Lords of Blood, page 100
Suddenly afraid, he bent forward and touched the liquid. It was still warm.
He raised the vox to his mouth, opened it to speak, but no sound came out. A sharp agony cut into him from behind. A heavy, ugly sword punched through his ribs, its serrations carrying the remains of his lungs out through his ruptured chest.
A hard hand shoved him off the blade. He fell onto his knees, his mouth gulping for air he could no longer breathe.
A skull-faced giant in red stalked past him, a grapnel line reeling itself silently back into a huge pistol. The giant spared him no backward glance, but whispered menacingly as he moved round the corner.
‘Brother Fain reporting. Sector two secured,’ were the last words Chekeen ever heard.
An explosive round tore a chunk out of the wall by Ghinac’s head, hurting his ears and scourging his face with a storm of shrapnel.
He heard another of the palace guard behind him give a shout that was abruptly cut off.
‘Intruders!’ he shouted into his vox-set. ‘Intruders on the eastern wall!’ He cursed the vox-set. When he released the send button it made a weirdly modulated hum, and would neither send nor receive. It was huge and heavy so he dropped it, letting the poor-quality plastek of its casing break to pieces on the stone. He was grateful to be free of the weight. His feet pushed off the paving hard, twisting painfully against the leather of his boots. He ran faster than he ever had before, fear driving him on more effectively than any whip.
He did not look behind. Even the minor effort to turn his head would cost him valuable time. He had no wish to see the ogrish things coming for him, the men-machines with lifeless skulls for faces and killing hands of metal. They seemed too big to move quickly, too massive to be as silent as they were, but the crawling skin on his neck told him they were right behind him. All he heard of his pursuers were stealthy footfalls, much further apart than a normal man’s and far quieter than he thought possible, the soft noise of rubber grips on stone coming closer and closer.
He pelted through into the palace and slammed the door, dropping the lock bar into the brackets. He prayed to the True Emperor that three inches of steel would stop his pursuers.
He was mistaken. He was barely thirty yards down the corridor when the door boomed to two heavy kicks and burst inwards. ‘Intruders!’ he shouted, struggling through his ragged breath to get out the words. ‘Soldiers of the Lying Emperor!’
Silenced guns coughed, just as he threw himself sideways into one of the palace’s staterooms. At that hour it was deserted, and his footsteps slapped loudly on the wooden floor. He hurtled on, diving down a side passage at the last moment. His pursuers ran past, pale red light cast from lamps set around their eyes, their skull masks ghostly in the gloom of the hall.
He stilled his breathing and jogged forward slowly. The lumens were out in the palace. He heard muffled gunshots and terrified voices cut off mid-shriek.
He was getting closer to the central precincts of the palace. The alarm still had not been raised.
‘Intruders!’ he shouted. ‘False angels! Intruders!’ His breath was ragged. He wished now he had never taken up smoking bhaccan tubes.
Finally, an alarm began to sound somewhere far off.
He slowed. The sounds of fighting grew in intensity, but distance dulled them. He heard inhuman roars and the reports of overpowered weaponry, now all far behind.
He came to another grand space. The palace was large. In the darkness and his haste to escape, he had lost his way. He took a tentative step forward.
‘Hello?’ he whispered. He expected an echo, but the shadows swallowed his voice whole. He hesitated. Darkness was heavy behind him, and growing thicker, with a sense of weight and mass that pushed him on.
The darkness welcomed him. He could see nothing. He had the awful sense that the darkness was alive, close to his face, looking at him with invisible eyes.
Shaking set into his limbs. The tap-tap-tap of his lasgun butt on his uniform buttons was terrifyingly loud. There was something in there with him. He could feel it deep in the animal parts of his brain, those ancient limbic circuits buried deep that gave warning of predators. He turned around and took a few faltering steps forward. He had no idea which was the way out.
‘I’m not afraid,’ he lied.
