Abaddon's voice was barely recognisable, as crackling pops and wet hissing overlaid it with meaningless babble.
'Moving… th… gh the lowe… rat… decks… keep… We have… flank… master.'
Horus tapped his gorget. 'Ezekyle? Damn it.'
The Warmaster turned to Verulam Moy and said, 'Try and raise Erebus,' before returning to his own attempts at communication. 'Little Horus, can you hear me?'
More static followed, uninterrupted save for a faint voice, '…ordnance deck… slow… shells. Making safe… but… make… gress.'
'Nothing from Erebus,' reported Moy, 'but he may be on the other side of the ship by now. If the interference we are getting between our own warriors is anything to go by, it is unlikely our armour links will be able to reach him.'
'Damn it,' repeated the Warmaster. 'Well, let's keep going.'
'Sir,' ventured Moy. 'Might I make a suggestion?'
'If it's that we turn back, forget it, Verulam. My honour and that of the Crusade has been impugned and I'll not have it said that I turned my back on it.'
'I know that, sir, but I believe Captain Loken is correct. We are taking a needless risk here.'
'Life is a risk, my friend. Every day we spend away from Terra is a risk. Every decision I make is a risk. We cannot avoid risk, my friend, for if we do, we achieve nothing. If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever. You are a fine officer, Verulam, but you do not see heroic opportunities as I do.'
'But, sir,' protested Moy, 'we cannot maintain contact with our warriors and we have no idea what might be waiting for us in this ship. Forgive me if I speak out of turn, but delving into the unknown like this does not feel like heroism. It feels like guesswork.'
Horus leaned in close to Moy and said, 'Captain, you know as well as I do that the whole art of war consists of guessing what is on the other side of the hill.'
'I understand that, sir—' began Moy, but Horus was in no mood for interruptions.
'Ever since the Emperor appointed me in the role of Warmaster, people have been telling me what I can and cannot do, and I tell you I am sick and tired of it,' snapped Horus. 'If people don't like my opinions, then that's their problem. I am the Warmaster and I have made up my mind. We go on.'
A squealing shriek of static abruptly sliced through the darkness and Luc Sedirae's voice came over the armour link as clearly as if he stood next to them.
'Throne! They're here!' shouted Sedirae.
Then everything turned upside down.
Loken felt it through the soles of his boots as a tremendous rumbling that seemed to come from the very foundations of the moon. He turned in horror, hearing metal grind on metal with a deafening screech, and watching geysers of mud spout skyward as buried portions of the starship tore themselves free of the sucking mud. The upper sections of the vessel plummeted towards the ground and the entire ship began tipping over, the colossal rear section arcing downwards with a terrible inevitability.
'Everyone get clear!' bellowed Loken as the massive weight of metal gathered speed.
Astartes scattered from the falling wreck, and Loken felt its massive shadow like a shroud as his armour's senses shut out the roaring noise of the starship's collapse.
He looked back in time to see the wreckage slam into the ground with the force of an orbital strike, the superstructure crumpling under the impact of its own weight and hurling lakes of muddy water through the air. Loken was tossed like a leaf by the Shockwave, landing waist deep in a stagnant pool of greenish scum and disappearing beneath the surface.
Rolling to his knees, he saw tsunamis of mud rippling out from the vessel, and watched as dozens of his warriors were buried beneath the brownish sludge. The power of the wrecked starship's impact spread from the crater it had gouged in the mud. A brackish rain of muddy water drizzled down, smearing his helmet's visor and reducing visibility to no more than a few hundred metres.
Loken climbed to his feet, clearing the action of his bolter as he realised the Shockwave had dispersed the sulphurous fog that had been their constant companion since landing on this accursed moon.
'Sons of Horus, stand ready!' he shouted, seeing what lay beyond the fog.
Hundreds of the dead things marched relentlessly towards them.
