by Gav Thorpe
It was an understandable but deplorable strategy, devoid of all honour. The Dark Angels treated their unaugmented serfs with respect – many had once been novitiates that had for one reason or another failed later testing or had suffered harm as a result of training or the organ implantation process. They were servants to be protected, not a faceless resource to be expended like ammunition.
Tactical Squad Devorus followed the Dreadnought as he lumbered onto the flight deck. The interior of the Terminus Est was as unholy as the exterior. Every surface was crusted with corrosion, fungal growths and filthy grease. Flies flitted everywhere and there were already hordes of maggots crawling up through the decking to set upon the newly-dead. Fronds like hanging guts draped from the ceiling, pulsing with internal motions, intertwined with the machine parts of the ship.
Telemenus fired his lascannons at the launch bay door as he advanced. Reinforced to guard against the ravening vacuum of space and the impact of anti-ship missiles, it took four pinpoint blasts to remove the locking mechanism. Two of the battle-brothers moved forward and pulled the doors apart, revealing an arterial corridor beyond.
The roar of more jets announced the arrival of a second gunship. Without turning, Telemenus felt the approach of twenty Assault Marines, bounding quickly across the deck with blasts from their jump packs. To the left and right, above and below, drop-ships and boarding torpedoes were bringing in the entirety of the Chapter. Telemenus had only witnessed the whole Chapter deployed to battle once before, during the first scouring of Piscina Four in the wake of Ghazghkull’s invasion.
Never had he thought a starship would be the target of so much effort. Whatever was aboard the Terminus Est, the Supreme Grand Master was willing to exchange his entire command for its destruction. Thoughts of Piscina Four were not encouraging – despite the best efforts of the Dark Angels the world had eventually succumbed to internal divisions and the ever-resurgent orks. Telemenus hoped that there was a more satisfying conclusion to this attack.
As he left the launch bay, Telemenus found himself in a gullet-like passageway. Fifty metres to the left and the right blast doors had descended to seal the pressure breach. Brothers from the Assault squads leapt forward and placed their melta charges. Both doors were simultaneously vaporised, unleashing a blizzard of warm air, dead flies, bloated spore pods and mangled body parts as the pressure equalised.
Telemenus moved to the right, towards the bark of shotguns and the zip of las-blasts. The Assault Marines returned fire with their pistols, chainswords whirring as they charged along the corridor. Above their heads Telemenus picked out targets further away, sending beams of laser energy and single missiles screaming along the corridor.
The objective beacon led them on two hundred metres to a cross-junction, and a left turn towards the spine of the ship. A huge archway opened up from the passageway into a vaulted space between the dorsal gun batteries.
Reaching the threshold, Telemenus was taken aback by the cathedral-like space. It stretched up for three hundred metres, the ceiling lost in a green vapour that swirled and billowed as though from monstrous exhalations. The walls were thick with hardened filth, in places broken by jutting bone and misshapen rows of teeth. Suckered tentacles turned towards the Dark Angels as they entered, eyestalks quivered and lipless maws moaned mournful warning cries.
The floor was carpeted with daemonic mites – a morass of small, boil-shaped bodies with glinting eyes and needle teeth, and green and black beetles with knobbled carapaces and strangely human eyes. One-eyed daemon-things hovered in the upper mists on the backs of huge flies, while more of their kind emerged in shambling lines from the shadows of the colonnaded hall. Slug-like beasts flopped and slithered amongst the surging tide, waves of rippling filth splashing over the mites and bugs.
Here were the traitors too, in their filth-slicked armour almost indistinguishable from the rotted mess around them. Gizzards bulged from rents in their war-plate, distorted limbs and faces broke through ancient ceramite layers, revealing pustuled skin and leprous flesh.
To the left, no more than two-score metres away, an immense mound of green, pestilent flesh presided over the daemonic horde. Broad, yellow-veined eyes turned towards him, a look almost of sadness drooping the bulbous lips of the huge daemon commander.
Telemenus froze, engulfed by a memory.
Daellon laughed.
‘Emperor-damned miracle, it is. A damned miracle!’
