A rush of alien anger burst over the square. Guinian cried out. The crystalline matrix about his helmet sparked and he stumbled, overwhelmed by the cult witch’s warp-born powers. Teale grabbed him by the arm, and pulled the Librarian to the centre of the square, where the others surrounded him.
‘She is strong!’ gasped Guinian.
The four Blood Drinkers stood with the alien dead piled about them. The genestealers came on from every arch and doorway; creeping down stone columns, slinking out of dark corridor mouths.
The Space Marines, heroes among heroes all, were outnumbered. Reports from the rest of the Sanctum came in through Caedis’s helmet vox. Relief was deadly seconds away.
The false saint smiled. Her teeth were small and pointed, her gums dark. ‘You test the might of Mother Hesta, you test and you die . This is our world now, it belongs to the Children of the Stars.’
She raised her staff, glowing with wyrding energy.
‘The blood of life flows quickly!’ Teale said, intoning the first line of the Sanguis Moritura.
‘Only in death can it be stilled!’ replied the others.
‘Let not ours be stilled easily, let it flow on and outward – let it flow from us as we slay those who free it!’
‘Blood is strength, in death it quickens!’
They sang then the hymn of fury, dry lips bitten red by sharp teeth. They prepared to sell themselves dearly.
Hesta pointed her staff at them and laughed.
Stone burst inwards. Lumps of saints flew across the square, battering down several genestealers. A cloud of dust billowed outwards.
Brother Endarmiel strode through the breach, roaring metallically. White dust coated black armour. Twin blood fists whirred. He pivoted and drove a mechanical arm forward, smashing hybrids to a pulp. Hesta’s eyes widened and she cast her bolt of gathered power at the war machine. Purple light flared around Endarmiel’s black armour. He leaned into the blast, weathered it, then strode on and smashed a fist towards the false saint. Hesta stumbled, energy flaring around her as her psychic shield took the brunt of the blow. She snarled, swinging her staff at the war machine’s leg. It connected with a resounding boom. Brother Endarmiel staggered, and Hesta howled victoriously, but the Dreadnought extended one mighty fist. The storm bolter slung underneath fired, and Hesta was cut to pieces.
Brother Endarmiel turned from the shattered remains of the magos and turned upon the brood. Caedis and the others charged forward.
Caught between the rampaging Dreadnought and the lord of the Blood Drinkers, the genestealers were doomed. Their claws could do little against the plating that protected Endarmiel’s sarcophagus. They scored the metal, paring red blood marks and sacred scrolls away, leaving raw tracks in the adamantium, but they could not find their way through it. They died, crushed by Endarmiel’s fists, impaled by Gladius Rubeum , cleaved in two by Guinian’s force staff, torn apart by chainsword and lightning claw.
Erdagon fell, but the slaughter continued unabated.
Caedis slew another of the half-xenos, driving his sword point through its alien skull.
‘Come,’ said Guinian hoarsely. ‘Our target lies within. I can sense them, and they can sense me. Their mother is dead and still they do not fear.’
There were only three of them now: Teale, Caedis and Guinian. Teale turned away from them. The roars of the Dreadnought were deafening as it finished the last of the hybrids, and he had to shout to make himself heard.
‘I must remain here and put aside the blood rage. Erdagon can be saved, and I must retrieve the gene-seed of brother Hermis. Go with fortune and fury, sing well the hymns of battle-joy.’
Caedis gave his assent to the Sanguinary Master. Teale set about his solemn work. Battle-brothers were arriving in the courtyard in Endarmiel’s wake, the fight was nearly done. Caedis motioned for a squad to follow, and together they exited the square and descended into the catacombs beneath Saint Catria’s Reliquary Sanctum.
How many holy women lay interred there? At the base of the stairs, in a wide corridor paved with marble, the burials began, hollows in the wall like shelves five high, each housing a set of mummified remains. Corridors led off at regular intervals, all crammed with desiccated corpses.
The Blood Drinkers advanced, the Thirst boiling within them.
