Silver Skulls: Portents

by S P Cawkwell

  ‘So keen to die, boy? Your turn will come.’

  ‘Warp take you,’ fired back Nicodemus and with a gravity-defying bound, he leaped at the antenna array. He punched his hands and feet into the structure as he landed. Then, with all the strength he could muster, he began to climb.

  Karteitja withdrew the blade and gave the massive axe an effortless shake. It bit into the Space Marine’s armour with a crunch, shearing through his hip and thigh with contemptuous ease. The Silver Skull fell, his enhanced body struggling to stem the arterial flow from his amputated limb.

  Gileas watched him fall and reacted with the instincts of a child raised amongst warriors. The entire process took three heartbeats of his accelerated physiology. Then he went berserk.

  Gileas lunged at the Oracle who was blocking passage to his fallen brother, taking a shot to the chest for his efforts. The shell scattered armour chips in all directions but failed to penetrate the battleplate. Then he grabbed the traitor’s armoured collar and smashed him in the face with the studded guard of his chainsword. Three times Eclipse rose and fell, three piston-motion punches that crumpled the baroque decoration of the Oracle’s helm. The fourth downward swing removed his opponent’s blade hand, sending him stumbling away. Then Gileas raised his bolt pistol and emptied the magazine into the wounded warrior’s face.

  The sergeant stepped through the raining gobbets of meat and ceramite in time to see the enemy champion hurling crackling bolts of force at a figure high up on the flank of the array.

  Nicodemus climbed, the air growing thick with the ozone taint of psychic power as projectile after projectile burst struck the young psyker. Even from this distance, Gileas could see that the youth’s armour was beginning to peel in places and there was only so much more it could take before its systems were fully compromised.

  The traitor in front of Tikaye let out an ululating cry and sidestepped, dropping like a stone from the platform. There was a sudden prickling of the air and that now-familiar sound of an Adeptus Astartes stepping into the warp. The Oracle of Change had made good his escape. Stirred at last from the apathy brought on by the mirror room, Tikaye bellowed curses into the cloudbank that had swirled beneath them. One by one, they were departing.

  ‘Sergeant.’ Tikaye attempted to raise Gileas on the vox, but he knew it was a futile effort. He could see his superior carving his way towards the enemy with relentless determination. The enemy seemed disinterested, focused as he was on another target.

  Tikaye had little choice but to follow Gileas and deal with the situation as it happened. Reuben lay still and seemingly lifeless, although his life rune glowed faintly in the corner of Tikaye’s helm. His brother lived still, but was in the deep embrace of a sus-an coma. His sergeant also lived – but was in the grip of a red-rimmed cloud of absolute rage that Tikaye had seen before.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said again, reaching out a hand to grab the bigger warrior by the shoulder. ‘Gileas!’

  The voice of his battle-brother… his friend finally penetrated the scarlet haze and Gileas turned to look at Tikaye. The battle helm that the Techmarine had spent so long carefully fixing up was broken and shattered, both eye-lenses lost now, and Gileas’s dark blue eyes slowly bled fury until it was evident he had come to his senses.

  ‘Their escape route is assured,’ said Tikaye, indicating Karteitja with his weapon. ‘The minute he thinks he is beaten, he will step off into the warp.’

  ‘So pessimistic, Tikaye,’ said Gileas. ‘Then you and I must kill him before we can allow that to happen.’ His eyes cast upwards to where Nicodemus was still clinging with determination to the highest antenna array. ‘We need to buy that boy the time he needs.’

  They considered Karteitja for a moment. Then they launched their attack in perfect synchronicity. The jets on their jump packs burned fiercely and they lifted with effortless ease into the air, throwing themselves with reckless abandon at the sorcerer.

  His goal was within a few feet.

  The furious psychic attacks being hurled at him by the horned warrior champion far below were taking their toll on his systems. His generator was starting to fail, its functionality now intermittent at best, and this added to his climbing burden. Having to bear the weight of his own armour without the generator’s aid meant that extra chemicals and stimulants were flooding his system. But bear it he did, his expression grim beneath the helm.

