Iron Warrior

Iron Warrior Page 10

by Graham McNeill

  Vaanes leapt towards the assassin, his lightning-wreathed claws stabbing towards its neck. Without giving any sign it had been aware of him, the assassin twisted in the Newborn’s grip and blocked his thrusting claws with a dizzyingly swift parry. It launched a riposte and Vaanes only just managed to throw his other claw up to block.

  The sword slid between Vaanes’s claws and he twisted his gauntlet savagely, snapping the blade of the assassin’s sword in an explosion of flaring light. The assassin abandoned its sword, but before it could draw its pistol, a black bladed axe slammed into its chest, cleaving it from neck to groin. Hissing, chemically and genetically altered blood sprayed Vaanes, bubbling on his armour as the assassin fell to the ground.

  The needle gauntlet tore free from the Newborn and it collapsed, its aberrant flesh fighting to reknit in the face of such dreadful harm. Even its formidable regenerative abilities could barely survive such lethal toxins, and Vaanes wondered if the presence of the daemon lord was helping undo the damage.

  Vaanes backed away as Honsou wrenched his axe from the dead assassin, the blade hissing and growling as though angered by the kill.

  ‘You took your time,’ said Honsou.

  Vaanes ignored him, instead staring at the corpse as it bubbled and seethed with chemical reactions. Its flesh sizzled and its blood smoked with acrid venom as the nightmarish collection of toxins, nerve agents and viruses that flowed through its body began reacting with one another. While the killer had lived, that reaction was kept in check, but now…

  ‘Get back!’ yelled Vaanes.

  Honsou looked down at the assassin’s body and immediately saw the danger, hurling himself flat as the corpse combusted in an explosion of virulent chemical fire.

  Grendel slammed the butt of his gun against the helmet of a mortal soldier, fighting to reach the Ultramarines sergeant. The warrior fought alongside a woman in black armour with a silver helm. Her sword cut graceful arcs through renegade pirates, and her pistol spat bright bolts of white-hot plasma. They would make good kills.

  He had all but exhausted his melta gun’s energy charge, and was saving its last few bursts of energy for the prize kills of this fight. Iron Warriors, ogres, corsairs, pirates and renegades surrounded the warp core, a bastard mix of fighters to be sure, but an effective one.

  The Imperials had fought hard, but even with a Dreadnought to anchor their defences, their position was hopeless. A dozen bullet scars creased Grendel’s armour and his chest still ached where the assassin’s sword had skewered him. The blade had punctured his heart, but his secondary organ sustained him while his body repaired the damage.

  The Ultramarines warrior noticed him, and Grendel saw the recognition of a fellow killer in his eyes. Grendel paused and ripped off his helmet, letting the electric atmosphere of the warp core stiffen his mohawk. It was foolish to remove his helmet in the midst of a battle, but he wanted to taste the warrior’s blood, feel it spatter his face as he smashed his enemy to ruin on the deck.

  He caught sight of a shaven-headed figure in a stained uniform jacket sheltering behind the sergeant, a man working frantically by an opened panel at the base of the warp core. Grendel had no idea what he was doing, but something about the way the warrior and the armoured woman were protecting him made Grendel want to kill him even more.

  The Dreadnought let off another burst of assault cannon fire, shredding a dozen of Kaarja Salombar’s corsairs, and crushing one of the ogre beasts with its colossal hammer fist. That was a problem for later, thought Grendel.

  He stalked through the swirling combat towards his prey, rotating his neck and swinging his shoulders to loosen the muscles, though he had no intention of going toe to toe with this warrior.

  ‘I’m going to kill you, traitor,’ said the Ultramarine, dropping into a fighting crouch with a silver-bladed sword held before him.

  ‘Guess again,’ said Grendel, swinging his melta gun to bear and pressing the firing stud.

  A screaming burst of superheated air erupted around the Ultramarines sergeant as Grendel’s melta blast struck him full square in the chest. Armour, flesh and bone melted together as the impossible heat of the melta gun fused the warrior to the deck. Ceramite plates ran like wax, flesh vaporised and hyper-oxygenated blood boiled to steam in an instant.

  The woman cried out at his death, and Grendel savoured her horror. She came at him with her sword, but he batted it aside with his melta gun and slammed his fist against her carved breastplate. She was hurled back, tumbling against the shaven-headed man working on the warp core.

  She shouted something at him, but Grendel wasn’t listening.

  He stepped towards the man, lifting him from the deck and breaking his neck with a contemptuous flick of his wrist. He tossed the limp body aside and turned back towards the woman on the deck, already thinking of the harm he would wreak on her body.

  She had scrambled to her knees and scooped up her pistol. Grendel roared and hurled himself at her as she pulled the trigger.

  A blazing white light filled his vision, blinding him and filling his world with fire. Searing energies slammed into his breastplate and Grendel roared in pain as the plates of his armour vaporised in the intense heat. The bodysuit beneath melted to his skin and burning blue fire billowed over his skull, burning away his mohawk in an instant and searing the skin of his face and head. Grendel dropped the melta gun and his hands fled to his face, feeling his flesh bubble and run like molten pitch.

