by Guy Haley
Helbrecht ignored him.
‘Very well,’ said Naroosh. His voice was leaden, weary. ‘We are observers here, nothing more. With your permission I will return to my ship and await the outcome of your folly.’
‘You have my permission, captain,’ said Helbrecht coldly.
Naroosh bowed and departed. Helbrecht’s eyes never moved from the fire blooming among the dead ships, not until the fleet had been rendered to splinters of semi-organic debris and clouds of glowing gas.
Still no reprisal came.
Probes shot out from small exit ports set over the Eternal Crusader’s prow augur arrays. Square as coffins, they housed the disembodied, lobotomised brains of heretics repurposed by the Chapter forge as mono-tasked servitor units. With a steady rhythm they launched, until five hundred coasted in long strings on either side of the fleet. At a single command, their plasma torches ignited, accelerating them away on pillars of glowing gas. At a safe distance, they arranged themselves into formation, a network whose nexuses were spaced a million kilometres apart.
Acting as one giant antenna, they filtered the aether for signals. Faint messages sent by cultures forty thousand years dead were isolated and discarded. Alien chatter was hunted down, analysed and dumped. But space in the Ghoul Stars was unusually quiet, as if the entire sector held its breath in fear, and they found their target within hours, buried amid the thumping voices of pulsars.
The minds of the dead conveyed their findings back to the Eternal Crusader, ten light minutes behind them. They accelerated onward, until their scant fuel reserves ran out, the damned souls within having unknowingly earned their redemption.
The Inner Circle gathered in one of the Eternal Crusader’s many strategiums to hear the message. Jurisian activated the recording by mind-impulse via the nerve shunts of his armour.
An audio fragment played, high register shrieks that made unaltered men wince. The same sequence repeated three times.
‘Is that it?’ asked Bayard.
‘This is in no recognisable tongue or code,’ said Jurisian. ‘But it was sent only a few days ago, and is artificial.’
‘What does it say?’ asked Ceonulf.
‘There are complex algorithms here. I cannot tell,’ said Jurisian.
‘Have the monks look at it,’ said Bayard hotly.
Jurisian’s servo arms, folded neatly across his back, twitched in annoyance.
‘You are the Chosen of the Emperor, Bayard, and by his will you are included in the Chamber Militant of the Inner Circle. But watch your tone,’ warned Helbrecht. ‘Jurisian is wise and well-versed in secrets you can never grasp. Save your choler for battle.’
‘My lord,’ said Bayard. He dropped his head.
‘You have, of course, consulted with Abbot Giscard,’ added Helbrecht.
‘Of course. The finest minds of the Monasterium Certituda have listened to it time and again. They also could discern no meaning. It is a multi-dimensional model. Of what, I could not say. This is not the science of the holy Emperor-Omnissiah – it is unclean, xenos filth. But I can tell you from where it came – the third planet of this system.’
The world in question hove into view on their chartdesk, blue and ominous. Screeds of information detailing its hostile environment ran almost to the floor.
‘The outer gas giant,’ said Ceonulf. ‘It is unlike any world we have found the ghouls upon.’
‘Nevertheless, it emanated from there,’ said Jurisian. ‘It was a wide broadcast, radio frequencies. Very primitive. I cannot say for whom it was intended, but it suggests the nest is located there.’
‘Very well,’ said Helbrecht. He drew his sword, that most holy relic of the Imperium, and held it aloft. His fellows bowed their heads. ‘By the Sword of the High Marshals, Sigismund’s sword, into which was forged a fragment of Dorn’s own blade, I take the following oath – that we shall purge this world of our foe, and cast the cythor fiends out forever from the Ghoul Stars.’
‘Praise be!’ intoned the others.
‘Let this world be designated 9836-18, the eighteenth planet targeted by the 9,836th Black Templars Crusade,’ said Castellan Ceonulf. ‘Let us hereafter refer to and name it as Grave Core.’
The fleet approached Grave Core unopposed. Large structures were detected in the upper reaches of its deep atmosphere. No signs of life were detected, but little could be told, for the cythor’s structures and the world’s atmosphere defied the fleet’s auguries. Cautiously, Helbrecht ordered his Chapter to investigate.
