[Dawn of War 03] - Tempest Read online

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  DAWN OF WAR:

  TEMPEST

  Dawn of War - 03

  C.S. Goto

  (v1.5)

  CHAPTER ONE: VAIROCANUM

  The heat was sudden and intense, as though I had been thrown from the coolness of gentle night air into the fury of a blast furnace. All at once, I could feel my senses coming alive: my skin prickled beneath the familiar ceramic touch of my armour, and my face burned as though it were on fire. There was nothing but light—radiant, searing and unbearable—piercing through to the back of my closed eyes, dragging me into consciousness like a beacon bringing a ship to shore.

  Flicking open instinctively, my eyes merely filled my head with lancing agonies as the dazzling light crashed against my unguarded retinas. Still, I could see nothing, only the burning, red, bloody brightness of an intense sun that dominated my vision as though I were blind. My mind raced for images of darkness, trying to bring cool salve into my boiling thoughts, but the heat incinerated every thought, as though my head were an inferno in which nothing could survive.

  Am I blind? The thoughts spiralled through the boiling convections, making me nauseous and dizzy. For a moment I thought that I was on my feet, but then my balance seemed to flip and turn, and the ground ran over my back like simmering water, scalding me through the panels of my armour, trickling through the joints against the scarred and leathery skin beneath.

  No. Blindness is being lost in the darkness. Here I am surrounded by light. Without another thought, I lifted my left hand to my face and felt the darkness of a shadow fall over my blistered skin. The light against my eyes shifted and the temperature on my face dropped by a fraction of a degree. Cracking open my eyes once again, a burst of darkness cut into my mind as the silhouette of my hand burnt its image into my retina, like a moon eclipsing the sun.

  My weapon! The thought exploded into my head, extinguishing the flames that wracked my mind like dynamite blowing out a forest fire. Nothing else mattered.

  Reaching urgently around behind my shoulder, my hand plunged into a sea of burning granules as it quested for the hilt of my sword. I’m lying on sand—this must be a desert! But the hilt was not there. I rolled onto my side and felt the sizzling sand cascade across my back as I checked the sheath for its ancient blade. Nothing. It was not there.

  Blood was pulsing through my neck, running close to the surface of the skin in an attempt to cool my body, and I could feel the labour of my secondary heart pounding in my chest.

  Am I injured? I couldn’t tell—all of my senses were swamped by the heat. I slumped back onto my back, folding my arm across my face to shade the exposed skin from the relentless assault of the desert sun.

  After a few seconds, fragments of memories started to flicker past my eyes.

  How did I get here? They were questions more than memories, but they implied memories: I was somewhere else before—this is not where I am supposed to be. I am someone who belongs elsewhere.

  That single notion lingered in my mind, as though all trains of thought led directly back to it: I—who am I? It was like a black hole sucking everything else in.

  There were no answers. The clearest image in my head was of an ornate and ancient sword, and I felt sure that the beautiful item was mine. It was important to me. Integral. It was part of who I was, and I felt its absence like an icy, physical wound. Instinctively, I reached again with my hand, letting the flames of the sun lap against my raw face once more, hoping faintly that I would find the hilt this time and, with it, find something of myself.

  Nothing.

  Without thinking, I snatched my right hand down to my thigh. I should have a boltpistol in that holster. The realisation was not quite a memory; it was more like an assertion about the proper state of my being. I should have a sword on my back and a pistol against my leg: that was what it meant to be me. But the holster was empty and my bare fingers found nothing except the hiss of scorchingly hot ceramite, as my fingertips burnt against the armour fitted over my leg.

  There must be something. I must have a weapon. A memory stirred and my hands darted to the fixtures and fittings that were moulded into the band around the waist of my armour. With my eyes still closed, my fingers danced across the surface with a muscle memory of their own; they knew what they were looking for. After a second, a wave of relief eased through me, like a wash of cool water. A combat knife. The metallic hilt burnt my fingers and the palm of my hand, but I gripped it with the certainty and strength with which a lame man might hold his cane.

