by Nick Kyme
Jedda kept on running. So did the man with him.
Makato did not know their names, only that they were Jedda’s men and therefore Jedda’s responsibility. Faced with what he suspected was in those caskets, Makato felt remiss in not learning those names, that in this moment of peril, he had disrespected the lesser armsmen somehow and would now not be able to rectify that. It was strange how much that bothered him.
‘Where’s the other one?’ asked Makato, recognising his maudlin thoughts as potentially hazardous to his survival, however remote that might be, and pushing them to his subconscious. Maintain focus now, live to repent later. He, Jedda and the other armsman regrouped in sight of the central corridor. The heavy tread of the Thallax resonated against the metal as it advanced, but was not particularly comforting. Makato wanted it between them and whatever was coming out of the caskets, but his duty made him go and get his men first.
‘Dead, lieutenant,’ Jedda replied. ‘They gutted him soon as they came out of stasis.’
‘They? How many did you see?’
To his immense credit, Jedda was managing to stay coherent.
‘Three, I think. The first broke out behind us, killed Halder. It was slow, still shrugging off stasis but it tore him apart all the same. We retaliated. I think we wounded it but a second one came out in front, boxing us in, so I gave the order to retreat.’ Jedda glanced over his shoulder at the facedown corpse a few metres away. ‘Navaar got clipped by the one we wounded.’
Halder. Navaar. Makato would remember them, and would honour their sacrifice if he survived. If any of them survived.
‘I’ve got at least two more in banks delta and epsilon,’ he said, then asked the other armsman, ‘What’s your name, son?’
‘Bharius, sir,’ Bharius answered, a little confused.
Strange, how the small things mattered when death was crouched within your eye line.
‘Are they…?’ ventured Jedda, unwilling to voice the name of their would-be killers aloud.
Makato nodded.
He had never fought against Renegade Space Marines before. Despite his many years of service to the Chapter, the scenario had never come about. No fire-born would ever even countenance putting a human life in harm’s way whilst they could still be that human’s shield. It was their creed. But Makato knew what was in that first casket, even though he had only seen a sliver of its identity, a half-glimpsed plastron, an ice-bitten gauntlet. Those pits of night glaring murderously through the frosted glass.
Armoured in black with eyes the mirror of their battleplate, there were many renegade warbands who answered that vague description. Makato knew only of a few, but had not seen any iconography or markings to narrow that down. It hardly mattered, all were deadly and beyond he and his depleted squad’s current capabilities to kill or even incapacitate. Even the Thallax would struggle to overcome an entire squad of transhumans, but it could slow them down.
If Utulexx could then seal them in the cryo-vault… They were sluggish, Jedda had said as much. Even transhuman biology would struggle to return to full efficacy after prolonged cryogenic exposure. It had been the perfect camouflage but had also left them diminished.
‘What are your orders, sir?’
Makato could not have wished for a better soldier than Jedda. It crushed his pride to think they might all soon be dead.
‘Thallax is inbound. We get it between us and them, hold corridor gamma until Utulexx can seal the cryo-vault.’
Jedda nodded and the three of them ran for the central corridor.
The Thallax was immense and easily filled the corridor with its height and bulk. Capacitors in the cyborganic’s micro-reactor cycled up to full ionisation. Coils along the barrel of the lightning gun, sleeved to its left arm and cradled by the three metal digits of its right, electrified with energised promise. A chainsaw bayonet protruding beneath the rifle’s muzzle began to turn. The low hum of the blade became a throaty growl.
It halted halfway down the corridor, the single cortex in its skull flaring red, a hound at the extent of its master’s leash.
Upon seeing the Thallax, Makato slowed almost to a stop as did Jedda and Bharius. The voice of the enginseer got them moving again with purpose.
‘It would be unwise to delay, lieutenant.’
Makato got Jedda and Bharius behind the Thallax a few seconds before the firing began. Glancing over his shoulder as he ran down corridor gamma, Makato saw a burst of energy whip from the coiled muzzle of the lightning gun and into an armoured warrior who had just stepped into its sights.
