by Nick Kyme
Agatone didn’t need to watch him land and make the slow traverse. Exor was on his own now. Entering Molior as little more than a neophyte, he had grown into a battle-brother with similar skill and judgement to a veteran. Agatone wanted fiercely to have him as a member of Third Company. He would need warriors like that to help rebuild it, and forge its reputation anew. First, he had another fire-born to bring to heel.
Issak looked up from the Well. ‘How could he have survived that fall?’
‘We Adeptus Astartes are hard to kill, especially fire-born. Takes more than a long drop to finish us.’
‘But Zartath isn’t a fire-born,’ Issak replied.
‘Ah medicus, but he is. And I would see all my brothers returned to Nocturne’s forge.’
Urging Issak to move, Agatone eventually reached the other side of the chasm, where Exor had indicated Tsu’gan had gone. Clambering up to the precise spot, Agatone reached down to help the medicus and easily hauled him onto the ledge where he was crouching.
Standing, Agatone looked out into the deeper underhive, trying to imagine Tsu’gan’s route and what he could have been doing. All he saw was further wreckage: a sloping ceiling, shattered pipework, trails of viperous but inert electrical wire… and an icon. It was half-buried in all the detritus, begrimed and otherwise obscured by filth. But Agatone’s keen eyes discerned its symbol as well as its meaning.
It was an Imperial eagle split down the middle, one head and wing lost to decay.
Agatone checked the auspex. The trail led to the broken eagle. Beneath it there was a gap in the rubble just large enough for a transhuman body to crawl through.
‘The archivium you mentioned,’ said Agatone, pointing, ‘could that be it?’
Without a Space Marine’s genhanced vision, Issak didn’t see it at first, but after a few seconds he made out the eagle.
‘It must be.’
‘Tsu’gan went inside,’ said Agatone, without a trace of doubt.
Issak frowned, unable to make the connection. ‘To what end?’
‘I’m not sure it was his idea,’ said Agatone. ‘Either way, that’s where we are going.’
Exor hit the ledge hard and felt the impact throughout his body. His wounds were healing but more slowly than he’d like and they flared angrily. He winced, taking a moment to marshal the pain and catch his breath.
The suspensors were lightening his weight, but not enough. As a means of lessening the encumbrance of a lascannon or heavy bolter, their intended purpose, they performed well. Utilised as an improvised anti-gravitic, less so. In his current condition, without them he might already be crippled so he bit down, retracted the grapnel and prepared for the next jump.
Launching the cable into the darkness, focusing on a point where he could snare the grapnel hook, Exor tried to gauge the distance to the ground but couldn’t. Depth was impossible to speculate as was Zartath’s eventual position. He could be dead. If that was the case, then Exor would still have to locate him and haul his body back to the surface then wait for Agatone’s return.
He leapt out into the unknown.
Heat from a venting pipe seared his face as Exor passed through a grimy cloud of steam and gritty particulate. He landed awkwardly, jarring his knee and wondered if he had over-estimated his fitness for duty. Rolling onto his back, he looked up through the now-dissipating miasma jettisoned from the pipe and estimated he had descended almost eight hundred metres by variously rappelling down and leaping from ledge to ledge.
As the mist cleared fully, he saw something else. A claw mark, just two or three metres above him.
The inner side of the shaft led to the various sub-levels of the underhive. Whatever object had cored through each level had exposed them to each other, like layers of diseased flesh. Ordinarily accessed through myriad tunnels, lifters or stairways, the Well made reaching Molior’s sub-strata much easier. Zartath had chosen this place to make ingress, hunting down an enemy only he could perceive. Exor would have to follow him and hope they could overcome that enemy together.
As a Techmarine, and a relatively inexperienced one at that, he knew little of battle psychology. But it didn’t take an expert to know that Zartath, whilst loyal, was damaged. He had heard about the ex-Black Dragon’s imprisonment in the alien realm and his subsequent rescue by the Firedrakes. He had also heard about his heroism during the dragon-strife when all of Nocturne was at war, but Zartath was still an enigma. If he found him, alive, sane, Exor was not sure what to expect or how to approach him. Logic would dictate he formulate a plan, but that was of no use here. Instinct was all he’d have to go on.
