Damnos - Nick Kyme Read online

  ‘Brother-sergeant.’ Krixous pointed with his mutilated stump.

  Praxor followed it to where Brother Vandius valiantly upheld the company standard. The banner was stilled, heavy as if soaked with rain, though the wind raged around it.

  Buffeted by the gale that failed to lift the Second’s banner but hammered everything else, Praxor urged, ‘Fight on, brother. Courage and honour.’

  Something as close to fear as a Space Marine could experience tainted Krixous’s voice. ‘How is that even possible?’

  Trajan’s vehement dogma tore through the storm and his doubt. ‘Our glory is more than the hallowed cloth of a standard. It is blood and sinew, heritage and valour – virtues these soulless aberrations know nothing of. Wars are not won by cold machination and the calculus of metal. Victory is achieved through heart and flesh-made courage. We are Guilliman’s heirs, his noble sons. Honour his legacy!’

  He held the crozius aloft and it burst into azure flame, banishing the darkness around it. Three wraiths recoiled from its brilliance, revealed in the shadows. Trajan brought the power mace down upon the skull of one, crushing it and sending the vile thing back to the unholy cradle that spawned it.

  Praxor drove at one of the others, swinging his power sword in a lethal arc. It was a master blade, forged by the Chapter artisans, crafted from the purest metals and imbued with an indomitable machine-spirit.

  It passed right through the creature as ethereal as smoke. The wraith resolved a moment later and its long talons cut Praxor’s bolt pistol in half as the Ultramarine made to fire. He cast the ruined weapon aside as his fist closed on a useless trigger and took his sword in a two-handed grip, feeding more power to its monomolecular edge.

  ‘We are defiant!’ he roared, mustering righteous anger. ‘The scions of Ultramar!’

  The wraith was unmoved and attacked with whipcord, preternatural speed.

  An instinctive parry warded one talon strike, a frantic block fended off a lash of the wraith’s whip-like tail. He had yet to strike a blow. Hard-pressed, Praxor fell back a step.

  ‘Only forward, brother-sergeant.’ It was Daceus. The formidable veteran was leading the line. He bellowed to the Lions, ‘Forge a path for the captain!’

  Somewhere ahead of the wraiths was the Stormcaller. Sicarius meant to meet him in combat and do what he was born to do – end lives.

  Daceus seized a wraith in his power fist, but it squirmed free before he could clamp his fingers together to crush it and was lost to the storm. To his right, obscured by the mist and shadows, Honourable Gaius Prabian fought with sword and shield like the Macraggian battle-kings of old. The Company Champion moved with relentless purpose, a match for any of the serpentine wraiths. He severed necks and sundered bodies, his mind and body as one, his weapons an extension of his martial will. As Daceus and Gaius Prabian drove them, the other Lions sent salvos of fire into the night, tearing the blackness to strips.

  Sicarius advanced in the killing ground they made, slaying when he had to, searching for his prey when he didn’t.

  In those few frantic moments, Praxor’s world contracted into microcosm where only his Shieldbearers and the Lions existed, surrounded by the night. Silhouettes ranged in the shadows still, bellowing oaths or yielding screams, but they were indistinct and phantasmal. Somewhere in the dark were Trajan and Agrippen. The faint corona of the Chaplain’s crozius was yet visible spitting righteous fire, while the Dreadnought was a hulking nightmare limned emerald against onyx-black with each lightning strike.

  Of Brother-Sergeant Solinus and the Indomitable, there was no sign.

  Praxor hoped they fought on still. Without his bolt pistol, he drew his gladius and battled with two swords instead. The wraiths still lingered at the edge of his vision, distracted by the march of Sicarius and his Lions. Perhaps the Stormcaller was reacting to an imminent threat to his life, such as it was, and recalling his revenants.

  Brandishing his power sword, Praxor roared a challenge. ‘Here, machine!’

  Twisting its head on a strange, segmented neck, the wraith regarded him as a predator to prey. Coiling first, like a snake, it attacked.

  With his gladius Praxor batted away the first talon thrust, following up with the power sword and hacking off the necron’s wrist. A burst of shells from Etrius’s bolt pistol strafed its torso and skull-face, angering it.

