Carcharodons: Red Tithe

by Robbie MacNiven

  ‘Young fool,’ the sorcerer managed to choke. Dark blood was running from his helmet’s vox-grille, pattering onto the rockcrete beneath. ‘You… understand nothing…’

  ‘If you had completed the ritual with his blood, you would have made your daemon master too powerful,’ Cull went on. ‘The Long War is over for you, Flayed Father. This is for my real father. Not the false one you skinned in his palace. Not the murdering one whose genes you implanted into me. This is for the savlar dreg in the hive city you virus bombed.’

  The Prince of Thorns swung his blade, and the sorcerer’s horned helmet tumbled from his shoulders.

  With a shriek, the daemons attacked.

  + + Gene scan complete + + +

  + + Access granted + + +

  + + Beginning mem-bank entry log + + +

  + + Date check, 3680875.M41 + + +

  Day 92, Zartak local.

  Word from Lord Rozenkranz has reached me. His findings are truly disturbing. Since receiving my initial report he has been investigating the disappearance of the original mining colonists, prior to the transformation of Zartak into a penal colony. Like me, he came across a great deal of redacted material, but it would seem that our worst fears are in fact true.

  Sometime a little over two centuries ago contact was entirely lost with the Zartak system. When it was re-established by an Imperial Navy rapid response sub-fleet, the planetoid was found to be entirely deserted. All four hundred and eleven thousand, seven hundred and thirty-two colonists, as recorded in the last census, had vanished. The ore ships anchored in high orbit were also entirely devoid of life. The fragmentary reports from the Navy sub-fleet that have not been purged do not mention any particular signs of violence. In all other senses though, the current circumstances on this accursed world seem eerily similar.

  Lord Rozenkranz has sent a directive saying he is making his way here with all possible haste. I pray I find something positive to report to him when he arrives. Tomorrow we will continue on through Sink Shaft One towards the Precinct Fortress.

  Signed,

  Interrogator Augim Nzogwu.

  + + Mem-bank entry log ends + + +

  + + Thought for the Day: Faith without sacrifice is meaningless + + +

  Chapter XVI

  Unnatural howling and the thunder of bolter fire echoed down the corridor. Kordi paused for a second, assessing the situation.

  Fourth Squad, the human named Rannik in toe, had progressed through the corridors, barrack blocks and vox-substations of the Precinct Fortress without opposition. Whenever they reached an intersection Rannik would point them in the right direction. It was only when they came to the final flight of stairs before the control centre that they encountered any sign of the enemy.

  Rannik had initially refused to climb the stairwell. The lumen strips had gone out, and the human seemed petrified of the dark. Ekara physically dragged her up, ignoring her screams. On the final flight they found Rull’s body, his armour split and savaged by countless claw marks. Beyond the next corridor was the Centrum Dominus.

  Its open blast doors led to a scene of chaos. The control room had become a place of writhing blackness shot through with stabs of gunfire, the echoing reports of point-blank, full-auto discharges vying with the screams and shrieks that shuddered up through the abandoned fortress.

  The Carcharodons halted at the doors, those auto-senses that still functioned piercing the dark as they attempted to make sense of what was happening.

  ‘They’ve turned on one another,’ said Ekara. The Night Lords were firing and hacking indiscriminately at winged, shadowy daemons across the length of the embattled control centre. The creatures were swarming towards the cogitator pit at the heart of the room, their dark flocks obscuring its centre.

  ‘Let them slaughter each other,’ Haru muttered.

  ‘We cannot,’ Kordi replied, pointing towards the middle of the Centrum. ‘They have the Pale Nomad.’

  Bound to a surgical rack at the bottom of the pit was Te Kahurangi. The armour had been stripped from his upper body, revealing his black carapace and the neural ports that studded his white, scabbed flesh. Two daemons were struggling over his force staff, clutching the ancient relic’s haft.

  ‘Iron Tide-pattern,’ Ekara said, picking an assault wedge. ‘I’ll lead. We get to Te Kahurangi, and we release him.’ He turned to Rannik. ‘Can you open his magnicles?’

