The Death of Integrity (23 page)

‘Lord, are you lucid?’ asked Mazrael.

‘Yes, yes I am with you,’ Caedis said. He swallowed. His mouth was still dry, but being here, with a mission to perform, he found he could focus his fracturing mind. He could more easily recognise the men with him. Brother Metrion, Reclusiarch Mazrael, Epistolary Guinian, Brother Erdagon, Sergeant Sandamael, Brother Quintus, Brother Kalael; all bar Mazrael in Terminator armour and armed with lightning claws. Where were Atameo and Hermis? They should be here, he would have preferred them over Brothers Hordus and Donas. He was about to ask Mazrael when the memory of their deaths on Katria rushed back. So many deaths. How many had he seen die? How many had he killed? How many had given their blood so that he might serve?

‘My lord?’

Caedis gripped the hilt of his sword, Gladius Rubeum. It grounded him. ‘We must go to our allotted position, Reclusiarch, there to await the orders of Captain Galt. He is your commander now. We must trust to the warriors of Honourum to see us through this battle.’

The Terminators fanned out either side of their officer, Sergeant Sandamael directing them via the sensorium.

‘And you, my lord?’ asked Mazrael, dropping his voice to a private channel.

Caedis included Guinian in the conversation. ‘Find me a good death, my friends. Find me something worthy to fight. Brother Guinian, search out their mightiest so that I might slay him face to face.’

‘Yes my lord,’ Guinian said. He prepared his mind, and slipped into a trance.

Epistolary Guinian let his mind drift out into the greater hulk. His warp-sense told him things that should have been unknown, the location of his brothers and their Novamarines allies, and the location of their genestealer enemies. This he saw not in terms most men would understand, not even other psykers, for he experienced his extended awareness through a series of layered metaphors. Images that made little sense if taken at face value took the place of hard reality. He was a psyker, blessed with witch-sight, an inheritor of the strange mutation that granted the immortal Emperor his power. His ability was far less than that of the Lord of All Men, but potent still.

Because of this he possessed an understanding of reality different to that of others. Like the Techmarines, the Librarians of a Chapter were privy to mysteries that set them apart from the other brethren. But where the concerns of the Forge were entirely of the material, those of the Library were quite the opposite, the ephemeral and unknowable; that which could not be seen, only sensed. If the forge commanded steel, the apothecarion flesh, the chaplaincy the soul, then the Librarians knew the secrets of men’s hearts, and more besides.

The mass of metal, ice and rubble that made up the hulk was as a dark rock on the shore of an endless sea. Bright points flickered on the stone, the wavering lights of the souls of battle-brothers. They were puny in the dark, strong though they were in the terms most men would understand. Brighter stars shone in this non-firmament, the glowing minds of the other psykers. Ranial of the Novamarines was as bright as the nova burst his armour bore. He stood upon the surface of the hulk. The other four Librarians in the joined fleet were lesser, those of Librarium neophytes barely brighter than those of their non-psyker battle-brothers. Give them time, thought Guinian, soul-fire flares brighter with training and experience.

Outwards from the stone, other outcrops of denser reality dotted the dark beach of the sky – the ships of the Novamarines and the Blood Drinkers. More lights, the fires of the lives of men, inconstant sparks that were so easy to snuff out. Astropaths and Navigators on the ships showed larger. He dipped into the chatter of the latter, like a man trailing his hand in water in the wake of a boat. Abstract images filled his mind, the best and strongest of the soul-bound projecting words and images. Focussed beams of thought punched through the warp, informing Chapter fortresses far away of the actions of the fleet. Somewhere out on the further shores of his mind construct – Guinian dared not seek it out – was the glaring beacon of the Astronomican, a light that would sear his soul if he looked too deep into it.

He drew himself back. There were other minds here, dark and alien and opaque to his understanding. Their minds were distinct, but meshed together into a web so tightly woven it was difficult to decide where one ended and another began. Guinian touched his thoughts across this network of alien minds, gently so as not to alert it. It appeared to him as a green-black web, a powerful stench coming off it, the toxic desires of the alien. The outflung edges of this web touched every planet the genestealers infested, the threads sometimes so faint they were barely visible, but it was always there, and after thirty years of hunting these creatures, Guinian had become proficient at detecting it. Now, to be so close to its source made him feel unclean. He steeled his soul and plunged his mind on.

He felt a thickening in the alien mind-web, it came together, knotting tighter and tighter until…

Something powerful and evil stirred in its sleep and regarded him.

Guinian gasped, his eyes snapped open.

