[Night Lords 01] - Soul Hunter

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - (ebook by Undead)

  “We are the Lords of the Night. We are the sons of the VIII Legion. And we will take Seventeen-Seventeen, so that for a thousand years the Imperium will lament the hour of our coming to Crythe.”

  The cheers had been loud and long.

  “Prepare a drop-pod,” the Dreadnought demanded. “I stand in midnight clad once more, and my claws thirst for Imperial blood.”

  The cheers roared louder.

  An eyeless, tongueless, one-armed corpse floated within the god-like machine, knowing it would soon taste war for the first time in ten thousand years.

  XVI

  SEVENTEEN-SEVENTEEN

  “I have noticed an anomaly.

  “Many Imperial records have come to deal very kindly with the Crythe Cluster Insurrection, but praise is most often levelled at the saviour fleet led by the arriving Astartes of the Blood Angels Chapter, rather than the initial defence of any individual world. Critical eyes were most often cast at the “dubious resistance” put up by the Adeptus Mechanicus in the defence of its principal bastion in the northern hemisphere, Site 017-017.

  “Indeed, that site’s survival is often entirely attributed to the instability of the Archenemy’s forces upon Crythe Prime and the well-noted tendency of the Traitor Legions to fall upon one another at the slightest provocation.

  “Entire mountains were hollowed out to make room for the blessed Titan foundries of the Legio Maledictis. Had the Despoiler’s war been successful, these would have been a resource of overwhelming value: used, plundered and stripped of their worth before the arriving Imperial fleet bestowed its infinite vengeance upon the accursed forces of the Warmaster.

  “Those rugged mountainsides were thick with elite Mechanicus skitarii, like lice in a beggar’s hair.

  “Arranging thousands of individual landings across the entire mountain range would have taken a great deal of time that remained unavailable to the Despoiler.

  “At this stage, the Warmaster believed only weeks remained before the first Blood Angel battle-barge would soar into the system to bring the God-Emperor’s justice. Abaddon, a thousand curses upon his name, knew this from his own astropathic sources. Prisoners captured after the war confirmed this to us.

  “Such foreknowledge is the only conceivable explanation for a massed surface landing on the plains before Site 017-017’s foothills. In essence, Abaddon cast his hordes planetside and hurled them “at the front gates”, as it were.

  “I have heard it said that our greatest weapon against the Archenemy is the foe’s own nature. That may indeed be so. Fate was most certainly on the side of righteousness the day the Night Lords and Black Legion within the Crythe offensive turned against one another.

  “No Imperial record I have been able to trace details exactly why Abaddon’s command over portions of his army broke so completely, nor does it explain what—if anything—the forces of the Archenemy sought to gain from their untimely division.

  “If such internal conflict is down to anything more than the maddened behaviour of tainted, once-human beasts, it is unlikely to ever come to light.”

  —Interrogator Reshlan Darrow

  Annotation in his pivotal work: Faces of the Despoiler

  First Claw shuddered as one.

  “Breaching atmosphere,” Adhemar said to the others within the confines of the drop-pod. “One minute.”

  “Why the rough deployment?” Cyrion asked.

  “Anti-air fire,” Mercutian grumbled.

  “This high? Not a chance.”

  “It’s just a rough ride down,” said Adhemar. “Weather patterns, rising heat, high pressure. Stay focused, brothers.”

  “Blood,” Uzas was mumbling. “Blood and skulls and souls for the Red King.”

  “Shut up,” Adhemar growled. “Shut up or I’ll tear your head off, stuff it with frag grenades, and use it as the ugliest explosive ever made.”

  “He can’t hear you,” said Cyrion. “Ignore him. He always does this.”

  “Blood for the Blood God,” Uzas’ voice was thick and wet. He was salivating again, venomous drool coating his chin. “Skulls for the—”

  Talos slammed the palm of his hand on Uzas’ helm, crashing the side of the helmet against the headrest of his brother’s restraint throne.

  “Shut up!” he snapped. “Every mission. Every battle. Enough.”

  Uzas didn’t react at all.

