Defenders of Mankind - David Annandale & Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

  Clastrin took one last look at his brothers, their bone-and-blue armour standing shoulder to shoulder with the red of the Blood Drinkers, then turned, jumped up, grabbed the lip of the hatch and pulled himself in.

  He was in the machine, surrounded by cabling. He imagined himself a component in the grand scheme of the Omnissiah, a piece of the greater puzzle of the universe’s mechanism. His mucranoid film shielded him from snags and the sharp edges in the crawlspace. Genthis, not so protected, was already cut and scraped in a dozen places, leaving a trail of blood which dried on contact with the metal. It was punishingly hot in the crawlspace, the air stale and rank, and the other adept’s skin was raw with blisters.

  ‘How far?’ said the Blood Drinker. Wildness had crept back into his voice. He was enjoying this.

  ‘Not far, thirty metres. We pass alongside an access corridor to an outer airlock. There is a panel towards the end. From there I will be able to remotely open the door and let our brothers in.’

  Genthis made a noise of affirmation. ‘Good, good. I long to rejoin them. It is not our way to retreat from a fight.’ He moved forward some way as he spoke, then said, ‘Wait! We come to a crossways.’

  Clastrin brought up a copy of the map in his intelligence core. The cranial implant was another gift of Mars, another thing that set him aside from his battle-brothers. A vertical shaft bisected theirs. On the far side the way grew wider, two broad ways filled with power conduits leading at right angles away up and down into the skin of the ship.

  ‘Go on,’ said Clastrin.

  ‘Shh!’ said Genthis. ‘I hear something.’

  Clastrin waited as the Blood Drinker inched forward to peer down the shaft, then up. He turned back to look at the Novamarines Forgemaster.

  ‘Movement. The enemy descends upon us.’ He scrambled forward, swinging his legs under him and dropping into the vertical shaft. He looked upward. ‘Hurry Lord Forgemaster, you must be quick! Crawl over the shaft and be on your way. I will hold them here.’

  Clastrin wriggled forward. The rattle of claws moving over metal came from above him, but he did not look up. He pushed past Genthis’s head, and went on into the further crawlspace. Genthis crawled in backward after him. Clastrin was four metres in when Genthis began shooting.

  Praying to the Machine-God and the Emperor for the Blood Drinker’s soul, he pushed on. The sounds of fighting intensified behind him, alien screeches echoing metallically in the confined space, the bark of the bolt pistol. The reek of genestealer blood thickened the air.

  Clastrin turned his broad shoulders awkwardly; these service conduits were designed for drones and unchanged men, not the giants of the Space Marine Chapters. His arms pinned to his chest, he worked with difficulty to free the access panel. Behind him, Genthis shouted the battle-cries of his Chapter. The noise of his weapon was overwhelmingly loud in the confined space. Shrieks and the thump of falling flesh signalled the demise of genestealers as they plummeted down the shaft, bouncing from its sides as they fell.

  Even through the noise, Clastrin heard the click as Genthis’s boltgun ran dry, the clatter as Genthis discarded it. The Blood Drinker began to chant, a Blood Drinkers’ battle hymn Clastrin did not know. The Blood Drinker was preparing himself for his death.

  The panel popped out of its housing. Air blew from the crawlway into the vacuum of the airlock access corridor.

  Clastrin drew in a deep breath, filling the lungs he was born with and the third gifted him by the Chapter. With a twist, he wormed through the hatch, and dropped into the way.

  Brother Genthis chanted. ‘Lo! I see the wings of Sanguinius! They shield me from harm! They bear me up from battle!’ The genestealer attacking him crouched in the mouth of the crawlway, its body contorted in a manner impossible for a man. Scrabbling talons raked at Genthis, drawing lines of blood across his scalp. The Space Marine grabbed one of the upper claws in his left hand, yanking it hard over to the side of the crawlspace. The genestealer hissed and struggled, its other arms tangled behind its pinned arm. Its tubular tongue flicked over its black teeth. Yellow eyes blazed. Genthis felt the power of them, felt them trying to subvert his will, but he was a brother of the Blood Drinkers and the wiles of xenos held no power over him. ‘Blood is life, the life is blood, through life we fulfil our duty, through blood we continue life!’ His voice became increasingly sonorous. ‘Take my blood, take my life, you will never turn me from my duty, though my blood lie thickening in the dust, and my life run out and be done!’

