Carcharadons: Void Exile, page 16
The air had become a metal hail. Most of Second Squad had switched to firing on the fist-wielding Kastelan, and its repulsor grid was flaring again and again as it robbed each incoming round of kinetic energy, detonating them in the air all around Kordi.
‘Strike here,’ he heard Ze-One-Prime shouting. At the same moment, his visor blinked with an update. The dominus had again somehow accessed his display, and this time had highlighted a small part of the Kastelan towering over him, a circular metal node on the upper right of the robot’s cuirass, still jutting free of the pulsating meat that was starting to envelope it.
Kordi didn’t question the advice.
He flipped his knife and launched upwards, slamming its hilt against the node. It crunched, and took two more rapid hits before breaking off with a fizzing discharge of electricity.
Immediately, the thrumming that had been running through his very bones ceased. Kordi realised he had broken the repulsor grid’s transmitter.
Reaching it had left him unbalanced, and all he could do was throw himself to the ground as the addled, mutating robot swung again, a fist once more scraping off his pack, its disrupter field chipping at the ceramite and exposing silver plasteel beneath.
As he fell, his razor-keen senses caught the shriek of an incoming shell. He’d barely registered it before the corrupt Kastelan exploded.
The blast picked him off the ground and flung him several yards across the shattered rockcrete, embroiled in flame and shorn metal. His armour barked warnings in his ear, and he rolled with the impact, up again before he was even fully aware of what had happened.
Rangu’s Hammer had dealt the kill-shot. The Vindicator siege tank had rolled forward behind the assault and had punched a shell into the Kastelan from point-blank range. Kordi had been dangerously close to the detonation, but the robot itself had taken the worst of it. His armour had endured only a pair of minor penetrations, and his genhanced physiology ensured there was no danger of concussion or disorientation.
Both Kastelans were now down, one reduced to scrap metal and twitching, unidentifiable meat, the other motionless and mangled by concentrated bolter fire, on its knees and surrounded by the rapidly cooling rockcrete its phosphor blasters had melted.
Kordi briefly saluted Arihu, who was still manning his Vindicator’s storm bolter from its top hatch, then checked Ze-One-Prime. The dominus had been thrown over by the detonation, but had righted their insectoid body with their cane and started shaking dust from their robes. Second Squad had taken no casualties.
‘Move in,’ Kordi ordered.
They swept across the remainder of the square to the hub bunker, where Ze-One-Prime plugged one of their mechadendrites into the eye socket of the servo-skull that had been lock-slaved to the blast hatch. There was a thud, and the portal iris opened from the centre, admitting Ze-One-Prime’s hunched form.
‘Wall-tide,’ Kordi ordered, arraying the Carcharodons in a defensive perimeter around the entrance. He scanned the square, his visor pinging him a swarm of potential target locks, but most of the surviving skitarii were preoccupied with murdering one another.
That ceased with a crack, and a discharge of energy from the router spikes protruding from the bunker roof.
Eerily, like puppets whose strings were being pulled slowly taut by an invisible hand, the skitarii ceased their feral fighting and rose, tall and still. A sudden calm gripped the interior of the fortress.
Ze-One-Prime came hurrying back out of the hub, the optics on their mechadendrites bright as they surveyed their handiwork.
‘Praise the Omnissiah,’ they intoned.
‘You are sure they have been cleansed?’ Kordi asked, watching the nearest skitarii warily, as those who had been beating and hacking one another to death now simply stood side by side staring into nothing, robes ragged, sparks occasionally spurting from ruptured circuits and ripped actuators.
‘No,’ Ze-One-Prime admitted. ‘Some will be damaged beyond repair, and I doubt most will survive the data-shriving I will have to perform. They are infested with scrapcode. But I vouch that none will raise a hand against you.’
That sounded like cold comfort to Kordi, but it would have to do.
‘We must make the fortress defensible,’ he said, finally allowing his attention to shift beyond the battle-scarred courtyard. ‘The bastions need to be reinforced–’
He paused. There was something beyond the background brutality of the city being pounded into pieces around them. Bestial screeches, underpinned by a rising rumble – the sound of a multitude in motion. It was coming from the direction of the skybridge at their backs.
