Battle for the Abyss

by Ben Counter

  Mhotep ignored the abattoir stink assailing his nostrils, even through his battle-helm, the wet redness of the chamber cast starkly in the intermittent flare of warning lamps. He saw Admiral Kaminska, slumped against the floor, a pistol in her hand.

  ‘Get out of her,’ she breathed, blood flecking her lips as she spoke.

  Standing before them both, an insane grin etched upon her face, was Helmsmistress Venkmyer. She was bloody and her toes, pointing downward in her boots, just scraped the floor as if she were a marionette held limply by its strings.

  ‘Get out!’ Kaminska urged again, struggling to stand as she fired her pistol on empty at the abomination that used to be her second-in-command.

  The Venkmyer-puppet lashed out, her arm extending as if it were made of clay, and sheared off Kaminska’s head with its talon-like fingers. The admiral dead, the creature’s arm shrank back into position, glistening with blood.

  ‘You dwell within,’ said Mhotep calmly, taking a step forward as he mustered his psychic resolve. ‘Come forth.’

  The Venkmyer-puppet grinned back at him.

  ‘I am a servant of the crimson eye. I am a vassal of Magnus the all-knowing,’ said Mhotep, taking another step as he reaffirmed the grip on his spear. ‘Come forth.’

  Eerie quiet had descended like a veil and the temperature readings in the Thousand Son’s helmet were registering sub-zero. He saw miniature icicles of hoarfrost building on his gauntlets. A faint white patina was emerging slowly on his cuirass as he advanced.

  Still, the Venkmyer-puppet did not answer.

  ‘I know you are here!’ cried Mhotep, his voice resonating around the bridge. ‘You have been here all along! You cannot hide from me. I have the eye of Magnus!’ Mhotep levelled his spear at Venkmyer as if she was a wild beast poised to attack.

  ‘Come forth,’ he hissed, and the briefest flash of recognition appeared on Venkmyer’s face, but was swallowed by agony.

  The thing that used to be the helmsmistress opened its mouth and the jaw distended to reveal a hollow maw of deep red. A gush of blood spewed outwards, coating Mhotep in its sickly gore. The Thousand Son did not falter against the crimson tide and held his ground.

  The sound of cracking bone filled the air as Venkmyer’s spine was ripped out of her back and arced up and over her head like a scorpion’s sting. Her neck snapped, and her jaw distended further, tendons severing. Beneath her tarnished uniform, her ribs writhed as a shape fought to free itself from the flesh and bone sack of her body. Convulsions wracked her and the head came apart in a shower of gore and matter.

  A shape of raw muscle emerged, unfolding and opening like a bloody flower. Venkmyer’s hands became claws and enhanced musculature spread across her ravaged body in a riot. Wet and pink, the muscle swelled until a hard, black carapace formed over it. What had once been Venkmyer, little more than a conduit for something to wrench itself into existence, grew exponentially until it had to crouch to fit into the chamber. The nubs of horns sprouted from a bulbous head from which eyes like pits of tar blinked maliciously. A slit ran across the near-featureless head like the cut from a surgeon’s scalpel and a wide mouth opened from it, revealing rows of razor teeth. Talons like scythe blades scraped along the floor from distended, simian-like arms. A long, sinewy tail spilled from its back made of tough muscle-bound vines and twisted spine.

  ‘There you are…’ said Mhotep, looking up at the towering abomination, ‘…Wsoric’

  It was a thing of the warp, a daemon made flesh, and it stared at the Thousand Son, allowing its malign presence to wash over him.

  ‘I am gorged,’ the thing gurgled, drooling blood as its mouth deformed to make the words, ‘but there is always room for more.’

  Mhotep knew then that the beast had been aboard the ship for weeks, devouring souls to gather its strength. It had been the temptation in his head that had almost made him slip into madness. It had fanned the flames of the Space Wolf’s enmity against him. It had fostered the madness that had claimed the lives of so many of the crew.

  Mhotep brandished his spear and a corona of crackling energy arced over it.

  ‘Feeding time is over,’ he promised.

  THE SEVENTH CIRCLE of hell, two steps closer to the heart of damnation, was for rebels: those who had cast off the natural order, who had defied their betters or refused to accept their place in the world. In ages past, those who had taken up arms against Macragge’s Battle Kings had found themselves here, alongside children who had turned against their parents, and deviants and agitators of every kind.

