I am finished with this petty banter. You believe you know the truths behind our reality? Then show me. Tell me what you saw at the end of your accursed Pilgrimage.
Lorgar rose to his feet, extinguishing the small fires with a gentle gesture. Frost glinted on his fingernails as the flames hissed into nothingness, starved of air. For a moment he felt a twinge of regret, that he and his closest brother should be reduced to this.
But time changed all things. He was no longer the lost one, the weak one, the one brother plagued by doubt.
Lorgar nodded, his eyes thinned to dangerous slits.
‘Very well, Magnus.’
PHALANX
Chapter Eleven
Ben Counter
The Phalanx had been designed – whenever it had been designed, before the Age of Imperium – to survive. Any hostiles who boarded the immense ship might find themselves trapped in the tight, winding corridors of the engineering and maintenance areas just beneath the hull’s skin, separated from the ship’s more vulnerable areas by hundreds of automated bulkhead doors and whole sections of outer deck that could be vented into hard vacuum with the press of a control stud.
The hostiles currently on the Phalanx had bypassed every design feature intended to contain them. They had been disgorged directly into the ship’s interior, spilling through cavernous shuttle bays and swarming into crew quarters, riding torrents of blood through automated cargo motivator systems. The Phalanx had no way to stop the daemonic invaders.
So it was up to the Adeptus Astartes instead.
Chapter Master Vladimir stood at the threshold of the Sigismunda Tactica, and looked out across the battlefield. It spanned the barracks deck and was a kilometre and a half wide. This was the vulnerable heart of the Phalanx, the ground across which an invader could charge with impunity from the lost starboard docking bays towards the engines and reactors. The Forge of Ages anchored one end, beyond which was a tangle of engineering areas and power and coolant conduits. The other flank terminated in the Rynn’s World Memorial, an amphitheatre of granite inscribed with the names of the Crimson Fists lost in the infamous near-destruction of their fortress-monastery. Beyond this memorial were the steel catacombs, tight nests of cramped candlelit chambers where generations of crew members were laid to rest in niches scattered with bones. The conduit decks and catacombs would slow down the invaders’ advance, funnelling them through the open areas of the barracks, chapels and hero-shrines rolling out in front of Vladimir.
‘I can smell them,’ said Captain Lysander, emerging from the Sigismunda Tactica behind Vladimir. ‘The enemy are close.’
‘Of course you can smell them,’ said Vladimir. ‘I wonder if we will ever get the stink of the warp off my ship.’
‘Borganor is in position at the Forge of Ages,’ continued Lysander. ‘Leucrontas and the Ninth will hold the memorial.’
‘And everyone else will take the centre,’ finished Vladimir. ‘Can it be held?’
‘Our Third and Fifth are enough to hold anything,’ said Lysander.
‘You realise you will stake your life on that belief?’
‘We all will, Chapter Master. If this line breaks, everyone on the Phalanx will die.’
‘Tell me, captain. Is it wrong that I have dreamed of a day like this?’ Vladimir drew the Fangs of Dorn from the scabbards on either side of his waist - twin power swords, their blades broad for stabbing, their hilts semicircles of glinting black stone. ‘That I have knelt at the altars of Dorn and prayed that one day I would face the enemy like this, in a battle that will decide whether my Chapter lives in glory or is banished to a penitents’ crusade in disgrace? I have begged the Emperor to give me such a battle, toe to toe, no retreat, everything at stake. Is it wrong that I feel some joy in me that it is here?’
‘We all see something else in battle,’ replied Lysander. ‘Perhaps it is a mirror in which we see a reflection of ourselves. I see a grim task to be completed, something ugly and crude, but an evil necessary for the survival of our species. You see something different.’
‘Most Imperial Fists would simply have said “No”, captain.’
‘Well, that’s why you made me a captain.’
Among the complexes of barracks cells and the shrines to long-dead heroes, the Third and Fifth Companies of the Imperial Fists were taking up their battle positions. Low buildings formed the anchoring points beneath the grey sky of the ceiling. Battle-brothers knelt to icons of past captains and Chapter Masters, their home suddenly transformed into a battleground.
