The Slaughterman beckoned with an encrusted gauntlet.
Leonid raised Vaanes’s pistol and said, ‘I don’t think so. Just stop this thing and I won’t kill you.’
The Slaughterman laughed, and shook his head as he advanced towards Leonid. ‘You kill me? No, you are meat, nothing more. We will talk no more and you will die.’
Leonid fired the pistol, the bolt striking the Slaughterman square in the chest. Sparks flew and a frothing gruel of fluid and matter dribbled down his filthy apron. The giant snarled, his blackened features twisted in rage.
‘You shot me,’ he said. ‘I cut you to death slowly now. Cut your flesh screaming into morsels that I will feed you. I will feed you your feet, your legs and then your arms. And then I will give you to the Omphalos Daemonium and you will know true pain.’
Leonid fired again, but this time the bolt was smashed aside by the Slaughterman’s billhook.
With a roar, the Slaughterman charged, his giant blade sweeping down to cleave Leonid in two. Leonid ducked and rolled aside, the billhook scraping a flaring gouge in the floor.
Ellard ran behind the Slaughterman, desperately searching for a weapon, as Leonid stood and fired again. The bullets went wide, smacking wetly into the hanging torsos and blowing them apart from the inside.
‘No!’ shouted the Slaughterman. ‘Not the deadflesh. Bad flesh must stop. Needs to be chopped quick.’
The giant Iron Warrior turned as Leonid backed into the swaying cadavers, firing into the butcher’s rack of meat, ripping them from their hooks in a hail of bullets.
The Slaughterman wailed and roared, his billhook slashing a path through the meat towards his prey. Leonid kept the trigger pulled until the hammer slammed down on an empty chamber. Bloody hooks swung and jangled before him, scraps of meat still sliding down the dark metal. One hook slid to the floor, a looping pile of chains rattling down from the winch above. As the Slaughterman pushed the last cadaver aside and stood face to face with Leonid, he saw Ellard standing beside the levers that controlled the chain pulley mechanism. The firebox seethed in hunger behind the Slaughterman.
Leonid reached down and grabbed the hook, holding it before him like a weapon.
‘Bad flesh, you. No reverence for you now. Chop, chop, chop. Deadflesh.’
The Slaughterman leaned down, and Leonid could finally see his face beneath the conical, horned helmet. Vacant and puffy, his features were curiously child-like, with a rotten-toothed grin and rheumy eyes that spoke of an unthinking cruelty.
One meaty gauntlet reached down, scooping up Leonid before he could dodge aside and lifting him from the ground. He grunted in pain as the giant lifted him up.
‘Bad flesh,’ said the Slaughterman. ‘Won’t even wet my blade with you. Just bite you into pieces.’
The Slaughterman’s jaws cracked as they opened, stretching and swelling as if to swallow him whole. Foetid breath, reeking of decomposing matter, wafted from the depths and Leonid gagged, kicking at the Slaughterman’s gut in desperation.
As the Slaughterman’s jaws reached down towards him, Leonid swung the butcher’s hook upwards in a vicious arc.
Bone splintered as the iron point punched through the giant’s jawbone before exploding through his eye-socket.
Leonid fell to the floor as the Slaughterman howled in pain, the chain attached to the end of the hook pulling taut as Ellard frantically cranked the winch. The Slaughterman dropped his weapon and scrabbled at the barb, black blood spraying from the wound as he sought to pull some slack in the chain.
But Ellard was having none of it, reeling the Slaughterman in, winching the chain screechingly along its rails and dragging the wounded giant towards the firebox. His howls were piteous, but Leonid had no sympathy for the monstrous cannibal.
Daemonic flames leapt from the firebox, blazing claws slashing at the Slaughterman’s back. He screamed, fighting to get clear, but the tormented daemon had him and was not about to release its grip. Incandescent flames enveloped the Slaughterman and he was dragged into the inferno of the daemonic firebox. Soon he was lost to sight and the heavy iron door slammed shut behind him as the maniacal daemon within wreaked its terrible vengeance on its captor.
