In spite of the raging heat, Alaric could feel ice in his veins. The Heresy, the Great Betrayal, where the forces of Chaos had played their hand and come so close to taking over the galaxy. It had been the human race’s most desperate hour and the Emperor had sacrificed everything but His living spirit to keep it from succeeding.
The Castigator was continuing, as static-filled pict-grabs sputtered across the data-blocks, the surviving images from the Heresy ten thousand years before. “Horus wanted that same war. A war that would burn everything and never end. He and I, we sought the same thing. But I read also that Horus died and his forces were scattered and it seemed that I had awoken nine thousand years too late. But I knew that perhaps such potential would come to the galaxy again. I could not risk any harm coming to Chaeroneia, so I hid it in the warp, using details of tech-heresies hidden in the most obscure archives of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Many tech-priests had studied the ways of the warp before the Mechanicus found them and stopped them and when I put together all their heresies I had more than enough knowledge to have Scraecos and his priests enact the ritual.”
The images surrounding the Castigator were now of the warp, its maddening swirls of light and darkness made of raw emotion. Even depicted flat and distorted, the sight made Alaric’s eyes hurt to look at it. “The planet was removed to the warp and there I bargained with the powers I found, offering them my wisdom and knowledge in return for a place of safety in the warp. I tamed some of the warp-predators and brought them to my world and had the tech-priests worship me and rebuild Chaeroneia according to the principles of the Dark Mechanicus I pried from the most ancient data fortresses. They were diligent, my priests. They did my every whim, killing one another for the honour of serving me. And then I heard news of what was happening in your galaxy. The opening of the Eye of Terror and the invasion of the Despoiler. In Abaddon, the warp powers said, Horus was born again. And I saw in him the potential for the war of annihilation that Horus so nearly waged.”
Alaric was surrounded by images of the Eye of Terror opening and the Chaos war fleets of the Thirteenth Black Crusade flooding out. He saw Cadia overrun and the destruction of St. Josman’s Hope. He saw a battlefleet burning in orbit over Agrippina, defence lasers lacing the night sky of Nemesis Tessera. Dead men walking on the surface of Subiaco Diablo, animated by dark magic. Endless thousands of Imperial Guard marching into the most intense and desperate warzone in the Imperium.
The Imperial Navy had bottled up much of the Black Crusade within the systems surrounding the Eye. But the balance was still precarious and it would only take a slim advantage for Abaddon to break through and strike for the heart of the Segmentum Solar.
An advantage like the Standard Template Construct for the Father of Titans.
“And now,” said the Castigator, “you understand. I feel it in you, the light of comprehension. You understand why I had to bring Chaeroneia back out of the warp and send a signal offering myself as tribute to Abaddon. Only he and the forces of Chaos can realize my true purpose. From me shall be copied endless god-machines and this time they shall be perfect, made using the unfettered science I taught the tech-priests of Chaeroneia. In the service of Chaos I shall stride a thousand battlefields at once and become one with the destruction that is my purpose. The galaxy shall burn because of me and so I shall become complete.”
“Yes,” said Alaric. “Yes, I understand.”
Alaric was brought upwards into the cogitator core that filled the Titan’s head and a block of data-medium detached from the wall. Alaric was lowered onto the block, where he was cut off from the nuclear heat from the reactor. The cold of the cogitator core flowed around him again, but not intensely enough to harm him. He could move, for what good it did him. The pain of his burns raged all over him but more to the point the Castigator had been correct. Alaric couldn’t fight a creature of pure information. He had battled the data-daemons before, but they had been susceptible to his training as a daemon-hunter. There was just no way for Alaric to harm the Castigator.
And he really did understand.
“You don’t really know what you are,” said Alaric, pulling himself to his feet. “It took you thousands of years to evolve into what you are. There’s nothing else like you in the galaxy. We both know what you want now, but only one of us understands what you actually are and it’s not you.”
The Castigator drifted upwards to stand in front of Alaric. It seemed to be thinking deeply. “Perhaps, it is true,” the Castigator replied. “The historical records and theoretical research have not suggested one such as me and I no longer follow the purpose of the Standard Template Construct. You are correct. There is one tiling I do not understand. I do not know what I am. But you do?” The Castigator’s tone was almost conversational, as if it were speaking now with an equal—a friend, even.
