The Chapters Due
Page 16
“Then do your best to keep me alive,” said Calgar. “It’s still a hard climb away.”
“Count on it, my lord.”
Calgar looked up into the starlit peaks and said, “First we have to reach it, and that in itself will be no small achievement.”
“We will reach it,” said Tigurius. “I have seen you at its walls, fighting with courage and honour. You will face the daemons and you must hold them here long enough for the Sentinel of the Tower to fulfil his destiny.”
“How long will that be?”
“I do not know, but if Uriel Ventris has proven anything since he took command of the 4th, it is that he is resourceful in the face of adversity.”
“Then there is hope yet, my friend,” said Calgar with a wan smile.
Tigurius grimaced and felt a familiar sickness in his gut that could mean only one thing.
“Daemons!” he yelled.
THE FLICKERING IMAGE of the warrior with Uriel’s face danced and jerked on the frozen holo-globe. Magos Locard had zoomed in as much as the captured image allowed, and the interpolation matrices within Lex Tredecim’s cogitators sharpened the image as best they were able. There was no mistaking the aquiline cast of these lean, patrician features or the grey stormcloud eyes.
But for the armour and corpse pallor of the face, they could be looking at Uriel.
“I don’t understand,” said Suzaku, looking at Uriel and the image within the globe. “You have a twin?”
“No,” said Uriel, horrified at this violation of his identity. “Absolutely not. I do not know what that is.”
Yet even as he said the words, he suddenly knew what this abomination was, how it bore his face and how it had come to be here. Once again he pictured the vision he’d had while immersed in the vile fluids and fleshy embrace of the daemonic womb-creature of Medrengard. Sinking fast within its amniotic suspension, his mind had fled to the idyll of his youth. He’d walked the caves of Calth, relived old glories and conversed with the image of his former captain.
Even then, he’d known it could not have been Idaeus, but now he was not so sure.
“The Dark Son…” Uriel whispered. “Idaeus tried to warn me.”
“Idaeus,” asked Suzaku, the merest flicker of light behind her iris telling Uriel she was accessing implanted memory coils. “The previous captain of the 4th?”
“Aye,” said Pasanius with a nod. “What are you talking about, Uriel? Idaeus is long dead.”
“I know that, but I saw him,” said Uriel. “On Medrengard, when the monsters put me in the daemonic incubator creatures. I don’t know; it was like a vision or a fever dream. I think he was trying to warn me of this, but I did not understand what he meant. I clawed my way free of the monster I was trapped within, but while I was in there, it felt like…”
“Like what?” asked Locard, always eager to hear tales of such aberrant xenobiology.
“Like there was something else in there with me,” finished Uriel, horrified at the implication. “I felt it next to me and I felt it reaching into me. I did not understand what was happening, but Emperor save me, it must have been that… thing.”
“Interesting,” said Locard. “A warp-spawned gestation creature that bio-samples the superior specimen and implants the lesser with its enhanced genes. In all but the literal sense, this creature is your brother, Captain Ventris.”
“Never say that,” snapped Uriel. “These are my brothers, not that freakish monster.”
“I apologise for my choice of words,” said Locard. “But for all intents and purposes, this being is real and shares a rudimentary genetic link to Captain Ventris. I believe I now know how our enemies have managed to overcome the defences of Ultramar with such ease.”
The magos extended a series of wand-like probes from his back and slotted them home into a console behind him with gem-like buttons and numerous binaric displays.
“What do you mean?” asked Suzaku.
“One moment, inquisitor,” said Locard. “I am exloading the telemetry from the conflict in space, which I believe will confirm what I suspect to be the answer.”
A binary string column scrolled across the surface of the holo-globe, unintelligible to Uriel, but which appeared to mean something to Locard.
“Ah, yes, it is as I feared,” said the magos.
“What?” demanded Uriel.
“The orbital defences were infected by a scrapcode attack,” explained Locard. “A corrupt and debased version of the blessed Lingua Technis, one of the Mechanilingua family of languages used in servitorware scripts. This is a nasty one, very advanced, but they could not have breached the aegis code without knowledge of Ultramar’s defence protocols.”
