Trial by Blood

by Andy Smillie

  Propelled by modified jetpacks that had spinning rotators in place of thrusters, the orks followed the water inside.

  ‘Bring them death!’ Harahel roared and powered forward into the press of orks.

  The metal and fabric suits worn by the orks were like something from the ancient annals of man. Translucent, domed helms covered the orks’ faces, a crude system of valves and thick pipes providing oxygen. Harahel snarled as he drove his fist through one of the domes, shattering it and crushing the face of the ork behind it. Harahel’s muscles burned with effort as he tore his blade through the water into the torso of an advancing ork. He reversed the stroke, snarling as the teeth of his weapon ripped apart another of the greenskins.

  Blood. There was no blood. No blood on his armour. No blood choking his blade. The accursed sea swallowed the ork arterial fluid as quickly as he shed it. He snarled and killed another and another, butchering a dozen orks in quick succession. Still the water robbed him of his prize, diluting the blood, drawing it away from him. He killed again, reaching out with his hand in a desperate effort to grab hold of the blood as it spilled from the orks’ veins. ‘Must I turn the sea red?’ Harahel roared as the blood slipped away from him. Drawing his bolt pistol, he emptied a clip into the orks, grinning as their bodies burst like crimson clouds in the water. He would not stop. He would not tire. He would have his blood.

  Seth knelt on the deck, bracing himself as it shuddered under the wrath of the Validus’s defensive weaponry. Above him, a squadron of ork bombers converged on the Titan, carrion intent on feasting. Submerged in the ocean, with only its buttressed towers visible above the waves, the Validus seemed an easy target.

  It was not.

  Where a Warlord- or Reaver-class Titan would have been almost defenceless against such an attack, the Validus’s towering spires housed more than enough firepower for the task in hand.

  Seth turned his attention to the angular gantries ahead of him.

  Rain and seawater lashed the deck in an unceasing barrage, conspiring with the night to make visibility poor. But he knew the ork assault teams were out there. Even above the wind, the bark of thunder and chatter of weapons fire, he could hear the low growl in their throats.

  Unbidden, the killer inside the Flesh Tearer growled in response.

  Lightning tore across the sky, throwing splinters of light across the deck. Between jagged flashes, Seth glimpsed the yellow eyes and ragged teeth of more than a dozen greenskins. He smiled.

  The orks roared and charged towards him.

  Springing to his feet, Seth swung his eviscerator up and flicked the activation stud. He barrelled into the orks, denying their attack momentum, feeling his heartbeat quicken as bones broke against his armoured bulk.

  Snarling, Seth tore his blade through a wide arc. The vicious stroke maimed a trio of orks, ripping out their guts and bathing him in blood. He reversed the motion, hacking the blade back down, butchering two more of the greenskins. He attacked again. Another ork died, its torso shorn in half.

  His blade rose and fell, churning muscle and bone into sodden gobbets. He attacked and attacked and attacked, relentlessly cutting and bludgeoning, striking without any thought of defence, ignorant of the blows that hammered against his armour.

  Seth snarled as he found his blade blocked by another. He pressed down on his opponent, feeling the other’s weapon begin to buckle.

  ‘Lord, it is I, Nathaniel,’ Nathaniel stammered, driving his second chainsword under Seth’s blade in an effort to stop it inching towards his face.

  Seth couldn’t hear Nathaniel. He couldn’t see the aquila on the other Flesh Tearer’s breastplate. Lost to his bloodlust, all he could hear was the sound of battle, all he could see was the blood yet to be spilt.

  ‘Lord… Seth…’

  Seth roared and tore his weapon free from Nathaniel’s, punching it down into the deck. He knelt against his sword, gripping the haft as though crushing it might bring him solace, and deactivated his armour’s auto-senses. His helmet display blinked dark, plunging him into silent isolation, cutting him off from the world, shutting out the violence. ‘Sanguinius, clad me in rightful mind, strengthen me against the desires of flesh.’ Seth ground his teeth, struggling through the litany. The beast in his breast shuddered, hammering a final blow as it felt his will shackle it. ‘By the Blood am I made… By the Blood am I armoured… By the Blood… I will endure.’

