Whatever its composition, the face had withstood days of incessant necron fire. So had the door in its roaring mouth. It was made of the same mysterious stone as the face itself, but its strength, too, was failing at last. It was pitted and crumbling. It had the visual consistency of sponge, even though it was still standing. The necrons eroded it further by the second.
The skeletal warriors were as rooted as turrets, moving only to play their gauss beams over a resisting part of the door. They were directed by a lone figure. It carried a staff that to Teiras resembled a cross between an ecclesiarch’s sceptre of office and a spear. He caught a glimpse of the creature’s face. It was the expressionless skull of its race, but it had only one eye in the centre of its forehead. The emerald glow of the orb was brighter and more piercing than those of its fellows. Its gaze was one of eternal, unblinking observation, analysis and judgement.
‘There is much here to destroy,’ Kyral said. He pulled out a melta bomb.
Teiras did the same. The canyon was very narrow, only a few dozen metres wide. The necrons were bunched close together. The invitation was impossible to ignore.
‘Let us purge them from the Emperor’s sight,’ Teiras said.
He and Kyral leaped over the crest of the rubble. They raced down the slope. Halfway down, they were within range, and threw their bombs. The cyclopean necron noticed them and brought its staff to bear at the same moment. It fired. A blistering, shrieking beam slammed into Kyral’s chest. The Relictor flew backwards, enveloped by howling light. Then the bombs landed, and there was a different light. This was the light of the Emperor, beyond molten, silver-white as blindness. It swallowed the necrons and their glow of the plague. There was a satisfying unity to the death shrieks. The one-eyed necron was caught at the outer edge of the bombs’ radius of effect. Its lower half was liquefied by the heat. Its staff exploded, disintegrating its right arm. It dragged itself forwards a few metres before phasing out, and Teiras was sure he saw hatred in the fading glow of its eye.
Teiras turned to help Kyral, but the Relictor was already on his feet. His chest plate was badly damaged, but whatever the extent of his injuries, he strode on as if they were beneath notice.
‘Brother,’ Teiras began.
‘I require no assistance,’ Kyral snapped. He marched the rest of the way to the stone door.
Jern muttered, ‘Aristocrat,’ as he went past, drawing a snort from Teiras.
They gathered before the ravaged door. The melta bomb attack had damaged it still more, but it had not fallen.
‘We are at the door, inquisitor,’ Teiras voxed to the Merciless.
Dagover opened a general channel. ‘Salmenau,’ he said, ‘let them in. You know you have no choice.’
Several seconds went by, pregnant with resentment. Then the door opened. There was no sound. The unknown stone split into six wedges that withdrew into the sides of the face’s mouth. The kill-team moved inside.
The interior was surprisingly small, given the monumental façade. It extended for about thirty metres, was the same in width, and half that in height. The walls, floor and ceiling were smooth and rounded, like the interior of a bubble. Rows of lume-strips had been installed on the ceiling. Along the right-hand wall was a large cogitator and a panoply of excavation and analytical equipment fussed over by a clutch of tech-priests. Power was supplied by a large cable, almost as thick as Teiras’s torso. It snaked into the cavern from an opening in the rear wall, near the ceiling. It must have been fed in through the top of the hill, and linked to a power source via the maglev tracks.
The weapon crouched in the middle of the floor. It was fifteen metres long, and two thirds of that comprised a monstrous barrel wide enough to take metre-thick shells – if indeed those were what it fired. Teiras couldn’t begin to guess whether it was a projectile or energy weapon. Its body was articulated, and it rested on four insect-like legs. Teiras’s lip curled. The cannon was an utterly and disgustingly alien object. There was also something about its design, its machinic mimicry of life, that reminded him of the necrons’ guns. There was a connection, he realised. The nature of the link between the necrons and the cyranax watchers was as obscure as the watchers themselves, but the fact of the link was clear. There was a dark logic behind the necrons’ presence here, and their pursuit of this gigantic weapon.
