by C Z Dunn
In truth, she had no idea where she was going, so even if there had been light to see by it would have gained her no advantage. All she knew was that she was down here and that the orks were out there. And so was Ladbon. She broke down again, this time vomiting.
Up ahead, a noise roused her back into focus. Feet splashing through the effluent, accompanied by two pinpricks of light.
Instinctively, she pressed herself against the wall of the sewer, her shoulder coming to rest against a corroded pipe. She gripped it experimentally, flakes of rust coming away in her hands, and tugged at it. The sound of the metal coming away from the stone wall echoed loudly. The footsteps got quicker, louder. With another tug, stronger than before, the length of pipe broke off.
Marita ran her hand along it blindly, feeling the jagged edge of the end, the sharpness of it. For a second she considered jamming it into her throat, opening an artery and sparing herself and the child she was carrying the inevitable agony the greenskin she was sure was coming for her would mete out. The tip of the pipe hovered at her neck, but then she turned it over in her hands, aiming it in the direction of whatever was coming for her. Ladbon had sacrificed himself to save them; throwing her life away would accomplish nothing and dishonour the memory of the man she loved. By fighting she had a chance, no matter how slim. It might only be one ork; it might be wounded, unarmed. It might be…
The beam of light from the lume hit her square in the eyes, the shock of it causing Marita to drop the pipe and reflexively throw an arm over her face.
‘Marita!’ said a voice that was most definitely not an ork’s.
She pulled her arm away from her eyes, the beam of light from the lume now pointed downwards rather than directly at her, giving off enough light to illuminate the features of the speaker.
‘Allix…’ Marita said, collapsing into the Vostroyan’s arms, tears of anguish mingling with cries of relief.
‘Ladbon…?’ Allix asked, embracing the Honorian girl.
Marita said nothing, closing her eyes and shaking her head.
‘Where?’ Allix said.
Still silent, Marita raised an arm and pointed back in the direction she had come from.
‘It’s all right,’ Allix said. ‘You’re safe now. Kas, come with me. The rest of you get her back to the citadel.’
Allix relaxed her embrace and Dmitri took hold of Marita, slipping her arm around his shoulder to support her.
‘And tell somebody in authority about this sewer system,’ Allix called after them as they headed in opposite directions. ‘They’ll need to seal all access points.’
‘You know he’s dead, right?’ Kas said once the others were out of earshot.
‘This is Ladbon we’re talking about,’ Allix said. ‘Until I see his corpse, anything is possible.’
‘Is there any more I can do to help?’ Serpicus said, disposing of the bloodied rags Rephial had just handed him.
The Apothecary had removed his gauntlets and was examining Ezekiel’s wound with his bare fingers. Alongside him, the sensors that were assessing the Librarian’s vital signs beeped and blipped intermittently. ‘I doubt it, brother. The bullet is still lodged in there and I fear it may have damaged his brain.’ Rephial pointed to one of the many monitoring devices, a wire running from its casing to a pad on the side of Ezekiel’s temple, its screen showing two lines erratically peaking and troughing.
‘Can you remove it?’ Serpicus asked.
‘I think so.’
‘Then what is stopping you, Brother Apothecary?’
‘The presence of the bullet means that the wound to his eye will not cease bleeding.’
‘So remove it and allow his body to do what it has been genetically modified to do.’
‘It’s not that simple, Serpicus. The bullet is lodged deep and it is serrated, probably as a result of the ricochet it took on the way in. I’ll need to perform delicate surgery to get it out of there safely, and at the rate the Librarian is losing blood, there’s almost zero chance he will make it.’ Rephial handed the Techmarine another sodden, crimson rag.
‘Then do it right here, right now.’
‘He’s not a machine that you can carry out a field repair on and send on its way,’ Rephial said, becoming agitated. ‘It’s not just a case of fitting spare parts when the old ones become damaged or worn out. His eye, yes, that can be replaced in time, but his brain? If I damage that then there’s no second chance to get it right.’
