by Paul Kearney
The Witness fell to its knees, still bellowing, and Calgar at once launched himself onto the thing’s back.
He grasped one great horn in each fist and pulled the daemon’s massive skull back with a sharp crack. Then he shouted aloud with an extreme effort as he gripped onto the horns with all his remaining strength.
Now, finally, he let go of his anger, the long simmering rage that had been building in him ever since he had boarded the hulk. Now, he expended the last drop of it – and under the grip of the power fists he wielded, the monster’s skull was abruptly wrenched apart in a violent explosion of bone and fluid, drenching him in the burning ichor of its life’s blood.
It collapsed under him, a massive tangle of hooves and wings and horns. He flung himself free of its ruin, and landed heavily. His head smashed into the hot floor and he blacked out for a moment.
Coming to, he lay there, assessing the damage, feeling his hands quiver with strain inside the ancient gauntlets, which were now dead and cold on his fingers.
The fighting was still going on around him, but it had not the desperate tenor that it had had before. The Broken were now streaming away down the nave of the massive control chamber, except for a few berserkers that the Terminators cut down without mercy.
Calgar felt a hand help to raise him up, and he climbed slowly to his feet, his armour an immense weight on his shoulders, his fractured bones grinding within it.
‘You have killed it,’ Brother Starn was saying, as if from a long way off. ‘My lord, I fear you have suffered grievous hurt.’
‘I am alive,’ Calgar answered him, coughing up blood, swaying. ‘I had not expected that.’
Twenty-Five
Galenus and his comrades fought their way towards the coordinates they had been given, and it seemed that resistance had slackened. All through the avenues and alleyways of the Blood Keep, the servants of Chaos had felt the fall of their master and were rudderless, demoralised, like a hive of insects when the swollen creature at their heart is slain.
They still fought, but without tactics or direction, and the survivors of Fifth Company who made their way through them did so without difficulty, killing them with raw steel to save the dregs of their ammo and exorcise the furious grief which animated every blow.
‘It’s gone,’ Brother Ulfius panted. ‘Do you not feel it, brothers? The Chapter Master has done what he set out to do – he has killed the daemon. Look around you – its minions are out of their minds with the import of it. I feel it like– like–’
He stopped. +Brother Ulfius, can you hear me?+
I hear you inquisitor.+
The daemon at the heart of the Keep is slain, but Lord Calgar is badly hurt. You should bring all your Brethren here, to us if you can. There is not much time left.+
Our Apothecary is dead, but Brother Salvator is still alive. We can–+
It is no matter now. I have gained the controls of the hulk, and have set its reactor core on the way to meltdown. We do not have long before the entire structure self-destructs.+
Ulfius had known something like this was coming – this was success, or at least, the best outcome they could have hoped for, back when there had been no hope at all. But it was something of a blow, nonetheless. To finally confront the fact that there would be no survivors, that Fifth would be totally destroyed, and with them, the Chapter Master himself. If this was victory, then it was a bitter one, a battle without triumph at its end for those who had won it.
We will join you,+ he told Drake, keeping his sorrow and his regret hidden from the psychic overtones of his reply.
Make it soon.+
He told Captain Galenus, who nodded grimly as they strode along towards the tall blade-shaped tower which was their destination, scarcely a quarter of a mile away now. ‘This may not be to our liking, but it is a victory. The daemon has been banished to the warp, the hulk will be destroyed, and Ultramar will endure.’
The Techmarine, Brother Salvator, now strode at the side of the captain and the Librarian. ‘I wonder at Inquisitor Drake’s expertise, to be able to accomplish such a technical feat.’
‘He is a resourceful man,’ Galenus said, and then he halted where he stood.
‘We are not the only ones who are about to taste death in victory.’ He pointed.
There was a broad avenue, half ruined but still wide and mostly clear, which ran for perhaps three quarters of a mile on their right. It led down to the massive battlements of the Blood Keep. In that long wall there was a rough barbican of sorts, and the main gates of the Keep stood in it. But these gates had now been thrown down, and through their ruined remnants was stepping a pair of Adeptus Mechanicus kastelans, one of which lacked an arm, both much battered and with smoke drifting from their hulls. Behind them a host of other troops followed, skitarii and kataphrons, depleted by the battle before the gates, but still numerous enough to hurl aside the few defenders who remained before them; Khornate berserkers, bands of frenzied cultists, and a single remaining daemon with its black-bladed sword raised high.
‘The Adeptus Mechanicus have finally found their way in,’ Brother Ulfius said.
‘May it profit them,’ Captain Galenus said with contempt. ‘Come, brothers. Let us join the Lord of Macragge. It is right and fitting that we be at his side when this thing goes up.’
The little band of Ultramarines picked up the pace, running now, and smashing aside those confused milling knots of Chaos troops who stood in their way.
