“Anyone else hear that?” he asked.
“Hear what?” said Hawkespur.
Something moved inside the black crystal of the cliff face, like a creature swimming under black ice. That was all the warning Alaric had.
His wards flared white-hot and he was thrown from his feet as something massive and yet somehow incorporeal ripped past him, hurling him against the opposite face. Crystal shattered and bit into the skin of Alaric’s body, scraping deep gouges in his armour. He hit the ground hard, willing himself to keep a grip on his halberd. The screaming sound was so loud it was like a wall of white noise, shrieking right through him, filling his mind.
Gunfire stuttered. Bright crimson las-blasts streaked in every direction.
An ice-cold spectral hand reached out of the crystal Alaric had just slammed into, snaking around his throat and lifting him up. It was not physical, not flesh and blood or even metal. Alaric saw a glimpse of a face that was not a face beneath the crystal, formed of a jumble of geometric shapes that coalesced into snarling fangs and burning purple slashes for eyes.
“Domine, salve nos!” hissed Alaric and the psychic wall around his soul flared outwards, burning the creature’s talons with the fire of his faith. The monster screamed and reeled back into the wall, dropping Alaric.
“Tharkk! Get your men in close! Grey Knights, surround them!”
Half-real creatures were leaping across the valley, streaking from one crystal wall to the other. One tech-guard was lifted off his feet as he went and the creature began to devour him. The tech-guard’s emotional repression wasn’t enough to cut out the pain as he was twisted around in the air, the maddening haze of shapes that made up the creature’s body whirling about him. Piece by piece he was sliced apart, geometric scraps of skin flayed off, and neat cores of bone bored out of him. The process took a handful of seconds before the creature reached the opposite wall but time seemed to slow down, as if Chaeroneia wanted the man to suffer as much as possible before it was done with him.
Tharkk hauled the remaining two tech-guard into the middle of the valley, Saphentis alongside him. The Grey Knights formed up around them, storm bolter fire chattering up as they tried to hit the creature streaking past them. They were lightning-quick and serpentine, clawed limbs extruding from their bodies at strange angles, their faces horrid slashes of deep burning light like broad strokes painted over reality. They were made of swirling shapes like some corrupt mathematics made real and the crystal of the valley walls seemed to conduct them, so that they arced across the valley like electricity.
Alaric’s wards were absorbing the foul magic pulsing off them. The Grey Knights all had the same defences and the creatures hated it. They bent around the Grey Knights like refracting light, the force of the Marines’ faith enough to warp the sub-reality they moved through.
The creatures screamed and contorted in torment, strange ugly colours rippling through them as they approached the Grey Knights. But it wouldn’t be enough. Moment by moment they were getting closer, becoming quicker and more aggressive as if their first attack had been a mere warm-up.
“We can’t stay!” shouted Hawkespur. She had her sidearm out and was sniping at the creatures, her bullets leaving rippling trails through them.
Alaric thought rapidly. She was right. They could hold out here but not forever—a few moments and the creatures could start injuring Grey Knights and carrying them away, getting among the tech-guard and finishing them off.
They had to move. To reach the data-fortress.
“Brother Archis,” said Alaric levelly, his voice raised above the otherworldly screaming. “I think our tech-guard companions could do with some inspiring words.”
“Justicar?” Archis paused between firing gouts of flame at the creatures to glance at Alaric.
“Tell them the Parable of Grand Master Ganelon. I hear you tell it well.”
Archis took aim again and bathed another creature in flame, the fire rippling purple-black where it flowed through the substance of the creature’s body. “There was once a man named Ganelon,” began Archis uncertainly. “A Grand Master of our Chapter. He…”
“As related in the Index Beati of High Chaplain Greacris, Brother Archis. I taught it to you myself.”
