‘You have to,’ snapped Olantor. ‘These are the conditions we have.’
‘But it’s impossible,’ protested Pater Monna. ‘To manually trigger a warp jump without coordinates? It’s madness. And to make a warp jump this close to a planet…’
‘I know,’ said Olantor. ‘The gravity well will drag us into its heart.’
‘It’ll kill us all,’ said Pater Monna needlessly.
‘That’s what I’m counting on.’
‘Will it kill… that?’ said Monna, gesturing with a shoulder to the raging monster within the warp core.
‘I do not know,’ admitted Olantor. ‘That is what I hope.’
Honsou took the stairs three at a time. Following the glowing schematic overlaid on his helmet’s visor, he led his Iron Warriors down into the basilica. Gunfire raged around him, las-fire from choke points on the defensive landings and roaring bolter and flamer fire from his own warriors.
The narrow stairwells were death traps, but they were death traps for the defenders, for they were so hopelessly outnumbered that they could not hope to stem the tide of Iron Warriors. Honsou’s ogres used their chain grapples to tear down the barricades and the Iron Warriors battered their way through the defenders, killing as they went and leaving no survivors in their wake.
Grendel laughed as he emptied the magazines of his bolter. He discarded the weapon, and continued the slaughter with his viciously-toothed sword, his latest melta gun slung over one shoulder. Notha Etassay eschewed projectile weapons, favouring his twin swords and awesome speed to kill. The warrior moved like liquid, seeming to shift instantly from one place to another in the blink of an eye. Only one touched by the gods could move so quickly.
Exquisite hangings burned in the fires, and smoke billowed up the stairwells as the Iron Warriors forced their way onto the engineering levels of the Indomitable. Honsou fired his bolter in careful bursts, each pull of the trigger taking down a handful of mortal soldiers.
Nothing Imperial was getting out of this fortress alive.
Honsou knelt beside the body of a dead soldier. Shattered ribs poked from his armour where a bolter shell had exploded within his chest, and Honsou dipped the fingers of his silver arm into the wound.
He watched the ruby droplets fall from his hand and said, ‘Their blood is weak, I can smell the fear in it. They have no substance to them.’
‘You don’t need to smell their blood to know that,’ hissed Grendel, lifting his own bloody gauntlets.
‘They fight poorly,’ added Etassay, ‘but Honsou is right. Their fear adds a certain… frisson… to the proceedings.’
‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ snapped Grendel, like an attack dog on a leash. ‘I just want to kill them.’
‘Have no fear, dear Grendel,’ said Etassay, sliding up behind him and whispering at his ear. ‘I’ll be sure to leave some for you.’
Grendel shrugged off the blademaster. ‘How much further?’ he demanded.
‘One more level down,’ said Honsou, calling up the star fort’s plans onto his visor. ‘This was the last choke point.’
‘Then let’s get this done,’ hissed Grendel, setting off once more.
This deep in the basilica, the walls were steel and bronze, stencilled with bold warnings of hazards and penalties for failing to observe appropriate safety measures. Imperial eagles and brilliant white ‘U’ symbols adorned every warning, and Honsou sneered at such ostentation.
Typical of the Ultramarines to think of the safety of mortals.
‘That will be your undoing,’ he whispered as he followed Grendel along a wide corridor of hissing pipes, flashing orange lights and blaring sirens. An automated voice warned of intruders and Honsou took no small measure of pride in knowing that this was the only time that alarm had ever been broadcast.
Up ahead, the tunnel made a sharp dogleg to the left and Honsou stepped in front of Grendel as he moved up to the bend. He glanced round the corner. A wide set of iron stairs led down to the blast-shielded gateway of a chamber lit by a brilliant blue white glow.
Thanks to Adept Cycerin, the blast shield was locked open, and green sparks dripped from the locking panel at its side. A hastily-erected barricade of sandbags and overturned benches had been thrown up across the gateway, manned by at least twenty soldiers in the blue and gold of the Ultramarines’ vassal soldiers.
‘We’re here,’ he said, unable to keep the visceral excitement from his voice.
