Dark Imperium: Plague War

by Guy Haley

  He needed distraction.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me your name?’ Devorus asked the child for the fourth time that day. By now, he had no expectation of an answer whatsoever. She’d not spoken to him since their first meeting. Both her physical and mental condition had deteriorated.

  The girl pulled her knees tighter into her chin, her face buried in her arms, presenting a greasy head of hair at him. She had looked healthier when Iolanth had first brought her in. He half feared she was ill with one of the enemy’s diseases. She had been given a long nightdress woven out of vegetable fibres brushed until soft, a fine gown of a sort worn only by the wealthy. It was kind to the skin, but the sleeves and high collar couldn’t hide the scars of excruciation on her flesh, and there were stiff patches, especially across her back, where leakage from her wounds had hardened. The hexagrammatic bonds she wore pulled at her wrists and ankles. Across the back of her neck smaller chains snaked in and out of her hair.

  ‘I’m sorry to keep asking,’ said Devorus, putting a smile into his voice he didn’t entirely feel. ‘It seems like a reasonable question. We’re going to be in here together for a while, until the fighting is done.’

  Devorus liked being useless only marginally more than he liked being bored, in other words not at all. He’d had his fill of staring at the battle on the plain and the battle in the void. There had been precious little he could see during the day, even with his magnoculars, and now both conflicts had been reduced to glaring light shows that hurt his eyes.

  He gave up and sat down on the room’s only chair. Without realising, he had put his chair as far away from the Sister of Silence as it was possible to get, on the far side of the bed. This brought it closer to the Space Marine, but anything was better than being near to her. A moment’s impulse had him kicking out his feet. Ordinarily he watched the way he behaved. He was a high-ranking officer, with standards to uphold, but he was so tired he was past caring. Resting himself for a few moments he felt the weight of months of exhaustion pile on top of him again. He grunted in surprise, a strange, breathy explosion of air he hadn’t meant to make at all, and sat forward.

  ‘Fine. Sitting is bad.’

  ‘You’re tired,’ said the girl in a small voice. ‘I can feel it.’

  Devorus clamped down hard on his amazement at her speaking. He had to handle this carefully, or she’d fall silent for good, he was sure. ‘Can you now,’ he said with forced nonchalance. He pulled his hands across his face and yawned. His eyes did not want to stay open. ‘You know, since the primarch arrived I’ve had some time to sleep. It’s only made me more tired.’

  ‘Why aren’t you fighting?’ she said. She still didn’t lift up her head to look at him.

  ‘The primarch, Emperor bless him, deemed my men and I worthy of respite from our long labours.’ He leaned over and held up his hand to his mouth, comically shielding it from the Primaris Marine. ‘He told me to stay here and look after you. He thought I was a good man for the job.’

  ‘Tetrarch Felix gave the order,’ said the Primaris Marine robotically.

  ‘My, my, you can talk too,’ said Devorus, turning to the blue giant. ‘Well, yes, I suppose he did.’ He remembered the words, and spoke them aloud, deepening his voice. ‘“Lord Guilliman will test her,” the tetrarch said, he’s got a very deep voice,’ he explained to the girl. ‘“Until then, she remains here. Do not allow her to depart this facility. Do not allow anyone but yourself to have contact with her, Devorus. Consider these orders as coming from the primarch himself.” Very serious stuff.’

  The Primaris Space Marine still had not moved.

  ‘Is that it? You’re going to wake up for a spot of pedantry then fall back asleep?’

  ‘I am not asleep,’ said the Primaris Marine. ‘I do not need to sleep for another thirty-six hours.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said. The Primaris Marine put him on guard almost as much as the Sister. His fear came out as irritation.

  ‘I correct you because incorrect information compromises efficiency,’ offered the Primaris Marine.

  ‘He’s a charming one, this fellow,’ said Devorus. The girl peeked out from under her fringe. Devorus leaned in a little closer. ‘Charm’s probably not needed when you’re that big. Isn’t that so?’ he said to the Primaris Marine.

  The Primaris Marine said nothing.

  ‘So,’ he said. Clapping his hands on his knees and doing his best not to glance at the Sister again, he returned his attention to the girl. ‘We’re in here together. I thought asking your name wasn’t an unreasonable question.’

