A persistent warning sigil flashed on Appollus’s retinal display as his armour’s auspex detected incoming artillery.
‘Morholt,’ Appollus snarled.
Locking his crozius to his armour, he grabbed the nearest brute by its head. The hulking traitor voiced a throttled scream as Appollus threw himself to the ground, dragging the unfortunate down on top of him. His helmet’s audio dampeners activated to preserve his hearing a heartbeat before a staccato of explosions burst around him.
‘I am his weapon, he is my shield!’ Appollus bellowed the mantra through gritted teeth as the ground shuddered under multiple detonations.
The siege shells exploded in coarse bellows that threw dirt and malformed bodies into the air like sparks burning away from a firecracker. Flame washed over him, incinerating the screaming brute sheltering him and burning the litany parchments from his armour.
The heat liquefied the ground beneath him, his armoured bulk sinking further into the muddied earth. Biometric data scrolled across his retinal display as the bombardment ended. The concussive force of the blasts had strained his organs, but his armour had held and he was already healing.
A pair of faded ident-tags told him Urim and Rashnu had taken direct hits, blown into fleshy rain by the artillery barrage.
‘Rest well, brothers.’
When the battle was over, Appollus would gather whatever fragments of their armour remained and take them to the Basilica of Remembrance. They would be mourned, as would the loss of their gene-seed.
‘Cease fire!’ Appollus growled into the vox.
A burst of static shot back in answer.
Snarling, he pushed himself up out of the dirt, cursing as his gauntlets slid into the earthy soup.
‘Hold your fire, Morholt, or by the blood I will kill you myself!’
Appollus surveyed the destruction. The enemy dead carpeted the landscape, like purple reeds flattened by the wind. The remaining four members of his Death Company were scattered among a line of shallow craters to his left flank.
Las-fire flickered from the edge of the blast zone. The Brotherhood were starting to rally. An autocannon shell glanced his pauldron, spinning him down into the mud.
‘Forwards!’ Appollus roared as he regained his footing.
But the Death Company were already charging towards the Brotherhood, bolters barking in their hands as they advanced into a hail of las-fire.
‘We are anger. We are death.’
Fire burned in Appollus’s limbs as his legs pumped him towards the foe. Ignorant of the las-fire that licked his armour and the solid-state rounds that threw up dirt in his path, he charged towards the wall of enemy.
‘Our wrath knows no succour.’
Ten more paces and he would be among them. His gauntlets would drip in entrails as he ripped apart their blasphemous forms.
‘Our blades know no–‘
Something unseen struck Appollus in the chest, flipping him to the ground. He landed hard, a crack snaking along his breastplate. He groaned as he lifted his head, blinking hard to clear his vision. Pain suppressors flooded his system but did nothing to quell the searing pain in his skull.
The enemy stopped firing.
Grunting with effort, Appollus got to his feet. He stumbled forwards, but the ground swung up to meet him. Blood filled his mouth as his head struck the ground. Roaring with frustration, he pushed himself onto all fours. He would crawl if he had to. Only death would stay his wrath.
Ahead the ranks of the Brotherhood stood immobile, taunting him.
Behind his skull helm, Appollus’s face was set in a snarl of pure hate. He cast his eyes over the traitors, searching for sign of his Death Company. A flash of mirror-black armour among the mauve robes caught his eye. He made to look again, but in the same instant was yanked from the ground, tossed into the air and slammed back down with bone-breaking force.
Pain burned through him, as though a molten needle was being threaded into his very marrow. He couldn’t move, his limbs pinned to the earth, trapped beneath a huge, invisible weight. Patches of hoarfrost rimed his armour, spitting as they cracked and reformed. The stench of sulphur choked the air around him.
Psyker.
The thought formed in Appollus’s mind the briefest of instants before he glimpsed the mirror-black armour once more and darkness took him.
