The greater daemon loomed overhead. Its bloated shadow fell over Leucrontas. The daemons were no longer hauling it forward and its faces creased in frustration. It reached futilely towards the Imperial Fists, flabby claws flapping at nothing. It forced a stumpy leg forwards as it began to propel its own enormous bulk towards the enemy.
It thundered forwards a step. It smiled now, eager to get to grips with the yellow-armoured figures embedded in the melee below.
Among the steps of the amphitheatre and the monumental sculptures, the rest of the Ninth appeared. Armed with the company’s heavy weapons, they picked out their targets under the orders of their sergeants who acted as spotters. They pointed out the slavering beasts being goaded towards the front line, the gibbering daemons bearing icons of the warp on their standards. But most of all they pointed out the greater daemon, the monster shambling one step at a time towards the castellan.
Lascannons and heavy bolters opened fire. The memorial’s grey stone was painted crimson by the pulses of las-fire. Massive-calibre fire hammered into corrupted flesh, and liquefied muscle and entrails flowed so thickly they were a viscous tide flooding around the legs of the battling Adeptus Astartes.
The greater daemon was battered by the weight of the fire. Its skin tore and split, and loops of intestines slithered out in a crimson-black mass. Tiny gibbering creatures spilled from its wounds, gambolling through the battle lines in their new-found freedom. Its lips parted and it bellowed, face creasing in pain, tiny red eyes narrowing further. Its vast throat yawed open, a red wet pit lined with teeth and inhabited by a long, thick tongue that lashed as if it was its own ravenous creature.
‘Now,’ yelled Leucrontas. ‘Onwards! Onwards!’
The greater daemon leaned forwards into the fire. Even as the flesh of its face was stripped away by heavy bolter blasts, it smiled at the yellow-armoured figure battling towards it. It reached down with a flabby arm, fingers spread to snatch up Leucrontas.
Leucrontas saw it coming. He rattled off half the magazine of his bolt pistol blasting off the greater daemon’s thumb. The hand crashed down onto him and his combat knife sliced through tendons. Another finger, as long as a Space Marine was tall, fell useless.
The remnants of the hand closed around the castellan. Leucrontas fought to push the fingers apart, but the greater daemon was stronger, and it was hungry.
Leucrontas fought on as he was picked up off the ground. Imperial Fists dived in around the greater daemon’s feet, hacking at its ankles to bring it down or carving into its titanic belly to cripple it. The greater daemon seemed not to notice them at all.
‘Hello, little one,’ the daemon said as it raised Leucrontas to its face. Its voice was a terrible rumble, the gurgling of its corrupted lungs as deep as an earthquake. ‘What a blessed day is this, my grandchildren! I have found a new plaything!’
Leucrontas’s reply was lost in the hungry howl that roared from the greater daemon as its jaws opened wide. The daemon dropped Leucrontas down its throat and swallowed with an awful wet sucking sound, like something vast being yanked out of a pool of sucking mud. The daemon laughed, a deep, guttural sound that shook the stones of the Rynn’s World memorial.
The Imperial Fists line bowed as the daemons surged forwards once more. Chainblades rose and fell, barely breaking the surface of the fleshy tide surrounding them, and the guns hammered an endless stream of shells and las-blasts into an equally unending mass of enemies. The greater daemon reached down and parted the daemonic sea in front of it, revealing a knot of Imperial Fists fighting back to back, covered in gore.
The greater daemon leered down at them, took in a great ragged breath, and regurgitated a torrent of bilious filth onto them. The crushed and dissolved remains of Leucrontas crashed over them, the acidic torrent flooding through the seals of their armour and digesting them even as they scrambled to get out of the foul sticky mass.
‘Fall back,’ came an order from one of the heavy weapons squads’ sergeants, taking up command in the wake of Leucrontas’s death. ‘We cannot hold.’
In the face of the appalling sight of the greater daemon’s assault, even Space Marines could do little but retreat and retain what order they could, forcing the daemon army to pay for the ground they took with volleys of bolter fire.
The message that reached Chapter Master Vladimir was fragmented and rushed, but its meaning was clear. The Rynn’s World Memorial had been lost. The first victory in the Battle of the Phalanx had gone to the Enemy.
