by Nick Kyme
‘Secutius…’ Pillium slurred, only now realising how badly he had been injured. Some of the barbs had embedded in his flesh. He felt them pinch and then start to dig…
Secutius had emptied his bolt rifle and was hacking at the spawn two-handed. He drove his combat blade in right up to the hilt and then dragged it downwards. It was like opening up a balloon of bulging viscera, as rancid organs and malformed body parts spilled out in a gruesome flood. Acid hissed as it made contact with the sergeant’s armour.
‘Secutius… Markus!’ Pillium said again, ripping out the last of the embedded barbs with his fingers and half running, half staggering to his feet as he made for Sharna and the armsmen. Two were already dead. Roan had left Odyssian’s still-quivering corpse and had just ripped off the head of one of the quartermaster’s escorts. Blood geysered from the femoral artery. Another lay nearby, riot shield bent almost in two, her ribcage open like a sprung hinge and steaming in the cold air. Her sightless gaze fell in Pillium’s direction and he roared.
‘Danger behind us!’
Eurates and Tiberus peeled off from the fight with the spawn. Pillium heard their urgent footfalls following on behind his own.
They reached Roan almost at the same time. The last armsman had been eviscerated and left to die in a pool of his own stinking innards.
Pillium put a bolt in the back of Roan’s head, which had grown and distorted. Part of the skull blew out, releasing a plume of matter and broken bone.
Roan turned, except this wasn’t Roan. A row of eyes had opened down one side of his chest, bloodshot, yellow and blinking feverishly at the advancing Primaris Marine. Two tentacular limbs unfolded from his flanks, a snapping beak in place of hands and fingers. Muscle mass exploded across his whole frame, uneven and burdensome. It gave him resilience, though. Several bolt-rounds struck him in the torso but failed to stop him.
Sharna had collapsed from sheer terror. She back-scuttled away from Roan, weeping and wailing every inch.
The Roan-thing barged into Eurates, who had the presence of mind to draw his blade, shove it into the neck and hold on.
Somewhere behind Pillium, a loud explosion went off. Grenades. He heard Secutius shouting, something raw and indistinct, a primal reaction to the unnatural, a channelling of his fury. For his part, Pillium dropped his bolt rifle and picked up Odyssian’s weapon.
‘Stand clear!’ he bellowed and racked a krak grenade in the bolt rifle’s auxiliary launcher.
Slowly being crushed by Roan’s tentacles, Eurates shouted, ‘Do it!’ and Pillium mashed the trigger. The explosion smashed him off his feet and tore Roan apart. Tiberus advanced on the gibbering mess, blasting at dismembered limbs and pieces of Roan’s body until they were nothing more than red smears.
Getting to his feet, Pillium tossed two frag grenades into whatever was left, and shredded Roan – or the thing that he had become – out of existence. He looked back in time to see Secutius impaled on one of the spawn’s barbed limbs. It speared him through the chest, instantly destroying both hearts. He shuddered with his final nerve tremors and fell still. His grip slackened, a blood-slick blade clattering as it hit the ground.
Pillium roared. ‘Markus!’
LET THE BLOOD FLOW
Dozens lay dead, killed by the explosion. The incendiary device deployed by the cultists was crude, but with the labourers so hemmed in it could not help but wreak havoc. At first, the survivors scattered. They ran in all directions, some genuinely unsure where the danger came from. Fear of secondary explosions rippled through the crowd like a shock wave. They stampeded. Some were crushed against the massive silos, others simply disappeared underfoot and did not reappear. Panic had seized the mob and turned them feral. It did not end there. The wounded were set upon, stabbed and bludgeoned, as shouts radiated through the ration yard.
Kharnath!
Kharnath!
It was a ritual, and these poor starving men and women were its sacrifice. Only to what, Scipio had no idea.
He pushed into the crowd, letting the terrified labourers rush past him as he made for the cultists moving through the throng. He was unarmed but there was no time to return for his weapons. He was the weapon, and that would have to be enough. Skirmishes had broken out, between the loyal and the traitorous, as some decided to fight to protect their ship. Scipio did not hesitate to join with them. He heard Harpon Bader across the vox.
‘Hold steady,’ he was saying, the catch in his voice giving away his fear. ‘Shields together. Don’t let them through.’
