Velich Tarn was, then, that least of all desired outcomes. Assessed first as an outpost, or a small, starveling survivor stronghold, it had proven non-compliant. Captain Sejanus, favoured of all Lupercal's commanders, had led the embassy there and met ferocious resistance from the outset. His reports back to the waiting fleet had been brief and matter-of-fact. The environment was poor, and the human enclave there well fortified and armed with what he categorised as 'bio-mechanoid' weapons. They had first ignored and then rejected Sejanus' requests for contact. All hope of compliance had foundered when the Velich Tarn enclave commenced open hostilities. Their population was small - scans revealed only four hundred people - but their mindset was smaller. Velich Tarn would not submit to Imperial authority or even Imperial contact. 'They are extreme xenophobes,' Sejanus had written in a communique, clearly with a heavy heart, 'and refuse to deal with us. Despite their small numbers, they are formidably weaponised. They are determined to resist, and if left alone, I fear they will grow into a significant threat to stability in this zone. With regret, my lord, I request your permission to illuminate them.'
Horus read this missive quietly. Maloghurst and the others present could see from his humour that he was disappointed, and that he empathised deeply with his friend Hastur Sejanus' reluctance. Too many pockets of human survival had reacted to expedition forces with hate and fear during the course of the Great Reunion, most often the smallest and most isolated. Illumination was a last resort.
Horus granted the request, and sent tidings of consolation and forbearance to Sejanus.
A week later, Sejanus requested that the rest of his Fourth Company strength join him.
His reports were now referring to the opposition as 'the biomechs' or the 'biomech obscenities', and rating resistance as 'severe'. He had identified their leader as a man named Fo, and suggested '…there is no dealing here, nor option for truce. Illumination must proceed to its most miserable extent, and this blight be erased.'
'I'm going to Sejanus,' Horus told Maloghurst.
'My lord,' Maloghurst chided softly. 'Hastur has it in hand, and is reinforced. Qruze and Loken are due back from Kest's sun in two days. We are ready to make shift to Ullanor.'
'My brave wolf Hastur struggles with this,' said Horus. 'It is a bloody business, the worst dealings we must contend with in this project. Worse than xenos-breed, for this is our own kind turned feral. I will support him. Oh, don't look at me like that, equerry. This is the last business we must undertake in this zone, and the only one that has proved bloody. I'll see it done away cleanly at Hastur's side. I'll not leave a mess here in this quadrant, nor leave one of my sons to bear the bitter burden alone.'
'If this is your wish, lord,' Maloghurst replied, for he knew when even his artfully twisted persuasion would not work.
'It is,' said Lupercal. 'Besides, I have been reading.'
'Reading, my lord?'
'Idly. From the old annals. I think I know who this Fo is.'
Even from orbit-descent, Velich Tarn did not look like a place any man would wish to stay for more than a day, let alone the millennia Fo's people were believed to have sheltered there.
Bone spires of rock rose like lines of fangs from miasmal lowlands and plutonic lakes that were toxic beyond any reason of local enviro-chemistry. Striated clouds raced across the skies, low and dense, thick with pollutants, driven by crosswinds of blast-zone force.
Illumination had gripped a corner of the landscape, the region of the main enclave. Uplands had been fractured by orbital weapons, and kilometres of rubble still glowed as the heat leaked out of it. The broken curtain hills lay under a vast pall of grey smoke that rose like the breath of a supervolcano hours from obliterating itself.
In the scorching twilight beneath the plume, the valley was alight with thousands of snapping, winking, flashing darts of weaponsfire as the entire Fourth Company of the Luna Wolves, along with mechanised support, maintained the grind to break Fo's enclave open.
Hastur Sejanus, his plate scored and dented, hurried up the dirt track to the landing zone. A Stormbird, its white hull grimed with atmospheric soot was just settling on the wide mesh pads beyond the lines of empty troop carriers and landing barges. Daggers of blue flame stabbed from its vector jets as it touched down. Sejanus felt the thump of its mass transmitted through the temporary mesh decking.
Sejanus was alone. There hadn't been time to pull men out of the fighting line to form an honour guard. Lupercal, with characteristically puckish glee, had chosen not to give the Fourth Company captain advance notice of his arrival.
