Deathfire

by Nick Kyme

  Footfalls were echoing across the deckplate towards them, audible over the numbing drone of the Geller field generator.

  Harboured behind a reinforced shell of overlapping adamantium plates, the device’s housing had a single weak point: a circular access hatch large enough for an enginseer or Techmarine. Beyond that aegis lay the generator itself, a pulsing engine of singular technological artifice, a relic of the Dark Age of Technology.

  Without it, the Charybdis’s survival would be measured in seconds.

  Foolish, the first legionary to push down the narrow defile spat out some Colchisian mantra and Gargo leaned around to stab up into the frothing zealot’s chin before he had even raised his weapon.

  Zonn took down a second Word Bearer, spearing him through the chest with his plasma-cutter before wrenching the mewling warrior’s head off with his servo-arm.

  Blood fountained in the tight space, spattering his eye lenses and coating the back of Gargo’s left shoulder with gore.

  As he was trying to cleanse his visor, a bolt tore into Zonn’s upper chest, ripping off chunks of breastplate and severing the servo-arm’s cabling. A flapping pressure hose from the damaged armature spewed vapour across his faceplate. He staggered, recovering enough to thrust his drawn chainblade into a torso. The teeth burred, grinding metal and bone. More blood and chunks of flesh spat out at the Techmarine, ruddying his armour.

  Gargo was advancing, stepping over the dead to close the gap with the Word Bearers surging into the narrow defile leading to the generatorium. A dying legionary clawed at his ankle. Glancing down, Gargo stomped his skull into fragments. When he looked back up a brute of a warrior stood in his way with bare, muscular arms etched in cuneiform. A host of scars colonised his skin behind the runic script. His face was bare too, but for the rebreather fast­ened over his nose and mouth.

  Both swung simultaneously, Gargo with his spatha, the brutish Word Bearer with a flange-headed mace. The spatha’s blade disappeared in a flare of angry light and squealing metal, leaving behind a smoking stump of hilt.

  The mace had to be a power weapon.

  Hoping to even the odds, Gargo swung with his hammer but the Word Bearer had a second blade too and it cut through the black-smiter’s battleplate like parchment, rending flesh then bone.

  For a moment Gargo thought the wet thud against the deckplate was the stump of hilt, until a sudden imbalance kicked in as he leaned hard and realised his only flesh and blood arm had been cut off.

  A massive dose of adrenaline flooded his bloodstream, stymying pain and staving off neurological shutdown. A Space Marine’s body was genetically engineered to keep on fighting even after sustaining critical injury. Where reaction and instinct would fail, hypno-­conditioned impulse took over, so Gargo did not mentally process the loss of his limb at first; he just fought to survive.

  Even unarmed, his bionic remained an effective weapon. Before the Word Bearer could finish him, Gargo smashed the blade of his bionic hand into the other legionary’s chest. Metal plates parted and ruptured on impact, and the bone beneath shattered.

  A savage backhand ripped off the Word Bearer’s rebreather, dislodging teeth in the same blow. A feral smile lay hidden beneath the grille-mask, despite the pain of injury.

  Rather than capitulate, the Word Bearer fought harder and lashed out, catching Gargo across the midriff with the haft of the mace and hurling him into the generatorium’s armoured shell, where he slumped down.

  Zonn saw his brother Salamander fall and moved to intercede, warding the narrow defile with his armoured body and blocking any further advance from the Word Bearers.

  ‘You like it bloody,’ said the Word Bearer who had felled Gargo, brandishing his twin weapons.

  Zonn did not answer. Instead, he brought up his chainsword into a defensive stance.

  The Word Bearer nodded, ignoring the shouts of his fellow legionaries, who were pinned behind him.

  ‘Good,’ he said to Zonn. ‘So do I.’

  Blade and mace struck in unison and Zonn had to fall back onto one knee as he braced against the warrior’s immense strength. Chain teeth sped by in a blur, churning against the Word Bearer’s two weapons. They churned Zonn’s gauntlet too, the Techmarine having to clench the burring blade of his weapon to stop from being overwhelmed.

