The Horus Heresy: Old Wounds, New Scars

The skies of Terra were what Alivia missed the most.

She remembered how blue they’d been. How wide.

The view from the summit of the Black Cuillin on her island home was breathtaking: misted glens, sprawling forests and deep oceans stretching in an endless blue expanse.

But most of all, she remembered a sky so wide it seemed it would never end.

Alivia had climbed all the mountains of Old Earth, even the towering white peaks now mantled in stone and steel.

But nothing could compare to this view over the cold ocean to the New World.

Alivia tasted the air: the cool aroma of pine, the wet warmth of wild animals and the thorny tangles of gorse.

She’d seen other worlds, other wonders, since then.

She’d scaled the colossal slopes of Olympus Mons, swum the world oceans of Talassar, even explored the ruins of Fringe Space.

Miracles and marvels all, but the glory of the Throneworld was too powerful, too connected to Alivia’s soul for anything to eclipse it.

Maybe that’s why Horus wants it so badly.

The sentiment was an intrusion. It wasn’t hers.

Her memory’s gaze shifted, down from the endless skies to the forests of highland fir. The trees grew close, only whispering shadows of sunset visible between their pollarded trunks.

Grazing at the edge of the treeline was a powerful stag.

The sheer magnificence of the animal took her breath away.

Its russet hide shone gold in the dying sun, and its antlers forked upwards like bone lightning. This was the master of the glen, and when the wild hunt thundered over the hills, he would lead it.

Alivia held her breath, lest even a whisper of movement break the spell.

The stag’s head came up, its nostrils twitching.

The animal met her gaze, and in its eyes, she saw an ageless soul. Tears pricked her eyes to see a kernel of doubt in its noble strength.

A chilling howl echoed from deep within the forest, the cry of a wolf. Others joined it – dozens, then hundreds. Maybe more.

The stag turned and bolted, its powerful legs carrying it farther up the mountain, leaping over rocks and scrambling along treacherous pathways.

A black-furred wolf raced from the trees, its eyes red and rabid. The pack followed it, red wolves, grey wolves and wolves with moulting fur. They raced after the stag, driving it towards the cliffs where others would be waiting.

She wanted to shout after the fleeing animal.

To warn it that it was heading into a trap.

I always loved that about you, Alivia; your metaphors were always so damn pretty.

Alivia woke with a cry on her lips.

She blinked, breathing hard, the vision of the stag fleeing into mountains fading. Darkness overhead. Dim glow of lumens from the creaking corridor beyond.

Night aboard Molech’s Enlightenment. Above her, the hard, oil-stained metal of the compartment’s ceiling. She rolled onto her side, looking over to where Vivyen and Miska lay. Her adopted daughters were asleep, curled together on their makeshift bunk.

Next to her, Jeph rubbed his eyes and yawned.

‘Did I wake you?’ she asked.

‘Yes, but it’s okay.’

She smiled. They’d all picked up some of the old slang.

‘Another bad dream?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘The one about the snakes?’

‘Thankfully not,’ she said, letting her breathing even out.

Jeph propped himself up on one elbow, running his fingertips across the sweep of her shoulder.

‘Who’s John?’ he asked.

John Grammaticus.

She hadn’t thought of her old lover in a long time.

He came to mind only infrequently – if she heard a specific inflexion of tone or caught a precise sardonic expression out of the corner of her eye. She’d spin around, expecting to see him standing there with a knowing grin, as if he’d only been gone for a few hours and not ages of the world.

When was the last time she’d seen John?

She rolled over in her bunk, knowing exactly when.

The Khyber.

A smoky bar in Kabul, back before the tanks of the Iron Czar reduced the entire city to rubble. Close to the Palace of Amanullah Khan, the Khyber was the preferred watering hole for a rogue’s gallery of strangers in a strange land, drifters thrown together by tides of crime, betrayal and loss.

John wasn’t with their circle of acquaintances that day. He’d been thrown out three days earlier for loudly berating the bar staff for serving watered-down liquor, and was still serving penance by being forced to drink in the factory bars down by the Janagalak.

She’d just laid down a winning hand of panjpar, to loud wails of protest from her opponents, when she felt his presence. Alivia looked over her shoulder and saw John at the louvred entrance, frantic and bathed in sweat like the time he’d run the first marathon.

He’d just started to shout her name when the Khyber exploded.

A single 152mm shell from an Akatsiya artillery piece deployed outside the city smashed down through the roof and detonated in the bar, killing everyone in the building in the fires of an earth-shaking blast.

Alivia remembered the flames and the thunder of collapsing masonry. The sensation was powerful, and she cut it off abruptly. Painful experience had taught her it was never a good idea to relive powerful emotions in the warp.

The breath caught in her chest, and she knew she wasn’t getting back to sleep again anytime soon. She swung out of bed and dressed in the dark with the efficiency of someone who knows the exact location of everything she needs.

‘Where you going, Liv?’ asked Jeph.

‘Going to head up to the bridge,’ she said, lacing up her heavy boots. ‘Captain Sulaiman and I need to figure out how we’re going to stretch our supplies long enough to reach Terra.’

But Jeph was already slipping back to sleep.

She envied him that ability.

