The Unforgiven - Gav Thorpe

by Warhammer 40K

  Boarding torpedoes slammed into the exposed hull of the Terminus Est and gunships blasted their way into the open launch bays of the battleship to disgorge hundreds of Space Marines. At that moment the teleportaria of the Rock simultaneously burst into activity, directed at the command bridge of Typhus’s flagship, casting the entirety of the surviving Deathwing across the warp.

  Footfalls On Caliban

  The Black Knights ventured into the passageway they had discovered in the side of the kilometre-wide asteroid to which they had been brought. The suit lamps of the floating Space Marines passed over pitted ferrocrete, which formed an arched corridor five metres high. Behind them the Thunderhawk and Dark Talon had been secured by docking grapples to the sides of the jagged opening. Tybalain led the way, Cypher between Annael and Calatus, with Sabrael bringing up the rear.

  ‘It looks like an arterial transport tunnel,’ said Annael as he pulled himself hand-over-hand along a glistening metal rail in what he assumed had been the floor.

  ‘Maglev monorail,’ said Cypher. ‘It used to link the arcologies of the Northwilds with the starport at Andaril.’

  ‘Arcologies?’ said Calatus.

  ‘Mega-cities. You might call them hives.’

  ‘We were told that Caliban was a world of deep forests and oceans,’ said Annael. He eased himself over a buckled length of rail, the ground beneath cracked as if twisted by some massive hand. ‘Not a hive world.’

  ‘Once, in the depths of time. Had precious Caliban survived, the Imperium would have the last of the forests cut down, the rolling hills strip-mined, the deep caverns delved in the search for riches. Perhaps a hive world ten thousand years later, if the plunder of Mankind did not destroy the planet earlier.’

  There was a wistful edge to the renegade’s speech rather than bitterness. A melancholy of times lost forever.

  ‘It is hard to imagine that these spinning rocks were once home to the Lion,’ said Annael. ‘That millions of people lived and breathed here before the ruin was unleashed.’

  ‘Stay focused,’ warned Tybalain.

  Annael readied his bolt pistol and continued to pull himself with his left hand, allowing his momentum to carry him forward. Ahead, the passage became rounded, the lamplight reflecting from broken tiles on the curved far wall. As Sabrael adjusted his angle, his lantern beam caught on something that glittered.

  The squad came to an immediate halt at a word from their Huntmaster. They played their lamps back and forth across the tunnel mouth. The light refracted from glistening crystal deposits that looked like trails left across the bricks and tiles.

  ‘We must push on,’ said Cypher.

  ‘You are not in command,’ said Tybalain. There was an awkward moment until the Huntmaster thrust away from the wall and into the tunnel. ‘Follow me.’

  Annael took a closer look at the crystals as he drifted past. They were like faceted glassy beads, slightly puddled where they stuck to the wall. Turning to the left and right, he counted more than twenty trails all within a few metres. He tried following them, but they disappeared into the darkness, intertwining and overlapping but all of them either heading into or out of the tunnel.

  ‘Do you think something came in before us, or tried to escape a long time ago?’ he asked.

  ‘It is waiting for us, I am sure of it,’ replied Cypher.

  ‘Movement ahead!’ Calatus warned before Cypher offered further explanation. The Space Marine held out his auspex and panned left and right for a few seconds. ‘Signal cannot lock. Definitely movement, but no life signs or heat signature.’

  ‘Threads of the empyrean,’ said Cypher. ‘Projections of the beast we hunt made real.’

  ‘Hallucinations?’ said Sabrael.

  ‘No.’ Cypher pulled free his pistols. The glow from the containment chamber of his plasma weapon lit the tunnel with a cerulean glare. ‘The warp manifested. Nephila. Daemonspawn.’

  As they continued, they passed branching service tunnels and broken ladders that led up to maintenance ducts. A few hundred metres into the tunnel they came to a station. The rail ended a hundred metres away, a two-metre-high platform on their left. The cavern-like terminus swallowed the lamplight, marooning them on an island of light in a sea of blackness.

