Graevus holstered his bolt pistol to hold his axe two-handed, then dropped into the hole. His a.s.sault squad followed him rapidly, each man dropping into the unknown with weapons drawn.
"d.a.m.nation!" came a vox almost immediately, half-scrambled by interference but definitely Grae-vus"s voice. "What is... Get down here, everyone, I can"t..."
Static howled over the vox. Without pausing Salk jumped in after the squad, knowing that his squad wouldbe right behind him.
He landed on something hot and soft, squirming and undulating beneath him. Something twisted past his face and his autosenses picked out a tenta-cle, as thick as a Marine"s waist, squeezing the life out of one of Graevus"s a.s.sault Marines before cramming the remains into a giant circular maw big enough to swallow a tank. Yelled orders and cries of pain were everywhere, along with the roaring of something inhuman that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
Salk"s squad were dropping in all around him. He flicked the selector on his bolt pistol to full auto and dived into the fray.
Sarkia Aristeia gulped down the pure, freezing air, trying to get the stink of mutation and burning flesh out of her lungs. She stumbled from the open blast doors and fell to the ground, grazing her palms on the frozen earth. It was ruination outside the facility, with the tech-guard defences reduced to rubble and heaps of pulverised earth. Barbed wire was wrapped around broken bodies of men and eldar. Corpses lay everywhere, their blood already freezing hard - Sarkia even saw the armoured form of a fallen Marine. Plumes of smoke rose from craters and, as Sarkia looked up at Stratix Luminae"s pale blank sky, she saw the twirling contrails of the Soul Drinkers Thunder-hawks as they returned to their ship in orbit. She had seen them fight, and by the Omnissiah they were awe-some, a head taller than the tallest normal man, fast and ruthless, deadeye shots and ferocious in hand-to-hand. Truth be told they had scared her more than the quick, skilful eldar. She supposed that the Soul Drinkers had saved her life from the alien menace, but it was a hollow feeling.
The Marines hadn"t bothered with the survivors. An Adeptus Mechanicus ship would probably come, carrying adepts that would use Sarkia and the other survivors to seal the facility and label it Interdictus. The work they were doing there had been revolutionary, even Sarkia knew it. But it had been dangerous, and even if the eldar raid had been a coincidence (it couldn"t be, the aliens had to have known what they were doing here and come to stop or steal it) the mutagenics could easily have got out of hand. Now the containment around the primary samples had been breached - Sarkia might be killed and incinerated to prevent contamination, or she might be interrogated until she gave up what little she knew about the program in an investigation into possible corruption or incompetence. It all depended on the unknowable, logic of the Archmagus in charge.
Something stirred in the entrance, moving out of the shadows. Another survivor? A few tech-guard and adepts had survived, Sarkia was sure she had seen old Karlu Grien hobbling out of the wreckage below. But no... it was a survivor, perhaps, but not one she wanted to see.
It was naked, humanoid but not human. It was so emaciated it couldn"t possibly be alive - pallid skin stretched taut over a vestigial ribcage and a stringy abdomen. Its limbs were too long and it had too many fingers and toes, which had too many joints apiece. It looked too weak to stand but it strode confidently out of the blast doors and into the light. Its face was no face but a knot of hanging skin, with a pair of stern triangular eyes that glowed faintly. It looked at her, once, and Sarkia could feel the menace, like a lasgun beam right into her soul, burning those eyes and that nonexistent face into her mind forever.
It looked at her like she looked at cells under a micro-scope. In that moment she knew what it was - one of the experiments from the lowest level, perhaps a success, perhaps a failure. The adepts had been trying to unlock the human genetic pattern so they could halt, reverse, or create mutations at will - this was one of the things they had made. By the way it moved without enough mus-culature to support itself, Sarkia presumed that it was one of the psychic creations she had heard rumoured darkly by the menial staff.
A wave of revulsion rolled over her and she scrambled away into a half-collapsed trench as the creature walked by, forgetting her as it looked out over the remnants of the defences and the gory relics of the battle. She could feel its hatred and corruption, she could feel her very soul becoming filthy with its presence. She fought the urge to vomit, to grab sharp chunks of frozen soil and sc.r.a.pe her-self bloodily clean.
