Enusat turned in his pilot throne, his movement tugging at the ribbed cables connecting him to the shuttle’s controls. Kol Badar stood behind him, his lupine face up-lit by the red internal glow of his revered Terminator armour. The Coryphaus gave a slow nod.
‘Follow them in,’ he said.
‘By your command,’ said Enusat. He turned and settled back into the embrace of the shuttle’s worn, human-leather seat. He eased the shuttle’s controls forwards, feeling the ship’s dark soul buzzing in his mind. The Invisus was uneasy. Did it sense something that their sensors could not, Enusat wondered? The thought departed as quickly as it had come. To linger on doubt was not in his character.
The Invisus slipped through the shimmering field. The embarkation deck was cavernous and as dark as the pits of Hades. That was not some empty metaphor, either. Enusat had been to Hades, and it was indeed rather dark.
The shuttle’s runner-lights panned left and right. The air was thick with particles. Dust perhaps.
‘And lo, the Faithful entered the Cimmerian gloom, seeking the Light of Truth,’ quoted Enusat.
Kol Badar grunted. ‘Where is that from?’
‘The Fifty-Seventh epistle of Mahnarhek the Infested,’ said Enusat.
‘Remind me. What happened to the “Faithful” at the end of that passage?’ asked Kol Badar.
‘They were devoured alive,’ said Enusat, ‘yet in being devoured, they attained true enlightenment.’
‘How comforting,’ said Kol Badar.
‘Clear,’ said Kol Badar, his voice crackling across the vox-network.
With a grunt, Enusat relaxed his grip on his autocannon. Holding it one-handed, he leant it against his shoulder, the long barrel pointing vertically. With his other hand he removed his grilled Mark Three helmet, accompanied by the hiss of equalising pressure.
He breathed in deeply. There was air aboard the Vox Dominus, which he had not expected. It was hot and tasted foul, but it was air nonetheless. The oxygen content was low, low enough that an unaugmented human would have lasted no more than a few minutes at best, but the atmosphere was perfectly survivable for one of the Legiones Astartes.
It was also uncomfortably humid. Rivulets of moisture already ran down the plates of his armour, and he blinked sweat from his eyes.
The Coryphaus had been wrong in his earlier prediction. There was life on the ship. Abundant and verdant life. It just was not the life that they were seeking.
It clung to the walls and hung low from the ceilings. The ground underfoot was soft, spongy and uneven. It was a veritable forest of fungus, lichen and moss, and it transformed the interior of the Vox Dominus into an otherworldy jungle, more akin to a death world than the belly of a battleship.
It was bewildering in its diversity. Pallid stalks rose from the ground in dense clusters, reaching towards the ceiling like saplings seeking sunlight. Stinking polyps the colour of diseased liver protruded from between fan-like fronds as delicate as lace. Bulging brain-like sponges covered in fuzz grew atop spotted stems. Coral-like clusters grew alongside oddly shaped stinkhorns and earth-tongues, each one more wildly coloured than the last. Puddles of water collected in hollows, filled with brightly coloured algal blooms – likely the source of the oxygen that Enusat now breathed.
The only light on the deck came from the void, a diffuse orange-red glow, and from pockets of glowing phosphorescent fungi. These clusters resembled undersea anemones, with tiny finger-like protuberances waving gently in the air.
Even now the deck had been declared clear, the warriors of the Thirty-Fourth Host moved warily through the transformed embarkation deck, bolters and chainswords at the ready.
‘This has the air of the plague god about it,’ said Kol Badar. His voice was a harsh growl, distorted by his quad-tusked helmet, giving it a crackling, mechanical quality.
Enusat glanced across the deck to Nahren. The Dark Apostle stood motionless, staring around him, his face a mask of controlled fury. He held his immense crozius in a tight, two-handed grip, its spiked head crackling, as if it embodied his hatred. He looked ready to brain someone.
‘It would seem the Dark Apostle of the Third Host has come to the same conclusion,’ said Enusat.
Nahren’s bodyguard, the Bloodsworn, stood in a rough circle around their master. Each wore a horned helmet with the skin of a human face grotesquely stretched over its faceplate, and they were armed with an eclectic mix of weapons: chainaxes, power blades, bolters and plasma weaponry. Some of those veterans, Marduk had told him, were possessed by more than a single entity – even unarmed they would be dangerous foes.
