Chapter war, p.21
Chapter War, page 21
‘You forget, captain, that we are not alone here. The enemy may be using this jungle to their advantage, but we have advantages of our own. We have the Emperor, and the blessed variety of His servants.’
Sergeant Ossex of Mercaeno’s command squad was at the entrance to the hollow. ‘Lord Librarian,’ he said. ‘We have contacted the general. His command frequency is patched into our vox-net.’
‘Good,’ said Mercaeno. He saw that Ossex had a new oath recently painted onto one of his vambraces, an oath to avenge the death of Brother Rhelnon. The oath had a name that had been crossed out – that of Inquisitor Thaddeus, who had slain Rhelnon and been slain in turn by Mercaeno. The Howling Griffons had made good on another promise.
‘Have they contacted the enemy yet?’ asked Borganor.
‘Not yet,’ said Ossex. ‘They do not seem aware of the nature of the enemy they face.’
‘Of course not,’ said Mercaeno. ‘The Bearers of the Black Chalice are too grave a threat to become known to mere soldiers.’ Mercaeno flicked through the channels of the Howling Griffons vox-net until he found the channel that had been newly patched in.
‘General,’ he said. ‘This is Lord Mercaeno, commanding officer of the Howling Griffons.’
‘General Glaivan Varr of the 901st Penal Legion,’ replied a weary voice, rendered grainy through the substandard Imperial Guard vox. ‘The Howling Griffons, you say? I had not thought Vanqualis was worthy of one Space Marine army, let alone two.’
‘There are no Space Marines on this world save us,’ replied Mercaeno sharply.
‘Commander Sarpedon would disagree,’ said Varr. ‘He and his Soul Drinkers.’
‘So that is what they call themselves,’ spat Mercaeno, the venom clear in his voice.
Varr paused. ‘There is something I do not know,’ he said carefully.
‘More than you can imagine, general. The creatures you know as the Soul Drinkers are traitors to the Emperor.’
‘Renegades,’ said Varr. ‘Hunted by the Imperium. So they told me.’
‘Then you should have exterminated them!’ snapped Mercaeno.
‘We were having something of an ork problem, Lord Mercaeno,’ said Varr, tiredness and cynicism weighing his voice down. ‘Fighting Space Marines on principle isn’t a priority for me and my men.’
‘They are no mere renegades, general. These Soul Drinkers are given over to the Ruinous Powers. The Dark Gods of the warp, corruption made flesh. They have come to take this world and give it over in sacrifice to their gods, and they have used the ignorance of you and your men to turn you into tools of wickedness. This is the work of Chaos, general, and you are a part of it, unless you redeem yourself and join us in destroying it.’
For a long time General Varr did not reply, and the only sounds were the trickling of the water and the low, constant calls of the jungle.
‘Chaos,’ he said.
‘Chaos,’ replied Mercaeno. ‘It is nothing but lies. And believing those lies is the path to corruption. The Enemy has come to Vanqualis, and it is far deadlier than any savage greenskin horde.’
‘We fought alongside them,’ said Varr. ‘We killed thousands of orks…’
‘Because they want this world for themselves. The Bearers of the Black Chalice no doubt used the ork invasion to infiltrate Nevermourn. The greenskins be damned, the true enemy has revealed its head and it will be destroyed.’
‘Then I take it, Lord Mercaeno, that you are assuming command of the Imperial forces on Vanqualis?’
‘That is correct,’ said Mercaeno. ‘And with our combined forces we will butcher the Bearers of the Black Chalice here and now. What is your position, General Varr?’
‘We’re encamped on high ground about two kilometres north-west of the head of the Serpentspine Valley,’ said Varr. ‘We’re still receiving stragglers from the battle in the valley. We’ve got two thousand healthy soldiers here, another five hundred to a thousand holding out in pockets between here and the valley. My scouts tell me the greenskins are moving north from the heights over the valley, which means they’re making their push on the coast.’
‘We have greater concerns than the orks,’ said Mercaeno. ‘The betrayers are fleeing from my Howling Griffons through the marshes south of the ruined fortress.’
‘I know where you mean,’ said Varr. ‘I’ve got it flagged on our maps as dead man’s ground. Nothing’s getting through there, even the orks would give it a wide berth.’
