by Nick Kyme
Foolish to leave the human so lightly guarded, but then Vogel knew that the loyalists had taken a hammering at the manufactorum. He doubted there were many more left. He smiled, showing two rows of pointed teeth he had filed down himself, and remembered how the Dark Apostle’s warpcraft had revealed their enemies to him. The tunnels could have led to any one of fifty or more outflows. Vogel was certain that the loyalists would not be expecting an attack so soon.
Unsheathing a second blade, he crept quietly into the open, his footfalls masked by the rain. His fellow assassins were right behind him, but Vogel didn’t need them. He was going to kill all of these weaklings by himself.
Numeon clung to the side of the cliff, beneath the cascading overflow. Glancing to the right, he saw Leodrakk with his gauntleted fingers dug into the manmade rock face. On the left was Daka’rai, also clinging on. Three of their brothers were hiding on the opposite side of the gushing falls, obscured by the water. K’gosi and three more were submerged beneath the sink itself.
Numeon was blind to whatever was happening above. All he could hear was the roar of the water as it battered against his armour. Even through his helmet respirator, the air was foul and dank.
Soon… he told himself.
It was all up to Shen’ra now. All Numeon and the others had to do was honour his sacrifice.
Vogel had a hunter’s stealth but a maniac’s urgency. The latter tended to undermine the former, which was why Narek had only wanted him in his squad when he needed killers and could trust less to subterfuge. Had he been allowed to do this with Dagon and possibly Melach, Narek would have gone about it differently. Something about the scene before him, the quiet comradely conversation, the huddled figure of the stock-still human, gave him pause. He could have given voice to it, he could have suggested caution but instead he let Dagon give the all-clear to attack. After that, Vogel had rushed out to be first.
Narek was content to let him and followed on behind with Dagon, Melach and Saarsk.
Elias was amongst the vanguard too, the rest of the Word Bearers waiting in the tunnel if needed. Narek kept the Dark Apostle behind him, irritated that Elias had insisted on joining the kill-squad. Fear of Erebus and a loss of status amongst the XVII was a compelling motivator, it seemed.
Vogel had almost reached the Techmarine when Narek received a horrible premonition. His concerns, abstract at first, became reality and his warning could not then remain unspoken.
‘Their eyes…’ he hissed urgently over the vox to Dagon.
‘What of them?’
‘Look!’
The three Salamanders sitting and listening to the Techmarine had dead retinal lenses. Their eyes, normally burning, should have cast a faint light through them.
It meant the eyes were not the only things that were dead, and that in turn meant–
Narek stood up and shouted, ‘Vogel! No!’
Too late, the bladesman plunged his dagger into the Techmarine’s back. It was a killing stroke, punched right through the legionary’s primary heart. Vogel wrenched out the blade. It was covered in blood. He was about to slay another when the dull thud of an object hitting the wooden deck drew his eyes downwards.
Blinking red, an incendiary rolled from the Techmarine’s open gauntlet. There was a smile etched on Shen’ra’s lifeless face as he released the dead man’s trigger.
The explosion immolated Vogel, and threw the others off their feet. Fire swept across the jetty, igniting a chain of grenades dug into and around the tunnel entrance. They cooked off in seconds, releasing a secondary explosion and effectively sealing the outflow behind a tonne of debris.
Smashed back towards the entrance and then away from it as the second blast hit, Narek was on the ground, stunned but alive. He’d dragged Elias down with him as he sought to keep the Dark Apostle from harm. Hate him he might, but he still had his duty to perform. Peering through smoke and fire, the huntsman saw four legionaries emerging from the sink with bolters raised. He threw his knife, piercing the neck of one before the Salamander had a chance to fire.
Dagon had his rifle up, preparing to execute a second ambusher, when a shot whined out from a distance and struck right through the side of his head. The sniper was dead before he hit the jetty.
Bolt-rounds from the submerged legionaries ripped Melach apart, the Word Bearer with his pistol only half drawn.
