by Guy Haley
Genthis sang the Sanguis Moritura, laughing as he did.
‘The blood of life flows quickly! Only in death can it be stilled!’
He fended off the genestealer’s claws, turned them aside with his strong hands. ‘Let not mine be stilled easily, let it flow on and outward – let it flow from me as I slay those who free it!’
He worked his cheeks and spat, acidic venom from his Betcher’s gland spraying into the genestealer’s face. The thing screeched as its eyes dissolved, and Genthis reached for it. He opened his mouth wide, dragged the creature to him and bit deep, his extended canines sinking into its alien neck. He ignored the burn of his own acid venom on his skin. Black blood poured down his throat.
Xenos blood. Unclean. Impure. Satisfying. He gulped as it filled his mouth. It tasted vile, bitter and cold, still he drank. Flashes of alien thoughts played across his mind as it filled his stomach and washed over his Remembrancer; endless waiting, the chill of deep space, and a single purpose so consuming there was space for nothing else. Behind it, a vast and horrifying shape moved, distant, and yet imminent.
Genthis dragged his head back, his hearts chilled by the vision. Dark blood ran down his face. His skin bubbled, acid burns joining the blisters he had received from the hot metal. He blinked, the genestealer’s memories of inconceivable patience warring with his own urgent need for war.
A rending sound came from above him. He twisted his neck. Metal plating peeled back. The terrible face of a genestealer, contorted in fury, glared down at him.
‘Blood is strength, in death it quickens,’ he whispered.
A three-clawed hand drove down into his neck, ripping his windpipe free.
His mind still reeling from its contact with the alien’s soul, Brother Genthis died.
Voldo blasted a genestealer into pieces with his storm bolter, mass reactive bolts tearing it apart from the inside. He swung his power sword around, smashing another of the aliens back. He put a bolt in its gut, and it crumpled to the ground. Gallio stood not far behind him, taking opportunistic shots past him. To his left, Astomar let fly with one final burst of his heavy flamer.
‘Ammunition depleted, brother-sergeant!’ He called.
By Astomar, Eskerio fought to defend his battle-brother, borrowed lightning claws darting quickly, ripping parallel furrows into alien flesh. Behind Voldo, Alanius and Azmael fought back to back, sending genestealer limbs flying, Azmael seemingly unhindered by his damaged suit. Nuministon crouched by the door, ignoring the combat he worked on its dead control panel. Voldo was impressed by his coolness. Not once did the tech-priest look up from his work.
Despite the suit’s aid and his own superhuman metabolism he was panting with effort. His helmet flashed, the sensorium clamouring at him with a dozen alarms. He cleaved a genestealer in two, power sword flaring, and stole a glance at the door.
It remained locked.
Clastrin was in the airlock access corridor. He went to the inner airlock door at the far end of the corridor from the access doorway beyond which were the rest of the party. The corridor was wide enough for two Terminators to walk abreast. This was once a major access point for the ship, he thought.
He flipped out the access panel to the door control with the tips of his mechadendrites.
The wind was loud as air was sucked from the pressurised cavities by the vacuum in the corridor, battering at him and causing his hair to whip around his face, stirring the metal tendrils at the back of his skull. There must have been a gap in the hull to the outside, for the air whistled ceaselessly over him; the pressure should have stabilised by now. At least he could breath. Over the roar of the wind, he faintly heard the sound of Genthis’s battle hymn and the screams of dying aliens.
‘Focus is the mother and the father of the machine,’ he said to himself. ‘Focus is the enemy of haste, focus is the bringer of function.’ Clastrin regretted that he had no holy oils or greases with which to paint the exterior of the door panel to supplicate the machine-spirits of the ancient ship. He had invaded systems wantonly all over the hulk. He was a battle-brother of the Novamarines, a warrior first and foremost. Expediency overrode all other concerns; but he was also a priest of the Omnissiah, inducted into the lesser thirteen mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus, and he felt sorrow that he had not been able to approach the devices he communed with on this mission with the appropriate reverence.
