‘Keep firing!’ he roars, reaching out for something to hold on to.
He feels sick, strangely. He feels like he has been poisoned. The deck carries on bucking, relentlessly. It feels – and this is insane – like the ship is literally trying to shake something off its back.
‘Keep firing!’ he shouts again, not knowing whether anyone is heeding his commands or whether this is some terminal spiral into oblivion.
He fights his way back along the gallery, clambering over the guns’ tangled moorings. Dimly, he registers other data – boarding torpedoes incoming, the ship’s gravity centre skidding all over the place, conduits bursting open and flooding the atmosphere with sprays of acidic lubricants.
They are getting in, he realises, infuriated and impotent, and there is nothing now to stop them.
Kledo screams. It has been a long time since he last screamed, and it makes his withered vocal cords throb.
Somehow, he keeps his claws pushed down, connected with that shivering mass of flesh and pumping fear-stimulants and mind-suppressants into it.
The sensory inload is overwhelming, gigantic, all-smothering. Kledo had no idea. He had no idea just how far Solace has grown, how powerful it has become. He stares into the ship’s mind, its half-aware self, and sees an almost infinite potency there, gigantic, sullen, dull like fog.
He has a choice now. He can try to pull out, to escape with his life and sanity, or he can push on and exert his will over this behemoth.
Kledo fights it. His fingers squeeze on the triggers, pumping more suppressants into Solace’s bloodstream. The electrodes at his temples flare, and he feels the sharp snap of pain as alien matter back-floods into his own circulatory system.
They are connected now, the two of them, like a foetus in a womb. Kledo has his innate strength to draw on, his knowledge and his long preparation. Solace is barely conscious, a slumbering leviathan, but it is reacting to the invasion, kicking back, wallowing up through the shallows.
For a second, Kledo sees the prize before him. He sees the vessel’s control centres, its ganglia and its long, straggling connectors, lodged deep into every system and structure. He sees the electric glows as the proto-thoughts shuttle and commute between organs, regulating and feeding. He understands how it works, and almost grasps what would be needed to control it. He reaches out, his consciousness travelling down those same conduits, and has the sensation of vastness, of control.
Then he is in the void. He, Kledo, is in the void, an immense, single object, flickering with a coronet of las-fire, powered by colossal thrusters that throb red like a wound. He sees the other objects flying around him, some tiny, some as huge as he is. He sees a sable strike cruiser coming in very close, loosing its cargo of fighters. He feels the scampering of the crew within him and understands that he could crush them all – a squeeze here, an exhalation there.
This is horribly dangerous. This is not what he wanted. Control was the objective, not some merging of minds. Kledo fights harder. Somewhere, in another, far-off reality, his fingers stay tight on the plungers, pumping in more of the chemicals. The ship must be rendered dormant, quiescent, turned into something he can enslave.
The pain ratchets up. Solace is aware of him. Kledo can smell the intelligence there now, blind but clarifying rapidly, numbed by his injections but hard to fully extinguish. It is like a sea, deep and turgid, rolling under heavy gravity, slow but with an incredible, inexhaustible force.
This has been a mistake. He has overreached, stretching out for something beyond his ability to hold.
Kledo has one option left – a concoction he has never tried before, a combination of neurotoxins so potent that every subject he has ever exposed to them died in immediate psychic shock. He had been keeping it in reserve, loath to use it unless necessary, but now, surely, he is out of alternatives.
It is still hard to make the selection. He is losing his mind, and he can feel his poisons reverse-seeping into his own bloodflow. His fingers do not work as they should; his neck is searing with that hot, tight pain. Though he can no longer see, he somehow knows that the organs around him are swelling, bloating, pressing against him and trying to crush the life from him.
This has been a mistake.
He forces a finger to twitch, to click down on that last switch. He can almost taste the poisons gushing, bubbling and frothing as they surge into open veins.
Solace wrenches away. It jerks, it spasms. Systems shut down, gasping, and ventricles burst.
Kledo is hurled away from the link, the needles ripped out, doused in a torrent of inky fuel. The world swings wildly, and he cracks his head against a sparking nest of blown wiring.
