Planetkill, page 12
Vaanes leaned down and said, ‘How did you get this?’
The soldier didn’t answer, his mouth working in a monotone wail of pure terror, his eyes squeezed shut as though he could escape the terror of his situation by keeping it from sight.
‘How did you get this?’ shouted Vaanes, gripping the soldier’s jacket and tearing him from Cadaras Grendel. Hysterical babbling was his only answer and Vaanes screamed his question again, his right fist pulled back and ready to strike, the fizzing crackle of the lightning energy loud in his ears.
‘Do it…’ hissed Grendel, and the urge to kill this man, to hurt him, to maim him and inflict suffering beyond measure was greater than anything Vaanes had ever known. Vaanes heard a sibilant whisper in his ear as though an unseen speaker’s voice was hidden in the rising buzz of his lightning claw, a voice only he could hear.
The sensation was not unpleasant, a silent urging and a silken pressure on his mind that promised new wonders, pleasures undreamed of and the ecstasy of experience. All this and more were encapsulated in the wordless whisper and Ardaric Vaanes knew without understanding that this was the offer and the price of the bargain he had struck with Honsou on Medrengard.
His vision narrowed until all he could see was the Ultramarines honour badge, the winking silver and gold mocking him with their purity and lustre. The face of Uriel Ventris appeared in the forefront of his mind and he cried out in anguished rage.
The lightning claw slammed forward, punching through the trooper’s chest and exploding from his back. The blow continued and his fist followed the claws through the man’s torso, pulverising bone, heart and lungs on its way through the substance of his body.
Vaanes tore at the body until his hissing claws had reduced it to scraps of torn meat, a ruined gruel of smashed bone and offal. The breath heaved in his lungs and he stepped back from the wreckage of the man’s remains and felt a wave of acceptance pour through him, his limbs filled with energy and exhilaration.
He heard Cadaras Grendel laughing and felt the killer’s gauntlet slap him on the shoulder guard. Words were spoken, but he didn’t hear them, too caught up in the wonder he had just experienced.
Vaanes stared down at what he had done, the bodies around him so torn that their very humanity was obliterated. Finally, he understood the lie he had been living since the shame that had driven him from the Raven Guard.
There was no self-delusional status he could impart to salve his own conscience and no middle ground between loyalist and traitor. In the Long War, such labels were meaningless anyway – there were only victors and defeated.
At last, the truth of what he had become was apparent in this baptism of murder and blood.
Ardaric Vaanes welcomed it.
The central control room of Defence Platform Ultra Nine reeked of blasting charges and blood. With the doors blown, the men inside had no chance of life and had made the best job they could of disabling the systems and calling for reinforcements, but Honsou knew the nearest Imperial ship was many hours distant.
Adept Cycerin stood before the smashed consoles, a morass of writhing cables snaking from the cavity of his bio-mechanical chest to mesh with the inner workings of the smashed consoles.
The doomed mortals had been thorough in their vandalism, but Cycerin had made swift work in undoing the damage, and his unique talents allowed him to coax the required life from the smashed systems without difficulty.
‘Is everything ready?’ asked Honsou, impatient to see the results of his labours bear fruit.
Cadaras Grendel shrugged as he ran his eyes over the buckled and las-shot console. Red lights winked on surviving, brass-rimmed dials and sparks fizzed and sputtered.
‘Hard to say for sure, but we swapped over the missiles’ payload,’ said Grendel. ‘All but one is loaded up with the stuff we took from Golbasto. It’s up to Cycerin now.’
‘Why all but one?’ asked Ardaric Vaanes and Honsou caught a subtle change in the warrior’s voice, a shift in tone of a warrior who has at last come to know himself.
‘The last one is a message to Ventris.’
‘What does it say?’
‘It’s not what it says,’ said Honsou, ‘it’s what it represents.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘That you don’t walk away from a fight with Honsou without paying a price.’
