Defenders of Mankind - David Annandale & Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

  Voldo could not help him. Genestealers were spilling through the ruined door.

  ‘Get behind me, magos!’ said the sergeant. He pushed the young tech-adept into the lee of his towering armour. He raised his gun and fired.

  ‘Careful! Do not compromise the containment rings!’ shouted Samin.

  ‘I will not miss!’ Voldo growled. He fired and fired, bringing half a dozen genestealers to ruin. His storm bolter ran dry. He disengaged the power feeds linking it to his armour with a thought and cast it aside. He pulled out his sword. The genestealers ran at him, scuttling down the walls as if the change in gravity was not applicable to them.

  ‘For the Emperor! For Guilliman! For Honourum!’ shouted Voldo as the first came at him. He cut it down with a double-handed sweep of his blade. Energy crackled along the edges as it gutted the creature. ‘Die xenos, die! Die as you are fated to die, and leave mankind alone in the stars!’ He killed another. ‘For the Lord of Man will take me up and lo! He will be mighty and terrible, and all is known by him!’ A third died. ‘And I will present to him the art of my flesh, and the wounds of my last battle will be the marks of my last deed, and by this I will be… ahhhh!’ He cried out as a claw cut deep into the ceramite of his vambrace. He let go of his sword with one hand and backhanded the genestealer across the face. He finished it with an overhead blow. ‘And by this I will be judged fit to join him in the final battle!’

  He swept the sword low, wishing that he wore his power armour, feeling restricted by the Terminator plate. A genestealer lost its legs.

  They came at him again and again, a relentless tide of alien abominations. He fought ferociously, but even the superhumans of the Adeptus Astartes tire. He faltered, another claw found its way through the join at the inside of his elbow. He cried out. Samin fired as best he could past the giant warrior, but his aim was poor.

  ‘Best make your peace with your Machine-God, magos,’ said Voldo as he killed another alien, and drove another back with a series of furious blows. ‘There are many of them.’

  And then they were behind the two, having crawled down the wall and outflanked them. Voldo turned a little, but he could not save Samin, who died with his finger on the laspistol’s trigger. His hand tightened in death, sending a final round into the reactor core, where it was consumed.

  Voldo was surrounded. He pressed his back into the wall. Genestealers were to the right and left of him. They crawled down the wall at him from above.

  His arms had stopped bleeding, but they were stiff from their wounds and the sealant leaking from the micropores within his armour.

  ‘Filth,’ he spat, ‘let us see how many of your deaths it takes to secure the end of one of the Emperor’s warriors.’

  He held his sword upright. Shifting his weight, trying to gauge which direction the attack would come from.

  The genestealers charged.

  The evacuation must have finished. The last transports were fleeing across the night when the fleet opened up. The hulk shuddered under the impact of lava bombs, missiles, cannon rounds and energy beams.

  ‘How predictable,’ said the Spirit of Eternity . ‘How very predictable.’

  ‘Seven minutes to warp translation,’ said the ship’s secondary voice.

  The spirit of the vessel turned its attentions from the fleet to the men on the bridge. ‘Very soon your friends out there will have blasted enough of the cursed accretions free from my hull that I will be able to fly once again. Something you will not be alive to witness.’

  The servitors levelled their weapons at the remaining Space Marines. Galt prepared to die.

  There was a hellish cry, the sound of lost souls in anguish, and something dark smashed its way onto the bridge from a door leading from the rear. One of the servitors turned to face it, but the shape leapt clear across the room and smashed it down. Galt could not see it clearly at first, but he had the impression of something huge and nightmarish, a monster from the dark folk tales of the most debased tribe.

  The servitor was ripped to pieces. The thing roared, bringing the bleeding body up and threw it hard into another weapon-servitor. Then it ran, shoulders down, at the column. It impacted it with terrific force. It bellowed again, and began tearing at it.

  Suddenly, Galt felt control of his armour return to him. Bolts criss-crossed the chamber as the Space Marines and servitors opened fire on each other. Galt raised his gun and filled two of the servitors full of bolts, then he turned it on the column. The monster had yanked many of its panels away, exposing the glittering optics of its internal spaces. Fires burned in the delicate machinery where Galt’s bolts had hit. The others joined him.

