Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘Can it be done?’ Kersh asked, looking at the sheer size of the monument.

  ‘I can demolish the structure, but then what?’ Dancred asked.

  ‘Then we bring in the flamers and meltas,’ Kersh confirmed, ‘and wipe any evidence of the thing from the face of the planet.’

  ‘The Charnel Guard could–’ Colquhoun began.

  ‘The Charnel Guard will maintain the prayer cordon until we have destroyed this thing of evil. Only Adeptus Astartes are to work within the cordon to reduce the risk of contamination.’

  ‘As you wish, my lord.’

  ‘Brother Dancred will oversee the monument’s demolition,’ Kersh instructed. ‘Squad Cicatrix will provide security and destroy all remnants of the structure once it is down.’

  ‘You would have us waste more time on this miserable little world?’ Skase accused.

  ‘Chief Whip Skase, the eradication of Chaos is not a waste of our time. It is the purest expression of the purpose for which we were bred and I’ll have you not forget that,’ Kersh bit back.

  ‘You question my courage,’ Skase seethed, advancing on the Scourge.

  ‘Increasingly,’ Kersh spat.

  The two Excoriators splashed through the shallows at one another and their ceramite would have clashed had it not been for Brother Micah getting his bolter and combat shield between them. Shoving Skase back with the shield, Micah also put his shoulder against his corpus-captain’s chestplate. Two of Skase’s squad grabbed their leader by the arms and attempted to haul him back.

  ‘It’s the monument,’ Melmoch called. A calm descended on the scene. Skase and the Scourge’s twisted faces fell and the pair looked at the Epistolary. ‘This is its dread influence. It demands blood, spilt in its name.’

  Kersh looked to Skase and then nodded slowly.

  ‘Squad Cicatrix will return with me to Obsequa City,’ the corpus-captain ordered. ‘Squad Castigir will have the honour of destroying this thing of evil. Chaplain Shadrath will return with the squad to monitor the operation for corruption.’ Kersh turned and began to stomp his way back through the darkening shallows towards the waiting Thunderhawk. ‘Come,’ he commanded. ‘We are wasting time. The chief whip was at least right about that.’

  I have a new-found respect for my former commanders. Squad Whip Thanial; Brother Erastus; Corpus-Captain Tobiaz, Corpus-Captain Phinehas; Chapter Master Ichabod. All were great Adeptus Astartes and I feel that I can live up to their warrior example. How any of them survived the trivialities of command, however, I know not. On the battlefield, I have seen mortals exceed the cruel limitations of their bodies. I do not hold them in contempt or exercise a prejudice for such handicap. They, however, exceed the cruel limitations of my attention and interest. They can talk for hours of nothing. You would think a short existence would breed a brevity in their number, but no.

  I sit here, at the long stone table of the pontifex, with the great and the good of Certus-Minor and more food than an army could eat. Ezrachi sits at my side. Beyond Melmoch, he is the only one of our number I thought to afflict with this intolerable duty. The Librarian was acting strangely – a little absent – and with glazed eyes had requested to remain in his allocated cell. The pontifex, crippled down one half of his body, has a palace menial cut his portions and bring fork from plate to mouth. The gaggle of priests at the table devour their portions with relish and I’m sure the feast is the finest quality the Adeptus Ministorum kitchens can produce. But like the conversation, I have no stomach for it. On backwater swillholes and death worlds I have eaten things that would make a grox retch. Here, I do little more than push the fine fare around my plate and then push the plate itself to one side. All the while, Pontifex Oliphant and his clerics jabber incessantly.

  Oliphant seems a good man. He doesn’t make my skin crawl like the cardinal world husks we found on St Ethalberg, but I find the boundless benevolence of his devotion difficult to endure. Every statement must be qualified with a prayer. Every act is worthy of Holy Terran grace. The pontifex showers me and my Excoriators with compliments and blessings, and prattles his priestly interpretation of the God-Emperor’s will. I am glad I did not include Brother Melmoch in such company. I would be ill-disposed to such blind slanders falling from Adeptus Astartes lips.

  My mood sours. I do not feel myself and I indulge my baser feelings with a mask of a face. A frozen frown of unmistakable contempt which grows with every word from the ecclesiarch’s crooked mouth.

