by Paul Kearney
‘Do you really think you see more than he chooses to let you see?’
‘Do you really think that you are a free agent here on this hulk?’ the magos retorted. ‘The creature at the heart of this artefact has been aware of our movements and motives since the moment we landed. Dominus Hagnon-Cro has been battling him for centuries. Once he was an Adeptus Astartes. Now he has turned so completely, and accomplished the damnation of his Chapter so thoroughly that the Ruinous Powers have rewarded him with apotheosis. This so-called Witness, Chapter Master, has become a daemon prince.’
‘Hagnon-Cro did not see fit to share that with me,’ Calgar said thoughtfully.
‘I share it with you now, as a gesture of my continued goodwill towards you and yours. This daemon has been refashioning the core of the hulk into a world of his own design for centuries. He wants us to become part of that design – you especially. That is why you are still alive.’
Calgar looked at the magos closely. ‘You seem to know a lot about the secrets at the heart of the hulk all of a sudden, Fane.’
‘Dominus Hagnon-Cro has been enlightening me.’
‘How charitable of him. He is a selfless soul indeed.’
It was the magos’ turn to stare. ‘Beware, Lord Calgar. I see in you the simmering rage which boils at the heart of this thing. Khorne’s red thread runs through this place, affecting all within it.’
‘I am the master of my own emotions, magos. I only hope that you are still master of your own intellect. Is it not said that the scrapcode of the Dark Mechanicus can insinuate itself with such subtlety that those who are infected by it are not even aware?’
‘It is said,’ the magos replied. ‘I have faced its subtleties many times, Chapter Master. And I tell you that here, it is something different.’
‘I hope so, magos, for your sake. Because if I find that this Hagnon-Cro is in league with the dark powers, then there will be nothing for it but to kill him, and you along with him. I will accomplish that, even if it means my own death.’
The magos inclined his head slightly. ‘I would expect no less.’
‘You are his creature now, are you not?’
The magos stiffened. ‘I am an adept of the Ordos Exploratorum, high in the regard of the powers of Mars. Do not take me for some mindless servitor, Lord Calgar.’
‘Then take a piece of advice from one who has been battling the Ruinous Powers all his life. Trust no one, magos. Hold to the tenets of your order, and do not allow yourself to be swayed by the temptations of your own intellect and its programming. Suspicion is blessed, it is said. Hold fast to the Cult Mechanicus, and remember that for you, the Omnissiah is present in the Emperor. It can be approached no other way than through His service. All else is a lie.’
Magos Fane bowed again. His fists tightened on his cog-headed staff.
‘I will remember,’ he said. And then he joined the rear of the Mechanicus column as it clanked down the tunnel ahead.
There was more fighting to come, some of it very savage. Dominus Hagnon-Cro brought his kastelans – he had four maniples of them – up to the vanguard, and the giant robots smashed and battered their way through a steady stream of foes, while the tunnel sizzled with the bright lightning of arc-rifle fire.
Further down the extended column, groups of Chaos warriors attacked from side-passages, and dropped from holes in the deckhead, or thrust up out of pits concealed in the noisome slime-pools that lapped on the floor. Most of these attackers were humanoid. Some even bore still the remnants of carapace armour, and on examination their tortured corpses could be seen to bear the faded imprint of the Imperial aquila. These had once been proud members of the Emperor’s Anvil, the Astra Militarum. They were fed into the fight now in their hundreds, and cut down without mercy.
Others were even more degenerate. Shaven-headed cultists with the eight-pointed star carved across their snarling faces, their limbs bound with bloody wire. They attacked in mobs, with no real tactics save mindless hate. In places their bodies were mounded so high that the Ultramarines had to stack them against the walls to make a passage. To save their ammunition, the Adeptus Astartes met these attackers with the cold steel of gladii, or the brute impact of power-armoured fists. They were not worthy of bolter rounds.
Two more of Fifth perished on the long descent, however. The first was swarmed by a hacking crowd of cultists, one of whom detonated a krak grenade under the flailing limbs of his fellows. A second was blown apart by the plasma gun he bore, as it overheated in a vicious firefight.
