Void Stalker

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Talos’s skulled helm snapped around to face the pilot. ‘Will you shut your mouth and just get us into the void?’

  ‘The engines are choking with ash. I told you this would happen. We’re not going to clear orbit.’

  ‘Try.’

  In the same moment, more tracer fire zipped across their prow, tinnily hammering into the gunship’s nose. Half of the control console went dark.

  ‘Hold on,’ Sar Zell muttered, an ocean of bizarre calm.

  The Thunderhawk banked in a hard roll, driving them all against their restraint thrones. The shaking – already brutal – magnified tenfold. Something burst outside on the hull with a rattle of metal.

  ‘Primary engines are dead,’ said Sar Zell.

  ‘The worst… pilot in… all of… Tenth Company…’ Cyrion managed to vox through the crushing gravitational forces.

  Talos watched the smoke cloud twisting in all directions, feeling the gunship lurch beneath him again. A second detonation was a muffled crump on the edge of hearing.

  ‘Secondary engines are dead,’ intoned Sar Zell.

  There was no single serene moment where the Thunderhawk hovered at the apex of its flight before gently beginning a plummet. They rolled and shuddered in a powerless freefall, listening to the piteous machine-scream of the ash-choked engines. Each of them was shouting over the vox to be heard, even their audio-receptors unable to filter out the storm of noise.

  ‘We’re dead in the air,’ Sar Zell called, still hauling on the levers to drag some stability back from their death-dive.

  ‘Jump packs,’ Talos shouted over the chaos.

  First Claw locked their boots to the deck and rose from their restraint thrones. Step by halting step, they made their way to the crew bay, magnetic bootsteps thumping. Loose debris crashed against their armour-plating. Xarl’s crate of replacement chain-teeth shattered on Ruven’s helm, eliciting a muttered curse over the vox.

  Talos was the first to reach the racked jump packs. He locked the harness over his shoulder guards, secured the seals to his armour, and readied to thud his armoured fist into the bay door release.

  ‘We’re going to die today,’ Cyrion voxed, sounding more amused than anything else.

  Talos hit the ramp release, and stared out into the roaring wind, choking smoke, and the horizon spinning beyond sanity.

  ‘I have an idea,’ the prophet replied with a shout. ‘But we’ll need to be careful. Follow me.’

  ‘The ash will choke our jump pack engines,’ Sar Zell called out. ‘We’ll have a minute, maybe two. Make it count.’

  Talos didn’t reply. He unlocked his boots from the deck and started running, leaping out into the burning sky.

  XIV

  COVENANT OF BLOOD

  First Claw had gathered.

  ‘When will he awaken?’ one of them asked. ‘The humans below are still in their shelters, but we should act soon.’

  ‘He will be awake within the hour. He is close to the surface now.’

  ‘His eyes are open.’

  ‘They have been for hours, yet he cannot see us. His mind is unresponsive to most external stimuli. He may be able to hear us. The analysis on that matter is inconclusive.’

  ‘You said he was going to die. He said he was going to live, but suffer pain. Which one of you is right?’

  ‘I believe he was correct. His physiology is in flux, and it may not be terminal. But the pain will destroy him over time, one way or another. And his prophetic gift is no longer reliable. There is no distinguishable brain pattern between his natural nightmares and his visions now. Whatever biological miracle, whatever mix of genetic coding bestowed the gift upon him is beginning to fade from his blood.’

  Talos smiled without smiling. He would weep no tears if he lost his foresight. Perhaps freedom would even be worth the price of pain.

  ‘We’ve sensed it for a while now, Flayer. He was wrong about Faroven on Crythe. Since then, he’s been wrong more and more often. He was wrong about Uzas killing me in the shadow of a Titan. He was wrong about all of us dying at the hands of the Eldar. Xarl’s already dead.’

  For a time, the dreamer heard no more voices. The silence seemed important somehow; bloated with tension.

  ‘His gene-seed still manipulates his body more aggressively than it should. It also ingurgitates more of his genetic memory and biological distinctiveness.’

  ‘…ingurgitates?’

  ‘Absorbs. Soaks up, if you will. His progenoid glands are receptors for the unique flaws in his genetic code. In another host, those flaws may not be flaws at all. They might make a legionary of vicious, vicious quality.’

