A pair of missiles shot from the Space Marines' weapons and slashed towards the leftmost bunker, slamming into the rockcrete and obscuring it in a bright explosion of fire and smoke. Another flashing pair of contrails hammered into the opposite bunker from somewhere high above Uriel and Pasanius and the second bunker vanished in a fiery explosion.
Prisoners screamed and Iron Warriors bellowed commands at the mutant herders as more warriors in power armour emerged from hiding now that the trap was sprung. Bolter shells stitched an explosive path through the prisoners, blood and screams filling the air as they died. More missiles shot out and exploded against the bunkers, and Uriel heard the crack of stonework collapsing under the onslaught.
'Let's go!' shouted Uriel, activating his sword and charging from cover towards the panicked column of prisoners. Pasanius was quick to follow him, a blue flame leaping to life on the end of his weapon.
Uriel saw an Iron Warrior clubbing a prisoner with the butt of his gun and aimed his charge towards him. The warrior was a full head and shoulders above Uriel, his armour spiked and daubed with unclean symbols. A pair of curved and looping horns sprouted from his helmet and he carried a brutal sword with screaming, serrated teeth. He spun, hearing Uriel's wild charge and raised his weapon, but it was already too late. Uriel slashed his sword through the Iron Warrior's breastplate, drawing a spray of black blood and a roar of pain from his foe.
Pasanius sprayed a sheet of flame across a second Iron Warrior, one with mechanised, snapping claws for hands and an explosion ripped through the prisoners as a fuel-filled tank on the Chaos Marine's back detonated.
Uriel heard the roar of bolter fire from above, seeing scores of warriors in different coloured power armour charging from their concealment. He swayed aside as the Iron Warrior swung his sword in a graceless arc meant to behead him and slashed his sword around at his flank, cutting a full handspan into his armour. More missiles speared out from the spires, slamming into the towering daemon head and rocking it back. Thick cable stays snapped and whipped around in slashing arcs as the daemon tower roared.
Heavy calibre shells ripped from its mouth, tearing great gouges in the earth as they sprayed through the camp, striking friend and foe alike. The mutants in rubberised body suits jabbed the prisoners back to the camp, drawing blood and piteous cries from their wretched charges.
The Iron Warrior roared in anger, stepping forward to smash his fist against Uriel's chest. His strength was phenomenal, even for one genetically engineered to be stronger, and Uriel was hurled back, skidding through the ash as his attacker raised his sword two-handed to deliver the deathblow. He drew his pistol and squeezed off two shells, both ricocheting from the Iron Warrior's armour.
'Now you die, renegade!' bellowed the traitor.
Uriel rolled aside as the screaming sword hacked into the ground, kicking out at the Iron Warrior's kneecap. He roared as he struck, putting his entire strength behind the blow, feeling his foe's armour splinter and the knee shatter into fragments. The Iron Warrior howled and dropped to the ground. Uriel didn't give him a chance to recover and stepped in, driving his sword clean through the Iron Warrior's chest.
The warrior seized his neck and chuckled, a throaty death rasp, and Uriel felt the immense strength in the grip. He twisted the blade, spurts of blood spraying his hands as the wound tore wider. The Iron Warrior's grip on his neck tightened and he heard a joint in his gorget pop and crack as his dying foe sought to choke the life from him. Uriel slammed his fist into the side of the warrior's helmet again and again, pounding his skull to destruction until he finally released his grip.
Uriel staggered back from the dead Iron Warrior, seeing the Space Marines storming through the open gateway in the razorwire fence. The bunkers were smoking ruins, their interiors like abattoirs. Gunfire blasted from the daemonic tower, ripping through the ranks of the attacking Space Marines. Some fell, but most picked themselves up before ducking into whatever cover they could find. Mutants fled before the wrath of the attackers, but they were cut down without mercy, hacked to death with swords or beaten to death with armoured gauntlets.
