Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1

by Warhammer 40K

  Morek entered, squinting against the bright lights, keeping the suspensor close. There was noise from further in, but no immediate sign of anyone about. He kept walking, passing more rows of metal tables, walking through more rooms full of equipment he could barely guess the purpose of. Alongside the machinery of surgery and physical augmentation, there were long banks of ancient looking cogitators, lined with bronze cases, humming gently.

  The noises grew. He was getting closer to activity. As he turned a corner, he entered a larger chamber, dome-roofed and even brighter than the others. There were huge, heavy tables there too, and some were occupied. Two Sky Warriors lay on them, both conscious, both being operated on by teams of leather-masked thralls. The mortals worked quickly and deftly, slicing open flesh, pinning back muscle, working at the wounds with needle probes and pain-suppressants. They all wore iron visors with bottle-green lenses, each of them flickering with points of light.

  ‘Mortal,’ came a deep voice, and Morek turned to face it. A Wolf Priest, one of Wyrmblade’s acolytes by his look, strode up to him in night-black armour, his exposed hands covered in blood. ‘State your business.’

  Morek bowed. ‘I was charged to bring this warrior, Aunir Frar, into the care of the Lord Wyrmblade.’

  The Wolf Priest snorted.

  ‘You think he’d be here? When the Aett is under assault?’ He shook his head. ‘We’ll take him. Go back to your station, rivenmaster.’

  Even as the Priest spoke, thralls flocked around the suspensor, dragging it alongside one of the metal tables. Steel threads were inserted into the prone body and scanning devices angled over the wounds. The Wolf Priest turned to his new charge and began to direct the operation.

  Morek bowed. He turned and withdrew, walking back through the empty chambers of the fleshmaker’s domain as quickly as he could. Something about the place unnerved him. The aromas were foreign, utterly unlike the smells of hide and embers he’d been born into.

  Too much light.

  He went through another room, then turned left, passing between open doors. He went several more paces before realising he’d come the wrong way. The chamber he’d entered was smaller than the others, though still lined with clinical white tiles. There were three huge tanks in the centre of it, each filled with a translucent fluid. The vessels were cylindrical, no more than a metre wide but running the whole height of the room. Machinery clustered at the base of them, ticking and rattling rhythmically.

  He knew he should look away, but the contents of the tanks held him. There were bodies floating in them, dark outlines of men suspended in the liquid. Huge ribcages, bunched-muscle arms, thick necks. The profile was that of a Space Marine, heavy and powerful. They didn’t move, just hung, swaying slightly. Dimly, Morek could make out snaking coils of respirator tubes hanging down and covering their lower faces.

  He turned away, knowing he’d come too far, suppressing his curiosity.

  The curious mind opens the door to damnation.

  It was as he did so that he saw the metal table, over to the left, away from the main beams of the strip-lumens. His eyes locked on what was on it, and stayed there.

  Slowly, almost unconsciously, Morek felt his feet propelling him towards the table. He passed the tanks by, their contents forgotten. He couldn’t look away then, couldn’t turn back.

  On the metal slab was a body, or perhaps a corpse. There was no breath in its gigantic lungs – at least, not one he could discern. It was like the others, naked, stretched out on its back, arms straight by its sides.

  Morek felt the sense of wrongness immediately. For a moment, he couldn’t work out what, precisely, was so troubling about the corpse – he’d seen many before – but then he paid more attention.

  The forearms were smooth, almost hair-free. The fingernails were no longer than his own. The jawline was square-cut and blunt, but with no signs of lupine distension. There was no room in that mouth for fangs, just mortal dentition.

  Morek moved closer, feeling his breathing quicken slightly. The corpse had its eyes open, blank and unseeing.

  They were grey like his, with a pupil like a mortal’s. There was no extraneous facial hair across the thick-set face, no heavy bone-ridge across the brow. The musculature was still there, rigid and heavy-set across an outsize skeletal frame, but it was blank and featureless.

  Whatever this thing was, it was no Space Wolf. It was a sham, a simulacrum, a mockery.

