by C Z Dunn
He quickly realised it was the exact opposite of a miracle.
Heralded by cultist and Traitor Astartes alike prostrating themselves before him, an enormous figure, taller than the berzerkers thanks in part to the topknot he wore in his hair, strode through the chaos. The gold trim of his black armour reflected the pale light of Pythos’s moon and an ancient power claw hung menacingly at his side, flexing in anticipation of the slaughter to come. Here, in all his brutish majesty, was Abaddon the Despoiler, Abaddon the Warmaster and, in that moment Strike knew, Abaddon the Conqueror of Pythos.
Strike’s guts turned to ice, such was Abaddon’s imposing presence even at more than a hundred metres away. All around him, men pissed themselves in fear.
The vox at his belt crackled rudely to life, desecrating the sombre hush that had descended.
‘Colonel Strike? This is Major Thorne. It’s the enemy, sir. They’ve stopped firing like they’ve given up. I hate to admit this but I’m not sure what to do. What are your orders, sir?’
From the other side of the battlefield, the son of Horus bared his teeth in a wicked parody of a smile. The sound of weapons beating against armour and cries venerating the Warmaster’s name rushed in to fill the vacuum of silence.
‘Are you receiving me, colonel? What are your orders?’ This time Thorne’s words registered with Strike.
‘Get out of there,’ Strike said, his voice catching in his throat. ‘All of you, get out of there now,’ he added, finally able to move legs he had thought turned to stone and followed the already fleeing Catachans to the last escape route left open to them.
833959.M41 / Interior. Atika Hive, Pythos
The jet of promethium passed through the blue pilot light burning at the flamer’s tip, igniting the liquid and spewing forth fire which engulfed the throng of cultists who were either too slow or too stupid to move out of the weapon’s arc. Sweat-soaked robes of crude manufacture became infernos and the front ranks, ablaze and panicked, ran blindly into their comrades behind them in turn, setting them alight and spreading the fire between them. For every cultist who burned, another would emerge from the level below, swinging a brutal close combat weapon and chanting vile litanies.
‘One more level, Liall,’ Mack said softly to his friend. ‘One more level and we’ll be at the astropathic chamber.’ The Catachan had not relinquished his grip on the astropath since they’d been forced to enter the hab levels and Mack guided Liall backwards towards the final ramp, brief bursts of the flamer abating the advance of nearby cultists.
Four of them remained now. Twenty-seven levels of intense combat had accounted for the rest of the squad, each life laid down to ensure Liall reached his destination and relief for both regiment and planet be secured. Four soon became three.
Surrounded on all sides by enemy combatants, Olevski, a squat, barrel-chested man from one of the islands near to Mack’s own back on Catachan, depressed the firing stud of his flamer but nothing happened. Frantically he shook the weapon, coaxing out the last few drops of promethium in fear that it had run dry but upon hearing the fuel tank slosh half-full, noticed the blue ignition flame had gone out. Already feeling the first slashes across his back and arms from enemy blades, Olevski drew his own knife and raised it high above his head before stabbing it down hard into the flamer’s fuel tank.
The ensuing burst of flame was brief but devastating, instantly incinerating everything within a ten metre radius and the shockwave from the explosion knocked those further away to the ground. Mack was able to keep his own footing and his tight grasp prevented Liall from falling prone. Janaczek, the only other surviving Catachan, put his back to the wall of the final ramp and laid covering fire with his lasrifle.
‘Come on! Quick while they’re still down,’ Janaczek yelled.
Mack practically dragged Liall the last twenty metres and up onto the top level of the hive. Janaczek followed, moving backwards so that he could pick off any cultist rising to their feet.
The bars and gambling dens were the most recognisable parts of Atika to the men and women of the 183rd, but all of them were familiar with the top level as it had served as regimental headquarters for the past three years. Rare was the Catachan who could keep his nose clean for any prolonged period of non-combat. During their time on Pythos, almost everyone in the entire regiment had at some point found themselves on a charge for brawling or drunken behaviour and been forced to appear before Strike to explain themselves. After a dressing down from the colonel, very few of them had made a repeat performance.
