‘She is in there, I know it,’ said Marduk hotly. ‘There is no going back.’
‘How do you propose to get through that?’ snapped Kol Badar, gesturing with one of his powered talons towards the bulkhead.
Marduk stared at the door for a moment.
‘Darioq-Grendh’al,’ he ordered. ‘Open it.’
‘As you wish, Marduk, First Acolyte of the Word Bearers Legion of Astartes, genetic descendant of the glorified Primarch Lorgar,’ said the hulking figure of the magos, stepping forwards, his four mechanical servo arms unfolding from his back.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Solon Marcabus trudged through the blinding snowstorm, leaning into the relentless winds that threatened to knock him to the ground with every gust. He stumbled as he stepped into a small drift, sinking up to his knees. It took all his effort to haul himself out, and he lay on his back for a moment, catching his breath.
His eyelids flickered and closed as his breathing steadied. It would be so easy just to drift away, to give in to exhaustion. He knew that to fall asleep out here unprotected was to die, but he almost didn’t care anymore. He would just close his eyes for a few minutes.
It had been almost a full day since they had left the dead husk of the crawler behind. It had not been an easy decision to try to make the starport on foot, for their chance of success was minimal, but it was better than waiting for what the boy called ghosts return. He was jolted from his micro-sleep as he felt a hand on his shoulder, shaking him, and he looked up at the boy, Dios, who was kneeling over him. Through the circular goggles set into the boy’s oversized exposure suit hood, he saw the concern in Dios’s eyes.
The boy’s face was an unhealthy blue, and his eyes gleamed feverishly. Solon was impressed with the boy’s stamina, and he realised that if he succumbed to the lure of sleep, he would not only be condemning himself to death; out here, lost in the wilderness of swirling snow, the boy would not last a day.
Nodding to the boy, Solon pushed himself painfully to his feet and continued to trudge on. Dios followed in his wake, walking through the furrow that Solon’s feet made, one hand holding onto Solon’s belt.
The boy’s determination was driving Solon on, and he drew strength from Dios’s indefatigable will to live. He gritted his teeth and cursed his momentary weakness. He knew that if the boy had not been with him, he would not have woken. He would have died out here but for the strength of a boy no more than ten years of age. Perhaps his body would have been buried beneath the snow, entombed within the ice of Perdus Skylla. Perhaps in a thousand years, erosion and wind may have exposed his preserved corpse, and someone would have wondered what had become of him. Why had this man been wandering the wastes, they might have asked.
Pushing such morbid thoughts from his mind, Solon concentrated on keeping moving, each painful step a challenge, but also a minor victory. Just keep moving, he told himself, and he repeated the phrase under his breath, like a mantra. Just keep moving. One step at a time.
Solon had no idea how long he had been walking when he realised that there was no longer a small hand grasping his belt. He turned around as quickly as the bulky exposure suit allowed him. Dios was no longer walking in his footsteps. The boy was nowhere in sight.
Cursing himself, Solon turned around in every direction, eyes straining to pierce the whitewash of billowing snow and fog all around him, desperately trying to sight the boy. He saw nothing.
Throwing his fatigue off, Solon began to backtrack, following the path he had cleared through the snow. It was not hard to follow, though the falling snow was already beginning to fill in his footsteps. In an hour, they would be gone.
He hurried back along his path, jogging heavily through the snow, stumbling several times, but pushing himself back to his feet, his fear for the boy’s safety allowing him to plumb reserves of strength that he didn’t know he had.
He had failed the boy, just as he had failed his son.
Despair lent him strength, and he pushed on, slogging through the mire of snow and ice, desperately squinting through the blinding blizzard.
At last, he saw a small, dark shape slumped in the snow, and he broke into a run as he drew towards it. It was covered in a light dusting of snow, and Solon prayed that he was not too late.
‘You can’t be dead,’ said Solon desperately, and drawing near, he dropped to his knees before the figure of the boy. Rolling Dios over onto his front, he looked down into eyes that were half open and unfocused. Dark circles surrounded the boy’s eyes, and his flesh was a sickly blue colour.
‘No, no, no, no, no,’ said Solon, feeling panicked and desperate.
