Dishonoured

by Ray Harrison

  Leoric scowled.

  ‘I cannot say I am worried about having more heart than that bastard.’

  Aergard couldn’t find it in him to disagree. Garel was pragmatic to the point of callousness. He embodied what mortals so often thought of the Adeptus Astartes, that they lost their capacity for emotion when they accepted their mantle of demigod. That wasn’t strictly true. It merely became easier and more vital for them to keep their emotions distant.

  Most of the time.

  ‘These mortals spoke of an ancient structure, buried beneath this settlement,’ Leoric said.

  ‘Necron?’ Aergard asked.

  Leoric nodded absently.

  ‘They did not say so, but it makes sense. I think they triggered some sort of beacon when it was uncovered.’

  Aergard frowned. If what Leoric was saying was true, then the necrons would not abandon the planet easily. Nothing about this crusade was turning out to be as it first appeared.

  ‘Did you send news of this to the Marshal?’ Aergard asked.

  Leoric shrugged.

  ‘We tried. With the vox system ailing as it is we can only pray that he heard it.’

  Aergard exhaled slowly, frustrated. The light coming through the windows was dwindling. The day cycle on Schrödinger VII was short. Darkness would fall soon.

  ‘We need to move on,’ Aergard said, still watching Anguis with the humans. ‘I swore an oath to the Marshal, and we have tarried here too long. As have you. You cannot protect them, Leo. Winning back their world is the only way to help them now.’

  Leoric nodded.

  ‘I know what you are going to say,’ he said.

  ‘Then I will not say it,’ Aergard said.

  Across the chapel, Anguis finished his prayers. One of the women put her hand on his arm as he got up to leave. She took a golden chain from the folds of her cloak, and pressed it into his hand. Even at a distance, Aergard recognised the pendant. It was an aquila. Anguis thanked her with a patient smile.

  ‘They keep true to the faith,’ Leoric said. He looked at Aergard. ‘They call us angels.’

  Aergard watched the woman. She wore a scarf covering her nose and mouth, protecting her from the cold. Only her eyes were visible.

  He saw fear there… and hope.

  Aergard sighed. ‘Get them back into the crypts. Leave them a light and a blade. Then get back into the fight.’

  A knife would certainly not protect them should the necrons return, but the comfort of having the weapon would perhaps be worth something. It was all that could be done for them.

  It would have to be enough.

  Leoric nodded. ‘As you say,’ he said.

  Aergard bade farewell to Leoric and turned away, crunching slivers of stained glass under his boots. The rune denoting Evrain’s location flickered. They were not far now. It originated in the network of mines beneath their feet.

  Aergard watched the pallid disc of the sun slip below the buildings as he left the chapel. The sky was tainted by smoke and the intermittent flare of weapons fire. His two brothers waited at the bottom of the steps.

  ‘Are we done here?’ Garel said.

  ‘Yes,’ Aergard replied. ‘It is time to finish this.’

  The necrons had taken the bait.

  As Helbrecht reached the ice bridge, five of the xenos landed hard on the ice in front of them. They wore arcane jump packs that seemed to achieve propulsion without thrust. Where they landed, they caused tiny disruptions in gravity. At Helbrecht’s feet, crystals of ice began to float upwards.

  As one, the necrons activated the power fields on their staves.

  ‘I think they are trying to stop us from reaching the bridge,’ Vayn said, drily.

  The necrons began to advance.

  ‘Go through them,’ Helbrecht said.

  The Black Templars started to move.

  One of the creatures lowered its stave and braced its feet. A searing beam of energy arced from the stave’s jewelled head, hitting one of Ideus’ squad, Deytrik, in the chest. With a boom of pressure, Deytrik was unmade, reduced to a grey flurry of ashes.

  Gone.

  With a snarl of rage, Helbrecht charged the closest of the necron creatures. It blocked his attack with its stave, the power fields of their weapons colliding with a shriek. The creature knocked Helbrecht’s blade aside, pushing the Marshal back two paces. It swung the stave with silent malice, aiming to punch it through Helbrecht’s chest. Helbrecht deflected it with a swipe of his sword, chasing up with a deft strike at the creature’s throat.

