Hammer and Bolter 15

by Christian Dunn

  Nisroc entered the inner sanctum to find Amaru poring over the main data console. The Techmarine had nano-wires and connective fibres plugged into every available data jack.

  ‘Brother Atoc?’ Barbelo had his back to the door and spoke without turning around, his gaze fixed on a wall-mounted viewer.

  ‘His duty is at an end.’ Nisroc touched a hand to his narthecium. ‘His gene-seed survives. His death served its purpose.’

  Barbelo turned to face the Apothecary, pausing before he spoke. ‘And his body?’

  ‘His–’ Nisroc faltered. Bodies, where were the bodies?

  ‘Micos,’ the other Flesh Tearer snapped his shoulders back at the sergeant’s summons. ‘Return Atoc’s corpse to the Stormraven, his weapon too.’

  ‘Bodies,’ the word tumbled from Nisroc’s lips.

  ‘What is it, Apothecary?’ the grille mouthpiece of Barbelo’s helmet did little to filter his annoyance.

  Nisroc cast his gaze around the chamber. Harahel’s armour was pitted and scared. Maion’s cuisse was fractured. The dismembered bodies of traitors were strewn around the floor, a madman’s mosaic. ‘Where are the other bodies?’ Nisroc repeated the question straining at his mind.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There were ten of our brothers stationed here. We have found only one, Brother Haamiah. Where are the others? There was no trace of them on the lower levels or here in the sanctum. They must be somewhere.’

  ‘I agree with you brother, it is an oddity. But we do not have the time,’ Barbelo turned back to the monitor, ‘the enemy advances from all sides. Their vanguard will contact us in thirty-eight minutes.’

  ‘Then we must make the time. We must find them. We must retrieve their gene-seed and honour their deaths.’

  ‘And what if they are not here? What if they are as ash, carried from here by the blasted storm?’

  Barbelo’s tone brooked no discussion but Nisroc persisted. ‘Then we shall mourn their loss and the loss of their gift. But we must first check everywhere. We must be sure.’

  Barbelo turned to face Nisroc, his poise threatening. ‘The enemy outnumbers us thousands to one.’

  Nisroc moved towards Barbelo. ‘Death means nothing as long as the gene-seed survives.’

  ‘And who will collect our gene-seed when we lie dead beneath the starless sky of this world?’

  ‘We must–’

  ‘No!’ Barbelo pressed his forehead against Nisroc’s. ‘Amaru has affected repairs on the Stormraven. Once we acquire the data from the base’s cogitators we are leaving. You have until then.’

  ‘Very well,’ Nisroc took a step back and made to turn away. ‘But know that I shall take no pleasure in reporting our mission as a failure to the High Priests.’

  Barbelo snarled. Never had he failed his Chapter. His grip tightened on his chainsword. He should gut Nisroc. Stain the Apothecary’s white breastplate crimson with his own sanctimonious blood. Out of his peripheral vision he saw Maion and Harahel edge closer. The other Flesh Tearers had remained silent but Barbelo doubted they would stand by and watch him kill the Apothecary. A warning shone on his display as he threatened to crush the chainsword’s handle. He fought to bring his rage under control. Now was not the time. ‘Go then. Look for the others. We will do what we must.’

  Nisroc dipped his head, ‘Thank you, brother.’

  Barbelo growled, ‘Do not push me, Apothecary.’ His voice was void cold. ‘Harahel…’ The sergeant drew his gaze from Nisroc in an effort to calm himself. ‘Go with him.’

  Harahel walked silently beside Nisroc as they approached the chapel annex. It was the only spine of the compound the Flesh Tearers had yet to explore. If any evidence of Haamiah’s squad remained then it had to be there. The chrono display in Harahel’s helmet clicked down to thirty. He turned it off, uncaring as to whether they made it off Arere before the Chaos advance struck. It didn’t matter if he fought here or redeployed to another world, as long as he fought, as long as he killed. Blood, the thought rolled into his mind like an invading army. Saliva began to build in his mouth, his nostrils flaring as they searched for arterial juices. Blood, Harahel hungered for blood.

  ‘We are here,’ Nisroc’s voice crackled in Harahel’s ear breaking his stupor.

  Harahel blinked hard, clearing the fog from his senses.

  ‘Is something the matter?’

