by Ben Counter
In the centre of the room stood the Red Widow. The illustration of her had not done her justice. She was tall and skinny, her limbs malformed, her fingers long and probing, lank hair hanging down over a pallid body covered in scars and open wounds. She had no face, and where a face should have been was a black void, like a window into space. She turned that face to Lysander as he tore into the apothecarion, and he felt himself falling into it, time and space rushing past him.
Nebulae and galaxies rushed past. Stars boiled into existence from the heart of incandescent stellar clouds. Solar systems were cracked and shattered to dust, and swallowed up by endless maws of nothingness that opened up to devour them.
The warp. It was the warp, the dimension that ran parallel to reality, the dwelling place of the Fell Powers and the source of everything that was worst in this galaxy.
Lysander tore his eyes away. The laughter rang in his head. He shielded his eyes and tried to gauge what the Red Widow was doing without looking at her face.
In the Red Widow’s hand was an arm. It was the oversized arm of a Space Marine. Lysander recognised the recent blister scars and surgical marks around the ruin of the shoulder. The arm had belonged to Brother Skelpis.
‘This is your friend,’ hissed the Red Widow, and somehow the laughter was uninterrupted. ‘Your brother. Sworn to the same oaths. Born of the same battles.’
Lysander lunged with his chainblade. The Red Widow batted the blade aside with Skelpis’s arm.
Sergeant Kaderic ran past Lysander and slammed into the Red Widow. A hand, impossibly strong, closed around one of Kaderic’s legs and the Widow threw him aside. Kaderic crashed through one of the organ cylinders, falling to the ground in a heap of shattered glass and torn artificial flesh.
‘You chose the wrong ship,’ snarled Lysander.
‘You chose the wrong god,’ hissed the Widow.
Lysander slashed at her, the teeth of his chainblade shrieking. The Widow leapt up onto the ceiling, the joints of her elongated limbs cracking as they bent the wrong way and grabbed handholds in the image on the ceiling. Her face flared open, a great void threatening to drag Lysander’s consciousness into it. As long as she faced him, Lysander could not look directly at her – he would be paralysed by the warp’s assault on his senses and the Widow would tear him apart as she had done Brother Skelpis.
Nails as hard as diamond tore chunks from the fresco as the Widow scuttled across the ceiling, reaching down at Lysander’s throat. His chainblade flashed in his hand, guided by reflex rather than choice, and sawed through the Widow’s arm just below one of the elbows.
Blades of shadow slid from the torn stump. The light of distant stars bled from the wound, and the sound of colliding galaxies roared in Lysander’s ears. The stuff of the warp oozed from the Widow, pooling in masses of darkness where it touched the deck.
The Red Widow giggled, as if the severing of a limb was the most wonderful fun.
Lysander lost sight of her for a split second as darkness swirled around her. He heard her land on the deck behind him, and the shadow claws closed around his torso, grossly elongated. They dug in, biting through the ceramite of his breastplate and shoulder guards.
Lysander’s chainblade arm was pinned. He drew his bolt pistol with his free hand and aimed blindly over his shoulder, loosing off three shots at the place he guessed her head would be. The Widow’s other hand grabbed his wrist and wrenched it behind his back.
‘I saw your god die,’ the Widow whispered in his ear. ‘I lapped at the liquor from his corpse.’
A tremendous crash cut her voice off and Lysander was thrown forwards, face down onto the blood-slicked deck. He rolled onto his back and saw the Red Widow reeling, shards of glass impaling her ragged skin.
Behind her was a Space Marine, stripped of his armour and wearing the simple half-robes of an apothecarion patient. His skin had been dark, but now it was a patchwork of new scars and synthetic skin. He was holding the remains of the organ cylinder he had smashed into the back of the Red Widow’s head. His eyes were wide and wild.
Lysander stamped a foot down onto the Red Widow’s back and drew back his chainblade. He plunged the blade into the Widow, its chain teeth grinding through spine and rib.
Darkness sprayed out, miniature fragments of a mirror reflecting the warp. Sergeant Kaderic had extricated himself from the wreckage of the organ cylinders and brought his axe down, cutting off the Red Widow’s head.
