Soul Drinkers 06 - Phalanx

by Ben Counter

  claimed, to oversee the trial of the Soul Drinkers, and they held their

  standards of the blinded eye aloft. They were hooded and robed and

  issued a low chant, dark syllables repeated in a terrible drone.

  N’Kalo was aware that he still wore his armour and his battered

  helm was back on his head. It made no sense for his captor to leave

  him armoured. He might not have a weapon in his hand, but a Space

  Marine in armour was still more dangerous than one without. It could

  help him when he broke out, and there was no doubt in his mind that

  he would. Whatever agenda Daenyathos had, and whether the Soul

  Drinkers were heretics or blameless, Daenyathos and Iktinos had

  revealed themselves to constitute a moral threat and N’Kalo had a duty

  to escape and bring them to justice.

  ‘You wear your thoughts on you as if they were written on your

  armour,’ said Daenyathos. ‘You desire escape. That is natural. A

  Space Marine is not created to be caged. And you desire revenge.

  You would call it duty or justice, but it is ultimately death you wish on

  me for orchestrating your defeat and capture. This, again, is natural. A

  Space Marine is a vengeful creature. But do you see now, helpless as

  you are, what a pitiful animal you truly are? Freedom and vengeance –

  what do these things mean, when compared to the matters that shape

  the galaxy? How much does your existence mean?’

  N’Kalo struggled again. His chains were set into the deck of the

  cargo hold. They were probably chains built into the deck to keep

  tanks from sliding around when the Phalanx was in flight. One Space

  Marine could not break them.

  ‘My duty is within myself,’ said N’Kalo. He knew he should have

  stayed silent, but something in Daenyathos’s words, in the way he

  seemed genuinely passionate in spite of the artificiality of his voice,

  compelled him to reply. ‘Though the galaxy may burn and humanity

  collapse, I must fulfil my duty regardless. And so I call myself a Space

  Marine.’

  ‘That is the response of a weak mind,’ said Daenyathos. The

  dreadnought’s body turned away to something off to the side, outside

  N’Kalo’s frame of vision. ‘You choose to ignore the matters that affect

  the galaxy, and shrink your mind down to one battle after another, one

  petty victory over some xenos or renegade, and tell yourself that such

  is the totality of your potential. I chose instead to abandon the duties

  that restrict me, and rise to become one of those very factors that

  mould the galaxy at their whim. It is a choice I made. Yours is a mind

  too small to make it. The Soul Drinkers were like you, and I had to

  make that choice for them. Were they wise enough to understand,

  they would have thanked me.’

  Daenyathos’s massive tank-like torso swivelled back to face N’Kalo.

  One of his arms was a missile launcher, while the other ended in a

  huge power fist. That fist was now encased in a gauntlet from which

  protruded several smaller implements – manipulator limbs, blades,

  needles, an assortment of attachments for finer control than the

  dreadnought’s power fist afforded.

  ‘What is this?’ said N’Kalo. ‘Why have you brought me here?’

  ‘That is a question I am willing to answer,’ said Daenyathos. ‘But not

  through words.’

  A circular saw emerged from among the implements. N’Kalo tensed,

  forcing against his bonds with every muscle he had. He felt joints

  parting and bones cracking, shots of pain running through him as his

  muscular power pushed beyond the limits of his skeleton.

  The chains did not move. Perhaps N’Kalo could break and twist his

  limbs until they could be slipped out of their bonds. Perhaps he could

  crawl away, steal a weapon from one of the cultists.

  The circular blade cut through N’Kalo’s breastplate. Sparks flew, and

  bright reflections glinted in the lenses set into Daenyathos’s armoured

  head.

  Daenyathos worked quickly, and with great precision. Soon the

  breastplate was lifted off in sections, smaller manipulator limbs picking

  apart the layers of ceramite until N’Kalo felt the recycled air of the

  Phalanx cold on his chest.

  The chanting changed to a terrible falling cadence, a piece of music

  about to end. N’Kalo felt the power charging in the air and saw a glow

  overhead, as if from a great heat against the ceiling of the cargo hold.

  Crackles of energy ran down the walls, earthing off the massive feet of

  Daenyathos’s dreadnought body.

  N’Kalo felt pain. He gasped in spite of himself, the impossibly cold

  touch of the saw blade running in a red line along his sternum.

  The ceiling of the cargo hold was lifting off, metallic sections peeling

  apart and fluttering into the void like dead leaves on the wind. The hull

  parted and the air gushed out. The pilgrims looked up at the rent in the

  side of the Phalanx, calm and joy on their faces even as the sudden

  pressure change made their eye sockets well up red with burst

  vessels. Hood were blown back by the swirling gale and, in spite of the

  pain, N’Kalo’s mind registered the face of a woman ecstatic as

  foaming blood ran from her lips. Another one of the pilgrims was their

  leader, impossibly ancient, and his dry and dusty body seemed to

  wither away as he raised his wizened head to the origin of the light

  that fell on him.

  The light was coming from Kravamesh, the star around which the

  Phalanx orbited. A burning orange glow filtered down through the

  debris swirling around the hull breach. The hull parted further, like an

  opening eye, and the last tides of air boomed out.

