Shroud of Night

by Andy Clark

  ‘Readings still building,’ reported Kyphas. ‘They could be trying to bring in reinforcements?’

  ‘Some officer-level vox chatter about Dysorian Protocols,’ said Haltheus. ‘But my knowledge donor didn’t know anything about that.’

  ‘Whatever it is, we don’t want it to happen,’ said Kassar. ‘Pick up the pace.’

  A hail of firepower greeted them as they reached sub-deck four. Bolt shells and las-fire spat from industrial loading hatches, over which empyric warning sigils and cogs mechanicus were stencilled.

  ‘No time for subtlety,’ said Kassar. ‘Grenades, then storm the breaches.’

  His warriors complied, a hail of frag charges sailing down the ramp to bounce through the fortified entrances. Even as dull explosions rippled within, they were already charging.

  Kassar burst through the smoke into a red-lit chamber. The frag-torn corpses of several Tsadrekhans sprawled on the floor. More were falling back, ducking behind circuit-pillars and runic consoles, firing as they went. Las-fire splashed from his scorched armour.

  ‘Keep at them,’ he bellowed. ‘Break their line.’

  To his right, Phalk’ir lunged through a hail of shots to impale a screaming Tsadrekhan. Phaek’or followed his twin at a steady stride, his heavy bolter deafening in the low-ceilinged space.

  ‘Careful of the damned consoles,’ snapped Haltheus as he locked blades with a Battle Sister. ‘Don’t damage anything that looks important.’

  The Sister stepped back and swung her chainsword, chewing through Haltheus’ shoulder guard in a spray of blood. Haltheus hacked his opponent’s legs out from under her, catching her by the throat as she fell and hoisting her to eye level.

  ‘That hurt, mortal,’ he snarled. The Battle Sister spat in his face. In return, Haltheus head-butted her, caving her skull in and discarding her twitching corpse.

  Kassar pushed deeper into the teleportarium, aiming his shots with pinpoint care, trying to avoid severing bundled cables or damaging thrumming consoles. Huge armourglass tubes rose floor to ceiling, caged lightning dancing within. Kassar strode between them, down a set of ironwork steps, gunning down charging Tsadrekhans as he went.

  Beyond their tumbling corpses, Kassar saw that the steps descended into a lightning-wreathed metal pit surrounded by arcane machineries. Huge cargo-conveyors fed in through the pit walls, leading to a teleportarium dais of enormous size. Figures swarmed around it, armoured Tsadrekhans and hunched tech-priests, but Kassar caught no more than a fleeting glimpse before a hail of plasma fire drove him back into cover.

  ‘The last of them are making a stand around the dais,’ he voxed. ‘Surround them and–’

  ‘Kassar,’ said Haltheus urgently. ‘There’s no time. The energy readings don’t match any teleport signature I’ve seen. They’re far too high. They’re going to overload the teleportarium.’

  ‘Blast radius?’ asked Kassar.

  ‘Conservative estimate, the entire rig,’ said Haltheus. ‘That’s if it’s even a conventional blast. They could tear a warp rift…’

  Kassar felt real fury rise inside him, and the familiar old hatred of the Imperium. How long he had laboured to keep his warriors alive, never despairing, always resisting the sick temptation to some vainglorious last stand and the relief that would bring. Yet one battle turning against them, and these nihilistic zealots were willing to kill themselves to the last man. It was so wasteful, so narrow-minded.

  ‘How do we stop them?’ he asked.

  ‘My best guess,’ said Haltheus, ‘is we kill the priests performing the ritual.’

  ‘Without them, we won’t be able to use the teleportarium,’ said Phalk’ir. ‘We’ll be stranded, mission fail.’

  ‘We’ll fail either way,’ said Kassar. ‘Better alive than dead. Unsung, kill the tech-priests.’

  Kassar and his warriors burst from cover, sending a hail of fire whipping down into the pit. A red-robed priest sprawled onto his face, blood and oil leaking from gaping bolter wounds. A round from Thelgh’s rifle threw another against the pit wall in a spray of gore. A’khassor let fly with his plasma pistol, burning a third tech-priest to ash.

