At last, Ekodas tired of his sport. He caught Ostorius’ arm as he launched a weak overhead strike. Spinning in behind his opponent, Ekodas wrapped an arm around his neck.
“All over now,” said Ekodas in Ostorius’ ear. The brutalised White Consul’s unfocussed gaze lingered on the Nexus Arrangement.
With a violent twist, Ekodas broke the Proconsul’s neck.
Marduk’s eyes were narrowed as he watched the pitiful cluster of White Consuls and Guardsmen scurrying across the square below.
“Take them,” he said, and the warriors of the 34th Host broke into a charge, leaping down the steps in pursuit.
They were halfway down when the heavens exploded.
Like a star going supernova, the Kronos star fort detonated in an almighty explosion that lit up the planet below in blinding, harsh white light.
“What in the name of the gods?” breathed Ashkanez.
Something changed in the quality of the air. Marduk could feel it even within his hermetically sealed armour. It was as if the air were suddenly charged with electricity, making the thick, matted hairs of his cloak stand on end.
A hot wind blew down from above, sending eddies of dust and ash spinning across the square. The heavens had began to roil like an angry whirlpool, clouds of ash, smoke and toxic pollutants swirling madly. Directly overhead, they began to spiral in an anticlockwise direction, as if a cyclone of tremendous proportions were brewing. It looked like a giant maelstrom, a vortex that began to rotate with increasing volatility. Marduk felt unease begin to form within his gut. His natural response to such an unfamiliar emotion was aggression and violence, and fresh combat drugs were pumped through his veins, flooding his system.
“Are we doing that?” growled Burias, once again holding his revered icon in his hands, the daemon pushed back below the surface.
“No,” said Marduk. “I feel no touch of the warp here. None at all. It is… something else.”
Whatever it was, it began descending into the atmosphere.
And it was huge.
BOOK FIVE:
RETRIBUTION
“We are all eternal, my brothers. All this pain is but an illusion.”
—Dark Apostle Mah’keenen, scrawled in blood
on the eve of his sacrifice
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
At first it was nothing more than a shadow in the heavens, obscured by the crimson miasma hanging in the atmosphere of Boros Prime. It blotted out the twin suns, casting darkness as deep as night across the city below. It loomed large, seeming to spread from horizon to horizon, and it was got nearer.
At first, Marduk thought perhaps it was a battle-cruiser crashing down to earth, a casualty of the ongoing war in orbit above Boros, but he saw that this shape was bigger than that, larger even than Ekodas’ flagship, the immense Crucius Maledictus. The star fort itself?
The spiralling downwind intensified and a gap in the centre of the maelstrom appeared. This break in the cloud cover should have afforded those upon the surface of Boros Prime their first unobscured glimpse of the sky since the arrival of the Word Bearers. The angry welt of the Eye of Terror should have been visible across the heavens, but something blotted out the view. Blue skies should have been visible within that growing gap, but all that could be seen through it was darkness, an enveloping emptiness that seemed to swallow all light.
It was the underside of a vessel so vast as to put the largest battlecruiser to shame, yet Marduk knew instantly that this was not the falling Kronos star fort. Whatever this vessel was, it had destroyed the orbital bastion, utterly and completely. The rotating clouds continued to part before it. As it descended ever closer, eerie glowing green lights lit up along its black underside. Marduk felt a spike of trepidation.
The last of the clouds were sent fleeing over the horizon, and the xenos vessel was finally fully revealed. It must have been easily fifteen kilometres across, and it cast its shadow over the entire city. The dull glow of the obscured suns framed it like an eclipse, giving all those below a sense of the vessel’s shape.
It was an immense, perfectly geometric crescent, curving like a sickle-blade, and it hung in low atmosphere, an executioner’s axe ready to fall. Something so large should not have been able to descend so close to the planet’s surface without being dragged down by the planet’s gravity, no matter how powerful its engines were. Yet still it descended.
The energy it must have been exerting to resist the pull of gravity and keep its immense bulk from crashing to earth was beyond imagining, far in excess of anything that could be fathomed by a human mind. Nevertheless, while the fierce downwind continued to buffet the city below, they were hardly of the scale that Marduk would have imagined necessary to keep such a structure aloft. Indeed, there appeared to be no blazing engines burning with the heat of a thousand suns upon the vessel’s underside at all.
