Hammer and Bolter Year One

by Christian Dunn

  Within the frame of the BL-verse… well, I’d love to have been there at the inception of the Horus Heresy series. What a blast it must have been to set the ball rolling on that monster…

  PHALANX

  Chapter Ten

  Ben Counter

  Archmagos Voar was surrounded by a cordon of servitors as he hurried through the guest quarters towards the saviour pod array. Beyond the lavish guest rooms, he knew a shuttle could be found, normally used for diplomatic purposes but perfectly suitable for taking him off the Phalanx and onto one of the nearby ships – the Traitorsgrave, perhaps, on which Lord Inquisitor Kolgo had arrived, or a Space Marine ship like the Judgement Upon Garadan.

  Voar had betrayed the Soul Drinkers on Selaaca. None of his logic circuits entertained the concept that it might have been the wrong thing to do, either logically or morally. But that did not change the fact that the Soul Drinkers were loose and they might well want Voar, in particular, dead. The Phalanx was not safe for him.

  Voar’s motivator units, damaged on Selaaca, had been repaired well enough for him to make good speed through the nests of anterooms and state suites, winding around antique furnishings and artworks whose uselessness accentuated their sense of the lavish. The Imperial Fists were pragmatic in their dealings with the wider Imperium, willing to receive diplomats from the various Adepta in a fashion acceptable to the Imperium’s social elite. The servitors Voar had taken from the Phalanx’s stores wound around the resulting tables, chairs and light sculptures with rather more difficulty than Voar himself.

  Voar paused at the infra-red signature that flared against his vision. His sight, like most of the rest of him, had been significantly augmented to bring him away from corruptible flesh and closer to the machine-ideal. He had seen a heat trace, just past one of the archways leading into an audience chamber. Reclining couches and tables with gilt decorations, imported from some far-off world of craftsmen, stood before an ornate throne painted with enamelled scenes of plenty and wealth. Beneath the room’s chandeliers and incense-servitor perches, something had moved, something interested in keeping itself hidden for as long as possible.

  Voar drew the inferno pistol, another item liberated from the Phalanx’s armouries. The servitors, responding to the mind-impulse unit built into Voar’s cranium, formed a tighter cordon around him. Their weapons, autoguns linked to the targeting units that filled their eye sockets, tracked as Voar’s vision switched through spectrums. He saw warm traces of footprints on the floor, residual electrical energy dissipating.

  Chaplain Iktinos knew he had been seen. There was no use in trying to stay hidden when he was over two-and-a-half metres tall and in full armour. He walked out from behind the dignitary’s throne, crozius arcanum in hand.

  ‘You have failed, Soul Drinker,’ said Voar. There was no trace of fear in his voice, and not just because of its artificial nature. His emotional repressive surgery had chased such petty concerns like fear from his biological brain. ‘Your escape from the Phalanx is a logical impossibility. You gain nothing from exacting revenge against me.’

  ‘Logic is a lie,’ came the reply. ‘A prison for small minds. I am here for a purpose beyond revenge.’

  Voar waited no longer. Negotiations would not suffice. He dropped back behind an enormous four-poster bed of black hardwood as he gave the impulse for the servitors to open fire.

  Eight autoguns hammered out a curtain of fire. Iktinos ran into the storm, faceplate of his helmet tucked behind one shoulder guard as he charged. The armour was chewed away as if by accelerated decay, the skull-faced shoulder guard stripped down through ceramite layers, then down to the bundles of cables and nerve fibres that controlled it.

  Iktinos slammed into the servitors. One was crushed under his weight, its reinforced spine snapping and its gun wrenched out of position to spray bullets uselessly into the frescoed ceiling. The crozius slashed through another two, their unarmoured forms coming apart under the shock of the power field, mechanical and once-human parts showering against the walls in a wet steel rain.

  Voar ducked out of cover as Iktinos beheaded the last servitor with his free hand. Voar took aim and fired, a lance of superheated energy lashing out and slicing a chunk out of the chaplain’s crozius arm.

  Voar’s mind slowed down, logic circuits engaging to examine the tactical possibilities faster than unaugmented thought. He had to keep his distance since, up close, Iktinos was lethal, while Voar’s inferno pistol was the only weapon he had that could hope to fell a Space Marine. The targeting systems built into his eyes would make sure that his second shot would not miss. As long as he saw Iktinos before the fallen Chaplain could kill him, Voar would get one good shot off. The plan fell into place, paths and vectors illuminating in blue-white lines layered over his vision.