  His blow never connected.

  His sword cut empty air as Helbrecht felt the point of the necron’s stave scrape along his fused ribcage. He cursed, spitting blood. It was fast, faster than he’d expected. The creature knocked him back with the haft of the stave, sending the Marshal sprawling on the ice. It swung at him. Helbrecht rolled aside and the stave crashed into the ground where he’d been moments before.

  And stuck there.

  Gaining his feet, Helbrecht fired his bolter, stitching the creature with firebursts as the rounds detonated. It fell, damaged and twitching, but not dead. The creature’s body started to reknit. It lurched to its knees, reaching for the Marshal with hands like claws.

  Helbrecht fired his bolter again, and kept firing until the creature lay still, shattered and smoking. The Marshal was breathing hard, blood dripping onto the ice from where the creature had cut him.

  He was surprised how much it hurt.

  ‘That was the last of them.’ Vayn limped towards him. His chest-plate was cracked, the black lacquer flaking away. He spat on the ice.

  ‘What I would not give for an enemy that stayed dead when I killed it.’

  Helbrecht looked up. A curdled swirl of cloud was gathering above them. Lightning flashed in the sky.

  ‘If we survive this, then I will try and find some for you,’ he said.

  The wind was picking up. It tugged at the purity seals attached to Helbrecht’s armour. Thunder boomed unceasingly.

  ‘That is no natural storm,’ Vayn shouted over the noise of the wind.

  Suddenly, the clamour stopped.

  Emerald light lit the sky. Helbrecht caught the scent of ozone.

  The light flared away and a silver figure was revealed, standing in the centre of the ice-bridge. A long, segmented cape hung heavy from its shoulders. It bore a brassy crown on its brow, stained with verdigris.

  An immortal king crafted from silver and steel.

  With an air of ceremony, the figure extended its hand.

  ‘Mortal ones,’ the figure said in richly accented, halting Gothic. ‘You look upon Imotekh the Stormlord, Ruler of Mandragora, Liberator of Somonor and Overlord of the Sautekh dynasty.’

  ‘That is rather a lot of titles,’ Vayn muttered.

  ‘Helbrecht!’ the Stormlord said, impossibly loud.

  Helbrecht, for a moment, felt physically stunned.

  His name. It had used his name.

  ‘You are the one who leads,’ the Stormlord said. ‘That must make you an honourable creature. Of sorts.’

  The necron’s face was a frozen rictus mask of metal, but Helbrecht couldn’t help but hear a smile in the Stormlord’s voice.

  ‘If that is the case, then face me in single combat. Prove that you are not the failure you have so far shown yourself to be.’

  The knuckles of Helbrecht’s gauntlets creaked as he curled his hands into fists.

  ‘Sire,’ Vayn started, placing a warning hand on Helbrecht’s shoulder.

  Helbrecht stared at him. ‘Let go,’ he said, softly.

  Vayn did as he was asked, though he looked none too happy about it.

  Helbrecht strode towards the Stormlord. He forced himself to walk as if unwounded. He would not show weakness to this creature, this xenos that kn
ew his name.

  The signal from Evrain’s locator had led them into the cryonite mines.

  Hanging lume-globes lit the darkness. Wind howled up from the heart of the world, swinging the lanterns and casting long, twisted shadows on the walls. This far down, the ice was depthless and black. It spoke in constant tectonic creaks. A river of molten cryonite lay alongside the path they followed. The grey substance was slow flowing, the surface cracking and bubbling. The air was rank with the stench of it, like spoiled meat.

  ‘I can safely say that there is nothing about this planet that I find pleasant,’ Thibaut said dourly.

  Garel stopped and picked something up from the floor. He turned it in his armoured hand. It was a rebreather mask. The inside of the faceplate was crusted with old blood.

  ‘There are no bodies,’ Garel said.

  Disturbed by his handling of the mask, tiny metallic insects scuttled from inside it. Garel made a disgusted noise and threw the rebreather mask into the cryonite. The molten substance swallowed it with a lick of flame. One of the insects had managed to crawl onto his armour. He grabbed it and crushed it in his fist.

