by Ben Counter
dreadnought chassis now.
Sarpedon tried to take cover again but Daenyathos’s aim was too
good. The first volley of bolter fire shredded the step in front of him,
gold plate and granite dissolving under his hands. The second
slammed two shots into his torso, the bolter shells penetrating the
ceramite and bursting against Sarpedon’s breastplate of fused ribs.
He felt the bone breaking. The sensation was clear among the
shock that hammered through him. Twin craters were blown open in
his chest and the air touched the mass of his lungs, the pulsing
surface of his heart. Sarpedon fell onto the steps and rolled onto his
back, gasping as his body recoiled.
He was a Space Marine. He would survive this. He could survive
anything. Before, he had doubted. But now, so close to death, his
certainty was complete. He would survive this. He was Sarpedon,
Chapter Master of the Soul Drinkers, a man the galaxy had sought to
kill, yet who had survived long enough to breathe the same air as the
only enemy he had ever really had.
Sarpedon planted a hand on the step in front of him and turned
himself over. His remaining legs fought to push him up onto his talons.
He looked up, blood running down his face, thick gobbets of it pumping
from the wounds in his chest. The Axe of Mercaeno was still in his
hand.
‘There is no future,’ he said through blood-spittled lips. ‘There will be
others like us. They will break out of this cage of a galaxy, they will
bypass everything you have engineered to stop you. Human beings
cannot be kept caged by fate. Not all of them. Someone will remember
us, and someone will follow.’
Daenyathos took careful aim and blasted another storm bolter volley
into Sarpedon. This one hit the wrist and elbow of his right hand, the
one in which he was carrying the Axe of Mercaeno. The bones of
Sarpedon’s forearm shattered and his arm fell useless, the Axe of
Mercaeno clattering down the steps.
The pain did not come. Sarpedon did not let it. He forged forwards a
few steps more, so the massive armoured legs of Daenyathos’s
dreadnought were just a couple of metres from his face.
Daenyathos’s power fist reached down and snatched Sarpedon up
off the floor, the articulated fingers closing around his shoulders and
waist. Sarpedon’s head lolled like that of a rag doll, his legs dangling
uselessly under him, as he was held immobile up in front of
Daenyathos.
Sarpedon could see, through the eyepieces of Daenyathos’s
armoured helm, the eyes of the man inside. They were full of
amusement, as if Sarpedon was an animal or a child playing at being
a soldier, something to be pitied and taught its place, something to be
mocked.
‘Did you truly think something like you,’ mocked Daenyathos, ‘could
kill me?’
‘I didn’t have to kill you,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘I just had to get you
close.’
Sarpedon’s one good hand reached into the ammo pouch at his
waist. Daenyathos registered what Sarpedon was doing and the servos
in his power first whined.
The massive fingers of the fist closed. Sarpedon could feel the
ceramite around his torso tensing and buckling, massive pressure
crushing down. The seconds stretched out and he imagined, in precise
detail, how his organs would look being forced out of his chest under
the pressure, hearts bursting, tatters of lungs oozing out, entrails
following, the awful wrongness of his distorted body filling him in the
moments before death.
It seemed an age before his fingers closed around the haft of the
Soulspear.
The artefact’s twin blades speared outwards, caged vortex fields
consisting of anti-space where no material substance could exist.
The pressure forced Sarpedon’s right arm out of place. His shoulder
blade split and the joint crumbled. Each segment of the destruction
registered like stages in a scientific experiment, observed with calm
and detachment in those moments before the pain receptors fired and
reached Sarpedon’s brain.
Sarpedon whipped the Soulspear up, one blade swinging up through
the sarcophagus that made up the armoured centre of the
dreadnought. Sarpedon’s wrist flicked and the other blade arced up to
complete the cut, two slashes of blackness that between them formed
a plane separating the front of the sarcophagus from the body of the
dreadnought.
The pressure relented. The power fist fell inactive, the energy no
longer focused through its servos to crush Sarpedon’s torso.
The energy finally went out of Sarpedon. The weight of the
Soulspear, negligible as it was compared to a boltgun or the Axe of
Mercaeno, was too much. The weapon fell from his fingers. The blades
disappeared and the short metal length of its haft tumbled down the
steps before the throne.
The front of Daenyathos’s sarcophagus followed. It clanged as it fell
end over end down the steps, the sound echoing off the walls of the
bridge, the final sound as it hit the floor like the tolling of a bell.
Sarpedon’s breaths were shallow. The ruination of his shoulder hit
him and the pain was like a sun burning where his shoulder had once
been, a ball of fire surrounding the mass of ripped muscle and cracked
bone.
He forced the pain down. He had suffered before. It meant nothing.
His eyes focused, and he was looking into the face of Daenyathos.
