by Nick Kyme
‘It is, brother-sergeant.’
None of this was improving Iaptus’s already irascible mood.
Vo’sha was just behind the sergeant, looking ahead through a pair of magnoculars.
‘The route diverges,’ he said. ‘No way to link our two forces – we’ll be pushed farther south before we can head east again.’
Zantho’s voice came through the vox.
‘How far, brother-sergeant?’
‘Difficult to judge…’ said Iaptus.
Vo’sha adjusted the magnification through the scopes. ‘A detour of several hours at least.’
Zantho heard and cursed quietly in Nocturnean. Exhaling a frustrated breath he said, ‘Join up with Kor’ad. I’ll inform the ancient he’s going to be lighter by several battle tanks but that at least the Wyverns will be watching his flank.’
Iaptus sent Zantho his affirmation sigil and opened a link to the waiting Thunderhawk.
‘Brother Orcas, prepare for departure. We’re joining Kor’ad and the Cadians.’
Ignoring the thrumming engines, Sister Stephina bowed her head in prayer. In the darkness of the transport’s hold, she shut her eyes to the outside world and beseeched Saint Dominica’s aid.
For years, Canoness Angerer had been her lodestone and a constant reminder of her faith and duty to the Throne. In all that time the latter had never wavered, but knelt in the dark before the votive shrine, Stephina confessed to doubts about her preceptor.
‘Our teachings are the words of the Emperor, His Throne we serve in perpetuity and in so doing sacrifice all mortal concerns and desires,’ she whispered. ‘Our Order so does pledge, by our Ebon Chalice, sigil of Our Martyred Saint Dominica.’
The canticles of faith passed quickly across her lips, Stephina afraid that in doing anything other she would be exposed for her lack of faith and forever diminished in the eyes of the Emperor and the saint.
‘Grant me faith, oh Dominica – let me see how my canoness serves the Throne. Her will is the will of the Order, she who represents you on earth. And yet…’ she paused, breath catching in her throat. To believe her canoness acted out of some selfish agenda was one thing, to speak it invited actual condemnation if she was wrong, ‘I cannot see the Emperor’s hand in her works.’
‘Sister…’
Stephina’s heart trembled in her chest, so engrossed in prayer was she that for a moment she believed it was the voice of Alicia Dominica and not her fellow Seraphim that had addressed her.
‘Casiopia,’ she said, managing to sound calm as she opened her eyes serenely.
‘Orders have been received from the Canoness-Preceptor.’ Sister Casiopia clutched a leaf of parchment in her hand, reverently bowing her head so her superior could rise from prayer and accept it.
Stephina read the wax-sealed parchment, knowing already what it contained.
‘What was the signal word, Sister?’ she asked, her face darkening as she took in Angerer’s written orders. Despite her prayers, she could not help but see the treachery in them.
‘Angelicus, my Sister.’
Stephina nodded, dismissing Casiopia.
Twenty Seraphim occupied the hold of the transport; another almost equally burdened gunship flew alongside it not twenty metres away.
‘We are to Solist then,’ said a voice she knew.
Sister Helia, her white hair and alabaster complexion marking her out as angelic in more than honorific alone, approached from the other side of the hold. It was not spacious but neither was it at capacity, so there was room enough to move and seek solitude if needed.
‘I had no wish to interrupt,’ she added, clutching the same parchment orders as Stephina did. ‘You seemed… troubled, Sister.’
Of the entire Order, there was no one Stephina trusted more than Helia. Except perhaps Laevenius, but Stephina believed she was somehow allied to whatever scheme Angerer was fulfilling.
They were blood sisters, after all.
Even so, she had to consider what she said to Helia next.
‘Troubled to what end, I cannot fathom.’
‘Is that why you were so deep in prayer, Sister? It is not so shameful to admit you have doubts.’
‘I see only bloodshed on this parchment,’ Stephina confessed, trusting enough in Helia to speak her mind.
‘You worry for the savages?’
