by Guy Haley
I could blame Perturabo for this, he thought.
His fleet had been spread too thin in the first place; two grand battalions were an insufficiency of warriors for so many worlds. But he was not the sort of man to place the blame for his own failings on others. What he had been asked to do was difficult, but not impossible. There had been little in the straits to oppose them. The hrud warrens there had been minor and easily overcome, if ease could ever be a term applied to warfare against such terrible alien beasts.
After compliance, they were tasked with raising fortifications to act as nexuses for future colonies and waypoints for the Legion’s supply fleets. It was the standard manner of war for his kind, and the sort of task that Dantioch had performed a hundred times before.
Nevertheless, he was troubled. Things had changed, his primarch not least among them. Behind Perturabo’s cold facade, Dantioch sensed a hint of desperation. And the primarch was not alone in this change - the Iron Warriors as a whole were becoming harder, more callous, less caring of their own lives and of the lives of those they were supposed to protect.
Sergeant Zolan was a loyal warrior, perhaps one of the few like Dantioch who saw this turning of the tide and sensed the trouble it brought, but he had too much iron in him; his plain-speaking had kept him from captaincy. Still, Dantioch was glad of this lone, forthright voice, even though he could never join his to it in support, despite privately agreeing with much of what the sergeant said.
The spirit of his Legion had dimmed, burned out by a century of brutal sieges and thankless garrison work far from the glorious fronts of the Great Crusade.
And now this - a deployment into nowhere Dantioch could see that in a hundred years, five hundred years maybe, the worlds of the Sak’trada Deeps might become important to the Imperium - they were rich in minerals, but so were many millions more that were closer to the border and not infested with time-warping xenos. They were so far away from the Imperium’s edge The feeble stars of the subsector lacked any of the rare and precious Terran-analogue worlds that mankind so coveted. As far as the Sak’trada Deeps were concerned, miserable Gholghis was a paradise.
Obviously, the hrud were devilish creatures. They could not be allowed to survive, especially in such great numbers. Dantioch understood that. But it did not account for why they must die now. Containment would have been the rational option.
That was the cause of Dantioch’s unease: the lack of logic to the expedition. The whole campaign looked, on the surface, to be pointless, though Dantioch was not a warrior to see the surface of anything - be it metal, stone or an idea - and judge it upon that merit alone And so, in the darker hours, he ruminated on the Legion’s purpose in the Sak’trada Deeps. He could find no explanation that satisfied him save one, and that concerned him so greatly that, though he gave it no real credence, it dogged him through the nights and the days.
It was this: if one wished to wage a campaign to break a Legion’s spirit, it would be a campaign like this.
The Iron Warriors lived up to the metal they took their name from in every way: strong versatile and hard. But iron required care like any other thing. Poorly forged iron might shatter when hit by a precise blow.
Dantioch had challenged their orders, but Perturabo was too proud to question commands from Terra, too bloody-minded to stand against them and pronounce them wrong. His primarch’s greatest failing was his inability to engage, to stand up and say no. He would rather sulk. Perturabo was a genius afflicted by ego.
Nevertheless, things had been proceeding well until the nightly hrud transits began. A migration was building almost certainly a reaction to the Iron Warriors’ presence in the sector. All the signs were there Strange lights in the sky. Ships that appeared and vanished. Incursions of hrud on the surface - alone at first, and always near the sites of the destroyed warrens, but then more of them, groups following the watercourse, and lately armed soldier-caste intruding inside the fortress itself.
Dantioch left the parapet and headed towards the wall gate. Made only months ago, the fortress had the look of something thousands of years old, its walls aged unnaturally quickly under the influence of the time-warping auras of the hrud. The legionaries manning the fortress, were not immune to this effect either. Supposedly immortal, Dantioch felt age in his bones. An annoying tickle in his chest threatened to turn into a cough with every breath. His hair, previously jet black, had thinned and greyed around the temples. Even Zolan dared not voice the fear that they were dying by degree; none of them could, but they were Dantioch looked up at the sky. The pathetic pearl drop of the sun, weak enough to stare at directly, was sinking away into the west. He hurried within towards the armoury, dismissing the aches in his joints with an act of will.
