by Dan Abnett
‘Leodocus,’ Porphyrian said. ‘Squad Orpheon is to leave the ship. I want you to enact the usual vicarial protocols. I want the Excommunicado under the frigate’s guns at all times. If Squad Orpheon is out of contact for three sidereal rotations you will take the Serpentra to Captain Cules.’
‘Yes, brother-sergeant.’
‘Ship’s steward, the Serpentra is yours. Remain on station and stand by for further orders.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Do you think this is a good idea?’ Brother Andromedes asked as he left the bridge with his sergeant.
‘No,’ Porphyrian told his battle-brother. ‘This is a very bad idea.’
II
The Excommunicado was a floating slaughterhouse. From the moment the Storm Eagle gunship’s landing gears skidded across the hangar-bay deck, it became clear to the Iron Snakes that the Commissariat vessel had been overrun. As Squad Orpheon ran from the prow door of the Ithakariad, their power-armoured footfalls crunched through the bones of the long dead. From the butchery in the hangar and the small-arms fire afflicting the deck and walls it seemed that the corvette had suffered a boarding action. The las-riddled shells of lighters and humpshuttles sat empty on the flight deck surrounded by skeletal remains. The hangar was littered with the dead. Guard uniforms and carapace had become bags for bones. Shattered skulls separated from spines bore testament to the furious violence of the assault and atrocities committed during or after the conclusion of the boarding action.
Leaving Brother Salames with the serf flight crew in the cockpit of the Ithakariad, with engines idling, Porphyrian ordered the Iron Snakes on. Splitting Squad Orpheon into two, the sergeant sent Brother Deucalion and Apothecary Nemertes with half of the Ithakans aft to check the penitentiary section. Porphyrian and Andromedes led the other half of the squad towards the command deck.
Death was everywhere. The corvette had been the site of obscene butchery and celebratory mutilation. Despite the air being musty with murderous violence long past, the floor was sticky with the black sludge of old blood. Porphyrian suspected that during the savage boarding action, the accessways and corridors of the corvette must have been puddle-deep in the blood of innocents. Despite the fact that their auspectra showed no life signs or energy emissions, Porphyrian ordered extra vigilance. The Iron Snakes had fought many enemies across the Sabbat Worlds – creatures like warp-spawned monstrosities – that existed beyond the narrow spectrum of the scanners’ parameters.
With Andromedes beside him with his boltgun and Brother Ptolomon’s flamer hissing behind, Porphyrian ordered Argius and Hyperenor up front. Mag-locking their boltguns to their belts, the Iron Snakes led with combat shields and sea lances held above their armoured shoulders. The humming lances were power spears that were largely used in cult ceremonies. Each member of Squad Orpheon carried two such weapons slung between their armour and their pack, and Porphyrian could think of little better to have between him and a horde of enemies trying to rush them down the length of the narrow corridor. The kind of horde that must have overwhelmed the Tempestus scions of the 123rd Pontifical Strikes and butchered the Commissariat officers of the Excommunicado.
The vessel echoed like a tomb. Black blood squelched and fragments of shattered bone crunched beneath armoured boots as the Iron Snakes moved through the corvette. Through the bodies slammed into the deck. The skeletons torn to pieces. The mounds of bones at bulkheads, smashed barricades and bottlenecks signifying sites where commissars and Pontificals had held their attackers for a few moments at least before paying for such foolish notions with their lives.
By the time the Iron Snakes reached the corvette’s small bridge, Brother Deucalion had made his report over the vox. They had found the penitentiary section awash with bodies – both storm trooper sentinels and their attackers. The bones sat in the bloodstained clothing of hive world menials daubed with a number eight with a horizontal line through the middle of it. Porphyrian had found the same on bodies on the bridge and smeared across runescreens and walls.
‘Brother Andromedes,’ Porphyrian said as he moved through the carnage. Runebanks and servitor stations had been smashed – either by the blood-crazed enemy or by commissars aiming to deny the vessel to their attackers. Their bones sat tangled in leather greatcoats.
‘These same symbols were recorded on Sapienca,’ Andromedes said, recalling Captain Cules’s mission briefing. He snorted the stench of death back at the deck from which it was rising. ‘Cultist insignia,’ Andromedes confirmed finally. ‘Belongs to the Kith.’
