by Various
‘Gholic. Hadar-Gul. Take point,’ Gorphon ordered. ‘We are to finish the survivors.’
As he attached his helmet to his belt, Murnau detected a moment’s hesitation in the Destroyers – the first they had demonstrated in the brutal boarding action. The raw-faced Graven knew what their sergeant’s orders meant. The Death Guard would have to brave the phosphex themselves and match both their physical resilience and resolve against the Imperial Fists.
Leading the way with their pistols and with idling chainblades held ready, the Destroyers advanced. Grull Gorphon followed with Murnau at his side and Zorrak bringing up the rear. Like Hadar-Gul, he had dropped his cumbersome launcher and had armed himself with bolt pistols instead. The walls and ceiling of the passage had ignited as the phosphorescent fires spread. The chemical blaze danced horribly over the metal, burning with an eerie white-blue flame – it seemed hungry, as though eager to claim new territory. As the squad made its cautious way down the steep corridor, Murnau felt the liquid mist of the toxic compound against his skin. It smothered him like a lingering miasma, and almost immediately he felt the poison seep and scald its way into his flesh.
Murnau could now hear the howling agony of the Imperial Fists rising up from the lower deck. Across his vox-link the Chaplain detected the faintest murmur of agony from the lead Graven as they stomped through the hanging phosphex. The matt ceramite and green trim of their plate visibly smouldered in the glow, but Murnau didn’t fully appreciate the torture to which he had exposed them until he too pushed on into the concentrated cloud of chemical death. The glowing flames flaring from the metal of his cables, chest-plate and studded pauldrons was disconcerting enough, but they set light to his long, black hair and licked at his face.
Murnau could feel the desiccating toxic compound eating into him.
The Graven held their tongues, biting back the agony as they descended to the gunnery deck. Murnau assumed that the remaining Imperial Fists were suffering as much – if not more so – than the Death Guard, since the Destroyers entered unmolested. Not a single shot was offered in defence.
The gunnery deck was a vision of refulgent, blue hell. There were fires everywhere. Here the Destroyers found the empty canisters and the chemical cloud in greatest concentration. Murnau heard a low growl across the vox from members of the Graven, but it was the rumble of determination. They were Death Guard – the sons of Mortarion, the scourge of Barbarus. They were much more than their brother Legions. They did not fear death, nor any instrument of death. Brute endurance was their greatest gift, and it was that and that alone that drove the faltering Graven onwards.
‘Bodies,’ Gorphon announced, rasping through his corrupted lungs.
‘Over here, also,’ Gholic gargled, as the Destroyers moved out cautiously across the open deck. Imperial Fists, helmetless and face down, their yellow armour burned and twisted. As Murnau and the sergeant stood over the body of one particular dead Space Marine, the Chaplain noticed something out of the corner of one stinging eye.
‘Movement!’ Hadar-Gul managed in a hoarse roar.
Another of Latham’s men stumbled out of the blue murk, his boltgun held slackly in his gauntlet and kicking wild shots into the deck and ceiling. Gorphon spun around, slapping the Imperial Fist back with his power fist. The loyalist fell, his ghoulish face a steaming mask of eaten muscle – there was no skin to speak of, and his cheekbones were visible through the hyper-desiccated flesh. The Destroyer sergeant brought his crackling fist around and took the melting head from the shoulders of the unfortunate warrior. The Imperial Fist fell to his knees before toppling to one side.
‘Blood!’ Zorrak called out, drawing Murnau and the remaining Graven towards him.
Following spots and spatters of gore that sizzled on the deck amongst the phosphex residue, the Destroyer led them through the blue haze. The spots became clots, and the clots became bloody boot prints until finally a smear on the deck led the Death Guard to a single Space Marine crawling arm over ceramite arm across the gunnery deck. Zorrak raised his bolt pistol.
‘Hold!’ Murnau barked through his scorched lips. The prone warrior was certainly not an Imperial Fist, as the plain colour of his plate confirmed. His armour could almost be taken for that of the Death Guard. Murnau squinted with his raw eyes. Even through the flickering phosphorescence dancing across the plate it was clear that the suit bore no marking, Legion symbol or rank insignia.
