The Devastation of Baal

by Guy Haley

  The claw slammed into the rockcrete again, obscuring the secondary beast. The other claw smashed into the wall, and the headless monster rose upwards three feet.

  ‘It is nearly at the top!’ yelled a Blood Swords sergeant.

  The claw raised, exposing the weapon for a fraction of a second again. Dante’s aim was good. The air shimmered as he fired. Where the fusion beam connected with the gun’s flesh there was a terrific roar as all moisture in the sub-beast was instantly evaporated. The resulting explosion blasted it to pieces. The carnifex continued to climb for one more clawstroke before flailing limply and falling from the wall.

  The beast had come within feet of the edge, and two more screeching monsters were still climbing.

  A devastator squad in Blood Drinkers livery deployed and opened fire with their lascannons, a second devastator unit from the Blood Swords close behind. Four ruby beams of light blew holes in the lead carnifex’s armour, expertly targeting the beast’s primary organs. Trailing fire, it fell into the horde, crushing dozens of lesser beasts. The third of the brood paused, opened its mouth wide and started to scream. Stark white light shone in its throat.

  ‘Bioplasma!’ shouted the Blood Swords sergeant. Dozens of boltguns banged, smashing into the monster. They exploded harmlessly on its chitinous armour, only a few tearing chunks out of the more vulnerable intercostal spaces. Fist-sized craters appeared all over it. One eye burst. Several rounds flew down its throat, but were there consumed by the beast’s gathering incandescent fire.

  A further lascannon volley denied the beast the chance to spit. The light died. The carnifex slumped, dead, hanging from the wall by its claws.

  Dante took stock. All along the wall similar tales were being told. Carnifexes tumbled from the fortifications, riddled with smoking holes. Newly built corpse ramps burned under sustained plasma and melta fire. He called up his strategic overview. The wall remained a solid green line. Three breaches glinted red, but quick vox reports and glimpses through the eye-lenses of others informed him that these were places where carnifexes had clambered over. The wall itself remained whole.

  ‘Such a fruitless expenditure of assets,’ said Dante. ‘If they continue to pursue their objectives so thoughtlessly, we will crush them.’

  ‘Aye, my lord,’ said Dontoriel, looking out over the surging horde. ‘But they have plenty to spare. The second wave approaches.’

  ‘We must make sure they do not pile the corpses up, Dontoriel. A few carnifexes in the perimeter will be simple to deal with, but if we have to engage a host of ’gaunts we will lose control of the situation and be forced to fall back. I am going to send you to–’ Dante was cut short by an eerie wailing from the Arx Angelicum. An angel’s cry that cut Dante’s soul. There was only one location that would generate such an alarm.

  Captain Raxietal’s voice crackled over the vox. ‘My lord, we have xenos inside the fortress. There are genestealers within the Hall of Sarcophagi.’

  Dante activated his widecast vox. ‘Chapter Master Ercon of the Blood Swords has command of the second line until further notice.’ And he activated his jets again, blasting over the ground between the second line and the Arx Angelicum. His Sanguinary Guard followed.

  ‘How did they get in?’ he demanded over the vox. ‘If there is an unguarded breach, there could be thousands of them inside.’

  ‘Unknown, my lord. I have an augur team scanning the lower levels to see if they can lock it down. We have traced the general area to section nine-Phi. I have sent several squads and our blood thralls into the Cantabrian Mesozone to head off any further attack.’ Captain Raxietal was running fast enough to make a Space Marine pant. The impact of his boots boomed off stone. ‘I am heading to the Hall of Sarcophagi now myself.’

  ‘Double the guard on the void generatorum and reactor halls,’ said Dante.

  ‘Sergeant Frense is already there. I have three more squads en route. No reports of hostiles elsewhere as yet.’

  ‘Good,’ said Dante. ‘Beware. This could be a diversion. Keep me informed of everything.

  ‘My lord.’ Captain Raxietal’s voice cut out.

