Ultramarines

by Graham McNeill

  Resurrect from that.

  ‘Move!’ I grabbed Daceus and we dove back inside the armourium as the corridor where we’d been standing was stitched with viridian beams.

  Hunkered down, our backs against the wall as our enemy advanced down the corridor spewing fire, Daceus handed me a primed charge.

  ‘Here…’

  I glanced at him quizzically.

  ‘One can never be too prepared.’

  ‘Even in the fortress-monastery?’

  He shrugged. In my hand, I held a krak grenade.

  I leaned out into the corridor, squeezing off a snapshot and clipping one of the bulky cannon-wielders. The necron was heavily armoured but the plasma bolt tore off its right shoulder and most of its arm. Unable to heft its weapon, it stumbled and collapsed against the corridor wall. But it was far from finished, as its self-repair protocols activated.

  Behind the first wave, three more immortal warriors lumbered into view.

  ‘There are too many.’

  Daceus fired off a bolter burst one-handed, the two of us alternating our snap-fire in an attempt to slow down our enemy. It wasn’t working.

  ‘Agreed,’ said the sergeant.

  A plan formed. I thumbed the krak grenade’s detonator, and primed it for a six-second timer.

  ‘Give me some covering fire.’

  Daceus triggered a three-round burst as I leaned out with him a fraction later and clamped the krak grenade to the wall.

  ‘Back, now!’

  We ducked back inside the armourium as a firestorm ripped through the corridor, bringing most of the ceiling down and sealing it off.

  Daceus and I were back on our feet a moment later. Outside the armourium, the dust was still settling. Chunks of debris fell from the ceiling, and where internal circuitry was exposed, wires spat and fizzed.

  Our enemies were trapped, but already the veil of darkness was beginning to coalesce again.

  Daceus raised his bolter but I seized his arm and urged him away from the rubble.

  ‘Come on. We need to gather reinforcements.’

  We had scarcely taken a few steps when the vox crackled again.

  ‘Sicarius…’ It was Agemman. His voice was strained and I heard the distinctive sounds of combat in the background. ‘We are under attack. The necrons have laid siege to the apothecarion. Lord Calgar is in danger. I don’t know how much longer we can–’

  The link was severed in a blurt of hostile static. Agemman was gone and no amount of attempts was going to raise him again.

  Like smoke on the wind, the darkness abated. It was headed elsewhere, possessed of a singular purpose.

  Grim-faced, Daceus and I set off for the apothecarion. I hoped to Guilliman we would not be too late.

  Despite the wailing alert sirens, the warning strobes and its call to arms, the Fortress of Hera was eerily empty.

  It had unnerved Daceus. ‘Where are our battle-brothers?’

  I shook my head, hurrying down the ghost-like hallways as my vox hails were met with forbidding silence.

  ‘Engaged against the necrons.’

  ‘With no word, no warning or attempt to coordinate defences?’

  Daceus was unconvinced.

  So was I.

  ‘There is no other explanation, brother-sergeant.’

  That too was a lie. I could think of one, so could Daceus, but neither of us would speak it.

  There were no further encounters with the necrons before we reached the apothecarion. Standing at the end of the short hallway to the chamber’s entrance, I realised why.

  There was no entrance. It had been entirely consumed by the veil of darkness.

  As if sentient and reacting to our sudden presence, the tendrils of night began to whip and eddy as if borne by an ethereal breeze. Twisting and uncoiling, unfurling like a ragged black cloak, the darkness came for us.

  Within its depths were the necrons.

  Three armoured warriors stomped towards us, coffin-shaped shields locked together in the manner of some ancient empire. Unlike the other necrons we had faced, these carried energised khopesh blades and were emblazoned with dynastic symbols. I knew a warrior elite when I saw it. I also knew who they were protecting.

  A one-eyed necron, not an assassin but more a vizier, cowered behind this trio of formidable guardians. Stone like lapis lazuli accented his mechanised body in long strips and a gilded beard clasp protruded from his chin. In one metal-fingered hand he carried a staff; the other clutched the tethers of the veil. Here was the architect of darkness. And it was through him we would have to go if we were to reach our stricken Chapter Master.

