Defenders of Mankind - David Annandale & Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

  The room, a kitchen, it seemed to have been, contained a scene of ancient slaughter. The bones of the men who had once staffed Father Harvest were scattered like twigs across the floor, black bloodstains on the walls marked their passing from this life into the next. All else had passed, ground to dust by the passage of time.

  ‘Emperor preserve their souls,’ said Alanius softly.

  It was a small room, insignificant, its mundane purpose adding to the poignancy of what must have been a desperate last stand.

  ‘They await the final call to serve, their lot in this life is done, in the next they may excel,’ said Voldo, emotionlessly reciting the prayer of Honourum. ‘Had xenos broken into the ship, at least the crew would have died quickly.’

  ‘That is somewhat callous, brother-sergeant,’ said Alanius. ‘They were men of the Imperium, men such as we are sworn to protect.’

  Voldo turned away from the grey bones and black blood. ‘I meant no callousness nor disrespect to these men, but conjecture on their fate, however awful, is ultimately meaningless. Whatever battle was fought here was done long ago. Long before the ship was attracted to the agglomeration and found another peril to stalk its halls.’

  They passed on towards the final corridor they had to traverse in the broken agri-hauler, the way to the next ship in the hulk. They opened the door to this corridor, and Voldo’s rad-counter buzzed like an insect taking flight.

  There was a strange mist low on the air, green and heavy. Tendrils of it uncurled themselves into the doorway, trailing across the feet of the group.

  ‘Radioactive fog,’ said Voldo.

  ‘It is the air itself, poisoned by the dying of machines,’ said Clastrin. ‘This we certainly may not breathe.’

  ‘We are far from the sources of active radioactivity,’ said Voldo.

  ‘That suggests the fog will only grow thicker as we proceed. The environment here is poorer than anticipated,’ said Nuministon. ‘This is valuable data, useful for the assault. It will not harm you. Your armour is proof against such hazards, as is mine.’

  ‘You speak truly,’ said Alanius, ‘but your servitors, magos, their organic components will die.’

  ‘And as I stated before, they will persist long enough to fulfil their purpose,’ replied Nuministon.

  ‘We should hurry our pace nevertheless, lest they fail. It would go ill if two of our brothers are occupied with transporting the device and we are attacked,’ said Voldo.

  ‘I concur, brother Novamarine,’ said Alanius.

  The party proceeded, kicking the fog into uncanny shapes. It grew thicker, rising from the floor to fill the corridor to the ceiling, crowding their vision and disabling their long-range sensors. Suit light beams were forced nearer and nearer to their source as the fog grew denser, until each Terminator appeared as a bulky phantom led by a bobbing will-o’-the-wisp. The glow from the ship’s functioning light fittings withdrew within the vapour, becoming pale smears of uncertain origin. Doors gaped wide and sudden. Where the floor buckled it came as a surprise and the Terminators stumbled. Lesser men, even lesser members of the Adeptus Astartes, would have felt their nerves fray in these circumstances, but these were the veterans of two great Chapters, and they felt nothing but a heightened sense of wariness.

  ‘Switch to echo location,’ said Voldo. ‘Sound will be our guide.’

  ‘Will it not alert the xenos?’ asked Azmael. ‘When we fought them on Xoros Ten, they appeared to be able to hear well into the ultrasonic range.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Voldo. ‘They will be able to hear the echo locator’s voice, but only if they are near. It is better to know the ground and risk combat than to be blind.’

  The Terminators did as ordered. Sonic units pulsed.

  ‘This is a poor situation, brothers,’ said Eskerio. ‘Radiation is far higher than we anticipated.’ The motion tracker was a useless fuzz beyond seventy metres, the map limited to a series of stacked boxes painted in high-pitched sound.

  ‘We are close to the exit point,’ said Voldo. ‘Be steady.’

  They came to the end of the corridor, where it took a sharp bend to the left, following the hull’s inside. Further that way the corridor was blocked, the hull and ceiling pressed down as if a hand had crushed the ship, but the wall directly ahead was clear, with space for Clastrin and Gallio to work. They approached, and Voldo and his comrades felt their weight shift.

  ‘The grav plates here are dead,’ said Clastrin. ‘Re-engage mag-locks.’

  A series of clunks sounded as boots locked to the floor.

