With each word the man said, Leon’s fury had grown and grown. His terror gave way to anger, hard resentment at his betrayal. Finally, he could hold it in no more, and he burst from his cover and threw himself at Mendacs, cursing his name.
The remembrancer – no, the spy– let him come running, at the last moment swinging up the laspistol and using it to crack the boy across the face. Leon cried out in agony as the butt of the gun broke his nose and he tripped, stumbling to the floor.
Without pause, Mendacs turned back to the astropath and executed her, the howl of a single las-bolt resonating in the chamber as it blew through the psyker’s heart and killed her instantly.
Leon scrambled backwards, bringing up his hands in a fruitless gesture of self-protection, gagging on the stink of burnt meat. Mendacs ignored him, instead stooping to pick up the box-shaped device lying on the floor. He holstered the gun and walked away.
He was almost out of the room before Leon gathered the wits to call after him. ‘She was right, you are a traitor bastard! You’re a mass-murderer!’
Mendacs halted on the threshold. ‘That’s not true, Leon. I’ve taken only one life since I came to this planet.’ He nodded at the dead psyker. ‘It’s the people who are killers. People down there, in Town Forty-Four and every other place just like it. People like your father and Prael and all the rest. They let themselves be manipulated, because deep within them, they want to be right. They want to have their darkest fears come true, to validate their loathing of the lives they lead.’
‘You did it all!’ Leon shouted. ‘You faked the drop-pods in the sky; you used those things in your case to corrupt the broadcasts… You turned neighbours against each other with your lies and propaganda!’
‘I did. And I will again, and again…’
Leon’s shoulders fell. ‘Are… you going to kill me now?’
Mendacs shook his head. ‘No. I knew you were following me. I wanted to see how far you would come.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘It amused me. I so rarely have a witness to the full scope of my work.’ The man nodded in the direction of the transfer station core. ‘You’re clever enough to find a set of cargo pods on the downbound rails. They’ll take you home.’
Leon climbed unsteadily to his feet. ‘When I get back,’ he husked, ‘I will tell everyone what you have done. I’ll stop you. I’ll make sure all the other worlds are warned!’
‘No, you won’t.’ Mendacs turned away. ‘You have a choice, Leon. You must swear your loyalty to Horus Lupercal and deny the Emperor’s dominion. Because by the time the Skyhook carries you down to the surface, the colony of Virger-Mos II will belong to the Warmaster. Not through force of arms, but because of the weakness of the people who live there. Because they have exchanged their fear of one thing they have never seen for the fear of another.’ He spared the youth one last look. ‘And if you do not join them, theywill be the ones who kill you.’
THE WARP-CUTTER DETACHED and turned about its axis, the slower-than-light fusion engines coming online to propel the vessel up and away from the colony world.
In the cockpit module, Mendacs finished the last of the entries in his mission log, pausing to study the details of the mining outpost six light years distant where he would begin his work anew.
Content that he was prepared, he settled back into the acceleration couch and reached for the stasis field generator. He keyed the deactivation timer to trigger a week out from orbital insertion, so that he would have time to intercept the outpost’s vox-transmissions and begin work on a new plan of subterfuge.
Mendacs closed his eyes and flipped the switch; to him, he would awaken a second later and begin again.
It was what he was best at.
Leon Kyyter leaned forwards and let his forehead touch the cold glassaic of the armoured viewport, his hands splayed palm open either side of his face.
He looked down, not daring to glance towards the threatening dark, watching the agri-world beneath him. Night covered the landscape, but there was light, here and there in scattered bands and broken commas of colour.
Light from the fires of burning towns, yellow-orange and hellish in shade, falling everywhere he turned his gaze.
In the cold and the silence, Leon watched the distant flames spread.
FORGOTTEN SONS
Nick Kyme
Landfall
I
HEKA’TAN ROSE FROM the smoke cloud like a statue of living onyx. The woman was alive but unconscious. Grey tendrils of smoke coiled off the warrior’s ebon skin from where he’d shielded her from the blast. Debris crunched underfoot – most of the ceiling, together with the lume-strip array, had collapsed. Somewhere in the crawl space above, an orange glow flickered.
The fire hadn’t reached the meditation chamber yet and the billowing smoke coming through the vents was escaping upwards. At least she wouldn’t choke to death on the fumes. Others might be injured, in need of rescue. The ship lurched suddenly, throwing Heka’tan against the wall. It was in its death throes now. He could feel the shuddering of the failing engines through the bulkhead, hear the whine of rapid depressurisation from the gash in the fuselage.
The door was blocked. Heka’tan felt the heat beyond it and heard the crackle of flames ravaging the adjacent corridor section. During meditation, his battle-plate was secured in the armourarium. He recalled the oaths of moment affixed to his shoulder guards and greaves. One of those vows was echoed in the onyx flesh of his naked torso too, branded eternally.
Protect the weak.
It was written in sigil-language, the ancient tongue of Nocturne. Heka’tan was born from fire on this hell-world. Rather than debilitate, the blaze invigorated him. He tore the door off its hinges, closing his eyes as the flames swept out and over him. They burned out quickly, devouring the oxygen. Heka’tan stayed anchored in place until it was done, a light tingling on his skin the only lasting evidence of the fire’s touch.
A corridor stretched in front of him. The air hazed with the heat of conflagration. Again, the ship bucked. Not long now before impact. He glanced back at the woman.
The vox alongside him crackled to life, the pilot’s last words.
‘ …ing down. Brace… selves… impact. Emperor… preserve us…’
Detached and calm, even in the face of imminent and violent landfall, Heka’tan found the last remark curious. It sounded almost like a prayer.
The engine drone became a scream. For a few seconds, Heka’tan remembered… The screaming, the death and blood. ‘Hell made real’ – they were Gravius’s words. Heka’tan staggered, but not from weakness or fatigue. He staggered at the memory of it, of that place where so many had died and so much had gone wrong.