‘Who is he?’ Gorphon managed, expecting the Chaplain to know.
Murnau didn’t, but he felt sure that this was the precious cargo that the Xanthus was transporting to Terra. The passenger was a Space Marine, true, but a legionary no more.
‘He is a loyalist spy,’ the Chaplain announced. ‘Some agent of the Emperor.’
The Chaplain stepped in front of the crawling Space Marine, who looked up at him from the deck. His eyes were misted and blood-speckled, and his face flesh ruptured and wasting away before the Chaplain’s gaze. His russet hair and beard were plaited and his chin whiskers rich with the clotted gore he’d brought up from his disintegrating lungs. As he stared up at Murnau he showed the blood-stained serration of sharpened teeth. His voice – when it graced the seething silence – was raw, but full of primal determination.
‘This… is Varskjøld,’ the agent wheezed. ‘Sergeant… do it now…’
It took a moment for Murnau to realise that the agent was talking into his vox-link.
A sudden detonation rocked the gunnery deck as one of the battery plasma cannons was overloaded. It flashed with the heat and light of a miniature sun.
Murnau felt the entire vessel shift. He was blown into a bulkhead wall, and a series of quakes shuddered violently through the superstructure. The agent Varskjøld had instructed some unseen ally to blow the cannon and deliberately hull the derelict, and Murnau could feel the Xanthus lurching as a cascade of swamp filth flooded the gunnery deck. Something inside the vessel had equalised – a tipping point had been reached and the extra weight of the diseased waters was taking the shattered section down into the depths.
Moments passed in a blur. Murnau heard the single crash of a bolt pistol. The phosphex obscured everything in a bank of blue, luminescent lethality, and under its cover Gorphon had been shot in the throat. From the angle, the bolt taking the Destroyer sergeant under the chin and blowing out the top of his scabby crown, Murnau reckoned that Varskjøld had taken the shot with a concealed weapon. The Chaplain’s response was immediate and well-practised, the crozius coming down on the agent’s head with terrible force, splitting open his skull and allowing his brains to spill out through the tangle of his russet plaits.
The sinking ship lurched again, hurling the remaining Graven to the deck once more. Beyond, Murnau could hear the churn of filth bubbling up beyond the flooded sections. Foetid air howled past the skinned flesh of his ears, though doing little to dislodge the cruel hold the phosphex had on the deck. About him, the Chaplain heard the tortured groans of the Xanthus being rushed to a quagmire grave.
Almost blind and still suffering under the cruel and caustic attentions of the phosphex haze, the Death Guard were struggling. With the deck shifting beneath them, it was little wonder that the roaring black waters took them so easily.
Murnau half stumbled, half clawed his way up the incline and hooked his gauntlet into the piping running along the gunnery deck bulkhead. Gholic and Hadar-Gul disappeared into the darkness without a word as the deluge of rotting sludge swept them away.
The ship was moving. What had once been an incline was becoming a floundering vertical. Zorrak’s thundering footsteps took him towards the Chaplain, and the two Death Guard reached out their gauntlets for one another, but their ceramite fingertips missed by a whisper and the Destroyer plummeted down into the furious churn of the rising floodwaters.
Using his crozius like a climbing pick, Murnau ascended the wall like the face of a cliff. Hammering into the m
etal sheeting, he created purchase points to haul himself up while his gauntlet and mag-locking boots had to contend with the busy piping and cables running down the corridor’s length. All the while, the lingering cloud of phosphex ate away at both the Chaplain’s flesh and his resolve – every inch of exposed skin felt as if it was on fire.
With the swirling filth gargling and spitting its sticky way up towards him, Murnau heaved himself up into the buckled stairwell, but a waterfall of canker-curdled muck began to dribble, stream and then course down from above. Murnau held his position for a moment. The Xanthus was sinking, and as it did so the morass surrounding it was flooding in through the rents and breaches in the crashed vessel’s hull. The frigate was being flooded from above and below, cutting off the Chaplain’s escape and trapping him in the stairwell.