She tried to tear her eyes away but couldn"t, as the creature lifted off the ground and shot towards the sky, leaving behind an invisible but powerful stain of hatred and corruption that Sarkia Aristeia would never be able to wash off.
He was bored by this world, where the sum of living things wasn"t even worth the effort of killing.
Filled with the hatred of life that was hard-wired into a soul that should never have been born, Teturact looked up at the darkening evening sky, took hold of his feeble body with his awesome mind, and flung himself up towards the heavens.He could feel life out there. And life meant death, and death meant power, and power was the closest thing in the universe to the sacred. For Teturact had known, since the moment he had been born in a test tube crammed with mutating clone-cells, that he was a G.o.d, with a G.o.d"s power and a G.o.d"s ambition.
Now he just had to let his worshippers know they had to worship him, and as he plunged through the vacuum towards the teeming life-light ofStratix, he knew exactly how to make them kneel.
The h.e.l.l was lighting up the sky. The psychic circuit raged around Sarpedon"s body, cold fire against his skin, and he felt as if his blood would boil trapped inside his armour. He poured every last drop of his willpower into the h.e.l.l, the unique power that had brought him into the fold as Chapter Librarian a lifetime ago. The same power was now drawing stern spectres of order and justice in the sky, throw-ing down lightning bolts of purity at the hordes pouring from crashed landers and fallen piles of bodies. The nalwood force staff was hot in his hand and Sarpedon had to force back the h.e.l.l, rein it in before it demanded all his focus and blocked his capability to lead his Marines.
He let the psychic fire die down to a bearable level and clambered up onto the pile of wreckage he was using for cover, climbing to a vantage point where he could get some overview of the battle-field. A short distance away Squad Dyon was taking ranging shots at distant groups of enemies, and nearby Librarian Gresk was leading the prayers of Corvan"s a.s.sault squad as they prepared for the counter-attack they would soon drive into the heart of the enemy. Sarpedon looked out over the battle-field at the force his Marines were facing and though he did not accept despair, he got some idea of the sheer scale of the fight to come.
Traitorous Guardsmen jumped from Valkyrie trans-ports so twisted with corruption that they looked like huge flying beasts. Shambling dead groped their way from drifts of broken bodies and were whipped into advancing waves by cadaverous taskmasters. The sky was thick with falling debris, and Sarpedon knew the force had already lost Marines to the wreckage drop-ping from orbit. He could not begin to estimate the numbers of Teturact"s army He knew that a battleship could hold upwards of twenty thousand crew, but there was no telling how many cultists and living dead could be crammed into the same s.p.a.ce.
The h.e.l.l was throwing some of the enemy back, forcing the still-sentient troops of Teturact"s horde to falter as they charged. But the dead and the fanat-ics kept coming, and with each pa.s.sing moment a hundred more emerged, formed huge bloodthirsty mobs, and advanced.
The Soul Drinkers were drawn up in a rough defensive circle around the facility. The barren tun-dra had become a landscape of broken metal and dead bodies, where the Soul Drinkers" superior fire-power mattered less than brutal close combat. Several squads were already fighting hard within the ^position, hunting down and crushing the pockets of attackers that fell close to the facility, and already there were tales of brutality and bravery being writ-ten in the bloodstained maze of wreckage.
Sarpedon held the front and Iktinos the rear, and it was from the far side of the facility that Sarpe-don could see the flashes of psychic fire from the Librarian Tyrendian. Two fighters were still air-borne and functioning as a mobile reserve, but Sarpedon knew they could not stay in the air much longer. All he could see of Sevras and Karvik"s fighter was a pall of smoke hundreds of metres away. If anyone had survived, they would have to fend for themselves.
Sarpedon dropped back down to the ground as the first lasgun shots from the advancing horde spanged off the twisted metal around him.
"Range?" he asked of the closest sergeant, Dyon.
"Give the word and we can give them a counter-volley"
"Let them get closer. I want rapid fire, we need to thin them out, not scare them."
"Understood."
The vox crackled with gunfire. "Commander!" came Chaplain Iktinos"s voice. "The heathens have a.s.saulted with armour. We are engaging."
Iktinos was cut off before Sarpedon could reply, the sky past the facility flashing scarlet with Tyren-dian"s psychic lightning.
Sergeant Luko"s voice came over the vox a second later. "Tellos is counter-attacking, sir. We can"t hold him back, we"re advancing to give his men covering fire."
