by Ben Counter
‘My brother, my enemy,’ Cestus breathed after he took a moment to take stock, regarding the carnage of the dead Word Bearers around him.
Five Astartes slain, albeit traitors, by his hand; a temple devoted to heathen gods; enlightenment and the pragmatism of science and reason abandoned for superstition. Cestus felt the galaxy darkening even as he sheathed his power sword and discarded the Word Bearer’s unusable bolter clips. Grimacing, he tugged the ceramite chip from his face and then he pushed on. Somewhere ahead, he knew, was an armoury.
BRYNNGAR LEAPT ASIDE as the power hammer crashed down onto the deck. Rolling to his feet, the Space Wolf could only watch as Baelanos, awesome in his dreadnought armour, wrenched the weapon free from a crater filled with sparking wires and torn metal. Cables ripped out with the hammer head were snarled around the weapon’s spikes like intestines.
Baelanos grunted as he righted himself, confusion still warring within him, and charged again.
Brynngar ducked beneath the wild sweep of the hammer this time, the solid metal face whistling past his head like a death knell. The Space Wolf moved in with Felltooth and landed a fearsome blow to Baelanos’s armoured flank. The rune axe spanged against the reinforced ceramite frame and bit deep, but the Word Bearer dreadnought didn’t slow. Baelanos’s momentum carried him thundering into the Space Wolf, his machine bulk like a battering ram. Brynngar was smashed aside and lost his grip on Felltooth. He skidded on his front across the deck, friction sparks kicked up from his armour spitting in the Space Wolf’s face. Brynngar grimaced and got up, drawing a knife from his belt. The monomolecular blade was honed to beyond razor sharpness and could scythe open power armour with the proper amount of pressure. The only downside was its appalling reach, and Brynngar doubted whether a thrown blade would even irritate his goliath enemy.
Roaring a battle-cry, the old wolf launched himself at Baelanos, who was still turning, flashing in and out of lucidity. With every attack from the Space Wolf, though, the dreadnought’s memory was renewed.
Clinging to the Word Bearer machine’s weapon arm, Brynngar rammed his knife blade into the armour joint that sealed the sarcophagus in an attempt to prize it open. Baelanos spun hard, armoured feet stomping up and down, and his torso twisting as he sought to dislodge his opponent. Brynngar dug in, wrapping his legs around the dreadnought’s shoulder as he pushed the blade two-handed until it reached the hilt.
Baelanos, realising that he couldn’t shake the Space Wolf loose, decided to ram the Astartes into the armoury wall and charged headlong into it. Brynngar saw the empty dreadnought suits coming towards him at speed and realised that he was about to be crushed. He swung aside at the last moment, violently thrown clear as Baelanos careered into the dormant armour with a deafening clang. Dislodging himself quickly, the Word Bearer turned and stomped towards the prone Space Wolf, still dazed from his hurried dismount, intending to crush him beneath his feet.
With a groan of pain, Brynngar rolled aside, but Baelanos was getting quicker and caught him a glancing blow with the power hammer as the Space Wolf struggled to rise. White fury filled Brynngar’s body and for a moment he was back at Fenris, though now a man, standing upon the shores of the silver-grey ocean. Brynngar ducked a second swipe of the giant hammer that would have shattered his skull and ended the duel then and there. He saw Felltooth in flashes, but couldn’t reach the weapon’s haft to wrench it free. Brynngar also saw that the sarcophagus had sprung open, the collision forcing it loose with the Space Wolf’s knife lodged in the joint. The amniotic blister lay unprotected. Brynngar went for his bolt pistol, but found it wasn’t there. He cursed loudly. He must have lost it during the crash or at some point in the psychic fever dream.
Blood drooled from the Space Wolf’s mouth and nose, matting in the hair of his beard. His leg felt leaden and unresponsive. His body ached as if stuck with red-hot pins. This was the end. Unarmed and injured, even a warrior of Brynngar’s prowess could not hope to hold out against a dreadnought. Baelanos seemed to sense that inevitability and moved in slowly, as if savouring the kill.
The Space Wolf realised that he was laughing. The action of it hurt his chest. The shadow of the dreadnought eclipsed him completely and Brynngar closed his eyes, imaging the ocean.
