by Guy Haley
Two of the serfs went to Caedis’s side, and began to remove his armour’s outer plates. The third wheeled an auto-artisan down from the upper decks. This they would use to paint his armour black.
‘Brother Luentes,’ Mazrael voxed the pilot. ‘Take us back to Lux Rubrum.’
‘Yes, Lord Reclusiarch Mazrael,’ the pilot replied. The engines immediately kicked into life, building to a roar.
‘My brother, my lord, my son,’ said Mazrael. ‘Now, we shall pray together, pray to Sanguinius and the Emperor, for you shall soon be joining them both.’
Mazrael’s prayers faded from Caedis’s consciousness. Caedis replied to the catechism as best he could, each response activating deeply buried psycho conditioning; certain hypnotic states triggered by key words and ritual recitation implanted in him as a neophyte should the Black Rage come upon him. He realised this numbly, that this was no longer the Thirst, but that he was succumbing to the worst of the Flaw. A curse wrapped around his every cell; the thorns around the genomic flower of his gifts pricking at last.
For the Blood Drinkers and other scions of Sanguinius, their gifts were double-edged. But he was as detached from his realisation as he was from everything else. The rocky path was beneath his feet again, and then it was not, and he was looking at his repainted armour being replaced upon his limbs. And then he was on the lava road out of Fortress San Guisiga, hurrying away in secret and at night, and then he was walking the corridor from the docking bay on Lux Rubrum.
Brothers in full armour knelt at his passing, heads bowed in sorrow and deference. Lining all the way to the boarding torpedo launch tubes, half chanting his name low and regular as a heartbeat as others sang the hymn of mourning. And he was climbing up rocks hot with volcanic heat, splintered vision scouring desiccated skies for the silhouettes of the astorgai. He was in an acceleration chair. His men around him, men he had fought with for five hundred years: Epistolary Guinian, Reclusiarch Mazrael, Brother Ancient Metrion and others. They were helmetless, and they were singing a low dirge. The words were lost to him, sounding from far away, as sound travels through water, or through blood.
An astorgai swiped at him. Its wings flapped its burned-flesh stench deep into his nostrils and it cursed him in corrupt Gothic. The blow of its pinion-claw dented his plastron, only it was not his armour. Then it was not the astorgai’s blow that forced him back, but the sudden acceleration of the boarding torpedo, a fanfare of fire heralding its exit into space. The acceleration abruptly ceased, the pressure came off his chest and he came back into himself. He looked to his men, his companions, his friends. They wept, some of them.
What was this? What did he see? This was not Sanguinius’s death, not the communion with his primarch he was expecting. He tried to speak, to say what he saw, but he could not. He writhed against his restraints and shouted, and he was not sure if he shouted for himself or the man he was in his visions. ‘Who will guide me? Who will show me the way?’
Mazrael’s hand grasped the edge of Caedis’s shoulder plate, turning him so that his skull helmet filled his world.
‘I will guide you, lord, I will show you the way,’ said the Reclusiarch gently.
Caedis blinked. Reality shifted about him. The boarding torpedo’s klaxon sounded, alarm lights flashed. All around him, the song abruptly ceased, and helmets were placed on heads and sealed to armour. Mazrael helped Caedis put his on.
All was thunder and violence. The occupants of the torpedo were thrown about in their seats as the vessel punched deep into the hulk. Metal squealed along its windowless hull.
The torpedo reached its predetermined depth. Retro-rockets roared and it slammed to a halt, hurling the Space Marines forward against their restraints. The forward hatch blew open, the metal skating across the deck outside. Their harnesses slammed upward, and the Adeptus Astartes were up and into the hulk.
Metal glowed white hot from the retro-thrusters. Scorch marks blackened every wall, smoke choked the corridor. But this area was not airtight, and the exhaust was rapidly sucked away. From all around them the sound of other torpedoes hitting home reverberated through the metal of the hulk.
‘Lord, are you lucid?’ asked Mazrael.
