It was flowing uphill.
‘Captain,’ Galba voxed, ‘there is something drawing the–’
An earth tremor cut him off. It was shallow but widespread. It was like the movement of muscle beneath skin. Galba flashed on what he had stepped on in the deep moss. He grabbed Erephren by the arm. ‘Quickly,’ he hissed, and he began to run. He already knew that what was coming could not be fought. Ahead of them, the other squads were already moving at forced march speed out of the clearing.
The ground erupted. For a moment, Galba thought tentacles were bursting from the clay. Then he saw that they were roots. Thick as his arm, dozens of metres long, they tangled like a net, and reached out like talons. Clods of earth rained back down as the root system twisted and flexed, blind serpents seeking prey. A tendril struck one of Khi’dem’s Salamanders. It coiled around his arm. The roots whipped to the legionary’s location. In moments, he was cocooned and immobilised. He fell. Khi’dem and another of the Salamanders tore at the roots, but more came faster.
Galba hesitated. The rest of the Salamanders were rushing to help, but he was closer. He cursed, then left Erephren with the rest of his squad. ‘Keep her safe,’ he said to Vektus, his Apothecary, and ran back.
Khi’dem’s other squadmate was caught now, too. A root looped around Khi’dem’s gauntlet, but he yanked and tore the tendril, then sidestepped the others that came hunting for him.
Galba revved his chainsword and turned its teeth against the roots enveloping the first victim. As he did, Atticus’s voice crackled over the vox-channel. ‘Leave them.’
‘Brother-captain?’
‘Now.’
He hesitated, the first of the monstrous roots just beginning to part beneath his blade. And then the entire spiral around the Salamander contracted with a jerk. The movement was so violent that Galba stumbled back a step. Blood, under immense pressure, spurted from between the coils of the roots. It was as if a fist had crushed an egg. A second later, as the other Salamanders reached his position, the other cocoon underwent the same traumatic constriction. More blood, an aggressive spray, and nothing more than a brief grunt of terminal pain from the legionary as a force of unimaginable pressure smashed ceramite to bits and a body to pulp. The root system twitched and thrummed. It was feeding, and Galba had the ghastly impression of satisfaction radiating from the vegetation.
And then the thing being fed by the roots invaded. It rushed in from the upslope tree line. First there was green flesh racing along the roots, but this was only a harbinger. Behind it came a green wave, a writhing tide three metres high. It was the moss, Galba saw, swollen with blood and frenzied with the thirst for more. It was growing, spreading like a plague, but with the speed and relentless advance of a storm surge. It was also moving, dragged forwards by the tangling, swelling roots.
It was hunger given being. It wanted the world.
Three
Six seconds
Unnatural selection
The call in the wild
Fewer than five seconds had elapsed since Atticus’s order. Galba’s delay was already unforgivable. It might yet be fatal. There was nothing to shoot here, nothing to stab, nothing to fight. Perhaps the moss could burn, and two of the Salamanders were bringing flamers to bear. But the ravening moss was a wall as wide as the clearing. It would take a heavy flamer mounted on a Land Raider to stop it.
‘Leave it!’ Galba yelled.
Another second passed. He saw the frustrated rage in Khi’dem’s posture. The idea of flight from so mindless a foe, and with the death of battle-brothers unavenged, was obscene. But any other action was insane.
‘Retreat, brothers,’ Khi’dem voxed, and every toxic syllable was choked with bitterness.
They ran, and Galba shared the Salamanders’ fury. They were Legiones Astartes, and retreat was unthinkable, but they ran, and behind them, an emerald storm raged. The wave grew higher yet. A shadow filled the clearing. It stretched over the jungle ahead. The sound was more terrible than all the predator roars that had preceded it. It was the sibilant, monster exhalation, a hhhhssssssiiiiihhhhhhhhh of a hurricane-tossed forest, but there was no wind. The air moved, though. There was the breath of a monster, a displacement caused by the march of the jungle floor itself. Immensity heaved, and there was eagerness – a blind, mindless, but all-consuming desire, and it reached forwards to smash all flesh and smother all hope. It was called by blood, and it had come, unquenchable, in answer.
