Lords of Blood, page 38
‘Declare yourself!’ said Erwin.
‘Sergeant Hennan, of the Angels Numinous.’
‘What are you doing hiding here?’
‘Waiting to die,’ said the warrior. ‘Someone had to oversee the servitors so they kept up a good rate of fire. My plan was to surprise the enemy when they boarded. Instead I have surprised an impetuous rescuer who does not know how to listen to orders.’
‘Captain Asante is not my commander,’ said Erwin.
‘Then you should have paid attention to good sense, captain,’ said Hennan. ‘Respect should have made you hearken. Now you have put your ship in danger when only this one would have been lost. Our main drive malfunctioned, damaging the warp engine in the process. There was no choice but to abandon it. Had the others delayed to shelter this ship, they would have been lost, as you will soon discover. Everyone else left. You are too late, Captain Erwin.’
‘What about the serfs?’ said Erwin. ‘And him.’ He pointed his gun at the navigator. ‘Why is he still here?’
‘These men were of the same mind as I,’ said the Angel Numinous. ‘Best to die in honour than flee in shame. My navigator here–’
‘I may speak for myself, sergeant.’ The mutant had a high, sexless voice. There was a hint of pain to it. As a psychic being, such close contact with the hive mind would be causing him great discomfort. ‘I am pledge-bonded to this vessel. I cannot leave, by the laws of my house.’
‘That is a waste,’ said Achemen.
‘So is throwing away your ship and company attempting to rescue an obvious decoy vessel,’ said Hennan.
‘Your ship has served its purpose. Come with us, we can at least save you.’
‘I vowed to end my days here. I will not break my oath.’
Erwin had little to say in reply. He was shamed by his impulsiveness. There was only one way he could see to regain his honour. He and Hennan stared at each other.
‘You need not lose your ship,’ he said.
‘Asante did not see it that way,’ said Hennan.
‘The situation has changed.’
‘We can die together?’ said the sergeant.
‘We can live together,’ said Erwin. ‘Are your other systems still operational?’
‘More or less.’
‘Then we can make a break for the warp,’ said Erwin. ‘We can open the rift with our engines, you can follow us in. You have your navigator still. Once inside the immaterium, you will be able to follow us and re-emerge when we do.’
‘What he says is possible, though difficult, sergeant,’ said the navigator. ‘It is a chance. We should take it.’
‘I appreciate that you have an overwhelming desire to live if you can, Navigator Meus,’ said Hennan. ‘But we will never make it to a safe distance from Zozan. We will be overtaken.’
‘Who said anything about a safe distance?’ said Erwin. ‘We can translate here.’
‘You are impetuous, captain. The mass interference of all these tyranids will rip our ships to pieces.’
‘It might.’
‘It almost certainly will.’
‘It is better than dying,’ said Erwin.
‘So you would trade the certainty of saving one ship for the possibility of saving two. Consider there is also the possibility of saving none.’
‘If my ship runs now, we will probably lose it anyway,’ said Erwin.
‘The probability of your survival alone is higher than our survival together,’ said Hennan.
‘Where is your fighting spirit, sergeant?’
‘Under control,’ said Hennan. ‘Are you, captain?’
The ship lurched again. The movement was big enough to register against the grav-plating of the ship.
‘You are running out of time!’ said Erwin. ‘Decide. I can save you.’
Hennan stared back, his helmet masking his expression.
‘Very well. We shall try, and, when we die, we shall at least drag millions of these xenos spawn into the warp.’
‘Do you still have shuttlecraft?’
‘A few,’ said Hennan.
‘Then if your hangars are clear, I request that we might borrow them, and return to our vessel.’
Five more Angels Excelsis fell on their way to the Staff of Life’s hangar bays, cut down by genestealers and other, worse things. But Erwin was conveyed to safety and, forty minutes after he departed the Staff’s bridge, he strode back on to the command deck of the Splendid Pinion.
