by Nick Kyme
‘Your apotheosis is at hand,’ Ankh declared. He drew a portal with his staff in which a vision of Damnos was projected. It showed the walls of Kellenport, occupied by the fleshed and their genebred saviours. ‘Our world is overrun and the royarch calls you to war.’
One of the lych-like guards stepped forwards. He wore a circlet of tarnished gold around his forehead and his shoulder guards were cracked pieces of super-hardened ceramic – this was the leader. He raised his war-glaive and cut through the portal-image, banishing it.
His eyes flared with millennia-old anger. ‘We obey.’
Largo listened to the wind as he kept vigil over Renatus. His wounded battle-brother was deep into sus-an membrane coma now and would not easily be revived. It was a regenerative measure, triggered in extremis when a Space Marine was so badly injured that he could fight no further. Much of Renatus’s armour had been removed so he could be examined properly. His power generator, helmet and plastron were nearby, laid out reverently by Herdantes. There were blade marks in the ceramite, as long and thick as one of Largo’s gauntleted fingers. They were a killer’s marks, aimed for the weak points and targeting vital organs. Renatus had survived by virtue of being Adeptus Astartes, but only barely.
Largo hadn’t witnessed what happened in the gorge but suspected it was bad. Herdantes was on the other side of the tent, lost in shadow and catalepsean sleep. Another hour and it would be Largo’s turn. The other Ultramarine hadn’t spoken about the ambush. There’d been little time and too much blood. Brakkius had left the tent earlier, in need of air and an opportunity to stretch his injured leg.
Outside the medi-tent, the storm was building. Largo didn’t like it. He didn’t like being stuck in this camp with the humans and so far away from the rest of their battle group. He didn’t blame Scipio. He was Largo’s sergeant, as brave and resourceful a Space Marine as he’d ever known, but there was no denying the necrons had them reeling. He wanted, bitterly, to strike a blow.
‘I will watch him,’ said the medic. His name was Holdst, a man of middling human years but with a world-weary air that made him hunch. ‘If you need to rest, like your comrade.’ He glanced at Herdantes.
‘I need no rest. I am a Space Marine.’ It came out harder than Largo had intended, but he wasn’t sufficiently moved to apologise.
‘Of course,’ said Holdst. He’d been washing the blood off his hands and carried a pinkish rag that he used to dry his fingers. ‘There’s nothing further I can do for him, though.’
‘I understand. The Chapter thanks you for doing your duty to the Emperor.’
Holdst lingered and set down the rag.
Largo looked at him.
‘There is more?’
‘This was my world that has become a wasteland. I had a family, a life. I am angry too.’
For a human, Holdst was remarkably perceptive. Largo was about to respond when Holdst turned around at a noise behind him. It was hard to see what had got the medic’s attention, the tent was poorly lit and his body was in the way.
‘Fuge?’ he said at first, then, ‘Merciful Thro–’
Four blades punched through Holdst’s back and lifted the medic off his feet. His legs were already spasming as the thing wearing Fuge’s face stepped into the tent and the light. Largo was up, his bolter loose.
‘Herdantes!’
The other Ultramarine snapped awake and armed himself.
Twin muzzle flares tore open the darkness, filling it with fire and noise.
Poor Holdst was shredded. The man was already dead when Largo and Herdantes opened up at the ghoul inside the tent with them. Bolter shells exploded against its tough carapace but failed to slow it. The creature sprang, its body swathed in bloodied flesh flayed from one of the sentries, and landed on the bench supporting Renatus.
Largo drew his gladius, afraid he’d hit Renatus if he kept on shooting. In his peripheral vision, he saw Herdantes turn and spray wide as another flayed one ripped through the tent lining and came scurrying inside. The blast pitched the necron off its feet but it was followed by another and another.
Largo kept going. Renatus was in danger. A fifth creature emerged on his flank and he was forced to engage. A swipe of his gladius parried its talons wide of the mark, leaving them to scrape the ceramite of his leg greave, before Largo triggered his bolter point-blank and blew a hole in the flayed one’s torso.
‘Herdantes. Our brother!’
