Hellforged, p.5
Hellforged, page 5
The beetle zipped up and disappeared through one of the holes in the minaret.
‘Luko!’ ordered Sarpedon. ‘Get inside and seal the doors.’
‘What was that?’ asked Pallas.
‘I don’t know,’ said Lygris. ‘It looks beyond this world’s tech level.’
Captain Luko’s squad hauled the doors shut. Two of his Soul Drinkers dragged the remains of auditorium benches over to the doors to barricade them.
Chaplain Iktinos took his crozius off his belt. Like Luko’s lightning claws, the crozius was a power weapon, and a blue-white energy field leapt around it. It was a badge of office as well as a weapon, topped with a bladed skull so that Iktinos could swing it like a morning star.
‘I can hear them,’ he said. ‘The voice of the xenos calls us out.’
Sarpedon could hear it, too. A crackling, buzzing sound, deep and resonant, came to them from the grey sky visible through the circular opening in the pinnacle of the minaret. Graevus’s squad took up a position in the centre of the basilica around Sarpedon and the officers. Luko’s squad held the doors, ready to tear apart anything that came through, with massed bolter fire.
Sarpedon looked up. The beams of sunlight coming through the minaret were cut off.
The minaret collapsed under the weight of tens of thousands of metallic scarabs. They tumbled through the basilica roof in a tremendous metallic avalanche. Sarpedon barely had time to react before they were on him, mandibles chittering as they swarmed over his armour.
Sarpedon yelled, and swung with his axe, shattering a host of the scurrying things. Beside him, Iktinos did the same, clearing the space around him with wide sweeps of his crozius. Pallas fell to the ground, clawing at a scarab trying to bore its way into his face. Lygris dragged him to his feet, tore the creature off him and threw it to the floor. Pallas stamped on it and began blasting at the floor around him. The explosive bolter blasts shattered two or three scarabs each, but there were always more, swarming everywhere to fill the gaps.
‘Flamer front!’ yelled Luko over the din of the chittering creatures. ‘Vorn! Burn them!’
Brother Vorn, who carried Squad Luko’s flamer, stepped forwards from the doors, and hosed the area in front of him with liquid flame. The scarabs caught in the flame convulsed as whatever tiny electronics controlling them were melted by the heat. They spiralled up on burning wings like fragments of ash rising from the fire.
‘They’re everywhere!’ shouted Sarpedon. ‘Abandon this place! Make for the shuttles!’
Luko turned to the doors his squad had just barricaded, and squared up to barge them open again.
The doors burst inwards. Luko was thrown off his feet beneath the massive sheet of bronze. A creature swept in through the doorway; a solid rectangular body, longer than a Space Marine was tall, hovered impossibly off the ground. Thick, segmented legs curled up underneath it, and a pair of wicked crushing claws projected from its front edge. A head was mounted on the front, little more than a slab of metal covered in lenses and mandibles. Scarabs swarmed all over the creature. It managed to be both completely mechanical, and wholly alien.
Brother Vorn turned in time to see the pincers closing around his head. Instinctively, he blasted a plume of fire up against the creature’s underside, sheathing it in billowing flame. The pincers closed, and Vorn’s helmet distorted, eyepieces popping out under the pressure. The Soul Drinker was picked up off the floor, and the second pincer closed in, clamping around Vorn’s arm and tearing his gun arm away to keep him from firing.
The machine’s head opened up like a bladed metal flower. Mandibles jutted out and sliced down into Vorn’s face. A proboscis punched out through the back of Vorn’s skull, and his head burst open in a shower of blood and meat.
Sarpedon faced the machine. Bolter fire was already hammering against its armoured shell, but it looked like it could take a lot more punishment before going down. An aperture opened on the upper surface of its abdomen, revealing a forge, glowing dark red with heat, another couple of scarabs emerged from it to join the swarm.
‘Lygris! Iktinos! Get us another way out! Luko, fall back from the doors!’
Sarpedon ran forwards, crunching a scarab or two under his talons, the Axe of Mercaeno in his hand. The spidery floating creature focused its eye-lenses on him, its optics winking through a layer of Vorn’s blood. It dropped the Soul Drinker’s body. Flame still clung to it, dripping liquidly from its legs and rippling over its hull.
