Arxis was once Imperial Guard, a general no less, and now he sat amongst his generals, the trappings of politics forgotten and the familiar mantle of soldier resting firmly upon his shoulders.
It was comforting.
The news he’d just received about the Nobilis was not.
‘Throne, the entire ship? In one attack?’
Field-Marshal Lanspur nodded sombrely. ‘Captain Unser bought us some ground, possibly even some time with the barrages the Nobilis was able to make, but the ship is dead, my lord – all twelve thousand, three hundred and eighty-one souls.’
‘Merciful Emperor…’ Arxis was staring into space, finding it hard to comprehend what the necrons had done. He looked up at his commanders. The sixteen men arrayed around the metal table in the Proteus bunker looked back with carefully neutral expressions.
‘The astropathic message?’
‘Has been sent,’ replied the governor’s choirmaster, a robed adept called Fava who was in charge of all interstellar communication to and from Damnos. ‘We got it out just before the blackout.’
Though most short-wave vox transmissions were still in effect, anything longer range, certainly off-world communication, was utterly dead. The necrons had some kind of jamming shroud fouling it.
‘Then we should pray to the Golden Throne that it reaches allies quickly. For now, we marshal what defences we can.’ Arxis was about to address his master of ordnance, a short, pugnacious man who was loyal like a bloodhound, when a dull scraping sound stopped the words in his throat and altered them. ‘Did you hear that?’
The scraping was getting louder, resonating against the metal inner walls of the bunker.
Several of the governor’s military staff nodded.
Sytner, his chief bodyguard, drew a pistol. ‘Sire, we have to move you. Now.’ He said it forcefully but without panic. Sytner had been a storm trooper, serving in the same regiment as Arxis back in the day. The lord governor trusted the stocky man, recognised the urgency in his tan face, and nodded.
Beneath them, the ground trembled. Sytner stepped in, pushing the lord governor behind him and tipping the table back with one hand. Like the pillars of termites that formed in Damnos’s arid zone, a column of metal-flecked earth spiralled upwards from the ground. The bunker floor was several-centimetre-thick ferrocrete, but the tunnellers bored through it anyway.
A beetle-like creature, silver-backed and dirty with earth, poked out at the apex of the pillar. Sytner shot it with his laspistol, pitching it onto its back, legs twitching.
‘By the ice-hells, what…’ Gaben-dun leaned in for a closer look. The pillar erupted in front of him and in seconds the master of ordnance was swarmed with the beetle creatures. He fell writhing, the weight of the diminutive necrons bringing the big man down, and screamed.
‘Throne of Earth,’ gaped the choirmaster, seeing moist bone poking up from the chitinous mass assailing Gaben-dun. ‘They’re eating his flesh!’
‘Out! Out!’ shouted Sytner.
Lanspur and four of the other commanders had also drawn sidearms and put themselves between the carnivorous beetles and the lord governor.
‘Open fire!’ snapped Sytner and the crack of las filled the chamber along with the stink of fyceline.
Silver beetle-creatures split in half and spun off the corpse. A few las-bolts even pierced poor Gaben-dun, though the master of ordnance was little more than a sack of slowly dissolving meat by now.
When they were done with their first kill, the swarm converged on the rest.
Sytner and his fellows were soon shooting at the ceiling and the walls as the beetles scuttled towards them without impediment. A larger tremor shook the chamber and the room just as they were retreating into the bunker’s annexe.
A vox-unit switched to open frequency crackled to life, adding to the confusion. Frantic reports came over the speakers from the outside: of the walls being compromised; of the enemy inside the defences, seemingly appearing out of thin air; of high-pitched beam weapons and the screaming of their victims.
Arxis clenched his fists impotently as the floor caved in completely, taking Lanspur with it, and a much larger insectoid lumbered into view.
Men were being flayed alive outside…
One creature, its carapace glistening silver and suggestive of an arachnid construct, became three. Sytner’s las-bolt caromed ineffectually off the hide of the first. Its mandible claw snapped out and severed the man in two. To his credit, Sytner didn’t scream.
