‘Oh yes, and not a moment too soon,’ Flax said, lolling among his cushions. ‘I half feared you were him, at first. Now I see that his game has been interrupted. He will blame me, of course, as he always has, and he will have no choice but to bring an end to it.’ He smiled. ‘For that, I must thank you, captain.’
‘Who is “he”? Who are you talking about?’ Karlaen asked, knowing the answer even as the words left his mouth.
‘The beast, captain. You’ve seen it – fought it. I can tell.’ Flax reached out with a withered, liver-spotted hand as if to trace one of the many long gouges in Karlaen’s armour. His fingers stopped short, however, and he pulled his hand back to clutch it against his chest. He smiled wearily. ‘As telling as a signature, those marks. I’ve seen their like more times than I care to admit in my life. On doors and walls and, aye, on the bodies of my people.’
Karlaen touched the mark as he gazed at Flax. ‘The broodlord has been on Asphodex for some time, then.’ It was not unheard of – creatures like the broodlord had been reported on many worlds just before those planets came under threat from one tendril or another of a hive fleet. The creatures seemed to act as a beacon for the hive ships. They would lurk unseen for years, decades even, waiting for the right time to summon their hungry kin across the bleak stars to feast on the bio-matter of their chosen hunting ground.
‘Broodlord – is that what you call it?’ Flax chuckled. ‘My people called it the Spawn of Cryptus, as if it were a curse on the whole system rather than just this world.’ His smile faded. ‘Maybe it was – a sign of the Emperor’s displeasure with us if there ever was one.’
‘The Emperor had nothing to do with that creature,’ Karlaen said.
Flax gestured morosely. ‘Oh, to be sure. I know full well where the fault lies, captain.’ He grinned crookedly and patted his sunken chest. ‘With us, with the dynasty of Flax. We are damned, captain, and rightly so, for that thing, that beast, is our burden. It is our sin made manifest.’ The old man jerked forwards to cough into a clenched fist. Karlaen, alarmed, immediately ran a sensor scan of the old man. Humans were astonishingly fragile, and if Flax were broken or ill, it would hamper the extraction effort.
Flax’s coughing faded into a wet wheeze, and he shook his head. ‘Our sin,’ he said again. ‘Mine and my parents’, captain. A sin I allowed to stay buried, hoping that the shadows and years would swallow it. That it would crawl into the depths and die. But not everything dies in the dark… Some things take root and flourish.’ He looked up towards the pipes and grating that made up the roof. ‘And now here I am, cowering underground. Full circle,’ he muttered.
‘What are you talking about?’ Karlaen said. Something about the old man’s words had pricked his curiosity. He was afraid, but his fear was not of the tyranids, Karlaen thought. Flax looked at him.
‘My brother,’ the old man said, simply. ‘My brother, Captain Karlaen. You met him, briefly.’ He gestured to the claw mark on Karlaen’s armour. ‘And he made quite the impression.’ Flax’s eyes closed and he hunched forwards again, fists pressed to his eyes. ‘My Emperor-be-damned thrice-cursed brother, whose throne I took for the benefit of my people, much good as it has done them.’ He stiffened, and looked up again, eyes bulging. ‘Do you hear me Tiberius, you gangling monstrosity?’ he snarled, shaking his fist aimlessly. ‘I know you’re listening, little brother. I took your throne and I’d do it again, a thousand times over, no matter the consequences.’
Karlaen reached out to steady the old man. As Flax was overcome by another coughing fit, Karlaen shared a look with Alphaeus, who frowned and tapped the side of his head. Karlaen looked down at Flax again, then shook his head. No, Flax was not insane. Karlaen suspected there was a horrid truth to the old man’s ranting; he had seen it before, though only rarely. It was as abominable a heresy as any which existed.
Wheezing, Flax said, ‘Satys, captain, that’s where it began. I was a boy at the time, learning my limits here in the centre of our power, when my parents left on a trade mission.’ Flax’s face contorted. ‘When they finally returned, they weren’t my parents anymore. Everyone knew, everyone could see… something had changed. My mother was… pregnant, and the child was to be the new heir.’ He spat the words like bullets. ‘I was set aside as if I were nothing more than a placeholder.’ Wrinkled hands curled into trembling fists. ‘Set aside for a child yet unborn.’
