Hammer and Bolter Year One

by Christian Dunn

  Aescarion and Graevus joined the Imperial Fists cordon, slashing at the ghosts that swooped close. Luko was on his own, pivoting and slashing in every direction, his lightning claws perfectly suited to this fight where he was assailed from all sides. Scraps of spirit flesh floated down like shed leaves, faces breaking into ragged scraps of detritus as their distant screams died with them.

  ‘In the name of the Emperor and His mighty soul that shields us all from the enemy,’ yelled Varnica, ‘I cast thee out. From this good brother’s soul, where you shall find no purchase, I cast thee out!’

  Power arced off the Imperial Fist’s armour. The possessed form forced itself to its feet and threw off Prexus with strength beyond even a Space Marine. Prexus crashed into the tiled wall of an execution chamber, sliding down among the rubble and old bloodstains. Varnica kept hold of the possessed Space Marine, his hand still clamped against his forehead.

  The faceplate of the Imperial Fist’s helmet became like liquid, rippling and shifting into a face that was an animal mass of tentacles. A forked tongue flickered from its lipless mouth.

  ‘This spirit tastes good,’ it hissed.

  ‘Out, daemon,’ shouted Varnica. ‘The Emperor’s light burns you. The iron of this warrior’s soul cages you. Out, out, wither and die!’

  ‘Do you know how much is left of him?’ slathered the Vizier. ‘He has barely a name. The rest of him I consume. I shall leave him a shell with the mind of an infant.’

  ‘I said out!’ yelled Varnica. The shape of the Vizier rippled around the Imperial Fist, stretching and deforming as if it was being pulled from the body by invisible hands. Finally, with a shriek, it came away and the Space Marine clattered to the floor, insensible.

  Aescarion and Graevus leapt on the Vizier as it writhed, confused for a moment. Aescarion’s axe bisected its face, the power field burning through the spectral matter. The Vizier threw her to the floor with a lash of its long tail, but Graevus’ axe was already descending towards where its neck should be. The axe cut through it and its head was sheared from its body. The serpentine form dissolved into the air, and the head had shimmered away to motes of light before it hit the ground.

  The ghosts dissolved away, slinking back into the shadows. The Imperial Fists tracked their bolters through the darkness as Luko watched the rag-like slivers of ghostly flesh erode away from his gauntlets.

  Silence fell again, broken only by the plinking of tiles falling from the bolter-scarred walls.

  ‘What was it?’ asked Pallas, cradling the fallen Imperial Fist’s head and undoing the armour seals around his neck.

  Prexus picked himself up from the deck. ‘The Vizier,’ he spat. ‘A mutant warlord. A psyker. Centuries ago he was captured and brought to the Phalanx. He died down here. I do not recall the whole story.’

  ‘I imagine it was far from unique,’ said Luko.

  Pallas removed the Imperial Fist’s helmet. The faceplate was still twisted into a semblance of the Vizier’s tentacled face. Underneath, the warrior’s face was bloodied and battered, with growths of bloody bone poking through the cheekbones and scalp. He drew a shallow breath and winced.

  ‘Brother Dolonis,’ said Prexus, kneeling beside the wounded man. ‘Can you fight?’

  ‘No, my brother,’ gasped Dolonis in reply. ‘The pain… is everywhere. It has changed me. My body is not… not my own. I can still hear it laughing…’

  Aescarion cast her eye over Dolonis’s body. Shards of bone had penetrated through his armour all over. Knots of it were forcing his shoulder pads away from his body and knife-like growths jutted from his greaves. A pool of rapidly congealing blood was spreading beneath Dolonis.

  ‘We must leave him,’ said Aescarion.

  ‘He is a battle-brother,’ replied Prexus.

  ‘He cannot fight and we cannot take him. And the enemy has been within his mind. He is a moral threat. If he lives, we will be back for him, but for now we must leave him.’

  ‘I agree with the Sister,’ said Varnica. ‘You have not seen the ruin a possession can make of its victim. The possessor can plant a piece of itself that can continue even after the daemon is dead.’

  Prexus stepped back from Dolonis. ‘Brother. I cannot make this decision for you.’

  ‘Leave me,’ said Dolonis, the words causing him obvious pain. ‘Just put my bolter in my hand.’

