Let The Galaxy Burn

by Marc

  ‘Without it, there can be no more of us. Without it, the Emperor’s crusade ends. Without it, Chaos has free rein.’

  Lorus drew back the sheet, revealing the naked corpse of an Avenging Son, whose journey to the Chapel of Martyrs had been delayed for the sake of this demonstration. Korpus’s gaze lingered for a moment on the dead man’s face as he wondered what battles he had seen in the life of righteous conflict that had led him here. By the time the young apprentice medic looked back at his instructor, the old man had drawn a scalpel, longer and much thinner than those Korpus had seen thus far, from a stiff leather pouch strapped to his forearm. Lorus cast his eyes across the five who sat before him.

  ‘Now you will learn what it truly means to be an Apothecary.’

  THE LONG-DEAD instructor’s words always echoed in Korpus’s memory while performing an Excision. The ghost of the preservatives’ tang pricked the back of his throat as he carved the tiny, delicate vesicles from the base of the throat and deep within the chest. Had the wind that howled along the gully not increased while he worked on Pereus, the scent memory would have been augmented by the more powerful odour of the fresh fluid in the phials he unlatched from the storage bays set beneath his armour’s thigh-plates. Each of the pair of glands was deposited in a phial, their tops sealed and then replaced in their sheaths.

  Korpus secured the catches on the plates of double-thickness ceramite, intended to shield the precious cargo from damage that would doubtless blow the rest of Korpus to the winds of space. Replacing the scalpel in the instrument pack and donning his gloves, he prepared to leave. But there was one last ritual to perform.

  ‘You are a martyr to the Emperor’s will.’ he intoned over Pereus’s eviscerated remains.

  The dead man would have met the Apothecary’s gaze, had not a dense layer of ash settled across his face, covering it completely.

  ‘You shall be remembered. You shall be avenged.’

  ‘APOTHECARY!’ COMMANDER SEIXEUS’S voice rang in Korpus’s ears during a sudden lull in the static.

  ‘Apothecary Korpus reporting, praise His name.’ he replied. Having worked his way out of the defile, Korpus was retracing his steps up the long, rocky incline, heading once more towards the base camp. The number of loaded phials he had been carrying, excised from the bodies of Avenging Sons who had fallen in the battle to hold the perimeter, had prompted his initial decision to return, to place the glands in more permanent storage to be returned via Thunderhawk to the Avenging Son’s Chapter ship. Pereus’s glands had filled the last of the bays and made his return all the more imperative.

  ‘The order to regroup went out an hour past.’ Selleus said. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Incoming, my lord.’ Korpus lifted his visored gaze. There, visible through the ash-storm, sat the fortified chateau from which Selleus spoke. In his mind’s eye, he saw the remaining Avenging Sons, gathered around their commander, preparing themselves for the assault that would inevitably follow the regrouping. Longing to join them, to feel the holy fire of battle leap within him, he increased his pace over the uneven ground.

  ‘Pereus fell. Excision was required.’ he continued. ‘Your order did not reach me. This damnable static…’

  As if summoned by his words, a fresh wave of storm-generated interference engulfed much of Selleus’s reply.

  ‘…new incursion…’

  Korpus slammed an armoured fist against the side of his helmet. As if mocking his frustration, the static rose in volume. The import of the commander’s words was not lost on Korpus: yet more Chaos Marines had landed on Antillis IV.

  ‘Cognis dead…’

  The glands which resided within the Company Librarian were of especial value. Implanted in the correct candidate, they would provide the Chapter with a replacement for the veteran psyker, whose reading of the Emperor’s Tarot and subtle awareness of the aetheric shifts that heralded the arrival of daemonic forces had turned the tide of battle against greater numbers than had thus far been encountered on Antillis IV. However, the idea of a psychic shock wave powerful enough to end Cognis’s long and loyal service almost beggared the imagination. The odds against the Avenging Sons had, it seemed, become much worse.

  The hiss and crackle faded and Korpus grabbed the opportunity to reply. ‘I am almost with you, sir. I will perform the excision on Cognis and be ready to stand with you.’

