Sons of the Hydra

by Rob Sanders

  Putting their pauldrons against a large crate, the legionnaires heaved. They obscured the entrance to a freight elevator – one of several set in the ice wall of the cavern – and moved the stasis container across the snow. Watching for patrolling pairs of Battle Sisters, the Redacted made their move. Autolicon Phex slipped across to the elevator car. With Phex kneeling down under the weight of his heavy plasma gun, hydrogen flasks and grenades, the legionnaires – one by one – ran across and received a boost from the renegade. Launched up at a rough hatch in the sizeable elevator car, the legionnaires climbed up onto the roof before pulling Phex up with them.

  In the silence and gloom of the ice-carved elevator shaft, the Redacted paused. Positioning themselves behind the car’s bulky cable assembly, they waited in silence, kneeling on the roof of the elevator like statues. The car didn’t boast anything as sophisticated as mag-locks in the ice shaft: its controls simply operated a heavy-duty winch system situated above the renegades. It was noisy but reliable and carried the car up and down the shaft, between the cavern-repository and various sub-levels that had been carved into depths of the ice. As they moved, Sergeant Hasdrubal listened at the elevator hatch and Reznor’s servo-automata hovered on their repulsors, scanning the different levels with their enhanced augurs. They fed their data back to the warpsmith, who in turn relayed it to Occam when the elevator car was on an empty return.

  ‘Feedbacks confirm that the upper levels are dominated by heavy machinery,’ Reznor confirmed, ‘which makes sense. Installation would have been easier and it could have been put in place earlier while the lower levels were still being excavated.’

  ‘Generatorum?’ the strike master asked.

  ‘Yes, as well as some kind of operations complex,’ the warpsmith suggested.

  ‘Below that I suspect are the quarters and garrison levels for the Sisters,’ Reznor said. ‘Fewer returns there. Little activity.’

  ‘And beneath those?’

  ‘Repository levels, utilising the greatest concentration of security features,’ Reznor said. ‘Blast doors, hexagrammics, basic augur sweeps, sentry stations and patrols – at least as far as these readings suggest. No promises.’

  ‘We have no interest in those,’ Occam said, ‘now we know that the Word Bearers have the prize they came for.’

  ‘The warpsmith and I disagree,’ the sorcerer Quoda reminded his strike master, but in the planning stages of the venture Occam had overruled the pair’s request to investigate the secured treasures of the Inquisitorial repository.

  ‘Anything below those?’ Occam pressed the warpsmith.

  ‘At the very bottom, a smaller complex,’ Reznor told him.

  ‘Except no stasis containers have been transported down there in the whole time we’ve been monitoring,’ the sergeant said, lifting his helm up from the hatch. ‘Only personnel.’

  ‘Best guess?’ Occam put to him.

  ‘Mostly priests, I’d say,’ Hasdrubal informed him, ‘senior acolytes and Sisters – along with inquisitors. Agents have made regular trips down there.’

  ‘Prisoners?’ Occam asked.

  ‘I’d say so,’ the sergeant said.

  ‘It’s settled then,’ Occam decided. ‘Sergeant, take Quoda and the warpsmith. I want you to infiltrate the upper level and make your way to the generatorum. Use whatever strategies necessary to disguise your presence.’

  ‘Even Quoda?’ the sergeant asked. ‘Won’t use of his abilities set off some kind of alarm?’

  Occam nodded. As well as training, stealth, silent slaughter and the chameleonic properties of their plate and cloaks, the strike master was sending them with their only psyker. People saw what they expected to see and Quoda’s powers might just be enough to make even devout Sisters and staunch inquisitors blind to the renegades’ presence.

  ‘Augurs are most likely concentrated in the repository levels to monitor the corruption of the cargo,’ Reznor reassured them. ‘Little use for them in the operations section or generatorum.’

  ‘Once in the generatorum,’ Occam continued, ‘I want the warpsmith to engineer a controlled overload. Nothing explosive. As far as the installation is concerned, we’re looking at a reactor malfunction. They will send their enginseers.’

  ‘But they won’t reach the reactors,’ Sergeant Hasdrubal said. ‘We’ll see to that.’