"Do it, Luko. Just don"t get cut off, they"re coming in everywhere."
"Understood."
So battle was joined. Sarpedon knew the h.e.l.l would be little use against the mindless hordes at the forefront of the attack. He let the psychic circuit die down to a faint dull glow against his skin and holstered the force staff on his back."Dyon, bring your men forward and engage. We"ll throw them against the men behind them. Pa.s.s the order on, give me solid rapid fire and cover the a.s.sault squads."
Dyon ran forward through the growing storm of las-fire, his Marines snapping bolter shots off at the hordes that were even now breaking into a run as they began to charge.
Sarpedon followed, cycling through the vox-traffic, ready to intervene when a flashpoint erupted. He could feel the psychic feedback like a million buzzing insects as Gresk started to quicken the reac-tions and thought speed of the Marines around him and Tyrendian continued to fling mental artillery at the forces charging the rear of the facility.
This was where the future of the Soul Drinkers would be won or lost. He checked the magazine in his bolter, and drew the Soulspear.
Teturact"s ship was a ragged skeleton around him, sheets of hull flapping uselessly like torn skin, the inner decks exposed like the cells of a beehive, bleeding the living dead into the upper atmosphere. The ship was shedding its last few scales, and Tetu-ract willed his wizards down to the surface one by one where they could direct the battle and lend the power of their minds to the vastness of his horde.
There was a sudden flare of power far below, right in the heart of the growing battle. It coincided with a flare of hatred and grim determination as the two sides met, tinged with a delectable joy as someone who loved bloodshed charged into the fray. But the flare of power remained, hard and bright, something old and powerful and tinted by the taste of human-ity A relic, a weapon, the presence of which suggested that someone down there could be power-ful enough to put a dent in Teturact"s glorious army.
That could not be allowed. And furthermore, it was in itself a disadvantage. Because Teturact could see it, a bright black light on the surface of Stratix Luminae, and if he could see it then he could deal with it personally.
His brute-mutants, drifting aimlessly since the ship"s gravity had given way, were drawn to him to act as bearers once more. They lifted Teturact"s wiz-ened body onto their broad shoulders and with a thought he willed them downwards, through the disintegrating body of the ship, and into the upper atmosphere of the planet.
The freezing, thin air whipped around him as he descended, extinguishing the fear flickering in the bovine minds of his brute-mutants. His senses flowed out and he saw the tiny force, just a few hun-dred Marines, surrounded by the legions of his loyal worshippers. Where the two forces met combat blazed and the hot, spicy taste of lives lost flooded the wreckage of the battlefield. The Marines could fight, but the fire of that combat would eventually consume them. With the wizards even now landing amongst their flock, Teturact had more than enough raw manpower to make it happen.
The hard nugget of raw power shone directly beneath him. Teturact smiled, if it could be called a smile, and plummeted downwards.
TWELVE.
Mutation had run unchecked through the stores of sample tissue for ten years. The lower bas.e.m.e.nt had been full of refrigeration units containing sheets of cultured skin and cylindrical slabs of arti-ficial muscle and, when containment broke down the unleashed half-humans absorbed it all. Now there was barely any difference between the indi-vidual organisms - several had joined into huge gestalt creatures and, aside from the strongest who had left them so long ago, they thought with one mind.
They had been starving for some time. Now, they were hungry. In the lab floor just below the surface, many were loose, and at last they had some new game on which to prey.
Sergeant Salk hacked down with his chainsword and severed a long, articulated tentacle-limb as it tried to wrap itself around Techmarine Solun"s throat. The beast reared up twice as tall as a Marine, its head a writhing knot of tendrils surrounding a round muscular lamprey"s mouth, its body a pul-sating column of oozing muscle. Its head touched the low vaulted roof of the dark, nightmarish labo-ratory before it bellowed and crashed down on the spot where Solun had lain a moment before.
Salk dragged the techmarine aside just in time. Both Solun"s legs were gone, chewed off by the same beast that had swallowed half of Salk"s squad. The beast thundered in rage as it lumbered forward - Salk jabbed at the gaping maw and stabbing ten-tacles, keeping the thing at bay as Solun tried to fend off the claws of its lower limbs.