  The silence grated on Annael’s nerves. He felt not the slightest vibration through his fingers as he grabbed hold of the platform edge and slowly vaulted from the track. Twisting, he landed on the platform, legs bent. The wall was a few metres further on, crisscrossed by more of the crystal traceries. They converged or emanated from an exit arch halfway along the station.

  ‘This way, I think,’ he told the others, attracting their attention to the archway with a half-second strobe of his lamp. He felt his eye drawn to Cypher for confirmation despite Tybalain’s earlier assertion of command.

  The renegade looked around, the red gleam of his helm lenses bright as they turned towards Annael.

  ‘It would seem so,’ said Cypher, but offered nothing further, moving his attention to Tybalain.

  ‘Stay alert,’ said the Huntmaster. ‘Close confines, single file. Mark your aim carefully.’

  Passing into the exit corridor, the Dark Angels found that there was a metal underlay beneath the floor tiles. Activating the mag-grips of their boots, they were able to walk almost normally. The metronomic hiss and clank of their steps brought comfort to Annael. A dozen metres on they came upon a moving staircase, long since immobilised by lack of power. The crystal spoor did not lead them up, but on through another archway, presumably to another platform.

  ‘What are we seeking?’ asked Calatus as Tybalain led the squad onward. ‘What is the mission?’

  Before Cypher could reply, the tiniest reverberation alerted Annael that something had changed. The others had felt it too and froze where they were, weapons at the ready.

  A second later, the archway ahead exploded with fanged, writhing shapes as the tunnel vomited forth dozens of serpentine apparitions.

  The worms were translucent, pulsing with blackness inside white skin. Their eyes were like shards of coal, glinting black in the lamps of the Space Marines. Mouths gaped wide, large enough to swallow one of the Dark Angels helms whole, ringed with finger-long fangs. Thick slime drooled in ropes from squirming purple tongues.

  Annael fired on instinct. The flash of bolt propellant was stark white in the gloom, leaving a phosphorescent trail from pistol to detonation inside the mass of worm-like creatures. As though a single entity, the flailing mass thrashed back from the archway as more bolts raked into them from the squad. In moments, the darkness and silence descended again.

  A second passed, and another.

  ‘Why do I get the feeling we haven’t won?’ Sabrael asked. He looked at Cypher. ‘I don’t suppose that was the objective?’

  The station lurched. The whole asteroid, in fact, shuddered as though struck by an almighty fist. The mag-grip of Annael’s boots could not hold him in place and, along with Sabrael, he found himself tossed into the air. The others swayed like comical puppets, their feet locked in place while the world spun around them.

  Grabbing a light fitting in his spare hand, Annael swung his pistol towards the opening, expecting a fresh attack by the worm-wraiths.

  Nothing appeared.

  ‘Shut up!’ said Tybalain, sensing that Sabrael had readied another quip. ‘Calatus, watch our backs.’

  The Huntmaster took a step forward. The floor and wall exploded, engulfing him in a torrent of broken bricks and a cloud of mortar. His black armour disappeared under the avalanche of masonry as something eldritch and terrifying heaved itself into view.

  It was neither humanoid nor slug, but some strange amalgam of both, the visible portion so large that it smashed through the ceiling as it straightened, showering dirt and debris onto the squad. Its snake-like body ended with four ribbed tentacle-appendages, each tipped w
ith half a dozen claws as long as a combat blade. In the gloom beyond, Annael spied many-jointed legs like those of a centipede, scrabbling at the ruin of the tunnel beyond the arch.

  Amongst its upper limbs was a head-stump, little more than a bulge with a cluster of multi-faceted eyes that shone crimson in the reflected light of the Space Marines’ suit lamps. A disturbingly human mouth, thick-lipped, twisted in a grimace of displeasure, completed the horrific visage.

  ‘The ouroboros!’ bellowed Cypher. The word meant nothing to Annael but it was obviously a name for the creature. The renegade fired his plasma pistol. ‘Destroy it!’

  The Black Knights needed no encouragement. They opened fire together, targeting the head-lump. Bolt-round detonations lit the tunnel, harmless against the blistered, cracked skin of the daemonspawn.

