Crusaders of Dorn

by Guy Haley

  But the Black Templars held that this inhospitable world was yet the realm of man, no matter that the light of Astronomican was faint there. They would not be thwarted.

  Around the juncture of the root and the structure were human artefacts, the shattered remnants of cybernetic devices. Only a few fragments remained, splinters of polished skull and steel, driven into the fibres that covered the stalk by the currents that had swept the rest of their components away. One remained whole: an extensively modified probe, proofed by the arcane secrets of the Eternal Crusader’s forge against the hellish environment. It had crawled down the stalk to its doom, but it had survived, and would for a few moments more, and that was enough. Within its armoured housing blinked a teleport homer, singing to the ships high in the void.

  The liquid wobbled in the lee of the stalk. Bright light shone there. A shock wave of thin liquid burst outward. The Terminators arrived in a bubble of their own super-pressurised atmosphere, prepared for their transit, but despite the best efforts of the Chapter’s Techmarines the air was not quite of equal density as that around it, and the returning surge of liquid hydrogen rocked them on their feet.

  Helbrecht, Gulvein and four others materialised – Sword Brothers Aelfgar, Sotrnem, Giraldus and Leofric. They skidded sideways in the wind. Safety lines deployed automatically from their armour, anchoring them to the alien structure. Aelfgar reached for Sotrnem, steadying him before he could be blown away.

  Helbrecht looked at his Sword Brothers, their outlines wavering in the boiling hydrogen fluid. His armour creaked under the immense pressure. Currents yanked at him, threatening to push him from the structure to his death even in his Terminator armour. His movements were slow, his strength waging its own war against an entire planet. Status screed redlined all over his visor display, numbers jittering only increments below the armour’s utmost tolerances. He dismissed them in irritation.

  Surging electrical currents made a mockery of the vox. He pointed downward. Giraldus hefted his chainfist, knelt and began to cut. He opened a wide space in the roof. One by one, the Terminators stepped through and fell rapidly, four metres down, trusting the might of their armour to absorb the impact.

  They moved off to make space for their fellows as they arrived, suit lights flicking on to reveal a corridor as perfectly twisted as a rifled barrel. Three of them made a cordon for their high marshal. Aelfgar came after, Leofric last.

  Inside the structure, the pressure was just as great, the temperature higher. But the vicious winds were gone, and the electromagnetic interference was zero. The tempest raged only metres over their heads, making the silence within sinister. Helbrecht clearly heard the soft breathing of his brothers over the vox.

  ‘This whole structure acts as an energy cage,’ said Gulvein. ‘If it blocks out the signal of the recall beacon, our brothers will not be able to hear our calls for retrieval.’

  The white helmets of the Terminators looked to the bronze one of their lord.

  ‘Down,’ said Helbrecht. ‘We go down to victory or to death. It matters not. This is the path the Emperor has decreed, and we follow it until we succeed or die.’

  ‘Praise be,’ the others replied.

  They followed a long, spiral tunnel that looped around and around the structure. As far as they could tell, it was similar in form to the hive-like buildings embedded in the habitat lattice hundreds of kilometres higher up, but much larger in scale, and solitary.

  Mission clocks clicked onwards in their helmets. At the appointed times, the Black Templars sang their prayers in honour of the Emperor. The rest of the time they said little. There was no variation to the tunnel: it went on and on. For what seemed like a day they walked, proceeding ever downwards and inwards.

  After some time, the tunnel changed, becoming wider. Branches emerged all around it in spiral patterns, tiny at first, then larger and larger, until it became apparent to the Space Marines that they were miniature replicas of the tunnel in which they walked, converging on one point as rivers converge on terrestrial seas. The road they followed was the main path, or so it appeared, but they did not trust their autosenses, and half expected their way to empty itself into one wider, or stop altogether.

  ‘Halt!’ said Gulvein. By this point the corridor had become vast, thousands of subsidiary tunnels corkscrewing into the space all around. ‘Movement!’

  He pivoted his suit, moving the bulky shoulder guard from the hips. His suit beam stabbed out. A second met it, dazzling them.

