‘No such promise was made,’ Tyberos responded. ‘Your arrival here was contingent on the tithe already made to you.’
‘Tell that to your Chief Librarian,’ Nev said.
Atea turned to Te Kahurangi, but the Pale Nomad said nothing. Tyberos remained facing the viewscreens, unmoved.
‘He sent an astropathic communique renegotiating the terms of our agreement. For our guaranteed assistance he swore the gauntlets would be turned over to me.’
The silence on the Nicor’s bridge was deeper than ever. Tyberos said nothing. Eventually Te Kahurangi spoke.
‘It is true.’
‘He admits it,’ Nev snapped. ‘Surrender them to me, Red Wake.’
Tyberos remained silent for a moment more. His stance hadn’t shifted, but slowly, the fingers of Hunger and Slake clenched, adamantium grating together with brutal promise.
‘No,’ he said.
‘We will destroy you,’ Nev shouted, smashing his fist against the side of his throne. ‘I could annihilate you and your pathetic ship with a word!’
‘You could,’ Tyberos allowed. ‘But by the time you recharge your weapons, the Scyla and Annihilation will tear you apart. You are no match for the Nomad Predation Fleet.’
‘You are breaking your vows,’ Nev snarled. ‘I was promised those gauntlets!’
‘They are not Te Kahurangi’s to give,’ Tyberos replied, the tone of his deathly voice never changing. ‘If you wish to possess them, I will acquiesce to a duel. The two of us, and to the victor the prize.’
Nev went quiet, face contorted as he tried to summon a response.
‘That is not how oaths work, Red Wake. I do not have to prove myself in combat to know they belong to me!’
‘Face me in person,’ Tyberos said. ‘Or face my fleet. But I will not freely give you my Chapter’s relics.’
Nev glared from the viewscreen for a moment more. Then, abruptly, the transmission ended.
‘Our shields are at maximum,’ Atea said quietly. Tyberos didn’t respond. The bridge waited, all eyes on the Wicked Claw’s energy outputs.
They flared. For a moment it looked as though the exo-lance was firing. It wasn’t. The power was coming from the Wicked Claw’s plasma drives. Slowly, reluctantly, the Ashen Claws flagship was turning away from the Nicor.
‘They’re powering up their warp drives,’ reported a sensorium serf. ‘They’re disengaging.’
‘Void Father preserve us,’ Atea said, turning to Te Kahurangi. ‘You nearly finished us all. What possessed you?’
It was almost unheard of for any to speak against the Pale Nomad, especially within the Chapter’s Librarius. Te Kahurangi, however, bowed his head.
‘It was a necessary deception. My visions have been clear. Without the certainty of their intervention much of the fleet would have been lost, as well as our entire Third Company. I had to promise what I knew we would not give.’
‘It was a betrayal,’ Atea said. ‘A betrayal of all of us.’
‘It was not,’ Tyberos said before Te Kahurangi could respond, causing both Librarians to go silent. ‘The Pale Nomad put the good of the Chapter first. That is the heart of our doctrines.’
The giant in ichor-stained Terminator armour turned slowly to face the Chief Librarian, his black gaze as soulless as ever. Hunger and Slake had unclenched.
‘Nonetheless, the events here will come at a price. We will all have to pay it, in one form or another, some day.’
The sun was setting across the shrine-city, its last rays breaking through the smoke that hung about the ruined, ransacked churches and basilicas. In the distance bolter fire still rang out as the Adeptus Astartes hunted and slaughtered the remnants of the cult. The purge would continue through the long night and likely on into the days to come, unrelenting and merciless. By the end neither hybrid nor purestrain xenos would be left on Piety V.
Bail Sharr stood on the broken steps of the Theocratica’s cathedra, looking out over Absolution Square as the sun went down. Before him stretched a sea of carnage, the flagstones covered with the corpses and detritus of the unrelenting cultist assaults. They lay like tidal wreckage, one disorganised row after another, heaped up thicker and thicker the nearer they got to the cathedra’s broken doors. The steps were hardly visible, carpeted with the ichor-splashed pale flesh and the torn robes of the hybrids. Among them were rare glimpses of battered grey power armour, those void brethren fallen amidst the onslaught, cut down by overwhelming firepower or the talons and claws of dozens of assailants. Tama had already extracted their gene-seed, dragging each body out from under the mounds of those they had brought down in their final moments. The rest of their remains, including their precious battleplate, would be taken up by the shaven-headed serfs who now picked their way through the wreckage under the gaze of their overseers.
