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Alpharius : Head of the Hydra – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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DISCOVERY

I do not remember my beginning.

Even for a being as unusual and remarkable as I, there was a time before reason. Or perhaps there was not. Perhaps I knew where and what I was from the moment my form was created, but these memories were stolen from me by the forces that snatched me from the place intended to keep me safe in my infancy. All that is left to me, even now, are impressions, more than anything else: gleaming, white sterility; a glowing presence that outshone all others and left a sense of loss whenever it departed; and then noise, a jumble of colours which even I lack the vocabulary to describe, and a tapping and scratching, as of talons seeking me, that still sometimes haunts my dreams even in these last days of the 30th millennium.

My first definite, clear memory is of sitting in dust under a cloud-wracked night sky, assailed by a biting wind. I was not sure where I was, or how I had come to be there, but I knew my name. It had been whispered to me at some point, of that I was certain, and so I repeated it to myself for the first time.

‘I am Alpharius.’

Some people say names have power. Mine does not. I felt no sense of rightness or surety sweeping through my body when I spoke. My name is a tool, nothing more: an identifier, a starting baseline, to be used when convenient and discarded when not.

Then again, my name has come to have power, has it not? But that is power lent to it both by my own actions, and how it has been used as a tool by others. Taken alone, it is merely syllables. As with all such concepts, the significance they have is merely that which we confer upon them.

I knew nothing of this, however, as I sat in my first moments of lucid thought. I knew the wind lashing me was many degrees below the freezing point of water, and I could taste the artificial contaminants on it; and when I looked up, I could – even in the darkness – make out the faint colour signatures of the chemicals laced into the clouds above me. I could see mountains off to my right, high and stark, their peaks lost in cloud, but I also knew the plateau on which I sat was already at a high elevation. I could taste the thinness of the air. I did not know how I knew those things, against what criteria I was measuring them, or how that knowledge came to be with me. I simply knew them to be true.

What was also undeniably true was that I could see lights approaching from the north.

I understood that as soon as I saw them, although again, I cannot truly explain how. I realised the lights were to the north of me, and the mountains were to the south. I also became aware, for the first time in my life, of the concept of threat. I didn’t know the purpose behind the lights, but I knew there was the possibility that those controlling them might be hostile, and so I took stock of my situation.

I was sitting next to a piece of ruined metal, which appeared to have been torn apart by violent forces. Some few lights were still blinking on arcane devices within, but the thing itself was clearly damaged beyond repair. Indeed, I could tell it was far from whole, that approximately half the material required to form its original shape was missing. The ground was chewed up around me, as though this thing had fallen from a height.

So, it fell from the sky, bearing me with it, and landed with force. Either the fall, or the impact, or both, attracted attention. Those who were approaching could be intending to assist, or to plunder.

I was small, and young. I recognised the thing next to me as the remnants of what had surrounded me, in the dim, swirling memories that were all I had of my life before that point. I had presumably been within it for a reason, and the fact I was there, out in the open with it ruined beside me, suggested I was not yet intended to be outside it. I could be vulnerable.

I rose to my feet, and my body obeyed me as I wished it to. I scanned my surroundings for anything I could use as a weapon, but my options were limited. There were no sizeable stones in the dirt, and the ruined metal had not sheared or splintered into serviceable lengths. I caught sight of a marking as I looked it over: two sets of crossed lines, an ‘XX’. This meant nothing to me at the time, so I dismissed the detail.

The lights were closing on me now, and I could hear, above the wind, the mechanical roar of an engine. More than one, in fact. It was time for me to leave this place. I could watch from nearby, and reveal myself if I determined that these arrivals were not hostile.

I scrambled out of the rut carved through the ground by my arrival, keeping low, and made for the nearest slight rise in the ground. I crested it on my belly and turned at the top, my skin pressed against the dust, and looked back at where my consciousness had begun.

Two vehicles rumbled up: large, heavy and tracked, of similar but not identical designs, with paintwork that was faded in some places and damaged in others. I recognised the work of wind-driven dust and sand, and of rust, and also of ballistic weapons.

Doors opened, and light flooded out into the darkness. Nine figures dismounted: bipedal, and shaped roughly like myself, but I knew at once they were no kin of mine. Their movements were slow and clumsy, and they were swaddled in protective clothes against the chill and, perhaps, other environmental dangers. Each of them wore goggles, and masks that were presumably intended to aid their breathing. I took an experimental breath of my own, focusing on it consciously for the first time, but although I could taste bitterness on the air, it posed me no problems.

Each of the figures also carried weapons. They looked to be crude projectile throwers, similar to those that had marked their transports, but I had not yet tested my body’s resiliency or powers of recuperation, and so I remained wary. I also noted to myself that I instinctively understood the purpose of these items, in the same manner as I had understood the concept of threat, and that as I was watching them move around, I could see the angles from which someone could approach whilst remaining out of view. My eyes tracked over the tableau, and my brain provided the context: approach from the north-west, use the rightmost vehicle as cover, move around the front end of it and take the nearest from behind. Draw their belt knife, sever their spine, push them into their neighbour, throw the knife at the one whose gait held a slight limp, seize the neighbour’s weapon…

It was in those moments, on that high plateau, that I first began to understand the purpose for which I had been created.

