Hammer and Bolter Presents: Xenos Hunters

by Edited by Christian Dunn

  ‘And Weaponsmith Gurlagorg,’ replied Chrysius over the command vox. ‘If he is here. You cannot deny us that knowledge, captain.’

  ‘Discipline,’ replied Haestorr. ‘Focus, sergeant. The mission above all else.’

  ‘If the Weaponsmith is on this station then our mission is to kill him,’ replied Chrysius. ‘As it has been the mission of the Imperial Fists to kill all enemies of mankind.’

  ‘You are ahead of yourself,’ voxed Haestorr. ‘There is no sign the Weaponsmith is here.’

  ‘The Deathwatch think otherwise,’ said Chrysius. He could see Kholedei and the rest of his kill-team moving carefully through the unstable chamber, on one flank of the Imperial Fists’ formation. Chrysius could see, along with Kholedei’s own White Scars livery, the heraldry of other Space Marine Chapters on the shoulder pads of the kill-team members – a Praetor of Orpheus, a Black Dragon, a Scimitar Guard. Chrysius wondered what it would mean to fight alongside Space Marines whose way of thinking came from the doctrines of a different Chapter, men who might be his brothers as the Emperor’s finest but not brothers raised together in war.

  ‘We’re closing on the Hazardous Materials Lab,’ voxed Sergeant Moxus, whose squad held the opposite flank. ‘It’s shielded and fortified, if the original blueprints still hold true. If the Iron Warriors make a stand on this station, they will make it there.’

  ‘Captain Kholedei!’ ordered Haestorr. ‘Bring your demolitions charges forth. We’ll blast our way in.’

  The kill-team headed to the front where a great bulkhead, the spine of the station, met the corrupted deck. Chrysius saw now the Praetor of Orpheus had the servo-harness and artificer armour of a Techmarine. He attached three large steel canisters to the bulkhead wall and keyed in a command sequence as the kill-team retired to beyond the blast zone.

  ‘If the Weaponsmith didn’t know we were coming,’ said Vryskus bleakly, ‘he will soon.’

  ‘Lesser men would call us the forlorn hope,’ said Chrysius. ‘The first into the breach. A Space Marine calls it the place of the greatest honour, for to us will fall the first blood of the enemy.’ Chrysius drew his chainsword. ‘To us will fall the Weaponsmith.’

  A trio of rapid explosions shuddered the chamber. The cysts burst, spilling half-formed wargear across the floor in a flood of greasy filth. The bulkhead shattered in a blast of red light and flame, and black smoke filled the air.

  Through the gloom, Chrysius’s auto-senses cut a path through the interior of the Hazardous Materials Lab. Whatever it had once been, it now resembled nothing so much as a temple ripped from whatever dimension had birthed it and transplanted into this space station. Chains hung across the void in the heart of the station, hung with festoons of mangled corpses impaled on the spiked links. Shafts of black steel fell down through the darkness, impaling great altars of carved stone. The laboratory floor had been turned into a maze of altars, the spaces between them choked with bodies and forming a charnel house labyrinth. Statues of monstrous gods and daemons – a dog-headed representation of the Blood God Khorne, a sagging monstrosity of grey stone that was surely Nurgle, the Plague Lord – glowered over the scene, the gemstones in their eyes watching for bloodshed about to begin.

  The only remnants of the original lab were the cells. They were of polished steel and now stood on the top of black stone pillars, each one holding a specimen of a different xenos species. Chrysius recognised a genestealer of the Ymargl strain, the harbinger species who moved ahead of the tyranid hive fleets. Another cell held the filth-encrusted mass of a hrud, spacebound scavengers who clothed themselves in exoskeletons of other species’ detritus. There was a snake-bodied, four-armed creature among them whose ornate armour suggested ownership by a more sophisticated species who used it as a bodyguard or foot soldier. On many of the altars were the corpses of other xenos, some cut open with their innards spread as fodder for soothsayers, other dissected as if for study, their body parts laid out as neatly as a watchmaker’s cogs on the sacrificial slabs.

  Chrysius took all this in as he led the charge. Half his mind was that of a student of war, sizing up every aspect for cover and fields of fire. The other half saw only the tell-tale shapes of ancient power armour among the heaps of bones and let the recognition of them fill him with hate,

  The Iron Warriors. They were here, making their stand in this grand temple to the warp’s own gods.

