The vox-net crackled to life as he left the sluice gate behind. Voices hammered at his ears: commands, warnings, oaths – the roar of a Chapter, roused to fury. He heard the red hum rise behind his thoughts. It was always this way when the Chapter went to war; the black tide of emotions which every warrior fought to control became stronger and stronger as the vibrations of Thunderhawk engines shook their bones and the heat of weapons-fire washed over them.
Between battles, in the cold stretch of the void or on Baal’s blistered sands, the thirst for battle could be ignored, sublimated into more noble pursuits. Karlaen knew many battle-brothers who were as adept with a sculptor’s chisel or a painter’s brush as they were with bolter and blade. But here, now, on the sharp edge, the rage was given full flower. And if they were not careful, it could sweep them under and into damnation.
Heat washed across the plaza, withering the alien vegetation that had briefly claimed dominion. Without men or automated systems to control the fires they raged out of control, incinerating tyranids and any surviving Imperial defenders that were caught in the path of the flames. More than once, disorientated tyranids burst from the burning ruins and spilled through the plaza. Some attacked Karlaen, and he was forced to defend himself. He left a trail of crushed carcasses behind him as he trudged towards the Plaza of the Emperor Ascendant.
As yet, the tyranids were uncoordinated – they were little better than ravenous animals. But soon the Hive Mind would bring its incomprehensible attentions to bear on the invaders, and it would exert its will on the swarms, uniting them in terrible purpose.
By the time he reached the Plaza of the Emperor Ascendant, the air above him was full of the grotesque shapes of gargoyles. The flapping nightmares spiralled above the city like a living cloud of teeth and claws. Broods of gaunts crept through the haze that lay over the plaza, and Karlaen could just make out larger shapes behind them. But there was no sign of the others. He scanned through the pre-arranged vox frequencies, but only static greeted his ears. He moved towards the fallen statue of the Emperor.
Flax was still unconscious, and he barely stirred as Karlaen hid him in a cranny beneath the statue. It was a small mercy; no man should have to witness the death of his world and people, Karlaen thought. When he was satisfied that the governor was safe, he straightened and began cycling through the vox frequencies until he found the main Adeptus Astartes signal. The channel crackled with static. ‘This is Captain Karlaen, of the First, requesting extraction from the planet’s surface,’ Karlaen said, raising his voice to be heard through the static.
Moments passed. The signal phased in and out, and he repeated himself. He looked up, trying to imagine the battle raging far above the planet. Void warfare was a thing of vast distances and acute angles. Up and down had no meaning; there was no high ground to capture, and precise calculations were required to even come close to striking the enemy. Servitors slaved to battle-stations – one part analytical engine and one part gunner – manned targeting computers as specially trained Chapter serfs followed their instructions, firing at enemies they could not see.
Karlaen had only experienced void warfare a few times. He had participated in boarding actions and repelled the same, when the enemy drew close across the incalculable gulf that normally separated the combatants. Even now he could recall the crushing cold and inescapable silence that accompanied such conflicts as one moved across the outer hull of a vessel. The way the maddening spiral of stars which stretched into infinity in every direction imprinted itself on the mind’s eye, never to fade.
Making planetfall amidst such madness was even more nerve-wracking. Men died without ever seeing the surface of the world they had been brought to conquer. The upper reaches of the stratosphere would be a hellstorm of fire and fury.
As he tried to make contact with the fleet, he scanned the smoke and haze for the enemy. Behind the veil of grey and black, shapes moved, some large, some small, and he could hear the telltale click of chitin on stone. He clasped his hammer in both hands and waited. The vox crackled in his ear.
‘Say again?’ a voice asked. The line hissed and spat with static.
Karlaen grunted in satisfaction. ‘This is Captain Karlaen, requesting extraction,’ he barked. ‘Rallying-point alpha.’
‘Acknowledged captain. Extraction in process. Hold position until arrival.’
