by Guy Haley
Odrameyer was covered in disgusting fluids. They clogged his breathing filters. The sense of suffocation became unbearable, and he tore off his mask, exposing himself to the toxic airs. The pain as they ate into his lungs was immediate. And yet he endured it without fear.
He stood high on the turret’s inner step, and drew his power sword.
‘The Emperor is with us! The Emperor is with us!’ he called. ‘Praise be to He of Terra! Praise be! Forward!’
Guns blazing, tracks churning, the last women and men of the Cadian 4021st Armoured Regiment advanced towards their target.
Edermo urged the Novamarines into the battle without hesitation, not even pausing to ascertain why the militant-apostolic was there.
‘Prepare to engage,’ he voxed them, his voice clipped. ‘Vasilon, get the fleet on the vox by whatever means possible.’
‘Who are these people?’ Maxentius-Drontio asked Justinian.
‘They are allies, brother, that is all we need to know.’
‘I like simple answers,’ said Maxentius-Drontio approvingly.
‘Recon Force Edermo to split,’ the lieutenant commanded. ‘Squad Parris to engage the enemy, contact the militant-apostolic, find out why he’s here. All other squads, prepare to attack the facility.’
‘The lieutenant has not asked me to confirm the artefact is present,’ said Fe, somewhat aggrieved.
‘Is it?’ asked Maxentius-Drontio
‘Why, yes!’
‘Then be silent, tech-priest, and pray to your machine-god you live out this day.’
The grav-tanks swept down the slopes towards the medicae facility, coming in from the north. This path took them through the back of the plague horde’s rear lines at an angle, and as they passed they spied Astra Militarum tanks mired in huge mobs of daemons.
‘Lend them a little aid,’ Edermo ordered. ‘Targets of discretion.’
Without slowing, the Repulsor’s turret swivelled, sophisticated machine-spirits keeping the barrel level, and locked on. A spear of brilliant light flashed across the blighted land, connecting with a greater daemon’s weapon and blasting it to fragments. It panned efficiently on a few degrees, putting another shot through the skull of a beast covered in matted fur and twigs. The gatling cannon whined up to firing speed, and mowed down dozens of lesser daemons. The things were soon in range of their bolt weapons, and the guns of the Impulsors. All the tanks kept on firing as they sped by, cutting apart the horde from the rear. The threat to the Cadians diminished as the pressure of the back ranks of daemons reduced, and the Astra Militarum tanks hauled themselves forward. Edermo voxed out a few orders to them, ordering them to link up with the Space Marines at the facility.
‘With such weapons as these, mankind will rule the galaxy forever,’ said Pasac.
Justinian looked at Maxentius-Drontio. He gave a shrug and reloaded his bolt rifle.
‘The reborn get a little excited by all these new guns,’ Maxentius-Drontio said.
As they neared the wrecked facility, the Repulsor Executioner veered off, disgorging a squad of Eradicators close by the wrecked medicae building. Vasilon’s squad jumped down. Justinian had his Impulsor slow enough to drop the remaining Assault Intercessors off, before racing on and down towards the war train while the other two tanks recommenced firing on the horde.
‘Patch me into the orbital relay. Let’s see if it can boost our vox enough to establish communication with the war train,’ Justinian ordered.
‘As you command, brother-sergeant,’ Pasac responded from the driver’s compartment.
A painful squeal of overtaxed electronics blurted into Justinian’s ears, then levelled off to a continuous rasp.
‘Adeptus Ministorum war train, respond.’
They were moving at top speed now. Flies became smears across the hull. The train grew rapidly. A huge crowd of daemons of all sizes and kinds were mobbing it, attempting to prevent its progress further up the hill, but its racks of weapons burned them to ash, and its great mass would not be held back. As slow and inevitable as Imperial retribution, it ground up towards the corrupted facility. The fighting decks were crammed with people, most of them armed with simple weapons, and hardly any wearing any kind of protective equipment. And yet they breathed the toxic air, and they fought off the swarms of flies and aerial daemons attacking through the voids. Men and women on foot advanced alongside it, though they were falling fast.
