Fear to Tread

by James Swallow

  The breech on Meros’s pistol snapped open. ‘Reloading!’ he shouted, ejecting the clip with speed born of focus and constant practice.

  Kano did not have time to speak; instead he pivoted and aimed as one of the horrors took the Apothecary’s moment of pause to throw itself at the gantry where they stood.

  Kano’s shots hit home, but the creature was a big one and though the mass-reactive rounds blew divots of purple flesh from its flanks, it did not die. It ignored Meros and attacked his battle-brother, knocking buckled pipes out of the way to get at him. Kano went down with a crash and was lost to sight under the bulk of the monster. Meros drew his chainaxe and laid into its dripping flanks.

  Fanged mouths opened all along the side of the creature, snapping at him. With fresh loads in his pistol, Meros fed a bolt shell to each one, earning him several screeches of pain. The glutinous mass shrank back and tumbled away, revealing Kano in a crumpled heap.

  ‘Brother-medicae!’ A shout from above drew Meros’s gaze. Overhead, grouped upon a length of rail, was a line of legionaries in steel-grey armour, lending their guns to the fight. He saw Captain Redknife stab a finger towards Kano. ‘Get him out of there. Pull back now!’

  Meros shot a crab-form scuttling up behind him and pulled Kano to his feet. Blood oozed from cracks in his battle-brother’s armour; he was pale, as if the air had been sucked from his lungs. Together they stumbled up the incline towards the rest of the hastily-assembled defenders.

  The invaders were at their heels, giggling at the sight of this apparent retreat. The hull space below was now a frothing mass, boiling with uncountable numbers of the enemy.

  ‘They mustn’t get past us,’ Meros shouted. ‘They’ll get into the decks and we’ll never find them all!’

  ‘They won’t,’ Redknife called back. ‘Valdin found something to discourage them.’

  It was then the Apothecary saw that one of the Space Wolves was manhandling a conical object easily the height and mass of a human, dragging it off one of the munitions carts stalled by the impact. ‘Mag-locks,’ shouted the captain. ‘Brace yourselves!’

  It was a seeker-head, the weapon payload for an anti-interceptor missile.

  With a grunt of effort, Valdin threw the warhead over his shoulder and it tumbled down into the enemy throng. Meros turned away, bringing up his hands to shield his face as it hit the tanker’s bow and detonated.

  In such a confined space, the explosion blew out a great plate of the Red Tear’s outer hull – not enough to puncture the inner armour, but enough to unseat the invaders’ ship and expose the fleshy monstrosities to the harsh caress of space.

  Air and debris fled into the vacuum. Secured in place on the adamantium decks by the magnetic plates in his boots, Meros held Kano upright as the enemy were blown out into nothingness, their scream-songs abruptly silenced.

  Athene DuCade allowed her hands to smother her face, burying the heels of her palms in the hollows of her eyes. The warmth of her flesh felt disconnected from the moment, as if she were experiencing it second-hand. The admiral was aware of blood rumbling in her ears, thudding with each beat of her heart.

  All her life she had known control: of others, of her ship, of herself. Now that seemed like a distant dream. Athene had tried so intensely to hold on, but now she knew her strength was waning. Soon it would be gone.

  She heard her aide speaking. ‘They are inside the ship!’ His voice was tight with hysteria. ‘Those monsters have penetrated the hull, infected us…’ He took a shuddering breath.

  DuCade’s hands dropped away. ‘Major, calm yourself.’ She tried to say the words with authority, but they came out cracked and broken. The hard light of the Red Tear’s bridge prickled her eyes and she winced in spite of herself.

  He turned on her, and he was florid and filmed with sweat. ‘Don’t you understand?’ The officer bellowed the question at her, cutting through the chatter, drawing the attention of the other crewmen. ‘Wake up! Look around. The Legion has led us to our deaths. This is a trap, a pit to hell!’

  His face was so very red. DuCade’s stomach tightened in revulsion as she realised she could see the pulse of blood though the capillaries across his skin. How was that possible? A tiny voice in her head asked the question, but there was no answer.

