Legends of the dark ange.., p.17
Legends Of The Dark Angels, page 17
‘Affirmative,’ Boreas agreed with a nod, turning his attention back to the auspex. There were no life signs within fifty metres.
Damas squared up to the armoured door and placed his left hand against it. Clenching his powerfist, he swung. A thunderous detonation boomed down the corridor as his fist smashed through the metal. Opening his hand, he peeled away the torn metal as if it were paper-thin, ripping a hole large enough for them to duck through.
‘Thumiel, sentry point. Zaul and Nestor, remote secure area and advance to this position.’ After receiving their affirmative replies, the Interrogator-Chaplain pushed his way into the power chamber, followed by Hephaestus and Damas. It was not large, barely five metres square, and filled with thrumming power conduits and coils of finger-thick communications cables.
‘Relay interface,’ Hephaestus said, pointing at a screen and terminal to their left. Boreas gave him a nod, and stepped over to the machine. Pulling an assortment of wires from his backpack, Hephaestus tried a couple until he found one that could connect with the interface. ‘Assimilating schematics,’ the Techmarine announced.
Boreas checked his chronometer. Just short of two minutes had passed since they had initiated the boarding action. Another fifteen seconds went by before Hephaestus declared that he had the information he needed.
‘We’re four levels down from the main control bridge, and about sixty metres to the starboard,’ he told them. He paused for a moment as he consulted with the three-dimensional layout plan he had taken from the communications grid. ‘There’s an ascensor shaft twenty metres further on, which will give us access to the bridge entryway.’
Boreas’s comm buzzed as it received an external transmission and decoded it.
‘Lord Boreas,’ he heard Sen Neziel say. ‘Saint Carthen has reduced her fire considerably. I believe she is mustering her crew to repel boarders.’
‘Acknowledged,’ Boreas answered, before he turned to Hephaestus. ‘How secure is this area?’
‘One access point by the stairwell within one hundred metres, three ascensors within the same distance,’ he replied after a brief pause.
‘Can you shut down the ascensors from here?’ Boreas asked.
‘Not quickly, rites of command have been initiated,’ the Techmarine said with a shake of his head. ‘However, from here we can cut the power grid to the whole section, which will slow down reinforcements.’
‘Agreed,’ Boreas said with a nod. ‘Set melta-bombs.’
As Hephaestus began placing the charges, helped by Damas, who was following the Techmarine’s directions for the best sites, Boreas ducked back into the corridor where Zaul, Thumiel and Nestor were waiting for him.
‘Zaul, Thumiel, advance around the corner and secure the ascensor,’ he ordered. They headed off up the corridor, bolters held ready. Hephaestus and Damas hurried back out of the relay chamber, a moment before the interior was lit by white-hot light. Sparks cascaded from the severed energy lines and instantly the lights died. Boreas’s artificial sight bathed everything in a red haze.
‘Quick advance, that will only slow them down for a short while,’ Boreas said, leading the others after Zaul and Thumiel. Passing the corner, he saw the two battle-brothers flanking the double doors that gave access to the ascensor shaft. With his power armour-enhanced strength, it only took a moment for Boreas to force the doors open. The shaft stretched several levels above and below their position. The ascensor itself was on the next level down.
‘Thumiel, Zaul, covering positions on the shaft. Nestor hold this point. Hephaestus and Damas with me,’ he said before holstering his pistol and jumping out into the shaft to cling onto the ascensor’s cables. The threaded metal creaked under the additional weight. Certain that it would not hold up to the strain of three fully armoured Space Marines, Boreas leant across the shaft and drove his fingers through the comparatively thin metal walls, securing himself a hand hold. Releasing the grip of his other hand, he swung over the gap, the toe of his boot driving into the wall. Steadying himself, he set about climbing up the shaft, punching hand and footholds as he went.
Suddenly light filled the shaft as doors opened above. Zaul fired immediately, the traces of the bolts screaming up past Boreas to explode three levels above his head. Something bloody and ragged fell past him and landed on the top of the ascensor with a wet thud. He ignored the intermittent gunfire coming from above and below as he climbed, concentrating on maintaining his balance as he clambered up through the erratic las-fire and the whirring of bullets.
