Warriors of the Imperium - Andy Hoare & S P Cawkwell

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘Temu!’ Kor’sarro called as he sped down the ladder, his feet thudding onto the first platform. ‘Lead the warriors out. I will not be far behind.’

  The answer came over the comm-bead a moment later. ‘Aye, my khan. We are assailed by foes, but they attempt to break off the fight.’

  ‘Then let them,’ Kor’sarro ordered as he pounded along the platform to the next ladder. He was cut off before he could issue another order however, as a mighty explosion rocked the tower, throwing it violently to one side.

  Kor’sarro was forced to take hold of a corroded pipe or be flung from the platform. The entire tower lurched sideways, and only Kor’sarro’s iron grip kept him from plummeting dozens of metres as his body swung out into air. The whole base of the tower was wreathed in flames, a pool of burning promethium spreading outwards all around. With a metallic wail, the pipe burst, wreathing Kor’sarro in scalding hot steam. The pipe bent outwards, suspending him several metres from the tower’s flank.

  As if the situation could get any worse, Kor’sarro’s ears were assailed by a new sound, a keening like some beast the size of a mountain roaring a challenge to the entire world. For an instant, he took it for the mournful sound of the altered mutant-thing that had drawn him towards the tower, but this was far lower in pitch, so low it was more felt than heard. And it was emanating from the ground, or from beneath it.

  Pushing aside the sheer, unadulterated scope of Voldorius’s evil, Kor’sarro knew that he had more immediate concerns. The tower shook again, this time swaying the other way and dropping a dozen metres into the ground. For a moment, the open air below Kor’sarro was replaced by the inclined plane of the tower’s conduit-wreathed flanks.

  There was nothing for it. Kor’sarro let go of the pipe and dropped, striking the side of the leaning tower almost immediately. Gravity took over, and he slid down fifty metres of the steep slope, sparks flying from his armour as it scraped along the rusted conduits. The rapidly expanding lake of burning promethium loomed, black smoke pouring upwards to engulf him. His life depending on his timing, Kor’sarro braced himself ready to leap. Then he was entirely wreathed in black smoke, unable to see a thing. He bunched his muscles and pushed himself off against the conduit.

  Kor’sarro passed weightlessly through billowing smoke, and then he was out of it and the ground beyond the raging promethium was racing up to meet him. He had but an instant to prepare for the impact, tucking his legs so that as he struck the ground he rolled. Then he was up, Moonfang drawn from its scabbard before he was even upright.

  Burning promethium raging at his back, Kor’sarro gained his bearings. Explosions blossomed from nearby buildings, and the frozen, debris-strewn ground beneath his feet trembled. A quake wracked the street, and the ground lurched.

  ‘Seismic charges,’ Kor’sarro growled.

  Activating his comm-bead, he hailed his command vessel. ‘Lord of Heavens, this is Kor’sarro.’ The channel hissed and wailed with feedback for a moment, before the response cut through. ‘Lord of Heavens responding, my khan. Go ahead.’

  ‘The vile one has planted some form of detonator beneath the plant. The entire facility is coming down. Have all Hunters deployed to extract us. Out.’

  Not waiting for the response, Kor’sarro closed the channel and set out along the street at a fast run. The buildings and machinery to either side were now burning, smaller detonations blasting shrapnel in all directions. The sky overhead was black, the violet aurora entirely obscured by clouds of smoke. As he ran, he scanned the alleyways and portals for signs of the enemy, but found only smouldering corpses, bandoliers crackling as ammunition cooked off. A part of him was stunned by the sheer scale of the destruction Voldorius had unleashed, shocked that the vile one would go to such lengths to ensnare his pursuers. How long had Voldorius schemed? Some time, that much was clear. The refinery had been fortified to draw the White Scars in. It had been extensively mined to ensure their destruction once they were mired in combat with the recidivists turned to serve the Alpha Legion.

