Part 26 (2/2)
Flames suddenly gushed through the daemons. Thick, oily fire crawled over rotting flesh, melting fat from rotting bones. Las-bolts punched into the dissolving forms in disciplined volleys.
*Lord Cyrus,' Rihat's voice crackled through the vox. Cyrus looked around to see the colonel commander striding forwards flanked by lines of bronze-armoured figures in black-visored helms. Red smears and soot covered Rihat's face. His right arm hung loose at his side, the sleeve wet and dark. But there was a defiant look in his eye, and in front of him the flamer units burned their way through the daemon sp.a.w.n. Creatures with too many limbs and eyes tried to pull themselves forwards even as they collapsed into cinders and smoke.
Cyrus realised that the stuttering roar of heavy bolters had vanished. He turned, looking back to where Valerian's squad had stood. Flames filled his vision, spreading across the junction floor. Beyond the fire the beast lifted a ruin of b.l.o.o.d.y meat and white fragments in an iron claw. Cyrus began to run through the flames, purity seals burning, armour blackening. His helmet vision darkened, compensating for the brightness of the fire, objects and movements becoming a series of coloured runes overlaying s.h.i.+fting shadows. The beast's movements were a bladed blur overlaid with a green grid of lines.
The three remaining Devastators backed off, weapons fire spitting up at the beast as it advanced. Cyrus came out of the flames, the world snapping back to brightness. He saw Valerian twist the priming handle of a melta charge, and duck a scything blade. He reached for the beast's armoured thorax. The beast reached down, piston jaws flicking shut, as it yanked the sergeant from the ground. It brought the dying s.p.a.ce Marine level with its furnace eyes. Valerian's hand closed on the detonator with the last of his strength. A sun-bright sphere swallowed the sergeant and the beast's arm with a shriek of super-heated air. The beast rocked back, a cry like grating steel splitting the air.
Cyrus took his last strides, muscles and armour straining, his mind pulling power through him in a raw rush. He realised he was shouting; the names of his fallen brothers, of the dead worlds and lost wars, pouring from his lips. The beast sensed him, turned, blades scything downwards. Cyrus struck.
The blow buried the sword to the hilt in oil-black flesh. Inky liquid gushed from the wound. It stank of promethium and decay. A soul-born rage poured from Cyrus into the blade. All he could feel was the tide rolling through him, the anger of his soul given form by the warp. He felt...
... blood dripping from his armour as he walks through a familiar door...
A thing with the head of a vulture is laughing. The sound is like a murder of crows....
An astropath turns in a cone of green light. The astropath is laughing. It has two faces...
He is fading to nothing...
Cyrus awoke to fading screams and dimming fires. He lay amongst the ruin of his enemy, the warped machinery draped with tatters of oily flesh that were slowly dissolving to a sickly sheen. His hand still clasped his sword, its edge glimmering with a fading echo of power.
Pulling himself to his feet he felt the fever-ache of the psychic power he had channelled. Every movement brought a dull stab of pain. He looked around, his vision filling with threat a.s.sessment icons. The dead were thick on the floor and pools of flame cast the scene in a mottled orange light. No threat icons. They had won.
Cyrus saw Rihat approaching. The colonel was limping slightly, his left arm b.l.o.o.d.y and cradled at his side.
*Victory, colonel,' Cyrus said with a grim smile.
Rihat did not smile back; he looked grey, pain held back by will alone. *The enemy has broken through in many places. I am not even sure if some of the defences still hold.' He grimaced as pain shot through his face. *I do not think they have penetrated into the civilian areas. Not yet.'
Cyrus heard the fatalism in the colonel's voice. *We will hold, colonel. We will hold no matter the cost.' A surprised look pa.s.sed across Rihat's face, as if he had puzzled out a hidden truth. He opened his mouth to speak. He did not get the chance.
The voice spoke inside their skulls. *By the power and grace of the G.o.d-Emperor of Mankind, and the authority and majesty of His Holy Inquisition, judgement is proclaimed on this place and on all souls within its bounds.'
It was a single psychic voice made of many telepathic minds all transmitting the same message. It echoed through the warp with such force that it filled the mind of every person on Claros station. It was an announcement of judgement, a herald of intent.
*All are judged lost and the hammer will so fall. Exterminatus is here declared. May the Emperor have mercy on all true souls.'
The voices faded. Rihat looked at Cyrus, fear and confusion playing across his face. Cyrus staggered as a wave of psychic energy hit. It was the bow wave of a fleet punching back from the warp into reality with hammer-blow force.
Around them shocked silence was breaking into blind panic.
No. Cyrus would not let everything be consumed by the Inquisition's judgement. Not again, not after the price they had already paid. He turned to Rihat, ordering the last two of Valerian's squad to his side with a gesture. *The Inquisition is here. Their s.h.i.+ps will take some time to get within firing range. Get as many people as you can to the Aethon. We will break dock and outrun the Exterminatus.' He gave a ferocious grin. *They can try and stop us but we still have teeth.'
Rihat was frowning. *Colonel?' Cyrus said.
Rihat looked up at him. *The Inquisition knew that this place was under attack. But how? You and Colophon said that no messages could be sent?'
Cyrus suddenly felt cold. He thought of his visions, of the sensation of a future growing closer, a vision of an astropath turning in green light. An astropath with two faces. *Where is Colophon?' he growled.
