by Guy Haley
Warning lights flickered all around the cutter’s outside edge; no alarms audible in the vacuum.
‘You may begin,’ ordered Plosk.
The tech-priest in charge of the cutter’s bulky, portable control vehicle leant over its controls. He pointed, directing his juniors in the appropriate activation sequences. Mastrik had his sensorium magnify the scene so he could better observe. Whatever the tech-priests were doing was incomprehensible to him. He moved his gaze over the hulk’s surface, its coat of dust blinding in the direct light of Jorso. His helmet lenses darkened in response.
Mastrik watched the frame. The glassy material glowed a dark green. Light flickered all around it, sparks that arced and burst brightly when they touched. This caged storm intensified, until the whole of the frame was alive with dancing angles of energy.
‘You see? The device is now at thirty per cent total power capacity. Blessed be the Omnissiah,’ said Plosk.
The process reached a critical point, and the lightning ceased to be. In its stead was a flat screen of energy, nearly invisible were it not for the fact it turned all viewed through it faintly green.
‘Sixty per cent,’ said Plosk.
At the control landau, further activity. Mastrik felt the hulk vibrate. The disturbance built. His sensorium jumped at the backwash of electromagnetic energy generated by the cutter.
‘Aha! Ninety per cent and…’
A perfectly square beam of energy, angled as the frame that projected it, stabbed down through the hulk. A flash of light as it met, and then further reflected lights as the beam met denser matter in the body of the agglomeration and atomised it.
‘And there we have it,’ said Plosk, with pleasure.
The beam cut out. A black rectangular hole had been made in the hulk’s skin, leading down. The edges of it glowed faintly. Plumes of white jetted into space, atmosphere leaking from the hulk.
‘You have answered my earlier question,’ said Ranial.
‘It would make a fine weapon,’ said Sorael.
Plosk nodded in agreement. ‘Just so, and indeed it operates on similar principles to the disruption fields built into your power weapons. But the manner in which the device attains the projection of the field forwards, the maintenance of its coherency so far out from the projectors, the safe exhaust of the excess energy generated as the matter is annihilated, the overall magnitude of the field, the smooth manner of its disintegration… Well,’ he said apologetically. ‘I could go on for some time. These are mysteries now known only to the Machine-God.’
‘We will uncover them,’ said Nuministon in his machine voice. ‘Given time.’
‘That we will, Magos Nuministon, that we will,’ said Plosk. ‘When our lord deems us worthy. And it is by such actions as this retrieval mission that we prove ourselves to be so.’
‘Brother Ranial, I believe you owe Adept Samin here a small apology,’ said Mastrik. He checked his clock. He turned around to face the other side of the engine-mount. There, shaded from the sun, was the majority of the taskforce. His hearts quickened as he took them all in; one hundred and sixty Terminators stood at the front. Few were the Space Marines of any Chapter who had witnessed such a sight. Behind them, squads of power armoured brethren. The Novamarines quartered heraldry broke up their silhouettes, providing unexpected camouflage, whereas the blood-red of the Blood Drinkers was tinted deep mauve and obvious by the blue light of Jorso. In all, nearly four hundred Space Marines of two Chapters waited on the plain. Three Thunderfire cannons – two of the Novamarines, one of the Blood Drinkers – and five Devastator squads armed with anti-personnel heavy weapons were the extent of Battle-
force Anvil’s heavy support.
‘A fine gathering,’ said Sorael. ‘We will fight the enemy eye to eye, and it is glorious that it is so.’
By the sloping shaft, another Adeptus Mechanicus machine moved, a tracked vehicle carrying a giant spool of some material upon its back. Mastrik had never seen the like, but Plosk had assured him that the spool was wound with a road, a road which would go rigid once deployed, granting them easy entry to the depths of the hulk and thence to the killing zone.
‘As you see, my lords, you have your abilities, and we have ours,’ said Plosk.
‘Very impressive,’ said Ranial, ‘and far better than working our way through the hulk to the killing zone. I offer my apologies.’
‘We are ready, Lord Captain Galt,’ said Mastrik over his suit vox.
