Ultramarines Omnibus (warhammer 40000: ultramarines)

by Graham McNeill

  surrounded by grieving family members.

  Space Marine. He was a lean,

  Here was his son, dark haired like him,

  muscled farmer, toiling in the

  but taller and with the look of a warrior.

  cavern farms on his homeworld of

  Uriel's heart swelled in pride and regret:

  Calth. His features were soft and

  pride in his son and regret

  tinged with great regret

  that this vision of his life could never be…

  that this vision of his life could never be…

  Both faded from his mind, though he craved to see more of them, to know the consequences of his life having travelled the road not taken. But such was not to be and other visions intruded on his sight.

  Pavonis.

  Black Bone Road.

  Tarsis Ultra.

  Medrengard?

  What were these? Names of places or people? Memories or invention? Had he journeyed to these places? Was he from them? Were they his friends? He could taste the meaning on every jagged syllable, but none made sense, though he knew he should recognise them. Except… except there was one that did not have the subtle flavour of recognition. One that tasted of dark iron, that reeked of ashen pollutants, burning oil and echoed to the hammer of mountainous pile-drivers and pistons of hellish engines.

  This world, that reality, was alien to him. Why now should it then intrude on his fracturing consciousness? It swelled in his perception, growing and filling what remained of his mind before it too vanished and his mind began to collapse inwards.

  Nothing made sense any more: all was… dissolving in tamorass of information. He could no longer hold onto anything coherent, feeling his thoughts blur and soften, running like a hundred tributaries of a thousand rivers that emptied into a sea of oblivion and he welcomed it, knowing it would end this screaming madness in his head. An eternity or an instant –passed though he could not tell which time was now a meaningless concept, bereft of meaning and reference.

  A voice sounded amidst the insanity and what little remained of Uriel Ventris clutchedat it, as a drowning man grasps for a life line.

  'Fear not, Ultramarine,' it said. 'This journey is like all mortal life.'

  The daemon engine roared back into the realm of existence.

  'It ends…'

  Uriel drew breath, his hearts hammering fit to break his chest, his blood thundering around his body and his face streaked with crimson that wept from his eyes and nose. He had bitten his tongue and his mouth was filled with a coppery taste.

  He spat, tasting the reek of fumes and the acrid, iron stench of industry. He lay still for long seconds as he tried to work out where he was. Above him was an unending vista of white, without depth or scale, and he blinked, reaching up to wipe the congealed blood from his face. His hand passed before his face and he was struck by a lurching sense of vertigo. He had a sudden sensation of falling and cried out, scrabbling around him for purchase.

  His hands closed on a fine shale of metallic shavings and his vertigo vanished as he realised he was lying on his back and looking up into the sky - a dead sky, featureless and vacant without so much as a single cloud or speck to blight its horrid emptiness. He ached everywhere, his muscles weary to the point of exhaustion and a searing pain in his back from where his flesh had been gouged by the hook. His thoughts tumbled over themselves as he tried to piece together what had just happened.

  He pushed himself upright, seeing Pasanius next to him, retching onto the metallic ground. His friend's face was drawn and hollow, as though the weight of the world had settled upon his shoulders.

  'Get up,' said a grating voice behind him and a flood of memory filled Uriel's skull. Daemon. Daemon engine. He fought to stand, but his flesh was still adjusting to its return to existence and he could only stumble to his knees.

  Before them stood the Omphalos Daemonium, gigantic and monstrous in its blackened and ancient suit of power armour. Behind their captor was a shimmering, impossible rectangle of seething red light, a doorway back to the hellish interior of the daemon engine.

  It carried its billhook and stood ankle deep in the powdery shale of the ground. Their weapons, Uriel's sword and bolter together with Pasanius's pistol and flamer rested against the rocks beside it. White reflections of the dead sky glittered on its shoulder guards and it seemed to Uriel that the grinning, visored skull there burned with even more malice than before.

  'You will need to restore your equilibrium soon, Ultramarines,' said the daemon thing with an echoing chuckle. 'The delirium spectres will hear the pounding beats of your hearts and such morsels as you shall not go unnoticed for long.'

