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sorormaior · 18 days ago

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Kulikov

Act 1: The Witness

Chapter 5: The Long Year

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They dreamed again. Fractured little dreams that made no sense. They stood beside him, watching him grow more, and more and more unstable. Sometimes he spoke to them. Sometimes they spoke back. Cary thought the others might have seen them at some point. Sevatar’s eyes caught theirs as they stood close to Konnacht, the top of their head not even coming up to his elbow. Standing in a dungeon, Konnacht without his armour, the Great Angel standing before him. His red eyes alighted on their face. They think they might have heard him say their name, questioningly.

This too slips from them. Cary stands on a horrible ship, and watches Konnacht hunt the crew down to a man. A sad, frightened young man who is more fear than person. Sometimes this man can see them too. They keep trying to talk to him. They try to tell him to get back on the shuttle, to get away.

He doesn’t. He dies screaming.

They are standing in a throne room. It is so cold- they didn’t know they could feel cold in their dreams. He sits upon his throne. This is the Night Haunter. This is the Dark King.

“You’re going to die,” they manage.

“Yes,” says the Night Haunter. “Yet you live. I decree it.”

“I’m sorry,” Cary says. “I’m so sorry. I should have found you sooner.”

“No apologies should come from your mouth,” he says. “It is the gravity of my life that has changed the threads of yours.”

“I’m so cold,” they whisper.

He stands, he is so much older than when they left him. The Night Haunter reaches for them with bloodied hands.

Cary awoke. They reached up and touched their cheek, expecting the wet warmness there to be blood. Yet, it seemed only tears marked their face. The dream slipped away from them in pieces, as dreams are wont to do. They wiped at their face until no trace of tears remained.

The room had not changed, but they felt a little better. Cary swung their legs out of the cot and stood. Their body glove had been replaced with a sort of casual Ultramarine’s off-duty robes. It hung off of them loosely. Cary had always been small, narrower than the Night Lord average and an inch under seven feet. A variety of factors had led to this, not least of which were their poor eating habits as a teenager. There was only so much the augments could do against genetics. They noticed that behind their head, their jacket had been folded up once more. They pulled it on over the robe, out of the strange craving to have something familiar.

It sort of still fit on them. The hem hung far above their waist, and the sleeves only went down to just below their elbows. Cary remembered a time when the jacket had swallowed them, a time when they'd had to keep aggressively shoving the sleeves up to where they comfortably rested now.

They stretched and grimaced at the sound of their joints popping. A few tentative steps around the small room at least confirmed that they were still able to walk. Cary went to the armour rack, and lifted their helmet from its mount.

It had, like many Night Lord helmets, the face of a skull. Cary’s had always been silver in colour, as opposed to the real bone or white-painted helmets used by others. The bat wings which stretched out from the top were adamantine too. They’d often wondered if it was to help him find them, so that they’d be easier to kill when the time came. The ruby-red lenses stared back at them, dull without power.

The door opened, and the girl- Yarah, darted inside. She seemed breathless, and her eyes widened when she saw Cary standing.

“Good morning,” Cary said.

“Are you going to put it on?” Yarah asked between gasps of air.

“No, no point. There wouldn’t be any power to it,” they said, placing the helmet back on the armour rack. “You seem to be in a rush.”

“I just finished all my chores,” Yarah again sat on the stool. “I think the Inquisitor is bringing you breakfast.”

“How nice of him. I imagine that amounts to the usual Astartes rations.”

“I think he’s bringing eggs,” Yarah said.

Cary smiled, and took a seat on the edge of their cot.

“Eggs! I haven’t had eggs in years,” they paused. “Even before the stasis chamber.”

“Are you really as old as they say you are?” Yarah asked.

“I was there when the Emperor came to Nostramo,” Cary said.

She made a strange gesture then, crossing her hands over her chest so that her thumbs intertwined. When she looked at the obvious confusion on Cary’s face, she explained:

“It’s the salute of the aquila. You’re supposed to do it when the God-Emperor is mentioned.”

“Yes, that was another thing I was meaning to ask about,” Cary said, slowly. “The God-Emperor, you… worship him?”

Yarah looked at them as if they’d grown another head.

“Yes?”

“Right,” Cary said, absorbing that information. “Well, I bet wherever Lorgar is right now he’s very pleased with himself.”

Yarah flinched at the name.