The Tactica itself was one of the most defensible buildings on the deck. It was a circular building of black stone, its arched entrances leading to dozens of map tables on which famous past battles of the Imperial Fists had been recreated. The buildings over which Imperial Fists had fought and died were scrimshawed from alien ivories and laid out on miniature battlegrounds of polished obsidian. In the Tactica, named after Sigismund, one of Dorn’s greatest generals and the founder of the Black Templars Chapter, Imperial Fists officers could contemplate victories of the past, dissecting the battle plans the Chapter’s leaders had enacted and the follies of the enemies who tried to stand against them. If the Imperial Fists and the other Adeptus Astartes on the Phalanx could prevail, perhaps the Tactica itself would be recreated on one of those ornate maps.
Lord Inquisitor Kolgo was walking among the map tables, casting his eye over the Imperial Fists history. He wore deep red terminator armour embellished with silver symbols of the Inquisition, giving him the same bulk as a Space Marine in power armour. His Battle Sisters retinue kept a respectful distance, Sister Aescarion waiting patiently with power axe in hand.
‘I take it,’ said Vladimir, ‘that you know rather more about the forces of the warp than can be entrusted to lesser minds like ours.’
Kolgo looked up, as if he had not expected to be interrupted, to see Vladimir walking through one of the Tactica’s lofty archways. ‘It is a burden we Inquisitors must carry, Chapter Master,’ he said.
‘If there is anything we could do with knowing, then now is the time to tell us.’
Kolgo took a set of Emperor’s Tarot cards from a silver case set into his breastplate. On one of the map tables, one which represented a volcanic battlefield where the Imperial Fists had shattered an assault by the xenos tau, he laid out three of them in a row.
‘”The Silver Ocean”,’ said Kolgo, pointing to the first card. ‘One who cannot be grasped or comprehended, as subtle as quicksilver. An unknowable foe. The second is “The Altar”, a symbol of majesty and glory. But it is inverted, and followed by “The Plague”. The enemy is inscrutable and majestic, but that majesty is false and conceals an ocean of foulness beneath its beauty. It is a vessel of corruption in the form of something wonderful. I see the hand of the Lord of Change in the enemy we face, but the foe is its own creature, driven by its own desires.’
‘You know what it is?’ said Vladimir.
‘I have my suspicions, which I will not share until they become certainties, especially where the God of Lies is concerned.’ Kolgo gathered up the cards and put them away. ‘This is more than a battle over your vessel, Chapter Master. That is all I am willing to say.’
‘Then keep your own counsel, lord inquisitor, as long as you fight alongside us.’
Kolgo smiled. ‘Have no fear on that score.’
‘Chapter Master,’ came a voice over the vox-net. The rune signifying Castellan Leucrontas pulsed against Vladimir’s retina. ‘The enemy is sighted.’
‘What is their strength, castellan?’ demanded Vladimir.
‘Hundreds,’ came Leucrontas’s voice. ‘They are advancing on two sides. Holding position.’
Vladimir strode out of the Tactica. His own Imperial Fists were in position among the shrines and barracks, and he spotted the colours of the Silver Skulls and Angels Sanguine among them. ‘Lysander,’ he ordered. ‘Be ready to counter-advance on the castellan’s flank. Keep the memorial from being surrounded.’
&n
bsp; ‘Yes, Chapter Master,’ said Lysander. ‘Other orders?’
Vladimir did not reply. Instead, he was looking past the Imperial Fists positions ahead of him, towards the steel horizon broken by the spires of hero-shrines and the fluttering banners of the mustering grounds.
The daemon army was advancing. The horizon seethed, a mass of iridescence bleeding into view like a bank of incandescent gas. The sound of its music washed over the Imperial Fists lines, an awful cacophony of a thousand shrieking voices. Shapes towered over the lines, winged masses surrounded by mountains of daemonic followers tumbling over one another like insects swarming from a hive.
‘The Emperor has granted you your battle,’ said Lysander. ‘Now is the time to give thanks.’
‘There will be opportunity for that when the victory is won,’ said Vladimir. ‘Kolgo! Get your Battle Sisters to the lines! We are attacked on all fronts!’
From the daemonic horde emerged another winged monster, this one bathed in light as if Kravamesh’s light was falling in a bright shaft onto its pale, haloed form. It was framed by feathered wings and its skin was so pale it seemed to burn, like ivory lit from within. Its perfect face projected its beauty and authority even as far as the Tactica. Even Vladimir found it difficult to tear his eyes away from it, as if it was a vision that originated inside his head and burned its way outwards.