  'The what?' managed Uriel at last.

  'Monsters,' said the giant.

  'Monsters?' repeated Uriel, gritting his teeth and finally climbing to his feet. Pasanius picked himself up and stood beside him, his face ashen, but angry.

  'The skins of murderers stitched across desecrated frames by the Savage Morticians and filled with the mad souls of those who have died by their hands,' explained the Omphalos Daemonium. 'They hunt in these mountains and you will know them by the cries of the damned at your heels.'

  'Where are we?' said Pasanius. 'Where have you brought us?'

  'This is Medrengard, world of bitter iron,' said the Omphalos Daemonium, pointing at something behind the two Space Marines. 'Domain of the daemon primarch, Perturabo. Can you not feel his presence on the air? The malice of a being who once walked with gods and is now cast down to dwell beyond the realm he once bestrode. Look upon this ashen world and despair!'

  Uriel turned to where the Omphalos Daemonium was pointing, the breath catching in his throat as he saw the desolate vista before him.

  They stood on a high, rocky plateau above a sweeping, grey hinterland of utter wretchedness. Far below them on the dismal steppe was a world of death. Uriel had thought the sweltering cavern of the daemon engine had been a vision of hell, but it had been no more than a prelude to this soul-destroying desolation. Vast expanses of industrial heartland sprawled across the surface of the world: steel skeletons of factories, mountains of coal and reddish slag and mighty, belching smoke stacks. Flames burned from blasted refineries, the pounding of mighty hammers and the clangourous screech of iron on stone audible from hundreds of kilometres away.

  Uriel had seen pollution-choked hive worlds, planets teeming with uncounted billions who toiled ceaselessly in filthy, smog and soot-choked death worlds, but they were garden paradises compared to Medrengard.

  He had even set foot on the iron surfaces of Adeptus Mechanicus forge worlds, the hallowed domains of the priests of the Machine God. He had been awed by the scale of their pounding infrastructure, their every surface given over to colossal manufactorum and cathedral forges, but even the mightiest of these worlds was but a village smithy compared to Medrengard.

  Rivers of molten metal snaked like channels of lava and evil clouds of smoke wreathed each tall tower and fanged chimney in a halo of lethal fumes.

  A vast, dark range of mountains towered over it all: blasted black rock where no living thing had ever lived or ever would. The peaks seemed to scrape the sky itself: the jagged stumps of the mountains a dozen or more times taller than the highest summit of Macragge. Uriel felt his blood chill as his eyes travelled up the terrifying heights of the enormous crags, seeing vile tendrils of noxious black smoke writhing from behind the mountains and clawing impossibly into the sky.

  Strange turrets reared beyond the peaks and Uriel knew with awful certainly that some nightmare city lay concealed and brooding in the deep, dark valleys of that damnable mountain range. A city where walls and bastions spread across the ground and distant domes fouled the rock like fungi after the rain. It was a hideous, dead-ringed outpost of malice that was rightly abhorred by all living things. Tarnished steeples and stained walls, deathly weed-tangled spires and empty halls were filled with limping and shuffling ghosts in rags who blindly obeyed
the loathsome will of the city's diabolical master: the daemon primarch Perturabo, lord and master of the Iron Warriors.

  'The hate…' whispered Uriel. 'So much hate and bitterness.'

  'Yes,' said the Omphalos Daemonium. 'Imagine all the rank bitterness I smell within you - poisoned and grown strong by millennia of vengeful brooding, and it is still but the merest fraction of how much a living god can hate.'

  Uriel closed his eyes to shut out this nightmare vision, understanding that to take even a single step towards the dreadful city was to die, but its cyclopean immensity was etched forever in his mind such that nothing could ever remove it.

  The futility of existence in the face of this nameless horror was almost too great to bear and he raised his eyes to the dead sky, its soul-destroying emptiness preferable to Perturabo's baleful city. The ghostly black tendrils squirmed through the sky and he saw that they poured towards the solitary thing to stain its emptiness.

  A vast black sun, its surface so dark that its darkness was not simply the absence of colour and light, but such that its fuliginous depths sucked all life and soul from the world.