  ‘Kaylia,’ she whispered. ‘My name is Kaylia.’

  Devorus smiled. That felt like a triumph. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I didn’t say before because it’s not important any more,’ she whispered. ‘Only He is.’

  ‘Why don’t we talk about Him?’ Devorus said. ‘I’m getting a little bored you see, Kaylia, and he’s not much of a conversationalist.’ He nodded over at the Primaris Marine. He didn’t refer to the Sister.

  Don’t look at her, Devorus thought. Just don’t.

  ‘He doesn’t have much to talk about,’ Kaylia said. ‘He doesn’t think like you. He doesn’t care about the same things you do. Not food, or sleep, or love or peace. He wants to serve, like you, but that is all he wants. He wants to fight.’

  ‘Really?’ said Devorus. His eyes strayed to the hexagrammatic chains. They were proof against psychic ability. And then there was the Sister… Kaylia couldn’t be reading the warrior’s mind. He glanced at the Primaris Marine. He looked resolutely ahead.

  ‘I can sense it,’ she said. ‘Ever since He came to me, I’ve known things about people without being told.’

  ‘When did this begin?’ asked Devorus.

  ‘A week ago,’ she said.

  ‘Were your powers fully fledged?’ he asked.

  Ordinarily he kept what little he did know about psykers quiet. Talking about such matters brought unwelcome attention on a man, and he didn’t know much anyway. What he did know was that it wasn’t unusual for psychic tendencies to manifest during the teens. He wasn’t convinced that was the case here. He looked Kaylia over carefully. Such times as he had been exposed to the abilities of nascent witches had been very different. Minor poltergeist activity, or uncanny readings of the Emperor’s Tarot. People like that didn’t tend to last long. Devorus had helped round up more than a few himself. The devices used to contain psykers had a devastating effect on them. Their minds dulled to the point of stupidity, they suffered pain. Devorus had seen chains like Kaylia’s only once before, when a powerful witch resisted detention and the Black Ship crews had come down from on high like the vengeance of the Emperor Himself. The effect they had on the psyker had been terrible. When Devorus had touched them, they’d made him vomit, and he was as psychic as a ferrocrete block. So it was disturbing the girl wore them like they were jewellery. Even so, he felt no danger from her.

  ‘They’re not my powers,’ she said. ‘They’re His.’ She looked up at him defiantly. ‘You want to serve, He wants to serve. So do I. I let them hurt me. I let them to show them that what I say is true. The Emperor. It is Him. He tells me to fight. Why am I being kept here? He doesn’t want it. He wants to help the primarch.’

  A witchfire glow glinted in her eyes. Phantom tastes filled Devorus’ mouth. Her flesh should be burning under the chains.

  He swallowed. He glanced up at the Sister. She was staring at the girl with unfriendly eyes.

  ‘You’re afraid of me,’ Kaylia said. ‘You shouldn’t be. I won’t hurt you, but I must leave.’

  ‘I think it’s for the best if you stay here,’ said Devorus. He looked again to the Primaris Space Marine, hoping for some indication of support. The warrior stared ahead, expressive as an empty suit of armour.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘She’ll kill you if you don’t let me go.’

 
Devorus’ spine went icy. He looked again at the Sister. She was standing, hefting her sword. Kaylia might be referring to Voi.

  He stood again and straightened his tunic. ‘We’ll see what the primarch says.’

  ‘He needs my help,’ the girl said.

  ‘We’ll see what the primarch–’

  The wail of the alarm cut Devorus dead. He stiffened. His hand went instantly to his holstered laspistol. The shouts of his men in the guardroom next door spilled out into the corridor.

  An explosion followed, short and hollow. The Sister of Silence went to the girl’s side, her massive sword held ready. Her proximity to Devorus made him nauseous, but again the girl seemed unaffected.

  ‘Krak bomb,’ said Devorus. More explosions followed. ‘Bolters?’ he said incredulously, but he already knew who was coming.

  ‘Wait here,’ said the Primaris Marine.

