Soul Drinker

by Ben Counter

  That was fine by him, Sarpedon thought. He dodged another blade and darted his two front legs for­ward, impaling the daemon on his front claws and ripping it clean in two. The Assault Marines of Squad Karvik were around him and Karvik's power sword darted over his shoul­der to shear the arms off the closest daemon. Sarpedon nodded his thanks - Karvik's helmeted head glanced at him in acknowledgement, then turned back to lead his Marines in the killing. All around was a swirling, brutal combat, plague daemons charging through a cloud of flies, Soul Drinkers meeting them with chainswords and battering them into the unclean surf. But the daemons were strong and there was a horde of them here - Squad Dreo had gone in on one flank and were four men down already, the spearhead was blunted and Sarpedon could see more daemons piling in from the shore.

  The beachhead would fail. The Soul Drinkers would be trapped in the surf and surrounded. Time for the Hell.

  What did daemons fear? Nothing? No, they had minds of a sort, even if they were something a decent human being could never wish to comprehend. They had desires and hates and obsessions like everything else. They had fear, too. But of what?

  All Sarpedon had were his fellow Marines, battling in the surf. The greatest warriors humanity could produce, proud soldiers of the Emperor's will. They were warriors worth fear­ing for even the most degenerate mind. That was what the Hell would be.

  Sarpedon felt the aegis circuit pulse white-hot against his skin as he let the psychic power inside him flood out, a torrent more powerful than he had ever gathered before. Every day he had felt his powers reach greater heights and now he unleashed it all at once, the tide of the Hell rising up around him.

  His battle-brothers' eyes glowed with righteous hatred. Their swords were flashes of lightning, their guns belched bolts of fire. They were five metres tall, twenty-five, and fifty. The cloud-filled sky shrunk back from them in fear and the waters receded in terror. Sarpedon let the power rage through him, channelled into his fellow Marines. The chalices on their shoulder pads were brimming with traitors' blood, the masks of their helmets grim and forbidding. Those forced to fight without armour had skin that glowed with strength, as if it would turn aside bullets and blades like ceramite.

  Sarpedon rose from the surf, power arcing off the force staff in his hand. He was a hero of mankind, venerated in the annals of humanity long after the corrupt Imperium had decayed and the enemies of the Emperor purged from the galaxy. He was Rogal Dorn battling the traitorous hordes of Horus on the battlements of Earth. He was huge and terrible, a demi-god of vengeance striding into the midst of the plague daemons.

  The butchery faltered as the plague daemons' diseased minds straggled to comprehend the majesty of the warriors before them. Their blades stopped swinging for a second, and in that second the Soul Drinkers charged forwards as one, Sarpedon at their head, his staff ripping through deformed bodies. They tore through the daemon pack and sent them scurrying in shock, run down by the Assault Marines and massacred by supporting fire from the tactical squads.

  Some tried to rally and amongst them Sarpedon saw the leader who had directed the daemon horde. He was a night­mare - a giant of bare glistening muscle and a face that was a mass of sharp mandibles and gleaming eyes. He had a huge slab of metal stabbed through one clubbed hand for a sword and was surrounded by baying daemon-things.

  Kill this monstrosity and the daemon front would fail.

  Sarpedon ran on to the beach at full tilt, outstripping the Assault Marines charging into the faltering daemons around him, focused on the champion of Chaos who dared stand before him.

  GELENTIUS VORP SAW the invading commander and gave thanks to Grandfather Nurgle that he should have this opportunity. Oh, glorious decay, his hand would be slick with the blood of the clean ones and his body blessed with Ve'Meth's pestilent reward!

  This enemy was tall and clad in massive purple armour trimmed with bone and gold, a chalice symbol picked out on one shoulder pad - a Space Marine, the most stubbornly mis­guided of mankind who refused to look upon the majestic corruption of Nurgle, a fine scalp for Vorp to present to Ve'Meth. This one was different, though - he had eight legs, like those of an insect or a spider, sprouting from his waist, which sent him bounding up the shore far faster than his fel­low Marines advancing behind. The Space Marine had a long staff in one hand - he wore no helmet and was shaven-headed, and his eyes burned with anger. Vorp saw there was some trick that this enemy had used to throw the daemons into disarray, but Vorp himself was above such things, for Ve'Meth had shielded his mind against trickery.