‘Where to now?’ Mack asked. The astropathic chamber’s lack of food, alcohol or opportunities to either make a profit or get familiar with the locals meant that very few of the 183rd knew how to locate it.
‘Atika. Standard Momus-pattern pre-fabricated hive city. Manufactured on over nine thousand Imperial planets and used primarily on temperate death worlds due to its thick outer shell and outstanding heat-dissipating qualities,’ Liall said to the surprise of the Catachans. ‘Sixty-three storeys high, four hundred and twelve metres in diameter at its base. Capable of comfortably accommodating six thousand inhabitants, that capacity can be increased to nine thousand if necessary. Optional modifications include a landing pad for shuttle craft on the exterior of the fifty-seventh level and a cupola-style astropathic chamber on the exterior of the top level.’
Over the few weeks that he’d known Liall, Mack had come to realise that the youth had an uncanny ability for remembering facts. He must have overheard one of the inquisitors discussing the hive and filed the information away.
‘As interesting as all that is, it doesn’t help us find it,’ Janaczek said impatiently, the chanting of cultists rising in volume as they approached the ramp to the upper level.
‘North,’ Liall said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Astropathic chambers are traditionally always sited on the north face of a structure.’
An eye constantly over their shoulders for pursuing cultists, the three of them raced past the command centre and other buildings commandeered for regimental business. The noise behind them grew in volume as they bolted and other, more guttural sounds mingled with the profane chorus.
Rounding the final corner, a simple single metal door greeted them, padlock and chain securing it. Janaczek was about to swear when Mack doused the shackles in flame before slicing through the superheated metal with his fang. Both chain and lock hit the rockcrete floor with a satisfying thud.
‘Go. I’ll cover you here,’ Janaczek yelled, his lasrifle coming to life in his hands and taking down the first of the cultists to round the bend. Mack nodded solemnly and threw open the heavy door with a slam of his shoulder. He bundled Liall through before following.
They were at the base of a narrow spiral staircase that hugged the profile of the hive’s exterior and ascended gently upwards, presumably to the very pinnacle of the spire. Liall took the steps confidently as if some kind of sense memory were guiding him. Mack followed, ascending backwards to despatch any of the enemy who would pursue them once Janaczek inevitably succumbed. From the sounds coming from behind the door at the bottom of the staircase, that would not be long.
Taking the final curve of the stairs, Mack was surprised to find Liall waiting for him outside the door to the astropathic chamber.
‘What’s wrong? Is this door locked too?’ Mack said.
‘No,’ Liall said serenely. ‘I just wanted to say thank you.’ He held out an open hand and, arm bent, presented it to Mack who reciprocated. The two men stood there, hands and forearms clasped in the Catachan style. No more words were said, none were needed, and after a few seconds Liall released his grip, opened the door and stepped into the astropathic chamber.
Liall’s blindness was a boon as, deprived of sight, he could not see the mutilated corpses of the astropathic choir who until recently had practiced their psychic arts here. Their wounds had been inflicted upon each other, but they were as much a result of the predations of the enemy as if t
hey’d each been run through by a cultist’s blade. Moving to the centre of the chamber, almost tripping over human detritus as he did so, Liall made ready to contact the Imperial battlefleet.
The temperature in the room dropped significantly and a cold sweat broke across Liall’s forehead as, his psychic gifts amplified by the chamber, he engaged the aether. Blocking out the sound of the door at the bottom of the staircase being torn from its hinges, he sent the psychic cry for help the relatively short distance, easily circumnavigating the simple wards placed within the warp by the enemy.
Sensing that their cantrips and defences were void, enemy psykers targeted Liall directly and the strain upon his body caused him to convulse. He began to bleed from his nostrils and ears. Shutting off the sounds of the flamer discharging outside the door and the screams of the dying, Liall erected shields within his mind and ascended higher into the aether preparing to send his next message over a much greater distance. Finding the intended recipient within the sea of souls, he focused every fibre of his psychic might, expending the entirety of his talent in this one single message that must get through no matter what the cost.