‘Fenris,’ he whispered.
A bolter shot, stark and hollow, resounded in the armoury. Brynngar’s eyes snapped open to see a smoking hole in the blister, fracture lines emanating outwards from the puncture crater. Baelanos was rocked backwards, a gurgling sound emanating from his vox-emitter. Viscous, amniotic fluid spilled out from the crack like brine.
The Space Wolf ran forward, despite a new pain flaring in his leg, and ripped Felltooth free from the dreadnought’s bulk. He carved a line down the blister as Baelanos flailed in desperation and it cracked apart. The fluid gushed out, taking the incumbent Astartes inside with it. Baelanos flopped out of the shattered blister, half suspended by the circuitry and cables linking him to the dreadnought armour. A second shot from the still unseen bolt pistol struck him in the chest and thick blood oozed from the wound. The dreadnought fell backwards, hitting the armoury floor with a resounding clang, and was still. Brynngar crawled on top of it, straddling the machine, and tore into the wasted body of Baelanos with his rune axe until there was nothing left.
‘Try coming back from that,’ he breathed savagely.
Resonating footsteps made the Space Wolf turn around to regard his saviour. Skraal emerged from the gloom, bolt pistol still smoking in his outstretched fist.
‘Thought you were dead,’ grunted the old wolf and promptly collapsed.
MHOTEP FORCED THE end of his arm back into his shoulder joint. The pain didn’t mean anything. The grimace on his face was from frustration that the arm, and with it his spear, would be weakened. He heaved down a couple of deep breaths and backed up against a bulkhead.
The battle against Wsoric had passed beyond the corridor outside the bridge and had progressed to the senior crew quarters, chambers allocated to him before he’d been confined to isolation. They were relatively close to the bridge, should an emergency necessitate the presence of any senior crew. That fact meant little, in the face of certain death, save that the trail of destruction left by their battle was short-lived.
As he regarded the collapsed ceiling, the wreckage of two decks punctuated by a few intact support stanchions and columns still smouldering, Mhotep came to realise that he was the last living being on the command deck. The Thousand Son had lost sight of the daemon when he’d been smashed through the deck and landed in the chamber below. Wsoric could be anywhere. He tasted blood in his mouth and knew the fused carapace of his ribs was broken. His breathing was ragged, which indicated a punctured lung and his shoulder burned.
In truth, the fight was not going as he’d hoped.
‘You resisted,’ said the daemon. ‘I turned your brothers against you, showed you the path and you refused it. That was folly.’
Mhotep tried to follow the sound of Wsoric’s voice, but it came from all around him.
‘Do you realise how fragile the Emperor’s house is? How easily his sons will war with one another? It took nothing to make the wolf turn on you and little more for the puritan captain to abandon your defence.’
Mhotep ignored the goading, and tried to focus. It was dark in the crew quarters, all power having died on the Wrathful and he closed his eyes, relying instead on his psy-sight to guide him. Life support was dead too and the air was growing stagnant without it. Mhotep kept his breathing steady, so as not to use up too much oxygen.
‘The Imperium will fall,’ Wsoric promised, ‘and the galaxy will bathe in blood and fire. Humanity’s dominance is at an end.’
Mhotep cast about the chamber. His psy-sight showed him a grey, shadow world that was indistinct and grainy. Corpses of the slain officers who had died in their quarters flickered briefly like dimming candles. A voracious life spark, red and angry, got Mhotep’s attention. He saw the daemon form. Its skin was like i
ncandescent fire, constantly burning, and ribbed horns curled from its snarling head. A hide of thick, black hair covered its back from where immense, tattered wings extended, and its clawed feet raked the floor.
‘I see you,’ he whispered and threw his spear.
The daemon roared in agony as the golden spear impaled its neck. Mhotep’s eyes snapped open and Wsoric became the fleshy abomination once more, transfixed by his weapon. He ran headlong at the creature, trying to make the most of the small advantage he had gained.
