The floor of the facility"s second underground level was gone, eaten away as if by acid, a ragged ring ofblackened metal all that remained. In the centre, where it would have been bisected by the floor, was suspended a huge sphere, corpulent and rotting, seething flesh pulsing between the rusting metal plates. It hung from the ceiling by a web of raw tendons and rained a steady shower of filth down into the lowest level below.
It was there, at the deepest point of the facility, that the containment had failed and where the worst of the corruption waited. The released mutagens had knitted the raw tissue into a thick pulsing mantle of flesh that lay over everything like a blanket, rippling like water, boils as tall as a man spurting hot pus like geysers, the remains of hulking biocontainment units like islands surrounded by bleeding scabs and writhing proto-limbs.
In the centre, breaking the surface of a small lake of brackish blood rained down by the sphere above, was a structure that Salk guessed was a control room or tech-shrine. Thick cables snaked away from it, and the windows now clouded with corrosion would once have looked out across the whole con-tainment floor.
The Soul Drinkers looked down on the scene from a thin ledge of crumbling metal that clung to the wall just beyond the exit of the corridor leading to the floor above. The sounds of battle coming from the lab floor made it clear that they couldn"t stay there - they could be trapped and butchered by the mutated beasts charging down the corridor from above.
Salk glanced across at Graevus, The veteran"s power axe, clutched in his huge mutated hand, still fizzed and crackled as its power field burned off the blood crusted on its blade.
"One way." said Graevus simply.
"Agreed." said Salk. "Lygris?"
Lygris nodded. "You need me down there."
"Pallas." said Graevus, "you stay here. Someone has to get to the surface if we don"t make it. Get Sarpedon to evacuate the force as best he can if we can"t find anything or get back up. Whatever hap-pens, we"ll need you to fix us afterwards."
"Just make sure there"s enough left of you to patch up." replied Pallas.
Graevus smiled, hefted his power axe in both hands, and jumped.
Sarpedon saw the dark star as it fell, a weeping open eye that bled malice as it plummeted down from the sky. It warped everything around it - with sight alone Sarpedon could tell it was something of terrible power.
But his mind confirmed it. Sarpedon was a telepath who could transmit but normally not receive - but even so he was receptive enough for the new arrival"s sheer malevolence to burn itself into his mind. He felt filthy, as if some physical cor-ruption were washing over him, and his mutated genes seemed to squirm inside him as if trying to escape. He heard screams as the traitor horde sur-rounding the facility keened in worship or despair, or perhaps both. The sky was turning dark and for a moment everything seemed to tilt as reality itself buckled under the strain of containing such a power.
The falling object landed a few hundred metres away in an explosion of shattered metal and earth. The Soul Drinkers firebases were holding well against the advancing ma.s.ses of enemies, except where Tellos to the front and Iktinos to the back were embroiled in brutal swirling hand-to-hand combat. This would turn the tide, Sarpedon had no doubt - the leader of the horde had decided to take a personal hand in the battle. Sarpedon hurried through the closest cover, where several Marines had taken up firing posi-tions. He didn"t know which squad they were from - organisation was breaking down and offi-cers were in charge of whichever Marines were in earshot.
We need to put together an a.s.sault force," he called to the nearest Marine. "Round up as many brothers as you can and..."
The Marine turned to speak just as his head snapped to the side and a ragged hole appeared in his temple.
A report sounded over the din, the sharp crack of an autopistol. Sarpedon ducked into cover as more pinpoint shots rang out, one punching through the chitinous armour of his leg, another zipping past his head far too close. He saw the attackers closing in from behind. There were two of them, one a hooded, hunched figure prowling for-ward like an animal, the other an unaugmented man in a long blastcoat with a heavily modified autopistol in one hand.
Sarpedon brought out the Soulspear and it responded to his grip, his genetic signature unlock-ing its pre-Imperial technology and sending twin blade-shaped vortex fields out from either end. The Soulspear had served him well so far in this battle, but these new enemies were no traitors or mutants.