‘Acknowledged,’ Karlaen said, staring out at the ill-defined shapes slouching through the haze. He swung his hammer slowly, stirring the smoke. ‘Come then, if you will. Here I stand, and I shall not move,’ he murmured. Despite his words, he hoped that they would keep their distance. He was not afraid of them. Rather, he was afraid of himself. He could feel his control slipping with every confrontation. The Red Thirst scraped at the back of his throat and memories that were not his pressed down on him. He knew the signs as well as any, for he had seen men afflicted with them often enough.
He thought of Raphen. He closed his eyes, trying not to imagine how it would feel to be claimed by the same madness that had taken the other Space Marine, or Cassor. To be lost and damned by a curse in his very blood. Karlaen’s eyes opened and his gaze flickered to Flax, where the old man lay, breathing shallowly. Does the answer rest with you? he thought. Are you our salvation, as Corbulo thinks, or was this all for nothing?
He heard a scrape of talons on stone and whirled, his hammer chopping out to catch a leaping genestealer. The brutal blow drove the genestealer to the ground, leaving it in a gore-stained heap. Karlaen scanned the plaza, sighting more multi-armed shapes creeping towards him through the ruins. The vox crackled with static as he tried one last time to contact the others. A second genestealer lunged at him from over the fallen statue of the Emperor.
Karlaen pivoted and his blow caught the creature in the side, smashing it against the statue. Ichor stained the scorched features of the Emperor as the body slid to the ground. Karlaen turned back to see more of the beasts bounding towards him through the smoke.
The next few moments passed in a blur of blood and death. With his ammunition depleted, and an unconscious man to protect, Karlaen was forced onto the defensive. His hammer was as much shield as weapon. He turned, twisted, stomped and slid, never slowing, always staying in motion, forcing his enemies to come to him.
Finally, he stood alone, surrounded by the mangled corpses of tyranids. His hammer was heavy in his hand; the Chapter symbols that marked the ancient relic-weapon were hidden beneath a sticky shroud of splattered meat and alien juices. Smoke had filled the plaza, and he was pressed to see anything. He backed towards the statue as embers drifted down from the sky. His eyes stung from the heat of the flames which drew ever closer on either side of the palace. The air was thick with poison and ash.
Karlaen squinted. What little sunlight there had been was now hidden behind a thickening veil of smoke. He could see nothing, hear nothing. Weariness crept into him, one muscle at a time, and with it came the red hum, which became louder and louder the more tired he grew. Soon he would not be able to resist it, or to channel it. He would only be able to sink beneath it. And then…
He shied away from the thought, and tried to marshal what strength remained to him. Through the downpour of embers, he saw the genestealers massing once more among the shattered statues which marked the plaza. And then a malign shape, larger than the rest, leapt up from the horde and onto a headless statue.
The Spawn of Cryptus looked the worse for wear after its tumble into the depths. Its carapace was cracked and befouled; filth dripped from it, drying and flaking away in the heat of the fire. Yet it still moved with the same eerie grace as always, and it did not seem to have lost any of its terrible strength. As it crouched on the statue’s shoulders, its glare was one of hateful promise.
Karlaen shook his head. ‘Determination is not the province of the Emperor’s chosen alone,’ he murmured. Another line from the Philosophies of Raldoron. Raldoron had been referring to orks, but the statement held true for the broodlord as well, he th
ought. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground before him and raised his chin.
‘Well, beast. What are you waiting for?’
The broodlord watched its prey ready himself for what was to come, and felt a flicker of disquiet. Never before had it fought prey like this. Never before had it matched wills with a creature that could resist it.
It did not like this game.
It crouched on the statue and examined the red-armoured giant with distaste. The invader had ruined everything, and there was no more time. The broodlord could feel the weight of the Hive Mind’s attentions turning towards it now, as the ground shook and the sky bled fire. Something was riding the charnel wind down from the pitiless stars, and every swarm would be mustered to counter it.
But not yet. Not… yet. Not while its brother was yet unpunished. Not while the usurper yet breathed. Its claws sank into the surface of the statue, as it imagined doing the same to his fragile flesh. It had waited years, decades, for this moment. This last revenge. To show him the full price for his treachery.
