by David Guymer
The pit was one of several. When the building had been a working storehouse they would have been part of a subterranean storage area, but removing the floor panels had left a perfect string of gladiatorial arenas.
A heavy man, girdled in copper rings and fizzing with electoos, goaded a pair of cyber-ghouls through a sliding hatch doorway and into the pit. They were immensely muscled, arms braced with combat mounts or simply removed in post-mortem surgeries and replaced altogether with flamers and blades. One was armoured, a breastplate of sheet metal bent over the fleshy left side of its torso, a cuisse of toothed iron over the opposite thigh. The other wore a skullcap pierced with needle electrodes. Sparks of light preceded a reflex grimace and a jerk of movement.
I’m a gene-forged scion of the Iron Hands.
Look at you.
The fighter with the skullcap gave a violent spasm, frothing at the mouth as arcs of electricity coursed through its dead brain, and lurched forwards. The pilot light attached to its right arm ignited a jet of promethium.
Rauth rolled under the spitting arc. Spots landed on his skin and burned. He ignored it. Others sizzled uselessly on his augment casings. He rolled to his knees, slid his hand over the ghoul’s flamer arm and squeezed. The bracing rods attaching the flamer to the corpse limb crumpled. Bent metal severed the fuel lines. Promethium spilled over Rauth’s hand and the ghoul’s arm. Sparks leapt across the ghoul’s helm as fresh commands jerked into its brain. It primed the spring-hammer bolted to its other shoulder as a spark landed on its arm and the whole limb went up in a wumpf of flame.
A casual throw of the wrist and Rauth hurled the burning servitor back into the metal placards that made up the side of the pit. Jolts of bioelectricity spat between the ghoul’s ears. It reset itself to attack again, then exploded, burned meat and metal scraps shooting high into the hooting crowds.
Rauth’s hand was on fire too, he noticed, but he felt neither heat nor pain.
The hardest part is not looking as though I enjoy it. Clenching his burning fist, Rauth circled away from the second, armoured ghoul and looked up.
Still no sign of the adept they hunted in that screen of faces, or of Laana.
Or Yazir.
Why does that bother me?
With a shriek of its diamantite saw, the second ghoul swung for him.
Genhanced reflexes pulled Rauth out of the way at the last minute. The spinning disc-blade whirred over his back and chewed into the floor. Rockrete erupted in a spray. Rauth leapt well clear as the servitor dragged the weapon-tool from the floor. The teeth hadn’t even been marked. It was designed for cutting and shaping the adamantium of Knight armour. It’ll cut through me then. For some reason, that made him grin. The ghoul scythed for him again, and again, diagonal strokes, left, right, left. Rauth ducked and wove ahead of the screaming blade. He threw a knifehand punch that caught the spinning saw on the flat. Sparks jetted from his bionic hand and the ghoul took another gouge from the pit floor.
I was built to face the greatest threats the galaxy knows. Is this all you have?
The armoured cyber-ghoul clanked backwards, chuntering through sewn-up lips as it chewed on the attack algorithms of its doctrinal wafers.
Rauth strode towards it, fists clenched, one on fire. The ghoul issued a moan of muffled and poorly organicised code. It brought down its metal saw like an axe. Rauth caught the wrist housing one-handed, intending to twist the saw aside, but the servitor was stronger than it looked. Better made than the last. The blow knocked him down. He thumped to the ground. The ghoul straddled him. Rauth hissed in anger, straining against the hydraulic power of the construct’s arm as the metal saw hovered a centimetre from his face. The scream it made rippled the flesh of his cheek. The friction heat it put out made the burning promethium on his hand feel like hot water.
Despite the ghoul’s strength, Rauth had a half-metre advantage in reach. He kicked out, a sonorous, buckling clang, but failed to break its armour. He dragged his foot over the ghoul’s breastplate, pushing back, searching for weakness.
His foot lodged in the construct’s neck, and he shoved against it with gritted teeth.