Facing the Deathwatch were Inquisitor Salmenau and the survivors of his team. Salmenau had clearly not been expecting serious combat. He was flanked by an Imperial Guard veteran, a man whose facial scars were so extensive that his face had become two eyes glaring out from a mass of thick, leathery tissue an angry pink in colour. He had also been injured. His combat fatigues hung oddly on his left side, as if chunks of his body were missing. He was soaked in his blood. It seemed to Teiras that standing beside his master was all that the man could still do. The others were scholars, not fighters. They held lasrifles, but would be lucky not to shoot off their own heads.
Salmenau stood in marked contrast to Dagover. They were, Teiras knew, close to the same age, but Salmenau had undergone aggressive juvenat treatments. He seemed much younger, though there was a brittle tautness to his youth. His clothes were torn from combat, but after two weeks of being besieged, he didn’t have a hair out of place. The cut of his breeches and coat was severe but stylish. His hand rested on the pommel of a power sword. He was no less grotesque than the massively armoured vulture that waited back on the Thunderhawk.
Dagover’s voice crackled from multiple speakers. ‘You aren’t going to be difficult about this, Armand, are you? There really wouldn’t be any point.’
‘You cannot have it, Otto.’
‘Why not? You don’t appear to be doing anything useful with it. If you were going to use it, you would have done so days ago.’
Salmenau paled. ‘Such xenos obscenities are to be studied, then destroyed. I would die before risking such a taint to my soul.’
‘Which you were about to do. You Amalathians are so hidebound, I’m surprised your pious caution hasn’t led you to extinction.’
‘You must not take the weapon.’
‘Are you going to stop us?’
The scholars were trembling. One of them moaned, but they did not drop their guns. Teiras respected them for that.
Salmenau turned to the kill-team. ‘You are being led down the path to heresy and treason,’ he said. ‘Step off it, for all our sakes.’
Teiras remained still. Dagover’s enthusiasm for xenos technology disturbed him, but he had no wish to cast judgement, not when the Black Dragons were often denounced as abominations. And the oath he had sworn on his and the Chapter’s honour was to serve the Inquisition in the person of Otto Dagover. The other Space Marines made no move, either.
Salmenau stepped directly in front of the weapon’s barrel. ‘You will have to kill me,’ he said.
‘Spare us the melodrama,’ Dagover began.
He didn’t finish. The room erupted with green light as a barrage of gauss beams blasted through the open door. Teiras hurled himself down and to the side, out of the direct line of fire. Jern hit the ground hard, smoke pouring from his damaged power unit. Salmenau ducked under the weapon, which the necrons’ shots avoided, but his retinue was taken apart in seconds, bodies stripped and anatomised.
Teiras crawled forwards with his brothers. He was able to stand once he reached the raging ‘O’ of the stone mouth, staying in cover on the right-hand side. He took a quick look outside. The necrons were coming in force. He saw dozens of warriors, many of them the hulking variants they had fought on the street. At the head of the army came a figure whose tattered robes could not disguise a terrible majesty. It wielded a massive war scythe and towered over its troops, a monarch of death and machinic night. Its skeletal jaw parted, hurling a stream of alien curses as it closed in.
Salmenau scrabbled to the cogitator and turned some dials. There was a hum of power. Th
e chamber glowed faintly and the door began to close. It was sluggish, and the necron fire ate at the wedges. The door stopped dead, leaving an oval about the size of a man. Gherak and Jern took up positions at the gap. Gherak crouched, Jern stood, and they loosed a steady stream of bolter-fire at the advancing ghouls, staggering reloads so the mass-reactive hell never stopped.
Teiras gave them further support. Warriors vanished in crackling glows, but the advance barely slowed. The door continued to erode. The arithmetic was unavoidable. The kill-team only had so many bolter clips. Not nearly enough.
‘Ambush,’ Gherak growled. ‘They gave up part of their force so we would give them access.’