‘Yes, yes I am with you,’ Caedis said. He swallowed. His mouth was still dry, but being here, with a mission to perform, he found he could focus his fracturing mind. He could more easily recognise the men with him. Brother Metrion, Reclusiarch Mazrael, Epistolary Guinian, Brother Erdagon, Sergeant Sandamael, Brother Quintus, Brother Kalael; all bar Mazrael in Terminator armour and armed with lightning claws. Where were Atameo and Hermis? They should be here, he would have preferred them over Brothers Hordus and Donas. He was about to ask Mazrael when the memory of their deaths on Katria rushed back. So many deaths. How many had he seen die? How many had he killed? How many had given their blood so that he might serve?
‘My lord?’
Caedis gripped the hilt of his sword, Gladius Rubeum. It grounded him. ‘We must go to our allotted position, Reclusiarch, there to await the orders of Captain Galt. He is your commander now. We must trust to the warriors of Honourum to see us through this battle.’
The Terminators fanned out either side of their officer, Sergeant Sandamael directing them via the sensorium.
‘And you, my lord?’ asked Mazrael, dropping his voice to a private channel.
Caedis included Guinian in the conversation. ‘Find me a good death, my friends. Find me something worthy to fight. Brother Guinian, search out their mightiest so that I might slay him face to face.’
‘Yes my lord,’ Guinian said. He prepared his mind, and slipped into a trance.
Epistolary Guinian let his mind drift out into the greater hulk. His warp-sense told him things that should have been unknown, the location of his brothers and their Novamarines allies, and the location of their genestealer enemies. This he saw not in terms most men would understand, not even other psykers, for he experienced his extended awareness through a series of layered metaphors. Images that made little sense if taken at face value took the place of hard reality. He was a psyker, blessed with witch-sight, an inheritor of the strange mutation that granted the immortal Emperor his power. His ability was far less than that of the Lord of All Men, but potent still.
Because of this he possessed an understanding of reality different to that of others. Like the Techmarines, the Librarians of a Chapter were privy to mysteries that set them apart from the other brethren. But where the concerns of the Forge were entirely of the material, those of the Library were quite the opposite, the ephemeral and unknowable; that which could not be seen, only sensed. If the forge commanded steel, the apothecarion flesh, the chaplaincy the soul, then the Librarians knew the secrets of men’s hearts, and more besides.
The mass of metal, ice and rubble that made up the hulk was as a dark rock on the shore of an endless sea. Bright points flickered on the stone, the wavering lights of the souls of battle-brothers. They were puny in the dark, strong though they were in the terms most men would understand. Brighter stars shone in this non-firmament, the glowing minds of the other psykers. Ranial of the Novamarines was as bright as the nova burst his armour bore. He stood upon the surface of the hulk. The other four Librarians in the joined fleet were lesser, those of Librarium neophytes barely brighter than those of their non-psyker battle-brothers. Give them time, thought Guinian, soul-fire flares brighter with training and experience.
Outwards from the stone, other outcrops of denser reality dotted the dark beach of the sky – the ships of the Novamarines and the Blood Drinkers. More lights, the fires of the lives of men, inconstant sparks that were so easy to snuff out. Astropaths and Navigators on the ships showed larger. He dipped into the chatter of the latter, like a man trailing his hand in water in the wake of a boat. Abstract images filled his mind, the best and strongest of the soul-bound projecting words and images. Focussed beams of thought punched through the warp, informing Chapter fortresses far away of the actions of the fleet. Somewhere o
ut on the further shores of his mind construct – Guinian dared not seek it out – was the glaring beacon of the Astronomican, a light that would sear his soul if he looked too deep into it.
He drew himself back. There were other minds here, dark and alien and opaque to his understanding. Their minds were distinct, but meshed together into a web so tightly woven it was difficult to decide where one ended and another began. Guinian touched his thoughts across this network of alien minds, gently so as not to alert it. It appeared to him as a green-black web, a powerful stench coming off it, the toxic desires of the alien. The outflung edges of this web touched every planet the genestealers infested, the threads sometimes so faint they were barely visible, but it was always there, and after thirty years of hunting these creatures, Guinian had become proficient at detecting it. Now, to be so close to its source made him feel unclean. He steeled his soul and plunged his mind on.
He felt a thickening in the alien mind-web, it came together, knotting tighter and tighter until…
Something powerful and evil stirred in its sleep and regarded him.
