The Death of Integrity (17 page)

‘We must be swift here, brothers’ said Voldo. ‘The genestealers have not found a way into this cargo ship, but the space below us opens in multiple places into the roost cavern. There will be active xenos below, and if they find us, they will bring their siblings to wakefulness.’

They went through the breach. There was no artificial gravity in the alien ship. Whatever race had manufactured it had long gone from the galaxy, for the Adeptus Astartes did not recognise its form, nor did the two initiates to the Martian mysteries understand its construction, which was a seemingly random lattice of spurs that interlocked with little logic.

They floated free, and used this matrix to pull themselves along, quickly at first, but then with wariness. Some of the spurs were solid as iron, others went to powder at the slightest touch, and Brother Astomar was sent careening through a whole section of them when one snapped in his hand. Astomar stopped himself rightly enough, but the noise he made was significant, and the Space Marines were put on edge. They tensed, stretching out their senses through the suits’ sensorium suites. Voldo moved himself, his suit lights catching on the matrix.

Voldo was about to signal the all clear when Eskerio spoke.

‘Contact,’ he breathed.

Voldo and the others searched it out. There at the bottom of the tangled structure, a pulsing mark. It was heading unerringly toward them.

‘We must go fast now,’ said Voldo. ‘We shall abandon stealth.’

Two more red marks flashed, then ten more.

‘We are one hundred and fifty metres from the Imperial ship’s hull, brother-sergeant,’ said Eskerio.

Alanius turned quickly. ‘There! Movement!’

‘Go now!’ shouted Voldo.

The Space Marines shoved themselves off, the sheer bulk of their suits smashing struts to pieces as they flew. Their left hands crackled as they activated the energy fields surrounding their power fists, and they used these to batter their way through the forest-like mass of supports.

Voldo risked a look back. Below them, genestealers launched themselves from strut to strut, scurrying upward, their six limbs lending them a grace and speed in the low gravity that the Terminators could not match. He raised his gun, but did not fire. The targets were moving fast and were in dense cover. ‘Conserve your ammunition, brothers!’ he shouted.

They bludgeoned their way through the struts. The hull narrowed, the floor and ceiling three metres apart. They were forced to work their way around irregular cysts bulging inward from the fabric of the hull. Voldo scrambled between two of these, to find Gallio carving a way out of the alien ship. Nuministon came next, then the compromised Genthis, followed by Clastrin, Alanius, Azmael, and Eskerio. Astomar was last, kicking at something that dragged at his feet. Voldo caught sight of a leering alien face through the suit picter. The genestealer’s lower hands grasped the Space Marine’s greave, but it struggled to get its sharper upper claws at him. Eskerio leaned over and discharged his storm bolter. Astomar’s armour sparked as the missiles caught him. One found its mark in the genestealer’s face and it went limp as its head exploded. Astomar kicked at its hands, until he dislodged it, and pulled himself into the demi-chamber formed by the curved cysts.

The motion tracker was alive with dots, a wave of xenos rendered in flashing red. Voldo glanced back. The three Blood Drinkers were attacking the rubbery material of the hull wall with their lightning claws, gashing it. Clastrin worked again with Gallio. The Forgemaster’s plasma torches burned, but made little impact on the strange material that made up this part of the hull. Where Gallio’s chainfist penetrated the wall, the hull’s elasticity made it pucker around the blade, snagging the weapon’s teeth and keeping it from being properly breached. Their exit was minutes away from readiness.

‘Brother Eskerio! Clear a way for Brother Astomar! Astomar, let fire on my mark.’

A genestealer lunged at the gap. Astomar punched it in the shoulder with his power fist, caving its shoulder into its chest. He kicked it free. Eskerio shot down three more with controlled bursts from his storm bolter. Grasping claws forced their way between the other cysts, raking at the air, but the spaces between were too small for them to force their way through.

Voldo waited until there were no live genestealers by the gap. The sensorium did its best to differentiate the auspex motion detector’s data into dead and live foes, those it deemed no longer a threat turning a deep amber. Four of these floated in the space beyond the cysts, a sickle-shaped formation of twenty or so live contacts beyond that. It was imperative that the promethium of Astomar’s heavy flamer could spread far. If he fired while the gap was plugged, only single genestealers would take the brunt. In the worst case, the fires could wash back into their own space, and they were capable of overwhelming even the great protection of Terminator armour.