“And you think this clone creature knows those codes?” asked Suzaku.
“It knows them because Captain Ventris knows them.”
“Are you saying that everything I know it now knows?”
“No, that seems unlikely,” said Locard. “I imagine it would have absorbed random portions of your brain chemistry and memory. And by the principle of exchange, it is possible you would have absorbed some of its past existence. Is that the case?”
All eyes turned to him, and Uriel hesitated before answering. “Perhaps,” he said. “I have been having strange dreams of late.”
“What manner of dreams?”
Uriel shook his head. “Nothing I can truly remember, just flashes. More than a dream, it is like memories of events that happened to someone else. I suppose that is exactly what it is.”
“What happens in these visions?” asked Locard. “It could hold the key to unlocking what this creature is and how it is able to function.”
Uriel cast his mind back to the Temple of Correction, reliving the terror of the attack on the frozen castellum and the capture of the young cadets.
“I am a young boy,” he began. “A cadet at a scholam, I don’t know where. It is attacked by Iron Warriors, and they capture me… him. I do not see any more than that.”
“Fascinating. You may have experienced the child’s memory of its abduction prior to its implantation in the womb creature you were later sealed within.”
“That makes a kind of sense,” said Shaan, his pale features tinged green with the light from the holo-globe. “A cadet of that age would be a suitable candidate for gene-seed implantation.”
“A crude method to be sure,” said Locard. “I would imagine a dreadful rate of mortality in such a procedure, but the Archenemy cares little for such things.”
“So why have I not experienced these visions before now?” asked Uriel.
Locard disconnected himself from the console and circled the info-globe on his clicking, calliper legs to stand before Uriel. “Your cognitive architecture was fully formed by the time you were imprisoned, so your dominance of your psyche was complete. This child’s was malleable and easily reshaped into something monstrous. Its own memories and personality will be fighting for dominance with everything it took from you, which I imagine would be enough to drive anyone to madness.”
“You call it a child,” said Shaan, jabbing a finger at the image. “But that is no child.”
“Once he was,” said Locard, his tone sympathetic. “Once he had a name and a life ahead of him, but now he is a monster, his mind filled with the indoctrinations of the Ruinous Powers. Who knows what he might have been with only Captain Ventris’ genetic influence?”
“A creature grown within such an abomination can only ever be a thing of darkness,” said Inquisitor Suzaku. “Chaos corrupts all it touches.”
“Be that as it may,” said Locard. “Clearly this requires further investigation.”
“Indeed it does,” agreed Suzaku, turning to Uriel. “Why did you not mention this before, Captain Ventris? This could very well have a bearing on the coming conflict. If this link can work both ways, then clearly it is something we must endeavour to exploit.”
“Now just wait a minute,” said Pasanius, stepping between Uriel and Suzaku.
Suzaku looked amused at their display of solidarity, but Uriel saw past her mask of acquiescence. The inquisitor saw potential in his connection to this monstrous clone, and, if he were honest, he knew she was right.
“Stand down, sergeants,” said Uriel. “If I can unlock more of this creature’s memories then perhaps there might be a something that will help us fight the Iron Warriors. Can you do that, Magos Locard? Can you get these memories out of me?”
Locard nodded, his expression alight with anticipation. “I have neuro-invasive equipment on board that should be able to pluck any residual traces of your clone from your mind,” he said with a gleeful smile. “Of course, that equipment was designed for xenos creatures, but it should still be reasonably safe.”
“Reasonably? That sounds somewhat imprecise for you, magos,” said Uriel, folding his arms across his plastron. “Define reasonably.”
“You will have a sixty-seven point six three four nine per cent chance of survival,” said Locard.
TEN
THOUGH THE NEWBORN had told Honsou of Guilliman’s Gate, its mighty scale and incredible power, it was still a shock to see how massive a structure it was. Visible from fifty kilometres away as a bronze gleam in the face of indigo-sheened mountains, its size wasn’t apparent until the army of the Bloodborn climbed into the rugged slopes of the Mountains of Twilight.