  ‘NO!’ Selleus cut vehemently across his Apothecary’s transmission. He spoke quickly, obviously mindful of possible interference. ‘Your orders are to quit the planet, taking all excised glands with you. If that proves to be impossible, you are to destroy them all, including your own. Do you understand?’

  For a heartbeat, Korpus struggled to digest the message. Quit the planet? That was not the way of the Avenging Sons. Fight, yes. Die, if necessary. But run?

  ‘Apothecary, respond,’ came Selleus’s voice. ‘Did you receive my last transmission?’ A faint crackle had begun to edge his words.

  ‘Transmission received, commander.’ Korpus forced his reply from between numb lips. ‘But not understood. I can store the glands on my return to base. Surely we can fight on?’ Korpus glanced up at the chateau, still maddeningly far above him.

  ‘Negative.’ A susurrating hiss washed over Selleus’s words, growing steadily in volume. ‘Cognis’s last message was clear… Outer wall breached… compound overrun… Imperative… all viable glands… out of enemy hands… Imperative!… We embrace… Mercy’s Kiss.’

  Mercy’s Kiss: the name given to the small pistol which hung at Korpus’s belt – and the belt of every Apothecary. With it, Korpus would ease the pain of the fatally wounded, thus buying his patient an easier demise and himself more time to perform an Excision. The message in Selleus’s use of the name was clear.

  The commander’s voice erupted into a series of howling whoops and squeals – interference caused by the close proximity of a large concentration of warp energy. The picture in Korpus’s mind’s eye changed from one of his company preparing to take the war to the enemy, to one of a beleaguered outpost fighting a last-ditch battle against the warp hordes.

  ‘Message received and understood!’ Korpus shouted his reply in the hope that it might reach his commander. ‘You shall be remem—’

  Before he could complete the litany, the distant chateau dissolved in a series of explosions. Gouts of rock and ash flew into the air. A multiple concussion swept down the hillside, pushing a rolling cloud of ash before it. Korpus dropped to the ground, curled so as to present his back to the avalanche and protect the phials loaded in his thigh-packs.

  For what seemed like an eternity, the falling debris beat a relentless tattoo against Korpus’s ceramite carapace. As he lay there, his commander’s last words rang in his ears – and with it, the questions he longed to ask: how had the situation become so dire that his entire company would choose suicide over continued resistance? Why was it so important for the glands in his care to be taken off-world or destroyed?

  Eventually the rock fall subsided and Korpus climbed to his feet, ash falling from his shoulders like snow. Looking up at the smoking remains of the chateau, reduced to a ragged collection of charred fragments by the detonation of the company’s entire store of munitions, he completed the ritual. Never before had he said the words with such fury and such determination: ‘You shall be avenged!’

  GUIDED BY THE advice of Tiresias, the Company Astropath, Selleus had ordered the Avenging Sons’ Thunderhawk gunships to make landfall at the edge of the greatest concentration of warp energy. Never one to waste time picking a way through the opposition’s perimeter, he preferred to strike at the enemy’s heart. The reports received from Antillis IV’s Imperial garrison upon their company ship’s shift out of warp made it clear that any such tactical niceties were already redundant. The planet’s Imperial Governor had waited too long before sending a request for help – whether this was due to misplaced confidence or sheer incompetence no longer mattered. The Avenging Sons would have to drive stra
ight for the centre of the enemy’s forces, or all was lost.

  But all, it seemed, was lost. Korpus’s mind nagged at the fact as he made his way towards the drop zone: a garrison airfield still several hours distant. Defended by a unit of Imperial Guardsmen, the Thunderhawks offered his only chance of obeying his commander’s final order.

  Turning his back on the rocky outcrop which now bore only the smouldering remains of his brothers, Korpus forged across a landscape littered with evidence of Antillis IV’s damnation: shattered hulks of Chimera troop carriers, their tracks blown from under them while attempting a strategic withdrawal. A Leman Russ tank, presumably the troop carriers’ escort, had been tossed aside like a discarded toy, its armour plating shredded, its crew reduced to bloody daubs. Korpus picked his way between the hulks, wary in case the Chaos-inspired troops that had inflicted such damage had posted a rearguard.