‘If there were survivors on board, they would have come to meet us,’ said Kol Badar. ‘We’ll find nothing here but death.’
Enusat was inclined to agree.
‘Come, First Acolyte,’ Kol Badar continued. ‘Let’s see what the Apostle has in mind now that he’s seen this desolation with his own eyes.’
The Bloodsworn bristled as they approached, feral growls rumbling forth from the vocalisers of their helmets. It was probably the only sound they could make with their mouths sewn shut, Enusat thought.
‘Their conversational skills must make the months of warp-transit just fly by,’ he said in a low voice, eliciting a snort from the Terminator-armoured Coryphaus. His helmet transformed it into a harsh blurt of distortion.
The Bloodsworn stepped protectively in front of their Dark Apostle, weapons raised. Enusat, his helmet secured at his hip, resisted the urge to turn his autocannon on them. It would not be wise to antagonise the Dark Apostle or his bodyguard when they were already close to snapping. A single spark, and they would erupt. Nevertheless, he refused to be intimidated.
An ugly smile split his mangled face, exposing his gleaming black-steel teeth. He couldn’t help it. Part of him longed to test himself against these veterans.
He and Kol Badar stopped a few steps back from the Bloodsworn, staring down the barrels of their live weapons. If Enusat had been wearing his helmet, warning runes would have been flashing before his eyes, keying him into the targeters locked on him.
‘Call your pups off, Apostle,’ growled the Coryphaus, ‘or I’ll be forced to put them on a leash.’
Nahren stared up at Kol Badar. He looked ready to strike the Coryphaus, but after a moment, with an oppugnant lack of urgency, he gave the command for his Bloodsworn to stand down. Enusat was almost disappointed.
The Dark Apostle spoke the order in the tongue of daemons. The harsh, unnatural sound was like a punch in the face. The Bloodsworn responded instantly, easing back and turning their weapons away from the two warriors of the Thirty-Fourth Host.
‘What now, Apostle? I have no wish to risk my warriors here any longer than necessary.’
‘Cowardice,’ snarled Nahren.
Enusat saw a vein at Kol Badar’s temple twitch, and his expression hardened.
‘The anomaly could reappear at any moment and claim us, as it has already claimed your Host,’ said Kol Badar.
‘‘We do not leave until I have answers.’
‘You command the Third Host, Apostle. What is left of it. You do not command the Thirty-Fourth.’
‘I know where I stand in the Legion,’ snapped Nahren, ‘and it is on a far higher step than the place of any Coryphaus. Even the great Kol Badar. Marduk lent me your strength in good faith. Do not dishonour your Apostle, Coryphaus.’
The silence was punctuated by the sounds of water dripping somewhere.
Do not antagonise Nahren, Marduk had said to him before he had left the Infidus Diabolus. Even without a Host, he is dangerous.
‘There are certainly questions to be answered,’ said Enusat, seeking to deflect the rising tension.
‘I would hear how the Death Guard can explain all this,’ said Nahren, gesturing around them. ‘I would like to see if they dare speak their lies to my face. Let’s
ask them, shall we?’
Kol Badar’s expression was dark but, somewhat grudgingly, he opened up a vox-link to the sleek fighters that had escorted them across the expanse separating the Vox Dominus and the Infidus Diabolus.
‘Bring them in,’ he said.
‘There they go,’ said Sabtec, gesturing to the glowing map before them. ‘It is just as you predicted.’
He was stood with Marduk overlooking the small, portable strategic display. Behind them, his squad made ready for battle, checking weapons and ammunition as they filed onto the small shuttle, once a smuggler’s vessel, small and discreet. Heavy machinery was being loaded on board, along with a floating casket guided by robed attendants.
A small, ruby-red icon had appeared alongside the larger three-dimensional representation of the Death Guard vessel on the glass tablet. The small icon flashed as it moved away from its larger parent ship.
‘Good,’ said Marduk. ‘Prep the engines. I want us launched the moment the Death Guard set foot aboard the Vox Dominus.’
