Hammer and Bolter 3 Read online

  Stellan dribbled. He tried to mumble the words on the wall. Then he tried to get his palsied mouth around his master’s name. He failed. The young Space Marine’s mind was no longer his own. He belonged to someone else: to the will of the wordsmith – whoever they were. And not only the novice: countless other recruits over the years, for whom indoctrination hid in the very fabric of their worlds and now in the backs of their afflicted minds. All ready to be activated at a single phrase.

  Navarre readied himself. Opened his being to the warp’s dark promise. Allowed its fire to burn within. Slipping Chrysaen from its chest scabbard, the Chief Librarian held both force blades out in front of him. Each master-crafted gladius smoked with immaterial vengeance.

  For Stellan, the dangers were much more immediate than brainwashing. Stripped of his years of training and the mental fortitude that shielded an Astartes Librarian from the dangers of the warp, Stellan succumbed to the monster stalking his soul.

  Something like shock took the Crimson Consul’s face hostage. The novice looked like he had been seized from below. Somehow, horribly, he had. The Librarian’s head suddenly disappeared down into the trunk of his blue and gold power armour. An oily, green ichor erupted from the neck of the suit.

  ‘Ghidorquiel…’ Navarre spat. The Chief Librarian thrust himself at the quivering suit of armour, spearing his Lexicanum through the chest with Chrysaor. The stink of warp-corruption poured from the adamantium shell and stung the psyker’s nostrils. Spinning and kicking the body back along the treacherous walkway, Navarre’s blades trailed ethereal afterglow as they arced and cleaved through the sacred suit.

  Howling fury at the materialising beast within the armour, the Chief Librarian unleashed a blast wave of raw warp energy from his chest that lit up the cavern interior and hit the suit like the God-Emperor’s own fist.

  The suit tumbled backwards, wrenching and cracking along the walkway until it came to rest, a broken-backed heap. Even then, the armour continued to quiver and snap, rearranging the splintered ceramite plating and moulding itself into something new. On the walkway, Navarre came to behold an adamantium shell, like that of a mollusc, from which slithered an explosion of tentacles. Navarre ran full speed at the daemon while appendages shot for him like guided missiles. Twisting this way and that, but without sacrificing any of his rage-fuelled speed, the Chief Librarian slashed at the beast, his blinding blades shearing off tentacular length and the warp-dribbling tips of the monster feelers.

  As the psyker closed with the daemon nautiloid, the warp beast shot its appendages into the fragile walkway’s architecture. Hugging the snapping struts and supports to it, the creature demolished the structure beneath the Crimson Consul’s feet.

  Navarre plummeted through the cavern space before smashing down through the frozen surface of the chemical lake below. The industrial waste plunge immediately went to work on the blue and gold of the Librarian’s armour and blistered the psyker’s exposed and freezing flesh. Navarre’s force blades glowed spectroscopic eeriness under the surface and it took precious moments for the Space Marine to orientate himself and kick for the surface. As his steaming head broke from the frozen acid depths of the lake, Navarre’s burn-blurry eyes saw the rest of the walkway collapsing towards him. Ghidorquiel had reached for the cavern wall and, pulling with its unnatural might, had toppled the remainder of the structure.

  Again Navarre was hammered to the darkness of the lake bottom, sinking wreckage raining all about the dazed psyker. Somewhere in the chaos Chrysaen slipped from Navarre’s grip. Vaulting upwards, the Space Marine hit the thick ice of the lake surface further across. Clawing uselessly with his gauntlet, skin aflame and armour freezing up, Navarre stared through the ice and saw something slither overhead. Roaring pain and frustration into the chemical darkness, the Chief Librarian thrust Chrysaor through the frozen effluence. Warpflame bled from the blade and across the ice, rapidly melting the crust of the acid bath and allowing the Crimson Consul a moment to suck in a foetid breath and drag himself up the shoreline of shattered masonry.

  Ghidorquiel was there, launching tentacles at the psyker. Hairless and with flesh melting from his skull the Librarian mindlessly slashed the appendages to pieces. All the Space Marine wanted was the daemon. The thing dragged its obscene adamantium shell sluggishly away from the lake and the enraged Astartes. Navarre bounded up and off a heap of walkway wreckage, dodging the creature’s remaining tentacles and landing on ceramite. Drawing on everything he had, the Chief Librarian became a conduit of the warp. The raw, scalding essence of immaterial energy poured from his being and down through the descending tip of his force sword. Chrysaor slammed through the twisted shell of Stellan’s armour and buried itself in the daemon’s core. Like a lightning rod, the gladius roasted the beast from the inside out.