  As his guardians marched towards us, the vizier extended a talon in our direction.

  His voice echoed with the resonance of ages.

  ‘Defilers. Infidels. You are an inferior species, lesser in every way to the Necrontyr. Behold what your arrogance has wrought. You will have all eternity to regret it.’

  I glanced to Daceus. His bolter was aimed and ready.

  ‘Bold words. Sounds like a challenge.’

  My brother-sergeant snarled. ‘Which I gladly answer.’

  Daceus unleashed an unceasing storm of fire from his bolter. The heavy shells hammered the necron shield wall, battering the guardians back and breaking their defence. It ended with the hard thunk of the bolter’s empty magazine. Daceus dropped it, unholstering his sidearm in one hand and drawing his gladius with the other.

  I saluted our opponents with the Tempest Blade, hilt raised up to my eyes.

  ‘In the name of Ultramar, you will not stand between us and our Chapter Master.’

  Two of the vizier’s guardians yet lived. I brought my sword down preparing to engage them, when Daceus stopped me.

  ‘No, brother-captain. Kill that thing,’ he nodded towards the vizier. ‘Save Lord Calgar.’

  After a moment’s hesitation and knowing the fate my sergeant had condemned himself to, I ran down the corridor.

  One of the guardians stepped into my path but I parried its khopesh blade and thundered a kick into its lowered shield, smashing the necron aside. Hearing Daceus engage them both, and not stopping to see how he fared, I leapt at the vizier.

  The ancient necron recoiled, brandishing his staff defensively as vortices of shadow swirled around him. I watched the darkness retreat, like mist before the sun, carrying the vizier with it, clinging on like some infernal passenger. I vaulted into the air, the sword of Talassar held aloft in a two-handed grip. As the blade descended, the vizier was already fading. Cruel laughter echoed around me as I scythed through nothing, embedding my sword in the deck-plate underfoot with a resounding clang.

  But I would not be denied, and gave chase into the apothecarion. Behind me, Daceus was fighting for his life. I could not stop, or his sacrifice would mean nothing.

  With the scent of my fleeing enemy still on me, I hurried through the gaping doorway.

  The vizier had not run far, for inside the apothecarion the veil of darkness howled like a captured thunderhead. It bleached all vitality from the room and its occupants as if their very life forces were being surrendered to sustain it.

  At the eye of this storm, I saw Agemman and the survivors of Calgar’s honour guard. Two were dead already, slumped against the medi-slab where the Lord of Ultramar lay supine and unconscious.

  Venatio was nearest to him, but far from ministering to our wounded Chapter Master, he was fighting hard against a score of necrons. Like the creatures we had fought on Damnos, they wore the skins of the dead like mantles or trophies, and carried no weapons as such except for their dagger-length talons. The Damnosians had taken to calling them flayed ones.

  One turned as I entered the apothecarion, alerted to my presence by the vizier who was skulking in the background, half-smothered by shadow.

  It sprang
at me, this flesh-draped horror.

  I weaved away from its reaching claws and cut its midriff, parting abdomen and torso through its spinal column. I didn’t wait to see it dissipate – more were coming.

  I shot one with my swiftly drawn plasma pistol. The burst took it in the chest, arresting its mad leap and blasting it into the ether. I aimed at a second but one of the flayed ones slashed my forearm, tearing up the vambrace and disarming me. Sweeping the Tempest Blade, I decapitated it. A third I impaled through the chest, staggering a fourth with a heavy punch. It was dazed, or rather I had forced a system reboot, and it took a few seconds for it to adjust. Long enough for me to cleave it open diagonally from shoulder to hip. It phased out in a flurry of sparks.

  My efforts had got me as far as the medi-slab.

  Calgar’s recumbent form looked frighteningly still and I tried to tell myself he yet drew breath.

