The Killing Ground

by Graham McNeill

  Leto Barbaden laughed. 'So am I to understand that these creatures came to Salinas with you, Captain Ventris? Oh, this is too rich. Then the deaths of the Screaming Eagles, Colonel Kain and Mesira Bardhyl are your fault.'

  'No, governor,' said Uriel icily. 'Their deaths are on your head. The Unfleshed could have lived their lives out in peace somewhere safe, if it hadn't been for the horror you unleashed on Khaturian. Now they are pawns in the bloody revenge of your victims.'

  'Worse, they may see this world destroyed,' said Leodegarius.

  All recriminations stopped.

  'Destroyed?' asked Casuaban. 'In the name of all that's holy, why?'

  The stronger the dead become, the more they draw the power of the warp to themselves, further weakening the walls that keep the immaterium from engulfing this world. If we do not stop this soon, the walls will collapse and the entire sector will become a gateway to the realm of Chaos. I will destroy this world before I allow that to happen.'

  A heavy silence descended as all gathered suddenly realised the scale of the danger.

  'So how do we stop it?' asked Uriel.

  'We find what is holding the ghosts here and destroy it,' said Leodegarius.

  'What is holding them here?' asked Togandis.

  When Leodegarius didn't answer immediately, Barbaden said, 'You don't know, do you?'

  'No, I do not, but one of you does.'

  'One of us?' asked Uriel. 'Who?'

  'Again, I do not know, but the cards have gathered you here for a reason,' said Leodegarius. 'The energy of these spirits must have a focus that binds them here, someone with psychic ability, who is so consumed by rage that he has the power to wield such monstrous energies.'

  Again, silence fell, until Pascal Blaise said, 'I know who it is.'

  'Who?' demanded Leodegarius. 'Tell us.'

  'It's Sylvanus Thayer.'

  'Nonsense,' snapped Barbaden. 'That stupid bastard is dead. The Falcatas destroyed him and his traitorous band after Khaturian.'

  Serj Casuaban shook his head. 'No, Leto,' he said, 'he's alive. What's left of him is hooked up to machines in the House of Providence, though to call what he has ''life'' is stretching the term somewhat.'

  'You knew Thayer was alive and you kept this from me?' stormed Barbaden.

  'I did,' admitted Casuaban. 'It was my penance for what we did. He was one man I would not let die through my cowardice.'

  Leodegarius interrupted, turning Serj Casuaban around and saying, 'This Sylvanus Thayer? Tell me of him.'

  'What do you want to know?'

  'You said, ''What's left of him'', what did you mean by that?'

  'I meant that the Falcatas were thorough; they thought they'd killed him and they very nearly did. When Pascal Blaise brought him to me, I thought he was already dead, but he held on to life and just wouldn't let go of it. He'd sustained burns to almost ninety percent of his body and had lost both his legs and one of his arms. His eyes had burned away and he'd lost the power of speech. I think he can hear, but it's hard to tell. A machine breathes for him and another feeds him, while a third takes away his waste. Like I said, it's not much of a life.'

  'Imperator, you'd be better off letting him die!' said Pasanius.

  'I know,' said Casuaban, his voice close to breaking, 'but I couldn't. After the Killing Ground Massacre, I stayed sane by telling myself that I hadn't killed anyone, hadn't even fired a shot, but if I killed Sylvanus Thayer or just let him die, I'd be as bad as those who had burned Khaturian.'

  'If anyone would have enough rage within him it would be the man whose family was killed in Khaturian,' nodded Leodegarius. 'Being trapped in the flesh of his destroyed body... that could have been the catalyst that allowed latent psychic powers to develop.'

  Leodegarius gripped Casuaban's shoulders tightly.

  'You say this Sylvanus Thayer is in the House of Providence?'

  'Yes,' said Casuaban.

  'Take us there,' said Leodegarius, 'before it's too late.'

  NINETEEN

  THE LAND RAIDER'S engine was loud and the stink of its fuel was an acrid, yet amazingly welcome smell to Uriel. Clad in his borrowed armour and riding to battle in one of the most powerful vehicles in the Space Marine inventory was a tangible sign that their enforced exile was at an end.