The choirmaster did, just as his face and torso were melted off by the second spider’s beam-spike. It started as a death-shriek then ended in a wet gurgle of sloughed flesh and matter.
The rest of the command staff didn’t last much longer. Scarabs claimed them – the lord governor could think of no better way to describe the beetle swarms – or the arachnids butchered them.
Arxis was alone, surrounded by foes, trapped by the illusory protection of his own Proteus bunker.
He had time to kneel before he died; a prayer to the Emperor on his lips and the barrel of a laspistol to his temple.
When he squeezed the trigger, the weapon groaned and failed. Exhausted during those first frantic moments, the power pack was out.
Arxis closed his eyes before the claws took him.
Phalanx
Ben Counter
Chapter 5
‘It will not hurt, brother,’ said Sister Solace to Brother Sennon. In the cramped cell, once the living space of an engineer among the cavernous workings of the Phalanx, a few candles guttered, giving a struggling yellowish light. In Solace’s hands was a wide-gauge needle hooked up to a pump and an intravenous bag.
‘I do not fear pain,’ replied Sennon, who lay bare-chested on a mattress. Sweat beaded on his face in spite of his words, and his voice came from a dry throat. He had never looked younger. In the shadows he seemed a child, defying the cowardice that his youth should have brought him.
‘We need not make ourselves suffer now,’ replied Solace. ‘The time for such things is over. Let the Emperor’s kindness soothe you, and I shall make you as comfortable as possible.’
Sennon swallowed, and winced as the tip of the needle touched the vein Solace had located on the inside of his elbow. The needle slid under his skin, the pump began to work and the intravenous bag filled up. Solace hooked up a second bag, this one filled with a clear bluish liquid.
‘Speak to me, my brother,’ she said as Sennon’s eyes drifted out of focus. ‘What can you see?’
‘I see you, my sister,’ said Sennon. His throat constricted and he grimaced as he fought to breathe. Solace took his hand and squeezed. ‘I see… this place is gone. There are no walls. The Phalanx is gone.’
‘What is it? What do you see?’
‘I see… a battlefield.’ Sennon’s body relaxed and his eyes seemed to focus on a point far off, past the ceiling of the cell with its rag-tag collection of mementos from a life among the engines of the Phalanx. Cogs and valves were piled up on a shelf beneath a metal icon painted with the symbol of the Imperial Fists. A few ragged sets of protective clothing were hung up above an alcove containing three pairs of battered steel-toed boots. A paltry collection of religious verses and children’s stories filled a small cupboard beside the mattress on which Sennon lay, and on the ceiling a previous occupier had drawn images of stars and crescent moons. Sennon saw none of it. Solace thought for a moment that she could see an endless landscape of rolling plains and mountains reflected in the youth’s eyes as his pupils expanded to black pools.
‘It goes on forever,’ said Sennon, his breath hushed. ‘They are all there, all those who have died in the Emperor’s name. They are there to join him in the battle at the end of time.’
‘Tell me,’ said Sister Solace. She adjusted the pump, which hummed louder as the liquid coursed faster through Sennon’s veins. Gauges on the side of the pump read various pressures and she tried to keep them aligned. Too fast or too slow and the youth would die.
‘I see billions of them, the uniforms of the Imperial Guard,’ said Sennon. A million regiments, bayonets fixed, stretching across a world. And others too, ordinary men and women in a great throng. All the pious souls that have ever died. And at the forefront are the Adeptus Astartes, the Angels of Death!’
Solace looked up. A trickle of blood ran from Sennon’s nose. ‘As Gyranar told us?’ she asked.
‘Yes! Oh, sister, they are beautiful! Their armour gleams, and they have wings of gold on which to fly!’ Sennon’s face spread into a rapturous smile, even as blood collected in the corner of his mouth. ‘Their eyes are aflame! Mighty blades shine in their hands. But… but the Enemy is here also. The Adversary. All the foul tongues of the warp have spoken into existence an army even greater!’
Sennon’s body began to shudder. Solace took the youth’s pulse from his wrist: his heart was hammering, his face now showing an awestruck fear.
‘Speak to me of them, brother,’ said Solace. ‘There is nothing to fear in them. They cannot harm you. Speak to me.’
