Malodrax

by Ben Counter

  Had that been the same man? He answered to the name Lysander, he wore the golden armour and the symbol of the clenched fist, but would that man recognise the thoughts in his head, the recent memories? What would that Lysander have said of a man who had recited a list of sins the current Lysander had committed – trafficking with daemons, permitting witches and mutants to live, shirking one duty to fulfil another to his battle-brothers?

  Lysander threw out thoughts like that. He had no room in his mind for anything save the thoughts of a soldier now. Squads Kaderic and Lycaon were moving parallel to the siege tower, keeping the ruins between them and any sensors the siege tower must have. It had to be autonomous, controlled by a corrupt machine or daemon, to roam unscrewed through the ruins, and it would be watching for prey just as it had been the day it rolled out of Kulgarde’s forges. The closer Lysander got the fouler the glimpses he had of the machine. Its upper reaches were covered in corpses, mounted on spikes jutting from the blackened timbers. They were old and new, many of obvious mutants, others of ragged creatures dressed in all-covering pale robes who might have been nomads or wandered eking out lives in the region. Hoppers mounted on the engine’s sides seemed to be there for the sole purpose of holding more bodies, many rotted away to skeletons, a few fresh and bloody.

  ‘We are closing,’ came First Sergeant Kaderic’s vox. ‘All squads, be ready for contact.’

  Ahead, a body lay among a host of fallen rubble. The body was of one of the nomads – so far the strike force had not seen any alive but had come across a couple of bodies on their way through the ruins. This one looked to have been trapped by the rockfall, one leg crushed beneath a block of stone, and to have perished where he lay. With a clack of metal on metal a spidery creature, somewhat larger than a man, scuttled over the fallen wall and over the body. Without a word the Imperial Fists shifted into cover, each man putting something between himself and the creature.

  It was a form of servitor, a mechanical creature controlled by a biological, human core component. The Imperium created them from condemned prisoners, or those pious folk who left their bodies to be used to continue the Imperium’s work. Presumably this one had been made in Kulgarde – its body resembled that of a ten-legged spider, its body made up of a human torso with the head hanging upside-down to form its face, a single wide lens mounted in the mouth. A forelimb snickered out and sliced the trapped leg off the corpse, before the servitor threw the corpse over its back and carried it over the ruins towards the rumbling of the siege engine’s wheels.

  ‘It collects them,’ voxed Brother Givenar of Squad Kaderic, the huge Imperial Fist who had wrestled at the funeral games outside Shalhadar’s city.

  ‘Not for much longer,’ said Kaderic. ‘We’re coming up to the crossroads. Break cover on my word.’

  The sound of the siege engine was so loud Lysander could hear nothing else save for the vox, transmitted directly to his middle ear.

  ‘In position,’ came the vox from Sergeant Gorvetz.

  ‘Go!’ ordered Lycaon.

  The Imperial Fists broke from cover and burst into the crossroads ahead. Soaring walls formed a sheer-sided chasm in one direction – in the other wound a labyrinth of collapsed buildings, countless layers of floors tumbling down over one another. Through this labyrinth the siege tower approached, crunching through the ruins, heralded by a cloud of rubble dust.

  Lysander jammed his helmet over his head as the dust cloud rolled over him. Amidst the sound of the siege tower’s engines was the screech of metal on metal as the gun emplacement swivelled to aim at the Imperial Fists that had suddenly appeared in its path.

  Bolter fire stuttered up at the engine, pinging off the armour plating that covered its front. Corpses were shot off the spikes covering its upper levels. The huge daemonic face grimaced down at the Imperial Fists as the tower’s guns opened up.

  Great rents were opened up in the chasm walls as the guns thundered. Shattered stone rained, red-hot and razor-sharp. Spent cannon shells the size of men fell as Lysander sprinted to one side to avoid them. The percussion of the shots was like a hammer against Lysander’s armour – Imperial Fists were thrown off their feet.

  ‘We have its attention,’ voxed Lycaon.

  Another volley from the siege tower’s guns threw an avalanche of shattered rubble into the crossroads. Lysander saw a sprawling golden-armoured figure vanish under the torrent. He hauled chunks of rock away until he exposed the battered shoulder guard of another Imperial Fist – Brother Givenar. He pulled on the guard until Givenar came loose. Givenar roared and leapt to his feet, throwing rubble in every direction, furious he had not been strong enough to free himself.