‘It will be as you wish,’ said Sabtec.
‘I want the Death’s Head silenced,’ said Marduk. ‘I do not want the Death Guard knowing what we are doing until the deed is done.’
‘They will not know we are upon them until the last moment,’ said Sabtec. ‘And by then it will be too late.’
‘Inbound,’ said Kol Badar. ‘Be ready.’
Enusat planted himself behind a rockcrete barrier designed to protect against engine blast. The position was located centrally, allowing him to cover virtually the entirety of the embarkation deck. His legs were set wide in a braced position, and the stabilisers in his greaves hummed softly, working to keep him locked in place, ready to compensate for the weapon’s monstrous recoil.
His wore his helmet once more, having tired of the heady stink and heat of the ship’s interior. A flood of information was presented before his eyes. He blink-clicked through external diagnostics displaying temperature, humidity and the chemical breakdown of the air, and on through logistical data including heat-sink readouts, ammunition updates and energy-strain. Tactical readouts presented themselves to him, analysing the heart-rate and life-functions of his warrior-brothers. A crosshair matrix followed where his eyes focused, eagerly seeking a target.
The barrel of his beloved high-calibre weapon was almost two metres in length, most of which was encased in a perforated barrel ventilation shroud. An underslung chainblade bayonet protruded a further half-metre beyond the snarling daemon that formed the weapon’s wide-bore muzzle.
The autocannon was hung with fetishes and religious icons, and its bulky casing was inscribed with holy passages from the Book of Lorgar. A heavy chain shoulder-strap locked over Enusat’s shoulder, taking the weapon’s considerable weight, aided by internal servos.
His right hand clasped the weapon’s grip, thumb resting lightly on its firing mechanism. He guided the autocannon’s direction with his left hand, grasping the handle atop the weapon’s casing. Suspensors lightened the load, and the servo-bundles built into his armour made him able to heft the immense weapon as easily as an unaugmented mortal would a rifle.
The autocannon was belt-fed from Enusat’s oversized backpack, which acted as an ammunition reservoir as well as the power source for his armour. The ammunition feed was protected by a flexible casing. While not capable of such a high rate of fire as a heavy bolter, his weapon was far more powerful, able to rip through rockcrete and vehicle plating like paper.
The other warriors of the Thirty-Fourth and the Third Hosts had taken up defensive positions, hugging the Invisus and the Lux Aeterna, and taking advantage of the cover provided by the overgrown embarkation deck. Bolters were held at the ready, and warriors knelt at the corners of armoured bulwarks half hidden by fungal overgrowth.
Dark Apostle Nahren stood out in the open, awaiting the arrival of the inbound Death Guard shuttle. The Bloodsworn stood with them, as did Kol Badar, an implacable bulwark of heavy armour and belligerence. The bladed lengths of his power talons clicked against each other as he waited.
Enusat revved his autocannon’s underslung chainblade, and black smoke rose from its engine.
The Death Guard shuttle resembled some kind of repulsive insect, bloated to gigantic proportions, as it passed through the embarkation deck’s shimmering integrity field.
Every panel of the ship was heavily worn, pitted, and dented. Rust and corrosion encrusted its armour plates, and in places it looked like the rot had eaten completely through the hull. Enusat was surprised it was even void-worthy.
The dilapidated ship’s weapons looked very serviceable, however, and they rotated freely in their turrets, sweeping across the Word Bearers arrayed to greet it. Each time they swept over him, a host of warning runes flashed up before Enusat’s eyes. He heard the Invisus growl like an angry beast. Its weapons were trained upon this newcomer, this rival, and it longed to assert its dominance.
‘Hold your fire,’ said Enusat, both to the Word Bearers of the Thirty-Fourth and the gunship. He could not speak for Nahren or the Bloodsworn, of course.
The hull of the Death Guard’s shuttle was bulbous, and it was held aloft upon a large pair of circular jets. Those jets were rotated downwards now, making the air shimmer with their heat as it hovered slowly forwards, inching its way into the embarkation deck.
The windows of its dual cockpit were convex and bulging. They seemed to be made up of thousands of tiny octagonal segments, making them resemble the compound eyes of an arthropod. While the hull of the shuttle was the grey-green colour of a bloated, water-logged corpse, and covered in sections of scabrous rust and corrosion, those eyes were a deep and iridescent amber.
