by Ben Counter
Brother Kalchis’s chainsword off the ground and swung it as Sarpedon
came crashing towards him.
Sarpedon span on a front leg, out of the reach of the chainblade. He
swung in low, axe hacking down at Nephael’s leg. Nephael didn’t have
the speed of Sarpedon, and he didn’t have the strength. The axe
caught Nephael below the knee and flung him head over heels.
Sarpedon charged into Nephael as he fell, slamming the Flock
member into the ground.
Sarpedon rolled Nephael over so he was face up, Sarpedon’s weight
on the Soul Drinker’s chest. He ripped the chainsword from Nephael’s
hand and threw it aside.
Sarpedon tore Nephael’s helmet off. The face revealed was more
youthful than most Soul Drinkers, the hair cropped close and the eyes
set into bruised slits.
‘Where is Iktinos?’ demanded Sarpedon.
‘He is the future,’ spat back Nephael.
‘Where is Iktinos?’ shouted Sarpedon, slamming the back of
Nephael’s head into the ground to punctuate each word.
‘Go to Terra,’ said Nephael, ‘when our work is complete. You will
find him kneeling at the foot of the Golden Throne.’
Nephael wrenched an arm free and drew his combat knife. Before he
could drive it upwards Sarpedon had slithered off him and buried the
Axe of Mercaeno in the Soul Drinker’s head, cleaving it in half down to
the floor.
Sarpedon got back to his feet. Around him, the mock village was
strewn with bodies and blood. He had killed them all.
The members of Iktinos’s Flock who had ambushed him and Salk
had fallen either to Squad Salk’s guns or to Sarpedon himself. He had
dived among them, these Space Marines who had once sworn to
follow him to extinction, and he had cut them to pieces. Cracked
skulls spilled red-black pools across the flakboard floor. Limbs torn off
lay orphaned from their owners, who in turn lay where Sarpedon had
speared them with talons or carved them open with the Axe of
Mercaeno. Nephael had been the last of them alive but they had all
been men that Sarpedon recognised.
That was not mere blood spattered up against the false chapel and
ruins. It was the blood of Space Marine. It was the blood of brothers.
Sarpedon forced his pulse and breathing to slow. It had felt good, he
was ashamed to realise, to finally come to grips with the enemy that
had manipulated his Chapter towards execution. In the middle of the
fight, he had felt a certainty that could only be born of the sure
knowledge that the man facing you would kill you if you did not kill him
first. Now, he was surrounded by dead brothers, and the doubts came
back. He swallowed them down, demanded that he become calm.
Reinez had fled. The Crimson Fist could not be seen among the
ruins. Sarpedon could not see any movement among Salk’s positions,
either. Sarpedon ran to the ruin in which Salk had taken shelter, its
flakboard now chewed up and splintered by bolter fire.
Salk lay on his back in a ruin of torn flakboard. Bolter impacts had
broken through the ceramite of his chest and abdomen. He turned his
head weakly, and Sarpedon saw that one side of his face was a pulpy
ruin, shattered bone poking through a mass of blood that had already
coagulated to a crystalline rind.
‘Brother,’ said Sarpedon. ‘Speak to me. Tell me that Salk has not
fallen.’
‘Forgive me,’ sputtered Salk. ‘Failure is my sin.’
‘No, Salk. None has been more steadfast than you. There is no
failure.’
‘Then this is certainly not victory. I had not thought it would be so
bleak. I thought there would be some… heroism.’
Sarpedon leaned down close to Salk, unsure if the sergeant’s
drifting eyes were able to focus on him at all. ‘I will kill Iktinos.’
‘I know you will. Not for me, Commander. Do what has to be done.
For everyone.’
Sarpedon tried to pick up Salk, thinking perhaps he could get the
fallen sergeant back to the archives where the other Soul Drinkers
could tend to him. But he felt Salk getting lighter in his arms, as if the
life was evaporating from him and leaving an empty body behind.
Sarpedon saw the light going out in Salk’s eyes, something
impossible to describe changing with infinite subtlety as the Soul
Drinker, his friend, turned into just another body.
Sarpedon held Salk for a long moment. Some primitive emotion in
the back of his head begged the Emperor to breathe life back into
Salk. Salk had been as solid a squad leader as Sarpedon had ever
commanded, before or after the First Chapter War. He had earned his
laurels on Stratix Luminae and thereafter proved an unsung and
dependable lynchpin of the Soul Drinkers’ most desperate moments.
Now, Salk was gone. That was the calibre of man Iktinos and
Daenyathos were running down in their charge towards whatever mad
future they had concocted.
Sarpedon placed Salk on the ground, and murmured an old prayer. It
called upon the Emperor and anyone who served him to shepherd the
fallen towards the End Times, to make sure his wargear was waiting
for him when he lined up alongside the Emperor for the battle at the
end of existence. The fake battleground was a poor burial place for
anyone, let alone a Space Marine, but for Salk and the brethren of his
squad it would have to do for now. Perhaps the Imperial Fists would
give them a basic funeral, dying as they did fighting a mutual enemy.