No sooner had the firebox’s door shut than the vast bone-pistons slowed and the hissing machineries released scalding bursts of steam. The orange glow that pervaded the engine room faded and the impossible geometries of the chamber began returning to those dimensions that did not baffle the senses.
Leonid dropped to his knees, exhausted beyond words as the horror of the past few days threatened to overwhelm him. Ellard stumbled over to him and offered him his hand.
‘I can’t believe it. We got him.’
‘Yes, sergeant, we did. Well done.’
‘Now what do we do? Is this thing stopping?’
‘Certainly feels like it.’
Leonid glanced over at the bronze door they had come through. Strangely, the thudding booms of the Sarcomata had ceased. Was their very existence somehow linked to the daemon within the firebox or even the Slaughterman himself? Even as he formed the thought, the door exploded inwards and Ardaric Vaanes stood framed in the white light of the sky.
‘You did it,’ he said, sounding surprised.
‘Yes, we did,’ agreed Leonid. ‘Did you kill Obax Zakayo?’
‘No, but he’s gone. Gone with the rest of the boxcars.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Leonid, limping towards the door.
As he and Ellard left the Slaught-erman’s domain, they saw that the tender was all that was left attached to the Omphalos Daemonium. Battered-looking Space Marines filled it, but the boxcars were nowhere in sight.
‘What the hell did you do?’ screamed Leonid. ‘I thought you came to rescue us?’
‘No,’ said Ardaric Vaanes. ‘We were never here to save you. We came to stop the Iron Warriors getting more slaves for their weapon shops. Without slaves they cannot make weapons to fight us.’
‘You killed them,’ said Ellard, looking down the tracks for any sign of the boxcars.
‘Trust me, if they truly understood what awaited them in Honsou’s citadel, they would thank me for my mercy.’
‘Mercy! You bastard, those were my men,’ shouted Leonid. ‘I fought shoulder to shoulder with them and you betrayed their courage.’
‘They were not the men you fought beside any more. You know this. They were broken. But you have steel in you, I can see it plain as day. If you wish, you may come with us and strike back against the Iron Warriors. But decide now; we are through the gatehouse, and its guards will be upon us soon if we are not away.’
Vaanes climbed into the tender and held his hand above the coupling mechanism.
‘Are you with us?’ he asked.
‘Go with you? We don’t even know what you are,’ said Leonid.
‘We were once Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes and fought for the Emperor, but now our only allegiance is to each other,’ said Vaanes. ‘Our former battle-brothers would call us renegades, but right now we are the nearest thing you have to friends.’
Leonid started to reply, but felt Ellard’s hand on his shoulder.
‘Sir, he may be right.’
‘He killed our men, sergeant!’
‘I know, and we will never forget that, but as Castellan Vauban used to say “the enemy of my enemy…”’
‘…is my friend,’ finished Leonid.
THE HERACLITUS EFFECT
The monster with the patchwork face was right behind him. He could hear it crashing through the overgrown forest with bludgeoning force, trampling the fruits of their invention with every giant stride. He kept running. Running was all he could do. He couldn’t fight such a terrible thing, it was too much.
Magos Third Class Evlame fled through the forest in panicked flight, a forest that had once been a place of wonder and miracles, a place that had literally blossomed as a result of their labours. Every day spent here had been a day spent with the thrill of discovery and pr
ide in their achievements, but now it was a place of horror, a blood-drenched nightmare of dismembered bodies and death.
Evlame’s breath came in sharp spikes in his chest, his overlarge frame unused to such exertion and his heartbeat pounding in his ears as he ran. Massively wide leaves and sharp branches whipped past him, cutting his face and hands as he pushed through the forest. The ripe smell of new growth filled his nostrils and ruptured fruits, larger than his head, hung dripping from branches shredded with gunfire.
The sweet smell of pulped vegetation was almost overpowering, catching in the back of his throat as his lungs heaved in panicked breath after panicked breath. Breathless, Evlame paused to get his bearings, seeking something familiar in the landscape around him.
Swollen trees with trunks thicker than a Titan’s leg surrounded him, their tops lost in the claws of mist that hung in the stagnant, moist atmosphere. Drooping branches laden with vivid growths in a rainbow of colours hung almost to the ground and gleaming chemical atomisers stood amongst the trees like the silver sculptures he’d seen in shrine parks, their waving, articulated limbs dispensing microscopic amounts of the Heraclitus strain into the atmosphere in controlled puffs of vapour.
