by Ben Counter
Turning a corner, at the lead of the two Astartes, Cestus was hit square in the chest. The impact, though surprising, moved the Astartes not at all. He stared down at what had struck him.
Quivering amidst a bundle of tangled robes, a litho-slate clasped reassuringly in his hands, was a scholarly-looking human.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ Antiges demanded at once.
The pale scholar cowered beneath the towering Astartes, shrinking before his obvious power. He was sweating profusely, and used the sleeve of his robe to wipe his head before casting a glance back in the direction he had come from in spite of the monolithic warriors in front of him.
‘Speak!’ Antiges pressed.
‘Be temperate, my brother,’ Cestus counselled calmly, resting his hand lightly on Antiges’s shoulder pad. The gesture appeased the Ultramarine, who backed down a little.
‘Tell us,’ Cestus urged the scholar gently, ‘who are you and what has put you in this distemper?’
‘Tannhaut,’ the scholar said through ragged breaths, ‘Remembrancer Tannhaut. I only wanted to compose a saga of his deeds, when a madness took him,’ he blathered. ‘He is a savage, a savage I tell you!’
Cestus exchanged an incredulous look with Antiges, who turned back to fix the remembrancer with his imperious gaze once more.
‘What are you talking about?’
Tannhaut pointed a quivering finger towards the arched entrance of a muster hall.
A stylised rendering of a lupine head was etched into a stone panel beside it.
Cestus frowned when he saw it, knowing full well who else was on the space port with them at that time.
‘The sons of Russ.’
Antiges groaned inwardly.
‘Guilliman give us strength,’ he said, and the two Ultramarines strode off in the direction of the muster hall, leaving Remembrancer Tannhaut quailing behind them.
BRYNNGAR STURMDRENG’S BOOMING laughter echoed loudly around the muster hall as he felled another Blood Claw.
‘Come, whelplings!’ he bellowed, taking a long pull from the tankard in his hand. Most of the frothing, brown liquid within spilled down his immense beard, which was bound in a series of intricate knots, and swept over the grey power armour of his Legion. ‘I’ve yet to sharpen my fangs.’
In recognition of the fact, Brynngar displayed a pair of long incisors in a feral grin.
The Blood Claw Brynngar had just knocked prone and half-conscious crawled groggily on his belly in a vain attempt to get clear of the ebullient Wolf Guard.
‘We’re not done yet, pups,’ Brynngar said, clamping a massive armoured fist around the Blood Claw’s ankle and swinging him across the room one-handed to smash into what was left of the furnishings.
The three Blood Claws left standing amongst the carnage of broken chairs and tables, and spilled drink and victuals, eyed the Wolf Guard warily as they began to surround him.
The two facing Brynngar leapt in to attack, their shorter fangs bared.
The Wolf Guard drunkenly dodged the swipe of the first and hammered a brutal elbow into the Blood Claw’s gut. He took the punch of the second on his rock-hard chin before smashing him to the floor with his considerable bulk.
A third Blood Claw came from behind, but Brynngar was ready and merely sidestepped, allowing the young warrior to overshoot, before delivering a punishing uppercut into his cheek.
‘Never attack downwind,’ the bawdy Wolf Guard told the Blood Claw rolling around on the floor. ‘I’ll always smell you coming,’ he added, tapping his flaring nostrils for emphasis.
‘As for you,’ Brynngar said, turning on the one who had struck him, ‘you hit like you’re from Macragge!’
The Wolf Guard laughed out loud, before stomping a ceramite boot in mock salute of his triumph on top of the last Blood Claw, who had yet to stir from unconsciousness.
‘Is that so?’ a stern voice from the entranceway asked.
Brynngar swung his gaze in the direction of the speaker, and his one good eye brightened at once.
‘A fresh challenge,’ he cried, swigging from his tankard and delivering a raucous belch. ‘Come forth,’ Brynngar said, beckoning.
‘I think you’ve had enough.’
‘Then let us see.’ The Wolf Guard gave a feral grin and stepped off the inert Blood Claw. ‘Tell me this,’ he added, stalking forward, ‘can you catch?’