  Voar jumped out of cover, his motivator units sending him drifting rapidly backwards towards an archway leading into an elaborate stone-lined bath house, with a deep caldarium, a cold-plunge pool and a Space Marine-scaled massage table. Mosaics of Imperial heroes lined the walls and valet-servitors stood ready. Voar’s inferno pistol was out in front of him, ready to fire.

  Iktinos was not within his frame of vision. The archmagos’s logic circuits fought to create new tactical scenarios. He should have been feeling panic, but instead his altered mind was generating a burst of useless information, a confused tangle of targeting solutions for a target that suddenly wasn’t there.

  Iktinos’s armoured mass slid out from under the enormous massage table, crashing into the lower half of Voar’s body. Voar was thrown against the archway. He fired, but Iktinos was moving too rapidly and the shot grazed him again, carving a molten channel along the side of his helmet. Iktinos slashed at Voar with his heavy powered mace. The archmagos cut his motivator units and dropped to the floor, and the crozius sliced through the stonework of the arch.

  Iktinos’s other arm grabbed Voar’s gun wrist, spun the archmagos around and slammed him against the wall, his forearm pinning Voar’s back.

  ‘I am not here to kill you,’ said Iktinos. ‘Your life means nothing to me. Give me the Soulspear.’

  ‘Take it,’ said Voar. A small manipulator limb emerged from the collar of his hood. It carried the haft of the Soulspear, a cylinder of metal with a knurled handgrip.

  Iktinos took the Soulspear and turned it over in his hand, keeping Voar up against the wall.

  ‘To think,’ he said. ‘Such a small thing. Even now I wonder if it was this that set us on our path. Many of your tech-priests died over this, archmagos. Many of my brothers, too. It is right that it be delivered into the hands of Daenyathos.’

  ‘You have what you came for,’ said Voar. ‘Let me go.’

  ‘I made no promises that you would live,’ said Iktinos.

  Emotions that had not been felt for decades clouded Voar’s face. ‘Omnissiah take your soul!’ he snapped. ‘May it burn in His forges! May it be hammered on His anvil!’

  Iktinos lifted Voar into the air and slammed the tech-priest down over his knee. Metal vertebrae shattered and components rained out of Voar’s robes. Iktinos plunged the crozius arcanum into Voar’s chest, the power field ripping through layers of metal and bone.

  Senior tech-priests could be extremely difficult to kill. Many of them could survive anything up to and including decapitation, trusting in their augmentations to keep their semi-organic brains alive until their remains could be recovered. A few of the most senior, the archmagi ultima who might rule whole clusters of forge worlds, even had archaeotech backup brains where their personalities and memories could be recorded in case of physical destruction. Voar did not have that level of augmentation, but Iktinos had to be thorough nevertheless.

  Iktinos tore open Voar’s torso completely and scattered the contents, smashing each organ and component in case Voar’s brain was located there. He finished destroying the spine and finally turned to Voar’s head. He crushed the cranium under his boot, grinding logic circuits and ocular bionics into t
he floor with his heel. Quite probably, Voar died in that moment, the last sensory inputs gone dark, the final thoughts flashing through sundered circuitry.

  Iktinos finished destroying Voar’s body, then took up the Soulspear. It was a relic of the Great Crusade, found by Rogal Dorn himself during the Emperor’s reconquest of the galaxy in the name of humanity. He had given it to the Soul Drinkers at their founding, to symbolise that they were sons of Dorn as surely as the Imperial Fists themselves.

  That was the story, of course. In truth, the origin of the Soulspear, like the rest of the Soul Drinkers history, was as murky as anything else in Imperial annals. The Soulspear was gene-activated and would only respond to someone with a Soul Drinker’s genetic code, so whoever had created or found the artefact, it had not been Rogal Dorn. The Soulspear, like the rest of the universe, was a lie.

  That did not mean it did not have its uses. Daenyathos understood that. Just like the Imperium, the Soulspear might be founded on lies, but it could still become a part of the plan.

