“This lift is a relic,” remarked Kol Badar. “If a fault in the hull appears, we will all be crushed to death. This is a foolish endeavour, an unnecessary risk.”
“Are you going senile in your dotage Coryphaus?” snapped Marduk. Burias sniggered. “You are repeating yourself. Your protestations have been heard before, and duly noted. I don’t care what you think. I am your leader now, and you will do as I wish.”
The Coryphaus’s brow creased in anger.
“If a fault appears, then we are dead,” Marduk said, more calmly. “Such would be the will of the gods, but I do not believe it will be so.”
“How can you be so sure?” asked Kol Badar.
“Have faith, Coryphaus,” said Marduk. “Each of us is in our allotted place, as per the will of the gods. If it is our time to die, then so be it, but I do not think that it is. The gods have much more in store for me, of that I am certain.”
“And for me?” asked Burias.
Marduk shrugged.
“You speak as if all our actions are already predetermined,” growled Kol Badar.
“Are you so sure they are not?” countered Marduk. “I have seen things in dream visions that have come to pass. Many amongst the Host have. Does such a thing not suggest that every decision that we think we make has not already been determined beforehand? A path set in front of us that we, try as we might to avoid our fate, are condemned to walk?”
“By that rationale, why should we strive for anything? Why should we seek to destroy our enemies, if the outcome has already been decided?” asked Burias.
“Don’t be a fool, Burias,” said Marduk sharply. “The gods help those that help themselves. If you were not going to try to defeat your enemies, then you were already fated to lose.”
“If what you suggest is correct, then this,” said Kol Badar, levelling his combi-bolter at Marduk’s head, “is the will of the gods?”
The Coryphaus’s weapon system whined and clicked as fresh bolts were loaded into the firing chambers. Burias licked his lips, glancing between the First Acolyte and Kol Badar.
Behind them, kneeling in a tight circle with his squad, Khalaxis half-rose to his feet, but the heavy hand of one of the Anointed held him in place.
The sergeant-champion glowered up at the Terminator-armoured warrior, his rage building, but he relented and remained kneeling, watching the outcome of the confrontation.
Marduk took a step forward so that the twin barrels of the Coryphaus’s weapon pressed against his forehead.
“Pull the trigger and find out,” said Marduk.
After a tense moment, Kol Badar bent his arm, removing the weapon from his superior’s head, and stalked away angrily.
“What if he had pulled the trigger?” asked Burias quietly.
“Then I’d be dead,” said Marduk.
Sinking ever deeper, the lift continued descending through the inky-black water. This was more of an abyss than the depths of deep space, thought Burias. At least there pin-pricks of light could be glimpsed, distant stars and coronas a hundred million light years distant. Here, the darkness was complete and all-consuming.
Still they descended. It felt like they had been descending for days, though it had been less than an hour, and Burias continued his restless pacing, stalking back and forth, clenching and unclenching his fists.
Khalaxis’s squad knelt in a close circle around Marduk, who was in a half-trance, intoning from the unholy scriptures. The warriors of the Anointed stood in a second circle around the kneeling figures, the Coryphaus leading a morose counter-chant.
Of the warrior brethren, only Burias stood apart, for he could not calm his mind enough to be part of the communion.
Impatience knotted his stomach, and he snarled in frustration.
Burias stamped around the interior of the lift, slamming the butt of his icon into the grilled flooring with each step. The flickering lights above were irritating him with their incessant buzzing and for a moment he toyed with the notion of smashing them.
While other Astartes warriors within the Host took pleasure in creation, painstakingly copying the illuminated volumes of the Books of Lorgar into new volumes, labouring for weeks on end over each page, Burias had not the patience for such pursuits. He took pleasure in destruction, whether it was ripping apart a living creature and watching its life fade, or smashing apart the profane statues of the Imperium.
What worth was a hundred years of toil if a man could destroy it in seconds?