“Yes, I do. I know that you bargain with the powers of the warp and teach sorcery to your followers. You are worshipped as a god. You rule through deceit. You lust for death and destruction. And you have pledged yourself to the service of Chaos.”
“All this is true, Space Marine.”
“Well, where I come from, there’s a word for something like that.”
“And it is?”
“Daemon.”
The Castigator was silent for a moment. “Interesting,” it said. “Yes. Yes, I see. I am defined by these things, by my purpose and actions. And they are those of a daemon. Perhaps your words were not lies.”
The Castigator’s pure white skin was changing. Tendrils of greyish corruption were reaching across it, standing out like veins. Its green eyes became darker and greasy smoke like befouled incense coiled up from their flame.
“Of course. All this time in the warp, bargaining with the Fell Powers. This devotion to Chaos. This form that is not flesh and not machine. What else am I? What else could I be?”
The Castigator’s body took on the appearance of flesh, pale and covered in bulging veins. Its eyes sank into deep, scorched sockets and claws were growing from its fingers. It was still humanoid, but it was becoming the half-flesh, half-magic stuff of daemons.
Alaric felt it against his soul, massive and crushing, the sign of a daemonic presence the like of which he had not felt since he had confronted Ghargatuloth on Volcanis Ultor. The Castigator was an awesome presence, almost deafening. Alaric’s shield of faith bowed under the enormity of it—the Castigator was battering at Alaric’s mental defences without even having to will it. It was a daemon at last—and daemons were something Alaric understood.
Savage joy flared in the Castigator’s eyes. It raised its hands and green flames flowed from its fingers.
“Yes! A daemon am I! Thank you, justicar! At last, I am complete!”
“You’re welcome,” said Alaric. “And now you die.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of the daemon,
I shall fear nothing. For I am what the daemon fears!”
—Grand Master Mandulis of the Grey Knights
The titan works spread out below the belly of the Hellforger. The ship’s enormous shadow turned Chaeroneia’s permanent twilight into the black of night as the grand cruiser descended through the last few layers of pollutant cloud and into the relatively clear lower atmosphere. The navigation daemon kept the cruiser’s battery of thrusters firing constantly keeping the Hellforger hanging impossibly over the titan works. Few newer ships could have managed it—most were not even designed for the possibility of atmospheric flight. But the Hellforger was old indeed and it knew a few tricks the Imperial Navy had long forgotten.
On the bridge, Urkrathos was studying the images of the titan works intently. Such was the massive power usage of the facility that the ship’s sensors had trouble cutting through all the interference—the ocular glands on the ship’s underside had barely been able to focus on the place and send clear images to the bridge. The Titans were clear enough, hundreds of them standing silently to attention like
an honour guard for Urkrathos’s arrival. But details were difficult. And details were important, because it was one particular Titan that had grabbed Abaddon’s attention. So Urkrathos had to confirm that the signal was genuine, by scanning the banks of pict-screens that had been extruded from the body of one of the bridge sensor-daemons.
Urkrathos could just make out the shapes of Reavers and Warlords, even a few Warhound Scout Titans. One Titan had fallen and Urkrathos’s trained eye spotted the signs of a short, vicious battle among the wreckage. There were bodies and bullet scars everywhere. But Urkrathos wasn’t interested in that.
His eye caught the cherry-red of molten metal and he homed in on one pict-screen showing a massive charred crater, molten wreckage smouldering in its centre. “There.” He said to the sensor-daemon. “Enlarge.”
The sensor-daemon moaned and its bulbous, fleshy body quivered as most of the pict-screens sank back into its skin and the one showing the crater grew larger. The image shuddered as the ocular strained to refocus before the image was sharp again.
Urkrathos studied it more closely—a Titan had been destroyed, recently and catastrophically He couldn’t tell what type of Titan it had been, but that wasn’t what interested him—what he really noticed was the massive footprints crushed deep into the rockcrete.