The hrud always came at night, and night was fast approaching.
THREE
TIME AND IRON
999.M30
GUGANN, SAK’TRADA DEEPS
Fortreidon felt the hrud before he saw them.
Their influence plucked at the fabric of space-time itself. The strange quickening that surrounded them altered the composition of the atmosphere, thickening it with accelerated particular motion. Light shifted its hue subtly towards the blue end of the spectrum as it was sped on past its natural limit.
But the worst and most telling indication of their presence was the heat. The tunnel became suddenly stifling.
That was the sign that there were hrud nearby, always.
Andos Fan, scouting thirty metres ahead of the main body of the 165th Company, 16th Grand Battalion, stopped at a branching in the tunnel and held up his hand, signalling a halt. Vox clicks and battlesign passed down the line, halting the warriors. They waited tensely in the dark in two lines either side of the tunnel, the light reflecting feebly from the edges of their dull steel armour. It was not in the nature of the Iron Warriors to be cautious in battle, but fighting the hrud had taught them many hard lessons, one being the use of point men like Fan. Better one of them age rapidly to dust in the temporal vortex of a time-mine than all of them.
‘Got a temperature spike,’ voxed Fan. ‘A big one.’
‘Lend me your eyes, brother,’ replied Captain Anabaxis, his voice carrying to the whole company.
Fan steeled himself before he obliged, leaning back against the wall with his bolter ready before ducking round the smooth corner and peering about, Anabaxis sharing the view through his auto-senses. Fan leaned back.
The captain’s vox clicked in the ears of his men as he switched to a private channel, leaving his company to wait upon his orders.
Fortreidon battled to master himself. He doubted the others in the Seventh Tactical Squad felt the same trepidation he did. He wouldn’t call it fear exactly, but the hrud were unnerving creatures to fight. This was his first campaign, and only his third battle. The deep scars where the Apothecaries had cored his flesh to implant his neural plugs still ached at night. His breath thundered in a helmet that still felt foreign to him. Runes and data-screed that he had only just begun to master winked at him on his visor. His pulse was quick Six months of training and endless surgeries, now this. His head span at the rapid change in his circumstances: from a junior hoplon of Edifus to a legionary in one year.
Iron within, iron without, he thought.
His brothers were tense. Though they remained outwardly fearless, this war was taking its toll on them. They were close-mouthed, many quick to anger. This was not how he had imagined being a member of the Legion to be.
‘What’s the hold up?’ asked Udermais.
‘Circumspection,’ said Genus Kellephon. He shifted his flamer and fuel sloshed in its tank. Fortreidon found the constant hiss of its pilot light calming. Kellephon was kinder than the others, and Fortreidon was glad of his proximity.
‘Damn circumspection - we should get in there and kill them all now,’ said Jaseron Zankator, whom they called Mauler for reasons that were plainly evident to anyone who had fought alongside him in the line.
‘Tep
heus curse us, I wager there’s an archive there,’ muttered Harrakis. ‘What’s that mean?’ asked Fortreidon cautiously. The others were irritated by his ignorance. He would not let that stop him asking questions. He would die if he did not learn.
‘It means resistance, lad, that’s what,’ said Bardan. Though a dour character, he was more understanding of Fortreidon’s position than most, though not so helpful as Kellephon. ‘Better be ready for a hard fight. They’ll die by the dozen to protect their precious books. This is going to cost us dearly.’
Bardan’s pessimism was unwarranted. The vox clicked again as Anabaxis re-engaged the company channel.
‘I see at least three of them. We’ve taken them unawares. Squad Seven, it is your turn to take the lead. Fan, you are relieved. Squads Six and Twelve, stand ready to support Seven. Three and Four, to the rearguard. Sergeants, listen.‘ His company-wide broadcast ceased again. Anabaxis was an emotionless leader, fonder of squad numbers than the names his troops gave their units. Kellephon said he had changed, consciously modelling himself on the primarch. Bardan said he’d always been that way.
