High above, unseen by eyes either post-human or daemonic, a shape only a few shades darker than the emerald of the cavern walls peeled itself from the mouth of the tunnel it had used to spy upon proceedings. Turning around in the narrow confines, Scout Sergeant Namaan began the long crawl back to inform Lord Azrael of what he had witnessed.
153961.M41 / Jala Hold. Two hundred and eighty-seven kilometres north-east of Atika, Pythos
Though his occulobe had already enabled Epimetheus to see the damage caused to Jala Hold from over twenty kilometres away, he had still insisted that Shira put the shuttle down so he could inspect it close up.
Thick black smoke swirled around him as he ascended the slope towards the mine entrance, inky fronds dancing around his now almost entirely silver armour as the backwash from the shuttle’s engines blew across the rocky approach. Fat flames licked from the cave mouth, the entire underground complex completely engulfed, but of the arsonists there was no sign. Even in his armoured state, the heat was too much for the ancient Grey Knight, and he stood his ground thirty paces away from the blaze, the orange light making his Terminator suit appear bronze as he turned about to survey the devastation. Despite his vision being obscured by the dark plume, he still spotted what he was looking for.
To his left, a blackened figure lay face down on the ground, a pistol clutched in one hand. At first, Epimetheus took the dark hue to be cindered flesh but as he got closer and saw that the Cadian’s uniform had not been claimed by the fire, he realised it was only soot coating the corpse. Kneeling down, he rolled the dead Imperial Guard officer over. Unspoilt by the smoke, the front of the man’s tunic was torn in five places, dried blood surrounding each deep gash that had been cut all the way through to bone. Four of them ran parallel but the fifth, not as deep as the others, was offset, running across the Cadian’s flank where the others had ripped at his torso.
In ancient times, superstitious cultures believed that those who had died a violent death retained an image of their killer upon their retina, a victim’s indictment of their killer from beyond the threshold of life. In the tens of thousands of years that had elapsed since then, that belief had been disproven but it did not mean that the dead man could not tell any tales. Like all superstitions, it had a grain of truth to it and while the eyes of the recently deceased could not offer up the identity of the Imperial Guardsman’s murderer, his mind could. Closing his eyes to aid concentration, Epimetheus reached out to read the corpse’s mind.
He knew the answer before the image flashed into his mind. It was the same image he had seen from nearly fifty dead men at over a dozen burned-out holds in the past week.
Abaddon.
The Warmaster’s actions had ceased making sense. From the vox-traffic he and Shira had been monitoring, the enemy were effectively fighting a last stand yet Abaddon had neither rushed to their aid nor fled the planet, instead choosing to carry out pointless raids on isolated delver-strongholds that no longer held any strategic value. It seemed to be only one group carrying out these attacks, always one step ahead of Epimetheus and always gone from the scene by the time he and Shira arrived, heading to the next massacre. It was impossible to predict the exact location of these attacks, but it was always in the same general direction.
It was almost as if he was being left a trail to follow. A trail that was heading southwards, ever closer to Atika. The Grey Knight was reluctant to engage with the main Imperial Reconquest Force but if Abaddon was planning to reinforce his beleaguered forces beneath the planetary capital, Epimetheus would be left with little option.
Lifting the body up, Epimetheus took a few steps forward and hurled it unceremoniously into the flames, the inferno hungrily consuming it in an instant. By the time he had made it back to the shuttle, even the bone had turned to ash, such was the intensity of the fire fuelled by mining machinery and promethium stores.
‘No survivors?’ Shira asked from the controls. She had asked that question a lot recently and had received the same answer.
Epimetheus said nothing, instead simply shaking his head as he seated himself at the rear of the crew compartment, contemplating the Warmaster’s plan as Shira sent the shuttle skywards.
