by Darius Hinks
‘Interlopers. Despite repeated warnings, you have trespassed on the sovereign and most holy sanctuary of the victorious dynast, He Who is Bidden to Rule, phaeron of the Royal House of Khenisi, his victorious majesty, Menkhaz the Unmortal.’
There was a moment of quiet as the necron paused for the Blood Angels to consider the magnificence of its words. The only sound was the humming of servos in the warriors’ armour and the groaning of the sagging floor. Servatus glanced at the heat-warped deck plates. The fighting had been so fierce that several of the support struts had disintegrated. Whole sections of the deck looked like they might collapse before the pompous necron had even finished its proclamation.
‘Your vessel is on a collision course with our inviolable crown world,’ continued the necron. It steered its robotic steed forwards, the tree-broad legs slamming down near Servatus. ‘You leave us no option,’ it said, gazing magisterially across the room. ‘You fought with a degree of honour, but–’
The necron paused as Servatus dashed to the centre of the room. Guns swivelled on the war machine, targeting Servatus as he fixed a grenade to the deck and sprinted back towards the steps, giving Sergeant Agorix a silent hand gesture as he ran.
The war machine fired just as the grenade detonated, ripping the damaged strut away and tearing a hole through the deck. It teetered, legs thrashing, then fell back into the hole with a scream of grinding gears.
There was a series of smashing sounds as it crashed through the levels below.
Every necron in the chamber stumbled and lowered its weapon, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Then, a fraction of a second later they recovered, raising their guns and bracing themselves for more fighting.
The Blood Angels had followed Servatus’ command and leapt up onto the clerestory, hauling themselves up struts and onto the balcony. Once they were clear, they turned and hurled a plasma storm at the androids.
With their lord gone, the necrons’ shots were wild and untargeted. They staggered under the Blood Angels’ gunfire as more of the floor collapsed, sending ranks of warriors tumbling from view.
‘For Sanguinius!’ cried Servatus as they ripped the necrons into a junkyard of steel limbs and thrashing cables.
Within a few more minutes it was over. The Blood Angels lowered their guns and surveyed the carnage. The necrons’ living alloy was now indistinguishable from the heat-warped deck. Some of their skull-like faces were still recognisable, but as the smoke cleared, the necrons’ eyes grew dark and the fragments began to dematerialise.
Servatus reloaded his gun and nodded at Sergeant Agorix. Agorix saluted, and they stepped through the western door and on into the room beyond. There were no necrons there, only fragments of those that had been torn apart by their grenades.
As Servatus picked his way carefully through the steel bodies, two lights blinked into life – eye sockets in one of the metal skulls. At the same moment, a dismembered torso began hauling itself towards the head, dragging its scorched chest with one twisted arm.
Servatus curled his lip in distaste. The thing was not alive in any real sense. It had no creed or faith – it was just programmed to kill.
He blasted the skull into molten ore, then strode on.
The next few chambers were empty, apart from the surreal sight of a neatly decapitated corpse left in the wake of the necron advance. The third chamber had collapsed, but there was a slender gantry left hanging out over the gap. The Blood Angels pounded across without pausing, their servo-reactive armour plates hissing as they rushed through the half-light, their plasma weapons trained on the rolling darkness as columns of smoke drifted up from the lower levels.
Lieutenant Servatus raced on through a vast, abandoned chapel, pausing only to whisper a prayer to a statue of the Angel Sanguinius, then, as he reached the narrow, spear-tip archway on the far side, he stopped, holding up a warning hand to Sergeant Agorix.
The sounds of battle reverberated down the next passageway. He heard the savage bark of bolter fire and the whining howl of xenos weaponry. Lights flashed through the darkness – crimson, green, then white, flickering across the murals on the walls.
Servatus waved for Agorix to follow, then advanced slowly, unholstering his pistol and holding it before him as he marched on.
The passageway ended in a long, rectangular atrium, with a ceiling too high to discern. Spaced along the sides of the atrium were nine grand archways. Eight were dark and silent; the ninth was a gate to hell. It was piled with severed body parts and lit up by a blaze of gunfire.
