Up Against by the Gates of Hell
Part II
By author Perfidious Albion
The Emperor raced from icy hell to icy hell, trying and failing to find his tenth-born daughter.
She was playing more dangerous games, now, than the sweet little questions of "What this?", "Why?" she used to ask him, psychically sending her curious wisps of thought to her father from where she had rested in her lifepod in the nursery on Terra, soft and snug and safe.
Instead she battled defiant against the endless dark. She was in mortal peril virtually every day.
The gathered commanders of the Pure Ones looked solemn. Crammed together in the neon light of Bunker Gimmel-Four, its harsh and artificial glare the only warmth that they had ever known, these hard-bitten men and women with weather-beaten skin and abundant scars were crowding around an ancient ash-wood table.
The table's holographic display showed the surface of their world in flawless detail. Every jagged mountainside, every glacial valley, every field of rock and miles-thick ice was rendered perfectly in light in three dimensions with exacting precision that would put a watchmaker to shame. It was so lifelike it looked as if one could simply step inside and be there. Much of the technology of olden years was retained by the people of Sheol IX. Not that it was doing them much good now. All they could do was get an excellent good look at their doom.
A terrible horde of shambling monstrosities, more than a million strong, bore down upon the humans' stronghold. So many were they that the world trembled at their coming and great clouds of snow were stirred up by their thundering footsteps.
So heavily did the great horde strike the earth that they dredged up sad things, old and forgotten. Corpses—many human—men, women and children, even babies clutching their parents' necks and arms… it made no matter. All had died in the ancient nuclear war at the end of the Golden Age.
Thousands of years buried under the snow, since the nuclear winter that had followed those strikes, the passing of the horde exposed them to the elements. They had not rotted at all. Sheol IX was too cold for that. They looked as if they could have died a week ago. That was not to say they looked pristine. Many bore terrible burns. Most bore the signs of radiation poisoning: an ugly sight, for that did not make for a clean death. These people had fled from the towns and cities that had suffered nuclear annihilation, making for safety—perhaps even the very bunker where people watched now. They had not got there in time.
And now an army of mutants, the scum of Sheol, warped by the genetic corruption of radioactive fallout and the metaphysical corruption of the Warp, came to take away the humans' last remaining refuges and homes.
Sheol IX's blizzards—so fierce, sharp-toothed and cruel that they could strip the flesh from a man in a matter of seconds—had concealed their approach. No-one, mutant or human, dared venture out in a snowstorm like that. The mutants, meanwhile, were not blind to the humans' movements. They far outnumbered the humans, so they could afford to do much more scouting. They could see in the air as well, for they had flying creatures among their fell kin, whereas the humans had few aerospacecraft yet functioning after thousands of years of wear and tear and decay. And the blizzards had set in, just in time to let the mutants see the humans but not to let the humans see the mutant army in return.
The timing of that was most unfair. It was a harsh life on this world of murder and grinding ice. Few would say it aloud, for the Sheolites were not a superstitious people. They held proudly to the atheism that had predominated in the Golden Age. But it sometimes seemed as if the weather, the climate… even the world itself were on the enemy's side.
How could a host of this size and ferocity be faced, let alone be beaten?
The captains and chieftains of the Pure Ones, the untainted humans of Sheol IX, were at a loss. They looked, as always, to the one they hoped would have all the answers, when they were bereft and devoid of hope.
They looked to the Starchild.
"There will be battle. There is no doubt of that now," said the scientist's daughter. She was frostily calm. If she were intimidated at all, she showed no sign of it. "The first matter is that we must not let them decide the terms on which it is fought."
It went without saying that the enemy intended to bear down on the Pure Ones' underground redoubts, batter their way in and kill them, or else provoke them to come out and fling themselves into the horde for a valiant quick death.
"How could we divert them, my lady?" asked a broad-shouldered middle-aged man. "They know where we are."
'My lady' had come to be the most common form of address for the Starchild, though she had never claimed a noble title. Men called her, in awe and respect and budding hope, 'the Lady of the Dawn'.
"They do. They will come to us." She spoke this calmly, without fear or doubt. "But which route will they take against us? That is the question on which our future now hangs."
"But there is only one route to this…" A white-haired woman trailed off; she hesitated. "No," she whispered. "You can't mean that."
