Dark Imperium: Plague War

by Guy Haley

  The Space Marines were of many liveries, a composite force ­assembled by Guilliman from the small groups sent to Ultramar by distant Chapters. Though many were the sons of Guilliman, they had no bond beyond this brotherhood, and they fought without the coordinated finesse of the XIII Legion of old. It was laughable. Fear had compelled Guilliman to break up the Legions after Horus fell, emasculating them in the process. Typhus felt nothing but contempt for the primarch and these diminished warriors.

  Five of them were shooting at him, ignoring nearer threats in an attempt to bring down the general of their foes. It was what Typhus would have done in their place.

  Death lurked in the toxic miasma surrounding Typhus and his men. With a thought he drew in the vapours, weaving them into questing arms, and sent them spearing towards the Space Marines. They arrowed towards the weak points of their armour, attacking their breathing masks and the softer insides of their elbow and knee joints. The warriors carried on firing for a second, until their seals dissolved and the disease-laden air infiltrated their war suits. They collapsed, clawing at their throats, blood fountaining out of breathing grilles.

  The battle was coming to a close. The spaceport itself was sickening. Cogitator phages ripped through its operating systems, destroying the cables and data relays along with the machine code. Defence turrets went limp, their weapons tumbling from corroded bearings. The lumens were going out. Ventilation and recyc systems tried to purge the atmosphere of the First Company’s poisons, only to be destroyed. Fires were catching in the walls where insulation peeled back from infected wiring. Clotted oils and lubricants ran from dead devices. The infection of machines was almost as fine an act of worship as the mortification of living flesh. Nurgle would be pleased. As the humans died, their psychic resistance to Nurgle’s powers weakened. A tide of corruption ripped across the fabric of the Odyssean port, enacting a thousand years of decay in an instant.

  A dying klaxon attempted to announce the activation of the port reactor’s self-destruction mechanisms. It repeated its mechanical warning before perishing in a bubble of static. Typhus tensed, awaiting the change in vibration that would indicate the governors had been taken offline and the core ejection mechanisms disabled.

  The reactor throbbed, shaking the ground with a fever’s palsy. It was sick, but that was Typhus’ doing. Whatever attempts had been made to immolate the Death Guard along with the station had been thwarted again by the daemonic scrap code and semi-organic dataphages running rampant through the orbital’s innards.

  A tri-lobe of blight haulers melta-gunned their way through the wall of the leftmost tower guarding the command block gate. A torrent of filth projected by alchemical weapons through the breach ended all resistance from the bastion. The right-hand tower enjoyed a similar fate moments later. A foul blightspawn moved in on the gate while the plasteel of the bastions was still hissing, directing his diseased mortal servants to flick congealed filth all over the main gates. Jagged lines of corrosion crept out from each dot of the mixture, joining together in a web of decay. Where gobbets of the slurry landed, the metal oxidised rapidly, great plates of rust falling from it quickly. Adamantium was supposedly immune to such effects, but the ferric blight was a disease of the warp. To it, the laws of the mortal realm were nothing.

  Gurgling with pleasure at the infection, the blightspawn retreated, his misshapen followers hobbling after him. A Plague Marine squad took his place. Even they avoided touching the worst of the diseased metal as they clamped their krak grenades to the gates, primed the cores and took several steps backwards.

  The rattling bang of contained implosions boomed across the chamber. The detonations were loud enough to incapacitate mortal men. The audio suppressors of the Death Guard had long ceased functioning, but they chortled as their eardrums thrummed, revelling in their immunity to pain.

  Before the last drifts of rust had pattered to the floor, the Death Guard were moving through, firing in a beat to match their steady pace. Las-bolts and cones of shotter pellets blasted out from the clouds of smoke. The las-bolts flickered, losing their potency as their photons dissipated into the metal-laden air, but even so they could barely miss the bloated shapes forcing the gate. The dented surfaces of ceramite glowed with fresh damage. Las-fire hissed into soft, diseased flesh. It did no harm to the sons of Mortarion. Typhus laughed blackly to see his men take wounds that would incapacitate a loyal Space Marine. What was a cauterised hole in the skin of a warrior whose liver hung from his side?