‘And that is where we will destroy the Black Chalice. My men are approaching from the east. You will take the 901st and block the western edge of the marshes. The traitors will be trapped.’
‘Abandoning our positions here will give the orks free rein,’ said Varr. ‘They could get to the coast in three days unopposed.’
‘General Varr,’ said Mercaeno gravely, ‘my Chapter swore to defend Vanqualis a long time ago. When we learned of the greenskins that infested it, I took my Chapter to cleanse these jungles of the xenos. But the Howling Griffons also knew that one day the Black Chalice would return, and until they are destroyed there is room for no other concerns. I despise the xenos as much as you do, Varr – the more so, for I have fought their kind in every corner of the galaxy. But believe me when I say that I would rather every single Vanqualian dies to orkish hands than a lone bearer of the Black Chalice escapes these jungles alive. Do not think to question me, Varr, nor even to guess at what drives us. We will stop at nothing to fulfil the oaths our Chapter has sworn. Nothing.’
‘Then my men can be in position in half a day,’ said Varr. ‘If that is an order.’
‘That is an order, general.’ Mercaeno closed the vox-link.
‘Penal Legions,’ said Borganor with some distaste. ‘The worst of the worst. Scum not fit to seek the Emperor’s redemption.’
‘Scum indeed,’ said Mercaeno. ‘But the greenskins will have weeded out the weaker-willed. Among those men will be the hardest-bitten of killers. And it barely matters if the 901st stand and fight or run like dogs, Borganor. All they need to do is slow the Black Chalice down. As soon as we get to grips with the enemy, the Black Chalice will be destroyed. Whether the 901st survive to fight alongside us is irrelevant.’
‘Then they shall serve some purpose in death,’ said Borganor. ‘Far more than they ever did in life.’
‘Have Captain Darion draw in the patrols and make ready to move. As soon as the 901st are in position we will tighten the noose.’
Borganor saluted and left the hollow, leaving Mercaeno to finish his wargear rites.
Finally it would be done and one of the Chapter’s oldest oaths would be fulfilled. By the next nightfall another name carved deep into Mercaeno’s skin would be struck through, so that every time Mercaeno felt pain he would be reminded of the day the Black Chalice fell.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘How far must we compromise when victory is at stake?’
‘The concept of compromise is alien to an Astartes. To die unrelenting is to be victorious.’
– Daenyathos, Catechisms Martial
With the twin dramas of the ork advance and the Howling Griffons’ pursuit of the Soul Drinkers, a great deal went unnoticed in Nevermourn’s jungles. Tiny pockets of Penal Legion troopers held out against scattered bands of orks, both sides cut off from their parent armies, fighting miniature wars for survival. Stragglers were picked off by predators native to the jungle, crushed in the maws of enormous insectoid monsters or dragged down beneath the ground by the articulated tentacles of subterranean beasts. A thousand stories were played out away from Vanqualis’s eyes, men and greenskins dying heroic or shameful deaths, prevailing against the planet or falling to one another’s blades.
One of those unnoticed dramas saw a number of small, obsolete cargo landers flying down through the last vestiges of the night. They landed clumsily on the cratered open ground on the blasted hill. From the forest around the hilltop emerged the Soul Drinkers loyal to Eumenes, led by Sergeant Hecular. They had watched the conflict between the Howling Griffons and Sarpedon’s Soul Drinkers with some amusement, relishing the irony that it was Imperial Space Marines who had seen off their enemy Sarpedon.
Silently, rapidly, the rebel Soul Drinkers embarked on the Onager orbital landers, which trundled around the hilltop and took off again. They rose into the sky as the first tinge of grey-green morning light edged the far horizon, heading for the Brokenback so they could finally leave this forsaken planet forever.
Even Sarpedon’s mutated legs made hard work of forcing his way through the foul, sucking swamp around him. It stank, for everything that died in the jungle eventually found its way into the swamp where it lay and rotted, forming a rank sluggish lake of decay and stagnation. The trees that grew there were like skeletal hands reaching desperately up from the swamp, and slime-encrusted roots arced overhead forming archways and tunnels among the filth. The Soul Drinkers had been forging on for several hours, knowing that the Howling Griffons would be matching their every step.