A sudden flood of darkness blinded Lysander. He wrenched his chainblade free and stumbled for the door, finding the doorframe with an outstretched hand and making it out of the apothecarion. Kaderic followed him out, carrying with him the severed head of the Red Widow.
‘Halaestus!’ shouted Lysander. ‘Skelpis!’
Brother Halaestus, still holding the base of the shattered organ cylinder, emerged from the darkness clinging around the doorway. ‘Skelpis is dead,’ he said. ‘He was helpless on the slab. She killed him.’
‘He is avenged,’ said Sergeant Kaderic.
‘None of us are avenged,’ said Halaestus, ‘until Malodrax falls.’
Lysander put a gauntleted hand on Halaestus’s shoulder. ‘We will have our revenge,’ said Lysander. ‘I swear.’
For a moment Brother Halaestus just stared at Lysander, his eyes looking far away as if focused on the Red Widow’s glimpse of the warp. Then he refocused, and looked down at the head in Sergeant Kaderic’s hand. The head was sagging and limp, little more than a hollow mask of skin with the window to the warp gone.
‘That’s the Widow,’ said Halaestus.
‘Just as in the map,’ said Lysander. ‘We were ready for her.’
‘Not ready enough,’ said Halaestus. ‘You said you would lead us here, Lysander. You said you would be prepared for anything Malodrax had.’
‘I did not say there would not be losses,’ replied Lysander, his voice level. ‘It is a lot for me to ask you to have faith, I know that. But that is what I ask of you now.’
Whatever reply Halaestus had, he never made it. Chaplain Lycaon approached from the cell block, both barrels of the storm bolter in his hand glowing dull red, the head of his crozius arcanum still crackling with its power field. ‘The enemy is scattered, First Sergeant!’ said Lycaon. ‘What of the apothecarion?’
‘Held, Chaplain!’ announced Kaderic. ‘The Red Widow it was, and this is what remains of her!’ Kaderic cast the Widow’s head onto the deck at Lycaon’s feet. ‘But one brother, Skelpis, was lost here. The daemon was vanquished by the captain and myself.’
‘Rejoin your brethren,’ said Lycaon. ‘Sweep the cell block and launch patrols to clear the rest of the ship.’
‘Of course, Chaplain,’ said Kaderic.
‘And captain, sergeant,’ said Lycaon, ‘and you, Brother Halaestus. Well fought.’
Usually the crew of the Breaker worked in two shifts, changing every fourteen hours. For the next twenty hours both shifts were awake and at station, guiding the Breaker around the Red Widow’s lair of treacherous orbital currents and jagged masses of coral. Two thrusters were torn off the ship’s stern, and a hole torn in her flank a hundred metres long that bled three decks’ worth of air into the void. More died, added to the tally taken by the Grey Hungers and the Red Widow a few hours before. But the crew of the Breaker had known that they would not all make it home, not from this journey. They worked to exhaustion until the ship emerged from the reef into the relatively clear high orbit of Malodrax. They would have leave to mourn their dead when the mission was done.
In the new quiet that had fallen on the ship, Chaplain Lycaon was able to return to his art. In his fingers was a small piece of bone, and in his other hand a miniature drill with which he was inscribing illustrations onto the bone. Around him were mounted the arms and armour of a senior Chaplain of the Imperial Fists, a tattered banner stained with smoke from an old battlefield, she
lves of books of battle-lore and a polished stone Crux Terminatus mounted on the wall like a plaque. His armour, painted in the black of a Chaplain instead of the gold of an Imperial Fist, hung from a rack against the wall.
Lysander watched Lycaon work. The Chaplain’s hands were those of a Space Marine, huge and powerful even without gauntlets, but he worked with the fine dexterity of a watchmaker.
‘Dorn himself scrimshawed the bones of the dead,’ said Lycaon at length. ‘He wrote that pursuits such as these separate us from other soldiers. Any savage can swing a club or fire a gun. But a Space Marine is better than that. He can turn his mind inwards, and channel what lies there into focus as well as rage.’ The Chaplain blew dust off the bone, revealing the finely cut detail. ‘I hope Brother Skelpis would agree, having unwittingly donated his finger bone.’
‘He would consider it an honour,’ said Lysander.
