The gunshot echoed down the corridor, and each battle-brother there turned his face away from the art of justice.
Rafen stood to find Puluo watching him. The Space Marine tapped his chest, over the spot where his progenoid glands were implanted. The tiny knots of flesh contained the complex DNA required for each generation of Blood Angels, and their recovery from the bodies of the fallen ensured new life in the shadow of death.
“No,” said Rafen. “No harvest for him. Caecus’ crime has tainted him beyond the point of exculpation. No trace shall remain.” The sergeant gestured to Roan, pointing at the Flesh Tearer’s hand flamer. “You. Burn him.”
The gush of ignited promethium billowed and engulfed the corpse. None of them spoke as the majoris’ body was turned into ashes.
Noxx’s dead eyes were hooded, and finally he broke the silence. “If an agent of the Ruinous Powers is within these walls, how did our psykers not detect him?”
“Does that matter now?” asked Ajir. “Every Astartes knows the traitor Fabius Bile. He is ten millennia old. To survive that long, he must have tricks we can only guess at.”
Rafen gave a slow nod of agreement. Once an Adeptus Astartes himself, the warrior who had been Brother Fabius of the Emperor’s Children Legion gave himself to the Chaos Gods during Horus’ insurrection against Terra in the 31st millennium; he turned, along with his primarch Fulgrim and the rest of the III Legion, and embraced the way of the traitor. There were many tales of the man who renamed himself Fabius Bile, self-styled “primogenitor” of the Chaos hordes, all of them sickening and hateful. No longer allied to his former band of corrupted turncoats, he was known to act as a free agent among the arch-enemy, a mercenary offering his knowledge of twisted science to any he chose. Fabius Bile had crossed paths with the Blood Angels on many occasions, but never before had he dared to venture this close to the heart of their Chapter. “Nothing has changed,” said the sergeant. “If anything, we now have greater cause to obliterate this place if Bile’s corruption has touched it.”
“Excise it like a cancer, and kill him into the bargain,” said Corvus. “He must be the cause of the mutants.” The Space Marine dared to glance at the smouldering corpse. “He used Caecus to strike at the Chapter.”
Noxx snorted. “And you believe this blackguard will simply stand still and allow us to drown him in boiling floodwaters? If he has not already escaped?”
Kayne shook his head. “No ships have left the citadel in days, none save the flyer used by the majoris. There are no other ways out of the complex.”
Corvus held up the auspex. “That is not true, brother.”
He showed the display to Rafen, and the sergeant’s eyes widened. “A teleportarium?”
“On this very tier, lord, used for the transit of delicate genetic samples,” said the Space Marine. He frowned. “There are dozens of starships in orbit—”
“If that traitor whoreson reaches any one of them, his escape is virtually certain!” Roan shook his head.
“We need to split the unit,” said Noxx, his thoughts following the same pattern as those of his Blood Angel counterpart.
“Agreed,” Rafen nodded. “Corvus, you will join Sergeant Noxx and the Flesh Tearer squad. Guide them to the terminatus chamber and enact the rites of obliteration. The rest of us will locate the teleportarium and render it inoperable.”
Noxx gestured at Roan. “Take him with you. I won’t have Mephiston say I left my cousins a man down.”
“For Sanguinius, then.”
Noxx nodded. “In the primarch’s name, aye.”
The mutants walked in a wary train behind him, heads turning in jerks of motion like birds of prey seeking food animals. Some of them lowed and snapped at each other with angry ill-temper. They had fed so much and yet they were still hungry. The primogenitor wondered what it would take to sate that unending appetite. How much blood? How many kills? Part of him was sorrowful he would not be able to stay behind and observe. It was of interest to him, but truth be told, only in a tangential way. He had much more important things to do. Much more important experiments to enact.
Fabius’ long fingers tapped out a rhythm upon the flesh-pouch on his belt, the draw-string bag made from the flayed head-skin of a small girl he had caught, on some hive-world whose name escaped him. Behind the sewn-shut eyes and mouth slit, resting there was the vial that foolish Caecus had delivered to him. The largest of the Bloodfiends, the one that walked at the front of the line, had brought it to him. That one was the farthest along, the most developed. Bile could see the glint of emerging intelligence in its eyes. It was carrying a stolen bolter and bundles of ammunition plundered from the citadel’s weapons store. The clone cradled the weapon in a way that was both unfamiliar and commonplace.