‘Monsters without form. Flesh turned liquid, bathed in fire. Legions of the hateful warp-spawned, like regiments on the parade ground. Things of living corruption, smothered under a blanket of flies, seething masses of filth! Mountains of rot that vomit torrents of their progeny onto the field! And worse… sister, worse things, so sinful and lascivious in form that I cannot look away! Tear my eyes from them, sister, before they infect my soul!’
‘Do not fear, brother. I am with you. The Emperor is with you. No harm can befall you, for you are under His protection. Believe in Him, believe, brother!’
‘And still more,’ continued Sennon, his voice speeding up into a near-gabble. ‘The generals and the overlords of the Adversary. They tower! Their shadows cast whole continents into darkness! Mighty horned things, wielding blades wreathed in flame! I see a beast with a hundred heads, crowned with laurels of entwined bodies. I see… I see a creature red-skinned and immense, its wings blocking out the sun, the axe in its hand oozing blood! I can see all the galaxy’s hatred in its twisted face. But it cannot harm me. Though its eyes fall on me, it cannot harm me!’
‘No,’ said Solace. ‘It cannot.’ She lacked the equipment to read Sennon’s vital signs properly, so she had to do it by eye, reading the youth’s pulse and the dilation of his pupils, the spasming of his fingers and toes, the alternating rigidity and weakness of his limbs. The Phalanx had some of the finest medicae facilities in the Imperium within its apothecarion and the sickbays used by the crew, but Solace had to do this work away from the eyes of the Imperial Fists and the Phalanx’s crewmen. It had to be done this way.
And if Sennon died, there were others. She would go through the whole Blinded Eye if she had to. If it came to it, she would do this to herself.
‘I see the gods of the warp!’ gasped Sennon. ‘Saints take my eyes! Faithful hands strip me of my senses! I see such things that creation cannot contain! Talon and hateful eye, wing and feather, an ocean of rotting flesh and the awful knotted limbs of the eternal dancer! And yet… and yet they are in shadow, cast by a far greater light…’
Solace checked the gauges. Most of Sennon’s blood was gone. The fluid that replaced it was pumping through him, but it might not be fast enough. This was the most dangerous point, where the body hovered between bleeding to death and being suffused with its replacement blood.
‘The Primarchs stand ready to command the host. Sanguinius the Angel paints his face with a million tears, one for every blood-brother who stands by his side. Russ and the Lion are side by side, their hatred for one another gone, the Wolves of Fenris and the Dark Angels standing proud. Guilliman and his host, vaster than any other army ever assembled. The Khan, the Iron-Handed One, and Vulkan, all gathered exhorting their brothers to war! And Dorn, holy Dorn, sacred Dorn, the greatest of them, I see the banner in his hands spun from the starlight of every sun within the Emperor’s domain! He is the Champion of the Emperor, the first to fight, the tip of His spear and the lightning that shall be cast down among the enemy! He shines like gold, such a blaze of fire that the enemy are blinded and they howl in anguish at the presence of such holiness!’
Sennon gasped and his eyes rolled back. Solace grabbed his hand and squeezed it tighter. ‘Brother! Keep talking, brother! Tell me what you see! Sennon, tell me what you see!’
Sennon just gasped in response, spraying flecks of blood down his chin.
Solace scrabbled in the meagre selection of medical gear that lay on the floor around her. She found a syringe and tore its wrapping open. The syringe was pre-loaded with a fat needle as long as a finger and a steel cylinder of a body. Solace held the syringe point-down over Sennon’s chest, muttered a prayer, and stabbed down.
The needle punched between Sennon’s ribs. The liquid inside flooded into his heart and his whole body juddered as if hit with an electric shock. Solace had to lean over him and put her body weight on him to keep the needle from breaking off or tearing too big a hole in the youth’s heart. Sennon gasped, sputtering more blood. A mist of it spattered against the side of Solace’s face. His body tensed and arched, joints creaking.
Sennon slumped down again. He let out a long rattling breath from a painfully dry throat.
‘I see the Emperor,’ he murmured. ‘He tells me not to be afraid. He tells me to fight.’