The two Terminators burst into a cavernous space easily a hundred metres high, veined and vaulted like some immense pulmonary chamber. Droplets of spattering fluid fell from open sores above and the uneven floor forced them to slow, lest they trip on one of the cartilaginous ridges and masses that protruded through the skin-like surface.
Telemenus’s eye was immediately drawn to a figure in black Terminator armour and he recognised the markings of Brother Sapphon. With the Chaplain were eight other Terminators, almost surrounded by a crowd of humanoid, single-eyed daemons that crashed rusted blades against the Space Marines’ armour, their bodies twisted and rotting. The Terminators blasted and punched their way through the group, lightning claws carving ruinous tatters in immaterial flesh, while Sapphon bludgeoned and decapitated with his crozius arcanum.
‘Praise the Lion!’ Telemenus called out over the short-range vox. ‘A happy moment this is.’
Sapphon turned in their direction, skull helm half-covered with sickly ichor. He pointed at them with his crozius.
‘Beware!’
Daellon and Telemenus pivoted at the Chaplain’s warning. Dozens of the pustule-beasts boiled through the widening archway behind them, bursting out under the pressure of their numbers. Yet it was not these that had so concerned Sapphon. Behind them loomed something enormous, a bloated shadow that lumbered after its diminutive children.
Squeezing its bulk into the cathedral-like hall with surprising swiftness, the immense daemon was a hill of a beast, a mound of pestilent, torn flesh bloated with gas and fluids that bubbled from weeping sores in its green hide. It was nearly five times the height of Telemenus and Daellon, its broad shadow eclipsing both Terminators. Its wide, flat face was split by a slash of a grin, dagger-teeth discoloured and fractured. Broken horns jutted from either side of its head, dangling with streamers of entrails and foetid matter.
‘Get back!’ Daellon stepped in front of Telemenus and opened fire, stitching bolter detonations across the beast’s chest.
The daemon swung its right arm, flab bulging and rippling, a flail of rusted chain in its fist, each of the three massive lengths ending with a clutch of monstrous skulls. The flail slammed into Daellon. The whip-crack speed of the heads made them hit with a deafening crash, sending the Space Marine clattering a dozen metres across the floor, bouncing and twisting awkwardly over the uneven surface.
Telemenus raised his storm bolter and fired but it was pointless. A rusty pick whose head was as big as his torso plunged down, its tip punching through the left side of his plastron. A thousand crooked nails dragged through his ribs and innards where the pick cut deep into flesh to erupt from the base of his back. Telemenus could not swallow the screech of utter agony ripped from deep within his soul as the daemon dragged free the weapon, the rusted pick chewing at his wounds like a million insects gnawing in his flesh.
He met the gaze of the daemon and tried to fire again, but the storm bolter had fallen from his hand without him realising it. The daemon pouted, brow furrowed, a look of sympathy more than anything else. Telemenus collapsed to his knees, looking as though he had fallen in supplication to its mighty form. Blood frothed from the wound and smaller daemons poured around him, forked tongues lapping at the spilt life fluid. Telemenus mustered enough strength to swipe them away with his power fist, leaving them as burst smears across his broken armour.
Telemenus fell forwards and was unconscious before his masked face slammed into the floor.
T
he daemon-curse was still in him.
He could feel the blackness seeping up from his heart, moving sluggishly along arteries into his lungs and brain. There was nothing he could do to combat the filth that had been unleashed in him. Not even the armoured body of a Dreadnought was proof against the sickness of his soul.
‘Faith is your armour.’
It was a phrase oft-used by the Chaplains, but it sounded far more convincing spoken by the voice of the Emperor. The words were a confident assertion of a fundamental truth, bringing forth something from deep inside his soul.
The memory of his near-death flickered away, burned as though by a bright fire. White flames licked at the edges of Telemenus’s thoughts, forming the image of an eagle, eyes of red, claws made of lightning bolts.
The Dreadnought fired, unleashing a storm of missiles onto the bulbous daemon’s flesh. Telemenus’s lascannon stabbed white beams into its face, turning gawping features into a slurry of broken teeth and melting eyes.
