would say. A mere boy.’

‘His psychic readings are in the alpha range.’

‘He has never seen a real war – not as you and I define it.’

‘How do we define real war, my lord?’ Jonah asked.

‘Do you jest with me, captain?’ The Chapter Master’s voice was stern.

‘On my faith, no.’

Al Murzim’s chin sank onto his breast. His pacing slowed.

‘When you were young, and I commanded Mortai as you do now, brother, back then we saw what real war was.’ He looked up. ‘It was here, fought in the very chambers of Mors Angnar itself.

‘You were my first sergeant back then, and Fornix a mere stripling, fresh out of the Haradai. There is a new generation of Dark Hunters now who did not know that fight, the six years of hell we endured.

‘Kass is one of them. I know his quality, but are you so sure he warrants this step?’

‘Mortai has no Librarian, as it has no Chaplain,’ Kerne replied. ‘That cannot be allowed to continue. My Kharne, we have the skeleton of a Chapter in many respects, but surely we can fill some of the more gaping holes.’

‘You were never enamoured of Chaplains, as I recall.’

‘Perhaps. It is a slow business, is it not though? Filling out those bare bones.’

They looked at one another, and in the shared glance there were a thousand memories.

‘Bare bones – I suppose that is what we are,’ the Chapter Master said at last. ‘And yet there is now a generation of our brethren who did not fight the war which so reduced us, who may not yet comprehend the true import of such a conflict.’

He drew a breath, like a man laying down a heavy load.

‘But some of them, at least, may know it presently.’ From the sleeve of his habit the Chapter Master produced a coil of plasment. It quivered in his metal fingers as he held it out to Kerne.

Jonah bowed and unrolled the document. His face changed as he read; the muscles bunched along his jaw and his dark eyes glittered.

+++ Incoming transmission – Cypra Mundi Administratum – Felix Galerius – URGENT – attention of Kharne Al Murzim – Chapter Master Dark Hunters – Adeptus Astartes – Phobos System – Finial Sector: IMMEDIATE ACTION +++

Fleet belonging to Traitor Chaos faction known as Punishers sighted in Finial Sector, Kargad System: coordinates 22/394/J19. Fleet complement Dauntless class or lighter. Contact lost with Imperial detachments on Peronnen, Asranak and the Tellik Asteroids.

Intercept. Interdict. Destroy.

By the Emperor’s Will

Message ends

5.236.982.M41

‘Phobos!’ Jonah grated, using the nearest thing he had to profanity. He looked his Chapter Master in the eye. ‘This is all we have?’

‘All we have,’ Al Murzim said calmly. He resumed his pacing once more. The light was dwindling in the vast chamber and the votive candles flickered like the coals of little dying fires.

‘Dauntless class. Light cruisers then,’ Jonah said. ‘We still have heavier metal than that.’

‘We have the Ogadai,’ the Kharne said. ‘And it is close on four thousand years old.’

‘But still spaceworthy.’

‘Massaron assures me that is so. One Gothic class heavy cruiser – would that be enough, Jonah?’ Al Murzim smiled again.

‘I would take out a harbour scow to meet these scum in battle. In our own sector! And I thought we had seen the last of the Punishers. It’s been–’

‘One hundred and fifty-seven years,’ the Chapter Master interrupted him. ‘Over one and a half centuries since we threw them out of this system, and nearly destroyed ourselves in the process.’

‘I remember, lord.’

‘Of course you do. How many of us from Mortai Company were left standing when it was over?’

A cold light kindled in Kerne’s eyes. He spat the words out through bared teeth. ‘Eighteen.’

‘So you still dwell on it. As do I. Eighteen out of the ninety we numbered before the Punishers landed. You know better than anyone, Jonah, how dangerous these renegades are. They are our dark brethren, the shadow cast by our light. They are an abomination which cannot be allowed to exist.’

‘“The Great Enemy will be destroyed wherever he is found, hunted wherever he flees, and afforded neither pity nor quarter.”’

‘Quoting the Adeptus Terra at me? Not like you,’ Al Murzim said.

‘In this, I am one with the Administratum.’

‘As are we all. No matter how far we are from Earth, the Emperor’s Word will always reach us, and we will obey it.’

They paced in silence again. Jonah was afire with questions, burning to begin preparations for the mission that he was now sure was his. Tables and numbers filed through his brain: the roster of his company, the faces and names, the sergeants and the servitors.

He brought up the memory of the Ogadai, that vast starship which had been laid down before the Dark Hunters themselves had been founded. In its youth it had been part of the battle fleet of the White Scars Chapter. The Primarch himself, Jaghatai, had travelled in it, sanctifying the ship with his presence.

And ancient though it was, it still possessed enough firepower to lay waste to a planet.

Al Murzim spoke at last, in that quiet, even voice of his.

‘The last time they came, it was an invasion. They landed a quarter of a million in the first wave, and they had Emperor-class ships to back them up. It took the help of six other Chapters of our brethren to finally extirpate the Punishers from this system.’

‘Emperor bless them,’ Jonah said automatically.

‘Indeed. But for the Brazen Fists and the Dark Sons and the other four Chapters of our Adept, we would have been annihilated. As it is, even after a century and a half, we have not regained our numbers.’

Al Murzim sighed.

‘We are a poor Chapter, brother. Not for us the glorious campaigns of the Ultramarines or the Blood Angels. Three times in our three thousand years we have been reduced to a remnant.