Guinian gasped, his eyes snapped open.
‘My lords,’ he said, not daring to drop out of his trance entirely, lest he lose the creature. ‘I have found something. A powerful mind at the heart of the web of minds that directs this infestation.’
Caedis stared at him, his face unreadable behind his suit helmet. Guinian felt his mind more keenly than ever, a turmoil of psychic energies more potent than any he had ever felt the Chapter Master emit. He suppressed a shudder. The Black Rage was a spiritual affliction as much as a consequence of their flawed gene-seed.
A long moment passed before the Chapter Master spoke.
‘Then we will find the creature within whose head it resides. Brother Guinian, you do not have to follow me to my doom, but your abilities would be welcome.’ Caedis’s voice was hollow and distant. ‘This is not an order, but a request, from one brother to another.’
‘I would be honoured to aid you, lord, this last time.’ He fought back tears. He knew his beloved leader was close to his end.
‘I will join you, you will need my guidance,’ said Mazrael. ‘Let us tread this road together.’
‘To the summit of Mount Calicium,’ said Caedis, his voice trailing into a slur. ‘Captain Aresti?’
‘Yes, lord?’
‘You are in command here. I have other matters to attend to. The wings of Sanguinius shield you.’
‘My lord,’ said Aresti. Galt would have told him what Caedis intended, but he still sounded surprised. ‘Are you certain?’
The Chapter Master of the Blood Drinkers did not reply. Caedis, Mazrael, Guinian and his guard squad were working their way out from the beachhead. Quickly, more quickly than Caedis’s walking speed and the efficacy of the Novamarine’s equipment would suggest, Caedis and his followers faded from the strikeforce’s monitoring equipment, and disappeared into the hulk.
Chapter 13
Hesperion’s Folly
A giant square frame formed the outside of the cutter. Glass or some other substance glittered in its forward edge, reflecting Jorso’s angry light.
‘The cutter has to be precisely sited, lords,’ said Plosk. He wore a suit of rust-red powered armour, as did his aide, Samin. Nuministon wore his greenish-gold suit, its helmet aglitter with its disturbing lenses.
Mastrik was with them, Epistolary Ranial and Captain Sorael of the Blood Drinkers alongside. They watched from atop a jutting spaceship engine block that rose over the hulk. Servitors in flimsy vacuum suits worked on the plain below, securing the device with hawsers, Novamarines Scouts clad in armoured space suits guarded them. Pistons terminating in broad, claw-like feet pushed out from the cutter and into the surface of the hulk. The cutter was a simple hollow square of metal, forty metres long on the sides, five bulky units housing its feet mechanisms and power inlets. This square was now held at a twenty-nine degree angle to the surface of the hulk. Or so Mastrik’s sensorium told him. To do this it underlaid a uniform value to the uneven hulk surface, calculated off the hulk’s mean elevation. Three sets of three black pipes bound together snaked off over the hulk to portable reactors of some size. Other smaller cables led off to a control landau; an open, legged conveyance full of equipment and tech-priests.
‘Is this worth the effort?’ said Ranial. ‘We could have cut several ways in ourselves in half this time.’
‘Oh, I do not think so, my lords,’ said Plosk. Mastrik heard the smile hidden behind his helmet. ‘You are about to witness a great efficiency.’
‘This is a great artefact, an atomic disintegration field cutter,’ said Samin hotly. ‘It dates from the times of knowledge, you will marvel at its power.’
‘No need to be so defensive, Adept Samin,’ said Mastrik. ‘My Brother-Librarian voices a question as he is entitled to. He too is the guardian of old knowledge, albeit of a different kind to yours, and exhibits his natural curiosity. If he is wrong, he will graciously admit so.’
Ranial made a non-committal noise. Samin bristled, evident even through his armour. Emperor, thought Mastrik, I’m annoying both of them today. Mastrik was a bluff man, with a broad sense of humour that occasionally jarred upon the sensibilities of the serious-minded Novamarines. Ranial was capable of an amount of dry wit, but as a Librarian possessed of a portion of the Emperor’s own godlike abilities, could also be more serious-minded than most. Mastrik and he were good friends, but his mood could be difficult to judge, and so sometimes they came to argue.