The pilot spoke. ‘Wind velocity is four hundred and thirty-six kilometres per hour and rising.’
The Thunderhawk’s bumping turned into a ceaseless shaking as the craft sank deeper into the thick atmosphere. Hydrocarbon snow blatted against the cockpit canopy, leaving greasy smears.
‘Be advised, brothers,’ shouted the co-pilot over the screaming of the engines, ‘we will drop through several layers of differentiated laminar flows. The disparity between currents is high. This will be a rough transit.’
The Thunderhawk bounced hard. Engines howled as they clawed for the air streaming ahead of the ship. It tilted forward, the rear bulled up by the rushing wind. The metal creaked as the pilot pulled the prow level, wind and engines raging at each other impotently.
‘Wind velocity seven hundred and two kilometres per hour and rising,’ said the pilot. ‘Hull temperature twenty thousand degrees and rising. Air temperature two hundred degrees Kelvin. It is cold, brothers.’
The Space Marines, locked in their cradles, said nothing. The Black Templars were as belligerent as they were religious. If many of them spent their time from launch to insertion in prayer, equally there were those that liked to boast and joust with words before battle was joined. But this was a grim undertaking, an especially vile foe. The turbulence shook their tongues in their mouths, making them grit their teeth. Instead they silently focused upon the divine majesty of the Emperor and the righteousness of their cause.
The juddering image of an alien platform was projected into their helms. The habitat leapt from the display as if it was trying to escape, the result of the augurs mounted on the gunships repeatedly losing their lock. Although the Thunderhawks were being shaken to the edge of destruction by the planet’s violent atmosphere, the platform did not move so much as a millimetre.
The habitat swelled in the forward view. Similarly fluted as the cythor fiends’ spacecraft and made of the same papery organics, the bulk of it was a thicket of branching tubes, intersecting each other to form a three-dimensional mesh two hundred cubic kilometres in extent. Large hive-like structures were embedded in this network. Straggling tendrils twisted upon themselves outside this mass, as if they had attached to something now removed. Flat platforms that resembled great leaves were situated at various points, all at different inclinations to each other. The structure was grey and scabrous. Growing upon it were citadels of crystal, their clean, sharp planes a contrast to the fungal roughness of the rest. These were hard to see, hidden in the folds and frills of the habitat. Upon other worlds Helbrecht’s men had seen such glassy forts, although built upon solid ground. These had glowed with witchlight that danced in the stone’s depths. Not here. These were dead, mineral tumours on the habitat.
The flight of gunships split, fighting to keep themselves from smashing into the habitat or each other. They headed for different areas of the alien tangle, seeking level ground to alight upon. Searchlights snapped on, dazzlingly bright on drifts of blue snow.
No fire came to greet them, no message. No shields were raised or warnings uttered. The Black Templars landed unmolested. One by one their engines cut out, leaving the howling of the wind unopposed.
Helbrecht chose a wide space, a near-flat leaf that intruded some way into the root tangle between two of the papery hives. The pilot put the ship down as close by one of these structures as he could, seeking to shelter
his brothers from the deadly winds. The ramp slammed down. An inrush of atmosphere equalised interior and exterior pressures with a bang. Helmet signums chimed warnings to their wearers as the oxygen-nitrogen mix filling the cabin was roughly compressed and chased out by Grave Core’s frigid, hydrogen-heavy air.
‘Onward!’ snapped Helbrecht. Fearing his prize to have slipped his grasp, his humour was poor. He shrugged off his flight cage before it had finished retracting and stalked outside, Sigismund’s sword already in his hand. The fifteen power-armoured Space Marines of Helbrecht’s command squad and Crusader Squad Victorious hurried out. Five Terminator-armoured Sword Brothers disembarked behind them, Sword Brother Gulvein at their head.
