Fear to Tread

by James Swallow

  Raldoron watched them die, each falling apart in a pinkish-grey mist like deconstructed puzzles made of meat and brass.

  With a ring of crystal on plasteel, Sanguinius drew his battle sword and brought it up into a fighting stance. The two-handed blade was as long as a Space Marine was tall, slender and deadly, forged in red metal with a golden, ruby-studded guard. The weapon hummed, coming to life in the Angel’s hands. His wings turned against his shining armour and the primarch pointed the blade into the air. ‘Show yourself, if you dare!’

  The shrill note reached its zenith, a dagger through Raldoron’s ears, but as it died a new affront occurred. The remains of the servitors writhed and conjoined, ropes of entrails and broken limbs groping for one another. The air lensed around the pieces of meat, as reality was turned and split.

  The parts assembled a new body. The torso was an androgynous mutation with four arms and quivering, muscular flesh; a head grew into something like that of a great goat, with horns and a sharp, snorting muzzle. The newborn creature flexed and stood tall, looking down on the Blood Angels. It traced claw-fingers over its form, toying with the bloody meat it was made from, and emitted a wet, orgiastic gasp.

  ‘Sanguinius,’ it said, labouring the name with sibilance. ‘You have no idea how much delight it brings me to finally have you in my domain.’ The amalgam-creature gave a mocking bow and licked its dead-flesh lips. ‘Welcome.’

  ‘In all the stars, what manner of being are you?’ The primarch’s cold fury became disgust. ‘You have the stench of the warp upon you.’

  The being gave a grotesque nod. ‘So true. You have such sight, abhuman. That excites me.’

  Raldoron sensed a strange merging of odours in the air: a cloying perfume smothering almost everything, but beneath it the stale reek of sweat and body fluids, the tang of sulphur.

  The patchwork monster brought its quartet of hands together, as if in prayer. ‘Consider yourselves flattered by the presence of this proxy, the essence of I, who you shall be allowed to call Kyriss. I am the glimpse at the edge of ecstasy in death, the Perverse and the Charmed, son-daughter of the Master of Pleasure and eager servant of Q’tlahsi’issho’akshami. The void itself sings my praise.’

  ‘Your titles mean nothing to me,’ Sanguinius replied. ‘What is your form, alien? Name it.’

  The creature let its gaze stray, and Raldoron found it looking at him with something like hunger. ‘Alien. So limited a concept. You all know what I am.’ It released a mad giggle. ‘I am one of those. Say it with me. Daemon.’ A length of black tongue followed the word from its lips.

  Azkaellon spoke: ‘You stole that designation from the people you murdered. A name from ancient myth and legend.’

  For a brief instant, the beast’s play at coquettish civility vanished, replaced by sudden fury. ‘You stole it from us!’ But then it was gone again, and Kyriss bowed low. ‘I greet you, Angels of Blood. I own these worlds, these souls and this kingdom, in the name and the glory of Slaanesh.’ Kyriss cocked its head in a parody of demure coyness. ‘Do you wish to try and take them from me?’

  As Raldoron looked on, the anger that had first been present in his primarch seemed to fade away, and an icy calm descended upon the Angel. Sanguinius lowered his sword and rested it point-down towards the deck, his hands knitting across the jewelled hilt. ‘You have committed an act of war against the Imperium of Mankind, and atrocities against her citizens. Know that there can only be retribution for these deeds, not accommodation, not appeasement.’

  ‘Oh, do tell,’ breathed Kyriss.

  ‘I will make this offer once. Surrender and give up your claim on the Signus Cluster. Do so now and I promise your end will be swift and merciful.’

  The creature’s laughter began high and strident, falling into deep, threatening registers. ‘You have no comprehension of my majesty, vulgar, trivial angel-thing. Nothing so crude can kill such splendour! I am the cardinal of the Cathedral of the Mark, the king-queen of Signus and enemy of all life. These worlds will be monuments to your despair, abhuman. Everything you love will be taken from you and tainted by my kiss.’ It turned towards the viewport. Two hands pointed out, off towards the clouded mass of Signus Prime; the other pair of limbs beckoned them. ‘Come,’ said Kyriss. ‘You will find me there. I await your pleasure.’

