Sons of the Hydra

by Rob Sanders

  As Occam stumbled back towards the steps of the colossal black pyramid, he passed the Alpha Legion officer and several renegades taking cover behind a fallen monument. With the bulbous targeter of his helm trained upon the whirling storm, the officer and his legionnaires emptied their boltguns at the star god. Legionnaires in surrounding towers pumped Stalker rounds into the maelstrom before jumping down from their positions as the storm tore through their structures. Bright flashes bloomed about the star god as heavy weapons legionnaires fired their missile launchers into the swirling brilliance, but the storm of the Deceiver swallowed it all.

  ‘Unleash the Word Bearers,’ Occam called, slapping Malik on the pauldron.

  ‘They’ll want to kill us all,’ the former Night Lord said.

  ‘We’re going to need their rage,’ Occam told him, pushing Malik up the steps towards the Dissolutio Perpetua, which rocked in station above the pyramid in the swell of the storm. ‘We need everyone.’

  More blossoms of flame erupted about the star god’s swirling havoc as heavy weapons legionnaires launched missile after missile into the alien entity. Occam launched another melta bomb at the storm, only to have the vaporising flash simply assimilated into its brilliance and fury. Surrounding the Deceiver, Alpha Legion renegades emerged from the cover of ancient tombs and techno-mausolea to unleash their weaponry upon the star god. The strike master could see the flash of barrels as legionnaires, unified in their abhorrence of the alien creature and their desire for vengeance, pumped bolt-round after bolt-round into the furious thing.

  The star god’s column of white fire began to swirl about like loosening rope. The destruction ploughed through the ancient structures of Royal Belphagar, tearing through temples, tombs and monuments. Above, the energy maelstrom crackled across the surface of the molten core, drawing some of the orb’s own fury down into itself. Swirling around, the column cut through the flotilla of Alpha Legion vessels stationed there. Several frigates were sheared in two, while a light cruiser was plunged straight into the fiery core.

  Other vessels were flung away, tumbling strangely through the gravitational reversals to crash and detonate spectacularly across the cityscape. One demolished one of the colossal temple nodes that projected a stabilising beam of green energy up into the planetary core. As the thick beam stuttered and died, the core began to tremble.

  Gravitational reversals began to tear through the cityscape and Occam could feel the black pyramid shaking beneath his boots. It was as if the whole planet were shaking itself apart. Beyond the apocalyptic boom of ancient buildings collapsing, Occam could detect the distant thunder of a similar destruction on the planet surface. The quakes had set in motion a chain reaction of toppling pylons, the thin needles cracking and falling over – only to strike several more structures in the cluster.

  Occam looked up the pyramid at the Dissolutio Perpetua and the Alpha Legion light cruiser flanking it.

  ‘Sigma Sophistra,’ he voxed across the open channel, ‘this is Strike Master Occam on the ground. Concentrate your fire on the target – point blank. Legionnaires expendable, I repeat. Dump everything you have on that monstrosity.’

  Occam pulled the sorcerer Quoda back up the steps of the pyramid.

  ‘All legionnaires receiving,’ the strike master called across the vox. ‘Pull back. Fire incoming.’

  The broadside came faster than any of them were expecting. Naetrix Krayt had ordered his starboard gun crews level their cannon fire at the swirling brilliance carving a path of devastation through the city. The sound was ear-splitting, even within Occam’s helm. When the cannonfire hit the city, it felt as if the world were ending. Massive explosions ripped through the buildings, blasting dust, darkness and debris outwards in a wave that took the strike master off his feet, further up the steps of the pyramid.

  As the murk cleared, Occam could see that the devastation had knocked out the swirling tornado of brilliance. A tall figure stalked through the destruction. Lithe, otherworldly, lethal. It appeared to be some kind of alien angel. Uncaring and monstrously powerful. It had played its games, meddling in the affairs of mortals, drawing superhuman renegades of the Alpha Legion to do its bidding. Now it seemed to have grown tired of its manipulations and wished only to end the cold beauty of its masquerade. It desired obliteration for all that it had created.

