Carcharodons: Red Tithe

by Robbie MacNiven

  The sudden hammering of bolters across the junction was eclipsed by the panicked wailing of the hundreds of prisoners packed into the middle of the open space where the loco rails crossed over, crouching beneath the guns of their former prison mates. That in turn was almost drowned out by the vox-screaming as the traitors attacked.

  Nuritona sent controlled bursts of fire down the tunnel, trying to target-lock the spiked shadows flitting towards them. Return fire stabbed at the Carcharodons’ entrenched position, battering at the ceramite arbitrator suppression shields that had been planted on the far side of a barricade of gravel-filled sandbags. One bolt struck a vicious glancing blow off Nuritona’s right pauldron, scarring the white Chapter crest, while another detonated prematurely in the air barely a foot above his head, scraping the grey of his helmet and the top of his backpack silver with a burst of razor debris.

  Even in such a confined space, the traitors used the darkness masterfully, slipping right up to the edge of the Carcharodons’ position under cover of the shadows they seemed to drag around themselves. Within seconds of the assault beginning they’d hit close range, a fact brought home by the sight of a fragmentation grenade arcing up out of the shadows to thump off the front of the requisitioned arbitrator shields.

  ‘Grenade!’ Nuritona barked. There was a solid crump and the suppression shields shuddered, the barricade buckling. Nuritona was unmoved, but the position was untenable. He slammed home a fresh magazine.

  ‘Fall back to secondary positions,’ he ordered, unsnapping a frag grenade as he did so. He set the fuse, yanked out the pin, released the spoon and tossed it underarm over the rank of shields. The air around him vibrated with the weight of close-range bolter fire being directed from the other side of the barricade, and he caught the impression of snarling skull-faced visors and bloody red wings. His grenade detonated, filling the air with more shrapnel. Second Squad gave ground as the thunderclap echoed back around the junction, dropping into cover behind secondary barricades erected overlooking the blocked tunnel entrance.

  The traitors were wise enough not to carry their assault on into the fresh killing ground. Second Squad had their backs to the meagre force of arbitrators and loyalist convicts watching over the corralled prisoners at the junction’s centre. From further back Nuritona could hear the sound of what was left of Third Squad also engaging from the tunnel entrance that led back to the sub-precinct. They were the last line of defence, and they were cut off. Only the rail tunnels of the left and right-hand junctions – leading to the other crossroads still held by Nuritona’s void brothers – gave any hope of reinforcement.

  ‘Hold your fire,’ Nuritona ordered as he reloaded, auto-senses scanning the tunnel barricade for evidence of a renewed assault. ‘And trust in the Wandering Ancestors, brethren. We hold here, or we die.’

  The signifier rune for Shipmaster Teko lit up Sharr’s visor display.

  ‘Company Master, I can confirm that we have six enemy vessels breaking from the asteroid belt and moving into attack position. We are still assessing their capabilities.’

  ‘Acknowledged,’ Sharr replied. ‘You must hold at all costs. Do not break formation to engage.’

  ‘Understood, Company Master. They shall not move us.’

  The vox went dead. Sharr shifted slightly in his battleplate. He could sense that the rest of the command squad around him were similarly eager, instinct warring with the realities of combat. Reports were filtering in of a full sub-surface engagement. All four junctions held by the Third Company were being attacked. There was still no word from Te Kahurangi. For all Sharr knew the strike force had already been trapped and butchered, deep inside Zartak’s heated core.

  Such thoughts did not trouble the Company Master. The plan they had decided upon was to his liking – direct and decisive. They would cut the head from this traitor warband with a single, vicious blow. The Chapter’s doctrines approved it.

  ‘The Void Sword thirsts,’ said Red Tane, disturbing the quiet of the chamber.

  ‘It cannot thirst,’ said Dorthor, tone slick with a veteran’s disdain. ‘It’s a sword. You are the one who thirsts, young Champion.’

  ‘The blood of traitors is not worthy of such a relic,’ Tane said, hand on his ancient weapon’s skull pommel.