Alivia leaned over and kissed his cheek. Jeph was a good man. He wasn’t exceptional, nor was he handsome or rich, but he loved her and his girls deeply.

What more could someone like her ask for?

She kissed the girls. Miska, the cherub-faced mistress of mischief and backchat managed to look entirely innocent while asleep, and Vivyen the storyteller, so like her father.

Alivia saw the chapbook she’d long ago taken from the Odense Domkirke library clutched tight to the girl’s chest. Ever since Alivia and Severian of the Luna Wolves (he’d been careful to make the distinction) had rescued Vivyen, she’d never let the book go.

Alivia left them sleeping and quietly slipped out of the maintenance compartment that served as their cabin. Smaller than an Arbites gaol cell, but it was more than most people on Molech’s Enlightenment had.

The deck corridor beyond was only fitfully illuminated, and Alivia saw the area around the door was again strewn with trinkets and small offerings of food. Picts of lost loved ones were pinned to the door frame and inked strips of votive paper fluttered in the sour air drifting from the recyc-vent above.

Every morning it was the same.

Alivia knelt to gather up every gift and every scrawled request. The gifts she’d redistribute, the requests she’d read later and try to help where she could.

Molech’s Enlightenment was a destroyer, a small ship by Naval standards, but still over a kilometre in length. Fast and manoeuvrable, she was a pack hunter without a pack, a lonely traveller limping back to the system of her birth.

Under normal circumstances, the vessel would boast a complement of around fifteen thousand, but now carried almost double that.

These times were anything but normal.

The ship’s holds and empty torpedo bays were now home to thousands of refugees from Molech, a world taken by Horus in his galaxy-wide betrayal.

Almost two years had passed since their escape, years in which many of those who had begun the journey from Molech had died in the darkness. Many more had succumbed to warp sickness or the pressures of their desperate existence. It seemed as though they might escape the ravages of Horus, only to succumb to the slow attrition of the voyage back to Terra.

Alivia had stepped up and worked closely with Captain Sulaiman to make conditions aboard the vessel bearable. She’d overseen the regular distribution of food and water supplies, worked with Noama Calver and Kjell to establish a functioning medicae facility, and put in place a system to ensure the fair allocation of habitable living spaces.

She’d found myriad ways to keep thousands of people crammed for months in an Imperial starship from turning on one another out of fear and desperation.

They recognised she had kept them all alive, and they loved her for that.

Someone had given her a nickname, Saint Liv, and though Alivia disliked it, she’d found it impossible to shake. It reminded her a little too much of what she’d read on a faded palimpsest a grateful patient had left on their medicae bunk.

The Lectitio Divinitatus, a quasi-religious text that deified the Emperor and set Him in the holy role of mankind’s golden protector.

She’d ripped it up with a sigh.

People always looked to higher powers when night closed in.

Alivia had since seen at least seven shrines around the ship, and knew there would be more. But as much as she loathed the idea of the Emperor being revered as a god, the nascent belief offered a sliver of hope to the desperate.

For now, that was all that sustained some people, so she swallowed her bitterness and let them believe the impossible.

Alivia set off towards the bridge, feeling the vibrations of the starship’s engines through the metal deck plates. She could hear the groaning of the ship’s superstructure as a distant rumble, and she paused to place her palm on a nearby stanchion.

The bare metal was warm, a side effect of feedback from the Geller field as it resisted the insane tides of the immaterium.

‘Only a little farther, steel-heart,’ she said.

Two thousand people called Lateral Companionway Epsilon-77 home. It had been designed as a way to swiftly move rapid-response troops to any hull breaches; now every inch of the deck was carefully divided into sleeping areas, ration dispensaries, medicae bays and refectory spaces. The environment-scrubbers were on their way out, and stale sweat, unwashed bodies and the ammoniac reek of recycled air added a tangible texture to every breath. Magos Cervari only gave them a fifty-six per cent chance of remaining functional long enough for the ship to reach Terran space.

Alivia emerged onto a wide, transverse gantry that spanned the companionway, trying to cross as swiftly and quietly as possible.

It didn’t do any good.

People looked up as she passed overhead, and more and more lifted their faces towards her as word of her presence spread.

Alivia looked down, meeting the gaze of a woman she’d helped find food for her three children. Her name was Orabella, and she kissed her fingertips before placing them over her heart.

The gesture was swiftly copied by other refugees: a man whose life she’d saved when she’d found a last bottle of counterseptic to treat a gash in his thigh; a teenage girl she and Noama had helped through a difficult birth; a child who’d suffered warp nightmares, and who she’d rocked to sleep every night for a month until they faded.

Alivia had listened to their anguished stories of fleeing Molech with nothing but the clothes on their backs, their legacies of heartache and fear. She held them close as they spoke of lost husbands, wives, children and siblings.

She’d cried more tears aboard Molech’s Enlightenment than she could ever remember shedding. To be an empath on a ship of refugees was to feel every hurt, every loss and every stab of grief that much deeper.

But she’d turned that despair into hope.

It was fragile this hope, forever in danger of being extinguished like the first sparks of a fire in a windy hearth.

She breathed soft life to it by listening with compassion to everyone who needed catharsis or closure, then speaking healing words in return. She helped shoulder every burden, and, in doing so, lessened theirs.

