Word Bearers

by Anthony Reynolds

He stumbled as his foot caught on something, and fell awkwardly onto his front. A soldier helped him back to his feet and he looked to see what he had tripped over.

  A hand, blue and frozen, was protruding from the snow.

  Solon swore and staggered back, pointing frantically at the frozen hand. The soldier nodded grimly and motioned for him to keep moving.

  Tearing his eyes from the grisly display, Solon hurried to catch up with the rest of the group. His breathing was coming in short, sharp gasps, sounding too loud in the enclosed space of his mask.

  The group moved around the front of the crawler, and Solon saw that the reflective plasglass of the cabin had been shattered. Several holes had been punched through the front chassis of the crawler, and Solon marvelled at the immense power of the blasts. The front of the crawlers were heavily armoured, allowing them to push through ice, rock and snow if necessary, and he had been led to believe that even a lascannon would be unable to pierce its reinforced layers. Whatever had struck this crawler though had made a mockery of his teaching.

  The soldiers moved warily around the side of the crawler, and Solon froze as the sergeant raised his hand. One of the soldiers dropped to one knee at the corner of the crawler and risked a quick glance around it before giving the all clear and moving on.

  They were out of the worst of the wind behind the lee-side of the crawler, and Solon breathed a sigh of relief to be out of the relentless gale. The snow was not banked up so heavily here, and with a flurry of hand signals, the sergeant relayed his orders.

  One of the cargo bay doors was wide open, and one of the soldiers warily climbed the icy ladder up to the cavernous opening. As he crouched below the lip of the cargo bay, he raised his lasgun and clicked on the powerful light under-slung below the barrel.

  Rising up on the ladder, the soldier held his lasgun to his shoulder and swung the beam of his light around within the crawler’s cargo hold. He signalled the all clear, and climbed up into the interior, disappearing from sight. The other soldiers moved towards the ladder, Solon being herded in the centre of the group.

  Sergeant Folches and one of his men ascended quickly, while the other members of the squad covered them, and then Solon was signalled to climb up.

  His bulky exposure suit made the climb difficult and he was breathing hard as he reached the top. Sergeant Folches grabbed him under one arm and hauled him over the edge, his pistol held at the ready in his other hand.

  The sergeant held up a hand for Solon to stay put and his soldiers began advancing through the darkened cargo hold, the focused beams of their lights swinging left and right. They were swallowed by the darkness as they penetrated deeper into the stricken crawler, leaving Solon standing alone.

  He turned around, the weak lights mounted on either shoulder of his exposure suit illuminating the area around him in their yellow glow. One of the lights flickered and buzzed, and Solon hit it with one hand. The flickering stopped, but then the light gave out all together, and he swore.

  Feeling exposed and alone, he moved further into the cargo hold, trying to see the soldiers’ lights. He couldn’t see them, and the sound of his own breathing filled his ears. He also noticed evidence of fighting. Blackened scorch marks marred the sides of ore containers and severed cables hung limp from holes blasted in the walls.

  The massive ore containers were loaded on top of each other and tightly packed, forming a maze of narrow corridors within the vast hold. The containers disappeared in the gloom above him, and Solon felt a rivulet of sweat run down his spine.

  Turning a corner, he almost stepped on the corpse. It wore the uniform of a crawler orderly, and Solon recoiled in horror and disgust. The man looked as if he had died in absolute agony, his mouth wide in a scream, his eyes huge and staring, and his body frozen in a contorted death spasm. His hands were twisted like claws, and his legs were bent beneath him. It looked as though he had been writhing in agony as he had died. Solon saw a line of wicked splinters across his chest, embedded in his flesh.

  Solon turned away, feeling his stomach heave. He ripped his mask away and vomited the contents of his stomach onto the floor. He pulled his canteen from one of the deep pockets of his exposure suit, and took a swig of the cold water, cleansing his mouth and spitting it out onto the floor.

  He didn’t look again at the corpse as he walked away, sucking in the cold air in deep breaths.

  It felt like the soldiers had been gone for hours, though it was more likely just minutes, and Solon felt panic begin to rise within him. What had hit the crawler? What enemy was loose in the darkness? And was it still here?

