The Death of Integrity (24 page)

Alarms pinged in their helmets. The locator beacons of Squad Glorious Ruin fizzed on the visor screens. Red dots swarmed around them.

‘Where did they come from?’ said Azmael.

‘It would be impossible to seal all the secret ways of a hulk like this,’ said Tarael. ‘This is a fool’s errand in more ways than one.’

The sounds of distant fighting reached them, amplified by the enhanced hearing the suits and their superior physiology granted them: the distinctive discharge of storm bolters, the crackling bangs of power fist energy fields annihilating matter, the screams of genestealers.

An icon depicting the skull and starburst of the Novamarines flickered and went out.

‘One of them has fallen,’ said Azmael.

‘We should go to their aid, then they will be able to more quickly seal this corridor, and we can be on our way to join Lord Caedis and the others,’ said Tarael.

Alanius considered Tarael’s proposal. If Squad Glorious Ruin fell, and their Techmarine died with them, the assault would be delayed, granting the genestealers more time in which to waken. He thought on it as dispassionately as he could, keeping his battle-joy on a tight rein. They had been ordered to remain here. But to what end? Tarael was correct, to a degree. This corridor was a minor branching; its strategic value was low. Surely it would be better to ensure the safety of their Novamarines cousins? He licked his lips. He would seek guidance. ‘Lord Caedis?’ he tried. ‘Lord Captain Sorael?’ He tried to connect with the fleet, then the Novamarines. The relay system was not yet active. All his attempts were met with static. He tuned into Squad Glorious Ruin’s frequency. He could hear their squad chatter, their battle chants and warnings to one another, but the sound was broken and when he attempted to speak with them, they did not hear.

Alanius felt a shudder of delicious anticipation at the battle’s noise. His Chapter celebrated the violent side of their heritage. Unlike Sanguinius’s other sons, they drank deeply of the stuff of life, seeking not to sate their unnatural appetites, but to provoke them. They channelled the Thirst, drawing upon its power, and it made them strong. The Blood Drinkers could control their urges this way, and were not as reckless as some of their brother Chapters. But the battle-joy gave counsel whether sought or not, and its advice was always the same: attack, attack, attack!

Alanius weighed this against the need to guard the corridor. The battle-joy won out. It always did.

He looked around him one last time, and made final consideration. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We will aid them, but you, Brother Azmael, will remain here.’

‘Yes brother-sergeant.’ There was disappointment in Azmael’s assent. ‘By Sanguinius, I shall do my duty.’

Alanius and Tarael moved off, mag-lock boots clicking on the metal.

Alien eyes watched the Blood Drinkers depart. The genestealer had no name, and no conception of what a name was. Names are human things, and the habits of humans were irrelevant to it. But it understood their actions. Its quick mind, geared to purposes unintelligible to the human mind, saw its opportunity. The invaders were gone, drawn away by its kin, and the way was open into the deeper hulk. Only one of the interlopers remained, one soft entity cased in hard metal. The genestealer hissed at those accompanying it. Hard chitin rattled as the creatures unfurled themselves. The genestealer crept forward, driven by an intellect even greater than its own. The wishes of their broodlord were felt and understood by his family, they operated as one. The nearness of them, the touch of their minds on each other was their comfort and their strength. They advanced silently in the dark.

An alarm went off in Brother Azmael’s helmet. His eyes whipped upward to where the auspex feed was displayed within his visor. Motion indicators blinked, dozens of them. The enemy was close, very close.

Azmael had time to voice a garbled cry for help before the first of them was on him, and then he was fighting for his life.

Sergeant Voldo caught Azmael’s vox burst as a clatter of static and disrupted words.

‘Brother Eskerio! Find me the source of that transmission.’

The corridor glared actinic white as Estrellius sealed another duct. Sparks leapt from the metal and danced across the floor.

‘Sector 4.9.201,’ said Eskerio, homing in on the source of the message instantly.

Voldo’s onboard cogitator ran the message over and again, each time shaving away the layers of interference, until a voice leapt out of it.

‘Brother Azmael, of the Blood Drinkers,’ Voldo said. ‘He is under attack.’

‘I have him,’ said Eskerio. The auspex feed shifted. The motion detector was operating at maximum range, the depiction of Azmael’s struggle spotty. There was no hiding the numbers attacking him. ‘There are between fifty and seventy xenos.’

‘He doesn’t stand a chance,’ said Astomar.

