by Nick Kyme
Ahead, a light burned. It hurt his eyes – he much preferred the dark – but knew it meant the execution of the next phase of his mission was at hand. Execution was just what Urgaresh had charged him with. Encouraging the bone blades to slip a fraction from the flesh sleeves in his forearms then through the gaps in his armour, Haakem let the savagery that was ever at the edge of his thoughts take over.
Preceded by the clatter of a hatch hitting the deck as it was stripped off its hinges, something large and black burst from the maintenance duct and into the armsmen.
Makato was already turning as a solid armoured mass hit his men like a wrecking ball. Demolition did not accurately sum up what happened in the seconds that followed, however. Massacre did. Blood arced in fountains from suddenly screaming armsmen – so did their limbs and heads as the monster’s bone blades began to carve.
‘Take him down!’ Makato screamed, trying to bully his way through the press of bodies that were understandably retreating from the murderous whirlwind that had sprung up amongst them. A panicked scrum developed, between those men within reach of the monster and those trapping them. Makato had packed the corridor tight. He wanted overlapping fields of fire, a cannonade that would bring even Space Marines down. They were positioned at a junction with three exits, guns pointing towards aft, one exit to the side and the rest of the corridor behind. Death clad in black came from this direction, and unlike the slow inexorable force often recited in bleak poems and soliloquies, here death was swift and bloody.
Order was lost. Even if they could stop this one monster, they were utterly undone.
Ahead of the armsmen watching the corridor, the boarding shield moved aside and admitted a fresh band of deadly warriors. With the Rapier’s ammo-mags still half in, half out, Makato’s men were reduced to small arms fire. Shotgun bursts and lasgun beams smacked and ricocheted off the renegades’ armour, but the Black Dragons were undaunted. They came on like a tide, bolters crashing like the thunder of waves.
Makato froze, trapped in an island of indecision. One way, the monster threshing his men like crops on an agri-farm; the other, a rushing force tired of hiding and committed to the charge. For the first time since Yugeti Makato had given him his inaugural sword-fighting lesson, Kensai did not know what to do. Strike or fade?
Strong hands seized him by the shoulders, almost hauling Makato off his feet. Decision made, but not by him. Jedda rushed in front of him, taking charge and waving the two men who grabbed Makato away.
‘You can shoot me for insubordination later, lieutenant,’ he said to the thrashing form of Makato as he disappeared down the side corridor. ‘This is your ship. You have to live if you’re going to defend it, sir.’
‘Jedda!’ Makato screamed, remembering how he had screamed as Yugeti had dragged him away from his father’s body, Hiroshimo dead to a pirate’s blade. Though the household guard, the Bushiko, had repulsed the xenos raiders, Kensai Makato had become a man that day. He had made his first vow, to join the Imperial Navy and honour the legacy of Hiroshimo and Yugeti Makato. This was how it was supposed to end for him, embattled with weapon in hand. He railed against it, his cheated fate, but was powerless to stop it as Jedda vanished into the shadows.
‘I will hold them as long as I can,’ he called, wading in with the others as the bulkhead door slammed down, cutting him off from view and silencing the screams.
Urgaresh saw the officer dragged off by his own men and knew the fight was theirs. It had been the moment Haakem had emerged amongst them, but with them now trying to save their leader it meant the mortals had all but accepted their fate.
By his side were Thorast and Skarh, the latter firing off quick bursts from his purloined bolter to try to break up the wall of solid shot and las peppering the Black Dragons. There was no sign of Ghaan, but Urgaresh could not worry about that now. He had tossed his own bolt pistol when the mag ran dry and wielded the chainsword two-handed, leading into the charge with his shoulder. He was hurting. His eyes still burned from the blind grenade, despite the optical compensators in his battle-helm. Urgaresh knew Thorast and Skarh had felt it too. Both were seized by a feral rage.
With Haakem at their backs, cutting flesh as he was born to, and Thorast, Skarh and Urgaresh pushing from the front, the fight was mercifully short. For what they had done to Zartath, Urgaresh wanted to punish the mortals more but was cogent enough to realise these wretched souls were not the true focus of his ire. He wanted the Salamanders.