‘Three times we have had to fight back from the verge of extinction. The Umbra Mortis, our battle barge, is at present nothing more than an orbital battery, stripped of parts and incapable of travelling the warp. The Ogadai is the only capital ship we have which is ready for immediate deployment, and it has been overdue a full refit for these last fifty years.

‘We have eleven Dreadnoughts left, and one of those encases Breughal Paine, our Forge-Master, who cannot leave this world lest his knowledge be lost forever. Even the Ardunai, our First Company, can clad barely half its brethren in the blessed relics of Terminator armour, and its captain, Ares Thuraman, is older even than I.’

‘He is a warrior beyond compare–’ Jonah said stoutly.

‘He is old, and his wounds trouble him without surcease. He will do his duty – he would even accept Dreadnought symbiosis if I asked him to endure it, but sometimes I believe what he really craves is the Emperor’s Peace.’

‘Thuraman has more ambition than that,’ Jonah said before he could stop himself.

The Kharne cocked his head, as if reconsidering something he already knew. ‘Say, rather, that others are ambitious on his behalf.’

‘Lord, what is it you are saying?’ Jonah asked quietly.

The Chapter Master checked, and looked his captain square in the face.

‘It may be this is a raid, no more. But the Kargad System is four months away.’

‘Not if one has recourse to the warp–’

‘The warp is fickle at best, and Isa Garakis has not travelled it in a long time. The Eye of Terror is waxing, we hear, and the warp is in flux. Half a dozen ships have been lost to it without a trace in the last year alone – an Imperial transport convoy with an entire Guards Regiment aboard is ten months overdue to Wendakhen.’

‘You do not trust our senior navigator?’

‘Say rather that in the current conditions, I will not trust to the warp.’

‘Four months! Lord, they could conquer half the system in that time, and be well entrenched by the time we arrive.’

‘Better than you not arriving at all, Jonah.’

As he saw the embattled frown upon his captain’s face, Al Murzim set one fleshless hand upon his shoulder again.

‘If we were at full strength, with a fleet worthy of the name, then I would send you into the warp. But I will not risk the loss of an entire battle company for the sake of a few months; nor will I risk losing you. The Chapter cannot afford that gamble.’

He paused. ‘One day, Jonah, I look to see you standing where I stand now.’

Jonah was stunned. ‘I am in no way worthy,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘Oh, but you are.’ Al Murzim smiled. ‘And besides, there is no one else to whom I would trust this brotherhood, were it up to me alone.’

‘It – it is not up to you alone.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Parrik–’ It had been a long time since Jonah Kerne had called his Chapter Master by that name. Not many in the Chapter even knew what their lord’s name was, beyond the title. But Kerne had known Al Murzim in the long-ago days when they had both been young.

‘There is no call to begin talking about your successor.’

‘One never knows, Brother Kerne.’ The Kharne seemed uncomfortable, irritated even, at hearing the name he had been known under when he had been merely another battle-brother.

‘Forgive me. I am overfamiliar.’

‘No, not you. But times have changed, Jonah. There are undercurrents in the senior command that I have not quite fathomed.’ The Kharne collected himself, frowning. ‘This is not your concern, at any rate. That last message from Cypra Mundi is.’

Then Kerne looked up. ‘Then you are sending me. You are sending out Mortai.’

‘I am. Can you guess why?’

‘I–’ Kerne hesitated. He thought he knew, but he was not sure he should say it.

‘Because you are the best strategist of all my captains. That’s one thing. And because you work best without supervision. That’s another. Others will say that I send you out of sentiment, my old company that I led for a century and which I still indulge from time to time.

‘Well, there may be something in that too. But you will not go alone. I will attach some heavy weapons from the Ninth, and Ambros will provide you with Scouts. It will be good for the Haradai to learn some new tricks at your hands.’

Jonah Kerne bowed, and on straightening said: ‘My Kharne, you say this has the hallmarks of a raid. What if it is more?’

The Chapter Master’s long face closed, until it resembled that of his granite-hewn forbears in the shadows around them.

‘That is the final reason why I send Mortai, and not one of the other companies. Because I know that it is like its current captain – awkward, stubborn, and full of anger. Mortai Company gained its title long before you and I were born, but its character has endured.

‘If things go ill – if this is more than a mere raid – then you will send us word, and we will come to you. And in the meantime you and Mortai will endure, Jonah. Your people will hold their ground against the Great Enemy until we prevail once more. There is no other company in the Chapter that I trust more.’

Al Murzim stopped and looked across the austere vastness of the chamber. His gaze came to rest upon the statue named Lukullus. Then he raised his head and stared up at the opening in the great dome above. It was dark outside now, and the wind could be heard, a distant howling. Snow whirled in and vanished before it was halfway to the floor. In the red lights of the votive candles it looked like slowly falling blood.

‘It is for this and times like it that our kind were brought into being, brother.’

Jonah Kerne knelt before his Chapter Master and bowed his shaven head. ‘Lord, we will do your bidding, or we will die trying.’

Kharne Al Murzim raised up his captain and took his arm in the ancient warrior grip, cold steel and warm flesh meeting.

‘Umbra Sumus,’ the Chapter Master said.

‘Umbra Sumus,’ Jonah replied. And his black eyes gleamed bright.