A salvo of sixteen orbital torpedoes surged from the planetside launch bays, followed by another rippling salvo seconds later. Another three salvos launched until all but one of the platform’s entire payload of missiles was expended. Each missile dropped away rapidly from the platform, the blue-hot coals of their engines firing for long enough to put them in a ballistic trajectory towards the planet’s surface.
They swooped downwards like hunting raptors, their formation breaking up as the spread pattern implanted into each warhead by Adept Cycerin took hold of each one. The missiles diverged until their contrails were spread around the planet like a glittering spiderweb.
Heat shields burned with conical fire as the missiles plunged through the atmosphere, emerging into the crystal skies of the planet. Hurried defences scrambled to lock onto the missiles, but launched from low orbit, they were already travelling too quickly and were too close to be engaged with any hope of success.
As the missiles reached a predetermined altitude over the planet’s surface, each one exploded and spread its viral payload into the air. Vast quantities of the experimental Heraclitus strain were released into the atmosphere in doses billions of times greater than had been employed on Golbasto.
All across the planet, a terrible rain fell, the genius of Magos Szalin of the Ordos Biologis wreaking terrible damage as it went to work on the indigenous and xenos vegetation.
A few short years ago, this world had suffered the horror of invasion, monstrous swarms of ferocious alien killers rampaging across its surface. A great war had been fought; in space, in the air, on land and finally in the very bowels of a living spacecraft that had travelled from another galaxy for uncounted aeons.
Though the invasion had been defeated, the dreadful legacy of the alien invaders remained to taint the planet’s ecology forever. From pole to pole, horrific spires of dreadful alien vegetable matter towered over the landscape, slowly choking the life from the natural landscape.
The alien flora had subsumed entire continents, a rapacious instinct to devour encoded in every strand of its genetic structure. Nutrients were leeched from the soil and used to create hyper-fertile spore growths that drifted on the heated currents of the air to seed new regions and pollute yet more land.
Only rigorous burning policies ensured the planet’s survival – for a world of the Imperium could not simply be abandoned, not after all the blood that had been shed in its defence. The shining steel cities, islands in a sea of alien growth, still produced masses of munitions and armoured vehicles for Imperial wars throughout the subsector.
Salvoes of anti-plant missiles, slash and burn pogroms and pesticide overflights were a matter of routine since the defeat of the invasion.
Such things were thankless tasks, but necessary for the planet’s continued survival.
But all that was rendered moot in the face of Magos Szalin’s creation.
Developed from a partial fragment of ancient research conducted by Magos Heraclitus, the bio-toxins were intended to increase the growth rate of crops on agri-worlds. Magos Szalin had taken the next step and pioneered techniques designed to increase the productivity of such worlds a thousand fold.
Now that work was put to the ultimate test, mixing its monstrous potential for increased growth with an alien organism that was at the apex of its biological efficiency.
Within seconds of the Heraclitus strain being released into the atmosphere, the alien growths reacted to its touch, surging upwards and over the planet’s terrain. Slash and burn teams were instantly overwhelmed by mutant growths, poisonous plant life expanding kilometres in seconds as the virulent growth strain sent its metabolism into overdrive.
Huge amounts of nutrients were sucked from the ground and released as enormous quantities of heat, raising the ambient temperature of the world in a matter of moments. Oxygen was sucked greedily from the atmosphere by horrifyingly massive spore chimneys and the planet’s protective layers were gradually stripped in unthinking biological genocide.
This was not the rapid death of Exterminatus, but ecological death of worldwide proportions.
Panicked messages were hurled out into the immaterium and only those with the money, influence or cunning escaped on hastily prepped ships that fled the planet’s destruction.
But these were few compared to the billions left behind and, weeks later, as the last of the planet’s atmosphere was stripped from it by the hyper-evolved alien biology, stellar radiation swept the surface, killing every living thing and laying waste to all that remained.