  Veins bulged in the Word Bearer’s neck as he pressed down on Zonn’s defence.

  All Techmarines had varying degrees of augmentation. For some it was to enhance their senses, auditory, olfactory or visual. Others had bionic limbs for enhanced speed or strength. Zonn’s extended from haptic implants in his hands to bionics implanted into his neck. He called upon the latter now, rising from his enforced crouch and butting the casing of his chainsword so it snapped forwards.

  His oppressor lurched backwards, his hold broken as he was struck in the chest and the chain teeth from Zonn’s blade raked across his breastplate.

  The blow hit hard, but threw out Zonn’s arm at the same time. For a moment, his defence lay breached. He almost recovered, but the Word Bearer was quicker.

  Thick plasteel swept into Zonn’s neck, and jarred. The blade held fast, snared by ranks of plated cabling and wires. Sparks rained from the wound, and an oil slick poured down the Techmarine’s upper chest like blood.

  His battleplate registered the critical injury, relaying the data across Zonn’s retinal feed, a biometric outline of his armoured frame displaying red warning icons at the point where his gorget met his helm.

  This he processed in a nanosecond; his next act was to engage the plasma-cutter in his right vambrace. For some reason it failed to activate. Reaction time slowing to a crawl, he missed the second critical warning on his lens display.

  Plastron breach, rib-plate split, internal organs compromised and failing.

  He absorbed the data as dispassionately as a cogitator. Only when Zonn looked down and saw the flanged mace head embedded deep in his chest did he realise just how seriously injured he was.

  With a violent tug, the blade in his neck was wrenched loose, spoiling his vision as he tried to find his assailant through the squalls of static affecting his feed. A second strike met the gouge laid by the first and Zonn felt it bite flesh.

  Blood met oil, pouring down his chest and abdomen in a black flood, draining and pooling onto the deck at his feet.

  Nerveless fingers relinquished the chainsword. In a brief visual, Zonn thought the Word Bearer had grown, for the traitor towered over him. Belatedly, he realised it was he that had sunk down, on both knees this time.

  The blade wrenched loose one more time, Zonn’s head jerking with the violent motion, his visual feed blurring.

  ‘Vulk–’

  He stopped short when his neck was severed, and his head came free of his body.

  Degat kicked over the corpse and stepped into the generatorium core. He could feel the energy hum rattling his bones and taste the corposant bleeding off the machinery behind the armoured shell where the other one still sat.

  Not dead, but down.

  ‘I’ll be back to finish you soon,’ he promised the one-armed legionary, shouting over his shoulder for a blast charge.

  The krak grenade went off with a dull crump, taking off the shell’s access hatch and exposing the engine within. Light and noise flooded the corridor as viperous bands of energy licked and spat through the shattered hatch.

  ‘Breacher,’ he snarled, and waited for the hefty explosive to be handed down.

  It never made it.

  The breacher carrier pitched to the side, his left temple drilled by a bolt shell. A detonation ruptured the warrior’s cranial vault in a welter of bone shards and matter. Headless, the Word Bearer stood erect for another second before he collapsed still holding the charge.

  Degat smiled, staying low as suppressing fire rained in on him and his men.

  He had only caught a
glimpse of their assailant, but it was enough.

  ‘At last,’ he murmured, jerking back against the renewed fusillade and laughing as another of his battle-brothers was cut down.

  Forty-Three

  The Emperor protects

  Battle-barge Charybdis, foredecks

  Adyssian thought Ushamann was dead – the light in his eyes had gone, and he wasn’t moving. Before succumbing to this fugue state, he had clawed something into the wall with gauntleted fingers.

  Unearths Kabar.

  Who Kabar was or why Ushamann had carved his name into the metal was a mystery to Adyssian. A flicker of motion in his peripheral vision took his attention from the wall.

  The girl had moved, or, at least, the thing that had fashioned itself as a girl. Dredged from Adyssian’s subconscious, it was as cruel an apparition as the warp could have made for him.

  ‘Maelyssa…’

  He wept, not because the gossamer-clad thing slowly closing on them reminded him of his dead daughter, but for the true memory of what he had lost and all the grief that came with it.

