Grey Knights: Sons of Titan

by David Annandale

  The electrical explosion incinerated the orks surrounding Gared and hit him like a maglev train. His psychic hood flared nova as it sought to neutralise the blast. He seized it, rode the crest of its exterminating power. He would not be dishonoured by such a blow. There was fire in his head, and shrieking white noise. The world around him, rotting and convulsed by disease, vanished. He brought it back. His howl was one of rage, pure in its righteousness. The energy was on the point of vaporizing him from within as it built and built, but he would not release it, not yet, not until he worked his will and made it his shape, his servant.

  He unleashed the force, multiplied by the sorcerous exchange. It devastated the real. The materium screamed. It tore itself open before him. He spread his arms, and the wound became a maw. Between him and the advancing orks there was a devouring nothing. The greenskins fell into the jerking, twitching barrier. The warp took them. It ended them, consuming existence.

  Gared turned from the rift and began to climb the slope of the rubble, towards the bridge. After a second, the wound healed itself with a severing snap. He glanced down and saw limbs fall to the ground.

  The warlord pointed at him, shouting. The orks within earshot started firing at him. Two of them raised rocket launchers. The first missile hit the rubble just to his right. The blast pried at him with wind, flame and shrapnel. He had sunk his fingers into the rotten stone, and hung on. Before the second ork could fire, Styer burst through the scrum of orks surrounding him. He sent a bolter shell through the skull of the rocketeer. The greenskin squeezed the trigger convulsively as it died. The missile went low and wild. Its explosion sent ork body parts flying.

  ‘We have you covered, brother,’ Styer voxed to him. ‘Climb hard. I will follow.’

  Gared didn’t look down again. He placed his faith in his brothers, as they did in him. He had to reach the bridge.

  He climbed fast, but others had been faster. The creation of the daemonic tunnel had shaken loose the orks as they had been within reach of the doors. The survivors had recovered, and the door fell to xenos grenades while he was still a few metres from the top. Along with the orks, the advance symptoms of the plague host streamed in. Nurglings scrabbled along the walls and the ridges of the fallen floor. They were fast, bloated insects. As they crossed the threshold onto the bridge, the voice from the depths spoke again.

  ‘One. The one gift. No other. I will know its promise.’

  And from the battlefield, that monotone chant of the Plaguebearers took on a new significance for Gared. It was a count of one. With that realization, he began to hear it differently. He did not know whether it was the chant or his perception that had altered. The chant was condensing into syllables, into a name. The name of the gift.

  He hauled himself up the rest of the way. Styer was a just a few metres behind him, alternating hands as he climbed, blasting orks and nurglings with his storm bolter. Gared ran onto the bridge, and into the domain of nightmare.

  The walls, the ceiling and the floor of the bridge were consumed by leprosy. The engravings of the vault had lost definition. The lines of the pillars at the four corners of the bridge had softened. White marble and gold were turning a fungal grey. Only the holy weapon that Gared had come to retrieve was untouched by the rot. Massive, unmoving, impassive, it waited for him, while everything around it fell to ruin.

  The defenders of the bridge were all mortals: the crew and two squads of warrior acolytes. Easy prey for the orks. Plentiful prey for the plague. The orks were butchering the acolytes when Gared arrived. A few of the humans were still fighting. Just a few, and these most determined would be dead before the greenskins reached them. When the doors had been breached, the disease had rushed in, pervasive as a cloud, quick as despair. The bridge was covered in bodies twisted into the perfection of agony.

  Gared remembered the warped skeleton in the Mehnert tomb.

  The chanted name crystallised: bonewrack. The unleashing of the plague was celebration and baptism.

  Montgelas had collapsed before the oculus. A laspistol still dangled from his fingers, which had curled backwards through the trigger guard. He had two profiles at once. His eyes and nose faced left. His jaw faced right. His skull was not broken, though, because he was still drawing breath, still opening his mouth to scream. His spine, arms and legs bent and rippled. Every bone in his body had been warped, and was warping, would go on warping until the pain killed him.

