kill us all here? It would be little more than the cast of a die to decide
between us, I think. And we are going to die here whether it be to
Abraxes’s legion or your bolters, so we have nothing to lose. Will you
still stand against us, sergeant?’
‘There will be no need for bloodshed here,’ came a voice from behind
Prexus. It was one of the Iron Knights, who walked out of cover into
the open.
‘Borasi!’ said Luko, his face breaking into a smile.
‘Captain,’ The two Adeptus Astartes approached and shook hands.
‘You will have to trust me that this time we meet, I shall break no
bones of yours.’
‘I shall hold you to that, Sergeant,’ said Luko.
‘You know this warrior?’ demanded Prexus.
‘We met on Molikor,’ said Borasi. ‘We were compelled by
circumstance to trade blows before we had our facts straightened out
for us.’
‘I knew you were a poor choice for the rearguard,’ said Prexus. ‘You
could not be trusted to treat the enemy as an enemy.’
‘I think there is another enemy on the Phalanx you should concern
yourself with rather more,’ said Luko.
‘Let the Soul Drinkers fight Abraxes if they wish it,’ said Borasi. ‘I
will take responsibility. Let them die facing its daemons. That is
execution sure enough for anyone.’
‘I am in command here!’ barked Prexus. ‘You are under my
authority, sergeant! You are here only at the sufferance of…’
The sudden burst of chatter over the Imperial Fists vox was loud and
rapid enough to grab Prexus’s attention.
Chapter Master Vladimir’s voice cut through the chatter. ‘All forces
of the ninth, fall back to the centre! All other forces, move up to the
front! The Rynn’s World Memorial is lost and Castellan Leucrontas has
fallen. Let them be avenged!’
‘You heard, sergeant,’ said Borasi. ‘You have your orders.’
‘The Imperial Fists will shoot you on sight,’ said Prexus. ‘It doesn’t
matter if you want to join the fight or not. They will kill you as soon as
they see you have left the archives.’
‘They can try,’ said Luko. ‘Although they may decide their
ammunition is better spent elsewhere.’
‘Fall back!’ ordered Prexus. ‘Squad Makos, take the fore! Iron
Knights, take the centre! Move out, Borasi. Do not follow us, Luko, or
we shall see just how that close fight you spoke of turns out.’
Borasi saluted Luko as he returned to join the other Iron Knights.
The Imperial Fists kept their guns trained on Luko as Prexus’s force
withdrew from the mess hall, the chatter over their vox-channels
continuing to illustrate the collapse of Leucrontas’s force and the
approach of the bulk of the daemon army.
When the way was clear, Librarian Tyrendian and Sergeant Graevus
emerged from the archives to join Luko.
‘It’s bad,’ said Tyrendian. ‘I can feel it. Realspace is screaming in
my mind. It is Abraxes, I have no doubt about that, and banishment
has given him strength through hate.’
‘What now, Captain?’ asked Graevus.
‘We have to avoid the Imperial Fists lines,’ replied Luko. ‘And the
Howling Griffons, for that matter. We head for the memorial.’
‘I wondered,’ said Iktinos, ‘how long you would take. You disappoint
me. I had thought a reckoning would have happened long before
Selaaca, that you would have seen through what I and my fellow
chaplains have been doing, and that some other thread of fate would
be needed to bring you to Kravamesh. But it is as if you were an
automaton, programmed to do as Daenyathos wrote six thousand
years ago.’ He turned to face his opponent, the scar on his skull-faced
helmet still smouldering. ‘As if you were following his instructions as
precisely as I.’
Sarpedon had found Iktinos in the dorsal fighter bays, three decks
up from the training decks. He had followed a Space Marine’s instinct,
the best escape routes, the avenues of flight that allowed for the most
cover and the best firing angles, and he had emerged in this cavernous
his way across the seemingly endless concourse.
There were fifty metres between the two Soul Drinkers as they faced
one another down a row of fighter craft. Each craft was enormous,
bigger than the Thunderhawk Gunships of the Space Marines, with
blunt-nosed, brutal shapes that made no concession to the
aerodynamics irrelevant in the void. When the Phalanx went to war,
these were the craft that swarmed around the vast ship like hornets,
but with the enemy having invaded from within they were silent and
ignored.
‘I have asked myself many times how we have come to this point,’
said Sarpedon. He fought to keep his voice level. ‘Now I would like to
ask you.’
‘You presume that I know,’ said Iktinos. ‘Daenyathos knows. We
follow. That was always enough for us.’
‘For you? The chaplains?’
‘Indeed. Ever since Daenyathos fell on the Talon of Mars, we have
followed the teachings he handed down to us in secret. The rest of the
Chapter, meanwhile, has followed the commands he laid out in the
Catechisms Martial, encoded in his words so that you acted by them
and yet remained ignorant of them.’
‘Tell me why we are here!’ snapped Sarpedon. ‘And I hear the name
of Abraxes in my head. I hear his pride and his lust for revenge. What
has brought him to the Phalanx? You?’
‘Daenyathos knew that one would rise from the warp at his behest.