  The pilgrims were dying, each moment robbing another of

  consciousness. N’Kalo realised his armour had been left on so that he

  could still breathe while the cargo hold fell apart.

  The saw was withdrawn. Without air, the only sound was now

  vibrations through the floor. The faint whir of servos as a manipulator

  arm unfolded. The rattling breath N’Kalo drew through the systems of

  his armour as the cold hit the open wound in his chest.

  ‘Do you know,’ said Daenyathos, the sound of his voice transmitted

  as vibrations through his feet, ‘what you are to become?’

  N’Kalo gritted his teeth. He could see Kravamesh above him, its

  boiling fires, and though its fires looked down on him its light was

  appallingly cold.

  ‘The key,’ continued Daenyathos. The manipulators extended and

  hooked around N’Kalo’s ribs. N’Kalo yelled, the cry not making it past

  the insides of his own armour. ‘Dorn’s own blood is the only key that

  will fit the lock he built around Kravamesh. The Soul Drinkers do not

  have it, though it suited me for them to continue believing they did.

  You have it, Iron Knight. The blood of Dorn flows in your veins.’

  The manipulators forced at the edges of N’Kalo’s fused rib

  breastplate. The bones creaked. N’Kalo strained every muscle in his

  body, forcing against the pain as well as his restraints.

  He saw Rogal Dorn, his golden-armoured body kneeling at the

 
Emperor’s fallen form. He saw the Eye of Terror open, and the

  battlements of Earth burning. Some ancient memory, written into the

  genetic material on which his augmentations were based, bled in the

  final moments into his mind.

  N’Kalo felt the impossible pride and fury of Rogal Dorn. They filled

  him to bursting, too much emotion for a man, even a Space Marine, to

  contain. The Primarch was an impossible creature, in every aspect

  superior to a man, in every dimension vaster by far.

  N’Kalo could see Rogal Dorn at the Iron Cage, the vast fortifications

  manned by the soldiers of Chaos, the shadow of the entire Imperial

  Fists Chapter falling on it as Dorn orchestrated the assault.

  The last images were ghosted over the monstrous eye of Kravamesh

  opening wide, vast and unholy shapes emerging from its fires.

  Daenyathos punched the mass of his power fist into N’Kalo’s chest,

  splintering through the ribs. Daenyathos ripped the fist free and

  N’Kalo’s organs were sprayed across the cargo bay deck in the shape

  of bloody wings. The gore iced over in the cold of the void.

  Daenyathos’s massive form leaned back from N’Kalo. The pattern

  scorched into the deck glowed red as if it was drinking N’Kalo’s spilled

  blood. The glow was met by the burning orange light from above. The

  head of Daenyathos’s chassis looked up towards the tear in the hull

  as the fires of Kravamesh billowed suddenly close.

  From space it looked as if a bridge of fire was being built, reaching

  from the mass of Kravamesh towards the speck of the Phalanx.

  Shapes rippled along the bridge, tortured faces and twisted limbs,

  howling ghosts that split and reformed like liquid fire.

  The observation crews on the Phalanx saw it right away. Every

  sensor on the Imperial Fists fortress-ship screamed in response. But

  the Phalanx was embroiled in open warfare, its crew managing the

  chaos unfolding from its archives, and without the whole crew at their

  stations the huge and complex ship could not react in time.

  The tendril of fire touched the hull of the Phalanx. Daenyathos stood

  in the swirling mass of flame that incinerated the remains of N’Kalo

  and the pilgrims. From the flame emerged shapes – leaping, gibbering

  things, limbs and eyes that turned in on one another in an endless

  mockery of evolution. They danced madly around Daenyathos as if he

  was the master of their revel. Reality shuddered and tore as the

  insanity formed a huge circular gate in the centre of the cargo bay, the

  fire rippling around a glassy black pit that plunged through the

  substance of the universe and into a place far darker.

  Daenyathos stood before the warp portal. The fires of the warp

  washed around the feet of his dreadnought chassis, and the daemons

  slavered as they slunk through the flame. But Daenyathos did not

  falter. He had seen this moment a million times before. He had

  dreamed it over thousands of years in half-sleep under Selaaca.

  Vast mountains of filth and hatred shifted in the darkness beyond

  the portal. Tendrils of their sheer malice rippled through the substance

  of the cargo hold, blistering up the metal of the deck with spiny

  tentacled limbs. Blood-weeping eyes opened up in the walls. The

  daemon cavalcade shrieked higher and higher as one of the forms in

  the portal detached itself and drifted, half-formed, towards the opening.

  It coalesced as it approached, taking the shape of something at

  once beautiful and appalling. A vast and idealised human figure,

  glistening pale skin clad in flowing white silk, surrounded by a halo of

  raw magic. Torn minds flowed in its wake, ruptured spirits shredded

  into madness by the warp. A taloned hand grasped the flaming edge of

  the portal, hauling its vastness towards reality.

  The perfect, maddening shape of the head emerged. Its features

  looked like they were carved from pure marble, its eyes orbs of jade.