  ‘No, I am fine,’ Harahel unlatched the Eviscerator from his back.

  ‘Wait,’ Nisroc held up his hand. Stepping ahead of Harahel, he moved to the chapel door’s access panel and removed one of his gauntlets. He wiped the grime from the console and pressed his palm onto the biometric scanner. The ancient machine chimed green as it recognised Nisroc’s genetic code as that of a Space Marine. With a pressurised hiss, the arched doors to the annex swung inwards.

  Harahel grunted and followed the Apothecary inside.

  ‘The enemy will contact us here first,’ Barbelo spoke as a hololithic representation of the compound rotated in the air between him and Maion.

  ‘I would have thought here a more likely target,’ Maion gestured to the curving walls that formed the east side of the central courtyard.

  ‘No, they will expect that area to be mined; more than a handful of detonations would bring the rock face down on top of them.’ Barbelo pointed to the compound’s main entrance way. ‘They will attack from here.’

  Maion studied the hololith, the sergeant was right. Had the base been fully manned, then attacking down the wide avenues of the main corridors would have been suicide. Under current circumstances the wide avenues would allow them to enter in force and overwhelm the Flesh Tearers. ‘What is this area here?’ He pointed to a dark spot on the display behind the armoury. ‘It wasn’t on the briefing schematics.’

  ‘That area…’ Amaru paused as his implants sifted through the compound’s memory banks for an answer. ‘It’s a missile silo. Surface-to-orbit ordnance. No use against ground targets.’

  ‘We cannot hope to defend the entire complex, we will make a stand here,’ Barbelo indicated a group of passageways that sprung from the main corridors and ran to the courtyard. ‘We’ll collapse these four and split ourselves into pairs to defend the remaining two.’

  ‘Four against–’ Maion paused, turning to Amaru.

  ‘Four thousand and seventy-eight separate contacts.’

  Maion grinned, ‘Seems there’ll be blood enough even for Harahel.’

  ‘I think I can help even the odds,’ the hololith changed to show the Stormraven as Amaru spoke. ‘The Stormraven’s hurricane-bolters and missile launcher can be removed,’ the gunship’s weapon systems floated away from its hull, illustrating the Techmarine’s point. ‘It wouldn’t take much to reconfigure them as defensive turrets.’

  ‘What about the Stormraven?’ Maion’s face hardened. ‘The courtyard is uncovered, even a glancing hit from a siege gun and– ’

  ‘We needn’t worry about artillery,’ Barbelo interrupted. ‘I have fought this enemy before. They are like us.’

  Maion glared at the sergeant, ‘You would liken us to the Archenemy?’

  ‘You have fought beside our Chapter’s Death Company?’

  Maion nodded, his unease growing at the mention of the Chapter’s damned warriors. The Black Rage was a genetic curse that threatened to overwhelm all of the sons of Sanguinius. Once afflicted, a Flesh Tearer would be lost to battle lust, his sanity replaced by a desperate need for violence. Those that succumbed to the madness where inducted into the ranks of the black-armoured Death Company where they’d soon find redemption in death.

  ‘Like our coal-armoured brethren, the enemy we face is lost to bloodlust. They are fuelled by an insatiable rage, ever hungry for battle. They will want to taste our blood when they kill us,’ Barbelo tested the weight of his chainsword. ‘They will not attack from range.’

  With the storm’s howl locked outside, silence permeated the chapel. Harahel moved ahead of Nisroc, his eyes adjusting to the change in light as a stri
ng of angular luminators hummed into life along the ceiling, filling the corridor with the hushed yellow glow the Imperial church reserved for religious buildings and the homes of cardinals.

  Harahel smelt blood. He touched his thumb to the activation stud on his Eviscerator, ‘Stand ready.’

  Nisroc raised his bolt pistol, letting its scope feed targeting data to his helmet display. He knew better than to question Harahel’s instincts.

  From the reception chamber, they entered the Hall of Solace, a long corridor with single-occupant prayer cells joining it every few metres. The two Space Marines stopped. Dried blood and fleshy matter coated the metal floor ahead of them, paving the way like the regal carpet of some warp-spawned fiend.

