Khadi hadn’t liked to look at the others, though she’d thought of Marivo often during the long flight home. It sometimes felt like his spirit was mocking her, or chiding her, or somehow informing on her to what authorities now remained.
Khadi knew he wouldn’t have done that, not even if his sense of duty had tempted him to. Right at the end, she’d learned to appreciate his character a little more. Perhaps she would never have truly liked him; they were too different, too far sundered along the long line of Imperial hierarchy.
For all that, though, moments of their association still came back to her. She remembered how it had been to drive the mutants back in disarray, shouting out her allegiance to the Emperor and watching them fall, one by one, under a hail of las-beams. She remembered how she’d felt when the Iron Hand, the one with flame-wreathed fists, had spoken to them before the gates to the tunnels.
Whenever she thought about those things for too long, though, it made her feel sick, and she forced herself to concentrate on the present.
The present was squalid enough. She was hunched in the corner of a tiny, metal-lined room. It was perfectly dark save for a sliver of light at the base of the door. The floor swam with filth that seeped through her worn-out boots as she squatted.
She was cold. She’d long since got used to the perpetual shakes and the blurred vision. Melamar’s ruined infrastructure was still mostly offline, which meant that the air was almost unbreathable and drinking water was scarce. She hadn’t eaten properly for days, and the chances of finding more food where she was were slim.
It was the same for all the others. She’d been surprised how many there were, lurking in the underworld of the hive; thousands of them, their faces drawn with hunger, their eyes hollow with despair. Somehow they’d managed to escape the worst of the fighting, neither succumbing to the mutants nor the loyalists.
She’d pushed her way through them, not wanting to get too close and hoping she saw no face she recognised. They had been heavy with disease, most of them, and if they hadn’t been so weak and terrified then she might have been scared of them. It was only later that she realised how she must have appeared to them – still in armour, holding a well-used lasgun and with blood all over her.
Eventually she’d managed to get away, finding ways down into levels where even they didn’t go. She’d found a home in the dark, a place to gather her shattered spirits, to wait for her energy and resolve to return.
They never did. The days passed. She got hungrier and weaker, and her scavenging trips to the old refectoria turned up less and less of use. She saw bodies everywhere, slumped face down in the flickering gloom, wasted away from plague or exhaustion.
If Marivo had still been with her, she would have shown him those bodies, and the masses of refugees who still huddled in the depths of the spires. She would have explained to him that these people were the backbone of the Imperium, the ones who kept it functioning during the long centuries of toil and privation. They understood nothing of the certainties he’d cherished. Even right at the end, most of them would have had no idea why war had come to Shardenus, nor have been able to tell the traitor forces apart from those who had come to liberate them. Each army would have been equally horrifying to them – just two sets of monsters, each one intent on killing as much as possible, destroying as much as possible, punishing as much as possible.
In those circumstances, she would have argued, who could blame them for hiding away, for turning a blind eye to the growing tide of corruption, for keeping their heads down?
Khadi liked to imagine what Marivo would have said in reply. She liked to imagine him tongue-tied, finally aware of the harsh reality of the underworld, unable to respond with some glib piety or other. Most of all, she liked to picture him admitting to her that she’d been right, and that they had never stood a chance right from the beginning.
They won’t even know it was us that took down the tower, she’d told him. They’ll do to us what they’re doing to everything they come across. They’ll kill us, Marivo. It doesn’t matter which side does it; we are all going to die.
Her thoughts came to an abrupt halt then. Something heavy boomed out above her. She shrank back, pressing her body up against the metal wall. The boom was followed by a series of heavy crashes, each one echoing down long tunnels before dying away.
She felt her heart beat faster. She hugged her knees, and resisted the urge to rock on her haunches.
She knew what was coming. She’d gleaned enough information from the others to know that the Angels of Death had finally turned their attention to those who had been too slow, too scared or too confused to make the appropriate level of sacrifice for Shardenus. She knew that they’d spent two whole weeks scouring the Capitolis, cleansing it with fire. Then they’d moved on to the outer spires, sweeping through them one at a time, delivering their justice, executing those who hadn’t resisted the traitor with enough fervour.