Just inside the doorway, another squad of Blood Angels were barricaded behind fallen statuary. There were five of them, holding back dozens of necrons. Waves of the dead-faced automata were toppling back into the gloom, their metal limbs glinting in the light of bolter fire as the Blood Angels gunned them down.
Servatus and Agorix hurried down the vast, empty chamber, heading for the fighting. ‘Lupum Squad,’ muttered Servatus, noting the markings on the Blood Angels’ beautifully worked Mk X battleplate.
‘Sergeant Lupum,’ he said, opening the vox-network.
One of the Blood Angels glanced back, still firing into the oncoming ranks. He waved to another archway, further on down the atrium.
His voice crackled over the vox, strained but clear. ‘Brother-Lieutenant Servatus, head for the bridge. We have orders from Lord Rhacelus to keep this route clear, but everyone else is to assemble on the bridge.’ He paused as the necrons focused their fire on him, gauss beams slicing through the fallen statue and forcing him to duck as stonework disintegrated all around him.
After a moment, he stood again and calmly continued returning fire. ‘For the Emperor and Sanguinius,’ he said, without looking back.
There was another barrage of gauss fire and the Blood Angels vanished from view, enveloped in a column of dust and smoke.
‘For the Emperor and Sanguinius,’ replied Servatus, waving his men on.
By the time they reached the bridge, it was already a battleground. They entered just above the command dais and saw that it was heaped with the corpses of blood thralls and adepts. Most of the hard-wired servitors were slumped in their stone cradles, trailing blood and smoke from fatal wounds. Only a few were still hunched over their viewscreens, working furiously at the runeboards, the light of the display glyphs flashing over their beautiful, gilded masks. There was no sign of Mephiston or Rhacelus.
There were Blood Angels lying crumpled on the steps. Their crimson armour was barely visible through the smoke, but they were clearly dead. Large sections of their torsos were absent, leaving their innards to slide from the neatly sliced power armour. Servatus winced at the sight of his fallen battle-brothers. The Chapter could ill afford such losses. He knew them all by name: Mercato, Acutus, Castor, Marchia. Heroes all. They had survived centuries of war to die here, on the bridge of their own ship.
The command bridge of the Blood Oath was a domed hall dissected by two suspended walkways that fanned out, wing-like, from a central blood-drop-shaped command dais. One side of the dome was draped in enormous ceremonial banners, celebrating each of the Blood Oath’s many engagements, but the other was a crystal oculus, a vast, curved window on to the stars. There was so much gunfire and flames beneath it that the oculus was mainly reflecting the battle for the bridge but, through the fumes, Servatus caught glimpses of the scene outside – dozens of necron ships, gathered around the Blood Oath like carrion over a wounded beast, firing a dazzling barrage of laser blasts into the badly listing vessel.
Inside the bridge, the scene was just as grim. Large sections of the two walkways had been sheared away, sent smashing through the levels below, and the parts that remained were crowded with ranks of necron warriors. A single Blood Angels squad held each of the two walkways, firing a sustained barrage of bolter rounds into the calmly advancing xenos, taking advantage of the bottleneck crush and sending the vanguard necro
ns spinning into the cavernous space below.
Many of the Blood Angels on the walkways had been wounded and some were stumbling backwards over corpses as they fired, surrounded by the heaped remains of blood thralls who had tried to aid them.
‘Agorix,’ barked Servatus over the vox, nodding to the walkways.
The sergeant saluted and sprinted across the command dais. He headed towards one walkway with two of his squad and waved the rest of them towards the other. As they ran, Agorix Squad were already firing gouts of plasma into the necrons.
The Blood Angels holding the walkways glanced back, nodding in recognition as their battle-brothers caused the necron lines to falter.
Servatus raced across the command dais as a wall of gauss fire hummed past, just above his head, disintegrating banks of machinery and religious paraphernalia. Cables and ornamental shields clattered down around him as he ran through the flames, heading for a group of blood thralls on the far side of the dais.