An entire flank of the mountain had been sculpted into a mighty gateway, a vertical chasm crafted into the rock with the inner faces carved with tens of thousands of statues, reliquaries, shrines and decorative arches. Greatest of these was the golden statue of Captain Ventanus, the saviour of Calth, fully a hundred metres high. The gateway sat atop a wide causeway of polished granite that led up from the desolate wastelands of the surface. Built two thousand metres high and the equal of any of the great gates of Terra, it was a monumental piece of defensive architecture. Ultramarines heroes stood atop ouslite plinths in heroic poses all along the length of the causeway with their shields and heads lifted towards the deadly sun.
Kroot warriors glistening with oily secretions that allowed them to breathe climbed the statues and smeared excrement over the pallid marble faces. The alien mercenaries squawked with raucous amusement at their vandalism, their alien skin darkened under the influence of Calth’s poisonous sun. Mortal soldiers took pot shots at the statues with primitive bolt-action lascarbines, while armoured vehicles sideswiped them and sent each one tumbling to the plains below.
The gate itself stood on the far side of a bottomless chasm, its twin leaves formed from a pair of towering slabs of bronze and adamantium locked together at their centre by a pair of intertwined Ultramarines symbols. Divided into coffers, each panel depicted some ludicrously overblown image of Ultramarines heroes, slaying dragons, greenskins and horned daemons. Projecting bunkers and gun bastions studded the inner faces of the cave, creating a deadly killing ground from which little would emerge alive. To reach the gate would be no mean feat, but to breach it would require more than brute force.
Honsou rode in the open cupola of his Land Raider, the pistol grips of its heavy bolter grasped lightly in his gauntleted hands. He rolled with the motion of the tank, relishing the sense of power such a vehicle conferred. He had crushed Ultramarines beneath its tracks already and looked forward to hearing the death screams of many more before this conflict was done. Though it was unwise, his vehicle was part of the Bloodborn van, a chaotic mixture of powerful battle tanks, troop carriers and bizarre hybrid machines fabricated by Votheer Tark and his coterie of lunatic magos.
As powerful as Honsou’s mighty tank was, it was like an ant before a grox compared to the vehicle crunching over Calth’s quartz desert behind him, a vast, tracked leviathan of steel and dark iron. A hundred metres high, its core structure bore the design hallmarks of a race that once counted the Imperium as an ally until it was betrayed and allowed to fall into extinction. Once, this mobile fortress had fought for the Corpse-Emperor, but now it was a dark cathedral of destruction that served the warriors of the Dark Gods.
It was the Black Basilica, and those Bloodborn without rebreathers travelled within its armoured, oil-soaked hull. An enormous cannon projected from its steep-sided glacis, and its lower reaches were swathed with filth-encrusted barbs and looping coils of energised razorwire. This was a thunderous symbol of bloody destruction that had ended wars, as much a dark idol of adoration and a temple to the Ruinous Powers as it was a weapon.
Adept Cycerin travelled within the Black Basilica, his stinking vat of conductive fluids transported from Warbreed’s strategium to its converted bridge, where his oozing mechadendrites meshed with its systems until there was little to separate magos and machine.
Tens of thousands of Bloodborn followed the Black Basilica, a host unlike any of Honsou’s Legion had commanded since the defeat of Horus Lupercal. Thousands of mutants, xenos mercenaries, pirates, renegade Astartes, outcasts, monsters, degenerates and criminals stood ready to do his bidding and unleash hell upon the greatest symbol of the Imperium that had rejected them.
Even when Abaddon led his host from the Great Eye, the Iron Warriors had fought in isolated warbands, fearful of being drawn into another disastrous conflict that would see them broken on the wheel of Imperial retribution.
Now Honsou would see one of the pillars of that Imperium torn down.
