Contents

Cover

Gates of the Devourer – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Gates of the Devourer

David Annandale

There was no peace in sleep. Instead, there were the memories and the rehearsals of war. Her dreams shook with the thunder of her footsteps. At the gesture of an arm, firestorms swept the world. The landscapes were far beneath her gaze of judgement. There was no order to the dreams. They were all her wars and none of them. Their only constant, their only truth, was her towering being.

In the dreams, her identity was whole.

But there would never be peace.

She woke, and felt diminished.

Princeps Captain Ferantha Krezoc of the Legio Pallidus Mor, commander of the Warlord Gloria Vastator, rose from her cot and stood on the cold flagstones of her quarters. She felt the texture of the stone beneath her feet. She breathed as a mere human. She forced herself to see and acknowledge the facts of the chamber – the iron of her chair and desk, the Legio banner hanging from the vaulted ceiling, the gear wheel and skull of the shrine to the Omnissiah that dominated the wall opposite the door. The process was necessary. As incomplete as she was at this moment, she had to accept her reality. She had to retain the clear sense of Ferantha Krezoc, always, or she would vanish into the Manifold of the Vastator, and so fail in her duty as princeps.

She acknowledged the pain of not being joined to the Warlord. That was her reality too, and to deny it would be a fracture of mental discipline.

But the illusion of completion in her dreams… Ah, that was a form of truth too. The reality of the illusion could not be ignored. It was the constant of her periods of unconsciousness (she could not call them rest). It was the pull of the Gloria Vastator reaching into her soul. The dreams, Krezoc thought, were gateways to the God-Machine. Through them, she and the great engine’s machine-spirit spoke to each other. They were not truly one in the dreams. That was the lie. But the lie was the representation of the great truth. The truth of the bond. Waking brought the pain of disconnection, and the anxiety, tamped down from desperation only through force of will, to re-establish the link. To feel once more feel the mechadendrites of the Mind Impulse Unit jacking into the ports on her spine and at the base of her skull.

The phantom-limb ache was familiar. The pain greeted her at every waking. She would not be without the illusion in the dreams, though. It was a promise. It was the hope she would soon pass through the gate between human and machine once more.

Today there was a difference in her coming to consciousness. She felt an intuitive certainty. She and the Titan were about to be called upon to march.

Something was coming. War was coming. A new tide of fire and blood was drawing nigh.

Lord Governor Albrecht Feisler of Khania also woke from troubled dreams. His dreams were nightmares, scrabbling, swarming, writhing visions where he sank beneath an ocean of clacking, ripping claws. He woke himself with a moaning shriek. He was entangled in the bedclothes so tightly he could barely move. His right arm was immobilised by a grave-swaddling of sweat-soaked sheets. He fought free, his breath becoming a whine of distress. He stumbled away from the bed. His legs were weak. The carpets of his bedchamber felt like a rough crust over the ocean that had been swallowing him. He did not trust it. He moved warily across the floor until he reached the balcony windows, then flung them open and ran to the parapet.

A warm, foetid east wind blew into his face. It carried the blended stenches of Hive Gelon’s manufactoria and of the swampland beyond the city’s walls. Hive Gelon was an industrial heap of smokestacks and cathedral spires. The military output of the forge world was vital to the campaigns in the subsector, and Gelon’s Taurox and artillery plants never ceased their activity. The habs for the vast majority of the hive’s citizens were little more than immense dormitoria attached to the manufactoria. Life in the hives of Khania was a state of eternal urgency. Production could never keep up with the off-world demand, so the people worked harder, faster, and the elites of Khania grew richer. The Administratum lords and the barons of industry inhabited the towers that rose through, but rarely pierced, the clouds of brown and grey and dirty yellow. Even Feisler’s chambers, in the highest tower, were shrouded by the smog.