  Armour steamed. Tentacles dropped and trembled to stillness. The daemon caught light. Leaving the force blade in the monstrous body, Navarre stumbled down from the creature and crashed to the cavern floor himself. The psyker was spent: in every way conceivable. He could do little more than lie there in his own palsy, staring at the daemon corpse lit by Chrysaor’s still gleaming blade. The slack, horrible face of the creature had slipped down out of the malformed armour shell: the same horrific face that the novice Stellan had confronted in his dreams.

  Looking up into the inky, cavern blackness, Navarre wrangled with the reality that somehow he had to get out of the catacombs and warn the Slaughterhorn of impending disaster. A slurp drew his face back to the creature; sickeningly it began to rumble with daemonic life and throttled laughter. Fresh tentacles erupted from its flaming sides and wrapped themselves around two of the crooked pillars of rockcrete and metal that were supporting the chamber ceiling and the underhive levels above.

  All Navarre could do was watch the monster pull the columns towards its warp-scorched body and roar his frustration as the cavern ceiling quaked and thundered down towards him, with the weight of Hive Niveous behind it.

  The Oratorium swarmed with armoured command staff and their attendants. Clarifications and communications shot back and forth across the chamber amongst a hololithic representation of the Slaughterhorn fortress-monastery that crackled disturbance every time an officer or Crimson Consuls serf walked through it.

  ‘They discovered nothing, my lord,’ Baldwin informed Artegall in mid-report. ‘No High Chaplain; no Scout squads; nothing. They’ve scoured the Dry-blind around the Pale Maidens. They’re requesting permission to bring the Thunderhawks back to base.’

  ‘What about Chief Librarian Navarre?’ Artegall called across the Oratorium.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ Lord Apothecary Fabian confirmed. ‘On the vox or from the Librarium.’

  ‘Planetary Defence Force channels and on-scene Enforcers report seismic shift and hive tremors in the capital lower levels,’ the Master of the Forge reported, his huge servo-claw swinging about over the heads of the gathering.

  ‘What about the Crimson Tithe?’

  ‘Patching you through to Master Lambert now,’ Maximagne Ferro added, giving directions to a communications servitor. The hololithic representation of the Slaughterhorn disappeared and was replaced with the phantasmal static of a dead pict-feed that danced around the assembled Crimson Consuls.

  ‘What the hell is happening up there, Maximagne?’ Artegall demanded, but the Master of the Forge was working furiously on the servitor and the brass control station of the runeslab. The static disappeared before briefly being replaced by the Slaughterhorn and then a three-dimensional hololith of the Carcharian system. Artegall immediately picked out their system star and their icebound home world: numerous defence monitors and small frigates were stationed in high orbit. Circling Carcharias were the moons of De Vere, Thusa Major and Thusa Minor between which two strike cruisers sat at anchor. Most distant was Rubessa; the Oratorium could see the battle-barge Crimson Tithe beneath it. Approaching was Hecton Lambert’s strike cruiser, Anno Tenebris. The hololithic image of the Adeptus As
tartes strike cruiser suddenly crackled and then disappeared.

  The Oratorium fell to a deathly silence.

  ‘Master Maximagne…’ Artegall began. The Master of the Forge had a vox-headset to one ear.

  ‘Confirmed, my lord. The Anno Tenebris has been destroyed with all on board.’ The silence prevailed. ‘Sir, the Crimson Tithe fired upon her.’

  The gathered Adeptus Astartes looked to their Chapter Master, who, like his compatriots, could not believe what he was hearing.

  ‘Master Faulks,’ Artegall began. ‘It seems you were correct. We are under attack. Status report: fortress-monastery.’

  ‘In lockdown as ordered, sir,’ the Master of Ordnance reported with grim pride. ‘All Crimson Consuls are prepped for combat. All sentry guns manned. Thunderhawks ready for launch on your order. Defence lasers powered to full.’

  Captain Roderick presented himself to his Chapter Master: ‘My lord, the Seventh Company has fortified the Slaughterhorn at the Master of Ordnance’s instruction. Nothing will get through – you can be sure of that.’

  ‘Sir,’ Master Maximagne alerted the chamber: ‘Crimson Tithe is on the move, Carcharias bound, my lord.’

  Artegall’s lip curled into a snarl. ‘Who the hell are they?’ he muttered to himself. ‘What about our remaining cruisers?’