  As the last word faded, the broken pieces of metal and meat came apart into an ugly pile, the animating power of the monstrous proxy abruptly withdrawn.

  Sanguinius stared silently at the remains for a long moment, before turning to his men. ‘Take us in,’ he said.

  ‘My lord, the fleet is still in some disarray–’ began Azkaellon.

  ‘As the enemy planned.’ The primarch’s eyes were dark and hard, like shards of flint. ‘But we have walked the road they laid for us long enough. We will not suffer this creature to live, my sons. Carry out my command.’

  The second phase of the attack lurked in plain sight, concealed in the shoal of wreckage that girdled Signus Prime in a thick band of broken metal.

  Deformed, mutant vessels broke free of the planet’s gravity and surged forwards to assault the Blood Angels fleet, their engines vomiting smoky plumes of fusion fire. There could be no classification for these craft, no formal way to measure them against conventional laws of void-combat. They were hell-ships, and, like the remains of their crews, they had been twisted and remade into something repugnant and unthinkable. At first dormant, dead to all sensors, now they came alive with ghostly energy, motivated by powers that came from nothingness.

  Some were two-headed freaks, merged plasteel and bronze that resembled the aftermath of a catastrophic warp departure. Others had been cut open, hull plates flensed away to reveal the skeletal ribbing beneath, mirroring an anatomical etching in the textbook of some medicae. Fires burned within the predatory wrecks, flaming orbs at their serried bows glaring like eyes into the dark. These ships did not so much fly through space as they did swim in it, hulls undulating. They moved like great animals, forms directed by the maleficent intelligences that inhabited the shells of what had once been the pride of the Signusi defence force.

  Others opened great sails made of tanned human skin, unfurling on telescoping armatures that resembled horn and ivory. The massive spinnakers cut the light with their size, and impossibly, they filled as if a phantom wind was pressing at them. Guns grew from every surface of the hell-ships, releasing cascades of purple energy and scatter-shot discharges of spiked explosive spheres the size of Stormbirds.

  Some of the craft were little more than gigantic missiles, empty hulks thrown into the path of the Imperial warships without guidance or heed to where they might go. One such ship-carcass ploughed through a flight of Raven interceptors and found the cruiser Numitor before it could effect an escape turn. The two craft embraced in a blaze of flame and fell out of the formation amid a cloud of ashen fragments.

  The echo of the malaise that had swept across the Blood Angels crews had not yet died, and the ships of Sanguinius’s fleet were struggling to stand firm against the enemy attack – but to delay would mean death, attrition and destruction. They were off their guard, robbed of balance, but there was no choice other than to fight.

  Victus and the Covenant of Baal unleashed salvoes of lance-fire that raked over a juggernaut powering towards the flank of the Ignis. The enemy craft – a once-pristine system carrier that now appeared infected by a plague of rust – was obliterated, coming apart in great chunks of rotten metal. Like wormwood struck by a hammer, the hulk exploded, pieces of it flashing to atoms as they collided with the void shields of the crimson-hulled warships.

  Nearby, the Chalice and the Hermia were racing to fill the gap left ahead of the flagship, surging through the confusion of their own lines to face contact with the enemy. Bloated frigates, their panels distended from within, powered towards them leaving black pennants of toxic gases trailing behind. The star of eight was emblazoned upon their hulls, daubed in bloody colour over desecrated emblems that h
ad once been proud exemplars of Signus’s fealty to Terra.

  The Blood Angels ships fired torpedo barrages and pulsing blasts from their mega-lasers, stripping all protection from the attackers, but still the enemy came on. For a moment it seemed as if the lead frigate was going to ram the Chalice, but then the fouled hull broke open and revealed what was within.

  Inside each of the transformed ships was a mass of ropey, muscular flesh, sheathed in glistening chitin. Like a cancer, these monstrosities had grown to fill the interiors of the craft and now they burst free. Limbs that shimmered in the light of the stars of the cluster unfolded, eight spider-legs each a half-kilometre in length. The cancer-creatures inside the hulls writhed, wearing the husks of the vessels like a crustacean might carry a seashell across its back.

