Flesh And Iron

by Henry Zou

  'For the Emperor! And the glory of the cardinal!' shouted Palatine Fure. Her battle-sisters warbled curious whistles that bridged into the first high-pitched notes of a hymn. As they sang, their fury was renewed and they pincered the beleaguered Riverine.

  'For the fallen!' Baeder bellowed, throwing himself deep into the enemy lines.

  MAUTISTA'S HEARTBEAT WAS more a convulsion than a pulse. It soared up to three hundred beats a minute, drumming agony and the hard buzz of adrenaline into his system before slacking down to a weak tremor or two every few seconds. The daemon in his curdled blood was whispering sweet promises in his mind.

  Mautista would find death soon.

  Four score rebels rampaged through the deckhead with him. They slaughtered any unarmed crew ratings they encountered. Some tried to flee past them onto the deck, while others just curled up and surrendered. None were spared. The Persepian resistance they met was sporadic and cursory. It seemed most Nauticals were more concerned with evacuating the sinking warship than defending it against attack. The few Nautical armsmen they encountered put up a few stray shots before scurrying away.

  'Mautista! There!' Canao pointed eagerly. There was a corkscrew staircase leading out of the deckhead into the upper structures. The aperture was open and they could hear the intense clash of metal and cries of pain and anger, even above the creaks and booms of oceanic warfare.

  'I can find rest up there,' Mautista said, smiling crookedly. He clawed up the corkscrew and into the hatchway, limping into the plush ground floor of the state ward. Structural damage to the ship had loosened valves and cables. The air was swimmy with a haze of combustibles, but through it Mautista could see a pitched and desperate struggle. Instruments of cutting and clubbing rose and fell. An armoured female lay on the carpet, bleeding from a stab wound to the rubberised underarm of her shoulder plates. An off-world Riverine was slumped on a divan as though asleep, his lower body twisted around unnaturally. Dozens of Riverine bodies lay on the carpet, their arms locked stiff as if trying to ward away the final blow. Several white-armoured bodies were interspersed with the Guardsmen. Mautista followed the carnage with his eyes until he saw the behemoth of dark armour in the centre of the room. It was Atachron.

  Mautista's ruptured vision immediately tunnelled. His heart rate escalated to five pulsations a second. He felt a hot, swelling bulge in his stomach. He nursed that hot rage into a fury. For a moment all he could see was the broken shell of Atachron. He had been one of the Two Pairs of visionaries who had given Solo-Baston the means to fight. Were it not for them, Mautista would have never reached enlightenment. He owed them everything.

  The remaining rebels emerged out of the floor hatch. Less than eighteen mixed Carnibales and renegade Guardsmen. They would suffice. With a sharp yell, Mautista the Disciple charged into the melee.

  LIKE CRUSADERS IN celestial armour the battle-sisters laid about with maces and chain flails. The order favoured such weapons because they drew inspiration from fossilised woodcuts of thirty-nine-thousand-year-old knights from a period known as the ''First Crusade''. They were like knights driving back the feral hill hordes. The colonel's men were the faceless animals to be felled for their legend.

  Baeder fell back into a ring with the eight remaining men in his unit as Fure's Celestians hemmed them in. Baeder ducked a lashing chain flail and swung his fen-hammer low. It caught the battle-sister in her shins and swept her legs out from underneath her. She came crashing back down, her legs shattered. Prayer - fervent and pained - escaped from her helmet vents.

  Another mace cut the air and this time Baeder had no room to evade. It hit him square in the ribs, the flanged mace-head bouncing off his flak vest. Baeder heard bones break and scrape against splintered ends. He fell. He heard harsh incantations. Baeder expected death. The sisters were intoning his death prayer. But the killing blow did not come.

  Instead, the sister turned away, her attention drawn as more rebels had fought their way into the state ward. He saw Mautista, the skeletal Disciple, decapitate a battle-sister with a scything machete. A second wave hit the scrum - Soder, Barlach, Boetcher and a mob of Carnibales. They hit the Celestian flank and threatened to spill over to where Avanti and his assembly hid in the rear. Once again, Baeder realised, the powers above had chosen to keep him alive.