  The rest of the crew were the same. The plague was fast, but there was no mercy in its speed, only intensity. Lying on the floor, draped over work stations, even sitting because their deformations kept them vertical, the crew members had become arabesques of death. The acolytes’ flak armour snapped ribs and arms as it resisted the pressure of their change.

  The orks, unaffected, began to lose interest in the slaughter as the humans ceased fighting. They turned their attention to the great prize that stood in the centre of the bridge. The device had the silhouette of a headless Grey Knight. It was three times the height of the orks. Unclean xenos hands reached out to claim the Dreadknight.

  Gared opened fire. A few seconds later, so did Styer. They annihilated the greenskins and purged the bridge of the nurglings that cavorted over the writhing bodies. Before they were done, the rest of the squad had reached the bridge. They held the entrance, hammering shells into the orks and daemons.

  Inside the bridge, the war paused for a few moments.

  Gared eyed the tormented mortals. He regretted that there was neither the time nor the ammunition to spare to grant them peace.

  Worse than his regret was the sick conviction in his gut.

  ‘So this is the result of Orbiana’s great work,’ Styer said. ‘We were too late to stop her madness.’

  ‘No,’ said Gared. ‘To the contrary. We were precisely on time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  As he walked towards the Dreadknight, Gared spread his arms to take in the whole of the bridge. ‘We have done this,’ he said. ‘This is our work.’ Fear was alien to him. So was despair. But he did know horror, and he was learning of its full richness in this moment.

  Approaching the bridge, the rising chant of bonewrack, bonewrack, bonewrack.

  And the voice again, the giant, vessel-shaking, plague-speaking voice that claimed a dread familiarity: ‘Are your there, kin of Thawn? This day is long enough in coming!’

  ‘Our work,’ Gared repeated. He placed his hand against one massive leg of the Dreadknight. He wondered if atonement was possible.

  The voice. The terrible voice. The voice that should not be, shouting its commands throughout the ship. Brauner cried out when he heard it. He clutched his head, trying to squeeze out the worms.

  The great wave came. The deck rose. It crested. Bulkheads broke away. Walls tumbled in foam. On all fours, Brauner clutched at the floor and rode the storm. The ship changed around him, and under him. It tossed him. It battered him. He had no firm purchase, and he slid. He grabbed the first edge his hands found and hung on, and after a few seconds the storm subsided. He stayed prone for several minutes, unsure of where he was. The strange softness beneath his fingers couldn’t be the ship, could it?

  It was, though. And the Scouring Light still had power. A few lumen strips in his vicinity had survived. When he raised his head to look around, he saw that he was still on the lower deck. The ceiling was buckled, and the floor was warped. The greater changes had carried on above him, though. He had the impression that a huge blow had travelled diagonally upwards. He had just missed being caught in its path.

  He stood with difficulty. Nothing was broken, but his body was a bag of exhausted pain. He almost reached to steady himself against a wall but snatched his hand back at the last moment. He wavered, undecided for a few more moments, then continued down the same path. He was heading towards the greater damage. He had no reason to choose this route over another. It was, though,
the closest thing he still had to a purpose. He hadn’t heard any orks near him for a few minutes. But there were other sounds. He thought he heard shuffling, mutterings, the scuttling of wet insects. The ship was turning into something that belonged in the myths of frightened children. His faith demanded that he reject the conclusion his terror had reached.

  He found that he could not.

  As chastisement, as duty, he moved deeper into the twisted bow region of the Scouring Light.

  The noises of horrors remained above him. There didn’t seem to be anything at the same level. Then, around the buckled remains of the next intersection, he heard something heavy being dragged. Lasrifle at the ready, he rounded the corner. From the shadows came a shape, pulling itself along the deck. It was long, thin and incomplete. It was draped in rags and moved with the jerkiness of a malfunctioning machine, and the relentlessness of obsession. There was blood and flesh on one side of the struggling machine.

