The Successors, page 11
The trader was still behind him, shouting himself, but the men fleeing did not heed.
They were running from the death that walked in silence upon this dead world at the edge of everything and, in their fear, they did not stop to think of what lay in store for them.
The clipper rose into the air, jets flaring beneath it, pushing it up and up and up, taking the Void Glass. The other relics of the Chapter lay scattered across the plain, blown hither and thither by the downwash.
Tangata Manu stopped running. He stared up. The ship was high, far above, its main engines beginning to cycle as it rose into thinner, clearer air.
He stood on the plain of the dead world surrounded by the relics. He had failed. They had taken the Void Glass but, in taking it, they were lost themselves, condemned to wander through the immaterium or realspace until time or chance brought them to a landing upon some unknown world or sent them spiralling into a dying star.
Behind him, the sound of laughter, choking on itself.
Tangata Manu turned round.
Zhu Lanshang lay upon the sand. From his mouth spilled the red froth of a man drowning in his own blood, but in his eyes was a great mirth. While the Chaplain’s back was turned, he had taken something. An escape plan.
‘L-lost something?’
The Chaplain stepped towards the trader but Zhu Lanshang fell back upon the sand. When Tangata Manu reached him, the trader’s eyes were empty, his final mirth evaporated into the last Void. He had even managed to rob the Chaplain of vengeance.
From far above came a high-pitched scream as Zhu Lanshang’s ship accelerated away from the thin air of the dying world. Tangata Manu, Chaplain to the Carcharodon Astra, stared up into the sky as it emptied, the ship lost from sight.
The realisation that he had lost the most sacred relic given into the keeping of the Forgotten One by the Emperor Himself overcame him. His face, blank as the Void, stared up into nothing.
Then, slowly, Tangata Manu spoke, the words grinding through his teeth.
‘I will find the Glass though the search take a thousand years.’
LEGACY OF POSUL
CHRIS FORRESTER
The product of a world shrouded in endless darkness, the Mortifactors take more from their home world of Posul than they do from their Ultramarine gene-fathers. To meet these inhumanly savage Space Marines on the battlefield is to meet brutality incarnate, and to fall against them is to see your skull taken as trophy – proof of the death of the Emperor’s enemies.
Black smoke belched from hatches jammed open by corpses, reeking of hot ash and spoiled meat.
Devan Arathos’ mouth watered. It tasted like home: like Posul. Memories of his birth world were few, excised by the Chapter during ascension. He remembered the endless night, barren rock and shale slopes, the hot kiss of ash and flame from roasting pyres. His childhood had been dominated by the hunt, by lives taken in service to survival and the ever-present shade of hunger sated by the taste of fire-cooked flesh. His strongest memory of Posul was blood tracing his chin, fat stringing his teeth and marrow sucked from bones, sweet upon his tongue.
His skin prickled at the thought. His teeth itched and his fingers curled into killer’s claws. The distant crackle of bolter fire and Posulan war cries called him back, despite the insistent tightening in his stomach.
The deck trembled beneath his feet. The Mortuum was still fighting.
Shadows moved in the smoke, clad in thick armour. Arathos halted and waved the Scout, Koralos, behind him. He signed an order to Kalex. The other Mortifactor nodded and took position on the far side of the corridor, his bolter aimed into the fumes. Arathos and Koralos raised their pistols.
‘Fire and manoeuvre,’ he instructed. The Scout nodded, his red eyes gleaming behind the empty sockets of the chipped ork skull he wore in battle. Arathos had been there when he’d taken it. He’d devoured part of that kill at Koralos’ side – a handful of stringy sinew and leathery flesh offered to the Apothecary the way a hunter would gift the first bite to their chieftain.
A challenge-call cut through the smoke.
Arathos lowered his pistol. He knew that voice. Smiling, he bellowed a response and marched through the thick, black clouds. Koralos followed after him. Two Mortifactors stood from behind a makeshift barricade, their weapons raised. Kalex approached from the left.
‘Emperor’s teeth,’ Arathos laughed, offering his hand to the first Mortifactor. The warrior gripped his wrist and they embraced with a clatter of battleplate. ‘Elarion, I thought you dead.’
‘It takes more than a few World Eaters to finish me, brother.’
