Fear to Tread

by James Swallow

  Every ten minutes, the vox muttered with the voices of the other teams checking in. They too had found the burned dead, along with more colonies of the strange black flies.

  An alert icon blinked in the corner of the Apothecary’s vision block and he halted, bringing up his gauntlet’s auspex again.

  ‘You have something?’ said Cassiel.

  He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, captain. A change in gas concentrations nearby.’

  Nakir hefted his boltgun. ‘Toxins?’

  Meros shook his head. ‘No, sir. But a marked rise in carbon dioxide and other by-products of respiration.’ He panned the sensor head around, letting it sample the air. ‘Something is alive nearby.’

  ‘Weapons to ready,’ he ordered. The commander’s face was unreadable as his men brought up their guns and snapped off safety catches. Carefully, he tabbed the vox-pickup in his gorget and spoke into it. His words were immediately amplified tenfold by an address relay in the helmet hanging at his waist. ‘Attention. This is Captain Dar Nakir of the IX Legion Astartes.’ His call rebounded off the walls and down the dark corridors. ‘Anyone within the sound of my voice, make yourself known. We are here to rescue you. You will not be harmed.’

  The last word echoed away from them, fading, and Meros held his breath, straining to listen.

  Up above, very distinctly, something heavy struck the bulkhead three times.

  ‘There.’ Gravato pointed towards a hatch in the wall beneath a twisted gantry.

  Nakir arranged his men in a staggered formation to cover all angles in the event of an ambush, and then climbed up, with Meros and the others following closely. The hatch was a thick autolock, the kind that would automatically seal shut in the event of catastrophic loss of atmosphere, but as the captain looked closer, he picked out thermal damage around the release clamps. ‘These handles have been welded in place. From the inside.’

  ‘They didn’t want anyone coming in after them,’ noted Cassiel.

  Meros held up the auspex, the green glow of the display backlighting his face. ‘Confirmed, my lord. Someone is in there.’

  Nakir stepped back, shooting a look at Gravato. ‘Get it open.’

  ‘Aye,’ he replied, raising the melta weapon with one hand, dialling down the projector choke with the other.

  ‘Wait!’ Meros stepped into the firing line. ‘We don’t know who is on the other side of this. The shock effect could be lethal.’

  ‘You have another suggestion, Apothecary?’

  ‘I do.’ Meros drew his chainaxe and threw a hard blow against the first of the clamps. Fractal-edged tungsten-alloy teeth met plasteel and yellow sparks flew. The handle spun away from its mounts, and in moments Meros had beheaded all of the clamps. Cassiel put his weight behind the hinges, and with a shout of tortured metal, the hatch swung back.

  It revealed a dark, wide space beyond, thick with human odours and stale atmosphere. Meros stepped over the threshold, the lamp over his shoulder bringing hard illumination to the gloom. It was hazy inside – and something else.

  The air in the chamber seemed strangely dead. It was almost as if a shroud had been placed over everything, muffling sounds and sensations even though nothing seemed quieter or less defined. He thought he could smell ozone.

  Bare feet slapped against metal and a slight, limping figure fell into the cone of the beam. Utterly out of place in the plasteel dungeon, the woman wore a fine sundress that was now much the worse for wear, with a short jacket draped over thin shoulders. Her face was pale and grubby beneath an unkempt knot of red hair. She had an expression that was somewhere between the poles of awe and relief.

  A long-fingered hand dared to came up and touch the sigil of the alatus cadere across Meros’s chestplate, and a smile like sunrise split her smoke-dirty face. ‘You are the Emperor’s Angels,’ she breathed.

  ‘We are,’ he replied.

  ‘I knew you would come for us.’ She spun on her heel and shouted into the shadows. ‘I told you they would come!’

  From the edges of the darkness, more survivors dared to show themselves, one by one coming forwards to see the Blood Angels, as if they wanted proof that this was not an illusion.

  Kreed had given his understanding when the Urizen had demanded it. He had never questioned; that was not the way of the Word Bearers. They were built, soul and bone, upon a certainty of purpose that was ultimate and unbreakable.

  Our blood is our oath.

