‘No man can outlive entropy!’ spat Grulgor. ‘The mark of the Great Destroyer claims everything!’
His joints swelled and became inflamed and painful. With monumental effort, Decius swung up his chainsword and hefted it. The corpulent mutant rocked back, out of range if the young Astartes tried to slash at him with it, but instead Decius brought it down hard across his arm, just below the elbow joint. With a scream of hate, the young Astartes severed his own limb, letting the plague-ravaged flesh and crumbling metal of his gauntlet fall away.
His vision fogged, the youth’s body was at its limits fighting infection and injury, and it could not support his consciousness. Decius’s eyes fluttered as his body went slack and dormant.
Grulgor snorted and spat out a gobbet of acid phlegm before raising his plague knife again over Decius’s unmoving body. Heavy bolt shells tore into his back and ripped away curls of dead flesh, knocking him off-balance before he could deliver the killing blow.
GARRO’S AIM WAS exact, and it sent the Grulgor-thing stumbling, back towards the hull wall and away from Decius. Nathaniel wanted to look to the boy, to be sure that he was still alive, but his old rival was only wounded and from what Garro could see these reanimated men healed as fast as he could hurt them. All around him, Voyen, Hakur and the others were caught in their own small battles. He pushed questions of the why from his mind and concentrated on the how – how can I kill him?
Grulgor spun around and let loose a gargling roar, emerald-tinted blood trailing from him in a wet arc. Garro’s old foe snatched at him, the plague knife and his cancerous fingers slicing through the air and missing. Garro fired again and heard the hollow clack as his bolter ran dry. Without missing a beat, he let the gun drop and took Libertas in a two-handed grip.
‘I knew this moment would come,’ gurgled the mutant. ‘I would not be denied it. My enmity for you is beyond death!’
Garro grimaced in return. ‘You have always been a braggart and a fool, Ignatius. On the field of battle you served a purpose, but now, you are an abomination! You are everything the Astartes stand against, the antithesis of the Death Guard.’
Grulgor spat again and made a clumsy, furious pass that Garro parried with quick replies. ‘Nathaniel! So blind! I am the harbinger of the future, you pathetic wretch!’ He pounded a crooked-fingered fist on the rusted armour over his breast. ‘The warp’s touch is the way forward. If you were not so blinkered and mawkish, you would see it! The powers that exist out there dwarf the might of your Emperor!’ Grulgor pointed his knife at the throbbing crimson light beyond the starship. ‘We will be deathless and eternal!’
‘No,’ said Garro, and took the sword to him. Libertas swung low and cut into Grulgorís fleshy, fish-belly white gut, and tore. Nathaniel’s blade met diseased meat and to his alarm, it sank inwards.
Instead of cutting through pliant skin, the sword became enveloped in a doughy morass that drew on it like quicksand. Flickers of power from the blade sparked and died. Grulgor rumbled with amusement and puffed out his barrel chest, sucking the weapon into his body. ‘There is no victory here for you,’ he hissed, ‘only contagion and lingering agony. I’ll make this ship an offering of screaming meat—’
‘Enough!’ Garro could not draw the sword out. Instead, he ran it through. With all his might, the battle-captain rode the blade down and carved it out across the mutant’s abdomen, forcing a full charge through the crystalline matrix steel. He opened Grulgor with an angry snarl and Libertas at last came free.
Fatty ropes of serpentine intestine writhed and fell from the cut in loops across the wet decking. The former Astartes wailed and struggled to catch them in his hands, stuffing them back into the maw of his belly. Garro rocked back, the putrid gas from inside the bloated body making his eyes stream and throat clog.
The Eisenstein’s deck shivered beneath his feet and for a split-second the captain’s attention was taken by a rolling flash of chain lightning that surged around the flanks of the frigate.
He heard Hakur shouting. ‘The Geller Field! It’s failing!’
Garro ignored Grulgor’s hooting laughter as glimmering motes of firelight began to form in the heavy air over their heads. He thought of the homunculus plague bearers and the slashing razor-disc predators from the navis sanctorum. If they came to bolster Grulgor and his changed army, the tide would turn against Garro’s men. He could sense the engagement slipping away from him, the certain prediction of the battle’s play hard in his thoughts just as it had been on the jorgall bottle-world and a hundred times before. He had only moments before the fight was lost to him.
