Master of sanctity, p.15
Master of Sanctity, page 15
There was no means to tell which way would lead to the rest of the Deathwing. They were to teleport in two waves, but evidently despite the signals from the teleport homers planted by the Ravenwing the first wave had been scattered all across the target citadel. This was the situation they had hoped to avoid and it seemed the lost brothers of the Second Company had died in vain.
That was despondency talking. Without the effort and sacrifice of the Ravenwing perhaps the First Company might not have been able to teleport at all, or worse…
He focused on the positive aspects of his situation. He had arrived in one piece and was inside the enemy fortification. Somewhere here there were enemies to be killed, and their commander to be captured if possible. If he had survived then so too had others, he was sure. This place could not be so vast that they would never come together. Even now Belial was probably bringing squads together for a determined assault.
Telemenus thus saw that he had two mission objectives. His priority was to locate any enemy and slay them. The second mission was to join up with the other elements of the assault force. To achieve the second would require a degree of luck and starting out in any particular direction was as likely as any other to take him closer to allies. On the first, the slaying of the enemy, he knew that whichever way he went he would come across a foe sooner rather than later.
Leadership
It was obvious from the moment Sapphon recovered his senses that all was not well. Waiting with the second wave aboard the Penitent Warrior he had been horrified to learn that contact had been lost with the Ravenwing, only for hope to return when their teleport homers were detected. However, the moment Belial had teleported to the surface with the squads of the first assault the ships’ scanners had fallen blank once more. He had ordered the second wave to teleport as soon as possible, using the coordinates fixed for the initial attack.
Of his five-man honour guard, only Fidellus with his thunder hammer and storm shield and Brother Satrael, armed with a heavy flamer, had arrived with the Master of Sanctity. Vox-checks showed that there was no comm-link between the squads and the First Company warriors were forced to shut down their sensoriums, which had been rendered useless by the warp-reality interface of Ulthor.
‘Secure perimeter,’ Sapphon ordered over the external vocalisers.
They had arrived in something like a furnace room, presumably somewhere near the base of the enemy stronghold. The air was dry and hot, a dozen open furnaces that burned with green-and-yellow flame spilled heat and light across crumbling bricks of floor and walls. The ceiling was thick with black soot, seemingly accreted over countless generations although Sapphon knew Ulthor had until a few years ago been an Imperial world and the construct they were now in had not existed then.
‘Main doors secured,’ reported Satrael. ‘Corridor, thirty metres, no enemy.’
‘No other exits,’ confirmed Fidellus, rejoining Sapphon. The battle-brother looked around, storm bolter tracking the movement of his gaze. ‘What is this place?’
Sapphon moved to a nearby pillar and drove his fist into it. Brick shattered, but underneath where one might have expected to find plasteel bars or ferrocrete was a bone-like substance along which ran dark veins. Sapphon punched again, breaking into another layer, this time of almost formless greyish slime, flecked with globules of gristle that started to coagulate, hardening into a new protective layer, turning red to match the brick.
‘It is raw warp made into matter,’ said the Chaplain, pulling his hand away with a shower of bloody droplets. He knew it was not blood at all but it was hard to think of the dark red fluid in any other way. He chose his next words carefully, for although many in the Deathwing had been initiated into the lore of the Dark Angels they were not all aware of the true nature of the warp and the daemons that inhabited it. ‘A psychic construct, made possible only here at the edge of the Eye. No more real than the flame of a psychic blast.’
‘Such flames can still burn and kill,’ said Satrael.
‘True,’ conceded Sapphon. He motioned for Fidellus to follow and walked over to Satrael. ‘Whatever may seem unreal here is certainly material enough to cause injury, even death. We must find the others quickly.’
With Satrael leading the way, the corridor only wide enough for them to advance in single file, the three Space Marines set out from the furnace room. The passageway took them to a junction, the route to the left staying level, on the right the corridor became a set of steps going up after a few metres, and it was upwards they headed. The tunnel-like stairwell was barely large enough for them to pass, backpacks and shoulders scraping furrows in the moss-covered brickwork as they forced their way up the steps.
