He raised the blade of his hand, opened the fingers; the battle sign command for spread out. The six Space Marines shifted away from the cover of the wrecks and moved swiftly toward the building, opening up into a fan, covering every possible angle of attack.
They came in, loping like hunter canines on the prowl, boots crunching softly on dull dust and chips of glass. Rafen saw that the building was a service tower, a layered structure of offices and Adminstratum facilities. Renditions of the noble Imperial eagle jutted from every corner, and across the main entrance a pair of towering figures in the robes of the Adeptus Terra flanked the space where the doors would have been. Some of the upper tiers had collapsed down into those below them, giving the building a stooped aspect. The sergeant noted this; the structure was probably unstable, which meant restricting the men to non-explosive weapons. The ill-considered use of a krak grenade here could conceivably bring the roof down upon them.
Kayne signalled to him, and pointed. Off to the side, the dusty road dropped into a shallow ramp leading toward the underlevels of the tower. An underground vehicle park, he realised. Rafen considered it for a moment. A good, defensible position, as tough as any fallout shelter or army bunker, concealed to the eyes of anything but a close-range inspection. A fair choice for a rebel seeking a bolt hole.
He hesitated. Once he gave the order to step inside, he would be venturing beyond the mission orders granted to him. Rafen’s squad were to seek their objective, nothing more, nothing less. If he turned them all away and led them back down the highway, it would not be wrong to do so—but in all truth, the matter of the dead bodies had concerned him. He felt a building need to know more about what was going on here on Eritaen.
Rafen’s brow furrowed. He decided to consider it an exercise. They had been prowling the streets of this maze for days. Some action would be a blessing.
He nodded to Kayne and gestured for him to take the point, all the better to give him something to focus on. The young warrior smiled thinly, pausing to replace his helmet before moving on.
The underlevel parking structure descended for several tiers beneath the service tower, dropping into sub-basements that ranged away into the dimness. The floor was canted downwards, each level a shallow ramp leading to the next. With the city’s power grid long since smashed, the only light came from the sickly yellow-green glow of biolume pods along the rough ferrocrete walls. Rafen felt the familiar tensing sensation at the back of his eyes as his occulobe implant stirred to life, stimulating the cells of his optic nerves. The deeper they ventured inside, the more the chambers took on a flat, washed-out cast, his vision adjusting to the low levels of illumination.
He glanced at the sensor glyphs in the corner of his visor. The armour’s integral atmosphere sensors were registering a slight build-up of monoxides in the atmosphere, but so little as to be beneath the notice of an Astartes. The ever-present powdery dust had not reached this far; only small curls of it lurked here and there, drooling from the grilles of ventilation shafts. Down here, the air tasted of stale hydrocarbons and spent batteries.
Turcio tap-tapped the side of his helmet, attracting the attention of the whole squad. “More bodies.” There were perhaps fifty or sixty of them, piled in a long, low heap against a wall. “These ones haven’t been blooded.”
“Saved for later, maybe,” Kayne noted quietly.
Ajir bent closer. “What are those?” He pointed to a strange contraption about the torso of the nearest figure. From Rafen’s viewpoint, it resembled a metallic vest with racks of glassy tubes ranged down it, each one dark with some sort of oily liquid inside. His hearing detected a faint clicking sound. Every one of the bodies wore the same item; every one of them bore the Companitas insignia on their face.
“Touch nothing,” said Rafen. “The corpses are likely to be booby-trapped.”
“We leave them here?” Ajir pressed.
“Aye,” he returned. “Turcio will torch them when we’ve completed our sweep.”
They moved on. There were a few vehicles, mostly of the boxy, utilitarian kind pressed from the same Standard Template Construct pattern used on thousands of human worlds. Rafen imagined they had likely been abandoned in the rush to escape the city when the fighting finally spilled into the open.
“Still nothing,” offered Corvus, scrutinising the auspex.
“Not quite,” said Kayne, halting with his bolter at his shoulder.