With sudden, shocking speed the cowled figure leapt forward, great strength propelling it as it pounced.
Sarpedon slashed with the Soulspear but the cowled monster was too quick, ducking beneath the vortex blade and batting aside the front legs that Sarpedon jabbed up to fend it off.
Sarpedon was thrown back onto a ma.s.s of wreck-age, the foul-smelling creature pinning him down withstrength that Sarpedon had only witnessed in a fellow s.p.a.ce Marine. The arm that held the Souls-pear was pinned - he reached round with his free left hand and tried to grab the attacker by the throat but it lunged back and drove an elbow into Sarpe-don"s face. His mouth filled with blood and he spat out a tooth bitterly, reaching out with two legs to get some purchase on the wreckage. He dug his talons into the torn metal and hauled himself over, rolling to the side and using the momentum to push the attacker off him. He grabbed a handful of the rags that covered it, and pulled.
The cowl tore away, and Sarpedon saw his attacker"s face. Its skin was dead and pale blue-grey, red-raw where thick cables snaked into interfaces in the scalp. Its eyes were pure black. Its nose, mouth and throat were gone, replaced with bra.s.s-cased augmetics, metallic gills that fanned open and closed as it breathed and thick cylindrical filtration units where its throat should have been.
Sarpedon recognised that hate-filled expression, eyes burst black from the sudden pressure drop, twisted with loathing for the betrayal it felt. "Greet-ings, Michairas." said Sarpedon, and cracked a vicious head b.u.t.t into his enemy"s face.
Sarpedon had killed Brother Michairas once before during the Chapter war. When many of the Soul Drinkers had rebelled against Sarpedon"s ascension to the post of Chapter Master, Michairas had been one of their leaders. He had been a young but excellent warrior, novice to Commander Caeon, and had even partic.i.p.ated in the rites that followed victory on the Lakonia s.p.a.ce fort. When Sarpedon had tracked Michairas down on the strike cruiser, he had torn out his rebreather implants, throttled the life out of him and hurled him out of an airlock. Those hate-filled eyes had stared at him from through the porthole even as they filled up with blood and turned black.
Sarpedon had a moment to admire Michairas"s toughness and resourcefulness. He had no idea how the Marine had survived - perhaps the damage done to his rebreathers hadn"t been enough and he had somehow managed to get his helmet on and drift until picked up. Probably he had clawed his way back on board the strike cruiser and stolen a saviour pod. It didn"t really matter - it must have taken ma.s.sive strength of will to not only survive, but set out on a path of revenge that had brought him to Stratix Luminae.
The blade of the Soulspear hummed through the air and Michairas ducked it as Sarpedon knew he would - he stabbed deep into Michairas"s shoulder with his front leg and felt the talon slide through muscle, bone and augmetics.
But Michairas didn"t feel the pain. He probably couldn"t feel anything any more, with so many of his organs replaced with augmentics and bionics. Instead he grabbed hold of the leg embedded in his shoulder and used its leverage to throw Sarpedon clear over his shoulder, slamming him into the rock-hard earth.
Michairas leapt onto Sarpedon like a predator, fingers reaching out to gouge at Sarpedon"s eyes. It was only when his limbs suddenly refused to obey him that he realised the blade of the Soulspear was stabbing through his stomach, shearing through his spine. Sarpedon kicked him off to roll onto the ground beside him, withdrawing the vortex blade of the Soulspear.
"The Soul Drinkers you knew are gone." Sarpedon said grimly. "That Chapter dies with you."
The black eyes were still staring at him when the Soulspear sliced Michairas"s head off. Augmetics shorted as the headless body fell back, bionics sparking and cables spewing black conductor fluid.
Sarpedon turned to the second attacker, the nor-mal man who had hung back while Michairas attacked.
Wordlessly, the man took aim and fired. The bullet hummed like an insect as it whipped through the air - Sarpedon ducked it but he could hear it as it zipped back towards him. A guided round, rare and lethal.
Sarpedon"s wrist flicked and the Soulspear cut the bullet in half in mid-flight.
