Revus, as promised, did his best to keep up. He contributed when he could, adding his hellgun shots to the thundering chorus of boltguns. Amid all the broken shadows and fire-flecked explosions, even through his fatigue, he witnessed the way the Adeptus Astartes fought, and for the first time began to understand why Spinoza was so enamoured with them.
They were so different to the Custodians. Where those warriors had been artisans of combat, individually perfect, beautiful and dreadful, these were ostensibly cruder creations, blunter-edged, heavier. Soon, though, it became apparent that they were no less deadly. Their way of battle was to overwhelm, to shock, to render an opponent half-insensible before the first blows even landed. Within that rolling tide of sensory overload, fuelled by battle-roars and the incessant grind of servos and muzzle-flares, there was another kind of artistry present – a pinpoint precision, a flawless awareness of those around them. They were a seamless unit, the five of them, backing one another up, multiplying the others’ firepower and killing potential.
As Revus ran, he felt the long tug of exhaustion snag at his muscles. The pace, as promised, was punishing. The Space Marines scorched their way back through blood-streaked halls, never pausing, tearing through hastily-thrown psychic bolts as if they were nothing.
Spinoza remained at the forefront, running alongside Haessler, guiding them in. They reached a long arched bridge that crossed a deep chasm, and sprinted across it. Screams swung at them eerily, some far below, some above. Revus gritted his teeth and kept going, feeling the sharp burn in his lungs. An Imperial Fist loped alongside him, his heavy boots cracking the stone with each footfall.
The corrupted adept came from nowhere. It must have been waiting for them on the underside of the bridge, hanging like a spider, poised to drag itself up over the edge. It slithered quickly into view, cloaked in snaggles of darkness, its toothless jaw locked into a snarl.
The Space Marine reacted instantly, bringing his bolter to bear, but reality suddenly popped around them, wobbling and distorting. He slipped, skidding close to the edge.
Revus, running just a little further back, opened up with his hellgun. Lasbeams sliced into the adept, every one hitting home, cutting straight through it and punching streamers of blood out the far side. He found himself shouting in rage, just as the Space Marines did, hurling invective at the creature even as its psychic distortion gusted out.
A second later, and the Imperial Fist had recovered himself. He lurched forward, grabbing the wretch by its neck and hurling it out into the void. Then he turned on Revus, his helm lenses glowing in the fractured dark.
For a moment, Revus thought the warrior would be angry, deprived of prey.
‘How long have you been in here?’ the Space Marine demanded.
Revus glanced at the mission chrono. ‘Five-point-four hours, lord,’ he replied.
The enormous helm nodded in salute. ‘Impressive,’ he said. ‘You do honour to the Throne.’
He turned back, running again, racing to catch up with the rest of the squad. Revus stood for a split second, startled, panting, aching.
You do honour to the Throne.
Then he too was running again, somehow feeling less pain than before, somehow dragging energy up from a place he had not yet tapped. His jaw set firm, his shoulders low, he kept his legs moving, rejoining the band as it tore deeper into the heart of the Fortress.
The Space Marines were still roaring battle-chants, creating that wall of sonic intimidation that travelled before them like a physical shockwave.
‘For Him!’ Revus cried out, joining in the charge, feeling the energy of it flood through his body, banishing both the dark and the agony. ‘For the glory of Him on Earth!’
Crowl glanced back, just for a moment, at Khazad. She appeared to be listening to the Resonance while staring all the while intently at the Master. The expression of pure hatred in her eyes was impressive. If the Resonance had not been on hand to keep her in check, he had little doubt the man would already have been dead at her hands, powerblade or no.
He turned back to his host. The void below yawned away beneath him, and eddies of the sphere’s internal winds pulled at his cloak.
‘What happened here?’ Crowl asked.
‘It can be contained,’ said Franck.
‘Have you been outside?’
‘It can be contained.’ Franck gazed up at the pulsating orb. ‘A new alignment is coming, inquisitor. A new age. We must expect birth pangs.’
