Carcharodons: Red Tithe

by Robbie MacNiven

  ‘As you say, Company Master,’ he said eventually.

  ‘You have squad command,’ Sharr said, turning towards the sifting chamber’s exit. ‘Keep the room secure until Ari and the Scouts arrive.’

  ‘Understood. Where are you going?’

  ‘To pray.’

  Torrik and the rest of Fifth Squad were securing a loco storage bay when the darkness caught up with them.

  The blood of cultists and traitors was still red on Torrik’s chainaxe as the Carcharodons moved into the echoing cavern. It had been carved from Zartak’s lower level mines with great megaborers, left as a space to accommodate reserve carriages for the rail systems. Those engines covered the tracked floor of the cavern, most of them draped in heavy storage tarps. Torrik and his four void brothers moved among them silently, their advance slowed to compensate for their malfunctioning auto-senses. Strike Leader Kartli had divided Fifth into two combat squads to better fulfil their new role – combing the side bays and lesser tunnels in the rear of the new battlefront established by the rest of the company. Kartli himself led the first squad, Torrik the second. They’d been hunting down stray cultists and prisoners while the rest of Third Company prepared for the final push towards Sink Shaft One. It was inglorious work, but work the Carcharodons did well. To the likes of Torrik, praise and acknowledgement had never been things of any worth. In the Outer Dark there was only the endless silence of the void. The Wandering Ancestors had given up on the weakness of human glory when they’d entered into their great exile. Never again would their descendants seek it.

  ‘I heard something,’ voxed brother Loa. Torrik paused between two carriages, his chainaxe unclamped but inactive, his senses probing the ever-present darkness of Zartak’s underworld.

  ‘We are not alone,’ he said into the vox. ‘I can feel it.’ Ever since entering the storage bay he’d been plagued by a presence in the shadows, only half felt but certainly not imagined. To warriors so attuned to the darkness, the sensation of being hunted was a curious one – unsettling, alien. The Carcharodon keyed his vox again.

  ‘Combat squad, converge on my position.’

  Cull was beginning to understand why his Claws had struggled. These loyalists were unlike any he’d encountered before. They bore a curious resemblance to the Night Lords themselves, but where the VIII Legion delighted in the terror they caused, these grey killers seemed to be without any emotions at all. For a moment, crouched in the concealing darkness of the loco carriage’s interior, Cull found himself wondering where they had come from, and why.

  It did not matter. What mattered was that they were challenging the Night Lords. And Cull had long ago learned how to deal with challenges.

  The Stalk was complete. First Kill, finally released from the Centrum Dominus, had worked its way through ratholes and burrow seams to infiltrate the rear of the loyalist positions. Cull knew he had to offer them something. They had been patient for so long. Besides, unleashing the Warp Talons had left him with a deep-seated desire to kill. Simply watching the fighting from the Precinct Fortress was no longer enough. He needed the challenge. He needed to overcome it.

  There would be no Terror after the Stalk. As a tactic it was rarely of any use against the Adeptus Astartes, and even less so against these mysterious grey warriors. Cull went straight to the Kill.

  ‘Strike,’ he ordered.

  First Kill attacked. The Loyalist half-squad was still rallying to the centre of the carriage storage bay. They reacted to the ambush with the same silent ferocity Cull had seen over the viewscreens. But First Kill was hungry. It would not be denied.

  Narx drew first blood, as ever. The violent young executioner tore from where he’d been concealed behind the gutted engine block of a decommissioned loco hauler, his power sword crackling. The Loyalist who had been passing by reacted immediately, bolter coming up, but Narx was faster. His blade bisected the bolter, and as the Loyalist went for his chainsword the executioner opened him with a callous backward swipe.

  Golgoth had been lurking among the straining support struts of the cavern’s ceiling. His jump pack flared as he landed, but even its retro thrust barely dampened the impact of the hulking Raptor. Grit and dirt exploded around him as he came down behind one of the Loyalists, energy blazing across his wicked lightning claws. The grey Imperial hammered a burst of bolts into the Night Lord at point-blank range, but the traitor’s modified armour turned them aside in a shower of sparks. Laughing, Golgoth tore into the Loyalist, his hideous strength rending the Space Marine apart in just a few slashing blows.

