The Apothecae was very careful not to move. “Hatred. Hatred is our weapon,” he said, completing the fragment of the Alchonis Axiom.
At once the targeting beam dropped away. “Terra’s bane. I thought you were one of them.” A figure emerged from the darkness clutching a gun, and Caecus recognised the man, one of the lower-ranked Apothecae Minoris.
“Brother Leonon?”
The Blood Angel hesitated. “Majoris? Majoris, is that you? Forgive me, I did not recognise you…” He trailed off and gestured to a roughly-applied bandage across his face. “My sight was impaired. The glass…” He indicated the floor. “I have not been able to remove all of the fragments from my eyes.”
“Leonon, what has happened here?” Caecus straightened, slipping into the mode of seniority he habitually wore in the halls of the citadel. “What was that business with the axiom?”
“They don’t seem to have the intelligence for anything more than a few words,” he husked. “They can look like us from a distance. I had to be certain.” Leonon shook his head. “I saw men kill one another because they were unsure.”
A horrifying awareness was forming in Caecus’ mind, his gut tightening with a sense of revulsion, of self-loathing; and perhaps, of fear. “Where are the staff?”
“All dead, or if not they are isolated and waiting for rescue as I was.” Leonon blinked owlishly at him with his one good eye. “How many men did you bring with you? How did you get past them?”
Caecus ignored the questions and nodded at the dead serf. “Who did this?”
The next word from the Blood Angel’s lips made his heart tighten in his chest. “Mutants.” Leonon shook his head. “I saw only the one, but there must be several of them. How else could the citadel be silenced so quickly?”
In his mind’s eye, Caecus relived that horrific moment in the arena, when the Bloodchild’s perfectly sculpted form went into flux. He remembered the festoons of teeth, the warped limbs and other aberrations in the failed clones that he had terminated throughout the length of his work. This was far worse than one freak gunned down in front of the Chapter Master. If the iterations in the embryo chambers had suffered some kind of spontaneous mass metamorphosis, there might be dozens of deviant creatures running loose in the complex.
He thought of Fenn and Serpens. Were they already dead, torn apart by maddened clones with no control over their baser natures? He struggled to keep himself in check, fighting the urge to curse in front of the Space Marine. “I must continue onward,” he told Leonon. “To the secure tiers. The source of this… concern is there.”
The other Apothecary’s face set grimly. “It is a charnel house down there, majoris. Those things are feasting. I heard them.”
“This is an order!” he snapped, his temper rising. “You will come with me!” From the corner of his eye, Caecus saw a shadow move slightly, against the glow of the chamber’s biolumes.
Leonon had seen it too, and was turning, bringing up the bolt pistol. The shadow disconnected from the rest of the dimness and crossed the chamber in one quick, loping surge. It moved so fast that Caecus was left with only impressions of it, a sheet of talons and a mouth like a lamprey, eyes red as ruby. Leonon’s gun was cut from him and Caecus saw only the red beam of the laser streaking around and about as it spun away, out into the darkened corridor. The attacker ignored him and ripped across the room, dragging the Apothecae Minoris with it, spinning Leonon about and savagely ripping into the Blood Angel’s flesh. The creature struck in the manner of a sand shark, biting down with its distended jaw and shaking furiously, tearing the flesh to ribbons.
Caecus stumbled after the lost pistol, sickened by the gargling scream of the Space Marine as the mutant crushed his throat and choked him on his own blood. Falling to his knees, he found the weapon on the stone floor. A length of Leonon’s forearm and hand were still connected to the grip, the severed end a stream of red rags. He ripped the detached limb away and took the bolt pistol, taking aim back through the open door. The mutant looked up from the twitching body of the Minoris, face painted crimson with viscera.
Caecus fired, the first round sparking off the tiles, the next shots impacting hard in the torso and abdomen. The creature howled, and it sounded almost like a man.
The pistol made a hollow snapping sound and the mechanism stalled in his grip. The Blood Angel cursed and grabbed the slide with his other hand, working at the breech; the gun was fouled, a bolt cartridge caught upright in the ejector port like a stove pipe.
