by Darius Hinks
‘Who are–?’ he started to say.
‘The crest. Now.’ The head spoke with such force that it rocked on its stand, spilling sparks across the workbench.
One by one, all the heads started to rattle on their bases, snorting and belching. Crimson tears poured down their cheeks. ‘What is here?’ they whispered in unison. ‘What is here?’
Calx raised his power axe. The weapon was taller than him and clad in a bewildering array of esoteric devices, but it did nothing to calm his nerves.
‘I have no time,’ said the heads. ‘The crest. Now.’
Calx backed away, then jumped as someone began pounding on the door.
The heads became rigid and lifeless once more, so Calx turned to the door and wrenched it open, his power axe still raised.
‘Magos,’ said the pale, blood-splattered soldier outside. ‘It’s over. We are defeated.’
Magos Calx clattered out into blinding, bitter cold, followed by a phalanx of helmeted skitarii: vanguard troops, their low-slung radium carbines crackling as they lined up in perfect lockstep behind him. The clamour of battle crashed into them – thudding, hammer blows of artillery and the peevish cackle of arc rifles. Even up here, above the dam, Calx could see how dire the situation had become. Broken phosphor weapons and diagnostic equipment lay discarded around the bunker and mindless skitarii were sprawled everywhere, pleading to the cogs on their armour and gnawing at their bloody fists. Medicae-servitors whirred past – winged drones laden with needles and hacksaws, pallid, slack-jawed faces embedded in their iron thoraxes. They picked at the dying with blank-eyed disinterest, examining some, killing others. All of the soldiers were lacerated and bleeding, but Calx knew the wounds were not caused by the enemy. The men had not been mauled by xenos horrors, but by themselves. Steam filled the brittle air, drifting from their glistening, exposed innards and bloodstained mouths.
The magos paused as he left the bunker, horrified by the cannibalism that had consumed his garrison. To devour their own bodies, to eat the flesh that had been so lovingly improved by their lord, it was tragic in ways he could barely fathom. It was the most obscene form of defeat he could conceive of and it had occurred under his command. He had no doubt what was responsible. Corruption was the constant enemy. The Ruinous Powers. Daemonkind. The creatures of the warp. They had arrived on Hydrus Ulterior and entered the souls of his men. Then he remembered the voice that had spoken to him in the bunker. Even now there was hope.
He leant back as far as his iron-wrought torso would allow, until he looked like an armour-plated beetle, trapped in the sunlight, trying to right itself. Four of his servo-arms sprouted from his rusty carapace up into the air, as he opened his mind to every datascreed he could locate. Binharic code echoed round his head, a barrage of vox chatter from every corner of the valley – trajectories, munitions details, rates of attrition, all listed in exhaustive detail, despite the hopeless situation they described. Calx sifted through the statistics, trying to find an explanation for what had just happened to the heads.
‘Indente-dante, three-six-nine,’ he said, tapping the tubes that snaked through his skull. ‘Affixing one, affixing two.’ More reports hit him, jolting his body like a current. Then, finally, he found it.
He lowered his arms and stood upright, gripping his power axe with trembling fingers, excitement distorting his words. ‘Adeptus Astartes? The Adeptus Astartes are here? And none of you thought to alert me?’
‘Magos,’ replied one of the skitarii. ‘Your work with the heads… You ordered us not to disturb you until exactly–’
The magos pointed his power axe at the trooper. The weapon’s head was a stylised cog, each tooth sharpened to a keen edge. Calx tapped the humming blade on the trooper’s chest, scattering sparks across his grimy armour.
‘Who is it? What have they said?’
‘Magos,’ said the trooper, ‘the gunship only appeared on our auspexes thirteen minutes and seventeen seconds ago. I did not think it right to disrupt your timings until we identified it. A single gunship is approaching the dam, that is all, and it has not yet reached the valley. They have yet to clear the foothills. We have received no communiques. I disturbed you for another reason. The outer defences are…’ His words faltered. ‘We need to know your orders, magos. Things have become much worse.’
Magos Calx was about to reply when another volley hit, closer this time, causing the tech-priest and his guards to steady themselves as the ground shuddered and the air filled with dust.