  His simpering daemon-pack of plaguebearers bounded alongside him as he strode towards his prey, their lips drool­ing at the prospect of the kill. Vorp swung his huge blade at the Space Marine but the enemy was quick and turned the pendulous sword with a shoulder pad, jabbing with the staff and spearing it through the head of the closest plaguebearer. The staff flicked and the daemon's gristly spine came apart.

  A worthy opponent. Vorp made a note to offer up thanks to Ve'Meth and the Grandfather for such an opportunity to prove his devotion to the Lord of Decay.

  Vorp stepped in close and rammed a clubbed fist into the enemy's chest, denting the ceramite and throwing the Space Marine back a pace. But suddenly the staff was entangled in his legs and Vorp was pitched off his feet, slamming into the sharp black sand on his back. The Marine saw Vorp was wide open and a massive downward swipe of the staff tore deep into Vorp's shoulder, narrowly missing bisecting his skull.

  The arrogance! The nerve!

  Vorp rose to his feet and slashed with the sword, biting into the Marine's shoulder pad and into his arm. The Marine stumbled back again and caught Vorp's descending blade with the staff - Vorp reached down and grabbed one of the strange arachnoid legs, twisted and pulled, and felt the leg come away with a snapping of tendons.

  The Space Marine bellowed with rage as he saw the man­gled stump of his leg spurting vermilion blood over the sand.

  Vorp had hurt it. Now Vorp would kill it.

  A WHITE-HOT PAIN flared bright in Sarpedon's mind, flooding through him from the bleeding socket of his left mid-leg. The leg itself was held in the paw of the skinless monster standing over him, triumph in its multitude of insect eyes. Even though the battle was raging all around him, the gunfire and howling of daemons was blocked out by the white noise of agony.

  The pain would pass. Sarpedon had suffered worse. And he still had seven legs left, damn it.

  The Chaos champion barrelled forwards, doubtless hoping to capitalise on its small victory and finish Sarpedon for good. Sarpedon dodged to the side and weaved between the huge swinging blows of the champion's tarnished sword. Sarpedon was favouring his left side but knew he could not let up for an instant - the champion was inhumanly strong and seemed as immune to pain as its attendant daemons.

  The sword stabbed at head height and Sarpedon caught a huge fleshy knee in the throat as he ducked. He slashed upwards with a talon, following with the staff, and as the champion stepped back he slammed the heel of his free hand into the side of its leg. A bone snapped somewhere deep within the slimy muscle. The champion didn't notice, piv­oted on a heel, brought the blunt pommel of its blade down on the back of Sarpedon's neck.

  It was fast as well as strong. It had no finesse - there was no method here, only brutality and anger. Sarpedon couldn't outfight something like this, because every trick or flourish he might bring out would be beaten down by the champion's sheer relentless strength. The only way was to be stronger than it was.

  There was no art in this fight. The champion made a wide arcing downward swing, hoping to decapitate Sarpedon. Sarpedon took the blow on a shoulder pad, swung back with his staff. The champion blocked the attack but Sarpedon struck again and again, slamming the staff into the cham­pion's guard, battering it slowly backwards. With its free arm it slashed a spined elbow into Sarpedon's face and tried to close its gnarled fingers around his throat. But Sarpedon had to focus everything on attack, never back down or pause for brea
th, and hope it would be enough.

  The force staff, crackling with psychic power, ripped down­wards and the champion met it with a wide circling parry, driving the head of the staff deep into the sand beneath its feet. Sarpedon's assault was fended off and in that moment, both combatants were wide open to the counterattack.

  Sarpedon was a split-second quicker, reflexes honed by decades of training and battle outstripping the instincts of a life in service to the Dark Gods. Sarpedon reared up on his back legs and stabbed down, spearing a talon through the wrist of the Chaos champion's sword arm. Its foul mandibled pit of a mouth yawned wide and it howled as Sarpedon dropped the force staff and grabbed the monster's head, jab­bing his gauntleted fingers into its eyes. With his free hand he drew his boltgun from its holster and jammed it under its throat. He pulled the trigger and blew a corona of filthy bil­ious blood out of the back of its head.

  It wasn't dead. But it was close.