Alivia left the companionway and its swirling emotions, moving farther up the ship and crossing rally points now serving as dormitories, and ordnance stowage bays pressed into service as ablutions chambers.

She passed a team of servitors running a series of replacement pipes where a buckled stanchion had sheared a power conduit. Captain Sulaiman had told her the unpredictable tides of the empyrean were surging as he’d never seen them before, like a hurricane breaking upon the shore. Both of them knew upon what world’s shores the warp tides would be breaking.

Alivia…

She winced in pain, feeling an icy chill pass through her.

She looked for a speaker but she was alone, a singular enough experience on Molech’s Enlightenment that it immediately struck her as strange.

Alivia…

She put a hand to her chest as the temperature dropped.

Her skin was cold to the touch, and her breath feathered the air. She felt the hard ridges of scars, three vertical ones where the Warmaster’s claws had pierced her, and one where Severian had split her heart with Proximo Tarchon’s gladius.

The moment passed, and Alivia straightened.

Travelling through the warp, you learned to accept the odd muttering shadow or sourceless whisper. This certainly wasn’t the first time she’d heard her name being called in an empty corridor.

Such harmless phenomena often indicated a ship was about to translate back into real space.

Alivia reached out and rapped her knuckles three times against the nearest bulkhead and said, ‘Going to have to do better than that if you’re trying to spook me.’

She moved on, turning into the approach corridor that led to the bridge.

Behind her, three answering knocks echoed from the bulkhead.

The bridge of Molech’s Enlightenment was hot, coolant fluids being a carefully controlled substance now. Much to Magos Cervari’s chagrin, the cogitators were forced to run close to overheating before their machine-spirits were appeased by a carefully rationed burst of cooling balms.

He’d predicted a binharic revolt within the logic engines, but thus far it seemed the spirits within were accepting this sacrifice to keep the ship running.

Captain Sulaiman stood at his command podium, immaculately dressed as always in his white frock coat, and flanked by two black-carapaced armsmen carrying shot-cannons. Once, the soldiers had bristled at the informality of her entrance to the bridge, but Alivia had earned her place here.

‘Captain Sulaiman,’ said Alivia. ‘Am I right in thinking I just heard translation ghosts?’

Sulaiman turned to face her, his caramel-coloured skin clean shaven and immaculate. His augmetic eyes danced with barely contained enthusiasm.

‘Mistress Sureka,’ he said, ignoring her question. ‘How are you?’

‘Tired, hungry and looking forward to seeing some sky over my head for a change.’

‘You say that every time.’

‘Then you should know not to bother asking.’

Sulaiman cocked his head to the side, giving her a curious look. Or was it concern? The augmetics made it hard to be sure.

‘You’re testy today,’ he observed.

‘Are you surprised?’ she responded, exhaustion fraying familiarity into a lack of respect for Sulaiman’s rank. ‘We’ve been transitioning for nine months now. Who knows how long has really passed or what’s happening in real space? For all we know Horus is already sitting in the Palace and drinking the Emperor’s favourite wine.’

Sulaiman flinched as if she’d struck him.

‘I could have you shot for saying that,’ he said.

Alivia bit off a caustic retort.

She and Sulaiman had a cordial working relationship now, but it hadn’t always been that way. It had taken time and effort for her earn a measure of his respect, though she suspected he still thought of her as little more than a jumped-up civilian with delusions of her own importance.

This was, after all, a proud vessel of the Imperial Navy, and Sulaiman would never believe that she too had captained ships of war in equally dangerous times. She remembered the Straits of Artemisium, commanding warships of another man people foolishly called a god-emperor.

Sometimes she had to remind herself of what men of war in this turbulent age saw when they looked at her.

A wife. A mother. They didn’t see the warrior beneath.

‘I apologise, captain,’ she said, rubbing the heels of her palms against her eyes. ‘I’m not sleeping properly, and I keep hearing warp-whispers around every corner.’

‘Anything I should be concerned about?’

She shook her head. ‘No, just the usual nonsense. Anyway, how are we doing up here? You look like the cat that’s got the cream.’

He stared at her blankly, her meaning lost on him.

‘You and your curious expressions,’ he said. ‘Regardless, we have some good news at last. Magos Cervari?’

The Mechanicum adept looked up from his table-console, though he had no need to in terms of eye contact, for his chromed, circuit-patterned skull was devoid of anything resembling human sensory organs in appearance or placement. His robes fluttered and hissed with venting gases and the sound of straining fan mechanisms, for he too was subject to coolant restrictions.

‘Indeed. Captain Sulaiman is correct,’ said Cervari, unrolling a faded relic of celestial cartography across his console.

‘An actual map?’ said Alivia. ‘Are you ill?’

‘Negative, I am fully functional within the rationed parameters I have set myself. Why do you ask?’

‘I’ve never known a single Martian who’d take a physical object over a noospheric representation of it.’

‘I am not from Mars,’ said Cervari. ‘I was born in the sub-aquatic geo-therm stacks of Europa.’

‘Oh, well do continue,’ said Alivia, studying the map.