CESTUS HURLED HIMSELF aside at the last moment as the broad-backed chair flew at him, smashing into splinters against the wall of the muster hall. When he looked up again, he saw a broad and burly Wolf Guard coming towards him. The Astartes was an absolute brute, his grey power armour wreathed in pelts and furs, numerous fangs and other feral fetishes hanging from silver chains. He wore no helmet, his long and ragged hair swathed in sweat together with a beard drenched in Wulfsmeade, swaying freely about his thick shoulders.
‘Stay back,’ Cestus advised Antiges as he hauled himself to his feet.
‘Be my guest,’ the other Ultramarine replied from his prone position.
Adopting a crouching stance as dictated by the fighting regimen of Roboute Guilliman, Cestus rushed towards the Space Wolf.
Brynngar lunged at the Ultramarine, who barely dodged the sudden attack. Using his low posture to sweep under and around the blow, Cestus rammed a quick forearm smash into the Space Wolf’s elbow, tipping the rest of what was in the tankard over his face.
Brynngar roared and came at the Ultramarine with renewed vigour.
Cestus ducked the clumsy two-armed bear hug aimed at him and used Brynngar’s momentum to trip the Space Wolf hard onto his rump.
The manoeuvre almost worked, but Brynngar turned out of his trip, casting aside the empty tankard and using his free hand to support his body. He twisted, using the momentum to carry him, and landed a fierce punch to Cestus’s midriff when he came back too swiftly for the Ultramarine to block. An overhand blow followed as Brynngar sought to chain his attacks, but Cestus moved out of the striking arc and unleashed a fearsome uppercut that sent Brynngar hurtling backwards.
With the sound of more crushed furniture, the Space Wolf got to his feet, but Cestus was already on him, pressing his advantage. He rained three quick, flat-handed strikes against Brynngar’s nose, ear and solar plexus. Staggered after the barrage, the Wolf Guard was unable to respond as Cestus drove forward and hooked both arms around his torso. Using the weight of the attack to propel him, Cestus roared and flung Brynngar bodily across the muster hall into a tall stack of barrels. As he moved backwards, Cestus watched as the rack holding the barrels came loose and they crashed down on top of Brynngar.
‘Had enough?’ Cestus asked through heaving breaths.
Dazed and defeated, and covered in foaming Wulfsmeade, a brew native to Fenris and so potent that it could render an Astartes insensible should he drink enough, Brynngar looked up at the victorious Ultramarine and smiled, showing his fangs.
‘There are worse ways to lose a fight,’ he said, wringing out his beard and supping the Wulfsmeade squeezed from it.
Antiges, standing alongside his fellow battle-brother, made a face.
‘Up you get,’ said Cestus, hauling Brynngar to his feet.
‘Fair greetings, Cestus,’ said the Wolf Guard, when he was up, crushing Cestus in a mighty bear hug. ‘And to you, Antiges,’ he added.
The other Ultramarine backed away a step and nodded.
Brynngar put his arms down and nodded back with a broad smile.
‘It has been a while, lads.’
It was on Carthis during the uprising of the Kolobite Empire in the early years of the crusade that the three Astartes had first fought together. Brynngar had saved Cestus’s life that day and had been blinded in one eye for his trouble. The venerable wolf had fought the Kolobite drone-king single-handed. The mighty rune axe, Felltooth, which Brynngar wielded to this day, had part of its blade forged from the creature’s mandible claw by the rune-priests and artificers of Fenris in recognition of the deed.
> ‘Indeed it has, my noble friend,’ said Cestus.
‘Drunk and brawling? Are the drinking holes of this space port insufficient sport, Brynngar? Did you build this muster hall for just such a purpose, I wonder?’ said Antiges with a hint of reproach.
Lacquered wood panelled the walls, and a plentiful cache of barrels, filled with Wulfsmeade, were stationed at intervals throughout the hall. Huge, long tables and stout wooden benches filled the place, which was empty except for Brynngar and the groaning Blood Claws. Tapestries of the deeds of Fenris swathed the walls. The muster halls of the Ultramarines were austere and regimented; this one, fashioned by the artisans of Leman Russ’s Legion, looked more like a rustic long-house from the inside.
