Battle for the Abyss

by Ben Counter

  ‘Well met, son of Russ.’

  Brynngar grunted a response, his demeanour still hostile, and turned to one of his charges. ‘Rujveld, bring him out.’

  One of the Blood Claws, a youth with bright orange hair worked into a mohawk and a short beard festooned with wolf fetishes, nodded and went back into the crew compartment. When he returned, he was not alone. A pale-faced warrior was with him, his hands and forearms encased by restraints linked by an adamantium cord, his face fraught with cuts, and a massive purple-black bruise over one eye the size of Brynngar’s fist. Bent-backed and obviously weak, he had a defiant air about him still. He wore the armour of the XV Legion: the armour of the Word Bearers.

  ‘We have ourselves a prisoner,’ Brynngar snarled, stalking past the trio of Ultramarines without explanation, his Blood Claws with their prize in tow.

  ‘Find me an isolation cell,’ Cestus overheard the Wolf Guard say to one of his battle-brothers. ‘I intend to find out what he knows.’

  Cestus kept his eyes forward for a moment, striving to master his anger.

  ‘My lord?’ ventured Saphrax, the banner bearer clearly noticing his captain’s distemper.

  ‘Son of Russ,’ Cestus said levelly, knowing he would be heard.

  The sound of the departing Space Wolves echoing down the deck was the only reply.

  ‘Son of Russ,’ he bellowed this time and turned, his expression set as if in stone.

  Brynngar had almost reached the deck portal when he stopped.

  ‘I would have your report, brother,’ said Cestus, calmly, ‘and I would have it now.’

  The Wolf Guard turned slowly, his massive bulk forcing the Blood Claws close by to step aside. Anger and belligerence were etched on his face as plain as the Legion symbols on his armour.

  ‘The assault failed,’ he growled. ‘The Furious Abyss is still intact. There, you have my report.’

  Cestus fought to keep his voice steady and devoid of emotion.

  ‘What of Antiges and Skraal?’

  Brynngar was breathing hard, his anger boiling, but at the mention of the two captains, particularly Antiges, his expression softened for a moment.

  ‘We were the only survivors,’ he replied quietly and continued on through the deck portal to the passageways beyond that would lead eventually to the isolation chambers.

  Cestus stood for a moment, allowing it to sink in. Antiges had been his battle-brother for almost twenty years. They had fought together on countless occasions. They had brought the light of the Emperor to countless worlds in the darkest reaches of the known galaxy.

  ‘What are your orders, my captain?’ asked Saphrax, ever the pragmatist.

  Cestus crushed his grief quickly. It would serve no purpose here.

  ‘Get Admiral Kaminska. Tell her we are to continue pursuit of the Furious Abyss at once, with all speed.’

  ‘At your command, my lord.’ Saphrax snapped a strong salute and left the dock, heading for the bridge.

  Cestus’s plan had failed, catastrophically. More than sixty per cent casualties were unacceptable. It left only the Ultramarines honour guard, still stationed aboard ship by way of contingency, and Brynngar’s Blood Claws. The Space Wolf’s continued defiance was developing into open hostility. Something was building. Even without the animal instincts of the sons of Russ, Cestus could feel it. He wondered how long it would be before the inevitable storm broke.

  Here they were, at war with their fellow Legions. Guilliman only knew how deep the treachery went, how many more Legions had turned against the Emperor. If anything, the loyal Legions needed desperately to draw together, not to fight internecine conflicts between themselves in the name of petty disagreements. When the final reckoning came, where would Brynngar and his Legion sit? Guilliman and his Ultramarines were dogmatic in their fealty to the Emperor; could the same be said of Russ?

  Cestus left such dark thoughts behind for now, knowing it would not aid him or their mission to dwell on them. Instead, his mind turned briefly to Antiges. In all likelihood, he was dead. His brother, his closest friend slain in what had been a fool’s cause. Cestus cursed himself for allowing Antiges to take his place. Saphrax was an able adjutant, his dedication to the teachings of Guilliman was unshakeable, but he was not the confidant that Antiges had been.

  Cestus clenched his fist.

  This deed will not go unavenged.

  ‘Laeradis, with me,’ said the Ultramarine captain, marching off in the direction that Brynngar had taken. The Apothecary fell into lockstep behind him. ‘Where are we going, captain?’

