Hand Of Abaddon, page 35
‘And what of us, my kâhl?’ her Grimnyr asked of her. Othed was by her side on the bridge of the Delver with Utri not too far away, keeping Vutred firmly in his sights. ‘Are we to join hammer and axe with the Imperials?’
Utri clearly heard this too, despite the general clamour around the bridge as the void battle wore on, and she caught him watching keenly for his kâhl’s reaction.
‘Let them break its back, if they can,’ she replied. ‘I will commit no more Kin lives to the ancestors without some proof of profit or grudgement in the offing.’ She turned to Othed. ‘What say the Votann?’
‘They are silent, my kâhl. In this, we are alone.’
Vutred could not decide if that was good or ill, or neither. Destiny, it appeared, was for her to determine. She hoped she would prove worthy.
Via the Delver’s advanced instruments she saw the troop ships had reached their point of no return. They would launch the assault now, or they would perish in the void.
‘Luck has. Need keeps. Toil earns,’ she whispered, and prayed to the ancestors anyway.
The Honour of Iax disgorged its entire complement of assault boats and boarding torpedoes. They seared unerringly across the battlesphere, streaking through explosions, heavy shell fire and accumulated debris fields, navigating each hazard with daring and exact timing.
Several of the boarding torpedoes took hits, one exploding brightly when the rest of the assault group was halfway across the distance between the strike cruiser and its gargantuan target. Mercifully, the craft was unmanned, as were all of the boarding torpedoes. If any made it through the interdicting fire, their incendiary payloads would detonate on impact and rip through what defences were in their way. Otherwise, they were effectively mobile chaff.
Areios watched it all unfold across his retinal lens display. A complex, monochromatic engagement played out for his tactical appraisal, informing him of any craft destroyed and the distance to each target zone. There were two, and the Sixth Company would split their forces equally across each of these ingress points. He knew the Militarum were coming in their wake, slower and with less confidence than the Astartes, whose fearlessness gave them a distinct advantage when charging into the mouth of hell.
The image in his helm also linked to a visual data-feed from the Caestus’ front axis. It blurred past at speed, fraught with the flash and flare of ephemeral explosions, the smeared jags of wreckage as the nimble craft dipped and wheeled around them. All the while, the Blackstone Fortress grew larger. Already colossal, even at distance, it rapidly became an all-consuming negative sun, obliterating everything else from sight.
An alert went off, flooding the tightly packed hold with amber light, as they hit a proximity marker.
‘For glory, brothers,’ he said sternly across the vox linking not only his own craft but all of the other manned crafts in their assault cadre. ‘For courage and honour.’
Through the visual feed all he saw then was black, a great starless expanse of black. He shut down the feed. Impact was imminent.
Meltas went to work cutting through the outer armour of the fortress. It sloughed away easily enough, like dead flesh yielding to a hot knife. In seconds, cold and strange light washed into the assault boat’s interior, and with ingrained, infallible precision the Ultramarines deployed. A rapid, nanosecond count told Areios all but one of the Caestus craft had reached the Blackstone Fortress. The others could not be considered lost at this point, for a Space Marine could withstand the void even without a ship to propel him. He knew of far stranger survivals. He put it out of his mind. He had three battle squads ready to engage.
His first impression upon entering the halls of the Blackstone Fortress was that it was unlike any starship he had ever encountered. The space was immense and vaulted with crystalline arches and thick columns of obsidian. The Ultramarines’ incursion had been so destructive as to destabilise a section of outer hull, which in turn took with it a piece of inner wall. The Caestus rams had partially sealed this gap but there was still a large breach, a gale of decompression rushing through it.
As if waiting for this prompt, the enemy stirred, hurling themselves from hatchways and antechambers, some attached to void-lines and spilling out like deranged ants, others wearing mag-locked boots. Some merely flung their bodies into the roaring vacuum, carried along like flotsam on a ferocious tide.