  The Dark Twins, Xeron and Terron, were confounding the third Loyalist, caught between two disused carriages. One Night Lord would dart from the shadows and lash out, the blow parried by the Space Marine’s revving chainsword. Another would strike a split second later from the opposite side, dealing a minor blow to one of the weak points in the Loyalist’s patchwork armour. They were bleeding him, one slash at a time.

  Cull burst through the side of the carriage he’d been concealed in with a full-throated roar, steel crumpling beneath the forward thrust of his jump pack. The final Loyalist turned to face him, bloody chainaxe revving. Cull’s runesword met the weapon, jarring back off the spinning teeth. The Night Lord turned the half-slash into a short lunge that grated to the side of the Loyalist’s breastplate. As expected, rather than try to regain his defence the Imperial attacked, driving himself into Cull’s exposed guard. Cull responded in kind before the Loyalist could cut upwards with his axe, the two killers locked together in a deadly embrace. Cull found his helm inches from the Loyalist’s. The black lenses facing him were utterly soulless and unreflective, a contrast to the prince’s hateful glare.

  The Loyalist headbutted him.

  Cull went back, his skull ringing. The sudden blow bought the Loyalist only a split second, but it was enough for him to rake his chainaxe across Cull’s breastplate. The Prince of Thorns snarled as the blades bit deep, chopping through ceramite and almost splitting the skull embossed over the Night Lord’s breast.

  Cull reacted with the same lightning reflexes that had left every challenger he’d ever faced dead at his feet. He lashed out with his left hand, grasping the wrist of the Loyalist and pinning his chainaxe off to his right side. In the same breath he drove his runeblade at the Space Marine’s lower torso. He felt the warrior’s arm twitch in his grip as the Loyalist attempted to parry, but the Night Lord held his guard open. There was a crunch as the runesword punched through the Loyalist’s stomach, the sigils inscribed across its blade glowing darkly. The Space Marine doubled up, gutted, his spine pierced. Cull released his right arm and struck him about the helm with his gauntlet, knocking him to one side even as he twisted his sword free. The Loyalist fell to his knees. A last contemptuous swipe of the rune­sword sent his head tumbling across the rail bed in a jet of blood.

  The Dark Twins had finished with their victim, a final blow from Terron cutting the legs from beneath the dying warrior. Even with his genhanced body, his dozen wounds would bleed him out in minutes. Alone among First Kill, Drac hadn’t engaged. The veteran demolitions expert had watched it all from the top of one of the carriages, content to let the rest of the retinue have its fun. It had been finished in barely a minute.

  ‘Our claws are still sharp,’ Narx said. He’d tugged one of the shark tooth vambrace bindings from the Loyalist he’d killed, intending to keep the curious charm as a trophy. Golgoth was going from one Loyalist corpse to the next, plunging his claws through the upper chestplate, ruining their gene-seed. Cull watched the blood dripping from his runesword for a moment, savouring the patter as it fell upon Zartak’s dark earth.

  ‘This will show them who owns the night,’ he said, finally lowering the blade.

  ‘Incoming contacts,’ Drac said from his perch, scanning the auspex. ‘Hostiles.’

  Cull knew they could not afford to linger. Other Loyalists would surely be respondi
ng to the ambush, and if the next phase of his plan was to be successful he needed to get back to Sink Shaft One.

  ‘We go,’ he said, locking his sword. ‘With me, brothers.’

  Armour powering down to vital functions once more, First Kill returned to the Stalk. They merged with the shadows, leaving only death behind.

  On their way to the sifting chamber First Squad had passed a works chapel. It was a thing of bare necessities, a tiny chamber carved into the rock of the tunnel wall, barely wide enough to accommodate Sharr. The Company Master stooped as he entered. Inside, a dozen flickering lumen sticks were the only source of light, set into little niches either side of the effigy that had been hacked into the rock wall with power picks and lascutters. It was a crude representation of an armoured man, his featureless head surrounded by carved lines representing the glow of radiant glory. He stood with sword planted atop an orb that was doubtless supposed to represent Holy Terra.

  Sharr went down on both knees before the image, lowering himself slowly. His power armour’s servos whirred, and his knee plates grated where they met the bare rock of the chapel floor. He made the sign of the aquila across his breastplate before looking up at the figure once more.