Ahead of them, sitting cross-legged atop the bonnet of a low-slung cargo flatbed, was a figure partially clad in what appeared to be scraps of Imperial Guard-issue armour. It was a male, dirty and matted, hunched slightly forward. His shoulders were twitching and he paid the approach of the Space Marines no heed. Rafen’s immediate impression was of someone silently weeping.
“He does not register…” said Corvus. “I read no organic traces from him.”
Kayne had already drawn a bead, and the rest of the unit reacted as they were supposed to, spying to the corners of the parking space, looking for other threats.
Rafen took a step forward. “Identify yourself,” he demanded. The Blood Angel was not in the business of being ignored.
The man looked up briefly, and it became clear he was not weeping, but laughing. He did it without uttering a sound, rocking back and forth as if the greatest comedy of all the universe had been revealed to him.
“I asked you a question, citizen.” Rafen’s free hand drifted to the hilt of his power sword. “Speak!”
Abruptly, the man slid off the vehicle and stumbled drunkenly toward them. “The dust,” he gulped, gasping in air between quiet jags of hysteria. “The dust is why it’s… It’s all that’s left of them!”
“Stand back,” ordered Kayne, all hesitation gone from his voice.
“See,” said the man, offering something to them in his cupped hands. “See.” It was a glass cylinder filled with thick fluid, identical to those mounted upon the metal vests. Closer now, and Rafen could see the laughing man was also wearing one beneath his dirt-slick jacket. “Come to the dust,” he choked, and with a sudden motion, the ragged figure jammed the tube into his thigh.
A clicking noise sounded from the cylinder, and with a glugging cough the fluid inside discharged into the man’s leg. He shuddered like a palsy victim and leapt at them, whooping.
Kayne’s gun discharged and the flat bang of the shot echoed around them. The laughing man was slammed backward, his neck ending in a haze of pink mist.
“He tried to attack you.” Corvus was almost incredulous. “Was he out of his mind?”
“Apparently,” opined Puluo.
Then from behind them, back up along the shallow rise of the slanting floor, a rattling chorus of clicking and hissing and chugging echoed off the walls. The pile of bodies writhed and slipped, figures falling off one another, dropping to the floor and rolling away. Others were stiff-legged, climbing slowly to their feet. Giggling. Mumbling. Empty glass ampoules fell from the ports in their vests and rolled down toward the Astartes.
“They were dead…” Corvus blinked.
“Yes,” noted Turcio. “They were.”
“Remind them, then,” said Rafen, bringing up his gun as the figures swarmed toward them, each one injecting draughts of fluid into their twitching bodies.
Puluo unleashed the heavy bolter, and inside the confines of the vehicle park the noise of the weapon’s discharge was a metallic bellow. A crucifix of muzzle flare split from the barrel as bullets the size of candlepins ripped into the advancing horde. Some of them were killed instantly as shots punched through the middle of their torsos, shattering them through hydrostatic shock; others lost limbs or hanks of flesh, spinning about as if they were taking part in some idiot dance.
The ones that did not die immediately showed no signs of fear, not the slightest jot of concern for their lives. They simply laughed and screamed, the meat of their faces bulging, puffed up with the surge of the dark fluid from the injectors.
They had poor weapons, but
many of them. Stubber rifles, mostly, along with clubs of all kinds and countless blades. Ballistic rounds rattled off Rafen’s chest plate, chipping at the red ceramite but gaining no purchase. He used his bolter to place single, pinpoint rounds into the head of any target that came his way.
The ones that had limbs blown out from under them did not appear to care. Rafen witnessed them reach for the ampules on their vests and fire fresh doses into their stomachs or necks. The Blood Angel was no stranger to combat drugs, although for the most part, his Chapter eschewed the used of chemical alterants to enhance battlefield ability, preferring to rely on the raw power of the bloodline of their primarch. But whatever it was that these rebels were using on themselves, it went beyond the scope of such things. The fluid was some kind of mutagen; he could actually see it altering the density of flesh or staunching the torrents of blood.