  The music of the warp accompanied it, a thousand choirs shorn of

  their bodies.

  ‘It is time,’ said Daenyathos. ‘The threads of the destiny meet here.’

  ‘Free!’ bellowed the daemon prince in its thousand voices.

  ‘Banishment, agony, all over! A vengeance… vengeance flows like

  blood from a wound! The wound I shall leave in the universe… the

  hatred that shall rise in a flood. Oh unriven souls, oh undreaming

  minds, you shall be laid to waste! Abraxes has returned!’

  Chapter 10

  Archmagos Voar was surrounded by a cordon of servitors as he

  hurried through the guest quarters towards the saviour pod array.

  Beyond the lavish guest rooms, he knew a shuttle could be found,

  normally used for diplomatic purposes but perfectly suitable for taking

  him off the Phalanx and onto one of the nearby ships – the

  Traitorsgrave, perhaps, on which Lord Inquisitor Kolgo had arrived, or a

  Space Marine ship like the Judgement Upon Garadan.

  Voar had betrayed the Soul Drinkers on Selaaca. None of his logic

  circuits entertained the concept that it might have been the wrong

  thing to do, either logically or morally. But that did not change the fact

  that the Soul Drinkers were loose and they might well want Voar, in

  particular, dead. The Phalanx was not safe for him.

  Voar’s motivator units, damaged on Selaaca, had been repaired well

  enough for him to make good speed through the nests of anterooms

  and state suites, winding around antique furnishings and artworks

  whose uselessness accentuated their sense of the lavish. The Imperial

  Fists were pragmatic in their dealings with the wider Imperium, willing

  to receive diplomats from the various Adepta in a fashion acceptable to

  the Imperium’s social elite. The servitors Voar had taken from the

  Phalanx’s stores wound around the resulting tables, chairs and light

  sculptures with rather more difficulty than Voar himself.

  Voar paused at the infra-red signature that flared against his vision.

  His sight, like most of the rest of him, had been significantly

  augmented to bring him away from corruptible flesh and closer to the

  machine-ideal. He had seen a heat trace, just past one of the

  archways leading into an audience chamber. Reclining couches and

  tables with gilt decorations, imported from some far-off world of

  craftsmen, stood before an ornate throne painted with enamelled

  scenes of plenty and wealth. Beneath the room’s chandeliers and

  incense-servitor perches, something had moved, something interested

  in keeping itself hidden for as long as possible.

  Voar drew the inferno pistol, another item liberated from the

  Phalanx’s armouries. The servitors, responding to the mind-impulse

  unit built into Voar’s cranium, formed a tighter cordon around him.

  Their weapons, autoguns linked to the targeting units that filled their

  eye sockets, tracked as Voar’s vision switched through spectrums. He

  saw warm traces of footprints on the floor, residual electrical energy

  dissipating.

  Chaplain Iktinos knew he had been seen. There was no use in trying

  to stay hidden when he was over two-and-a-half metres tall and in full

&n
bsp; armour. He walked out from behind the dignitary’s throne, crozius

  arcanum in hand.

  ‘You have failed, Soul Drinker,’ said Voar. There was no trace of fear

  in his voice, and not just because of its artificial nature. His emotional

  repressive surgery had chased such petty concerns like fear from his

  biological brain. ‘Your escape from the Phalanx is a logical

  impossibility. You gain nothing from exacting revenge against me.’

  ‘Logic is a lie,’ came the reply. ‘A prison for small minds. I am here

  for a purpose beyond revenge.’

  Voar waited no longer. Negotiations would not suffice. He dropped

  back behind an enormous four-poster bed of black hardwood as he

  gave the impulse for the servitors to open fire.

  Eight autoguns hammered out a curtain of fire. Iktinos ran into the

  storm, faceplate of his helmet tucked behind one shoulder guard as he

  charged. The armour was chewed away as if by accelerated decay,

  the skull-faced shoulder guard stripped down through ceramite layers,

  then down to the bundles of cables and nerve fibres that controlled it.

  Iktinos slammed into the servitors. One was crushed under his

  weight, its reinforced spine snapping and its gun wrenched out of

  position to spray bullets uselessly into the frescoed ceiling. The

  crozius slashed through another two, their unarmoured forms coming

  apart under the shock of the power field, mechanical and once-human

  parts showering against the walls in a wet steel rain.

  Voar ducked out of cover as Iktinos beheaded the last servitor with

  his free hand. Voar took aim and fired, a lance of superheated energy

  lashing out and slicing a chunk out of the chaplain’s crozius arm.

  Voar’s mind slowed down, logic circuits engaging to examine the

  tactical possibilities faster than unaugmented thought. He had to keep

  his distance since, up close, Iktinos was lethal, while Voar’s inferno

  pistol was the only weapon he had that could hope to fell a Space

  Marine. The targeting systems built into his eyes would make sure

  that his second shot would not miss. As long as he saw Iktinos before

  the fallen Chaplain could kill him, Voar would get one good shot off.

  The plan fell into place, paths and vectors illuminating in blue-white

  lines layered over his vision.

  Voar jumped out of cover, his motivator units sending him drifting