Deathfire

by Nick Kyme

  ‘Then they have reached their end. Do your part now, preacher, and I will honour our agreement. Fail again, and your suffering will be profound. I will a send ship for you. Be ready for it.’

  ‘A ship?’ asked Quor Gallek, trying to fight down a sudden sense of unease rising in his gut. ‘What for?’

  ‘I want you aboard the Reaper’s Shroud whilst you are still useful. I may have to sacrifice your vessel to stop them. Be ready.’

  Laestygon cut the feed, returning the servo-skull to its macabre state of un-life.

  Regardless of what the Death Guard wanted, Quor Gallek knew he had to stop the Charybdis whilst it was still in the warp. If nothing else, his ship and a ready means of escaping the Death Guard depended on it. He suspected Magnus’s hand in the Salamanders’ salvation, but not one to see a gift so casually scorned, the primarch would not help them again. ‘You believe you can breach the veil…’ he said to himself.

  Why else would the Drakes have returned if they did not harbour some realistic hope of success? Somehow, they had found a way to see through the aetheric tides without the Astronomican.

  During the assault on the generatorium, as he had come aboard, Quor Gallek had felt the mind of another psyker. With the fulgurite sliver psychically tethered to its point of origin, he could find that mind again. Entering the Ruinstorm a second time, it had to be weak. Vulnerable.

  A mind wandering in dark places always was.

  ‘Old friend,’ he muttered as he drew forth the Asirnoth blade. ‘I have need of you.’

  He had to move fast. The ship Laestygon had sent for him would not be long.

  It would take pain. And blood. It always did.

  Quor Gallek gently pulled open his robes, exposing the bare skin of his chest. Scars heaped atop scars, not all battle wounds.

  Murmuring the rites of the sacred Octed, he began to carve.

  Fifty-Six

  Blinded

  Battle-barge Charybdis, bridge

  The Charybdis had entered through the Mandeville point and been struck at once by the Ruinstorm’s ferocity. The familiar shriek of the ship’s abused hull and skeletal structure resounded throughout the decks.

  On the bridge, it was akin to a death wail.

  The mortal crew clung to their posts, teeth gritted as they stared at the shuttered viewport, doubtless wondering what horrors they were sailing through.

  For weeks, it had been this way. A torturous journey, seemingly without end.

  The Salamanders remained stalwart throughout. Vigilant, redoubtable and watching keenly for the slightest sign of weakness.

  Numeon watched too, for days on end, but had not expected it to come from the Librarian.

  Under the strain of maintaining a heading through the storm for so long, Ushamann trembled. His eyes had clenched tightly shut, and the beads of feverish sweat on his face glistened redly in the light. Like blood.

  Var’kir, who clung to his crozius with a near-desperate fervour, shared his pain. He too shook, head bowed as he murmured in the old tongue, that which had been spoken by the earth shamans of ancient Nocturne.

  Numeon caught only fragments of words, and even these he did not understand. Few now did who still lived.

  Vulkan was one, but he would rise again. He must.

  Between both Chaplain and Librarian, and their obvious struggle, it took Numeon a few moments to realise something else was wrong with Ushamann.

  ‘Zytos…’ Numeon swung his sword up into a ready stance and had begun to advance on Ushamann when he called out.

  Seeing the danger, knowing what it meant first-hand from his brief experience in the Eastern Keep, Zytos came at the afflicted Librarian from the other side.

  Before either could reach him, Ushamann’s head yanked back as if pulled by a cable and his eyes sprang open, spilling out cerulean light.

  ‘Vulkan’s blood, Ushamann,’ whispered Numeon, raising his sword to cut off the Librarian’s head. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Not… me…’ he rasped, the effort of speaking etched in agony on his face.

  Too late, Zytos turned to see the doors to the novatum already opening as if no lock or bar had been placed upon them.

  Standing in the gaping portal, limned by the red light and partially obscured by the pressure venting from the seals, was Circe.

  Adyssian had turned also, and was drawn from the command throne by a siren song he alone could respond to.

  Her lithe body no longer appeared frail, as she almost glided down the stairway from her sanctum.

