The alien flora had subsumed entire continents, a rapacious instinct to devour encoded in every strand of its genetic structure. Nutrients were leeched from the soil and used to create hyper-fertile spore growths that drifted on the heated currents of the air to seed new regions and pollute yet more land.
Only rigorous burning policies ensured the planet’s survival – for a world of the Imperium could not simply be abandoned, not after all the blood that had been shed in its defence. The shining steel cities, islands in a sea of alien growth, still produced masses of munitions and armoured vehicles for Imperial wars throughout the subsector.
Salvoes of anti-plant missiles, slash and burn pogroms and pesticide overflights were a matter of routine since the defeat of the invasion.
Such things were thankless tasks, but necessary for the planet’s continued survival.
But all that was rendered moot in the face of Magos Szalin’s creation.
Developed from a partial fragment of ancient research conducted by Magos Heraclitus, the bio-toxins were intended to increase the growth rate of crops on agri-worlds. Magos Szalin had taken the next step and pioneered techniques designed to increase the productivity of such worlds a thousand fold.
Now that work was put to the ultimate test, mixing its monstrous potential for increased growth with an alien organism that was at the apex of its biological efficiency.
Within seconds of the Heraclitus strain being released into the atmosphere, the alien growths reacted to its touch, surging upwards and over the planet’s terrain. Slash and burn teams were instantly overwhelmed by mutant growths, poisonous plant life expanding kilometres in seconds as the virulent growth strain sent its metabolism into overdrive.
Huge amounts of nutrients were sucked from the ground and released as enormous quantities of heat, raising the ambient temperature of the world in a matter of moments. Oxygen was sucked greedily from the atmosphere by horrifyingly massive spore chimneys and the planet’s protective layers were gradually stripped in unthinking biological genocide.
This was not the rapid death of Exterminatus, but ecological death of worldwide proportions.
Panicked messages were hurled out into the immaterium and only those with the money, influence or cunning escaped on hastily prepped ships that fled the planet’s destruction.
But these were few compared to the billions left behind and, weeks later, as the last of the planet’s atmosphere was stripped from it by the hyper-evolved alien biology, stellar radiation swept the surface, killing every living thing and laying waste to all that remained.
Months after the launch of the missiles, nothing remained alive, the deadly alien vegetation killed by lethal levels of radiation and the frigid cold that gripped the planet without its protective atmosphere.
All that now remained of the planet was a dead, lifeless ball of rock, its surface seared and barren, with only the skeletal remains of its blackened cities left as evidence that human beings had once lived upon it.
The silver-skinned drop-ship fell through the airless vacuum of the planet. A host of Marauders and Raptors followed it down, though nothing lived here now. The drop-ship’s retros screamed as the pilot brought it in on final approach, the skids deploying just before it landed in the midst of dead plant matter and scorched alien trees.
A drogue arm deployed to test the external environment and once it retracted, the pressure door on the side of the craft opened and a heavy ramp extended to the surface.
Cautiously, for none aboard truly felt safe, a squad of Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-Guard clad in heavy environment suits – similar in function and design to the Terminator armour employed by the Adeptus Astartes – emerged and descended to the planet’s surface.
Following the group was a figure whose heavy armour was swathed in vivid red robes emblazoned with the black and white cog symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
His name was Magos Locard and this was not the first time he had come to this world.
With quick, precise gestures, Locard directed the Tech-Guard to collect samples of the dead plants and the underlying strata. Diggers and corers rolled down from the drop-ship and Locard watched them as they gathered information that might offer some clue as to what had caused this catastrophe.
Despite the many augmentations applied to his flesh, Locard was not so far removed from humanity that the fate of this world did not cause him great sadness. Like many others, he had fought to save it and had been instrumental in what he had thought was its salvation.
Now all that was ashes and Locard felt a great anger build within him.
Whoever had done this would pay.
A Tech-Guard soldier approached Locard and said, ‘My lord, we’ve found it.’
