The Siege of Castellax

by C. L. Werner

  Rhodaan struggled for breath as the coils began to tighten. ‘The orks are inside the Bastion, Oriax. Do you want the xenos to take your little toy?’

  The coils tightened as Oriax hissed his contempt. ‘It would be disappointing if the orks didn’t come. I took great pains to bring them here. First with the deep range scouting probes to establish contact with them, to give them the bait to draw them here. You have to be careful with orks, give them information too openly and they distrust it. Make them work too hard to gain it and they become bored and kill their prisoners. It took great patience to train Flesh to withstand just the right amount of torture.’

  Rhodaan stared in disbelief at the Fabricator. ‘You lured the orks here? The entire invasion was your doing?’ His fists clenched at his sides, his body thrashed in a futile effort to break the bonds that held him. ‘Why?’ he demanded.

  ‘I already told you,’ Oriax said. ‘The Warsmith was going to take my Daemonculum away from me, let others defile it. I couldn’t let that happen. Better that Castellax should burn, that the Third Grand Company should be no more, than the unworthy be allowed to share my knowledge.’ Oriax tilted his head to one side, his optics glittering as he watched Rhodaan being crushed in his grip. The arm that had been a hammer now churned into life, a whisper of light flashing from its tube-like extremity.

  ‘A monofilament wire,’ Oriax explained. ‘A little something to remember the dying eldar race. In a moment, I will project this wire through your helmet’s right optic. Then I will use it to puree you inside your own armour.’ The icy grin was back on Oriax’s face. ‘I just thought you might like to know.’

  ‘No!’ The word roared through the sanctum, rumbling across the broken machinery. Oriax swung around, the Fabricator’s brow knotting in concern as his optics focused upon the hulking monstrosity marching slowly across the floor of the Daemonculum.

  Rhodaan felt a surge of relief rush through him. Brother Merihem. Once again, the Obliterator had arrived at just the right moment to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. As he marched across the bloodwood platform, Rhodaan could see Merihem’s body sway, his legs struggling with each step, as though he strode through an unseen mire. How hungry Oriax’s daemons must be to turn their attentions upon an Obliterator! For a moment, the Raptor wondered if Merihem would be able to resist the temptations roaring through his mind, the siren call of the imprisoned daemons.

  Merihem’s will was stronger than the daemons, a will forged in iron and hate. The pale little face glared at Oriax, the steel teeth shining in a cold smile that gave even the Fabricator pause.

  ‘Why do you stand against me, brother?’ Oriax asked. He extended his hand, displaying its oozing mush of flesh and metal for Merihem to see. ‘We are truly brothers. We share the blessings of the machine made flesh and the flesh made machine. These others,’ the Fabricator shook Rhodaan in his grip, nearly breaking the Raptor’s neck, ‘are nothing to us. They are no different than the Flesh from which we were chosen. They are the clay from which the true Iron Warrior may rise. Those like us, who are truly iron within and iron without.’

  Merihem lumbered forwards, dragging his feet clear of the bloodwood and the spectral clutch of the daemons. ‘I care nothing for the Legion,’ he growled. ‘I care nothing for the kinship of false brothers who betray their oaths.’ His steel smile became even more vicious, the little black eyes twinkling in the pits of his face. ‘What I care about is that trash in your hand. I want him.’

  As he heard the Obliterator’s growl, Rhodaan knew he listened to the voice of Death. The monster had warned him when they left the Oubliette that there would be a reckoning. He had been a fool to ever think Merihem could be trusted, that a beast like him could ever be bound by such noble concepts as duty and honour. The abomination had simply been biding his time, waiting for the moment when Rhodaan stood at the edge of victory before he struck in order that his revenge might be even more complete.

  ‘You are not here to avenge the Warsmith?’ Oriax demanded, his voice crackling with doubt.

  Merihem took another lumbering step forwards, the claws of his left hand splayed in a gesture of murderous readiness. ‘I am here to avenge myself,’ he declared. ‘To avenge my exile and imprisonment. To avenge the denial of my purpose, the squandering of my potential. To avenge centuries abandoned in the darkness, locked away like some keepsake. To avenge the shame of my condition. If the Warsmith was here, I would peel the flesh from his bones and drink the blood from his torn hearts.’ Merihem’s black eyes glared into the lenses of Rhodaan’s helmet. ‘Since Andraaz is not here, I shall content myself with his lapdog, the mongrel who brought my disgrace so long ago and left me to rot in the dark.’