‘What were the orders for Squad Hesperion?’ asked Militor.

‘To guard that section, until the door could be reached and sealed by a Techmarine,’ said Voldo. ‘The doorway was allocated to Squad Glorious Ruin’s group. They must still be delayed. Any word on Brother-Sergeant Crastus?’

‘Negative, brother-sergeant,’ said Eskerio. ‘We are too far away now to know our brothers’ fates.’

‘When will the relays be operational?’ asked Militor.

‘I calculate soon, brothers,’ said Estrellius. ‘I must place a relay here. My brothers-in-the-forge will have placed most of the rest of the relay poles by now. They will not function until all are in place.’ He ordered a servitor to him and took a long metal stave topped with a bulbous device from it. Estrellius grasped it firmly and placed it upon the floor. He twisted his armoured hands in opposite directions around the relay’s activation mechanisms, and a spike shot from the end of the pole, burying itself in the floor. Estrellius touched further controls near the head, and the light atop it began a slow, red flashing.

‘I see only Azmael on the auspex,’ said Astomar. ‘Where are his brothers?’

‘They could be there, the radiation is high in that area, the auspex struggles to show us the truth,’ said Eskerio.

‘Brothers,’ said Estrellius. ‘I am done here. That is the last of my allotted tasks. We may rejoin the battlegroup.’

‘Let us go to the aid of Azmael on the way,’ said Voldo. ‘It is less than one kilometre. Brother Estrellius can seal the door, and if need be we can relieve Squad Glorious Ruin as we turn back. Azmael and his brothers aided us greatly, we owe him a debt of honour. Away, and swiftly now.’ Although as he said this, Voldo wondered if it was the same impetuousness he had long ago seen in the Knights of Blood that had endangered the Blood Drinkers.

Estrellius’s servitors gathered up his gear, and the Techmarine fell in behind the Terminators. The group moved as quickly as they could down the buckled corridors of the ship. They had been assigned the deepest vessel in the chain of linked ships that Strikeforce Hammer would enter; those craft nearer the cavern would be tackled by squads from Anvil. The craft was a cruiser once of the Imperial Navy, lost long ago to the vagaries of space and the warp. Its prow rested atop another ship nearer the surface, the second route to the killing zone passing along most of its length before heading down through a hole they had earlier cut through the hull wall. Its compartments were distorted, the whole of the craft pushed out of true by the shifting mass around it. There was little power to be found, and no artificial gravity. Squad Hesperion was stationed further up the vessel, towards the prow. Squad Glorious Ruin, who had been assigned many of the doors in the ship above, were not much further on.

Voldo and his squad kept up a steady pace. All eyes strayed to the auspex, willing Azmael to survive. Seventy gene-stealers were stiff odds even for six Terminator-armoured brothers, but honour dictated they aid him.

‘Brothers!’ said Eskerio. ‘The genestealers.’

‘What is it brother?’ asked Voldo.

The auspex motion sensor grew clearer as they drew closer to Azmael. Several blips were around the chalice and blood drop icon denoting the Blood Drinker, but others were streaming past him, down the open corridor.

‘What are they doing?’ said Militor.

‘They are escaping, brother, is it not clear?’ said Eskerio.

‘These are a cunning foe,’ said Astomar.

It took just over ten minutes to traverse the whole of the kilometre to Azmael’s position. Surprisingly, he still lived. They hailed him as they came, urging him to fight harder.

Voldo came first, bolter spitting fire. His suit light illuminated a wall of writhing chitin. Azmael was hidden by a press of genestealers. He had been forced back from his doorway and into a room. There he had taken refuge in the entrance to another corridor, one choked with wreckage. From there he could fight the genestealers one at a time, but he could not stop the greater part of their number running through the unsealed door. Voldo’s gun wavered between the stampede of aliens scuttling into the open way and those attacking the Blood Drinker. He aimed at those attacking Azmael, and blew apart two from behind. Those fleeing hissed at him, but did not stop.

The other Novamarines joined him, emerging into the room and fanning out. Bolter fire rang out, muzzle flash whiting out their sensoriums’ various image compensators. Voldo deactivated his heat vision and light intensification. He watched genestealers smashed into pieces by the short-lived bursts of light from their guns. Azmael emerged fighting, lightning claws flashing. He wheeled and swung his arms, cutting down two.

