by Ben Counter
‘I did not believe you to be stupid.’
The chaplain’s posture was neutral and unassuming.
‘Stand down,’ he said simply, lifting the pistol a fraction to emphasis his point.
Zadkiel bowed his head. In the corner of his eye, he saw Ikthalon start to lower his weapon. It would be the chaplain’s last mistake.
Zadkiel moved swiftly to the side, his rapier-like power sword drawn fluidly. The bucking report of the bolt pistol sounded on the bridge, but Ikthalon’s shot, confounded by the admiral’s sudden movement, missed.
Zadkiel slid the blade through the chaplain’s gorget, smacking the bolt pistol from his grasp at the same time.
‘Did you think I would leave this bridge, my bridge, to a snake like you?’
Ikthalon could only gurgle in reply.
Zadkiel ripped away the chaplain’s battle-helm. Underneath it, Ikthalon was scarred, his face a mass of burn tissue, his ravaged throat a wreck of scabrous flesh. He stared into the chaplain’s pink-tinged eyes with intense hate.
‘You thought wrong,’ he hissed, and pushed Ikthalon off the blade to land with a clang of ceramite on the deck. The chaplain floundered at first, trying to speak, clutching ineffectually at his throat, but was then still, the blood pooling slowly beneath him.
Zadkiel turned to Sarkorov.
‘Clean that up and monitor all stations. You have the bridge. As soon as we are in a state of readiness again, inform me at once,’ ordered Zadkiel.
Pale-faced at the chaplain’s sudden death, the helms-master snapped a ragged salute and gestured to a group of Legion serfs to act as a clean-up crew.
Zadkiel stalked away, wiping the blood off his blade. He would deal with the infiltrators and be damned to ignominy if he was going to let them interfere any further with his plans. Besides, it would not look favourable in the eyes of the arch-commander if he needed his lackeys to deal with their enemies. No, the only way to be sure was to kill them all himself.
RESKIEL WAS PLEASED. Though he had lost several of his squad fighting the loyalists, he had them boxed in, having forced them into a tunnel that he knew was a dead end. The sound of gunfire had abated, but the roar of the primary reactor and all the workings of the ship were still incredibly loud inside his battle-helm.
Using Astartes battle-sign, he signalled for the three warriors with him to descend from the upper stacks where they’d spread out and exploited their vantage point to corral the loyalists into a death trap. For a moment, Reskiel lost sight of two of his warriors as they moved into position.
Reaching the ground floor of the engineering deck, they converged on the tunnel. That was when Reskiel first realised that something was wrong. One of his warriors was missing.
‘Where is Vorkan?’ he hissed through the helmet vox.
‘I lost sight of him as he changed position, sergeant,’ one of the others, Karhadax, replied.
Reskiel turned to the second Word Bearer, Eradan.
‘I was watching the Space Wolf and the Ultramarine,’ he said by way of explanation.
A cold chill ran down Reskiel’s spine despite the heat of exertion and the warmth of the engineering deck.
‘What of the third? What of the World Eater?’
The hunters had suddenly become the prey.
Eradan’s neck and chest exploded outwards in a rain of blood and flesh, the whirring of chain teeth visible through all the gore.
‘I’m right here,’ said Skraal, his voice dead of all emotion, as the Word Bearer he had slain fell face forward onto the deck. He killed Karhadax next, cutting off his head as he charged. Whatever oath or battle cry the Word Bearer was about to shout died on his lips as his decapitated head hit the ground. Skraal kicked the still-flailing body out of his path and came at Reskiel.
To the sergeant-commander’s credit, he did not flinch in the face of the killing machine before him, and even managed to put a bolt round through Skraal’s thigh before the World Eater buried his chainaxe into him.
Skraal tore his bloodied weapon out of the still quivering body as Cestus and Brynngar emerged from the tunnel. It was with some degree of satisfaction that the World Eater had killed Reskiel. He had slain Antiges and chased him like a dog through the bowels of the ship. Four other Word Bearers lay within the tunnel nearby, variously punctured with bolter wounds and cleaved by blades. They were the other remnants of Reskiel’s hunter squad, despatched by the Astartes.
