Ultramarines Omnibus (warhammer 40000: ultramarines)

by Graham McNeill

  'Power,' stated Barzano simply.

  'Then if you know where it is, tell me the location and Vae Victus shall destroy it.'

  'Ah, Uriel. If only it were that simple. It does not exist in this reality as we understand it. It drifts between time, forever flitting between this world and the immaterium. Would that it remain so for all eternity.'

  'Why do you fear it so?'

  Barzano lifted his hand from the locked strongbox, placing his thumb on the geno-key and crouched before the lock, allowing the box's guardian spirit to confirm his identity.

  Finally, he punched in the thirteen-digit password into its lid and spoke the word of opening. The lid swung open and the inquisitor removed a heavy, iron-bound book with thirteen small golden padlocks securing its pages shut. The locks looked fragile, but each had been imbued with hexagrammic sigils of great power.

  Barzano touched each lock in turn, whispering as though persuading the locks to grant access to the precious tome. One by one, the locks snicked open and Barzano straightened as the creaking cover of the book slowly opened without help from any human hand.

  Uriel hissed and the others stepped back in alarm. Barzano took a deep breath and closed his eyes and Uriel felt a tinny, electric sensation pass through him. The book heaved, mirroring the inquisitor's breath and Uriel felt his hand involuntarily reach for his pistol. Sorcery!

  Barzano extended his palm towards Uriel and shook his head.

  'No, captain. I am entreating the spirit within the book to impart a measure of its knowledge to us.'

  'Spirit within the book?' hissed Uriel.

  'Yes. You have heard the expression that knowledge is power, yes? Did you think those were just empty words? Knowledge is indeed power, and knowledge has power.'

  Seeing the book pulse like a beating heart, Uriel muttered a protective prayer. Suddenly he realised that there could only be one way that Barzano was, as he put it, entreating the book's spirit.

  'You are a psyker?'

  'Of sorts,' admitted Barzano, his brow knitted with the effort of speaking. 'I am an empath. I can sense strong emotions and feelings.'

  The book suddenly seemed to swell and its pages fanned forwards as though in a strong wind, faster than the eye could follow. Abruptly, the book settled, its yellowed pages sighing and settling into immobility.

  Barzano relaxed, opening his eyes and Uriel noticed beads of sweat on his brow. A trickle of blood ran from his nose, but he wiped it clear and leaned over the pages the book had revealed to him.

  Hesitantly, Uriel, Pasanius, Shonai and Corteo approached the table.

  At first Uriel could not understand what he was looking at. The pages had been scrawled by a crazed hand, hundreds of words overlapping and spinning in lunatic circles or viciously crossed out.

  'What is it?' asked Shonai.

  'These are some of the writings of the heretic tech-abbot, Corteswain.'

  'And who was he?'

  'Corteswain belonged to the Adeptus Mechanicus. He travelled the galaxy searching ancient archaeological sites for working STC systems. Instead he found madness.'

  Uriel knew of the Adeptus Mechanicus's ceaseless quest for Standard Template Construct systems, techno-arcana priceless beyond imagining. Every single piece of Imperial technology was derived from the few, precious fragments of STC systems that remained in the hands of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Even the flimsiest rumour of an STC's existence prompted whole fleets of Explorators to set off in search of this most valuable treasure.

  Barzano continued his story. 'Corteswain was the only survivor of an expedition to a dead world, whose name has long since been lost, in search of STC arcana. Something attacked his expedition and he claimed to have been taken to a world beyond this galaxy by a being of unimaginable power he called a god.'

  'A god?' whispered Shonai

  'Yes, a god. He claimed to have seen the true face of the Omnissiah, the Machine God. Needless to say, this didn't make him particularly popular within some factions of the Adeptus Mechanicus, who accused him of blasphemy. It caused a schism in their ranks that exists even today and within a year Corteswain disappeared from the omniastery on Selethoth where he had begun preaching his dogma.'

  'What happened to him?' asked Uriel.

  Barzano shrugged. 'I don't know. 'His rivals probably had him abducted and killed. But some of his writings survived, carried from the omniastery by his acolytes.'

  'What does it mean? I can hardly make anything out,' said Shonai, slipping on her glasses.