  The monster shifted his gaze to Oriax. ‘Stand aside, “brother,” and I will show you what it means to hate.’

  The Warsmith’s claw came slashing across the ork’s chest, energy flaring in a nimbus of cobalt as the blades struck the power field generated by the alien’s armour. Andraaz grunted in pain as electrical feedback crackled down his arm, searing every nerve. He bit down on his pain and forced his talons through the power field. For an instant, the field resisted, then as the attack persisted, the scythe-like blades went tearing into the ork’s body.

  Biglug reeled back, howling in surprise as much as pain. Tatters of armour flopped from the gashes left behind by Andraaz’s power claw, blood bubbled from the ork’s torn flesh. Trying to defend himself, Biglug brought the power axe chopping into the Iron Warrior. The ceramite surface of the Terminator armour shuddered at the impact, but the Legion’s artificers had maintained the artefact well. Biglug’s energised blade barely penetrated a few millimetres despite the monstrous brawn behind the attack.

  Andraaz fired his storm bolter into the ork’s roaring face, the rounds smashing against the force field that protected the brute. The assault did, however, distract Biglug, keeping his tiny brain occupied while the Warsmith brought his claw shearing through the ork’s leg.

  Or at least such had been Andraaz’s intention. As he brought his power claw slashing down, the Warsmith was aware of a strange, all pervasive crackle of static. Dimly he recognised it as a pulse of binary. The servo-motor in his arm seized and shut down, refusing to complete the murderous strike. From a supercharged engine of destruction, the left arm of the Warsmith’s armour had become an inert lump of metal. If his reactions were any slower, his reflexes less honed by the battlefield, Andraaz’s equilibrium would have collapsed under the transformation, the dead weight of his raised arm and its suddenly thwarted momentum dragging him down to the ground. As it was, he pivoted, swinging his entire body around to prevent such a disaster.

  In preventing his fall, Andraaz exposed himself to his foe. Biglug howled with delight as he lunged at the Iron Warrior’s unprotected back, the power axe slashing through the sensorium relays and diagnostic bundles running along the left side of the armour. There was a stabbing pain along Andraaz’s spine as the axe sheared through a mass of fibre-bundles, sending electricity crackling from the compromised machinery.

  Andraaz swung back around, firing his storm bolter into the alien’s body. Against the point-blank barrage, even the force field was overwhelmed. Biglug snarled in pain as explosive shells smashed into his armour, sending splinters of plasteel and armaplas flying. The brute was staggered by the onslaught, but even this wasn’t enough to subdue his savagery. As he reeled back, Biglug twisted his power axe around, hooking the edge of the head in the adamantium ribs that supported the Terminator’s thick layers of ceramite and plasteel. The Warsmith stumbled forwards as the ork dragged him after it.

  Andraaz resisted Biglug’s pull, digging his feet in the shattered earth, using the full weight of his Terminator armour to defy the ork’s brawn. Pivoting in place, he turned the ork’s exertions into a lumbering swing, flinging Biglug into the broken wall of a processing plant. The xenos’s impact was like that of a cannon, chunks of ferrocrete crashing down about the ork’s head. The Warsmith added t
o Biglug’s ordeal, raking his body with shots from his storm bolter. With a loud wail and a strobing burst of light, Biglug’s force field fizzled, smoke rising from the overwhelmed mechanism.

  The Warsmith smiled coldly and took a lumbering step towards the staggered Biglug. Andraaz lifted the storm bolter, picking a spot between the brute’s beady eyes to deliver the killing shot.

  Before he could fire, Andraaz heard the binary shriek crackle through his armour’s sensors. The massive Terminator suit froze in mid-step, the limbs locking in place as their motivators powered down. The Iron Warrior struggled to move by sheer force of his muscles alone, but even his superhuman strength was unequal to the effort.

  The ork warlord extracted himself from the rubble, shaking his head as he tried to clear away the cobwebs. He glared at Andraaz and smacked a meaty paw against his alien chest in a token of violent challenge. Snarling, the ork rushed towards the Warsmith.