‘Sholen Skara’s Kith?’ Porphyrian asked. ‘His cult troops? How can that be possible?’ The sergeant shook his head at the butchery around his boots. ‘They were annihilated at Sapienca, many by their own hand. How can we not be done with the Kith?’
Andromedes shook his head slowly. ‘Heresy is a plague,’ the former petitioner said, ‘a disease that seems to survive despite our best efforts to eradicate it.’
‘Still,’ Porphyrian said, hauling tangles of bones and shredded clothing from consoles. ‘How is this possible?’
‘It’s not possible,’ Brother Andromedes said.
‘I want to stop hearing that answer,’ Porphyrian rumbled. ‘Find an operational databank among this mess and pull some information on what happened here. The ship’s systems must know something.’
As Andromedes – aided by Brother Hyperenor – went to work on a functional bridge station, Porphyrian reported back to the Serpentra, updating Leodocus and the mission log on their findings. When Brother Deucalion and his Iron Snakes completed their sweep of the corvette’s aft section, the story was the same. Butchery, slaughter, desecration of the flesh. Blood everywhere.
‘What about Sholen Skara’s cell?’ Porphyrian put to Deucalion. The sergeant knew he was hoping beyond hope that the body of the Chaos warlord would be discovered still manacled to the floor.
‘Gone.’
‘Repeat,’ Porphyrian ordered. ‘I didn’t quite catch that. Did you say it was breached?’
‘It’s gone, brother-sergeant,’ Deucalion informed him. ‘Mesh, bars, bunk, chains – even the sentinel station and pict terminals. All gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Torn to pieces, brother-sergeant.’
‘We’ve got it,’ Andromedes announced. Having restored the bridge station to partial operation, Brother Hyperenor stepped back and recovered his shield and spear.
‘Stand by,’ Porphyrian told Deucalion. He heard Brother Andromedes grunt as he read the runescreen.
‘Well?’ Porphyrian demanded. ‘What happened here?’
‘Ship’s log confirms that the Excommunicado dropped out of the warp and put in at the Valens System as a result of a medical emergency,’ Andromedes told the bridge.
‘You’re getting this?’ Porphyrian asked, opening a vox-channel to Brother Deucalion and the other Iron Snakes.
‘Receiving, brother-sergeant.’
‘Sholen Skara suffered some kind of episode or affliction,’ Andromedes went on, reading from multiple logs and records. ‘Convulsions. Ruptures. An embolism. He started bleeding from mouth, ears and eyes – internal bleeding that could not be corrected with surgery. The corvette’s chief medicae officer believed that Skara had found a way to harm himself. This contradicted Colonel-Commissar Gaunt’s orders that he should reach Khulan unharmed and certainly not realise his cult ambitions and take his own life. When the officer reported that Skara’s afflictions were life-threatening and beyond his skill, the commanding commissar ordered the Excommunicado put in at Valens 160 in search of assistance.’
‘But instead of receiving medical assistance…’
‘The corvette was boarded by lighters and humpshuttles from the planet surface and overwhelmed,’ Brother Andromedes told him.
‘Why didn’t they request assistance from system ships of the defence forces?’ Porphyrian asked.
‘Leaving his taint here,’ Porphyrian said.
‘And no doubt a few lieutenants to see to the cult’s continuation,’ Andromedes said. ‘He timed his symptoms to coincide with this leg of the journey. The Valens System is the obvious choice for assistance – Valens 160 the only choice for Officio Medicae facilities and personnel. By then, the Kith would already have their hooks into the hive world. The Excommunicado would have simply been another victim.’ Brother Andromedes found himself lost in the horror of such a possibility. ‘Imagine the celebratory slaughter to follow,’ the former petitioner said, ‘upon discovering their ruinous magister on board. If Valens 160 wasn’t doomed before then, its fate was sealed that day.’
Porphyrian bit at his lip. There was nothing else to be done. His assigned mission was to find the heretic Sholen Skara. The monster had left a trail of blood and butchered bodies in his wake.