‘What is in Solist that we must abandon our allies to obtain?’
Helia frowned as if she’d just been asked a facile question. ‘We obey our preceptor, Sister. Her faith is our guide, her will the will of the Throne.’
‘We are leaving them to die, Sister.’
‘They are capable warriors.’
‘Who believe they are reinforced by a holy Order of the Adepta Sororitas. Tell me this does not sit ill with you.’
‘We follow the decrees of Canoness Angerer. Our duty is to the Ecclesiarchy, above all else.’
‘And what if the preceptor is not serving the Ecclesiarchy in this?’ Stephina lowered her voice, glancing sidelong to see if anyone else was listening but fortunately the drone of the engines was masking the conversation. ‘What if she serves her own ends?’
‘Do you have proof?’
‘I have the inexplicable nature of these orders,’ said Stephina. ‘I have my faith.’
For a moment Helia succumbed to doubt. It was written plainly on her face, her look of angelic serenity marred by sudden confusion.
For a moment, Stephina hoped it had not been such a stretch to implicate their canoness so boldly. It did not last.
‘I have never seen you like this before, Stephina.’
‘Because I have never been told to abandon my post and allies of the Imperium for a clandestine mission. Let the Inquisition be ruled by such subterfuge – we Battle Sisters are of higher morality.’
‘Sister…’ Helia reached out to hold Stephina’s hands. They shook with anger. ‘Be calm. You are weary, that is all. Rest, pray. There is a little time before we reach Solist.’
It was like shouting into a storm. Helia would not hear her, and Stephina was yet unsure what she could do. Appearing to heed her Sister, she gently released herself, bowed her head in gratitude and returned to the shrine.
‘Answer me this, Sister,’ she said whilst her back was turned, just about to kneel down again. ‘When did we become betrayers?’
Helia could not.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sturndrang, the underhive of Molior
The din of machinery and clattering metal resolved on the warm air, suggesting the excavation was still ongoing.
And close.
A heady scent pervaded, cloying and noxiously saccharine. It dulled the otherwise industrial and actinic scent of the underhive Exor had come to know but overlaid a much more unsettling odour that felt incongruous in the sweating, metal confines.
Somewhere close was the nexus of whatever foulness had crept into the heart of Molior and taken root. It was the source of Zartath’s disquiet and the reason why the vermin were so grossly mutated. Facts interleaved, coincidence became causality and all the disparate threads they had been following suddenly conjoined at this point, in this moment.
Logic and instinct had reached the same conclusion in the same instant and so its two agents in Molior found themselves at the precipice of a great and dark discovery.
Slowing naturally as instinctive caution took over, Zartath signalled for Exor to take the opposite flank of the wreckage. The path they had been travelling, shouldered by peaks of discarded metal, had widened, the summits either side shrinking as the debris flattened out in a rusted plain.
Exor nodded, understanding, and as the warriors diverged they crouched low and moved quietly between scraps of cover.
As well as the noise from the machines, there was light now too. As Exor crept closer, he t
ried to keep Zartath in his field of vision. Agatone had sent Exor after the hunter to bring him back and now the Techmarine found himself in league with him, facing some terror of the subterranean world below Sturndrang. Even with his mission parameters changed in the face of empirical evidence, Exor knew he needed to keep Zartath in his sights, watch him as his captain had ordered. It was impossible. The hunter moved too swiftly, Exor a lumpen clod in comparison. He had to settle for knowing he was close by and that, for now at least, their objectives were in alignment.
The light was coming from a string of phosphor lamps, rigged above a deep pit from which the scattered and piled wreckage had been excised. More light emanated from drum fires and the metal shells of vehicles and structures that had been turned into massive burning braziers. They reminded Exor of ribcages and he briefly wondered if their design had been deliberate.