At the top was another corridor, far wider, the brick-like skin giving way to a fleshy surface that undulated slightly as though rippled by a breeze. A slow, rhythmic thudding like a heartbeat could be heard reverberating along the walls and floor.
‘Brothers!’ Satrael called out as two ivory-armoured giants appeared through an archway ahead. Sapphon recognised their livery: Nemascus and Haerus. The two Terminators, part of the first assault, shouldered their way out into the corridor.
‘A welcome sight,’ said Haerus. ‘The first we have seen since arriving.’
Sapphon noticed that there was thick ichor splashed across their armour, as well as cuts and cracks in the ceramite.
‘You have encountered the foe?’ asked the Chaplain.
‘Aye, and they regretted it,’ said Nemascus. He lifted a power fist, its disruption field crackling. ‘Humanoid and others, not of mortal flesh.’
‘Like this palace,’ added Haerus. ‘See?’
He kicked at the wall, which disintegrated at the blow. Another kick and a punch had opened up a hole into an adjoining chamber large enough for the Terminators to pass through.
‘What of the warp-spawn, do they die as easily as the walls crumble?’ asked Sapphon.
‘They do, and a rare treat it is,’ said Haerus.
‘They fall as easily as living creatures here,’ said Nemascus. ‘No warp blessing to protect them. In this place, between material and immaterial, mortal and immortal are the same, it seems.’
‘A good thing to know,’ said Satrael.
‘There is bad news also,’ replied Haerus. He stepped through the hole and beckoned the others to follow. Sapphon ducked through and found himself in a long column-line gallery, though the columns appeared more like femurs, and the floor was awash with a shallow trickle of thick fluid. At the far end, the floor was bulging up in several places; horns and single-eyed faces were pushing out of the fabric of the palace.
‘I see,’ said the Chaplain. He opened fire, blasting apart the emerging daemons. Their burgeoning heads turned to black pools of filth, spreading out slowly through the mire. Moments later, half a dozen pillars started contorting, forming into pot-bellied figures, arms and swords lifting away as faces pushed out from the bone.
‘Problematic,’ said Fidellus.
‘Indeed,’ replied Satrael. ‘We fight the whole building. It is all one mass: creatures, edifice, world. How can we kill such a thing?’
‘We do not attempt to,’ said Sapphon, heading up the gallery towards the manifesting daemons. Dangling polyps in the ceiling swayed towards him, growing eyes and barbs as he approached. ‘We seek the Fallen, or news of his whereabouts. The nature of our location does not change this.’
‘As you command, Brother-Chaplain,’ said Satrael.
‘Just so,’ replied Fidellus.
Two of the daemons tore themselves free of the structure just in front of Sapphon. He smashed one aside with a single blow from his crozius arcanum. The daemon’s flesh became a fog speckled with wet fragments that drifted to the ground like sodden leaves falling from a tree. Fidellus’s power fist despatched the other, a blow to the midriff turning the otherworldly creature into a smear along the Terminator’s arm.
‘Unpleasant,’ said Fidellus, trying to shake off the filth.
‘Press on,’ said Sapphon.
It was time-consuming to battle every apparition and half-formed assailant, and so the Deathwing warriors stopped only to fight those manifestations that were fully formed, or to clear away grasping, slashing appendages and other weapons of the palace itself. They headed steadily upwards when they could, Sapphon convinced that regardless of the strangeness of the stronghold, the normal hierarchy of the ruler wishing to be above his domain would hold true even here.
As they battled their way up through the citadel they encountered more of the First Company. Soon Sapphon’s small force numbered eleven other warriors, and they advanced at speed, certain they would find more of their battle-brothers in the halls and chambers ahead. More confident than when he arrived, he despatched a squad of Terminators to look for other survivors, sending them away with the instruction that any warrior they encountered was to be sent up; in the higher reaches of the palace the Deathwing would come together again.