Truly, it was a thing of beauty – hand-painted on gilt-edged wax paper, with warp contours picked out in vermillion pigment and the Gordian knots of stable transit routes marked with careful strokes of a fine brush. Estimated journey times were lettered in gold cursive that spoke of meticulous attention to detail.

‘Navigator Mehlson deserves the credit,’ said Sulaiman. ‘She caught a riptide that carried us into a stable route that skirted the extreme edge of the Katar warp storm. She skimmed its axial rotation and cut weeks off our projected travel time.’

‘What does that mean in real terms?’ asked Alivia. ‘How far are we from the solar boundary?’

Magos Cervari answered. ‘We have already passed it.’

‘We’ve passed it already?’

‘Indeed,’ said Sulaiman. ‘Navigator Mehlson believes we will be in position to translate into solar real space within the hour.’

‘An hour? Throne!’

Alivia found the black rose of the warp storm on the map, a furious tempest that had been raging for over five hundred years. Her fingers traced the route the manoeuvre Sulaiman had described would likely have taken them. She followed it to the Trans-Uranic Gulf, where a silver gate was lovingly rendered in flaking metallic pigments.

‘You’re going to bring us out at the Elysian Gate?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ replied Sulaiman. ‘Our luck has finally turned.’

Alivia shook her head. ‘No. We can’t use either of the old gates,’ she said.

‘Why not?’ demanded Sulaiman. ‘They are the most stable routes into the home system. They’ll bring us weeks closer to Terra.’

‘Yeah, but they’re known. By us and the traitors. Like I said, we don’t know how much sidereal time has passed since Molech. I’d be surprised if the Solar System isn’t a giant void fight already.’

‘You cannot know that for sure,’ said Cervari.

‘You’re right, I can’t,’ agreed Alivia with increasing certainty, ‘but regardless of how much time has passed, whoever is directing the defences of Terra will have layered space around both gates with deep shoals of mines, star forts, battery-plates and entire fleets of ships.’

‘Molech’s Enlightenment will not re-enter its home system like an intruder,’ said Sulaiman stiffly.

Alivia let out a breath of frustration.

‘Listen,’ she snapped, feeling her temper fraying. ‘Anything that comes out of either of those gates is going to be destroyed before it’s even halfway translated.’

Alivia…

She flinched and hammered her fist down on the map.

‘And you can shut up too!’ she yelled to the air.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Sulaiman.

‘Not you,’ said Alivia. ‘That damn voice.’

‘What voice?’

‘The one that keeps calling my name.’

‘A voice is calling to you by name?’

Alivia heard the note of wariness in Sulaiman’s voice and replayed the last few moments in her head.

‘Ah, yes, I see how that might sound, but don’t worry – I’m sure it’s just translation ghosts.’

‘I think that perhaps you need to rest, Mistress Sureka.’

‘Look, I’m okay,’ insisted Alivia. ‘I’m just worn a bit thin, that’s all.’

‘I must insist,’ said Sulaiman, nodding to the two armsmen.

They hesitated, knowing how beloved Alivia was among the crew and refugees.

‘Remove her from the bridge,’ said Sulaiman. ‘That’s an order.’

Alivia backed away from the table.

‘I’m telling you, I’m okay,’ she said. ‘But you have to listen to me. If we come out of either of those gates, we’re going to die. Do you understand?’

Alivia, listen to me… I can help.

‘I told you to shut the hell up!’ she shouted.

The racking of a shot-cannon brought Alivia back to the present.

‘Please, captain, you have to believe me,’ Alivia pleaded. ‘I understand this has been a long voyage, and it’s asked more of us than we knew we could give. We all want to see Terra, but this isn’t the way home. You have to trust me.’

Sulaiman snapped his fingers and the two armsmen stepped forward. Hesitation or not, Sulaiman was their captain.

‘Mistress Sureka, you have been a great help in getting us this far, but Molech’s Enlightenment is my ship. I flatter myself that I know the void better than a mere civilian. We will translate through the Elysian Gate, so let that be an end to the discussion.’

‘Just think about what I’m saying, captain. We’re a ship that’s probably been declared lost with all hands, suddenly appearing without warning in the Solar System from a world that’s just fallen to the Warmaster. How does that look? Would you trust a ship with that baggage?’

‘Remove her from my bridge,’ ordered Sulaiman.

The captain’s men took Alivia’s arms and marched her towards the bridge entrance. She’d fought her share of up-close-and-personal brawls, but this wasn’t the time to break bones.

The armsmen marched her beyond the bridge, and stationed themselves to either side of its entrance as the armoured door closed and internal bolts slammed home within its reinforced frame.

Nothing short of multiple melta charges would breach it now.

Let me help…

The maddening voice felt like it was right next to her.

Another angry shout died on her lips as she now heard the specific inflexion of tone, the sardonic undertone and the easy familiarity.

She turned from the bridge and whispered under her breath.

‘John, is that you?’

Alivia found a cramped maintenance conduit and squeezed herself inside, crouching in the lee of heavy ductwork. Her heart beat like a jackhammer, and her mouth was sour with the taste of bilious memories.

Deep breaths. Calm yourself.

Find a place of serenity within.

She closed her eyes and carefully erected a series of mental barriers, compartmentalising areas of her consciousness and walling off a quarantined mindspace.