The fire from the tower was punishing the attackers and as its fiery gaze swept across the plateau, Uriel had a sickening sensation that it saw him, saw him and recognised him…
Even as he watched, he saw a warrior in midnight black power armour leap from a spire of rock to one side of the camp. A searing fire erupted from his back and Uriel saw the warrior was wearing a jump pack. Smoke and flames fired from its vents, propelling the warrior through the air to land on the head of the daemon tower. Flames burst from its eyes and the tower shook violently, but whether that was in response to the Space Marine landing on it or the daemon's own fury, it was impossible to tell.
The warrior slashed at the daemonic head with lightning sheathed claws, crackling arcs of blue energy flaring where he struck, before swinging one-handed from the side of the head and clamping something to its side. The tower shook violently, as though seeking to dislodge its attacker, but the dark armoured warrior drove his lightning claws into the daemon head and hung on. He swung around the tower, slashing at the thick cables that held it in place before bracing his feet against its cheek and pushing off. His jump jets fired as the melta charge he had placed on the daemon head detonated and he flew clear on the bow wave of an explosion that vaporised the top of the tower in a pluming mushroom cloud of incandescent energy.
With a shrieking roar, the tower swayed drunkenly, the few remaining cable stays twanging loudly as they pulled taut before snapping with the crack of a gunshot. The tower toppled majestically, crashing through the corrugated tin roof of the nearest warehouse and sending up plumes of dust and smoke.
Gunfire sounded sporadically from the camp as the last of the mutant labourers were rounded up and killed, and Uriel let out a deep breath as he saw that the battle was over.
He dragged his sword from the chest of the body before him, looking around to see an Iron Warrior on his knees, blood flooding down his breastplate as Pasanius slashed at him with his own chainblade. Both his arms had been hacked off and his belly had spilled its contents across the dark earth.
The fight was gone from the Iron Warrior, but still Pasanius took his measure of vengeance from him. A mob of Space Marines had the last Iron Warrior surrounded and shot him to death without mercy, their bolts penetrating his torn armour and exploding wetly within his flesh.
Only now, with the battle over, did Uriel really pay close attention to the armour of the Space Marines he had fought alongside. No more than two or three were alike in colour or design, and each bore testament to many hard fights, with ancient battle scars hastily and imperfectly repaired with crude grafts and filler. Almost all bore a different Chapter symbol on their shoulder guards and many had painted over them with jagged red saltires.
Wailing slaves squatted in their folds of flesh or cradled each other in their misery. Uriel ran over to Pasanius as he continued to hack the fallen Iron Warrior into pieces.
'Pasanius!' shouted Uriel.
He grabbed Pasanius's arm as he drew back for another blow. 'Pasanius, he is dead!'
Pasanius's head snapped round, his eyes ablaze with fury. For the briefest second, Uriel feared that something terrible had possessed his friend, then the killing light went out of him and he dropped the Iron Warrior's weapon and let out a deep, shuddering breath. The sergeant dropped to his knees, his face ashen at the fury he had unleashed.
'Your comrade's anger does him credit,' said a voice behind Uriel and he turned to see the warrior in black who had destroyed the tower. His armour was a far cry from the usual gleaming brilliance of a Space Marine's power armour, being ravaged with dents, scars and patches. Hot vapours vented at his shoulders from the nozzles of his jump pack, and a white symbol - a bird of prey of some kind - had been painted over with a jagged red cross. His helmet bore a similar symbol across his visor.
'You kill Iron Warriors well, both of you,' he said.
Uriel took the
measure of this Space Marine before answering, seeing a confident, almost arrogant swagger to his posture.
'I am Uriel Ventris of the Ultramarines, and this is Pasanius Lysane. Who are you?'
The warrior sheathed the lightning claws on his gauntlets and reached up to release the vacuum seals on his gorget. He removed his helmet and took a lungful of the stale air of Medrengard before answering.
'My name is Ardaric Vaanes, formerly of the Raven Guard,' he said, running a hand over his scalp. Vaanes's hair was long and dark, bound in a tight scalp lock: his features angular and pale, with deep-set hooded eyes of violet. His cheeks were scarred and he bore a trio of round scars on his forehead above his left eye, where it looked as though long service studs had been removed.
'Formerly?' asked Uriel warily.
'Aye, formerly,' said Vaanes, stepping forward and offering his hand to Uriel.
