[Grey Knights 01] - Grey Knights

by Ben Counter - (ebook by Undead)

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  GREY KNIGHTS

  Grey Knights - 01

  Ben Counter

  (v1.0)

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred

  centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden

  Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the

  will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the

  might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass

  writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of

  Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for

  whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that

  he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues

  his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the

  daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route

  between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican,

  the psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast

  armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds.

  Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes,

  the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their

  comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and

  countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant

  Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus

  Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their

  multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-

  present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants—and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold

  billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody

  regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times.

  Forget the power of technology and science, for so much

  has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the

  promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim

  dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst

  the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and

  the laughter of thirsting gods.

  CHAPTER ONE

  KHORION IX

  It was a heaving sea of hatred, an ocean of pure evil.

  Far below, the surface of Khorion IX was covered in a seething forest of torture racks, crosses and squares and stars of bloodstained wood on which were broken hundreds of thousands of bodies, mangled and wound around the wood like vines around a cane. It was like a huge and horrible vineyard, with rows and rows of crucified bodies spilling a terrible vintage of blood into the earth. The victims were trapped between life and death, their bodies exsanguinated but their minds just lucid enough to understand their agony. They were the servants of the Prince of a Thousand Faces, the cultists and demagogues summoned to their master’s planet in the hope of an eternal reward that was all too real. Their bodies were merged with the wood that had grown as the seasons passed, twisting their limbs into canopies of fleshy branches and deforming them until there was barely anything human in them save for their suffering.

  They said the screams could be heard from orbit. They were right.

  At an unheard signal, the ground began to seethe. The crucified of Khorion IX began to wail even louder, their agony supplanted by fear, as the sodden earth burst into fountains of bloodstained soil and a hideous gibbering rose up from beneath. Iridescent, shifting creatures crawled up to the surface, some with long reaching fingers and torsos dominated by leering, huge-mawed faces, others with bloated fungoid bodies that belched multicoloured flame. There were ravenous swarms of tiny, misshapen things that gnawed at the roots of the crucified forest and immense winged monsters like huge deformed vultures that spat magic fire. Every one was a shining multicoloured vision of hell, and each was just a pale reflection of their master. The Prince of a Thousand Faces, the Forger of Hells, the Whisperer in the Darkness—Ghargatuloth the Daemon Lord, chosen of the God of Change.

  A tide of daemons burst like an ocean from the ground and flooded through the crucified forest, shrieking in anticipation and hunger, the greater daemons marshalling the lesser and the lowest of them, forming a mantle of daemon flesh that covered the ground in a sea of iridescence.

  The daemonic tide poured onto the surface until from far above it looked like an ocean of daemonskin, the lesser daemons sweeping between the rows of the crucified and the greater crushing Ghargatuloth’s slave-victims beneath clawed feet. The will of Ghargatuloth resonated through the very crust of Khorion IX; every single one of the Tzeentch’s servants felt it.

  The next turning point will be here, it said. Thousands of the Change God’s plots were coming to a head in this battle, a tangled nexus of fates that would set the path for the future. It was fate that formed the medium through which Tzeentch mutated the universe to his will, and so this was a holy battle where fate was the weapon, the prize and the battleground.

  The cackling of the daemon army mixed with the screams of the crucified and the air vibrated with the din. For light years in all directions the insane babbling and screams of desperation gnawed at every mind, whispering darkly and shrieking insanely. Though the space around Khorion IX was largely devoid of human habitation, many of those few who heard the call of the daemon lost their minds in the prelude to the battle.

  But the minds that mattered, the minds of those who would face the horde of Ghargatuloth, were unwavering. They had trained since before they could remember in resisting the trickery of Tzeentch himself and the creeping corruption that had brought so many to the fold of Ghargatuloth. They were armed with the best weapons the Ordo Malleus could give them, protected by consecrated power armour hundreds if not thousands of years old, shielded from sorcery by hexagrammic and pentagrammic wards tattooed onto their skin by the sages of the Inquisitorial archives.

  They were ready. Their very purpose was to be ready, because when the time came to fight something like Ghargatuloth, who else could do it? They were the Grey Knights, the daemon hunters of the Adeptus Astartes, tasked by the Ordo Malleus of the Inquisition and hence the Emperor Himself to fight the daemon in all its forms. They were just a handful in number compared to the trillions of citizens making up the Imperium but when a threat like Ghargatuloth was finally brought to bear, the Grey Knights were literally the Imperium’s only hope.

  There were three hundred of them bearing down on Khorion IX to have their say in the confluence of fates. And Khorion IX was waiting for them.

  The first things Grand Master Mandulis saw of Khorion IX were the thick bands of cloud, white and streaked with red, as they rushed past the viewport of the drop-pod that plummeted through the planet’s lower atmosphere. The screams from below sounded even through the din of the descent and the pod’s lander engines, a million voices raised in praise and anticipation, calling out for blood and for new spirits to break on the anvil of Ghargatuloth’s sorcery.