“Sorry,” Cary apologised. “I knew him.”

“How many of the Primarchs did you know?”

“Well, I knew Lord Guilliman. I knew most of them decently well. Nacht wasn’t exactly a social creature, and neither was Sevatar. I knew how to talk to people, and they were more than happy to let me do it.”

“Did you know the Great Angel?” Yarah leaned forward, eyes wide and excited.

“I did,” they smiled. “He was as kind as they say he was.”

“Was he pretty?”

Cary laughed. Yarah scowled at them.

“Sorry, sorry. He was beautiful- they were all beautiful in a strange way.”

“ All of them?” Yarah looked doubtful

“Beauty is not the measure of morality, else this would be a very different Imperium.”

Cary looked towards the door. The heavy sound of boots echoed down the corridor. They turned back to find Yarah already shutting herself inside the ablution chamber.

Soon enough the door opened, and once again Inquisitor Gael stepped through. Cary had no way of knowing if the Ultramarine accompanying him was once again Elaius, but they were sure they would know in time.

“Good morning, Captain Kulikov,” the Inquisitor said brightly.

In his hands he held a tray, which he set down on the desk. Cary could see that they had in fact been brought eggs, sausage, and toast. There even appeared to be a pot of recaf.

“We thought you might be hungry, having not had a meal for the past ten thousand years,” he joked.

They were hungry, it was true. They weren’t exactly sure when their last meal had been.

“Thank you, Inquisitor,” Cary replied, accepting the cup that he had poured for them.

In his hands, the cup had been more the size of a bowl. Gael let them drink and eat before once again asking them to continue their story. He was oddly relaxed for an Inquisitor, which was off-putting in itself.

“We had just gone over the death of my father, yes?” Cary took another sip of recaf.

“I believe so.”

“Then we should start at the beginning of the Long Year.”

The seasons of Nostramo were never pleasant. The rain was always warm no matter the month of the year, it never even seemed to matter where you were in the hive. You were always either too hot or too cold.

However, Nostramans often marked the start of the year with colourful ribbons, streaming from their windows, tied to the criss-cross of metal struts between hab blocks. The upper hivers would set off sparkrockets, showering the hive below with brightly coloured sparkles. It hurt the eyes to look at them, just another way the upper hives kept the lower hives in check really.

Still, if you had smoked glasses, then the displays were quite pretty. Cary had found a pair of these silver rimmed glasses shoved in the gap between the bed and the wall when they moved into the hab. They’d climbed up to the roof to watch, assuming they’d be completely alone. It was one of the years when it hadn't rained for year’s beginning, but still, not everyone had smoked glasses.

They were lying on the roof, staring up at the swirls of colour and explosion of sparks, when the sky was eclipsed by darkness.

“What is this?” Asked the Night Haunter.

He was squinting painfully, hunched like an animal. Dark trails of his hair threatened to brush Cary’s face, so they sat up, shielding their eyes as they handed him the glasses.

“Year’s beginning, we’re celebrating the start of a new year,” Cary explained, helping him slide the glasses over his ears.

He craned his neck backward to look up as they had. The Night Haunter had only gotten larger in the past few months, he took up all four of the sofa cushions now. The only lucky thing was that he only seemed to need to eat every few days or so, like a lion. Cary squinted at him, lit up brightly in the painful beauty of the sparkrockets.

The Night Haunter watched carefully, Cary could see those points of white at the side of his eyes moving- it was strange to see where someone was looking. Normally Nostramans indicated where they were looking by inclining their heads or gesturing.

“It is too bright,” he said.

“Yeah, they’re really making a show of it this year.” Cary squinted at the upper hive. “Not exactly surprising.”

“I have a plan,” the Night Haunter said.

“Oh?” Cary looked at him.

“I am going to take over Quintus,” he said, solemnly.

“Right,” Cary replied.

“I am serious.”

“I’m sure you are- Nacht, you’re one man, and not a very well liked one at that.”

They had started shortening the name, using an old Nostraman word for Night. He didn’t seem to mind it.

“I have a plan,” the Night Haunter repeated.

“Tell me.”

After he had finished explaining, Cary could only stare at him.

“Once I have subjugated Quintus, the other cities of Nostramo will follow. They already fear me, fear what I can do. I will root out corruption and I will root out disorder.”

It was a little hard to take him seriously while he was still wearing the smoked glasses.

