by Gav Thorpe
The antechamber was only a little wider than the conveyor, and about ten metres long. It was lavishly decorated and furnished, at odds with the militaristic surrounds of the rest of the fortress and compound. A chandelier sparkled overhead, thick carpet underfoot as Azrael stepped out.
Wooden benches and tables had been upended to provide cover for a score of defenders. These were a mix of the hereteks they had encountered on the lower level and the renegade forces that manned the Iron Stalagmite’s outer defences.
A rage of bullets and las-blasts screamed into the open conveyor, bouncing and hissing from the Terminators and walls. Azrael opened fire as he forced himself into the storm, directing a trail of bolts that ripped through a trio of rebels sheltering behind an upturned table directly ahead.
Belial fired past his commander, turning a sofa to kindling and torn upholstery, leaving those it had sheltered bloodily smeared across the pastel-coloured wallpaper behind.
The doors ahead opened and more soldiers fired from beyond, using the frame as cover. Azrael replied with a long burst from his storm bolter, each explosive impact turning the plastered wall to dust, punching through in a shower of deadly wood and brick splinters.
The whine of the second conveyor announced its arrival, a second before the rest of Belial’s squad burst into the close confines, their storm bolters unerringly seeking the defenders. Volleys of fire spat past centimetres away from the Grand Master and sergeant, never at risk of hitting them.
Azrael trusted his battle-brothers to clear the room in his wake and did not pause in his advance. Long strides took him to the doorway where the remains of five soldiers were piled. Another tried to slam one of the doors against him. His powerfist swung out, turning the wood to splinters that tore open the man’s face and throat and sent him reeling back with a gurgling cry.
The space beyond the door was dark, and only by the artificial projection of the sensorium was Azrael able to see that it extended almost a hundred metres towards the centre of the citadel. A maze of smaller chambers and corridors surrounded it – private rooms, storage areas and service access.
Naberius’ signal was a bright star in the centre of it all, drawing Azrael on like a siren. He almost did not notice the soldiers arrayed along both sides of the hall, nor the blistering fire that sparked from his plate.
He activated his suit lamps and their blinding light bathed the hall. Flinching from the glare, the rebels were easy targets – the steady pound of rounds from the Grand Master’s storm bolter cut down a dozen foes in the next few seconds. Writhing tentacle-like cables and pipework covered the walls and ceiling and coiled across the floor like serpents. Puffs of vapour and gasses issued from grilled maws, and blinking coloured lights seemed to stare back at the Grand Master from within loops of semi-organic technology.
Advancing a few more paces, Azrael brought the light to the further reaches of the hall. What he saw made him falter in his next step.
Naberius was held up in a web of iron spines and ribbed pipes, his armour broken and his flesh pierced in many places. His helm lay in the blood-spattered coils below, as did the broken haft of the Chapter banner, the standard itself draped over the undulating mass, burned and stained.
His eyes were open, pale circles in a mask of crimson from a steadily weeping wound across his brow. Something had been daubed over his head, oily and glistening, and it ran in black tears down his cheeks. The Supreme Grand Master silently mouthed something, lips and jaw moving in the same manner again and again.
More techno-cultists surrounded the ghastly vision, their wolf-masks pushed back to reveal sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. One amongst them had golden robes – clearly their leader. A shock of white hair fell from his balding scalp almost to his waist, as he stood before Naberius’ half-corpse with arms outstretched. In one hand he held a serpent-hafted rod with a cog-shaped head; in the other, a three-tined dagger with blades that shimmered and moved as if alive.
They did not turn, intent upon their ceremony, oblivious to the violence that erupted around them. As more Deathwing moved into the hall the storm of bolts grew intense, a near-constant barrage of fire that turned men, women and machines to ruin.
Azrael opened fire on the chief cultists. His bolts flared across the divide and then stopped a metre from their target. They hung in the air until their propellant burned out, and then clattered to the floor.
The technomage did not turn.