In a tomb remade in a crude parody of a nursery, they found the purestrains. Hollow-eyed women and feeble men snatched the mewling creatures from cribs arranged around a throne of bone and iron as the angels of death entered. Four arms stole around the neck of each surrogate parent, and purple snouts nuzzled human necks. The bewitched humans turned to shield their hellish young with their own bodies. Some raised weapons; bolters barked, and these few fell.
A wave of psychic malice came from this twisted family. Cold, alien eyes stared with hatred from the changeling babies.
‘Do not kill them, not yet,’ ordered Epistolary Guinian in his stern and sorrowful voice. ‘I must take the knowledge I seek from their minds.’
The children of Mother Hesta hissed, tubular tongues sliding over wicked teeth. Reptilian eyes possessed of deep and terrible wisdom regarded them. Their false mothers crooned over them frantically as though they were human infants, blind to their heinous form.
Guinian undid his helmet clasps, air hissing as the neck seal came undone. He set his helm on the floor, and stared at the xenos brood. ‘Know me now, oh foul and repellent beasts, for I will have what I seek.’ Guinian’s eyes glowed, and he reached out to the creatures.
The purestrain young let out a haunting cry as one, heard as much in the mind as in the air. Fingers shifted on weapons in armoured hands.
‘Wait!’ commanded Caedis. The Thirst threatened to undo their task nigh to its completion. ‘Do not fire!’
Guinian’s eyes slid open. Triumph pulled his dour face into a smile. ‘My lord, I have it.’
‘You can augur the path of the hulk, brother? You can find the initial source of the xenos contagion?’
‘Yes, my lord. I have the psychic scent of these things ,’ Guinian spat the word. ‘There are patterns and trails, lord, even in the chaos of empyrean. I can lead us to their foul progenitor.’
Caedis nodded. His eyes swam. The Thirst tortured him. Never had it assailed him so strongly, and a shadow of apprehension stole over his heart.
‘Excellent news’ he said, forcing himself to master his will. ‘I will recall the Second and Fifth Companies to our fleet. This will be a gathering of heroes! We shall crush this abomination at its source once and for all.’
‘Please!’ called one of the women. She was tall and famished, her vitality bled away by her monstrous family. ‘The children! Please, do not harm the little ones!’
Caedis shook his head slowly. ‘Your actions are no sin of your own, but you are forever lost to us. We will commend your souls to your Saint Catria – perhaps she will judge you kindly.’
Caedis raised his hand. The Catrians wailed and screamed.
He let it drop.
Promethium and bolter fire cleansed the chamber.
‘Where were they found?’ demanded Colonel Indrana. She fought and failed to keep the horror out of her voice. From outside the command centre she could hear the thunder of the Space Marines’ departing craft, taking the angelic warriors back to their fleet.
‘Bunker eighty-five. No one saw or heard anything,’ said the medicae adept. ‘I have never seen anything like this. These cuts…’
‘Yes. I can see them,’ snapped Indrana. She stared. The medicae facility smelled like an abattoir, not a place of healing.
‘Colonel, what should we do?’
‘Burn them,’ she said curtly. ‘Burn them all. Contact the families. Tell them they died in defence of our home and the Emperor’s domain.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Immediately!’
The room burst into activity, her order breaking the air of terror in the room, each of the women present thankful of a task to perform.
Note:
The majority of this novel takes place in 887.M39, two thousand years before the present year of 998.M41.
Chapter 1
Memories of Honourum
Serenity entered the mind and hearts of Mantillio Galt. The whispered prayers of the chapel serfs receded to be replaced by the sough of soft wind. The buzz of the tattooing needle faded. The rapid prick, prick, prick of it on his skin was kissed away by cold mountain air. His perception of the battle-barge’s Grand Chapel became uncertain. His eyes were closed, all he saw was the fleshy dark behind his eyelids, but the sense of it, the weight of years and prayer, grew lesser and replaced by an impression of open spaces. He was hanging between the physical and the metaphysical; a disquieting sensation of being neither here nor there. He reminded himself that he was aboard Novum in Honourum , in transit through the warp. He lacked the dubious witch-gifts that would allow him to sense it, but at these times, halfway into his meditative state, he felt he could almost see it.