Sarpedon looked behind him, to the bodies of the fallen Flock. The
fact that they had been sent to ambush the Soul Drinkers at all meant
Sarpedon was getting close. The Flock meant Iktinos, and Iktinos
meant some measure of revenge.
Revenge. That was all Sarpedon had left now to fight for. But
everything a Space Marine did was for revenge, and for Sarpedon, as
he picked up the Axe of Mercaeno and headed towards the far side of
the training deck, it was just enough.
Castellan Leucrontas jumped from cover and led the counter-charge.
It was an insane move against the insane enemy advancing on the
Rynn’s World Memorial. A mad show of bravado, a hand played
against an enemy where such crazed fury was the only way to shock
them and drive them back.
Leucrontas was followed by more than fifty Imperial Fists of the
Ninth Company. They vaulted over the carved stone tableaux of battle
scenes from Rynn’s World, ducking at a run past the slabs inscribed
with the names of the lost. They were framed by the sweeping wings of
the stone amphitheatre, as if the battle was a grand stage play and
this was the climactic scene.
The daemons surged forwards. A titanic being of rotting flesh, its
body a vast bloated sac bulging with torn veins and maggoty slabs of
muscle, was hauled forwards by their front ranks. It chortled and
moaned as if the whole thing was an enormous joke that only it could
understand, a mix of the idiotic and cunning on its wide lolling face.
Hundreds of daemons pushed it from behind and a hundred more
pulled
it forwards on rusted chains embedded in its flesh.
‘I will not wait for the enemy to do as he will!’ yelled Leucrontas as
he ran, his storm bolter out ready to fire. ‘If he is eager for our blood,
let us onwards and drown him in it!’
Leucrontas opened fire. Fifty bolters echoed him, full-auto fire
burning through magazines. The front rank of the daemons
disappeared in a mass of foul torn flesh, torsos bursting like bags of
blood and maggots, broken corpses trampled underfoot. A tide of
black corrupted blood washed forwards around the Imperial Fists’ feet
and flies descended, a black haze of them swirling as if controlled by a
single ravenous mind.
The daemons were all about Leucrontas now. His storm bolter
rattled in his hand, twin barrels glowing blue-hot, until the hammer fell
on an empty chamber. Leucrontas dived into the torn mass of flesh
around him, combat knife in one hand, bolt pistol in another, laying
about him with chop and thrust even as he picked out leering one-eyed
heads and put a bolter round into each he saw.
A rusted chain fell to the ground, dropped by the daemons hit by
Leucrontas’s assault. The daemons fought to surround the castellan
and he resembled nothing so much as a walking fortification standing
against a sea of hungry foes, the crenellations of his armour holding off
blades of corroded iron and lashing, filthy claws.
The Imperial Fists saved him. Charging on in his wake, they forced
the daemons back. Some, with chainswords and combat shields,
fought the ugliest sort of battle imaginable, hacking away at the
daemonic mass and trusting in their wargear to protect them. Others
formed a cordon to keep the daemons sweeping around and cutting off
Leucrontas, kneeling to fire disciplined execution squad volleys into
the press of enemies.
The greater daemon loomed overhead. Its bloated shadow fell over
Leucrontas. The daemons were no longer hauling it forward and its
faces creased in frustration. It reached futilely towards the Imperial
Fists, flabby claws flapping at nothing. It forced a stumpy leg forwards
as it began to propel its own enormous bulk towards the enemy.
It thundered forwards a step. It smiled now, eager to get to grips with
the yellow-armoured figures embedded in the melee below.
Among the steps of the amphitheatre and the monumental
sculptures, the rest of the Ninth appeared. Armed with the company’s
heavy weapons, they picked out their targets under the orders of their
sergeants who acted as spotters. They pointed out the slavering
beasts being goaded towards the front line, the gibbering daemons
bearing icons of the warp on their standards. But most of all they
pointed out the greater daemon, the monster shambling one step at a
time towards the castellan.
Lascannons and heavy bolters opened fire. The memorial’s grey
stone was painted crimson by the pulses of las-fire. Massive-calibre
fire hammered into corrupted flesh, and liquefied muscle and entrails
flowed so thickly they were a viscous tide flooding around the legs of
the battling Adeptus Astartes.
The greater daemon was battered by the weight of the fire. Its skin
tore and split, and loops of intestines slithered out in a crimson-black
mass. Tiny gibbering creatures spilled from its wounds, gambolling
through the battle lines in their new-found freedom. Its lips parted and
it bellowed, face creasing in pain, tiny red eyes narrowing further. Its
vast throat yawed open, a red wet pit lined with teeth and inhabited by
a long, thick tongue that lashed as if it was its own ravenous creature.
‘Now,’ yelled Leucrontas. ‘Onwards! Onwards!’
The greater daemon leaned forwards into the fire. Even as the flesh
of its face was stripped away by heavy bolter blasts, it smiled at the
yellow-armoured figure battling towards it. It reached down with a
flabby arm, fingers spread to snatch up Leucrontas.