The noise of chainweapons and booming warcries emanated from outside the chamber and the sound of Mack’s flamer was soon joined by his screams as his defence of the chamber door ended.
Convulsing, bleeding, smoke pouring from the dead holes where his eyes once were, Liall was still sending the message as the door burst open.
Chapter Four
847959.M41 / Imperial Command Centre.
Olympax Mountains, Pythos
As he had done every day for a week since the shattered survivors of the assault on Atika had completed their deadly march through the Deathglades, Colonel Strike made his way through the secret tunnels of the delver stronghold, ascending ever higher to his vantage point atop the range’s highest peak.
Unlike every previous occasion he had made this climb, this time he was being followed.
His head-mounted lume strip shone through the cloying darkness, illuminating the route for both him and his unseen pursuer and as he rounded the final corner and walked up the final steep slope, he switched it off as natural light began to filter in. Emerging into the red-hued dawn of Pythos, he took a deep breath and expelled the dank air of the stronghold’s caverns, replacing it with the crisp thin air of the mountains.
Away in the distance, Atika Hive stood dark and silent, rising up out of the emerald jungle like a grim memorial to the Catachans’s defeat and the massive loss of life endured there. Cells of his men had stayed behind to run a counterinsurgency against the invaders, but not one of them had made contact since the rest of the regiment had fled the hive, and speculation was rife as to what new horrors the enemy had inflicted upon them. Even then, they may have been the lucky ones.
Of the nearly eleven thousand Catachans who had made it out of Atika, a little more than half of that had survived. Those who perished had not fallen to the guns and blades of the enemy but were instead claimed by the hostile wildlife of the death world’s jungles. Abaddon’s forces had not pursued them, and whether that was down to allowing the jungle to do the work of soldiers or other, darker reasons was the source of as much speculation as the fate of those who remained in Atika.
‘Please don’t tell me you come up here for the view, Colonel Strike,’ said a woman’s voice from the tunnel behind him. ‘I’d hate to think you’re becoming sentimental.’
Strike’s fang was in his hand and clear of its sheath before she had even uttered his name. Fortunately for Tzula, with her newly-cropped hair, he identified her before he could inflict any damage with it.
‘Are there no secrets from the likes of you?’ Strike said, shaking his head but smiling. He safely stowed his blade back at his hip.
‘All part of my job,’ Tzula replied warmly. In the week since Strike had emerged from the Deathglades at the head of a column of his men, he’d formed an uneasy relationship with the junior inquisitor. Though he still placed the blame for the invasion squarely with Dinalt and his cohort, Tzula had already proven to be a valuable asset and, in Brigstone’s absence, had begun training three dozen of his men how to tame and train some of Pythos’s smaller saurians so that they could expand their patrols deeper into the jungle. Her xenos pet had proved his worth too, ensuring that the few Valkyries and other flyers that had made it to Olympax stayed airworthy, allowing Strike to order rapid missions of opportunity whenever and wherever they presented themselves.
‘And what of your secret? Are you ready to tell me who that second message was intended for? Can we expect salvation or were you double-crossing us like your blonde friend?’
‘She was never my friend,’ Tzula said coldly. ‘And if you really believed that I was a traitor too that knife of yours would be between my ribs, not sheathed at your hip,’ she added, warmth returning to her voice.
‘True enough but if you really were sending for aid, I don’t understand why you’re being so clandestine about it.’
‘If the message made it through, you’ll understand soon enough.’ A noise in the distance caught her attention and, shielding her eyes, she looked in the direction of the rising sun. ‘Ah, I think your little secret is about to be revealed, colonel.’
Silhouetted against the pink disc slowly rising on the horizon, four Valkyries slowly made their way towards the makeshift Imperial Command centre, engines whining in protest at the great cargo slung between them. As they struggled to keep formation, the bulky object – almost the size of the four flyers combined – swung precariously from thick chains, threatening to send the aircraft crashing through the canopy below.