The darkness parted. A figure appeared before him suddenly, wreathed in red light. It was not the light that revealed him but rather the darkness that relinquished him, and Ghinac knew in his soul that the being was darkness. Tall he was, and terrible to see, a ghost-white face surrounded by long pale hair, with burning red eyes and the fangs of a killing animal. The monster’s masters had seen fit to clad it in armour fashioned to look like flayed flesh: a design that glinted the liquid gloss of fresh gore, with wet muscle ridges newly peeled artfully sculpted on every inch. He held a sword bigger than Ghinac that fluttered soft red flames.
Such terror smote at Ghinac’s failing courage that it collapsed entirely. Warm liquid ran down his uniform leg.
He sank to his knees, moaning softly. The prophet said he would be protected. The prophet said he would be saved. Where was the prophet now?
‘I pity you,’ the giant said, before raising his hand and, with invisible force, crushed the life from Ghinac’s body.
Dante waited outside the city. The units he commanded directly were hidden in giant grain silos. They were otherwise empty, and by the look of them had been for some time. A number of bodies were stacked in the corner – unfortunate civilians who had come across the Blood Angels while gleaning for scraps. They were malnourished to the point of starvation.
Dante steadfastly ignored the dead men, but he could not shut their presence from his mind entirely. Blood leaked under them, running in bright sheets to make pools in the pitted ferrocrete of the silo floor. He yearned to take off his helm and lap at it, to take their strength for his own.
A couple of his warriors worked to fit Dante with his jump pack. The Sanguinary Guard accompanying him had already been equipped. Squads of Intercessors and Hellblasters waited to move out. A portable hololith displayed the view from the sergeant of the squad of Infiltrators watching the city’s main barracks.
Mephiston’s voice spoke to him directly, his psychic might bypassing the need for vox.
Lord Dante, the outer palace buildings are taken. Reivers are in the process of eliminating the last of the palace guard. I am moving in to eliminate the prime target.+
‘Then I shall begin my assault,’ said Dante. ‘Antargo, give your Infiltrators the signal. They are to engage as soon as the enemy respond to Mephiston’s attacks.’
‘Signal given, my lord.’
Dante waited for the armoured gates of the barracks to open. He cut off the feed from the hololith as the first shots were fired.
‘We go for the palace.’
An explosion from the city barracks rumbled across the sleeping city.
From all quarters, the dirge of alarms struck up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE PERSON WE PERCEIVE
Danakan stared at the chronograph. Just over an hour remained before he would have to open fire on the planet below. He imagined the people looking skywards, seeing the fleet come to save them flash and flare with weapons fire, then scream as they realised the shots were meant for them.
They would all burn: men, women and children. The planet itself would be devastated, a living world, killed. The scar of the city he’d flattened still gave off smoke. Hours later, it stretched hundreds of miles across Ronenti’s deserts.
What if Dante and the rest were alive when he fired? He would be responsible for the death of the Imperium’s greatest hero. The future of the whole of Imperium Nihilus depended on his choice.
Their message to the rulers of the south droned on and on, set to repeat without pause.
‘…in order to ensure your survival. The Emperor is merciful, the Emperor is just. Surrender and enjoy pain-free execution. This is your final…’
His head swam. The chronograph ticked down, second by second.
‘My lord!’ whispered Juvenel.
Danakan shook off his sense of growing dread. He had to wet his lips before he could speak.
‘Is there any word?’ he asked. He had tried to keep his requests for information to a minimum, but he had asked the same question a hundred times. Juvenel winced. His vox liaison looked at him uncertainly.
‘None, my lord admiral,’ said the man. ‘The enemy have co-opted the entire planetary communication network to jam our signals. The master of astropaths has attempted communication, but the xenos below are preventing contact by telepathy also.’
‘Augurs?’ asked Danakan.
‘The same situation, my lord,’ reported the mistress of sight. ‘Some augurs are giving readings, but only those in the low-definition range. Visual scans are unclear.’ She called up a grainy image of the capital. ‘There are indications Lord Dante’s troops are fighting in this part of the city, around the palace here. We believe they have been ambushed.’
