This close, Toc Derenoth saw that the ramps crossed a deep fissure. On either side of each slope was the darkness of a long fall.
Deep pain ran up and down his left side. His body was working hard to stanch the bleeding. His leg dragged. Muscles were torn and bones were broken. His breath turned into a snarl as he marched through his wounds. He refused to grant them a victory. He funnelled his agony into his consciousness of the rounds flying from his bolter. They were his anger. He saw another enemy fall. Then the Ultramarines’ fire stopped all at once.
The movement of the enemy changed. There was a different kind of coherence. The Ultramarines were moving back.
‘They’re retreating,’ Qarthon announced.
‘Why?’ Toc Derenoth asked. Whatever he thought of the loyalists, they were not weak, and they were not cowards. They fought to the end.
A rumble began. It grew louder, drowning out the hum of the command nexus.
Rhaalahn Squad rushed the ramps. Ulughar was just behind. Toc Derenoth set foot on the slope at the same moment the bolter fire burst from the row of windows.
Another Ultramarines force had entered the command nexus from a different approach. Toc Derenoth felt a wave of frustration so intense it bordered on vertigo. He saw now the kind of war he and his brothers were fighting. The tangle of caves was not only too massive to control, it was too complex to learn. Communications were too fragmented. Perhaps the Ultramarines were faring better, but at this stage it was impossible to know how many Word Bearers had reached the arcologies, or where they were. Toc Derenoth had a vision of disconnected skirmishes playing out within the networks, victories and defeats meaningless beyond their participants, and any connections formed only by chance.
Except the Ultramarines knew this territory. They would be able to link up. To coordinate. They already had.
The destruction of the command nexus was more urgent than ever.
The barrage caught the Word Bearers in the open. It drove them back a full step before they could return fire. The Ultramarines had the heights now, and there were no good positions in the room. The only defence was a concerted offence: a push to the windows.
Shell and flame in both directions along the ramps. Frag grenades detonated in the midst of the squads and inside the nexus. Rock shrapnel filled the air. Just in front of Toc Derenoth, a blast lifted Dar Hathuun into the air and hurled him off the side of the ramp. The Word Bearer disappeared into the dark gulf below with a snarl of hatred. The curses faded as he fell, but Toc Derenoth did not hear him hit the bottom.
Retaliatory explosions shook the wall of the centre. The interior lights flickered, then steadied. The Ultramarines’ fire paused at one window. The pause was brief.
The rumble became deafening. The stones of the cavern were filled with thunder. On the far right of the chamber was a valve three metres in diameter. It flew open with a bang. Silver liquid burst from the maw, and from a dozen other conduits around the chamber. And still the rumble grew, as of some enormous cataract coming, about to crash down on the cavern.
The air around the silver froth froze into crystals. Hypercoolant, Toc Derenoth realised. The sudden river raced along the platform and down the ramps. It was already over a metre deep. The wave hit the front of the Word Bearers advance. Qarthon stopped marching. He jerked, held in place. He roared in pain. He tried to take a step, and his legs shattered. He fell into the stream. The rest of Rhaalahn Squad was swept down too, overcome in an instant.
The other Word Bearers retreated. The hypercoolant was an enemy that could not be fought. They scrambled for the high ground of the rubble. The hypercoolant poured off the edges of the ramps into the depths, and it spread itself out on the main floor. Toc Derenoth only had time to climb atop a waist-high slab before the lethal silver rushed past him. He saw the flow from the valve diminish. He started to look for a route back towards the command nexus.
But the thunder still raged. Louder and louder, filling the cavern with smothering noise. And now the flood arrived. The hypercoolant roared into the cave from every entrance. The river had been a mere prologue. Now the sea had come. The waves were as high as the ceiling. In an instant, the atmosphere of the cavern turned to brittle ice. Everything turned white. Toc Derenoth’s rebreather struggled to draw oxygen. Cold sharp as the void stabbed his lungs.