Brother Philo retrieved their gene-seed, and the advance went on, slow, bloody and inexorable. The slaughter was intense, but the Ultramarines showed no mercy and no hesitation. The fate of Brother Fortunus was now general knowledge, and it fed into a cold, focused rage which fuelled his brethren as they slew the howling ranks of the Archenemy by the hundred.
And still, there was no word from Inquisitor Drake. The Ultramarines were advancing in the wake of the Mechanicus troops up front, but they were advancing blind, and even Librarian Ulfius, his psychic senses swamped by the miasma of pain, fear and loathing that now surrounded them, could not make contact with the inquisitor. This deep into the heart of Fury, his abilities were dampened and dimmed, much like the flickering auspex readings of the Ultramarines themselves.
They fought like men on a battlefield of Old Earth, slashing and hacking with wicked steel, aware only of the snarling face in front of them which had to be cut down, and the hoarse orders of their officers who stood fast and sought to produce order out of the mayhem.
A pause in the killing, and Marneus Calgar shook the blood from his fingers to hear the voice of Dominus Hagnon-Cro on the channel he had set aside for the Mechanicus forces.
‘Chapter Master, my forward elements have arrived at the entrance to the great chamber we spoke of. The enemy has been hurled back and is regrouping in the wider space beyond. Now the real battle will begin.’
‘Acknowledged. We are still some half a mile behind you. You should deploy as compactly as possible. To spread out will allow them to bring their superior numbers to bear.’
‘I am aware of that, Lord Calgar. I will construct a defensive line and await the arrival of your troops. Once they have come up, we will resume the advance.’
‘You truly mean to attack them head on?’
‘There is little else for it. And what we face is mostly Chaos fodder – waves of lesser beings thrown in to pin us down. The Blood Keep is ahead. The elite forces of the enemy are within. I have no doubt that their master wishes to see us all committed before he looses them upon us.’
‘Very well. We will join you in the next hour or so, and then I will make an appraisal of the tactical situation.’
‘The tactical situation?’ The dominus seemed amused. ‘The situation, Chapter Master, is that we must fight here and prevail, or fight here and die.’
‘So be it. Calgar out.’
Twenty
Inquisitor Drake and his men had made their way along the wall of the great chamber – the Skull Chamber, he thought of it in his head – and were now almost a mile from the entrance. They had proceeded with all the stealth they could muster, creeping from mound to crater to wreck to stagnant pool, and were now laid up in a tangled mass of metallic debris that might once have been the coolant tubes of a voidship’s drive section. There, in the dim, greenish light that pervaded the chamber, they sat withdrawn into the shadows, under cameleoline tarps, their vox turned down to a narrow-band whisper.
Drake had mapped out the walls of the keep in his head, and every foot of their visible length was etched into his trained mind; a foul memory which he nonetheless knew how to pick apart for any mote of advantage. And he thought he had found one; a sliver of hope. The enormous, fortified gates of the keep’s curtain wall looked well-nigh impregnable, at least without armoured support or artillery to call upon. But there m
ight be another way, almost overlooked. A way to enter the place without wading through a torrent of blood.
But even as Drake watched and calculated, the main gates of the Blood Keep opened with a brass clang, and an army poured out.
A long, dark mass speckled with metallic glints, it straggled across the open ground, amid the mounded skulls, and splashed through the shallow lake that served as moat to the Blood Keep. The column widened as it advanced, tangled and knotted ranks opening out, the hungry roar of its troops echoing in the humid air. It deployed before them in its thousands, perhaps a mile wide and many ranks deep. Among its humanoid files there towered great twisted beasts which gargled and bellowed. And on its flanks were swift-moving lupine shapes which seemed some unholy cross between hound and reptile, horned and red-skinned with maws full of yellow teeth.
It took all of Inquisitor Drake’s psychic powers to keep his own little band of men hidden from their keen searching senses as they coursed the wide wasteland that loomed out before the gathering army. And those powers were severely compromised by the daemonic psychic emanations of the beasts.