  He continued, pounding along streets now cracked and shifting as the ground disintegrated. The cracks widened into fractures, which Kor’sarro leapt over as he ran. He readied Moonfang as he closed on the building the White Scars had left their bikes in, slowing as he approached the hiding place. He doubted any of the convict defenders would be nearby, but was alert nonetheless.

  As Kor’sarro passed through the dark opening, his boot thudded into something wet. At his feet was the blasted body of one of the black- and grey-clad soldiers that had accompanied the Alpha Legion. The man must have fallen foul of one of the charges set to defend the bikes. Kor’sarro’s eye was caught by a symbol painted onto the blood-splattered shoulder armour, something he had not noticed any of the other enemy soldiers wearing. It was some kind of heraldic device, a red shield mounted with four stars. He did not know the significance of the device, but noted it nonetheless.

  Then Kor’sarro’s bolt pistol was in his hand and levelled at the darkness as he heard a sound.

  ‘Brother-captain!’ the voice of Brother Kergis came from the shadows. A moment later, the White Scar activated his bike’s engine, which roared to life, its headlights illuminating the interior of the building. In the harsh glare, Kor’sarro saw that Brother Kergis was not alone. His Command squad awaited, each upon their bikes, while Moondrakkan stood ready for him.

  Kor’sarro grinned, but was struck an instant later by two competing concerns.

  ‘I ordered you to leave…’ he began. Then ‘Brother Jhogai?’ He feared he knew the fate of the company champion without the need to be told, but awaited the response nonetheless.

  ‘He died with honour, my khan,’ Brother Kergis said, his voice thick with grief.

  Kor’sarro nodded silently. The warriors of his Command squad had fought together for years, and Jhogai was well loved and respected amongst the warriors of the Third Company. He might one day have risen to Kor’sarro’s own rank, but for the traitorous Alpha Legion.

  An explosion nearby brought Kor’sarro back to the here and now, dust and debris falling from the ceiling. He pushed his own grief to the back of his mind, resolving to honour his fallen comrade by ensuring the others survived to continue the hunt for Voldorius.

  ‘I’ll have words with those who disregard my orders,’ he said as he mounted his bike and gunned its engine to life. Despite the harshness of his tone, his warriors would know he jested. He was eternally grateful they had waited for him.

  ‘White Scars,’ Kor’sarro bellowed over the roaring of his Command squad’s bikes in the building’s interior. ‘It is well past time we were leaving!’

  At that, Kor’sarro led the way out of the building as larger chunks of debris were torn from its roof to crash down around them. The street outside now resembled a warzone, as if opposing titans had battled one another with no regard for their environment. Oily black smoke enveloped the refinery, the only illumination that of the raging promethium fires deep within. As they rode, they were forced to swerve as huge chunks of debris and falling buildings, massive conduits and processing stacks were cast down by the sheer destruction Voldorius had unleashed. The ground heaved, and several times cracks many metres wide appeared in front of the White Scars. They gunned their bikes’ engines and leapt across blindly, for all too often the other side was wreathed in smoke and flame.

  The streets finally widened and the Command squad raced through the refinery-city’s outer limits, the smoke thinning noticeably. The bulk of the destruction was confined to the city’s heart, marked by the now-collapsed tower upon which Kor’sarro had faced the mutant-thing proxy of Voldorius. The White Scars cleared the last of the machines and buildings of the plant and closed on the inner trench line.

  The defences were now abandoned by all but the dead and the dying, the recidivist scum having shown their true colours and fled. They would not get far, for those not cut dow
n by the White Scars would not survive long in the frozen depths of the polar wastes, and they could scarcely return to their city.

  Passing the defence line, Kor’sarro brought Moondrakkan to a slewing halt that kicked up a spray of ice from the frozen ground. As his companions slowed to a stop, he looked back in the direction they had come from.

  The central zone of the refinery-city was enveloped in roiling black clouds, which seethed and pulsed as if with a vile life of their own. Flashes from within illuminated the clouds, silhouetting something that Kor’sarro could not quite make out. A deep, subsonic lowing filled the air, echoing through the blazing city and out across the frozen wastes. The sound was almost that of an animal, a vast creature bellowing its hatred and pain at the universe.

