‘Your five minutes have already begun,’ the sergeant said, pointing at Vespesario with his power sword. ‘Use the time wisely.’
The Librarian said nothing as he returned to Vespesario’s inert form. He was about to slip into synchrony with the near-dead Space Marine when the sound of a storm bolter firing resounded across his auto-senses. Several blurs of light on the auspex had detached themselves from the mass holding back, and were moving around the perimeter. Brother Santiago’s report crackled over the vox.
‘Two targets eliminated. Three more incoming.’ Another, longer, burst of fire. ‘Eliminated.’
The sensor readings showed other probing movements receding for the moment, moving back to the outer corridors and the decks above and below. Sergeant Dioneas stopped beside Calistarius.
‘Scouting attacks. Let us hope that they do not realise our numbers are so small before the second wave arrives.’
Calistarius needed no further encouragement and crouched down with arm outstretched, his gauntleted fingers falling upon the bloodstained skin of Vespesario’s forehead.
The ship itself tried to fight them as well as the daemons. Doorways appeared in solid walls and closed up again, separating the Blood Angels from each other. Vents in the shape of snarling mouths spewed clouds of flies that exploded like small incendiary shells. Metal decking melted underfoot, turning to a quagmire from which snapping tentacles and fanged maws erupted to drag down unfortunate legionaries.
They pressed on regardless, blasting and hewing their way through the daemonic assault, pushing ever onwards to the strategium where he knew the Arch-traitor would be found. They crossed impossible bridges over bottomless gulfs, battling red-skinned axe wielders with white eyes and bronze armour. They were assailed by multicoloured flames gouting from scything beasts that swooped down upon them from the heights of kilometre-long processional halls.
He knew that progress was slow, but there was something else at work. The interior of the Warmaster’s battle-barge was like the inside of a warp breach, contorted and folded upon itself, a contained bubble of the immaterium far bigger than its external space.
There had to be something sustaining the breach, pouring warp energy into the real universe to uphold the diabolic structure and its daemon inhabitants.
Horus.
The Warmaster was a living portal, his superhuman body the only thing capable of transferring so much Chaos energy into the material realm. Not until the Warmaster was slain would they be freed.
As if this thought prompted a response, the Blood Angels, now numbering only six warriors, were confronted by warriors of the Traitor’s Legion. Bolt and plasma converged upon them from galleries and mezzanines, forcing them to return to the winding passageways they had just left, where daemons waited with sickle blades and paralysing tongues.
Undeterred, he carved a path through his foes, borne forward not by hate or rage, but the desire to save his sons from this perverted torment.
They fight their way to the upper decks, advancing purposefully into the heart of the enemy, securing bulkheads and blast doors to seal off the foe’s lines of attack. It is a folly to hope that they can achieve anything meaningful, but they are Space Marines, Blood Angels, sons of Sanguinius, and they will fight to their last breath. Cleanse and purge. Kill the alien. Suffer not the xenos to live. The main bridge may be their objective but extermination is their true goal.
They fire their storm bolters in short, controlled bursts, conserving ammunition as much as they can. The sergeants have their power swords, cutting down any genestealer that survives the hail of fire. Brother Geraneos has a heavy flamer. Blasts of super-hot promethium clear whole chambers of foes, the incendiary fuel a barrier to further attack, buying scant respite to reload and redistribute ammunition.
Cercanto, Rabellio, Zervantes and Desarius are dead. There is no thought of recovering their ancient battleplate, but their spare magazines do not go to waste.
The foe withdraw from the advance, but none of the Blood Angels mistake this for victory. The genestealers are not mindless animals, that much has been learnt in previous campaigns. They possess patience and cunning, guided by a psychic gestalt for the near flawless coordination of attacks. The Blood Angels’ foes are waiting, biding their time while the Terminators traverse the open galleries and broad storage halls of the third and fourth deck; there are few crawl ducts and hiding spaces from which to launch an ambush. Perhaps they know that the Space Marines are heading for the controls in the bridge and are saving their numbers for a last overwhelming defence.
