The Lightning Tower & The Dark King by Dan Abnett; Graham McNeill

Author:Dan Abnett; Graham McNeill
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Warhammer 40K
Publisher: The Black Library
Published: 2008-05-29T22:00:00+00:00

THE EMPTINESS OF space shimmered in the glow of distant suns beyond the armoured glass, faraway planets and unknown systems turning in their prescribed arcs without thought for the dramas being played out on the stage of human endeavour. What did those who lived beneath these suns know of the Cheraut system and the blood that had been shed to pacify it in the name of the emergent Imperium of Mankind?

Curze stifled the anger such questions provoked, staring into his reflection with cold, obsidian eyes that resembled empty sockets in his pallid, sunken features. Lank hair hung to his neck like black ropes and spilled across his wide, powerful shoulders. He turned from his reflection, uncomfortable with the dreadful disappointment he saw there.

Glinting metal caught his sullen gaze: his armour, standing in a shadowed alcove on the far wall. He crossed the chamber and placed his hand on the skull-faced helmet. The gem-like facets of its lenses winked in the low light and the sweeping dark wings rose from its sides like the pinions of some avenging angel of night. The burnished plates were dark, as befitted the Primarch of the Night Lords, each one contoured perfectly to his form and worked with gold edging that caught the starlight.

Turning from his battle armour, he paced the hard, metallic floor of the gloomy, cavernous chamber that confined him. Thick steel columns supported a great vaulted ceiling, its upper reaches lost in shadow, and the hum of the mighty starfort’s reactor beat like a pulse in the metal.

This aesthetic of functional austerity was typical of the Imperial Fists, whose artifice had constructed this mighty orbital fortress as a base of operations with which to begin the compliance of the Cheraut system.

The Emperor’s Children had held their traditional victory feast before the first shot had been fired and together with Fulgrim’s Legion and the Night Lords, Rogal Dorn’s Imperial Fists had broken open the defences of the belligerent human coalition that resisted the coming of the Imperium. Within eight months of hard, bloody fighting, the eagle flew above the smoking ruins of the last bastion, but where Dorn lauded Fulgrim’s Legion, the conduct of the Night Lords had earned only his ire.

Matters had finally come to a head amid the silver ruins of Osmium.

Pyres of the dead stained the skies black and Curze had watched his chaplains orchestrating the executions of defeated prisoners when Dorn marched into his camp, his lean face thunderous. ‘Curze!’

Never once had Rogal Dorn called him by his forename.

‘Brother?’ he had replied.

‘Throne! What are you doing here?’ demanded Dorn, his normal, affable tone swallowed in the depths of his outrage. A phalanx of gold-armoured warriors followed their lord and Curze had immediately sensed the tension in the air.

‘Punishing the guilty,’ he had answered coolly. ‘Restoring order.’

The Primarch of the Imperial Fists shook his head. ‘This not order, Curze, it is murder. Order your warriors to stand down. My Imperial Fists will take over this sector.’

‘Stand down?’ said Curze. ‘Are they not the enemy?’

‘Not anymore,’ said Dorn.

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