  Nisroc knelt and extended a probe from his narthecium, using it to scrape away a fragment of gore. A line of genetic sequence flashed across his display as the probe finished its analysis. ‘Sanguinius gut them,’ the Apothecary slammed his fist into the ground, cracking the metal panelling. ‘This blood belongs to the Chapter.’

  Harahel tightened his grip on his weapon as his pulse began to quicken. He swallowed hard in an attempt to stop salivating. ‘Blood calls out to blood,’ Harahel recited the battle mantra as he fought down the urge to tear apart the walls.

  ‘The main chapel lies at the far end,’ Nisroc spoke as the chrono display flashed a warning in his display. ‘Time is–’

  ‘Advance behind me,’ Harahel activated his Eviscerator, the weapon’s barbed blades impatiently churning the air as they search for something to rend. ‘If anyone emerges, shoot them.’ Harahel spat the words through a pool of saliva. He dropped his weight and flexed his knees.

  Nisroc nodded and slammed a fresh clip into his bolt pistol.

  ‘For the Chapter!’ Harahel broke into a run, the servos in his armour whirring as he picked up pace. The enhanced musculature of his thighs powered him forward at a speed that belied his bulk, an engine of ceramite and fury. ‘One, clear. Two, clear,’ Harahel looked left and right as he ran, updating Nisroc as his armour’s optical and audio sensors checked and recorded the disposition of each of the prayer cells in a heartbeat. ‘Three–’

  Las-rounds stabbed at Harahel from either side.

  ‘Contacts, five through nine,’ Harahel kept running, ignoring the smattering of fire coming from the cells. Most shots went wide, his powerful strides carrying him past the cell openings before his attackers could take aim. A handful of rounds grazed his armour, picking the paint from his war plate. Harahel growled. The combination of his helmet’s vox amplifier and the hall’s acoustics amplifying his annoyance until it filled the corridor like the roar of some terrible beast.

  ‘Keep moving,’ Nisroc opened fire. His bolt pistol bucked in his hand as he sent three traitors sprawling to the floor, their heads blasted from their malnourished shoulders. ‘Your rear is secure.’

  Harahel blinked an acknowledgement to Nisroc and pushed onwards. He was nearing the last cluster of prayer cells. His targeting overlay lit up with data, tracking the trajectory of the three fist-sized globes that rolled onto the corridor in front of him. ‘Grenades!’ Harahel bellowed a warning to the Apothecary, and threw himself into the nearest prayer cell as the devices exploded, avoiding the wash of flame and shrapnel that billowed out from them. He heard a muffled cry and a wrenching snap as the cell’s occupant’s bones broke under his immense bulk. Harahel snorted and picked the dead man up by his skull.

  ‘Harahel?’ Nisroc’s voice crackled in Harahel’s ear.

  ‘I am unharmed,’ Harahel emerged from the cell carrying the head of the dead traitor by the spinal cord, his gauntlet slick with blood.

  ‘The way is clear brother.’

  ‘No, there is one left, there,’ Harahel tossed the dismembered head into the cell opposite. A man screamed, firing on reflex as the head landed with a wet mulch.

  Nisroc stepped into the cell, allowing his armour to filter out the smell of excrement. The man had the nose of his lasgun pressed inside his mouth. His eyes trembled as they looked up at the Flesh Tearer. The Apothecary growled. The man juddered, reflexively pulling the trigger. The single las-round blew apart his skull, painting the wall behind him with superheated brain matter. Nisroc turned from the corpse to find Harahel on bended knee, his helmet discarded at his side. The veins in the other Flesh Tearer’s forehead were threatening to push through his skin, his brow ran with sweat. Nisroc took a tentative step towards Harahel, his finger resting on the trigger of his bolt pistol.

  ‘Stay back!’ Harahel held a hand out to the Apothecary.

  Nisroc resisted the urge to fire, ‘Control yourself! Now is not the time. The Archenemy has taken the lives of our brothers.’ Nisroc gestured to the arched doors of the chapel, ‘We must know what lies behind those doors.’

  Harahel said nothing, saliva dripped from his mouth to burn away at the floor.

  ‘On your feet, Flesh Tearer! You can report to Appollus as soon as we return to the Victus, I’m sure he’ll welcome you into the Death Company. But right now, you need to get to your feet or, Emperor help me, I’ll put a bolt-round through that thick skull of yours.’

  Harahel titled his head to look up at the Apothecary, his eyes bloodshot.

