by Thorpe, Gav
Even the fulgurites and corpuscarii could not hope to overcome several dozen Space Marines, but their sacrifice earned the rest of the force sufficient time to retreat to the akropoliz. Exasas-tactical decapitated another Heretic Astartes that thought he would be unprepared for a flank attack, not comprehending that the magos dominus had perfect three-hundred-and-sixty-degree awareness and response.
Propelled backwards by long legs, weapons spitting rounds at the pursuing enemy, Exasas-tactical retreated into the main fortification. A single noospheric pulse brought the gates crashing down, sealing the portal.
Seconds later the first hiss of melta-cutters and the clang of power fists signalled the Space Marines’ attempts to breach.
CHAPTER 6
REPEL BOARDERS
Inside, air filtration systems snarled in protest at the debris choking their fans. Alphas shouted and tech-priests moved among their soldiers, issuing bursts of harsh binaric while they replenished ammunition and distributed new weapons.
A huge shape loomed through the main portal, the wavering shadow becoming the dominus, surrounded by a platoon of skitarii and the crackling forms of a few surviving electro-priests. The doors boomed shut behind them and the crash of locking bars echoed dully through the interior of the carapace citadel.
As Ghelsa might strip off her coverall, the skitarii commander shed his battle-form, the quadruped war machine peeling apart to disgorge a human-sized mechanical caterpillar. On a score of many-jointed limbs, Magos Exasas sped into the akropoliz followed by a coterie of tech-priests.
A powerful detonation shook the gate while squads of skitarii took up positions to defend the hallway just within. From inside the akropoliz, somewhere above them, gunfire and panicked shouts echoed down the corridors. A tortured screaming continued, every pain-wracked screech a fresh scratch on Ghelsa’s frayed nerves.
A hand around Ghelsa’s arm led her down one of the passageways. The walls of the akropoliz were decorated with carved friezes of scenes from Metalica – vistas of temple-factories and holy laboratories that Ghelsa had never seen. She let her fingers trace the contours of a spired manusanctuary, the tiny shapes of dozens of heavy battle tanks issuing from its arched gateways, a cog-like halo of the Omnissiah above the citadel-shrine.
Harkas moved some distance ahead and waited at a junction for her. She pushed away from the wall, but dizziness threatened to topple her and she slumped back against the sculpted alabaster. She made no attempt to resist as Harkas came back to guide her to a secluded alcove beside a low doorway into one of the secondary gunnery chambers. The steady thud-thud-thud of a defensive cannon sounded through the wall. She leaned back, placing her head against the plastek divide, finding comfort in the predictable rhythm of the gunfire.
Harkas headed back to the main hall and reappeared a few seconds later dragging a dead skitarii soldier. He took off the armour, weapons and coat for himself. The inquisitor was talking to her, but all she could hear was the rush of blood in her ears. She looked up, trying to focus on the blue light of a lumen globe behind a mesh in the ceiling. Her vision swam, bleeding into swirls and then straightening again.
‘Focus on me.’
Harkas’ voice penetrated the noise of her pulse but his face seemed to swim in a fog. He became more insistent, his grip tightening on the back of her hand, fingers pressing between the metal callipers. ‘Ghelsa, focus on me.’
Her heart was a drum in her chest, each beat like thunder. In her gut something writhed, constricting about her intestines, worming its way into her lungs to steal her breath.
‘Ghelsa!’
The word was sharp, not loud, pricking the bubble of numbness that enveloped her. The tributai forced herself to look at him through the sick feeling rising in her chest. His voice remained muted, his face sketched in drab colours.
‘Your body is going into shock. You have to stay calm’
‘I… I…’ More words spilled out, but Ghelsa did not recognise what she said.
Cooler air swept into the corridor, clearing some of the odour of sweat, lubricant and cloying incense that was the signature smell of the tech-priests. Almost immediately Ghelsa’s vision sharpened, and she was able to stagger a few steps before she had to slump against a plasteel brace.
She slid down until she sat with her back against the wall. Ghelsa stared at her hands, willing the bright metal to come into focus against the dark skin.
‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Sorry. So sorry.’
‘You cannot be held responsible for biology,’ said Harkas. He stepped back, checking the corridor. Ghelsa was dimly aware of feet on the hard floor, lots of running. A nagging sound of impacts trembled from the gate chamber.
Harkas crouched beside her, his gleaming eyes staring directly into hers, almost blinding with their intensity. The inquisitor reached inside his robe and then pressed his hand to her neck. She felt a scratch, short but painful, and pulled away.
‘What did you just do?’ she demanded.
He held up a microdermic between thumb and forefinger.
‘A stimm, that is all. To keep you going.’
Shedding his warskin, Exasas shifted his perspective back to a strategic mode. The magos dominus inhaled a deep draught from his incense circulators to cleanse the taint of the outside air from his systems, and his calculation patterns extended into a more nebulous realm, collating data from across the whole noosphere to construct a neuroschematic of the battle for the akropoliz. Although he could comprehend the full extent of the conflict, his dataflow lacked the precision and clarity of his tactical self. In particular he was in no position to directly coordinate and respond with his skitarii. The local defence of the Imperator was entrusted to the lower-ranking battle-priests and alphas while Exasas concentrated on the matters of broader import.
Locating three points of attack in the upper levels of the atrium, Exasas examined the progress of the Space Marines across the layout of the akropoliz. Accounting for their ignorance of the Imperator’s specific arrangement of chambers and passages, he adjusted his simulation and determined a likely convergence point for the trio of invading forces.
The intersection appeared in his datathread as a glowing white rune close to the floor of the atrium where the akropoliz met with the command module access and the duluz-manned decks of the main mechanical systems.
As he manipulated this internal display, Exasas navigated the actual corridors, passing along frieze-lined passageways and heavy-lintelled archways beyond which the gun crews continued their labours alongside the slave servitors.
He moved away from the fighting. Bereft of his warskin, he had no intention of contact with the enemy, instead racing for the atrium to best organise the defence around the enemy’s ultimate objective. Like the Az Khalak defenders, he knew he could not prevent his foes from pushing through to their objective. Their bodies had been genetically engineered for close-quarters fighting and the wargear designed to enhance those already considerable abilities – by no lesser creator than the Omnissiah.
Such skitarii squads and tech-priests that Exasas directed into their path were intended as a brake on the speed of their advance rather than with any hope of halting it. Where possible they might degrade the Space Marines’ threat potential through the process of inflicting accumulating damage and, more likely, requiring enemy ammunition to be expended in their destruction.
Racing serpent-like down a spiral stair near the rear of the akropoliz, Exasas examined the attackers’ potential goals. He began with the general conjecture of inflicting casualties and disrupting the guns of the Casus Belli, but dismissed it on the grounds that, like the earlier attacks, if that had been the desire then the enemy should have launched the assault to conjoin with other offensives.
Having eliminated this broad possibility, he was left with the thought that if the Space Marine attack was not general, it had to be specific. There had to be something significant about an aerial insertion into the akropoliz at that particular
time.
While he tried to unsplice the competing motivations that crowded into his thoughts, Exasas sent a full mobilisation command to the rest of the skitarii company, ordering the alphas to arm their squads as a preparatory measure for defensive fighting inside the atrium. He then issued a summon-muster imperative for the atrium itself, setting into motion a series of commands that would have the skitarii in the akropoliz and those in the leg bastions conjoined at the point of greatest defence. To facilitate the more rapid passage of those within the leg bastions, Exasas subordered a request into the conveyor systems of the main torso levels, equipping his alphas with an override to commandeer all elevators and conveyors in order to speed them to the atrium.
He reached the atrium three levels from its base. It was in rough outline an inverted ziggurat with four stairways running around the walls in a helical arrangement, interspersed with access arches and intermedial galleries. A delve into the atrium cartographical data highlighted two possible objectives for the Space Marines – the command module and a direct access linkway to the reactor decks. Penetration of either would prove fatal to the Casus Belli.