  Some eighteen necrons had been struck down around us. Several had phased out, but the rest were currently self-repairing. In the encroaching veil of darkness, I saw more viridian balefires flicker into life as the vizier summoned yet more warriors.

  For Agemman’s benefit, I aimed my sword at the vizier.

  ‘We need to end that thing.’

  The other defenders’ bolters had run dry of ammunition long before and the First Captain had taken up one of the fallen Ultramarines’ relic blades in preference to his ceremonial gladius. The remaining honour guard wielded power axes, whilst Apothecary Venatio had his chainsword.

  ‘How do you propose we do that?’ Agemman gestured to the necron horde that had just redoubled in size. A ring of steel stood between us and the vizier.

  There was but a few seconds’ respite to form a strategy before the flayed ones would be on us again.

  ‘With courage and honour, Severus. He won’t escape this time. Make me a breach with your warriors, and I’ll pierce whatever passes for a heart in this thing.’

  ‘What of Lord Calgar?’

  Venatio spoke up. ‘I’ll stay by the Chapter Master’s side.’

  Agemman glanced back at me.

  ‘If this fails, you’ll be overwhelmed.’

  I nodded. ‘Aye, but you always said I was reckless.’

  I heard the smirk in his response. He summoned the honour guard and prepared to open the gap I needed.

  Self-repairing, several of the necrons jerked back to their feet. Their jaws clacked as if laughing, and they sliced their talons against one another in anticipation of the kill. For machines, they displayed an unnerving awareness of malice.

  I lowered my sword, looking down the blade as I adopted a ready stance.

  ‘Cut deep…’

  Leading the honour guard, Agemman charged the necrons.

  The sudden attack briefly stunned the horde and for a few seconds they reeled against the First Captain’s fury. Agemman used his bulk and strength to break the flayed ones apart, ignoring the claws that raked his armour.

  He roared, cutting a necron down with every sweep of his borrowed relic blade.

  ‘Courage and honour!’

  Through the flurry of power axes, I saw mechanised limbs fall in a metal rain. Torsos were hacked apart, heads cleaved. Like their captain, the honour guard were brutal. Relentless. My warrior’s heart thundered with pride to witness such unstinting determination and bravery.

  Like a speartip they had driven deep into the flayed ones, forcing a channel that thrust all the way to vizier. Embattled on every side, Agemman cried out and with one last effort made the breach I needed.

  ‘Do it, Sicarius… Now!’

  The distance was short, my passage blocked only by broken necrons underfoot.

  I fixed the singular orb of the vizier with a glare that promised retribution.

  ‘For Ultramar!’ I declared, my fury unstoppable. ‘Here you die!’

  As I reached my enemy, I sprang into a shallow leap using it to gain loft and additional momentum. Holding nothing back, I struck down one-handed putting every iota of strength I possessed into the blow. My Tempest Blade cut the staff in half and carried on without pause into the vizier’s skull. I split him down the middle, bifurcating his cyclopean eye, and did not stop until I had sheared him clean through. Both halves collapsed in a frenzy of flashing sparks and thrashing wires. The vizier phased out before they even hit the ground.

  Triumphant, I turned to Agemman.

  The darkness was receding, my plan had succeed–

  Agemman was down, parted from his relic blade. The three honour guard were strewn around him, slain. Venatio lay sprawled on his back. The Apothecary was unmoving.

  Calgar was alone, unconscious and undefended on the medi-slab.

  As I saw the thing that loomed above him, I realised it would be his mortuary slab instead.

  My sword felt loose and heavy in my grasp. I scarcely had breath to speak.

  ‘No…’

  An old enemy turned to regard me and in its fathomless gaze I saw the fall of empires and the terrible entropy of ages.

  It had returned. The gilded king, my nemesis, the Undying of Damnos.

  ‘I am doom.’

  As the darkness closed in around me and I drowned again, I saw its war-scythe held over Calgar in an executioner’s grip. There was no pity in his eyes, no mercy, not even malice, just a deep abiding ennui that presaged an end to all things.