Squad Wisdom of Lucretius turned their guns on the fleeing genestealers. Brother Astomar made his way around the periphery of the room, pointed his heavy flamer into the corridor and filled it with promethium.

There were seven genestealers left. Trapped by the Space Marines, they attacked with unrestrained ferocity. Two were blown into shreds before they reached Voldo’s squad. The fight became a close-quarters struggle. Voldo’s power sword cut one across the chest, another fell to Militor’s power fist, its head crushed with a bang. Militor dropped another with a bolt. Astomar fended the sixth off, batting at its darting claws with his powered gauntlet, and then Azmael was with him, claws emerging from the creature’s chest.

The remaining genestealer died quickly.

‘I burned a half-dozen at least,’ said Astomar.

‘Many more escaped,’ said Eskerio. Red dots swarmed away down the corridor, disappearing outside the auspex’s effective range.

Azmael’s armour dripped with black alien blood. Marks were scored into the metal.

‘Your armour, cousin,’ said Estrellius. He went to the Blood Drinker.

‘It functions.’

‘You have minor damage. Come, I will aid you.’

‘What happened here?’ demanded Voldo.

‘My brothers went to aid your brothers, Veteran-Sergeant Voldo.’

‘In defiance of your orders,’ said the Novamarines sergeant.

‘Sergeant Alanius sought guidance, but none was forthcoming. He acted upon his own initiative.’

‘Thanks to this initiative, fifty or so xenos have escaped our trap, and you nearly paid with your life.’

‘I do my duty,’ said Azmael. ‘Do not challenge me as to how I fulfil it!’ Azmael’s voice was angry. He shrugged off the attentions of Estrellius. ‘Enough! My armour serves.’

They are no better than the Knights of Blood, thought Voldo.

‘Brother,’ said Estrellius. ‘All relays are active. Communications coming online in three, two, one…’

Their helmets filled with the familiar chatter of active operations. Squads reported from all over the hulk, status updates flying through the relay system, up to a booster on the comms-service and then on to the fleet.

‘Relays active,’ said Captain Galt. Carried by the devices of the Adeptus Mechanicus, his voice was clear. ‘All hatches and doorways sealed. Strikeforce Hammer of the Emperor to regroup and await detonation of roost walls.’

‘Lord Captain Aresti, I request an audience,’ said Voldo.

‘Captain Aresti,’ said the Fifth Company commander. ‘What can I do for you, brother?’

‘We have had an… incident, here. Fifty plus xenos have escaped the perimeter. I request permission to mount a search and destroy mission.’

‘As do I,’ said Alanius as he and Tarael strode into the room. ‘Chapter Master Caedis, lord, allow me this mission.’

‘Lord Caedis is occupied, cousin,’ said Aresti. ‘You are to take direction from me, by his order. All elements of the Hammer strikeforce are under my command.’

‘Lord captain,’ said Alanius. ‘Then it is you I humbly petition.’

‘You fought with us bravely on our first mission, Sergeant Alanius, but it is your abandonment of your position that leads us to this pass,’ said Voldo.

‘Your brothers live because of it,’ countered Alanius. ‘And their mission is fulfilled. You cannot criticise us for success.’

‘I am sure they could have held their own, which is more than I can say for the lone brother left here.’

‘Do not test me, cousin…’ growled Alanius.

‘Enough!’ interrupted Aresti. ‘Sergeant Voldo, I grant your request, and that of Cousin Alanius. If he truly is at fault – and his efforts did aid our brothers, do not forget that – then what better way to atone? You may detach yourself from our drive and head into the deeper hulk. Fifty genestealers loose is unconscionable. Destroy them.’

‘Yes, lord captain.’

‘Captain Aresti out.’

Voldo and Alanius faced each other.

‘There you have it,’ said Alanius. ‘We fight together once again.’ His breathing and voice returned to normal. ‘And I for one recognise this as an honour for my brothers. Do you?’

Voldo remained suspicious. ‘I have fought with others of the line of Sanguinius before, Sergeant Alanius. It did not end well.’

‘Which Chapter?’

‘The Knights of Blood.’

‘Ah,’ said Alanius. ‘Our Chapters are brothers, true, but brothers can be different.’

‘They fought without consideration.’

‘With valour?’

Voldo paused.

‘Yes, with great valour.’

‘Then that is the least you can expect from us.’

Azmael spoke, calmer now. ‘Could the genestealers have drawn us off purposefully? Did they mean to escape?’