Far above, something clanged hard – metal striking metal. Karlaen looked up. His bionic eye scanned the roof of the undercity, but there was nothing to see. He glanced at Alphaeus, who nodded and gestured to Zachreal, who stood some distance away with the others. The Terminator made his way towards them, gently shooing drunken nobles from his path. Alphaeus moved to meet him. Karlaen turned back to Flax, confident that Alphaeus would know what to do. ‘And when it was born?’ he asked.
‘It was not human,’ Flax hissed. His eyes were glassy, as his mind wandered back into memory. ‘He was a monster from the first, a mutant, I thought, but he – it – was something far worse. Oh, they doted on him, though. They loved him as they had once loved me.’ His voice became a savage rasp. ‘After the first assassination attempt, they hid Tiberius away, below the palace… Here, in fact. This was his world for so many years,’ Flax said, raising his skinny arms to indicate their surroundings. ‘His playmates were servitors, and his few visitors… Well, they never left.’
Flax dropped his hands into his lap and stared at them. ‘Dissidents and criminals, mostly. Though I know father, in his infinite foolishness, tried to arrange a marriage for him. They found the girl’s body floating in a sump pipe some months later.’ Flax smirked. ‘That was the moment the nobility rallied around me. I was old enough then to know which way the wind was blowing, and since my parents had seen fit to abandon me, well… It was easy to reciprocate.’ His smirk faded and he twitched nervously, as something rang hollowly, far above among the pipes. Karlaen saw Zachreal and two others moving off, away from the group, weapons ready. They would investigate and report back any sign of the enemy.
Karlaen could feel their presence, though the sensors showed no sign of them. There were thousands of kilometres of tunnels, ducts and pipes between where they now stood and the palace above. It was inconceivable to him that the genestealers had not found a route down here at some point and time, regardless of Flax’s assumption that his defences had kept them at bay. He looked back at the old man. ‘You became governor,’ he prompted.
It was not curiosity now which drove his line of questioning, but the need for information. It was on Satys that Corbulo had discovered the secrets of the Flaxian bloodline, and developed his theory that they might hold the key to freeing the Blood Angels of their twin curses. And it was on Satys that this monstrosity who now dogged his steps had originated. It was possible that it was a coincidence. It was also possible that whatever factor made the Flaxian genetic structure so valuable to Corbulo had also played a part in the corruption of Flax’s parents. And before he escorted Flax from the ashes of his kingdom, Karlaen intended to find out which it was.
‘Yessss,’ Flax said, drawing the word out. ‘An orderly transition of power, backed by the nobility, whose sons and daughters now loll insensate here with me in my final hours. It is the least I could do for them, for services rendered.’ He coughed again and then laughed. ‘Make no mistake, captain, they did not help me out of the goodness of their shrivelled, ambitious hearts – no, they were frightened. Can you imagine the nightmare that would have followed Tiberius’s coronation? The people would have risen up, there would have been a civil war, and all the good the Flaxian Dynasty had done would have been unmade in an eye blink.’
There was a certain amount of sense there, Karlaen knew. Genestealers undermined societies from within, damaging the social and political structure as well as corrupting the bodies and souls of the populace. They were a virus, unleashed on worlds and sectors in order to make them ripe for the coming of the hive fleet.
‘You kille
d your own parents,’ Alphaeus said, speaking up for the first time. There was a hint of revulsion in his voice. Flax noticed it, and his lips peeled back from his teeth in a feral grimace.
‘Not willingly, I assure you,’ he rasped. His eyes closed and he leaned back, his hands flexing uselessly, as if they yearned to grip someone’s throat. ‘I still loved them, even then. You should have known them in their prime, captain. My father with his booming voice and hearty laugh. My mother, quiet and stern – the perfect match for him, the blade to his bludgeon. Between them, they brought this sector to heel in a way no other Flax had ever managed. And in the end, they were reduced to ruin by their love for a foul, unfeeling beast.’ He grunted and shifted his weight on his bed. ‘I had to kill them – there was no other way. It was Tiberius. They were protecting him, protecting him from me, their true son.’ His words came fast now, tripping over each other.
