Legends of the dark ange.., p.62
Legends Of The Dark Angels, page 62
It had been a good plan, right up until the moment the Supreme Grand Master’s gunship had been shot down.
The corridor beyond the hall was tight, forcing the squad to advance in single file. Belial took the lead, Azrael a couple of metres behind, and the rest of the squad following with Meritus bringing up the rear. The sensorium did not provide much assistance or direction, except to display the rough layout of passageways and chambers, which became increasingly maze-like away from the main hall. There was, however, a broader space fifty metres ahead. It was just inside the citadel’s wall. Azrael highlighted this in the sensorium, marking it as their objective.
‘A hidden secondary gate, perhaps,’ he told the squad. ‘Internal loading area with bulk conveyors, I hope.’
‘Am I the only one that isn’t happy about how easy this has been?’ said Cadael. ‘Resistance has been virtually non-existent.’
‘Stay focused,’ said Azrael, though he shared the Terminator’s concern. ‘If they think to draw us in for ambush, they will not live long to regret the favours they have granted us.’
They continued in silence, moving past storerooms filled with consumables in boxes and sacks. Each chamber was almost full, small walkways left between the piles of stores and sagging shelves.
‘They brought in a lot of supplies,’ remarked Cadael.
‘Preparing for the worst,’ said Belial.
‘I think they must have been expecting attack before we arrived, brother-sergeant,’ Cadael continued. ‘It would have taken weeks to gather all of these stores.’
‘That means little,’ the sergeant replied. ‘They have broken from the Imperium – they must have expected some form of retaliation.’
Azrael only half-listened to the ongoing conversation, subconsciously assimilating their exchanges in the same way he monitored the occasional vox chatter and reports from the other squads. He was occupied with the same issues that Naberius must have wrestled with. As Grand Master of the Deathwing he was well acquainted with the necessity to prevent knowledge of the Fallen spreading too far through the Chapter. It had been his duty on several occasions to directly intercede to ensure that his warriors were present at a crucial moment to spirit away the offending traitor.
But it had been Naberius’ strategy that had engineered such opportunity. Now that he was confronted with the reality of the potential task – to win a military campaign whilst hamstrung by the need for secrecy at the highest level – Azrael found the proposition daunting.
A fluctuation on the sensorium pulled him out of his thoughts. The squad had reached a T-junction. A wider corridor, broad enough for two Terminators abreast, ran across their line of approach, with the objective just ten metres further on. The passage to the left continued for about thirty metres before a turn to bring it alongside the outer wall.
His attention had been drawn by an energy surge that rippled through the surrounding rooms. The others had seen it and instinctively paused in their advance. Belial took a few paces towards their objective while Azrael turned left to cover the opposite approach. He could see nothing in the standard visual spectrum, but the overlaid rendition of the sensorium picked out a tracery of orange and yellow power feeds that snaked along and through the walls ahead.
A buzzing started, low and indistinct. He could not isolate the source; it was emanating from the ceiling and walls, in front and behind.
‘Can you hear that? Can you see that?’ asked Meritus. The Deathwing Terminator covered the corridor along which they had advanced, and via the sensorium Azrael could see a shadow creeping slowly up the passageway towards Meritus. ‘I think I’m experiencing a malfunction.’
‘I hear it, brother,’ replied Galad. ‘We all can.’
The darkness was not a thing in itself, but the absence of the power grid. This was no shutdown – no immediate cessation of supply. It was as though something was moving along the conduits, devouring the electricity within. In its wake the sensorium went dark as well, just flickers of sound and the occasional spark like a distant star.
‘Emperor’s throne, it’s... eating the light!’ Meritus’ exclamation was dramatic, impossible, but accurate. The shadow had reached the extent of his suit lamps, twenty metres ahead, but the beams from the high-powered lumens of his armour simply stopped as though hitting a black wall. A wall that was edging closer, a few centimetres every second.
‘Shall I open fire, Grand Master?’