Locard followed the man as he waded through thick piles of ashen vegetation to the source of what had led them to this exact place. Though the planet was now bereft of life, a constantly repeating signal had reached into space, its plaintive voice almost lost in the void, but shrill and insistent, demanding attention.
The vegetation thinned and Locard realised he was walking in a deep trench carved by the impact of something that had fallen from the skies.
‘Here, my lord,’ said the Tech-Guard, backing away from Locard.
Locard saw a battered silver tube, perhaps ten metres in length – an orbital torpedo, though his exo-armour’s auspex told him there was no ordnance or explosives loaded in the warhead. This was the source of the signal and Locard knew that someone had wanted them to find this.
He walked along the length of the torpedo towards the payload bay and deployed bolt-clasps from the forearm of his armour. One by one, he removed the bolts of the payload bay and hurled it aside when he unscrewed the last one.
The inside of the bay was dark, but his enhanced ocular implants could easily make out what it contained. He frowned and reached inside the bay to remove its contents.
He turned to the Tech-Guard next to him and handed him a cracked helmet, the paint chipped and one eye lens missing. The helmet was a deep blue and bore a symbol on the forehead that was known to Locard.
The inverted omega of the Ultramarines Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.
‘I don’t understand,’ said the Tech-Guard, turning the helmet over in his hands.
‘Nor I,’ said Locard, turning and marching from the missile. ‘Not yet.’
As the Tech-Guard followed Locard he said, ‘What happened to this place?’
‘This place has a name, soldier,’ snapped Locard. ‘Imperial citizens died here.’
‘Apologies, my lord, I meant no disrespect,’ said the Tech-Guard. ‘What was it called?’
Locard paused, casting his gaze across the blasted wasteland that was all that remained of a once proud Imperial world that had stood defiantly before the horror of a Tyranid invasion.
‘It was called Tarsis Ultra.’
THE SKULL HARVEST
DEAD GLASSY EYES stared up at the bar patrons from the floor as the rolling head finally came to a halt. It had been a swift blow, the edge of the killer’s palm like a blade, and the snarling warrior’s head was ripped from his neck before the last words of his challenge were out of his mouth.
The body still stood, its murderer grasping the edge of its crimson-stained breastplate in one gnarled grey fist. Blood pooled beneath the head and squirted upwards from the stump of neck. The body’s legs began to twitch, as though it sought to escape its fate even in death. The killer released his grip and turned away as the body crashed to the dirty, ash- and dust-streaked floor in a clatter of steel and dead meat.
The excitement over, the patrons of the darkened bar returned to their drinks and plotting, for no one came to a place like this without schemes of revenge, murder, pillage and destruction in mind.
Honsou of the Iron Warriors was no exception, and his champion’s bloody display of lethal prowess was just the first step in his own grand design.
The air was thick with intrigue, grease and smoke, the latter curlin
g around heavy rafters that looked as though they had once been part of a spaceship. Irregular clay bricks supported a roof formed from sheets of corrugated iron, and thin slats of harsh light, like the burning white sky of Medrengard, shone through bullet holes and gaps in the construction.
The killer of the now headless body licked the blood from the edge of its hand, and Honsou grinned as he saw the urge to continue killing in his champion’s all too familiar grey eyes and taut posture. It called itself the Newborn, and was clad in tarnished power armour the colour of wrought iron. Its shoulder guards were edged in yellow and black, and a rough cloak of ochre was draped around its wide shoulders. It was every inch an Iron Warrior but for its face; a slack fleshmask of stolen skin that was the image of a man Honsou would one day kill. Stitched together from the skins of dead prisoners, the Newborn’s face was that of the killer in the dark, the terror of the night and the lurker in the shadows that haunts the dreams of the fearful.
It turned towards Honsou and he felt a delicious shiver of vicarious excitement as he glanced at the dead body on the floor. ‘Nicely done,’ said Honsou. ‘Poor bastard didn’t even get to finish insulting me.’
The Newborn shrugged as it sat across the table from him. ‘He was nothing, just a slave warrior.’
‘True, but he died just as bloodily as the next man.’