  The major rocked forwards and grabbed the arms of her command chair, shouting at the top of his voice. ‘Get us out of here!’ He had become quite unhinged, she saw that now. ‘For Terra’s sake, we must run! Answer me, you cold-hearted bitch!’

  In the rhythm of the crimson across his face she saw black too, ink-dark and poisonous. The major realised with a sudden start that it was he who was infected, with madness, with fear, with whatever disease that crippling scream had left behind.

  ‘Kyriss.’

  ‘What did you say?’ she snapped.

  DuCade bolted to her feet and the major staggered backwards. The name crackled through her like electricity. Her sight cleared for a moment.

  ‘I… I never said…’ The major’s face was just a mask of meat hanging over something horrible that had usurped his form.

  She understood now. One of the laspistols from her cross-belt was suddenly in her hand, and then she was shooting him, one bright bolt of coherent light after another, putting him down on the deck, the sizzling stink of burned flesh rising. His corpse buzzed and writhed, becoming blurry.

  When DuCade looked around, the sickness in her gut twisted tighter still. All the other faces of the crew were upon her – and all of them were marked with the same writhing crimson-black. Were they laughing? She could hear them laughing.

  They wanted to kill her as much as the thing inside the major had. She pulled the other laspistol and opened fire with both pistols at once. The admiral blasted them as they ran, streaks of fire crossing the bridge chamber, cutting into tainted bodies or destroying control panels.

  She killed the helmsman last, as he tried to hold up clawed hands to rake at her face or perhaps to surrender. It didn’t matter. All of them had the black blood in their flesh and now it pooled on the deck around her, gathering at the hem of her cloak, soaking the grey ermine.

  But the greatest horror was reserved for when Athene DuCade caught sight of her own face, reflected in the navi-monitor. Her old, warrior’s face, red with exertion. Red shading to black, melting and distending on her skull.

  She was not immune. The infection was in her too. Of course it was. The madness had turned into a virus, a lethal contagion. The others had fallen to it, and soon so would she.

  The admiral wept bitter tears. She loved this ship so much, like a daughter. She loved her primarch and his Legion, but she had brought them to this. Now the Red Tear was riddled with corruption and it was her fault. It was all her fault.

  DuCade’s brittle self-control shattered. ‘I have to atone,’ she said aloud, through a sob. ‘This cannot go further. Yes. Yes.’

  Sanguinius would understand. She knew that he would. The Angel’s forgiveness was enough.

  The admiral entered the new course into the helm, beginning the thruster burn that brought Signus Prime up to rest on the tip of the flagship’s bow. Engines accepted the commands and the great vessel sailed out of position, into the grip of the planet’s gravity well. With her guns, she destroyed the command console so that her deed could not be undone.

  The last las-bolt bored into DuCade’s heart, flash-burning a hole through her chest.

  THIRTEEN

  Falling Tear

  Fortress

  This is Our Vow

  Lit by atomic fires and the blaze of coherent energy, the war in the skies above Signus Prime was a tapestry of violence. Hell-ships reanimated from dead, cold corpse states threw themselves at the Blood Angels warfleet, powered by pillars of flame and other, more ephemeral means.

  Many of the turncoat ships still had crews, after a fashion, but they resembled nothing of the loyal men and women who had once filled their ranks. The closest to human were the zealots, the wea
k of spirit and cowardly of heart who had sold their birthright and loyalty to Bruja’s lie of redemption. Their fear of death had taken them into a servitude that would see them perish a thousand times over.

  Then there were the other things, the monsters and the freaks, the meat-borne shades that had used the flesh of the dead as a man would wear an environment suit, so that they could walk from the warp into the realm of the material. These creatures, clad in garb of boneless human meat, played and crowed under the name of daemon. They had grown tired of culling the weak Signusi colonists, and now they wanted new prey to bite and claw and slice. After the seduction and murder of a handful of worlds, it was time for them to bathe in blood and hatred.

  Together in this blighted place, the children of two dark gods had joined forces for a war unlike any other. Signus Prime was the beachhead, their foothold in the crude reality of matter, and each of them knew that the battle begun this day would be repeated a million times over, on countless other worlds for millennia to come.