The ship is screaming. Its thrusters gun into full burn, flinging it into a crazed spiral. Repeated thuds slam along its flanks – what are they? Impacts? Explosions?
Kledo is crawling now. His head is banging with starbursts, his whole body flaring with agony. He coughs up blood. He has unleashed something within Solace – some reaction that is spreading and burgeoning. In a human body, it would be burning towards the heart, choking it off and rendering it insensible.
Where is Solace’s heart? Where will the shock come?
Kledo drags himself away. He has failed badly. He does not know what happens next.
Where is Solace’s heart?
Vorx drops to his knees. Everything is exploding. The roof collapses further down the bridge dome, crushing crew beneath its fall.
The atmosphere is rushing past him, as if the ship has suffered some major breach, though no such report has reached him. Every signal he receives makes no sense. He is feeling light-headed, bleary.
Solace is in agony, and a chain reaction has been set off somewhere. Vorx staggers over to an augur station and tries to understand the cacophony of signals blaring across its hololith column.
The Iron Shades are on board, some of them at least, but Solace is now travelling incredibly fast.
Cracks race across the ceiling, deep ones that score into the metal struts. He must get out, get away from that danger.
The warp drives. He sees the numbers click over, faster and faster. By the god, if that does not stop soon…
He lurches, going for a column that will shut everything down, flush the tubes, blow the main interconnectors and jettison them straight into void. As he moves the columns collapse, the roof falls in, adamantium smashes and slams around him and the cogitators explode into balls of static.
Vorx smells the warp and sees the unshuttered realviewers go white. He tries to get away, but the entire bridge is falling in around him.
‘Gallowsman–’ he voxes, just as the first beam crunches into his helm.
He goes down hard, more impacts landing.
Blood runs down the inside of his helm.
The warp drives, he thinks.
Then he’s gone, he’s out, silent amid the falling wreckage.
IX: Plague Planet
Chapter Twenty-One
Dragan meets up with Philemon in a courtyard just below the fortress’ soaring chapel complex. A personnel carrier lies, smashed, against its far end. It is raining soot, a drifting pall like black snow. His warriors lurch through it, dozens of them, their armour gradually turning black. Far above, beyond the flames and the smoke, the clouds are flickering with strange light. The wind does not feel natural in this place. Further back, Legion Rhinos roar their way into the courtyard from the streets beyond.
‘You’re sure,’ Dragan says.
‘It has already started,’ Philemon says. ‘I have attempted to contact the siegemaster. No reply.’
Dragan looks at Philemon for a moment. He had always had the Tallyman down as one of Vorx’s closest allies. What is his purpose in this? Is he seriously fostering some kind of revolt at last, or is this just a tactical move to stave off destruction by the Weeping Veil? Perhaps both, perhaps ne
ither.
There is no use speculating, for Philemon is right about the matter at hand – time is running out, and someone needs to act. Wide stone stairs, heavily gouged, lead up to an open gate. Walls soar up on either side, monolithic like all Imperial constructions, scored with the giant impression of the hated aquila. Dragan cannot hear screaming any longer. All that remains is the heavy crump of munitions, the low grind of gunships plying between the spires. There is fighting still. The Space Marines are clinging on. Word Bearers and Unbroken kill-squads are still finding resistance to squash.
Naum enters the courtyard then, cracking the stone as he staggers between the disembarking troop carriers. He drags a cluster of bio-cables and armour pieces, black with amniotic residue and the last flickers of electrical power. Others of Dragan’s command are en route, and more will come as they heed his call, but so slowly. Always so slowly.
Dragan turns to see figures emerge from the gates above – Word Bearers, clad in their dark-stained crimson plate.
Dragan climbs the steps towards them, flexing his claw. As he does so, he sends a silent Prepare command to the Unbroken at his back. Philemon climbs too, his bolter drawn and his books stowed in chained clumps across his back. Little Lords scamper with him, picking up the strips of parchment that fall from the piles and trying to stuff them back into bundles.
‘Stand aside,’ Dragan says, reaching the gate’s threshold.