  He rose to his feet. Broken ribs grated. Every breath brought a stab of pain in his right side. Clawing his way up, he led off the remnants of his group. Mortlock moved to his side, slamming a battle-sister into the ground with a downward blow. 'Where to, boss?'

  'Find Avanti. I need to see him die.'

  The cardinal hid behind a fighting square of his bodyguard as they fought their way beneath the mezzanine towards the foredeck. They had almost broken free until Mautista's party engaged them. Now the cardinal was hollering about the ship sinking. He was probably right, the Argo-Nautical rocked dangerously. But Baeder's focus became one of such singular aggression he did not hear any words.

  Gabre bowled into the Celestian flank. He tore at them, picking up the armoured form of a battle-sister and shaking her like a deranged simian. The Celestians rushed to meet him, creating a gap in the formation.

  Baeder staggered towards the breach, fen-hammer loose in his hand. Mercenaries rushed to plug the gap with a forest of flagged lances. Each bore a handlebar moustache and neatly-waxed hair. These were no fighters. To Baeder they were typical of the Imperium's ruling elite. Baeder smashed the ceremonial weapons aside with contempt, splitting the polished wood staves and trampling their pennants. Avanti was close now. Baeder looked into his eyes. There he saw not fear, but a flicker of uncertainly. It elicited a thrill of delight in Baeder. He was slavering now, but he didn't care.

  'He's mine!' howled Baeder. 'Mine!' He hurled himself against the aristocratic lancers, breaking apart two of them. The burning in his ribs was forgotten. He snorted, blowing strings of blood from his nose. A lance plunged into his thigh. Something collided with the side of his head. Baeder felt none of it, he could see only Avanti and his cold blue eyes, clear and vivid amongst a periphery of grey shapes. He was reckless. He would die here.

  'No!' screamed Mautista.

  A hand seized Baeder by the back of his jacket and pulled him away from the front-line. Baeder lashed out instinctively, punching Mautista in the face and exploding his nose in a spray of blood. 'What? What?' growled Baeder through his teeth.

  'There!' said Mautista, pointing to the mezzanine stairs. Platoons of Persepian Nautical infantry were clattering down the steps, bayonets couched at the hip. Nautical officers blasted their bugles in the cardinal's rescue. A company-sized element at the very least. Several of the vanguard threw themselves into the churning fight, spearing Riverine from behind with their bayonets. He saw Sergeant Colborn sink as a Persepian blade transfixed his spine. A Nautical officer's sabre parted the head of Trooper Bantem from his neck. A Carnibales screamed as he clutched a stomach wound.

  The realisation of sudden defeat sobered him. Mautista pulled Baeder back from the melee as the man continued to protest. 'I have to kill him. To rest the souls of my men, I have to kill him.'

  'Let me do it. Gabre needs you to go with him. The ship is sinking.'

  Baeder shook his head. 'Damnit Mautista, no. I will not. This is what I came to finish. This is everything I have left.'

  'No, this is not why. The Four know there are greater designs for you yet. The gods have promised.'

  'This is my fight,' Baeder shouted into the Disciple's face, lashing him with spittle.

  'Fyodor, leave! The gods have marked you as their own now. As for me, the gods have chosen to end my mortal life. I am dying already.'

  As if to prove his point, Mautista wrenched open the buttons of his leather jacket with his remaining arm and bared his chest. Beneath a cage of distended ribs, his heart was a visible black stain beneath paper skin. With each slow, irregular beat, the black stain pulsated like a convulsing ink blot. 'I have been infused with the blood of daemons. My life
purpose is to serve the Dos Pares. Yours is a greater purpose. Go Fyodor, do not anger the gods.'

  Baeder could not look away from Mautista's heart. Arterial spider webs of black were spreading out across his skeletal chest. Whatever daemonic entity had been imparted into Mautista's body was claiming the flesh vessel as its own. Baeder was not sure how he knew this, but he was sure he was correct.

  A mace slashed towards his head. A black armoured shape took the hit against its ceramite hide and eviscerated the mace-wielder with his chainsword. Gabre.

  'Fyodor. Come with me,' he said, holding out his great gauntlet.

  Bader looked around at the crashing battle. More of his men were dying. The last of the 31st bleeding out, dashing themselves against the wall of pearl amour. The entire Persepian company had reached the floor level now. They were surrounded and overwhelmed.