‘Next time, you’re the bait,’ Brynngar growled at Skraal, who smacked his chainaxe against the deck to dislodge some of the flesh snarled up in its blades.
‘There will be more,’ said Cestus, ramming a fresh clip that he’d taken from the armoury hall into his bolt pistol.
‘There’s always more,’ growled Brynngar, eager not to linger. ‘Lead on.’
Warning klaxons were sounding everywhere as the search for the Astartes saboteurs intensified and found its focus. Red hazard lights flashed with insistent intermittence and the shouts of the distant hunters echoed through the metal labyrinth of piping conduits and machinery. Gantries overhead provided only a curtailed view of the maze below, but Cestus instructed them to seek what cover they could whilst moving swiftly.
Determined to inflict as much damage as possible en route to the main reactor, the three Astartes had moved through the secondary reactors, systematically wrecking them as they went. Already reactor three had shut down, several coolant pipes torn free of its side and its crews scythed down with bolter fire at their dead man’s handles. Escaped coolant poured down from it in a scalding thunderhead of steam.
Cestus despatched a reactor crewman emerging from a control room with a snap shot from his bolt pistol. Another came from the opposite aisle of conduits. The Ultramarine killed him too.
The death dealing was indiscriminate. Fighting in and amongst the close confines of the pipe-works was like guerrilla warfare. Despite the overwhelming forces arrayed against them, the loyalist Astartes had a chance in this arena. Numerous improvised booby traps, simple frag grenade and tripwire arrangements, had been left in their wake, and the occasional explosion behind them meant that Cestus knew when their enemies were closing. Only the frag and krak grenades were used for traps. They would need the melta bombs for the main reactor. Once they reached it, they would need to infiltrate the protective shielding and plant the explosives into the reactor swell. That was, assuming the reactor’s immense radiation didn’t kill them first. It was a journey that Cestus planned on making alone and not one he was expecting to come back from.
A fusillade of bolter fire from a gantry above them got the Ultramarine’s attention, tearing up sections of piping.
The Word Bearers had found them.
ZADKIEL WATCHED THE Astartes scurry into cover as his squads opened fire from the main access gantry. From his vantage point, he could see the whole reactor section, like an ocean of darkness with the reactors, immense steel islands, connected by a flimsy spider’s web of catwalks, coolant pipes and maintenance ladders. He recognised the armour of three Legions amongst the saboteurs, and knew that this was the last of them: the last desperate attempt to try and make a difference.
‘It will do you no good,’ Zadkiel whispered to himself and turned to his sergeants. ‘Grazious, hound them from up here. The rest of us will press on to the main reactor and intercept them.’
The sergeant saluted, snapping an affirmative response as Zadkiel departed.
‘Such impudence,’ Zadkiel muttered as he headed towards the main reactor.
It would end, here and now, with the death of the Ultramarines.
MHOTEP DRAGGED HIMSELF along the floor of the ordnance deck.
The air was still thick with the stench of death. Dried blood caked the walls and the bulkheads on either side were sealed with super-hot torches.
The Thousand Son rolled onto his back with effort and peered up at the rent in the ceiling far above, through which he’d plummeted. Wsoric had fallen with him. Craning his neck to lo
ok down the charnel house gangway, Mhotep saw rotting corpses on either side, prickling with frost as the void penetrated the Wrathful’s hull. Breathing was difficult, the air was thinning, and with the life support inoperative it would not replenish itself. Pain kept the Astartes moving. The red hot needles in his body let him know he was alive and still fighting.
He was dying. Mhotep knew this, but death held no fear for him. It was fate, his fate, and he embraced it. Struggling to his feet, the hellish agony intensified, and for a moment, Mhotep thought he might pass out.
Wsoric was a short distance away, squatting over a heap of corpses. They were the remains of the ratings and gang masters that had been sealed in when the deck was quarantined. Already lost to madness, Mhotep could only imagine what they had thought, half frozen from the cold of space, when the daemon approached them. Perhaps they had welcomed it. Perhaps they had forfeited their souls.
Wsoric stood and arched its neck. Distended flesh bulged and writhed as it consumed the last of the survivors in body and in doing so claimed their souls.
The daemon turned, an apparition in the blackness of the abattoir its kind had created, smiling at the Thousand Son’s pitiful attempt to escape it.
