Shield of Baal: Deathstorm

by Josh Reynolds

  It was a monstrous thing, all alien muscle and seething malice. He could feel its thoughts in his, like wriggling worms of doubt and dread, at once familiar and repugnant. How many times had he felt those same sharp thoughts clawing at his mind as a boy? Flax pushed himself upright, his arms and legs trembling with the effort. It watched his movements with evident curiosity. He wondered if it were savouring his broken-down state, or if, perhaps, it were disappointed in him. Did it dream of him, of this moment?

  ‘We’re not children any more, though, are we Tiberius?’ he croaked. ‘I am a decrepit sack of flesh, and you have sloughed off whatever frail shell of humanity you might have possessed to become the monster we always knew you to be.’

  The broodlord leaned down over the statue, twisting its head so that it could meet his gaze. It hissed softly. Flax bent double, his body wracked by a coughing fit. The broodlord drew back, nostrils flaring.

  Flax looked up and smiled a bloody smile. ‘Have no fear, brother. I am not sick. Merely old and feeble, and broken on the altar of time.’ He forced himself to straighten and spread his arms. ‘Well? What have you to say to me, hmm? The moment is here, Tiberius. The moment I knew was coming the instant I put down the beasts you’d made of my parents…’

  The broodlord snarled. The sound echoed across the width of the chasm below, rising above the thunder of falling water, and Flax could not help but quail back. The sound had never failed to strike fear in him. But a surge of anger stiffened his spine. ‘Yes, snarl at me, I deserve it,’ he snapped. ‘I took the only creatures who ever showed you love and killed them. But while my finger might have been the one which pulled the trigger, you were as guilty as I. You ruined them – you almost destroyed everything that we had.’ He shook his head. ‘I say almost, as if the worst hasn’t come to pass.’ He looked at the broodlord. ‘Are you satisfied, brother? How long do you think your new masters will let you rule the ash heap you’ve made of our kingdom, hmm? How long before you’re rendered down the way my people have been?’

  The broodlord leapt gracefully from the statue and landed in a crouch at Flax’s feet. The old man stumbled back, tripping on the hem of his robes. He fell back, scraping his elbows and back on the hard stone. The broodlord scuttled towards him, eyes glinting.

  ‘That’s right, Tiberius – get it over with,’ Flax hissed. Fear raced through him, paralysing everything but his mouth. He hurled words at the creature for lack of any other defence. ‘Open me up and feast on my heart. It won’t satisfy you, you know. It won’t bring them back.’

  The broodlord froze. It stared at him, unblinking. Flax smiled weakly. He had not expected the beast to react so obviously. Maybe it was more human than he had suspected. ‘Oh. Oh my, how ridiculous you are, beast. To think, I have been frightened of you all this time.’ His smile faded. ‘Do you even know why you’re doing this? Is it just some primitive impulse, or is there actually a mind in there? What are you, Tiberius? Man or monster?’

  The broodlord shrieked. Flax stared into its maw, full of jagged fangs and lashing tongue, and saw his answer. The creature lunged, grabbing his shoulders and slamming him backwards. He felt his head crack against the stone and nausea flowed through him. Part of him prayed that the Blood Angels would find him in time, but it was a vain hope at best.

  When they had first arrived in their battle-scorched crimson armour, he had experienced a moment of hope. But that too, he knew, was part of the creature’s demented game. It had allowed him to survive, to escape, just as it had allowed him a moment of hope, so that it could snatch it all away. Even as he had snatched away its life, so long ago.

  Flax did not struggle. There was no reason to do so. He wanted it to end, wanted the beast to finish what it had begun. Decades of slow torment, dwindling to these last bare moments. ‘Go ahead, brother… kill me, the way you killed our world. Kill me, and be damned.’ As he spoke, he fumbled in his robes for the hard shape of the knife he had secreted on his person. He had intended to cut his own throat, when the time came. Oh, how he’d gleefully imagined the frustrated look on the beast’s face as he claimed his own life.

