by Paul Kearney
‘There is intelligence there, and a black storm of hatred. Hatred for each other as well as for us. But something binds them together – a great will – I–’
He staggered forward a step, his boots lifting and then sucked back in place by the maglocks in their soles.
‘It is an ancient malevolence that drives them, empty and hungry as the void itself. But there is a familiarity to it, captain. These things were once like us. I hear echoes of what they once were – Legiones Astartes.’ He clenched and unclenched his fists. ‘It is… unholy. They teem in their thousands, as restless as a swarm of locusts.’
‘The warp spawns them, vomits them forth,’ Brother Malchai said with deep distaste. ‘They are the gangrenous cells in the galaxy’s body. I feel them too. Their souls howl at me from the warp.’
‘They crave oblivion, and wish to take us all with them into the darkness,’ Kass said. His voice shook. ‘I have never looked into such a pit of hate before.’
‘Hate makes you strong,’ Malchai said. ‘Focus, brother.’
‘Yes, Reclusiarch.’
Up on the vox came Fornix again. ‘We are on the bridge, Jonah. Two brothers down. Hot work.’
‘Do you want the reserve?’ Kerne asked instantly.
‘Negative. Wait out.’
The vox clicked off. Fornix was back on the squad net. Jonah listened to it intently, hearing the grunted commands – that was Finn March and his brothers snapping out warnings to each other.
‘They’re breaking left.’
‘Heavy flamer. Gad, take it out.’
‘Beta move right, down the stairs.’
‘Move on, move on. Push them back, brothers.’
‘Grenade!’
‘I’m down – keep going.’
‘Blow that console. Heinos, plug in and open those ports.’
And the rattling crash of bolter fire now, the whistling of atmospherics being sucked out. It was still spuming out of the entry hole in white clouds, and with it came scraps of metal and flesh and smoke, even discarded weapons and wiring, all entangled. A severed head still in its helm, circling as it blew out into space, crowned with horns.
‘It’s a long way off, but I can feel it now,’ Brother Kass was saying. ‘It gives them purpose and direction, else these things would devour each other in their madness. There is a single mind at work here, Brother Malchai, a power in it I have never known before.
‘It is not alien in any way – it is almost recognisable, the way it works.’
‘Careful, brother,’ Malchai warned. ‘If you look into the warp, the warp looks back at you.’
Elijah Kass shuddered as he stood there like a tree in a gale. Malchai clumped towards him and shook the young Librarian.
‘Brother! Look away! Come back to me!’
‘The bridge is clear.’ That was Fornix’s voice, clear and untrammelled by interference. ‘Brother Heinos has accessed the ship systems. We’re killing this thing, Jonah. We have her, by the Emperor’s light – the thing is going down.’
‘Set it to self destruct and get out of there,’ Kerne said. He was watching Kass and Malchai grappling together.
Another voice on the net. Nureddin of Secundus, on the other destroyer.
‘Captain, all enemy resistance on the bridge has ended. We’ve sealed the doors and are setting charges. We’ll cripple her. Request Hawk Two for immediate evacuation.’
‘You have it, Nureddin. Good work. Casualties?’
‘Brother Infinius. We have his gene-seed.’
He didn’t last long, Kerne thought. His first real fight, and he is gone. He said a quiet prayer.
‘Hawks One and Two, move in for pickup, best speed.’
He turned to the Apothecary, whose helm was configured for casualty readout.
‘Passarion?’
‘All told, we have three brothers dead beyond recall, captain, and six more with major trauma, but ambulatory.’
He did not want to know all their names, not yet.
‘A long enough butcher’s bill,’ he said quietly.
‘Augur sweeps indicate that there are at least eight thousand crew on each of these ships, captain,’ Passarion said. He was watching Elijah Kass, who was back on his feet and breathing heavily over the vox.
‘Three brethren for sixteen thousand of the enemy and two destroyers. I call that a good exchange.’