A bright yellow generator hummed at the base of a towering, copper-barked tree laden with thick golden orbs that were wonderfully sweet and nutritious. The generator was stencilled with the number seventeen, which told him he was to the north of the Adeptus Mechanicus compound and home.
He heard the crunch of a heavy footfall beyond the limit of sight and froze in place as he tried to pinpoint the source. The reek of spoiled meat drifted on the wind, a rank, unpleasant odour after the fragrances he was used to in the forest. His eyes scanned left and right.
And then he saw it…
A glint of sunlight on armour, a reflection on dulled steel and a glimpse of his hunter’s grey, nightmare face. Though he had only the briefest flicker of the features, he wished for no more complete a view, for the dead face was the horror of a badly maimed mannequin, the bloody remnants of a bomb blast victim.
Evlame turned and ran, knowing the genhanced vegetation underfoot and rampant growth of the forest would make stealthy movement impossible. He fled south, following the route of ribbed copper cables as they snaked through the humid forest like indigenous serpents. Pungent mulch carpeted the forest floor and Evlame felt like he was running in some terrible nightmare, where the monster is forever at your shoulder and your feet move as though through the most viscous glue.
Tears and snot covered his face as he blundered onwards, praying to the God-Emperor and every saint he could think of to deliver him from this terrible killer. He risked a glance over his shoulder, but could see nothing behind him. His foot connected with something solid and his world cartwheeled as he tumbled to the ground.
Evlame hit hard, the breath driven from his lungs by the impact and bright light exploded before his eyes. The cloying texture of fruit mash filled his mouth, as well as a pungent smell of opened meat. He spat seeds and fruit flesh, shaking his head as he pushed himself upright.
He knelt in an open clearing of enormous, ovoid fruit, most reaching to his chest in height and at least as wide – their enhanced growth rendering them swollen and ripe.
A headless body lay beside him, the ragged stump of neck still enthusiastically pumping blood onto the dark, almost black, soil. Another corpse lay amid the dripping carcass of an exploded fruit, its chest cavity ripped open as though an explosive charge had detonated within. Other bodies lay in similar states of terrible ruin – heads crushed, limbs removed or torsos ripped apart.
Evlame’s mouth dropped open in mute horror, unable to take in such brutal, visceral evidence of murder. He pushed himself upright and set off towards the habitat domes, following the twisting cables like a lifeline. Rasping breath, like that of a consumptive, hissed behind him and he whimpered in terror, awaiting the blow that would split him open as surely as the ripened, overlarge fruits that surrounded him.
Such a blow never landed and he pushed his burning legs onwards, trampling through the soft mulch of pulped fruit and bloody earth. He sobbed with every step, his limbs flailing and his eyes streaming with tears of raw, unmanning fear.
Through his tears he saw the gleam of the silver-skinned habitat domes between the thick trunks of the towering forest and aimed his flight towards salvation. Surely Magos Szalin would know what to do? An entire company of cybernetically enhanced Tech-Guard were stationed at the Golbasto Facility and he began to laugh uncontrollably at the thought of reaching safety, his hysteria bubbling up like a geyser.
Evlame emerged into the open and stumbled across the automated firebreaks and pesticide barriers that protected the facility from the rampant growth of the genhanced forest. After the gloomy, spectral twilight of the undergrowth, the glare of the planet’s warm yellow sun was dazzlingly bright and he shielded his eyes as he staggered and swayed like a drunk towards the Adeptus Mechanicus experimentation facility, the domes blurred through his lens of tears.
He saw movement and heard voices. He wiped his sodden face with the sleeve of his robe and wept in joy as he saw scores of massively broad warriors in burnished battle plate, their bulk unmistakable as anything other than Adeptus Astartes.
The Space Marines had come!
Relief lent his battered limbs new strength and he ran towards the facility with fresh vigour, anxious to have these brave protectors of mankind between him and the monster that pursued him. Evlame ran like a man possessed, smelling an acrid chemical stink from the smashed domes and seeing flame-shot smoke as it billowed into the clear sky.
