25 For 25

by Various

  Shock and horror had paralysed them for a moment, but it was all Honsou needed. His bolter roared again and the soldiers were torn in two by a sawing arc of bolter shells.

  ‘With me!’ he yelled, slamming his back into the wall at the chamber’s door. He ducked his helmeted head through the doorway, seeing more of the blue-jacketed soldiers manning defended positions further around the curving corridor.

  Honsou rolled around the door; his bolter raised to his shoulder and pumping out lethally aimed shots directed by his augmetic eye. Three soldiers flopped back, their chests pulped to ruptured craters by three shots.

  Iron Warriors moved past him, deploying with grim, wordless efficiency to secure the passages leading to the platform’s hub. Honsou was pleased at the accuracy of his shots, for it had taken him a little time to retrain his body to fire the bolter left-handed and sync it to his newly grafted eye, but the results spoke for themselves.

  Cadaras Grendel and Ardaric Vaanes moved past him, moving anticlockwise around the rim of the orbital and firing as they went. Grendel’s underslung melta gun trailed smoke and Vaanes’s lightning claws threw off arcs of blue lightning, making the air taste of ozone.

  He smelled the newborn before he saw it, despite the case of armour it wore about its body. Even his own helmet’s filters couldn’t keep the stench of it from him.

  ‘Stay with me,’ ordered Honsou. ‘Kill anything that isn’t ours.’

  The newborn nodded and they set off after the sound of gunfire.

  Cadaras Grendel grinned like a madman as he charged down the curving corridor, his teeth bared and his heart beating wildly in his chest. It had been too long since he had killed something and he itched to fight something worthwhile, though he suspected there would be precious little sport on this grubby little platform.

  But Cadaras Grendel wasn’t fussy; he’d kill whatever came his way.

  He and Vaanes pounded down the corridor, its walls strobed by red warning lights and ringing with blaring klaxons. It was the symphony of battle and needed only the bark of gunfire and the screams of the dying to make it complete.

  As if in answer to his thoughts, a ragged squad of soldiers rose from a defensive position before him and opened fire. Their weapons spat bright bolts of energy, daggers to fight a Titan, and Grendel laughed as he opened fire, the vox-unit on his armour broadcasting his demented, psychotic amusement as a howling yell of rebellion.

  One soldier crumpled, his shoulder blasted away and his face shredded by exploding fragments of bone. Another ran screaming from the barricade, while the rest stood with grim stoicism in the face of Grendel’s onslaught.

  Las-fire spat, the impacts against his armour insignificant. His bolter fired again, a bark of shots that cut down a handful of the men in sprays of blood and shattered armour.

  Vaanes had eschewed his jump pack for this close and dirty fight, but Grendel had to admit his speed was impressive nonetheless. The former Raven Guard was faster than Grendel and reached the barrier first, leaping forward in an arcing dive that took him over the barricade and into the midst of the soldiers.

  Actinic blurs of silver steel flashed and squirts of blood sprayed the walls as Vaanes rolled to his feet, striking left and right with his lightning claws. Arms flopped to the metal decking and torsos sheared from bodies as the energised edges cut through armour, meat and bone with an electric hiss and spit.

  Screams of pain and terror echoed from the walls, and in seconds the skirmish was over.

  Grendel nodded in approval as he rounded the barricade to see Vaanes standing in a circle of blood, chuckling as he found it impossible to tell how many had died given the profusion of dismembered body parts.

  His amusement turned to glee as he saw a pair of soldiers huddled in the shadow of the barricade, clinging to one another and weeping in terror. Their blue uniforms bore the wreckage of their fellow soldiers’ deaths and they were little more than mindless sacks of blood and pain now.

  Grendel reached down and hoisted one of the soldiers from the ground, letting him dangle above the deck as his wrist was slowly crushed.

  ‘Don’t seem like much, do they?’ he asked.

  Vaanes didn’t answer immediately, his helmet fixed on the carnage his deadly claws had wrought. For all the motion Vaanes displayed, he might as well have been a statue.

  ‘Vaanes?’

  ‘I heard you.’