He quickly erected his survival tent, pulling it loose from his thigh-pocket and unravelling it before turning it into the wind, which expanded it like a balloon. He dragged Dios’s lifeless body into the cramped interior and ran a finger down the tent-flap, sealing it, before ripping loose the seals of the boy’s hood, pulling it down away from his face.
Tearing his own suit away from his upper body, Solon pressed his fingers to the boy’s throat. There was a pulse there, though it was weak and irregular, and he groaned in relief. Solon pulled off the insulating inner gloves from Dios’s hands, and pulled off his own gloves with his teeth.
Ignoring the throbbing pain as feeling began to return to his fingers, Solon began rubbing warmth into Dios’s hands. Blood was not circulating properly and the boy’s fingertips were icy to the touch.
For an hour, Solon rubbed life back into the boy’s hands and feet, until colour had returned to the digits, and his breathing had become steady. The temperature in the tent had risen sharply from their body-heat, and condensation had formed on its translucent walls.
Solon had set up his water distiller, and the trickle of purified water was now constant. He had filled both his water flasks, and the taste of the cold, fresh water on his tongue was like divine nectar. He had dribbled water into Dios’s mouth, and had felt his spirits soar as the boy swallowed greedily.
At last, the boy had woken, and smiled weakly at Solon. Finally satisfied that the boy was out of immediate danger, Solon had allowed himself to fall into an exhausted slumber, as the wind battered the fragile tent outside.
Dios appeared as strong as ever when Solon woke, and the pair shared a small portion of the emergency ration bar that every exposure suit was equipped with. The dry protein ration was stale and old, but it tasted as fine as any meal Solon had ever eaten, though he was stringent in how much he allowed them to eat.
Water was not a problem. With his water distiller, and the amount of ice and snow around, they had an abundant supply. Food was another matter, however. This one ration bar was all they had, and though he portioned it out only sparingly, he knew that it would not last more than two days. Without food, they would become increasingly tired and sluggish, and they needed all the energy they had to make the long walk to the Phorcys starport.
In his heart, Solon knew that it was impossible, but as he saw Dios smile, the first smile he had seen on the boy, he felt rejuvenated and refreshed.
They had to dig themselves out of the tent, which was buried beneath five feet of snow, and Solon was exhausted as they clambered out onto the moon’s icy surface, but his spirits were strangely high. He felt almost euphoric, and though he assumed it was a side effect of exhaustion and lack of nourishment, he didn’t care at that moment.
Lifting the smiling Dios onto his shoulders, determined not to let the child out of sight, Solon began a new day of walking.
He would be damned if he allowed himself to succumb to fatigue before he saw the boy to safety.
‘Ammunition thirty per cent,’ growled the Anointed warrior Akkar, registering the blinking icon that flashed before his eyes. Smoke rose from the twin barrels of the weapon, and he swung them before him, seeking a target.
Another wave of enemy creatures surged down the corridor, leaping the shattered remains of their kind, and Akkar depressed the thumb trigger of his heavy reaper autocan
non once more, sending hundreds of high-calibre rounds into their line, ripping them apart without remorse.
‘Weapon temperature peaking,’ said Akkar.
‘Understood,’ said Kol Badar. Indicating with one of his glowing power talons, he organised the remaining warriors into a semicircle facing the corridor, and with a curt command ordered Akkar back from the corridor entrance.
The Anointed warrior stepped slowly backwards, still firing, the barrels of his high-velocity weapon glowing hot.
‘Hold,’ said Kol Badar, as Akkar’s reaper fell silent. The hissing of the aliens was clearly audible in the sudden silence and clawed limbs clicked loudly on the corridor floor and walls.
‘Hold,’ repeated Kol Badar. The reaper autocannon’s killing range was far in excess of the bolters and combi-bolters wielded by the other warriors, and conserving ammunition was becoming a serious issue.
‘Now!’ roared the Coryphaus as the first xenos creatures spilled from the corridor into the room, bounding forwards with inhuman speed. At his order, the warriors began firing, ripping the aliens apart. Within twenty seconds a score of the aliens were dead, and gore and blood splashed across the walls.