Grulgor saw the expression on his face and laughed. The mutant Astartes spread his hands to the roiling, churning hell-light outside as a willing supplicant, basking in the alien energies. Outside, the membrane of artificial force that separated the frigate from the madness was disintegrating. Already weakened by the incursion of the pestilent touch that made Grulgor live and the breaches of the warp-beasts, the Geller Field unraveled in flares of exotic radiation, layer upon layer peeling back as if it were flesh flensed from bone.
Garro shouted into his vox, a desperate gambit coming to the fore of his thoughts. ‘Qruze!’ he cried, ‘Heed me! Get us out of the warp, crash reversion! Now!’
Over the clash of the skirmish and the buzzing interference, he heard raised voices in the background, the bridge crew reacting with shock at his demands. The Luna Wolf was wary. ‘Garro, say again?’
‘Drop out of the immaterium! These intruders, the warp must be sustaining them somehow! If we stay here we’ll lose the ship!’
‘We can’t revert!’ It was Vought, her words laced with panic. ‘We have no idea where we are, we could emerge inside a star or—’
‘Do it!’ The order was a thunderous roar.
‘Captain, aye,’ Qruze did not hesitate. ‘Brace yourself!’
‘No, no, no!’ Grulgor pounded across the deck towards him, raising his blade. ‘You will not deny me my satisfaction! I will see you dead, Garro! I will outlive you!’
The battle-captain brought up his sword and batted Grulgor away. ‘Be gone, you stinking freak! Back to your hell and choke on it!’
Through the armoured window slits, a flurry of brilliant blue-white discharges signaled the creation of a warp gate, and the frigate dropped through the screaming maw and back into the realm of real space. Grulgor and his freakish kindred bawled a chorus of agony and frenzy, and dissipated.
Garro saw it with his own eyes and still he could not explain it. He witnessed a roaring, shimmering phantom tear itself from the meat sack of a body, drawn up and away as if it were a leaf caught in a hurricane, and for an instant he saw the shapes of both the mutant and the man that Ignatius Grulgor had once been before the screaming shade was torn away. It vanished through the hull of the ship with dozens of others, the captured energy of all the twisted Death Guard. Souls, he told himself, his mind unable to furnish any other explanation but this most numinous, unreal of notions. Their souls have been taken by the warp.
TRAILING FIRE AND pieces of itself, shedding waves of radiation from the brutal emergency reversion and the collapse of the Geller bubble, the tiny frigate returned to common existence in a dark and unpopulated quadrant of interstellar space. There were no stars to sight, no worlds within range, only dust and airless void. Directionless and adrift, the Eisenstein fell.
TWELVE
The Void
A Church of Men
Lost
‘THE FRAGRANCE OF the sick and the wounded,’ said Voyen with grim annoyance, ‘this ship reeks of it.’
Garro did not meet his gaze, instead ranging about the interior of Eisenstein’s infirmary. The frigate’s valetudinarium was filled to bursting, temporary partitions made from sheets of metal segregating the areas of the long chamber to stem any chance of cross-infection. At the far end, hidden behind walls of thick, frosted glass and iron seal doors, was the isolation ward. Garro walked steadily towards it, picking his way around
medicae servitors and practitioners. The Apothecary kept pace with him.
‘The remains were doused in liquid promethium and set to burn for the better part of a day,’ Voyen continued. ‘Then servitors were used to eject them into space. The helots were then terminated by Hakur, just to be sure.’
Remains. This was the word they were using to describe the diseased flesh-matter that was all that was left of Grulgor and his men. It was easier to depersonalize it that way, to think of the puddles of ichor and bone as just effluent to be disposed of.
To face the reality of what those corpses had once been, what they became, nothing in the lives of Garro’s men had prepared them for such sights.
Voyen, in particular, had taken it poorly. As much as he was a warrior like Garro, he was an oath-sworn healer as well, and for him to witness the dead rise to life as crucibles of seething pestilence troubled the Astartes more deeply than he might ever care to admit. Garro saw it in his hooded eyes, and saw the mirror of his own feelings there as well.