  ‘Shipmaster,’ Numeon warned and went to intercede.

  Circe held out her hands, as if surrendering.

  ‘Navigator…’ said Numeon, one hand on the grip of Basilysk.

  Then Circe looked up, and he knew then that she was lost. Her black eyes were like pools of oil. She smiled, reaching up to remove her silver circlet.

  Several other Salamanders had already taken aim but Adyssian had mounted the stairs and strayed into their path, putting himself between Circe and the warriors charged with destroying her. The poor shipmaster didn’t know she was already dead, or if he did, he chose to ignore it.

  ‘Stand aside, shipmaster. That is not Circe,’ said Numeon.

  ‘I know,’ Adyssian replied sadly, and fell into her embrace anyway.

  Her fingers had begun to taper at the ends, hardening into long talons.

  ‘My love…’ she said, two voices speaking as one. She sounded amused, and took off the circlet. Numeon remembered that tone as he was forced to look away.

  Xenut Sul.

  And as Circe stared down at Adyssian with the fathomless black orbs of the Unburdened and the churning madness of her warp eye, she saw something in his face that gave her pause.

  ‘You are not my love,’ he told the foul thing wearing Circe’s borrowed flesh, and revealed the explosive charge he had clasped in both hands like a promise.

  Numeon saw it too in his peripheral vision, and as Adyssian clung to the frail form of his dead love and carried them both through the open seal into the novatum, he shouted.

  ‘Take cover!’

  Adyssian and Circe were torn apart. Pressed tight to their bodies, the destructive force was magnified and shredded them with its sheer intensity.

  A plume of smoke, fire and shrapnel from ruptured sections of deck and interior billowed down into the bridge. Though most of its incendiary power vented into the novatum, it spilled over.

  Several crewmen and legionaries, Numeon amongst them, were hurled off their feet.

  It would have killed Esenzi but for Numeon shielding her. He curved over her body, arms cradling the lieutenant, his armour torn by many rents. She reached up and touched the sigil on his face, relieved to be alive.

  Abidemi had been thrown to the opposite side of the deck, but groaned as he slowly got up. He managed to crawl over to Dakar, who had a large piece of shrapnel embedded in his chest. Numeon raised his eyes to Abidemi in hope, but the other Salamander shook his head.

  ‘How many more must die?’ Zytos asked. His armour was scored and blackened too. Every legionary who stood on the bridge had put himself in harm’s way to protect the mortals in his charge.

  As a result casualties were light.

  Numeon turned, and was about to answer when Ushamann screamed. He did so in concert with Var’kir. Wrenching off his skull mask, the Chaplain’s eyes blazed with the captured fires of an inferno as at last he beheld the beacon they had been seeking.

  ‘I see it!’ Var’kir roared, for he could do nothing else. ‘The flame… immolus… Deathfire!’

  As they breached the storm, a rush of intense revelation flowed through Numeon. He saw the vision Magnus had given him anew. He saw his passage to the mountain, the blood-red sky overhead cracked by forks of lightning. He knew this. It was the Time of Trial, when the
earth split and the heartblood of Nocturne poured forth to consume all.

  Ushamann kept on screaming. With Circe dead, her possessed form so abruptly vanquished, it fell to him to take the strain alone. The Librarian appeared to shrivel, as the warp stole away his vitality and power. Flesh withered and aged in seconds; rapid atrophy reduced his skeleton to brittle, ossified bones.

  He smiled, despite the agony, as his eyes hollowed to pitted sockets until only the light remained.

  Before the teeth in his mouth cracked into powder, before his tongue shrank to withered meat, Ushamann was able to utter one final word.

  ‘Nocturne…’

  The light from Var’kir’s eyes spilled out until it filled the bridge, so bright that none could endure it, not even Numeon. It banished all darkness, burning, ever burning, until with his last act Ushamann wrenched them from the storm, bringing the Charybdis’s long journey to its end.

  Fifty-Seven

  Nocturne

  Battle-barge Charybdis, bridge

  Stillness stole across the bridge of the Charybdis, gently urged by its plasma engines, the hull finally at rest.