‘Killing this one might make you the “next man” to his master,’ said the Newborn.
‘Better he dies now than we end up recruiting him and he fails in battle,’ said Cadaras Grendel from across the table as he finished a tin mug of harsh liquor. ‘Don’t want any damn wasters next to me if we have to fight anything tough in the next few days.’ Grendel was a brute, an armoured killer who delighted in slaughter and the misery of others. Once, he had fought for a rival Warsmith on Medrengard, though in defeat he had transferred his allegiance to Honsou. Despite that switch, Honsou knew Grendel’s continued service was bought with the promise of carnage and that his loyalty was that of a starving wolf on a short leash. The warrior’s face was a scarred and pitted nightmare of battered flesh, his cruel features topped with a close-cropped mohican.
‘Trust me,’ said the warrior next to Grendel, ‘the Skull Harvest weeds out the chaff early on. Only the strongest and most vicious will survive to the end.’
Honsou nodded and said, ‘You should know, Vaanes. You’ve been here before.’
Clad in the midnight-black armour of the Raven Guard, Ardaric Vaanes was the polar opposite of Cadaras Grendel; lithe, elegant and handsome. His long dark hair was bound in a tight scalp-lock and his hooded eyes were set in a face that was aquiline and which bore ritual scars on each cheek.
The former Raven Guard had changed since Honsou had first recruited him to train the Newborn. Honsou had never fully believed that a warrior once loyal to the False Emperor could completely throw off the shackles of his former master, but from what Cadaras Grendel had told him of Vaanes’s actions on the orbital battery above Tarsis Ultra, it seemed such concerns were groundless.
‘Indeed,’ agreed Vaanes. ‘And I can’t say I’m happy to be back. This isn’t a place to come to unless you’re prepared for the worst. Especially during the Skull Harvest.’
‘We’re prepared for the worst,’ said Honsou, leaning over and lifting the severed head from the floor and depositing it on their table. The dead man’s expression was frozen in surprise, and Honsou wondered if he’d lived long enough to see the bar spinning around as his head rolled across the floor. The skin was waxy and moist, the iconic mark of a red skull branded into its forehead over a tattoo of an eight-pointed star. ‘After all, that’s why we’re here and why I had the Newborn kill this one.’
Like his warriors, Honsou had changed a great deal since his rise to prominence had begun on Hydra Cordatus. His unique silver arm was new and a bolt-round had pulverised the left side of his face, leaving it a burned and bloody ruin and making a glutinous, fused mess of his eye. That eye had been replaced with an augmetic implant and as much as he had changed physically, Honsou knew that it was nothing compared to the changes wrought within him.
Vaanes reached over and lifted the head, turning it over and allowing the blood to drip down his gauntlets. Honsou saw Vaanes’s eyes widen as he touched the head, his nostrils flaring as he took in the scents of the dead man, while running his fingers over the cold flesh.
‘This was one of Pashtoq Uluvent’s fighters,’ said Vaanes.
‘Who?’
‘A follower of the Blood God,’ said Vaanes, turning the head around and tapping the sigil branded on its forehead. ‘That’s his mark.’
‘Is he powerful?’ asked Grendel.
‘Very powerful,’ said Vaanes. ‘He has come to the Skull Harvest many times to recruit fighters for his warband.’
‘And he’s won?’
‘Champions that don’t win the Skull Harvest end up dead,’ said Vaanes.
‘Killing one of his men ought to get his attention,’ said Honsou.
‘I think it just did,’ said Grendel, nodding towards the bar’s door with a wide grin of anticipation.
A towering warrior in armour that had once been black and yellow, but which was now so stained with blood that it resembled a deep, rusted burgundy, marched towards their table.
Grendel reached for his weapon, but Honsou shook his head.
The warrior’s helm was horned and two long tusks sprouted from beneath the visor of his helmet. Honsou couldn’t tell whether they were part of his armour or his flesh. The same symbol branded into the head was cut into the warrior’s breastplate, and his breath was a rasping growl, like that of a ravenous beast. He carried an axe with a bronze blade that dripped blood and shone with the dull fire of a smouldering forge.