Khadi wondered how they knew who had been a hero and who had been a coward. Surely it was almost impossible to tell, except for the fact that most of those who’d joined them, like Marivo, were dead.
So it was that she’d speculated that they were killing everyone, perhaps in some petulant rage against the perceived weaknesses of mortal men. She’d heard other figures bandied around, too – one old man who’d escaped from the Axis hive across the wasteland and had nearly gone blind from the poisons reckoned they were killing one out of every three survivors they found.
‘One out of three,’ he’d rasped, struggling to breathe from his bleeding mouth. ‘They’re making an example, to stiffen the resolve of other systems.’
He’d laughed then, coughing up blood in the process.
‘We will be famous,’ he’d said, and Khadi had seen the tears in his eyes. ‘They will whisper our name on a thousand worlds.’
More booms rang out from above her, followed by a long, resounding series of dull thuds. For a moment, Khadi thought they were mortars going off. Then she realised they were boot-treads, clanging against the hollow metal. They got closer.
She tried to get to her feet, but her legs were too shaky. She stumbled, and fell to her knees into the slime. When the door slammed open, flooding the chamber with light, that was how she appeared – on all fours, wrist-deep in filth, her greasy hair hanging lankly down over her face.
Khadi looked up, squinting against a strong lumen beam. The Iron Hand towered over her. For a moment, she thought she recognised him. He looked exactly the same as the one that had rescued her and Marivo, the one who had demanded that they follow him to the tunnels.
Then again, they all looked more or less the same.
‘I fought for you,’ she said, getting to her knees. Her eyes began to adjust to the light, and she blinked heavily, sending tears down her cheeks.
The Iron Hand lowered his boltgun. He hesitated for a moment, holding the weapon steady. It looked to Khadi like he might have been running some kind of ident-check through his internal systems.
‘I was with Alend Marivo, of the Guard. We both fought for you.’
The Iron Hand remained unmoving. His helm lenses glowed blood-red in the shadows. He looked more like an daemon than an angel.
Perhaps, thought Khadi, that was what was required. Perhaps the galaxy had become so mired in horror that only such warriors as these could stand up for humanity.
She resolved to say nothing further then. She fixed her gaze on the monster’s trigger finger.
And if that is so, she thought, then we have lost already. If that is so, then our survival means nothing.
She didn’t notice when the finger tensed, sending the bolt directly into her body. Death was almost instant – a brief punch of bone breaking on impact before the explosive shell detonated within her heart.
Khadi’s lifeless corpse fell to the ground with a splash. The monster stood over her for a long time. The white hand device on its shoulder guard shone in sharp relief in the lumen beams of its brother warriors.
‘More life-signs, further down,’ came Brother Rydek’s voice over the comm.
Khadi’s killer – Brother-Sergeant Naim Morvox of Clave Arx, Clan Raukaan of the Iron Hands – nodded curtly before turning and moving back into the corridor. From behind him, the sound of crunching boots and synthetic armour-hum echoed in the narrow passages.
‘Advance,’ said Morvox, and stalked back out into the darkness.
Death of Integrity
Guy Haley
Note:
The majority of this novel takes place in 887.M39, two thousand years before the present year of 998.M41.
Chapter 1
Memories of Honourum
Serenity entered the mind and hearts of Mantillio Galt. The whispered prayers of the chapel serfs receded to be replaced by the sough of soft wind. The buzz of the tattooing needle faded. The rapid prick, prick, prick of it on his skin was kissed away by cold mountain air. His perception of the battle-barge’s Grand Chapel became uncertain. His eyes were closed, all he saw was the fleshy dark behind his eyelids, but the sense of it, the weight of years and prayer, grew lesser and replaced by an impression of open spaces. He was hanging between the physical and the metaphysical; a disquieting sensation of being neither here nor there. He reminded himself that he was aboard Novum in Honourum, in transit through the warp. He lacked the dubious witch-gifts that would allow him to sense it, but at these times, halfway into his meditative state, he felt he could almost see it.