Noting the position of the claw marks and Zartath’s likely entry point, Exor lifted himself up using a strut of broken rebar for support. As he did so he felt a tiny vibration, like a minor seismic tremor, ripple through the metal. At first he thought he had got up heavily, moving awkwardly because of his injuries, but then realised the vibrational resonance persisted even when he was still and the ledge had settled under his weight.
Tiny flakes of metal peppered his armour and exposed skin. So focused on the descent through the Well, Exor hadn’t noticed until he had stopped and taken stock of his situation. Now he looked up and saw the glinting, metal drifts fogging the air. Larger pieces of debris accompanied them and as he analysed the scene in more detail, noting the massive chunks of wreckage on the verge of plunging down into the shaft, Exor was put in mind of a slowly eroding cliff face. Only in this instance, the cliff was a steadily widening hole suffering under the effect of sustained seismic resonance. He realised that the Well had been much smaller originally. It must have taken decades for it to reach its current size. Whatever initially came through was likely much smaller than he had first estimated but its arrival had triggered an effect that was slowly shaking the entire area apart.
Using the haptic implants in his bionic hand to analyse the vibrations, Exor estimated that the source was coming from deeper into the hive, exactly where Zartath was headed.
Securing his gear, the Techmarine climbed the short distance up the shaft to where the claw marks mapped his path. There he found a large vent, the inside recently scratched as someone had crawled through it. First drawing his bolt pistol so he could crawl with it in front of him, Exor entered the vent. It led to a narrow access tunnel, tight enough that he dragged himself slowly on his elbows.
Exor emerged onto another ledge into a flickering halogen glow. A cluster of overhanging lamps fizzled with their weak electrical connections, casting the scene in front of him in murky grey monochrome.
A capacious chamber opened out in front of him helping to banish the claustrophobic sense of containment engendered by the rest of the underhive. It had a vaulted ceiling and the outward appearance of a wrecker’s yard, for a few metres below the ledge was a steep slope of accumulated industrial detritus. Rather than the slow degeneration of neglect and disrepair Exor had seen so far, this wreckage had been piled here deliberately. In the weak light he discerned girders, roofing plates, blast doors, gantries, several tonnes of mesh grating – all the debris that had come down on top of whatever had crashed through the hive levels in the first place and ended up here in Molior’s underhive.
There were bodies as well, most too emaciated and skeletal to have been recent. Victims of the collapse? It was certainly possible – some of the half-mangled structures looked like tenement habs. If Kabullah was any gauge then the collapsed structures would have been vastly overpopulated when the sky fell down on them. Tens of thousands could be rotting amongst the rubble, and Exor realised with a rare spike of compassion that he was looking at a mass grave. Wasted limbs jutted from the industrial morass. Skulls, skin stretched thin as parchment across the bone, leered at him through the lattice of collapsed metal.
‘Vulkan’s mercy…’ he breathed.
There were no heat traces, nothing in close proximity. Whoever had piled th
e wreckage had since moved on. Nothing had been scavenged either, which seemed at odds with the philosophy of the underhive he had come to understand. There was only a path wide enough for a small cargo loader or four-track freight hauler to traverse that led deeper into the level. Whatever was waiting at the end of that road was obscured by the subterranean gloom and the peaks of wreckage. It had to have taken a small, dedicated army of workers to shift that much metal.
Exor tried to contact Agatone but the vox return was too weak. Signal interference from the depth, he assumed. About to move out, he stopped when he felt the blade against his neck and silently cursed for allowing himself to be caught off-guard so easily.
‘You whisper too loudly,’ said a rasping voice, redolent with the stink of raw meat. ‘Should I kill you now? Is that why he sent you?’
Exor holstered the bolt pistol, raising both hands so that his assailant could see he was unarmed.
‘I came to find you, brother.’
‘Am I your brother now then?’
‘Petulance doesn’t suit you, Zartath.’ Exor tried to break away but the bone blade sank deeper, nicking the skin around his neck. ‘Why save me back then, only to kill me now?’
