Warriors of the Imperium - Andy Hoare & S P Cawkwell

by Warhammer 40K

  Part of him baulked at the sheer volume of information that was flooding into his mind. The human brain, even one enhanced with the gift of Adeptus Astartes genetics, was not designed to withstand such a rush of data. He could feel himself drowning beneath the pressure of it all. It was too much. He could not cope. He was losing everything that he was. His mind was fracturing, breaking apart. Eventually, his mind would literally melt away, floating free from his body and there would be nothing left but a husk, floating in the tank.

  The knowledge that his death was imminent brought a strange sense of calm to him. Better death than this terrible feeling of failure.

  Failure. I am no failure. We will not fail in this.

  The very word was complete anathema to Volker. He had always been the brightest, always been the best and now, here he was. Ready to give up. His considerable pride and unshakeable loyalty bubbled to the surface and new-found purpose burgeoned within his heart.

  No.

  No. We will not fail.

  The whole inner conflict had taken no more than three seconds. With a renewed sense of purpose, Volker turned his attentions to the situation at hand. In his previous existence, he had never piloted a vessel in a live exercise, although he had flown in many ships and had learned the controls. He had absorbed texts and manuals with an eager appetite. Everything that he learned flowed through the enhanced synapses of his brain and within seconds so brief as to be unmeasurable, he became the ship itself. He had no time to fully assimilate the vast reality of that fact, however, and he reluctantly forced the wide-eyed, Volker Straub part of himself to remain dormant, bringing the augmetics and inherent knowledge of the ship to the fore.

  So much knowledge. So much power. The memory of the terrible moment of pain when the Red Corsairs had fired upon the Dread Argent rose to the front of his thoughts and Volker channelled the anger and hurt of that memory into a whispered promise. The message was broadcast through the void. It slid through the myriad frequencies of vox-transport and it broke through to the bridge of the Red Corsairs ship.

  ‘Incoming transmission, Lord Huron.’

  ‘Then let us receive it.’ Huron Blackheart’s metal teeth ground together in barely contained delight as the vox-channel opened. He was expecting a full surrender.

  Words oozed through the vox, permeating the bridge of the stolen vessel like a whispered threat of extermination.

  We are the Dread Argent. Despite your best efforts, we are unbroken and we will one day be your doom. We will not be eliminated so easily, traitor of the Imperium.

  For hundreds of years, Huron Blackheart had travelled through the warp and even now, even twisted as he was, he retained a healthy respect for it. As the rent in space broadened and his ship nudged closer to it, as the words whispered into the augmetic aural sensors that served him now, he stared into its swirling depths.

  ‘Therein lies the way of the insane,’ a former sergeant had said to him in a life he had long mostly forgotten. The Tyrant had walked the brink of that insanity every time he had entered the warp. Many of those who had studied his behavioural patterns over the years had never been able to fathom the exact point at which he had fallen.

  They never would. The Tyrant of Badab, Lugft Huron had not fallen from grace. He had not fallen into madness. He had willingly jumped.

  He had seen into the heart of Chaos and he had survived. He had fought for his own survival against countless enemies and he had always emerged, even if he had not always been victorious. He had contended with terrible agony for countless years and yet he endured. He was bold and he was fearless.

  But those whispered words that leaked through the walls of his ship, coming as they had so close after Arrun’s final words, chilled the very marrow in his bones. The voice was almost as coldly detached, as uncaring and emotionless as he was. It was something that he had not known the Silver Skulls were in full possession of. In all the years he had devoted himself to his life of treachery he had never once met his emotional match. It chilled him and fired his imagination at the same time; a unique experience. Right there and then, the Tyrant decided that whatever it was the Silver Skulls had been hiding would be his. But the discovery had come too late. Time had run out. Hell’s Iris awaited them.

  ‘Translation to the warp in three... two...’