Murnau slammed his fist into the passage wall, putting a dent in the metal. His gaunt face was screwed up with rage, the raw muscles and tendons creating a mask of frustration. He settled himself amongst the stairwell structure, watching the liquid filth cascade past him and gush into the stinking waters below. The Chaplain thought on the living bounty that had withered and died to create such ruination and putridity. He considered the promise of new life that the rotting slime held for the insects, parasites and fungal forms that had colonised, and come to dominate, the sludge-ball that Algonquis had so quickly become. The notion that he was going to become part of that fruitful corruption momentarily amused the Chaplain. He would have smiled but for the fact there was so little of his face left.
The stabbing pain in his eyes flickered away to darkness and all Murnau had left was the fire in his scalded, bloody lungs and the doom in his hearts. His mirth and madness had abandoned him. He licked his perfect teeth. Even with a blistered tongue he could taste the heavy metal lethality seeping into his body.
In the empty blackness, the Chaplain’s thoughts returned to the tale of Mortarion’s ascension that he had told the Destroyers to inspire them, and fortify their spirit. To his surprise and disappointment, he found precious little of inspiration in the story now. Picturing Mortarion on the toxic slopes of Barbarus served only to remind him that the poisoned environs of their home world had actually defeated the primarch, and it had been down to the Emperor to save his fallen son.
There would be no one to save Morgax Murnau. The Chaplain remembered Phorgal’s insistence that there should be no survivors aboard the Xanthus.
Indeed, there would be none.
Grey Angel
John French
The prisoner looked up as the cell door opened. Chains as thick as a man’s wrist held him against the bare stone wall, looping over him like rust-scaled serpents. They had deactivated his power armour, its dead bulk holding his body like a manacle.
The small cell was carved from black rock, and the walls glistened with damp as a figure stepped through the door carrying a torch. The flame caught the prisoner’s eyes, kindling sparks in their depths as they watched the torchbearer.
Shadow-grey robes swathed him, and the prisoner could see a hint of a smiling mouth hidden within a cowl. The iron door shut and locked behind the figure. The cell was suddenly silent but for the hissing of the torch.
‘So you are the one they caught,’ the figure said at length. ‘I am here to question you. You understand this much, I am sure.’
‘Do what you must. I do not fear your methods.’
‘I am here to find answers, not cut you to pieces.’
As the figure stepped forwards the prisoner saw two liquid-black eyes glitter within the cowl. The figure was a head shorter than a Space Marine, though bulked by armour and robe.
The prisoner blinked. His vision was sharp, but it was as if his mind could not focus, as if something about the figure could not be resolved. The figure glanced into the shadowed corner of the cell as though he were waiting for something. ‘What line of simple questioning requires that you chain me here?’
‘Questions of loyalty.’ The robed figure held the torch closer, letting its flickering light reach across the dull grey surface of the prisoner’s armour. ‘You wear the battleplate of the Legions, but bear no heraldry or marks of fealty. To whom we bend our knee defines who we are. This is the order of things. You are undefined, your loyalty unknown, and you have strayed into my realm. At best you are a mystery. At worst…’
‘Is this an interrogation or a sermon?’ the prisoner demanded.
‘Does it have to be either? An interrogation would imply that we are enemies, and I would not want to believe that. A sermon would mean that I was trying to persuade you, and I have no need to do that. I am simply telling you what I know to be true.’
‘These chains say otherwise.’
‘Once, upon this world, it was death to come unheralded into another’s domain. Be thankful that I have allowed you to keep your armour.’ The robed figure placed the torch in a metal bracket, his armoured hands glossy black and fire-touched gold. The oily light pushed back the gloom at the edge of the cell and the prisoner could see his bolter and chainsword propped against the wall. ‘The chains are simply a precaution. I have accorded you every honour, though you have not extended the meanest courtesy in return. You have not even told me your name.’
The prisoner leaned his head back, feeling the cool damp of the stone wall upon his scalp. ‘My name is Cerberus.’