  Rannik was staring into the maelstrom of shadows. Ekara snatched her roughly by the shoulder and spun her so she was forced to look up at the towering Adeptus Astartes.

  ‘I asked you a question. Can you release him?’ Rannik managed to nod.

  ‘Then do so,’ Ekara finished, and let go of her. The Carcharodon turned to Kordi.

  ‘Keep the human alive. We’ll do our best to hold off the rest until you two reach the Pale Nomad. Hopefully amidst all this confusion–’

  Ekara never finished. As though to underline his words there was a splitting crack, followed by a howl of primordial, ancient fury. The sound tore through the souls – mortal and immortal – of every being on Zartak.

  He had awoken.

  Skell hugged the ground as the daemons struck. Bar’ghul tried to force him back onto his feet, tried to make him assist the Furies as they punished the petulant, traitorous mortals who were foiling the daemon’s plans. Skell resisted. He was stronger now.

  The Pale Nomad was with him. His power, as eternal and unrelenting as the crashing ocean, infused him with raw energy. Bar’ghul snarled and snapped at him, rendered impotent. Skell could feel the Pale One’s eyes still fixed on him from atop the rack, even as the Centrum Dominus descended into a living hell of screams, shouts and ear-aching gunfire.

  The two daemons that had been wrestling over the Pale One’s bone staff were still struggling, stubby wings beating the air furiously as they simultaneously tried to snatch the prize free whilst gouging one another. Neither had noticed the green stone at the tip of the staff starting to glow again.

  One of the armoured giants attacking the daemons dragged a spray of hard rounds across the cogitator pit, the air above Skell alive with bolt detonations. The two warring Furies were struck, and came apart like a nightmare lost amidst waking reality.

  The staff fell.

  Time seemed to slow. Everything became agonisingly sluggish. Skell watched with morbid fascination as the staff tumbled end over end, down into the pit.

  Now, said the thought in his head.

  No, shrieked Bar’ghul.

  Skell lunged. He felt his aching, fatigued muscles stretch agonisingly, felt fresh blood break from the ritual wounds carved into his back. He saw everything. Bolt shells arcing away, slow as departing constellations, their propellants flaring like the final bursts of starlight in the depths of voidspace. The stab-illumination of muzzle flashes reflected back from bared claws and fangs, grinning skulls and hateful, red eye-lenses. Four more grey-clad giants and one terrified arbitrator poised at the blast doors, on the cusp of flinging themselves into the melee. Skell saw it all, and cared for none of it. All that mattered was the beautiful, beaten, ancient staff plunging down towards him, its green headstone blazing with light.

  Skell stretched out, his feet smearing the bloody markings on the floor, the ones that were supposed to bind and trap an immortal predator inside him. Half a second before the staff fell into his outstretched hand, reality reasserted itself. Time sped back up. Daemons shrieked and gibbered and burst into nothingness, disintegrating into wisps of black smoke as they were blown apart by bolter fire. Their dark, transhuman vanquishers cackled and cursed, reloaded and fired. The staff thumped into Skell’s hand…

  …and he screamed.

  Reality buckled. The air ignited with energy as bolts of lightning crashed from the staff to rip and tear across the room, leaping between combatants and arcing up to the ceiling. The few cogitators that
hadn’t yet been smashed all came online at once, jolting as their screens lit up green and white with data-overloads. An echoing thunderclap shuddered through the Precinct Fortress, shaking Sink Shaft One all the way down to its flooded, cavernous depths.

  Skell collapsed, unconscious, the staff clattering to the floor beside him. Lightning still sparked and danced from the bone haft and around the boy’s prone body. The Centrum Dominus shook.

  And, for just a second, the void shield above flickered and failed.

  On board the White Maw, in orbit above Zartak, Techmarine Beta-one-three-Uthulu swung his ignition hammer. The blessed instrument struck the initiation panel with a great, echoing clang. The adepts ranged around the Techmarine’s raised lectern inserted the final data-slates into the activation panels, prayers of machine-glory and servo-encouragement blaring from their hooded vox-grilles.

  Te Kahurangi’s gamble had paid off. He’d reached the boy, and the warp discharge of his full psychic awakening had been enough to short out the void shield protecting the Precinct Fortress for a few seconds.