  The walls formed by the containers rearing up on either side of him seemed to close in, and Solon’s breath was coming in shorter gasps.

  ‘Stay here, he says. To hell with that,’ said Solon, deciding to find Sergeant Folches and his soldiers. He might not like the man, but if there was still an enemy in the crawler, he would feel a lot more comfortable with the armed soldiers.

  Thinking he heard a noise behind him, Solon spun around, his heart beating wildly. There was nothing there. The weak illumination given off by his sole functioning shoulder lamp made the shadows jump, and Solon’s eyes darted around in fear.

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ he said to himself.

  He turned around to continue his search for the sergeant, and his lamp illuminated a pale face less than a metre behind him.

  Solon staggered backwards, a strangled cry tearing from his throat and his heart lurching. His sudden movement made the light from his lamp swing wildly, making shadows dance in front of him, though his eyes were locked on the motionless figure.

  He heard a shout, and boots pounded across the grilled flooring, coming closer, but still the face stared up at him.

  It was a child, no more than ten years old by his reckoning, his face pale and gaunt. Solon stared at the boy in horror, as if the ghosts of his past had risen to haunt him; for a fraction of a second, the child was the spitting image of his son, dead these last eighteen years.

  As the soldiers arrived, they shone their lights upon the child, and Solon saw that he was of flesh and blood, not some ethereal phantom come to haunt him, and his resemblance to his dead son faded. The boy’s eyes were deeply ringed by shadow, and he recoiled from the bright lights, shielding his eyes.

  The boy looked up in fright as Sergeant Folches and one of his soldiers appeared, their weapons levelled at the boy. In the cold light of the soldier’s lights, his face took on a blue tinge. He must be half-frozen, thought Solon. He let out a long breath, and tried to force his pounding heart-rate to slow.

  ‘Where in the hell did he come from?’ barked Folches, sliding the visor of his helmet up.

  ‘No idea,’ said Solon, hardly able to take his eyes off the boy.

  ‘You, boy,’ said Folches. ‘Are you the only one here?’

  His face fearful, the boy merely stared up at the soldier.

  ‘What happened here, boy?’ asked Folches again, more forcefully. The boy backed away a step, looking as if he was going to bolt at any second.

  ‘Ease up, sergeant,’ said Solon, fumbling at one of his pockets. He pulled out a protein pack, and tore off its foil seal.

  ‘You hungry?’ he asked the boy, offering the food.

  The boy merely stared back at him, and Solon took a small bite of the protein pack. It was bland and tasteless, but he nodded his head and made a show of enjoying it. He saw the boy lick his lips, and this time when Solon offered it to him he snatched it eagerly.

  ‘You find any survivors?’ Solon asked the sergeant in a low voice, though he kept his eyes on the boy.

  ‘No,’ said Folches. ‘We found some… remains, but nowhere near as many as I would have expected.’

  ‘Think they got away? Fled on foot, or something?’ asked Solon.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Folches. ‘Whatever hit here, it hit hard and fast. I don’t think anyone got away.’

  ‘What then? They just disappeared? There must
have been a couple of hundred folks onboard.’

  ‘They were taken,’ said the boy suddenly.

  Solon and Folches exchanged a look.

  ‘Who took them, son?’ asked Solon.

  ‘Ghosts,’ said the boy, his eyes haunted.

  BOOK TWO: GHOSTS

  ‘Hate the xenos as you hate the infidel, as you hate the non-believer. Feel not mercy for them, for their very existence is profane. What right have they to live, those that are Other?’

  – Kor Phaeron, Master of the Faith

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The four Land Raiders roared across the ice, passing the burnt-out shells of enemy vehicles. The bodies of men lay strewn around the smoking wrecks, their blood staining the snow beneath them.

  ‘The last known location of the target is here,’ said Kol Badar, indicating a position on the schematics that appeared in flickering green lines upon the data-slate. He was seated within the enclosed space of the second Land Raider, his hulking form filling the space around him, making the interior cramped. He had removed his tusked helmet, and the red lights of the interior of the tank gave his broad face a daemonic glow.

