25 For 25

by Various

  Such grievous wounds would have put down even one of the Adeptus Astartes, but the newborn barely registered them now.

  The newborn followed his gaze and said, ‘We travel through the realm of my masters. Here I heal quicker.’

  ‘And you already heal fast,’ said Vaanes.

  ‘The power of Chaos is everywhere and grows stronger every day.’

  ‘Spoken like a true pupil.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked the newborn, his curiosity genuine.

  ‘I mean that sounds like something someone told you rather than something you know.’

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘Of course there is,’ said Vaanes, his patience wearing thin at the newborn’s insatiable curiosity. He had joined Honsou to train the newborn to fight, not to be his teacher of ethics and knowledge.

  ‘Tell me the difference.’

  ‘It means that you are being told a lot of things, but are learning very little,’ said Vaanes.

  The newborn considered this for a moment, cocking his head to one side and chewing its bottom lip like a child thinking hard. Vaanes let his eyes drift away from the creature… he still couldn’t think of him as a person, not when he had been a child mere months ago.

  The fact that he so closely resembled a man he hated didn’t help much either.

  The last he had seen of Uriel Ventris had been in the mountains of Medrengard as the fool had been about to attack Honsou’s fortress with a pack of rabid, cannibalistic monsters at his heel. Though Vaanes had been sure Ventris would perish within the fortress, it appeared that the resourceful captain had prevailed and helped bring down Khalan-Ghol.

  ‘Do you hate me?’ asked the newborn suddenly.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you hate me?’ repeated the newborn. ‘I think you do.’

  ‘Hate you? I don’t even know what you really are or what to call you.’

  ‘I don’t have a name,’ said the newborn. ‘I have not earned one yet.’

  ‘You don’t earn names, they’re given to you when you’re born.’

  ‘I remember my birth,’ said the newborn.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What… what was it like?’ asked Vaanes, curious despite himself.

  ‘Painful.’

  Vaanes knew little about how creatures such as the newborn were created, save what Ventris had told him when he had sold the lie of honour to his warrior band at the Sanctuary. But he had learned enough to know that the newborn had been little more than a child when the transformation of his entire flesh had begun.

  Biological hot-housing, daemonic magic and debased techniques of genetic theft had accelerated his growth with strands of geneseed ripped from the meat and bone of Uriel Ventris. Diabolical suckling within the womb of a daemonic host creature had nourished it and sagging skin carved from the bodies of slaves had clothed him.

  Though he had the flesh and physique of a Space Marine, he had the mind of a neophyte.

  ‘Painful…’ said Vaanes. ‘I imagine it was.’

  ‘Was?’ said the newborn, shaking his head. ‘It still is. My every waking moment is pain.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Vaanes.

  ‘No,’ said the newborn, stepping close to him with its teeth bared. ‘You don’t. I am the broken shards of a human being, Ardaric Vaanes. My every breath is pain. Every beat of my heart is pain. Everything is pain. Why should I be the only one to suffer like this? I want everyone to hurt like I do.’

  ‘And you do a good job of that,’ said Vaanes, meeting the angry stare of the newborn, and remembering the horrific, mutilating death of the magos on Golbasto.

  ‘It is all I have,’ spat the newborn. ‘You have your name and a lifetime of memory, all I have are nightmares and the stolen memories of another.’

  ‘You have Ventris’s memories? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Not memories really,’ said the newborn, his anger diminishing. ‘More like fragments of half-remembered dreams. The world we travel to is one I see in those fragments.’

  ‘Do you know this world’s name?’ asked Vaanes, intrigued.

  ‘No,’ said the newborn, ‘but I know it is precious to him. An army of great and terrible hunger came here, but it was defeated.’

  ‘Is that all you know?’

  ‘I think so… I… I… know things of him and I feel the soul of his flesh within me, but…’

  ‘But what?’ asked Vaanes.

  ‘But everything I am taught by my masters of the power of Chaos tells me to reject such feelings. I am an instrument of the will of gods that were and ever shall be, a weapon to be used in their service and nothing more.’