  ‘Is that it?’ yelled Givenar up at the siege engine. ‘I’ll tear you apart by myself!’

  One of the guns was angling down at them. Lysander grabbed Givenar again and dragged him into the relative cover of a section of fallen battlement as the gun roared. The blast picked up Lysander and threw him against a stretch of wall, and he blacked out for a split second in the storm that slammed into him.

  He came to on the ground, billows of dust roiling around him. It was Givenar who hauled Lysander to his feet this time, and the pain that ran through Lysander’s limbs was a reminder that they were all basically intact. Lucky, he thought. We have been lucky so far.

  ‘Get in closer!’ shouted Lysander over the din. He and Givenar forged their way through the debris towards the roaring of the siege tower’s engines. The dust was blown away by a blast of exhaust and the wheels of the siege engine loomed through the half-light. They were three storeys high, of dense black wood and studded with iron spikes. The structure’s lower floors were stained black with old blood, the splits and gaps packed with the long-dried bodies of forge labourers and the sacrifices made to awaken its machine-spirit. More spent shells clattered down against the wheels, crushed flat under them as the siege engine rolled on through the ruins.

  Rogal Dorn had written more on the art of the siege than had anyone else in the history of the Imperium. It was his genius, the purpose for which the Emperor had created him at the dawn of the Great Crusade. Every Imperial Fist knew the core tenets of Dorn’s siege-lore – the reduction of fortifications, the murderous geometry of firing zones, the million and one ways in which a set location could be made lethal to any who approached and the equal number of ways to kill an enemy while he skulked behind his walls. Among those principles was one which spoke of the purpose of siege engines, from the primitive rams and ladders of feral peoples to the Imperium’s own Titan Legions. The guns on a siege tower such as this were designed to clear enemy walls of opposition, to open up breaches in their fortifications, and to pound the enemy’s fortress from a distance to soften them up for the approach. They were not designed to kill enemies swarming around the base of the fortress, since such an enemy should be within his walls sheltering from the bombardment as the siege tower rolled forwards.

  The Imperial Fists stayed close, moving with the siege engine. Its guns thundered, but they could not target enemies on foot at so close a range – even if they had the flexibility of elevation, they would have blasted the tower’s own wheels off. Thus the theory went, and as Lysander and the rest of the strike force struggled through the rubble to the base of the tower that theory was put to the test.

  The theory had not taken the servitors into account. The Imperial Fists, however, were ready for them. Like spiders bursting from their egg sacs, the servitors tore free of the metal blisters covering the middle floors and scurried down the tower’s sides towards the ground. The blisters gave the tower a scabbed and diseased appearance which was not lessened by the knowledge they contained the host of spider-servitors.

  The servitors dropped down among the Imperial Fists and, scattered by the storm of gunfire and falling rubble, the Imperial Fists had to face them in ones and twos. One dropped right on top of Brother Givenar, its legs clacking as an industria
l pincer tried to slice into his armour. Givenar threw the servitor to the ground in a perfect wrestler’s move and stamped down on the human torso at its centre. Ribs splintered and transparent greyish blood spattered up over his greaves.

  Lysander found himself facing another configuration, this one with three upright human bodies fused together at the spine, each with its mouth wired open and a gun barrel jutting from between its teeth. It moved on a cluster of jointed legs, chunky and industrial, and its abdomens were fused to the centre of the cluster with a joint that permitted them to rotate. As it closed with Lysander it spun and Lysander realised a split second before it opened fire that this servitor was designed to spray bullets randomly in all directions, lethally imperilling anyone nearby.

  Lysander dived into a roll as the servitor’s guns opened up as one. A spiral of gunfire ripped over his head, filling the air with a buzzing mass of hot shrapnel. Any other soldier would have fled from the servitor, trying to put distance between himself and the stuttering waves of gunfire. A Space Marine knew better. He knew that an enemy with a gun was most dangerous from a distance, because he had time and space to aim and close the gap with a well-placed shot. A Space Marine, on the other hand, was deadliest up close.