  Tybalain shouldered his way out of the rubble pile, firing up into the creature’s mouth from underneath its bulk. As the ouroboros moved, ridged underbelly scraping flags from the floor, Tybalain retreated. He dodged aside just as its enormous girth settled where the Huntmaster had been standing, the floor buckling under the pressure of the thing forcing its way into the hallway.

  Blue light flashed as Cypher fired his plasma pistol again, the bolt of energy splashing against the face of the ouroboros. It reeled back, jaw widening even further. It might have howled, or roared, or squealed, but all Annael felt was another ripple of vibrations through the tunnel, the walls shedding grubby tiles like scales. Hauling itself forward, bony projections like scythes slashing through the exposed ferrocrete of the walls, the monstrous creature towered over the Black Knights.

  ‘Time to end this,’ declared Sabrael.

  He drew the Blade of Corswain and leapt at the daemonspawn. The gleaming blade parted a tentacle flailing towards his face, leaving a trail of fluorescent green globules and a twitching stump. Another appendage snapped out like a whip, catching Sabrael across the side of his helm, leaving a white welt of cracked ceramite against the black enamel. With no purchase, the Space Marine spun head over heels back across the chamber, snarling curses.

  Annael and Tybalain followed Sabrael’s example, swapping pistols for corvus hammers. The head of his weapon left a bright arc as Annael swung at what he supposed was the beast’s chest. The force of the impact unleashed a flash of power from the hammer, the immaterial flesh of the ouroboros rippling as though a brick had been dropped in a puddle. The immutable laws of physics had an equal effect on Annael, sending him flying in the same direction as Sabrael.

  Tybalain was wiser, keeping his feet firmly rooted to the floor as he swung his hammer at the descending fangs. Teeth broke into shards, grey splinters embedding themselves in the Huntmaster’s armour. He took a step back and swung again, the hammer pulsing with energy as it smashed into the daemonspawn’s body.

  Cypher moved left, leaping over a tentacle as it swept out to snap his legs under him. The traitor fired a flurry of shots as he glided, twisting slowly, towards the moving stairway, stitching a line of shots across the creature’s eyes. Lenses fractured like glass but the ouroboros forced itself further into the chamber, slashing left and right with blade-arms and thrashing limbs.

  The ceiling had corrugated, giving Sabrael a footing from which he launched himself like an arrow, his sword forming the tip as he sped past Annael. The blade punched into flesh a metre below the monster’s mouth, more bright fluid streaming forth. Sabrael’s momentum carried him sideways into the body of the beast, a lashing tentacle wrapping about his chest before he could push himself free.

  ‘Emperor’s blood!’ he cursed. ‘My armour is splitting!’

  Calatus threw himself at the appendage, tossing aside his hammer to grasp it with both hands. Anchoring his feet against a ridge of blubbery flesh, he tried to prise the limb away. Cypher continued past the creature’s visage, disappearing into the gloom of the burrow it had created, his crested helm silhouetted by the flashes of bolt pistol and plasma blast.

  Annael stopped his backward flight by securing himself to a twisted stanchion jutting from the wall. He clambered around the support and kicked away, using the undulating surface of the wall to ‘run’ at the monster, hammer held ready. A tentacle swung towards him and he jumped, turning in midair as he was propelled towards the opposite side of the chamber. He timed the twist to land feet first against the broken masonry and pushed again, the fibre bundles in his armour hurtling him at speed towards the ouroboros.

  Calatus dragged Sabrael free a couple of seconds before Annael reached his target. The hammer left a burning trail as he swung it into the maw of the creature with all his strength, striking upward. The blazing weapon smashed through the creature’s upper lip, leaving a gaping, flapping mess of flesh in its wake, coating the Black Knight’s armour in a layer of filth.

  Like Sabrael, Annael could not stop himself slamming into the creature’s flank. Unlike his companion, he was ready, and thrust away with his hand before he was crushed against the wall, tumbling further into the darkness from which the ouroboros had erupted. He slowed his progress with a hand against the broken tiles and came to a stop.

  Annael was about to push himself back towards the others when he glimpsed the blue glare of Cypher’s plasma pistol. He followed it down through the collapsed remnants of the tunnel, passing into another station that lay parallel to the one by which the Space Marines had entered.