‘The Twinfort at the far end has been overrun,’ Ze-One-Prime said, gazing through the arches of the bridge and along its length, apparently aware of things that Kordi could not yet sense. ‘The skybridge has been compromised.’
CHAPTER XVI
Khauri and Te Kahurangi passed through the Deepzone together. There was a stillness about them. The warp itself seemed to have lost its bite, like a sea becalmed at the heart of a tempest.
Te Kahurangi was the Chief Librarian of the Carcharodon Astra, and the most venerable member of the Chapter. He was the Pale Nomad, and his power had always seemed all but absolute to Khauri. He was his mentor. He was also the one who had saved his soul from damnation and, in doing so, had inducted him into the Chapter.
‘I am thankful you have come,’ he told Te Kahurangi as they passed through the narrow, shrouded streets. Like Khauri, his armour was the deep blue of the Chapter’s Librarius, but it was heavily inscribed with exile markings and the most potent of arcane wards, and hung with predatory trinkets – talons and fangs and shards of scrimshawed bones. Unlike almost all of his brethren, he rarely wore his helmet, his long white hair and the grey, deathly cast of his wizened and tattooed face displayed to friend and foe alike.
‘I told you I would hear you if you called,’ he replied.
Khauri wondered for a moment just how it was the Chief Librarian had come to be present on Diamantus, but he knew there would be no easy answer to such a question.
‘You are wondering perhaps if I am truly here,’ Te Kahurangi said with the barest hint of humour. ‘Perhaps we are vision-walking, or communing only in spirit? Perhaps I am projecting my likeness from the depths of the Outer Dark? Wouldn’t that be trite? Do you wish to reach out and touch me, to be sure I am flesh and blood?’
Ordinarily, he would have felt a moment’s shame that his thoughts had been read by another psyker, but with Te Kahurangi it was no surprise. Besides, it could just as easily be his intuition.
‘I heard your call,’ he carried on. ‘Many are the hidden pathways you have yet to discover, but your time will come. Some you know already.’
That answer seemed somewhat contradictory to Khauri, but he knew better than to linger on such things.
‘I would not have called if I did not think the situation demanded it,’ he said instead. ‘We were correct in some regards, but mistaken in others. The hulk has destroyed itself, and in doing so has brought ruination to this world. The forces of the Archenemy abound. I am certain they mean to do more than simply slaughter the machine-men.’
‘Your analysis is correct,’ Te Kahurangi responded. ‘I believe there is a great threat to the Imperium here, a danger beyond the damage that will be done by the loss of a potent forge world. Diamantus is already broken. It is what comes after that we must stop, before it is too late.’
‘And what comes after?’ Khauri asked.
‘I will show you,’ Te Kahurangi said. ‘But before we indulge in the esoteric and the arcane, let us honour our Chapter’s ways by dealing with practicalities. The forces of the Archenemy are upon us, and the Third Company lies wounded and scattered. They must be rallied if we are to have a hope of stopping what is coming. The squads must be brought together, the surviving Mechanicus must be found and made to coordinate with our efforts. The company requires leadership and direction. If we are not able to provide that, we will be overrun before we can even hope to retaliate against the Archenemy’s schemes.’
‘Of course,’ Khauri said. ‘I suspect most of the squads are indeed scattered, but it was good fortune that the worst of the wreckage is striking Mount Antikythera. Most of the company was redeployed from the upper slopes to its base some days ago.’
‘Good fortune, or your prescience?’ Te Kahurangi asked with a thin smile.
‘You know it can be difficult to say.’
‘There is truth in that. The company has suffered, but then it has been suffering for some time.’
‘An unavoidable reality,’ Khauri said guardedly.
‘Not any longer. The Shiver will soon stand as complete as it once was.’
‘I do not understand,’ Khauri admitted, frowning behind his helm.