  Grendel shrugged and dropped the wailing soldier, who crawled away holding his shattered wrist close to his chest. Grendel let him get a few metres away before turning his weapon on him and unleashing a superheated blast of energy from the underslung melta gun.

  The protective senses of his helmet dimmed momentarily as the white-hot blast engulfed the soldier and Grendel laughed as the glow faded and he saw the stumps of feet and charred skull lid that was all that remained.

  He turned to Vaanes and said, ‘I’ll leave the last one for you.’

  Fighting alongside the newborn was much easier when it wore a helmet, for Honsou was not forced to look upon the face of Ventris in the midst of a battle. The fight for the outer ring of the orbital platform was virtually over, the soldiers defending it no match for the relentless ferocity of an assault of the Iron Warriors.

  Few soldiers were.

  Honsou watched his champion kill their enemies without mercy, fighting with a skill and familiar style that took him a moment to recognise. The blows it struck were practiced and precise, the very image of those taught to the Adeptus Astartes… exactly how a warrior of the Ultramarines would fight.

  The challenge of killing mortals with his bolter had grown stale, and Honsou now fought with his axe, cleaving a screaming path through his enemies. Truth be told, there was little more challenge in fighting them in close quarters, but it had the virtue of being bloody.

  Honsou’s axe growled as it slew, the monstrous entity within it feeding on the souls of the dead even as it feasted on the blood of their burst bodies. His blade reaped a fearsome tally, the blue-jacketed soldiers fighting on despite the impossibility of their victory. Honsou admired their courage, if not their ability.

  He wrenched his axe from the golden breastplate of some kind of officer, the axe protesting with a ripple of dead eyes across the blade’s glossy surface. A tremor of rage passed along his arms from the weapon and Honsou snarled as he exerted the force of his will to quiet the daemon within.

  The sounds of battle were diminishing throughout the station and Honsou knew the battle was almost won. Even as he relished the victory, he saw a ragged scramble from the end of one of the spoke passageways that led to the central hub. One soldier carried a stubby tube on his shoulder, into which another man stuffed a finned missile.

  Honsou wanted to laugh at the desperation of the weapon, before realising that the detonation of such a missile would explosively decompress the entire outer ring and send everyone within hurtling into space.

  He tried to move, but his limbs would not obey his commands and he looked down in anger at the axe that shuddered in his grip, its will to dominate pushing back against him.

  ‘Now is really not the time!’ he snarled through gritted teeth, fighting to force the essence of the daemon back into the darkly shimmering depths of the blade.

  A bloom of noise, light and smoke erupted from the soldiers and, though it was surely impossible to see such a fast moving object, Honsou saw a needle-nosed missile streaking towards him.

  Honsou felt the daemon withdraw into the weapon and end the battle for control, but knew it was far too late to avoid the missile. He threw his arm up before him in an instinctive gesture of defence.

  The force of the impact hurled him from his feet and he felt a terrible, leeching power within him, as though a loathsome, dark force tapped into his life-force. His head slammed against the wall and he looked down to see the smoking, hissing fins of the missile embedded in the rippling silver of the arm he had taken from the Ultramarines sergeant.

  Light pulsed in t
he depths of the arm, flitting fireflies of energy that spoke of technology wrought in an age long forgotten and a race of such malice that his own petty evils were insignificant when measured alongside theirs. Even as he watched, a fiery orange line hissed around the circumference of the portion of the missile that protruded from his arm and it fell to the deck with a clatter of metal.

  Honsou stared in wonder at the unblemished surface of his arm, looking up as the equally astounded soldiers reloaded the weapon.

  He scrambled to his feet, but quickly saw there was no need for haste as the newborn launched himself towards the soldiers and began their butchery. Until now, Honsou had only seen the newborn kill with the mechanical precision of the Adeptus Astartes, albeit employed with a vicious joy no Space Marine would condone, but his champion now fought with brutal savagery, every blow excruciatingly mortal and delivered with fluid economy of force.

  No movement was wasted, no blow more powerful than required and no opening left unexploited. Within seconds the soldiers were dead and the battle over.

