Hellforged, p.23
Hellforged, page 23
The corpse knelt down and hauled on the wheel lock. Flakes of rust broke off, and the lock squealed as the corpse forced it open. With a boom, the lock snapped open and the corpse hauled the hatch up.
Burning green eyes looked up from the darkness of the maintenance space below.
The Undying climbed up through the hatch. They were skinnier than the warriors, lacking the broad carapaces over their shoulders, and they didn’t carry any weapons. Instead, long silver claws folded out from their forearms, fitting over the ends of their fingers.
The corpse led them out of the room. One of them knelt down beside the dead soldier and slit his back open with its blades, removing bones and organs with inhuman speed and accuracy. Another opened the body bag and began doing the same to the dead soldier inside. A neat pile of organs and bones was piled up beside the bodies, arranged as precisely as the pieces of a machine. In less than two minutes, the soldier the corpse had killed was hollowed out, and the Undying pulled its still-clothed hide into it, fitting its limbs and torso inside. It pulled the dead man’s face over its skull. The third Undying finished its dissection and did the same. The soldier it wore had been killed by a blast that tore away one side of his chest, its bloody metal ribs visible through the wound.
More Undying were coming up from the maintenance space where they had been waiting patiently for the infiltrator to let them through. They followed the corpse towards the stairwell leading up into the command centre. The three wearing the skins of the dead took the lead. The others went naked and undisguised, but it did not matter. Soon there would be enough bodies to go around.
The pyramid was immense. Its pinnacle tore into the ceiling, and its base had dislodged almost half of the tomb-city. Chunks of rubble tumbled down its sides like rain. The pyramid was made from glossy black stone, deeply inscribed with glyphs and patterns that echoed circuitry.
The pyramid was stepped, and on each level stood black menhirs, like the standing stones erected all over Selaaca, channelling information across the planet’s surface. Somewhere in its vastness and majesty was a very recognisable arrogance, the proportions designed to awe, the triumphal pictograms of stylised necrons marching across wasted planets. The necron warriors were soulless, but the intelligence that had caused the pyramid to be constructed had enough of a personality left to want to proclaim its superiority.
A wide staircase hundreds of steps high led to the upper levels. The top quarter of the pyramid was a columned temple, its entrance flanked by obsidian statues of necron Immortals permanently at guard. Patterns of gold spiralled around the columns, pulsing with energy.
The rumbling stopped. The pyramid had forced its way fully into the tomb-city.
Techmarine Lygris, being helped along by Apothecary Pallas, looked up at the pyramid.
‘It’s another tomb,’ he said.
‘The intelligence?’ asked Sarpedon. ‘It’s in there?’
‘I can taste its thoughts,’ said Lygris.
If Lygris had still been able to speak with his own tongue, thought Sarpedon, would he have detected a note of fear in the Techmarine’s voice?
‘Archmagos,’ voxed Sarpedon, ‘we need you to hold the base of the pyramid. Keep the necrons off our backs.’
‘Very well, commander,’ replied Voar. The tech-guard were just behind the Soul Drinkers, moving to take up positions among the tombs. Necrons were already emerging from the tunnel that led back up to the surface, the vanguard of the force that had pursued them through the ruins above. ‘The time you have shall be bought with the blood of the Omnissiah’s faithful. Do not waste it.’
‘All squads!’ ordered Sarpedon. ‘Assault units to the fore! Soul Drinkers, advance!’
The Soul Drinkers broke cover and made for the base of the pyramid. The necrons that had survived the pyramid’s emergence opened fire, but they were in disarray. The Soul Drinkers were as fast and ruthless as any Astartes, Graevus leading the assault units up front that leapt obstacles on their jump packs and brought down the necrons in their way with chainswords and bolt pistols. The tech-guard engaged the necrons on their flank, swapping fire with the aliens to tie them down and keep them from blunting the advance. Sarpedon glimpsed the fat bursts of laser from Magos Hepsebah, and even spotted a broken Undying being hurled aside by the industrial strength of Magos Vionel.
Lygris was on his feet, and snapped shots off at the necrons between the tombs. The Soul Drinkers had almost reached the pyramid.