It could feel its brother’s mind, dim and clouded by pain. That pain gave it no satisfaction, though it could not say why. His features flashed through its mind, and it wondered why it had not killed him when it had had the chance. It had wanted to so badly, but something had stayed its hand – other faces, other voices, memories it did not understand, a woman’s voice whispering: This is your brother Augustus. He will protect you, Tiberius.
But he had not. And then, it was too late.
It closed its eyes, ignoring the sounds of its children below, of the death of the world it had sought to claim. It focused on the memories that swirled through its mind the way embers swirled through the air above the plaza. It remembered a man and a woman, and then Flax, raising a pistol. It remembered the man shouting, and the blood that followed a rumble of thunder. The plaza shook around it. The broodlord opened its eyes and clutched at itself as pain shot through it.
The fall had hurt it. The waters had seared its lungs, but it had hauled itself out and up into the light, its strength bolstered by rage. Rage at the thought that it might not taste the blood of the usurper. Rage that its long-delayed vengeance might never take place. Rage that its brother would survive while it was subsumed into the Hive Mind.
Rage that he might never understand what he had taken from it.
Only he did, didn’t he? He had made that clear enough on the bridge. The broodlord touched the spot where Flax’s knife had bitten into its side, still wet with ichor. No, Augustus Flax understood all too well.
And the Spawn of Cryptus would make him pay. No matter how many red giants stood between them, no matter how much fire fell from the sky, or how many cracks opened in the earth. The Spawn of Cryptus ruled Asphodex now. The old order would be swept away, and the song and shadow of the Leviathan would rise in its place, stretching from star to star.
The broodlord stretched to its full height on its perch and spread its arms. It threw back its head and for a moment it gazed up at the fiery rain that had begun to fall from the roiling clouds above. Then its head snapped down and it roared.
Its children echoed its cry, then loped towards their prey.
The final battle for the fate of the Flaxian Dynasty had begun.
Seventeen
Karlaen raised his hammer and prepared to sell his life dearly. The broodlord’s scream rippled out over the plaza, and the genestealers echoed its cry as they lunged forward as one. There were too many of them, coming too fast, for him to overcome. He made the calculation instinctively, and it brought him no shame to realise the inevitability of his position.
Indeed, part of him longed for it. Part of him longed to give in to the madness and drink deep of the red waters that rose behind his eyes, to simply give in to the Red Thirst as so many others had, and to shed the burden of duty in his final moments. He thought of Raphen and the Death Company, and wondered what it must be like to fight as they did, lost in the past. What would it be like, to battle alongside heroes long dead and gone to dust? Was it worth it? Was giving in to madness worth seeing the face of Sanguinius himself, as the dark closed in around you for the last time? He could almost feel the primarch’s presence beside him, his great wings shielding Karlaen from the falling embers. He could almost…
The thud of his hearts drowned out all other sound. Shadows moved through the rain of fire; the flickering, ghostly outline of memories struggling to the surface. In the pulse of his hearts he heard the dim din of voices, and felt the reverberations of battle. But not this battle. He opened his eyes. The world might as well have been a painting. He could make out the gleam of the firelight reflected in the talons of his enemies, and smell the acrid stink of them. And among them he could see warriors who were not there – shades clad in armour of brass or amethyst, reeking of incense and spoiled blood. He blinked. The warriors rippled and vanished, as if they were no more than motes on the surface of his eye.
Karlaen steeled himself. He ignored the red hum and what it had stirred to the surface of him as the genestealers bounded towards him through the ruins, springing from statue to statue or simply scuttling across the open plaza. If he was to die, it would not be as a maddened beast. He would not give in. He would do his duty, and he would die here and now, at the talons of these beasts, rather than beneath the blades of enemies past, if die he must.
He let the head of the hammer dip. His mind began to calculate the best way to use their numbers against them, and to utilise his combat capabilities to the fullest. Tyranids were not men, and wounds that did not kill them outright rarely stopped them. But the swarms could be shaken free of the Hive Mind’s control through sustained violence. Kill enough of them, and quickly, and the broodlord’s synaptic control might slip as the remainder gave in to their feral nature and fled. The encroaching flames would make that easier. Like all animals, the bio-beasts instinctively feared fire.
