Equipped with weapons from Sub-Precinct Eight’s emptied armoury, the convicts were led to the loco rail junctions by Second Squad and the arbitrators. Te Kahurangi, meanwhile, prepared his team. Eight void brothers, one from every squad in the Third Company besides First and the missing Fourth, had volunteered to accompany him. They were the Tactical Marines Amonga, Imau, Koro and Tupai, the Assault brothers Unik and Unok, and two Devastators, Rull and Kea. Alongside them were Ari’s two youngest initiates, Zeta-one-nine and Zeta-one-ten. Lastly came Sub-Warden Rannik. She seemed to be in a dazed state, as though walking in the footsteps of a lingering dream.
Rannik had left Jaken in command of the remaining arbitrators, who were deploying from the sub-precinct’s walls and bastions down into the mines in support of the Space Marines and those prisoners they had armed. It had been made clear to them all that this was the final stage of the battle for Zartak. The shadows that had come up out of the night to claw and consume them were circling now for the kill. The last light, glimmering around the stretch of mine works held by the Space Marines, was on the verge of going out. The lawmen of the Adeptus Arbites stood alongside the god-warriors and the armed men who had once been their prisoners, watching the crouched masses herded into the junctions, and the darkness encroaching upon them from the surrounding tunnels.
While Te Kahurangi, Rannik and the strike team descended deeper into Zartak’s heart, Sharr left it all behind. He took First Squad in the Thunderhawk Razortooth back into high orbit, returning to the White Maw. Among the gloom of the ancient strike cruiser’s bridge he received a situation report from Shipmaster Teko.
‘We’re picking up phantom traces from the asteroid belt,’ he said. ‘Our augurs haven’t been able to complete enough scans to make any identifications yet, but I suspect that is where the traitor fleet has been concealed while we have been on-station here.’
‘They’re moving?’ Sharr asked.
‘Yes. Again, we have no definite patterns right now, but I suspect they’re about to break from cover and attack. I have put all vessels on high alert. Shields up and guns run out.’
‘We were correct to assume this is the end, then,’ Sharr said.
He welcomed it. Either the Carcharodon Astra would be victorious and take what remained of the Red Tithe, or they would die to the last void brother. Either way, the time for doubt had long since passed. He felt a sense of inner quiet, like the soothing loneliness of the void, which all Carcharodons meditated upon during their cryo-sleep, lost in the darkness between the stars. The angry spirit of Akia was gone, consigned now to honoured memory. He had bloodied himself at the head of the company. His company. Regardless of the outcome of the final battle, he had bonded with his void brothers in his new role as their commander.
His First Squad were with him – Strike Veteran Dorthor, Company Champion Tane, Signifier Niko, Brother Soha. Only Apothecary Tama had remained on Zartak, still ministering to the wounded brethren in the medicae bay of the sub-precinct. His skills with auto-saw and scalpel, chirurgeon plasts and synth flesh would be in even greater demand soon enough.
Chaplain Nikora was with them too. Sharr had privately sought his advice on Te Kahurangi’s plan. The venerable Chaplain had approved it, on the condition that he was with Sharr for the final attack. He would not abandon the Chief Librarian, his oldest battle-brother.
Sharr led them all down into the shadow-haunted bowels of the White Maw. There, in the darkness and the silence, far above Zartak’s surface, they waited.
+ + Gene scan complete + + +
+ + Access granted + + +
+ + Beginning mem-bank entry log + + +
+ + Date check, 3677875.M41 + + +
Day 91, Zartak local.
The picts from servo-skull 2486 have turned up little of any value. There appears to be a great deal of feedback distortion corrupting the data. Adept Julio suspects some sort of artificial scrambling. There is evidence of military engagements, and a number of unidentified corpses deeper inside the mine works.
The report sent via astropathic relay to Lord Rozenkranz has been psy-logged as delivered, but there has been no reply as of yet. I have recalled 2486 and am preparing the more physically able members of the retinue to accompany me down into the mines personally. The Saint Angelica is still scanning the wrecks in orbit for more evidence as to their possible origins or identity.