Now they were adrift and their flight stalled for the moment with the Navigator’s death, the adrenaline of the battle and chase faded. In its place was the reckoning of what had transpired, the realization of its bleak import. If death was not the end, if what happened to Grulgor was real and not some kind of warp-spawned illusion… then could such a fate be waiting for all of them? That this might be some element of Horus’s pact with betrayal chilled Garro’s marrow.
Voyen spoke again. ‘Has Sendek had any success with the star maps?’
Garro shook his head, seeing no reason to keep the truth from him. ‘The woman, Vought, she has been toiling with him, but the results are not favourable. As closely as they can determine the ship reverted to normal space somewhere beyond the edge of the Perseus Null, but even that is nothing more than an educated guess. No traders or scouts have ever ventured into the zone.’ He took a deep breath. How long had they been becalmed out here? Days, or was it weeks? Inside the vessel all was a permanent, smoky twilight that made it difficult to gauge the passage of time.
Voyen hesitated as they passed a section of the wall where refrigerated pods hung in clusters around heavy steel stanchions. ‘The autopsy on the Navigator Severnaya was completed and I have viewed it.’ He indicated one of the frosted pods. Garro could make out the impression of a drawn grey face inside the capsule. ‘It is as Master Carya suspected. The Navigator was injured in the engagement, but he died from the psychic shock of the emergency transition from the warp. The apparent bleed-over took the lives of his adjutants and helots. In his already weakened state, it was inevitable.’
‘I might as well have placed my bolter to his skull and pulled the trigger,’ Garro frowned. ‘I should have known. With all the madness running riot through the ship, I should have known he wouldn’t survive the journey.’ When Voyen didn’t respond straight away, Garro shot him a look. ‘What choice did I have?’ he said flatly. ‘The Geller Field was seconds away from collapse. We would have been torn apart in the warp or obliterated in a drive explosion.’
‘You did as you thought right,’ Voyen replied, unable to keep an element of reproach from his words.
‘First it was Decius questioning me, and now you? You would have made a different choice?’
‘I am not a battle-captain,’ said the Astartes healer. ‘I can only observe the aftermath of the choice my commander made. Our ship lies aimless and astray in uncharted space without means for rescue. The astropaths and Navigators are dead, so we cannot cry for help or chance another venture into the warp.’ His eyes flared with restrained anger. ‘We have escaped the sedition at Isstvan only to die here, our message unheard and the Warmaster free to reach Terra before word of his perfidy. Despair stalks the corridors of this ship, sir, as real as any mutant killer!’
‘As always, I appreciate your candour, Meric,’ Garro allowed, resisting the urge to chastise him for daring to voice words that bordered on insubordination. They moved on. ‘Tell me about the other casualties.’
‘Many of the officers and enlisted crew suffered injuries, and there were several deaths from the… the incursions.’
‘And our battle-brothers?’
Voyen sighed. ‘Every man who fell in combat with those things is dead, lord. Every one except Decius, and even he barely clings to the edge of life.’ The Apothecary nodded to the sealed section. ‘The infections in his body strive to overwhelm him and I have done all I can with the medicines and equipment at my disposal. I confess I am at the limits of my knowledge with his malady.’
‘What are his chances of survival? I want no obfuscation or hedging. Will he live?’
‘I cannot answer that, lord. He fights hard, but his strength will eventually wane and this disease that has him is like none I have seen or heard of. It changes from moment to moment to mimic different phages, little by little wearing down his resistance.’ Voyen gave him a hard look. ‘You should consider granting him release.’
Garro’s eyes narrowed. ‘Events have forced me to end the lives of too many of my kindred already! Now you would ask me to slit the throat of one who lies too weak to defend himself?’
‘It would be a mercy.’
‘For whom?’ Garro demanded. ‘For Decius, or for you? I see the disgust you can barely hide, Voyen. You would rather all evidence of the foulness that attacked us be jettisoned, eh? Easier for you to ignore its consequence and whatever connection it might have to your blasted lodges!’
The Apothecary froze, shocked into silence by his commander’s outburst.
Garro saw his reaction and immediately regretted his words. He looked away to see the Luna Wolf approaching. ‘I am sorry, Meric, I spoke out of turn. My frustration overtook my reason—’
Voyen hid his wounded expression. ‘I have duties I must address, lord. By your leave.’ He moved away as Qruze came closer.
