by Joe Parrino
Corposant gambolled down a clump of wires. It was the only evidence that the machinery here still functioned. Matching the direction of the cables, Rhasc knew that they ran to the teleportation array.
She could hear the distant wailing of the empyrean from that path. The same noxious unlight that emanated from the Temple of Shades radiated from the corridor. Waves of pressure pulsed.
Errant arcs of electricity fizzled down the wrought walls, describing faces and runes.
Rhasc caught the click of claws again, the brief hint that something watched her. Beneath the zapping fizz of uncaged electrical discharge, Rhasc thought she heard the heavy breaths of some vast animal.
‘We are not alone,’ she whispered over the vox.
Dark niches concealed doorways to other rooms The doors stood ajar, providing glimpses into the lives of those who served the astropaths. The half-light allowed Rhasc to see broken furniture, empty canteens and dormant servitors. Bodies lay where they had been butchered, long strips of meat pulled from the bone while the servant yet lived. Pools of congealing blood were marked with swirling symbols, left by the tip of some gauntleted finger. The Crimson Slaughter seemed to have been left to slip the leash here, to indulge in whatever sport they desired.
Endless hallways stretched away into nothing. No sound came from within, but Rhasc could see bootprints left in congealed blood.
As yet, this inner sanctum was undefended. Rhasc could not tell whether that brought relief, or alarm. Perhaps the remaining servants of Drask stood beside the sorcerer lord in the Temple of Shades.
The unlight of the Sea of Souls grew brighter and brighter, drowning out all meaning, all presence of reality. Within the teleportation chamber, reality broke.
Walls were gone, half spinning away into nothing. Cruel flowers made from the flayed skin of xenos sprouted from the floor. Jagged crystals broke through stone. Daemonic whispers taunted and gave voice to promises of torment and terror. Vast shapes curled through the space beyond, half-glimpsed and unrealised.
Through the tears in the walls, the Temple of Shades beckoned. Somehow, the Assassins had drawn level with the fane itself. They could see inside, through the vast arches that lined its exterior. Rhasc caught a distant impression of power-armoured figures, of cavorting daemon-things.
The array itself, a circle of inscribed iron, was the only part of the room left untouched. Bare stone lay within. Cords snaked away from the device, linking the machine to some other place.
‘The control console is missing,’ said Zhau. Actual emotion lurked in his tone.
‘There is a secondary command console on this level. A failsafe in case the first was seized,’ Rhasc said. ‘It is not far, but it will require us to split our forces. We cannot allow the array to be undefended while we activate it. As soon as it comes online, we will draw attention to ourselves. The Emperor alone knows what will come through when the system activates.’
‘Take the Eversor,’ Zhau said. ‘This Culexus and I have the better chance of eliminating our target regardless of your intervention. Should you fall, we will progress through.’
Rhasc bristled at his tone, feeling that the Vindicare had some ulterior motive to claim the sorcerer lord’s death for his Temple. The other Assassin had shot her and left her for dead before. Rhasc did her best to quell the paranoia. There was only the mission, only duty and fealty to the Emperor.
She nodded instead. ‘Let’s go, Torq.’
IX
Following the cables brought them to the secondary control console. Icons of the Cult Mechanicus stood proud from the walls, untouched by the corruption. Someone had made a half-hearted attempt to vandalise the holy symbols, but had been unable to do much more than mar the cog-sigils of the Omnissiah.
Singed prayer papers studded the cables at regular intervals. Blood and oil coated the walls. Beneath the ever-present stench of blood and bile, Rhasc caught the faint resin-smell of incense. Quiet and calm haunted this realm of logic and reasoning among the witch-minds of the Adeptus Astra Telepathicus.
Instead of stone, everything was metal. Bronze, iron and silver formed this section of the structure. Rhasc was struck by its similarity to a starship rather than an astropath’s sanctum.
Ordinary mortals would have left sounds as they moved along the heavy iron plates. The Callidus and the Eversor moved silently, their passage muffled by training and artifice.