He reached out with his intelligence core. Emitters within the cabling at the back of his head beamed his requests into the ship in the timeless language of binaric. There was no reply. With machinery this age, there rarely was, the spirits often having died, fled, or lapsed into electronic senility.
His mechadendrites snaked over his shoulder, their flexible smart metals allowing them to extend, the dendrites’ diameter thinning as they did so. Their interface tips searched the cavity for an input port – there!
Clastrin closed his eyes involuntarily as a familiar electric jolt coursed through his mind, his cerebral augmentations seeking communion with the vessel.
There was but a flicker of life in the ship. The reactor burned fiercely, but so much of its energy was radiated through broken containment fields and lost. The hull was broken in so many places that the ship’s service infrastructure was likewise interrupted. But from here to the door, from the door to the reactor; from somewhere, energy trickled. And if energy ran, signals could be sent. Voltage was too low; wire warmed rather than conveyed messages, resistances heightened by deterioration in the power matrices. He risked adding gain to the energy flows, sourcing the power from his own cybernetics. A risky play, drawing on his own body. He missed the power plant of his power armour.
Ways opened up. Wires dead for millennia hummed with life.
He felt the door at the other end of the corridor, felt the thickness of it. Brother Gallio would have been at it for twenty minutes, he thought, before scratching it. He felt too the broken panel on the outside, and the connections that had once run to it, severed and dead, deep within the wall sealing the outer hull from the chamber his battle-brothers now fought in.
He reached out through his interface dendrites, the metal cabling on his head warming as his energies mingled with that of the ship’s machines. There, the door access switch. A simple piece of optical electronics. He activated it.
Nothing happened. He tried again. It was no use. The double doors at the far end, the ones trapping his brothers, remained closed.
There was movement behind him. Genthis’s broken corpse was pushed from the access hatch, landing awkwardly on the floor, his head nearly severed. The blood-smeared face of a genestealer followed. Clastrin did not break contact with the machine. He raised his bolt pistol in one fluid motion and put a round between the genestealer’s eyes. Scrabbling noises came from behind as more genestealers tried to gain the corridor.
He spoke. ‘Oh great and all-knowing Omnissiah! Oh keeper of knowledge, aid me now.’ His eyes screwed shut. He reached out, caressing the switch with his being, at one with the machine.
From somewhere, another touch upon his mind, that of another machine. Fleeting, then gone.
Lights flickered. Clastrin was aware of power relays burning out within the wall. But the double door trapping his brothers creaked, straining against the corrosion that held it closed. A deafening squeal of metal cut into the wind, and the door juddered open.
‘All praise the Omnissiah, all praise the father of machines,’ said Clastrin. He turned, gun raised, to face the genestealers.
Captain Mastrik of the Novamarines and Squad Vermillion flew in the Thunderhawk Reprisal, its sister craft Hawk’s Fury alongside. Laser light stabbed out from one or the other as they flew above the hulk’s surface, atomising dangerous chunks of debris.
‘Lord captain!’ The second pilot of the vessel turned in his seat. ‘I have sight of Wisdom of Lucretius’s teleport homers.’
Mastrik was out of his own seat in an instant. ‘Where?’
‘Here, lord captain.’
The Space Marine pointed at a glowing orb on the map. ‘Near this energy source. I saw it for a second, and then it was gone, but I did see it.’
‘That is practically on the surface,’ said Mastrik. He smiled. ‘They are coming out.’ He slapped the Space Marine’s shoulder pad. ‘Take us down. Hawk’s Fury! Follow us in.’
‘Yes, lord captain.’ The voice of the other pilot was blurred by static, almost unintelligible.
‘Brothers!’ called Mastrik to his men. ‘Prepare for immediate deployment, we have found our brethren, and if they are in need of our aid, we will be ready to give it to them.’
Gallio was first into the corridor, then Astomar. Clastrin watched as he dodged past a genestealer, Azmael stepping forward to take it down with his claws. The Forgemaster saw Voldo stagger back, a genestealer grappling with him. It flew backwards, blood exploding from its back, and then Clastrin could see nothing more in the chamber, the view blocked by his brothers. He turned his attention back to the accessway hatch. Coming through there, the genestealers were an easy target. Three lay dead atop Genthis, another hung from the hatch.