“Of course.” Archis paused for a second, as if composing himself. “…and so reflect, novice, on the works of Ganelon, who attained the rank of Grand Master two hundred and fifty-one years after taking on the mantle of the Knight. For the legions of the Lust God had done much evil through the Garon Nebula and the Holy Orders of the Emperor’s Inquisition entreated the Grey Knights to make war upon the benighted peoples therein…”
Archis had learned the parable by heart. Alaric had led the squad in prayers countless times and even the recent additions to the squad, Archis included, took equal responsibilities for their spiritual health. The parable was one Alaric had ensured Archis knew by heart so he could lead the squad in reflecting on its message, immortalized by High Chaplain Greacris eight centuries before.
Alaric waved the squad forward as Archis spoke, the Marine’s voice getting stronger as the familiar parable unfolded. The Grey Knights and the tech-guard moved gradually down the valley, the creatures shrieking past them.
The strength of the Grey Knights was not in their wargear or their training, in their augmentations or in the patronage of the Ordo Malleus. Their strength was faith. That was how they would survive here. That was the one weapon the Enemy could never counter.
“And Ganelon saw the evils done by the Lust God,” continued Archis, raising his voice above the howling. “But the minions of the Lust God were fell and many and Ganelon was surrounded by sorcerers and heretics and all who knew of it said he would surely die.”
The serpentine creatures flared red as the words of the parable burned them. They still reached out to test the Grey Knights’ psychic defences, but their mental claws were burned and they squirmed away through the air, keening angrily. As they reeled the other Grey Knights could fire at them, storm bolter shells shredding the half-physical stuff of their bodies. Wounded creatures writhed behind the surface of the crystal cliffs, bleeding raw mathematics from the tears in their bodies.
“The data-fortress is just ahead,” said Alaric. “We’re almost there.”
“If these things move through data media,” said Hawkespur as she stumbled through the underfoot wreckage to keep up with the tech-guard, “then they’ll be stronger there.”
“Let me worry about that. Just stay alive.”
“…And the Lord Sorcerer of the Lust God spake unto Ganelon,” said Archis, “and offered him great things. The Lust God would give Ganelon anything he desired, no matter how base or beautiful, savage or tender, a lifetime of wonders in return for service. And the sorcerer’s magic showed Ganelon all the things the Lust God could bring and they were wondrous indeed…”
Alaric glanced up and saw grav-platforms coming in to land over the data-fortress. There would be resistance, then, but he knew there would be. Now he was ready. The Grey Knights were coming into their own—this was the kind of battle they were made for.
“But Ganelon spoke to the Lord Sorcerer. He spoke of the weight of duty he carried and the opportunity given to him by the grace of the Emperor to discharge that duty. And he said to the Lord Sorcerer, what else is there in this universe, or any other, that can compare to a warrior’s duty done? What other gift can I receive, for the like of which I would give up what the Emperor has given unto me? And the Lord Sorcerer could find no answer and so were his deceitful words revealed as lies and his magic broken, and Ganelon struck off his head with one blow and won back the Garon Nebula into the Emperor’s light…”
Archis was nearly finished. The squad had reached the data-fortress, the first step of a flight of steps leading up to a huge black rectangle of the entrance. The data-fortress was a single massive cylinder standing on end, its obsidian surface swirling with the magnitude of information it contained. Alaric could feel t
he weight of all that knowledge, billions of words’ worth of information pressing against his consciousness. Information, the foundation stone of the Adeptus Mechanicus and presumably the lifeblood of whatever tech-heresy had taken hold of Chaeroneia.
The creatures were wary, hiding beneath the surface of the crystal or dissolving into barely-glimpsed shapes of shadow that slunk around in the distance. Archis’s parable had worked, focusing the faith of the Grey Knights until it burned their enemies.
“What in the hells are they?” asked Hawkespur as they made their way warily up towards the entrance.
“Self-actuating programs,” replied Saphentis. “Data constructs with limited decision-networks. Evidently the Mechanicus here has endowed them with some capacity to manipulate gravity or matter. Greatly heretical creations, or course.”
“Creations? No, archmagos. The tech-priests didn’t make them.”
“Explain, justicar?”
