by Darius Hinks
‘There was an Imperial presence here,’ he said. Even amongst all this ugliness he could see the divine hand of the Emperor. As they dropped from orbit, he saw a lone tower, slicing up through the promethium clouds – an elegant spur of rockcrete, still clad in bits of Imperial statuary. The broken statues reminded him of the trinkets worn by his ghosts – those sad remnants of the things they loved in life.
He turned from the oculus to the spirits. Some clutched valuable jewellery or fine robes, but most carried mementos too obscure to mean anything to anyone else: a child’s toy or a fragment of clothing. It is odd what anchors us to the materium, he thought, clutching the locket he had taken from the dead Guardsman on Hydrus Ulterior. It was a simple oval, engraved with a lion’s head. The cover had been torn away to reveal a faded pict capture. He had seen countless such objects on the corpses he left behind, but for some inexplicable reason this one troubled him. He tucked it back beneath his robes.
‘Bastion mines,’ whined Vidiens, its thin, grating voice filled with awe. ‘Emperor be praised. Yes. Then this must be one of the worlds that we colonised before the arrival of the necrons.’
‘Mines.’ Mephiston studied the landscape unfurling below. The slender tower was almost as beautiful as the spires of his Librarium on Baal, wreathed in vast crumbling eagle wings and venerable, hooded statues. ‘The name does not do them justice.’
‘True, my lord,’ replied Vidiens. ‘Their beauty reflects their importance. The Revenant Stars were once a jewel in the Emperor’s throne. Whole planets veined with holy promethium.’ Vidiens adjusted the oculus and schematics rolled across the screen, dividing the landscape into a grid of vertical shafts and horizontal galleries. ‘Morsus is uninhabitable now, of course. Toxic. Barren. Infested with xenos. But still a treasure trove. A honeycomb of tunnels and pits. The planet is run through with promethium-bearing lodes. And they are unusually plentiful. The seams are hundreds of feet wide. Some extend for many miles.’
‘If the mines were so valuable,’ said Servatus, ‘why did we abandon them?’
There was a rattle of spinning cogs as Vidiens’ mechanical wings carried it closer. The wizened little servitor was cradling the brass salver under one arm, but it unfolded another of its multi-jointed limbs and pointed at the tower. ‘The divine territories of Morsus were victims of the Great Rift, Lord Rhacelus. Before the galaxy was split by the Cicatrix Maledictum, the bastion mines of Morsus were considered a site of utmost religious and strategic importance. There was an Imperial decree. The High Lords of Terra had no intention of abandoning such a prize. There was a glorious crusade to drive the xenos from their tombs. The local garrisons were bolstered by Astra Militarum regiments. Half of the sector’s troop reserves were deployed to recapture these mines.’ Vidiens raised the brass plate. ‘As the Chief Librarian recorded in his great scheme.’
Mephiston traced a finger over pictures near the edge of the salver – rows of corpses, tiny, stylised men, wrapped in winding sheets, coins over their eyes. They were all contained within a vile, xenos glyph. It was the ankh of the necrons – the symbol of their long-dead king.
‘The Revenant Crusade,’ said Mephiston. ‘It was abandoned and the garrison was massacred.’
‘A needless catastrophe,’ said Rhacelus. ‘If they had called on Commander Dante for our aid, the world could have been saved. The necrons were unsure of themselves when they first emerged. We could have easily dealt with them.’
The gunship jolted, hard, rocked by turbulence, and Mephiston’s ghosts recalled their purpose, clawing at his armour. Pained, furious faces spiralled around him, spitting curses.
‘Make for the tower,’ he said, ignoring the howling dead. He knew the pilot would not hear the screams that filled his mind, so he resisted the urge to shout over them, keeping his voice low. ‘Let us see what the xenos have done to this world.’
‘My lord,’ called the pilot, sounding surprised. ‘There’s something down there – an Imperial signal. The encryption protocols are ancient but they’re not xenos.’
