Yarrick: The Pyres of Armageddon

  More tales of the Astra Militarum from Black Library

  YARRICK: IMPERIAL CREED

  A Commissar Yarrick novel

  YARRICK: CHAINS OF GOLGOTHA

  A Commissar Yarrick novella

  HONOUR IMPERIALIS

  An omnibus edition of the novels Cadian Blood, Redemption Corps & Dead Men Walking

  STRAKEN

  An ‘Iron Hand’ Straken novel

  • THE MACHARIAN CRUSADE •

  Book 1: ANGEL OF FIRE

  Book 2: FIST OF DEMETRIUS

  Book 3: FALL OF MACHARIUS

  • GAUNT’S GHOSTS •

  THE FOUNDING

  Book 1: FIRST AND ONLY

  Book 2: GHOSTMAKER

  Book 3: NECROPOLIS

  THE SAINT

  Book 4: HONOUR GUARD

  Book 5: THE GUNS OF TANITH

  Book 6: STRAIGHT SILVER

  Book 7: SABBAT MARTYR

  THE LOST

  Book 8: TRAITOR GENERAL

  Book 9: HIS LAST COMMAND

  Book 10: THE ARMOUR OF CONTEMPT

  Book 11: ONLY IN DEATH

  THE VICTORY

  Book 12: BLOOD PACT

  Book 13: SALVATION’S REACH

  Visit blacklibrary.com for the full range of Astra Militarum novels, novellas, audio dramas and short stories, as well as many other exclusive Black Library products.

  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 battlefleets 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 Emperor’s 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 Astra Militarum 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.

  1. Yarrick

  The return to Armageddon was a hard one. As we made our way back from Basquit, the warp convulsed. Waves of insanity slammed against the Glaive of Pyran. The Lunar-class cruiser was a good ship, strong in hull and crew. Even so, cries echoed down its length. Some were the wailing of tocsins as the Gellar field’s integrity was strained by the currents and tides of the immaterium moved to anger. Others came from the Glaive’s astropathic choir and navigator. In the troop holds, we felt the cruiser shake as its reality came under assault and the certainty of its path eroded. At one point, the walls reverberated with a groan that was too deafening to be human, and too agonised to be metal.

  And yet this was not the storm. This was the storm building. The Glaive of Pyran held true to its course, and when it exited the warp, we were in the Armageddon System.

  ‘A rough passage, Commissar Yarrick,’ Colonel Artura Brenken said to me in the shuttle that carried us from the cruiser towards Hive Infernus. There was a jolt as we began re-entry. My grav-­harness held me in place as the fuselage shook.

  ‘Very,’ I agreed. I raised my voice over the violent rattling caused by the atmosphere’s turbulence. ‘I doubt many more ships will be able to enter or leave the system until the storm passes.’

  Brenken gave me a sharp look. ‘This storm worries you.’

  ‘All warp storms do.’

  ‘This one more than others.’

  I gave her a crooked grin. She knew me well. She should, after so many decades. We had first met shortly after my initial mission as commissar. After serving on Mistral, I had been seconded to the Armageddon Steel Legion for the first time. She had been a sergeant, then a captain, and had been a colonel now for over seventy years. She would have made a fine general, and in my more cynical moments, I sometimes thought that was precisely why she had never reached that rank. She was a superb soldier, but a poor politician – an officer who became more uneasy the further she was from a battlefield.

  She wouldn’t make general now. She was near the end of her career. We both were. We were old. Juvenat treatments had kept us physically viable, but her face, like mine, had been moulded by the decades upon decades of war. The unnatural smoothness of her augmetic lower jaw stood out in stark contrast to the landscape of wrinkles and scars on the rest of her clean-shaven skull.

  No, colonel would be the peak of her ascension in the ranks.

  But she had ascended. I was still a simple commissar.

  We both had debriefings to attend. She, as commanding officer of the 252nd Regiment of the Armageddon Steel Legion, would be due for official commendation, following the success of the campaign against the ork raiders. My day would be less pleasant. Seroff would see to that.

  Brenken prodded me. ‘What is it about this storm?’

  ‘Nothing definite,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t like its conjunction with what we found on Basquit.’

  ‘Orks…’ Brenken began, but was interrupted by turbulence.

  I was sitting next to the viewing block and looked out at our descent through the cloud cover of Armageddon. The air was dense and filthy as an oil slick, lightning flashing between roiling fists of brown and yellow. Then we dropped below the cover. The air was still far from clear. I looked out through the eternal layers of grit and banks of sluggish, low-hanging smog. Corrosive rain streaked the viewing block, blurring my first view of Infernus. At this distance, the spires of the hive were indistinguishable from its chimneys. It was a hulking mass of black, filth-crusted iron and rockcrete surging up from the planet’s surface, forever surrounded by the choking aura of its industry. It was nestled between two mountain chains – the Pallidus to the west, and the Diablo to the east. The winds of the Season of Fire buffeted the shuttle, but did nothing to clear away the smog. The bowl between the mountains held the poisoned air trapped over the city.