‘Commander,’ voxed Sergeant Salk from up ahead. Salk’s squad included a number of tough field veterans and Sarpedon had found himself using them as forward scouts more and more often. ‘We’ve got contacts up ahead. Half a kilometre from us.’
‘Howling Griffons?’
‘No. It looks like the 901st.’
‘All units, halt,’ ordered Sarpedon. The remaining Soul Drinkers, around two hundred Astartes strong, stopped forging on through the filth and held their positions, holding their weapons up out of the stinking water. Sarpedon himself halted and the sounds of the swamp settled around him – chirping insects, the hooting of birds roosting among the blighted trees overhead, and the slow, sluggish grind of the water itself.
‘I could make contact, commander,’ voxed Salk.
‘No, sergeant,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘We don’t know whose side they’re on. The Howling Griffons could easily have taken command.’ Sarpedon crawled a short distance through the swamp to the thick bole of a tree, which rose on a crown of overhead roots that resembled Sarpedon’s own arachnoid legs. Sarpedon clambered up the tree – he could climb as nimbly as an insect, his legs tipped with long talons that dug deep into the bark.
From the vantage point, his enhanced Astartes eyesight piercing the filmy gloom, he could just glimpse the far edge of the swamp where banks of mud rose from the water and the jungle began again. The Penal Legion troopers were well disguised, smeared with mud and wearing improvised camouflage, but they were definitely there standing guard. They crouched down among the undergrowth or kept watch from the forks of trees, scanning the swamps. They were expecting an enemy to come through the swamps towards them, and that enemy could only be the Soul Drinkers.
Between the Soul Drinkers and the 901st’s line, several enormous hunks of machinery lay half-submerged in the swamp. A few more were embedded in the far bank, hulks of rusting metal or lumps of scorched rock. They were the remains of the ork asteroid ship that had landed off-target and hit the hill behind them – it must have broken up and scattered itself all over the swamp and the valley beyond. The sight was a sudden reminder that the greenskins had brought the Soul Drinkers to Vanqualis in the first place, but that now the xenos were far from Sarpedon’s mind, well down the list of priorities that now began with survival.
‘They’ve been sent to trap us here,’ said Sarpedon. ‘Poor damned sinners.’
Sarpedon saw movement on the far shore. Chimera troop carriers, rugged APCs used throughout the Imperial Guard, rode up over the tangles of roots on the bank and tipped down into the swamp. Ripples rode through the filthy swamp water ahead of them as they forged forwards.
‘They’re moving to engage,’ said Sarpedon. ‘Soul drinkers! Advance as line!’
Behind Sarpedon, the Soul Drinkers moved forward in a long, forbidding line, each Space Marine an anchor keeping the line taut and relentless. Sarpedon joined them, scuttling down from the tree back into the water. The Chimeras of the 901st were slowing down in the sucking mud and one foundered in the shadow of the orkish wreck. Its top hatch swung open and the men inside vaulted out. The water was chest-high to an unaugmented human and they struggled to keep their footing in the swamp.
One of them shouted. The Soul Drinkers had been spotted. Hundreds of men were in the water now, lasguns ready, a few heavy weapons and plasma guns shouldered ready to fight.
It could be because they are brave, though Sarpedon, that they come forward to fight us. Or it could be that they do not believe they will get off this planet, and they are just looking for a good fight before it is over.
Sarpedon could see the lead Chimera, a command vehicle trailing a cluster of antennae and mounted with vox-casters. The command unit inside were clambering out, and they were just hitting the water when the firing began.
‘Advance!’ Sarpedon heard – it was Captain Luko, jogging through the swamp, leading a chevron of Soul Drinkers through the spattering of las-fire. The 901st were sending out ranging shots, or perhaps hoping to break up the advance. Space Marine armour was all but proof against isolated las-fire, and it took far more to rattle the Soul Drinkers. As the first bolters rang out, Sarpedon put his head down and ran for the command Chimera.