  The huge space glittered, every surface covered with the same crystals they had seen earlier. Cypher was making his way across a bed of the angular deposits, following the line of the ouroboros’s body. At first Annael thought the daemonspawn’s bulk disappeared into a transport tunnel, but as he followed the renegade his lamp revealed that it was connected to a mass of pustules and warty flesh beneath the carpet of crystals.

  ‘We have to get back to assist the others!’ Annael insisted over the short-range vox. He pointed his pistol at Cypher. ‘You are coming back with me!’

  ‘We have to destroy the heart,’ Cypher replied without turning around.

  ‘It has a heart?’ asked Annael. His lamp moved back and forth across the huge tube of the daemonspawn’s body, sickened by the undulating mass. ‘Where?’

  ‘Not here, of course,’ said the renegade. He was looking down, at the crystals. Suddenly he stood back and let his lantern illuminate the ceiling. ‘It’s around us.’

  Annael looked up and saw a ballooning outcrop of ridged grey flesh, forming the roof of the chamber. In places there were deeper shadows, which he realised with apprehension were splits, the gaps between the mass and other snaking protrusions.

  ‘That is just a head, one of a dozen, disposable,’ Cypher said, flashing his lamp towards the monster they had been fighting.

  The renegade’s words did not make much sense but Annael had no time to ask any further questions. The asteroid trembled, the shaking growing more violent with every passing second. The quake continued to intensify until masonry and shards of stone rained down on Annael and Cypher. The fleshy ceiling shifted, straightening, while the neck and head slithered back past the pair of Space Marines, luminous eyes regarding them briefly in the darkness.

  The moonlet broke apart, scattering thousands of tonnes of stone into the void.

  The ground splintered and dropped away beneath Annael, leaving him floating over a deepening chasm. And then that was also gone, reduced to spinning fragments that whirled away into the vacuum.

  The Black Knights were cast adrift amongst the debris, some of them still attached to splinters of floor by their mag-grip boots. Annael, Cypher and Sabrael floated free, flotsam amongst the tempest of rock and ferrocrete. Tiny jets of air from articulated vents on Annael’s backpack allowed him to stay his outward momentum. He took up a position between the renegade and his battle-brother.

  The creature formed a huge semi-transparent ring, the light of the local star a pale orange through its body, darker shadows of organs
throbbing and elongating. The claw-feet that extended along the necks unfurled strange skin flaps, looking like sails, or solar sheets catching the light of the star – appendages for navigating through a universe of the immaterial.

  The ouroboros’s massive form was tipped at either end by fronds of bulbous heads like the hydras of ancient legend, each jaw clamped around the neck of a head on the opposite end. All save the head that the Dark Angels had been fighting, which glared down at the Space Marines with malign intent.

  It seemed to be suckling from itself, pulsing, darkness flowing from one end of the immense body to the other. The beast shuddered and its jaws opened together, freeing the cosmic daemonspawn from its self-embrace. It uncoiled, darkening, flesh becoming solid, skin hardening into a glossy black hide that was barely visible against the night.

  ‘That is the body,’ said Cypher. The renegade seemed oddly calm considering the circumstances. Annael’s whole body was abuzz with adrenaline and stimulants from his battleplate, and the apparition of the ouroboros defied rational thought, numbing him even more. ‘We need to find and destroy the heart. Not a real heart, of course, but the warp anchor in this reality, the seed of Caliban it devoured.’

  Annael looked down at his pistol and corvus hammer and then back up at the vastness of the ouroboros that blotted out the heavens.

  ‘How?’

  A Return To Dark Places

  The Thunderhawk eased down onto the floor of the landing bay, the assault ramp in its nose already lowering before the landing gear touched down. Telemenus was at the ramp, his missiles refilled, patches of bonded ceramite and chunky rivet-welds covering the worst of the damage he had suffered during the battle for the Rock.

  The cannons of the gunship had already cleared the enemy flagship’s landing bay, littering the corroded decking with blasted bodies. Striding down the ramp, Telemenus detected only mutants and twisted human remains – no legionaries. They would be close, but not directly at the forefront of the defence. Better to soak up the initial momentum of the assault with expendable minions.