The void outside the ship was crowded with tyranid attack craft, living and dead. The Splendid Pinion was free of assault beasts. The same could not be said of the Staff of Light. A shelled bio-ship had the front of the ship firmly in its tentacles, and was biting at the prow shields with a giant beak. The size of the thing was difficult to comprehend. Few creatures grew to such a size by any natural process, or could withstand the rigours of the void.
‘Send a data-squirt to Captain Asante,’ said Erwin. ‘Inform him we have the Staff of Light under our protection and will attempt a tandem emergency translation.’
‘You are insane,’ said Achemen.
‘Only those who are insane have strength enough to prosper.’
‘Only those who prosper truly judge what is sane,’ responded Achemon.
‘Then you know the Prestican thinkers.’
‘I never said that I agree with them,’ said Achemen. ‘If this works, captain, I swear I shall pay great attention to your every word. If it fails, I would like to say in advance I told you so.’
Erwin looked at his second in command. ‘So you do know how to jest.’
Achemen removed his helmet, revealing a face sheened with combat sweat. His expression was entirely humourless. ‘I do not jest.’
Erwin shrugged. ‘All power to the main drive,’ he ordered. ‘Prepare immaterial drive for emergency translation. Intensify forward fire. Servile Belligerent, remove that creature from the prow of the Staff of Life.’
‘Yes, my lord! Gunnery stations, prepare fusion beamers and plasma casters for maximum discharge,’ ordered the Servile Belligerent.
Erwin’s commands sent his human crew into action. They were tense, but worked efficiently, their fear at imminent death kept in check by their training.
‘Servile of the Helm, take us forward.’
‘Course, my lord?’
Erwin grinned inside his helmet. ‘Into the heart of the swarm.’
The Splendid Pinion’s engines burst into life, their backwash incinerating a score of tyranid vessels attempting a stern approach. Erwin’s vessel slid forward smoothly relative to the Staff of Life. The creature wrapped around the prow spewed streams of gas from vents along the curve of its shell, shoving the Staff of Life sideways. The stress of this movement could snap a ship in two, and the vessel had little choice but to roll with the beast while attempting to move forward.
‘Spinal gunnery stations, standby!’ shouted the Servile Belligerent.
The tyranid beast was huge in the oculus, moving out of view as the Splendid Pinion passed it by. Erwin watched its grainy image captured on the hololith and tacticaria.
‘Fire! Full strike!’ said the Servile Belligerent.
The shells and void-pocked flesh of tyranids all around the Splendid Pinion lit up harshly as a dozen energy cannons let fire. Beams of plasma slammed into the shell of the grappling kraken, charring it through to the core. Fusion beams flash cooked the soft tissue within, then rendered it into ash, but the creature did not die. It convulsed, gripping the ship harder than ever, before a second volley hollowed out the shell. It floated away, keratinous armour smouldering, detached tentacles drifting off, given brief freedom before they too expired. The Staff of Life lumbered around, correcting its course and following the Splendid Pinion.
‘Match speed to the Staff of Light,’ said Erwin. ‘Do not outpace it.’
Guns flared along the flanks of the two ships. The void shields of the Splendid Pinion sparkled as it absorbed thousands of small impacts. The strike cruisers were alone, the rest of the fleet having outpaced the pursuing tyranids. The Staff of Life could only limp along. Bio-ships swarmed the two vessels. By dint of sheer firepower, they kept their side approaches clear of aliens, but the real peril came at them from the front, where the two squadrons sent out to intercept the Imperial fleet had reversed course and were now bearing down directly on the strike cruisers.
‘My lord?’ asked the Servile of the Helm. He looked up from his station and the choir of servitors he directed.
‘Straight at them! Prepare for warp translation on my mark. Activate Geller fields.’
‘We shall have to drop the void shields,’ warned the Servile Scutus.
‘Do it!’ commanded Erwin.
The tyranids drew closer. The void shields dropped, exposing the ship to the impact of living torpedoes and balls of bioplasma. The anti-munitions cannons of the vessel worked ceaselessly. The point defence turrets and interception galleries reeked of overheated machinery, and were ankle deep in hot shell casings.