  ‘Apothecary!’ The faint plea drifted across the field of static that filled his transceiver’s earplug and was gone so quickly that Korpus couldn’t be sure it had come from beyond the confines of his own skull. Perhaps it was just a memory of cries he had heard on many battlefields on many worlds. He shivered, then picked up his pace, heading for a stand of flash-blasted trees, the ash-blizzard howling at his back.

  Just inside the tree line, Korpus found more wreckage: a battery of Basilisks, reduced to so much scrap, their crews torn to pieces. As he surveyed the organic detritus that lay, draped across the remains of the artillery pieces, the cry came again.

  ‘Apothecary!’

  ‘An echo, nothing more.’ he told himself, though he could not suppress the shiver that ran through him. The call of a wounded Space Marine, broadcast hours ago, bouncing back to the planet’s surface from the warp-clogged troposphere. The rest of his company had answered the order to regroup and died beside their commander. Korpus was the last of them.

  ‘And you have your orders,’ he reminded himself, his voice sounding dead and flat inside his helmet. He should have been with them to meet that last assault. Selleus’s last transmission made no sense. The righteous determination with which he had promised his commander vengeance had faded, leaving only questions and confusion.

  ‘Confusion is the seed-bed of Chaos,’ Korpus intoned, remembering an aphorism from the Avenging Sons’ Chapter Book as he marched on through the trees. Their branches had been stripped and blackened in the wake of the Chaos army’s progress. Massive boles had been overturned; wind-blown ash now gathered among their roots.

  ‘Uproot it, in the Emperor’s name.’ he continued. If only it were that simple.

  HOURS PASSED, EVERY one of them eating up the distance between Korpus and the airfield. Rugged, mountainous countryside gave way to flat plains and occasional patches of woodland. By nightfall, the Apothecary could see the gap-toothed outline of a city on the horizon, backlit by a dull reddish glow, which could mean only one thing: the forces of Chaos had reached the city. The firelight would be the result of the massive pyres built from the corpses of the city’s inhabitants, gouting oily smoke and adding to the ash storms which continued to swirl about him as he marched.

  The Thunderhawks’ drop zone was located on the outskirts of the city. Had the Imperial troops left to guard the attack ships been able to hold off their attackers, then Korpus would be able to fulfil his commander’s orders. If not…

  ‘We may yet meet in the Book of Martyrs, Pereus.’ Korpus muttered grimly as he strode on, step after tireless, servo-assisted step.

  The night passed in a barely-remembered monotony of motion. Implanted in the early stages of a Space Marine’s genetic conditioning, the Catalepsian Node allowed such a warrior to reduce all non-essential mental processes to a minimum, mimicking the effects of sleep, yet retain full awareness of his surroundings and objectives.

  Korpus returned to full wakefulness as the first rays of the Antillis system’s bloated sun rose between the buildings that now towered above him. He had reached the outskirts of the city and now marched along its cracked and buckled highways, still heading towards the airstrip. The ruins of what had once been an industrial area flanked the highway with shattered factories and storage yards.

  As he marched, Korpus recited the Morning Prayer of the Avenging Sons: ‘If this day be my last, I shall spend it in the service of your will, Emperor, Saviour, Last Hope of Mankind.’ Light years away, aboard the vast, cathedral-like Chapter ship that was the home of the Avenging Sons, the morning bell would be tolling. Every Avenging Son not on assignment would be gathered in the Great Chapel, reciting the same prayer as if with one voice. ‘For I am an instrument of your will, a scourge of your enemies. I am an…’

  The voice that burst from his transceiver stopped Korpus in his tracks, the remainder of the Morning Prayer unspoken. The voice was high and clear, uttering a battle cry he never expected to hear again.

  ‘Avenging Sons!’

  ‘AVENGING SONS!’ SCOUT Vaelus swung his bolter left and right, pumping bolt after bolt into the Traitor Marines which advanced towards him between the high towers of containerised foodstuffs that would now never leave this storage yard for other star systems.

  ‘Avenging Sons!’ Scout Salvus, to Vaelus’s right, took up the war cry, as did Scout Marus, to his left. Their bolters spat explosive death into the faces of the servants of the warp, vaporising heads, severing limbs – but it was not enough.

