Throne of light, p.39
Throne Of Light, page 39
It was either that, or die.
Gritting his teeth against the coming pain, he tugged off his gloves, put his hands upon the metal, and using only the friction of his palms on the door, began to pull himself up off the ground.
Broken bones grated on each other. His left leg was not so bad, only the shin was broken there, meaning he could, with great pain, get onto his knee. His right leg, however, had snapped at the thigh. Putting any weight on that pushed him close to passing out.
His hand slapped against the door. His other hand followed. He pushed on the steel, and pulled. Amazing, how much grip the Terran hand can exert when flat and pressed down. He needed to do this two times, maybe three. It was the kind of act an uninjured man could do in a moment, without thinking; now it seemed impossible.
He lifted again, hauled again. He pulled his left knee up. Each bump on the way sent spikes of agony through him. Then, miraculously, he was upright, leaning on his left knee, his right dangling as a painful liability.
The stud was on the right of the door.
‘Oh, Emperor, how you love to test me,’ he said. He reached as far as he could, and swiped at the stud. He missed by the depth of a fingernail.
He bit his teeth together hard. He knew what he had to do. It was going to hurt.
He leaned a little to the right, and reached again.
His finger hit the button as his weight transferred to his broken right thigh. It collapsed immediately under him, and he screamed. Rarely had he felt pain like that. But the door opened, and he fell into the service tower as Cheelche opened fire.
He pulled himself inside. Mercifully, the door closed automatically behind him.
The surviving psykers howled like beasts. Witch-light blazed in their faces. Their bodies shook. Every few seconds, one would go off like a flare, their soul pouring out all at once, reducing their body to ash. The machines that gathered up the overflow were glowing far too brightly.
Lacrante could feel the things on the other side pressing through, and he was not psychic; that meant they were close. He leaned against the base of the tower pier. Blood ran down his back. There was a deep wound in his shoulder inflicted by one of the daemon-servitors.
Cheelche knelt next to him. They needed to be close to the door.
‘As soon as that shutter opens, we’re going to have to run,’ she said. She squinted down the carbine at a cable holding up a counterweight that held the shutter closed. ‘I really wish I had my damn long-las,’ she grumbled. ‘Big blocks of iron,’ she said. ‘We’re lucky you people are so primitive.’ She fired again. The plasma pulse vanished into the metal of the shutter itself. She cursed.
‘If the chikanti are so smart, how come it’s us that rule the galaxy?’ said Lacrante. He was watching the psyker nearest to them. Her back was arched rigidly, like that was its proper shape.
‘The galaxy? That’s debatable. One million worlds from billions? You’re a mould stain, not the supreme race.’ She fired again. The plasma pulse raced away from them. ‘Shit!’ she said, followed by some probably much worse words in her clicking alien tongue.
‘Long-las?’
‘Shut up, ape boy,’ she said. She breathed.
The woman in the throne nearby was changing. Her screaming mouth distended, like that of a serpent preparing to swallow its prey. Her skin ran horribly, re-forming, gathering itself into spines and whistling orifices.
‘Cheelche…’
‘Shut up,’ she said.
‘We’re running out of time.’ Lacrante took the unilateral decision to put a las-beam through the woman’s head. As soon as she was dead he spied another psyker writhing. ‘There’s another one. I can’t shoot them all.’
Lacrante walked painfully around the sphere interior. Even with the psy-block strapped to his head, psychic pressure emanating from the astropaths made him feel weak as jelly. Things scraped around at the back of his skull. His mouth watered uncontrollably. He reached the second psyker. The face of this one was stretched out wide and drumskin-round. Something was pushing through from the other side, all points and spines. He found himself entranced.
When red eyes rolled into being in the astropath’s hollow eye sockets, he squeezed the trigger.
He looked about. More than half the astropaths were dead, slain by psychical overload or the sorcerer’s semi-daemonic constructs. The rest were writhing, and more and more were showing the signs of transfiguration.
‘Cheelche!’
‘I’m trying!’ she shouted back.