  Prexus handed Dolonis his gun. Aescarion knelt beside him and took a loop of prayer beads from a pouch at her waist. She pressed them into Dolonis’s free hand.

  ‘Pray for us, brother,’ she said. ‘We will pray for you.’

  Pallas gently lowered Dolonis to the deck.

  ‘We need to move on,’ said Luko, stepping over the rubble further into the tangle of execution chambers. The feeble light reached to the threshold of another warren, this time of cell blocks of tight winding tunnels lined with steel doors and stretches of manacle-hung walls. ‘If Abraxes’s influence has woken the old dead here, then he probably knows we have disturbed them. We must reach his portal before he sends his own forces down here.’

  Prexus did not, or could not, say anything further. With a final glance at Dolonis, he led his squad out of formation towards the deeper regions of the Path.

  ‘You fight well, Sister,’ said Graevus as he and Aescarion took up their position in the middle of the marching order.

  ‘You expected otherwise?’ said Aescarion.

  ‘I did not mean…’

  ‘We are the daughters of the Emperor,’ she said, ‘just as you are his sons. I may not have two hearts or three lungs, but I have every bit the resolve of a Space Marine.’

  ‘So I saw,’ said Graevus. ‘You were quick to leave Dolonis to his fate.’

  ‘As I would with a sister of mine,’ said Aescarion sharply. ‘A sense of brotherhood has its benefits, but taken to extremes, I fear it can become a weakness as much as a strength. The history of the Imperium is a litany of failings caused by brotherhood misplaced.’

  Graevus bit back any reply. The Path of the Lost closed around them, the cramped warrens of cells forcing the Space Marines to split up, and it felt for all the galaxy as if the Phalanx was swallowing them whole.

  By the fires of the forges they had built, the daemons’ war engines were taking shape. One of them was a huge horned thing, a battering ram with cylindrical cages for wheels in which some of the lumbering daemon-beasts would doubtless be herded to drive it forwards. Another was a catapult with a shield mantlet reaching almost to the deck’s high ceiling, piles of alien skulls being heaped up behind it as ammunition. A machine like a massive mechanical crab was being assembled with tanks of some caustic bilious substance on its back, hooked up to the cannon on its coiling tail. Impish daemon-wrights scrambled over the surfaces of the war machines, while legions of bloodletters stood guard and the shapeshifting horrors of Abraxes swarmed in an endless squirming dance. The remains of the greater plague daemon had been dragged behind the tumbledown fortifications and putrefied into a cauldron of bubbling rot, from which more plaguebearers were being birthed by the minute.

  Lord Inquisitor Kolgo watched the flickering fires reflected off the pitted metal of the half-finished daemon engines. His Battle Sisters retinue shadowed him at a respectful distance as he leaned against a fallen wall behind which a couple of Imperial Fists had taken up their position in the line. ‘We will have to attack before they are finished,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ replied Chapter Master Vladimir. ‘That is why Abraxes is building them. He wants us to emerge from safety and march towards them, to give them the defensive ground instead of us.’

  ‘And we will attack,’ said Kolgo. ‘We cannot stand back and give them the Phalanx. It is written in the fate that Abraxes loves to weave so much.’

  ‘It seems that you have divined the future, lord inquisitor,’ said Vladimir. Any bitterness in his voice was well hidden. ‘Abraxes is not the only one reading the runes.’

  ‘Fate has us all in its snares, Chapter Master
. It is an inquisitor’s duty to perceive it.’

  ‘And what does fate say will happen to us?’

  ‘Truly? If you so wish, Chapter Master. Fate has decided that Abraxes shall bring his great cunning to bear and with it, defeat a force of brave but bull-headed Space Marines, bringing a great tragedy to pass.’

  ‘That is fate?’

  ‘That is fate.’

  ‘Then, lord inquisitor, I shall fight fate.’ Vladimir pointed to a knot of rubble in the no-man’s-land between the armies. It was the remains of a hero-chapel that had been toppled by the daemons’ advance. ‘There still stands the statue of Chaplain Pausanias,’ he said. ‘They could not topple him. See? He lacks an arm, and the rest of him has seen better days, but he stands.’