  Lysander slammed into the servitor and rammed the barrel of his bolter up into its closest ribcage. He squeezed the trigger and hammered half a magazine into its central mass. Desiccated flesh flew as the explosive bolter shells ripped through the servitor from the inside. Lysander kicked over what remained of the servitor to see Brother Givenar reeling, clutching the bloody side of his face.

  ‘Brother!’ shouted Lysander.

  ‘Damn thing took my ear off!’ replied Givenar, more angry than hurt.

  ‘We have a shot!’ came the vox from Sergeant Gorvetz.

  ‘Take it!’ was Chaplain Lycaon’s reply.

  Gorvetz’s Devastator squad had used the chaos to get into position overlooking the intersection. Now, as one, they opened fire from an upper floor, directly into the side of the siege engine. Gorvetz had chosen a spot where an ammunition hopper met the armour plating, where the armour seemed thinner than on the rest of the machine. A plasma blast blew off a panel of armour and heavy bolter fire chewed through wood and metal. Lysander could hear the low stuttering of the heavy bolters over the engines, and then the sudden hot crack of cannon shells cooking off inside the tower. Burning timbers rained down like the giant shell casings had moments before. A sheet of pitted steel fell like a guillotine blade, landing a few metres from Lysander and embedding itself corner-first in the paved ground.

  ‘Breach!’ yelled Gorvetz over the vox. ‘We have a breach!’

  ‘On my way!’ replied Lysander. ‘First Sergeant!’

  ‘Brother Lysander!’ replied First Sergeant Kaderic. The sound of chainblade through bone and metal buzzed away over the vox as he spoke.

  ‘With me! We go up!’

  Lysander ran for the half-collapsed building where Gorvetz was set up. Brother Givenar followed him, and other Imperial Fists from Squad Kaderic. He spotted Lycaon duelling with another servitor, a creature twice his height composed of several bodies wrapped around a steel frame to form its muscles, giving it a hunched, gorilla-like profile. As Lysander watched, Lycaon’s crozius flashed and one of the servitor’s arms came away.

  Lysander found a stairway leading to the upper floors of the building, marked with burning flares left there by Gorvetz. He ran up, half blinded by the billows of dust and smoke boiling from the impacts of the tower’s cannon fire. The shapes of Gorvetz’s Devastator squad loomed through the darkness and Lysander made out Gorvetz himself, gnarled old face screwed up in a grimace as he joined his squad in hammering gunfire at the siege tower.

  A huge hole had been torn in the side of the tower, three floors up. Inside, lit by the strobes of gunfire, Lysander could make out only a sifting, seething blackness.

  ‘Kho! Break cover!’ voxed Lysander.

  Dorn’s Dagger and the Talon Blade buzzed down from their positions hovering out of sight above the chasm walls. Lysander could see the red armour of Techmarine Kho as he guided his Land Speeder down through the eddies of smoke towards Gorvetz’s position.

  The priority was Kho. Anyone else who made it inside was a bonus, but Kho had to get inside and he had to survive. Otherwise the whole mission on Malodrax would be lost.

  The Talon Blade thrummed past the position first. Sergeant Gorvetz and Brother Antinas, carrying the squad’s heavy flamer, jumped down onto the running plates of the Land Speeder. A Land Speeder was not a troop carrier, but if needs be a couple of Space Marines could hold on for a short ride. The Talon Blade swept around close to the breach in the tower’s side and Brother Antinas jumped, disappearing through the black gash in the armour. Gorvetz made ready to leap but a falling chunk of debris forced Gethor, at the Talon Blade’s controls, to swerve away from the breach, and Gorvetz had to hold on.

  The Dorn’s Dagger was close now. Lysander shouldered his bolter and jumped, hitting chest-first against the Land Speeder’s engine cowling. He found a handhold and clung on, feeling the impact as Brother Givenar landed alongside him.

  The crossroads whirled below him. Lysander could see Captain Lycaon and the Imperial Fists of his squad forming a rough battle line, fending off the combat servitors surging at them through the rubble to be cut down by bolter fire or drawn onto the point of a chainblade. Lycaon was directing as if conducting a symphony.