‘Give the order for your men to take up their positions,’ replied Galt. ‘The attack begins soon.’
Ten kilometres away, at the beachhead recently vacated by Lord Caedis, three squads of Novamarines Terminators and two of the Blood Drinkers spread out. Their role was to cover the main points of egress the genestealers might use to escape their depressurised roosts. The areas they began in were close to the edge of the hulk, bereft of atmosphere in the main, but the genestealers could scatter in any direction. They were to hold, await the return of the five Terminator squads and the Techmarines sealing the main ways deeper in and then advance once the roosts were blown, and encourage on into the killing zone any genestealers for whom the loss of breathable air was not a sufficient spur. Captain Aresti commanded them now that Lord Caedis had stepped down.
Many levels down, in the last of the vessels the routes to the killing zone would run through, Sergeant Voldo and Squad Wisdom of Lucretius were hard at work. Voldo watched as a door, immobile since the time of Goge Vandire, ground out of its housing to seal a major intersection. The Techmarine accompanying the squad directed his servitors to unhook the mobile generator wired into the door panel’s innards, and set himself to welding the door shut with his servo arm.
‘Four minutes, and they will not be able to use this exit, brother-sergeant,’ said the Techmarine.
‘It is as the Lord of Man wills it, Brother Techmarine Estrellius,’ said Voldo. The sergeant ran his map up and down the main way to the killing zone. Data transmission was still poor. Boosted relays were being installed throughout the tunnels to allow better communication with the fleet, but they would not be operational for some time.
Doors were being sealed all through this part of the hulk, others cut through bulkheads and hull walls, transforming a rat run of passages into three, long tunnels leading directly through the hulk into the cavern.
Things had been quiet, but recently there had been reports of a genestealer attack from Novamarines Squad Glorious Ruin. Every so often the noise of their guns reached Voldo’s sensorium, the sounds of bolters reduced to a feeble popping by distance.
‘The enemy stir,’ said Astomar.
‘Why now, I wonder,’ said Militor. ‘Is it an omen? Are they warned of what occurs?’
‘I pray not,’ said Voldo.
Estrellius stepped back from the door. ‘I am done here.’
‘Very well,’ Voldo said. ‘We go on to our next objective.’
Voldo scanned the feed from Eskerio’s auspex. Excepting the small swarm of red dots around Squad Glorious Ruin’s position, the only movements they could see were friendly. ‘This is too easy,’ he said, ‘brothers, be on your guard.’
Sergeant Alanius stood in total darkness. The two remaining members of his squad a blur of grey slabs in his sensorium’s heat vision, radioactive fog up to their waists, the heat leakage from their power plants illuminating the room with infrared light.
They had been assigned point duty, ranging ahead of Novamarines Terminator Squad Glorious Ruin, and guarding the next open way on the list of those they had to seal. This way, so Galt had planned, those squads accompanying the Techmarines could avoid ambush.
‘This is no fit task,’ said Azmael. ‘Guarding a passageway that none will take.’
‘Silence, brother,’ said Alanius. ‘We are under strength and are given a role fitting to our weakened state. This is the final of Squad Glorious R
uin’s objectives. Once they have dealt with door ninety, then they will come here and seal this corridor, and we can join the greater battle.’
The breathing of Azmael and Tarael was harsh over the vox. The Thirst might have been sated by the Rite of Holos, giving them more control over their actions, but the blood drinking had wakened the battle-joy and they were desperate to fight.
‘Caedis would not have put us here,’ said Tarael bitterly. ‘This Novamarines captain does not know the hearts and minds of Blood Drinkers.’
‘Nor should he brother, better our secrets remain our own,’ said Alanius.
‘We should not be here,’ said Tarael. ‘Such sentry duty is demeaning.’
‘I ordered silence, Brother Tarael. Captain Galt is in command, he works his resources as he sees fit,’ said Alanius, but his rebuke was half-hearted. His blood sang fiercely. Energised by the rite, he was as impatient for the fray as his squad mates.