  Ignoring zero-range fire from the Chalice’s point defence guns, two of the spider-craft leapt at the heavy cruiser and began to chew upon it, huge mandibles wet with fluid flashing in the dark. Streams of oxygen spurted into the vacuum as the Chalice began to lose her atmosphere through countless breaches. Similar violence was taking place all along the line of engagement, as every ship in the fleet found an enemy ready for it.

  Ahead, the Red Tear opened her gun ports and let her cannons give their all, the brilliant spears of particle beams and the streamers of missile salvoes striking hard across the line of the hell-ship advance. The Blood’s Son and the Encarnadine followed suit, releasing everything in their arsenal, cutting into the enemy and the vast debris zone at their backs. Perfect, pearl-like globes of nuclear fire bloomed in the night, destroying what should have already been long dead.

  Kreed licked the blood from the tips of his fingers, savouring it. The fluid that bled from his eyes was dark and oily, and it carried with it a pungent odour that drew his mind back to distant Colchis. It smells like birth, he told himself. Rebirth. The herald of the new.

  Silent torrents of light cast sweeping shadows across his command throne as the skies around the Dark Page burned with weapons discharges. Kreed rose and looked down.

  His warship’s bridge was a bubble of mirrored armourglass, rust-tinted and opaque from without, but within alike to standing in the cradle of the void. Massive blast shutters normally kept the great pod safe and armoured, but the Acolyte had ordered them all lowered so that he might watch the moment of betrayal unfold.

  Kreed watched the spider-ships feasting on the Chalice and his smile grew wide. Soon, the Blood Angels would count the crew of that craft as the fortunate ones, just like the dead aboard the Helios, the Paleknight and all the other offerings.

  The bleeding had not stopped; it began in the wake of the manifestation before Horus in the sacellum, and now it was slow and constant. The Word Bearer felt no pain or discomfort from it. He had come to realise that it was a sign upon him, a mark of advantage that had been left upon his flesh. He did not allow himself to dwell upon the Warmaster’s words, nor the conflict that came from them. Horus had ordered him to defy the plan laid by Erebus, and Kreed searched within himself to find guilt at that; he found none. Erebus, so arrogant, so cocksure, he and the half-breed Kor Phaeron granting power like gifts to their favourites… They were not here. They did not see opportunity. Kreed had the chance now to advance beyond them, perhaps to earn the right to stand at Lorgar’s side in their stead.

  If we succeed. When we succeed.

  The great winged daemon-beast had let him live, and the crimson streaks were a reminder of that beneficence. Once again, Kreed dared to wonder about the future. I am marked. That makes it a certainty. He smiled to himself. This war is already won.

  ‘Repeated messages from the Blood Angels command ship.’ Kreed turned to face the warrior who had made the report. His name was Felleye; the hulking reaver was one of Captain Harox’s hand-picked personal guard.

  ‘They beg for our help,’ said the Acolyte. He looked down. Beneath his boots, through the armourglass deck he saw the great sculpted shape of the Red Tear, lighting up the void with her weapons-fire and beam discharges.

  Kreed felt a strange kind of calm at being adrift in the midst of such a violent confrontation. The Dark Page had yet to fire a shot in anger or receive even the slightest attention from the enemy.

  ‘The woman DuCade demands we apply our guns to control of this flotilla sector,’ Felleye continued.

  ‘Let her feast on static.’

  Harox came to his commander’s side. ‘The ships of this element are following established combat protocol,’ said the captain. He pointed out the battle cruisers moving sluggishly into a protective phalanx around Sanguinius’s vessel.

  ‘As I knew they would.’ Kreed nodded to himself. ‘And little thought given to the dispensation of their cousins in the XVII Legion.’ He watched the vessels move in their slow ballet. ‘Trust is such a foolish thing.’

  ‘Incoming approach, port quarter high,’ called Felleye. ‘Masters, it appears to be the shell of a civilian bulk tanker. It will pass directly through our fire corridor on a collision course with the Red Tear. We are the only vessel in position to fend off the assault.’

  Kreed looked up and his genhanced sight picked the attacker from the blackness beyond it. A cylinder wreathed in foetid smoke, exhaust fires propelling it at increasing velocity, the flanks of the craft were covered in vile texts and uncanny symbols. The Acolyte’s hand went to his forearm, where his tattooed flesh bore many of the same sigils.

