Carcharodons: Red Tithe

by Robbie MacNiven

  Sharr estimated they had less than a minute before they started incurring casualties. He could see the Night Lord with the ornate tube of the missile launcher that had fired the frag rocket earlier, moving up under the covering fire of his brethren. One missile down the tunnel would slaughter them, or bring the rest of the rathole above down on their heads. A single clutch of grenades followed by a bout of full-auto bolter fire would turn any survivors into ragged meat. In their current position – hemmed in, and with their backs to a dirt wall – there was nothing the Carcharodons could do but die.

  That was what Sharr wanted the traitors to believe. He keyed his vox and blink-clicked the uplink connection for the White Maw.

  ‘Kahu,’ he said. ‘Strike.’

  Kahu’s Terminators materialised in a flare of teleportation lightning and a thunderclap of displaced air. Suddenly, five giants in slabs of off-white adamantium occupied the empty rail-turning platform at the centre of the junction.

  The tunnel around Sharr reverberated as the Red Brethren opened fire. A hail of rounds from Incaladion-pattern storm bolters and a Mark II Absinia heavy assault cannon mowed down the two nearest traitors. Their brothers responded with the speed and force typical of Adeptus Astartes. Within seconds a counter-barrage of bolts was cracking off the Terminators’ Tactical Dreadnought armour, hitting them from all sides.

  ‘Forward,’ Sharr voxed.

  He led First and Second Squads back out into the junction, Reaper roaring monstrously in his hands. The nearest traitors, scattered across the space where the loco tracks met, turned their attention back on them, but too late. One dropped his bolter and swung up a chainsword as Sharr swept into a lunge, but the motor had barely started to spin when Reaper crashed down into it. The Carcharodon’s great overhead blow sheared straight through the attempted parry and down into the traitor’s skull, carving all the way to his breastbone in a shower of churned-up blood and gore. Sharr tore Reaper from the corpse and swung a haymaker at another Night Lord, who was scrambling back as he triggered his own chainsword. Reaper’s bloody teeth bit air, but Red Tane was already going past Sharr. The Void Sword took the heretic where the lower part of his breastplate met the upper, running him through.

  The Night Lords counter-attacked. They drew blade and bolt pistol and hurled themselves into the fray, the synthesised screaming of their torture victims looping maddeningly over their vox-amplifiers. Kahu’s Terminators, not content to keep up their fire from their exposed position at the centre of the junction, waded in with their power fists ignited. Within seconds it became clear why the white-armoured veterans bore the title of Red Brethren – the great, pulverising blows of their disruptor-wreathed fists punched through power armour and flesh alike, swiftly painting them in streaks of dripping red. Like so many red butchers, they tore the Night Lords apart.

  ‘They’re retreating,’ growled Nuritona over the vox. Sharr saw that he was right. The rearmost heretics were melting back into the darkness of the tunnels, dragging their fallen with them, a few pausing to fire into the combat and keep the Carcharodons from exploiting the gaps opening between the withdrawing squads.

  ‘Do we pursue?’ Nuritona voxed.

  ‘Negative,’ Sharr said, though his transhuman body screamed otherwise. The Blindness beckoned, that silent, suicidal ennui that made up one of the darkest parts of his Chapter’s twisted genetic inheritance. He fought to keep it in check, his grip on Reaper’s haft tight.

  ‘It may be a trap,’ Dorthor said, sensing his commander’s strain. ‘We don’t know their numbers or dispositions, and they are masters of this type of warfare.’

  Sharr’s response was interrupted by another shriek, louder than all the others. Two dark, spiked shapes rocketed from one of the tunnels, their jump packs flaring. The surviving Raptors, the ones that had first sprung the ambush, had returned.

  They made straight for the Red Brethren. One actually managed to draw blood, its lightning claws plunging through a Terminator’s thigh plates before the massive warrior’s power fist dashed it to oblivion. The other, its breastplate pitted and buckled by what looked like close-range shotgun blasts, lunged at Kahu himself, gauntlet snagging the predator teeth hanging around the Terminator’s gorget. The leather band snapped as the traitor pulled away from Kahu’s lunge, and the Carcharodon’s great power fist crushed only air.