The ground rippled beneath Galba’s feet as he left the clearing. He pounded down the slope, hoping the trees would slow the tide of moss, but wondering how large the growth truly was, and whether they were all merely running into its enveloping embrace. The vox chatter coming from the rest of the forces was a chorus of overlapping urgency, but there were no calls of casualties or struggle.
‘Your position, Sergeant Galba?’ came Atticus again, the bionic voice as cold and precise as ever, but its rasp somehow encoding a sharp edge of rage.
‘Approaching rapidly, captain. Can you see what is behind us?’
‘Enough of it. We will continue moving at speed. Catch up.’
They kept running. The way forward was made easier by the passage of the others. Brush was trampled, vines and low-hanging branches chopped away. There was moss here, but it was dormant. The million tiny deaths that were the constant reality of a jungle were not enough to rouse it into frenzy. And now Galba heard the green wave crash into the trees. It was the sound of a massive surf and heavy rock, soft with bodies, strong with serpents. He pictured the moss flowing between the gigantic trunks, the tide turning into a thirsting stream. The hissing, rustling and snapping pursued. But the tremors in the ground diminished. They were putting distance between themselves and the hunger. Its blood-fuelled run was slowing.
Then came the fall once more into quiescence. There could be no true silence in the jungle. There was the perpetual whine of insects. Galba had seen no birds yet, but he could hear the distant snarls and shrieks of hunters and prey. There was the rustle of the unseen. But when the pursuit ceased, the calm that descended was as oppressive as lead.
The hunger subsided back into the earth, unsatisfied. The knowledge of its existence spread over the land. Everywhere Galba looked now, he saw the potential for its re-emergence. He thought with regret of the lethality of Medusa. He longed for the purity of its cold indifference. Pythos was unclean. It was anything but indifferent. It was desire at its most naked and inchoate. Such obscenity of the organic deserved but one thing: flame.
He rejoined the other squads at the bottom of the slope. Underbrush and moss had been burned away. There was nothing but ash between the trees here, a space in the jungle carved on the Iron Hands’ terms. There was a chance now to regroup.
Atticus was waiting at the end of the path. Galba wondered again how absolute stillness could be so expressive. As they approached, the captain pivoted on one foot, as if he were the steel door of a fortress gate opening. He was, Galba thought, formidable enough to be one. He was a colossus of war, a being no more to be moved by thoughts of mercy than a Fellblade tank. Those who passed him did so only on his sufferance. Knowing what was coming, Galba slowed down, letting the Salamanders go first. Khi’dem nodded briefly to the Iron Hands’ commander. Atticus made no response. Galba drew abreast with him and stopped. He opened a private vox-channel. ‘Captain,’ he said.
‘Sergeant.’ No brother. And then silence. At least, Galba thought, he had responded on the same channel. Whatever was about to transpire, it would be between them alone.
The silence continued. Galba found himself counting the seconds. He began to see a painful meaning in their number.
‘Six seconds,’ Atticus said. ‘That is a noticeable period of time, is it not?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘When I issue an order, I do not simply expect immediate compliance. I demand it.’
‘
Yes, my lord.’
‘Is there anything I have said that is less than clear? Less than precise? Open to interpretation?’
The last word was especially damning. Interpretation and all the other luxuries of artistic contemplation were the domain of the Emperor’s Children. What had been the subject of playful banter and fraternal jests had, since the Callinedes betrayal, become a symptom of corruption. Interpretation and lies were the same thing. That which had more than one unarguable meaning had clearly been created with deception at its heart.
‘No, brother-captain,’ Galba replied. ‘You are being very clear.’
Atticus turned to go. ‘I do not have the time or resources to waste on disciplinary action,’ he said. ‘But do not fail me again.’ The tenor of the mechanical voice was clear. Galba was not being given a second chance. He was being given an ultimatum.
‘I shall not.’
Atticus looked back at him. ‘I am not in the habit of explaining my orders.’
Galba was taken aback. ‘Nor should you be, my lord.’