  The Emperor. To the miserable convicts of Zartak, a distant, uncaring god on a planet none of them would ever see. To the Adeptus Astartes, the great primogenitor and mightiest leader mankind would ever know. To the Carcharodon Astra he was Rangu, the Void Father, sire of the Forgotten One. Like the Carcharodons, his vigilance was eternal, a beacon in the night, the bane of the encroaching shadows. Sharr’s Chapter had left humanity for the emptiness of the Outer Dark when He had still walked among mortals, and they would not return until He did so once again. Only with the coming of the Forgotten One could the Edicts of Exile be overturned, and the Chapter’s eternal crusade in the darkness be brought to an end.

  Sharr knew that some, like Te Kahurangi, did not believe such a thing would ever happen. He did not share the Chief Librarian’s pessimism. The Carcharodon Astra were a faithful brotherhood, even by the standards of the Adeptus Astartes. Their creed was an old one, older than the superstitions and misbeliefs of the current Imperial Cult. Theirs was not some blind faith based on hollow praise and lavish donations. Their memories of the Emperor were of a living, breathing titan, and Terra was far more to them than some distant hub of galaxy-spanning bureaucracy. Their connection to it was ancient and primal. It had sustained their loyalty and their determination for ten thousand years, amidst the loneliness of the Outer Dark. When they had first been banished, none had expected them to survive, let alone remain united as a Chapter. But survive they had, their disparate heritage bound by their faith in Him on Earth. Nothing could shake that.

  ‘I have not seen you at prayer since you became Company Master.’

  For a moment Sharr thought Te Kahurangi had slipped the words directly into his mind. Then he realised that the Pale Nomad was actually standing just beyond the chapel’s hatchway. He resisted the urge to react, keeping his gaze fixed on the Emperor’s graven image.

  ‘I prefer to speak to the Void Father in private.’

  ‘You prefer to confront your memories of this world alone,’ Te Kahurangi said.

  ‘They mean nothing. The solace of silence is a blessing.’

  ‘It is,’ the Chief Librarian admitted. ‘It still distresses Chaplain Nikora that we worship privately, even after all these years. I suppose it is harder for the initiates to understand the depths of our Chapter’s doctrines if its veterans so rarely appear at the devotional services.’

  ‘They will learn in time,’ Sharr said. ‘Solitary contemplation offers the best opportunity for revelation.’

  ‘Chapter three, verse eleven,’ Te Kahurangi said, aware the Company Master was quoting Beyond the Veil of Stars, one of the foundational texts written by the Shade Master during the first Days of Exile.

  ‘What do they intend for the boy?’ Sharr asked, eyes not leaving Rangu.

  ‘The worst fate imaginable. They will use him as a conduit to channel the daemon that the Dead Skin serves. The creature’s darkness already infests these mines and clouds my visions.’

  ‘You have seen the fate of Kahu?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘What killed them, Pale Nomad?’

  ‘Things that once counted themselves as our brothers,’ Te Kahurangi said. ‘Twisted and deformed in body and mind by the Dark Powers. They are more beasts now than transhumans. They are loosed upon us like hunting animals.’

  ‘The Void Father alone knows what manner of vile pacts these traitors have wrought,’ Sharr said. ‘It is ever the same with the worshippers of the Dark Gods. But we have overcome their kind before, and we will do so again.’

  ‘Not if the Dead Skin completes his ritual,’ Te Kahurangi warned. ‘If his daemon is bound to the mortal plane even I will not be able to stop him.’

  Sharr didn’t reply, his attention turning to an incoming vox-transmission from Strike Leader Kartli.

  ‘The traitors are behind us, Company Master,’ the leader of Fifth Squad said. ‘They have ambushed and destroyed one of my combat squads in the loco carriage bay, Lower West Six.’

  ‘Can you track them?’

  ‘They have already withdrawn, and pursuit will likely expose the remainder of my squad.’

  ‘Rally on Tenth Squad and await further orders,’ Sharr ordered.

  ‘They are stalking us,’ Te Kahurangi said.

  ‘And we them,’ Sharr replied. ‘Like two predators. We are poised on the brink of the final offensive. Sink Shaft One is almost within our grasp.’

