He had found that within a few days he was able to walk, albeit with considerable difficulty and pain. He was made to work day and night, his efforts directed by horrifying, hunched overseers, garbed in skintight, black, oily fabric. The faces of the overseers were, thankfully, obscured by the same black material, though how the creatures were able to see was beyond him. Grilled vox-blasters were positioned where the creatures' mouths should be, and their fingertips ended in long needles. Varnus had felt the pain of those needles when he had stumbled one night, and the pain that they caused was far in excess of what he imagined a slaver's whip would deliver. The overseers stalked along the lines of slaves, their hunchbacked gait bobbing and awkward.
But far more terrifying than the overseers were the Chaos Marines. Whenever Varnus glimpsed one of them he was overwhelmed by the scale of the monsters and the pure aura of power and dread that they exuded.
The sense of oppression never lifted. For days, the sky was largely obscured by the immense shape of a titanic Chaos battle barge hanging in low orbit, plunging most of the city into darkness. Enormous landing craft were in constant movement between the Chaos ship and the ground, ferrying Emperor-knew what down to the planet. Then one day it was gone. Not being able to see the battle barge of the Chaos forces in the atmosphere was a small blessing amid the horror that was Varnus's existence.
The great red planet of Korsis could be seen both day and night, getting increasingly larger as its orbit drew it ever closer to Tanakreg and the time of the system's conjunction of planets.
Varnus had watched as an area somewhere in the region of a hundred city blocks was levelled by heavy siege ordnance. In a short flurry of brutal devastation, hundreds of buildings had been demolished with ground shaking force. Dust had rushed across the landscape for hundreds of kilometres all around, Varnus guessed. He no longer knew if it was day or night, for the air was thick with dust and foul, heavy, black smoke that left a residue on every surface.
Giant, smoking, infernal machines had been brought in to push aside the debris of the demolition, and along with thousands of slaves, Varnus had been forced to follow in the wake of these mechanical beasts, clearing away the smaller rubble that the machines missed. His hands had bled, and chirurgeons moving through the lines of chained Imperials had sprayed them with a dark, synthetic coating, stemming the bleeding, but not the pain.
Monstrous, polluting factories, foundries and forges were constructed, vast, vile places filled with acrid black smoke, heat and the screams of those being ''encouraged'' by the overseers and their needle hands. Titanic vats of superheated, molten rock were fed with the rubble of the demolished buildings, and what looked like bricks, though bricks on an insanely large scale, were being created in gigantic, black, metal moulds.
The corpses of those killed in the defence of Shinar were dumped in giant, stinking piles, and more bodies were pushed there by huge bulldozers, black smoke belching from racks of exhausts. Varnus thanked the Emperor that he had not been assigned to one of the slave gangs forced to strip those corpses naked before they were deposited in vast silos. He had no wish to learn what abhorrence the enemy had planned for the bodies.
Other worker teams were busy in the centre of the vast open space that had been cleared, working with smoke-belching machinery, drilling down into the earth, creating a vast hole over a kilometre wide that sank lower into the planet's crust with every passing day.
The destruction of the city was not, it seemed, complete, and on what Varnus guessed was his second week of hell, more demolitions began. The rabble created from the demolitions was brought to the smelteries in cavernous vehicles and upon the backs of thousands of slaves. Varnus completely lost track of time as he dragged and hauled twisted metal, chunks of rockcrete and stone to the vast smelteries, there to be turned into ever more giant blocks.
A sudden weight pulled at the collar around Varnus's neck and he was hauled back a step, almost dropping the chunk of rock he was bearing. He tried to keep moving, but there was a dead weight on the chain attached to his collar, and he glanced around fearfully, trying to see if there was an overseer nearby. Seeing none, he turned around and saw that the man behind him had fallen. Swearing, Varnus dropped the stone he carried to the ground and hobbled to the fallen slave, trying to pull him to his feet.
'Get up, damn you,' he swore. The punishments exacted upon the entire worker gang if one of their number slowed their progress were harsh. The man didn't move. 'By the Emperor, man, get up!'
Sudden, wracking pain jolted through his nervous system, and he heard the rasping voice on an overseer. There was a slight delay as whatever fell language the overseer spoke was translated into Low Gothic by its vox-blaster.
