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Hand of Abaddon – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

daughter of mordian

tartarus

whisperers

Kesh awoke to screaming, and in the quiet dark of the underground it took her a few moments to realise it was only a dream.

She was alone in her bunk and even upon waking could not be sure if she had been the one screaming or if it was someone else. She stood and moved to the basin beside her cot, first dashing water onto her face, then trying to rub the stiffness from her neck and shoulders with her other hand.

She felt a scar there, one of many old wounds earned from past battles. It wasn’t the scars she could touch that bothered her, but rather the ones she could not. The scars that were memories. Of Gathalamor in the catacombs, buried alive under the bones of the dead. Of Kamidar in the palace, and the dreams of fire and blood, of black sackcloth wings.

When does a memory become a dream and a dream a memory? When is reality and fiction so intertwined that the one is no longer readily distinguishable from the other?

Kesh shuddered at the thought. She found Dvorgin’s old flask amongst her belongings and took a swig to settle her nerves. The rupka stung like a bastard but it was warming and had enough of a kick to make her feel almost alive. When her hands stopped shaking, she dressed fully. She had been wearing her fatigue trousers and under-vest already, so the rest didn’t take long to throw on, and then she was out.

She found Lodrin and a few of the others sitting around a table in a part of the tunnel designated as barracks. It was one of many such chambers that had been cored out of the rock and earth, a few tables and chairs thrown in, a stove for recaff with bunks adjoining. Sodium lamps flickered over the scene, lending it more atmosphere than it deserved, the soft lighting kind to the shithouse condition of everyone and everything inside.

Of the group, only Lodrin evinced any kind of cheer. Ruddy-cheeked, dark brown hair cut short but not shaved, he always managed to look simultaneously neat and out of breath. Gently spoken was Lod, though his build was that of a brawler, thick-necked and wide-shouldered. He carried the squad’s flamer, some of the shadows beneath his eyes soot rather than lack of sleep. His cap sat on the table next to a steaming mug of recaff, and he looked up from staring at the fan of cards he held in front of him as Kesh approached.

The game was Sickles, a firm favourite amongst the ranks, easy to learn and fraught with gambler’s peril.

‘I can deal you in, sergeant,’ he offered genially.

Kesh wondered briefly if he and the others had heard her screaming, or if it had just been the dream.

Mavin, their vox-operator, glanced at his own hand, but like the other trooper he kept his feelings as well guarded as his cards, giving nothing away. Mavin hailed from Tarnus, one of the hives on Mordian, the world where the entirety of the 84th came from. Tarnus had a cut-throat reputation, its clans miserly and distrustful. His narrow, angular features and thin chin seemed to exacerbate this trait in him, and like most of the hivers, he had stark white hair from where the rains had bleached it. Kesh had always found him fair and shrewd, if a little tight.

The mood was tense, the pile of Munitorum chits high.

Garris had the highest pile. He leaned back in his chair, his face pensive. ‘Not until this round is concluded,’ he said, flat as ice.

A soldier through and through, Garris had a gift. He knew knives like a Catachan knows the jungle, although Kesh had seen him turn most any sharp object into a deadly weapon. On Brevin, he had killed a cultist with a fork, stabbing every artery and point of critical injury in a matter of seconds. He also doubled as the squad’s battlefield surgeon when the need arose. There was no one more capable than Harkus Garris with a needle, and he always kept his stitches small.

‘Wouldn’t want to break your streak, trooper,’ Kesh replied, earning a sharp glance from the veteran. She gave a nod of thanks to Lodrin, who offered a half-hearted smile in return. Perhaps he had hoped she would change his luck, or perhaps he didn’t know what else to say.

There had been a lot of that going around since Kamidar. Hundreds dead, many of those slain in cold blood, massacred by the Queen of Iron, who also now lay in her grave. Kesh’s rank permitted her to know very little of the particulars, but the world had been pacified in the wake of internecine war and made a redoubt of the Anaxian Line. She had come back to a regiment much changed since the early years of the crusade. Fellows had died during that time, replacements had come in to maintain the ranks and then those replacements had died, and so it went. Kesh endured. Some amongst the 84th thought she was lucky.