  Gulvein shut off his beam. They hefted their weapons, readying them for attack.

  Staring back at them, from the curve of a fractally radiating tunnel, was a group of Black Templars: five in black, white and red, and one in bronze.

  They lowered their weapons; the other group did the same.

  ‘A reflection,’ said Helbrecht aloud. His double said the same, the twinned echoes tangling along the convoluted interstices of the tunnel.

  ‘They appear not to be solid,’ said Aelfgar, and his double also spoke.

  ‘Ignore them. It is witchery,’ said Helbrecht. ‘The Emperor protects us.’

  ‘Praise be,’ all ten Space Marines said.

  They marched on, their doubles heading in the opposite direction.

  The tunnels flowed together in infinite multitude. The solid phantoms became a more frequent occurrence. They walked round and round in spirals, coming stolidly towards Helbrecht’s party, or going away, or heading down other branches. They saw tiny versions of themselves treading their own paths in the subsidiary tendrils of subsidiary tendrils. When they sang their songs of praise, the complex thundered to prayers reproduced a million times.

  At first the doubles were exact, but after a time they began to notice differences in their doppelgangers. Subtle at first – unfamiliar badges, perhaps, or a different brother’s name upon one suit of plate or another. These oddities grew wilder and more extreme. They saw themselves all in white, they saw groups of twenty or more, they saw themselves dead. They saw themselves in the yellow of the Imperial Fists, black gauntlets upon their armour. They heard vox chatter in their own voices but in languages that made no sense to them. They put all notice of these phantoms from their minds, concentrating upon their progression through the thick hydrogen medium that filled the tunnels. At all times the chief truth of ztheir creed was on their lips and in their hearts: ‘The Emperor protects, glory to the Emperor.’

  And then they rounded a corner, and they were alone. They were notified of strange energies by their sensoriums, and their threat indicators, red since their arrival upon the deeper platform, shifted to an even angrier hue.

  ‘We grow close. Prepare,’ said Helbrecht.

  A chamber met them, wider than could be guessed or measured. The dimensions of it were all wrong, sliding from their minds as they attempted to perceive them. A radiance shone at the centre of it, a tall slash that stretched from floor to ceiling.

  ‘A gateway, a tear in the world,’ growled Gulvein. ‘This is black sorcery.’

  A multitude of shining beings crowded this brilliance. Their colours were those of the creature within the glassed man, but freed from their shells they took on shapes that were impossible for the eye to process – objects like soapy cubes that span about incomprehensible axes, or shoals of ever-changing pyramids. They orbited the light in a tightening triple helix formation that sank into its heart where the creatures were absorbed.

  One form, far greater than the rest, hung over the light, its body playing complex rhythms of colour and shade.

  ‘It acts as shepherd,’ said Sotrnem. ‘Sending them whither it will.’

  ‘We have time if we are swift,’ said Helbrecht. ‘They flee our wrath.’

  ‘For the Emperor,’ Gulvein whispered.

  ‘Praise be.’

  They stepped into full view, weapons raised, their armoured limbs working hard against t
he liquid air. They were noticed, and the pulsing of the shepherd picked up tempo. The crowds of flickering shapes spasmed as one, the helix twisted the faster, and the transformed cythor fled quickly into the light, disappearing from view in a shower of breaking rainbows. The chamber emptied impossibly fast; what had been a throng that pressed every side of the room become a crowd, then a small group. The Space Marines staggered forward, guns, swords and hammers raised. They made slow progress, their limbs snagged by more than the treacly atmosphere.

  There was darkness too in this luminous place – the blaze of the light at the heart of the room cast black shadows in the nooks of the rippled wall. From here, the predators came.

  ‘Brothers! ’Ware!’ said Sotrnem. ‘Eldar daemonspawn.’