The warrior planted his axe, blade down, on the floor and banged his fist against his breastplate. ‘I am Vosok Dall, servant of the Skull Throne, and I have come to take your life.’
Honsou took the measure of the warrior in a heartbeat.
Vosok Dall was former Astartes, Scythes of the Emperor by the crossed-scythe heraldry on his shoulder guard, but a warrior who now killed in the name of a blood-drenched god that revelled in murder and battle. He would be strong and capable, with a hunger for glory and martial honour unmatched even by those who still fought for the Imperium.
‘I thought your Chapter was dead,’ said Honsou, pushing himself to his feet. ‘Didn’t the swarm fleets turn your world into an airless rock?’
‘You speak of events that do not concern you, maggot,’ barked Dall. ‘I am here to kill you, so ready your weapon.’
‘You see,’ said Honsou, shaking his head. ‘That’s what you followers of the Blood God always get wrong. You always talk too much.’
‘No more talk then,’ said Dall. ‘Fight.’
Honsou didn’t answer, simply sweeping his axe from beside the table. The blade of the weapon was glossy and black, its sheened surface featureless and seeming to swallow any light unfortunate enough to touch it.
Honsou was fast, but Dall was faster and brought his own axe up to block the strike. The warrior spun the axe and slashed it around in a bifurcating sweep. Honsou ducked and rammed the haft of his weapon into Dall’s gut, spinning away from his opponent’s reverse stroke. The blade passed millimetres from his head and he felt the angry heat that burned within the warp-forged weapon.
He took a double-handed grip on his axe and widened his stance as Dall came at him. The warrior of the Blood God was fast and his roar of hatred shook the very walls, but Honsou had faced down more terrifying foes than Vosok Dall and lived.
Honsou stepped to meet the attack, throwing his arm up to block the blow. The axe slashed down and bit deeply, the blade stuck fast into Honsou’s forearm. Like the Newborn and Cadaras Grendel, Honsou wore the naked metal colours of the Iron Warriors, but the arm struck by Vosok Dall’s axe appeared to be incongruously fashioned from the purest, gleaming silver.
Dall grunted in shock, and Honsou knew this
warrior would expect anything he hit with his axe to go down and stay down. That shock cost him his life.
The warrior tugged at his weapon, but the blade was stuck fast and Honsou swung his axe in a mighty downward arc, hammering the glossy black blade through the top of his foe’s skull. The axe smashed through Dall’s helmet, skull and neck before finally lodging in the centre of his sternum.
Vosok Dall dropped to his knees and toppled onto his side, his dead weight dragging Honsou with him. Dall’s entire body convulsed as the malevolent warp beast bound to Honsou’s axe ripped his soul apart for sport.
Blood fanned from the cloven skull in a flood of crimson, and even as Dall’s soul was devoured, his grip remained strong on his weapon.
A bright orange line, like that of a welder’s acetylene torch hissed around the edge of where Dall’s axe was buried in Honsou’s arm and the weapon fell free with a crescent-shaped bite taken from it. Even as Honsou watched, the fiery lustre of the blade faded as its power passed into Honsou’s weapon.
Where Dall’s blade had penetrated Honsou’s arm was unblemished and smooth, as though it had come straight from the silversmith’s workbench. Honsou neither knew nor cared about the source of the arm’s power to heal itself, it was enough that it had saved him once again.
He rose to his full height, standing triumphant over the dead body of Vosok Dall as the patrons of the bar stared in amazement at him.
‘I am Honsou of the Iron Warriors!’ he bellowed, lifting his axe high over his head. ‘I am here for the Skull Harvest and I am afraid of no man. Any warrior who thinks he is worthy of joining me should make himself known at my camp. Look for the banner of the Iron Skull on the northern promontory.’
A man in a battered flak vest with a long rifle slung over his shoulder and a battered Guardsman’s helmet jammed onto his rugged features stood up as Honsou made his way to the door.
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