The horrific scene had so consumed Azrael he only just noticed the surge of signals on the sensorium. A swirling immaterial vortex appeared to his right, beyond one of the doorways, its centre a mass of spiralling stars and sickly hues. Hulking warriors materialised from the depths, motes of power dancing from their armour as they strode from the immaterial breach.
They were as large as the Deathwing – traitor legionaries in Cataphractii Terminator suits older than the Imperium itself. Their livery, amongst the baroque gold stylings and plain metal and ceramite of patchwork repairs, was a midnight blue. Shimmers of lightning crawled over the plates as though trapped in the enamel.
Night Lords, despotic servants of the Dark Powers, architects of the Rhamiel revolt.
The Deathwing and traitors opened fire together; rounds from combi-bolters and storm bolters flashed past each other in the glare of suit lamps to spark from walls and armour. Ceramite splinters showered from the impacts as the two forces traded fusillades at point-blank range.
Azrael turned his weapon on the Night Lords but continued his advance towards the tech-cultists, Belial and his squad moving with him.
A bass growl issued from the left, causing another squad of power-armoured Night Lords to part like a stormy wave. From the pulsing warp portal behind them, a blocky shadow even larger than the Terminators eclipsed the light and the floor resounded with a monotonous heavy tread.
With a metallic screech, a Dreadnought tore through the reality barrier and paused at the threshold. The walker filled the space with its massive armoured form. Its central sarcophagus was rendered with an embossed image of a skeleton with bat wings, arms folded across its chestbone, as though a grotesque mockery of the Angel of Death found in so many of the Dark Angels’ designs.
It was armed with two scythe-like claws that gleamed red with a shimmering energy field, bathing the lightning-wreathed armour of its body with ruddy light. It looked hunched, if such a thing was possible, almost off balance as it lumbered into the hall. It paused a few metres from the heretek cabal and let out a piercing mechanical shriek, a scream of insane rage that filled the hall.
The Night Lords squad behind it turned their bolters and missile launcher upon the Deathwing, catching them in a crossfire with the traitor Cataphractii on the other side of the hall. The Dreadnought loomed over Azrael, glittering battle-scythes sweeping back and forth as it charged.
The Grand Master avoided the first blade as best he could, but his armour was too heavy to allow him to elude the second. The crackling edge lashed across his pauldron, scoring deep through the armour, biting into the crux terminatus honour badge that adorned it.
He grabbed at the flailing weapon with his power fist and the fingers of the huge gauntlet clamped around reticulated links. Servo matched servo with hisses and whines as the Dreadnought tried to wrench its weapon free, its own bulk blocking the attack of its opposite limb. Clawed feet dug into the stone floor and tertiary clamping talons flicked out to set the legs in place. With a burst of vapours from ornate exhaust stacks, the warped battle engine pivoted at the waist, dragging Azrael sideways towards the Cataphractii.
Meritus and Cadael charged the traitors, throwing themselves bodily at their opponents with power fists swinging. Garvel followed behind, the first swipe of his thunder hammer taking a renegade square in the chest with a concussive explosion of power.
Belial strode past Azrael, power sword in hand, his storm bolter directed at the second squad of Night Lords to the left. The Dreadnought detected his approach and flicked out a scythe-
blade with a metallic snarl, but too late to catch the Deathwing sergeant. Belial’s blade rang against the plated sheath of the leg, throwing up sparks and leaving a deep welt in the armour.
He struck two more blows, each strong enough to slay a man but of little use against the thick armour of the war machine. The Dreadnought snarled and backed away, trying again to slash open the sergeant with a powered scythe, tugging and wrenching at Azrael to free its other weapon.
A fresh flurry of bolts from the doorway announced the arrival of Squad Balthasar. Manael’s assault cannon snarled, followed by the rapid bark of a reaper autocannon carried by one of the renegades. Their shells shrieked past each other across the hall.
‘Your orders were to secure the field generator, sergeant,’ Azrael snapped, adjusting his weight as the Dreadnought changed tactic and lumbered towards him, trying to bear him down with its mass.
‘You gave me independent command, Grand Master,’ the sergeant replied as his squad fanned out behind a wall of fire directed at the Night Lords in power armour. ‘Therizon and three squads are securing the generator now – it’ll be destroyed in the next sixty seconds. I thought you might need assistance – you have not been answering the vox.’