‘Test rounds, four rapid,’ Azrael replied, monitoring the other sensor feeds. The shadow was definitely originating from a single source rather than approaching from multiple directions.
The bark of Meritus’ storm bolter was sharp and loud. The four shells shrieked down the corridor. Their propellant sparks blinked out and then disappeared into a black veil, their detonation suppressed or enveloped by the encroaching shadow.
‘Sergeant Daeron, report.’ Azrael kept the command short, forcing a calmness he did not feel. ‘Therizon, what is your situation?’
Static replied.
‘Movement!’
Belial’s warning startled them all, their fixation on the shadow delaying their reactions for a split second. The sergeant opened fire. Through the shared visual feed Azrael glimpsed a flutter of robe and a pale face a second before three bolt-round detonations blossomed brightly in the gloom. The sensorium was suddenly alive with signals, approaching from ahead of Azrael and Belial. Only darkness remained behind the squad.
‘I swear something’s in there,’ whispered Meritus. ‘Something moving in the dark.’
The darkness was a spear of nothingness on the sensorium, depleting everything around it, surrounded by an aura of sonic diffusions and visual blackness. Where sensor readings remained, the life signs tripled and then quadrupled over the course of several seconds – masses of rebels pouring up and down from the levels around the Terminators.
The squad opened fire as more figures appeared at the extremity of visual range, the whip-crack of las-blasts searing down the corridor from both directions. Azrael could make them out more clearly now – dressed in robes rather than combat fatigues, their heads hooded and masked like those at the citadel gate. That the hail of bolts that greeted them had not slain them all stood testament to the armour concealed beneath their robes.
‘More hereteks,’ he said to the others. ‘Blasphemers against the Machine God.’
‘Traitors of all types deserve nothing but scorn,’ replied Galad. ‘Their particular delusion is irrelevant.’
‘But not their capabilities,’ said Belial. His sword flashed with a pulse of blue. ‘Prepare for close assault.’
‘Grand Master?’ Meritus was subdued. If Azrael hadn’t known it to be impossible, he would have thought the warrior was afraid. He could understand the battle-brother’s concern. The darkness was ten metres from the Terminators, obliterating all scans of everything beyond it. It was like staring into a bottomless abyss, a maw that threatened to swallow everything. ‘Orders, Grand Master?’
‘Belial, lead the assault.’ Azrael opened fire again, targeting the helmed heads of his foes. Two fell to the salvo, a third forced back into the cover of a doorway. Beyond them a handful more levelled their weapons and unleashed a flurry of las-bolts. ‘I shall hold this flank. Meritus, withdraw to my position.’
‘Gratitude, Grand Master,’ replied the veteran warrior. He moved backwards, storm bolter still raised against the slowly incoming wave of blackness.
‘Garvel, on my left,’ snapped Belial, waving the other Terminator forward with his sword. The field of Garvel’s thunder hammer crackled sporadically, blue light glinting from fittings and cables along the walls.
The two Terminators advanced shoulder to shoulder. Belial kept up bursts of fire from his storm bolter; Garvel had his shield raised against the intermittent las-fire that returned. A coruscating ball of plasma screamed down the passageway, glancing across Belial’s shoulder. The blast erupted into a spray of cerulean energy, bathing the Terminator and wall with a pulse of power.
DATE IDENT: 887939.M41#1441
‘Cover fire!’ barked Azrael.
Cadael opened up past his reeling sergeant, firing on full automatic for several seconds while his squad leader recovered from the plasma impact. A handful of hereteks retreated from the furious blaze of bolts.
Azrael was aware of Meritus just behind before the heavy thud of steps sounded through his suit’s auto-senses. The sensorium and a decade of experience fighting together joined them beyond the physical – they shared senses and knew each other’s manner and instincts intimately. The Grand Master steeled himself against the infectious discomfort that flowed from Meritus’ unease.
‘Some kind of anti-tech pulse field, I warrant,’ Azrael said to calm his companion. He fired at movement to his left, a flurry of bolts that turned a stone doorway to a cloud of flying shards.