  Tartaron impaled it with a thrown spear of rebar he’d found amongst the debris. Somewhere along the line, his meltagun had been rendered inoperative. While the creature was still squirming, Praxor removed its head. Permanent phase-out was instantaneous.

  Keeping pace with Sicarius and the Lions was a feat. When a second wraith emerged from the shadows, Praxor lunged – first gladius then power sword – to gain ground. Both blows missed but Krixous hammered it with a bolter salvo, steadying his aim on his ruined stump. Praxor carved the wraith open as it staggered, before Tartaron and Etrius each rammed a gladius into its neck cavity. It jerked once, the balefires in its eyes flaring with impotent fury, before phasing out.

  Krixous had his eyes on the sky. ‘Emperor’s grace…’ he breathed, ‘Look!’

  All eyes went to the heavens where dozens of wraiths swirled and twisted like the denizens of some black infernal sea.

  Praxor levelled his gladius in an order to fire. ‘Bolters!’ he cried, and the air was torn apart by explosive, mass-reactive death.

  Some of the wraiths were drawn by the attack, swimming effortlessly in and out of phase, with only the viridian orbs of their eyes a constant.

  ‘Hold them off.’ Praxor knew they must give Sicarius time to find and kill their lord. ‘By Guilliman’s sword!’

  The wraiths engulfed the Shieldbearers. Talon-blades and tail-barbs became a ghostly blur as the necrons swept amongst them. Their rending tools cleaved and cut.

  Brother Belthonis was dragged into the storm, the hard bangs of his bolter stolen on the air. Skewered through the torso and neck, Brother Galrion crumpled spitting blood. His vambraces shredded, Brother Hexedese screamed the primarch’s name as a spear-like tail punctured his plastron and he fell.

  ‘Form a shield around me!’ Praxor urged his warriors to rally, and the Shieldbearers closed ranks like an armoured laager, firing in all directions. They were an island of cobalt in a hostile black ocean surrounded by a shoal of pitiless killers. Images flashed before Praxor in the chaos: Daceus crying hell and fury; Gaius Prabian, colder and more clinical in his kills than the machines; Venatio, stooped over the body of Galrion. Through the blood-soaked blur, one resolved brighter than all the rest.

  Sicarius…

  The Grand Duke of Talassar had found his prey. He angled his blade, energy bleeding off the edge in a pearlescent haze. Answering, the Stormcaller brandished his staff. Alien sigils ran along the haft and it crackled with emerald lightning. Moments later, their weapons clashed in incandescent fusion. Above, the thunder bellowed in empathy. Every emotion, every blow and counter-blow was described in the storm-wracked sky.

  For a machine, the necron moved more swiftly than Praxor gave it credit for. He caught only snatches through the frenzy of his own battle, but heard the lightning crack time and again. The duellists became shadows in the harsh light of its afterglow, lit in stark monochrome.

  It lasted only seconds. With a shout of triumph, Sicarius cut the Stormcaller’s staff in half, sending a backwash of energy through him, and then decapitated the creature with the reverse blow. The necron lord’s head didn’t even have time to hit the earth before he disappeared, leaving behind the malicious resonance of his passing.

  The storm went with him, evaporating as if carried on a strong wind, light replacing dark like a sudden breaking dawn. Lightning ebbed, thunder subsided. Even the wraiths melted away, returned to their master’s side. In the centre of it all was Sicarius. He leant on one knee, heaving breath into his body.

  The lightn
ing had struck him more than once – the smoke coiling off his scorched armour was testament to that. In spite of the obvious pain, he rose and with straightened back and head held high lifted the Tempest Blade.

  ‘Victoris Ultra!’

  Relief and exultation blending as one glorious emotion, the Second – Lions, Shieldbearers, Indomitable and all – gave voice that echoed their captain.

  Desolation surrounded them. And more than one of Guilliman’s sons had returned to their primarch’s side in the Temple of Correction on Macragge.

  Vandius’s banner stirred again, rippling on an arctic breeze.

  The necron vanguard was defeated.

  Though of exultant mood, a small kernel of Praxor felt hollow at the victory. Over half his squad were dead or maimed; Sicarius’s maddened rush at the enemy the reason for it. Solinus’s squad had suffered too, though not nearly as badly.