Fury
Mewls, whines, growls and howls added their harmony to the rhythmic thunder of storm bolter fire. The entire citadel rebelled at the presence of the intruders, ripping itself apart, reshaping stairways and columns, floors and balconies into grasping claws and cyclopean monstrosities. Walls fell away to become swarms of ravaging beetles, while sinewy roots erupted from doorways to ensnare anything that approached. Flies the size of bolt shells were vomited forth by lesion-marked maws torn out of window slits while giants made of brick and mould waded into the Deathwing with club fists and rusted iron teeth.
Asmodai did not register the strangeness around him, but saw the ongoing battle in a monochrome fashion: allies and targets. A tide of beetles crept over his black-painted armour, their carapaces shining like oil, turning him into a writhing statue of chitin and rage as he tried to sweep them away with the side of his combi-bolter and the butt of his crozius arcanum.
‘Brother Allius!’ The heavy flamer-armed Terminator turned as the Chaplain called his name. ‘Cleanse me!’
The Space Marine hesitated a moment and then opened fire, washing burning promethium over the Terminator armour of his superior. Warning lights and sirens flashed at the temperature rise but Asmodai was unconcerned; his suit was designed to withstand far worse. After a few seconds, Allius ended the gout of flames, leaving a sticky, drying crust crackling across Asmodai’s armour.
There was no sign of Belial. Asmodai had been standing right next to him on the teleporter pad, but a stomach-churning few seconds later and they had been deposited in completely different parts of the target area. A methodical search had ensued, in which Asmodai had gathered up twenty more of the Deathwing, but had revealed no sign of the First Company Grand Master.
There was a lull in the violence; colour and clarity started to return to the Chaplain as ire simmered down to dull anger. He noticed that two of his battle-brothers had been taken down during the fighting, though he could not recall how. Semmean had lost his right leg; Namnos had been punctured through the chest multiple times. Apothecary Temraen was attending to them both, his white armour splashed with blood as he attempted to examine Namnos’s wounds.
‘Brothers Tyronius, Vascaertes, protect the Brother-Apothecary and then follow when the casualties are secure.’
‘Televacuation, Brother-Chaplain?’ asked Tyronius.
‘No,’ said Asmodai with a shake of the head. ‘No teleporter fix. The only way we leave this citadel is to fight our way out when the mission is complete.’
‘Affirmative, Brother-Chaplain,’ said Tyronius, moving to stand guard at one of the corridors coming into the large hall. Vascaertes positioned himself to cover another entryway.
‘Follow me, show the enemy no mercy,’ said Asmodai striding towards a stairwell that had, a minute earlier, been a serpentine mass of barbs and suckers.
‘I did not realise we had been,’ muttered Sergeant Daeron.
‘Enough flippancy!’ snapped Asmodai, not turning to look at the wayward Space Marine. ‘Ten days in the penitentium when we return to the ship. Concentrate on the task at hand, not on vacuous humour.’
‘Apologies, Brother-Chaplain.’
Asmodai paid no regard to the sergeant’s contrition. He was occupied using what auto-senses he had remaining to scan the stairwell ahead. It seemed dormant for the moment but he had no desire to march directly into the gullet of some daemonic conjuration.
The steps led upwards, splitting into two curving sets of steps. About twenty metres away each disappeared beyond two asymmetric archways before being lost in the gloom of fog and the buzzing remnants of the clouds of flies. Asmodai pressed on, turning right on a whim, for there was no means of knowing which flight would take him closer to the foe.
After another twenty metres, through which the stairs had curved through one hundred and eighty degrees, the Chaplain stepped through another misshaped opening onto a long ledge that ran alongside a wall on the right shaped like half a rib cage, arching overhead to link with vertebrae-like vaults. To the left the floor sheared away as though cut by an axe, ragged but steep. The ledge was four metres wide, narrowing and widening by a metre or so for stretches, angled slightly up and visible for several hundred metres before hanging fronds of red moss and ruffles of pale yellow fungus obscured the view.
Asmodai stepped out onto the ramp and looked down into the chasm. He stepped back in shock, taken aback for a moment before forcing himself to look once more.