One level down from the open doorway, which was also the floor on which the bridge was located, Boreas stopped and glanced down. Hephaestus was just a couple of metres below him, and Damas a similar distance further down. He signalled for them to stop climbing and pulled a fragmentation grenade from his belt. With his free hand, he primed the timer for a one-second delay then flipped the firing pin and lobbed the grenade up. It arced slightly towards the open door and exploded in mid-flight, shrapnel clattering noisily off his armour and shredding anything stood in the open portal. With a grunt, he pulled himself up a couple more handholds and then leapt for the opening, his fingers digging into the mesh of the floor.
Hauling himself up, he pulled out his crozius and looked around. Four dismembered bodies littered the hallway he found himself in. He stared face-to-face with a group of more than a dozen crewmen, armed with lasguns and shotguns, who staggered back, terrified.
‘External address. No mercy, no respite, no retreat!’ Boreas bellowed, his exterior speakers turning his battlecry into a deafening roar that stunned the traitors even more.
He was on them before they could react, his crozius smashing the jaw from one and crushing the chest of another with his return swing. Hephaestus sprinted past him, his glowing axe cleaving another in two through the midriff and lopping the arm off another. They broke and fled, but couldn’t outrun the Space Marines as they bounded forward with long, powered strides, hacking them down from behind, their power weapons leaving a trail of steaming blood and cauterised flesh.
‘Exit point secured,’ barked Boreas. ‘Reform at my position.’
As he waited for Nestor, Zaul and Thumiel to catch up, Boreas checked the chronometer again. Five and a half minutes since the operation had begun. He unslung the auspex and activated it, pointing it in the direction of the bridge. The flickering screen was almost completely white with pulsing life signals.
‘Full charge, close assault,’ he announced when the others were all present. ‘Covering fire Zaul and Thumiel, rearguard Nestor.’
They nodded in understanding and readied their weapons for the final push. Hephaestus jabbed the button to open the chamber’s portal.
‘For the Lion!’ cried Boreas, launching himself out into the entryway that led to the bridge.
The passageway was deserted and Boreas halted just a few steps down, momentarily puzzled. It stretched ahead for twenty metres before opening out onto a hallway. Right in front of him stood the doors to the bridge, a heavily armoured portal with hydraulic bars dropped into place. He checked the auspex again; it still read overwhelming life signals. He thumped it with the butt of his pistol and it gave a plaintive electronic whine and the display faded.
‘Brother-chaplain, I am detecting an interference signal emanating from the bridge,’ Hephaestus announced. ‘They are jamming our scanners.’
Boreas hooked the auspex back onto his belt and looked back at the others.
‘They have taken refuge inside the bridge itself,’ he said, advancing cautiously along the corridor, the others following him. ‘Impossible to know how many of them there are, we must assume it will be heavily guarded.’
‘We do not have breaching equipment to cut through the portal,’ Hephaestus told them.
‘Are there any other access points?’ Boreas asked as they reached the hallway. It too was empty of life. Boreas spotted a scanning lens set into the wall above the door and shot it with his bolt pistol, sending sparks cascading down onto his armour.‘
‘There are several weak points in the bulkhead itself,’ Hephaestus replied, his head turning left and right as he surveyed the wall.
‘Augment terrorsight,’ Boreas muttered and his constructed vision faded to a wireframe schematic. He could see the wall, the banks of machinery and consoles beyond, the enemy crew standing out as red blobs amongst the overlapping lines. There were at least three dozen waiting inside, probably more, many of them clustered around the doorway. He saw the outline of Hephaestus moving forward as he indicated a section of the bulkhead that was thinner than the rest. ‘Cease augmentation,’ Boreas told his armour and a hazy approximation of normal sight returned.
