Seventh Retribution

by Ben Counter

  ‘We do not concern ourselves with honour as obsessively as a Space Marine, captain,’ replied Syncella, equally humourless. ‘I request the chance to kill Legienstrasse because it is likely Skult and myself are the only ones capable of doing it. You do not know her capabilities in battle. You have not been witness to her proving in combat or the details of her creation.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Lysander handed the magnoculars back to Orfos and faced Syncella across the rooftop. The evening was drawing in close and the sun broke through a gap in the clouds on the horizon, and the shadows turned long. ‘You never finished telling me what Legienstrasse can do.’

  ‘Or what she is,’ said Syncella. ‘I have spoken to you of the six Assassin Temples. Six forms of retribution primed to fall on the Emperor’s enemies. So much is known by many among the Imperium’s Adeptae. But there was once another Temple. A seventh retribution.’

  ‘A seventh Temple?’ said Orfos. ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘These are words that will not be repeated,’ said Syncella. ‘Your Imperial Fists may know of them, as it may be crucial in the battle ahead. But they will go no further. This I ask of you, as you have asked much of me.’

  ‘We can keep a secret,’ said Lysander, not a little grudgingly.

  ‘Each Temple is dedicated to a particular form of death that can be visited upon a particular type of enemy,’ said Syncella. ‘A Callidus is employed when an enemy is well protected and inaccessible. A psychic target is typically eliminated by a Culexus Assassin such as myself. A Vindicare is used when only a kill from a distance is possible, and so on. The Maerorus Temple was created to deal with a target which, while being a single entity conceptually, is spread over a number of individuals. A rebel parliament, for example. A cult or similar deviant organisation. Families, a number of targets connected by a bloodline, were considered likely targets and hence the Maerorus was given the capacity to track particular gene signatures.’

  ‘How did the Maerorus kill?’ asked Lysander.

  ‘By the hand,’ replied Syncella. ‘The number of potential sub-targets was such that technology could not be relied upon. A gun can run out of bullets. A knife can break. Poison can run dry. Only unarmed killing would do. The Maerorus’s modus operandi was to enter into a target-rich area, typically a meeting or gathering, and kill every sub-target present as quickly as possible, without recourse to weaponry or fallible technology.’

  ‘So,’ said Orfos, ‘she’s designed to kill everyone in the room.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘You know,’ said Orfos, turning to Lysander, ‘that’s not light years away from what we’re trained to do.’

  ‘The difference being,’ replied Syncella, ‘that given enough resistance, you could be stopped.’

  ‘What happened to the Maerorus Temple?’ asked Lysander.

  Syncella’s expression did not change. ‘That information is not relevant to Legienstrasse’s destruction.’

  ‘Then how does she do it?’ said Lysander, impatience in his voice. ‘How is she able to kill so many, so quickly, with nothing but her hands?’

  Lady Syncella began to explain, and Lysander understood for the first time just why so much had to be sacrificed for the chance to kill Legienstrasse.

  The army was made in its master’s image. His armour of burning iron was echoed in the steel plates riveted and nailed to their flesh. They carried swords in imitation of his, and all the guns they could lay their hands on because he would kill from afar or up close as the whim took him.

  And they wore skulls. Necklaces of them, jawbones, skulls impaled on spikes welded to their armour.

  They filed their teeth to points. They cut off their noses to give them the appearance of a living skull. Some wore helmets without faces, so there was no emotion, no pity in them.

  They charged across the open space of Landing Pad Three, and Karnikhal Six-Finger led them.

  The Imperial Guardsmen of the 90th Algol Siegebreakers faced them. They were behind the shelter of the western terminal building, a series of half-fallen buildings and hangars where tens of thousands of Kraeites had once teemed, arriving or leaving their city. Its ornamental indoor gardens were overgrown and turned wild, and the businesses and pleasure parlours were now choked labyrinths of wild growth and collapse. The Siegebreakers had thrown together debris and sandbags to make barricades plugging the gaps in the cover.