  ‘Like us?’ said Kolgo.

  ‘You miss my point. Pausanias was a dark seed. He was brought onto the Phalanx as a novice, recruited like thousands of others. Unlike most of them, he was found worthy as an Imperial Fist. But there was a darkness in him. A pride. He sought the greatest glory in battle, and battle-brothers died for his failings.’

  ‘A warrior’s sin, rarely acknowledged,’ said Kolgo.

  Vladimir ignored the inquisitor. ‘We saw too late what he was,’ he continued, ‘and when his charge against a gunline, seeking to capture the standard of the enemy, cost the life of his squad’s sergeant, he was banished to the Atoning Halls for his paucity of spirit. Fate had decided that Pausanias should be a lesson to us, lord inquisitor. He was destined to be a parable of warning to future novices, a disgrace as a Space Marine to be mourned and despised. But Pausanias was not resigned to accepting that fate. He scourged away his pride in the Atoning Halls. He returned lower than the novices, lower than our crew. He worked in the engines of the Phalanx, until the Chapter welcomed him back into its ranks. He died a Chaplain, a spiritual guardian of our battle-brothers, because he had fought that fate which had bound him so tightly and fought to live beyond it. He defeated his fate and is remembered here for it. I shall emulate him, if the Emperor wills it, and confound the designs of this daemon prince.’

  ‘It sounds to me, Chapter Master, that an Imperial Fist does not know when to give in.’

  ‘We do not know, lord inquisitor, what giving in even means.’

  From the shadows cast by the daemons’ fires, a Space Marine scout crept towards the Imperial Fist lines. The yellow of his armour was smeared with ash, as was his face, to break up his outline in the gloom.

  ‘Scout Orfos,’ said Vladimir as the scout got closer, ‘if these old eyes fail me not.’

  ‘You shame me, Chapter Master,’ said Orfos as he took his place in the line. ‘I should aspire to get within a knife thrust of you before you notice me.’

  ‘Friend and foe have tried, brother. That I still stand suggests no foe, at least, has succeeded yet. What news do you bring of the enemy?’

  ‘Within two hours, they will finish building their war engines,’ replied Orfos. ‘They are preparing rituals to possess them with daemons. Heaps of skulls and entrails piled up, and sigils wrought in blood, I have seen. They have brought supplicants through, still human, though barely, and they writhe and chant to gain the attention of their gods. Such rites of the flesh I hesitate to describe, but the beasts they build will have a cunning born of their possession as well as their own raw strength.’

  ‘Can we survive them, if they are sent against us?’ said Vladimir.

  ‘I do not know if the Phalanx itself will survive them,’ said Orfos. ‘We counted six of them. The scorpion beast, the battering ram and the catapult are clearest to us from here. A burrowing worm of steel lies coiled and slumbering out of our view, with a contraption of brass and skulls that I suspect will house the spirit of a greater daemon and a beast of flesh knitted together, as if predators of the warp had been butchered and their carcasses divided to be formed into one single monstrosity. All look as if they are nearing completion.’

  ‘You and your brother scouts have done well,’ said Vladimir.

  Orfos saluted and headed back through the lines to join the other scouts arriving in ones and twos from their mission.

  ‘Then within two hours,’ said Kolgo, ‘we attack.’

  ‘That is one fate I will not seek to avoid. My Fangs of Dorn have not seen enough blood yet, not quite.’

  ‘If Luko’s mission does not succeed, this will be the last the Phalanx sees of any of us.’

  ‘Are you afraid, lord inquisitor?’

  Kolgo replied with a smirk and turned back towards the centre of the Imperial Fists position, where his Battle Sisters were waiting patiently for their master.

  When Kolgo was out of earshot, Vladimir looked again towards the daemon engines growing more complete by the moment. He took the Fangs of Dorn in his hands, their blades scarred with burning daemon blood and muttered to himself.

  ‘Is it wrong that I have prayed for this?’

  By the time the strike force of Imperial Fists and Soul Drinkers reached the Panpsychicon, two more of Prexus’s squad had been lost. In the warren of cells and tunnels, where the Space Marines were forced to move through each junction and bottlenecks in knots of two or three, unseen foes had snatched at them from the darkness.