Alanius glanced back at the door. It gaped open, the corridor beyond dark. In places the monochrome image in his helmet brightened with the radioactive heat-glow of the fog, but the corridor quickly went into black. The door opened automatically – unlike most of the systems on this vessel, it still functioned – and they could not seal it. They needed technical support for that.
‘We wait,’ said Alanius. He checked Squad Glorious Ruin’s position on the map. Icons leapt around the rendering of the hulk where they worked, the auspex carried by Azmael unsure. Background radiation here was high, and the device’s capabilities were compromised.
The blackness was utter. Each enhanced man was a world unto himself, walled off from the rest of the universe by thick armour.
‘Wait!’ said Azmael. ‘Brother-sergeant, the motion detector.’
Alarms pinged in their helmets. The locator beacons of Squad Glorious Ruin fizzed on the visor screens. Red dots swarmed around them.
‘Where did they come from?’ said Azmael.
‘It would be impossible to seal all the secret ways of a hulk like this,’ said Tarael. ‘This is a fool’s errand in more ways than one.’
The sounds of distant fighting reached them, amplified by the enhanced hearing the suits and their superior physiology granted them: the distinctive discharge of storm bolters, the crackling bangs of power fist energy fields annihilating matter, the screams of genestealers.
An icon depicting the skull and starburst of the Novamarines flickered and went out.
‘One of them has fallen,’ said Azmael.
‘We should go to their aid, then they will be able to more quickly seal this corridor, and we can be on our way to join Lord Caedis and the others,’ said Tarael.
Alanius considered Tarael’s proposal. If Squad Glorious Ruin fell, and their Techmarine died with them, the assault would be delayed, granting the genestealers more time in which to waken. He thought on it as dispassionately as he could, keeping his battle-joy on a tight rein. They had been ordered to remain here. But to what end? Tarael was correct, to a degree. This corridor was a minor branching; its strategic value was low. Surely it would be better to ensure the safety of their Novamarines cousins? He licked his lips. He would seek guidance. ‘Lord Caedis?’ he tried. ‘Lord Captain Sorael?’ He tried to connect with the fleet, then the Novamarines. The relay system was not yet active. All his attempts were met with static. He tuned into Squad Glorious Ruin’s frequency. He could hear their squad chatter, their battle chants and warnings to one another, but the sound was broken and when he attempted to speak with them, they did not hear.
Alanius felt a shudder of delicious anticipation at the battle’s noise. His Chapter celebrated the violent side of their heritage. Unlike Sanguinius’s other sons, they drank deeply of the stuff of life, seeking not to sate their unnatural appetites, but to provoke them. They channelled the Thirst, drawing upon its power, and it made them strong. The Blood Drinkers could control their urges this way, and were not as reckless as some of their brother Chapters. But the battle-joy gave counsel whether sought or not, and its advice was always the same: attack, attack, attack!
Alanius weighed this against the need to guard the corridor. The battle-joy won out. It always did.
He looked around him one last time, and made final consideration. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We will aid them, but you, Brother Azmael, will remain here.’
‘Yes brother-sergeant.’ There was disappointment in Azmael’s assent. ‘By Sanguinius, I shall do my duty.’
Alanius and Tarael moved off, mag-lock boots clicking on the metal.
Alien eyes watched the Blood Drinkers depart. The genestealer had no name, and no conception of what a name was. Names are human things, and the habits of humans were irrelevant to it. But it understood their actions. Its quick mind, geared to purposes unintelligible to the human mind, saw its opportunity. The invaders were gone, drawn away by its kin, and the way was open into the deeper hulk. Only one of the interlopers remained, one soft entity cased in hard metal. The genestealer hissed at those accompanying it. Hard chitin rattled as the creatures unfurled themselves. The genestealer crept forward, driven by an intellect even greater than its own. The wishes of their broodlord were felt and understood by his family, they operated as one. The nearness of them, the touch of their minds on each other was their comfort and their strength. They advanced silently in the dark.
An alarm went off in Brother Azmael’s helmet. His eyes whipped upward to where the auspex feed was displayed within his visor. Motion indicators blinked, dozens of them. The enemy was close, very close.