Sejanus strode out across the pad, steam roiling around his feet, the landing masts winking in the yellow light. The Stormbird's landing jaws were opening. Horus was already on the ramp.
'My lord,' Sejanus began.
Horus, in full war-plate, stepped out and embraced his captain.
'Don't, Hastur,' he said.
'My lord?'
'I know you, old friend. First, an apology for the lack of due ceremony. Then, some demand for censure for taking so very long to crush this nest of vermin.'
'I admit, I had both prepared.'
'Forget them,' said Horus. 'Let's talk inside.'
They crossed to the nearest modular. Inside, air-scrubbers purged the atmosphere lock, and recycle pumps hosed them in decontam spray. They entered the main command module, uncoupling their war-helms.
'Let me have the room,' Sejanus commanded.
The officers present saluted and withdrew. They were alone in the low-ceilinged strategy station, unmanned cogitators streaming battlefield data onto their raised glass plates.
'You came to…?' Sejanus asked, letting the question trail.
'Offer support,' said Horus. He set down his helm, glanced around, and then smiled at the captain. 'Your reports are candid, but brief, Hastur. I can tell, more by what you don't say than what you do, that this place plagues you.'
Sejanus shrugged. His face was drawn. Horus had never seen Sejanus so freighted with stress.
'I have tried to be succinct,' he replied. 'This place is a bane. This enemy… inhuman. In the light of the glorious compliances lately achieved, I felt I should spare the bald horror of it. When this is done, it is a thing better forgotten.'
'The truth is what the truth is, Hastur. I'm not a sensitive soul that needs to be coddled. And even in our worst moments, we may learn things that we may benefit from in later evaluation. You've maintained a full battle record?'
'Of course. We could have reviewed it together at some later date. Lord, this war is all but won. My spearhead squads are just hours away from taking the enclave heart.'
'How many have you lost, Hastur?'
Sejanus paused.
'Sixteen men dead,' he said. 'Another thirty wounded to such extent that augmetic repair will be required. Usually limb loss. I am ashamed of these loss statistics.'
'Because you are a full company of the Imperium's finest Legion, and you face just four hundred souls?'
'Yes, lord.'
'Fo's people must be something indeed. That's an unprecedented proportional hit-rate.'
'It is,' said Sejanus, 'which is why I have kept it to myself for now. But Fo's people… are not people. Four hundred life signs is misleading. I believe there are less than thirty actual humans present on this world. Perhaps none at all. Our systems interpreted multiple and blended life readings and came up with a figure of four hundred. But each one could mean… a dozen… a thousand…'
'A dozen or a thousand what?'
Sejanus crossed to one of the primary cogitators, entered his code and pulled up pict-capture from the combat archives. Sliding with his fingertip, he began to lay the images out across the glass screen, as a man might spread paper pictures on a table.
'Wait, wait, what am I looking at?' asked Horus. 'What is this?'
He touched the screen. A yellow rune highlighted one image and enlarged it, bringing it to the fore. A blur, motion-stabilised. Steel teeth, like human inc
isors, arranged in a grinding circle like the head of a mining rock-drill. A snout of cream bone armour. Massive jaw-muscles exteriorised, reinforced with hydraulic baffles, sheathed in the folds of a throat that bellied like a serpent.
'Bio-mech,' replied Sejanus. 'Bio-mechanical constructs. Engineered to kill. Some as small as a man's hand, others larger than a drop-ship.'
'Engineered?'
'Gene-edited. Spliced, reworked from human stock.'
Horus pulled more images to the front and stared at them. Each one showed a new horror, as if he were flicking through a pict-book of a madman's nightmares.
'Everything you see is human,' said Sejanus.
'There's barely anything I recognise as remotely human,' said Horus quietly.
'Quite. But bio-scans are precise. Everything coming at us is genetically human. Woven from this colony's original human stock. Some combine the genes of more than one source individual. Multiple others are worked from a single origin gene-donor. All are reinforced and weaponised with cybernetics.'
'Hence the misleading life scans?'