  He drove his combat knife deep into the glaring eye of the genestealer, twisted it until it ground on bone. The genestealer convulsed so hard it threw off Genthis’s hand. Its limbs rattled a drum roll of death on the metal.

  Wind sprang up, blowing down the corridor to where Clastrin had gone, and Genthis was glad that the Forgemaster of the Novamarines had made it into the airlock access corridor. He sang louder, against the howl of decompression. Leaving the dead genestealer blocking the crawlway, he backed further down. A pair of large purple hands grabbed at the corpse and pulled it away. The dead genestealer fell from sight as it dropped into the shaft. Three more alien faces regarded him from the end. Without pause, the next of the monsters crept into the narrow space. Legs bent up under it, it moved rapidly. Genthis laughed.

  ‘Come, come and fight me alien filth! Brother Genthis has not had his fill yet!’

  His body was electric with excitement, the joy of battle coursed through him, lifting his spirit and filling him with surety of purpose. At the back of his soul, he felt the dull ache of need, for his last Rite of Holos had been a week ago, and the Thirst had resumed its torments. He did not care. ‘Here is battle! In battle is true service! Service begets joy! Joy begets death!’ he shouted. Genthis felt this joy deeply. To him and his kind, there was no greater purpose in all the galaxy than to fight in the name of the Emperor.

  The genestealer scuttled at him, upper claws outstretched. Genthis batted one aside, and stabbed his knife point deep into the chitin of another. The genestealer made a strange, squawking protest and tore its arm back. Genthis’s knife was wrenched from his hand.

  Genthis sang the Sanguis Moritura, laughing as he did.

  ‘The blood of life flows quickly! Only in death can it be stilled!’

  He fended off the genestealer’s claws, turned them aside with his strong hands. ‘Let not mine be stilled easily, let it flow on and outward – let it flow from me as I slay those who free it!’

  He worked his cheeks and spat, acidic venom from his Betcher’s gland spraying into the genestealer’s face. The thing screeched as its eyes dissolved, and Genthis reached for it. He opened his mouth wide, dragged the creature to him and bit deep, his extended canines sinking into its alien neck. He ignored the burn of his own acid venom on his skin. Black blood poured down his throat.

  Xenos blood. Unclean. Impure. Satisfying. He gulped as it filled his mouth. It tasted vile, bitter and cold, still he drank. Flashes of alien thoughts played across his mind as it filled his stomach and washed over his Remembrancer; endless waiting, the chill of deep space, and a single purpose so consuming there was space for nothing else. Behind it, a vast and horrifying shape moved, distant, and yet imminent.

  Genthis dragged his head back, his hearts chilled by the vision. Dark blood ran down his face. His skin bubbled, acid burns joining the blisters he had received from the hot metal. He blinked, the genestealer’s memories of inconceivable patience warring with his own urgent need for war.

  A rending sound came from above him. He twisted his neck. Metal plating peeled back. The terrible face of a genestealer, contorted in fury, glared down at him.

  ‘Blood is strength, in death it quickens,’ he whispered.

  A three-clawed hand drove down into his neck, ripping his windpipe free.

  His mind still reeling from its contact with the alien’s soul, Brother Genthis died.

  Voldo blasted a genestealer into pieces with his storm bolter, mass reactive bolts tearing it apar
t from the inside. He swung his power sword around, smashing another of the aliens back. He put a bolt in its gut, and it crumpled to the ground. Gallio stood not far behind him, taking opportunistic shots past him. To his left, Astomar let fly with one final burst of his heavy flamer.

  ‘Ammunition depleted, brother-sergeant!’ He called.

  By Astomar, Eskerio fought to defend his battle-brother, borrowed lightning claws darting quickly, ripping parallel furrows into alien flesh. Behind Voldo, Alanius and Azmael fought back to back, sending genestealer limbs flying, Azmael seemingly unhindered by his damaged suit. Nuministon crouched by the door, ignoring the combat he worked on its dead control panel. Voldo was impressed by his coolness. Not once did the tech-priest look up from his work.