  ‘I do not like that look in your eyes, Variel.’

  ‘You like nothing about me, Cyrion. Your thoughts on the matter are meaningless to me.’

  Once more, a pregnant silence reigned.

  ‘The Legion has always said that Tsagualsa is cursed. I feel it in my blood. We will die here.’

  ‘Now you sound like Mercutian. No jokes, Nostraman? No toothed smile to hide your own sins and instability from your brothers?’

  ‘Watch your tongue.’

  ‘You do not intimidate me, Cyrion. Perhaps this world is indeed cursed, but a curse can bring clarity. Before he fell into this slumber, Talos spoke of knowing what to do with the world beneath us. We will linger only long enough to achieve our goals. ’

  ‘I hope that you are right. He is no longer mumbling or screaming in his sleep.’

  ‘That was prophecy. This is a memory, not a vision. What was, not what will be. He dreams of the past, and the part he played within it.’

  The Ultramarines Thunderhawk shuddered on its hover jets, drifting over the fortress’s battlements in lethal serenity. Its rocket pods were empty, its squads deployed, and it hovered on-station, sweeping its bow across the fortress’s defence platforms, raking them with merciless fire from its heavy bolters. Every thirty seconds, the gunship’s spinal turbolaser discharged a beam of force, annihilating another of the weapons platforms in a bolt of blue light.

  Brother Tyrus of the Demes Collegiate saw through flickering pict-screens as the gunship moved in another hulking drift. With his gauntlets on the control levers, he forced the bolter cannons to chew through one of the last remaining servitor weapons teams still alive on the castle’s parapets.

  ‘Kill confirmed,’ he voxed to the pilot. ‘Sabre defence platform, two servitor crew.’

  Brother Gedean of the Arteus Collegiate didn’t turn from the view through the gunship’s blastshield. ‘Ammunition reserves?’ he voxed back.

  ‘Remain on-station for another six strafing runs,’ said Tyrus. ‘Advise rearmament thereafter.’

  ‘Understood,’ the pilot replied.

  There was a distinctive, undeniable bang of metal on metal from above. The pilot, co-pilot, gunner and navigator – each of them Ultramarines drawn from separate training collegiates throughout the worlds of distant Ultramar – all looked up in the same moment.

  A second thud sounded from above. Then another, and another.

  Brother Constantinus, enthroned in the navigator’s seat, drew his bolt pistol. ‘Something is–’ he began, though he was interrupted by two more thuds on the ceiling above. The thuds made their way down the side of the hull in a feral, hurried drumbeat.

  Constantinus and Remar, the co-pilot, disengaged their throne-locks at once, moving from the flight deck and descending via crew ladder into the loading bay.

  As soon as they entered, they were greeted by the sight of the external bulkhead being wrenched from its hinges with a tearing whine of abused metal. The crash and boom of the siege poured in with the air outside, and the enemy came in with it.

  ‘Emergency boarding protocol,’ Brother Remar voxed to Gedean in the cockpit above. The Thunderhawk immediately started to climb, boosting high on angry eng
ines. Remar and Constantinus kept their backs to the crew ladder, raising their weapons.

  The first thing to enter was a broken chainaxe, the adamantine teeth snarled into ruin by chewing through the bulkhead hinges. It crashed onto the deck, tossed inside with casual abandon. The second thing to enter was a warrior of the Eighth Legion, his skull-faced helm leering through the smoke as he slid into the bay with almost serpentine desperation. The huge jump pack turbines on his back made his entrance through the bulkhead altogether less graceful.

  Constantinus and Remar opened up with their pistols, taking the warrior down even as he twisted to present his reinforced shoulder guard to protect his head. Before the first boarder had even hit the floor, others were spilling in through the hole. They came armed, their own bolters lashing back with a greater storm of fire.

  Both Ultramarines went down – Remar dead, his armour and flesh pulped against the crew ladder behind; Constantinus haemorrhaging from terminal wounds to his chest, throat and stomach.

  ‘Move, move,’ Xarl voxed. He led Uzas and Ruven up the crew ladder. Cyrion hesitated, turning back to where Talos remained crouched by their last brother. Blood and broken armour lay in a smear across the floor where Sar Zell had fallen.

