Soul Drinkers 06 - Phalanx

by Ben Counter

  rapidly backwards towards an archway leading into an elaborate stonelined

  bath house, with a deep caldarium, a cold-plunge pool and a

  Space Marine-scaled massage table. Mosaics of Imperial heroes lined

  the walls and valet-servitors stood ready. Voar’s inferno pistol was out

  in front of him, ready to fire.

  Iktinos was not within his frame of vision. The archmagos’s logic

  circuits fought to create new tactical scenarios. He should have been

  feeling panic, but instead his altered mind was generating a burst of

  useless information, a confused tangle of targeting solutions for a

  target that suddenly wasn’t there.

  Iktinos’s armoured mass slid out from under the enormous massage

  table, crashing into the lower half of Voar’s body. Voar was thrown

  against the archway. He fired, but Iktinos was moving too rapidly and

  the shot grazed him again, carving a molten channel along the side of

  his helmet. Iktinos slashed at Voar with his heavy powered mace. The

  archmagos cut his motivator units and dropped to the floor, and the

  crozius sliced through the stonework of the arch.

  Iktinos’s other arm grabbed Voar’s gun wrist, spun the archmagos

  around and slammed him against the wall, his forearm pinning Voar’s

  back.

  ‘I am not here to kill you,’ said Iktinos. ‘Your life means nothing to

  me. Give me the Soulspear.’

  ‘Take it,’ said Voar. A small manipulator limb emerged from the

  collar of his hood. It carried the haft of the Soulspear, a cylinder of

  metal with a knurled handgrip.

  Iktinos took the Soulspear and turned it over in his hand, keeping

  Voar up against the wall.

  ‘To think,’ he said. ‘Such a small thing. Even now I wonder if it was

  this that set us on our path. Many of your tech-priests died over this,

  archmagos. Many of my brothers, too. It is right that it be delivered

  into the hands of Daenyathos.’

  ‘You have what you came for,’ said Voar. ‘Let me go.’

  ‘I made no promises that you would live,’ said Iktinos.

  Emotions that had not been felt for decades clouded Voar’s face.

  ‘Omnissiah take your soul!’ he snapped. ‘May it burn in His forges!

  May it be hammered on His anvil!’

  Iktinos lifted Voar into the air and slammed the tech-priest down over

  his knee. Metal vertebrae shattered and components rained out of

  Voar’s robes. Iktinos plunged the crozius arcanum into Voar’s chest,

  the power field ripping through layers of metal and bone.

  Senior tech-priests could be extremely difficult to kill. Many of them

  could survive anything up to and including decapitation, trusting in their

  augmentations to keep their semi-organic brains alive until their

  remains could be recovered. A few of the most senior, the archmagi

  ultima who might rule whole clusters of forge worlds, even had

  archaeotech backup brains where their personalities and memories

  could be recorded in case of physical destruction. Voar did not have

  that level of augmentation, but Iktinos had to be thorough nevertheless.

  Iktinos tore open Voar’s torso completely and scattered the

  contents, smashing each organ and component in case Voar’s brain

  was located there. He finished destroying the spine and finally turned

  to Voar’s head. He crushed the cranium under his boot, grinding logic

  circuits and ocular bionics into the floor with his heel. Quite probably,

  Voar died in that moment, the last sensory inputs gone dark, the final

  thoughts flashing through sundered circuitry.

  Iktinos finished destroying Voar’s body, then took up the Soulspear.

  It was a relic of the Great Crusade, found by Rogal Dorn himself during

  the Emperor’s reconquest of the galaxy in the name of humanity. He

  had given it to the Soul Drinkers at their founding, to symbolise that

  they were sons of Dorn as surely as the Imperial Fists themselves.

  That was the story, of course. In truth, the origin of the Soulspear,

  like the rest of the Soul Drinkers history, was as murky as anything

  else in Imperial annals. The Soulspear was gene-activated and would

  only respond to someone with a Soul Drinker’s genetic code, so

  whoever had created or found the artefact, it had not been Rogal Dorn.