She didn’t feel lucky.

Hence she left the game of Sickles well alone.

‘If there’s any of that recaff going, I’ll take a cup,’ she said, briefly choosing wakefulness over sleep, glancing around for the pot.

Garris took a handful of bone dice and threw them into a tray in the middle of the table. His grin widened as the octagonal dice came to rest and he laid down three cards, taking up two in return. Kesh glanced over the spread that remained, her interest casual.

‘Only dregs left,’ said Lodrin apologetically, and he shaped as if he was about to rise. ‘I can brew up some more if you–’

Kesh stopped him. ‘No need.’ She cast her eye out to the softly lit darkness beyond. ‘I’m sure I can scrounge up something from one of the other squads.

‘Enjoy your game,’ she added, leaning in to Lodrin before she went. ‘I’d take the Preceptor and the Veteran if I were you…’ She winked at Garris, who growled under his breath, something filthy, an expletive from his old hive.

And then she was out into the tunnels, hunting sleep, grasping for a mote of peace.

According to the chrono, another item bequeathed by her dying commanding officer, it was late. Or early, depending on your perspective, she supposed. The sentries were active; Kesh nodded as she passed by their patrols. Their pale, mud-grimed faces were swathed in the shadows of phosphor lamps hanging from the low ceiling on looping strings of wire.

She saw troops from the Vardish and Catachan regiments. Good fighters, disciplined but ill-suited to the dark and narrow places under the world. She and the Mordian 84th shared lodgings with one other regiment besides these two. Whilst the Vardish and Catachans had been brought in for manpower and fighting grit, the Gunbad 204th were loners when they weren’t mustered or in combat but deadly with their trench axes. Tunnellers by military trade, they excelled in the ‘Hellway’, the name the troops had given to the miles-long network of passages and chambers painstakingly excavated by the teams of Mechanicus sappers that Kesh could hear by the distant echoes of drilling engines deeper in the subterranean complex.

Above her, sixty feet of hard earth and bedrock, was Barren. A fitting name for a bleak and unimpressive world. What little she had seen of it, anyway. They had landed by night, over three months ago, and it was less than two days after that when the Martians had forged an underground beachhead with the Termites, and the Militarum short-strawed as underminers had been sent below to make a garrison.

A grim fate for some, though Kesh didn’t mind the dark. As a native of Mordian she was used to it.

‘Having trouble sleeping, sergeant?’

She met Captain Rellion coming the other way. Tall, straight-backed and dark-haired like some Mordians, Rellion looked almost pristine for someone who had been living underground for the better part of the last few months. Though he had taken to wearing his combat helmet instead of his officer’s cap ever since Colonel Arber had been struck by a loose piece of rock and stretchered off the line. Geologians from the Martian cohort had performed a rapid structural analysis of the tunnels in the aftermath of the incident and replaced steel wall braces with synthwood. Then they had sprayed any weaknesses with a bonding polymer, declaring Tartarus – the name the Militarum had given this tunnel network – safe, but Rellion didn’t trust it. He was keeping his helmet on. Kesh wondered if he slept with it on and stifled a grin at the thought of the man wearing little but his helm, deciding it was not so bad an image.

‘Is it that obvious, sir?’ said Kesh, and made a crisp salute.

She knew she must look ragged, and felt the dark circles around her eyes, her gaunt features. The roughly cropped hair like a thick tuft of snow-grass on her head. Never mind the scars.

Rellion reciprocated the salute, putting Kesh at ease. ‘Looking for something to take the edge off?’ he asked.

‘Would that be inappropriate, sir?’

‘Not at all. I think there’s a medicae somewhere around this section that has been handing out low-dose morphia like it’s standard issue.’ He pointed vaguely to one of the tunnel branches behind him. ‘You’re not the only one who’s ill at ease down here.’ He gave a furtive glance at the ceiling as if at any second it might give way or that piece of rock that took out Colonel Arber would somehow find him too.

‘Oh, I don’t mind the dark and the deeps, sir.’

Rellion quirked an eyebrow as he looked back at Kesh. ‘Night terrors then? I thought I heard screaming.’