He went to her again. ‘We should leave, maybe find a control station or something, open it that way.’
‘We’ve no time,’ she said.
The mountain shook. The psykers screamed. On the far side of the sphere, one exploded in a shower of gore. Through the still-twitching remains, something was emerging.
‘This… time…’ said Cheelche.
She squeezed the trigger.
The plasma pulse streaked through the air, cutting the cable holding the counterweight. A huge drum wrapped with steel hawser began to turn.
‘We’re going,’ she said.
They ran. The clattering of the shutter rolling back boomed around the chamber, chasing them into the corridor. Over it came the shrieks of astropaths succumbing to possession.
The shutter opened. Lacrante felt the light pouring into the relay as a physical blow. He screwed his eyes tight, fearful he’d go blind.
Cheelche groped behind her, hands over her eyes, until she found the door switch. The portal slammed into place.
Lacrante opened his eyes. He could hardly see.
‘In the nick of time?’ he said.
‘Let’s hope so,’ said Cheelche.
‘Traitor fleet is changing heading,’ Second Lieutenant Semain relayed.
‘Diomed?’ Athagey asked.
‘All of them are firing their manoeuvring thrusters. Our augury says their engine output is undiminished. They’re not coming back for another pass. They’re breaking from combat. We’ve got them on the run.’
A cheer went up. With an angry shout, Athagey silenced it.
‘Quiet!’ she said. ‘Don’t you see? If they’re running now, we can’t catch them. This is not like the Word Bearers to flee. Who knows what objectives they had, and what they may have achieved.’
‘Shall I order pursuit?’ Diomed asked.
‘Flare status,’ Athagey barked.
‘Stellar weather front hitting in one hundred and twenty seconds,’ reported Basu. ‘It has already reached Srinagar Primus.’
‘Quartus Delphus One and Two?’
‘One is already in the weather front. Two will be hit half an hour after us.’
Athagey half stood from her chair. The twin suns were noticeably brighter. The Chaos fleet was scattered. She could bring some of the enemy to bay, but her ships were stretched out, vulnerable to counter-attack, and with their shields worn down by two hours of battle, vulnerable to the stars.
She didn’t know what to do. Her pulse raced under the influence of the stimms. Her thoughts stampeded through her mind, loose and dangerous, presenting her with dozens of contradictory options. Attack, or stand down? Bloodlust warred with reason. She froze, giddy, her stomach in knots. If she had been alone, she would have staggered, intoxicated, to her throne, to let the thundering of her heart and soul calm.
She could not do that. Moments passed.
‘Groupmistress?’ Diomed asked. Dozens of eyes looked to Athagey for guidance.
Athagey’s face contorted. There was only one viable option.
‘Emperor’s living corpse!’ she spat. ‘Order all ships to stand down pursuit. Cut power to engines. All vessels to divert full power to void shields and brace for flare impact. Close the shutters. It’s over.’
The hubbub on the bridge died.
‘Get on with it!’ she shouted. The shutters were closing. The suns’ light was getting painful. One by one, the tactical hololiths went out. Battle schema on gel screens were replaced by sheets of static. The last she saw was the Chaos vessels vanishing, impossible to see with the naked eye against the stellar glare.
‘Eloise,’ Diomed said urgently. Her eyes flicked from Athagey’s nose to her chin and back again.
Hesitantly, Athagey raised her hand to her face and wiped. Blood stained her hand. Her nose was bleeding freely.
She tugged out a handkerchief. Her temples throbbed. Her skin was tight, her throat swelling, wanting to close up. She’d taken too much vitadandum; she had to excuse herself.
‘Diomed, as soon as the storm has passed I want deep augur sweeps of the entire system,’ she said, with as much authority as she could muster. ‘Get a message to Quartus Delphus Two, tell them to start pursuit as soon as possible, if they can salvage anything from this mess with a couple of ship kills, I’ll be grateful.’ She strode out of the deck, trying not to stagger, though the deck felt insubstantial beneath her boots. ‘If you need anything else, I’ll be in my quarters.’