  Oliphant has dragged himself to his feet. With one shoulder held higher than the other he offers a twisted toast. The menial prises the pontifex’s fingers open and slips a goblet of wine into his trembling clutch.

  ‘To our saviours, the Adeptus Astartes,’ he begins, and as he does so is joined by his legion of priests. ‘May the God-Emperor smile on their efforts as He does our own. Let Him look out across His holy realm and watch over them as they carry out His will. Let Him bless their endeavour with His divine favour. Let Him lend them the strength to do what is right and cleanse our sacred earth of this foul contagion. In good faith we live in expectation of success and the failure of darkness. After all, does not the God-Emperor fight on our side?’

  I think of the Ruinous monument. Of the thunder of Brother Dancred’s efforts on the horizon and Squad Castigir waiting with meltas and flamers to scour it from the planet surface. The throne of skulls calls to us. I can feel its malign influence in my intolerance, the flex of my muscles and the edge in my voice. It reaches out for the warrior in me like some final furious defiance. The last pollutive gasp of a proud evil about to take its fall. I think of Skase. His hatred and that of his brothers. Shadrath’s scorn. The loathing of the squad whips. The bright fire of Joachim’s fraternal allegiance. The cold fury in Ishmael’s eyes.

  This is an insufferable position for all. If I were but a squad whip in this company I would share their anger and indignation, and like Uriah Skase, I would make my displeasure known. It is my honour that hangs in the balance. My standard lost. My vendetta to prosecute with the filth Alpha Legion. I marvel that my own Excoriators cannot see the pain I share with them. As corpus-captain, however, my gaze must be broader. The Fifth Company’s hearts beat to a mutinous rhythm, and like the race to the runner, our time on Certus-Minor only serves to amplify the defiant thunder in their chests. It would be easy to excuse this as some malignant influence of the Chaos artefact. I am their corpus-captain and I know better. I cannot find it in myself to thank Chapter Master Ichabod for this duty, or see the wisdom in his orders. In a galaxy overrun with mankind’s enemies, I fail to see the significance of a single cemetery world. My Excoriators need to exorcise their grief through the blessings of battle. Only in the crash of their bolters and the fall of their enemies can the Fifth Company find itself once again.

  Oliphant talks still but I am no longer listening. He spits his prayers and blessings to the God-Emperor through his palsied lips, but his feeble words are drowned out by my silent rage. Like the pontifex, the priests are on their feet with goblets in their hands. Their gathering dims the chamber. They feel like a curtain about me, shutting out the world. I long to be free and for a terrible moment my hand drifts for my weapons.

  Then I see it. My spectre. My revenant. My madness – sat at the other end of the table. The dead thing fixes me with the unnatural life force glowing in a single eye. It stares down the table at me like a lance beam from the rent in the being’s helm. Then, in an action that chills me to the core, the revenant takes up a goblet from the table and holds it up to toast me also.

  My vision blurs. The deep black armour of the spectre blotches and runs into everything else. The clerics take their wine and then, depositing their cups on the tabletop, begin to clap their appreciation. A silent applause. The chamber shrinking. Their forms in shadow growing. Then, beyond them I see others. A gallery of shadows. Shapes in midnight plate. Indistinct but obviously armoured. Pauldrons. Helmets. Optics burning with otherworldly intelligence. They are everywhere.
Row after row. An army of revenants. A host of darkness. Everything becomes an inky blackness, like being trapped deep under an ice-covered lake. Through an opening – distant and darkening – I see only Oliphant, deific praise still escaping his lips.

  Before I know I’ve done it, my fists come down. The stone table jumps, the impact of my assault sending a quake down its entire length. Goblets dance. Plates and cutlery leap and rattle. Red wine spreads like blood from wounds across the table, pitter-pattering off the edge and onto the floor. I am on my feet, towering above the frozen gathering. They are simultaneously shocked and terrified. Rooted to the spot. Even Oliphant has stopped. Light has returned to the chamber. The revenant is gone and so has his company of lost souls.