  A passage from the Book of Lorgar was etched upon the skin of his right cheek, a gift cut from the face of Jarulek, back on the Imperial world of Tanakreg before the Dark Apostle fell.

  Marduk too had borne a similar passage on his cheek, though it had been obliterated when the Dark Apostle had shot half his face off. He had removed his skull-faced helmet and stowed it in an arched niche above his head, alongside a pair of lit blood-candles, and the dark outline of the mark of Lorgar was clearly visible on his forehead.

  Incense wafted from one of the daemon-headed braziers, filling the air with its cloying stench.

  Marduk snatched the data-slate from the Coryphaus, and looked where Kol Badar had indicated.

  ‘What is this structure?’ he asked.

  ‘A mining facility, a hundred and fifty kilometres to the east. But there is a problem.’

  ‘Of course there is,’ spat Marduk. ‘Well?’

  ‘The mining facility is located on the ocean floor. It is over ten thousand metres below the surface of the ice.’

  ‘Lorgar’s blood,’ said Burias from the other side of the Land Raider. Blood still caked the icon bearer’s lips and chin, and Marduk glared at him for a moment.

  ‘On the ocean floor,’ he said.

  ‘That is correct, First Acolyte,’ replied Kol Badar, ‘if the information the magos extracted can be trusted.’

  ‘It can,’ said Marduk. He balled his right hand into a fist and slammed it down onto an armrest carved in the likeness of a spinal column.

  He quickly recovered his composure, and quoted from the Epistles of Kor Phaeron, the revered Master of the Faith whom he had served under during the campaign on Calth fighting against the hated sons of Guilliman.

  ‘Through our travails we journey further down the blessed spiral,’ he quoted. ‘Through pain and struggle and toil we prove ourselves before the true gods. Each new obstacle should be welcomed as a test of faith, for only the strong and true walk the Eightfold Path of Enlightenment.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Kol Badar dryly.

  ‘You have formulated a battle order?’ asked Marduk. They had been back within the Land Raiders for less than fifteen minutes, but he knew that Kol Badar’s keen strategic mind would have already concocted a dozen plans to ensure victory for the Host, each one more complete than the last.

  ‘There is an access tunnel beneath the ice here,’ said the Coryphaus, indicating on the schematic map with one of his massive armoured fingers. ‘It runs for two hundred kilometres, connecting this habitation base with a starport located to the west. Air recycling hubs connect the tunnel to the surface at intermittent positions,’ he said, stabbing his finger into the data-slate at several points along the line of the access tunnel. ‘This one is twenty-five kilometres from the habitation base. We proceed to that air-recycling hub by Land Raider, across these ice flows here, and here, and approach from the south. The wind will be behind us, and we should be able to approach without detection, or at least neutralise any resistance before a defence can be established.’

  ‘The defences of this world are pitiful,’ said Marduk. ‘The majority of the standing defence force has already been vacated. Darioq-Grendh’al picked up an incoming transmission as he gathered the information. The xenos invasion is expected to make planet-fall within the next sixty-three hours. Sixty-two hours now,’ he corrected.

  ‘Sixty-two hours,’ said Kol Badar. ‘This foolish mission cannot be achieved in sixty-two hours.’

  ‘Find a way,’ retorted Marduk.

  ‘It cannot be done,’ said Kol Badar hotly. ‘It could not be done even were we to encounter zero opposition. I suggest that we vacate this place. There is nothing of value to our Legion here.’

  ‘I am not asking for your council, Kol Badar,’ said Marduk. ‘You are the Coryphaus. You enact my will. I am giving you an order; make it happen.’

  ‘The xenos will have commenced their invasion before we are back on the surface,’ said Kol Badar.

  ‘Explain to me how that changes anything?’ snapped Marduk, losing patience. ‘If they get in our way, we kill them. It is not complicated.’

  ‘You wish to be here in the midst of a full-scale invasion? With less than thirty warriors?’

  ‘That is the voice of cowardice, Kol Badar,’ said Marduk, his voice low and dangerous. ‘You shame the Legion and the position of Coryphaus with your fear.’

  Kol Badar’s eyes flashed, and he ground his teeth, clenching his power talons. Burias, sitting opposite, grinned.