The man lowered his weapon.
"Inquisition?" asked Sarpedon, the Soulspear still alive and thrumming in his hand.
Yes. Ordo Hereticus, sent to kill you."
"Are you going to stand there wasting bullets on me, or are you going to fight an enemy worth fight-ing?"
The inquisitor stared at Sarpedon and paused for what seemed like forever. Sarpedon could see the tendons in his hand and neck tensing as he pre-pared for the next move - to attack or flee, to demand Sarpedon"s surrender or to negotiate for his own safety.
Before the inquisitor could act a Shockwave tore across the battlefield, tearing from the traitor leader"s landing site through the wreckage and bar-ricades. Sarpedon turned and saw showers of earth and shattered metal fountaining as something pow-erful and fast hurtled straight towards him, carving a furrow through the battlefield, throwing traitors and Marines alike into the air as it pa.s.sed.
Sarpedon dived to one side as a wall of flying debris ripped over him, covering his legs with deep slash marks down to the muscle and knocking the inquisitor flying. Sarpedon hit the ground hard and rolled quickly, planting his leg under him to spring up and face whatever new monstrosity had sent itself.a.gainst the Soul Drinkers.
Metal and soil fell like rain. In the centre of the destruction, in a zone of calm like the eye of a hur-ricane, was Teturact.
No descriptions existed of Teturact but Sarpedon knew straight away who he was facing. Sarpedon could feel his augmented organs straining to keep diseases from erupting throughout his body at the enemy"s mere presence. Strange sounds rolled just beneath his range of hearing, the taste of rank blood filled his mouth.
His autosenses could barely contain the sight in front of him.
Teturact was a thin, wizened humanoid form perched like a malevolent carrion bird on the shoulders of four immense, brawny brute-mutants. The faces of the mutants were swamped with mus-cle until their features hardly showed, and their trunk-like arms ended in fists as large as a man"s torso. Teturact probably couldn"t walk on his own, but even in that deformed, dried-out body Sarpe-don could taste the vastness of Teturact"s mind and the immense power it could bring to bear.
Teturact reached out and Sarpedon was held in a psychic vice that reached through his armour and began to crush his solid bone ribcage as it hauled him high into the air. A white wall of pain crushed inwards as he struggled against bonds that only existed in Teturact"s mind. The battlefield whirled underneath him and Sarpedon could see the facility, the isolated pockets of Soul Drinkers holding back the tide, the vast swarms of traitors wading through the volleys of bolter fire and the piles of their own dead.
He saw the snarled knots of slaughter where Tellos and Iktinos were engaged in savage hand-to-hand fighting on opposite sides of the battlefield. He could even pick out, through a whitening gauze of agony, the battle on the edge of his vision where black-armoured Sisters and Hereticus storm troop-ers were fighting tides of zombies and wizards whose corrupt magic Sarpedon could taste.
Sarpedon"s ribcage fractured. A warm wave rode through him as internal organs ruptured and his insides were flooded with blood. He tried to reach through Teturact"s grip deep into his own mind, to dredge out the power of the h.e.l.l that might distract Teturact long enough for Sarpedon to strike back. But Teturact was powerful, more powerful than any-thing Sarpedon had felt before, a vessel of pure hatred and corruption focused through an utterly malevolent mind.
With a flick of his will, Teturact threw Sarpedon down to the ground. Somehow, Sarpedon forced his legs underneath him and spread them enough to cushion his landing, otherwise his armour would have been cracked clean open by the impact. As it was he felt the muscles tearing in their armour of chitin and his single bionic leg shorted out with a flash of pain.
Teturact lifted him up again, legs dangling use-lessly, and brought Sarpedon through the air towards him.
Sarpedon saw Teturact"s ruin of a face, flaps of ragged skin for features, weeping raw pits for eyes.
"You are different." said Teturact"s voice in Sarpe-don"s head, thick and treacly, like acid corroding his brain. "My worshippers have faced the Astartes many times, but they tasted pure and misguided. You are tainted. You are like I once was, a man flawed down to the genes. Ah, but I took those flaws and made them my reason for being. You are afraid of them, however. You want to turn yourself back. How can you turn back when you are already so much more than a man?"
