The Eye of Ezekiel

by C Z Dunn

  Culmonios battered the creature down, wrenching the gun-analogue from its forelimbs and ramming it over and over into the thing’s screeching face. His own pistol had long since run dry. There had, simply, been too many of them.

  He threw the bio-weapon aside and grabbed the tyranid creature by the throat. It thrashed and snapped at him, until he broke its spine over his knee.

  Hauling himself back to his feet with a wordless cry of exertion, took a splattering hit to the breastplate as he charged the last of their numbers, though the corrosive, organic projectile – whatever it was – did not pierce the ceramite. The pair of skulking creatures hissed at him as he closed the distance, trying to scramble away over the mounds of their dead kin, but Culmonios would not be denied. He slammed bodily into the first, sending it sprawling to the deck where he shattered its chitin-crested skull beneath his armoured heel.

  With a bestial shriek the last creature tried to raise its weapon, but Culmonios grabbed its open jaw and sheathed his chainsword in its gullet with one savage thrust. The tyranid twitched as it died, gagging on the razor-sharp teeth of the blade.

  ‘Culmonios, are you receiving? Unknown hostiles were reported mass–’

  ‘Hunter-slayers,’ he growled. His twin heartbeats thundered in his ears. ‘Forty-plus confirmed kills. This deck is cleansed.’

  ‘Deck seventeen cleansed, aye. Heading to your position now. Are the others still with you?’

  ‘Negative. They are all gone.’

  He ripped the chainsword free, and let the alien corpse crash to the deck. The blade rattled disappointingly, the mechanism evidently fouled by overuse in the past few hours, but Culmonios could only stare down at the steaming bone-case of the tyranid’s fallen weapon.

  The damned thing had an eye. It stared back at him, the slit-pupil responding reflexively to the erratic flicker of the lumens overhead.

  Disgust rose in his gorge. Disgust, and rage, and sorrow.

  ‘You vile, unworthy abominations,’ he muttered behind his helm visor. ‘How did your misbegotten kind ever take the home world?’

  There was something in that vacant, alien gaze. Something that was not merely a weapon, not merely a tool. Culmonios gritted his teeth and, with one thumb, gouged out the eye and crushed it in the palm of his gauntlet.

  He came up slowly, his hands trembling. Casting about the compartment, he took in the nightmarish scene that lay all around. A tableau of dead faces and spilled blood. Here and there, the bulky silhouette of a fallen Chapter brother. Spent bolter casings. Arcs of red splattered across the bulkheads, in some places right up to the vaulted ceiling. The deck plates were slick with gore, the remains of human and xenos alike hopelessly mingled.

  It would all have to be disposed of. Ejected into the void, most likely, or scoured with flame. It was an undignified end for those Imperial citizens who had already died such a poor death.

  The ventral hull zones were where the fighting had been thickest, but the short-range vox was filled with reports from his surviving battle-brothers and the frigate’s serf security teams as they drove the last xenos creatures back to the outer compartments. Culmonios gathered that the fleet – if it could be considered such – had made the jump back to real space, but the translation had not even registered upon his weary senses. For him, the past hours had been filled with naught but slaughter, and the frenzied cries of the alien attackers.

  He trudged back to his most prized kill, letting his chainsword clatter to the deck as he went.

  The hulking corpse of a full-grown tyranid warrior lay crumpled over a handful of its lesser cousins, its spilled innards cooling, its eyes glassy and black. The beast had claimed three of his battle-brothers before he had struck it down; Gordani’s empty helm was still gripped in its claws. Culmonios knelt beside the fallen monstrosity, which in life had stood easily half as tall again as an armoured Space Marine.

  ‘They don’t look so big when they’re on their backs,’ came Brother Nimeon’s voice from across the compartment. Culmonios had not heard him forcing his way through the barricaded entrance, though the warrior now picked gingerly through the carnage, sweeping the lamp of his bolter left and right. ‘Oh, Holy Terra – this was another one of the refugee holds.’

  Culmonios nodded solemnly. The xenos boarding parties seemed to have been drawn to the least-protected parts of the ship, like predators seeking out the weakest members of the herd.

