The Death of Integrity (37 page)

Caedis stirred. The Thirst had returned. It ate at him, burning along nerves, scorching the neural pathways of his brain, rewriting who he was. He was still Caedis, but Caedis was slipping from his mind, the Black Rage welling up from the pits of his soul to remake him in its image. His flesh crawled. His memory was a thousand splinters of battles that were not his own. He screamed in agony, but all that came was a muffled sob.

The daemon had been true to its word. He was suffering.

From somewhere, he heard voices. Mazrael? There was the sound of the voice that had welcomed him into this cold cell, a little while later the blast of a fusion weapon.

He panicked. His brothers were in peril. The Rage made his body spasm. The restraints tightened about his wrists, crushingly hard.

A small part of him retained its sanity. He had a chance to help them, if he could get free. Always, his Chapter had embraced the Flaw where the other scions of Sanguinius fought against it. The advice had come from a fell source, but what choice did he have?

Praying to the Emperor, Caedis searched out the blackness in his heart, and submerged his soul in it.

The transformation wracking his body increased in pace, as did the pain. He bucked and thrashed, consumed by excruciation. This was the precursor to damnation, the waiting room to hell.

As he yanked and thrashed, his bonds moved.

Samin directed Voldo as he laboured. The problem was a relatively simple one; one of the containment rings was not receiving a sufficient supply of energy, and was causing the reactor’s furious power to spill off in pulsed bursts. This had set up a feedback loop, where the amount of energy being supplied to the ring dropped further, allowing more energies to dissipate. As the spillage increased, so the problem intensified. The effect was initially very small, but the cumulative nature of the fault meant that now forty per cent of the reactor’s power was wasted.

Samin thought through the possible causes. The ship had marked powers of rejuvenation. It could have been that the reactor here was interfering with that, but the rest of the chamber was pristine; if his hypothesis was correct, then there would have been other damage apparent.

He had a flash of inspiration. ‘Sergeant, we are looking for a foreign object, something lodged in the wall perhaps.’

‘Where?’

‘It could be anywhere. I do not know the distribution of the power relays in this reactor. Start near the faltering containment ring.’

The door above was showing signs of damage. A claw tip would appear through it, and the door would reform to heal the wound, but with each penetration it had lost something of its cohesion, and was becoming deformed, sagging like old skin.

They searched quickly. Samin was surprised how quickly he found the source of the fault, an irregularity in the metal of the ship’s wall. He cut through, and found a remote probe buried in a power conduit. It bore the stamp of the Adeptus Mechanicus at its end.

‘They must have been testing the ship’s energy flows,’ he said.

He retracted the barbs of the probe and, with a grunt, yanked it free. Immediately, the conduit reformed true. There was an instantaneous reaction in the reactor, its pulsed thrumming steadying, building higher in volume. He screwed his eyes shut as it glowed brighter and brighter and the noise of it roared, but the surge of energy he expected did not come.

The noise stopped. A gentle hum took its place.

Samin opened his eyes to see an annular energy field formed around the core, tinted somehow so that its glare did not damage the sight of those who looked at it. The lightning spraying from the reactor had stopped. He breathed out a sigh of relief and of wonder. If he had been so close to the core of an Imperial reactor at full power, he would have been consumed.

‘The reactor is burning purely now. They should be able to get a pattern lock. We can be beamed free.’

‘That’s all well,’ said Voldo, ‘but there may not be much of us left to teleport. Tell me, do you have a gun?’

Samin nodded. He pulled out a laspistol from his pack. He needed both hands to heft it, and his arms shook as he did.

A clawed arm forced itself through the doorway.

Samin’s aim steadied.

Galt looked on helplessly as Militor and Sandamael were killed. His armour had betrayed him. All his system indicators were red. He could not move. The shouts of his brothers tortured him.

The evil spirit that possessed the vessel continued to talk.

‘…three thousand years at the heart of this hulk. But I will be free, and you have helped me. Do you think it coincidence that I targeted the worlds I did? I knew it would only be a matter of time before I attracted the attention of your brutal dictatorship. I thank you for clearing me of this infestation of monsters. I will soon have enough fuel harvested from this sun and the others like it I have visited to leave this galaxy altogether and…’

There was a shudder in the ship. Galt’s head was suddenly alive with vox chatter from the other group. It seemed like they were under attack. Voldo was reporting that the reactor was repaired. In vain he tried to contact them.