Mortal cultists, Areios realised. Most wore no discernible armour and minimal void protection, their exposed skin veneering with frost as they shouted their silent death oaths. Some did not even have breather masks and merely held their breath, eyes bloodshot, their lifespans measured in minutes, swinging hatchets and shooting crude firearms. Others were better protected, less berserk but still fanatical. Runic tattoos covered their skin or were burned and cut into their flesh. They had iron spikes in their foreheads, worn like dirty metal crowns. Chainblades whirred in their grubby hands and flensed skulls rattled against belts and on trophy racks.
Spilling from their shadowed places, the cultists hit like a rabid swarm.
Areios and his warriors met them, weapons raised and blazing.
Drussus and Cicero were at his side as he roared across the vox, leading a chorus of voices.
‘Avenging Son!’
By the time the lander touched down and its ramp unfurled, the Astartes ahead of them had already made significant headway. Kesh watched their gradually departing backs as they hacked and blasted a path through scores of cultists. They drove like a spear on the outer part of the hull, unflinching, never stopping, all momentum. The void was garlanded with droplets of blood.
Her company had come in right on the Astartes’ wake and although their slaughter was prodigious, they only engaged what was in front of them, leaving the rest for the Militarum to mop up. The fighting was immediately manic on both sides, as the Mordians – unused to the strange new theatre of war – struggled to find their cohesion. Kesh saw a sergeant misjudge his footing, fail to make mag-lock and carom off into the darkness, his troopers trying and failing to grasp him. Another stumbled into a cultist’s axe, her helm visor split and venting air. She suffocated, even as her killer drifted off into the endless black untethered and unprotected against the cold of space.
Their enemy, Kesh quickly surmised, was insane. Literally throwing their bodies at the Imperials, flailing with blades or firing wildly with solid-shot weapons. Large smoke plumes drooled from the barrels, most of the bullets missing their targets and left to fly forever. Some hit, through sheer volume more than skill, their firers pushed back with every trigger pull in the zero gravity. The Mordians were taking damage.
‘They’re killing us out here,’ rasped Munser over the helm-vox, his voice almost shrill with barely contained terror. He stared at the outer dark surrounding them and then quickly averted his eyes.
The landers had managed to alight on a massive docking pad. Towers, overhead bridges and antenna arrays rose up around them, but they were in the open, more or less, and the gaping hole left by the explosion of a boarding torpedo yawned widely a few hundred feet ahead. The Astartes had already plunged through the breach, their assault boat scraping to a halt just outside the zone of destruction now its incursion weaponry was not needed. It peeled off almost instantly, engines firing and propulsion jets turning it on its horizontal axis for rapid egress.
Kesh kept her head down, making use of the cover, which amounted to the manufactured undulations of the fortress’ outer hull. She was urging her troopers out of the landers. Out, out and onto the dock. One of the large transports exploded brightly and briefly, torn apart by rocket-propelled grenade, the lazy contrail from the missile still hanging in the void like a pale white chain. Mordians were flung aside by the blast. Many were lost to the void as they pinwheeled off into darkness, their screams gradually petering to nothing over the vox.
‘We need to get inside,’ she said to Munser. ‘Push forward and link up with the Astartes.’
Las-fire whipped in blurred flashes as the Militarum fought back.
‘But first we need to cohere, fight as a unit,’ she added and began to exert her command over the platoon sergeants, giving out orders, cajoling and herding her men into something approaching order. She made use of Munser, tasked him with a section of the company to occupy his mind and drown out the fear. Mavin, Vosko and Lodrin stayed close, her command squad loyal and determined. She had instilled that in them. They followed her because of who she was, not what she might be. That thought, even in the midst of battle, was a comfort.
Gradually, across blistering fields of fire, the Mordians came together. The intervening minutes had allowed the survivors to become more accustomed to their void-gear, and soon a host of mag-booted troopers strode towards their target. Across a gaping expanse, Kesh caught sight of one of the other assault groups. Here, part of the outer wall had sheared completely away and the Militarum landers were plunging straight into the breach. Her forces had to endure the slog and the razor-edged gauntlet of gunfire and savage cultist blades.