  Despite the suit’s aid and his own superhuman metabolism he was panting with effort. His helmet flashed, the sensorium clamouring at him with a dozen alarms. He cleaved a genestealer in two, power sword flaring, and stole a glance at the door.

  It remained locked.

  Clastrin was in the airlock access corridor. He went to the inner airlock door at the far end of the corridor from the access doorway beyond which were the rest of the party. The corridor was wide enough for two Terminators to walk abreast. This was once a major access point for the ship, he thought.

  He flipped out the access panel to the door control with the tips of his mechadendrites.

  The wind was loud as air was sucked from the pressurised cavities by the vacuum in the corridor, battering at him and causing his hair to whip around his face, stirring the metal tendrils at the back of his skull. There must have been a gap in the hull to the outside, for the air whistled ceaselessly over him; the pressure should have stabilised by now. At least he could breath. Over the roar of the wind, he faintly heard the sound of Genthis’s battle hymn and the screams of dying aliens.

  ‘Focus is the mother and the father of the machine,’ he said to himself. ‘Focus is the enemy of haste, focus is the bringer of function.’ Clastrin regretted that he had no holy oils or greases with which to paint the exterior of the door panel to supplicate the machine-spirits of the ancient ship. He had invaded systems wantonly all over the hulk. He was a battle-brother of the Novamarines, a warrior first and foremost. Expediency overrode all other concerns; but he was also a priest of the Omnissiah, inducted into the lesser thirteen mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus, and he felt sorrow that he had not been able to approach the devices he communed with on this mission with the appropriate reverence.

  He reached out with his intelligence core. Emitters within the cabling at the back of his head beamed his requests into the ship in the timeless language of binaric. There was no reply. With machinery this age, there rarely was, the spirits often having died, fled, or lapsed into electronic senility.

  His mechadendrites snaked over his shoulder, their flexible smart metals allowing them to extend, the dendrites’ diameter thinning as they did so. Their interface tips searched the cavity for an input port – there!

  Clastrin closed his eyes involuntarily as a familiar electric jolt coursed through his mind, his cerebral augmentations seeking communion with the vessel.

  There was but a flicker of life in the ship. The reactor burned fiercely, but so much of its energy was radiated through broken containment fields and lost. The hull was broken in so many places that the ship’s service infrastructure was likewise interrupted. But from here to the door, from the door to the reactor; from somewhere, energy trickled. And if energy ran, signals could be sent. Voltage was too low; wire warmed rather than conveyed messages, resistances heightened by deterioration in the power matrices. He risked adding gain to the energy flows, sourcing the power from his own cybernetics. A risky play, drawing on his own body. He missed the power plant of his power armour.

  Ways opened up. Wires dead for millennia hummed with life.

  He felt the door at the other end of the corridor, felt the thickness of it. Brother Gallio would have been at it for twenty minutes, he thought, before scratching it. He felt too the broken panel on the outside, and the connections that had once run to it, severed and dead, deep within the wall sealing the outer hull from the chamber his battle-brothers now fought in.

  He reached out through his interface dendrites, the metal cabling on his head warming as his energies mingled with that of the ship’s machines. There, the door access switch. A simple piece of optical electronics. He activated it.

  Nothing happened. He tried again. It was no use. The double doors at the far end, the ones trapping his brothers, remained closed.

  There was movement behind him. Genthis’s broken corpse was pushed from the access hatch, landing awkwardly on the floor, his head nearly severed. The blood-smeared face of a genestealer followed. Clastrin did not break contact with the machine. He raised his bolt pistol in one fluid motion and put a round between the genestealer’s eyes. Scrabbling noises came from behind as more genestealers tried to gain the corridor.

  He spoke. ‘Oh great and all-knowing Omnissiah! Oh keeper of knowledge, aid me now.’ His eyes screwed shut. He reached out, caressing the switch with his being, at one with the machine.

  From somewhere, another touch upon his mind, that of another machine. Fleeting, then gone.

  Lights flickered. Clastrin was aware of power relays burning out within the wall. But the double door trapping his brothers creaked, straining against the corrosion that held it closed. A deafening squeal of metal cut into the wind, and the door juddered open.