A pair of a bipod-mounted autocannon unleashed a blizzard of heavy calibre shells, and a flurry of las-fire erupted from the soldiers’ guns at the sight of him.
Honsou pressed himself flat. Explosive rounds chewed up the wall, spraying metal shavings and sparking flares over his armour, but doing no damage. Three of Salombar’s corsairs screamed as wild ricochets bounced around the corridor and cut them down. An Iron Warrior dropped to his knees as a rogue shell pulped the side of his helmet. Blood streamed over his shoulder guard, but the warrior got to his feet moments later.
Honsou grinned, feeling the heady mix of combat-stimms and adrenal shunts pumping his body full of chemicals. The battle-surge was on him, and his body sang with the sweet taste of victory. He felt a rush of the recklessness that had served him well before, and rolled around the corner.
He leapt straight to the bottom of the stairs, landing right in front of the barricade with a tremendous clang that buckled the metal-grilled floor. His augmetic eye instantly picked out the gunner and loader of the nearest autocannon. Two quick squeezes of his bolter’s trigger blew both of them back, the mass-reactive shells exploding within their armour and disintegrating their torsos.
‘Onwards!’ he shouted, charging the barricade. Lasguns spat bright bolts of energy at him, but they were hastily aimed and only two struck him. One melted a bright spot on his breastplate, the other left a glowing streak on his helmet. Neither was enough to stop him. He slammed into the sandbags, not even bothering to jump them, and barrelled through the flimsy barricade.
The other autocannon roared in defiance, but it was quickly silenced. Honsou felt others beside him, but didn’t see them. His attention was on the killing around him, his bolter sweeping out to crush the skull of a nearby soldier. His silver fist shattered the ribcage of a second, a snap shot cut a third in half. Etassay danced through the melee, his blades lopping limbs with every graceful stroke. Like Honsou, Grendel bludgeoned his way through the battle, fists and elbows his weapons of choice.
In moments it was over, and the defenders lay dead, a horrific sliced, battered and torn up collection of meat and bone. Blood coated his fists and slithered around the shimmering metal of his silver arm.
Honsou stepped over the last bodies and nodded to Grendel as he surged through the gateway into the warp core.
The mighty chamber was illuminated by a searing column of light bound within curved plates of etched bronze and glass, and no sooner had he laid eyes on it, then he knew he had reached his goal. He could sense the incredible power chained to the beating heart of the Indomitable, the ancient malice filling the air with hate and evil from a bygone age.
Clustered around the column were the last of the star fort’s defenders, a lone Ultramarines warrior, the battle-scarred Dreadnought that had destroyed Votheer Tark’s battle-engines, and perhaps sixty or so mortal soldiers.
Positioned behind more makeshift barricades, Honsou wanted to laugh at the futility of their resistance. This was all that stood between him and victory?
In front of the pitiful remnants of the defenders stood an upright black oblong, a hissing, dripping object that looked like a coffin. Winking lights flashed rapidly at its centre and a host of ribbed cables snaked back to where a slight woman in battle plate the colour of an oil slick held a heavy, rubberised control pad.
‘What in the name of the warp is that?’ said Grendel.
‘You have them?’ said Olantor.
‘Sow the seeds of damnation and I shall reap the souls of the tainted
,’ said Sibiya, quoting from a text Olantor didn’t recognise and rapidly blink-clicking the target acquisition lens of her helm.
One by one, she picked out the warriors she identified as the champions of this host, uploading their biometric data to the Sentinel Array.
‘It’s done,’ she said.
‘Then release it,’ said Olantor.
Sibiya nodded, pressing the activation key on the control pad.
‘Fear this, for it is your apocalypse,’ she said.
The lights on the oblong box ceased flashing, and locking bolts around its front panel blew off in a series of percussive booms. It crashed to the grilled floor and a mist of billowing steam spilled from the box. Something moved in the haze and Honsou felt a moment’s trepidation at this last resort of the Imperials.
A glossy black shape exploded from the steam, a lithe figure with a bone-white mask in the form of a skull. Its glossy black bodysuit was studded with injectors and stimm-shunts, but that was all he saw before it was amongst them.