  The mine was a smouldering ruin. The vast geared systems of belts that carried away the rock had been reduced to a tangled mess of twisted metal. Dark columns of smoke drifted up from scattered piles of ore that lay heaped around iron transit caskets. The energy-rich mineral deposits would burn for weeks, warming the bodies of the dead Steel Legion troopers who covered the ground like spent shell casings.

  ‘We are here. Now what?’ asked Seth.

  ‘We need to descend to the absolute bottom. The main tunnel should take us past half way. Beyond that, we’ll run into the exploratory lines. We should be able to use one of them to travel the rest of the way,’ said Nerissa.

  ‘Should?’

  ‘It is the nature of mines that they change on a daily basis. The last set of schematics I managed to secure were over three months old. Now that we are here, we should be able to procure a more accurate set.’ Nerissa indicated a damaged console to the right of the doorway.

  ‘Metatron, see what you can do,’ said Seth.

  The Techmarine approached the console and pulled a pair of data-cables from a recess in his gauntlet. ‘It’s functioning, but the display is beyond repair. Give me a moment and I’ll route the data to my helm.’ Metatron manipulated several of the dials on the console. ‘According to the senior excavator’s last log, GSN-V is the deepest burrow. It is almost nine kilometres down.’

  ‘What is the time stamp?’ asked Seth.

  ‘It was recorded two hundred and sixty hours ago,’ said Metatron.

  ‘That is a long time. How can we be sure the tunnel is still open?’ asked Harahel.

  ‘We cannot. It is just a chance we will have to take,’ said Nerissa.

  ‘I do not like trusting my fate to chance.’ Harahel hefted his eviscerator as though to emphasise his point.

  ‘You are a fool to think it has ever been any other way, Flesh Tearer.’

  Harahel took a pace towards her in threat.

  ‘Enough,’ said Seth. ‘Let us go.’

  ‘Be on your guard. It looks like the orks overran the mine. They may not have left.’ Seth spoke as they passed a string of dismembered corpses.

  ‘Orks I can kill. I’m more concerned with all these tunnels. A wrong turn and we’ll be wandering around here for weeks,’ said Harahel.

  ‘I am certain the data I extracted was accurate,’ said Metatron.

  ‘Let us hope so.’ Seth cast a sidelong glance at the inquisitor. It would not bode well for her if his warriors remained trapped underground for any length of time. Without an enemy to kill, their frustrations would soon get the better of them. ‘Pick up the pace.’

  Plasteel beams shadowed them from overhead as they moved through the mine. Reinforced arches and cross-tunnels intersected their path every hundred paces. Twice they had to stop to dig through piles of rubble that blocked their path before they reached the base of the main tunnel.

  ‘Which way now?’ Seth indicated the arterial passageways and smaller feeder tunnels that wound off in every direction.

  ‘We should head–’

  ‘What was that?’ Nerissa interrupted the Techmarine, instinctively raising her weapon.

  Seth snarled. ‘Orks.’

  Without another word, the Flesh Tearers took up defensive positions. The burr of chainswords growling on idle broke the silence. A heartbeat later, a roar, primal and alien, responded.

  The orks had found them.

  Harahel took first blood. ‘Contact!’

  His voice was quickly joined by the others as the orks engaged them. The Flesh Tearers opened fire as orks poure
d from every tunnel and cross-tunnel connected to their position.

  ‘Hold formation. The first of you to break will pay with his life,’ Seth snarled as he fought down his own urge to abandon his position and charge headlong into the mass of greenskins.

  In the close confines of the cavern, the thunderous staccato of weapons fire was deafening. The howl of the orks and the roar of the Flesh Tearers was like the voice of some terrible storm.

  ‘We cannot stay here,’ said Nerissa.

  ‘She is right.’ Nathaniel emptied the last of his rounds into a charging ork, reducing the greenskin to a ruined mulch. ‘If even one of us falls they will overwhelm us.’

  Seth ignored them, his attention fixed on his own blade as it tore the guts from an ork.

  ‘Master Seth. We must move.’

  Seth grinned at the panic in Nerissa’s voice and cast a glance towards her. Defensive wounds scored her arms and face. Two of her retinue lay dead beside her. The other two were bleeding badly.

  ‘Seth!’

  Seth roared in frustration. ‘Metatron, which way?’