She couldn’t know for certain if this was truly John or some malicious warp entity.

‘Whoever you are, tell me something only John would know.’

For a moment she wasn’t sure the voice would answer.

I’m sorry I didn’t reach the Khyber in time.

Alivia opened her eyes and was back on the mountains of her youth. She took a breath of the wild air, no less refreshing simply because it was conjured from memory.

John was here, sat on the grass by the edge of a steep cliff overlooking a port town where masted ships were moored to a series of interconnected jetties. A castle of black rock stood on a jutting promontory, where the lord of the isles held his court.

‘I always loved coming here with you,’ he said.

She sat on a boulder a safe distance from him.

‘I thought you were a city boy.’

He grinned. ‘I am. Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the beauty of the great outdoors. Especially now it’s gone.’

‘It’s been gone a long time.’

‘Is that why you’ve held on to it so clearly?’

‘This is where I’m from,’ said Alivia. ‘This place shaped me more than anywhere else. I come here when I need to remember the good times.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t remember too many of them. All the lives we’ve lived, all the things we’ve seen? Can you honestly tell me the good times outweigh the bad?’

She didn’t answer.

‘You can only hold on to so much, you know?’ said John, throwing a pebble from the cliff and watching it start an avalanche of scree. ‘Not all of us have held to the same identity as long as you, Alivia. I admire that about you.’

‘Spare me the flattery, John. Why are you here?’

He smiled and said, ‘You always did like to cut to the chase.’

He made to stand, but she waved him back.

‘No, stay down. Just tell me, and don’t try playing me like one of your marks.’

‘I swear I’d never do that to you.’

‘Not again, you mean.’

‘Well, yeah. Again. Sorry.’

‘So tell me what you want.’

He nodded and looked out to sea, as though he were trying to figure out how best to ask. An act, she knew; John was never unprepared.

‘I need to find Oll,’ he said.

That wasn’t the simple answer she’d been expecting.

‘I seem to remember Oll Persson telling you he wanted nothing to do with the rest of us in no uncertain terms.’

‘At Béziers, I remember,’ said John.

‘So why would you think he’d want to see you now?’

‘Actually, I’ve already seen him since then. On Calth.’

‘In the Five Hundred Worlds?’

John shrugged. ‘Maybe not as many as that now, but yeah. He’s mellowed in his old age.’

‘Old age?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘You still haven’t told me why you’re looking for him.’

‘He’s needed.’

Alivia laughed. John scowled, and that only made it funnier.

‘Needed? By who?’ she asked, though there could be only one answer.

‘The Emperor. I know Oll told us he was done, but the universe decided otherwise,’ said John with a lopsided grin Alivia remembered from all the times she’d kissed it. ‘Funny how often that happens, isn’t it? Almost like we don’t get a say in how things turn out. I mean, look at the three of us, all heading to Terra just as the Warmaster tightens the noose. You think that’s an accident? You think there isn’t some grand scheme at play?’

Alivia shook her head and moved to sit next to him.

They looked at the sun, dipping beyond the horizon and turning the cold northern ocean into a rippling expanse of gold. Dark clouds threatened where the ocean met the sky, and a cold wind began to blow, rippling the grass on the hillside.

‘After all that’s happened and all you’ve done, why would you ever think I’d tell you where Oll is?’

‘So you know where he is?’

She sensed the urgent need in him.

‘Of course,’ she lied. ‘But I’m not going to tell you. And if you dare ask why, I’ll push you off this cliff right now.’

John looked over the edge to the jagged rocks below.

‘Would it help if I told you I could get you through the fleet blockades to Terra?’ he asked. ‘I’m the prodigal son now, back in the fold so to speak.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said.

‘It’s true. Mostly true, anyway, but the part about getting you and everyone aboard this ship safely to Terra? That part’s definitely true.’

She searched his face for any hint of a lie. She saw only sincerity, but that meant less than nothing. John Grammaticus was many things, but first and foremost, he was a liar.

‘You must be desperate to come to me for help.’

‘I am,’ he replied, and to see him so nakedly honest and stripped of subterfuge was so shocking she almost blurted out that she had absolutely no idea where Oll might be found.

But then she remembered all the pain he’d caused her, all the lies he’d told and, finally, how he’d left her buried under the ruins of the Khyber. She desperately wanted to ask why he hadn’t dug her from the ruins, but wasn’t sure she’d like the answer.

‘You hurt me, John,’ she said at last. ‘More than anyone’s hurt me. And I’ve known a lot of pain in my time.’

‘We all have, Liv,’ he said, reaching to take her hand.

She snatched it back.

‘Don’t call me that,’ she said. ‘That name’s not for you. Not any more.’

‘Is it for your husband?’

‘Yes. And my daughters.’

‘Daughters? Those girls?’

Anger touched Alivia, and she said, ‘Yes, those girls. I know they’re not my flesh and blood, but they’re mine. I’m their mother, because I’ve raised them. I’m their mother because I’ve kept them safe and because I love them. And that makes them my daughters just as much as if I’d carried them inside me.’

John nodded and pushed himself to his feet as a tremor vibrated up from the ground.

‘You’re right, I’m sorry.’