‘Iulus,’ said Scipio, ‘they’ll stampede that wall and Bader is too afraid to listen.’
He received a grunt of understanding and heard his fellow sergeant stomp back to the barrier to get ahead of the mob. A trickle became a flood, men and women hurrying for safety as they at last realised from where the danger was coming. Oben fought against the tide, he and those others who had decided to engage the traitors in their midst. They fought with wrenches and pipes and with their fists. The cultists were organised and fuelled by some insane doctrine. Beneath their masks they were crazed and utterly given over to a darker power. The warp had touched them, a small seed that had spread into a contagion of madness and blood. In the bowels of the ship, it would have been easy to conceal their deviancy, an allegiance born out of fear and desperation or a simple human desire to inflict pain on others and see your own weakness reflected in a victim’s suffering.
Weakness of character, of resolve. It sickened Scipio. He would see it purged and the turncoats put to death along with their heretic creed. But first he needed to reach them.
An interrogative came over the vox. ‘Should we engage, brother-sergeant?’
One of his men, eager to obey his genetic coding.
‘No firearms,’ Scipio replied, forging through the throng. If the Ultramarines spread out around the ration yard started shooting now it would be a bloodbath. The bolter was many things, but it was never subtle. ‘Hand-to-hand. Hunt the bastards down.’
Scipio’s weapons were gone, being kicked around or tripped over in the panic. He risked a backward glance. The shield wall had scattered, the armsmen ushering the scared labourers through. Iulus was slowly moving back up through the tide of bodies. It was the same across the ration yard. Scipio occupied the most advanced position. For now, he was on his own.
A ragged-looking man, missing his mask but daubed in the marks of heresy, flung himself at the Ultramarine. Scipio caught him by the neck, twisted it hard and moved on. A second he punched in the chest and felt rib bones yield. They flocked to him then, the traitors. He represented the Imperium that they had come to hate, the thing they had traded for the lies of Chaos. They leapt at him, and upon him, clawing and hacking with improvised weapons. Scipio used his elbows, his knees, his feet. He used the unarmed combat doctrines of his Chapter and saw the effort in the practice cages rewarded. It was bloody work, though the feel of splintered bone beneath his fists yielded a certain catharsis.
The cultists were waning, both in numbers and in purpose. The crowds had all but dispersed and the Ultramarines behind Scipio were making their superior strength and training count. The danger to the innocent dropped dramatically. The order to fire was given. And the riot ended moments later.
‘What was the purpose of all this?’ Scipio asked as Iulus rejoined him. He carried Scipio’s weapons and returned them with due reverence. The blade was given back last, and done so with the utmost care.
‘To sow carnage and terror,’ Iulus replied. ‘I can think of no other reason.’
Scipio regarded a body amongst the masses.
‘Perhaps it is just insanity,’ Iulus suggested when Scipio did not answer.
‘Or something darker. It is a grim hope when that is the thing we must wish for, that there was reason to this and not just blind madness.’ He kneeled down by the body, gently closing the dead man’s eyes and carefully setting his hands upon his chest in imitation of the Imperial eagle.
‘Who was h
e?’ asked Iulus.
‘Another loyal son of Macragge,’ Scipio replied, and left Oben to his well-earned peace.
It was only later, when the vox crackled, that they learned why the massacre had taken place, and what it had brought forth.
HELL SPAWNED
It had grown, the spawn-thing. A glossy carapace had spread across its hunched back. Wiry black hairs as thick as swords protruded from its eight gangling legs. It was still flesh, the gathered and partly dismembered leavings of Colonel Roan’s former platoon, but had an overall arachnoid appearance.
‘We have to kill it,’ breathed Pillium.
Maxus lay unmoving, his twitching fingers caught in the flickering light of his stab-lamp. Eurates was blown half apart and Odyssian had been cut to pieces. It left Tiberus and whatever remained of Secutius’ squad.
‘Primaris Marines, fall back on my position,’ Pillium snapped into the vox.
Aegidus, Cajus and Seppio laid down fire, retreating in good order.