153961.M41 / The Underhive. Atika, Pythos
The blade slid under Balthasar’s flesh, peeling the skin away from the muscle beneath. Pain suppressors flooded his system along with coagulants and clotting agents as the knife burrowed deeper, probing through the meat of the Dark Angel’s forearm. Finding its target, the wielder twisted the scalpel, loosening the foreign object from where it was embedded between the fibres before stabbing it with the tip of the surgical instrument. Careful not to cause any more damage than he had done on the way in, Apothecary Rephial slowly withdrew the sliver of blight grenade shrapnel, the shard festering and hissing as it made contact with the stale air of the subterranean cavern. He placed it alongside dozens more onto a metal tray beside the slab of stone he was using as a makeshift operating table.
‘That’s the last of it,’ the Apothecary said. His skin was dark orange, weathered and lined, a remnant of his early years on a desert world before his recruitment into the Dark Angels, and his Gothic was heavily accented. The planet had supplied many neophyte Space Marines down the years – Balthasar had served in the same squad as two of them during his time in Fifth Company – and though it had a reputation for breeding doughty fighters, Rephial was the first to join the ranks of the Apothecarion. ‘Try not to stand in front of any grenades for a while, alright?’
Balthasar grimaced, partly out of pain, partly out of the Apothecary’s attempt at a joke. A Space Marine’s lot was a grim one, of constant warfare and eternal strife. Brothers they had served alongside for several lifetimes of an ordinary human could be wiped out in the blink of an eye, and death’s shadow was permanently upon them. It was an existence bereft of levity and any attempt at humour was awkward and forced.
‘It was Master Gabriel who stepped in front of this particular grenade, not I,’ Balthasar said, sitting upright and examining the lattice of cuts across his arms. He patted his face experimentally, not wishing to reopen the lacerations on his cheeks. ‘How is he?’
‘Ask him yourself. He is out of his sus-an coma and Brother Raguel has almost concluded his ministrations.’ The Apothecary gestured to another ad hoc surgical station on the opposite side of the dimly lit chamber.
Nodding his thanks to Rephial, Balthasar slid from the stone table while the Apothecary moved on to treat more of the wounded Dark Angels strewn about his own field hospital. Already close to thirty Space Marines sat or lay on the raised tablets or rough floor and word had come through that more were on their way.
The months since the initial assault had been a bloody grind, the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the former hive city a deathtrap of blind corners, dead ends and cave-ins. Marauding packs of daemons prowled the benighted depths and Traitor Astartes and cultists lay in wait, ready to spring ambushes or collapse tunnels on top of the Imperial attackers. Almost an entire company of Dark Angels had been lost since the underground war commenced, many still entombed beneath rubble. Azrael had redeployed elements of Tenth Company to operate in a purely search and rescue capacity, locating survivors and pulling them from under the rocks.
The Grey Knights had fared little better, the daemonic host reserving especial hatred for the psychic Knights. In any joint operations between the two Chapters, it was always the silver armoured Space Marines who bore the worst of the casualties rather than those clad in green, white or black. Draigo’s Brotherhood was still a viable and potent force but was now down to three-quarters of its initial strength.
It was the soldiery of the Imperial Guard who had fared worst, however. The lack of any natural light this far beneath the surface of Pythos made it almost impossible for the unaugmented humans to fight unless it was alongside armour equipped with searchlights or other forms of illumination. Many of the tank brigades were out of action waiting for the necessary parts to arrive
in-system to allow them to be upgraded for underground combat, but some mechanised units were already able to operate in the wider tunnels with impunity. Curiously, the entire armoured complement of the Catachan 183rd had been in the thick of the action right from the start, light arrays based around the abundant crystal found beneath Pythos fitted to all of their vehicles within days of the first shots being fired.
But the war below ground needed to be fought regardless of the conditions and so hundreds of thousands of human soldiers were ordered into the tunnels to bolster the Dark Angels and Grey Knights forces. Many of them would never see daylight again, rent apart by claws of daemons or feasted upon by an army of the undead intent on defending the Damnation Cache and the Emerald Cavern. A high proportion of those who did feel the rays of Pythos’s sun on their skin again did so only briefly before being shuttled off back to the fleet where they died lingering deaths on board medical frigates.