The daemon twisted, enduring the pain it brought as the spear tip tore at its ephemeral flesh. Its gaping maw split open all the way down through its torso and, just as Mhotep reached it, the daemon vomited a hail of burning bone shards. The Thousand Son took a shard in his leg that pierced his battle-plate with ease. Limping backwards, he ripped the spear out of Wsoric’s neck, ichor spewing in its wake and thrust again, shredding through the muscle of the daemon’s shoulder.
With a lurch of straining steel, the deck collapsed, Astartes and daemon plunging into a dark void below. They landed in a dead space in the hull, separating the crew quarters from the lower industrial decks. A freezing gloom persisted there, criss-crossed with support beams. Mhotep rolled off the creature, which had taken the brunt of the fall, and staggered backwards.
Wsoric rose with the screech of sundered metal. The struts around it were already damaged. The ship was breaking apart. The daemon roared its anger, preparing to vent its wrath when the supports gave way. Together, they tumbled down into the cold blackness.
THE SOUND OF the ocean receded as Brynngar came around. The scarred visage of the World Eater in his battle-helm looked down on him.
‘You’re a sore sight for my eyes,’ grumbled the old wolf and got to his feet. Brynngar’s body felt bruised with the effort, and the pain down one leg made him stagger at first before he righted himself. Blood flecked his beard and armour.
‘How long was I out?’ he asked, aware that they were still in the armoury hall.
‘Just a few minutes,’ Skraal replied, ‘but we’ve no time to rest. Word Bearers are patrolling the ship looking for us.’
‘Been hunting you for a while, eh?’ guessed the Space Wolf, taking in the rents and burns on Skraal’s armour. He could almost imagine the fevered look in his eyes, the kind of nervous expression that any man on the run might adopt after being chased for long enough. The World Eater was already volatile. Shaken up as he was, he might crack at any moment.
‘Several weeks… I think.’ The son of Angron came across a little dazed as his time aboard the ship had dulled his sense of what was real and what were merely phantoms of the mind.
‘Did anyone else get aboard?’ Brynngar asked, swinging Felltooth to better remember the strength of his arm. The old wolf noticed that the red-limned portal was still open.
‘I am the only survivor,’ Skraal responded curtly and headed for the light.
‘You know where that leads?’ asked the Wolf Guard, noting the nonchalant way the World Eater approached the doorway.
‘The corridor beyond will get us to the engine deck.’
‘We need to reach ordnance and destroy the cyclonic payload,’ said Brynngar, ‘and how do you know that we can reach the engines from there?’
‘He knows because I told him,’ said a familiar voice from the gloom that sent the hackles on the back of Brynngar’s neck rising.
‘Destroying the cyclonics is no longer viable,’ he added, emerging out of the penumbra.
‘Cestus.’ Brynngar growled when he said it.
The Ultramarine slammed a fresh clip from the armoury’s stores into his bolt pistol and nodded to the Space Wolf.
‘There is but one opportunity left to us,’ Cestus said. ‘The easier course is no longer possible. We must walk the harder road. It is the only one open to us.’
Brynngar’s silence held the question.
‘We must destroy the ship,’ said Cestus.
TWENTY
Contention
Avenge me
Immolation
‘DESTROY THE SHIP?’ Brynngar laughed as he limped after his battle-brothers. When Cestus went to aid him, he snarled, ‘I’m fine,’ before continuing.
‘This is the single largest and most powerful vessel I have ever seen. A few incendiaries,’ the Space Wolf indicated the grenade harness he still carried ‘will not see to its ruin.’
‘Have you lost your mind as well as your honour, son of Guilliman?’
‘Neither,’ Cestus replied. ‘The Furious Abyss can be destroyed. In order to do it, we must reach the engines and the plasma reactor that fuels them. If we can overload them with an incendiary payload of our own the resulting explosion will commence a chain reaction that cannot be averted by the ship’s fail safes and redundant systems.’
Brynngar seized Cestus by the shoulder. The Space Wolf’s eyes were full of anger.
‘You knew this and yet said nothing?’
‘It was irrelevant before,’ Cestus returned, shaking free of the Wolf Guard’s grip. ‘Our only way in was through the torpedo tubes, which made the cyclonics our obvious and most immediate target. There was no way of knowing we could’ve made it this far into the ship for an assault on the main reactor to be even possible.’