The spawn appeared content to let them, suffering each blow with little reaction but trembling with further transformations. Its skin darkened, turning from pale pink to vibrant incarnadine. It hunched over, its limbs conjoining, entwining from eight to four. And they thickened, musculature growing at an insane rate, colonising its back, its chest. The spiny hairs fell out, replaced by patchy black growths that had the appearance of a shaggy hide. As the long neck retracted, the three skulls began to merge into a single head and face. The nubs of horns formed. Flesh blossomed like a sudden flourishing of lesions. The carapace that wrapped its body hardened and turned metallic, like armour.
‘Sergeant…’
A whimpering voice, half-heard and on the edge of his attention, niggled at Pillium. The bolter storm had lessened on account of ammunition running low and the obvious fact it was having utterly no effect.
Pillium drew his sword. A scraping metal chorus sounded a moment later as the remaining Primaris Marines did the same.
‘Sergeant…’
Louder now, the voice. He recognised it, though chose to ignore it. The bolters rang empty.
‘Grenades?’ asked Pillium. His warriors brandished what they had.
The thing had grown larger, its body more defined, even hunched over as it was, wracked in its unnatural birth spasms. It had legs and arms, an anthropomorphic pattern but with a distinctly canine aspect. Flaps of black skin spilled across its back like sail canvas and spread until they sagged to the ground. Bony scapularies tethering them to its body jerked and raised up the flaps, the skin unfurling into two draconic pinions. Ragged and gossamer thin, they had yet to form fully.
Olvo Sharna cried out. ‘Sergeant! We cannot stay here.’ She was back on her feet, but barely holding on. Fear clung to her, threatening to drag her into an abyss out of which there was no escape. The mere presence of this thing… It was enough to do that. Pillium felt a measure of the terror it radiated. He did not recognise the emotion straight away, for it was a foreign concept, not fear exactly but a deep sense of unease.
‘We can kill it,’ Pillium replied, the need for revenge for Markus’ death a cold flame in his gut.
‘We have to seal it in here,’ said Sharna. ‘The beast or whatever it is cannot be allowed out of deck thirteen.’
Pillium hesitated. ‘If we attack now, while it’s changing…’
‘Your weapons have been ineffective, sergeant. Please…’ she begged him, ‘I cannot endure this.’
‘Tiberus.’ Pillium turned to the Primaris Marine, who was about to escort Sharna away when she put both hands on his vambrace, clinging to it like a child hanging on to the arm of an adult.
‘Neither can you.’
A second hesitation. Pillium let out a bellow of frustration.
‘Grenades,’ he said, ‘everything we’ve got. Then fall back quickly. We make for the entrance.’ He looked Sharna in the eye. ‘Quartermaster, can you still seal the door once we’re on the other side?’
She nodded mutely. Tiberus took her gently, leaving his grenades with Cajus and Seppio. Once they were out of the muster hall, he carried her and ran.
The Primaris Marines tossed their grenades, and the beast roared as a storm of shrapnel bloomed around it, shrouding it from sight.
‘We move!’ bellowed Pillium.
They ran. Hard.
And behind them the beast bellowed a savage affirmation.
‘Kharnath!’
POWER
Haephestus had descended into the bowels of the ship. A chemical atmosphere pervaded here, anathema to human life and necessitating both bodily protection and a rebreather. Crew still roamed these parts, equipped with the appropriate environmental trappings and a crude auspex to help with navigation, though sightings were rare. The lower decks, the catacombs as they were sometimes known, were as labyrinthine as they were deadly.
Stacked pipes ran in every direction, ferrying plasma, coolant, waste and other gases and fluids that all contributed to the running of the ship. They ran for miles, literally, snaking around colossal turbines, ranks of hydraulic pistons and mass compressors. There was power here, definable, tangible power. Haephestus had felt it ever since he had passed through the first bulkhead. He felt it now, sickly sizzling, as he walked through a pall of chemical fog.
A pair of heavy servitors, golem-alpha and golem-beta, followed sullenly. Haephestus had modified them for adverse atmospheric conditions, and they wheezed like stimm addicts with every draw of their respirators. Adapted also for heavy lifting, each servitor had a pair of hydraulic fork arms and was swollen with rapidly grown muscle across the back and shoulders. Servos groaned in their trunk-like legs with every ponderous step.