  'Riverine!' Baeder ordered. 'Fall back on my mark.'

  MAUTISTA SAW THE last of his warband fall. He knew he would fall too, soon, but not quite yet. He knew his purpose and he would play it out to the end.

  The ship boomed again. Perhaps an ammunition store had cooked off, or perhaps the boiler room had erupted. The she-warriors in pearl, their polished ceramite dented and stained, maintained a tight circle around Cardinal Avanti, leaving the flock of beribboned oligarchs scurrying in their wake.

  Mautista cut diagonally with his machete and sheared a Persepian apart from shoulder to waist. He leapt clear of a toppled divan and sprinted towards Avanti. The last three survivors - Canao, Estima and Azuilgur - followed him, hacking left and right as they ran.

  Estima was transfixed by a Persepian bayonet. Stopping to parry a Nautical officer's sabre, Canao was dragged down and lost. Only Azuilgur and Mautista reached Palatine Fure.

  The palatine's power sceptre knocked Azuilgur sideways, five metres across the room. His torso ruptured, beads of blood seemingly hanging in the air before pattering to the carpet. Mautista knew, despite the unnatural augmentation in his bloodstream, he could not match the martial skill of the Palatine. He reached for a stub pistol at his hip, a small six-shot revolver. Fure swung her sceptre, gouging away a portion of Mautista's lower torso. As the holy weapon met daemon blood, there was an audible hiss as if the wound itself was crying out in pain. Steam ejected forcefully from the open wound, boiling and bubbling with effervescence. The shock alone would have been enough to kill a normal man, yet Mautista was numb. His legs buckled and he toppled backwards, his stub pistol still clutched loosely in his fingers.

  He saw Avanti, now at the front of the procession. The cardinal's eyes were closed, his hands clasped in prayer. He seemed impervious to the carnage around him.

  Fure loomed over him to deliver the killing blow, but Mautista was faster. He jerked the finger of his trigger, willing his muscles to contract one last time. The percussion cap struck the round and the stub gun barked.

  Mautista saw the muzzle glow before the bullet had left the barrel. A discharge of hot, high-pressure gas flickered. It sparked the volatile gas and ignited. The flame expanded outward, a horizontal sheet of flame that erupted instantaneously from wall to wall.

  There was no sound. Mautista felt nothing. He saw, before his death, the room grow white and Avanti open his eyes. Mautista saw fear there. In the fraction of a second before his death, Avanti's eyes quavered. His soul was damned, and he knew it. The cardinal opened his mouth to scream but blooming fire sucked the oxygen from his lungs.

  EPILOGUE

  THE IMPERIUM'S INLAND campaign pressed on for a further ten months, well into the dry season. Robbed of its initial momentum, the land forces were drawn into a lengthy guerrilla war with the natives of Solo-Baston. Outmatched by Caliguan heavy armour, the indigenous fighters expanded their tunnel systems and continued to fight, drawing numbers from the sudden influx of refugees dislodged by fighting.

  Although the death of Cardinal Avanti did not have any strategic impact on military planning, its impact on the overall campaign was considerable. He had been the embodiment of the holy campaign on Solo-Baston and the architect for the creation of a post-war industry. Without him, the campaign lost political influence and financial investment fell away. Prospective shipping and holding firms declined to enter into any chartered agreements on the unstable planet. The Weston-East Phalia Company reneged on their contracts and ceased negotiations to explore the mainland interior. House Uhring, furious at the loss of their heir, lobbied for a protracted trade sanction against Solo-Baston. The Ecclesiarchy severed their ties with Solo-Baston and were quick to clean their hands of Avanti's mess.

  Without the support of powerful vested interests, the Imperial Guard were left to conduct a war with limited resources. Major General Montalvo succeeded as operations commander upon the deaths of Avanti and Admiral de Ruger. Despite the initial successes of an inland assault, he inherited a stagnant campaign. His men were unused to fighting an insurgent war in such inhospitable terrain. Demoralised and without cohesive leadership, Caliguan crews hid in their tanks and Chimeras away from the heat and disease. Dysentery afflicted one in two men while tropical agues became a conditional norm. Significant quantities of medical supplies were requested, but none were forthcoming and their pleas were ignored. No Imperial officials in the region wanted to involve themselves in the cardinal's disaster.