‘That much is clear.’ Arathos smiled, casting an eye over the dead.
‘Skill did not save him.’ The second Mortifactor clasped Kalex’s hand. ‘His neck is thicker than a Medusan’s. These mongrels lacked the patience to hack through it.’
Arathos nodded. ‘Gerador.’
‘Apothecary.’
‘Is the gene-seed within?’
‘It is.’ Tension coloured Elarion’s reply. They moved towards the apothecarion and Arathos saw black-and-bone armour amid the fallen. ‘Including that of our honoured dead.’
Arathos placed a hand on Elarion’s shoulder.
‘They feast at the Emperor’s side, brother. They shed their lives in His stead, and we do them no service leaving their legacy vulnerable.’ He knelt beside a fallen Mortifactor and picked up his bolter, disconnecting the magazine. He took two more from the warrior’s bandoliers and murmured his thanks. ‘Gather weapons and ammunition. We leave imminently.’
The other four Mortifactors nodded.
Gerador rolled a heretic corpse onto its back, searching for bolt pistol magazines and tracks of chain-teeth. Even their debased materiel could serve. Koralos and Elarion stripped bolter ammunition and grenades from the fallen Mortifactors. Kalex watched the corridor.
Something caught Arathos’ eye.
‘Have you used a flamer before, brother?’ Arathos asked, turning to Koralos. As he did, he pulled the weapon from a dead Mortifactor.
The Scout shook his head, reloading his pistol. Pride burned in his eyes at the Apothecary’s use of the honorific. Full battle-brothers rarely acknowledged their genetic kinship to Scouts, but it was an honour well earned in Arathos’ opinion.
He checked the promethium canister, heard a satisfying slosh and ignited the weapon. Arathos handed the flamer to Koralos and muttered his thanks to the fallen warrior’s shade. He was no doubt now feasting with the Emperor and Lord Magyar in the Hall of Victors.
‘Gently squeeze the trigger,’ he said, adjusting the Scout’s stance. Koralos handled the weapon well. ‘Brace before firing and target clusters. One enemy alone is a waste.’
‘Just don’t turn it on us,’ Kalex said.
‘Pay Kalex no mind,’ Arathos countered. ‘His skill with a flamer is woeful.’
The other Mortifactors chuckled, Kalex loudest of all. Koralos smiled thinly.
‘The apothecarion is in full lockdown?’ Arathos asked, indicating the hexagonal hatch a handful of yards away. Elarion nodded, and Arathos signalled Kalex and Gerador to secure the approach. They vox-clicked their assent. Koralos nodded and took position beside them.
Arathos and Elarion moved to the door.
A skull-faced servitor built into a shadowed alcove swivelled on its gimbal-torso to train a multi-melta on the Apothecary, its eyes glowing killing red. It was the door’s keeper, and most obvious defence. Arathos counted at least three other meltas and six bolters secreted in the shadows, slaved to automated defence protocols that would not hesitate to annihilate any threat.
Arathos removed his helm, exposing a youthful and unscarred face that echoed Guilliman’s noble profile. He spoke quickly and clearly while a red beam scanned his retina, his tone reflecting the frustrated eagerness written in his scowl.
‘Devan Arathos, Apothecary, Second Company.’
‘Voice-print analysis, match.’ The servitor’s voice was a dull metronome click. ‘Retinal scan, match. Gait recognition, match. Vermillion-level access protocols in effect. Gene-sample required.’
A small panel in the door retracted, revealing a palm-sized data-slate. Arathos spat on it and stepped back while it processed his genetic markers. The slate chimed.
‘Gene-match. Gratitude, Devan Arathos.’ The servitor’s eyes blinked from red to amber. ‘Vermillion-level access protocols in effect. Secondary sample required.’
Arathos stepped aside and Elarion took his place beneath the servitor’s blank stare. A servo-blade wiped Arathos’ saliva from the data-slate, and the scanning beam mapped Elarion’s retina. He too spat and spoke his name and rank in a cold, clear tone.
‘Mikael Elarion, battle-brother. First Squad, Second Company.’
Amber blinked green. The servitor fell slack in its housing. Ancient mechanisms thunked and grated, parting the hatch.
Arathos followed Elarion inside.