‘Heavy resistance,’ voxed Graevus from up ahead. ‘They’re throwing warriors at us.’
‘Open us up a path,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘Luko! Salk! With me! Up the steps!’
Sarpedon ran forwards at full tilt, Lygris struggling to keep up as Sarpedon scrambled over the ruined tombs in front. Pallas and Tyrendian were there, too, Tyrendian scorching the shadows between the tombs with a bolt of lightning that blew an Immortal to burning pieces.
The assault units were battling with the necrons up ahead. Sarpedon ran past them, leading the rest of the Soul Drinkers onto the steps.
‘Support fire!’ shouted Luko as his squad made it onto the steps. His Soul Drinkers turned and aimed down into the tombs, where dozens of necrons were massing to march on Graevus’s embattled assault troops. ‘Fire!’
Squad Luko raked the tombs with explosive fire. Necrons fell, clambered back up self-repaired, and fell again with massive wounds blasted through their metal carapaces. Squad Salk joined in, and a unit of tech-guard made it onto the bottom level of the pyramid to lend the weight of their las-fire to the battle.
Tyrendian and Scamander joined Sarpedon and Lygris at the front.
‘How do we kill it?’ asked Tyrendian. ‘Assuming we even know what it is?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lygris. ‘But we have to do it now.’
‘Heads up!’ shouted Scamander, looking towards the pinnacle of the pyramid. Hundreds of black motes were swarming from inside the temple entrance.
‘Scarabs,’ spat Lygris.
‘Guns up! The xenos are upon us!’ ordered Sarpedon. More and more Soul Drinkers were making it onto the pyramid steps, forming a firing line of bolters that was sweeping the ruined tombs of necron defenders. Many of them turned to see the new threat from above.
‘Unless we are to shoot them all, one by one,’ said Scamander, ‘I suggest you all get down.’
Tyrendian looked at the young Librarian. ‘Can you do it?’
‘I can.’
‘Then commander,’ said Tyrendian, ‘I suggest we all do as he says.’
‘Everyone,’ ordered Sarpedon, ‘down!’
The Soul Drinkers threw themselves onto the steps. Scamander stood and walked forwards. The swarm descended: scarabs, hundreds of them, buzzing down on steel wings, their jaws glowing molten red as they prepared to bore through power armour.
Scamander raised his arms. His hands glowed orange. Ice formed around his feet, crackling across the black stone.
Scarabs flowed around him in a black cloud, eager to force their way through the joints of his armour and eat him alive.
Scamander yelled, and a wave of fire exploded from around his hands. Billows of flame radiated out from him, like a red storm with Scamander at its eye. Scarabs flew haywire, circuits burned out and wings on fire. The fire rippled over the heads of the Soul Drinkers, scorching the backpacks of their armour as it licked up the stairway and across the ornate slabs of the pyramid.
The roar of the fire died down. Burning scarabs were everywhere, pinging against the sides of the pyramid as they flew blinded and out of control. A metallic hail of dead scarabs fell, trailing smoke.
Scamander fell back onto the steps. His arms and shoulder pads smouldered. The rest of him was caked with ice, hissing where it touched the heated armour. Scamander began to roll down the steps, unconscious. Tyrendian hurried forward and supported him, hauling him into a seated position, and propping him up against a terrace of the pyramid.
‘Apothecary!’ called Tyrendian, but Pallas was already there. Scamander’s mouth lolled open, and his eyes were rolled back.
‘Keep moving!’ ordered Sarpedon. The Soul Drinkers advanced up the pyramid, the tech-guard reaching the lower levels below them. Sarpedon could see Hepsebah’s cannon raking the ruins below.
Only the temple remained before Sarpedon: the temple making up the top of the pyramid. Between the black stone columns of its entrance there was a darkness so profound that his enhanced eyesight couldn’t penetrate it.
‘I can feel it,’ said Lygris. ‘It’s watching us.’
‘Not for long,’ said Sarpedon, and scuttled into the temple.