When the air had cleared, Calx gripped the soldier’s arm. ‘A-contrario,’ he whispered urgently. ‘We have been saved. This is it. Justitia. Now those apes will learn what happens when they defile an Imperial facility. Actiones-secundafidei. This is it!’
He turned away, scuttling towards the steps that led out onto the crest of the dam. It was a grand structure – a powerful sweep of rockcrete, half a mile tall and a mile in length, supported by a majestic fan of buttresses. It barred the valley like a divine fist.
The dam was made even more spectacular by the skeins of electromagnetic power dancing across its crest. Calx muttered to himself as he clattered through the rubble, his head swimming with the scale of his ward. ‘Steel-bound, god-bound, oil-chained in-ab-eterno. I will never lose you to the sweating hands of these groti-grosi beasts.’
As he stepped out onto the crest of the dam, Calx paused, his excitement fading. When he had entered the bunker, the battle had been desperate; now it was a rout. There was an avalanche of scrap metal smashing through his garrison. His once perfect lines of skitarii had collapsed, thrown into disarray by the delirium that had washed through their ranks. The earthworks were overrun, the cog-shaped fan of trenches awash with xenos beasts. His Ironstriders were being torn down like trees, their mechanical legs thrashing uselessly as ork walkers ripped into them. Most of the Astra Militarum Guardsmen were dead. The final bank of trenches was still manned by his red-robed skitarii troops, but even their orderly lines had been torn open, madness throwing them into a shameful jumble of crossfires and foundering scrums. The greenskins had almost taken the whole valley with their lumbering war machines – ugly, iron buckets, propelled by steam-piston legs and laden with guns. This was the result of damnation. It was the only explanation. As his men battled for their sanity and sanctity, the xenos animals had seized their chance to attack. ‘No,’ said Calx, shaking his mane of cables. ‘This must not be. I will not allow it.’
‘We were betrayed,’ said the soldier, waving his gun at the weapons batteries that punctuated the bunkers. They were all in ruins, their walls scattered across the rocks in smouldering heaps.
Calx hissed as he saw that they had been detonated from within.
‘It was Lexmechanic Balkh,’ replied the soldier. ‘This is why I interrupted you, magos. He took every one of our security protocols to the enemy.’
‘Balkh?’ Calx slumped as though he had been deflated. He remembered the face of his old friend. There were few he would have trusted with such information. ‘How could he do that to me?’
The soldier shook his head. ‘His mind was gone, magos, just like all the others. The Dark Powers consumed him. He did not realise what he was doing. We…’ he hesitated. ‘We stopped him, but it was too late. We found his cognition prints in all the systems. He wanted the dam to fall.’ The soldier looked out across the sea of brutal war machines below. ‘He wanted those monsters to tear it down. He wanted–’
Calx held up a hand to silence the man. ‘No, he did not. Absolvo injuria. His mind was gone, as you say. He was no longer Balkh. We must honour the memory of the man he was, not dwell on what became of him. We are all victims of this curse.’
He was about to say more when a new sound cut through the din – a promethium roar of reversing thrusters. Calx looked away from the battle and out across the top of the dam. A gunship ripped through the brittle mountain air, shimmering in it
s own heat haze as it swooped down towards the rockcrete landing pad, kicking up dust from the ancient stone and scattering troops. Calx scuttled off in the direction of the landing ship, waving for his men to follow.
Calx’s crimson robes flashed blue as he passed beneath the dam’s final line of defence. All along the mile-long lip of the dam, blue-skinned priests had been welded to metal gantries, their limbs shattered and melted into sixty-foot-tall struts. These dangling, iron-fused heroes were the corpuscarii, the electro-priests, their scarred flesh shimmering with a constant lightning pulse. Their eyes had been burned away long ago, melted by the incredible power jolting through their bodies, but the whole dam was alive with their faith. Their canticles roared out over the boom of the landing gunship, each proud word bolstering the edifice beneath them.
