The Word Bearers carved through the hordes of lesser tyranids like a spear through water, smashing them aside as they drove forwards. A warrior stumbled as maggotlike organisms splattered across his armour, acidic life-fluids melting through his armour plates and burning into his flesh. Marduk lifted the warrior back to his feet, supporting him with one arm as he fired.
Spotlights tore through the darkness and the swirling snow, and the hulking shapes of Land Raiders appeared through the whitewash of fog and ice. Incandescent las-cannon beams stabbed from side-sponsons, scything through tyranid organisms that hurled themselves at the Word Bearers, symbiotic bio-weapons spitting. Heavy bolters scythed through dozens of the xenos beasts, ripping them apart with their high calibre rounds.
The Land Raiders came to a grinding halt before the warriors of the XVII Legion, growling like daemonic beasts, their hot breath steaming from exhaust stacks. The frontal assault ramps smashed down onto the ice, and the warriors of the XVII Legion stormed inside the gaping interiors of the immense steel beasts.
Sabtec relieved Marduk of the wounded warrior he was supporting. The warrior was reciting the Doxology of Revilement, focusing on the words to alleviate the pain of the bio-acid melting through his armour and flesh. As he passed the warrior into Sabtec’s care, Marduk spun around standing in the door of the Land Raider as the last of the warriors of the Host stamped forwards.
The larger tyranid creatures they had seen clawing their way free of their spore-pod were stalking towards the Land Raiders, their tails thrashing. Each pair of upper arms ended in scything blades, and their secondary pairs of arms moulded into long-barrelled bio-cannons. A swarm of the lesser tyranids raced towards Marduk as the assault ramp began to close, and he fired into the pack, dropping two of them.
Lascannon beams made the air crackle with electrical energy as the twin-linked side-sponsons of the mighty Land Raiders fired, and one of the large tyranid creatures was vaporised. The other two lurched forwards, discharging their long-barrelled bio-weapons towards Marduk even as the swarming horde of lesser xenos raced towards him.
The bio-weapons ammunition splattered onto the assault ramp of the Land Raider as it rose, spraying acid across the thick metal that began to hiss and bubble. A drop splashed onto Marduk’s chest plate, burning a hole through his armour and searing his flesh, but he ignored the wound and slashed with his chainsword as the lesser tyranids launched themselves onto the Land Raider’s chassis.
Heavy bolter fire ripped two of them to shreds as the Land Raider lurched into reverse, but two of them hurled themselves through the closing aperture as the assault ramp hissed closed, and Marduk killed the first, impaling its head on his chainblade, the whirring teeth ripping its skull apart. Sabtec killed the second creature, slamming its bestial, xenos face into the side of the Land Raider again and again until it was an unrecognisable, bloody pulp.
More of the small tyranids scrabbled at the assault ramp as it closed, but then the assault ramp was sealed, severing several stabbing blade-arms that fell to the floor inside, leaking foul-smelling fluids.
Marduk slumped down into one of the seats, breathing hard.
Only then did he realise that he still had the bony blade-arm of one of the creatures protruding from his chest. He ripped it clear with a sharp movement, and tossed it to the floor alongside the pair of tyranid corpses.
The Doxology of Revilement was still being recited as Sabtec tore the melting breastplate from the warrior of his coterie who had been splashed with bio-acid, and the champion sprayed a black film over the wounds.
“First Acolyte,” said Kol Badar over a closed channel from the other Land Raider.
“Go ahead,” said Marduk.
“The tyranid invasion may have covered half this world already,” said the Coryphaus. “I feel that it would be inadvisable to proceed to the drop-ship’s location overland. We do not know the numbers of the xenos between here and there.”
“Agreed,” said Marduk.
“I suggest that we order the ship to launch, to meet us half way.”
“Understood. See that it is done,” said Marduk severing the connection.
Bloody and battered, Marduk pulled his helmet from his head and stowed it in the alcove above him.
At last they were leaving this doomed Imperial backwater planet, he thought, and he smiled, exposing his sharp teeth.
A month, maybe two, and he would be back on Sicarus, returning in glory.
The Land Raider rocked as tyranid bio-weapons struck its armoured hide, but still Marduk grinned.