Prone, almost underneath Narek, Elias fired off a burst and clipped one of the emerging legionaries, who had now drawn blades and were charging through the water. Narek suspected they were low on – or even out of – ammunition, as a concentrated fusillade would have ended the fight quickly. He wondered what the loyalists might be saving their rounds for.
Six more hauled themselves over the edge of the outflow basin. One advanced ahead of the rest. He was a Salamander, a centurion.
A quick headcount made the odds fairly even, but of the many in the tunnel only a few had got out before the blast hit and sealed in the rest. The loyalists also had a plan and the advantage of surprise.
Elias was on his feet. He fired off a snap shot that took the Salamander officer in the shoulder. He staggered but kept on coming, swinging a hefty-looking glaive.
Narek had other concerns as the two from the sink drove at him. He parried one thrust with his rapidly drawn gladius. A second attack he trapped with his forearm and then dragged the legionary in, crushing his vox-grille with a savage head-butt.
Saarsk had engaged some of the Salamanders who had clambered up over the edge of the sink. He stabbed one and shot another before the sniper ventilated his chest, and the others dragged the Word Bearer down to finish him.
He saw Elias barrelled over as the Salamander officer hurtled into him. The two grappling warriors fell hard against the jetty, which cracked under their weight. A second later and the wooden jetty split, dumping everyone on it down into the filth. It doused the fire still crackling against Narek’s armour, and he used the sudden shift in terrain to put a pistol burst point-blank into one of his opponents. Grunting, the Salamander rolled over and sank into the water.
An elbow strike in the second legionary’s throat dented his gorget and partially choked him, freeing Narek of immediate enemies. The fall had split Elias and the Salamander officer apart. They were close to the edge of the sink and a long drop into the reservoir of filth below. Ignoring the other legionaries, who had started to regroup after the Word Bearers’ fast counter-attack, Narek went straight for Elias.
‘What are you doing?’ yelled the Dark Apostle.
They were outgunned, with a sniper rifle trained on them at distance. Everyone else in the kill-squad was dead or soon to be, and all their reinforcements were trapped inside the tunnel without any excavation gear.
‘Saving our lives,’ snapped Narek as he took Elias and himself over the edge of the sink and down towards the foaming tumult below.
Numeon rushed to the edge of the sink and almost jumped.
Leodrakk stopped him, hauling the captain back by his shoulder guard.
‘We’ve lost enough already,’ he said, but leaned over and sighted down his bolter.
‘Save your rounds,’ Numeon told him, embittered. ‘They’re gone.’
Putting aside his anger, Leodrakk relented and lowered the bolter. ‘We almost had him. That bastard.’
‘He’ll want revenge for this. We’ll see him again.’
‘Did you see his arm?’ asked Leodrakk. ‘He was wounded. Recently.’
‘But not by us.’
‘Not one of his own?’
‘No,’ Numeon said, pensive, ‘something else.’
After a few seconds of watching the tide of filth still plunging from the outflow and not seeing either Word Bearer snared by the current, they stepped away from the edge.
K’gosi was alive. His breastplate was bloodstained where a Word Bearer had plunged a blad
e into it, but he was otherwise unharmed. He had long since depleted his reserves of promethium and flexed his left gauntlet irritably. The right he held against Shen’ra’s chest.
‘We will remember your sacrifice, brother,’ he muttered softly, kneeling next to the Techmarine whom he had rolled onto his back in repose. The splinter of jetty Shen’ra rested on was about all there was left of it; the others were still up to their armoured shins in sewage.
The Techmarine was not the only casualty. Daka’rai was also dead, on his back in the filth with a knife jutting from his neck. Ukra’bar had taken a bolt-round point blank and would not rise again. The others all carried minor injuries, and none that would amount to the wounding inflicted by their brothers’ deaths.
All present bowed their heads, before Leodrakk spoke up.
‘We cannot even burn them.’