  Despite Imperial superiority in firepower and numbers, the Carnibales fought an obstinate war on their home soil. With no end in sight, the Imperial Guard lost the will to fight. They languished in camps, unwilling to advance and unable to retreat. However, the poorly equipped Carnibales were unable to press the advantage and the fighting stalemated into intermittent skirmishes and constant ambush.

  The war on Solo-Baston ended exactly eighteen months after initial deployment. In its aftermath almost a third of the planet's population had perished from conflict, disease or malnutrition. The Imperium declared it a victory. Streamers and processions lined the streets as far as the Bastion Stars. A soapstone statue of Major General Montalvo was erected in Union City. With its arms raised towards the sky in victory, the forty-metre sculpture was clearly visible from the Solo-Baston coast.

  However, only the inner administrative officials knew the truth of their triumph. They had lost Solo-Baston. The war was an Imperial catastrophe that could ruin Ecclesiarchal legitimacy within the subsector. Restriction of information was imperative.

  Many years later, military theorists wrote of a guerrilla network concealed within the rural populace led by daemon-blooded heretics known as Disciples. These Disciples disseminated knowledge of guerrilla warfare far in advance of anything the rebels would otherwise have known. Yet more importantly, the success of the insurgency relied on the support of dissident villages who supplied raw produce, food, labour and concealment for the Archenemy host.

  Imperial historians legitimised the massacre of thousands by citing the local support for heresy. No mention was made of the wholesale genocide of loyalist groups. A complete history of the Solo-Baston Uprising was commissioned by Cardinal Heitor de Silva which omitted the violations committed against the indigenous groups of Baston. Instead the campaign was repainted as a struggle between Caliguan Guardsmen and Persepian vessels against the barbaric hordes of Chaos cultists. No mention was made of involvement from the 31st Riverine Amphibious.

  In actuality, it would be the arrival of Traitor Marines that broke the stalemate on the eighteenth month. Blood Gorgon, in company strength, deployed via a fortress fleet that broke the Imperial picket at Midway Reach. They deployed by Thunderhawk and Raptor into Baston interior, pin-pointing strikes against command and communication centres. Quick and brutal, the Blood Gorgons routed the Guardsmen back out into the sea, drowning them in their thousands. The colossal monument of Major General Montalvo was demolished by the Archenemy, less than three weeks after its completion.

  KHORSABAD WAS BOTH title and forename. It was derived from the Bastonese word ''Khorsa'' meaning corsair or renegade and the honorific ''Habad
'' meaning ''the King''.

  Maw was his true name. It was a name that Gabre of the Blood Gorgons gave him. A derivative of another name, Mautista, whose very fate was intertwined with that of Khorsabad Maw as much as Maw's own organic birth mother's. The threads of fate crisscross and interlock. Although Mautista's thread had ended, it converged and continued along the thread of Khorsabad Maw. His actions in life had bound them. Without following the destiny of Mautista, there could be no Maw.

  Fyodor Baeder was a past name. With the passage of time, it was a name that would be forgotten. There existed a young Fyodor, much younger, who had sailed paper yachts in the marsh parks of Ouisivia with his father. Another Fyodor not quite yet a man who had greased his hair, worn leather crepe-soles and taken a dark-haired girl to the slump dances. The last Fyodor has been the colonel who led his men into interiors of a distant, war-torn jungle. All of those Fyodors would in time be forgotten too.

  His tide Khorsabad and his true name Maw were chiselled into the newly-forged plates of his armour: miniature, heretic script that adorned every pane of his shoulder, torso and thighs like the cauldron crab shell of Kalisador fame. The ragged remains of his military uniform fluttered like ghostly vestiges, the death shroud of man entombed in a crypt of new armour.

  The Blood Gorgons gave him his armour and much more. They gifted him with a mask of iron, so he would not suffer memories of the past each time he faced a mirror. This they welded to his face, forever, as a pledge to his new life. Bands of steel looping like serpents, their tails began sharply at his chin and their heads met atop his crown. They gifted him with a falchion, sculpted from the rending claw of a tyranid specimen, and many accoutrements of war from the Eye of Terror. But most of all, they promised him immortality so he could pursue his vendetta against the Imperium.