Hammer and Bolter 9

by Christian Dunn

  ‘Agreed,’ said Sarpedon. ‘We must make good time.’

  ‘If we find Iktinos, commander, what will we do?’

  Sarpedon raised an eyebrow. ‘Kill him,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

  The atmosphere of real battlefields clung thickly to the recreation. It was not just the bullet scars from live-fire exercises on the forests, ruined villages, jungles and alien environments wrought from flak-board and steel. It was the echo of all the imaginary wars that had been fought there, battles which had their own echo in the real bloodshed the Imperial Fists trained there later encountered. The skills they learned there served them well, or failed them, in the depths of war on Emperor-forsaken alien worlds, and the traces of those desperate times clung to the mock fortifications like a freezing mist.

  ‘Contact!’ came a vox from up ahead.

  ‘Close in!’ ordered Salk. ‘Cover and report targets!’

  Ahead was the recreation of a village ruined by shellfire, craters moulded into the floor sections and the blank, broken walls featureless save for the empty eyes of windows and doorways. A building in the shape of a chapel, its walls devoid of sculpture, dominated the centre of the village with its bell tower tailor-made for snipers. Sarpedon scuttled into the shell of a mock house, crouching down on his haunches by a doorway. Sarpedon couldn’t see most of Salk’s squad, spread out and in cover as they were, but he knew they were there.

  At the far end of the mock village, Reinez walked into plain view. The Crimson Fist’s armour still had the filth and scorching of battle, and in the quiet he jangled with the many icons and seals hanging from him. He looked just as Sarpedon had left him in the lab, battered and bruised, but with none of his fires dimmed.

  ‘Sarpedon!’ called Reinez. ‘I know you are here, you and your traitors. I think we left some business undone when last we met!’

  ‘Orders, commander?’ voxed Salk quietly.

  ‘Hold,’ replied Sarpedon.

  ‘We could take him down.’

  ‘You have my orders. Hold fire.’

  Reinez walked forwards to the town square in the shadow of the church. ‘Well?’ he shouted. He had his hammer in his hand, and scowled at the ruins as he searched out the purple of Soul Drinkers armour. ‘Do not tell me you care nothing for the fate of Reinez! You took my standard, you humiliated me, you cast me out from my own Chapter with your treachery! How can you do all this and yet let me live?’

  Sarpedon stood up from his cover and walked into the open, his talons clicking on the hard deck sections. Reinez watched him coldly, wordlessly.

  Sarpedon took the Axe of Mercaeno in one hand. ‘This need not happen,’ said Sarpedon. ‘We are both Space Marines. For one to shed another’s blood is heresy.’

  ‘You speak of heresy?’ barked Reinez. ‘You, who have already slain so many of my brothers? There has not been enough Adeptus Astartes blood spilled yet for my liking. A few drops more and then it will be done.’

  ‘Reinez, I have no quarrel with you here. I seek one of my own, the one who has orchestrated all that you have railed against. It is he who deserves all your hate, just as he deserves mine. If you truly want revenge for what happened to your brothers then let me pass or join me, but please, do not stand in my way.’

  ‘You knew it would not end any way but the two of us to the death,’ said Reinez. ‘You knew that from the moment a Crimson Fist fell to a Soul Drinker’s hand. Fate will not let us go and it will kill one of us before either walks away.’

  Sarpedon let out a long breath. ‘Then that is the way it must be,’ he said. ‘You have argued for a reckoning since you arrived on the Phalanx. You will have it, if that is what you truly want.’

  Reinez crouched down into a guard, hammer haft held across his body. He flexed and bounced on his calves, judging distance and winding up for the strike.

  Sarpedon knew that Salk’s squad had all their guns trained on Reinez. They would not fire. Perhaps they would if Reinez killed Sarpedon, but by then it would not matter.

  Reinez darted forwards, faster than Sarpedon remembered him moving. Sarpedon whirled and swung the Axe of Mercaeno around, slamming the head into Reinez’s side. He discharged a blast of psychic power through the force blade and though Reinez caught the worst of the blow on the haft of his hammer, the explosive force was enough to throw him from his feet and into the flakboard side of the fake church. The wall buckled under his weight, but Reinez rolled to his feet and swung his hammer at ankle height as Sarpedon charged to follow up.