‘Remember, Fortreidon,’ said Meson Dentrophor darkly, ‘the more of these xenos scum we kill, the sooner we can be back to a proper war. Try not to die.’
‘Digging. Sieges. We all wished for variety, brothers,’ said Bardan, racking a bolt into the chamber of his weapon. ‘Be wary of wishes.’
‘Silence,’ said Vodan Zhalsk, the sergeant of Squad Seven. He spoke distractedly, listening to his superior on a direct vox-link. ‘We are to go now. Move out.’
They advanced the thirty metres to the branching, silent but for the muffled thud of their boots and the whine of their armour systems. The hrud were insatiable diggers, tunnelling hundreds of kilometres of tubular warrens through the rock of the planets they dominated. How they did it was open to conjecture. The Iron Warriors had found nothing that resembled digging machines. The walls were uneven but glassily surfaced, seemingly impervious to the constant tremors that beset hrud worlds. They rose and fell slightly, twisting about like the guts of an immense creature As they approached the branching a temperature indicator blinked on Fortreidon’s visor display. The coolant system of his backpack rumbled into higher gear. He felt dislocated. His comrades moved unnaturally quickly.
Time was running ahead of itself.
Zhalsk directed his squad to flank the branching either side of the entrance The hrud rarely used doors. Each chamber and tunnel of their warrens ran into the next.
The way bulged into a large chamber filled with racks of hollow honeycomb shelving made from some kind of resin. Sheets of cured mycelium were stacked in roughly half of them. The rest were empty, their papers removed and stacked on the floor or in odd leaf-shaped things that had no understandable purpose.
Fortreidon was at the front Zhalsk was testing him, but it did not concern him unduly. He had to prove himself to his new comrades. The squad had been devastated - already understrength when the invasion of Gugann had commenced, half the remainder had died in this one campaign. Although no stranger to high casualties, the strain was getting to the Iron Warriors. They resented Fortreidon for being alive in the place of their deceased brothers. It was natural. He did not begrudge them.
In any case, his continued existence might not be an issue for much longer.
‘The archive was lit by non-directional light that came from nowhere, dim as the hrud liked it This place is a mess,’ said Udermais.
‘They’re clearing it out,’ said Zhalsk. ‘We’ve got them on the run.’
‘Anyone see them?’ asked Bardan. They all spoke quietly over vox. If the hrud detected them, their service to the Emperor would end prematurely.
‘There, at the back of the room,’ said Dentrophor. He dipped his bolter towards the far side of the archive, where another entrance, slightly offset from theirs, opened up.
Fortreidon squinted into the gloom. The hrud were almost impossible to spot behind the entropic fields generated by their bizarre biology. The break in time’s flow acted like a lens, bending light around them. When they were stationary, they were virtually invisible. When they moved they seemed to traverse space without crossing it, flickers of black at the heart of a column of shimmering air. Sight was rarely the most reliable way to detect them.
Zhalsk directed Fortreidon’s attention to a blur in the corner. A twisting ribbon of black danced behind it. Fortreidon switched to thermal imaging, and the world bloomed with confusing false colours. The entropic effects of the hrud caused massive heat bleed from the environment. The creature swelled into a throbbing mass of hot yellows and reds. If he aimed for the middle, he should kill it.
They sighted the other two. The Seventh Tactical Squad selected their targets. Zhalsk held up three fingers… then two… then one. ‘Now,’ he voxed.
They opened fired. Fortreidon kept his aim on the centre of his target. He flicked back and forth between true vision and thermal. He couldn’t be sure if he hit either way. In a normal view, the slash of shadow that was the hrud leaped about; in thermal vision, its position was obscured by the thermal bloom of overclocked atomic activity, but it was easier to keep track of where it was.
Bolts streaked at the alien. Upon encountering the thing’s time field, they sped on to unbelievable speeds, or they detonated prematurely as the explosive inside the munition decayed, or they came apart in rains of metal atoms. The effect of the hrud on their surroundings was unpredictable. A Space Marine stood close by one might age a thousand years in a minute, and yet his comrade be unaffected. The hrud’s own artefacts seemed immune.