  As he paused, uncertain, the thing lifted its head. It had a face, bisected between the machinic and the organic. The bronze visage was still intact, a stained idol of judgement. Bone showed through the flesh on the other side. Some of the wounds were too neat. Brauner recognised the work of Orbiana’s strange gun. His finger tightened on his rifle’s trigger.

  Then he saw the pendant dangling from the being’s neck. It was the same rosette that Orbiana had brandished. The same absolute authority whose name Brauner knew better than to ask.

  He had overheard the Grey Knights mention a name. He spoke it now. ‘Hadrianna Furia?’ he whispered.

  The apparition nodded. She gestured at her throat. He understood that she could not speak. Shouldering his rifle, he moved forward and bent to help her. The density of her augmetic limbs made her heavier than she appeared, but he managed to get her upright. Her right leg was injured, but with his aid was able to support weight. She could walk, slowly.

  ‘I’ll take you to…’ He trailed off. Take her where? There were no rear lines.

  Furia pointed. Her remaining arm, bronze like her face, was a rigid, commanding sign.

  Brauner nodded that he understood. They began to make their way back towards the stern, one dragging step at a time. Above them, the sounds of battle and madness grew worse.

  And that voice, that terrible voice. It kept coming. With every syllable it uttered, reality decayed.

  ‘Blasphemy,’ Vohnum said.

  The exclamation was curt, an instinctive reaction to Gared’s statement. Styer also heard surprise and puzzlement in his tone. Of course there was. True blasphemy was as foreign a concept to the Grey Knights as contemplation was to the orks. But what Gared had said must have been incomprehensible to Vohnum’s way of thinking.

  Styer wished it was to his. He wished he didn’t see the dark, inexorable logic of events taking shape before his mind’s eye. He watched Gared kneel before the Dreadknight. The Epistolary crossed his arms over his chest and whispered a prayer of greeting before he climbed the adamantium-alloy leg and began the process of putting himself in the harness.

  Styer said, ‘The relic that Orbiana brought back…’

  ‘As dangerous as we thought,’ Gared confirmed.

  ‘We did the right thing,’ Vohnum said. He, Borsam and Gundemar had formed a barrier in the doorway. They fired at every daemon and ork that approached. Ardax and Tygern, in the rank behind, moved forward to fire as their brothers reloaded. They were living fortifications. They would not be enough when the main force arrived.

  ‘Yes,’ Gared said. ‘We did the right thing.’ The command harness clamps came down over his shoulders, fixing his torso in place. ‘And in doing that right thing, we forced Inquisitor Orbiana into a corner. Clearly, she made a desperate attempt, which has ended in disaster.’

  ‘You think that if we had left her to her devices, her safeguards might have been sufficient?’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. But we made certain that her safeguards were not sufficient when she proceeded regardless.’

  ‘This is speculative,’ Vohnum objected.

  ‘When I was in the mausoleum,’ Gared said, ‘I found a ring with hexagrammic encoding. Touching it destroyed it. The daemonic probe I fought was blocked until then. It must have been seeking since the death of Mehnert, since his body was distorted after death. The relic must have been calling it. But it lacked direction until I broke those wards.’

  The complete pattern unveiled itself to Styer. It was as sickening as if it had been an actual plague. And maybe it was. ‘Because we came, Orbiana’s departure from the system was delayed,’ he said. ‘The kroozer and the second wave of ships are here only because we are. If not for us, Orbiana would have found her relic and extracted her forces.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, just one, the single wince he would permit himself. ‘We brought the orks. We held the Scouring Light here. We created the circumstances in which a desperate, foolhardy risk was taken.’

  ‘This nexus of events could only occur at these coordinates,’ Gared said softly.