  Gunfire rattled against the underside of Dorn’s Dagger. The Land Speeder lurched, and Techmarine Kho wrestled with the control yoke. The servitors below had realised that the Land Speeders were a target and those that could were firing up at them.

  Lysander’s left hand came away with the shift of weight and he was hanging by one hand over the crossroads, feet kicking out over nothing. The Land Speeder levelled and Lysander found another handhold, clutching tighter to the cowling.

  ‘Brother Givenar, if you will,’ voxed Techmarine Kho. Lysander saw Dorn’s Dagger was level with the breach. Kho put the vehicle into a steady hover and clambered up out of the cockpit, the servo-arms of his harness spread to grab out at anything that might support him. Kho leapt from the Land Speeder and vanished through the breach.

  Givenar pulled himself over into the cockpit. ‘Go, captain!’ he voxed, swinging the Land Speeder around. His touch was not as fine as Kho’s, but like every Imperial Fist he had basic training in all the Chapter’s vehicles including the Land Speeder. Lysander braced his feet against the side of the engine housing as the yawning mouth of the breach swung closer.

  Lysander waited for another half-second, sure that he would get no closer. Then he pushed off with both feet and propelled himself through the torn armour and into the siege engine.

  Darkness swarmed around him. Even through the filters of his armour’s faceplate he could barely breathe through the stench of death, intensified and concentrated inside the siege tower. Toxin warning runes flickered, projected against his retina by his armour’s autosensors. Lysander tried to make out his surroundings, but the darkness clung and the shape of the interior was sketched out as black on black.

  ‘The Dagger’s hit!’ voxed Givenar. Lysander could hear the Land Speeder’s engines shrieking over the rumble of the siege tower.

  The shape of Dorn’s Dagger, with Givenar behind the controls, loomed in the tear in the armour behind Lysander. With a lurch the speeder crashed into the breach, its nose ripping through the ragged edges of armour as the engines fragmented and threw chunks of burning metal in every direction.

  Lysander leaned over the nose of the speeder and grabbed Givenar’s hand. He pulled Givenar out of the cockpit and into the siege tower. Dorn’s Dagger stayed lodged where it was, the burning engines casting a flickering light through the tower’s interior.

  ‘Then we are on our own,’ said Techmarine Kho levelly.

  ‘Givenar!
’ exclaimed Antinas. ‘Glad you made it! You’re sure to make the rest of us look good.’

  ‘Not hard with children like you,’ replied Givenar.

  ‘I meant by comparison,’ said Antinas.

  In the guttering light Lysander could make out the beams of the siege engine criss-crossing the space inside. It was no surprise by now to see them hung with human skins, each one cured and tattooed to form a banner in the heraldry of the Iron Warriors. Lysander saw the steel face mask of the Legion and bold patterns of yellow and black like the warning flashes on their armour. He recognised the book, tower and hands of Kraegon Thul’s personal heraldry, hanging high on a vast pelt that must have been cut from one of Kulgarde’s brute-mutants.

  ‘Up or down?’ asked Lysander. Below was the churning of the tower’s engines, and up was the chamber where the troops would wait for the siege engine’s drawbridge to open.

  ‘Down,’ said Kho.

  Lysander, Givenar, Antinas, and Techmarine Kho. Ideally more would have made it through the breach, but there were worse bands of Imperial Fists to take on this mission. Givenar took the lead heading downwards, and Lysander could see on him the wounded pride from having crashed the Land Speeder and closed up the breach. He had, at least, held on to his bolter, which he was playing through the shadows. The lower levels were choked with bodies, long-dead and dried out, stretched between the wooden beams and forming a dry, crackling layer underfoot. Huge cogs turned and pistons thrust through the gloom, choking oily smoke mingled with the stink of death.

  ‘Movement!’ shouted Brother Antinas. Before Lysander could focus on the scuttling that came at them out of the dark, Antinas was opening up with his heavy flamer, spraying a long gout of liquid flame over a spider-servitor leaping at him. It was engulfed in the flame and landed on him, fire catching in the greasy joints of its armour and on the dried-out flesh of its human torso. Antinas slammed the servitor into the floor and clubbed it flat with the butt of his heavy flamer. The massive weapon crunched through the ribs of the human component and flattened its skull.