  It was a machine – a vast, complex, endless construction of cogs and steel that churned through the seventh circle. Rebels had failed to realise that they were required to be a part of a larger machine, and so the seventh hell was to educate them in their place. Sinners became a part of that machine, bent and stretched into component parts. The machine never let them alone, always twisting them or thrusting a piston through them, until they gave up their individuality in the hope of ending the pain. The seventh hell was not just a punishment, it was a lesson, and it would break the pupil’s spirit in the telling.

  Cestus’s spine was bent backwards. Spurs of metal were slid in at his wrists, down through the muscle of his arms and into his chest. Metal merged with the back of his skull and snapped it back every few seconds as the teeth of a cog hammered by behind him.

  This circle of hell was dark and dripping with blood. Other sinners were everywhere, their bodies so deformed by the machine that they were little more than cogs or cams of gristle and bone, facial features barely discernible. A few others were new and their bodies were still resisting. They screamed, bones poking through their skin and muscles ripping.

  ‘Cestus!’ cried someone above him. Cestus tried to look back, grimacing as metal pushed through the skin of his scalp.

  It was Antiges. The Ultramarine had been stripped of his armour and was bolted spread-eagled to a cog. His limbs were being forced around to follow the circle of the cog. His shins and forearms were being bent into curves and they looked like they would shatter at any moment. Another, smaller cog inside the larger was fixed to his back, slowly twisting his spine. Already, his torso looked lopsided and his head had been forced down onto one shoulder.

  ‘Antiges!’ gasped Cestus. ‘I had thought you were lost.’

  ‘I am,’ said Antiges, a brief lull in his suffering before the agony returned. ‘So are you. Fathers of Macragge, this pain… I cannot suffer it much longer. If only there were some… some new death, some oblivion.’

  ‘This is the hell for rebels,’ said Cestus. He felt a note of panic in his mind as the spurs in his forearms and chest began to force apart, drawing his arms behind him. ‘We are not rebels. We were always loyal sons of Macragge! We served the Imperial Truth until the end! Nothing was worth more to us than our duty.’

  ‘Your duties were on Terra,’ said Antiges. ‘You took a ship and left your post. You took us all on your mission to Macragge, and damned the rest! There was no duty that told you to gather your fleet and abandon Terra. That was your personal crusade, Cestus. That was your rebellion.’

  ‘I had a duty to Macragge and to my battle-brothers. Everything I did, I did because it was demanded of my by my Legion! Loyalty drove me on!’

  ‘Loyalty, Cestus, to yourself.’ Antiges threw his head back and screamed. One leg shattered, snapping at the shin. The other one was wrenched apart at the knee. A shoulder followed, the bone torn out of the socket. Skin split and Antiges’s arm was held on only by a few tendons. His eyes rolled back and his breathing turned ragged. An Astartes could take pain that would kill a normal man, but even Antiges had his limits.

  ‘Brother!’ shouted Cestus. ‘Hold on! Do not leave me! Fight!’

  Cestus’s part of the machine hummed with power diverted to the engines chugging away beneath him. He felt his arms forced back further and a sharp pressure in his back. His head was forced back, too, snapping back and forth as it was ratcheted tight into th
e top of his spine.

  The pressure in his chest was tremendous. An Astartes’s ribs were fused into a breastplate of bone, and Cestus could feel them grinding as it made ready to split down the middle. The pain grew and the Ultramarine could feel nothing else, only the awful inevitability of his breaking.

  ‘I am no rebel!’ shouted Cestus, drawing resolve from a pit of strength he didn’t know he had. ‘I only serve! My Legion is my life! I do not belong in this hell of Macragge, and so this hell is not real! I am no rebel! I defy you all!’

  Somewhere, a taskmaster turned a rusting wheel and the machine shuddered with power.

  Cestus’s chest split open. He screamed. Hot air shrieked through his organs. His legs kicked frantically and both his arms snapped. His neck broke, but the pain did not die, and his body was forced to accept the form of the machine.

  ‘I defy you,’ gasped Cestus with his last breath.