There was a wrenching sound, ligaments stretching, metal tearing from flesh, and the saw arm slowly detached from the ghoul’s shoulder. A stringy matt of dripping wires held it to its body. All strength failed the ghoul’s arm. The saw shrieked down as Rauth rammed it into the floor. The rockrete exploded. The last thing Rauth saw was the construct trying to totter back. He drew his knee to his stomach, then kicked back hard. He felt it connect. The saw ground to a halt as its remaining power was severed. The arm came off in his hand. He batted it away, then bunched his abdominals and flipped from his back onto his feet.
Gasps of approval rained through from the spectator rail above.
Pinching grit from his eyes, Rauth watched the disarmed servitor staggering away. Greasy fluidics drained from its ruined shoulder and splattered over the floor.
The klaxon boomed out a second time and the crowds grew ecstatic.
Rauth looked up as chains sped through rusted hoops, dozens of hatches sliding open from the pit sides to reveal new doors. Praise be. With spasms of electricity and cyborg moans, a fresh horde of ghouls piled into the arena.
VIII
The Knights converged in the centre of the arena stage like two sides of an avalanche. Aftershocks of the collision reverberated through the colosseum grounds, the armourglass shield covering the armoured dais trembling with the force. Twice before Jalenghaal had seen the giant war machines in action. On Moriban he had been part of the Scout clave already deployed to the agri world when the Knights of House Taranis had been unleashed on the genestealer cult infestation there. And later, as part of a larger task force under Iron Captain Draevark, he had helped coordinate the Imperial counter-offensive that, with a contingent of Knights as its spearhead, had culled ninety-five per cent of the population of Junai and all eleven of the Emperor’s Children that had occupied its capital.
But he had never seen them fight each other.
It did not provoke the same visceral response in him that it did the humans. The sensory overload was pleasurable nonetheless. He allowed himself the moment, then directed his full attention back to Princeps Fabris. Autonomous systems had maintained threat locks and client alerts throughout.
He caught Alfaran watching him.
The Chapter Master wore a blank mask of white powder, but Jalenghaal saw a ghoulish flicker of amusement in his dead, kohl-rimmed eyes.
‘Baron Jehar is Keep Warden,’ said Fabris, urgently. He was sitting forward, wine glass hanging from his fingers by the stem as though its taste were ash to him now the exhibition was under way. ‘He is proud and experienced, but Baron Laurentine is a Knight Gallant of estimable skill. Watch him, lords. See how he comports himself in battle. He boasts more engine kills from single combat than any Knight of my House. He has an oft-stated preference for measuring his skill-at-arms against eldar Titans, but he will reap an almighty tally against the crude machines of the greenskin, have no doubt.’
At the mention of the word ‘eldar’ Sevastian twitched.
‘You disagree?’ Alfaran dragged his gaze across to the fabricator-locum, but Jalenghaal could feel something of it linger. As though naked eyes could leave a kill mark.
‘Not at all,’ said Qarismi, his skull features grinning.
Alfaran ignored him. ‘Something darkens your soul, magos.’
Sevastian visibly shrank from the Chapter Master’s unblinking regard, extraneous weapon appendages withdrawing into the core mass.
‘The ork invasion is unexpected,’ said Qarismi. ‘You mentioned the eldar – the fabricator-locum doubtless wonders if there is some malign hand at work in its chosen path. Is that not correct, Sevastian?’
‘It is,’ the magos mumbled.
‘Who can say?’ Alfaran whispered. Jalengh
aal heard the sound of snakes in his voice, snakes slithering over human bones. ‘The void is dark and filled with perils. I have hunted the astragatai that devour ships and breathe dark matter and shoal through the gulfs between stars. I have led the Third Company Crusaders in purges of alien hulks. I have waged war with dark eldar corsairs and ork privateers and human pirates, and indeed it is they whom I despise more than any alien for they have been shown the light and turned from it. Who can say what draws this menace to Fabris Callivant and not to another. In an infinite Imperium all things become possible.’
‘Spoken out of ignorance of probabilistic calculus,’ said Kristos, breaking his long silence. ‘And the nature of infinity.’
The ice-sharp gleam of armourglass lenses met the deceptively vacant glaze of hard inhuman eyes. Alfaran’s lips were drawn lines of black paint.
‘Only the God-Emperor is perfect.’