  As the ship was sucked into the malevolent depths of the empyrean, a huge shock wave radiated out from the point of entry, its trajectory wild and unpredictable. It stirred up the debris field and turned it from a perilous series of obstacles into a relentless onslaught of wanton destruction. All souls aboard the Dread Argent were fully braced for impact, but the moment the shock wave struck, they were flung in all directions.

  Halfway to the bridge, Prognosticator Brand stumbled, but he did not fall. His mind was filled with the murmured thoughts of the youth who had once been Volker Straub as he struggled to cope with the situation. The thoughts touched his own as a jumble of binary commands laced with human thought. There was a sense of urgency, of determination and even of fear. Pushing outwards with his own mind, despite his exhaustion at his earlier exertions, Brand offered whatever emotional support he could lend. He was rewarded with a bloom of sudden confidence.

  Diverting non-essential power to shields. Incoming projectiles.

  All the ship lights dimmed to emergency levels as Volker rerouted all superfluous systems and infused the shield generators with enough power to take them to maximum efficiency. The ship juddered and shook as it rode out the initial bow wave of the Red Corsairs’ departure, but the worst was still to come.

  Once the initial shock had broken over the strike cruiser, a relentless and punishing barrage hurtled towards it. The Dread Argent was huge and unwieldy and was unlikely to be able to dodge much of the onslaught. Yet to Yanus’s amazement, Volker rose to the challenge in a way he could never have imagined.

  Demonstrating the reactions and response time of a machine, the heart of the Dread Argent shifted power relays with effortless ease, channelling and decreasing power to the shields and thrusters as required.

  Despite the success of Volker’s tireless work, the ship was in no way invulnerable or invincible and the vessel took direct hits from a number of broken hulks and asteroids. When it was over, when the ship had taken its last battering, the Dread Argent’s thrusters stilled, the engines dropped several octaves to a low, throbbing ebb and the lights winked out for a few seconds.

  ‘Is that it?’ Yanus could hardly dare to believe that they had somehow survived the bombardment. Had the control of the ship been left in the hands of the crew, they would almost certainly have been torn apart.

  There are small fragments, came Volker’s voice. But the main threat has passed. He sounded weary. We will work to restore all the systems to full compliance. Even now we are recanting the appropriate litanies. The machine spirits are restless, but with the aid of the tech-priests and enginseers, they will soon be soothed. We hope to establish basic systems shortly. Running damage reports. We may have to linger in this system a while longer.

  ‘But we will be alive to carry out the repairs.’ Yanus’s voice had a hint of incredulous wonder in it. ‘Thank you, Volker. You may just have saved us all.’

  It is our purpose, Eduar Yanus. Nonetheless... you are welcome.

  ‘He truly is a wonder,’ mused the officer to nobody in particular. He was rewarded with the soft, rumbling bass of the Prognosticator.

  ‘Aye, that he is.’ Brand had reached the bridge. He had felt every moment of Volker’s determination, the fear that had coursed through him as much as the machine code and binary. He had lived through the horror of surviving the death trap of the Gildar Rift with the same intensity as Volker had and, like the ship’s heart, he felt the same dogged weariness.

  The threat in orbit now no longer an issue, another wave of drop pods ripped to the surface of Gildar Secundus. Several of them had
experienced rough landings, the planet’s meteorology having been upset by the Red Corsairs’ proximal warp jump. As providence would have it, several were damaged on their way down, but none were destroyed. It was a small mercy, but it was a mercy nonetheless.

  Most of the Chapter’s warriors were deployed close to the refinery to support the troops already working their way systematically through the dregs of the Red Corsairs strike force, but others were landing closer to the other inhabited areas of the planet. All across the industrial world, the drop pods bearing the stylised skull of the Chapter descended to the surface ready to neutralise any remaining threat.

  The final cleansing of the promethium refinery took less than an hour. The majority of the cultists the Red Corsairs had used as a distraction already lay dead, their bodies strewn throughout the compound and its buildings. The Silver Skulls made no effort to remove the corpses. They had retaken the refinery for the Imperium and for the humans of this forsaken world. Let the humans perform their part was the unspoken consensus of opinion. A deputation was sent to Talonport, the global Administratum hub, to speak with the Governor there and to dispatch local law enforcement to deal with the clean-up.