  ‘Enough,’ I say. The word is mine, unlike the wave of anger upon which it rides. ‘The Emperor is flesh and he is blood. He lives and breathes. His sons honoured this, as do his sons’ sons. When will humanity, from whose ranks the Emperor emerged, recognise this? Priests… what do they know of the Emperor’s will? Priests, who take history – the truth of deeds long done – and use it to peddle lies and expectation. Who are you to offer hope? Vague promises of sanctuary and intervention, designed to distract humanity from the misery of an Imperial existence? The Emperor is a powerful man – but he is not all-powerful. If he was, do you think he would allow his people to languish as they do under threat of torment, poverty, hunger and death? As a man he is father to us all, not some omnipotent god to feed your desire to be loved and assuage your mortal fears. As a father, he does his best – as he always has – to protect his children. He reaches out to smash, with a righteous fist, those that seek to harm you. We are that fist.’

  My own fists are buried in the cracked stone of the tabletop. I don’t really know to whom I am talking. Oliphant? The absent Melmoch? Myself? I lean at the gawping priests, my arms straight and shoulders hunched. I turn to look at Ezrachi, seated by my side. He is more the politician than myself, but I know that as an Adeptus Astartes, the priestly prattle rankles him also. His face is hard but not cast in the kind of disapproval I have come to expect from the Apothecary. My own face falls from fury to consternation.

  ‘The Darkness,’ I mumble. It is neither statement nor question. Ezrachi’s crabby brow furrows. The Apothecary is suddenly on his feet.

  ‘Please excuse us,’ Ezrachi says bowing his head. ‘Pontifex, gathered dignitaries. The corpus-captain’s duties demand his attention.’

  The pontifex, a good-natured smile still somehow plastered across his half-paralysed face, nods reverently back, an act mimicked by the stunned priests about the table. With that, Ezrachi gets me out of the chamber.

  Accompanied by the sibilance of his bionic leg, the Apothecary helped Kersh to the ground floor and the square before the pontifex’s palace.

  ‘It’s returning. I’m sure of it,’ Kersh said.

  ‘I severely doubt that,’ Ezrachi told him, ‘but I’ll do some tests.’

  ‘I told you before, I’m seeing things that are not there.’

  ‘Symptomatic of sleep deprivation. I can give you something for your sleeplessness. Even an Adeptus Astartes must sleep some time. We should not forget the monument. We have little idea of its malign influence. Melmoch tells me that it is corruptive and had a strange effect on both you and Skase. The Ruinous Powers delight in their mind tricks and we should not discount it.’ Kersh nodded slowly. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to alert the Chaplain just yet. I shall summon Melmoch for a second opinion.’

  Outside, one of Certus-Minor’s long nights had fallen. All three of the cemetery world’s suns were absent from the sky. Brother Micah stood sentry on the palace door nearby a pair of Charnel Guard. He had been waiting. Upon seeing Kersh slumped against the aged Apothecary, the young champion was prompted to ask, ‘What’s wrong with the corpus-captain?’

  ‘You protect him,’ Ezrachi said with annoyance, ‘Let me treat him, eh?’

  ‘Brother Toralech is trying to relay an urgent message from Corpus-Commander Bartimeus, but can’t get a vox-link,’ Micah informed the Apothecary.

  ‘As you can see, the corpus-captain isn’t answering his vox-bead right now,’ Ezrachi replied sardonically.

  With Micah under one ceramite shoulder and Ezrachi the other, the pair of Excoriators took Kersh across the square in the great shadow of the Umberto II Memorial Mausoleum. The journey downhill on cobbles, with the weight of the stumbling Scourge between them, was difficult. In the darkness of an alleyway the Space Marines heard screams and the echo of running footsteps. Gunshots followed. With his free hand Micah brought up his bolter and combat shield attachment, but Ezrachi pulled both Kersh and the company champion into the deeper darkness.

  ‘It’s local business. Let the cemetery world authorities handle it,’ the Apothecary insisted. ‘I don’t want anyone to see the corpus-captain like this.’ The three Excoriators held a hidden vantage point at a corner. Silent and still the Space Marines watched a servant girl, a common drudge, run for her life past them. Micah risked a brief glance around the corner. Heavier footsteps followed and close after he saw a thick-set foss-reeve bounding up the alleyway like a man possessed. As the reeve rounded the corner, Micah stepped out and shouldered the cemetery worlder into the opposite wall. Striking the masonry, the reeve hit his head and then tumbled to the cobbles, rolling shoulder over shoulder down the alleyway until he came to rest in a gutter. Ezrachi’s lip curled.