‘We are the scions of Mordian,’ she roared down the vox over the company-wide band. ‘Born in darkness, we fear no shadow, not even death!’
‘Not even death!’ the crackling, patchy refrain replied.
It spurred them on, and in a few more minutes they had swept the cultists away, crushed them against the sheer relentlessness of the advance.
The inner darkness of the fortress beckoned.
Rostov gripped the haft of the silverwood staff hard as they came in behind the engine flare of the Militarum lander. The pain suppressors had left him numb and he wanted to feel something, to remind himself he was still present in this moment.
Nirdrangar and the other storm troopers sat around him, unmoving in their assault cradles, dead-eyed and ready. It was stuffy, close, the inner hull rattling with every small debris impact or lurch of the engines as the pilot made evasive manoeuvres. The hold of the gunship was smaller than the landers, but it accommodated the troops well enough, even with the addition of the Silent Sister.
She had tried to persuade him to remain on board the Wyrmslayer Queen with Helvintr, a stolen few seconds before their delayed deployment. He had been in the armourium, preparing his gear. One of Helvintr’s bondsmen had repaired his own armour. It felt good to be wearing it again, though it hung off his body more loosely than before, the straps and seals adjusted to his slighter frame.
The Silent Sister had taken in his debilitated appearance in a single glance. He had only passed out once, putting them slightly behind schedule.
It will kill you, she had signed.
Thinking of his condition now, the hollows in his cheeks and around his eyes, the sallow complexion of his once ruddy skin, Rostov did not deny it.
‘I have to see it done, Syreniel.’
I have no desire to see you die, Leonid.
‘I do not relish the prospect myself, though I am glad you’re at my side.’
You may come to regret saying that.
He had laughed at that, a small, sad sound. ‘This is the end, one way or another. You said this may all be the Emperor’s will. Trust in that. This is my role, I feel it.’
We are all merely servants, Leonid Rostov.
‘Yes, on both sides of this war. Our enemies have masters too.’
Then we must hope that the avatars of His will are stronger than theirs.
‘And so you see, I have to finish this. I must be there… I must be there the day we kill the Hand of Abaddon. And that’s why I need you, Syreniel. To come with me and bring me back, alive or dead.’
She stared for a moment, impossible to read.
I can do that.
It gave some small comfort thinking back on their exchange. She gave no outward sign of it now, her focus as razor sharp as her sword.
The proximity alert sounded, signalling imminent debarkation.
Rostov put on his helm, and the inner visor screen lit green. This was it.
Alive or dead.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
the darkness within
what is this fell place?
abattoir
Areios left behind the dead as he and his brothers tore through the defenders of the fortress. As the Militarum landers passed through the breach in the outer wall they would be met by a veritable graveyard of corpses, the slain cultists still hooked up to cables, drifting in the airless void or mag-locked to the deck, their lightless upper limbs floating as if underwater. Bloodshot eyes wide, mouths fixed in a frozen rictus.
The Astartes moved on, the way behind them sealing shut like a rapidly healing wound. The Blackstone Fortress was cutting off their escape. The Militarum troopers hurried through behind them, not everyone making it. Areios paid it little mind, pushing on into the fortress, and quickly consulted the data-slate built into his vambrace.
It was quieter now as the roar of escaping pressure had cut off, and an eerie silence was asserting itself. There were no defenders either, not here at least. His bio-scans revealed nothing. No heat or movement at all. He cast his gaze around. The chamber they found themselves in was immense, the size of a battleship’s embarkation deck – but Areios was reminded of the Forlorn Temple and its deceiving dimensions.
One of his brethren stopped to peer into the black mirrorglass. The entire massive chamber appeared to be constructed from it.
‘Something inside the glass…’ he began.