The waves raced towards the centre of the chamber. There was no exit, and only seconds before the cave became a new hypercoolant reservoir. He leapt from the slab and ran back towards the ramps. He splashed through pools of hypercoolant. The ceramite of his boots cracked. He took three steps up, and there was another rush of liquid from the main valve. He was trapped. He stopped. The wall of hypercoolant filling the chamber pushed the air ahead of it, and a hurricane of ice pummelled him from all sides. The vox filled with the end of his brothers. Their agony was brief, and it was savage. They were frozen and smashed, drowned and crushed. They disappeared forever beneath the waves.
No recourse. No choices. But he fought all the same. Toc Derenoth ran to meet the hypercoolant flowing down the ramp. Just before it reached him, he jumped sideways. The edges of the stone bridge were uneven. He punched his fist through the rock and dangled over the abyss. The silver spilled over the edge and rained onto him. His armour’s servo-motors stuttered. His coordination faltered. His right hand twitched and tried to release its grip on the ramp. A scythe of cold cut into him. His senses shut down in an effort to protect his consciousness. And still the scythe cut deep. He was not submerged in the flood, yet existence shrank to pain and silver.
The vox was silent. His brothers were dead.
His grip was slipping. Toc Derenoth looked down. The darkness below was more than a relief from the silver. It was a welcome. It was home. The hypercoolant was the tool of the Ultramarines, and the silver was the false illumination of bad faith and blind obedience. The darkness reached for him. It was as real a presence as the hypercoolant. As he hung from the final threads of awareness, the dark appeared to rise towards him. It unfurled tendrils, enraged by the fall of the silver. He saw how right Kurtha Sedd was to guide Fifth Company downwards, to take them towards the dark. Their weapon was down there.
The roar of the hypercoolant flood continued. The greater cataract plunged over the edge of the floor between the ramps. The rain on Toc Derenoth diminished, the flow from the valve cutting off. It had done its work, though. He was sliding towards a sus-an membrane coma. If the rain came again, it would kill him.
He would not grant the Ultramarines that victory. He would risk the fall into the darkness. If he died, it would be in the embrace of the truth. He whispered a prayer to the gods, and let go.
A powerful grip seized his wrists, arresting his fall. He looked up, squinting through anger and pain. A shape in blue armour held him. It was flanked by other figures. The Ultramarine hauled him up, away from the darkness, into the light and shame of capture.
FIVE
Acceptable losses
Aethon
Disgrace
The traces of the battle for the command nexus reached Kurtha Sedd. The further down he led the rest of Fifth Company, the more broken the vox-transmissions became. He heard enough to guess at its progress. Explosions, muted by distance, followed the Word Bearers down the shafts and tunnels.
Then came an echo that did not fade. It built and built. It was a pursuit. Less than a minute after it began, all vox-traffic from Rhaalahn, Ulughar and Thulain squads ceased. The last voices he heard were unable to form words.
Kurtha Sedd looked back up. The company was in another access shaft that passed between major levels of the arcology network. It was a dim cylinder stretching overhead for more than a hundred metres, and there was at least that far to go before reaching its landing. The iron staircase that spiralled along the shaft vibrated with approaching thunder. Dust fell from the walls.
Kurtha Sedd cursed the prospect of delay. H
e scanned the shaft. A few metres further down, a grille covered the access to a ventilation network. It was wide enough for a legionary to enter, and just barely for Sor Gharax to be dragged inside. He ran down the steps and tore the grille away. No command was needed. Every warrior present knew catastrophe breathed down their necks. He stood aside as his brothers struggled to get the crippled Dreadnought into the conduit. Kurtha Sedd was the last to take shelter. He gazed upwards, challenging the fates. Would judgement find him here, in so meaningless a moment? It would not. It could not.
As the last of the Word Bearers entered the conduit, the hypercoolant burst into the shaft from the uppermost entrance. Silver cold filled space. It fell, roaring and hissing. Kurtha Sedd glared at it, then followed his brothers into the shelter. He stayed as close to the mouth of the passage as he dared. As the hypercoolant thundered past, the cold was a solid wall. It slammed through his armour’s insulation. His flesh experienced a form of pain it had not known in decades.
‘Brothers,’ he shouted over the roar, ‘that cold is the touch of a dead faith. The loyalists reach for us, and we elude their grasp. They strike and miss. We will strike and kill.’