He allowed himself a smile. They were exceptional things, these replicae, almost the equal to the New Men of the primogenitor’s own creation. Such a shame, such a pity that genetic material of rich potential would be wasted. But then, it was in the service of a better cause. The precious vial made all sacrifices worthwhile. The geneforms locked within that undying fluid would advance his great work by decades.
The renegade left the teleportarium’s doors wide open and moved to the command console, pausing only to snap the neck of the servitor waiting there. As an afterthought, he tossed the corpse toward the clones and let them harry it for a while. He worked quickly at the rune-dotted panel, his hands and the brass limbs sprouting from his back at a blur; during this he became aware that the large Bloodfiend, the pack’s “alpha”, was sniffing the air and shooting him wary glances. The mutants had shown Fabius an almost instinctual deference, as if they understood on a cellular level that he was in some way their creator. But now they were becoming agitated.
He pressed on; other matters were more crucial, and the time was drawing near. He could sense the slow build of pressure in the back of his skull. The Gate would open soon, and then he would flee this place. The last of his pretence at being Haran Serpens would be removed, and he would truly be himself once more. He longed for the feel of his trusty tools in his hands, his rod and the needier. They were his orb and sceptre, the implements that crowned him Gene-master of the Eye of Terror.
But before he could return, he had to ensure he would not be followed. The first step in that had already been set in motion. He could feel it in the slow chilling of the air. The second step… He was almost done.
Fabius eschewed the rituals of activation and the tiresome litanies of thanks to the Machine-God that the teleporter’s drone-mind demanded. Instead, the chirurgeon upon his back extended a needle-arm and injected a euphoric poison into the mechanism’s braincase, letting it drown in pleasure. So released, he was free to impose a new set of target coordinates and set the matter-energy conversion process to begin accumulating power for a transit.
The humming chains of energy were nearing their peak when the howls of the Bloodfiends turned clamorous and shrill. Through the open doors came a squad of Space Marines, and the renegade laughed at them. “What kept you?” he snorted.
Noxx’s men moved with a swift and predatory competence that was at odds with the manners they had displayed on Eritaen. Corvus kept pace with them, the auspex in his hand, his bolter at the ready.
The Flesh Tearer sergeant disarmed a laser trip-mine array hastily erected about the door to the terminatus chamber and opened the thick hatch.
“Shouldn’t that doorway have been locked?” said one of the Flesh Tearers.
Corvus didn’t register the man’s words, his thoughts on the task ahead. He had already drawn the deactivation scripts for the geothermal regulator device, and he strode in beside Noxx, ready to offer them to the citadel’s machine-spirit.
What he saw made him stop dead. The glyphs on the control consoles were shining a hard, uniform crimson. Corvus had barely registered the fact when he sensed a faint tremor through the soles of his boots.
Noxx swore. “This is bad.”
Corvus shook h
is head, his mouth going dry. “No, sergeant. This is worse.”
“Fabius Bile, I name you traitor!” Rafen spat out the malediction and opened fire, shooting from the hip. Bolt-fire cascaded into the command pulpit and the renegade dived away, through the mass of cables strung from the power vanes that circled the teleport pad like a giant’s coronet.
The Bloodchild clones—no, the Bloodfiends - went wild and attacked, but this time the Astartes were ready for them. With pinpoint barrages of fire, they corralled them, forced them across the humming hex-grid of the chamber floor. Energy crackled all about them.
“Back!” shouted Puluo to the men. “Stay back!”
Roan was at the front of the group and faltered. Rafen’s eyes widened with shock as he saw a clone, this one larger than the rest, bring up a bolter and return fire. The Flesh Tearer dodged away, skidding across the grid as emerald motes of light began to form in the air. Noxx had been correct; the creatures were evolving. He remembered the Bloodchild they had fought in the arena, the way it had drawn from their fighting styles and learned in seconds. These things were doing the same, quicker and quicker with each confrontation.
