Warhammer - Ultramarines 03 - Dead Sky, Black Sun (McNeill, Graham)

by Graham McNeill

  Uriel struggled against it, but its strength was beyond even that of a dreadnought and he was held firm. He was lifted from the water and held close to the Lord of the Unfleshed's face, the ragged flaps of skin around its nasal cavity fluttering as it smelled him.

  A thick tongue slid from its mouth and Uriel gagged at the monster's corpse-breath as the leathery appendage licked the skin of his face. Before he could do more than retch, the Lord of the Unfleshed dropped him back into the water, and he grunted in pain as the splintered ends of his collarbone ground together.

  The massive creature turned to the Unfleshed around the pool.

  'Not meat yet! Maybe they Unwanted like us. Smell and taste flesh mother meat on him.' it said, its words twisted and guttural.

  The Unfleshed threw back their heads and gave voice to a plaintive howling that echoed from the high peaks of the mountains, and Uriel could not decide whether the ululating cry was a gesture of welcome or a desperate cry of pity.

  The Halls of the Savage Morticians still echoed to the pounding beat of the Heart of Blood, the air still stank of desperation and the psychic deadness still draped the soul. But for all that it remained the same, there was a subtle shift in the dynamic of the chamber. Honsou had not noticed it at first, but as he followed the bronze-legged Savage Mortician through the paths of the dying, he noticed it in the downcast skull-faces of each of the black-robed monsters...

  'Have you noticed...' whispered Obax Zakayo, reading his master's features.

  'Aye.' replied Honsou. 'They are afraid, and that doesn't happen often.'

  They had good reason to be afraid, though, thought Honsou. Prisoners entrusted to their destruction by the master of Khalan-Ghol had killed two of their number and escaped. Obviously dark memories of the fortress's last master still burned in the minds of the Savage Morticians and Honsou found himself relishing their apprehension as he reached the mortuary circle where the Space Marines who followed Ventris had been shackled.

  In the centre of the circle were the mangled, dismembered remains of two Morticians: their flesh hacked to carven, grey chunks. Honsou knelt beside the nearest, pulling the dead arm bearing a vicious drill from the ruin of its head.

  'I fear I may have underestimated this Ventris and his band.' he said.

  'You think he might be more than one of Toramino's mercenaries?'

  Honsou nodded. 'I'm beginning to think that he might not have anything to do with Toramino at all, that he might be here for reasons of his own.'

  'What reasons?'

  Honsou did not answer at first, but snapped his fingers and indicated that one of the hissing, dark surgeons approach. A tall beast with wide, bladed legs and clicking hydraulic claws for arms stooped to face him, its gleaming jaws centimetres from Honsou.

  'You put Ventris in the daemonculaba?' he asked.

  'Yes. Stitched him in. Into the womb with the others. He should not be alive.'

  'No.' agreed Honsou. 'He very definitely should not. Show me.'

  'Show master of Khalan-Ghol what?' hissed the Savage Mortician.

  'Show me where you implanted him.' ordered Honsou. 'Now.'

  The creature nodded and reared up to its full height, stalking off between the barrels of viscera and blood towards the nearest ramp that led to the gantries of the daemonculaba. Honsou and Obax Zakayo followed, noting with interest some of the more cruel and unusual experiments in pain that were being carried out in the quest for deathly knowledge.

  'With all due respect, my lord.' began Obax Zakayo. 'Is it wise to concern yourself with a fate of a few renegades? The armies of Lord Berossus are at the gates of Khalan-Ghol.'

  'And?'

  'And they are within days at most of breaching the walls...'

  'Berossus will not get in, I have plans for him.'

  'Any you want to share?'

  'Not with you, no.' said Honsou as they reached the top of the ramp. 'Understand this, Obax Zakayo, you are my servant, a mere functionary, and nothing more. You served a master who had forgotten why we fight the Long War, a master who had allowed the bitter fires of the False Emperor's treachery to smoulder instead of burning brightly in his breast. Have you forgotten how our Legion was almost destroyed piece by piece by his uncaring, unthinking betrayals? Have you forgotten how he allowed us to stagnate and become little more than gaolers? The False Emperor drove us to this fate, condemning us to suffer an eternity of torment in the Eye, and while Forrix forgot that, I did not.'