  Honsou joined the newborn at the scene of the slaughter as more Iron Warriors secured the spoke corridor. Specialists with shaped charges moved down its length and prepared to blow the doors to the central hub. Within moments, the orbital platform would be theirs.

  Honsou put a hand on the newborn’s shoulder, feeling his hostility towards his new champion diminish in the face of the obvious relish taken in causing death.

  ‘Ardaric Vaanes is training you well,’ he said.

  Ardaric Vaanes inclined his head to the last trooper. The man’s face was a mask of tears and blood, his eyes glazed as his head shook back and forth in terror. Cadaras Grendel stood with his shoulders squared, the threat and challenge of his body language plain.

  ‘He’s dead already,’ said Vaanes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said he’s dead already. He’s no threat to us anymore.’

  ‘So? What’s that got to do with anything?’ said Grendel, moving to stand inches in front of him. ‘You not got the stomach for killing a man unless he’s got a gun pointed at you?’

  ‘I just don’t see the need anymore.’

  ‘The need?’ said Grendel. ‘Who said anything about need? Kill him. Now.’

  Vaanes met Grendel’s angry stare, the challenge and hostility evident even through the masks of ceramite that separated them. The sound of battle surrounded them, the fighting pushing ever closer to the hub of the orbital platform, but Grendel was ignoring it, intent on pushing Vaanes and seeing what he was made of.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve got the guts, Vaanes,’ said Grendel. ‘I think maybe you’re still working with the Imperials. Honsou thinks so too, I can tell he doesn’t trust you.’

  ‘He doesn’t trust you either,’ pointed out Vaanes.

  ‘No, but I don’t try and pretend like I won’t betray him someday. He and I, well, we got ourselves an understanding.’

  Grendel turned away from Vaanes and scooped up the last surviving trooper. He held him up before Vaanes and said, ‘Go on. Kill him. Kill him or I’ll kill you, I swear.’

  Vaanes took a breath, wondering if he would have to fight Grendel now. The warrior had been spoiling for it ever since he had joined Honsou’s band, but as he tensed his muscles in readiness for action, his eyes caught a glint of silver on the dangling trooper’s uniform.

  An honour badge pinned to his collar.

  Droplets of blood had stained the uniform around it, but not a single drop sullied the badge itself and the image of a stylised silver ‘U’ upon a rich blue background was unmistakable…

  Ultramarines.

  Picked out in gold behind the symbol of the Ultramarines was the numeral IV, and Vaanes felt a surge of anger as he realised the meaning of the symbol. It was a campaign badge awarded to those who had fought alongside the Fourth Company of the Ultramarines.

  Vaanes leaned down and said, ‘How did you get this?’

  The soldier didn’t answer, his mouth working in a monotone wail of pure terror, his eyes squeezed shut as though he could escape the terror of his situation by keeping it from sight.

  ‘How did you get this?’ shouted Vaanes, gripping the soldier’s jacket and tearing him from Cadaras Grendel. Hysterical babbling was his only answer and Vaanes screamed his question again, his right fist pulled back and ready to strike, the fizzing crackle of the lightning energy loud in his ears.

  ‘Do it…’ hissed Grendel, and the urge to kill this man, to hurt him, to maim him and inflict suffering beyond measure was greater than anything Vaanes had ever known. Vaanes heard a sibilant whisper in his ear as though an unseen speaker’s voice was hidden in the rising buzz of his lightning claw, a voice only he could hear.

  The sensation was not unpleasant, a silent urging and a silken pressure on his mind that promised new wonders, pleasures undreamed of and the ecstasy of experience. All this and more were encapsulated in the wordless whisper and Ardaric Vaanes knew without understanding that this was the offer and the price of the bargain he had struck with Honsou on Medrengard.

  His vision narrowed until all he could see was the Ultramarines honour badge, the winking silver and gold mocking him with their purity and lustre. The face of Uriel Ventris appeared in the forefront of his mind and he cried out in anguished rage.

  The lightning claw slammed forward, punching through the trooper’s chest and exploding from his back. The blow continued and his fist followed the claws through the man’s torso, pulverising bone, heart and lungs on its way through the substance of his body.

