Legion of the Damned

by Rob Sanders

  ‘Affirmative.’

  The Gauntlet banked slightly against the setting suns. At an open airlock situated in the flank of the Thunderhawk, Kersh, Melmoch and Dancred looked down on the abomination. Nobody spoke. Micah, the Scourge’s new shadow, waited nearby. In the tactical bay behind them, Proctor Kraski chewed tobacco while High Constable Colquhoun relayed instructions to his Charnel Guard vox-operator and Pallmaster General Ferreira leant against the compartment wall clutching his stomach and covering his mouth. Beyond, Chief Whip Uriah Skase and Squad Cicatrix primed their weapons and offered thanks to the primarch.

  Below the Gauntlet were the still waters of Lake Serenity. On the distant shoreline of the lake drainage plants boiled off the fresh water, releasing clouds of steam from fat funnels up into the atmosphere. The waters had receded as such from a shallower inlet, revealing a monstrous monument that had been hidden beneath the lake’s crystal surface. A hideous multi-sided pyramid, the monument appeared like an eight-pointed star from above. It was a dirty cream colour impacted with silt and draped with scraps of freshwater weed. About the gargantuan artefact, Kersh could make out the thin circle that made up the prayer cordon, with temporary Charnel Guard heavy weapon emplacements situated at intervals beyond.

  ‘Put us down beyond the cordon,’ Kersh ordered.

  ‘Affirmative, corpus-captain.’

  With the gunship’s landing gear scraping down between the headstones of freshly dug graves, Kersh jumped from the airlock. About him, in the drained earth reclaimed from the lake, fossers had already gone to work with their shovels and masons had put the finishing touches to the gravestones adorning the neat, rectangular pits. Peering into the nearest empty grave Kersh spotted an odd arrangement of pipes running between the headstone and the grave bottom. Wire cables ran down the side of the pipes and up into the stone of the marker.

  Proctor Kraski came up behind the corpus-captain.

  ‘What are the pipes for?’ Kersh asked the enforcer.

  ‘Mistakes happen,’ Kraski informed him nonchalantly. ‘Thousands of stasis caskets and sarcophagi arrive here every day from Imperial worlds across the sector: hive-worlds, cardinal worlds, garrisons and so forth. Occasionally people are interred accidentally – sometimes even on purpose.’

  ‘Buried alive?’ Kersh marvelled.

  ‘Without power and a stasis field, dead bodies rot in the sacred earth. Those buried alive might ordinarily have an hour or two of air, screaming for their lives below the ground where no one can hear them.’ Kraski turned his head and spat a stream of tobacco and saliva behind his back. ‘It is cemetery world practice to fashion all headstones with a safety mechanism: an air source and wire cords leading to small bells, set by the masons in the decorative detail of the gravestones.’

  ‘All the graves have these mechanisms?’

  ‘It’s an ancient custom.’

  Marching around the Thunderhawk’s nose, the Excoriators and their guides made their way towards the prayer cordon. The choristers were blindfolded and had little idea that it had been an Adeptus Astartes gunship that had landed in their midst. They also had little idea that as abbots broke the chain and moved several choristers to one side, the Emperor’s Angels walked among them.

  Beyond the cordon, Kersh strode into shallows, splashing down into the emptying lake. Fresh water lapped about his armoured ankles. The cordon lined the shore but the receding waters were still reasonably deep about the abominate structure. The Excoriators strode towards the damned object, with Skase and his squad kicking up fountains as they filed forwards in a canopy formation. Kraski, Colquhoun and Ferreira made headway a great deal more difficult, especially since the Pallmaster General was retching into the shallows following his first flight by Thunderhawk.

  As the Scourge approached he saw that the huge pyramid was constructed of human skulls. Each was a brick within the horrific structure, cemented together with lake silt and sand. Kersh’s boot tapped against something in the water. Kneeling down, the corpus-captain grasped the object and brought it to the surface. In his gauntlet Kersh held a cracked human skull. Rolling it over in his ceramite glove he examined the dome of the cranium. A symbol or design had been daubed in red paint on the top, a cross run through with three parallel, horizontal lines. Kersh tossed the skull over to Melmoch who caught the macabre object, drawing a scowl from the Pallmaster General.