Astartes from Squad Graevus were following Sarpedon towards the machine, but the scarabs were thick around them, snaring their sword arms and tangling around their feet. Sarpedon was on his own, surrounded by the scarab swarm with the machine bearing down on him.
Sarpedon dropped low, scuttling towards the xenos machine at full tilt. It raised its claws to grab him and tear him apart. Somehow, there was malice in that expressionless face, in the blank lenses and grinding mandibles.
Sarpedon slammed into it just as it began to accelerate at him. Bladed jaws snickered shut just over his head. He powered up off his back legs into its underside, slamming the Axe of Mercaeno into its side. The blade tore through the metal hull and caught there, and Sarpedon grabbed with his other arm and pulled the beast down.
He wrestled it to the ground, forcing it against its anti-gravity motors onto its back underneath him. The legs struck up at him, one catching him hard on the side of the head. Sarpedon’s senses reeled and he clung on out of instinct, grabbing a flailing metallic leg and hugging it close to keep it from ripping his head off.
Sarpedon’s head stopped spinning. The metal spider beneath him was writhing like a pinned insect, legs kicking out as it tried to right itself. Sarpedon ripped the axe out of its side, and cut to left and right, hacking off one of its legs. He drove his own legs into the ground on either side of its body, anchoring it to the floor of the basilica. The proboscis, like a bladed tongue, snapped up at him, but Sarpedon’s reactions outstripped even the machine, and he dodged back out of its reach.
He grabbed the tongue with his free hand and pulled hard. The machine’s head was forced back towards its chest. Sarpedon looked for a moment into its eyes, and saw the hatred there, the arrogance of the soulless machine, without anything human behind it.
Sarpedon’s stomach churned. The machine’s xenos nature was as clear as could be.
With an effort that even Sarpedon didn’t know he could make, he twisted the machine’s head right around on its mountings. Wires tore and fastenings snapped. He pulled again, and the head came away in its hands.
The metal spider convulsed as its motor functions went haywire. Half-formed scarabs were spat from its hull. It shuddered, its legs curled up over its upturned body, and it was still.
Sarpedon saw a tide of scarabs approaching from across the city square. Thousands of the machines formed a writhing silver-black carpet over the abandoned buildings. More bulky spiders hovered above them, multiple eyes scanning their targets in the basilica.
Sarpedon hauled the remains of the doors shut, and dragged the dead spider machine in front of them as a barricade. He turned to see how the Soul Drinkers were faring behind him. Scarabs still chittered everywhere, but the main swarm had been scattered or destroyed, and the Soul Drinkers were moving down to the far end of the Basilica. Squad Graevus was close, rushing to hold the doors alongside Sarpedon. A series of explosions hammered from the rear of the basilica, and Sarpedon recognised the reports of exploding krak grenades. Lygris had blown a hole in the rear wall of the basilica.
‘I would not like to have to wait for you, commander,’ voxed Lygris.
Sarpedon made for the new entrance through which Luko was already leading his squad. Pallas was with them, bleeding from the gash on the side of his face.
‘Are you hurt?’ asked Pallas.
‘No,’ said Sarpedon. ‘You?’
Pallas did not answer. He ducked through the hole, and followed Iktinos and Lygris after the squads.
Beyond the basilica was a river, its banks heavy with grand buildings of government and commerce. There was evidence of a battle here, too, with bullet scars and claw marks on the walls. Sarpedon imagined that the claws had been those of mechanised spiders, closing in on the city’s leaders to butcher them and throw the remains to the scarabs. A bridge led across the river, and Squad Luko was already securing it. One of Luko’s men carried Vorn’s body. It was a dishonour to leave a fallen brother behind, not least because the gene-seed taken from Vorn’s body would be used to create the Soul Drinker that would replace him.
‘A lander is coming down for us,’ said Lygris. ‘Fast troop ship. Jackal-class. We don’t have many of them left.’
‘Where are they coming down?’
‘There’s an ornamental garden across the river. It’s large enough for a landing zone.’
‘Then let’s move. Soul Drinkers! Cover and run, fast!’