  The Siegebreakers were heavy infantry specialising in destroying and storming fortifications. The Guardsmen, numbering more than four thousand, had left their heavy weapons behind on the Starfall Line in the hurry to reach Krae. They strapped on their blastshield suits, bulky cocoons of layered flakweave and steel, and the regimental priests walked up and down the line offering blessings and taking final confessions. The regiment’s banner was unfurled – it was a shroud that had once wrapped the body of Saint Levissa, Algol’s patron saint and martyr to the green-skinned xenos. The officers lined up and knelt before it, the bloody imprint of their saint’s face looking down sternly on them as if to warn them to do their duty.

  The howling and yelling of the enemy brought them to their firing positions. Thousands of ironclad foes were rushing at them. And Karnikhal Six-Finger himself was there. That could be the only identity of the monster, three metres tall, surrounded by a wreath of smoke and steam, the glow of molten steel outlining a huge and brutal shape. Blood sprayed endlessly from the whirring teeth of his chainblade.

  ‘Though none may yet live to speak of us,’ said Colonel Messk, ‘yet we will not go forgotten. For the Emperor sees all. For every hero of the Imperium who loses his life to the unending war, He weeps a single tear. Though the pain of battle’s fires and death be dreadful to us, yet there can be no fear, for I have faith in all of you. You will do Algol proud. You will win this victory, or you will be tears in the Emperor’s eye. There is no dishonour in either fate. It is a privilege to have lived among you, sons of Algol. To die among you will be a greater honour still. Fight well, check your targets, conserve your las-packs and give thanks to the Emperor who watches.’

  The first gunfire crackled from the enemy, ill-aimed ranging shots. Some fell on the expanse of cracked rockcrete in front of the terminal buildings. Others pinged against the ruins of control towers. The Siegebreakers held firm, for they had been raised on discipline. Some Guardsmen were savage berserkers recruited from feral worlds. Others were stealthy killers without mercy or morals who would scatter and skulk to fight tomorrow. But the Algol Siegebreakers were proud and well drilled, and they died standing up, front to the enemy, braced to fire and in formation.

  Drops of blood spattered onto the flakweave suits of the Guardsmen. They fell thicker, pattering down like rain. A rain of blood that gathered in the cracks of the fallen walls and pooled underfoot. The smell of it, like burning metal, filled the air. Men shook it from their visors. Sharpshooters wiped it off the scopes of their lasguns.

  There were omens. Flashes and strange shapes in the sky. Some men heard, in the battlefield sermons of the preachers, strange words or phrases inserted, praises to a god of blood or a promise of an appalling sacrifice.

  The mouth of Saint Levissa opened up into a silent scream, as tears of blood ran down her.

  The sharpshooters opened fire at extreme range. Hissing las-shots left dripping red welts in steel armour-plates. A couple of the enemy fell, a helmetless warrior shot through one eye, another caught in a gap between the plates fixed to his abdomen. Shots hit Karnikhal Six-Finger, lost in the glow of his molten armour without doing any harm at all.

  ‘Fix bayonets!’ yelled Messk, drawing his own dress sword. The order was relayed up and down the line. A hot wind blew in and lashed the falling blood drops against the Guardsmen. A Guardsman injured in the previous battles on the Starfall Line, detailed to carry ammo supplies from the rear, threw a violent fit and was held down by a regimental medic as he started coughing up foam. The priests continued to pray, their words lost in the whistling of the blood-laden
wind and the cries of anger and madness from the approaching enemy.

  Fire from the horde thunked into sandbags and fallen masonry. The Guardsmen sighted down their lasguns, each picking out a target through the red veil of rain.

  Karnikhal himself loped ahead of his army, more eager than any of them to get into the fray. His armour had once been that of a Space Marine, thousands of years ago when he marched among the Legions. Now it was deformed, the shoulder guards wrought into wide mouths full of churning fire, the helm welded so tightly to his face that it took on his own features, creasing and warping with his emotions, molten light bleeding from the eyes and mouth. He left burning footprints on the rockcrete.

  In a few short moments, he was looming huge in the eyes of every Algol Guardsman. And then, faster than anything so big should be able to move, he was within a lunge of the barricades.

  Las-fire opened up, a great glittering fusillade of it that shredded the air. But the energy of the las-bolts just fed the fires of Karnikhal’s armour. He glowed bright, as if made of fire, as he vaulted the barricades and fell among the Guardsmen.