The closest genestealer leapt, and time seemed to slow, the moment drawing taut like the string of a bow. Karlaen pinpointed the best place to land his blow for maximum effect, and the haft of his hammer spun in his grip as he brought it up. Even as the blow connected, his armour’s sensors screamed a warning. The genestealer’s head burst like an overripe fruit and, as it flipped through the air, bolter fire licked across the horde.
The vox crackled to life and Karlaen could not stifle a triumphant laugh as a familiar voice said, ‘One would think you’d learned your lesson about haring off alone, captain.’
‘Feel free to report me to Commander Dante once we’re off-planet, sergeant,’ Karlaen said, as genestealers fell. Terminators tromped into the plaza from out of the palace ruins, bolters thundering. Alphaeus, Zachreal and Melos were in the lead. ‘Joses?’ Karlaen asked, quietly.
Alphaeus’s voice was sombre. ‘He bought us time to retreat. The creature spilled his guts, and he was in no mood to fall back. We – I – thought it best to abide by his decision.’ There was much left unsaid in that terse statement. Karlaen could think of nothing to say. Joses had always been close to the red edge of things. The taciturn black-haired warrior had never fully shed himself of the lessons of the desert and the mountain.
Karlaen shook his head and smashed a genestealer aside as it clawed at him. He would mourn later. ‘I have signalled for extraction. They are on their way.’ He jammed the end of his hammer into a genestealer’s spine, shattering it. ‘Where are–’ Before he could finish the question, the whine of turbines filled the air and black-armoured shapes dropped through the smoke. The Death Company had arrived. Or at least what was left of it. There were only a handful of the berserkers remaining, though their enthusiasm seemed undimmed.
A genestealer that had been about to leap on him was crushed by a thunder hammer. Raphen landed a moment later and jerked the head of his hammer free from the ruin of the xenos’s twitching form. The crazed warrior turned to Karlaen and nodded tersely. ‘Thought to have them all to yourself, eh brother? For shame. The traitors owe us
all a debt of blood, not just you,’ he rasped, shivering in eagerness. He clapped a trembling hand to Karlaen’s shoulder and said, ‘We shall stand together. Holy Terra shall not fall. Not today.’
‘No, not today,’ Karlaen said. He hesitated, but then clasped Raphen’s forearm in a warrior’s grip. The sergeant jerked once, as if in surprise. His twitching subsided. He looked at Karlaen, and the eyes behind the lenses of his helmet were lucid. But the clarity lasted only for a moment.
‘Can you hear him, brother? Can you feel the heat of his passage? We are in the shadow of his wings, and he calls the Ninth Legion to his side,’ Raphen snarled. He spun, crushing a genestealer, then putting a bolt-round into the belly of another. The wounded beast charged on. Raphen made to fire again, but his bolt pistol clicked uselessly. He tossed the weapon aside. Karlaen moved to finish off the wounded genestealer, but Raphen beat him to it.
He caught the creature by its jaw and jerked its head forwards against his own. He smashed his head against the genestealer’s own again and again, until the xenos stopped thrashing. He let the body fall and turned back to Karlaen, ichor dripping down the contours of his faceplate. ‘The primarch calls us to battle, brother,’ he whispered hoarsely.
Before Karlaen could reply, Raphen whipped back around, lifted his hammer and activated his jump pack, hurling himself into the seething ranks of the foe. As Karlaen watched him, the ground shook beneath his feet, and a loud voice roared, ‘Faith is what fans the guttering spark of my rage. Witches and heretics shall be consumed in my fire. One side, brother – this plaza shall be their tomb.’ Cassor stomped past the statue, storm bolter firing. Genestealers exploded in mid-leap or were slapped from the air by the Dreadnought’s claws.
Karlaen felt a surge of relief as he watched the Dreadnought smash into the enemy. His earlier calculations fractured and came apart as he watched his brothers enter the fray. They were still outnumbered a hundred to one, but there was a chance now, where before there had only been inevitability. He swung his hammer with renewed strength. Alphaeus and the others joined him, marching steadily across the plaza to take up formation around the statue of the Emperor.
Shield of Baal: Deathstorm Page 13