Wrath of Iron

by Chris Wraight

  Khadi coughed up more phlegm, and felt Marivo steady her as she got it out. It tasted bitter, as if she’d swallowed engine lubricant.

  ‘You could go,’ she said, feeling the worst of the shakes begin to ebb. ‘I’ll slow you down.’

  Marivo looked over his shoulder, like a hunted beast. The explosions from down the tunnels were coming nearer. With the Warhounds out of action and the Iron Hands seemingly careless of how much their allies suffered, they were horribly exposed.

  ‘You will,’ he said, grabbing her breastplate and hauling her up. He grunted with the effort of it. ‘Throne, you really will.’

  She didn’t resist. Once she was on her feet she found she could stand, just as long as she leaned on him.

  Khadi couldn’t see what Marivo’s expression was. The small patch of exposed flesh around his chin looked bloody, like he’d taken a heavy blow there. His breath came in tight, shallow bursts.

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ she asked.

  ‘Plan?’

  ‘You always have one.’

  Marivo laughed – a bitter, choking snort that cut off quickly.

  ‘Is that right?’ he said, dragging her along with him.

  Together, they crept along the shattered grav-train tracks. Tracer fire shot out above them, lighting up the ferrocrete of the tunnel roof. Munition booms, fuel-cell detonations, human screams, daemonic screams, all of them followed, resounding in the vast, enclosed spaces overhead.

  Khadi clung on tight to Marivo, gritting her teeth, trying to squeeze the nightmares out of her mind’s eye.

  ‘I’ll work on something,’ said Marivo, panting as he dragged her along. ‘For now, just try to keep walking.’

  Telach looked up. The real world overlapped with the psychic one in a shifting, sliding blaze of false colour.

  The vast subterranean gates to the Capitolis, the terminus of the long transit tunnels, stretched away above him, massive and imposing. Huge pillars of adamantium reared up from the floor, banded with granite and carved into exotic swirls. Stone and metal glimmered in the dark, outlined with shrouds of corpse-light that flickered and swayed rhythmically.

  Daemons wheeled and dived in front of the gates, tearing through the air like flocks of raptors. Dozens of them had come through the portal and into the tunnels, shrieking and throwing themselves into combat. As they passed, auras of madness lingered in the smoggy dark. The physical elements themselves seemed to recoil from their presence, leaving eddies of ash hanging in the air like the wash of ships in oil-fouled water.

  Some were downed by the hail of bolter fire that rose up to greet them. Others veered their way through the barrage and came crashing to earth, only to meet the massed blades of the claves. Their death-screams echoed up into the shadow-shrouded vaults, bouncing from the pillars and running down the grav-train tracks.

  But daemons, even lesser daemons such as these, were more than a match for individual Iron Hands, and their capriciousness in battle was for a purpose. As Telach knew, but few other mortal humans did, daemons never died. Their fragile physical forms could be shattered, banishing their essence back to the shadow world that spawned them, but respite from their malice was only temporary.

  So it was that the daemons opened themselves to risk so casually. For eternal beings such as them, birthed at the dawn of mortal sentience, the price of temporary dissolution was low. Every time one of their bodies absorbed the leading edge of a mortal blade, another one of their dread sisters was given space to dart in and deliver a true killing blow.

  And when such inhuman weapons struck home, the Iron Hands died truly. Their bodies were durable, cast from genhanced sinew and buttressed with grafted bionics, but still they died. For every daemon that was sent howling back into the abyss, another human warrior took a mortal wound, or was ripped apart by snapping claws, or was prevented from coming to the aid of a brother.

  Throughout it all, the claves fought silently, grimly, mechanically. They stayed in close formation, matching the daemons’ chaotic rage with stoic resolve. They used their blades with precise, limited movements, and withdrew again when the work was done. Bolters were fired sparingly once the creatures had dropped to ground level. Every battle-brother knew that daemons were undone better with the weapons of eternity – swords, knives, axes, fists.

