He called a halt and opened the link to his fellow commanders once again as yet more bodies, hundreds now, floated to the surface of the swamp. Grey and lifeless meat still clung to their bones and the imparts of the Titans’ footfalls gave their dead limbs a horrid animation.
‘This is Loken,’ he said. ‘I’ve found some bodies.’
‘Are they Temba’s men?’ asked Horus.
‘I can’t tell, sir,’ answered Loken. ‘They’re too badly decomposed. It’s hard to tell. I’m checking now.’
He slung his bolter and leaned forwards, gripping the nearest corpse and lifting it from the water. Its bloated, rancid flesh was alive with wriggling motion, burrowing carrion insects and larvae nesting within it. Sure enough, mouldering scraps of a uniform hung from it and Loken wiped a smear of mud from its shoulder.
Barely legible beneath the scum and filth of the swamps he found a sewn patch bearing the number sixty-three emblazoned over the outline of a snarling wolf’s head.
‘Yes, 63rd Expedition,’ confirmed Loken. ‘They’re Temba’s, but I—’
Loken never finished the sentence as the bloated body suddenly reached up and fastened its bony fingers around his neck, its eyes filled with lambent green fire.
‘LOKEN?’ SAID HORUS as the link was suddenly cut off. ‘Loken?’
‘Something amiss?’ asked Torgaddon.
‘I don’t know yet, Tarik,’ answered the Warmaster.
Suddenly the hard bangs of bolter fire and the whoosh of flame units could be heard from all around them.
‘Second Company!’ shouted Torgaddon. ‘Stand to, weapons free!’
‘Where’s it coming from?’ bellowed Horus.
‘Can’t say,’ replied Torgaddon. ‘The mist’s playing merry hell with the acoustics.’
‘Find out,’ ordered the Warmaster.
Torgaddon nodded, demanding contact reports from all companies. Garbled shouts of impossible things came over the link, along with the louder bark of heavy bolter fire.
Gunfire sounded to his left and he spun to face it, his bolter raised before him. He could see nothing but the staccato flashes of weapon fire and the occasional blue streak of a plasma shot. Even the external senses of his armour were unable to penetrate the creeping mist.
‘Sir, I think we—’
Without warning the swamp exploded as something vast and bloated erupted from the water before him. Its gangrenous, rotten flesh barrelled into him, its bulk sufficient to knock him onto his back and into the swamp.
Before he went under the dark water, Torgaddon had the fleeting impression of a yawning mouth filled with hundreds of fangs and a glaucous, cyclopean eye beneath a horn of yellowed bone.
‘I DON’T KNOW. The command net just went crazy,’ said Moderati Primus Aruken in response to Princeps Turnet’s question. The external surveyors had suddenly and shockingly filled with returns that hadn’t been there a second ago and his princeps had demanded to know what was going on.
‘Well find out, damn you!’ ordered Turnet. ‘The Warmaster’s out there.’
‘Main guns spooled up and ready to fire,’ reported Moderati Primus Titus Cassar.
‘We need a damn target first, I’m not about to fire into that mess without knowing what I’m shooting at,’ said Turnet. ‘If it was Army I’d risk it, but not Astartes.’
The bridge of the Dies Irae was bathed in a red light, its three command officers seated upon their control seats on a raised dais before the green glow of the tactical plot. Wired into the very essence of the Titan, they could feel its every motion as though it were their own.
Despite the mighty war machine beneath him, Jonah Aruken suddenly felt powerless as this unknown enemy arose to engulf the Sons of Horus. Expecting armoured opposition and an enemy they could see, they had been little more than a focus for the Imperial forces to rally around so far. For all the Titan’s overwhelming superiority in firepower, there was little they could do to aid their fellows.
‘Getting something,’ reported Cassar. ‘Incoming signal.’
‘What is it? I need better information than that, damn you,’ shouted Turnet.
‘Aerial contact. Signal’s firming up. Fast moving and heading towards us.’
‘Is it a Stormbird?’
‘No, sir. All Stormbirds are accounted for in the deployment zone and I’m not picking up any military transponder signals.’