The Blood Angels take stock, pausing for a few seconds in one of the long mess halls that run nearly four hundred metres along the spine of the ship. The number of rusted benches and tables riveted to the floor suggest that the ship must have housed thousands of crew. A few lighting strips still work, powered by some auxiliary system, flickering dismal yellow in patches, creating shadows that dance with their own life.
‘Not to sound overly optimistic, brothers, but I think we might have a chance,’ says Serrajo. ‘I’ve studied the sensorium readings and I think the enemy number in their hundreds, not thousands.’
To most warriors such news would be cold comfort – hundreds of genestealers against half a dozen seems impossible odds – but to the Blood Angels of the First Company this is greeted with cautious hope.
‘A small infestation,’ says Sergeant Commeos. ‘You are right, we might yet survive this encounter.’
‘We have a small group moving on the right flank.’ Lucasi’s warning turns the ad-hoc squad in time to see figures scuttling through the broken mess doors. To the surprise of the Space Marines, lasbeams and bullets zip and whine out of the darkness towards them.
The figures spilling into the hall are a contortion of human form, hunched and misshapen as though made of wax and left near a flame. Some have extra eyes, while others sport additional flailing, jointless arms. Many are disfigured with protruding spines and haphazard growths of serrated chitin.
Unlike the purestrain genestealers they carry weapons. Inaccurate fire patters on the Terminators’ armour and the tables nearby as the Space Marines move to respond, their storm bolters throwing a hail of rounds into the incoming mass of degenerate half-breeds.
‘Hybrids,’ snarls Adonius. ‘Wipe them out.’
Shotguns boom and autoguns rattle in response as the Terminators close on their foes, their tactical dreadnought armour designed to withstand anti-tank rounds and artillery bombardments. Power gloves smash bones and crush limbs as the crippled hybrids throw themselves ineffectually at the Emperor’s chosen. Vespesario swings his fist without relent, pulping skulls and mashing internal organs.
Suddenly a white-blue bolt of energy screams across the hall, catching Commeos on the side of the helm. The plasma explodes in a detonation of raw energy, turning the sergeant’s head into an expanding cloud of vaporised liquid and tissue.
A lascannon bolt slices through the bulkhead close at hand, narrowly missing Serrajo.
‘Back,’ orders Adonius, turning his storm bolter onto the new arrivals.
There are too few of them to risk losing a warrior to the hybrids’ heavier weaponry and they retreat from the mess hall, covering their withdrawal with a continuous stream of bolts.
Retracting his mind from the whorl of Vespesario’s thoughts, Calistarius passed on this vital piece of intelligence.
‘Those are not scouting attacks,’ responded Dioneas. ‘The genestealers are attempting to lock us into position while their hybrids bring heavy weapons to bear. The tactical situation is not improving, Brother-Lexicanium. We need a mobile defence or we will make easy targets.’
‘A minute, no longer,’ Calistarius told him. ‘I have almost found out what happened to the previous boarding party. I sense that if I can locate his memories of what happened on the main bridge we shall know what we are facing.’
<
br /> ‘Sixty seconds, no more.’
Calistarius nodded and focused his thoughts. There was no more time for subtlety, exploring Vespesario’s thoughts as though sifting through wreckage. If the Librarian were to discover what had occurred two centuries ago he needed to find it swiftly. The extension of his thoughts into the other Blood Angel became a lance of burning energy, drilling down through Vespesario’s psyche into the pulsing core of his memories, shredding everything else in the vicinity. After the Black Rage and so long in suspended animation, Vespesario no longer possessed anything close to a rational mind that would be destroyed by the intrusion. Only good grace had stopped Calistarius being so blunt before.
Growling and snarling, feeling the Black Rage seeping into his soul, Calistarius opened himself up to the weight of Vespesario’s experiences, allowing everything to flood in. Fighting against the tide of pain and anger, the Librarian ripped free what he needed, raw and bleeding like a heart torn still beating from the chest.