  Pasanius sat next to him, his attention fixed on a pict-slate displaying a grainy image of the Land Raider's exterior, while five other Grey Knights in burnished silver-steel power armour sat opposite him.

  Standing at the frontal assault ramp was Leodegarius, who was once again clad in his colossal Terminator armour. The Grey Knight stood with his long polearm clutched tightly in his enormous fist. In place of his wrist-mounted storm bolter, he bore a weapon that he had informed Uriel was a psycannon. Instead of bolt shells, this weapon fired consecrated bolts of purest silver that were the bane of the daemonic and unnatural.

  Uriel held the bolter that Leodegarius had given him tightly, the fine lines and exquisite workmanship far exceeding anything he had ever seen. It was a gift of incalculable worth and Uriel hoped he would prove an honourable bearer of such a fine weapon in the coming fight.

  He was under no illusions - blood would be spilled tonight.

  No sooner had Uriel stepped from the palace and into the dusk of evening than he had felt the smothering gloom of the looming threat. The presence of the vengeful dead saturated the air and scraped along the nerves like a discordant vibration.

  With no time to waste, Leodegarius had mustered his warriors and, together with Uriel and Pasanius and Serj Casuaban, they had set off through the streets of Barbadus towards the House of Providence. Two Rhinos followed behind the Land Raider and despite the sheer bulk and terror a Land Raider inspired, it was slow going, for the streets of Barbadus were thronged with people: shouting, agitated and scared people.

  'It's a mess out there,' said Pasanius, looking at the pict-slate.

  'No one knows what's happening, but they know that something is terribly wrong,' said Uriel.

  'Aye, you're right, you don't need to be psychic to know that,' agreed Pasanius, looking towards Leodegarius's vast bulk. The warrior's blade gleamed red in the light of the troop compartment and Uriel shivered as he felt its potency as a shrill prickling along the length of his spine.

  'It is a Nemesis weapon,' said Leodegarius, as if sensing Uriel's scrutiny, 'a blade forged by the finest artificers of Titan and quenched in the blood of a daemon.'

  'The Unfleshed?' asked Uriel. 'Will it kill them?'

  'It killed two of them in the plaza before the building I pulled you out of.'

  'Two,' said Uriel sadly, 'that leaves maybe five or six left.'

  'You feel sympathy for them?' asked Leodegarius.

  'I do,' agreed Uriel. 'They didn't deserve this.'

  'Perhaps not, but few people in this galaxy get what they deserve.'

  'He will,' said Pasanius, jerking his thumb at Serj Casuaban, looking wretched and miserable in the far corner of the compartment.

  Pasanius turned away from the dejected medicae and addressed Leodegarius. 'I still say we should bomb this place from orbit. You've got a ship up there, haven't you?'

  'I have,' said Leodegarius without turning, 'and if we cannot stop Thayer then I will order a lance strike from orbit.'

  'No, you can't!' cried Serj Casuaban. 'There are innocents in the House of Providence, not to mention all the people you'd kill and maim in the city with a strike like that! Give that order and you're no better than Barbaden.'

  'Or you,' said Pasanius. 'You were at Khaturian as well.'

  'I killed no one,' said Casuaban defensively.

  'You let Barbaden give the order,' said Pasanius. 'Did you even try to stop him?'

  'You don't know him. Once Leto has his mind made up, there's not a thing in the world can make him change it.'

  'Fine,' said Pasanius, turning to Uriel, 'then why don't we give these dead folk what they want? Barbaden and Togandis are locked up in the cells and w
e have this one here, so why not just put a bullet in the backs of their heads? Wouldn't that solve the problem?'

  'You'd kill me in cold blood?' demanded Casuaban.

  'If it would save the planet, aye,' nodded Pasanius, 'in a heartbeat.'

  'Pasanius, enough,' snapped Uriel. 'We're not shooting anyone. This is about justice, not revenge. We stop Sylvanus Thayer and then the three of them will face a court martial for war crimes.'

  Uriel paused as a sudden thought came to him and turned to face Leodegarius. 'Is it safe to keep Barbaden and Togandis in the palace cells? Won't the dead be able to get to them there?'

  'No, I am maintaining an aegis sanctuary over them,' said Leodegarius. 'No power of the warp will be able to touch them.'