  Then the heat overcame me once again, and the searing light blinked into the darkness of unconsciousness.

  The sky swirled with purple clouds, spiralling into whirling nebulae against the heavy, deep red of the darkening atmosphere above. The air had cooled, and I could feel the crack of a thin layer of ice as I snapped open my eyes. Perspiration had frozen across my face, forming a delicate and brittle second skin. It was freezing cold.

  The sand beneath me crackled as I shifted my weight, flexing my aching shoulders to bring sensation back into the muscles that were sealed within the ice-encrusted shell of my armour. The servos that assisted shoulder movement whined for a moment, as though they had been frozen in place after a long period of inaction. The joints between the armoured plates had been sealed by ice after layers of sand had insinuated their way into the cracks.

  Like bones crunching back into place, the armour broke through the pathetic resistance of the elements, and I could feel freedom return to my motions. The mechanical augmentation felt strangely natural. As my muscles flexed and power returned to the auto-reactive plates over my shoulders, warmth began to flood through the rest of my body. Something had shifted in my physiology, triggering a chemical release that raised my body temperature. I should understand this process, but I have forgotten its name.

  As I climbed to my feet, splinters of icy shards exploded out of the joints in my arms and legs, but my body already felt warm and strong within its super-augmented shell. Only my face felt strange: cold and exposed, as though it had been stripped of its very skin. A sense of vulnerability made me reach for my head, but in place of icy ceramite I found the brittle and moist touch of ice-coated, blistered and scarred skin. An icy, metallic stud stood proud of my left temple.

  I should have a helmet. That much I could remember. Something is missing. Then I remembered the missing sword and boltpistol. In my other hand, I registered the metallic touch of the hilt of a combat knife. Memories of searing heat and desert-blindness flashed back through my mind. Where am I? Behind me, the desert stretched out to the horizon, barren and featureless, rolling with shifting dunes as the bitter wind toyed with incoherent clouds of dust. The scene was tinged with red from the dying light of three local stars, each just vanishing over the horizon and filling the sky with a wash of bloody light. The sand radiated an eerie paleness. I could not tell whether this was the natural colour of the desert, or a trick of faltering light, but I was certain about one thing. This is a lost world.

  A narrow channel had been blown through the sand; it started in a crater about two hundred metres away and ended at my feet. From the look of it, it had been made by the impact and slide of a fast-moving, solid body. Perhaps it was the impact scar of a meteor. Or perhaps the signature of my own arrival on this planet?

  Scanning the rest of the horizon and turning in the opposite direction, the desert dropped away sharply into a ravine. I was standing on the lip of a sheer cliff. Far below, the foot of the cliff-face was lost in deepest shadow, making it almost impossible to estimate the depth of the fall.

  On the other side of the wide ravine, the landscape rolled and swept out into the dar
kness that shrouded the distant horizon, from whence the touch of the triple suns had already withdrawn. The dim, undulating dunes were punctuated with occasional tors and rocky protrusions, and great, jagged, black lashes through the sand suggested that other ravines broke the desert in the vaguely discernable distance. The icy wind scraped through the sand like the serrated breath of death itself.

  Is this whole place dead? The thought had only just formed when a glint of light from the shadows at the base of the cliff caught my eyes. It was little more than a flash, just a flicker of reflected light, as though dancing in the eyes of a predator.

  Did it move? I could feel my pupils dilate as my brain drew as much light as possible out of the surroundings, sucking it in like tiny, depthless black holes. In a reflex reaction, I squinted, and suddenly the light in the scene shifted, as though enhanced by something in my own brain. The bottom of the ravine zoomed up towards me, tinted in an overexposed, pale blue; it was as though my eyes were reeling it in. The sudden flush of nausea and vertigo lasted for only a fraction of moment, and then I realised that this was natural.

