by Dan Abnett
‘Make your report, please,’ she said.
‘Teleport flare!’ the operator cried. ‘Teleport flare detected!’
‘Trickster, this is Trickster,’ said Elg immediately, ‘All kill teams. Incoming material transfer detected. Stand ready. Repeat, stand ready.’
‘Frack it!’ Diamantis snapped at the operator.
‘Stand by…’ the operator replied, fear in his voice. ‘Plot is refracting… Plot locked! Zone mortalis Alpha!’
‘Strife!’ Diamantis yelled. ‘Teleport flare, Mortalis Alpha! They’re on you!’
* * *
Catulan Reaver section manifested in Mortalis Alpha with a savage bang of displaced air, and started shooting before the flare of the teleport had subsided. Kibre couldn’t assess the full situation, but he could see Imperial Fists in front of him, and the dead hulks of two tunnellers embedded in the stone.
Catulan advanced at a walking pace in their black Terminator plate, sowing fire at the loyalist squads. Garro’s kill team buckled and fell under the almost point blank assault from behind them. Twin-bolters and lascannons shredded the Imperial Fists’ unprotected formation, splintering yellow ceramite and spattering hunks of meat. Gercault tried to turn. Kibre’s bolter shells blew out his face, throat and chest.
‘The hell is this?’ DeRall yelled over the link.
‘Illuminate them,’ Kibre replied.
‘They were expecting us!’ DeRall cried.
‘Shut up and kill,’ growled Kibre.
But the Catulan chief was right, and Kibre knew it. Their undertaking had been made at the highest level of confidence. No one was supposed to know. They were supposed to be deploying into empty cellars and forgotten undercrofts.
Not face to face with a VII strike force. The chamber was crawling with shit-scum Imperial Fists! Fifty, sixty or more.
Many were dead already. That was something.
‘Reap them, Catulan,’ Kibre voxed, firing continually, his Terminator plate vibrating with the discharge. ‘Make a space.’
They were compromised. There was no doubt. The Imperial Fists he was killing had taken out two of their infiltration vehicles. How many Sons of Horus had they butchered? I have to clear the chamber, Kibre thought. Secure it. Work out what the hell is going on, find out what we’ve lost…
…decide what the hell we do.
The thought had barely formed before Kibre realised that Catulan was taking hits from the flank.
* * *
Garro, still securing Eta, had heard Trickster’s warning. He brought his fire squads back through the connecting arch into Alpha in time to see the flare fading, and Catulan slaughtering his men.
He had partial cover from the arch and a short firing wall. His Murder section took the fore, spraying the striding Terminators with their heavy weapons.
Tactical Dreadnought suits and Cataphractii warplate were hard to kill. Murder had the firepower, but they were outnumbered by the pack of monstrous Sons of Horus. As soon as the first of Catulan started falling, exo-plate gouged open by cannon and heavy las, spurting blood and clouds of sparks from open wounds, the Terminators swung about, and started to bombard Garro’s position.
The torrential gunfire ripped at the firing wall, the flagstones, and the arch. Stone chips scattered like chaff, and the air filmed with a thick haze of brick dust, which made the flicking bolts of las more luminous. DeRall tracked the pulses of Mathane’s lascannon as though they were tracers, and hammered his twin-bolters at the source. Garro was in cover beside Mathane when the Imperial Fist blew apart.
Garro and the men around him took shrapnel. A triangular shard of yellow ceramite stabbed into Garro’s faceplate just below his left eye, and wedged there. He and his men maintained fire, but the beasts of Catulan Reaver were more numerous and more heavily plated.
Garro’s cover was crumbling. What was left of Strife kill team, less than a third, was being driven back into Eta.
* * *
‘Strife reports Catulan Reaver section, zone mortalis Alpha,’ said Elg. Taking heavy losses. Extending back into Eta. I am showing forty-eight casualties, fatalities’
‘Forty-eight?’ Ahlborn murmured.
‘Catulan Reaver,’ said Sindermann. ‘A name to conjure dread since the formation of the Sixteenth.’ Therajomas pushed past them, and bolted for the door. They heard him vomiting in the hallway.