The echoes of the battle reached through the Phalanx. It was not mere sound, although the explosions of heavy weapons fire and the thunder of the daemons’ advance shuddered for many decks around. It was a psychic echo, a cacophony of screaming and cackling that wormed into the back of the skull and rattled around as if trying to find a way out.
Abraxes, it cried. I am Abraxes.
The echo shuddered through the mess halls near the archive, where a rearguard of Imperial Fists and the surviving Iron Knights formed a cordon to keep the Soul Drinkers penned into the ruined library. Sergeant Prexus of the Imperial Fists had to keep the itch for battle in check, for among the Adeptus Astartes under his command he knew there burned the urge to get into the fight unfolding elsewhere.
‘Sergeant,’ came a vox from one of the battle-brothers keeping watch over the expanse of the mess hall. ‘I hear movement, beyond the doors. I think they are advancing.’
‘To arms, brothers,’ ordered Prexus. In a moment the Imperial Fists and Iron Knights were behind barricades of upturned furniture or crouched in the cover of doorways, bolters trained towards the double doors, chained shut, through which the Howling Griffons had advanced into the library just an hour ago.
The doors banged on their hinges, chains shuddering. A second blow wrenched one door away completely and a single Soul Drinker stepped through. He went bare-headed, his hair shaved into a single black strip along his scalp, his hands encased in lightning claws. But the power fields of the claws were not activated and the Soul Drinker was alone.
Prexus held up a hand, belaying any order to open fire.
‘I am Captain Luko of the Soul Drinkers,’ said the newcomer.
‘I know who you are,’ replied Prexus. ‘Are you here to surrender?’
‘No,’ said Luko. ‘I am here to kill Abraxes.’
Imperial Fists trigger fingers tightened. ‘Explain yourself,’ said Prexus.
‘Abraxes is the leader of the force that assails you. You know it and I know it. I have been in its unclean presence before, at the Battle of the Brokenback when Sarpedon banished it to the warp. Now it has returned when we are at our weakest to have its revenge, and kill as many Imperial Fists as it can into the bargain. We have heard your vox-traffic and seen the pict-feeds. We know that Abraxes has brought a daemonic legion onto the Phalanx and we want to fight it.’
‘I have my orders,’ replied Prexus. ‘You will go nowhere.’
‘Then we will go through you,’ said Luko. ‘I see you have perhaps forty Space Marines. I have a few more, but you are no doubt better equipped and you have no wounded among you. Do you think you can kill us all here? It would be little more than the cast of a die to decide between us, I think. And we are going to die here whether it be to Abraxes’s legion or your bolters, so we have nothing to lose. Will you still stand against us, sergeant?’
‘There will be no need for bloodshed here,’ came a voice from behind Prexus. It was one of the Iron Knights, who walked out of cover into the open.
‘Borasi!’ said Luko, his face breaking into a smile.
‘Captain,’ The two Adeptus Astartes approached and shook hands. ‘You will have to trust me that this time we meet, I shall break no bones of yours.’
‘I shall hold you to that, Sergeant,’ said Luko.
‘You know this warrior?’ demanded Prexus.
‘We met on Molikor,’ said Borasi. ‘We were compelled by circumstance to trade blows before we had our facts straightened out for us.’
‘I knew you were a poor choice for the rearguard,’ said Prexus. ‘You could not be trusted to treat the enemy as an enemy.’
‘I think there is another enemy on the Phalanx you should concern yourself with rather more,’ said Luko.
‘Let the Soul Drinkers fight Abraxes if they wish it,’ said Borasi. ‘I will take responsibility. Let them die facing its daemons. That is execution sure enough for anyone.’
‘I am in command here!’ barked Prexus. ‘You are under my authority, sergeant! You are here only at the sufferance of…’
The sudden burst of chatter over the Imperial Fists vox was loud and rapid enough to grab Prexus’s attention.
Chapter Master Vladimir’s voice cut through the chatter. ‘All forces of the ninth, fall back to the centre! All other forces, move up to the front! The Rynn’s World Memorial is lost and Castellan Leucrontas has fallen. Let them be avenged!’
‘You heard, sergeant,’ said Borasi. ‘You have your orders.’
‘The Imperial Fists will shoot you on sight,’ said Prexus. ‘It doesn’t matter if you want to join the fight or not. They will kill you as soon as they see you have left the archives.’