Morsus was lashed by storms that would have burned the skin from a mortal man. Even encased in battleplate, the Blood Angels had to lean forward into the scalding tempest, struggling to stay upright as they clambered over blackened rocks. They followed the remains of an old transitway, a ghostly reminder of the long-gone civilisation that had once covered the planet, but its surface was buckled and uneven – reclaimed by the planet’s death throes. The burned-out skeletons of groundcars and ore-haulers jutted up from the dust, like the fossils of long-dead beasts.
Agorix Squad had spread out to form a semicircle on the orders of Lieutenant Servatus, surveying the scorched landscape through the viewfinders of their plasma incinerators, checking for signs of movement.
Mephiston, Epistolary Rhacelus and Lieutenant Servatus gathered behind the rest of the Blood Angels, surveying the horizon from up on a fist-shaped lump of irradiated rock. Mephiston dropped to one knee, brushing some ash from the ground. There were no blood thralls to accompany them – they could not have endured the fierce atmosphere – but the winged shape of Vidiens was just visible as it struggled to stay aloft in the whirling, ionised fumes.
As Mephiston scratched at the ground, a cold light splayed up between his armour-clad fingers. Under its blackened crust, the ground was pulsing with a phosphorescent blue glow. The other two Blood Angels stepped closer to watch as Mephiston used his combat knife to chip away the surface of more rocks. All of them had the same burning, blue-white core.
‘Nothing could live here, my lord,’ said Lieutenant Servatus. ‘The pilot must have been wrong. The ground is completely irradiated.’
Mephiston tried to reach out with his thoughts but the numbness he felt on the Blood Oath had become even more pronounced since they made planetfall. It was as though someone had encased his mind in lead. He wanted to claw at his skull and let the light back in. He could not even see into the thoughts of the lieutenant standing right beside him.
‘Can you see anything, Rhacelus?’ he asked, looking up into the storm.
Rhacelus shook his head. ‘This place is a pit. I see nothing.’
As Mephiston climbed to his feet, one of the battle-brothers of the Hellblaster squad hurried back to Lieutenant Servatus. He held up an auspex, the emerald display flickering through the miasma. ‘Sir. More of the strange signals. A few miles north from here. They still do not look to be xenos in origin.’
Lieutenant Servatus took the device. He peered at the runes. ‘Beneath the ground,’ he said, turning to face Mephiston and Rhacelus.
Mephiston tried again to reach out with his mind, but the blindness refused to give.
‘Could Imperial citizens have survived from the days of the Revenant Crusade?’ asked Servatus.
‘It is irrelevant,’ said Mephiston. ‘I am here to find the device that dimmed my vision. I will disable it and we will leave. We have not come here to exhume the dead.’
Servatus nodded, humbled. ‘My lord. Of course.’
Rhacelus took the auspex and peered at the screen. He tapped it a few times and then handed it to Vidiens, who was still fluttering overhead. ‘What do you make of these vertical structures?’
‘Mine shafts. And the horizontal lines are the galleries that spur off them. It’s the remains of a bastion mine. A big one too, by the looks of it. All of the planet’s manufactorums and hab-districts were divided into administrative regions called cantons. This looks to be the capital of the twelfth canton.’ It paused to wipe dust from the screen. ‘Some of the fiercest fighting happened here. It looks like this was the mine that held out longest against the necrons. There are records of distress calls as recent as two centuries ago. It was the last place to fall silent.’
‘I do not care about mines,’ said Mephiston. ‘Locate the centre of the xenos activity.’
Vidiens shook its head, scrolling through the lines of
glowing runes. ‘Impossible to be sure, my lord. There are at least three hundred and fifty major centres of xenos activity on Morsus. I could not say which is the heart of their operations.’
‘Chief Librarian,’ said Lieutenant Servatus. ‘If there are survivors just a few miles from here, they might be able to explain the disposition of the necron troops.’
Mephiston said nothing but Rhacelus nodded. ‘If anyone is alive down there, they might still be sane enough to know the history of the war.’