  NINETEEN

  Pack mentality

  Wsoric

  Reunion

  BRYNNGAR STALKED ON all fours amongst the steaming carcasses of the pack. He had rent them apart with tooth and claw, his furred muzzle stained with their blood. They had challenged him and he had proved he was dominant. Upon the snowy, Fenrisian plain, his feral eyes cast across a silver ocean so still that it was like glass. He sniffed the air, the scent of something drifting towards him on the cold breeze. Long wolf ears pricking at the faintest sound of disturbed tundra, he saw a shape above him, moving stealthily up a craggy peak under a shawl of snow.

  Another wolf still lived and was stalking him.

  Brynngar emitted a baleful howl that echoed across the soaring mountains. Its challenge was met by another.

  The hackles rose on Brynngar’s back as the other wolf loped into view. He was smaller, but lean and well-muscled. Reddish, brown fur covered his lupine body and he pawed at the ground with blood-red claws.

  Brynngar growled at the red wolf’s approach, a deep and ululating sound that resonated through his body. The challenger stepped down onto the plain and they began circling each other, the old and venerable grey versus the youthful red. Death was the only outcome. The only thing that was uncertain was whether the duel would claim them both.

  Ribbons of wolf flesh still clung to Brynngar’s fangs. The blood taste was intoxicating, and the scent set his feral senses aflame. With a roar, he dived at the other wolf, biting and clawing with savage abandon. So furious was the attack that the red wolf was bowled briefly off balance. He twisted in Brynngar’s jaws, scraping wildly with his claws and biting down against the grey’s back. The wolves broke apart, both bloodied and full of fury. This time the red wolf attacked, launching a swift assault that saw him rake his claws down Brynngar’s flank. The old, grey wolf yelped in pain and skidded away across the ice plain on all fours, before regrouping to charge again.

  The red wolf slashed a claw across Brynngar’s muzzle as he came at him, but the old grey was not to be deterred. Ignoring the pain, Brynngar locked his jaw around the red wolf’s neck and bit down. Claws raked his flank as the red wolf’s back legs kicked out in desperation. Brynngar could hear his opponent’s frantic breathing, and feel the hotness against his fur, the vapour cooling in the cold. With a grunt of effort, he snapped the red wolf’s neck. It yelped just before it died, and fell limp in Brynngar’s jaw. The old wolf shook the corpse loose and howled in triumph, blood drizzling from his maw as he brandished gory fangs.

  The silver ocean was before him once more and Brynngar felt it call to him. Snow spilled across its mirror sheen in fat, white drifts. It fell upon the ground where Brynngar stood, covering up the spilled blood of the slain wolves. The old grey was about to lope off when a shadow fell across the ice plain. He looked up and for a moment could see nothing through the heavy snowfall. Then, slowly, a figure resolved itself. It was a black wolf, easily twice his size, sitting on its haunches watching him calmly. There was no challenge in its posture; Brynngar detected no threat in either its tone or manner. It merely watched. The grey wolf had seen this black furred beast before. He approached it slowly, warily and stopped as the black wolf got up. Its eyes bored into him and it opened its mouth as if to howl.

  ‘Look around you,’ said the black wolf, and though it spoke the words of man, Brynngar the grey wolf understood.

  ‘Look around you, Brynngar,’ said the giant black wolf again. ‘This is not Fenris.’

  BRYNNGAR WOKE FROM a dream straight into a nightmare. Rujveld lay dead at his feet. The Blood Claw’s throat had been ripped out and vital fluids pooled around his corpse. Brynngar tasted copper in his mouth and knew at once that he had killed him. Out of the corner of his eye, the Wolf Guard saw other grey-armoured forms and realised that he had slain all of his kinsmen. He shut his eyes against the horror, willing it to be his fevered imagination, but when Brynngar opened them again he knew it was not.

  The Wolf Guard got unsteadily to his feet. The last thing he remembered was approaching the Furious Abyss. Their shuttle had been hit and they’d crashed in a place of darkness. The rest was lost. He had emerged onto what he thought was Fenris. He knew that this was some form of psychic lie. He clenched his fists at the thought of being manipulated by witchcraft. It had cost the lives of his battle-brothers. He had been damned by it.