  ‘He’s dead,’ the prophet said. He didn’t deploy his reductor to begin harvesting Sar Zell’s gene-seed, nor did he make any move to follow the others up the ladder to the cockpit. He remained where he was, Sar Zell’s broken helmet in his hands. Blood streaked what was left of the warrior’s face.

  Cyrion could hear the shouts and blade-grinds from above. He almost resented Talos for making him miss it.

  ‘Leave him, he said. ‘Xarl can fly the gunship.’

  ‘I know.’ Talos hauled the body to the side of the bay, leashing it with binding straps. Cyrion helped, albeit belatedly. The gunship juddered as it climbed higher.

  ‘He was a fool to go in first,’ Cyrion continued. ‘We should have sent Uzas in after he carved the door open. Then–’

  Three bolt shells hammered into Cyrion’s side, blasting armour wreckage against the bay walls with ringing resonance. The warrior staggered back with a pained cry across the vox, and crashed against the bulkhead’s edges before falling from the gunship.

  The dying Brother Constantinus still held the empty bolt pistol in a trembling hand. He clicked the trigger three more times, aiming at the remaining Night Lord. In reply, Talos rammed his chainsword through the Ultramarine’s spine, letting the teeth chew through everything they could find to bite. For what it was worth, Constantinus died in bitter, angry silence, never once howling in pain.

  ‘Cyrion,’ he voxed as he tore his sword free. ‘Cyrion?’

  ‘I can’t… He hit my jump pack,’ was the hissed reply.

  Talos ran to the sundered bulkhead, gripped the edges, and hurled himself out into the sky again.

  Xarl’s voice crackled in his helmet mic. ‘Did you just–’

  ‘Yes.’ Talos’s retinal display flickered as he fell, the runes cycling as they recorded his dropping altitude. Responding to his fevered attention, his target lock pinpointed the tiny figure of Cyrion, detailing a host of life sign bio-data in Nostraman runic script. Talos ignored it, and fired the turbines on his back. He just wasn’t falling then, but powering towards the ground. The fortress, faint behind a gauzy veil of smoke, lurched closer as the thrusters kicked harder. He ignored the landspeeders and gunships raging over the battlements.

  Nearer now, he could see Cyrion’s jump pack flaring with sparks and false thrust. A Thunderhawk in the green of the Aurora Chapter heaved past, unconcerned with such small targets as it strafed the battlements.

  And still, Cyrion tumbled through the smoke. The ground surged up to meet them. Too fast, far too fast.

  ‘I thank you…’ Cyrion grunted, ‘…for making the attempt.’

  ‘Brace,’ Talos warned, and his straining engines gave another coughing burst of thrust, propelling him downward. Three seconds later, they collided in mid-air, ceramite screeching as they crashed together.

  Their contact was utterly devoid of grace. Talos smashed into his brother, his gauntleted fingers scrabbling for purchase, at last clutching Cyrion by the shoulder guard. The other Night Lord reached up, and their hands slammed closed, gripping one another’s wrists.

  Talos focused on shifting his thrust, forcing the jump pack’s antigravitic suspensors to prime along with the adjusted turbines. It made little difference. The two of them tumbled through the sky together, slowed by Talos’s jump engines. The thruster pack – despite the archaic design better designed for sustained flight – was already straining from its journeys through the ash storm and clouds of smoke. Talos had the briefest moment of selfish panic: he could let go and save himself dying in a smear across the Tsagualsan dust plains. None of the others would know.

  ‘Drop me,’ Cyrion voxed, his lightning-streaked helm facing up to his brother.

  ‘Shut up,’ Talos voxed back.

  ‘This will kill us both.’

  ‘Shut up, Cy.’

  ‘Talos…’

  They plunged into another column of smoke, the runic numbers on the prophet’s retinal altitude chiming red. In the same moment, Cyrion released his grip. Talos clutched harder, cursing in breathless anger.

  ‘Drop me,’ Cyrion said again.

  ‘Lose… the… jump pack…’

  Cyrion restored his grip with a curse that mirrored his brother’s a moment before. With his free hand, he disengaged the seals that bound the boosters to his backpack. As the turbines fell free, the lessened weight pulled them from their freefall.