The Word Bearers level their guns. From the base of the stairway, Naum looks up, eyes cloudy with confusion. The ash falls faster, and flames lick across the parapets.
One of the Word Bearers, the leader of their squad by his markings, takes up position under the gate’s lintel, a crackling brass power blade held loosely.
‘This place is secure,’ the warrior says. ‘Find somewhere else to tarnish.’
Dragan never stops moving. ‘Stand aside.’
The Word Bearer takes a step towards him. ‘Like I said–’
Perhaps he believes the Death Guard have forgotten all initiative. Perhaps he thinks that they will shamble up, stupidly, and debate this with them, or perhaps he thinks that his allies are so thick-headed they would just slink meekly away.
Dragan’s talons punch through his chest before he has the chance to move.
‘Aside,’ Dragan growls, then flings him bodily into the gate’s edge.
Bolters open up, a chorus of hard bangs, blowing Unbroken from their feet. The Death Guard return fire, and the stairs instantly become a crashing, debris-blasted battleground. Philemon swings into action, firing liberally, escorted by screaming Little Lords that fly at the enemy, ripping and gouging. Naum lets loose with a dull roar of confused outrage and smashes his way heavily up the stairs, his immense arms already swinging with gathering momentum.
Dragan is a whirl by then, a blur of speed and power. He hacks at the nearest Word Bearer, gouging lines through the brass and ceramite, before spinning into the next. A bolt-shell whistles past his helm, another strikes him on the kneecap, but he’s still moving, cutting and punching, driving under the gate’s shadow.
He breaks through the cordon, heading under the gates and then into chambers where Imperial banners have been torn down and trampled. There is blood on the polished floor here, but no bodies. The scale of the architecture around him becomes ever greater – a succession of loftier spaces, solemn spaces, lined and scored with the imagery of the Ministorum. Graven images line the stone walls, and relics of old wars lurk in side chapels where statues of the fallen loom. Amid all the smells of battle, the pungent undertone of incense still lingers.
More Word Bearers race to intercept him, to prevent the Unbroken getting through, and the fighting intensifies under the sorrowful gaze of the Emperor’s Angels. Dragan drives his way through them, absorbing the hits and repaying them in kind, swept up now and buoyed by his battle-brothers around him. Naum is fully engaged, his stupor banished by the sights and smells of battle, flailing around as if truly possessed. He seems to have picked up one of the Word Bearers in his left claw and is using him as a bloody cudgel.
Dragan sees more Unbroken go down under bolter barrages, and not all get back up. Philemon himself runs into trouble and is soon fighting hard against two determined Word Bearers, despite the shrieking assistance he gets from his coterie of Little Lords.
Only one pair of doors remains – gilded with images of serpents and angels, the burnished surface marred by great rents. Dragan can hear something on the far side – a roar, like a sea coming in. Light is spilling from the gaps between the doors, red as embers.
He slams into them, breaking them open, and the crimson haze spills across him. Dragan stares out, past the empty-eyed statues, past the lines of candles and the smoky braziers, past the ranks of protective Word Bearers and their slaved cultists. He sees what has been done, what has been gathered together, and finally understands the Tallyman’s urgency.
From behind him, he hears his battle-brothers labour as they fight their way to his position. He hears Naum’s huge bellows and detects the helm-laced signals of yet more Unbroken converging on this location.
But it will all be too late. As he looks out and sees what is about to happen, he knows it must be too late. There is no defeating what comes next. No time to muster a defence, no space to do what must be done.
The Weeping Veil have made their move, and now only pain awaits.
‘What were you trying to do?’ Vorx asks.
Kledo is struggling to speak. That is not surprising. His mouth is a bubbling swamp of blood, and his cheekbones are gone. Xydias was really quite brutally efficient.
‘Garstag–’ Kledo attempts.
‘Yes, Garstag,’ says Vorx. ‘Working for me. Hunting the ship for me, asking questions for me. No one suspects him, for some reason. Maybe the way he looks.’
Kledo laughs, and blood trickles down his ruined chin. ‘Ah,’ he says.
‘Just tell me why.’
