Dark Imperium: Plague War

by Guy Haley

  Felix sprayed the coming Plague Marines with his boltstorm gauntlet, the twin underslung pistols belting out a tremendous rate of fire. Icons warned him that the weapons were overheating and his ammo hopper was nearly empty. By then, it had ceased to matter.

  The Plague Marines reached them.

  The first Felix slew with a grenade, rolling it under his feet and blasting out the deck grille from beneath him. The Traitor Space Marine fell like a daemon in a mystery play disappearing through a trap door, his insane giggles transformed into a howl of outrage as he plummeted into the obscurity of the lower levels.

  Kaspian did the same, tossing a handful of shock grenades first to disorientate the enemy before following up with two krak bombs thrown in quick succession. Bolts exploded all around the Space Marines, blasting massive wet holes in the rotten ferrocrete. The krak bombs detonated, taking out a wide section of the deck, sending three Death Guard down to their long-denied deaths. A fourth grabbed at the floor as he fell, and clung to the edge, the fingers of one hand rumpling the plasteel, a bright pink tentacle wrapped around the girder beneath. His power plant was crowned with a bizarre collection of makeshift, smoke-belching exhausts. His battleplate groaned with the agony of poorly lubricated mechanisms as he hauled his massive bulk out of the hole.

  Felix ended his efforts with a volley of bolt shots that tore off his unarmoured tentacle and smashed his helm free along with his head.

  Imperial efforts were yielding a satisfying kill ratio. Now they must test themselves hand to hand.

  Felix stepped in to intercept a noisome champion, his exalted status marked by his greater bulk and a chattering daemon fly that orbited his head with the regularity of a motorised ornament. Felix ignored the fly, saving his wrath for its master.

  The warrior swung a massive power fist of ancient make at the tetrarch. It rebounded from his aegis, but already the Death Guard was following the strike with a trio of bolts from his pistol. All flashed to oblivion against Felix’s power field. Felix responded with a hard thrust from his sword. The point punched through the traitor’s rotten breastplate. The disruption field flash-cooked his organs. Stinking fluids wept out of the myriad holes in the champion’s battleplate. He did not die, but chortled and swung his power fist again at Felix’s head.

  The blow never connected. A blade flashed behind him, taking off the rusting gauntlet at the man’s elbow. Felix was presented with a grim cross-section of flesh and bone bonded unnaturally to armour. The fist, hand still inside, clanged off the floor, and the champion turned with a snarl to face his attacker. The blade emerged through his back, pulsing flame and sparks from the champion’s ruined reactor.

  The champion fell down, revealing Voi, sword in hand. Shrieking, the fly dived at her, mouthparts clacking, but as soon as it came near, it evaporated into a smear of greasy smoke.

  ‘My thanks,’ said Felix. He riddled a warrior lumbering towards the Sister of Silence with bolts. Multiple flashes lit up his interior, shining through corroded holes in his armour.

  Voi inclined her head and was away, dancing through the combat, wielding the massive sword as lightly as if it were some tiny duelling blade.

  Felix sighted another target, killing him with his boltstorm. Another died to a blow from behind. He switched from blade work, trusting instead to the power field surrounding his gauntlet. It was a slower weapon, but the greater destructive power it possessed put down the unnaturally resilient foe more reliably.

  The counter for the device ticked down. He plunged his fist, still firing the underslung pistols, into the chest of a traitor, yanking out the creature’s defiled hearts in a rush of thick blood and pus.

  Dozens of the enemy were now pouring into the reactor control centre, and the building itself was reacting to the Imperial presence. A rush of stinking matter poured out of the corridor, forming a new, living floor to cover over the rotted grille. The slime river flooded after it. The combined weight of the Death Guard upon the deck would have destroyed the original floor, but the flesh held them up. As it spread it sprouted bizarre plant growths that blackened and died as soon as they bloomed. Spores choked the stinking air. Felix’s atmospheric filtration unit peeped. Particulate filth was eating through his void seals.