The blood-rimed fiend did not come for him. It watched, cocking its head. Then, with a sickening lurch, it began to retch, shoulders twitching and rocking. After a moment the creature spat a thick bolus of oily vomit on to the tiles and gave a wheeze.
Caecus heard the jammed shell ring as it flew free and the gun snapped back to the ready. The mutant did not wait. With one hand of grotesquely misshapen talon-fingers, it pierced the chest of Brother Leonon and grabbed him by the cage of his ribs. On coiled, rippling muscles it leapt at the ceiling, clawing open a ventilation duct set into the stone roof. It flowed into the space, compacting itself to fit into the narrow space, dragging Leonon as it went. Caecus heard the Space Marine’s bones fracture and snap, as it pulled the Apothecae Minoris into the vent with such force that his robes were torn away.
Rattling echoes grew fainter and fainter as the thing fled from the room along the shaft, finally becoming silence once again. In the pool of liquid ejecta, objects glittered and Caecus ventured closer, daring to take a look. Amid the glutinous blood-laced bile there were two distorted discs of metal, resembling the caps of fungal growths. The Apothecae nudged one with his finger. It steamed slightly, still warm with the heat of passage through the mutant’s flesh. Caecus had a flash of memory from his service as a battlefield medicae. He had seen the same thing many times when called upon to extract spent rounds from his injured brethren, the distended heads of bullets flattened by impact with dense flesh.
He got back to his feet, checked the pistol once again, and then resumed his passage along the downward spiral.
The thrusters flaring at maximum output, the Thunderhawk plunged toward the ice fields at near-hypersonic velocity, speed bleeding off in a cherry glow about the wings as the transport aircraft entered the terminal phase of its suborbital flight from the fortress-monastery. Through the viewing slits in the hull, the polar zone was a ghost-grey in the washed-out light reflected from Baal Prime. The first moon was high in the sky, its larger sister still low to the horizon, hidden behind the thick bands of dust clouds.
Rafen looked away. He felt more at ease now he was back in his wargear. After everything that had transpired since the return from Eritaen, some part of him had longed for the cool familiarity of his battle armour about his body. Now so sheathed, he felt his confidence strengthen. All the politicking and talk of the conclave was anathema to him; he longed for the simple equations of battle. His armour was an old friend, a comrade. Encased within it, Rafen once more became the red blade of the Emperor, ready to do His bidding.
The vox-bead in his ear chimed and he inclined his head. “Speak.”
“Corvus, lord,” said the other Space Marine, transmitting from the Thunderhawk’s flight deck. “No reply to the cogitator’s interrogation signal. The citadel’s communicants do not answer. Something is amiss.”
Rafen accepted this, musing. When they were closer, they might be able to pick up signals from hand-held short-range vox-units; but then again the Vitalis Citadel was built into a cairn of dense rock, which meant that anyone attempting to communicate from the lower tiers would not be heard at all. “Place the summons on auto-repeat, brother. Then return to the drop bay and be ready for deployment.”
“Should we inform the fortress?”
“Not yet. Not until we have something definite to report. Lord Dante has enough to occupy him.”
“Aye, brother-sergeant.” Corvus’ voice faded away and Rafen became aware of someone standing in the gangway down th
e middle of the transport’s troop compartment. He shifted in his acceleration couch.
“Rafen,” began Captain Gorn, “a moment of your time before we arrive at the target.” The officer had his helmet in the crook of his arm and showed the Blood Angel a mirthless smile. “Deploy your men in a staggered twin-tear formation after touchdown, and I will move with Brother-Sergeant Noxx—”
He held up an armoured hand to halt the Flesh Tearer’s speech. “Your pardon, lord, but there appears to have been some miscommunication. This sortie is under my command. Lord Dante himself authorised it.”
Gorn bristled. “Does a captain’s rank mean nothing to you?”
“Your rank has no bearing upon this, sir.” He put a hard emphasis on the honorific. “This is Baal. And no mission progresses upon her surface that is not led by a Blood Angel.” He made a show of glancing around. “I appear to be the ranking Astartes of that Chapter here present.”