  Morek felt sickness well in the back of his throat. The Sky Warriors were sacred to him, as sacred as the world-soul, as the spirits of the ice, as the life of his daughter. This was an abomination, some dreadful meddling in the changeless order of things.

  He took a step back. From behind him, back in the operating theatre, he heard the movement of thralls as they struggled to save the life of Aunir Frar.

  This is forbidden. I should not be here.

  His sickness was replaced by fear. He’d seen the look in the eyes of the leather-masked thralls, and knew the reputation of the fleshmakers. They did not forgive trespasses.

  Morek turned and hurried back the way he’d come, averting his eyes from the floating figures in the tanks, ignoring the banks of strange equipment that lined the walls beyond them, hardly seeing the rows of tiny vials arranged in careful order under the controlled lights.

  There were heavy footsteps somewhere behind him, and his heart jumped. He kept going, kept his head down, hoping whoever owned them was headed somewhere else. The linked chambers were confusing, hard to find one’s way around, and the sound could have come from anywhere.

  The footsteps faded. Morek was back in the reception chambers, the ones with the empty metal tables. Ahead of him was the exit, and the corridor to the elevator shaft.

  His heart was beating hard.

  The curious mind opens the door to damnation.

  He looked down at his hands. They were rough, calloused, hardened by a lifetime of service to the Sky Warriors. They were trembling. For a moment he paused, uncaring if the thralls saw him now.

  What was that thing?

  He stood still for a few more heartbeats, rendered indecisive by what he had witnessed. The Wolf Priests were the guardians of the Aett, the keepers of the traditions of the Vlka Fenryka. If they had sanctioned it, then it must be permitted.

  It was an abomination.

  He looked back over his shoulder. The tile-lined chambers stretched away from him, each one leading to the next, each stinking of antiseptic and blood. He felt the nausea rise up again, catching in his gullet.

  In the Hall of the Fangthane, he had shouted himself hoarse with devotion to the Sky Warriors, the embodiment of the divine savagery of Fenris. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t summon that spirit back up.

  Shakily, with none of the purpose that had brought him to that place, he walked back to the elevator shaft. Across his open, loyal face the certainty had gone.

  In its place, and for the first time in Morek’s life, there was doubt.

  Chapter Ten

  Blackwing sat slumped at the metal conference table, ignoring the dozen figures seated around him, running his hands through his matted hair. He ignored the flickering strip-lights, the dozen or so kaerls standing to attention by the walls in their dirty uniforms and the sclerotic grind of the damaged engines from below.

  He felt cramped, dirty, cooped up. Each day since the escape from Fenris had been a wearying round of emergencies and repairs, all in the cause of keeping the Nauro from breaking open and spinning into the void.

  It was demeaning work, fit perhaps for mortals, but not for him. He was bred for higher things, for expert slaying in the shadows, for glorying in the contests of void-war. Having to listen to the counsel of greasy enginarium workers and the doom-laden pronouncements of the ship’s tactical crew bored him supremely.

  Not that the situation wasn’t dire. He knew enough of starship mechanics to recognise when things were about to fall apart. Frankly, they ought to have done so already – the ship
was still at least twelve days out from Gangava, and that schedule was only possible because he’d continued to thrash the warp drives over the protests of the ship’s Master. A few days ago, he’d made the mistake of asking the Nauro’s Enginarius, a mortal who’d had extensive training from Adeptus Mechanicus tech-adepts, what the machine-spirit was doing during all of this.

  ‘Screaming, sir,’ he’d replied in his gruff, practical voice. ‘Screaming like an ungor with its throat cut.’

  Blackwing had given thanks then that he was insensitive to such things.

  Then again, he was insensitive to most things. He’d never gelled with his battle-brothers, had never forged the friendships that tied squads together. He’d despised his superior officers, chafing against the discipline they’d imposed. Even in the Space Wolves Chapter, famous across the Imperium for its loose attitude toward the Codex Astartes, that discipline was severe.

  Blackwing had always been different, subject to dark moods and bouts of a manic, dangerous over-confidence. The Scout corps had been perfect for him, allowing him to perfect the arts of lone killing far from the raucous brotherhood of the Aett. It was in such isolation that he’d found a kind of contentment.