  If anyone had asked Chrysius, in that moment, to recite the principles of warfare that had been implanted in his mind in hypno-doctrination, he could not have done so. The glories of Rogal Dorn. The legends of his Chapter. His own name. They were all gone from his mind, replaced by a raw and burning hatred.

  Because he had seen the Iron Warrior’s face. The one he had killed in the fuel depot. And the image of that face filled his mind, an icon of hatred without equal.

  Bolter fire hammered against the shattered bulkhead as Chrysius vaulted the twisted wreckage. Shots burst against his chestplate and greave, but his momentum carried him on. He passed into the dense shadow between two altars, his feet crunching through xenos skeletons.

  Black power armour loomed in front of him. The shape was that of a Space Marine but deformed with bulky bionics. One arm was an industrial claw, more suited to carving up slabs of metal in a manufactorum than for using as a hand. Half the head was a metallic skull, crowned with a circle of bronze horns. The single eye in the centre of the faceplate glowed green as it played targeting lasers across Chrysius’s body.

  Chrysius never gave the Iron Warrior the opportunity to shoot. He closed the gap in two strides and hit the traitor square in the chest.

  But it held firm. It was heavier and stronger than Chrysius. It slammed its claw against Chrysius’s midriff in a colossal backhand, throwing the Imperial Fist into the black stone of the altar behind him.

  Chrysius kicked out, forcing open the gap between himself and the Iron Warrior. It was just enough to bring the point of his chainsword up and drive it forward. The tip sheared through the pistons of the traitor’s bionic shoulder, slicing through cables and hoses.

  The Iron Warrior laughed. It was a hateful, metallic sound. Chrysius tried to wrench his chainblade back out and the Iron Warrior held up his claw, slamming its blades together as if in mockery, to show Chrysius the weapon that would cut him in half in a handful of seconds.

  Another shadow fell against the darkness, black against black. It was Brother Vryskus, his duelling blade arrowing down at the Iron Warrior.

  The blade punched into the Iron Warrior’s chest. The pressure came off Chrysius for a second and he was free, rolling out from under the Iron Warrior.

  The Iron Warrior ignored the injury, pivoting and catching Vryskus between the blades of his claw. Steam spurted from its damaged shoulder as the twin blades slammed closed, slicing Brother Vryskus in half at the waist.

  Chrysius felt as if he had been immersed in ice. His blood seemed gone, replaced with freezing gas. He cried out and stabbed his chainblade forward again, this time aiming at the back of the Iron Warrior’s head.

  The chainsword caught the Iron Warrior in the neck, where the spine joined the skull. The traitor tensed rigid as the chain teeth sawed through the top of his spine and brain stem, pulping the inside of the cranium. The single eyepiece popped and spurted viscous gore down the front of its black armour.

  It had taken less than a second. One moment Vryskus had been alive, the next he was dead. Chrysius had seen thousands of deaths, but the death of a brother, of a squad mate, was never the same.

  Brother Myrdos, who had bickered with Vryskus minutes before, crunched through the corpses underfoot and stopped dead when he saw Vryskus’s helmet, with the black stripe painted down its faceplate, down among the broken bodies. He saw instantly that Vryskus was dead.

  ‘We will mourn him when the Weaponsmith has fallen,’ gasped Chrysius.

  Myrdos could only nod h
is agreement before Chrysius stepped over the two dead Space Marines, one traitor and one loyal, and struck further into the altar labyrinth.

  The hate had been hot a moment ago. Now Chrysius was filled with ice, and it seemed twice as fierce. He had to be rid of it, this awful freezing pressure building up in his chest, and the only way was to fight on through, kill and maim and avenge with every stroke.

  Revenge. He would have revenge. He would carve every unspoken syllable of his hate onto the Weaponsmith’s body.

  Gunfire streaked from an altar above. Chrysius vaulted up onto the top and saw another Iron Warrior, this one with both hands altered with mutation and bionics into multi-barrelled bolters. It was spraying out the firepower of four or five Imperial Fists, filling the air with burning chains of shrapnel. Chrysius slashed down at one of the Iron Warrior’s legs, knocking it onto its back. Myrdos was beside him and leapt on the downed Iron Warrior, stabbing down at its heart. Myrdos’s chainsword threw a shower of sparks as it bit into ceramite.