  And they had fed well. The Scythes had arrived too late.

  Drawing his combat blade, Culmonios wrenched the tyranid’s head up and began to saw at the corded sinews of its neck.

  ‘Brother, what are you doing?’ asked Nimeon.

  Culmonios did not look up. A righteous fury burned in his hearts. ‘This was the greatest of them,’ he muttered. ‘It shall serve as a warning to those that follow.’

  ‘I do not think the xenos can be cowed by a gibbet.’

  ‘Who said anything about a gibbet? This is a trophy.’

  With a meaty snap, he twisted the beast’s crested skull free and let the body fall away. As he rose, he hefted the crest like a shield, testing its weight. Bloody ropes of drool still hung from the creature’s slack jaws.

  Nimeon removed his helm, repulsion written clearly upon his face, but Culmonios met his gaze unwaveringly.

  ‘They have taken everything from us, brother, and so shall I take from them as I damn well please.’ He did not bother to clean the blood from his knife, and it slid wetly back into the sheath at his hip. ‘We will have our vengeance upon the Kraken, one foul beast at a time.’

  Spiridonas lay amidst the tangled cables of the control blister, his muscular chest heaving. His bare arms and hands were wound up in the psi-conductive mechanism, and a crystalline hood had been forced over his broad skull, though the webbing had evidently torn as a result. His eyes were screwed closed, and had been for a good while.

  Brother Machaon knelt beside him, one gauntleted hand upon the Librarian’s shoulder.

  ‘Who was with him during the voyage?’

  The two armoured serfs at his back shuffled warily, their lascarbines clutched in unsteady hands. ‘No one, my lord,’ one of them replied. ‘He ordered us all to leave, after the…’

  His words trailed off, and he nodded to the four bodies that lay beneath a bloody tarpaulin beside the entrance hatch.

  ‘There were rumours, my lord, from when the xenos attacked. Madness. Murder. He said he did not need the distraction of mortal minds nearby.’

  Machaon frowned. ‘Someone should have been with him.’

  He selected a muscle relaxant dosage from his narthecium, and slid the needle into Spiridonas’ taut forearm. The Librarian sagged a little, though he continued to grind his teeth as he gasped down each laboured breath.

  The second human stiffened, and put a finger to the vox-bead in his ear. ‘My lord Apothecary – Captain Thracian is demanding entrance to the Navigator chambers. How should I respond?’

  ‘Let him in.’

  After a few moments, the hatchway mechanism was unlocked and the doors slid open. Thracian, though clearly having been wounded in the evacuation, still managed to carry himself with the prideful gait of a true-blooded Sothan. A young female officer followed in his wake, looking distinctly uncomfortable as the two of them made their way past the covered bodies. Beneath her bloody field dressing, Machaon recognised her as the replacement executive officer appointed by Shipmaster Devanti after the orbital attack.

  ‘Captain,’ he said with a slight incline of his head, but remaining at Spiridonas’ side. ‘I trust you know of Zebulon’s passing?’

  ‘I do. I was with him.’

  ‘My condolences, then. He was a worthy hero of the Chapter.’

  Thracian nodded in acknowledgement, coming to stand over Machaon and the insensible Librarian. ‘He looks bad.’

  Machaon cons
ulted his medicae auspex. ‘He has not fared well. The exertion has darkened his thoughts.’

  ‘How so? Is the mind of a Librarian not trained to channel the aether?’

  Somewhat surprised by the frankness of the question, and conscious of his patient’s current lack of dignity, Machaon gestured to the serf guards and the lieutenant. ‘Leave us. All of you. Bar and lock the doors. No one is to enter these chambers without my authorisation.’

  The first guard looked to Thracian for confirmation, but the captain simply stared back at him, blankly. ‘Yes, my lord Apothecary,’ he mumbled.

  He doesn’t know, Machaon realised. Young Thracian doesn’t yet understand the weight of the duty that may now fall to him.

  Beyond the Navigator chambers, throughout the Heart of Cronus and across the scattered fleet, the Scythes of the Emperor and their Chapter thralls were in need of leadership.