Not even the armour of a primarch could withstand the impact of a falling starship, and Horus grunted as he pulled a twisted spar of jagged iron from his chest. Sticky blood coated his armour, the wound sealing almost as soon as he had withdrawn the metal. His genhanced body could easily withstand such trivial punishment, and despite the spinning fall through the decks of the ship, he remained perfectly orientated and in balance on the sloping deck.
He remembered the sound of tearing metal, the clang of metal on armour and the sharp crack of bones snapping as Astartes warriors were thrown around like children in a funhouse.
'Sons of Horus!' he shouted. 'Verulam!'
Only mocking echoes answered him, and he cursed as he realised he was alone. The vox mic on his gorget was shattered, brass wires hanging limply from the empty socket, and he angrily ripped them away.
Verulam Moy was nowhere to be seen, and his squad members were similarly scattered beyond sight. Quickly taking stock of his surroundings, Horus could see that he lay partially buried in metal debris on the armorium vestibule, its ceiling bulging and cracked. Icy water dripped in a cold rain, and he tipped his head back to let it pour over his face.
He was close to the bridge of the ship, assuming it hadn't sheared off on impact with the ground - for surely there could be no other explanation for what had happened. Horus hauled himself from beneath the wreckage and checked to make sure that he was still armed, finding his sword hilt protruding from the detritus of the vestibule.
Pulling the weapon clear, its golden blade caught what little light there was and shone as though an inner fire burned within its core. Forged by his brother, Ferrus Manus of the Tenth Legion, the Iron Hands, it had been a gift to commemorate Horus's investiture as Warmaster.
He smiled as he saw that the weapon remained as unblemished as the day Ferrus had held it out to him, the light of adoration in his steel grey eyes, and Horus had never been more thankful for his brother's skill at the forge's anvil.
The deck creaked beneath his weight, and he suddenly began to question the wisdom of leading this assault. Despite that, he still seethed with molten rage for Eugan Temba, a man whose character he had believed in, and whose betrayal cut his heart with searing knives.
What manner of a man could betray the oath of loyalty to the Imperium?
What manner of base cur would dare to betray him?
The deck shifted again, Horus easily compensating for the lurching motion. He used his free hand to haul himself up towards the gaping doorway that led to the warren of passageways that riddled a ship this size. Horus had set foot on the Glory of Terra only once before, nearly seventy years ago, but remembered its layout as though it had been yesterday. Beyond this doorway lay the upper gantries of the armorium and beyond that, the central spine of the ship that led through several defensive choke points to the bridge.
Horus grunted as he felt a sharp pain in his chest and realised that the iron spar must have torn through one of his lungs. Without hesitation, he switched his breathing pattern and carried on without pause, his eyesight easily piercing the darkness of the vessel's interior.
This close to the bridge, Horus could see the terrible changes wrought upon the ship, its walls coated in loathsome bacterial slime that ate at the metal like an acidic fungus. Dripping fronds of waving, leech-like organisms suckled at oozing pustules of greenish brown matter, and an unremitting stench of decay hung in the air.
Horus wondered what had happened to this ship. Had the tribes of the moon unleashed some kind of deadly plague on the crew? Were these the means that Erebus had spoken of?
He could taste that the air was thick with lethal bacterial filth and biological contaminants, t
hough none were even close to virulent enough to trouble his incredible metabolism. With the golden light of his sword to illuminate the way, Horus negotiated a path around the gantry, listening out for any signs of his warriors. The occasional distant crack of gunfire or clang of metal told him that he wasn't completely alone, but the whereabouts of the battles was a mystery. The corrupted inner structure of the ship threw phantom echoes and faraway shouts all around him until he decided to ignore them and press on alone.
Horus passed through the armorium and into the star-ship's central spine, the deck warped and canted at an unnatural angle. Flickering glow-globes and sputtering power conduits sparked and lit the arched passageway with blue electrical fire. Broken doors clanged against their frames with the rocking motion of the ship, making a sound like funeral bells.
Ahead he could hear a low moaning and the shuffle of callused feet, the first sounds he could clearly identify. They came from beyond a wide hatchway, toothed blast doors juddering open and closed like the jaws of some monstrous beast. Crushed debris prevented the doors from closing completely, and Horus knew that whatever was making the noises stood between him and his ultimate destination.
