Hammer and Bolter 15

by Christian Dunn

  ‘Assessment of enemy forces,’ said Vrakos who had been taking in the scene. ‘Fifteen eldar warriors engaged in battle with… whatever these things are.’ Djul dropped slowly to a crouch and studied what remained of the thing he had killed.

  ‘Bio-matter,’ he said, his voice terse. ‘Similar in some ways to the tyranid biomass pools that we have encountered. Only these appear to be spawning these creatures. Or…’ He peered more closely and stood again, disgusted. ‘They are corrupted in some way.’

  Bhehan’s brows feathered together at Djul’s words and he brushed his senses across the room, attempting to ignore the anxiety and fury that was coming from the eldar minds. The psyches of the things that they were fighting were disturbingly blank with no spark of intellect coming from them at all. They were psychically arid and seemingly without life.

  ‘They can be killed,’ began Kerelan.

  ‘No,’ interrupted the Prognosticator. ‘You cannot kill what is already dead. You can merely slow it down.’ He stepped forward to crouch down where Djul had recently been. ‘Look.’ He scooped up a handful of the jelly-like matter and held it up. They could all see what he meant; there, in his hand, were fragments of bone just like those that they had trodden underfoot. ‘These are… animated things that have been created by something greater. They are created in a human image. A memory, perhaps, of what they once were? It is hard to say.’

  There was a lingering stench of the warp, a scent he was well accustomed to. But although Bhehan was familiar with the ozone taint of warp power as it leaked from every psychic being he had ever encountered, it rolled from this stuff in a near-overpowering wave.

  He let the stuff slide from his gauntlet with a foul slurp and stood once again. ‘This place is filled with decay and death. There is…’

  He broke off again as he felt a sudden battering at the wall around his mind. He stepped backwards and renewed the surge of psychic energy. Whatever it was that was trying to break through would not succeed. And yet still there was a trickle of a thought, that worked its way in through the small cracks with a skill and deft precision the Prognosticator would not have believed possible.

  Help us. Alone, we cannot do this thing. Together…

  Get out of my head.

  ‘Kill everything that moves,’ said Kerelan grimly, noting the Prognosticator’s sudden distraction. ‘The eldar and these things. We can work out the specifics when there are no xenos scum standing between us and them.’

  ‘As the First Captain commands,’ chorused the Talriktug. They fanned out, equidistant from one another. Brother Djul’s voice began to once again recite the Catechism of Hate.

  ‘While vile mutants still draw breath, there can be no peace. While the hearts of obscene heretics still beat, there can be no respite. While faithless traitors still live, there can be no forgiveness. In the name of the Emperor, in the name of Argentius, in the name of all Silver Skulls… brothers, we fight!’

  Three storm bolters immediately opened fire as the line of Silver Skulls began to advance towards the enemy, their staccato reports echoing in the vast caverns of the fortress-monastery. Smoking shell cases dropped to the ground at an incredible rate and the muzzle flares briefly lit up the darkness. The orange and white glow from the flamer in Asterios’s hand burned brightly and served as an effective weapon against the enemy.

  Djul and Kerelan moved in closer. The First Captain swung his relic blade in a murderous arc towards the closest eldar warrior. It raised a blade of its own to fend off the attack, but Kerelan’s superior strength and skill served him well. He pressed back with all his power and the eldar warrior crumpled beneath his assault. Kerelan raised his blade again and let it come down against his opponent. It did not penetrate on the first blow, instead tearing a ragged gouge across the alien’s segmented armour. The eldar staggered back.

  ‘You do not know…’ it began, but Kerelan cut short its words with another swing of his blade. The eldar’s head rolled clear of its shoulders, blood fountaining from the stump of the neck. The warrior crashed heavily to the ground.

  ‘I know enough,’ retorted the First Captain, his voice barely audible above Djul’s zealous declarations. He had already moved onto the next challenge. To his right, Djul carved his way through more of the faceless humanoid golems with his chainfist. The warrior never ceased his recital as he fought, hardly even pausing to draw breath. Bhehan let the words wash over him, let them fill his hearts with more strength and he began to draw his power to him.