  The champion reeled wildly, segments of skull flapping from scraps of skin. Sarpedon lunged into it, knocking it backwards and landing astride of it. He put the rest of the bolter magazine into its chest, blasting the ribcage open and spraying ragged chunks of organs. When the magazine was empty Sarpedon punched down and split the ruined ribcage clean open, plunged his hands into the pulpy mass beneath, tore out leathered lungs and a foul still-beating heart, know­ing that a creature like this was harder to kill than anything he had faced before. But it still bellowed and thrashed beneath him, massive corroded sword swinging wildly even as brackish blood sprayed across the sand.

  Sarpedon grasped the champion's ruined head with both hands and ripped it clean off the abomination's shoulders. He cast the hideous head into the black sand, its mandibles still writhing, its glossy eyes glaring.

  As the thing fell still, Sarpedon took up his gun and staff again, glancing behind him to see how his squads were far­ing. The daemons were in flight and the Soul Drinkers were making a break for the rugged slopes of the mountain-fortress, where the broken landscape would afford some cover for the ascent towards Ve'Meth's sanctum.

  He stood up, blocking out the pain from his severed leg. He joined the forward elements of the spearhead as they sprinted through the remains of daemonic defences, raking the distant Chaos forces with bolter-fire as they ran, the Hell still burning around them.

  * * *

  GELENTIUS VORP LAY there for some time on the black coral sand, trying to force the parasites infesting him to knit together his sundered organs. He could probably survive without his head, or with his chest cavity blasted free of organs, but maybe not with both.

  Would the Grandfather help him? Almighty Nurgle blessed His followers with durable bodies that scorned injury - but as he stared up at the sky with his remaining eyes Vorp spec­ulated that perhaps even the Ve'Meth, most powerful vessel of Nurgle, might have trouble saving Vorp now.

  The Space Marine would pay, of that Vorp was sure. If the fortress didn't kill him then Ve'Meth himself would. But he had so longed to feel the Marine's naively clean blood on his hands and look into his eyes as he tore his heart out...

  Dismembered on the beach of Ve'Meth's island, Gelentius Vorp died at last.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE DIN OF death echoed up the bile-slicked slopes of the fortress to reach Ve'Meth. The screech of ended life, the low keening of pain, the roar of anger. The dim crackling of gun­fire was drowned out by the delicious racket that living things made when they suddenly became living no more.

  That there was so much death, however, was tempered by the fact that so much of it was of Ve'Meth's own servants. Space Marines had died, and their passing was most satis­fying - but daemons had been torn asunder and their spirits banished to the warp, and slaves and beastmen had died in droves. Gelentius Vorp, champion of Nurgle, had actually been killed, which was something Ve'Meth had considered to be effectively beyond the capability of any­thing mortal.

  Ve'Meth sent out a command through the living stone of his fortress. Every servant who dwelled within his walls snapped to attention and ran, slithered or wallowed towards its designated position within the organic warren of the fortress, ready to receive and repel the invaders in corrup­tion's name. Even if the Imperial weaklings got within striking distance of Ve'Meth's abscess-chamber his body­guards should deal with them quickly enough.

  And if they didn't? Well, then Ve'Meth would have to han­dle things personally.

  A host-body broke ranks and strode towards the rear of the chamber where Ve'Meth kept a shrine to himself. Images offered up from cults and worlds under his domination were piled up against the sweating coral wall - crude idols of an insect-god, a beautifully wrought reliquary in the form of a golden snake, totems of shrunken heads and human bones, and hundreds more. Ve'Meth swept them aside to reveal the wooden box he kept there, burned with runes to keep the unworthy from opening it. The host lifted the lid, reached a hand in and removed Arguotha.

  It pleased Ve'Meth to savour the memory again of all those centuries ago, when he still had a single mundane body. On his long pilgrimage through the Eye of Terror he had been beset by the Daemon Arguotha, who flew into a rage when he saw the suppurating marks of favour the Plague God had bestowed upon Ve'Meth. The daemon set his thousand off­spring on Ve'Meth but the young champion had faced them all and won, scattering them in combat. Then Arguotha himself attacked, yet Ve'Meth had shown no fear and defeated the daemon. He wrestled it to the ground and intoned the canti­cle of binding, making the daemon his own to do with as he wished. And Ve'Meth had wished to bind the daemon into his favourite weapon.