‘I ever hunger, Astartes,’ it told him. ‘The thirst for souls is never slaked. It is like an eternal keening in my skull upon this plane. You will quiet it for a time,’ it promised, heading for Mhotep.
The Thousand Son fell as he went to flee the daemon. Blood was seeping from his cuirass where Wsoric had raked him with its claws. Bloody and battered, the Astartes had been granted a short reprieve when the creature detected the mewling terror from within the deck. It had found the ratings easily, drawn by the scent of their fear. Mhotep had been made to watch as the daemon butchered them.
‘I will drink of your hope and bravery until you are hollow,’ promised Wsoric.
Mhotep dragged himself up, using his spear as a crutch. He would meet his destruction face-to-face and on his feet. Outstretching his palm, a nimbus of scarlet light played about his finger tips.
Wsoric was almost upon him, and reached out, crushing the Thousand Son’s hand in his taloned fist.
Mhotep screamed in agony as his bones were splintered even within his gauntlet. He dropped the spear and sagged, only held up by the strength of the daemon.
‘Still you fight, insignificant speck,’ it said, mouth forming into a feral sneer. ‘To think that one such as you could kill one such as I.’
The daemon’s booming laughter flecked caustic spittle and dead blood into Mhotep’s face.
‘I wasn’t trying to kill you,’ muttered the Thousand Son, looking up at the beast as he unclipped something from his belt. It was an incendiary grenade.
‘What do you intend to do with that, little man?’ asked Wsoric with an obscene smile.
‘You have tarried here too long,’ said Mhotep. ‘At any moment you could have swum across the empyrean to the Furious Abyss, or back into the immaterium, but your gluttony for reaping souls has undone you warp beast. Look!’
Wsoric’s flesh was leaking ichorous fluid as the psychic energy required to keep it in the material universe broke down. Its form was becoming gelatinous and ephemeral. Mhotep had detected the creature weakening all the time he fought it. Every psychic exertion had taken its toll, sloughing away some of the matter that kept it stable and in existence.
‘I wasn’t trying to kill you,’ said Mhotep with his failing breath, ‘just to keep you here for long enough.’ He thrust his free hand forward, punching through Wsoric’s melting skin and releasing the grenade’s detonator.
The daemon snarled in rage and sudden fear.
‘Puny human, I will feast upon your…’
Mhotep was thrown back by the blast as Wsoric exploded from the inside, destroyed by the dissolution of its corporeal body.
Lying in an expanding pool of his own blood, Mhotep could see through one of the aiming ports in the ordnance deck’s starboard wall. Roaring fire burned at the edges of the Wrathful’s armoured hull as the ship, caught in the moon’s gravity well, hurtled towards Formaska. He imagined the rivers of lava on its barren surface, the crags and mountainous expanses, and smiled, accepting his doom.
THE NOISE OF the main reactor, even closed off within its housing, was immense. Beyond, Cestus knew there was an approach corridor, designed to enable close maintenance of the reactor when not in use. Beyond that was the incandescent core of energy. To step into it meant certain death. It was a sacrifice he was willing to make.
Using Astartes battle-sign, the Ultramarine indicated for Brynngar to take up position on the opposite side of the armoured hatch that led into the approach corridor. The Space Wolf obeyed swiftly and was about to cleave into the first layer of shielding when a hail of bolter fire rebounded off the metal, forcing him into cover. Cestus followed, Skraal next to him. The Astartes saw a squad of Word Bearers in firing drill formation on a lofted gantry, led by a commander in gilded, crimson armour. So resplendent and arrogant did he look, that Cestus assumed at once that he was the captain of the ship.
‘We are honoured,’ he said sarcastically, shouting at Skraal to be heard.
The World Eater nodded. He had recognised the captain too, the one he knew to be called Zadkiel: the taunting orator who had tried to twist his loyalty and prey upon his inner weakness. Skraal despised that. Crouching as he ran, he left cover and disappeared for a moment behind a riot of piping. He emerged, bolt pistol blazing. One of the Word Bearers pinning them was pitched off the gantry, clutching his neck. The gilded captain stood his ground at first, but took a step back when a second Word Bearer was spun off his feet, a smoking hole in his chest-plate.