Thankfully, the Host was almost constantly at war. It was at times like these, however, when the enemy was so close, yet the thrill of battle was denied him, that his fury rose, clouding his mind and shattering his concentration.
He paced around the extent of the lift, until finally he saw a soft glow permeating up from below through the porthole windows.
In the distance below, the lights from the mining station were radiating up from the ocean floor.
It looked like some outpost station on a desolate asteroid or moon, with the blackness of space all around it. A broad, domed central hub, roughly the size of the largest galactic battleship, was rooted in the rock bed, surrounded by dozens of bulbous satellite outbuildings. Cylindrical, transparent corridors connected all the sub-structures to the main hub. Light, harsh and unnatural, spilled from the arterial tubes, and peering closely, Burias thought he could see vehicles and people moving through them, like tiny insects within an artificial environ-farm.
Burias rolled his shoulders and stretched the muscles of his neck.
“Finally,” he muttered.
Pressure gauges vented, equalising the compressed air within the lift with that of the mining facility. The sides of the lift slid aside with a clatter and water gushed down from above, slipping off the angled surfaces of the lift’s hull, and draining away through the grates set in the floor. Darkness greeted them inside the mining facility, though an infrequent strobe of light sparked from severed cables hanging loose from the low ceiling.
The Word Bearers walked cautiously forward, stepping through the dripping water, weapons seeking targets. There were none.
Kol Badar’s Anointed led the way, combi-bolters and repeater autocannon tracking from side to side.
The air was hot and humid, a far cry from the dry, gelid atmosphere on the planet’s frozen surface.
“There is no one down here,” growled Kol Badar.
“There are people here,” said Burias. “I saw them on the descent.”
The warriors drew towards the main entrance into the mining facility, an immense arched processional that led from the lift base to the main hub of the structure.
Marduk’s eyes were drawn up above the archway. A massive figure had been roughly painted onto the plascrete wall, like a mural, though its workmanship was crude to say the least. A low hiss escaped his lips.
“What is it?” asked Burias, his eyes wide. “A daemon? Are these miners cult worshippers?”
“No, it’s not a daemon,” said Marduk, not taking his eyes from the primitive mural.
“You are sure?” asked Kol Badar, glowering upwards.
“I feel no touch of the warp here,” said Marduk. “Worship of the great gods of the immaterium would leave a palpable trace, a lingering presence, but there is none. No, this is no daemon. I could command a daemon. There is no commanding that.”
The warriors of the Host shuffled uneasily. A four-armed figure was daubed on the wall above the archway, painted in garish blues and purples. Two of its arms ended in claws, while the others ended in humanlike hands. Its eyes were yellow and its mouth was wide, exposing a caricature of sharp teeth, painted as simple triangles and dripping with garish red paint representing blood. A long, stabbing tongue protruded from the toothy maw.
“I think your battle-lust will soon be sated, Burias,” said Marduk in a soft voice.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“You want us to go in there?” asked Kol Badar flatly, looking in disdain at the maintenance submersibles bob
bing slightly on the surface of the dark pool of water.
“This is the way that the explorator came; we must follow in his footsteps,” said Marduk evenly.
“That statement is categorically false, Marduk, First Acolyte of the Word Bearers Legion of Astartes, genetic descendant of the glorified Primarch Lorgar,” intoned Darioq-Grendh’al.
Marduk turned slowly towards the daemonically infused magos, glowering within his skull-faced helmet.
“What?” he said in a low, dangerous voice.
“Repeat: ‘This is the way that the explorator came, we must follow in his footsteps’ is categorically false,” said the magos.
Marduk licked his lips. If he did not feel like he had such control over the daemon inhabiting Darioq’s body, he would think that the magos was being wilfully obtuse.
“What is incorrect about that statement?” asked Marduk slowly.