‘This is Trickster,’ said Diamantis evenly. ‘Naysmith, Seventh, Black Dog. Urgent support needed, Alpha. Apprise me if you are task completed and can assist. Repeat, urgent support needed, Mortalis Alpha.’
* * *
‘We were tasked to Iota, lord!’ Leod Baldwin cried.
‘Iota can wait,’ replied Loken. He had broken into a run. ‘Alpha is closer.’
Baldwin knew the Luna Wolf was right, and he could hear the echoes of heavy weapons fire rolling down the hallway already. But his Lord Dorn had set out clear protocols for the operation. They had to obey the rules of defence, as dictated by Trickster, or risk losing prosecution control of the zones.
‘Naysmith, move! With me!’ Loken yelled.
‘I cannot allow this,’ said Baldwin. ‘Loken, we are ordered to Mortalis Iota! We-‘
‘The Iota track is still minutes out,’ Loken replied, not slowing down. ‘Catulan is at Alpha! Catulan Reaver! Garro’s men are being decimated!’
‘Team Seventh has reported response,’ Baldwin insisted.
‘We’re doser,’ was Loken’s only answer.
The hallway was broad and almost straight. Ahead, to the right, it passed the access arch into the as-yet virginal zone mortalis Mu. Baldwin realised there was no arguing with Garviel Loken. He wondered if he should follow, or shoot the man for dereliction. He looked back at the legionaries behind them.
‘Form into squads, then!’ Baldwin yelled at them. ‘You’re Imperial Fists, Naysmith, show some damned order! By squad, advance on my lead. Follow the insane Wolf bastard!’
Running ahead, Loken sensed the flare before the wave of it washed in. He came up sharp, his boots scraping on the stone.
‘Teleport!’ he yelled at the men behind him.
Air pressure bulged, and then burst down the length of the hallway. In a rush of sudden radiance, black-plated figures popped into reality, one by one, in rapid succession, all the way along the hallway ahead of him.
A full section. Vincor Tactical, First Company, Sons of Horus. Loken was barely six metres from the section leader, face to face.
The leader was a hulking giant. He looked at Loken as though bemused, as though he recognised him of old, and not from the anachronistic livery of the Luna Wolves. It was something deeper, and more personal.
‘Loken,’ wheezed Tormageddon.
His voice was a clotted corruption of Tarik Torgaddon’s. He had a chainfist on his left hand, and a chainsword in his right.
Both began to rev.
Loken swung his chainsword up, and drew Rubio’s blade.
* * *
‘What is the damned delay?’ demanded Horus Aximand. The Plutona was wallowing and rolling, like a ship in a heavy swell. The motivators groaned as they fought for purchase.
‘We have bored into a cavity, lord,’ one of the drivers said. ‘An air pocket. The halite and shale of the flaw have subsided and-‘
‘So?’
‘We’ve lost primary traction. There is nothing to grip.’
Aximand growled. ‘How far short?’ he asked. ‘How far down are we?’
‘Auspex shows us forty metres below the target subfloor, my lord.’
Aximand gripped the overhead rail to steady himself. The confinement was plaguing him. Buried so deep, and now helpless. He felt as though he were being crushed by the weight of the whole Palace.
‘Full reverse,’ he said. ‘Get traction, and come at it again.’
The drivers threw the machine into reverse. The Plutona lurched, swam, and then seemed to grab some semb
lance of grip.
‘Now!’ barked Aximand.
The drivers wrenched the motivators into forward process, and the machine hitched again. Then it began to grind forward. Aximand could hear the drill heads start to chew again, pushing spoil back over the hull in rattling streams.
He smiled. They were moving. Not long now-
Massive impacts resounded through the hull, as though a giant had decided to batter them with a hammer. For a moment, Aximand thought they were taking fire. The compartment skin above his head buckled under extreme force.
Then they started to roll violently. Aximand, the only man standing and not strapped in, was thrown hard. Internal lighting failed. There was a noise like an avalanche, a tide of rock raining down. The Plutona shook.
The onslaught stopped.
Emergency lighting kicked in. The craft was on its side. The motivators had died. Aximand clambered to his feet.
‘What happened?’ he demanded.
One of the drivers was unconscious and lolling in his restraints, his head gashed open. The other was blearily checking gauges.