Six medicae thralls, armed with lascarbines and knapped-flint hand-axes, flanked the gene-vault. Two had the rich mahogany skin of the Posul-born. The rest were dredged from worlds Arathos did not care to know or name. They bowed and fell back. A veteran sergeant was speaking a funerary rite for a fallen squad member. Blood-flecked oath scrolls and skulls were affixed to his waist and shoulder.
Arathos remembered his desperate attempts to save the warrior. Two hours and forty-nine minutes of reconstructive surgery on augmented organs and implants reduced to scraps by fat bullets and mass-reactive bolts. Stimulants and synthesised infusions had tethered the warrior to life with spider-silk strands until the Mortifactor joined the Ultimum Bellator. The sergeant, now the lone survivor of the squad, had taken it hard. Arathos had been secretly relieved when he was then ordered to attend the fallen elsewhere. Words were not his strength, and survivors demanded too many of them. Chaplain Erani’s ministrations had ever been their solace and guide, but not now. Battle had drawn him away, his strength and sword arm needed to repulse the heretics and lead the Mortifactors to victory.
Arathos placed his hand on the gene-vault’s cold surface, his eyes tracing the Corpus Helix and the Chapter’s heraldic skull. The genetic legacy of over sixty Adeptus Astartes warriors was hyper-chilled, preserved to be implanted into fresh initiates at the next recruitment harvest.
If there is another harvest, he thought darkly.
He made a show of checking his bolt pistol, chainblade, reductor and narthecium, acutely aware that Elarion was watching him. Feigning satisfaction, Arathos waited a moment longer, then cleared his throat.
The sergeant glanced up. Blood dappled his grey beard, and his expression was twisted between rage and grief. His augmetic eye clicked as it focused, underlining his frustration. Arathos could not blame him. The warriors he had led, whose survival he had prized above his own, now lay dead. The World Eaters had stolen his duty from him.
‘Their gene-seed is accounted for,’ the sergeant said, nodding sharply at seven shrouded figures. ‘And mine. Take it and go. I have heretics to hunt.’ Arathos noticed the inexpert sutures at his throat. Breath snatched between his lips. An irritated flush of shame spurted through his mind. He felt like a novice presented with his first bolter.
Arathos recovered his composure quickly, still embarrassed.
‘Will you not join us?’ he asked. ‘To ensure their legacy endures?’
‘Erani and Second Squad will rendezvous with you en route to the hangar,’ the sergeant growled. ‘Angron’s dogs murdered my brothers. They die for that, gene-seed be damned.’
Arathos suppressed a snarl. Honour demanded vengeance, but on Posul, hunger was a child’s first tutor. It bred pragmatism as surely as it bred killers for the Chapter to mould into warriors. Pragmatism meant survival, and survival was all to the tribes. Pragmatism would have alloyed his strength to theirs and chosen duty over honour. Duty demanded the fallen’s legacy be preserved. That was his responsibility, and this fool spat on it.
But Arathos saw the pain and despair in the sergeant’s eyes, and knew he craved a death that might wash them away. In less desperate times, Erani would have offered counsel and penance, but now his only atonement would be righteous slaughter. In extracting his gene-seed, however inexpertly, he had served the Chapter, and Arathos was grateful.
Still, news of Erani made him smile. They had grown to boyhood in the same clan, killed their first man together, carving his flesh with flint knives before they’d each gifted their first bite to the other. They had survived the Astartes trials, and decades of service as Faceless. Even when their talents drew them apart, to Reclusiam and Apothecarion, the Emperor’s will saw them assigned to the same battle company. To know his brother was alive was a relief beyond measure. He restrained his smile, though, for this was no day for good humour. Instead, he centred his thoughts, adopted a grave mien and bowed his head.
‘Thank you, brother. May we meet again, in this life or in the Hall of Victors.’
The sergeant ignored him. He was muttering to the fallen again.
Arathos thumbed the vault’s control panel. Anti-grav plates whirred, propelling the casket at an unaugmented human’s marching pace. The massive doors rumbled shut as they left the apothecarion. The others fell in behind, boasts and jubilation forgotten.
‘The sergeant is not joining us?’ Gerador asked, fitting a fresh teeth-track into his chainsword. A flensing knife of carved aeldari bone was sheathed at his waist.