  The Iron Warrior threw Myrdos off and, before Chrysius could even swing a return stroke at it, fired a volley at him. One shot caught Chrysius full in the leg and he felt the bones and gristle of his knee blown apart into a bloody-petalled flower of torn skin.

  Chrysius fell back. He ordered his body to move in for the kill-stroke, but his body refused to obey him, shocked into dis-obedience. The Iron Warrior turned to Myrdos and the snarl of its deformed faceplate seemed to sneer as it levelled its bolter barrels at the Imperial Fist.

  A massive volley of fire ripped into Myrdos, laying his ribcage open in a bloody mass. One of his arms was blown clean off and another shot punched through his eyepiece, splitting the back of his head open and spilling his brains across the black stone of the altar.

  I will mourn later, Chrysius told himself. Time seemed to slow down, leaving him the moments he needed to follow his thoughts. I will weep for him among the shrines and statues of the Phalanx. But not yet.

  Hanging above the altar was one of the specimen cages – this one containing another genestealer. Chrysius had fought them before, and knew them to be creatures of such viciousness that to take one down, one on one, in close combat was worth a badge of honour that Chrysius had yet to earn. They could be taken down at a distance with no loss, provided they were spotted and targeted in time. Up close, they were a horror.

  Chrysius drew his bolt pistol, not moving from his position on his back. He aimed up at the chain holding the cell above the altar.

  The Iron Warrior must have assumed Chrysius was trying and failing to aim at it. It blasted off a few bolter shots into the advancing Imperial Fists, then turned back to Chrysius. In the moment that gave him, Chrysius loosed off half his pistol’s magazine, and the top of the cage was shredded in a burst of silver shrapnel.

  The chain parted and the cell plummeted down. It landed just behind the Iron Warrior, who turned to see what had missed it.

  The four clawed limbs of the genestealer inside reached out between the bent bars and grabbed the Iron Warrior by the neck. The alien’s head was a mass of tentacles that splayed apart, revealing a beak-like mouthpart. The genestealer dragged the Iron Warrior against its cell, and lashed its tentacles around its helmet.

  The beak punched out through the back of the Iron Warrior’s face. The Traitor Marine convulsed, bolters firing randomly.

  Chrysius forced himself to stand, his ruined leg threatening to buckle under him. There was no pain, even though there should have been too much for his armour’s painkiller reserves to mask. He had no room for pain in him now.

  The rest of his bolter’s magazine was blasted point-blank into the feasting genestealer’s head, shattering its alien skull and leaving it slumped in its cell with the dead Iron Warrior still held close.

  Part of Chrysius wanted to pick up the remains of Brother Myrdos, carry him far from that battlefield and give him the funeral rites of a brother. He wanted to take Brother Vryskus, too, and bear the two sundered halves of him to the Phalanx where they might lie in state as heroes. But that part of Chrysius was a whisper compared to the hate rushing through him – now he was hollow, a desert valley worn smooth by a screaming wind. Everything was scoured away but the will to do violence to the Weaponsmith who had created all this.

  Chrysius ran on, leaping down from the blood-slicked altar into the labyrinth. His vision swam with tears as he forced his way through the heaps of skeletons and wreckage. A red glow was ahead of him, and he recognised the heat and colour of molten ceramite. In the forges of the Phalanx it was melted down to create new armour plates. He caught the smell of it, breaking through the stench of bodies and boltgun propellant that made it through the filters of his faceplate.

  The forge at the centre of the temple was a structure of barricaded archways. Hundreds of skulls were mounted on spikes on the walls. Gunfire was blasting chunks from the barricades of wreckage the Iron Warriors had set up – the battle had already reached this far into the temple, the Imperial Fists following in the wake of Chrysius’s charge and engaging the Iron Warriors from every direction.

  The Weaponsmith must be here, in the forge.

  In front of one of the barricades was Brother Hestion, the last member of Chrysius’s squad. Hestion had charged through the hail of bolter fire to the foot of the barricade. Chrysius watched as he dragged an Iron Warrior over the barricade, flinging it to the floor and pounding a fist into its faceplate.