He willed the ship’s sensors to scan along the path of the footprints. They were massive, larger even than those of an Imperator Titan. Then the scanners ranged across an expanse of shimmering white armour, bright even through the static on the pict-screen.
Urkrathos saw the flicker of green flame, the massive multi-barelled gun and the graceful lines of something that could never have been built by tech-priests, Dark Mechanicus or otherwise.
He had found it. The tribute promised by Chaeroneia to Abaddon the Despoiler, the tribute Urkrathos had been sent by the Despoiler to collect. The Father of Titans, the ultimate god-machine, which contained within it the information needed to build a thousand more of its kind. The weapon that would end the Thirteenth Black Crusade and begin Abaddon’s inexorable conquest of the galaxy.
“Hold position,” ordered Urkrathos. “And prepare the landing parties.”
In the time it took Alaric to raise his gun, the Castigator flitted to the far side of the chamber, its burning eyes narrowed with anger. In the time it took to pull the trigger, the green fire had flowed from its eyes, down its mouthless face and arms and surrounded its clawed hands.
Storm bolter fire spattered across the chamber as Alaric sprayed on full-auto. The Castigator moved almost too fast for Alaric to see—two shots thunked into its chest but the rest flew just wide, blasting spider-web cracks into the data-blocks which flared glossy black where they were hit.
“Betrayal!” screamed the daemon. “It understands and yet it defies! Treachery!” The Castigator, wreathed in flame, dived at Alaric. Alaric turned one hand away but the other grabbed his gun arm, forcing it away as he fired another volley of shots.
The daemon wrenched Alaric up off the data-block. For a moment Alaric was looking into those hate-filled green eyes, the flame rippling over his armour and the skin of his face. Then the Castigator threw Alaric with all its might, straight into the data-block wall behind him.
Alaric’s armoured bulk was considerable and the Castigator was strong. Alaric smashed through the glassy data medium, thousands of shards slicing at him as he flew. He crashed through several layers of the cogitator core and then was bathed in ice-cold green fire, boiling around him with enough force to throw him further.
Alaric realised where he was. He had flown right through the burning eye of the Castigator’s Titan, into the open air. He thought quickly enough to grab the lip of the armour below the Titan’s immense face, his legs dangling over the sheer drop down to the ground. He pulled himself onto the carapace, his Marine’s training enabling him to casually count off his injuries without the pain overwhelming him—his face was burned, the back of his ribcage was fractured and the shoulder of his gun arm was badly wrenched.
He saw a huge, dark shape above him, a massive wedge of corrupted metal so vast it was like a rotting steel sky. A spacecraft, come to Chaeroneia to answer the Castigator’s signal and take the Father of Titans back to the court of Abaddon. That meant Alaric was almost too late.
A sound snapped Alaric’s attention away from the sight. Something was bounding across the carapace towards Alaric—bestial, canine, half-way between lizard and insect, with a snapping lopsided maw full of lashing tentacles. A daemon.
Alaric fumbled to get his Nemesis halberd off his back, but he was too slow and the thing was on him. The edge of the carapace was near and the surface was slippery and curved—Alaric fought to keep his footing as he tried to draw his weapon and he knew he wouldn’t have time before the creature slammed into him and pitched him over the edge to his death.
A sound like a thunderclap ripped out of nowhere and the daemon came apart in a shower of black-green gore. Alaric looked up to see Brother Dvorn lunge out from behind the curve of the Titan’s high armoured collar, smacking his Nemesis hammer into the hissing remains of the daemon.
“Justicar!” said Dvorn in surprise. “You’re alive! He glanced down at the puddle of acidic mess that had once been the daemon. “Damn things came at us in a mass. We fought them off but there are still some left. Haulvarn reckons we’re an infection and these things are the immune system.”
“He’s right,” said Alaric, bracing himself against the Titan’s collar armour and moving away from the edge. “But there’s worse. I found the greater daemon controlling this machine and it’s angry. And by the look of it we’ll have company very soon.” Alaric pointed up at the ship hanging above them—lander ports were already opening on its underside and Alaric knew that it would only be a few minutes before landing craft or drop pods rained down, full of Chaos troops eager to claim their tribute.