Turnet nodded. ‘Then it’s hostile. Do you have a solution, Aruken?’
‘Running it now, princeps.’
‘Range six hundred metres and closing,’ said Cassar. ‘God-Emperor protect us, it’s coming right for us.’
‘Aruken! That’s too damn close, shoot it down.’
‘Working on it, sir.’
‘Work faster!’
THE DENSE MISTS made looking through the frontal windshield pointless; nevertheless, there was an irresistible fascination in looking out at an alien world – not that there was much, or indeed anything, to see. Thus, Petronella’s first impressions upon breaching the upper atmosphere were of disappointment, having expected exotic vistas of unimaginable alien strangeness.
Instead, they had been buffeted by violent storm winds and could see nothing but the yellow skies and banks of fog that seemed to be gathered around another unremarkable patch of brown swampland ahead.
Though the Warmaster had politely, but firmly, declined her request to travel to the surface with the warriors of the speartip, she had been sure there was a glint of mischief in his eye. Taking that for a sign of tacit approval, she had immediately gathered Maggard and her flight crew in the shuttle bay in preparation for descent to the moon below. Her gold-skinned landing skiff launched in the wake of the Army dropships, losing itself in the mass of assault craft heading to the moon’s surface. Unable to keep pace with the invasion force, they had been forced to follow the emission trails and now found themselves circling deep in a soup of impenetrable fog that rendered the ground below virtually invisible.
‘Getting some returns from up ahead, my lady,’ said the first officer. ‘I think it’s the speartip.’
‘At last,’ she said. ‘Get as close as you can then set us down. I want to get out of this mist so I can see something worth writing about.’ ‘Yes, ma’am.’
Petronella settled back into her seat as the skiff angled its course towards the source of the surveyor return, irritably altering the position of her restraint harness to try to avoid creasing the folds of her dress. She gave up, deciding that the dress was beyond saving, and returned her gaze to the windshield as the pilot gave a sudden yell of terror.
Hot fear seethed in her veins as the mist before them cleared and she saw a huge mechanical giant before them, its proportions massive and armoured. Saw-toothed bastions and towers filled her vision, massive cannons and a terrible, snarling face of dark iron.
‘Throne!’ cried the pilot, hauling on the controls in a desperate evasive manoeuvre as roaring fire and light horrifyingly filled the windshield.
Petronella’s world exploded in pain and broken glass as the guns of the Dies Irae opened fire and blasted her skiff from the yellow skies.
LOKEN SURGED BACKWARDS in horror and disgust as the cadaver attempted to strangle the life from him with its slimy fingers. For something as apparently fragile as a rotted corpse, the thing was possessed of a fearsome strength and he was dragged to his knees by the weight and power of the creature.
With a thought, he flooded his metabolism with battle stimms and fresh strength surged into his limbs. He gripped the arms of his attacker and pulled them from its reeking torso in a flood of dead fluids and a wash of brackish blood. The fire died in the thing’s eyes and it flopped lifeless to the swamp.
He pushed himself to his feet and took stock of the situation, his Astartes training suppressing any notion of panic or disorientation. From all around them, the bodies he had previously thought to be lifeless were rising from the dark waters and launching themselves at his warriors.
&
nbsp; Bolters blasted chunks of mouldered flesh from their bodies or tore limbs from putrefied torsos, but still they kept coming, tearing at the Astartes with diseased, yellowed claws. More of the things were rising all around them and Loken shot three down with as many shots, shattering skulls and exploding chests with mass-reactive shells.
‘Sons of Horus, on me!’ he yelled. ‘Form on me!’
The warriors of 10th Company calmly began falling back to their captain, firing as they went at the necrotic horrors rising from the swamp like creatures from their worst nightmares. Hundreds of dead things surrounded them, mouldering corpses and bloated, muttering abominations, each with a single milky, distended eye and a scabrous horn sprouting from its forehead.
What were they? Monstrous xeno creatures with the power to reanimate dead flesh or something far worse? Thick, buzzing clouds of flies flew round them, and Loken saw an Astartes go down, the feeds on his helmet thick with fat bodied insects. The warrior frenziedly tore his helmet off and Loken was horrified to see his flesh rotting away with an unnatural rapidity, his skin greying and peeling away to reveal the liquefying tissue beneath.