Seeing the danger, Herdantes was moving. He punched one necron in the jaw, stunning it, before bounding onto the slab where Renatus slumbered. The necron crouching over the wounded Ultramarine was different to the others. There was a gleam of malicious sentience in its eyes and its trappings were more elaborate.
‘Fleeessshhh…’
It hissed at Herdantes. Its teeth were gummed with blood and viscera. There wasn’t time to lift a gladius as a swipe of the necron’s talons ripped Herdantes’s armour open and sent him sprawling.
Largo reacted to his brother’s cry of pain and converged on Renatus. But he was too late to stop the creature lopping off Renatus’s head and bathing in the bloody fountain projected from his neck stump.
‘No!’
A flayed one tried to stop him, but Largo rammed his gladius into its neck all the way to the hilt. A second he gunned down with the last of his ammunition, before discarding both weapons and leaping for Renatus’s slayer, his hands curled into strangling claws.
The creature wearing Fuge’s face punched both talons into Renatus’s lifeless body, hoisted the dead Space Marine onto its back and, pumping its legs, sprang through the roof and out into the night.
Largo’s fingers closed on air and he cursed again.
Herdantes had been finishing off the last of the flayed ones in the medi-tent but saw what happened. There was something akin to fear in his voice. ‘It will defile him…’
Largo roared through clenched teeth, took up his fallen bolter and ran outside into the storm.
The camp was in chaos. Screaming merged with sporadic las-fire, half-heard through the wind, as Scipio rushed from Jynn’s command tent and realised they were under attack.
He tapped the comm-feed in his ear, scanning the darkness for threats. ‘Brothers! Thunderbolts! Report!’
Cator’s voice, crackling with the weather interference, came through first. ‘Something got through the gate… went under… everywhere… Engaging!’ Percussive bolter fire cut him off. Scipio saw the muzzle flashes in the distance. Several more came from the direction of the medi-tent and he was torn.
‘Largo!’ he shouted down the feed. Silhouettes crossed his vision, the guerrillas were running back and forth as they struggled to fight an enemy they couldn’t see. Scipio almost shot one of them on reflex. ‘Captain Evvers,’ he called behind him. ‘Marshal your troops before my brothers and I cut down them down by mistake.’ She was on the vox in her tent, trying to find out what was happening.
Her reply was cut off by the voice of Largo, loud and urgent in Scipio’s ear. ‘It’s got Renatus! It cut off his head, sergeant. It took him.’
First Naceon then Ortus and now Renatus – this war is exacting a heavy toll.
Scipio crouched in the lee of another tent. The tripod guns had started rattling. Someone was panicking. ‘Largo, repeat. You’re not making sense.’
‘It took him,’ said Largo – his breathing was hard, he was running and angry. ‘I’m getting him back.’
A skin-draped horror emerged from the gloom before him and Scipio realised at last what was attacking the camp.
He ran at the flayed one, thumbing the activation rune of his chainsword.
There was a hollow prang and a cascade of sparks rained down onto the snow as blade met talon but Scipio would not be denied. He aimed a punch at the creature’s neck, followed by a blow that cut through its clavicle and severed a clutch of cabling. It cr
umpled and Scipio finished it. Instant phase-out told him he’d done it right.
Jynn Evvers came running up beside him. She was armed and kitted out for a sudden departure. ‘We’re overrun.’
Scipio’s eyes were on the darkness. ‘They’re here for us.’ Shadows cast in the camp’s portable floodlights swivelled in all directions. It was like trying to catch smoke. A dozen gun battles were happening at once but most of the guerrillas were firing at shadows. Or each other.
Jynn sounded rueful. ‘I know.’
Before Scipio could respond, Brakkius joined them. His cooling meltagun suggested he’d had a recent encounter.
‘Necrons have tunnelled into the camp and bypassed the sentries.’
‘How many?’
Brakkius shook his head. ‘Hard to tell. Could be as many as twenty, possibly more.’ He clapped the stock of his weapon. ‘I took out two, but there are skirmishes breaking out everywhere.’
‘Have you seen Largo or Herdantes?’