  The traitor seemed to think twice about his rash assault, pirouetting mid-air with the grace of an avian predator before powering away from the vengeful Terminators with his jump pack. Storm bolter rounds shredded the space around him and scored off his armour, but none found their mark before he vanished back down the tunnel.

  The Raptors’ sudden aerial assault had given the rest of the Night Lords the seconds they needed. They melded once more with the darkness, leaving only the echoes of their captured screams behind. Nuritona’s Tactical Marines started after them, gripped by the early stages of the Blindness, but a snarled command from the strike leader halted their pursuit. The blood-frenzy drained from their genhanced bodies, gone as surely as if it had never been there at all.

  ‘We should pursue,’ Kahu said to Sharr, striding through the carnage to stand before the Company Master. ‘Otherwise my presence here is wasted.’

  The anger in the Terminator’s voice was barely restrained. Chapter combat doctrine specified that the Red Brethren’s place in teleport reserve should only be utilised when a crucial operational juncture had been reached. They were the killing blow, the axe that finally lopped the head from those judged guilty, after they had been bloodied and broken. Instead they’d been utilised in the first skirmish, and one of their number had been injured.

  Sharr took a calming breath before answering.

  ‘You have my thanks, brother. Without your intervention we would all be dead.’

  ‘You were cut off?’

  ‘Yes, Third Squad is clearing the debris as we speak.’

  ‘How can it be that our vanguard was so easily trapped?’ Kahu demanded, the criticism in his voice clear.

  ‘The speed of our deployment has made our reconnaissance capacity minimal at best.’

  ‘You should not have surrendered your Scout detachment to Te Kahurangi then.’

  ‘Do not question my judgement, Kahu,’ Sharr said. ‘Not until you have something worthy to complain about.’

  He could have gone further. The reason he had been forced to walk into a trap, initially alone, had been because of Kahu’s demands for speed. If the Terminator had wished to act as the killing blow then he should have permitted Third Company more time to prepare. He said none of that however, merely holding the black glare of Kahu’s visor lenses. Eventually the Terminator turned away.

  ‘We are committed now,’ he said.

  ‘That we are,’ Sharr agreed. ‘The advance continues.’

  + + Gene scan complete + + +

  + + Access granted + + +

  + + Beginning mem-bank entry log + + +

  + + Date check, 3674875.M41 + + +

  Day 89, warp time variance approximate.

  We have just broken from the warp in-system, spinward of Zartak’s star. The empyrean has played its tricks again – we have arrived far earlier than expected. The Saint Angelica’s augurs are still performing scans, but thus far have been unable to detect the presence of any other ships in the vicinity, or any signals emanating from the surface of Zartak beyond a weak distress signal that seems to be coming from a secondary prison facility. There are traces of what may be several substantial wrecks locked in the planetoid’s orbit, and other evidence of recent void combat. We are also detecting the trail of what can only be described as a recent fleet-sized warp jump. I suspect we are too late. All communication channels are dead. I will order the Saint Angelica to chart a course through the system’s outer asteroid belt once the final scans have been completed and uploaded. Emperor only knows what we’ll find on
ce we get there.

  Signed,

  Interrogator Augim Nzogwu.

  + + Mem-bank entry log ends + + +

  + + Thought for the Day: Temper inquisitiveness with the desire to do His Will + + +

  Chapter VIII

  The darkness had betrayed Shadraith.

  For the Night Lord, the shadows were always full, always crawling with sharp talons and bestial faces, always busy with murmurs and lies and disembodied, inhuman chittering. They were the source of his strength, the essence of Bar’ghul, the black-clad trickster, a daemon born from darkness and the untruths that lead to death.

  The tangled depths of Sink Shaft One had held no secrets from him. The shadows had brought Shadraith this far, guiding him like faithful hounds through the labyrinthine passages of rock and dirt that constituted Zartak’s man-made underworld. They had never let him down. Until now.