‘No one is perfect,’ said Kristos.
Fabris set down his glass and sighed as though the exchange intruded on his enjoyment of the exhibition.
‘What of the heretek cult that festers in your city?’ said Kristos.
‘My city?’ One eyebrow climbed slowly into the powdered white of Alfaran’s brow. ‘We are many light years from the territory my Chapter is pledged to defend.’
‘You have been here many weeks.’
‘You believe we have been idle?’
Jalenghaal looked from one to the other, trying to determine which was the most inhuman. Fabris cleared his throat loudly and sat back in his high throne, his fleshy face drawn into a countenance that even Jalenghaal could identify as annoyance.
‘It is my city. And it is in hand.’
Alfaran dipped his head graciously. ‘It is, princeps.’
‘Query,’ said Sevastian. Jalenghaal was sensitive only to the most extreme sub-vocal cues, but the fabricator-locum looked suddenly wary. ‘What do you mean?’
Alfaran returned his expression of macabre beatification to the magos. ‘It has been over a century since I have defended a world. But stalwart sons of Dorn we remain. We recall the basic premise of choosing stable ground on which to make our stand.’
Sevastian stole a glance at Qarismi before speaking. ‘Your meaning?’
‘The Hospitallers make three vows upon their acceptance of the Chapter’s gene-seed,’ intoned Venerable Galvarro. The carillon bells mounted across the seneschal’s ornate sarcophagus rang as his vocabulisers turned electrical vibrations into words. ‘To honour the Emperor who is God. To shield the faithful. To bring absolution through death to the heretic, the apostate, the unbeliever and the alien. This is the foundation of our three companies.’
The Chapter Master smiled for the first time.
‘Battle-brothers of the Third Company deliver the last rites to the Frateris Aequalis as we speak.’
IX
Rauth’s fists were a blur of steel and flesh. Parry and block. His limbs felt elongated, drawn with exertion, unresponsive with the speed at which he made them move. His secondary heart thumped a dozen times for every time that one of his fists thumped corpse-flesh, iron or diamantite-tipped points. The stench of rotting flesh and electrical animus was fierce.
Try not to die before we have him, she says.
A pit-ghoul the size of a fully grown ork stabbed at him with an active power driver. He kicked at the tool-arm. The rotating bit shredded the metal of his boot, stripped away flesh and ground on the metatarsal bones. The flood of pain-deadening endorphins made him shudder. The tool-arm swung wide. Rauth shifted his weight onto the savaged foot. It didn’t waver.
She had better be keeping to her side of the plan.
A sharp punch to the throat broke the cyber-ghoul around his knuckles.
Rigor mortis kept the brute standing and Rauth ducked in front. His arms tangled with those of another. A tool-arm drilled messily through the first corpse. Rauth ducked, and it plunged into the chest of the second. Blood slapped Rauth in the face as he threw his shoulder into the second ghoul. The impaling drill carried both ghouls, and the pit-construct toting the drill, to the ground.
Rauth stamped on the drill ghoul’s wrist, until it sputtered and died.
The crowd had fallen oddly quiet, like caged animals expecting to be fed.
He looked around. The hatches in the pit sides were still open, but no more ghouls were coming through. Only one other combatant was still standing. The flow rate of his machine heart fluctuated under the mixed signals from his body.
Fight whatever they send against you, she says. Try not to die, she says.
Easy for her.
He wondered for a moment if he imagined the other warrior’s gallows smile. He smiled back, an unfamiliar surge of warmth spreading through his muscles as he lowered into a fighting stance.
In Rauth’s mind, Khrysaar would always be the neophyte. Over the course of their separate missions here on Fabris Callivant he had developed into a fully matured Iron Hands warrior. He was as big as Rauth now. Bigger even. His bare chest was slabbed with genhanced muscle. His black carapace presented a dark sheen of bioconductive hardening. The numerals 2-0-4 had been stencilled onto his left pectoral muscle. The twisted emblem of the Frateris Aequalis on the right. His eye bionic was a pearlescent white, set within a steel fixture that cut through his face from forehead to cheek to mouth. The other was deliberately dead and level, no hint of recognition. The iron of his left hand was greasy with blood and oil.