  ‘Bodies,’ Brother Micah called from a position ahead. Using the barrel of his boltgun he lifted a mesh of tangled bones and shredded clothing. The shallows closer to the monument were a mantrap carpet of twisted skeletal remains. Lifting his weapon higher, Micah angled the bones around. ‘They all seem to be wearing these,’ the company champion said. From his muzzle dangled a lead cloak on a chain, wrapped around the vertebrae of an unfortunate’s neck. The Pallmaster General looked up from his retching and narrowed his eyes.

  ‘How did you discover this aberration?’ Kersh put to the cemetery worlders.

  Colquhoun directed their attention to the funnels of the distant drainage plants. ‘In order to maximise plot space and extend the burial grounds, Lake Serenity had been marked for land reclamation. As the water levels fell, the top of the structure made itself known.’

  ‘What about the skulls?’ Kersh said. He turned to Proctor Kraski. ‘That’s a lot of heads to go missing.’

  ‘They’re not cemetery worlders,’ the arbitrator said, spitting a stream of tobacco-stained saliva into the shallows. ‘The murder rates are impeccable here. Until last month, I only had four murders on my slates for last year, global total. Two, the cycle before that.’

  ‘What about last month?’ Kersh enquired.

  ‘Thirty-seven,’ Kraski said.

  ‘There are a lot more than thirty-seven skulls here,’ Dancred said. Behind him, Punisher had rolled down the Gauntlet’s opening bay ramp and trundled through the shallows to take position beside the Techmarine.

  ‘We have occasional robberies,’ Kraski said.

  ‘Robberies?’

  ‘Grave robberies,’ the enforcer confirmed. ‘Mostly fossers – having a hard time meeting Ministorum taxes. You have to catch the ghouls in the act because the cunning bastards re-bury the bodies and therefore the evidence. Did catch a couple of lost souls out here a few months back. Took a ceremonial sword from a Guard officer’s casket shipped from the Kallistan garrison world. Took the officer’s head, as well. After I introduced them to my power maul they confessed that looting the graves is prolific in the martial grounds…’

  ‘Areas set aside for military burials?’ Kersh queried.

  ‘Yes,’ Kraski replied, ‘which is unusual, since the ghouls are more likely to make good on the trinkets of some hive-world spirestress than the casket of a Navy commander or Guard brass.’

  ‘What of the decapitation?’

  ‘Put in an exhumation request,’ Kraski told the Excoriator before spitting. The enforcer and Pallmaster General Ferreira exchanged a hard look. ‘But it was denied. We liaised with the Charnel Guard and organised extra patrols but nothing came of it.’

  ‘Melmoch?’

  The Librarian seemed lost in the monument’s warped design. ‘Epistolary Melmoch!’ Kersh repeated.

  ‘Eight points,’ Melmoch replied. ‘The dread star of the Ruinous Powers. Two pyramids, sitting one within the other, eight sides to face, eight corners to turn. Eight – the Blood God’s integer.’

  Kersh had fought the Blood God’s servants. Crazed cultists. Berserkers. Renegade Space Marines of the Goremongers Chapter. Even princes of the Rage Lord’s daemonic pantheon. They had all shared the same unrelenting desire to spill the Scourge’s blood.

  ‘What is the monument’s function? Is it some dark gateway?’ Kersh put to the Librarian.

  ‘No,’ Melmoch replied. ‘Not a gate. A throne.’

  ‘A throne… of skulls?’

  ‘A throne to be taken,’ Melmoch said. ‘An invitation issued. A beacon beckoning.’

  ‘A beacon for what?’ Ke
rsh asked.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Melmoch told him honestly. ‘Proctor, all the surrounding remains seem to be wearing these cloaks. What are they used for?’

  ‘It’s part of an Ecclesiarchical practice,’ Kraski said. ‘I know little of it.’

  The Excoriators turned on Ferreira.

  ‘Lead capes,’ the Pallmaster General confirmed. ‘They are a form of punishment. Penitents volunteer to bear the considerable extra weight as part of their rite of atonement. They are a metaphor for the tardiness of their wearer’s spiritual progress.’

  Melmoch looked back at the knotted remains in the shallows. Kneeling he plunged his gauntlet into the water and retrieved a rusty blade. Scanning his eyes across the glassy surface, he found a second and a third, all simple knives, pitted and brown.

  ‘Melmoch?’ Kersh prompted. ‘Opinion?’

  ‘Corpus-captain, I think that it is entirely possible that the monument is a reasonably recent construct. These bodies probably belong to cultists devoting themselves to the Blood God and his murderous ideals. As the proctor indicates, graves are robbed and skulls are taken. The martial burial grounds are targeted because the Blood God favours the skulls of warriors for his throne. The caskets are reburied to avoid suspicion in the same way that the monument was constructed in secret on the lake bed.’

