Defenders of Mankind - David Annandale & Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

  They were blind, unable to communicate even with the nearer elements of their strikeforce.

  Aresti had his men proceed cautiously, his two squads covering each other in a bounding overwatch advance. What was intended to be hot pursuit of the genestealers had become instead a painstakingly cautious process. Aresti very much felt that they had become the hunted. They were on high alert, expecting ambush at every turn.

  They were not long disappointed.

  It was Brother Lucello who shouted out, ‘Genestealers!’

  The creatures leapt out from the fog from three directions: from the ceiling, from in front of them, and from the left. Brother Ignatio of Squad Glorious Ruin was sent staggering as one landed on his back, claws digging into the plasteel and ceramite of his cowling. Aresti turned on the spot and shot the thing in the lower part of its spine. The bolt exploded, breaking it into two pieces. It gave a terrible cry and fell to the floor.

  The Space Marines were fast, dropping four of the creatures as they charged. One made it through, and gouged Brother Uxerio’s leg armour so badly the fibre bundles within failed and his limb locked.

  ‘Bring up the assault cannons! Make way, brothers!’

  The squads’ heavy weapons brothers were let through as the first rank of the Terminator group, three wide, fought hard against the assaulting xenos. They grappled with genestealers, smashing them down with power fists or shoving them back so their bolters might do their deadly work. The first wave was slaughtered and another came at them.

  ‘Clear! Clear! Clear!’ shouted Uxerio. He let himself topple to the floor. Those next to him, Ignatio and Sergeant Hendis moved aside. Andas and Gallio had a clear line of fire.

  Their assault cannons whined as they rotated up to firing speed, then fire blazed from them. Their multiple barrels blurred as they spat hundreds of rounds a minute into the genestealers. The Terminators swept their guns to the left and then to the right, filling the corridor with depleted uranium bullets. Genestealers screamed as they were riddled with holes. The guns ran hot, still the brothers fired, fired until their ammunition boxes were dry.

  ‘Halt!’ called Aresti. ‘Lucello, report!’

  ‘The way is clear. A small group. I have six motion signatures heading away from us. The auspex cannot see far thanks to this Emperor-damned fog, but I am confident the majority are slain.’

  ‘Then forward, but slowly.’

  They helped Uxerio upright, then left him to cover their rear, as he could no longer walk. Their numbers reduced to ten, they went onward past a ragged opening in the metal wall carved by claws.

  ‘That is new, made since the mapping,’ said Aresti. ‘We may have underestimated our enemy.’

  They advanced around a corner and the fog grew thicker. Visibility and effective auspex range dropped further, and the Terminators slowed to a crawl. Ahead, according to the Imagifer Maximus map downloaded into their sensoriums, was a large chamber. Its sides were oddly distorted. An artefact, the tech-priests had explained, of their seismic waves running through material of whose particular nature they could not determine. Without this parameter of essence, they were unable to determine the parameter of shape. They had shrugged their iron shoulders and pointed out the clarity of the map’s remainder.

  A silhouette, then another. Three of them, coming out of the fog. As one, the brothers to the fore opened fire.

  The fog thinned just for a second, granting the captain a view into the chamber beyond. Too late, Aresti found out why the Imagifer Maximus had failed to make an accurate representation. There was liquid in the room, enclosed in tanks. He saw the chemical units through the gap in the radioactive vapours; tall orange canisters topped with metal valves, corroded white. Arranged in groups of four, the canisters filled the room either side of a catwalk down the centre. Dozens of them.

  The genestealers had led them directly to it.

  Aresti experienced the closest thing to panic he had for a long time. ‘Stop! Cease firing! Cease firing!’ He shouted. He barged into Brother Lucello’s arm, sending his shots awry. But he could not stop them all. The Space Marines let their fingers slacken on the triggers of their guns as soon as their sharp minds registered the order, but the bolts were already in flight.

  Three punched neat holes in the side of the lead canister stack, a trio of insignificant ‘pinking’ noises as the metal was pierced. Aresti had time to pray that there was insufficient mass to set off the bolts’ detonators before the munitions exploded.