Glory would be his.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dracon Alith Drazjaer of the Black Heart Cabal strode down the dark corridor, his thin lips curled in distaste. He moved with the supple, arrogant grace of a born warrior. A pair of heavily armoured incubi bodyguards walked warily on either side of him, the sweeping blades of their punisher glaives lowered.
They passed dozens of cells, all crammed with wailing, wretched slaves, many of whom had already felt the ministrations of the haemonculus Rhakaeth, or soon would.
The wretched creatures were mostly human, but there were other lesser species packed into the crowded cells as well: tall, reptilian k’ith; kroot mercenaries; stony-faced demiurg; as well as eldar, either those of Drazjaer’s dark kin that had fallen from his grace, warriors of his rivals, or his deluded craftworld cousins.
The cells closest to the haemonculus’s operation chambers were filled with his experiments, and these blighted creatures filled the corridor with their sickly cries. Humans with their spines removed flopped impotently on the floors of cells, while others that had had their legs replaced with muscular arms whooped in insane rage, hurling themselves against the invisible barrier separating them from Drazjaer. They were thrown backwards as energy arced across the barrier, accompanied by the stink of ozone.
Other twisted monstrosities had insect-like eyes, more than one head, or random limbs sprouting from their bulbous stomachs. Some had leathery wings grafted to their backs, and others pulled themselves across the floor of their cells with flipper-like appendages where human hands had once been, their lower bodies shrunken and wasted, like the malformed legs of a foetus not yet reached its term.
Some of the abominations scratched at faces that were already torn to bloody ribbons, and all cried out for death. Still others flexed overgrown muscles, fan-like webs of skin opening up beneath their arms, while others appeared almost normal, with just minor enhancements, such as arms that ended in glittering blades, or had sharp ridges of bone running down their craniums.
A pair of Rhakaeth’s grotesques guarded the door to the haemonculus’s chambers: his altered ones, his companions, his twisted cortege; his more successful experiments. These eldar had come to the haemonculus willingly, desperate to experience new and varied sensations, and they had begged and backstabbed their way into Rhakaeth’s favour in order to feel the touch of his razors.
One of the grotesques stood taller even than Drazjaer. Hundreds of quill-like spines had been surgically inserted into his flesh, running down his spine and across the backs of his arms. His mouth had been cut into a new form, a vertical slash bisecting his horizontal lips, and additional musculature added so that when it opened, its four corners peeled back independently. The abomination’s eyes were those of some serpentine, alien species, and a dual pair of eyelids blinked as the grotesque looked towards the approaching dracon and his incubi. Its quills stood on end and began to shiver noisily. More spines flicked from within his forearms, and others slid forwards from the base of its palms.
The second of Rhakaeth’s guards, a female eldar, was completely naked, though her flesh was covered in small metallic blue scales that shimmered and turned a dusky red as Drazjaer drew near. Her luscious, ruby lips parted and a forked tongue, pierced in a dozen places with metal studs, flicked out past sharpened teeth. The fingers of her left hand had been replaced with long knives, and parts of her body—and her companion’s—bore sc
ars and fresh wounds that had clearly been the result of her caresses.
Neither of the altered eldar warriors bore weapons, their enhanced bodies their instruments of death.
The incubi at Drazjaer’s side levelled their glaives at the pair, and runes flickered with witch-light upon the blasters built into their sweeping tormentor helms. The potent weapons were neurally linked to the incubi’s brain waves, and could be fired with a mere thought, leaving the warrior’s hands free to wield their punisher glaives.
The grotesques hissed at the powerfully armoured incubi, the female creature flexing her fingers, and her male counterpart turning his upturned hands towards them. Drazjaer had seen that one fight before. It was capable of firing the spines from its palms, and the merest scratch of one of the quills would cause a slow and painful death. The haemonculus Rhakaeth had been particularly proud of that creation.
Drazjaer waved them aside with a languid, dismissive motion, and the pair of grotesques backed away from the portal, still hissing at the incubi.
“Stay here,” Drazjaer said to his bodyguards, in his soft, dangerous voice. The incubi bowed their helmeted heads in respect of his wishes and stood to attention, taking up a position opposite the grotesque bodyguards, the ruby-red crystal lenses, hiding their eyes, glittering menacingly.