There was a crackle of vox chatter in Servatus’ helmet. ‘Chief Librarian,’ he said, gripping the handle of his power sword. ‘Hostiles. Approaching from the east in large numbers.’
Everyone looked at Mephiston.
‘Do we fight them here, Chief Librarian?’ asked Rhacelus.
Mephiston shook his head. ‘If we stop to battle every enemy detachment this will take weeks. How far to the bastion mine, Vidiens?’
‘We could be there in twelve hours’ march, barring any delays.’
Mephiston looked at Servatus. ‘Make it six.’
The lieutenant nodded. ‘Squad, advance!’ he barked, sprinting down the slope towards his men.
They tore through the fumes, racing down the charred transitway and pounding up the ragged slopes. After a while, they entered a valley where the black crust of the ground had broken away in slabs, allowing columns of cold, subterranean light to slice upwards, flashing across the underside of the clouds. It looked like they were running through a forest of cerulean spires. They were dwarfed by the light show – tiny silhouettes weaving between vast, radiant columns.
The Blood Angels kept up a furious pace for several hours, but Mephiston began to wonder if it would be fast enough. The atmosphere was even more toxic than he had first imagined. His battleplate’s cogitator was droning a constant series of warnings and statistics as the suit struggled to cope with the fierce radiation. He glanced down and noticed that the blood-red paint on his armour was bubbling and peeling away from the sculpted plates. The Adeptus Astartes were bred for such hostile environments. They could survive almost any atmosphere for a while. But Mephiston had never seen a world so fierce that its atmosphere alone could warp his power armour. He and Rhacelus had many ways to protect themselves, but he did not wish to find out what would happen to Servatus and his Hellblaster squad if their armour gave way.
They crossed the valley and pounded up the far slope, leaving the forest of light behind as they entered an area of broad, charred flatlands.
‘Necrons again,’ snapped one of Servatus’ men. ‘And they’re close. Approaching fast, from the south.’
A mountainous thunderhead rolled across the ground towards them, more shadow than cloud and moving against the wind. An undulating whine came from the same direction, keening and mournful, like the howling of wolves.
‘Wait,’ continued the battle-brother. ‘They are not actually heading for us. It looks like they will pass by. I’m not sure they are even aware of us. I think–’
The shadow suddenly accelerated, rushing across the plateau at unnatural speed. What had seemed to be several minutes away was now going to envelop them in seconds.
‘Battle formation,’ snapped Lieutenant Servatus, dropping to one knee and drawing his pistol.
There was a roar of igniting plasma cells as the Blood Angels braced themselves and clicked their guns into life.
Mephiston strode out ahead of the squad and drew his force sword. Vitarus shimmered with arcane energy as Mephiston levelled the blade at the approaching void. Psychic flame blossomed around him and he became a point of light, dwarfed by a mountain of darkness.
‘Let me see them, Vitarus,’ he said, addressing the sword in respectful tones.
Blood-light radiated from the blade, threading the gloom with crimson and revealing dozens of small one-man vehicles, screaming through the air towards them. This was the source of the howling noise. Each aircraft was built around a slender, scythe-shaped frame, a hook of corroded metal cradling a single rigid figure. Necron warriors – gleaming metal puppets with ghost light trapped in their skulls.
None of the aircraft were actually flying towards the Blood Angels. They were speeding for a rocky outcrop on the horizon, looping and spiralling in a bewildering display of aerial acrobatics.
‘Fire!’ cried Lieutenant Servatus and the air crackled with arcs of plasma. Several shots hit home, tearing necron craft into lumps of molten slag and kicking them back into the other flyers.
Some of the aircraft looped round and returned fire, spitting lances of gauss energy at the Blood Angels, but most continued as though nothing had happened, rushing on towards the distant outcrop.
Mephiston reached through the walls of reality, allowing himself a taste of the warp. His vision was dimmed but his power was not. The necrons were bloodless lumps of metal, long dead by any normal definition, so many of his incantations were useless. He would need other, less subtle means of harnessing the immaterium. As reality peeled away, Mephiston honed in on a single fragment of the immaterium and locked it into Vitarus.