‘Ah, a legend of the ancient times. As you choose. I will return the honour. My name is Luther, and I would know why you have come to my realm.’
Iacton Qruze folded into the shadow beyond the wall and listened. His armour was ghost-grey against the night, and the only mark it bore was lost in the gloom and rain spatter. He had removed his helmet, letting his senses sift the night air. He could smell the gathering charge of thunder.
Above him the fortress of Aldurukh rose in tiers of cold stone to a starless night sky. He had penetrated its outer defences, but he knew that there were guards, sensors and security precautions that would only increase the deeper he went. He was taking a risk, but time and the possibility of total failure had forced his hand.
Necessity: his watchword for all these last years, as bitter and undeniable as ever. He had been on Caliban for days, moving in the darkness – listening, watching, trying to find what they needed, what they had come for.
The Lion had sent part of the Dark Angels Legion back to its home world under the command of Luther. That had been long before Horus had begun his rebellion, but Caliban had been eerily silent ever since. In a war of betrayal and treachery, that silence could mean nothing, or many things. It was a matter they had come here to resolve, but they were running out of time.
The Dark Angels had captured Loken. No, he thought, Loken had allowed them to take him. Qruze could see only folly in such an action – it was a dangerous gamble. He had waited for as long as he could, to see if Loken would get himself free, or if his plan had actually worked. If Loken had met with Luther and determined his loyalty, then they could deliver their message and move into the open. But there had been no sign, and too much time had passed. Now Qruze had to gamble even more.
Nothing was moving in the courtyard below – he could hear only the wind and the patter of rain on stone. He shifted forwards, his armoured bulk moving with a quietened purr. The battleplate was that worn by all of the Legiones Astartes, but a keen eye would have picked out the differences, the mark of unique artifice in its grey simplicity.
Qruze moved to the parapet edge, staying low. He cocked his head, feeling the rain run down the valleys of his scarred cheeks.
The lightning lit the sky and roared its anger over the fortress. Qruze dropped over the parapet, the sound of his impact on the stone below swallowed by the thunder’s echo. He glanced around, his hand on the boltgun mag-locked to his leg plate.
Nothing.
He moved around the edge of a courtyard, keeping to the rain-soaked shadows. T
he oily light of a torch flickered from an open archway that led into the fortress’ interior. He was three paces from the door when he heard the footsteps. He went still, hand hovering over his bolter.
A figure emerged from the doorway, the torchlight rendering it as a writhing silhouette. Qruze could see the bulk of pauldrons swathed under a fur-trimmed robe that rippled in the wind. Short wings sprang from the temples of the warrior’s blunt-faced helm, and a drawn sword rested against his right shoulder. Rain ran down the flat of the blade. In the torchlight it looked like runnels of cooling fire.
Qruze held his breath, felt the rising beat of his hearts. The Dark Angel tilted his head, red eye-lenses fixed upon the sky.
Lightning bleached out the courtyard and the robed Dark Angel. Qruze could feel the rising crest of adrenaline, cold and oily, inside his old muscles. He forced his heartbeats to slow. Inside his gauntlets his fingers were almost trembling.
The Dark Angel dropped his gaze, half turned and scanned the courtyard opposite where Qruze stood. He would have to shoot if the Dark Angel turned around. It would have to be a kill-shot, clean and fast, very precise – a single Stalker round in the instant the sentry drew his bolter.
Qruze’s mind ran through the movement, focusing on the target, the timing, readying himself for the inevitable moment.
He could see the rain beading on the pale fur draped across the Dark Angel’s shoulders. Qruze had not come here to kill, but he would do so if needed. That it was a fellow Space Marine, whose loyalty might yet be true, did not alter that necessity. In the war they now fought, such things meant nothing.
He visualised the mercury-filled shell punching through the warrior’s eyepiece. He tensed his legs – he would need to spring forwards as soon as he fired, to catch the body before it clattered to the floor…
The Dark Angel turned, and walked back through the doorway. Qruze listened to the footsteps recede. He exhaled slowly, and let his muscles relax.