  ‘Aren’t we all…’ said Vaanes, beckoning Svoljard and Jeffar San back to the centre of the battle deck. ‘But it does explain something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why we keep beating you,’ said Vaanes. ‘It’s Ventris. Everything about him is part of you. The things that make him who he is are imprinted in your very flesh and as much as Honsou and Grendel try to beat that out of you, it’s always going to be there.’

  ‘Are you saying I am imperfect?’

  Vaanes laughed. ‘That goes without saying, but Ventris’s childish sense of right and wrong, good and evil… they’re pulling you apart from the inside. You fight fair and that’s not how we do things around here.’

  Svoljard and Jeffar San rejoined Vaanes and he jabbed his finger into the newborn’s chest as he said, ‘We fight again and this time no pulling of punches. You had Svoljard at your mercy and you didn’t finish him. Don’t make that mistake again. Understood?’

  ‘Understood,’ growled the newborn, casting a hostile glance at the Wolf Brother.

  Once again, the three warriors surrounded the newborn and made ready to fight.

  ‘Now–’ began Vaanes.

  Before he could finish, the newborn was in motion, his fist smashing into Svoljard’s jaw and tearing it off in a shower of blood and splintered bone. The stricken warrior dropped his axe and clutched at his ruined face. Blood jetted from the wound and a horrific, wet scream gurgled from Svoljard’s throat.

  The axe fell and the newborn swept it up, spinning on his heel to smash it into Jeffar San’s breastplate. The blade clove through ceramite plate and ossified bone to lodge deep within the White Consul’s chest cavity. Jeffar San’s legs buckled and he collapsed to his knees, an awful mask of shock and pain twisting his proud features in horror.

  Even as Vaanes registered the speed with which the newborn had moved, he leapt upon him, his bloody fists reaching for his neck.

  Vaanes moved in tune with the newborn’s attack, swaying backwards and buying himself precious moments of life. He twisted his body along the direction of its lunge.

  Razor claws snapped from his gauntlets.

  He punched up into the newborn’s belly and heaved.

  The impaled newborn sailed over him, landing in a crumpled heap on the deck.

  Vaanes rolled to his feet as the newborn wailed in pain and Jeffar San fell forwards onto the deck with a solid thump.

  Had the fight taken so short a time?

  Vaanes drew back his lightning claws into a fighting posture and activated the crackling energy sheath with a thought. The newborn was in killing mood and Vaanes could afford to take no chances.

  But it seemed the fight had gone out of the newborn as he pushed himself painfully to his knees. Blood and the familiar oily, yellow glow oozed from the mortal wound at his belly as it closed, but he seemed not to care.

  ‘Was that better?’ hissed the newborn, grinning at the suffering he had caused.

  ‘Much better,’ said Vaanes.

  The Imperial battleship sailed away from the Warbreed, its enormous bulk a slab of bristling, ancient metal as it plied its stately course through the stars, oblivious to the enemy that passed beneath it. Its name was a mystery, but the threat it represented should any of its surveyors, auspex or escorts disc
over them was very real indeed.

  Ever since Cycerin had brought the ship through the gates of the empyrean, they had followed a stuttering course towards their target, avoiding patrol flotillas, system monitors and listening posts scattered throughout the system.

  Now the image of the planet filled the viewing bay, a frigid white orb with ugly blotches of unnatural colour spread over its surface like liver spots on the skull of a withered old man. Honsou neither knew nor cared for its name. That it was known and valued by Ventris was all that mattered.

  Honsou smiled as he watched the image of the battleship recede on the plotting table, his fear that the ship would discover them diminishing along with its engine signature. The strategium of the Warbreed was subdued, as though their Imperial enemies might somehow hear them from so far away.

  ‘They’ve missed us!’ breathed Cadaras Grendel, gripping the edge of the plotting table with white knuckled hands. ‘I don’t believe it…’

  Honsou nodded and said, ‘That was the last one. We’re inside their patrol ring now.’

  Grendel smiled a predator’s grin and shook his head in disbelieving amusement. ‘Now all we have to do is worry about the planetary monitor ships. All it’ll take is one of them to get so much as a sniff of us and we’re dead.’