‘Where are they?’ snarled Skarh, battering a man to death with the stock of his bolter. Ammunition was short, and now they were amongst the armsmen it made sense to try to conserve it. Urgaresh was surprised at Skarh’s restraint. Perhaps they were not as lost as the sergeant believed. ‘They should come. We slaughter their men.’ Skarh lifted a man by the throat, crushing the mortal’s larynx with a savage twist before dropping him and breaking another. ‘They should come.’
Haakem met his brothers from the other side of the melee. Anointed with blood, there was something monstrous and unpredictable about him even to Urgaresh.
‘Well met, brother,’ rasped the sergeant, using the flat of his chainblade to swat a figure into the wall. Its face was crushed on impact, the armsman’s helmet splitting across the middle of the crown. Urgaresh barely registered it – the burring chainteeth of his sword were already cutting into more meat. In the carnage his enemies had ceased to be people anymore – they were just obstacles in his way, laid waste to by his wrath. The slaughter became mechanistic, almost perfunctory. A momentary flash of pain in his cheek brought him out of this murderous torpor, and belatedly Urgaresh realised he had been shot almost point blank in the face. He staggered, and felt the hot knives of the shotgun pellets where they had penetrated his helm and embedded into flesh. The vox-grille was wrecked, so he ripped it away with his free hand, warding off his attacker with his chainsword in the other.
He was a skilled fighter, this mortal. Urgaresh recognised him from the Fist of Kraedor. Still fending off his attacker, Urgaresh tore off his battle-helm completely and swung. The blow came unexpectedly and struck the man across the torso and neck. He snapped back, disarmed. Urgaresh spared him no words and thrust the chainblade into the mortal’s prone body.
It was over. The rest either died or fled. Urgaresh did not bother to give chase, nor did any of the ‘wrath’. They would get to them all soon enough. This had been the defenders’ best attempt to stop them, and it had failed.
‘Is this it?’ snapped Skarh, glaring at the spread of bodies lying beneath him in rapidly expanding pools of their own blood. He turned to Urgaresh, a savage look in his eye visible where one of his retinal lenses had been smashed during the fight. ‘My fury is not yet slaked, brother-sergeant.’
‘We aren’t done,’ said Urgaresh, largely ignoring Skarh’s minor tantrum while he inspected the chainsword. Some of the teeth were broken and its motor hardly purred anymore. Perhaps he had gone at the mortals harder than he first thought. In his peripheral vision, Urgaresh noticed Haakem. Drenched in blood and sweat, he released a cascade of mortal fluids as he shook his head. The act was not unlike that of a dog, and Urgaresh wondered again at where this road was taking them all.
‘I would have Salamanders blood for Zartath,’ hissed Skarh, gripping the edge of Urgaresh’s plastron.
Urgaresh glared at him. ‘So would I,’ he calmly replied. ‘Now, release me.’
Skarh obeyed, bowing his head in swift compliance as he realised his overstep.
‘Skarh is right, brother-sergeant,’ said Haakem. ‘This is barely worth the effort. I joined a rescue mission that turned into one demanding vengeance instead. With that I have no issue, but slaughtering these dregs…’ he gestured to the bodies. ‘It’s butcher’s work, not worthy of us. We’re unscathed and yet they–’
‘No, brother,’ uttered the solemn voice of Thorast. The Apothecary was kneeling next to Ghaan, his reduct
or already unsheathed. ‘Not unscathed.’
Ghaan was dead, his body slumped against the boarding shield but still more or less upright. He had died on his feet, which was little more than they could all ask. The shield had taken some grievous hits after all. There were gaps in the armour, gaps that Ghaan had stopped with his own body.
‘“Do not fail your brothers. Though their bodies die, their spirit must return to the Chapter. That is your charge.”’
‘So it was said,’ murmured Thorast, nodding at Urgaresh’s recitation of the Credo of Apothecaries.