‘We don’t need to imagine,’ the Iron Snake told Andromedes. ‘Brother Deucalion, your work is done. Fall back to the Ithakariad. We shall meet you there.’
‘On our way, brother-sergeant.’
‘Does the log contain the course signatures of the departing lighters and shuttles?’ Porphyrian asked.
‘You intend to–’ Andromedes began, turning away from the runescreen.
‘I intend to follow the carnage wherever it leads,’ Porphyrian told them. ‘Since it will, Emperor willing, eventually bring us to the heretic Sholen Skara.’ The sergeant changed vox-channel. ‘Brother Salames?’
‘Standing by, brother-sergeant.’
‘Prepare for an orbital insertion,’ Porphyrian told the Space Marine pilot. ‘Our search continues on the planet surface.’
‘Aye, brother-sergeant.’
‘Course signatures?’ Porphyrian pressed.
‘The capital hive,’ Andromedes said. ‘Plethorapolis.’
Porphyrian made to leave the bridge. The Iron Snakes did likewise. ‘It waits for us,’ the sergeant said, ‘and no doubt Sholen Skara with it.’
‘Yes, brother-sergeant,’ Andromedes said.
‘Leave the bridge as we found it,’ Porphyrian said, striding across the command deck. ‘And Brother Andromedes…’
‘Yes, brother-sergeant?’
‘Good work.’
III
In a free fall, the Ithakariad descended through the hull-staining cloud cover of the hive world. With storm-racked nebulosity churning around the Storm Eagle and a poisonous upper atmosphere of caustic chemicals eating away at the armour plating, the Iron Snakes gunship dropped out of the sky.
Crafting a shaft of sunlight through the rusty layers of smog, bilious yellow vapours and oily smoke, the Ithakariad punched down through the underbelly of the permanent cloud cover, allowing the light of the Valens star to reach the industriascape beneath. Below the thick cloud was a murky twilight, dungeon-like in quality. Only the sheet lightning that seemed to pulse perpetually from the tumultuous clouds provided anything approaching illumination.
Brother Salames engaged the gunship’s wing thrusters to slow their descent before firing the main engines. They picked up speed over one of the satellite hives before slipping down into the colossal forest of tower factoria, manufactorum mills and smokescrapers. Banking left and right at high speed through the gargantuan architecture, the Ithakariad made short, blazing work of the conurbatia between the satellite cities and the capital hive. Plethorapolis reached up through the ramshackle dereliction of its own foundations, a wonder of unchecked accretion, mindless engineering and trembling hive quakes. Like a single, yellowing tusk it punctured the toxic heavens.
Slowing and bringing the gunship up through the insanity of rising architecture – the factoria vent nests, hab-stacks and tottering cathedra – Brother Salames fired the prow door. Behind it stood Brother-Sergeant Porphyrian. The Iron Snakes Space Marine took the hive world in. A world devoted to death, pledged to one of the dark powers of the galaxy – the abyssal appetite for slaughter and suffering that was known from planet to planet simply as the Blood God. Here on Valens 160, the Kith and their magister, Sholen Skara, had found a world ripe for sin and sacrifice.
Even from the gunship, with the doomed hive streaming by, Porphyrian could see the simple horror of the choice the heretic warlord had presented to the rancid billions. His monstrous god demanded blood. Every man, woman and child – from the lowliest underskavs to the clean-breathing Spireborn – owed Sholen Skara an end, a death-pledge that could be settled in the savage taking of one’s own life or the limitless taking of others.
Porphyrian saw a cityscape decorated in chemically mummified cadavers. Like the fruits of damnation hanging from warped trees, thousands of bodies swung from cords, chains and improvised ropes, hanging from every available ramshackle structure, balcony and walkway. Steeples, chimneys and scaffolding leaned with the weight of the dead hanging from them. Forests of cadavers swayed with the roaring passage of the Iron Snakes gunship. Aerials, wire walkways and hab-stack-spanning power cables were draped with the dead.
Some had launched themselves from great heights, making a broken descent through the busy architecture of the hive. Those not cut into pieces by high-tension suspension cables or scarecrowed on spires and vox antennae, who reached the rockcrete, became one with it, turning the avenues, elevated freightways and labyrinthine thoroughfares leading out of the hive into rivers of blood.