  He too had seen Reuben’s life sign fade to a dull throb and knew that far below him, a respected and admired battle-brother was fighting for his life. He had been indoctrinated and trained for live combat and instinctively knew how he should be reacting in this situation. But the extraneous factors were far harder to compartmentalise than training had ever promised.

  He climbed. He poured everything he had into climbing. It became the only thing that mattered. As he gathered his psychic will on the antenna in preparation to destroy it once and for all, he saw more clearly than he had ever seen in his young life. Everything that he had absorbed through the hypno-doctrination sessions during his ascension… every training fight he had ever battled… every word of advice or any moment of fraternity that had passed his way… he remembered it all.

  Steeling his every thought against what he knew must follow, he offered up a whispered prayer to the God-Emperor, so far beyond his reach on distant Terra. Energy trembled through his limbs and ignited his fists with argent flames of blinding purity. He thrust them into the guts of the massive antenna and seized the corrupted, vitreous core with both hands. The raw agony of a million tortured souls assailed him, the psychic backlash shattering his helm and blowing the matrices of his hood apart in a spray of crystal and ceramite.

  Nicodemus had often heard that your entire life was supposed to flash before your eyes at the moment of death. But no amount of indoctrination or any wise words from his more experienced battle-brothers could ever have prepared him for the reality of that fact. In the blink of an eye, he saw everything he had been, all that he had become.

  He did not see what he would be, and he smiled. ‘I have done well,’ he said. ‘I have prevailed.’

  The entire array shuddered, throwing the warriors below off their feet as the structure groaned in protest. The pillar of warped energy spearing into the heavens wobbled and shook as Nicodemus strained to kill it at its source. The shaking got steadily stronger and the antenna to which he clung began to crack loudly as it broke away from its fellows.

  ‘More,’ he urged through gritted teeth. He strained, psychic might, enhanced muscle and powered armour focused in that one moment of pure purpose. He could feel the forces of the warp playing about him, stripping away his battleplate, scorching his flesh and hammering at his psyche. But in that one perfect moment he found the flaw in the design and his gift broke it open. He was rewarded with a glaring, searing white flash of light that whilst it blinded him, nonetheless brought with it the knowledge that he had succeeded.

  The torrent of hateful energy sputtered and died in a catastrophic backlash, blowing the top level of the array apart in a dazzling flash of white and silver. The mast listed drunkenly to one side before tearing from its moorings completely and plunging past the platform to the plaza far below. Burning debris rained down from the explosion, including a lone blue comet with a tail of argent fire that guttered out as it fell hundreds of feet to the distant ground.

  The killing stroke did not come. Bhehan surged to his feet and whirled about. In every direction he looked across the plaza the Oracles of Change were gone. Even the hulking Chaos Dreadnought and its attendants had disappeared like nothing more than a bad memory.

  Mutants and heretics still clogged the Celebrant’s Square, but without the threat of the sorcerers they were wild and uncoordinated and the surviving Silver Skulls set about slaughtering them despite still being greatly outnumbered. The Prognosticator staggered over to the first captain, retrieving his fallen axe. Kerelan s
aid nothing, his grim expression amply conveying his feelings on the subject, and then the pair set to work on the twisted hordes of Valoria.

  ‘Nicodemus, no!’

  Gileas was unable to prevent the yell that escaped his lips; the momentary denial of his brother’s demise. He had been nothing more than a boy. Promising, eager, everything he had once been. To see him fall, damaged and broken, was enough to bring that surge of furious rage burning back through the calm he had gathered. Tikaye heard the Chaos champion snarl in rage as his works were undone and wondered for a moment why he had not simply fled as his brethren so often did. Treachery was in their nature, however, so perhaps he had been abandoned to his fate for his failure.

  Nicodemus was gone, but his efforts at least had borne fruit. The billowing black clouds that had gathered at the top of the antenna rig began to disperse. The warp storm would take some time to clear, but here at its epicentre, the driving force behind it was damaged beyond repair.