‘Of course, Grand Master,’ Meritus replied, unconvinced. ‘Very likely. Nothing arcane or unnatural at all.’
The crash of Garvel’s thunder hammer resounded down the corridor, swiftly followed by the higher pitched crackle of Belial’s power sword and a scream cut short. Azrael had to reload.
‘Swap positions,’ he told Meritus. ‘Hold them back.’
The two Terminators rotated around each other like a single mechanism, leaving Meritus free to continue firing at the hereteks. Azrael came face to face with the approaching shadow. While he ejected his weapon’s magazine and pushed home another, he studied the wall of blackness. It was hard to remain objective, as though an aura of menace preceded the dark wave.
The sensorium had no reading from the shadow, so he was forced to estimate its distance. Seven-point-five metres. Another flare of plasma brightened the feed from Garvel and the Terminator cursed, falling to one knee as his leg armour gave way under the strike. Immediately Cadael was there, standing over his battle-brother, his fist smashing aside a heretek lunging at the Terminators with a serrated axe.
Azrael fought against the distraction and tried to focus on the edge of the cloud where it touched the wall. From the lack of data picked up by the sensorium, he knew the field, or whatever it was, extended through the ferrocrete and into the surrounding rooms for several metres.
He fired a grenade. The charge arced onwards until it met the shadow and then vanished. He waited, and two seconds later heard the faintest of noises, almost a sigh that issued from the blackness.
Belial hewed the helmeted head from a heretek as he reported.
‘Passage to the objective is secured, Grand Master.’
He and Cadael were at the doors to the large room Azrael hoped was some kind of conveyor chamber. From what he could see on the sensorium scan, once they were in there would be no other way out. The hereteks seemed content to allow them into the room, perhaps knowing they would be trapped there until the energy-eater reached them.
‘Hold the line.’ Azrael fired a flurry of grenades at the shadow-wall and ran towards it with storm bolter blazing. ‘I shall return.’
His outstretched power fist touched the blackness. Warning sigils and a piercing whine exploded through his war-plate as systems overloaded. The stacked crystal core of the reactor burned at one hundred and fifty per cent for almost a second to compensate for the sudden energy drain.
Azrael could feel himself slowing, the servos and artificial muscles of his Tactical Dreadnought armour shutting down as the shadow swallowed up its power. Like a vampire, the darkness leeched everything from the suit – sensorium, locomotive and environmental systems blacked out in rapid succession.
For a heartbeat, and then another, nothingness swamped Azrael. There was no feedback from his armour at all, but he could smell his own sweat inside his helm, taste the metal of the suit. He could see his eyes reflected in the red lenses just centimetres in front, devoid of head-up display and sensorium readings.
It was like losing a limb; the jacks and sockets of his black carapace that linked him to the armour became cold metal embedded in his flesh. Not painful, but suddenly stark against the warmth of his own body.
As he had thought, momentum took him onwards and just two seconds after entering the shadow the impetus of his charge carried him free of it again.
The sudden light and sound was blinding and deafening, the whine from his suit as power once more surged through its limbs like a welcome clarion. His bolts and grenades exploded just a few metres ahead, ripping across a tangle of wires and metal just a little narrower than the corridor itself, a metre and a half tall.
A trio of hereteks stood behind the device, which continued to slowly grind forward on metal tracks. He saw their eyes widen with fear in the visors of their wolf-masks, as they reached for long-barrelled pistols hanging in holsters beneath their robes.
He fired high. The first bolt took the nearest heretek in the face and turned her mask into hot shards, flinging her back with a piercing shriek. The second had started to duck but two bolts caught the top of his head, ripping his cranium apart from within, the blast partially contained by his hood so that as he fell a slick of broken skull and gobbets of flesh coated the inside of the rough cloth.
The third did not flinch as a bolt whirred over his shoulder. Azrael had time to register the strange ruby-like gem that tipped the pistol – rather than a muzzle or las-lens – a moment before a spark no bigger than a thumbnail hit him in the chest.