  ‘That’s why we have our guide,’ said Honsou, nodding towards the strategium’s prow.

  Adept Cycerin stood before his iron lectern as always, his hands clasped either side of the newborn’s head, who knelt with his back to the monstrously transformed magos. Ardaric Vaanes stood a little to one side of the lectern, grimacing in disgust at the sight of the organic plugs Cycerin’s hands had become as they slithered within the back of the newborn’s skull.

  The newborn’s skin rippled with a grotesque undulant motion as the bio-dendrites rooted around in his brain for the information they needed to survive this journey. His eyes fluttered behind tightly squeezed lids and his lips moved in a soundless mantra.

  ‘Does that hurt it?’ wondered Grendel.

  ‘Does it matter?’ countered Honsou. ‘Ventris was here and he knows the deployment protocols of the ships and that means the newborn knows them. Maybe not consciously, but the deployments, the Veritas codes, everything. They’re all in there. We need that if we’re to get close enough to do what we planned.’

  ‘True enough,’ agreed Grendel. ‘I’m all for whatever gets us out of here in one piece.’

  ‘Likewise,’ said Honsou. ‘Though a little risk is never a bad thing, eh?’

  ‘Sometimes I think you like risk too much.’

  Honsou nodded and said, ‘You might be right. I remember Obax Zakayo said the same thing when we attacked the artillery battery in Berossus’s camp.’

  ‘Sensible man,’ said Grendel.

  ‘Not really, he betrayed me.’

  ‘He’s dead then?’

  ‘Yes, very dead,’ agreed Honsou. ‘You could learn from him.’

  ‘I learn quick,’ said Grendel, ‘but you’ll bite off more than you can chew one day.’

  ‘Maybe,’ shrugged Honsou with a grin. ‘But not today.’

  Ardaric Vaanes marched towards them along the central nave of the strategium, his attention switching between the image on the viewing bay to the pain of the newborn.

  Honsou and Grendel looked up as he approached.

  ‘Well?’ asked Honsou.

  ‘Cycerin says that one will do,’ he said, pointing to a flicker of light above a point on the planet’s equator. ‘It’s furthest from the ships and is above the largest concentration of xeno vegetation.’

  Honsou nodded and fixed his attention on the light, knowing it meant the first step to wreaking a great and terrible vengeance upon Ventris. What he did here would be a blatant challenge, a call to arms that a stickler like Ventris would not be able to resist answering.

  The three warriors watched the pinpoint of light grow from a speck in the darkness to something more angular and blocky. As the distance lessened, the shape resolved into a gently spinning orbital defence platform, though the majority of its launch bays were angled towards the planet’s surface.

  The defence platform hung in geostationary orbit above the planet’s equator above a loathsome stretch of purple that spread across a wide, ochre landmass.

  ‘Tell me something,’ said Vaanes, turning from the image of the orbital station. ‘Once you’d defeated Berossus and Toramino, why did you not stay on Medrengard?’

  ‘Khalan-Ghol was ruined, there was nothing left of it.’

  ‘You could have built another fortress. Isn’t that what you Iron Warriors do?’

  ‘I could have,’ agreed Honsou. ‘But fortresses are static and when everyone on the planet has armies geared for siege, it’s only a matter of time until someone attacks you. I made a mistake going back to Medrengard. I should have stayed out in the galaxy and carried on the Long War.’

  ‘That war was ten thousand years ago,’ said Vaanes.

  ‘To you maybe, but to the Iron Warriors it was yesterday, the blink of an eye. You think the passage of years matters to something as powerful as vengeance? When you dwell in a place where time itself is a meaningless concept, the defeats and glories of the past are only a heartbeat away. I fought alongside warriors who once bestrode the surface of Terra and marched with the primarchs at their head, and it galls me to see the pale shadows the great Astartes have become. You are weaklings compared to what those warriors achieved.’

  Honsou felt his anger threaten to overcome his composure and forced himself to calm down as he pondered the strength of his fervour. Before the battles on Medrengard, he had no such high notions of the warriors who had fought in Horus’s war, openly mocking Forrix and Kroeger for their misty-eyed reminiscences of a campaign he had not taken part in.