‘Brother-sergeant, I have a clear field!’

‘Fire!’ shouted Voldo.

Fire bellied out from the heavy weapon, gushing through the gap and billowing out into the wider space beyond. Genestealers shrieked, and Voldo was gratified to see many more contacts turn amber.

‘Emperor! The matrix is ablaze,’ said Astomar.

Voldo looked himself, shouldering Eskerio aside. The structure of the ship had caught fire.

‘Should keep them back for a while,’ said Genthis.

‘Do not count on it, brother.’ More red dots were closing in on them.

‘Almost there, brothers!’ shouted Gallio. His chainfist squealed, the disruption field banging as alien materials went to atoms.

‘Look brother-sergeant, the fire.’ Astomar drew Voldo’s attention back to the blaze. It died back quickly, the bone-like matrix smouldering low. Voldo checked his sensorium.

‘The flames have consumed the available oxygen,’ said Astomar.

‘The xenos will suffocate,’ said Nuministon.

‘No,’ said Voldo. ‘Even a vacuum is nothing to them.’ He looked back to Gallio’s work. ‘Ready yourselves!’

The elastic properties of the hull were exhausted, and Gallio’s weapon suddenly punctured the material fully. A rush of air blasted in through the rip, the hull flapped like a flag in the wind. The fire, suddenly nourished, exploded.

The force of it was astonishing. The flames blasted into their confined space, jolting the heavily armoured Space Marines together. The hull tore further under the pressure of the firestorm, and Gallio was able to rip a doorway into it large enough to force himself through. He grasped Clastrin, and dragged him after him. The others righted themselves and followed, and so they made their escape from the alien ship and were into the derelict Imperial vessel.

They ran, Voldo at their head.

The Terminators jogged as fast as they were able, their movement helped by the active gravity in the ship. The corridor they followed passed deep into the vessel. Their radiation counters rattled, and the air about them became furnace-hot, baked dry by the roiling energies of the reactor. The corridor was whole, but the outer hulk was much fissured, entirely stripped of plating in places and reduced to bracing spars. The genestealers from the roost could therefore ambush them at any turn.

‘Not far now!’ shouted Eskerio. From behind came the racket of storm bolter fire as Gallio lay down covering fire, Astomar beside him ready to fill the corridor with promethium.

Contacts pinged all over the map, coming down from outside and following corridors parallel to their own. Voldo stopped at an intersection and blasted three gene-stealers coming from the left to chunks. ‘Quickly! More are on their way.’

‘We are making for the outer lock,’ said Eskerio. ‘There should be a door ahead, then a short corridor, then access to the port.’

‘Let us pray to the Emperor that it functions,’ said Voldo.

Astomar’s flamer roared. Genestealers screamed. A dozen motion positives backed away.

‘Thank the Lord of Man, there it is!’ said Voldo. ‘The door.’

The doorway to the airlock access corridor was set into a wall in a hexagonal antechamber. Two more doors opened out from the either side. He ran to it, and stopped dead.

‘What is it brother?’ Alanius called. He was supporting Genthis, half-dragging him. Genthis’s suit’s heatsinks were being overwhelmed by the fierce heat of the reactor, his time was running out.

‘There is no control panel!’

‘Let me see,’ said Clastrin. He came forward. More bolter fire came from the rear. Three shots, an inhuman scream.

Clastrin knelt by the door. The panel had been ripped free. Wires hung from it, their colours lost under the dirt of ages. He plunged a metal tendril from his harness into the mess. ‘There is power,’ he said, ‘but I cannot access the command circuits.’ His mechadendrite withdrew.

‘What of direct interface, can you not link with the door directly?’ said Nuministon.

‘No. It is all gone.’

‘Then cut it through!’ growled Alanius.

‘This is a major blast door of prime patterning,’ said Clastrin. ‘Time is needed.’

Red dots crowded in from all sides on the map.

‘Time is a luxury we do not have,’ said Voldo. ‘And such a choice, Brother Gallio’s storm bolter there, or his chainfist here.’