Figures huddled in the light. Men and women, not so dissimilar to the dregs he had seen in Kabullah. The differences between them were subtle, but immediately alarming. A nervous vitality affected the ones now before him. It drove their weary bodies back to the pit where half a dozen vehicles were crowding. Three of the vehicles were industrial-grade excavators, drilling and digging. Two others were cargo haulers, brimming with scrap from the pit. The last vehicle was a freight loader, a four-track. On the back of the truck a tall figure in purple robes murmured sibilant imprecations.
The men and women were not slaves; they were supplicants. Through his visual implants, Exor discerned sigils scratched into their flesh. Self-inflicted wounds. Scarification marred faces already withered by malnutrition. None of this disfigurement or wretchedness appeared to dampen their spirits, though it was difficult to tell if they laboured in thralls of rapture or melancholy. The mood of the supplicants seemed to wax and wane according to their proximity to the pit. Exor estimated almost forty at the dig site, including the robed demagogue who he assumed was the leader. As his imprecations grew louder, chanting began in the cultists’ ranks too and a realisation was quick to form.
This was who they had fought at Seven Points, who Tsu’gan had fought too. A cult of Chaos was at large and growing in Molior’s deep underhive. Unchecked, it would be the end of this world.
About to creep closer and try to find Zartath, Exor saw the first sentry. Unlike the diggers, it moved languidly as if affected by some torpor. Disguised beneath its robes and afflicted by some kind of physical mutant action, gender was hard to determine. He did make out the strange arrangement of tubes in kind to the creatures they had dispatched at Seven Points. Seeing it for a second time, Exor was reminded of the amulet the underhiver wore when they had first delved into Molior. Tainted blood had corrupted these men and women, turned its vermin into monsters.
Pipes fed down into the pit, extracting, exsanguinating. Whatever lurked within was being siphoned and turned into a narcotic that altered its takers in initially subtle but ultimately ruinous ways, like the one that had affected the ganger called Karve.
The taint: this place in the darkness was the epicentre and the radial fractures of its corruption were slowly spreading. Like hacking down a dead tree to expose the insects burrowing under its seemingly healthy bark, the fire-born had uncovered an infestation. Only one course of action remained to them – exterminate it at the source.
Exor edged forwards, low and to the shadows, careful to avoid the sentries’ patrols. Techmarines were not adept at stealth but the sentries seemed so entranced that sneaking amongst them was not much of a challenge. The sudden and painful throbbing in Exor’s skull was. The closer he got to the pit, the louder and more agonising it became. The supplicants’ rapture was his torture. It could only be worse for Zartath.
The keening, that’s what he had called it. In mythic ages, it was a siren’s call dragging sailors to their doom. Only this siren was embedded in the deep earth of the underhive, not an ocean, and the sailors were the two fire-born who had tracked it to its lair.
There was no tuning it out, and no solace from the call. It was inside, a hollow drone that rattled around within the skull like a broken chip of bone, the damage being caused by its existence unknown until it was too late.
An ordinary man would have been driven mad by it, or driven to it, foreswearing all oaths and friendships in order to be in service to the keening. But Space Marines were not men, and did not give in to Chaos easily. A duty lay before Exor now, one he had sworn to uphold when he became fire-born, to defend mankind from threats without and within to his dying breath.
As part of the Chapter or alone here in the dark of the underhive, it did not matter.
‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…’ he began, affirming his purpose and planning a route through the sentries that would get him to the demagogue. Then all thoughts of duty and tactics deserted him.
He had found Zartath. The ex-Black Dragon was on his feet, charging down the nearest sentry and roaring like a beast unhinged.
Horrified and agape, Exor watched as Zartath bore the sentry down with bone blades embedded in its chest. Shattering its blood-vials, Zartath was back on his feet and running again before the creature expired with a strange whimper of pleasure-pain. He moved low but with long, loping strides like a hound on the hunt. Blood sprayed across his muzzle, the sense-shattering keening coring out his skull – Zartath was as close to truly feral as he had ever been. So singular of purpose, so maddened, he was heedless of almost everything except the keening.