Magos Calx whispered a prayer of thanks to the corpuscarii as he rushed past them, humbled by their sacrifice, but his mask of cracked lenses remained locked on the gunship. It had settled onto the dam and its engines died away as the boarding ramp rattled down. Calx waved a silent order at his men and they fanned out behind him, readying their guns.
As Calx neared the ship, the dust rolled away and a robed colossus strode towards him, silhouetted by the dying sun.
‘Where is it?’ demanded the newcomer as he emerged from the glare and towered over Calx. It was the same voice Calx had heard coming through the severed head.
A Blood Angel, thought Calx as he studied the giant. The Space Marine was clad in a suit of ancient, magnificent war-plate – beautiful sculpted ceramite, filigreed with such intricacy that he could only be a great general or captain. The armour was of an odd design: the surface had been worked to resemble raw, peeled meat, and the plates had been lacquered and polished a dark, glossy red. And that was not the only oddity. Calx had never seen a Blood Angel this close before but the warrior’s face was not at all what he had expected. The Blood Angel’s pale features were gaunt, tormented even. And his eyes were as lifeless as those Calx had just left in the bunker.
Calx’s brain whirred and clicked, skimming quickly through the organisational structures of the Adeptus Astartes. The Blood Angel wore a long, ceremonial cloak and an ornate sword at his hip, but it was the death-white pallor of his face that dragged a hiss of recognition from Calx’s mouth. He had seen this living death mask in countless pict feeds and military texts.
‘Chief Librarian,’ said Calx, performing a disjointed, marionette-like bow. Rumour and myth tumbled through his mind. ‘Mephiston-excelsus. Dominus-a-mortis. It is– it is an honour,’ he managed to say.
Mephiston looked past him to the network of bunkers, Administratum buildings and research stations that sprawled out behind the dam. Then he said something.
Calx shook his head. Mephiston had spoken quietly, using a jumble of dialects so antiquated that Calx could not discern the meaning.
Mephiston stared at Calx and the magos realised his mistake. The Blood Angel’s eyes were locked rather than dead. The eyes of an insomniac – staring, unblinking, remote, as though he were watching something no one else could see. The effect was chilling. Calx began counting the striations in Mephiston’s irises, comforting himself with the emollient rhythm of the numbers. Then he began to multiply the numbers, drowning his fear in arithmetic.
‘What is it?’ said Mephiston, speaking more clearly.
‘What is what, Chief Librarian?’
Something rippled across the Blood Angel’s face – a flicker of barely suppressed violence.
‘What happened to the traitor?’ said Mephiston, speaking even more quietly.
‘Traitor?’
Crimson light blossomed in Mephiston’s eyes, a thousand tiny haemorrhages. Calx considered his next answer with care. ‘Balkh?’ he said finally. ‘The lexmechanic?’
Mephiston looked at him in silence.
‘Yes, yes, of course, Balkh.’ Calx tapped the handle of his power axe on the ground in relief. ‘One of my most trusted lexmechanics. He was corrupted somehow. Fallax-maledictione-three-three-twelve. The Ruinous Powers. Damnatio.’ Calx glanced around, sensing that even now, daemons could be waiting to poison his mind. ‘Balkh’s soul was damned and he betrayed us, allowing these xenos thugs to breach our lines.’ He looked past the straining wall of corpuscarii and out at the carnage-filled valley below. ‘This is all his doing. He is… He was…’ Calx found it hard to say the words. ‘His mind was ruined by the Great Enemy. Chaos-taint is everywhere.’ He picked at his robes, as though removing insects. As though he could preserve his soul through cleanliness.
‘This is not the work of the Ruinous Powers,’ said Mephiston, surveying the battle.
Calx had to stifle an incredulous laugh. ‘Not the work of Chaos, my lord? Our minds are being warped and perverted. Even our most iron-bound logic has been debased. I would never have let those xenos creatures near this blessed dam, but Chaos disarmed our souls. It is amongst us. It is common sense, my lord. If you just look at my men, you–’
‘Common sense?’ Mephiston focused on Calx for a moment. There was a quiet fury in his voice. ‘Common sense is a collective unwillingness to think.’
Calx faltered, unsure what that meant, unsure how to reply.