Crowl followed the man’s eyes. He had no means of judging, but the oscillations out in the centre of the sphere looked febrile to him, as if something was out of kilter. Even as he watched, black blotches appeared and disappeared in its heart, bursting and fading like blood clots.
‘You have lost your acolytes to madness,’ Crowl tried again. ‘The few left alive are mindless wretches. This is more than an alignment.’
Franck sucked in a long breath through his device, making it wheeze. ‘You and I are both old men. We have seen a great deal. But nothing compared to what must come now.’ He turned, and fixed the inquisitor with two deep green eyes. ‘I come here from the Senatorum. We nearly changed a law there that has stood for ten thousand years, one that has underpinned everything we have done since the days of glory. I argued against it, and for now it stands, but as for the future… who knows? There are agitated souls out there now. They have reason to be. We have lost Cadia.’
Crowl thought he must have misheard that. ‘We have–’
‘We have lost Cadia.’ The Master smiled again, coldly. ‘That will concentrate minds. Some of them should have been concentrated far earlier.’
‘What is the Wound?’
‘Ah, you heard them scream that, did you? That was the first inkling we had that something was wrong. They started writing it in their scriptorium classes, over and over. Then we couldn’t stop them saying it. Then they started reaching for knives.’
‘You should have reported it.’
‘It can be contained.’
Crowl snorted. The orb above them flexed again, blotching black, before clearing. ‘You know it can’t.’
‘There is a boundary between the ether and real space. It can be bent, it can be broken. In the usual run of things, breakages are localised, impermanent. But Cadia was important, and there were more than just physical walls on that world. The Wound is the mark of our failure. I do not know yet how large it will grow. It may never stop growing.’
‘And it is sending your people mad.’
‘They are attuned to the warp as few others are.’
Crowl remembered what Spinoza had said then. His words to her in that final chamber seemed like some strange dream, a fever-nightmare, and he could hardly believe he’d uttered them. ‘You need assistance. You need help. The Beacon will be lost.’
‘How did you get in here, Crowl? I thought our tracks had been covered adequately well, given the limitations of time and resources.’
Crowl stared at him for a moment, wondering how he could be quite so phlegmatic. His entire kingdom was on the verge of destruction. Even as he hesitated, a few more of the light-points on the sphere’s edge went dark, provoking more spasms from the central orb.
‘You took your inspiration from heresy,’ Crowl said. ‘Appropriately enough. I thought the Magister was merely mad, but its final words had a ring to them. I had heard something similar before, or maybe read it. It took me a while to remember, for my mind does not seem to be what it was, but it came to me in the end. I had a single copy of the forbidden manuscript, written before this world had a single language. Mine was in the Doitjer dialect, and transliterated, after a little work, to Offenbarung. Or, in the Gothic, Revelation. A suitably obscure passage to choose as your code-phrase. And before the Throne there was a sea of glass, like unto crystal.’
Franck nodded. ‘And in the midst of the Throne, and round
about the Throne, were four beasts, full of eyes, before and behind. The text was not picked idly.’
‘Rassilo told me the same thing. The Throne is failing.’
‘And we were the beasts that stood about it, the only ones to see and understand the danger. Dhanda. Raskian. Myself.’
‘And the fourth?’
‘You have met it, I believe.’
‘That creature is dead.’
Franck laughed. ‘Come, now. You know that isn’t true.’
The orb trembled, and black sparks shot from its heart. A tongue of flame kindled in the air above them, snapping briefly like a pennant before gusting out. A tremor ran across the earth far below them, core-deep and angry.
‘Tell me what you have done,’ Crowl said.
Franck clasped his hands together again, turning his face up to the light show above. ‘It is already complete, inquisitor. Bringing the xenos here was our greatest mistake, but it had insisted on seeing the Throneworld in person. In truth, the main outline of the Project had already been agreed. When the creature went mad, that was regrettable, and momentarily dangerous, but it did not affect the matter of the scheme. Dhanda pulled out, which was a shame, but her role was always peripheral.’