‘A pity you could not have joined in sooner,’ Brynngar remarked. ‘Perhaps tomorrow?’
‘With regret, we must decline,’ Cestus replied, secretly relieved; he had no desire to go a second round with the burly Space Wolf. ‘We leave today for Ultramar. War is brewing in the Veridan system and we are to be reunited with our brothers in order to prosecute it. We are heading to the space dock now.’
Brynngar smiled broadly, clapping both Astartes on the shoulder, who both felt the impact through their armour.
‘Then there is only one thing for it.’ Antiges’s expression was suspicious. ‘What is that?’
‘I shall come to see you off.’
With that, the Wolf Guard turned the two Ultramarines and, putting his massive arms around their shoulders, proceeded to walk them out of the muster hall.
‘What about them?’ Cestus asked as they were leaving, indicating the battered Blood Claws.
Brynngar cast a quick look over his shoulder and made a dismissive gesture.
‘Ah, they’ve had enough excitement.’
THREE
God of the Furious Abyss
Psychic scream
Visions of home
CORALIS DOCK WAS one of many on Vangelis. A wide, flat plain of plate metal stretched out from its many station houses and listening spires, ending in a trio of fanged docking clamps where the various visiting craft could make harbour and take on or drop off cargo.
Arriving at the main control hub of Coralis, the three Astartes found themselves in a tight chamber that overlooked the dock. Thick, interwoven cables looped from the ceiling and dim, flickering halogen globes illuminated the bent-backed menials and cogitator servitors working the hub. A backwash of sickly yellow light thrown from numerous pict screens and data-displays fought weakly against the gloom.
An azure holosphere was located in the centre of the chamber, rotating above a gunmetal dais. It depicted Vangelis space port in grainy, intermittent resolution and a wide arc surveyor net that projected several thousand metres from the surface.
A large, convex viewport confronted the Astartes at the far wall through which they could see the magnificent vista of real space. Distantly, writhing nebulae patterned the infinite blackness with their iridescent glory and fading suns. Starfields and other galactic phenomena were arrayed like the flora and fauna of some endless obsidian ocean. It was a breathtaking view and stole away the fact that the recycled air within the control hub was sickly and stifling. A machine drone accompanied it from the space port’s primary reactor located in the subterranean catacombs of Vangelis. The insistent hum of latent power could be felt through the reinforced plasteel floor. It was hot, too, the stark industrial interior barely shielded against the dock’s generatorium.
Saphrax was already on the command deck of the control hub, consulting with the hub’s stationmaster, when the other Astartes arrived. Saphrax was the honour guard squad’s standard bearer, and the Ultramarines honour banner was rolled up in its case slung over his back. The rest of Saphrax’s battle-brothers were below at the hub’s gate, preparing for their imminent departure.
‘Greetings, Saphrax. You know Brynngar of the Space Wolves,’ said Cestus, indicating the brutish Wolf Guard who gave a feral snarl.
‘What news?’ the brother-sergeant asked his banner bearer.
‘Captain, Antiges,’ said the Ultramarine to his battle-brothers. ‘Son of Russ,’ he added for Brynngar’s benefit. Saphrax was a bald-headed warrior with a long scar that ran from his left temple to the base of his chin: another souvenir from the Kolobite. Cestus often mused that none in the Legion were as straight-backed as Saphrax, so much so that he seemed permanently at attention. Dependable and solid, he was seldom given to great emotion and wore a stern expression like a mask over chiselled stone features. Pragmatic, even melancholic, he was the third element to the balance that existed between Cestus and Antiges. Even so, the banner bearer’s mood was particularly dour.
‘We have received an astropathic message,’ Saphrax informed them.
There were three astropaths in residence at the hub, and more in the space port at large. They were sunk into a deep, circular vestibule, just below floor level, and swathed in shadow. Dim lights set into the edge of the vestibule cast weak illumination onto their faintly writhing forms. A skin of translucent, psychically conditioned material was draped over the trio of astropaths like a clinging veil. Beneath it, they looked like they were somehow conjoined, as if feeling each other’s emotions as one being. Other, less obvious, wards were also in place. All were designed to safeguard against the dangerous mental energies that could be unleashed during the course of their duties.
