The Plagues of Orath

by Various

  Galenus was on his hands and knees in the rubble.

  He was staring at the ground, although he didn’t remember falling. He was dimly aware of a figure looming over him: the zombie that had slashed his throat. An instant later, however, it was gone, replaced by the familiar hulking shape of a friend.

  Terserus had swiped the zombie’s legs out from under it, breaking every bone in them. It was wriggling, trying to stand, but couldn’t support itself. It lay helplessly as Terserus planted a foot to each side of it, straddling it. He drove his fist down into the zombie’s head with the force of a guided missile. Then he turned his attention to his fallen brother.

  Galenus had blood in his throat and couldn’t speak. Somehow, he managed to brace his left foot underneath him. He transferred his weight onto it, incrementally, but the effort to stand defeated him too. He pitched forward, dizzily, just catching himself on his hands again.

  ‘Brother Typhus’s flamer is cremating the last of our opponents,’ reported Terserus, ‘while the others are making sure the dead stay dead. Fort Kerberos is ours.’

  He hesitated for a moment. Then, his armour’s servos whirred as he stooped awkwardly and extended his one hand towards his captain. Galenus squinted up at him. The Dreadnought’s obdurate, blue form was etched against the sky like a hab-block, cast into menacing shadow by the warp light behind it. He didn’t take the proffered hand.

  ‘Is the Great Seal… still down there?’ he rasped. ‘Can you see…?’

  Brother Filion’s voice broke in on his assault team’s vox-channel. ‘We stopped the Death Guard in time, sir. They didn’t break through to the underground shrine.’ Good as that was to hear, it didn’t answer Galenus’s question.

  ‘I’m in contact with Captain Numitor,’ said Filion. ‘He reports that the traitor army to the north-west is in rout. Our main force is on its way to join us. I also asked him to relay a message to the Quintillus. He’ll have them send down servitors and excavating equipment, and more ships to collect the wounded. He… asked after your health, sir.’

  ‘He’ll survive,’ said Terserus, bluntly.

  Galenus wondered what made him so certain. His two hearts were beating an irregular rhythm against his chestplate. He was struggling to stay awake, but he knew he was too badly damaged. His implanted sus-an membrane – the Space Marine’s hibernator organ – was beginning to shut his bodily functions down.

  Terserus addressed him over their private channel. Once again, his mind had slipped back in time. He sounded like the Sergeant Terserus of the past. ‘The Apothecaries will bring you back, I’d stake my right arm on it,’ he said. ‘The Emperor isn’t done with you yet, Brother Galenus. You have the makings of a captain. I always said so.’

  Galenus wondered if he might wake up, like Terserus, in Dreadnought armour. He wondered if he would be aware of his fate if he did. He imagined it would feel a lot like being buried alive. Perhaps it would be preferable not to wake at all.

  He could take consolation in the fact that this battle was won, although his Chapter would be counting the cost of it for decades to come. It would take that long to find and train new Space Marines to replace those lost on Orath: the hacked- and clawed-apart; the victims of bolter shells and explosive shrapnel; the infected.

  He only wished he could have learned the fate of the Kerberos Seal. He wanted to know – before he succumbed to what may be his final sleep – that his decisions had been the correct ones, that the sacrifices he had made had counted for something.

  Galenus was trembling. Another weakness of his failing flesh, he thought; but then he realised that the ground itself was shaking underneath his hands and knees.

  He collapsed indecorously onto his face and stomach. Terserus was struggling to keep his balance too, but he planted his heavy feet in the shifting rubble and stood over his captain determinedly, as the tremor grew stronger and turned into a fully fledged earthquake.

  Galenus realised, with a numb sense of horror, that the battle wasn’t over yet.

  Then, just as he was on the point of being able to think no more, he heard and felt a tremendous explosion, and the world behind his closing eyelids turned green.

  Arkelius felt the early tremors too.

  The last of the Death Guard tanks had been despatched. The ragged remains of the Ultramarines army – battered, bloodied but proud – had formed up and were on the march again. At the helm of the Scourge of the Skies, he felt at least as proud as any of them.