  Sarpedon leapt up. He scuttled along the wall, talons clinging to the flakboard.

  Reinez tried to get his bearings, unused to fighting an enemy who could climb walls like a spider.

  ‘Now!’ yelled Reinez. ‘Now! Fire! Fire!’

  From every direction, bolters hammered. Muzzle flashes betrayed hidden firing positions around the far side of the mock village. Bullet fire ripped into the flakboard around Sarpedon, and a flash of pain burst through one of his back legs. Sarpedon ran up the wall and onto the roof of the church, volleys of fire chewing through the church all around him. In the lee of the church tower he found a semblance of cover, the flakboard tearing apart and the tower sagging above him.

  ‘Contacts everywhere,’ voxed Salk. ‘It was a trap. Engage!’

  ‘Who are they?’ demanded Sarpedon.

  ‘It’s us,’ came Salk’s shocked reply. ‘It’s Soul Drinkers!’

  Sarpedon could glimpse purple armour among the debris and gunsmoke of the firefight erupting across the village. Iktinos’s Flock, the Soul Drinkers who were loyal to the Chaplain first and Sarpedon a distant second, whose allegiance Sarpedon had been too blind to question.

  ‘You are too honourable, Soul Drinker!’ yelled Reinez from somewhere below. ‘Too quick to give a sworn enemy a fair fight! Now it will be the death of you all!’

  Reinez clambered up the wall and vaulted onto the roof. Sarpedon lunged and the two fought, axe and hammer flashing, blows parried and driven aside as bolter fire shrieked around them. Sarpedon hacked a chunk out of Reinez’s shoulder armour. In response, Reinez stamped down on Sarpedon’s wounded leg to pin him in place and crunched the head of his hammer into Sarpedon’s chest. Sarpedon was faster than Reinez but the Crimson Fist had prepared for this fight for many years and this time he had the advantage of numbers. Iktinos’s Flock comprised many more warriors than Salk’s squad and among the Flock were those with good enough aim to pick out Sarpedon from the melee. Bolter fire slammed into the tower behind Sarpedon or sparked from his armour, knocking him back a pace or throwing him off-balance.

  Sarpedon powered forwards, a desperate move more suited to a rude brawl than a duel to the death. Forelegs and arms wrapped around Reinez, forcing him down under Sarpedon’s greater weight.

  ‘What have you done, Reinez?’ growled Sarpedon.

  ‘Iktinos promised me a chance to kill you,’ replied Reinez, voice strained as he fought to burst Sarpedon’s hold on him. ‘There was nothing else anyone could offer me.’

  ‘Iktinos is the enemy! He is the source of all this suffering.’

  ‘Then I will kill him next,’ snarled Reinez.

  Sarpedon picked up Reinez and threw him down, putting all his strength into hurling the Crimson Fist off the roof. Reinez landed badly and Salk’s return fire drove him into the cover of a ruined building adjoining the church.

  The Flock were moving across the village. More than twenty of them had survived the breakout from the Atoning Halls, double Salk’s numbers. Sarpedon recognised Soul Drinkers he had called brothers, who had been stranded when their officers were killed. Iktinos had taken them in and Sarpedon had been grateful that the Chaplain was willing to give them spiritual leadership. But Iktinos had been warping them, finding their sense of loss and turning it into something else, a devotion to the chaplain alone that meant they followed him instead of Sarpedon. The chapter master had been confronted with many results of his failures as a leader, but none of them had struck him a
s sharply as the sight of the Flock did then, moving with murderous intent across the town square to batter Salk’s squad into oblivion.

  Salk’s Soul Drinkers were falling. They were surrounded and outgunned. Salk himself leaned out from cover to fell one of the Flock, and in response a cluster of shots knocked him out of sight in a shower of blood. Sarpedon’s twin hearts felt like they were tightening in his chest, all the heat squeezed out of his body to be replaced with cold and dust.