‘They can try,’ said Luko. ‘Although they may decide their ammunition is better spent elsewhere.’
‘Fall back!’ ordered Prexus. ‘Squad Makos, take the fore! Iron Knights, take the centre! Move out, Borasi. Do not follow us, Luko, or we shall see just how that close fight you spoke of turns out.’
Borasi saluted Luko as he returned to join the other Iron Knights. The Imperial Fists kept their guns trained on Luko as Prexus’s force withdrew from the mess hall, the chatter over their vox-channels continuing to illustrate the collapse of Leucrontas’s force and the approach of the bulk of the daemon army.
When the way was clear, Librarian Tyrendian and Sergeant Graevus emerged from the archives to join Luko.
‘It’s bad,’ said Tyrendian. ‘I can feel it. Realspace is screaming in my mind. It is Abraxes, I have no doubt about that, and banishment has given him strength through hate.’
‘What now, Captain?’ asked Graevus.
‘We have to avoid the Imperial Fists lines,’ replied Luko. ‘And the Howling Griffons, for that matter. We head for the memorial.’
‘I wondered,’ said Iktinos, ‘how long you would take. You disappoint me. I had thought a reckoning would have happened long before Selaaca, that you would have seen through what I and my fellow chaplains have been doing, and that some other thread of fate would be needed to bring you to Kravamesh. But it is as if you were an automaton, programmed to do as Daenyathos wrote six thousand years ago.’ He turned to face his opponent, the scar on his skull-faced helmet still smouldering. ‘As if you were following his instructions as precisely as I.’
Sarpedon had found Iktinos in the dorsal fighter bays, three decks up from the training decks. He had followed a Space Marine’s instinct, the best escape routes, the avenues of flight that allowed for the most cover and the best firing angles, and he had emerged in this cavernous place with its ranks of deep space fighter craft, to see Iktinos making his way across the seemingly endless concourse.
There were fifty metres between the two Soul Drinkers as they faced one another down a row of fighter craft. Each craft was enormous, bigger than the Thunderhawk Gunships of the Space Marines, with blunt-nosed, brutal shapes that made no concession to the aerodynamics irrelevant in the void. When the Phalanx went to war, these were the craft that swarmed around the vast ship like hornets, but with the enemy having invaded from within they were silent and ignored.
‘I have asked myself many times how we have come to this point,’ said Sarpedon. He fought to keep his voice level. ‘Now I would like to ask you.’
‘You presume that I know,’ said Iktinos. ‘Daenyathos knows. We follow. That was always enough for us.’
‘For you? The chaplains?’
‘Indeed. Ever since Daenyathos fell on the Talon of Mars, we have followed the teachings he handed down to us in secret. The rest of the Chapter, meanwhile, has followed the commands he laid out in the Catechisms Martial, encoded in his words so that you acted by them and yet remained ignorant of them.’
‘Tell me why we are here!’ snapped Sarpedon. ‘And I hear the name of Abraxes in my head. I hear his pride and his lust for revenge. What has brought him to the Phalanx? You?’
‘Daenyathos knew that one would rise from the warp at his behest. That it happens to be Abraxes is a testament to fate. He must have been lurking beneath the surface of the warp, hungry for any taste of the Soul Drinkers who bested him. Abraxes is just another pawn, Sarpedon, like you, like me.’
‘There are those who have tried to use my Chapter for their own ends before,’ said Sarpedon. His grip tightened on the Axe of Mercaeno. ‘Do you recall, Chaplain Iktinos, what happened to them?’
Iktinos drew the haft of the Soulspear from a holster at his waist. His thumb closed over an aperture in the alien metal, a micro-laser pulsed and drew blood through the ceramite of his gauntlet. The gene-lock activated and twin blades of purest, liquid black extended from either end of the haft. ‘I recall it very well, Sarpedon. I recall that they were amateurs. Daenyathos factored them in, as well. Nothing has occurred that he did not foresee and plan for in advance.’
‘Including your death?’ said Sarpedon. He crouched down a little on his haunches, the bundles of muscles in his legs bunching ready to pounce.
‘If that is what occurs,’ said Iktinos, no emotion in his voice, ‘then yes.’