He waited until Gallio was close. He took deep breaths of the rushing air, then opened both inner and outer airlock doors simultaneously, overriding the ship’s safety protocols. He grabbed hold of the open door panel as the rush of air became a gale. The airlock gaped open onto the depthless black of the cosmos. The merciless light of Jorso flooded the revealed airlock chamber. A glittering blast of flash-frozen atmosphere and flakes of paint, corrosion and dust gushed out into space.
‘Many genestealers!’ shouted Gallio as he passed. Clastrin nodded. He was being pulled toward the outside, but his brothers, still armoured, trudged on, weathering the wind as a man might a spring breeze.
Gallio went into the night outside, then Nuministon who bobbed his multi-lensed helmet in thanks as he hurried past. Astomar, Eskerio, then the Blood Drinker Azmael was next. Voldo, his armour cowling scored deeply followed, firing as he walked backwards. Finally, Alanius. Sparks showered from a tear in his armour. He too walked backwards. Genestealers crept after him, Voldo’s bolts finding their flesh and laying them down in death. Blood and gobbets of flesh spattered Clastrin with every kill. They came closer. There were too many.
Clastrin reached out to the ship again. He found the governors for the grav plates easily. With a prayer to Mars and a twist of binaric code, he turned them up to full.
Crushing weight gripped him. Alanius and Voldo wavered on their legs. The Terminator suits, designed to work under the harshest of conditions, responded, redoubling the strength they lent to the Space Marines. The remaining Novamarines and Blood Drinkers walked out into the endless night.
For the genestealers, it was a different matter. They cried out in anger as their legs collapsed under them and they were pinned by their own mass to the floor. They tried to advance, but could not move, their claws waving feebly.
Clastrin withdrew his mechadendrites, his machine gifts retreating to their housing in his black carapace. Alanius caught him around the waist as he backed out into the airlock chamber. The oppressive gravity dropped away abruptly as they passed the threshold of the door, making his stomach flip, and Clastrin was outside in the hard vacuum with the others, unprotected but for his flimsy mucranoid skin. He screwed his eyes shut, and yet still through his eyelids the blue light seared his retinas. He felt his skin stretch and blood churn. Only willpower prevented him from opening his mouth in a silent scream. He flung his arm over his face to protect his eyes. The air in his lungs would soon be spent.
‘Lord captain! Atmospheric venting!’
Mastrik looked out of the Thunderhawk’s forward windows. A glittering cone of debris blasted out from the surface of the hulk, as an airlock in a trapped Imperial vessel opened. Bulky figures, their shadows long on the surface, stepped out onto the surface. Teleport homing beacons and suit data sprang up on the Thunderhawk’s screens. Some of the Terminators were damaged, others were absent.
‘Set down! Set down immediately!’ said Mastrik.
Thunderhawks swooped in on jets of fire, blasting accreted dust into space. Assault ramps dropped open, the ships’ air gusting out with them, and two squads of Tactical Marines rushed onto the surface, swiftly forming a perimeter. Clastrin was taken aboard by an Apothecary first, and put into a sealed chamber. Mastrik approached Voldo.
‘Brother-sergeant,’ he said. ‘How went your mission?’
‘A success, although not without its complications,’ the older man replied. ‘We have the mapping data. Brother Curzon is trapped in the hulk; Brother Tarael’s whereabouts are unknown. Brother Genthis is dead. Our own Brother Militor remains as rearguard near where we came into the hulk.’
‘The armour of Forgemaster Clastrin, and Brother Genthis?’
‘Brother Genthis’s body lies just within, lord captain. His armour and that of the Master of the Forge are at the end of the access corridor.’
‘Then we will retrieve them,’ said Mastrik. ‘And the Progenoid glands of Brother Genthis. We will present his armour and his gene-seed to Lord Caedis. It should take the sting from their loss a little.’
