Rebirth

by Nick Kyme

  Am I fit to be the arbiter of such a decision? he wondered. And what of Tsu’gan? How should he be judged? It was a dilemma he had faced ever since being charged by Tu’Shan with the errant Salamander’s recovery. Others from Third had far more straightforward imperatives. Most remained on Nocturne to help train the scout company and begin the inception of a Seventh Battle Company, an unprecedented undertaking since before the time of the Second Founding. Two much smaller factions had been given unique sanction by the Chapter Master, one to track down Tsu’gan and the other, comprising Firedrakes led by Herculon Praetor, to find whatever remained of the Dragon Warriors. Praetor’s mission was simple – retrieve from their cold, dead corpses the missing book from the Tome of Fire.

  Agatone was not given the choice of which path to take. In his heart, he wanted nothing more than to track down the Chaos renegades and exact vengeance for their heinous assault on Nocturne, but Tsu’gan had been his responsibility. In the Pantheon Chamber, he had vowed to Tu’Shan to do all within his power to bring the errant fire-born back, or die in the attempt.

  And so he and nine others had departed the Vulkan’s Wrath and secured a more modest frigate to take them to Sturndrang where the last recorded position of the stolen Malevolent gunship had been plotted by Prometheus’s sensorium. It was tenuous as trails went, and a planet-wide search grid was far from narrow, but they had found the ship and that in itself was miraculous. Now they merely had to find the man. Agatone was close to beseeching the Emperor for His providence.

  ‘Do you hear that?’

  Zartath’s voice distracted him from his thoughts. He began to return to the crashed gunship.

  Somewhere in the distance, deep in the belly of the underhive, a rough klaxon was chiming. It could mean more hive scum, or something worse.

  ‘It’s getting louder,’ said Agatone, and reached for his holstered pistol. He slipped a small combat shield the size of a buckler onto his wrist. All of their weapons were small, easy to conceal, but at that moment he wished he had a bolter.

  Behind him, one of the gangers was stirring.

  ‘I thought you killed them…’

  Zartath’s fangs glistened wetly in the faint phosphor light. The klaxons were rising in volume as if one had begun a relay and that relay was now working its way towards them. He had to shout.

  ‘I did!’ Spittle sprang from his lips in a chain as Zartath’s bone claws snapped loose, first piercing flesh then skin. ‘They were cold when I left them.’ His martial pride had been slighted and that needed to be answered for, but Agatone was already standing over the dead gangers. The master had the leash.

  ‘Karve don’t die so easy, hulk…’ drawled the ganger, but he was in a bad way. When he tried to rise, Agatone floored him with a palm-strike to the chest. It was little more than a slap, but cracked at least two ribs.

  ‘Stay down,’ Agatone warned.

  The one called Karve gurgled, blood frothing from his lips because of a collapsed lung. Aghast at what the warrior had done to him, Karve had enough strength to rip open his jacket and body armour. Beneath the rough apparel was some kind of device. It looked to Agatone like a hexagonal amulet, a piece of crude technology that had as much to do with the arcane as it did with science. Briefly, he wondered where this gutter rat had found, stolen or bartered for it.

  Upon closer inspection, he realised that rather than being on a chain, the amulet was actually surgically attached to Karve’s chest, just below his heart. There were small notations etched around the edge that could have been runes and it had two hardened glass ampoules inset in a small chamber in the centre. The dual vial of chemicals was empty as the various stimulants and apparently regenerative fluids had already been dumped into Karve’s body intravenously. It was how he had come back, with a massive flood of chemicals and perhaps something else if the runes were not just for ornamentation.

  Karve tried to laugh but just ended up gurgling more blood. Agatone could tell by his eyes though – they were narrowed in bitter mirth, and the wretch flecked his lips with crimson as he spat and wheezed.

  ‘You’re dying,’ Agatone told him, his eyes pitiless as they regarded the wretch. ‘Whatever you know, speak up now and I’ll end it quickly.’

  A bone claw flashed past his eye-line, coming perilously close to the ganger’s exposed neck and would have cut off Karve’s head had Agatone not seized Zartath’s wrist.

