The Damnation of Pythos

by David Annandale

  There were too many flavours, too many beings. None of it was human. Unbending was flying above a primordial field of combat. Galba thought about the difference between his home world and what he was rushing towards here. Life was violence on both planets. But on Medusa, life had to struggle simply to exist. Medusa was a world that rejected the organic. It was a test, and only the strongest forms found a purchase on its surface. Pythos, though, was monstrous in its all-encompassing welcome. Life had exploded here. Life piled on life. The only shortage was space, and that was enough to ignite a war of all against all.

  Medusa forged unity and steadfastness. Galba was not surprised that no civilisation awaited the Iron Hands on Pythos. There was, he was sure, no order possible in this place of orgiastic growth.

  Ahead, not far from the western edge of the target zone, the land rose, and a rocky promontory broke free of the canopy. Atticus pointed. ‘We land there.’

  The peak of the promontory was bare and level, about half a kilometre on a side. To the north, west and south, it ended in steep cliffs. To the east, the slope was a gradual descent back to the floor of the jungle. The tree line was about ten metres down from the peak. The Thunderhawks circled the area once, then landed. The assault ramps slammed down, and the legionaries marched onto the surface of Pythos. They spread outwards from the gunships, forming a ceramite barrier to the east.

  Galba had been tasked with ensuring the safety of Rhydia Erephren. The members of his squad surrounded her, and they measured their pace. He was surprised by how quickly she moved in completely unknown territory. She stood still for a moment after she walked away from Unbending. She frowned as if listening. Galba saw a vein in her forehead pulse rapidly, the one sign of the strain she was experiencing. Then she turned and made for the eastern line. Her stride was almost as assured as on the Veritas.

  Atticus was waiting. ‘Well, Mistress Erephren?’ he asked.

  ‘The anomaly is already powerful here, captain, but this is not yet the source. I can feel the current of its presence, though, much more sharply defined. It lies in that direction.’ She pointed east.

  ‘Very well,’ Atticus said. ‘We shall burn our way through the jungle if necessary. I will take point. Mistress, you will remain in the rear lines under the protection of Sergeant Galba. Should we deviate from the correct path, inform us immediately.’

  ‘As you say, captain.’

  The Iron Hands plunged into the jungle. The Salamanders and Raven Guard followed behind, the true rearguard even though Atticus barely acknowledged their presence. Within a hundred metres, the legionaries were deep into a green night. The sky vanished behind the unbroken shield of intertwining branches. The occulobes of the Space Marines compensated for the dim light, and the legionaries marched on as if in broad day. The air grew thicker yet, and Galba wondered how long Erephren would be able to function. Already he could hear a liquid rattle in her breathing, but she did not slow.

  The trees were gigantic, rising thirty metres or more. Galba saw a few leafed varieties, but most were conifers with needles like curved claws. Almost as common were growths that turned out not to be trees at all, but immense ferns. Vines twisted from trunk to trunk, their stems thick as cables, the blades of their leaves so sharply angular, Galba found himself thinking of razor wire designed for Dreadnoughts. The lower trunks and jungle floor were covered by carpets of moss. It was so deep and wrinkled that it camouflaged roots, and on several occasions Galba was about to warn Erephren of a hazard at her feet, but she stepped over the obstacle each time.

  ‘You are sure-footed,’ he told her.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘How do you sense your surroundings?’

  ‘You misunderstand my abilities, sergeant. I do not have an image of what is before me, except what my imagination reconstructs after the fact. I am making use of the knowledge that flows to me from the immaterium. I receive the messages sent by my brothers and sisters of the Astra Telepathica, and I have grown accustomed to retrieving other information as well, such as what movements I should make. I do not know why I must move to the right,’ and she did, avoiding the trunk that stood in her way. ‘Perhaps I am sensing the eddies in the warp caused by the physical realm, and this is my new sight. I do know that listening to these promptings serves me well.’

  ‘Clearly,’ said Galba. He thought for a moment. ‘What happened on the bridge…’ he began.