  “See?” Cyrion said to Adhemar.

  Adhemar just nodded, his thoughts his own. “Thirty seconds.”

  “This is not going to be easy,” Mercutian said. “Are we going in with the Violators and the Scourges of Quintus?”

  “They’re to the east,” Talos answered, “between us and the Black Legion. Just remember your targets. We break in, we kill the unit commanders as ordered, and we break out to our own lines.”

  “Twenty seconds,” Adhemar noted.

  “This is not about attrition,” Talos said, repeating Malcharion’s words at the briefing, “and we’re dead if anyone tries to turn it into a fair fight.”

  “Ten seconds.”

  “Kill, and break away. Let Abaddon’s mortal followers bleed for him.” Talos couldn’t resist the grin that coloured his words. “That’s not our job.”

  It was a decent plan on the surface, but with obvious risks.

  The squads that volunteered for this, across all of the Traitor Legions and renegade Chapters, were given poor odds of survival.

  In front of the Exalted and Malcharion, Talos had demanded First Claw be part of the assault.

  Like all troops, the Mechanicus’ skitarii, despite their training and augmentations, had proved time and again they suffered when severed from their battlefield leadership. The Warmaster’s forces, seeking to capitalise on that potential weakness, hurled elite squads of Astartes into the warzones below—each unit tasked with the assassination of several tech-adept commanders.

  First Claw’s pod crashed to the earth, throwing soil skyward from its landing crater. With timed bursts, the walls slammed down to form ramps, and First Claw charged from their restraint thrones, bolters up and blazing as they ran out onto the plainsland—a vast plateau before the foothills of Seventeen-Seventeen’s crag fortresses.

  Their pod had come down onto a battlefield, in the middle of an enemy regiment.

  An ocean of foes writhed beyond the clearing dust of their downed pod. The distant figures of Titans, a host of classes and patterns, duelled in the distance.

  The closest of the god-machines was at least two thousand metres away—a towering, enraged Reaver spraying the ground with immense firepower—and still it was huge beyond reckoning compared to the surrounding enemy. Instinctively, it drew the eyes.

  As the Astartes disembarked, weapons opening up, their vox calls to each other immediately took on a tone of amused desperation.

  “Try not to die here, brothers,” Mercutian muttered. “I’m in no spirits to look for another squad.”

  Cyrion laid waste to three heavily-augmented tech-guard, bolts detonating in the flesh-parts of their bodies and blowing them apart.

  “This looked much easier on the holo-maps!” A brute with four mechanical extra arms rumbled towards him, waving a bizarre array of mining tools formed into weapons of war. Cyrion dodged a drill the size of his leg as it powered past his head, and rammed his gladius into the skitarii’s bawling mouth. The blade bit, sank in, and impaled the skitarii’s altered brain.

  “I’ve got zero confirmation of the first target,” he said, holding back several more tech-guard with full-auto bolter fire. His aim was off. Shaky and loose. Hard to align his bolter with his targeting reticule.

  The new arm. A hasty surgery and a simple augmetic. It would need a great deal more reconstructive work before he was satisfied with its performance. Still, with these odds, it was impossible to miss.

  The ground was treacherous underfoot, rendered uneven by the bodies layering the plain. Their drop-pod had killed a fair few of the enhanced Mechanicus soldiers when it hamm
ered down into the heart of the regiment’s formation. Those around the impact zone were still scattered and fighting to form a decent resistance to the enemy in their midst.

  “Landing is never an exact science, eh?” Adhemar ended a brief duel with a skitarii possessing treads instead of legs. He wrenched his combat blade from the creature’s eye socket, launching at the next closest. “Zero sighting of the main target.”

  Talos’ attention kept flicking to his retinal display, keeping track of the squad’s increasing spatial division.

  “Xarl?” he voxed. No answer. He spun as he lashed out with Aurum. The distance was bad. The blade’s tip snicked through the throat of a looming tech-guard behind him, instead of taking the head clean off.

  “Xarl, answer me.” Talos kicked the staggering skitarii with the severed jugular away. Cycling through sight modes, he tried to get a clear view of his brothers through the mass melee.