Clastrin cast about, rapidly scanning the walls. Conduits and circuitry showed up in his artificer armour’s displays. He caught sight of a hatchway.

‘There is another way,’ he said. He stood and pointed. ‘A crawlway. I can go through and attempt to remotely activate this door from the airlock’s inner portal.’

‘It is too small,’ said Azmael.

‘Not if I go without armour,’ said Clastrin in his twin voices. ‘Then I will fit.

‘Are you insane?’ said Alanius. ‘Genestealers descend upon us from every quarter.’

‘Then we will die whether I go or not,’ said Clastrin.

‘What of the radiation?’

‘I shall recite the fifteenth litany minoris, and bring my mucranoid into action. The coating it will give my skin will provide some protection.’

‘Yes, not to try, that is the insanity,’ said Voldo.

Clastrin bowed his head. He reached for the first release clasp, and began the liturgy of disrobement.

Genthis pushed himself upright from Alanius. ‘I will go with him,’ he said. ‘I am no use within my armour. Without it, I can act as an escort.’

Voldo looked from Clastrin to Alanius. The latter hesitated, then stood back. ‘Agreed brother, you are a credit to our order.’

Clastrin stepped forward, using his servo-harness to help Genthis from his crippled armour.

Voldo acted, plotting positions for the remaining Terminators; Gallio and Astomar to hold the rear against the bulk of the genestealers, Alanius beside them to aid them if they broke through. Voldo took the left door leading from the chamber, Eskerio he directed to the right door.

Eskerio hefted his storm bolter. His ammunition was almost spent. ‘Give me his claws,’ he said suddenly. ‘Lend me your weapons, Brother Genthis.’

Clastrin paused his hands, his servo-harness continued undoing retaining bolts and clasps on Genthis’s armour.

‘I have but twenty bolts remaining. Better I give my magazines to our brother-sergeant and let him fire longer, while I go better equipped for close melee.’

‘I did not think such fighting to be your preference, Novamarine,’ said Genthis with humour.

‘All things have their time and place, cousin Blood Drinker,’ said Eskerio.

‘Then you may gladly take them.’

The gauntlets slipped from his wrists.

‘Hurry then!’ said Voldo. A wave of contacts were converging on them, far more than before. ‘The roost has awakened. We must fight now for our lives as well as the glory of the Emperor.’

Eskerio took the lightning claws from the Blood Drinker. Voldo and Nuministon helped Genthis further, releasing the bolts that attached his breastplate to his cowling. With a hiss of air, his helmet came away, revealing his savagely beautiful face.

‘It is hot brothers! As hot as home!’ he shouted and smiled. With a twist, he depressed his belt clasp, and the two-part breastplate unclicked. Nuministon pulled it away, sealant cracking where it had covered over the joins between plates. The tech-priest, with Voldo’s help, next removed the cowl and the reactor within, and set to work on Genthis. Far more quickly than the Novamarine’s sergeant could have hoped, Nuministon had disassembled the armour and Genthis stepped free. What would have taken the forge serfs twenty minutes to achieve, the magos had done in a fraction of the time. Voldo hoped the armour was not offended. The components of Genthis’s battle-plate lay scattered upon the floor.

Clastrin had replaced Eskerio’s storm bolter and power fist with the crimson lightning claws of Genthis. Despite the difference in marks between the two Space Marines’ armours, Clastrin connected the blades to the suit’s power source easily.

Eskerio held the claws up in front of his helmet and activated them. ‘My thanks for your arms.’

‘Use them well,’ said Genthis. ‘Do not disappoint my armour’s machine-spirit.’

Shouts came from the rear. Genestealers were prowling the perimeter. Azmael and Voldo moved away, leaving the naked Genthis and Nuministon to help the Forgemaster from his armour. Clastrin deactivated and detached what he could with direct commands via his spine ports, while the magos and Blood Drinker pulled his servo-harness away. They unclipped his backpack, helped him off with his gauntlets, and then he was bare headed, ice-blue eyes staring out from a face tattooed with holy blueprints and the cog of Mars under the Novamarine’s skull and starburst.