  Occam heard the bark of boltguns in the drifting dust. The Alpha Legion were bringing destruction to the xenos monstrosity that had fooled them. The thing that had pretended to be their galactic prince, their warlord, their genic sire. Missiles rocketed out from cover while the thick beams of lascannons cut through the obscurity. Boltguns flashed in a closing cordon.

  ‘End it, brothers,’ Occam ordered, getting back to his feet, drawing his bolt pistol and adding his fury to the onslaught. ‘We are first among equals. We are the last thing our foes will see. We are the cure for the galaxy’s many ills. Send this thing back to oblivion. It thinks that it is a god, but the blood of the one, true God runs through our veins. Let it not fail us in the face of enemies unnatural and ancient. For we were engineered to bring death to such monsters.’

  The star god strode through the murk and havoc – impassive and untouched. It narrowed its alien eyes at the oncoming hail of bolt-rounds, blinking them into flaring trails of obliteration before they reached the alabaster brilliance of its unflesh. About the abomination, reality seemed to warp and wrinkle. It snarled at legionnaires shooting from cover, turning the ground beneath the renegades and the shattered sections of stone they hid behind into liquid unreality. As demolished buildings and toppled columns sank into the stone floor, legionnaires flailed and splashed below the surface. The star god walked on through the desolation, allowing the ground to solidify once more about the trapped renegades.

  Waving the perfection of its alien claws at oncoming grenades it made them detonate harmlessly in the air. Fat beams of energy from lascannons threatened to cut the creature in two, but it phased in and out of reality, passing out of their path, allowing them on through the dust-laden air. Missiles surged away from heavy weapons legionnaires stepping out from cover. Holding its palm flat out before it, the star god arrested the progress of the missiles and forced the weapons back towards their launchers. Detonating as they re-entered their weapons, the missiles blew the legionnaires who had fired them to pieces.

  Reaching out with its claws and grasping for open space, the star god seized Alpha Legionnaires from where they were taking cover and reloading. Snatching them one by one, the creature used its brutal powers of telekinesis to drag the renegades through the air towards itself. Some smashed through the derelict structures with a bloody splatter. Others were thrown into each other at sickening speed, their broken armoured forms then flung away.

  A stamp of the star god’s foot on the ground sent a ripple through reality, knocking the closing attackers out of cover. With a searing gaze of annihilation, the Deceiver turned legionnaire after legionnaire to clouds of ash that tore away to join the rising maelstrom that encircled the pyramid. Whatever the blinding brilliance of the creature’s eyes fell upon died. Nothing could stop it. The whirling storm of shattered stone and dust became stained with blood and the ghostly stream of souls upon which the star god gorged.

  ‘Sigma Sophistra,’ Occam called across the vox as the legionnaires fighting below died in their droves. ‘Fire again. Everything on our position.’

  The star god had not forgotten about the vessel stationed above them. While a hurricane of shattered black stone, green crackling energies and dust encircled the colossal pyramid, it began to rain within the deathly calm at the storm’s centre. All Occam could hear across the vox-channel were the screams of the afflicted. He ducked down as he realised what it was. The alien abomination had fixed its gaze upon the Sigma Sophistra. In the reality-bending sights of the star god the vessel was melting, turning rapidly into a deluge of liquid metal falling from the sky and hammering Occam to his knees.

  Everything was unfold
ing obliteration. About the star god and the pyramid the unnatural storm raged. Beyond, enormous cracks felt their way through the cityscape. Buildings collapsed and monoliths toppled in vaulting clouds of dust. The planetary core, suspended far above Occam’s head, was losing stability. It raged and spat, while its wobbling rotation tore with gravitational insistence at the hollow planet. Sections of surface began to fall through, creating colossal holes and tears in Royal Belphagar. The towering pylons on the surface were toppling over and smashing, and those surrounding the opening chasms were falling through the openings.

  Occam felt quakes through the pyramid superstructure. The star god had followed him. The strike master fell back on the crumbling steps and peered up through the last drizzle of the Sigma Sophistra. The star god stood above him, its face a sneering mask of absolute supremacy. Being so close to the thing made Occam’s plate vibrate, his blood course and bones burn. He felt the absolute emptiness of the thing, its hunger for souls and the elemental untruth of its existence. Deceiver. It had deceived them all.