Solace looked down at the gauges and readouts again. They had stabilised. The exchange was complete.
She withdrew the needle from Sennon’s arm and placed a dressing on the wound. She wiped the blood from his face with a wet cloth.
‘You will fight, my brother,’ she whispered. ‘I promise.’
In the tumult following Librarian Varnica’s evidence, Chapter Master Vladimir had called an adjournment to the trial. Sarpedon had been led back to his cell, the Imperial Fists refusing any answer to his requests to speak with Daenyathos. The alleged presence of the Philosopher-Soldier still had his mind in a whirl. The dismay that he had felt to have Abraxes’ existence revealed to the trial was a new counterpart to that confusion. Piece by piece, everything he had been sure of was falling apart.
He was grateful for the cell, though he had never thought he could think so. Its cramped walls and deadening psychic wards, smothering though they were, were preferable to the hatred that surrounded him in the courtroom. He crouched against one wall, and stared for a few minutes at the heap of crumpled papers, all that remained of his attempts to pen final words to his battle-brothers.
What could he say? What would make any difference? He had thought he would face this trial with dignity and courage, perhaps even to make his execution, when it came, a reluctant act on the part of the executioners. Now even that small victory felt very far away.
‘I will not kneel,’ he said to himself. ‘I will not despair. I am Adeptus Astartes. I will not despair.’
‘I fear for your sake, Chapter Master, that whether to despair is not your decision to make.’
Sarpedon’s eyes snapped to the opening in the cell door. It was not the voice of a Space Marine – it was a woman. This one had a note of familiarity to it, though.
Sarpedon scuttled up to the door. Beyond it, flanked by a pair of Imperial Fists with bolters at the ready, was Sister Aescarion of the Adepta Sororitas. She, like the Space Marines, wore her full armour to the trial and still had it on now, a suit of polished black ceramite emblazoned with the iconography of the Imperial Church. Her own weapon was the power axe but it was strapped to the jump pack of her armour now and she did not have it to hand. She was a full head shorter than a Space Marine for she was not augmented like them, and had a stern, angular yet handsome face with red-brown hair tied back in a ponytail.
‘I recall you from Stratix Luminae,’ said Sarpedon.
‘An encounter I would sooner forget,’ replied Aescarion.
‘None of us wish to remember the sight of an adversary who departs the battlefield alive.’
‘And you are still my adversary,’ said t
he Battle Sister. ‘Nothing has changed on that score. You are a traitor.’
‘And yet,’ said Sarpedon, ‘you willingly exchange words with me. It seems women are as a strange a breed of creature as men say.’
‘Not as strange as a condemned prisoner who makes light of his situation,’ said Aescarion with a withering look that had no doubt been the scourge of the Sororitas novices she had trained.
‘I trust you have not come here to swap insults, Sister,’ said Sarpedon.
Aescarion glanced at the Imperial Fists flanking her. ‘If you please,’ she said to them. ‘A few minutes are all I ask.’
‘Stay in sight,’ replied one of the Imperial Fists. The two Adeptus Astartes parted and walked several paces down the corridor outside Sarpedon’s cell, out of earshot.
‘They run a tight ship, these sons of Dorn,’ said Sarpedon, As strait-laced as they come. It must be a comfort to be in the presence of Space Marines who jump when Terra demands it.’
‘I find no comfort while enemies yet live,’ replied Aescarion sharply. ‘But I have nothing but admiration for the Imperial Fists, it is true. I find a little of my faith in humanity restored.’
‘I have faith in humanity as well, Sister. It is not the people of the Imperium I have ever had a problem with. It is the structures by which the Imperium maintains itself, clinging to existence through blood and cruelty. I have seen them over and over. And you have too, Sister Aescarion. Worlds condemned to misery or death. Freedom and rebellion given the same names and crushed beneath the mass of the shiploads of captives sent to Terra to–’
‘Enough! Do not speak of such things.’
‘And pretend, instead, that they never existed?’ Sarpedon reared up and put his face close to the window in the cell door.
‘No! Accept them as necessary for the survival of the human race, and turn our minds instead to the glory of our survival! That is how the Sororitas are taught.’
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