‘What in the name of the Throne is that?’ Tzula asked.
‘Why don’t you come and find out?’ Strike said, hitting the activation stud on his lume strip and climbing back down into the gloom of the stronghold.
The hangar, more used to accommodating the dirigibles that transported Pythosian crystal to the spaceports at the planet’s poles, was teeming with Catachans, so many that it was impossible to make out what the squad of Valkyries had delivered. Men and women, all clad in camouflage pattern fatigues, green vests and red bandanas, swarmed over the new arrival, obfuscating its outline as they clambered over it.
‘Atten-hut!’ Major Thorne bawled noticing that the colonel and junior inquisitor had entered the hangar. Within seconds, the green cover melted away, circling the rusted object beneath in an impromptu honour guard.
‘Is that a–’ Tzula began.
‘It is,’ said Strike as if it was the second coming of the Emperor himself. ‘It’s a Hellhammer.’
Coated in millennia of rust, the Baneblade variant more closely resembled a mobile fortress than a super-heavy battle tank, even in its dilapidated condition. A huge hellhammer cannon, from which the tank drew its pattern name, was mounted into its turret and a Demolisher cannon and autocannon were positioned beneath it. Along its thickly armoured hull, two sponsons sat either side, housing a lascannon and heavy flamer in each. Pintle-mounted in front of the turret was a huge heavy bolter. None of them looked like they were in working condition and though the tank still had treads, close to half the links were missing.
‘It’s… it’s…’ Tzula struggled to find the words.
‘One of the finest military machines ever to roll out of a forge-world? The most glorious relic of the Imperium you’ve ever cast your eyes upon? A miracle that the Emperor saw fit to bless us with by leaving it for us to find in the jungle?’ Strike proffered.
‘It’s a wreck,’ Tzula concluded. ‘Why did you waste time and effort hauling this thing back here? None of the weapons systems are operational and you’ll be waiting until doomsday to get the engine running.’
As if to spite her, the hangar filled with the chug chug of the ancient Phaeton thermic combuster attempting to turn over. That was quickly followed by the roar of it springing to life accompanied by a thick cloud of sooty black smoke pouring forth from the engine vents. A chee
r louder than the sound of the tank’s engine went up from the assembled Catachans and Tzula felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment at her previous pronouncement. A second wave of appreciation sounded out as the top hatch sprung open and an orange-furred hand sprang out of it making a thumbs-up gesture, soon followed by the rest of K’Cee.
‘You were saying?’ Strike said smugly.
888959.M41 / Hesodikas Stronghold. Hesodikas, Pythos
The agonised screams of the dying merged with the roar of blue flame as the fire engulfed its victims, melting flesh, rending fat and scorching bone. Nine times nine was the required sacrifice, and warpfire was the method by which they were to be slaughtered. Corpulax had seen to the first requirement when he had stormed the delver-stronghold and made prisoners of the Catachans who fought in vain to defend it. Abaddon had fulfilled the second by supplying the Plague Lord with a seemingly endless stream of sorcerers, so numerous were the cabals who had rallied to his cause.
The death cries echoed around the huge subterranean chamber in which the sixth seal to the Damnation Cache was located before dying down. The sound of bubbling tallow and the unholy dirge of sorcerous chanting struck up in its place. The discordant wail reached a crescendo before, as quickly as the sapphire flame had been conjured into being, it dissipated, the only sign of it ever existing being the molten mass of human waste smoking on the expansive rocky floor.
One of the sorcerers, a tall, wiry figure whose neck was adorned with many rings giving it a bizarre, elongated appearance, stepped towards Corpulax, who had observed proceedings from the mouth of the chamber. ‘It is done, Lord Corpulax. The penultimate seal is broken and we edge ever closer to reopening the Damnation Cache.’ His voice was reed thin and laced with venom.