‘What in the name of all the devils is this?’ one of the figures asked, bending over the wreckage. I doubt many of his companions would have been able to hear his words had they been much further away from him, but I could understand what was said even from my vantage point.

‘Looks like Imperial tech,’ the limping one replied, extending one hand cautiously. She stopped before she touched it, however, and looked up at the mountains to the south as though expecting some form of punishment to manifest.

‘And you’d be an expert on Imperial tech,’ the first speaker snorted.

‘You ever seen anything like this before?’ the second demanded. ‘I don’t recognise any of these parts.’

‘If something Imperial just dropped out of the sky and crashed, they’ll be on their way to pick it up,’ a third speaker cut in, not without a hint of nerves in their voice. ‘Either we grab it and bail, or we just bail, but we need to not be here.’

‘If it was that important to them, they wouldn’t have let it crash out here in the first place,’ the first speaker said, but even he looked towards the mountains. His words weighed on me, though. Why was I here?

‘I don’t know,’ the second speaker said uneasily, straightening and stepping back from the wreckage. ‘I think it’s too risky.’

‘We’re looking at a fortune here!’ the first speaker protested.

‘Are we?’ The second speaker rounded on him. ‘How can we junk it and sell it on when we don’t even know what these components are? We’d just be painting a target on our backs for when their people come looking for their missing tech.’

I became aware of a sound. It was high-pitched, but with the ghost of power behind it.

The first speaker hefted his weapon. ‘I’m not leaving it behind. Put it in the crawler.’

The sound was growing. It wasn’t just high-pitched, it was high. I looked up, but could make out nothing through the clouds. Could they truly not hear it?

‘You don’t give me orders, Aberath,’ the second speaker said, and although her weapon wasn’t exactly aimed at the first speaker, it had drifted in his direction. ‘I’m not–’

‘Hey, d’you hear that?’ the third speaker asked, finally looking upwards. The other half-dozen figures who’d been gathered around, apparently waiting for their leaders to make a decision, looked up too. Some readied their weapons.

The clouds parted, and a golden thunderbolt emerged.

My eyes and brain struggled to comprehend, for a moment, exactly what I was seeing. Then I managed to reframe it: a flying vehicle, ostentatiously decorated in a manner that emphasised opulence and regality, and drew attention away from the destructive power it could bring to bear. I noted the weapon pods and underslung, high-calibre guns – far superior to those toted by the would-be scavengers below – but it was not these that held my attention.

That was reserved for the glowing, gold-clad figure who leapt out of the craft and plummeted to the ground.

The scavengers were overcome. One of them, their primitive brain responding to a perceived threat, squeezed the trigger of their weapon and rattled off a few harmless shots blindly into the sky. The others simply stood motionless, their expressions hidden but their slack-limbed postures speaking of the potent mix of terror and awe that froze them in place.

The glowing figure landed, a giant amongst them, and I felt the wave of power that washed out from it. All the scavengers fell, like puppets with their strings cut.

The giant looked up at me and spoke, in a voice I heard with my mind as much as I did with my ears.

‘Come out, my son.’

I could have resisted. I could have refused. It would have taken all of my will, but I could have done so. However, I had no wish to, for I recognised this figure, from my dim, confused memories of the time before, and its presence filled a void in me I had not, until that point, realised was there.

I stood up, and walked over the dust to where the glowing figure stood.

‘I thought I had lost you all,’ it said, in tones of wonderment. ‘And now I find you here, after all this time, on my very doorstep.’ It knelt down and reached out to me. ‘Let me look at you.’

I submitted myself for inspection. I do not know how else to describe it. My head was turned this way and that, but I could tell on some level that I was being examined in a manner that went far beyond the visual. A nagging sense grew in me that there was something wrong with me, that I had been damaged in some way.

‘Is everything… as it should be?’ I asked. There was a hesitation before the voice answered, but when it spoke, it sounded as sure and certain as stone.

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

I should have been reassured, and yet I was not. Now I thought on it, I could feel that not everything was as it should be. There was something missing, something I could not verbalise. I was not complete. Something had, at some point, been taken from me.

‘It is a shame about these people,’ the glowing giant said, looking at the limp bodies of the scavengers around us. ‘But they could not be allowed to repeat what they saw here, even if they had not seen you. You are all that is left to me now. No one can know of you.’

‘But what am I?’ I found the courage to ask. ‘And who are you?’ ‘I am the Emperor,’ the giant replied, its voice warm. ‘I am your father. As to what you are… You are my son. Do you know your name?’

I looked up at it, peering into the glow.

‘I am Alpharius.’

Click here to buy Alpharius : Head of the Hydra.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2021.
This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Mikhail Savier.

Alpharius: Head of the Hydra © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2021. Alpharius: Head of the Hydra, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-80026-594-3

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But it seems more fitting to leave it ambiguous.

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