Brother Ulfius, this is Drake. Listen to me. Hear my voice.+
It was like whispering into a gale. Drake could not chance a wide-band vox signal for fear of being picked up, and even sending out the minute psychic enquiry was dangerous enough. He was cut off from the Ultramarines, and could only watch, listen and examine the terrain and troops in front of him, looking for an opening, a weak spot which the Ultramarines might be able to exploit, once they arrived.
Though even they, he knew, could not hope to prevail alone against the host of the enemy that was forming up in front of the Blood Keep. Not just cultist filth but disciplined bodies of fighting men, their armour painted red or green. And Chaos Marines embedded with them, champions of their kind with tall-horned helms and power armour that had been reforged into plates of twisted, leering faces, adorned with skulls, streaming with flayed skins.
And looming above even these were terrible, scarlet-skinned daemons crowned with antlers, bearing swords as long as a man with blades that rippled and gleamed like snakes of flame. These seemed to be some kind of lesser daemons from the depths of the warp, souls twisted and destroyed until they were nothing more than vessels for the rage and hatred of the Blood God. Looking upon them, even Inquisitor Drake felt his heart fail him for a moment. To fight one of these things would be a fearful battle in itself, and there were many of them arrayed here. At some point in Fury’s past, the Geller field must have flickered or failed, to allow such creatures to board the hulk.
Emperor, send me the light of your ancient courage and insight. Help me see a way to rid ourselves of these abominations.
And then there was something else, a flicker of light in his clouded mind.
Drake. I hear you. Speak again. See how I narrow the contact to a mere shining filament, undetectable, but so fragile. Listen to me now, and take hold of it. Speak to me, inquisitor. I listen.+
It was nothing more than the faintest murmur in the mental maelstrom that thundered about him, but it was there. Brother Ulfius was contacting him on a psychic skein that was so tenuous as to be almost inaudible. But it was enough. It would have to be enough.
I listen, Librarian, and I send you my sight. See what I see now. See the horde that awaits you. Warn Calgar. His doom is here.+
Was that his own thought, that last phrase, or something else? He was not sure, and it troubled him. Flashes of other thoughts were lighting up his mind’s eye, and he had to fight to keep the message narrow, guarded, secure.
He knows, Drake. The renegade Mechanicus are with us – we have a truce. We are coming, us and them. Coming to fight.+
Astonished, it took a few minutes for Drake to gather his thoughts again and refocus the psychic connection. He did not waste time on venting his incredulity, however, but got straight to the heart of the matter.
There is another entrance to the keep, a postern on the left-hand side, some two miles in. It may be the only way.+
Understood. Stand fast. We come.+
Nothing would be unguarded in this place, but Drake did not see how a frontal attack on the Chaos host before him could succeed. It would take several companies of Ultramarines to prevail there.
Hope is lost, the thought came to him. But he recognised the oozing despair for what it was; a groping tendril of Nurgle’s baleful influence. He had felt such things before. He ignored it and, calling up the magnification in his helm’s oculars, he scanned the ground to the left of the main gate, that blasted, debris-strewn plain with its crucified figures and broken wreckage. A small party might get a long way there without being seen, but only if the watchful eyes in the citadel beyond were elsewhere.
And then Regan tapped him lightly on the arm under the tarp, and pointed wordlessly. From the main entryway into the Skull Chamber a group of large figures was emerging. They were ten feet tall, reddish, metallic, and they moved with the steady clockwork of automata.
Drake recognised them at once; he had seen them in action before. Kastelans of the Adeptus Mechanicus, at least half a dozen of them. And after them came skitarii in their scores, and then the rattling, thunderous rumble of kataphrons, their tracks churning up the mud and sending it flying as they manoeuvred.