  The two Silver Skulls were on their feet before their opponent was; Terminator armour had never loaned itself to agility and Gileas was grateful for that fact. The Oracle of Change had dropped forward onto his knees. Both Gileas and Tikaye struggled for a moment to regain their balance on the platform as it groaned in the wind and blast shock.

  The two warriors exchanged brief glances, their unspoken bond of brotherhood connecting them more than it had ever done before. ‘He will probably kill us, Gileas,’ said Tikaye, a statement of fact rather than a concern.

  ‘Probably.’ Gileas’s acceptance was spoken in a voice that was calm and reasoned.

  ‘It was always going to come down to this. You, me and Reuben against an insurmountable challenge. Reuben’s going to be beside himself with rage that he missed it.’ Even now, even at the moment of certain defeat, Tikaye’s dry humour brought a smile to Gileas’s face.

  ‘We can regale him with stories of our final heroic foolishness when we reach the Emperor’s side,’ said the sergeant. ‘But I have a mind to drag that traitor with us.’

  For the first time, Karteitja considered the very real possibility of defeat. His warriors were gone; dead or made good their escape in the warp.

  ‘So you betray me at the last, Cirth,’ he said aloud and a gale of bitter laughter burst forth from him. He was left to face the Silver Skulls alone.

  It was hardly a challenge. He had defeated worthier rivals in his long lifetime, champions of the Four and Imperial dogs alike. The problem for him now was how he was going to get out of this place. Somebody had sealed the blessed ways behind them, effectively preventing escape by sorcerous means. Only the Unborn would dare, only the Unborn had such ambition.

  He would have to fight these two warriors, but little matter. It would not take long to deprive them of their worthless souls.

  Twenty

  We Shall Prevail

  ‘I have not managed to raise Sergeant Ur’ten on the vox,’ Kerelan said. ‘I would suggest that we work on an assumption that our battle-brothers have fallen and have been unsuccessful in their endeavour.’

  The first captain’s words came in response to yet another failed attempt to communicate with Gileas’s squad. Evidence certainly suggested that they had failed; the skies above them still swirled and boiled and vile creatures continued to rampage throughout the city and beyond.

  The battle in the plaza had been horrific and arduous; the Astra Militarum had been butchered virtually to a man, with only a handful of men and vehicles remaining. It had been difficult for the Silver Skulls to bear witness to something that was far out of their hands, but they had been hard-pressed to defend themselves against the Oracle’s onslaught. Apart from the one break in the storm, there had been no word from the Prevision of Victory since its brief transmission and Kerelan was unsure whether he had even heard them or if it had just been a moment of battle madness.

  Bhehan and Inteus had all but exhausted their psychic energies protecting themselves from the attacks directed at them by the Oracles of Change. They had hoarded what little strength they had remaining to guard themselves against the perils of the encroaching empyrean. Tactically, they were next to useless.

  The remnants of the Talriktug, fragmented squads of the siege company and a handful of men and armour were all that remained of the palace defence. As the waves of mutants broke up under the concentrated fire of the survivors, Bhehan wearily voiced his concern regarding the disappearance of the Oracles.

  ‘They knew they could not hope to win,’ asserted Vrakos with the unshakable confidence of the terminally arrogant.

  ‘More likely that they are planning something worse,’ responded Asterios, needing to shout over the roar of battle.

  But the Oracles of Change did not return.

  ‘You are surprisingly tenacious, Silver Skulls.’ Karteitja was not paying them a compliment when he spoke the words. ‘But then… you always were. Even the course of thousands of years has not eroded that stubborn streak in you and your brethren.’ He hefted the daemonically possessed axe in his hands.

  Gileas and Tikaye did not bother to engage their enemy in conversation. They had hurled themselves towards the Terminator, Tikaye with his bolt pistol on semi-automatic and Gileas with his chainsword throbbing hungrily. He set his stance ready for what he fully anticipated to be a ferocious battle. Even the razor teeth of the well-honed chainsword would be hard-pressed to make so much as a scratch in desecrated Terminator armour, but he would not fail through lack of trying.