  ‘No!’ cried Plosk, ‘Stop! What are you doing!’ He yanked at Galt’s arm. The captain sent him sprawling.

  ‘I warned you, magos, you have lied to me for the last time.’

  Galt carried on firing.

  ‘Six minutes to warp translation.’

  The vessel’s warp engines were powering up. The ship vibrated under Galt’s boots.

  ‘Forgemaster Clastrin! Please, you understand! Stop them!’

  Clastrin shook his head. ‘I know where my loyalties lie, magos – to the Emperor first. I was tempted when I saw this hulk, but you have overreached yourself. This is an abomination, you know that. You are guilty of heresy. We will sift what we may from the wreckage of its mind.’

  ‘Why have they not teleported us yet?’

  ‘We’re being jammed! We need to get off this bridge,’ said Galt. A weapon descended from the ceiling. He blew it to pieces as its barrel swivelled towards him. ‘We must go!’

  The warp engines built to a howl. Over it, the Spirit of Eternity was laughing. ‘Insects! You do not know what awaits you! The end times are upon you, and it is all your own doing. Behold the true face of your comrade!’

  There was a massive discharge of energy, and the thing that had saved them was flung across the room. It landed on a console, breaking the glass. It rolled off and landed light as a cat before leaping to its feet.

  ‘Caedis?’ said Galt, barely able to believe his eyes.

  The figure before him was ruddy-skinned. Its bones were twisted, protruding from its flesh. Its muscles were knotted with tension. Fangs protruded from a drooling mouth. His angelic features were broken with rage, his hair falling out in clumps. He held his fingers out in front of him like claws, but it was recognisably Caedis.

  ‘What have you done to him?’ said Galt.

  ‘I? I?’ the Spirit of Eternity laughed. ‘It is not I, but you and your debased knowledge that has done this to him, a corruption of the implants he has been given, and from them of the spirit.’

  Caedis looked about the room, eyes blazing, the whites now yellow. They settled on the bone face of Mazrael. ‘You knew,’ he said. His voice was guttural, the words nearly lost to its animal roar. ‘You knew!’ The light of humanity in Caedis’s eyes was guttering. He was losing himself.

  The servitor Caedis had knocked over got to its feet and aimed its multi-melta at him.

  ‘Caedis, beware!’ Galt called.

  ‘Lord, we must go!’ said Clastrin.

  Galt looked back as the thing that had been Caedis fought madly against the tech-priest’s suborned servitors and the ship itself. Segmented tentacles were extending from the walls to snare him.

  ‘Five minutes until warp translation.’

  The vessel tried to bar their way, but their power fists smashed through the door, and they were out into the corridor again.

  ‘This way,’ said Clastrin.

  The entire hulk was shaking under the fury of the Space Marine bombardment. The mad laughter of the Spirit of Eternity was loud and grating over it all, broadcast directly into their helmets.

  ‘Here! Here!’ said Clastrin. ‘The signal is weak, but it is our best chance.’

  ‘This is First Captain Mantillio Galt, emergency teleport!’

  There was no reply. The heavy tread of servitor feet came from around the corner.


  ‘They cannot hear us!’

  ‘Retreat further,’ said Galt. ‘Go! Go! I will delay them!’

  ‘Four minutes to warp translation.’

  ‘Captain…’ said the Forgemaster.

  Galt shoved at Clastrin. The others backed up warily.

  Galt raised his sword. Servitors came around the corner, broken and smashed cyborgs, their organics dead, the machine parts motivated by the ship’s great power. Guns pointed.

  A buzzing built in Galt’s ears. Light burned. There was a roar.

  Bolts and fusion blasts scorched the wall where Galt’s party had been standing.

  Chapter 23

  The Death of Integrity

  The light died, and the interior of a teleport pod resolved itself. He was alone. He sought out the release switch, glowing red in the dark, and hammered on it hard. Gas hissed noisily, and the pod unclamped, the top rising with a loud whir.