Filmy water dripped onto Appollus’s face, stirring him. His head ached in a way he’d not felt since Seth had struck him in the duelling cages. Easing his eyes open, he saw thick iron chains looped around his ankles. He was naked, strung up like butchered cattle, his head a metre from the ground. His wrists were shackled too, fixed beneath him by a chain that ran through a loop set into the bare rock of the floor. Appollus strained at his bonds, his muscles rippling with effort as he tried in vain to break the irons from the floor.
‘The blood grant me my vengeance,’ he spat, growling with frustration.
The light in the chamber was poor, uneven. The faint smell of promethium hung in the air, drifting from oil burners. Appollus strained his eyes, snatching glimpses of his surroundings in the flickering lamplight. The chamber was perhaps five metres across, its walls pocked and irregular, hewn from solid rock by axe and pick. The air was damp, and algae and moss clung to the walls in thick patches.
There was no sign of an exit. Appollus closed his eyes, his Lyman’s ear filtering out the noise of the water as it continued to drip from the ceiling. Slowing his breathing, he quietened his heart, the drumming of his warrior-pulse dropping to a whisper.
The door was to his rear. His skin tingled at the light wisps of air that pushed into the chamber through the gaps at its edges. Someone stood just beyond it. He could hear the regular exhaling and changeless heartbeat of a bored sentry. There were…
Footsteps.
Appollus focused on their steady rhythm as they grew closer. Judging by the gait, his visitors were human. Two men, one with a limp.
The guard’s pulse quickened. Appollus smiled at his gaoler’s discomfort.
The footsteps stopped outside the door, and Appollus listened as the two men spoke to the fearful sentry. The blasphemous curs spoke in the tongue of the arch-enemy. Appollus clenched his jaw. Though he couldn’t discern what they were saying, he recognised the tone well enough. The visitors were the guard’s superiors, his deference to them unmistakable.
The door opened inwards, the sound of its heavy latch sliding free a welcome relief from the ravaged consonants that ground from the men’s throats.
Appollus tasted the familiar tang of recycled air as the door opened. The chamber was underground; a ventilation system fed air in through the corridor. He concentrated on the air as it brushed against his skin and decided that the nearest circulation shaft was perhaps ten paces beyond his cell. The door clunked as it swung closed. It was thick, but with a sufficient run-up he was confident he could fell it.
‘Welcome, Chaplain.’
The speaker’s voice brought Appollus’s attention back into the room. The man stank of sulphur and day-old blood.
Appollus opened his eyes but remained silent. As a Chaplain, it was his duty to listen. To hear the sins of his brothers and distil their lies before they had even formed on their tongues. He had taken confession from the best of men, men of power and great strength. He had listened to the broken voices of terrible men, men whose twisted machinations had seen the end of civilisations, as they lay on his interrogation rack.
His visitor was neither.
‘You hold secrets, Chaplain.’ This time it was the second visitor who spoke. His voice was deeper than that of the first, and he struggled over the words as though unused to making their sounds. He bent down as he spoke, holding a long blade so that Appollus could see its blood-encrusted barbs. ‘Secrets that our master would know.’
The man wore the mauve robes of the Brothe
rhood, though he wore no mask. Instead, the skin of his face had been dyed oil-black. Gleaming slivers of glass sat where his eyes should have been, sparkling even in the low-light of the chamber.
Fratris Crucio.
Appollus recognised his visitor from the numerous engagement reports and after-action accounts he’d studied. The Brotherhood’s master interrogators were infamous throughout the Khandax warzone. Tales of their atrocities drifted from foxhole to foxhole, hushed whispers that crept along the trench line. Fratris Crucio, a byword for terror. Storm-coated officers of the Commissariat had adopted the stories as their own. It kept the men of the Imperial Guard fearful, alert. Vigilance along the watch-line absolute. To be captured by them was to suffer a fate far worse than simple death.
Appollus spat in the torturer’s face.
The man tumbled back screaming, clawing at his face as the acid-saliva burned away his flesh. His companion knelt down over him but did nothing to ease his torment, simply inclining his head and watching as the acid ate into his brethren’s eyes.