Azmael had time to voice a garbled cry for help before the first of them was on him, and then he was fighting for his life.
Sergeant Voldo caught Azmael’s vox burst as a clatter of static and disrupted words.
‘Brother Eskerio! Find me the source of that transmission.’
The corridor glared actinic white as Estrellius sealed another duct. Sparks leapt from the metal and danced across the floor.
‘Sector 4.9.201,’ said Eskerio, homing in on the source of the message instantly.
Voldo’s onboard cogitator ran the message over and again, each time shaving away the layers of interference, until a voice leapt out of it.
‘Brother Azmael, of the Blood Drinkers,’ Voldo said. ‘He is under attack.’
‘I have him,’ said Eskerio. The auspex feed shifted. The motion detector was operating at maximum range, the depiction of Azmael’s struggle spotty. There was no hiding the numbers attacking him. ‘There are between fifty and seventy xenos.’
‘He doesn’t stand a chance,’ said Astomar.
‘What were the orders for Squad Hesperion?’ asked Militor.
‘To guard that section, until the door could be reached and sealed by a Techmarine,’ said Voldo. ‘The doorway was allocated to Squad Glorious Ruin’s group. They must still be delayed. Any word on Brother-Sergeant Crastus?’
‘Negative, brother-sergeant,’ said Eskerio. ‘We are too far away now to know our brothers’ fates.’
‘When will the relays be operational?’ asked Militor.
‘I calculate soon, brothers,’ said Estrellius. ‘I must place a relay here. My brothers-in-the-forge will have placed most of the rest of the relay poles by now. They will not function until all are in place.’ He ordered a servitor to him and took a long metal stave topped with a bulbous device from it. Estrellius grasped it firmly and placed it upon the floor. He twisted his armoured hands in opposite directions around the relay’s activation mechanisms, and a spike shot from the end of the pole, burying itself in the floor. Estrellius touched further controls near the head, and the light atop it began a slow, red flashing.
‘I see only Azmael on the auspex,’ said Astomar. ‘Where are his brothers?’
‘They could be there, the radiation is high in that area, the auspex struggles to show us the truth,’ said Eskerio.
‘B
rothers,’ said Estrellius. ‘I am done here. That is the last of my allotted tasks. We may rejoin the battlegroup.’
‘Let us go to the aid of Azmael on the way,’ said Voldo. ‘It is less than one kilometre. Brother Estrellius can seal the door, and if need be we can relieve Squad Glorious Ruin as we turn back. Azmael and his brothers aided us greatly, we owe him a debt of honour. Away, and swiftly now.’ Although as he said this, Voldo wondered if it was the same impetuousness he had long ago seen in the Knights of Blood that had endangered the Blood Drinkers.
Estrellius’s servitors gathered up his gear, and the Techmarine fell in behind the Terminators. The group moved as quickly as they could down the buckled corridors of the ship. They had been assigned the deepest vessel in the chain of linked ships that Strikeforce Hammer would enter; those craft nearer the cavern would be tackled by squads from Anvil. The craft was a cruiser once of the Imperial Navy, lost long ago to the vagaries of space and the warp. Its prow rested atop another ship nearer the surface, the second route to the killing zone passing along most of its length before heading down through a hole they had earlier cut through the hull wall. Its compartments were distorted, the whole of the craft pushed out of true by the shifting mass around it. There was little power to be found, and no artificial gravity. Squad Hesperion was stationed further up the vessel, towards the prow. Squad Glorious Ruin, who had been assigned many of the doors in the ship above, were not much further on.
Voldo and his squad kept up a steady pace. All eyes strayed to the auspex, willing Azmael to survive. Seventy gene-stealers were stiff odds even for six Terminator-armoured brothers, but honour dictated they aid him.
‘Brothers!’ said Eskerio. ‘The genestealers.’
‘What is it brother?’ asked Voldo.
The auspex motion sensor grew clearer as they drew closer to Azmael. Several blips were around the chalice and blood drop icon denoting the Blood Drinker, but others were streaming past him, down the open corridor.