‘No, we cannot.’ Numeon went over to the prone form of the dead human, one of the sump-catchers, and retrieved K’gosi’s cloak to give back to him. ‘So we must honour them a different way.’
In his left hand he held up the fulgurite spear. During their fight, he had wrested it from the Dark Apostle’s scabbard.
Despair turned to hope at the sight of this mundane object, though none who saw it could explain why. It crackled with power, an inner golden glow that spoke of the Emperor’s grace and his near-divinity. Stringent steps and sanctions had been taken to refute the idea of the Emperor as a god, but his power had always suggested otherwise, despite the desire to move from superstition to enlightenment. But the past months had begun to challenge that paradigm. For the universe was not the sole province of mortals, be they human or alien – it was the realm of gods, too, and most of them were malign. The Word Bearers believed in them, even courted their foot soldiers for dark favours. They had faith, but what they believed in was horrible.
As he held the spearhead aloft, Numeon knew that he had faith too: faith in the Emperor and his design for the galaxy and humanity, and faith that his primarch was still alive. The power in the fulgurite seemed to ignite that belief; it ignited it in all of them.
He lightly traced his fingers over the sigil at his waist.
‘Vulkan lives,’ he uttered simply.
Every legionary standing before him replied. First K’gosi and Ikrad.
‘Vulkan lives.’
Then G’orrn and B’tarro.
‘Vulkan lives.’
And Hur’vak and Kronor.
‘Vulkan lives.’
With every new voice, the chorus became louder, until only one remained.
Numeon looked his Pyre brother in the eye, and saw the hurt and pain he held there from when Skatar’var had been lost on Isstvan. If any had cause to doubt, it would be Leodrakk. The memory of that day and their flight to the drop-ships left a canker of regret in Numeon’s mouth, but he kept his expression neutral as he regarded Leodrakk.
His gaze moving from Numeon to the spear to the sigil and then back again, Leodrakk nodded.
‘Vulkan lives.’
Together they turned their affirmation into a battle cry, shouting at the sky in defiance and as one.
‘Vulkan lives!’
They would hold to this belief, and use it to give their cause much-needed hope.
For the first time since they had run from Isstvan, beaten and bloody, Numeon knew what he had to do. Going back to stand at the edge of the sink, he signalled to Pergellen, with whom he knew Hriak and John Grammaticus were also waiting.
It was time to talk to the human again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Human failings
Kharaatan, during the Great Crusade
Night had fallen over Khartor City for the last time. Through a combined effort of Imperial Army, both infantry and armoured, Titans from the Legio Ignis and two Space Marine Legions, the world of Kharaatan was at last officially deemed compliant. With the warriors’ work now done, the Imperial Administration with its army of logisticians, codifiers, servitors, engineers, manufactors, taxonomers and scriveners could begin the long task of recolonising One-Five-Four Six and repatriating it in the name of the Emperor and the Imperium.
Its old name of Kharaatan, together with the names of all its cities and other important geographical locations, would change. For now simple designations would suffice, such as the signifier it had been given when the war of compliance had been authorised by the War Council. In time, new appellations would be chosen in order to help colonists better adapt and think of the world as their own, as a loyal Imperial world with loyal Imperial citizens.
Kharaatan and all its associated trappings represented rebellion and discord. By changing its names, their power was revoked and supplanted it with another’s.
Part of this transformation began with the logging and transportation of the entire population of Kharaatan. These men, women and children, be they rebels or innocents, would never see their home again. Some would go to the penal colonies, others would be sent to worlds in need of indentured workers, some would be executed. But in the end, the cultural footprint of the Kharaatan people would disappear forever.
Logistician Murbo thought on none of this as he conducted final checks before the transporters’ departure. After what had seemed like days rather than hours of painstaking cataloguing and questioning, the Departmento Munitorum, assisted by Administratum clerks in battalion-strength cohorts, had finally rounded up and divided Khartor’s population. This was the last city. It had also been one of the largest. Headache didn’t even begin to describe the wretched pounding that was alive in Murbo’s skull, so his temper was short as well as his diligence.
