“All of you,” the warrior spoke, without taking his black eyes off of the northern horizon, “should be dead.”
The palace guards remained motionless, stoic in the face of the traitor Space Marine’s pronouncement. Nullus turned his scarred face towards the men, and continued.
“But I am a practical man, and have use for you yet.”
Nullus watched as the guards stood as still as statues, not one of them daring to look at him. His scar-traced features split into a vile and savage grin.
Nullus reached to his back and unlimbered his black-hafted halberd. “So you need not die. Not all of you.”
A cold wind rose out of the wastes. Still, none of the guards responded. Nullus brought the halberd in front of him in one hand and set the base of its haft resting on the deck at his feet.
“Whichever of you will face me, he will die. But the remainder, I will allow to live.”
Now the guards showed signs of reaction. Several of them glanced sidelong at their fellows, before one of their number answered.
“I will face you,” came the response, and one of the troopers stepped forwards.
“Name yourself, so that the gods might have notice of your coming, and prepare you a special place in damnation,” Nullus replied, bringing the halberd across his chest in both hands.
“My name is Ghalan,” the man proclaimed, addressing his statement to the powers of the warp as much as to Nullus. “Warrant Officer Primus,” he added with pride, turning to salute his men.
The assembled guard returned the salute, and Nullus prepared to deliver his lesson.
“Three kilometres south, brother-sergeant,” Scout Telluk whispered. “A bunker, right on the border of the agri-zone.”
Kholka felt a stab of disappointment, but determined to give the neophyte a second chance. It was after all only the boy’s second operational deployment. “Again. Properly this time.”
The neophyte paused, his face reddening almost imperceptibly as he cast his eyes to the ground. “My apologies, brother-sergeant,” he said.
“Never mind that,” Kholka replied, the veteran’s patience growing thin. “Deliver your report.”
“The beast in stone, as the third moon slumbers, bestriding the steppe,” Telluk reported.
“Better,” Kholka responded. “Though ‘Ghan’s last march’ would have gotten the point over more elegantly.” By its very nature, the White Scars battle-cant was subjective and varied enormously by speaker and context. The veteran gifted the youngster with a wry smile. “Now pass me the magnoculars.”
Taking the device from the neophyte, Kholka raised it to his eyes and looked out across the wastes. From the squad’s concealed position high atop a jagged, black rock spire, Kholka had a panoramic view of the region where the barren wastelands gave way to the agri-zone. Scanning the near field first, the sergeant took in the terrain, the last of the rock-strewn plain his squad had marched through.
Adjusting the viewfinder’s settings, Kholka focussed on the middle ground, where it was obvious that many of the larger rock formations had been blasted flat so that any crossing it would be detected and cut down in a hail of defensive fire. Panning first left, and then right, locating the point that Scout Telluk had identified, Kholka saw the squat, grey bunker.
“Well observed, neophyte,” Kholka said quietly as he magnified the scene. The bunker had been placed by a defender who knew his business well, and lesser foes than the Space Marines might have missed it amongst the volcanic rocks and outcroppings of the region.
“One primary,” Kholka reeled off his observations, adding a commentary to the data that the sensorium-core built into his armour was recording. Even if the sergeant and his charges were slain, there would be a chance that others of the White Scars would recover the data and act upon it. He zoomed in on the figure standing on the bunker’s observation deck, looking out across the wastes. The warrior’s armour was the distinctive blue-green of the traitor Alpha Legion, and across its back was slung a black halberd. Increasing the magnification still further, Kholka brought the figure’s head into focus, revealing a face that was a mass of fine scar tissue, traced by the hand of a madman. “We know you.”
“Four… no, five, secondaries.” Kholka watched as a group of figures, each wearing the same armour as the first, came into his vision. Their faces were hidden beneath helmets surmounted by twisting horns, and each carried a boltgun adorned with fell runes. “Alpha Legionnaires.”
As he panned downwards, Kholka’s field of vision was eclipsed by the rear of a black helmet. He zoomed out, the viewfinder showing a man dressed in grey fatigues and black body armour facing the primary. The briefings of the last few strike force councils came to the sergeant’s mind. The black and grey armour. Kholka zoomed out still further, seeking confirmation.