‘A slave to logic, trying to reason with an animal. You amuse me.’
He gave a throaty laugh, causing spittle to fleck across Exor’s cheek but the Techmarine didn’t flinch.
‘You are still a man, brother. Agatone would not have–’
‘Agatone! I am our captain’s faithful dog, brother. He keeps me leashed, or have you not noticed? I am the necessary monster he needs to achieve his mission.’
‘Then why send me after you? To put you down like the rabid dog you think you are?’ Exor laughed too, mustering as much derision as he could. Since Mars and his induction into the secrets of the Mechanicus, emotion had become increasingly difficult. ‘Leaving you down here to rot would have been much more logical.’
Silence lingered in the wake of Exor’s voice, broken only by the ex-Black Dragon’s feral breathing. Slowly, the pressure against his neck eased and Exor turned to face Zartath’s cold staring eyes.
He snorted. ‘How did you ever advance beyond the rank of Scout?’
‘I had help.’ It wasn’t a lie. Va’lin had been at his side throughout. It had not been easy to leave him – their bond had been forged in blood, but their paths diverged. Brother-Captain Ba’ken had told them it was Vulkan’s will. Exor wondered if his battle-brother yet lived.
‘And are you here to help me or stop me?’ asked Zartath, shaking his head. ‘The latter will not go well for you, I think.’
Exor knew he was in no condition to fight. Even fully fit and armed, he would struggle and likely die going up against the ex-Black Dragon.
‘I’ve seen you fight,’ he said, holding up his hands in surrender.
Zartath regarded him for a moment, gauging the Techmarine’s veracity before giving him a draconic smile that revealed both rows of his fangs.
‘Your instincts are better than I thought, Martian.’
‘I am not a Martian,’ Exor replied. ‘I am fire-born.’
‘That is what they tell me also,’ said Zartath, leaping silently over the ledge and scaling the wreckage below.
Exor went after him, slower because of his injuries. When they reunited at the bottom, Zartath concluded, ‘But we know differently, don’t we, brother?’
Exor chose not to answer. Zartath was in a capricious mood – it made him more unpredictable than usual. As a Techmarine, Exor based his interactions with others on logic. The ex-Black Dragon adhered to no such principal, he was a creature of pure instinct. Perhaps that was the source of Exor’s distemper towards him and the reason why negative emotion was easier to illicit in his presence. He chose to be direct instead.
‘What’s down here? What made you leap into the pit?’
Zartath’s face darkened and all his humour bled away, replaced by haunting neutrality.
‘The keening.’
‘That’s not an answer.’
‘There is no answer. It just is!’ he snapped, allowing the briefest chink of weariness to show. ‘It’s like a passenger I cannot release,’ he pointed to his skull, ‘inside my head. Calling. Always.’
Exor had felt it too, but not to this degree. A drone lingered at the edge of his hearing, but so faint he dismissed it as imagined or a part of his subconscious. Zartath’s exposure to the taint running through the blood of Molior’s vermin had been much less, yet his affliction appeared magnitudes worse. It had to be something else. Zartath’s mutant physiology had made him more attuned, exposed him because of his greater sensitivity.
Exor knew something of xeno-biology, that there were several known species that could emulate a ‘siren-call’. Such abilities were psychic in origin, but perhaps in this case there was a physical factor also. However there was another explanation.
Chaos. It was the moral corruption of the soul. Mutation was its physical expression. Some mutation was tolerated, even essential. Navigators, astropaths, even the Adeptus Astartes Librarius – the Imperium would cease to function without them. They were also the individuals at greatest risk from contamination by the warp. Such men and women were conduits that, if improperly channelled, became doorways for unnatural creatures. It was logical to assume that mutants, those bearing the physical stigmata of Ruin, could also be susceptible in some way.
Whether on account of his mutation or some, as yet, unrevealed taint within him, Zartath’s psychosis was pulling him to this place. Like a piece of driftwood caught in the maelstrom’s inexorable gravity, he could do nothing to prevent it. Exor merely feared the reaction when Zartath was finally forced to confront that which had almost driven him insane.