  ‘I want to know what happened on Bakka Triumveron and I want to find out what our Word Bearer knows about his Legion’s ship and their mission to Macragge.’

  BY THE TIME Cestus and Laeradis reached the isolation cells, Brynngar was already inside, the door sealed with Rujveld standing guard.

  The isolation cells were located in the lower decks, where the heat and sweat of the engines could be heard and felt palpably. Toiling ratings below sang gritty naval chants to aid them in their work and the resonant din carried through the metal. It was a muffled chorus down the gloom-drenched passages that Cestus and Laeradis had travelled to reach this point.

  ‘Step aside, Blood Claw,’ ordered Cestus without preamble.

  At first it looked as if Rujveld would disobey the Ultramarine, but Cestus was a captain, albeit from a different Legion, and that position commanded respect. The Blood Claw lowered his gaze, indicating his obedience, and gave ground.

  Cestus thumbed the door release icon as he stood before the cell portal. The bare metal panel slid aside, two thins jets of vapour escaping as it did so.

  A darkened chamber beckoned, barely illuminated in the half-light of lume-globes set to low-emit. A bulky shape stood within, with two shrivelled, robed forms to either side. Brynngar had stripped out of his armour, aided by two attendant Legion serfs. The menials kept their heads low and their tongues still. The Wolf Guard was naked from the waist up, wearing only simple grey battle fatigues. His torso was covered in old wounds, scars and faded pinkish welts creating a patchwork history of pain and battle.

  Standing without his armour, his immense musculature obvious and intimidating, and with the great mass of his hair hanging down, Brynngar reminded the Ultramarine of a barbarian of ancient Terra, the kind that he had seen rendered in frescos in some of the great antiquitariums.

  The Wolf Guard turned at the interruption, the shadow of another figure strapped down in a metal restraint frame partly visible for a moment before the Space Wolf’s bulk took up the space again.

  ‘What do you want, Cestus? I’m sure you can see that I’m busy.’ Brynngar’s knuckles were hard and white as he clenched his fists.

  As he had stormed from the tertiary dock after the Space Wolf and his battle-brothers, Cestus had thought to intervene, the idea of torturing a fellow Legion brother abhorrent to him. Now, standing at the threshold of the isolation chamber, he realised just how desperate their plight had become and that victory might call for compromise.

  Just how far this compromise would go and where it would eventually lead, Cestus did not care to think. It was what it was. They were on this course now and the Word Bearers were enemies like any other. They had not hesitated when they destroyed the Waning Moon, nor had they paused to consider their actions during the slaughter on Bakka Triumveron 14.

  ‘I would speak to you again, Brynngar,’ the Ultramarine captain said, ‘once this is over. I would know the details of what happened on Bakka.’

  ‘Aye, lad.’ The Space Wolf nodded, a glimmer of their old rapport returning briefly to his features.

  Cestus glimpsed the prone form of their prisoner as Brynngar turned back to his ‘work’.

  ‘Do only what is necessary,’ the Ultramarine warned, ‘and do it quickly. I am leaving Laeradis here to… assist you if he can.’

  The Apothecary shifted uncomfortably beside Cestus, whether at the thought of partaking in torture or the prospect o
f being left alone with Brynngar, the Ultramarines captain did not know.

  Brynngar looked over his shoulder just as Cestus was leaving.

  ‘I will break him,’ he said with a predatory gleam in his eye.

  ‘WE HID BEHIND Bakka Triumveron to keep the Furious Abyss from sending torpedoes after us. We’re heading on course for a warp jump vector as we speak.’

  Kaminska was, as ever, on station at her command throne on the bridge. Saphrax was there, also, straight backed and dour as ever. Cestus had headed there alone after leaving Laeradis with Brynngar in the isolation chamber. In the scant reports he’d received from the admiral regarding information gleaned from the assault boat pilot, Cestus had learned a little more of what had happened at Bakka. They’d lost the other two assault boats during the extraction, swallowed up by the fire of the Furious’s engines that had turned much of Bakka Triumveron 14 into a smoking wasteland of charred and twisted metal. The tactical readouts aboard ship had disclosed precious little, save that it was chaotic and not to plan. One of Guilliman’s edicts of wisdom was that any plan, however meticulously devised, seldom survives contact with the enemy. The primarch spoke, of course, of the need for flexibility and adaptation when at war. Cestus thought he should have heeded those words more closely. It appeared, also, that the Word Bearers had been forewarned of the Astartes’ attack, a fact that he resolved to discover the root of. He considered briefly the possibility of a traitor in their ranks aboard the Wrathful, but dismissed the thought quickly, partly because to countenance such a thing would breed only suspicion and paranoia, and also because to do so would implicate the Astartes captains or Kaminska.

  lWhat of our prisoner, Captain Cestus?’ asked Kaminska, after consulting the battery of viewscreens in front of her, satisfied that all necessary preparations were underway for pursuit.