  My eyes are the eyes of the Emperor. The words formed effortlessly in my mind, as though I had recited this thought over and over again until it had become part of me. But I couldn’t make sense of it. The Emperor? Who was this man that strove to dominate my thoughts?

  At the base of the cliff, half buried in the sand as though it had dropped directly out of heaven, my enhanced vision could discern the elegant shape of a sword. A large warpstone jewel glinted darkly from the pommel of the hilt, and intricate, alien runes glowed faintly as they snaked around the half concealed blade. It gave off a barely visible green light, as though it were a living entity that pulsed with veins of energy in place of blood.

  Vairocanum. It was my sword. Its name slid silently into my thoughts, like burning oil, singeing incomprehensible, runic shapes into the fabric of my mind. It was calling for me, reminding me that it should never have been forgotten, pressing its presence into my very being as though it were a necessary part of me.

  As I stared down at Vairocanum, watching the green glow wax and wane as eddies of dust and sand drifted past it, flickers of other images started to pulse through my thoughts. The sight of the sword triggered a flood of memories. They flashed like visions being projected intermittently into my mind. I could see other people. Giant, armoured warriors like myself. They were battling something unimaginable. Vague, amorphous shapes were reaching out of the walls, thrashing towards them and burning with daemonic passions. The warriors fought and then ran, turning towards me and charging. They yelled, screaming, brandishing their weapons as they stormed forwards. But before they could reach me, I plunged the burning Vairocanum into the deck at my feet, and everything vanished.

  The darkness of my memory faded gradually into the near-darkness of the desert. I found myself unmoved and unmoving, still standing on the edge of the cliff, staring down at the oddly enhanced image of my once-lost force-sword, half buried in the pale blue sands of an unknown, alien desert.

  Vairocanum. The word sat comfortably in my brain. It felt like it belonged; I trusted it.

  Self-consciously, I raised my hand over my shoulder and felt the empty sheath on my back. Vairocanum. It was one of the missing pieces, and it was as good a place to start as any. The cold, metal combat knife in my other hand felt lifeless and pathetic. I need my sword.

  There were at least three ways to descend the cliff: about a kilometre to the south I could see a rift in the structure of the ravine, and, given the geological composition of the landscape, I was sure that such a rift would be accompanied by rock falls and sand slides that would provide an easy path down to the valley floor. The deductions came naturally to mind, requiring no concentration or conscious effort. For a moment I wondered whether this strange landscape was familiar to me, but then I realised something quite simple. I have been trained to understand terrain. The rift in the ravine held my interest for less than a couple of seconds. It would take me away from Vairocanum before bringing me back to her. I would lose sight of her very quickly especially in the rapidly failing light. And the journey would not be a rapid one: the sand was loose and deep, and my heavy boots would sink significantly with each step; the going would be hard. I had no idea when I might have access to water or nourishment, so the exertion and the extra time would be wasteful and foolish. Besides, I must not leave the sword—it is all I have.

  A better way down was more direct. The cliff beneath my feet was rocky and riddled with cracks. Tufts of vegetation had drilled their roots into the surface, suggesting that there would be handholds in the cliff, and that its composition was likely to be sedimentary—sandstone perhaps. I should be able to hack out handholds with my knife, if I need to. The climb looked challenging, especially in the icy dark, but I felt confident that I had made harder climbs before, even though I could not remember them. I must not leave the sword.

  As I stood on the brink of the climb, a third possibility suggested itself to me like a secret revelation. I might survive the fall. Holding my hands out in front of my face, I studied the strong, heat-scarred fingers; the large combat knife looked tiny in my fist, even as it glinted with the last rays of the third red sun. The armoured panels that covered my arms were scratched and dented, but they seemed immovably fixed, as though they were somehow grafted to my body. The ceramite plates looked heavy and formidable, and yet I could not feel their weight at all. It was as though they were made of the air itself. The armour supports its own weight. It does not sap my strength; it gives strength to me.

