Ultramarines Omnibus (warhammer 40000: ultramarines)

by Graham McNeill

It backed away, unfolding longer, more deadly blades from the sheaths of its arms and Pasanius took the opportunity to step in and deliver a thunderous punch to the creature before him as it struggled to push itself to its feet. It howled in pain and Pasanius took hold of its quivering, beweaponed armature, alive with shrieking cutting implements, and rammed it into the monster's face.

  Dead fluids and long-decayed skin flew as its own fist ripped its head to rotten shards. Desiccated flesh and bone sprayed, and its howls were silenced as it slumped forward with a long death rasp.

  'Pasanius!' shouted Vaanes. 'Release me! Hurry!'

  Pasanius looked as though he were about to take on the second Mortician alone, but nodded, backing away towards Vaanes as it leapt forwards on its long legs. He dodged the first slash of its blades, ducking below a high sweep of a second. Its leg hammered out and slammed into his stomach, doubling him up with a whooshing intake of breath.

  Pasanius rolled aside as its blades stabbed the bloody ground and Vaanes saw that the sergeant would not be able to avoid its attacks for much longer. Sabatier ran from the dissection theatre as fast as his mutated gait allowed him. It screamed for aid and Vaanes knew that unless Pasanius could free him quickly, they were as good as dead.

  Pasanius surged to his feet, leaping for the restraints holding Vaanes to the mortuary table. He lunged for the bolt at Vaanes's arm, his fingers connecting with the bolt and closing on the metal as another thumping blow sent him flying through the air. Pasanius landed with a steel crash on the table of saws, scalpels and their weapons, scattering bolters and Uriel's golden-hilted sword to the floor.

  But Vaanes saw that the sergeant's effort had been enough. The bolt had been hauled clear as Pasanius had been kicked away and, with a feral roar of hate, Vaanes ripped his arm free and unsheathed his crackling lightning claws. With a few quick blows, the remainder of his restraints were hacked clear and he dropped from the mortuary table, bellowing a challenge to the Savage Mortician as it towered over Pasanius's battered form.

  But before he could do more than take a single step towards the looming monster, a bloody, reeking figure vaulted onto an empty mortuary table and leapt for its terrible form. The figure held a long halberd above its head, with the wickedly hooked blade aimed towards the Savage Mortician's torso. He landed on the creature's back, driving the halberd deep into the monster's spine, the blade erupting in a flood of stinking, yellow fluids and gasses from its chest.

  As terrible a wound as it was, the creature made no sound, but twisted on some internal axis to dislodge its gore-smeared attacker, while leaving the halberd embedded in its body.

  'Uriel!' shouted Pasanius, hurling the golden-bladed sword towards him, and Vaanes was shocked to see that this wild, animalistic figure was none other than the former Ultramarines captain.

  Ventris caught the sword on its downward arc, the blade flaring to life as he thumbed the activation rune. Without words, Uriel and Vaanes moved left and right, the Savage Mortician ripping the halberd from its body and tossing it aside, a blaring shriek of warning blasting from the vox-units on its throat.

  'We have to finish this thing!' shouted Vaanes.

  Ventris did not reply, darting in to slash at the Mortician's legs. It dodged back, stabbing for him with a roaring saw blade, longer than the largest eviscerator. Ventris rolled beneath its screaming arc and hacked his sword upwards through the arm, severing it in a wash of blue sparks.

  Vaanes also leapt to attack, jumping onto the creature's arched back as it reared away from Uriel's blow. He hammered one clawed fist through its neck and held on with the other as the thrashing monster attempted to dislodge him. Hooks hanging from the structure surrounding the arena slammed into him, but he grimly held on, stabbing his claws through the Savage Mortician's body again and again.

  The Savage Mortician shrieked in pain and he tumbled from the beast's back as Ventris chopped its convulsing legs from under it. Vaanes rolled away from its monstrous body as it thrashed and jerked on the ground, dying in agony as Ventris stabbed and stabbed and stabbed at its loathsome corpse.

  'Ventris!' he called. 'It's dead. Come on, let's get the hell out of here!'

  The Ultramarine stabbed the creature's chest one last time, taking huge, rasping breaths and looking more like one of the followers of the Blood God as he revelled in the slaughter he had just perpetrated.