Teturact drew Sarpedon closer. It felt like his mind was on fire.
"If you could only see what is possible when your own body is no longer a prison, then you would really know what freedom is. That is what you want, isn"t it, flawed man? To be free? Yet you search to rebuild the prisons of your flesh."
Sarpedon knew he couldn"t take Teturact on, not when the vast fortress of the mutant"s mind stood before him and Sarpedon himself was, ultimately, little more than a man. But Sarpedon could taste somewhere in Teturact a single weakness, the same weakness that was killing the Imperium and which the Soul Drinkers themselves had possessed until Sarpedon had shown them the way out.
It was arrogance. Teturact believed he was a G.o.d, and his victims were worshippers. When he looked at the Soul Drinkers he saw more fodder for his worship, strong and skilled men but men nonethe-less.
Sarpedon was not much more than a man but he was more, and what set him apart was the strength of will that had seen him fight against his Chapter and his Imperium, accepting the hatred of the universe in return for a fleeting taste of freedom.
A white stab of psychic power was driving forth from Teturact"s mind, boring into Sarpedon"s own mind the same way it had done to untold billions of desperate plague victims, to plant in him the seeds of worship and bind him to Teturact"s will. Sarpedon let him in, pulling back his psychic defences just enough to let Teturact think he was winning.
Cold horror washed through Sarpedon. He could feel the exultation of a G.o.d and the billions of minds united in worship. He could see a universe where stars were weeping sores and planets teemed with life like spores of a disease, all singing the name of Teturact. He could feel the Imperium he hated crushed beneaththe weight of worship, the minds of its citizens liberated even as their bodies decayed and the armies of the Emperor died in their trillions...
Sarpedon opened his eyes. He could swear he detected rapture in that near-featureless face, the face of a G.o.d being fed the worship he craved.
With a strength he didn"t know he had, Sarpedon snapped his mind away from Teturact, the images of glorious decay receding with impossible speed and leaving him dazed and near-blind with the effort. But Teturact was stunned, too, his mind losing its grip on Sarpedon and dropping him to the ground. Sarpedon landed hard on his back, exhaust gases hissing from the fractured power plant in his armour"s backpack.
He fumbled with numb fingers for his boltgun. His hands shook as he brought it to bear on the indis-tinct shapes towering over him, and his trigger finger spasmed as he willed it to pull down on the trigger.
Half a magazine of bolts sprayed out. Every one ricocheted off an invisible shield of will, s.p.a.ce warping where they hit.
The brute-mutants leaned down and Teturact leaned with them, his spindly form tottering directly over Sarpedon.
Traitor! it screeched into his head. I am a G.o.d, you are vermin! Vermin! And you deny me, believer of noth-ing? I will give you something to believe!
A red spear of psychic hatred shot down and held Sarpedon to the ground like an insect pinned to a board.
Spite poured into him, hot and livid, the rage of a G.o.d denied. Just once it had been denied, once in its lifetime, and its response was to annihi-late the mind that denied it in a tide of hatred.
Sarpedon was strong, stronger than a man, stronger than even any Marine. That meant he would survive a split second more before his mind gave way and his body became just another sh.e.l.l in service of Teturact the G.o.d. The last thing he would see would be the ruined mutant face, those bleeding eye-holes narrowed in hate. It gave him a strange satisfaction, in those last moments, that he could force even that unreadable face to give away its emotions.
"In the name of the Immortal Emperor," cried a voice from nowhere, "I dub thee Hereticus!"
A shower of blood and flesh was the head of a brute-mutant disintegrating. A falling shadow was the mutant"s body falling and the spindly shape above it was Teturact falling with it, wizened limbs flailing.
Sarpedon forced himself to roll through the pain as Teturact and his mutant bearers fell to the hard earth around him.
