by Mike Lee
'Well, I…' Hadziel began, then took one look at the Astartes and thought better of his protest. 'I mean, I'll send the word out immediately.'
Luther nodded curtly. 'Very good, colonel.' He paused for a moment, studying the display carefully for a moment. 'At this point, I want you to focus your efforts on holding the checkpoints at level fifteen and to continue evacuating civilians out of the hab levels as quickly and efficiently as possible. My warriors will form into strike forces and will pass through these checkpoints—' He indicated seven strategic locations across level fifteen '—and will advance into the contested areas towards the arcology's power plants and life support centres.'
Hadziel frowned. 'My lord, we have no clear estimates on the number of infected individuals on the lower levels, but it certainly reaches into the hundreds, possibly thousands. They will be drawn to your warriors like blood moths to a wounded deer.'
Luther nodded in agreement. 'That's the idea, colonel. My brothers will deal with the corpses and take the pressure off your troops. Once you've completed relocating the civilian population you'll be able to commit your forces to securing the arcology's lower levels. I want you to assign a liaison officer to each of my teams and ensure that their path through the checkpoints is cleared. That's all for now, gentlemen. We'll speak again once order is restored.'
Hadziel nodded and began issuing instructions to his staff officers, who immediately began to draft the necessary orders. Luther turned away from the Jaegers and motioned for Zahariel, Attias and Lord Cypher to join him several paces away.
'Any word from the rebels still inside the arcology?' he quietly asked Zahariel.
The Librarian shook his head. 'They're having no better luck with their vox-units than we are,' he replied. 'There's no way to know if they've found the sorcerers or not.'
Luther nodded. 'Do you believe Colonel Hadziel's estimate of the number of corpses in the lower levels?'
Zahariel shook his head grimly. 'Not in the least. They must number in the thousands, possibly the tens of thousands.'
'An army of the dead,' Brother Attias said in his hollow, synthetic voice. 'But to what purpose?'
'Fuel for the fire,' Luther said, half to himself. 'The sorcerers are using the violence and bloodshed to weaken the barrier between the physical world and the warp and facilitate their master ritual.' He cast a meaningful glance at Lord Cypher, who nodded.
Zahariel scowled at the secret exchange, wondering what secrets Luther had uncovered from the forbidden library. 'Then we have to find a way to strike directly at the sorcerers and their ritual,' he declared.
'If we can locate them in time,' Luther said grimly. 'The ritual must be close to completion at this point.'
'Zahariel can lead us there,' Cypher said. His hooded head swivelled to regard the Librarian. 'You can sense the turbulence in the warp generated by the ritual, can you not?'
'I…' Zahariel paused, glancing from Lord Cypher to Luther. The Master of Caliban was staring at him expectantly. Was he being manoeuvred into something? Israfael's stricken face hovered before his mind's eye like a ghost. He shook his head, as though to clear it. 'That is, yes, I can, but that kind of prolonged exposure to warp energy is not without risk.'
Luther grinned wryly. 'Brother, believe me when I tell you that if we don't stop this ritual we're all going to be exposed to more warp energy than is really healthy.'
A strange, wheezing note blurted from Attias's vox grille. Zahariel turned to stare at the skull-faced Astartes. The sound continued, and it took the Librarian a few moments to realise that Attias was laughing. Cypher started to chuckle, and then Zahariel couldn't help but join in as well, dispelling the tension of the moment.
'Well, brother?' Luther prompted.
Zahariel bowed his head. 'Give me a moment to centre myself,' he said, clenching the force staff tightly and focusing his awareness through his armour's psychic hood.
At once he felt the churning maelstrom of the warp whirling about him. Its energy licked at him like tongues of flame, trying to find purchase in his soul. Jagged slivers of ice dug painfully into the back of his skull as the hood tried to shield him from the storm.
The whirlwind spun about him, drawing him downward towards its locus like a gaping maw. Something lay at its centre, he sensed; a seed of darkness, hungry and impatient for release.
Zahariel staggered slightly at the vertiginous pull of the ritual, holding himself apart from it by sheer effort of will. 'I can feel it,' he gasped. 'The sorcerers are trying to open a path for something to come through. Like Sarosh, only… worse, somehow.'