  'This particular passage talks of a vessel Corteswain claims he saw,' said Barzano, pointing out a barely legible scrawl in the corner of one page.

  His fingers traced the outline of a badly sketched crescent with a pyramid shape sitting atop its middle.

  Uriel squinted as he tried to read the words scratched into the parchment below the sketch. The same words were written again and again, at every angle, overlapping and curling back on themselves.

  His eyes followed the least obscured portion of the spidery writing and he silently mouthed the words as he slowly pieced them together.

  He finally grasped what the words said and the hairs on the back of his neck rose as he realised he had heard them before - from the burned lips of a man on the brink of death.

  Bringer of Darkness.

  Barzano glanced sharply at him and Uriel was reminded that the inquisitor could sense his emotions.

  'Uriel,' said Barzano slowly. 'Do those words mean anything to you?'

  Uriel nodded. 'Yes. The survivor on Caernus IV, a man named Gedrik, spoke them to me just before he died.'

  'What did he say? Quickly!' hissed Barzano.

  'He said that the Death of Worlds and the Bringer of Darkness awaited to be born into the galaxy and that it would be in my hands to decide which. Do you know what he meant by that?'

  'No,' said Barzano, a little too quickly. 'I don't. What else did he say?'

  'Nothing. He died soon afterwards,' replied Uriel, pointing to the crescent shaped sketch on the book. 'So the Bringer of Darkness is an alien starship. What can it do?'

  'It can unmake the stars themselves, bleed them dry of energy and leave nothing alive in a star system. And it can do this in a matter of days. Now do you see?'

  Uriel nodded. 'Then we must find it before the eldar.'

  'Agreed. We must also discover who they are working with here on Pavonis,' said Barzano, pacing the room, hands laced behind his back.

  'The eldar leader spoke a name as we fought, perhaps it was his accomplice.'

  Barzano stopped pacing and spun to face Uriel, a look of disbelief on his face.

  'He mentioned a name?' hissed Barzano. 'What? Quickly man!'

  'I'm not sure it was a name. It was one of their foul words, it sounded like… karsag, or something like that.'

  Barzano's brow knitted and he cast a glance at Shonai. 'Does that name have any meaning to you? It isn't one of the cartels here?'

  'No, I don't recognise it.'

  'Captain Ventris,' said Lortuen Perjed. 'Could the word you heard have been kyerzak perhaps?'

  Uriel closed his eyes, picturing the corpse-faced warrior, recalling the sounds that rasped from his expressionless mouth. He nodded.

  'Yes, Adept Perjed. I believe that it could very well have been that.'

  Barzano rushed to his aide and knelt before the old man, gripping his shoulders tightly. His face was alight with excitement. 'Lortuen, do you know what that word means? Is it a name?'

  Perjed shook his head. 'No, it is not a name, rather it is a term of address. Its roots are indeed eldar in origin and it is used to denote one who is to be honoured.'

  Barzano released his grip on Perjed's shoulders and stood, perplexed. 'Helpful though that is, it gets us no nearer to who the eldar are working with.'

  'On the contrary, Ario, it tells us exactly who we are looking for.'

  'It does?' replied Barzano, 'Explain yourself, Lortuen. We don't have time to indulge your sense for
the dramatic.'

  'The word kyerzak means an honoured one, but in the writings of Lasko Pyre, he talks of how the torturers of the dark kin, beings he called the haemonculi, would tell him that he should appreciate the honour they did him, inflicting the most sublime pain they could imagine upon his flesh.'

  Uriel and Barzano made the connection as Perjed continued.

  'You see, the dark kin have corrupted the word, debasing its meaning to refer to one who has been honoured with their most painful artistry.'

  Shonai clenched her fists and hissed the architect of her troubles' name. 'Kasimir de Valtos.'

  Constructed in a hardened bunker in the eastern wing of the palace, orbital defence control was responsible for the monitoring of aerial and spatial traffic in the local area around Pavonis. It was heavily fortified and fully self-contained, with its own energy grid and reserve power supplies that would allow it to defend Pavonis for up to a year without primary power.