  Faulks stepped forwards indicating the cruisers at anchor between the hololithic moons of Thusa Major and Thusa Minor. ‘At full alert as I advised. The Caliburn and Honour of Hera could plot an intercept course and attempt an ambush…’

  ‘Out of the question,’ Artegall stopped Faulks. ‘Bring the strike cruisers in above the Slaughterhorn at low orbit. I want our defence lasers to have their backs.’

  ‘Yes, my master,’ Faulks obeyed.

  ‘Baldwin…’

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Ready my weapons and armour.’

  The Chamber Castellan nodded slowly, ‘It would be my honour, master.’ The Crimson Consuls watched the serf exit, knowing what this meant. Artegall was already standing at the head of the runeslab in a functional suit of crimson and cream power armour and his mantle. He was asking for the hallowed suit of artificer armour and master-crafted bolter that resided in the Chapter Master’s private armoury. The gleaming suit of crimson and gold upon which the honourable history of the Crimson Consuls Chapter was inscribed and inlaid in gemstone ripped from the frozen earth of Carcharias itself. The armour that past Masters had worn when leading the Chapter to war in its entirety: Aldebaran; the Fall of Volsungard; the Termagant Wars.

  ‘Narke.’

  ‘Master Artegall,’ the Slaughterhorn’s chief astropath replied from near the Oratorium doors.

  ‘Have you been successful in contacting the Third, Fifth or Eighth Companies?’

  ‘Captain Neath has not responded, lord,’ the blind Narke reported, clutching his staff.

  Artegall and Talbot Faulks exchanged grim glances. Neath and the 8th Company were only two systems away hunting Black Legion Traitor Marine degenerates in the Sarcus Reaches.

  ‘And Captain Borachio?’

  Artegall had received monthly astrotelepathic reports from Captain Albrecht Borachio stationed in the Damocles Gulf. Borachio had overseen the Crimson Consuls contribution to the Damocles Crusade in the form of the 3rd and 5th Companies and had present responsibility for bringing the Tau commander, O’Shovah, to battle in the Farsight Enclaves. Artegall and Borachio had served together in the same squad as battle-brothers and Borachio beyond Baldwin, was what the Chapter Master might have counted as the closest thing he had to a friend.

  ‘Three days ago, my lord,’ Narke returned. ‘You returned in kind, Master Artegall.’

  ‘Read back the message.’

  The astropath’s knuckles whitened around his staff as he recalled the message: ‘… encountered a convoy of heavy cruisers out of Fi’Rios – a lesser sept, the Xenobiologis assure me, attempting to contact Commander Farsight. We took a trailing vessel with little difficulty but at the loss of one Carcharian son: Crimson Consul Battle-Brother Theodoric of the First Squad: Fifth Company. I commend Brother Theodoric’s service to you and recommend his name be added to the Shrine of Hera in the Company Chapel as a posthumous recipient of the Iron Laurel…’

  ‘And the end?’ Artegall pushed.

  ‘An algebraic notation in three dimensions, my lord: Kn Ω iii – π iX (Z-) – Αα v.R (!?) 0-1.’

  ‘Coordinates? Battle manoeuvres?’ Talbot Faulks hypothesised.

  ‘Regicide notations,’ Artegall informed him, his mind elsewhere. For years, the Chapter Master and Albrecht Borachio had maintained a game of regicide across the stars, moves detailed back and forth with their astropathic communiqués. Each had a board and pieces upon which the same game had been played out; Artegall’s was an ancient set carved from lacquered megafelis sabres on a burnished bronze board. Artegall moved the pieces in his mind, recalling the board as it was set up on a rostra by his throne in the Chancelorium. Borachio had beaten him: ‘Blind Man’s Mate…’ the Chapter Master mouthed.

  ‘Excuse me, my lord?’ Narke asked.

  ‘No disrespect intended,’ Artegall told the astropath. ‘It’s a form of victory in regicide, so called because you do not see it coming.’

  The corridor outside the Oratorium suddenly echoed with the sharp crack of bolter fire. Shocked glances between Artegall and his Astartes officers were swiftly replaced by the assumption of cover positions. The armoured forms took advantage of the runeslab and the walls either side of the Oratorium door.

  ‘That’s inside the perimeter,’ Faulks called in disbelief, slapping on his helmet.

