Strike rubbed the several weeks of growth on his chin contemplatively.
‘Right now there’s an entire army of daemons headed for this place and he isn’t going to be able to handle them on his own,’ she continued. ‘Please, Strike. Don’t leave him to face them alone.’
‘So your brothers abandoned you, did they? Left you behind to keep watch over the Damnation Cache while they went around the galaxy seeking true glory.’ The Lord of Change swatted aside a riposte from the Grey Knight’s halberd. ‘That must rankle you, Epimetheus. To know that they chose you to remain here because you were the least of them.’
‘I am immune to your words, filth,’ Epimetheus spat, channelling his rage but not allowing it to overtake him. He swung low and wide with the force weapon, attempting to unbalance the daemon. It lifted one foot in time to avoid the blow, but its back foot didn’t move quite as swiftly and it fell backwards, wings crumpling beneath it. Instantaneously, Epimetheus was standing over it, halberd held aloft in both hands and poised to land the killing blow.
‘That’s right, Epimetheus. End me. End me so that you might at last emerge from Janus’s shadow,’ the daemon taunted.
The force halberd crackled with lambent psychic energy but before Epimetheus could drive it down, a dark form flew in from his blindside and bowled him over, causing him to lose hold of the weapon. Long fangs, more akin to claws, snapped at his armour, trying to chew through the aged ceramite. Gripping the serpentine thing by the neck, Epimetheus got back to his feet and tore its head from its body, showering his armour in gore. More of the detritus that coated his armour dissolved away, revealing further patches of silver beneath. He stooped to recover his halberd but when he turned back to the spot where he’d left the prone daemon, the Lord of Change was no longer there.
‘Janus would have landed that blow. Khyron too.’ The daemon had taken to the air now, flanked by more of the serpentine daemons and blue horrors that had earlier assailed the Catachan Valkyries. Heralded by the loud roar of engines, the Hellhammer opened up with all of its weapons, tearing over the rubble coating the hangar floor, taking out any target that presented itself. Daemons either side of the Lord of Change disintegrated as autocannon fire stitched through them. The greater daemon raised his kine shield just in time to prevent the rounds causing it damage too.
‘A truly wonderful toy,’ the daemon said as the Hellhammer scorched a cadre of blue horrors with its flamers. ‘Come, Epimetheus, let me kill you quickly so that I can play with it.’ The Lord of Change swooped down on its massive wings and struck the Grey Knight a glancing blow with its staff. Epimetheus slashed upwards but, seeing his foe unbalanced, the daemon performed a turn in mid-air that ran contrary to all known laws of physics and knocked him to the ground. Before he could react, the winged monstrosity was upon him, pinning him down with twisted, clawed hands.
‘Such a waste really, to spend ten thousand years waiting for something only to find that the something you were waiting for was your own death.’ Thick strands of spittle drooled from its beak, spilling over Epimetheus’s helmet.
‘I am nothing if not patient,’ the Space Marine said, straining to break the daemon’s grip. ‘For centuries I dwelt on Titan while the Sigillite kept us hidden from reality, training my mind and arming myself with the knowledge I would need to go forth and eradicate the daemonic from the material realm. I had hundreds of years to not only armour my mind from psychic assault but also to turn it into the sharpest blade with which to sever my enemies’ links with the corporeal. But that was not the greatest weapon I armed myself with.’
‘Wasn’t it? Please illuminate me, Grey Knight,’ the Lord of Change said in amusement, its myriad voices raised over the din of the Hellhammer’s slaughter. ‘But make it quick. I can already sense the entities gathering in the warp waiting for a taste of your soul.’
‘Knowledge. Knowledge is the most powerful threat I wield. I had hundreds of years to prepare to do battle with monsters like you and entire libraries at my disposal filled with books that listed the rituals of banishment, the rites of warding and, most important of all, the true names of daemons.’
The daemon sneered. ‘True names are worthless if you don’t know who they belong to. Come now, I am bored of your prattling. Time to die.’ It raised a clawed hand ready to tear through the Grey Knight’s armour.