Sealed blast doors, scratched and dented by chain weapons and bolter fire, studded the hallway; yet more evidence of the Crimson Slaughter Space Marines that had sacked this structure. Of the Chaos Space Marines themselves, there was no hint of their continued presence within the sanctum.
Rhasc opened each door in turn, searching for the console. They swung open on silent, oiled hinges. Abused and broken machinery were inside. None resembled the console she was looking for.
‘It would be kind for the Mechanicus to clearly label things in a language spoken by those beyond their ranks,’ Rhasc complained.
Torq grunted.
‘Seven is all we faced,’ Torq drooled. ‘Pitiful. Paltry. Not enough. Must be more.’
‘There were more,’ Rhasc reminded him. ‘The Culexus’s intervention saved us. Remember?’
‘Should still have been more,’ the Eversor said.
If even Torq’s abused mind could find the puzzle of missing traitors, then Rhasc knew there was something more to their absence. They could not be alone here.
‘Even the far fallen would not leave such a critical location unguarded. What are we missing? What are we not seeing?’
The itching feeling of corruption grew. A patina of blooming corrosion covered everything. An anathema to the Machine Cult, this odd-coloured rust had been brought in from outside, spreading like a fungus through the halls of the Martian enclave.
She opened the next to last door. Only a slight resistance met her push as the door scraped through something. Blood and oil gushed out through the widening crack. It stopped half-way open.
Unlight streamed through as the deep bark of bolter fire erupted from within.
Torq shoved his shoulder against it, adding his strength to hers. It barely budged. Shrapnel flickered out from the bolt impacts, cutting into her skin, slicing through her bodyglove.
The Eversor threw himself into the door, a roar of rage slipping from his lips. Bolter fire kept hammering at the opening. Deadly shards of metal pinged through the air.
Rhasc stepped back. She drew her phase sword, considered the door, and sliced into the hinges. The sword’s properties, engineered to the exacting standards of the Callidus Temple and forged by nearly forgotten technology, had made the blade beyond sharp. The sword sliced through the thick armour that covered the door. Metal sparked and spat. Molten iron ran down the cuts.
Torq saw what she was doing. He stopped shoving at the door and waited.
The last hinge failed, compromised by her sword. She nodded at Torq.
The Eversor leaned back and kicked. There was a massive boom and the door flew backwards, propelled by the Assassin’s prodigious strength. A stream of bolt shells flew through the space. Torq had already jinked inside.
Rhasc followed and found the reason for the blockage. Robed bodies were stacked three deep. Oil and blood pumped from their veins and systems. Some still twitched and groaned.
Mechadendrites slipped from the bodies, trailing to a lectern.
Behind the dais stood a Crimson Slaughter Space Marine. The traitor stood with legs braced, a heavy bolter spitting a steady stream of rounds at the Assassins. Horns emerged from the creature’s skull. Flesh grew in thick tumours from between its armour. Mouths and tongues lolled from the growths.
Rhasc rolled underneath the fire, through the blood. Faster even than Torq, she leapt up and rammed her punch dagger into the traitor’s gorget.
Unable to react quickly due
to the heavy kickback of its weapon, the traitor failed to block the blow. Instead it grunted, accepted the punishment and wheezed a gurgling ‘Death to the False Emperor’ in heavily accented Gothic.
It dropped the heavy bolter and reached for her instead with one arm. With the other, the traitor pulled a brutally serrated combat knife. Torq came at it from the other side, spitting curses and scrabbling with his neuro-gauntlet. A grip of iron caught on Rhasc’s left arm and she felt the bone crack. Pain lanced through her. The traitor raised the knife, ready to disembowel her.
Torq’s sword carved down and took the Chaos Space Marine’s arm off at the elbow. Blood spurted and then clotted. It chuckled something in its malign tongue and then turned its attention on Torq. The knife flashed through the air. Torq, overextended, tried to twist out of the way.
The Eversor failed. With a crunching sound, the knife broke through the Assassin’s ribs and sunk into his torso. He jerked on the blade and pushed the arm that held it back. Centimetres of bloody steel came out from his torso, along with a wash of blood.