  Daenyathos’s transformation of the Imperium would not be a pleasant process. Nothing worth doing ever was. But in spite of the blood, in spite of the suffering and the death, the universe would thank Daenyathos when it was done.

  Iktinos left Voar’s remains scattered on the floor of the diplomatic quarters, and headed towards the Predator’s Eye to witness the Imperium’s future unfold.

  Gethsemar and Daviks charged into the heart of the library labyrinth at the same time, charging in from two directions to catch Sarpedon off-guard.

  Sarpedon was never off-guard. Silhouetted in the flames that ran across the bookcases behind him, he turned to face the Angels Sanguine and Silver Skulls warriors as if he had been expecting them.

  Daviks opened fire. Sarpedon’s reactions were so fast that the bolter shots burst against the blade of the Axe of Mercaeno as the mutant flicked it up to defend himself.

  Gethsemar erupted towards Sarpedon on a column of fire from his jump pack. Sarpedon’s left-side legs flipped the reading table behind him into Gethsemar’s path and the heavy hardwood slammed into Gethsemar, throwing the Angel Sanguine into a bookcase which buried him in a drift of burning books.

  In the middle of the fire and slaughter, it was almost poetry that unfolded as the fight continued. Daviks parried the Axe of Mercaeno with the body of his bolter, only to be thrown to the floor by Sarpedon’s lashing legs. Gethsemar jumped to his feet and lunged with his glaive, Sarpedon ducking the blow with impossible grace and barging the butt of the axe into Gethsemar’s abdomen to throw him off-balance.

  Captain Luko vaulted through the flame to crash into Daviks before the siege-captain could join the assault again. The two warriors of the Adeptus Astartes traded blows as fast as a man could see, Luko’s lightning claws lashing in great arcs of blue-white power, batting aside Daviks’s bolter before Daviks could get a shot.

  Gethsemar launched himself into the air and dived down out of the flames overhead. Sarpedon reached up and grabbed Gethsemar, hauling him in close where the Angel Sanguine’s blade could not be brought to bear. Gethsemar and Sarpedon wrestled, Sarpedon using his mutated physiology to grapple from unexpected angles and drag Gethsemar to the floor. He forced the Axe of Mercaeno down, the edge of the blade pressing against Gethsemar’s throat. Gethsemar fired his jump pack but Sarpedon was stronger, and his taloned legs dug into the floor to keep himself upright.

  ‘Fall back!’ came an order over the Imperial Fists vox-channel. It was Lysander’s voice, transmitted to the Howling Griffons, Silver Skulls and Angels Sanguine. ‘All troops, fall back to rally points! Disengage immediately!’

  The moment’s confusion this caused was enough for Sarpedon to drive a fist into Gethsemar’s faceplate. The death mask of Sanguinius dented and blood spurted from the carved mouth. Gemstones pinged out of the gilded surface and Gethsemar juddered as the impact ran through his whole body.

  Daviks saw that Gethsemar was going to die. He ducked Luko’s swinging claw swipe and charged into the Soul Drinker’s legs, hauling Luko off his feet and ramming him right through the bookcase behind. He threw Luko and, using the moment of distance he had opened up, brought his bolter around and sprayed a volley in Luko’s direction. The Soul Drinker rolled out of the way, putting hardwood shelving and millions of burning pages between him and Daviks’s gunfire, but that was what Daviks needed.

  Daviks sprinted to where Gethsemar lay, the shadow of Sarpedon’s axe cast over him by the light of the flames. Daviks grabbed Gethsemar’s wrist and dragged him out of the way as Sarpedon’s axe came down, ripping a deep gash in the deck.

  ‘We leave, brother!’ gasped Daviks. ‘Lysander has ordered us back!’

  ‘The fight is not done,’ replied Gethsemar, his voice thick with blood. ‘The enemy still stands.’

  ‘Lysander has command! We fall back! Muster your brothers and get back to the choristers’ chamber! We will cover you!’

  The two Space Marines dropped back through the smoke and wreckage. Sarpedon watched them go, not eager to pursue them when their battle-brothers must surely be just behind them.

  Luko emerged smouldering from the wreck of the bookcase he had been thrown through. ‘Damnation, I will have your hide!’ he yelled after Daviks.

  Sarpedon put a hand on Luko’s shoulder. ‘Stay, brother,’ he said. ‘Something is wrong.’