  ‘On your feet.’ Nisroc proffered Harahel his helmet. ‘Use your rage for something useful, like getting through that door.’

  Harahel took the helmet and locked it in place. ‘Never threaten me again, brother.’ He regarded the fusion marks on the chapel doors. Someone had welded them shut from the outside. He took a step back and then drove forwards, slamming his armoured shoulder into the weld-line. The metal buckled. Harahel brought his knee up and kicked out, the doors snapped inwards. A bank of suspended luminators stuttered into life as he stepped into the chamber.

  ‘Emperor save us…’

  The story continues next month...

  Gilead’s Curse

  Chapter Three

  Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

  ‘He will come, so he will. He will come. When he comes, for come he will, I’ll live forever. I won’t live for now, not just for now. I’ll live forever,’ the words tripped out over a narrow, dry pink tongue, through V-shaped rows of bright, sharp dentition.

  His gleaming black eyes, like onyx marbles lapped to a mirror finish, shone back at him from the many reflective surfaces of the object he held between blackened claws as he gabbled. His words came in a torrent, spoken almost without punctuation, without pausing for breath, fast and uncontrolled.

  ‘He will come, so he will. He will come,’ he said, but there was no one in the chamber to hear his speech, only the artifact in his hands and the air moving in response to his words.

  The scratch of claws and the groans of leather armour creaking around bobbing heads as his attendants sniffed at the foetid air and rotated their ears, listening for the things they must listen for, drew his attention. He ran one soft, pink palm over the vibrating earth wall of his antechamber, and then dropped the artifact on its plaited hair-ribbon back under his coat. It hit the soft short fur of his belly, where it had grown new the last few days, and began to heat and then whither the fur until the smell of slowly burning hair drifted up to his nostrils, making him turn his head this way and that, eyes wide.

  The undercrofts throbbed with the movement of hundreds... thousands of his minions, their whispered exchanges creating a susurrus that filled the air and the mind. He could sense it all as they gathered in the vaulted chamber of an ancient crypt, built by man-things a millennium ago, inhabited by his own kind for almost half that time. He would go to them in a few minutes more, go to them, show himself and speak the words that would galvanise them. He did not need to hear the words they spoke to one another in fast, clipped tones; he needed only to feel the air move around him, vibrating the coarse whiskers that sprouted from his brow and maw.

  One conversation came to him, and then another and another.

  ‘The gold is there, the gems, the wealth. Gold and more gold, and gem
s and gold. Piled, piled high and wide, piled everywhere, the gold and the gems and more gold.’

  This was his power. These were his lands, these walls, these tunnels, caves and warrens, these fissures through the earth. All that was sky-less belonged to him, and all those who thrived sunless and moonless in his nether-lands bowed down before him.

  They were ratkin in their dirt-lined warrens, tunnels and burrows, living in the warm embrace of the earth, lean and sleek, fast as fast, eager to serve, eager to get closer to their lord, to the centre of things. They were the whisperers, the collectors of information on the movements of men, of beasts, of higher beings. They were the stalkers, the followers, the gatherers of intelligence. Every time man or beast undertook a journey, the whisperers knew about it. They could read the vibrations in the ground. They knew whether a warrior travelled alone by the weight of his warhorse’s hoof-falls, knew how far and how long he had travelled, and how burdened he was. They knew when carts rolled to markets, laden with the new fruits of the surface fields, fruits too young, not ripened to the putrefaction of the flesh they thrived on, not brown and grey and fizzing with fermentation, but bright and clean and anathema. They knew when the dirt was tilled and when it was dug, and they knew the purpose of the tilling or the digging. They knew the difference between deep holes dug for bodies and those excavated for hiding treasures, wealth, things, objects, artifacts, the wonders the air-walkers worshipped them with.

  They were ratfolk in their brick-lined burrows, with their dripping moss-covered walls, and low vaulted ceilings, nothing but brick below, around and above them. Their warrens rich in midden-pickings from above, they were closest to the top-worlders, the surface-dwellers, the crust-livers, the air-walkers. They lived so close to the streets, houses, workshops, hostelries inhabited by species that had solid ground only beneath their feet and never above their heads. The rest was air. By contrast, the air-walkers were robust of constitution, slow of wits, hairless and sluggish, and abominable.