‘Rockfall, lord,’ he said. ‘Our drills tore loose the unstable edge of the cavity, and it collapsed on us.’
Aximand stared at the wall that had now become the ceiling. Their motivators were dead. Thousands of tonnes of rock had subsided onto them.
The Plutona-patterns, unlike the big Mantoliths, carried no onboard teleport grids.
In the constricting darkness, he could hear his own breathing, shallow, fast. He realised, with revulsion and outrage, that he understood his old, oppressive dream. The sound of breathing in the darkness was him. It was now.
This metal box was going to be his tomb.
* * *
‘Reading a sinkhole collapse,’ announced one of the post’s operators.
‘Location?’ asked Elg quickly.
‘Beneath Theta and Pi,’ replied the operator. Target track to that vicinal has just dropped off the board.’
‘A major subsidence,’ Elg told Diamantis. ‘This was a concern.Pockets of the flaw are stress-weak. The scale and speed of the enemy’s tunnelling was liable to cause collapse sooner or later.’ She looked at the Huscarl. ‘Magos Land should begin,’ she advised.
‘Too soon, mistress,’ replied Diamantis. ‘I won’t make that call yet. The idea was to trap as many of them as possible. There are… how many confirmed tracks?
‘Sixteen incoming, lord,’ replied an operator, ‘all now within the flaw, all inbound in the next fourteen minutes.’
‘Sixteen tracks,’ said Diamantis to Elg. ‘That could be two or three company strengths. I won’t abandon this snare with so much game still to catch.’
‘You speak as a warrior, Huscarl, counting victory in blood spilled,’ replied Elg. ‘As a senior of the War Court, I count victory as units lost and enemy strengths extinguished. You do not have to kill them all with your own hands, Diamantis. Magos Land’s lockcrete will seal them all in the flaw forever. There would be no escape.’
‘I require confirmation kills,’ replied Diamantis. ‘You are presuming Magos Land’s process will perform to required parameters.’
‘It had better,’ said Elg. ‘Let me put it another way, lord. Subsidence has now begun. It will propagate rapidly. If Magos Land is not permitted to seal and bind the flaw now, there could be a catastrophic sink event. It could even fracture the Ultimate Wall at Saturnine. At the very least, the flaw would be wide open, and too large to refill or close. There would be a hole in the side of the Sanctum Imperialis.’
Diamantis hesitated. He picked up the vox-mic.
‘This is Trickster,’ he said. ‘Land, you are ordered to commence.’
* * *
Garro’s team had expended almost all of its munitions. Catulan Reaver were pushing what was left of them back into Eta. The arch and firing wall had been chewed away by hurricanes of gunfire, and the vault air was boiling with dust.
They were going to have to fall back through Eta entirely, and try to make a new stand at the choke point where Eta met the secondary clearance causeway. Garro instructed them so. The men began to move.
Garro glanced back.
The sound of the approaching gunfire had suddenly altered, and changed pattern. The roar of new salvos was overlaying the Catulan fire.
‘Garro! You still alive?’
He heard Gallor’s voice break over the vox.
‘Gallor?’
‘Seventh at your side,’ Gallor replied.
Kill team Seventh had entered Alpha through one of the two causeway arches. Fronted by Gallor’s heavy squad, all Imperial Fists Cataphractii, they were scything into the Catalan from the rear. Falkus Kibre tried to draw his exposed men aside and use the other arch as a hold point. Reavers were being blown off their feet, or chopped apart by squealing beams of plasma.
Kill team Black Dog entered through the second arch. Haar roared orders, and his mix of Blackshields and Imperial Fists laid down pitiless enfilading fire.
The glory, and the story, of Catalan Reaver section ended in seconds. The combined guns of Black Dog and Seventh reduced them to pulp. Two Terminators tried to fight their way through the second arch. Haar’s squad chief felled one with a power axe. The Riven Hound put the other’s head into the wall with his power fist.
Garro and his few survivors, ammunition spent, were pulling back across Eta to get clear of the crossfire’s brutal collateral spill. Orontis slammed his last saddle mag onto his autocannon, and provided them with retreating cover.
Garro heard Gallor yell.
‘Garro! Coming at you!’