‘Your strength will not serve you.’ The torturer said finally, picking up the fallen blade and pushing it into Appollus’s ribs. ‘It will not last.’
The pain was excruciating but Appollus did not cry out.
It was the least of his worries. Pain was temporary, ended by absolution or death; a slight inflicted upon his body and no more. But what the pain stirred in him – the anger, the bloodlust – that was terror. It thundered in his veins, threatening to drown his organs in a tide of red and rage. He would not allow himself to succumb to the curse; such a fate had no end.
Appollus closed off his mind from the pain. He pictured the High Basilica back on Cretecia, his Chapter’s fortress home world. Tens of thousands of candles burned along the stone edges of the basilica’s aisles. One flickering memorial for each Flesh Tearer who had donned the black armour of death. The red of the candle wax was used to seal the saltires and affix the litany parchments to the armour of every new Death Company Space Marine. As a novitiate in the Chaplaincy, Appollus had spent years tending to the candles as he recited the catechism of observance; a decade-long mass that armoured his mind and allowed him to walk among the damned of his Chapter, untouched by their madness.
He lost himself in the memory, beginning anew the observance as his torturers continued to violate his flesh.
‘He has said nothing, lord. He will not speak.’ The Crucio bowed as he entered the chamber, keeping his eyes fixed on the black curvature of his master’s armoured feet.
Abasi Amun, encased in full battle plate, sat on an immense throne wrought from the ore-rich stone of the cavern around him. He was still, unmoving, like a sculpture stolen from the grand halls of a monarch.
‘Nothing?’ Abasi Amun’s voice rumbled around the cavern. The metallic resonance of his helmet’s vox-caster sounding machine-harsh in the enclosed space.
‘He does not scream, lord.’
‘Then you have failed me.’ Amun said, standing.
‘No, no. Perhaps…’ the Crucio stammered, his mouth dry with fear.. ‘Perhaps he knows nothing.’
Amun shot forwards in a heartbeat, flowing like black water across the chamber’s expanse to lift the torturer by his neck. The Crucio gasped, his hands grasping in vain at Amun’s gauntlet.
‘He hides something, a truth.’ With a flick of his wrist, Amun snapped the Crucio’s neck. ‘I sensed it on the battlefield, he keeps something from us,’ Amun continued, talking to the limp corpse in his hand. ‘I will know his secret.’
Amun brought the corpse closer and whispered. ‘I will know.’
Pain. Appollus awoke with a start, expecting the sharp kiss of a blade or the cruel attentions of a neural flail. There was no trace of either. A lone figure stood before him, cloaked in shadow. The jagged light from the oil burners seemed to avoid the figure, flickering around the edges of his form but never quite illuminating him.
Appollus bared his teeth in a growl. He needn’t see his enemy to know him. He could hear the figure’s twin hearts thump like an indomitable engine in his chest. The shadow before him was an Adeptus Astartes. Greatest among traitors, a true pawn of the arch-enemy. A Chaos Space Marine.
Blood rushed to Appollus’s muscles as he tensed against his restraints. The hatred locked into his genetic code willed him to rend the figure apart, to strike him dead. He bit down a growl. There was something else, something more. It clawed at his mind like a burrowing rodent. He could smell it. Hiding among the pungent, oleaginous balms the Traitor Marine used to maintain his armour was the foul, corrupting stench of the warp.
‘Psyker,’ Appollus snarled.
‘You are observant, for a puppet of a false god.’ The Chaos Space Marine paced forwards, throwing off the shadows the way a man might remove a cowl. ‘Where you look only to the blood of your crippled father for strength, I have embraced the power of the great Changer.’ The Traitor Marine flexed his arms. ‘His limitless majesty feeds my veins.’
The warrior’s power armour was mirror-black, its edges rounded and its surface polished to an impossible sheen. Yet it reflected nothing of the chamber. Its smooth plates were devoid of Chapter insignia and symbols of loyalty. Appollus averted his gaze. The armour was hard to look upon. It was at once dark and formless, yet as solid as the rock walls surrounding them.