At the feet of the Astartes, the ferrocrete was quickly becoming damp and sticky with the vitae of their attackers. Through his breath grille, Rafen’s nostrils twitched at the scent of the blood. It had a peculiar bouquet, the familiar coppery tang mingled with an almost sugary sweetness, like some succulent confection. He licked his lips automatically.
The attackers hurled themselves over the bodies of their fallen brethren with mad abandon, and abruptly the skirmish became a close quarter battle. Rafen’s squad met the challenge with casual force. Such close-in fights were the very meat and drink of the Blood Angels. The sergeant let his bolter fall away on its sling and drew his power sword backhanded, bringing it about in a quick turn that beheaded a Companitas brandishing a drum-fed shotgun. The weapon discharged once, twice, as the headless corpse continued a little longer in the mad capering dance. Irritated, Rafen cut again, this time parting the abdomen. There was a slight resistance as the glowing blade sliced through the spinal column; he made a mental note to have the armoury serfs sharpen the edge and tune the sword’s energy field when the squad had quit Eritaen.
Around him, the fight had contracted to a series of one-on-one combats. Puluo killed a man with the weight of his bolter, using the gun as a blunt instrument to crush his skull against the floor. Kayne buried his bayonet in the chest of a chattering swordsman. Turcio’s flamer coughed out puffballs of yellow-orange promethium flame, turning his foes into screaming torches.
“Let’s finish this and be gone,” said Corvus.
Ajir grunted with grim gallows humour. “With all due respect, I think these fools may have other ideas. Do you not hear them?”
Rafen turned as the sound of clattering boots and chattering laughter reached his ears. There were more of the Companitas emerging from beneath them, hundreds more, the bubbling rush of their hysteria echoing up from the sub-levels. He had wondered earlier where the enemy was hiding; it seemed that they had been hiding here.
“We’ve happened on a rat’s nest.” Turcio’s face was set. “How many?”
“More than we have shells for,” Rafen replied. “Draw back. If they bottle us up in here, we’ll not see daylight again—”
Then without preamble, a new voice issued out over the general vox frequency, a gruff and resonant growl. “Blood Angels. Exfiltrate now. You are in a fire zone.”
“Who speaks?” he demanded. “Give your name and rank!”
“I will not warn you again, cousin,” came the terse reply, and the signal cut out.
Puluo turned to fire into ranks of the rebel reinforcements as the last of the first wave were dispatched. Kayne shot Rafen a look. “Orders, lord?”
Rafen’s expression soured. “We go. Disengage and fall back!”
The squad reacted as one, Puluo and Corvus laying down cover fire as the Space Marines retreated back the way they had come. Rafen’s grimace set hard; he knew full well who had spoken, and the arrogance of the words filled him with irritation; but to ignore what was said would be foolish.
Weak daylight glowed before them as they reached the uppermost level of the parking structure, and a faint sound reached his enhanced hearing; the shriek of multiple missile fire.
His rational mind barely had time to register the thought, questions springing to his lips; but instead he shouted out a warning. “Incoming!”
They burst from the structure in rush. Somewhere above them, a barrage of rockets slammed into the flanks of the service tower and sent a Shockwave hammering down through the sub-levels. Aged ferrocrete splintered, cracked, shattered, and down came the building around them in a torrent of stone.
Turcio felt the rain of rock rather than saw it. Dust blinded him and he cursed himself for going about without his helmet. Blinking, he glimpsed another figure in battle armour struggling to wade through the melee and instinctively reached out, tugging on an arm to help his comrade move through the landslide.
The arm was rudely snatched away. “Look to your own welfare, penitent!” snarled Ajir, forcing his way through the choking clouds of powder.
Turcio scowled and said nothing, charging onward. He was aware of other men around him, the shifting, blurry shapes of red in amongst the falling rocks. Tiny stones clattered into his neck ring and ones the size of fists bounced across his skull, lighting sparks of pain. He almost stumbled, but a force propelled him forward. Puluo.
“Move,” snapped the Space Marine. The blue sunshine turned grey as a haze of dust enveloped them.