  ‘He didn’t see anything,’ Micah said before leading the two of them back down the alley.

  It was the company champion’s responsibility to protect the corpus-captain at all times and even Ezrachi had to admit that the young Excoriator had done an excellent job of memorising the steep maze of lanes, passageways and alleys back down towards the Umberto II Memorial Space Port. The path was an escape route from the palace to the hermitage Ezrachi and Chaplain Shadrath had arranged for the Excoriators to use as a planetside dormitory.

  As the Adeptus Astartes passed a dirge-cloister, they observed members of the Charnel Guard and a pair of Kraski’s enforcers gathered outside an emporium. The Excoriators with their superhuman hearing could hear stifled screams and growls of intimidation from within. The enforcers kicked in a flimsy door and entered with their shotguns raised. The Charnel Guard followed in their ceremonial gear and with their long lasfusils. There was a sudden rush and a cacophony of threats, followed by the inevitable bark of the enforcers’ weapons. The flash of lasfusils filled the narrow casements.

  ‘What on Terra is going on?’ Micah posed.

  ‘Come on!’ Ezrachi urged and the Excoriators pushed on along the final few alleyways. About them, against the backdrop of night, the city seemed alive with anger, shrieks of alarm and the occasional crack of stub-fire.

  ‘Shouldn’t we alert the Chaplain?’ Micah asked as they approached the hermitage.

  ‘Not the Chaplain,’ Ezrachi insisted.

  ‘Who then?’ Micah pushed. ‘Bartimeus? The chief whip? This is why we have a command structure.’

  Micah stopped. Ezrachi didn’t wait for him. Taking the full weight of the barely conscious Kersh onto one shoulder, the Apothecary dragged the Scourge with him along the cobbles.

  ‘You can debate the directives for command with me later,’ Ezrachi called behind him. ‘For now, help me get your actual commanding officer inside.’

  ‘Apothecary.’

  ‘What?’ Ezrachi barked. When Micah didn’t appear beside him or even reply, the Apothecary stopped and made an ungainly one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn. Micah stood in the middle of the alleyway, his boltgun slack in his grip. The Excoriator was staring up past the belfries, spires and steeples of the city and into the open night sky. Ezrachi did the same. There, hanging above the cemetery world like a drop of blood, was the bulb-head of a comet. A crimson comet, whose tail trickled after it, smearing the heavens with gore. Ezrachi had heard of the crimson comet. The worst of omens, it brought death in its wake to entire worlds, for along
its pilgrim path blazed the Blood God’s servants, unimaginable in number, with an unquenchable thirst for slaughter. The Cholercaust had come to Certus-Minor and with it had come inescapable doom.

  Chapter Eight

  Fallen Star

  Lord Havloc nestled in his command throne – an object that had become as much part of him as he had the Traitor battle-barge Rancour. Pincering a strip of ancient flesh between a pair of black talons, Havloc peeled it from his grotesque shoulder. His infernal face – a mangled snout of sabre-tusk and red, reptilian scale – twisted with repugnant hate. The lord of the Rancour had long felt disgust for his previous, weakling form. He let the strip dangle and drop beside the flesh-throne before examining the bone-scabrous daemonhide beneath.

  About the creature the darkened bridge of the battle-barge extended, a nightmare of brasswork and chain. Gouts of flame routinely erupted from the grille floor, beneath which a gladiatorial slave-pit extended for Havloc’s pleasure. The roar of murderous intention and resulting death-shrieks that rose from the pit competed with the excruciating struggle of the Rancour’s ancient engines. Catwalks and elevated gangways led from the throne pulpit across the open space to the banks of rancid cogitators and runescreens, manned by half-mad emaciates and wretched captives that had proven themselves in the pit. The blood-smeared slaves were manacled to their stations and sat in their rags, staring glaze-eyed at their stations, reliving some past horror aboard the Rancour.

  Dominating the far end of the bridge were the gargantuan lancet windows, cracked and misted with old blood. Through them the deep darkness of space was visible. One celestial object dominated, however. In the main lancet screen, perpetually held in a set of cross hairs by the mechanical course corrections of brass automatons, was the gory miasma of the Keeler Comet’s tail. With ancient orders and angelic masks, the automatons maintained the Rancour’s course heading, its torpid pursuit of the crimson comet across the stars.