Though not large, the shot dug deep through the layers of metal and ceramite. The discharge of energy carved open his breastplate like the swipe of a lightning claw. Scorching pain lanced through Azrael’s pectoral but he pulled the trigger as he stumbled back and his next two shots found their mark in the heretek’s chest. Two bright explosions tore open his robes and scattered blood-spattered scales into the air.
Blood bubbled from the wound in Azrael’s chest, quickly solidifying as modified cells clotted the injury.
There were more hereteks behind the shadowcaster, but the bulk of the machine was between them and the Grand Master, blocking their lines of fire.
With a grunt, Azrael heaved a shoulder into the metal plate fronting the machine. Its tracks squealed and screeched on the hard floor as snarling engines fought against the powerful fibre bundles of the Grand Master’s warplate. Its momentum, though slow, was implacable and it continued to push forwards, sliding Azrael back across the ferrocrete floor. Detecting a loss of traction, his suit responded, jutting slender memesteel spines from the soles of his boots. The spikes dug ragged grooves in the stone until they found purchase.
The growl of the shadowcaster’s engines grew to a loud whine. Past the armoured shield Azrael could see robed figures clambering onto the engine block and track housings. He stowed his storm bolter against his greave with a clang of its magnetic clamp and grabbed the bottom of the frontisplate with his now free hand.
‘Boost to servos,’ he told his armour and it responded immediately, the hum of its stacked crystal core reactor becoming a pulsing buzz. A temporary surge of power flooded the Terminator suit’s limbs and spinal hydraulics.
Azrael straightened his knees and lifted the front of the shadowcaster. As its tracks rose from the floor it lost traction, and the Grand Master’s task grew easier with each passing moment. With a shout, Azrael hauled the diabolic engine up, turning it as he did so to tip aside the hereteks climbing along its length.
Metal screeched and tore as he continued to tilt the shadowcaster. He toppled the bulky machine onto a handful of techno-cultists, its weight crushing them to a paste across the unforgiving floor. Tracks whirred against the bodies of those on the other side, dragging robes and limbs into drive wheels, grating flesh and bone against the wall.
Azrael pushed. With no force to act against the power of his armour, he broke into a run, using the overturned shadowcaster as a ram to flatten even more hereteks that had been following behind the bizarre field generator. Their screams and panicked cries were silenced as the engine crashed through them like a runaway heavy loader.
Twenty metres and more than a score of dead enemies later, the shadowcaster crashed against the wall of a junction, mashing another trio of cultists to pulp against shattering stones. Sparks flared from the shadow generator and flames burst from ruptured lubricant lines. In seconds the entire infernal machine was engulfed in green flames.
Able to utilise the sensorium again, Azrael saw that his companions were beset from three sides – the scanner relay showed their beacons as a few bright dots amongst a sea of energy signals. The chamber to which they had been heading was as full as the corridor, which had been empty thirty seconds earlier, indicating that the rebels had some means to arrive at the ground level.
Further afield more Deathwing squads approached from the main hall – Squads Therizon and Karolus. Daeron’s men were still out of range.
‘Daeron, status report,’ Azrael voxed as he started back towards Squad Belial.
‘A few attacks. Nothing troubling, Grand Master. I think they are just trying to keep us occupied for the moment.’
‘The citadel shield generator is still operational. Link up with Karolus and locate its source. I want that shield down in five minutes.’
‘Affirmative, Grand Master. We’ll follow the energy grid and do a sweep from here.’
DATE IDENT: 887939.M41#1444
Arriving back at the arterial corridor, Azrael was confronted by an anarchic scene. The hereteks had pushed through the fusillades of the Terminators and an intense close assault raged on both flanks. Belial’s power sword swept back and forth with relentless precise strokes. The crackle and crash of power fists landing body-shattering blows punctuated the shouts and shrieks of the techno-cultists.