Months after the launch of the missiles, nothing remained alive, the deadly alien vegetation killed by lethal levels of radiation and the frigid cold that gripped the planet without its protective atmosphere.
All that now remained of the planet was a dead, lifeless ball of rock, its surface seared and barren, with only the skeletal remains of its blackened cities left as evidence that human beings had once lived upon it.
The silver-skinned drop-ship fell through the airless vacuum of the planet. A host of Marauders and Raptors followed it down, though nothing lived here now. The drop-ship’s retros screamed as the pilot brought it in on final approach, the skids deploying just before it landed in the midst of dead plant matter and scorched alien trees.
A drogue arm deployed to test the external environment and once it retracted, the pressure door on the side of the craft opened and a heavy ramp extended to the surface.
Cautiously, for none aboard truly felt safe, a squad of Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-Guard clad in heavy environment suits – similar in function and design to the Terminator armour employed by the Adeptus Astartes – emerged and descended to the planet’s surface.
Following the group was a figure whose heavy armour was swathed in vivid red robes emblazoned with the black and white cog symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
His name was Magos Locard and this was not the first time he had come to this world.
With quick, precise gestures, Locard directed the Tech-Guard to collect samples of the dead plants and the underlying strata. Diggers and corers rolled down from the drop-ship and Locard watched them as they gathered information that might offer some clue as to what had caused this catastrophe.
Despite the many augmentations applied to his flesh, Locard was not so far removed from humanity that the fate of this world did not cause him great sadness. Like many others, he had fought to save it and had been instrumental in what he had thought was its salvation.
Now all that was ashes and Locard felt a great anger build within him.
Whoever had done this would pay.
A Tech-Guard soldier approached Locard and said, ‘My lord, we’ve found it.’
Locard followed the man as he waded through thick piles of ashen vegetation to the source of what had led them to this exact place. Though the planet was now bereft of life, a constantly repeating signal had reached into space, its plaintive voice almost lost in the void, but shrill and insistent, demanding attention.
The vegetation thinned and Locard realised he was walking in a deep trench carved by the impact of something that had fallen from the skies.
‘Here, my lord,’ said the Tech-Guard, backing away from Locard.
Locard saw a battered silver tube, perhaps ten metres in length – an orbital torpedo, though his exo-armour’s auspex told him there was no ordnance or explosives loaded in the warhead. This was the source of the signal and Locard knew that someone had wanted them to find this.
He walked along the length of the torpedo towards the payload bay and deployed bolt-clasps from the forearm of his armour. One by one, he removed the bolts of the payload bay and hurled it aside when he unscrewed the last one.
The inside of the bay was dark, but his enhanced ocular implants could easily make out what it contained. He frowned and reached inside the bay to remove its contents.
He turned to the Tech-Guard next to him and handed him a cracked helmet, the paint chipped and one eye lens missing. The helmet was a deep blue and bore a symbol on the forehead that was known to Locard.
The inverted omega of the Ultramarines Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.
‘I don’t understand,’ said the Tech-Guard, turning the helmet over in his hands.
‘Nor I,’ said Locard, turning and marching from the missile. ‘Not yet.’
As the Tech-Guard followed Locard he said, ‘What happened to this place?’
‘This place has a name, soldier,’ snapped Locard. ‘Imperial citizens died here.’
‘Apologies, my lord, I meant no disrespect,’ said the Tech-Guard. ‘What was it called?’
Locard paused, casting his gaze across the blasted wasteland that was all that remained of a once proud Imperial world that had stood defiantly before the horror of a Tyranid invasion.
‘It was called Tarsis Ultra.’
THE EMPEROR WEPT
Simon Dyton
Planet-fall was a long time ago. Adept Biologis Hieronym Rottle could remember marvelling at the enormous barbs and blisters punching through the lower atmosphere like islands in an ocean of curdled milk. Under scalding clouds, continental forges glittered and winked over magma fields and core plunges. He could remember vast tectonic fractures splitting the dim surface of the planet.
It was all such a long time ago.