'Speak not the name of the accursed one!' rasped the overseer, and slammed another handful of needles into Varnus's lower back. He had never felt such pain in his life, would not even have been able to conceive of such agony. He convulsed and jerked on the ground. Abruptly the pain ceased, leaving him feeling numb.
The overseer called out something in its own rasping dialect, and another of its kind stepped forwards with a las-cutter, as Varnus shielded his salt-sore eyes from the white-hot light. The chains connected to the collar of the man who still lay unmoving on the ground were cut, and Varnus felt his own chain go slack for a moment. Then he was pulled violently to his feet by the chain, as the severed links were fused together.
The slave was dead, or close to it, and was dragged away.
Two sharp notes were blown on a whistle, and Varnus quickly picked up his dropped rock and shuffled to the side of the rained street with the other slaves of his worker gang. A detachment of blood-red armoured Chaos Space Marines marched past, and the other slaves kept their gaze lowered, as did the black clad, hunchbacked overseers.
The familiar burning feeling beneath the skin of his forehead itched, but Varnus resisted the urge to scratch at it. He had seen other slaves claw at the eight-pointed star symbols beneath their flesh, and terrible, painful welts had erupted.
A Discord, one of the floating monstrosities that accompanied every slave gang, blessedly silent for a moment as the Chaos Marines had walked by, began once again to blare its cacophony of unintelligible words and hellish sounds from its grilled speaker-unit. It hovered limply half a metre off the ground, dragging behind it an array of mechanical tentacles as it moved ponderously up and down the line of slaves. The sound was sickening, making Varnus's insides twist with nausea.
A long, drawn out whistle sounded, and Varnus once again dropped his stone and lowered himself painfully to the ground. An overseer walked along the line of seated slaves, holding a muddy brown bottle with a straw out to each of the men in turn. When it came to his turn, Varnus leant forward and sucked deeply from the tube. He almost gagged on the foul, thick liquid, but forced himself to swallow. He had no idea what it was that the bastards fed them, but it was the only form of sustenance that they were allowed.
'So, what were you before?' asked a low voice in a conspiratorial whisper, after the overseer had moved on.
Varnus glanced surreptitiously at the man next to him. They were now chained together, since the poor soul who had been chained in between them had just been dragged off. He thought that he recognised the man from somewhere, but he couldn't place the face.
'Enforcer,' said Varnus quietly.
'You got a name?' whispered the man.
'Varnus.' A whistle blew, and the slave gangers pushed themselves to their feet. 'Yours?' he risked, whispering.
'Pierlo,' said the man quietly.
Marduk was first off the Thunderhawk, striding purposefully down the assault ramp as it was lowered from the stubbed nose of the gunship. He removed his helmet and breathed in deeply. The air was thick with pollution, smoke and the taint of Chaos, and he smiled. Much had changed since he had left the city of Shinar.
For the past weeks he had been engaged against various PDF armies far from the city, ensuring that there was no military power upo
n the planet with the strength to launch a counter-attack against the Word Bearers. While there were still dozens of areas of resistance scattered across the planet, there was no single force that would prove a threat.
The skies were scarred with dust and smog, and the first cautious rumbles of thunder rolled across the marred heavens. The fires of industry were burning fiercely in the city below.
The palace had changed. The spires and towers that had once formed the silhouette of the bastion had been ripped down, replaced with brutal spikes and barbed uprights, and corpses were strung up all over them. Marduk saw that the skinless forms of the kathartes, the daemonic, cadaverous furies that accompanied the Host, were perched amongst the corpses. The vicious harpies screeched and fought amongst themselves for the prime perches. The powerful air defence turrets had been returned to activation, and they scanned the heavens. That was good: it would not be long before the Imperial fleet arrived.
Purple-red veins pulsed beneath the surface of the once plain, pale grey, plascrete walls of the upper bastion, and Marduk was pleased to see the symbols of all the great gods of Chaos artfully painted in blood on the walls of the galleries he passed through.
He nodded to the honour guard flanking the vast glass doors, and walked past them out onto the large, opulent balcony. Jarulek, surveying the ruin of a city below, did not acknowledge his approach.