  Those words were said in the years before the Enlightenment, back in the wastes of Colchis when the enemy were cruel priests and heartless lore-lords. They were spoken again when the Emperor came in his false glory. Now they were uttered in real, total truth for the first time, and it was a renewal. The Legion was born again under Lorgar’s revelations and it was, at last, right.

  The other, older truths, now revealed in the light of the new as mere husks, had been sloughed off as a snake would shed a desiccated skin. Those ghost-truths were not mistakes, but tests. The XVII Legion had been tested and found good.

  How could it be otherwise? The Word Bearers had broken down the barriers and at last ascended to the path of the real truth. The great road was revealed.

  Tanus Kreed believed this with all his heart. Doubt was unknown to him. If his Legion had failed to comprehend, if his master had not seen and brought them illumination… then they would have been forever trapped in false dogma. For a moment he thought of the Ultramarines who would perish on far distant Calth, the hidebound Imperial Fists, whose days were similarly numbered; the Salamanders and the Raven Guard ground into dust beneath the boot heel of the new order.

  None of them saw as the Word Bearers saw. None of them saw what Kreed laid eyes upon now.

  A being made of nightmares and war, too terrible for paltry words to encompass.

  It spared him an arch look and he recoiled, his flesh searing. The Acolyte brought up his hands to shield his face and felt them burn cold. Kreed’s eyes prickled as if a thousand needles stabbed through them into his skull. Each time he tried to gain some understanding of the massive, bestial form, the scale of it slipped away from him. It filled the room, and yet it seemed even larger than that. The iron walls surrounding them, decorated with layers of profane iconography, took on new, impermanent dimensions. Reality seemed to distort around the towering behemoth. All around the chamber, the litanic servitors were dropping dead where they stood, multiple mouths open in voiceless screams.

  At last the monster turned away, and mercifully Kreed was – for the moment – once again beneath its notice.

  Across the sacellum, the Warmaster’s ghostly avatar gave a nod to the winged creature. ‘What are you?’ The question flashed across the void, buzzing with malice.

  ‘Names are for cenotaphs,’ it rumbled, drooling black venom through gaping jaws. The creature gave an exaggerated bow, the blurred mass of it making a mockery of so very human a gesture. ‘Know that I am a Warlord of the Damned, Arbiter of Unmercy. I am your general upon the field of battle for this great conflict, Horus Lupercal.’ It chuckled and gave a mocking salute in the oldest of ways, flicking a clawed hand from its savage brow. ‘I know you yearn to call me daemon. That word fits well. I’ll skin it and wear it about my girth.’ It rocked back and forth on taloned feet, exuding a sense of incredible fury held barely in check. The massive creature was almost squirming with the need to commit violence, and Kreed dared to wonder what it could do given unfettered release.

  Above the shivering mass of the warp flask upon the bloody deck, Horus’s face hazed and reformed in a scowl. ‘If you are a mere general, then where is your commander-in-chief?’

  There was a barb there and the beast reacted to it, chains about its arms rattling in annoyance. ‘It is… indisposed. Much is to be done, I am told. Final preparations.’ The daemon shrugged, as if the thought of such a thing disgusted it. ‘The work of the hesitant and timid witch-minds disgusts me.’ It leered. ‘I came for blood and skulls.’

  ‘You’ll have them, enough to s
lake your thirst and more,’ Horus promised. ‘If you do as I command you now.’

  Kreed sensed the undercurrent beneath the Warmaster’s words, and he felt a flutter of panic in his hearts. The scope of this great turning, the complex and perfect design of the betrayal at Signus had been planned with exacting focus and absolute precision by the hand of Erebus and his ethereal cohorts.

  It could not be changed, not at the eleventh hour.

  Not even by Horus Lupercal, the fulcrum of the war to end all wars.

  The Acolyte dared to stand, taking a step towards the smoke-phantom that carried the Warmaster’s presence. ‘My lord,’ he began. ‘What do you intend?’

  The daemon made a motion with the smallest of its claws, less than a gesture; still, it was enough to make Tanus Kreed’s lungs and throat fill with tainted bile. The gooey, purple-black ooze gushed out from his lips and nostrils, drowning him as he stood there. He swayed, the agony shocking him rigid, yet somehow, he was not dead, even as the oil-thick fluid refused to expel itself from his body. Kreed crashed down to the scarred mosaic floor and lay there, shivering.