  This in itself unearthed another situation that was dealt with swiftly and with the clinical detachment that only the Adeptus Astartes could demonstrate. Angered and made somewhat ornery at the loss of the Master of the Fleet, the Silver Skulls were in no mood for the trivial matters that had transpired and had no patience to deal with anything in a diplomatic fashion.

  Opportunistic, would-be rebels against the Imperium’s regime had taken their chance to strike at the time the refinery had initially fallen into the hands of the Red Corsairs. Their pathetic attempts at rebelling against the Planetary Governor were quashed with barely a dozen shots from bolters. The death of their disorganised leaders had terrified the others. They had turned themselves over to the local militia without hesitation, deciding in some misguided way that this was surely the better option. The Governor’s residence was liberated. The would-be rebellion was quelled.

  The people had rejoiced at the arrival of the Emperor’s Angels, but that joy had not permeated the wave of silver fury that had swept through the hab-zones, cleansing every last scrap of filth that could be routed.

  The planet’s Governor, a sweaty, unpleasant man with terrible halitosis, had nervously expressed the people’s thanks to the Adeptus Astartes, but he may as well have saved his words. The Silver Skulls chose a taciturn response choosing to demonstrate a very visible reminder of their silent strength. Gathered together, they were solid, implacable and truly terrifying. Most of the people of this world had only ever heard of the Emperor’s Angels. To stand in such proximity to so many of them was unsettling – and their continued silence was more than a little unnerving.

  ‘You have saved Gildar Secundus. The refineries will continue to produce for the Imperium thanks to you, noble warriors. You came to our aid and for that, you have our eternal gratitude.’ The Governor’s words were clumsy and did not flow easily. Aviaq, who had led the deputation to Talonport, had turned a helmed head on the man. His eyes, hidden behind the helm, gave away nothing.

  ‘We do what we must because we must.’ The low rumble of his voice seemed to reverberate in the ceramite sheath of his chest. ‘We do not rid this planet of the Red Corsairs purely for the benefit of you and your people, Governor. We rid this planet of a cancer that would otherwise grow and contaminate everything in the system. All those who would oppose the Imperium will learn from this object lesson.’ He had turned his head towards the armed enforcers. ‘Your own protectorate would do well to learn from their mistakes as well. Laxity leads to heresy. And heresy leads to retribution.’

  With those words, the warriors had marched away, moving onwards.

  Daerys Arrun’s body had been desecrated by the Tyrant’s repeated attacks. The damage to the Master of Fleet was extensive and unpleasant, but in death, there was a peace in his eyes that had never been there in life.

  Daviks had knelt beside the dead warrior and had spoken the Varsavian Catechism of Peace Eternal. By the Emperor’s grace, the captain’s progenoid gland had not been removed. The shell of Daerys Arrun may have been forever destroyed, but the essence of who he had been in life would live on in the next generation. It would be a favoured son indeed who would be chosen to receive Arrun’s Quintessence Sacred.

  Reaching to close his friend’s eyes respectfully, Daviks had shouldered the body with as much grace as the situation allowed him and had climbed with him to the top of the crater that had been his place of death.

  ‘Return the captain to the Dread Argent,’ he ordered one of the waiting Thunderhawk pilots. ‘Afford him as much respect now as you would have done had he lived.’

  ‘Aye, my lord.’

  The gunship rose from the planet’s surface and lifted into the darkening clouds. The battle for the refinery had lasted less than a day. Dusk had not yet even fallen. Daviks allowed himself to marvel at the fact. It had felt much longer, probably, to them all. Night would come soon, but they would not leave until they were absolutely certain that everything had been restored and that every trace of rebellion and heresy was obliterated.

  There were other worlds in the Gildar system that would need to feel the judgement of the Silver Skulls yet, but on Gildar Secundus at least, they had experienced a victory.