  Of course, they were leaving many dead and wounded behind them: almost two-thirds of their initial force. Thunderhawks had begun to arrive from the Quintillus to take them back to its apothecarion. In the meantime, Techmarines patched up vehicles and equipment in the field as best they could, in case of unexpected need.

  Corbin was still in the Scourge’s driver’s seat. Arkelius had wanted to leave him behind, but he had insisted, ‘I’ve come this far, sergeant. I can see this through to the end.’

  He swore that his condition had stabilised – the bleeding from his eyes had stopped – so Arkelius had given his assent. The fighting had been over, after all. Or so it had seemed.

  The ruins of Fort Kerberos were dead ahead of him, across flat land. The jagged warp rift still raged in the sky above it. He was close enough to see blue-armoured figures clambering over the rubble. The largest of them – Galenus’s constant companion, Terserus – was unmistakable. He couldn’t see the captain himself, though, which concerned him.

  Then, suddenly, the world went into a violent spin.

  Arkelius ordered Corbin to plant the stabilisers, knowing even as the words left his mouth that they would do no good. The earth itself had erupted under the Scourge’s tracks; there was nothing left for the stabilisers to hold onto.

  He was battered against each side of his compartment in turn – he even banged his head on the roof – before the earthquake finally subsided. By now, he was well-used to the red lights and klaxon blares of the emergency alarms.

  His forward vision slit was clogged with black stalks of grain.

  It took a moment for Arkelius to get his bearings and to realise that the Scourge had come to rest at a precarious angle, its nose pointed at the ground. He didn’t know what was holding its rear end up, but every slightest move he made caused the tank to rock alarmingly.

  He voxed his two crewmates. Iunus confirmed that he was relatively unhurt, but there was no reply from Corbin.

  Shocked voices were beginning to break into the vox-channels. More than one of them swore that an unholy green fire had burst out of the ground without warning. The epicentre of the blast had been the site of the razed fort, still four hundred metres ahead of them. Even this far out, however, it had tossed both Space Marines and tanks around like children’s toys.

  Arkelius tried to open his hatch, but it was jammed. The Scourge’s hull must have given a little, bending its frame out of shape.

  The smell of burning inside his tiny compartment was stronger than ever. Arkelius suspected that the engine was on fire, which meant there was a real risk of the flames spreading to the promethium tanks, or even worse.

  ‘How many Skyspear missiles do we have left?’ he asked. He didn’t wait for Iunus’s reply. ‘Right now, we’re sitting on top of too many atomic warheads.’

  He squirmed around until he could brace himself against his bulkheads and get his left foot to the jammed hatch. Then, he kicked it as hard as he could.

  Every impact of his boot made the Scourge of the Skies shudder violently. He pretended he couldn’t feel the slight pain in his hip, from muscles that had recently been shredded and hadn’t yet completely healed. Behind his eyelids, however, he could see the snarling eyes and slavering tusks of the barbarian ork that had beaten him and left him for dead. He imagined it was the ork’s face he was kicking. He refused to let it beat him again.

  One more good kick, and
the hinges of the hatch finally snapped. It fell away, and he could see the grey light of the sky behind it.

  He clambered out of the Hunter, helped on his way by a firm push from Iunus, who had lowered himself into the tank commander’s compartment behind him.

  It was only a short hop to the ground, but Arkelius landed in an awkward crouch. His balance was off; that blow to the head had affected him more than he had thought. He blinked away the black spots in his eyes and straightened up.

  He could see now that the Scourge’s back wheels were resting on the crumpled shell of a Predator Destructor. Flames were licking at its underside. As Iunus’s head appeared through the hatchway above him, Arkelius had him throw down the extinguisher.

  Perching precariously on the Scourge’s tilted roof, Iunus yanked open the driver’s hatch. He first reported that Corbin wasn’t moving, and a moment later that his hearts at least were still beating and his multi-lung pumping. He asked for his sergeant’s help in lifting his battle-brother out of the wreck to safety, but Arkelius’s gaze had travelled past him.