  Second Technician Lutricia Vijeon sat at her control panel, sweeping the space around Pavonis for any unauthorised traffic.

  Her commanding officer, Danil Vorens, sat with his back to her at the command console staring at a holo display projected from the plot before him.

  Lutricia noticed a faint return on her surveyor scope and began noting the time of its appearance on her log. It had to be a ship, it was too large to be anything else. She checked the flight plans pinned beside her station to check if anything was expected in her sector of responsibility. There was nothing logged and she adjusted the runes before her to sharpen the image on her display.

  It didn't look like anything she'd seen before, with its long, tapered prow and what appeared to be long sails rising from its engine section. What the hell was it?

  The image swam hazily on the display, its image blurring as she tried to lock down its form. The image snapped into focus as a thick hand dropped onto her shoulder, squeezing it tightly. She started and looked up into the grim face of Danil Vorens.

  'Sir, I've got this signal on the—' she began.

  'I know about it, Vijeon. Everything has been properly logged. I have authorised it personally,' said Vorens, shutting off her surveyor scope.

  'Oh, I see. But shouldn't we log it in the daily report?'

  'No, Vijeon,' whispered Vorens, leaning close to her ear and squeezing her shoulder even tighter. 'This ship was not here and you did not pick it up on your surveyors. Understood?'

  Vijeon didn't, but wasn't going to tell Vorens that. Still, what did it matter to her?

  She nodded and switched her scope to another sector of space. Obviously Vorens had been expecting this ship.

  The Ultramarines' Thunderhawk gunship landed in the country estates of Kasimir de Valtos in the foot of the Owsen Hills, nearly seventy-five kilometres west of Brandon Gate.

  'Everyone out!' yelled Uriel, charging from the belly of the gunship, bolter at the ready.

  He emerged into the late afternoon sun, seeing the splendour of de Valtos's country estates spreading before him. A large, multi-winged house sprawled in front of them, two black coaches sitting before the main entrance. The Ultramarines fanned out, forming a defensive perimeter as the gunship howled skyward on a pillar of fiery smoke.

  Uriel waved Dardino's squad left and Venasus's right, leading Pasanius's towards the main doors.

  The main door was already open and Uriel sprinted through into the chequered entrance hall. Ultramarines barged through the door and Uriel directed them with sharp jabs of his fist. He indicated that Pasanius and two other Space Marines should follow him and charged up the staircase, his bolter constantly searching for targets.

  The upper landing was empty, a long carpeted passageway stretching left and right.

  To the right, the passageway curved out of sight, while on the left it ended at a large oaken door. Something told Uriel that this house had been abandoned, but his soldier's instinct was too well honed not to treat this place as an anything less than hostile.

  Uriel and Pasanius made their way cautiously down the passageway, bolters trained on the door. His auto senses could detect no noise from the room beyond, though he could smell a faint, but disturbing odour.

  Uriel smashed the door from its frame, going in low and fast, Pasanius behind him, bolter sweeping left and right. Given the confines of the dwelling, he had opted for his bolter rather than his preferred flamer. Behind him, Uriel could hear the sounds of Ultramarines, kicking down doors and searching room-to-room.

  The stench hit him before he realised what he was looking at on the bed.

  It had once been a human being, but almost every vestige of humanity had been stripped from the corpse's frame by blades, saws, needles and flame. A golden halo of hair framed the body's head, its leering skull-face stripped of skin below the eyes, both of which had been gouged from their sockets with the bloodstained shards of a broken mirror that crunched underfoot.

  Uriel's gorge rose at the sight. 'Guilliman's oath!'

  Pasanius lowered his bolter, taking in the full horror of the dead woman.

  'By the Emperor, who could do such a thing?'

  Uriel had no answer.

  Despite the horrific mutilation, Uriel recognised the features of Solana Vergen and he added her name to those for whom he would seek vengeance upon Kasimir de Valtos.

  Sergeant Venasus led his squad carefully through the lower reaches of the traitor's dwelling place. It was colder here, his suit of power armour registering a drop of fourteen degrees.

  So far they had found nothing, and Venasus dearly hoped to find some of their enemies soon. Three of his men had died on the alien ship and there was a blood price to be paid for their deaths.