‘No. I went back to the medi-tent but they were already gone.’ He met Jynn’s questioning gaze. ‘I’m sorry, but your medic is dead.’
Her face tightened into a hard line as she suppressed the grief. That wouldn’t serve her now.
Brakkius focussed his attention back on his sergeant.
‘We can’t mount an effective counter-attack in these conditions. What are your orders, sir?
Nodding, Scipio said, ‘Signal the squad, all Thunderbolts to regroup at the command tent.’ He turned to Jynn. ‘Your men, too, Captain Evvers. Bring them all here, what’s left of them. We’re falling back.’
Scipio broke into a run, away from the command tent.
‘Sir, where are you going?’ asked Brakkius.
He looked over his shoulder, his face determined. ‘After Largo. He’ll ignore the order. He wants revenge for Renatus.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because it’s what I’d do.’
‘Wait!’ Brakkius pulled a spare bolt clip from his belt and threw it over.
Scipio caught it, nodded and ran off into the night. The snowfall thickened in his wake, smothering him from sight as if he’d never even been there.
Brakkius raised the others on the comm-feed.
Scipio’s blood was up. He was crouched low against the wind, using the falling snow to mask his advance through the camp, but all he really wanted to do was unleash his anger. One clip, given up by Brakkius, was all he had – that, his chainsword and his gladius – he’d need to make every one count.
He headed for the medi-tent, hoping to pick up on Largo’s trail. The camp was relatively small and should have been easy to navigate but the battle was spilling over its borders into the mountains beyond and the weather conditions were impeding even his superhuman senses. The guerrilla fighters had trained in this arctic waste, they’d fought and survived the environs but even so they would be blind in this blizzard. Their screaming punctuated Scipio’s every thought. He blocked it out, focussed on finding Largo.
Can’t lose another. Not this way.
The medi-tent was empty, aside from the carnage. Even the medic’s corpse was gone, though Scipio discerned bloody drag marks in the snow.
What kind of automatons are these things?
He found Herdantes a few metres away. He was slumped against a rock, veiled in snow and holding his ruined chest so his organs stayed inside.
‘Brother-sergeant,’ he rasped. The frozen air from Herdantes’s mouth was blood-flecked, suggesting internal bleeding. Even his Larraman cells were struggling to form clots. ‘Opened me up,’ he continued, moving his hand for a few seconds to show the red crater in his torso. ‘But I killed it, sent it back to whatever hell spawned it.’
Scipio wasn’t sure what that place was or if the necrons could even be killed. He knelt beside Herdantes, assessing the damage. ‘Where’s Largo?’
Herdantes went to speak but the blood in his throat only gurgled. He pointed to the darkness just outside the camp instead. It was north, deeper into the mountain range. Scipio narrowed his gaze and made out the jagged silhouette of a frozen peak.
‘Are you armed?’
Herdantes nodded wearily. His breath was coming out in ragged gasps. Patting the bolter on his lap was difficult. ‘Half a clip.’
‘Use them wisely. I’ll return,’ Scipio promised. A group of guerrilla fighters appeared out of the blizzard and he waved them over. ‘Get him up, regroup at the command tent.’
The storm was so loud, the humans just nodded.
Scipio left them and headed for the jagged peak.
Largo was hunkered down behind a cluster of snow-caked boulders, staring into a sheer-sided rock face above. He glanced over at Scipio as he crouched next to him.
‘It’s up there,’ he whispered, nodding to the fathomless darkness.
The blizzard was getting worse. It made following Largo’s gesture almost impossible.
‘I see nothing,’ Scipio hissed
‘It’s there. It’s got Renatus. Look…’ Largo unclasped his bolter’s targeter and gave it to the sergeant.
Scipio lined the crosshairs over a plateau above. The night-vision scope picked out the shoulders and spines of massive rocks in the darkness. He tweaked a dial on the sight to heat-tracking. A muffled red shape resolved as the image went from hazy green to grainy blue. It was moving. There was another shape in front of it, though its red glow was less vibrant.
Renatus. Scipio suspected the dead Ultramarine’s generator was providing most of the heat trace.
‘It took his head, brother-sergeant. Tore it off in front of me.’