The whole front of the sarcophagus was gone, and the life support
cradle was revealed in which Daenyathos had spent the last six
thousand years. It was a biomechanical tangle of cabling and artificial
organs, pipes and valves hissing cold vapour, blinking readouts mottled
with the patina of centuries.
The Philosopher-Soldier hung among the cabling, restrains locking
him in to the life support systems. He was pale and withered, his
limbs atrophied, the skin shrunken around his skull and ribcage. Red
welts had swollen up where pipes and wires pierced his skin, carrying
the mental signals that moved the dreadnought body around him. His
eyes were squinting in the sudden light, pupils shrunk to nothing.
Sarpedon had never seen such a pathetic example of a Space
Marine. The musculature was gone, the skin stretched around a body
starved of movement for six millennia. Daenyathos gasped in shock,
the feeling of outside air alien to him now.
The grip of the power fist relaxed. Sarpedon clattered onto the steps
of the throne mount. Daenyathos was in shock, unable to function, and
for a few seconds he would be unable to know where – or even what –
Sarpedon was.
Sarpedon, one arm hanging limp and useless at his side, clambered
up the front of the dreadnought until he was level with Daenyathos. He
tore out handfuls of cabling, wires slithering out of Daenyathos’s stickthin
limbs. Dribbles of watery blood spattered onto the gilded steps.
Sarpedon grasped Daenyathos around the neck – his hand easily
encircling the scrawny throat
– and pulled Daenyathos out of the
sarcophagus.
The Philosopher-Soldier’s body came away easily, Daenyathos
unable to put up a fight. Sarpedon carried him down the steps to the
deck of the bridge, his remaining talons kicking aside chunks of
smouldering debris. The dreadnought chassis remained standing
before the bridge captain’s throne, gutted of its occupant, silent and
unmoving.
‘Wait,’ gasped Daenyathos in a voice that could barely struggle
above a whisper. ‘You are a part of this. You can be something great.
Imagine the role you could play in a galaxy remade by me. Imagine it.’
‘I have a better imagination than you realise,’ said Sarpedon,
grimacing as he dragged himself towards the blast doors at the back
of the bridge. ‘I have seen it, and it is no place for me.’
‘Where are you taking me?’ hissed Daenyathos, a desperation in his
voice that had never been there before.
Sarpedon did not answer. Daenyathos’s protests were lost in the
sound of the flames licking up from the ruined bridge.
‘Forge on,’ cried Luko as he forced himself another pace through the
sucking mire of gore. ‘Just a few paces more. Onwards, there he
stands, our prey. Onwards!’
The daemonic cyst had responded to the strike force like an organ
threatened by infection. It had filled back up with blood, its fleshy walls
erupting in tentacles to snare the intruders and drag them down into
the gore. Attendant daemons had uncoiled from the filth and leapt to
attack.
Abraxes stood up from his throne of twisted corpses, the spectral
image of the battle on the barracks deck fading around him as the
newcomers grabbed his attention.
‘You are beneath my notice, and yet I must stoop to kill you,’ he
said, his voice like a bass choir. ‘Your presence offends me.’
The remnants of Squad Prexus crashed into the horrors forging
through the lake of blood. The Imperial Fists wrestled with things that
grew new limbs and fanged mouths at will. One Space Marine was
dragged down into the blood and half a dozen horrors leapt on top of
him. Spiny hands ripped him apart. An armoured leg was thrown
between them, a trophy of the hunt, and the warrior’s head was
pitched against the fleshy wall.
Sister Aescarion and Graevus fought like one individual, the axe of
one parrying while the other struck. The two whirled in a dance that
took them through the assaulting daemons, cutting mutating bodies
open and shattering horned skulls. Luko followed in their wake,
stabbing the surviving daemons with both lightning claws, lifting them
proud of the blood and thrashing them into shreds.
Behind Abraxes burned the portal. It was a shimmering circle, edged
in blue fire. Beyond it could be glimpsed something that resembled the
void of space only in its darkness. The masses of power, like
mountains of seething energy, loomed in that darkness, and carried
with them a sense of appalling intelligence. They were watching, these
powers of the warp, eager for the last obstacles to be removed so they
could force the whole potential of their chaotic hatred through into
realspace.
The sight of them could drive men mad. The Astartes had to force
their eyes away, for they could become lost in contemplation of that
towering evil. Even this slight glimpse of the warp could corrode the
mind. On the shore in front of the portal were still engraved, on the
rotten remains of the cargo bay deck, the sigils that had called the
portal into beings, and they burned blood red with anticipation.
Abraxes strode into the gore. A blade appeared in his hand, a sword
of frozen malice, and he cleaved it down into the battle around his feet.
Luko felt his gut tighten as he saw Apothecary Pallas in the blade’s
path. Pallas tried to yell something in defiance, but Abraxes was
pitiless and did not grant him the chance. The blade carved down
through Pallas’s shoulder and came out through his abdomen on the
other side, slicing him in two across the torso.