Sarpedon led the way across the bridge, Luko and Graevus using their squads to keep the forward and rear areas covered with bolters and bolt pistols. Beneath them, the river was choked with debris.
Not debris, bodies... hundreds of them. Their clothes were rich, embroidered togas and military uniforms. Sarpedon had seen thousands of bullet wounds in his life, and he did not see a single one on the bodies that bobbed in the filthy water. The dead had been shredded with blades or chewed up by scarab mandibles. Many of them seemed to have been dissolved away as if by acid, layers of their bodies exposed by some force that eroded skin and bone.
‘We found the defenders, then,’ said Luko bleakly.
The roof of the basilica collapsed, throwing up a cloud of dust and scarabs. The rear wall fell in under the gouging claws of the spiders. Luko’s squad opened up with bolter fire, battering one spider back and shattering the face of another. Scarabs poured out from the ruined building, spilling into the river and scuttling along the bridge. One of Luko’s squad had picked up Vorn’s fallen flamer, and painted the bridge behind the Soul Drinkers with fire, incinerating the scarabs as they approached.
Sarpedon sprinted to the far end of the bridge. Squad Graevus leapt over him on the exhaust blasts of their jump packs to land in the garden beyond. A willow tree stood at the river’s edge, leaves trailing in the water, and ornamental hedges cut into the shapes of fanciful animals stood between flowerbeds and mosaic paths. The flowers were all dead.
Sarpedon saw the contrails of the descending lander. It was Imperial, but of an old mark that its forge worlds had forgotten how to produce, with a blunt brutal nose and downturned wings like those of a bird of prey. Hatches opened up in its belly as it descended.
Twin autocannons mounted on the lander’s wings opened up and explosions thundered along the bridge behind Squad Luko. Chunks of masonry and shattered scarabs flew. The bridge shuddered, but it was solidly built and would hold.
‘We’re coming in hot!’ said the vox from the Soul Drinker piloting the lander. ‘Xenos are converging from everywhere! Make ready for the pass!’
‘How’s our landing zone, Graevus?’ voxed Sarpedon.
‘Clear,’ came the reply.
‘Then get to the gardens and hold, everyone!’
The Soul Drinkers vaulted over the low walls and kicked through the ornamental hedges. From the pall of dust surrounding the bridge emerged a metallic spider, one of its claws replaced with the barrel of a weapon that spat arcs of lightning as it charged up. Squad Luko studded its hull with bolter fire, but it held firm, and fired.
A bolt of green lightning lanced out from the spider’s gun, hitting the ground just behind Sarpedon. Soul Drinkers were thrown off their feet, and earth showered down from the impact.
Its second shot went high, streaking through the wing of the lander. The craft stayed airborne, but only just, swinging precariously as air rushed through the hole in its wing.
Graevus didn’t wait for the order. He hurtled over Sarpedon, power axe high, ready to strike. The jets of his jump pack cut out and he landed right on top of the spider. His power axe sheared the lightning weapon clean off the spider, and it rounded on him, its remaining forelimb snapping open ready to slice his head off.
Another of his squad landed beside it, and drove his chainsword into the spider’s side, where one of its legs met the hull. The machine flicked a foreleg, throwing the Soul Drinker off in a shower of sparks, but the rest of Graevus’s squad was close behind him, and suddenly the machine was surrounded. The Soul Drinkers duelled with the machine, turning its thrashing limbs aside with their chainswords, until Graevus rolled underneath, driving his axe into its underside so hard that the machine’s anti-grav units were wrecked and it flopped down on top of him.
Graevus’s men hauled the machine to the side of the bridge and pushed it off. They dragged Graevus to his feet, and fell back as the tide of scarabs closed in on them through the dust and rubble.
The lander’s engines roared overhead. The craft came in over the gardens and hovered, lowering itself so that the grab-rails around its hatch were within reach of the Soul Drinkers. Pallas and Squad Luko clambered up into the craft, followed by Iktinos and Lygris. Squad Graevus sprinted for the lander, and Sarpedon joined them, leaping up into the belly of the craft as the last of Squad Graevus made it on board.