Wind snatched at them, buffeting even these potent sons of Terra. Caution overtook their battle lust. The surface was slippery with oily organics and frozen gas. Armour maglocks were activated but found nothing to grip; the ground was entirely non-ferrous. A barrage of sleety methane cut straight lines across the platform. Visibility was low, the wind deafening. Lightning crackled in the distance, spreading zig-zag networks through exotic gases. Plasma sprites ignited there, skittering like live things through the upper atmosphere. Helmet systems buzzed and fizzed with each electric blast.
‘My lord!’ shouted Gulvein. ‘An entry!’ He pointed with his power sword. The length of it sparked as snow was annihilated upon its energy field.
Helbrecht marched toward the entrance indicated – a vertical slit, far taller than it needed to be to accommodate the cythor fiends. A bipartite door, seamed raggedly down the centre, barred the way within. Helbrecht pushed at it, but it would not yield. His suit systems showed him a thick wall either side.
‘Breaching charges!’ he ordered, his words almost lost to the roar of the weather.
Two Space Marines of Squad Victorious ran to do his bidding, securing bulky meltabombs to the door. They activated the mechanisms and retreated. A bright fusion reaction consumed the bombs, most of the door and part of the wall. The xenos material fell away to soot that spiralled off on the wind. Helbrecht kicked his way inside.
Gulvein shouldered his way through, bringing down more of the weakened material and widening the breach. He came to stand by the High Marshal. Helbrecht was at the very edge of a precipitous drop, his cloak whipping around his legs. A massive space was before them, somewhat like the interior of a beehive hollowed of its combs. The edges were crowded with twisting walkways that led to randomly placed pods around the periphery. The centre narrowed as it dropped, until it was a few metres across. There a small hole glowed with blue world-light, affording a view directly down to the planet’s core. A crystalline structure hung from the apex of the building’s ceiling many hundreds of metres overhead. Suggestions of ramparts could be teased from its confounding layout, but again the crystal was lifeless and smoky, lacking the flowing light-forms seen on other ghoul-worlds.
Hydrogen winds whistled through the Space Marines’ entry point, hooting along the unrailed walkways in a near melody disturbingly close to the sound of a human voice.
The Space Marines of Helbrecht’s group entered the chamber and fanned out. Squad Victorious took the upper levels. Helbrecht’s command group fell in around their lord. Gulvein’s Terminators stopped a short way from them.
‘Castellan Ceonulf.’ Helbrecht signalled his second in command. His voice seemed unnaturally loud after the tempest outside. Static hiss filled all their vox beads, as if the world growled in its sleep.
‘Lord Helbrecht.’ The voice that replied was not the castellan’s.
‘Forgemaster Jurisian? Where are you?’
‘About three thousand metres from your position.’
‘Are you in contact with the others?’
‘I have found Bayard’s group. He moves to join my Techmarines. Effective vox is down to pitiful distances. I can attempt a signal boost within a few moments.’
‘Do you have any notice of the foe?’
‘None, my lord.’
‘Then we shall make our way to your position and join with you and Bayard,’ said Helbrecht. He brought up a thumbnail map in his visor and planted a rendezvous marker upon the schema with his mind. The map skipped and juddered with interference, much of it coloured in hazy reds and uncertain purples. He had a firm lock on Jurisian, but the other Black Templars’ locators skittered from place to place as his armour’s spirits struggled to correctly place them.
‘Brothers, follow,’ he ordered.
They walked around the chamber upon walkways that widened and narrowed without reason. Squad Victorious covered their lord and his veterans, boltguns sweeping across the great beehive of the room. No threat presented itself, and the Black Templars’ frustration grew.
On the far side there was another door. Helbrecht stopped, his command squad and Gulvein’s Terminators halting behind him. The door was as the other had been, an uneven shape sealed up the middle, rough and tight. But he found himself unable to judge its actual size, and when he examined it closely its lines shrank and warped without seeming to move. His sensorium pinged uncertainly. The heat outline of the door writhed with menace.
‘This door. My sensorium cannot get a firm hold upon it.’
‘It is odd in appearance, my lord,’ said Gulvein.
‘You see nothing amiss beyond that, Sword Brother?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘It shifts, as if presenting new aspects of itself to me.’
‘I see it entire and unmoving, my liege,’ said Gulvein.