In the predawn gloom, the smoke was lit by the orange flames of burn-off. The wind was strong enough to tear rents in the stinking clouds. The privilege of Feisler’s position was not the panorama of Gelon: the hive’s vistas were grey rockcrete, grey metal and grey streets. The land beyond was grey too, a darker grey of slag heaps, lakes of toxic sludge, and the beginning of the swamp. There was life beyond the city’s walls. The life that thrived on the leavings of Gelon’s industry was as grim as the hive itself – an explosion of tumorous growths, sluggish reptiles and swarms of insects as dense as torrential rain.

No, the privilege of Feisler’s position was not the view of Gelon. It was the sight of the stars. He could not see them every night; the wind had to be strong enough. He saw them now, through the streamers of smoke. He gazed at them, drawing on their silver light for strength, using them to banish the dreams. So it was Feisler, alone among the people of Khania, who witnessed the fall of the stars.

There were so many. They came as red filaments, drawing a scarlet veil over the sky. Then the darkness came, worse than any dream, and Feisler ran from the balcony, his world’s desperate cry for help already resounding in his soul.

Khania shrieked, but no one heard. The shadow in the warp had come to the planet ahead of the first spores. From the perspective of neighbouring systems, Khania had fallen silent. Feisler and his subjects did not know they were already under attack before the crimson dawn. They were ignorant of the threat, except perhaps in the torment of their dreams.

But the silence itself was noted. It was monstrous in its significance. Khania screamed in the silence, and the Imperium answered.

The nearest system was Sevasmos. On Katara, the sole inhabited world, the Astra Militarum regiment of the 66th Kataran Spears embarked for Khania. The mobilisation was total. Every soldier in the Spears knew what the silence meant. The Devourer had come, and if Khania fell, Katara would be next.

Captain Harth Deyers paused on the ramp of the heavy lifter. His company of Leman Russ tanks was aboard, ready to be transported to the cruiser Admiral Dammann waiting at low anchor. These were his last moments on Katara. He hoped to return. He did not expect to. He was going into battle against the tyranids. The only honest hope he could cling to was victory, not survival. Could he think of a better end to his decades of service than to die for the salvation of Katara itself? No, he could not.

As long as salvation was achieved.

‘Captain?’

He glanced over his shoulder. Lehanna Platen, his gunner on the Leman Russ Bastion of Faith, was descending the ramp. Deyers and Platen had served together for more than fifty years in the Bastion. Platen was a sniper with the cannon. Deyers was not surprised she had caught his hesitations. ‘Just having a last look, Platen,’ he said. Beyond the spaceport, the lights of Chreontiades illuminated the falling evening. The city was the magnificent jewel of Katara. Crystal towers bounced the light between them. The elevations of the city flashed and twinkled. The walls of the towers were treated armourglass. They were as strong as they were inspiring, but at night it was easy to perceive the city as being as insubstantial as light itself.

This was a sight worth preserving. A city worth dying to protect.

Platen joined Deyers. Standing beside him, she barely reached his shoulder. She was a short, hard, barrel of a trooper, destined from birth, it seemed, to live in the confined spaces of the gun controls. She folded her arms and nodded at the lights of Chreontiades. ‘How do you like our odds?’ she said.

‘Of winning or surviving?’

Platen snorted at the mention of survival. ‘Winning,’ she said.

‘They’re good,’ said Deyers. ‘We won’t be fighting alone.’

‘Is the Adeptus Astartes coming?’

‘No, but two Legios of the Adeptus Titanicus are. So is the Navy.’ Deyers spoke for his own benefit more than for Platen’s. She entered combat phlegmatically. That she was even asking these questions showed how seriously she took the coming war. ‘The Navy will destroy the hive ships. The Legios will obliterate the tyranid ground forces. Our role will be a supporting one.’

‘A sound strategy,’ Platen said. ‘Very nice.’ Her tone was hard and knowing, shaped by too much experience. ‘So there is nothing to go wrong, is there?’

The wreckage of ships filled the vicinity of the Khania system’s Mandeville point. Krezoc arrived on the bridge of the Pallidus Mor’s transport Nuntius Mortis as the ship translated from the immaterium. Collision warnings sounded. Hololithic screens to either side of the oculus were dense with red runes as cogitators fought to keep up with the trajectories of the larger fragments.