The hypercoolant fell for several minutes more. It turned the iron of the staircase brittle, then carried all the steps away with a resounding crash. At last, the cataract tapered. Kurtha Sedd advanced to the lip of the conduit and looked down. He gazed at the final streams of deathly silver. The lumen globes in the shaft had been destroyed, and the only illumination now leaked in from access points that had escaped the flood. ‘Look,’ Kurtha Sedd ordered. ‘The darkness is stronger. That is the achievement of the enemy. He turns more and more of his world over to us.’
It did seem that the darkness had devoured the silver. A blow had passed, and fallen into the void.
Kaeloq was crouched beside him, looking where he pointed. Crystals fell past them, circling and twinkling feebly before vanishing into the rising dark.
‘We can’t get down this way,’ Kaeloq said.
He was right. With the stairs gone, the shaft was smooth. Kurtha Sedd grunted. ‘There,’ he said, ‘is the extent of the Ultramarines’ victory. A delay.’
After a hesitation, Kaeloq asked, ‘With respect, Chaplain, is that the full extent?’
Kurtha Sedd turned around, blocking the exit to the shaft, forcing Kaeloq to step back. The other legionaries watched. ‘Justify your question,’ he said. He placed his hand on the hilt of his crozius. He was putting Kaeloq on notice. The path before them was a clear one. To question him was to question the destiny determined by the gods themselves. From the moment of the defeat on the surface of Calth, the way forward had been revealed to him. It was necessary that his brothers understand his words were to be taken as absolute. All his brothers’ doubts should have been answered when he spoke to them in the ruins of the archive.
Kaeloq crouched a bit lower. He spread his hands. He was not challenging his Chaplain. He still asked his question. ‘We have lost contact with our brothers. It is hard not to assume the worst.’
‘They have failed,’ said Kurtha Sedd. ‘That is clear. And they have paid the price of failure. Their losses are not our defeat.’
‘Don’t the Ultramarines now control a command nexus?’ Vor Raennag asked.
Kurtha Sedd shrugged. ‘Perhaps. For all the good it will do them in the long run. They took it, and what did they do? Flood their vaults with hypercoolant. The damage that has caused will not be limited to our brothers and a staircase. They are destroying their own territory to reach us. And meanwhile, we have gained time. We have descended further. They are standing still. We are advancing.’
‘You knew our squads were going to their doom?’ Kaeloq sounded more awed than accusatory.
‘I did not know. It was a distinct possibility. Whether the Ultramarines would have looked for us or not, they were occupied in that battle. That is what matters: to find what waits for us, and us alone, in the depths. To that end, no sacrifice is too much. Nothing is excessive. Whatever is asked of us is nothing less than necessary.’
He turned away once more. He had said his piece, and it fell to the company to obey. He looked down. The pull of the dark was strong, and growing stronger. The nature of his goal was as obscure as ever, but his certainty that he was following a divinely ordained trajectory was adamantine. The fall before him was inviting. It would be easy to step forwards and fly towards his destiny. He could almost believe he would survive the landing, borne up by the inevitability of fate.
He resisted the urge. His duty was to find the way, and a suicidal leap was not the way. He resented the detour he now faced. The company would have to find a new route down. So be it. He would do what must be done.
He rested for a moment in the certitude of his goal and his course of action, holding the other doubts at bay. The gods were speaking to him directly, and he had trust in the gods. It was their other intermediaries he doubted. Lorgar had told him the Emperor watched him. That had been a lie. Kor Phaeron and Erebus had said nothing of this path. When he had a chance, he would perform the ritual and speak to his superiors. Kaeloq had turned to him for answers, and he had given them. He wanted answers in his turn.
He wanted to dispel thoughts of abandonment. Of betrayal. But after that first and greatest betrayal in Monarchia, none were impossible.
Only the dark was true. And as he gazed into it, regretful that he could not fly to it, it seemed to rise to him. He frowned. The dark below was growing thicker. It was closer to him, in spirit and in space. It was a promise, a reality and an inspiration. It had swallowed the silver, taken the light.