He quashed his anxiety.
‘Glorious is the Emperor, mankind manifest as one, he shall light the way.’ He quoted the Codex Astartes, and concentrated on his breathing.
The scents and sounds of home called to him, but he would not go there, not yet. For the Flesh Remembrance to take, for it to be bright with truth and glorious for the Emperor’s eyes when his time came, first he must relive the incident which the tattoo would commemorate.
The material world flickered, and went away entirely.
Fire. Fire blazing in the fluted corridors of the eldar craft. The osseous plastics of the alien vessel burned ferociously. Blue-tinted flame washed against his battleplate; blue from bone licking at the blue-and-bone of his Chapter’s heraldry. The temperature indicators of his sensorium were far into the red; without his power armour he would be burned alive. Even now, he sweated from the heat.
The roar of the fire was deafening. Flickering movement had him raise his bolt pistol rapidly, his power sword ready. Nothing, nothing but fire and burning psychoplastics.
Most of the eldar pirates were dead, their slender forms shattered by bolter fire. Gaudy corpses draped the platforms of the chamber, some already aflame. Reports from Novum in Honourum had the remaining three eldar vessels fleeing, strike cruiser Ceaseless Vigilance and Battlefleet Trident’s four escort craft in hot pursuit. They would not catch the fleeter xenos craft, but Galt was confident they would not return to trouble the Orin Gap. Ten fragile alien spaceships were wrecks. It had been a costly victory; Corvo’s Hammer wallowed in the void, heavily damaged. And it had not been won yet.
‘Form up on me,’ he ordered his squad of Sternguard veterans. Four remained. They ceased their checking of the dead, and gathered around their captain, ever alert. Firelight danced over their armours’ ornate decorations.
Galt nodded towards the large door at the head of the chamber. Delicate galleries framed it, drawing the eye towards its curved symmetries. The personal badge of the eldar corsairs’ leader adorned this portal: a blank-eyed face, dripping with tears.
Decadent xenos trash.
‘Through there, the bridge,’ Galt said. ‘Slay their leader, and they will not return. Brother Verderio, blow the door.’
‘Yes, captain.’
The door was as fragile as the rest of the ship. Verderio’s melta bomb reduced it to slag. Beyond lay their target.
They marched in, bolters high. Shuriken fire came at them from several quarters. Pistol shots. Razored discs embedded themselves in the thick ceramite of the Space Marines’ battleplate. Not a single Sternguard fell, their relic armour proof against such feeble alien devices. Bolt fire replied. Three eldar died, joining their brethren already draped across the bridge’s shattered instrument consoles.
Ruination greeted Galt, fallen spars and shattered bonework all around. The corsairs had been heavily punished by Battlefleet Trident’s weapons. Broken machinery and dead aliens surrounded a raised dais, upon which, in an ornate throne, an eldar princeling lolled, his chin upon his fist. He wore no armour, but was instead clad in garish robes. Nor did he carry any weapon, although he looked at the Novamarines with such disdain it seemed he thought his glare alone deadly enough. Two forms flanked him, grasping evoluted weapons. They were so still that, for a second, Galt took them to be statues. They were not. He watched them closely for movement. He had seen their kind before, despicable thinking machines: robots, abominable intelligences, forbidden tech made doubly vile by its alien origin.
Galt holstered his pistol and unclasped his helmet. He placed it upon the floor, looking upon the alien lord without the mediation of his power armour’s senses. His purpose was twofold. Galt would allow the eldar to see the tally of his deeds that were marked upon his face, and he would view the alien in turn with his own eyes, to test his spirit’s mettle against its uncleanliness unshielded.
‘Surrender!’ he called. ‘And die with what little honour your kind possesses.’