  The surviving Tsadrekhans, perhaps a dozen or so troopers and officers, fired back. Kyphas was clipped by multiple las-bolts and driven back into cover. A krak grenade detonated at Kassar’s feet, throwing him onto his back as a fresh spread of warning runes lit up in his peripheral vision. Phalk’ir sidestepped a plasma blast, only for another searing bolt to graze his helm. Armour melted and Phalk’ir dropped with a howl of pain.

  The last tech-priest ignored the blizzard of fire whipping around him, and his fallen comrades littering the teleportarium dais. He proceeded solemnly from one console to the next, working his ministrations, sending arcs of unnatural lightning leaping between the empyric vanes of the machinery. Consoles began to rupture and burn, and a terrible whine filled the air.

  Kassar pulled himself into a sitting position, struggling to aim a shot at the priest. His first round flew wide. His second blew out the chest of a selflessly heroic Tsadrekhan who threw himself into its path.

  ‘Someone…’ he barked into the vox.

  There was a flash of silver in Kassar’s peripheral vision, a streak of light on metal, and a foot-long silver blade sprouted at the base of the tech-priest’s skull. The Martian staggered, reached out for the nearest console with shuddering mechadendrites, then collapsed in a robed heap, unmoving.

  The last few Tsadrekhans turned their guns on the teleportarium in desperation. The only practical effect of this defiant gesture was to speed their own extermination as the Unsung shot them down in short order.

  Limping, Kassar made his way down into the pit, examining the machineries as they flickered and sparked. The caged lightning was dying away, the whine fading.

  ‘It’s dead,’ he said.

  ‘It is,’ agreed Haltheus, surveying the devastation. ‘Far beyond anything I could repair, before you ask.’

  ‘How, then, do we proceed?’ asked Makhor, joining them. ‘This plan called for the speed of the teleportarium. Without our gunship, we may well be stranded here altogether, and even if we could get airborne, we would once again face the problem of overcoming Endurance’s flak cover.’

  ‘My lords,’ said Syxx. ‘We cannot fail in this. We must reach the beacon. I must get there.’

  ‘You don’t make demands of us, mortal,’ growled D’sakh. ‘If there’s another way to reach our objective then we’ll find it. Otherwise, you stay very silent and hope we don’t discard you.’

  ‘How do we proceed now?’ asked Kassar. ‘Thoughts?’

  ‘I don’t know, myself,’ said Kyphas with relish. ‘But I’ve found someone to ask…’

  Stooping, he grabbed one of the fallen Tsadrekhan officers by the arm and hoisted him off the floor. The man made a lunge for his pistol, but Kyphas slapped the weapon away.

  The Unsung gathered around Kyphas and his prize, menacing figures looming in the gloom.

  ‘Ah,’ said Haltheus to the sweating, wounded officer. ‘Lieutenant DeLares, I presume…’

  Flames roared. Metal shuddered. Harsh voices bellowed oaths to the Blood God. Lit red, the interior of the Dreadclaw stank of dried blood and chemical sweat.

  Strapped into his restraints, Khârn ignored it all. In his mind’s eye, the Betrayer saw a singular figure, limned in blinding light. A winged angel, blade in hand, ancient eyes in an ageless face. A divine champion of the Emperor, who had walked a road of faith to return the Primarch Guilliman to life.

  Khârn cared nothing for Khordas, for Tsadrekha, or for this war. He had come as the instrument of Khorne’s punishment, the headsman’s axe that would lop this angel’s skull from her neck so that it might be set at the Blood God’s throne.

  Sudden impacts rang the Dreadclaw like a struck bell. Holes spackled its flank. Blood sprayed as hig
h-velocity rounds punched through the drop pod, shredding the Berzerkers within and sending it looping off course. Khârn snarled, gripping his restraints as punishing g-forces pressed him back against the hull.

  Spinning. Shuddering. Jolting. The Dreadclaw’s interior went dark as its power failed, the only illumination the harsh bars of daylight stabbing through the bullet holes. The pod was spinning madly, turning on its side.

  Muscles straining, Khârn hefted Gorechild and triggered the axe’s motors. It revved in his grip, a monster awoken and glad to serve its master.

  Khârn swung Gorechild once, twice, carving through the rusted metal of the Dreadclaw’s hull. The third blow saw a slab of metal tear loose and spin away. Wind whistled through the gap, and for a moment Khârn saw the ocean revolve below, swelling rapidly closer.