  Vaanes tore at the body until his hissing claws had reduced it to scraps of torn meat, a ruined gruel of smashed bone and offal. The breath heaved in his lungs and he stepped back from the wreckage of the man’s remains and felt a wave of acceptance pour through him, his limbs filled with energy and exhilaration.

  He heard Cadaras Grendel laughing and felt the killer’s gauntlet slap him on the shoulder guard. Words were spoken, but he didn’t hear them, too caught up in the wonder he had just experienced.

  Vaanes stared down at what he had done, the bodies around him so torn that their very humanity was obliterated. Finally, he understood the lie he had been living since the shame that had driven him from the Raven Guard.

  There was no self-delusional status he could impart to salve his own conscience and no middle ground between loyalist and traitor. In the Long War, such labels were meaningless anyway – there were only victors and defeated.

  At last, the truth of what he had become was apparent in this baptism of murder and blood.

  Ardaric Vaanes welcomed it.

  The central control room of Defence Platform Ultra Nine reeked of blasting charges and blood. With the doors blown, the men inside had no chance of life and had made the best job they could of disabling the systems and calling for reinforcements, but Honsou knew the nearest Imperial ship was many hours distant.

  Adept Cycerin stood before the smashed consoles, a morass of writhing cables snaking from the cavity of his bio-mechanical chest to mesh with the inner workings of the smashed consoles.

  The doomed mortals had been thorough in their vandalism, but Cycerin had made swift work in undoing the damage, and his unique talents allowed him to coax the required life from the smashed systems without difficulty.

  ‘Is everything ready?’ asked Honsou, impatient to see the results of his labours bear fruit.

  Cadaras Grendel shrugged as he ran his eyes over the buckled and las-shot console. Red lights winked on surviving, brass-rimmed dials and sparks fizzed and sputtered.

  ‘Hard to say for sure, but we swapped over the missiles’ payload,’ said Grendel. ‘All but one is loaded up with the stuff we took from Golbasto. It’s up to Cycerin now.’

  ‘Why all but one?’ asked Ardaric Vaanes and Honsou caught a subtle change in the warrior’s voice, a shift in tone of a warrior who has at last come to know himself.

  ‘The last one is a message to Ventris.’

 
‘What does it say?’

  ‘It’s not what it says,’ said Honsou, ‘it’s what it represents.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘That you don’t walk away from a fight with Honsou without paying a price.’

  A salvo of sixteen orbital torpedoes surged from the planetside launch bays, followed by another rippling salvo seconds later. Another three salvos launched until all but one of the platform’s entire payload of missiles was expended. Each missile dropped away rapidly from the platform, the blue-hot coals of their engines firing for long enough to put them in a ballistic trajectory towards the planet’s surface.

  They swooped downwards like hunting raptors, their formation breaking up as the spread pattern implanted into each warhead by Adept Cycerin took hold of each one. The missiles diverged until their contrails were spread around the planet like a glittering spiderweb.

  Heat shields burned with conical fire as the missiles plunged through the atmosphere, emerging into the crystal skies of the planet. Hurried defences scrambled to lock onto the missiles, but launched from low orbit, they were already travelling too quickly and were too close to be engaged with any hope of success.

  As the missiles reached a predetermined altitude over the planet’s surface, each one exploded and spread its viral payload into the air. Vast quantities of the experimental Heraclitus strain were released into the atmosphere in doses billions of times greater than had been employed on Golbasto.

  All across the planet, a terrible rain fell, the genius of Magos Szalin of the Ordos Biologis wreaking terrible damage as it went to work on the indigenous and xenos vegetation.

  A few short years ago, this world had suffered the horror of invasion, monstrous swarms of ferocious alien killers rampaging across its surface. A great war had been fought; in space, in the air, on land and finally in the very bowels of a living spacecraft that had travelled from another galaxy for uncounted aeons.

  Though the invasion had been defeated, the dreadful legacy of the alien invaders remained to taint the planet’s ecology forever. From pole to pole, horrific spires of dreadful alien vegetable matter towered over the landscape, slowly choking the life from the natural landscape.