  The two Silver Skulls pushed forward, keeping themselves at just enough distance so that the sweep of the Terminator’s axe could not reach them. They had yet to see what the weapon was fully capable of, but it had revealed itself to be lethal enough to carve through sacred battleplate.

  With a barking laugh, the sorcerer thrust his free hand out before him, the gauntleted fingers spread wide. Unseen and invisible forces gathered around the two silver-clad warriors and clamped tightly round their armour, dragging them backwards with a power they could not hope to resist. They were both dumped unceremoniously over the edge of the platform, falling a few feet before they fired their jump packs and soared back onto the unstable surface.

  They found Karteitja ready and waiting for them, his axe held out before him and with an arrogant set to his stance. He spoke in his strange, other-worldly voice. ‘I forget. You are far less than my brothers and I. We have the gift. You have nothing but a legacy of deceit and lies. Your Prognosticators have misled you from the day your wretched Chapter was born. They cannot possibly hope to divine the future, for there will be no future for your kind.’

  With those words, he lumbered forward, the heavy armour slowing his movements considerably. The axe sketched a complicated figure and a flare of sudden light burst forth from its twin heads. It dazzled even the eyes of the two Space Marines and they were forced to turn away whilst their sight adapted to block out the worst of it.

  Before that process had even finished – and it took barely a second – the axe had connected with Gileas’s shoulder and carved through the thick ceramite guard, burying itself in the plates beneath. The power armour prevented the weapon from biting into his flesh, but it was not his body that was threatened by the possessed blade. Its whispering voice seemed to creep beneath his skin and run through his entire body as though taking passage in his very veins.

  You saw what you could have been.

  He had. He had witnessed the power of Gryce’s mirrors. He had seen a warped, tainted version of everything he believed himself to be. He had seen, if he would but admit it, the Gileas Ur’ten that he could easily become if he were ever allowed to fall victim to the visceral and violent rage that burned in his soul.

  You saw what you could have.

  Again, the whisper shuddered through him and he felt, for the second time that day and in over a hundred years, physically sick. Nausea rose in the pit of his stomach, fil
ling his mouth with the taste of acidic bile, and he swallowed it back.

  You saw what?

  It was coaxing, pleading, begging him to answer, flirting with him to submit to a fundamental change of direction, gnawing ceaselessly at his resolve. He remembered the warrior in the mirror and for a heartbeat, he tasted temptation. Faith, he thought. My faith is my shield.

  The voice of Andreas Kulle, so long dead, echoed in his mind. ‘Without faith, what are we but a bundle of impulses and blood vessels in complicated armour? Ah, Gileas, to be a warrior of the Silver Skulls Chapter is to embody that faith. We are so much more than the Emperor’s strong arm, my boy. We are His beating heart. His will made flesh.’

  As if in unconscious response to those words, spoken to him decades before, Gileas felt the dual thump of his twin hearts as he fought off the encroaching darkness. The suddenness of them, reminding him once and for all that he was alive, brought him back to his senses.

  You saw. There was triumph now in the voice and perhaps it was indignation at the idea of losing, or perhaps it was that sudden vivid memory of his former mentor, that gave Gileas the push he needed to drag free of the axe’s bite.

  ‘Yes,’ he said aloud. ‘I saw. And that was not me. That will never be me.’

  A pity.

  The axe swung again and this time Gileas had enough presence of mind to avoid it. The thing seemed to twist and change before his eyes and he could see screaming faces in the heart of the steel. It was an impossible thing; a creation so alien to his own mindset that all he wanted to do was snatch it from the enemy’s hands and fling it as far away as he could. He suspected, however, that were he to lay a grip on the thing, it would claim him.

  ‘Why do you not fight back, Silver Skulls?’ There was taunting in the voice. ‘Are you so susceptible to the power of the warp that your brains have become soft already?’ The sorcerer exerted his powers again and for the second time, the two Assault Marines were gathered up by unseen hands. Rather than throw them casually from the platform, this time the powers at Karteitja’s command grasped them in a crushing embrace that slowly began to squeeze the life out of them. Joints popped and ancient plates cracked under the strain as Karteitja strove to pulverise the Silver Skulls in their own armour.