  'Uriel, come on!' urged Pasanius. 'We have to go now. There's bound to be more of these things coming!'

  Ventris nodded, joining Vaanes and Pasanius and gathering up their weapons from where the Savage Morticians had dumped them. The bloody Space Marine sheathed his sword and hefted his bolter when Leonid shouted, 'Wait! Don't go, don't leave us!'

  'Why?' asked Vaanes.

  'Why?' snapped Ellard, amazed that such a question had even been asked. 'We'll die otherwise!'

  'What's the use in freeing you? You're going to die anyway,' said Vaanes, turning away and gathering up his own guns.

  'Uriel!' cried Leonid. 'You can't mean to leave us here? Please!'

  Ventris said nothing for long seconds, his chest still heaving with the thrill and adrenaline of combat. Vaanes moved past him, but Ventris gripped his arm and locked eyes with him, slowly shaking his head.

  'We leave no one behind,' he said firmly.

  'We don't have time for this!' snapped Vaanes. 'They won't make it, but we might!'

  'I think I was wrong about you, Vaanes,' said Uriel sadly. 'I thought you still had courage and honour, but your heart is dead inside. This place has destroyed your soul.'

  'If we don't go now, we'll all die, Ventris, cut to bloody rags by more of those things!'

  'Everyone who serves the Emperor dies bloody, Vaanes,' said Uriel. 'All we get to do is choose how and where. Every warrior deserves that, and I'm not leaving without them.'

  Ventris turned and ran back into the arena, and with Pasanius's help, began freeing the pitiful remainder of their once-proud warrior band.

  'If they don't kill you, follow my tracks!' called Vaanes. 'Sabatier said something about all the filth of Khalan-Ghol being flushed out into the mountains, so there's got to be a way out of here!'

  Ventris nodded, too busy to answer, as the shrieks of approaching enemies drew nearer.

  Cursing the Ultramarine for a fool, Vaanes set off into the depths of the cavern.

  Uriel freed Leonid and Ellard, the coughing Guardsmen nodding their thanks as they clambered free and gathered up their own weapons. Soon they had freed the surviving members of the warrior band and set off into the macabre wilderness of the chamber, the great heartbeat and the screams of both victims and pursuers echoing weirdly from the rocky walls of the cavern.

  Vaanes's trail was not hard to follow: the cloven bodies of mutants and overturned surgical tables clearly marking his passage through the cavern. The sounds of pursuit drew ever closer, their ragtag band weary to the point of collapse through a combination of sheer physical exhaustion and terror.

  The sound of rushing fluids came from ahead and Uriel staggered into a vast, open sluice chamber filled with a multitude of filth-encrusted chutes and aqueducts that either pierced the walls of the cavern, rose up from below the ground or sluiced down from the upper tiers of the daemonculaba. The roaring noise of tonnes of excrement, waste matter and dead flesh rivalled the thudding of the Heart of Blood. Everything washed into a pool of stinking effluent that in turn poured through a colossal pipeway in the cavern wall.

  A waterfall of filth, body parts, corpses and decomposing foetal matter poured from the cavern and away from the fortress. A way out…

  Dead mutants littered the chamber, hacked in two by Vaanes's mad dash for freedom, and Uriel saw that there was only one way they would get out of this damnable place.

  'We cannot fight them here! Into the tunnel!' he shouted and set off through the pool, wading thigh-deep in the bobbing detritus of surgical waste matter. He had no idea where the wide tunnel led or even if their situation would be improved b
y jumping in, but it had to be better than this.

  The going was slow, but as he looked back over his shoulder to see a dozen or more of the Savage Morticians emerge into the sluice chamber, he pushed forward through the sludge with renewed vigour, sheathing his sword as he went.

  The warrior band reached the churning, roaring waterfall of the tunnel and, one by one, leapt into its stinking darkness. Uriel heard the splash of thick, mechanical limbs entering the water behind him, and without a backwards glance, leapt in after his warriors.

  Rushing filth enfolded him, its repulsive contents buffeting him as he tumbled downwards. Darkness and half-light warred with one another, and as he slipped beneath the surface of the scummy fluid, he was grateful for the shadows that hid the dead horrors flushed from the Halls of the Savage Morticians.

