by Rob Sanders
Occam looked up through the thinning haze of dust. He could hear screaming and the excruciating fracture of the cathedral cracking about them. The broken bodies of Grey Knights flew through the air. Through the murk and green light, Occam could see the greater daemon – a monstrous whirlwind of flesh and flame – break the back of a Grey Knights walker by stamping out with a cloven hoof. As bolt rounds ripped up through the abomination’s back, the creature tore at statues and holy tapestries adorning the cathedral wall. Bombarding Grey Knights with rubble that surviving brothers used for cover, the daemon turned. Stormbolter fire ripped into the monster’s metal-threaded hide. Roaring in pain and frustration, Kar’Nash’gahar threw itself at the Space Marines. The creature stamped Terminators into the cathedral floor and scooped up armoured victims in its great claws, crushing them with furious abandon.
It seemed suddenly to notice a figure taking cover behind the grand episcopal throne. Occam saw that it was Van Leeuwen, the inquisitor unloading his bolt pistol at the towering monstrosity. Obliterating the throne with a savage kick of its hoof, the Slayer of Worlds snatched Van Leeuwen in one great claw and brought the inquisitor up before its infernal ugliness. The inquisitor roared his hatred at the daemon beast before sending the last of his bolt-rounds into Kar’Nash’gahar’s face, making the creature flinch. When the Slaughterlord roared back, the foul intensity of its breath melted the weapon in Van Leeuwen’s gauntlet before turning the inquisitor himself into a withering husk. Tossing the body aside, the daemon once more raged into the gunfire of the remaining Grey Knights.
As the daemon stormed across the cathedral, Goura Shengk fell to his knees and held his arms outstretched.
‘Mighty Kar’Nash’gahar…’ the Dark Apostle called, supplicating himself before the greater daemon.
Occam shook his head. Unable to return to Unholy Ghalmek, Goura Shengk was looking for new daemon sponsors. Leaving the Word Bearer, the strike master ran into the blinding green light. He reached out and grabbed for the Tesseraqt. He felt the object moving. Reassembling. Once again, finding its form. As the Tesseraqt closed, the brilliant green light of the containment field disappeared and Occam found himself with the black cube once again in his hand.
As the light died, the Slaughterlord’s gaze was drawn from its butchery of the Grey Knights. The monstrosity saw Occam with its prison in his hand. Its face contorted with hatred and fury as it associated the strike master with its incarceration.
Slipping the Tesseraqt into his belt pouch, Occam ran. Pounding his armoured footsteps across the cathedral, he risked a glance behind him as the greater daemon stomped forth in abyssal anger.
‘Lord of Glorious Slaughter and Slayer of Worlds,’ Goura Shengk called, ‘we offer ourselves…’
A wrinkle of disgust passed across Occam’s features at the Word Bearer’s entreaty. The monstrosity stamped its hoof down on the Dark Apostle. The Word Bearer disappeared, replaced by a crater of shattered flagstones and fountaining gore.
The Master of Mankind’s statue had fallen face first onto the ground and its colossal form lay in Occam’s path. Skidding down onto his side, the strike master slid beneath the stern visage of the God-Emperor’s face, mere moments before the Slaughterlord’s hoof came crashing down to shatter the statue’s back.
Occam ran past Grey Knights Terminators, whose optics were fixed upon the Slaughterlord’s spellbinding form. They held their halberds out to corral the monstrosity in a serrated gauntlet of psychically charged blades. Meanwhile, brothers in powered plate ripped into the greater daemon’s foul brawn with the staccato blast of ethereal boltfire. These Grey Knights also seemed unconcerned at Occam’s escape and the fleeing of the Redacted. Kar’Nash’gahar had their attention now and could not be allowed to leave this place to wreak havoc across the atmospheric plates of Suspiria Proctor.
Occam heard a gargling shriek across the vox-channel. A Grey Knights Terminator had managed to thrust the blade of his halberd into Malik’s gut, bringing the former Night Lord down. The strike master could hear the suppressed gasp of shock followed by Malik coughing and spluttering blood up within his helm.
The Redacted were suddenly there at their brother’s side. Occam ran at the Terminator, throwing the weight of his powered plate at the hulking Grey Knight’s pauldron. Knocking him off balance and stumbling to one side, the strike master put the armoured warrior in Hasdrubal’s sights, allowing the sergeant to finish their foe with a headshot from his boltgun.