  Sarpedon leapt down from the church into the centre of the village. He landed in the heart of the advancing Flock. Faces he had known for years, since before the first Chapter war, turned on him and saw nothing but an enemy. Sarpedon saw nothing in them any more, no brotherhood, no hope, none of the principles that had made them turn on the old Chapter’s ways. He was their enemy, and they were his. Suddenly, it seemed simple.

  Sarpedon knew the closest Soul Drinker to him was Brother Scarphinal, one of Givrillian’s squad. Givrillian had been Sarpedon’s closest confidant and best friend, and he had died on a nameless planet to the daemon prince Ve’Meth. There was nothing left of Givrillian’s command in Scarphinal now. His eyes were blank and his bolter turned towards Sarpedon without hesitation.

  Sarpedon struck Scarphinal’s head from his shoulders with a single shining arc, the Axe of Mercaeno slicing through the Space Marine’s neck so smoothly the blood had not yet begun to flow when Scarphinal’s head hit the floor.

  Something dark and prideful, a relic of the old Chapter, awakened in Sarpedon. The love of bloodshed, the exultation of battle. Sometimes, those places locked away in his mind could be useful, and it was with a strange sense of relief that he let the bloodlust take him.

  Sarpedon roared with formless anger, and dived into the carnage.

  SURVIVOR

  Steve Parker

  Bas was up and running full tilt before he even knew why. Part of his brain reacted the moment the cry went out, then his legs were moving, pounding the dusty alleyways as he flew from his pursuers.

  The first rule was simple: don’t be seen. He’d broken it only a few times since the monsters had come, and never by choice. This time, as before, it wasn’t through clumsiness. It wasn’t carelessness. It was just raw bad luck, plain and simple. He had taken all the usual precautions. He’d stuck to the shadows. He’d moved low and fast. He’d been patient and silent and constantly aware. But the monsters chasing him now, yapping and chittering joyously at the prospect of spilling his blood, had come from below. They had emerged from a sewer grate just a few metres behind him and the day’s quest for clean water was suddenly forgotten in favour of a far more pressing need.

  Bullets smacked into the alley walls on either side of him as he fled, blowing out little clouds of dust and stone chips. Some came near to ending his life, their passage close enough to whip at his filth-caked hair. That lent him an extra burst of speed, extra adrenaline to further numb the agony of his aching joints and muscles.

  Up ahead, he saw the twisted remains of a fire escape and bolted towards it. The rooftops – those were his domain. In the months since their coming, he had spent hours laying boards and planks between what was left of the town’s roofs. Up there, he moved where he pleased and saw all. He had the advantage. The big ones never went up there, and the smaller ones didn’t know the terrain like he did. The rooftops were his –control your environment and you would always be one step ahead.

  The crooked metal stairs shook and groaned as he thundered up them, heart hammering in his ears, skull pounding with accelerated blood flow. He chanced a look down and saw his pursuers, four scrawny green figures with red eyes and needle teeth. They reached the bottom of the fire escape and leapt onto it, clambering up after him.

  Bas kept on and made the roof in a few more seconds. For the briefest moment, he took stock of where he was. Here in the town’s south-west quarter, he had a few established hiding places, two of which were close by. But he couldn’t risk leading his enemies to one of his sanctuaries. He had to put some distance between them first. He could go north across the makeshift bridges he had laid weeks ago, or he could head east where the gaps between the tenements were narrow enough to leap.

  North, then. The monsters behind him could leap as far as he could. East was a bad gamble.

  He sped on across the roof, avoiding the gaps where alien artillery shells had bitten great gaping holes. He was at the far side when the first of the wiry green killers topped the fire escape and resumed shooting wildly at him. The others appeared beside it and, seeing that their guns were missing the mark, they rushed towards him.

  Eyes front, Bas told himself as he took his first hurried step out onto the twin planks. Don’t look down.

  The gap between the buildings was five metres wide. As he neared the middle, the wood sagged under him, but he knew it would hold. He had tested the strength of the wood before he laid it.