Marduk strode to the Dark Apostle's side and knelt down beside him, his head lowered. After a moment, Jarulek placed his hand upon the kneeling warrior's head.
'The blessings of the dark gods of the Immaterium upon you, my First Acolyte. Rise,' said the Dark Apostle. 'You return having accomplished that which I requested,' he said. There was no hint of a question in the remark, since there would be no need for Marduk to return had he not completed the task appointed him.
'There is no fighting force upon Tanakreg that can interrupt the preparations, my lord,' said Marduk. 'I bring with me near to five hundred thousand additional slaves to aid in the construction.'
'Good. The slaves of this planet are weak. More than a thousand of them perish every day.'
'The Imperials are all weak,' said Marduk emphatically. 'We will smash those soon to arrive, as we smashed the pitiful resistance on this planet.'
'I have faith that you are correct, we will smash these new arrivals. Individually they are weak, yes,' said Jarulek, 'but together, they are not so. It is only through division that we weaken them. This is why we must always propagate the cults. When the Imperium fears the enemies within its own cities, that is when it is the most vulnerable.'
'I understand, my lord,' said Marduk, 'though I do not believe that your Coryphaus sees it so?'
'Kol Badar does not need to. He is the warlord of the Host, and he fulfils that role perfectly. Rarely has the Legion seen such a warrior and strategos,' he said, turning his disconcerting gaze towards Marduk for the first time since they began speaking. 'He brought in well over a million slaves from his attacks against the cities in the north, you know,' said Jarulek softly, watching his First Acolyte carefully. 'He is and always will be a better warrior than you.'
Marduk tried to remain composed, but his jaw clenched slightly. He saw the dark amusement in Jarulek's eyes. The Dark Apostle kept watching him, seeming to Marduk to enjoy making him feel uncomfortable, as he always did.
'You still feel the shame, don't you?' asked Jarulek, cruelly.
'I could have beaten him,' said Marduk, 'if you had given me the chance.'
Jarulek laughed softly, a bitter, cruel sound. 'We both know that is a lie,' he said.
Marduk clenched his fists, but he did not refute the Dark Apostle.
Jarulek placed a forceful hand on one of Marduk's battle-worn shoulder pads and turned him towards the view over the rained city.
'Beautiful, is it not? The first stones of the tower have been laid, the ground consecrated with the death of a thousand and one heathens, and the blood mortar is setting. The tower will breach the heavens, the gods will be pleased, and this world will be turned inside out.' He turned towards Marduk, a hungry smile on his scripture covered lips. 'The time draws near. "As Sanguine Orb waxes strong and Pillar of Clamour rises high, the Peal of Nether shakes, And Great Wyrms of The Below wreak the earth with flame and gaseous exhalation. Roar of Titans will smite the mountains and they shall tumble. Depths of Onyx shall engulf the lands, and then exposed shall lay The Undercroft, Death and Mastery."'
The First Acolyte's brow creased. There was not one of the great tomes of Lorgar that he had not memorised in its entirety, nor any of the scriptures of Kor Phaeron or Erebus that he did not know word for word. As First Acolyte, he was expected to know the words of the Legion as well as any Dark Apostle did. Any time that he was not killing in the name of Lorgar or aiding the Dark Apostle in the spiritual guidance of the Legion was spent in study of the ancient writings, as well as the required ritualistic penitence, self-flagellation and fasts. He prided himself on his knowledge of the Sermons of Hate, and the Exonerations of Resentment, as well as thousands upon thousands of other litanies, recitations, curses, denunciations and proclamations of the Dark Apostles through the history of the Legion. He had spent countless hours poring over pronouncements, predictions and prophecies witnessed in ten thousand trances, visions and dreams. Marduk had even studied the scrawled recollections and scribed ravings of those warrior-brothers possessed by daemons, words straight from the Ether, seeking the truth in them. And yet he had never before heard the prophecy that Jarulek quoted.
'It is not written in any of the tomes within the librariox aboard the Infidus Diabolus,' said Jarulek, seeing the look on Marduk's face. 'Nor is it written anywhere within the great temple factories of Ghalmek or the hallowed flesh-halls of Sicarus. No,' said Jarulek smiling secretively, 'this prophecy is scribed on only one tome, and it resides in none of those places.'
