by Guy Haley
A glaring flash blinked through the oculus, slow to die: an enemy ship exploding unnoticed. All eyes were on the psyk-out missiles.
Guilliman leaned forward suddenly as one of the missiles drew a hail of fire and detonated, spilling anti-psychic fallout into the stratosphere.
Half a minute later, the surviving torpedoes impacted on the target. On the tacticaria display the psychic maelstrom shrank back like paper catching fire. It wavered on the edge of dissipation, then slowly began to creep back.
‘My lord, the warp shield is inactive,’ reported the Master Augurum. ‘Psy-oculus indicates building etheric activity. The shield will be back on line within ten minutes, maximum projection. Minimum estimate of five minutes.’
Guilliman nodded. Even at the worst estimate, Felix would perform his landing without fear of hitting the warp shield. He surveyed the swirling eye of corruption blighting Hecaton. Soon it would close for good.
He opened fleet wide vox. ‘Attacking this facility will be dangerous and unpleasant. I do not commit you to this task lightly, but there is no other way. Mortarion’s warp network rots the fabric of the materium throughout our realm. It brings his warriors strength. It feeds his daemonic allies with the black energies needed to sustain their essences. It speeds the spread of his unnatural plagues. With the warp clock of Parmenio smashed, victory here will be all the easier. This fight, this initial fight, will be among the hardest performed for this world. So I say to you, go forward in the name of the Emperor. He expects the utmost of you. He demands the greatest of efforts, for you are gifted by Him with strength to be mightier than other warriors, in order that you might watch over lesser men and protect them, and deliver them from these evils that beset our galaxy. As you fight, I shall watch over you.’ He paused. ‘And my father shall watch over you also.’
He looked to the watch commander. ‘Order second invasion wave drop pods to prepare. Send messages to all troop transports and Titan drop-ships to ready themselves for immediate deployment the moment the warp clock is gone. Brahe, bring us into stable high orbit. Choose a firing position, target the cathedral of Hecaton. Maintain suppressive bombardment upon enemy air defences.’
The crew responded with a chorus of affirmatives. The Macragge’s Honour slowed and turned about to hold stationary anchor over the city. Its lance batteries charged, and in the decks housing its macrocannons, the gun crews laboured to load the weapons with destructive magma shells.
‘Second wave commanders reporting readiness, my lord,’ the Master of the Watch said.
‘Launch,’ Guilliman said.
At the primarch’s order the launch tubes of a dozen ships belched fire, and the Space Marines of Ultramar raced across the void past the dying remains of the plague fleet, towards the diseased planet.
Chapter Eleven
Mortarion’s Fane
A bang, a rumble of jets. Acceleration pushed at Felix’s body within his armour. His retinal displays flickered with competing strands of information. Warning chimes and aural notifications drowned out vox reports from the strike force. Databursts unravelled themselves as text, graphics and figures displayed only long enough to notice before the next pushed its predecessor aside.
There was a time of stillness where physics ceased tormenting his flesh, acceleration stopped, and he floated serenely, weight forgotten for several minutes. It was all too brief. Parmenio snatched at the craft and yanked them down through the sky. Time passed now to the roar of atmospheric friction and bow compression.
‘Four minutes, forty-two seconds until warp shield reengagement.’ There was an edge to the Master Augurum’s voice. Felix appreciated his fear. Heading towards probable death with bland commentary in his ears seemed unfitting.
‘Fire engines. Accelerate to maximum speed,’ Felix voxed to the shoal of attack craft. The orders were obeyed without question, though their execution pushed the torpedoes to the limits of destruction.
They had to get into the facility before the shields recovered, and that had to be fast. Warp shields were a sorcerous variant on void shields, using dark magic to perform the role taken by technology on Imperial ships. Consequently, they were unpredictable. Speed was of the essence. Gunships and even drop pods were too slow. Only boarding torpedoes, designed to be hurled into the hull of another ship and deliver warriors safely within, were strong enough to survive the mad dash for Parmenio’s surface and the impact that would ensue without losing valuable seconds to deceleration.