  Pasanius wept at its horrible, crushing weight and Uriel was not surprised to find that he too shed tears at the sight of such an abomination against nature.

  'Emperor protect us,' he whispered. 'This is…'

  'Aye,' said the Omphalos Daemonium. 'This is the place you call the Eye of Terror.'

  'Why…?' gasped Uriel, tearing his gaze from the morbid sun. 'Why here?'

  'This is the end of your journey. The place where you will fulfil your oath.'

  'I do not understand.'

  'That matters not. The things you seek to destroy, the daemonculaba, are on this world, shuttered away in the darkness, far from the sight of man in a great fastness fashioned from madness and despair.'

  'Why would you bring us here?' demanded Uriel, a measure of his self-control returning. 'Why would a creature of Chaos seek to aid us?'

  The Omphalos Daemonium laughed its booming, discordant laugh and said, 'Because you are to do my bidding, Uriel Ventris.'

  'Never!' snapped Uriel. 'We would die before aiding a beast such as you.'

  'Perhaps,' agreed the giant warrior. 'But are you willing to sacrifice all that you have fought to protect by defying me? Everything you have sacrificed and everyone you have bled to save will be washed away in an ocean of blood if you do.'

  'You lie,' growled Pasanius.

  'Foolish morsels. What need have I of lies? The Architect of Fate has lies enough for this universe: the Lord of Skulls demands no such pretences. I know what you saw as we travelled the bloodtracks, your world afire and your people dead, ashes on the wind as it burned to death.'

  The Omphalos Daemonium took a ponderous step towards them, its billhook lowered to aim at Uriel's chest.

  'I can make that happen,' it promised. 'All the splintered futures you saw can be shaped and I can ensure that your precious home dies screaming in the flames. Do you believe that?'

  Uriel stared into the leprous yellow eyes of the daemon and knew with utter certainty that it could do the things it spoke of - Macragge destroyed, Ultramar gone…

  'Yes, I believe you,' he said at last. 'What would you have us do?'

  'Uriel!' cried Pasanius.

  'I do not believe we have a choice, my friend,' said Uriel slowly.

  'Think of what you are saying,' said Pasanius in disbelief. 'Whatever this bastard thing wants us to do can only be for evil. Who knows what we might unleash if we agree to do what it wants?'

  'I know that, Pasanius, but what else can we do? Would you see Ultramar destroyed? The Fortress of Hera brought to ruin?'

  'No, of course not, but—'

  'No, Pasanius,' said Uriel evenly. 'Trust me. You have to trust me. Do you trust me?'

  'You know I do,' protested Pasanius. 'I trust you with my life, but this is madness!'

  'Then trust me now,' pressed Uriel.

  Pasanius opened his mouth to speak once more, but saw the look in Uriel's eyes and simply nodded curtly.

  'Very well,' he said sadly.

  'Good,' hissed the Omphalos Daemonium, revelling in their defeat. 'There is a fortress many leagues from here, high in the southern mountains, and its master has something deep in his most secret vault that belongs to me. You will retrieve it for me.'

  'What is it?' asked Uriel.

  'It is the Heart of Blood, and that it is precious to me is all you need know.'

  'What does it look like? How will we recognise it?'

  The Omphalos Daemonium chuckled. 'You will know it when you see it.'

  'Why do you need us for this?' demanded Pasanius. 'If it's so damned important, why the hell don't you just get it yourself?'

  The Omphalos Daemonium was silent for a beat, then said, 'I have seen you with it and it is your destiny to do this. That is enough.'

  Uriel nodded, hearing a distant, shrill cry on the air.

  The Omphalos Daemonium heard the noise too and cocked its head, turning and marching back to the rectangle of red light that led back into the daemon engine and the hissing Sarcomata.

  As it reached the shimmering doorway, it said, 'The delirium spectres come. They hear the beat of your hearts and their hunger tears at them. It would be wise not to be found by them.'

  'Wait!' said Uriel, but the Omphalos Daemonium stepped through the doorway and he watched helplessly as it faded and vanished from the mountainside, taking their daemonic captor from sight.