Ghelsa stood up and reeled away, disgusted by what Harkas had done, flailing a hand at his face when he attempted to grab her.
‘You don’t do that!’ she snarled, stumbling into the opposite wall. The giddiness dissipated but her heart raced and her skin itched. A surge of energy swelled through her muscles, pushing out the aching tiredness. But something was wrong. She couldn’t catch her breath. Her fingers and toes burned and her jaw hurt. ‘What was it?’ she demanded.
‘A standard-issue skitarii stimulant mix,’ Harkas replied.
The inquisitor’s voice sounded tinny and distant. He tossed the microdermic away and pulled a pistol from his commandeered armour. ‘I took it off one of the bodies. Nothing unusual.’
Sweat sheened Ghelsa’s skin and soaked her coveralls, running in rivulets down her back.
‘I already have additives… in my blood,’ she gasped. Hormonal surges frothed inside her veins, making her want to shout and run and pound her fists into Harkas. ‘For my exo-skeleton. I’m suffering… an… alchemical reaction. I’m burning up!’
A loud crash and renewed flurry of gunfire from further into the akropoliz made Ghelsa flinch. Pulses of las-fire and radium blasts flashed against the walls from unseen combatants. The light was too bright, the faintest noises reverberating through her skull. Her body strained against her will, demanding to move, to be set free, as if it might burst out of her skin with a life of its own. The contact points where her exo-skeleton delved into flesh and connected to bone throbbed painfully.
An explosion at the far end of the corridor tossed a handful of skitarii corpses into view, wreathed in flame, robes tattered, their blood spattering the passageway. The shadow of a giant appeared against the wall, cast by dancing firelight.
Ghelsa was running before she even knew what she was doing, the multi-tool as light as air in her hand. She barely heard Harkas’ shout, much less understood the words. All she knew was that she had to act. The fire that burned in her chest would consume her if she did not release its energy.
She leapt over the steaming corpses of the skitarii, skidding through puddles of blood into the next passageway. The floor was hard and reassuring under her bare feet, the endlessly recycled air a taste of her home, even tainted as it was by the odour of the tech-priests.
Her thoughts were a blur, racing from one subject to the next, never staying in one place, a welter of animistic impressions and instinct, nothing rational or considered.
Ahead a power-armoured figure stalked the corridor, its back turned to Ghelsa. The tributai was usually the tallest in any company she kept, but the Space Marine was larger still, his augmented bulk further swollen by corruptive power. His warplate was much adulterated, fixed with curved ornamental blades, and a pair of horns spiralled from his helm. It was a dark pink with tiger-like black stripes, hung with charms and fetishes made out of human and xenos parts. Ghelsa could not focus on the runes daubed across the massive shoulder guards.
The Space Marine started to turn, the muzzle of the bolter in his grip fashioned in the shape of a snarling dog. Spurred by the unnatural chemicals coursing through her blood vessels, Ghelsa hurled herself at the monstrous warrior, swinging the multi-tool at the side of his head.
The plasteel connected hard, the thud of the impact rebounding from the walls. Vibrations thrummed through her fingers, weakening her grip so that the multi-tool tumbled from her grasp even as she collided with the warrior’s armoured body. Staggering back, she looked up and saw that what she had taken for a helm was in fact the traitor’s head, curling horns included. His face was pale but heavily tattooed with red and green, so that he had the appearance of a creature made of some strange fire. A scratch leaked a single droplet of blood where she had struck.
Ghelsa snatched up the plasteel tool and hit the Space Marine again, aiming for the chin. A slight movement of his head meant the warrior caught the blow on his cheek, with as much affect as her first attack. The Space Marine smiled, displaying teeth filed to razor points, each studded with a black gemstone.
Ghelsa screamed and swung the multi-tool again and again, battering at the warrior’s face and head. For several seconds he made no effort to defend himself, his chest rumbling with a deep laugh while she raised welts from his inhuman flesh.
And then he moved his arm, faster than Ghelsa could follow. Pain flared through her body and her back hit a wall, the multi-tool spinning from her grip again.