  This was the moment that he would open his mind up to a psychic onslaught if the owner of the female voice was so inclined. It was a chance he was going to have to take.

  Something thudded into the shoulder guard of his armour and he turned reflexively. A sharp-bladed disc had embedded itself into the ceramite. He tore it out and flung it to the ground with a clatter. Then he stood straight and pointed his force axe at the eldar who had dared attack him. A crackling bolt of lightning burst from the end of the weapon as he channelled his power through it. The bolt struck the unfortunate target squarely in the chest, flinging him back into a knot of three of the monsters. They bent and buckled under the impact and then sprang back into shape.

  Almost immediately on making contact with them, the eldar began to struggle to free itself, but it was caught fast. The three creatures switched attention to their captive and even as Bhehan watched in macabre fascination, the eldar’s armour began to disintegrate before his eyes. The shreds of fibre that came from the intricately wrought battle gear seemed to be absorbed into the golems and they grew noticeably larger.

  The eldar, now without his armour continued to struggle, but the unnatural force that animated these things continued without remorse. The flesh of the xenos was devoured even as the eldar still lived and his screams echoed throughout the corridors until finally nothing was left but the bones. Then they too were consumed. The entire process had taken only seconds. The three golems congealed and came together to form a single, larger creature which began to slowly lumber towards the Silver Skulls.

  Revolted by the foulness of the entity, Bhehan unleashed another torrent of psychic force at it. It burst apart in a thousand flaming pieces, returning to a liquefied state.

  ‘When they are animated, do not touch them. Do not let them keep hold of you,’ he voxed to the rest of the squad. ‘If you are trapped by them, it…’

  Follow the corruption.

  It was her voice again.

  Follow the corruption and it will lead you to the source. Hurry. There may not be much time. Look down. Look at your feet. You will see…

  Despite his determination to ignore the voice, Bhehan’s lowered his eyes to stare at the ground. The floor, which was coated in a fine film of ooze and now a veneer of blood from the eldar warriors who were dying swiftly beneath the guns and blades of his battle-brothers, was moving. It carried the very visible shreds of armour, chunks of blood and muscle and even recognisable internal organs. They slid in a sticky mess down the tunnels.

  ‘First Captain!’

  Kerelan did not respond immediately, engaged as he was with the battle. Bhehan called to him again, a little more urgently than before.

  ‘Prognosticator, a moment if you would.’

  Another round of shells disgorged with a resounding clatter from Vrakos’s bolter and Kerelan nodded with satisfaction before turning towards the agitated psyker.

  ‘The daemon calls to its own, First Captain! The source of this evil is at the end of this flow.’

  ‘Then we will finish our work here and we will move on.’

  Bhehan did not mention the voice in his head. Instead, he caught a tight hold of his force axe and threw himself with easy confidence into what remained of the battle.

  Eliminating the remaining eldar afforded no hardship. They were struggling to survive the onslaught of the vile creatures. Two more of them suffered the same fate as the one Bhehan had sent flying into their clutches and their screams as their bodies wer
e dissolved were horrific. Yet Bhehan could not help be feel satisfaction. Ancient enmity between the races ran deep.

  ‘What are these things, Prognosticator?’ The question came from Vrakos who had fallen into step next to Bhehan, the weapon in his hand still spitting out shell after shell.

  ‘I am not sure, brother,’ replied Bhehan, swinging his axe round in a neat arc, severing another golem in two. Like the others, it simply seeped into the greater flow and moved slowly down the corridor taking pieces of flesh, bone and armour with it. ‘But there is the touch of the warp at work here. Of that I am sure.’

  ‘Daemons, do you think?’

  ‘Aye. I suspect.’ Bhehan pointed down at the ground, at the slowly snaking river of debris. ‘I cannot think of anything else so powerful as to be able to manipulate matter in this way. Wherever this flows… it will lead us to our answers.’