  Whatever was in the canisters was highly reactive, or else had become so through a process of chemical alteration over the long years within the plasteel bottles. The tanks burst, and fire roiled outwards. Chunks of plasticised metal scythed through the air, puncturing other bottles and setting them off in a thunderous chain reaction. Half a canister slammed into Aresti’s chest, sending him sprawling. The corridor became an inferno.

  Three of Aresti’s brother’s icons blinked out.

  Chapter 16

  The Ascent

  Caedis was Holos, Holos was Caedis, where one began and one ended had ceased to matter. All that concerned him/them was the placing of one foot in front of the other, as he/they scaled the side of the unforgiving mountain. The slope was steep in places, and Holos was forced to pull at the ground with his hands. The material was loose, and he found himself dislodging great fans of it as he climbed. He slid backwards frequently, and at these times the climb became laborious even for his enhanced physique, each three steps forward bought at the cost of two back. Rocks fell from above with increasing frequency. The mountain grumbled under him as he embraced it, angry at Holos’s presence upon its flanks.

  Holos’s mouth was dry as dust. His suit should have kept him hydrated, recycling the excreta of his body and injecting it back into him in the form of nutrient-rich liquid. But this was no natural thirst that assailed Holos and the spirits of the yet-to-be brothers who haunted him. Knowing how he would be so afflicted, Holos had brought water and wine on his climb. Sips of this had helped assuage the burn of the Thirst for delightful seconds, but the canteens slung at his belt had long since run empty, and he had discarded them one after another. They littered the side of the mountain, bright glints by the dark tracks of his boots.

  Shrill cries carried down from on high, and Holos looked upwards to see the astorgai wheel around the pinnacle of the volcano. He was weary, nevertheless he quickened his pace; the position he was in was not favourable should they choose to attack.

  ‘What does he speak of, Reclusiarch, when he talks of Holos? I reach out for him with my mind and sense a great disturbance in him.’ Guinian pitched this question directly at the Chaplain, isolating their conversation from the brothers who marched with them. They had descended a further hour since the garden room oasis, passing through two more ships.

  ‘I am forbidden to talk of it, brother,’ said Mazrael. ‘It is the ultimate mystery of our order, and not one to be shared lightly, even with so mighty and honoured a hero as you. Only the Reclusiarch may know the whole truth of it, it is my burden. Be glad I cannot share it with you.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Guinian. In the Librarium of the Blood Drinkers the psychic brothers kept plenty of secrets of their own.

  ‘It is good that is so – curiosity is the downfall of wisdom.’ Mazrael’s tone lightened. ‘You are one of our Chapter’s mightiest sons, perhaps you will discover for yourself one day.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Guinian cast a sidelong look at Caedis. ‘Where is he? Is he here, or is he there?’

  ‘Here, there – what do these things mean?’ said Mazrael. ‘You of all the brethren should know that reality is more than it seems. Wherever he is he serves, and he walks by our side. Service is all that matters.’

  The Terminator brothers ahead, Quintus and Kalael, stopped. The corridor came to an unexpected end, sliced away by whatever disaster had caused the vessel to die and join the agglomeration, and was now pressed hard against a vessel of alien build
in a frozen metal kiss. Quintus and Kalael’s suit lights illuminated a double circle of bulbous, greenish material. Mazrael stepped between them and ran his fingers over it. He pulled his hand back and looked for Guinian.

  ‘Brother?’

  Guinian nodded and replied, his voice characteristically lugubrious. ‘The entity lies within this ship.’

  ‘Then we go on. Sergeant Sandamael, organise your men.’

  Sandamael had Erdagon come up, for he carried a chainfist alongside his bolter. He set to work on the alien hull, then stopped. ‘Brothers,’ he said, ‘this may take a while. The hull is composed of some kind of composite poly-laminate, very tough.’

  Mazrael glanced at their lord, who stood so still only the lights on his suit gave away the fact that it was occupied. ‘Proceed as quickly as you can brother. We have little time.’