  Shadows gathered at the corners of the room, black ellipses that rivalled the brilliance of the gate at the centre of the room in their blackness. From them issued the grim shapes of eldar-daemons. The liquid around them shimmered, condensed by the immense chill emanating from each. This effect made their forms waver, but they held true within their curtains of chilled air, appearing as solid creatures of blackness patterned with light, wild shocks of white hair around their heads. They wore no protection, even in the hostile depths of the atmosphere, but instead had long skirts around their legs that looked to be of flayed skin. Going in pairs, they stalked forward, approaching the edges of the herds of transformed cythor with sharded nets in their hands. Neither the shepherd being nor its charges appeared to notice this threat in their midst. The daemonkin stole forward and cast their nets into the shoal of cythor, dragging several pulsing, ever-changing shapes down to the ground.

  ‘They have our prey!’ roared Helbrecht. ‘They steal our prize!’

  At this outburst, shadowy heads turned quickly. Several of the outliers turned from their harvest and passed into places cast into black shadow by the brilliant light.

  They emerged again a second later, leaping from the dark places close to hand and into the Black Templars Terminators. There were seven of them, lithe and deadly.

  Sotrnem was knocked sideways as one of the daemonkin struck him. Another came at him, hooked blade pulsing with sickly light. Sotrnem took the blow upon his stormshield. A shock wave burst through the thick air at the activation of the energy field. The eldar-thing fell back. A mouth appeared in the lower half of its featureless face, hissing at the Sword Brother. He shrugged at the other, knocking it from its perch upon his pauldron. Both were quick, even in the dragging atmosphere, and dodged his hammer’s blows.

  Aelfgar and Leofric closed about Helbrecht, weapons ready. Giraldus opened fire with his bolter, catching one of the creatures in the shoulder as it poured itself from a crack in the wall. It was spun around by the impact, clawed at itself, then evaporated into wisps of shadow.

  A third and fourth attacked Gulvein. He was wise in the ways of war, and stayed his hand till the last, reversing his blade and burying it into the sternum of one of the creatures as it came at him. The point of his power sword emerged from the thing’s back and the thick air curdled with its black blood.

  By the gate of light, the grisly catch continued. Dozens of the daemon-creatures trapped the ascending cythor in nets of shadow and crystal. Many more of them were attracted to the Black Templars, emerging from the dark places, showing needle teeth in mouths that vanished when closed. They came from the thinnest sliver of darkness, crawling down the walls, hands plunging from hollows in the floor to grab at the Black Templars’ feet and greaves. Soon a crowd of dozens had gathered about the sons of Dorn. As they circled the Space Marines, they kept low to the ground, their movements as exaggerated and sinuous of those of a dancer. Close up, the glowing markings of their bodies could be seen as deep scars, cut or branded into their midnight flesh. All shone with a different light, this one green, another sickly yellow, a few an icy blue. The air wavered about them, a zone of churning currents where the deep chill that emanated from the creatures fought the pressure-heat of the room. The daemonkin’s numbers increased until they brought the temperature of the chamber low enough for the temperature gauges in the Terminators’ visors to drop.

  ‘Come for us, foul warpspawn, and see what it avails you!’ roared Gulvein. ‘You have tasted our mettle – my blade yearns for more of your blood!’

  ‘They will not attack,’ said Helbrecht. ‘They are craven. We have put the fear of Dorn into their hearts! They seek only to keep us from our prize. Well, I say – this will not pass! We have taken an oath to rid the galaxy of the cythor fiends. I will not stand idly by while my prize is denied me!’

  ‘Praise be!’ roared the Black Templars. Their blood boiled with righteous anger, and they threw themselves into the mob of daemonkin.

  The watery air boomed with the crackle and banging of disruption fields. Ten daemonkin or more there were for every Terminator, but although the creatures crawled all over the Sword Brothers, they could find no way into the armour, and the Black Templars set about the glorious work of death. Gulvein slaughtered many, his sword moving slowly through the cloying air, but always to the right place at the right time. Giraldus brought several down with his boltgun, while Leofric and Aelfgar used their mass and crackling stormshields to force a path toward the fleeing cythor fiends. Helbrecht followed them, the sword of Sigismund jabbing and slashing into the packed mass of the creatures, slaying many.

  The daemonkin drew back. Fell light played over their markings and a blast of terrible cold emanated from their outstretched claws.