  Another Iron Warrior mounted the barricade and vaulted down. He wielded a power axe with both hands and struck down at Hestion. The blade bit into Hestion’s arm and almost cut right through it. Hestion grabbed the Iron Warrior by the throat with his good arm and, with a strength that even a Space Marine could rarely muster, hurled the Iron Warrior into the barricade. Chunks of wreckage and steel beams tumbled down.

  Chrysius ran to his battle-brother’s side. The Iron Warrior on the floor was trying to get up – Chrysius lanced it through the spine with his chainblade, putting all the momentum of his charge into the sword-thrust. The blade bit deep but did not penetrate far enough to kill the Iron Warrior, who turned and blasted at point-blank range with a bolt pistol.

  Chrysius felt the armour over his abdomen dent and shear, but not give way. The bolter round had not penetrated. The next shot would.

  Chrysius put a foot against the Iron Warrior’s neck, feeling the spikes of pain bursting from his shattered knee. He drove down as best he could, forcing the Iron Warrior’s head down, twisted the chainblade and put all of his weight behind it. This time the blade bored through the Iron Warrior’s back. Chrysius pulled it almost all the way out and stabbed down again and again, each thrust bubbling up a torrent of gore from the well of blood.

  Chrysius looked up to see Hestion and the second Iron Warrior duelling, axe against chainblade. The axe swung in a low arc, aimed at taking out Hestion’s legs. Hestion blocked the blow with his weapon but in a flash of light the axe’s power field discharged and the chainblade was ripped apart. Loose metal teeth spattered against Chrysius, embedding themselves in his armour like tiny daggers.

  Hestion, unarmed now, put both hands around the Iron Warrior’s neck. Chrysius fought to get his own chainsword out of the downed Iron Warrior’s back but it had jammed tight against the breastplate of fused ribs. Finally it came loose and Chrysius lunged forwards but his knee gave way, folding the wrong way underneath him.

  The Iron Warrior drove the head of the axe up under Hestion’s ribs. The Imperial Fist fell back, the breastplate of his power armour laid open. The Iron Warrior drew up its axe and buried the blade up to the handle in Hestion’s exposed chest.

  Chrysius cried out wordlessly. The Iron Warrior brought up the axe again and swung it down with such force it split Hestion’s torso from shoulder to waist.

  Chrysius grabbed the fallen Iron Warrior’s bolt pistol from the floor. He dragged himself forward a couple of paces so
the shot would be point blank. He unloaded the pistol’s remaining ammo into the back of the Iron Warrior, blasting apart the power plant of its armour.

  Hestion was still alive. He was the strongest man, Space Marine or otherwise, that Chrysius had ever known and his last act was to grab the Iron Warrior’s helmet and wrench it off, before falling to the ground.

  The last round of bolter ammo went into the back of the Iron Warrior’s head. It blew the back of the traitor’s skull apart, throwing brain and skull against the fallen barricade.

  Chrysius knew what he would see even before the Iron Warrior tumbled back, its head tilted back so Chrysius was looking into dead eyes. He knew what the face would look like. He had seen it earlier, when he had killed the Iron Warrior in the fuel depot. The image had burned into his brain.

  And this Iron Warrior was the same.

  Chrysius was looking into a human face. Not a monster’s face, not the face of a daemon or an inhuman fusion of man and machine. Just a man’s face, like a Space Marine. No, not like any – Chrysius himself, with his gang tattoos, looked far more monstrous than either this Iron Warrior.

  They were men. Space Marines, just like him. Whatever made them the enemy of mankind, it was not the fact they were monsters, debased and savage creatures disfigured by the marks of their heresy. What made them traitors was something inside, something that waited inside every Space Marine.

  There was nothing that Chrysius had seen in his life so hateful as a normal, human face on this enemy.

  Chrysius struggled across the wreckage to Hestion’s body. His battle-brother was dead – his innards were open to the air and Chrysius could see his hearts and lungs motionless amid the gore.

  Chrysius pulled himself upright against the ruins of the barricade. Beyond it he could see molten ceramite pouring in sheets, like waterfalls, from above. Here, in the forge, was where the Weaponsmith waited.

  Chrysius clambered over the fallen barricade. He reloaded his bolt pistol with hands that shook with pain and physical shock. It did not matter that he was hurt. When he was so full of hate, when it drove him on with such force, he could ignore that. He would suffer later. Now, there was one last kill to be taken.