Some trick of the diffuse, strobing light threw jittering shadows from the mouth of the hatchway, and flickering after-images danced on his retinas as though the light came from a pict projector running in slow motion.
As the hatchway rumbled closed once more, a clawed hand reached out and gripped the smeared metal. Long, dripping yellow talons sprouted from the hand, the flesh of the wasted arm maggot-ridden and leprous. Another hand pushed through and clamped onto the metal, wrenching open the blast doors with a strength that belied the frailness of the arms.
The sensation of fear was utterly alien to Horus, but when the horrifying source of the sounds was revealed, he was suddenly seized with the conviction that perhaps his captains had been right after all.
A shambling mob of rotten-fleshed famine victims appeared, their shuffling gaits carrying them forwards in a droning phalanx of corruption. A creeping sensation of hidden power pulsed from their hunger-wasted bodies and swollen bellies, and buzzing clouds of flies surrounded their cyclopean, horned heads. Sonorous doggerel spilled from bloated and split lips, though Horus could make no sense of the words. Green flesh hung from exposed bones, and although they moved with the leaden monotony of the dead things, Horus could see coiled strength in their limbs and a terrible hunger in each monster's cataracted eyeball.
The creatures were less than a dozen metres from him, but their images were blurred and wavering, as though tears misted his vision. He blinked rapidly to clear it, and saw their swords, rusted and dripped with contagion.
'Well you're a handsome bunch and no mistake,' said Horus, raising his sword and throwing himself forward.
His golden sword clove into the monsters like a fiery comet, each blow hacking down a dozen or more without effort. Spatters of diseased meat caked the walls, and the air was thick with the stench of faecal matter, as each monster exploded with rotten bangs of flesh at his every blow. Filthy claws tore at Horus, but his every limb was a weapon. His elbow smashed skulls from shoulders, his knees and feet shattered spines, and his sword struck his foes down as if they were the mindless automatons in the training cages.
Horus did not know what manner of creatures these were, but they had obviously never faced a being as mighty as a primarch. He pushed further up the centtal spine of the starship, hacking a path through hundreds of organ-draped beasts. Behind him lay the ruin of his passing, shredded meat that reeked of decay and pestilence. Before him lay scores more of the creatures, and the bridge of the Glory of Terra.
He lost track of time, the primal brutality of the fight capturing the entirety of his attention, his sword strikes mechanical and bludgeoning. Nothing could stand before him, and with each blow, the Warmaster drew closer to his goal. The corridor grew wider as he pushed through the heaving mass of Cyclopean monsters, the golden sheen of his sword and the flickering, uncertain lights of the corridor making it appear that his enemies were becoming less substantial.
His sword chopped through a distended belly, ripping it wide open in a gush of stinking fluids, but instead of bursting open, the meat of the creature simply vanished like greasy smoke in the wind. Horus took another step forwards, but instead of meeting his foes head on with brutal ferocity, the corridor was suddenly and inexplicably empty. He looked around, and where once there had been a host of diseased creatures bent on his death, now there were only the reeking remains of hacked up corpses.
Even they were dissolving like fat on a griddle, vanishing in hissing streamers of green smoke so dark it was almost black.
'Throne,' hissed Horus, revolted by the sickening sight of the liquefying meat, and finally recognising the taint within the ship for what it was - a charnel house of the warp: a spawning ground of the Immaterium.
Horus felt fresh resolve fill his limbs as he drew closer to the multiple blast doors that protected the bridge, more certain than ever that he must destroy Eugan Temba. He expected yet more legions of the warp-spawned things, but the way was eerily quiet, the silence punctuated only by the sounds of more gunfire (which he was now sure was coming from beyond the hull) and the patter of black water on his armour.
Horus made his way forward cautiously, brushing sparking cables from his path as, one by one, the sealed blast doors slowly rumbled open at his approach. The whole thing reeked of a trap, but nothing could deny him his vengeance now, and he pressed onwards.