  And then another flash of lightning illuminated the roiling cloudbank, and Kor’sarro saw something terrible. Rising ponderously out of the cloud was what he first took for a warped and distorted conduit, perhaps thrown outwards by the explosions tearing the city’s heart apart. Then he saw that it was no conduit; it was nothing made by the hand of man.

  From out of the cloud rose what could only be described as vast, coiling tentacles. The animal keening rose to deafening volume, forcing Kor’sarro to don his helmet and activate its dampeners just to preserve his hearing. More of the tentacles appeared, until a nest of dozens writhed and thrashed as if in slow motion. The vast, coiling limbs quested blindly outwards, each languid movement felling a building or processing stack and causing untold destruction. Whatever the beast was, it appeared not to notice the flames that raged all about it as billions of litres of promethium burned.

  ‘Xenos blasphemy…’ Kor’sarro heard Brother Yeku, his company standard bearer mutter.

  ‘Or worse,’ answered Apothecary Khagus, his own voice thick with disbelief at the sight before them.

  ‘What could be–’ Brother Yeku said.

  ‘Enough!’ Kor’sarro interjected. Even as he spoke, more of the tentacles were writhing outwards from whatever hell mouth had spawned the beast. Several were moving in the direction of the Command squad. He gunned Moondrakkan’s engine and brought his mount around. ‘Brother Temu, raise the Lord of Heavens. I want a situation report.’

  As Kor’sarro and his Command squad moved out again, Brother Temu reported back. ‘Lord of Heavens says they’ve lost contact with the gunships, my khan. I barely got through, and lost the channel soon after.’

  Several of the vast tentacles were now reaching high into the air, and one was questing in the command group’s direction. It was so large, even the fast-moving bikes could not hope to escape it.

  ‘All Hunters!’ Kor’sarro bellowed into the vox-link. ‘This is Kor’sarro, does anyone read me?’

  Wailing feedback was the only reply Kor’sarro heard, before a second later the gargantuan tentacle loomed overhead and crashed to the ground a mere twenty metres away, pulverising ice and smashing apart crystal formations. The impact, had it come down upon the Command squad, would have crushed the whole group to a bloody smear.

  As the tentacle rose again, Kor’sarro reopened the vox-channel. ‘All Hunters, whoever can hear me, converge on my position!’

  The vast tentacle slammed down into the ground again, the force of the impact almost throwing several of the White Scars from their bikes. But it is said that the sons of Chogoris are born in the saddle, and they all maintained control of their machines. This time, the ice sheet cracked, and a nearby defence bastion was swallowed whole as a vast chasm opened up.

  ‘Does anyone read me?’ Kor’sarro called again, steering wildly to avoid a massive shard of ice flung across his path by the tentacle’s flailing. The animal lowing continued, so loud now that even with his helmet systems engaged Kor’sarro was almost deafened.

  ‘Hunter One,’ the response came over the vox. ‘This is Hunter Three, inbound on your position. Stand by.’

  ‘Hunter Three?’ Kor’sarro replied, uncaring that his voice was tinged with incredulity. He heard a savage roar of joy from his companions, which was drowned out seconds later by the sound of a trio of hellstrike missiles streaking overhead from Hunter Three’s undamaged wing, before slamming into the writhing tentacle.

  The monstrous organ was consumed in fire, two hundred metres of it tearing away under the missiles’ barrage. The separated appendage reared hideously into the air, standing upright for a moment before crashing down. The ice cracked, and the obscene tentacle collapsed through the wound it had made.

  But the beast would not be killed simply by severing its limbs. Whatever lay at the heart of the writhing mass was still protected in the ground beneath the promethium plant.

  ‘Hunters,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘We shall draw the beast from its lair. When its body is exposed, strike it down.’

  The bikers powered on across the icebound plains, the jagged crystal formations becoming denser as the ruined promethium plant was left far behind. The White Scars’ skills were tested to the full as they swerved around crystals as sharp as diamonds. A shadow passed over Kor’sarro’s band, and an instant later a rearing crystal stack shattered into a billion pieces, showering the White Scars with razor-sharp fragments.