  The first wave spread out into the command centre with the fluidity of ten thousand years’ practice. Once past the gateway, they came into the fire arcs of the block’s automated gun defences. Now the Death Guard did suffer. Autocannon shells pounded into one warrior like bullets into clay, and with seemingly the same amount of effect. But the fifteenth proved the fatal blow, and the warrior fell with a disappointed moan. A second was blasted into steaming pieces by concerted heavy bolter fire. A lascannon lanced another through. He continued to walk, until he finally decided he was dead, and fell down.

  ‘Target their defences!’ ordered Typhus. He pushed his way forward, using his immense bulk to shoulder aside his warriors, and entered the block himself. ‘Take out the emplaced weapons!’

  He need not have given the order. His warriors had fought the Long War since the hated False Emperor had walked and breathed as a living being. Blight launchers were already coughing, sending their canister shells towards the turrets. Meltagunners ran forward under the covering fire of their verminous brothers. Well trained and better disciplined, few could stand against the Death Guard.

  They had costly work ahead of them. Every orbital was different, the product of their builders’ individual tastes, experience and idiosyncrasies. This layout was a credit to its architect. The control desks were raised six feet above the level of the floor. The operators sat facing outwards, and the outer faces of their stations were armoured as well as any defence line. Every grouping was a small bastion, and they were arranged in such a way that they covered each other and the paths between. From positions of relative safety the command crew and their protectors poured fire down onto the Plague Marines. Their weapons were ordinarily inconsequential things, deadly to mortal men but not the chosen of Nurgle, except when employed in such large numbers. Then, they could harm.

  More pressing were the retractable defence turrets turning the ways into lanes of fire. The roof was low, as well armoured as the exterior walls, preventing the engagement of jump packs. Everything was smooth, without adornment, the bracing set against the wall angled and moulded in such a way that it provided the absolute minimum of cover to the invaders. Further defence points were built into the wall, bunkers in every fourth bulkhead, gimballed weapon mounts protecting them. The command and control systems for the weapons must have been independent from the outer datanet, for they tracked and fired with none of the ill effects of the phage code evident. The hazy air was alive with solid rounds and energy streams.

  Plague Marines were falling in some numbers. Still they poured in. Someone with sense and authority must have seen Typhus, for all of a sudden he was weathering a disproportionate amount of fire again. What made its way through his energy shield bounced off his armour. What penetrated his armour thudded into unfeeling flesh. The First Captain pushed forward, heading directly down the central alley, ignoring the autocannon rounds screaming off his Cataphractii plate.

  A heavy bolter emplacement exploded, its ammunition cooking off in a series of small, hatefully clean, yellow explosions. Green vapours polluted the honest smoke of battle, an undertone of decay sliding into the fresh, bracing scent of fyceline and hot plasteel, but the malodour was too diffuse to harm the crew. Typhus suspected they wore high-grade protection. Mortarion’s assaults on Ultramar had been ongoing for over a century, and the subjects of Guilliman had adapted. He lumbered on, heading for the first bastion.

  Under Typhus’ influence, the
vapours thickened. They probed their way up the sides of the bastions like live things. From the other side came screams that ended in retching, and the fire from within ceased. Next, Typhus turned his attention to the autocannon blasting away at him. He raised a hand and sent a bolt of green warp energy cracking down the alleyway into the weapon. By his will alone it was destroyed, crumpled in on itself as if smote by Nurgle’s own fist.

  His warriors exploited the opening. Seven of them arrayed themselves before the next bunker and unhooked their blight grenades from their sides. The grenades were as varied in appearance as their owners, from steel canisters venting curls of gas to the still-living heads of past victims, their orifices sewn tightly closed to contain the diseases infesting them.

  With slow, overarm throws, the Death Guard lobbed their grenades into one of the armoured control stations. They landed with a dull clatter and exploded with underwhelming force. The effect, however, was immediate. The gunfire ceased. A wall of mustard yellow gas, potent with a mephitic stench, rolled over the lip of the wall. A man stood up violently from where he sheltered, clawing at his throat as his environmental suit dissolved and his face crawled off his skull.