‘My lords,’ he said, not daring to drop out of his trance entirely, lest he lose the creature. ‘I have found something. A powerful mind at the heart of the web of minds that directs this infestation.’

Caedis stared at him, his face unreadable behind his suit helmet. Guinian felt his mind more keenly than ever, a turmoil of psychic energies more potent than any he had ever felt the Chapter Master emit. He suppressed a shudder. The Black Rage was a spiritual affliction as much as a consequence of their flawed gene-seed.

A long moment passed before the Chapter Master spoke.

‘Then we will find the creature within whose head it resides. Brother Guinian, you do not have to follow me to my doom, but your abilities would be welcome.’ Caedis’s voice was hollow and distant. ‘This is not an order, but a request, from one brother to another.’

‘I would be honoured to aid you, lord, this last time.’ He fought back tears. He knew his beloved leader was close to his end.

‘I will join you, you will need my guidance,’ said Mazrael. ‘Let us tread this road together.’

‘To the summit of Mount Calicium,’ said Caedis, his voice trailing into a slur. ‘Captain Aresti?’

‘Yes, lord?’

‘You are in command here. I have other matters to attend to. The wings of Sanguinius shield you.’

‘My lord,’ said Aresti. Galt would have told him what Caedis intended, but he still sounded surprised. ‘Are you certain?’

The Chapter Master of the Blood Drinkers did not reply. Caedis, Mazrael, Guinian and his guard squad were working their way out from the beachhead. Quickly, more quickly than Caedis’s walking speed and the efficacy of the Novamarine’s equipment would suggest, Caedis and his followers faded from the strikeforce’s monitoring equipment, and disappeared into the hulk.

Chapter 13

Hesperion’s Folly

A giant square frame formed the outside of the cutter. Glass or some other substance glittered in its forward edge, reflecting Jorso’s angry light.

‘The cutter has to be precisely sited, lords,’ said Plosk. He wore a suit of rust-red powered armour, as did his aide, Samin. Nuministon wore his greenish-gold suit, its helmet aglitter with its disturbing lenses.

Mastrik was with them, Epistolary Ranial and Captain Sorael of the Blood Drinkers alongside. They watched from atop a jutting spaceship engine block that rose over the hulk. Servitors in flimsy vacuum suits worked on the plain below, securing the device with hawsers, Novamarines Scouts clad in armoured space suits guarded them. Pistons terminating in broad, claw-like feet pushed out from the cutter and into the surface of the hulk. The cutter was a simple hollow square of metal, forty metres long on the sides, five bulky units housing its feet mechanisms and power inlets. This square was now held at a twenty-nine degree angle to the surface of the hulk. Or so Mastrik’s sensorium told him. To do this it underlaid a uniform value to the uneven hulk surface, calculated off the hulk’s mean elevation. Three sets of three black pipes bound together snaked off over the hulk to portable reactors of some size. Other smaller cables led off to a control landau; an open, legged conveyance full of equipment and tech-priests.

‘Is this worth the effort?’ said Ranial. ‘We could have cut several ways in ourselves in half this time.’

‘Oh, I do not think so, my lords,’ said Plosk. Mastrik heard the smile hidden behind his helmet. ‘You are about to witness a great efficiency.’

‘This is a great artefact, an atomic disintegration field cutter,’ said Samin hotly. ‘It dates from the times of knowledge, you will marvel at its power.’

‘No need to be so defensive, Adept Samin,’ said Mastrik. ‘My Brother-Librarian voices a question as he is entitled to. He too is the guardian of old knowledge, albeit of a different kind to yours, and exhibits his natural curiosity. If he is wrong, he will graciously admit so.’

Ranial made a non-committal noise. Samin bristled, evident even through his armour. Emperor, thought Mastrik, I’m annoying both of them today. Mastrik was a bluff man, with a broad sense of humour that occasionally jarred upon the sensibilities of the serious-minded Novamarines. Ranial was capable of an amount of dry wit, but as a Librarian possessed of a portion of the Emperor’s own godlike abilities, could also be more serious-minded than most. Mastrik and he were good friends, but his mood could be difficult to judge, and so sometimes they came to argue.

‘I meant no offence,’ said Mastrik. ‘How long until your priests are ready, magos?’ He checked his mission clock.

‘Any moment now, lord captain,’ said Plosk. His own armour was large, made bigger by the rack of manipulators and devices Mastrik had no name for sprouting from his back. Still, it was small compared to the Terminator battle-plate Mastrik, Sorael and Ranial wore. ‘The erection of the cutter takes time, I admit, but once in operation, well, you shall see…’

Servitors walked away from the cutter, their tasks done. The tech-priests followed.