  Heel! The command came unbidden to Agatone’s mind and he felt ashamed at it. He chose his actual words more carefully.

  ‘Hold. He knows something. I want to hear it.’ Agatone’s dour gaze fixed on Karve again. ‘What are these alarms? What do they mean?’ Seeing it rotating slowly on the ganger’s chest, Agatone seized the amulet and stalled its motion. Karve immediately paled and jerked uncomfortably. ‘Talk and I release it. You can eke out whatever dregs of life are left in this thing or I can end you. Those are the last two choices left to you now.’

  A crude equivalent of an adrenaline shunt, the amulet was no doubt intended to give an enterprising underhiver a fighting chance at finding aid or sloping off to safety should he be badly injured. But Karve’s wounds had been so severe that it was merely prolonging his life so he could experience more pain. Agatone was willing to extend that further if he could find out what the discordant noise coming from the klaxons meant.

  Alerted by the sound, Exor emerged from the wrecked gunship to find both Agatone and Zartath crouched over the ganger.

  ‘What is it?’ he called out. ‘Did we trip some kind of alarm?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s an alarm…’ said Agatone, watching the ganger’s growing hysteria. ‘I think it’s a warning.’ He released the amulet and let it continue its fatal countdown. There was no negotiating with the wretch now – his mind was crashing even as the cocktail of narcotics flooding his system attempted to jumpstart his broken body. There was no resurrection for gutter scum; for them, death was a way of life. Knowing his end was near, the ganger smiled, showing blood-rimmed teeth, and managed to utter two words before he died.

  ‘Feeding time…’

  Agatone crushed his throat with a booted foot.

  Zartath growled, annoyed at being deprived of the kill, but a glare from Agatone calmed him at once. Again, the captain tried not to think of the warrior as a wild beast only partially tamed, but evidence was evidence.

  ‘Something is coming,’ snarled Zartath, and turned in the direction of the deeper underhive and the darkness smothering it.

  Agatone checked the ammo gauge on his bolt pistol. He carried two spare clips attached to his belt, but if he ran dry he still had his combat knife. He eyed the darkness that seemed to have grown more pervasive over the intervening seconds.

  ‘Whatever comes from that tunnel,’ he said, using his vox-bead, ‘does not live. Am I understood, brothers?’

  Both Salamanders responded in the affirmative.

  Standing at the periphery of the crash debris, Exor had drawn a lamp pack as well as his bolt pistol and was shining it into the gloom. By now the klaxons were screaming, evidently part of a mechanised relay that fed throughout much of this district.

  ‘What does it presage, Zartath?’ asked Agatone, his voice almost a roar by necessity. Over the years, he had learned to trust the savage warrior, but Zartath did not answer. He listened. Agatone cast around for the source of the cacophony but it had to be higher up, above ground level and accessed via lifter or one of the many ladders to the rusted gantries.

  Whilst his comrades were rooted, Exor kept advancing with the lamp pack. His bolt pistol panned across the leavened shadows.

  The vox-bead in Agatone’s right ear crackled.

  ‘I see movement, brother-captain.’

  Up ahead, Exor dropped into a kneeling position, setting down the lamp pack so he could aim his sidearm and also draw his combat knife.

  ‘Distance, brother?’ asked Agatone, hurrying to reach the Techmarine. Zartath was a few steps behind him.

  �
�Hard to be sure… It’s as if the ground is… writhing.’

  The great, sprawling underhives below cities such as Molior were fraught with dangers. In many respects they were as war-torn as any of the battlefields Agatone had ever fought on.

  Feeding time, the ganger had said.

  Food for what, though?

  ‘What do you mean, Exor? Be specific. What can you see, broth–’

  Agatone cut off at the same time as the warning klaxons.

  In the echoing silence that followed, a different sound established itself. It was the sharp refrain of skittering and the shriek of thousands of bestial voices.

  ‘Name of Vulkan,’ Agatone breathed, realising what was upon them. ‘Fall back, Exor. That is an order, Techmarine.’