The lab floor was a nightmare. The vaulted ceiling was crusted and discoloured. Banks of corroded machinery and shorted-out command consoles provided scores of hiding places for mutant crea-tures and obstacles for the Marines. Bolter sh.e.l.ls were zipping across the room and globs of brackish mutant blood spattered from gunshot wounds and chainblades. Salk"s own chainblade was so clotted with gore that its motor whined and smoked angrily. The lights were out and the gauze of filth and corruption that lay overeverything cut down the visibility like fog, so that all Salk could see were huge mutant forms looming all around and glimpses of his battle-brothers in muzzle flashes and the detonations of grenades. The din was terri-ble, gunfire and b.e.s.t.i.a.l howls, the crack of fractured ceramite and the cries of the dying.
It was all but impossible to keep cohesive. The vox I was distorted and near-useless. Salk"s own squad was scattered, many of them dead, others wounded. Brother Karrick would be lucky to keep the arm that had been mangled by something unspeakable that struck from above. Salk knew that any of them would be lucky to get out alive.
There was a flash of white armour and Apothecary Pallas was diving onto the beast from behind, punching his carnifex gauntlet through the mutant"s hide. The array of chemical vials emptied through the gauntlet"s injector spike and a black stain of necrotic tissue spread. The huge mutant convulsed, forcing Pallas to hold on to avoid being thrown across the room. Salk ducked forward and drove his chainblade into the mutant"s head, again and again, feeling the weapon"s motor straining under the weight of tissue clotted around its teeth.
The beast stopped thrashing. Pallas rolled off it and landed beside Solun, the white sections of his armour now dark and slick with corrupted blood.
Thank you, brother." gasped Salk.
"Don"t thank me yet," replied Pallas. "We still have to get onto the containment level. That"s where the samples will be kept."
"Where"s Karraidin?"
"Down. He and his squad are making a stand but they"re trapped. Graevus is holding the way down but he can"t make it without help. Lygris is with them, trying to get the blast doors open." Pallas used one of his few remaining vials to inject Solun with powerful painkillers and coagulants, restricting the blood flow to his ruined legs.
"I"ll take what men I can and help out Graevus." said Salk. He looked down at Solun.
"I"ll do what I can here." replied Pallas.
"They"ll need you down there." said Solun, his voice weakening. "There isn"t much you can do for me, Pallas."
"I can stabilise you so we can pick you up on the way out. We need you alive."
"Good luck, brothers." said Salk, knocking the worst of the gore off his chainblade before heading into the foetid gloom to gather the remains of his squad.
"Wait!" said Solun. What... what"s yours?"
"My what?"
"Your mutation. We are all changing, that"s why we are here."
Salk thought for a second. To tell the truth he had been ignoring it. Pretending to himself that it wasn"t real.
"Karendin says it"s metabolic. My body chemistry is changing. I don"t know the details."
"And it"s getting worse?" Solun was going into shock and his voice was faltering.
Yes, brother. It is."
So is mine. It"s my memory, you see. I can... remember things. I"m starting to remember things that I never learned. Ever since the Galactarium... please, we have to finish this. Even if we die trying, we can"t turn into one of these creatures."
"Don"t speak, Solun." said Pallas. "Drop into half-trance, you"re in shock." He looked up at Salk - his face was streaked with mutant blood. "Get to Grae-vus. Don"t wait for me, I"ll make it if I can."
Salk nodded once and sprinted into the gloom, the deformed monstrosities of Stratix Luminae clos-ing in from the darkness around him, and the secret of survival somewhere below.
Thaddeus. .h.i.t the floor of the Chimera APC as it roared over piles of wreckage, storm trooper driver grinding the gears as the vehicle almost overturned trying to scale the unexpected obstacle.
Tanks are ruptured." said the driver from up front. "Bail out!"
The rear hatch swung down and Thaddeus jumped out, followed by the Pilgrim, who showed agility beyond his ragged appearance as he scuttled down the wreckage to ground level.
Towering twisted piles of wreckage had turned the barren tundra into a maze. The sound of battle came from all directions: h.e.l.lguns and bolters, the booming amplified voices of cultist taskmasters, storm trooper sergeants yelling orders. A couple of storm trooper squads were nearby trying to clear out a cordon to mount another push - the vehicle column had broken up completely, the APCs ren-dered all but useless by the rapidly changing, lethal environment.
