[Night Lords 01] - Soul Hunter

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - (ebook by Undead)

  Talos felt his newly-recovered strength desert him. Back to the wall, he slid down to the decking, clutching his shattered breastplate. The Dreadnoughts regarded each other in a moment of almost hilarious calm.

  “Kill it!” Talos screamed. “Kill it now!”

  “I already have once,” Malcharion boomed.

  The Blood Angels Dreadnought made the same gear-shifting grind of a sound Talos had heard from Malcharion. The Night Lord’s eyes fell upon the sarcophagus mounted within the war-sage’s new body. There stood the image of Malcharion in life, clutching the three helms. One of those belonged to…

  The Blood Angel champion… Raguel the Sufferer.

  “Even in death,” the Blood Angel growled, “I will avenge myself.”

  “You deserve the chance, Raguel.”

  With power fists crackling, the two war machines did what they were resurrected to do.

  The fight played out in two worlds, and until his dying night Talos was never sure which battle he truly witnessed. In the immediate, painful, shaking world of the shallowest senses, the two armoured behemoths tore at each other with rotating claws and bludgeoning fists. Ceramite ripped in those mauling hands, and shards of armour flew from the combatants like hail on some blizzard-touched deathworld.

  Neither of the suspended corpses saw this, and neither felt it.

  The walls were gold where these warriors duelled. Both men wore the proud armour of their Legion, and both men fought for Terra—one to defend it and die for the Imperium, one to conquer it and kill for the same reason.

  Their blades spun and struck until both were broken. Then it came down to gauntleted fists and the strength to strangle.

  Talos watched the Dreadnoughts tearing each other to scrap, and saw exactly what the dead men saw.

  Blackened roared through the air, engines screaming as the racing Thunderhawk drew alongside the Covenant.

  The others had already docked, bringing their precious cargo on board the strike cruiser as it tore across the sky. Blackened was the last.

  Warning runes flashed across console displays as Septimus pushed the engines past all safe limits. The control sticks juddered in his fists, shaking almost in sync with the wailing sirens that screamed at him to cease what he was doing. The dark dart of the Thunderhawk banked closer to the racing shape of the Covenant, the turbulence intensified with Blackened on the edge of entering its mothership’s slipstream.

  It was starting to climb.

  He could see it himself, even without the Astartes in the cockpit—warriors he didn’t know—pointing it out in curses and complaints.

  These, he did his best to ignore along with the warning runes blinking migraine-red everywhere.

  But the Covenant was definitely climbing now, and even slowly, it made a near-impossible landing almost inconceivable. Its prow came up, cutting the polluted sky, in the beginning incline for orbital re-entry.

  “Just a little more,” he mouthed the plea, wrenching the three thrust levers into the blank sockets past the red zones marked on the helm consoles. Blackened kicked, howling louder, and burst forward in pursuit of its carrier.

  The thought occurred, as he climbed alongside the strike cruiser, banking ever closer to the open hangar bay, that there was a very good chance one—or all—of the Thunderhawk’s engines would explode under this punishment.

  Septimus pulled back, climbing parallel to the larger ship, boosting ahead of the open bay doors, ready to fall back and weave inside. The gunship veered gently, shaking hard, within thirty metres of the hangar bay.

  They were going too fast to deploy the landing gear. The claws would be torn off the moment they cleared the hull. Septimus would need to lower them late, as soon as Blackened came into the bay, and pray they were down enough to take the ship’s weight.

  “Now or never,” he whispered, and banked hard right at more than full thrust. The Thunderhawk wrenched to the side, rolling directly at the hangar bay.

  The next ten seconds lasted an age to Septimus—an eternity of insane shaking and the loudest noises he had ever heard.

  The port booster exploded as the Thunderhawk veered home, amplifying the turbulence tenfold. Septimus had been ready for one or more of the engines to go, and compensated immediately. Blackened would have fallen short of its target, either smashing headlong into side of the Covenant, or glancing from the larger ship and then falling from the sky after sustaining severe damage in the impact. Septimus compensated by overloading the remaining boosters, destroying them all in one momentary burst of thrust that threw the gunship at the open bay.