  ‘I am picking up traces of multiple contacts,’ Thibaut said, tapping at the auspex he carried.

  ‘It’s picking up more of those damned insects,’ Garel said.

  Thibaut shook his head. ‘No, it is something bigger,’ he said. He tapped at the auspex again. ‘I cannot get a clear reading. There is too much interference down here.’

  Aergard scowled behind his faceplate.

  ‘We should keep moving. If something is following us, we cannot very well stop it if we cannot see it.’

  Thibaut nodded. He moved off, following the curve of the tunnel.

  Aergard watched the walls. The metallic insects were everywhere, crawling in and out of holes and cracks in the ice. Their multi-jointed limbs clicked incessantly. Garel stalked beside him in silence, his helm’s red eye lenses glowing in the gloom. After a few more minutes, Thibaut stopped.

  ‘There it is again,’ he said.

  Aergard never had the chance to reply.

  The stone floor of the tunnel beneath Thibaut’s feet rippled, and a metallic creature emerged, all hooked blades and segmented metal spine.

  It punched its bladed forelimbs through Thibaut’s chest.

  ‘Thibaut!’ Aergard yelled.

  Thibaut cried out and dropped the auspex on the tunnel floor. The creature reared up, lifting the Space Marine’s body off the ground. Thibaut struggled. He managed to jam his sword into the creature’s single eye. It gave a stuttering, static cry and lashed out, striking Aergard with its tail and sending him crashing against the wall.

  Thibaut had stopped struggling, his hands twitching nervelessly. His body slid from the creature’s bladed arms, and landed in a crumpled heap on the tunnel floor.

  The necron creature turned wildly, blinded. Garel started to fire his bolter at it, forcing it backwards with each explosive round. He was pushing it towards the cryonite. Aergard added his own gunfire to the onslaught. The creature squealed and writhed, juddering in and out of reality like a damaged pict recording. When it hit the cryonite, it was solid enough to burn. The creature screeched, and disappeared with a burst of flame and smoke.

  Aergard turned and ran to where Thibaut lay. A pool of blood was spreading beneath him on the tunnel floor.

  ‘Brother?’ Aergard said, kneeling beside him.

  Thibaut’s breathing was ragged. Aergard’s helm display showed his life signs as an erratic, jumping line.

  ‘D-done something to my nerves,’ Thibaut said with some amount of effort. ‘My legs are useless.’

  Aergard shook his head.

  ‘Come now,’ he said, quietly. ‘Do not make me carry you.’

  Thibaut tried to laugh, but it turned into a choking gargle. He gripped Aergard’s arm with his gauntleted hand.

  ‘Like I said,’ he managed, his voice a wet rasp, ‘until we are too dead to bear them.’ His body was wracked with a massive seizure.

  Thibaut’s life signs flattened out on Aergard’s helm display.

  Aergard remained still, kneeling beside his brother.

  ‘He was a good warrior,’ Garel said.

  Aergard sighed. His hands were covered with his brother’s blood. ‘Yes, he was.’

  For one of the first times in recent memory, Helbrecht was losing a fight.

  He felt weak. The keen edge of the Stormlord’s powered blade had cut him, carving a deep gouge in his shoulder. It had been agonising to begin with, but the pain was fading, leaving behind it a cloying numbness. The loss of sensation was much worse. Agony at least brought with it clarity. Helbrecht could barely feel his fingers, his grip on the hilt of his sword slipping.

  Helbrecht would have suffered any amount of pain gladly. He was blessed with the blood of Dorn. He was a Marshal of the Black Templars, the holiest of the Emperor’s sons. He had won a thousand duels or more, bested champions and hordes alike.

  And now he was losing to this creature. This ancient, dead thing, that had out-thought, out-strategised and now out-fought him. This faithless, hateful alien.

  His vision tunnelled, and he coughed up blood. It spattered onto his tabard, staining the black cross of his Chapter.

  His Chapter, his blood. They were all his blood. And he had led them here to die.