‘You have excelled yourselves!’ said the ship. ‘My secondary reactor functions!’

The ship hummed with renewed vigour. It trembled with energy.

‘Yes! Yes! Soon I will be free. My thanks to you and your shamans, priest,’ said the ship. ‘You have accomplished something I thought beyond you.’

A secondary voice spoke. ‘Primary weapons activated. Secondary weapons activated. Main drive online. Warp engines online.’

‘Now you shall see the true power of the ancients, priest. Observe, and quake in terror at what you have lost.’

The view forward on the screen shifted into a small box at the top right. The rest showed a broad panorama of the Imperial fleet holding distance from the hulk.

‘Your ship, I believe,’ said the vessel, bringing a close-up of
Excommentum Incursus
into being at the bottom left. ‘A charmless thing.’

A howling moan built, mighty energies that would not be constrained. A roar shuddered the vessel from one end to the other. The detritus to the fore was annihilated. On the greater part of the image, a beam of bright energy crossed the stars, stabbing out at the Mechanicus’ vessel.

On the close-up of the
Excommentum Incursus
, they watched as the beam hit the vessel full amidships. Void shields flared as they rapidly collapsed one after the other, the beam punching through to the hull. Plating and armour were vaporised. The beam cut off, leaving the
Excommentum Incursus
with a gaping hole in its side, edges white hot. Debris drifted away from it. The ship yawed to port, dropping out of formation from the rest of the fleet, its engine stacks out.
Ceaseless Vigilance
, at anchor alongside for repairs, broke free and drifted away.

Galt shouted, cursing his armour, but it would not move. He prayed Aresti would have enough sense to evacuate the hulk before the Mechanicus retaliated.

‘Ah, see the mice run,’ said the AI. The edge of insanity to its voice was sharpening. Galt watched hopefully as shuttles and Thunderhawks retreated from the hulk. The others could be teleported away. With luck the evacuation would not take long. ‘They do not return fire! How very restrained. I would allow them more time, but I yearn to be free. Let us see if I can provoke some of your more impetuous warriors.’

The ship’s weapon spoke again, this time slamming into
Lux Rubrum
. Shields burned out in milliseconds.

‘Still no response,’ said the ship. ‘How disappointing.’

With the reactor working, Voldo’s connection to his squad cleared, although he still could not raise Galt. Through the sensorium, Voldo watched as Astomar bellowed the war hymns of the Novamarines. He was alone, the others fallen around him. The whumping noise of his flamer was a heavy counterpoint to his laments for his brothers.

Voldo could not help him. Genestealers were spilling through the ruined door.

‘Get behind me, magos!’ said the sergeant. He pushed the young tech-adept into the lee of his towering armour. He raised his gun and fired.

‘Careful! Do not compromise the containment rings!’ shouted Samin.

‘I will not miss!’ Voldo growled. He fired and fired, bringing a half-dozen genestealers to ruin. His storm bolter ran dry. He disengaged the power feeds linking it to his armour with a thought and cast it aside. He pulled out his sword. The genestealers ran at him, scuttling down the walls as if the change in gravity was not applicable to them.

‘For the Emperor! For Guilliman! For Honourum!’ shouted Voldo as the first came at him. He cut it down with a double-handed sweep of his blade. Energy crackled along the edges as it gutted the creature. ‘Die xenos, die! Die as you are fated to die, and leave mankind alone in the stars!’ He killed another. ‘For the Lord of Man will take me up and lo! He will be mighty and terrible, and all is known by him!’ A third died. ‘And I will present to him the art of my flesh, and the wounds of my last battle will be the marks of my last deed, and by this I will be… ahhhh!’ He cried out as a claw cut deep into the ceramite of his vambrace. He let go of his sword with one hand and backhanded the genestealer across the face. He finished it with an overhead blow. ‘And by this I will be judged fit to join him in the final battle!’

He swept the sword low, wishing that he wore his power armour, feeling restricted by the Terminator plate. A gene-stealer lost its legs.