  There was no time. Spewing from the tunnel mouth, riming its sides almost all the way to the ceiling, was a vast deluge of vermin. Some had the appearance of rats, others were malformed and only resembled creatures of nature. As he saw what was bearing down on the Techmarine, who stood before it like a man before the crashing waves of a tsunami he knows he cannot outrun, Agatone knew this was a plague of un-nature. Mutation was rife in the swollen tide and Exor was about to be drowned in it.

  Exor carried a belt of flares, six in total. He lit and threw down the entire bandoleer, then ran with all haste. The vermin tide screeched angrily as the flares ignited, the light rather than the fire causing them pain. It gave him a few precious seconds to gain some ground.

  Agatone and Zartath were coming towards him. He waved them back, shouting, ‘Get to high ground!’

  Behind him, the shrieking vermin chorus was like a knife drawn over glass. Exor clenched his teeth and fired off a three-round burst blind. The shrieking intensified in pitch for a few seconds, and he realised he had hit something. But then how could he miss?

  The nearest gantry was a few metres away – Agatone and Zartath were already climbing its rickety ladder – when Exor felt the creature land on his back. Only half armoured with what amounted to Scout carapace, he was more vulnerable than he would have been in an encompassing suit of power armour. It stank, the creature, of spoiled meat and mould. There was something else too, a taint that disturbed Exor more than the horde itself and suggested a ruinous origin to the mutation affecting the vermin. It bit deep into the back of his neck before Exor could crush it.

  Another latched onto his leg but he shook it off before it could bite down. He did not risk another shot, putting all of his effort into running those last few metres. The tide was almost upon him now, its high-pitched squeal deafening and close.

  Agatone and Zartath had made it to the gantry. Exor boosted into a final sprint and leapt for the ladder. He scaled the first few rungs before his weight and the impact of his landing wrenched the bolts free and the ladder tore away from its holdings.

  Instinctively he reached out and felt a strong grip around his wrist.

  ‘Hold on,’ Zartath snarled through gritted teeth, leaning right over the gantry with Agatone clinging to his belter to stabilise him.

  Below Exor, the vermin tide roiled and undulated. The diminutive horde lapped against the support struts of the gantry like a dirty sea pounding against the resolve of coastal bulwarks. Blood slicked the Techmarine’s arm from a savage bite – with the adrenaline pumping into his system, he had barely noticed it but now it was running freely, something in the bite preventing his Larraman cells clotting as they should do. Zartath felt his hand slipping, and he fought to maintain his grip.

  ‘Climb…’ he snarled with the effort of holding on.

  Exor reached, determination etched on his nondescript features… and slipped.

  The fall was relatively short, and what awaited him below was far more hazardous.

  Agatone watched his Techmarine disappear into a morass of furred bodies. Exor was absorbed instantly.

  Zartath made to leap in after him, but Agatone stopped him.

  ‘He’ll be carried by the flood, end up Throne knows where,’ growled the ex-Black Dragon.

  ‘So will you if you jump. Here,’ said Agatone, finding a length of chain and hacking it loose from the gantry with his blade, ‘we’ll drag him in.’

  Agatone opened up the vox whilst Zartath gathered up the length of chain.

  ‘Exor,’ Agatone began, scanning the vermin tide for any sign of the Techmarine, ‘if you can hear me, try to breach the surface and we’ll haul you in.’

  There was no response, but a second later Exor’s outstretched hand burst forth from the tide which had now flooded the entire lower level.

  Zartath was whipping the chain around in a circular fashion and was about to launch it in the direction of Exor’s hand when he saw what was clenched in it.

  A frag grenade primed for detonation exploded in the Techmarine’s hand as he released the trigger. Scores of furred, verminous bodies were sent skyward in a welter of blood and bone. The blast forged a crater in the tide with Exor at its epicentre. He was badly wounded, and had lost the hand, but he was alive.

  Knowing the tide would reform in moments, Zartath threw the chain. Exor caught it in his remaining hand and Agatone heaved. With Zartath helping, Agatone pulled Exor up and away from the ravening horde. They hauled the Techmarine like a piece of cargo, and when his body crested the gantry’s edge they dragged him onto it.