  ‘At least you will find it in abundance down there,’ Niko pointed out. ‘We will wreak a red vengeance for Kahu, and all the other fallen.’ The signifier had returned the company’s battle standard to the ship’s fore armoury. It would only be an encumbrance where they were going. Instead he wielded his adamantium koa spear, another of the Chapter’s venerable weapons. It had been carried by the Wandering Ancestors during the earliest Days of Exile. Niko’s abilities with the seemingly archaic weapon had earned him renown across the Nomad Predation Fleet.

  ‘They think themselves superior to us, these traitors,’ Soha said, running his gauntlet over the ribbed coils of his ancient thermal ray gun, as he was wont to do when waiting. ‘The arrogance of their attacks shows the contempt they have for us.’

  ‘It is ever so with such renegades,’ Dorthor said dismissively. ‘It is their arrogance that drives them to treachery in the first place. We are here to judge them for that.’

  Sharr said nothing, but glanced sidelong at Chaplain Nikora. The ancient, black-armoured warrior seemed unaffected by the restlessness that gripped the other veteran Carcharodons – he stood tall and firm in his pitch battleplate, quietly reciting the Third Litany of Readiness over the inter-squad vox. The flowing High Gothic words brought back the memory of Sharr’s visit to the mine chapel outside the sifting chamber, and the words Te Kahurangi had spoken to him there.

  The darkness arrayed against us would break you while you struggle to uphold your new burden. Will you let it?

  No, he would not. He would banish it, the way he had banished Akia’s lingering, bloody spectre. He began to join in Nikora’s litany, quiet yet firm, breathing the words of loyalty and dedication – words the Carcharodons had brought with them and spoken into the void, alone, for ten millennia. One by one, the rest of First Squad abandoned their conversation and joined in. One by one, their restless postures became calm.

  They were the judges, they were reapers. From the Outer Dark they came, and when the Red Tithe was over, darkness there and nothing more.

  + + Gene scan complete + + +

  + + Access granted + + +

  + + Beginning mem-bank entry log + + +

  + + Date check, 3678875.M41 + + +

  Day 91, Zartak local.

  We have penetrated deep into the mine workings now. The signs of slaughter are everywhere. As well as uncovering the dread corpses of more Traitor Space Marines we have catalogued hundreds of unaugmented human remains. Most appear to be former inmates of the Zartak prison mines, but there are some who bear clear markings of heretical cult worship and a few arbitrators. There is still no evidence of who is responsible for the killings, or what has become of the majority of the prison population – while the dead are numerous, there must still be many inmates unaccounted for.

  Signed,

  Interrogator Augim Nzogwu.

  + + Mem-bank entry log ends + + +

  + + Thought for the Day: Blessed is the mind too small for doubt + + +

  Chapter XIV

  The Night Lords finally broke through at junction 27-0. It was Eighth Claw, under Jarq, that led the assault. The Claw champion commanded from the front, disdaining the bolt pistol fire of the Loyalist Assault squad trying to hold the tunnel perimeter around the loco crossrail.

  Eighth was the warband’s Lesser Claw. Composed of the dregs and survivors from the others, it was held in endless derision by the more established squads. The other champions mocked Jarq incessantly, calling his warriors fodder for the guns of the corpse worshippers. The seven Night Lords that made up the Eighth fought with even greater bitterness and savagery because of it
.

  It was that bitterness that carried Jarq through the fire of the Loyalists holding 27-0. His visor was screaming warnings at him, speaking of target locks and incoming rounds, of entry wounds in his left thigh, left forearm and the right side of his breastplate. He dismissed them without even thinking, servos whirring as he pounded down the tunnel and directly into the barrage. His Claw followed on his heels, infected by their leader’s determination, their vox-screams ramped up to maximum. This was their opportunity to prove themselves. They would grasp it, or they would die trying.

  Corvax took a bolt-round through the visor, the shot detonating inside his skull and blowing his head apart. A trio of well-aimed, closely spaced rounds punched through the breastplate of Jaggen. He stumbled on for a few more steps before collapsing, his insides turned to mulch by the triple detonations.

  Jarq’s icy determination drove him through the barrage and the pain of his wounds. He slammed into the barricades the Loyalists had erected at the end of the tunnel. The grey-armoured Space Marines on the other side triggered their chainswords, preparing to face the might of the VIII Legion blade for blade. But Jarq had no intention of doing that.