Kledo collects himself. His breath is filtered through collapsed lungs. Somewhere within his body, the flesh is rapidly reknitting. He was a Space Marine, once, and his much-altered body retains some of that old restorative capacity. ‘The chance,’ Kledo says, chewing on what remains of his tongue. ‘To master the ship. You won’t lead, Vorx. Someone had to act.’
‘So many tell me this. We’ll win here, though.’
‘But your… habits. Your mind. It’s gone.’
‘We bring faith to the galaxy. You could have waited. Trusted. The rewards would have come.’
Kledo laughs, and winces from the pain of it. ‘What rewards do you have for us, siegemaster? What rewards does the primarch have for us? I do not wish to run an old war again, over and over. I wish for something new.’
Vorx looks at him. ‘Then you are a fool,’ he says. ‘We were given something new, once. Look where it got us.’
Kledo laughs again. It seems he cannot stop. ‘You are the Legion,’ he says. ‘A weapon made for an older galaxy. You never evolved. We never evolved. I’d have changed that.’
Vorx shakes his head. ‘I tolerated you, Kledo, for what you could do for us. In power, you would be an abomination.’
Kledo tries to smirk. ‘Yes, I think I would.’ He hacks up blood. His hands are trembling now. ‘But I damaged Solace. I don’t know if it can recover.’
‘It already has.’
‘They’ll know,’ Kledo says, searching now. ‘The others. They’ll know.’
Vorx moves gently, placing both gauntlets around Kledo’s neck. ‘Your wounds were given by the Corpse-spawn. This was carefully arranged. I will grieve with the others for your loss, when your body is found here.’ He starts, carefully, to press. ‘You thought me weak, Kledo. Dragan thinks me weak. The Weeping Veil, those deluded pilgrims, they think us all weak. It is in the pattern, though. It is all in hand.’
Kledo is gurgling. He fights ba
ck, pathetically, for his strength has already been driven from him.
‘Everyone asks me what I want,’ Vorx says. ‘I want what I have. I want this, here. This is our time.’
Kledo’s limbs jerk. What remains of his face goes red, then purple.
‘We will make it to Ultramar,’ Vorx says, softly now. ‘We will fight under the primarch’s banner. After that, who cares? What more could there be, but that?’
Kledo dies, gagging. His limbs fall limp, his chest shudders still.
‘You wanted something new,’ says Vorx contemptuously. ‘Now you have it.’
Vorx relaxes. He looks down at the Surgeon for a little while. His expression is just as it always is – that mask of corrosion, the armour-mark of another age.
He looks up. The gene-seed vault lies ahead, whirring faintly. He casts his eyes over the shelves, looking at the ranks of tiny vials.
Before he can move, a priority signal worms its way up from the sea of many runes swimming across his visual field. With some reluctance, he activates it.
‘The Veil have moved, lord,’ says Philemon, sounding both anxious and irritated. ‘If you can hear this, time has run out.’
So little faith. All of them, so little faith. Vorx has half a mind to stay where he is and let the consequences of their doubt damn them.
He stands, though. He looks around. Then, slowly, he reaches for the incendiary device, the one that will chew through anything organic and render it down to drifting atoms.
He primes it and holds it up before the gene-vault. For a little longer he gazes down the lamplit rows, at all the learning there, all the potential, all the power.
Then he tosses the live charge, letting it roll along the floor into the vault, and turns on his heels, scythe in hand.
There are thousands there, tens of thousands, culled from every cache and refuge in the fortress. They stare, dull-eyed and terrified, chained together in groups a dozen strong and herded onto the chapel’s capacious marble floor. Every shackled group has a robed cultist to guard it, armed with a long, serrated knife that snarls and glows with bronze-tipped flame. Above them soars the nave, fifty metres up, its blank stone now swimming with whirling swatches of lurid illumination. In the great voids, in the curving vaults and the iron-lined shafts, energies have been kindled, spiralling in mid-air like nebulae. The images hanging in stately isolation are all defaced – turned upside down or scratched out. Crude octeds six metres across have been engraved into the granite tomb faces, and flames snap and ripple across them.
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