  The roar of the tunnel was deafening, its slope too precipitous and the waters too deep to gain any handholds. He fought to the surface, gasping for breath and swallowing mouthfuls of foetid, frothing matter. The thunder of great pumps and the whining of enormous filters echoed from the encrusted walls and Uriel felt his skin burning with the pollutants and toxic discharge.

  He slammed into the tunnel wall as it bent to one side, losing his grip on his bolter and watching as it spun off into the water. His fingers scrabbled for purchase, but he was being carried along too fast to find any kind of grip. Huge blades churned the water, hurling severed body parts and disembowelled carcasses into the air and Uriel desperately kicked out to avoid them. A rusted spar of sharpened metal slashed the water next to him and stinging water blinded him as he was carried along by the torrent, spinning him beneath the water.

  As his head broke the surface, Uriel saw a huge foaming mass of spuming effluent ahead and heard the thunderous crash of water falling hundreds of metres. Jagged archipelagos of ruined flesh and foetal islands had agglomerated into decaying masses at the edge of a waterfall, and Uriel fought against the immense flow of the river of waste to direct his frenetic course towards one.

  The roar of the waterfall and the stench of rotten flesh and organic waste matter filled his senses, threatening to overwhelm him. As the current hurled him onwards, he gave one last desperate kick and thrust his hands out to grip the mass of body parts before him. His hands closed on the clammy, greasy flesh, his fingers breaking the surface and spilling a mass of rotted innards into the water. Dead eyes and glassy features stared at him from the lifeless mounds as the sodden flesh disintegrated beneath his grip. He tumbled away, spinning around and cried out as he was swept over the edge of the waterfall.

  Suddenly Uriel was in freefall, hurtling downwards through the air and tumbling end over end into the unknown depths. His limbs flailed uselessly as he fell and he roared in defiance at the darkness below. Was this how it was to end? Dying, broken to pieces within the refuse of the Iron Warriors?

  He caught a glimmer of light on the fractured glass surface of water below and straightened his body to reduce the coming impact. His body knifed into the water, the filthy murk closing over him as he plunged into its inky black depths. Drowned corpses swirled in the cold darkness with him, rotted arms wrapping around him and eyeless skulls mocking him with their sightless gazes.

  Uriel kicked for the surface, the breath hot in his supernumerary lung, fighting against the dead of the Savage Morticians who were dragging him down to lie with them forever.

  His head broke the surface and he heaved a great breath of air, the dank stench of the rushing, water-filled tunnel welcome after the stinking depths. Swirling filth foamed around him and, as he shook his head clear, he heard and saw giant, churning blades chopping the water ahead of him, smashing the water and debris ahead to a fleshy morass.

  Uriel fought against the current, spitting effluent from his mouth as he struggled against the worsening flow of water. The great fan blades spun too fast to dodge, but as he was carried ever closer, he saw that the leading edges of the fan did not quite reach the roof of the cavern…

  Was it possible they didn't reach the bottom of the tunnel also?

  Knowing he had only once chance of survival, Uriel took a deep breath and dived beneath the surface of the corpse-filled water, feeling the pressure waves of the huge blades buffet him from side to side as they foamed with water stained red with flesh and blood. The pounding pressure wave of the fan blades was a fierce force dragging him onwards, but with powerful strokes and kicks, Uriel swam downwards towards the bottom of the tunnel.

  His lung burned with fire and his vision greyed, but through the murk of the water, he saw the soiled rockcrete base of the tunnel. Ahead, a thrashing mass of bubbles obscured the lethal edges of the fan blades, and he couldn't tell whether there was enough room for him to pass beneath. With no other choice before him, he pulled himself along the bottom of the tunnel, feeling the enormous beat of the blades.

  He cried out, a breath of bubbles bursting from his mouth as he felt a searing slash across his back. Instinctively he pulled himself down and forward, letting what little air remained in his lungs pull him towards the surface as he cleared the blades. Uriel's struggles and kicks grew weaker and weaker, his limbs leaden as oxygen starvation took its toll on his already weakened physique.

  And then his head broke the surface once more and he vomited up polluted matter, retching in a reeking lungful of air. The current beyond the fan blades was still strong, but he found that he could keep his head above the water with a little effort.