A kneeling Malik roared as he pulled the skewering halberd blade from his side.
‘Malik…’ Occam said.
‘I can make it,’ the former Night Lord growled.
The strike master risked a glance behind him.
‘Get him up,’ Occam ordered. Between them, Hasdrubal and the sorcerer helped Malik to his feet.
‘What’s happening to the floor?’ Hasdrubal said. Occam had detected it also. The gradient was changing. He could feel the ever increasing slant of the ground beneath his feet, had felt it since the storm of unnatural energy had been unleashed.
‘I think the daemon’s manifestation has knocked out the plate generatoria,’ Occam told his sergeant. ‘A chain reaction or system failure. The anti-gravity engines must be failing. This plate is falling out of the sky. We’ve got to get away.’
With an arm around each of them, Malik’s armoured boots barely skimmed the floor. As the Alpha Legionnaires rushed him across the vaulted chambers, followed by their strike master, Kar’Nash’gahar smashed his way through the cathedral and the cordon of Grey Knights.
The greater daemon vented its monstrous fury upon the holiness of its surroundings, tearing architecture and the statues of saints down upon the battle-brothers in silver plate who sought to contain it. The cathedral drove the creature insane with the divinity of stone and sculpture. The Grey Knights demanded obliteration for the foolish assumption that they alone could contain the uncontainable. The Slaughterlord never took its fell gaze from the true object of its abyssal ire. The one who had unleashed the Slayer of Worlds once more upon the galaxy – a service that would not save him. The one who had kept the abomination prisoner in the xenos cube: Occam the Untrue.
‘Do you have a plan?’ Sergeant Hasdrubal called as they reached the cathedral gates.
‘It barely qualifies,’ Occam said, ‘but yes – I have something.’
As Hasdrubal shouldered the towering doors open, creating the narrowest of gaps, the Redacted forced their way through. Occam followed, but outside the cathedral – gathered on the ceremonial entrance plaza – was a sea of cardinal world soldiers: planetary defence forces, storm troopers, crusaders and frater militia hordes, all dressed in devout black robes and armour. They surrounded the Cathedral-Primus, their weaponry aimed at the opening doors. At their head, in a Chimera mounting an armoured pulpit, was the lord cardinal’s aide-maximus: Deacon Borshach. The Ecclesiarchical troops had all heard the thunderous horror coming from within the cathedral. They had felt the quake and crumble of foundations, and stained glass had rained down on them from the grandeur of shattered windows. Faced only with what was left of the Redacted, Borshach – like his cardinal world soldiers – seemed uncertain.
Occam was out of options. He pushed his legionnaires to one side. They had to clear the door. The action drew the fire of a militia trooper in black, his single stabbing beam going wide of the mark but enough to prompt a blinding cascade of others to sear across the plaza from the front lines of the cardinal’s troops. Lasbeams cut across the path of the legionnaires, burning into the stone of the cathedral exterior. The strike master’s armour registered a cluster of impacts. Some were glancing beams while others seared into the plate. He heard his sergeant call out as a beam struck him in the side of the neck.
In a monstrous boom of metal and stone, the cathedral doors exploded outwards. With a Titanic kick the greater daemon struck the doors with a hoof and sent one flying out across the plaza in a storm of masonry. Soldiers died in their hundred
s as the colossal bronze door smeared their ranks into the plaza. Kar’Nash’gahar stood there, a nightmare made flesh, bellowing his bottomless rage at the Ecclesiarchical soldiers, the capital plate and the cardinal world at large. As the shock subsided and heart-thumping panic set in, the blinding hail of lasbeams left the Redacted and moved across to the greater daemon.
‘Sergeant,’ Occam said as the stone wall of the cathedral smoked about them.
‘My lord?’
‘Climb.’
‘Climb?’
‘For your lives,’ Occam said as he backed from them.
‘But my lord…’
‘For the inquisitor’s lighter,’ the strike master said. ‘The lord cardinal’s barge. Some kind of craft up on the spire landing platforms. Anything that gets us away from that monstrosity. Now climb.’