  He closed his eyes. If he listened carefully, opened his soul to it, Kreed could almost hear the cackling, joyful hate radiating from the incoming ship. The creatures on board were eager to taste the blood of angels.

  ‘Orders?’ said Harox.

  ‘It is time, at last,’ said Kreed, opening his eyes. ‘The perfect moment of treachery has shown itself.’

  Kreed returned to his command throne and savoured the act, wishing he could look upon the faces of those he had betrayed.

  At first Meros thought his eyes were deceiving him. His hand pressed to the armoured glass of the viewport, he peered out at the battle and his breath caught in his throat as a flash of silent colour grew from the stern of the Word Bearers starship. For a moment, the Blood Angel believed the Dark Page had suffered a catastrophic internal explosion; but then the flames resolved into engine thrust discharges and he knew the cruiser had abandoned them.

  It was enough to stop him dead, even in the midst of the unfolding battle. What reason could Lorgar’s sons have to flee?

  ‘Meros!’ A familiar voice called to him and he wheeled to find Kano approaching at a run. ‘Quickly! They’re coming!’

  ‘Who?’ His battle-brother looked fatigued, clutching a bolter to his chest. ‘Kano, what do you mean?’

  ‘Look.’ The other legionary pointed an armour-clad finger out into the dark. Meros followed his direction and saw the blunt bludgeon-ship bearing down on the Red Tear. ‘Do you see?’

  Meros looked back at his comrade. ‘Do you?’ He tapped a finger to his brow.

  Kano’s expression soured. ‘That does not matter now.’

  The Apothecary had more questions, but they were drowned out by the impact of the tanker as it crashed through the outer hull below them.

  The ship had once been a transport for volatile chemical fuels, a slow barge that took long voyages back and forth from Signus Prime to the White River and back again. Its endless circuits had been broken when the warp-spawn came to the cluster. The crew were made meat-proxy for minor beasts of the immaterium, sheathes of flesh that they could wear in order to walk in the realm of the ephemerals. In turn, they gathered more from the Signusi, who swore their allegiance in hopes that it would save them. It did, but not in the way they wanted.

  The mark of Slaanesh covered every surface of the craft, the unholy words ribbing the prow of the craft making it a benediction when the time came to bring death to the Emperor’s Angels.

  Point of contact was portside, a machine space where pneumatic rails connected to the forward weapon bays ferried torpedoes
from the main ammunition store. The beasts peeled open the walls of the tanker and swarmed out into the Red Tear.

  The Blood Angels were waiting for them, but not in great number.

  Meros saw a festering hell beneath him. Trapped between the outer skin of the flagship and the first wall of the inner hulls, the compartment had never been designed with movement of humans in mind. Below him was a plasteel pit lined with broken cables and torn runners, sparks from the control mechanisms of auto-carriages illuminating the places where the muzzle flash of bolter-fire and the beam of his shoulder lamp did not go. The prow of the captured tanker had jammed itself in place, further passage arrested by the presence of thick armour plating, but that had not stopped its horrific crew from disembarking.

  Things that resembled the soft, lamprey-like dwellers of deep oceans chittered and slid over the gridded catwalks and up the impact-bent walls. They moved in leaping bounds, nests of whipping tendrils snapping out, catching a hold and hauling themselves bodily upwards. Others – gelid creatures of snapping crab-claws with spiny bodies that resembled great skinned canines – leapt incredible distances on powerful back-legs, hooting and braying.

  Battle-brothers had already been taken by these things. Some, killed by the impact itself, others captured by razor-tipped tentacles or cut open with talons. Meros was intent on making the intruders pay. He fired single shots from his bolt pistol, pacing each round. The Apothecary tried to gauge the location of nerve clusters or braincases, just as he had been taught to by his mentors, but there was no uniformity or logic to the shape and form of these monsters. Only the application of brutal overkill seemed to end them. At his side, Kano was lost in the fight, coldly executing everything that moved.With him were a dozen more warriors who had come to the attack point with the same intent – to defend the Red Tear until death.

  The creatures sang as they came at the legionaries, ugly melodies full of ululating shrieks and gasps that rang across the bulkheads. There seemed to be no end to the deluge of the things, more and more of them spewing from the tanker’s hull in a glossy, writhing swarm. The tide was rising, and without reinforcements they would soon be overwhelmed.