  Amazed that he still lived, he circled in the water, searching for other members of the warrior band.

  'Pasanius!' he yelled. 'Vaanes!'

  .His voice echoed from the dripping walls of the tunnel, but there was no response to his call and he despaired at seeing any survivors. Had they all been chopped to unrecognisable hunks of meat by the filtering blades of the tunnel?

  Now that his immediate danger had passed, Uriel wondered where this tunnel eventually led. He had no way of knowing for sure, but felt that he must have travelled for many kilometres through these hellish passages. Where then did it empty?

  Even as he formed the thought, he felt the speed of the water increase and saw a bright dot of white light up ahead. Once more, he heard the roaring crash of a waterfall, but this time there were no potentially life-saving archipelagos to cling to and Uriel was carried towards the tunnel mouth at greater and greater speed.

  The white sky through the opening before him grew rapidly in size, until he was finally swept through into the open air.

  Mountains soared above him and the dead sky spread its hateful whiteness above the dark rocks of Medrengard as Uriel was spat out of Khalan-Ghol hundreds of metres above the ground.

  He tumbled downwards through the air towards a repulsive, scum-frothed pool, catching a glimpse of armoured warriors crawling from the water as he fell. The breath was driven from him by the impact as he slammed into the surface of the pool and he swallowed great mouthfuls of rank water.

  Uriel spun through the murky liquid, kicking out, though he had no idea of which direction was up and which was down. He felt hands upon him and surrendered to their grip, feeling himself hauled upwards and dragged from the water. He retched, spewing huge mouthfuls of foamed, oily water and rolled onto his side as hands slapped him on the back.

  He looked up to see the filthy, streaked face of Ardaric Vaanes, bleeding and battered.

  'You made it out then?'

  'Only just,' coughed Uriel, feeling as though he had done a dozen sparring sessions with Captain Agemman, leader of the Ultramarines veterans company. He sat up, feeling a measure of his strength returning with each stale breath he took. He took a moment to survey his surroundings, seeing that the deep pool sat in a high-sided basin of rock at the base of a tall peak of glistening rock, the water-bubbling and swirling with treacherous currents. One side of the basin was a sheer face of smooth rockcrete, a vertical slab of stone with the pouring outflow they had fallen from hundreds of metres above them.

  He looked around
to see who else had survived the horror of Khalan-Ghol, feeling a cold hate suffuse him as he saw that the escape from the dungeons of the Iron Warriors had cost them clear. Ardaric Vaanes had survived, as had two other Space Marines, a Wolf Brother named Svoljard and a White Consul, whose name Uriel did not know. He let out a great sigh of relief as he saw Pasanius sitting on the wet rocks at the side of the pool. Such was his joy that it took him a moment to realise that his sergeant's arm ended just above the elbow, that his forearm had been removed. A crusted mass of knotted scar tissue graced the stump of his arm, and though the wound must surely have been painful, Pasanius gave no sign of it.

  'What happened to you?' he asked.

  'Those monsters cut it off,' said Pasanius. 'Hurt like a bastard.'

  Despite himself, Uriel laughed at such masterful understatement.

  Leonid and Ellard were also amongst the living, but Uriel could see that Sergeant Ellard was grievously wounded, a terrible gash running across his stomach. Uriel was no Apothecary, but even he could see the wound would soon be mortal.

  'You are a survivor, colonel.'

  'I would be dead were it not for Pasanius,' said Leonid, cradling Ellard's head and staring at his friend's terrible wound. 'But I don't think…'

  Uriel nodded in understanding and said, 'No… but I am glad you are alive.'

  Putting the wounded sergeant from his mind for now, Uriel turned to face Ardaric Vaanes. 'Where are we? Do you know this place?'

  'Aye,' said Vaanes, 'and we should be away quickly.'

  'Why?'

  'Because this is the hunting ground of the Unfleshed,' said Vaanes, looking to the ridges surrounding the pool.

  Uriel felt a thrill of fear as he remembered the malformed, red-skinned monsters that had devoured the wretched inhabitants of the Iron Warriors' flesh camp.

  'You're right,' he said, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet and gripping the filmy hilt of his golden sword. 'We need to get out of here.'

  'Too late,' said Leonid, pointing towards the ridge that ran along the circumference of the basin. 'They're already here…'