Teiras could almost admire the strategic precision of the necrons’ sacrifice. They had abandoned just enough of their number to make that force convincing. It had never occurred to him that he had been gunning down bait.
‘This barrier will not last,’ Jern said.
Ducking just under the barrel of Jern’s bolter, Teiras directed his fire at the approaching noble. The necron didn’t even acknowledge the attack. The shells bounced off its form. Teiras thumbed a krak grenade from his belt and hurled it through the gap. The explosion immolated the two foot soldiers on either side of the lord, but the leader marched on without pause. It was less than thirty metres from the door.
Teiras looked back. Kyral was huddled over the back of the weapon. ‘Brother Teiras,’ he called.
Teiras dropped another warrior, then joined the Relictor. Utor took his place at the door.
Kyral pointed at the power cable. ‘That links to the main generatorium for the Fastness. That should be enough power. I think I can connect the weapon. I see enough parallels to other relics of my experience.’
Use the xenos weapon? Teiras thought. The concept was disgusting. And yet...
‘This is not done lightly,’ Kyral said. He pointed to the disintegrating door. ‘Or shall we die in purity and leave this to the necrons?’
Salmenau glared, but drew a laspistol and went to engage in symbolic defence of the entrance.
‘I should be able to keep the power connected and flowing,’ Kyral began.
‘And I must pull the trigger,’ Teiras finished. It was midway down the enormous barrel, shaped as if for a handheld weapon, but on a cannon the size of a major artillery piece. Teiras wrapped both arms around the firing mechanism. He watched the door.
The malevolent green intensified. The barrier did not glow so much as become translucent. The gap widened. Teiras’s proximity to the weapon was the only thing that saved his life. Salmenau reeled back from the opening, clutching at the perfectly sheared stump where his right hand had been. Utor, Jern and Gherak kept up the fire even as their armour lost layers to the stray hits they did not move fast enough to avoid. Teiras listened to Utor’s breathing. As if sensing he was monitored, Utor announced, ‘Do not fear, brothers. If we are to meet the Emperor this day, I shall do so with a clear spirit.’
There was a flash of energy and green corruption. The door vanished. The necrons surged forwards, led by their lord. It swung its scythe at Jern with blinding speed and shattered his pauldron. He fell, but was not cut in half. Teiras’s eyes widened at Jern’s strength. It was as if he wore a second suit of armour.
Utor had pulled his chainsword and was decapitating the warriors almost as quickly as they crossed the threshold to the chamber. Almost. The tide was pushing him back. A group of three converged on Gherak. He roared and threw himself into their midst. Others joined the attack. Individually, they were weaker than a Space Marine, but they fought with a terrible collective precision. Gherak sank under the attack.
Then he threw the attackers off and swung a chainaxe. And as he did so, he burst into flame.
At first, Teiras thought that Gherak had been hit by a flamer. Then he saw that the Space Marine himself was the source of the fire.
Teiras felt a moment of astonishment at the depths of Dagover’s game. A Flame Falcon. The most cursed Chapter of the Cursed Founding, the most ill-fated of the Black Dragons’ cousins. Declared Excommunicate by the Inquisition, they had, Teiras had always believed, been exterminated, and yet here was one, no doubt existing at the pleasure of Dagover.
What agenda am I aiding by fighting for this man? Teiras thought. But then Kyral shouted ‘Now!’ and Teiras thought, I fight for my brothers.
The Deathwatch warriors threw themselves back and down.
The necron lord had reached the cannon and it swung its scythe at Teiras.
Teiras heaved back, and fired the gun.
It was as if he had personally triggered a nova cannon. The world vanished in a flash of quasar silver streaked with infernal red. Energies he could not begin to fathom sprang into being. Microseconds merged with eternity. Creation was the negation of all that stood in its path. There was a silent roar so huge it buried all sound except, deep within the core, something that sounded like a hissing whisper.
The light and the sound of otherness faded. In their wake came the almost reassuring rhythm of massive but conventional explosions. And in a straight line from the weapon: nothing. The necrons had vanished. So had a large section of the slope. A wake of pure destruction stretched as far as Teiras could see.