  Biglug hesitated when the Iron Warrior failed to move or respond in any way. The ork actually took a few paces backwards, his eyes darting from side to side in search of a trap. Finally, his gaze turned to Andraaz once more. He cocked his head to one side, scratched at his jaw with a stumpy finger. Then, angrily, the ork slapped his hand against his chest once more, as though daring the Warsmith to shoot him again.

  Still, Andraaz couldn’t move, the binary pulse was paralysing the machine-spirit of his armour, imprisoning him inside. He howled in frustration, wracking his brain for some way to force the armour to act.

  The ork warlord’s fragile patience wore out, his desire for a good fight overwhelming his suspicions of a trap. Roaring with fury, Biglug charged the dozen metres between himself and Andraaz. He brought the power axe smashing down in a brutal sweep that shattered the Terminator’s shoulder and nearly sheared the Warsmith’s arm from his body.

  Biglug jumped back, bracing himself for the Iron Warrior’s counter-attack. When his enemy still failed to move, the warlord stood straight and barked at Andraaz, cursing and jeering the Iron Warrior who refused to fight. Contemptuously, Biglug brought the butt of his axe cracking into his foe’s head, unbalancing the Terminator and pitching him over into the dirt.

  Falling, Andraaz had a good view of the trophies lashed to Biglug’s chest. He could see the Steel Blood chained there beside Vallax’s helmet. The skull’s optics were aglow, its jaw open to expose the speaker buried in its mouth. Andraaz knew the source of the binary pulse that had paralyzed his armour, had made the machine-spirit betray its master. He knew that the shameful death of the Rending Guard had been no accident or malfunction.

  Biglug hooted with contemptuous mockery as he brought his axe smashing down into the prone Terminator, each blow sending tremors through the thick ceramite plates. Blow after blow, the alien was battering his way through the armour and to the defenceless Space Marine trapped inside.

  Warsmith Andraaz had thought to make a heroic end for himself, but Oriax had arranged things differently. The orks would remember him, all right, but not as some mighty foe who had stood proud upon the battlefield. Andraaz would be the arrogant coward, who in the end had cowered before their warlord and not even put up a fight when Biglug started to pull him piece by piece from his ruptured armour.

  Andraaz hadn’t liked the orks laughing at him, but they would be doing it for a very long time.

  Merihem’s steel grin widened, stretching from ear to ear, his little black eyes glaring malevolently from the ghostly pallor of his face. The Obliterator clenched his claws, each finger bubbling into a little chainblade. Rhodaan struggled in Fabricator Oriax’s grip, trying to reach his belt. He might not be able to stave off death, but he wouldn’t go down like this, butchered like a grox by a subhuman abomination.

  The monster began to descend from the Daemonculum when there was a sudden blast of bright light. Merihem’s chest exploded in a pool of bubbling metal and molten meat. The Obliterator staggered, swinging around and firing his autocannon across the chamber. Uzraal, his meltagun still smoking from its violent discharge, dived behind one of the wraithbone columns.

  ‘Now, while it is weak!’ Uzraal shouted.

  In response, Captain Morax and Brother Gomorie came charging across the bloodwood platform. Clenched in their arms was the frame of a flesh-drone, its mechadendrites extended, frozen into position at the moment of the servitor’s destruction. The effect was like a three-metre long lance and the two Iron Warriors drove it straight into the wound Uzraal’s meltagun had blasted in Merihem’s body.

  The Obliterator’s corrupt essence had already started to flow back into the injury, fibres of steel and flesh knitting back together. The lance stabbed into Merihem’s regenerating chest, piercing clean through the monster. He swung around, his tiny face pulled back in a sneer.

  ‘Laugh this off, obscenity!’ Morax cursed. The Skylord’s hand smashed the power plant still fixed to the flesh-drone’s frame. The two Space Marines hastily released their improvised spear as thousands of kilowatts of electricity crackled down the servitor’s frame.

  Merihem shrieked in agony as the discharge seared his body, burning through every synapse and wire. The Obliterator lunged forwards, his chainclaw catching Morax, the whirring blades chewing into the Skylord’s armour. Merihem lifted his prey from the floor, glaring into the lenses of his helmet. ‘Clever worm,’ Merihem spat. His other hand began to shift, reforming into the crazed confusion of the ork combi-weapon he had absorbed in the wasteland.