  ‘That hurt, you bitch!’ bellowed Grendel, as the woman desperately twisted a dial on her pistol, the magnetic coils buzzing as they recharged the weapon. Grendel took a step forward and lifted her from the ground, holding her against the glowing plates of the warp core. Her armour began to smoke and the etchings carved into the bronze plates shone with a bitter, golden light.

  The woman screamed in pain, acrid fumes hissing from the ruptured joints of her armour. Grendel had no idea what was happening to her, but suspected some enchantment or ward worked into the fabric of the warp core was attacking her. She struggled against his grip, but against the power of a fallen Astartes, she had no chance of breaking free.

  The sounds of battle around him continued unabated, but Grendel ignored it, watching in fascination as the woman was burned to death inside her armour. At last her struggles ceased and Grendel dropped her charred and smoking armour, the beatific face carved into the silver of her helmet now sagging and melancholy. An ashen outline of a human form was left imprinted on the bronze of the warp core and he chuckled.

  A towering shadow loomed over Grendel and he ducked as a massive hammerblow slammed into the warp core. The bronze plates buckled with the force of the blow and streamers of blue energy spun glittering traceries of light before him.

  He rolled before another blow could land, scooping up his fallen melta gun.

  Looming over him was the Dreadnought, its colossal, quad-headed hammer rearming for another strike.

  roared the Dreadnought.

  Honsou raced towards the warp core, watching as Grendel dropped a smoking body in black armour at his feet. Ardaric Vaanes ran alongside him, and the Newborn followed as fast as it could. The assassin’s toxins were slowing it, but the fact it was alive was nothing short of miraculous. Half a dozen of the augmented ogres lumbered alongside him, together with a host of Iron Warriors and armoured renegades.

  The battle was won, and now only the Dreadnought remained fighting. Though it could still wreak fearsome harm, it was doomed. The warp core blazed with light, as though the daemon lord chained within could sense its imminent freedom. Honsou’s own flesh trembled, recalling the moment when a creature of the warp had briefly possessed him on Hydra Cordatus.

  Grendel rolled to his feet and aimed his melta gun at the Dreadnought’s chest, but Honsou had greater plans in mind for this creation of the Ultramarines.

  ‘Don’t kill it!’ shouted Honsou. Grendel heard him and ducked behind the warp core before the Dreadnought could op
en fire on him.

  Honsou came to a halt and waved the ogre creatures forward as the Dreadnought’s upper torso spun on its axis to face him.

  ‘Take it,’ he commanded.

  The first ogre’s chain grapple hammered into the Dreadnought’s upper glacis, where the armour had been torn from it earlier. The hook buried itself in the workings of the Dreadnought’s hammer arm, snagging deeper the more the machine tried to free itself. Another hook slammed into its centre section, fouling on the gimbal at its waist. Two more whipped out and buried themselves in the machine’s armour.

  The Dreadnought roared in anger, thrashing with its powerful actuator muscles. The ogres were pulled and spun around by its fury, but as more chain grapples hooked it, its struggles became weaker and more of the ogres bent their backs to restraining it. Its assault cannon blazed, ripping one of the ogres in two and tearing the head from another, but as more of Honsou’s Iron Warriors took up the struggle the machine was finally held immobile.

  Sparks and smoke rose from its mechanical muscles as it fought to break free and its assault cannon spun uselessly as its ammo hopper finally ran dry.

  roared the Dreadnought.

  Honsou stepped in front of the Dreadnought, brash and fearless now that it was fully restrained. He glanced over at the straining ogres and Iron Warriors. They had it firm for now, but they couldn’t hold it much longer.

  ‘Grendel?’ said Honsou.

  ‘Aye,’ said the warrior, emerging from behind the warp core, and Honsou was shocked at the horrendous damage done to Grendel’s face. The flesh was seared black, his eyes twin pits of madness and pain.

  ‘You still have a charge in that melta gun?’

  ‘Enough to finish this bastard off, yes,’ said Grendel, levelling the deadly weapon at the Dreadnought’s sarcophagus.

  ‘No,’ said Honsou, looking up at the warp core, where the light gathered in a maelstrom of phantom claws, teeth and a multitude of eyes. He pointed his silver arm at the blackened outline of a human form that had been burned into the bronze. Where other portions of the warp core were covered in wardings, this part was bare, and tendrils of crackling light oozed from the buckled plates. ‘Shoot that part.’

  ‘Shoot the warp core?’ hissed Vaanes. ‘Are you insane? You’ll kill us all!’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Honsou. ‘Grendel, do it.’

  Grendel shrugged and shouldered the melta gun, unleashing his last charge on the brass plating where he had watched the armoured woman burn to death. The armoured plating was no match for the close range blast of a melta gun and the metal vaporised in the superheated explosion.

  As though a vast ocean of seething blue white energy had been kept dammed within the core, the titanic energies bound within flooded outwards. But instead of filling the chamber with deadly forces that should have consumed the entirety of the star fort, the light poured into the bound Dreadnought.

  The mighty war machine bucked and heaved as the immaterial energies suffused it, taking every molecule of its being as its own. A terrible howling echoed from the walls, but whether it was from the Dreadnought or the newly released daemon was impossible to tell.