Behind him, Kyral, dazed, was picking himself up. The power cable was a twisting, burning wreck. Teiras imagined the immense recoil of the weapon transformed into annihilating feedback.
He had to know. He tore out of the chamber and scrambled up the cliff wall, punching handholds into the rock face where none presented themselves. It took him less than a minute to reach the top of the rise, and he was in time to see the last of what had been wrought. He had been right. The energy of the recoil had travelled back over the entire power network of the Fastness. The maglev web flashed orange and white, molten tracks dropping down like burning logs. Power nodes were exploding all over the Fastness, bright spheres of light and death in the night. In the distance, the tower swayed. It was the centre of the grid. The generatoria at its base were massive in power, and now massive in death. There was a huge flash. God-flames engulfed its entire height, and moments later the sound arrived, hammering the air and ground with a hollow blast of doom. The tower collapsed straight down, folding again and again in on itself.
Then there were only glows and echoes, and the anticipation of aftermath.
‘You are a Recongregator,’ Teiras said. Helmet under his arm, he was standing in Dagover’s study aboard the Iudex Ferox. Gargoyles and the statues of martyred saints lined the walls.
The inquisitor was seated behind a massive desk. Its surface was covered in books whose titles Teiras was content not to examine. Crouched in his armour, his long bionic arms flicking through papers, Dagover reminded him of a scarab. ‘And?’ Dagover asked. He did not sound displeased that Teiras knew of his radical faction within the Inquisition.
‘I want to know what we just did.’
Dagover snorted. ‘It is not your place to ask.’
‘I realise that. Nonetheless.’
Dagover nodded, that ghastly smile forming once again. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you think we accomplished.’
‘We destroyed a necron raiding force. We also managed to shut down all power, and thus all security measures, of the Vorago Fastness, punch a large hole through its outer wall, and do considerable damage to the city beyond, including bisecting the Lord Governor’s palace.’
‘Quite,’ Dagover said, the grin becoming even wider and more hideous. ‘And...?’
‘And the prison population has flooded into Carcera Lucrosus. We have effectively unleashed a civil war on Discidia.’
Dagover nodded. ‘Would you say that the existing political order on Discidia was worth preserving?’
‘No.’ Teiras was surprised at how easily the answer came.
‘So the wealth of the planet has been preserved, and a regime that wa
s unworthy of the Emperor’s light has fallen,’ Dagover summed up.
‘And this is how it is replaced?’ Teiras asked, incredulous.
‘You and I agree that the Lord Governor and his cronies were corrupt, but they kept well within the letter of Imperial law. They paid their tithes. They violated no edicts. And their political friends were many. I could not act directly.’
Teiras noticed Dagover’s use of the first-person. ‘You planned this from the beginning?’
‘You flatter me. I took advantage of the opportunity that the necron attack provided.’ The inquisitor leaned forwards. ‘But now, matters have changed as an unintended consequence of a necessary action.’ He became deadly serious. ‘Creative destruction is necessary for the salvation of the Imperium, Black Dragon,’ he said. ‘Do not doubt it.’
Teiras thought of the grotesque spectacle that the capital city had presented to him, and found that, indeed, he could not doubt what Dagover said. ‘You plan to control the outcome?’
The smile again. ‘Whatever faction wins will know that deviation from the good of the Imperium will be met with a most terrible judgement. In the end, a new, more pure order will arise. And so we have another small step towards galactic renewal.’
‘That weapon is unlikely to fire again.’ It lay in the hold of the Iudex Ferox. The back half had been turned to slag.
‘No one on the planet will know that.’
The rest of the kill-team was waiting for him outside the study. Gherak had removed his helmet. Teiras looked from one Adeptus Astartes to the next. We are the damned, he thought, fighting for the redemption of the Imperium.
Hammer and Bolter Presents: Xenos Hunters Page 20