Almost immediately, the 901st were dying. Dozens of them in those few moments, thrown back against the hulls of their Chimeras or thrown down into the bloodstained filth of the swamp. Sarpedon saw it all as if detached, as if he was watching on a pict-screen far away, the sound of the gunfire around him faint and tinny. These were his allies, the men who had come to Vanqualis to be redeemed, and to fight them was a betrayal. But there was no choice, on either side. The destruction of the 901st was a cruel inevitability, a grim, heartless business to be done quickly and without emotion, like the execution of a battle-brother.
Ahead of Sarpedon, the 901st’s command Chimera rocked as a plasma blast bored through its side and flames billowed from the top hatch. The men sheltering around it threw themselves away from the vehicle, stumbling through the murk, their silhouettes hard-edged among the flames.
Sarpedon and General Varr saw one another at the same time. Scorched by the guttering flame enveloping his Chimera, Varr drew his sword – an ornate sabre he had probably taken from a dead Vanqualian artilleryman to replace the blade he had broken at the Wraithspire Palace.
‘Fall back!’ shouted Varr to the men behind him, without taking his eyes off Sarpedon. ‘Give the order! Fall back and hold the shore!’
The command squad’s vox-operator hauled his vox-unit through the murk and darkness, relaying the order to the rest of the 901st. Varr didn’t follow the rest of his squad as they retreated from the giant armoured forms of the Soul Drinkers.
‘Varr!’ called Sarpedon.
‘Sarpedon,’ replied Varr. ‘Change in the chain of command. You are the enemy now.’
‘I know.’
‘If it could end any other way I would take it. I hope you believe that. But my duty is to the Imperium, and on Vanqualis that means Lord Mercaeno.’
‘I believe it, Varr. And if it means anything, I would change it, too, if I could.’
Varr dropped back into a guard position, blade held high. ‘Make it quick,’ he said.
Sarpedon’s force staff was in his hand. In a few moments he had crossed the distance between them, and Varr’s blade came forward to meet him.
‘The Howling Griffons?’ said Eumenes.
‘The Chapter symbol is the same,’ replied Sergeant Hecular. In the dim light of the Soul Drinkers’ Chapter archive, Hecular’s face looked even more hollow and cruel than usual.
Eumenes swung the pict-screen around on its armature. The Chapter archive still mostly consisted of datastacks that had been salvaged from the old Soul Drinkers fleet before Sarpedon had scuttled it after the first Chapter War, and was housed in a ship’s chapel with mosaics on the floors and faded frescoes on the walls and vaulted ceiling.
The history of the Howling Griffons scrolled by. ‘Ultramarines successors,’ said Eumenes to himself. ‘Guilliman’s brood. Guilliman was the primarch who built the whole mess of the Imperium in the first place. I hope Sarpedon kills a few of his sons before they get him.’
‘I never paid much attention to Imperial history,’ said Hecular.
Eumenes turned to him. ‘Then start now,’ he said. ‘Know the enemy.’ He turned back to the Howling Griffons’ history. ‘The Griffons are just another Chapter of lapdogs. They’ll toe whatever line Terra casts out, by the looks of it. We have to be gone by the time they’re finished with Sarpedon.’
Eumenes noticed another Soul Drinker approaching – Apothecary Pallas, his face still scorched and raw from his encounter with Techmarine Lygris. Pallas had recovered consciousness a few minutes after Lygris had escaped and torn the flight decks apart looking for him, but the Techmarine had fled. ‘The last Onager has landed,’ he said. ‘All those loyal to us are on board.’
‘Good,’ said Eumenes. ‘And the wounded?’
‘There are some,’ replied Pallas. ‘But the apothecarion can cope as long as I have some of the others to help me.’
‘And what of Lygris?’
‘Still missing.’
‘His escape rankles with you, Pallas,’ said Eumenes.
‘Of course,’ replied Pallas tightly. ‘He bested me.’
‘You failed me,’ said Eumenes. ‘I expect more from my officers.’
‘I will find him, Eumenes.’
‘Eventually, yes, it is inevitable. That is not enough. I want his head, and soon.’ Eumenes switched off the pict-screen and spoke over the vox. ‘Tydeus? The rest of the Chapter is on board. How long before we can hit the warp?’
‘A day at least,’ replied Tydeus. The sounds of the engine decks were clear across the vox. Many of the Brokenback’s component ships had functional warp engines, which had been connected together so they could move the whole hulk into the warp.