  A corpse fell against Khârn, a fellow Berzerker, and he kicked it away with a growl. Then, breaking his restraints, the Betrayer grabbed the edge of the ragged hole he had carved and launched himself into the open sky.

  Khârn fell, the wind whipping around him, Gorechild clutched firmly in one fist. His stricken Dreadclaw tumbled away, falling faster, trailing smoke. It hit the waves and detonated.

  The Betrayer steered himself as best he could, bringing his arms and legs in as the waters rushed up to meet him. The impact was like being run over by a battle-tank. It hammered the breath from his body, and knocked him momentarily unconscious. Only his power armour and his unnatural fortitude prevented it from shattering every bone in his body.

  Khârn plunged deep, the waters closing over his head. Fire lit the waves above. Below him was only darkness.

  With powerful kicks, he drove himself back towards the surface, the image of the angel still burning in his mind. Nothing would keep him from his quarry. He was the Blood God’s weapon, and he would strike.

  Khârn broke the surface. Overhead, the stormy sky was filled with fire, plummeting drop-craft and streams of flak. Wreckage and corpses bobbed and sank all around. In the distance rose Hive Endurance, where his Dreadclaw was supposed to have landed. Closer, less than a mile distant, Khârn saw an armoured fortress. It clung to a jutting island of stone, its defence cannons spitting fire into the skies.

  Feeling rage building within, Khârn struck out for the fortress.

  ‘You have not saved yourselves, lapdogs,’ he snarled. ‘You have only prolonged your suffering…’

  Khârn hauled himself up the rocks hand over hand, his eyes fixed on the fortress rising above him. Algae and squirming, tentacled things squelched under his gauntlets. The rhythmic pounding of the fort’s guns filled his ears, warring with the jackhammer beating of his hearts. Khârn saw the aquila emblazoned across its flank, and felt a swelling surge of hate.

  It seemed that no one on the walls had spotted him yet. Their eyes were turned skywards. Khârn would punish them for that.

  Unholstering his plasma pistol, Khârn revved Gorechild and strode to the foot of the fortress wall. Several swift blows and a section of verdigrised metal crashed inwards. Khârn stepped through, into a pipe-lined corridor. He took a deep breath, scenting flesh and blood nearby.

  ‘Kill!’ he bellowed, his vox-grille amplifying his words into a stentorian boom. ‘Maim! Burn!’

  Picking his direction at random, Khârn set off down the corridor. He loped up a set of metal steps and burst through a bulkhead door into a brightly lit chamber. Human soldiers were scrambling for their guns, overturning tables for cover. He saw, within the space of a heartbeat, how each one would act. How each one would die. He saw every axe-stroke and pistol shot, as he had seen billions before.

  Then the violence began. Las-bolts slashed around him, some splashing from his armour. Khârn ignored them and charged headlong, swinging Gorechild in an almighty arc. The axe’s teeth whirled through flesh and bone, blood exploding from the sundered bodies of three Tsadrekhan troopers. Khârn gunned down another two, his plasma pistol howling, then kicked an overturned table across the room, smashing another Tsadrekhan into the wall in a burst of gore.

  More shots hit home, but his enemies might as well have been throwing stones for all the good they did. To one side, a trooper was frantically fumbling with the charge-modulator of his plasma gun, jabbering prayers as he did. Khârn lopped his head from his shoulders then shot down another Tsadrekhan who ran at him with bayonet levelled.

  The last troopers were falling back, fleeing for the chamber’s other exit. Khârn accelerated into a charge and ploughed through their midst, every blow felling another victim. Heads bounced across the floor, expressions locked in terrified grimaces. Blood jetted from the stumps of necks. Not a single Tsadrekhan escaped the chamber alive.

  Khârn moved on, the butcher’s nails pounding in his skull, a furnace of hate and fury roaring within him.

  ‘Blood for the Blood God!’ he roared as he crashed into another chamber, this one some kind of magazine. Huge shells and crates of rounds filled metal racks on every side, and Tsadrekhans hunkered behind makeshift barricades between them. They died, just as their comrades had died.

  Just as everyone who faced Khârn died.

  The Betrayer’s rampage continued, the body count climbing by the minute. Panic spread quickly, the Tsadrekhans yelling orders and desperate pleas through their vox-casters. They came at Khârn whole squads at a time, and he butchered them like livestock. Where they tried to hem him in, trap him and pound him with firepower, the Betrayer smashed his way free. Where they tried to block his path, or overwhelm him with numbers, Khârn hacked them apart with contemptuous ease. Where brave heroes duelled him, he reduced them to bloodied meat in moments.