"I am afraid I do," said the Lady of the Dawn.
"Our ancestors have lived here for two-hundred generations. We have defended it against every incursion, spilt so much blood and woe and anguish to defend it. We cannot abandon our home."
"I do not ask for abandonment. I require a temporary and tactical retreat to more defensible territory. Then you can return once the horde is beaten down."
The Emperor's daughter leant over the map, manipulating the holographic display with her fingers. It widened, moving out to display a much greater expanse of space.
"We will meet them here—here—" her fingers stabbed out at the map— "when they come to Bunker Aleph-Vav-Nine. They will underestimate us. We will encourage them to do so. They will look and see a column of refugees, fleeing from Gimmel-Four in panic at their approach. Lead them to see us as a lambs and they will become wolves. It is in their instinct. It is in their nature."
The golden-haired lady was smiling, now: a feral smile that foretold violence to come and delighted in it.
"Not just Gimmel-Four but every bunker for sixty kilometres around will flee. We shall cross the Ethlurion Heights. They will cross too, to come after us. They will not see the trap until it is too late."
"What trap?" asked the chieftain of Gimmel-Four, a tall and powerfully built woman whose hair had started to go grey. "It is a wide open valley, good flat ground, thirteen kilometres along and two kilometres across, with sheer impassable cliffs on both sides. The ice there is not too treacherous. It is, by our world's low standards, a good place to approach, a safe place for a large army to make a crossing through the Heights. I might use it myself, if I were them."
"Because," said his daughter, "it is a wide open valley, good flat ground, thirteen kilometres along and two kilometres across. And those high cliffs are not quite as impassable as everybody thinks they are."
Her smile was bright like a knife. She was pacing like a lioness, a great golden predatory cat, swift of bite and sharp of claw. The mortal limits of the underground chamber could hardly contain her passion and force of will.
"Thirteen kilometres, my friends! See it in your mind's eye! You know that valley. Once they are committed, they've no way out. They can only go back or go forward. And after seizing dozens of bunkers and finding no humans here to slay, they will not go back. They will be too frantic with bloodlust. Three dozen clans of civilian refugees fleeing through the snow with little but the shirts on their backs will be a prize that they cannot resist.
"A small force positioned above them there could mow them down with impunity. It would be a massacre. Thirteen kilometres! Thirteen kilometres for us to stand over their heads, beyond their reach, and cut the great horde down to size."
"Impossible," breathed the chieftain; but there was wonder in her voice. Her tone did not match her words. It revealed her hope rising. "No-one could make that climb."
"How do you think I got here today?" asked the Starchild. "I have scaled those cliffs myself—unsupported, single-handed, and I survived."
The men and women, if that were possible, looked upon her with even more awe.
"I will not lie to you. It is not easy," she said solemnly. "It is sheer, it is icy, it is treacherous. But I have done it and survived, and I know in my heart that mankind on Sheol IX depends on this. So listen to me when I tell you, 'It can be done!'"
The warriors were cheering now: "STARCHILD! STARCHILD!"
"BANE OF MUTANTS!"
"LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS!"
"LADY OF THE DAWN!"
"My friends! I shall not demand this of anyone," she spoke over the crowd. "Your elders are not wrong to speak of the peril of the task. To do this is to dance at the edge of death and life. I shall accept only those who volunteer.
"But hear me now: I have done it. It can be done," said the daughter of the stars. "Whoever is with me, I will show you the way."
And a young man stood to his full height, dark-haired, dark-eyed, handsome, tall and muscular. He was the only son of the chieftain who had spoken.
"I am with you, Starchild!" he cried. "I volunteer! Show me the way!"
"I volunteer!"
"And I!"
"And I!"
"I am with you!"
"I'll come with you, my lady!"
"I will fight at your side!"
"I volunteer!"
"And I!"
"Show me the way!"
"Show us the way!"
"SHOW US THE WAY!"
The Emperor was working on his eldest son, soon to emerge from his lifepod, when it happened.
The treason was meticulously well planned and executed. Layer after layer after layer of defences was penetrated, infiltrated and sabotaged. Foolish guards were deceived. Corrupt ones were bribed. Those who were both clever and incorruptible were murdered, or transferred elsewhere and replaced with those less able, or lured away with fake emergencies at precisely the wrong time. Technological safeguards, military formations, psychic protections… all should have made this impossible a hundred times over. All were breached, one way or another. All failed.