  The teleport deck was in uproar. Space Marines stumbled from the pads in ones and twos, disoriented at having teleported without the correct rites of preparation. Steam and decontaminants jetted everywhere. The stink of ozone was overpowering.

  Galt saw many of his brothers in the devices arrayed around the room. In those closest to him were the men who had accompanied him to the bridge. Astomar was there, wounded but alive, Plosk, Nuministon, Mazrael, Tarael, Clastrin, who collapsed the moment the field shut off, and several suits that did not move: Voldo, Militor, Curzon and Eskerio. Pieces of Caedis’s Terminator plate had materialised on another pad, but of the blasted suits of Sandamael and Ancient Metrion, nothing had survived.

  Galt paid no attention but ran from the teleporter, throwing his sword aside. He shoved past serfs, Techmarines and servitors alike.

  ‘Bridge! Bridge! Mastrik, answer me!’

  ‘Mastrik here, brother. What in the name of Holy Terra happened down there?’

  ‘Mastrik, signal the fleet, open up with everything we have. Put a full spread of cyclonic torpedoes into that space hulk, I want it destroyed. Target the following coordinates.’ Galt read off a string of numbers provided by his armour’s sensorium; the exact location of the Spirit of Eternity .

  ‘You!’ Galt jabbed a finger at the brother serving as deck officer.

  ‘Lord captain?’

  ‘Get the window open, get it open now!’

  Galt hurried from the teleport room – one of fifteen on the teleport deck, the rest of that level of the ship taken up by the immense power relays the devices required. He took a narrow tunnel that led through the ship’s two dozen metre thick armour, to a fragile observation cupola attached to the surface of the hull.

  The blast shields closing off the windows slid open. The deadly light of Jorso flooded the compartment, causing the serf guarding it to cry out and fling his arm across his eyes. Galt’s suit adjusted to the glare, and he watched the Death of Integrity come apart.

  Huge chunks of the hulk had broken away and were wheeling into the sun. The main part had broken into two large pieces that glittered on their night side with the repeated impact of starship ordnance. It would not last long.

  Novum in Honourum shook as its guns worked. There was a keening shriek as the torpedo bays discharged their load. They swerved to port and streaked towards the hulk. He could see another spread racing in from the Lux Rubrum .

  The other guns continued to fire. It was several hundred thousand kilometres to the target, so the explosions he was watching were of rounds launched minutes ago.

  One of the greater pieces broke into three. The hulk was nearly destroyed. Galt held his breath, his hand reached up to his chest, where, under his scarred battleplate his Chapter talisman was hidden.

  The cyclonic torpedoes rushed towards their target.

  Too late.

  There was the telltale flash of translation, the visual fallout from the warping of time and space. A dart of metal that could only have been the Spirit of Eternity separated from the hulk and collapsed into itself, folding into the unnatural geometries of the empyrean. Some of the small pieces of the hulk were taken with it. One day they would re-emerge, the parts of a new agglomeration, to spread contagion, aliens or Emperor knew what else evil across the galaxy.

  The torpedoes reached the remainder of the hulk. They exploded with astonishing violence, focused fission blasts in a tight spread. For a moment, their nuclear fires outshone those of the sun, causing Galt’s visor to darken almost to black.

  The light died. Jorso was alone. All that remained of the Death of Integrity was a series of black specks. In time, these would fall into the star, and further fuel its cyan fury.

  Galt had failed.

  Galt stormed back into the teleport room. Serfs of the apothecarion had arrived, along with two of the Chapter’s Apothecaries. Plosk had removed his armour and was haughtily receiving their attentions. Galt strode over to him. As he came he undid his helmet, pulled it free, and thrust it at a serf.

  ‘Are you pleased, tech-priest? Are you happy with your tally of dead?’

  Plosk’s lidless eyes stared up at him. He contrived to sound sad, although the bare bone of his face conveyed no expression at all. ‘The STC system has gone. But I did manage to download a sizeable fraction of it into my own memplants. A bitter second prize, but a prize nonetheless.’

  Galt snarled and stooped over the magos. He hauled him into the air by the front of his robe.