  But that plan was ashes now. Besides, he was a Flax, and such a death was not for him. No, better to bury the blade in the creature’s side and see what sort of death it bought him. Let it know one more moment of pain at his hands, before it finished this sad drama. The broodlord stared at him, as if trying to understand his lack of fear.

  As it hunched over him, he drew the knife and rammed it home. The broodlord reared back and screamed. He didn’t think the wound was mortal, or even debilitating, but that wasn’t the point. The creature tore the knife from its side and glared down at him, talons poised to strike, every abhorrent muscle quivering with repressed need.

  Flax smiled. ‘They might have loved you at the end, brother, but they loved me first and best.’

  With a howl, the broodlord struck.

  Fifteen

  Karlaen stomped down on the last squealing bio-beast, squashing it. The ripper swarm had attacked moments ago, drawn out of bore holes in the ruined foundations by the scent of him. He had dissuaded them with proper application of boot and hammer, but they had left him much to remember them by. He could feel blood leaking into the crevices of his suit, and a pall of fatigue muffled his senses. The creatures had swarmed over him, biting and burrowing, and it was only thanks to the armour he wore that he had survived.

  The rippers were not the only threat he had faced. Genestealers had attacked him more than once as he hunted his quarry through the tomb-like foundations of the palace. They came at him in twos and threes, dropping down from the darkness above, or lunging out of crannies and side tunnels. Each time, his bionic eye had tracked their approach, and each time, he had put them down. But the attacks were constant, and even the superhuman physiology of a Space Marine could be worn down under such conditions. The bio-sensors in his armour mewled warnings about increasing fatigue-poisons and torn muscles. His breath rasped hot and harsh in his lungs. Blood and sweat stung his eyes. But still he pressed on, moving through slanted shadows, following Flax’s genetic signature through the depths of Phodia.

  The vox crackled intermittently, assuring him that at least some of the others still lived. Bereft of any other orders, they would make for the surface and the rallying-point as quickly as possible. Karlaen could not say what would be waiting for them when they got there. The signs of the planet’s consumption had spread even to these depths.

  Sewer channels that had once carried filthy rainwater from the streets far above were now choked with strange, barbed vegetation and the still waters were occupied by hideous, half-seen creatures. The foundations of the city were being strangled by new, poisonous growths which gaped and whined like hungry animals as he tore them from his path or crushed them underfoot. Karlaen had encountered these often enough to recognise the flesh-tubes of the hive fleet when he saw them. They were digging deep, to feed on the life-blood of Asphodex and drain even the soil of nutrients.

  The tyranids were efficient, in their way, monstrous as it was. They broke worlds down, squeezing every grain of sustenance from them, one molecule at a time. They wasted nothing. Even the air itself was stripped of life. That was to be Asphodex’s fate – the fate of every world in the Cryptus System: to be squeezed and drained and left barren. And once they were finished here, Hive Fleet Leviathan would move on to the next course in its galaxy-spanning meal – Baal.

  The thought stirred the embers of his rage to life once more. He fought down the instinct to charge forwards into whatever waited ahead. He extended a hand and leaned against a wall covered in swelling, breathing growths of alien matter, trying to bring his red-tinged thoughts back under control. Anger swelled in him, and he tried to channel it into his desire to find Flax. His mind was filled with images of his enemy, and he could hear its screams as he pulled it apart, limb by limb. His teeth scissored into his bottom lip, releasing a spurt of blood into his mouth, and he swallowed without thinkin
g. The shock of it startled him back to awareness.

  His discipline was eroding the harder he pushed himself, but he could not afford to stop. This was the razor’s edge which every Son of Sanguinius walked. To push themselves to the limit of discipline and hypno-conditioning without tipping over into the madness that crept about the edges of their psyche. To utilise the rage and the strength that came with it, without being swallowed by it. But that was easier said than done, and the fire could only be stoked for so long before it raged out of control.