Kibre, DeRall and one remaining Catulan Terminator had fled towards the ruined Eta arch. Orontis met them coming in, and split DeRall in half with his cannon, but the Terminator put his power sword through Orontis’ neck. Kibre pushed past them both, ion maul lit, munitions loads empty.
Garro rushed him head-on, Libertas drawn. They slammed off each other. Garro, smaller and lighter, evaded two lethal swings of Kibre’s mace. His ancient sword sliced Kibre’s belly-plate wide open. Blood blurted down the Widowmaker’s thigh. Kibre swung again, the mace burning the air. His exo-plate alone out-matched Garro, but Kibre’s body was amplified terribly by the warp. Garro ducked, and tried to grapple, blocking Kibre’s arm, and trying to keep the sizzling mace at bay.
Then the Terminator who had ended Orontis rushed him.
Garro broke away in time to out-step him, dancing outside the downswing of the Terminator’s power sword. Garro checked, crossed, and swung the broadsword down with both hands.
The blade did not slow or drag. It cut through the Terminator from light shoulder to left hip in one stroke. The severed halves of the Catulan Terminator crashed onto the flagstones.
Kibre’s mace took Garro off his feet.
Garro cartwheeled, and landed hard, his pauldron splintered. Libertas had been knocked out of his grip. The sword had landed two metres from him, tip down, the blade buried a third of its length deep in the stone floor.
Garro struggled to recover, to get back up.
Kibre thumped towards him. He glanced at the sword, quivering in the ground. He’d seen what it could do. Kibre needed everything he could get.
He grabbed it to pull it free. It would not budge. He pulled harder, applying the full might of his amplified body and amplified plate.
Libertas would not come free.
A plated heel smashed Kibre in the face, and staggered him backwards.
Garro was on his feet again. His kick had creased Kibre’s faceplate. Kibre ran at him.
Garro slid the sword out of the stone with no effort at all. The blade came up, and impaled Kibre through the chest.
Falkus Kibre rocked. Garro wrenched the blade out of him, and hacked, splitting Falkus Kibre through the chin, the sternum and the groin.
Torn open, Kibre sank to his knees. Glossy black organs bulged and spilled out of him, carried by a
rush of fluid as dark as promethium. He had not been Falkus Kibre in any organic sense for a long time. Whatever invisible, aetheric thing had been nesting in him shrieked and fled, leaving its ruined host body behind.
‘Throne of Terra,’ Garro murmured. ‘You poor bastard…’
Garro swung, quickly, surely, and struck off Falkus Kibre’s gasping head.
* * *
They had cut their way out of the dead Termite. Aximand and Lukash led Haemora Destroyer section up a great slope of halide waste in twilight darkness. It felt as though they were route marching some arctic escarpment at night. Open blackness encased them. The blue-white halide crust crunched beneath their feet and looked, in their visor view, as lambent as nocturnal snow. Every few minutes, there was a rumble of further collapses and rockslides from the deep cavity behind them.
Aximand tried the vox, but it was as dead as before. He was lost beneath the earth with fifty warriors whose high purpose was nullified.
‘We are climbing,’ said Lukash. He checked his auspex. ‘Another two hundred metres will bring us close to the point where the damned Mechanicum was supposed to deliver us.’
‘Lord captain!’ one of the Destroyers called out. He was crouching, examining something.
‘What?’ asked Aximand.
‘A flagstone,’ the legionary said, holding up a chunk of shaped rock.
‘Wonderful, Sackur. That’s the very thing we’ve come all this way to find.’
‘My lord, it has clearly tumbled down,’ the man replied. He pointed. The Haemora was right. There was a long, scattered trickle of dark rock marking the halide ahead, a dark smear almost a hundred metres long.
A flagstone. Part of a sundered floor.
Aximand slapped the man across the pauldron.
‘Good boy,’ he said. ‘Haemora, with me!’
They scrunched their way up the slope at double time, following the dark smear of spoil, which was starkly visible against the glowing while halide. More pieces of flag, and some bricks. Aximand’s visor detected a rise in background luminosity.
There was a hole in the night sky, because the night sky was the underside of the subfloor. Pale light shafted down, revealing the base of a sinkhole. Tonnes of masonry formed steep piles that climbed from the halide bank to the sagging hole. The bottom of some ancient cellar had caved in during the landslip.