‘Take me to their general,’ said Mephiston. ‘I need to learn the real cause of your defeat.’
‘Take you to him?’ Calx was still looking at the ranks of dying skitarii falling back beneath the onslaught of the orks. ‘Impossible. He’s hidden. In the heart of their army. In the belly of the beast.’
Hurt filled Calx’s voice as he waved his power axe towards the greenskins. ‘Chaos wiped the logic from my men’s minds. It turned them into animals. And now Balkh has given those xenos dogs every protocol and deployment code he could take. I tried everything I could to identify the cause of the corruption, but it’s useless. If I could rip out the root I would. If I could simply lay my hands on the xenos general of course I would cut him down. But we would have to defeat the entire horde to reach him.’
Mephiston looked through the lines of electricity that were shielding them from the orks. ‘Then defeat them.’
Calx laughed. ‘Chief Librarian, I would die before letting xenos claim this dam, but look.’ He waved again at the carnage. The valley was crowded with deranged, dying soldiers. With their weapon silos disabled, and their minds consumed by madness, the skitarii were being butchered. Columns of fire spat up from frozen trenches, spewing broken war machines, showering the landscape with ember and flame.
Mephiston looked through Calx. ‘Sometimes it is easier to die than adapt.’
Calx shook his head. ‘I have followed every protocol.’
Mephiston looked out through the flames again. ‘The greenskin general is in the rearguard?’
‘I suppose so, yes. That’s what my reports say. They took the secondary comms tower, up on Naxilus Ridge. It’s a small galvanic pulsometer. We only ever kept a small force there.’ He shook his head. ‘I never thought an attack would come there. It seems an odd place to strike. But now it’s their base of operations.’
‘And you know the way to this pulsometer?’
‘Of course.’
Mephiston looked from the orks to the tormented priests powering the dam. They were shivering as they channelled their life force through its twisted pylons.
Calx sensed that the Blood Angel disapproved of him. ‘I have given everything to stop them,’ he said.
Mephiston raised an eyebrow. ‘Everything?’ He strode across the dam, drawing a combat knife from his belt as he neared the pylons. He vaulted easily up onto a gantry, his robes snapping in the electric charge. Lightning pulsed through his bones, lighting up his skull, but he showed no sign of pain as he approached one of the priests. Rather, he seemed to grow in stature.
The priest’s song faltered as Mephiston climbed towards him through the inferno.
Calx ru
shed across the dam, shielding his face as he neared the blazing wall of energy. ‘Wait,’ he cried through the din. ‘Chief Librarian! Do not disrupt the hymn.’
Mephiston gave no sign he had heard, hauling himself up onto another gantry. Without a word, he ripped one of the priest’s arms free from the iron mesh, shedding sparks and blood.
The priest’s song became a howl as Mephiston gripped the broken limb in one hand. Then, with electricity still rattling through his armour, Mephiston jammed his combat knife through the back of his own hand, pinning himself to the priest.
The wall of blue turned crimson, drenching the dam in charnel light. Along the top of the dam every one of the corpuscarii arched in pain, scarlet lancing from their stitched eye sockets.
Calx reeled away from the explosion that had consumed the pylons. ‘No!’ he cried, as the ironworks began to groan and shudder.
Mephiston was barely visible within the wall of red fire, but Calx could just about see him gripping the priest’s hand – he was at the heart of the inferno: a single, stark point of darkness. It looked to Calx as though the Blood Angel had latched his mouth on to the priest’s wrist, but Calx knew he must be mistaken. Why would a noble hero of the Imperium do something so savage?
‘Magos!’ cried one of the skitarii troopers.
Calx whirled around. The soldier was pointing at a network of cracks jerking across the top of the dam. The vibrations were not just coming from the lightning – the whole dam was shaking and shifting.
‘What are you doing?’ cried Calx, trying and failing to break through the inferno.
Even over the electromagnetic howl he could hear Mephiston chanting – indecipherable rhymes tumbled from his lips, forming a red aether that spiralled around his mouth. Blood lashed Mephiston to the priest, whose blue skin blazed with power as he howled in pain.
