Grey knights the omnibus, p.43
Grey Knights: The Omnibus, page 43
Thalassa looked at the floor. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Tech-priest Thalassa would be useful at the datafortress but not essential,’ said Saphentis. ‘I can perform similar functions.’
‘I don’t like it. There is too much about what lies ahead of us that we do not know. Nothing has killed more men on the battlefield than ignorance about what they are facing.’
‘I do not see any other choice, justicar.’
‘Neither do I. But I would be more prepared if I knew everything about the enemy here that you do. There is a reason you came down to this planet yourself. There are a great many tech-preists who are more capable in battle than you.’
‘Thalassa,’ said Saphentis, ‘tell Captain Tharkk we will move out shortly.’ Thalassa nodded and hurried over to the fire where Tharkk and his men were tending their wounds. For the moment, Alaric and Saphentis were out of their earshot.
‘Go on,’ said Alaric.
‘They were Mechanicus,’ began Saphentis. ‘After a fashion. They have changed. Some tech-heresy has taken root. The fusion of the biological and the mechanical is permitted by the Cult Mechanicus only so that weak flesh may be replaced or improved, or that the otherwise useless might be made useful in the sight of the Omnissiah, such as is the case with servitors. The large-scale biomechanics we see here are forbidden, for they do not place machine and flesh at the command of tech-priests but create new forms of life entirely and such is not permitted by the tenets of the Priesthood of Mars. Successive Fabricators General have pronounced on this countless times.’
‘So the enemy are tech-heretics?’ asked Alaric. ‘The same that were investigated here a hundred years ago?’
‘Without doubt. And the heresy must reach to every level of Chaeroneia’s priesthood. More importantly, what we have seen on Chaeroneia represents a pace of innovation considered heretical. The Cult Mechanicus forbids designs and techniques not of the most ancient provenance. Many centuries must pass before quarantined knowledge is allowed beyond our research stations. But here there is innovation and creation. All around us! This world could never be created by the existing tenets of the Mechanicus. The pace of invention here must be astonishing.’
‘You sound as if you admire them, archmagos.’
‘That is not true, justicar. Heresy is heresy, as you yourself must know well. I would thank you not to make such suggestions again.’
‘An ally who agrees with the enemy becomes that enemy, archmagos. I will be watching you.’
Brother Haulvarn stomped over hurriedly. ‘Archis can see gun-platforms, justicar. They’re moving like they’re looking for us.’
Alaric looked round at him. The strike force was still in poor cover and vulnerable and they didn’t need a fight right now. ‘How far?’
‘Two kilometres. Five plus platforms, at least two troop carriers. Sweep formation. They’re about five hundred metres up, too.’
‘Then they’ll be on us soon. We need to move out.’
‘We would be better hidden if we kept to derelict sections of the city,’ said Saphentis. ‘This planet will have fewer eyes on us.’
‘That at least I agree on,’ said Alaric. ‘I’ll work out a route with Thalassa. Get your tech-guard ready to move in five minutes. And in case there is any confusion left, you are under my command. As long as we are on this planet, you follow my orders.’
‘Understood, justicar.’
‘You don’t have to understand. You just have to do it.’
The tech-guard were soon up and armed, their emotional repressive surgery meaning that they would not be affected by the trauma of the fight they had just gone through. Hawkespur was looking closer to exhaustion than she would ever admit and Thalassa was still half-numb with shock, moving like a woman in a dream. But they weren’t the ones Alaric was worried about. The Grey Knights had taught him a great deal and the Chapter believed that one day they could call him a leader – but one lesson he had not learned was how to deal with an enemy that was supposed to be under your own command.
Alaric glanced at the shadows stretching above and saw tiny points of light darting about, the grav-platforms Archis’s keen eyes had spotted. Chaeroneia had a lot of ways to kill intruders and Alaric knew they would discover a few more before they reached Thalassa’s datafortress. But they had to go there because the datafortress meant information and once Alaric understood what he was up against on this world then he could finally turn around and fight it.
Once, when the Imperium was young and the Emperor was still a living being walking among His subjects, there had been hope. But that had been a long time ago indeed.