URIEL LAY ON the silver gurney within the medicae bay of Lex Tredeсim, staring at the stark lumen strips of the ceiling as Magos Locard busied himself with a host of open-sided metal frames that bristled with machine parts that looked as though they belonged to a dozen different branches of xenos technologies. A ribbed length of cable emerged from one box as Magos Locard’s mechadendrites machined its connector plug to allow it to slot into the input socket at the back of Uriel’s neck.
Normally, this socket allowed his armour’s autosenses to mesh with his genhanced physique, providing Uriel with a more intuitive situational awareness and a faster reactive instinct for danger.
“Are you sure about this?” asked Pasanius, leaning over the table to look down at him.
“The enemy is at the gate,” said Uriel emphatically. “Against any other foe, I would not fear for it, but the Iron Warriors are masters of siegecraft and Honsou is driven by hate and the lust for vengeance. So, yes, I am sure.”
Pasanius glanced at Learchus, and Uriel was touched by their concern, but what he had said was true. If risking his life in this manner would help in the coming fight, then he was only too willing to allow Locard’s attempt to reach any inherited memories buried within his brain.
“I don’t like it,” said Pasanius. “It’s not natural.”
Trying to sound at ease, Uriel said, “I will be fine.”
“But what if you’re not?” said Pasanius. “Who’ll command the 4th?”
Uriel twisted his head to look at Learchus. “Learchus did it once before, and if need be, he will do it again.”
Learchus shook his head. “I want my captaincy,” he said. “But not like this.”
“I said the same thing when Idaeus died,” said Uriel, “but I have learned that life cares little for what we want or what we deserve.”
Pasanius grunted and jerked a thumb towards the humming boxes of circuitry. “It doesn’t look safe to me,” he said. “It looks alien.”
“It is,” said Magos Locard without turning around. “Much of it employs technology recovered from the ruins of Golgotha in the wake of the routing of the greenskins.”
“This is greenskin technology?” hissed Pasanius. “See, I told you it wasn’t safe!”
“No, Sergeant Pasanius,” said Locard. “It is older than that, remnants of the race the greenskins exterminated to claim Golgotha for themselves. Calm yourself, your captain is in safe hands.”
Uriel hoped Locard was ri
ght, for the mechadendrites had finished their tooling of the connector socket and curled through the air towards him as the magos approached him.
“Are you ready, Captain Ventris?” asked Locard.
“I am,” said Uriel. “How long will this take?”
“Speculation: not long,” said Locard, as the connector slotted neatly into the socket in his neck. “The other subjects experienced memory recall in seconds. I suspect this will be little different.”
The plug in his neck felt cold and there was a moment of metallic taste in his mouth, like a low-level current of electricity running through him. He heard the snick of connection and the whirr of locking bolts screwing home in the threads cut in his skull. A numb sense of cold spread through him as invasive fibres meshed with his brain stem and infiltrated his skull.
Inquisitor Suzaku appeared in his peripheral vision. Uriel hadn’t heard her enter the medicae bay.
“I shall be observing,” she said. “In case anything should manifest other the creature’s memories.”
“I understand,” said Uriel, seeing the stark purpose in Namira Suzaku’s eyes.
Locard leaned over him, what was left of his organic features struggling to conceal the excitement at utilising his technology is such a unique way.
“Shall we begin?” he asked.
“Do it,” said Uriel.
He heard a faint click, and searing pain stabbed up into his skull as repressed horror rushed to fill the spaces of his mind.
THE PAIN IS intense, a shooting spike of eye-watering agony. He closes his eyes and tries to remember something good, something pleasurable, but there is nothing left. All he remembers now is pain and degradation. He remembers cages, whips and casual brutality that cheapens life until those he shares his cage with sometimes turn on one another.
All he knows is pain, hunger and sickness.
The starship was a metal coffin, its translations unshielded, and the nightmares drove dozens to madness and suicide. Barely a handful remain, though he cannot now remember how many began this dreadful journey. They live in darkness, are fed scraps and subsist on condensate licked from the cold iron walls.