  ‘Well inside,’ Artegall agreed grimly. Many of the Space Marines had drawn either their bolt pistols or their gladius swords. Only Captain Roderick and the Oratorium sentry sergeants, Bohemond and Ravenscar, were equipped for full combat with bolters, spare ammunition and grenades.

  With the muzzle of his squat Fornax-pattern bolt pistol resting on the slab, the Master of Ordnance brought up the hololithic representation of the Slaughterhorn once more. The fortress-monastery was a tessellation of flashing wings, towers, hangars and sections.

  ‘Impossible…’ Faulks mumbled.

  ‘The fortress-monastery is completely compromised,’ Master Maximagne informed the chamber, cycling through the vox-channels.

  Bolt shells pounded the thick doors of the Oratorium. The 7th Company captain held a gauntleted finger to the vox-bead in his ear.

  ‘Roderick,’ Artegall called. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘My men are being fired upon from the inside of the Slaughterhorn, my lord,’ the captain reported bleakly. ‘By fellow Astartes – by Crimson Consuls, Master Artegall!’

  ‘What has happened to us?’ the Chapter Master bawled in dire amazement.

  ‘Later, sir. We have to get you out of here,’ Faulks insisted.

  ‘What sections do we hold?’ Artegall demanded.

  ‘Elias, we have to go, now!’

  ‘Master Faulks, what do we hold?’

  ‘Sir, small groups of my men hold the Apothecarion and the north-east hangar,’ Roderick reported. ‘The Barbican, some Foundry sections and Cell Block Sigma.’

  ‘The Apothecarion?’ Fabian clarified.

  ‘The gene-seed,’ Artegall heard himself mutter.

  ‘The Command Tower is clear,’ Faulks announced, reading details off the hololith schematic of the monastery. Bolt-rounds tore through the metal of the Oratorium door and drummed into the runeslab column. The hololith promptly died. Ravenscar pushed Narke, the blind astropath, out of his way and poked the muzzle of his weapon through the rent in the door. He started plugging the corridor with ammunition-conserving boltfire.

  ‘We must get the Chapter Master to the Tactical Chancelorium,’ Faulks put to Roderick, Maximagne and the sentry sergeants.

  ‘No,’ Artegall barked back. ‘We must take back the Slaughterhorn.’

  ‘Which we can do best from your Tactical Chancelorium, my
lord,’ Faulks insisted with strategic logic. ‘From there we have our own vox-relays, tactical feeds and your private armoury: it’s elevated for a Thunderhawk evacuation – it’s simply the most secure location in the fortress-monastery,’ Faulks told his master. ‘The best place from which to coordinate and rally our forces.’

  ‘When we determine who they are,’ Fabian added miserably. Artegall and the Master of Ordnance stared at one another.

  ‘Sir!’ Ravenscar called from the door. ‘Coming up on a reload.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Artegall told Faulks. ‘Captain Roderick shall accompany Master Maximagne and Lord Fabian to secure the Apothecarion; the gene-seed must be saved. Serfs with your masters. Sergeants Ravenscar and Bohemond, escort the Master of Ordnance and myself to the Tactical Chancelorium. Narke, you will accompany us. All understood?’

  ‘Yes, Chapter Master,’ the chorus came back.

  ‘Sergeant, on three,’ Artegall instructed. ‘One.’ Bohemond nodded and primed a pair of grenades from his belt. ‘Two.’ Faulks took position by the door stud. ‘Three’. Roderick nestled his bolter snug into his shoulder as Faulks activated the door mechanism.

  As the door rolled open, Ravenscar pulled away and went about reloading his boltgun. Bohemond’s grenades were then followed by replacement suppression fire from Captain Roderick’s bolter.

  The brief impression of crimson and cream armour working up the corridor was suddenly replaced with the thunder and flash of grenades. Roderick was swiftly joined by Bohemond and then Ravenscar, the three Space Marines maintaining a withering arc of fire. The command group filed out of the Oratorium with their Chapter serf attendants, the singular crash of their Fornax-pattern pistols joining in the cacophony.

  With Roderick’s precision fire leading the Lord Apothecary and the Master of the Forge down a side passage, Bohemond slammed his shoulder through a stairwell door to lead the other group up onto the next level. The Crimson Consuls soon fell into the surgical-style battle rotation so beloved of Guilliman: battle-brother covering battle-brother; arc-pivoting and rapid advance suppression fire. Ravenscar and Bohemond orchestrated the tactical dance from the front, with Artegall’s pistol crashing support from behind and the Master of Ordnance covering the rear with his own, while half dragging the blind Narke behind him.