  The Grey Knights’ briefing sermon had told them that an ancient pre-Imperial barrows complex was their landing zone, but the plans they had to go by were from exploratory records three hundred years old. There could be anything on Khorion IX. It had taken more than a century to track Ghargatuloth to the planet, and the daemon prince would know the Grey Knights were coming. It would be savage. Very probably, nothing would survive. Grand Master Mandulis knew this and accepted it, for he had sworn long ago that the destruction of the daemonic was of greater importance than his life. He had decades of experience in the ranks of the Grey Knights, he had fought across a hundred worlds in the unending hidden war against the horrors of the warp, but if he had to d
ie to see Ghargatuloth banished from real space then he would gladly die.

  But it wouldn’t be that simple.

  The drop-pod’s proximity alarms kicked in and filled the cramped interior with deep red light. It picked out the face of Justicar Chemuel, whose squad Mandulis was accompanying in the assault. Chemuel was as good a soldier as the Grey Knights had, and Mandulis had seen how he led his Purgation squad. His Marines carried psycannon and flamers and Chemuel had drilled them until they could lay down massive pinpoint fire. It would be Chemuel’s task to help clear the path through Ghargatuloth’s servants so the veteran Terminator assault squads could close with the greater daemons and even with the Prince of a Thousand Faces himself.

  That was the plan, but plans never lasted. The Grey Knights could fight the battles they did precisely because every one of them was trained and psycho-doctrinated to survive in the forge of battle alone if needs be; Chemuel like his battle-brothers would fight alone when the battle broke down into a slaughter.

  That was when, not if. That was the way of daemons. They wrought bloodshed and confusion because they enjoyed it. Ghargatuloth had surrounded himself with an immense army of such creatures, and if the Grey Knight had to fight them all at once, then they would.

  The restraints holding Mandulis and Squad Chemuel into their grav-couches wound in suddenly for the impact. Blood-streaked clouds rushed past the viewport and then they were gone. The pod’s lander engines fired and again the pod decelerated suddenly, swooping as it came in to land. For a moment Mandulis was looking out on the twisted nightmare that was Khorion IX—the landscape shattered as if struck by a giant hammer, row upon row of tormented bodies staked out or nailed to crosses and arranged in terraced fields stretching between horizons. A waterfall of blood poured into a churning red sea in the distance.

  A network of pre-Imperial barrows, the only recognizable landmark from the ancient maps of the planet, was ringed with banner poles from which hung innumerable flags of flayed skin. And worst of all, the daemon army seethed, hundreds of thousands strong, surrounding the closest barrow in an unbroken sea of daemon flesh.

  Mandulis had been a Grey Knight since before he could remember. He had fought the Chaotic and daemonic from the heart of the Segmentum Solar to far-flung daemon worlds, from the halls of planetary governors to the endless slums of hive cities. Mandulis had seen so much that volumes of his battlefield reports filled shelves of the Archivum Titanis, and yet still in all his days he had never seen anything like the horde of Ghargatuloth.

  He was not afraid. The Emperor himself had decreed that a Space Marine shall know no fear. But Grand Master Mandulis’s soul still recoiled at the sheer magnitude of evil.

  “I am the hammer,” he intoned as the landing jets pushed even harder against the drop-pod’s descent. “I am the right hand of my Emperor, the instrument of His will, the gauntlet about His fist, the tip of His spear, the edge of His sword…”

  The Marines of Squad Chemuel followed Mandulis as he led them in the final battlefield prayer, intoning the sacred words even though they could barely hear them above the scream of the drop-pod’s final braking jets.

  The impact was immense, like slamming into a wall. The grav-couch restraints jolted back as the pods ploughed through the branches of wood and bone, into the middle of the daemon throng. A great scream rose above the din of the impact as daemons were vaporised by the impact, and the viewport was suddenly covered in their many-coloured blood.

  “Pod down!” yelled Justicar Chemuel. “Blow the restraints!”

  The servitor-pilot controlling the pod’s systems responded to the pre-programmed order and the bolts holding the pod’s sides together burst with a series of sharp reports. The sides of the pod burst open and Mandulis’s restraints fell away. Baleful reddish light and a truly appalling stench of decay flooded in, so thick it was like plunging into a sea of blood. The screams of the engines were replaced by the unearthly and hideous keening of thousands of daemons, like an atonal choir howling out a wall of sound. The weeping sky was scratched by the reaching branches of crucified limbs, the forest swarmed with daemons, the pure hatred of Ghargatuloth’s army was like a wave of pain pouring into the drop-pod.

  Mandulis had a split second before the daemons closed in again. The pod had blasted a crater, thick with daemon gore, ringed by broken crucifix-trees. Blood spurted from tears in the ground as if from severed arteries. The stench that got through Mandulis’s helmet filters was of burning and blood, and the howling of the daemons hit him like a gale.

  “Squad, suppression fire!” called Chemuel and his Marines, their psycannons already loaded and primed, thudded off a single, huge volley that blasted apart the daemons scrambling over the ridge of the crater.

  Mandulis saw another pod hitting home close by, throwing up a foul rain of blood and daemon body parts. “That’s Martel!” voxed Mandulis. “Chemuel, give him cover and link up!”