‘It seems to me that your decision is a simple one, brother. If you delay, the Librarian almost certainly dies. If you act now, then he at least has a chance.’
‘Damn you and your logic, Serpicus!’ Rephial spat through gritted teeth. ‘I sometimes think that the machine part of you is more dominant than the flesh.’
The Techmarine said nothing, just stared coldly at the Apothecary.
‘You’re right though,’ Rephial said after several tense seconds. ‘There is only one course of action here. Hand me that.’ The Apothecary pointed to a set of magnetised tweezers sat on a metal tray over on Serpicus’ side of the gurney.
‘May the Emperor and the Lion guide your hand, brother,’ Serpicus said, tossing the tool to Rephial.
Saying nothing, the Apothecary set about his task.
Ladbon’s corpse was a mess.
Though the face was still just about recognisable as the Vostroyan captain, one of his arms was missing, along with a foot, and his chest was a void, likely from a point-blank shot from a crude ork pistol. Alongside him were the bodies of two orks, one impaled through the gut with a combat knife, the other bled out from a deep throat wound. From underneath the shelter of the access hatch, raised just a fraction so that they could see out, Allix and Kas broke into sombre grins.
‘At least he put up a good fight,’ the big man said. ‘Took a few of the green bastards with him.’
‘We’ve got to recover the body,’ Allix said.
‘Are you mad?’ Kas hissed. ‘The city is overrun with orks.’ To emphasise his point an ork patrol chose that very moment to wander past the end of the street.
‘He’d have done the same for you, for any of us,’ Allix said once they had gone by.
‘You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you?’ Kas said, rolling his eyes.
‘Of course not,’ Allix said. ‘Besides, I’m your commanding officer now, so I’ll order you to help me if needs be. Stay here. I’ll drag him over to you.’
Sliding clear of the manhole, Allix moved at a crouch, carefully covering the few yards to where Ladbon’s body lay.
Without warning, another ork patrol hove into view at the end of the street. Instinctively, Allix fell prone, back towards the greenskins, feigning death. Their footsteps stopped and for the next few moments they conversed tersely in their guttural ork tongue. Convinced that the orks were suspicious, Allix very slowly began to reach for the lasrifle lying beside Ladbon. It was just within reach when, as quickly as they appeared, the orks were on their way.
Wasting no time, Allix gripped Ladbon’s corpse under the shoulders and dragged him unceremoniously over to the access hatch, where Kas slung the cadaver over one shoulder and quickly descended the ladder. Allix followed, replacing the metal cover just as another, much larger group of orks passed along the end of the street.
‘I don’t know about giving you command,’ Kas said. ‘I think the captain must have transferred some of his famous luck to you too.’
Allix smiled grimly before igniting the lume and leading the way back to the inner citadel.
‘Brother Serpicus,’ Balthasar said, spotting the Techmarine entering the command chamber.
Banks of vid screens hung from the walls, some relaying live feeds from across the capital, most showing only interference or static. Vox-units rang out with frantic chatter, forces from other fortresses and gates vainly asking fo
r succour or reinforcement. Turmiel and a handful of other Dark Angels helped assimilate the information coming in while Astra Militarum adjutants and intelligence officers scurried around updating battle maps and orders of battle.
‘Please tell me you bring good tidings,’ the first sergeant continued. ‘We have seven battle-brothers confirmed dead, twice that many missing or wounded, and the orks have started to assault the outlying gates. The Mordian and Vostroyan regiments are almost down to half strength, and those skitarii that covered our escape to the inner citadel are the only surviving Mechanicus forces on the entire planet.’
Serpicus’ features were grim and morose. As he looked like that the majority of the time, it was hard for Balthasar to read him.
‘Then I am sorry to disappoint you, brother,’ Serpicus said, hanging his head.
Turmiel broke off from his appointed task and stood shoulder to shoulder with the two more senior Dark Angels before giving voice to what Serpicus was thinking, and what he already knew, and had known for a long time.