‘I shall, however, seek clarity from you on one point. You believe, do you not, that I commanded you to abandon the Salamanders to their fate. You believe that I was motivated by spite, rather than strategy.’
‘No, brother-captain.’ He was shaking his head, horrified. ‘I believe nothing of the kind.’
‘Then why did you hesitate?’
He should have had an answer. He should have had a reason. He should not have met the question with ghastly silence. Galba felt a void gape in his chest, an abyss in which might lurk the most pernicious doubt, and into which he was refusing to gaze. Yet Atticus was forcing him up to its edge. The awful seconds ticked away once more, and Galba had no answer to give. Instead, his captain’s toxic questions bred others, just as poisonous.
Galba looked at the legionary that stood before him, at the being who had exterminated his flesh to the point that there was very little to distinguish the armour from the form beneath it. He thought about that one human eye that still gazed from the metal skull, and it seemed to him, in this moment, that Atticus’s remaining concessions to humanity were nothing more than expressions of scorn. Worming its way out of the dark was a deep question, never articulated before, but expressed perhaps in the moderation of his own bionic enhancements. If the full rejection of the flesh was the goal, why had Ferrus Manus never completed that journey? The primarch’s silver-metal arms had been the limit of his metamorphosis. What did it mean that Atticus had gone so much further?
Six seconds. Galba blinked. He rejected the absurdity of this train of thought. If he continued to follow it, he would be brought to doubt the most fundamental tenets of the Iron Hands. And he did not doubt them. If anything, the disgusting, chaotic explosion of the organic he had just witnessed only reinforced the sane and ordered virtues of the machine. As rationality returned to him, he felt his answer come to him. It was a simple admission of shame.
But before he could express it, Atticus spoke again. ‘Did you accomplish anything in your delay? Was a single warrior, of whatever Legion, saved?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘What purpose was served by anyone remaining on that field for another six seconds?’
‘None.’
‘And what would have been the result if Mistress Erephren had come to harm as a result of your choices?’
‘Disaster.’ He did not try to exculpate himself with the sorry excuse that he had confided her safety to the care of a subordinate. He sought no forgiveness for his past actions. He would seek redemption in his future ones.
Atticus nodded with the smooth up-and-down motion of a turret. ‘None,’ he repeated. ‘I feel no great warmth for our brothers from the other Legions, Galba. But I act for the Emperor. Always. And what I command is what I believe will bring us victory. Always. Am I clear?’
‘Yes, brother-captain.’
‘Good. Then let us see what Mistress Erephren can tell us next about our quest through this obscenity.’
The astropath was standing with Vektus. ‘Our thanks, brother,’ Atticus said.
‘My duty, brother-captain,’ Vektus said, pleased, and withdrew.
Galba was grateful for Atticus’s implication that Vektus had been acting under orders flowing down a unified chain of command. The humane gesture in the captain’s choice of words surprised him, and his surprise shamed him. He hurled his doubts back into the pit, and declared it sealed.
Erephren’s posture was as rigid as ever, but strain had etched deeper furrows into her brow. A narrow trickle of blood fell from her left eye. ‘We are close,’ she said. Her voice was flat. It was not weak, but it was diminished, as though her presence were an illusion, and she was calling to them from a great distance.
‘The warp is taking you from us,’ Atticus said.
‘It is attempting to,’ she agreed. ‘But it will not succeed. Have no fear, captain.’ She smiled, looking like an ancient icon of death. ‘But then, you don’t, do you?’
‘I have full confidence in your strength, mistress,’ Atticus replied, the embodiment of metal addressing the triumph of determination over the flesh. ‘Show us the way.’
She pointed, and Atticus led the way forwards. Due east still, deeper into the jungle. The ground was level. There were no features to distinguish this direction from any other. The trees, even more dense than on the slope, surrounded the Iron Hands in a green prison.
‘Brother Galba,’ Khi’dem voxed. ‘I know the help you tried to give us came at a cost.’
Galba did not answer. He was not interested. The field of blood and green was behind him.