  The Soulspear, like the rest of the universe, was a lie.

  That did not mean it did not have its uses. Daenyathos understood

  that. Just like the Imperium, the Soulspear might be founded on lies,

  but it could still become a part of the plan.

  Daenyathos’s transformation of the Imperium would not be a

  pleasant process. Nothing worth doing ever was. But in spite of the

  blood, in spite of the suffering and the death, the universe would thank

  Daenyathos when it was done.

  Iktinos left Voar’s remains scattered on the floor of the diplomatic

  quarters, and headed towards the Predator’s Eye to witness the

  Imperium’s future unfold.

  Gethsemar and Daviks charged into the heart of the library labyrinth at

  the same time, charging in from two directions to catch Sarpedon offguard.

  Sarpedon was never off-guard. Silhouetted in the flames that ran

  across the bookcases behind him, he turned to face the Angels

  Sanguine and Silver Skulls warriors as if he had been expecting them.

  Daviks opened fire. Sarpedon’s reactions were so fast that the bolter

  shots burst against the blade of the Axe of Mercaeno as the mutant

  flicked it up to defend himself.

  Gethsemar erupted towards Sarpedon on a column of fire from his

  jump pack. Sarpedon’s left-side legs flipped the reading table behind

  him into Gethsemar’s path and the heavy hardwood slammed into

  Gethsemar, throwing the Angel Sanguine into a bookcase which

  buried him in a drift of burning books.

  In the middle of the fire and slaughter, it was almost poetry that

  unfolded as the fight continued. Daviks parried the Axe of Mercaeno

  with the body of his bolter, only to be thrown to the floor by Sarpedon’s

  lashing legs. Gethsemar jumped to his feet and lunged with his glaive,

  Sarpedon ducking the blow with impossible grace and barging the butt

  of the axe into Gethsemar’s abdomen to throw him off-balance.

  Captain Luko vaulted through the flame to crash into Daviks before

  the siege-captain could join the assault again. The two warriors of the

  Adeptus Astartes traded blows as fast as a man could see, Luko’s

  lightning claws lashing in great arcs of blue-white power, batting aside

  Daviks’s bolter before Daviks could get a shot.

  Gethsemar launched himself into the air and dived down out of the

  flames overhead. Sarpedon reached up and grabbed Gethsemar,

  hauling him in close where the Angel Sanguine’s blade could not be

  brought to bear. Gethsemar and Sarpedon wrestled, Sarpedon using

  his mutated physiology to grapple from unexpected angles and drag

  Gethsemar to the floor. He forced the Axe of Mercaeno down, the edge

  of the blade pressing against Gethsemar’s throat. Gethsemar fired his

  jump pack but Sarpedon was stronger, and his taloned legs dug into

  the floor to keep himself upright.

  ‘Fall back!’ came
an order over the Imperial Fists vox-channel. It was

  Lysander’s voice, transmitted to the Howling Griffons, Silver Skulls and

  Angels Sanguine. ‘All troops, fall back to rally points! Disengage

  immediately!’

  The moment’s confusion this caused was enough for Sarpedon to

  drive a fist into Gethsemar’s faceplate. The death mask of Sanguinius

  dented and blood spurted from the carved mouth. Gemstones pinged

  out of the gilded surface and Gethsemar juddered as the impact ran

  through his whole body.

  Daviks saw that Gethsemar was going to die. He ducked Luko’s

  swinging claw swipe and charged into the Soul Drinker’s legs, hauling

  Luko off his feet and ramming him right through the bookcase behind.

  He threw Luko and, using the moment of distance he had opened up,

  brought his bolter around and sprayed a volley in Luko’s direction. The

  Soul Drinker rolled out of the way, putting hardwood shelving and

  millions of burning pages between him and Daviks’s gunfire, but that

  was what Daviks needed.

  Daviks sprinted to where Gethsemar lay, the shadow of Sarpedon’s

  axe cast over him by the light of the flames. Daviks grabbed

  Gethsemar’s wrist and dragged him out of the way as Sarpedon’s axe

  came down, ripping a deep gash in the deck.