  A couple of bullets sang past his ears. He half-ran the last few steps across and leapt the final one. Behind him, his pursuers were halfway across the previous rooftop.

  Bas turned to face them. There wasn’t time to pull the planks in like he wanted to, not with his enemies wielding those scrappy, fat barrelled pistols. Instead, he kicked out at the planks and watched them tumble end-over-end to the dark alley below.

  His pursuers howled and spat in rage and opened fire. One, perhaps more reckless than the others, or perhaps with a greater bloodlust, refused to be beaten. The creature took a run up to the edge of the roof and leapt out into space. Bas was already sprinting towards the next rooftop. He didn’t see the creature plunge to its death, but he heard the chilling scream. Soon, he had left his hunters far behind, their alien cries of frustration and outrage ringing in his ears.

  He was dying.

  Maybe. Probably. He couldn’t be sure. Bas was only ten years old, and all the dying he had seen so far in this short life had been the violent, messy kind – and all of that in the last few months.

  This was different. This was a loosening of his back teeth. This was a burning in his gut on those increasingly rare occasions when he ate something solid. This was blood in his phlegm when he spat and in his stool when he made his toilet. Pounding headaches came and went, like the sharp cramps that sometimes wracked his weakening muscles.

  After his flight across the rooftops, all these symptoms came on him at once. He fought them off until he reached relative safety. Then he lay down, and the pain rolled over him like a landslide.

  Had he known any better, he would have recognised the signs of dehydration and malnourishment. As his scavenged supplies dwindled, he was forced to spread them ever thinner. But Bas didn’t know. He could only guess.

  How long had he lived like this now? Was it months? It felt like months. What date was it? He couldn’t be sure of anything. Time passed for him not in hours and minutes, but in periods of hiding and running, of light, tormented sleep and the daily business of surviving on a knife edge. He felt like the last rodent in a tower of ravenous felines.

  If the green horrors ever caught him, his end would come quickly enough. It would be painful and horrific, but it would be short. Shorter than disease or hunger, anyway. He wondered if a slow, quiet death was any better. Something instinctual made him back away from that train of thought before he formed an answer. For now, he was alive, and here, in one of his many boltholes, he was safe.

  He chided himself. No, not safe. Not truly. He was never that.

  He heard the old man’s voice in his head, berating him from memory, as sharp and harsh as a rifle’s report.

  Safety is an illusion, boy. Never forget that.

  Aye, an illusion. How could Bas forget? The words had been beaten into him until he learned to sleep only lightly and wake to a readiness any frontline Guardsman would have envied. While living with the old man, if he wasn’t up and at attention three seconds after first call, that heavy cane would whistle through the air and wake him up the hard way. Now, if a blow ever caught him
in his sleep, it wouldn’t be for the sake of a lesson. It would be the bite of a greenskin blade, and his sleep would be the eternal sleep of the dead.

  His traps and snares, he knew, wouldn’t protect him forever. One day, maybe soon, one of the savages would get all the way in. Not one of the tusked giants. Bas was careful to bed down only in small, tight spaces where they couldn’t go. But the scrawny, hook-nosed ones could slip into all the places he could, and they were wicked, murderous things, gleeful in their bloodletting. He trusted his defences only as much as he trusted himself, so he was diligent to a fault. He triple-checked every last point of entry before he ever allowed his eyes to close. Simple though they were, his traps had already saved him a dozen times over. The old sod had drilled him relentlessly, and Bas had despised him for it. But those lessons, hard-learned and hated, were the thin line between life and death now, the reason one last ten-year-old boy survived in the remnants of this rotting town where eighteen thousand Imperial citizens had died screaming, crying out to the Emperor for salvation.

  Bas lived, and that in itself was spit in the eye of the greenskin nightmare.

  He had never thanked the old man. There had been a moment, back when they had parted company for good, in which Bas had almost said the words, but the memories of all the fractured bones and cuts and bruises were still too sharp back then. They had stilled his tongue. The moment had passed, never to come again, and the old man was surely dead. For what it was worth, Bas hoped the old bastard’s soul would take some satisfaction in his grandson’s survival.