Marduk risked a glance behind him, seeing the hulking form of Darioq-Grendh’al working on the bulkhead. The lascutter on the tip of one of his servo-arms burned white hot as it seared through the reinforced, thirty-centimetre structure, but the magos was only half way around the bulkhead’s circumference, and he growled in frustration before turning away and burying a bolt in another alien’s brainpan.
The xenos attacked their position furiously, racing headlong towards the Word Bearers only to be shredded by the concentrated weight of fire. Still more of them poured into the room, and the pile of dead at the corridor entrance was growing.
‘Have your Mechanicus lapdog hurry it up,’ rumbled Kol Badar to Marduk. ‘Our ammunition will not last forever.’
Marduk did not answer. No words would have hurried the methodical work of the magos, but he knew that the Coryphaus was right; if the enemy maintained this intensity in attack, they could not hold.
Even as the thought formed, one of the aliens reached the semicircular line of the Legion warriors, despite the weight of fire. Two of its arms were blown clear of its body by percussive blasts, but it did not drop, and it leapt forwards and drove its claws through the faceplate of a brother Space Marine’s helmet, popping his skull like an overripe fruit.
The alien was cut from shoulder to hip by Khalaxis’s roaring chainaxe, and then in half by the veteran’s chainsword, retrieved from one of his fallen warriors, which he wielded in his other hand.
‘Hold the line,’ roared Kol Badar, but Marduk had seen Khalaxis’s bloodlust dozens of times, and knew that the words would probably not penetrate the red haze that had descended over the warrior.
Alien blood splattered across his armour, Khalaxis roared as he leapt forwards into the no-man’s land, spinning the pair of chain weapons around in a brutal arc that tore through the body of another alien as it was forced backwards by explosive bolt rounds.
Not wishing to be outdone by the blood-frenzied champion, Burias-Drak’shal leapt into the fray, slamming another of the aliens into the wall with a swing of his icon, his talons shearing the face from another.
The killing ground was gone, and firing into the melee risked hitting Khalaxis and the Icon Bearer, and so Marduk roared a deafening cry and hurled himself into the fray, his daemonic, heavy-bladed chainsword roaring.
The other warriors reacted instantly, throwing themselves forwards without thought for their own safety, firing their bolt pistols at point blank range into the melee and swinging their chainblades in murderous arcs.
Kol Badar stalked forwards, gunning down one of the creatures before swatting the head of another from its shoulders with a backhand sweep of his power talons. The Anointed advanced alongside the Coryphaus, power weapons humming with energy. One of them sent a white-hot gout of plasma shooting from his combi-weapon into the face of one genestealer, liquefying its flesh and rendering its bones to powder.
Still, the xenos creatures were fast beyond belief, and their strength was inhuman. Marduk fought with controlled rage, all the anger and tension of the last months fuelling every murderous stroke of his chainsword.
‘This is not my time!’ he roared. His bolt pistol clicked impotently as his last bolts were expended, and he threw it to the floor in disgust. Claws slashed across his chest plate, gouging deep rents through the ceramite armour, and tearing through his flesh. He grasped the daemon chainsword with two hands, allowing the daemon’s hunger for blood to flow through him, and hacked the blade into the widespread maw of the alien as it lunged towards him.
Marduk carved the daemon weapon through alien teeth, muscle and flesh, spraying blood and fang-shards in all directions, and the creature’s lower jaw was torn away as he wrenched the chainblade clear. Inhuman, gargling screams burst from its throat, and it thrashed around madly, spraying blood left and right, slashing and tearing at Marduk’s armour.
His left shoulder plate was ripped away, shorn almost in two, and a tri-clawed talon dug into his neck, punching through his armour and flesh, grinding against his hyper-strengthened vertebrae. Blood pumped from the wound, and he reeled backwards from the pain-fuelled, frenzied attack of the alien. It came after him, but was driven into the ground by a hammer-blow from Kol Badar’s power talons. The Coryphaus silenced its screams, crushing its skull with a heavy stamp of his foot.