‘Keep your apology,’ she snapped. ‘Just go.’

‘So you won’t tell me where Oll is?’

‘I won’t,’ said Alivia.

Alivia’s head snapped up, and the real world swam back into focus as she felt a swell of nausea climb her gullet. She swallowed it down, and pushed herself upright.

‘Shit, we’re translating.’

She emerged from the maintenance conduit and ran back to the bridge. As she’d expected, the armoured door was closed, and the two armsmen still stood guard.

They tensed as she approached and she raised her hands to show she was no threat. She saw herself reflected in the gloss black of their visors, and smiled.

‘I need to see Captain Sulaiman,’ she said.

One of the armsmen stepped forward and said, ‘Your bridge privileges have been revoked, Mistress Sureka. Captain’s orders.’

His name was Burraga. She knew his name and that he had lost friends in the fight to escape Molech. Thirty-four years old, a career Navy man. Tough and by the book. She knew him, but not as well as she’d have liked, which made manipulating him difficult.

But not impossible.

John would have simply dominated the minds of both men with brute force mental coercion, but Alivia’s abilities were more suited to flanking.

‘Listen to me very carefully, we don’t have time for this,’ she said, weaving empathic manipulation into every word. ‘If we’re translating through the Elysian Gate, this ship is going to be an expanding cloud of radioactive metal and bodies soon. If I can’t convince the captain to alter his plans, then everyone aboard this ship is going to die. Do you really want that on your conscience?’

It wasn’t fair to put that on him, but it would provide the leverage she needed to get inside his head. Alivia exerted more pressure, once again wishing that the ability push came more naturally to her.

‘I know it’s not fair to put that on you, Burraga,’ she said, carefully enunciating his name, ‘but that’s where we are. You have to let me in. And you have to let me in now.’

‘I… I don’t… think that’s–’

‘We’re so close,’ she continued, carefully modulating her tone and drawing out his deep sense of honour. ‘We can’t die with Terra within reach. All the people we saved, the men, women and children? Don’t you want to help them? Don’t let them die in the void, killed by our own people.’

She reached deeper into his mind, a place of hard angles and unbending discipline wrapped around an honourable core. Alivia had felt his hesitation before he and his comrade marched her from the bridge. She amplified that feeling, helped it grow and swell, touching everything around it.

Alivia channelled the nascent hope and the desire to live she’d nurtured in everyone aboard Molech’s Enlightenment.

She let it pour into Burraga.

He nodded and made a quarter-turn to his right.

The butt of his shot-cannon hammered into the belly of his comrade. The armsman doubled up, and Burraga’s armoured knee cannoned into his face. The visor of his helm cracked and he collapsed to the deck with a groan of pain.

Alivia retrieved his fallen shot-cannon as Burraga entered the access code to the bridge door. The gun felt absurdly heavy, and though she was no stranger to weapons, she didn’t like the finality of them.

‘You’d better be damn sure about this,’ said Burraga as the door opened.

‘I am,’ promised Alivia.

To his credit, Captain Sulaiman seemed wholly unsurprised at Alivia’s reappearance. He sighed and shook his head in exasperation as she and Burraga swept inside.

‘I should have known you’d find a way to get back onto my bridge,’ he said.

‘What can I say? I’m persistent.’

‘And clearly persuasive,’ said Sulaiman, nodding towards Burraga.

‘I explained exactly what was at stake, and Armsman Burraga happened to agree.’

‘So what is your intent, Mistress Sureka? Is this a mutiny? Do you intend to replace me as captain?’

‘Of course not,’ said Alivia. ‘But we can’t translate through the Elysian Gate.’

Sulaiman turned to the viewing bay at the far end of the bridge and said, ‘Then I am afraid you have arrived a little too late.’

The wide bay displayed a riot of colours and maddening static.

Translation was messy; flaring warp corposant all but blinded a ship until it was fully clear, and immaterial energies clinging to the ship’s crenellated spires and gothic bastions kept its shields from immediately igniting.

Even as Alivia watched, the view began to darken to the void of space as the ship finished its transition.

Almost immediately, Magos Cervari’s station lit up with chiming blooms of noospheric indicators.

Threat markers, auspex sweeps, target acquisition runes.

‘Multiple contacts!’ said Cervari.

‘Identify,’ ordered Sulaiman.

‘So many…’ said Cervari. ‘Multiple capital-class assets, thirty plus squadrons of destroyers, flotillas of cruisers and gunboats. Throne, there is firepower here to conquer entire sectors!’

The viewing bay cleared enough that the numbers and volume of contacts Cervari was reporting could be rationalised. Even over the vast distances involved in a void engagement, it was clear to see that space around the Elysian Gate was awash with warships.

‘Yes,’ said Alivia, trying her best to sound calm. ‘That’s a lot of firepower aimed right at us.’

Glowing darts of capital ships were moving to bracket Molech’s Enlightenment with their grand batteries, and swarming packs of piquet ships were moving to intercept. Scores of torpedo sweeps blitzed the hull with ranging pings in preparation for launch.

Void-anchored gun platforms painted Molech’s Enlightenment with so many auspex returns it would be comical if their macro-cannon weren’t about to destroy them. Hunter-killer mines locked on to the ship’s hull signature and fired their one-shot boosters.

