by Darius Hinks
He nodded.
‘If we carry on as we were,’ she continued, ‘we will reach the service tunnels in the east side of the Infernum. The ancients’ fortress is beneath the lower levels, but they guard the upper tunnels too. I don’t know how far we can travel without–’
Another tremor rocked the chamber. This one was so violent that Llourens and the other soldiers were hurled across the car and even Mephiston staggered as he held his hand aloft, driving back the impact with his mind, head bowed as psychic flames rippled across his power armour.
He removed his helmet and knelt beside the soldier he had killed. The corpse was surrounded by a dark pool of blood and as the soldiers watched in horror and confusion, Mephiston dragged his finger through the gore and pressed warm blood to his lips, closing his eyes as life-force rushed through his body.
The curse howled in his soul, a beast straining at a leash. Rage shivered through his limbs, but Mephiston had no difficulty in harnessing the ancient blood-fever. His curse was of another nature. Power raced through his veins and shimmering words appeared in the air before him. He had no need to read from a book. Every word of the Glutted Scythe was emblazoned across his mind. He plucked the syllables with ease, casting them into being with subtle twists of his sword. Then he used Vitarus’ tip to draw a circle in the air and the symbols blazed brighter, starting to rotate. He whispered an archaic Baalite word and the disc of light blasted into the wall, showering the car with rocks.
Frigid light enveloped Mephiston as he left the car and strode into the freshly hewn tunnel. Behind him, the Sabine troopers stumbled and staggered after him, leaning on each other for support and thumping their guns, trying to rid them of grit. Vidiens fluttered at Mephiston’s side, whispering prayers and clutching the brass salver to its scrawny chest.
After a few minutes, the disc of light blasted through into another undergroundcarriageway and then vanished. Mephiston jumped down onto the tracks to look around. He had joined the route at a crossroads and the three other tunnels had all been damaged by the tremor. The left-hand route had completely collapsed and the other two looked close to doing the same. There was a steady shower of soil and stones dropping onto the tracks.
Llourens rushed to his side.
‘My lord,’ she said, her voice muffled by her rebreather. ‘We’re even nearer to the Infernum than I realised. The ancients sometimes patrol this way.’ Then she grimaced as she saw the state of the tunnels. ‘We’ll have to try something else.’ She waved at a pair of thick, rusting blast doors in the opposite wall. ‘I think those ventilation shafts would rejoin the tunnel at a later point. We could crawl along those until we reach a stable section of tunnel. If we just–’
‘Crawl?’ Vidiens stared at Llourens through its porcelain mask. ‘This is the Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels. He is Lord Commander Dante’s Consul Aetheric and he is the Master of the Quorum Empyrric. He does not crawl. You should consider yourself lucky he has not–’
Mephiston silenced the servitor with a glance. Then he turned back to Llourens.
‘What about these routes?’ He nodded to the two tunnels that were mostly intact.
Llourens shook her head. She gestured to the tunnel on their right. ‘That one will just loop round and take us back to Kysloth. And the other route is too dangerous. We should avoid it.’
‘Xenos?’
‘Blistermen. That’s one of the most irradiated regions of the mine, but the ogryns manage to survive in there.’ She made the sign of the aquila. ‘We stay clear.’
‘Ogryns survive this close to the enemy?’
‘The miners were bred to survive almost anything. The rest of us–’
Mephiston held up a hand to silence her.
Since he had entered this new tunnel, the crowds of dead souls had begun to fragment. Most were still lashed around him, howling and clawing at his face, but a few were drifting away down the tunnel Llourens seemed so eager to avoid.
‘Can you lead me to the necron fortress if we head that way?’ he asked. ‘Do you know those tunnels?’
Llourens paled. ‘Yes, my lord, I know all the tunnels. But the radiation down there is bad. We couldn’t survive it for very long, even in these suits. And it leads right through the heart of the blistermen zones.’