Uriel eyed the proffered hand and said, 'You are renegade.'
Vaanes held his hand out for a second longer before accepting that Uriel was not going to take it and dropped it to his side. He nodded. 'Some call us that, yes.'
Pasanius stood next to Uriel and said, 'Others call you traitor.'
Vaanes's eyes narrowed. 'Perhaps they do, but only once.'
The three Space Marines stared at one another in silence for long seconds before Vaanes shrugged and walked past them towards the wrecked camp.
'Wait,' said Uriel, turning and following the renegade. 'I don't understand. How is it you come to be here?'
'That, Uriel Ventris, is a long story,' replied Vaanes, as they passed through the gate into the blazing camp. 'But we should destroy this place and be gone from here soon. The Unfleshed are close and the scent of death will draw them here quickly.'
'What about all these people?' asked Pasanius, sweeping his arm around to encompass the weeping prisoners outside the camp.
'What about them?'
'How are we going to get them out of here?'
'We're not,' said Vaanes.
'You're not?' snapped Uriel. 'Then why did you come to rescue them?'
'Rescue them?' said Vaanes, gesturing to his warriors, who began methodically working their way around the warehouse buildings and placing explosive charges. 'We didn't come to rescue them, we came to destroy this camp and that is all. These people are nothing to me.'
'How can you say that? Look at them!'
'If you want to rescue them, then good luck to you, Uriel Ventris. You will need it.'
'Damn you, Vaanes, have you no honour?'
'None to speak of, no,' snapped Vaanes. 'Look at them, these precious people you want to save. They are worthless. Most do not survive to reach the skinning chasm anyway and the ones that do soon wish they had not.'
'But you can't just abandon them,' pressed Uriel.
'I can and I will.'
'What is this camp anyway?' asked Pasanius. 'A prison? A death camp?'
Vaanes shook his head. 'No, nothing so mundane. It is much worse than that.'
'Then what?'
Vaanes grabbed the handles of the roller shutter door of the nearest warehouse and hauled it open, saying, 'Why don't you find out?'
Uriel shared a wary glance with Pasanius as Ardaric Vaanes gestured that they should enter the building. A powerful reek of human waste gusted from within, mixed with the stench of rotted flesh and the stink of desperation. Flickering lights sputtered within and a low sobbing drifted on the stinking air.
Uriel stepped into the brick building, his eyes quickly adjusting to the gloom within. Inside, the warehouse was revealed to be a mechanised factory facility, with iron girders running the length of the building fitted with dangling chains and heavy pulley mechanisms on greased runners. Mesh cages on raised platforms ran along the left-hand side of the building, a mass of pale flesh filling each one, with gurgling pipes and tubes drooping from bulging feed sacks suspended from the roof.
A trough that reeked of human faeces ran beneath the cages, clogged and buzzing with waste-eating insects. Uriel covered his mouth and nose, even his prodigious metabolism struggling to protect him from the awful stench. He walked forwards, his boots ringing on the grilled floor as he approached the first cage.
Inside was a naked man, though to call him such was surely to stretch the term. His form was immense, bloated and flabby, and his skin had the colour and texture of bile, with a horrid, clammy gleam to it. Rusted clamps held his jaw open while ribbed tubing pulsed with a grotesque peristaltic motion as nutrients and foodstuffs laced with growth hormones were pumped into him as another tube carried away his waste. Coloured wires and augmetic plugs pierced the flesh of his sagging chest, no doubt artificially regulating his heart and preventing the cardiac arrest that his vast bulk should have long ago brought on.
His limbs were thick, doughy lumps of grey flesh, held immobile by tight snares of wire, his features lost in the flabby immensity of his skull, his eyes telling of a mind that had long since taken refuge in madness. Uriel felt an immense sadness and horror at the man's plight - what manner of monster could do this to a human being?
He moved on to the next cage, finding a similar sight within, this time a naked woman, her body also bloated and obscene, her belly scarred and ravaged by what looked like repeated and unnecessary surgery. Unlike the occupant of the previous cage, her eyes had a vestige of sanity and they spoke eloquently to Uriel of her torment.