All thoughts of stealth now abandoned, Exor rose up and opened fire on the mutant closing on Zartath’s blindside. It cradled a strange-looking fusil, the stock and trigger clutched by long, bony fingers, the barrel steadied with a coiling tentacle. Truly, they had unearthed a den of ruin in Molior.
It had to burn.
Exor fired again on the move, taking the mutant somewhere in its midriff. The shot knocked it off its feet, torso and legs sheared apart in the resulting explosive crescendo. Heads turned. Faces with too many eyes regarded the second interloper in their midst. With a clawed hand outstretched, his own face occluded by the folds of his hood, the demagogue marshalled his disciples.
As one and with eerie synchronicity, the supplicants dropped what they were carrying and ran like wolves at the fire-born.
A solid shot whipped past Exor’s ear; he felt the heat and heard the speed of its passage. Another clipped his slim shoulder guard and he was reminded how perilously unprotected he was without his power armour. He broke into a run, loosing off three more shots in quick succession, aiming for the sentries as they were armed and already firing.
Two more went down, broken into chunks of smouldering meat by a bolt-shell’s explosive impact. He thought he had missed the third, but the round had actually bounced off the mutant whose hide was like a sheath of impervious armour plate.
A head shot overcame the problem and decapitated the sentry. There was no time to be subtle – only brute aggression would prevail. Exor knew he had to get to the pit, then confront and kill whatever was in it. He would have to go through the demagogue and his flock to reach it, unless Zartath got there ahead of him.
The ex-Black Dragon was eating up the ground between himself and the pit with long, determined strides. Reacting instinctively, he switched between evasion and sheer power. Anything in his way was cut down. Three mutant sentries so far, their spilled and noisome innards steaming on the collated trash they seemed to worship. Resistance had been fleeting, suicidal even, but as Zartath closed on the pit the ranks of defenders thickened.
It was all Exor could do to maintain a steady pace. Loosing three more bursts, his clip began to run dry. He finished it off and ejected the clip, reaching for another, but there were none so he drew his combat blade. Cursing, he realised he must have lost the spare during his descent.
Fortunately, not only had Zartath thinned the herd, his insane dash towards the pit had drawn everything to him. A morass of bodies, supplica
nts and sentries both, enveloped the hunter. Excited and terrified at the prospect of his own imminent death, the demagogue grew more animated. His sermons devolved to ranting. He was baying now, baying for the transgressor’s blood with all the fervour of a frothing lunatic.
A greater madness had been unleashed against him, though. Zartath had survived the labyrinthine prison of the Volgorrah Reef and killed Renegade Astartes – no enrobed zealot was going to resist him for long, even with a host to protect him.
Exor arrived to find Zartath cutting the last of the disciples down, a butcher cleaving meat. He ended the slaughter with the demagogue, who finally fled but stumbled when his robes snagged on a piece of twisted metal and fell onto his face. Crawling on his stomach, he reached the edge of the crevice his followers had been digging.
Even from a little distance away, Exor could see the shallow but widening gyre they had made in the wreckage. A speartip of metal jutted just high enough for the Techmarine to see from where he was standing. It looked like the cone of a drop pod…
A predator sensing wounded prey, Zartath sprang on the mewling demagogue who was desperately trying to claw his way into the pit. Part of his trappings had torn loose, revealing the corruption beneath. Twisted flesh, an over-wide maw in place of a natural mouth, his eyes small slits of flesh, surrendered for this other mutation. As always with Chaos, one must give in order to receive.
As he was thrown onto his back by the rough hands of the ex-Black Dragon, the demagogue uttered a single arcane word. His oratory was his gift, a boon from his dark patrons that had helped him enslave the citizens to his will. It was meant to stop his assailant dead, a single, chiming utterance of power. Zartath was singularly unmoved.
Mad with rage, Zartath rammed his bone blade through the side of the demagogue’s skull, silencing him, but failed to quieten the daemons in his own head.
Battle over, the cult vanquished, Exor went to join him at the edge of the pit.