  Arguotha had brooded over the centuries and his anger was marked upon him. His barrel was gnarled and toothed, the metal of his casing twisted into faces that ground their teeth and screamed from time to time. In the magazine slung beneath, the thousand young of Arguotha writhed in captiv­ity, eager to be released.

  If the Space Marines dared cross Ve'Meth's threshold, they would get their wish, and Arguotha would speak once more.

  'MEDIC!' GRAEVUS GLANCED up to see Apothecary Pallas ducking through the scattered gunfire towards where the Marine from Squad Hastis was trying to pile the oozing mass of his lung back into the massive rent in the side of his chest. The Marine knew he was dead, but he wanted to make sure Pallas took the gene-seed organ from his body for transport back to the Chapter apothecarion. Brave lad, thought Graevus. They all were. Graevus's spearhead had made it across the beach, clearing out the black stone fortifications of the mutants and cultists who were sheltering there. Karraidin and Squad Hastis had made it up there too, leaving a gory trail of the dead across the sand. Now the Soul Drinkers were at the foot of the cave-riddled mountain fortress, taking fire from hundreds of murder holes and firepoints studding the slopes above them. The weapons were crude and badly aimed but there were scores of them, pouring fire down onto the Soul Drinkers.

  'Give the word, Graevus.' said Karraidin as his hugely armoured bulk clambered over the stone outcrop of the for­tification in which Graevus was taking cover.

  Graevus peered out at the Soul Drinkers still arriving through the gunsmoke. 'Give it a moment. If we make a break for it now we'll leave half the lads strung out under fire.'

  Karraidin risked a long look at the firepoints above them, his aristocratic features profiled against the corpse-strewn battlefield. 'The fortress is teeming with them. There must be thousands.'

  'It'll be in our favour, captain. Enclosed spaces, up close. Like a boarding action.'

  Karraidin smiled grimly. As a Soul Drinker who had distin­guished himself in spacecraft boarding actions, for which the valuable terminator suits had been designed, he knew full well the intense, half-blind butchery that the Soul Drinkers would have to wade through. 'Can't wait.' Karraidin said, and Graevus knew he meant it. Another purple-armoured body dived into the cover of the rock, bullets snickering into the sand beside him. It was Sergeant Karvik, chainsword in hand. 'My squad's in position sir.' he gasped. Squad Karvik had been t
rapped in the shallows when the spearhead had first advanced, and must have sprinted through both the regrouping beast-cultists and the fire from the slopes. 'Good work, sergeant. Captain, that's all of them. We move.'

  'Soul Drinkers, with me!' called Karraidin over the vox and vaulted over the stone wall. All around the Soul Drinkers squads broke cover and ran, snapping shots at the openings overhead. Graevus saw Marines fall, some to be helped by their battle-brothers as they passed, others to pick themselves up and carry on, others to lie where they fell.

  Karraidin had spotted an opening at foot-level - a ragged cavern entrance from which ran a runnel of sickly brown ichor. Through the shadows inside Graevus. saw Chaos troops, hunched figures clad in rags, manoeuvring an auto-cannon to cover the entrance. A volley from Karraidin's storm bolter caused them to duck so that by the time they had squeezed off a burst of shots the closest Assault Marines were upon them, Sergeant Tellos in their midst. Three Marines fell, large-calibre autocannon rounds punching through their bodies, before the gun crew were cut to pieces and the Soul Drinkers were inside.

  Graevus's eyes adjusted instantly to the darkness, and he realised that this was something that had not been built; it had been grown. The tunnel stretching into the heart of the fortress was ribbed and puckered, the internal organs of something long-dead or dormant, something that might wake or be revived at any moment. And this particular mon­ster's brain was Ve'Meth.

  The assault squads were fifty metres down the tunnel with Tellos and Karraidin, spraying bullets at things that dared move in the shadows.

  'What do you think, Graevus?' voxed Karraidin.

  In any normal situation Sergeant Graevus, with the decades of experience feeding a honed combat instinct, would have carefully weighed up the routes likely to bring them within striking distance of a tactical objective. But this was not a nor­mal situation, and Graevus knew exactly where they had to go to exterminate the pollution that had deformed this whole planet. 'I think we go up.' he said.