“I know daemons when I see them. This planet was stuck in the warp for a thousand years. I think those daemons infested the data media and the tech-priests are using them.” Alaric glanced at Saphentis. “They’ve fallen further than you think. Sorcery, Throne knows what else.”
“Then we are in grave danger here.”
“Wrong again. At first everything on this world was new to me. The Mechanicus, the tech-heresies, it’s something our training never anticipated. But daemons are different. Daemons I know. The tech-priests probably think their daemons are the best weapon they have, but we’ve trained our whole lives to take them on. This fight just shifted in our favour.”
The Grey Knights led the way through the forbidding entrance into the data-fortress itself and the weight of information settled on Alaric as his eyes snapped his pupils open to drink in the feeble light inside. The inside of the data-fortress was a riot of shapes. The stern exterior had served to contain rampant growths of datacrystal, forming spikes and blades that jutted insanely from every angle. It was disorienting in the extreme—the angles didn’t add up right, distances didn’t match up properly, everything seemed tilted in a dozen different ways. Strange colours pulsed through the crystal growths as the data-daemons plunged into the architecture of the fortress itself.
“They’re regrouping,” said Alaric. “Saphentis! Get us information! Concentrate on historical data, the last thousand years.”
“Thousand? But it has only been a century…”
“Do it! Haulvarn, Archis, don’t leave his side. The rest, close perimeter. Don’t let them surround us.”
Alaric tried to gauge how far the navigable space inside the fortress went. It was impossible to guess how far in anyone could get. There was something so fundamentally wrong with the inside of the fortress that Alaric guessed his men could still get lost no matter how big it actually was. It was as if the magnitude of information in the fortress was so great that its weight had come down on the fabric of reality, making it buckle and bend.
The daemons were there. He could feel them through the wards in his armour, through his skin and down to the core of his soul. Hanging back, watching, waiting. Waiting for something.
And there were tech-priests on the way with grav-platforms full of reinforcements. Saphentis would have to be quick and they would have to get back out through the valley under fire. Alaric knew it wouldn’t be easy but the odds were lengthening with every second. “Saphentis? What have you got?”
Saphentis had his two probe-tipped arms stabbed deep into the crystal, the servos twitching as torrents of information seethed up them. “Interesting,” he said. “There is much information. I lack the data filtration matrices that Thalassa possessed. I will need several minutes.”
It was so obvious they didn’t have several minutes that Alaric didn’t bother saying it.
The crystal was pulsing with strange colours that matched nothing on the visible spectrum. Alaric’s wards flared hotter. He glanced at the other members of his squad—Lykkos was touching a hand to the miniature copy of the Liber Daemonicum contained in its compartment on the front of his breastplate. Alaric did the same, mouthing a quick prayer that beseeched the Emperor for clarity of mind and firmness of decision amid the confusion of war.
“To my front!” called Brother Cardios. “They’re coming!”
There was a burst of storm bolter fire and Alaric turned in time to see something lift Cardios up and slam him hard against the crystal roof, shards of obsidian raining down. A giant spectral hand dropped the Marine and more fire streaked up at it, the muzzle flashes illuminating a huge, hulking creature, bullets rending its half-real flesh. Its massive doglike head bled purple-black fire that dripped upwards and the scores of eyes studding its skull were burning black pits. Its body seethed with corrupt mathematics, angles and shapes twisting in on one another so maddeningly it was impossible to focus on it properly, only comprehend that it was massive, powerful and terrible.
A daemon. The data-daemons had combined, subsuming their individual prowess into one creature that did not fear the prayers of the Grey Knights.
Dvorn yelled and sprinted into the space where Cardios had stood, swinging his nemesis hammer so hard it connected with the unreal substance of the daemon’s torso and ripped out a chunk of raw logic. The daemon bellowed and swung out a clawed hand, smashing Dvorn against the crystal. Sparks of power bled from the wound in the crystal as Dvorn hit the ground and rolled just as a cloven foot extruded itself from the daemon’s mass and stamped down like an industrial piston.