How it was controlling its descent was beyond his understanding, and yet in defiance of all natural law and rational thought it continued to penetrate the low atmosphere, drawing steadily nearer the surface of Boros Prime.
The immense xenos vessel was so utterly black that it seemed to absorb the light, and this darkness made the glowing green lines that spread across its underside in alien, geometric patterns all the brighter. Tens of thousands of glowing hieroglyphs could be discerned upon its sheer underside, symbols that might have been some form of inhuman picture writing consisting of lines, circles and crescents. One symbol was larger than the others—a circle with lines of differing lengths projecting from it, like the stylised beams of a sun.
Marduk had seen this symbol before on an Imperial backwater planet called Tanakreg. There, it had appeared upon the sheer obsidian flanks of an alien structure deeply embedded in the rock of an evaporated ocean floor. He knew what manner of beings resided within: undying constructs of living metal, devoid of fear, compassion or mercy, unfettered by mortal concerns. They were a deadly foe, nigh unstoppable, and his blood ran cold as he realised for what purpose they had surely come here.
“Call in our Stormbirds,” ordered Marduk as he reached the bottom of the Imperial temple’s stairs. His voice was tense. “Have the Infidus Diabolus readied. I want full and immediate extraction. Now.”
“What new horror is this?” breathed Coadjutor Aquilius, eyes wide, pausing just before he dropped down into the sub-tunnels that would lead into the lower levels of the Temple of the Gloriatus.
Librarian Epistolary Liventius too was looking up. His face was grave.
“Come, brothers,” said the Librarian at last.
Moving warily, weapons at the ready, the cluster of wounded White Consuls and Guardsmen ducked their heads and moved into the tunnels. The heavy blast-doors slammed behind them with grim finality.
Kol Badar’s eyes were locked on the immense shape hovering low in the atmosphere overhead. He had offered no argument to the Dark Apostle’s order to abandon this world. Marduk knew that he too recognised the nature of this vessel hovering oppressively over the city. Marduk heard the crackle of vox-traffic as the Coryphaus began ordering the evacuation.
“Master?” said Ashkanez, scowling darkly. “What is this? We are going to abandon all we have fought for?”
Ignoring his First Acolyte, the only member of the 34th Host who had not fought on Tanakreg, Marduk began barking orders, commanding his forces to pull back and regroup, ready for extraction.
“Master!” said Ashkanez more forcefully. “We must finish what we started! The sons of Guilliman cannot be allowed to live!”
Marduk continued to ignore him.
“This world is not yet ours,” growled Ashkanez. “We cannot make extraction before Grand Apostle Ekodas gives us leave to commence the—”
The First Acolyte was silenced as Marduk spun around suddenly and clamped a hand around his throat, snarling. The broad features of Ashkanez flared with anger and for a moment Marduk thought—even hoped—that his First Apostle would strike out at him, but the stony mask of composure fell
across Ashkanez’s features once more, and the First Acolyte lowered his gaze.
“No, this world is not yet ours, and nor will it be, not now. You have no comprehension of what that is,” said Marduk, gesturing up at the immense shape looming ever larger in the heavens, “nor of what its appearance portends. We leave now. Ekodas be damned.”
“So the Imperials have unexpected reinforcements,” said Ashkanez. “What does it matter? We must finish the Consuls while they are weak and vulnerable.”
“Ignorant fool,” said Marduk. “These are no Imperial allies.”
He released his First Acolyte with a shove, sneering.
He saw Ashkanez glance over Marduk’s shoulder, and only then did he register the hulking presence of someone standing threateningly close behind him. With a glance he saw it was the berserker Khalaxis, exalted champion of 17th Coterie. The big warrior’s chest was rising and falling heavily, and his ritualistically scarred face, framed by matted dreadlocks, was contorted in a bestial snarl.
“Is there a problem, Khalaxis?” growled Marduk, glaring up into the champion’s red-tinged, frenzied eyes. He was amongst the tallest warriors of the Host, and Marduk came barely to his chin.