  'I only meant-' began Obax Zakayo.

  'I know what you meant.' snapped Honsou, making his way along the gantry past the heaving masses of flesh that rippled in agony with new life. 'You think I don't know of your entreaties to Toramino and Berossus? You have betrayed me, Obax Zakayo. I know everything.'

  Obax Zakayo opened his mouth to protest, but Honsou turned and shook his head. 'You can say nothing. I don't blame you. You saw an opportunity and you took it. But to think that someone like you could outwit me... please!'

  The servo claws hunched at Obax Zakayo's shoulders reared up, snapping like the jaws of evil, mechanical snakes, and the giant Iron Warrior gripped his toothed axe tightly.

  Honsou smiled and again shook his head as a pair of Savage Morticians loomed behind Obax Zakayo. The axe was snatched from his hands and broken like a twig as bronze claws snapped shut on his limbs and crackling, piston driven pincers cut the mechanised arms from his back.

  'No!' shouted Obax Zakayo as he was lifted from his feet. 'I know things you need to know!'

  'I don't think so.' said Honsou. 'Toramino is not so stupid as to trust you with anything of importance.'

  Honsou nodded to the Savage Mortician and said, 'Do with him as you will.'

  He turned away as Obax Zakayo screamed curses upon his name and was carried away by the Savage Morticians to his no doubt bloody fate. Honsou had not been surprised by Obax Zakayo's treachery: indeed it had proven to be extremely useful. Soon Berossus and Toramino would learn the price for trusting such a poor traitor.

  Putting Obax Zakayo from his mind he walked along the grilled gantry to where a wheezing mass of blubbery, torn flesh was being prodded and cut further by the creature that had led him here. The pain-filled features of the daemonculaba stared at him in mute horror, its glassy eyes rolling in unspeakable pain. Honsou ignored its suffering and leant down to examine its torn belly, where recently sutured flesh had been rudely torn open.

  'From the inside...' noted Honsou. 'He climbed out himself.'

  The Savage Mortician bobbed its head, though Honsou could clearly see its confusion at such a thing.

  'How could Ventris have done this?' asked Honsou.

  'Not knowing. Daemonculaba tasted him, fed him soporifics. Should not have happened.' rasped the Mortician.

  'And yet it did.' mused Honsou, pulling back the greasy folds of flesh from the daemonculaba's ruptured belly. The slippery innards of the great beast heaved and shuddered at his touch and Honsou drew back as the creature went into a violent seizure, its entire frame shuddering. Though it had no voice to call its own, a high, keening wail ripped from its ruined throat and a flood of gore gushed from the open wound.

  'What's happening to it?' demanded Honsou.

  'Womb ready to expel its issue.' explained the moribund surgeon.

  More blood and amniotic fluids poured from the daemonculaba's belly and the Savage Mortician reached in to hack at its internal structure with long, sword-like limbs. Hissing, gurgling tubes carried away dead fluids and Honsou heard the crack of bone and the sharp twang of severed sinews from within the daemonculaba's body.

  The Mortician cut the wound wider and with a final splash of blood and blue and purple viscera, the daemonculaba's offspring spilled out onto the floor.

  He landed with a wet, meaty thump: powerfully muscled and hot-housed far beyond the callow youth he had been when implanted. Honsou knelt beside the quivering newborn, the skinless body shivering with the violence of its delivery. Even wrapped in a mutated len
gth of glistening umbilical cord, Honsou could see that this birth was perfect - no need to flush him into the pipes with the rest of the discards.

  Filmy, acidic residue coated his muscles and he began weeping in pain as the Savage Mortician lifted him from the ground.

  'Wait.' said Honsou, stepping forward and wiping handfuls of bloody, matter-flecked slime from the newborn's gleaming red skull and clearing the birth fluids from his skinless features.

  The newborn lifted his head at Honsou's touch, looking into his face with a fierce earnestness. Honsou held the newly born Chaos Space Marine towards its dark, clawed midwife.

  'Clean him and then clothe him in fresh skin.' he ordered. 'Give him Obax Zakayo's armour and bring him to me when he becomes ready.'

  The Savage Mortician nodded and dragged away the mewling newborn.

  And the master of Khalan-Ghol laughed, realising that the Gods of Chaos could sometimes have a sense of humour after all.

