by Dan Abnett
‘Are they part of the Calth arcology?’ asks Ventanus. He recalls that significant systems of natural caverns lace the planet, and many are being developed as habitats. They are commonly used as population shelters when the local star undergoes its infrequent periods of maximum solar activity.
‘Not fully, a branch,’ replies Tawren. ‘The early governors created a secure underground link between the city and the palace.’
‘Military support from the XIII Legion at Leptius would be of great assistance while we begin our recovery program,’ says Arook.
He looks at Ventanus. That defective red eye glimmers. It fades out and in again. Ventanus can hear a burble of binaric cant issuing from Arook’s cybernetics.
‘I have made contact,’ he says. ‘I have a manifold link with Skitarii Commander Gargoz. Gargoz has your Captain Sydance with him.’
‘What is the situation?’ asks Ventanus. ‘Ask him what the situation is.’
There is a binaric crackle.
‘Grim,’ relays Arook. ‘The muster site has been bombarded. Many are dead. Very little survives in the way of vehicles or transports. Sydance reports that strengths from the Ultramarines 4th, and eight other companies, have managed to shelter at the Braxas Wall. Approximately seven hundred men. They are ready to move at your instruction.’
Arook looks directly at Ventanus.
‘Captain Sydance apparently wishes to emphasise that he is pleased to hear from you. He is pleased to know that you are alive.’
‘Tell him where we need them to be. Ask him to see what other forces he can mobilise. As muster commander, I am giving authority to the movement of troops. Ask him to send an arrival estimate.’
Arook nods and relays.
‘We will need a shibboleth,’ says Selaton.
Ventanus hesitates.
‘They have cracked everything. They’ve broken Mechanicum code,’ says Selaton. ‘Even our authority codes can’t be trusted.’
Ventanus nods.
‘Tell Sydance that he can only trust a message from someone who knows the number of the painted eldar. Tell him I will only trust the same.’
‘It is done,’ says Arook. ‘What does it mean?’
Ventanus doesn’t answer.
‘Tell him I’ll see him at Leptius Numinus in a few hours,’ he says.
4
[mark: 6.59.66]
Chapter Master Marius Gage hits the bulkhead and slides down it with a wet squeak, leaving a smear of blood.
The wound’s bad. Envenomed somehow. It’s actually beating his transhuman clotting factor. He can feel his body fighting the fever.
He can feel his mind fighting the fear.
It’s not fear of death or fear of pain. It’s not even fear of failure.
It’s the undermining disquiet of the unknown.
It’s what mankind had to overcome in order to come out of his cave, in order to set forth from his birthworld. It’s the thing mankind had to conquer in order to face down the xenos and the horrors that lurked in Old Night.
It’s the fear his kind was bred to lack.
It amazes him.
He thought he had seen everything. His career has been a long and successful one. His status as the first Chapter Master attests to that. He has been with the Ultramarines since the very beginning.
They are genetically adjusted to register diminished levels of fear response. They are psychologically programmed to eschew its weakness, to resist the critical and dismaying shocks that fear can induce. Part of that programming is to study every threat and hazard, every new xenos form and mutant, that the Imperium might encounter during its outward expansion. Nothing must come as a surprise. Every possible horror must be explored. They must be exposed to every new possibility. An immunity must be built up. A disregard. Some say this makes the Ultramarines seem callous, but it is only the same kind of callous that a labourer might build up on his hands through graft work.
They must be unflinching. They must be impervious to fright.
And Gage thought he was. He really thought he was. Fear was a stranger to him.
Sweat begins to bead on his forehead. He struggles to get up, but he can’t. There is a lesson here, he considers, the practical application of a theoretical paradigm. Pride is our weakness. Over-confidence. We are so sure of ourselves and our vaunted fearlessness, of such conviction that the galaxy no longer contains anything that can scare us, we make ourselves vulnerable.
Gage is sure that Guilliman has already thought of this. He is sure that Guilliman has already written the notion down somewhere in his codification notes. The sin of over-confidence. Yes, Guilliman has definitely schooled against this in his writings. He has admonished the XIII not to assume mastery of anything, including fear, because that instantly creates a vulnerability.