Sarpedon circled to one side, talons clicking on the deck. He passed under the shadow cast by the nose of the closest fighter craft. Iktinos followed suit, no doubt gauging Sarpedon’s stance, weighing up everything he knew about the speed and fighting skills of his one-time Chapter Master.
The air hissed as molecules passed over the Soulspear’s blades and were sliced in two. The sound of distant battle reached the fighter deck as a faint rumble, a shuddering as if the Phalanx itself was tensing up. The blank eyes of the fighter craft cockpits seemed to stare, watching for the first move.
Iktinos moved first.
The chaplain sprinted forwards, Soulspear held back to strike. Sarpedon ducked to one side as Iktinos covered the ground in impossibly quick time, and swung out a spinning, dizzying strike with the Soulspear. The blades of blackness flickered around Sarpedon as he twisted and dropped to avoid them. A chunk of ceramite, sliced from his shoulder pad, thudded to the deck, and a fist-sized lump of chitin from his remaining back leg was cut away.
Sarpedon kicked out and caught Iktinos’s shin, He hooked the chaplain’s leg with a talon and tripped him. Iktinos rolled and came up fighting, one end of the Soulspear arcing up and the other slashing from right to left. Sarpedon, poised to slash down with the Axe of Mercaeno, had to jump back to avoid them.
‘What is left, Sarpedon?’ said Iktinos, the Soulspear held out in front of him like a barrier. ‘What is left when every effort you have made to be free has been at the behest of another? What remains of who you are?’
‘I am not a traitor,’ said Sarpedon. ‘That is more than you can say.’
‘Treachery is meaningless,’ replied Iktinos. ‘There are no sides to betray. There is survival and oblivion. Everything else is a lie.’
Sarpedon leapt up onto the side of the fighter craft behind him, and launched himself from above at Iktinos. Iktinos was not ready to be attacked from above and he fell to one knee, spinning the Soulspear in a figure-eight to ward Sarpedon off. Sarpedon landed heavily, let the momentum crouch him down to the deck, and cut beneath Iktinos’s guard. The Axe of Mercaeno carved through one of Iktinos’s knee guards, drawing blood, but the impact was not enough to discharge Sarpedon’s psychic power through the blade. Iktinos rolled away and Sarpedon charged on, Iktinos slashing this way and that, Sarpedon too quick to be hit.
But the Axe of Mercaeno was too unwieldy to get through Iktinos’s guard. The Soulspear’s twin blades, each a vortex fiel
d caged by some technology long-lost in the days of the Great Crusade, would slice through the axe as surely as through flesh or bone. Disarmed, Sarpedon would be as good as dead. He feinted and struck, slashed and wheeled, but Iktinos was just beyond his blade’s reach.
Iktinos had known this day would come. He knew how to fight with the Soulspear – he had gone over this fight Throne knew how many times in his head.
The two passed beneath the hull of the fighter craft. Sarpedon scuttled up the landing gear and clung to the craft’s underside, trusting in the novel angle of attack to keep Iktinos off-guard. Iktinos paused in his counter-attacks, Soulspear wavering, waiting for a blow from Sarpedon to parry.
‘Fate has a hold of you,’ said Iktinos. His voice still betrayed little emotion, as if he was a machine controlled from far away. ‘If you die, Daenyathos has planned for it. If you live, he has planned for that, too. If only you understood, Sarpedon, you would kneel down and accept a quick death for the blessing it is.’
‘And if only you understood, Iktinos, what it means to be Adeptus Astartes.’ Sarpedon hauled himself a couple of steps sideways, Iktinos mirroring his every movement. ‘The Soul Drinkers are nobody’s instrument. We are not here to be wielded and used as Daenyathos or anyone else pleases. He chose the wrong puppets for his plan.’
‘And yet,’ replied Iktinos cooly, ‘here you are, at the time and place of his choosing.’
‘What I shall do to him is not something that he would choose.’
Iktinos darted forward and slashed at the landing gear. The Soulspear sliced cleanly through the steel and hydraulic lines and the craft shifted downwards, all its front-half weight suddenly unsupported. Iktinos dived out of the way and Sarpedon did the same in the opposite direction, yelling with frustration as he scrambled to avoid being crushed by the fighter’s hull. The fighter thudded to the deck and rolled in Sarpedeon’s direction, forcing him to back up further. Iktinos was out of sight.
Hammer and Bolter Year One Page 139