There was an audible grunt, the strong scent of burned metal as the warrior took a hit that slung him back and slammed him into one of the caskets that then burst apart in a flare of actinic light.
A subsequent salvo of shots ignited the muzzle coil moments after the first, as the Thallax reacted to a second combatant. A third came closely on its heels. Both warriors were carrying some kind of blade, but had no firearms to speak of. It was hard to be certain in the half-dark while trying to fight the sudden rush of transhuman dread that Makato felt creeping into his marrow. The shots went wide of the mark, or rather the warrior evaded one and took the other as a glancing hit on his shoulder guard. Makato saw nothing further, as he needed to look back around or would risk colliding with the caskets or one of his men in the rising panic.
When he did turn again, the Thallax had winged the second warrior, but the third was still moving. A fourth, difficult to discern with the air clouded by the corposant discharge from the lightning gun, had entered the corridor but stooped to help his wounded comrade. According to his rough calculation, Makato reasoned the Thallax had one more shot before the third warrior made up the ground and would be on it.
There was still a quarter of the corridor to go. Makato saw Utulexx waiting at the end for them, entering the activation protocols that would seal the cryo-vault.
When he heard the high pitched shriek of the lightning gun, Makato turned. The shot was good, but even wounded the third warrior swung his blade and forced the Thallax to parry with its bayonet.
‘You need to hurry,’ came the voice of Utulexx through the vox.
Makato was torn between standing his ground with his carbine and running like hell. They were almost there but the Renegade Astartes were close and they moved so fast…
A fraction too late, he saw Bharius turn and aim high with his carbine. A fifth warrior in black armour had mounted one of the caskets, like a living gargoyle but one poised to attack rather than slaved to stone.
In front of Makato the Thallax had thrown back the third warrior but the second, who had now recovered, went in hard with his blade. With incredible strength he slashed apart a cluster of cabling that put the cyborg on one knee as the mechanised equivalent of its tendons were severed. A point-blank burst from the lightning gun sent the warrior reeling, rolling end over end until he struck one of the caskets and it crumpled inwards against his violent impetus.
In the same moment, a dark spray flecked Makato’s helmet glacis and atmosphere suit. Bharius’s abruptly clipped scream revealed what had happened.
Something large, much more massive and imposing up close, landed amongst them. Paralysed with the same dread he had been fighting ever since seeing what was inside the caskets waiting for them, Makato could only watch as a black-armoured angel of death tore apart what was left of Bharius. In the same killing stroke, the warrior seemed to point his gauntleted fingers at Utulexx who had begun to seal the cryo-vault. Makato did not even have time to feel anger at this betrayal as the enginseer came apart in a welter of gore and machine components, his blood merging horribly with oil.
Slow, so impotently slow, Makato turned with his carbine.
Reacting to its master’s demise, the Thallax was turning too, intent on engaging the enginseer’s murderer, who had evidently implanted his watchdog with some kind of vengeance protocol. It was ultimately dooming as, with its guard down whilst it took aim at the warrior that had killed
Utulexx, the other two warriors ripped into the Thallax from behind, and destroyed it.
Knowing there was no way out now, Makato put up his hand and lowered his gun. With a glance, he ordered Jedda to do the same.
Seen behind his retinal lenses, the eyes of the warrior who had dropped down on them from the stasis caskets met Makato’s.
‘Surrender…?’ said a guttural voice, deep and harsh as scoured steel. ‘A considerably wise move on your part.’
Now he saw the warrior up close as it rose to its full, awesome height, Makato saw the blades were not blades as such – at least, they were not the kind that are drawn or lacquered or mounted in an armoury. They were bone. A living part of the warrior. Bone protruded through his battle-helm too, a crest of it that stretched across his entire skull all the way to the nape of the neck as far as Makato could tell.
He had the rank markings of a sergeant, and Makato assumed this one was their leader, but carried no visible weapons other than the deadly bone growths. By the way he had torn Utulexx apart, Makato had thought the warrior might be a psyker but again, as he looked closer, he saw the smaller bone ‘knives’ embedded in parts of the enginseer’s sundered corpse.