Mastrik signalled to his men. A brother with a flamer went to the airlock first. The tunnel was at an angle to the surface of the hulk, and he had to adjust his aim accordingly. Two others dragged out the body of Genthis and handed it to the care of the Apothecary accompanying the retrieval group. Then the corridor was cleansed with promethium. Mastrik had Nuministon readjust the gravity, and his squads went in, three brothers abreast, firing as they went.
In a short time, the armours were recovered and borne with reverence to Hawk’s Fury.
‘Honour the battlegear of the dead,’ said Mastrik, as the vast bulk of Genthis’s Terminator suit went by on the shoulders of six Novamarines. Two of his own were wounded. A fair exchange for the retrieval of ancient wargear.
They fell back into the ships in good order, and the Thunderhawks flew. Voldo, helmet off, conversed with Mastrik in the operations room to the rear of the flight deck.
‘Lord captain,’ said Voldo. ‘We discovered a large roost of genestealers during our escape. It lies here, not far from the reactor.’
Mastrik looked at the map.
‘A few well placed shots should detonate the reactor, brother-sergeant.’ Mastrik smiled.
‘Indeed. I say fewer genestealers would make the coming fight easier.’
‘Hail the fleet!’ ordered Mastrik.
‘Brother-Sergeant Voldo,’ came Galt’s voice, ripped by static. ‘It is good you still live.’
‘Lord captain.’ Voldo relayed his news, and the location of the reactor near the surface.
‘Then we will smite them,’ said Galt. ‘Open fire on Brother-Sergeant Voldo’s coordinates.’
‘No! Not the reactor! It is a treasure beyond your comprehension,’ pleaded Nuministon.
‘We have retrieved Genthis’s armour. The roost by it is a treasure we can do without,’ said Galt. ‘There is sure to be much more archeotech elsewhere within the hulk, be content with that.’
‘We will have vengeance,’ said Voldo. From his sensorium, he sent out the coordinates of the reactor, the Thunderhawk’s communications suite boosting the signal back to the fleet.
The two Thunderhawks skimmed over the surface of the hulk, back toward the party’s initial insertion point. A streak of metal sped across the black behind them, a bombardment cannon round. The hulk shook as it impacted. Bright fire burst upwards, followed moments later by a searing flash.
‘The reactor,’ said Voldo.
Nuministon turned away, the remaining organic parts of his face hard.
Fire shot out of the hulk, bodies and debris billowing out into space around it.
‘Death to the enemies of mankind,’ said Voldo.
‘It is the will of the Emperor, and it pleases me greatly to be its instrument,’ replied Mastrik.
Militor tried the vox again. The incessant buzz of subatom
ic particles cutting up his comms channels was all he heard. His fleet access was restricted to their locator beacon, voice contact was so broken up as to be useless, and although he knew where the fleet lay, he doubted they could tell where he was. From the group there were no messages, which was to be expected under the circumstances, but he had been on station for several hours and the expedition should have returned by now.
‘Brother Militor to Novum in Honourum, Brother Militor requesting audience with Lord Captain Galt.’
Nothing.
His own limited sensorium auspex showed him nothing untoward, only the radioactive broil that filled the hulk below him, and the snow of atoms blasted out by the sun. He had seen and heard nothing the whole time he had been there. The tech-priest’s devices had gone off at the appointed time, and he wondered if the great hulk quake that followed had somehow been caused by their machinations. There was no knowing with the priests of Mars. Militor was grateful for the weapons he carried and the armour which shielded him, but the less he knew of their arcane workings the better. Technology was a dangerous knowledge, fraught with peril.
He paced around the lifthead, suit lights catching on the edges of ruptured metal and the dead crewmen. He made his circle as quietly as he could, pausing at each door to let his sensorium extend his senses into the spaces beyond.
This was poor duty. He wished he was below with his brothers of Squad Wisdom of Lucretius, the other adepts with whom he had fought a hundred battles. It pained him to think of them fighting without him, not least as in these circumstances a single additional storm bolter could turn a battle in their favour. But also he knew a little envy; this was not a mission that would bring additional skin art, not for him.
He put his feelings aside. Envy was not a worthy emotion.
A noise came from the lift shaft. He turned, amplified hearing working hard to pick up sound in the attenuated air.