A figure passed among the emaciated humans, heavy boots grinding uncaringly over the remains of the xenos dead. The serfs cringed back from him as he mounted the steps and halted before Sharr. The Reaper Prime looked down on him and, after a moment, made the sign of the aquila. The figure did likewise, ichor still dripping slowly from his dark battleplate.
‘Hail and well met, Carcharodon,’ said Rama Sixx. It was he who had led three companies of the Ashen Claws to the Piety System, the same companies that had delivered the Third and now spearheaded the purge spreading from Absolution Square into every street, alley and undercroft.
‘Well met, Ashen Claw,’ Sharr said. ‘You have my thanks and that of my brethren. Were it not for your intervention, we would still be battling here. I doubt many of us would have seen the next dawn.’
‘It is good that we have come here,’ Sixx said. ‘For our own sake as well as yours. It has been too long since my brothers and I drew blade and bolter against a worthy foe. To be cleansing xenos filth once more… It is what many of us have yearned for.’
‘There will be no shortage of purging here,’ Sharr said, looking out over the square once more. ‘But tell me, how is it that you come to be here, at so fortunate a time and place? When I was on Atargatis last I did not know my orders would bring me here, and surely neither did you?’
‘We received word,’ Sixx said. ‘Or rather, Brother Arathar received word from your Chief Librarian. He told of your fleet’s stand and of your journey here.’
‘And what of that fleet?’ Sharr went on. A part of him was loathed to ask the fate of his brethren from a stranger, especially one such as Sixx, but he hadn’t found time to contact the White Maw’s choristorum or discover if any news had come through from the Nomad Predation Fleet. Even with victory on Piety, he didn’t know for certain whether the hive fleet had turned away. A part of him still feared that the Third were the sole remnants of the Carcharodon Astra.
‘I have not received word of any astropathic communication,’ Sixx said. ‘But my lord Nehat Nev took the greater bulk of the Chapter’s fleet to the aid of your brethren, including the Wicked Claw. If the xenos have not been turned back, it will not matter – they will be upon us soon enough, and this world’s existence will be at an end.’
Sharr acknowledged Sixx’s words. They were true enough. Knowing that Nev had finally committed his Chapter to the defeat of the xenos was a comfort. In truth he now realised he hadn’t expected the Ashen Claws to honour their promise and come to their aid.
‘I will remember what you have done here this day, brother,’ he said to Sixx.
The Ashen Claw nodded, turning to leave.
‘I must oversee the ongoing purification of the city,’ he said. ‘The xenos survivors may seek to rally under cover of darkness.’
‘Agreed,’ Sharr said. ‘The majority of my company are still combat effective. We will join you within the hour, once we have gathered up our dead and resupplied.’
As Sixx departed, Sharr turned his back on Absolution Square’s destruction and paced i
nto the cathedra. Here the ruination was even worse. The great, painted dome of the place of worship was now half-demolished, and the sun’s fading light was beaming in through the jagged gap, illuminating the rubble and Itako’s drop pod in the centre of the nave. The Dreadnought had returned to his slumbers, inert and silent amidst a small mountain of butchered corpses. Uthulu and his artisans reverently wiped the filth and ichor from the Contemptor, and conducted short-term repairs to his motor units and power plant. The rest of the cathedra’s architecture was no more intact than its ceiling – several pillars had collapsed completely, and the finely carved gothic architecture, from the vault’s buttresses to the statuary niches, was riddled with bullet holes, las-scars and flamer burns. Even worse was the state of the nave – besides the shattered flagstones around Itako, the hundreds of pews had been shot, beaten and broken to splinters. Bodies draped their remains, so many that the cathedra’s floor was hardly visible, and not a single block of the brutalised stonework wasn’t sticky and dark with xenos blood.