  ‘Breathing apparatus. Heavy equipment. That is a significant undertaking,’ Dancred reminded the Librarian.

  ‘More than you know,’ Melmoch said, standing upright with the knives in his gauntlet. ‘The monument has been entirely constructed by hand. Each skull added to the submerged structure would be a one-way ticket for its bearer. Each cultist would wear a lead cape and take a blade with them. The lead would take them to the bottom, where they would add their grave-robbed gift to the throne. They would then slit their throats and baptise the unholy monument in the murk of their offered blood. Murder – of the self.’

  Nobody said anything for a few moments.

  ‘Macabre,’ Dancred said finally.

  ‘Committed,’ Melmoch replied.

  ‘Futile,’ Kersh concluded. The Scourge bit at his mangled lower lip. He looked about the Excoriators and cemetery world significants, then took in the ghastly monument with an all-encompassing stare, from top to dreadful bottom.

  ‘As every Excoriator knows, it is a great deal easier to destroy than it is to create,’ Kersh said. ‘We’ll widen the exclusion zone and have the Angelica Mortis obliterate it from orbit.’

  ‘Completely out of the question,’ the Pallmaster General suddenly piped up. There was a new-found edge to his voice – an imperiousness that Kersh hadn’t heard him use with the Excoriators before. ‘The cemetery world’s sacred earth will not be tainted with violence and bombardment.’

  ‘It already seems tainted,’ Kersh returned. ‘That is why we’re here.’

  ‘It would cause untold damage to the surrounding plots and tombs…’

  ‘We can calibrate the warhead,’ Techmarine Dancred informed him.

  ‘What if you miss?’

  ‘We’re the Adeptus Astartes, Pallmaster,’ Kersh barked back. ‘We do not miss.’

  ‘I’m sorry, corpus-captain,’ Ferreira said. ‘But I cannot allow that kind of an intervention.’

  ‘It is a Ruinous artefact,’ Chief Whip Skase called across with venom. ‘We do not need your authorisation to destroy it.’

  ‘Corpus-captain,’ High Constable Colquhoun interjected. ‘I’m as eager to be rid of this abomination as you are, but the Lord Pontifex will not sanction an orbital attack on Certusian soil. There must be another way. Please, my lords.’

  ‘If you don’t want our assistance,’ Skase threatened, ‘then you can keep the damned thing. The Excoriators have duties to attend to elsewhere…’

  ‘Skase…’ Kersh said. The chief whip looked from Ferreira and Colquhoun to the corpus-captain. ‘What about that?’ Kersh nodded at Dancred’s itinerant Thunderfire cannon. Punisher had rolled through the shallows to take position dutifully by the Techmarine’s side. ‘Could we demolish the monument rather than obliterate it?’

  ‘Unbelievable,’ Skase concluded in the background.

  ‘The Thunderfire cannon can deploy subterranean ammunition designed to destabilise and disorientate,’ Dancred said, his face whirring and clunking. ‘Directional salvoes combined with strategically placed demolition charges from the Charnel Guard armouries – in prodigious amounts, of course – might topple the structure.’

  ‘That will take days!’ Skase fumed. The squad whip wanted off the cemetery world as soon as possible to continue the hunt for the Alpha Legion.

  ‘Can it be done?’ Kersh asked, looking at the sheer size of the monument.

  ‘I can demolish the structure, but then what?’ Dancred asked.

  ‘Then we bring in the flamers and meltas,’ Kersh confirmed, ‘and wipe any evidence of the thing from the face of the planet.’

  ‘The Charnel Guard could–’ Colquhoun began.

  ‘The Charnel Guard will maintain the prayer cordon until we have destroyed this thing of evil. Only Adeptus Astartes are to work within the cordon to reduce the risk of contamination.’

  ‘As you wish, my lord.’

  ‘Brother Dancred will oversee the monument’s demolition,’ Kersh instructed. ‘Squad Cicatrix will provide security and destroy all remnants of the structure once it is down.’

  ‘You would have us waste more time on this miserable little world?’ Skase accused.

  ‘Chief Whip Skase, the eradication of Chaos is not a waste of our time. It is the purest expression of the purpose for which we were bred and I’ll have you not forget that,’ Kersh bit back.

  ‘You question my courage,’ Skase seethed, advancing on the Scourge.