‘Onward for the Lion!’ Telemenus roared from his external speakers. He fired again, pulping the body of the greater daemon with las and missile, turning its torn flesh and scattered innards into a testament to the glory of the Emperor. With each beam and impact his confidence grew. Every shot was a smiting blow for the immortal Master of Mankind. There were no more doubts, no more questions. It was for this purpose that he existed. He gave an exultant shout from his address systems as another salvo of shots turned the remnants of the daemon’s carcass into a spattered mess. ‘Spare no wrath!’
From the other side of the massive hall two more Dreadnoughts appeared, laying about them with power fists and heavy bolters. Assault squads bounded through the fray, hacking and shooting, while Devastators laid down swathes of fire from the upper decks, their heavy weapons tearing into the Plague Marines.
Telemenus pushed on, heading towards the prow as he had been commanded. He did not count the kills, but gloried in each and every one as though it was his first and last. Behind him the Dark Angels surged into the heart of the Terminus Est, laying waste to all in their path.
Unholy Revelation
They were called the Grave Wardens, the most dedicated and skilled of Typhus’s warriors. One hundred strong, clad in ancient Terminator armour, festooned with the marks and rewards of their unholy patron. For ten thousand years a scourge on the Imperium, and before that the greatest warriors of a whole Legion.
They stood between Azrael and his goal and he did not show a moment’s hesitation or mercy.
While the rest of the Chapter overwhelmed the lower decks of the Terminus Est the teleport attack was ranged against the strategium of the huge battleship – the throne room of the Chaos Champion Typhus. The control chamber of the warship was larger than many halls of the Rock, the ceiling held aloft by three dozen pitted pillars, the crumbling vaults above encrusted with glowing growths and fan-like fungi.
As when the Plague Marines had assaulted the Rock, the air was thick with buzzing insects and a cloying miasma of sluggish brown and green clouds. Though a thousand lanterns blazed on hooks in the walls, the smog swallowed up their light, turning it into half-seen daemonic shapes carved from swirling mist.
On a broad dais at the far end of the chamber stood Typhus. Tendrils like lianas hung from the Terminus Est, connected to his massive suit of Terminator armour in the manner of umbilical cords. The swaying cables throbbed and pulsed with their own life, bulging and heaving.
Around him the Grave Wardens were arrayed in squads, bearing reaper autocannons, missile launchers, flamers, plasma guns and combi-bolters. For close assault they wielded an eclectic assortment of glaives, scythes, claws and scimitars that burned with unholy fire. Above them were tattered standards and icons of bone and rusted iron, proclaiming victories for ten millennia and allegiances to powers a million years older.
Of Astelan there was no sign, but the Lord of the Dark Angels did not allow this disappointment to temper his wrath.
‘Death to the traitors!’ he roared, breaking into a run as more Deathwing squads arrived around him, the air swirling with warp energy. ‘Spare none their just execution!’
The command hall erupted with the bark of storm bolters and the crack of combi-bolters. Promethium spewed and missiles shrieked from one force to the other.
Wielding the Lion’s Wrath in one hand, Azrael unleashed alternate blasts of plasma and hails of bolts. The flickering balls of energy punched steaming holes in the armour of the foe, the detonation of bolts splintering hardened bony growths and shattering ceramite.
He ignored the storm of fire that engulfed him, trusting to the arcane powers of the Lion Helm upon his head. Bolts were turned to ash, plasma splashed like rain and missiles burst into fiery blossoms centimetres from his body, but no harm came to the Lord of the Rock.
To his left Nakir fired steady bursts from his storm bolter. Each round unleashed flickered with its own fire and punched clean holes through the enemy Terminators – melta-warheads whose manufacture had been lost in millennia past. His armour was slicked with a gleaming field of gold that shifted aside every incoming projectile and beam.
On the right Ezekiel was wreathed in a black cloud that flashed with red lightning at every impact of bolt and rocket. Bursts of energy streamed from the blade of Traitor’s Bane each time the Chief Librarian levelled his weapon at the foe. His helm was bathed in an auric glow of psychic power, its light burning through the clouds of flies and fog that filled the vile cathedral.