In the thrumming, baleful heat of the vast control chamber, Marneus Calgar stood watching the reactor core readouts climb steadily into the red. He leaned on Brother Starn while the other three Terminators of First stood watchful, surrounded by a lumpen mound of bodies; the remains of the Broken, who had fallen under their guns and fists. Calgar’s honour guards stood to one side, leaning on their axes. Brother Morent had a slew of steaming holes down his ornate breastplate where a plasma gun had struck, but he was steady as a rock. The winged cheekguards of his helm had been ripped off in the fighting, and now his helm looked raw and wrecked, but the seals held.
Brother Ohtar held out a similarly battered, blackened object to Marneus Calgar. ‘I beg you, my lord, put it on. The radiation–’
‘I will be dead long before the radiation kills me,’ said Calgar with a mirthless smile, looking at his helm. ‘But I thank you, brother. The mission is accomplished. We need not worry after anything else.’ He turned his scarred face to Drake. ‘How long, inquisitor?’
Drake was watching the intricate numerals of the vid-screens that reared up in the side-chapel. ‘We are talking about a small planetary core, Lord Calgar. It cannot be brought on with the flick of a switch. It will take several hours, at least.’
‘Chapter Master–’ A voice came up on the company vox that Calgar had not dared hope to hear again.
‘Caito! Report, captain – status.’
‘We are about to enter the tower – the stairway is ahead. There are twelve of us left alive that I know of. My lord, the troops of the Adeptus Mechanicus have forced entrance into the Keep and are now approaching fast – they too are making for the tower, and in force.’
‘Very well, captain. You must join us at once. If needs be, we must hold them off up here until the hulk self-destructs.’ He wanted to say more, to express his grief, his pride in Fifth Company’s sacrifice, but he knew there was no need, not even now.
‘Calgar out.’
He felt the bones in his body knitting together again, but more slowly than they should. The radiation was hampering his self-regenerative systems. Checking his power levels, he saw barely a flicker. The beautiful ancient armour he wore was all but dead, an ornate sarcophagus, nothing more.
If it comes to a fight, I will be all but useless, he thought. Not the way I would have made an end, sealed in a metal coffin, barely able to keep my feet.
As he stood the
re, he went over some of his command decisions. It was not regret, it was pure habit; a way of revisiting strategic and tactical problems. He knew now that Dominus Hagnon-Cro was a worthy adversary, who had used him to do what he could not – to slay the Witness, and allow the Adeptus Mechanicus access to the place which governed Fury. But the dominus had overreached himself, in the end. He had not counted on Drake’s expertise with ancient technology. The mission had been flawed, but it had succeeded. At great cost.
Captain Galenus entered the great nave, striding down it with his chainsword in his fist. Behind him came Brother Ulfius, Techmarine Salvator, and nine other battle-brothers, some of them limping, their gladii drawn and bloody, their armour rent and battered.
Calgar hobbled forward to meet him, his battleplate an enormous crushing weight on his injured flesh and bones. But he had a smile for Galenus.
‘We are well met, captain. I wish only that more of you had survived.’
Galenus made the sign of the aquila. ‘My lord, let Brother Salvator look at your armour. The Mechanicus forces are close behind us.’
‘We must hold the doors,’ Calgar said with a nod, his scarred face bleeding afresh as he grimaced. ‘Hear me, brothers! The thing is not yet done. This unholy place must be preserved from the possession of the Mechanicus renegades, or else all that we have done and lost here shall be in vain. I ask you to stand with me a little longer.’
Brother Tersius raised his carbon-caked bolter. ‘For Macragge!’
The rest of them took it up, so that the cry echoed out around them like a cheer. Then they took up their defensive positions, and the four Terminators of First Company boomed unhurriedly down the nave to the doorway, their power fists alight, the storm bolters cocking fresh rounds into their chambers.
‘Brother Salvator,’ Calgar said. ‘Do what you can with my armour. I do not need much – just enough for one more fight. The last.’
Magos Fane straightened in the cramped, noisome compartment and folded his many limbs within the red rags of his robe. One of his eyelenses was shattered and there were the pock-marks of bolter strikes in his alloy torso. He moved in staccato jerks, like a clockwork device whose mechanism has been damaged. Beside him the two enginseers who had survived were locked in to the jungle of cable and wiring that surrounded the console. He had subsumed their bio-programming into his own. They were now as much a part of him as his clawed metal digits, mere components routed through the nervous system of the hulk.
He was in the depths of the great tower, three hundred feet below the spot where Marneus Calgar and his Ultramarines now stood. A secondary access node, forgotten by all but those who had installed it, it had been enough. The ancient blueprints had been difficult to follow, reworked, twisted out of shape, and half buried in the foul detritus of the Broken and their minions, but such things had been built to last, in a long-gone age when technology had been better understood than it was now.