  She was close, and the shipmaster was almost able to see what lay beneath that long, lank hair. Adyssian didn’t want to and as much as it hurt his martial pride to die on his knees, he shut his eyes.

  The crumpled parchment underneath his uniform felt old and tattered, but also comforting. He didn’t need to look at the faded vellum pages to recite the prayer; Adyssian knew every word by heart.

  ‘In the Emperor’s shadow, I shall not falter,’ he whispered, clutching tightly to the Lectitio Divinitatus. ‘For it is He that banished the denizens of Old Night with the light of the Imperial Truth.’

  Giggling that was much too deep and resonant for a little girl intruded, but Adyssian did not stop.

  ‘I am His servant. By His will and my deeds am I shielded from evil, for the Emperor Protects and His luminance shall–’

  Loud, percussive bolter fire cut through Adyssian’s recitation, and as he opened his eyes, throwing himself against the wall to make a smaller target, he saw muzzle flare and the slowly diminishing form of the girl.

  Heavy armoured figures stormed into her wake and the still fading flare of bolters.

  ‘Save your ammo,’ he heard one of them say. ‘Hammers and blades are the only way to be sure.’

  ‘Yes, brother-captain.’

  Adyssian sagged against the wall, his relief palpable. Exhausted as he was, he heaved his weary body to its feet as he met Artellus Numeon.

  He led four other Salamanders, including Sergeant Zytos. A sixth figure, much more diminutive than the rest, caused tears to flow anew down the shipmaster’s face as all thought of decorum vanished.

  ‘Lyssa!’

  Adyssian and Esenzi embraced as two long-lost friends, separated by a gulf of time. The indulgence was momentary, and as they parted Adyssian eyed his flag lieutenant questioningly.

  Esenzi knew what he asked; the answer was obvious in her sorrowful gaze. She almost just nodded, but remembered her training at the last moment and gave her report as she had been trained to do.

  ‘Lieutenant Gullero is dead, sir. They’re all dead. The entire bridge crew. I am the only one who survived.’

  Adyssian tried not to gape at the sheer horror of it all. He glanced to Zytos, who gave a slight nod.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked Esenzi, though he suspected the answer lay with the twisted memory of his dead daughter.

  Numeon stepped in, his eagerness to get moving obvious.

  ‘We need to get you and Lieutenant Esenzi to safety, shipmaster.’

  Adyssian nodded slowly, still overcoming the inertia of his shock.

  ‘Of course, yes.’ They needed him, and Esenzi, to crew the ship’s bridge once they returned to the void. He smoothed down his uniform, releasing his grip on the parchment in his inner jacket pocket.

  Dakar had gone to see to Ushamann, whilst Abidemi and Vorko stood sentry, watching both ends of the corridor.

  The safety Numeon spoke of evidently wasn’t here.

  ‘What do you have in mind, my lord?’

  ‘Ushamann was taking you to his Librarium, yes?’

  Adyssian nodded to the Salamander. He watched Dakar make a battle-sign against his plastron before he saw the faint stirrings of life return to the Librarian.

  ‘Then we go there now,’ said Numeon, glancing at Ushamann’s scrawled words but making no comment. ‘All of us.’

  They were about to head out when the vox crackled back into life again, having been quiet since just after Numeon and Zytos had left the bridge.

  Var’kir’s wizened voice manifested across the feed.

  ‘Numeon? Mercy of Vulkan! You are alive, brother-captain. When I could not reach you, I feared the worst.’

  The return was patchy and far from ideal, but Numeon was at least in contact with his Chaplain again.

  ‘Var’kir, there is something aboard the Charybdis, some kind of–’

  ‘It’s a daemon, Artellus. I know how that sounds, but we are being manipulated by a denizen of Old Night.’

  ‘It sounds all too plausible, old friend.’ Numeon discerned the sporadic exchange of gunfire in the background and raised, urgent voices. ‘Where are you? What is happening?’