  He risked it, so close to the target, and deployed the landing gear. The hideous sound of wrenching metal told the fate of the front landing leg. The others held.

  Darkness blanketed over the view windows as they hurtled at the Covenant. Septimus had a split second to realise they were on course, but not perfectly, before they were in the bay itself with a blur of motion. Another almighty crash shook the Thunderhawk as the gunship’s tail cleaved into the edge of the bay doors. Blackened bucked and lurched, twisted off its already chaotic course, and slammed into the floor with savage force.

  The rear landing claws carved into the decking as the gunship’s nose hammered down and ploughed a squealing, sparking furrow through the deck floor. After several dozen metres of skidding, the rear landing gear gave way, torn from their sockets and thudding the gunship’s winged rear end to the decking with a thunderous crash.

  With its engines dead and thrusters burned out, the only thing that brought the howling gunship to a final halt was its collision with the side wall of the hangar bay.

  Septimus was jolted forward with this last indignity, but his restraint belts remained strong, keeping him in his throne.

  Motionless at last, his heart pounding, Septimus let out the deepest breath he’d ever held.

  “We’re… we’re down,” he said, unsurprised at the tremor in his voice.

  The Astartes squad unbuckled from their own thrones and left the cockpit without a word.

  Even as the ruined engines continued the short process of terminally cycling down in an orchestra of mechanical whines, the Astartes on board were disembarking, summoned by the Exalted in defence of the Covenant. Throne-loyal Astartes were apparently on board.

  Septimus was almost too tired to care as he stood slowly, trying to keep his balance on unsteady legs.

  His neck ached. His back ached. His hands ached.

  Everything ached. A pilot all his life, he’d not even believed such a docking was survivable. The Astartes left without a word of acknowledgement. He was also too tired to care.

  Well. Almost.

  Stumbling down the gang ramp, he blinked blurry stress-exhaustion from his eyes. Blackened creaked and hissed behind him as its strained hull settled into inactivity once more.

  The gunship’s tail was gone, torn off in the crash with the hull. The landing gear was a mangled memory. All across the Thunderhawk’s proud, hunter’s form, damage showed in stark, black burns and dark, twisted metal.

  “I am never doing that again,” he said. Servitors approached, their simple programming taking several moments to calculate how to deal with the wreckage of what lay before them. Several looked at him curiously, wondering if he’d spoken a command.

  “Get back to work,” Septimus said. He reached up to activate his vox-bead. “Octavia?”

  Her voice was weak. Wet with tears.

  “You have to help me,” she said softly.

  “Where are you?”

  She told him, and Septimus broke into a pained run.

  On the strategium, the Exalted watched the mountain ranges below falling away. Its ship climbed, tearing into the sky like a spear. The bridge crew cheered. The sound shook the Exalted, having never heard it before.

  Within seconds, the blue palette of the occulus was replaced by black.

  The black of the void. Blessedly, the Covenant ended its tormented shaking. Artificial gravity resum
ed, and limbs became less heavy.

  “Punch a hole through between these two ships,” the Exalted ordered. It was already sat back in its throne, studying the reactivated hololithic display. Keen senses raced to unravel the mysteries, the flight paths, the destructions and deaths since he had last seen this image.

  The shaking began again, and this time, damage reports flooded in.

  “I do not care what damage is sustained.” The ship jolted hard under another volley of lance strikes. “Just get us into the warp.”

  Arrow-straight and lethally fast, the Covenant ripped from Crythe Prime’s orbit, racing through the battling fleets.

  “Navigator Etrigius,” the Exalted said. “Answer me.”

  “He’s… he’s dead,” said a female voice.

  First Claw came to the downed machines.

  The healthiest of the Astartes were limping. Uzas and Mercutian dragged themselves by their hands.

  The Blood Angel Dreadnought still twitched as it lay on its back. Its claw opened and closed, grinding nothing but air. Talos nodded to the sarcophagus, too pained to point.