  The Dreadnought shook off its captors’ grip, tearing the chain grapples from the ogre creatures and shuddering in the grip of daemonic energies that poured into it. Its substance swelled and bloated as its limbs lengthened and stretched, becoming hideous melds of machine and daemonic flesh. Its armoured carapace stretched and cracked, burning cracks of light seeping from within as though the warp itself flowed through its circuits and joints instead of blessed oil and amniotic suspension.

  The manifesting daemon dropped to its knees, screaming at this violent transition from prison to freedom. The pain of its birth was felt by everyone around it, and Honsou’s body was wracked by agonising pain, as the hurt of every wound done to him in his long life as a warrior returned to haunt him.

  The granite of its carapace pulled and twisted like wax paper, and a snarling, horned head pressed itself through the stone. Metal, stone and warp-spawned flesh moulded together to shape the fleshless skull of the Thrice Born, an elongated, bestial face that writhed with the memory of ancient tattoos.

  The Dreadnought’s arms stretched and cracked, the assault cannon reshaped into some hideous mecha-organic weapon of unknown function. The mighty hammer crackled with bilious light, its substance fluid and impossible to fix. Honsou blinked as it seemed to flicker through one form after another; one moment a shimmering sword, the next a clawed arm, the next a seething mass of formless light.

  At last the hurricane of energy ceased and the Thrice Born climbed to its feet, now clawed and sheathed in iron. It towered over everything, a hulking, monstrous, luminous being of immaterial flesh and steel. It flexed its new limbs, and the power radiating from its body was palpable.

  Behind the mighty daemon lord, the warp core continued to beat, the power of a hundred stars still caged within its heart. Shimmering warp-spawned light sealed the wound Grendel’s melta gun had caused, and screaming faces swam in that light, stretched mouths and pleading eyes; the souls of the Thrice Born’s victims bound eternally to its service.

  The daemon lord’s fanged maw split wide open, exposing yellowed teeth like sharpened tombstones as it swept its baleful gaze around the warp core. Its eyes fixed on Honsou, and he met its appraising look with one of his own.

  Dark light of torment shone in the depths of its eyes, and Honsou quailed before the hatred and malice he saw in them. His own reservoir of hate was as a paltry thing next to the venom this being had for the scions of Guilliman.

  Honsou felt his heart race as it saw his purpose and rejoiced in it.

  This was a being with which he would wreak a terrible vengeance. The worlds of Ultramar would burn in its wrath and Uriel Ventris would know suffering and pain the likes of which he could not even begin to imagine.

  The Thrice Born raised its arms and the air within the chamber grew thick with static and the taste of blood and metal. Shapes formed from twists of folded reality and hideous creatures of scales, horns and fangs slipped through the veil that separated realities. Hundreds of monstrous daemons crackled into existence, and Honsou sensed the presence of tens of thousands more just waiting for the chance to force their way through.

  ‘Behold the vanguard of my daemon army,’ roared the daemon lord.

  The rings of Aescari Exterio burned red as the Indomitable broke orbit, moving under its own volition for the first time in its existence. A new power burned at the heart of the star fort, one that was not bound by conventional laws of nature or the designs of a long-dead priest of the Machine-God.

  Honsou’s fleet and the vessels crippled in the fighting to take the fortress were berthed in its dock facilities, and even now thousands of captured techs and servitors repaired and rearmed them for the war to come. The damage done in the battle to capture the star fort was undone and the Iron Warriors built fresh fortifications atop the ruins of the old.

  Where once the Indomitable’s bastions had been raised with pride, standing with honour and majestic beauty, they were now ugly donjons of iron and stone, crowned with rusted spikes and forests of razorwire. What had once been glorious was now a hideous parody of honour, a brooding fastness of bitter anger and spite.

  A fortress of the Iron Warriors.

  The Indomitable – though it would soon shed that name – departed Aescari Exterio, moving to the outer reaches of the Triplex system. Safely distant from the gravity well of the system’s star, space collapsed as the veil of real space was torn aside and the star fort vanished, hurled into the Empyrean to ride the currents of the warp.

  Its new masters had but one destination in mind.

  The empire of the Ultramarines.

  Ultramar.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Hailing from Scotland, Graham McNeill worked for over six years as a Games Developer in Games Works
hop’s Design Studio before taking the plunge to become a full-time writer. Graham’s written a host of SF and Fantasy novels and comics, as well as a number of side projects that keep him busy and (mostly) out of trouble. His Horus Heresy novel, A Thousand Sons, was a New York Times bestseller and his Time of Legends novel, Empire, won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award. Graham lives and works in Nottingham and you can keep up to date with where he’ll be and what he’s working on by visiting his website.

  Join the ranks of the 4th Company at www.graham-mcneill.com

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  First published in 2010 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

  © Games Workshop Limited 2012. All rights reserved.

  Illustrations by Rosie Edwards, Darius Hinks, Neil Roberts and Adrian Wood.

  Black Library, the Black Library logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2012, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-0-85787-557-0

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise except as expressly permitted under license from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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  blacklibrary.com

 

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