  ‘The lower decks are under attack. Word Bearers, brother, and in number. They had us at an impasse but a section broke off…’ Var’kir paused to release a loud burst from his pistol. It was several seconds before he came back and for a moment Numeon feared he had been injured or worse. ‘They are headed for the generatorium.’

  ‘The Geller field?’

  ‘What else. They mean to overrun this ship with hellspawn.’

  Had this been another time, before Isstvan, before Traoris and the horrors he had witnessed on Macragge, Numeon would have scoffed at such a remark. Now, it was all too reasonable. With that came a stark revelation. The Imperial Truth, that which denied the existence of gods and deities beyond the natural world, which eschewed superstition and the arcane, promoting science and reasoning as the tools of enlightenment, was a lie.

  ‘I have Adyssian and Esenzi. Who defends the generatorium?’

  Var’kir told him. He also told him how the Pyre was spread thin across the Charybdis, pulled in every direction by sightings of the girl, and by other visions that had led warriors to stray from their posts. The Chaplain had twenty legionaries with him, but had no reliable way of marshalling the others.

  ‘Xathen?’ Numeon knew the veteran had been on patrol in that region of the ship.

  ‘I have lost contact with everyone beyond the cadre I am fighting beside. Everyone except for you, brother-captain.’

  Numeon blink-clicked a ship schematic onto his visor display and found what he was looking for in seconds.

  ‘A route from the Librarium will get us to the lower decks. I can reinforce Zonn and Gargo from there.’

  ‘Understood. I will try to break through if I can. There is one more thing. The grey legionary is moving to reinforce our beleaguered brothers.’

  ‘Hecht?’

  ‘The very same.’

  Behind his draconian faceplate, Numeon raised an eyebrow. ‘You let him go alone?’

  ‘It is as Zytos said – we have to trust someone.’

  Numeon sensed there was more to the Chaplain’s change of heart than that, but nodded. He and the others were already moving, and had been since Var’kir had made contact.

  ‘Vulkan lives, Chaplain,’ he said.

  ‘In you, brother-captain,’ Var’kir replied before the feed fell silent again.

  Evidently, some things had still not changed.

  Gargo crawled. His chest burned from where the mace had struck him. Dented battleplate pushed in at his rib bone, sharp from where it had caved against the blow.

  He crawled one-handed an
d left a bloody smear in his wake, fingers digging into the deck grille, heaving his bulk up with his bionic arm. He found Zonn and briefly clutched the Techmarine’s forearm in a final moment of remembrance before moving on. One of the eyepieces in his helm was cracked, and it was making it diff­icult to see, but he couldn’t remove it.

  Heavy fire echoed dully overhead, and Gargo realised his audio feed must be damaged too. That or he was closer to incapacity than he realised.

  The fight had moved outside the narrow defile where he and Zonn had made their stand. Someone else had engaged the Word Bearers before they could enact their sabotage. And though the corr­idor was empty now, bodies still impeded him. Gargo wrenched himself over them, crushing throats or gouging into eyes where motes of life still persisted. He told himself it was necessary, not malicious or vengeful, but every time he remembered the sight of Zonn’s severed head the truth became his reality.

  Gargo’s strength was giving out by the time he reached the end of the corridor and emerged into the deck proper. Pyroclasts engaged the throng of Word Bearers, led by Rek’or Xathen.

  As he passed from consciousness, Gargo realised something was wrong. As darkness took him, he realised he could not see the Preacher. The Word Bearers Chaplain had not been amongst the raiders. He was somewhere else, his purpose unknown but almost certainly not good.

  Forty-Four

  Unearths Kabar

  Battle-barge Charybdis, cargo hold

  Quor Gallek ran through the ship, taking conveyors and lifters when he had to, but met little in the way of resistance. A few wayward deckhands, easily silenced, were all who had stood in his path.

  It was a path that led him to the primarch. Cloistered somewhere in the lower decks, amongst the cargo, lay the artefact Quor Gallek sought. Embedded in the flesh of Vulkan, it might prove difficult to remove. He knew, without really knowing, the Salamanders must have tried to pull out the fulgurite in the vain hope that it would restore their lord. Faerie stories, nothing more, clung to by desperate sons.