Areios’ backup helmplate fizzled. Tiny, less immersive than the deep retinal systems the Mark X armour had as its primary display, it existed for use in the direst of need, and therefore possessed datasplays relating only to physical health and armour integrity.
Sluggish tracers showed a dying heartbeat. Urgent patterns of light spoke of a struggling pharmacopoeia. His armour was no better. Outline picts showed red in every plate, every system. It would not serve again.
Ferren Areios’ life slipped away. Deep under his Primaris programming, he remembered a boy, fleet of foot and lively; a short life awaited him, but it might have been joyous, if not stolen for the needs of the Imperium. He had died already, he thought, he would die again, and properly now. No methalon cold awaited him, no endless tests or millennia of hypnomat nightmares.
He greeted it calmly.
Patterns changed, flickered back, changed, locked. Lights blinked green.
A massive jolt of electricity surged through Areios’ body. Muscles contracted so hard that they tore. Broken bones ground on one another. Snapped teeth cut into mashed gums. His hearts pulsed quicker, then died.
A sudden dry heat ripped through him, emanating from a place in his chest, but spreading wildfire-quick, until his whole body was aflame. Nothing in his broken battleplate could reduce the pain. Nothing in his altered physiology could dampen it.
There is no agony like life.
As the Belisarian Furnace consumed him, he heard a voice from far away.
‘It’s the captain. He’s badly injured.’ The voice came close, then became quieter. ‘Serfs! Here now.’ A vox-click from a helm. ‘Urgent medicae evacuation required, one subject, level zero, Hall of Utterances. Signal ahead and prepare the medicae facility aboard the Saint Aster for immediate surgery. Augmetic implants necessary. Prioritise him.’ Another vox-click. ‘Activate that grav-bier. Gently, now. Get him out of here, quickly.’
Hands grabbed at Areios, so many hands it seemed, until he was covered all over with painful, gripping fingers. His armour was taken from him. The plates came away with hot, angry sensations, like they were part of him torn free.
Someone worked a device into the medical port on his thigh. There was the stab of something into his flesh through the interface collar, a hiss that was oddly loud, and coldness spread from the port point throughout his burning body, calming the fires.
Consciousness receded. The voice spoke one last time before blackness took him.
‘Inform the lord lieutenant that Ferren Areios lives.’
Chapter Forty-One
REACTOR DEATH
MORTIAN’S TRUTH
BOTHO’S CHOICE
Sonorous bells tolled warnings of imminent destruction. The vessel quaked as its boiling plasma heart went into arrest. Soon the false sun would slip its bonds, and break the Chaos ship.
‘This way, it is this way!’ shouted Botho, waving Lucerne up a minor corridor. ‘The hangar where Mortian was sent is not far.’
The ship rumbled. Power fluctuations were causing integrity fields to fail. Without the effects of their molecular binding, the two-mile ship was becoming unstable. With each violent shudder the floors rippled. Metal rent. Mechanisms failed. A pipe broke, spewing hot gas into their path. Fires licked around displaced wall panels. They saw no more Word Bearers, and the remaining mortal crew scattered when they sighted the Space Marines. The few that held their ground died, cut down by Lucerne and Botho without them breaking their stride.
Lucerne checked the chrono running down in the corner of his field of view. The reactor would hold another five minutes, no more, possibly less.
The gravity was fluctuating. Lucerne activated his mag-locks, and voxed that Botho should do the same. He was responsible for the boy now.
Alarms wailed. An explosion in a side room ejected a scatter of smoking metal and a burning spear of fire, intense as a blowtorch. They leapt through it, Botho batting out the flames it set on his void armour as they ran.
A crowd of mortal crew was coming towards them down the corridor. A priest led the mob, crimson-robed, a livid octed branded into his scalp. Lucerne levelled his bolt pistol.
‘Leave them! They are fated to die anyway,’ said Botho. ‘Up here.’
Lucerne lowered his gun.