Signed,
Interrogator Augim Nzogwu.
+ + Mem-bank entry log ends + + +
+ + Thought for the Day: Mankind stands on the shoulders of the Martyred + + +
Chapter XII
‘They are coming,’ Shadraith said. Eerie blue witch light played around the lenses of his helm and the wicked blade of his scythe. The air of the Centrum Dominus was alive with warp energy, little bursts of ethereal fire that flared randomly in the darkness.
First Kill were tense. Golgoth was practically growling, and Narx had unsheathed his power blade. Cull was pacing before the viewscreens, sickly light emanating from the Nostramo sigils of his runesword. The boy bound in the middle of the room was wide-eyed with terror, moaning at every crack of lightning that split the darkness overhead. Only Shadraith seemed to be revelling in the moment. Bar’ghul was drawing nearer with each passing second, scenting the suitability of its new host.
‘The time is nigh, brethren,’ Cull said over the vox, no longer trying to hide his excitement. ‘We will make these grey phantoms scream. All Claws, location report.’
Situation checks and readiness confirmations clicked back to the Prince of Thorns. They were slipping like a noose around the Loyalist-held junctions, ready to be tightened at the executioner’s command. Only the Warp Talons in their bloody nest and Vorfex, consigned to the Precinct Fortress’ maximum security cell, had not been deployed for the last assault. That, and the cult squads of the Black Hand requisitioned by Shadraith for his trap.
The sorcerer walked around Skell like a hunter appraising his kill. He had cut three bloody marks with his silver blade into the boy’s flesh – markings favoured by the God of Change, and Bar’ghul in particular. He could feel the daemon’s insubstantial presence like talons on his shoulders, like stinking breath on the nape of his neck. The warp thing’s approval made Shadraith strong. Its servants were drawing nearer too, filling the darkest corners of the tainted Centrum Dominus with leathery wings and low, cackling laughter.
Shadraith cut the leather bonds and let Skell down. The boy would have collapsed, but the towering sorcerer held him upright. He tugged away the strip of cloth that had been used to gag him.
‘Do you understand what is happening?’ Skell merely shook.
‘You have been chosen,’ Shadraith told him. ‘You are the reason we are here.’
‘The reason you are here,’ Cull corrected him from the viewscreens. Shadraith ignored him.
‘A great power is awakening inside you,’ he continued. ‘You have been blessed with abilities that leave mere mortals in dread. Soon, you will experience the presence of a deity of the warp itself.’
The chittering from the shadow-things taking form around the chamber grew louder. More ethereal lightning crackled in the dark. Skell managed to find his voice.
‘Why me?’
‘Do not trouble yourself with such questions,’ Shadraith soothed. ‘Save your strength. You will need it.’
The boy tried to move. He snatched himself away from Shadraith’s grasp and made for the command centre’s doors. He only covered a few feet before he collapsed. His body smeared the bloody sigils daubed across the floor. Shadraith gestured at one of Shenzar’s Terminators.
‘He still has some defiance left,’ the sorcerer said. ‘The knife-point between despair and hope. Tie him and gag him again.’ The Terminator hesitated before hauling the boy off the floor, one-handed. Shadraith bent to reconsecrate the blasphemous patterns disturbed by his weak attempt
at flight.
There was still some fight in him. That was good. He would struggle when Bar’ghul seized control of his flesh. And Shadraith had been clashing with the daemon for long enough to know just how much Bar’ghul liked it when a mortal tried to fight back.
Unnoticed by the sorcerer, Cull and Shenzar exchanged a lingering glance. The Prince of Thorns nodded.
Rannik was with the Scouts in the forefront of the advance into Zartak’s core. They descended to under-route 1 via a secondary sub-tunnel just before the final junctions where the Space Marines and the prisoners were concentrated.
The entrance to the narrow space was boarded over. Yellow block letters, lit up by Rannik’s stab lumen, warned of a mine collapse and the potential danger of neurotoxic gases from an unstable seam. The Scouts broke down the boards and exposed the darkness within.