‘No,’ Arathos answered, his annoyance betrayed by his tone. ‘He wishes to hunt the enemy and I am not foolhardy enough to think I can force him from his quest.’
‘He honours the old ways of Posul,’ Koralos said, fingers brushing the hand-axe sheathed at his waist. Its knapped-flint head was secured to a haft of yellowed bone by knotted cord woven from human hair. ‘He hunts the killers of his oath-brothers, to devour their hearts and honour the fallen while they yet feast in the Emperor’s halls.’
Arathos’ eyes narrowed. He remembered no such tradition from his own childhood. His clan killed to feed and preserve their territory. Vengeance was an unworthy motivation in comparison to the slow onset of starvation, and honour was a concept taught by the Chapter alone, one that was utterly alien to the tribes of Posul.
‘You are a fool, boy,’ Gerador said. ‘He craves the Emperor’s gift and the release that comes with it. I doubt he would accept any order that did not offer him blood to shed and skulls to take, or one that did not culminate in his death.’
Koralos made to respond.
‘Enough.’ Arathos silenced them both with a glare. Though not a commander, he was still an officer; his position within the Chapter was similar to that of the tribal healers and shamans that commanded the respect of the Posulan warrior caste. ‘Bickering is pointless and does not serve our purpose. You will both hold your tongues. Is that clear?’
Both nodded.
They assumed a defensive formation around the gene-vault, Gerador and Arathos to the fore. They passed through benighted corridors and training halls turned charnel houses, the scent of blood and scorched meat teasing his hunger once again. The distant sounds of battle were a call Arathos longed to answer. The warrior-sons of Posul did not run except to join the fray and save beleaguered brothers. Pragmatism kept him from the fight, duty seeding frustration and sorrow that poisoned his humours. No one spoke, each vigilant for threats, but Arathos sensed his own distemper reflected in his brothers.
Twice the Archenemy came against them, allowing them to unshackle their frustration and take vengeance for fallen brothers. Twice, packs of canid-faced mutants and mortal men and women in boiled leather, chainmail and furs assailed them with primitive weapons. Bullets and musket balls leapt from the blank eyes of a hundred muzzles. They pinged harmlessly against the Mortifactors’ battleplate, an acned mess of scorch marks and chipped ceramite their only testament. The Mortifactors drove them back, purging the shame of enforced inaction with disciplined volleys of bolter fire, gouts of burning promethium and the strength of their sword arms.
A World Eater led the second assault, a figure of dread inspiration, slaughtering those who retreated or blocked his way. Arathos smiled and moved to intercept him, cutting the mortals apart by bolter fire or by the chainblade snarling in his grip.
One lucky blow cut through the ribbing beneath his arm, biting into the muscle. He crushed the fool’s throat, hurling the corpse aside. His blade rose and fell, parried and countered. Every stroke ended a life.
Sweat beaded his skin. The enemy sold their lives without thought, slowing him with the seconds it took to kill them. Their lord advanced closer. Arathos snarled at the World Eater, spinning his blade.
The traitor broke into a lumbering run. Warp-iron claws protruded from his knuckles, oozing black venom that flecked the bulkheads with every swing. Plasteel hissed and melted beneath the foul liquid. Arathos counter-charged, sidestepping a clumsy blow, and spun under the traitor’s guard before severing his arm at the elbow.
The heretic roared, swiping with his remaining claw.
Arathos turned the swing aside, locking eyes with the World Eater. Bareheaded, he tasted old blood on the traitor’s breath and saw the mindless fury threading his eyes. Cortical implants squatted on his scalp like ugly iron parasites. The legionary sliced, aiming to cut him from collarbone to pelvis. Arathos deflected the strike and slashed at a cracked plate on the traitor’s leg. The chainsword chewed through the weakened ceramite and into meat, muscle and bone. Black blood spurted. The heretic staggered backwards, cursing.
Arathos’ fist cannoned into the heretic’s face. Once. Twice. Thrice. His nose and cheekbone shattered. The legionary struck wildly, but Arathos parried each blow, biding his time. His patience was rewarded. As his frustrated foe overbalanced, Arathos sliced through the heretic’s wrist and rammed the blade into his primary heart. The traitor thrashed and died.