The ground beneath gave way just as Sarpedon’s talons left it. A blast of infernally hot air hammered up at the lander, and it rose up on the swell. Sarpedon’s hand closed on the grab-rail. Beneath him, the gardens fell inwards, revealing a great hollow of black earth that swallowed the stands of trees and topiary hedges that remained.
As if from a nest of insects torn open, scarabs swarmed in the unearthed warren. Spider-machines squatted amongst them, birthing new scarabs from their inner forges.
Sergeant Graevus’s mutated hand grabbed Sarpedon’s wrist, and, with its unnatural strength, hauled him up into the lander’s belly. The hatch slammed shut below him.
‘Take us back,’ said Sarpedon, ‘fast!’
The lander tipped up onto its stern and fired its main engines. It rocketed up towards the pallid sky. Sarpedon saw that the pilot was Scamander, the young psyker, who was the only recruit into the Chapter’s Librarium since Sarpedon had assumed command.
‘What was it?’ asked Iktinos. ‘What force has taken this world?’
Sarpedon had no answer to give.
The lander tore through the thick cloud cover, leaving the dead city behind.
‘The only enemy worth your admiration is one who has accepted the superiority of mankind and knelt before you to be executed. All others are to be despised. Honour means nothing when it is used to oppose the Emperor’s will.’
Daenyathos, Notes on the Catechisms Martial
CHAPTER FOUR
Archmagos Voar had seen the readouts on the bridge, but, in truth, he did not believe them. Perhaps that was just what he told himself, and the truth was really that he wanted to see the anomalies with his own eyes. When the last human parts of him had been replaced with the machine, such moments of weakness would not plague him any more.
The observatory on the Antithesis filled a dome blistered up from the ship’s upper hull. An array of brass-cased telescopes, carefully inscribed with binary prayers of accuracy, and flawlessness, jutted out from the observatory dome. The inside of the dome was frescoed with images of great discoveries, like Magos Land uncovering lost STC fragments and Tech-Priest Gurvann stumbling upon the principles of xenos-specific neurotoxins. It was a place of reflection and inspiration. Magos Voar rarely permitted anyone else to enter it.
Voar murmured a prayer to the telescope’s machine-spirit and looked into the eyepiece. The object of the strange readings on the bridge hovered in front of him, glowing darkly in the light reflected from a distant star.
It was a world, but it was not a world. It was rather smaller than Terran standard, but possessed a gravity far higher than its size suggested, a suspicious sign if ever there was one. Its surface was as smooth and polished as an ornamental skull, and it had no polar caps or tectonic canyons, not even meteorite craters, which made no sense given its lack of atmosphere.
The strangest feature of the planet, however, was that it was not alone. Two others orbited the same star, precisely equidistant. They were of the same size and mass. They moved, and even spun on their axes, at the same rate. They could not be a natural phenomenon. Not even millions of years of constant gravity could produce such a solar system.
‘Sensorium,’ voxed Voar. ‘Can we be sure the Soul Drinkers passed this way?’
‘We’ve just picked up a plasma trace,’ came the reply from the bridge library. ‘The hulk dropped out of the warp in the outer system and headed for the inner worlds. It was still venting plasma, so it wasn’t hard to follow.’
‘Have we found it?’
‘We’re searching the inner worlds. If they’re in orbit around a planet, they’ll take a little longer to find.’
‘Good. What do we have on the three outer worlds?’
‘Nothing new. The Fleet Minor is sending two scouts on a flyby of the nearest one.’
‘That is your second priority after finding the hulk.’
‘Yes, archmagos. The first scout is approaching sensor range now.’
Voar held up his left index finger, and a dataprobe emerged from the tip. He inserted it into a socket on the side of the telescope housing and interfaced with the sensors of the Antithesis. He felt, for a moment, the fleet around it, the bulky presence of the Constant and Ferrous, the shape of the Defence of Caelano Minoris with its hotspots of energy, and the sensor-heavy shoal of the Fleet Minor. He caught two flitting shapes that had broken off from the fleet and were looping into close orbit around the massive dead presence of the planet. Voar mentally commanded the telescope to focus on the first ship. The telescope whirred around on clockwork gears to focus on the tiny glowing dart.