  The bare stone passage led along to an iron door, padlocked shut and Venasus wasted no time smashing it from its frame with a well-placed kick. The sergeant powered through the doorway, his men following close behind. The room was in darkness, but his armour's auto senses kicked in.

  He saw the gleam of metal to his left. A grinning skull face leapt from the darkness of the room. Venasus swung his bolter up and opened fire at the deathly apparition.

  Uriel heard the burst of gunfire from the top landing and sprinted downwards, following the stairs to the lower levels of the house. His blood pounded in his veins, hoping that there would be enemies to slay, his heart hungry for vengeance. As he reached the source of the gunfire, he could see that he was to be denied such vengeance for now. The corridor was cold, its walls glistening with moisture.

  Sergeant Venasus stood at the buckled doorway to a dimly lit room.

  'Report,' ordered Uriel.

  'False alarm, captain. I was first through the door and acquired what I thought was a target. I opened fire, but I was mistaken.'

  'Assign yourself ten days of fasting and prayer to atone for your lax targeting rituals.'

  'Yes, captain.'

  'So what was it you fired upon, sergeant?'

  Venasus paused before answering. 'I am not sure, some kind of metallic skeleton. I do not know exactly what it is.'

  The sergeant moved aside to allow Uriel and Pasanius to enter the room. A single glow-globe cast a fitful illumination around the small room, which looked like some insane mechanic's workshop. All manner of tools lay strewn upon chipped and blackened benches, their exact use incomprehensible. In one corner of the room lay the shattered remains of Sergeant Venasus's target. As the sergeant had described, it resembled a metallic skeleton, its once gleaming surface stained with a patina of green and its limbs twisted at unnatural angles. : Another skeleton of stained metal lay propped up on an angled bench, bundles of wires running from its open chest to rows of yellow battery packs with red lettering stencilled on their sides. Panels on its chest and skull had been prised open and Uriel peered into the darkness within its grotesque anatomy. It resembled a skull in that it had eye sockets and a skeletal grin but there was something horrendously alien about this construction, as though its maker had set out to mock humanity's perf
ection.

  The metallic form repulsed Uriel, though he could not say exactly why. Perhaps it was the loathsome malevolence that radiated from its expressionless features. Perhaps it was the metal's resemblance to the substance they had removed from beneath the hillside on Caernus IV.

  'What in the name of all that's holy is this?' asked Pasanius.

  Uriel shook his head. 'I have no idea, my friend. Perhaps they were the crew of the ship Barzano spoke of.'

  Pasanius pointed at the machine on the bench. 'You think it is dead?'

  Uriel walked over to it and wrenched the wires from the metal skeleton's chest and skull. 'It is now,' he said.

  Uriel watched the temperature reading on his visor creep slowly downwards as he approached the last door. Steam hissed from the power unit on the back of his armour and he could feel a strange sense of foreboding as he neared the rusted portal.

  The door wasn't shut, a sliver of darkness and stuttering light edging the frame. Wisps of condensing air soughed through from behind it.

  He glanced behind him. Pasanius, Venasus and six Ultramarines stood ready to storm the room on his order. The remainder of his command were tearing the house apart from top to bottom, searching for a clue to de Valtos's current whereabouts. He nodded to Pasanius and hammered his boot against the metal of the door.

  It slammed inwards, Pasanius charging through with Venasus hot on his heels. Uriel spun into the room, covering the danger zone on their blindside as the remainder of the men charged in.

  Uriel heard the clink of chains and soft moans emanating from the centre of the room. His auto-senses had trouble adjusting to the flickering light and he disengaged them, activating his armour lights. The other Ultramarines followed his example and slowly the horrendous centrepiece of the octagonal room became visible.

  Atop a stinking, gore-smeared slab lay a large human skeleton, the bones bloody, its former wrapping suspended above it.

  Chunks of excised flesh hung from the ceiling on scores of butchers' hooks, each one set at precisely the correct height to shape the outline of the body they once enclosed. As though frozen a millisecond after his body had suffered some internal explosion, the flesh and organs of Taryn Honan hung suspended above his skeleton, each fatty slice of his body ribboned together with dripping sinew and pulsing cords of vein.