‘We are not going to make it,’ said Achemen. He pointed ahead. A shoal of many-armed assault beasts was speeding at the vessel.
‘Stand firm!’ ordered Erwin. ‘Launch torpedoes. Full spreads. Reload, fire again. Do not stop.’
Moments later, the prow ejected six heavy torpedoes at the creatures.
The timbre of the ship’s voice changed. Complex harmonics overlaid the rumble of the engines.
‘Translation in fifty seconds,’ intoned a dull machine voice.
The soapy sheen of a Geller field appeared around the vessel. There was no communication between the Angels Excelsis and the Angels Numinous ships, but the Staff of Light’s actions matched that of their would-be rescuer, and their own warp protection popped into being a moment later, flexing the void around it.
‘Translation in thirty seconds.’
‘We will be torn apart by gravitic shear,’ said Achemen. ‘I advise you to change course, captain, and make speed for a different translation point.’
‘The chances of survival are only moderately better,’ said Erwin. ‘The certainty of death to the xenos is only increased by our departure from their midst. Make for the centre of the interception shoal!’
‘Translation in twenty seconds.’
Thousands of spores, seeds, pods and living munitions peppered the oculus, mouths sucking and scraping at the armourglass as they slid off. The first round of torpedoes met their target, blasting apart a kraken ship. The second volley arrived more quickly, the distance between the closing splinter squadron and the escaping cruisers now considerably shortened, but these detonated prematurely, their drives fouled by suicidal creatures and their servitor brains deceived by false information projected by living chaff.
‘We are not going to make it. Damn it, Erwin, you have killed us all.’ Achemen placed his helmet back on and loosened his weapons. ‘All squads, prepare for boarding parties.’
Erwin ignored him. He leaned on the dais rail, hands gripping it so hard the metal bent. There was a chance. Where there was life, there was always a chance.
The chance was rapidly diminishing. Already grasping tentacles were unfurling, diamond-tipped appendages flexed, the teeth on their suckers twitching, ready to snare their prey.
‘Translation in ten seconds,’ said the voice.
‘That is it. They have us,’ said Achemen.
But as the first tentacle brushed the ship, it recoiled. The kraken slowed and broke formation clumsily, turning away from the vessel. One sailed dangerously close to the command tower, a vast, moist eye peered hungrily into the ship, and then it was gone.
‘Apparently not,’ said Erwin.
‘Translation ready,’ said the voice.
‘Close the shutters!’ bellowed Erwin. ‘Brace for translation! Engage warp engines!’
The shutters of the oculus descended, smearing the remains of dead tyranid void organisms across armourglass. Command deck lumens dipped and turned red.
‘Brace. Brace. Brace,’ sang a skull-faced servitor with a beautiful voice.
The ship’s immaterial drive howled at being activated in proximity to so much mass. Reality warping bent perceptions out of true, stretching space-time like spun sugar. The sickening threat of Geller field failure teetered on the cusp of realisation. The crews of both craft experienced a moment of disassociation, a feeling of being adrift in a sea of monsters far worse than the tyranids.
Outside, the black cloth of space balled in on itself. In place of the normally smooth creation of a warp rift, the void rumpled into a cluster of holes, and the veil of reality opened like melting plastek sheeting. Multiple smaller rifts sagged open, interspersed by hard knots of compressed reality. The ships sailed on directly towards the central tear of this cancerous fissure. They shuddered as gravity waves rucked up the void. A hard particle sleet of neutrons and gamma bursts slew servitors and burned out electronic systems, but still they plunged on towards the blazing unlight beyond the uneven rift.
The effect on the tyranids was catastrophic. Their ships were scattered like playthings flicked off a blanket. Those closest to the opening tear imploded messily on themselves, compressed into neutronic diamond, or were smeared bloodily across space.
With a final wrenching noise that echoed in the souls of all living things present, the empyrean was revealed. The ships passed out of reality with a violent flare, leaving the interception shoal in shreds. For thousands of miles around their translation point the tyranid fleet was decimated.