  “Cut that open.”

  Xarl and Cyrion went to work with their chainswords, carving through the coffin’s surface, the tearing teeth offering no respect for the funerary declarations and acid-etched glories depicted in Baalian glyphs. With grunts of effort, the two warriors hauled the sarcophagus’ lid away, revealing the pilot within.

  Their blades had ruptured the inner coffin. Clear amniotic fluid, blood-pinked in patches, seeped from the pierced box in sloshing trickles.

  Talos stepped on the downed Dreadnought’s hull, looking down at the limbless, augmented wreck of a human being.

  “I am Talos of the Night Lords. Nod if you understand me.”

  The slain hero nodded, skin tightening in doubtlessly painful spasms as his life support interfeeds failed. Talos smiled at the sight.

  “Know this, Blood Angel. Your final mission was a failure. Your brothers are dead. We will wear their armour in battle against your False Emperor. And know this also, champion of the IX Legion. Twice now, the sons of the Night Haunter have seen you slain. Greet the afterlife within the warp knowing you were too weak to triumph over us, even once.”

  Talos locked eyes with the spasming remnant in its fluid-filled coffin. In a sure grip despite the weakness of his arm, Talos raised Aurum, the blade of another fallen Angel.

  “Your bones will be made into trophies for our armour. We will feast upon your gene-seed. And whatever remains of this glorious walking tomb will be salvaged by our tech-priest to house a champion of our own Legion.”

  He plunged the blade down. Its golden length stabbed through the casket, impaling the mutilated Imperial hero’s open mouth.

  “Die,” Talos finished, “with the taste of your Chapter’s eternal failure on your tongue.”

  Octavia wiped the blood from Etrigius’ face.

  The Navigator’s eerie features seemed somehow childish in death, peaceful and innocent. She could almost believe he hadn’t seen a lifetime of sights and secrets few mortals should be cursed to witness.

  One of his rings had slipped from a too-long finger. She replaced it on his hand, not even sure why she bothered. It just felt right. Throne, she’d not even liked him. He was an insufferable and condescending ass.

  Still. He’d not deserved this. No one did.

  Octavia rested her hand over the bleeding puncture where his warp eye had been. A sniper… some kind of lightly-armoured Astartes youth… He’d stolen into the chamber and dropped Etrigius with a single shot. The Navigator died in the middle of complaining about the turbulence. Octavia had been too shocked to move, too stunned to reach for her autopistol, even when the Navigator’s robed servitors deployed their claws and tore the Blood Angel youth limb from limb.

  “He’s dead,” she’d told the daemon-thing on the bridge when its voice blared over the vox. “They killed him.”

  The daemon-thing, the Exalted, had screamed. The ship shuddered as if in the grip of some huge, angry god.

  Septimus’ voice came to her again. Not over the vox this time. She looked up and saw him standing at the doorway.

  “Octavia.”

  “They killed him,” she said again, her teeth clenched. Throne, why was she crying? Why wouldn’t the ship stop shaking… just for a moment…

  “Octavia,” Septimus came to her, helping her to her feet. “The Covenant is being destroyed. We are all dead, unless…”

  “Unless… I guide us into the warp.”

  “Yes.” He wiped flecks of blood from her face, his augmetic eye whirring as it focused. She heard it click once, very quietly.

  “Did you just take my pict?”

  “I may have,” he said. His smile answered for him, slow and mournful.

  Octavia glanced at the bloodstained meditation couch, and did not look back at him. “You should go. This is never pleasant to watch.”

  He hesitated, reluctant to let her go even as the ship was being annihilated by Imperial guns. She pushed him away, not unkindly.

  “You know,” she said, walking to the couch, “I’ll see you after. Maybe.”

  “Maybe.”

  She finally looked back, seeing him standing by the door. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I can find the Astronomican, guide by the Emperor’s light. But I have a feeling that would invite pursuit.”

  “It would. Just… do your best.”

  “I could kill you all, if I wanted to.” She grinned. “You’re heretics, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “You should go.”