  The two warriors fell silent as they executed one of the few remaining eldar. They worked in harmony as though they had fought together on many occasions before. Vrakos fired his weapon into the chest of an eldar who flew backwards. The xenos’s armour soaked up most of the initial damage, but before the alien could even get to his feet, Bhehan had unleashed psychic hell on it. He thrust his hand forwards, the axe held tightly in the other. Jolts of psychic and electrical energy found their target, frying the enemy’s brain. It slid down the wall, far from the pools of ooze.

  From somewhere further down, the Silver Skulls heard a sudden roaring. It was a deeply unnatural sound, somewhere between rage and pain. The two warriors exchanged glances.

  ‘That was not a noise made by any xenos I have encountered,’ observed Vrakos in a mild, almost conversational tone. ‘I would say it lends weight to your daemon hypothesis, Prognosticator.’

  The last remaining eldar let out a bellowing phrase in its own language and turned, hurtling at full speed down the corridor in the direction of the sound which was still echoing along the walls.

  Raking fire scraped down the rock behind the fleeing eldar and the six Space Marines formed up as a single unit once again. The saving grace was that in the wake of the bestial roar that had resounded down the tunnels, the golems had collapsed. The stream of debris continued to flow.

  ‘Pursuit,’ said Djul, breaking off from his endless litanies to speak the word. He was almost visibly trembling with zealous fury. ‘It is our only choice. We cannot stand here in idleness whilst the xenos still desecrate our ancestral home.’

  ‘Aye, brother. At least one remains and I fancy we will find more at the end of this tunnel. More than eldar too if that noise was anything to go by. Brother Prognosticator? The Emperor’s Word, if you would?’

  ‘Aye, First Captain.’ Bhehan reached down to the rune bag at his waist and drew a stone at random. It was his preferred method of divination in fraught situations. He studied the beautifully carved stone as he raised it to his eyes. ‘This rune symbolises death,’ he said.

  ‘Ours?’

  ‘Nothing so obvious, First Captain. Merely a suggestion that something is coming to an end. It can also suggest success, that we reach our goals.’ Bhehan dropped the rune back into his pouch. ‘The rune is a positive one,’ he said. ‘We should proceed. With caution, obviously. These are eldar we are dealing with. As I observed, this may be some elaborate trap on their part.’

  ‘This is something that had not escaped my own consideration,’ replied Kerelan. He glanced around his squad and nodded. ‘The Prognosticator has spoken. It is the Emperor’s will that we pursue.’

  Djul had already started walking.

  ‘Your helmet, Prognosticator?’

  ‘In due course, First Captain. Whatever it is that is trying to invade my thoughts, I want to look on its face properly when I kill it.’

  ‘Spoken like a true Silver Skull.’

  There were three minds at war.

  The female voice still whispered at the edges of his awareness. He could sense its sheer desperation and that bothered him. If she was powerful enough to insert herself into the highly defended mind of an Adeptus Astartes psyker, then what could possibly cause her such anxiety?

  Then there was his own mind. Young, but gruellingly trained to deal with this kind of invasion. He had expended some considerable psychic energy during the altercation with the eldar and the daemonic beings, but he was still more than in control of his faculties. He was keeping the woman at bay – for now at least – and he still had plenty to give.

  But the third presence was new, as though it had only lately become aware he was there. An insidious, creeping presence that sought to break through the first gap in his defences that it found. Where the alien’s voice was like a constant hammering on the door of his mental fortress, this new consciousness was like a noxious gas attempting to seep in.

  Despite not having replaced his helmet, Bhehan was not struggling to see where he was going. Barely any light reached this far down into the tunnels but Bhehan had long ago learned to compensate for lack of vision with other, preternatural senses. He felt the shape of the room around him and was able to pinpoint his battle-brothers with accuracy. A soft blue glow from his psychic hood and the silvery thread of power that rippled around the head of the force axe loaned a little light to the proceedings but the squad forged ahead mostly in darkness.