  Befanged faces had loomed, gnashing and spitting bile. The walls had fallen in, or pits had opened in the floor. Cackling creatures had flitted past junctions ahead, too quick to see or shoot. One Imperial Fist had been dragged into a cell by hands of shattered, bloody bone; by the time his battle-brothers had reached him, there was nothing left in the cell but torn scraps of ceramite and the blood slathered across the walls and ceiling.

  The second had been killed by invisible hands as his brothers watched. Even as they tried to haul him down from the ceiling where he had been carried, his head was wrenched around almost backwards and his spine snapped. The forces holding him had dissipated instantly, dropping the corpse to the deck and leaving only silence behind.

  So the strike force warily emerged into the wide space ahead of them, leaving the labyrinth behind, only to wonder where the next threat would come from.

  ‘What is this place?’ said Luko, the first to step out of the cell block tunnel.

  ‘The Panpsychicon,’ said Prexus behind him. ‘An experiment.’

  ‘Was it successful?’ asked Luko.

  ‘It had lain down here unused for two hundred years,’ replied Prexus. ‘Is that answer enough?’

  The circular expanse of the Panpsychicon was bounded by smooth walls inlaid with mosaics. The names of a hundred great battles from Imperial Fists history were depicted there in patterns of brightly coloured stone shards, surrounded by complex heraldries that spiralled into an unbroken pattern. Even the name Terra was picked out among the heraldry, commemorating the part the Imperial Fists had played in the battle for the Emperor’s Palace ten thousand years before.

  In the centre of the Panpsychicon was a device of steel and crystal that reached the ceiling, something like a set of interlocking spider’s webs in which were suspended cut slabs and chunks of crystal like giant gemstones. A rainbow of colours reflected from every surface, creating a maddening nest of shapes and light that refused attempts to view it as a normal object in three dimensions.

  Luko’s foot disturbed a manacle set into the floor. It was one of dozens set in concentric circles around the central device.

  ‘Some enemies resist traditional interrogation techniques,’ said Prexus. ‘Psykers amongst them. The Panpsychicon was built to rid them of their mental barriers.’

  ‘It is a machine,’ said Sister Aescarion, ‘for grinding down men’s souls? The Inquisition makes use of such things, but with varying success. And never have I seen one on such a scale.’

  ‘These are matters of the past,’ said Prexus. ‘We must press on. We close on the cargo sections, but we must not allow ourselves to be slowed further.’

  The whole room shuddered. Handfuls of dust spilled from cracks in the ceiling and the mosaiced walls shed their tesse
rae. The Panpsychicon’s device shone and glimmered as its crystals shook and, with a grinding sound from beneath the floor, began to rotate.

  ‘How many died down here?’ asked Luko, crouching to keep his footing as the room shuddered with greater strength.

  ‘That depends,’ said Prexus, ‘on what you mean by “die”.’

  Shapes of captives, manacled to the floor, flashed in the strange colours of light emitted by the spirit-grinder device. Crackles of light played across the walls.

  ‘Go,’ said Luko. ‘Go, get through. Do not give it the chance to…’

  Luko’s sentence was cut off by the burst of energy that tore across the Panpsychicon. The Space Marines were picked off their feet and slammed into the wall, shattering the mosaics beneath them. Shackles of lightning held them there, struggling against the force. Graevus’s mutated arm pushed free of his restraints but the rest of him was held fast.

  Luko tried to shut his eyes, but the same force holding him in place was prising them open. He forced himself onto his side and pushed with an arm and a leg, feeling some give in his bonds.

  ‘Resist!’ he yelled over the growing sound, a rumble combined with a skull-shuddering whine, emitted by the spirit-grinder as it opened up into a mass of articulated arms dripping with shimmering crystals. ‘Resist it. Fight back!’

  Luko’s bonds snapped. He slid to the floor, still pushed back by the wall of psychic power pulsing from the centre of the room. He could see Sister Aescarion screaming as her body, without the strengthening augmentations of a Space Marine, was battered against the wall like a plaything in the hand of a spiteful child.

  Luko took a painful step towards the centre of the room. The apparitions manacled to the floor were writhing, contorted impossibly, as he stepped through them, forcing himself forwards.

  All I want is peace, said a voice in the back of his head.