Irritation tugged at the corner of the captain’s lip, but then he smothered it with another false smile. “As you wish. We are your guests, after all. However, perhaps you will accept my tactical counsel, should the situation require it?”
“Perhaps,” allowed Rafen. “But this is not Eritaen. This is not a combat zone.” The Thunderhawk shuddered through a thermal and the deck tilted. Gorn was about to offer some rejoinder, but Rafen beat him to the punch. “We have entered the landing phase, brother-captain. You should return to your acceleration couch. The air over the pole can be quite changeable.” As if to underline his point for him, the transport dropped sharply through a pocket of turbulence.
Gorn walked away, back to where Sergeant Noxx and his squad were already strapped in. He leaned close to his men to exchange sullen words with them.
Rafen’s vox chimed once more, this time with a rune on his helmet display indicating a signal on discreet channel. “He does not look happy,” said Turcio. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Gorn’s men cut from us the moment our boots touch rock.”
“Respect the rank, if not the warrior, brother,” he replied. “As for the good captain’s happiness, that is an issue I don’t consider to be important.”
Turcio was two racks behind him, likewise sealed into his armour so that no other man would hear their conversation. “Why did the master even agree to let them accompany us? They have no business in the citadel.”
Rafen frowned behind his breather grille. “Lord Dante has his own troubles to address. We are merely his instruments.”
“Ave Imperator, then,” said Turcio.
“Indeed,” nodded the sergeant, drawing into his own thoughts as the Thunderhawk drew nearer to their destination.
The closer Caecus came to the replicae laboratorium, the worse it became. At first he found the odd body part, or severed limb whitened through blood loss; pieces of people discarded by their killers, lying on the broad bands of the stone staircase. The debris left behind by a pack of predators.
Then there were the levels he passed without daring to investigate them further. Through the doors that led into their depths there were the occasional sounds of motion, and once a faint, peculiar mewling. At the forty-seventh tier he was forced to constrict nerves in his nostrils because of the death-stink that wafted over him. He paused to listen and heard a lapping sound, removed some distance down a radial corridor. There were no lights down there, but the floor glistened in the spill from the stairwell as if it were slick with wetness.
The bolt pistol only had three more rounds remaining in the magazine. He moved, spiralling, descending.
The heavy pressure doors were open, and beyond the acrinic blue lights of the purification antechamber were flickering and buzzing. The guard cages on the walls were open pits in the carved rock, the bands of metal across them twisted away. Pieces of iron and stained brass littered the floor; of the gun-servitors there was nothing else. The floor was sticky and it dragged at Caecus’ sandals as he walked slowly from the stairwell, the bolt pistol in a two-handed grip. The crimson thread of the targeting beam reached out in front of him, fingering the walls.
He hesitated on the threshold, kneading the gun. There could be no turning back now.
Inside, the laboratorium was red. Blood covered every surface. It dripped in places from the ceiling and collected in shallow pools. Caecus felt the odour of it penetrating his flesh, tasted the metallic flavour on his tongue with every breath he took. He was at once sickened by the sight; but there was a fraction of him, a piece of the primal Blood Angel soul that savoured the sinister fragrance that lay thick in the air. The Apothecae recalled the sensation that the Red Grail had briefly instilled in him; this was a sense of the same thing, but less marshalled, more feral.
He blinked, forcing away the dark thoughts, and took stock of the devastation. Everything was wrecked. Every device, every storage cylinder, every servitor and cogitator, all of them torn to pieces as if a hurricane had been contained within the chamber and allowed to expend its fury upon them. Across the length of the laboratorium, he saw that the door to the replicae chamber was hanging open at an angle, the upper hinge torn off by some incredible force. He approached, stepping into the compartment. It was gloomy with inky shadows and Caecus forced his occulobe implant to adjust his vision spectrum. His eyes prickled and a shape became clear: a man of his size and stature.
The tech-lord stood at a console examining a piece of torn meat with casual indifference. He discarded it and turned as Caecus approached, with no more concern than a host welcoming a visitor into his parlour. He inclined his head. “Ah, majoris. I’m pleased you came. I confess, I suspected you would falter before this point.” A smile drew across those misshapen lips. “It pleases me I was mistaken.” His gait seemed different, hunched somehow, as if a great weight were upon his back.