‘And when you find whatever is causing this… keening, what will you do?’
The coldness returned, Zartath’s eyes like chips of carved jet.
‘Kill it.’
He moved off, low and fast into the flickering half-light. He seemed different, edgier and feral.
Exor had no choice but to go after him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Heletine, Canticus southern district, ‘the Cairns’
Demolition of over half the city during the bitter fighting made the deployment of heavy armour almost impossible. This deep into Canticus, the streets were choked with debris. Barricades, tank traps and other improvised defences only made the going even harder for track-mounted vehicles. Razorwire threaded every avenue. Chunks of fallen masonry were riddled with mines and live grenades. Shells of tanks still smouldered in hidden trench lines and pits, their crews silently decomposing within.
None of this offered any impediment to the Targons.
Bar’dak’s warriors advanced doggedly through the corpse of the once proud city, their Centurion armour more than equal to its hazards. As vanguard troops, they were almost unrivalled, and ranged several hundred metres ahead of the main force which included the overall Imperial commander, Captain Ur’zan Drakgaard.
Where the Wyverns ruled the sky, the Targons dominated the ground. All things in balance, or so Vulkan’s teachings went, and Bar’dak believed vehemently in this Promethean creed. Like all fire-born, he was a warrior ascetic but to the greatest extreme. Bar’dak forever needed to test himself, to know the limits of his endurance and determination.
During his early years of initiation, he had walked the length of the Scorian Plain and swam the straits of the Gey’sarr. He did so alone and without fanfare or audience. For it was not out of a desire for adulation that Goran Bar’dak performed these feats – he did so because he had to know if he could.
According to Chaplain Elysius, pride was a sin to be wary of, one Bar’dak knew himself to be guilty of. Not selfish pride but esteem for his Targons, an indulgence of ego he found he was unable to temper. Live long enough unscathed and any man, however h
umble, will start to believe he is immortal. Not the Chaplain’s words, but part of Zen’de’s philosophy. Bar’dak knew it well, and recognised the truth of it in his own hubris. No battlefield had bested the Targons yet, and no recruits had joined their ranks since the current squad was formed almost a century ago. None had been needed. As records went, even the lauded sons of Ultramar would struggle to name an equal.
‘Sergeant,’ Ush’ban’s voice crackled over Bar’dak’s vox.
One of the tower-templum that sprang up around the Cairns like fungus in shadow had collapsed across the street, effectively blocking it off. Its foundations jutted from the earth like nubs of broken bone, the tower the limb from which they had been severed.
Civilians, mainly pilgrims and minor Ecclesiarchy functionaries, lived and prayed in these templums. The city had been evacuated weeks ago, but encounters with the human populace of Canticus were not unheard of. No matter how dire things became, mankind would always strive to cling to what it has and what it knows. The majority of these desperate, lingering few had been swept up by the heretic army and pushed into service as conscripts, indentured slaves or worse. Most clutched crude stubbers or shotguns, improvised cudgels or blades and had been fighting against the Salamanders since they had arrived on Heletine several weeks ago.
They were not the men and women they might once have been. Scarification marked their naked flesh, the burned brand of their Chaos potentate whose favour they now sought. Self-mutilated, armed and armoured with whatever they could scavenge, foreswearing Throne and Emperor, their souls were lost, their bodies grist for the ever-grinding war machine of the old enemy. Madness and desperation were inevitable.
Ush’ban’s war-plate still carried the burns and gouges of an improvised explosive wielded by one crazed devotee. In sacrificing himself, the cultist had levelled half a city district. Ush’ban’s warsuit had protected him, but Colonel Redgage had lost a lot of men in the blast. Captain Drakgaard had insisted the fire-born bear the brunt of the fighting after that incident, only utilising Guard armour in a vanguard role and the dwindling Cadian 81st as support. The decision was met with resistance by a conflicted colonel, who had no wish to throw away the lives of his men but at the same time had felt his honour besmirched. The matter had only just been resolved when the arrival of the Adepta Sororitas complicated everything again.