‘Then the Blood Angels live,’ said Danakan.
‘They do not yet appear to have broken into the palace, my lord,’ said the mistress of sight. ‘They are running behind schedule.’
‘Then the invasion is stalling,’ said Juvenel.
‘We do not know that yet!’ said Danakan. His officers shared glances at his tone. It was expected that an admiral might shout at his command, but Danakan realised just how anxious he sounded. He took a deep breath. ‘I am going to my quarters to rest a while. I will return when the countdown nears completion.’
Danakan deactivated his control implants and stepped down from the dais.
‘Juvenel, take a rest as well. Thirty minutes. We have hard choices ahead of us. Captain Arturo, you have fleet command.’
‘If it is all the same to you, my lord,’ said Juvenel, ‘I would rather remain here.’
Danakan struggled to keep his voice level. ‘You will rest,’ said Danakan. He didn’t trust what Juvenel would do in his absence.
‘I will rest then,’ said Juvenel tersely. ‘Prepare gunnery sections for action.’
‘Belay that,’ said Danakan.
‘My lord!’ said Juvenel.
‘Gunnery command to remain on third level alert, no higher,’ said Danakan. He walked past Juvenel. ‘You overstep your authority, sir,’ he whispered to his flag-lieutenant.
Juvenel gave him a cold look. Before he could respond, Danakan strode briskly towards the private lifter that would take him to his quarters. He passed pits full of crew who were, he was sure, deliberately avoiding his eyes.
The rattle of bolt rifles firing together drowned out the engine noise of the enemy tanks. Three Leman Russ variants were pushing through the broken gate into the palace’s outer grounds. The lead machine rocked back on its suspension as its main armament fired. The shell fell among a demi-squad of Dante’s Intercessors, blasting them off their feet. They were strong, and four of them got back to their feet, shook off the effects of the cannon blast and recommenced firing from the shelter of the crater. The fifth lay still.
Bolt-rounds detonated across the tanks’ dozer blades and thick frontal armour. Divots of metal were chipped from the glacis amid bright flashes and showers of spall, leaving bare plasteel craters in their livery. The tanks finally made it through the central archway of the gate, jerking as their treads reversed to turn them quickly on the spot, the first heading right, the second left, opening up a gap for the third to drive through. Fyceline smoke drifted thickly across the courtyard as their heavy bolters opened up, their steady, bass chugging and the explosions of their large rounds adding to the roar of battle.
The Blood Angels’ intelligence was lacking. The enemy had brought their own denial widecast into range, and although it was too unsophisticated to break the Blood Angels’ hardened squad-to-squad vox systems, communications with the fleet were severely hampered. They were at risk of being bogged down.
There was a squad of Incursors hunting for the source of the transmission, but the city was large, and time was running short.
‘Squad Etruscus, take down the tank,’ Dante commanded, painting the target with his unit auto-senses and broadcasting the data to the Hellblasters. Immediately they opened up, coming in from the side to enfilade the leftmost Leman Russ. Blinding plasma streams hit the vehicle, cutting molten gashes into its thick armour. Its sponson blew spectacularly, sending out corkscrewing trails as the rounds in the side cooked off. But the tank was otherwise unharmed, and its turret swung around on whining motors, battle cannon depressing to take aim.
The Hellblasters fired again, melting the links of its left track together. The engine roared as the machine tried to free itself, but succeeded only in breaking its track, which slithered free of its drive wheels to lie flat on the ground, stranding the vehicle.
The battle cannon barked. The shell hit a Hellblaster square in the chest. He flew backwards into the ground, his armour carving up the gravel of the courtyard and digging into the earth. The shell blew while the Hellblaster was on the floor, blasting him to pieces.
Dante resisted the urge to charge into combat with the tanks. Antargo was already among them, gun flashing. His Phobos armour made him nimble, but he was missing the armour-killing strength of a power fist.