Khalaxis booted another in the face with the flat of his foot, cracking its skull before shearing a pair of its arms away with a downward sweep of his chainaxe. The claws of its remaining arms ripped across his chest, crumpling his breastplate like paper and gouging a deep wound through his fused breastplate, but his blood frenzy drove him on, and he rammed his chainsword into its midsection, disembowelling it. Sickly purple and pinkish steaming organs flopped from the wound.
Brother Akkar swung his reaper autocannon like a club, smashing an alien away from him as it hurled itself at him, sending it crashing into a wall. As it struggled to right itself, sinuous limbs thrashing, the Anointed warrior tore it to shreds with a burst of fire from his heavy weapon, the high calibre rounds ripping through its body and puncturing the pipes and cables behind, which spewed steam into the blood-soaked room.
A genestealer hit the Anointed brother from behind, driving claws into either side of his helmet, and his skull was crushed to pulp.
Burias-Drak’shal gripped the writhing alien in his arms, pulling it away from Akkar, who was already dead and falling to his knees, and bit down on its elongated cranium, his fangs piercing its skull. Black blood squirted into his mouth as the creature died, and the possessed warrior hurled it away, his forked daemon-tongue lapping at the blood covering his lips and chin.
The attack was repulsed abruptly, though the throbbing auspex showed that another wave of the aliens was gathering further along the corridor. The remaining Word Bearers hastily reloaded their weapons and began to fire once more.
Pulling his hand away from his neck, Marduk stared at the bright red blood on his fingers and palm, and his anger surged. The blood began to bubble and spit on his gauntlet, and inside his helmet, Marduk’s eyes turned black as the power of the warp surged through him, fuelled by the bloodshed and the fury of the warriors around him, and jolting his body with its suddenness and its power.
Feeling the building power, Burias-Drak’shal was driven to his knees, clasping his icon in both clawed hands, his head lowered. Blood ran from his ears, and his hands shook as infernal power coursed through the icon, which began to vibrate and smoke, giving off an acrid, sulphurous stench.
The sounds of weapons firing and Kol Badar bellowing orders faded from Marduk’s consciousness as the fury of the Lord of Skulls entered him, and he struggled to contain the unrelenting waves of insane anger coursing through his body.
His muscles tensed to the point of bursting, veins bulging in his
neck and arms, and he struggled to maintain control over the bloodthirsty urges that assailed him, urging him to lash out, unmindful of who he killed so long as the blood flowed. Blood pumped loudly through his veins, drowning out all sounds, and his vision was red and hazy. Slowly, he gained mastery over the surge of diabolic power, forcing it to submit to his will.
‘Darr’kazar, Khor’Rhakath, Borr’mordhlal, Forgh’gazz’ar,’ intoned Marduk, speaking the true names as they formed in his mind’s eye. Daemonic voices roared in rage and hatred at his command over them, but Marduk cared not, and continued to recite the names as they came to him.
‘Borgh’a’teth, Rhazazel, Skaman’dhor, Katharr’bosch,’ said Marduk, completing the eight names that burnt red-hot within his mind’s eye. He dropped to his knees and spread his arms out wide, throwing his head back as he spoke the words of summoning and binding.
Akkar’s body, lying on the floor with its skull a bloody ruin, began to bloat, as if his innards were expanding exponentially, like a balloon filling with gas. His hermetically sealed Terminator armour groaned and strained, threatening to rupture like a canister of promethium hurled into hot coals. A tiny hairline fracture appeared in the centre of the breastplate and it quickly expanded outwards, until, with the sickening sound of cracking bone and tendon, the armour ripped apart, like the shell being peeled from a crustacean.
A shapeless blood-bag swelled from the fissure, flopping down onto the floor alongside the ruptured corpse. The veined skin of the amorphous mass pulsed and heaved as something struggled to be released from within, and the whole mass swelled as it increased in volume, growing larger with every passing moment.
A blade pierced the birth-sac, its surface blackened as if by fire and with glowing, infernal runes carved upon its surface. A daemon rose to its clawed feet as the skin of the blood-bag sloughed from its body.
The daemon was one of Khorne’s minions, a foot soldier of the Lord of the Brazen Skull Throne, and its flesh was the colour of congealed blood. It uncurled from its hunched, foetal position as the last vestiges of its birth-sac dropped away, and it sucked in a deep breath, its first in the material realm.
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