Ahead of him, Fulgrim strode onwards, unaware or uncaring of the effect the darkness of the temple was having on his warriors. Julius could see that even the normally implacable Phoenix Guard were uneasy in this place, and no wonder, for the primarch himself had declared that it was a place of worship.
The idea of such things was as repugnant to Julius as the idea of failure, and the thought that he stood in a fane where loathsome aliens had offered praise to false gods stoked the fires of his hatred. The warriors who had fought their way into the temple spread out as they followed their leader, swords raised or bolters at the ready in case some new threat lay within the place that the Laer had fought so hard to defend.
'There is power here,' said Fulgrim, his voice sounding impossibly distant. 'I can feel it.'
The Phoenix Guard closed ranks around the primarch, but he waved them away, sheathing Fireblade and reaching up to remove his eagle-winged helmet before handing it to the closest of his bodyguards. Though the Phoenix Guard retained their helmets, a great many other warriors reached up and followed their primarch's example.
Julius did likewise and released the catches at his gorget, lifting the close-fitting helmet clear of his head. His skin was clammy with sweat, and he took a deep breath of air to clear his lungs of the stale, recycled oxygen of his armour. The air was hot and scented, a cloying musk drifting from holes in the walls, and he was surprised to feel a little lightheaded.
The darkness of the temple began to lift as they penetrated deeper, and Julius could hear what sounded like frantic music from up ahead, as though a million demented orchestras were playing a million different tunes at once. A flickering, multi-coloured glow pierced the gloom where Julius believed the source of the discordant music to lie. Even at this distance, Julius could feel the cold breath of air that spoke of a much larger space ahead, and he picked up his pace, marching in heavy, ponderous strides to draw level with his primarch.
As Julius entered the cavern, he felt as though a smothering blanket he had not known existed was suddenly pulled from his skull, and he clapped his hands to his ears as a cacophonous flood of sensations assaulted him with a surge of light and noise.
Blazing light filled the immense space within the temple, leaping from wall to wall, and riotous noise echoed in a deafening thunder of sounds. Fantastical colours wheeled in the air, as though the light were somehow caught in the humid, aromatic smoke that snaked through the chamber. Monstrous statues of what Julius assumed were the gods of the Laer ran around the circumference of the temple, massive bull-headed creatures with multiple arms and great horns curling from their skulls. Numerous barbed rings pierced their stone flesh and each god's chest was sheathed in layered armour plate that left the right breast bare.
Wild murals covered every centimetre of the walls, and Julius stiffened as he saw that hundreds of the Laer writhing on the chamber's floor, the horrid, dry susurration of their bodies the most hideous sound imaginable. He made to shout a warning, but saw there was no need, for the serpentine bodies were hideously intertwined in what looked like some form of grotesque sexual congress.
Clearly, whatever power had driven the Laer defending the temple into a manic frenzy did not extend to those within it. They sprawled in languorous repose, their glistening, multi-hued bodies pierced in the same manner as the statues, and their sluggish movements suggesting the effects of a powerful narcotic.
'What are they doing?' asked Julius over the din. 'Are they dying?'
'If they are, then it seems to be a very pleasurable death,' said Fulgrim, his eyes fixed hungrily on something in the centre of the chamber. Julius followed his gaze, seeing that the slithering Laer surrounded a circular block of veined black stone, embedded within which was a tall sword with a gently curved blade.
The handle was long and silver, its surface patterned like the scales of a snake, and its pommel was set with a winking purple stone that threw off dazzling reflections.
'They were protecting this,' said Fulgrim, his voice sounding distant and faint to Julius. His eyes stung with the smoke, and he could feel the beginnings of a powerful headache as the noise and light continued to batter at his senses.
'No,' whispered Julius, knowing, but not knowing how he knew, that the Laer had not offered praise in this temple, but had been in thrall to it. 'This is not a place of worship, it is a place of dominance.'