‘Behold, your future!’ the monster bellowed, its voice tearing across the battlefield like a razored wind. ‘I am the end of empires! I am the woes of men! I am Abraxes!’
Sarpedon skidded across the blood-slicked surface, the Axe of Mercaeno smouldering in his hand.
Brother Nephael faced him. Nephael’s bolter magazine was empty, his last few shots fired wildly through a storm of his own battle-brothers, and he had no time to change the magazine. He snatched Brother Kalchis’s chainsword off the ground and swung it as Sarpedon came crashing towards him.
Sarpedon span on a front leg, out of the reach of the chainblade. He swung in low, axe hacking down at Nephael’s leg. Nephael didn’t have the speed of Sarpedon, and he didn’t have the strength. The axe caught Nephael below the knee and flung him head over heels. Sarpedon charged into Nephael as he fell, slamming the Flock member into the ground.
Sarpedon rolled Nephael over so he was face up, Sarpedon’s weight on the Soul Drinker’s chest. He ripped the chainsword from Nephael’s hand and threw it aside.
Sarpedon tore Nephael’s helmet off. The face revealed was more youthful than most Soul Drinkers, the hair cropped close and the eyes set into bruised slits.
‘Where is Iktinos?’ demanded Sarpedon.
‘He is the future,’ spat back Nephael.
‘Where is Iktinos?’ shouted Sarpedon, slamming the back of Nephael’s head into the ground to punctuate each word.
‘Go to Terra,’ said Nephael, ‘when our work is complete. You will find him kneeling at the foot of the Golden Throne.’
Nephael wrenched an arm free and drew his combat knife. Before he could drive it upwards Sarpedon had slithered off him and buried the Axe of Mercaeno in the Soul Drinker’s head, cleaving it in half down to the floor.
Sarpedon got back to his feet. Around him, the mock village was strewn with bodies and blood. He had killed them all.
The members of Iktinos’s Flock who had ambushed him and Salk had fallen either to Squad Salk’s guns or to Sarpedon himself. He had dived among them, these Space Marines who had once sworn to follow him to extinction, and he had cut them to pieces. Cracked skulls spilled red-black pools across the flakboard floor. Limbs torn off lay orphaned from their owners, who in turn lay where Sarpedon had speared them with talons or carved them open with the Axe of Mercaeno. Nephael had been the last of them alive but they had all been men that Sarpedon recognised.
That was not mere blood spattered up against the false chapel and ruins. It was the blood of Space Marine. It was the blood of brothers.
Sarpedon forced his pulse and breathing to slow. It had felt good, he was ashamed to realise, to finally come to grips with the enemy that had manipulated his Chapter towards execution. In the middle of the fight, he had felt a certainty that could only be born of the sure knowledge that the man facing you would kill you if you did not kill him first. Now, he was surrounded by dead brothers, and the doubts came back. He swallowed them down, demanded that he become calm.
Reinez had fled. The Crimson Fist could not be seen among the ruins. Sarpedon could not see any movement among Salk’s positions, either. Sarpedon ran to the ruin in which Salk had taken shelter, its flakboard now chewed up and splintered by bolter fire.
Salk lay on his back in a ruin of torn flakboard. Bolter impacts had broken through the ceramite of his chest and abdomen. He turned his head weakly, and Sarpedon saw that one side of his face was a pulpy ruin, shattered bone poking through a mass of blood that had already coagulated to a crystalline rind.
‘Brother,’ said Sarpedon. ‘Speak to me. Tell me that Salk has not fallen.’
‘Forgive me,’ sputtered Salk. ‘Failure is my sin.’
‘No, Salk. None has been more steadfast than you. There is no failure.’
‘Then this is certainly not victory. I had not thought it would be so bleak. I thought there would be some… heroism.’
Sarpedon leaned down close to Salk, unsure if the sergeant’s drifting eyes were able to focus on him at all. ‘I will kill Iktinos.’
‘I know you will. Not for me, Commander. Do what has to be done. For everyone.’