  Telach watched the brutality unfold – two mingled furies locked together in an close-pressed, desperate orgy of committed bloodletting. Slowly, painfully, the ground was won. Unlike the earlier fighting conducted against the masses of mutated human troops, this time the Iron Hands took heavy casualties. Each step was paid for in blood, but the claves remained resolute. They ignored the dead and fought their way up towards the towering gates.

  Khatir kept up his battle-cries during the grinding progress, his vox-amplified exhortations ringing out against the distant walls. His flamers lit up the dark, glowing magma-red and reflecting dully from the ebony of his shoulder guards. He advanced in tandem with Rauth and Clave Prime’s Veteran Sergeant Imanol. Even the daemons, those spirits of infinite contempt and mockery, shied away from them. When they eventually summoned the resolve to attack, Rauth smashed them aside with great sweeps of his glittering power sword. The blade shone like ice against velvet, electric blue and blazing with disruptor energy.

  Even that light, though, paled beside the brilliance of Telach and his three acolytes. The four Librarians stood apart from the main host, stretched out across the full expanse of the cavernous space, wreathed at all times in coruscating fire. Bright white flames raged over the nightshade-blue of their battle-plate, at once as hot as pitch and as cold as the void. The psykers were like pillars of fire in the night, and aether-born matter streamed towards them like glowing dust pulled into orbit around forming stars.

  The daemons knew well enough just how much the Librarians could hurt them. Alone among the warriors of the claves, Telach and his brothers controlled the very substance that gave them form. They could pull apart the hidden tapestry that underpinned the world of matter and extension. They could hear the secret dissonances in the aether, the dissonances that prefigured coming storms of warp magick. They could create devastating eddies of their own. They could perceive the souls of the living and the dead around them, overlaid onto the skein of physical perception like a targeting grid.

  Of all of them, Telach was the greatest. His power was the most complete, the most subtle, the most thorough, the most deadly. His mind strode across the planes of the warp with calm certainty, drawing dark energy from across the veils of reality and directing it, screaming, into the world of mortal existence. Throughout the long march along the tunnels, he had deployed his cold fire judiciously, protecting his brothers from the worst predations of the daemon horde and throwing the unholy creatures back towards this, their last redoubt. He had been immense, immutable, inviolable, a spark of dazzling clarity amid a battlefield of filth, horror and fear.

  And now the gates loomed before him, vast and corrupted. Telach could see the imprint of tormented souls in the metal and stone. He could hear their screams, locked in the very stuff of the hive spire, condemned to a living death amid the foundations of the immense Capitolis spires.

  He could see the open doors, each one embossed with bronze and iron. He could see the portal through which the horror still emanated. He could see the ancient engravings over the massive lintel – Turris Capitolis, Shardenus Primus Exultans – and the foul sigils that had been scrawled across them.

  Beyond the doors, he could see the beginning of the Great Stair – the gigantic passageway up into the hive towers beyond. He could feel the close warmth coming down from that opening, as if generated by the coals of a huge fire that had been burning for days and was only now coming to its full pitch of consuming heat.

  Telach could see all those things, far more acutely than even his fellow Codiciers in the clan, and the rank sickness of it all resonated
like a virus coursing through his bloodstream. His temples throbbed from the constant effort of maintaining the psychic shield around him. His hands bled freely from the summoning of warp-born fires. His muscles ached, his eyes pricked from tears, his mouth bled under his heavy blue helm.

  And yet, the goal was close. The ruinous charge down the transit corridors was at its end, and now only the gates themselves remained to be taken.

  Telach bowed his head for a moment, gathering his strength. Screams and the laughter of daemons passed, for a moment, into the background. He let the current of the warp sweep up into him, surging from the depths of his consciousness and into his waking mind. The power rose quickly, like dark waters pooling in the shaft of a well.

  No machine could do this.

  The words came to him unbidden, like a memory unearthed at random. He discarded them.

  By the Immortal Hand of the Emperor, the Master of Mankind.