  Amidst this turmoil, the hail of laser-fire and the screaming, a great winged teardrop cast from adamantium and bronze burned a black path across the planet’s wounded sky.

  With nothing to stop its fall, the Red Tear plunged into Signus Prime’s gravity well and kissed the outer atmosphere in a flickering cascade of orange fire. Plasmatic flames licked the ventral hull, wreathing the battle-barge’s slender keel in coruscating bands of electromagnetic discharge. Antennae and thin beam emitters wilted under the steady, increasing heat, curling and melting like fronds of a plant meeting the fury of a forest conflagration. A great, animal moan sounded for kilometres along the length of the massive vessel, the fuselage twisting as stresses it was never meant to experience were placed upon it.

  The Red Tear was a mighty craft, built for the punishment of a hundred wars; it was not some delicate solar sailer or gossamer-skinned xenos yacht. Yet, the battle-barge had been forged in vacuum and made for the deeps of interplanetary space. The flagship of the Legion was not a vessel configured to accept the embrace of a world and the touch of an atmosphere across its hull. The primarch’s chariot was made to live and die in the void – but Athene DuCade had changed that destiny with a gunshot.

  The Red Tear was falling, shrieking as it cut across the day-night terminator, the curvature of Signus Prime’s horizon slowly rising to gather to it.

  Cassiel had to shout to make himself heard over the thunderous rumble sounding down the corridor. ‘Can you do it, or not?’

  The deck beneath the sergeant and his men was pitching and rolling. The Techmarine Kaide knelt close to the central hatchway to the bridge, one hand bracing him against the deck and the other buried to the elbow in the open panel near the control mechanism. His eyes were unfocused, an aspect that belied his intense concentration.

  ‘Can you open it?’ Cassiel asked again, casting a look back at Leyteo. The other Blood Angel hefted a meltagun in his hand, showing he was ready to turn it on the jammed hatch as soon as ordered.

  Nearby, Sarga cast a frown and muttered something under his breath about lost causes. Cassiel and his small group of his warriors had found themselves in the opportune place to race for the bridge the moment the battle-barge had begun its uncontrolled descent – but now an armoured barrier thick enough to deflect las-cutters lay between them and the command deck. Kaide’s bleak assessment had not been welcomed; even with Leyteo’s melta weapon, it could take hours to burn through the blast hatch.

  ‘I can open it,’ the Techmarine said, at last. Something inside the panel gave a sparking, fizzing jolt that flooded the corridor with the hot tang of electricity. The hatch grunted and slid back on hydraulic pistons, showing the legionaries the interior of the multi-levelled bridge.

  The smell of burned glass and cooked meat assailed them as Cassiel led the way in, Sarga at his side panning left and right with his bolter. Every crew-serf and servitor, every auxiliary and officer, lay dead at their posts or sprawled on the floor. Many had died fleeing, laser burns scorching open their backs with wet pink wounds.

  Leyteo grimaced as he followed them in. ‘More insanity. Did they murder each other? For what?’

  Cassiel didn’t answer the question, advancing past the command throne to the apex of the bridge. Lying before him on the deck, the shipmistress was a mess of seared skin and the crumpled silks of her elegant cloak.

  He looked away and out beyond the grand portal. He saw the arrowhead prow of the Red Tear bathed in fire.

  ‘Survivor!’ Kaide called out from one of the control alcoves.

  The sergeant came closer to find a man slumped in a sticky red puddle. He wore the uniform of a communications officer, second class, and the odour of his blood filled Cassiel’s nostrils. Behind the mask of his battle helmet, the Blood Angel reflexively licked his lips.

  ‘This one won’t live,’ Kaide said coldly, and the pallor of the vox-officer’s face made it clear the Techmarine was right. ‘Where’s Meros when we need him?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ The sergeant leaned close to the dying crewman. ‘You. Tell me who did this.’

  ‘The Admiral.’ The word came out in a dry, faint whisper that was almost lost in the constant rumble of the hull. ‘Killed us.’

  Cassiel looked back towards the ruined helm controls across the compartment and gave a grave nod. ‘Yes. It looks like she did.’