  ‘The mind,’ said Guinian. ‘It watches us.’

  It took a long time, as these things are measured, for Brother Erdagon to carve his way through the spacecraft wall.

  A cliff many hundreds of metres towered over Holos. From the ledge he could not see to the top. As legend suggested, there was no ascent to the crater rim and thence the peak, only the cave of the astorgai offered a route.

  The mouth of the cave was a dark tube in red rock. Holos had cause to hesitate, this was the lair of the lord of the astorgai, Lo-tan, a great monster five times the size of his subjects. Four great heroes of the Chapter had set out to slay him, four heroes had died, their wargear and lives lost in his lair.

  Holos’s mind was clear on the matter. This was the only way to the top of the mountain.

  He drew his weapons and walked into the cave.

  Guinian shouted in exultation as he gathered the energy of the warp into his mind and cast it from his hand in the form of a bloody red spear. Guinian was renowned for his dour temperament. The other brothers said there was nothing that could make Guinian smile. And why should he? He, unlike them, felt the fear of those they killed to sate their thirst for blood. He felt their confusion as they were slain by their beloved angels, their sense of betrayal as they were destroyed by those that were supposed to protect them left a bitter tang in his mind.

  Isolation was the normal state of affairs for most Chapters; long wars against endless foes sent every order across the galaxy. And isolation could be a danger. The brothers within the Chapter had their purpose; they had their sense of belonging, reinforced by tradition and ritual thousands of years old. But they were separate from the run of the Imperium’s citizens, armoured by faith and technology that few others might ever see, and fewer yet understood. To an unenhanced human, a Space Marine was a creature of myth, a benevolent one at that – the sky warriors of the Emperor; the angels of death. Such separation and adulation could breed arrogance in those so separated and adored.

  The death they brought was supposed to fall upon the xenos and the traitor, the mutant and the unbeliever. What then did the sons of man feel when a citizen was taken and bled like an animal for the sustenance of the Blood Drinkers? Guinian knew only too well. He was sensitive to the emotions of others, to subtle threads in the warp some of the other Librarians were not. He felt their pain and their terror. As a Librarian Guinian was also privy to things other brothers were not. The rituals of the Librarium concerned dark things not for the minds of non-psychic brothers. He knew fully of the daemonic terrors that lurked beyond the veil of real space, for he had to know them to resist the whispers they sent. He saw the bloodletting of his Chapter, the sense of righteousness in committing an evil to prevent greater evils. For all the prayers, and the guilt, and the Chapter’s focus on the safeguarding of life wherever it could, he saw in the harvesting of the unwilling hints of an arrogance that could lead to their downfall, an echo of the temptations that had led more than half the Emperor’s own, godlike sons from their chosen path in the time of the Heresy.

  This was why he rarely smiled.

  Nevertheless the others were wrong about him. He did smile. He smiled now as the bolt of ruby energy he cast from his hand jinked around Brother Quintus and speared a genestealer through the chest, knocking the creature backwards, arms and legs suddenly lifeless. It smashed into a wall and crumpled to the floor.

  Guinian laughed. He boiled with the power of the warp and the battle-joy combined. He sang the warding prayers of the Librarium as he drew on the immaterium. The uncanny energy quickened his mind and his hearts, and the effect was intoxicating. He raised his bolt pistol and loosed five rounds. His shots landed unerringly, stitching a line of craters in a genestealer attacking Brother Erdagon, culminating in the detonation of its head. A genestealer leapt from a low platform. Guinian took a half-step backwards and smashed the xenos to the ground with his force staff. He grinned savagely behind his Terminator helmet; blood ran down his chin where his lengthened canines punctured his own lips. Red light blazed around his fists. Another Blood Lance leapt from his outstretched hand.