  He was looking in horror at the site of the ruined Fort Kerberos, now a scene of unadulterated Chaos. The churned-up ground was alight with sickly green and yellow flames. The warp rift in the sky had changed its hue and was pulsing with the same putrid energy, great bolts of it lashing down to create a highly localised electrical storm; and, in the centre of that maelstrom, there had appeared a monster, an obscene mockery of life.

  It must have been close to six metres tall, twice the height of an Ultramarine, taller even than the giant Terserus. It was a bloated, squat creature, festooned with boils and open sores. Dead grey skin sloughed from its bones to expose black, worm-ridden organs. Scraps of rusted power armour appeared to have been welded to the monster’s hide.

  A misshapen head protruded from its chest, as if its neck had melted into its torso. Its near-skinless face was twisted with hateful laughter. A pair of giant, holed and tattered insect wings sprouted from the monster’s shoulder blades. Even vibrating furiously as they were, they could barely lift their heavy burden a metre or so off the ground, where it hovered.

  The monster was like nothing Arkelius had seen before, but instinctively he knew it for what it was. The mere sight of it was enough to envelop his soul in an icy, nameless dread.

  Of the man who had called himself Naracoth, nothing remained.

  No longer was he a fragile being of flesh and bone. He had been reborn in a form worthy of his god’s affection, more able to spread His gifts of disease, decay and destruction across the stars. His body – his new, magnificent, powerful body – was formed from the substance of the warp itself, and his veins seethed with its untamed energies.

  He could utilise those energies, direct them, guide their flow. By instinct alone, he had projected an expanding field around him. He had blasted his way out of his collapsed tomb and scattered his enemies before him.

  He glared down on them now, the forces of the vaunted Imperium. They were battered and weary from their recent travails, and oh-so-small from his newfound loftier perspective. They may as well have been insects, scuttling across the blighted earth in terror, waiting for him to crush them under his heel.

  He was as far above his former self now as his former self had been above the ticks and lice that had leeched off his putrescent flesh. He had become as one with the fundamental forces of Chaos. Grandfather Nurgle had blessed this faithful follower, and had turned him into a prince. A Daemon Prince.

  More tanks than just the Scourge of the Skies had been upended. One had even been completely overturned. More crews than just the Scourge’s crew were fighting their way out of the wreckage; and, of course, many Space Marines had been knocked over too.

  Many of them – like Arkelius – were picking themselves up slowly. Like him, their gazes were rooted to the Daemon Prince hovering over the nearby ruins. They were Ultramarines, however, the Emperor’s finest. So they swallowed down their natural feelings of shock and disgust and they got on with doing the Emperor’s work.

  Galenus’s team at the fort were already back on their feet. Their brothers from the main force – those that could – were hurrying to cross the ground between them. They were ready to do battle with this new enemy, no matter how hopeless it may seem, because that was their duty and their honour.

  It would have been Arkelius’s honour too. He even took a step forward to join the others, acting on instinct. Then, Iunus’s voice – ‘Sergeant!’ – pulled him back, reminding him of his duty to his crewmates.

  Iunus had hauled Corbin up through the Scourge’s hatchway. Arkelius helped by supporting his head as, together, they lowered the injured driver down from the Hunter’s roof. The lenses in Corbin’s helmet had been shattered and his eyes were badly damaged.

  ‘Emperor, grant him the strength to overcome this,’ Iunus breathed. As Arkelius had noted earlier, he was young, and, for as long as he had served with the Ultramarines, Corbin had served alongside him.

  He said nothing to his battle-brother, however. He was listening to the latest vox reports, with a sinking feeling. ‘The captain…’ he muttered. ‘The captain’s down.’

  It hardly seemed possible. Caito Galenus had been a lieutenant when Arkelius had been recruited into the Fifth Company. He had been a captain for as long as Arkelius had been a sergeant. He had always been there, at the forefront of every combat, leading his men by example, never asking them to take a risk he wouldn’t gladly take himself.

  Some people – only those who didn’t know him – had called him a glory-hunter, albeit never twice within Arkelius’s earshot. He had seemed to be invincible.