‘I meant no offence,’ said Mastrik. ‘How long until your priests are ready, magos?’ He checked his mission clock.
‘Any moment now, lord captain,’ said Plosk. His own armour was large, made bigger by the rack of manipulators and devices Mastrik had no name for sprouting from his back. Still, it was small compared to the Terminator battle-plate Mastrik, Sorael and Ranial wore. ‘The erection of the cutter takes time, I admit, but once in operation, well, you shall see…’
Servitors walked away from the cutter, their tasks done. The tech-priests followed.
‘They must retreat to a safe distance,’ explained Plosk. ‘There is something akin to molecular shrapnel generated by the activities of the cutter. A magnetic shield extends around it, to snare these stray atom-clumps and funnel them away safely, but it requires distance to exert itself fully. To be close to the actual blade itself while cutting is underway could be fatal.’
Warning lights flickered all around the cutter’s outside edge; no alarms audible in the vacuum.
‘You may begin,’ ordered Plosk.
The tech-priest in charge of the cutter’s bulky, portable control vehicle leant over its controls. He pointed, directing his juniors in the appropriate activation sequences. Mastrik had his sensorium magnify the scene so he could better observe. Whatever the tech-priests were doing was incomprehensible to him. He moved his gaze over the hulk’s surface, its coat of dust blinding in the direct light of Jorso. His helmet lenses darkened in response.
Mastrik watched the frame. The glassy material glowed a dark green. Light flickered all around it, sparks that arced and burst brightly when they touched. This caged storm intensified, until the whole of the frame was alive with dancing angles of energy.
‘You see? The device is now at thirty per cent total power capacity. Blessed be the Omnissiah,’ said Plosk.
The process reached a critical point, and the lightning ceased to be. In its stead was a flat screen of energy, nearly invisible were it not for the fact it turned all viewed through it faintly green.
‘Sixty per cent,’ said Plosk.
At the control landau, further activity. Mastrik felt the hulk vibrate. The disturbance built. His sensorium jumped at the backwash of electromagnetic energy generated by the cutter.
‘Aha! Ninety per cent and…’
A perfectly square beam of energy, angled as the frame that projected it, stabbed down through the hulk. A flash of light as it met, and then further reflecte
d lights as the beam met denser matter in the body of the agglomeration and atomised it.
‘And there we have it,’ said Plosk, with pleasure.
The beam cut out. A black rectangular hole had been made in the hulk’s skin, leading down. The edges of it glowed faintly. Plumes of white jetted into space, atmosphere leaking from the hulk.
‘You have answered my earlier question,’ said Ranial.
‘It would make a fine weapon,’ said Sorael.
Plosk nodded in agreement. ‘Just so, and indeed it operates on similar principles to the disruption fields built into your power weapons. But the manner in which the device attains the projection of the field forwards, the maintenance of its coherency so far out from the projectors, the safe exhaust of the excess energy generated as the matter is annihilated, the overall magnitude of the field, the smooth manner of its disintegration… Well,’ he said apologetically. ‘I could go on for some time. These are mysteries now known only to the Machine-God.’
‘We will uncover them,’ said Nuministon in his machine voice. ‘Given time.’
‘That we will, Magos Nuministon, that we will,’ said Plosk. ‘When our lord deems us worthy. And it is by such actions as this retrieval mission that we prove ourselves to be so.’
‘Brother Ranial, I believe you owe Adept Samin here a small apology,’ said Mastrik. He checked his clock. He turned around to face the other side of the engine-mount. There, shaded from the sun, was the majority of the taskforce. His hearts quickened as he took them all in; one hundred and sixty Terminators stood at the front. Few were the Space Marines of any Chapter who had witnessed such a sight. Behind them, squads of power armoured brethren. The Novamarines quartered heraldry broke up their silhouettes, providing unexpected camouflage, whereas the blood-red of the Blood Drinkers was tinted deep mauve and obvious by the blue light of Jorso. In all, nearly four hundred Space Marines of two Chapters waited on the plain. Three Thunderfire cannons – two of the Novamarines, one of the Blood Drinkers – and five Devastator squads armed with anti-personnel heavy weapons were the extent of Battle-