  ‘Vulkan’s mercy…’ Agatone breathed.

  Exor was covered in bites. Every bit of exposed flesh had been gnawed upon, in some cases savagely. His right hand and forearm were almost completely destroyed. Oil and blood were spewing from the shattered cabling jutting from the stump. It was a mercy that the hand had been a bionic. His armour was ruined and though partially shielded from the blast by his attackers, Exor was badly burned.

  Agatone would have expected such injuries to already be healing, but something was interfering with Exor’s regenerative abilities and he bled from where he should be healed.

  ‘Some kind of toxin…’ he rasped feverishly. He was shaking, going into shock.

  Below them, the vermin tide was passing, and Agatone guessed it happened in cycles, hence the klaxons.

  ‘What do we do with him?’ said Zartath.

  Agatone shook his head, sighing deeply. This had not been a part of his plan. Too deep to go back, too far away from help to request reinforcement or extraction, there was little choice left to him.

  ‘Get him to a medic. There must be something down here. Wherever that wretch,’ he gestured to where Karve and his men used to be, for the tide had carried them off to feast upon, ‘stole that disc from that he wore. Our mission is to stabilise Exor and then proceed as originally planned.’

  ‘Leave me here…’ said Exor, but the words were laboured. ‘I just need time… to recover, then rejoin you later.’

  Zartath had dragged him up into a sitting position but the Techmarine still looked on the verge of collapse.

  ‘There’s something in your blood, Exor,’ Agatone told him. ‘It’s preventing you from healing properly.’

  ‘Poison… I can feel it… coursing through me.’

  ‘Not coursing,’ snarled Zartath as he tasted some of Exor’s spilled blood before quickly spitting it up, ‘cursing, brother.’ For once, there was no rancour when he referred to Exor as his brother. Zartath looked up at Agatone from his kneeling position. ‘Tainted. An unnatural venom.’

  Despite being close to unconsciousness, Exor’s eyes widened as he despaired, ‘Am I damned then?’

  ‘No, brother,’ Agatone replied, tasting the blood for himself and scowling as he too spat it out immediately. ‘Chaos damnation is not a disease. You cannot contract it by a wound. It is a moral decay, a choice. Those things harboured it, some dark plague, and we must flush it out if you’re to heal.’

  ‘You’re certain it is… the taint?’ asked Exor, face screwed up in obvious pain.

  ‘No, but I can see its effects and it is no poison I have ever encountered. The taste of your blood, it is not… right. It’s old
, somehow.’

  ‘Then Tsu’gan found more here…’ Exor faltered briefly, ‘than a hive city. Could he have succumbed to it?’

  ‘Perhaps, but we won’t know until we find his body or evidence of his escape,’ said Agatone. ‘Either way, we’re getting you away from here and to whatever help this warren can offer.’ Agatone went to lift Exor up, when Zartath stopped him.

  ‘Respectfully, brother-captain,’ said Zartath, ‘I must carry him.’

  ‘Because you think you let him fall?’

  ‘Because you are the leader of this mission and should not be encumbered and, yes, because I let him fall.’

  ‘You’re my hunter. I need you out in front,’ said Agatone. ‘Exor stays with me.’

  Zartath did not argue, he merely helped his captain get Exor onto his shoulders so Agatone could carry him.

  ‘He’s heavy,’ said Agatone.

  ‘Too much metal,’ Zartath replied.

  ‘That metal may well have saved him,’ Agatone replied, noting that Exor had passed out. That was good, it meant his body was trying to heal him.

  ‘Are his wounds tainted by Chaos?’ asked Zartath.

  ‘You tasted his blood too, what was your first impression?’

  ‘I received a vision, a flash, a fragment, nothing more,’ Zartath replied. ‘Such tortures were inflicted upon me at Volgorrah by the xenos. They were weapons of the warp, brother-captain. Tainted blades, tainted fangs. I saw hell in my mind’s eye. I hear it still, a keening in my ears. What did you see?’

  Hell, thought Agatone, but did not speak it. He did not need to.