THIRTEEN
Ira in Caelum
When he unhelmed, there was a new element to the air on the flight deck. The familiar heavy reek of lubricants and sweat and the tang of bare metal and exhaust now had added to it the carbonised burned bitterness of battle damage, the thin acridness of cordite and the static aftertaste of las-fire.
And blood. His senses picked up the blood of his wounded brethren over all, that coppery, familiar element common to every fight he had ever known.
A low-loader drew near, and on it were six Space Marines, their power armour dented and broken and torn as though it were made of clay. He knew all their names, and they all raised their heads as it approached. They had that light in their eyes he knew well, and it heartened him to see it.
When a man looks into the sun, the after-image of that brightness stays with him. So it was with combat. These men who were more than men had been bred and trained for war, and now they had taken a taste of it.
They were Adeptus Astartes, and it had barely whetted their appetite. He saw it in their eyes, and it gladdened him. It was as it should be.
‘Try not to get shot next time,’ Kerne said to them. And looking at young Brother Gad and the blackened flesh of his face, he added: ‘Or burned either.’
‘This one is too eager,’ Finn March said, coming up behind him and gesturing towards Brother Gad. ‘Thinks that now he’s out of the Haradai and into some real fighting, he can just charge ahead and bull his way through. He’ll know better next time.’
‘I will,’ Gad said, and he grinned, the burned lips pulling back in a ghastly rictus from the blackened gums.
‘Get to the apothecarion before I give you all extra duties for carelessness,’ Kerne said, and he touched Gad on the shoulder.
The low-loader sped on down the echoing, busy deck, fleet crew scattering before it.
‘Brother-Sergeant March, I want a full report from you and Nureddin before the hour is out,’ Kerne said quietly.
‘You shall have it, captain.’ March cocked his head to one side. Another low-loader was trundling past driven by a servitor. Upon it were two massive prone shapes, mangled but recognisable as Dark Hunters. Apothecary Passarion was walking alongside, his white armour gleaming.
‘Brothers Arrimos and Gascan,’ Passarion said. ‘Infinius’s body could not be recovered.’
‘You know what to do, brother,’ Kerne said. ‘You and Brother Malchai must consign them to the stars with all reverence. But time is short. The main operation is about to begin.’
‘Understood, captain.’
Passarion was a cold fish, but as he spoke he set one hand on the broken body beside him with something like tenderness.
‘Their genes will live on. They will come again.’
‘Other faces, other names, but the flesh abides,’ Kerne said, in the ancient ritualistic proverb of the Dark Hunters.
These dead were only the first. There would be many more to follow; he felt it in his bones.
They were gathering around him now, the sergeants of the company, along with Fornix of course, and Brother Laufey of the Scouts and Nieman Stahl, the senior sergeant of the detachment from Novus.
The trio of March, Nureddin and Orsus were the most senior, but Primus and Secundus had been hollowed out by casualties. Until the wounded Space Marines were back with their squads, the two senior sergeants would take a back seat during the assault.
It went through his mind in a smooth succession of calculations, as it had a thousand times before.
‘Tertius will lead the next operation,’ he said, and big Orsus grinned like a dog
just given a bone; if he had possessed a tail he would have wagged it.
‘Brother Laufey, you will attach three of the Haradai to Tertius, Quatris, and Quincus squads. Brother-Sergeant Stahl, you will do the same with your Devastators. Heavy plasmas and meltas, for preference – they’re more flexible. We do not yet know what we are about to face on the surface, whether it will be armour or infantry-centred.’
‘With respect, captain, I would much prefer to keep my warriors together. A full squad of heavy weapons–’
‘I have thought this through. You will be left with one squad intact, which you will command as company reserve. The others will serve with the line-squads.’
‘Sixteen-man squads, that will be,’ Fornix said and he pursed his lips in a soundless whistle.
‘For the first three, yes,’ Kerne said. ‘We must go in as hard as we can, brothers. It has been weeks – nay, months – since anything has been heard from the Imperial forces on Ras Hanem. There may be none left, or it may be that enemy jamming has stymied their attempts to communicate. In any case, we must be prepared to reconquer the entire planet from scratch if need be.’