Three squads of Grave Wardens broke from the line, stomping forward to meet the trio of officers. Nakir met the brunt of the first squad, the Sword of Sanctity crashing against the swung spear of the closest Terminator, shattering the haft of the accursed lance. The point of the Heavenfall blade sliced off the top of the Grave Warden’s head with one clean motion, exposing pustulent brain matter.
Ezekiel took the second squad, letting free a burst of ravening energy from his fingertips at the moment of their meeting. The floor beneath the Terminators erupted with black sword blades, piercing their legs and abdomens, slicing through their heavy-gauge war-plate as though it did not exist. Traitor’s Bane coursed golden lightning through their wounded bodies, exploding in forked energy from their eyes and fingers.
The third squad was left for Azrael. A scythe blade slashed out towards his throat but he caught it on the vambrace of his battleplate, turning aside the gleaming weapon. The Sword of Secrets felt alive in his grasp, lunging for the enemy as if possessed by a life of its own. It stabbed into the exposed armpit of the Plague Terminator and buried deep into the corrupted warrior’s chest. Wrenching the blade free, Azrael ducked beneath a swinging fist and fired the Lion’s Wrath, turning the head of another foe into a dissipating mass of vapour.
Blows rained down on the field projected by the Lion Helm but Azrael’s thoughts were fixed on dealing death. The Sword of Secrets licked left and right in his hand, dealing cuts and thrusts without pause, slashing open millennia-old armour, exposing necrotic flesh and skin blistered with weeping sores.
Belial arrived half a minute later with his Knights. Shields locked, the Deathwing were like a battering ram at the gates of a castle. The Grave Wardens could not hold against their charge, their line breaking apart like shattered timbers before the maces and flails of the First Company’s finest.
Azrael did not hesitate, but charged into the breach opened by Belial’s attack. Ezekiel and Nakir followed, breaking away from their foes as more Deathwing Terminators reached the Grave Warden squads. As Azrael reached the steps leading up to Typhus’s dais, Nakir turned towards the Grave Wardens, taking up a guard position to protect Azrael. Ezekiel ascended beside him.
Typhus was swelled with arcane power, larger even than the company of Terminators that served him, dwarfing Azrael. His armour was covered with a sheen of pale green mucus that glistened on plates scabbed like torn flesh, ceramite vambraces and
pauldrons scaled like flaking eczema. In places ragged weaves of adamantium mail covered breaches in the plate, which sported a profusion of reinforced bonding studs. Bony growths grew through cracks in the plate.
His once-knightly armour was adorned with a single forehead horn, his cheek guards inset with two half-censer breathing gills that leaked olive-coloured vapour. Yellow lenses flashed as the commander of the Terminus Est turned his head towards the mortal creature stepping foot into his domain.
The Lord of the Rock paused a few steps from the top of the platform.
‘“Thou shalt not suffer the unclean to live,”’ Azrael raged, brandishing the Sword of Secrets. ‘Do not think that you can intrude upon the demesne of the Dark Angels and not suffer consequence.’
Typhus laughed, a grating, rumbling sound that reverberated across the whole edifice of the strategium, making columns shake free clouds of dust. Cracked plaster and faded murals scattered flakes like snow onto the raging battle between the Grave Wardens and the Deathwing.
‘It dares to come onto my ship and threaten me? What spirit!’ Typhus turned his whole body towards Azrael. With a hiss like a nest of snakes, the pipes adjoined to the Chaos lord broke away, exposing puckered orifices and bony flues across the top and back of his armour. ‘Welcome to the heart of the Destroyer Hive!’
Typhus raised his arms. In his right hand appeared an enormous scythe, its crooked blade a long shard of iron that shone with dark power. He laughed again, and as his body shook there came to Azrael’s ears a buzzing sound. From the holes and chimneys of Typhus’s war-plate spewed forth a cloud of flies with black bodies as large as a fist, their veined wings fluttering. Dozens, then hundreds and then thousands spilled impossibly from within Typhus’s suit, surrounding Azrael with a solid wall of squirming furry bodies and multi-faceted eyes.
The living wall started to close on the Lord of the Rock, blocking out all of the light, plunging him into a throbbing, buzzing darkness.