  ‘Here Brother Gallio, this is to be our way into the next ship.’ Voldo indicated a patch of wall.

  ‘I will aid you, Brother Gallio, as before,’ said Clastrin.

  The Master of the Forge and veteran brother set to work, the others standing guard over them. Alanius had Brother Curzon station himself by debris, in case something did come through. Others hunted out underfloor access ways, or roof vents and crawlways that led into the ship’s systems. Genestealers could cram themselves into remarkably tight spaces, to emerge where least expected.

  The veteran brothers stood as still as statues, green fog caressing their armour, the long silence of the ship torn by the crackle and whine of Gallio’s chainfist and the hiss of Clastrin’s plasma torches. Voldo checked his mission clock. Three hours in. In another five the tech-priests of the explorator fleet would expect the device to be functional and start their own machines. There was no way to signal them should that not be the case.

  The Forgemaster and Gallio were close to breaching the inner skin when Eskerio called out. ‘Brother-Sergeant Voldo! Quadrant five, coordinates 917.328.900.’

  Voldo sent his map over to that point, a labyrinth of corridors and rooms and crawlspaces and cracks whisked past his eyes. He was just in time to see a small, pulsing red dot, before it moved off the edge of their equipment’s effective range. Five hundred metres, slightly forward, down and to the left of them. Not close, but close enough.

  ‘Are we noticed?’ asked Alanius.

  ‘It is hard to say,’ said Voldo. ‘Genestealers sleep most of their time aboard these hulks, but there are always a few awake. Sentries, if you will. If one has seen us, all have. They are psychically attuned to one another.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Alanius. ‘It is the way Brother-Epistolary Guinian tracked them here, through their psychic bond.’

  ‘They are beasts. Beasts do not post sentries,’ said Curzon.

  ‘If our Novamarines brother says they do, believe him. Do not dismiss the genestealers as animals,’ said Alanius. ‘We have not fought side by side with Master Caedis these last twenty-five years against them. They have claimed more than a few of our brethren who thought as you do. Do not underestimate them.’

  ‘It is my eternal regret our squad was with the Fifth Company all this time, brother-sergeant,’ said Curzon.

  ‘Do not despair, brother. You will have the chance to blood your claws.’

  ‘You have not faced this foe before?’ said Voldo.

  ‘No. Squad Hesperion had been attached to the Fifth Company’s taskforce for some time, and we have been separated from the rest of our veteran brothers,’ said Alanius. ‘Lord Caedis wished us to accompany you, so that when the assault comes, all the First Company will have faced the genestealers in battle. You have great experience, he desires us to share it.’

  Voldo could see the wisdom in that, and the lack of it.

  Gallio pulled back a wide section of hull plate with the help of Clastrin’s servo-harness. ‘Brother-sergeant, we are through.’

  A black space gaped, into which the radioactive fog was rapidly sucked, spilling over the lip of metal like a waterfall.

  Voldo strode forward. The ships had been pushed so hard together the metal of their hulls was mashed into one. He stepped one foot over the raw doorway, and lowered himself the fifty centimetres difference between the two ships’ decks. A black space gaped in front of him, his suit light too feeble to dissipa
te the imprisoned night.

  He drew his power sword. Blue lightning crackled along its edges.

  ‘Brothers,’ said Voldo. ‘Be on your guard.’

  Chapter 6

  First Contact

  The second ship was also of Imperial origin, but far older and in worse repair than the Father Harvest . Many of its compartments were crushed to nothing. In places the floor had fallen away entirely, giving view to deck after crumbling deck until they were swallowed by the hulk’s fathomless dark. Paths the map showed as clear were clogged with wreckage many metres deep that they could not cut through. One passage was a solid mass of rippled ice, another cut by a chasm they could barely see across. Each time they were forced to double back and find another route. All systems aboard the ship were inert and remained so despite the best efforts of Nuministon and Clastrin to coax them into life. Neither their tools nor their prayers would awaken them, and after a time the Techmarine and magos abandoned their efforts, and the group pressed on as best they could. Every door they encountered had to be cut through. Gallio’s chainfist made short work of such obstructions, but the screech of metal on metal and the rapid bangs of the weapon’s disruption field shattering matter threatened to bring the foe upon their heads. Each door breached was followed by a tense pause, every member of the party listening for the approach of furtive claws while Eskerio and Azmael scrutinised their instruments.