  ‘For better or for worse, Kahu locked us into this course of action.’

  ‘Was it truly Kahu?’ Sharr said slowly. ‘Should I not have overruled him if I thought this plan was ill-conceived? I am failing the Chapter and the Void Father, Chief Librarian.’

  ‘If you truly believe that, then you will,’ Te Kahurangi said. ‘But you have not failed them, not yet. Do not allow your imagination to become reality. Defeat is currently only in your mind.’

  ‘Akia’s bloodthirstiness has consumed me,’ Sharr admitted, finally rising. ‘A part of me was eager to follow Kahu’s course of action. That is the truth of why I did not overrule him. It is Akia’s bloody spirit that haunts me, not my memories of Zartak. They are long lost.’

  There was a crack as Te Kahurangi struck the stone floor with the base of his force staff.

  ‘Akia is not the master of Third Company. Kahu is not the Master of Third Company. Even Lord Tyberos is not the master of Third Company. It is you, Bail Sharr. It is to your credit if we succeed here, and to your dishonour if we are defeated. None but you can be held accountable, regardless of the outcome of this Tithing. That is the weight of the duty you took on when you swore your new Void Vows, both as the master of this company, and as the Chapter’s new Reaper Prime. It is your sacred duty to see the Tithe through. The darkness arrayed against us would break you while you struggle to uphold your new burden. Will you let it?’

  Sharr turned to Te Kahurangi. He filled the chapel, his grey, black and brass armour gleaming in the flickering light of the little lumen sticks. For a moment he stared at the blue-plated Chief Librarian, saying nothing. For a moment he could have been Akia, on the brink of a bloody outburst.

  ‘These traitors have avoided trial for too long,’ he said. ‘Their sentence is overdue. I will render judgement, and the Third Company will be my axe of execution.’

  Shadraith dragged the cords tighter, the leather biting into the boy’s wrists. Skell was unconscious, hanging limp between two rune-inscribed rods driven into the middle of the Centrum Dominus. The Chaos sorcerer had inscribed the cogitator pit with sigils in chalk and blood.

  He’d already force-fed Skell a dose of nutrient paste. He was malnourished and weak. He needed to be strong if he was going to play host for Bar�
��ghul. The Chaos sorcerer was muttering to himself, his voice rich and dripping with dark energies. He’d drawn the curving blade of a ritual dagger, its handle crafted into the silver coil of a multi-fin. The shining blade was etched with the spiral-and-eye crest of the God of Change. He stood behind the boy, towering over him.

  Shadraith had desired this for longer than he could remember. The power his pact with Bar’ghul would bring him was worth any sacrifice. The warband would be his, and with Cull bent to Shadraith’s will their strength would only grow. All he needed to do was complete the ritual. He could feel the shadow daemon’s attention fixed upon him from beyond the veil, the air above the bloody symbols on the floor shimmering as reality buckled.

  Shadraith was aware of Shenzar and his Terminators looking on with cold disgust from the shadows on the edge of the Centrum Dominus. He ignored them. They were relics. Their blind mistrust of the true power of Chaos and their idiotic refusal to harness it for their own ends was all that was holding the Night Lords back. Shadraith would change that. He would change everything.

  Formerly, the muster point on the edge of Sink Shaft One would have been the place for the largest work gangs to be brought prior to boarding the servitor-manned loco rails for the deepest levels. Now the confluence of cell corridors writhed with a sea of scabbed, grimy flesh and tattered rags. The prisoners that had been released into the mines had been dragged back by the Night Lords as they withdrew in the face of the Loyalist advance.

  ‘How many?’ Cull asked Fexrath, commander of Third Claw.

  ‘Warp knows,’ the champion said. The humans were pushing and shoving at one another in their desperation to keep away from the towering killers, crushing the rearmost ranks back against the gantries and plasteel bars ringing the edge of the shaft hole itself. Screams and wails cut the air. The sounds only fed the Night Lords’ murderlust.

  ‘Some of these are worth harvesting,’ the Claw champion added. Cull followed his gaze, noting the prisoners among the mob who weren’t all cowering before their captors. Some had the courage to face them down, refusing to hide among their weaker fellows. Those were the ones the Night Lords had come for.