Achilleos saw this too. He ceased firing a moment in amazement.
‘They should all be dead,’ he said.
‘They will be soon,’ said Maxentius-Drontio. ‘Look, the war train’s shields are failing. It cannot stand long.’
As they watched the last void collapsed. Airborne daemons fell on the defenders, reaping a terrible toll. The train was moving slowly, and plaguebearers on foot began to press at it, and clamber aboard.
Orpino was shaking from the iron hail’s recoil as he raked the daemons. The tank bounced on its grav-cushion, a strangely soft sensation, when it ran down the foe. Achilleos and Maxentius-Drontio knelt on the transit bay benches, guns resting on the raised sides. Pasac fired the storm bolters mounted in the forward sponsons. For such a small vehicle, a fully crewed Impulsor put out a tremendous amount of fire, and they opened up a corridor, for although the daemons they faced were resilient ordinarily, some quality of the train made them weaker than could be expected, and Maxentius-Drontio especially grunted with satisfaction at each daemon felled.
‘Adeptus Ministorum war train, I am Brother-Sergeant Justinian of the Novamarines. Respond with status and tactical objectives.’
There was a broken series of sounds, then clear, calm words.
‘Well met, by the light of the Emperor, brother,’ Frater Mathieu replied. ‘If you value humanity at all, you will help me get into the medicae building.’
‘Be advised, orbital bombardment imminent,’ Justinian said. ‘I suggest you hold position.’
‘If the fires of the Emperor Himself were to scour that place to dead rock, still I would go there,’ said Mathieu. ‘The Emperor calls me. You are His angels come to lead me. Take me to my destiny.’
Maxentius-Drontio looked to Justinian. The sergeant nodded.
‘Do as he says. Fall in with the train and escort them up the hill.’
Ku’Gath looked out at the bothersome mortals forcing their way into the mill. They were making quite a dent in his followers, and he hesitated a moment. Could he leave the pot?
‘It might boil over,’ he mumbled. ‘Then where would the storm be?’
The pot bubbled with vicious enthusiasm, buffeting his soul with the negative energy it poured into the atmosphere. He was proud of his alchemical abilities.
‘What I have done here is not easy,’ he grumbled. ‘Brew me up a storm! He makes it sound so easy, but to gather all this potential and violence, to prod decay into energy? Not. Simple,’ he said. He shook his great head wearily. ‘Keep them out, my Plague Guard!’ he shouted, but he lacked conviction. There were none of his lieutenants nearby. The Great Unclean Ones he had roused from the garden to replace his old generals were not of the same calibre, and he had only a few, one of whom, he glumly noticed, had just managed to get himself banished. ‘No mortals. No Plague Marines. No shuffling afflicted. Only daemons.’
Will it be enough? It should be enough, he told himself. He sighed.
‘But it won’t be enough, will it?’
It was all so wearily predictable.
He felt the orbital attack before it hit, for he was intimately connected to the cauldron. The cauldron made the storm, and the bombardment came through it. Bits of his soul were spread through the atmosphere. The incoming lance fire tickled his gut with an unwelcome cramp. He burped, then looked up.
‘Oh dear,’ he said.
Rains of las fell through the skies. A lot of it fizzled out, the ord
erly transference of energies disrupted by Ku’Gath’s magic, and that made him happy. The Corpse-God’s vessels were flinging the energies of stars at the cauldron, but it would not be so easily destroyed. What made him less happy was that beyond the shield over the cauldron, a fair amount of fire was getting through, incinerating his Plague Guard by the score.
‘They certainly are being reckless,’ Ku’Gath said, as a lance strike slammed into the ground close to the war train, sending up a cloud of steam into the sky. Boltgun fire and the revving of chainswords were coming closer. He looked into the cauldron again. He did not enjoy fighting, as a rule.
‘But sometimes we have no choice,’ he grumbled. ‘You, you, you – get up here and stir.’