‘If we use the rest of our melta-bombs, we can blast a hole through here,’ the Techmarine said, activating his power axe and scoring a rough outline into the metal of the wall about five metres right of the doorway. He marked six points to indicate where to attach the melta-bombs. Damas collected the charges and set to work, de-activating their timers so that they would only explode by remote detonation. When it was done, they gathered in a semi-circle a couple of metres back from the breaching point, readying their frag grenades.
‘Zaul, Damas, first in and break to the right. Hephaestus and Nestor next in to cover forward. Thumiel follow with me to the left,’ Boreas snapped out the plan. ‘Prime grenades with three-second fuse.’
Damas took a step forward, his powerfist glowing, with Zaul slightly crouched behind him. Hephaestus glanced over at Boreas and the Interrogator-Chaplain gave a small nod. With a hiss and then a loud crack, the melta-bombs detonated, melting through the metal bulkhead in an instant. Damas jumped forward, his powerfist smashing through the weakened wall and clattered into the bridge, his bolt pistol firing. Zaul followed quickly, bolter held in one hand, combat knife gripped in the other. His chanting sounded over the comm-link as Nestor and Hephaestus followed up, their pistols spewing fire. Boreas charged in next and rounded to the left towards the door, Thumiel close behind him, his bolter roaring.
There were twenty or so officers and crewmen by the entry portal, armed with a mixture of lasguns, stub pistols and shotguns. They were turning in reaction to the attack but Boreas opened fire first. The first bolt tore into the face of a man with a red bandana, a moment before his head was vapourised. The second round ripped into the butt of a shotgun and flung the man back as his firearm exploded in his hands.
Boreas launched himself across the gap, still firing, his crozius held above his head. Flares of light reflected off the gleaming surfaces of control panels and displays as his conversion field burst into life as shotgun rounds, las-bolts and bullets pelted into him. He took a heavy hit to his right knee and stumbled. A lucky shot had pierced the bendium seal between the armour plates on his leg but the pain passed in an instant as his armour stimulated his pain-suppressing glands to kick into action. Thumiel loomed over the Interrogator-Chaplain, spent bolt casings showering around him as he fired semi-automatic bursts into the enemy.
With a grunt, Boreas pushed himself upright, dropping his pistol and gripping his crozius in two hands. The first swing threw a man five metres across the bridge to land heavily in a crash of splintering dials and exploding wires. His next blow crushed the chest of an officer in a long blue coat decorated with gold braiding. He slumped to the floor, blood bubbling from his lips from his collapsed lungs. Another man had drawn his sword and chopped wildly at Boreas’s head. The blade crashed off his helmet and threw his head back. The Interrogator-Chaplain let go of his crozius with his right hand and as the next attack swung in, he warded it away with his arm, his gauntleted fist closing around the blade. Exerting his strength, the blade buckled and twisted between Boreas’s fingers until it snapped. He rammed the point into the man’s throat and let go, leaving his body to fall to the floor drenched in arterial blood.
Only three men were left alive and they threw down their weapons and raised their hands above their heads. Zaul fired into the chest of the first, ripping apart his spine and internal organs. Boreas grabbed the head of the next in his hand and snapped his neck, tossing the body aside with ease. The third man collapsed to his knees, tears streaming down his cheeks, his white trousers stained as he soiled himself. The man gibbered some unholy prayer before Boreas’s booted foot crashed into the back of his head, stamping his life out on the hard deck.
‘Damas, Nestor, secure entry point,’ the Chaplain barked, turning from the sprawl of bodies and pointing to the smoking breach in the bulkhead. ‘Hephaestus, locate and shut down artificial gravity and life support systems.’
The bridge was theirs.
THE TALE OF ASTELAN
PART FOUR
Voices called to Astelan from the dark shadows of the cell. He thrashed feverishly within his chains, his once mighty frame now wasted and haggard. Not a scrap of flesh had been left unmarked by the Interrogator-Chaplain’s cruel ministrations.
Astelan’s mind felt as equally ravaged by the psychic intrusions of Samiel. His body battered, his thoughts in tatters, he struggled to maintain a fragile grip on reality.