‘We are ready,’ he said as his breastplate came free.

‘Then go, and may the Lord of Mankind guide you,’ said Voldo, his voice hard and loud through his suit vox-grille. The sergeant lifted his weapon and fired. Genestealers were chancing the other corridor.

Chapter 10

The Power of the Machine-God

The heat was intense, fifty-five degrees at least, but the touch of it reduced to a tolerable level as Clastrin’s modified sweat glands secreted an oily perspiration. The smell of the mucranoid’s secretions was sharp and somewhat unpleasant. He wiped it away from his mouth, nose and eyes or it would seal them shut. Hibernation was not his aim today.

Clastrin’s forte was machinery, but he knew a little of how his biological gifts functioned, for what was biotechnology but another manifestation of the glorious machine? He knew how the long-chain proteins in the mucous from the Weaver aligned themselves with one another, hardening to cover his body in a waxy coating. He flexed his hand, watching as the second skin wrinkled. Another benefit of the Emperor-Omnissiah, and the wisdom of ancient days. He had been Master of the Forge of the Novamarines for seventy years, but his wonder at the might of the Machine-God never diminished.

‘Blessed are the works of technology, blessed are the ways of the Omnissiah,’ he said.

Nuministon, hurrying to unclip the remainder of the Forgemaster’s armour, did not respond.

With his helmet off, Clastrin was exposed to the full noise of the ship. The unshielded reactor filled the space with a persistent roar, distant though it was. The derelict ship vibrated with it. All vessels hummed to the tune of their power sources, but this was a sick song. Clastrin possessed a deep affinity for machines, he could sense what ailed them often without removing their casings. He was surprised the reactor worked still.

Gunfire rattled sporadically. No longer able to access the extended senses of his helmet, Clastrin’s view of the combat was restricted to what his own eyes and ears could tell him. The corridors leading out of this small chamber were obscured by the massive bulk of the Terminator armour. He suspected that the genestealers held back, wary of the Space Marines’ firepower. They were savage, these xenos, but possessed of a cunning akin to true intelligence.

Nuministon stepped back, holding the Forgemaster’s backplate. The neural interface spike slid free of the port in Clastrin’s black carapace, and his sense of his war harness departed him entirely. Clastrin still wore parts of his power armour, but he was to all intents already naked.

Nuministon placed the plate on the floor, and helped Clastrin free himself of the rest of his plate.

Astomar’s flamer whooshed. Firelight played around the chamber.

‘I am ready,’ said Clastrin. His own voice sounded odd outside of his armour. The mucous had hardened fully, providing some protection from both heat and vacuum. Useful under the current circumstances.

‘Go with the Omnissiah,’ said Nuministon. ‘I am not aware of the pattern for these portals, but such a simple thing as a door will pose no trouble to an initiate to the mysteries of Mars.’

‘Cousin Genthis! We go!’ Clastrin had to shout to be heard.

The Blood Drinker nodded. His body was streaked with dried secretions, but he had no protective cover, and his own skin looked unnaturally dry. Genthis caught Clastrin looking at him, and shook his head.

A loss of a para-organ, then, thought Clastrin. Some Chapters did not possess all of the Emperor’s gifts. ‘There is no atmosphere in the corridor beyond, cousin.’

‘Then I will trust you to work hard to free us,’ said the Blood Drinker. ‘I shall go first, Lord Forgemaster.’ He was thinner than the Novamarine, athletically proportioned, as lithe and hard-muscled as a statue. His face too, was beautiful, its angelic perfection at odds with the feral way in which Genthis bared his teeth as he spoke. ‘You are of greater worth here.’ He held a knife in his hand.

‘Take this,’ said Nuministon, handing over an ornate bolt pistol. ‘I am no warrior.’

Genthis nodded in thanks. Clastrin picked up his own bolt pistol from the floor.

‘We must go now,’ said the Forgemaster. The sounds of gunfire were intensifying. He extended his two mechandrites from the housing below his shoulder blades, a gift of a different kind from the temples of the Machine-God. He reached up to the panel covering the crawlway and deftly unscrewed it with the dendrite tips, pulling the plate away. He turned to Genthis and indicated that he would boost the Blood Drinker into the space. Genthis was up and into the hatch easily.