The indicated plaguebearers shuffled up the slippery wooden scaffolding around the cauldron. Ku’Gath relinquished his stirring spoon to them. It was twice the size of any of them. Only by a complex rig of straps and ropes could they drag it around the mixture, and they argued dolorously about who should wear the harness.
‘Oh, do get on with it,’ Ku’Gath snapped. He waddled over to his great sword, propped up against the wall, and took it up. By then, the plaguebearers were pulling the spoon around.
‘Slower!’ he snarled. ‘Slower! It’s a tempest, not a tornado.’
Shaking his head, he wandered off in the direction of the shooting.
He ambled down a long corridor, his antlers scraping the remains of the sodden plaster from the high roof, his sword dragged behind him, ripping up plastek floor tiles. He went out into one of the medicae’s grand entrance halls. Ku’Gath had little use for the space, and had not actively remodelled it, but his mere presence ensured it was dank, streaked black with mould, and the floor covered over with tumorous flesh and stands of dying weeds. The ceiling had caved in across half the room, showing the nauseously churning sky.
‘Halllooooo?’ he called, one hand to his mouth. ‘I hear you down here, little men. Come out! Come out now!’
By way of answer, a fusion beam roared out from a side arch, and hit him square in the belly. Ku’Gath looked at the wound with a scowl. His attacker sheltered behind a pillar of dulled marble, and wore some sort of quartered design.
‘This is my house, and you treat me with such ill respect?’ he hooted. ‘How impolite!’
Another fusion beam blew out a chunk of his guts. A second and third of the warriors were approaching from the other side of the room, all armed the same.
‘Ouch,’ he said. He brandished his sword. ‘A little ambush, eh? Not good enough. Do you know who I am?’
He strode forward, and smashed down his plaguesword into the first Space Marine. Blue-and-bone armour went black. It cracked into a thousand perished pieces, and the man inside was rendered into stinking oil, black as midnight.
‘I am Ku’Gath Plaguefather, first in Nurgle’s favour,’ he said. The other Eradicators shot him again in the back, so Ku’Gath whipped out his long, frog-like tongue, and wrenched one from the ground, tossing him into the air. As he flew, the warrior underwent a process of rapid mutation. By the time his decay-racked body burst against the wall, it was a collection of mismatched limbs with its guts worn on the outside. ‘I am no weak-willed pox-pusher, but a master of disease!’ Ku’Gath scolded. ‘There are few things in this universe strong enough to beat me.’
Bolt-rounds thumped into him from all quarters. Other Space Marines were coming in, sighting down short carbines.
‘Oh, more of you, is it? Do stop it,’ he said. ‘I am rather ticklish, and apt, when provoked, to tickle back.’
The Space Marines continued to fire at him. Ku’Gath turned around. They circled him.
‘This is not fair, so many against one. I will even the odds.’
Where the walls were covered with delightful growth, they rippled and bubbled.
Ku’Gath grinned. Plaguebearers emerged from the shadows behind the Space Marines. The bolter fire eased off.
‘Now,’ Ku’Gath said, grudgingly admitting to himself that this was rather fun. ‘Who is going to fight me?’
‘I shall.’
One of the Anathema’s toy grandsons strode out of the dark, pompous as a nurgling on a dung pile. He hefted a shield fronted by a bound skeleton, and carried a glowing sword of some size, though it was a lot smaller than Ku’Gath’s. He was disgustingly clean and healthy looking. It would be a pleasure to cut him down to size.
‘Oh, you’ll do,’ Ku’Gath said with relish. ‘You’ll very much do indeed.’
Chapter Thirty-One
A LIBRARIAN’S DUTY
F abian went alone into the darkness. The main doors opened directly onto a long flight of steps leading down below the fortress plazas. The Library of Ptolemy’s outer building was immense, but it had existed for thousands of years, and the collection it housed had long ago outgrown the original structure. Subsequent delving into the bedrock of the mountains had expanded the library tenfold, so that its stacks stretched on so far underground that Fabian could imagine them going on forever. Even in the entrance hall, the walls were crammed with books. Five storeys of brass balconies served by hundreds of ladders on wheels, left where their last users had put them before Guilliman had closed up the place.