Theoretically. The proof was in the practical, Felix reminded himself. This manoeuvre was rarely attempted because it was so risky.
As an aggressive tool of boarding, the torpedoes could reach very high speeds. What they weren’t really designed for was to head directly into a gravity well at full burn. The impact was going to be something, if the little ships did not burn up in the atmosphere first. Boarding torpedoes had ceramite thermal shielding, but it was designed to protect the front end of the vessel from its meltacutters, not the deadly compressive heating of re-entry. Provided they kept the prow to the planet, they should arrive alive. Antique spacecraft, primitive spacecraft, the machine adepts told him, had operated under this principle in the dim ages of prehistory.
At least, that was the theory, and only one theory. No one in the fleet had experience with such backward technologies. They might, admitted the adepts, all die.
Felix concentrated on the coming action. A toxic environment awaited him, guarded by warriors who had fought for Mortarion since the birth of the Imperium. The descent was the least of his concerns.
The torpedoes jumped as they passed into the lower reaches of the atmosphere. The familiar shaking of re-entry jounced his bones. He cleared his retinal display of all but two chronometers, one counting down the estimated time until the warp shield burst back into place, the other their arrival time. They were close.
The retinal display Felix’s battle suit boasted was superior to the helmplate displays traditionally fitted to Space Marine armour. Felix’s head shook violently, but the two chronographs ran down in crystal clarity.
The counters reached the one-minute minus mark. Outside, attack craft would be running over the city, drawing the enemy’s fire when not taking out their air defences directly. The torpedoes were coming down on predictable trajectories. Easy targets.
Faster and faster they went, roaring jets powering the torpedoes towards the surface, snubbing gravity for its lack of application.
It was over quickly. Retrojet burn slammed Felix back in the restraint cage, then a tremendous impact tossed him forwards. It was not as hard as he had expected. Ordinarily metal met metal with a ring and boom, shaking those in the tight confines of the torpedoes. Assailing the shield plant was altogether different, akin to a bullet piercing corpse skin than the nail-into-metal insertion of a typical boarding action.
He blacked out for a second. Long enough for his battleplate machine-spirit to apply a jolt from his pharmacopeia.
The torpedoes knifed through the cancerous hide of the facility. The passage was slicked by internal bleeding, a slippery chute ride instead of the brutal, grinding drill penetration Felix was used to.
At the point where the walls retained their original rockcrete and plasteel structure, the torpedoes juddered slightly, the melta arrays burned more loudly, and needles dropped a little quicker on the dials displaying the limited power source of the vessels. No more notice was given than that. The jump and skip of internal voids encountered in a layered metal structure were not there. Vile growth filled them all, imprisoning mechanisms and men alike in a fleshy hell.
Unlike the drop, the crawl inside the building seemed to take forever.
When Felix felt the journey might never end, chimes registered destination reached, and open air before the prow. Melta arrays cut out and the tracks that had dragged them through whirred into reverse, bringing the torpedoes to a halt.
A slurry of flesh and unspeakable bodily fluids sluiced out around the torpedo into a corridor. Liquid hissed where it ran over hardening slag.
There was a moment’s quiet. Cooling metal ticked. Muffled detonations fought their way within the building from the war outside.
Petalled doors burst wide. Felix’s squad of five veteran Primaris Reivers deactivated the maglocks holding their feet to the floor. Restraint bars fell loose in the cages and were pushed aside. The two warriors ahead of Felix jumped out into the hellish guts of the building. Being out first was an honourable but dangerous role. Many Space Marines had died advancing from boarding craft into enemy fire. No one was there to greet them. They took up sentry by the gaping nose of the torpedo, guns raised.
Felix was third to leave the tiny craft. Two more Primaris Marines came out after him. Skull masks, luminous in the dark, bobbed past the sentries to take up point positions twenty metres either direction up the corridor. When they were in place, Sergeant Kaspian emerged, a bulky auspex unit trilling in his fist.