  ‘All praise the Omnissiah, all praise the father of machines,’ said Clastrin. He turned, gun raised, to face the genestealers.

  Captain Mastrik of the Novamarines and Squad Vermillion flew in the Thunderhawk Reprisal , its sister craft Hawk’s Fury alongside. Laser light stabbed out from one or the other as they flew above the hulk’s surface, atomising dangerous chunks of debris.

  ‘Lord captain!’ The second pilot of the vessel turned in his seat. ‘I have sight of Wisdom of Lucretius’s teleport homers.’

  Mastrik was out of his own seat in an instant. ‘Where?’

  ‘Here, lord captain.’ The Space Marine pointed at a glowing orb on the map. ‘Near this energy source. I saw it for a second, and then it was gone, but I did see it.’

  ‘That is practically on the surface,’ said Mastrik. He smiled. ‘They are coming out.’ He slapped the Space Marine’s shoulder pad. ‘Take us down. Hawk’s Fury ! Follow us in.’

  ‘Yes, lord captain.’ The voice of the other pilot was blurred by static, almost unintelligible.

  ‘Brothers!’ called Mastrik to his men. ‘Prepare for immediate deployment, we have found our brethren, and if they are in need of our aid, we will be ready to give it to them.’

  Gallio was first into the corridor, then Astomar. Clastrin watched as he dodged past a genestealer, Azmael stepping forward to take it down with his claws. The Forgemaster saw Voldo stagger back, a genestealer grappling with him. It flew backwards, blood exploding from its back, and then Clastrin could see nothing more in the chamber, the view blocked by his brothers. He turned his attention back to the accessway hatch. Coming through there, the genestealers were an easy target. Three lay dead atop Genthis, another hung from the hatch.

  He waited until Gallio was close. He took deep breaths of the rushing air, then opened both inner and outer airlock doors simultaneously, overriding the ship’s safety protocols. He grabbed hold of the open door panel as the rush of air became a gale. The airlock gaped open onto the depthless black of the cosmos. The merciless light of Jorso flooded the revealed airlock chamber. A glittering blast of flash-frozen atmosphere and flakes of paint, corrosion and dust gushed out into space.

  ‘Many genestealers!’ shouted Gallio as he passed. Clastrin nodded. He was being pulled towards the outside, but his brothers, still armoured, trudged on, weathering the wind as a man might a spring breeze.

  Gallio went into the night outside, then Nuministon who bobbed his multi-lensed helmet in thanks as he hurried p
ast. Astomar, Eskerio, then the Blood Drinker Azmael was next. Voldo, his armour cowling scored deeply followed, firing as he walked backwards. Finally, Alanius. Sparks showered from a tear in his armour. He too walked backwards. Genestealers crept after him, Voldo’s bolts finding their flesh and laying them down in death. Blood and gobbets of flesh spattered Clastrin with every kill. They came closer. There were too many.

  Clastrin reached out to the ship again. He found the governors for the grav plates easily. With a prayer to Mars and a twist of binaric code, he turned them up to full.

  Crushing weight gripped him. Alanius and Voldo wavered on their legs. The Terminator suits, designed to work under the harshest of conditions, responded, redoubling the strength they lent to the Space Marines. The remaining Novamarines and Blood Drinkers walked out into the endless night.

  For the genestealers, it was a different matter. They cried out in anger as their legs collapsed under them and they were pinned by their own mass to the floor. They tried to advance, but could not move, their claws waving feebly.

  Clastrin withdrew his mechadendrites, his machine gifts retreating to their housing in his black carapace. Alanius caught him around the waist as he backed out into the airlock chamber. The oppressive gravity dropped away abruptly as they passed the threshold of the door, making his stomach flip, and Clastrin was outside in the hard vacuum with the others, unprotected but for his flimsy mucranoid skin. He screwed his eyes shut, and yet still through his eyelids the blue light seared his retinas. He felt his skin stretch and blood churn. Only willpower prevented him from opening his mouth in a silent scream. He flung his arm over his face to protect his eyes. The air in his lungs would soon be spent.