The Chaos host bayed its hate, surging forward and back like the waves of a tidal sea. But their leaders restrained them for now, and the forces of the Mechanicus renegades deployed before them without interference, opening out onto the plain. Near their rear there strode a taller, barely human figure on a skittering of many-jointed legs, its robe billowing out around it and more limbs rising out of the tattered fabric. An Adeptus Mechanicus dominus, one of the generals of that kind. And now Drake understood many things, letting them all fall into place in his mind.
Calgar has made a devil’s bargain, he thought. I did not think he could find such flexibility in that iron soul of his. I wonder what it has cost him?
But he dismissed the thought with an effort, though all his training, all his long experience told him that there was treachery in the air here, renegades selling out traitors.
‘At least they will kill each other,’ Kastiro said beside him in a murmur. ‘Perhaps, my lord, it will even the odds some.’
Drake was about to reply when he saw the first Ultramarines issue from the tunnel in the wake of the Mechanicus troops. There was little of their blue parade-ground flash left now. They looked like men who had come through hell. And yet there was no obvious weariness to their movements. They shook out into squads like warriors come fresh and eager to the fight, and now Drake saw Marneus Calgar himself with his honour guard, and the four towering Terminators of First Company who strode alongside him, giant figures to inspire awe.
He felt hope again. Such warriors as these, such pride and honour. It lifted the heart – even one as cynical and corroded by distrust as his own.
He keyed up the private channel, hoping that the general chatter which now flooded the aether would disguise his transmission to any who were listening.
‘My lord Calgar, I must speak with you.’
Marneus Calgar stood in the midst of the Ultramarines formation and heard the first cries of outrage, the half-stifled curses that broke out on the company vox as his brothers caught sight of the crucified Space Marines that dotted the plain of battle ahead.
He saw them himself, and for fully three seconds he stood there frozen, the rage flaring up a storm in his mind, the fury choking him. He had seen many terrible things in his long life, but to see his own kind impaled there, alive, enduring torture beyond the ken of mortal man – it kindled a wrath he had not known he could still feel.
Taste the anger. Savour it. Feel the thrill of rage in every limb – the joyous prospect of bloody slaughter, of justice, revenge. Death must come to those who did this. Embrace the fury, the black despair. Stare down into the pit
and see the bottomless depths of it.
He shook his head, his eye stinging. ‘Formations!’ he barked, and now he shouted it out loud, augmenting his voice with his vox emitters so that it echoed all over this end of the plain. ‘Ultramarines, stand fast – sergeants, see to your squads! Deploy Devastators. Stand with me, my brothers!’
A roar came out of Fifth Company, an inarticulate bellow of anger and acknowledgement. The squads shook out into chequerboard formation, the heavy weapons deployed in the gaps between them, the whole company as perfectly mustered as if it were training on Martial Square. But it was a depleted force, just over sixty Ultramarines of Fifth left standing now.
Calgar listened as Drake told him of the postern gate out to the flank of the Blood Keep. It might do – it was doubtless a trap of some sort, but it was an alternative.
‘If we make for it straight away, and the enemy will simply detach forces to block us,’ Calgar said. He had brought Captain Galenus into the vox exchange and now Fifth’s commander spoke up.
‘My lord, we must make them commit, heavily – here where we are. They must send everything they possess against us – perhaps then there will be a chance for a small party to make it out on the left.’
‘Agreed,’ Calgar said. He paused in thought. ‘Caito, I must go. Whatever lies beyond that side gate is meant for me – I am sure of it.’
‘I agree, Chapter Master.’
‘I would rather stay with Fifth – you know that. But I cannot. And you will have to fight on without me, for as long as you can, drawing in as many of the enemy as possible.’
‘Acknowledged.’
‘One thing, though. I shall lead out the company as soon as the Mechanicus troops are engaged. We will advance in echelon, edging leftwards as far as we can. As soon as the main body of the enemy has contacted our Mechanicus allies–’ the word had a sarcastic emphasis – ‘we will engage the enemy right flank. That way it will be easier for me to leave the battle-line. And it will also improve your chances on the field. If you have to retreat, withdraw out to the left, towards the side gate, and make for it. Join me if you can, Caito.’