Unnatural dimensions assailed him. Space did not fold up correctly in the temple. Even in the darkness, the angles of the walls did not add up correctly, and even up and down seemed skewed, as if reality was being distorted through a lens. Sarpedon struggled to keep his footing as his equilibrium told him that left was right.
He was in a chamber of brushed steel, that much he could tell. But it was not a chamber, it was an intersection of a larger structure, one that could not possibly fit into the temple at the top of the pyramid. The necrons had folded this place to fit inside the structure, blaspheming against the basics of physical reality.
Above was a sky composed of information: half-formed chains of numbers and commands, flickering images of blueprints, chains of data streaming off into infinity. It hurt Sarpedon’s eyes just to look at it. It didn’t want to fit into his mind. He looked down at a floor, inlaid with the skulls and carapaces of necron warriors, beaten flat, perhaps damaged warriors recycled into building materials or some grand sacrifice of the alien machines to their leader.
Sarpedon clambered up the wall of the chamber, and reached the top to give himself a better view. A labyrinth of machinery led off as far as he could see: enormous engines, half-formed as if in the process of melting into slag; forges churning out necron warriors and scarabs; forests of captives, nothing more than skeletons wrapped in tendrils of bleeding muscle; grand tombs, their sarcophagi lying open, waiting to receive lords yet to be built; an immense spire of glowing steel with warships suckling power from it; oceans of inky black information, infested with hunter-programs that writhed and darted like translucent sharks; ziggurats of pure carbon, and monoliths of obsidian.
Sarpedon’s mind whirled with the impossibility of it all. It could not be real, this patchwork of tech-heresies.
Lygris pulled himself up onto the top of the wall. Sarpedon could see that the Techmarine was exhausted. Some of the datavaults built into his armour had melted.
‘It’s information,’ said Lygris, looking out across the hellforged labyrinth. ‘This is what they want, what they plan to build. This is what they will do with the galaxy if they get their way. The wall between information and reality is thin here. Their designs and their plans, they… they break through.’
‘Where is their ruler?’
‘In the labyrinth, at its heart. I can take you to him. I can feel him watching me in every interface I have.’
‘We must hurry,’ said Sarpedon. ‘This place could kill us as surely as the necrons.’
‘Agreed,’ replied Lygris. ‘Follow me.’
The Soul Drinkers advanced into the temple behind Sarpedon, through the shadowy gateway that marked the temple threshold. They were thrown into disarray by the sudden shift in reality, but their officers ordered them forwards. Tyrendian supported Scamander, who looked semi-conscious and drained, his hands still smouldering, and his feet leaving icy prints on the mosaic of dismembered necrons on the floor.
‘This just gets better and better,’ snarled Captain Luko. ‘Where’s the thing we’re supposed to kill?’
‘Near,’ replied Lygris.
‘Good,’ said Luko. ‘Dismantling these machines has left me thirsty for a proper fight.’
Ghosts drifted through the walls of the labyrinth. They had the faces of necrons, emotionless skulls with burning eyes, but they drifted above the ground, trailing long whipping tails of cables and probes. Their hands were bundles of syringes and glowing blades. They were broader and far quicker than a necron warrior, and, most disturbingly of all, they were only half-there, transparent and shimmering as they flickered in and out of reality. A dozen of them emerged from the walls, moving swiftly to surround the Soul Drinkers. More of them were diving down from the information sky like spectral comets, a whole host of them, almost matching the hundred or so Soul Drinkers in numbers.
‘Then drink your fill, captain,’ said Sarpedon.
When the Undying had come to Raevenia, and even before, when the worlds of the Selaacan empire were winking out, one by one, tall tales of the aliens’ capabilities had been swapped between the fearful citizens of Astelok. Among them were stories that echoed gruesome fairy tales of skeletal creatures that came invisible in the night and wore the skins of those they killed. No one really believed them, of course, for who could be left alive to pass them on? But still they spread, and became embellished with stories of glowing green eyes and blades for fingers, and a death that crept from the shadows unnoticed.
The officers and troops manning the command centre’s situation room learned, in that moment, that the stories were true.
‘Sentries to the situation room!’ yelled General Damask, who was overseeing the command centre. ‘Now! Gods, now!’