Caecus saw the gestation capsules for the clones, every one of them shattered from the inside, every one of them empty. “You did this,” he husked, the words that had been pressing at his lips emerging in a dry rush.
“I merely helped the process down a road it was already upon.” The smile grew a little more. “I am sorry to tell you that for all your hard work, you were doomed to fail just as Corax did.” He chuckled, as if at a private joke. “But then Corax was always a fool.”
“Serpens!” Caecus snarled his name in accusation, as the other man shrugged off the coat over his shoulders, letting it drop into a heap. “I trusted you! What purpose was there to this?” He blinked. “My staff… Leonon… Fenn?”
“I would be surprised if they were not all dead by now. The Bloodfiends are such brutal and efficient killers, don’t you agree?” Something moved at his back, clicking and unfolding.
“Bloodfiend?”
He got an indulgent nod in return. “I like that name better.”
Caecus twitched, his self-control cracking beneath the strain. He glanced at the gun, still gripped in his hand, as if he had forgotten it was there. The Apothecae took aim. “I will kill you for this!”
“Don’t you want to know why?” The man reached his long, bony fingers up to his face and played with the skin there, pulling at it, pinching at the cheekbones and the line of the jaw. “You are a scientist, Caecus. Cause and effect, reason and process, these are all things at the cornerstone of your self. Can you really kill me without understanding why this happened?” There came a tearing noise and parts of the magos’ face peeled away in fatty strips, dropping to the floor where they began to deliquesce. Caecus saw other flesh beneath, tight upon a hard-lined and ancient skull.
“Speak, then, Serpens!” he shouted. “Confess if you must!”
Another laugh escaped him, the register shifting to a deep, bone-crack dry tonality. “I have been Haran Serpens for a time. But he is ill-fitting, tight about my breeches. I tire of him.” The ripping went on, and the skin flayed itself. A white gale of stringy hair emerged and fell about the man’s shoulders. He took a step closer, so that the flickering lights of the chamber could better illuminate him. “Do you
know me, Brother Caecus? Think now. I imagine you recall my name.” Brass splines sighed and extended from behind him, and with a start the Apothecae Majoris realised that what he had thought to be the play of shadows was actually a spidery contraption upon the impostor’s shoulders. “I know you and all your kin,” he continued. “I walked the same earth as your primarch. I once looked him in the face.” He laughed openly. “What a poor distillate of his grandeur you are these days. He would be ashamed.”
“Do not speak of Sanguinius, pretender!” Caecus gasped. “Do not utter his… his name…” The heat in his blood instantly flashed to ice as recognition crept upon his thoughts. “You?” He felt his gut twist. “It cannot be!”
“Your primarch was always an arrogant one, Blood Angel. You are no different, ten thousand years after Great Horus struck him down like the fool he was.” The impostor opened his arms wide and a festoon of brass limbs exploded from the monstrous thing upon his back. “Do you still not know me?”
The Apothecae fired blind, but the rounds screeched as the spider-legs spun out to deflect the shots. A black, cold pall filled the chamber.
“Then, please allow me to introduce myself.” The impostor bowed low, revealing the chattering machine upon him in all its grotesque glory. “I am the primogenitor of Chaos Undivided, Master of Pain, Lord of the New Men.” His voice was thick with mockery and venom. “I am Fabius Bile. And you have something that I want.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Astartes disembarked from the troop bay of the Thunderhawk even as the transport was lowering itself to the deck on its landing gear. Blood Angels and Flesh Tearers streamed out of the craft and formed a perimeter. The men with search lamps on their shoulders shone the bright sodium-white beams about the interior of the bartizan, picking out the hard-edged shadows of parked fuel bowsers, cargo crates and resting flyers.
At Rafen’s side, Puluo inclined his head slightly and gave his commander a meaningful look, flaring his nostrils. Behind his helmet, the sergeant caught the scent as well; spilled blood, underscoring everything.
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