  ‘We leave, brother!’ gasped Daviks. ‘Lysander has ordered us back!’

  ‘The fight is not done,’ replied Gethsemar, his voice thick with blood.

  ‘The enemy still stands.’

  ‘Lysander has command! We fall back! Muster your brothers and get

  back to the choristers’ chamber! We will cover you!’

  The two Space Marines dropped back through the smoke and

  wreckage. Sarpedon watched them go, not eager to pursue them when

  their battle-brothers must surely be just behind them.

  Luko emerged smouldering from the wreck of the bookcase he had

  been thrown through. ‘Damnation, I will have your hide!’ he yelled after

  Daviks.

  Sarpedon put a hand on Luko’s shoulder. ‘Stay, brother,’ he said.

  ‘Something is wrong.’

  Graevus dared a glance over the barricade. The last volley of bolter fire

  the Soul Drinkers had kicked out had not been replied. He saw the

  shapes of the Howling Griffons receding through the smoke, a few

  kneeling to fire while the majority fell back.

  Graevus stood and took aim, firing off a few shots snapped into the

  half-seen shapes through the smoke. Salk was beside him now,

  echoing Graevus’s own fire.

  ‘They’re retreating,’ said Salk as he paused to swap magazines.

  ‘We haven’t hit them that hard,’ said Graevus. ‘I thought they would

  be on us.’

  ‘Then something else has happened,’ said Salk.

  ‘Don’t be too thankful. They could be mustering for another push.’

  ‘No,’ replied Salk. ‘Not when they had us pinned in place. Not the

  Howling Griffons, not here. They would have pushed on until either they

  or we were all dead. This… this is no plan of theirs.’

  ‘Maybe logic prevailed,’ said Graevus.

  With the gunfire reduced to sporadic shots, the roar of the flames

  and the clattering of armour became like another form of silence, as if

  the library were in the eye of a storm that had just passed over and

  now everything was still. Behind the barricade lay two fallen Soul

  Drinkers, brought down by bolter fire and shrapnel – one was dead,

  both Graevus and Salk could see that, his torso split open and blood

  already congealing in a crystalline mass around the enormous spinedeep

  wound. The other was still but the wound to his leg, severe

  though it was, should not kill him.

  ‘We need Pallas,’ said Graevus.

  ‘We do not have him,’ replied Salk. ‘Soul Drinkers! Bring the fallen

  and retreat to Sarpedon’s position! Brother Markis, Thessalon! Cover

  us!’

  Other Soul Drinkers, the survivors of a dozen Howling Griffons

  assaults, were moving through the smoke. They looked like the ghosts

  of some long-distant battle hovering just on this side of reality, clinging

  on as they enacted the same bloodshed night after night. Most had

  survived with bearable wounds, but there had been no doubt that the

  numbers and fury of the Howling Griffons would have soon prevailed.

  But now the Griffons had fallen back, and in their place was surely an

  unknown enemy no more inclined to give the Soul Drinkers any

  respite.

  ‘No,’ said Graevus. ‘On second thoughts, there is no reason here.’

  ‘Bring me everything you know,’ said Chapter Master Vladimir.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Castellan Leucrontas. ‘We know little, but I can

  confirm that the starboard dorsal cargo section has been lost.’

  Leucrontas had been summoned to the Forge of Ages, which had

  become Vladimir’s command post. Pict-feeds from the battle site

  showed little more than screens full of smoke and the vox-channel was

  full of barked orders and the confusion that the sudden order to retreat

  had brought about. In spite of that, the Howling Griffons were falling

  back in good order and even now mustering around the crew mess.

  That was not the issue.

  ‘Lost?’ said Vladimir. He leaned forward on the steel throne from

  which the Imperial Fists techmarines usually oversaw the work of the

  forge-crews.

  ‘It is gone. Full breach and depressurisation. Any crew in the area

  are dead, no doubt.’