It moved faster than even Etassay, its limbs a blur of motion as it charged with a roar of hate that struck to the core of every Iron Warrior with its ferocity. A blade edged in blue fire licked out and skewered Grendel, stabbed home and withdrawn in the time it took to notice.
Grendel dropped with a grunt of surprise as the monster spun away. Gunshots followed it, but its speed was inhuman, its body seeming to bend and sweep out of the path of every projectile. Its sword swept out, beheading an Iron Warrior and disembowelling one of Honsou’s ogres. It vaulted over the ogre, its red eyes blazing with killing fire.
‘Gods of the warp!’ hissed Honsou, unlimbering his black-bladed axe. ‘Eversor!’
They surrounded the assassin, clubbing and stabbing, but their blows met thin air. Combat-stimms boosted the Eversor’s metabolism to monstrous heights, and its reactions were sharpened to impossible levels. It was a monster spawned in the depths of the
Assassinorum’s darkest laboratories, a killer, a destroyer and a weapon of ultimate destruction.
No sooner had the assassin attacked than the Imperial soldiers clustered around the warp core opened fire. Las-bolts and solid rounds whickered through the ranks of the Iron Warriors, who swiftly returned fire, turning the vast chamber into an echoing cavern of reverberating reports. The Dreadnought loomed above everything, the barrels of its assault cannon spinning as it prepared to open fire.
Grendel picked himself up from the deck with a bellow of anger, a thin line of blood coating his pierced breastplate. Say what you will about Cadaras Grendel, thought Honsou, he’s a tough bastard, right enough.
‘Grendel!’ shouted Honsou, pointing at the defenders. ‘Take them out!’
‘Gladly,’ hissed the warrior, slipping the melta gun from his shoulder. Honsou turned back to the fray as Grendel gathered Iron Warriors, corsairs and the augmented ogre creatures for an assault on the defenders.
Honsou turned back to the battle with the Eversor, meeting its hateful gaze as it fought through the ranks of Iron Warriors. The fiend screamed as it killed, as though every death simultaneously fed and heightened its hatred and battle fury.
The roar of the Dreadnought’s assault cannon echoed in the chamber, but Honsou could not risk taking his eyes from the assassin to see how Grendel and his ad hoc assault force fared. As the assassin cut and sliced with its sword, it fired a needle-nosed pistol, blowing out helmets and kneecaps with every shot. Bullets floated past the Eversor, and blades seemed to drift by it as it wove its dance of death through his fighters. Seven Iron Warriors were dead already, limbless, poisoned, shot or disembowelled, while they had yet to put a mark on the assassin.
Another Iron Warrior died as the Eversor rammed its sword through the weaker armour under his arm and clove both his hearts. It wrenched its sword clear and tossed aside its victim, cutting a path through its foes as though they were no more than irritants. The shock of the assassin’s appearance had broken the momentum of the Iron Warriors’ assault in a heartbeat, and it needed to die. Now.
‘Quite the killer,’ said Etassay between bursts of shots. ‘My blood is afire watching it.’
‘I’m pleased for you,’ hissed Honsou, watching as the Eversor fought its way towards them. ‘It’s coming for us. We’re its targets, no doubt about it.’
‘Oh, I do hope so…’ said Etassay, his expression unreadable behind his smooth-faced mask. The prospect of facing such a highly trained killer did not appeal to Honsou, for he was under no illusions as to his ability to defeat the assassin. Honsou was a fine warrior, but the assassin was another level of killer entirely.
‘You want him, he’s yours,’ said Honsou, content to let the blademaster risk his neck. If anyone stood a chance of killing the Eversor, it was Etassay.
‘Oh yes,’ said Etassay gleefully. ‘I want him, oh yes, I do.’
The blademaster leapt towards the Eversor, his twin swords flashing as he met its charge.
‘At last,’ hissed Etassay, resplendent in his form-fitting bodysuit of black and silver. ‘A worthy partner with which to caress the blade.’
The assassin registered Etassay’s presence, and Honsou watched as blademaster and assassin began their ritual dance of death. Etassay duelled with twin swords of silver steel, while the assassin fought with but a single blade. Steel shimmered and cut the air, bodies flowed together.