On board the command deck of the Splendid Pinion Erwin released the dais rail.
‘Well done, my servants,’ he said.
Sparks rained down from on high. The smell of cooked human flesh rose from wrecked servitors. Fires burned unchecked on three galleries at the back. But they had survived.
‘Captain,’ said the Servile of Response. ‘I have vox contact from the Staff of Light. They are firmly in our warp envelope and following.’
Erwin looked over to Achemen.
‘First sergeant, you spoke too hastily.’
‘I did not,’ said Achemen, staring ahead. ‘The enterprise was reckless.’
‘Yet you admit we are alive, and we have saved a valuable vessel in the process.’
‘Luck,’ said Achemen.
‘Maybe.’ Erwin stood taller. His pauldrons shifted back. ‘You will report to me later for punishment duty.’ He swept his gaze over his command deck. ‘Never gainsay me like that again.’
CHAPTER SIX
THE ARCHANGELIAN
While the muster gathered, Commander Dante spent much of his waking hours in the throne room at the pinnacle of the Archangelian, a soaring, needle-thin tower upon the Arx Murus. A processional staircase guarded by statues wound its way up the tower’s hollow centre, decorated with a continuous mural a thousand yards in length painted only in shades of red, black and bone. A rich runner, hand knotted by the Blood Angels themselves, carpeted the stair in a single, unbroken length. The rods that held it in place were of pink Baalite granite, the stops of platinum. A hundred thousand bloodstones glinted in the balustrade of the stair. Organ music blasted from the depths with such force it created a swirling draught in the shaft of the stairwell, buffeting the angelic cyber-constructs and the servo-skulls of loyal blood thralls centuries dead that thronged it.
Hundreds of Space Marines ascended the stair in slow unison, their steps timed with ritual precision. Dozens of Chapter heraldries were evident. Most of the supplicants were Chapter lords and captains, Chaplains, forge masters, Sanguinary priests and similarly high ranks. Though members of brotherhoods other than the Blood Angels, they were moved by the beautiful singing of the blood thralls as much as their hosts were, and hearkened to the teachings of the Blood Angels Chaplains stationed on the stair’s wide landings with as much respect.
Mephiston bypassed the ritual line in an unseemly hurry. Rhacelus followed. The appearance of the Lord of Death was greeted with a mixture of emotion by the gathered scions of Sanguinius. Many Librarians acknowledged him. The reaction of their brothers was less favourable.
Mephiston’s uncanny presence provoked fear in all men, even in the hardened hearts and minds of the Adeptus Astartes, and though it was but a shifting unease the Space Marines felt, it was still fear. Of all the sons of Sanguinius, only High Chaplain Astorath the Grim, Redeemer of the Lost, provoked more loathing.
Rhacelus felt the wash of emotion as his master surely must. Mephiston showed not a sign of caring. His will was hard as millennial ice, black as night and strong as iron. Opprobrium or approbation were equally unimportant to him.
Droning chants provided a simple baseline to the complexities of soaring plainsong. Proclamations of Sanguinius’ purity and responses of loyalty from the Space Marine lords added a rhythm. All were entwined with the rumbling organ music. Unity of purpose and of blood bound music and men together.
If this were only a common happening, thought Rhacelus, then nought would stand against us. The galaxy would know peace again. Rhacelus was old, and he had seen many gatherings of the Blood, but he was humbled by this unprecedented display of power and piety coiling its way around the Archangelian.
Mephiston caught Rhacelus’ thoughts.
‘It is impressive,’ he said aloud.
‘The Blood is strong with us,’ said Rhacelus.
‘You have spent too long these last weeks cloistered in the Diurnal Vaults, Rhacelus. Venture onto the Arx Murus and you will see the majesty of the force Dante has summoned.’
They arrived at the top of the stair. Blood Angels in the golden plate of the Sanguinary Guard barred a giant set of carved stone doors leading into the throne hall. Two skull-headed angels were depicted in the stone either side of a giant ‘IX’ picked out in gold, their skeletal hands held up to frame the numeral.