The old Astartes threw a glance after him. ‘We think we have seen it all and yet there always comes a day when the universe shows us the folly of that hubris.’
‘Aye,’ managed Garro.
Qruze nodded to himself. ‘Captain, I took the liberty of compiling an order of battle for your review, following the retreat from Isstvan.’ He handed over a data-slate and Garro scanned the names. ‘Just over forty line Astartes and half that number of men of veteran ranking, including myself. Five warriors severely injured in the escape but capable of meeting battle, should it come to it. The count does not include you or the Apothecary.’
‘Solun Decius is not listed.’
‘He’s in a coma, is he not? He is an invalid and cannot fight.’
The captain tapped a balled fist on his augmetic leg with a defiant grimace. ‘Some dared to say that to me and I made a lie of it! While Decius lives, he’s still one of my men,’ Garro retorted. ‘You’ll add him to the roll until I tell you otherwise.’
‘As you wish,’ said Qruze.
Garro weighed the slate in his hand. ‘Seventy men, Iacton. Out of thousands of Astartes at Isstvan, we are all that still live beyond the reach of the Warmaster’s treachery.’ The words were still difficult for him to say aloud, and he saw that Qruze found it just as hard to hear them.
‘There will be others,’ insisted the Luna Wolf. ‘Tarvitz, Loken, Varren… all of them are good, staunch warriors who won’t see such rebellion without opposing it.’
‘I do not question that,’ replied the Death Guard, ‘but when I think of them left behind while we fled for the warp—’ He broke off, his voice tightening. The memory of the virus bombing was still painful. ‘I wonder how many made it to shelter before the plague and the firestorm. If only we could have saved some of them, rescued a few more of our brethren.’ Garro thought of Saul Tarvitz and Ullis Temeter, and hoped that death had come quickly for his friends.
‘It is the duty of this vessel to be a messenger, not a lifeboat. For all we can know, other ships may have slipped away, or gone to ground. The fleet is huge and the Warmaster cannot have eyes everywhere.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Garro, ‘but I cannot look upon my brothers hereabouts and not see those we left to face Horus.’ He stood, his glove pressed to the thick armourglass of the containment chamber, and studied the papery face of Decius where the youth lay amid a nest of life-support devices and autonarthecia. ‘I feel like I have aged centuries in a day,’ he admitted.
Qruze snorted in a dry chuckle. ‘Is that all? Live as long as I have and you’ll come to understand that it’s not the years that count, it’s the distance you travel.’
Garro broke away from the sight of his comrade. ‘Then by that reckoning, I am older still.’
‘With all due respect, you’re a stripling, Battle-Captain Garro.’
‘You think so, Luna Wolf?’ Garro replied. ‘You forget the nature of the realm through which we pass. I would warrant that were we to match our days of birth to the Imperial calendar, I would be as old as you, brother, perhaps even your senior.’
‘Impossible,’ scoffed the other Astartes.
‘Is it? Time moves at different rates on Terra and Cthonia. In the warp it becomes malleable and unpredictable. When I think of the years I have spent in passage through that infernal domain or in the little-death of cold sleep on voyages below the speed of light… I may not match you in days, but in chronology the story would be quite different.’ He looked back at Decius. ‘I see this poor, untempered boy and I wonder if he will ever live to see the glory and the scope of what I have known. Today, I feel more weary than I ever have before. All those days escaped and deaths postponed drag at me. Their weight threatens to pull me under.’
The veil of long-suffering temper that was Qruze’s usual mien dropped away for a moment, and the old soldier placed a hand on Garro’s shoulder. ‘Brother, this is the weight we bear all our living days, the burden of the Astartes as the Emperor gave it to us. We must carry the future of mankind and the Imperium upon our backs, keep it safe and held high for Him. Today that burden weighs more than it ever has, and we have seen that there are those among our number who cannot support it any longer. They chose…’ He took a deep breath. ‘Horus chose to throw it aside and become an oath-breaker, so we must bear it without him. You must bear it, Nathaniel. The alarm we hold cannot sound unheard out here in the darkness. You must do whatever must be done in order to warn Terra. All other concerns, our lives and those of our brothers, come a distant second to that mission.’
The Flight of the Eisenstein Page 23