  He opened up with his bolter on full auto, at point-blank range. His power armour clenched and locked as it absorbed the recoil of the violent stream of shells, the hammer of discharges momentarily overpowering the wailing issuing from his brass vox-horns.

  The three Assault Marines on the other side of the suppression shield barricades went down beneath the hail, armour plates ruptured and blown apart. Jarq stepped over their steaming corpses, slamming a fresh magazine home. Eighth Claw followed him into the light of the junction, their own howls overlaying the screaming of their victims.

  More Loyalists rushed them. Most were Scouts, pallid youths wielding combat knives or barbaric saw-like mauls. Eighth Claw didn’t let up. Their firepower simply tore the junction’s defenders to pieces, cutting down the scattering of arbitrators and armed prisoners who tried to focus their fire on them. Only one more member of the Claw fell – Zarrio, his breastplate and chest torn open by the power fist of the Assault squad leader, who’d somehow waded through the storm of Eighth’s fire. Jarq killed him with a bolt to the head when the Loyalist drew his crackling fist back to strike.

  The four survivors of Eighth Claw turned their guns on the hundreds of prisoners crowding the junction’s centre. By then, other sections of the warband had broken through as well. Black Hand cult squads swarmed in through the northern and western tunnel entrances, adding their firepower to that of their masters.

  If Jarq and his bloody, victorious renegades had ignored the prisoners and gone south, towards the second junction in the defensive line held by the Loyalists, they could have turned the tide of the entire fight. They could have punched through the lightly defended north tunnel right into the heart of the next junction and wreaked havoc.

  But Jarq and his brothers were too inexperienced. They were gripped by the murderlust, ecstatic at their success, overwhelmed by the sight of hundreds of dirty, ragged and wholly defenceless figures kneeling before their guns. This wasn’t the Stalk, this wasn’t the Terror. This was the Kill. At long last, the yearned-for, glorious Kill. So instead of pressing the assault south they turned junction 27-0 into a slaughter pit. Even as they sought to prove they were worthy of the respect of older Claws, they did the opposite, and put their brutal desires ahead of the warband’s victory.

  Only when every living thing in 27-0 had been reduced to twitching red meat did they finally move on.

  The screams of the daemon warriors as they ripped their way back into reality left Rannik paralysed. The heretics, their spiked forms wreathed with blue fire, dropped on top of the strike force without warning. Their claws sliced through metal and flesh as though it wasn’t there at all. Rannik was unable to move, pinned by primal fear. The Space Marines showed no such hesitation – they opened fire.

  ‘Down,’ snarled one of the Scouts. His hand snatched Rannik by the shoulder and flung her bodily behind an upturned bench.

  ‘Warp Talons,’ the Scout snarled. ‘Half daemons.’ The pale warrior had barely spoken before the air was full of charged ceramite and snapping flames, and a hideous screaming brought the arbitrator’s ears close to bursting. One of the Warp Talons rocketed overhead, an indistinct blur of spikes and claws. The air itself seemed to shudder and split around it, as though trying to get away from something so utterly unnatural.

  The Scout slumped in its wake. Something had opened his torso from his left shoulder to his stomach, the savage wounds jetting blood. The Space Marine managed to stay upright for a second, staring down at his torn body with wide, black eyes. Then he collapsed.

  Rannik moaned with terror, pressing herself against the unyielding metal surface of the bench. The monsters were slaughtering each other. Across the aisle she could see the blue-armoured leader of the strike force standing unmoved. His bone staff was held high, his other arm outstretched, gauntlet making a clenching motion. One of the airborne attackers, scything through the Loyalists near the refectorium stove plates, faltered. Arcane words spilled from the helm of the blue warrior, and the green stone set into the jaw of his staff flared with light. As Rannik stared she saw the spine-crested helm of the taloned creature crumple and burst, as though the pressure of some fathomless depths had suddenly been applied to its cranium. Grey matter oozed from the split ceramite, and it crumpled, its cutting assault-shrieks silenced.