  There was no sign of the enemy.

  The Space Marines did not speak but to offer status reports. The ship was so full of holes that every corridor presented a tactical nightmare should the enemy choose to attack. They were free of the fog for a time, allowing their auspexes to see deeper into the structure. No new contacts were reported, but then they passed through a crumpled bulkhead and they were into the fog again. The range of the auspexes abruptly contracted, and Voldo’s rad-counter screamed so loudly he was forced to silence its audio function.

  Not long after they re-entered the radioactive fog, one of the servitors stumbled and went down onto its knees. The other did not register its companion’s malfunction, dragging the seismic probe forward and pulling the dying servitor off balance until Nuministon halted his slave. The kneeling once-man panted slowly behind the clear cylinder of its environment suit helmet, then it toppled forward to lie half-hidden in the mist.

  Genthis, directly behind the servitors in the party line, called a halt. He strode forward and pushed the servitor over with his foot. Milky eyes stared out of a face clearly exhibiting radiation burns. ‘Dead,’ he called. ‘One of us will have to take up the burden.’

  ‘Who?’ said Astomar. ‘You Blood Drinkers all bear claws, you cannot carry the machine, nor can I.’ He waved his heavy flamer, its housing clasped firmly around his right hand, by way of illustration.

  ‘Brothers, I will bear it alone,’ said Clastrin. ‘The other servitor will be dead soon in any case.’ He spoke to the remaining cyborg in the twitters of machine speak. It let go of the probe and stepped back. Clastrin moved the dead servitor from his path, and, gripping the device in his servo-arm’s manipulators, heaved it off the ground.

  ‘Sergeants,’ said Azmael, ‘I am picking up contacts.’

  ‘I too,’ said Eskerio. ‘Fifty metres distant, two of them.’

  Voldo hurried his map over to the edge of the auspex’s current range. Two blips. They faded.

  ‘They have stopped,’ he said. ‘They have stopped because we have stopped.’

  ‘They are following us,’ said Alanius. ‘Could they be herding us into an ambush?’

  ‘It is possible,’ said Voldo. ‘They might simply be waiting for reinforcements. We have been noticed. Even now, their vile kin will be stirring from their slumber. We must move on quickly.’

  ‘We are nearly at our objective,’ said Alanius.

  ‘We are, but our way back is blocked,’ said Voldo.

  ‘No. If we are quick, we might fight our way free before too many come and retrace our steps,’ said Alanius. ‘My brothers are armed for close quarter fighting. Let them come to us, we will drive a way through for us all.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Voldo. ‘Brother Astomar, you are to take rearguard. Fill the corridor with promethium should the genestealers come. Burn them.’

  ‘As you order, brother-sergeant.’

  Astomar dropped to the back of the line. They forged ahead, moving as quickly as they could in their armour, all pretence at stealth gone. The corridor they travelled creased inward from both sides, and for one heartbeat Voldo thought they would have to retrace their steps yet again. He pushed on. His plate screeched on the wall, his Crux Terminatus leaving white streaks as it grazed the metal. Then he was through.

  They wasted several minutes negotiating the seismic probe through the gap. The mission clock ticked down. In an hour, the tech-priests would detonate their explosives. The probe had to be active by then.

  The two dots stayed forever on the edge of the auspex’s range, disappearing when pockets of extreme radiation reduced the auspexes’ efficacy, appearing worryingly close when the machines were able to cast their sensing nets out further. Sometimes the contacts were together, and sometimes apart, but always they were there.

  The party broke through into a series of corridors and chambers that had retained something of their original shape. Their speed increased. Voldo had Astomar hang back from the main body of the group, covering its rear, before rejoining them under the watchful gaze and gun of Eskerio, and then remaining behind once more. This seemed to keep the creatures shadowing them back a little, and Voldo breathed easier.

  They passed into a lozenge-shaped compartment, where the tattered remains of radiation suits hung from rusted hooks and traces of hazard signs were visible under ancient corrosion. A further door led into a square room, double doors marked with sigils of warding and warning at its far side. On Voldo’s map the mission objective marker glowed bright in the centre of the wide room beyond.

  ‘And so providence brings us nigh to our goal, brothers,’ said Voldo. ‘Magos Nuministon, Forgemaster Clastrin, to the front with me.’