The strategium. Darkness suffused the massive chamber, broken only by the hellish glimmer of daemon eyes and pulsing warp energy. Bathed in the actinic glow was the Warmaster, encased in battleplate fashioned from the artifice of lunatics and shaped by the whim of Dark Gods.
Horus held up his claws, brandishing them in a display of defiance.
Sword flashing, he hurled himself at the Traitor, ducking beneath a sweeping claw, blade outstretched. A glowing fist met the burning sword and sparks erupted, filling the darkness with a moment of blinding light.
He attacked again, and again was parried with a storm of lightning. Eluding a return blow, he lunged for the head but his sword was turned aside, ripping across armour plates, carving a white-hot furrow where it passed.
The Warmaster snarled and swept his claws upwards, raking agony across the chest of the Blood Angel. Staggering back, he half-warded away the Traitor’s next blow, losing a shoulder pad to the slashing talons.
He threw himself aside to dodge the next assault, ignoring the burning in his lungs, the agonised thrashing of his heart.
The next attack came not from the Traitor’s claws but his mind. Psychic energy flared, coruscating through the darkness to hurl the Blood Angel across the strategium. Fronds of sable energy crackled over his armour, scratching and stinging like a million wasps.
Worse still, the Warmaster’s thoughts were inside his head, threatening and cajoling, daring him to fight, demanding his surrender.
He could be immortal, Horus promised, if he would only swear his allegiance to a new master. There was nothing to be gained by this pointless resistance. A painful death was no reward for so many centuries of service.
The promise was an affront to all that he held dear. The idea that the Warmaster thought he was capable of being swayed by such argument was too much. Fuelled by a sudden rage he lashed out, his thoughts hurling back the psychic attack, his sword piercing Horus’s side.
The Traitor’s scream was mixed with demented laughter, a howl of victory as much as pain.
It was then that he realised he would fail if he fought. His sons would perish and all those he had sworn to protect would be consumed by the warp-spawned madness that had been unleashed.
The rage wanted him to fight. The hatred was boiling in his veins, urging him to slash and stab and rend this vile mockery of the man he had once called brother. But he could not give in to the anger, could not submit himself to the vengeance of mindless violence. There was a deeper truth that had to be protected.
He threw himself into the darkness, letting it consume him, the icy chill of the abyss freezing his lungs, setting a chill in his veins, numbing his thoughts until he was part of the darkness itself.
Calistarius struggled, the sacrifice of Vespesario sending a surge of memory into him, breaking like a shard of ice in his thoughts, filling him with a single imperative: slay the Traitor!
Reeling away from Vespesario, Calistarius barely noticed the final glimmer of life had fled the Blood Angel’s body. With his last measure of vitality the Terminator had sent his final warning.
‘The main bridge!’ Calistarius barked. He switched to the command channel. ‘Captain Raphael. You must despatch the second wave immediately!’
‘Explain yourself, Brother-Librarian,’ snapped Sergeant Dioneas as Calistarius exited the chamber and set off along the corridor. ‘What did you see?’
‘A trap, brother-sergeant. A terrible, beguiling trap.’
Slamming his fist into the vestiges of the bridge door, Vespesario opens a hole wide enough to step through. Behind him Sergeant Adonius’s storm bolter roars for a few more seconds as he cuts down another genestealer attack.
Pushing his way onto the main bridge, Vespesario finds himself in near-total darkness, the only light a few blinking indicators on a panel to his right and a red haze from a broken viewscreen ahead. His armour’s auto-senses flash through alternatives to the usual spectrum, strobing his view for a half-second before settling on thermal register. Even so it takes a few more seconds for him to realise all is not right with the console beneath the shattered plate of the central display screen.
Twists of cables and snaking wires form a constricting web around something entirely organic. It is hard to discern where mechanical and biological meet, but in the grey shades of cool air he notices that what he took for corrugated tubing is in fact ribbed flesh, sheathed in a segment of black chitin. Above is a nodule that he interprets as an elbow and a flare of carapace over the shoulder.