Clastrin took one last look at his brothers, their bone-and-blue armour standing shoulder to shoulder with the red of the Blood Drinkers, then turned, jumped up, grabbed the lip of the hatch and pulled himself in.

He was in the machine, surrounded by cabling. He imagined himself a component in the grand scheme of the Omnissiah, a piece of the greater puzzle of the universe’s mechanism. His mucranoid film shielded him from snags and the sharp edges in the crawlspace. Genthis, not so protected, was already cut and scraped in a dozen places, leaving a trail of blood which dried on contact with the metal. It was punishingly hot in the crawlspace, the air stale and rank, and the other adept’s skin was raw with blisters.

‘How far?’ said the Blood Drinker. Wildness had crept back into his voice. He was enjoying this.

‘Not far, thirty metres. We pass alongside an access corridor to an outer airlock. There is a panel toward the end. From there I will be able to remotely open the door and let our brothers in.’

Genthis made a noise of affirmation. ‘Good, good. I long to rejoin them. It is not our way to retreat from a fight.’ He moved forward some way as he spoke, then said, ‘Wait! We come to a crossways.’

Clastrin brought up a copy of the map in his intelligence core. The cranial implant was another gift of Mars, another thing that set him aside from his battle-brothers. A vertical shaft bisected theirs. On the far side the way grew wider, two broad ways filled with power conduits leading at right angles away up and down into the skin of the ship.

‘Go on,’ said Clastrin.

‘Shh!’ said Genthis. ‘I hear something.’

Clastrin waited as the Blood Drinker inched forward to peer down the shaft, then up. He turned back to look at the Novamarines Forgemaster.

‘Movement. The enemy descends upon us.’ He scrambled forward, swinging his legs under him and dropping into the vertical shaft. He looked upward. ‘Hurry Lord Forgemaster, you must be quick! Crawl over the shaft and be on your way. I will hold them here.’

Clastrin wriggled forward. The rattle of claws moving over metal came from above him, but he did not look up. He pushed past Genthis’s head, and went on into the further crawlspace. Genthis crawled in backward after him. Clastrin was four metres in when Genthis began shooting.

Praying to the Machine-God and the Emperor for the Blood Drinker’s soul, he pushed on. The sounds of fighting intensified behind him, alien screeches echoing metallically in the confined space, the bark of the bolt pistol. The reek of genestealer blood thickened the air.

Clastrin turned his broad shoulders awkwardly; these service conduits were designed for drones and unchanged men, not the giants of the Space Marine Chapters. His arms pinned to his chest, he worked with difficulty to free the access panel. Behind him, Genthis shouted the battle-cries of his Chapter. The noise of his weapon was overwhelmingly loud in the confined space. Shrieks and the thump of falling flesh signalled the demise of genestealers as they plummeted down the shaft, bouncing from its sides as they fell.

Even through the noise, Clastrin heard the click as Genthis’s boltgun ran dry, the clatter as Genthis discarded it. The Blood Drinker began to chant, a Blood Drinker’s battle hymn Clastrin did not know. The Blood Drinker was preparing himself for his death.

The panel popped out of its housing. Air blew from the crawlway into the vacuum of the airlock access corridor.

Clastrin drew in a deep breath, filling the lungs he was born with and the third gifted him by the Chapter. With a twist, he wormed through the hatch, and dropped into the way.

Brother Genthis chanted. ‘Lo! I see the wings of Sanguinius! They shield me from harm! They bear me up from battle!’ The genestealer attacking him crouched in the mouth of the crawlway, its body contorted in a manner impossible for a man. Scrabbling talons raked at Genthis, drawing lines of blood across his scalp. The Space Marine grabbed one of the upper claws in his left hand, yanking it hard over to the side of the crawlspace. The genestealer hissed and struggled, its other arms tangled behind its pinned arm. Its tubular tongue flicked over its black teeth. Yellow eyes blazed. Genthis felt the power of them, felt them trying to subvert his will, but he was a brother of the Blood Drinkers and the wiles of xenos held no power over him. ‘Blood is life, the life is blood, through life we fulfil our duty, through blood we continue life!’ His voice became increasingly sonorous. ‘Take my blood, take my life, you will never turn me from my duty, though my blood lie thickening in the dust, and my life run out and be done!’