Rannik led the way. Her footing was sure, even in the rugged, bare stone tunnel they found themselves travelling down. She didn’t really understand how she was so certain of where they were or where they were going. She felt light-headed, slightly ill, as though she was experiencing the first touch of some terminal fever. Vague considerations of duty, and the lurking fear of the god-warriors pressing close behind her, carried her on into the depths.
It became infernally hot. Rannik was soon drenched in sweat. The Space Marines showed no sign of discomfort, the pale, predatory faces of the initiates in the vanguard remaining stoic. Their dark eyes made her shudder.
Under-route 1 led them on, dragging her ever deeper, the rock either side hot to the touch. For a terrifying moment she wondered if she was in fact dead, whether this was all some nightmarish afterlife, a descent into the hell that Cardinal Mollin had warned them about every week in the Schola Excubitos basilica.
If it was, the Space Marines were making the journey with her. That thought gave her something to grasp on to, easing the panic brought on by the suffocating darkness. There was no way such warriors could possibly die. Her memory strayed back to the lightning-clad monsters on the bridge of Imperial Truth. They were not the same. They couldn’t be. Despite the heat, she shivered again.
‘Contacts on the auspex,’ one of the Scouts muttered. ‘Hold.’
Rannik allowed the initiate to pass her by. The tunnel had finally stopped its descent and levelled out, though its curvature meant seeing anything beyond two dozen paces was impossible. At a curt gesture from the Scout behind her she turned off her stab lumen. Darkness swallowed them.
The advance resumed. After a few seconds there came a shriek, and the thump of blades through meat. The sounds didn’t last for long.
Zeta-one-nine darted from the shadows, his infra-lens lighting up the vitals of the figures crouched between the tunnel’s tight rock walls. If they had any means of illumination down in Zartak’s sweltering depths, the two men had switched it off to conserve its power, and the low murmur of conversation had concealed the initiate’s final approach.
The serrated edge of one-nine’s monomolecular combat knife took the first man in the throat before he realised anything was wrong. The grey-clad Scout pushed past the slumping body as arterial blood splattered hot rock, snatching the second by the throat as he turned. As the man scrambled with his sidearm, one-nine slammed his gas-hooded skull against the tunnel wall.
The cultist let out a strangled cry. Sudden fury seized one-nine, accentuated by the claustrophobic confines and the infernal heat. He broke the traitor’s head against the unyielding, jagged stone. The enthralling scent of fresh blood filled his flared nostrils. He didn’t realise the man was dead until Te Kahurangi thrust a calming imperative into his thoughts, breaking through the wall of bloodlust that had surged so suddenly from the deeps of the young Scout’s consciousness.
‘Calm yourself, Zeta-one-nine,’ the Chief Librarian ordered. ‘The Carcharodon Astra do not lose control at the first hint of blood. Slaughter must always serve a purpose.’
One-nine bowed his head in the dark, struggling for breath.
‘Who are they?’ Te Kahurangi demanded. The Scout switched his infra-lens for a handheld stab lumen, lighting up his bloody work.
‘Cultists,’ he said. ‘The ones with the black hands. Set to guard the tunnel, I assume.’
‘Do not assume. Find out.’
‘Chief Librarian?’
‘You have been implanted with your omophagea, have you not?’ Te Kahurangi demanded.
‘Yes, Chief Librarian.’
‘Then make use of it. Perhaps it will help quell your dishonourable bloodlust as well.’
One-nine knelt beside the two bodies and dragged the gas hood away from the throat of the nearest.
Rannik switched her stab lumen back on. It lit up the back of one of the two Scouts. He was crouching over the bodies he’d just taken down in the dark, head bowed. Rannik heard a wet tearing sound. She took a step towards the hunched Space Marine.
‘Go no closer,’ Te Kahurangi ordered from behind her, but Rannik found herself unable to look away. The scent of blood filled her nostrils. A part of her was aware of what she was witnessing, but still she didn’t believe it. Then the Scout turned to look up at her, and her last hope vanished.
The initiate’s pale face was a crimson mask, glistening with blood. He’d literally torn the throat from one of the men who’d been guarding the tunnel, the heretic’s blood still pulsing weakly from the ruined cartilage and bare bone that had been his neck.