  ‘Increasingly,’ Kersh spat.

  The two Excoriators splashed through the shallows at one another and their ceramite would have clashed had it not been for Brother Micah getting his bolter and combat shield between them. Shoving Skase back with the shield, Micah also put his shoulder against his corpus-captain’s chestplate. Two of Skase’s squad grabbed their leader by the arms and attempted to haul him back.

  ‘It’s the monument,’ Melmoch called. A calm descended on the scene. Skase and the Scourge’s twisted faces fell and the pair looked at the Epistolary. ‘This is its dread influence. It demands blood, spilt in its name.’

  Kersh looked to Skase and then nodded slowly.

  ‘Squad Cicatrix will return with me to Obsequa City,’ the corpus-captain ordered. ‘Squad Castigir will have the honour of destroying this thing of evil. Chaplain Shadrath will return with the squad to monitor the operation for corruption.’ Kersh turned and began to stomp his way back through the darkening shallows towards the waiting Thunderhawk. ‘Come,’ he commanded. ‘We are wasting time. The chief whip was at least right about that.’

  I have a new-found respect for my former commanders. Squad Whip Thanial; Brother Erastus; Corpus-Captain Tobiaz, Corpus-Captain Phinehas; Chapter Master Ichabod. All were great Adeptus Astartes and I feel that I can live up to their warrior example. How any of them survived the trivialities of command, however, I know not. On the battlefield, I have seen mortals exceed the cruel limitations of their bodies. I do not hold them in contempt or exercise a prejudice for such handicap. They, however, exceed the cruel limitations of my attention and interest. They can talk for hours of nothing. You would think a short existence would breed a brevity in their number, but no.

  I sit here, at the long stone table of the pontifex, with the great and the good of Certus-Minor and more food than an army could eat. Ezrachi sits at my side. Beyond Melmoch, he is the only one of our number I thought to afflict with this intolerable duty. The Librarian was acting strangely – a little absent – and with glazed eyes had requested to remain in his allocated cell. The pontifex, crippled down one half of his body, has a palace menial cut his portions and bring fork from plate to mouth. The gaggle of priests at the table devour their port
ions with relish and I’m sure the feast is the finest quality the Adeptus Ministorum kitchens can produce. But like the conversation, I have no stomach for it. On backwater swillholes and death worlds I have eaten things that would make a grox retch. Here, I do little more than push the fine fare around my plate and then push the plate itself to one side. All the while, Pontifex Oliphant and his clerics jabber incessantly.

  Oliphant seems a good man. He doesn’t make my skin crawl like the cardinal world husks we found on St Ethalberg, but I find the boundless benevolence of his devotion difficult to endure. Every statement must be qualified with a prayer. Every act is worthy of Holy Terran grace. The pontifex showers me and my Excoriators with compliments and blessings, and prattles his priestly interpretation of the God-Emperor’s will. I am glad I did not include Brother Melmoch in such company. I would be ill-disposed to such blind slanders falling from Adeptus Astartes lips.

  My mood sours. I do not feel myself and I indulge my baser feelings with a mask of a face. A frozen frown of unmistakable contempt which grows with every word from the ecclesiarch’s crooked mouth.

  Oliphant has dragged himself to his feet. With one shoulder held higher than the other he offers a twisted toast. The menial prises the pontifex’s fingers open and slips a goblet of wine into his trembling clutch.

  ‘To our saviours, the Adeptus Astartes,’ he begins, and as he does so is joined by his legion of priests. ‘May the God-Emperor smile on their efforts as He does our own. Let Him look out across His holy realm and watch over them as they carry out His will. Let Him bless their endeavour with His divine favour. Let Him lend them the strength to do what is right and cleanse our sacred earth of this foul contagion. In good faith we live in expectation of success and the failure of darkness. After all, does not the God-Emperor fight on our side?’

  I think of the Ruinous monument. Of the thunder of Brother Dancred’s efforts on the horizon and Squad Castigir waiting with meltas and flamers to scour it from the planet surface. The throne of skulls calls to us. I can feel its malign influence in my intolerance, the flex of my muscles and the edge in my voice. It reaches out for the warrior in me like some final furious defiance. The last pollutive gasp of a proud evil about to take its fall. I think of Skase. His hatred and that of his brothers. Shadrath’s scorn. The loathing of the squad whips. The bright fire of Joachim’s fraternal allegiance. The cold fury in Ishmael’s eyes.