'Can you lead us to them?' Luther said.
Zahariel concentrated on the vortex, following its currents with his mind. The biting cold in his head increased. Frost spread along the force staff's metal shaft. 'The locus is deep within the earth,' he said with a grimace. 'I'll be able to refine its position more precisely as we go.'
'Excellent,' Luther said. 'We'll have Hadziel unlock a bank of maintenance lifts that will take us directly to the lowest sub-level, then fight our way to the locus from there.'
The Master of Caliban spun on his heel, snapping orders to Colonel Hadziel and to the other three squad leaders waiting at the landing pad. With an effort, Zahariel tried to re-orient himself in the physical world once more. The transition was much more difficult than he expected; even with the buffer provided by the psychic hood, the energies of the maelstrom still plucked at him, as though it had sunk barbs deep into his soul. He felt strangely numbed, unmoored within his own skin, and he knew that the grip of the storm would only grow stronger the closer he came to the centre of the ritual.
He blinked, trying to clear his eyes, and found Lord Cypher studying him speculatively. Before Zahariel could ask what he was staring at, the enigmatic Astartes abruptly turned away.
They descended into darkness, lit only by feeble red emergency lighting inside the maintenance lift's metal cage. Hadziel had authorised the activation of a bank of four lifts that would allow Luther's four assault squads to deploy together, concentrating their strength against whatever foes awaited them. Based on their experience at Sigma Five-One-Seven, Zahariel had advised choosing the set of lifts in the closest proximity to the arcology's main thermal core.
The strength of the maelstrom increased steadily the deeper they went, until Zahariel scarcely had to focus his awareness in order to sense it. The unnatural energies sank effortlessly through his armour and pulsed sickeningly against his skin. Frost coated the housing of his psychic hood and sent needles of icy feedback into his brain. The storm winds tugged ruthlessly at him, tearing at his mind and soul with increasing vigour.
Finally the lift jerked roughly to a halt, two hundred metres below the earth. They'd reached the lowest sub-level of the arcology. Luther gave a nod to the Astartes manning the controls, and the lift doors clattered open, revealing a broad, low-ceilinged chamber formed of fused permacrete. The air was stiflingly humid and thick with the stench of corruption.
Here, as with the lower levels at Sigma Five-One-Seven, the earth had already begun to reclaim the space. Glossy greenish-black vines sprouted from cracks in the walls and along the floor, and a dripping, greenish mould covered much of the ceiling. Inserts chittered and squirmed through the tainted growth, or droned through the thick air on blurring wings. Sickly blue luminescence radiated from colonies of fungus that sprouted in haphazard clusters overhead, providing ample light to the Astartes' enhanced night vision.
The Dark Angel squads deployed swiftly from the adjoining lifts. Three assault squads took the lead, forming a protective arc in front of Luther and the command squad, and orienting their weapons on the three entryways on the opposite side of the chamber. Two men in each of the assault squads carried a hand flamer, while two of the veterans in Luther's command squad were armed with powerful, short range meltaguns. The rest carried roaring chainswords and blunt-nosed bolt pistols, ideal for the kind of close-quarters fighting they expected to encounter. Th
ey were forty strong, a fearsome display of force. Entire worlds had been brought into compliance with less.
Luther led the command squad into the chamber. His huge sword Nightfall burned a fierce blue in his right hand, and his ornate bolt pistol gleamed dully in his left. Zahariel stood next to him, clutching his force staff with both hands, while Brother Attias and Lord Cypher brought up the rear. Cypher held his plasma pistol ready in his right hand. The leather-bound grimoire was clutched tightly against his chest.
The Master of Caliban leaned close to Zahariel. 'Can you sense the ritual in process?' he asked quietly.
Gritting his teeth, Zahariel focused his awareness through the psychic hood. The dampener was already straining at the limit of its abilities; he could smell the strange mix of overheated circuitry and frozen metal. This close, he could sense rhythms pulsing through the howling psychic wind, like discordant notes struck by a madman's hand. The vibrations represented the symbolic chants that coaxed the energies of the warp into the physical realm.