  At the fort, in the captain’s absence, Terserus led the charge against the monster. He thundered towards it, his arm-mounted bolters flaring. His bolts pinged off its patches of armour and, equally, off the exposed bones in between them.

  The Daemon Prince’s bloodshot but fiery eyes narrowed and its twisted maw gaped open. It belched out a thick stream of glistening mucus in its attacker’s direction.

  Even Terserus was stopped – temporarily, Arkelius hoped – in his tracks.

  The three battle-brothers who had been following in his footsteps kept going, but separated, having lost the protection of the Dreadnought’s armour in front of them. Their bolters were proving ineffectual too, so they fired up their chainswords.

  The first of them reached his hovering foe and slashed at a dangling leg. His blow landed solidly and appeared to have done some damage, although Arkelius was too far away to tell if it had drawn blood. Did a Daemon Prince have blood to draw, he wondered?

  The monster let out a contemptuous laugh and dropped heavily onto the rubble, squaring up to its opponent. It was carrying a massive, filth-encrusted flail, with which it lashed out viciously. The Space Marine threw up an arm to protect his chest and head; the flail’s twin chains wrapped around it and shredded his armour.

  His brothers came at the Daemon Prince from each side, hoping to slam it between them. Its wings droned loudly as they hauled it back into the sky, maddeningly out of their reach.

  In the absence of an Apothecary, Iunus was kneeling beside Corbin, patching him up as best he could with the Scourge’s medi-kit. Once that was done, he looked up at his sergeant for instructions. He was already fingering the haft of his sheathed chainsword, in anticipation of what those instructions would be.

  An hour earlier, Arkelius wouldn’t have hesitated. He would have led Iunus to the front lines in a heartbeat, and been glad of the chance to exercise his muscles in combat – real combat – once again. An hour earlier, he had prayed for a chance like this.

  A lot could change in just an hour.

  Again, he turned his gaze towards Fort Kerberos’s shattered remains, just as the Daemon Prince’s pox-ridden flail claimed its first kill. One down, and it had only taken a matter of seconds. The luckless Ultramarine, at
least, had not given his life for nothing.

  The Daemon Prince’s attention had been drawn away from Terserus, which had given him the chance he needed to recover his strength. The Dreadnought bellowed a fierce litany of hatred as he ran at his monstrous foe like a speeding tank.

  The Daemon Prince tried to climb further into the sky, but its wings couldn’t lift its considerable bulk quickly enough. The Dreadnought tackled it and dragged it back down to the ground. With one arm, he pinned its wings behind its back; with the other, he emptied two bolter clips into its leering face.

  They crashed into the rubble together, the Dreadnought and the Daemon Prince, and, for a moment, the watching Arkelius thought – hoped, prayed – that the battle might not have been as hopeless as he had first thought. Just for a moment.

  It soon became clear which was the stronger of the two combatants. The Daemon Prince was slower than Terserus, but its flail, where it hit, was slicing into the Dreadnought’s casing, cutting fibre bundles inside it. It looked as if his right arm, his storm bolter arm, was dead, although his power fist had landed a few good punches.

  The Daemon Prince stretched open its mouth again, this time to cough up a cloud of buzzing black flies. The Dreadnought reeled as the insects engulfed him; still, he clung to the Daemon Prince’s feet as it attempted to take to the air once more, doggedly weighting it down.

  Then, the fastest of the Space Marines from the main force reached their battle-brother’s side and, for all its size, the Daemon Prince found itself swarmed by a grim mass of blue-armoured avengers. The screams of their angry chainswords rent the air.

  They would keep the monster busy for a short time, Arkelius judged. What they needed in the longer term, however, were bigger guns – much bigger.

  At least two other tank crews had come to the same conclusion. They had started up their engines and were advancing upon the fort again. Their Predator Destructors, however, didn’t have what the Scourge of the Skies had. They didn’t have the Skyspear missile launcher.

  Nor, for that matter, were the Predators sitting with their noses in the ground and their back ends in the air, their engines and most of their onboard systems burned-out.