‘Hold the gate!’ Dante said. ‘Do not allow them within to reinforce the troops inside the palace.’
Smaller battles raged all over the complex. Blood Angels infiltrators tied up most of the palace guard, allowing Mephiston the chance to penetrate the deeper defences, but the tanks and the mechanised infantry coming in behind could tip the balance.
An alien shriek rose behind them. A heavy iron door clanked up into the inner walls, and through it poured a horde of misshapen hybrids. They ran headlong, almost falling over their feet in their rush to engage with the Space Marines. There were dozens of them. Antargo’s force, some twenty strong, were occupied with the tanks. Already, infantry were moving up outside in the cover of the Leman Russ to make an attempt to retake the courtyard. The hybrids were a dangerous distraction.
Dante flicked the activation stud on the Axe Mortalis. Its head flared with a burst of false lightning.
‘Squad Quercus, fall back and engage new threat at range. Brother Sulea, Brother Tengrael,’ he said to his guard. ‘On me.’
He activated his jump pack, arcing high over the racing crowd of tainted humanity. At the apex of his flight, he had a moment of weightlessness when his jets cut out, and saw Squad Quercus turn and fell the first rank of the xenos monsters with a concentrated burst of gunfire. Then he fell down on the enemy like the wrath of the Emperor Himself, crushing a swollen head beneath his boots, incinerating another with the Perdition Pistol. His axe obliterated the chest of a third hybrid with a thunderous bang.
His wounds twinged. He felt weak.
Then claws and teeth were snapping all around him, and he lost sight of the rest of his force.
The psychic scream of the cult was a constant presence, akin to the shadow in the warp in the same way that the shrill cries of young avians bear resemblance to the calls of the adults. It keened in Mephiston’s mind, the wail of an infant shrieking for its mother’s attention.
Undaunted, Mephiston moved on towards the source. By psychic art he trapped the shriek as surely as if it were encased in a soundproof bubble. No fleet of bio-ships would come in answer to strip the planet bare of life, and reveal to the cultists the truth of what they worshipped – not while he lived. At this close range to the source he could blot it out completely.
He took grim satisfaction in his new powers. They no longer threatened to overwhelm him. The black angel was inside him now. He felt it beneath the layers of his mind: Kali, Calistarius, Mephiston. Blood Angel and man. Buried under all the constructs of his consciousness, the constraints of his training, was a force far greater than any he had ever known before. Like the Rage, but not wild; his alone.
He could reach down inside himself and open the doors to the black angel. It might mean the end of him, but the thought of such power being his to wield tempted him gravely.
This was part of his burden now. Not one of his brothers showed signs of the Rage. If he were to unleash what dwelled within him, all would plummet into unreasoning madness, and the Rage would spread, and spread, until none of Sanguinius’ scions remained sane.
This was the truth of what he was. He could never tell a soul.
He turned away from temptation. He walked halls so dark no standard human being could possibly see inside, but to him they were lit as clearly as if both moons of Baal shone full. There was no life down there. The palace was immense, and surely must have been busy with servants before the cult came. He saw no one but the soldiers he slaughtered so casually. It was like the fields, and the starving people. The cult had no need for anything other than the call. They raised up false idols and the people danced while their world died around them.
The call could be trapped within a psychic construct. He could do little about the mental web linking the cult together. He attempted to suppress the threads spreading from the palace’s rotten heart that subverted human will into unthinking servitude. Part of a cult’s control over the populace was physical, induced by chemical and genetic changes made by direct contamination, but much of it was psychic slavery. Cut off the head, and the body would wither.
The cult leaders were waiting for him. He could feel that. There were several minds tangled together, a partial hive of human slaves, backed by the monstrous intellect of a genestealer patriarch.
They were close. He pushed a greater part of his mind into Vitarus, the Sanguinary Sword. Its red flames danced higher.