  ‘There is a chamber up ahead.’ Asterios spoke from the front of the line of Terminators. ‘Bodies. Movement. Something I cannot quite…’

  Another roar sounded, this time so close that they could all feel the shifting air that accompanied it. Death. Disease. Rot and plague.

  ‘Replace your helmet, Prognosticator,’ Kerelan began as red warning runes began to flash across his eyes. ‘There is poison in the air.’

  The young psyker had already begun the task of putting his helmet back on. It was not a quick thing to do to manipulate it around the psychic hood, but he managed it. As the seals hissed into place, he blinked heavily to adjust his eyes to the infrared. Taking note of the analysis of the air, he was confident that he would not have suffered any undue harm.

  ‘First Captain!’

  The shout from Asterios dragged Bhehan’s attention away from the scrolling data and they moved as fast as their armour would allow them towards the chamber. Not heeding Kerelan’s order about remaining by his side, Bhehan accelerated his speed and moved ahead of the others, arriving at the mouth of the chamber before they did. Asterios shot him a glance. He said nothing. He did not need to. What was visible in the chamber spoke for itself.

  A swift scan of the inhabitants of the vast, high-ceilinged room revealed eight eldar warriors, including the one who had fled from the previous battle. All wore segmented, form-fitting armour apart from one. The second Bhehan’s eyes rested on her, he knew at once that this was the source of one of the two voices in his head. She was clad in flowing robes of deepest purple that draped around her slender frame, protected by an ornate breastplate and pauldrons. She stood firm and defiant, her hand out before her and was shouting words in her own language at a monster of unimaginable proportions. Her voice was muffled by the rebreather mask that protected her from the poisonous air.

  ‘In the Emperor’s name,’ breathed Asterios through the vox. ‘What horror has been wrought in this place?’

  It was massive, fully four metres in height and at least that across. It had no real form and seemed to be nothing more than a huge, shapeless mass of vile and putrid decay. Its skin spilled in rolls that rippled as it moved and the slimy trails of corruption that had led the Silver Skulls here flowed directly beneath it. Occasionally, whenever an eldar weapon or projectile made contact with it, a great gash that approximated a screaming mouth would open up. Bhehan stared for a few moments, realising what it was made from. Its epidermis was entirely transparent and beneath its roiling surface the young Prognosticator could pick out bone fragments. He saw skulls, torn strips of flesh and muscle… all the living matter that had been torn from the eldar in the previous chamber. Organic matter that
had been absorbed over the millennia.

  It is a spawn of the Unclean One. A lesser daemon of Nurgleth. It was the eldar woman’s voice in his head and this time, Bhehan did not reject her presence. We came here in response to a vision and we seek to defeat it. It has fed for so long on the decay and death that infects everything on this world. Please, mon-k… human. Please, you must aid us in this venture. We cannot succeed without your help. It may only be a minor creature but this place is so strong in decay that it thrives.

  ‘A creature of Chaos,’ he responded to Asterios’s question. He chose carefully not to reply to the eldar. Her pleading tone disgusted him. ‘A daemonic entity that thrives on atrophy and decay…’

  ‘I do not purport to understand the nature of daemons,’ said Kerelan. ‘But I do understand how to fight them. Concentrate your fire on that thing first. We will deal with the eldar later.’

  ‘How do we know that the filthy eldar witch is not controlling it?’ Djul’s response was startlingly predictable and he raised his storm bolter, levelling it at the eldar woman’s head. ‘If we kill her then it will die.’

  Do not let this happen, human. A slightly sharper psychic probe that made Bhehan gasp. She turned from what she was doing, lightning or some other, unknown force dancing from her hands and stared at the Silver Skulls directly.

  Our goal is shared, she said to Bhehan and the desperation returned. Surely you can see that? There is a time for animosity between our species, but it is not now. Now is the time for us to combine our strength, to join together. I felt your presence the moment you arrived on this world. We must do this thing together.

  ‘Please,’ she said aloud.

  ‘Do not even speak, alien,’ said Djul and prepared to fire. But Bhehan moved to stand between him and his target.