Honsou knew he would never again witness such a peerless display of skill, and doubted two such skilled opponents had ever crossed blades in all the long history of the Imperium.
As corrupt as he was, Notha Etassay still honoured the etiquette of the duel, fighting with blinding skill and speed and finesse. The Eversor fought with no such handicap. Its sole driving force was to kill and it clung to no such antiquated or restricting notions as honour or glory. To destroy was its only goal, and that was Etassay’s undoing.
Etassay executed a flawless block, spinning on his heel to lunge at the Eversor’s groin, but his opponent was no longer there. A spinning kick smashed into the side of Etassay’s head, sending him crashing to the deck. He rolled to his knees, agile as a cat and furious that such a low blow had been employed in a duel. Etassay lunged, but the Eversor dived over his blade and, using his shoulders as a pivot, swung up and over the blademaster. The Eversor sailed over Etassay’s head, and a series of glittering needles wired to chemical reservoirs on its arms snapped from its gauntlet.
The needles punched through the neck seals of Etassay’s armour and a lethal cocktail of neurotoxins pumped out. Not even a warrior touched by the Dark Gods could resist the finest work of the Officio Assassinorum’s venom-masters, and Etassay howled in a mixture of agony and ecstasy as they set to work on his body.
Pink froth erupted from the smooth faceplate of Etassay’s helmet and he collapsed to the deck, thrashing in exquisite torment.
‘Incredible!’ he shrieked, as his back arched one last time and Honsou heard a powerful crack as Etassay’s spine broke with the force of his convulsions.
At last Honsou and the Eversor were face to face, and he felt a twist of fear take hold in his gut. The face of the Eversor was the face of death itself, and it flexed the muscles of its shoulders as it advanced grimly towards him. The warriors around him backed away, knowing that to intervene would be the last thing they did.
‘Just you and me,’ said Honsou, readying his axe.
The assassin did not reply, its skull-mask reflecting the blue light of the warp core. Its hate and rage-filled eyes fixed on him with an expression of loathing.
Honsou caught sight of movement above the Eversor and smiled to himself.
‘Or maybe not,’ he said, as the Newborn slammed into the assassin.
Ardaric Vaanes slowed his descent with a quick burst of his jump pack, his boots slamming down onto the deck of the warp core with a metal-buckling crash. All around him, the loxatl of the Xaneant kin-brood swarmed down the sides of the chamber, flechette blasters filling the air with whickering darts.
He watched Grendel lead his ragtag assault force against the defenders of the warp core and saw the Dreadnought cut many of them down with its deadly gun or crush them beneath the pounding blows of its enormous hammer.
‘Do we not attack?’ asked the Newborn as it watched the black clad assassin closing on Honsou. Vaanes didn’t answer at first, not sure what he wanted to say. The whispering voice of his pride and ambition spoke of a chance for glory, a chance to shine brighter than the greatest supernova, a chance to be the one true champion to emerge from this battle.
Another part of him, the shadow that knew his true soul, reminded him that the path he had chosen had but one outcome.
‘Yes,’ he said to himself, ‘but how we walk it is just as important.’
Misunderstanding his words, the Newborn launched itself from the gantry, swinging out and gripping one of the iron chains and sliding down its length. The loxatl let out hissing breaths of aggression as they slithered down the walls. Bathed in the glow of the warp core, their skin flickered through an unnatural spectrum of sickening colours.
The decision had been made for him, and he hurled himself from the gantry.
The flames and smoke of his landing dissipated and he saw that, incredibly, the assassin still lived. The Newborn was on its knees, the assassin’s needle-tipped gauntlet buried in its chest. Clear tubes pulsed with motion as automatic dispensers pumped toxins from internal reservoirs.
The Newborn shuddered in the grip of the assassin’s poisons, yet it did not relinquish its grip on its attacker’s arm. Held fast, the assassin spun its sword up and plunged it again and again into the Newborn’s chest. Blue white light spilled from the wounds, as though the Newborn’s blood ran with the same light as pulsed in the warp core.
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