He could remember the drop-ship swooping over the vast, viscous northern sea, black, stagnant, rolling slowly on rotten tides. He could remember the genetor facility looming out of the mist, towering towards the pale sun like a barbaric totem to the Omnissiah. That was all he could remember of his arrival.
Such a long, long time ago.
After the cortical splicing of his own brain, Rottle couldn’t remember why he was transferred from the chemical sinks of Mars. But he didn’t need to remember. Reason was logic enough; his transferral was the consequence of cause – all premised upon service to the blessed Machine.
He could remember that the data conduit onboard the drop-ship did not register the research laboratorium’s identifying code or the existence of the planet below. It was as if the fortress-like facility hung in cold, lonely space, unknown and utterly knowable but for his presence.
There had been rumours during the long journey from Mars. He had heard in his one remaining organic ear that the planet had no official name, which was long ago expunged from Explorator records, Imperial Navy charts and Terran libraria by deletion orders from the highest offices of the Adeptus Terra, from the High Lords of Terra themselves. Even the Inquisition had been persuaded to overlook its existence. The only off-world record of the planet was on Mars, deep within the most ancient datacores, buried beneath the iron-plated flanks of Olympus Mons. The rumours said that the Adeptus Mechanicus were the sole overlords of the genetor facility here – and of the unnamed planet that it called home.
One talkative initiate, his humanity still partially intact before neural enhancement, had told Rottle that the planet was once Umbracogg’s World, named after a pilgrim who settled the world after explorator fleet Majestechnicum discovered the ball of rock, fire and bile thousands of years ago. But no one knew why the Adeptus Mechanicus reclaimed it. Another initiate, fearfully awaiting cerebral spooling, told Rottle that the name Umbracogg was only intended to remind the planet’s handful of inhabitants that they lived in the shadow of the Cog, in umbra Coga in low Gothic, where the Omnissiah’s most dangerous knowledge might be hidden. Perhaps the initiate was raving, Rottle had thought. Cerebral spooling was a trauma to the flesh. For Rottle, knowing did not need naming; that the Omnissiah’s intent was known unto Himself was data-sufficient.
Hieronym Rottle had wanted only to begin his work. There was no higher worship of the Omnissiah than the sanctification of a gene-vat with a binary hymn, the holy mechanistration of a techvigil, or the ignition of a blessed lumosphoid. Rottle sought no learning for himself; he sought only to celebrate the Omnissiah’s knowledge, the sanctity of data preserved and cherished.
When the drop-ship landed, he never saw the initiates again. They vanished, taken swiftly into the facility’s lower levels. Years later, Archmagos Biologis Vaeyvor would tell Rottle that such initiates became monitoring servitors, vital parts of the research station’s security network. Rottle recorded this information in his memarchive. By then, he had long ceased to contemplate the fleshed.
Hieronym Rottle was nothing if not a servant of the Omnissiah.
His work was its own salvation.
For such work it was.
On this anonymous planet, in an unnamed Mechanicus fortress-laboratorium, Hieronym Rottle made the Life-Eater.
The Life-Eater. One of the hallowed munitions of Exterminatus, the Killer of Worlds, the direst sentence brought to bear by the Holy Ordos of the Emperor’s Inquisition against a planetary population whose crimes against the Throne of Terra deserved annihilation, absolute and entire. Wholesale planetary destruction.
This planet was where servants of the Adeptus Mechanicus made the Life-Eater virus for the great fleets of the Segmentum Obscurus. In an age when Cyclonic and Incineratus torpedoes were widely used for Exterminatus, and when even some members of the Inquisition frowned upon the Life-Eater for reasons the Mechanicus had long forgotten, the magi biologi of the Adeptus Mechanicus still made one of ancient Terra’s most prodigious weapons. Flesh was imperfect, as Archmagos Biologis Vaeyvor had said so many times, and the engine of its annihilation was praise indeed to the Omnissiah.