The legionary took a step towards her, his dark tongue licking flecks of blood from swollen lips.
‘I am going to enjoy breaking you,’ he declared, his words softly spoken, his tone complimentary and engaging. ‘The tech-priests have built your body nice and strong, so it will take some time. That is good. It is the endurance of your spirit that I truly wish to test. We can share the ecstasy of that time. I will let you hurt me too, if you want.’
Clattering down the white-painted steps, Exasas detected the first skitarii squads emerging from the interstitial decks of the torso. Others arrived from within the akropoliz, the leading squads of Space Marines close behind. An intense firefight screamed into life above the magos as he alighted upon the floor of the atrium and looked up. Through the eyes of his soldiers and his own sensory arrays he picked out a combat-squad of Heretic Astartes – five warriors – on the brink of entering the atrium’s upper level. Channelling dataflow across the noosphere from other battle-priests stationed around the akropoliz, he was able to devise a holding pattern of squads to limit the support from other attacking forces.
While the skitarii moved into position to close in on the Space Marines from several directions, Exasas sent two more muster commands. The first went to the auxilia tasked with close defence of the akropoliz. If Exasas and his skitarii were the Casus Belli’s innate immune system, the auxilia would be considered the adaptive immune system, instigated after the wars against the orks on Armageddon. They were not integrated into the noosphere nor Exasas’ strategic systems, instead relying upon their natural warrior instincts and personal initiative, as guided by their officer corps. As a second layer of protection against invasion of the Imperator they had proved effective on several previous occasions, and Exasas’ victory estimates were therefore significantly higher once they were deployed.
The second corps he activated was another standard precautionary measure, the order passed to the tech-priests of the small cybernetika cohort that usually lay dormant within the sub-layers of the akropoliz. Whether their arrival could be expedited to influence the outcome of the unfolding conflict was uncertain, and Exasas refused to add any positive bias to his victory thresholds on their account.
Despite Exasas’ complementary manoeuvres, a number of the Heretic Astartes had moved into attack position around the uppermost level of the atrium. With a declining victory estimate colouring his mood, Exasas registered the increa
sing casualty levels of the skitarii attempting to prevent the Space Marines gaining access to the main chamber.
The losses were too many to sustain. With a sensation not unlike a pang of regret, Exasas transmitted a further withdrawal code, essentially abandoning the upper levels of the akropoliz to the invaders. If he had miscalculated the intent of the traitors – a 4.6 per cent probability to his mind – he had just given them free rein to unleash carnage on the gunnery stations.
Several torturous seconds passed during which the skitarii regrouped within the atrium, resetting their cordon lines and siting their heaviest weapons to cover the upper entrances. Arcs of fire and trajectory lines criss-crossed Exasas’ view as he regarded the highest level, every white-coated warrior lining the stairs and galleries picked out with a tiny red rune that identified squad and platoon. A rapid noospheric roll call counted the losses at some third of the total skitarii force available to her, though more were arriving as the bastion chambers emptied of soldiers.
Though relief was a strange response to imminent enemy attack, it was the closest emotional equivalent to Exasas’ reaction when the Heretic Astartes launched their assault on the atrium. In four coordinated attacks, they stormed along the corridors leading to the highest level from each direction, intent upon breaking into the broad hall.
The probability of direct contact – and concomitant personal risk – increased to nearly 90 per cent. Any momentary considerations of self-preservation were subsumed into a swell of satisfaction that his predictions had been proven correct.
A flare of red scored a line across the Space Marine’s nose and brow. Ghelsa remembered Harkas’ digi-laser. Another flashing beam seared paint from a gauntlet raised to protect the warrior’s face.
The bark of the Space Marine’s bolter was ridiculously loud in the confines of the akropoliz passageway, and Ghelsa shrieked. All she saw was a flicker of propellant, and then she heard a pained shout from Harkas. She struggled to her feet, stimulant chemicals still coursing through her, overriding any fear. Ghelsa threw a punch, her reinforced knuckles connecting with the giant’s chin, her full weight behind the blow.