Mephiston wondered if she was as strong-willed as he had thought. The dozen or so other Guardsmen had emerged from the tunnel and were watching the exchange closely to see how their new leader would respond. None of them showed her spark of determination. Captain Elias was still with them, but he was clearly useless. After watching them move through the tunnels, Mephiston was starting to see a way the remnants of the Sabine Guard might be of use to him, but only if someone was able to lead them. ‘Can you lead me to the fortress?’ he repeated, looking back at Llourens.
She stared down the tunnel, looking pained. ‘We must avoid the blistermen, my lord. They’re mutants. They’ve been tainted by all their years down in these mines. But yes, yes of course I will show you the way.’
Some of the troopers looked doubtful, but most stood a little taller, pride glinting in their eyes as they gathered around Llourens.
‘She’s a heretic,’ slurred Captain Elias, from the back of the group.
Llourens grew pale with rage and, for a moment, she seemed to forget about Mephiston. She squared up to the captain and jabbed her finger into his chest. ‘You have no right to speak of heresy,’ she said, punctuating each word with another finger jab. ‘We should have been here decades ago, when we still had a garrison to fight with. We could have made a difference. But you let us rot down there in Kysloth, getting weaker and weaker until there was no chance to do anything.’
Mephiston stepped back to watch. Now he would see what Llourens was really made of. Now he would see if there was a spark of life left on Morsus or whaether he should leave these walking corpses in their graves.
Captain Elias looked around the circle of Guardsmen, staring at them in outrage. ‘How dare you stand there and let this heretic speak to me like that?’ Drool flew from his thin, cracked lips as he staggered towards them. ‘Seize her!’ he cried. ‘Take her back to the barracks and find the commissar! I order you to see her executed.’
The Guardsmen said nothing, shame and anger writ across their gaunt faces.
Elias shook his head in disbelief.
‘She is in league with the xenos,’ he said. ‘She must be. Why else would she bring us out here?’ Again, there was no reply and Elias started to look hesitant. Doubt clouded his eyes as he sensed he was alone.
‘I’ve spent my whole life listening to your pathetic excuses,’ muttered Llourens, her words dripping with disdain. ‘I have prayed every day of my miserable life that the Emperor might show me a way to be worth something – a way to deserve this uniform.’ She glanced at Mephiston. ‘But now I see the truth. The Emperor was always there. He never gave up on us. You did.’
The Guardsmen nodded and gripped their guns, stepping towards Elias, their faces grim.
Elias shook his head. ‘You would not dare harm me. I am your commanding officer. I will see you shot if you do not seize this woman.’
They said nothing.
‘Go,’ said Llourens. ‘Crawl back to your office and hide under your desk like you have done for the last thirty years. The rest of us have work to do.’
Elias howled and drew his laspistol, pointing it at Llourens’ head. He was trembling with rage and barely sober enough to stand.
Llourens glared at him down the barrel of the gun, her face defiant. Elias howled again as he pulled the trigger.
Dust and noise filled the air and, when it cleared, Llourens was still standing, staring at Elias. He was so drunk he had managed to miss her head from a few inches away, slicing a fist-sized chunk of rock from the wall.
Llourens took the gun from his trembling hand. Then she pistol-wh
ipped him to the floor. He toppled like a broken doll and lay in the dust, babbling and cursing as she stepped over him, pointing the pistol at his head.
At that moment, Rhacelus emerged from the tunnel, leading the rest of the Blood Angels and the few Guardsmen who had survived the cave-in. He saw Llourens pointing the pistol at Elias and glanced at Mephiston.
Mephiston held up a warning hand.
Llourens did not even notice the others arrive. She was still staring at Elias. ‘You’re a disgrace,’ she muttered. ‘I won’t waste a shot on you. Get up. Get out of here.’
The captain climbed clumsily to his feet to face a circle of cold, scornful faces. His shoulders dropped. He looked defeated. He was about to speak when Llourens clubbed him to the ground again.
Elias muttered curses into the bloody earth, then stood and staggered off down the tunnel that led back to the barracks. He paused once to glare back at them, then he ran on.