  He didn’t know what else to say, so he left without saying anything at all. The door to Etrigius’—no, Octavia’s chambers—sealed closed and locked tight.

  “Navigator,” came a growl from the vox speakers around the room.

  “Here,” she answered.

  “I am the Exalted.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “Do you know the region of space, close to the galactic core, that houses a warp wound known as the Great Eye?”

  Eurydice Mervallion, now called Octavia of the Covenant, took a deep breath.

  “Link me to the helm,” she said, strength returning to her voice. “I will commune with your pilots.”

  It wasn’t so difficult, really.

  The ship hated her. Oh, how it loathed her presence. She felt its soul recoil from her probing meditation, like a viper protecting its young.

  I hate you, the Covenant hissed. Its presence thrashed in her mind, shrieking and hateful.

  I hate you, it warned again, far from the docile and sedate soul of Kartan Syne’s Maiden of the Stars.

  You are not my Navigator, it spat.

  “Yes,” she spoke to the chamber, empty except the corpse of her predecessor. “I am.”

  Octavia closed her human eyes, opened the third, and dragged the Covenant of Blood into the space between worlds.

  “You feel that?” Xarl asked as the ship seemed to slip forward in a strangely smooth lurch that had no similarity to weapons fire.

  Talos nodded. He’d felt the translation into the warp as well.

  “We made it,” Cyrion grunted. “Most of us.”

  Malcharion was no longer moving at all. First Claw clustered around the ruined warrior, and Xarl’s chain-blade revved again.

  “Should we?” he asked Talos. “Deltrian might be able to save him, if he still lives within.”

  “No. Let him sleep, as he wished. We already have an image of him that should stay with us down the ages.” The prophet’s eyes didn’t leave the triumphant engraving on the front of the sarcophagus for some time.

  “It was grand to see him fight,” Uzas conceded, “one last time.”

  The others snorted or stared to hear such a thing from him.

  “I swear, I saw the fight at the Palace of Terra again,” Cyrion said. “Not these… war machines clubbing each other.”

  Talos didn’t reply.

&nb
sp; “Deltrian,” he voxed to the Hall of Remembrance.

  “Yes, One-Two-Ten. I am present, Talos.”

  “Malcharion the War-Sage has fallen in battle.”

  “Your voice indicates you grieve at this development. If condolences from others will ease your torment, I will offer them.”

  “The sentiment is appreciated, but that is not all.”

  “Your voice patterns now show a trace of amusement.”

  “Send two teams of lifter servitors to the aft mortals’ decks, to the area known as Blackmarket.”

  “Processing. One team is enough to recover the holy relic of the entombed Malcharion. I require reasoning for your request of two lifter teams.”

  “Because, honoured tech-priest,” Talos turned his gaze to the wreckage of Raguel the Sufferer in his priceless war machine shell, “First Claw has a gift for you.”

  With the link cut, Talos narrowed his eyes at the corpse of one dead Blood Angel. The warrior’s breastplate remained intact despite grievous damage to his thigh, leg and shoulder armour. An Imperial eagle spread its wings proudly across the chestpiece, forged from platinum, gleaming gold in the dim light.

  The prophet nodded weakly at the dead Blood Angel’s beautiful armour.

  “That is mine,” he said, and slid back down to the decking, too exhausted to move.

  EPILOGUE

  PORTENTS

  In the bowels of the Covenant of Blood, a mother and father wept.

  The human crew had not come through the battle unscathed. Some fell victim to the Blood Angel boarding teams, cut down as they fled from the righteous indignation of the Emperor’s finest warriors. Others perished in the explosions that wracked the ship as it sustained severe damage from other Imperial cruisers. Still more died as gangs of mortals used the chaos of the orbital war as a cover to launch attacks on the rival gangs that shared the blackness with them.

  One man clutched the body of his daughter, holding her light, lifeless form to his own scrawny chest. Blood still marked the girl’s lips and face from where she had choked out her last wet breath, less than an hour before. Her eyes, dark from the eternal gloom, stared sightlessly at the crowd that came to gather.