He vaulted a broken control module and landed with a clang on the deck plating, causing the blood thralls on the other side to whirl around, brandishing laspistols and sabres. Most of them were stood next to those servitors that were still intact, but there was a group crowded round First Officer Castulo, struggling to keep him upright. They saluted and lowered their weapons as they recognised Servatus.
Castulo’s robes were stained a darker red by a wound in his stomach. His face was ivory with pain and his tonsured head beaded with sweat as he struggled to stay upright. But he managed to lock his feverish eyes on Servatus.
‘My lord,’ he gasped, shrugging off his helpers and attempting a bow. ‘The master of armament is dead. So is the master of auspex. The void shields are about to collapse.’
More emerald beams slashed across the walls, detonating screens and cutting through plasteel. The blood thralls crouched and shielded their faces, but Servatus ignored the wreckage bouncing off his armour and stepped closer.
‘Maintain your current course,’ he said.
Castulo wiped the blood from his face and managed to stand upright, giving him a stiff salute. ‘I have, my lord. As ordered. The current course takes us into the heart of the enemy fleet, though.’ He waved at the vast oculus that made up one side of the command bridge. ‘In fact, we’re heading towards the planet they appeared from.’
Servatus was about to ask another question when he saw something approaching through the smoke on the far side of the command dais. For a moment, he could not make out the shape. Then he realised it was a pair of vast, tenebrous wings, rearing up through smoke, as though a great eagle were landing in the darkness. A cold disquiet tightened in Servatus’ stomach. He was Adeptus Astartes. He knew no fear. And yet, as the shadow moved closer, he took a few steps backwards, his hearts racing. The darkness around the wings was alive with other shapes. The gloom formed into coiled, faceless beings, boiling and turning with the smoke, weightless and incorporeal as they tumbled towards him. A vast tower of shadow was about to emerge onto the deck.
The blood thralls backed away from their controls, their faces white.
The wings and shadows vanished as Mephiston emerged from the smoke, sword in hand and chin raised. Lord Rhacelus followed close behind and the blood thralls prostrated themselves on the deck as the two mighty heroes approached.
Mephiston walked past Servatus and First Officer Castulo and loomed over one of the hooded servitors in the control alcoves. He studied the viewscreen, muttered a few words and passed his hand over the runeboard. Columns of data scrolled down the screen, millions of runic characters, moving too fast for mortal eyes to register, but Mephiston was reading all of them. He punched some runes and the screen cleared, then it projected a hololith of a planet in front of Mephiston’s face. He studied it, nodded, and turned to Rhacelus.
The fighting on the walkways had grown even more furious and Mephiston had to raise his voice to be heard.
‘The Glutted Scythe,’ he said, referring to an ancient manual of the Librarius, ‘pages twelve hundred to twelve hundred and fifty. Are you able to complete the fourth and fifth rituals?’
‘Of course, Chief Librarian,’ said Rhacelus. ‘My second sight grows as dim as yours, but I feel the warp currents as keenly as ever.’
Mephiston nodded and Rhacelus strode from the dais, his robes trailing through the fumes as he made for the battle below.
When Rhacelus had reached the lower levels of the bridge he marched out into the centre of the walkway and dropped to one knee, scratching something into the deck plating, whispering furiously. Veins of pale fire rippled across the walkway, passing beneath the feet of the embattled Blood Angels and shimmering across the walls of the bridge.
Up on the command dais, Mephiston was performing the same rite, linking his power to Rhacelus’. The light washed across walkways and spiralled around columns, until the whole chamber was lined with a tracery of psychic force. The air shimmered like a heat haze, and the blood thralls winced as aetheric currents jangled through their minds.
Across the bridge, display screens began flashing warnings and bleating alarms.
Mephiston nodded in satisfaction and then rose to his feet and looked through the unshielded oculus at the planet hoving into view. ‘Contact the enemy flagship,’ he said. ‘I wish to speak with their commander.’
The first officer saluted and staggered over to one of the navigational cradles, commanding a servitor to hail the enemy fleet.
‘My lord,’ said Castulo after a few seconds, shaking his head. ‘No answer. Perhaps if we–’
The noise of the battle suddenly ceased.
