‘None shall depart!’ he roared. ‘I go first! None shall take skulls on the Throneworld’s soil before I!’
Khârn ran in his genefather’s footsteps. Where the daemon primarch trod, the metal smoked. Heat as much as anger radiated from Angron. Mortals ran from him. Those that did not fell convulsing, bleeding from their eyes, or else attacked one another in awful outbursts of violence.
‘Khârn, I have reports of a demi-company attempting to breach hangar nineteen, not far from your position.’
‘Hnnnh,’ Khârn swallowed bloody spittle. ‘We are nearly there, Lotara,’ he said. ‘Angron knows.’ Speaking with the shipmistress calmed his fury a little, but not much. He struggled to concentrate.
’That is not good.’
‘I… I… hnnnh, I would agree,’ Khârn finally managed.
‘You will not land before me!’ Angron roared, and sprinted ahead. ‘I will be first!’
‘I must go.’ Khârn swore, and ran after him. Angron pulled ahead easily. His sword was ready and trailing black vapours.
Khârn caught up as the primarch was slaughtering his way through a hundred World Eaters. The fools had been throwing themselves against the hangar doors, despite all of them being sealed at Khârn’s order. The heavy portals were scarred with melta burns. The disobedient company had made little headway before their father arrived to punish their presumption.
Angron’s lessons came at the edge of his sword, and all were fatal.
‘You dare? You dare!’ Angron roared. He cut one of his sons in half from helm to crotch. The sword wailed as it swung, blood boiling from its edges. Always huge, Angron had grown to immense stature since his change, dwarfing his sons. He caught one up in his left hand, his fingers easily grasping the Space Marine’s chest, and slammed him repeatedly into a wall. Armoured fingers prised at Angron’s grip, but nothing the World Eater did could free him.
‘I will be first upon Terra!’ roared Angron. ‘You are not worthy! It is my honour! Khorne demands it! The Blood God decrees it! You shall burn in lakes of fire for your temerity!’
Several hacked at the primarch’s limbs. The blows his brass armour did not turn aside sunk only a little way into his daemonic flesh. Sprays of scalding ichor hissed over the primarch’s assailants, blinding those without helmets. His skin rippled around the wounds, closing them quickly. Angron ignored those who attacked him, and continued to pound the warrior in his fist against the wall.
‘Traitor!’ roared Angron. ‘Usurper!’
The ceramite cracked, followed by the warrior’s ribs. Blood gushed from rupturing flesh. The primarch cast his dead son aside, and turned his blade upon the others.
Angron would not rest until everyone in the corridor was dead. Khârn tried to think of how to calm his primarch, to bring his rage to manageable levels, but the answer eluded him. His own reason was drowning in a tide of blood. The Butcher’s Nails pounded into his skull. The smell of spilt vitae excited his senses. He swallowed a mouthful of saliva, suddenly conscious of a flood of it streaming down his chin. Before he lost himself entirely, he reopened communications with Lotara.
‘Seal decks eighty-four through ninety, portside of the spinal way. Every entrance.’ He could barely speak. His vision swam. He wanted to fight. He needed to kill. With heroic effort he growled out his orders. ‘Order this deck cleared. Dispatch suppression teams to all other hangars, ship-wide. Lock them all down. Prime remote weapons to kill on sight. No one leaves this ship. Angron will slaughter us all if anyone tries. Seal all portals on this deck except forwards gate nine. Open all doors leading to the lower decks beyond. If Angron wants to keep fighting, he can do it among the thralls.’
‘Confirmed. No one runs from the Conqueror,’ Lotara said. ‘What about you? Khârn?’
Khârn could no longer hear. Words belonging to something else forced themselves out of his mouth.
‘Blood for the Blood God!’ he roared, and joined battle at his father’s side.
Ark Mechanicum Pent-Ark, Terran near orbit, 14th of Tertius
Clain Pent’s Ark Mechanicum took its first orbital breach with good graces. Spherical and of a mass similar to a large asteroid, it was not designed for such a landing, but it was not the first void-ship to break Terra’s atmospheric envelope during the siege, and it would not be the last.
Pent’s lair was situated right at the centre of the vessel, in an armoured sub-sphere that could be ejected in the event of the ark’s destruction. It was a ship within a ship, equipped with its own void shields, drives and external weapons systems. Throughout the descent, Pent’s metaphorical hand hovered over the activation codes in the ship’s infosphere.
He had his own clade of lesser servants. Some of the disciples of Sota-Nul, such as Ardim Protos, had no followers of their own, whereas the likes of Illivia Epta kept legions of them. For Pent, eight followers were sufficient. Not too many to control, enough to be useful, and with the additional bonus of flattering Nul through imitation. The eight of them served him as ship crew, engineers, advisers, agents and all other things.
said Acolyte Penta-7, who hunched low over the auspex scopes cramming the forwards portion of the command dome.
Pent blurted. He used direct voxwave communication, always. The body he wore had a mouth, but it was not his own. Pent’s preferred disciplines were those of biomancy and cybertheurgy. He kept a stable of bodies of his own design to wear. He’d chosen his current one for its combat efficacy. It was large, heavily muscled, being vat-grown from abhuman gene stock, and heavily modified with bionics. Not that he intended to do any fighting; he wore it for appearance’s sake.
Outwardly, he showed no sign of fear. Within his suit of flesh, it was a different story. Pent was little more than a brain in a jar hidden in the armoured chest cavity of his host. He had no face of his own to display worry or similar emotions, while that of his temporary body was immobile. Pent found joy in manipulating biological matter, but he saw no need for the humanity in them; the biological was merely another form of machine. The face had been cured upon the skull and painted brightly so that it looked like a carnival figure, and in whose permanently open mouth Pent’s glowing sensor array hid. But a magos can betray himself in other ways than an unguarded scowl or frown, and Pent kept a tight rein on his external links in case an involuntarily expelled data packet revealed his dismay.
The command, delivered as electric pulses, was transmitted instantaneously via augmitter wired into his host’s vestigial brainstem. The ship shook when the order was executed. Air is remarkably hard and hot when encountered from the void, and the shields treated it as they would any other threat, shunting it partially into the warp.
The violence of the reaction was alarming. The ship dropped by sudden degrees as the voids annihilated huge pockets of atmosphere, and accelerated into the lacuna, then decelerated abruptly when air rushed back in.
An outside observer would have seen Pent in his grotesque body and his eight servants, all augmented to more or less horrific degrees, working quietly but for a gentle bleeping passing between them. The peacefulness of the data exchange belied the ferocious argument it conveyed.
spoke Acolyte Penta-1.
rejoined Acolyte Penta-2.
said Penta-5, who was female once, but had transformed herself into a waving shock of metal tentacles arranged around a metal box.
The shi p lurched to the side. External gravity was taking hold, throwing the grav-plating’s effects out of true. Miniature gravitic vortices tugged at the adepts’ black robes.
commanded Clain Pent.
Attacks from the ground were coming in hard. Machines sang their hosannas of alarm as the first of the void generators burnt out. Immediately, servitors detached themselves from deep-set alcoves and clomped off the bridge to enact repairs. Pent reviewed the damage in his internal data-feeds. They were wasting their time.