  ‘Any Adeptus Astartes casualties?’

  ‘I do not believe so.’

  ‘What caused it?’

  ‘The psychic wards built around the librarium contemplative

  chambers reacted,’ replied Leucrontas. ‘And the readings so far

  obtained are esoteric.’

  ‘A psychic attack?’ said Vladimir.

  ‘If so, my lord, it is a vast and destructive one, well beyond the

  capacity of an Adeptus Astartes psyker.’

  ‘Then,’ said Vladimir, his chin on his fist, ‘a moral threat? An assault

  from the warp?’

  ‘Librarian Varnica’s testimony did suggest the Soul Drinkers had

  daemonic allies,’ said Leucrontas. ‘And there is… something…

  happening to Kravamesh.’

  ‘Kravamesh? The star? What has the star around which we orbit to

  do with the Soul Drinkers?’ Vladimir held up his hand before

  Leucrontas replied. ‘No, Castellan, I ask not for an answer. I merely

  muse upon it. We must see to the security of the Phalanx before we

  seek the origin of this new threat. Once the assault on the archives

  has been withdrawn, we must redeploy our strength around the dorsal

  cargo bays to keep them contained. A smaller force can maintain the

  cordon around the archives. Draw up the battle stations and see that

  Lysander has access to them. Nothing must get in or out of either

  area without running a gauntlet of bolter fire.’

  ‘Yes, my lord. And the crew?’

  ‘Order them to arms. Protect the critical areas of the ship. I had

  hoped that even after the escape this would be limited to Space

  Marine versus Space Marine. It seems events have compelled us to

  think beyond that.’

  �
�It will be done.’

  ‘Keep me apprised of everything, and…’

  Vladimir’s voice was interrupted by the bleating of an alarm. From

  the armrest of the throne slid a pict-screen that shuddered in to life.

  ‘The tech-adepts must have got dorsal security back online,’ said

  Leucrontas.

  The screen showed a view of a corridor, bulkhead doors standing

  open along its length. Mist clung to the floor and rolled through the

  doorways.

  Shapes were coalescing. Tentacles, eyes, mouths, malformed

  limbs, writhing masses of entrails that moved with an impossible

  impression of intelligence and malice. Teeth, blades of bone, tides of

  filth, all wrapped into dimensions that refused to fit into reality. Like a

  stain the madness was spreading out, a tide of filth and insanity that

  warped the fabric of the Phalanx as it advanced.

  ‘Daemons,’ snarled Vladimir. He looked up at Leucrontas. ‘Bring me

  the Fangs of Dorn.’

  In the smouldering ruins of the archive, Sarpedon and his officers

  convened. The smoke that still clung to everything made it look as if

  they were wanderers in dense mist who had come across one another

  by accident. They gathered around one of the few intact reading

  tables, where the ground was knee-deep in charred pages and gutted

  spines.

  Graevus and Salk joined Luko, Tyrendian and Sarpedon where they

  waited. ‘The dead have been counted,’ said Graevus.

  ‘What is the tally?’ said Sarpedon.

  Salk stepped forwards. ‘Fifteen,’ he said. ‘Those who remain number

  forty-seven.’

  ‘Was it ever true that there were once a thousand of us?’ said

  Sarpedon.

  ‘No,’ replied Tyrendian. ‘The old Chapter boasted a thousand

  warriors. We are not that Chapter.’

  ‘Then they died,’ said Sarpedon, ‘as we surely shall. Now is not the

  time to bar that truth from our souls. Many times a Space Marine

  facing death refuses to allow it into his mind, for by defying the

  inevitable we can sometimes rob it of victory. But not here. I think I

  accepted our deaths here when the Imperial Fists first faced us on

  Selaaca, but if any of you still rage against our fate then I ask you to

  abandon it. Take the certainty of death into yourselves, welcome it,

  and make peace with it. It is not an easy task, but now, it is the right

  path to take.’

  ‘If we fight not to survive,’ said Luko, ‘then why? Why not simply