Rhasc unholstered her neural shredder and pressed it against the Space Marine’s helmet. She pulled the trigger and the traitor flopped bonelessly to the floor.
‘He was never false,’ Rhasc said to the corpse. ‘You were.’
Torq groaned. He had his hand clasped to his wound. Blood leaked through it, pouring down the front of his bodyglove. Rhasc moved to help him, but the Eversor held up a forestalling hand. ‘Don’t. It’s fine.’
‘Clearly it isn’t.’
A new sound interrupted her, a deep-throated laugh. The snick-click of claws came down the corridor. A heavy, animal breathing came with it, wet and burbling.
‘Am I interrupting something?’ asked a creature with twinned voices, one transhuman, and the other a daemon’s wet rasp.
Her head snapped to the doorway. Framed there, a massive figure towered. Spiralling horns scraped the ceiling. Tongues of flame spat from toothed gaps in its armour.
‘When your souls scream into the warp–’ it began to say. Torq tore his way towards it.
Its hand shot out, lightning fast. Torq caught it with his neuro-gauntlet, punched into its muscle meat. The thing’s arm bulged, flexed massive plates of muscle and threw the Eversor down.
Rhasc fired her neural shredder. Matter wept from the thing’s eyes, but it continued to laugh. It flowed like water toward her, crossing the space between the pair in the blink of an eye.
Rhasc battled for her life. Her phase sword carved through weeping armour plates, ignoring the protection it offered. But the thing was monstrously fast, able to match her grace with a daemon’s agility.
Fire spat from its maw, bright green and vile. Heat singed her and flash burned against her bodyglove. A poisoned blade hurtled through the air, flung from her outstretched palm. It skewered the creature’s tongue and stuck it fast against the back of its throat.
The flames ceased as it gurgled, choking.
Torq hit it from the back, sword stabbing, neuro-gauntlet punching into armour plates. Toxins roared into its bloodstream and still the thing came on. He stabbed again and again, punching deep into the Space Marine’s body, but still it came on. With an irritated roar, it pulled Torq off and flung him to crack into the lectern.
The Callidus caught the snap of bone.
Rhasc tried to pull it towards her, away from the injured Eversor and the command lectern. They all bled from dozens of cuts, shallow or otherwise.
With a rising whine, she fired her neural shredder again. Blood fountained out from the Space Marine’s head, erupting from its eyes, ears and mouth.
It lowered its head and charged.
She jumped over it, flipping onto its back as it crashed into the thick metal plates of the wall. Its horns stuck fast.
With a grunt of effort, she punched her phase sword down, shearing through muscle and bone. The fires in its body flickered, burning ember-bright.
It struggled to free itself. The traitor braced its arms against the wall and tried to shove itself off. Muscles shifted below her, mutating even as she straddled it. She sawed through one arm. Blood and steam jetted from the wound.
Still it roared, still it fought.
Torq rose from where he had fallen. His speed had nearly left him, hobbled by broken bones and internal trauma.
The Eversor hurled his sword. The blade flashed end over end, before cutting through the traitor’s other arm. Frustration erupted from the creature’s mouth with a stream of invectives in a language no human was ever meant to know. It jerked its head, desperate to pull itself free.
‘Go,’ Torq said, words slurred by more than chemicals. ‘I will activate the lectern. Complete the mission, false face.’ Blood poured from the wound in his torso.
‘Die well, Eversor,’ Rhasc said. She sprinted away, barely catching the last words he spoke.
‘No such thing, Rhasc,’ Torq said to her back. ‘No such thing.’
X
Zhau’s pistol coughed. The turbo-penetrator round broke clean through a Crimson Slaughter’s helmet. Brain meat sprayed the traitor’s cursing comrades. He fell back into his cover, a nest of crystals that emanated a child’s desperate wailing. The teleporter array lay frustratingly dormant behind him.
‘Bless this servant of your divine will,’ Zhau exhorted.
The Culexus held them at bay, keeping them hemmed in. Kord was a shocking ally, quick and agile, but the true threat stemmed from the terrible lens that crouched on his helmet.