  Erephren gave her head a solemn shake. ‘I know no more than you.’

  ‘But you tried to warn Captain Atticus.’

  ‘The barrier to the empyrean is very thin here. The forces at work are very powerful. I felt a surge, but why was it caused by Sergeant Aulus’s scan? And why did it take the form that it did? I have no answers.’

  ‘I am not just concerned with why it took that form,’ Galba said. ‘I want to understand what that form was. I’ve never witnessed the like.’

  ‘The warp defies understanding, sergeant. That is its nature. I do not believe we need to look any more deeply than that.’

  She made her last sentence very emphatic. It was on the tip of Galba’s tongue to ask if the truth was that she did not want to believe in the need to look more closely. He stopped himself. He could see the strain in her face. The astropath was always linked to the warp. Her consciousness was always divided, her self shaped by two inimical conceptions of existence. He could not begin to understand the risks she ran every second after eternal second. If there were paths that she recoiled from treading, he would respect her wishes.

  Then Erephren spoke again, startling Galba with her confiding tone. ‘I have a great admiration for the tenets of this Legion, sergeant,’ she said. ‘I am not a native of your world. I serve the Iron Hands, but I do not flatter myself that I am of your number. But you should know how important what you represent is for me.’ She tapped her leg once with her cane. ‘This body is weak. It is a barely adequate vehicle. That is the cost of my gift and my service. I pay it gladly, and seek my strength elsewhere, where I need it most, in my will and my sense of identity.’ She paused as she negotiated a root almost as high as her knee. ‘The Iron Hands are without compromise. You do not tolerate weakness. You expunge it from yourselves and from others. This rigour means you must make hard choices, and engage in harsh actions.’

  ‘Harsh?’ He was taken aback. Was she questioning the honour of his Legion? The Iron Hands had never acted with anything less than justice on their side. Any punishment meted out was deserved.

  ‘You misunderstand me. The word is a term of praise. The galaxy is a harsh place, and must be answered in kind. You are that answer. There have been several occasions, sergeant, during our Great Crusade, when duty has required that you cull the entire human populations of non-compliant worlds.’

  ‘That is so. Sometimes the xenos taint is too great, the resistance to reason too entrenched.’

  ‘Do you know what I hear during those purges? Do you realise that those deaths are marked in the warp as they are in the materium?’

  ‘No.’ He had not known.

  ‘You cannot imagine the horror,’ she said. ‘But I can stand it, because I know you enforce the Emperor’s will, and if you have the strength to do the hard thing, then it is my duty to find the strength to bear witness to it. You despise the flesh, and become iron. I tell myself that I must do the same. You are models, sergeant, for the mortals who serve you and follow you. We are not as powerful, nor as resilient. But we can aspire to be better than we are, because you are better than we are.’

  She paused again, and was silent for so long that Galba began to think she had said her piece. But then she spoke, and he could hear each word chosen with care. ‘This is a difficult time. The Iron Hands are…’

  ‘We have suffered a defeat, mistress,’ Galba said. ‘Do not disguise the truth.’

  ‘But you are not defeated. And you must not be.’

  ‘It
seems to me that you wish to turn away from something you fear would have the best of us. Closing one’s eyes to the enemy is not a defence, and it does not speak well of your faith in us.’

  ‘I do not think that is what I am doing. I believe I am acting for the sake of reason and light. What happened on the bridge was an eruption of the irrational. To investigate its depths invites the sleep of reason. One does not engage in a dialogue with insanity, just as one does not accept a tainted people into the Imperium’s embrace. What is called for is quarantine. And then excision. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think I do,’ he said. ‘But are you sure this fine reasoning isn’t being shaped by your fear?’

  ‘No,’ she answered very quietly. ‘I am not sure.’