Crowl listened, suppressing the hundred questions that simmered under the surface.
‘They can help us. Without them, the Throne will not see out the next hundred years. It will go dark, poisoned both by age and the coming Wound in reality. You do not know what that means. You do not know what the Throne truly is, nor what it protects us from. You may believe, in your ignorance, that it is immune to harm, or that its failures can somehow be accommodated, but let me tell you, with the utmost surety born of perception of what lies beneath, that the horrors you have seen in here this night pale into nothing beside what would overtake us if it were allowed to fail.’
‘They are liars,’ Crowl said.
‘The xenos? Most assuredly so.’
‘They will betray us. They care nothing for us.’
The Master shrugged. ‘The second point is certainly true. The first point may be true also. Risk exists in everything we do.’
Crowl had to restrain himself from leaping up then, clawing at the man’s throat. He still had Sanguine at his belt. If he moved quickly enough, before the thought fully formed…
‘What have you given them?’
‘That is none of your concern.’
‘You sold out your own species!’ Crowl shouted. ‘That makes it my concern.’
The flesh at the corner of Franck’s eyes flickered a fraction. ‘No price could be too high,’ he said, defensive now, ‘if it succeeded.’
Crowl edged closer to him, holding himself back with some difficulty. ‘They are abominations,’ he hissed. ‘Nothing they have told you can be trusted. Whatever you have promised them will be lost forever. They live only for pain. Our pain.’
Franck rounded on him then, at last showing defiance. ‘Yes, we are prey to them,’ he said, his voice low and bitter. ‘We always have been. And yet, if we are destroyed, then they understand that they must be next, for it is we – the weak, the deluded, the decaying children of Old Earth – who alone hold back the tide of unmaking. We are bound together in our mutual need.’
Crowl stared into the Master’s eyes, and saw the utter certainty there. At the very least, the man believed what he said.
‘Whatever you have done,’ he said, his voice low, ‘call it back.’
Franck smiled again, this time with a certain sadness in his eyes. ‘I could not do so now, even if I wished it,’ he said. ‘You have been a most dogged pursuer, Crowl. I find myself pleased that you did not die in your lonely citadel, and that we have spoken these words. But the delegation has left. They are no longer on Terra. They take with them the final element of the Project, the very last thing they asked of us, and when they reach their destination, the contract will be sealed. It cannot be stopped now.’
Crowl tried to move then, to reach for his revolver, but found he couldn’t. With a rising sense of panic, he found that his limbs were frozen, weighed down as if in liquid rockcrete.
He could still move his eyes. Above them, the orb was pluming more violently. It looked as if, far above them, a crack had formed in the glass. He tried to blurt out a warning, but his lips were clamped together.
‘We must endure, now,’ the Master said. ‘We must wait, and ride out the coming storm.’
Crowl felt a twitch at his belt, and saw, with horror, that Sanguine was moving of its own accord from his holster. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Khazad similarly locked in place, though struggling hard.
‘I have sacrificed everything to see this come to pass,’ Franck said. Above them, more flames licked into life, dancing like ghosts around the cold star at their heart. ‘You understand me? Everything.’
Sanguine rose up smoothly before Crowl, swivelling on its axis until the barrel was lined up against his forehead. He struggled to move, and knew that the strength he had left in his withered limbs was laughably insufficient.
Sanguine floated closer, the muzzle’s tip pressing lightly against his skin.
‘The new age is upon us,’ the Master said. ‘I find myself sorry, truly sorry, that you will not live to see it.’
With nothing left to do, Crowl closed his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-four
Spinoza fought alongside Haessler, driving herself hard to keep somewhere close to his speed and power. She had forgotten just how arduous it was even to be in their presence, let alone attempt to accompany them into combat.