  Telach recited those words reverently, concentrating on the task of gathering warp energy to himself. He knew the daemons would sense the build-up. Very soon they would streak towards him, heedless of the protective aegis swirling around him.

  Let them. Such bravado will only hasten their mortal deaths.

  He opened his eyes, and the world of the senses rushed back in. His heart-rates picked up. The myriad systems in his psychically-charged armour activated. His breathing deepened. The aether pumped through him, roaring and frothing at the bonds he had set on it.

  Gift me the power of that which is the doom of the weak. Gift me the power of that which our uttermost enemy calls home.

  Telach’s fingers began to leak warp power. It spilled from his gauntlets like pearls, smashing on the floor below and letting out flickers of glimmering witchlight. The massive potency was hard to contain, even before it reached the full level of devastation.

  Gift me the power which is the true and just inheritance of Mankind, his destiny, his calling, his birthright to rule.

  Telach lifted his head again. The gates towered over him. The screaming of the souls embedded in its structure reached fever-pitch – a chorus of agony arranged in mockery of the holy chants given every waking hour in the cathedrals of the boundless Imperium. Daemons, having sensed the danger, hurled themselves towards him, pulling free of combat with the Iron Hands in their midst and streaking in his direction. Their faces no longer laughed, but were pinched with fear.

  They knew what he was about to do.

  Telach knew what he was about to do.

  For all the pain he was in, for all the pain he knew it would bring him, he still smiled.

  For the honour of the Throne, for the honour of Manus.

  The smile broadened.

  Now you die.

  He flung his arms wide, and raw warp fire exploded out from them. Beams of piercing white light shot towards the gates, rippling and thrumming with uncoiled intensity. Two columns of aetheric-fire, snaking like tornados, lashed out from his hands and smashed into the doors of the gate.

  The daemons plunged into it and were torn apart. They detonated like frag-charges, scattering across the tunnel vaults in showers of blazing sparks. Telach’s columns of fire roared out – undiminishing, thundering and rushing with the force of eternity.

  It was agony. Even as the awesome power coursed through his body, Telach could feel it destroying him. He could feel his remaining flesh cauterising, curling away from the augmetics that riddled it. He could feel his hearts burst messily, flooding his chest with blood and drowning him from within.

  The sensations were illusions – visions of what would come should he fail to control the torrent of otherworldly flame – but they hurt him nonetheless. It felt for all the world like a part of him was dying; perhaps on some other plane of existence where the divide between warp and materium was less certain, perhaps nowhere else but in his mind.

  More. Give me more.

  The columns of crackling energy wrapped themselves around the open doors. Like two enormous flaming tentacles, they began to pull them closed.

  The daemons stepped up their frantic attacks. They tore towards him like bullets, crackling and burning as the warp-fire rushed through them.

  One nearly got to him. It detonated just metres from his unprotected face, shrieking like an animal as the rush of cold flame roared through it.

  Telach remained unmoving. His arms were flung wide, channelling the vast power roaring through him.

  I am the conduit. I am the process. I am the vessel.

  Slowly, grindingly, the doors began to close. The screams of the trapped souls in the metal reached a fresh crescendo. The Iron Hands stepped up their withering assault, launching fresh salvos of bolter fire into the fervid atmosphere. His Codiciers sent out warp fire of their own, cutting down the daemons even as they rallied for a final, frantic assault.

  Telach felt his strength began to ebb. He tasted fresh blood. His heartbeats picked up again, thudding like a drum deep within his rib-fused chest.

  Not yet. Just a little more.

  The fires lashed out, snaking around the edges of the doors. The gap between them narrowed down to a red-tinged slit. Telach began to cry out. He heard his own voice as if from far away, muffled by the crashing tides of the aether around him.

  The spire was resisting him. The stone, the metal, the ferrocrete – it was mustering against the power ignited at its base. Whatever dwelt at the summit had corrupted every part of the gigantic structure, like a cancer spreading down from the diseased head, and now the Capitolis itself was alive.