  ‘You want a meltdown?’ Reznor clarified.

  ‘Of the surrounding ice,’ Occam said. ‘Warm meltwater should melt further channels on the upper level and drain down the open elevator shafts.’

  ‘That follows,’ the warpsmith said, ‘but once it begins there will be no stopping it.’

  ‘I’m counting on it,’ Occam told him. ‘The dungeon level will become flooded…’

  ‘…forcing the security forces down there to evacuate the prisoners,’ Hasdrubal added with approval.

  ‘Malik, Phex and I will ride down to the dungeon level,’ the strike master said, ‘and will take possession of the transported prisoners in the car. All rendezvous in the cavern-repository for a tactical withdrawal. Installation to Serpent’s Egg. The Dreadclaw back to the Iota-Æternus. Understood?’

  The legionnaires nodded silently.

  As the car shuddered up towards the cavern-repository to collect another consignment of cargo, the Alpha Legionnaires got ready. Positioning themselves either side of the doorway opening onto the operations level, Hasdrubal leant his helmet to one side and risked a brief glance. With the broad corridor of ice empty, the sergeant led Arkan Reznor and the sorcerer Quoda off the roof of the moving car and down the freezing passage towards the distant boom of the generatorum. Beta, Zeta and Theta drifted close by after them.

  Occam, Malik and Phex remained hidden on the car roof as it went down the shaft. They held position as the car came to a stop and unloaded a consignment of crates on a repository level. From there it carried agents of the ordo, notaries and Battle Sisters down into the depths. The strike master couldn’t hear any klaxons or the hammer of boots into the elevator car that would signify security forces had been scrambled to the operations level.

  It soon became apparent that the sergeant had succeeded in his mission, as meltwater began to seep, trickle, and then gush down the wall from the operations level opening. Warm water began stripping away the ice wall of the shaft and filling it with steam. Listening through the hatch, they heard the Battle Sisters vox the base enginseers with instructions to inspect the environmental controls and the generatorum. Occam knew, of course, what they would find was a quietly overloading reactor that despite their best efforts would continue to heat the ice about it.

  ‘Not long now,’ the strike master told Malik and Phex. ‘Prime your weapons.’

  Holstering his pistol and blades, the former Night Lord brought his adapted plasma gun to life. With some calibration, Malik brought the sound of the weapon’s deep hum down and concealed the blue glow of the barrel with a sliding shutter. As Occam followed suit, Autolicon Phex did the same with his heavy plasma gun.

  As a waterfall of black meltwater gushed down the shaft wall, the strike master brought his helm optics down to a crack he had set up between the hatch and car roof. Observing in silence and angling his view, Occam took in the occupants of the car.

  He immediately saw the white plate of Battle Sisters. Promethium sloshed about in the canisters of the flamers they were carrying. Two were bereft of helmets and shaved. One had an eye that had been stapled shut while the second, some kind of officer in an ermine cloak, had black symbols of reverence and devotion burned into her teeth. She was speaking into a vox headset.

  ‘Double the perimeter guard,’ the officer said with a snarl. ‘I want reports from all patrols out on the ice and security logs for the repository levels triple-checked.’

  ‘It could be just a malfunction,’ her compatriot with the stapled eye said. ‘The cold – nothing much seems to work on this ice ball.’

  ‘Such naivety is not your reputation, Sister Superior,’ the off
icer spat, holding the receiver of her vox headset. ‘You know as well as I, there is no such thing as just a malfunction, but I expect that is what the ordo’s forces on Nemesis Spectra thought before the apocalypse rained down on them from orbit. The renegade and heretic are not to be underestimated.’

  ‘Never, palatine,’ the Sister Superior answered.

  Occam saw that the pair carried chains of barbed silver and manacle restraints – the kind that might be used in transferring dangerous prisoners.

  When the elevator arrived at the bottom of the shaft, Occam felt a shudder and resistance. The meltwater that had collected in the dungeon level of the complex slowed the elevator down before gushing in from the connecting passageway and flooding the car up to the Battle Sisters’ thighs. Holding their flamers and hissing primers above the water, the Sisters cursed and waded into the darkened depths of the frozen dungeon.