The eldar shook his head as if enormously disappointed. He toyed with a glittering jewel on a chain about his neck and curled his lip in distaste. ‘So predictable, so very, very predictable.’ He stood. ‘For a thousand years I have plied the stars, mon-keigh , and you march in here in your…’ He gestured at the Space Marines, at a loss for words. ‘…ugly suits of armour, shouting at me as if I were deaf, expecting me to hold my hands in the air and allow you to end my life with your crude devices.’ He pursed his lips. His sing-song, accented Gothic was loaded with contempt. ‘I am not deaf, Captain Galt. Far from it. How else would I know your name? I hear all.’
Galt’s face was unmoving. He was unimpressed with the eldar’s attempts to unnerve him. He jerked his head. The Sternguard raised their weapons.
‘Then die without honour. It matters not a whit to me. Only that you no longer prey upon the citizens and shipping of the Imperium.’
The eldar laughed. ‘You think I die today? No. I am not done with this path yet, let alone my life.’
Suddenly, the pirate captain dropped from view through a circle of light that burst open in the floor. Bolts cracked into the throne, their target gone.
‘Cease fire!’ Galt ordered. He signalled with his hand to Brother Aster, that he should investigate the pirate captain’s escape route. ‘Brothers, cover him. Beware the statues beside the throne.’ Aster ran forward, bolter raised. He looked downwards, then back at his captain.
‘An energy portal of some kind, brother-captain. I cannot see through it. Do we follow?’
‘No,’ said Galt. ‘The doorway will not go where he went, I’ll warrant. Trust not the pathways of the alien.’
Sure enough, the light winked out. The portal closed, revealing nought but a patch of smooth floor.
‘Well said, brother-captain,’ said Brother Kederion.
‘Captain,’ warned out Brother Gorfillio. He raised his gun. ‘The constructs awaken.’ The statues were moving.
Aster backed away from the dais, bolter up.
‘As I thought, eldar ghost machines,’ spat Galt. ‘Aster, stand clear. Take them down.’
‘Stand firm, brothers,’ said Aster, ‘these things are tougher than they look.’
The machines moved slowly, as if time ran differently for them. Boltgun rounds smacked into them, but failed to penetrate. Together, the ghost machines raised their weapons.
‘Take cover!’ shouted Galt. He and his veterans were familiar with the deadly effects of wraithcannon fire.
The guns were silent. A black orb appeared on Verderio’s chest. He glanced down at it, and died. Verderio collapsed in on himself, pulled t
owards the ball of unlight. His armour shattered with a deafening crack. Blood sprayed in all directions as his body imploded.
The Sternguard went for cover, keeping up fire as they went. The machines were slow, but their shots many. They tore chunks from the battle-scarred bridge. Dozens of bolt rounds spattered off them without harm, a few exploding when they ricocheted and buried themselves in the fabric of the chamber.
Throughout it all the ghost machines made not a single sound. The Space Marines were fighting the dead.
Galt watched from behind a fallen spar. The roaring of flames from the adjoining room had become louder, punctuated by the crashing of falling chunks of wraithbone. He had to end this now. He waited until the wraithguard were facing away from him, ready to exploit their poor reactions.
‘For Honourum! For Corvo! For the Oath!’ he cried, and ran full tilt at the eldar machines. He slammed into one, jarring his own body. It staggered back from the force of his impact. The second registered his presence, and brought its deadly rifle to bear. The machines overtopped him by thirty centimetres or more, slender giants. Galt looked into the long, cold face of the thing’s helmet. His own was reflected in the gloss of its surface.
Galt swung his power sword with all his might, the crackling edge of it slamming into the bulbous end of the ghost warrior’s cannon. The strange alloys of it split. He stepped back and brought the sword down again, severing the end of the gun from the stock. The wraithguard dropped the shattered weapon, and made a clumsy lunge for him. He sidestepped, sweeping his sword around towards the leg of the first wraithguard, now recovered from Galt’s charge. The sword dug deep into the back of its knee. The construct rounded on him, gun coming towards his head. Galt wrenched at his power sword, the tug of it coming free sending him backwards. He regained his guard in time to stare right down the muzzle of the wraithguard’s gun.
Defenders of Mankind - David Annandale & Guy Haley Page 37