They were phenomenal, of course, barely giving her or the others a chance to shoot. Spinoza felt all the old adulation rush back at once – they were like furnaces, driving all before them, never relenting, never stopping. They must have been running well within themselves in order to allow her and the others to keep up, but the pace was still staggering, and soon they were closing on the inner Fortress.
‘How long has it been like this?’ Haessler asked as he loped along, sounding appalled.
‘Unknown,’ Spinoza replied, panting. ‘Must have taken hold fast. They made no distress call.’
The sergeant grunted, clearly unimpressed. ‘We nearly did not respond to you. A hundred other cries have been issued, many of them critical.’
‘What is causing it?’
‘Causes are your domain, interrogator,’ Haessler said. ‘We are here for what comes next.’
They made their way further in, following the course that Crowl must have taken. The cadavers never went away, still contorted into their various displays of agony, besmirched with signs and slogans daubed in their own blood. The same word was sprayed everywhere – the Wound, the Wound, the Wound.
‘My sensors fail beyond this point,’ Haessler reported calmly, as they sprinted down another long, echoing chamber. ‘What can you tell me?’
Spinoza began to struggle to match pace. Only her pride, her determination not to lose face before such warriors, kept her ploughing on.
‘My master came this way,’ she said, sounding more certain than she felt.
Just as she spoke, the floor beneath her rocked, as if shaken by an earthquake. Debris streamed down from the roof, smashing apart as it hit the ground.
‘Interrogator!’ Haessler cried, grabbing her and pulling her clear just as a huge crack zig-zagged across the stone. The squad skidded to a halt, retreating from the widening chasm.
One of Haessler’s battle-brothers grabbed a handheld sensor device. ‘Major tectonic activity, imminent psionic rupture,’ he reported. ‘More shockwaves incoming. The epicentre is directly ahead.’
The sergeant put Spinoza down. ‘It is unsafe to continue. We shall take it from here.’
Spinoza stood her ground. ‘He may yet be alive.’
‘I will not tell you again.’
‘You will not have to. I am coming.’
The ground shook again, and a pillar cracked open, bisected from top to bottom. Further back, another shaft opened up and flames shot out from the gap, thundering like gas-plumes from a refinery chimney. The air around them suddenly shimmered, became denser, then shook back to normal, as if reality had briefly flexed.
Haessler laughed. ‘Come, then.’
And then they were moving again, all of them, sprinting through the hall as it steadily disintegrated around them. Huge flashes of blue-white light flared up out of nowhere, spinning into the chasms before erupting into snaking maelstroms. More pillars toppled, rupturing as they smashed into the rockcrete floor.
The Space Marines formed up around Spinoza, Revus and the others, warding them from the worst of it. The confined space filled with dust, and the way ahead became even murkier than before. Explosions rang out both ahead and behind them, shivering the bones of the Fortress and sending blastwaves racing down the narrow tunnels.
The detonations were not just physical. Every impact brought a chorus of shrieks with it, coming from nowhere, sounding as if hundreds of voices, thousands of voices, were crying out in sudden and unbearable pain. The crystal walls blew apart, one by one, showering them all with spinning slivers.
Of all of the non-Space Marines, Revus seemed to be coping best. He was running harder now, looking as if he intended to break through the barriers ahead through force of will alone. Gorgias soared high above, driving his motive units hard, weaving between the falling wreckage. Spinoza felt as if her limbs would betray her at any moment, flooded with lactic acid and ready to give out. She barely noticed the destruction around her, only the way ahead, forged now by Haessler and kept clear by his squad.
Eventually, they broke into another long hall with galleries set high on either side. The chequerboard floor had erupted, and whole ranks of statues had collapsed into rocking chunks. Snaking lines of force lapped and whipped across the far wall, illuminating heaps of blood-drenched bodies amid the widening cracks. Some still lived, and shrieked when they saw the Space Marines break in. A few tried to summon up some kind of defensive power, but with the eldritch forces now running wild and unrestrained they were torn apart as soon as they raised their arms.
Vaults of Terra- The Hollow Mountain - Chris Wraight Page 28