The copper tang of slaughter was so thick that, like the hull of the Ithakariad, Porphyrian’s armour began to mist red.
Beyond those who had taken their own lives and the lives of their dependants in the Blood God’s name, and those who had willingly pledged themselves to his service in the cult ranks of Sholen Skara’s Kith, there had been many unready for such an impossible choice. They had become the sacrificial millions offered up by swelling numbers of the Blood God’s newest and most ardent servants.
There were bodies everywhere, and everywhere the dazed, idle monstrosity of those who had shed their blood. Murderous mobs and hordes of emaciated savages waited on the magister’s word – gathered in quads, on roofs, along the ooze of blood-slick freightways and in the devastation of hab-stacks. Around the bloodbound Kith, on every surface, wall and floor was the sigil of Sholen Skara smeared in gore.
As the Storm Eagle howled by, the Kith howled back their murderous intent. They watched the Ithakariad weaving in and out, up and around the web of cables, walkways and towering dereliction, but all they really saw was a delivery of victims, unfortunates who would honour the Blood God with their deaths or join the blessed ranks of his butchers.
‘Let’s get their attention,’ Brother-Sergeant Porphyrian voxed to the cockpit.
‘Affirmative,’ Brother Salames voxed back.
Porphyrian felt the gunship buck as a hellstrike missile blasted free of its wing-mounting and streaked away. Watching the missile sear ahead of them, Porphyrian followed its progress until it slammed into a colossal sub-spire. Reaching for the polychromatic underbelly of the polluted heavens was a shaft of sweat mills, rickety hab-stacks, smokescrapers and tower-top villas that formed a prong on the crown of sub-spires that encircled the Plethorapolitan capital spire. Porphyrian could not help admiring Brother Salames’s aim. It wasn’t just hitting the tower; the Ithakariad’s machine-spirit could help a pilot achieve that. It was knowing where to hit the sub-spire. As the missile thudded into the towering monstrosity, and ripples of infernal destruction blasted through the floors and superst
ructure at the spire base, the architecture couldn’t decide whether it wanted to topple over or collapse in on itself. Attempting both, the excruciating sound of shearing girders and pulverised masonry drowned out the screams of thousands of cult warriors. The Kith savages flailed to their deaths, their broken bodies destined to be buried beneath thousands of tonnes of falling rockcrete.
As a plume of dust rocketed up in place of the sub-spire, the Iron Snakes gunship punctured straight through it, swooping through the labyrinthine reach of hab-stacks and tower factoria. Banging a gauntlet on the troop-bay ceiling, Porphyrian heard Brother Salames respond by unleashing the nose-mounted heavy bolters on the hive. As the gunship expertly weaved through the tottering architecture, the heavy bolters above the prow door chugged away with a monstrous, rhythmic insistence that was felt throughout the length of the craft. From shredding away the sides of habs and mulching the cult warriors within to chewing up hordes of Kith and the elevated avenues upon which they were idling, the Ithakariad visited a maelstrom of destruction upon all who fell under its guns.
Punching the last of the gunship’s hellstrike missiles into a forest of slum-stacks, and watching the tapering tower blocks tangle and topple one another over in a net of contorted suspension wires, the gunship emerged from the mess with little room to manoeuvre. As the Ithakariad slowed and its progress became increasingly frustrated by crowded architecture, snapping cables and the shattering structures of rusted walkways, Porphyrian ordered Brother Salames to land.
Turning a furious mob of Kith roaring at the gunship from atop a sweat mill into a red smear of bolt-punctured plasteel on the rust-stained roof, Brother Salames drifted the Ithakariad down. Gently landing the gunship on the creaking roof, Salames cut the engines and idled the wing thrusters in preparation for – if required – an immediate take off.
‘Squad Orpheon,’ Brother-Sergeant Porphyrian said over the helmet vox, turning to address his Iron Snakes, who were gathered for departure behind him. ‘We are here to hunt a monster. A dangerous foe who, like the water wyrms of our distant Ithaka, churns up the world around him into storm and violence. We are the Iron Snakes. We shall ride out the storm, cut through the chaos and bring this monster down. Just like Ithaka. Just like home. Is that understood?’