The two who had cut the Thallax apart, severing both arms and legs before decapitating it, joined the sergeant. The three warriors formed a cage of black ceramite around Makato and Jedda, who had now sunk to their knees.
These two had the same bony growths as their sergeant, only shorter and without the crest. One of the warriors, the one Makato had seen through the glass, was without a helmet. His skin was extremely pale, rimmed with frost, the extremities tinted azure with cyanosis. Whether a result of lurking in unprotected and partial cryo-stasis or some mutagenic quirk, his ears were slightly pointed at the ends, his nose almost beak-like. But it was the eyes that resonated. They were indeed black, as if the pupil had overwhelmed the sclera and clouded the eye with abject shadow.
Makato found he could not hold the warrior’s gaze and looked away. Before he did, he saw that all three had the silver icon of a snarling dragon on their shoulder guards.
‘We are cursed,’ the sergeant told Makato when he saw him looking at the bone growths of him and his men.
Makato was no stranger to being around Adeptus Astartes. The awe they inspired with their mere presence was familiar to him, but there was something different at work in the black-armoured sergeant. He radiated strength and savagery. Something feral and utterly monstrous lurked behind the faceplate he wore, a mask to contain a beast, betrayed by the snarl in his every syllable. There was no pity, no potential for remorse or compassion, only brutality and the prospect of violence.
Despite his terror, Makato found the resolve to speak, though his words were uttered as a rasp through fear-clenched teeth.
‘I am Lieutenant Makato of the Chapter Adeptus Astartes vessel Forge Hammer.’ He was surprised at his own defiance. Jedda’s head was bowed, but he raised it upon hearing Makato’s proud words.
Makato was fifth generation Navy, and his esteemed heritage extended all the way back into the previous millennium. His was a proud family, a lineage of honour and duty. A silver braid upon his uniform had once belonged to his father, Hiroshimo. Makato had barely known the man, for a life in the Navy is one that seldom comes with the comfort of loved ones, but he still valued that tangible piece of familial legacy like the heirloom it truly was. A ceremonial sword he had in his quarters had once served his grandfather, Yugeti, and though Makato had never drawn it in battle the blade was still sharp. In the memories of these things lay strength. Makato drew on that, on the legacy of Yugeti and Hiroshimo, and yoked it for the courage it afforded in facing down the monster before him with unyielding resistance. He up-thrust his chin imperiously and–
The blow came swift, and a starburst of pain flashed behind Makato’s eyes a moment later. He tasted blood, and felt a raw and aching agony in his face. His atmosphere helmet was gone, smashed loose by the warrior’s blow. The realisation of that came late as well as the fact Makato had been knocked onto his face. It had been little more than a slap, but he felt the loose teeth in his mouth and spat out a wad of blood.
Jedda made to rise when the sergeant advanced on Makato, but was roughly put down by one of the other warriors. The sergeant paid the armsman no heed, who was doubled over in pain, several of his ribs broken.
‘Leave him,’ snarled Makato in a half-rasp, looking up from all fours as he tried to get back up to his feet, glaring through blurring vision.
A second blow put him down again, harder than the first and he had to stifle a yelp as he felt something break. Makato was determined not to give his aggressor that satisfaction. With the three black-armoured warriors looking on impassively, Makato struggled to his knees again and grimaced through a cage of missing teeth.
‘I am Lieutenant Makat–’
He was struck again, hard enough to send him sprawling this time. Dark shadows crowded at the edge of Makato’s vision as he came close to blacking out. Only half-conscious, Makato felt himself seized by a manacle-like fist. The pain of the sergeant’s grip was so intense it brought Makato back around.
‘I heard you, maggot,’ the sergeant uttered in a low growl. ‘I am battle worn and half frozen but not deaf.’
‘What do you want?’
Makato could smell the sergeant’s foetid breath issuing in a cloud of vapour through his helmet grille as he crouched down to answer. It stank of spoiled meat and old blood. Makato imagined fangs behind that mouth grille.
His words came out as a whisper that was more chilling than any battle cry.
‘Revenge,’ he said. ‘But first we want your ship.’