  Another Death Guard died. The flesh mat glowed, bathing the reactor centre with a sickening green light. The slime river, now falling as a wide, dribbling cataract as the flesh spread, carried the light with it, illuminating the floors below. Beneath, Death Guard that had fallen through the deck were picking themselves up.

  Felix swore. Could nothing kill these abominations?

  Three of them were on him, forcing him to fight with all his skill. They were older than even him, but whereas he had spent the last ten millennia in and out of suspended animation, they had fought all the while. They knew his techniques. Heroes greater than he had fallen to them.

  He was forced back. They jabbed at him with rusting blades. From the notched edges, a black poison dripped that boiled away before it hit the ground, causing the air to shimmer.

  The counter hit zero. Felix held his breath. Nothing happened.

  He had time to fear the worst. His back was against the wall. Euphain was down, Daler hard pressed. Kaspian had vanished from sight, though no mortis rune had rung out to mark his demise.

  Failure beckoned.

  An immense pressure built behind him, pushing through his body. This was not the overpressure of a mundane explosion, but a psychic assault of unparalleled power.

  The heart in the reactor shrieked with a human voice, and died.

  A strange skin of light engulfed Felix. Where light raced over the flesh mat, it died, disintegrating into a thin gruel that slopped down through the rusted floor.

  Like the torpedoes, the device contained the powdered remnants of pariahs. Felix had heard dark whispers about them. It was said that they had no soul. Not only were they inimical to the denizens of the warp, but they affected every scintilla of otherworldly energy, including the souls of living beings.

  That was why the likes of Voi were so uncomfortable to be around. This was that same sensation, multiplied a thousand times. The wash of the detonation physically pulled at something within Felix, lifting his psyche, plucking etheric energy from its balanced synthesis with his body and threatening to extinguish it forever.

  It was excruciating, like nothing he had ever felt. His soul was on fire.

  He screamed.

  Steeped in the power of their diabolical god, the effect on the Plague Marines was far greater. They moaned and fell down, some stone dead. Others shrieked as if the horror of their condition had suddenly become plain to them.

  Time seemed out of joint. There was nothing but shouting all around him.

  Felix was among the first to recover, dragging up his body from the ground. He felt like he might vomit. His muscles ached. His head rang. He attempted to summon his retinal display, but the device was unresponsive.

  The voice of Guilliman’s Master Augurum spoke in his vox-bead. ‘Tetrarch, we have detected the detonation of the psyk-out device. The shield is down. Confirm mission success.’

  ‘Mission success,’ he croaked. The veins were shrivelled black threads on the ground. The pulse of the heart was silent. ‘Reactor obliterated. We shall withdraw. Commence bombardment. Make sure what dwelt here does not return to life.’

  ‘We are targeting the cathedra. As soon as you are clear, my lord, we shall level the power generatorium,’ voxed the Master Augurum. The ship-feed crackled out.

  Felix staggered on, oblivious to the danger posed to him by the floor, and put a round through the head of a groaning Plague Marine. Several lived, sprawled on the decking. Kaspian was up on his feet, putting down the fallen with his knife. Voi aided him, seemingly unaffected by the detonation of the psyk-out device.

  ‘My suit systems are out. Report in,’ croaked Fel
ix.

  Kaspian, Daler and Baskvo lived. The rest were dead. A final few bolt rounds blasted out, finishing off their enemy. They had no mercy for the traitors.

  ‘Move out. The quicker we get to the surface, the sooner Lord Guilliman can level this place,’ ordered Felix.

  ‘I’ve got movement!’ said Kaspian. The Reivers swivelled, training their guns on the entrance.

  A group of Space Marines thundered down the corridor, all in Ultramarines blue.

  Captain Sicarius of the Victrix Guard hailed Felix from the chamber’s edge.

  ‘Follow me, my lord,’ he called. ‘We have a cordon running back to the exterior. This is the quickest way out.’

  ‘You join us in a hellish place, captain,’ said Felix.