Inquisitor Thaddeus felt the kick of the autopistol in his hand and was grateful that he could feel any-thing at all. He had been frozen in place as Teturact had seemed about to tear Sarpedon apart with psychic power, but whatever Sarpedon had done had worked and in the split second Teturact"s attention was diverted Thaddeus had taken aim and blown apart the head of the closest brute-mutant.
He yelled out the protocol forms of the Inquisi-tion as he fired. He was going to do this properly.
"By the edicts of the Conclave of Mount Amalath I claim your life as forfeit and cast your soul to the mercy of the Emperor!" Thaddeus pumped sh.e.l.ls towards Teturact"s spindly, momentarily vulnerable body but one of his mutant bearers got in the way and the explosive-tipped sh.e.l.ls blew fist-sized lumps of flesh from its hide. Thaddeus had spent the last of his precious tracker-sh.e.l.ls on Sarpedon, and seen it swatted out of the air before it hit - he had to rely on old-fashioned hand-aiming now.
Thaddeus ran towards Teturact, trying to draw a bead on his cowering mutant form, snapping shots between the brute-mutants sheltering him. The hammer fell on an empty chamber and Thaddeus holstered the pistol quickly, for he was out of ammunition and his remaining spare clips lay back in the storm trooper Chimera.
He still had one more weapon. He reached inside his flak-coat and drew out the ma.s.sive, boxy bolt pistol Aescarion had brought back from Eumenix, its casing decorated with the golden chalice of the Soul Drinkers, half a clip of explosive bolts in its curved magazine. He had to grip it with both hands to take aim.
Teturact"s wits were gathering and the cold, greasy feel of its deformed mind was evident in the air. The surviving mutants were rearing up to defend their master - Thaddeus"s first shot missed high as the pistol"s kick deceived him but the sec-ond hit, blowing a mutant"s throat out. It fell backwards against its brother mutant and in a flash of strange black light the second mutant"s body was sliced clean in two in a welter of strange-coloured blood.
Sarpedon, battering and bleeding, was back on his many feet, his armour scored and dented, the strange weapon with its twin shimmering black blades in one hand.
Thaddeus raised the bolt pistol. His opponent was battered, shocked and slowed, but would not remain so for long. "By the authority of the Holy Orders of His Inquisition and the Chamber of the Ordo Hereticus."
he said, "I execute the destruction of your body and the release your soul for judge-ment. May the Emperor have mercy on you, for His servants cannot."His trigger finger pressed down and his whole body shook as the bolt pistol juddered, hot cases spilling to Thaddeus"s feet. The p.r.o.nouncement of execution ringing in his ears, he emptied the rest of the pistol"s sh.e.l.ls into Teturact.
Sarpedon had been ready to die. But the final shots were not for him. The inquisitor fired off the last of his bullets into Teturact who was sprawled on the frozen ground beside Sarpedon, showered in the blood of his brute-mutant retainers.
You couldn"t kill something like Teturact just by destroying its body. Sarpedon could feel the malev-olent mind reaching out even now, seeking for some other living thing to take up roost, so it could escape and begin its reign again.
Sarpedon reared up on his back legs. Forgetting the pain of his torn muscles and ruptured organs, he took one last look at the ruined non-face of Tetu-ract.
." serve the Emperor, mutant, he thought, knowing full well that Teturact could hear him. ." need no other G.o.d.
He stamped down on Teturact"s head, talons shearing through the feverish brain, and the dark light of Teturact"s soul was extinguished forever.
Techmarine Lygris tore the mem-circuits from the archive console. There was no time for finesse, they would just have to trust that enough would survive. From inside the command room he could hear the vicious din of battle and he knew that every second here cost more battle-brothers their lives.
Beside him, Sergeant Salk plunged a hand through the window of the command structure and, bracing his legs against the plasteel wall, hauled Apothecary Pallas out of the pulsing sea of rotting flesh that pressed in on the structure from all sides. Pallas was covered in filth, smoke rising where his armour"s exhausts were clogged with gore, and somewhere he had lost his bolt pistol in the mire.
He held up a hand, and it held a specimen cylin-der with a clot of pink, uncorrupted flesh inside.