  Senses returning, Brynngar looked around. The chamber was gloomy in the extreme, but felt large and tall. It was some kind of armoury. He stood face-to-face with a suit of dreadnought armour. Startled at first, the Wolf Guard took an instinctive step back and reached for Felltooth. When he realised that the sarcophagus of the mighty war machine was empty and dormant, he relaxed. There was another dreadnought next to it, similarly harnessed, made ready for the warrior who would become entombed within it for all time or until they fell in service to the Legion.

  The armoury was vast and well-stocked. There were crates of munitions, stacked in rows. They joined ranks of bolter clips, fuel cells and harnessed grenades. It was the hulking presence of the dreadnoughts, however, that caught the Space Wolf’s attention. Next to the second war machine, there was another and another, and another. Brynngar gazed up and across the chamber, his enhanced eyesight adjusting to the darkness. At least a hundred dreadnoughts filled the massive armoury hall, their somnambulant forms held fast in racks and rows. Weapon systems, great piston hammers, power flails, autocannons, heavy bolters, twin-linked flamers and missile pods, were arrayed next to them, waiting to be attached to the dreadnought body. Brynngar balked at the firepower on display and the thought of thousands of these armoured leviathans going to war in Lorgar’s name.

  Brynngar’s ears pricked up; he’d lost his battle-helm at some point he could not recall. A slab of metal slid away from a bare wall in the armoury hall and a shaft of wan red light issued through the gap. A tall, thin shadow was waiting outside and, with the way open, it moved into the room. It was clad in black robes and Brynngar detected the glint of a metal artifice at its back: Mechanicum.

  The magos turned when it noticed the Astartes in the armoury. Without preamble, it came at the Space Wolf, a mechadendrite drill emerging from the folds of its robes. Brynngar slashed the mechanical arm of the weapon, oil spilling from the severed metal limb like blood, and brought Felltooth down onto the hapless magos with a roar. The creature gurgled as it died, in what might have been an expression of pain or regret. It twitched for a moment as if its mechanical body was taking time to realise that it was already dead, before at last it lay still.

  The red light continued to issue from the portal opened by the magos.

  Brynngar had no idea where it led, but perhaps he could find some vulnerable location on the ship and do some damage, making the sacrifice of his Blood Claws and his own terrible act worth something. Maybe even the Ultramarine was still alive and he could find him. These thoughts running through his mind, the Wolf Guard took a step towards the portal, but stopped when he heard the shift of metal in the chamber, followed by the pressure-hiss of a disengaging harness.
>
  Brynngar turned towards the sound, his accentuated hearing pinpointing its location exactly, and paused. He did not have to wait long for the source of the disturbance to reveal itself.

  ‘I serve the Legion eternally,’ a scratchy voice, said, emitted from a vox-caster out of the darkness. Heavy metal footfalls like the thunk of giant hammers hitting metal, echoed in the armoury as a massive dreadnought emerged from the shadows.

  The thing was an abomination, only part-way through the procedure of interment. The armoured sarcophagus hung open revealing a translucent blister pod in which a naked form was surrounded in amniotic fluid. The viscous material clung to the body, casting the enhanced musculature of the entombed Astartes in a dull sheen through the blister.

  It walked unsteadily and one of its arms was missing, disconnected cabling flapping like cut veins, doubtless still awaiting the weapons of destruction through which it would express the art of war. The other arm, though, was more than ready, a massive, spiked hammer swinging from it. A faint energy crackle played along its surface, casting stark flashes onto the dreadnought as it primed the deadly weapon subconsciously. A sense of palpable menace came from the metal monster that towered over Brynngar. The old wolf took a step back, swinging Felltooth in readiness. The armour of his opponent looked thick and he hoped that the rune axe could pierce it.

  ‘My enemy,’ droned the dreadnought lumbering forward to close off the exit to the armoury as a flare of recognition coloured its tone and demeanour. ‘Ultis must die,’ it added, pausing for a moment as if suddenly confused, before it refocused on the Space Wolf and continued, ‘You will not gain the ship.’

  Brynngar knew this warrior. He had killed him once already, at Bakka Triumveron.

  ‘Baelanos…’ it said with machine coldness.

  The assault-captain.

  ‘Didn’t I kill you once, already,’ growled the Wolf Guard.