  ‘My thirst is great,’ said the beast, its grin growing to terrifying width. ‘And my tastes are refined.’ A wicked tongue flicked out, tasting the air. ‘Mortals are common and good.’ It nodded towards Kreed. ‘I look forward to sampling these gene-forged.’

  ‘I will give you a primarch’s blood, an angel’s skull,’ said the Warmaster. ‘Is that a prize that will sway your full loyalty to me in this?’

  A great, quaking churn of laughter beat at the walls. ‘Samus was right. For an ephemeral, you are very clever, Horus Lupercal. You have my measure.’ The laugh ground the air with its passing once more. ‘A brother’s essence, made sweet with despair and sorrow–’

  ‘And hate,’ Horus broke in. ‘There will be such hate.’

  ‘I want that. I will gorge on it,’ the daemon growled. ‘Give it to me. Tell me how.’

  At last, the pain ebbed and Kreed could breathe again. His flesh was hot and filmed with sweat as his bio-implants worked feverishly to rid his body of the toxins that had briefly flooded it. Still, he was able to force out a few words. ‘Sanguinius… The plan…’

  Horus’s avatar merged into a newer, more savage expression. ‘Erebus’s plan. Their plan.’ He shook his head. ‘Not mine.’

  Moment by shuddering moment, Kreed rose to his knees and then to his feet, blinking bloody tears from his eyes, spitting gobs of ejecta to the deck. ‘We… agreed. This place, this colossal trap… The entire purpose of it was to contain the Blood Angels, to push them to the abyss. To bring them to our banner or destroy them!’

  The daemon’s horned head bobbed. ‘I can smell it on them. They do not see it, but the scarlet path passes beneath their feet. The correct application of pressure and they would turn fully to it, marching to the Skull Throne. The bleak, red release is in them all. The little Angel knows it, even though he lacks the words. It is the only thing he truly fears.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Horus. ‘I gave you the key to them. Use it. Strip away their dutiful nobility and virtue. Break them and bring me what is left. Make weapons of them for my crusade.’

  Kreed tried to imagine that: the fury of the Blood Angels with no control, nothing to hold them back. No code, no morality, nothing but rage. They would become mindless killing machines, fit only to be cast down upon the enemy to destroy everything they saw until all was ashes. To take the Angel’s proud sons and remake them as blood-hungry berserkers would be a desecration of such magnificent power… But the breaking of Sanguinius himself would be the greatest challenge of them all.

  The Warmaster seemed to sense his thoughts, even across the light years. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I want the Blood Angels for the crusade against my father, so he can see his folly, so the Imperium can know that even the most noble can be corrupted. But not my dear brother.’

  A low rumble of amusement issued out from the daemon’s fanged mouth. ‘Ah. A detail becomes apparent.’

  Old, buried venom emerged in Horus’s words. ‘Sanguinius will never turn his face from the Emperor. Erebus is a fool to think it could ever be so. The Angel must fall and never rise. Without him, his sons will embrace your scarlet path, creature. They will be lost.’ His eyes became hooded. ‘They will belong to your bloody king.’

  ‘I see clearly,’ said the beast, drawing in its great wings. ‘Your hubris is entertaining, Horus Lupercal. I see what you see. If the impossible were to happen, if the Angel Sanguinius could be turned… Then for the first time you would have a true rival among your traitor allies. Perhaps, one the Ruinous Powers might grow to favour over you, given time. You do not wish to take that risk.’

  ‘He will not turn!’ Horus’s shout shredded the smoke-shape of the avatar, and it twisted angrily as it reformed. ‘None of you understand him as well as I do. But mark this, he will die even if I must do the deed myself. On my soul, I swear it.’

  ‘It will be as you say.’ The daemon brought its clawed hands together, talons scraping across one another. ‘And I accept my part in this.’ Hellish eyes, burning red like murdered stars, turned to fix Tanus Kreed in their sight. An expectant silence fell.

  The Acolyte was not a fool. ‘I accept my part in this,’ he echoed, quashing all hesitation. He would consider his collusion in the defiance of Erebus’s orders later. If he lived long enough to do so.