One of the grandest places of devotion to the Imperial Cult in the subsector had become a monument to wanton slaughter, a shrine of carnage and massacre that spoke volumes of the desperate position mankind held in an inimical and merciless galaxy.
And yet, despite the devastation, at the far end of the cathedra Sharr could see the Third Company’s ragged, dark standard, still hung over the cracked and bloodied remains of the altar. The apse was ruinous, every inch pockmarked by bullets and shrapnel. The Carcharodons fallen in the cathedra’s defence had been hauled by the Chapter-serfs into the apse space, where they were being carefully relieved of their venerable battleplate. Tama was kneeling over the last, his narthecium full. Sharr had not yet heard a full casualty report for the company. He would put it off a little longer.
It was ironic, he thought as he looked up at the ceiling and all its shattered grandeur. Ironic that the Carcharodons disdained the modern Imperial Cult and all its lavishness. Yet here they stood, bloodied and wounded, having slaughtered thousands in its defence. Holding a place like this meant nothing to the Chapter. It meant everything to the wider Imperium, however. And when the scattered accounts were collated, and regiments of the Astra Militarum swarmed the shrines of Piety, they would find a stoic defence of all that the Imperium held dear. That narrative, rather than a simple massacre, could yet prove vital. Regardless, Sharr did not intend to be anywhere near the Piety System when relief arrived.
One of his brothers was crossing the chancel to join him, passing the inert form of Itako and the company’s Techmarine. Sharr realised it was Khauri. The change in the Librarian was stark. Gone was the youthful void brother who had been assigned to them at the beginning of the operation. In his place was a warrior seer worthy of the likes of the Pale Nomad. It was not so much the shattered state of his battleplate or the fresh scars and grazes that criss-crossed his pale skin. It was the surety in his stride, the firmness in his black gaze, the stoicism of his set jaw. He looked like a void brother who had discovered the inner silence, who had been moulded into the selfless, cold warrior that the Chapter’s doctrines demanded.
‘The Nomad Predation Fleet yet lives,’ the Librarian said as he reached Sharr’s side. ‘I have seen it.’
Perhaps the Reaper Prime would have doubted such an assertion before. He did not now. Instead, he nodded.
The Librarian carried on. ‘We must depart soon. The Imperium will not be as slow to react here as we might expect. The woman will make sure of that.’
‘We will be withdrawing to orbit within the next forty-eight Terran hours,’ Sharr confirmed. ‘Regardless of the status of the cult or the Ashen Claws’ progress in purging them. The patriarch is slain and, if your visions are correct, the threat has receded, for now. I am eager to return to the main fleet.’
‘You were there when I was taken, weren’t you?’
The sudden question made Sharr turn to look at Khauri. He had removed his helmet and their black eyes met. Neither looked away.
‘On Zartak,’ Khauri went on. ‘You were there when the Pale Nomad took me.’
‘I was,’ Sharr said.
‘Tell me of it.’
‘It is not my place. Te Kahurangi is your master. If he judges the story relevant, I am sure he will tell it.’
‘I was dying when he found me, wasn’t I?’ Khauri went on, as though Sharr hadn’t spoken. ‘I have seen it all. The hypno-induction and the indoctrination therapies were meant to strip away all memories of a time before my ascension, but I remember it now. Those final moments on Zartak. The traitor, the one called the Flayed Father. The daemon he sought to harness to my flesh. Bar’ghul.’
Silence followed the blasphemous utterance, but Khauri seemed unperturbed.
‘I have his markings on me still,’ he said, half turning to show Sharr his back. Beneath the grime and filth of the more recent combat, the long, lazy stripes of the old wounds remained visible.
‘This is his rune,’ Khauri said, reaching back to trace one line-dashed circle, fingers following the curve from memory alone. ‘And this is the mark of summoning. And this, my life-knot, severed. If the Flayed Father had succeeded I would have become nothing more than a flesh-prison for the warp beast, my mind and soul eaten up piece by piece.’
‘Yet here you stand,’ Sharr said.
‘Here I stand,’ Khauri echoed. ‘Forever marked by the power of Chaos. Forever bonded with Bar’ghul, the shadow daemon.’
‘It was banished before it could ever latch its claws upon you. Te Kahurangi made sure of that.’