“Explorator First Class Daenae,” said Magos Darioq in his monotone voice, “originally of the Konor Adeptus Mechanicus research world of UL01.02, assigned to cl4.8.87.i, Perdus Skylla, for recon/salvage of the Dvorak-class interstellar freighter Flames of Perdition, which reappeared within Segmentum Tempestus in 942.M41 and crashed onto the surface of cl4.8.87.i, Perdus Skylla, in 944.M41 after being missing presumed lost in warp storm anomaly xi.024.396 in 432.M35, is of the female gender.”
Marduk blinked.
“Well I am certainly glad that we got that cleared up,” he said in a deadpan voice.
“I am pleased to have caused you gratification, Marduk, First—” began the magos, but Marduk held up a hand to stop him.
“Enough,” he impelled, the word laced with the power of the warp, and the magos fell silent mid-sentence.
“Why don’t we rip out his tongue?” suggested Burias. “Or his speaker box, or whatever.”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” said Marduk, before turning back towards the line of docked submersibles.
“We are going in those,” he said to Kol Badar. “No discussion.”
Though wary of possible attack and on edge having witnessed the profane mural upon entering the mining facility, they had encountered no resistance as they penetrated deeper into the complex. They had come across several shrines that appeared to venerate the four-armed creature that Marduk recognised as xenos in origin, with crudely scrawled images of the beast in alcoves surrounded by offerings of tokens, charms and coins. He ordered these fanes destroyed, and the walls cleansed with bursts of promethium from flamer units.
Though they faced no resistance, a growing crowd of humans, miners it would seem, were shadowing their progress. At first, just a few figures were seen ghosting their steps, ducking into the shadows whenever warrior brothers looked in their direction. As they continued onward they attracted more of a following, until hundreds of miners were following in their footsteps, though they still maintained a wary distance. Marduk felt their anger as the shrines were obliterated but, wisely, they did not dare to attempt to stop the actions of the Word Bearers.
Not wishing to be slowed, Marduk ordered the warrior brothers to ignore the growing crowd that shadowed their progress, pressing on with an increasing sense of urgency.
The interstellar freighter Flames of Perdition had settled on the ocean bed some eight kilometres from the mining complex, and the last recorded location of the explorator he sought had been a docking station of submersible maintenance vehicles. Presumably, the explorator and her team had commandeered a flotilla of the craft to investigate the submerged ship, and so Marduk’s progress had led here, to the very same dock.
Half a dozen submersibles were docked here, held in place by massive locking clamps that looked like giant, mechanical crab claws. Each of the submersibles was the size of a Land Raider and roughly spherical in shape, with an array of sensors protruding from forward hulls like the antennae of inserts. A pair of mechanical arms were under-slung beneath their bulbous chassis, just visible in the dark water, and the monstrous insectoid limbs ended in powerful claws, industrial-sized welding tools and drills the length of two men.
Hundreds of onlookers watched from the shadows, crowding in around the gantries overlooking the holding pool of the dock. Marduk glimpsed hooded faces, eyes gleaming with feverish light and their skin an unhealthy, blue-tinged pallor. The tension in the crowd was palpable, and the warriors of the Host kept their weapons ready, yet the miners made no move to obstruct them.
Four-armed stick figures had been scratched into the circular boarding hatches in the sides of the submersibles, as well as phrases scrawled in what must have been the local Low Gothic dialect. It made little sense to Marduk, though he was schooled in dozens of Imperial dialects, but the general message could be understood. The scratching seemed to indicate that the submersibles were the “carriages of the earthly gods”, and that to enter them would bring enlightenment.
Marduk was repulsed by the idolatrous pseudo-religious sentiments, but he had not the time nor the inclination to “educate” these wretches of their misguided beliefs. They would all be dead soon enough anyway.
“You still maintain these people are not daemon worshippers?” asked Kol Badar, tracing his finger along the deep gouges that formed the stick figure of a four-armed monster. It certainly did look daemonic, but Marduk was certain.
“I believe these people are held in the sway of xenos creatures,” he stated. “A tyranid vanguard species, perhaps. I feel that there is some form of psychic control over these miners that draws the hive fleet like a lure. These deluded fools are worshipping a xenos creature, or a host of them, that will be the death of them.”