  Now, however, he began to wonder whether that choice had always been such a good one. None of the mortals on the Nauro were capable of making the command choices he had to, of taking the difficult decisions on which their lives all depended. It might have been preferable, perhaps, to have had a brother warrior to consult, someone to share the burden with for a short while.

  Not that any of his battle-brothers would have willingly come with him on a mission. Blackwing had created a near-perfect bubble of solitude around him, alienating even those who had no prior dislike of the Scouts.

  So be it. That was the path he’d chosen, and it had suited him well enough before now. Not all of Russ’s sons could be hollering berserkers.

  ‘Lord?’

  The voice was that of the ship’s Master, a grey-haired man called Georyth. Blackwing looked up to face him. Even out of armour, the Space Marine dominated the chamber. As his yellow eyes, sunk into their dark-ringed sockets, clamped on to the mortal, Georyth swallowed.

  ‘You asked for a report on the fires.’

  ‘So I did, Master. Tell me the latest good news.’

  ‘I have none to give. Three levels are still out of bounds, even to thrall-servitors. The burning has spread to the drive chambers. As supplies run low, our ability to contain it will diminish.’

  ‘And I know what you recommend.’

  Georyth took a deep breath.

  ‘It hasn’t changed, lord.’

  ‘You wish us to drop out of the warp, open the levels to the void, flush out the area and make repairs.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And how long would such a manoeuvre take, assuming optimal performance?’

  ‘A week, lord. Perhaps less.’

  Blackwing shot him a cold, superior smile. There was no humour in it, just a kind of knowing disdain.

  ‘Too long.’

  ‘Lord, if the promethium lines are–’

  Blackwing sighed and pushed himself back in his chair.

  ‘If they’re breached? Then we die, Master. Even I, an ignorant warmongering savage with zero enginarium training, know that.’

  He fixed his pin-pupil gaze on the man.

  ‘But reflect on this,’ he said. ‘Without the Great Wolf’s forces to relieve it, the Aett will fall. Lord Ironhelm’s ships must still be in the warp. If we keep travelling at our current pace, with no pauses or slowdowns, we will arrive at Gangava many days after them. And then, even if I can pass on Lord Greyloc’s message swiftly and persuade Ironhelm to return to Fenris, it will be another twenty days before he can possibly do so. Which means that Lord Greyloc, whom I know is held in such unflinching esteem by all this Chapter, will have to hold the citadel, with a single depleted Great Company, for at least forty days. You saw the forces in orbit, Master. You saw what they did to our defences there. Now tell me, speaking honestly, if you really think that army can be defied on land for forty days.’

  The Master’s face went grey.

  ‘If Russ wills it...’ he began dutifully, but his voice lost its certainty, and he trailed off.

  ‘Precisely. So perhaps you will now understand my insistence that we reach Gangava as soon as we can. We have cheated Morkai already on this voyage, and we will have to cheat him for a little longer. Count yourself lucky you’re commanded by a Scout, Master. That’s what we do. Cheat.’

  The Master didn’t reply, but slumped in his chair, his expression hollow. Blackwing could see his mind working, already trying to figure out some way of keeping the raging fires from reaching anything explosive. He didn’t look confident.

  Blackwing turned to look at the rest of the command crew.

  ‘Anything else we need to discuss?’ he asked dryly.

  The Tacticus said nothing. The man had been driven hard, and his eyes were red-rimmed from fatigue. The Enginarius had already given his assessment of repair work needed in the hold, and the Armourer was dead, killed by an exploding bulkhead hours after translation from Fenris.

  Neiman, the Navigator, was the only one still looking calm. He was also the only non-Fenrisian on the crew, a Belisarian from Terra, and was as slim and cold as his crewmates were stocky and vigorous. It was rare for him to leave his work of guiding the ship through the perils of the immaterium. In the presence of non-mutants, his pineal eye was covered in a wrap of silk over a steel patch.

  He didn’t speak. He was staring intently away from the table, toward the kaerls standing to attention around the walls of the council chamber. His natural eyes were unwavering.