  After they left, Occam could hear voices and shouting from the oubliettes. Here, the Inquisition had secured their prisoners: dangerous heretics, nullified witchbreeds, altereds and Traitor Space Marines. The strike master hooked his ceramite fingertips under the hatch and quietly opened it. Motioning for Phex, Occam directed the legionnaire to position himself above the hatch with the barrel of his heavy plasma gun pointing down. The strike master and Malik positioned themselves either side of him, criss-crossing their aim down into the car.

  ‘Move, you heretical scum,’ Occam heard the palatine say as the Battle Sisters splashed their way back through the rising waters.

  Through the open hatch, Occam saw that the Battle Sisters had their flamers slung and were holding a lone prisoner in chains between them. Occam could tell from his size that he was an Adeptus Astartes legionary. A pale and battered specimen of genetic engineering, whose armourless body was splattered with blood and filth.

  With his bloodied wrists manacled behind him and his ankles chained loosely together, the hulking prisoner had a brace around his bulging neck and a caged bridle about his head. He was struggling to walk and his hands rattled in their chains like his head in its cage. Patches of skin across the prisoner’s body were black with the withering effects of frostbite. It became clear to Occam that the ordo torturers had made effective use of their frozen surroundings. As the prisoner was moved into the centre of the car, Occam could see that his face was in a terrible state.

  Chains radiating out from links on the neck brace were held by the Battle Sisters, keeping the prisoner in place between their number. While the Sister Superior held an Inferno pistol pointed up at the back of the huge prisoner’s caged head, the palatine held the wicked curvature of a chainblade against his muscular side. She tapped the teeth of the weapon against his chest.

  ‘One move,’ she snarled at the prisoner, staring into his skull-cage. ‘You so much as blink at me the wrong way, traitor…’

  Angling his view through the hatch, Occam looked down upon the prisoner. He could see that he was a Word Bearer. Though carrying himself like a whipped dog, the proud defiance of his Legion could still be seen in the glint of his bloodshot eyes and the set of his jaw. His flesh was like an unholy text. Those patches that were not frostbitten and black were a contested space of words and symbols tattooed into the skin. Faded beneath were sigils and incantations that Occam recognised as ruinous markers and honoraria. These covered his whole body, while over the top – in bloody ink much fresher than the heretical flesh-scripture – were hexagrammic symbols and writing in High Gothic.

  With the prisoner secure, an inquisitor entered the elevator car. His ordo robes and the small mountain of exotic furs cascading down from his armoured shoulders made wading through the meltwater difficult. A bionic claw tapped nervously against the grip of a holstered bolt pistol, while the other clutched his helm. He treated the occupants of the elevator car to his skull-face. The beneficiary of many rejuvenat treatments and surgeries, the inquisitor’s face was mottled, threadbare skin stretched across the sharp bones. It was almost transparent in places. His eyes were orbs misty with age, behind which bionic optics had been implanted, making his pupils and the surrounding transparency of his skull glow red. He also no longer had his own teeth, instead baring implanted fangs of sanctified silver. Somehow the agent of the Holy Ordos managed to make a seemingly permanent scowl with the tight skin of his face – a mask of prejudice and hatred.

  ‘Lord inquisitor,’ the palatine asked, ‘what about the others?’

  ‘One did not survive the exorcism,’ the inquisitor said, ‘the other, the interrogations that followed. I will not allow this wretched specimen the mercy of drowning. Get him up to one of the repository levels, somewhere this flood cannot reach him. I want him secured in one of the empty reliquaries. Then, lady-palatine, I shall expect a full report regarding what on Holy Terra is going on.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ the palatine replied, throwing the crank that activated the elevator.

  Once again, Occam felt the winch struggle. It wasn’t just carrying the passengers, it was trying to lift half a car full of meltwater. The elevator shuddered back up the ice shaft, water draining from the car as it moved. Occam knew they couldn’t wait much longer. With every passing moment the chance of the Redacted being discovered on top of the elevator car or in the generatorum increased. Between floors, the occupants of the car were stranded and beyond the help of Battle Sisters sentries in both the dungeon and on the repository levels above.

  ‘Now,’ Occam ordered.