  Glancing back over my shoulder towards the last of the setting suns, I considered the deep impact channel that had been ploughed through the desert up to my feet. If I survived that, the drop from this cliff would be nothing.

  As I watched, the third sun finally dipped below the horizon and the last of its ruddy light vanished from the surface of the desert. For a moment, a heavy dark shroud hung over the scene, obscuring everything beneath a veil. But then, as though activated by a silent and secret command, two pale red moons emerged from behind the roiling clouds; one massive like a fourth sun, and the other little more than the reflection of an eye. All at once the sky was alive with points of light, as the gently swirling clouds parted and shifted to reveal unknown constellations of stars and raging tempests of nebulae. Where is this place? The sands of the desert were cast into myriad colours, each grain a pale reflection of the glory of the stars above.

  Vairocanum. The thought brought me back to the top of the cliff, prodding back into my mind like the pain of a phantom-limb. I’m wasting time. The one thing that I was sure about, the one thing that I knew had a place in my life, the one thing that I could name was at the base of that cliff. Everything else seemed vague and poisoned by conjecture, ignorance and disremembrance.

  Resolution settled into my mind: I am a warrior, and I must have my sword. Taking a single step backwards and then two rapid steps forwards, I vaulted off the top of the cliff and down into the darkness below.

  The frozen desert rose up to meet me like a solid and impenetrable block of ice. As my feet punched into its surface I could feel the frozen structure crack and shatter beneath me. The ground frost exploded instantly, scattering shards of ice and fragments of congealed sand in all directions, as though they were being evacuated from a blast crater. With the ice-hard surface thoroughly ruined, my legs ploughed down into the softer sand beneath; it decelerated me rapidly as it compacted under the force of my impact.

  I hardly felt that landing at all. The dynamism felt right. I am the sword of the Great Father. The phrase emerged out the darkness like a flaming torch in my brain; it was instinctive and I knew that I believed it instantly, but the words rang hollow like distant bells. The Great Father?

  Vairocanum… The name pressed into my mind persistently and relentlessly. My eyes snapped to the north as I pulled myself out the sand and onto my feet. I could see the hilt clearly now, with the warpstone
pommel glinting with dark complexity in the shadows of the night and the runes burning with eerie green power. After a couple of strides, I fell to my knees before the faintly glowing blade, bowing my head before it as though to an idol. It stood upright like a statue; its hilt and half its blade protruding up out of the sand, with the rest buried firmly in the frozen desert.

  “I am the Sword of Vidya.” The words whispered from my lips automatically, as though they were the beginning of a mantra or prayer that I had taken inside my being and internalised so strongly that they had transcended even the shackles of memory. I am the sword of the Great Father and my eyes are the eyes of the Emperor. When I gaze upon the unrighteous, I shall visit upon them the tempest of truth and lay waste to their souls.

  “For knowledge is power, and I will guard it with my life… and my sword.”

  My words caught the frozen breath of the desert and drifted across the sand.

  The snaking runes along the length of the blade seemed to beckon to me, luminous and sparkling in the icy night air. They curdled and swam through the metallic substance, as though the heart of the blade was composed of a fiery liquid, seductively confined in the shape of an ancient sword. The script slipped and flowed from one pattern to the next, inscribing a narrative and a history into my head in a language that I suddenly understood.

  The runic characters became suddenly vivid, burning with an emerald passion that I knew I had seen many times before. It felt forbidden and exhilarating. I could feel the power pulsing into the sand beneath my knees. The sword called out to me, using a name that I could barely hear; it was as though the desert wind itself was eroding a word from the cliff-face by my side. Rhamah. I recognised it. I am Rhamah—the touch of death. It was clear and obvious all at once, like something that could never be forgotten.

  With a sense of ceremony that I could not explain, I carefully tucked my combat knife back into its harness before reaching for the hilt of the great sword. Despite the freezing, arctic cold of the desert night, the grip felt warm to my touch, as though my fingers were closing around the thin neck of a traitor or a long forgotten lover.