  The officer died without another word and Kaide left him there, rising from a crouch. He surveyed the brutalised control mechanisms with a severe gaze, shaking his head. ‘This was madness. Not a single console remains undamaged.’

  ‘Can it be repaired?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘Aye,’ Kaide replied. ‘But in a span of hours, with a dozen tech-brothers and servitors to the task. This vessel will be spread out over a thousand kilometres of stratosphere long before then.’

  ‘Are you so quick to discount my ship and her strength?’ The voice brought them all about and then to the bowing of their heads.

  The Angel entered the bridge, flanked by two of the Sanguinary Guard and Captain Raldoron. Even in such circumstance, Cassiel’s immediate reaction – and that of all his men – was to kneel and show their master fealty.

  However, the primarch eschewed protocol in favour of directness, fixing Kaide with his measuring gaze. ‘Do you know how old this starship is, my son?’

  ‘I do, Great One,’ said the Techmarine. ‘The Red Tear was part of your father’s grand fleet before the age of the Great Crusade.’

  Sanguinius gave a nod. ‘She is the figurehead of our Legion, and her time is not yet at an end.’ His golden armour shimmered as it reflected the distant fires cast across the interior of the bridge, and the Angel picked his way through the debris, moving towards the command throne.

  Cassiel saw what could only be grief on the face of his liege lord as the primarch’s gaze passed over the bodies of the dead. The sergeant blinked in shock; the Angel was so far removed from mortals like the crew-serfs, even from the lives led by his gene-forged sons, that Cassiel had always believed he would be above such emotions. Not callous or aloof, but simply…beyond them. To see Sanguinius show even an instant of such regret gave the Blood Angel a new insight into his master’s being. He wondered if he would live long enough to reflect on it.

  Raldoron stood with Sarga, peering into a damaged hololith. ‘It’s worse than I thought,’ said the captain. ‘Descent rate is increasing. Void shields are not responding. Several of the auxiliary craft have already made emergency departures, but the landing bays are in flames.’

  Azkaellon, the Guard Commander, stepped after the primarch. ‘Lord, I would ask that the order be given to launch saviour pods.’

  ‘And how many lives would that preserve?’ Sanguinius hesitated over the body of Athene DuCade. ‘The lower decks are still in turmoil. If the escape capsules were launched now, they would be scattered. Some would be trapped in low orbit, others dragged into our wake, still more strewn across whatever lies below the clou
ds of Signus Prime.’ Kaide nodded silently in agreement with his primarch’s bleak estimation. After a moment, Sanguinius gave a curt shake of the head. ‘No. This is my command. Pass word to all who can hear it. Tell them to make for the core decks, the deepest and most heavily protected compartments.’

  The Angel knelt down next to DuCade’s corpse and his wings opened slightly, casting a shadow over the woman. The plasma fires from the imminent re-entry lit his white feathers with flickering streamers of crimson and orange.

  Raldoron gave a sharp gesture and Cassiel followed it with a nod; in moments, Kaide, Sarga and Leyteo were repeating the primarch’s commands over the vox-bands and intercom channels.

  Cassiel watched Azkaellon as the Angel stood up. ‘This ship will be torn apart,’ insisted the commander. ‘If not by the force of the descent then dashed against the landscape below.’

  ‘No.’ Sanguinius did not grace his officer with a look. Instead, he walked to the helm console and laid his hand upon a plaque forged from bronze and gold. The panel was bolted to a podium supporting the ship’s etheric compass, and it bore the seal of Terra and the Emperor. The engravings certified the Red Tear’s service to the Imperium and the Legiones Astartes. ‘No, I will not accept that. This vessel has carried my banner through war and peace alike and never faltered. She has served this Legion for centuries. She will not fail us now.’

  Then the Angel did something that none of them expected. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, the fires beyond the great portal casting him in the dancing light of an inferno. ‘I salute you,’ he told the ship, meaning every word. ‘And now I ask of you a single boon, old friend. Carry my sons through this trial. Take us to the heart of our enemy.’

  The tremble in the deck became a quaking, became a rolling, shifting turn. Cassiel’s gaze was drawn to the hellish light blazing through the bridge deck portals.