ONE
Terra
The skies of Terra burn tonight. The false gods pour forth their wrath into the galaxy. Storms of lost dreams drag ships into the abyss between stars. Lights darken. Towers crumble. Horrors wake and walk the world. Screams and flames and panic. Guns fire on the battlements of Terra. The roots of the great Palace shake, and everywhere there is confusion. Everywhere there is Chaos.
In the Imperial Palace, warriors fight before gates that an enemy has not passed for ten thousand years. Things we name ‘daemon’ slither from the gaps between fire and shadow. Slaughter dances across the burnt earth. In the halls and chambers of the Emperor’s domain, people huddle in the dark or walk amongst the ruin, weeping. No one knows what is happening, or how it will end. It is like the ancient days. It is a time of ending. It is a beginning.
Who am I? Ah, that question again. You know me, I am the one they call Cypher. And no, I shall give you no other name. This is not my story, though I am its voice.
And that story begins with me locked in the depths of Old Earth, beyond sight of all that passes in the world above. In the Dark Cells of the Adeptus Custodes, I wait for the door to my prison to open. The universe moves, it changes. What is true one second is false the next – I am dead; I am alive; I am bound; I am free; I am true; I am false. Everything you know now will be no more. Everything you have lost will return – all you have to do is wait… and while Terra burns, the first key that shall open the door of the future begins to turn.
High orbit
Above the Throneworld a ship lies still in the void. It is dark-hulled, a dart of metal the green of shadowed forests. It is called the Absolution, and it has come across the galaxy from the ruin of a war around a world called Fenris. It has come bearing warnings of an ancient enemy returned to the Imperium, of ruin and disaster. And it has arrived to find that catastrophe has outrun it. The enemy it brought warning of is not far away but everywhere: grinning from the night sky and capering in the flames lighting the surface of Terra.
From the viewport of a tower high on the ship’s back, a warrior watches the fires glow across the nightside of Terra. He is called Mordachi, and he is an Epistolary of the Librarius of the Dark Angels Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. He is a witch, a murderer of his kin, and in another life perhaps a good man. Not that it matters, but I like him as much as I pity him.
‘What do you see, Brother Mordachi?’
The Librarian does not turn at the question or the sound of approaching footsteps. He knew the questioner and the question before they made a noise. An armoured figure stops beside him. This one is called Nariel.
‘I see tragedy,’ replies Mordachi, and he nods to the arc of the world crossing the view in front of him. ‘You see that glow just beneath the polar circle, Nariel? That light is from the tower complex of Suun. It has stood since the days of the Great Wars of Heresy. In the most ancient records that exist, it is said that the towers persisted through the bombardment of the Warmaster and as Legions died at their feet. After that was done, after peace came again, the Lord Guilliman himself asked Master Mason Serena to raise the Towers of Suun higher. They endured the darkest of times, and now they burn.’
Nariel looks at the speck of light on the arc of the world below. Nothing stirs in his soul at the sight. After a long moment he speaks.
‘There is a matter that has arisen.’
‘What has happened?’ asks Mordachi.
Nariel swallows. He holds the rank of sergeant. He has been a warrior for decades. He has moved through the circles of secrecy that the Dark Angels use to hide what they think is the truth. He has faced terror and doubt and not shaken. But in this second, he finds his throat dry. Can you blame him? I cannot.
‘We have information, brother,’ says Nariel. ‘Ever since we were ordered to hold anchor at the orbital cordon, we have been performing our standard sweep and sift of all communications. Information security and coding has broken down in many of the units and divisions of the Adeptus Terra. There has been a lot of traffic, most of it incoherent and panicked, but the more we sift, the more we have been able to reconstruct.’
‘What have we heard?’
‘This.’
Nariel keys a control on his armour and a voice comes from the speaker units set into its collar. The words are scratched and spliced with distortion, but you can understand enough to feel them strike.
‘It is he! It… Guilliman… primarch… He… returned. God-Emper… praised. Guilliman returned!’
The two Dark Angels listen as the recording unwinds into static.