Now Gage thinks of it, the primarch certainly has said this several times.
Certainly. Certainly, he has.
He has said it.
He has warned. Warned of it.
In case he hasn’t. In case. In case he hasn’t, in that case, Gage hopes he can get to... He can mention it to Guilliman. Mention it later.
Except. Except there may not be a later.
Guilliman.
On the bridge when... The bridge just...
That thing. That thing.
So much blood. Then open to the void. That thing. There may never be a chance now. Guilliman. Guilliman may be... He was ripped into space when the ports blew.
He may be...
Guilliman may already be dead.
That thing.
That damned thing.
He–
–comes back out of the blackness. Acid bile in his throat. Tears in his eyes. Agony in his back and ribs where that thing bit him.
He blacked out there. Blacked out. Slid away into a red fog of unconsciousness as the toxins momentarily overwhelmed him.
Gage is breathing hard. Every push of his lungs is a neural fire. He looks down the hallway.
There’s smoke in the air. It’s moving like a river along the ceiling, gusted by the steady breeze. The flagship’s air pumps are fighting to restore onboard atmospheric pressure after the bridgespace voided. Hazard lamps flash. He can see an Ultramarine dead about five metres away. The fellow’s head is twisted the wrong way. Beyond him, three bridge officers sit with their backs against the bulkhead wall, resting against each other like comrades back from a drunken night’s shore leave. They are entirely covered in blood, every shred of them apart from the whites of their glazed, staring eyes.
Beyond them, there’s a bloody ribcage with one arm attached to it. Beyond that, a second Ultramarine has been split open like a fibrous seed.
Then he sees the thing.
Gage isn’t sure if the thing on the bridge, the thing that… killed Guilliman… Gage isn’t sure if it was one thing, or many in one amorphous shape. The thing picking its way towards him might be one of the many, or a piece of the whole.
It’s humanoid, roughly, and about twice the size of a legionary. Its proportions are simian, though its true outline is hard to discern. Reality seems to contort around it. The air festers. It moves like a fog of the unreal, like the fluid black flow of the deepest, most subterranean nightmare.
Like a great ape, it shambles on all fours, its massive arms like tree trunks. It is bristled black, like a blowfly, but its flesh between the coarse bristles is iridescent.
It has no eyes. Its skull is all jaw and no cranium. Its face is a shrivelled grey scrap of skin drawn tight over a deformed human skull, the empty eyes like lunar craters. Its mouth is an eruption of curved tusks and huge yellow teeth like chisel blades. Venom, like sticky brown syrup, droops from its lipless gums.
It is making a snuffling sound. It smells of battery acid and spun sugar.
Is it the same thing that bit him? He doesn’t want it to bite him again. He wonders if it can see him.
Of course it can see him. He’s sprawled out in the open, right in its path.<
br />
But it hasn’t got any eyes, so–
Gage takes a deep breath. He appreciates that the venom is making his mind swim. He knows it’s making him think stupid, illogical, foolish things. He knows his transhuman metabolism is fighting it, but he’s not sure if it will win the battle.
If it does win, Gage isn’t sure it will win it in time.
The thing is right on him.
He reaches for his boltgun.
The weapon is long gone. He realises that several of the fingers of his gun-hand are missing too.
His power sword is on the deck near his outstretched left leg. He leans and reaches for it. He stretches. He strains. By the old gods of Terra, he has barely the strength to move!
Gage utters an involuntary bark of frustration.
The thing hears him. It turns its tusked maw towards him. It bobs its head slightly, a feline habit, and then pounces.
Gage screams in rage and horror. He lashes out with his right hand to try to catch its throat and keep it at arm’s length before it lands its full weight on him. If that happens, he’s done.
His hand misses the throat. He manages to ram it up to the forearm in the thing’s mouth.
The thing bites.