  Those seconds would be enough. With a crack the chained lightning arcing between three teleportation orbs lashed downwards, earthing into the transitional sigils etched on the deck. In an eye blink, Sharr and First Squad were gone from the White Maw’s tele­portation bay.

  + + Gene scan complete + + +

  + + Access granted + + +

  + + Beginning mem-bank entry log + + +

  + + Date check, 3682875.M41 + + +

  Day 93, Zartak local.

  We have penetrated the Precinct Fortress. Like the surrounding cell blocks, it seems entirely deserted. There are signs of combat, especially in a lower level refectorium. In all my time serving the Inquisition I have never seen bloodshed so savage, so mindless. The bodies we came across had literally been torn limb from limb. I praise the God-Emperor that such a fate has been reserved for heretics and not loyal subjects of the Imperium, though there is still no sign of what has become of whoever meted out this furious justice.

  We shall continue upwards towards the fortress’ Centrum Dominus.

  Signed,

  Interrogator Augim Nzogwu.

  + + Mem-bank entry log ends + + +

  + + Thought for the Day: By your works shall you be known + + +

  Chapter XVII

  In a halo of white light and a blaze of energy, Sharr, Chaplain Nikora and First Squad materialised in the midst of the Centrum Dominus. They moved without hesitation and in deadly silence, launching themselves into the nearest Night Lords. From the doorway, Kordi and the rest of Fourth Squad charged into the chamber.

  Nikora, his heavy crozius arcanum blazing with holy light, smashed through the battleplate of one of the Night Lords Raptors, knocking him to his knees. The traitor’s ignited lightning claws raked the Chaplain’s pauldron as he went down, leaving glowing, smoking rents in the ceramite. A second blow from Nikora’s skull-tipped mace staved in the Night Lord’s head, leaving him crumpled and bloody on the floor.

  On the vox-gantry ringing the upper walls, Red Tane had engaged a power sword-wielding traitor. The two warriors were a blur of vicious motion, the cut and thrust so swift and relentless it seemed to have been choreographed. The Void Sword struck and sparked from the Night Lord’s power blade, each blow delivered with a speed and strength only transhuman champions could possibly possess. More sparks danced from the scarred and damaged equipment around them, throwing the ferocious duel into oscillating moments of light and dark as they drove each other back and forth across the gantry.

  Below them a huge Raptor smashed his lightning claws through Soha’s guard. The crackling blades pounded straight through the Carcharodon’s raised chainsword with such force that Soha’s grey breastplate buckled, and he was sent slamming back into the nearest bank of overloaded cogitators.

  Strike Veteran Dorthor’s chainaxe turned aside another heretic’s chainblade, the Night Lord left momentarily exposed by the Carcharodon’s deft parry. The traitor flung himself back in time, Dorthor’s backward sweep striking only sparks from his skull-plated breastplate. The two warriors drew apart and circled one another in the Centrum’s main data pit, like wary, caged animals.

  Signifier Niko lashed out with his adamantium-haft koa spear, its reinforced shark teeth bound with feathers and wreathed with a snapping disruptor shield. He plunged the weapon into the guts of another Raptor, savaging the wound with an expert twist of the haft. The Night Lord’s chainsword struck sparks from the weapon as he tried to shear through it, but Niko ripped it free and spun it in a low crouch, the teeth biting deep into his left greave. The Night Lord went down on one knee.

  Sharr swung Reaper in a savage arc, forcing the Night Lord he was facing to back up against an augur array. The Company Master sensed a presence looming towards his right and turned just in time to avoid the air-splitting crack of a power mace. One of the Night Lords Terminators advanced towards him, armour crackling with the energy of its active refractor field. The intervention gave the first traitor the opportunity he needed to regain his footing. Together, the two Chaos Space Marines moved towards the Company Master.

  Kordi emptied his newly acquired bolter into a Chaos Terminator grinding round to face him, a black Fury still struggling hopelessly in its grip. The hulking monster absorbed Kordi’s barrage without flinching, activating its chainfist with a roar. Kordi’s own chainsword answered it.