  And if not Thracian, who else?

  Seemingly almost as an afterthought as the serfs made their way out of the chamber, the captain addressed the lieutenant. ‘Hannelore, send shuttles with repair crews to those ships still without communications. We need headcounts on the survivors, and a complete inventory of supplies. Anything and everything that the shipmasters managed to bring aboard their vessels before the jump.’

  ‘Yes, Captain Thracian,’ she replied.

  No salute, Machaon noted as she left. When they were alone and the hatchway was sealed once more, he turned his attentions back to Spiridonas.

  ‘You ask if a Librarian should not be more than capable of navigating a ship through the warp, brother-captain. Yes, it is quite possible – though not bred for it like the houses of the Navis Nobilite, a trained battle-psyker might use his sight to give a vague heading, once his vessel was under way.’ He delicately ran two fingers of his gauntlet over the torn webbing of Spiridonas’ hood. ‘In truth, I doubt any but a member of the Librarius could have brought us here from Sotha.’

  Thracian’s eyes followed the psi-conductor cabling up to the ports in the ceiling, then back to Spiridonas. ‘How so?’

  Grimly, Machaon pointed to the bloody tarpaulin by the door.

  ‘The xenos are insidious foes, my lord. The mere presence of their hive fleets shrouds our psykers’ connection to the warp, and conjures terrors in the minds of those who would gaze into the abyss regardless. From what I have seen so far, the beasts of the Kraken cast a shadow far greater and far darker than any previously encountered by the Imperium. A Space Marine’s mind is more resistant to it, but by no means immune.’

  Narrowing those golden eyes of his, Thracian grunted in understanding. ‘I see the truth of it. This is how they crippled our fleet, then – we had not the sight of our Navigators to guide us away, nor the minds of our astropaths to call for help.’

  For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The only sounds in the chamber were the crackle of dead systems, and the Librarian’s laboured breathing.

  At length, Machaon rose. ‘Captain, I sense an unasked question in your silence. Why did you come here?’

  When he replied, Thracian spoke quietly, though Machaon was unsure who exactly he thought might overhear them. ‘I would speak to Spiridonas,’ he said. ‘My question is for him.’

  ‘A wasted journey then, my lord. I do not believe he even knows we are here. I do not care to imagine what alien nightmares he might have glimpsed, to bring him to this state.’

  Carefully, Thracian drew his tattered cloak aside and crouched before the control blister, his armour growling in protest and the movement clearly paining his injuries. Machaon’s trained eye spotted heavy machine scraping in the ceramite, as well as buckling to several of the joints – the captain had evidently been crushed by something during the course of the evacuation. He was doing well, considering.

  Thracian removed his gauntlets and leaned in towards the Librarian.

  ‘Brother Spiridonas, can you hear me?’

  There was no response. He glanced back at Machaon. The Apothecary shrugged.

  ‘Brother Spiridonas,’ Thracian said again, raising his voice. ‘Have we escaped them? Will the tyranids follow us here?’

  Machaon saw him place a hand upon the Codicier’s straining arm. Spiridonas’ eyes snapped open at the contact.

  The Librarian screamed.

  It was a sound of indescribable, maddened panic.

  In an anonymous cargo hold, aboard a silently drifting frigate out beyond the edge of the Miral System, a lone Chapter brother stumbled out from between two grubby transit containers, and fell to his knees upon the deck.

  His bare hands trembled. The enormity, the horror of it all, had shaken him to the core.

  There was blood. His forearms were spattered with it. He dropped his broken falx blade and laughed, tears stinging his eyes.

  I had to be sure, he convinced himself.

  He ran his hands over his scalp, leaving sticky red smears behind.

  His name was Brother Hadrios. For now, that was the only truth that he was willing to believe. His desperate laughter echoed again in the gloomy hold.

  They would be coming for him soon. He had to move quickly.

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  A Black Library Publication

  First published in Great Britain in 2017

  This eBook edition published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,

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  Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

  Cover illustration by Roman Tishenin.

  Internal illustrations by Alex Boyd and John Michelbach.

  Map by Tomasz Gut.

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