Kesh cursed inwardly at this confirmation. It also meant the others had been hiding their knowledge of it. What else have they been hiding?

Rellion went on. ‘I think there’s a regimental priest hereabouts too.’ He looked around. ‘But Throne of Terra, I couldn’t say exactly where. This place grows by the hour. I swear the only reason I walk these halls is so that I don’t wake up one day and realise I’m lost in them. Wandering forever, never finding my way back to the line.’ He smiled.

‘Don’t tempt me,’ Kesh joked but took care to note if any of the Commissariat were in earshot first. ‘I suppose we’ll be prepping for the assault soon?’ she asked.

Rellion nodded, his gaze faraway for a moment. ‘This place’ll be choked with troopers by then. A lot of men and materiel underground.’ Another look at the ceiling. ‘I hope these cogheads know what they’re doing.’

Kesh doubted the Martians had much regard for the flesh-and-blood troopers of the Militarum, but she trusted their craft. The tunnels would hold, even with two thousand boots rumbling through them. At least, she hoped they would.

‘Are you alright, sergeant?’ he said, noting something in Kesh’s manner.

‘Just a little insomnia, sir.’

‘You seem a little off.’

Kesh shrugged; she couldn’t disagree.

‘I’m surprised,’ Rellion continued, and gestured to her rank pins, ‘that you’re still at squad level. After Kamidar and what you did… I could scarcely credit Munser’s report, but here you are.’

She felt her chest tighten, a vice pincering her ribs and pushing out her breath. Lieutenant Munser and some of his men had found her in the halls of the Kamidarian palatial capital not long after the shield wall had come down and the Black Templars had made their surgical strike. It had ended the war, or cut it off at the knees before it could properly start at least. Kesh had been hailed a hero, even if the exact circumstances of how she had survived couldn’t be fully established.

Munser had brought her on as his sergeant and part of his command squad, and she found she liked the change. The lieutenant was a decent man, and the others in her squad had their quirks, like Garris, but she trusted them.

Rellion was still talking, Kesh having drifted out and only now picking up the threads of their conversation again. ‘I heard they tried to give you a platoon. And pinned a medal on your chest.’

Kesh nodded, trying to gather her composure.

‘Remarkable valour, Kesh. And to have lived through all that…’ He shook his head and Kesh prayed he wouldn’t say it. Please don’t say it… ‘Miraculous.’

She couldn’t decide if Rellion was probing, looking for something hidden, some truth Kesh wasn’t willing to reveal, that she couldn’t reveal because she understood as little about what had transpired in Gallanhold as anyone else. Except she had been there. Her and Syreniel. Though the Silent Sister had stayed true to the name of her Order, she had still managed to communicate something of what she saw in Kesh. To think of it made Kesh’s skin crawl and her hand slipped to the gold coin the Oblivion Knight had given her upon her departure. It still felt warm to the touch despite the chill of the under-dark.

‘I’m just a soldier, sir,’ said Kesh, ‘one who wants to do her duty. I see better with my boots on the ground.’ She tugged at the forester’s cap tucked under her epaulette, but it was stuck tight enough. ‘I have no desire to lead. I find the way so that others may lead, that’s the pathfinder’s creed.’

She nodded briskly, about to move on, when Rellion held up a hand to stop her.

‘Here,’ said the captain, proffering a smoke stick from his jacket pocket. ‘Won’t help you sleep, but…’

Kesh took it with a wan smile. ‘Much obliged, sir. Though I should be on my way if I’m going to find that medicae.’

She made a swift exit after that, and headed in the rough direction Rellion had indicated. She could not fault his assertion that getting lost down here was a distinct possibility. All the tunnels looked much the same, and was it her imagination or did the ceiling seem to be getting lower? Kesh suppressed a shudder at the sudden thought of several tons of earth and rock pressing down on her and silently cursed the captain for putting the thought in her head.

A couple of troopers passed her, wearing flak armour. They had low-lumen torches on their uniforms but the shadows couldn’t hide the fact they looked on edge. After weeks of dogged preparation, the assault was coming. Alarms had been set up throughout the complex, poised to signal everyone to arms.