Out of corner of his eye, Marduk saw Ashkanez glance skyward, then back at Khalaxis. The First Acolyte seemed indecisive for a moment, then gave a brief shake of his head—reluctantly, it seemed to Marduk.
“Move away now, brother,” said Sabtec, stepping protectively in front of Marduk. The champion of the hallowed 13th had his hand on the hilt of his sword.
The massive exalted champion refused to back down, still glaring over Sabtec’s head at Marduk, violence written in his gaze. Marduk was very aware of the immense chainaxe clasped in the towering warrior’s hands and blood-rage that Khalaxis clearly held only barely in check.
“Khalaxis,” snapped Ashkanez.
With a last threatening glare, the berserker swung away, stamping off to rejoin his Coterie.
“Do not be too hard on Khalaxis, my lord,” said Ashkanez. “His choler was in the ascendant. He meant no disrespect.”
“When we get out of this, you and I are going to have… words, First Acolyte,” said Marduk.
Ashkanez bowed his head in supplication.
“As it pleases you, my master,” he said, his tone neutral.
Marduk saw Burias smirk.
“Assault shuttles inbound,” confirmed Kol Badar.
Marduk glanced across the expanse of the square. The White Consuls were long gone now. Ever since Calth, the desire to kill and maim the sons of Guilliman, to destroy all that they stood for, had consumed him. Now he was allowing these gene-descendants of the Ultramarines to escape him, but he swallowed back his hatred, for there were issues of more pressing importance that demanded his attention. Namely, keeping himself alive. His gaze ventured skywards once more.
On Tanakreg, a xenos pyramid of ancient, inhuman design had sat deep within an abyssal trench located far beneath the acidic oceans of that backwater planet. There it had resided for countless millennia, dormant and lifeless. Its location had been revealed after the oceans had been boiled away by the actions of the 34th Host, under the leadership of Marduk’s predecessor, the Dark Apostle Jarulek. Marduk, Jarulek’s First Acolyte, had been amongst those that had penetrated the alien pyramid, descending into its claustrophobic interior. It was a tomb, Marduk had realised, and by penetrating into its dark heart, the Word Bearers had awakened its guardians from their eternal slumber.
It had been there, deep within the alien crypts of the xenos pyramid, that he had entered the inner sanctum of a being the ancient apocrypha of the Word Bearers named the Undying One. This being was unimaginably ancient, a thing that Marduk suspected was as old as the heavens themselves. There in the Undying One’s insane realm, a place far beyond his understanding where distance and time seemed as malleable as living flesh, Marduk had discovered the Nexus Arrangement, the potent piece of alien technology that had made this attack on the Boros Gate sector possible. There too, Marduk had left his master, Jarulek. The Dark Apostle had turned on him once his usefulness had passed, but it had been Marduk that had emerged triumphant.
Marduk had long plotted Jarulek’s downfall. It might not have happened the way he had planned, but it mattered little. Jarulek had perished, and Marduk had escaped from the Undying One’s maddening realm, taking with him his prize, the Nexus.
A niggling doubt remained, buried deep within his consciousness, that the malevolent sentient being had allowed him to leave its realm. Always, Marduk had refused to entertain the errant thought, but now, seeing this immense vessel descending down towards the city, the whisper of doubt returned. Instinctively, he knew the malign intelligence that commanded this vessel was the same as that he had encountered beneath the alien pyramid. Doubtless it came to reclaim what had been stolen from it.
The immense xenos vessel was now so close that Marduk imagined he could almost touch its obsidian underside, yet it was still at least a kilometre above the city.
It is not my fate to die here, Marduk thought, defiantly. Nothing in the portents had spoken of his death.
The immense alien vessel had come to rest some two hundred metres above the city, looming claustrophobically low overhead. No hint of the sky beyond it could be glimpsed now. It felt as if the planet had an unsupported low roof that might drop to crush those beneath it at any moment.
Green-tinged lightning arced across its underside, dancing across its obsidian surfaces. Geometric designs throbbed, growing brighter and then dimming, like a heartbeat, and thousands of alien hieroglyphs flared into glowing, green life.