‘To an extent,’ Khauri allowed. ‘But he was not wholly successful in shielding me. You may not have yet realised it, Reaper Prime, but the Pale Nomad is not all-powerful. Zartak almost broke him. The Dead Skin almost defeated him. The scars I carry with me are a testimony to that.’
‘He has done more for our brotherhood than you yet know or understand, Khauri,’ Sharr said, his tone level. ‘It will be a long time indeed before any can claim to be his equal.’
‘That much is certain,’ Khauri replied. ‘I doubt I will ever have the strength or foresight he possesses. But that does not change what happened on Zartak. Bar’ghul is with me still. That is something I have now accepted. Rangu willing, I will one day find the power necessary to tear it from my soul permanently. But I will not learn that power from the Pale Nomad. If he knew, he would have taught me already.’
‘The knowledge your kind possess is beyond me,’ Sharr said. ‘If what you say is correct, you should bring it before Te Kahurangi. Even if you believe he cannot help you directly, his knowledge will point you down the right path. He has helped me many times before, and I am certain he can do so with you.’
‘Perhaps,’ Khauri said slowly, looking up as the last light blinked from existence on the edge of the broken dome, plunging the slaughter-filled cathedra into shadow. ‘But one way or another, I will be free of this darkness.’
A lone figure stalked the streets as darkness fell. The staccato thudding of weapons fire continued to sound nearby, but the battle’s fury had already moved on through the route the woman took. Its detritus had been left behind for her to pick through. Bodies, thousands of them, littering the rockcrete, scattered haphazardly along the roadways and intersections, heaped on street corners and outside the black iron railings barring the entrances to shrines and chapels. Almost all of them were human or xenos. From a glance it was often difficult to tell them apart. Some of the dead bore multiple limbs, distended skulls, fang-filled maws or had skin paler than bleached skulls, but just as many bore no immediate signs of corruption. Almost all were identically clad as well, in the devotional garb of Piety V, be it pilgrim shifts, supplicant habits, the white and gold of priestly vestments or the black of the devotati. It was no wonder that the cult had been able to hide away for so long, breeding and festering in the rustwood pulpits and the alms queues, the confessional booths and
communion lines. How strong it had grown would now never be known. How many innocents had been purged along with the tainted was not a matter that concerned the Carcharodon Astra, or the other Angels of Death who had touched down in the shrine-city.
Occasionally, the woman saw their bodies as well. They were armoured like the Carcharodons, in ancient, mismatched battleplate, but its colours were different – darkest greys and deep reds. In the decade the woman had spent scouring archives and data-stacks for the many different brotherhoods of the Adeptus Astartes, she had never come across their colours and heraldry. Doubtless they were another band of renegades, just like the grey-clad killers they had come to rescue.
She passed by a burned-out landcar and picked her way over rubble spilled from the shattered wall of a devotarium. Bodies hung from the lamp posts at the far end of the street, dressed in priestly vestments, their gowns thrown up over their heads before the nooses had been tightened. At the street’s end a fountain, crafted into the likeness of a trio of soaring cherubim, had been shot to pieces, and the water had spilled out and flooded the small square it occupied. Bodies floated in the shallow water, the liquid discoloured by their blood.
She passed through the square and turned right. Ahead the Adeptus Arbites precinct loomed. The Space Marines had already swept through it – the gates lay broken open and the cleared space before it, with its razorwire coils and dragons’ teeth, was thick with bodies blown apart by brutal bolt weapons. Smoke coiled from the central keep, the top of which had been shattered by a shell. She passed through the gateway, her footsteps loud in the deserted drill square beyond. Yet more bodies lay within the precinct, frateris and Arbites alike, a further testimony to the utter carnage that had enveloped the entire city. There were no survivors.
She stopped in the square, and cast about. There was a comms-bead in her hand, and she used the back-up locator to direct her movement, first over to the broken execution blocks occupying the east side of the Arbites courtyard, then back towards the entrance to the central keep, where a swathe of blackened, shrivelled corpses marked the work of a flamer. The air was still thick with the stench of burned flesh, and the woman put a hand up to her face as she passed, her eyes still scanning the ground.
Carcharodons: Outer Dark Page 28