  Karlaen shoved himself away from the wall and stumbled. He felt the walls of his discipline crumbling, brick by brick. The world lurched around him and he felt his gut twist in loss and pain the likes of which no mortal could bear, and he heard the sound of great wings flapping brokenly, and felt the rush of heat and pain and saw the face of god twisted into something beyond redemption and he screamed as something snagged his arm and sank cruel barbs through the armour plates.

  Karlaen jerked his arm back, uprooting the strangling creepers from the stone of the wall. They had slithered about him so noiselessly, so quickly, that he had been taken unawares. Pain flooded his nervous system, driving back the madness. He whispered a quiet prayer of thanks as he tore the whole mass of alien vegetation from the wall and extricated his arm from its tendrils. He flexed his hand, and, satisfied that he could still use it, he turned and pressed on, trying to ignore the ghostly feathers that fluttered at the edges of his vision.

  The corridor ended in a square of dull light. As he stepped through, the omnipresent roar of water, muted until now, suddenly flowered into its full glory. He stopped just past the aperture and took in the scene before him – the four intersecting bridges, the great sluice gates set high above the bridges, water pouring down from them into the chasm below. And at the centre of the bridges, the Spawn of Cryptus crouched over a limp form.

  Flax was not dead. Karlaen’s sensors told him that much. But he was fading. The governor was too old and too feeble to handle the sort of stressors he had been exposed to. Karlaen could hear the erratic hammering of the old man’s heart. He took a step forward, and the broodlord looked up. The alien met his gaze without reaction. It reached down and gently stroked Flax’s hair. The gesture was almost affectionate.

  Warnings flashed and Karlaen scanned the area. There were other shapes lurking in the ruined foundations that surrounded the bridges, or hanging from the support struts and railings of the bridges. He wondered how many of the creatures remained. How many children did the Spawn of Cryptus have left to throw at him? Karlaen took another step forwards. He considered trying for a shot with his storm bolter, but there was a chance he might hit Flax. Even targeting arrays had their limits, and between his fatigue, the damp haze that obscured the air and the broodlord’s mind-tricks, he did not want to risk it. He left the weapon where it was, and raised his hammer. As he gripped it, the broodlord leaned forwards, as if scenting the air.

  Karlaen started forwards. The broodlord screamed. Karlaen staggered as his mind suddenly rippled with pain. He stumbled and lowered his hammer, using its haft to keep himself upright as the broodlord assailed him psychically. Waves of pain rolled over him. Shards of memory, weaponised and honed to lethality by an alien psyche, tore at his defences as they had before. But this time, Karlaen was ready. He stoked the flames of his rage to a new intensity, welcoming the flush of clarity it brought. The broodlord was a thing of nurtured hate and bestial rage, but that was as nothing compared to the fury of one who lived with the dying scream of a demigod lodged in his mind. Alien whispers were shredded like smoke by the beating of great, unseen wings.

  The Shield of Baal locked eyes with the Spawn of Cryptus and pushed himself to his feet. The broodlord’s expression of animal serenity wavered. Its eyes widened in shock, then narrowed in consternation as it found its greatest weapon undone and useless. In the span of half a dozen heartbeats, the contest was decided. The creature blinked, breaking contact. It reared to its full height and let loose a shrill cry of command.

  As the echoes of that cry rode across the thunder of the water and bounced from statue to foundation stone, the genestealers launched themselves into motion. The creatures raced forward from all directions. Karlaen met them with focused violence. The power field of his hammer crackled and sparked as he swung it in wide, precise arcs, driving the creatures back, or killing them in mid-lunge. Here in the open, he could employ the weapon to its fullest, and the Hammer of Baal hummed in his hands.

  Through it all, he continued his advance towards the broodlord, neither slowing nor stopping. He had come too far and endured too much to allow himself to be stymied here and now. The last two genestealers between him and his quarry scrambled along the edge of the bridge, racing towards him.

  Karlaen swatted the first out of the air with his hammer, driving it into the surface of the bridge with a resounding crack. The creature barely had time to squall before its carapace split and burst, and it was reduced to a wet stain. As the second genestealer sprang towards him, Karlaen turned, firing his storm bolter. The beast was plucked from the air by the explosive bolts and reduced to a dark mist.