  Blackwing found this annoying. He’d not summoned the man to this meeting to have him daydream.

  ‘Is there something you wished to contribute, Navigator?’ he asked.

  Neiman didn’t flinch.

  ‘Who is that man?’ he demanded, his gaze locked on a particularly scruffy kaerl. Blackwing shot a glance at the man. He was shorter than the others, a little more hunched, with greasy hair and bruised skin around the eyes. He was a good deal filthier than the rest of them too, but the endless demands of survival had taken their toll on everyone. Strange, though – he didn’t look like a soldier.

  At all.

  ‘Is this particularly important?’ asked Georyth irritably. ‘We have other things to resolve.’

  The man in question didn’t respond. He kept staring blankly, his expression totally vacant. On either side of him, the kaerls suddenly seemed to notice his presence. One of them looked at his sergeant in alarm, as if the man had been functionally invisible until that moment.

  Blackwing felt the hairs on his back rise. His mood shifted instantly from boredom to high alertness. Why hadn’t he noticed this man before? What had the Navigator sensed?

  ‘Seize him,’ he ordered, rising from his chair.

  The kaerls grabbed the man by the shoulders. As if a switch had been flipped, the vacant-faced man went crazy. He backhanded the kaerl to his left, slamming him into the wall, then grabbed the neck of the other and launched into a vicious headbutt. Still without uttering a sound, the man spun round, making for the exit doors, knocking aside another kaerl who rushed to intercept him.

  He moved with astonishing speed. But, for all that, it was mortal speed. Blackwing was quicker, leaping across the table in a lithe pounce and careering into the man as he raced for the door. Together they skidded along the pressed-metal floor. Blackwing seized the man’s hair and crunched his face into the wall, stunning him. He regained his feet quickly, dragging the man up with him.

  ‘Take care, lord!’ warned Neiman. ‘I sense–’

  The injured man turned his bloody face toward Blackwing’s. His eyes suddenly blazed a pale, sickly green.

  Blackwing felt the build-up of maleficarum. In a single movement he hurled the man away, sending him cartwheeling through space toward the empty far end of th
e council chamber. Before the kaerl had landed, Blackwing pulled his bolt pistol from its holster and squeezed off a single round. The slug punched through the flailing man’s head and detonated, spraying bone and glistening grey matter across the wall.

  The ruined, headless body hit the metal with a wet thud. It twitched for a moment, then fell still.

  ‘Teeth of Russ!’ swore Georyth, superfluously training his own sidearm on the corpse. ‘What in Hel–’

  ‘It knew how to remain hidden,’ said Neiman, looking at Blackwing in alarm. ‘This is witchery – he was in plain view of all of us.’

  Blackwing stooped to pick up something on the floor. A sphere the size of an eyeball had rolled across the metal. It glowed green, and flickered with a ghostly witchlight.

  He rose, gazing at the bloodstained ball in his palm. It felt hot to the touch, almost painfully so. As he looked at it, a dull ache broke out behind his eyes.

  Blackwing crushed it with a clench of his clawed fingers.

  ‘It seems we have a new problem,’ he said grimly, turning slowly to face the startled ship’s council. ‘Something else is on the ship. Something that no doubt wishes us harm. And whatever it is, it now knows how weak we are.’

  The Iron Priest had gone. In his absence, the dark seemed even colder, even more remote. The concept of daylight was already proving hard to reconstruct, as was the passage of time. Freija had lost track of both. Perhaps the assault had started, or perhaps the Sky Warriors still held the enemy in the mountains. If the battle came to the Aett, would any sign of it penetrate so far down?

  She swept her gaze across the chamber. It was big, though hard to say how big – even her night-vision visor didn’t pick much out in the far recesses. One wall, the wall her squad had clustered around, had been extensively worked. There were huge doors in the centre of it, once more crested with the twin faces of Morkai. The space around the doors was studded with arcane machinery – coils of coolant piping, statuesque clusters of power transformers, lattices of ironwork covering unidentifiable workings within. Incredibly, given the oppressive cold and distance from maintenance crews, the low hum from the machines sounded healthy.