A booming report went off somewhere in the storehouse, but such was the general noise level that Rauth didn’t pay it any attention.
Khrysaar held up his bionic hand and flexed the fingers.
Rauth’s smile sickened into a grimace as he drew up his fists.
With a sudden snarl of aggression, Khrysaar ran at him. He threw a punch to the face that Rauth blocked, swung a knee to parry Rauth’s, inbound for his groin. You’ve improved. Khrysaar grabbed Rauth’s shoulder with his bionic hand and attempted to push him off balance, but this kind of ultra-close quarters fighting was what the Iron Hands had been built for. Not improved enough. The augmusculature of his left side stiffened as he shifted balance and threw the other Scout’s lock. Khrysaar swayed. Limbs tangled as kicks, punches and feints were thrown in too hard and too fast, and from too close in, to be effectively countered. A punch from Khrysaar hammered into Rauth’s jaw, the same time Rauth’s elbow hit Khrysaar’s throat.
The two Scouts stumbled apart.
Breathing hard, Rauth looked up, annoyed by the lack of appreciation from the crowd.
Not good enough for you?
There was another loud bang, a rattling burst of them. Pulpy detonations sounded amongst the press of bodies and someone, somewhere, started screaming. Bolter fire. A man pitched over the spectator rail with a wail. He hadn’t been hit – a mass-reactive explosion makes a unique mess of the human body – but the instinct of the crowd deemed the cull of a few as fair exchange for the survival of the many. The rest were already a screaming crush, heading for the single alleyside exit.
Rauth snorted. ‘Bolters,’ he said aloud. ‘That can only mean–’
The man who had fallen into the pit moaned, tried to push himself off the rockrete, but both his legs had been broken by the fall and he collapsed into a mewling heap of pain. Not so fun from down here, is it? The mortal stared up at Rauth and Khrysaar, horrified. I imagine we’re bigger up close.
A quiet hum suddenly ran through Rauth’s bones and throbbed beneath his teeth. His gu
ts knotted. I know that sensation. He turned to look up, over his shoulder.
A Space Marine in ash-white armour strode through the narcotic fumes that clung to the spectator parapet like the ghost of a giant. His lenses glowed white with a trace hint of gold. Hospitaller.
A cybermantically animated corpse or weaponised servitor, he could fight. Khrysaar even, he could fight, and kill if he had to. But a fully armed and outfitted warrior of the Adeptus Astartes?
I wouldn’t stand a chance.
The pit-side hatches were still open and Rauth dived into the nearest as the Hospitaller’s bolter roared, rolling like a felled log until the passage became too narrow for his legs and he scraped to a halt, caked in grey dust. Khrysaar. He scrambled up, but there was no sign of his brother in the arena. Explosive rounds burst across the floor where they had been standing. A short-lived cry and a puff of blood from the man with the broken legs.
‘Go!’ yelled Khrysaar.
He had made it to one of hatches on the opposite side of the pit floor. He was hanging back from the mouth of it as explosions chewed the ground and wall plating, waving for Rauth to get away. ‘I’ll find you again at the top.’
‘The day I start listening to you is the day you can beat me in the ring,’ Rauth spat back. He drew back, halfway between a sprinter’s crouch and a belly crawl, and strained his ears.
Rauth could eject a sickle mag and reload in point six seconds. He’d once seen Sergeant Tartrak do it in point four-five. There was a click as the Hospitaller’s trigger hit an empty magazine, and then Rauth exploded forwards.
He cleared the opening, hurdled a dead cyber-ghoul. He’d mentally clocked point four-five seconds when mass-reactive explosions began tearing up the ground around him, shrapnel shredding his greaves. No worse than Tartrak. Rauth launched himself for the tunnel mouth, piling straight into Khrysaar’s chest and bowling them both down. Rauth sprang up without breaking stride, leaving Khrysaar prone as he sprinted down the tunnel. Pain shot up his leg every time his damaged foot hit the ground – damned power driver – but it wasn’t slowing him down yet. Only a matter of time though. The integrity of the boot was the only thing holding it together. It’ll need replacing later.