“I want to make the Corps a force for true justice,” he said, a little quieter. “I want to give people hope, give them peace. That they are no longer subject to the whims of the gangs.”

“You probably won’t have to kill many of them,” Cary replied. “Upper hivers will do anything to save their own skin. Not of course that us lower hive scum wouldn’t but y’know how rich people are.”

Cary doubted he knew how rich people were. There were still so many gaps in his knowledge, the kind of social knowledge that would have come with a normal upbringing.

“When are you going to start?” Cary asked.

He took off the smoked glasses and dropped them into Cary’s hand. The Night Haunter stood and craned his head to look up towards the tallest spire of the hive.

“Tonight.”

In a single night, seven of Quintus’ Justicars went missing. Their remains were later found scattered across the city. Cary had often seen their names at the top of documents, seen them shaking hands with the gang leaders, seen them smiling for picts. They were the most rotten of the Justicars, the ones known for taking bribes, for having the most connections, for having their hands in the dirtier businesses of Quintus.

Cary couldn’t say the officials would be missed. But it put everyone on edge. They were taking on more shifts as the Night Haunter took precedence over almost anything else. The rich were getting scared, the gangs were too. Any disruption of peace and law was tracked down and methodically eliminated. Not even the highest level of hiver was safe, they’d heard over the vox that the Mirthless, the Blade Carrion- even the Chatterers had been slaughtered to a man. Those of them that had survived scattered to the winds, like cockroaches scrambling away from a lifted rock.

It surprised Cary when he went after the counter-culturalists, the young ones who printed their own newspapers and demanded change. After all, it only usually took a few years for their spirits to be broken, for them to become just another cog in the churning machine of Nostramo. Their Dad had caught them with one of the pamphlets once. Made them sleep outside in the winter rain- caught blacklung and they’d been coughing up grey miner’s mucus for weeks afterwards.

It made Cary uneasy to see the idealists cut down like the others. Like the gangers and the squandering nobles. They worked up the nerve to ask him about it when he had appeared in their hab, early in the morning. They usually saw each other in the ash-grey hours of morning, Cary supposed it was when his “shift” ended too.

“Why the Ribboners?” Cary asked him.

He looked up at them.

“Who?”

“The kids on Third Ring, the ones printing their own papers- Advocates for Change, I think that’s what they called themselves.”

Everyone called them the Ribboners, for the brightly coloured year’s beginning ribbons they tied in their hair and clothing. Symbols of change, of making things anew

“They interrupted order,” the Night Haunter said.

There had been riots recently. The Ribboners had taken advantage of the general chaos he’d been sowing to canvas the city openly. Cary hadn’t been there- been called by Grike to a different Night Haunter crime scene, but they’d heard it hadn’t ended well for anyone in the Ribboners’ way.

“They had some good ideas,” Cary pointed out.

The Night Haunter arched an eyebrow.

“Such as?”

“Improving things somewhat. Y’know, so that there aren’t kids in gangs, or trafficking, or privatised health services, or that people should actually be getting punished for crimes,” Cary listed.

“Order can stop these things,” he said. “They didn’t seem particularly interested in the improvement of the city when they were throwing bricks through windows.”

Cary wondered how long it would take to break down political activism to the Night Haunter. To explain that while yes those actions were bad, had a negative impact on the world, it was only a brick through a window. That what they were fighting for was to be heard, that they were raging against a system that had tried to crush all human life again and again and again. That they had little else to live for but the hope that something, anything would change.

“I’ll remind you that they were only able to rally because you’ve just murdered about half the leadership of Quintus,” Cary said, pointing their fork at him. “It’s chaos out there right now.”

“And from the ashes, order will be born,” he promised.

Cary hadn’t been there, the day he went before the remaining nobles and Justicars and other officiants. Cary hadn’t heard what he had said to them, what words he had cunningly worked (he’d become increasingly verbose over the year), or what he had offered them. The only thing they knew was that when they awoke in the evening, they had several missed calls on their prelector- which was also flashing with an emergency news alert.

Quintus had just installed the Night Haunter as their king.

Unas, Dyas, Tridentarius and Tettares had already pledged their allegiances, after refusing Quintus aid for years. Cary had to just sit and stare at the prelector for a few minutes, before checking the messages. Most of them were from Grike and Olenka, their aunt wanting to know if they’d seen the news and Grike asking them to call as soon as they woke up.