  Whether the manufactory facility had fallen into disuse and then been colonised by the Unfleshed or whether they had taken it by force was unknowable, but judging by the state of disrepair and wreckage strewn around, either explanation was possible. Uriel had been shocked at the hideousness of the Unfleshed he had seen on the surface of Medrengard, but they were nothing compared to the horrors of those who remained below in the darkness. How such things could live baffled Uriel, but even as he felt revulsion at their terrible forms, he felt a great pity for them. For they too were victims of the Iron Warriors' malice.

  Uriel had no way of measuring, but reckoned on the passing of perhaps ten or twelve hours since they had escaped the dungeons of Khalan-Ghol. Led by the Lord of the Unfleshed on a gruelling march into the high peaks of mountains, they had set off to an unknown destiny, though it had been impossible to tell whether they had been taken as brothers-in-arms or prisoners. Uriel and Pasanius had bound Ellard's wound and carried him with them, despite Vaanes's protestations that the man was as good as dead and should be left behind.

  Upon leaving the pool at the base of the cliffs where their lunatic flight from the depths of Khalan-Ghol through the sewage pipes had carried them, Uriel had seen that they were indeed many kilometres from the fortress. After covering many more, the warrior band had eventually been led to a great crack in the mountainside where noxious clouds of vapour gusted and spoil heaps of refuse and bones were gathered.

  Descending into the stygian darkness of the mountainside, the rock passageway had eventually opened into a wide chamber where perhaps some underground earthquake had ripped an underground manufactory apart. Buckled, iron columns supported a bowing ceiling on vast, riveted girders, and beams of murky light speared down through shattered coolant towers that pierced the roof and illuminated the echoing space. Twisting bridges of knotted rope connected the forests of columns and a great pit had been dug or drilled in the centre of the manufactory floor where something unseen glittered and twisted in the dim light.

  Piles of shattered machinery lay rusting in pools of moisture and groups of the Unfleshed, hundreds of them, gathered around them, their red bodies wet and glistening. These Unfleshed were the true monsters, so mutated and deformed as to be unable to hunt, or - in some cases - even move. Piles of altered flesh, twisted limbs without number and warped symbiotes of fused flesh that gibbered and howled in constant pain.

  'So many of them...' said Uriel.

  Further comment had been prevented as they were herded down into the depths of the manufactory and the Lord of the Unfleshed indicated that they should sit in the lee of a great pressing machine, with hammers the size of a battle tank.

  'You. Not move.'

  'Wait.' said Uriel. 'What do you want with us?'

  'Tribe needs talk. Decide if you Unwanted like us or just meat. Probably we kill you all.' admitted the Lord of the Unfleshed. 'Good meat on your bones and fresh skin to wear.'

  'Kill us?' snapped Vaanes. 'If you're just going to kill us, then why the hell did you bother to bring us here, you damn freak?'

  'Weak of Tribe need meat.' rasped the monster, staring at Ellard with undisguised appetite. The sergeant had surprised them all by surviving the journey, though Uriel saw that he surely could not live much longer. Blood soaked the makeshift bandage of his tattered uniform jacket and his face was deathly pale. 'They cannot hunt, so we bring meat to them.'

  'You had to ask.' growled Pasanius.

  Vaanes shrugged and slumped to the ground with his back to the Ultramarines.

  The Lord of the Unfleshed had then departed, making his way down to the floor of the manufactory to rejoin his tribe, leaving them in the company of a dozen gigantic monsters, each larger than a dreadnought and equipped with a fearsome array of gnashing fangs and long, dripping talons.

  Since then, they had waited for hours in the stinking twilight as their captors - or brethren - debated whether to kill them or not. The creature Uriel had fought in the outflow pool was one of their guards, though it still appeared not to care about the weapon lodged in its flesh.

  'Damn it, but I wish I knew what they were doing.' said Uriel, turning from the creatures that surrounded them.

  'Do you?' said Pasanius. 'I'm not so sure.'

  'We can't stay here. We have to get back to that fortress.'

  'Back to the fortress?' laughed Ardaric Vaanes. 'Are you serious?'

  'Deadly serious.' nodded Uriel. We have a death oath to fulfil, to destroy the daemonculaba or die in the attempt.'

  'You'll die then.' promised Vaanes.

