The Outcast Dead by Graham McNeill
‘Stand down, Atharva of the Thousand Sons,’ said Dorn, his voice as hard and unyielding as the stone of the mountains. ‘It is over.’
‘Nothing is ever over, Rogal Dorn,’ said Atharva. ‘You of all people should know that.’
The gold-armoured sisters accompanying Dorn flinched at Atharva’s use of his given name, but of course said nothing. More people entered the temple, armsmen clad in looped bands of black and bearing an amethyst crest upon their left breast. At their head marched a beautiful woman whose face he had last seen while a prisoner beneath the mountains. There, she had been an illusion, but Kai had no doubt that this Aeliana Septmia Verduchina Castana was the real thing.
Roxanne let out a soft breath at the sight of her family’s representative and snapped her head in the direction of a young boy held tight to the matronly women that huddled in the shelter of the statue with them. She knelt beside him and opened his tightly clenched fist to reveal a silver ring set with an amethyst that blinked with a soft purple glow.
The boy’s eyes were rimed with tears.
‘You said it was a magic ring,’ he said.
‘And so it is,’ said Roxanne with a rueful sigh, taking hold of Kai’s hand as they stood together to face Rogal Dorn and his allies. Among them, Kai saw Adept Hiriko and Athena Diyos. Though he knew she must have helped his pursuers, he was glad to have this last chance to see her again.
‘Give us the astropath,’ ordered Rogal Dorn, and Kai had to stop himself from taking an involuntary step forward.
Atharva shook his head. ‘He is not yours to command.’
Dorn laughed, though Kai heard uncertainty in the sound.
‘Of course he is,’ said Dorn, drawing a vast pistol of chased gold and ebony. ‘I am the Emperor’s chosen champion. Everything on Terra is mine to command.’
Atharva looked over his shoulder and gave Kai a nod of respect.
‘Not everything,’ he said as Rogal Dorn’s weapon fired with a deafening roar.
Anger touched Kai as he watched Atharva fall, the back of his head a smouldering ruin of blackened meat and skull fragments. The warrior of the Thousand Sons toppled to the temple floor, dead before he hit the ground.
Kai gripped Roxanne’s hand tightly, trying not to show how afraid he was. His gaze moved from Lord Dorn to Adept Hiriko and Athena Diyos, and he knew he would not be able to keep them from learning what he knew. He was not strong enough to resist their interrogation, and he dearly wished he could unlearn what he knew.
What he knew would destroy them, its truth too terrible for them to bear, and in that moment Kai knew he could not allow them to take him. Some things were too dark, too impossible and too dreadful to be known. A slow smile crept across his face as he remembered the words of his regicide opponent.
Sometimes the only victory possible is to keep your opponent from winning.
Quite whose victory he was winning Kai wasn’t sure, but he knew that the Imperium could not stand against the armies of Horus Lupercal if they dragged the truth out of him. Atharva had failed in his bid to bring him to the Warmaster, and now the fate of millions rested on Kai’s shoulders.
This was his moment, his last chance to take control of his destiny and serve the Emperor with the only thing that was his to give.
‘Roxanne,’ he said evenly. ‘I need you to do something for me.’
THE BATTLE IS over, but Nagasena does not yet know who has emerged victorious. The renegade Space Marines are all dead, and the building is secure, but too much has been lost for him to think of this hunt as anything but a failure. He kneels beside the broken body of Kartono, grieving for his fallen companion. His bondsman is a broken thing, his body shattered in every place, and Nagasena does not know how it is possible he is dead.
They had been together for so long, he had never considered the possibility a foe could end him, let along one empowered by the warp. How Atharva could have stood to touch Ulis Kartono, let alone best him like that is a question that will forever go unanswered, and Nagasena is a man who hates to leave matters unresolved.
He wipes a tear from his eye and watches as the House Castana armsmen secure the building, moving with admirable speed and thoroughness to ensure no one is left alive. A striking woman in a dress of amethyst directs their operations, and when Nagasena sees the elaborate headpiece that covers her forehead, he knows she must be Aeliana Castana.
Kai Zulane stands next to the last survivors of this massacre, a heavyset woman with two young boys held tight to her, and a pretty girl with a blue bandanna tied around her forehead. Her features share a clear similarity to Aeliana Castana, and Nagasena realises he has seen her face before. She is Roxanne Larysa Joyanni Castana, the other survivor of the Argo, and Nagasena senses a confluence of events that speak of a universal order at work.