  Graevus dared a glance over the barricade. The last volley of bolter fire the Soul Drinkers had kicked out had not been replied. He saw the shapes of the Howling Griffons receding through the smoke, a few kneeling to fire while the majority fell back.

  Graevus stood and took aim, firing off a few shots snapped into the half-seen shapes through the smoke. Salk was beside him now, echoing Graevus’s own fire.

  ‘They’re retreating,’ said Salk as he paused to swap magazines.

  ‘We haven’t hit them that hard,’ said Graevus. ‘I thought they would be on us.’

  ‘Then something else has happened,’ said Salk.

  ‘Don’t be too thankful. They could be mustering for another push.’

  ‘No,’ replied Salk. ‘Not when they had us pinned in place. Not the Howling Griffons, not here. They would have pushed on until either they or we were all dead. This… this is no plan of theirs.’

  ‘Maybe logic prevailed,’ said Graevus.

  With the gunfire reduced to sporadic shots, the roar of the flames and the clattering of armour became like another form of silence, as if the library were in the eye of a storm that had just passed over and now everything was still. Behind the barricade lay two fallen Soul Drinkers, brought down by bolter fire and shrapnel – one was dead, both Graevus and Salk could see that, his torso split open and blood already congealing in a crystalline mass around the enormous spine-deep wound. The other was still but the wound to his leg, severe though it was, should not kill him.

  ‘We need Pallas,’ said Graevus.

  ‘We do not have him,’ replied Salk. ‘Soul Drinkers! Bring the fallen and retreat to Sarpedon’s position! Brother Markis, Thessalon! Cover us!’

  Other Soul Drinkers, the survivors of a dozen Howling Griffons assaults, were moving through the smoke. They looked like the ghosts of some long-distant battle hovering just on this side of reality, clinging on as they enacted the same bloodshed night after night. Most had survived with bearable wounds, but there had been no doubt that the numbers and fury of the Howling Griffons would have soon prevailed. But now the Griffons had fallen back, and in their place was surely an unknown enemy no more inclined to give the Soul Drinkers any respite.

  ‘No,’ said Graevus. ‘On second thoughts, there is no reason here.’

  ‘Bring me everything you know,’ said Chapter Master Vladimir.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Castellan Leucrontas. ‘We know little, but I can confirm that the starboard dorsal cargo section has been lost.’

  Leucrontas had been summoned to the Forge of Ages, which had become Vladimir’s command post. Pict-feeds from
the battle site showed little more than screens full of smoke and the vox-channel was full of barked orders and the confusion that the sudden order to retreat had brought about. In spite of that, the Howling Griffons were falling back in good order and even now mustering around the crew mess. That was not the issue.

  ‘Lost?’ said Vladimir. He leaned forward on the steel throne from which the Imperial Fists techmarines usually oversaw the work of the forge-crews.

  ‘It is gone. Full breach and depressurisation. Any crew in the area are dead, no doubt.’

  ‘Any Adeptus Astartes casualties?’

  ‘I do not believe so.’

  ‘What caused it?’

  ‘The psychic wards built around the librarium contemplative chambers reacted,’ replied Leucrontas. ‘And the readings so far obtained are esoteric.’

  ‘A psychic attack?’ said Vladimir.

  ‘If so, my lord, it is a vast and destructive one, well beyond the capacity of an Adeptus Astartes psyker.’

  ‘Then,’ said Vladimir, his chin on his fist, ‘a moral threat? An assault from the warp?’

  ‘Librarian Varnica’s testimony did suggest the Soul Drinkers had daemonic allies,’ said Leucrontas. ‘And there is… something… happening to Kravamesh.’

  ‘Kravamesh? The star? What has the star around which we orbit to do with the Soul Drinkers?’ Vladimir held up his hand before Leucrontas replied. ‘No, Castellan, I ask not for an answer. I merely muse upon it. We must see to the security of the Phalanx before we seek the origin of this new threat. Once the assault on the archives has been withdrawn, we must redeploy our strength around the dorsal cargo bays to keep them contained. A smaller force can maintain the cordon around the archives. Draw up the battle stations and see that Lysander has access to them. Nothing must get in or out of either area without running a gauntlet of bolter fire.’