“Approximately thirty tertiaries,” Kholka sub-vocalised. The wind had changed direction and he could not take the risk of being overheard. “Subjects appear at first glance to be a platoon-sized multiple of Mankarra household guard.”
The sergeant watched, scanning the figures for any sign of the four-starred insignia that would positively confirm the troopers’ identity and their link with the action on Cernis IV. He could see, although not hear, that the primary was addressing them. After a moment, one of the troopers stepped forwards to stand before the primary, and then turned and saluted the others.
At that moment, Kholka saw clearly the insignia on the man’s shoulder armour.
“Confirmed,” the sergeant said, the thrill of the hunt rising in him. “We have them now.”
Nullus watched with barely contained disdain as Ghalan turned back to face him. His black eyes flitted to the weapons at the guard’s belt, seeing that the man was armed with a power sword of archaic pattern and a heavy pistol. The guard’s face was set in a mask of grim determination. Clearly, the man knew he would die. But alone amongst the platoon, he had chosen to face his death with dignity.
The guard reached for the ornate basket hilt of his power sword and drew it slowly, his eyes never leaving his opponent. As the blade cleared the scabbard, a flick of the thumb activated its power core. Veins of searing light crept along its length, coalescing at its monomolecular edge. Ghalan set his feet wide, assuming a fighter’s stance. Yet still, Nullus looked on with contempt.
“Do you hope for a quick death?” Nullus growled, his lipless mouth sneering.
In answer, Ghalan raised his power sword into the guard position.
“Or do you perhaps imagine you have some chance against me?”
Ghalan remained tight-lipped, refusing to play along with the traitor Space Marine’s cruel game. His only answer was to bare his teeth in anger, a gesture which brought another sneer from his opponent.
“I think you want to die,” Nullus crowed. “I think you know the extent of your failure beneath the palace, and think you can avoid vengeance by way of a clean death.” Nullus cast a withering glance at the other guards. “I think that you wish to avoid the fate I have in store for them.”
The assembled palace guards looked to one another, some raising angry curses.
“Kill him!” one shouted.
The man’s head exploded in a welter of blood and gore, and one of Nullus’ fellow Alpha Legion warriors lowered his boltgun, smoke wafting from its gaping barrel. Several of the man’s fellow guards were showered with tissue, yet they refused to flee in the face of the sudden outbreak of violence. As the man’s decapitated body hit the deck, Ghalan growled and lunged forwards, his power sword raised to deliver a two-handed, downward blow.
Nullus merely sidestepped the attack, his massive armoured form belying his speed. Ghalan should have been killed as the force he had channelled into his attack met only air and he was thrown off-balance, stumbling against the bunker’s parapet. The guard paused there for several seconds, his back turned to his opponent, waiting for the killing blow to strike him down.
But the blow did not come.
Ghal
an turned slowly, to find that Nullus was facing him five metres away, his halberd resting contemptuously across one shoulder.
“Did you think it would be so easy?” Nullus sneered. “If you desire death by my hand, you’ll have to earn it.”
Once more, Ghalan raised his power sword. The man’s face was now a mask of barely-controlled rage. He knew he was being made sport of and was in an impossible position. He had little chance of besting the traitor, yet his opponent was intent upon humiliating him.
Ghalan began to move in a wide circle, and Nullus obliged by moving with him, so that the two stalked one another across the bunker’s observation deck. Nullus’ fellow Alpha Legion warriors looked on, their masks impassive but their bolters raised menacingly to ensure the remaining guards did not intervene.
“You know what I’ll do with your skull, once you’re dead?” Nullus said, his tone at once coldly matter-of-fact and supremely mocking.
Ghalan threw himself forwards, his power sword cutting a glittering arc through the air towards his opponent’s head. The attack was well aimed, but Nullus merely shifted his stance but a fraction, scornfully allowing the searing blade to pass within centimetres of his scarred face.
This time, Ghalan did not allow himself to become unbalanced. Instead, he allowed the momentum of his attack to carry his body around to his opponent’s left hand side. Turning the blade in his hand, Ghalan brought it upwards to strike at Nullus’ midriff.