  Dante swore – ancient, powerful Secundan oaths. The breach would not be large, otherwise the Arx Angelicum would be under full scale assault. That was the one reassuring fact of this debacle. If it were a diversion, targeting the Hall of Sarcophagi was a stroke of tactical genius. Within its blood-filled caskets, neophytes underwent the year-long ritual of the Insanguination. Such a brazen assault on the Chapter’s future would send his men into a fury, and that would dull their thinking. He hoped the alien mind of the swarm was merely being vindictive, or was hell-bent on wiping out the Chapter. But those were the low plans of animals, and Dante thought the hive mind to be of a far higher degree than that. He looked upwards as he flew. As yet, the void shield still rippled over the fortress monastery. He was thankful for Captain Raxietal’s level-headedness.

  The black majesty of the Arx Murus towered ahead, flashing with the reports of giant weapons. He was closest to the Maxilliary Gate, where the walls projected out over a gatehouse like a closing mouth.

  Alarms bleeped urgently in Dante’s ears. His gaze flicked to the top corner of his faceplate display. His fuel indicator was running rapidly to zero. His suit’s machine-spirit informed him when his fuel reached a dangerous level, allowing him time to land safely. He ignored it, burning the last seconds of his supply to send himself forward and upward. ‘Get me a transport. Something fast. My jets thirst, and can carry me no more.’

  Stuttering fire, the jets blew out. Momentum carried Dante forward a hundred yards, but Baal’s robust gravity caught up with him, and he was dragged down on a steep curve.

  He hit the sand hard. He couldn’t roll because of the bulk of his jump pack, and came down in a staggering run that ended in a fall. His teeth jarred in his head as his foot hit the rockcrete. Internal shock absorbers took death out of the impact, but something gave in his leg and every forward step brought a sharp pain in his knee until his armour’s pharmacopoeia detected the hurt and dulled it, though the bone ground as he ran. He opened the adrenal valves on his helm, elevating his heart rate to dangerous levels. There was only so much a Space Marine’s enhanced physiology could take, but he could not afford to be cautious.

  Dante’s jump pack was of ancient and powerful make. He had outpaced his bodyguard. They caught up with him as he ran, landing around him in perfect formation.

  ‘Get back up!’ he commanded. ‘Get inside! Head for the void generatorum.’

  ‘My lord.’ Dontoriel led his fellows off, stepping up into the air as if it were solid ground.

  The Maxilliary Gate opened. Five combat bikes sped out onto the landing fields. Plumes of sand sprayed from their rear wheels. Now the work of war had begun the clearing was neglected, and the desert was swallowing the fields again.

  The bikes roared up and skidded to a halt. The biker sergeant leapt off his steed and knelt at his lord’s feet.

  ‘Take my machine, my lord, go quickly,’ he said.

  Dante leapt onto the bike without a word, the encumbrance of the jump pack nothing to so graceful a warrior. Wheels spinning, he wrestled the heavy machine around in a circle and headed back towards the Arx Angelicum at speed.

  The gates were left open for him. He did not dismount, but sped on, thundering through his fortress. The ­labyrinthine ways and halls of the Arx Angelicum whipped by as he headed down. The bike left tyre marks on pristine stairs, and shattered the quiet of sacred halls with bellicose engine noise.

  The Hall of Sarcophagi was deep beneath the surface, far from the light. Dante slewed his borrowed combat bike around tight corners, bursting through the hall’s modest gates into the long, low expanse of the chamber.

  Rectangular in shape and lined down both long edges by caskets of ivory and plasteel, the Hall of Sarcophagi was a place of peace. There, within its sa
cred precincts, diseased, malnourished boys were remade into angels for the greater glory of the Imperium, and weary warriors might rest awhile from the toil of battle. Ordinarily the silence was interrupted only by the quiet hum of machines and the whisper of robes across the polished floor.

  Its peace was in ruins.

  Space Marines fought desperate close-quarter battles with genestealers. There was precious little cover in the hall for the aliens to utilise, but the genestealers were everywhere, and the Space Marines hesitated to use the full destructive potential of their weapons for fear of hitting the next generation of neophytes dreaming their way through apotheosis. They relied on single shots, aiming carefully so as not to kill their own kin, and that allowed the genestealers to use their superior speed. They scuttled at the Blood Angels, leaping at them with their claws outstretched, tearing them apart in a flurry of raking strikes.