  ‘He is resting uncomfortably with Brynngar,’ the Ultramarine replied, his gaze locked on the prow-facing viewport.

  ‘You believe he knows something about the ship that we can use to our advantage?’

  Cestus’s response was taciturn as he thought grimly of the road ahead and of their options dwindling like parchment before a flame.

  ‘Let us hope so.’

  Kaminska allowed a moment’s pause, before she spoke again.

  ‘I am sorry about Antiges. I know he was your friend.’ Cestus turned to face her. ‘He was my brother’

  Kaminska’s vox-bead chirped, interrupting the sentiment of the moment.

  ‘We have reached the jump point, captain,’ she said. ‘If we hit the warp now, Orcadus has a chance of finding the Furious Abyss again.’

  ‘Engage the warp drives,’ said Cestus.

  Kaminska gave the order and after a few minutes the Wrathful shuddered as the integrity fields leapt up around it, ready for its re-entry into the warp.

  ZADKIEL PRAYED TO the bodies in front of him.

  The Word Bearer was situated in one of the many chapels within the lower decks of the Furious Abyss. It was a modest, relatively unadorned chamber with a simple shrine etched with the scriptures of Lorgar and lit by votive candles set in baroque-looking candelabras. The room, besides being the ship’s morgue, also offered solace and the opportunity to consider the divinity of the primarch’s Word, of his teachings and the power of faith and the warp.

  Prayer was a complicated matter. On the crude, fleshly level it was just a stream of words spoken by a man. It was little wonder that Imperial conquerors, without an understanding of what faith truly was, saw the prayers of primitive people and discarded them as dangerous superstition and a barrier to genuine enlightenment. They saw the holy books and sacred places, and ascribed them not to faith or a higher understanding but to stupidity, blindness, and an adherence to divisive, irrelevant traditions. They taught an Imperial Truth in the place of those simple religions and wiped out any evidence that faith had once been a reality to those worlds. Sometimes that erasure was done with flames and bullets. More often it was done with iterators, brilliant diplomats and philosophers, who could re-educate whole populations.

  Zadkiel’s belief, the root of his vainglorious conviction, was that the Throne of Terra would be toppled, not by the strength of arms wielded by the Warmaster, nor even by the denizens of the warp, but by faith. Simple and indissoluble, the purity of it would burn through the Imperium like a holy spear, setting the non-believers and their effigies of science and empirical delusion alight.

  Zadkiel shifted slightly in his kneeling position, abruptly aware that another presence was in the chapel-morgue with him.

  ‘Speak,’ he uttered calmly, eyes closed.

  ‘My lord it is I, Reskiel,’ the sergeant-commander announced.

  Zadkiel could hear the creak of his armour as he bowed, in spite of the fact that he could not see him.

  ‘I would know the fate of Captain Baelanos, sire,’ Reskiel continued after a moment’s pause. ‘Was he recovered?’

  Doubtless, the ambitious cur sought to supplant the stricken assault-captain in Zadkiel’s command hierarchy, or manoeuvre for greater power and influence in the fleet. This did not trouble the Word Bearer admiral. Reskiel was easy to manipulate. His ambition far outweighed his ability, a fact that was easy to exploit and control. Unlike Ultis, whose youthful idealism and fearlessness threatened him, Zadkiel was sanguine about Reskiel’s prospects for advancement.

  ‘Though mortally injured, the good captain was indeed recovered,’ Zadkiel told him. ‘His body has gone into its fugue state in order to heal.’ Zadkiel turned at that remark, looking the sergeant-commander in the eye. ‘Baelanos will be incapacitated for some time, captain. This only strengthens your position in my command.’