But Nullus was prepared too, and Ghalan’s power sword struck the black blade of his enemy’s halberd. Dark light flared where the two weapons clashed, casting a pall of shadow across both fighters. Ghalan was shrouded in unnatural night. Unable to see Nullus clearly, he instinctively threw his body backwards to avoid the inevitable riposte.
Ghalan struck the ground hard at the feet of one of Nullus’ warriors. The Alpha Legionnaire made no effort to intervene in the combat, however, and Ghalan leapt to his feet, bringing his blade up.
It was only when Nullus’ scarred mouth formed into a wide, mocking grin that Ghalan looked down at his blade. The weapon’s edge no longer danced with the energy that had powered it before. The once lethal weapon was now reduced to a crude, blunted sword no more effective than a club wielded by a savage. Nullus’ own, unnatural weapon had somehow drained its power and rendered it all but useless.
Snarling in frustration, Ghalan threw his broken weapon to the ground and snatched the heavy pistol from his belt. In a single movement, the weapon was held out before him, aimed squarely at Nullus’ head.
“Better make it count,” Nullus growled. “You won’t get a second shot.”
The pistol shook in Ghalan’s hands as he fought with all his might to control his rage. His glance flicked briefly to the other palace guards, but they stood powerless to intervene, covered by the boltguns of the Alpha Legionnaires.
Ghalan’s finger closed on the trigger and the weapon barked a single shot. The bullet struck Nullus just below the thick collar of his power armour, barely leaving a scratch in the blue-green livery.
Before Ghalan could fire a second shot, Nullus exploded into violent movement. The black halberd lashed forwards, leaping across the space between the two combatants in the blink of an eye. The weapon struck Ghalan in the shoulder, propelling him across the decking and pinning him against the inner wall as its point sank into the rockcrete.
Transfixed by the blade, Ghalan was powerless as Nullus stepped before him.
“You sought a clean death,” Nullus sneered. “You sought to avoid justice.”
The slightest of grins appeared at Ghalan’s blood-flecked lips, but it vanished as Nullus continued. “Your soul is mine, fool.”
As the remaining palace guards looked on in stunned horror, Ghalan’s face became pale. Within moments, his skin began to shrivel and his muscles to collapse in upon themselves. As the vile process continued, Ghalan’s entire body convulsed and twisted around the point of the halberd. A distant, mournful cry echoed, seeming to emanate from the very blade of Nullus’ weapon. At the last, Ghalan’s body was reduced to a shrivelled husk, and Nullus withdrew his blade.
“He who would share this fool’s fate,” Nullus addressed the remaining guards, “let him fail me again.”
The guards remained stoically silent, none daring to look towards the desiccated corpse behind Nullus. With the tip of his halberd, Nullus lifted Ghalan’s remains high, and with a scornful flick cast them over the precipice to crumple to the ground in front of the bunker.
As the Alpha Legionnaires herded the palace guards away, Nullus addressed the corpse below, the insignia on the shoulder pad clearly visible. “I think the point is made.”
“Khula,” said Scout-Sergeant Kholka, his voice low but clear. “Take position here. I want overwatch at all times. Concentrate on the gully due south.”
Kholka watched for a moment as the Scout lowered himself into a dip in the volcanic rock and arranged his camouflaged cloak so he blended seamlessly into his surroundings. Only the barrel of the Scout’s sniper rifle was visible, and that only from close up.
Confirming that Khula was in position, Kholka took one last look around. The enemy had departed, but the entire scene could still have been a charade to draw the attention of anyone watching. The Alpha Legion might be hidden nearby, ready to launch a devastating ambush against the small group of White Scars.
But Kholka was a veteran of the celebrated “422” patrol and had survived everything that the death world of Canak had thrown at him. He had served an entire year deep in enemy territory whilst fighting the dreaded Saharduins. He had even stalked lictors across the great cobalt reefs of Ayria-12-Tsunami, and had the honour scars to prove it. Kholka had not done all of these things by allowing himself to fall prey to enemy entrapment, and he was determined to pass such wisdom on to those under his tutorship.
“Our strength,” Kholka addressed the Scouts, “is not arms. Our strength is guile.”