The bark of bolter fire focussed him and he returned his attention to the battle before him, emptying magazine after magazine into the shambling mass of repulsive creatures before him.
‘Head shots only!’ he cried as he put another of the dead things down, its skull a ruin of blackened bone and sloshing ooze. The tide of the battle began to turn as more and more of the shambling horrors went down and stayed down. The green-fleshed things with grotesquely distended bellies took more killing, though it seemed to Loken that they dissolved into stinking matter as they fell into the water of the swamp.
More shapes moved through the mist as a thunderous roar of heavy cannon fire came from behind them, followed by the bright flare of an explosion high above. Loken looked up to see a golden landing skiff trailing smoke and fire wobble in the sky, though he had not the time to wonder what a civilian craft was doing in a warzone as yet more of the dead things climbed from the water.
Too close for bolters, he drew his sword and brought the monstrously toothed blade to life with a press of the activation stud. A ghastly thing of decomposed flesh and rotten meat hurled itself at him and he swung his blade two handed for its skull.
The blade roared as it slew, gobbets of wet, grey meat spattering his armour as he ripped the sword through from brainpan to groin. He swung at another creature, the green fire of its eyes flickering out as he hacked it in two. All about him, Sons of Horus went toe to toe with the terrible creatures that had once been members of the 63rd Expedition.
Rotted hands clamped onto his armour from beneath the water and Loken felt himself being dragged down. He roared and reversed his grip on his sword, stabbing it straight down into leering skulls and rotted faces, but incredibly their strength was the greater and he could not resist their pull.
‘Garvi!’ shouted Vipus, hacking enemies from his path as he forged through the swamp towards him.
‘Luc! Help me!’ cried Vipus, grabbing onto Loken’s outstretched arm. Loken gripped onto his friend’s hand as he felt another set of hands grip him around his chest and haul backwards.
‘Let go, you bastards!’ roared Luc Sedirae, hauling with all his might.
Loken felt himself rising and kicked out as the swamp creatures finally released him. He scrambled back and clambered to his feet. Together, he, Luc and Nero fought with bludgeoning ferocity, although there was no shape to the battle now, if there ever had been. It was nothing more than butcher work, requiring no swordsmanship or finesse, just brute strength and a determination not to fall. Bizarrely, Loken thought of Lucius, the swordsman of the Emperor’s Children Legion, and of how he would have hated this inelegant form of war.
Loken returned his attention to the battle and, with Luc Sedirae and Nero Vipus in the fight, he was able to gain some space and time to reorganise.
‘Thanks, Luc, Nero. I owe you,’ he said in a lull in the fighting. The Sons of Horus reloaded bolters and cleaned chunks of dead flesh from their swords. Sporadic bursts of gunfire still sounded from the swamp and strobing flashes lit the fog with firefly bursts. Off to their left Loken saw a burning pyre where the skiff had come down, its flames acting as a beacon in the midst of the obscuring fog.
‘No problem, Garvi,’ said Sedirae, and Loken knew that he was grinning beneath his helmet. ‘You’ll do the same for me before we’re out of this shit-storm, I’ll wager.’
‘You’re probably right, but let’s hope not.’
‘What’s the plan, Garvi?’ asked Vipus.
Loken held up his hand for silence as he attempted to make contact with his Mournival brothers and the Warmaster once more. Static and desperate cries filled the vox, terrified voices of army soldiers and the damned, gurgling voices that kept saying, ‘Blessed be Nurghleth…’ over and over.
Then a voice cut across every channel and Loken almost cried aloud in relief to hear it.
‘All Sons of Horus, this is the Warmaster. Converge on this signal. Head for the flames!’
At the sound of the Warmaster’s voice, fresh energy filled the tired limbs and hearts of the Astartes, and they moved off in good order towards the burning pillar of fire coming from the wrecked skiff they had seen earlier. Loken killed with a methodical precision, each shot felling an opponent. He began to feel that they finally had the measure of this grotesque enemy.