Scipio scanned the area through the targeter. A chasm fell away a few metres beyond the boulders, explaining why Largo had given up pursuit. A fragile ice escarpment led to the edge of the precipice which was thorned with dagger-like crags.
He brought the crosshairs back up to the plateau again, gauging the distance the necron had climbed. The fact they were capable of such feats surprised him. ‘Where is your squad, brother?’ Scipio asked.
Largo was nonplussed.
‘Where are your brothers?’
Largo looked behind at the snow-shrouded encampment.
Scipio still had his eye on the plateau. Something was happening. ‘We cannot indulge in personal vengeance, Largo.’
‘Renatus–’
The sergeant cut him off. ‘Is dead. But the rest of your battle-brothers still live. We’re– Move!’
Scipio dropped the targeter and thrust Largo aside as the necron landed between them. It had vaulted the chasm.
Both Space Marines were on their feet quickly with weapons drawn.
‘Circle it!’ Scipio shouted. He began strafing along the necron’s flank, drawing its gaze, as Largo went the other way to blindside the monster.
It tracked Scipio’s movements, like an alpha predator tracks a threat. Scipio levelled his chainsword, but kept the movement slow. His bolt pistol was at his side ready.
It was a ghoul, this thing. Ropes of skin clung to its skeletal form and great tranches of flesh swathed its back, fashioned into a cape or robes. Blood crusted its muzzle and thicker visceral fluids drooled through the cavities in its structure, hanging off cables and congealing over wires. Its face was the most disturbing aspect of its appearance, for it was a mask of flesh. The human called Fuge had been butchered for his skin and this creature had taken his face whole, robbed the man of the only thing left to him in death – his identity. Even so, the mask was breaking, stretched too thinly across the necron’s gruesome visage, and patches of gore-streaked metal showed through. As the flayed one glared at him, Scipio saw a piece of chewed skin tear and fall to the ground.
‘A face…’ It spoke with sepulchral madness, trembling with anguish. ‘I had a face. Give me my face…’
Scipio realised i
t wanted his face or anyone’s. It was the only reason it had jumped from its perch. It had decapitated Renatus and lost his face. Now the wretched creature wanted another.
Only Scipio’s psycho-conditioning stopped him balking in terror.
Largo could wait no longer. He’d drawn his gladius – with only the necron between them, he might hit Scipio with his bolter – and leapt at the creature.
With viperous dexterity, the flayed one parried the blow and stabbed Largo in the shoulder. It drew a shout of pain from the Ultramarine.
Scipio launched his attack a second later before the necron could injure Largo further.
Again, the creature moved with preternatural swiftness, coiling its body around to slash at the brother-sergeant. The talons missed Scipio’s neck by a finger-width and he stepped back, warding off the monster with a chainsword thrust. It smacked the weapon aside, chain-teeth spitting sparks but doing little else.
Largo attacked again, slowed by his wound. He managed to land a blow on the necron’s shoulder but it pranged off as if striking adamantium. The resulting shockwave ran up Largo’s arm and into his shoulder, numbing it.
‘Flesh…’ A jagged wound ripped open Largo’s face, drooling blood.
The blizzard was worsening and enveloped the combatants in a swirling maelstrom.
Scipio’s shout was almost robbed by the wind. ‘It’s not working. Follow me, brother.’ He peeled off from the attack, making for the escarpment.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Largo, taking off after Scipio.
‘Do you trust my judgement, brother?’
‘You are my sergeant.’
That was all the answer Scipio needed.
Behind them, the necron turned. Despite its fluidity in combat, when not under imminent threat its insanity seemed to slow it down. It took a few seconds to realise its prey was running, then it sprang into the air with a dense crunch of servos and landed on the boulders, squat like a skeletal gargoyle.
‘Flesh…’ it hissed, filled with a terrible yearning. ‘I need it…’
Backing slowly towards the escarpment, Scipio could feel the ice cracking under his weight. This was no ordinary necron, he realised. It was one of the masters, a superior construct. Within a few seconds of the engagement, Scipio knew the chances of the two of them defeating it were slight.