He drove his combat knife deep into the glaring eye of the genestealer, twisted it until it ground on bone. The genestealer convulsed so hard it threw off Genthis’s hand. Its limbs rattled a drum roll of death on the metal.

Wind sprang up, blowing down the corridor to where Clastrin had gone, and Genthis was glad that the Forgemaster of the Novamarines had made it into the airlock access corridor. He sang louder, against the howl of decompression. Leaving the dead genestealer blocking the crawlway, he backed further down. A pair of large purple hands grabbed at the corpse and pulled it away. The dead gene-
stealer fell from sight as it dropped into the shaft. Three more alien faces regarded him from the end. Without pause, the next of the monsters crept into the narrow space. Legs bent up under it, it moved rapidly. Genthis laughed.

‘Come, come and fight me alien filth! Brother Genthis has not had his fill yet!’

His body was electric with excitement, the joy of battle coursed through him, lifting his spirit and filling him with surety of purpose. At the back of his soul, he felt the dull ache of need, for his last Rite of Holos had been a week ago, and the Thirst had resumed its torments. He did not care. ‘Here is battle! In battle is true service! Service begets joy! Joy begets death!’ he shouted. Genthis felt this joy deeply. To him and his kind, there was no greater purpose in all the galaxy than to fight in the name of the Emperor.

The genestealer scuttled at him, upper claws outstretched. Genthis batted one aside, and stabbed his knife point deep into the chitin of another. The genestealer made a strange, squawking protest and tore its arm back. Genthis’s knife was wrenched from his hand.

Genthis sang the Sanguis Moritura, laughing as he did.

‘The blood of life flows quickly! Only in death can it be stilled!’

He fended off the genestealer’s claws, turned them aside with his strong hands. ‘Let not mine be stilled easily, let it flow on and outward – let it flow from me as I slay those who free it!’

He worked his cheeks and spat, acidic venom from his Betcher’s gland spraying into the genestealer’s face. The thing screeched as its eyes dissolved, and Genthis reached for it. He opened his mouth wide, dragged the creature to him and bit deep, his extended canines sinking into its alien neck. He ignored the burn of his own acid venom on his skin. Black blood poured down his throat.

Xenos blood. Unclean. Impure. Satisfying. He gulped as it filled his mouth. It tasted vile, bitter and cold, still he drank. Flashes of alien thoughts played across his mind as it filled his stomach and washed over his Remembrancer; endless waiting, the chill of deep space, and a single purpose so consuming there was space for nothing else. Behind it, a vast and horrifying shape moved, distant, and yet imminent.

Genthis dragged his head back, his hearts chilled by the vision. Dark blood ran down his face. His skin bubbled, acid burns joining the blisters he had received from the hot metal. He blinked, the genestealer’s memories of inconceivable patience warring with his own urgent need for war.

A rending sound came from above him. He twisted his neck. Metal plating peeled back. The terrible face of a genestealer, contorted in fury, glared down at him.

‘Blood is strength, in death it quickens,’ he whispered.

A three-clawed hand drove down into his neck, ripping his windpipe free.

His mind still reeling from its contact with the alien’s soul, Brother Genthis died.

Voldo blasted a genestealer into pieces with his storm bolter, mass reactive bolts tearing it apart from the inside. He swung his power sword around, smashing another of the aliens back. He put a bolt in its gut, and it crumpled to the ground. Gallio stood not far behind him, taking opportunistic shots past him. To his left, Astomar let fly with one final burst of his heavy flamer.

‘Ammunition depleted, brother-sergeant!’ He called.

By Astomar, Eskerio fought to defend his battle-brother, borrowed lightning claws darting quickly, ripping parallel furrows into alien flesh. Behind Voldo, Alanius and Azmael fought back to back, sending genestealer limbs flying, Azmael seemingly unhindered by his damaged suit. Nuministon crouched by the door, ignoring the combat he worked on its dead control panel. Voldo was impressed by his coolness. Not once did the tech-priest look up from his work.