  Uriel wanted to ask more, but the Grey Knight held up his hand. 'We are here,' he said.

  'How does it look?'

  'Bad.'

  DESPITE THE FACT that he was languishing in a cell beneath the rock of the Imperial Palace, Shavo Togandis was more at peace than he had been in the last ten years. All the guilt was, if not gone, at least less of a burden now that the truth of the Killing Ground was known.

  The air in the circular prison complex was cold, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, Togandis was not sweating. Stripped of his ceremonial robes, he had been permitted to retain the undergarments of his vestments, as none of the prison issue tunics were large enough for him.

  He knelt before the bars of his cell, facing the featureless guard building in the centre of the chamber, his hands clasped before him, reciting prayers that rushed to fill the void in his mind that had been left by the fear of discovery.

  'You think praying will do any good?' asked Leto Barbaden from the cell next to his.

  Togandis finished his prayer and turned his head to face the man who had lived in his nightmares for the past decade. Looking at him now, he wondered what he had found so terrifying. Leto Barbaden might be a monster on the inside, but to look at him he was just an ordinary man. Not too strong and not too clever, just an ordinary man.

  Just as he was an ordinary man.

  Which only made the scale of their crimes all the more horrifying.

  How could anyone believe that such evil could come from such unremarkable specimens?

  Surely the slaughter of so many innocent lives could only have been at the behest of some winged, fire-breathing daemon or undertaken by a host of bloodthirsty orks.

  No, it had been done by men and women.

  They had done it, and the nearness of the punishment was a blessed relief to the former cardinal.

  'I think prayer can't hurt, Leto,' he answered. 'We are going to pay for what we did and I need to get right with the Emperor before then.'

  'They can cook up a farce of a trial, but I won't apologise. They'll get nothing from me.'

  'Even now, with everything in the open, you still don't think we did anything wrong?'

  'Of course not,' snapped Barbaden.

  'Then you are truly lost, Leto,' said Togandis with a shake of his head. 'I always knew you were a very dangerous man, but I don't think I realised why until now.'

  'What are you babbling about?'

  'You are the dark heart of man, Leto,' answered Togandis. 'You are the evil that can lurk in any of us, the potential to commit the most heinous acts and do it with a smile on our faces. There is a wall of conscience between acts of good and evil inside most of us, but that's missing in you. I don't know why, but for you there is no concept of evil, just results.'

  The words flowed from Togandis and he felt the catharsis of them as he spoke.

  He closed his eyes and smiled as he smelled the faint, but distinct aroma of burning flesh.

  'They're coming, Leto.'

  Togandis turned his head and looked out beyond the bars as he heard shouts and cries of alarm from the other prisoners.

  A mist of shimmering light was forming in the chamber, as though some ductwork had split open and was pouring hot steam into the gaol. Togandis knew it was no such thing and smiled as he saw a host of jostling, ghostly forms in the mist.

  First to emerge from the acrid smoke was a small girl, her dress blackened and smouldering. Her flesh was burned and hung from her body in melted strips.

  Other forms joined the girl: men, women and more children. On they came until it seemed as though the chamber was filled with the dead.

  They moved as though blown by a gentle breeze, drawing near to the cells. Togandis welcomed them, knowing that neither he nor Leto Barbaden would ever stand before a court martial.

  Togandis looked over at Leto Barbaden and didn't know whether to be impressed or revolted at his lack of emotion. The former governor of Salinas appeared as unmoved by these apparitions of death as he did by everything else in life.

  How grey life must be to him, thought Togandis.

  The young girl turned her face to Barbaden and said, 'You were there.'

  'Damn right I was,' snarled Barbaden. 'I killed you and I am not sorry.'

  The girl's face twisted, the flesh of her face rippling with light and undulant motion as she launched herself towards Leto Barbaden.

  Searing blue lightning flashed from the bars of the cell and Togandis blinked in surprise as the girl was hurled back. Her substance faded and vanished into the mist as though she had never existed.

  Barbaden laughed. 'It seems these phantoms of Thayer's are not so powerful after all.'

  'What do you mean?' gasped Togandis, willing the spirits of the dead to come for him and end his miserable existence.

  'I think Leodegarius really wants us alive to stand trial.'