  Styer surprised himself with a harsh rasp of bitter laughter. ‘Brother Vohnum,’ he said, ‘you are vindicated. The prognostication was accurate. A daemonic incursion was foretold to occur in this region, and now it has. We made sure of it.’

  Vohnum said nothing. He kept shooting.

  ‘Is this where prognostication takes us?’ Styer asked Gared. ‘To fulfil our own prophecies? If we had ignored the prognosticators, would the incursion never have happened?’

  ‘We could never have ignored the warning,’ Gared said. His preparations were almost complete. Once the Dreadknight’s mechadendrites connected to his synaptic implants, he and the huge framework would be one. He would have a new body.

  ‘You’re right, brother,’ Styer agreed. ‘We must always act on the warning.’ To do otherwise was treasonous. Heretical. Unthinkable. But he was faced with something worse than his earlier doubts. He had mistrusted what had appeared to be inconsistencies and nonsensical aspects of the prognostication. Now they were all explained. And what did this mean? That the Grey Knights were the puppets of fate? That they were destined forever to fight daemonic threats that arose because of their own actions?

  He could not accept that.

  Gared saw where his thoughts had taken him. ‘I am the pilot of the Dreadknight,’ he said. ‘I move its limbs. It does not move mine.’

  ‘Your wisdom gives us hope, Brother-Epistolary,’ he said. ‘It is time we destroyed the enemy’s hope.’

  ‘How does the daemon know us?’ Borsam asked.

  ‘We shall demand that answer of it,’ Styer said. ‘We will rip it from the fiend’s throat.’ The question was a good one. Dark answers occurred to the justicar, answers shaped by the pattern he had confronted. He would not countenance them yet. If they were false, he would not give them power. If they were true, he would learn that only as he destroyed the foe that awaited him.

  To Gared, he said, ‘Are you prepared, brother?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then begin.’

  Styer strode towards the entrance. His questions were wounds. He would withstand them. They did not change the honour of the battle in which his squad was engaged. A great evil had erupted here. It intended to blight the Imperium. Destroying this threat gave meaning to Styer’s existence.

  Behind him, Gared intoned, ‘Awake. The Emperor calls upon thee, oh Dreadknight. The Imperium calls upon thee. I call upon thee, and I offer my body and my soul to thee. Be the fire of my limbs. I shall be the fire of your heart. Lend me your strength and fortitude, and I shall reward thee with righteous purpose.’ The bridge filled with the deep, powerful hum of the Dreadknight’s plasma reactor coming to life, filling its warrior heart with anger.

  Gared’s prayer was a call to duty for Styer too. Strength and purpose. Faith. They were the iron of the Grey Knights. They resided in him. They resided in his brothers. A
s the moment of great battle loomed, his doubts and questions faded before the vital elements of his being. They would return, but they meant nothing now. He lived for the righteous war against the Ruinous Powers, and here their minions came to feel his wrath.

  They would pay for his doubts. They would bleed for his questions. And their master, whatever foul being it was, would suffer tenfold for the answer to the questions – the answer that Styer pushed to the back of his mind, that he would not countenance until the threat was vanquished.

  Renewed by prayer, fuelled by anger, Justicar Styer moved a single step past his brothers. He stood at the edge of the shattered deck. He looked down at the spectacle of the xenos filth and daemonic obscenity battling with each other, at the rising tide of enemies now within striking distance of the bridge.

  Behind him, Gared shouted, ‘In the name of the Emperor!’

  The Dreadknight took its first booming step.

  The furnace of war raging in his heart, Styer voxed Warheit and Saalfrank. ‘Restrict your fire to the defence of the Tyndaris. Allow the orks unrestricted access to the Scouring Light.’

  Warheit acknowledged. Saalfrank asked, ‘Justicar?’

  ‘There is much here to keep them occupied,’ Styer told him. To his squad he said, ‘Let the foes tear each other apart. We will pass through them as a scythe and send their leader shrieking back to the immaterium.’