Satisfied that the Scouts were ready to learn and, if necessary, to fight, Kholka led the squad out of the cover of the rock formation and into the open wastes. Though old even for a Space Marine, Kholka moved with the fluid grace and stealth of a steppe-born predator. Indeed, as a savage son of proud, wild Chogoris, he was exactly that.
His silenced boltgun raised, Kholka made use of every scrap of cover as he approached the seemingly abandoned bunker. Every few minutes the sergeant would duck down behind cover, observe the bunker and ensure that his Scouts were deployed correctly.
Several times he glanced back to the position high atop the rocks, where he knew that Scout Khula was hidden. The neophyte had concealed himself well.
Kholka had timed the advance carefully, ensuring that it was only as the sun set that the squad reached the point where the rocks thinned out. The ground became flat where a clear fire zone had been levelled in front of the bunker.
“The gaze of midnight,” Kholka whispered, and the Scouts all lowered their night vision goggles over their eyes. He squinted down his boltgun’s sights and scanned the bunker. The low, squat structure appeared deserted, but the sergeant engaged the sight’s heat-sensitive function just to be sure. When no telltale heat signals Were revealed, he waved his charges forwards, one at a time at ten-second intervals. The Scouts covered each other as they ran forwards into the spreading gloom.
As the last of the Scouts departed, Kholka counted to ten before setting out across the open ground himself. Minutes later, he was at the bunker, finding that his Scouts had spread out to cover all approaches with their boltguns.
“Brother-sergeant,” hissed Scout Borchu. “Over here.”
Kholka stalked silently to the source of the whisper. He found the Scout by the bunker’s slab-sided armoured fascia, looking down at the man they had witnessed being flung over the wall. In the shadow of the bunker the corpse was little more than a deeper patch of gloom against the black volcanic ground. He squatted down, and judged it safe to engage the lamp set into the barrel of his boltgu
n at its lowest setting.
The sergeant drew a sharp intake of breath at the sight that greeted him. The man’s body was little more than a skeleton, parched skin stretched tight across its bones. The face, or what little remained of it, was locked in a rictus leer, the shrivelled eyes staring in a sightless terror that seemed to transcend death itself.
“What happened to him?” Kholka heard Borchu ask, the boy’s easy mirth now entirely gone.
“Nothing I would have you learn of,” the sergeant replied. “Not until you have to, at any rate.”
“The armour,” Borchu continued. “Is that the—?”
“Yes, boy,” Kholka interjected. “That is the confirmation we seek.”
“Then we have them?” Borchu asked.
“Yes, neophyte,” Kholka replied. “We have them.” Even as the sergeant spoke, he knew things were not as simple as they might have seemed to the inexperienced Scout. To Kholka’s seasoned, hunter’s instinct, it was all too contrived, all too convenient.
“Squad,” Kholka whispered, standing as the Scouts gathered before him in the dark. “We return to the insertion point.”
“For extraction?” Borchu enquired.
“No,” Kholka replied grimly. “We have a report to make. We need to reach secure ground and set up the tight-beam transmitter. Kor’sarro Khan must hear of this.”
* * *
Kholka looked up as the transmitter device emitted a sharp tone. A steady stream of figures scrolled across his auspex, the code informing him that the machine’s spirit was prepared to commune with another of its kind in high orbit overhead.
The sergeant gave the signal to Gharn that he should set the now aligned projector unit down and return to watch duty. The projector, linked by a snaking cable to the unit in front of Kholka, was just visible atop a nearby rock formation. Its sharp form was silhouetted against the massive disk of Quintus’ moon, which was now rising above the horizon and staining the jagged landscape an unearthly, sickly green.
The march to the pre-arranged location from which the signal would be sent had been carried out in record time. The sergeant had forced the pace, knowing that the signal must get through at all costs. Kholka had reviewed the findings as he had led the march, going over the mission and its conclusion time and time again. He knew that the specially shielded Thunderhawk would only be overhead for a minute, for to linger any longer would be to invite detection by Voldorius and his Alpha Legion sorcerers and heretic tech-priests.
03 - Hunt for Voldorius Page 11