As Quoda and the sergeant helped the wounded Malik up into the busy architecture of the cathedral wall, Occam followed.
Occam reached for ledges and hauled himself up through nests of stone gargoyles. Below on the plaza, the greater daemon was slashing at the ranks of cardinal world defenders with its flail, turning them into rivers of blood. The heaving, tilting plate made it impossible for the soldiers to retain formation. They flew up into the air and tracked vehicles left the ground. It was as though gravity was failing, when really the effect was being created by the freefall of the colossal plate. For Occam and the Redacted, at least, it sped up their climb and made surmounting the architecture of the cathedral exterior easier.
In the distance, the plate generatoria detonated. With the dropping capital plate now in the shadow of its higher neighbours, the rippling chain reaction of explosions lit up the dark undershell of the surrounding structures. The strike master could see that the main reactor had become a blinding flash of explosive mayhem. Silhouetted in the crackling destruction was the Slaughterlord Kar’Nash’gahar. It too had begun to climb up the walls of the cathedral. Its abyssal rage would not allow its gaoler to escape.
Occam pushed on. He could see Sergeant Hasdrubal and the sorcerer Quoda above, helping Malik up through the gargoyled architecture of the Cathedral-Primus and its main tower. Occam leapt for the ledges and sculptures. His engineered might and the servos of his armour carried him so far but the shuddering drop of the plate did the rest, carrying the strike master farther up the structure than he could have managed unaided. Latching onto crumbling stone sculptures and cloud-stained architecture he scrambled up the side of the cathedral: up, in pursuit of the Redacted; up, towards the cathedral tower tops that still descended parallel with the ragged edge of the city’s surrounding plates.
Occam climbed for his life. A life that seemed worth so little in that moment. He had lost all. He had given up his ship to a daemonic entity. The Redacted were in tatters and the strike master’s alliance with the Word Bearers of unholy Ghalmek replaced by a force of unnatural fury. Occam heard Kar’Nash’gahar’s bellows of infernal anger and hatred rise above the screams of thousands. He felt the quake of the monstrous daemon as its bounding step took it up onto the cathedral side and its claws punched like grapnels into the thick stone of the ancient building. It flapped its ruined wings in frustration and bellowed its rage.
The strike master’s climbing became increasingly wild. Hauling, scrabbling, he leaped from purchase to purchase. He quickly gained on Hasdrubal and Quoda, the pair negotiating the architecture with the broken Malik. They had made good time, however, having reached the tower’s mighty steeple. Kar’Nash’gahar thundered up behind. It had almost reached him.
‘Onwards!’ Occam roared at his remaining legionnaires. Carcinus Quoda was heaving himself up a maintenance ladder that ran up the steeple’s side, with Malik hanging off the back of his pack. Hasdrubal was holding back for his strike master but Occam called for the sergeant to keep going. Beyond the raging daemon that clawed and climbed, rumbling like a great furnace below him, Occam could hear fresh screams. These were not shrieks of horror at the sight of the daemon entity but calls of fear at the plate’s sudden descent. Occam knew pain when he heard it. The lowest parts of the city plate were now sinking through the roiling clouds of acidic splendour that made up the planet’s atmosphere. Lost in the colourful strata of death, the cardinal worlders of the capital plate were screaming and gargling as their flesh melted away and their lungs were turned to mush. Stone hissed as the acid did its worst and began eating through the foundations of the Cathedral-Primus itself.
‘Go!’ Occam called to his sergeant. He had drawn level with Hasdrubal. They could no longer see the sorcerer and Malik.
The Slaughterlord reached up for the renegade Space Marines, clawing away sections of stone. Uncoiling the great length of its flail from its spiked belt, the greater daemon slashed at the Alpha Legionnaires.
For horrible moments all Occam could hear was the shredding of stone and the thunder of rage as the flail tore through the architecture about them. Rock dust blanketed the scene of devastation until the winds whipped the cloud away. Through the destruction, he could see Hasdrubal hanging onto the shattered cathedral wall. They had reached the smashed edge of the spire landing platform some distance apart. Occam hauled himself up onto the platform.
‘Sergeant,’ Occam called. ‘Hang on. That’s an order!’
Hasdrubal hung on by his ceramite fingertips. He tried to haul himself up, the stone crumbling about him.