There is a crack of armour shattering, a crunch of forearm bones shearing. It bites his hand off beyond the wrist. There is a generous spill of blood. Pain cores up his arm like a hot wire. Gage howls. His heart rates spike.
The savage pain jacks up his metabolic reaction so hard it clears the fog of the toxin from his befuddled mind. He smashes around with his left fist, and cracks the thing in the side of the skull, knocking out two molars in a squirt of pink saliva.
The blow drives the thing back and to the side. Its mouth is still full of his hand. Gage rolls to grab his sword, but the thing is standing on his knee, and he can’t twist far enough.
It opens its mouth impossibly wide and comes in for his face. He can see his severed hand flopping down its gullet.
Blue impact slams it aside. Black ichor is suddenly painted across all the nearby surfaces, including Gage’s face. The thing is down, cut badly. An Ultramarine stands over Gage. He’s a sergeant. His armour is battered. His helmet is painted red, indicating he has been marked for censure. He has an electromagnetic longsword in one hand and a Kehletai friction axe in the other.
‘Go back to hell!’ he tells the thing. It is screaming and caterwauling, its black shape swirling and re-forming, as though reality is trying to heal itself.
The sergeant puts the axe into it. The Kehletai, before they were extinguished during the bitter Kraal Compliance, made paper-thin blades that cut on a molecular level. The nanoedge blade of the axe is huge, bigger than a Fenrisian battle axe. It goes right through the thing, exploding rotten gore in all directions.
For good measure, the sergeant spears it with the longsword. Dead, it is nothing more than a stain.
The sergeant turns.
‘Move up!’ he yells. A fighting party appears, moving urgently down the corridor. There are several Ultramarines in it, but it is also composed of Army troopers and Navy personnel, including at least one abhuman stoker. They are armed with the most mismatched and exotic weapons Gage has ever seen outside Guilliman’s private arsenal of–
They are all from the primarch’s private arsenal.
‘Move up. Secure the section!’ the sergeant yells. ‘Brother Kerso, scope the next corridor. Flamers to the front! Apothecary Jaer, get to the Chapter Master! Right now!’
He bends down beside Gage, setting his weapons on the deck where they will be in easy reach. Close up, Gage can see the scratch marks adorning the sergeant’s armour.
‘You’ve got an Apothecary?’ Gage asks, his voice a husk of its normal baritone.
‘Just coming, sir.’
‘Your name?’
‘Thiel, sir. Aeonid Thiel. 135th Company.’
‘Marked for censure?’
‘Today started in a different place, sir.’
‘That it did, Thiel. Well said. Who put you in charge?’
‘I put myself in charge. I was awaiting interview on deck forty when everything went to pieces. There was no chain of command. I decided I needed to build one.’
‘Good work.’
‘What happened, sir?’ Thiel asks. He steps back slightly to allow the Apothecary to start work on Gage’s wounds.
‘Something attacked us. Blew the whole main bridge. Some of us got out. More than that, I can’t say.’
‘Who did we lose?’ Thiel asks.
He’s impertinent, Gage thinks. He’s–
No, he’s not. He’s level-headed. He’s practical. He’s fearless. He’s asking questions because he needs to know the answers.
‘The shipmaster, certainly,’ says Gage. ‘Most of the bridge seniors. Chapter Master Vared. Chapter Master Banzor. Your Chapter Master, Antoli.’
‘Terrible losses. What about the primarch?’
‘I did not see him die, but I fear the worst,’ replies Gage.
Thiel is silent for a moment.
‘What are your orders, sir?’ he asks.
‘What was your operational plan, sergeant?’
‘Practical: I was attempting to consolidate and coordinate a shipboard fighting force, sir, and begin to retake the ship. These daemons are everywhere.’
‘Daemons, Thiel? I don’t think we believe in daemons these days.’
‘Then I don’t know what you want to call them, sir, because they are not xenos. They are byblows. Monsters. Warp-things. It takes everything we’ve got to kill them.’
‘Is that why you raided the primarch’s collection?’ asks Gage.
‘No. I raided the primarch’s collection because of the Word Bearers, sir.’