  A leaden weight of despair settled on Uriel's soul as the Omphalos Daemonium disappeared, and he dropped to his knees as he heard the cries of what sounded like a skirling chorus of air raid sirens.

  He looked into the dead sky and saw a flock of hybrid, winged… things, flapping rhythmically on fleshy pinions towards them from the high peaks of the mountains.

  'What the hell…?' said Pasanius, squinting into the sky.

  'The delirium spectres,' said Uriel, scrambling over the ashen ground to retrieve his weapons.

  'What do we do?' said Pasanius, belting on his pistol and slinging his flamer over his shoulder.

  'We run,' said Uriel, as the madly screeching flock drew closer.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Black shapes against the white sky screeched as they descended from the heights of the mountains and streaked towards the two Space Marines. The delirium spectres filled the air with the wails of murder victims and Uriel could hear their agony in every shriek torn from their bodies.

  He scanned the plateau for obvious hiding places, hating the idea of flight, but knowing that the Omphalos Daemonium had not lied when it had told them that it would be wise not to be found by these creatures.

  'Uriel,' said Pasanius, pointing further up the steep slopes of the mountain to a narrow defile in the rock-face. 'There! I don't think they will be able to get in there.'

  'Can we make it?'

  'Only one way to find out,' said Pasanius, setting off for the scree slope.

  Uriel buckled on his sword and ran after Pasanius, his breath ragged and strained in the toxic atmosphere. His back felt as if it was on fire, but he pushed aside the pain as he reached the slope and began climbing after Pasanius. The slope was rough, composed of dusty iron filings, craggy lumps of coal and twisted scoria. Pasanius's prodigious strength enabled him to scale the slope, albeit with great difficulty, but the loose incline gave Uriel no purchase and the harder he struggled, the further he slid back.

  Screeching wails of obscene hunger echoed from behind and he risked a glance over his shoulder as the first of the delirium spectres dived from above.

  'Uriel!' shouted Pasanius from a ledge above. 'Go left!'

  He rolled to the left as the creature dropped from the sky, welded iron claws on its wings gouging the ground where his head had been.

  He kicked out and the creature skidded down the slope, its fleshy wings beating the air in fury as it righted itself. Its shape was like that of some great, ocean-dwelling manta ray
, an external skeleton formed of iron struts with its flesh a billowing sheet of patchwork human skin stitched to the metal. Screaming faces bulged across its leathery hide, a vicious ''o'' of a mouth edged in hundreds of needle-like teeth.

  Another three creatures swooped from above, their jaws stretching across the entire surface of their skin and billowing wings flaring out to arrest their dives as they smashed into Uriel. The creature Uriel had knocked aside leapt into the air with a discordant howl as he struggled with the beasts that enfolded him, their teeth gnashing against his armour.

  Pasanius shot the airborn delirium spectre, but his bolt passed clean through its flesh before detonating and it altered its course to swoop further up the slope to attack him with a deafening screech.

  Uriel gripped the greasy flesh of the monsters attacking him and wrenched it from his armour, seeing anguished faces bulge from the surface of the skin and reach out to him. He punched through a thrashing jaw, his fist ripping through the taut skin as a flare of heat washed over him from above and he heard Pasanius shout, 'Get back!'

  The beast thrashed in his grip as the others snapped and bit at him. He forced his other hand through the wound he had punched, rolling down the slope and dislodging the others. He gripped the flapping skin to either side and tore it from the iron frame, feeling the souls trapped within scream of their release.

  Flickering lights and joyous cries erupted from the dying beast, and as the last soul departed, Uriel was left with an inanimate pile of torn flesh and metal in his hands. He hurled its remains aside as yet more of the creatures circled lower. Uriel drew his sword, slashing the energised blade through the flesh of the nearest delirium spectre, drawing a hysterical shriek of freedom from its jaws before it collapsed.

  The last beast leapt towards him and he dived forwards, rolling and slashing high with his blade and hacking it into two halves as it passed overhead.

  He heard another cry of release and saw a lifeless pile of iron struts and burning skin lying further upslope. Pasanius had his flamer out, spraying burning gouts of promethium into the air to discourage the other creatures from approaching too closely.