  ‘Let the stains of their blood never fade!’ bellowed Karnikhal as he crushed two men beneath him, lanced another through the gut with his sword and sprayed bolter fire in all directions. A priest ran towards him, his power fist, intricately inlaid with prayers, glowing blue with its power field. Before the priest could swing the cumbersome fist, Karnikhal had grabbed him around the throat with his free hand and hauled him up off his feet. The fires of Karnikhal’s gauntlet set light to the priest’s robes and he yelled wordlessly, perhaps a prayer, perhaps just pain, as flames licked around his face. Karnikhal fired the bolter mounted on the back of his forearm and blew the priest’s head apart, the shower of brains and bone added to the blood rain that swirled around Karnikhal in a red tornado.

  Karnikhal’s soldiers were dying in the hundreds, bodies clattering to the ground. Those behind them clambered over the bodies into more volleys of fire, and were cut down in turn.

  ‘Kill! Die! Bleed and suffer!’ Karnikhal threw another soldier aside and brought his chainblade down into the shoulder of an officer, carving down through the man’s body until the blade sawed out through his hip. ‘Khorne cares not from whom the blood flows! The Blood God cares not from whose neck the skull is taken!’

  ‘Fall back!’ yelled Colonel Messk. ‘To the second line! Fall back and keep up the fire! Sons of Algol, draw them on, draw them on!’

  Karnikhal’s men had reached the line now. They were laying about them with their swords, knocking aside bayonets and hacking at the flak armour of the Guardsmen. The Siegebreakers broke from behind their cover and ran towards the barricades and rubble further back in the terminal building, trying to keep formation even as more enemies rushed at them and the terrible figure of Karnikhal Six-Finger carved a gory path through the centre of their line.

  Long ago, Colonel Messk had sworn to his men that he would never send them into a battle he would not be willing to fight in himself. And so, because he had been raised to keep his word, he drew his sidearm, tightened his grip on his dress sword, and ran towards the thickest of the bloodshed, to seek his death fighting Karnikhal Six-Finger.

  It was Enriaan who saw the Warp Serpent, blue-pink fire coiling over the spaceport, surrounded by flashing lightning.

  ‘We are late,’ said Lysander, receiving the vox-message from the Scouts up ahead. ‘Brethren! The enemy is sighted! Make all speed!’

  Lysander led the strike force through the tangle of ruined tenements and basilica that marked the southern boundary of the spaceport. Headless statues stood ready to topple everywhere, for this was a region inhabited by artists and poets who had erected monuments to the rich patrons of Krae’s elite. Some buildings were completely fallen, with a dozen storeys pancaked into crushed strata of marble and rockcrete, while others stood all but intact with blind windows looking onto gutted interiors. The going was rough, with drifts of rubble everywhere, but the Imperial Fists made good time across it as they passed through shattered lower floors and canyons of stone walls.

  The Scouts ran up ahead, occasionally visible as flashes of golden armour amid the gloom. They weren’t trying to stay hidden now, for speed was more important than surprise.

  <> voxed Librarian Deiphobus. <>

  ‘Make ready!’ ordered Lysander. ‘Septuron, be ready to intercept!’

  A ruined building to Lysander’s right was pierced by a bolt of red light. It was the Warp Serpent, diving down from overhead, flying straight as an arrow at Lysander.

  Lysander rolled to one side and the Warp Serpent hurtled past, air screaming with it. Lysander got a glimpse of its scales, alight with fire, pink flames trailing from vents down its sides. Its head was huge and fanged, like a dragon’s with barbels hanging from its jaws and rippling in its wake.

  The other Imperial Fists dived out of its way. Ctesiphon’s squad, bringing up the formation’s rear, had the time to fire a bolter volley at it, and explosions stuttered across the cracked walls of the tenement block up ahead as the serpent flew by.

  The Warp Serpent curved up into the sky, just visible between the buildings as it coiled back on itself to fly down at the Imperial Fists again. Bolts of blue and pink fire rained down from it, slamming into the rubble in multicoloured explosions. The Imperial Fists scattered into what overhead cover they could find. One of Septuron’s squad was thrown off his feet by a blast, and Lysander could not see if he was wounded or not.