‘Emperor’s mercy…’ whispered Sulaiman, and Alivia gave him a sidelong glance. Clearly the words of the Lectitio Divinitatus were not confined solely to the refugees.

‘Can we get back through the gate?’

Sulaiman didn’t reply, his augmetic eyes fixed on the campaign-scale of the fleet arrayed before him.

‘They’re launching!’ cried Cervari, and the surveyor station blossomed with scores of torpedo launches. Squadrons of bombers scrambled into the void, knifing through space towards them.

‘Captain,’ she snapped. ‘Can we get back through the gate?’

He squared his shoulders and shook his head.

‘A Cobra-class destroyer is fast, Mistress Sureka, but it’s not that fast,’ he said, his augmetics flickering as they tracked the numerous incoming torpedoes arcing towards his ship. ‘In any case, making another translation so soon would tear us apart.’

‘Then can we stay alive long enough?’

‘Long enough for what?’

‘For me to ask a favour.’

‘A favour from whom?’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ snapped Alivia, dropping the shot-cannon to the deck and trusting that Sulaiman wouldn’t take the opportunity to blow her away. ‘Just… don’t let us die.’

Sulaiman marched swiftly back to his command podium and cricked his neck, fixing his gaze upon the incoming torpedoes, myriad weapon locks and swarming packs of ship-killing mines.

‘I cannot promise such a feat lies within my power, but I will try,’ he said.

Alivia smiled and said, ‘I have faith in you, captain.’

She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing.

No time for fancy mental compartmentalisation.

+Okay, John, you win,+ sent Alivia, hurling her psychic call into the void. +I’ll tell you where you can find Oll.+

Alivia’s words echoed in her mind, but she heard nothing in reply, not even a whisper.

The mass of her body shifted as Sulaiman fired the ship’s engines, the reactor burning hot as he manoeuvred the vessel hard.

Molech’s Enlightenment groaned as its battle-stanchions shouldered explosive torsion and compression baffles endured stresses they hadn’t felt in months.

+Come on, when did you ever give up this easy?+

The staccato warnings of incoming ordnance were distracting, and she tried to shut them out. A klaxon sounded and binharic proximity alarms screeched from wall-mounted vox-horns.

‘Impact in thirty seconds!’ announced Magos Cervari.

+Please, John,+ she sent. +Help us. Call them off!+

+You’ll tell me where Oll is?+

The breath burst from her at the sound of John’s voice in her mind.

+I will,+ she said. +As soon as we’re safely on Terra.+

+Tell me now. That ship’s going to be burning void debris in minutes.+

+Then you’d better work fast,+ she sent, snapping off the connection between them.

‘Impact in twenty seconds!’ announced Magos Cervari.

Sulaiman sweated as he threw the ship into sharp turns, burning the engines and manoeuvring jets harder than its Jovian shipwrights had ever intended.

Alivia felt the terror of the thousands of people in the cargo decks and transit chambers. Their fear surged through her as they wept and held tight to their loved ones, not knowing what was happening.

‘Ten seconds,’ said Cervari.

‘I am afraid I can run no farther, Mistress Sureka,’ called Sulaiman. ‘So if you have any miracles to work, now would be the time.’

‘I’m sorry, captain,’ said Alivia. ‘I’m all out of miracles.’

‘Five, four, three, two…’

Alivia squeezed her eyes shut, awaiting the pain and horror of a ship-death. She expelled the breath in her lungs, awaiting a sudden and explosive decompression in the hard vacuum of space.

The moment stretched.

One by one, the sirens, klaxons and binharic alarms ceased.

Silence fell across the bridge, the only sound the angry hissing of overheated logic engines, the groans of settling metal and her own laboured breathing.

Alivia unclenched her fists and peered into the shimmering starfield in the viewing bay. She tried to make sense of the corkscrewing contrails of aborted torpedoes and fading smears of light, all that remained of the incoming hunter-killer mines.

Thank you, John…

A bark of static crackled from the vox, making her jump.

‘Molech’s Enlightenment, this is Captain Vihaan of the Cardinal Boras. You are ordered to assume a coreward heading and come abeam of us at dead slow. You will follow my ship back to Terra. Any delay or deviation will result in your immediate destruction. Indicate your understanding of this order or we will open fire immediately.’

Sulaiman stared in open-mouthed wonder at Alivia.

‘How did you do that?’

‘Never mind just now,’ said Alivia. ‘Answer him!’

Sulaiman swiftly signalled his assent to the Cardinal Boras, and Molech’s Enlightenment swung around as Magos Cervari complied with Vihaan’s order.

Alivia sank to the deck, resting her back against the warm metal of a cogitator bank. She lay her head back and released a long, relieved breath.

She looked up as Sulaiman stood over her. His eyes were augmetic, but she swore she could see reverence in them.

‘Now I know why the people call you a saint, Mistress Sureka.’

‘I’m no saint,’ snorted Alivia. ‘Far from it.’

‘Then how did you do that?’

Alivia closed her eyes and said, ‘I made a promise I can’t possibly keep.’

The skies of Terra were what Alivia remembered the most.

Now iron grey and laced with clouds, but at least it was sky.