  The ice came back, crusting the ground and shawling my body in a sudden snowfall. Beneath it, I heard the beating heart that quaked the very earth.

  I gasped, but breath wouldn’t come. Black spots flecked my sight, converging at the edge of my vision. I raged but knew I was dying. My gauntleted fingers slipped from the sword’s hilt and I heard it clatter uselessly to the ground.

  I fell to one knee, then all fours.

  Crawling, still defiant, I felt the scrape of talons pinning me as the flayed ones swarmed over me, swallowing me in a sea of cold metal. Something seized my face and then a hand clamped around my neck. A blade pierced my shoulder, another in my back and I was steadily transfixed.

  Powerless, I could only watch as the war-scythe descended…

  As the veil of darkness claimed me, I heard far away voices but dismissed them as nostalgic memory. I had died on Damnos and come back, but there was no returning from this.

  A dense ball of white heat flared in my side prompting a gout of hot fluid to erupt from my throat, spewing up over my lips in a coppery wash. I spat it out, retching up the blood–

  No… it wasn’t blood. It was the briny, amniotic soup of the revivification casket I could taste in my mouth.

  I opened my eyes and found I was cocooned by a viscous recuperating gel.

  Had I survived? Were the voices I heard real after all? Did Daceus yet live and muster reinforcements?

  My mind overloaded with uncertainty, and with my senses restored I hammered a fist against the inside of the casket. My rebreather had come loose and I was drowning in this filth.

  The locking mechanism disengaged and I fell forwards onto the apothecarion floor as the revivification casket opened with a blurted warning chime.

  On my knees, coughing up the amniotic brine that had saved my life and kept it tethered to the world, I looked up into the eyes of my Apothecary.

  I could scarcely believe what they were telling me.

  ‘Venatio?’

  He nodded respectfully, fashioning a warm smile. ‘Brother-captain. Welcome back to the world of the–’

  ‘You’re alive…’ Staggering, I got to my feet. I was sweating with the intense biological rigours my body had just undertaken and was still a little unsteady. Venatio went to assist me but I held him back with my outstretched palm.

  ‘And so are you, Sicarius. You were badly injured and have only just–’

  I interrupted for a second time. ‘Injured
where? Here, in the fortress-monastery?’

  Something wasn’t right. An odd sense of recollection, a very mortal experience described as dèja vu, that which is ‘seen already’, was affecting me. I remembered the chronometric device utilised by the assassin, how it had blurred time and I wondered if I was somehow trapped in it.

  ‘Damnos.’ Venatio’s eyes narrowed. He was already consulting his bio-scanner, as if their readers could provide some clue to my sudden distemper. ‘You were struck down on Damnos, several weeks ago in fact. You have just this moment come back to consciousness.’

  I gazed around the apothecarion, at the shadows at its periphery, but saw no veil of darkness, no hidden foes this time.

  ‘I was drowning…’

  Venatio bowed his head, abruptly contrite. ‘Apologies, brother-captain. Your rebreather came loose towards the end of suspended animation. You appeared to be experiencing some form of nightmare. It’s not uncommon. So close to revival, I couldn’t interrupt the process to wake you or replace the rebreather. It was inactive for but a few seconds.’

  I was shaking my head.

  ‘But this is… it’s impossible.’

  The Apothecary showed his hands in a placatory gesture. ‘You are here. You are back with us. What is your name?’

  I frowned, incredulous. ‘My name?’

  ‘Yes. What is it?’

  ‘Cato Sicarius. I am master of my senses, Venatio.’

  ‘You do not seem it.’ Agemman stepped from the shadows, just as he had before.

  ‘Severus…’ Another apparition. ‘I saw you fall.’

  The First Captain opened his arms as physical testament to his veracity. ‘I am standing before you now, Cato.’ He disengaged the locking clamps on his battle-helm and removed it, placing it in the crook of his arm. ‘Brother.’ He came over and put his hand on my shoulder. This scarred veteran of the Tyrannic Wars, hair shorn close to his scalp, service studs gleaming in his brow, was trying to reassure me as one battle-brother to another.