  ‘I have seen far worse,’ Sicarius replied.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Saints and sinners

  The quiet noises of diligent men at work on the wallwalk relaxed Devorus. His command staff went about their duties with focus. Low conversations and the occasional squawk of incoming vox messages were reassuringly human noises, clear and vital in the greyed-out day of Parmenio. The breach sheared through the wall not twenty metres from Devorus’ position, but the defence lines set below to guard the gap were laid out with pleasing geometry, and appeared at that moment proof against the enemy’s attentions. Peace held on the far side of the channel. No work was done on the mole that day. The enemy were waiting, as were Devorus and his men. The war had changed in a moment.

  The Imperial Regent had come to Parmenio.

  Shellfire rumbled over the distant mountains as enemy positions around Hecaton were obliterated from orbit. The blanket fogs that covered the plains were perturbed. No longer a solid mass, they broke into rolling banks whose motion over the wasted land revealed ruined towns and farms reduced to shell-pocked mud. The haze in the higher reaches of the air had dispersed, allowing him to see all the way to Hecaton for the first time since the enemy came.

  Before the war, the view had been fine. The air was clean and clear most days, and Hecaton easy to see. The city spread lacily down the slopes of the mountains, a filigreed ornament upon nature’s art, white peaks above, green lands below. People had come to Tyros’ walls to see it, that view of Ultramar’s perfection, where man and planet lived in tolerable balance.

  What the blowing mists revealed horrified him. The peaks of the mountains were still white. All else had changed. Agricolae turned to toxic bog. Ruined towns white as bones in liquefied flesh. Worst of all was the fate of Hecaton. It was seventy kilometres from there to the island, a distance that reduced a city from a place to a detail. Devorus did not need to get any closer to know it was lost.

  The fine towers were twisted and black, as if they had been partially melted by mistake and inexpertly mended by a fool who had no wit to see how poor a restoration he provided. The great dome of the Administratum Officio – a wonder in the days before, three thousand metres across and an eggshell blue that outmatched the sky – was gone. The suburbs were black smears on the mountainsides. When he used his magnoculars, Devorus saw rivers of filth pouring down steep streets.

  War drummed its beat in the heavens, and lit them with sporadic bursts of power. Ships waged silent battle in orbit out of sight above the clouds, but debris falling from the fight and stray weapon strikes filled the sky over the plains with booms and whooping discharges.

  From the far side of the River Sea where Keleton stood firm, stripes of linear light stabbed – the glaring blasts of the defence lasers of inland Edimos. A peculiar thunder was called from the sky with each blaze of collimated light. The clouds bunched in and swirled around their track, leaving bald slashes where the sky showed blue, a sight Devorus never thought to see again, before the clouds swirled back in to plug the gap with fitful washes of rain.

  The lasers fired only when the Death Guard fleet strayed into their arc of fire. The curve of the planet limited their contribution to the battle. Devorus was pleased to see them used. Too long the defence laser ­battery had been a threat rather than an active participant in the war.

  He held up his magnoculars again. Victory would be an act of defiance rather than something to be measured as a successful defence. The Ultramarines could take Hecatone back, but it was too late. Whole swathes of Parmenio would have to burn to clear away the Death Guard’s taint.

  Morbid though the thoughts were, he did not submit to despair. He could not.

  The crunch of boots on rubble had him turn to face Sister Superior Iolanth. Behind her, the outer door of the airlock leading into the tall Shoreward Bastion was open, shedding bright lumen light into the grey of the infected day. Iolanth had her helmet off, and for perhaps only the third or fourth time since Devorus had made her acquaintance, he saw her face. He looked forward to seeing her face.

  It was strange, he thought, how beautiful all the Battle Sisters were. Service to the Emperor, especially in battle, should not require such aesthetic perfection. He suspected the hand of lesser, impure men in their selection.

  Iolanth wore her white hair in braids down the left side of her skull, drawn so tight and close to the head they exposed the scalp between. The right side was shaved down to the skin, leaving an expanse free for a large aquila tattoo.