‘I would have you know,’ Khi’dem continued, ‘that though your orders were correct, your actions were, too.’ Then he clicked off, sparing the Iron Hands legionary the need to respond.
Galba wanted to deny Khi’dem’s assertion. He wanted to regard what he had done as a lingering weakness of the flesh, one that he must, in time, shed with all the others.
But he did not.
‘I’m sorry we were not close enough to help,’ Ptero said.
He and Khi’dem were marching together. Their two squads followed behind. Ptero held no official rank over his fellows. But he was a veteran, and in the chaos of Isstvan, his greater experience had made the difference in saving even a few of his battle-brothers. Unit cohesion demanded leadership, and the survivors had deferred to him. Khi’dem wondered if the weight of Ptero’s new responsibility dragged at his shoulder in the same way as his own rank did. To be a sergeant of such a reduced squad was a constant reminder of failure.
He shook his head. ‘No help was possible,’ he told Ptero. ‘We should have retreated more quickly, but…’ He moved his hand in a gesture of tired frustration.
‘No one saw that coming, brother.’
‘That moss, perhaps not, but you sensed something was wrong. Those beasts disturbed you.’
‘They did,’ the Raven Guard agreed. ‘Those animals made no sense. Everything about them, from their herding instinct to their build, announced them as plant-eaters.’
‘Apart from the fact that they were not.’
‘Exactly. Our experience of this planet’s life is still limited, but have you noticed the pattern?’
Khi’dem saw where he was heading. ‘Everything is carnivorous.’
‘Even the plants.’
‘That should not be sustainable.’ He thought about the punishing geological cycles on Nocturne, and of how tenuous life’s grip was on his home world. Nocturne boasted many dangerous species, but there was also a balance between predator and prey. Without it, Nocturne would have no ecosystem at all.
‘It’s worse than that,’ Ptero said. His helmet turned to face Khi’dem. ‘How did this come to be?’
The implication was obvious. ‘Not through natural processes.’
‘No.’<
br />
‘You think we might have a sentient enemy on Pythos?’
Ptero had returned his gaze to the jungle. Khi’dem could almost see the wheels turning in the tactician’s mind as he scanned for threats. ‘I do not know,’ Ptero said. ‘Our information is suggestive enough for concern, but too incomplete to be of use. The Iron Hands found no sign of a civilisation, or even of its ruins, so that is encouraging. But it is not conclusive.’
The land began to rise again. The slope was far more gentle than the descent from the promontory had been. It was consistent, though. The elevation increased step by step. The line of Space Marines detoured around a massive fern, its trunk thick as a flagship’s cannon. Its enormous fronds hung low over their heads. They moved back and forth, their blades passing over each other, creating shifting, interlocking patterns. They were the hands of a mesmerist, summoning the gaze, luring the mind. Ptero slashed at them with his lightning claws.
‘Dangerous?’ Khi’dem asked, watching green shreds flutter to the ground.
‘Perhaps,’ Ptero answered. He gave the trunk a parting gouge as they passed.
‘You are frustrated, brother.’
‘I am.’
‘You doubt the wisdom of this mission?’
Ptero’s sigh was a crackle of static over the vox. ‘I hope it succeeds. The potential for valuable intelligence is great, and given the loss we have suffered, we have very few credible means of striking back open to us.’
‘But?’
‘I am troubled by what we are fighting here. The hostility of this planet is something more than feral. There is an enemy here, but I do not know how to fight it.’
‘Neither do I.’ The combat philosophies of the Salamanders and the Raven Guard were poles apart. Neither the unbreakable line nor the lightning strike would serve here, though. When the land itself was hostile, there was no ground to hold, and no terrain to exploit.
As the land continued its slow rise, the jungle unveiled variations in its character. The legionaries passed through areas where the trees had been toppled. Some had been uprooted. The trunks of many others had been snapped in two, or had their top halves sheared away. Khi’dem saw a cluster of conifers that looked as if they had been flattened into splinters, and at least one tree suspended by the branches of others a good ten metres off the ground, as if it had flown there. The clouds were dark, angry bruises visible through the ragged wound in the canopy.
The Damnation of Pythos Page 6