  The jungle became more and more dense the further the legionaries descended the slope. They hacked through the choking vegetation with chainswords. Sometimes, all trace of a path was swallowed up, and a new trail was created with the flamers. Vines and moss burned where touched directly by the promethium, but the humidity was so high that the fires died out within seconds. Galba chafed against the slow progress. He resented any march whose momentum bled away, but one where the only enemy was the landscape was galling. The rest of the reconnaissance force snaked away before him, black-and-steeldust-grey vanishing into the emerald gloom. It was impossible to see more than a dozen metres ahead through the undergrowth. The moss became even thicker. It was so yielding, and went down so far, it was like tramping over deep snow. Galba was startled when one leg sank almost to the knee. His boot rested on a thick root. It felt disconcertingly like standing on a muscle. He hauled himself out of the depression and found firmer ground.

  His vox-bead crackled. ‘Clearing ahead,’ Atticus reported. ‘Auspex indicates multiple large contacts.’

  Galba and his squad moved forwards with Erephren. Atticus was waiting for them where the path opened into the clearing. The other legionaries had spread out to either side, forming once more the defensive wall they had established at the landing site. ‘What is our course?’ he asked Erephren.

  ‘Straight ahead.’

  ‘That is what I thought.’

  The clearing was a rough circle about a kilometre in diameter. A small stream ran through the centre, crossing the path of the advance. Gathered not far from it was a large group of quadruped saurians. Galba guessed their numbers at a hundred. They stood about three metres high at the shoulder, and were about twice that in length. Their tails stopped just short of the ground, and ended in twin bony hooks. Rows of forward-curving spikes covered their backs. Their legs were thick, massive trunks, evolved to support weight, not run. Their heads were down, turned away from the Space Marines.

  ‘A species of grox, do you think?’ Galba asked.

  ‘They appear to be grazing.’ Khi’dem and his pariahs had arrived.

  ‘Grazing on what?’ Ptero pointed out. The ground had been trampled into hard clay.

  Under the stink of the massive animals, Galba caught the other stench. ‘There’s blood there,’ he said. ‘Lots of it.’

  ‘Rid my sight of them,’ Atticus ordered.

  Even as he spoke, the animals caught the scent of the intruders. They turned from the carcasses they had been devouring. Their heads were massive, boxy, with enormous jaws like power claws. They roared, revealing teeth so jagged and narrow, they seemed to be the weapons of a torturer instead of the tools of a predator.

  ‘They should be herbivores,’ Ptero said, and Galba thought he heard awe in the Raven Guard’s voice.

  Galba raised his bolter and took aim. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The shape of their bodies, their heads. How can they be effective predators? They must be too slow.’

  The herd charged. The earth shook. ‘They seem to be managing,’ Galba said, and opened fire.

  The line of Iron Hands unleashed a continuous barrage of bolter fire into the saurians. The mass-reactive rounds punched into the hide of the beasts and blew out chunks of flesh and bone. Roars became shrieks of agonised rage. The leading monsters collapsed with the thunder of granite. Galba slammed half a dozen shots into the forelegs of his target. The saurian’s joints exploded, severing the limbs in two. The animal smashed to the ground, rolling and howling. Two others lost interest in the Space Marines and set upon their fallen kin. They tore open its exposed belly with claws and teeth. Within moments, they were covered in fratricidal gore. Their victim was gutted, flaps of skin like fallen sails on either side of its torso. It was still alive, its stumps twitching, hind legs flailing. It was a keening, writhing mass of butchered meat.

  A dozen saurians downed. Half again as many fighting over their corpses. And still the avalanche with teeth came on, its momentum unchecked.

  Unblinking, the Space Marines kept firing. More of the predators fell, the shorter range making the wounds even more catastrophic. The clearing became a giant’s abattoir. The stench of blood filled Galba’s nostrils. It was hot, clammy and suffocating, a sweat-slicked fist. It was also the smell of falling enemies, the first kills the legionaries of the Veritas Ferrum had claimed since Isstvan V. A low, vibrating rumble came to Galba’s ears over the shattering roar of the saurian assault, and it was a moment before he realised he was hearing his own growls. They were the expression of his fury at betrayal, and they were the primitive satisfaction that came with the release of slaughter. Each recoil of his bolter was another blow struck at the humiliation that had been visited upon the X Legion.