  ‘Here.’ The Techmarine indicated a narrow tunnel sloping down to their left.

  ‘Go. I will hold them here,’ said Harahel.

  ‘No. There are too many even for your might, brother,’ said Seth.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Harahel grinned and tore his weapon through another ork. ‘But we cannot fight a withdrawal. A single detonation inside that tunnel will see us buried.’

  Seth knew he was right. ‘We will return for your body. Your bloodline will not end here.’

  ‘See that you do.’

  ‘The Blood protects.’ Seth banged his fist against Harahel’s pauldron in salute and withdrew into the tunnel.

  With the Chapter Master clear, Harahel threw a grenade up towards the ceiling. The detonation sealed off the tunnel, leaving him alone with the orks. ‘Who dies first?’

  GSN-V was a ragged borehole that plummeted sharply down into the earth. It grew narrower at irregular intervals, forcing the Flesh Tearers to hunch over and advance in single file. Unlike the main tunnel, there was no lighting studding the ceiling, forcing Nerissa and her warband to navigate by portable luminator.

  ‘We can go no further.’ Seth spoke for the benefit of Nerissa, who was several paces behind him.

  ‘The Titan should be directly below us.’ The inquisitor knelt down and ran her hand across the coarse earth. ‘Arija.’ She motioned to the tattooed warrior.

  The man stepped forward, placing a flat metal cylinder on the ground. Twisting it securely into the earth, he depressed the activation stud on its side.

  ‘Stand back,’ said Nerissa, as the device began to charge.

  The cylinder flashed azure as the noise built to a crescendo, emitting a pulse of energy that lanced down into the ground. The earth and ore-rock underneath the device began to crack, turning to powder and crumbling away to reveal a plate of green-brown adamantium.

  ‘Brother Metatron,’ said Nerissa. ‘Your plasma cutter, please.’

  The Titan had been buried face down, leaving them to enter through its back so that they walked on the internal walls while the flooring stood erect behind them. The ventilation-cyclers and atmos-scrubbers had long since fallen silent and the air was a stale mix of pungent decay. Cobwebs clung to every surface. Piles of grey dust, the powdered remains of organic matter, tumbled like sand where they disturbed it. It was not unlike the Validus. A maze of tight corridors and grilled walkways dissected its interior, allowing begrudging access to the god-machine’s manifold sections.

  ‘It still functions.’ Metatron indicated a flickering bank of luminators. ‘Does it have a name?’

  ‘Not one I am willing to share with you, Flesh Tearer,’ Nerissa sneered.

  Seth snarled. ‘How much further?’

  ‘We are almost there. The bridge should be on the other side of the next bulkhead,’ said Nerissa.

  ‘Pick up the pace. Let us be done with this.’ The desire to avenge Harahel gnawed at Seth’s bones like a starved beast. He itched to be back in the mine, killing orks.

  ‘This doesn’t feel right,’ Nisroc’s voice crackled over a closed channel.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Seth.

  ‘Look around you. There are no heretical markings, no crude blood sigils.’

  Seth stopped walking. The Apothecary was right. He had been so consumed with the desire to avenge Harahel, to kill the inquisitor, that he had missed it. The baleful miasma, the sickening air of perversion that permeated everything the Archenemy touched, was absent. The Titan had not been tainted.

  ‘We are here,’ Nerissa announced as she entered the bridge. Arija and the remaining woman followed her in.

  Seth looked past them, studying the ruined chamber. Sparking cables hung like limp vines from smashed consoles. The husked remains of the Titan’s crew lay slumped against the vast oculus that was the Titan’s left eye. The armourglass lens was badly cracked, stricken with wide fissures. The symbol of the Legio Annihilator glared back at him from the upturned ceiling.

  ‘Arija, get what we came for and plant the charges,’ said Nerissa.

  ‘Wait. Stop.’

  Arija ignored Seth, pulling a device from his belt and connecting it to the princeps’s jacks. A second later, his head vanished in a cloud of red mist as an explosive round detonated his skull.

  Nerissa rounded on Seth to find his bolt pistol levelled at her face. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I am tired of your lies, inquisitor. This Titan is not a weapon of the Archenemy. Tell me why we are here or I will rip your face from your skull.’