“Justicar!” called Brother Haulvarn, hurrying across the carapace. Like Dvorn he had obviously fought long and hard against the Castigator’s lesser daemons—perhaps that was why Alaric had made it to the cogitator core unmolested by them. “I felt it wake. What is it?”
“I don’t know for sure and it doesn’t matter. Brothers, this machine must be destroyed. The reactor core is open, you can get in through the Titan’s eye. Do whatever you can to destabilize it.”
“Yes, justicar,” said Haulvarn. “And the daemon?”
The Castigator’s burning form burst out through the top of the daemon’s head, screaming its rage, the muscles of its new daemonic body writhing as it turned its anger into raw strength to tear Alaric apart.
“I’ll deal with it,” said Alaric. “The Chaos fleet wants the Titan. Don’t leave them anything to find. Go!”
Haulvarn and Dvorn ran round towards the front of the Titan’s head. As Alaric had hoped, the Castigator ignored them. It was Alaric it wanted to kill. Alaric was the betrayer—the one who had understood, but not submitted.
The Castigator screeched and sent bolts of green flame rippling down towards Alaric like comets. But Alaric, for all his size and the weight of his armour, was a Space Marine, his body enhanced to be quick as well as strong. He rolled away from the first strike and ducked past the next, spraying fire up at the Castigator. The rear edge of the carapace was dangerously close and the yawning drop swung by as Alaric scrabbled away from the daemon’s fire. The Castigator was fast, too and zipped around above the Titan.
More fire fell in fat shimmering bursts that blew hissing craters in the Titan’s shoulder armour. The Castigator was frustrated. It had probably never failed to get its way before. It didn’t care any more about subtle manipulations or a plan that had taken a thousand years to play out. It just wanted to kill. It was the only advantage Alaric had and he was going to use it.
The Castigator dived, determined to finish Alaric with his bare claws. Alaric swept the Nemesis halberd at it and cut a deep gouge across the Castigator’s chest, stepping to the side as the daemon sla
mmed a fist into the carapace.
The daemon lashed out and caught Alaric on the chest. Alaric stumbled backwards and the daemon was upon him, slashing at him, cutting through the ceramite of his chest armour as if it was nothing, battering him backwards towards the edge.
The daemon was strong. As strong as anything Alaric had ever faced in close combat. And it was winning.
Alaric felt an arm break in the Castigator’s grip. It was his gun arm. He could do without it for now. He wrenched the arm around, feeling it fold uselessly and slip out of the Castigator’s grip. It gave him the freedom to force the Castigator off him and headbutt the creature square in its featureless face. The daemon reeled and Alaric spun his halberd, cracking the butt end into the Castigator’s throat and following up with a slash that carved a furrow down its face.
Teeth slid from the edges of the wound, giving the Castigator a revolting vertical mouth that drooled blood as the Castigator howled. It kicked out and prehensile claws on its foot gripped Alaric’s leg. The Castigator soared upwards, flying up above the Titan with Alaric dangling from its grip. The collar armour shot by and suddenly Alaric was high in the air, the drop dizzying as it spun beneath him as the Castigator flew high up above the titan works, towards the steel sky of the Chaos ship.
It was going to drop him. It was so simple. Alaric could fight as well as almost any other soldier the Imperium had, but one thing he couldn’t do was fly.
The Castigator let go. Alaric pivoted in the air, shifting his weight to turn himself the right way up. He stabbed up with the halberd, forcing his broken arm to move in a two-handed strike that thrust the halberd blade up over his head.
The blade punched into the Castigator’s abdomen and passed right through. Alaric twisted the blade and it caught, leaving him hanging by the halberd. The Castigator twisted and screamed, trying to dislodge the blade and send Alaric tumbling to his death. But it was losing height, too, its concentration broken and its powers of flight compromised by rage and pain. The Castigator swooped low, not much slower than a dead fall, the surface of the titan works streaking by beneath it. Alaric hung on grimly as the daemon flew between the legs of the Warlord Titan and banked to avoid the solid mass of a bunker.
[Grey Knights 02] - Dark Adeptus Page 29