‘Good.’ Lycaon gave the bone a few more strokes with the drill, and held it up to the light of the cell’s glow-globe. Dense knotwork wound around the clenched fist symbol of the Chapter, and through the wings of the Imperial aquila beside it. ‘Brother Halaestus has lost his focus.’
Lysander did not answer for a long moment. Lycaon put Skelpis’s scrimshawed finger bone on the table in front of him, and turned his gaze up to Lysander for the first time since the captain had answered the summons to Lycaon’s cell.
‘He has gone through much,’ said Lysander. ‘He wants revenge.’
‘Every Space Marine wants revenge,’ said Lycaon. ‘All the time. With every breath. He wants revenge against the galaxy for daring to be so full of enemies. Revenge is not an excuse to lose one’s focus.’
‘Do you intend to leave him on the Breaker when we go down to the surface?’ asked Lysander.
‘I am not such a fool to shun the use of an able-bodied Space Marine when we face an environment like Malodrax. No, my concerns lie deeper. A man driven to extremes by rage might be just what this strike force needs. But it is not what the Chapter needs.’
‘Brother Halaestus will be rehabilitated. What he underwent on Malodrax could never leave a soul unmarked, but he is an Imperial Fist and he is strong. The apothecarion and the help of his battle-brothers will fix him.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Lycaon. ‘But I have another concern.’
‘Chaplain?’
‘Brother Halaestus is not the brother who compels the greater part of my attention. I had heard much of you, Lysander. Your loss was the cause of great sorrow. Even amidst the tragedy of the Shield of Valour, the death of Lysander was mourned most keenly, for they spoke of you as a Chapter Master of the future. When you returned to us, it was with great joy that we learned you lived, but among the Chaplains there was concern. A thousand years had passed and the men you fought alongside are not those who serve the Chapter today.’
‘The Imperial Fists are the same,’ said Lysander. ‘Dorn saw to it that our principles were strong enough to weather the ages.’
Lycaon did not acknowledge Lysander’s words. ‘And then came the Shield of Valour,’ he continued. ‘Then came Malodrax. And I do not know if the First Captain of the Imperial Fists, the one whose death was among the greatest tragedies the Chapter has suffered, is the same man who stands opposite me now.’
Lysander did not respond. He stared down at the scrimshaw in front of Lycaon, which had once been a finger bone of Brother Skelpis. Skelpis had been crippled, unable to fight, and he had died a helpless death that no Space Marine should ever suffer.
‘What do you have to say, captain?’ asked Lycaon. ‘Or have you nothing?’
‘When we leave Malodrax,’ said Lysander, ‘Thul will be dead. That is all I have to say.’
‘I pray that you are right,’ said Lycaon. ‘It was your intelligence that led us here. It is your experience that we hope will give us the edge on the surface. Much relies on you, Lysander, and you will be judged when it is all done. When we come to leave Malodrax, whatever has happened down there, we will know which Lysander the Imperial Fists name among their number. The Reclusiam stands apart from the Chapter, for even its heroes are not beyond our judgement.’ Lycaon handed the scrimshawed bone to Lysander. ‘You were down there with him. Carry him with you.’
Lysander took the finger bone, saluted, and left the cell without another word.
The coral had grown up over millions of years, encrusted around flecks of rock and debris in orbit around Malodrax. Tiny organisms had woven microscopic calcific shells around themselves, and gradually, as the millennia ground by, enormous reefs had built up that cloaked the world of Malodrax in a shield of jagged coral that rendered it impervious to any attempt to land.
Any attempt, that was, without a map. Crazed scholars had mapped the reefs and the intricacies of their movement. Captains had braved the reefs to reach the forbidden planet inside. Who had first come to Malodrax, and why, was lost to the infinite histories of the Scattering, when mankind flew heedlessly to the most distant stars. But someone, to the woe of all, had made it.
The Breaker of Darkness emerged from the reef scored and tattered, dragging its own train of wreckage, chunks of shredded hull and the bodies of crewmen floating in her wake. Wide gashes laid open the latticework of deck and bulkhead inside. Half the golden fist emblem on her prow had been sheared off. But she could still fly, and her cargo was intact.
With a flare of engines the ship changed attitude, presenting the heat-shielded prow to the upper atmosphere of Malodrax.