Llourens watched him go, weaving and lurching off through the promethium glow. She looked around at the rest of the troopers to see how they would react.
‘Captain,’ said one, saluting.
As one, the others all saluted too.
‘The fortress,’ said Mephiston.
‘Let’s go,’ she snapped, waving for the others to follow as she raced down the tunnel.
The light grew even brighter in the lower tunnels and Mephiston wondered what kind of creature the blistermen were to survive in such a place.
Llourens led them through a bewildering maze of tunnels and galleries and on several occasions they had to clamber down broken lift shafts and vast, vaulted air vents. Centuries of cave-ins had created an unmappable warren of ruined tracks and shafts that would have left Mephiston utterly lost if not for Llourens’ guidance.
After a while they began to hear sounds. At first Mephiston thought it was another aftershock, but as he ran further he realised they were explosions.
A few minutes later, he and Llourens turned a corner and both slid to a halt, looking down over a sheer drop. The track ended suddenly before a vast chasm. One of the mine shafts had been ripped open by an explosion or landslide, a recent one by the looks of it. It had torn through several levels and exposed a sump pit, hundreds of feet below.
‘Stay back,’ ordered Mephiston as he saw the source of the noise he had heard earlier. The bottom of the pit was as wide as a parade ground and crowded with lines of marching necrons. They were surging through silvery, under-lit dust clouds, dozens of them, firing in well-drilled salvoes at a group on the far side of the pit.
Mephiston peered through the shimmering clouds, trying to make out who the necrons were firing at. Gathered beneath a burned-out blockhouse were a dozen or so purple-skinned giants.
‘Blistermen?’ asked Rhacelus.
Llourens nodded.
They were similar to ogryns Mephiston had seen on other worlds, but with a few distinct differences – their blank, oversized eyes were especially odd. They were naked apart from loincloths and their hulking, muscle-lashed bodies were covered in scar tissue. They looked like walking meat but they carried themselves with a dignity that belied the ugliness of their flesh. As the necrons advanced towards them, the abhumans stood proud and unafraid, despite the corpses that surrounded them. They raised their chins and threw back their shoulders as they faced the silent ranks of robots, lifting their guns and preparing to return fire.
‘What are those guns?’ asked Rhacelus. ‘Shotguns?’
‘No,’ said Llourens. ‘They don’t have guns as such. It’s their old mining equipment. They were designed to break through rock faces.’
Mephiston nodded. His mind was a repository of knowledge, from the mythical to the mundane. ‘Ablation drills,’ he said, as the ogryns aimed the devices at the necrons. He felt a flicker of amusement. ‘Clever.’
The ablation drills fired with a sound like dozens of dogs barking. The air shimmered and the necron vanguard staggered backwards, their outer shells vaporised, exposing the circuitry beneath.
‘The ogryns are playing the necrons at their own game,’ said Mephiston. ‘They’re using their mining equipment to flay their enemy’s cells.’
There was another chorus of barks as the drills fired again, vaporising even more of the necrons’ workings.
The necron front rank collapsed, their disassembled parts sparking and hissing as they sank into the filth, their cells continuing to disintegrate as the metal disappeared from view.
Mephiston summoned wings from the fumes and dropped into the pit. As he fell, he drew his pistol and fired into the necron ranks, shearing heads and chests with vivid blasts of plasma.
The necrons whirled around and targeted him, but Mephiston had already intoned another exhortation and, as he fell, ionised fumes gathered around him, creating a rippling, sparking shield that absorbed every salvo that lanced towards him.
With the necrons focused on Mephiston, the abhumans surged forwards, still firing their repurposed drills. The necrons fell back, torn down by the blasts. As the ogryns got close, their drills became even more lethal – shredding the necrons with a single shot.
When Mephiston reached the necrons he spread his wings wider, turning them into a vast roof of pitch that engulfed the entire pit. The darkness became tangible as it enveloped the necron warriors in a blanket of thick, weltering blood. They staggered and reeled, firing wildly as they tried to free themselves from the viscous pool. The more the necrons struggled, the tighter the red tar latched on to them, clogging their joints and pouring through the eye sockets of their metal skulls. The blistermen fired with even more ferocity, ripping layer after layer from the trapped, thrashing bodies.