‘Theoretical: explain that logic,’ Gage asks. Then he says, ‘Wait, wait. Apothecary, help me to my feet.’
‘My lord, you are in no condition to–’ the Apothecary begins.
‘Help me to damn well stand up, Apothecary,’ Gage snaps.
They help him up. He is unsteady. The Apothecary resumes dressing his wrist stump.
‘Now, continue,’ says Gage. ‘Theoretical?’
‘We are attacked by the Word Bearers,’ says Thiel.
‘Agreed.’
‘These byblow daemons may be allied to them, some form of creature they have enslaved to their service. Or they may be controlling the XVII. It would certainly explain why our brothers have turned against us in such a fundamental fashion.’
‘Agreed. Continue.’
‘The daemons present a significant threat, but they appear to be… receding.’
‘Receding? Explain.’
‘It’s like a tide going out, sir. They are fewer and weaker than they were an hour ago. As though they are draining back into hell or the warp. However, the Word Bearers have three cruisers alongside us, and they are in the process of boarding. Within the next hour they will be through the airgates and the hull, and we will be compelled to fight our own kind. This form of combat is unprecedented. Their advantage is shock and surprise. Our counter-advantage must be a lack of convention.’
‘Expand.’
‘They know what we are, for they are us. They know the attributes of our armour and our weapons. They also know our tactics and formulae of war, for our beloved primarch has made his codifications available to all his brothers. We never thought we would need to conceal our combat methods from our own kind. Today, we have been disabused of that notion. So we must fight them in ways that they do not expect from us. We must use the unconventional, the improvised and the makeshift. In order to properly honour the combat teachings of Roboute Guilliman, we must cast his rules aside for the day. I have always considered his greatest wisdom to be Remark 101.x–’
Gage nods.
‘I know it. “What wins the fight is what wins the fight. Ultimately, nothing should be excluded if that exclusion leads to defeat”.’
‘Precisely so, sir.’
‘The “by any
means” edict,’ Gage says. ‘The ultimate rule that no rule is unbreakable. You know, that idea always troubled him. He told me he often thought to excise the remark. He thought it too dangerous. He feared it would stand, in posterity, as a justification for any action.’
‘I think the XVII have already dispensed with any such rationale, sir,’ replies Thiel. ‘I also would urge you not to refer to the primarch in the past tense in front of the men.’
Gage catches himself.
‘Quite correct, sergeant.’
‘Are my theory and my practice approved, sir?’ Thiel asks.
‘They are. Let us coordinate. What other officers can we contact?’
‘There is a possibility that Chapter Master Empion is operational on deck thirty-five with a resistance force, and Captain Heutonicus on deck twenty.’
‘A decent beginning,’ says Gage. He picks up his fallen power sword and slides it into its scabbard. ‘Let’s move before this day goes altogether. That friction axe?’
‘Sir?’
‘Can it be wielded one-handed?’
Thiel hands it over.
‘It’s light enough, sir.’
‘Lead the way. Let’s cut a line towards the bridge tower.’
Thiel salutes. He turns, raising his longsword and shouting instructions to the clearance team.
Gage glances at the Apothecary.
‘Are we done?’ he asks.
‘I’d prefer to get you to–’
‘Are we done, Jaer?’
‘We are, sir. For now.’
Gage hefts the axe in his good hand.
‘Sergeant Thiel. Do you happen to know why he was under censure?’
‘I do, sir,’ says Jaer. ‘His commanding officer discovered that he was running theoreticals on how to fight and defeat Space Marines, sir. Thiel claimed, in his defence, that he had run theoreticals on all other major adversaries, and it was a tactical blind spot not to know how to fight the Legions. He said, as I understand it, that the Space Marines of the Imperium were the greatest warriors in the galaxy, and thus had an obligation to understand how to fight and defeat the greatest warriors in the galaxy. Thiel declared that Space Marines were the only opponents left worth any theoretical study. His theoreticals were regarded as treasonous thought, and he was referred to the flagship for censure.’