‘Ezekiel is dead.’
Part Three
Chapter Twenty
At first there was only darkness.
In an eternity of pitch, noiseless and still, Ezekiel lingered there, neither dead nor truly alive, incorporeal in the void. Gradually – though time had no meaning in this place – sound encroached and shapes began to coalesce on the edge of perception, shadows on black. Predators began to circle though they had no form, merely ideas given function and purpose by the warp, and Ezekiel could feel them lashing out, taking aim for his soul.
As the hunters drew closer, he became aware of a light in the darkness, like a meteor arcing across benighted skies. The entities that hungered for Ezekiel hesitated, flinching back, some cowering at the approach of this strange newcomer, though the larger, more advanced concepts paid it no heed, their raw aggression unchecked. As it flew nearer, Ezekiel could see that the thing of light had human form, mighty blazing wings at its back and a sword in its hand. The warp predators began to panic, those closest to Ezekiel frantically trying to reach him before the angel, but it was to no avail. With wide strokes of the illuminated blade, they were cast asunder, blinking out of unreality.
Ezekiel had no physical body here but he felt the angel’s arms wrap around him and bear him aloft, pursued by scores of the neverborn, emboldened at the prospect of losing their prey.
After that there was only light.
Blinking with eyes that he knew were not his, Ezekiel could feel that he had a physical presence again, though, like the eyes, it was not his true form. As the light bled away, it was replaced by surroundings that were familiar to Ezekiel. In his centuries of existence, he had travelled to thousands of worlds, even had a hand in destroying several of them, but there was one place that was indelibly etched onto his memories, one place that he did not need his eidetic memory to recall in near-perfect detail. The site of his greatest defeat, the source of his secret shame. The place in which he was robbed of part of his psyche, of part of his being.
Korsh.
Suddenly aware that he was not alone, Ezekiel spun on his heel, expecting to lay eyes on his saviour. Instead he turned to find Grand Master Danatheum standing before him.
‘Hello, Ezekiel,’ Danatheum said in the daemon’s voice.
‘Don’t think you’re slipping away from me that easily,’ Rephial muttered, inserting an enormous syringe into a vial of clear liquid.
Around him, the Astra Militarum medical personnel paid him little heed, busying themselves with the scores of wounded still awaiting attention. Those beyond treatment were piled against the walls of the infirmary in stacks already six deep.
Withdrawing the needle from the bottle, the Apothecary ran his thumb along the base of Ezekiel’s fused ribcage, feeling for a gap in the muscle and sinew. Finding a weak point, Rephial raised the syringe high above his head and stabbed down hard, depressing the plunger the instant the point had broken the flesh, delivering enough adrenaline to shock a fully grown bull grox to life directly to Ezekiel’s secondary heart.
To the Apothecary’s dismay, it had no effect, Ezekiel’s body lying as lifeless on the gurney as when he had been dragged in.
‘I’m not giving up that easily,’ Rephial said, reaching for the bone saw. It whirred into life with a flick of his thumb. ‘And neither are you,’ he added as he began cutting.
‘What am I doing here?’ Ezekiel said.
‘What an interesting question,’ replied the daemon. ‘And strange that it is the first one that you ask of me. You could have enquired how it is that I wear the form of your mentor, or, possibly most pertinent of all, how is it that you are still alive, but instead you want to know why you are back on Korsh.’
‘What am I doing here?’ Ezekiel repeated.
The daemon ignored the Dark Angel’s question for a second time, circling around the bare patch of obsidian stone it was standing on. ‘I’ll answer the second of those questions first. You are not alive, Ezekiel. You are not even hanging by a thread somewhere between life and death. You are dead. That ork bullet finished you off once and for all. Your body is still on Honoria, bled out and brain-dead, but your soul is here.’
‘I shall only ask you once more, daemon. Why am I here?’