Still holding the eagle-topped banner pole, Fulgrim walked into the mass of writhing Laer. His Phoenix Guard moved to follow him, but Fulgrim held them back. Julius tried to cry out to his primarch that something was very wrong here, but the perfumed smoke seemed to rush to fill his lungs and he could not draw breath to shout as a strident whisperer hissed in his ear.
Let him take me, Julius.
The words slipped from his mind as soon as they were spoken and he felt a strange numbness suffuse him, the tips of his fingers tingling pleasantly as he watched Fulgrim march through the sprawled Laer.
With every step the primarch took, the Laer parted before him, clearing a pathway towards the block of stone, and as he reached the sword, Julius recalled Fulgrim's words as they had entered the temple: There is power here.
He could feel a charge in the air, a breath on the wind that howled around the temple's interior, a pulse in the living walls and… and… the cry of release as a blade slices open an eyeball, the caress of silk across bare skin, the scream torn from the mouth of violated flesh and the bliss of agony as it takes pleasure in its own mutilation.
Julius cried out as sensations of horror and ecstasy filled his head, a delirious laughter echoing through the chamber, though none but he appeared to hear it. He looked up from his agony to see Fulgrim's fingers slip easily around the sword's handle. A sigh, like the ancient winds of the emptiest deserts, filled the chamber. Julius felt a tremor run through the temple, a shudder of release and fulfilment, as he watched Fulgrim draw the blade from the block of stone.
The Primarch of the Emperor's Children admired the sword blade, a spectral glow thrown across his pale features by the dancing lights that filled the chamber. The Laer still writhed on the ground, their bodies undulating obscenely as the primarch raised the burned banner pole high and drove it into the stone he had just drawn the sword from.
The eagle caught the light and threw off hundreds of fractured reflections from its wings, and to Julius the sight was hideous, the light making the eagle appear to twist and writhe in pain.
Fulgrim spun the sword in his grip, testing it for balance, and he smiled as he cast his gaze out over the hundreds of Laer sprawled around him.
'Destroy them all,' he said. 'Leave none alive.'
PART TWO
THE PHOENIX & THE GORGON
SIX
Diasporex
The Molten Heart
Young Gods
As much as he hated what they had become, Captain Balhaan of the Iron Hands couldn't help but admire the skill of the fleet masters of the Diasporex. For nearly five months they had managed to evade the ships of the X Legion around the Carollis system of the Lesser Bifold Cluster with an efficacy that was beyond even the longest serving captains of the Iron Hands.
That was set to change now that the Ferrum and her small company of escort ships had managed to calve a pair of vessels from the larger mass of the enemy fleet and drive them towards the gaseous rings of the Carollis Star from whence this endeavour had begun.
Ferrus Manus, Primarch of the Iron Hands, had noted bitterly that it was a tragedy of their own making that would see the Diasporex destroyed. They had come to the attention of the 52nd Expedition quite by accident when forward reconnaissance vessels had traversed the western reaches of the cluster and detected some unusual vox transmissions.
This region of space comprised three systems, two of which contained a number of habitable worlds that had been brought back into the Imperial fold with a minimum of resistance. Remote probe ships had revealed the existence of other systems deeper in the cluster with the pote
ntial to support life and, at first, it had been surmised that the signals had come from this unconquered region of space. Prior to the order for the mass advance, the unusual transmissions had once again been detected, this time in Imperial space around the Carollis Star.
The Primarch of the Iron Hands had immediately ordered the expedition's surveyor officers to locate the source of the transmissions, whereupon it was quickly deduced that an unknown fleet of some magnitude was at large in Imperial space. No other expeditions were authorised to be operating close by, and none of the newly compliant worlds had fleets of any significance, thus Ferrus Manus had declared that these interlopers must be found and eliminated before any advance could begin.
And so the hunt had begun.
Balhaan stood behind the iron lectern that served as his command post on the Ferrum, a mid-size strike cruiser that had served faithfully in the 52nd Expedition's forces for almost a century and a half. For sixty of those years it had been under Balhaan's command and he prided himself that it was the best ship and crew in the fleet, for anything less than the best was weakness that he would not tolerate.