That it happens to be Abraxes is a testament to fate. He must have
been lurking beneath the surface of the warp, hungry for any taste of
the Soul Drinkers who bested him. Abraxes is just another pawn,
Sarpedon, like you, like me.’
‘There are those who have tried to use my Chapter for their own
ends before,’ said Sarpedon. His grip tightened on the Axe of
Mercaeno. ‘Do you recall, Chaplain Iktinos, what happened to them?’
Iktinos drew the haft of the Soulspear from a holster at his waist. His
thumb closed over an aperture in the alien metal, a micro-laser pulsed
and drew blood through the ceramite of his gauntlet. The gene-lock
activated and twin blades of purest, liquid black extended from either
end of the haft. ‘I recall it very well, Sarpedon. I recall that they were
amateurs. Daenyathos factored them in, as well. Nothing has occurred
that he did not foresee and plan for in advance.’
‘Including your death?’ said Sarpedon. He crouched down a little on
his haunches, the bundles of muscles in his legs bunching ready to
pounce.
‘If that is what occurs,’ said Iktinos, no emotion in his voice, ‘then
yes.’
Sarpedon circled to one side, talons clicking on the deck. He
passed under the shadow cast by the nose of the closest fighter craft.
Iktinos followed suit, no doubt gauging Sarpedon’s stance, weighing up
everything he knew about the speed and fighting skills of his one-ti
me
Chapter Master.
The air hissed as molecules passed over the Soulspear’s blades
and were sliced in two. The sound of distant battle reached the fighter
deck as a faint rumble, a shuddering as if the Phalanx itself was
tensing up. The blank eyes of the fighter craft cockpits seemed to
stare, watching for the first move.
Iktinos moved first.
The chaplain sprinted forwards, Soulspear held back to strike.
Sarpedon ducked to one side as Iktinos covered the ground in
impossibly quick time, and swung out a spinning, dizzying strike with
the Soulspear. The blades of blackness flickered around Sarpedon as
he twisted and dropped to avoid them. A chunk of ceramite, sliced
from his shoulder pad, thudded to the deck, and a fist-sized lump of
chitin from his remaining back leg was cut away.
Sarpedon kicked out and caught Iktinos’s shin, He hooked the
chaplain’s leg with a talon and tripped him. Iktinos rolled and came up
fighting, one end of the Soulspear arcing up and the other slashing
from right to left. Sarpedon, poised to slash down with the Axe of
Mercaeno, had to jump back to avoid them.
‘What is left, Sarpedon?’ said Iktinos, the Soulspear held out in front
of him like a barrier. ‘What is left when every effort you have made to
be free has been at the behest of another? What remains of who you
are?’
‘I am not a traitor,’ said Sarpedon. ‘That is more than you can say.’
‘I am not a traitor,’ said Sarpedon. ‘That is more than you can say.’
‘Treachery is meaningless,’ replied Iktinos. ‘There are no sides to
betray. There is survival and oblivion. Everything else is a lie.’
Sarpedon leapt up onto the side of the fighter craft behind him, and
launched himself from above at Iktinos. Iktinos was not ready to be
attacked from above and he fell to one knee, spinning the Soulspear in
a figure-eight to ward Sarpedon off. Sarpedon landed heavily, let the
momentum crouch him down to the deck, and cut beneath Iktinos’s
guard. The Axe of Mercaeno carved through one of Iktinos’s knee
guards, drawing blood, but the impact was not enough to discharge
Sarpedon’s psychic power through the blade. Iktinos rolled away and
Sarpedon charged on, Iktinos slashing this way and that, Sarpedon
too quick to be hit.
But the Axe of Mercaeno was too unwieldy to get through Iktinos’s
guard. The Soulspear’s twin blades, each a vortex field caged by some
technology long-lost in the days of the Great Crusade, would slice
through the axe as surely as through flesh or bone. Disarmed,
Sarpedon would be as good as dead. He feinted and struck, slashed
and wheeled, but Iktinos was just beyond his blade’s reach.
Iktinos had known this day would come. He knew how to fight with
the Soulspear – he had gone over this fight Throne knew how many
times in his head.
The two passed beneath the hull of the fighter craft. Sarpedon
scuttled up the landing gear and clung to the craft’s underside, trusting
in the novel angle of attack to keep Iktinos off-guard. Iktinos paused in
his counter-attacks, Soulspear wavering, waiting for a blow from
Sarpedon to parry.
‘Fate has a hold of you,’ said Iktinos. His voice still betrayed little
emotion, as if he was a machine controlled from far away. ‘If you die,
Daenyathos has planned for it. If you live, he has planned for that, too.
If only you understood, Sarpedon, you would kneel down and accept a
quick death for the blessing it is.’
‘And if only you understood, Iktinos, what it means to be Adeptus
Astartes.’ Sarpedon hauled himself a couple of steps sideways,
Iktinos mirroring his every movement. ‘The Soul Drinkers are nobody’s
instrument. We are not here to be wielded and used as Daenyathos or
anyone else pleases. He chose the wrong puppets for his plan.’
‘And yet,’ replied Iktinos cooly, ‘here you are, at the time and place
of his choosing.’