‘To answer the first question,’ the daemon continued, ‘I did not choose this form – you did. Danatheum, pathetic little hedge wizard that he is, is many, many light years from here wasting precious lives and resources futilely trying to defeat an enemy that he should never have awakened. In time, he will realise his folly and order a retreat, but not before more lives are needlessly lost.
‘He will return to the Rock in shame, and though his superiors will lay no blame at his door, Danatheum will step aside as the Master of the Librarius and name his own successor. But you know all of this already, don’t you? You have foreseen it.’ The daemon laughed cruelly. ‘Ah, but I forget. I have persisted for millennia and yet this is all so new to me. You no longer have your powers of divination do you, Ezekiel? I have them now. I see what you are supposed to see.’
Though he was stood some distance from the daemon, Ezekiel leapt towards it, hands held out ready to grasp its throat and snap its neck. By the time he got there, the daemon was gone, Ezekiel crashing to the hard floor, his robes dangling in the streams of lava that crisscrossed the entire surface of Korsh. The fabric was unburned, confirming Ezekiel’s hypothesis that this was all an illusion of the daemon’s making.
‘So impulsive. So impatient,’ the daemon scolded from a ridge high above. ‘I was getting around to answering you. I just wanted to get the less important questions out of the way first. Just as with this body I manifest, I did not choose the location for our meeting – you did. Or rather your subconscious did.’
Ezekiel said nothing.
‘Why is that, do you think?’ the daemon said. It jumped down from the ledge, landing in a pool of lava that came up to its waist. It walked towards Ezekiel, exiting the burning magma unscathed and coming to a halt an arm’s reach in front of the Librarian. ‘I think that despite your conditioning, despite the fact that the fear was supposed to be driven from you, it is because this place, and what happened to you here, scares you. You are afraid, Ezekiel.’
This time the daemon did not react, did not teleport itself out of the way in time, and Ezekiel thrust out his hand, grabbing and snapping the daemon’s neck in one fluid motion. Danatheum’s body fell to the ground, lifeless.
‘It’s still so hard for you, isn’t it? Still too raw,’ said the daemon, once again inhabiting Danatheum’s form on the ridge high above. ‘Very well. Let us continue this some place else. My choice.’
The illusory world crumbled, replaced by darkness.
Chapter Twenty-One
Balthasar studied the blueprints pinned to the walls, committing to his eidetic memory every line, curve and angle of t
he inner citadel’s layout. Arch Magos Diezen stood beside him, augmetic eyes blinking at an alarming rate, processing the information in a very different manner to the Space Marine. Serpicus was on the other side of his battle-brother, his attention split between studying the schematic and effecting makeshift repairs to Balthasar’s power armour.
‘The walls of the inner citadel are even harder to breach than the gates,’ Balthasar said. ‘Unless the orks demolish the outer walls their war machines can’t get into the city.’
‘Even then they would be of limited use,’ Serpicus added. ‘The streets are too narrow for them to work effectively, and if they could pile the corpses high enough they would gain no advantage as the inner citadel is a closed structure. It was designed as a giant bunker, a redoubt of last resort to protect the citizenry of Aurelianum.’
‘Or to act as their tomb,’ Diezen said.
‘How long do you think the walls can hold out?’ Balthasar asked.
The arch magos’ blink rate increased, his mechanical fingers tapping away at an unfathomable brass device strapped to his waist. After much whirring and clicking, a wafer of parchment emerged from a slot at the side of the machine. Diezen held it up close to his face and read from it. ‘Three weeks, two days, seven hours, thirty-nine minutes and eighteen seconds, with a nought point two two margin for error.’
‘And how long will the supplies last?’ Balthasar said to Serpicus.
‘The inner citadel was only designed to house the capital’s population. Even with all of the casualties that the Astra Militarum forces have incurred, this place is filled way in excess of capacity.’
‘How long?’
‘If we put everybody on half rations, two days. Three if we’re lucky.’