Te Kahurangi stopped and looked up at him, a smile on his thin lips as he spoke.
‘Bail Sharr is with us, here on Diamantus.’
Either the salvation pod’s escape hatch had rusted shut after centuries of disuse, or the curse besetting Grim Destiny’s enslaved wreckage was still in effect. Either way, the door refused to unbar after the pod had ploughed a furrow through Megafactorum Primus’ ruins.
It made little difference to Sharr. He kicked his way out, the metal ripping open with a shriek followed by a bang.
He rose from the smoking, blackened container, a weapon in each hand, hunting for targets.
The area where the salvation pod had crash-landed looked as though it was part of some sort of industrial complex, replete with smokestacks, waste flumes and electro-coil blocks, but most of it was in ruins. Part of that had clearly been caused by Sharr’s salvation pod and those of the other Exiles – they had all come down in the same sector. According to Sharr’s display, Talon was just a few hundred yards east. He moved towards the marker.
Talon’s pod had landed in a processing plant. Several of its walls and part of its great sloping roof were still standing, stencils on the sooty, red brickwork directing the flow of a labour force that was currently absent, crushed and buried beneath the building’s gutted remains.
Talon met Sharr at a half-intact doorway, masonry scraping beneath his footfalls. The former Devourer said nothing, but acknowledged Sharr with a nod.
‘Blood Eye and Shadow are on the move,’ Sharr noted after a glance at his display. ‘Recommend we hold and wait for them here.’
‘Agreed,’ Talon said tersely.
The city shook. Debris from the broken hulk was still raining down on what Sharr took to be one of the forge world’s primary manufacturing sites. He had little other information to go on; the Exiles had been given only minimal data concerning Diamantus. It wasn’t supposed to be part of their operation. They were only planetside because they had failed.
It was another burden, another shame. It burned within Sharr, and he knew there was nothing he could do to douse it. The only reprieve he could hope for was the mindlessness of the Blindness, or oblivion itself.
Blood Eye emerged from the choking dust pall, his crimson lenses piercing the gloom while the rest of him was still a dark, indistinct bulk. Shadow arrived from the opposite direction moments later, his tread almost silent despite the rubble underfoot.
‘What now?’ Talon demanded, none of the Exiles offering the Chapter’s greeting to one another.
‘We need to establish contact with the Mechanicus,’ Blood Eye said. ‘Ensure they do not mistake us for the enemy, and then attempt to bolster their defensive operations.’
‘If they have any,’ Shadow said humourlessly, looking about at the seemingly abandoned wreckage of the dropsite.
‘We shall know soon enough,’ Blood Eye said, unlocking the auspex.
‘That is the extent of our plan?’ Sharr demanded. ‘To subordinate ourselves to the Mechanicus?’
‘Until we know more about what defences remain, making contact with them is all we can hope to do,’ Blood Eye pointed out. ‘We must find out who yet resists, and how many of the Archenemy’s damned creations survived planetfall.’
Sharr supposed that was true enough, but it did not help cure his need to make amends for the Exiles’ failure. He simply gestured for Blood Eye to lead on.
They moved through the ruins of the processing plant. Beyond it they discovered a roadway, dark rockcrete marked with yellow traffic symbols, partially scarred by one of the salvation pods. It ran uphill, flanked on the far side by a raised, parallel rail line.
‘Up or down?’ Shadow asked.
‘Down, for now,’ Blood Eye said. ‘I am picking up possible returns.’
The four Carcharodons kept to the edge of the roadway bordering the arches of the rail line, able to use the structure as cover if need be. The buildings on either side were little better than the ones the salvation pods had come down amidst. The air shivered with ongoing impacts and the distant wailing of manufactorum sirens, as though the city itself was screaming. There were no signs of life.
Shadow was on point, and highlighted a particularly heavy cloud of black smoke broiling up above the jagged rooftops ahead.
‘An impact site,’ Blood Eye hypothesised.
All four Space Marines detected the sound of bolter fire at the same time. It was coming from further down the slope.
Without a word they broke into a run, Blood Eye pinging his auspex findings across their visors.