He quashed his anxiety.
‘Glorious is the Emperor, mankind manifest as one, he shall light the way.’ He quoted the Codex Astartes, and concentrated on his breathing.
The scents and sounds of home called to him, but he would not go there, not yet. For the Flesh Remembrance to take, for it to be bright with truth and glorious for the Emperor’s eyes when his time came, first he must relive the incident which the tattoo would commemorate.
The material world flickered, and went away entirely.
Fire. Fire blazing in the fluted corridors of the eldar craft. The osseous plastics of the alien vessel burned ferociously. Blue-tinted flame washed against his battleplate; blue from bone licking at the blue-and-bone of his Chapter’s heraldry. The temperature indicators of his sensorium were far into the red; without his power armour he would be burned alive. Even now, he sweated from the heat.
The roar of the fire was deafening. Flickering movement had him raise his bolt pistol rapidly, his power sword ready. Nothing, nothing but fire and burning psychoplastics.
Most of the eldar pirates were dead, their slender forms shattered by bolter fire. Gaudy corpses draped the platforms of the chamber, some already aflame. Reports from Novum in Honourum had the remaining three eldar vessels fleeing, strike cruiser Ceaseless Vigilance and Battlefleet Trident’s four escort craft in hot pursuit. They would not catch the fleeter xenos craft, but Galt was confident they would not return to trouble the Orin Gap. Ten fragile alien spaceships were wrecks. It had been a costly victory; Corvo’s Hammer wallowed in the void, heavily damaged. And it had not been won yet.
‘Form up on me,’ he ordered his squad of Sternguard veterans. Four remained. They ceased their checking of the dead, and gathered around their captain, ever alert. Firelight danced over their armours’ ornate decorations.
Galt nodded towards the large door at the head of the chamber. Delicate galleries framed it, drawing the eye towards its curved symmetries. The personal badge of the eldar corsairs’ leader adorned this portal: a blank-eyed face, dripping with tears.
Decadent xenos trash.
‘Through there, the bridge,’ Galt said. ‘Slay their leader, and they will not return. Brother Verderio, blow the door.’
‘Yes, captain.’
The door was as fragile as the rest of the ship. Verderio’s melta bomb reduced it to slag. Beyond lay their target.
They marched in, bolters high. Shuriken fire came at them from several quarters. Pistol shots. Razored discs embedded themselves in the thick ceramite of the Space Marines’ battleplate. Not a single Sternguard fell, their relic armour proof against such feeble alien devices. Bolt fire replied. Three eldar died, joining their brethren already draped across the bridge’s shattered instrument consoles.
Ruination greeted Galt, fallen spars and shattered bonework all around. The corsairs had been heavily punished by Battlefleet Trident’s weapons. Broken machinery and dead aliens surrounded a raised dais, upon which, in an ornate throne, an eldar princeling lolled, his chin upon his fist. He wore no armour, but was instead clad in garish robes. Nor did he carry any weapon, although he looked at the Novamarines with such disdain it seemed he thought his glare alone deadly enough. Two forms flanked him, grasping evoluted weapons. They were so still that, for a second, Galt took them to be statues. They were not. He watched them closely for movement. He had seen their kind before, despicable thinking machines: robots, abominable intelligences, forbidden tech made doubly vile by its alien origin.
Galt holstered his pistol and unclasped his helmet. He placed it upon the floor, looking upon the alien lord without the mediation of his power armour’s senses. His purpose was twofold. Galt would allow the eldar to see the tally of his deeds that were marked upon his face, and he would view the alien in turn with his own eyes, to test his spirit’s mettle against its uncleanliness unshielded.
‘Surrender!’ he called. ‘And die with what little honour your kind possesses.’