In retrospect, Azrael realised he had heard nothing from the others for two minutes, having been too focused on Naberius’ continued survival. The sensorium was working, but there was a buzz at the outer edges of the scanner screen – some kind of interference from the hereteks.
‘Give me an opening, Grand Master!’ said Belial, now behind the Dreadnought.
Azrael complied without thought. He relinquished his hold on the Dreadnought’s scythe and manoeuvred past its shoulder to slam his fist into the weaker armour beneath its engine. Ceramite cracked and splintered from the first blow and disintegrated at the second.
With a roar, the Dreadnought ripped up its feet and turned. Though the scythe did not catch Azrael, the articulated arm smashed into his chest, knocking him to his back with a crash. The Night Lord war engine took a step closer, arm drawn back for a second swing.
Belial lanced his sword two-handed into the breach made by Azrael’s power fist, driving his blade to the hilt. The Dreadnought spasmed as the blade penetrated the internal sarcophagus, piercing the mortal remains of the traitor Space Marine within.
Azrael lifted his fist to ward away the blade as it slashed down, the blow a little wide of the mark as the pilot’s death spasms twitched the war machine’s limbs. The scythe glanced across the back of the Grand Master’s power fist, the flare of competing fields giving off a blinding flash. The weapon’s tip dug into the broken remnants of Azrael’s pauldron to embed into the flesh of his shoulder.
With a last shudder, the Dreadnought settled, pilot dead.
‘The hereteks!’ Azrael snapped as Belial stepped past the war engine to assist his Grand Master. ‘Naberius comes first.’
Balthasar’s squad were halfway up the hall by now, providing cover fire for Azrael as he prised the Dreadnought’s blade out of his arm. Blood bubbled up from the wound and pain made his fingers spasm as he first rolled to one side and then awkwardly pushed himself up from the floor.
Belial’s squad was locked in battle with the Cataphractii – two Night Lords were down but so too was Cadael, armour torn from chest to throat, exposed body turned to bloody rags and splintered bone.
Sergeant Belial was at the circle of hereteks, raining blows against the invisible wall that surrounded them, striking empty air like a maniac. Azrael moved up beside him and slammed his fist towards the chief cultist. His blow stopped half a metre from its target, encountering impossible resistance that rapidly slowed the attack rather than stopped it sharply. Pulling his fist back again was like dragging at a heavy weight.
‘Grand Master!’ Balthasar’s shout drew his attention to the sensorium, through which he saw a spark of energy crackle in the air behind the defeated Dreadnought. It flickered and started to expand.
‘This isn’t working, sergeant,’ Azrael told Belial as the sergeant swung two-handed at the invisible barrier.
He stepped back to survey the hall more closely, seeking inspiration. Balthasar’s squad had driven back the Night Lords on the left, but were in turn being held at bay by the hissing blasts of a melta-gun, powerful enough to cut through even Tactical Dreadnought armour with a single shot. Meritus and Garvel had been forced to withdraw by the arrival of more Cataphractii. With another portal about to open, the tide of battle was most definitely not moving in favour of the Deathwing.
‘We cannot go through,’ said Azrael, vocalising his thoughts to help focus them. He fired a grenade, its trajectory directed towards the centre of the hereteks’ circle, but it stopped some distance above, just like the bolts, its detonation spraying outwards from the shield that protected them. ‘We cannot go over...’
His eye was drawn back to the gaunt features of Supreme Grand Master Naberius. For just an instant their eyes met, and in that moment Azrael saw... nothing. The dead stare that returned his gaze held nothing of the warrior he knew. It was a look of unthinking coldness, and betrayed the final indignity inflicted by the hereteks.
‘He’s not alive,’ Azrael told Belial. His gaze moved to the cables and pipes that kept the Supreme Grand Master suspended in the air. ‘Not truly. They are keeping his body operational, nothing more.’
‘A trap, the bait for us,’ Belial replied, reaching the same conclusion as his commander. ‘One that we were too willing to spring for them.’