The creature fell, finally hit, and the whirling distortion around it blinked out. Fortreidon let out a shout of exhilaration. Mankind would rule the stars, and he would play his part in ensuring it was so.
Other hrud fell. Their bodies were already in the process of disintegration as they hit the ground. Thick vapours poured from them, acidic and stinking. Fortreidon’s breathing grille slid shut.
‘Advance!’ roared Zhalsk. Over the company vox, Anabaxis ordered Six and Twelve to follow and cover.
Fortreidon was barely aware of his brothers. He ran forwards with Harrakis, the two of them working together to cover the aisles between the strange shelves one after the other. Kellephon trailed him. Zhalsk ordered them to halt.
‘Are they all dead?’ said Udermais. ‘Seems too easy.’
‘Something’s wrong,’ said Harrakis. He peered around the edge of the archive stack and snatched himself back, choking. His bolter fell to the ground in pieces, and he held up his hands, staring at them, not believing what was happening to him.
‘More of them!’ he gasped. The bare ceramite of his gauntlets was pitting, as if left out in the elements for five thousand years. They crumbled around his hands, exposing the flesh within. It wrinkled and sagged. Muscles melted away, fingers became knotted with degenerative disease. His skin thinned and became liver spotted, and his veins stood out blue, the pulse in them weakening by the moment.
Harrakis’ screams became hideous gurgles. He fell down, dust pouring from the rents opening up in his armour.
Harrakis death took place in less than a second. Fortreidon backed away, bolter raised. His armour clanged out warnings as the temperature rose around him. The paint on his pauldrons blistered and began to flake. The flawless iron colour of the unpainted ceramite dulled as oxidisation pocks appeared on it. Systems juddered as they underwent a century of decay. His hearts pounded. Death approached. As he retreated, he looked down the aisle. Three hrud approached, tendrils of wavering air reaching out towards him.
‘Get down!’ yelled Kellephon.
Fortreidon dived to the side as a swelling cloud of fire roared up the aisle. Fighting the weight and awkwardness of his battleplate, he rolled onto his side in time to see the xenos die.
Flames flickered into an insane, jerking dance around the creatures. The consumption of oxygen was radically accelerated by the hrud’s entropic fields, an
d the fires burned themselves out quickly.
It was not enough to save the xenos. Genus Kellephon squeezed his trigger again, sending another blast of flame over the aliens. Their stinking, layered robes steamed under the assault of burning promethium, igniting suddenly as their moisture boiled off and they reached combustion temperature.
A dying hrud screamed like nothing should. The sound of it brought to mind the last, ticking seconds of a world’s life, or the ultimate exhaustion of the final star. It was the death scream of time itself.
Their long, flexible limbs flailed, sending spattering arcs of promethium up the walls of their burrow. These landed on layered sheets of mycelium paper, burning into them. The archive began to smoulder.
The rest of the Seventh gathered at the end of the aisle, taking up firing positions.
‘Fire!’ bellowed Zhalsk.
The Iron Warriors sent a storm of bolts into the hrud. They detonated violently, their flexible limbs coming apart and scattering vertebrae-like bones across the floor. The last of the time fields went out. The hrud curled on the floor, sinews tightening. The inferno burned so fast that they blurred into a standing wall of light. In seconds the fires rendered the bodies into ash, and the flame walls dropped. The hrud’s time-warping powers failed. The dread touch of entropy slipped from Fortreidon’s being as the xenos collapsed into nothing.
The passage of time crashed nauseatingly back to its proper speed. Jaseron Zankator toed a skull that had escaped the worst of the fire. Ash sifted from its large eye sockets. A mandible fell loose from the mouth and clicked on the floor.
‘Ugly,’ spat Zankator. He stamped the skull to powder, checked his weapon and slammed in a fresh magazine. Zhalsk and Udermais swept their auspexes around. The others spread out into a covering pattern as the following squads advanced, warriors splitting into pairs to check each aisle ‘Clear!’ bellowed Zhalsk.
The remainder of the Iron Warriors clattered into the archive. Meson helped Fortreidon to his feet.