The Imperial Guardsmen who had been fighting alongside Balthasar and Gabriel belonged in the former category. Following up on reports from Dark Angels Scouts, the two Deathwing had accompanied a unit of Cadians through a maze of tunnels leading to a sacrificial chamber where Plague Marines and cultists had been seen escorting prisoners. The intelligence regarding the use of the cavern had been accurate but when they arrived, there was no sign of any Traitor Astartes, only a coven of warptouched enacting some form of grotesque ritual.
Their slaughter was straightforward, economical use of the two Terminators’ storm bolters turning the stagnant air crimson, but, in a final act of defiance, one of the sorcerers detonated a blight grenade before he perished. Spotting the danger before anybody else, Gabriel put his body between the blast and the unarmoured Guardsmen, bearing the full brunt of the toxic explosion. Despite all of his Emperor-gifted boons, all of his augmentation and conditioning, the Master of the Deathwing was still too slow. The bizarre shrunken head fragmented sending shrapnel flying inexorably towards weak human flesh, killing a few of the Cadians outright but condemning the rest to a slow, agonising death. Still able to walk, Balthasar had dragged the comatose form of his company master back through almost twenty kilometres of tunnels before sending help for the stricken Guardsmen.
‘It would seem you saved my life again, Brother Balthasar,’ Gabriel said as he noticed the younger Space Marine approach. Raguel was pulling shards of grenade from the Master of the Deathwing’s chest. His scalpel bore deep into the flesh but the veteran did not flinch. ‘You are making quite a habit of that.’
‘It was you who shielded me from the blast, master. If not for that, Rephial might have had to use his reductor rather than his scalpel on me.’
Gabriel smiled despite Raguel’s hand being sunk to the knuckles in his pectoral, probing around for an errant sliver of blight grenade. ‘Let’s call it honours even.’
Balthasar returned the grin.
‘The Cadians. Did they…?’ Gabriel asked.
‘Most of them survived, though all were wounded.’ Balthasar didn’t need to add that they had likely all died in transit back to the fleet, the merest sliver of shrapnel being enough to seal their fate.
Gabriel sighed. ‘A pity. Sadder still that we did not find any of the Plague Marines the Scouts reported.’
The muscles in Balthasar’s cheeks tightened and he broke eye contact with his company master. Raguel at last found the piece of grenade he had been seeking and removed it, adding it to a pile of similar fragments.
‘All done here,’ Raguel said. His pale skin was in stark contrast to that of his counterpart, his alabaster complexion lending him an aspect not dissimilar to that of a Space Marine of the Raven Guard. ‘I’m going to request that you be kept away from the frontline for two days to allow your body to recover. I’ve spent the past seventeen hours taking almost an entire grenade out of you, and those wounds will need time to mesh.’
‘And I shall politely request that Lord Azrael decline your request. You have my gratitude for your care and attention, Brother Raguel, but I must now ask that you leave Brother Balthasar and I to our discussion.’ There was no malice to his tone, but he fixed the Apothecary with a hard stare.
Raguel nodded his confirmation and took his leave. It was obvious that the company master wished to talk business. Deathwing business.
‘Care to tell me what troubles you, brother?’ Gabriel said, lifting himself to a sitting position.
‘What makes you think something is troubling me?’ Balthasar retorted, a little too quickly.
‘You have been in a constant state of pensiveness ever since we came below ground. Distracted. You should have been as quick to react as I to that grenade, but instead you hesitated.’ Gabriel paused. ‘You act as if you’re carrying a burden. A secret perhaps?’
The tell registered on Balthasar’s face immediately. ‘I had wished to speak to a Chaplain about it but the campaign has not let up for an instant these past few months. The brief time I have spent in the company of our brothers from the Reclusiam has been battling at their side.’
‘I am no Chaplain, brother, but I am a capable listener if you wish to unburden yourself upon me. You know that you may speak freely.’ Gabriel’s body language relaxed.
Balthasar took a breath. He was a relative newcomer to the ranks of the Deathwing and had only navigated the first few curves of the Dark Angels’ inner circle. There were secrets he knew that would rock the Imperium to its core should they come out, but at the same time he had scarcely plumbed the depths of his Chapter’s mysteries.