Though some of its bulk is lost in the mess of machinery, it is easily twice as large as the Terminator. Two human-like arms slowly flex back and forth, tri-fingered hands opening and closing with dormant menace, while the lower set of the torso appendages are tiny, fidgeting digits no bigger than two fingers pressed together, tipped with a slender claw. More chitin covers the chest and abdomen, haphazard with random nodules and aberrant wart-like clusters of malformed hard tissue.
He drags his eyes to the bulging, monstrous head, larger than any creature’s he has seen before. More cables intersect with ichor-dribbling apertures, either side of a ridge of flanges running along the crest of the scalp. The mouth hangs open limply, fangs stunted and blunt, but the eyes that open slowly to regard him with malign alien intelligence are all too familiar.
It is almost too much to understand, so far outside his experience, so far from expected behaviour that he doubts his own senses for a moment. Vespesario struggles to find answers for the questions that crowd his thoughts. It is a collision of opposites, of the feral nature of the genestealer and the artisanship of the Cult Mechanicus. Hybrids bearing weapons is one thing, a fully grown genestealer patriarch meshed with human technology is something entirely different.
There is something else, something so far out of place that he had disregarded it at first.
A third eye splits the forehead of the monstrous half-mechanical genestealer. He meets its gaze for a moment and time loses all meaning.
Like ash ascending on the smoke of a pyre he is lifted up, swept from his weak body into the embrace of a loving god. Brotherhood and belonging, duty and sacrifice, these are values the brood understand. These are virtues to them.
The brood survives, and he will survive with the brood. Others will come, others like the first that were taken and others like him. They will come to be part of the brood also and know the infinite satisfaction of belonging.
It has happened before and will happen again. Timeless, the brood continues, luring in the curious and the dutiful, taking them unto itself to sustain the brood for another generation.
Vespesario has feared nothing since he survived the deserts and came to the people of the Blood. Not death on the battlefield, not injury or torment. Bodily dread is impossible to him, but as he witnesses the eternal life of the brood, leeching its life from those it traps, using them to steer it to more victims, he is filled w
ith a far more existential fear.
The Omen of Despair is no itinerant threat, no random visitor to worlds and systems, deposited by the vagaries of the warp. There is purpose behind its peregrination. It moves with a will, guided by the bloated creature that rules the brood, a far superior creature to any mere genestealer patriarch. This ship, the heart of the space hulk, provided something new and invigorating, something that altered the genetics and the destiny of the genestealers that had come aboard.
The third eye is all the evidence required, proof of the obscene nature of the brood’s interbreeding for a dozen generations and more.
The Navigator’s eye, a genetic mutation bred into the Navigator Houses during the Dark Age of Technology so that they could look upon the warp itself and steer a ship. Those genestrains bred into the aliens again and again through new human hosts, attempting to perfect with random mutation what ancient Terra’s scientists had constructed in laboratories, and given final form in the navigator-patriarch.
For centuries it has moved across the galaxy, emerging from the warp using the resonance of humanity’s thoughts, guided to populated worlds and drifting starships, dropping back into the warp to trap aboard those who have come to investigate and conquer. An ancient ship, a treasure vault of archeotech and lost knowledge so powerful that not even the Blood Angels would destroy it out of hand. The perfect guise, the perfect lure for adepts of the Machine God, Ecclesiarchy missionaries, Imperial servants of all ranks and divisions, ensnared by the false promise of glory and bounty.
Worse still is the glimpse of the future, the desired path of the Omen of Despair, its ultimate destination arrived at from the desires and memories of a hundred thousand victims of the brood. A planet teeming with life, billions upon billions, and at its heart a mind so powerful that it broadcasts a beacon across the galaxy. The Astronomican, light of the Emperor, the guiding path followed by Navigators for ten thousand years, entrenched into the most fundamental genetics of the brood, an imperative that drives everything they do.
Sin of Damnation - Gav Thorpe Page 12