Appollus looked again; he had seen its like before. ‘You were there, in battle.’
The Traitor Marine dipped his head in mock deference. ‘I am Abasi Amun. How should I address you, Chaplain?’
Appollus looked up at Amun’s breastplate, surprised to now see his reflection staring back at him, though the tortured figure he looked upon bared little resemblance to how he had last seen himself.
The Crucio had been studious in their work.
The master torturers had administered a potent mix of toxins that had retarded his Larraman’s organ and prevented his body from healing as it otherwise might. Hundreds of deep lacerations and patches of dark bruises covered his body. Several layers of skin had been shaved away from his abdomen, exposing the dermis. His face was gaunt, sapped of its chiselled sternness. Appollus met his own gaze, looked deep into his own eyes. They burned back at him with fierce intensity, reminding him of what he already knew – he would never break.
Appollus focused on the darkness of Amun’s helm. ‘Have you come seeking repentance, traitor?’
Amun laughed, a booming sound, incongruous with his subtle, insubstantial presence.
‘My Crucio have broken many of your kind. But you, you defy me still. So close to death and yet you will part with none of your secrets.’ Amun moved behind Appollus. The pressure seals around his gorget gave a popping hiss as he unclasped his helm.
‘If your body will not give me the truths I seek, then I shall take them from your mind.’
Appollus snarled, his eyes fixed on the wall opposite him. ‘I warn you, traitor. To know my secret, is to forfeit your life.’
Amun grabbed Appollus, his gauntleted fingers a vice around the Chaplain’s throat.
‘You are in no position to make threats, Chaplain.’ Amun relaxed his grip. ‘Save your piety. These are the final moments of your existence.’ Amun removed his gauntlets as he spoke. ‘I will find my answers. I will offer up your soul to my master and leave your body to rot, like the kingdom of your father.’
Amun’s eyes crackled with eldritch lightning that leapt to his outstretched palms. He curled his fingers back. The energy coalesced into a flickering ball of white fire. The temperature dropped below zero as Amun muttered a prayer in an inhuman tongue. Blood ran from Appollus’s orifices as frost began to rime his limbs.
‘I know… no fear.’ Appollus muttered, forcing his tongue to work through the viscous fluid filling his mouth.
The fireball drifted from Amun into Appollus’s torso, breaking into a fulgurant web that course
d over his flesh then vanished beneath it.
Appollus screamed.
Amun ripped into Appollus’s mind. In an agonising instant, the mental barriers that had taken the Chaplain decades to erect were torn asunder. His way unbarred, Amun proceeded with more care. Haste or disregard would leave Appollus a dribbling husk, his mind ruined and his secrets lost forever.
The chains binding Appollus rattled like weapons-fire as his body jerked. His skin rippled like water as half-clotted blood slid in thick clumps from his nostrils.
Amun cut deeper. He peeled away the surface thoughts that floated in Appollus’s conscious mind and prized apart the lies of memory. Blood ran from the Chaplain’s lips as they gave voice to a near constant stream.
Alone in the inner reaches of Appollus’s mind, Amun snarled. The Flesh Tearer was close to death, but the truth still eluded him. Abandoning his earlier care, Amun burned to the Chaplain’s essence. He would know, he must.
‘There…’ Amun’s mortal body mouthed the word as his psychic tendrils found the truth he had been searching for.
Even as he touched upon it, Amun knew he had made a mistake. The Chaplain had no knowledge of the wider Imperial forces, he knew nothing of troop dispersments or defence plans. His secret was far more potent, far deadlier. He concealed a rage, wrath in its purest form. A burning halo fire that wrapped around his soul like a serpent. Amun tried to run to withdraw his mind back to the safety of his body. But it was too late. The rage had found a new home, a new vessel to enact its bloody will, and it would not be denied its prize.
Abasi Amun screamed.
Treacheries of the Space Marines Page 26