CHAPTER TWO
The final, dying fall of the stubby tower sent a ring of air rippling out around it, churning the ever-present dust and the smaller shards of broken glass. Rolling cords of bone-coloured powder rose in a wave, slowly to drift and settle anew across the wreckage of the intersection. The dust fell upon the armour of the warriors who stood ranged around the squat shape of the Whirlwind missile tank. Their wargear, usually a heavy, wine-dark crimson with black trim, was sullied from weeks of battle in among the cloying dust. The colours were dull and washed-out, as if sun-bleached. Only the sigil on their shoulder pads remained bright and starkly visible; a razor-toothed circular blade crested with a single droplet of blood in deep, arterial red.
Smoke curled from the mouth of the Whirlwind’s rocket tubes as the commander of the unit glanced up at it. “You didn’t give them much warning,” noted one of his men.
“I gave them enough,” said the squad leader. “Perhaps this experience will encourage them not to interfere where they are uninvited.”
“If any one of them is dead… There could be repercussions.”
“They’ll live, if they’re worth the name Astartes.” The squad leader pointed. Rubble was shifting and figures emerged from the debris, shaking off the effects of the concussion. “You see? No harm done.” There was an edge of cruel amusement in his voice.
“Just to their pride,” added the other.
His commander smiled thinly. “They can stand a wound or two to that.”
Rafen kicked free of the ruin and stepped out from the tangle of rebar and wreckage, casting one quick look over his shoulder to be sure that his men were all unhurt. He didn’t wait for them to follow. He stormed out across the windblown intersection toward the tank, his fury building behind his chest. Rafen removed his helmet with an angry twist of his hands.
“Cousin,” said the voice from the vox. “Well met.” Two figures in Mark VII Aquila armour advanced out to meet him. They wore the insignia of a trooper and a veteran sergeant, and as he watched the senior warrior mirrored his action, doffing his headgear.
Rafen saw a craggy face beneath, with close-cut dark hair and cold, lifeless eyes; and at that moment, more than anything, he wanted to backhand him for his recklessness.
But there was the mission. The mission and the message. Rafen bit down on the impulse and ignored the ritual greeting. “I have often heard it said that the brothers of the Flesh Tearers Chapter are a savage and impulsive lot,” he said stiffly. “And to think, I thought better of you.”
Rafen was rewarded by a small tic of annoyance in the other warrior’s eye. “We have a reputation to live down to,” said
the Space Marine. “The primarch, in his wisdom, did not see fit to bless us with the same gifts as our parent legion.” He nodded at Rafen’s armour, at the winged blood droplet insignia upon its chest. “But we have learned to play to the strengths we have.” The Astartes gave the slightest of bows. “I am Brother-Sergeant Noxx. This is Battle-Brother Roan, my second-in-command.”
“Rafen,” he replied, his ill mood clipping his words. “I await your apology, cousin.” He put a hard emphasis on the word.
Noxx returned a steady gaze. “For what? For prosecuting a sortie in the battle that we have been ordered to win? If you have an issue, Blood Angel, I would suggest you take it up with my commander. It was on his orders we destroyed the target.” He gestured at the shattered building. “Had it not been for him, we might not have known you were inside.”
“Orbital observation drones spotted your men entering the tower,” added Roan.
“Why were you in there?” said Noxx. “Has there been a change of protocol that I was not aware of? Are the Blood Angels joining us at Eritaen to fight against the rebels? It was my understanding that you are here only as messengers.”
Rafen’s jaw hardened. He refused to allow the Flesh Tearer to bait him. “A target presented itself. I assumed you would appreciate our assistance in neutralising it.”
Noxx nodded once. “Indeed. But as you can see, we have the matter well in hand.” He indicated the Whirlwind, and for the first time Rafen noticed that there were a group of civilians cowering in the shadow of the armoured vehicle.
“Collaborators,” explained Roan, sensing Rafen’s question. “One of them was supplying water to the Companitas. When properly compelled, he revealed knowledge of this nest.”
“One?” Rafen repeated. “You have a dozen people there. What are the others guilty of?”
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