That hope had existed in the form of the Emperor’s own creations – the primarchs, perfect humans each representing a facet of the strength mankind would need to fulfil its manifest destiny of possessing the galaxy. They had been such astonishing beings that even on the eve of their creation, their genetic material was being used to create a generation of superhuman warriors – the Space Marines of the First Founding, twenty immense Legions of them, made in the image of the primarch on which they had been modelled.
The primarchs were scattered across the galaxy. In the Age of Imperium no one knew how or why this had happened – whether agents of Chaos had snatched them away from holy Terra, or whether the Emperor had sent them forth as infants to be strewn around the galaxy and there learn the qualities they could never acquire living in the Emperor’s shadow.
The Emperor, at the head of the Space Marine Legions, conquered the galaxy, gradually retrieving the scattered primarchs, who had grown into mighty leaders on their adopted worlds. In the Great Crusade the primarchs were reunited with their Legions and led them in the greatest military campaign mankind had ever seen, conquering the segmenta of space that would eventually form the backbone of Imperial territory, from the Segmentum Solar to the outlying Halo Zone and Veiled Region.
And the greatest of these primarchs was Horus.
Horus was the primarch of the Luna Wolves, the Legion that represented the most complete military machine in the Imperium. Resolute, valiant and commanded by Horus with a brilliance that rivalled the Emperor Himself, the Legion was such a finely-honed force that it was said that Horus wielded it with the precision of a master swordsman. There was nothing they could not do. When the Emperor acknowledged Horus as the Imperium’s greatest warmaster the Luna Wolves became the Sons of Horus, their new designation reflecting the masterful command of their primarch.
But Horus was too brilliant. His star shone too brightly. As the Crusade reeled in more and more of the galaxy he came to see the arrogance and tyranny of the Emperor. The Emperor did not do what He did for mankind – He did it for Himself, to know that the human race lived and died under His dominion. Ultimate power had corrupted Him and no one, not even Horus the Magnificent, the Warmaster himself, could sway His belief that He was the master of mankind.
This was where the seeds of the Heresy were born. Horus, the greatest man who ever lived, came to surpass the Emperor and to understand as the Emperor never could that the true destiny of mankind lay beyond the stars, in the untamed, pure realm of the warp, where the only entities deserving of worship resided. They were the Chaos Gods, the beings who wished to see mankind elevated from corruptible, heavy flesh to pure, enlightened spirits. But the Emperor was filled with hate that Horus should pay fealty to anyone greater than the Emperor Himself. So Horus was forced to entreat the powers of the warp for aid and so became the first and greatest Champion of Chaos.
The Horus Heresy divided the galaxy. In a mere seven years of war Horus led a rebellion that reached Holy Terra and the walls of the Imperial Palace, marching with fully half of the Space Marine Legions whose primarchs he had convinced of the justice of their cause. The rest sided with the Emperor, cowed into obedience by their fear of the knowledge Horus promised to teach the galaxy.
Among the greatest of the Sons of Horus was Abaddon, Horus’s right hand in battle, a force of destruction who blazed his way across the galaxy at the behest of his primarch, submitting his own life to the wishes of the Warmaster. Abaddon witnessed the final tragedy of the Heresy, when the Emperor and the Primarch Sanguinius ambushed Horus on his flagship. Horus slew them both but not before he was dealt a terrible wound by the Emperor’s sword and with his last breath, entreated Abaddon to keep the Sons of Horus alive and not sacrifice them needlessly on the walls of Terra.
So Abaddon took the Legion and withdrew, masterfully evading the vengeful Legions of the Emperor and taking refuge among the daemon worlds of the Eye of Terror. With Horus dead, the surviving primarchs still loyal to the Emperor conspired to cheat the people of the Imperium into believing the Emperor was still alive, now a living god inhabiting his corpse.
The Sons of Horus renamed themselves the Black Legion in eternal mourning for the greatest man who had ever lived, the man who should have inherited the Imperium and led mankind to an era of enlightenment in the warp. Meanwhile, the Imperium sank beyond redemption, corrupt and worthless, its people slaving to uphold the worship of a traitor long dead, its institutions dedicated only to eradicating truth from the galaxy. There could be no redemption for it now.