  The saurians fell, and fell, and fell. Their numbers were cut in half in the time it took them to close with the Iron Hands. They were still an avalanche. And now they hit.

  ‘Flank and crush!’ Atticus commanded in the final seconds before impact. The legionaries parted to the left and right, armoured might sprinting up the sides of the herd, and turning to catch the animals in a crossfire. They moved with speed and precision. They were the individual gears of a terrible mechanism, jaws of ceramite and steel that would rend all the flesh that passed between them.

  But the saurians were fast, too. The leading beast scooped its head down and snatched one of Darras’s men up in its maw. It bit down, and ceramite cracked like bone. Galba heard the cry of the legionary over the company vox-channel. It was a howl of outrage like those of the beasts, dragged from a perfect killer. The saurian bit harder. This time the snapping was bone. The lower half of the Space Marine fell to the ground. The reptile raised its head and choked the legionary’s head and upper torso down its gullet.

  Atticus had not been close enough to aid the fallen man, but he was the first to reach his killer. Still pouring fire into the rampaging beasts, Galba watched, out of the corner of his eye, as the Iron Hands captain leapt at the saurian. He had mag-locked his bolter and was wielding his chainaxe with both hands. Atticus said nothing as he attacked. He swung the axe at the animal’s throat. His movements had a mechanical perfection and grace. The weapon was massive, but in his hands, it seemed to have the weight and speed of a rapier. Its snarling head chewed through the monster’s hide. Machine and animal shrieked, one in high gear, the other grasped by death’s pain. A waterfall of vitae burst from the saurian’s neck, slicking Atticus from head to toe. The animal’s head lolled, half-severed. The body remained standing for a full five seconds after it had died. Then it fell over.

  The Iron Hands pressed in, constricting the herd between walls of fire. The mortification they wrought on the flesh at last took its toll. The landscape turned into a panorama of bleeding meat and splintered bone. Their charge broken, the saurians circled in confusion and pain, lashing out at each other as well as the Space Marines.

  One lunged clear of the pack, bulk and momentum propelling it through Galba’s bolter-rounds. Galba shoved Erephren further back. Blood pouring from craters in its body, the saurian smashed into him, knocking him onto his back. A massive paw pressed against his chest and crushed him into the clay. Hi
s bolter landed a hand’s width away. It might as well have been the next continent over. Erephren could have reached down for it, but she did not know it was there, and she took more steps back from the slavering roars.

  The saurian’s rasping, foetid breath washed over Galba. The jaws opened wide, a cave coming to engulf his head. He lashed out with his fist, striking the beast’s lower jaw, shattering it, sending shards of teeth into its palate. The saurian shrieked and staggered to the side. Galba rolled away, snatched his bolter and came up firing. The reptile’s head exploded.

  After that, combat ended, replaced by simple butcher’s work as the last of the saurians were cut down. Then it was done, the final krump of the bolters muffled by the surrounding jungle. The ground was slick with blood. The clay had turned to dark, clotted muck. This was no longer a clearing. It was a swamp. Galba rejoined Erephren, and the ground made sucking noises as they made their way over to where the legionaries were mustering.

  Ptero was standing over one of the more intact carcasses, his helmet angled down as he stared at the creature. ‘It’s dead,’ Galba said. ‘I shouldn’t let it trouble you any further.’

  ‘But you must admit this is all wrong,’ the Raven Guard insisted. ‘These animals are built like herbivores. You can see that, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but they aren’t herbivores, and there’s an end to the matter.’

  ‘I disagree, brother. We would be wrong to dismiss this aberration as insignificant, when this is what we must fight.’

  ‘And what do you call this aberration, then?’ Darras called. He was standing a few metres closer to the upslope side of the clearing. He, too, was staring downwards, but not at a carcass.

  ‘What is it?’ Galba asked.

  ‘Look at the blood.’

  Galba did. There were currents in the puddles. The blood was draining away.