  ‘No!’ Helbrecht flung the word at the Stormlord as if it too were a weapon. He struck out at the necron with a heavy blow from his sword that made the blade ring in his hand and his wounded shoulder ache. It snapped cabling and rent the metal of the Stormlord’s body.

  He had wounded it.

  He could wound it.

  Helbrecht followed up with another strike at the Stormlord’s weakened armour. The necron creature stepped aside deftly and Helbrecht stumbled. Blood drops scattered onto the ice from the wound in his shoulder. The Marshal turned to face his foe.

  The damage he’d done to the Stormlord’s body was repairing itself.

  Tiny metallic insects were crawling over the surface of the Stormlord’s metal exoskeleton, knitting it back together.

  For the second time, Helbrecht had the peculiar feeling that the Stormlord would have been smiling if it were capable.

  ‘You grow weak,’ the Stormlord said. ‘Weak and tired. You and your kin will fail here, as humanity’s empire will fail. Because I will it.’

  Helbrecht snarled. ‘You are arrogant,’ he said, through blood-flecked teeth. ‘A relic of a dead empire that has no right to exist.’

  The Stormlord cocked its head. ‘That is quite amusing, coming from one such as you.’

  Helbrecht darted forward, looking to plant his sword in the Stormlord’s throat.

  Not even attempting to parry, the Stormlord pointed its staff at Helbrecht with a swing of its arm. Conjured bolts of lightning struck Helbrecht in the chest, stiffening his limbs and making him blind, deaf and mute all in an instant. The power field surrounding Helbrecht’s sword shorted out with a burst of light.

  He stayed on his feet by virtue of stubbornness alone.

  Helbrecht’s sword connected. The force of the blow split the blade from point to hilt. The Stormlord cried out. Helbrecht tried to laugh, but found he couldn’t even breathe. The lightning blast had sent his primary heart into arrest.

  Aergard and Garel had found the origin of Evrain’s locator signal.

  The tunnel terminated in an expansive cave. It was a perfect dome, carved out of the heart of the world. The walls shone like polished glass. Discarded mining equipment littered the ground. A huge bladed drill stood inanimate, covered with ice.

  Rising from floor at the centre of the cave was the source of the signal.

  The structure was undoubtedly necron in origin. There was no technology that the Imperium possessed which could create something so other. It
towered above the Space Marines, a pyramid of eerily perfect obsidian.

  This was the structure that the mortals had spoken of. The beacon that had called the necrons to Schrödinger VII.

  ‘The standard is inside this thing?’

  Disdain wasn’t a strong enough term to describe Garel’s tone.

  Aergard looked at the structure. The longer he looked at it, the less fixed the dimensions seemed to be. ‘At least the workers left us a way in,’ he replied, flatly.

  The face of the structure had been broken open. Chunks of the strange rock were scattered around the fissure.

  Garel approached the structure. He glanced up at it a final time, then shook his head. ‘Let’s get this over with, then.’

  The two Space Marines stepped over the threshold. The human miners had broken through into a vast chamber built of the same strange black stone as the outside of the structure. Even more so than outside, the structure’s dimensions didn’t make sense, the scale of it seeming impossible. The walls, floor and ceiling were inlaid with curious repeating patterns. As Aergard and Garel passed by them, light coursed through the strange glyphs, as if they were reacting to the movement of the Space Marines.

  Dominating the centre of the chamber was a smaller mimic of the structure in which they now stood. Even the replica was five times Aergard’s height, or more.

  Aergard crossed the room to stand before it.

  On the surface in front of him was a door. Aergard walked around the structure once. There were identical doors on the other sides.

  He stopped again in front of the first door. Near the apex of the replica pyramid, below the capstone, there was a crack in the outer surface. For the briefest of moments, Aergard felt as if he was watching himself scrutinise the pyramid. The feeling was incredibly unpleasant.

  ‘We should not tarry here,’ Aergard said to Garel.

  The other Space Marine was standing before another of the doors. He was absolutely still, as if he too were carved from stone.

  ‘These doors do not make sense,’ he said, by way of reply.

  ‘There is no other way. We must go on, and that means choosing one of these doors.’

  Garel didn’t look at him. He kept watching the gaping maw of the doorway as if he expected it to do something.