It took a force of will to look on Malodrax itself. Like a void against a void, it forced the eye away from it, something darker than black. If an observer could compel himself to look at it he would see a discoloured orb, its southern hemisphere mottled and decaying like a tumour, its northern half parched and broken as if hammered into pieces. Its northern pole burned with purple flame, and near the equator an open wound oozed molten rock like infected blood. A tormented and suffering world, pulled apart by the unnatural forces that teemed on its surface, infested, befouled and rancid.
To this world the Breaker of Darkness descended, the flames of its upper atmosphere licking against the prow.
2
‘My captain was a brave man. He had served me for six decades as personal pilot, and then master of my fleet. The only time I saw him weep was when he condemned his ship to the atmosphere of Malodrax, knowing she would never rise from that toxic cauldron of hate.’
– Inquisitor Corvin Golrukhan
In the cool of the Shield of Valour, Lysander knelt to pray.
The ship was old indeed. It still bore the patina of Mars, deep red speckles on the blueish steel of her bulkheads and decks. Cold vapour clung to the floors and rippled down the walls. The archeotech engines, supplied by plasma reactors more efficient than any made for eight thousand years, required a deep chill to function and the whole ship was refrigerated.
Lysander’s silent prayer came to an end. It was one he had spoken to himself so many times before that it was as natural as strapping on his armour or the weight of his hammer in his hand. He asked the Emperor and the spirit of Rogal Dorn to lend him strength and wisdom. And he prayed for his own strength, because a Space Marine had to rely on himself above all. His soul cleansed, his mind rigid with faith, he stood and turned to face his battle-brothers.
The First Company stood to attention in the cathedral hall. One hundred Imperial Fists. They wore the white-painted armour trim and Crux Terminatus of the First. One carried the company banner, depicting Rogal Dorn, hammer in hand, straddling a crumbling fortress wall as traitors burned beneath his feet. It was hung with hundreds of battle-honours.
Lysander’s breath misted in front of him as he spoke.
‘Our mission is extermination,’ he began. ‘There is no word that suffices save that. Our mission objective is the extinction of a species. The Vorel are an immediate threat to the settlements of the Eastern Fringe
and the only response the human race can make is to revoke their existence. I need not tell you of the hatred the alien must kindle in your hearts. You know full well the weight of the duty that carries you, as you carry it, unto death. You are men of the First Company and need no description of such.
‘What I will tell you is that for all that we live in an Imperium of a million worlds, for all our lives shall encompass but a speck of time in the ten thousand years of our history, missions such as this give us our chance to leave a mark on that history. The galaxy is vast, and even a Space Marine may feel his role in it is vanishingly small. But we shall leave that mark. The Vorel were, and when we finish, they will no longer be. No human will ever suffer their predations again. How few men can say that the galaxy has changed with their passing? We can, we men of the First and of the Imperial Fists. That is our blessing. That is the legacy of the Emperor and of Rogal Dorn, their gift to humanity. Give thanks as you bring humanity’s wrath to the Vorel. Praise their blessing as you anoint yourselves in xenos blood!’
The Imperial Fists of the First clapped their hands to their breastplates and cheered, a warrior’s salute. Lysander hefted his hammer, the Fist of Dorn, over his head, and the men raised their chainblades in response.
They had studied the Vorel during the two months they had travelled through the warp on the Shield of Valour. The Adeptus Mechanicus had speculated that the Vorel had evolved from the airborne predators of a prey-starved world and had come to dominate that world in a civilisation based on floating sky-fortresses and eyrie-cities. It was inevitable they would look to the sky for more meat to hunt, and inevitable that they would come into contact with humanity as their eyes settled on sovereign Imperial worlds.
It was inevitable they would be exterminated in response. The Space Marines would seal that fate. The Vorel, by one standard, were unfortunate. They dreamed of hunting the finest prey across infinite worlds, their civilisation coming to chase predators between the very stars – and yet they would be wiped out by the cruellest hammer blow from a species that hated anything not human. A Space Marine might comprehend such a point of view, but he had the mental discipline to set it aside and replace it in the forefront of his mind with the duty to wipe out the alien and preserve humanity’s rule over the galaxy.