‘Leaving aside the matter of how you even know this,’ snarled the Wolf Guard, ‘how do you plan on getting close enough to destroy it? Have you seen the size of this vessel; it will be like a labyrinth in the engineering decks. We might never find it.’
‘I can guide us. It will take minutes,’ Cestus replied curtly. He was about to head off when Brynngar grabbed his arm again.
‘I don’t know what pact you have made with the witch that cowers aboard the Wrathful and what secrets you may be privy to,’ growled the Space Wolf dangerously, ‘but know this: I will not abide sorcery in any form. Once we gain the reactor and set this ship burning, our alliance is at an end, Ultramarine.’ Brynngar let Cestus go, and stalked away, taking a bolt pistol from the armoury and making ready at the open portal.
‘So be it,’ said Cestus grimly to himself and went to join his battle-brothers.
THE FURIOUS ABYSS had been forced out of position during the battle with the Wrathful. Formaska glowered well to its starboard side, Macragge scarcely less ominous well below it. The planet’s local defence fleet was also in sight, lingering above Macragge’s upper-atmosphere. With the supplicants dead, the Furious’s surveyor-dampening systems, which had allowed it to ambush the Fist of Macragge were no longer effective.
Slowly, the vessels were moving into defensive positions. Without knowledge of the Word Bearers’ intentions or their defection from the Imperium, though, the Macragge fleet was cautious and had yet to engage. They would try to hail them first. It was all the time that the Furious Abyss would need to realign, destroy Formaska and thus cripple the fleet in one stroke. The Wrathful was gone from the massive ship’s viewscreens, now little more than a chilling tomb of dead lights and lost souls, as it floundered in the void without power. Gravity would claim it.
Orders were relayed down to the Furious Abyss’s engine rooms to engage the directional thrusters and orient the ship back towards Formaska. The ordnance decks had been retaken, although the damage done by the enemy assault was extensive in some areas. The explosive discharge from a rapidly detonated melta bomb cluster had been ill-targeted, but destructive. The repair crews were hard at work clearing debris and expelling corpses into the void, but reaching operational status again would take time. It meant, although the cyclonic payload was intact, the launch would be delayed further.
Zadkiel felt his glory slipping through his grasp even as he listened to the toiling of the ratings on the ordnance deck. He shut down the vox link and closed his eyes, trying to master his anger.
Opening them again, Zadkiel looked at the positional display on one of his command throne’s viewscreens. The Furious had yet to change its heading and reset the launch vectors for the torpedoes.
>
‘Gureod,’ he barked into the vox array.
Silence answered.
‘Damn it, magos, why are the engines not engaged?’
Nothing again. Now the magos was just mocking him.
‘Reskiel,’ snarled Zadkiel, his tone impatient.
‘My lord,’ said the voice of the sergeant-commander, the thudding retort of gunfire audible in the background.
‘Get to engineering and find out why the ship has stalled.’
‘My lord,’ said Reskiel again, ‘we are at engineering. The enemy are here. They move through the ship as if they know every tunnel and access conduit. My squad is moving in to eliminate—’
The sound of a thunderous explosion broke the vox link for a moment. Crackling static reigned for a few seconds before Reskiel returned. ‘We have made contact. They are at the edge of the main reactor approach…’
Frantic cries and the screams of Word Bearers punctuated the chorus of bolter fire before the vox link went dead.
Zadkiel clenched his fist, and bit out his next words.
‘Ikthalon, lead three squads down to engineering. Seek those curs out and destroy them!’ Zadkiel’s veneer of calm cracked and fell away completely. He was shaking with apoplectic rage.
Ikthalon had returned to the bridge following the death of the supplicants and had, until now, observed proceedings with silent deference.
‘No, my lord,’ he responded in his usual sibilant cadence, adding, ‘I have endured your ineptitude for long enough. It threatens the glory of Kor Phaeron and our Lord Lorgar.’ Zadkiel heard the chaplain draw his bolt pistol from its holster.
‘I had thought you impudent, Ikthalon,’ said the admiral calmly, his composure returning as he turned to the chaplain. Zadkiel saw that he did indeed have his pistol trained upon him.