‘Naberius shall have the final vengeance, brother,’ Azrael said grimly. ‘Vox-capture, code Vanguard-eight-four-alpha.’
+Vox-capture recognised+ appeared in his display.
‘Command authority override. Transmit to signal alpha. Terminus override.’
The pulse of Naberius’ life signs became a fixed point in the sensorium, accompanied by a constant hum of recognition from the Terminator suit’s machine spirit.
+Terminus override signal ready to transmit.+
‘Transmit.’
It took three seconds for the core of the Supreme Grand Master’s power pack to overload, too swift for the hereteks to recognise what was happening. One moment they stood in a circle around their prize, trusting to their archeotech and Night Lord allies to protect them. The next, a fireball exploded from their captive, incinerating everything within a three-metre radius.
Flesh turned to ash, robes burst into flame and reflective armour became glassy slag by the core detonation. The effect on the shield was instantaneous, and the last remnants of the shock wave passed over Belial and Azrael as a wash of heat and light.
With the deaths of the hereteks the vox-blocking mechanism was also destroyed. The comm channels burst into life with a chatter of signals, one of them insistent above all the others.
‘...have lock on to your position. Ready to teleport. Grand Master Azrael, this is the Penitent Warrior awaiting your command. We have lock on to your position. Ready to t–’
‘Penitent Warrior! This is Azrael. Immediate withdrawal, all Deathwing squads, standard hierarchy.’ He stepped over the smoking remnants of the techno-cultists and dragged the ash-strewn remains of the Chapter banner from beneath the body of their leader. Little more than a square metre of it remained, the splayed feathers of a white wing. Yet it was enough; it had survived. There was a lesson in that. ‘All squads, prepare for extraction.’
Date Ident: 627819.M41
The singing in his head has almost stopped.
Almost.
He realises it hasn’t; he has simply ceased to listen. Its mellifluous tones, its constant strokes of praise and demands for adoration are part of the background hum of his thoughts, ever present like the armour that encloses him or the twilight of the deep mines of Truan IX.
He keeps the siren lure at bay with his own voice, fixes on every word that he speaks as if it is a cliff edge on which he is hanging. He not only sings the hymnals, he feels them, pulls them in to his soul as a ward aga
inst the accusations and mockery of the thing that has destroyed his battle-brothers.
No, it did not destroy his brothers. It made them destroy each other with its fake threats and false promises. Only he has survived. Only he remains to avenge them. Four days have passed since Master Batheus and the others died. Four days since he started his hunt for the creature. Four days alone against the unceasing voice.
The litanies continue even as he roams the lower shafts seeking its lair. Every canticle and verse he can recall becomes his armoury, until the teachings of the Chaplains are exhausted. He then begins the Lessons of the Armorium, and feels a quiver of rage run through the walls as he starts the Rites of Bolter Sanctification.
The las-scorched walls and floor are bare here, the litter of miners’ bodies and those of his battle-brothers far behind. Soon even the touch of the ore-workers disappears, to leave only virgin stone for him to follow.
His continuous muttering moves on to the Seven Chantings of Activation for the engine of a Land Raider. As he recites the Third Chanting – the Release of the Invocating Rune of Gears – he spies a gleam ahead, a shimmer of gold that, when he turns to gaze upon it fully, is more of a darker shadow.
He lost his helm during the fighting against his squad-brothers. Or removed it after, he is no longer sure. Perhaps he took it off to listen to the song all the better, unfiltered by the machinery of his auto-senses.
The soulmusic is so pure, so invigorating, it lifts him...
‘And on the Fourth Chanting thou shalt ignite the Battery Connections with the activation of the Rune of Power. By its inverted red triangular shape shall it be known, located on the thoracic converter panel on the left of the driver’s station,’ he calls out. His voice rises to a bellow, the words almost meaningless, but better than outright defiance of the whispering threats, for he has learnt that to engage, to confront is only an invitation to a wave of paranoia. ‘If the Rune of Power be active already, recourse must be made to rectify the negative flow!’