From above, the Guardsmen began firing their lasrifles into the fray, felling more of the necrons with carefully placed shots as Rhacelus glided down through the gloom, drawing his force sword as he rushed towards the battle.
The necrons toppled back as Mephiston crashed into their midst, shrugging off his shadow wings and wading through the throng. He fired his plasma pistol a few more times, then drew Vitarus and leapt forwards, hacking a path towards the abhumans.
He met them in the middle of the battlefield. Several more had died as they fought to meet him, but the rest showed no sign of fear. When their drills overheated they simply stomped on through the necrons, pummelling them into the slurry until others could fire at them.
Upon reaching Mephiston, the abhumans paused, staring at him with their half-blind eyes as though he was some kind of vision. Then they turned to face the enemy, fighting back to back with the Blood Angel, firing their drills as Mephiston lunged and parried, dismembering the robots with dazzling speed. After the pitiful state of the Guardsmen, Mephiston was pleased to find more worthy allies. The abhumans fought with a cool poise that reminded him of his own battle-brothers.
Rhacelus appeared at his side, slicing and lunging with his force sword, and behind him the other Blood Angels gunned the scattered necrons down with a wall of plasma fire. The coils of Mephiston’s pistol had cooled and he finished off the final necrons with a few well-placed head shots. The abhumans waded into the junkyard of broken limbs, smashing any that moved against the rough-hewn floor of the pit until they ceased twitching.
As the last few necrons blinked out of existence, the ogryns turned to face Mephiston.
Mephiston sheathed his blade and studied them properly for the first time. They were as tall as he was and much broader: beasts of burden who had taken up arms. Their charred bodies flickered with pulses of cool light – the same phosphorescent glow that bled up through the shattered rocks. Their skin was thick, like the leathery hide of a large animal. Their eyes were huge, dominating the rest of their brutally chiselled faces, but blank – nothing more than watery, colourless orbs.
One of them reached out towards Mephiston and touched his face, running its blocky fingers over Meph
iston’s hollow cheeks. Rhacelus gripped the handle of his sword, outraged, but Mephiston held up a hand, allowing the ogryn to touch him.
‘Star Warrior,’ said the abhuman, his voice low and resonant.
‘Blood Angel,’ said Mephiston, tapping the winged blood drop on his belt.
The ogryn pounded its chest. ‘Varus.’
‘I need to reach the regions that surround the necron fortress. I have a guide who can lead me from there, but the routes have caved in and we cannot get close. Can you lead me, Varus?’
The ogryn sniffed the air and frowned, making his bizarre-looking face even more grotesque. Then he turned to the other blistermen, as though seeking confirmation. They nodded.
‘There is a way,’ said Varus, grimacing as he spoke, as though it pained him to speak the words. He nodded across the pit to a row of doorways. ‘Our way. We can show–’
‘Mephiston,’ interrupted Rhacelus. ‘We know nothing of these creatures.’ He eyed the ogryns warily. ‘Why should we blindly follow them?’
‘I am not entirely blind,’ said Mephiston. He waved his servitor over. The wasted little wretch fluttered across the pit and handed the brass salver to Mephiston.
Mephiston tapped the plate, indicating the sigils he had scored around the Revenant Stars. ‘I made these marks before my warp sight failed. Much of our route is hidden from me, but as soon as I heard the locals talking of these “blistermen” it triggered a memory.’
Rhacelus stared at the engravings but shook his head. ‘I have never seen marks like these. It matches no language I have seen.’
Mephiston was reminded, not for the first time, of how far he had travelled from the rest of the Librarius. It had not even occurred to him that Rhacelus would be unable to decipher his work. ‘There is no time to explain,’ he said. ‘This clearly shows a link – a bond between these simple creatures and me. They mean me no harm, I know it.’
Rhacelus’ frown remained, but he nodded.