  Entering a section of mine works listed as Lower West 7, Shadraith’s connection with his daemonic wraiths had started to falter. A different presence had intruded through the warp, driving away the guiding whispers. The shadows that Shadraith knew and coveted were now gone, replaced by an altogether different kind of darkness. It was the oblivion of the void, an aching space of nothingness entirely free of any essence, daemonic or otherwise. It swallowed the Chaos sorcerer like the maw of some great, hungry leviathan, stripping away all the certainties that had led him to this world in the first place.

  For the first time since the powers of the Dark Gods had unlocked his innate psychic gifts and granted him the foresight once possessed by his martyred gene-sire, Shadraith found himself truly alone. The sorcerer raged, taking out his fury on the convicts unfortunate enough to stumble into his path. His warp scythe was soon red and wet. Its ethereal flames smouldered.

  He was lost. There was only one being on Zartak who could have done this, one being with the learning and experience to challenge Shadraith’s prodigious abilities. Shadraith had never encountered him in person, but Bar’ghul had. The Pale Nomad, the one known to his battle-brothers as Te Kahurangi. The daemon had clashed with him on three previous occasions, through different mortal allies. According to Bar’ghul the Space Marine Librarian was ancient by the standards of those weaklings still clinging to the False Emperor. Shadraith admitted that he had underestimated him. Nothing, mortal or otherwise, had been able to sever his link with Bar’ghul before.

  The Pale Nomad was also, according to Bar’ghul, his brother.

  The Chaos sorcerer worked to restore contact with his daemonic ally. In the miserable void-dark that encompassed him he collected the essence of life itself – blood. Like some nightmarish troglodyte-king, he dragged the victims who wandered unwittingly into his path into a cavern of bored-out rock and flayed them, ripping flesh from bones and pulping internal organs into a gory paste. His armour was soon befouled with a vile layer of blood and mud. He tore the old, leathery skins from him and slapped the fresh ones in place, the stretched flesh carved with new, blasphemous runes and sigils. All the while he canted dark phrases beneath his breath, words even he had never dared use before, ones that would have turned the stomachs of his own Night Lords brethren, let alone any sane mortal.

  He was being reborn. In his fury he was binding himself closer to the being he only ever acknowledged as ally, never master. Slowly, the darkness that encased him began to fill again, the lesser daemons and familiars that guided him returning as they overcame the Pale Nomad’s trickery.

  Shadraith would find the boy. Afterwards, he would find Te Kahurangi too, and he would peel his brother’s pale skin from his meat and bones, inch by inch.

  Skell woke. He didn’t remember falling asleep. His last thoughts were of stumbling from a sprint to a pained, slow limp, his body exhausted, his mind frayed by the experiences of the past day. His body had simply given up.

  For the briefest moment he had no idea where he was. Then reality came crashing back. He surged to his feet and cried out at the cramps that had worked their way into his cold, tired body while he’d slept.

  He was in an abandoned vent backtunnel, the tight space moaning with the humid atmosphere channelled by large rotor-fans down into the mines from Zartak’s jungle. The eerie sound made him shiver. He was caked in mud and grime. He’d lost both his shoes at some point in the cloying ore-mire of South 16. Hunger clawed at his belly like a rabid beast, aching and desperate.

  For a second, all he wanted to do was lie back down against the wall. For a second, he didn’t give a damn about anything that had happened. About the throbbing in his skull. About the nightmares, both real and imagined, that were stalking him. About the prison escape, and the horror of Dolar’s death, and the greater horror of what he’d somehow done to those who’d killed him. The tiredness, the cold and the hunger overcame all of his remaining instincts for self-preservation. He’d been running for what felt like his entire life.

  Keep going, said the thought.

  ‘Get out of my head,’ Skell shouted. The words bounced and echoed up the exhaust tunnel, the lonely shriek of a madman. He clamped his calloused hands around his skull, willing the pain to go away, willing the voices to cease. All of them. He’d had enough. He thrust the alien thought from his mind.