  ‘And what of your lies? They have cost the lives of many noble servants of the Imperium. Were they not treasure enough? Or must you tempt the evils of bygone ages before you are satisfied with a thing’s worth? I will see to it that you burn as a traitor and consort of forbidden technologies!’

  Plosk struggled to breath, his oxygen pipe making desperate wet sounds, but his voice, delivered by vox-grille, was unaffected.

  ‘You of the Adeptus Astartes think only of your own honour, your own service. What of the larger puzzle, captain? Surely the uncovering of a new piece is worth a little risk? No one will burn me, my lord. We will both be hailed as heroes.’

  ‘Dozens of my warriors are dead, at least four Crux Terminatus lost! Do you know what grave dishonour this is?’

  ‘Better dishonour, better even heresy, than extinction.’

  Galt shook him. He thought to reach out and crush the bare skull, squeeze those staring eyes from the moist sockets.

  But he did not. As the thought crossed his mind, the face of Caedis chased it. Caedis, a Lord Chapter Master. One of the greatest heroes of the Imperium, an angel in vermillion plate brought to bestial savagery by his gifts. Gifts similar to those Galt carried himself.

  Angel or beast? thought Galt. Both. Another part of him responded.

  Cannot a thing have two natures?

  He thought of all he had done, the mistakes he had made, his temptation to defy the Emperor’s will and save Voldo, the lies of the magos and the risks he had taken at his insistence. He had done nothing but obey the writ of the High Lords, his sworn duty, and yet it affronted him, or rather his reactions to that writ did. And now here he was, shaking a servant of the Imperium by the scruff of the neck like a dog with a rat.

  Could he truly call himself noble? He did not think so. He was not and never would be worthy of the rank of Chapter Master.

  Plosk was talking, stressing the great service he had done and the gift both Chapters would receive. This approbation sickened him more than the magos’s manipulations, but who was he to judge what was right and wrong? His was but to serve, and he had done so poorly.

  His breathing ragged, Galt lowered the tech-priest to the floor. He looked about for the Chaplain of the Blood Drinkers, seeking some explanation for the transformation of their erstwhile master, but Mazrael had departed, taking any answers he might have to the secrets of his Chapter with him.

  Epilogue

  Fortress Novum was immense, the largest fortress-monastery that Inquisitor Karo had visited, and Inquisitor Karo had visited many. The sheer size of it had impres
sed itself upon him as he had dropped down through the cloud deck of Honourum. A large part of the planet’s main mountain range had been transformed, carved into soaring battlements and fastnesses, adorned with statues of aquilae and heroes so large they were visible from orbit. Construction continued at either end of the monastery; it was part of the Novamarines creed, he understood, that they would not halt the expansion of their home until they were destroyed. Homes for the dead, and all that. There was nothing unusual in this ancestor worship – veneration of heroes and death cults were common in the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes even as they spurned the cult of the Emperor-as-god.

  It was drizzling when he landed. Karo, a native of a hot world, found it uncomfortably cold.

  He got the reception he was expecting from the Novamarines. They welcomed him cordially enough, and when he requested access to their Librarium their welcome turned as chilly as their home. He was an agent of the Emperor’s Holy Inquisition, and the Novamarines, as mighty as they were, were as bound to open their doors to his Inquisitorial seal as the meanest agri-world peasant. They had agreed to his demands without demur, naturally; that they sent him into their archives led by a servant rather than one of the initiates was a snub and clearly displayed their displeasure.

  He followed the aged Master of the Scrolls deep into the bowels of the mountains. They passed through a long succession of high halls, all empty of human life, all crowded with titanic statuary and shrines to fallen brothers. The Master of the Scrolls wore the simple robes of the Chapter serfs. He did not appear to notice the cold of the undermountain, which to Karo was even more pronounced than that of the surface. He burrowed into the fur collar of his long coat.

  ‘Is it much further?’ he said. He was annoyed at his own foul mood, even more annoyed that the bobbing lumen-globe that provided the only light through the endless halls of Fortress Novum provided only a frosty blue glow, and no heat.

  ‘Not much further, my lord,’ said the servant. ‘The particular records you request are old, and are preserved along with many others in the Halls of Salt. The humidity and temperature, you understand.’