‘So too shall be done,’ the sergeant concluded.
All watched as Thorast took Ghaan’s gene-seed and added it to the rest from the Fist of Kraedor.
‘It’s done,’ said Thorast, turning to his sergeant. ‘What now?’
‘Are we monsters, brothers?’ asked Urgaresh.
‘We are what our masters on Terra made us to be,’ said Skarh.
‘Then we head to the bridge. If there are Salamanders here on this ship, that is where we will find them. I want to look them in the eye before we kill them, and ask why.’
‘What kind of answer do you want?’ asked Thorast.
‘It hardly matters, I suppose. I just want them to know what this has all been for, what they have forced us to do, to become… and what we must do next.’
Without transhuman reinforcements, the ship was at the mercy of the Black Dragons. For what the Salamanders had done, Urgaresh would see it crashed on the dirty world below.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sturndrang, the underhive of Molior
Agatone found Zartath wandering alone at the edge of Kabullah’s border. The ex-Black Dragon looked punch-drunk as if he had just had a bout with Ba’ken in the practice cages and the hefty captain of Seventh Company had given him some brutal ‘instruction’. He almost staggered in Agatone’s direction when he saw him. Recognition was not instantaneous, either.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Agatone, wary, and kept his hand within reach of his holstered bolt pistol. There was something about the way Zartath moved, the blankness in his eyes, that gave the captain pause.
Blinking once, Zartath nodded. He did it slowly, wearily.
‘Did something happen, brother?’ Agatone asked, approaching him but still alert. His eyes narrowed when he saw the blood stains only half washed off Zartath’s armour. ‘Where have you been?’
‘It’s nothing,’ Zartath replied, and seemed to regain some of his senses.
‘Where, brother?’
‘I am my own man, brother-captain,’ said Zartath, only now understanding the level of caution Agatone was showing towards him.
‘Where have you been?’ Agatone pressed, and touched his fingers to the grip of his sidearm. He had known this day might come, that he might have to take Zartath to hand, the way a master deals with a feral dog. Agatone knew he might have to put the ex-Black Dragon down.
Zartath raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, and stopped.
‘Needed time alone,’ he admitted, ‘away from the roar.’
‘You were supposed to maintain watch, brother. Were this a conventional mission–’
‘But it isn’t, brother-captain. Nothing about it is,’ Zartath replied, and lowered his hands. ‘Tell me something, though. Have you heard it too?’
‘Heard what?’
‘You know what I’m talking about.’
The drone, that strange keening that had persisted ever since the klaxons had first sounded for the so-called ‘vermin tide’.
Agatone eased off a little but still kept his guard up. He gave one, slow nod.
‘So have I. It drums in my skull even now.’ Zartath took a step but no more than that. ‘I heard it at the sump pond, pounding through a waste pipe, coming up from below somewhere. There is something rotten here, brother-captain. It has tainted this place beyond the corruption of the flesh. It is tainting us, even now, as we hear it. Our helms, would that we wore them, would be no protection, either. It is within us.’
Agatone had suspected as much, but to hear his suspicions spoken aloud by Zartath gave them form and palpability. It also clarified them. He saw the truth of it now. The vermin that had attacked them were incubators for some pathogen, and the blood, their tainted blood had been a carrier that unlocked some deeper evil at large in Molior’s underhive. And they were hearing its siren call in the droning. For now, there was nothing Agatone could do about that. For the second time he wondered if Tsu’gan had run afoul of this ‘evil’, and tried to vanquish it. He hoped they were hunting for a living fire-born and not merely a corpse. Either way, none of it explained the blood on Zartath’s armour.
‘I need to know what you did, Zartath.’
Zartath showed Agatone his palms again.
‘Would that I knew what that was. Something… attacked me, I think.’
Agatone scowled. ‘You think?’
‘I ventured into the waters of the sump, drawn by the siren call in my head. I felt something wrap its jaws around my leg. The next moment, I awoke covered in blood.’