Abaddon probed the defences of the Imperium. In twelve Black Crusades he found the gaps in the Imperium’s armour through which the Black Legion and its allies could finally deliver the Imperium’s deathblow. When the board was set and the pieces in place, Abaddon selected the finest of the Black Legion’s heroes to lead their own armies in a grand, all-conquering campaign that would see the inheritors of the Imperium streaming from the Eye of Terror. The campaign would culminate in the destruction of Terra and the end of ten thousand years of resistance to Chaos.
Those chosen were the best of the best, leaders and warriors without peer, whose names would soon strike fear into anyone who had ever sworn fealty to the Corpse-Emperor. Among their number was Urkrathos, Chosen of Abaddon, Master of the Hellforger.
Urkrathos stamped onto the bridge that led to the ritual chamber of the Grand Cruiser Hellforger. Above him was the chamber’s ceiling like a distant black metal sky, hidden by clouds of sulphurous incense that rained a thin drizzle of black blood. Ghosts ran through the billowing clouds, spirits trapped by the sheer malice and power of the Hellforger and condemned to writhe around the ship’s decks. Below was a churning sea of gore, swirling like a whirlpool, through which naked figures fought to reach the surface and were always dragged back down, punished for their insolence or failure with a permanent state of agony, always on the verge of drowning, never reaching the release of death. Their thin, pathetic screams wove together into a dark howling wind that blew across the bridge.
Suspended over the sea of sinners was a huge circular platform, with raised edges like the seats of an amphitheatre. This was the ritual ground, a place infused with unholy energy by the torment of those being punished below. It was covered in bloodstained sand into which complex designs had been drawn in dried blood and lengths of offal, the ritual carcasses discarded in a pile to one side. The sacrifices had been specially bred on a daemon world deep within the Eye of Terror, each one worth a lifetime’s fealty to the Dark Gods. More incense billowed from burners made from the skulls of the Hellforger’s less useful crewmen and more heads hung from spiked chains from the distant ceiling, weeping black rain onto the sacred ground.
‘Feogrym!’ called Urkrathos, reaching the ritual floor. Feogrym was a wizened, hunched figure sitting in the middle of the arena. He looked up as Urkrathos approached and slunk forward, crawling towards the Hellforger’s captain. ‘I need to know now. We have entered real space and it will not be long before we reach the world. Is it genuine?’
Feogrym scampered forwards on his hands, dragging his legs behind him until he was almost prostrate at Urkrathos’s feet. ‘Feogrym knows!’ he spluttered. The sorcerer’s face could have been mistaken for that of an extremely wrinkled, wizened old man from a distance. Up close it was clear it was actually a mass of tiny writhing tentacles that only formed human-like features out of a force of habit. ‘Master, the Fell Gods speak, they speak… yes, they talk to Feogrym, tell him the truth, yes they do and old Feogrym can tell the truth from the lies…’
Urkrathos kicked Feogrym away from him, the boot of his power armour crunching through ribs Feogrym could heal easily enough. ‘Don’t try that nonsense with me, sorcerer,’ he said impatiently. ‘Abaddon warned me about you. You’re no holy moron, you’d stab us all in the back the second you saw the chance. Take it from me you won’t get that chance. Now, once again, sorcerer, is the signal real? I will not have this fleet wasting its time chasing echoes around the warp.’
Feogrym clambered to his feet and dusted the blood-caked sand off his tattered brown robes. ‘Yes, the signs have been conclusive,’ he said, rather more sanely. He looked nervously up at Urkrathos, who was twice the height of a normal man in his full Terminator armour. ‘Lord Tzeentch speaks with me.’
‘His daemons speak with you, old man and for every truth a daemon tells nine lies. You had better be right.’
‘Of course. Have I not witnesses?’ Feogrym pointed to the far side of the room and Urkrathos saw, through the billowing incense, the hundreds of desiccated corpses sitting in ranks around the amphitheatre like an audience. Urkrathos wondered for a moment where Feogrym had got them all and then realised he couldn’t have cared less as long as the sorcerer discharged his duties to the Warmaster as he had agreed.
‘So. What do you know?
‘Listen.’
Feogrym spoke a few words, dark sounds that didn’t belong to any register a human was supposed to hear. Urkrathos scowled as he recognised the dark tongue used by worshippers of Tzeentch, the Change God. Feogrym was one of those degenerates who worshipped one Chaos god over all the others, not realising that they were all part of the same many-faceted force that men called Chaos.