  ‘You go too far, you whoreson whelp,’ said Kol Badar, his eyes blazing with fury.

  ‘Learn your place, Kol Badar,’ growled Marduk, leaning in to the bigger warrior and snarling in his face. ‘Jarulek is dead. I am the power of the Host. Me! The Host is mine, and mine alone. You are mine, and I will discard you if you prove of no use to me.’

  Kol Badar bared his teeth, and Marduk could see him fighting to restrain himself from lashing out. With the fall of Jarulek, there was no question as to who was next in line. Marduk, as First Acolyte, was rightfully the leader of the Host, at least until such a time as the Council of Sicarus deemed otherwise.

  Marduk knew Kol Badar well. They had fought alongside each other in a thousand wars since the fall of the Warmaster Horus, and over that time he had come to understand, and despise, what he was. The Coryphaus was a deeply regimented warrior, who clung to ordained command structures and protocols with an almost holy fervour. Marduk had always seen it as a weakness, and had goaded the Coryphaus regarding it, many times.

  ‘You should have been born into Guilliman’s Legion,’ he had said on more than one occasion, drawing a parallel between Kol Badar’s stifling adherence to command structures and official stratagems of the puritanical weaklings of the Ultramarines.

  Doubtless, there was a certain strength in Kol Badar’s dogmatism. The Coryphaus had commanded the Host in battle thousands of times, and his understanding of the ebb and flow of combat, when to push forward and when to pull back, was second to none. In truth, Marduk had come to value the keen, perhaps brilliant, strategic mind of the Coryphaus, though his refusal to adopt more unconventional tactics was infuriating at times.

  For all that, Marduk felt assured that if he pushed home his unquestionable position in the hierarchy of the Host, then the Coryphaus would back down. After ten thousand years of adherence to strict military hierarchy, Kol Badar would be lost to madness and insanity were he to abandon it.

  Respect can wait, thought Marduk. For now, it is enough that he does what I wish.

  ‘I am the leader of the Host,’ continued Marduk, still staring into Kol Badar’s eyes, ‘and you will obey my will.’

  Marduk felt the power of Chaos build within him, as if the gods of the immaterium were pleased. Things writhed painfully beneath the skin of his skull, and he smiled as he saw Kol
Badar’s eyes widen.

  ‘Never question me, Kol Badar,’ said Marduk evenly. ‘Continue.’

  Kol Badar’s thick jaw tensed, but he lowered his gaze from Marduk’s, and stabbed a finger towards the schematic in his hands.

  ‘We use that hub to gain entry to the tunnel, and proceed along the access way into the heart of the hab-station. We secure one of the lifts located here,’ he growled, pointing, ‘which will take us to the mining facility on the ocean floor. This here,’ he said, zooming in on the data-slate, through dozens of floors and focusing on a specific part of the mining facility, ‘is the last recorded location of the explorator. The hulk crashed to the ocean floor around twelve kilometres distant from the facility. Here, the explorator boarded a maintenance submersible to investigate the wreck. He never returned. I would surmise that the explorator fool is still within the hulk, or dead.’

  Marduk nodded.

  ‘Fine,’ he said.

  ‘I still say this is a fool’s errand,’ said Kol Badar.

  ‘Your opinion has been duly noted, Coryphaus,’ said Marduk. ‘Now, pass the word. We move on that air recycling hub.’

  Approaching the air recycling station unobserved had been pathetically easy. The armed forces of the moon were virtually non-existent, most of them having already been evacuated, and the one patrol they had encountered on the ice flows had been destroyed with consummate ease.

  It was insulting, Kol Badar thought as he had killed.

  Clouds of steam rose from the turbine vents that cycled air into the tunnels deep in the ice below, and the hub station had been protected merely by thick rockcrete walls and a reinforced door, half buried in the snow. There were no guards posted on its walls. There had been no sign of a living presence at all, cowering inside against the storm like frightened rodents, Kol Badar had correctly surmised.

  He had ripped the door from its hinges and hurled it away, before stalking into the interior of the complex. The Land Raiders were situated half a kilometre away, hidden completely in the storm, where they would remain until this fool’s errand of a task was completed.