  Their black-armoured opponents seemed not to feel the pain of their injuries. Shrieking with daemonic laughter and crying, ‘Khorne! Khorne!’ even as another bolt detonated against their armour, they pressed forward. And there were so many of them, jostling with one another to be the first to taste the flesh of a fledgling Space Marine. So many…

  Something slammed against Vaelus’s back. Scout Tallis, flanked by Scouts Orris and Flavus, forced back by the Khorne-inspired berserkers that advanced towards them, equally as heedless of the cannonade of bolter fire that was being pumped into their midst, now stood back-to-back with their battle-brothers.

  ‘For the Emperor!’ Vaelus cried. They might fall here today, but their enemy would know in whose name they died.

  ‘For the Emperor!’ came the unexpected reply, moments before Vaelus heard the muffled crack of a bolt pistol being discharged against an armoured body from closer than the two arms-lengths which separated the Scouts and their attackers. The concussive report sounded again and again, counterpointed by the high-pitched crackling whine of a power fist at full charge. High-voltage detonations punctuated the whine as it connected with armour. The copper tang of boiling blood reached Vaelus as he caught his first glimpse of the figure that was cutting a swathe through the berserkers, fighting with an almost equally mindless fury: a figure whose armour bore the insignia of the Avenging Sons. A figure in white.

  ‘FOR THE EMPEROR!’ Korpus’s blood sang as he parried the downward sweep of a chainsword with his power fist. The whirring blade shattered against the glove’s energy field. Korpus slammed his bolt pistol against the black, sigil-etched breastplate of his attacker and pulled the trigger twice. Still laughing, the berserker fell back, his chest a smoking ruin. Stepping past him, Korpus placed the open palm of his power fist against the back of another skull-helmed traitor. The Chaos Marine, still too mindlessly intent on reaching the Scouts to react to the new threat, stiffened as his armour’s servos went into spasm. ‘Vengeance!’ Korpus breathed, and closed his fist.

  MINDS LOST TO the berserker fury of the Blood God, the Chaos Marines reacted with fatal slowness to the whirlwind of death that had appeared in their midst. Pressed close in their desire to reach the Scouts, they found turning to meet the white-armoured killer difficult: ablative plates snagged and took valuable seconds to disengage, seconds that allowed Korpus to step close, press the muzzle of his bolt pistol against the grinning, fanged skull of a face plate and pull the trigger.

  Seeing this, Vaelus closed the gap between himself and the nearest Chaos Marine – and was almost decapitated by his intended target
’s chainsword. Dropping to one knee to avoid the chattering blade, the Scout pressed his bolter against the nearest of the Chaos Marine’s knee joints and fired. Rising as the crippled berserker fell, Vaelus fired again, three times, vaporising the traitor’s head.

  ‘Forward, Avenging Sons!’ Vaelus cried. ‘The day can still be ours!’ He turned, searching for a new target, and found himself visor-to-visor with the Scouts’ white-armoured saviour. Without a word, the Apofhecary stepped past him, heading for the line of Chaos Marines which had closed upon the three Scouts at Vaelus’s back and now threatened to overwhelm them.

  Before turning to follow Korpus, Vaelus glanced along the narrow passageway between the containers. Moments before, there had been a seedling mass of black armour and grinning skulls. Now a tangled carpet of shattered, smoking corpses lay before him.

  ‘Emperor be praised. He has delivered us!’ Vaelus breathed, then hurried to join the battle that still raged.

  ‘ALL OF THEM?’ Salvus’s voice betrayed the mixture of disbelief, confusion and fear felt by all of the Scouts as they listened to Korpus’s account of the last hours of the Second Company.

  ‘The entire Second Company, yes.’ Korpus, helmetless, replied as he worked on the stump of Marus’s right arm, using a long-needled syringe to inject unguents into the raw pink flesh. The Scout’s genetically-altered blood had already clotted, sealing the wound, but necrotising infections were still a risk to one who had yet to complete the full course of enhancements that would elevate him to Space Marine status.

  ‘Time is a factor here,’ Korpus said, after binding Marus’s arm and re-securing his helmet. ‘This world is lost. My orders are to save the glands in my keeping. There will be other traitorous abominations such as these who will try to stop me. I may require an escort.’