'The ritual is well advanced,' the Librarian said, suppressing a groan of disgust. 'It could reach its climax at any time. We have to hurry!'
Luther nodded. His dark eyes shone with fevered intensity. 'Listen, Zahariel. When we reach the ritual site, I want you to keep close to me. We have to confront this entity, together. I have the knowledge, but I lack the ability to manipulate the forces of the warp.'
Zahariel shook his head. 'Confront it? You mean drive it back.'
'No,' Luther said. 'At least, not yet.' He turned and nodded at the grimoire that Cypher carried. 'That book contains the means to subjugate the spirit, bend it to our will. If we can reach it at the right moment, while it's still weak.'
'You can't be serious!' Zahariel cried. 'What you're talking about is madness! The Emperor—'
Luther stepped close, until he was nearly whispering in Zahariel's ear. 'Yes. The Emperor has forbidden this. Why? Because he fears the beings of the warp. That's something we must learn to exploit, if Caliban is to remain free.' He looked deeply into Zahariel's eyes. 'Do you trust me, brother?'
Zahariel found himself nodding, despite the misgivings in his heart. 'Yes. Of course.'
'Then help me. It's the only way.'
Without waiting to hear Zahariel's reply, Luther turned and waved the assault squads towards the rightmost of the three large openings on the other side of the landing. So far, the path to the ritual site seemed to lead to the arcology's primary thermal core, just as it had at Sigma Five-One-Seven. With a pair of flamer-wielding Astartes in the lead, the first assault squad advanced into the broad, vine-choked passageway. Luther's command squad was third in line, with the last assault squad covering the rear.
The corpses came at them from three sides. A few hundred metres down the passageway, it was bisected by another pair of wide corridors. The enemy, showing a rudimentary grasp of tactics, allowed the first and second squads to pass this junction before triggering their ambush. With scarcely a sound, hundreds of rotting corpses shambled out of the darkness, attacking the head of the advancing strike force and trying to drive into its midst from either side.
Flamers hissed, filling the passageways with streams of searing promethium. Bolt pistols barked on every side, felling the advancing creatures with well-placed shots to the head. The Astartes continued to fire even as the corpses surrounded them, drawing into arm's reach and trying to drag down the armoured warriors by sheer weight of numbers. Chainswords roared and slashed, severing limbs and splitting torsos.
The Dark Angels stood shoulder to shoulder in the confined space, never yielding a centimetre to the unearthly horde. At the centre of the formation, standing at the junction of the passageways, Luther roared encouragement to his warriors and put down one corpse after another with his pistol. Zahariel and Attias joined in with their own pistols, adding to the whirlwind of steel that took a fearful toll of the enemy.
For several long minutes the battle raged against the walking dead. The corpses pressed harder and harder against the Astartes - and then, inevitably, the pressure began to wane. The strike force, sensing that they had absorbed the brunt of the attack, began to press further down the passageway. Flamers continued to hiss and spit, until the walls of the passage shimmered with heat and the air grew thick with smoke and the stench of burnt meat.
Zahariel followed Luther through a waking nightmare. They advanced in the wake of the lead assault squads, moving down a tunnel of burning vines and shredded bodies. The slaughter was incredible; within only a hundred metres the Librarian found himself walking on a literal carpet of broken bodies. In places his boots sank into piles of blood and bone that rose nearly to his knees.
The Astartes drove inexorably forward, grinding the enemy beneath their heel. Then, without warning, the passageway widened into a huge chamber that crackled with unnatural energies. They had reached the thermal core.
Blasting their way through a faltering rear guard of corpses, the first and second assault squads broke through into the chamber far enough to make room for Luther's command squad. Then they halted, weapons ready, waiting for word from their commander.
Luther and Zahariel emerged into the cavernous room with the rest of the command squad close behind. Ahead, arcs of violet lightning leapt from the monolithic bulk of the thermal core and etched looping scars across the permacrete floor. The air stank of ozone and the sickly-sweet reek of decaying flesh; it rippled invisibly against the skin, churned by unnatural energies that radiated from the vast ritual circle at the centre of the space.