  The light faded and the dark reasserted itself.

  Ushamann was no more. In his circle there remained a pile of ash. No bone, no flesh, not even the ceramite of his armour. He was simply gone.

  Var’kir lay on his side, barely conscious but alive. As Numeon went over to him, the shutters over the viewport began to lift.

  The blessed void existed beyond them, and a vista that swelled the heart of every Salamander who saw it.

  A blood-red orb, tumultuous, the pluming smoke of its mountains visible even from space.

  Nocturne.

  ‘We are home, Var’kir,’ said Numeon, emotion choking his voice. ‘We are home. Look…’

  But as Numeon cradled the Chaplain’s head so he too could see the wonder that they had achieved together, he realised Var’kir would never see it. Never again. His eyes were gone, two blackened pits left in their wake.

  ‘It’s all right, Artellus,’ he said, still weak but getting stronger. He clasped the back of Numeon’s hand. ‘I can feel it. Our return. Our belief…’ Trying to turn his head, he asked, ‘Ushamann?’

  ‘Our Librarian has made his final sacrifice,’ said Numeon, sadly.

  Zytos sank to his knees. So did several Salamanders. Despite the evidence of their eyes, few could believe they had reached Nocturne.

  Their relief did not last long.

  Through the wide aperture of the oculus, a second warp translation manifested. Far off to the port side, reality was breached as the void itself distorted like a rippling pool of abject darkness. Something tore through, tendrils of psychic corposant clinging to its bows as if reticent to let it go.

  At first a long prow, crested by a pitted trident. Then a ship’s flanks, rough-hewn by war, blackened and battle-scarred. A dirty white hull, edged in green and tarnished copper, emerged. Begrimed and pockmarked, its bloated mass bulged with weapon arrays. Slowly, with a tranquillity that brought to mind a great leviathan moving through the deeps, the immense vessel fully translated into real space. Larger even than the Charybdis, it spoke of war unending and a vicious pathology to hunt down its prey.

  A Barbaran symbol emblazoned its flank, the spiked crown encircling a jawless skull.

  Death Guard.

  And it was not alone.

  A second, much smaller ship came in its warp wake, trailing aetheric mist as it too emerged from the haunted darkness of the Ruinstorm.

  Hell-red, its statued crenellations, cathedrals and arcane buttresses had less in common with a battleship than they did a temple. War had been eschewed for worship, though it came armed for a fight nonetheless.

  The Monarchia – the Charybdis’s augurs knew this vessel already.

  ‘Shipmistress,’ said Numeon, gently laying Var’kir down before getting to his feet. His eyes never left the viewport as the two enemy ships came fully into being and he saw the gaping maw in the void clamped shut behind them.

  It took Esenzi a few moments to realise Numeon was addressing her.

  ‘My lord.’

  ‘You are in command of this ship now. I need to know how long before we are in effective weapons range of those two vessels, and what kind of fight we can put up in return.’

  To her credit, Esenzi left the helm to an ensign and took up Adyssian’s old seat. Blood and black scorching still lingered where the shipmaster had given his life for his crew, but she averted her eyes from it when it came into her peripheral vision.

  After sounding a general alert, she quickly relayed orders to her makeshift bridge crew. Sensoria were activated, data gathered, damage reports inloaded and void shields engaged.

  The prognosis was bleak.

  ‘The Reaper’s Shroud and the Monarchia, my lord,’ said Esenzi, rapidly scrolling through the data screed. ‘Fourteenth and Seventeenth Legion respectively. Sensors are detecting energy signatures from the laser batteries of both ships. They are primed to fire, my lord.’

  ‘And our readiness?’

  ‘Our forward void shields are at eighteen per cent. Our weapon arrays are engaged but below optimal strength. Hull armour and integrity is weak, but we have a full torpedo payload and launch bays are functional.’

  Despite the distance, Numeon could see the two ships were manoeuvring into an intercept course to blockade Nocturne and prevent the Charybdis reaching the planet. On the flanks of the larger cruiser, several launch bays opened up.