She tilted her head back and drew in a deep breath of air that hadn’t been recirculated through ten thousand throats for months on end.

It tasted of metal and lightning.

She’d never tasted anything sweeter.

Behind her, the suborbital lander that had brought them down to the surface hissed and creaked as it cooled. Steam blistered from the blocky hull after its swift drop through the atmosphere.

Far, far in the distance, like ramparts against the sky, the endless edifice of the Emperor’s Palace held Alivia’s attention. Titanic and grotesque, it was a shrine to one man’s colossal arrogance and monstrous hubris.

Alivia felt a cold chill travel the length of her spine at the sight of that terrible place. To some, it was a wonder of the galaxy, but it held only bad memories for Alivia.

Vivyen and Miska stood next to her. Miska looked around in wonder, trying to take in the overwhelming sight and scale of an Imperial space port, and the fleets of landers, fuel tenders and darting skiffs criss-crossing the sky. Vast loader cranes swung overhead, carrying bulk containers of supplies, building materials or heavy blocks of reinforced permacrete.

Armies of servitors and augmented migou traversed the sprawling city-port, hauling crates of ammo, food and who knew what from depot to destination. Actinic blue sparks blinked and sputtered on the newly fortified walls surrounding the port as fresh sheets of armoured plasteel were shuttered to the outer defences.

The unimaginable scale of the place took Alivia’s breath away; it was not so much a port as a vast city unto itself, a colossal industrial sprawl of galvanic and atmospheric processors, and teeming districts of workers and supply cohorts.

How many millions called this steel and stone metropolis home, never knowing it was just one among dozens across the globe?

‘Is this the Emperor’s Palace?’ asked Miska.

‘No,’ said Alivia. ‘This is just a space port.’

‘On Terra?’

‘Yes, what do you think?’

‘It’s very… grey,’ she said.

‘And the air tastes bad,’ added Vivyen, without lifting her head from her storybook.

Jeph took Alivia’s hand.

‘We made it, Liv,’ he said. ‘Did you ever think we’d see Terra? The Throneworld.’

‘No,’ said Alivia, looking up at the mountains. ‘I didn’t.’

She’d intended never to set foot on this world ever again.

Alivia looked away from the peaks as a hulking tracked vehicle with a cupola-mounted heavy stubber ground to a halt at the foot of the lander’s embarkation ramp. The rumble of its engine set Alivia’s teeth on edge.

‘Our chariot awaits,’ said Alivia as a uniformed, dark-skinned man with Terran features and a serious demeanour stepped from the vehicle’s interior.

He climbed the ramp towards them. From his disciplined bearing, Alivia knew he was, or had once been, a soldier. But in his close-fitting body glove and thick damask cloak, he looked more like a courtier.

Or a spy like John.

Whoever this man was, he looked woefully out of place in the industrial bustle of the sprawling port.

‘Alivia Sureka,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she replied, well aware he wasn’t asking.

‘My name is Khalid Hassan, Chosen of–’

‘I know who you are,’ said Alivia.

That caught him off guard.

‘You do?’

Alivia shrugged. ‘I mean, not you personally, but I know what you are. You’re one of the Sigillite’s errand boys, aren’t you?’

He grinned and said, ‘John said you would be truculent.’

‘Truculent? Nice,’ said Alivia, nodding towards the tracked vehicle. ‘A Saturnyne-pattern Aurox? Bit over the top, isn’t it?’

‘My master merely wishes to ensure the safety of you and your family,’ explained Hassan, turning and taking a half-step towards the rumbling vehicle. ‘If you’ll come with me…’

Alivia tilted her head to the side, as though considering his offer that wasn’t really an offer.

‘Actually, I don’t think I will,’ she said.

Hassan smiled, but she saw the steel beneath it.

‘My master was quite insistent.’

‘I’m sure he was, but I’m not getting in that Aurox.’

Jeph released her hand and stepped forward.

He jabbed a finger into Hassan’s chest, and Alivia winced, half expecting him to break Jeph’s wrist.

‘I don’t know who you are,’ said Jeph, ‘but Alivia says she’s not going with you, and you can’t make her. And that’s that.’

‘Please, Mistress Sureka,’ said Hassan. ‘Let’s not have this become something it doesn’t need to. I am quite prepared to compel you to come with me if needs be.’

Alivia heard the tramp of weary feet behind her as hundreds of the refugees from Molech emerged, blinking, into the daylight of Terra.

Alivia glanced over her shoulder as they came on like a tide.

Some sobbed, others laughed, yet more looked to her with rapt expressions of unbridled devotion.

They swept down the embarkation ramp, and Alivia let herself and her family be carried along with them. Clustered around the base of the embarkation ramp were port staff and grey-robed adepts with data-slates, blank manifests and genealogical records.

Alivia smiled back at Hassan, who shook his head and returned to his Aurox. She had a feeling she hadn’t seen the last of that one, but he was a problem for another day.

‘Are we safe now, mama?’ asked Miska, as they approached the nearest of the grey-robed adepts.

‘I think so, dear-heart,’ answered Alivia. ‘For now at least.’

The masked adept held a data-slate and stylus out to her.

‘Welcome to Lion’s Gate Space Port,’ he said.