Less than five seconds after the torpedo breached the wall, the six Space Marines were out of the tube and in position.
Pulsing sheets of greenish flesh covered over most signs of man’s artifice. In a few rare places bits of the original structure could be seen; junction boxes dripping slime, or lumens obscured by keratinous growths, still shining faintly. There was little other illumination. Stab lights shone from the Space Marines’ gun mounts. Where their circles of yellow light touched, waving cilia tipped with black eyes shrank back into the wall as if burned.
The floor gave disgustingly under Felix’s boots. There were firmer patches where the grid of floor panels could be felt, but the contrast between flesh and steel heightened his revulsion. A green mist floated at knee height, obscuring the ground. Chittering things giggled in the shadows, running as soon as looked at, and so glimpsed only as fleeting, abominable shapes. Felix advanced carefully, boltstorm gauntlet ready to fire. He reactivated his retinal overlays, and tasked his cogitator to act in concert with Kaspian’s auspex to run a full breakdown of the bizarre environment. It was uniformly toxic.
‘By the primarch,’ said Modrias, one of the veterans. ‘Such a stench.’
‘Check your helm seals,’ Felix said. When he spoke it seemed to dirty him somehow, as if upon leaving his mouth the words left a trail for the power plant’s corruption to enter into him. Feeling uneasy, he double checked his Gravis armour’s systems. The retinal display assured him his suit was completely sealed, proof against the void and worse, but the meaty reek filled his mouth and nose nevertheless, coating his throat with the bitter smell of rotten flesh tossed onto a fire.
‘All troopers’ armour is fully sealed against the exterior,’ said Kaspian. ‘But I can still smell it. Impossible.’
‘Impossible under normal circumstances. This is witchcraft,’ said Modrias.
‘Do not let it distract you,’ said Felix. He was running over the deployment of the rest of the force. Several torpedoes had been shot down. One hundred and thirty-eight Space Marines were within the complex. He left the data trickle from his fellows on. He did not speak to them. If any had entered the complex undetected, he wished to keep it that way. Vox was easily traced.
Kaspian was already adjusting his auspex to scan for mass densities and thermal spikes, a sure way to pick up power-armoured foes. ‘I get no reading of the enemy. Euphain, Daler. Confirmation of no visual contact.’
‘Corridor clear,’ voxed Euphain.
‘It is as safe as it is going to be, my lord,’ said Kaspian.
‘Obsidian Knight Voi,’ Felix said. ‘You may disembark in safety.’
Asheera Voi walked down the tilted ramp of the boarding torpedo. Though small and slight compared to the huge bulk of Felix’s warriors, an aura of frightful power clung to her, and she entered the plague ship with a deal less trepidation than the Primaris Marines. She bore a huge sword sheathed on her back, and a small calibre boltgun maglocked at her thigh. Like the Space Marines, she was clad in power armour, though hers was of far more ornate a type. The Vratine armour – the armour of the oath, it was called. Its lesser systems and lighter plating meant she was free of the cumbersome reactor packs the Space Marines wore, and she moved easily. A trade-off for her greater mobility was protection; the Vratine armour lacked the hermetic sealing Adeptus Astartes plate possessed. Her only guard against the toxic environment was the grilled bevoir extending up from her neck over her mouth and nose. This contained a rebreather, but although the way was open between her armour joints to all manner of poison and disease, she showed no fear of contamination. Her head was covered with a high helm that recalled those of the Adeptus Custodes. The effect of helm and mask was to emphasise the face, while denying sight of the mouth. It was a visual reminder of the Oath of Tranquillity the Sisterhood took to forsake speech forever.
Voi signed at Felix as she emerged using her order’s ThoughtMark. He read it perfectly, but his suit’s machine-spirit blinked electric outlines around her hands anyway, and provided an audio translation.
Your sergeant is correct. This place is steeped in the warp. She continued signing. The smell is not a physical phenomenon. It is of the Plague God’s doing. See.