They all nodded at that. He saw their faces harden, if faces so marked by decades and centuries of warfare could be said to have hardened further. He saw the anger in their eyes. That was good.
‘The drop pods are prepping as we speak,’ he said. ‘Brother-Sergeants Orsus, Greynan and Kagan, see to your commands. I will be dropping with you. The fleet personnel have been briefed and prepped.
‘We have wiped out their sentries, brothers – now we will descend upon them like the Emperor’s Wrath. To your posts.’
The knot of sergeants broke up at once, and the huge armoured figures trooped down the deck to the waiting lines of Dark Hunters, shouting commands, the ordinary humans of the fleet scattering before them like lambs before wolves. The next wave of Thunderhawks was already being prepped, gunships as well as troop-transports this time. But it was the drop pods which would strike first.
‘Fornix, walk with me. I go to the command dais.’ They marched off without a further word, and it was only when they were ascending on one of the great cargo elevators that Jonah Kerne said:
‘First sergeant, where are my Chaplain and Librarian?’
Fornix scratched the side of his head. ‘The moment they came back, they went off somewhere together. I believe Malchai wanted a quiet word with our young epistolary. Elijah looked as though he was about to puke bullets. I think his first encounter with the Great Enemy scrambled his wits a little.’
‘Find them,’ Kerne snapped. ‘I do not have time to track down my command squad through the guts of the ship.’
‘Yes, brother-captain,’ Fornix said, watching his friend closely. Then he added: ‘Jonah, it was not your place to be at the head of a boarding party – you know that. You command Mortai.’
‘And you are my second, and yet you charged in there like some glory-hunting recruit fresh out of the Haradai.’
‘Ah, that’s me – ’twas ever thus.’
Jonah Kerne stared at his old friend. ‘Mortai needs its first sergeant as much as it needs its captain, Fornix. You should have let Finn March lead the way onto the enemy bridge.’
‘Well, you know me–’
‘Enough. You hear what I have said. Apply it. I will not say it again.’
Fornix’s face went carefully blank. ‘Yes, brother-captain.’
For the first time, Jonah Kerne’s arrival in the command centre of the Ogadai caused no comment or reaction. The crew were all too busy, and the red lumens of battle stations were still glowing like sullen coals around the command dais.
Kerne climbed the stone steps of the dais with his helm cradled in one arm, and waited, knowing better than to interfere with Massaron and his work.
‘Fire one,’ the shipmaster said, and there was the long slow shake under their feet as the massive Voidsunder in the bow erupted. It was three kilometres away from where they stood, and yet the power of that salvo echoed through the entire ship like a far-off earth-tremor.
‘Direct hit amidships,’ the flag lieutenant said. ‘Sir, she’s breaking up.’
A hum of satisfaction ran through the servitors on the dais, though they did not pause in their work for a second.
‘Enemy is breaking formation,’ Enginseer Miranich ticked out in that metallic grate of his.
‘Arm torpedoes, notify broadside batteries,’ Massaron said. He stood with his arms folded, seemingly imperturbable. ‘Fire two when firing resolution is locked.’
‘They’re running for it, sir,’ the lieutenant said.
‘I see that, Gershon. Configure torpedoes for that other Dauntless cruiser. I don’t want it to get away.’
‘Torpedoes launched, wide spread,’ a servitor said tonelessly, the binaric data-speak underlying his words like a secondary mutter. ‘On target.’
‘He’s evading, coming round to port at one three five mark twelve,’ the lieutenant barked, excitement raising his voice. ‘Sir, he’s turning right into–’
‘I see it. Fire two.’
A moment’s pause. Out in the emptiness of space, the Ogadai had just launched a vast spearhead of immense energy.
‘He’s hit–’
Jonah Kerne looked up. In the viewports high above his head there was a momentary flash of white light.
‘Target destroyed,’ Miranich reported without emotion. ‘Five torpedoes have gone wide. Three have made hits. Two more enemy ships are now out of command.’