  No matter how hollow it may have been.

  19

  What price victory?

  The Gildar Rift

  In geostationary orbit above Gildar Secundus

  ++Four days later++

  ‘On your feet, Porteus.’

  Lifting his eyes briefly and with reluctance to the door of the cell that held him, Porteus rose to a standing position. Protocol demanded that he not look directly at the Prognosticator who stood there, but truth told, protocol didn’t need to be called to mind. The sergeant’s sense of displacement and shame at his situation was too great. He hadn’t met the direct gaze of any of his battle-brothers in the time he had been back aboard the Dread Argent.

  Brand moved into the room, still with a noticeable limp in his step. His eyes raked over the bruised and battered Space Marine. Most of his injuries had faded to barely visible now, but there were two new scars on his face that had not marked his visage before. Had Porteus been looking, he would have seen the sympathy that flitted onto Brand’s face.

  ‘I have read the preliminary reports from Apothecary Naryn,’ the Prognosticator said in an officious, stern tone. ‘In Captain Arrun’s… absence… it falls to me to formally speak with you concerning the situation.’

  Four days had passed since the events on Gildar Secundus and in that time, Porteus had largely been left to his own devices. Following a cursory examination in the apothecarion, he had been confined to his quarters. There had been no need to restrain him. He had been so dejected and stricken down with his own misery that he had barely moved. He had paced, at first. Then he had lost the will to do even that and eventually had spent the majority of his time indulging in seemingly endless meditations and recital of litanies. His devotion had not gone unnoticed. As Brand studied him now, he noted the younger Silver Skull’s stance. He may be defeated in spirit, but Porteus still held himself like a warrior.

  ‘It is true, then.’ It was a statement rather than a question and he did not meet Brand’s eyes as he made it. Porteus’s voice, once so rich and commanding, sounded flat and emotionless. It pained the psyker to hear how far the sergeant had fallen on an emotional level. ‘I had heard talk that the captain had fallen in battle. Nobody would confirm it for me, though.’

  Brand sighed softly and nodded. There was little point in keeping the truth from Porteus. Without that shred of knowledge, the warrior would simply brood more.

  ‘Aye, brother, much as it brings pain to both of us, I can confirm that it is true. But at the least, take heart that the
battle is over. The Red Corsairs are purged and the Gildar system is freed from their influence.’ He noted the look of infinite pain that flashed across Porteus’s face and continued. ‘For what it may be worth, I would lay down good odds that they will not dare venture from their pit too swiftly.’

  ‘And what of Huron Blackheart?’ The name fell from Porteus’s lips tainted with venom. ‘What has become of him?’

  ‘Regretfully, Porteus, the Tyrant of Badab roams free.’ Brand put out a hand to rest on Porteus’s shoulder. ‘I understand that this news must cause you grief and pain. Your hatred runs so deep that even the non-psychic aboard this ship sense it. But brother, you should not trouble yourself further with matters that are – for now, at least – out of your concern.’ The Prognosticator folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the wall. It was partly meant as a comfortable, friendly gesture but also in part to take the weight off his healing bones. The damage he had caused to himself during the fight with Taemar had been quite extensive and although he was rapidly returning to full fitness, there was still a way to go before he would take the field of battle again.

  ‘I mean no transgression, Prognosticator. I merely ask out of respect for my captain and for my battle-brothers.’ At last, a fiery spark of the old Porteus shone through and the former sergeant raised his head. He still made a point of not meeting Brand’s direct gaze, despite the fact that the Prognosticator’s eyes were mostly hidden behind the voluminous hood he wore. He kept his focus very firmly fixed on a point somewhere over Brand’s left shoulder when he spoke. The older warrior quietly admired his perspicacity, not to mention his observance of protocol. Even when he had been ordered to give up his rank, Porteus had not objected. He understood fully and had been compliant from the moment he had been returned to the Dread Argent. It was such behaviour that would be noted when he reached Pax Argentius.