He turned away, appalled at such hideousness, seeing that there were hundreds of such cages within this darkened hell. Repulsed beyond words, yet drawn to explore further, he crossed the chamber to see what lay on the other side of the building. More cages occupied the right-hand side of the building, but these were narrower, occupied by splayed individuals who looked like the poor wretches Uriel had once seen on a hive world that had been cut off from the agri world it had relied upon for foodstuffs. Starving men and women were hung from iron hooks, wired to machines that kept them in a hellish limbo between life and death as their body fat was forcibly sucked from them by hissing pumps and industrial irrigation equipment.
Their skin hung loose on their bodies and drooped from their emaciated frames in purulent sheets. Uriel now knew the fate of those in the cages behind him. Fattened up artificially so the skin might stretch to obscene proportions, then ultra-rapidly divested of their bulk that they might be skinned to provide swathes of fresh skin.
But why? Why would anyone go to such lengths to harvest such vast quantities of human skin? The answer eluded Uriel and he felt an all-consuming pity well up within him at the plight of these prisoners.
'You see?' said Ardaric Vaanes, standing behind him. 'There is nothing you can do for them. Freeing these… things is pointless and their death will be a blessed release.'
'Sweet Emperor,' whispered Uriel. 'What purpose does this cruelty serve?'
Vaanes shrugged. 'I do not know, nor do I care. The Iron Warriors have built dozens of these camps in the mountains over the last few months. They are of importance to the Iron Warriors, so I destroy them. The "why" of it is irrelevant.'
'Are all the buildings like this one?' asked Pasanius, his face lined with sorrow.
'They are,' confirmed Vaanes. 'We have already destroyed two such camps, and they were all like this. We must destroy it now, for if we do not, the Unfleshed will come and there will be a feasting and a slaughter the likes of which you cannot imagine.'
'I do not understand,' said Uriel. 'The Unfleshed? What are they?'
'Beasts from your worst nightmares,' said Vaanes. 'They are the by-blows of the Iron Warriors, abortions given life who escaped the vivisectoria of the Savage Morticians to roam the mountains. They are many and we are few. Now, come, it is time we were gone.'
Uriel nodded wearily, barely listening to Vaanes, and followed the renegade back out into the remains of the camp. Numbly he took in the scale of the camp: two dozen of these buildings filled it, each one a darkened hell for those farmed within them. For all that he hated to admit it, Vaan
es was right, the sooner this facility and all within it were destroyed the better.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Galvanised by the urgency in the renegade's tone, Uriel quickly followed him through the camp as the first of the charges detonated with a hollow boom. Debris and flesh rained down as one of the human battery farms exploded, freeing the prisoners from their agonies in a fiery wash of release.
More charges blew and more of the infernal buildings collapsed inwards. Uriel prayed that the souls within them would forgive them and find their way to the Emperor's side. Flames and smoke billowed from the blazing wreckage of the camp as it was destroyed and the Space Marines ran for the safety of the mountains.
Uriel and Pasanius followed Ardaric Vaanes and his renegades southwards, climbing away from the camp as Uriel heard a mad chorus of howls from the mountains either side of them.
The breath caught in his throat and his pace slowed at the sight of the Unfleshed as they shambled from the mountains towards the burning camp with a twisted, lop-sided gait. Monstrously huge, they were a riot of anatomies, a carnival of the grotesque with no two alike in size or shape. Hugely built and massively tall, they were grossly swollen, glistening red and wet, the rippling form of their exposed musculature out of all proportion to their bodies. Uriel saw that, over and above their enormity and lack of skin, every one of them was deformed in other nightmarish ways, resembling the leavings from a mad sculptor-surgeon's table.
Here was a creature with two heads, fused at the jawbone, with a quartet of cataracted eyes that had run together into one misshapen orb. Another bore a monstrous foetal twin from its stomach, withered, and metastasised arms gripping its parent tightly.
Yet another shambled downhill using piston-like arms, its legs atrophied to little more than grasping claws. A trio of beasts, perhaps related somehow, shared a similarity in their deformities, with each clad in flapping sheets of leathery skin. Their skulls were swollen and distended with long fangs, and bony crests erupted from their flesh all across their bodies.
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