Flax pounded his chest. ‘I was their son. Me! I was the heir, not him. Not that squalling, shrieking thing.’ He glared at Karlaen. ‘Imagine it, captain. Imagine sharing your life, your parents, your world, with a parasite… with a thing that creeps into your chamber at night, and strokes your face in a parody of brotherly affection. A thing that follows you through the vents of the palace, always watching you, always snuffling at your heels, as if it were a real child and not some star-born abomination come to steal everything. Do you hear me, Tiberius? Are you listening, Spawn of Cryptus? It was mine. All of it, and our parents – my parents – deserved death for what they allowed you to make of them,’ he shrieked.
He sagged back into his cushions. ‘And I deserve it too. For what you made of me, brother,’ he muttered. He looked at Karlaen. ‘When I had… When it was done, I found that he was gone. Escaped into the undercity of Phodia.’
The illuminators overhead flickered. The vox clicked and crackled. Karlaen turned and saw Zachreal and the others he had left with hurrying back towards the group. Somewhere, pipes rattled.
Alphaeus drew his power sword. ‘We must go, captain. It is past time, and the rest of his story can wait for later.’
A flicker of a smile crossed Flax’s age-ravaged features. ‘He will not let me go, captain. He has spent decades reminding me of my crime, haunting my capital and breeding more of his filthy kind in the dark places. He was ever just out of the corner of my eye, one turn behind, trailing me down through the years. My father taught him how to hunt, and my mother taught him patience. And now, at the end of all things, he wants to enjoy the kill.’
The slave-servitors arranged around Flax’s bed suddenly stiffened. As one, their mouths opened and a hollow, mechanical monotone said, ‘Void-gate epsilon open – void-gate gamma open – western defence grid offline.’
Then, with a harsh crackle, the lights went out across the undercity.
Thirteen
The stab-lights on the Terminators’ armour immediately hummed to life, as did the spotlights mounted on Cassor’s hull. The darkness was pierced by dozens of shafts of light, and in that light, familiar, bestial shapes raced forward.
‘Contact, grids seven, ten, twelve, fifteen,’ Zachreal rumbled. Similar statements followed as the Terminators formed themselves into a wedge. Storm bolters roared, and the genestealers retreated, fading away into the dark like ghosts.
Alphaeus looked at Karlaen. ‘Time to go, captain. Gather our prize.’
Karlaen plucked Flax from his bed without ceremony.
The old man squawked, but did not resist. ‘No, don’t you understand,’ he babbled. ‘He’s coming. There’s no escape.’
‘Let him come,’ Karlaen said. He felt the heat of his rage building in him. He remembered Aphrae vanishing beneath a tide of chitin, and Bartelo toppling forwards, his flame extinguished. He remembered others, more than he cared to count, warriors who had followed him into the dark, against the enemy he now faced here on Asphodex, and had died because of him. He had thought to carry the light of the Chapter into the darkest recesses of the galaxy, and he had paid the price for his hubris. Come beast, he thought, with savage longing. Come and pay your debt, for Aphrae and Bartelo and all of the others whose blood stains your claws.
‘Cowards! The dark shall not hide you from the Emperor’s light. Come out and fight, or die in the dark. Make your choice,’ Cassor roared, as if echoing his thoughts. The Dreadnought hurled his words into the dark like artillery fire and clashed his claws together. ‘Come, dogs of Chemos. Come vermin of Nostramo. Fight Cassor the mighty or be damned for your timidity.’
Raphen and the rest of the Death Company shared the Dreadnought’s eagerness. They fanned out, weapons at the ready, forming a barrier between the Terminators and the enemy that lurked in the dark. Soon the air was full of the growling of chainswords and the bark of bolt pistols as the Death Company fired at darting shadows.
The intoxicated nobles were beginning to sober up, Karlaen saw. He felt a flash of regret as he pressed forward, shoving some of them aside with force. They could not be allowed to detain him or his battle-brothers. Men and women screamed as he trod on them, or swatted them from his path. Flax railed at him, pounding withered fists on his armour. Karlaen ignored the screams and curses both as, holding Flax to his chest, he moved towards the other Terminators, Alphaeus following close behind. ‘Brothers, we must withdraw to the entrance,’ Karlaen said as he moved. ‘Formation beta-ten, squad by squad. Covering fire, concentrate on the flanks. Let Raphen and the Death Company handle the rest. Joses, take point. We make for the Plaza of the Emperor Ascendant.’