She approached Felix. Her psychic null field enfolded him, protecting him from the facility’s malevolence. A great weight came off his soul, and the smell receded. The effect she had on the building itself was spectacular. Flesh-plaques went black as Voi’s weird gifts cut dead the life-sustaining energies of the warp. Peels of blubber rolled off the wall, revealing corroded plasteel beneath. Wherever she stepped, the green mist swam and recoiled, and the mat of tissues shivered with pain.
‘Impressive,’ he said.
I am anathema to this place, she signed. But you will understand the true meaning of that word once the device is activated. Stay close to me, tetrarch, she continued, her eye lenses locking with Felix’s. The mortal ailments within these walls can do you little harm, but there are sicknesses of the soul here. Without me, you may succumb.
‘Understood,’ said Felix. ‘You shall be protected. Do not take any unnecessary risks.’
She nodded, but drew her executioner greatblade anyway. An Oblivion Knight needed no protection. She kept back for their sake, not hers. As their guarantee against the soul-rotting powers of the facility, if she were to die, they would be vulnerable.
Felix flashed a compressed databurst to his men, reminding them of their task. It was information they had been over a hundred times already. Felix thought repetition worthwhile; though they were all veterans of the Indomitus Crusade, and had fought many strange foes, none of them had ever walked the innards of so heavily infested a place before. Few expeditions into the rotting hearts of Nurgle’s fanes had returned.
He performed a quick data harvest of other troops. The few Reiver squads were scattered from one end of the building to the other, employing their specialised skills to deliberately ambush the Plague Marines guarding the building. Captain Sicarius and the rest of the force acted as a lure near the entrance of the building. Between them, the Reivers and Victrix Guard should tie down the garrison. Though Felix’s team had the true mission, in the Ultramarines’ way the other strike forces were meaningful diversions; if Felix failed, the facility might still be destroyed by them.
‘Our brothers are engaged in several locations. I do not believe we have been noticed. Bring out the device,’ he commanded.
Kaspian worked his auspex again, ushering out from the torpedo the last occupant, a heavily armoured servitor. The upper half of a human body was mounted on the front, like a grotesque cybernetic centaur. Behind was a flatbed enclosed by a rail bearing a black sphere. Modrias and Voi checked the sphere over, ensuring the function lights upon the device displayed the proper patterns. While the checks were completed, Felix took a moment to get his bearings, his powerful gravis cogitator
attempting to overlay the actualities on the ground with the ancient plans he had inloaded for this pattern of generatorium. A cartolith shone brightly in his eyes. There was, unsurprisingly, very little correlation between original design and the current layout. Auspex returns displayed a twisted, organic network that had digested and reconfigured the original interior considerably. He found it hard to believe all this change had been effected in a few months.
A large shell hit the planet’s surface. The building shook with the impact. A long moan sounded past the Primaris Marines, solid as a physical presence.
‘I do not like this place,’ said Modrias.
‘I do not think it likes you,’ said Daler.
Felix examined the options carefully. A major, tubular corridor that looked like an enormous gullet led in the direction of where the reactor chamber should be. He gestured forward with his sword. It was as good a place as any to begin.
‘That way,’ he said.
Chapter Twelve
The heart reactor
Felix kept a close eye on the overall battle as they pushed on towards their target. Three other units moving in from different directions were making an obvious run for the reactor to mask Felix’s advance. The Reivers raised as much havoc as they could, drawing diseased eyes onto them, before vanishing to attack from elsewhere. Felix’s party met so little resistance he suspected the Death Guard to be overly reliant on supernatural senses. Asheera Voi’s presence masked them from psychic detection. All the evidence suggested they had not been seen, when a simple augur sweep of the facility would have discovered their torpedo.
As they advanced he thought the building no longer had anything as mundane as machine senses. There were few mechanical parts of the structure left, and though the generatorium was furnished with a profusion of bizarre growths, they seemed to perform no useful function. He reprimanded himself for expecting the growths to follow the logic of biotechnology, which they superficially resembled. They weren’t dealing with an artefact crafted in the material universe.