  With the warriors of the Eighth Company at his side, Dante roared into the hall, the boltguns mounted on the fairing of his combat bike barking, the Axe Mortalis crackling with wrathful power. He had not ridden one of the machines for centuries, but his skill was as accomplished as when he had been a young Assault Marine. He jinked past a snarling, purple-faced abomination, smiting it as he sped by. The force of his charge and the energy field of his axe reduced the alien to a shower of stringy meat and broken carapace. A second reared in front of him. Dante ran it down. Its rangy body cracked loudly under the wheels. A third jumped onto the bike, grabbing at the handlebars. A fourth made a giant leap, folding its arms about Dante’s jump pack from behind. The bike wobbled as he fended off their claws. He grabbed the thing on the fairing and heaved it off in front of his bike, where it was smashed to pieces by the weight of the machine. Broken alien chitin ground in the space between wheel and bodywork. The fourth’s jaws snapped at the side of his mask, super-hard teeth squealing on the ceramite. The back wheel of Dante’s mount slid out from under him as he wrestled with the beast. He managed to trap the claws scraping curls of metal from his plastron eagle under one arm, and drove back with the head of the Axe Mortalis. Its disruption field snapped and crackled. The axe’s edge scored a mark in his pauldron as he bludgeoned the genestealer’s face with the axe’s flat top. Atoms fizzled, broken energy bonds arcing out as stabbing lightning. The genestealer’s head exploded and it fell away, but too late. Dante’s bike tipped over, ploughing up shards of broken stone from the floor. His armour fountained sparks as the bike slid out of control across the hall. It slammed into the wall, crushing a genestealer’s legs and pinning it in place, and yet still it snapped and hissed at him. Dante snatched out the perdition pistol and blasted two more aliens running at him. Several of the infiltrators sensed his vulnerability and were turning from the other Space Marines. One of the other bikes was down, but four remained, and they passed through the crowd of genestealers in close formation, boltguns blazing, buying Dante a few precious moments.

  Shouting wrathfully, Dante flipped the bike upright, freeing himself and crushing the trapped genestealer’s chest. Finally, it died, its last breath a hateful rattle, yellowish blood oozing between silicate teeth.

  Howling, Dante spun around to face the creatures moving on him. Red stained his soul and his vision. Sanguinius’ curse rose in him. Dozens of the sarcophagi were ruined, the neophytes inside torn to pieces in their sleep. Dante experienced a father’s insane fury at the sight. Anger threatened to overwhelm him.

  Be not rage, lest rage become all you are. The words of the Bloody Catechism rang in his mind. Let the fourth virtue guide and save you, until all is lost and restraint be abandoned. This is what they want, he told himself. This is why they are here.

  Snarling like a beast, he fought back the urge to slay these monsters at the cost of everything else. If he lost himself, he would lose the battle.

  Still, they must die. It was not a question of how they died, or how he killed them, for they would die. It was a question of where his mind was when he was done.

  He swung his axe in crackling arcs. A genestealer’s exoskeletal armour was tough, but no match for a powered blade. Their arms came free at the passing of the edge. Their heads separated from necks deferentially, as if they inconvenienced the axe’s machine-spirit and would make amends. Blood and flesh sprayed in gory rain. Dante’s armour was painted black and yellow by vile xenos fluids. It was fortunate the tyranid ichor was repellent, or he would have struggled to contain the Red Thirst.

  Space Marines were falling all around the far end of the hall, their ceramite ripped open by alien claws. Dante despaired to see so many red-armoured bodies lying on the ground, and still his warriors were dying. A bike roared past him, engine afire, and exploded against the far side of the chamber, smashing three sarcophagi to pieces.

  Dante found himself surrounded by a dozen purple and white horrors; the noise of bolter fire was giving out. His men were being slaughtered.

  So it comes to this, thought Dante. He set the terror field projector built into the death mask’s halo to maximum. The arcane psychic technologies whined hard, and a pressure grew in his head. He bellowed out his anger, and the projector amplified it. A human foe would have fallen helpless with fear. But Dante was screaming his defiance at a mind far greater than his, and the genestealers did no more than flinch. It was a slender advantage that Dante used. He threw himself forward. The mass of his armour and jump pack knocked two of the enemy flying, and he laid into the rest before they recovered.

  If you are to die, die well, he said to himself.