  The tentacle slammed down behind the racing bikers, its leathery hide pierced with countless shards of crystalline shrapnel. The tentacle reared and thrashed as it bled the clear liquid that must have served it as blood across the ice. Another tentacle arched high into the air and came down with a ground-shaking impact in a great loop in front of the White Scars, trapping their escape.

  But the beast had overextended itself. Its vast, globular body had emerged from the smoking crater at the heart of the promethium plant as it had stretched itself further and further in pursuit of its prey. A pulsating mountain of unformed flesh rolled out of the chasm to flatten the buildings of the plant. Processing stacks toppled and machinery exploded as the creature tore down the works of man in its eagerness to catch those who fled it.

  ‘Now!’ Kor’sarro said. ‘All Hunters, strike for its heart!’

  The skies were split by the sonic boom of the Thunderhawks soaring high overhead. Every weapon of every gunship was fired as one, hellstrike missiles, cannon shells and las-beams lancing out across the sky.

  The pulsating core of the beast erupted in a fountain of vile ichor and was consumed in flames. The tentacles arched and thrashed, looping high as if to shield the beast from its attackers. As the last of the tentacles sank into the banks of black smoke, Hunters One and Five came in to land near Kor’sarro and his warriors and the Master of the Hunt led his retinue up the access ramp of his command gunship and into the waiting bay. What remained of the plant was fully ablaze, a column of black smoke rising many kilometres into the atmosphere.

  Just what vile sorceries Voldorius had enacted here Kor’sarro had no way of knowing, but it seemed to him that some creature from this world’s pre-history that slumbered beneath the ice sheet had been awakened by seismic charges. The act had been timed so that the beast would arise at the very moment Kor’sarro was facing the mutant atop the city’s highest peak.

  As the ramp closed behind him and the Thunderhawk lifted into the air, Kor’sarro vowed he would not allow Voldorius a moment’s respite. The image of the insignia on the dead soldier’s armour came to mind once more. The four stars on the crimson shield. If he could discover the source of that insignia, the hunt would be back under way.

  Kor’sarro swore that Voldorius would pay for the crimes he had enacted on Cernis IV. They would be added to the millennia-long litany. Justice would be done, by Kor’sarro’s own hand. This was his oath, on his very life.

  ‘Before the rise of the Imperium of Man, the greatest, most deranged minds created machines so small they could invade the very blood and make war upon their creators’ enemies from within. Once released, those machines replicated, until they had invaded the blood of an entire planetary population. And th
en, at a single word, they arose. Ten billion bled as one, and an entire world drowned in the blood.

  But something went wrong, as ever it will when man dabbles with such powers. The weapon escaped the shackles of its own being, and would not obey its masters. And so it came to pass that the world which the weapon had destroyed so spectacularly was set apart from the greater realm of man.

  The Emperor came, and in time that world knew the tread of man once more. Yet, the weapon remained hidden for cold millennia, until a servant of the Machine discovered it, waiting, in the dust and ashes beneath his very feet. And that servant, who had been cast out by his brethren, brought his discovery to the vile one, his true master. At his word, the weapon was resurrected, and at his word, it was set free across not one world, but a thousand. Only when the weapon had invaded the bodies of countless billions did the vile one order it to rise up and turn upon its carriers. Such glorious slaughter was achieved that night that the vile one was granted apotheosis. He cast off his mortal heritage and became as a god. But he would be yet more.

  The weapon was expended, reduced once more to a core of a trillion nanytes. These the vile one bound into the form of the prisoner, and held captive, until the time came to unleash the power upon the galaxy once more.

  The sons of man sought to destroy all knowledge of the weapon, to deny its existence, as if by locking facts away they could starve reality and undo that which had been done. But there are those who move in the shadows, who see what others do not. These benighted souls with eyes of black harbour such knowledge, and they wait, biding their time. Soon. That time is soon.’