‘It is true?’ asks Mordachi.
Nariel nods. ‘We have large quantities of signal traffic that corroborate it. Secondary and tertiary analysis align – it is true. Roboute Guilliman lives.’
‘On such days do legends walk…’
And now Nariel, faithful Nariel, pauses before he replies. He feels the weight of the second thing he must say, the name that will kill the spark of wonder in his brother’s eyes.
‘What is it, brother?’ asks Mordachi.
‘Amongst the data and signal churn this was heard…’
And Nariel keys his armour’s vox-system again. The static chops. Sounds become broken words.
‘Un…own…tes… C… her…
‘The signal serfs and cogitator wrights have reassembled it further,’ says Nariel. His face is hard, emotion held under the skin by will. And Mordachi can feel it now. In his witch’s soul, perhaps, he hears an echo of what he is about to learn. Nariel keys the recording again. More static, and then words.
‘Unknown… Astartes…’
Rising from the chaos like ghosts.
‘Cypher…’
And there it is, like a curse whispered into a king’s ear. Names have power as well as truth. And that name, my name, has the power to change Mordachi’s future.
Silence follows as the recording cuts out.
‘It relates to members of Lord Guilliman’s retinue,’ says Nariel, ‘a group of Space Marines of unknown origin who were with him when they returned.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘The indications are that they were handed over to the Custodian Guard.’
For a moment Mordachi does not move. In front of him the fires burning on the face of Terra seem distant jewels. He can feel the blood in his flesh, and the beat of both hearts in his chest. In this moment, in this time stolen before he must speak, he can feel the balance of history waiting for what he will say next.
‘They will take him to the Dark Cells,’ he says.
‘What are–’
‘We are not the only ones who chain things in the dark from fear and shame, Nariel. The Dark Cells are the gaol and prison of the Imperial Palace. Every monster the Custodians cannot kill, or threat that they wish to learn from, they keep down there… in the dark beneath the Emperor’s light.’
‘How do you know of such things?’
‘No secrets die, brother.’
Mordachi is not lying. But he is not telling the truth either. If I were in his place, neither would I. He turns from Nariel, and his hands go to rest on the balustrade before the iron-framed view of Terra. He knows what he has to do now – knows, and part of him wishes that the path was not so clear. Then he shakes the thought away, turns and begins to walk away from the viewport.
‘Kill the serfs who have heard this,’ he says to Nariel. ‘Cleanse all of our records. Start a sweep of the orbital defences – full tactical assessment. Ready our brothers for war.’
The Dark Cells
Footsteps echo down corridors of stone as Hekkarron walks the maze of the Dark Cells. He walks alone. The quiet here is such that the purr of his armour and the fall of his feet seem to fill existence. His kind were made at the dawn of the Imperium, in the golden time of lies before the war between the Legions.
Those that know of the Custodians and the Space Marines sometimes think us kin. We are not, except in the most distant way. A Space Marine is a mutilated being, a human cut open and grafted with fragments of a demigod’s essence. We are trained to belong to a group, to fight in a group, to think in a group. A Custodian is made by other means entirely. The mysteries of their transformation are not slotted into them like portions of meat but threaded through them as they grow from infants. It was said that all Custodians were once the offspring of defeated kings. If that was or is true, I do not know. But they are closer to princes than soldiers. They think alone, act alone, and fight alone. They are equally capable of the thoughts of scholars, the statecraft of diplomats, and the callousness of assassins. And here, down in the Dark Cells of the Imperial Palace, they are gaolers.
‘Open vox-link to primary
Warden control systems.’ Hekkarron speaks the command and the vox-systems in his armour hear and obey.
‘Compliance…’ drones a servitor voice in reply. ‘Authorising and processing auditory initiation… Access granted. The light of honour shines on you, Warden.’
‘Summarise Dark Cells confinement integrity.’
‘Compliance… Processing command… Dark Cells confinement integrity one hundred per cent on levels one through eighty-one. All is seen in the eye of the machine.’
Hekkarron walks past the outer doors to cells and oubliettes. ...
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