  The passage of the energy churned the air, ripping oath papers and tabards from their mounts upon the Black Templars’ armour. The dark eldar concentrated their fire on Aelfgar. The blast caught him square in the chest, blazing against his eagle and cross where a thick sludge of freezing hydrogen formed. With a sickening bang, Sword Brother Aelfgar’s armour collapsed inwards and he was pulped. On Gulvein’s squad display, the pressure signifier for Aelfgar’s armour shot into four figures and the temperature map of his suit became blotchy. He died instantly, his vital signs running flat.

  ‘What wickedness is this?’ cried Gulvein.

  ‘It is witchery, brothers!’ roared Helbrecht. ‘Prayer is the answer! Devotion! Raise your voices to the God Emperor and we shall surely overcome them! Praise b–’

  Helbrecht was cut short. Gulvein turned ponderously around, hampered by his armour and the environment. A daemonkin leapt at him. He thrust it aside, intent on his lord.

  He was just in time to see Helbrecht be pulled through a dark shadow in the floor. The High Marshal vanished.

  ‘Helbrecht! The High Marshal! The High Marshal is taken!’

  With a great shout of anger, the Black Templars stepped up their attack.

  Helbrecht fell through air no thicker than that of the Eternal Crusader. He landed hard on a pile of bones that shattered under his weight. Dragged down by his armour, he plunged deep into them, their broken ends closing over his head. The sword of Sigismund was jarred from his fingers, becoming lodged in the tangle of skeletons above him. His hand closed around the honour chain binding it to his wrist and he yanked hard, tugging the hilt through the calcareous mess overhead until he could grip the sacred weapon once more.

  Bones exploded outward as Helbrecht kicked his way free.

  He was in a cavern of black rock. There was no light except that cast by his suit lamp and devotional lantern. The environmental gauges of his sensorium flickered, confounded by the abrupt change. The room was at almost normal Terran atmospheric pressure, and a few degrees above the freezing point of water. Thermal imaging revealed walls of blocky, cruel-edged rock with a near-uniform temperature profile. He turned about, scanning the room with his eyes and sensorium. There appeared to be only one way in, and between himself and that exit were many piles of bones. They came from every creature imaginable, and all, without exception, were bereft of their skull.

  Helbrecht shifted his gri
p on his sword and made for the tunnel mouth.

  He did not have to walk far before he came across the heart of the place, a large and ominous hemispherical ossuary chamber. Except for a few black spaces, the rock was entirely covered with skulls, far more than there were skeletons outside. They were impaled on dark iron spikes, arranged according to species and size in bands and whorls that made subtle patterns. These became starker the longer he looked at them. A dais of black stone was set at the centre of the room, discarded skulls mounded up around it, the broken fragments of others carpeting the floor from wall to wall.

  The empty sockets of the mounted skulls glared at a space someway off the floor. Perhaps as an effect of this, the entire space throbbed with sinister energies.

  ‘A dark fane. I have come to the domain of the unclean,’ said Helbrecht. There was no fear in him, no concern at his displacement in space, only an exultation of the spirit. Surely the Emperor had ordained that he come here. Soon an enemy of the Emperor of Man would lie dead by his hand. He gripped his devotional lantern and held it up. ‘Come out, witch – I have been sent here by the Lord of Man to see to your doom. I bring the light of his magnificence to reveal your wickedness.’

  A low hiss answered from the darkness.

  ‘Revile the witch! Destroy the unclean!’ bellowed Helbrecht. ‘Suffer not the alien to live!’ He raised his storm bolter and took aim at the skulls upon the wall. He let fly three rounds, and shattered a dozen of his captor’s trophies. ‘Praise be! Praise be! Praise be!’

  He ceased firing. His boltgun smoked righteously.

  ‘You make a space for yourself.’ A low and sibilant alien voice defiled the Emperor’s language. ‘That is good. You are worthy.’ His foe was right behind him.

  Helbrecht turned just in time to block a vicious swipe. The sword of Sigismund caught a hooked alien blade that burned with the power of baleful technology. He flung it outward with a sweep of his sword, meaning to riposte on the return and end his foe, but the thing was too quick, dodging backwards and launching a flurry of counterblows at Helbrecht’s head.