  ‘The Reaper’s Shroud is deploying boarding craft.’ Esenzi kept up her commentary as the others watched.

  ‘Can we fight them?’ asked Numeon, having moved to stand beside the command throne so he could see the tactical hololith Esenzi had just engaged. ‘Break through the blockade?’

  ‘We would last minutes before we were overwhelmed. Not long enough to breach their cordon.’

  ‘Can we hail our brothers below on Nocturne?’

  It was hope without much to support it. Numeon did not even know if there were Salamanders still on Nocturne, let alone in numbers enough to challenge a Death Guard vessel of the size currently sitting in their way.

  Esenzi had already checked. ‘Our long-range comms are being jammed.’

  Numeon scowled, anger and frustration threatening to overcome reason. He needed to maintain a clear head.

  ‘How many boarding craft?’

  ‘Eighteen, my lord. Thunderhawk gunships.’

  Potentially over five hundred legionaries were currently bearing down on them. Even accounting for the rate of attrition from the Charybdis’s weapons, it was a force the ship’s much-reduced defenders could not overcome. And this was only the first wave.

  Esenzi knew it too.

  ‘I have given my life to this Legion, to this mission. It would be my honour to do so until duty ends, my lord. You need only reach the surface. The Charybdis can afford you that chance.’

  Numeon nodded. He understood.

  The aquila Esenzi had given him was wrapped around his wrist. Numeon had almost forgotten it was there. Remarkable, how it hadn’t broken, despite the battles. Now he returned it.

  Esenzi took the charm.

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘I stand before you, lord, don’t I?’

  She smiled, though the weight of her grief made it stop at her lips.

  ‘I can thin out those fighters,’ she told him, putting the aquila back around her neck. ‘Then I will engage the larger ships, and hold their attention for as long as I can. I don’t know this vessel as well as Adyssian did, but I can still give those bastards something to think about. Do what we came here to do, my lord. Return Vulkan to the earth.’

  Numeon bowed, not merely an acknowledgement but akin to genuflection. ‘You honour this Legion, Lyssa Esenzi,’ Numeon told her. ‘And you
honour Vulkan with your sacrifice.’

  Then he left her side, summoning Zytos and the other Salamanders.

  ‘First, we make for the sanctum,’ said Numeon. ‘And then the launch bays.’

  ‘A small cadre will have to remain to protect the bridge,’ said Zytos. ‘Otherwise, our own vessel could be turned against us.’

  Numeon nodded. ‘Abidemi, get Var’kir to the launch–’

  ‘I will stay,’ said the Chaplain, having risen to his feet. He tilted his head as he spoke. With his sight gone, he had to rely on his other senses. It was disorientating, but transhumans could adapt quickly.

  ‘You will almost certainly die, Var’kir. I cannot allow–’

  ‘Waste time fighting me or fulfil your destiny, Artellus. The outcome of who remains on this ship will be the same. I am staying. Take our father to his rest and then come what may.’

  ‘No drake was ever more stubborn, Phaestus.’

  Numeon embraced him. As he did so, Var’kir held him close and spoke quietly into his ear.

  ‘I saw you stood before the mountain as the skies ran red and fire rained, brother. I know not what it means, but sensed it presaged something of great import.’

  Numeon broke away, confusion writ upon his face, but quickly recovered.

  ‘Die well, Chaplain.’

  Var’kir snorted, turning away. ‘No such death exists for us, legionary. And don’t send Xathen. Throne knows he wants it, but I cannot suffer him in my final moments.’

  At that, Numeon departed with the others.

  Once outside of the bridge, he told Zytos, ‘Vox whoever is left. Have two return to the bridge and secure it. Volunteers only. The rest come with us to escort our father back to Nocturne.’

  ‘We will be one ship against many,’ Zytos warned.

  ‘I don’t plan on fighting them. We just have to run the gauntlet and reach the surface intact.’

  ‘What about Hecht?’

  ‘Whatever his mission was or still is, we can’t take him any further. If he shows up and tries to stop us, we put him down, agent of Malcador or not.’