The Scout exposed his pointed teeth, the filed gaps clogged with strings of gore. His black eyes gleamed in the stab light. Rannik stumbled back from the monster, but felt her backplate grate against the armour of one of its brethren. She was trapped.
‘We are following the right tunnel,’ the blood-drenched Scout said, rising and wiping viscera from his face. ‘The ascent towards the Precinct Fortress begins here. And…’ he trailed off, as though thinking, and then nodded.
‘These are the only guards. Just cultists.’
‘How can you know that?’ Rannik stammered. She was going to be sick. These things were no better than the monsters they claimed to fight.
‘Our abilities are far beyond your understanding, Rannik,’ the low voice of Te Kahurangi said. ‘By consuming an enemy’s flesh we gain insight into their thoughts and memories. It is an important skill to master.’
The bloody Scout simply glared at Rannik. The Space Marine’s black eyes made it an utterly soulless expression. The arbitrator felt a hand on her shoulder, thrusting her forwards past the nightmarish warrior and over the corpses of his two victims.
‘We have no time to lose,’ Te Kahurangi said. ‘We all do the Emperor’s will here. Lead on.’
Trying not to shake, Rannik carried on down the tunnel.
He was deep beneath the surface. The waters were warm and clear. Shoals of moonfins darted around him, their silvery scales glittering. He drove up towards the light, young arms burning with exertion, thoughts thrilling at the freedom the water gave him. He–
…should be dead. He should be dead, but he was not. That thought was the only one that occupied Kordi’s mind as he dug. It was agonising work, both mentally and physically. The earth shifted only fractionally despite his efforts, the servos in his armour screaming and burning as they worked to enhance his transhuman strength. A void brother could have thrown a sixtrack flatbed onto its side, yet he was barely able to shift his injured body a few feet. Regardless, he fought on, in the dark, the dirt shifting around him like slow-flowing tar, his limbs burning and his lungs tight, squeezed by his armour’s internal air circulation.
The memories came back, trying to overwhelm him, trying to drag him back down. They were not him, not any more. That life was gone.
The chrono in his visor display was malfunctioning, continuously cycling through its digits and refusing to cancel or pause when he double blink-clicked it. He didn’t know how long he’d been digg
ing. Beneath the earth, time felt insubstantial. The only weight on him was the weight pressing him down, making his scarred battleplate groan with strain as he fought up, ever up. Reaching for a surface that he knew could be many miles away, for a salvation that was far beyond his grasp.
Finally, his fist clenched something that wasn’t more dirt. He took a deep breath and heaved upwards, driving his body through the cloying filth. A bellow of exertion escaped his lips as he pushed. He felt the last of the soil give way, and he burst into open air. Dirt cascaded from the joints and plates of his armour.
His first sight was of a levelled bolt pistol.
His lower half was still trapped, but it didn’t matter. The pistol belonged to Strike Leader Ekara. The squad commander lowered and locked the sidearm before offering Kordi his remaining hand. The Carcharodon took it gratefully, and was dragged up out of Zartak’s crushing embrace.
‘My thanks, strike leader,’ he said as he regained his feet. He scraped the grime befouling the white Chapter crest on his shoulder guard away. Ekara simply grunted. The earth underfoot was shifting and unstable – Kordi felt himself sinking almost to his knees, and had to drag his boots free.
When the tunnel had collapsed, it had brought down the soil and bedrock separating it from the latticework of ratholes that ran above it – barely a dozen yards of earth. Ekara and the other two survivors from Fourth Squad, Haru and Tonga, had managed to fight their way back up into the new chamber formed by the cave-in. Like Kordi, they now resembled monstrous earth spirits from primeval legend – grey titans caked in black muck, their eyes gleaming and dark amidst the grime they had hauled themselves up from.
‘The auspex is lost,’ Ekara said as he surveyed their new surroundings. The roof above had once been the top of what had probably been a rathole, except it was now a good fifteen feet above them. The path back was blocked, while the way ahead was now at the summit of a ramp of collapsed dirt.
Carcharodons: Red Tithe Page 22