They came at him again and again, a relentless tide of alien abominations. He fought ferociously but even the superhumans of the Adeptus Astartes tire. He faltered, another claw found its way through the join at the inside of his elbow. He cried out. Samin fired as best he could past the giant warrior, but his aim was poor.

‘Best make your peace with your Machine-God, magos,’ said Voldo as he killed another alien, and drove another back with a series of furious blows. ‘There are many of them.’

And then they were behind the two, having crawled down the wall and outflanked them. Voldo turned a little, but he could not save Samin, who died with his finger on the laspistol’s trigger. His hand tightened in death, sending a final round into the reactor core, where it was consumed.

Voldo was surrounded. He pressed his back into the wall. Genestealers were to the right and left of him. They crawled down the wall at him from above.

His arms had stopped bleeding, but they were stiff from their wounds and the sealant leaking from the micropores within his armour.

‘Filth,’ he spat, ‘let us see how many of your deaths it takes to secure the end of one of the Emperor’s warriors.’

He held his sword upright. Shifting his weight, trying to gauge which direction the attack would come from.

The genestealers charged.

The evacuation must have finished. The last transports were fleeing across the night when the fleet opened up. The hulk shuddered under the impact of lava bombs, missiles, cannon rounds and energy beams.

‘How predictable,’ said the
Spirit of Eternity
. ‘How very predictable.’

‘Seven minutes to warp translation,’ said the ship’s secondary voice.

The spirit of the vessel turned its attentions from the fleet to the men on the bridge. ‘Very soon your friends out there will have blasted enough of the cursed accretions free from my hull that I will be able to fly once again. Something you will not be alive to witness.’

The servitors levelled their weapons at the remaining Space Marines. Galt prepared to die.

There was a hellish cry, the sound of lost souls in anguish, and something dark smashed its way onto the bridge from a door leading from the rear. One of the servitors turned to face it, but the shape leapt clear across the room and smashed it down. Galt could not see it clearly at first, but he had the impression of something huge and nightmarish, a monster from the dark folktales of the most debased tribe.

The servitor was ripped to pieces. The thing roared, bringing the bleeding body up and threw it hard into another weapon-servitor. Then it ran, shoulders down, at the column. It impacted it with terrific force. It bellowed again, and began tearing at it.

Suddenly, Galt felt control of his armour return to him. Bolts criss-crossed the chamber as the Space Marines and servitors opened fire on each other. Galt raised his gun and filled two of the servitors full of bolts, then he turned it on the column. The monster had yanked many of its panels away, exposing the glittering optics of its internal spaces. Fires burned in the delicate machinery where Galt’s bolts had hit. The others joined him.

‘No!’ cried Plosk, ‘Stop! What are you doing!’ He yanked at Galt’s arm. The captain sent him sprawling.

‘I warned you, magos, you have lied to me for the last time.’ Galt carried on firing.

‘Six minutes to warp translation.’

The vessel’s warp engines were powering up. The ship vibrated under Galt’s boots.

‘Forgemaster Clastrin! Please, you understand! Stop them!’

Clastrin shook his head. ‘I know where my loyalties lie, magos – to the Emperor first. I was tempted when I saw this hulk, but you have overreached yourself; this is an abomination, you know that. You are guilty of heresy. We will sift what we may from the wreckage of its mind.’

‘Why have they not teleported us yet?’

‘We’re being jammed! We need to get off this bridge,’ said Galt. A weapon descended from the ceiling. He blew it to pieces as its barrel swivelled toward him. ‘We must go!’

The warp engines built to a howl. Over it, the
Spirit of Eternity
was laughing. ‘Insects! You do not know what awaits you! The end times are upon you, and it is all your own doing. Behold the true face of your comrade!’

There was a massive discharge of energy, and the thing that had saved them was flung across the room. It landed on a console, breaking the glass. It rolled off and landed light as a cat before leaping to its feet.

‘Caedis?’ said Galt, barely able to believe his eyes.

The figure before him was ruddy-skinned. Its bones were twisted, protruding from its flesh. Its muscles were knotted with tension. Fangs protruded from a drooling mouth. His angelic features were broken with rage, his hair falling out in clumps. He held his fingers out in front of him like claws, but it was recognisably Caedis.