  ‘Press on, brothers!’ roared the blue-armoured giant. What was his name? Rannik couldn’t remember. Had she ever known? The thoughts that had been inside her head, the thoughts that hadn’t been hers at all, were gone. How had she come to be here, in this hell of blood and razor-edged steel? Who were these armoured monstrosities, butchering one another like feral beasts?

  She ran. A set of base instincts that had been repressed by other minds for too long finally triggered, and she found her feet and made for the door. Her duty, her rank, her role as an arbitrator, the importance of upholding the Lex Imperialis, it all faltered before what she was witnessing. She didn’t look back.

  They’d lost the arbitrator. The ambush had taken Te Kahurangi by surprise, and in the seconds he’d been forced to redirect his consciousness the human’s mind had slipped free.

  It didn’t matter. She had taken them far enough. Te Kahurangi parried a traitor’s talons as it came at him. The ensorcelled claws clashed and rebounded from the psy-reactive bone of his force staff. The Warp Talon shrieked with fury.

  Te Kahurangi spun the staff deftly into a thrust that cracked against the Night Lord’s breastplate, splitting the baroque metal. The Warp Talon responded by raking him with its fire-wreathed claws, first below and then above Te Kahurangi’s guard. The blows kept coming, lightning-fast, forcing him back.

  He lashed out with his mind, trying to grasp the Warp Talon in the crushing embrace of the void, as he had done with its kin moments earlier. The thing was coming at him too fast for the Librarian to be able to focus. The force staff flared with energy every time the bone haft met the monster’s claws.

  It was Epson-five-nine-Rull who finished the furious duel. The Devastator Marine flung himself into the side of the traitor, his multi-melta abandoned. The attack threw the Warp Talon off balance, its wicked claws scrabbling for purchase across the refectorium’s bloody floor.

  Te Kahurangi used the distraction. He flung his anger into a bolt of energy sent crackling up the haft of his staff and, as the Warp Talon lunged at him, he slammed the stone tip into its oncoming skull. The Night Lord’s helm crumpled as the back-blast of psychic energy pounded through its body, pulping its innards and blasting half of its hardened skeleton out its back. The remains crunched into the floor as though a concentrated tidal blow had rushed from the ether to pulverise it.

  The Chief Librarian took a second to gather himself, breathing heavily. Wordlessly, Rull snatched up a fa
llen chainsword. Las-bolts darted past, their distinctive whip-crack snatching Te Kahurangi’s attention to the doors the strike team had entered through. Dark-robed cult troops in bug-eyed gas hoods were forcing their way into the refectorium, firing wildly into the melee. The trap was closing.

  ‘I can help hold them, Pale Nomad,’ Rull said. Two Warp Talons were still tearing apart the remains of the strike force, their claws a welter of blood. Te Kahurangi saw Brother Unok fall, his chainsword bisected, its metal teeth scattering viciously across the refectorium. Brother Koro was grappling with the other traitor, the claws of one of its hands already lodged in his guts while he tried to dig his razortooth-studded leiomano through the creature’s gorget. The other remaining Carcharodons were firing on the cultists piling in through the adjoining entrances, bolts blasting apart flesh and flakplate. Still the heretics came, blazing indiscriminately into the wrecked refectorium.

  Te Kahurangi grasped Rull by the shoulder guard and dragged him towards the only hatch not swarming with enemies, the ones opposite those they’d entered through. The Pale Nomad barged past, force staff held before him, its green light blazing. It lit the corridor ahead, and the grav lift and stairwell at the end of it.

  ‘The stairs,’ he said, releasing Rull. Behind them the sounds of battle faded, the Carcharodons killing and dying in the eerie silence their Chapter’s long-obeyed doctrines demanded. They had all known this would be their fate. Te Kahurangi had been honoured by their sacrifice, and they had been honoured to fall in the struggle that would end the fighting on Zartak. This final blow would allow the thing most vital to the Chapter’s future – the Red Tithe – to begin. They were committed to it now. Without it, all the losses on the prison world would be meaningless. The Tithe had to go ahead.

  Assuming they could reach the Centrum Dominus. Te Kahurangi could sense a presence ahead.

  The lumen strips in the stairwell flickered and died.