The door burst open, revealing the bloodstained machine beyond it. The room beyond the machine was in ruins, the communications officers inside cut to ribbons, lying in foul gory shreds on the floor, or draped over their switchboards.
Damask drew his sidearm and snapped shots into the Flayed One. Shots hammered into its torso, and it fell backwards. Two more took its place, darting into the room.
Raevenian troops burst in through the far door. One of them swore and raised his gun immediately, spraying fire at the Flayed One. Bullet holes stitched across the doorway. The Flayed One hurtled through the fire and slammed into Damask.
It was heavy, all metal and blades. Bright slashes of pain opened up in the general’s arms and hands as he fended off the blades that snickered down at him.
‘Kill it! For the crown’s sake get this thing off me!’
There was more gunfire as more troops burst in. A Flayed One fell, skull blown open. Another clawed its way along the ceiling like a huge metal spider, and dropped down on top of the first soldier, carving through his throat with its finger blades.
A metal hand closed around Damask’s throat. It sliced shut, and his head came away, his neck cut to ribbons. His gun clattered to the floor, and the last sound he made was the long gurgling breath escaping from his severed windpipe.
‘Infiltrators!’ someone shouted. ‘Undying! Seal them off!’
The soldiers in the room turned as the door behind them was hauled shut, a loud booming indicating that map tables and document cabinets were being piled up behind it. They yelled and swore and hammered on the door, but it stayed shut. They tried to kick it in and shoot the hinges off, but the half-dozen men in the situation room were trapped.
A Flayed One skewered a soldier through his ribcage from behind, lifted him up, and dashed his brains out against the edge of the map table in the centre of the room. Markers indicating the Raevenian positions around the space port scattered onto the floor, and blood spattered across the diagram of the space port’s walls and landing pads. Another soldier backed against the door, and yelled as he fired on full-auto, emptying his gun’s magazine at the Flayed Ones entering the room. The gun’s movement clicked on an empty chamber, and bladed hands reached for him. He fought them off, screaming, even as his fellow soldiers were dragged down and butchered. Finally, his abdomen was slit open, and the scream caught in his throat, drowned in the blood gurgling up from a wound in his lung.
The Flayed Ones seemed barely to notice the barricaded doors. One of them, still wearing the tatters of the medic’s skin, reached up and pulled down a ceiling tile, revealing a cavity between the ceiling and the floor of the level above. With inhuman ease, it slid into the space, followed rapidly by half the other Flayed Ones. The others turned to the metal shutters on the situation room’s windows and began to tear them from the walls.
‘Your majesty, they’re here,’ said Kavins.
Queen Dyrmida looked up from the field radio with which she had been trying to get an explanation for the din coming from the lower floors. She had set up her quarters on an upper floor, where she could have a good view of the unfolding battle, near the landing control room with its banks of communications consoles and monitors. ‘They?’
‘The Undying. Flayed Ones.’
Dyrmida stood up. ‘How?’
‘We don’t know.’
Dyrmida drew her sidearm. She was well-practised with it, as good a shot as any of her soldiers, but skill at arms had not saved the men undoubtedly dying beneath her feet. ‘Can we get out through the lower floors?’
‘No,’ said Kavins. ‘We’re sealing all the ways up. A cargo lifter I had detailed to ferry ammunition to the walls is landing on the control tower roof.’
‘Can we contain the Undying in this building?’
‘Please, my queen, do not let that concern you. We must get you out of here.’
Kavins led her towards the exit leading to the stairwell. The other troops in the control room, mostly communications officers, were hurriedly disengaging their comm systems and checking their guns.
The sound of tearing metal came from the floor. One of the officers screamed and disappeared through a hole in the floor. Dyrmida caught a glimpse of bloody silver through the flesh of the soldier’s legs before he was gone.
‘Move!’ shouted Kavins, spraying fire from his sub-machine gun at the hole.
Bullets flew in every direction. One soldier was caught by a stray round. A Flayed One dragged itself out of the hole and was shot to pieces. Another hole opened up, and another man died, blades slicing up into his abdomen and through his spine.