‘So you killed it, whatever it was?’
‘I would not be alive otherwise.’
‘A reflex then?’
Zartath nodded mutely.
Something was missing from Zartath’s testimony, Agatone was certain. What he could not be sure of was whether the ex-Black Dragon was deliberately hiding the truth of that, or whether the savage warrior simply did not know. Part of the reason Agatone had once stringently opposed his inclusion into the Chapter was on account of such murderous blackouts. Elysius had convinced him it was a worthwhile risk – the hunt for Tsu’gan demanded it – and for his part Zartath had performed well, proving a valuable asset, but frequently Agatone questioned his suitability. He did so again now.
He scrutinised Zartath for a few seconds, hoping the silence might reveal something his questions had failed to, but found nothing new. In the end, Agatone beckoned him to follow.
‘Come on. Exor is awake, and we need to move out.’ He turned and led Zartath back, the ex-Black Dragon a few paces behind. ‘You need not walk at the back of me,’ Agatone called to him, tramping back to the muddy lights of the settlement.
‘It is my place,’ said Zartath, and the words gave Agatone renewed pause. The captain was wise enough to realise something had happened during the three hours he had been transfusing his blood to save Exor – it had left him a little weakened, but the effects would wear off quickly, a Space Marine’s Larraman cells more advanced than mortal blood cells. Regeneration and replenishment would be swift but he had neither the time nor means to interrogate Zartath further. Exor and, he hoped, Tsu’gan, were waiting.
Issak was the one waiting for them when they returned to the settlement. He was standing at the bottom of the staircase to his surgery, armed and armoured with a pack on his back. Some of the natives, including the ageing but relatively well-attired alderman, lurked nearby, looking concerned.
Agatone read their fear and anxiety immediately.
‘Going on a trip, medicus?’ he asked, and looked upwards in the direction of the surgery.
Issak was wearing light flak armour with a mesh underweave. It looked old, but serviceable, clearly Militarum-grade. His pack most likely contained his med-kit, spare ammo and whatever provisions he needed. It too was Guard-issue. His boots were dark, functional, with visible metal toe-caps and he had a leather skullcap too. A combat shotgun and stubby autopistol on a leather strap across his back and hip holster respectively were the extent of his arsenal, barring any knives. A storm cloak completed the image of underhive gun for hire.
‘Your comrade has recovered to an extent,’ Issak replied, following Agatone’s gaze all the way up to the surgery. ‘He is upright and mobile, at least.’
Agatone gave a slight bow of the head. ‘And for that you
have our gratitude, but you didn’t answer my question.’
‘I suspect you already know the answer, along with my destination.’
Agatone turned to Zartath who had just caught up to him. ‘See to Exor,’ he said. When Zartath was tramping noisily up the staircase, Agatone resumed his conversation with the medicus.
‘Craving the glory days, are we?’
‘Not exactly. I told you once I was a religious man. In coming here, I served the Throne and ministered to the faithless, preaching the Imperial Creed. I found the very worst hole of existence I could, and made it better. For the Imperium. For these people. I knew it would not be forever.’
‘I don’t need another gun – I have two already and others in the hive city I can call upon.’
‘With respect, lord, I believe the former but not the latter. You needed me to patch up your Techmarine because he’s the only one you’ve got. Vox-comms don’t work so cleanly in the underhive and where you’re going they will cease to function at all. The feral one and your wounded brother currently in my surgery are all the manpower you have at your immediate disposal.’
‘And your gun arm will tip the odds back in my favour, will it?’
‘I don’t offer it… at least, I don’t offer it alone. Finding Seven Points is easy if you know your way around. It’s also a lot safer if you’re familiar with our hazards.’
It made sense. Issak had decided he had been given a sign from the Emperor, that the Salamanders coming presaged a calling of sorts. A guide would make the journey to Seven Points easier, but Agatone struggled with the morality of putting the human’s life in danger, especially as he had just, in all likelihood, saved Exor’s.
‘I can’t guarantee your safety,’ Agatone told him.