  The Battle Sisters heard the sub-atomic whoosh of Phex’s heavy plasma gun and looked up. There was nothing they could do to stop the cataclysmic blast of blue fury that raged down through the car. Phex pumped orb after blistering orb down through the hatch, blasting screaming Sisters down through scorched holes in the car floor. Occam and Malik joined the mayhem, sending streams of furious plasma balls down into the car that burned straight through plate and flesh. About the prisoner, Sisters of Battle died – the victims of the Alpha Legion’s expert aim and unrelenting destruction.

  In the moments that followed, everything was havoc. Battle Sisters disappeared in blinding eruptions of plasma while others clutched holes burned clean through their chests and abdomens before crashing down onto their knees and toppling over. The unsteady prisoner was dragged down with them and both the palatine and Sister Superior had to rescue themselves from falling through wide holes melted through the car floor.

  ‘Word Bearers!’ the palatine roared, her lips contorted about the ugly exclamation. As she pointed her chainblade up at the hatch, the occupants of the car returned fire. The Sister Superior’s Inferno pistol melted blast holes up through the roof of the car, while the lord inquisitor’s bolt pistol – fast out of its holster in his bionic claw – punched bolts wildly up at the Redacted. As a column of fire from a Battle Sister’s flamer raged through the hatch, the legionnaires were knocked back. Malik stumbled and Phex’s camo-cloak caught light. When the flames evaporated, Occam could see that the lord inquisitor was standing over his prisoner.

  ‘You return, enemy of the Emperor,’ the inquisitor called up through the hatch, his bolt pistol wavering before the Word Bearer’s head. ‘Surrender, or I shall deny you your prize.’

  Occam knew he had to act. He could gun the inquisitor down from the elevator car roof, but now he had stated his intention, Occam could never hit the Sister Superior and palatine before they ended the prisoner.

  Thudding across the roof with powered steps, the strike master jumped and dropped down through the hatch. Appearing from the gloom of the ice shaft, Occam landed on the inquisitor. Using the weight of his plate and the force of the drop, the strike master smashed the inquisitor’s frame, bionic workings and ornate suit into the floor. Aiming his plasma gun down at the metal claw clutching the bolt pistol, which Occam now had pinned, he blasted both weapon and appendage to steaming oblivion.

  Besides the palatine and her Sister Superior, only one Battle Sister had survived the plasma onslaught. In her scorched white plate she turned on O
ccam, aiming the nozzle of her flamer at him.

  ‘So, you’re going to burn us all, Sister?’ Occam taunted.

  ‘Do it!’ the palatine commanded, as the Sister hesitated. Her commander had no such qualms about sacrificing everyone in the elevator car to destroy the Word Bearers.

  ‘Malik,’ the strike commander called. A second later, the Battle Sister’s head was gone – blazed from her shoulders in a flash of plasma. As her body dropped, Occam could see the former Night Lord through the hatch, kneeling on the car roof, peering down his weapon.

  Barging the corpse of their falling Sister aside, the palatine and Sister Superior threw themselves at Occam.

  ‘Die, heretic!’ the palatine bawled, as the strike master brought his plasma gun up. Sparks flew as she batted the barrel of the weapon aside. Carried off by the thrashing teeth, the plasma gun was torn from Occam’s grip and flew at the elevator wall. As the blade slashed back, he felt its barbs bite into the surface of his plate.

  Turning with the motion, Occam snatched his power scourge from his belt and thumbed it to crackling agitation. Whipping the tendril blades around, the strike master struck the curved chainblade. Sparking pieces of the weapon hit the opposite wall. As the Sister Superior shot a superheated blast of energy at the strike master from her Inferno pistol, he snatched the palatine up by her breastplate and used the Battle Sister as a shield. Occam watched the expression on the palatine’s face change as the melta blast cooked its way through her.

  Throwing her corpse to one side, he passed the scourge between his gauntlets, bringing the snaking tendrils up and over his head. Ripping them down through the Sister Superior, he paused as he completed the manoeuvre. The scourge had cut the one-eyed Sister into pieces. Clean cuts through plate and bone meant that the Sister Superior swiftly became a mound of toppling flesh.