‘They must retreat to a safe distance,’ explained Plosk. ‘There is something akin to molecular shrapnel generated by the activities of the cutter. A magnetic shield extends around it, to snare these stray atom-clumps and funnel them away safely, but it requires distance to exert itself fully. To be close to the actual blade itself while cutting is underway could be fatal.’

Warning lights flickered all around the cutter’s outside edge; no alarms audible in the vacuum.

‘You may begin,’ ordered Plosk.

The tech-priest in charge of the cutter’s bulky, portable control vehicle leant over its controls. He pointed, directing his juniors in the appropriate activation sequences. Mastrik had his sensorium magnify the scene so he could better observe. Whatever the tech-priests were doing was incomprehensible to him. He moved his gaze over the hulk’s surface, its coat of dust blinding in the direct light of Jorso. His helmet lenses darkened in response.

Mastrik watched the frame. The glassy material glowed a dark green. Light flickered all around it, sparks that arced and burst brightly when they touched. This caged storm intensified, until the whole of the frame was alive with dancing angles of energy.

‘You see? The device is now at thirty per cent total power capacity. Blessed be the Omnissiah,’ said Plosk.

The process reached a critical point, and the lightning ceased to be. In its stead was a flat screen of energy, nearly invisible were it not for the fact it turned all viewed through it faintly green.

‘Sixty per cent,’ said Plosk.

At the control landau, further activity. Mastrik felt the hulk vibrate. The disturbance built. His sensorium jumped at the backwash of electromagnetic energy generated by the cutter.

‘Aha! Ninety per cent and…’

A perfectly square beam of energy, angled as the frame that projected it, stabbed down through the hulk. A flash of light as it met, and then further reflected lights as the beam met denser matter in the body of the agglomeration and atomised it.

‘And there we have it,’ said Plosk, with pleasure.

The beam cut out. A black rectangular hole had been made in the hulk’s skin, leading down. The edges of it glowed faintly. Plumes of white jetted into space, atmosphere leaking from the hulk.

‘You have answered my earlier question,’ said Ranial.

‘It would make a fine weapon,’ said Sorael.

Plosk nodded in agreement. ‘Just so, and indeed it operates on similar principles to the disruption fields built into your power weapons. But the manner in which the device attains the projection of the field forwards, the maintenance of its coherency so far out from the projectors, the safe exhaust of the excess energy generated as the matter is annihilated, the overall magnitude of the field, the smooth manner of its disintegration… Well,’ he said apologetically. ‘I could go on for some time. These are mysteries now known only to the Machine-God.’

‘We will uncover them,’ said Nuministon in his machine voice. ‘Given time.’

‘That we will, Magos Nuministon, that we will,’ said Plosk. ‘When our lord deems us worthy. And it is by such actions as this retrieval mission that we prove ourselves to be so.’

‘Brother Ranial, I believe you owe Adept Samin here a small apology,’ said Mastrik. He checked his clock. He turned around to face the other side of the engine-mount. There, shaded from the sun, was the majority of the taskforce. His hearts quickened as he took them all in; one hundred and sixty Terminators stood at the front. Few were the Space Marines of any Chapter who had witnessed such a sight. Behind them, squads of power armoured brethren. The Novamarines quartered heraldry broke up their silhouettes, providing unexpected camouflage, whereas the blood-red of the Blood Drinkers was tinted deep mauve and obvious by the blue light of Jorso. In all, nearly four hundred Space Marines of two Chapters waited on the plain. Three Thunderfire cannons – two of the Novamarines, one of the Blood Drinkers – and five Devastator squads armed with anti-personnel heavy weapons were the extent of Battle-
force Anvil’s heavy support.

‘A fine gathering,’ said Sorael. ‘We will fight the enemy eye to eye, and it is glorious that it is so.’

By the sloping shaft, another Adeptus Mechanicus machine moved, a tracked vehicle carrying a giant spool of some material upon its back. Mastrik had never seen the like, but Plosk had assured him that the spool was wound with a road, a road which would go rigid once deployed, granting them easy entry to the depths of the hulk and thence to the killing zone.

‘As you see, my lords, you have your abilities, and we have ours,’ said Plosk.

‘Very impressive,’ said Ranial, ‘and far better than working our way through the hulk to the killing zone. I offer my apologies.’

‘We are ready, Lord Captain Galt,’ said Mastrik over his suit vox.

‘Give the order for your men to take up their positions,’ replied Galt. ‘The attack begins soon.’