Magos Fane had fulfilled the dominus’ faith in him. He had rerouted the main control systems of Fury away from the great nave above, to this unnoticed niche within the carcass of what had once been a proud Adeptus Mechanicus cruiser. And what was more, he was now linked in to these systems through his own cogital processes. For now, Magos Fane was the hulk, spliced into what amounted to the very nerves and arteries of the immense artefact – and he was not about to let it be destroyed. There was too much at stake, things which even the Lord of Macragge – and especially an inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus – could never hope to understand.
For all that, his frame was wrenched and damaged, his biological processes injured. It had been a hard road to follow, but the Ultramarines had cleared much of it for him, and his skitarii escorts had done the rest, at the cost of their own lives.
Dominus Hagnon-Cro sent a burst of binharic code.
‘No!’ The cry was torn out of Inquisitor Drake’s mouth and echoed around the chamber. He slammed a fist into the console before him, watching the readouts, seeing the red sigils slowly ease down into amber, the numbers falling on the streaming vid data-screens which loomed around him in their baroque frames.
‘Problem?’ Captain Galenus asked.
‘Coolant levels are rising, reactor temperature is falling. Something has gone wrong – the controls are no longer responding to my input. Fury’s reactor is being brought back down to within safety levels.’ The inquisitor scanned the readouts frantically. ‘Excess heat is being vented into the void. The whole damn thing is cooling down – the self-destruct sequence has been aborted. Lord Calgar!’
The Chapter Master limped over to Drake. Brother Salvator came with him; his mechadendrite arms all extended, working busily to restore the battered power-pack of the artificer battleplate.
Calgar scanned the lines of code, a sombre savagery flitting over his face. ‘I see it. Control of the hulk’s major systems has been diverted from this station to a secondary node. Drake, can you get it back?’
The inquisitor’s hands flew over the ancient control panel. ‘I am locked out.’ He stepped away from the console, his hands falling to his sides.
‘My lord, we have failed to destroy Fury. This enginarium console has been completely bypassed.’ He uttered a bitter laugh. ‘Radioactivity is falling at least. We shall live a little longer, it seems.’
‘That is not what we came here for.’
Calgar stood very still while Brother Salvator continued his work with all the absorbed imperturbability of his Martian training.
Mars. Yes. The Adeptus Mechanicus were behind this. Dominus Hagnon-Cro had been one step ahead at the end, after all.
Calgar tasted the full bitterness of his defeat – for that was what it was. From beginning to end, the Ultramarines had done the work of the Adeptus Mechanicus, ever since landing on Fury. He saw it now, with a blinding flash of revelation, the last veil lifted from his eyes.
He had been arrogant, complacent. The tainted influence of the hulk had been at work on him even as he congratulated himself on fighting it. It had been subtler than he had supposed, clouding his thinking in ways too delicate to be noticed at the time, nudging him towards misjudgement by increments.
But he was free of it now. His anger was burned away – it had died along with the slaying of the daemon prince. He was thinking clearly at last. And he saw now the full, intricate design of Dominus Hagnon-Cro.
And his soul burned with shame, at the way he had been managed. It had never happened to him before. He had mistaken his enemy entirely.
‘My lord, the Mechanicus forces are ascending the staircase below,’ Brother Tersius called out, from his post out on the narthex beyond the doors. He raised his bolte
r. ‘Shall I engage?’
‘Negative,’ Calgar said. ‘Pull back to the doorway. Brother Starn, stand fast. No one is to open fire until I give the word. Sergeant Greynius, status report.’
‘My lord, both squads are in position. We have between one and two magazines left each. No heavy weapons, no frag grenades. One flamer, a quarter-full tank. Fifth Company numbers twelve battle-brothers, including officers.’
‘Thank you. Stand by.’
Drake’s men were all dead. Including the inquisitor, the honour guards and Starn’s Terminators, there were twenty of them left. And an army was climbing the stairs below.
Calgar turned things over in his mind. Seventh had been attacked on the surface to keep them from following Fifth – two Ultramarines companies would have been too much for the dominus to manage, but one suited him well. And the Witness had made the warp translation as soon as it had realised the odds it faced in the void around Ultramar, the ships which had gathered about Fury. That had suited the Adeptus Mechanicus also. They had followed in Fifth’s wake, the Ultramarines themselves allowed to progress into the heart of the hulk by the Witness’ insane need to meet with and break a fellow Chapter Master of the Adeptus Astartes, to restore his position with his dark masters after centuries of stagnation. A gift of blood.
The Witness had played into Dominus Hagnon-Cro’s hands as much as Calgar had. The Ultramarines had opened the door, and the Adeptus Mechanicus had followed them through it. Calgar had sought to use the Mechanicus forces to keep the Broken occupied while he fought to the heart of the thing, the final confrontation. But it was he who had been used.
There was one, small mote of consolation in the ruin of all his intentions. With the slaying of the Witness, the tortured Space Marines crucified on the plain beyond could at least be set at peace now. They would no longer be kept alive by the daemon prince’s powers. Their mortality had been given back to them.