  The Space Marine stepped sideways through the door without even looking to see what awaited him, his gun levelled and firing as soon as it was clear of the room. Devorus didn’t heed him, and followed, peeking through the gap between transhuman warrior and door jamb.

  Men were shouting. The air was thick with fyceline and the ozone smell of ionised air. The body of one his men lay on the ground. Devorus couldn’t see much past the Primaris Marine. The Space Marine had his bolt rifle up tight into his shoulder, and was switching targets with alarming surety, squeezing off staccato bursts. The roar of a melta-gun changed that. The Primaris Marine staggered backwards. A wash of air hot with vaporised ceramite and burned flesh singed Devorus’ nostrils. He was almost too slow in stepping back. His eyes swam with the heat. The Primaris Marine crashed down hard, a neat hole in his torso. Greasy meat smoke rose from the wound. Incredibly, he was still alive, attempting to get up with half his organs cooked.

  A hail of bolts slammed into him, breaking his armour and detonating in his flesh. Fragments of metal peppered Devorus’ leg. It hurt, but he had been injured worse than that before, and he drew his laspistol on the women advancing down the corridor. He didn’t waver even when they paused to finish off his men.

  Iolanth emerged from the gun smoke.

  ‘Put the gun down,’ she said. Her voxmitter granted her voice an extra layer of authority. He almost obeyed.

  ‘I don’t think I will,’ he said. ‘You better surrender, before this situation gets worse.’

  ‘You can’t hurt me with that pistol, not in this armour.’

  ‘I could,’ he said.

  ‘You’d have to be lucky, and the Emperor is with me today, Devorus. You know what she is. The Emperor has a plan for her. You are a faithful man, a true warrior of the Emperor. Heed His call. He needs your help.’

  ‘I would prefer it if the primarch were a judge of that. She’s a psyker. She could be dangerous.’

  ‘The primarch cannot see what is in front of him. She’s no psyker.’

  ‘Know him well, do you?’ said Devorus. ‘I’ll take your surrender. Drop your weapons. Come on, do it now. This can finish, if you choose.’

  Iolanth’s warriors spread out across the narrow corridor, taking positions in doorways, covering the way they had come.

  ‘You’ve seen the miracle she performed, Devorus,’ said Iolanth. ‘Those chains don’t stop her. She is not warp-touched, but something else, something glorious.’

  ‘I’ve seen a lot of things,’ said Devorus. ‘Some of them have been like this. Some of them have been performed by good people, others by people bad through and through. All of them have ended badly. She might save this world, but she’ll damn it in doing so.’

  ‘There are many powers at work in the galaxy. Not all of them are evil.’

  He smiled sadly. ‘I can’t agree with that. It is always, always better to assume the worst.’ He pushed his thumb along the power slide of his laspistol, bringing it up to maximum.

  ‘Major Devorus, you are a good man. But good men must suffer so that all may live. They are blessed who are martyrs, for they shall be with Him at His side for eternity. Drop your gun to the floor, and you may continue to serve Him in this life.’

  ‘You can’t do this. These are the primarch’s orders. The child is to remain here.’

  ‘My guidance comes from a higher power. The highest of all.’

  Devorus’ finger twitched over the trigger.

  ‘I can’t let you. I’m sorry.’

  Laslight flashed. The beam duration was too short to register on human vision. The noise of its passage and impact were too closely spaced to tell apart, blended into one loud bang.

  Smoke curled over Iolanth’s heart. Devorus was a good shot. Iolanth was only a metre away, but her armour was amongst the best in all the Imperium, and though her undersuit was visible through the hole, she was unharmed and unmoved. Devorus was mildly surprised to see he had broken the surface of the armour at all.

  ‘I am sorry, Devorus,’ said Iolanth. ‘The Emperor’s will cannot be obstructed by any man, especially one as inconsequential as you. May you live forever in the Emperor’s light.’

  Iolanth’s gun barked.

  Iolanth advanced into the room over Devorus’ body, her weapon roaring.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Plague Guard

  cometh

  Morning broke most unwell, the whey-faced sun crawling into the sky. Light filtered through depthless mists, reducing everything to a silhouette, and making all appear unreal.