Unable to move his head very far, his world had constricted to a space only a few metres across. He knew every crack and crevice above him, he could picture them in his head as clearly as a map. He knew there were thirteen blades, three drills, five augurs, eight clamps, nine brands and two barbed hooks on the shelf. He could remember the feel of every one on his flesh, each a little different. Even when Boreas was not there wielding his vicious implements, so confused was Astelan’s mind that sometimes he would wake feeling their savage touch upon him.
With creeping fingers, he had counted the links on his chains hundreds of times to keep his thoughts occupied. Every moment that he did not concentrate on something, the voices returned.
He had long given up his refusal to sleep. It mattered not that he cried out when the nightmares assailed him. Awake, he was barely more lucid, the barriers between what was a dream and what was real had blurred for some time.
All this he knew, from a detached, coherent part of his mind that sometimes fought through to take control. He knew the voices were simply echoes in his head of Boreas’s questioning and the psychic probing of Samiel. He knew that it was merely an illusion of his tortured senses when the shadows grew hands that reached out towards him. But those times were few, and his moments of lucidity were growing rarer and shorter.
Astelan had lost count of the number of visits he’d had from his captors. Perhaps it had been fifty, perhaps five hundred. Sometimes he argued, other times he shut himself away, ignoring the slice of the scalpel in his flesh, the boring of the drill through his bones, the searing of his skin on the tip of a brand. Boreas came and went, Samiel came and went, and there was no pattern that Astelan could fathom. Sometimes he awoke to see Boreas standing there watching him, listening to his nightmare-induced screams. Other times the Chaplain plied him with questions, examining every aspect of his answers, but did not inflict any more pain on him. Sometimes there was only pain and no questions, or the insidious whispering of the psyker inside his head, calling him a liar and an oath-breaker.
As he lay there, tormented and delirious, he dreaded the sound of the large brass key in the lock. And then there were the times when he longed for Boreas to return, when his strained mind could no longer be contained and he had to communicate his raging thoughts. He struggled to remember why he was here, and then recollection would surge back, washing away the pain. Though it was a constant struggle, somehow he managed to retain a small piece of what he had been.
In his mind he pictured it as a glowing star hidden away in the centre of his brain. Shadows snatched at it, the burning red eyes of the warlock studied it, but it was safe and secure. It was his dream, his ambition. The return to the glory of the Great Crusade, the casting aside of the meaningless institutions and arrangements that had brought mankind low. As he concentrated on it, the glowing star would grow, fuelled by his memories, fanned into greater life by his desire.
Astelan knew that he would never see the Greater Imperium, would never again lead the armies of the Emperor across war zones amidst the crash of bolters and the crackling of flames. That was beyond him now; they had taken that from him when he had given himself up on Tharsis. If he had known, if he had truly realised what they had intended, he would have fought harder than he had ever fought before.
Regret turned to grief as he saw his plan lying in shattered pieces, the golden star just a hazy glow that bobbed and weaved, eluding him. For centuries he had been a protector, a leader, a warrior bred for conquest. He looked at the wreck he had become and cursed the Dark Angels, and cursed Lion El’Jonson who had set them on this path. Grief turned to anger and he raged feebly at the chains that bound him to the stone table, barely able to lift himself.
Astelan felt a familiar breeze on his check and looked at the open door, his head lolling weakly onto the slab. Through bruised and bloodshot eyes he saw Boreas enter. Inwardly, Astelan was grateful that Boreas had come alone. The Interrogator-Chaplain walked quickly to the slab, and Astelan heard the clanking of chains and the metallic scratching of a key in a lock. One by one, the chains fell away, their great weight lifting off his limbs and chest. Unencumbered by the heavy iron, Astelan tried to sit up, but found he had not the strength to do so.
‘Try harder,’ Boreas said softly in his ear. ‘Your muscles need reminding what they are for. Try again and they will start to remember.’
Astelan croaked wordlessly, focusing every fibre of his being, summoning all the strength he had. His spine felt like it was on fire, every joint in his body ached and his muscles screamed with the exertion, but after what seemed like hours, Astelan managed to pull and push himself upright.