  More and more were coming for him. He had lost count of how many he had killed. They pressed in. He cut them down with his axe, he turned them to steam with the perdition pistol, but there were too many, and they crushed his arms against his side.

  ‘My lord Dante,’ boomed a powerful voice, amplified to ear-splitting levels. ‘Get down.’

  With a last effort, Dante lunged forward, dragging genestealers to the floor with him. He fell into a flailing mass of arms and claws. The deafening racket of an assault cannon cleared a space above him. Monstrous aliens flew backwards, riddled with holes or burst apart completely. Dante wrestled with the creature beneath him. He let his axe and pistol fall, and choked the life from it with his golden hands. He did not let go until he felt the creature’s spine give under its chitinous exoskeleton.

  The whining of an autocannon barrel powering down fell to sudden silence. Dante stood.

  The Hall of Sarcophagi was destroyed. Fires burned in broken machines. There were but a few sarcophagi left intact; most had been ripped open, the rest were ­shattered by weapons fire. Dante felt a deep, sickening rage.

  Space Marines lay dead all through the hall. Most were of Raxietal’s reserve company. Among the dead lay Raxietal himself, his left arm and head torn from his body, the pieces of his corpse surrounded by xenos dead.

  Three Dreadnoughts stood in the doorway of the hall, weapons glowing with heat. Their giant shoulder plates also bore the double yellow blood drip of the Sixth.

  ‘We… we could not come quickly enough to save our brothers,’ their leader said. His machine-moderated voice was thick with emotion. ‘I…’

  ‘I too was late, Brother Daman,’ said Dante.

  ‘They should have waited.’

  Dante counted thirty Space Marine corpses. ‘The enemy is cunning. It wished to provoke us by attacking our youth. It has succeeded.’ He reactivated his helm’s strategic displays. For the time being the second line was holding. ‘Dontoriel,’ he voxed. ‘Report.’

  ‘The genatorum is free of enemy. You were right, my lord, the void shield was their target. We engaged them near the first gateway. The enemy were annihilated. We are chasing down the survivors.’

  Relief coursed through Dante, easing the hammering of his hearts. He switched vox channels, hunting out Corbulo’s private channel. ‘Captain Raxietal has fallen. Brother, attend to the extraction of his gene-seed p
ersonally. He was a warrior of rare skill.’

  ‘How many dead?’ replied Corbulo. The sound of fighting raged in the background. Corbulo’s ident signum placed him on the northern curtain wall.

  ‘Thirty fallen. Some are wounded.’ Dante attempted to move, but was halted by the drag of his injured leg. Wound signifiers screamed for attention. Furthermore, his armour’s lower assembly was impaired. ‘I need your help. I am wounded. I require Techmarines also, my armour is damaged.’

  ‘I will find one and bring him with me for you, my lord,’ responded Corbulo.

  ‘My thanks.’ Dante cut the vox, and limped towards a wounded Space Marine, intending to comfort him until help arrived.

  A muffled explosion sounded. The Arx Angelicum shook violently. The lumens went out.

  ‘Status!’ Dante voxed his entire command cadre.

  Incarael replied, his passionless machine voice as close to panic as Dante had ever heard. ‘My lord, the void shield is down.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Heart, Shattered

  The lictor watched the prey’s warrior strain attack its broodmates. Prey in red fired their refined mineral spines at the trygons. They misidentified synapse creatures and falsely assumed the death of the largest would precipitate the confusion of the genestealers. Their tactic worked against them. The trygons were too strong to be easily stopped by their weaponry, leaving the genestealers crucial moments to attack. This prey was easy. Slow to understand. Slow to adapt, while the hive mind evolved a thousand times faster. The lictor had no opinions. It made no moral judgement. It felt no emotion. The little clash it watched through its many eyes was added to the sum total of the hive mind’s knowledge. Little was to be gleaned. Observation was not its task any more. With complete disinterest, the lictor retreated into the shadows.

  Many ways revealed themselves to the creature’s bewildering suite of senses. Stealthy sonar pulses sounded out secret paths. Psychic resonance and scent revealed the location of prey concentrations that must be avoided. It slunk through cracks barely wider than its head, compressing its body to an astounding degree. The energy skin of the prey hive was generated by devices buried in this segment, all protected by rock and mineral adaptations. They thought it safe. They were mistaken.