‘Come to starboard ninety degrees,’ Massaron said. He unfolded his arms and his hands were now clenched into fists at his side. Under their feet, the hundreds of thousands of tons that were his ship wheeled in the void.
‘Now, port batteries, open fire as they bear.’
Kerne could hear the rumble and hiss of the lasburner batteries that lined the ship’s sides open up. It was too faint for the hearing of a normal human, but to the ears of an Adeptus Astartes, the sound was like carbonated liquid fizzing out of an opened bottle.
‘Targets destroyed,’ the flag lieutenant said, triumph lighting up his voice. ‘The rest of the enemy fleet is powering out of high orbit at maximum speed. Sir, shall I signal Arbion and Beynish to pursue?’
‘Negative. Signal them to remain astern. I want no more surprises.’ Here, for the first time, Massaron looked at Kerne, and there was something like shame in his face.
Then he turned back to the banks of monitors that towered above him.
‘Resume course for low orbit. I want continuous augur-sweeps of the planet, and scan for all vox-emissions. Recharge all weapons and stand by.’
A murmur of assent across the dais.
‘Lieutenant Gershon, you have the con. Captain Kerne, I expect you would like a full report.’
Kerne nodded curtly.
‘I have a ready room below. Please join me there.’
Kerne’s silence seemed to unnerve the shipmaster slightly. He poured water from a metal flask and drank off a tankard of it.
The Space Marine captain dominated the small room, and a faint smell of ozone rose off his armour. A shining dust speckled him: the residue of vacuum combat.
‘The enemy picket-line of destroyers was led with some skill,’ Massaron said, looking at the empty flagon he held in one fist. ‘There were six of them, light destroyers reconfigured for use against capital targets. Four, we obliterated – two more were taken out by your warriors.’ He paused. ‘I was distracted by the fate of the Caracalla, and let two of them slip past us into an ideal firing position, at our stern. It will not happen again. I apologise.’
‘What of the Caracalla?’ Kerne demanded harshly.
‘Gone. Some two thousand of the crew took to lifeboats and were picked up. The rest perished when the drives overheated and exploded.’ He poured himself more water. ‘Seven thousand men and women.’
He held the flagon up, and looked at it as though it were an artefact from an unknown world.
‘Shipmaster Miraneis was a fine officer. She did her duty.’ He drank deep, as though the water were something stronger.
‘She was my daughter.’
Grief gnarled his face. He faced the tall Space Marine squarely. ‘I made a mistake, distracted by sentiment. It will not happen again.’
‘See that it does not,’ Jonah Kerne told him coldly. ‘The boarding action should not have been necessary, and it has forced me to modify my plans for the planetary assault scant hours before it is due to begin. We do not have the resources or the time to permit such mistakes, shipmaster.’
‘Agreed, captain. I will submit a report on my error to Mors Angnar, and am ready to accept whatever sanction the Chapter Master sees fit to inflict.’
Kerne shook his head. ‘Belay that. We do not have the time for it, and there is no one else to whom the Ogadai can be trusted – you know that as well as I. Tell me of the situation as it now stands.’
Massaron blinked, and a low breath escaped him, as though he had been holding it in all this time.
‘We are two hours out from low orbit. The Punisher fleet has been scattered and is fleeing. We have destroyed two Dauntless class light cruisers and a total of eleven destroyers, plus at least six transport vessels. The way is clear for the ground phase of the operation to begin.’
‘You are to be congratulated, shipmaster.’
‘I lost seven thousand men today, captain, and placed this flagship in extreme jeopardy. I do not warrant your congratulations.’
‘You are only human.’ Kerne smiled slightly. ‘Any word from the ground?’
‘Now that the enemy fleet is dispersed, vox transmissions to and from the surface should begin to filter through.’
‘Very well. If any do, have them forwarded to me on the flight deck at once. Phase two is about to begin. I will take Mortai down onto Ras Hanem in the next two hours, the first wave in drop pods, the second in the Thunderhawks. I want your destroyers detailed to assist with orbital bombardment as soon as I am on the ground and able to identify viable targets. Is that clear?’