Ten kilometres away, at the beachhead recently vacated by Lord Caedis, three squads of Novamarines Terminators and two of the Blood Drinkers spread out. Their role was to cover the main points of egress the genestealers might use to escape their depressurised roosts. The areas they began in were close to the edge of the hulk, bereft of atmosphere in the main, but the genestealers could scatter in any direction. They were to hold, await the return of the five Terminator squads and the Techmarines sealing the main ways deeper in and then advance once the roosts were blown, and encourage on into the killing zone any genestealers for whom the loss of breathable air was not a sufficient spur. Captain Aresti commanded them now that Lord Caedis had stepped down.

Many levels down, in the last of the vessels the routes to the killing zone would run through, Sergeant Voldo and Squad Wisdom of Lucretius were hard at work. Voldo watched as a door, immobile since the time of Goge Vandire, ground out of its housing to seal a major intersection. The Techmarine accompanying the squad directed his servitors to unhook the mobile generator wired into the door panel’s innards, and set himself to welding the door shut with his servo arm.

‘Four minutes, and they will not be able to use this exit, brother-sergeant,’ said the Techmarine.

‘It is as the Lord of Man wills it, Brother Techmarine Estrellius,’ said Voldo. The sergeant ran his map up and down the main way to the killing zone. Data transmission was still poor. Boosted relays were being installed throughout the tunnels to allow better communication with the fleet, but they would not be operational for some time.

Doors were being sealed all through this part of the hulk, others cut through bulkheads and hull walls, transforming a rat run of passages into three, long tunnels leading directly through the hulk into the cavern.

Things had been quiet, but recently there had been reports of a genestealer attack from Novamarines Squad Glorious Ruin. Every so often the noise of their guns reached Voldo’s sensorium, the sounds of bolters reduced to a feeble popping by distance.

‘The enemy stir,’ said Astomar.

‘Why now, I wonder,’ said Militor. ‘Is it an omen? Are they warned of what occurs?’

‘I pray not,’ said Voldo.

Estrellius stepped back from the door. ‘I am done here.’

‘Very well,’ Voldo said. ‘We go on to our next objective.’

Voldo scanned the feed from Eskerio’s auspex. Excepting the small swarm of red dots around Squad Glorious Ruin’s position, the only movements they could see were friendly. ‘This is too easy,’ he said, ‘brothers, be on your guard.’

Sergeant Alanius stood in total darkness. The two remaining members of his squad a blur of grey slabs in his sensorium’s heat vision, radioactive fog up to their waists, the heat leakage from their power plants illuminating the room with infrared light.

They had been assigned point duty, ranging ahead of Novamarines Terminator Squad Glorious Ruin, and guarding the next open way on the list of those they had to seal. This way, so Galt had planned, those squads accompanying the Techmarines could avoid ambush.

‘This is no fit task,’ said Azmael. ‘Guarding a passageway that none will take.’

‘Silence, brother,’ said Alanius. ‘We are under strength and are given a role fitting to our weakened state. This is the final of Squad Glorious Ruin’s objectives. Once they have dealt with door ninety, then they will come here and seal this corridor, and we can join the greater battle.’

The breathing of Azmael and Tarael was harsh over the vox. The Thirst might have been sated by the Rite of Holos, giving them more control over their actions, but the blood drinking had wakened the battle-joy and they were desperate to fight.

‘Caedis would not have put us here,’ said Tarael bitterly. ‘This Novamarines captain does not know the hearts and minds of Blood Drinkers.’

‘Nor should he brother, better our secrets remain our own,’ said Alanius.

‘We should not be here,’ said Tarael. ‘Such sentry duty is demeaning.’

‘I ordered silence, Brother Tarael. Captain Galt is in command, he works his resources as he sees fit,’ said Alanius, but his rebuke was half-hearted. His blood sang fiercely. Energised by the rite, he was as impatient for the fray as his squad mates.

Alanius glanced back at the door. It gaped open, the corridor beyond dark. In places the monochrome image in his helmet brightened with the radioactive heat-glow of the fog, but the corridor quickly went into black. The door opened automatically – unlike most of the systems on this vessel, it still functioned – and they could not seal it. They needed technical support for that.

‘We wait,’ said Alanius. He checked Squad Glorious Ruin’s position on the map. Icons leapt around the rendering of the hulk where they worked, the auspex carried by Azmael unsure. Background radiation here was high, and the device’s capabilities were compromised.

The blackness was utter. Each enhanced man was a world unto himself, walled off from the rest of the universe by thick armour.

‘Wait!’ said Azmael. ‘Brother-sergeant, the motion detector.’