The blood rose in flakes off the floor, the flakes liquefying and running together like floating pools of quicksilver. The pools quivered and hundreds of crude, shifting faces were hanging in the air, their mouths working dumbly.
‘Bridge,’ commanded Urkrathos through the ship’s vox-net. The vox-net whispered back at him as it transmitted his voice to the bridge crew. ‘Play back the signal.’
The signal burst in a barrage of sound from the sky, bellowing through the ship’s vox-casters. The blood faces began gibbering wildly, flowing into one another in agitation.
‘Focus!’ snapped Feogrym. ‘Truth from the lies! The Changer of Ways commands you!’
The volume of the signal dropped and Urkrathos could make out the individual sounds, dots and dashes like some primitive code, wrought into a complex rhythm which he could tell had old, old magic pulsing at its centre.
The faces murmured a low babble of sounds, until words began forming in their speech, the words that formed the true message hidden so deep in the signal that only Feogrym’s black magic could get to it.
‘By the Fell Gods and the destiny of warp,’ they began, ‘By the death of the False Emperor and the dying of the stars, we bring to you, Warmaster Abaddon, Beloved of Chaos, Despised of Man, this tribute. For now these last days are the final fires burning, the black flames that consume a galaxy, the storms of the warp that drown out life, the End Times and the dawn of a galaxy of Chaos. We swear fealty to the Gods of Chaos and their herald, Abaddon the Despoiler, with this tribute that it might strike fear into the followers of the Corpse-Emperor and that through it they may see the true face of death…’
‘Enough,’ said Urkrathos. Feogrym waved a hand and the voices screamed silently as they dissolved into gobbets of blood that flowed up into the incense clouds. ‘This is genuine?’
‘Daemon-wrought,’ said Feogrym. ‘Most ancient. Yes, it is real.’
‘Abaddon suspected rightly, then. It is an offer of tribute. Does it tell us what they are offering?’
Feogrym spread his hands. His tentacles writhed and for a moment Urkrathos saw the pulpy, grey mass that made up the sorcerer’s real face. ‘Would that I knew, Lord Urkrathos. Perhaps the exact tribute is so great they wish for you to know of it for the first time through your own eyes, magnificent as you are.’
‘I warned you, Feogrym. I am less easily flattered than your acolytes.’
‘Of course. Nevertheless, if they are new to our cause they may wish to impress us with their offering by not revealing it until we are there.’
‘I have been around for ten thousand years. It will take a great deal to impress me.’
‘And is it your intention, Lord Urkrathos, to give them the chance?’
Urkrathos glared at the sorcerer. The ways of Tzeentch, Changer of Ways, were by definition impossible to divine. Warp only knew what went on in the creature’s head. Urkrathos didn’t care. As long as he could serve Abaddon and the greater reign of Chaos then he would accept whatever the gods threw in his way.
He would still kill Feogrym, though, when the time came. A chosen of Abaddon was not to be mocked with impunity.
‘I will keep my own counsel on that matter, sorcerer,’ he said.
‘So you will, then?’
Urkrathos scowled. Even without the enhanced strength of his terminator armour he could have pulled the sorcerer apart like a bored child might pull apart a fly. But he also knew that Feogrym was the type of creature that would not die just because you killed him. He would have to find some other way of destroying the man when he had outlived his usefulness.
Urkrathos turned and stomped off the ritual floor, leaving the madman to his divinations. Perhaps he would strip the soul from the sorcerer’s body and cast it down into the pool of torments below them, so he would serve to fuel the spells of whatever sorcerer was sent by Abaddon as a replacement. The gods would be pleased by that.
But for now, Urkrathos had what he had come for. The Black Legion’s fleet at the Eye of Terror had picked up the signal and Urkrathos had confirmed it was real. Now all that remained was to reach the planet and collect whatever was due to the Warmaster and perhaps bring the signal’s author into the war effort. The Imperium was resisting with the tenacity of a hive of insects and the Black Crusade needed all the bodies it could throw into the fire. Urkrathos would be greatly rewarded if he could bring new allies in on the side of the Fell Gods.