The warrior women of the Silent Sisterhood have already withdrawn and Lord Dorn kneels over the bodies of the World Eaters, a look of consternation on his handsome, patrician features. Maxim Golovko hovers nearby, basking in the primarch’s magnificence like a devotee.
No one has yet approached Kai Zulane, and Nagasena understands that they are all afraid of him, even Lord Dorn. Everyone can see that Zulane’s eyes have been restored, but how such a thing can be possible terrifies them. But more than that, they fear what he represents. They fear to learn the truth he knows. They hunger for it, but he suspects they will come to regret such cursed knowledge. Truth has been Nagasena’s bedrock, but even he knows there are some truths that cannot be faced without a heavy price being paid. Kai Zulane’s truth is such a thing, but there can be no turning from it.
Nagasena walks towards the man he has hunted through the Petitioner’s City, and his hand strays to the hilt of Shoujiki as he looks up at the featureless face of the kneeling statue. Whatever beast Atharva unleashed from within its stonework is gone, but it retains a grim aspect. Whatever else happens here today, it will certainly be destroyed.
Kai Zulane speaks animatedly with Roxanne Castana, and though Nagasena cannot hear what he is saying, he can read the nature of it without difficulty. Roxanne Castana shakes her head, tears flowing freely down her face, but Zulane is insistent. Nagasena hurries his step, a terrible fear growing in the pit of his stomach.
‘Kai!’ he shouts, and every eye in the building turns towards him.
The astropath does not respond, as he had known he would not, and Nagasena cries out as Roxanne Castana lifts the bandanna from her forehead.
Kai’s eyes widen as he stares into the depths of Roxanne’s third eye, and he crumples to the ground with a sigh of what Nagasena can only interpret as relief. Nagasena grabs hold of Roxanne Castana and pulls her towards his body, hoping to break the connection long enough to keep whatever power she possesses from completing its work. Even as he does so, he knows he is too late.
Roxanne turns to him, and Nagasena catches the briefest glimpse of what lies beneath her bandanna. It is milky white and utterly black, a vortex of infinite depths and impenetrable opacity that can see nothing and everything at once. Nagasena feels the alien touch of somewhere far distant, yet all around him, a realm of limitless potential and abject horror that no mortal should ever dare know of for fear of going utterly insane. The thinnest skein divides the domain of Man from the warp, and it chills Nagasena to know how fragile that barrier between worlds really is.
He peers into the nightmare realm of the warp and his spirit is falling, drawn into its unknowable depths. He tries to scream, but he has no voice, and in that fraction of a second, he sees what Kai Zulane saw in Roxanne’s eye, but before he can suffer the same fate, a nictitating fold of skin flicks down over the unnatural orb, obscuring it from sight. The terrible connection between Nagasena and Roxanne Castana is broken, and he drops to his knees as she turns her face away and pulls her bandanna back down.
Breath heaves in his chest, and he looks down at Kai Zulane.
The man is clearly dead, yet Nagasena sees a look of such peace on his face that
Kai Zulane’s eyes are open, and Nagasena sees they are the most intense shade of violet. In ancient cultures, such a hue would have marked a man out for greatness.
‘Your journey is at an end, Kai Zulane,’ says Nagasena, reaching out to softly close the dead man’s eyes. Roxanne Castana kneels beside him, and he covers his face.
‘My eye is shut,’ she says, and Nagasena looks up.
‘Why?’ he asks, and does not need to elaborate.
‘He was my friend,’ says Roxanne through her tears, but before she can say more, the Castana armsmen haul her to her feet.
‘Wait,’ he says, and such is the authority in his voice that they obey him.
‘Was what he knew so terrible?’ asks Nagasena.
‘I don’t know what he knew,’ replies Roxanne.
‘I believe you, but they will ask hard questions of you, and they will not ask kindly.’
Roxanne shrugs. ‘I can’t tell them anything. Whatever it was he knew is gone forever.’
‘What did he say to you?’ pleads Nagasena,
‘He said that sometimes the only victory possible to keep your opponent from winning.’
Nagasena knows the words, they are those of an ancient regicide grandmaster, and his heart sinks at the loss of Kai Zulane’s truth.
Before any more can be said, Aeliana Castana approaches and Roxanne musters enough courage to meet her disapproval with a haughty, defiant expression of her own.
‘You are a disgrace,’ says Aeliana Castana. ‘Patriarch Verduchina is greatly disappointed. You have brought great shame upon our house.’