Then of course, there was one message from a contact Cary had never seen before. It was marked Official Invitation , with the small icon at the corner bearing Nostramo Quintus’ coat of arms. Cary pressed it, and let the message play.

“Officer Kulikov,” a steady, administrative voice said. “The… The king of Nostramo Quintus, the Night Haunter, requests your presence at the Justicial Tower at your earliest convenience, as a witness. At the acceptance of this message, the Quintus Peace Corps will be informed of your absence for the day.”

Cary swore. Stared at the prelector. Swore again.

“Thank you for your response, we will be sure to pass it on.”

“What? No, nonono-,” they leapt towards the screen, but the message had vanished.

They went back to their bed, and fell face down onto it. It seemed to be the only reasonable action at this point, the only sane thing left to do.

Still clipped onto their belt from the shift last night, their vox crackled.

“ Kulikov answer your damn vox now! ”

Grike.

Cary got up, went to the pipes where their work trousers hung and took their vox.

“Here, Grike, though I’d like to point out these are unpaid hours-,” they attempted to sound at least a little jovial.

Grike swore, loudly, and continued swearing for some time.

“You realise we have a damned Justicial Excusal here for you? To go to the Tower? Can you explain any of this?” He demanded.

“I got a summons on the prelector. I’ve been asked to attend the Tower as a witness.”

“A witness?” Grike repeated.

“Yes, sir.”

“What the hell is that meant to mean?”

“Well, it was my shutter that got a picture of his face. When I called the crime into the station I said I had a witness: me. Maybe he thinks he’s being funny,” Cary grimaced.

They knew for a fact the Night Haunter would think it funny.

“Cary if you go there, there’s every chance you’re gonna end up disembowelled and hung off the parapets. Your father- does he know about your father? We can get you out of the city, off-world if we need to,” he was rambling now.

Off-world was a pipe dream even for the hivers in the Spire, let alone someone who’d been born Scar-side.

“It’ll be fine,” Cary said. “I’m going.”

“Kulikov-,”

Cary turned the vox off, and started to get dressed.

The Justicial Tower wasn’t the highest point of Nostramo Quintus, but it was the largest. A tall dark spike that challenged the heavens like an interlocutory finger, gothic in its architecture and dramatic in its silhouette. Cary had never been. Supposedly the courts were supposed to be held there, in the rare occasion someone had committed a crime worthy of going before a judge and hadn’t been killed before they got there. Sometimes the accused hadn’t even committed the crime, sometimes people who should have been taking a long walk off a short pier got off scott free.

It was no wonder that in the back of their mind, they felt as if they were attending the gallows. They squinted through the rain at the jumping map on the screen of the motorcyc. Having never been there before, Cary had been forced to key in the address to the bike’s compass.

People looked at them, a class of people Cary had never seen before. The well-dressed and the well fed. The noble sons and daughters of Nostramo, so much better than lower hivers for some inscrutable quality of their blood.

Cary didn’t think they looked much different from those on City’s Edge.

When they reached the gates of the Justicial Tower, there was an uncomfortable edge to the air. Fear. Uncertainty. Cary wondered if anyone in this part of Quintus had ever felt this kind of fear before. The fear the lower hives had been struggling with for centuries, that the upper hive had only now come to appreciate.

The guards stood aside, told them where to park their bike. The helmeted figures didn’t even ask for any identification, though likely Cary’s personal files had already been pulled up by anyone who had the means to. They were in a half delirious mood as they hopped up black granite steps and through an ornately carved doorway.

The inside of the Tower was lavish- like a palace from a novel. It seemed unreal in its vaulted ceilings, the smooth black marble shot through with silver streaks of adamantine. It reminded Cary of lightning in a midnight sky, and the image stuck with them for a long time.

The floors were smooth stone, slate-grey but flecked with a gunmetal sheen. The lumens here cast a dim blue glow over all, giving it an ethereal, unreal feeling.

“Officer Kulikov?” A soft voice said.

Cary turned, a pale haired administrator was looking at them. Her grey jacket was more finely tailored than the admin from the alleyway had been, with a statelier collar and fine silver trim. She was probably in her twenties, if they’d had to guess, and had a smooth oval shaped face. Cary nodded, their mouth suddenly dry.

“If you would follow me,” she said.

