Salvation's Reach

Salvation's Reach (Dan Abnett)

IT IS THE 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

YET EVEN IN his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battle fleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

TO BE A MAN in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

For Aaron and Katie, of course.

Came then he, a prisoner, into the

House of the Daemon, and he was bound about

and anointed so that his life could be

taken in offering, as was the custom.

But he slipped his bonds, and made a fire

burn inside the House of the Daemon,

and burned it he from the inside out,

and so the Daemon it was that

burned and was slain.

– from the Kinebrach myth of the Rath and the Hero

‘Throughout the year 781.M41, Warmaster Macaroth’s main battle groups remained deadlocked at the frontiers of the Erinyes Group, despite his strenuous efforts to force a breakthrough. Macaroth’s primary crusading strength was held off by a formidable defensive line composed of the forces of Archon Gaur, the Archenemy overlord.

‘Meanwhile, trailwards, the Warmaster’s second battle group had repeatedly failed to dislodge the legions of Magister Anakwanar Sek, Gaur’s most capable lieutenant, from the Cabal Systems. Senior advisors urged Macaroth to break off from his bull-headed prosecution of the Erinyes Line, and concentrate on quashing Sek at the Cabal Worlds. With the threat of Sek removed, they counselled, the Crusade could safely resume an assault of the Archon’s position. But Macaroth rejected the notion, claiming it would give the Archon enough time – perhaps two or three years – to rebuild and retrench to such an extent that the Erinyes Line would become unassailable.

‘Split between these two concentrations of resistance, Macaroth’s Crusade was haemorrhaging momentum and materiel. The Crusade had become two crusades, and even Macaroth’s vast war-tithes, and massive support from the sector lords, could not sustain his ambitions. Furthermore, there was a general and growing fear that, if properly co-ordinated, the forces of Sek and Gaur might combine with such effect, the Sabbat Worlds Crusade force would actually be annihilated.

‘During this critical period, a series of covert operations was planned and executed at key sites across the Sabbat Worlds. The most critical, and the one upon which all the others depended, was undertaken at Salvation’s Reach in the remote Rimworld Marginals. Seen as a huge gamble, and with atrocious prospects for success, the mission was authorised by Macaroth on the basis that, if accomplished by some miracle, it could alter the balance of the war entirely.

‘This was the twenty-sixth year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, and Macaroth was increasingly looking like a man prepared to try anything, and risk everything, to secure a victory.’

– from A History of the Later Imperial Crusades

ONE Suicide Kings

Something, perhaps the year of living by the skin of his teeth on occupied Gereon, or merely the fact of having been born a sly and ruthless son of a bitch, had given Major Rawne of the Tanith First a certain edge.

He could usually smell trouble coming. That morning, he could definitely smell trouble coming. As edges went, his was as fine and sharp as the one along the blade of his straight silver warknife.

At dawn, with the twin suns beginning to burn up through the petrochemical smog across the city bay, he left the regimental billet and walked down to the rockcrete wasteland of the bayside revetment. There, he wandered as far as the bridge, and crossed over to the pontoons in front of the island guardhouse.

The pontoon walkway clunked underfoot. Looking down through the mesh, he could see the water, toxic brown and frothy. The massive galvanic plants along the bay, Adeptus Mechanicus developments that powered and lit the hive city’s core systems, had just flushed their heatsinks, and filled the coastline with its morning dose of radioactive effluent. There was steam in the air, steam that stank of sulphur and rolled like a fog bank, white in the suns’ light. The waters of the bay and estuary had been corrosively acidic for a thousand years. It was sobering to think that anything still lived in it.

But things did. Just below the surface, they squirmed and moved, leech-mouthed, slug-slick, with dentition like crowded pincushions and eyes like phlegm. Rawne could see them, following him beneath the surface; a dark, wriggling mass. What gave them their edge? Was it the sound of his footsteps, the passing heat signature of his body? Pheromones? His shadow on the water?

They were survivors. They had adapted to their environment instead of allowing it to kill them. And they killed anything that threatened them.

Just like him.

Three Urdeshi troopers were manning the guardhouse. They didn’t know him, and he didn’t know them. They weren’t his concern. He had chosen that particular morning because it was pretty much the last chance he was going to get before the regiment shipped out. The point of no turning back had been reached.

But still, there was the nagging discomfort of his edge. Something was off. Something was wrong. He’d chosen the wrong day to try it. Maybe the troopers suspected him of something, maybe they were wired up for some reason. Maybe something had given away his true intent.

Under ordinary circumstances, the doubt would have been enough to make him abort, turn around, and go home. The uncertainty would have been sufficient to make him blow it off and try again another day when the odds were more favourable.

Except there weren’t going to be any more other days. It was now, or it was never. There were no more chances. The monster, that monster, should have been dead long since. Justice and decency demanded it, and only the dedicated efforts of good men who ought to have known better were ensuring the monster’s salvation.