  Then Togandis understood.

  BAD DIDN'T EVEN begin to cover it.

  The House of Providence was aflame, streamers of cold fire billowing like blazing shrouds from every opening and around every rivet, as though the interiors of the three mighty vehicles were full to bursting with light.

  Howling winds, like the shrieking cries of the damned, swirled around their destination carrying tormented screams of anguish so intense that it seemed impossible that they could be wrung from a human throat. Arcs of pellucid lighting crackled and rippled over the metal surfaces of the colossal war engines and a creeping sickness oozed down the hill.

  'Still think we shouldn't bomb this place from orbit?' asked Pasanius.

  Serj Casuaban looked at what had become of the House of Providence with sick horror, and Uriel could only begin to imagine what he must be feeling. A place of healing had become a place of death and vengeance, and the physician in him rebelled at such a perversion.

  Uriel and Leodegarius led the way uphill on foot, the Land Raider's passage onwards blocked by a multitude of burnt out tank chassis dragged onto the road. The Grey Knights followed in five-man combat teams, and Pasanius helped Serj Casuaban to keep up.

  'How did these tanks get here?' asked Casuaban. 'They weren't here before.'

  'The Unfleshed,' said Uriel, pointing upwards to where five hulking shapes were silhouetted at the ridge of the plateau. No more than midnight-black outlines, their veins ran with light and Uriel saw that the Lord of the Unfleshed had grown more powerful since their last encounter, his flesh monstrously swollen and seething with angry souls.

  The creatures vanished from sight behind the ridge and a wave of black despair engulfed Uriel as he knew he would have no choice but to aid the Grey Knights in their destruction. Whatever he had hoped for the Unfleshed was lost. The brutal reality of the galaxy was that there was no place for them, no happy ending, only death.

  The winds howling around the House of Providence were getting stronger and the screaming was growing louder. Lightning arced from the middle Capitol Imperialis with a deafening thunderclap, exploding against the hull of a hollowed out Chimera.

  'Something's definitely trying to keep us out!' shouted Uriel.

  Serj Casuaban clamped his hands over his ears and a hard rain pounded the ground.

  Their path wound up the h
ill, the pace slowed by the need to thread through the maze of burnt and abandoned tanks. Leodegarius hauled those that couldn't be got round out of the way, the incredible power of his Terminator armour able to push tanks from their path as though they weighed nothing at all.

  The ridge was approaching and Uriel racked the slide on his bolter, the very notion of going into battle as a Space Marine of the Emperor once more filling him with pride. The Grey Knights spread out, their halberds thrust forward into the storm of light and rain.

  Uriel's bolter snapped left and right as he caught fleeting glimpses of darting, ghostly figures at the edge of his vision. A thousand whispering voices rustled like a forest of fallen leaves, the words unintelligible, but all filled with anger.

  'You hear them?' asked Leodegarius over the vox.

  'I do,' said Uriel, 'but I'm more worried about the Unfleshed.'

  'They will be inside,' said Leodegarius, 'waiting for us.'

  With that thought uppermost in his mind, Uriel jogged over the ridge, his neck craning upwards as he stood in the enormous shadow of the House of Providence.

  Seen from a distance, the three Capitol Imperialis had been hugely impressive symbols of the Imperium, but up close, they were incredible, towering visions of the power to destroy. Their rusted metal flanks soared into the battered sky, the lightning that surrounded them flaring into the heavens as though it was a reactor on the verge of meltdown.

  The image was not a comforting one.

  As they approached the House of Providence, Uriel's every instinct told him that he was surrounded by foes, yet he could see nothing, nothing solid anyway, for the shrieking winds carried hints of floating phantoms, wisps of bodies as insubstantial as smoke, yet with the presence of a living, breathing being.

  Moving towards the House of Providence was proving difficult, as though every step was taken through sucking mud. Even Leodegarius's pace was slowed and Uriel did not want to think of the power that could slow a Terminator.

  'How do we get in?' shouted Uriel, looking along the length of the structure for an opening.

  'Over there,' said Leodegarius, pointing towards the shadowed form of an arched entrance, partially hidden by mists and unnatural blackness. Uriel peered into the gloom, barely able to discern its outline.