‘The Ultramarines think they have drowned us,’ he said. He was thinking aloud, but the inspiration was so strong, he shared it with the company. ‘I believe they will try to pursue their advantage. I believe we should meet them. I believe our darkness should swallow their light.’
He walked back to his brothers, energised. They must still go down, but if the gods had decreed a pause, then he would pause, and the Fifth Assault Company would wait with open jaws for what enemy might come. He would not wait long. Just long enough to bite hard, and bleed the XIII Legion just a little bit more.
He was sure the shadows were flowing, darkness streaming upwards in answer to the cold silver’s descent.
His captors had taken his weapons, chained his arms and hung him from the cavern ceiling. They wrapped more chains around his legs, holding them together and weighing him down even further. He was weak from his wounds. Toc Derenoth could do nothing. His sole victory was remaining conscious.
They had taken him into the command nexus. This cave was empty of equipment beyond a few steel canisters and a cache of construction and repair gear, from which the Ultramarines had taken the chains. Three other Word Bearers had survived the hypercoolant flood and were chained as Toc Derenoth was. Two were from Ulughar Squad: Khuzhun and Rethaz Qann. The armour markings of the third identified him as a brother of Hurundath Squad, Seventh Assault Company, also of the Chapter of the Third Hand. His name was Gherak Haxx. They were all badly wounded. Their armour was deeply scored, and in patches had shattered completely. Khuzhun had lost his helm. They were conscious. Their heads turned to follow the movements of their captors.
The Ultramarines said nothing. When they had finished binding the prisoners, two of them moved back a few steps. They surrounded the captives and trained their bolters on them. The others stood near the entrance in the far wall. There they waited.
A few minutes later, an Ultramarines captain strode into the cavern. His shorn skull was scarred. He glared with the intensity of death incarnate. He faced the prisoners, then turned on his men with a barely diminished fury. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.
‘Taking prisoners,’ one answered. ‘These were the only survivors.’
‘Taking prisoners to what end? What were you going to do? Ask them why they be
trayed us and the Imperium? Get them to beg forgiveness?’
There was no answer.
The captain marched over to the prisoners. He raised his bolt pistol to Toc Derenoth’s head. ‘What will we learn from them? Nothing. Will they speak? Of course not.’ He snorted. ‘And that’s assuming they know anything. I’d be surprised if they even know the locations of their other units.’ He turned to Toc Derenoth. ‘Isn’t that right, traitor?’
Toc Derenoth wished they had removed his helm. Then he would have the satisfaction of spitting in the Ultramarine’s face. He contented himself with a promise. Mentally, he prayed to the gods, offering them a final act of loyalty. He thought of the waiting dark, and how it had begun to move in the depths of the chasm between the ramps. He gave thanks for the vision of his Chaplain leading Fifth Company to a destiny inconceivable to these pathetic slaves of the Emperor. He said, ‘What I know is beyond your understanding. What Kurtha Sedd will visit upon you will be beyond your comprehension.’
The Ultramarines captain was motionless. His eyes widened when Toc Derenoth spoke the Chaplain’s name. Seconds passed. The execution Toc Derenoth expected did not occur. At last, the captain said, ‘Kurtha Sedd. You belong to the same company as Kurtha Sedd?’
‘I do.’
The captain muttered a curse. He lowered the pistol, though he did not mag-lock it. He whirled away from Toc Derenoth. He stalked back and forth across the width of the chamber. His legionaries stirred, obviously puzzled. After crossing the cavern several times, he stopped before the right-hand wall. He paused, then slammed his gauntleted fist into the stone, punching a small crater into the wall. ‘Take them down,’ he said.
‘Brother-captain?’ one of the guards asked.
‘I said take them down. Unchain them.’
He came back to Toc Derenoth. ‘I once owed a great debt to Kurtha Sedd. What happened on Calth these last days has cancelled it. But…’ He grimaced. ‘But I believe in honour, even if the Seventeenth Legion has abandoned all notion of it. You will return to Kurtha Sedd. Tell him you carry a message from Steloc Aethon. Tell him he has a choice. Tell him if he and the men under his command surrender, they will be granted a swift, honourable execution. That is far more than any of you deserve, but I will do in this in memory of the brotherhood we once shared.’
The Unburdened Page 6