Makato laughed in spite of his rising terror. ‘You are mad. There will be retribution for this.’
‘Could well be,’ said the sergeant before he hauled Makato up by the chin, his gauntleted fingers closing vice-like around the lieutenant’s neck. The fingers bit flesh, drawing blood. He raised him until his feet dangled off the floor. ‘Now hear me. Your courage is misplaced. You want to live, but above that you want your men to live. I am willing to allow this. The one in the corridor you left for dead yet survives. So too does the one currently bent double at the feet of my warriors.’
The sergeant seized Makato’s neck a little harder, spreading his fingers across his lower jaw as he brought him in closer. ‘I am Urgaresh of the Black Dragons. You will see us aboard your ship, and on my honour no further hand will be raised to you. Are we in accord?’ The one who called himself Urgaresh dropped Makato to the deck, who immediately gasped for air as he clutched his throat.
‘Your honour?’ said Makato when he could breathe again. ‘How can you speak of honour when you ambushed and killed two of my men?’
‘We fought. You lost. Do not succumb to vainglorious pride and add to the tally already made. An accord? Do we have one or must I kill another?’
Urgaresh stepped in close, giving Makato the lightest of kicks to urge him towards a quick answer. Pain flared in Makato’s chest, but he was still alive. So was Jedda, so was Navaar if what the Black Dragon had said was to be believed. He did not know the name of the warband, what Ruinous deities or warmaster they served. Makato only knew he had no choices left.
He nodded weakly.
Urgaresh stepped back and called to the warrior who had stopped to tend to their injured.
‘Thorast, does our brother yet live?’
‘He does.’
Urgaresh turned back to Makato. ‘That is fortunate for you, maggot. Tend the wounded mortal, stabilise him only,’ he continued to Thorast, though his gaze did not leave Makato, who was kneeling again. ‘Get these two fit enough to leave this ship on foot. We are bound for the Forge Hammer
then, and a reckoning with the sons of Nocturne.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sturndrang, underhive of Molior
The journey from the surface of Sturndrang and down into the subterranean underhive had not been without incident.
Even by shedding their armour and attempting to conceal their true nature beneath capacious storm cloaks, the Salamanders were far from inconspicuous. An underhive was the epitome of a dog-eat-dog existence, except here they actually did eat the dogs… and the rats, and whatever other carrion was unfortunate enough to stray beneath the hungering gaze of the underhivers. Dominance through fear of reprisal, the showing and establishing of strength was essential for anyone to thrive in such lightless, lawless conditions. That often meant as a pack, for even starving wolves are prone towards an instinct to congregate. It was no different here in the deep underground of Hive Molior.
Three men, large in stature, and obviously of a martial leaning had entered an arena without their prior knowledge of the fact. The arena was immense, the length, breadth and depth of the sprawling underhive. They had been stalked, but suppressing their genetically imposed instincts to confront and overcome, the Salamanders had managed to avoid conflict until one of those hiver wolf packs had finally tracked their scent to a place of reckoning. It had gone poorly for the gangers, who had made the fatal mistake of thinking their trio of chrono-gladiators were any guarantee of victory against such hooded and unknown warriors. Hulking and gene-bulked, the chrono-gladiators would fight on regardless of injury, until their death-clocks ran out. For most, at least those that inhabited Molior’s underhive, they would be formidable opponents. For most… not all. Their leader had seen three fools lost and out of their depth; his education to the contrary had been bloody and at Zartath’s hands, or rather claws. So had it been for all fifteen of these wretched men.
As Exor performed a more detailed analysis of the crashed ship and Zartath hunted for Tsu’gan’s ever-cooling trail, Agatone went over to the corpses of the gangers.
He had little experience of hive scum such as this, his wars demanding a much sterner test of the veteran captain, and found them an eclectic mix. There were hazards in these dark, forgotten places of the world, he had no doubt about that, but the threat did not come from such pathetic opponents. They were a far cry from the noble sons and daughters of Nocturne, and Agatone wondered how hard he would strive to protect the lives of degenerates such as these. He considered the morality of that decision, and whether or not it was right to discriminate on the grounds of personal worth as he saw it.