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Автор Саймон Спуриэр
SIMON SPURRIER
FIRE WARRIOR
(Warhammer 40,000)
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 arc the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms arc legion: the Imperial Guard 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.
PROLOGUE
Is this real?
Someone, somewhere, is screaming. The world becomes phosphor and ozone; iridescent nebulae fire-bursting across the retina, purple and blue blemishes that gyrate then fade to black. A riot of percussive madness tears at the eardrums: angry chattering that pounds the air. Everything seems alive with its ugly, echoing resonance. Bolter fire.
I can’t feel my legs.
So: gather information. Analyse your surroundings. Commit details to memory.
The mind has been prepared for this. It is a fortress, impregnable and implacable. Use it.
There, directly above: a series of looping coils of ducting, once taut and efficient, now beginning to sag with the weight of years, smeared with desiccated rust, dribbling incontinently from elderly cracks and fissures. To the left, perhaps, something moving. Legs? Maybe. Colours are uncertain — a lifeless melange of pastels and blacks phasing in and out of the pain fog. Shadows and icicles. Metal clothing. Maybe blue.
I can taste blood...
More gunfire. The familiar strobelight of a bolter barrel, flickering nearby. The distant report of detonating shells, finding their targets. Smoke and ashes, fire and pain.
Something screams again. Is it me?