Kesh nodded to them, turning her face from the light as it shone her way. She saw just fine without a lumen, her world of origin having prepared her for it. Every daughter and son of Mordian was born to the dark, half the global hemisphere perpetually benighted whilst the other burned eternally in the light of Mordian’s vengeful star. It had left her pale but with exceptional night vision.

The troopers barely acknowledged her, lost in their own thoughts.

On she went, and after a while she started to think she might have taken a wrong turn or somehow double-backed without realisation. It was only when she saw the sentry up ahead that Kesh breathed a small sigh of relief.

He sat on a metal footlocker at the entrance to a larger section of the tunnel complex, sharpening a bayonet. He was of the Gunbad, the tunnel fighters. She noticed a savage-looking trench axe tucked in his belt. Bright eyes like burnt umber regarded Kesh as she approached him.

‘Thought this was the medicae?’ she asked.

‘It is,’ came a slightly gruff reply. He looked young, just a trooper, his stubbled chin pockmarked with thicker patches of hair, and she guessed he used the trench axe for more than just hacking at earth. ‘Medicae’s dead, I’m afraid,’ he said.

Kesh caught a glimpse into a chamber beyond. No body to see, but a cut rope swayed gently in an underground breeze, hanging from a synthwood support beam. All the excavated caverns were shored up in this way. Wood was better than steel. It bent with pressure. Kesh tried not to imagine the creak and then the crack of timber surrendering to the mass above. The earth crashing down to bury her alive.

Bloody Rellion!

Dying. Again. This was the dream, she realised. Her death. It felt real. It always felt real, every time.

‘Yet here I am…’ she murmured. Just as the captain had said.

‘Beg pardon?’ said the sentry, as Kesh realised she had spoken a little too loudly.

‘What happened?’ she bluffed instead.

‘Self-execution.’ He raised his eyebrows as if suspicious, then spoke into the side of his hand, in a mock stage whisper. ‘The commissars won’t let us say suicide. Bad for morale. Ironic, eh?’

Kesh thought he had a lot of candour for a sentry.

‘What’s your name, trooper?’

‘Ghates.’ He tapped his ident with a dirty fingernail. As if really noticing her for the first time, Ghates stopped sharpening. ‘What do you need, Nighter?’

It was the name some of the troopers in the other regiments gave the Mordians in reference to the fact that Mordian was a world of eternal darkness. As cognomens went, it wasn’t bad.

‘Something for sleep. Anything in there still? Maybe a sedative, something to take the edge off. And you can call me Kesh.’

‘Whole kit and caboodle’s still in there, Kesh. The black hats never touched a thing.’

Kesh looked but hesitated, almost afraid to enter. As if it was sacrilege or something.

She really needed to sleep. Or wake properly. One or the other.

‘Why he’d do it?’ she asked.

Ghates shrugged and went back to sharpening the bayonet. ‘Maybe he felt the world pressing in. Or maybe dealing with the pain of others day and night drove him mad. Maybe the whisperers got him…’ He made the sign of the aquila.

Kesh frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing. Something. I just think maybe we’ve been down here a little too long. Folks hearing things. Seeing things, too.’

‘Such as?’

He shook his head, suddenly concerned. ‘Oh, not me. I’m buttoned up nice and tight. Nothing ailing me, Nighter. But there’s a reason that frayed rope is hanging from the rafters…’

‘Can I get in there, see what I can find? I just need a sedative,’ Kesh repeated. ‘Something mild.’

‘Next medicae is north.’ Ghates pointed with his bayonet. ‘That way.’

Her heart sank at the thought of the trudge back through the tunnels. ‘But that’s about two miles under all of this shit…’

He gave a wry smile, and jerked his head sideways towards the room.

‘The Emperor protects…’ she said, about to enter when she paused again. ‘Thank you, Ghates,’ she said and offered the smoke Rellion had given her. She wasn’t going to use it.

Ghates took it with a nod of gratitude. ‘I’d be quick if I were you.’

Kesh stepped inside, about to begin her search when the alarms started ringing. She shared a weary glance with the tunnel fighter and about-faced.

Sleep would have to wait.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2024.
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