“Where is that traitorous snake?” demanded Ajir.
Rafen spotted movement across the far side of the teleportarium. He had expected the renegade to be standing among the clones but the opposite was true. Bile was making for another doorway, the claws of his spinal mechanism flailing, ducking low to avoid the rounds that snapped at his heels.
The clones howled and battered at the decking, a lanky and stringy one striking out and snaring Roan about the ankle. Rafen burst from cover, meaning to dive headlong after him, but Puluo swung his heavy bolter and batted the Space Marine back on his haunches. “Sir, no!”
The Blood Angel sergeant realised too late what was about to happen. With a crackling, buzzing hum that reached into his marrow, Rafen let out a gasp as viridian light blazed through the chamber. There came a sharp thunderclap of displaced air and suddenly the teleport platform was empty; only wisps of ozone drifted where moments before a host of screeching clones and one Flesh Tearer had stood.
Rafen snarled and bolted across the still-sizzling transport stage. He was halfway across when the renegade threw a cluster of metal eggs toward the workings of the teleporter’s power train. “Consider them a gift!” shouted Fabius, pulling the far hatch shut behind him.
The krak grenades detonated on impact and a flat disc of force flashed out across the chamber. Rafen felt the deck leave him as he was picked up and tossed into the air. The Blood Angel was hurled into a crystalline regulator column that shattered into jagged fragments around him.
The tremors were coming every few seconds now, and at the edge of his hearing Corvus caught the rolling rumble of the boiling floodwaters churning their way through the levels beneath them. At a ran, the Astartes vaulted the broad stone steps three at a time, spiralling upwards. The Blood Angel’s world narrowed to the back of Noxx in front of him, the sergeant’s fusion-pack bobbing as they ran to reach the upper levels.
“Brother-Sergeant Rafen, the destruct process has already begun!” he called into his vox, his breath coming in chugs of air. “Bile got there before us! You must retreat to the Thunderhawk!”
He heard only static over the open channel.
Ignoring the darts of agony that rippled down his body, Rafen dragged himself from the wreckage of the burning teleporter stage and dove through the growing flames. He shouldered open the hatch and pushed inside. Beyond, there was an access gantry that ranged over a forest of power conduits. The companionway travelled for several metres and ended in a sheer ferrocrete wall.
His senses sifted the sensations in the air about him. There was a thickness to the atmosphere here, a sickly tang that felt greasy upon his tongue even through the filters of his helmet. A slime pattern lay about the sheer wall. Rafen pressed his palm to the hard sheet of artificial rock, searching for a hidden door, some sort of concealed exit, but there was nothing, no means of physical escape from the dead-end chamber. He frowned, for the first time sensing the shallow trembling in the walls around him.
In quick succession he ran through the different modes of vision open to an Astartes in power armour—electrochemical, ultraviolet, and infrared. Only when he turned to preysight mode did he catch it, and by reflex the Blood Angel batted at the shape that suddenly appeared in the air. It began to disperse, moving like slow smoke.
Rafen bit back a surge of disgust in his throat. The shape of the ghostly vapour was falling apart, but for a single moment he had seen it intact. It was an image, a crude sketch hovering in the air.
A howling skull-shaped gateway as big as a Space Marine, and between the teeth of its open mouth, a star with eight points.
Mephiston stopped abruptly in the light of the tall window and hissed as a line of pain crossed his face.
“Kinsman?” said Dante. “What is it?”
The psyker shook his head. “Something… I felt it before, but I could not be certain. This time, though… The touch of darkness…” He swallowed, tasting metal in his mouth.
And then the green flash erupted in the sky high above the central courtyard of the fortress-monastery.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The air was damp, acrid with the smell of metallic salts and sulphur. Ahead of the churning floodwater, gusts of furious steam were being pushed down the corridors of the Vitalis Citadel. The searing, superheated vapour reverted back to droplets where it touched the chilled outer walls of the tower, turning into rains that sluiced over brick and steel. The rumble of the deluge was constant now, the tremors rippling through the decks.