‘But I do know which true name belongs to you, daemon. I knew it even before you let slip that you turned half a Legion.’
The Lord of Change’s expression became one of puzzlement and doubt.
‘I know who you are, daemon, because I recognised you.’ The Grey Knight lowered a portion of his psychic defences, not enough to allow the daemon full access to his mind, but enough to share the information he needed to.
The Lord of Change relinquished its grip on Epimetheus and backed away. ‘No! It cannot be. You! The one who defied me, who very nearly unravelled everything. You’re not supposed to be in this place. You’re not even supposed to be in this time.’
Reaching for his weapon, Epimetheus rose to his feet and advanced upon the daemon, both Grey Knight and Lord of Change seemingly oblivious to the weapons fire exploding all around them.
‘This was not foreseen. A different path was laid out for you, yet you do not walk it. How can that be?’ There was genuine fear in the daemon’s voices.
‘Somebody switched places with me. That is now his path to walk,’ Epimetheus said before crying out the daemon’s true name, the one that granted him power over it.
The Lord of Change froze on the spot, its body convulsing as weird energies consumed it. Epimetheus continued to advance upon it.
‘Please,’ it said meekly. ‘I have waited so long to be set free.’
The Grey Knight ignored the plea and, without ceremony, thrust the force halberd into the daemon’s chest. It disappeared in the blink of an eye, the sound of air rushing into the space it had vacated its only fanfare.
‘Not as long as I have,’ Epimetheus said.
Daemons poured in through the hangar opening at a prodigious rate and, despite the best efforts of Strike and his crew, the numbers were becoming overwhelming. Drawing his bolt pistol, Epimetheus sprinted over to where the Hellhammer had drawn to a halt, downing daemons as he went. When he reached the rear of the tank, the hatch hissed open with an outpouring of pneumatic pressure to reveal Tzula, K’Cee and the skeleton crew within.
‘Get on board,’ Tzula called. ‘We’re retreating.’
The Grey Knight said nothing and ascended the ramp, ducking to get his massive Space Marine frame through the man-sized opening, to be greeted by a group of awestruck Catachans who looked like the Emperor himself had just stepped aboard their tank.
With the hatch still closing, the Hellhammer sped for the exit ramp, abandoning Olympax to its new daemonic occupiers.
Interlude
343960.M41 / The Chapel of Eternal Repose. Grey Knights Fortress-monastery, Titan
The hall was cold and silent, the tapping of the sculptors’ tools having fallen silent to allow Kaldor Draigo his moment of grief. Clad in full Terminator armour, he knelt before the corpse of Lexek Hasimir, until only a few days ago Grand Master of the Fifth Brotherhood of the Grey Knights, and bowed his head low. In the days to come, the body would be transferred to the Dead Fields where it would rest for all eternity, the half-finished statue beside him placed atop as everlasting memorial, but for now he lay in state awaiting the procession of former brothers who wished to pay their respects. The noble deeds of Lexek Hasimir were numerous and, despite most of the Chapter being deployed on operations, already a lengthy queue of Grey Knights had formed at the gates of the hall, patiently waiting to mark a hero’s passing.
As Supreme Grand Master, Draigo had no privilege of rank when it came to honouring a fallen brother, as no hierarchy of grief existed among the Grey Knights order. Captains, justicars, Grand Masters, all were equals in the Chapter’s death rites, so the fact that Draigo had been the fi
rst in line when the gates of the hall swung open was not by dint of his station, but of the overwhelming desire to mourn for a brother he felt he owed his life to.
Draigo stood and placed his hand on Hasimir’s cuirass, running his hand over the claw marks that ran deep through the ceramite breastplate. He pulled his hand away, dried blood coating the tips of his gauntlets, then ran his fingers over the shoulder pad of his own armour, finding three similar, yet not so severe rents.
The source of the gouges had been the same, but whereas Hasimir had reacted in time to prevent the servant of the Pleasure God from slaying the Supreme Grand Master, Draigo had been unable to return the favour, watching helplessly as the Keeper of Secrets had sliced open the leader of the Fifth Brotherhood. In response, the daemon had been banished and his acolytes purged from the surface of the planet they had turned into a world of debauched pleasure, but that seemed scant reward for the loss of a Chapter hero. In time, a conclave would be called so that Draigo and the Grand Masters could appoint a new commander of the Fifth, but for now ceremonies of a different kind were in order.