The most secret defences, the shields of arcane technology and psychic lore that the Emperor had woven around the Primarchs' nursery, known only to himself and his lover the mother of his children… even they were broken. Only one person could have done it. Erda Broutik's betrayal was a knife to the heart. She, a woman of the most formidable intellect the Emperor had ever met in all his millennia-long lifespan, had used that intellect not to aid the Emperor but to act against him, to sabotage the anti-Warp protections of the nursery of his superhuman children. Anyone could break machines and smudge runes. But she had twisted and undermined the Emperor's defences with such exquisite subtlety that they seemed perfectly well-functioning, even to the Emperor's superhuman intellect and superb psychic senses, until the terrible, terrible moment they revealed themselves hollow and helpless inside.
Gates were unlocked. Guards, among them even Custodes, were slain by rival warriors, or else were not there at the all-important moment; for decoys and emergencies were staged to lure the loyal away. Secret technologies that should have been undefeatable—for to protect the Emperor's precious babes there could be nothing but the best—were defeated and unlocked by dark sorceries and arcane technologies originating from any of a thousand species under the banner of Chaos. Traitors were inserted into positions where they were far enough from the Emperor's daily routine to avoid discovery but close enough to act in the critical moments. Loyal men were subverted, deceived, tricked away or quietly murdered.
The Ruinous Powers of Chaos threw everything they could at the plot against the Primarchs.
The Enemy got around everything else. But the Emperor had one warning system that the Enemy did not know of, that they could not possibly have known.
Daddy! cried his unborn daughter. Her fear was blasting like a hurricane across their mental connection. Daddy, there bad men in our place.
And in an instant, in a flash of the cold light of fear, the truth and purpose of Chaos's secret schemes were, after all, at long last, perceived.
Absolute terror seized hold of the Emperor. He stormed back to the nursery of the Primarchs. He did not walk; he did not run; he did not drive. He flew through air and steel and stone, suspending the laws of gravity and material deformation through sheer willpower. His firstborn son was clutched under his arm and shielded from shards of impact by the Emperor's indomitable will. He had picked him up as he fled. It would not do to lose one child while coming to save the other ones.
Walls shattered. Floors burst. Foundations gave way before the fury of his coming. Steel, rockcrete, even adamantium bulwarks that the Emperor's government of Terra had been building at great expense. It did not matter. To the power of the Emperor it did not matter. Not now. Not today. The Emperor's golden-armoured body smashed through them all.
The full power and fury of the Emperor's will was focused entirely on one thing: his desperate race to the nursery.
He was the most powerful psyker in the galaxy. But his was a feeling known to every parent of an endangered child.
The Enemy was not wasting time. Through his baby daughter's psychic senses he felt them open up a great swirling something—something vast and dark and bottomless that defied description and comprehension. Her terror shrieked down the psychic connection that had only known childish curiosity, warmth and love.
DADDY COME NOW! DADDY, DADDY PLEASE!
The wall erupted. The Emperor crashed through, armoured in auramite and sheer will made reality by psychic power, sundering rockcrete and steel.
He burst into his children's nursery like an avenging angel, his armour golden, his body crackling with a halo of lightning, his eyes glowing emerald-green with psychic power, his firstborn son nestled under one arm, his great sword lifted and aflame.
The nursery was deserted. The room was rubble. The walls were visibly marked by signs of a firefight. The foul stench of Chaos sorcery hung in the air. His guardsmen were slaughtered. Dead Custodes were littering the floor.
…and there were twenty-five empty resting places where the lifepods of his little children should have been.
He was too late.
The Emperor collapsed. The immortal lord and master of mankind fell to both knees on the floor of the nursery. Slowly, heart-stopping terror turned to realisation.
I failed. Chaos has my children.
The immortal Emperor of Mankind opened his mouth and SCREAMED.
The room shook. The Imperial Palace shook. The entire continent shook. Even a thousand kilometres away, bridges swayed like children's toys, with cars still on them; roads split open underfoot; and men and women cried out in alarm as the ground heaved and trembled under their feet.