‘What I shall do to him is not something that he would choose.’
Iktinos darted forward and slashed at the landing gear. The
Soulspear sliced cleanly through the steel and hydraulic lines and the
craft shifted downwards, all its front-half weight suddenly unsupported.
Iktinos dived out of the way and Sarpedon did the same in the opposite
direction, yelling with frustration as he scrambled to avoid being
crushed by the fighter’s hull. The fighter thudded to the deck and rolled
in Sarpedeon’s direction, forcing him to back up further. Iktinos was
out of sight.
‘What does he want?’ shouted Sarpedon. ‘If his plan is already fated
to succeed, then at least tell me that. For what purpose has he
enslaved us?’
‘For the galaxy’s good,’ came the reply from above. Iktinos stepped
into view atop the fallen fighter craft, standing just above the cockpit.
‘What is it that you have railed against for so long? The galaxy’s
cruelty? The Imperium’s tyranny? Daenyathos saw it six thousand
years before it ever occurred to you. He is not just going to batter his
Chapter to pieces fighting against it. He is going to cure it.’
Sarpedon began to climb towards Iktinos, up the near-vertical curve
of the fighter’s hull. ‘And how?’ he demanded.
‘What other cure is there for all mankind’s ills?’ said Iktinos. ‘Blood
and death. Pain and fear. Only through this can the path of the human
race be made straight.’
Sarpedon was level with Iktinos now, the two Soul Drinkers facing
one another on top of the fallen fighter craft. From here Sarpedon could
see the dozens of such craft ranged along the deck, the cylindrical fuel
tanks and racks of missiles standing between them. ‘There is too
much suffering,’ said Sarpedon. ‘There will be no more.’
‘Not for you,’ said Iktinos.
This time Sarpedon struck first, the Axe of Mercaeno flickering out
too quickly for Iktinos to parry. A good blow from the Soulspear would
slice the axe in two and make it useless, but Sarpedon was a fraction
of a heartbeat too fast. The axe carved not into the ceramite of
Iktinos’s armour, but into the hull of the fighter beneath his feet. The
hull’s outer skin came apart under the axe’s blade and Iktinos’s foot
was trapped. The chaplain fell backwards, unable to arrest his fall.
Sarpedon ripped the axe out of the hull and brought it down, but Iktinos
forced his head out of the way just before Sarpedon bisected it. The
axe was buried again in the hull, the whole head embedded in the
metal.
Sarpedon pinned Iktinos’s arm with one of his legs before the
chaplain could raise the Soulspear. He bent down and grabbed Iktinos
by both shoulder guards, hauled him up into the air, and hurled him
down off the fighter’s hull with every scrap of strength he could gather.
Iktinos slammed down into the fuel tank standing beside the fighter.
His impact half-flattened the cylinder of the tank and ruptured it. Thick
reddish fuel spurted onto the deck.
Sudden pain flared in the leg
with which Sarpedon had pinned
Iktinos’s arm. He looked down to see the stump of the leg, sliced so
cleanly through, a scalpel could have left no neater a wound. The leg
itself was sliding slowly down the curve of the fighter’s hull. Iktinos had
got off one last strike as he fell.
‘Close, my brother,’ called down Sarpedon. ‘But I can live without
that leg. I still have five, and that’s more than I need.’
Sarpedon sprang down from the hull to the deck, just as Iktinos was
extricating himself from the wreckage of the fuel tank. Fuel glistened
all over him. ‘Your fate is decided,’ he said. ‘What happens here
means nothing. Nothing.’
‘You betrayed us and you will die for it,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘That
means enough for me.’
Sarpedon raised the Axe of Mercaeno and ran its blade along one of
the stubby control surfaces of the fighter. The razor-sharp metal drew
sparks, which fell white-hot into the rivulets of fuel creeping towards
him from the ruptured fuel tank. The fuel caught light and flame rushed
towards Iktinos.
The fuel tank bloomed in a tremendous billowing of blue-white flame.
Sarpedon ducked behind the fighter to shield himself from the blast of
heat. He caught a glimpse of Iktinos disappearing in the flame, the
chaplain’s form seeming to dissolve in the heart of the fire.
The sound was a terrible roar, and the fighter shifted on the deck,
pushing against Sarpedon as he crouched. The wave of heat hit and
Sarpedon felt the chitin of his remaining legs blistering in it, the paint
of his armour bubbling, the side of his unprotected face scalding.
The noise died down, replaced with the guttering of flame.
Haphazard shadows were cast against the walls and ceiling of the
hangar deck by the fire as it continued to burn. Sarpedon limped out
from behind the fighter, his balance uncertain as he adjusted to moving
with one fewer leg.
Iktinos, on fire from head to toe, dived out of the flaming wreckage.
He crashed into Sarpedon who was unprepared, and fell to the deck
under Iktinos’s weight. Flames licked at his face as he stared for a
moment into the skull-mask of the chaplain’s helm, like the face of one
of the Imperial Creed’s many damned, leering up from a lake of fire.
Chapter 12
The daemonic horde hit the Imperial Fists line in a tide of flesh.