  Occam’s mind raced with the being’s insatiable need. He felt the last, dark days of the galaxy come to pass. Pylons erected everywhere: bringing the nullifying deadness of the Galactic Core, like a growing blot, to all corners of the Imperium. The warp and its polluted riftspace of raging storms vanquished. The fragmentation of humanity – a single, vast empire plunged once more into isolated civilisations, each one cut off and destroyed by the Deceiver. Billions upon billions, human and alien alike, marched into the soul forges of the abomination. With their passing, the stars of the galaxy were extinguished one after another by the gluttonous star god. Then, nothing. An obliterated absence – for the thing could not deny its eternal desires.

  The sorcerer Quoda had been experiencing much the same and threw himself at the star god. The creature reacted with revulsion at the psyker’s furious approach and with a cruel splaying of a clawed hand, sent the sorcerer bouncing back across the stone steps of the black pyramid.

  Occam yanked furiously on the trigger of his pistol, blasting bolt after bolt up into the thing. With every impact, the Deceiver changed. At once it was a ghostly apparition allowing the shell to rocket straight through. Then it became the black stone of its surroundings, a bolt ricocheting off its solid surface. A sudden silvery liquid of its form swallowed the next bolt while the returning brilliance of its perfect skin slowed another and another to spinning shells in front of the star god, which it flicked away with contempt.

  Everything was the swirling boom of destruction, but about the Deceiver and Occam was only closing darkness. Occam knew he was about to die. Snatching his last melta bomb from his belt he primed it with a clunk. The star god opened its claw and the grenade flew from the strike master’s gauntlets into the creature’s enclosed fist. As the grenade detonated the Deceiver’s hand glowed. It grew bright and then molten, streaming to the floor. Then it became a small inferno, a raging flame that swirled, resettled and resolidified into a cool, clenched fist once more.

  Occam watched as the star god flinched. Several balls of plasma splattered, crackled and burned against the alabaster perfection of its chest. Occam looked up the steps to see that Vilnius Malik had returned. He was blasting his plasma gun at the abomination in an attempt to save his fallen strike master. The Deceiver hissed an ageless hatred at the legionnaire, turning him into smoking shadow smeared up the steps.

  The legionnaire had not been alone, however. He had freed the Word Bearers and somehow convinced them that a far greater threat lay outside their ship than the Alpha Legion. Out of the darkness, the stuff of nightmares raged forth. The Varga Rax, led by Iaxor Phel and Captain Vhorpall, had regained some of their daemonic monstrosity. No longer the wasted specimens they had been on their journey across the nullified space surrounding the Galactic Core, the daemonic Word Bearers of the Varga Rax were blessed once more with incredible strength. Occam could only reason that with pylons collapsing across the surface of Royal Belphagar, both Quoda and the Word Bearers were regaining some revitalising connection with the warp.

  Having seen the ineffectual nature of boltguns upon the star god, they rushed the monstrous creature with cursed blades and possessed weaponry. Storming the entity, the Word Bearers – red of warped muscle and plate – were like a swarm of attack dogs. The star god towered over the Traitor Space Marines, the same look of revulsion on its terrible face as it had reserved for the sorcerer Quoda.

  As the melee swirled about Occam, it was all the strike master could do to back up the steps and feverishly reload his pistol. He heard a horrific shriek, a sound that caused his ears to bleed within his helm. It was the sound of a god in agony.

  The Deceiver had knocked aside warped blades with telekinetic force and melted weaponry with a flash of its eyes. But rushed by so many Word Bearers, it had not been able to stop Phel’s daemon sword Gorghastragar getting through. The blade opened the creature up across its thigh and the blinding light of a thousand suns blazed through from the gash. Even the filters cycling through Occam’s optics couldn’t shield him from the light.