‘Gladly, captain,’ Joses growled. Blade in hand, the dark-haired Blood Angel moved to the tip of the wedge and began to stride towards the entrance. Genestealers came out of the dark, and fell to Joses’s blade or the storm bolters of the others. Above it all, Karlaen noticed that the grinding metal sound he had noted earlier growing in volume. The air grew damp, and his armour’s sensors flashed in warning. He looked up, his bionic eye focusing in at last on the source of the noise and water.
Far above, the great sewer sluice gates which ran from the city above ground open, unleashing both alien invaders and a torrent of filthy water onto the streets below. Waterfalls of rain slammed down hard enough to rupture the street and sweep several Death Company warriors from their feet. Weak red light filtered down from above, illuminating the dark all around them, as the undercity began to slowly flood. Heavy shapes descended, dropping down from the sluice gates to crash onto the street, causing it to crack and shudder. Karlaen felt a tremor of alarm as he saw the familiar, hulking shape of a carnifex rise to its full height amidst the unceasing downpour.
The lenses of his eye cycled and clicked, bringing the lumbering monster into clear focus. Its skull was discoloured by a ruinous, newly healed wound, but it moved as quickly as he recalled.
‘Is that…?’ Alphaeus asked.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Karlaen grunted. ‘We’ll kill it again, if we have to. We’ll kill them as many times as it takes.’
As water thundered down around them, the Blood Angels made ready to receive their enemy. Genestealers sprinted through the ranks of the Death Company as tyranid warriors and the newly arrived carnifex crashed into the berserkers. The multi-limbed aliens slewed through the rising water, bounding to the attack and, in some cases, on past the Terminators towards easier prey. Karlaen heard the screams behind him. He hesitated, tempted to turn back, to try and save someone, anyone.
Alphaeus caught his shoulder. ‘You can’t, captain. We have our orders. Flax brought them down here to die, and that’s what they’re doing. The longer the genestealers are occupied chewing on Phodia’s upper crust, the longer we’ve got to get Flax to the plaza and off this dying hunk of rock.’ His words were harsh, but not unfeeling. Karlaen knew that Alphaeus and the others were wrestling with the same urge to go back, to protect those men and women they had left behind. But to do so would be to condemn their mission to failure. They had what they had come for, and now it was time to leave.
Karlaen
trudged on, ignoring the screams of the dying and the damned. Ahead of him, he saw Raphen spiral through the air, propelled by his jump pack, his crackling thunder hammer lashing out to crush and maim the enemy. Several of his men followed suit, hurtling over their fellows to land amidst the genestealers briefly, killing and then moving on.
The Blood Angels pressed on, creating a bloody path through any genestealer or tyranid that tried to stop them. But the creatures came on regardless of how many fell. Karlaen could feel the itch in his brain that said Flax’s abominable sibling was nearby, driving its servants to the attack. Between the darkness and the water pouring down from above it would be next to impossible to pinpoint the beast, even if he had been tempted to do so.
The wound in his chest ached at the thought. It had already sealed itself, but the memory of the claw punching into him was hard to shake. He had been wounded before, and many times, over the course of his service to the Chapter, but this one was different. It was almost personal, as if the broodlord had wanted to leave him something to remember it by. He touched the punctured spot on his armour with the tip of his hammer, and felt a tugging at his mind.
Then Flax was screaming in his ear and he came back to himself, knee-deep in water, as genestealers exploded upwards, claws reaching for him. Karlaen swung his hammer with a roar, bashing one of his attackers off its feet, but the others slammed into him, grabbing his legs and his arm, trying to pull him down.
‘Captain,’ Alphaeus shouted, turning towards him. The sergeant hammered his power sword down on the back of one beast’s skull, killing it instantly.
The others swarmed over Karlaen, dragging him to one knee through sheer weight of numbers. Flax screamed as talons sought his withered flesh. Thinking quickly, Karlaen hefted the old man and tossed him towards Alphaeus. The sergeant caught him as he beheaded a leaping genestealer with a sweep of his blade.
Shield of Baal: Deathstorm Page 10