  When he felt the full extent of that power, Telach felt his strength falter. He remembered what he’d seen when his soul had been cut loose.

  I remember you being stronger.

  No!+ he roared, blazing his defiance psychically. +No. No.+

  Then he let loose one final time, feeling the power of the immaterium tear through him with the raging force of a hurricane. Fresh aether-fire surged out, thrashing and writhing, clamping onto the doors and hauling them together.

  They closed with a huge, echoing clang. As soon as the metal crashed together, the baleful presence from above lessened.

  Telach cut the raging inferno loose, and fell to one knee. Warp essence tore free of him, curling out into the dark like a whiplash, before exploding in a multi-coloured nova against the hot metal of the closed gates.

  The daemons, those that had survived the Iron Hands’ onslaught, launched into a final vicious assault, knowing they were cut off now and at the mercy of Emperor’s Angels. Still they came on, fearlessly, devastatingly, with the fire of the warp in their eyes.

  Telach drew in thick, heaving breaths. His real-world sight became blurred. He fell forwards, dizzy, and had to put out a hand to stop himself pitching to the floor.

  Every muscle in his body glowed with pain. Even his bionic implants had been stressed, and he could feel the heat in the mechanical components as they wound down.

  It was a dangerous time. Drained of energy, bereft of the warp-drawn aegis that protected him, his body and soul were vulnerable to the daemons.

  He looked up, ignoring the bite of pain in his neck muscles, readying to use his force-staff in self-defence.

  He needn’t have worried. Ten huge silhouettes of power armour surrounded him. He heard the roar of Khatir close by, driving his acolytes on to ever greater feats of arms. The daemons still rushed towards the bringer of their torment, shrieking with frustrated anguish, but had no chance of penetrating the cordon around him.

  Telach felt some of his strength return. He swallowed, and tasted the blood in his mouth. Moving slowly, panting with the effort, he regained his feet.

  Rauth broke from combat then, turned, and lumbered over to him. The commander’s armour was streaked with blood and purple fluid; an unholy mixture of mortal and immortal essences. In his absence, Imanol’s warriors maint
ained the protective shield.

  The gates are closed, lord,+ Telach sent. His mouth was still too raw to move.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Rauth. He sounded neither pleased nor disappointed, despite the fact that the tunnels had now been sealed from further enemy reinforcement. As ever, his tone was impassive. ‘What is your status?’

  I will live.+

  ‘Good.’

  Rauth looked out, over Telach’s shoulder and back down the long, gaping maw of the tunnels. Moving more gingerly, Telach turned to look the same way.

  ‘What do you see?’ asked Rauth.

  Telach grimaced, and gathered his farsight once again. The effort of summoning it felt like ripping sinew from bone.

  We have taken the tunnels, lord,+ he said, letting his senses sweep back down the length of them. +Once the residual enemy is dispatched, they will be secure.+

  His vision rushed onwards, racing across scenes of devastation.

  ‘And the mortals?’

  Telach’s mind-sight passed over the wreckage of three Warhound Titans, each one burning and gutted. They stood in the darkness like braziers, wrapped in unwholesome, purple-tinged flames. He saw whole companies of men lying butchered amid the slime of the tunnel floor. He saw lines of tanks, broken and tilted and with their armour plate defaced. Survivors still fought with traitors along the entire length of the transit routes. In the wells where the grav-train tracks had been sunk, blood lapped at the gutters like the tide against the shore.

  Heavy fighting,+ he sent.

  Rauth nodded.

  ‘When the last of the neverborn are dissipated, the claves will relieve them,’ he said. ‘Those that survived will be re-formed and will accompany us into the spires.’

  Telach let his mind-sight sink back behind his physical eyes.

  Thousands have died. Tens of thousands.

  He blinked heavily, and fresh blood ran down his cheeks.

  Was this the only way, lord?+ he asked, almost without meaning to. He caught himself too late, and found himself looking up into the blank deathmask of Rauth’s Terminator helm.