Sejanus nodded. 'We're facing thousands of individual bio-mech hostiles. Potentially, over a hundred thousand. Every single one of them is capable of killing a fully armed legionary. But they are all derived from the same four hundred human originals.'
He looked at Horus. 'My wolves have given them names, lord. I have tried to discourage it. Cyberzerkers. Biome- cannibals. Misbegots. They are feral horrors. The least of them make the greenskins seem mild. The worst is… there is no sane reason for any of them.'
'Sane reason?'
'I mean, lord… in the sense of design. They're just like nightmares. Nightmares of flesh, made flesh. Some are so clumsy and grotesque they seem to serve no other purpose than to disgust.'
Sejanus summoned up more images. A pallid thing like a starfish, the limbs human arms, a beaked mouth at the centre. A thorned snake as thick as a tree trunk, formed from translucent intestine. Something made entirely of weeping eyes. Here, four thick, human legs bearing a sack that opened in a gaping orifice that was a mouth within a mouth within a mouth. Glistening things covered in blisters and horns. Pulsing things festooned with barbs. Things made of interlocked hands that cupped drooling mouths and glaring pupils. Things sheathed in fingernail horn, their exposed flanks stippled with coarse black hairs and open sores.
'These are the constructs Fo has made,' said Sejanus.
Horus glanced at him. 'In the Dark Age,' he said, 'before Old Night fell, there was a man called Fo. Basilio Fo. A bio-engineer. A self-proclaimed Worker of Obscenity. The data is very incomplete…'
'It would be,' remarked Sejanus. 'The Age of Technology ended five millennia past.'
Horus nodded. 'The creature called Fo mentioned in the annals was a monster even by the standards of that godless age. Hunted for his blasphemous work, he fled Terra during the stellar exodus. He was presumed lost, long dead.'
He looked at Sejanus. 'But given his gifts and skill-set, it may be he has survived. Endured is perhaps a better word. Sejanus, we may have found the hidden bastion of one of history's foulest creatures.'
The vox-system chimed. Sejanus turned and took the signal, listening carefully.
He looked back at Lupercal.
'Illumination complete,' he said. 'We have compliance. Daerec Terminator squad reports penetration of the enclave's main bunker and the capture of Fo. They're bringing him here. No other humans found. Not whole ones.'
Horus nodded, and clapped Sejanus on the arm.
'Your bleak efforts are rewarded, Hastur.'
Sejanus allowed himself a thin smile.
'I think it was you that turned the tide, lord. Word of your unexpected arrival quickly spread. The Fourth was inspired by your presence. They redoubled their efforts so as not to disappoint you.'
'A coincidence, I'm sure,' replied Horus. 'Since when did the Fourth ever slacken?'
'Perhaps,' said Sejanus. 'But you have an effect. The enemy must have learned of your arrival too, through vox intercept. Their heart was lost to learn a primarch was upon them. Just as our efforts renewed, Daerec reports the biomech misbegots lost a degree of frenzy. Their resistance broke, as if they were, at last, afraid of us.'
'They faltered just as I arrived?' asked Horus.
'As fast as word spread,' said Sejanus.
Horus paused. He picked up his war helm.
'Hastur?'
'My lord?'
'Get your weapon,' he growled. 'They were waiting for me.'
Sejanus began to reply, but his words were lost. The entire west side of the command module ripped out, and hell poured in at them.
The misbegot was the size of three landing ships. It had bored up through rock and soil beneath the Luna Wolves' forward base, breaching the crust of the world as easily as an ocean creature might rise up from the unlit depths and break the surface. Endless rows of grinding teeth had gnawed the ground away. Great loops and ridges of muscle had pulsed to heave the giant thing along its burrow.
It had no form, yet it had all forms. It was a vast bulk, a slab of flesh reinforced with a rib cage that would have made the frame of a generous dwelling hall. Yet it was also a writhing forest of limbs, of clawing hands, of amputee stumps that wedged and stabilised its weight. It was eyes, wide and weeping, clustered like egg sacks. It was mouths, some opening in its centre mass, some lunging forward on whip-spined necks, every gullet specialised and distinct. One to snap, one to bite, one to grind, one to sever, one to grasp and hold as others fed.