The eldar shook his head as if enormously disappointed. He toyed with a glittering jewel on a chain about his neck and curled his lip in distaste. ‘So predictable, so very, very predictable.’ He stood. ‘For a thousand years I have plied the stars, mon-keigh, and you march in here in your…’ He gestured at the Space Marines, at a loss for words. ‘…ugly suits of armour, shouting at me as if I were deaf, expecting me to hold my hands in the air and allow you to end my life with your crude devices.’ He pursed his lips. His sing-song, accented Gothic was loaded with contempt. ‘I am not deaf, Captain Galt. Far from it. How else would I know your name? I hear all.’
Galt’s face was unmoving. He was unimpressed with the eldar’s attempts to unnerve him. He jerked his head. The Sternguard raised their weapons.
‘Then die without honour. It matters not a whit to me. Only that you no longer prey upon the citizens and shipping of the Imperium.’
The eldar laughed. ‘You think I die today? No. I am not done with this path yet, let alone my life.’
Suddenly, the pirate captain dropped from view through a circle of light that burst open in the floor. Bolts cracked into the throne, their target gone.
‘Cease fire!’ Galt ordered. He signalled with his hand to Brother Aster, that he should investigate the pirate captain’s escape route. ‘Brothers, cover him. Beware the statues beside the throne.’ Aster ran forward, bolter raised. He looked downwards, then back at his captain.
‘An energy portal of some kind, brother-captain. I cannot see through it. Do we follow?’
‘No,’ said Galt. ‘The doorway will not go where he went, I’ll warrant. Trust not the pathways of the alien.’
Sure enough, the light winked out. The portal closed, revealing nought but a patch of smooth floor.
‘Well said, brother-captain,’ said Brother Kederion.
‘Captain,’ warned out Brother Gorfillio. He raised his gun. ‘The constructs awaken.’ The statues were moving.
Aster backed away from the dais, bolter up.
‘As I thought, eldar ghost machines,’ spat Galt. ‘Aster, stand clear. Take them down.’
‘Stand firm, brothers,’ said Aster, ‘these things are tougher than they look.’
The machines moved slowly, as if time ran differently for them. Boltgun rounds smacked into them, but failed to penetrate. Together, the ghost machines raised their weapons.
‘Take cover!’ shouted Galt. He and his veterans were familiar with the deadly effects of wraithcannon fire.
The guns were silent. A black orb appe
ared on Verderio’s chest. He glanced down at it, and died. Verderio collapsed in on himself, pulled towards the ball of unlight. His armour shattered with a deafening crack. Blood sprayed in all directions as his body imploded.
The Sternguard went for cover, keeping up fire as they went. The machines were slow, but their shots many. They tore chunks from the battle-scarred bridge. Dozens of bolt rounds spattered off them without harm, a few exploding when they ricocheted and buried themselves in the fabric of the chamber.
Throughout it all the ghost machines made not a single sound. The Space Marines were fighting the dead.
Galt watched from behind a fallen spar. The roaring of flames from the adjoining room had become louder, punctuated by the crashing of falling chunks of wraithbone. He had to end this now. He waited until the wraithguard were facing away from him, ready to exploit their poor reactions.
‘For Honourum! For Corvo! For the Oath!’ he cried, and ran full tilt at the eldar machines. He slammed into one, jarring his own body. It staggered back from the force of his impact. The second registered his presence, and brought its deadly rifle to bear. The machines overtopped him by thirty centimetres or more, slender giants. Galt looked into the long, cold face of the thing’s helmet. His own was reflected in the gloss of its surface.
Galt swung his power sword with all his might, the crackling edge of it slamming into the bulbous end of the ghost warrior’s cannon. The strange alloys of it split. He stepped back and brought the sword down again, severing the end of the gun from the stock. The wraithguard dropped the shattered weapon, and made a clumsy lunge for him. He sidestepped, sweeping his sword around towards the leg of the first wraithguard, now recovered from Galt’s charge. The sword dug deep into the back of its knee. The construct rounded on him, gun coming towards his head. Galt wrenched at his power sword, the tug of it coming free sending him backwards. He regained his guard in time to stare right down the muzzle of the wraithguard’s gun.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 244