They turned left, running towards the outer hull. Another, bigger explosion shook the vessel. The deck plating squealed apart between Lucerne and Botho, revealing sparking cables beneath. Lucerne vaulted the gap.
They entered the hangar via an upper door leading onto a control gallery. Instruments for the cranes that shared the ceiling with ducts, pipes and cabling lined the side. Thick black smoke was rolling up from below, and Lucerne cycled his vision systems to better see. Botho ran ahead, ducking under a fat pipe. There was a staircase beyond, heading down the inner wall of the hangar, passing over three short landings before leading onto the flight deck. The atmospheric shielding was still operational across the launch aperture, and the hangar retained an atmosphere though its physical gates were open to the void. The stairs were made for standard humans, and bounced on their bolts under the weight of Lucerne and Botho.
There were seven landing pads in the hangar, arranged in a staggered zigzag. Three were occupied by Thunderhawk gunships. One of these was ablaze, and it was this that was pouring out the black smoke. Another was covered in roaring daemon faces. The targeting lenses of its weapons glimmered with a fell light. When Botho ran towards it, Lucerne hauled him back.
‘Corrupt machine-spirits,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘We must hope the last one is viable.’
There had been hard fighting in the hangar. The bodies of mortal crew lay everywhere, bearing the horrific wounds of Adeptus Astartes weapons. Many of them were tatters of meat, blood and uniforms, unrecognisable as human beings. Botho ran ahead, calling names. There was no answer.
Six dead Heretic Astartes lay among the dead mortals. Lucerne ran past two whose battleplate had been shattered by boltgun fire. A third was locked in an embrace with one of the Black Templars, the warriors leaning on each other drunkenly. Both of them were battered, their armour broken and bloody. A fourth had a chainsword punched through his chestplate, and was propped up on the length off the floor, arms dangling, his killer dead from a plasma hit not ten feet away.
‘They are dead. My brothers!’ said Botho, with a mixture of anguish and ecstasy. ‘They have gone to the Emperor. May they glory in His light. Soon, I shall join them. Praise be!’
The final gunship was ahead, ramp down. The neutral light of machines spilled from the hatch. A tractor waited nearby, towing claw uncoupled, a promethium tank on a trailer behind it. From this, hoses snaked towards the Thunderhawk. Lucerne took it as a sign that the ship had been recently refuelled.
‘I do not think it is our time yet,’ said Lucerne. ‘Come on!’ He dragged the neophyte on.
A tremendous detonation shook the Chaos ship. Through the pale blue glimmer of the atmospheric shielding, Lucerne saw a pillar of fire gush outwards from the hull, speckled black with broken metal. Its edges curled with the colours of venting plasma.
‘This vessel will die in moments,’ he said. ‘We must be away.’ They reached the ramp. ‘On board, now.’
‘Can you fly it?’ Botho asked.
‘I have had some training,’ said Lucerne. ‘Let us hope it is enough.’
He had one foot on the ramp when a commanding voice called to him from behind.
‘Drop your weapon, Primaris. Do it. I have a gun trained on you. It will end your unholy life.’
‘Mortian,’ said Lucerne. He turned around slowly.
The Chaplain was sprawled against the side of the tractor. There was a large crater near his left armpit. The bolt had taken out the ceramite outer layer and the underweave. The flesh beneath was exposed, a raw pit. Blood ran down from his open mouth grille.
‘I was waiting to see if you had survived,’ Mortian said. ‘You Primaris are difficult to kill.’ In his fist was a plasma pistol, charge coils bright and ready to discharge. ‘Put your gun down.’
‘No,’ said Lucerne. ‘You will kill me anyway. The chances of me slaying you are slim, but it is possible. It is not possible if I put my weapon down. Why should I?’
Mortian growled. ‘Step aside, Botho. Cover him.’
The neophyte stepped back down off the Thunderhawk ramp, but he did not raise his boltgun, and beneath the visor of his armour, his face was conflicted.
‘No,’ said Botho. He let his boltgun dangle from his fist.
‘Then you damn yourself,’ Mortian said.