  At last, Khârn found himself near the fortress’ peak, in amongst the gun decks and flak turrets. Here the pounding roar of gunfire was constant, red armoured drop-ships exploding and falling from the sky above. One by one, Khârn silenced the guns, cutting down their crews and firing plasma bolts into their mechanisms and power supplies until an inferno raged all around.

  A commissar and his squad of ogryns delayed Khârn, buying time for the final turret to hammer off a few thousand more rounds into the skies. Then the last of the abhumans crashed, headless, to the decking, and the commissar’s chest was reduced to cinders by Khârn’s pistol. The Betrayer hacked open the armoured hatch of the final turret and butchered the crew, painting its interior dripping red.

  The fortress had fallen in less than an hour. Khârn’s armour was scorched, his flesh nicked and burned, but he didn’t notice. The tally of skulls had been started on this world, and he would build a mountain of them before he finally slew the angel for Khorne.

  As Khornate drop-craft lumbered in overhead and Dreadclaws slashed down to land upon the fortress’ battlements, Khârn turned and plunged back into the depths. Down there he had seen signage for an undersea maglev. A route into the hive. His path to the angel.

  ‘Kill! Maim! Burn!’ roared Khârn, and at his back, the massing warriors of the Blood God took up the cry…

  Part II

  Chapter Six

  They descended on an industrial lift, a broad platform that rumbled ponderously into the depths. Hazard lumen strobed around them as steam jetted and pipes gurgled.

  The Unsung were all there, those that still lived. Thelgh, Skaryth and Krowl remained apart from their brothers; the sniper meditated, his rifle across his knees; the lunatic muttered benedictions over his flamer, his hand flamers, his incendiary bombs; the golem, healed now, loomed still and silent. The rest of the Harrow cradled their weapons, speaking quietly together in small groups.

  A’khassor crouched by Makhor, tending to the naysmith’s broken arm.

  ‘I’ve done what I can,’ he said. ‘The bone is setting, the muscle mending. A few hours, perhaps a day, and the limb will be fully serviceable again.’

  ‘A day is a long time, Apothecary,’ replied Makhor, running one-handed checks on his weapons.r />
  ‘Which is why,’ said A’khassor, in a tone unique to piqued physicians the galaxy over, ‘I’m going to give you a shot of combat stimms.’

  ‘Is that wise?’ asked Makhor. ‘We have few enough doses left. Assuming you didn’t risk appropriating anything from Excrucias’ stocks.’

  A’khassor barked a laugh.

  ‘I wouldn’t inject that filth even if we were all down and dying,’ he said. ‘Who knows how the degenerates have tainted it?’

  ‘You’d have me seeing three-breasted daemonettes dancing around the enemy,’ said Makhor with a painful chuckle.

  ‘If you were lucky,’ said A’khassor. ‘More likely you’d just haemorrhage and die. No, this is Legion issue. And as the Harrow’s last living Apothecary, Makhor, yes, I deem it necessary.’

  A’khassor’s time-worn narthecium hissed as it dispensed the chemicals through a valve in Makhor’s armour.

  ‘Our brothers?’ asked Makhor, wincing as the stimms hit his system. ‘The fallen ones. They are with you?’

  ‘Of course,’ replied A’khassor, tapping the small, armoured canisters locked to his belt. ‘Their gene-seed lives on, if only for posterity. Their punishment is over. I envy them.’

  Makhor sighed, clenching and unclenching his fist, working feeling into his damaged limb.

  ‘Your superstitions are unbecoming for one in your position, A’khassor. We aren’t being punished.’

  ‘Of course we are,’ the Apothecary’s words bore no rancour, just acceptance. ‘For the twofold betrayals of our Legion. For our refusal to select a faith, in a galaxy of manifest gods. For the brothers we’ve slain. How could this slow winnowing not be a punishment?’

  Makhor shook his head.

  ‘We’ve been around this loop before, A’khassor. I should know better. You are just so level-headed about everything else.’

  ‘I only hope that our living brothers can be as peaceful as our fallen,’ said A’khassor, brusquely deflecting the conversation. ‘The operation has gone somewhat awry, has it not?’