Leucrontas saw it coming. He rattled off half the magazine of his bolt
pistol blasting off the greater daemon’s thumb. The hand crashed down
onto him and his combat knife sliced through tendons. Another finger,
as long as a Space Marine was tall, fell useless.
The remnants of the hand closed around the castellan. Leucrontas
fought to push the fingers apart, but the greater daemon was stronger,
and it was hungry.
Leucrontas fought on as he was picked up off the ground. Imperial
Fists dived in around the greater daemon’s feet, hacking at its ankles
to bring it down or carving into its titanic belly to cripple it. The greater
daemon seemed not to notice them at all.
‘Hello, little one,’ the daemon said as it raised Leucrontas to its
face. Its voice was a terrible rumble, the gurgling of its corrupted lungs
as deep as an earthquake. ‘What a blessed day is this, my
grandchildren! I have found a new plaything!’
Leucrontas’s reply was lost in the hungry howl that roared from the
greater daemon as its jaws opened wide. The daemon dropped
Leucrontas down its throat and swallowed with an awful wet sucking
sound, like something vast being yanked out of a pool of sucking mud.
The daemon laughed, a deep, guttural sound that shook the stones of
the Rynn’s World memorial.
The Imperial Fists line bowed as the daemons surged forwards once
more. Chainblades rose and fell, barely breaking the surface of the
fleshy tide surrounding them, and the guns hammered an endless
stream of shells and las-blasts into an equally unending mass of
enemies. The greater daemon reached down and parted the daemonic
sea in front of it, revealing a knot of Imperial Fists fighting back to
back, covered in gore.
The greater daemon leered down at them, took in a great ragged
breath, and regurgitated a torrent of bilious filth onto them. The
crushed and dissolved remains of Leucrontas crashed over them, the
acidic torrent flooding through the seals of their armour and digesting
them even as they scrambled to get out of the foul sticky mass.
‘Fall back,’ came an order from one of the heavy weapons squads’
sergeants, taking up command in the wake of Leucrontas’s death. ‘We
cannot hold.’
In the face of the appalling sight of the greater daemon’s assault,
even Space Marines could do little but retreat and retain what order
they could, forcing the daemon army to pay for the ground they took
with volleys of bolter fire.
The message that reached Chapter Master Vladimir was fragmented
and rushed, but its meaning was clear. The Rynn’s World Memorial
had been lost. The first victory in the Battle of the Phalanx had gone to
the Enemy.
The echoes of the battle reached through the Phalanx. It was not mere
sound, although the explosions of heavy weapons fire and the thunder
of the daemons’ advance shuddered for many decks around. It was a
psychic echo, a cacophony of screaming and cackling that wormed
into the back of the skull and rattled around as if trying to find a way
out.
Abrax
es, it cried. I am Abraxes.
The echo shuddered through the mess halls near the archive, where
a rearguard of Imperial Fists and the surviving Iron Knights formed a
cordon to keep the Soul Drinkers penned into the ruined library.
Sergeant Prexus of the Imperial Fists had to keep the itch for battle in
check, for among the Adeptus Astartes under his command he knew
there burned the urge to get into the fight unfolding elsewhere.
‘Sergeant,’ came a vox from one of the battle-brothers keeping
watch over the expanse of the mess hall. ‘I hear movement, beyond
the doors. I think they are advancing.’
‘To arms, brothers,’ ordered Prexus. In a moment the Imperial Fists
and Iron Knights were behind barricades of upturned furniture or
crouched in the cover of doorways, bolters trained towards the double
doors, chained shut, through which the Howling Griffons had advanced
into the library just an hour ago.
The doors banged on their hinges, chains shuddering. A second
blow wrenched one door away completely and a single Soul Drinker
stepped through. He went bare-headed, his hair shaved into a single
black strip along his scalp, his hands encased in lightning claws. But
the power fields of the claws were not activated and the Soul Drinker
was alone.
Prexus held up a hand, belaying any order to open fire.
‘I am Captain Luko of the Soul Drinkers,’ said the newcomer.
‘I know who you are,’ replied Prexus. ‘Are you here to surrender?’
‘No,’ said Luko. ‘I am here to kill Abraxes.’
Imperial Fists trigger fingers tightened. ‘Explain yourself,’ said
Prexus.
‘Abraxes is the leader of the force that assails you. You know it and
I know it. I have been in its unclean presence before, at the Battle of
the Brokenback when Sarpedon banished it to the warp. Now it has
returned when we are at our weakest to have its revenge, and kill as
many Imperial Fists as it can into the bargain. We have heard your
vox-traffic and seen the pict-feeds. We know that Abraxes has brought
a daemonic legion onto the Phalanx and we want to fight it.’
‘I have my orders,’ replied Prexus. ‘You will go nowhere.’
‘Then we will go through you,’ said Luko. ‘I see you have perhaps
forty Space Marines. I have a few more, but you are no doubt better
equipped and you have no wounded among you. Do you think you can