  Brenken tried again. ‘Orks are a threat, but hardly an uncommon one. And we purged them from Basquit.’

  ‘But what were they doing so deep into Imperial space?’ I asked. ‘And where did they come from? There aren’t any ork-held worlds in any proximity to the Armageddon sub-sector. And then there is what we heard.’

  She looked troubled at that reminder. ‘You think there’s a connection?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope not.’ I tried to imagine what a link between orks and warp storm could mean. My failure did not reassure me.

  The shuttle brought us to a landing pad that nestled at the base of the cluster of spires that housed the government of Infernus. The uppermost reaches were also, at this time, the residence of the ruler of Armageddon. Brenken an
d I disembarked. A staff officer stood on the pad, waiting to escort her to the debriefing. When she saw who was waiting for me, Brenken gave me a sympathetic nod. ‘We’ll speak later, commissar,’ she said.

  ‘Until then, colonel,’ I answered. I walked across the pitted rockcrete to where Lord Commissar Dominic Seroff stood at the edge of the landing zone.

  ‘Sebastian,’ he said. The familiarity was an expression of contempt.

  ‘Lord commissar,’ I answered. I kept my tone neutral, greeting formally correct. I would not begin the hostilities. I left that to Seroff.

  His once-blond hair had turned a blind white. It had receded from the top of his head, but the fringe that ran from ear to ear still had pronounced curls. There was something a bit comical in its refusal to be tamed. More than a century ago, Seroff’s eyes had shone with a sense of the comic too, but they hadn’t for a long time. They were cold. His face was pinched with bitterness. I was in no small way responsible for the officer Seroff had become. I did not regret the decisions I had made, or the actions I had taken. They were necessary. They were correct. But I had been suffering their consequences for much of my life. Seroff was one of those consequences.

  ‘The 252nd returns in triumph,’ said the lord commissar.

  ‘It does.’

  ‘Congratulations are in order.’ His mouth, pursed, tight-lipped, twitched in the right corner.

  ‘Thank you.’ I had just seen what passed for a smile on Seroff’s features. The day was going to be worse than I had expected.

  Behind me, the shuttle lifted off again. Seroff said nothing while the roar washed over us. Even after the sound of the ship’s engines had faded into the distance, we stood in silence. The rain pattered against my cap. It ran down my greatcoat. I felt the faint tingle of its acid as it dripped from my hands. Seroff was savouring the moment. I did not grant him the satisfaction of showing impatience or confusion.

  ‘Your actions on Basquit have received the attention they deserve,’ Seroff said at last. ‘Overlord von Strab wishes to see you.’

  Ah. Light began to dawn. I had a good idea which of my actions would have drawn the interest of von Strab. ‘I am at his disposal,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ Seroff said. ‘You are.’

  My formulation had been an expression of civility. Seroff had underscored its brutal truth. I was not, strictly speaking, under the authority of the overlord. I was, though, under Seroff’s, and he had just told me that he would see von Strab’s wishes concerning me carried out.

  ‘When, lord commissar?’ I asked. Still neutral. Still correct. Did Seroff seriously hope to see me worried? If so, that was disappointing. He knew me better than that.

  ‘He’s waiting for you now,’ Seroff said.

  I nodded. I almost thanked him for delivering the message, but there was nothing to be gained with the slight. I had no interest in the trivial games of personal pride that were consuming Seroff’s energy. They were another source of disappointment. I understood why Seroff hated me. But I had once believed he had more discernment. I had once believed he would have made a superb commissar. Instead, he had become an excellent politician.

  I made the sign of the aquila and walked towards the spire doors. Seroff remained where he was, preferring to stand in the rain than appear to act as an escort. No doubt he imagined himself a forbidding figure, alone on the landing pad in the rain. I’m sure he was, for the rank and file. But we wore the same uniform. We had come up through the schola progenium together. The more he tried to intimidate me, the more he diminished himself.

  I didn’t look back. ‘Throne, Dominic,’ I muttered. ‘Have a little dignity.’ We were much too ancient for such sad games.

  I had never met von Strab, and I had never been to the overlord’s Infernus residence. My dealings with all of the governmental bodies of the hives had been limited. I knew who the governors were, though. And I knew my way around the administrative centres. I had been attached to the Steel Legion long enough now that Armageddon was as close to a home as I had ever known. Seroff in his animosity kept me from the centres of the decision-making, but he had not prevented me from learning where those centres were, and who inhabited them. My first duty was to the Emperor, and the more I knew about Armageddon, the better I could serve the Father of Mankind.

  I had learned the cost of ignorance long ago, on Mistral. Lord Commissar Rasp, my mentor and Seroff’s, had warned us that what we did not know of a world’s political currents could be deadly. He had been correct. Even forewarned, we had stumbled. Our ignorance had almost killed us all. I had taken the lesson to heart.

  So I had come to know Armageddon. Over the years, I had come to know its spires and its depths. And they knew me.

  I navigated the halls, stairs and lifts that would take me to von Strab’s quarters with confidence. I would not appear at his door like a lost supplicant. I had my pride, too, no matter how much Seroff worked to trample it in the mud.