  These xenos were bigger and faster than those they had previously encountered. Underneath the blind aggression of the battle-joy, Guinian suspected these creatures had not bred from human stock. Their lower arms had two elbows and terminated in jabbing points of bone, rather than the grasping hands of the others, and drooping frills of manipulative tentacles twitched all along their forearms. Their faces too lacked the slight echo of humankind many genestealers possessed. The ship they were in was not of human manufacture, the corridors were low and broad, with long ramps in place of stairs and elevators. The lights and gravity were on, but neither was of a quality comfortable to standard human beings. The light was purplish and dark, with much of the illumination at the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, the air a choking mix of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen. Perhaps there was a vestige of the ship’s crew in these genestealers, perhaps not. In either case, these genestealers were xenos bred with xenos, and that made them all the more loathsome in Guinian’s eyes.

  He held out his hand, charging his mind from the depthless well of the warp. He lifted his hand to let fly once more.

  Pain assailed him as a great and powerful entity reached out from deeper within the ship. A cold, malevolent spirit touched his own, burning from the core of his brain outward, passing up his optic nerves. Something gave in his left eye, and he felt a trickle of blood run down his cheek to join with that slicking his chin.

  He cried out, and sank to one knee. Just in time he raised his staff, blocking a wheeling blow from a genestealer. He tried to stand, but could not, the attack of the genestealer was too fierce. A flurry of blows from its four limbs drove him backward.

  Lord Caedis saved him. Gladius Rubeum shone with pure light, the victories of the past playing along its blade. A genestealer stepped in to intercept him. Caedis chopped diagonally down with the sword. The creature span around with the force of his blow, guts flung outward. Caedis moved with an agility that should not have been possible in his Terminator suit, and drove Gladius Rubeum through the neck of the genestealer attacking Guinian. He twisted the blade to free it, and the creature fell dead. Without acknowledging the Librarian, Caedis stalked away in search of more victims.

  Guinian struggled to his feet. The battle was going poorly. Mazrael was backed into a corner by two of the creatures, his crozius arcanum flashing brightly as its disruptor field met the creatures’ arms. Brother Kalael was slumped upon the floor. His torso was torn open. He held at the wound with his hand. Suit sealant mixed freely with blood, and he muttered the Sanguis Moritura over and over again. Quintus let out a roar as a genestealer jumped onto his back, ripping at his helmet. Metrion and Sandamael fought side by side, power fists sweeping. A genestealer reared up in front of Sandamael, half as tall as the Terminator was again. Recovering his wits, Guinian blasted it from behind with his bolter, the litanies of hate on his lips.

  Quintus howled as his helmet was torn free. His blows turned frantic as he sought to drag the genestealer from his body, his face reddened as he fought with his breath held. The ba
ttle hung at a pivotal point, for a brief half-second, Guinian saw the room with his warp-sight, something that only ever happened to him under moments of extreme stress. The chief of the Librarium did not quite understand this ability of his. Every psyker’s gifts were slightly different, granted by the Emperor himself. It was a form of blood divination, an ability to see the future when the blood flowed thickly. When this occurred to Guinian, movements tracked into time and future, blurring into multiple possibilities. He saw the Blood Drinkers triumphant, but in the main he saw them all dead. He saw them all dead many times over.

  And then Caedis was striding through the battle, smiting all about him. A genestealer jumped for him, bone spikes and claws raking down his arm and bringing sparks from the metal. Caedis smashed it backwards with his forearm and caught it by the throat. With superhuman strength, he lifted it into the air and with a jerk of his wrist snapped its neck. Guinian gasped. Caedis cut only one path into the future, and as he walked time reordered itself until there was only victory.

  Caedis howled with the blood-rage, his emotions boiled like the lava of Mount Calicium. Guinian was staggered by the psychic impact of it. He sensed many things, he saw many things. He saw, for a moment, a cave and a man in power armour facing a winged astorgai. Holos, it could only have been Holos himself. He saw, beyond and beneath that, a third vision. The interior of a hellish vessel, gripped by Chaos, two brothers fighting, one winged, the other a traitor.

  Then it was gone. The faint second vision collapsed into the vision of Brother Holos, and then he too faded from view until there was only Caedis and bloodshed and death.