‘Skraal, no, it’s suicide!’ Cestus cried as he watched the World Eater gain the stairway and head straight at the Word Bearers. There was no way he would make it before they perforated him with bolter shells.
‘Come on,’ Brynngar bellowed, hacking into the armoured hatch with the sudden respite. ‘Make his sacrifice worthwhile.’
With the Word Bearers occupied, Skraal had given his comrades the time they needed to cut their way into the reactor and finally end the Furious Abyss.
Cestus was on his feet and cleaved into the hatch with his power sword. The metal fell away with a resounding clang as it struck the deck. A backwash of heat flowed from the approach corridor sending the radiation warnings flickering on the Ultramarine’s helmet display to critical.
‘Bandoleers,’ Cestus cried, holding out his hand for the belt of melta bombs that Brynngar carried. ‘It’s a one way trip,’ said the old wolf. Cestus stared at Brynngar, nonplussed. ‘Yes, now hand them over.’
‘Not for you,’ said the Wolf Guard and punched the Ultramarine hard in the battle-helm.
Cestus fell, half-stunned by the sudden attack, and through his blurring vision he saw Brynngar enter the approach corridor.
‘Both of us need not die here. Avenge me,’ he heard the Space Wolf say, ‘and your Legion.’
SKRAAL TOOK THE gantry steps three at a time. About halfway up his bolt pistol ran dry and he tossed it, focusing instead on his chainaxe. As he emerged into view, the Word Bearers fired. One round tore through his pauldron, another stuck his thigh, a third hit his chest and he staggered, but the fury was upon him and nothing would prevent him from spilling the blood of the enemy. All those weeks fleeing like an animal, caged in the depths of the ship like a… like a slave. That would not be his fate.
Two more shots to the chest and Skraal struck his foes. A Word Bearer came at him with a chainsword. The World Eater swatted the blow aside and carved his enemy in two across the torso. A second went down clutching the ruin of his face where Skraal had caved it in. Another lost an arm and screamed as the World Eater booted him off the gantry to his death below.
Then Skraal faced the gilded captain, standing stock still before him as if at total ease. Bellowing Angron’s name, Skraal launched himself at Zadkiel, preparing to dismember him with his chainaxe.
The Word Bearer captain calmly raised his bolt pistol and shot Skraal through the neck. With a last effort, the World Eater lashed out.
Zadkiel screamed in pain as his bolt pistol was cut in two, three of his fingers sheared off with it through the gauntlet.
Smiling beneath his battle-helm, the World Eater felt his leg collapse beneath him. The spinal cord was abruptly severed and a terrible, sudden cold engulfed him, as if he had been plunged into ice.
Vision fogging, he saw Zadkiel standing above, blood dripping from his severed fingers as he drew a long, thin sword.
‘I am no slave,’ Skraal hissed as the last of his vital fluid pumped out of him freely.
‘You have never been anything else,’ said Zadkiel savagely, and thrust the blade precisely through Skraal’s helmet lens and into the World Eater’s eye.
The dead Astartes shuddered for a moment, transfixed on the Word Bearer’s sword, before Zadkiel withdrew it with a flourish and Skraal crumpled to the deck. Wiping his blade on the corpse, and with a brief glance at his ruined hand, he turned to his sergeants.
‘Now kill the other two.’
CESTUS SHRUGGED OFF his disorientation and went for the hatch, but the barrage of fire resumed, cutting him off from the wolf.
‘Damn you, Brynngar,’ he bellowed, knowing that it was useless.
Soon the engineering deck would be immolated by fire. The chain reaction that followed after the main reactor’s destruction would be cataclysmic. Cestus didn’t want to be there when that happened. Anger burned within him at the death of his battle-brothers, the base treachery of the Word Bearers. He wanted Zadkiel, and although there was little chance of reaching him on the engineering deck, the Ultramarine knew where he would find him. Cestus made his way to the shuttle bay.
BRYNNGAR POWERED THROUGH the access corridor, waves of radiation washing over him, and tore apart the first line of shielding that led further into the reactor core chamber. He pummelled a second bulkhead with his fists. The sense of descent into the beating heart of the ship enveloped Brynngar as he crawled on his hands and knees through the final access conduit.