Drazjaer strode into Rhakaeth’s chambers, the bladed arcs of the door slicing closed behind him, and gazed around.
He avoided the haemonculus’s private chambers whenever possible, and it had been some years since he had last set foot in this part of his ship.
The only light within the room was a dull, pulsing glow that emanated from the floor and ceiling, throbbing like the beat of Khaine’s heart; Rhakaeth’s eyes were particularly sensitive to bright lights. The walls of the circular chamber were smooth and the colour of dried blood and bladed stands atop which was spread a veritable cornucopia of curios and torturous implements hovered above the floor.
There was no obvious order to the mess of objects strewn across the levitating stands. The hollowed skulls of eldar, carved with runes, lay alongside blades covered in rust-like flecks of dried blood, jars filled with blinking organic creatures that squirmed within their confinement, and decomposing severed limbs and organs left to rot.
Drazjaer moved to one of the hovering stands and lifted up a cube the size of a child’s skull. Its sides were covered in stretched, flayed eldar skin, and as he held it, faces began to push from within, straining to escape. They opened their mouths wide in silent cries of torment.
“That was a gift to me from my old master,” said a hollow voice, and Drazjaer turned to see his haemonculus, Rhakaeth, ghost into the room, his impossibly thin, skeletal frame seeming to glide across the floor. Blood was splashed across one emaciated cheek, shockingly bright on his monotone countenance.
The haemonculus folded his wasted arms across his chest, skeletal fingers covered in blood scratching idly at the emaciated flesh of his upper arms.
“Before you killed him?” asked Drazjaer.
“Indeed. It is a crucible. The soul-spirits of an entire seer-council of our brothers of Ulthwe are housed within it,” said Rhakaeth.
“It’s very nice,” said Drazjaer, placing the cube back upon the hovering stand.
“But you did not come here to admire my collection,” said the haemonculus, “you came here to pay witness to my work. Please, my lord, come through.”
Drazjaer followed him through to a side room and gazed upon the two bloodied bodies that were held aloft by a multi-legged mechanism, their limbs pierced by the blade-arms of the machine.
The two figures were immense, as tall as eldar, but easily three times the weight, their bodies bulked out with thick slabs of muscle. Blood was everywhere in the circular room. It had sprayed across the walls and ceiling, was pooling on the floor, and covered the bodies and the mechanical arms that pinned them in place.
The dark red armour plates of the mon-keigh were scattered across the floor. Drazjaer moved one of them with his foot. It was heavy and inflexible, a brutal and crude form of armour for a brutal and crude race.
Returning his gaze to the two human bodies impaled upon the bladed arms of the mechanical apparatus that held them, Drazjaer saw that one of them was clearly lifeless, and anger blossomed within him. What good were they to him if they were dead?
As if feeling his master’s anger bloom, Rhakaeth stepped away from the dracon, putting the bodies between them. The eyes of the still living human flicked towards the dracon, fires of rage in his lidless orbs. The man’s flesh had been stripped from his body, and his chest cavity was open to the air, organs pulsing within.
“My lord dracon—” Rhakaeth began in his deep, hollow voice, but Drazjaer cut him off.
“I told you to keep them alive,” the dracon said, his voice low and deadly.
“This one did not die as a result of my ministrations, my lord dracon,” said Rhakaeth. “The mandrake, Ja’harael, delivered it half-dead. It was all that I could do to keep it alive for as long as I did.”
“Ja’harael. It’s all Ja’harael’s fault,” said Drazjaer, sneering. “I’ve heard that before, from the snivelling sybarite rotting in your cells. I do not wish to hear any of your excuses, haemonculus.”
“Whether you wish to hear me or not, my lord dracon, I speak the truth,” said the haemonculus, his voice devoid of fear. Indeed, Drazjaer had rarely heard any emotion in his servant’s voice.
“And this one?” asked Drazjaer, leaning over the massive form of the still living human creature. It pulled at its restraints, massive muscles bulging as it stared at him in hatred. The dracon was unmoved, and peered with interest inside the figure’s exposed torso.
“Living, and strong, my lord dracon. The potency of its soul-essence is worth a hundred, a thousand of the lesser mon-keigh breed.”