As he rattled by the first transport, he didn’t notice the smell. He had a gaggle of servitors and a lexmechanic in tow, but they had long since been divested of the burden of olfactory sensation, so didn’t raise any question either.
It was dark, and a cold wind was coming in across the desert. Murbo wanted to be back in his lodgings aboard ship, warm and with something warming in his belly too. He’d been saving a bottle for just this occasion.
There were over fifty transports to check, log and verify before he was done, then he had to confirm passenger designation with the pilot and input said data onto his slate, which he now had in his hand. Administratum protocol was to make visual checks also, to ensure that no one was missed. In the chaotic scramble after a successful compliance that began on a war-footing, it was not uncommon for entire swathes of population to be forgotten about.
The first tranche of ex-Khar-tans, the prisoners bound for the penal colonies, had already gone. Murbo’s job was to despatch those people who were destined to become Imperial citizens on brave new worlds. He wasn’t sure who he pitied more, but his sympathy didn’t last. Rebellion reaped its own harsh rewards when it was against the Imperium.
He panned the weak lumen-lamp around the hold, saw the dead-eyed inhabitants contemplating their new lives, and approximated a head count. All seemed fine at first, but when he got to the second transport and was about to move on to the third, he paused.
‘Did they seem a little quiet to you?’ he asked the lexmechanic.
The hunched clerk seemed perplexed by the question. ‘I suspect they are contemplating the folly of rising up against the Imperium.’
No, thought Murbo, that wasn’t it.
There was nothing that Murbo wanted more in that moment than to be done with his business and be off to his quarters for the flight up to One-Five-Four Six’s atmosphere, but the ex-Khar-tans tended to be more vocal.
Then there was the smell, which, buoyed on the desert breeze, had begun to seem more noisome.
He increased the intensity of the lamp’s glow and went back to the first transport.
‘Oh Throne…’ he gasped, shining the light into the hold again.
Frantically, Murbo ran to the next transport and did the same aga
in. Then he went to the third, the fourth, the fifth. By the time he reached the twelfth, he was violently sick.
Still doubled over, Murbo waved off the lexmechanic who went to help him.
‘Don’t look in there,’ he warned, then asked, ‘Who’s still planetside?’
Again, the hunched little man looked confused in his drab robes.
‘Besides us?’
‘Military,’ said Murbo, wiping down his chin.
The lexmechanic checked his slate.
‘According to the Munitorum’s log, all military assets have left the surface…’ he paused, holding up a withered-looking hand as he checked further, ‘but there are still two Legion transports on the ground.’
‘Hail them,’ Murbo commanded. ‘Do it now.’
Vulkan was alone standing in the broad expanse of the Nightrunner’s cargo hold. Ordinarily it would be used for the transportation of weapons, ration packs and the myriad materiel required for war. This night it accommodated the dead. Caskets lined part of the hold’s east quarter, but the numbers were mercifully light, thanks to the swift and bloodless resolution of the Khartor siege. How many lives had been used to pay for that mercy… tortured, painful endings to lives… Vulkan knew all too well.
The bloodshed had not concluded with the massacre of Khar-tann City either. The riot during the settling of the Khartor citizenry had resulted in many deaths. And though he suspected his brother’s Night Lords had been partly responsible for that, he could not absolve himself of all blame.
Seriph lay before him within her casket. It was plain, unadorned, a simple metallic tube with a cryo-engine built in to retard putrefaction and ensure that the deceased reached their place of final rest unspoiled. The medicaes had cleaned up her wounds, but the bloodstain on her robes remained. Were it not for that and the grim pallor of her skin, then Vulkan might have believed she was merely sleeping.
He wanted to tell her that he was sorry she was dead, that he wished he had heeded her during the burning of Khar-tann and acceded to her request for an interview. His story should be told, he had decided, and Seriph would be the one to do it. But not any more. A corpse could tell no stories.