  They forced open the double doors by dint of main force. On the other side, four long, four-storey machines filled the room, spaced regularly apart; the vessel’s Geller field generation room.

  Nuministon spoke. His harsh voice was unpleasant over the vox-speakers, but for once Voldo was glad to hear it.

  ‘We are here. I shall deploy my machine.’

  ‘There are ten minutes left upon the mission clock,’ said Voldo. ‘Be swift so that we might be away as soon as the soundings are taken.’

  Before Voldo would allow Nuministon through, he had Eskerio conduct a thorough scan of the room, then investigated it himself with Brother Gallio and Brother Eskerio at his side. There were two other exits: a door to the left and a broad way opposite the double-doored entrance. This wide corridor was filled with wreckage, a narrow gap at its top.

  ‘There is a hole in the ceiling, brother-sergeant,’ said Eskerio, gesturing upward with his power fist. ‘Easy ingress for the xenos.’

  Voldo tilted his torso backward, sending his suit light beam leaping up the wall. The breach it revealed was wide, fringed with streamers of bent metal bracing, the room above inky black. ‘I see it. It is unfortunate. Gallio, cover the breach. We cannot secure this room entirely, but we will do all we can. Brother Astomar, report.’

  ‘No sign of the enemy, brother-sergeant.’ Astomar was twenty metres back down the corridor by the far door of the old suiting room, weapon pointing the way they had come.

  ‘If we have arrived at our objective, Brother Voldo, Azmael and Curzon should join your brother at the rear. They can engage the xenos should they weather the flames, while Brother Azmael’s presence there will extend the boundaries of our auspex’s range,’ said Alanius.

  ‘Yes, a good course of action.’ Voldo checked his map. He set out a plan for the others as Curzon and Azmael stamped back through the forechamber to join Astomar. Genthis
and Tarael joined Eskerio and all took up station beside the door leading from the forechamber into the suiting room, covering Astomar, Curzon and Azmael’s retreat. By mutual agreement, Alanius set off to the debris pile, ready to intercept anything that might force itself over the top, while Voldo himself strode to the doorway leading out of the side of the Geller room. He sheathed his sword and wrenched the doors open a crack, an impossible task without the Terminator armour amplifying his already considerable strength. The corridor beyond it was empty.

  ‘Lord Forgemaster Clastrin, please weld this door closed.’

  Clastrin deposited the sensor probe where Nuministon indicated and joined his Chapter brother. His servo-harness’s manipulators locked themselves to the doors and pushed them shut again. A hissing plasma torch descended on a slender mechanical arm and burned into the metal. Voldo looked away, its brightness interfering with his armour’s sensorium.

  The map within his helmet showed his group’s disposition, icons overlaid on a green wireframe representation of the rooms. Nuministon was by his device. Gallio stood back from the hole in the ceiling. He glanced at the magos from time to time, checking his progress. Through Gallio’s suit picter, Voldo saw the tech-priest activate the machine. Light glowed from the upper screen. Nuministon pressed at something. Arms extruded themselves from cavities in the device’s four corners, descended to the ground and locked it down. The foot, which Voldo had originally taken to be the main support, was now suspended fifty centimetres or so from the ground.

  ‘I am ready,’ said Nuministon. ‘Now we must wait for the detonations.’

  Voldo went through the placing of his and Alanius’s warriors one more time, thought of tactical responses to attacks from various quarters, committing courses of action to memory. It was always the same, no matter how many times he fought. The sense of oneness he felt with his armour retreated, the feed from the sensorium crawling into the back of his skull, leaving him feeling pinned and helpless within the suit’s thick layers of ceramite, plasteel and adamantium. For more than one brother he had known, the armour had become a trap, and then a tomb. Despite their strength and durability, the Terminator suits could be damaged, and if their own guiding machine-spirits died, they were impossible to free oneself from. And if one could free oneself, it begged the question, where would a brother go? Into the near-airless, toxic environs of the hulk? Voldo was not a normal human. He had not been a true man for long centuries. He did not feel fear as other men feel fear, but all the same in those moments of waiting he became acutely aware of his own mortality, of the air in his lungs, the pump of his hearts; a body that for all its gifts was comprised of weak bone and weaker flesh, a body encased in a machine that itself was, in the larger scale of things, also weak. Whatever the tech-priests might say, what power technology had in the face of the universe’s hostility was meagre at best.