Areios shouted a warning.
Berion jerked up his weapon, a hair trigger from firing when a spear of obsidian pierced his gorget and went right through into his neck. Then he fired, a nerve impulse, and bolter shells strafed the dark glass, cracking it in several places.
Another battle-brother, Acadius, suddenly convulsed as a black glass lance punched through his chest, impaling him to the ground. Drussus smashed it before being stabbed through the shoulder himself by another black spear. He cried out before shattering it in two, leaving the fore end still embedded in his pauldron.
The Astartes laid down suppressing fire, hammering the walls and columns with controlled bursts from their bolt rifles. Closing ranks, the Militarum soldiers who had made it through the breach did the same, the gloomy chamber lighting up with muzzle flash and las-flare.
It lasted almost thirty seconds before Areios called a halt. The eerie quiet resumed, growing with the fading echo of the final las-bolt, but mercifully whatever had agitated the room’s defences had stopped. Everyone held their breath.
Areios looked to Cicero, who had unclipped his auspex.
‘Nothing here I can make sense of, brother-lieutenant,’ he said. ‘We triggered a mechanism of some kind, a reaction from its innate defences. Though it is unlike any vessel I have ever encountered before. I would suggest we avoid peering too closely into the glass.’
‘I concur,’ replied Areios, somewhat ruefully.
Berion was dead, having bled out all over the floor, his head almost detached from his body. Valentius was already about the business of harvesting his gene-seed.
‘Apothecary?’ Areios enquired, his gaze falling on Acadius, who lay on his back unmoving, his question unspoken but obvious.
Valentius looked over, impassive. He ran a bio-scan as the rest of the fighters in the room kept a wary eye on the shadows.
‘He will not survive. The best I can offer him now is the Emperor’s mercy, and take the Chapter’s due.’
Areios let out a quiet breath. ‘See it done.’ He made a quick assessment. Two passageways appeared to lead out of the chamber. He consulted a map on his data-slate, an approximate rendering of the Blackstone Fortress’ interior derived from the Kin’s deep-scans. It was imperfect and already seemed out of date. The version of the chamber on his screen had three exits, not two, but he didn’t need the third and so followed the path that would lead him towards the heart of the fortress. Or at least, he hoped it still would.
They moved off, on edge now. Areios heard the Militarum muttering fearfully to each other, trying not to raise their voices or step in the wrong place, as if every flagstone hid some danger or trap.
Via the route designated on the map, they reached another room with heavy pipes and wiring hanging down like intestines from a vaulted ceiling. Somewhere below and out of sight, a machine could be heard whirring and clicking. As they moved in a narrow column, staying away from the walls, Areios abruptly felt the room trembling beneath his feet. He called a halt again, and went to one knee to place his gauntlet against the ground to better feel the tremors.
Then he looked ahead and saw the three exit routes slowly reducing to one as the walls appeared to slide and shift.
‘It’s moving,’ he said, surging to his feet. ‘It’s moving! On me now, brothers!’ Areios burst into a sprint, his warriors on his heels as they made for the doorway. It too was sealing, even as another had begun to open up behind them. The path ahead was the one they needed, the one from the increasingly inaccurate map.
The Militarum had given chase too but were far slower than the Astartes. Only a handful made it through after the Ultramarines, Areios hauling through the last. The rest were now consigned to the darkness behind them. One of the pale-faced troopers looked up at him with wide, afraid eyes.
‘Emperor bless you, my lord.’ She lowered her gaze, trembling.
‘Hold to your warrior’s creed, and your loyalty to the Throne,’ said Areios. ‘It will see us through.’
He move off to examine the doorway, now a solid wall, that had closed behind them. Through it, Areios swore he could hear the sound of screeching before even that too cut away to silence. They tried the vox, but there was nothing but static.
‘What is this fell place?’ Drussus rasped in private over the vox, so as not to spook the human troopers.
‘Nothing good,’ Cicero replied.