Sarpedon tried to pick up Salk, thinking perhaps he could get the fallen sergeant back to the archives where the other Soul Drinkers could tend to him. But he felt Salk getting lighter in his arms, as if the life was evaporating from him and leaving an empty body behind. Sarpedon saw the light going out in Salk’s eyes, something impossible to describe changing with infinite subtlety as the Soul Drinker, his friend, turned into just another body.
Sarpedon held Salk for a long moment. Some primitive emotion in the back of his head begged the Emperor to breathe life back into Salk. Salk had been as solid a squad leader as Sarpedon had ever commanded, before or after the First Chapter War. He had earned his laurels on Stratix Luminae and thereafter proved an unsung and dependable lynchpin of the Soul Drinkers’ most desperate moments.
Now, Salk was gone. That was the calibre of man Iktinos and Daenyathos were running down in their charge towards whatever mad future they had concocted.
Sarpedon placed Salk on the ground, and murmured an old prayer. It called upon the Emperor and anyone who served him to shepherd the fallen towards the End Times, to make sure his wargear was waiting for him when he lined up alongside the Emperor for the battle at the end of existence. The fake battleground was a poor burial place for anyone, let alone a Space Marine, but for Salk and the brethren of his squad it would have to do for now. Perhaps the Imperial Fists would give them a basic funeral, dying as they did fighting a mutual enemy.
Sarpedon looked behind him, to the bodies of the fallen Flock. The fact that they had been sent to ambush the Soul Drinkers at all meant Sarpedon was getting close. The Flock meant Iktinos, and Iktinos meant some measure of revenge.
Revenge. That was all Sarpedon had left now to fight for. But everything a Space Marine did was for revenge, and for Sarpedon, as he picked up the Axe of Mercaeno and headed towards the far side of the training deck, it was just enough.
Castellan Leucrontas jumped from cover and led the counter-charge.
It was an insane move against the insane enemy advancing on the Rynn’s World Memorial. A mad show of bravado, a hand played against an enemy where such crazed fury was the only way to shock them and drive them back.
Leucrontas was followed by more than fifty Imperial Fists of the Ninth Company. They vaulted over the carved stone tableaux of battle scenes from Rynn’s World, ducking at a run past the slabs inscribed with the names of the lost. They were framed by the sweeping wings of the stone amphitheatre, as if the battle was a grand stage play and thi
s was the climactic scene.
The daemons surged forwards. A titanic being of rotting flesh, its body a vast bloated sac bulging with torn veins and maggoty slabs of muscle, was hauled forwards by their front ranks. It chortled and moaned as if the whole thing was an enormous joke that only it could understand, a mix of the idiotic and cunning on its wide lolling face. Hundreds of daemons pushed it from behind and a hundred more pulled it forwards on rusted chains embedded in its flesh.
‘I will not wait for the enemy to do as he will!’ yelled Leucrontas as he ran, his storm bolter out ready to fire. ‘If he is eager for our blood, let us onwards and drown him in it!’
Leucrontas opened fire. Fifty bolters echoed him, full-auto fire burning through magazines. The front rank of the daemons disappeared in a mass of foul torn flesh, torsos bursting like bags of blood and maggots, broken corpses trampled underfoot. A tide of black corrupted blood washed forwards around the Imperial Fists’ feet and flies descended, a black haze of them swirling as if controlled by a single ravenous mind.
The daemons were all about Leucrontas now. His storm bolter rattled in his hand, twin barrels glowing blue-hot, until the hammer fell on an empty chamber. Leucrontas dived into the torn mass of flesh around him, combat knife in one hand, bolt pistol in another, laying about him with chop and thrust even as he picked out leering one-eyed heads and put a bolter round into each he saw.
A rusted chain fell to the ground, dropped by the daemons hit by Leucrontas’s assault. The daemons fought to surround the castellan and he resembled nothing so much as a walking fortification standing against a sea of hungry foes, the crenellations of his armour holding off blades of corroded iron and lashing, filthy claws.
The Imperial Fists saved him. Charging on in his wake, they forced the daemons back. Some, with chainswords and combat shields, fought the ugliest sort of battle imaginable, hacking away at the daemonic mass and trusting in their wargear to protect them. Others formed a cordon to keep the daemons sweeping around and cutting off Leucrontas, kneeling to fire disciplined execution squad volleys into the press of enemies.
Hammer and Bolter Year One Page 138