"Got it." he said, almost out of breath. "There was one containment unit intact. I think Graevus is still out there, he..."
That was all he could say before everything erupted in white noise. It was a scream so loud it filled the heads of every Soul Drinker, blocking out every sense. It was the death-scream of something vastly powerful, a keening of absolute rage and despair. The walls of mutant flesh shrunk back as they felt the death of one of their own.
Squad Graevus were revealed, hacking their way from beneath a web of flesh, where they had held position around the last functioning containment unit. The heaving ma.s.s of muscle and skin spat back Marines, some still alive, others half-digested. The mutant sea spasmed and the whole contain-ment floor churned like a sea in a storm.
"Salk to all points." yelled Salk over the vox, which was barely functioning any more. "It"s over, every man out!"
He clambered onto the roof of the command structure where he could see Graevus"s squad bat-tering a path across the floor. The survivors of Salk"s own squad were fighting their way up onto the top of the rolling mantle of muscle. They had seen him and were forging their way towards him, slicing and shooting through the malformed limbs that reached for them.
"I don"t know if this is getting through." voxed Salk through the static on the command channel, "but this is Squad Salk and we are withdrawing from the facility. If there"s an army still up there we will need extraction in about five minutes. Salk out."
No one knew where Colonel Vinn was. Inquisitor Thaddeus and the Pilgrim hadn"t returned. Aescar-ion now had command of the Inquisitorial troops and she was organising them into a withdrawal. The Soul Drinkers were on the other side of an immense ma.s.s of walking dead and fanatical traitors, led by powerful witches who threw lightning or turned men inside-out with a look. Many of the storm troopers were dead or cut off, but the Sisters had formed a formidable hard core of warriors against which wave after wave of enemies had broken, chewed up by bolter volleys or blasted into gutter-ing valleys of fire by flamers and melta-guns.
"Squad Rufilla, secure the Rhinos and cover us as we embark." voxed Aescarion as she snapped shots at traitors clambering over burning barricades of their own dead. She had personally led counter-attack after counter-attack into the shattered traitor lines, and her axe arm ached with the jarring of power blade against bone. Her Seraphim had fought as well as any troops on Stratix Luminae but in spite of the pride the warrior in her felt, the Sister saw only failure. The Soul Drinkers were on the other side of an army she could not hope to cut through, and no matter how many enemies of the Emperor fell here the strikeforce would not corner their quarry today.
The dead had not died for nothing. She would never forget that, for every one died in the service of theimmortal Emperor and that was an end in itself. But the Soul Drinkers would escape their justice, and their treachery would stay an open wound in the soul of the Imperium.
Squad Rufilla was pouring fire over the heads of the Sisters and storm troopers as they ran back towards the Rhinos and Chimeras. Several of the vehicles were out of action, tracks ripped apart by sharp ridges of wreckage or hulls dented by colli-sions. The strikeforce crammed into the surviving transports, small arms fire spattering against the hulls, the traitorous hordes taking the opportunity to press on through Rufilla"s fire.
Aescarion was on the front lines with the Sisters around her rapidly falling back. She followed them, snapping shots into the shambling dead tumbling down the valleys of twisted metal around her. A hand reached out and she sliced it off with a slash of her power axe.
"We have you covered, Sister, get on board now!" Rufilla"s bold voice sounded over the vox and Aescarion picked up her pace, the vehicle convoy beginning to roar off back towards the distant Cres-cent Moon.
"Sister!" someone yelled, not over the vox but out loud, out of breath and close by. Aescarion paused and looked back to see Inquisitor Thaddeus strug-gling across the blasted battlefield, firing with a bolt pistol he held with both hands, shooting his way through the living dead of Teturact"s army. His face was streaked with blood and his flak-coat was torn and burned at the edges. He broke into a run when he saw Aescarion and she thought for a moment that there were troops with him lending him cover-ing fire as he ran towards Aescarion and the convoy, but Squad Rufilla"s fire was soon ripping over his head and into the living dead.