Everyone that could was firing at the daemon now as it lumbered towards them, backing towards Saphentis in a tight formation. Captain Tharkk and the two tech-guard needed their combined strength to drag Brother Cardios back and Dvorn bought them all precious seconds, rolling onto his back and firing into the daemon’s underside before jamming his hammer into its belly and pushing up, trying to force it from over him.
The daemon reeled but did not stop, listing to the side and passing through the crystal. As it did so the livid, open wounds sealed up and new angry colours pulsed through its body.
The daemons living in the data medium were projecting this daemon out from there, just as they had projected the bodies of the hunter-daemons in the valley. They were stronger there, but they were also vulnerable, concentrating on fighting their way through the Grey Knights to reach Saphentis, the one who was invading their realm.
Alaric reversed his grip on his Nemesis halberd and dropped to his knees, driving the blade deep into the crystal of the floor.
“I am the Hammer!” he yelled. “I am the point of His spear! I am the mail about His fist!”
He felt the daemons recoil from him, their hot anger conducted through the blade and up the halberd’s haft. They hated it. He knew how to hurt them.
The daemon stopped, head back and screaming, spatters of pure information fountaining from its gaping mouth like blood. Lykkos stepped forward, dropped to one knee and put three rapid psycannon shots through its throat, the blessed bolter shells punching up through its head and spattering spectral brains all over the ceiling. The monster stumbled and the Grey Knights all added their fire, Archis taking aim with his Incinerator and pouring a gout of flame around its feet.
“Behold the fate of the Unguided one!” yelled Alaric, switching to a new prayer as he felt the daemons all around him trying to find a way around the force of his faith. “For every soul is drawn towards the beacon of the Master of Mankind! Behold the fate of the faithless, for every soul is born to believe!”
Raw pain shot up into Alaric, burning his fingers and the muscles of his arms as he held on. He was in a battle of wills with the data-daemons and he would not give in because there was nothing in this galaxy or any other with the willpower to match a Grey Knight.
Brother Haulvarn saw the daemon reeling and ran forward, leaping up and driving the blade of his sword down into its gaping mouth. Dvorn rolled onto his knees and swung his Nemesis hammer into the daemon’s side, knocking it onto one knee.
&
nbsp; Haulvarn was on top of it, stabbing down, smoldering multi-coloured gore spattering all over him.
The data-daemons were torn between fending off Alaric’s spiritual assault and keeping their creation on its feet. They couldn’t do both and the daemon was driven back under Dvorn and Haulvarn’s assault, battered further by combined fire from the rest of the squad. With a horrendous sound Alaric hoped he would never have to hear again, the daemon came apart. Unable to retain its foothold in real space, its daemonic flesh unravelled in a swirling mass of colour and light, streaming back into the crystal as it shape was erased from reality.
Alaric fell onto his back, the images of thousands of screaming data-daemons glowing on his retinas. “It’s down,” said Hawkespur.
“We don’t have long,” said Alaric. He pulled himself back onto his feet—his ceramite gauntlets were glowing a dull red and the blade of his Nemesis halberd was charred black. He looked at Saphentis. “Archmagos?”
“I believe I have found all that I can. It is incomplete and corrupt, but not devoid of interesting content.”
“Wonderful. Tharkk, stay close to the archmagos and Hawkespur.”
Captain Tharkk saluted briskly. He only had two tech-guard left, but Alaric knew the mental surgery and conditioning of the Adeptus Mechanicus meant he would be a soldier to the end.
Haulvarn picked himself up and pulled Dvorn to his feet. The two of them were liberally spattered with rainbow-sheened gore, like rancid machine oil.
“Injuries?” asked Alaric.
“Nothing,” replied Haulvarn.
“None here,” added Dvorn.
“Cardios?”
“I’m beaten up, but not badly,” replied Brother Cardios, who was sitting propped up against the crystal. His breastplate was badly dented and his backpack was all but shattered.
“I can hear contacts,” said Lykkos. “Close and approaching.”
“Throne of Earth,” said Alaric resignedly. “Fall back, we’ll have to take the valley.”
[Grey Knights 02] - Dark Adeptus Page 13