“Where are the Stormbirds?” hissed Marduk.
“Incoming, one minute,” said Kol Badar. He pointed into the distance. A flock of dark craft could be seen hurtling in their direction, flying low over the city. “There.”
A high frequency electronic whine that made Marduk’s skin crawl sounded in the distance. Its pitch ascended sharply, and as it moved beyond the range of Astartes hearing, a column of ghostly light as wide as a city block stabbed downwards from the alien vessel, perhaps two kilometres away to the north. Arcs of electricity danced along the shaft’s ethereal edges. The light of the column did not dissipate, but stayed firmly targeted on the city, like some immense, motionless spotlight.
“What in the hells of Sicarus is that?” said Ashkanez.
A second whine sounded and another spotlight stabbed downwards, this time appearing perhaps five kilometres south of their position. Further whines heralded more columns of ghostly light, until there were a dozen of them projected blindingly downwards, linking the alien craft to the city below. They shone like divine pillars in the darkness, as if holding the xenos vessel aloft.
A further electronic whine began to sound, piercing in its intensity, louder than any other so far. Gazing upwards Marduk saw a ring of light burning brightly on the underside of the xenos vessel, directly overhead. It grew steadily more intense, and while the auto-reactive lenses of his helmet compensated for the sudden, white-hot light, dulling it back to a manageable level, he nevertheless raised an arm to shield his eyes. If it were some form of weapon, a lance-beam of monstrous scale, Marduk realised that he and his brothers would be directly beneath the blast.
Setting his feet firmly, Marduk roared his fury at the heavens. If he were to die, then he would do so defiant and unrepentant to the last.
Blinding, diffuse light surrounded Marduk and his brethren, and the air crackled with a powerful electrical charge. It took Marduk half a second to realise that he lived still, that the column of light was not destructive in nature, and he gave a short prayer of thanks to the gods of the aether.
The moment’s respite did not last.
The air around him shimmered and crackled with intensity, as if the particles of the air were vibrating violently, and sparks of bright light danced across the armour plates of the uneasy Word Bearers.
“Energy readings are off the scale,” said Sabt
ec, his brows furrowed, looking at the daemonically-infused auspex in his hands.
“Something is making transference,” hissed Kol Badar, the bladed lengths of his power talons clenching and unclenching reflexively. “I can feel it in my bones.”
“Stand ready!” said Marduk, hefting his crozius.
“Something is coming through,” shouted Sabtec, turning around on the spot, eyes locked on the throbbing red blister-display of his auspex. He stopped abruptly, and his eyes lifted. “There! Three hundred and twenty metres! Elevation 3.46!”
Marduk looked where his champion pointed. At first he saw nothing. Then a ball of crackling energy blinked into existence, hanging perhaps twenty metres above the city. It was positioned in the centre of a wide boulevard that led up towards the square. The Word Bearers began to back away, weapons raised. The air around the sphere of flickering energy wavered, and sparking electricity stabbed outwards from its centre.
“What—” began Ashkanez, but he never finished.
With a deep whoosh, the crackling ball of light expanded suddenly to a hundred times its former size. Coronas of lightning sparked madly within it, and the Word Bearers fell back a step defensively as the blast overtook them. It lasted only a fraction of a second before it contracted sharply once more, accompanied by a deep sucking sound like air being vented into a vacuum. It shrank in upon itself, collapsing to something the size of a pea before exploding.
With a deafening crack, blinding white light burst out in all directions, and the sphere of energy was gone. In its place was a slowly spinning flat-topped pyramid roughly the size of a super-heavy tank, hovering ten metres above the ground. It was formed of light-absorbing black stone, and green electricity played along its blank, sheer surfaces.
It hung there in the air, turning lazily, and then its form began to alter. Glowing green lines appeared upon its smooth surfaces, and four oblong pillars of black stone rose from the corners of its top, rising like battlements atop a fortress. Rib-like sections of the prism’s sides slid upwards, forming a hollow cage atop it. A single wider arc, like an architectural buttress of unearthly design, glided smoothly upwards to position itself over the hollow cage.
[Word Bearers 03] - Dark Creed Page 25