The two halves of the Apothecary’s corpse flopped into the blood.
Daemons pounced on them to tear the remains apart.
Luko realised he was yelling, a cry of horror and anguish. Pallas
was his friend, in a galaxy where friends were rare.
Aescarion reached the shore where Abraxes’s throne stood.
Graevus was still waist-deep in the blood, fending off the daemons that
sought to drag them both down.
‘What means your strength?’ shouted Aescarion over the cackling of
daemons and the thrumming of the gate. ‘That your arm can lay low a
Space Marine? What does this mean laid against the might of the
God-Emperor’s children?’
Abraxes turned to look down at the Battle Sister. ‘It means that you
die, whelpling girl,’ he replied, shaking Pallas’s blood from his sword.
‘Destroy my body if you will,’ shouted back Aescarion. ‘But you
cannot break my spirit. A prince of daemons might claim the heads of
every enemy he faces, but he will never count the soul of a Battle
Sister as a trophy!’
Abraxes raised a hand, and purple-black fire flickered between his
talons. ‘You do not challenge the warp, child,’ he sneered. ‘I shall keep
your mind as a pet, and you will worship me.’
Fire lashed down at Aescarion. The Sister of Battle was driven back
by the force that hammered into her, and a halo of flame played around
her head as Abraxes’s magic tried to force open her mind.
The Battle Sister screamed, but she did not fall.
Luko realised what Sister Aescarion was trying to do. He threw
aside the body of the daemon he had killed, and pushed on through
the gore.
Librarian Varnica reached the metallic shore. The portal howled above
him, the winds of the warp tearing at him as he tried to keep his
footing. He clambered out of the blood, kicking free of the sucking
limbs that tried to ensnare his ankles.
He had to force himself not to stare up through the portal. He could
feel the vast intelligences beyond probing at his mind, pushing against
the mental shield that every Librarian built up over years of psychic
training. They were whispering to him, promising him power and
lifetimes of pleasure, or threatening him with such horrors a human
mind could not comprehend.
Varnica snapped himself free of their influence. He could not let
them trick him, not now, not when he was so close, when the means
for closing the portal were right in front of him.
He broke the fascination with the portal just in time to register the
power hammer arcing towards him.
Varnica brought up his force claw to turn the hammer aside. The
hammer’s head slammed into the ground, throwing shards of metal
everywhere. Varnica rolled back, shrapnel pinging off his armour.
Reinez stood over him. The Crimson Fist was a hideous sight –
scorched and battered, his helmetless skull little more that burns and
new scars. The deep blue and crimson of his armour was almost lost
under the grime of battle. Reinez pointed his hammer at Varnica.
‘You,’ he said. ‘You spoke against them. Now you fight alongside
them. You fight to take the gate for yourselves! You are one with them
in perdition!’
‘Damn you, Reinez!’ retorted Varnica. ‘Have you become so blind?
The warp has played us all; you, me, the Soul Drinkers, all of us, and
we have to put it right!’
‘Lies!’ yelled Reinez.
Anger made him careless. The hammer blow was a haymaker and
Varnica dodged back from it easily, raising his claw ready to snap it
forwards. But Reinez had strength on his side, born of a desperate
hatred. If Varnica was caught, he would die.
Varnica’s muscles tensed for the strike. But it felt like he had hit a
wall, as if something invisible was holding him fast.
His enemy was a Space Marine. Varnica had never raised arms
against a brother of the Adeptus Astartes before. The wrongness of it
stayed his hand. He could not shed a brother’s blood. Even now, with
all hell erupting around him, he could not do it.
Reinez jinked forwards and drove the butt of the hammer into
Varnica’s midriff. Varnica stumbled back, almost pitching into the
blood. Varnica kicked out at Reinez’s legs and the Crimson Fist was
caught, stumbling a half-pace onto one knee. Varnica rolled out of his
way and used the second he had bought to jump back to his feet.
‘Think, Reinez!’ said Varnica. ‘The warp has used your anger. It has
turned you against your brothers! Join us and help end all this!’
Reinez’s reply was a wild swing that almost took Varnica’s head off.
Varnica forced his eyes away from the hellish vastness of the portal
overhead, channelled a torrent of psychic power into his claw, and
prepared to take a Space Marine’s life for the first time.
Sister Aescarion felt her mind pried from her head and crushed in
Abraxes’s claw.
She fell to her knees. The screaming agony in her head blocked out
everything save the shadowy image of Abraxes, edged in black fire,
and the wicked bone-white slash of his grin.
She felt a million vicious hands reaching through her soul and
clawing at the inside of her head. She heard a million voices cackling
about what they would do to her when she was broken. Place her in
the body of a monster, rampaging through the warp’s enemies, fuelled