  'Then we die.' said Uriel. 'Have you heard nothing I have said to you, Vaanes?'

  'Don't you dare lecture me about honour and duty, Ventris.' warned Vaanes. 'I have seen enough of what your honour has to offer. Most of us are already dead, and for what?'

  'No warrior ever died in vain who died for honour in the service of the Emperor.'

  'Spare me your borrowed wisdom, Ventris.' sneered Vaanes. 'I have had my fill of it. If we survive this, there's no way I'm going anywhere near that fortress again. I am done with your heroics and will leave you to die.'

  'Then I was wrong about you, Vaanes.' said Uriel. 'I thought you had honour left within you, but I see now that you do not.'

  Vaanes ignored Uriel and stared sullenly at the lumpen, misshapen beasts that watched over them.

  Uriel turned to Pasanius and said, 'Then we are on our own, my friend.'

  'So it would seem.' agreed Pasanius, slowly, and Uriel could see that his friend was struggling to speak - burdened by the terrible weight of guilt.

  An awkward silence fell between the two friends, neither knowing the right way to break it or how to begin to say what needed to be said.

  'Why didn't you tell me?' said Uriel at last.

  'How could I?' sobbed Pasanius. 'I was tainted. Touched by evil and corrupted!'

  'How? When?' asked Uriel.

  'On Pavonis, I think.' said Pasanius, the words, now undammed, pouring from him in a rush of confession. 'You remember that I hated the augmetic arm the moment the artificers of the Shonai cartel grafted it to me?'

  'Aye.' nodded Uriel, remembering how Pasanius had complained that the arm could never be as good as one grown strong through a lifetime of war.

  'I didn't know the half of it.' continued Pasanius. 'After a while I got used to it, even began to appreciate the strength in the arm, but it was when we fought the orks on the Death of Virtue that I first realised something was wrong.'

  Uriel well remembered the desperate fighting to destroy the ork and tyranid infested space hulk that had drifted into the Tarsis Ultra system and heralded the great battle against a splinter fleet of bio-ships from Hive Fleet Leviathan.

  'What happened?'

  'We were fighting the orks, just before you killed their leader, you remember? One of the greenskins got behind me, nearly took my damn head off with his chainsaw.'

  'Yes, you took the blow on your arm.'

  'Aye, I did, and you saw the size of that blade. My arm should hav
e been hacked in two, but it wasn't. It wasn't even scratched.'

  'But that is impossible.' said Uriel.

  'That's what I thought, but by the time we got away and were back at the Thunderhawk, it was as good as new, not a scratch on it.'

  'I remember...' whispered Uriel, picturing Pasanius's arm reaching down to haul him to safety when their demolition charges had begun to tear the space hulk apart. 'It shone like silver.'

  'I know.' agreed Pasanius, 'but it didn't register on me until we were back aboard the Vae Victus that my arm should have been pulverised. I thought maybe I'd imagined how hard I'd been hit, but now I know I didn't.'

  'How is it possible? Do you think the adepts of Pavonis had access to some form of xeno tech?'

  'No.' said Pasanius, shaking his head. The silver-skinned devils we fought beneath Pavonis, the servants of the Bringer of Darkness, they could do the same thing. No matter how hard you cut, stabbed or shot them, they could get back up again, their bodies putting themselves back together right before your eyes.'

  'The necrontyr.' spat Uriel.

  Pasanius nodded. 'Aye, necrontyr. I think maybe part of the Bringer of Darkness went into me when it cut off my arm, something corrupt that waited and then found a home in the metal of my new arm.'

  'Why did you say nothing?' said Uriel. 'It was your duty to report such a thing.'

  'I know.' said Pasanius, dejectedly. 'But I was ashamed. You know me, it's always been my way to deal with things myself. I've been that way since I was a boy on Calth.'

  'I know, but you should still have reported it to Clausel. I will have to report it when we get back to Macragge.'

  'You mean if we get back.' reminded Pasanius.

  'No.' said Uriel, emphatically. 'When.'

  Uriel turned as he heard footfalls approaching. Colonel Leonid, his face gaunt and worn stood behind him and said, 'Sergeant Ellard is dead.'

  Uriel looked over to where the big man lay, and stood, placing his hand on Leonid's shoulder. 'I am sorry, my friend. He was a fine man and a good soldier.'