Whatever fell energy bestowed animation upon these diseased nightmares was clearly incapable of giving them much more than basic motor functions and an unremitting hostility.
Loken’s armour was covered in deep gouges and he wished he knew how many men he had lost to the loathsome hunger of the dead things.
He vowed that this Nurghleth would pay dearly for each of their deaths.
SHE COULD BARELY breathe, her chest hiking as she drew in convulsive gulps of air from the respirator Maggard was pushing against her face. Petronella’s eyes stung, tears of pain coursing down her cheeks as she tried to push herself into a sitting position.
All she remembered was a fury of noise and light, a metallic shriek and a bone-jarring impact as the skiff crashed and broke into pieces. Blood filled her senses and she felt excruciating pain all down her left side. Flames leapt around her, and her vision blurred with the sting of the atmosphere and smoke.
‘What happened?’ she managed, her voice muffled through the respirator’s mouthpiece.
Maggard didn’t answer, but then she remembered that he couldn’t and twisted her head around to gain a better appreciation of their current situation. Torn up bodies clothed in her livery littered the ground – the pilots and flight crew of her skiff – and there was a lot of blood covering the wreckage. Even through the respirator, she could smell the gore.
Cloying banks of leprous fog surrounded them, though the heat of the flames appeared to be clearing it in their immediate vicinity. Shambling shapes surrounded them and relief flooded her as she realised that they would soon be rescued.
Maggard spun, drawing his sword and pistol, and Petronella tried to shout at him that he must stand down, that these were their rescuers.
Then the first shape emerged from the smoke and she screamed as she saw its diseased flesh and the rotted innards hanging from its opened belly. Nor was it the worst of the approaching things. A cavalcade of cadavers with bloated, ruptured flesh and putrid, diseased bodies sloshed through the mud and wreckage towards them, clawed hands outstretched.
The green fire in their eyes spoke of monstrous appetites and Petronella felt a gut-wrenching terror greater than anything she had ever known.
Only Maggard stood between her and the walking, diseased corpses, and he was but one man. She had watched him train in the gymnasia of Kairos many times, but she had never seen him draw his weapons in anger.
Maggard’s pistol barked and each shot blasted one of the shambling horrors from its feet, neat holes drilled in its forehead. He fired and fired un
til his pistol was empty, and then holstered it and drew a long, triangular bladed dagger.
As the horde approached, her bodyguard attacked.
He leapt, feet first, at the nearest corpse and a neck snapped beneath his boot heel. Maggard spun as he landed, his sword decapitating a pair of the monsters, and his dagger ripping the throat from another. His Kirlian rapier darted like a silver snake, its glowing edge stabbing and cutting with incredible speed. Whatever it touched dropped instantly to the muddy ground like a servitor with its doctrina wafer pulled.
His body was always in motion, leaping, twisting and dodging away from the clutching hands of his diseased attackers. There was no pattern to their assault, simply a mindless host of dead things seeking to envelop them. Maggard fought like nothing she had ever seen, his augmetic muscles bulging and flexing as he cut down his foes with quick, lethal strokes.
No matter how many he killed, there were always more pressing in and they steadily forced him back a step at a time. The horde of creatures began to surround them, and Petronella saw that Maggard couldn’t possibly hold them all back. He staggered towards her, bleeding from a score of minor wounds. His flesh was blistered and weeping around the cuts and there was an unhealthy pallor to his skin, despite his respirator gear.
She wept bitter tears of horror as the monsters closed in, jaws opening wide to devour her flesh, and grasping hands ready to tear her perfect skin and feast on her innards. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. The Great Crusade wasn’t supposed to end in failure and death!
A corpse with mouldering, sagging skin lurched past Maggard, his blade lodged in the belly of a giant, necrotic thing with green flesh that was thick with flies.
She screamed as it reached for her.
Deafening bangs thundered behind her and the creature disintegrated in an explosion of wet meat and bone. Petronella covered her ears as the thunderous roar of gunfire came again and her attackers were torn apart in a series of rancid explosions, falling back into the fires of the skiff and burning with stinking green flames.
False Gods Page 10