‘It was just prior to the second orbital bombardment, when the Plain of Glass clogged with the half-dead. In among the carnage and confusion I saw someone, a black armoured Traitor Astartes who now swears fealty to the Plague God. The inquisitor, she spotted him too and we both engaged him in combat. I severed his arm but he was able to escape before the bombs dropped.’
‘You know the protocol for dealing with the Fallen,’ Gabriel hissed. ‘This should have been reported straight away.’
Balthasar lowered his voice. ‘It was not one of the Fallen. Well, not exactly.’
‘What do you mean “not exactly”? He was either one of our erstwhile brothers or he wasn’t.’
‘He was not a Dark Angel who had turned traitor, but he bore the markings of another of the Unforgiven. I saw them as clear I can see you now. The inquisitor confirmed it too when I spoke to her after, but she was unaware of his lineage or affiliation to us. The traitor was responsible for the murder of her former master and she desires vengeance.’
Gabriel’s eye were locked on Balthasar. ‘Which Chapter?’
‘The Consecrators.’ There was an uneasy pause. ‘I know the protocols for the location, capture and interrogation of the Fallen, but I do not know the procedure when the traitor comes from within our own ranks. What should I do, Master Gabriel?’
‘You?’ Gabriel said after some thought. ‘You do nothing.’
‘But his betrayal is an indelible mark upon our honour. It cannot go unpunished.’
‘And it won’t. There are protocols in place for this eventuality, but your level of ascension is not yet sufficient for you to be privy to them.’
‘But I was the one who discovered him. Surely that–’
‘That counts for nothing. The matter will be dealt with,’ Gabriel interrupted.
Balthasar was about to protest further when Apothecary Raguel approached them again.
‘My apologies, Master Gabriel. Brother Balthasar. We’ve received word from Lord Azrael that the enemy have breached the Emerald Cave. He’s ordered every battle-ready Dark Angel to rally there.’ He looked the company master up and down. ‘I suppose I’d be wasting my breath asking you to sit this one out?’
Gabriel snorted. ‘We shall not speak of this again, Brother Balthasar,’ he said, leaping down from the stone table. ‘Serf! Bring me my armour.’
The stench inside Traitor’s Bane was as potent as any of the gas-based weapons the forces of the Archenemy had thus far
deployed in the underground war. Tzula had taken to wearing her bandana as a facemask to block it out.
Months of fighting without respite had taken their toll, and the crew of the Hellhammer were filthy and dishevelled. With all water strictly rationed for drinking, none of them had showered in weeks and the reek of sweat freely mingled with the odour of burnt oil and engine fumes. Even if there had been a break in the combat sufficient enough to open some of the hatches and air the tank out, it would have done no good. The still, dank air of the subterranean tunnels would do nothing to displace the smell.
There were small mercies. Imperial tanks – even super-heavy ones – did not come fitted with internal latrines, so certain bodily functions occurred outside of their confines, but that was not without its dangers. Tamzarian and three other crew members had been eviscerated by a lurking lesser daemon the previous week when they’d left the protection of Traitor’s Bane to answer the call of nature.
Though the smell was constant and oppressive, Tzula knew that ultimately it was not going to kill her… unlike the pack of daemons that had just detached themselves from the darkness and were clambering over the tank’s hull.
The tapping of claws on metal echoed around the crew compartment, audible above the chug of the power plant and the grinding of the tracks. K’Cee had done an almost impossible job in getting the Hellhammer operational again, but the jokaero’s hard work was in danger of being undone, something he emoted frantically from the driver’s seat he now occupied.
‘Tindalos, this is Traitor’s Bane,’ Strike voxed. The colonel, replete with the thick beard he had sported throughout the jungle campaign, remained calm. ‘Get these things off us.’
‘Affirmative, chief,’ came the response through the compartment speakers.
From behind the Hellhammer a smaller tank broke formation, overtaking several others in the armoured column to draw alongside the command vehicle. Turning its turret to face Traitor’s Bane, the Hellhound let loose with its inferno cannon, dousing the super-heavy in flame. While its thick armour plating could withstand the intense heat, the flesh of its unwanted passengers could not and the host of daemons expired in a cloud of fire and chorus of otherworldly screams.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 342