Drazjaer licked his thin lips. He had already gathered almost ten thousand souls for his lord and master, the dark lord Asdrubael Vect, but this did not yet meet the extortionate tribute the high lord of the Black Heart cabal had demanded of his vassal.
When Vect had butchered the cabal leaders of the Bleeding Talons, the Vipers and the Void Serpents in one dark night, Drazjaer had been cast adrift, vulnerable, now that his lord had been slaughtered in the murderous plot. He had been forced to kneel before Asdrubael Vect in chains, and had been asked if he would submit to his rule, if he would join the Black Heart. Only once he had sworn his warriors to the Black Heart over the soulfires of Gaggamel did Vect lay down his terms.
Drazjaer’s time was running short. The Great Devourer hive fleet would overrun the system within the day, and his harvest would be over, his tribute not yet fulfilled. There was no running from Asdrubael Vect. No matter where Drazjaer went, no matter how far from Commoragh he fled, Vect would find him.
However, if he could gather more of these enhanced mon-keigh, these Space Marines, he mighty yet gain Vect’s favour. Perhaps the dark lord would even raise him to the exalted status of archon, in command of an entire slave fleet.
“Their physical makeup is interesting,” the haemonculus was saying, “clearly the result of gene-conditioning and surgical enhancement. It is offensively crude work, with little subtlety or grace, but I feel that I could harvest their organs to create a superior blend of eldar warrior.”
Drazjaer barely heard the sibilant hiss of Rhakaeth’s voice, lost in his own thoughts of greed and desire.
“Do whatever pleases you, Rhakaeth,” he said. “Just see that that one does not die. I believe that it is time to unleash Atherak and her wych cult upon the Imperial world.”
“The bitch’s arrogance knows no bounds,” said the haemonculus.
“Indeed,” agreed Drazjaer. “Let us see if her boastfulness is founded. Let us see if she can bring back more than two of these mon-keigh.”
“I will look forward to working upon more of these,” said the Rhakaeth, indicating the pair of altered humans strung up before him.
&nb
sp; “Fine,” said Drazjaer, turning and striding from the haemonculus’s chambers.
Outside, his incubi were still eyeing up the grotesque guards, and a third warrior had joined them, another of his sybarite captains.
“What is it?” asked Drazjaer.
“My lord dracon,” said the warrior, bowing. “The traitor returns.”
Solon Marcabus knew that the end was near. They were running low on food, down to the last protein bar, and his strength was fading.
Dios seemed neither to tire nor despair, and he pressed on through the snow with grim determination while Solon often lagged behind, and it was Dios who rubbed warmth into Solon’s frostbitten fingers and toes whenever they set up camp.
He was determined to see Dios on a shuttle away from Perdus Skylla, and though he had never been a pious man, Solon swore that he would devote his life to the Emperor if he only allowed the boy to survive this nightmare. Dios would have a future somewhere, on some distant planet, far from the threat of xenos incursions. Solon was fixated on the completion of what had become an epic pilgrimage towards the Phorcys spaceport, and he would fight to his dying breath to see the boy safely off-planet.
Dios could have the life that Solon’s son had been denied.
The ice crunched beneath his laboured steps. He could barely feel his arm, and though it was a relief to be free of the throbbing pain of his wound, he knew that it was a bad sign.
He heard a sound like thunder rolling towards them, over the blinding gale, but he gave it little thought; just more bad weather heading in their direction he thought grimly. He kept plodding along through the snow, putting one foot in front of the other.
The sound got louder, and Dios cried out. Solon lifted his head to see the boy gesturing wildly into the air.
A shuttle roared out of the banks of billowing snow and ice, flying low and fast through the storm. It was hit with a blast of wind and dropped metres through the air as it was buffeted to the side, and for a moment Solon thought it was going to crash, but the pilot compensated and the shuttle righted itself, engines screaming. Solon waved his arms above his head, attempting vainly to get the attention of the pilot, hoping and praying that the shuttle would stop. It passed low overhead, blocking out all sounds of the wind, and Solon stared up in awe and amazement as the shuttle screamed past, making the ground shudder with the power of its engines.
[Word Bearers 02] - Dark Disciple Page 24