  Kreed bowed his head and closed his eyes, listening to the echo of monstrous laughter, the stink of blood and sulphur all around him.

  When at last he dared open them again, he was alone with the meat of the dead.

  Meros passed from one ragged survivor to the next, giving them a cursory examination, documenting their injuries with growing concern. There were thirty-two in total, twenty males and twelve females, whose ages ranged from a boy of approximately three to a woman of one hundred and six standard Terran years. All of them were severely dehydrated and malnourished, with two of them close to death and several more with minor wounds.

  He grimaced at nothing. The chamber made him feel uncomfortable in a manner that reached to his marrow. There was a hollow, sepulchral atmosphere to the room, like the depths of an ancient tomb best left to the lifeless. Meros sensed the ghost of a void out at the edges of his thoughts, a wrongness that he couldn’t shake off. He sighed and pushed it away, trying to focus.

  Captain Nakir and Sergeant Madidus were close by, towering over the humans. The tattered refugees huddled together in a loose group, their fear apparent in every motion of their hands, every furtive look from their eyes. Meros learned that the woman in the dress had the name Tillyan Niobe, and she had been the caretaker of an unimportant ornamental garden in a town on the outskirts of Landing, Signus Prime’s capital. At first she talked at him rather than to him, as if it was a matter of great importance that she give him as much data about herself as she could in as short a time. It was almost as if she wanted to prove to him that she was what she said she was. Almost as if she was trying to fix herself in the real.

  ‘Can we go home now?’ she asked. ‘Have you defeated them?’

  ‘The nephilim?’

  Niobe hesitated. ‘I… I don’t know that word.’ She swallowed. ‘We’ve been in here for weeks. We have not seen light of day since the crash.’

  ‘What happened to the ship?’ said Nakir. He pointed at a man who had identified himself as Lieutenant Dortmund, formerly of the Signusi infantry brigades. ‘You. Explain it to me.’

  Dortmund peered up from beneath a mess of blond hair. He seemed too young to be wearing an officer’s braid. ‘It’s hard to say, lord,’ he began, fingering the lasgun slung at his hip. ‘We were below decks for most of the flight from Signus Prime. The ship was trying to move beyond the mass shadow. We did not see much.’ Dortmund nodded at another man in a crewman’s oversuit. ‘Mister Zhomas here, he was one of the Stark Dagger’s enlisted ranks.’

  ‘I know less than you think,’ Zhomas insisted. He was a thin, old man with a
n acidic manner, and he clearly resented the lieutenant’s attempt to bring him to the attention of the legionaries. ‘She was overloaded, captain. We were making good speed, but pushing the reactor too hard. Much too hard. I know there was power loss and we... we started to drift. That’s when the beasts came upon us.’

  ‘You were attacked by nephilim ships,’ said Nakir. ‘Did the xenos board this vessel?’

  ‘You keep saying that word!’ A man in a black greatcoat who hovered at the edge of the group spoke up, as if he were no longer able to keep his silence. ‘What does it mean? Neff-what?’ He spat on the deck.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Madidus.

  ‘You can call me Hengist, Space Marine. And that’s all for now.’

  ‘Indeed?’ The sergeant stepped forwards. ‘Why don’t you tell us what you know, Hengist?’

  The man tried and failed to stand his ground, shrinking back at the approach of the Blood Angel. Meros suspected he was a criminal of some sort. When they had first entered the chamber, Hengist had made an attempt to conceal a short sword and a narrow-gauge bolt pistol beneath a pile of rags; he’d not been pleased when the Apothecary took them from him.

  ‘I know what came out there weren’t no alien.’ Hengist showed his teeth. ‘Aliens don’t make walls bleed nor mothers eat their children, don’t turn sky to glass and men into cold smoke…’ There was something vicious about how he retorted.

  ‘He’s right,’ Zhomas added, with a jerk. ‘I’ve seen greenskins and the fey ones in my service, never nothing like that what killed this ship. All things made out of fangs and wings, lord. Horrors that you can’t lay eyes upon too long.’ He made motions with his fingers, little stabbing gestures. ‘Punched in through the hull, like snakes. Fires and all.’ He gave an involuntary shudder. ‘Down we go.’