  He pivoted, ready to fire at the others that were closing in on him from behind, but the storm bolter clicked empty. Karlaen cursed and slammed it back onto its grav-clamp. He took a two-handed grip on his hammer and met the first of the creatures with a blow that sent its body rolling bonelessly across the bridge. The second joined it, and the third. Then, just as suddenly as the attack had started, it was done.

  Karlaen turned back to see the broodlord step past the prone body of Flax, its features twisted in what might have been a sneer of contempt. Then, with a roar, it was upon him. They duelled for a moment, hammer against claw. As before, Karlaen was slower, but he was prepared for the beast’s agility now, and he fought conservatively, blocking and parrying its blows rather than simply absorbing them. He knew his enemy now, and it knew him.

  The broodlord ducked and weaved, avoiding blows that would have ended their conflict for good. It gave him no room to manoeuvre, circling and attacking from all directions as swiftly as possible. Karlaen had no opportunity to deliver the killing blow he needed. Finally, the beast leapt on him, and four arms strained against two as they grappled.

  Whatever strength his rage had given him was flagging now. The creature was far stronger than him, built for this sort of battle. He was pressed back, and soon, the flat of one knee touched the surface of the bridge. His hammer was interposed horizontally between them, the haft caught between the creature’s jaws. Centimetres away from his own, the broodlord’s flat, red eyes showed nothing of what lurked in its alien brain.

  Karlaen took a chance; he dropped his hand to his storm bolter and snatched it up. Empty as it was, it still had heft and weight. He smashed it across the side of the beast’s skull, packing every bit of force he could muster into the blow. Stunned, the broodlord released him and jerked away. He shoved it back, away from him. It scrambled to its feet as he swung his hammer up.

  But rather than striking the beast, he aimed his blow at the stretch of bridge beneath its claws. Metal and stone came apart with a scream of tortured steel as the hammer struck home. A whole section of the bridge gave way, carrying the beast with it. The broodlord tumbled into the darkness below, its limbs grasping in vain for anything that might arrest its fall. Its glare never wavered as it vanished into the dark, swirling waters below.

  Karlaen stared down after it, breathing heavily, his hearts hammering in his chest. He shook himself and made his way around the edge of the hole he had created to retrieve Flax.

  They had a rendezvous to make.

  Sixteen

  Plaza of the Emperor Unchained, Flaxian Palace, Phodia

  Karlaen reared back and kicked the sluice gate out of its frame. The steel grate flew into the space beyond, crashing down with a resounding clang. As he stepped out into the open air, Flax’s comatose form slung over his shoulder, he beheld a vision of carna
ge which was horribly familiar to one who had made war against the servants of the Hive Mind before. Asphodex had entered its final death throes – the air was thick with smoke and noise, and buildings had begun to collapse, adding to both.

  The city had become an inferno – towers of dancing flame rose from the ruins and waves of billowing smoke filled the streets and choked the air. Tyranid organisms screamed and shrieked throughout the city as they were caught up in the raging fires. Bio-beasts fled, trampling one another in their haste to escape obliteration.

  In the distance, Karlaen could see shuddering mushroom clouds rising above the tops of those buildings which still stood. The red sky flashed and quivered like a thing alive, and the great clouds which marked the upper atmosphere were shredded and reformed by unseen forces. The ground shook beneath his feet, not with the trembling of seismic activity, but as if some vast titan were smashing his fist down on Asphodex. The Blood Angels fleet had begun its preliminary orbital bombardment of the planet, in preparation for the first landings of Dante’s main force. Time had almost run out.

  Karlaen quickly triangulated his position. He stood in the eastern plaza – the Plaza of the Emperor Unchained. He calculated a route to the Plaza of the Emperor Ascendant. If Alphaeus or any of the others had survived the battle in the undercity, that was where they would be. Cradling Flax against his chest in order to protect him from the flames, he moved through the plaza, forging a path to the rallying-point.