Marduk felt his frustrations grow.
'A fleet of the great enemy draws close,' hissed Jarulek, his eyes narrowing.
'I have felt no tremor in the warp indicating their arrival,' said Marduk, knowing that he was particularly sensitive to such things.
'They have not yet left the Ether. But I feel their abhorrent vessels pushing through the tides of the warp. They will arrive soon. I have sent the Infidus Diabolus back to the warp.'
'You do not wish to engage the enemy fleet as it emerges?' asked Marduk.
'No.'
'You do not seek to engage them in the warp?' he asked, somewhat incredulously.
'No, I have no wish to risk the Infidus Diabolus in a futile battle of no consequence.'
'No battle against the great enemy is of no consequence,' growled Marduk. 'So Lorgar spoke, and so it is to be.'
'Speak to me in such a tone again and I will rip your still beating twin-hearts from your chest and devour them before your eyes,' said Jarulek softly.
Jarulek held Marduk's gaze until the First Acolyte could look no longer and dropped to his knees, his head down.
'Forgive me, Dark Apostle.'
'Of course I forgive you, dear Marduk,' said Jarulek softly, placing his hand upon the First Acolyte's head.
Marduk felt a sudden lurch. By the way that the Dark Apostle withdrew his hand, he knew that he had felt it too. He had felt that same feeling countless times, though much stronger in intensity, as the Infidus Diabolus dropped out of warp space. Jarulek stepped away, and Marduk stood.
'The great enemy,' said the Dark Apostle, 'has arrived.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn of the 133rd Elysians crossed his arms over his chest as he surveyed the flickering pict-screen. The image was hazy at best-at worst, nothing could be made out at all. He shook his head.
'Your pict-viewer is of inferior quality, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn,' said the techno-magos. His voice was monotone, and barely sounded human at all. 'The level 5.43 background radiation of the planet c6.7.32 and Type 3 winds disrupt its capabilities.'
'Th
ank you, that is most helpful, Magos Darioq.' Havorn replied.
'You are welcome, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn,' said the techno-magos, clearly not registering the sarcasm in the middle-aged general's tone. The large form of Colonel Boerl, the commander of the Elysian 72nd and Havorn's second in command smirked.
The techno-magos, one of the pre-eminent members of the Adeptus Mechanicus of far distant Mars, was a massive, augmented being. It was hard to know where the human ended and the machine began. No features could be discerned underneath the low hood, just an unblinking red light where an eye had once been.
From the back of his red robe, two huge, mechanical arms extended over his shoulders like a pair of vicious, stinging tails of some poisonous insect. Another pair of servo-arms extended around his sides. Formidable arrays of weaponry, heavy-duty machinery, power lifters and hissing claws were constructed into them. The staff of office of the techno-magos was incorporated into one of the servo-arms, a long-hafted, double-bladed power axe topped with a large, brass, twelve-toothed cog, the symbol of the Machine-God. Dozens of mechadendrites hovered around him: long, metallic tentacles fused to the nerve endings of his spine. They were tipped with dangerous looking, needle-like protrusions and surprisingly dextrous grasping claws.
The man's organic arms were wasted, useless things that he held crossed over his chest. It looked like they lacked the strength to grasp anything any longer, and they were held immobile. Clearly they had been made redundant by the hovering mechadendrites and servo-arms.
A diminutive, robed figure the size of a child stood before the magos, though nothing could be seen of its form within its deep hood. It appeared to be connected to the Mechanicus priest by cables and wiring. A floating servo-skull hung above the techno-magos, mechanics covering the right-hand side of its cranium. Its unblinking, red eye watched the goings on within the command centre unerringly.
With a slight shake of his head, Havorn squinted at the pict-screen again. Bleary images flickered across the viewer of massed bulk carriers sinking slowly through the atmosphere of Tanakreg, with escorts of gunships flying in figure-of-eight patterns around them. It was hard to make out, but Havorn had seen scores of similar landings, and he could see exactly what was occurring in his mind's eye.
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