Withered and blinded, the wretched creatures – two males and a female – like all of their calling had undergone the soul-binding ritual; the means by which the Emperor moulded and steeled their minds, so that they might be able to look into the warp and not be driven insane. Astropaths were vital to the function of the Imperium; without them, messages could not be communicated over vast distances, and forces could not be readied and co-ordinated. Even so, it was an inexact science. Messages both sent and received by the Astra Telepathica were often nought but a string of images and vague sense-impressions. Wires and thick cables snaked from the vestibule, slaving the astropaths to the control hub, where their ‘messages’ could be logged and interpreted.
‘It started fifteen minutes ago,’ said the stationmaster, an elderly veteran of the Imperial Army with cables running from under his shaved scalp, plugged into the command ports of the consoles set above the astropathic chamber. ‘We’ve only received fragments of meaning, so far. All we know for certain is that they come from a distant source. Thus far, only part of the message has reached us. Our astropaths are endeavouring to extract the rest as I speak to you.’
Cestus turned to regard the stationmaster and in turn the gibbering astropaths. Beneath the protective psy-skin, he could see their wasted bodies, swaddled in ragged robes. He heard the hissing of sibilant non sequiturs. The astropaths drooled spittle as they spoke, their sputum collecting against the inner material of the skin enveloping them. Their bone-like fingers were twitching as their minds attempted to infiltrate the empyrean.
‘Falkman, sire,’ said the stationmaster by way of introduction with a shallow bow. His right leg was augmetic and, judging by his awkward movements, most of his right side, which was probably why he had been sidelined to age and atrophy at Vangelis, no longer fit to taste of the Imperium’s glory on the battlefield. Cestus pitied his fragility and that of all non-Astartes.
‘Could it be a distress beacon sent from a ship?’ Antiges broke through Cestus’s thoughts with his assertive questioning.
‘We have been unable to discern that yet, sire, but it is unlikely,’ said Falkman, his face darkening as he turned to Saphrax.
‘The nature of the message was… broken, more like a psychic cry delivered with extreme force. With the warp in tumult the energy used to send it was unpredictable,’ said Saphrax, ‘and it was no beacon. There was a single message; the pattern does not repeat. We think perhaps it was an astropathic death scream.’
‘And that is not all.’
Cestus’s gaze was questioning.
Saphrax’s face was grim.
‘I will not make any negative conclusions,’ Cestus replied quietly, unwilling to give in to what he feared. ‘We must believe that—’
The three astropaths slaved to the control hub began convulsing as the full force of the psychic scream made its presence felt. Blood spurted inside the psy-skin covering them and looked hazy and bright viewed from outside it. The wasted limbs of the astropaths pressed against the material, forcing it tight, their muscles held in spasm as they writhed in agony. Cogitators set around the hub above them were spewing reams of data as the astropaths fought to control the visions rushing into their minds.
Smoke clouded the already hazy interior of the psy-skin as it rose from their decrepit bodies. Consoles sparked and exploded as wrathful electricity arced and spat. It earthed into the wizened frames of the astropaths, carried by the wires and cables, now little more than human conductors for its power. As one, they threw their heads back and a backwash of pure psychic force was unleashed in a terrible death scream that resonated throughout the room. The astropaths became a conduit for it, the strength of the psychic emission made many times more powerful by the volatile state of the warp.
Walls shuddering against the onslaught, the lights of Vangelis space port went out.
THE BRIDGE OF the Furious Abyss was like a sprawling city in miniature. The banks of cogitators were like hive-stacks rising above the streets formed by the exposed industrial ironwork of the deck. The various bridge crews sat in sunken command posts like arenas or deep harbours. Three viewscreens dominated one end of the bridge, while a raised acropolis at its heart was formed by the captain’s post. A strategium table stretched out before it from which he could raise an orrery display, showing the ship and its foes wrought in rotating brass rings.