Roxanne says nothing, and the Castana armsmen march her away. Nagasena watches her taken from the temple with a mixture of regret and sorrow, knowing that she goes towards an uncertain future. She is Navis Nobilite, and whatever else becomes of her, the Imperium will always have a use for her.
Rogal Dorn approaches with Maxim Golovko in his wake, and Nagasena gives the primarch a deep bow, careful to remove his hand from Shoujiki’s hilt. Lord Dorn’s face is unreadable, a cliff of craggy features that takes in the carnage wrought here with a dispassionate eye.
‘Was it all for nothing, Yasu Nagasena?’ asks Lord Dorn, staring down at Kai Zulane’s body. ‘What happened here tonight?’
Nagasena has only one answer for him. ‘The truth died here tonight.’
‘Perhaps that is for the best,’ answers Dorn.
Nagasena shakes his head. ‘I cannot believe that. Do we not serve the Imperial Truth? If we do not have truth, then what are we creating? The Imperium must have truth at its heart or else it is not worth building.’
‘Be careful what you say, Nagasena,’ warns Dorn, and the threat is clear.
‘Long ago I took a vow never to speak false, and I will never lie,’ says Nagasena. ‘Even to you, my lord.’
Dorn places a vast, gauntleted hand on Nagasena’s shoulder, and for the briefest moment, he wonders if he too will be sacrificed on the altar of loose ends. But Lord Dorn does not have murder in mind.
‘You are an honest man, Yasu Nagasena, and I have need of honest men.’
Nagasena nods and says, ‘I am yours to command.’
‘Then there is another task I would beg of you.’
‘Name it, my lord,’ says Nagasena, knowing Lord Dorn honours him by presenting his order as a request.
‘General Golovko tells me there is one of the renegades still unaccounted for,’ says Dorn.
Nagasena knows immediately who it will be.
‘The Luna Wolf,’ says Golovko. ‘His body isn’t here.’
‘Just so,’ agrees Dorn. ‘I would not have one of Horus Lupercal’s men at liberty on Terra.’
‘I will find him,’ says Nagasena. ‘But this will be my last hunt.’
The primarch nods and looks down at Kai Zulane.
‘What did you know?’ wonders Dorn aloud, and Nagasena hears something he would never have expected to hear in the voice of such a singular warrior: uncertainty. ‘The first axiom of defence is to understand what you defend against, Yasu, and I fear that this man could have helped me understand…’
‘Understand what?’ asks Nagasena, when Dorn does not continue.
‘I do not know,’ says Dorn. ‘But this day has diminished us all.’
The primarch marches away, and Yasu Nagasena feels a chill travel the length of his spine that has nothing to do with the katabatic winds sighing through shattered windows and punctured roof of the temple.
What are you afraid of, wonders Nagasena. What are you really afraid of?
THE SILVER CYLINDER hummed as it drew near the end of its incubation period. A host of wires and tubes ran from a bank of protein vats, each one encased in temperature-controlled pipework that gurgled as it fed the nutrient-rich broth within. The laboratory was cold, and its lights were dim, as though the work being done here was somehow secretive and its results uncertain.
Shielded and insulated cables connected the silver cylinder to three clear glass jars, each one containing a small, unremarkable looking mass of soft, plum-coloured tissue. A host of fine extraction needles and gene-samplers pierced these strange organs, and they pulsed like childrens’ hearts as the information encoded on every zygote and impossibly complex amino-acid chain was decoded.
A bank of monitoring equipment carefully regulated the process, a fantastically delicate operation that could go wrong in a million ways and which had an almost infinite amount of steps that needed to be exactly right before anything approaching success might be achieved.
Eventually, a series of gem-like bulbs on the upper surface of the silver cylinder flickered to life, each one turning green in rapid succession. A soft chime sounded, and coolant gases vented from a grille on the side as the nutrient fluids were drained.
The cylinder slid open with pneumatic hiss, and a mist of chemically-complex vapour drifted from the glistening organ within. It surfaces were glossy red and purple, webbed with myriad networks of super-oxygenated blood. Fresh grown and throbbing with potential, it was as close to perfection as could be imagined.
Only one other laboratory on Terra could have identified this organ, and it was deep beneath the skin of the world, protected as no other place of Terra was protected. No mortal geneticist could have unravelled the complexities of this biological miracle, and only one other individual could have replicated the process of its creation.
‘Did it work?’ asked Ghota.
‘Yes, my son,’ said Babu Dhakal with a triumphant exhalation. ‘It worked.’
Graham McNeill, The Outcast Dead