  Two Marines ran up the crater ridge and their incinerator-pattern flamers poured gouts of blue-hot flame into the tide of daemons pouring towards them through the woods. Mandulis stomped after them, the servos of his ancient Terminator suit whirring, his wrist-mounted storm bolter barking as he sent blessed bolter shots streaking into leering daemon faces. He reached the lip of the crater and saw the army for the first time from ground level—gnarled limbs of iridescent pink and blue, bloated creatures that belched flame, the lopsided shapes of avian greater daemons lurching towards the drop zone.

  Mandulis drew his Nemesis sword from its scabbard on his back. The blade leapt into life, its power field calibrated to disrupt the psychic matter of daemons’ flesh, the stylized golden lightning bolt set into its silver blade glowing hot with power. He lunged forward and cut a wide arc through the daemons clambering through the burning remains of their brothers; he felt three unholy bodies come apart under the blade’s edge.

  It was a good blade. One of the Chapter’s best, given to Mandulis when he first attained the rank of master. But it would have to drink more daemon’s blood than it had ever done before if he was to succeed in his mission now.

  Psycannon fire from Chemuel was shrieking past, the modified bolter shells exploding in spectacular starbursts of silver that shredded the attacking daemons. The flamer troops moved up and were beside Mandulis, pouring more fire into the attacking daemons as Mandulis’s Nemesis sword carved through any that got within range.

  Martel’s Terminator squad cut their way towards Mandulis, the huge tactical dreadnought armour battering aside the crucifix-trees as volleys of storm bolter fire cut through the forest.

  “Brother Martel,” voxed Mandulis. “Chemuel will cover you. We are close to the first barrow, follow me.”

  “Well met, grand master,” replied Captain Martel as he speared a daemon with his Nemesis halberd. “Justinian is close behind us. I think we are cut off from any of the others.”

  “Then we will carry the attack ourselves,” voxed Mandulis. “We knew it would come to this. Give grace to the Emperor for our part in this fight and keep moving.”

  “In position!” came the vox from Justicar Chemuel. Mandulis turned to see the Purgation squad lined up on the lip of the crater, surrounded by the dissolving remains of charred daemons, ready to send volley after disciplined volley from the psycannon into Ghargatuloth’s horde.

  Grand Master Mandulis could feel, thrumming through the bloodsoaked earth and cutting through the screams of the crucified, the deep angry growl of something waking. Below the ground, huge and malevolent, making ready to play its hand if the time came. The pre-battle guesswork had been correct—it was beneath the barrows and would be surrounded by the deadliest of its servants.

  Mandulis mouthed a silent prayer to the Emperor as the daemon tide came again, gibbering and screeching as they swung through the trees and loped along the ground, shining with flame and foul sorcery.

  Mandulis pressed down on the firing stud in his gauntlet and sent a stream of bolter shells ripping into the adv
ancing daemons. He hefted his Nemesis sword ready to strike and, with Martel’s Terminators at his side, he charged.

  The Grey Knights’ strike force that attacked Khorion IX was the strongest the Ordo Malleus could assemble. Compact, fast, led by three grand masters of the Grey Knights and composed of the best daemon-hunting warriors the Imperium had, it was nonetheless far from certain that the force would succeed. It had taken a century to hunt down Ghargatuloth, the power which, through dozens of avatars and aspects, directed thousands of Chaos cults in acts of depravity and terror.

  Ghargatuloth’s purpose was to spread chaos and carnage in the name of its god Tzeentch, following an infinitely obscure plan that was all but impossible to trace. The Ordo Malleus had fought long and hard to find out that it lived on Khorion IX, an uninhabited and largely unexplored world deep into the Halo Zone of the Segmentum Obscurus where the beacon of the Astronomican barely reached. All that time Ghargatuloth had prepared and the Ordo Malleus had no choice but to send their troops into his trap, because they might never get another chance. Khorion IX was too isolated for a planet-scouring Imperial Navy assault and normal troops would last a matter of seconds on the planet. Even the Exterminatus, the ultimate Inquisitorial sanction, would not be enough—someone had to see Ghargatuloth die and, even with a devastating strike from orbit, the Ordo Malleus could not be sure.

  It had to be the Grey Knights. Because if anyone could survive long enough to face Ghargatuloth in battle, it would be them.

  The fast strike cruisers Valour Saturnum and Vengeful carried over two hundred and fifty Grey Knights, as large a force as could be moved quickly enough through the vastness of the Segmentum Obscurus. Lord Inquisitor Lakonios of the Ordo Malleus was in ultimate command but once the drop-pods were launched and the atmosphere of Khorion IX was breached, it was the Grey Knights themselves who gave the orders.

  Grand Master Ganelon, who had personally killed the Vermin King of Kalentia when still a justicar, landed well off-centre in the thick of the daemon army. With nearly a hundred Grey Knights under his command he fought a valiant battle of survival against wave upon wave of daemons, back-to-back and completely surrounded. Marine after Marine died under sorcerous lightning or the talons of rampaging greater daemons and Ganelon himself began the Prayer of Purification, readying the souls of his men for the inevitable journey after death to join the Emperor in the final battle against Chaos.