“Worshipping xenos as gods?” asked Khalaxis, his voice expressing his disgust. Marduk nodded.
“A powerful foe, then,” said Burias with relish.
“Oh yes,” agreed Marduk. “A powerful foe.”
Marduk peered at the small view-screen. The submersible had no viewing portal; it was built to traverse the deepest abyssal channels of the ocean floor, and at extreme depths even the most heavily reinforced window would crumple beneath the tremendous pressure. In its stead, the grainy, black and white pict screen fed visual information from the sensor arrays on the exterior of the deep-sea vessel.
The interior of the submersible was cramped and hot, and the Word Bearers had needed to commandeer four of them to fit all of the warriors accompanying Marduk. The secondary locking gate on the underside of the sub-docks slid aside, and the four mining craft descended into the open water, powerful impeller motors whirring.
Burias sat at the controls of the craft, looking ludicrously large hunched over the dials and levers that controlled the pitch, speed, depth, direction and roll of the submersible. It was a simple control system akin to that of a shuttle, and he had little trouble becoming familiar with it. He grinned like a madman as he discovered the controls of the exterior robotic arms, and in the view-screen Marduk could see the massive power-claw snapping, and the huge drill spinning, creating a small whirlpool of turbulence.
“Burias, it is not a toy,” said Marduk.
The submersible struck one of the underside legs of the mining facility, and Burias looked around at Marduk guiltily.
“Sorry,” he said, and stopped fooling around with the robotic arms to concentrate on piloting the craft. It wanted to turn to the left all the time, and he struggled with the controls to keep it steady.
It levelled out abruptly and swung around smoothly to port, its impeller motors whining as the submersible powered forwards. Burias swore.
“You seem to have got the hang of it,” said Marduk.
Burias held his hands up, removing them from the controls.
“I’m not controlling it,” he said. “It is following an automated piloting route.”
He consulted the stream of data on a side-screen.
“It’s taking us to the downed ship.”
They could do little but watch the grainy pict screens as the submersible carried them away from the mining facility, f
ollowing its pre-determined route.
The ocean floor was jagged and uneven, and jutting spears of rock reared up before them, but the submersible traversed the terrain carefully, rising above the smaller outcrops, and accelerating beneath vast bridges of rock.
The undersea landscape was breathtaking, with vast cathedral-like spires of rock rising thousands of metres up into the dark water. Their vision slowly diminished the further they got away from the glow of the mining facility, until they could see only what was lit by the powerful spotlights on the prow of the submersible.
The lights of the other craft blinked, as all four of the submersibles travelled along the same line. As they passed beneath yet another towering arched causeway, they came upon a sheer drop-off, an undersea cliff that plunged down into blackness. It was down this vertical wall that the submersibles dropped, leaving trails of bubbles in their wake.
The sheer drop seemed to have no bottom. The chasm must have been over two kilometres in width, and it dropped away into utter darkness.
At last, something came into view, something immense.
“Gods of the ether,” swore Burias as they came upon the wreckage of the Flame of Perdition.
The Dvorak-class freighter was wedged between the walls of the chasm, its prow and stem ground into the sheer walls of the drop-off, bridging the bottomless gap.
As the submersibles ploughed on through the clear water, impeller engines whirring, the sheer size of the ship became apparent. It was one thing to see battle cruisers hanging in space where there were few reference points to give an indication of their sheer scale, but seeing this ship wedged firmly between the two distant sides of the chasm was breathtaking.
A portion of the lower stern looked as though it had been sheared away. It might have suffered the damage as it struck the mouth of the chasm, or it might have occurred thousands of years before the ship entered this sub-system, long before it had smashed through the ice crust of Perdus Skylla. According to Darioq-Grendh’al, the ship had been lost in a warp storm anomaly for some six and a half thousand years. Anything could have happened to it in that time.
[Word Bearers 02] - Dark Disciple Page 18