Thaddeus snapped off a couple of autopistol shots, knocking down a couple of cultists who had taken up a firing position high up in the closest wreckage. He saw as they fell that they were Guardsmen, d.a.m.nedsouls whose will had proven too weak and who had been corrupted into the ser-vice of Teturact. This was the worst kind of evil, the kind that took dutiful Imperial citizens and turned them into the tools of Chaos.
"Sister! Colonel! What"s our situation?"
The vox was a mess of warped static. Sister Aescar-ion"s voice came through first. We"re not going to be able to break through here, inquisitor. We"re fac-ing some kind of... moral threat. Heresy and daemonology."
"Sarpedon?"
"I think not. Witches, inquisitor. We have lost many already"
"Fight on, Sister, I will see if there is another way"
Thaddeus couldn"t raise Colonel Vinn at all. The storm troopers were moving forward, battering their way towards the facility with volleys of h.e.l.lgun fire, but they could not move fast enough to keep from being surrounded. Thaddeus recognised the advancing hordes from the battlefield reports that had come in from all over the warzone - vastly superior numbers, most of whom were barely sen-tient and so felt no pain or despair, who could be defeated only by killing them all. The same armies that had carved out Teturact"s empire were here on Stratix Luminae, and they wouldn"t be any easier to kill.
Thaddeus and Pilgrim ducked into cover as lasgun fire spattered towards them from ex-Guardsmen traitors duelling with the closest storm troopers.
"Do not feel sympathy for the Soul Drinkers." said the Pilgrim, as if reading Thaddeus"s mind. "Evil will always fight with itself. Just because Sarpedon batdes this same corruption does not mean he is our ally"
Thaddeus looked over the twisted hull fragment he was using as cover. He saw heretics crouched in the wreckage, swapping fire with the storm troopers - h.e.l.lgun blasts took off heads and ripped torsos apart but there were just too many of them.
"We cannot make it as one." Thaddeus said.
"The strikeforce was never anything more than a decoy." replied the Pilgrim. Though you may be loathe to admit it, it was only us who could face Sarpedon. Let them fight, it takes the eyes of our enemies away from us."
Thaddeus looked at the Pilgrim, its hooded face I as sinister as ever, its grinding voice like a warning in his head. "Not without Aescarion."
Teturact"s witches are here. There is much power in them, I can taste it. If Aescarion is facing them then she is lost. We are the only hope."
Thaddeus gripped his autopistol tight, sweating in spite of the freezing cold of Stratix Luminae. Aescarion was as loyal a Sister as he could hope to have on his side, and the storm troopers were some of the best-trained troops the Ordo Hereti-cus could field. But men like Kolgo had taught Thaddeus that even loyal citizens like these were secondary to the ultimate goal of doing the Emperor"s will. If they had known, they would have understood.
"Agreed." said Thaddeus. "We two can slip by when a hundred are halted. Lead the way, Pilgrim."
The inquisitor and the Pilgrim moved quickly towards the facility, always keeping the wreckage between them and the concentrations of enemy troops, leaving the strikeforce to draw away the enemy while they searched for their true quarry.
Whatever Sarpedon wanted, it was in the facility. And that was where Thaddeus would find him.
Perhaps Karraidin was dead. Perhaps Solun was, too, trapped and all but helpless on the floor above. It didn"t matter. What mattered was that the future was below them, trapped in the festering heart of an evil that had grown unchecked for a decade. Salk still lived, along with a handful of his squad. Grae-vus and many of his a.s.sault Marines, too, along with Techmarine Lygris and Apothecary Pallas. It would have to be enough, because they had one chance and this was it.
Techmarine Lygris, covered by the bolters of his brothers crammed into the corridor behind him, had opened the control panel of the blast doors and was rewiring the security circuits. The data-slate showing the scrawlings from Karlu Grien"s cell was his guide - the diagram was the most secret thing the mad adept had known, the key to the blast doors fitted to the containment floors after the facil-ity had been hurriedly sealed.
A fountain of sparks burst from the door controls and the doors juddered open, smoke pumping from the corroded servos.
"Cover!" yelled Graevus and the bolt pistols of his squad were levelled at the opening doors as Lygris scrambled back and drew his own pistol.
Salk watched as he prepared to enter the place that had almost killed Captain Korvax ten years before.