Named for the X Legion's primarch, Ferrus Manus, the bridge of the Ferrum was stark and spartan, its every surface gleaming and pristine. Though there was ornamentation, it was kept to a bare minimum, and the ship looked much as it had when it first launched from its moorings in the Martian shipyards. She was fast, deadly and the perfect ship to serve as a hunter of this unknown fleet.
The hunt had proven to be problematic, for the fleet clearly did not want to be found. Eventually, however, the origin of the mysterious fleet was revealed when the battle-barge Iron Will had chanced upon an unidentified cluster of vessels and intercepted them before they could flee.
To the surprise and delight of the expedition's sizeable Mechanicum contingent, the vessels had turned out to be of human origin, and interrogation of the surviving crew had been undertaken immediately. This revealed that the ships were part of a larger conglomeration of vessels the captured crewmen had called the Diasporex, and belonged to an age of Terra long since passed.
Balhaan was a keen student of the history of ancient Earth, and had read extensively of the golden age of exploration, thousands of years before the darkness of Old Night had descended upon the galaxy, when humanity had travelled from Earth in vast colonisation fleets. The very purpose of the Great Crusade was to reclaim what had been won by the early pioneers and then lost in the anarchy of the Age of Strife. Such ancient fleets were the stuff of legend, for the ships of the earliest starfarers had taken the children of Terra to the furthest corners of the galaxy.
To stumble upon their descendants was declared providential by Ferrus Manus himself.
With information gleaned from the captured crew, contact was established with these brothers of antiquity, but much to the 52nd Expedition's disgust, the Diasporex had incorporated many incongruent elements in its makeup over the long millennia. Ancient human vessels flew alongside starships belonging to a wide variety of alien races, and instead of rejecting such contamination, as the Emperor had dictated, the fleet masters of the Diasporex had welcomed them into their ranks, forming a co-operative armada that plied the darkness of space together.
In the spirit of forgiving brotherhood, Ferrus Manus had generously offered to repatriate the thousands of humans that made up the Diasporex to compliant worlds, if they would submit to the rule of the Emperor of Mankind.
The primarch's offer had been rejected out of hand and all communication broken off.
Faced with such an insult to the Emperor's will, Ferrus Manus had no choice but to lead the 52nd Expedition into a legitimate war against the Diasporex.
Balhaan and the Ferrum were the forward vanguard of the primarch's war, and now he had the honour of striking back at the humans who dared turn their back on the Emperor and the emergent Imperium. Like the vessel he commanded, Balhaan was stark and unforgiving, as befitted a warrior of the Kaargul Clan. He had commanded a fleet of ships on the icy seas of Medusa by his fifteenth winter and knew the shifting temperaments of the sea better than any man. No man who served under him had ever dared question his orders and no man had ever failed him. His Mark IV armour was polished a lustrous black, and a white, wool cloak embroidered with silver thread hung to his knees. A greenskin cleaver had taken his left arm three decades ago and a Deuthrite flenser his right barely a year later. Now both his arms were heavy augmetics of burnished iron, but Balhaan welcomed his new mechanised limbs, for flesh, even Astartes flesh, was weak and would eventually fail.
To receive the Blessing of Iron was a boon, not a curse.
An industrious hubbub filled the bridge with an excited hum, and Balhaan permitted the crew their excitement, for the Ferrum was to have the honour of the first kill. The main viewing bay was filled with the dark void of space, lit up by the brilliant yellow glow of the Carollis Star. A multitude of flickering lines looped across the display: flight trajectories, torpedo tracks, ranges and intercept vectors, each one designed to bring an end to the two vessels that lay a few thousand kilometres off his prow.
The irony of this hunt was not lost on Balhaan, for despite his rank as captain of a ship of war, he was not a man without sensibilities beyond his duties. These were human vessels and to attack them was to destroy a piece of history that fascinated him.