The ledge seemed to be dizzyingly high – thousands of metres dropped away below the Chaplain. But it was not this vertiginous view that had surprised Asmodai. At the bottom of the shaft dwelled some immensely bloated creature; or several creatures, for it was possible that their flabby bodies were pressed so hard together in the confines that they could not be discerned as separate. Hundreds of eyes glared back at Asmodai, some of them clustered like an insect’s, like the many-faceted crystal orbs of flies and spiders, scattered amongst bloodshot, disturbingly human orbs each easily a dozen metres across.
A gargantuan split rippled open along a portion of the creature – Asmodai was convinced now it was a single beast – revealing dark gums encrusted with wart-like growths each as big as the Chaplain, wrapped about broken and cracked fangs each as long as a gunship. Another maw gaped further alone the crevasse, a tongue slipped out languidly across bloated lips, forked and forked again, over and over again so that it became dozens of tendrils each about as thick as his arm, creeping and tasting its way up the slime-slicked sides of the canyon.
‘Emperor protect us!’ said Daeron. Asmodai had not noticed the sergeant come up beside him. ‘Is that just another construct, or do you think it is the controller of the citadel itself?’
‘It matters not. We lack sufficient firepower to inflict significant damage at this range.’ Asmodai watched as a bubo the size of a shuttle craft erupted above an eye, the pop echoing up the chasm like a crack of thunder. From the pus that spilled forth emerged half a dozen shapes, floating like bubbles towards the Terminators as they headed out along the ledge.
As they rose higher Asmodai could see a darkness within the translucent skin of the bubbles, like larvae in an egg. The dark spots grew rapidly in size, other bubble-eggs boiling up after the first, spat forth by erupting boils and suppurating wounds in the creature’s hide. The closest eggs burst, revealing monstrous fly-like beasts each as big as a Terminator, and on their backs clung more of the cyclopean daemons that had assailed the Deathwing since they had arrived.
‘Open fire!’ barked Asmodai, but the order was not needed; the Deathwing started to blaze away with storm bolters and heavy weapons the moment the first fly rider had erupted from its perverse cocoon. The cough of bolt-rounds cut across the thrum of insectile wings as the pestilent swarm rose out of the depths, hundreds-strong by the time the first wave reached the ledge.
Asmodai fired without relent, emptying the bolter component of his combi-weapon, the shots cutting through a trio of fly-riding daemons heading directly for the Chaplain. As he reloaded he switched to the plasma gun fixed by the artisans atop his modified bolter. One blast incinerated another daemonic attacker, its charred remnants fluttering back down the chasm like ash from a fire. To his right the Deathwing force had stretched out, advancing further along the ledge to ensure that their flank was protected. A barrage of bolt-rounds, assault cannon shells and cyclone missiles shrieked and roared down into the abyss, cutting swathes through the oncoming mass, though the daemons did not relent in their approach.
A flying creature with a lashing proboscis loomed up over the edge of the rock shelf, twice as big as Asmodai, its trailing legs tipped with claws, vestigial appendages in its thorax rippling and darting. Astride its back sat a canker-skinned daemon with a wide, fanged mouth, single red-pupiled eye and a curling horn in the centre of its forehead. Between the white nodules that broke its pale green skin were rents and tears, tatters of flesh turned back to reveal pulsating innards and flexing ligaments. Asmodai’s revulsion increased as he saw something like a face leering at him out of the creature’s spilling intestines.
‘Foul spawn! Death to the impure!’
His first blow was met on the blade of a rusted sword as the plague creature buzzed past, its limbs lashing at the Chaplain’s helmeted head, perhaps drawn to the skull into which it was fashioned. His next sweep dug the eagle-headed crozius arcanum deep into the belly of the creature, causing a ripple to flow across its flesh. The daemon rider’s sword crashed down on Asmodai’s shoulder, sending chips of ceramite flying. Where the blow had landed the ceramic coating started turning to dust, flaking away as though the bonds that held it together were breaking.