There was an engagement playing out close to the orbital debris. And if the auspex was accurate, one side wasn’t just the forces of the Adeptus Mechanicus, rallying to the defence of their world. The markers displayed belonged to the Carcharodon Astra.
Void Exiles were locked out of the usual chain of command, forbidden from even communicating with the battle company Shivers. The signifiers on Sharr’s visor didn’t resolve as they drew nearer, giving no information about company or squad, showing only the aquatic, finned predator of the Chapter’s ancient heraldry. There were only two of them, located in a large building just off the roadway. The haze of red markers surrounding them made the desperation of their circumstances clear.
The Exiles shifted naturally into their combat patterns, not the tide-coded manoeuvres familiar to the battle companies, but the instinctive style of fighting that had developed naturally between them over previous campaigns. Blood Eye and Shadow brought up the rear, boltguns unlocked, watching the flanks for Talon and Sharr as they began to race ahead.
Sharr freed his bolt pistol and chainsword as the building came into sight, the thunder of bolter fire still echoing from within, like a trapped storm. It was some kind of manufactorum, though most of it was already rubble – only the front remained standing, a façade bearing the cog symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus and boards that listed production quotas and shift schedules.
The enemy were already in sight. They were cultist infantry, the same kind the Exiles had encountered on the hulk, raggedy scum in patchwork chainmail and flakplate wielding autorifles and lasguns. Their attention was on the ruined building – they were in the process of assaulting it in two sections, the first breaking across the roadway to storm its windows and doorway with blades and grenades, while the second kept up covering fire from the ruins on the far side, lashing the scarred structure with hard rounds and crimson beams of energy.
They were so focused that they didn’t notice the Exiles until it was much too late.
Sharr switched from his pistol to his knife before contact, not intending to waste bolts. He crashed in through the remains of the wall the fire section were holding, a few belated las-bolts snapping at him but doing nothing more than searing his aged armour.
The Blindness wasn’t on him, not yet. He killed swiftly and efficiently with his combat knife, side by side with Talon, the latter’s club staving in a heretic’s head so hard it drove the plasteel like a knife into the man’s skull.
As the pair swept through the fire support section, Blood Eye and Shadow hit the assault element while they were crossing the open space of the street. Without cover the heretics were gone in moments, reduced to burst meat smeared across the roadway, like sacks of flesh that had been dropped onto the dark rockcrete from a great height.
‘Exterior secure, move in,’ Blood Eye voxed.
Sharr and Talon loped across the road, like hunting hounds unleashed. Sharr was focused on the sounds of bolter fire – two separate discharges had become one, and sure enough, there was now only a single Carcharodons signifier on the display.
They were going to be too late.
The inside of the manufactorum was a mismatch of broken floors and ramps of rubble. Most of it was already overrun by the Archenemy, by things altogether more terrible than the cultist foot soldiers the Exiles had already neutralised.
‘Mutants and daemonspawn,’ Talon growled as they engaged. The things scrabbling through the manufactorum’s broken innards were warped, illogical beings of sutured, pallid flesh and mutated growths fused and welded with jagged machinery. They were the same monstrosities the Exiles had faced on board the hulk, the discarded toys of demented deities, let loose upon Diamantus. Presumably they had come surging up from the nearby impact site.
They were a more fearsome foe than the cultists, but still so much fodder for the reaping scythe. Sharr triggered his chainsword, its roar reverberating through the ruins. It chewed through warped flesh and tainted metal as the creatures turned on the Space Marines, the lone bolter still ringing out defiantly from some adjacent room.
‘Follow the marker,’ Blood Eye urged, sensing Sharr teetering on the edge. He drove left, towards where the sigil of the last Carcharodon was blinking, the thunder of the other two Exiles’ bolters adding to the cacophony, making the stones underfoot judder.
Mutants and Neverborn burst apart and unravelled all around Sharr. He shouldered his way through a doorway, pauldrons knocking out part of the brickwork, too hyper-focused to care if he brought more of the building down around them.