All the lumens were out. There were still piles of data storage media on side tables, and a few personal effects, coated with years of dust. Fabian got the impression that Guilliman had chased out the scholiasts without warning.
It was quiet in there, and cool, even in his armoured suit. The noise of the assault was muffled by more than the library’s thick walls; sound seemed suppressed by the weight of knowledge. There were thousands of years of history within the place. The violence of the moment was nothing to that, and the library treated it with the contempt that it deserved.
Fabian crept along silent halls, his breath echoing around the close confines of his helm.
‘What by the Throne am I doing?’ he muttered to himself. The monster he tracked was far beyond him. He shouldn’t be there, for a whole host of reasons. Guilliman’s ban was only one of them. The gun he held so capably would probably elicit no more than a titter should he shoot the creature. Just looking upon a greater daemon would probably kill him, and yet he pressed on. The truth was, the temptation to tread those forbidden halls was greater than his fear.
The daemon was not difficult to follow. Where it had passed, slime crawling with parasites puddled the floor, streaks of blood and pus adding dashes of colour. Footsteps were marked by dissolving stone. Brass fittings were tarnished, steel and iron rusted. On the shelves above Fabian’s head, certain runs of books were furred with colourful moulds, as if the daemon had run its fingers carelessly among them, decaying with its touch. Curtains hung shabby, full of holes. Clumps of odd plants grew from mulched volumes, and pasty flowers huffed out spores that glimmered in the glare of Fabian’s stablight.
The thing had got ahead of him far quicker than Fabian expected and was nowhere to be seen, though it had seemed so huge and so slow when it had pushed its way through the door, as if Fabian would find it a couple of yards ahead, breathing laboured and flab wobbling. He had to remind himself that it was no mortal creature he followed.
He tried his vox and got nothing but expectant silence, as if the books were waiting to see what would happen next. There was not so much as the hiss of an open connection. His world was the soft glow of his helm instruments, the long cone of his stablight. He supposed he should feel afraid, and yet he was not.
The slime trail headed deeper into the library, passing under cyclopean arches from the time the library was first extended. The stacks reared up higher, becoming multi-storey edifices. All manner of data storage was contained there, not only books, but scrolls, crystals, picts, paintings, holodiscs and tapes. The daemon had headed straight down the grand hall, right into the mountain. Fabian followed, finding its trail had gone left down a narrow side
way. Shelves of books pressed in from either side, so that he was in a narrow defile of knowledge, though all those the daemon had come close to had rotted to unreadable trash, as if the space had been used to dump cast-off ideas nobody wanted any more.
More turns, more twists. He found himself going from grand arcades into lower ways, where books imprisoned in mesh cages looked sadly upon freedom. The roof lowered substantially. Flaps of skin hung from the ceiling where his quarry had scraped the plaster. Where the beast had steadied itself against the book cages they were pushed in, and their dampened contents covered in mushrooms.
Shortly after this, the signs of destruction and decay lessened. The slime dwindled. The parasites became dead brown lines in shrinking puddles. Fabian had to bend over to follow the trail, until he was peering at the floor.
A small, fat shape awaited him in the middle of the corridor. The imp from the rain.
It stood with its legs spread, fists on hips, its many chins jutting up, striking as heroic a pose as any actor on a stage. It held this position when Fabian’s light fell on it, just so he would see, then stuck out a blistered tongue, blew a rasp, and skipped off giggling. Fabian levelled his gun, thought better of it, and ran after.
That night it had wanted to show him something. What, he needed to know.
It skidded around a corner and into a low, hexagonal room domed with stone blocks. Its huge armoured door stood wide open. Six shelving units lined the walls. Five of them held books, the other a mixture of what seemed to be odds and ends and sheets of thin brass. All of them were chained in place, behind fretted silver screens.
The little imp was climbing up one of these in self-conscious parody of a mountaineer, making a great show of huffing and puffing. The silver went black where it touched, long runs of tarnish spreading. Plasteel furred. Books crumbled.