On the Thunderhawk’s drop-ramp, Turcio threw a quick glance down the length of the ship’s troop bay. At the far end, he saw Kayne in stern discussion with the pilot-serf. The transport’s engines were revving, the winglets shuddering as if the craft was desperate to take air and leave the citadel to destroy itself. “How much longer can we wait?” demanded the Astartes.
Kayne looked his way and spoke over the vox. “The pilot tells me we may have already tarried too long.”
Turcio grinned wolfishly. “I’d prefer a more optimistic estimate.” He went to say more, but movement at the doors to the landing bay brought him to a ready stance with his bolter at his shoulder. He relaxed an iota when he recognised the figures of Space Marines streaming across the deck. “Brother-sergeant?” he called.
Rafen was at the rear of the pack of men, urging them on. He threw a look over his shoulder and cursed. Turcio spied the first shallow drools of yellowed water sloshing over the threshold and knew that their time was up.
“Get the men aboard!” Rafen roared. “Forget the ramp, get them in and lift the ship!” Turcio stood back as a mass of mingled Blood Angel and Flesh Tearer warriors scrambled into the Thunderhawk’s open troop bay. Some of them bore injuries, but not a one of them allowed such trivialities to slow them. The Flesh Tearer sergeant, the veteran Noxx, propelled Brother Corvus ahead of him, and then turned on the lip of the ramp to extend a hand to Rafen. The Blood Angel accepted, and no sooner had Rafen’s boot touched the aircraft than the Thunderhawk’s engines shrieked with the application of new thrust. The floor of the landing bay fell away as the gunship lifted vertically through the bartizan and out into the polar air. Boiling floodstreams laden with debris came up after them, churning in coiled waves at the rising craft’s wings.
Turcio saw it happen through the open hatch. As the pilot-serf pulled them away, the deluge exploded out of the citadel’s flanks and for one brief instant the red tower became a fountainhead; then the frothing, streaming geyser overwhelmed the building’s structure. Beneath a plume of dirty, magma-fuelled water, the Vitalis Citadel was crushed back into the ice-covered mountainside. Hot and cold met in a scream of reaction, sending up a wall of steam and billowing snow.
The concussion rocked the Thunderhawk and sent it tottering toward the spikes of the ice ridges, the pilot-serf making frantic corrections
to keep them airborne. The Astartes who had not secured themselves were tossed about the cabin like toys. Turcio hung on grimly, and saw Rafen lend his strength to Noxx to keep him upright. A marked change from their behaviour in the fighting pit, he mused, keeping the observation to himself.
The turbulence eased and the flight became more stable as they accelerated away. The Blood Angel caught a few words from Noxx. “We’re short a body. Where is Roan?”
As the hatch finally closed, Rafen detached his helmet and ran a hand through his unkempt hair. “He was upon the teleportarium’s stage when it activated. The traitor Fabius used the device to spirit the mutants away before he fled the tower, and Roan was caught among the Bloodfiends.” He frowned. “I regret his loss.”
“Where did Bile send them?” demanded Noxx.
“I have an inkling,” Rafen returned, his expression grim. He looked at Turcio. “Brother. Tell the pilot to push this ship to the very limits, to fly it apart if he has to. No time can be spared. We must get back to the fortress-monastery.”
The teleportation flux tore the air from his lungs in the shattering moment of transition. The Flesh Tearer felt every atom of his body become fluid and ghostly, for one horrible millisecond existing as nothing but a mass of free particles in a sea of seething non-matter; and then suddenly Brother Roan was whole once again, the equilibrium of being restored as quickly as it had been taken.
The shocking transition was not new to him. Roan had taken part in teleport assaults on more than one occasion, but it was not something that he relished. He had seen brothers twisted inside by perturbations in the flux, and worse still the warpings of flesh and ceramite that resulted from an incorrect reintegration, that had to be put down like diseased animals.
His was not to share that fate, however. Fabius Bile was too accomplished a scientist to make an error of that stripe. No, the twisted genetor had led the Astartes to a wholly different manner of perishing.
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