  Bolt-shells smashed into Merihem’s back, driving splatters of liquid meat from his regenerating wound. Merihem pivoted, aiming his new weapon at Gomorie. There was a frown on the Obliterator’s face as he blasted Gomorie with the full malignity of the combi-weapon. Crude, unpredictable in its original state, the ghastly virus in his body had refined and stabilised the weapon, allowing it to reach its full potential. Gomorie’s armour shredded under the impact, his body tossed through the air to crash at the foot of a wraithbone pillar.

  ‘Such wasted potential,’ Merihem commented. ‘I had expected better things for you, little brother.’ The Obliterator clenched his fist, bringing the sawing chainblades tighter about Morax’s body. The Skylord flailed in his grip, blood streaming down his legs as the blades ripped into his flesh.

  Another blast from Uzraal’s meltagun slammed into Merihem, reducing his shoulder into a steaming morass of metal and muscle. The Obliterator’s arm went limp, dropping Morax to the floor. Vengefully, Merihem sent a salvo from his combi-weapon chasing after Uzraal, but again the Raptor was behind cover before the monster’s aim could come true. Maintaining an incredible rate of fire, Merihem chased Uzraal across the Daemonculum, ravaging the arcane machinery with each burst.

  ‘It seems I will not have to depend on the orks to destroy my Daemonculum,’ Oriax observed with bitterness. He turned his attention back to Rhodaan, savouring the Raptor’s struggles. His eyes narrowed as he focused them on the wings of Eurydice, a covetous gleam creeping into them.

  ‘I have long admired your archaeotech,’ Oriax said. He extended his hand, caressing the closest wing. His palm was already collapsing into a liquid mash, spreading to coat the demi-organic pinions. ‘You don’t mind if I take it. You won’t have any further use for it, I assure you.’ A touch of amusement flickered on the Fabricator’s face. ‘When they are mine, do you think I’ll fly?’ he asked.

  Rhodaan glared back at him. ‘I think you’ll burn,’ he snarled, slamming his hand against the Techmarine’s chest. The magnetic clamp on the haywire grenade he’d removed from his belt locked on to Oriax’s armour. The Fabricator was just able to look down at the device before it sent its pulse flaring through his body.

  The same discharge roared through Rhodaan, conducted into him by the Fabricator’s grip. As he was hurled away by the electrical shock, he slammed into one of the pict screens, feeling it shatter behind him in a shower of crystalline shards. Every nerve in his body felt like it was on fire. Half the systems in his armour had shorted out, the optics i
n his helmet flickering through different colour spectrums. Agony rippled through his muscles as he lifted his hands and removed his helmet. Groggily, Rhodaan regained his feet.

  As terrific as the effect of the haywire pulse had been upon him, Rhodaan had been spared the grenade’s full fury. The Fabricator had borne the brunt of the discharge. Oriax stood shuddering and writhing amid the wreck of his console, his mechadendrites spasming in an insane display of claws, pincers and drills. The metallic substance of his corrupt body undulated, throbbing like a pool of lava. His face was frozen in a silent shriek of agony.

  Defying the pain in his own body, Rhodaan lunged across the chamber, snatching his chainsword from where it had fallen. Fury flung him at the Fabricator: the fury of the betrayed, the fury of the loyal for the disloyal, the fury of a warrior against a comrade who has forsaken his duty.

  ‘This is how you die, traitor!’ Rhodaan shouted as he brought his chainsword hacking into the paralyzed Oriax. He never understood the strange look in the Fabricator’s eyes or the terrible irony that he should be struck down in such fashion, defenceless and without honour.

  Rhodaan’s chainsword bit into Oriax’s head, slashing through his mouth and cleaving the skull along the jawbone. The roof of Oriax’s head went spinning off into the darkness, while the rest of his mangled body simply slumped to the floor like a broken toy. Electricity continued to sizzle through the corpse as the haywire grenade expelled the energies of its power plant.

  The victorious Raptor stared down at his handiwork for a moment. Again, he reached to the floor, retrieving his plasma pistol. One traitor had been settled. Another was still to be reckoned with.

  Sheets of flame billowed across the Daemonculum, pursuing Uzraal as he strove to elude the monster. Merihem had given up trying to shoot the Raptor, instead adopting the muzzle of a flamer to burn the Iron Warrior from his hiding places. There was a murderous grin on the Obliterator’s face as he stormed across the charred planks of the bloodwood platform.