Uttering a prayer of gratitude to his dead brother and making a sign of warding over the corpse, Draigo took one of the unlit candles surrounding the altar and ignited it using a small psiflame he conjured forth from his fingertips. Carefully placing the taper next to Hasimir’s unhelmeted head, Draigo bowed again.
‘A light to guide you in dark places, brother. May your slumber grant you the peace that eludes us all in life,’ Draigo said before turning to make the long walk back to the gates of the hall and allow the next mourner to take his place by the deceased Grand Master’s side.
He hadn’t gone three paces when the tingling started in the front of his skull, alerting him to psychic activity within the chamber. The temperature dropped rapidly, hoarfrost forming on his armour. The candle flame guttered and died, as did the braziers ensconced in the chapel walls, extinguished by an unnatural breeze that formed out of nowhere. Crackles of blue energy licked over the surface of Hasimir’s torn armour, forming a corona around his head, a halo for a dead angel. Draigo’s hand reached for the hilt of the Titansword.
With the creak of Terminator armour straining to move without a power source, Lexek Hasimir sat bolt upright and slowly turned his head to look Draigo dead in the eye.
‘The Damnation Cache is open once more. You must lead the Chapter back to Pythos,’ the dead man said through mortised lips. His eyeballs rolled back in their sockets and he crashed back to the altar, cracking the stone in two as his deadweight impacted against it.
Stopping neither to check the condition of the body nor relight the candle, Grand Master Kaldor Draigo raced from the Hall of Repose, not in fear at his former battle-brother’s reanimation but because of the urgency of the message the corpse had conveyed.
Part Three
Chapter Seven
766960.M41 / The Bridge. Revenge, Pythos blockade, Pandorax System
Lord Admiral Orson Kranswar was not having a good war.
From the instant the battlefleet at his command had entered the Pandorax System and lost two destroyers, Hand of Macharius and Avatar of Woe, to a surprise attack from Chaos raiders waiting in ambush, the portents had been ill for a successful campaign. Every time it appeared that the Imperial Navy were gaining the upper hand and driving Abaddon’s vessels further towards Pythos, some new complication would arise to put Battlefleet Demeter on the back foot again. At the Third Battle of Sunward Gap, his ships were about to put the enemy to rout, Abaddon’s general having committed his entire fleet to counter Kranswar’s superior numbers, when the armada of Huron Blackheart arrived in-system at the eleventh hour, inflicting heavy casualties on the Imperium and depriving it forever of almost a dozen ancient vessels. Using the asteroids of the Adamantium Fields as a temporary refuge, the battlefleet regrouped in preparation for a counter-assault but the Fourth Battle of Sunward Gap was an even greater disaster than the Third.
With force disposition on each side now evenly balanced, the Imperial fleet emerged from the asteroid belt – in reality a graveyard for the countless vessels that had succumbed to the space-bound predators, both human and xenos, that plagued the Demeter subsector – only to find the combined forces of Abaddon and Huron lying in wait for them. With the enemy harassing them every parsec of the way, Kranswar ordered all ships back to the base they’d established at Gaea on the edge of the Pandorax System. Presenting their backs to the enemy, the Chaos forces showed them no mercy, decimating the Imperial fleet as it fled. The selfless actions of the men piloting the fast attack craft ensured casualties were not heavier and that Kranswar’s ships were able to make it back to Gaea to regroup at all.
In the days that followed, whispers spread throughout the fleet drawing the Lord Admiral’s ability to command into question. It was nothing he hadn’t heard before, as far back as his early days in the academy at Bakka. Plays it by the book. No innovation or flair. Too predictable. And so, as he had done ever since his time as a cadet, he ignored them. Just as he was ignoring the pleas of an ensign on the bridge of his flagship, Revenge.