Glancing from cover, Zhau trained another shot into the teeth of a whirring chainblade. Mangled before it could fall on the Culexus, the weapon exploded into shrapnel.
Bolt shells impacted against the crystal he crouched behind. Spinning shards filled the air, but Zhau was already moving. The sniper’s training that called to move after every shot ingrained until it had become instinct.
He snapped off shots as he moved, laying down suppressive fire.
A crumping explosion rocked the room as Kord dropped one of his grenades. Wails erupted from the Chaos Space Marines, oddly high-pitched for the deep-throats that gave voice to them.
From his new cover, Zhau switched to hellfire rounds. He took advantage of the madness that consumed the traitors and fired. Three bursts saw the bio-acidic rounds impacting into cracks in their armour. Flesh liquefied and Space Marines fell.
‘Blessed are you, Emperor, our god, Sovereign of Mankind,’ Zhau prayed.
He sprinted to new cover while the Space Marines were distracted, sliding behind the ruined hulk of some machine.
The Callidus burst into the room, sprinting through the assaulting traitors. ‘Into the circle!’ she yelled. There was no sign of the Eversor.
Kord abruptly turned. Bolt shells fell all around them. War cries streamed anew from altered throats.
Rhasc grabbed Zhau by the collar. She touched him, actually touched him. His flesh crawled to feel the touch of another being.
‘Where is–’ Zhau began.
She all but threw him into the circle.
The Callidus shouted something into the vox.
Light erupted all around the three Assassins, consuming the world and stealing away all thought and consciousness.
I
Looping declamations assaulted Rhasc’s ears. Writhing mist, the residue of teleportation travel, twined about her legs. The air pulsed with some unearthly power.
The close-range vox failed in a wash of broken voices and malignant white noise. Her mask’s lenses drew targets everywhere, fizzled in and out of function. She ripped the useless device from her head, freeing her senses. Her hair streamed in an unholy wind, thick with brimstone and the saccharine sweetness of rotting flowers. Her skin prickled with the unwholesome light of the unleashed Sea of Souls.
Shades, or perhaps souls or daemon-things, twisted thr
ough the air, leaving contrails of cancerous light behind them. Statues of dark, hooded figures loomed over her. Inside, Rhasc caught the brief glimpse of broken faces, twisted by mutation.
Jagged and broken words boomed out from a voice cast in a deep rumble.
‘The sorcerer lord!’ Rhasc yelled over the din.
Vast arches beckoned deeper into the fane.
Booming sounded from ahead. Blooms of fire speared toward the Assassins. They were already sprinting forward. From dark alcoves came the chattering thrum of bolter fire.
War cries left polluted throats. Ten gene-bulked mutants, tentacles and shards of bone writhing from their slimy skin, brandished axes and wicked instruments of war. Warriors of the Crimson Slaughter led them.
Poison darts flew from her hand, speared into throats, lodged into muscle. Two of the mutants fell to the unholy ground, dancing out their death throes. Winged daemons alighted on the corpses and began to tear strips of flesh free. Purple light leeched from the mouths of the dead.
Zhau’s rifle gave a dry cough, its sound stolen by a muffling silencer. The Vindicare fired at point-blank range. A traitor’s head exploded, the body flopped backwards, blown onto its back by the kinetic impact.
Streams of heavy bolter fire stitched holes in the marble beneath her feet, walking in sawing lines toward the Assassins’ position.
‘We must break through them,’ Zhau exhorted. ‘They don’t matter. We must stop the ritual, in the God-Emperor’s name.’
Rhasc dodged between bright tracers, rolling beneath the deadly fire. She stood level with the first of the sprinting mutants. Reaching up, she punched her sword through its gullet, through its mouth and into its skull. Bloody froth wheezed out of the wound.
The body twitched, puppet strings cut. Blood poured down her arm. She hissed at the sudden acid sizzle of its polluted bite.
She ducked between the dying mutant’s legs, whipping her sword free. Another of the confused creatures stood before her, awareness, alarm and pain waging war across its stunted features.