  ‘My lord, I don’t mean to imply—’ ‘No, of course not Reskiel,’ Zadkiel interjected with a mirthless smile, ‘but you have suffered for our cause and such sacrifice will not go unrewarded. You will assume Baelanos’s duties.’

  Reskiel nodded. The World Eater had shattered the bones down one side of his skull and his face had been reinforced with a metal web bolted to his cheek and jaw.

  ‘We have lost many brothers this day,’ he said, indicating the Astartes corpses laid out before his lord.

  ‘They are not lost,’ said Zadkiel. Each of the slain Word Bearers was set upon a mortuary slab, ready for their armour to be removed and their gene-seed recovered. One of them lay with his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Zadkiel closed them reverently. ‘Only if the Word had no place for them would they be lost.’

  ‘What of Ultis?’

  Zadkiel surveyed the array of the dead. ‘He fell at Bakka,’ he lied, ‘and the Scholar Coven with him.’

  Reskiel clenched his teeth in anger. ‘Damn them.’

  ‘We will not damn anyone, Reskiel,’ said Zadkiel sharply, ‘nor even will Lorgar. The Emperor’s gun-dogs will damn themselves.’

  ‘We should turn about and blast them out of real space.’

  ‘You, sergeant-commander, are in no place to say what this ship should and should not do. In the presence of these loyal brothers, do not debase yourself by forgetting your purpose.’ Zadkiel did not have to raise his voice to convey his displeasure.

  ‘Please forgive me, admiral. I have… I have lost brothers.’

  ‘We have all lost something. It was written that we would lose much before we are victorious. We should not expect anything else. We will not engage the Wrathful in a fight because to do so would use up time that we no longer have to spare, and our mission depends on its timing. Kor Phaeron will not be late, so neither will we. Besides, we have other options when dealing with the Wrathful.’

  ‘You mean Wsoric?’

  Zadkiel clenched his fist in a moment of unsuppressed emotion. ‘It is not appropriate for his name to be spoken here. Make the cathedral ready to receive him.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Reskiel. ‘And the surviving Astartes?’ ‘Hunt him down and kill him,’ said Zadkiel. Reskiel saluted and walked out of the chapel-mortuary.

&nb
sp; Certain that the sergeant-commander was gone, Zadkiel gestured to the shadows from which a clandestine guest emerged.

  Magos Gureod shuffled into the light of the votive candles slowly, mechadendrites clicking like insectoid claws.

  ‘You have received Baelanos?’ the admiral asked.

  The magos nodded.

  ‘All is prepared, my lord.’

  ‘Then begin his rebirth at once.’

  Gureod bowed and left the chamber.

  Now truly alone, Zadkiel looked back at the bodies lying arranged in front of him. In another chamber, together with the many crew of the Furious who had died, were the enemy Astartes, slain in the engine room and the cathedral. They would not receive benediction. They would have refused such an honour even if it could be given, because they did not understand what prayer and faith meant. They would never be given their place in the Word. They had forsaken it.

  Those Astartes, the declared enemies of Lorgar, were the ones who were truly lost.

  AN HOUR AFTER the Wrathful had entered the warp, Cestus went to the isolation chambers. Upon his arrival, he found Rujveld still dutifully in his position. This time, though, the Blood Claw stepped aside without being ordered and offered no resistance, it being ostensibly clear that the Ultramarine would brook none.

  The gloom of the isolation, cum interrogation, chamber was as Cestus remembered it, although now, the air was redolent of copper and sweat.

  ‘What progress have you made?’ the Ultramarine captain asked of Laeradis, who stood at the edge of the room. The apothecary’s face was ashen as he faced his brother-captain and saluted.

  ‘None,’ he hissed.

  ‘Nothing?’ asked Cestus, nonplussed. ‘He hasn’t yielded any information whatsoever?’ ‘No, my lord.’ ‘Brynngar—’

  ‘Your Apothecary has the strength of it,’ grumbled the Space Wolf, his back to Cestus, body heaving up and down with the obvious effort of his interrogations. When he turned, Brynngar’s face was haggard and his beard and much of his torso were flecked with blood. His meaty fists were angry and raw.

  ‘Is he alive?’ Cestus asked, concern creeping into his voice, not at the fate of their prisoner but at the prospect that they might have lost their one and only piece of leverage.