‘Ahead slow,’ Shipmaster Belletow called. There was no question of evasion for a vessel as ponderous as the Nuntius. It would have to rely on its bulk and shielding to pass through the debris field intact.

As she made her way to the forward area of the bridge, Krezoc felt the vibrations in the deck from the first impacts. In the oculus, the darkness flashed with the discharges of straining void shields. A huge chunk of a hull rumpled up through the oculus’ field of vision. Exterior statuary and banks of silent guns were still intact too. Krezoc slowed, bracing. The wreckage slammed into the superstructure of the Nuntius. The bridge shook as if worried in the jaws of a giant grox. More klaxons sounded. Krezoc kept her balance. She moved on, to where Marshal Eras Balzhan stood before the oculus. To her left, she saw the other two senior princeps arriving. Each commanded a maniple of Titans. The demi-legio dispatched to Khania consisted of four maniples altogether. A strong showing, Krezoc thought, regardless of the size of the force being sent by the Imperial Hunters. There had been no communication yet from the other Legio.

The Nuntius shook again. Screeches of binaric cant flew between the tech-priests on the bridge. Krezoc wondered how close the void shields were to collapse. There would have to be contact with the Imperial Hunters now. The campaign was already going awry.

As they do, Krezoc thought calmly. As they always do.

There should have been a large squadron of Imperial Navy ships on station. Instead, there was only the debris field, pulsing with the afterglow of cataclysmic explosions. The prow of a cruiser glided over the Nuntius, its severed end still blazing with ignited plasma. The transport moved through clouds of frozen human corpses. Scattered through the Imperial ruins were chunks of organic, honeycombed structures. They left a comet trail of organic soup as they spun end over end through the void.

Krezoc crossed the open space of the bridge to join Balzhan. ‘Do we know what happened?’ she asked.

‘We know enough,’ the old man said. The set of his jaw was grim. The marshal was squat, built heavily about the shoulders. Where Krezoc was wiry and taller than most of the other princeps in the Pallidus Mor, Balzhan’s build seemed well-suited to brawling in a Militarum commissary. His skull, clean-shaven like hers, was encased in a metal brace, bolted into the bone as if holding his head together. The cross-sections of the brace were further mechadendrite ports. Both his eyes were augmetics, dark jewels shimmering darkly in his sockets when light caught their facets. ‘It seems the Navy arrived at the same time as the Kataran 66th,’ Balzhan said.

‘Unfortunate,’ said Krezoc. The intent of the campaign had been for the Imperial Navy to strike first, taking out the bio-ships and clearing the way for the Spears and the Legios. Simultaneous translation from the warp might have split the attention of the Navy, especially if the Spears’ vessel had stuck to its mission and made straight to send the troops planetside.

‘Unfortunate,’ Balzhan agreed, ‘but not the determining factor.’ He swept an arm at the careening ruins. ‘The Navy did not send enough. Their vessels were overwhelmed by the enemy.’ He paused. ‘They managed to destroy one of the bio-ships, at least.’

The two officers marked the Navy’s loss in silence. For a moment, Krezoc allowed herself to see more than the tactical disaster. She saw the specks of human debris for what they were – tens of thousands of lives ended in a lost struggle.

The Pallidus Mor had the reputation of icy indifference to death. The reputation was false. The gulf between indifference and the necessary acceptance of realities of war was a vast one. The other princeps now reached them. ‘Did the Spears make planetfall?’ Merys Drahn asked.

‘We don’t know yet,’ Balzhan told her.

Krezoc hoped they had. The Pallidus Mor had fought by the sides of the 66th before. The campaign on Thoryvos had cemented a bond of shared sacrifice between the forces.

‘And the enemy’s position?’ said Toven Rehliax

Another impact, a hard one. Rehliax staggered. Balzhan was immobile, as if welded to the deck. He shrugged.

‘Auspex!’ Belletow shouted. ‘It would be nice to know where we stand!’

Click here to buy Gates of the Devourer.

A Black Library Publication

Published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Cover illustration by Mark Harrison.

Gates of the Devourer © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2016. Gates of the Devourer, 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.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-346-9

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.