‘But, sir, his men haven’t been fed properly for almost a week and his tanks are of no use in a void battle. All he’s asking is for his regiment to be allowed passage down to Gaea to resupply and recuperate while the fleet opens the route to Pythos,’ the ensign said, trying to hand the Lord Admiral the written request. ‘He has over three hundred tanks sitting in the holds and at least ten times that number of personnel. It would free up resources for the crew.’
Once Battlefleet HQ had received the distress call from Pythos, the reserve fleet and all Imperial ground forces in the vicinity were scrambled. Not even waiting for troop transports to arrive from other subsectors, entire Imperial Guard divisions and regiments were crammed into the battleships, cruisers and frigates of Kranswar’s fleet, such was the import of liberating the conquered world.
‘It’s cowardice, pure and simple,’ Kranswar snapped. ‘What is he? A bloody Vostroyan?’ The Lord Admiral was of early middle age, but the severe lines carved into his face and the rapidly developing widow’s peak brought on by the strain of command made him look significantly older.
The ensign checked the piece of paper he had been trying to pass to Kranswar. ‘Yes, sir. Brigadier Montague Gethsemane Heinrick-Hague XXVII of the Vostroyan 116th Armoured regiment according to his signature.’
‘Lazy bluebloods. All he wants to do is take his men down to the planet and lord it over the population. Probably stock up on a few fine wines, horses and properties while they’re down there. The man needs to show some backbone. Don’t hear those two Attilan regiments begging to be let off their ship, do you?’ The admiral’s raised voice was carrying across the bridge causing some of the crew to look up nervously in his direction.
The ensign swallowed. ‘With the greatest respect, sir, both Attilan regiments were billeted on the Avatar of Woe.’
The Lord Admiral’s cheeks went red but he did not immediately give voice to his rage. Awkward moments passed before he snatched the piece of paper from the ensign and tore it in half. ‘Request denied,’ he said with a flourish before stamping off to return to the other high-ranking officers of the fleet around the stone-wrought strategy table laid out in the centre of the bridge.
The Revenge was an ancient vessel, having made its first voyage through the warp while the Space Marine Legions were still being divided, and though its exterior resembled every other ship of its marque, the interior finish was a baroque marvel from another age. Above decks, its floors were made of the finest polished marble and the bulkheads of the bridge and vital operations stations were carved from finest basalt and slate, as were the quarters of every officer above the rank of lieutenant. Brass filigree and fluting livened up every otherwise bare surface or space, and every door was constructed from the highest grade timbers from trees extinct for millennia. Even the throne sitting before the vast occulus on the bridge was worthy of that name, cast from
a single piece of silver and finished with elaborate precious stones and the engraved names of every man and woman who’d ever sat in it.
Acknowledging the salutes of the dozen or so admirals, captains and commodores standing to attention over a huge parchment map of the Pandorax System, Kranswar took his place alongside them at the table.
‘Gentlemen, though the losses inflicted upon the fleet during our flight from the Adamantium Fields were grave, I believe that those losses ultimately proved worthwhile as it has finally provided me with the key to unlock their defences.’ None of the officers said anything but several exchanged bemused looks. ‘By using our assault squadrons to cover our defence, we exposed the Chaos forces’ soft underbelly. Our fighter-interceptors were able to get in close and strike with impunity, too fast for both their defence batteries and the enemy’s interceptors.’
A younger, heavy-set man with a thick red beard cleared his throat to get the Lord Admiral’s attention.
‘Yes, Admiral Blaise?’ Kranswar said, annoyed at not being able to continue with his grand plan. Blaise wore the same pristine white naval uniform as the Lord Admiral, minus the blue tabard that denoted the higher rank. He had the bridge of the Stalwart and as such was the second-in-command of the fleet.
‘That’s not strictly accurate, sir,’ Blaise said, his voice heavily accented. ‘The enemy interceptors are all stationed on craft that held back and didn’t pursue us to Gaea.’
Kranswar ploughed on regardless. ‘Irrelevant, admiral. Intelligence suggests that our fast attack craft outnumber theirs at least twofold. Should we encounter any aerial resistance, we can split our number in two, half carrying out strafing runs, half providing cover.’
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