Part 23 (1/2)

NO!+ his minda's voice shrieked, a thousand times louder despite its physical silence.

From a thousand, barely a hundred remained.

Bloodstained, battered, wounded, the last hundred entered the circular bridge of the Aggrieved.

Jevriana's broken arm was set, but hea'd picked up a limp from one of the cyclopean creaturesa' claws gas.h.i.+ng his thigh. The wound was smeared with anti-ague gel but it still stung, in Jevriana's own words, like an army of b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

Osirona's breathing rattled in and out of his rebreather and he held his axe low in tired hands. Rax stalked alongside the tech-priest, jaws spread for battle, its armoured body filthy with enemy blood.

Thade and Darrick were unharmed but exhausted, and Thadea's sword was clogged with gore, preventing any function. Caius had expended all of his sacred ammunition on the warp-beasts, and simply let his heavy psycannon fall to the floor, ignoring it now that it was useless.

The 88th fanned out around the circular room, looking in at the centre of the chamber where the raised control throne jutted from the floor on a grand stepped platform. Chains hung from the ceiling of the chamber, decorated by the old mark III helms of long-dead loyalist Astartes. The cogitator banks and consoles by the walls sat in ruin, many still with their operators close to their stations, wasted away to loose piles of bone on the ground.

A hundred rifles raised to cheeks as Thade pointed his fouled sword at the figure in the throne. The ent.i.ty was reborn. Its reserves of strength might have been exhausted by both the plague it unleashed and the invisible, draining wounds inflicted by Setha's final a.s.sault, but it sensed the nearness of Typhus, and that nearness made the ent.i.ty bold.

It was clearly once an Astartes. Time, and the favour of its hateful G.o.d, had changed that. What sat upon the throne now was club-limbed and twisted, like something half-formed from a psykera's nightmare and wrapped in ill-fitting Astartes armour. Its flesh was liquefied in places, melting and reforming like hot candlewax. Blisters and buboes covered its skin where bleeding rashes did not.

a”h.e.l.lo,a” it said.

a”In the name of the G.o.d-Emperor,a” Caius intoned, and the daemon recognised the only true threat in the room. Power roiled from Caius. In the moment the ent.i.ty sensed it up close, it knew fear.

a”Die,a” it said to the inquisitor.

Caius died. Not instantly, but within a few short seconds. The veins stood out on his face, dark and ugly, as he mustered his psychic might to repel the horrendously powerful telepathic invasion. It was more thorough and disgustingly more tender than any physical violation. Bastian Caius, who had come all this way to serve the Throne, drew his power sword and activated it, feeling an alien force eating his mind. He would have been at least a little consoled to learn of the immense effort the daemon had used in this command. He would have been proud to learn the daemon had feared him so much that it risked further psychic drain to ensure Caiusa' demise.

The Cadians never saw the inquisitora's death. By the time Caius had obeyed the terrible command and plunged his aquila-hilted blade into his own belly, the Guardsmen had opened fire on the daemon.

a”Have you come to bring me back into the False Emperora's light?a” Grotesquely, it spoke with Setha's voice even though it no longer wore his features, masked as they were under its reformed power armour. a”To show me my sins in the light of your dead G.o.d?a”

Something like that, Thade thought as his broken sword fell in a chop, and a hundred rifles fired in anger.

All told, the final battle between the survivors of the Cadian 88th Mechanised Infantry and the daemon responsible for the Kathurite Scourge lasted under one minute, yet it cost the lives of forty-six loyal Cadian-born servants of the Throne.

The volleys of las-fire did almost nothing to the creature, and it rampaged through the bridge, its claws tearing soldiers limb from limb, while it paused only to vomit acid on those too slow or too proud to retreat.

Thade and Horlan, both armed with ruined chainswords that sported stilled teeth, ran in to engage the daemon. They were joined by the wounded Ban Jevrian with his malfunctioning and half-snapped power sabre, and twenty men using their pistols and bayonets. With Thade was Rax, leaping at its mastera's side.

This swarm a.s.sault also did almost nothing, except cost lives. Horlan was decapitated by a sweep of the daemona's claw. Thade was saved from the same fate at the last moment by a grinding metal hand blocking the falling clawa's arc.

Osiron, his back-mounted powerpack and additional servo-arm sparking as its joints gave way under the pressure, held the creature at bay long enough for Thade to get to his feet again.

The tech-priesta's last action in the battle was to swing his two-handed axe with all his machine-enhanced strength, ramming it solidly into the daemona's body. This, at last, did something. The blade bit hard, snagging within the beasta's spine, dropping it to its knees. Its return strike smashed Osiron to the side of the chamber, where he would die several minutes later from blood loss and internal haemorrhaging.

Renewed las-fire slashed into the p.r.o.ne daemon, every beam now carving its burn lines into the fatty flesh of the thinga's face. Thade came at it from the side, both pistols hammering until their clips ran dry. Rax leapt at the horror, its jaws ripping head-sized chunks of spoiled meat from the beasta's bones.

It was weakening, but hardly out of the fight, even without the use of its legs.

a”Thade!a” Commissar Tionenji cried as he ran at the creature, hacking into its neck with his slender chainblade. His own strike was a distraction, as the sword hea'd taken from Inquisitor Caiusa' body flashed through the air in Thadea's direction. The captain caught it, reversed it in his hands, and plunged it two-handed into the daemona's neck. Black blood flowed from a legion of wounds now.

And it still wouldna't die.

There was no glorious final blow, though the soldiers of the 88th a- those that survived a- would say over the years that it was Thadea's last strike which a.s.suredly saw the daemon dead. The truth was altogether less glorious, and because Taan Darrick was involved, consisted of much more swearing than the saga would say.

a”Run, you idiots!a” Darrick cried from his position by the side consoles with the remains of his squad.

Thade and the others in their desperate melee saw a rain of black incoming, clattering all around.

Grenades.

As Thade threw himself aside, his world exploded in light.

a”Let this world rot.a” The Heralda's voice was a savage whisper. He still stood at the gates of the monastery, listening as the psychic death scream faded from his sixth sense. a”I am done with this place.a”

The Death Guard formed around their lord and master, unsure of his meaning.

a”We are leaving, Great One?a” a plague-ridden Astartes asked.

Typhus chuckled. The things living within his windpipe writhed at this rare mistreatment.

a”Yes. I have real business to attend to beyond this petty distraction. Tell me, do you remember Brother-Sergeant Arlus?a”

a”No, lord,a” replied the closest Death Guard.

a”Do any of you?a”

a”I do, lord. I was Brother Menander. I served Arlus in life. We were Seventh Company. He was greatly blessed by the Grandfather when we made war upon Terra.a”

a”He was. But he squandered his gift. And this shall be the last time I allow the whining of distant fools to distract me from my duty. Come. We return to Terminus Est!a”

a”And then, lord?a”

a”And then to Cadia. Take me to the Warmaster.a”

a”Medic!a”

Thade knelt by Osiron, flinching back as sparks flared from the tech-priesta's sundered body armour.

a”Sir,a” Tasoll looked awkward as he held his narthecium kit, staring down at the torn red robe now revealing an entirely augmetic body. a”W-what should I do? Hea's not even bleeding blood.a”

a”It is a synthesised compound a” Osiron wheezed a” of haemolubricant qualities and a”

a”Shut up, you idiot,a” Thade looked at the oily black fluid covering his hands. a”Just shut up, and tell us what to do!a”