  Ucalegon did not run. The Emperor’s Champion ran up a slope of rubble and jumped up onto a plinth that had once held a statue, now reduced to a pair of broken marble legs.

  ‘Warp-spawned thing!’ yelled Ucalegon. ‘Here is meat for you! Here is a head to take back to your god! Just descend and take it!’

  Lysander could not have stopped Ucalegon if he had wanted to. The role of the Emperor’s Champion was to seek out the highest-ranking enemy or the most dangerous, and challenge him to single combat. It was a role passed down from the days of Rogal Dorn, when Dorn himself had refused to back down from any taunt or calling-out in battle. The Emperor’s Champion was a psychological weapon, for his obsidian blade could lay low an enemy leader and send the rest of the enemy army reeling with shock and dismay. Even a First Captain of the Imperial Fists could not call off the Emperor’s Champion when his challenge had been set. No Emperor’s Champion had ever backed down once he had called out an enemy. Many had died duelling with a foe, but none had ever run from a fight.

  The Warp Serpent heard, and its great head turned down towards the lone Space Marine standing in the middle of the valley of ruins. Perhaps it recognised a challenge and, like Ucalegon himself, could not refuse it. Perhaps it just took advantage of a lone target in the open.

  The Warp Serpent arrowed down towards Ucalegon, trailing fire. Ucalegon reversed his grip on the obsidian sword and dived to one side as the Warp Serpent shrieked towards him. The point of the blade scored into its flesh as it passed, biting deeper until it had ripped a straight gash along the whole length of the serpent’s body.

  Burning entrails spilled out, a curtain of incandescent gore. The Warp Serpent howled, an appalling sound that shuddered what remained of the glass from the windows of the surrounding buildings. Ucalegon was caught in the torrent and stumbled from his perch, shaking the cloak of burning daemon’s flesh from his armour.

  ‘Whelps! Blinded children!’ The Warp Serpent’s voice crackled down as lightning flashed from its wound. ‘You will burn in your ignorance! If you knew of the warp, of my gods, you would cut your own throats to join me!’

  Sergeant Ctesiphon didn’t have to give the order. His squad stepped out from cover, took aim and hammered out a great sheet of bolter fire into the air. Squad Kirav joined in, storm bolter fire chattering up into the Warp Serpent. Explosive shells burst around the daemon. It shook drops of burning power from its head, and they fell lik
e miniature comets.

  Agent Skult knelt and took aim with his longrifle. He fired a single shot that punched up through the Warp Serpent’s jaw and out through the top of its head in a black flash.

  A void bullet, Lysander recognised. A bullet that imploded inside a biological target, leaving a great gory cavity.

  The Warp Serpent howled and almost tied itself in a knot as it changed direction and rattled off between the buildings.

  Lysander reached Ucalegon, who was pulling a length of smouldering intestine from one shoulder. ‘It is wounded, Brother Ucalegon,’ he said. ‘But it will return.’

  ‘Then I will finish the job,’ said Ucalegon.

  ‘Press on, brothers!’ cried Lysander. ‘The enemy has our scent! We must reach him before he reaches us!’

  Through the lower floors of the building ahead, the expanse of the nearest landing pad began. Trees and undergrowth had broken through in patches and lifted sections of the rockcrete surface. The spaceship was making its final approach to land, held up on columns of burning exhaust as it descended.

  ‘She’s here,’ said Lady Syncella, who was running through the ruins alongside Lysander. ‘Remember that.’

  Lysander could see crimson flashes of las-fire around the terminal building to the west. Something there was burning, and corpses lay heaped around makeshift barricades blocking doors and windows.

  ‘It is too late for them, captain,’ said Syncella. ‘Their struggle is a distraction. Legienstrasse will be going to meet the ship.’

  Her words were met with the shriek of falling artillery. Lysander glimpsed the shells curving over the landing pad towards him leaving trails of smoke.

  <> voxed Scout-Sergeant Orfos. <>

  Lysander ducked behind a support pillar as the first shells hammered into the ground. The shockwave hit him, throwing a tide of debris through the building. A black wave of dust swept over him and everything turned dark.