  Ekara tried to avoid the lunge of the Terminator attacking him, but the disruptor energies wreathing the giant’s clenched power fist snapped, buckling the side of his armour plating. The Carcharodon grunted as the surge of energy thrust him back into the wall. He ducked the next swing, the rockcrete above him shuddering as the spiked gauntlet hammered deep into the plasteel-reinforced side of the control centre. He turned the motion into an upward thrust, driving his chainsword into the Terminator’s guts. If he’d been able to deliver the blow two-handed, it might have done damage – as it was, it simply struck sparks from the thick layers of ceramite and plasteel protecting the giant. Before Ekara could recover from the lunge, the Terminator brought its fist down, grinding through the rockcrete and slamming into the strike leader’s back. There was a hideous crunch as the destructive weapon pounded through the Carcharodon, the release of its violent disruptor flare tearing apart the Space Marine and splattering his remains against the partly demolished wall.

  Tonga’s new multi-melta vibrated in his grasp, the pyrum molecules in the weapon’s fuel canister breaking down before being unleashed with a crack of vaporised air. The Terminator turning towards him from the melee was struck in the thigh. Its refractor field flared and shorted in a burst of sparks, and the roar of atomised flesh and armour molecules filled the chamber as the Chaos Space Marine’s left leg disappeared. It went over like a felled rustbark, bellowing in anger and pain. A second shot from the recharged melta liquefied its tusked helm.

  Rannik darted through the carnage. Her every instinct screamed at her not to enter the command centre after the Carcharodons. The place had become a battlefield for gods, a space of sensory overload filled with transhuman roars, terrible screams, the howling of chainblades and the hammering of point-blank discharges. The air itself crackled and danced with the power unleashed by ancient weaponry and psychic overload, and throbbed with the passage of blade, bolt and armoured bodies. The cogitator rows, augur array and vox-banks were smashed beyond all use, battered into sparking scrap as the huge, ceramite-plated warriors grappled and flung themselves at one another. A single careless blow or random shot could have cut Rannik down, and no one would have even noticed. No one except the figure strapped to the dissection rack near the room’s centre.

  It was Te Kahurangi, the one who once again called Rannik on, into the maelstrom of unyielding metal and blood. Te Kahurangi, who had been seized and bound by the traitors, yet still resisted, his mind sharper than any of their razors. Te Ka
hurangi who, restrained as he was, fought on with his mind alone.

  The sight of the pale monster, stripped down almost entirely to his scaled, grey flesh, held no terror for Rannik. This was what she was here to do. It was as necessary to her now as breathing, as the rapid beating of her own adrenaline-charged heart. It was not something she could fight or stop. She darted beneath the roaring blades of a chainaxe, dodged a stumbling grey-clad warrior bleeding from a savage head wound, ducked as a combi-bolter hammered out on full auto next to her. She slammed to a halt against the side of the rack.

  ‘Your gene-key,’ Te Kahurangi said, looking at her with his bottomless, black eyes. Rannik fumbled for the slip of plastek without saying anything. She had to free him. The Chief Librarian could bring the God-Emperor’s wrath surging up from the depths. If Rannik only did one more thing before she died, it had to be this.

  She swiped the gene-key against the charged magnicles binding the Space Marine’s wrists. They unlocked and disarmed with a thud. Te Kahurangi rolled off the bare metal with a litheness that belied his age. He knocked Rannik aside as he lunged towards his bone staff, still lying where it had fallen from the numb fingers of the unconscious prison boy. As his hand closed around its haft and his psychic powers once more earthed themselves into its reactive stone tip, the scrap of consciousness that had been impelling Rannik was torn from the arbitrator’s mind. The sub-warden cried out in pain and fear as her panicked thoughts reawakened to the chaotic reality surrounding her. The Carcharodons Librarian needed her no longer.

  In the few, frenzied seconds in which the Loyalists first materialised in the Centrum Dominus, Cull felt only one emotion – joy. This was what he had been waiting for, the chance to stamp his dominance before the rest of the warband by finally trapping and slaying these arrogant grey predators. The needs of the harvest had paled next to the challenge presented by the Loyalists. And Cull loved nothing more than overcoming challenges.