  ‘You dare–’

  ‘Now.’ Seth fired again, and the female warrior flanking Nerissa came apart at the midriff as the bolt-round tore through her abdomen.

  Nerissa turned to face the woman’s ruined corpse, and smiled. ‘Ah, that infamous Rage of yours, Seth. I had wondered how long it would be before it surfaced.’ Nerissa held up a hand to placate Seth as he advanced on her. ‘Whether it is loyal to the Throne or not, we cannot allow this Titan to fall into the hands of the orks. It must be destroyed.’

  ‘You cannot deny the Imperium a weapon such as this. We will send word to Mars, and have them excavate it.’

  ‘Such a small mind. Another war machine will make little difference to the fate of the Imperium.’ Nerissa spread her arms. ‘This Titan is ancient. It is older even than that barbaric symbol you wear on your pauldron. It stalked battlefields ten thousand years ago when the galaxy was forced to its knees by your depraved cousins.’ Emboldened by her conviction, Nerissa took a step towards Seth. ‘Knowledge is the only weapon worth possessing and I will not lose this find to the asinine secrecy and inane bureaucracy of Mars. I will know what this Titan knows. I will unlock the secrets from its mind.’

  Seth was silent for a moment, his anger momentarily crushed by the weight of the inquisitor’s words. ‘No. Knowledge corrupts. It is far more terrible than a simple weapon. It is justification. Too much knowledge, too little knowledge. Knowledge was the catalyst for the most devastating civil war mankind has ever faced. We cannot risk inviting such a war. I will not let you siphon the datacore.’

  ‘Are you worried about what I might find? About what I might uncover about your precious bloodline? Perhaps your progenitors were not who you think. Perhaps they aided the Archene–’

  Seth fired, depressing the trigger before the last syllable could leave Nerissa’s lips.

  The round detonated an inch in front of the inquisitor, exploding against a shimmering energy field. ‘I had hoped this moment would come sooner. Ghaar-gor kharnn ar-vgu raah.’ Blood spilled from Nerissa’s mouth as the dark words tore from her throat. The eldar gem on her breast began to vibrate, radiating a piercing light as Arija’s and the dead woman’s bodies drifted up from the ground.

  Seth and his warriors opened fire. ‘Psychic wretch,’ he cursed as the rounds impacted against the shield of energy surrounding the inquisitor. />
  The floating corpses shuddered once and exploded, bathing the Flesh Tearers in blood and viscera. Seth grunted in pain as the psychic shockwave slammed him back into the wall. Pain. Pain that was not there lanced through his legs as his mind heard his bones snap. He fell to the floor.

  He made to stand and stopped, casting his eyes around. He was on a warship, an ancient vessel far grander and mightier than any he had stood upon. Its plasma core thrummed with restrained fury, its walls rippled with power. Seth could hear the familiar sound of battle ringing from the ship’s many corridors. He reached for his weapon.

  Powerful hands that were no more real than the injury to his legs locked around his throat. They squeezed, gripping tighter, throttling the life from him. He struggled and tried to prise them away, but they were too strong. Death. Death and darkness closed in around him. He stopped struggling, giving up as his rage gave way to sorrow, to shame. Seth knew he had failed. He knew that this was where he would die. Unless…

  Seth roared to his feet, and drove his combat knife into Metatron’s jaw. Blood. Blood would wash away his shame. Blood would ease his anguish. Seth advanced and kicked his foot into Metatron’s chest. He would kill and kill and kill. He would kill death itself if it came for him.

  The Techmarine rode the blow’s momentum, rising and firing. The first shot went wide. The second struck Seth in the gut, blasting off a chunk of his armour and opening his abdomen. Seth barrelled into Metatron, dragging him to the ground. Pinning the Techmarine beneath him, Seth delivered a series of punishing hammerblows to his face, smashing his helm and cracking his skull. Pulling the knife from Metatron’s jaw, Seth plunged the blade into his torso, stabbing him again and again, working the knife until it broke against the Techmarine’s hardened ribs. Tossing the ruined weapon away, Seth drove his fingers down under the Techmarine’s gorget and broke it off, exposing his throat. Ripping off his own helm, Seth sank his teeth into Metatron and tore out his larynx. He relished the taste of the chemical-rich blood as it filled his mouth and warmed his throat.