Helbrecht looked again. This time, he saw nothing untoward. Frowning, he ran his sensorium feed back. Sure enough, there was the evidence: the door’s lines convulsed in the recording. ‘The mind might play tricks, Gulvein, but the spirits of machines cannot lie. What I saw was real. Sword Brethren, excise this door from its setting. Widen it. If there are defensive mechanisms within the wall, they will not catch us unawares.’
‘As you command, liege,’ said Gulvein.
Three Sword Brothers stepped forward. The stark blue light of active disruption fields reflected from the angles of the Black Templars’ battleplate as they smashed the wall to pieces. They battered with thunder hammer and chainfist until the door was obliterated, and half a metre’s thickness of broken, dry material lay exposed to the air. They ceased as one, judging the job finished. A blizzard of fine fibres wafted on currents of hydrogen-rich air.
‘It is done, my liege,’ said Gulvein.
The Terminators’ suit lights played about the interior of the room beyond. A floor sloped gently to some point in the middle, past the reach of the Terminators’ lamps. Tessellated, pentagonal blisters covered the wall as far as they could see. Acoustic pings emitted from the Space Marines’ armour painted a sound-image of a huge space.
‘This room is too large,’ breathed Brother Guthrith of Helbrecht’s command squad.
‘It does not match the outer shell of the habitat, my lord,’ said Gulvein.
Helbrecht had already seen this himself. He overlaid the supposed dimensions of the exterior upon what he saw of the interior. There was no fit between the external contours and the internal. His tactical map jumped and shifted.
‘This place is unwholesome,’ said Helbrecht. ‘Be wary. Be vigilant. I detect the corruption of an alien witch.’
‘Then we shall burn it upon the fire of the Emperor’s abhorrence,’ said Gulvein.
‘Praise be,’ the Space Marines replied.
Into the room they went, ever at the ready. Gulvein’s Terminators strode ahead, suit lights blazing, their lanterns of faith flickering at their sides. After three minutes, the cones of light emanating from their shoulders struck the far wall.
‘This is beyond reason,’ said Gulvein wonderingly. ‘What manner of evil is at work here?’
Helbrecht walked toward the room’s middle. The floor was rough underfoot, and rasped against t
he metal of his boots. They saw now that the chamber was a dome, five hundred metres across, the floor concave. The air was entirely still, the roar of the atmosphere outside absent.
‘My liege.’ Brother Eadwine of Squad Victorious voxed his master. ‘I have found trace of the foe. Dead. Here in one of the cells.’
The reaction to Eadwine’s announcement was instantaneous. All three squads went into a higher state of readiness. On their visor displays, threat indicators tracked upwards.
‘Check more of them,’ Helbrecht ordered. He strode toward the waiting Space Marine. Brother Eadwine stepped back from the cell. The fold of material he had been holding open with his bolter sprang back. Helbrecht grabbed it and wrenched it free. It collapsed into fragments as he did so. The lord of the Black Templars looked into the space behind.
Crammed inside, its spindly limbs wrapped tightly around its slender body, was a cythor fiend. There was the long head with a tiny mouth and no noticeable sensory organs, and a pair of long arms and legs, each with two more joints than human limbs. There were no identifiable muscle fibres in its flesh, which cloaked crystalline bones and was watered by a weak, benzene-based blood. But whereas the hides of those they had slaughtered elsewhere had been smooth and silvery, this one’s skin was as grey and rough as the fabric of the habitat. A fine web of gossamer strands covered it all over, somewhat akin to the silk spun by worms, but sparser and thicker. Helbrecht reached out a burnished bronze hand. When he touched the flesh it flaked away, as friable as burned paper.
‘In here too, my lord,’ called another.
‘And here.’
The Space Marines tore open more and more of the warty blisters. In most were desiccated corpses of cythor fiends, the life long fled from them.
‘What does this mean?’ said Gulvein. ‘Have they slain themselves in the face of our arrival?’
Before Helbrecht could answer, a garbled message burst across their closed vox-net, cut off as soon as it began. Banging followed, faint but unmistakeable.
‘Boltgun fire,’ said Helbrecht. ‘Ceonulf has found the foe. Praise be!’