  The higher I went, the more luxurious my surroundings became, though the grime of Armageddon was always present. Even scrubbed by the ventilation system’s filters, the air tasted of grit, and had the faint smell of sulphur. The stained glass windows were darkened by the smoke and ash of the atmosphere. They also bore other, more symbolic stains. They paid tribute to the accomplishments of the planet’s ruling families. There was a grim continuity to the lineages pictured. On the surface, Armageddon’s politics had been characterised by remarkable stability for centuries. The same families had governed the hives for generations, and the von Strab dynasty’s rule of the planet had been unchallenged for as long. Beneath that surface was a history of rivalries, assassinations, treachery and corruption. The von Strabs embodied that tradition better than any of the other families, which was another reason they had ruled for so long. Their line of succession was neither patrilineal nor matrilineal. It was homicidal.

  The corridor I was in branched. To the right was the gateway to the quarters of Erner von Kierska, Governor of Hive Infernus. I went left. The hall ended after a few metres at an ornate iron desk. Behind it sat a serf in the livery of the von Strabs, and behind her was a bronze door engraved with the family’s coat of arms: eight spears, one for each of the great hives of Armageddon, held by a mailed fist. I presented myself to the serf, who ushered me to the door. She pulled the lever beside it, and it slid open, granting me access to the lift to the final reaches of the spire.

  For all the luxury on display, this was still Armageddon, still an industrial world. The machinery of the door was not smooth. It ratcheted with age and rust. The lift’s cage was unadorned, and it shook and screeched as it carried me upward. It sounded like the leavings of industry and the blood of politics had caked its gears. The bangs and mechanical stuttering lasted several minutes, and then the door opened again.

  I entered the vestibule to the overlord’s quarters. At this height, the rockcrete of the walls, floor and ceiling had been given a cladding of gold-veined marble. The impression created was that here, thousands of metres up, was where the construction of the hive had begun. Despite the taste of the air, the stone was clean. The windows were larger and more elaborate than those below, though just as darkened by the outside ash. They suggested, without actually tipping into the heretical, that the von Strabs had been given explicit dispensation from the Emperor to rule over Armageddon in perpetuity. The chamber was a large one, and empty except for another desk. It was made of the same marble as the cladding, and appeared to grow out of the floor. There was nothing else in the vast space. The excess of luxury was ridiculous. It radiated vanity and waste. It was very difficult to take the power behind this lavish display seriously.

  Failing to do so, however, would be a mistake. One that others had made. Fatally.

  The serf rose from his desk as I approached. His expression was a smooth sculpture of servility and superiority. ‘Commissar Yarrick,’ he said before I could speak.
‘Thank you for coming.’ As if I were waiting on his pleasure. ‘The overlord is expecting you.’ He barely repressed his amusement.

  I couldn’t help myself. ‘You mean he won’t be surprised?’ I said as I walked over to the desk.

  The serf paused, blinking, his hands on the gold-leaf-encrusted double doors in the centre of the far wall. He looked back at me, confused. I was not showing the required anxiety upon meeting the Great Man. I stepped forward and returned his stare. He swallowed, looked away, and pushed the doors open. He announced me and withdrew, closing the doors behind me as I stepped through. The boom of the doors bounced around the chamber in which I now found myself. I assumed the intended effect was more deliberate intimidation.

  The overlord’s Infernus throne room was twice the size of the vestibule. It occupied the entire width of the spire. The east and west walls were gigantic stained glass windows. Mirrored heroic portraits of von Strab in military uniform towered above the room, a colossus with his feet planted on the diminished orb of Armageddon. There was far more gold in the marble cladding. It twisted around pillars, exploded in convoluted webs from the keystones of the vaults, and covered the throne itself in such a profusion of leaves that it looked like a disease. At regular intervals around the periphery of the chamber stood the honour guard clad in black armaplas and ceramite armour. Over the heart on the carapace was the von Strab coat of arms, but otherwise there was little adornment. The soldiers were equipped in an attempt to resemble the Tempestus Scions, the resemblance enough to cow the citizens of Armageddon. Only the effort involved impressed me. Well protected from standard-issue M-35 Pattern rifles, they were only exceptional as a piece of theatre.

  On the throne, Overlord Herman von Strab presided in all his glory. The fourth son of Overlord Luther (deceased), younger brother of Anton (deceased), Otto (deceased) and Vilhelm (deceased), he was a squat man, almost as wide as he was tall, fat enough to look stronger than he was. He wore the same uniform as his image on the windows, darker than the dirty ochre of the Steel Legion trench coats, though its cut was similar enough to declare von Strab as the supreme commander of the regiment. He was bald, with a heavy brow that shadowed his sharp gaze. A bionic monocle sat over his right eye. A thin mechadendrite ran coiled from the lens around his skull and rose over his pate to bury itself in his forehead. Information boosts to his frontal lobe, I guessed, amplifying his ability to foresee consequences. All the better to plan and scheme.