*I do not know, lord,' shrugged Rihat.
Cyrus nodded, his eyes focused on nothing, his mind racing. Colophon: the word he had thought he had heard in the signal. He felt as if all the threads of choices and half-glimpsed futures were weaving together, tightening into single strand. He looked back at Rihat and his last two brother s.p.a.ce Marines. *The station is lost. Evacuate everyone you can, if I do not return you have command.'
Rihat turned and began to shout orders as Cyrus strode away. He knew where he would find what he needed, where fate was leading him.
*Where are you going, lord?' called Rihat.
*For answers,' growled Cyrus to himself.
There were nine s.h.i.+ps. Five destroyers rode on bright cones of fire ahead of their greater sisters. Behind the destroyers were two Adeptus Astartes strike cruisers, their crenellated hulls coloured and marked with the deep sea blue of the Star Dragons. Beside them the spear-sleek hull of a Dauntless-cla.s.s cruiser sliced through the void. At the centre of them all was a vast craft of black metal, its hull capped with towers, its prow a golden point of swept eagle wings. At its birth it had been named for a hero of a lost past; reconsecrated in the service of the Inquisition it bore a name more suited to its task. The Sixth Hammer was an executioner, a slayer of worlds. One day it might return to the fleet from which it had been drawn, but at that moment it served the will of the man who watched Claros station grow nearer from its bridge.
Inquisitor Lord Xerxes watched the magnified view of Claros station on a vast holoscreen suspended in front of his throne. The view was stripped bare of tactical data and information icons. He did not need them, nor did he trust artificial aids to judgement. Judgement was a matter of clear-sightedness, something to be decided with the simplest tools and senses available to mankind. On the screen the warp-rift was a wound leaking swirling colours and tendrils of coiling energy. The station, or what remained of it, crawled with writhing ghost light. There was no hope for it, there never had been.
Xerxes turned the slot eyes of his iron face to the two figures that stood to his left. One wore segmented armour lacquered in arterial red over a powerful frame, his face hidden by a black cloth hood. The other was a spindle-thin form of clicking bra.s.s joints and desiccated flesh held together by bundles of tubes. The spindle figure wore no mask because it had no real face. Both were inquisitors, the only remaining two of the cell Xerxes had drawn around him. They had lost two of their number, one to the Accursed Eternity, another to folly, but their resolve had never wavered. They had hunted the creature called Fateweaver across the stars, executing the planets the daemon invaded, seeking for a way to cast it back into the warp for another aeon. Where they found the daemon they burned the ground from under it. They were the left hand of the Emperor and it was their duty as much as it was their right.
*The judgement has been spoken?' asked Xerxes, his flat voice coming from the horizontal slot in his mask.
*Yes,' said the spindle-bodied inquisitor in a mechanical voice. *The astropathic choir has transmitted it across the void. Any still alive on the station will know that judgement will be done.'
Xerxes nodded. *When we are in range the rest of the fleet is to begin the attack. Nothing is to be left for the warp.' He looked back to where the station's bronze hull writhed in the warp's grasp. *Nothing but ashes and silence.'
*Astropath.'
The word echoed in the empty silence of the astropathic chamber. The hunched figure in green turned his blind face to follow the fading noise as it reflected from the empty stone tiers.
*Cyrus? That is you, isn't it, my friend?' Colophon's voice added its own echoes to the empty gloom. The astropathic chamber lay at the heart of the station, a sanctuary as far from the advancing daemon forces as was possible. It was deserted, quiet, and dark. What need did the blind have for light?
Cyrus moved out of the shadowed arch of the entrance, armour purring with every movement. He had his storm bolter in his right fist, its twin mouths pointed at the hunchbacked old man. The blue surface of his armour was charred and streaked with drying fluids. He looked like a revenant dragged from a death pyre.
*It is Cyrus.' The Librarian's voice was a low growl. Colophon twitched towards him, his liver-spotted hands clutching the top of his cane. Bathed in the monochrome tint of Cyrus's helmet display he looked scared. No, he looked terrified.
*The Inquisition is coming,' Colophon stammered. *They will hammer this place to nothing and all of us with it. We should ga'
*Why did you deceive me?' Cyrus kept his distance from the old man, walking a slow circle around Colophon's green-robed form. The single targeting rune in his helmet display was an unresolved amber, pulsing over the old man.
*I have not deceived you.' Colophon stayed where he was, speaking to the air rather than following Cyrus's movements. Cyrus carried on, discarding Colophon's reply without thought.
*The signal, it has been puzzling me ever since we got here. How could it be sent when we were cut off as soon as the attack began? I am not as adept as you at astropathic transmission, but I touched the warp and felt that we were isolated as you said.'
Colophon drew his green robes around him as if against a chill wind. *I don't understand what you are saying.' He shook his head and took a few steps towards the door of the chamber. *We should go. We could escape on your s.h.i.+p, wea'
*But the signal did get sent. It drew me here, drew the Inquisition here no doubt.' Cyrus gave a humourless laugh. *Temporal distortion; you suggested it to me, and I did not consider an alternative.' The old man opened his mouth as if to say something, but Cyrus kept speaking, suspicion and anger making his voice a low rumble of restrained threat. *You sent the signal, Colophon. You brought me here, and you have brought the final execution of the Inquisition down on this place.'
<script>