Suddenly Ephron Hasdrubal was gone. A mighty daemonic claw was in his place, digging deep into the stone. Encapsulated in the prison of hellish flesh, the crushed sergeant could do little and Occam could do little to save him. Another claw gripped onto the creaking edge of the platform and Kar’Nash’gahar heaved its daemon bulk up. The beast had leapt for its life and just managed to get a purchase on the edge of the platform. The strike master backed away as the abomination brought the horror of its horns and abyssal features up level with him. Its fangs were black with the fires of its ire. Its nostrils streamed burning steam with the exertion of its climb. The greater daemon’s eyes burned bright for the years it had spent incarcerated in the alien Tesseraqt. Occam stared back. He was done running.
The strike master stamped down on the shattered stone of the platform. It did not take much. A single powered stomp sent cracks spreading through already loosened stone. A moment later, the daemon was gone.
Peering down past the broken stone edge, Occam watched the silhouette of the daemon thrash away from the plate. Tumbling down, with sections of broken stone and the broken sergeant, Kar’Nash’gahar fell down through the atmospheric maelstrom, flapping the useless expanse of its shredded wings. The daemon raged and bellowed. The capital plate with all its population was vanishing into the bottomless storm of acidic hell. Occam watched as his loyal sergeant and the monstrous greater daemon followed it, until the raging storm had claimed them both.
Getting up and stumbling away from the smashed edge of the platform, Occam heard the roar of engines. An Inquisitorial lighter drifted in close. He could see Quoda in the cockpit. The craft drifted around, its ramp lowered. The strike master leaped up onto the ramp just as the upper reaches of the cathedral fell away. Occam gazed down for a few more moments as the cathedral plummeted to its doom, before entering the lighter and closing the ramp. He found Malik doubled over on the compartment floor.
‘Sergeant Hasdrubal?’ the former Night Lord said through pain-gritted teeth.
‘No,’ Occam said, shaking his helm slowly.
‘Strike master,’ Carcinus Quoda said across the compartment vox, bringing Occam from dark thoughts of shock and loss. The strike master hit the vox stud.
‘Let’s go,’ Occam said finally.
‘Where?’ the sorcerer replied across the crackling channel. ‘The Dark Apostle wasn’t wrong. Where is there to go?’
‘We continue as planned,’ Occam the Untrue told him. ‘A great deal has happened but nothing has changed.’
‘How do we get off this wretched planet?’ Quoda asked.
‘It will take all of your talents, sorcerer,’ the strike master said, ‘but like all things the Alpha Legion put their mind to, it can be done.’
χ
Snakes Alive
The Dissolutio Perpetua held station over the tiny shrine world of Procul-Sanctus. Occam the Untrue stood motionless on the warped bridge of the Word Bearers daemon ship, staring out of the fanged maw of the forward lancet screen. It had been days since the Redacted had stolen a pilgrim lighter and escaped the havoc of Suspiria Proctor.
He looked down at the backwater shrine world and could only imagine the horror unfolding below.
‘Dark Apostle,’ Iaxor Phel said, addressing Occam. He leaned against Gorghastragar, his chin resting upon the skull-pommel of the daemon sword. ‘You should really be down there, leading the daemon brotherhood of the Varga Rax in the slaughter. You should indulge yourself – especially after the betrayal of those faithless serpents.’
The entity trapped within the jagged blade of Gorghastragar glowed within the metal in both agreement and daemon hunger. Occam gave his First Acolyte a withering gaze. For several weeks now what remained of the Redacted had been in command of the Word Bearers daemon ship. Pretending to be Goura Shengk and his two Word Bearers honour guard, the three Alpha Legionnaires had managed to escape Suspiria Proctor and rendezvous with the Dissolutio Perpetua under the premise that Occam the Untrue had betrayed them to the Angelbane. Using his potent psychic powers of manipulation, an exhausted Carcinus Quoda had managed to keep up the deception.
It had been tough going on all of them. Quoda had never had to maintain a manipulation for so long at such close quarters and the sorcerer looked haggard and drained. Vilnius Malik was recovering from his grievous wound at the hands of the Grey Knights. Occam had to do his part to present a realistic portrayal of the Dark Apostle to his own men.