  The Death Guard laughed and moved on to the next bastion.

  Typhus joined his psychic might into the assault. The Destroyer Hive buzzed inside his skull for release, but he pushed it back. He would show these mortals their finest castles could be overcome without the use of his most potent weapon.

  His warriors were bringing the situation under control. Machines squealed and died. Men screamed from within the bunkers as the nozzles of plague spewers were jammed through firing slits and discharged.

  The commander of the port and his bodyguard fought to the last upon the central platform. How noble, thought Typhus. In his younger days he would have surged forward to take the honour of killing the commander himself, but ten thousand years of war and the deaths of hundreds of millions had jaded him. He let his warriors take their pleasure. The Destroyer Hive whined in its myriad insect voices, yearning to indulge itself. Typhus gained a sense of savage satisfaction at denying it. The joy of possessing, and being possessed, by such a weapon was the power to decide when to unleash it, and when to cage it. He had that choice. He was no will-less daemon.

  Two of Typhus’ Plague Marines dragged a man through the wash of blood filling the walkways between the command posts. He struggled uselessly in the grip of transhuman monsters gifted with the power of Chaos. He could not resist. Never mind that the two who pulled him were the picture of ill health. One hacked and coughed with every step, the other was blinded by warty tumours covering his face, visible through the empty lens mounts in his broken helmet. He wore no breathing mask either. He could not. His mouth was a long snout rimmed with vicious teeth, while the first possessed a frill of tentacles around his neck guard, growing from blended flesh, plastek and cera­mite. Such gifts were common in the Legion. They made their bearers all the mightier.

  The Plague Marines dumped the man before Typhus, forced him to his knees and tore off the respirator mask he wore. Immediately upon taking a breath of the foul air, the man began to gag.

  ‘The port master,’ hissed the blind Plague Marine with the crocodilian mouth.

  ‘The rest?’ asked Typhus.

  ‘Dead, my lord,’ said the other.

  ‘Fitting offerings to our Grandfather. Withdraw from the command centre. Scour the corridors and the bastions of the near modules, then rig the port for demolition. Drop it on the world below. Never again will it be turned against the servants of the Plague God.’

  The port master was a brave man, ‘You may destroy my command and take my life, but you shall never beat us, traitor.’ He spat bloody phlegm. Only a century ago, men like him were terrified by the very sight of the Death Guard. Frequent exposure had dulled their fear. Typhus thought that a pity. ‘Our Lord Guilliman walks among us again, and has returned to Ultramar to cast you out.’ The port master’s eyes were reddening. He would be dead soon.

  ‘I am aware of this fact,’ said Typhus drily. ‘Do you have any tidings that might be of interest to me?’

  The Plague Marines chuckled. They enjoyed Typhus’ bullying of the weak.

  ‘The only tidings I convey to you are of death. You will fall, traitor, and the Emperor will see your soul condemned.’ He stared unflinchingly up at Typhus’ glowing eye lenses. ‘Look at you, corrupt and weeping filth. I cannot believe you were once a Space Marine.’

  ‘I still am, only I now have a truer master than you. You follow a corpse,’ said Typhus. ‘I follow the Lord of Life.’

  ‘You will die. You will be struck down.’

  ‘No,’ said Typhus. ‘I think not.’ He shook his monoceral helmet, and rested his armoured hand upon the man’s head. He had in mind to give him Nurgle’s blessing. He was too cynical to expect the commander to convert as the gift took him, but he anticipated his suffering nevertheless.

  Something beat him to it. Drops of sweat stood out on the port master’s bald head. The skin around his input ports reddened. The whites of his eyes turned deep yellow while Typhus looked on. He removed his hand from the man’s head.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said. In Typhus’ uncanny senses the room took on a polychromatic sheen. Arcs of psychic energy pulsed inwards towards the station master.

  ‘What have you done to me?’ shouted the man. Panic finally broke through his Ultramarian discipline. Spittle foamed at the corners of his mouth, flew from his lips and spotted his environment suit.