'Come about to new heading, zero two three,' he ordered, gripping the lectern tightly with his iron fingers. Fie did not dare betray any emotion as they closed on the two wallowing cruisers they had managed to shear from the Diasporex fleet, but he could not help a small smile of triumph as he watched his gunnery officer come towards him with a data-slate clutched in his eager hands.
'You have a solution for the forward batteries, Axarden?' demanded Balhaan.
'I do, sir.'
'Inform the ordnance decks,' said Balhaan, 'but close to optimum range before unmasking the guns.'
'Aye, sir,' replied Axarden, 'and the containers they ejected?'
Balhaan pulled up the feed from the starboard picters, watching as the enormous cargo containers that the cruisers had abandoned drifted away. In an attempt to gain more speed, the enemy cruisers had ditched whatever cargo they were hauling, but it hadn't been enough to prevent the Imperial ships from catching them.
'Ignore them,' ordered Balhaan. 'Concentrate on the cruisers. 'We will return for them later and examine what they were carrying.'
'Very good, sir.'
Balhaan watched the range to the two cruisers close with a practiced eye. They were following a curving trajectory around the star's corona, hoping to lose themselves in the electromagnetic clutter that spurted and foamed around its edges, but the Ferrum was too close to be thrown off by such a clumsy subterfuge.
Clumsy…
Balhaan frowned as he wondered at his prey's apparent foolishness. Everything he had learned of the Diasporex suggested that its captains were highly skilled, and for them to believe that such an obvious stratagem would throw him from their scent was inherently suspicious.
'Ordnance decks report all guns ready to fire,' reported Axarden.
'Very good,' nodded Balhaan, worried that there was something he wasn't seeing.
The two ships followed a divergent course, peeling away from one another, and Balhaan knew he should order his ship to all ahead full to pull into the gap and give both of them a good broadside, but he kept his counsel, knowing there was something wrong.
His worst fears were suddenly realised when his surveyor officer shouted, 'New contacts! Multiple signals!'
'Where in the name of Medusa did they come from?' shouted Balhaan, swinging his heavy body around to face the wide, waterfall displays of surveyor command. Red lights were winking into life on the display, and without asking Balhaan knew that they were behind his ships.
'I'm not sure,' said the surveyor officer, but even as he spoke, Balhaan knew where they had come from, and returned his gaze to the command lectern. He called up the external pi
cters and watched in horror as the vast cargo containers abandoned by their quarry split open and disgorged scores of gleaming darts: bombers and fighters no doubt.
'All ahead full!' ordered Balhaan, though he knew it was already too late. 'Come to new heading, nine seven zero and launch interceptors. Activate close-in defence turrets. All escorts to perimeter protection duties.'
'What about the cruisers?' asked Axarden.
'Damn the cruisers!' shouted Balhaan, watching as they ceased their flight and began turning to face the Ferrum. 'They were nothing more than decoys, and like a fool I fell for it.'
He could hear the groaning metal of the deck shifting beneath his feet as the Ferrum desperately sought to turn to face this new foe.
'Torpedoes launched!' warned the defence officer. 'Impact in thirty seconds!'
Balhaan shouted, 'Countermeasures!' though he knew that any torpedo launched from such close range was practically guaranteed to hit. The Ferrum continued to turn, and Balhaan could feel the juddering fire of the defence turrets as they opened fire on the incoming ordnance. Some of the enemy torpedoes would be shot down, exploding soundlessly in the void, but not all of them.
'Twenty seconds to impact!'
'All stop,' ordered Balhaan. 'Reverse turn, that might throw some of them off.' It was a vain hope, but right now he would take a vain hope over no hope.
His interceptors would be leaping from their launch rails by now, and they would bring a few more torpedoes down before engaging the enemy forces. His vessel heeled hard to the side as the strike cruiser twisted her bulk faster than she was ever designed to and the creaks and groans of the vessel were painful to Balhaan's ears.
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