Past the immense run-off tanks, it was here from where the fog exuded, and a huge gate stamped with the Icon Mechanicus stood. Even rust-rimed and colonised with clumps of biochemical algae, it looked indomitable. Forged of a ferro-ceramite alloy and placed here by the vessel’s original shipwrights, it was the literal gateway to the beating heart of the Emperor’s Will. The main power core churned behind it. Haephestus could feel it in his bones.
As a scion of both Mars and Macragge, he had a certain awareness of energy, its passage and purity, that his brothers did not. As a Techmarine he had been taught the ways of the Omnissiah and the machine-spirit. Even with the great gate sealed, Haephestus could feel an imbalance.
A warp siphon, that is what he had told the captain. It was an accurate, if imperfect, term for what was happening to the ship. As if perceiving his thoughts, the lumen arrays suspended in the ship’s rafters above, the only source of light in this part of the catacombs, flickered and went out.
Haephestus engaged his armour’s stab-lamps and two beams cut through the large chamber, alighting on the giant skull and cog of the Icon Mechanicus. Its hollow eye sockets glowed red like dying drum-fires.
‘An ill omen, Omnissiah?’ he queried, expecting no answer.
Techmarines did not usually put trust in superstition or signs. They believed in logic and the motive force behind all things, but Haephestus had seen enough on board the Emperor’s Will these past five years to know that reason could not explain every existing phenomenon.
Flicking open an access panel on his vambrace revealed a small screen, data spooling across in crude green monochrome. He released a blurt of binharic, the complex machine language or lingua technis of the Martian priesthood. The device in his vambrace transferred the arrangement of ones and zeros into an unlock code.
He waited.
Nothing happened.
Behind the faceplate of his helmet, Haephestus frowned.
‘Perplexing…’ he said to the golems.
Neither replied, their slack-eyed gazes unmoving from the sealed gate.
Haephestus sent a second tranche of binharic, a breacher code known only to the master Techmarine aboard ship.
This time the gate reacted, the red fire changing to emerald green, and Haephestus took a step back.
A t
hird binharic command saw alpha and beta move forwards and approach the gate, where two side panels had slid back left and right of the monolithic slab of alloy to reveal a large wheel recessed into the metal. Both golems locked their fork arms around each wheel like pincers. After a short expulsion of gas from their shoulder valves, they began to turn the wheels in perfect synchronicity. Inch by grinding inch, the gate opened. Heat and light bled out from the core furnace beyond, limning Haephestus’ armour a wan orange. When the opening was wide enough, he started forwards and signalled for the golems to cease all activity. They slumped where they stood, unpowered.
What he saw past the gate quickened his pace across the bridge that led to the core, a flow of chemical run-off bubbling beneath his feet.
The core was like a gigantic generator, only far more complex. There were signs of corrosion and chemical overspill at connection points. Parts of its metal casing had warped, twisting and bulging with corrupted expansions. Several of the wired conduits were scorched black and melted where they had burned out. The level of degrading Haephestus saw was the product of years of neglect and disuse. He had seen to the core’s maintenance himself. Therefore, the corrosion was not of natural origin. The furnace burned timidly in the background, lethargic and close to extinguishment.
Some of the access ports were exposed, the inputs a match for his own mechadendrite interface. Black ichorous sludge dribbled from the cavities, having dried out in a crusted wound tract down the metal. It all led to an inevitable conclusion.
‘Incursion.’
Though the warp had undoubtedly eroded the ship’s ability to function, it had not done so without help. So when the threat markers lit up in Haephestus’ retinal display, he was already engaging his defences. That split second of empirical premonition saved his life as a burst of weapons fire splashed against his hastily energised refractor field. Light flared with the shell collisions. It chased back the shadows and blinded his revealed assailant.
Part-cyborg, part-mutant, part-Astartes. It wore old power armour draped in ragged black robes, and recoiled against the actinic glare of the refractor field, shouting out in pain as its retinal lenses overloaded. In the same instant a volkite pistol sprang into Haephestus’ hand, magnetised to his gauntlet, and he fired. The shot had been aimed at his assailant’s faceplate but went slightly astray as they managed to turn. Instead, it struck the coupling around the neck, instantly deflagrating the metal and splitting the hermetic seal. Air toxicity around the core was lethal, even for a Traitor Space Marine.