Bodies littered the ground and the skins of the domes were pocked with bullet holes.
Clearly the monster had not come alone…
But now the Adeptus Astartes were here, there was surely nothing to fear, for what could stand against such perfect warriors – their flesh enhanced by the artifice of the Emperor and fragments of His greatness encoded into their very bones. Such holy vision had served as the model for their work on Golbasto and Evlame longed to speak to these warriors of legend to tell them of the achievements wrought here.
‘Over here!’ he yelled, his voice hoarse and rasping after his lung-searing run through the forest. ‘Help! It’s coming after me. There’s another one in the forest!’
The armoured giants turned at the sound of his voice, their massive, oversized weapons trained on him in an instant. He saw a confusing mix of armour marks and colours and laughed as he shook his head at their mistake.
‘No, no! It’s Magos Third Class Evlame!’ he shouted, the brief vigour lent to his limbs fading and his steps becoming more uneven. He laughed and waved his arms like a madman, simultaneously amused and terrified at the irony of nearly being gunned down by his rescuers. ‘I work here, I minister to the atomiser machines of the forest! I…’
His words trailed off as he dropped to his knees, his strength spent. He sank onto his rump, head tilted to the sun and his chest heaving as he sucked in shuddering breaths.
Evlame heard crunching footfalls and a chill fell across him as he was enveloped in the broad shadows of the towering warriors. He squinted into the glare of the sky and wiped the back of his hand across his tear-swollen eyes.
A trio of cruel faces cut from cold steel stared down at him, scarred and battle worn. One warrior’s face was that of a killer, hostile and unforgiving. His skull was partly shaven and a ragged mohawk ran across its centre. Another warrior in dark plate wore his long black hair in a tight scalp lock, hooded eyes deep set in angular, pale features.
Half the final warrior’s face was a ruined, knotted fist of crude augmetics, a glowing blue gem where his left eye ought to have been. His other eye glittered with cruel amusement and his close-cropped dark hair was smeared with blood spatters.
The one with the killer’s face itched to do him harm and Evlame felt a burgeoning horror swell within him as the truth of the matter began to dawn on him.
No Astartes these, but…
‘You work here?’ said the warrior with the ravaged face, squatting down on his haunches before him. Evlame nodded, his jaw slack with terror and he felt himself lose control of his bodily functions. The warrior reached out and took hold of his chin. Even in his fear-demented state, Evlame was Mechanicus enough to notice that the arm was fashioned from shimmering silver, a prosthetic quite unlike anything he had seen before. The digits were cold and smooth and articulated without recourse to any joints he could see.
The icy grip turned his head left and right, as though he were being regarded like a specimen in a jar.
‘Ardaric,’ said the warrior with the strange arm, ‘has Cycerin got everything we need?’
‘He’s almost done extracting the information from the senior magos,’ answered the warrior in the black armour with jagged red crosses painted across his shoulder guards. ‘The cogitators were smashed before we got to him, but the fool didn’t think to wipe his own cranial memory coils.’
‘And the canisters we came for?’
‘Servitors are loading them onto the Stormbird as we speak.’
The killer with the mohawk said, ‘Kill this last one, Honsou, and let’s be on our way.’
The warrior named Honsou lifted his gaze to something behind Evlame. ‘Not yet, Grendel. I think I’ll let my new champion finish what he started.’
The warrior released Evlame and pushed himself to his feet. It took an effort of will for Evlame to tear his eyes from Honsou’s incredible silver arm.
He heard the whine of automatic targeting servos behind him and turned to see the incinerator units that had been used to contain the forest’s expansion aiming at a singular figure that marched across the scorched borders of the Mechanicus facility.
Evlame whimpered in terror as the patchwork-faced monster that had killed the rest of his colleagues walked towards him. Its pace was leisurely, though he could see a fire of agony in its storm-cloud eyes, as though its every step was painful.
Like most of the others in this terrible group, it wore Astartes battle plate the colour of bare metal with chevron trims of yellow and black. The closer it came, the more he could see its aquiline features were drawn in a mask of anguish.
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