Soul Drinkers 06 - Phalanx

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