  “North,” came Xarl’s voice. “Closer to the front line. I can’t confirm. The fighting is densest there.”

  “I’m too far away for confirmation,” Adhemar voxed back.

  “As am I,” Talos cursed. “Cyrion? Mercutian?”

  “Little… busy…” Mercutian replied.

  “Too far,” breathed Cyrion. “Can’t see. Fighting.”

  “Souls for the Soul Eater!” Uzas screamed. “Skulls for the Skull Throne!”

  “No one asked you.”

  Through a sea of stabbing drills, slashing blades, punching fists and cutting las-fire, Talos carved and gunned his way forward.

  Something impacted on the side of his helm. Anathema barked in that direction, ending whatever threat had been there. Aurum twisted to deflect a skitarii’s two lashing machine arms. Talos thudded his ceramite boot into the chest of a tech-guard to the right, caving in the warrior’s armour and puncturing his lungs with broken ribs. Aurum flashed again in a vicious arc, cleaving through another tech-guard’s torso as Anathema roared three shells into the heads of three other skitarii.

  The downed tech-guard, carved in two, flailed at Talos’ legs with its remaining functional arm. The Night Lord stamped on the howling saw blade to smash it into uselessness and crushed the soldier’s head a moment later.

  “I’m having a wonderful time,” Cyrion voxed to him, breathless and sarcastic.

  “You and I both,” Talos said, his teeth clenched. He spared a half-second’s glance in the direction of the monstrous Reaver. It was closer now, but only barely, siren horns wailing above the battlefield—a challenge or a warning to those underfoot. It dwarfed the defeated Warhound by no small degree.

  “Traitors!” one of the attacking skitarii yelled. “Kill the Chaos Marines!”

  Talos gunned him down with a bolt in the face, and waded on.

  Uzas made the kill.

  The tech-adept was called Rollumos, a name he’d chosen himself, and any name he’d been born with was forgotten long long ago. He was, by the calculations of his own internal chronometers, one hundred and sixteen years of age. At least, the few remaining flesh parts were. Close, so very close, was his ascension to perfection. Only seventeen per cent of his flawed mortal form remained. A glorious and worshipful eighty-three per cent was iron, steel, bronze and titanium, all consecrated and ritually thrice-blessed daily in the name of the Machine-God.

  He hesitated to call himself a Master of Skitarii, not out of modesty but out of private shame. His role was a vital one, certainly, and not without its honour. Yet a grim, too-human ache remained within his cranial cogitators. A master of what? Slave soldiers?

  He deserved better. He deserved more.

  Solace lay in deception, and shame could be quelled by the same deceit. Outwardly he embraced his role, endlessly modifying his physical form so that he might wage war alongside his augmented warriors. He lied to his peers and fellow adepts. How they believed him! How they processed and chattered confirmation for his apparent scholarly focus within the physicality of frontline tactical, battle immersion.

  Like the avatars of the Machine-God that they were, the great engines of Legio Maledictis strode across the plains, towering above Rollumos’ own pedestrian, humble, insignificant accomplishments. Oftentimes he would ascend the gantries when only menials were present, and run a mechadendrite across the armour of an inactive Titan, his inner processors generating picts of himself working on a god-machine, striving to bring forth the soul of the engine from its silent bulk.

  Tormented by his own position in the Legio’s hierarchy, at least he hid his displeasure from the unblinking eyes of his more respected brethren. That was cold comfort, but enough to keep his shame hidden.

  It was no matter that this hierarchical deceit placed him within harm’s way. His body was significantly enhanced to deal with the kind of threats faced by tech-guard infantry, and he had no worries of sustaining personal harm.

  And yet, this deceit was one he came to regret in the final minutes of his life.

  They were dropping Astartes into his regiments.

  Astartes. Entire squads of them. A night-dark drop-pod lashed groundward, pounding into the plain some five hundred and eleven metres from where he stood deep within a phalanx of his favoured skitarii.

  Rollumos cogitated their allegiance. The winged skull symbol. The forks of lightning inscribed upon their armour. The… immediate and total viciousness of their assault, bolters discharging and blades hewing into precious augmented skitarii flesh.