It had no symmetry whatsoever. It was a sample of organic nightmares and anatomical shocks fused in one flesh, resembling no creature, terrestrial or xenos.
Yet its one defining horror was that it, and every disparate part of it, was unmistakably human.
And it was fast. Despite its size, it groped and slithered like a charging grox. It demolished the module chamber, shredding reinforced fabric in a blizzard of splinters, rending cogitator stations into scatters of sparks and debris, ripping up deck plates and undermatting like paper.
Staggered backwards by the shockwave of its burst assault, Lupercal and Sejanus braced side by side, unslung their weapons and unleashed streams of bolter fire into this onrushing misbegot. Wounds stippled the face of it, exploding fibres of flesh and muscle, erupting clouds of blood drizzle. Each gaping injury would have been the kill-wound for any beast of comparable scale.
It did not flinch.
Even with the most curious xenos-form, there was always some defining sense of biology. A common-sense estimation of vital parts, of head or heart, or principal organs.
The misbegot's lack of symmetry made such determinations impossible.
'With me,' said Horus.
They fell back through a junction hall into the adjoining module, reloading as they ran. Alarms were already screeching, triggered by seismic tremblers, perimeter auspex and integrity monitors. The klaxons were drowned out by the grinding roar of the horror as it pulverised the modular compartments to get at them.
Ahead, Horus saw men rallying to meet the attack: the startled fleet officers who manned the forward base, army auxiliaries, tactical staff, and a few Luna Wolves charged with station defence.
'Legiones Astartes, at my side!' Horus yelled. 'The rest, fall back!'
Only the armoured would stand a chance. The rest would die in seconds. Some were already spluttering as the corrosive air of Valich Tarn flooded the compromised habitat.
Yet they hesitated, for it was Lupercal, death opening its door at his heels, and they had pledged their lives and come to the stars to stand at his side.
'I command it! Save yourselves now!' Horus cried.
They obeyed, reluctant. The Luna Wolves, six of them, made a line with Horus and the Fourth's captain. The misbegot bore down, half submerged in the ground, sliding through flooring and rock alike, humped spine visible, flinging deck plates aside in its wake. The walls perished. The gale entered. Eight bolters began to fire, spatt
ering meat and swirling the air with blood-smoke.
It reached them, unstopped, unslowed. Some buried, forward part of it tore up through the decking and dragged a Luna Wolf down, churning tooth-drills shredding his legs and lower torso.
'My lord!' Sejanus howled.
The misbegot reared up, its titanic form supported by straining appendages and its gnarled trans-skeletal frame.
Horus stood his ground. His warblade gleamed in his armoured fist.
'Go back to hell,' he whispered.
'You slew it?' asked Fo.
Horus sat down facing him in the stark cell-block chamber. He was drenched in blood, and the chest and fore-guards of his plate were gouged and stripped back to bare metal. He made no answer at first. Blood dripped off him onto the deck. A trail of little blood pools led back to the hatch.
'It was reluctant to die,' said Horus. 'I dismantled your work until I found the one part it could not persist without.'
Fo nodded. He was small and bird-like, his forehead broad, his eyes bright. He perched rather than sat, hunched in his simple black robes.
'You were waiting for me,' said Horus.
Fo shrugged.
'I knew you would come one day, and when you did, I would not win. I resolved to make my stand count for something. If not defeat the enemy, then eliminate the greatest of its party. Its leader.'
'You knew I would come?' asked Horus.
Fo nodded.
'Mm-hmm. You or something like you. One day. Eventually. It's been a long time, but it was inevitable. Terra endures.'
'You left there a long time ago.'
'My art was not appreciated.'
'I have seen it first-hand. That does not surprise me. Abominations, Fo.'
'Abominations?' Fo smiled, and showed small and perfect teeth. 'I see tastes have not changed.'
He sat back.
'I have been monitoring your activity since you arrived in this zone twenty months ago,' he said. 'Through my listening stations and watch-networks, I have observed your dealings with local cultures. Your message. Your offer of embrace. I knew you would knock on my door before long.'
Sons of the Emperor Page 18