Stepping onto the bridge of the Glory of Terra, Horus saw that its colonnaded immensity had been changed from a place of command to something else entirely. Mouldering banners hung from the highest reaches, with long dead corpses stitched into the torn fabric of each one. Even from here, Horus could see that they wore the lupine grey uniforms of the 63rd Expedition, and he wondered if these poor souls had stayed true to their oaths of loyalty.
'You will be avenged, my friends,' he whispered as he stepped further into the bridge.
The tiered workstations were smashed and broken, their inner workings ripped out and rewired in some bizarre new way, metres-thick bundles of coiled wire rising into the darkness of the arched ceiling.
Throbbing energy pulsed from the cables and Horus realised that he was looking at the source of the vox signal that had so perturbed Loken on the way in.
Indeed, he fancied he could still hear the words of that damned voice whispering on the air like a secret that would turn your tongue black were you to tell it.
Nurghleth, it hissed, over and over…
Then he realised that it wasn't some auditory echo from the ship's vox, but a whisper from a human throat.
Horus's eyes narrowed as he sought the source of the voice, his lip curling in revulsion as he saw the massively swollen figure of a man standing before the captain's throne. Little more than a heaving mass of corpulent flesh, a terrific stench of rank meat rose from his fleshy immensity.
Flying things with glossy black bodies infested every fold of his skin, and scraps of grey cloth were stuck to his green grey flesh, gold epaulettes glinting and silver frogging hanging limply over his massive belly.
One hand rested in the glutinous mess of an infected wound in his chest, while the other held a sword with a glitter-sheen like diamond.
Horus dropped to his knees in anger and sorrow as he saw the slumped corpse of an Astartes warrior sprawled before the decayed splendour of the bloated figure.
Verulam Moy, his neck obviously broken and his sightless eyes fixed upon the decaying corpses hanging from the banners.
Even before Horus lifted his gaze to Moy's killer, he knew who it would be: Eugan Temba…
The Betrayer.
EIGHT
Fallen god
Loken could scarcely remember a fight where he and his warriors had expended all their ammunition. Each Astartes carried enough shells to sustain them for most types of engagement, since no shot was wasted and
each target would normally fall to a single bolt.
The ammo hoppers were back at the drop site and there was no way they could get through to them. The Warmaster's resolute advance had seen to that.
Loken's full capacity of bolter rounds had long been expended, and he was thankful for Aximand's insistence on subsonic rounds, as they made satisfyingly lethal explosions within the bodies of the dead things.
'Throne, don't they ever stop?' gasped Torgaddon. 'I must have killed a hundred or more of the damned things.'
'You probably keep killing the same one,' replied Loken, shaking his sword free of grey matter. 'If you don't destroy the head, they get back up again. I've cut down half a dozen or more with bolter wounds in them.'
Torgaddon nodded and said, 'Hold on, the Legio's coming again.'
Loken gripped onto a more solid piece of debris, as the Titans began yet another deadly strafing run through the mass of rotted monsters. Like the monstrous giants said to haunt the mists of Barbarus, the Titans emerged from the fog with fists of thunder and fire. Wet explosions mushroomed from the swamp as high explosives hurled the cadavers into the air and the crashing steps of the mighty war machines crashed them to ooze beneath their hammer-blow footsteps.
The very air thrummed with the vibrations of the Titans' attack, avalanches of debris and mud sliding from the Glory of Terra with each explosion and titanic footstep. The dead things had gained the slopes of rubble and detritus that led into the starship three times; and three times had they sent them back, first with gunfire, and, when the ammunition had ran out, with blades and brute strength. Each time they killed hundreds of their enemies, but each time a handful of Astartes was dragged down and pulled beneath the waters of the swamp.
Under normal circumstances, the Astartes would have had no trouble in dealing with these abominations, but with the Warmaster's fate unknown they were brittle and on edge, unable to think or fight with their customary ferocity. Loken knew exactly what they were feeling, because he felt it too.
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