  Two scars marred her face, one thick enough to crook the line of her lips where it crossed them, the other fine, pale as a moon, running almost level from one side of her forehead to the other. On the left, it turned down a little, and grew fatter, like a large tick, as if she had been approved by some cosmic, sanguinary power.

  Devorus wondered where she had got those scars. He did not ask her. He did not dare. Iolanth was imperious and fierce, with piercing yellow eyes. Devorus had the impression that if he praised her beauty in any way, she would mutilate herself on the spot to prove her devotion to the Emperor was of more importance.

  ‘The primarch comes,’ said Devorus. His eyes lingered on Iolanth’s face a moment too long, and he blushed. ‘I have confirmation of it from the highest channels. We are to await relief.’ He stared out over the harbour, wishing the orders were different, that they were to sally out and take the fight to the enemy. He was tired of hiding.

  ‘Indeed it is so. The son of the Emperor Himself arrives to punish the traitors,’ said Iolanth. ‘Wondrous news, but not the most wondrous.’

  Devorus slotted his magnoculars back into their case. The magnetic catch clicked.

  ‘The girl is awake?’

  ‘She is,’ said Iolanth. ‘Come into the bastion with me. I grant you the honour of seeing her.’

  Devorus followed her inside.

  The girl peeked at Devorus over her blanket, her large, brown eyes expressing a mix of shyness and confidence. He hadn’t seen what colour they were before; the terrible light had obscured them.

  He looked away. The light should surely have burned out her eyes. He couldn’t shake the image of empty, blackened sockets.

  ‘As you see, she is well,’ said Iolanth. She nodded at the two Battle Sisters standing guard. They departed wordlessly.

  The guards were within the chamber, Devorus noted, not outside.

  ‘Doesn’t she have a name?’ Devorus said.

  Iolanth shrugged. The detail was unimportant to her. The girl didn’t offer one.

  He went to the bedside of the girl.

  ‘This is Major Devorus. He is the commander of the Auxilia Garrison of Tyros, and the master of this city. You owe him your respect,’ Iolanth said portentously.

  ‘Hello,’ said Devorus. ‘You really don’t. Owe me any respect,’ he said. He didn’t much care for Iolanth’s introduction. ‘I’m just a soldier. Can I sit down?’ He gestured at the chair by the bed. When the girl did not reply, he sat anyway. She followed him with her huge brown eyes. He leaned forward and looked at her encouragingly.

  ‘They said I had to speak to you, but
I thought Colonel Anselm was commander,’ she said. It was not surprising a child of Ultramar should know who the military commander was. Once the war had begun and Macragge moved from civilian to military law codes, Anselm’s word had become law.

  ‘He died,’ said Devorus. And Colonel Borodino, and Majors Vascus, Gled and Hawmanc. He didn’t dwell on that.

  ‘When did you take charge?’ she asked.

  ‘A few weeks ago,’ he said.

  Borodino’s death had occurred six weeks past, and it had been a messy one. There was fighting in the transit tunnel beneath the harbour channel before they blew it up and washed the enemy back over to the other side. The colonel had been caught by one of the enemy’s bio weapons after they’d lain the demolition charges. Devorus resisted the advance of memory, tried to stop its replay before he got there and saw the way Borodino’s skin had melted off him, the way he gargled as he drowned in the soup of his own lungs, the way…

  Not now, he thought.

  He smiled. ‘We don’t tend to announce these things to the civilians unless there’s a good reason.’ Devorus leaned back in the chair. Sitting down allowed his tiredness to steal up on him and squat on his shoulders. A physical force wrestled with his eyelids, trying to force them shut. He yawned and pulled his hand down over his face, stretching it. Grit scraped against his skin. His last wash was… When had he last washed?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m tired.’ He laughed as if this were amusing.

  ‘I’m tired too,’ the girl said. She pulled her knees up under her chin. Devorus reassessed her age at maybe fourteen standard. She’d seemed older on the line. He supposed his own daughters would be around her age by now, one slightly older, one younger. If they were still alive. He had no idea if they were.

  ‘It’s very tiring when He comes.’

  ‘Who?’ said Devorus.