  Slowly, much too slowly, they began to rise.

  ‘We’re going to be shot to pieces,’ Cyrion voxed, ‘even if your engines don’t fail in the ash.’

  The prophet struggled to keep them steady as they ascended, his gaze ticking back and forth between the burning sky above and the thrust gauge at the edge of his vision. Gunships and land speeders slashed past, some zipping by hundreds of metres away, others roaring by much closer. Wake turbulence threw the brothers around, buffeting them in the air as an armoured landspeeder sliced past, almost close enough to touch.

  ‘They’re coming back,’ Cyrion voxed.

  Talos spared a glance over his shoulder. Cyrion was right; the speeder banked into a skyborne swerve, racing to come about on an attack run.

  ‘No one deserves our luck,’ Talos said, for the second time in less than an hour. He fired at the swooping craft despite its distance, the bolter shells going wide in the wind. It bore down on them, turbines howling, the underslung multi-barrelled assault cannon already spinning, winding up to fire.

  Tracer fire slashed from above in a flaming hail. The speeder jinked, evading the first streams of the sudden barrage, but the falling firepower shattered through the craft’s hull with explosive force.

  Trailing fire, the speeder’s wreckage hurtled past the defenceless Night Lords, screaming on its way to the ash plains below.

  An Ultramarines Thunderhawk darkened the sky before them, its bulky, active engines causing the air itself to throb. Slowly, the forward gangramp started to lower, a vulture’s beak opening to shriek.

  ‘Are you finished?’ voxed Xarl. ‘Can we get the hell out of here now?’

  Once they cleared the ash cloud, the true scale of the invasion force became agonisingly apparent. Talos leaned forward in the co-pilot’s throne, watching the sky twist from clouds of fire to become a heaven of stars and steel. Next to him, Xarl gave a soft curse.

  The void above Tsagualsa was wretched with enemy vessels, cruisers and barges of standardised classes, deadlocked in the sky with the Legion’s remaining fleet. The Imperial Space Marine fleet dwarfed the Night Lords’ in numbers and scope, but the Legion’s primary warships eclipsed the loyalists’ vessels in size by vast degrees. Smaller cruisers ringed the Legion battleship
s, trading fire against rippling, iridescent void shields.

  ‘The Codex Astartes in action,’ Ruven smirked. ‘Surrendering their largest and finest warships to the newborn Imperial Navy. I pray that today the Thirteenth learn a lesson in whoring away their most potent firepower to lesser men.’

  Talos didn’t take his eyes from the fleet engagement filling the heavens. ‘The Codex Astartes was responsible for our fortress falling in the most brutally efficient assault I have seen since the Siege of Terra,’ he said quietly. ‘I would watch your tongue until you’re certain we will survive this, brother. The Navy will be blockading the system’s outer reaches, one way or another.’

  ‘As you say,’ Ruven conceded with an unpleasant smile in his voice. ‘Find the Covenant, Xarl.’

  Xarl was already watching the gunship’s primitive hololithic auspex display. Hundreds of runes conflicted across its surface.

  ‘I think it’s gone. The Exalted must have run.’

  ‘A fact that will surprise none of us,’ Cyrion remarked from the navigator’s seat. The bodies of the dead Ultramarines pilot and gunner lay at his feet, where Xarl, Uzas and Ruven had dumped them. Uzas watched the others, saying nothing, his finger occasionally squeezing the trigger of his chainaxe, causing the teeth to chew air.

  ‘That is Sar Zell’s axe,’ Talos said.

  ‘Sar Zell is dead,’ Uzas replied. ‘Now it is my axe.’

  Talos turned back to the scene beyond the cockpit windshield. Xarl abandoned any false hope of keeping his distance from the battle, taking the gunship through the drifting hulks and doing his best to veer around any storms of battery fire.

  ‘This is First Claw, Tenth Company, to any Legion ships taking survivors.’

  A dozen immediately voices crackled back, all asking after Talos. Some were concerned for his safety; the others earnestly appealing that he lie dead in the fortress below.

  ‘Oh,’ Ruven chuckled without any amusement, ‘to be one of the Night Haunter’s Chosen.’