  Night Lords. This was not optimal.

  As Rollumos directed a greater number of his soldiers in the direction of this closest pod and its troublesome burden, the first regrets were just beginning to sink in. These regrets reached their peak—and ended abruptly—exactly seven minutes and nine seconds later.

  “Kill,” Uzas voxed to First Claw. He wasn’t even out of breath. “Target slain.”

  Uzas raised Rollumos’ metal head in one hand, like a primitive tribesman bearing the skull of a murdered foe. The tech-guard around him shrank back as he howled.

  “Who’s next?” Cyrion asked. The others heard the pounding of weapons against his armour transmitted over the vox. “I’m already bored of this.”

  “Skitarii Captain Tigrith,” Talos answered. “Look for banners. Further north.”

  First Claw returned to the Covenant of Blood nine hours later.

  Septimus and Octavia were waiting for them in the hangar bay, both mortals dressed in their Legion serf uniforms. The Thunderhawk bringing them back was Nightfall, one of the only other gunships still functional within 10th Company. Two other squads disembarked first. First Claw came last, and Octavia swore softly under her breath.

  Almost ten hours of solid fighting at the front line had taken a clear toll. Cyrion’s arm was limp and unmoving, the hastily-attached augmetic limb having given out hours before under the relentless demands of battle. Xarl’s collection of skulls hanging from his armour was reduced to no more than scarce fragments of bone dangling on a few remaining chains. Uzas and Mercutian both bore horrendous damage to their battle armour: las-burns had carved blackened furrows through the ceramite or burned it black on deflected impact; huge axes and chainblades had chopped the images of their edges into the dark plate elsewhere.

  Adhemar was bareheaded, his face decorated with bloody cuts, already scabbed and sealing with his enhanced physiology.

  Talos was the last to leave the Thunderhawk. The defiled Imperial eagle upon his chestpiece sported some intriguing new desecrations. One wing was now severed by a blade’s impact, unjoined to the rest of the image, and the eagle’s ivory-white body was black—charred by a flame weapon was Septimus’ guess. Talos’ right hand was locked into a curled claw, rigid and unmoving. Evidently, the gauntlet had finally failed, and would need a great deal of care in its repair.

  Septimus noticed two things immediately, the first of which was how much effort it was going to take to repair Talos’ armour. The second made his blood run cold.

  “Where’s his gun?” Octavia as
ked. She’d noticed it, too.

  “I lost it,” Talos said as First Claw strode past.

  “Lord, where are you going?” Septimus said.

  “To see the tech-priest, and the 10th Captain.”

  Deltrian attended to Malcharion personally.

  The damage he’d sustained in the desecration of the Hall of Remembrance was almost fully repaired, though several joint-motors within his upper body were still functioning at half-capacity, their systems untested at full power.

  Although it wounded him with secret shame to adopt such a human reaction to his injuries, he cursed Vraal each time his diminished physical aptitude caused an adjustment in his motion and movement.

  The tech-adept and several of his servitors worked on the Dreadnought’s hull, resealing, repairing, amending and reshaping. The Hall of Remembrance echoed with the sounds of maintenance.

  Talos had greeted Deltrian formally upon entering but quickly lapsed into vox conversation with the ancient warrior.

  “Forgive me for the rudeness, tech-priest,” the Astartes said, replacing his helm back over his head. “It is necessary if we are to speak over the noise.” Deltrian had bowed in response. The sounds of holy maintenance were loud by necessity. Through such song was praise offered to the Machine-God.

  “Captain…” Talos voxed.

  “Captain no longer. Speak, Soul Hunter.”

  “The plains are ours.”

  “A fine landing site, they shall make. The siege begins with the dawn.”

  “It will be close. Even if we take the city within the week…” Talos trailed off. Malcharion knew as well as he did. Time was not their ally. The Blood Angels were less than three weeks away.

  “Abaddon’s seers are still sure, are they not?”

  Talos snorted. “I heard from his own lips that they are failing him all too often these nights.”