The necrons on the walkways had simply stopped moving, becoming motionless statues, their weapons still trained on the Blood Angels. Beyond the oculus the stars glittered back into view as the broadsides ceased.
A voice crackled through angel-winged vox-speakers in the alcoves overhead. It was a metallic scrape of grinding vowels, as cold and inhuman as the void. ‘Enemies of the regent,’ it said. ‘I am Lord Suphys, first herald of his majesty, Menkhaz the Unmortal. Your time is short. You are permitted to beg the phaeron for forgiveness before we exterminate you.’
Mephiston paced back and forth across the command dais, lost in thought, drumming his fingers on the hilt of his force sword.
‘I am Lord Mephiston,’ he replied eventually, ‘Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels and servant of the immortal Emperor of Mankind.’
There was no reply. Empty static hummed through the vox-speakers.
Mephiston stared through the oculus, as though he could see the crew of the distant cruisers. ‘Are you aware of the military treatise known as the Zanakh Tablets?’
There were a few more seconds of wordless static, then the voice came through again.
‘I am aware of Zanakh.’
Mephiston stepped closer to the oculus.
‘In accordance with Zanakh’s fifth rule of engagement, as a high-ranking emissary of an Emperor, I am formally petitioning you for an audience with Menkhaz the Unmortal, your phaeron and regent.’
There was an unmistakable note of confusion in the next reply.
‘His victorious majesty will only acquaint you with the same facts, Blood Angel. You have trespassed. These are royal territories. You must die.’
‘You presume to answer for your phaeron?’ Mephiston started to pace again. ‘You presume to know his will?’
More silence. Longer this time. When the voice returned, it was as flat and mechanical as the first time it spoke.
‘I will formally petition his majesty the phaeron on your behalf, Blood Angel. I cannot say how soon you will receive a response. There are many matters of court to attend to before I will be able to raise this request.’
Mephiston was about to reply when the static cut off.
He looked up at the domed oculus. ‘How soon can we establish geostati
onary orbit with Morsus?’
The first officer shook his head. ‘Morsus, my lord?’
Mephiston waved at the planet that was quickly filling the oculus.
Castulo was grey with pain and there was blood pooling beneath his robes, but he leant over a display and tapped some runes.
‘Another hour, Chief Librarian, at least. Some of our primary engines have been damaged and we have limited ability to control our approach trajectory, but I think we can place the Blood Oath at high anchor. The gunnery decks have been blown apart though. We have no weapons batteries and no lance turrets. The void shields are failing. It will be like target practice for them.’
Mephiston nodded at the lights shimmering across the bridge. ‘There is more than one way to protect a ship, First Officer Castulo. The field Rhacelus and I have created will not hold forever, but I have also hobbled the xenos with their own bureaucracy.’ Mephiston strode away from the command dais. ‘I will return before they can think about firing on you again.’
Mephiston waved for the other Blood Angels to follow him. ‘To the embarkation deck. I need a closer look at Morsus.’
Chapter Four
Burning, broken and black, Morsus rolled into view. As the gunship dropped through the stratosphere, infernal light poured through its oculus, washing over Mephiston’s armour as he studied the lifeless world below. Seated beside the Chief Librarian were Epistolary Rhacelus and Brother-Lieutenant Servatus. In the rear of the gunship were the Primaris Marines of Sergeant Agorix’s Hellblaster squad. They were all watching the strange landscape passing beneath them. Forests of sapphire flame rippled across coal-dark plains, pooling in pitch valleys and washing up against tormented peaks. To most, it would have seemed an unwelcoming naetherworld, but to Mephiston it felt like home.
The ever-present dead drifted past him, quiet for a moment, flowing against the oculus like mist. Their storm of hate became a gentle squall, eddying around Mephiston as he looked out through the armoured glass. Sometimes he forgot that only he could see them. The tragic progeny of his wars were so clear to him, it was sometimes hard to accept that they were not real. This legion of hook-backed cadavers was as much a part of him now as his own scarred flesh. Something about Morsus had dulled their rage and their howls fell away as they studied the inferno below. Death-mask snarls grew calm and hate dimmed in eyeless pits.