  It tried to resist. It tried to stay buried in his head, muttering its rasping suggestions, seeing through his eyes, hearing through his ears. Skell would not permit it. With a shout of unadulterated anger he banished it, throwing it back into the bottomless oblivion it had risen from.

  His headache receded fractionally. The realisation rekindled a small ember of determination. They didn’t control him, not yet.

  He began to move. The backtunnel was no place to stop – it was too cold and too exposed. This section of the upper works was unfamiliar to him, far removed from the pits he had spent the past five months excavating. But he could tell he was getting closer to the surface. The air being blown down to him was fresh with rain­water and the smell of overripe fruit. Next to the stink of stale sweat, rubber and grit it felt like salvation.

  One of the exfiltration mine heads had to be close. He dragged his respiration mask back on and limped out of the backtunnel, following the dimly lit signs and plastek-sheathed notice boards.

  They would not take him, neither the voices in his head nor the nightmares stalking the tunnels.

  ‘Wait.’

  Te Kahurangi spoke the word with great difficulty, the sound issuing from his helmet’s vox as though through gritted teeth. Aleph-seven-seven and Aleph-one-sixteen came up short, crouching in the brackish water.

  The slurry vents of North E-6 were partly flooded, the bottom of the wide tunnels swilling with water discoloured a muddy brown by the sediment carried down from the surface into Zartak’s porous depths. The trio of Carcharodons moved through the knee-high water with a grace that belied their transhuman build, their motions causing barely a splash or ripple.

  Despite still being mere Scouts of the Tenth Company, Aleph-seven-seven and Aleph-one-sixteen knew their business well. Like the other Scouts now dispersing throughout the tunnels around Te Kahurangi, they’d been combat-effective for almost a decade, and had been bloodied on two dozen occasions. Both had the beginnings of their first exile markings, the dark, jagged tattoos spiralling in loops up their bared forearms and across their pale, shaven scalps. They were on the cusp of becoming full members of the Chapter, leaving behind the number designates all Scouts were known by in favour of a true void name, swapping their grey cara­pace plates and black multiweave fatigues for the coveted power armour of the nine Battle Companies. The fact that they were typical of the Scout detachment assigned to Sharr’s command showed just how badly the Chapter was in need of fresh blood. There had not been an effective Tithing for the better part of a decade.

  To Te Kahurangi there was little difference between Aleph-seven-seven, Aleph-one-sixteen and the younger initiates who were scouring the
other tunnels. The ancient Librarian had seen many like them rise and fall, from their first wild, ash-blind blooding to their eventual attainment of the rank of void brother, their promotion to strike leaders and even Company Masters, and their deaths. They all died, eventually. It was said by some that the Adeptus Astartes were immortal, that age alone could never carry them away from their duties to their primarch and their Emperor. Whether they were or weren’t was in itself an ephemeral debate. They had been bred for one task alone – to persecute the endless wars in mankind’s defence – and that guaranteed that no matter how skilled they were, one day they would fall.

  Te Kahurangi knew that he too would die, perhaps soon. The thought did not concern him. What concerned him was failure, failure to ensure the survival of his Chapter after he was gone. That was the only task left for him now. To achieve it, he had to retrieve the boy, Skell. But Skell had just driven him from his thoughts.

  The Chief Librarian stood motionless for a moment, the lumen lights reflecting from the turgid water and shimmering across the intricately inscribed blue plates of his power armour. The green stone embedded in the top of his force staff was dark and dead, the bone that clasped it no longer throbbing with warp energy. He had lost the connection, and with it even a vague sense of where Skell was in the seemingly endless labyrinth.

  The Scouts probed the gloom ahead, bolt pistols and their long, serrated combat knives in hand. They had already dispatched a gang of half a dozen convicts who’d stumbled into their path. They’d been armed with aquila-stamped las weaponry presumably pilfered from their former captors, and they’d been foolish enough to attempt to use it on the Space Marines. Their blood was now crusting on the initiate’s blades, armour and deathly white faces.