  God’s Wrath waded through noisome fog that had banked higher and higher through the night, until it overtopped the Reaver’s head. The engine was as blind as everyone else, reliant on disrupted data pulses from its brother engines and machine senses crowded with false positives. The bigger picture of the battle slipped from Dunkel’s grasp. His tactical overlays jumped with interference, pushing awful pictures over the manifold link that displaced his mission cartograph. The snatches that got through showed the fly-like formation of Mortarion’s army from orbit, never disrupted no matter how many of its soldiers were slaughtered. The Legio Mortis continued to resist, its blighted god-machines doggedly holding their line to the east, though several had been brought low in the night. It angered Dunkel how effective the traitor machines were; their engine kill ratio was point five above that of the Imperials.

  The larger fight was beyond him for now. Early morning saw the Legio Mortis forced back. Their line was finally losing its coherency. God’s Wrath and God’s Will were ordered forward into a gap that presented itself nearby. With Warhound support and a dozen of the Knights of Konor they plunged into the seething hordes of lesser foes on a mission of extermination, commanded to scorch them from Parmenio. The tactic was sound if a common one: penetrate the enemy, destroy the flow of reinforcements, and allow the lesser men and mechanisms of the Imperial war machine to break the attack at the front. But the enemy did not break. They came on without pause: tanks, daemonical engines, and thousands and thousands of infantry. The Titans vaporised them by the hundred. Tanks that dared raise their gun barrels towards the Titans’ towering shapes were smashed to atoms. Misguided human cultists took terminal lessons in the Emperor’s disapproval.

  Did they repent of their sins? thought Dunkel. Did they apprehend the light of the Emperor-Omnissiah one final time before life was stolen from them?

  Kill counters rattled upwards in cockpit displays. The sums were nominal only, for the weapons of the Titans were too destructive to allow accurate tallies to be taken of such small targets. Thousands and thousands dead, and hundreds added to the score with every frame-shaking discharge of the Titans’ weaponry. All God’s Wrath’s rockets had been expended. The lowly infantry were too far beneath the engine’s reach to suffer the attentions of its chainfist. But feet did as good work in the slaughter as any arcane weapon, while the meltacannon changed the living to steaming vapours.

  Void shields throbbed under a heavy r
ain of shells. The fusion roar of the main armament was as repetitive as the pounding of surf. The reactor cycled up and down with each firing, its sound so much a part of Dunkel’s being he had ceased to notice it. The Titan’s feet raised steady quakes from the ground. Dunkel lost the sense of his own body. He and his men and their machine were one by the holy will of the Omnissiah, united in the dealing of death.

  Some sense broke Dunkel from blessed unity, a ripple across the surface of reality as silky as a ring of waves upon a still cavern pool.

  God’s Wrath looked to the west, where Legio Mortis still held its ground, trading blows with Fortis and Atarus. Danger signifiers leapt up on his cartograph, and he turned his attention eastwards again. Three full households of pestilent traitor Knights were moving up around the comma tail formed by Mortis’ staged retreat of yesterday, seeking to outflank Oberon and get to Fortis’ rear.

  A sure sign of a fresh push.

  ‘I have enemy engine minoris activity, coordinates three-three-nine, seven-six-eight. Enemy Knights, moving in fast.’

  ‘You are heard, and understood,’ Urskein voxed back.

  The Knights were but the vanguard. Blocky shapes vaster than Titans were emerging from the fog, or perhaps they came from some other dimension, materialising from nowhere into that place, that time, to oppose the Titans of the Machine-God. Where there had been nothing, now there was definitely something.

  Dunkel squinted. Neither his eyes nor God’s Wrath’s were giving him a clear view.

  ‘Cleanse auspex, give me a view on those engines,’ he ordered. God’s Wrath’s horn array burbled along with him.

  The shapes looked more like buildings than engines. They were tall rectangles, like bastions. But they weren’t buildings. They were moving.

  ‘Stabilised picter feed available,’ voxed Adept Sine from the reactor room. ‘Maximum magnification.’

  A grainy vision imposed itself over Dunkel’s mind’s eye, fed to him by the Reaver’s glassy stare.

  Seven enormous wheeled towers rolled out of the fog towards the Imperial line, surrounded by hordes of beast-headed humanoids.