  ‘Done? I have not done anything,’ said Typhus. ‘This is not one of my ailments. But someone is doing something to you. I wonder who?’

  The port master retched. The Death Guard stepped back from him as he went onto all fours and vomited up black clots of blood.

  ‘Damn you all,’ he choked.

  ‘It’s a little too late to threaten us with that,’ said Typhus.

  The port master’s teeth locked and he grunted in agony. He fell to the floor, convulsing. His arms moved in uncontrollable spasms, throwing themselves into angular poses Typhus found amusing. His feet jiggled, his knees knocked. He threw back his head, shaking and moaning piteously, until a great seizure had him arching his back so hard his spine snapped with a loud, wet crack. His thighs shattered. Shards of pink, wet bone pushed themselves out of his garments. Pearls of yellow fat dribbled to the floor.

  Bloody pus pouring from his choking throat, the port master twitched. He was still alive and moaning as his body folded itself almost perfectly in half. Under normal circumstances, he would have died, but Grandfather Nurgle is kind, and wishes all those who are afflicted by his gifts to fully enjoy the experience, and so the man’s soul remained confined within his body. His eyes rolled madly even as they bloomed with cataracts and sank in upon themselves. His lips split, and his tongue turned black and fell from his mouth to writhe away like a salt-bathed slug. Stinking slurry pooled around him. His bowels leaked, his bladder inflated and burst. Still the man lived.

  A spectacle of rapid decay played out before Typhus’ eyes, and he watched fascinated while the sounds of fighting drew away from the command block, down the access ways to the hangars where the last few areas of resistance lingered. A greasy slick of sorcery clung to the officer. The sheer variety of death Nurgle meted out was a glory in itself, and this was the finest Typhus had witnessed in some time.

  The port master’s skin yellowed and sank into itself. His ripening gut distended with the gasses of rot and split. Like rapidly inflated balloons his intestines wormed themselves out from under his shirt, where they remained purple and full a moment, beautiful in their translucency. Then they deflated into black twists of hard matter, leaving the port master’s skin as a wrinkled, leaking sack. Black and purple bloomed across his face and hands. His body became a glorious sunset of lividity. His environment suit, so prettily presented only moments ago, was stained
black with corpse leakage, furred with mould, and split along the seams. In a minute, the man looked to have been dead a week. In two minutes, a month. And yet he still lived.

  Typhus clumped a step closer to him, the bony vents of his armour puking thick gasses. The buzz of the Destroyer Hive sawed loudly at the movement, demanding to be set free, but still Typhus disregarded its pleas. The First Captain of the Death Guard leaned on his manreaper and peered down at the dead-yet-living man as well as his Terminator plate and vast bulk would permit, his curiosity fully engaged.

  ‘You are truly blessed by Nurgle! Such fecundity in decay, such colour. Such fertile ground for life you have become. Know this, little man, few of your kind experience such exquisite extinctions, and fewer still are permitted to see the cornucopia of rebirth your mortal shells permit. You are favoured!’

  The corpse’s jaw clicked open and shut upon tendons dried hard.

  ‘You have fortitude too. You wish to speak? Then speak with the Father of Life and Death in the eternal garden. You have impressed me, his living herald. Tell him Typhus finds you worthy. Perhaps it is not over for you.’

  A whispering scratched out of the man’s knotted throat, his soul speaking to Typhus’ witch senses when his body could no longer. ‘K… kill me,’ he managed. ‘Mercy.’

  ‘You have had your allotment of mercy for today.’ Typhus stood tall again. ‘Perhaps you are not worthy after all.’

  A movement in the stomach of the dead man drew Typhus’ attention. The outlines of spread horns pressed into the rubberised cloth of the port master’s environment suit, piercing the mouldering fabric and allowing a boiling swell of finger-length maggots to escape.

  ‘My, my,’ Typhus said. ‘The day grows more interesting.’

  The horns emerged into the dying light of the command block, followed by the bald, scabrous head of a daemon imp, dripping with rotten blood and other foetid liquids of decomposition.

  The imp spoke. ‘I have words for you, Lord Typhus. Words from the manse.’