  He took a deep breath and looked back to the glinting form of the orbital platform.

  ‘Cycerin!’ he shouted. ‘Give them something to worry about.’

  The magos withdrew his crawling plugs from the back of the newborn’s head and turned to face him. The newborn slumped forward, supporting himself on his forearms as his breath came in ragged, wheezing gulps.

  Without answering Honsou, the magos slid his morphing limbs into the lectern and a pulsing hum travelled the length of the strategium. The lights dimmed as the magos became one with the Warbreed and bent his unknown powers to the misdirection of their enemies.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ asked Ardaric Vaanes.

  ‘Watch and see,’ said Honsou.

  The image on the viewing bay remained much as before, the station gently spinning before them as the Warbreed drifted closer, unseen and unknown. Then, slowly, the station’s guns and surveyor arrays came to life, swivelling in their mounts to train on a distant portion of space.

  Honsou glanced down at the plotting table as a flickering icon appeared, representing the location the nameless Imperial servants had just targetted.

  As they watched, the platform came alive with vox-chatter, the words of its occupants crackling the length and breadth of the strategium as they barked from a freshly formed amplifier unit on Cycerin’s chest.

  The words were scratchy and overlaid with static, but the panic in them was unmistakable.

  ‘…tress one, three omega! Contact in grid delta-epsilon-omega! Auger signatures indicate hostile xenos life form! Request intercept. On present course, contact will be in range in two hours. Any ships capable of rendering assistance please respond!’

  Vaanes watched as the phantom icon drifted slowly across the plotting table towards the platform and said, ‘That’s nowhere near us.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Honsou. ‘And thanks to Cycerin’s deceptions, that’s where the planetary monitors will head. By the time they realise there’s nothing there, we’ll be long gone.’

  Honsou turned from the image of the orbital platform and lifted his bolter.

  ‘They’re looking for help,’ he laughed. ‘So let’s go give them some.’

&
nbsp; Alarm bells echoed along the bare metal corridors of Defence Platform Ultra Nine, ear-splittingly loud as First Officer Alevov raced towards the embarkation deck. Calling it a deck gave it a sense of scale it did not possess, the pressurised chamber where crew transferred onto docked ships simply a vaulted chamber with bare bronze walls and numerous pipes and locking wheels that led to the various umbilicals.

  Imperial Guardsmen raced to prearranged choke points, ready to defend the orbital platform against boarders, though Alevov knew such precautions were likely unnecessary. Given the heightened state of alert the fleet had maintained since the initial invasion, it was unlikely that the lone enemy contact would reach the platform intact.

  Even so, it had been a stroke of luck to have the nearby monitor on station. They hadn’t detected it, but as it was engine-on to the sun’s corona that wasn’t surprising. The Veritas codes were old ones, but were still genuine and permission had been granted for it to dock.

  The captain’s offer of assistance had been gratefully accepted, for, as much as the soldiers on the platform seemed to know what they were doing, more bodies wouldn’t hurt in case something unexpected happened.

  Alevov passed the turn in the defensive architecture leading to the embarkation deck and pushed past two blue-jacketed soldiers fixing a gun with a long, perforated barrel to a bipod.

  He felt his ears pop as he entered the bronze chamber, making a mental note to have the enginseers check the pressure seals. A green light winked into life above a thick blast door and he breathed a sigh of relief.

  The clank of metal on metal sounded from beyond the door as he took hold of the locking clamp and turned the wheel. Jets of stale atmosphere gusted from the door seals as air from different worlds mingled.

  ‘Glad to have you aboard,’ said Alevov as the door swung open. ‘Probably a bit unnecessary, but you can never be too careful, can you?’

  ‘No,’ said Honsou, stepping from the airlock, ‘but apparently you can be too stupid.’

  Honsou raised his bolter and shot First Officer Alevov in the face.

  The headless body slammed against the bronze walls of the airlock and the gun’s report echoed deafeningly in the confined chamber. Honsou moved swiftly forward, seeing two open-mouthed soldiers at the chamber’s exit with a heavy calibre weapon.