Cary wanted to make some kind of conversation as they walked down the halls, past carved ebony doors and carved silver statues. But the quiet seemed to press in from all sides. If they heard other people it was in frantic whispers behind closed doors. Cary heard snatches of “Can’t possibly…” and “The damned Night Haunter! ”.

They reached a pair of tall, ash-grey doors. Five great lions from Nostramo’s past chased each other in a circle across their surface.

The administrator placed her hand on the doorknob, before turning to Cary.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

Cary’s eyebrows furrowed, then they realised.

“Oh, no, it’s fine. He’s not gonna kill me.”

The administrator looked at them.

“Your response called him a-”

“I’m aware- how many people heard that? At a conservative estimate?” They asked.

The administrator’s mouth twisted.

“His majesty played it before the court,” she said.

Cary had never had any idea how many people were even in the court, let alone after the Night Haunter’s purge. They assumed it was a decent number.

“I didn’t know it was recording me,” they admitted.

“Very clearly,” the administrator drawled, then opened the door.

It revealed a long room, where a grand oval shaped table stretched almost the entire length of it, carved of a single chunk of adamantine. Black robed officials hung in clumps around the room, like crows waiting to pick over carrion.

At the end of the table was a tall black throne. Cary wondered if they’d already had it on hand or if they’d made it for the Night Haunter. He sat there as if it was truly where he was meant to be, like he had always been there.

The administrator bowed as she entered, and Cary didn’t even notice she was waiting for them to do the same. Feeling semi ridiculed in bowing to a man who had boiled a human head in their only soup pot, they copied the gesture.

“My Lord Night Haunter,” the administrator said, her voice now cut of steel and echoing around the hall. “I present Officer Kulikov.”

The Night Haunter rose. The soft chattering of the crows went quiet.

“You may leave me,” he said.

The crows seemed unused to being dismissed in this manner, but they left quickly. Even the administrator left without a second look. Cary was already moving past them all anyway, looking the Night Haunter up and down.

Firstly, they’d made clothes that fit him. It was strange to actually see where his shoulders lay, to see him in the tailored clothes of the nobility. They had also apparently washed him, as his hair lacked the shine of grease it usually bore. Cary had once or twice managed to coax him into the tiny ablution chamber in their hab, managed to spray him down with the showerhead and get some conditioner in his hair. Though usually he stated that he didn’t see the point.

He was smiling. Cary smacked his forearm.

“What the hell are you?” They asked, incredulously. “You were a serial killer who sometimes crashed on my floor and now you’re king? ”

He laughed. The Night Haunter had a distinct laugh, somewhere between a bark and the croak of a carrion bird. Cary noticed a dark crown sitting on his brow, a shape of black iron, all angles and spikes.

“I am the Night Haunter,” he said. “I have done what I was created to do, unite this planet under my banner. All that is left is to create a model of conformity, of compliance.”

“Best of luck to you,” Cary replied. “Nacht, why am I here?”

I am no one and nothing, the statement hung in the air, the truth Cary had more or less come to terms with over the past year. Now that he was king, what use did he have of them? They doubted that he would continue to sleep on the floor of their hab, on a cobbled bed of worn sofa cushions.

“As my witness,” he said, simply.

“Yes, very funny of you.”

“Cary- I want you to watch me,” he said, reaching out and placing a large hand on their shoulder.

Even through the jacket they could feel the heat of his skin- he had always been feverishly hot, like he was constantly ill. They looked at him, still not understanding.

“ Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ?” He said, as if that was meant to clear anything up.

The Night Haunter had attempted to teach them some of the strange, archaic sounding language he claimed to have known since his birth. Cary furrowed their brow in translation.

“Who watches… the watcher?” They guessed.

“Close. Who will watch the watchman? Who among these cowards would tell me that I am going too far? That my hand could extend in mercy, rather than death?”

“You want me to choose who lives and dies,” Cary said, their voice flat.

“Not quite. I want you to give counsel to me. You know the people, you have always known people- known their hearts. I do not trust these vultures and scavengers, looking to pick apart the remains of the tumours I have excised from Quintus. I trust you when you tell me I am wrong.”

Cary struggled to recall a time they had ever called him wrong. There had been times where they strongly suggested a different course of action, Cary had assumed that most of them had been resolutely ignored. After all, they’d kept finding corpses. Enough to block storm drains.

“Can you do that?” He asked.

“I’ll do it.”

#warhammer 40k #wh40k #cary kulikov tag #caryfic act one tag

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