Mephiston slammed the door on his madness and sliced Vitarus down with a word of release. Warp fire ripped through the gloaming.
The necron vanguard detonated in a spray of molten metal. Mephiston staggered backwards, almost thrown from his feet by the ferocity of the blast.
The necrons continued hurtling past, but they now had a scrapyard of exploding aircraft hanging in front of them. They seemed unable to adjust their unfathomable trajectories and there was a scream of tearing metal as aircraft smashed into aircraft, filling the sky with more flaming metal.
The Blood Angels fired again. They had grown used to the strange motion of their targets and every shot was true, turning more necrons into smoking shrapnel.
Mephiston lowered Vitarus, confused. Most of the necrons were still hurtling past, ignoring them completely.
Agorix Squad fired again, knocking more of the craft from the sky, but after a few more seconds the necrons were gone, spiralling off into the darkness.
‘More, to the west,’ said Lieutenant Servatus and the Blood Angels dropped into battle crouches, raising their guns.
There was another shadow, just a few miles west of them, speckled with points of silver – more of the necron craft, weaving and rolling in drunken spirals.
Mephiston held up a restraining hand as the xenos ships rushed on their way, headed for an empty patch of ground at the edge of a crevasse.
‘They have another target in mind,’ he said.
The clouds flashed emerald as the necrons launched a blistering barrage at the ground, kicking up smoke and dust as their guns disintegrated rocks and the fossilised remains of trees.
‘A training exercise?’ asked Servatus.
Rhacelus shook his head. ‘Necrons do not train, they program. And they must have seen us. What are they doing?’
‘Wait,’ ordered Mephiston. With a word of summoning, he formed wings from the shadows and rose up into the air, staring through the haze at the strange behaviour of the necrons. Their manoeuvres were complex but not random. They were deploying deliberate, careful tactics as they fired at nothing.
He dropped lightly back to the ground and his wings vanished. ‘Their behaviour is odd, but I have read accounts of similar instances. Necrons spend thousands of years mouldering in their crypts before being reanimated. Their technology is advanced enough to preserve their metal shells, but preserving minds is another matter. Their bodies do not rot, but their sanity often does.’
Rhacelus shook his head in disbelief. ‘So they’ve won the war for a planet and lost the battle for their minds.’
‘Perhaps,’ replied Mephiston, watching the distant gunfire. ‘But if the necrons are sane, the Blood Oath may be in danger. The ceasefire I brokered will not hold if my presence is reported to their phaeron. And the shield
you and I summoned will not hold forever. We must move fast.’
Chapter Five
‘For the glory of the twelfth,’ said Sergeant Llourens, triggering the blast shutter and stepping out from the mine. Furious, searing wind sliced into her and she staggered, almost falling back through the doorway. Her wiry frame was encased in a filthy, charred rad-suit and her face was hidden behind a rebreather, but she knew she had only seconds to perform her mission. If she was too slow, Morsus would eat into her bones and she would die, painfully, before the day was over.
She clambered out into the acrid air. The stink of burning polymers hit her, even through the rebreather, and she almost gagged, but she knew that the others would be watching, so she climbed calmly up onto the ruins of an old transitway bridge and stood up, in full view of the enemy.
Half a mile away a shoal of glimmering, silver shapes whirled through the clouds – a squadron of enemy aircraft. The fighters made a tremulous moaning sound as wind sliced through their hook-shaped fuselages. It sounded like the sky was weeping.
The ancients were engaged in a furious attack, lashing the barren ground with luminous arcs of gauss fire. The bruise-dark clouds flashed green, lit up by the weapons storm. There was nothing to attack, of course. There never was. The ancients had spent days attacking an empty crevasse, hurling furious volleys at an unconcerned wall of rock.
Llourens did not pause to consider the lunacy of the scene. She could already feel the Morsusian air eating through her rubber suit. She turned her back on the ancients, briefly showed her rear to them, then dived back through the blast shutters.