A psychic storm of hate and rage and helplessness howled across the Throneworld.
And in the centre of the madness, a furious and lonely old man screamed his grief into the heavens. Terra quaked from the rage and despair of that old man. For that old man was the inspiration for the human species's concept of gods, and the most powerful psyker that the galaxy had ever seen.
He screamed, and screamed, and screamed his helpless rage into the sky—an uncaring sky that would not hear or heed him.
He was so furious he could have smashed through an enemy army's wills and forced them to commit suicide with one rage-filled glance. But there was no army here for him to break the wills of. There was no foe to vanquish. There was no city to destroy.
There was only his children, whom he had failed, and who would now be weapons against the human species, in the service of his foes.
The Emperor's blazing fury guttered out, like a mighty bonfire with nothing left to burn. He was still angry. He was still terribly, terribly angry. But there was nothing he could do with his anger.
Gradually, the hot tide of rage receded. All that was left behind was the heartbreak, the shame, the grief and the loss.
That was how Malcador and the Custodes found him. The whole Imperial Palace was aflutter with panic over the shocking earthquake and the Emperor's mysterious disappearance and the even more shocking news of an enemy incursion that had penetrated deep into Palace security, leaving many dead guards behind. Who were the enemy? How many of them were there? Had they been tracked down and caught yet? Had anyone on the inside helped them? What had they been after? What had they wanted? Had they got it? Imperial officials wanted answers. They were demanding answers and demanding them now. Meanwhile, in the centre of the madness, where it was thought surely nothing could have survived, it was, by comparison, almost serene.
Malcador looked for the Emperor of Mankind. What he saw was an old, old man, kneeling in the wreckage of the nursery. The lifepod of his only remaining son was clutched tight to his chest, held by one of his arms. The other lifepods were absent. And he was sobbing great ugly tears.
"Sire," Malcador said quietly.
The Emperor said nothing. Malcador noted with a jolt of shock that the infant Primarch in the lifepod was awake, alert and with eyes open.
The First Primarch's life had just begun.
What a moment to enter the galaxy in, Malcador thought bleakly. He chose not to mention it to the Emperor right now. This was not the best time.
"Sire," he said again, prompting him.
The Emperor did not reply.
The Lord Sigillite looked at the lifepod marked with the High Gothic numeral 'I'. The tiny face had turned in his capsule to look up at his father, and the baby Primarch was backing away from the Emperor as far as the wall of the lifepod would allow. Malcador realised that, from the baby Primarch's perspective, he had been just minding his own business when a fearsome, towering golden giant suddenly plucked him up, flew him through several dozen walls and floors at terrific speed, and made the world shake and walls and ceilings tumble down with his rage. The First Primarch was an unborn baby. He did not know this was his father. He did not even know what a father was.
The infant First Primarch was looking at his father the Emperor, and he looked absolutely terrified of him.
"Your Imperial Majesty," Malcador said.
The master of mankind turned to look at him. He said, "I have lost them."
The Emperor spoke the words like a confession. His lord had no hope of absolution for this sin, Malcador could tell. His tone was one of black despair.
"Yes, Sire," said Malcador.
"The Enemy has them. They will try to turn them against me. Some of them might be killed. Might they not?" Those last three words were a challenge.
A challenge that perhaps the Emperor had hoped Malcador would take up… but he would not. Malcador would not lie to him. "Yes. They might, Sire."
"Some of them might be turned against me successfully. They might fight me. And I might have to kill them."
Malcador bowed his head. "Yes, Sire."
There was a long, ghastly silence.
Then: "Leave me," the Emperor said coldly. "I wish to be alone for a time."
"As you wish, Your Imperial Majesty." Malcador hesitated. "Shall I take the little one with me to get him some—?"
In his lifepod, the little baby still was looking at the giant, glowing, golden form of the Emperor. He still looked terrified of him. He was starting to cry.
"No," the Emperor snapped at once, voice sharp as steel. His arm clutched tighter around the lifepod, reflexively. A few moments passed. Both men took deep breaths. Then, with a thin veneer of calm: "No. He is not going. I am keeping this one."
What was there that Malcador could do or say to that?
He bowed. He said, "As you will, Sire." And he left his old friend alone in the rubble of his dreams.