The corroded ship settled to the deck in the space between the Invisus and the Lux Aeterna, seven insectile legs unfolding to take its weight. They looked far too slender to support its bulk, and the metal was rusted and befouled, but they held, keeping the ship’s hull some three metres off the deck.
There was a shuddering groan, and a crack appeared in the bloated underside of the ship. Sickening yellow smoke poured from within. It hit the ground and spread outwards, concealing the deck in low fog.
The noxious vapour lapped around the legs of Nahren, Kol Badar and the Bloodsworn. Even fifteen metres away, the high levels of toxicity and acidity of the fog registered on Enusat’s auto-sensors.
The crack in the ship’s underside continued to expand like a gaping wound, gradually resolving itself into a slowly descending boarding ramp. Thick, saliva-like strands stretched out between the separating sections and dripped to the deck like thick syrup.
The ramp settled with an audible groan. There was a sharp hiss as an internal airlock was released, and the air was suddenly filled with the buzzing of insects. A dense cloud spewed from within the shuttle.
Most of the insects were small, but some of the revolting creatures were the size of a man’s fist. Their bloated abdomens hung low beneath glistening carapaces and foulness dripped from their engorged probosces.
The cloud expanded like a dark shadow to engulf the warrior-brothers of the XVIIth Legion. Enusat was suddenly very glad he was wearing his helmet. Of the Word Bearers, only Dark Apostle Nahren was bare-headed. Fat, crawling flies with gleaming, multi-faceted eyes settled upon his face, but the Dark Apostle paid them no mind. The Plague Father was a part of the Ruinous pantheon, and the Word Bearers honoured him as they honoured all the Greater Powers.
The cloud of flies continued to expand, dissipating somewhat as they spread out, though a thick mass of them remained buzzing around the shuttle’s now lowered boarding ramp. That was where Enusat focused. Crosshair reticules followed the movement of his iris as he searched for a target through the cloying smoke and buzzing insects.
Then he saw them.
A host of red targeting icons lit up before him.
‘Contact,’ he growled.
The threat-registers resolved into bulky, power-armoured silhouettes advancing slowly down the embarkation ramp. Enusat’s finger tensed on the trigger.
The Death Guard stepped onto the deck of the Vox Dominus.
‘Launch,’ ordered Sabtec, and the sleek, black-sided shuttle eased itself from the embarkation deck.
Its cogitators had been working frantically. Three servitors slaved to the devices had been burned out, their organic systems failing with massive subdural haemorrhaging, but the calculations had been completed successfully – Marduk hoped – and had been input into the shuttle’s nav-cortex. Both the Infidus Diabolus and the Death’s Head were moving; the trajectory calculation had to be perfect.
After three short bursts of stabilising jets to set them on the right course, the shuttle went dead, all of its systems shut down. It became nothing more than a lifeless piece of flotsam, like so many others floating in the void, though one that was moving on a perfect collision course with the Death’s Head.
Their progress through the vacant, orange-hued expanse was slow – they did not want to warn the Death’s Head of their approach – and would not make contact for several hours.
The Word Bearers settled themselves and calmed their breathing as the oxygen cut off and the temperature began to plummet.
A hint of a smile curled the corner of Marduk’s lips.
Nargalax. That was the name he gave them. It was not the moniker he had borne upon his home world of Barbarus, nor the cult name he had been given upon indoctrination into the Death Guard. Rather, it was the name that the Plague Father had gifted him; the name he had taken on after his infestation.
While Enusat acknowledged that he was not exactly pleasing on the eye, he was nevertheless a vision of classical grace and nobility next to the bloated living corpse that called itself leader of this piratical band of diseased legionaries.
His appearance, however, was not repugnant to Enusat. It was, after all, the blessings of the Plague Father that had wrought this change upon the Death Guard’s physical body. In truth, he was more fascinated than repulsed. It was amazing to him that anything could be this riddled with disease and corruption and yet still live. Truly, Nargalax wore the blessings of the gods upon his flesh.
Treacheries of the Space Marines Page 30