  The star god shrieked its alien rage, recognising the warp-channelling weapon as a real danger to itself. Silhouetted against its own brilliance, the creature’s vengeance was swift and terrible. Knocking aside the vicious thrusts of Word Bearers weaponry and the slash of daemon claws, the star god laid its nullifying claw on the cursed plate of the daemon Word Bearers. The ceramite turned white hot to the touch, each suit turning into a raging furnace of purifying flame. The Varga Rax died one after another, spontaneously combusting and roasting in the flames of their own nullification.

  Avenging his brethren, Captain Vhorpall slashed a monstrous talon at the creature’s face. The star god drew back and glared down on Vhorpall with its eyes alight. The captain melted, drizzling away in a cloud of liquid ceramite and blood.

  ‘Die, unnatural thing!’ First Acolyte Phel roared, holding his daemon sword above his head with two hands. The star god reached out with a perfect white claw and laid it upon Phel’s rune-encrusted breastplate. Seconds later, there was nothing left of the Word Bearer. Phel had simply exploded, his suit turned to shrapnel and his grotesque half-daemon body blazing away to nothing in a brief, blinding flash.

  As the daemon sword clattered to the steps, the monstrous alien continued its rampage. Occam still lay before it. He grabbed something from his belt. The star god suddenly stopped and the strike master’s head was filled with the excruciating sound of alien agony. The Deceiver stumbled. A blade was protruding from its midriff. The daemon blade Gorghastragar. Quoda had picked up the possessed weapon and plunged it into the star god’s back.

  The daemon writhed across the perfect flesh of the Deceiver, attempting to find some spiritual purchase but failing. The touch of the infernal beast was an anathema to the star god and for a moment the pair raged at each other.

  Unable to seize upon a soul that simply wasn’t present, Gorghastragar was forced to return to the cursed blade. The star god shrieked its pain and fury, causing the blade to melt and dribble down its brilliant white flesh. Turning with savage speed, the entity didn’t even bother visiting its reality-bending powers on the sorcerer. It plunged a claw through the legionnaire’s breastplate and tore his hearts from his chest.

  As the dead sorcerer’s body collapsed and tumbled down the steps of the pyramid, the star god turned back to Occam. The strike master was up on his feet.

  ‘I have something for you, entity,’ the strike master said. He pulled an object from his belt and threw it at the star god. The Deceiver caught the thing in its claw, believing the object to be another melta bomb. When the device failed to go off, the creature opened its claw. Inside sat the Tesseraqt, primed, opening, blazing with the green light of interdimensional incarceration.

  An ageless snarl wrinkled the horrid perfection of the star god’s face before being lost in the blaze of green light. Alien energies crackled and spat, arcing between the pyramid and the Deceiver, the
sky and the storm. These grew to horrific intensity, as though the star god was fighting its imprisonment. Occam stumbled back, holding a gauntlet up before his optics.

  A moment later, the star god was gone. The black cube containing its incarcerated form crackled with spidery green power and dropped to the ground. It bounced down the steps until it stopped at the foot of a figure advancing up the pyramid. The strike master realised that the hunched silhouette belonged to Omizhar Vohk. The alien machine picked up the Tesseraqt with a metal claw and approached Occam.

  ‘You exceeded my expectations, strike master,’ Vohk told him, the metallic hiss of his voice laden with an alien satisfaction. ‘I would be sorry for the deceptions to which you have been subjected and the loss of your legionary kindred but for the fact that everything we achieved here today was absolutely necessary. That entity was a weapon that turned itself against my people. It would eventually have done to same to yours. Its lies would have destroyed us all.’

  ‘And yet, it knew a great deal of the man I seek,’ Occam said.

  ‘Your galactic prince?’ Omizhar Vohk said. ‘Well, indeed. Are not the most effective lies laced with some element of truth?’

  ‘Yes,’ Occam said and completed loading his bolt pistol. Raising it, he coldly put two rounds through the metal skull of the alien techno-sorcerer. Like Quoda before him, Omizhar Vohk fell back and began to clatter down the steep steps of the pyramid.

  Picking up the alien Tesseraqt, Occam made his way up towards the apex plaza where the Dissolutio Perpetua still remained in station. Bounding up the steps and with the hollow planet falling apart about him, the strike master opened a vox-channel with the bridge.