A half-dozen queen worms were curled about the outside of the circle, their segmented bodies writhing frenetically in response to the building intensity of the ritual. Their mandibles clashed and their multiple eyes glowed with a power of their own as they drove thousands of corpses against the arcology's hard-pressed defenders.
Just beyond the worms, standing at precisely-determined points along the perimeter of the ritual circle, stood the sorcerers. The Terrans were clad in torn and stained robes that had been painted in arcane sigils that shone with a strange, pellucid light. Zahariel saw that their skin was waxy and mottled in shades of black and grey, as though they were little more than corpses themselves. Their heads turned fearfully at the arrival of the Astartes, but their leader, a towering figure with his back to the Dark Angels, rallied them with clenched fists and shrieked curses until they resumed their efforts.
At the centre of the circle, Zahariel could just make out massive coils of scaly hide, larger by far than the queen worm that had nearly slain him and his squad at Sigma Five-One-Seven.
Zahariel felt a surge of power in the great chamber that seemed to rise up from deep within the earth. Black vapours, reeking of sulphur and rot, rose in a flood from the deep pit where the thermal core was set. The ritual was reaching its culmination.
'We're nearly out of time!' he cried out.
Luther heard and nodded grimly. He raised his glowing sword. 'For Caliban, brothers!' he cried, his voice echoing like a trumpet call over the cacophony of the ritual chamber.
'For Caliban!' the Astartes answered. 'For Luther!' As one, they charged forward.
The queen worms outside the circle reacted at once, whipping about and screeching their fury, but they were caught in a veritable storm of bolt pistol fire, searing flame, and the fearsome blasts of meltaguns. Mass-reactive rounds punched through thick layers of scale and detonated in the soft flesh beneath, blasting gory craters in the worms' flanks. Two of the creatures thrashed and hissed, bathed in streams of fiery promethium. A third blew apart as a pair of meltagun shots struck in at the head and midsection, showering the rest with splashes of steaming ichor.
Yet despite their terrible wounds, the surviving worm queens fought on. Two of the creatures focused on Luther, their mandibles clashing as they lunged at the knight from the left and right. Zahariel saw it unfold, and thought of Brother Gideon, his body shorn in half by a worm's scissor-like bite.
But Luther w
as a born warrior, a man who had been fighting the monsters of Caliban all his life. As the monsters lunged, he ducked low and to the left, bringing up his power sword as the worm's leap carried it just past his right shoulder. Nightfall pierced the side of the worm's head, just behind the mandible, and like a claw it tore a burning gash more than halfway along the worm queen's length. The second worm found its attack blocked by the first creature's lunge, causing it to check its thrust and slide, snapping, over the mortally-wounded queen's back. Luther saw it coming and put out one of its eyes with an explosive bolt from his pistol. A plasma shot from Lord Cypher struck the opposite side of the queen's skull a moment later, leaving a glowing crater gouged into the bone and boiling its brains in the blink of an eye.
Brother Attias fell upon the mortally-wounded queen and began to saw its head off with his roaring chainsword. To Zahariel's left, a burning worm leapt into the midst of one of the attack squads, flattening them beneath its bulk and madly snapping at armoured limbs and torsos. Another worm, streaming ichor from scores of bolt-pistol wounds, snatched up a Dark Angel in its mandibles and lifted him high, crushing his armour plates like paper. The Librarian watched the warrior slap a krak grenade right between the monster's eyes, and both he and the worm's head disappeared in an angry yellow flash.
Zahariel ignored the surviving worms, heading instead for the ritual circle and the madly chanting Terrans. The power of the ritual trembled in the air; he could feel it against his skin like a searing brand. A bridge was being formed, linking the physical world with the seething madness of the warp. He knew all too well what would happen next.
He struck the sorcerer's ward a moment later, just outside the first lines of the summoning circle. It felt as though he'd run right into a solid wall of lightning. Agony tore along his nerves; warning telltales flashed in his vision as the neural feedback began to overload his synaptic receptors. Had it not been for the dampening power of his psychic hood, the shock would likely have killed him outright.