  As he watched Apothecary Venatio add the gene-seed of Hexedese to that of Galrion and Vortigan, Praxor could not help but question.

  ‘Only in death, Brother-Sergeant Manorian.’

  Trajan again, the ever-vigilant shadow of Second Company. ‘Duty is all we have, brother.’

  Praxor nodded.

  ‘Yes, my Chaplain.’

  At least Belthonis had lived, though he was badly wounded. He might walk, but fight? Given their position, he had little choice with either. Venatio would have to patch him up and make him last for however long he could.

  Agrippen met the sergeant’s gaze, stoic and unreadable within the armour-eternal of his sarcophagus, and within Praxor felt an accord.

  Suddenly the presence of the First on Damnos, Agemman’s watchmen, seemed all too necessary.

  Chapter Eight

  Macragge, two years before the Damnos Incident

  Praxor was enrapt as he listened to the senators’ endless debating.

  Watching from a seat at the back of the auditorium, Iulus frowned and was glad of the concealing shadows cast in the wake of the late Macraggian sun.

  Attired in robes of various hues and ostentation, he found the senators overfond of their own voices, prolix for the sake of it. Their arguments did not interest him. He had come for Praxor.

  Helots roamed the hall, plying the officials with drink and sustenance, while lexicographical servitors dictated every spoken word on clacking scriptoria. The debate had been going on for several days. It did not appear as if any resolution were in sight.

  Iulus noticed other Adeptus Astartes in the throng, company spokesmen and the aides of captains. Daceus was there. The veteran-sergeant looked strange with a stump of arm instead of his power fist. It was rare to see the Lion without his battle gear. He looked as enthralled as Iulus felt. So too was Helios from the First. His demeanour appeared keener but no less exhausted at the endless procrastination.

  Politics was not Iulus’s strong suit. He believed in what he could touch and fashion towards war, but the Chapter needed solidity too and so its future was given to the politicians to argue over. Not that their opinions really mattered. It was the illusion of diplomacy. Only one man could end the debate with any real authority and finality, and his throne in the auditorium was empty. He wasn’t wasting his time listening to this.

  Deciding Praxor was too involved to disturb, Iulus headed for the battle-cages alone.

  He met Scipio, waiting for him in training fatigues and wielding a blunted rudius.

  ‘I saw Praxor at the senate council again,’ he said as he began stripping off his armour. A pair of serfs came to attend him, but Iulus waved them away. ‘I am capable of donning my own training garb.’ He glowered and sent the serfs scurrying.

  Scipio was sketching test swings with his rudius. ‘Why do you terrify them, brother?’

  The corner of Iulus’s mouth twitched as he set down his cuirass. ‘Because it’s enjoyable.’

  Shrugging, Scipio made two arcs, switching from one hand to the other, before ending on a low thrust.

  ‘Serious, eh?’ joked Iulus. His armour was stowed and he picked up a rudius himself, gauging the weight and heft.

  ‘I have to be when sparring with you, ox.’

  Iulus snorted, mimicking the beast Scipio had likened him to.

  Then he swung.

  Scipio blocked expertly, moving aside and allowing the blunted blade to roll down and off his own. His riposte was a sharp jab that Iulus swatted down before he backed away and said, ‘We have not spoken of it since it happened.’

  Scipio leapt and swung an overhead blow that staggered Iulus at first but the sergeant got his footing quickly and rammed his shoulder against his opponent, denying him the room for a follow-up. Scipio grimaced as he tried and failed to match his friend’s superior strength. ‘Spoken of what?’

  Iulus felt Scipio move, turning his momentum against him. He checked his stance, bracing his legs wider, and pivoted on one foot to parry the reverse swipe aimed at his shoulder blade. The rudii clacked loudly around the cage.

  ‘Orad.’

  A hail of blows rebounded against Iulus’s blade and he was hard-pressed to defend against them. He had to back away, fending off each fresh attack, his options for a reply diminishing with every blow. It bordered on frenzied.

  Like a pugilist against the ropes, he went in close, seizing Scipio’s torso in a wrestling move and heaving him back to reassert some distance. Scipio came back undaunted and swinging. He carved elaborate approach swings in the air and Iulus had to use his full concentration to anticipate his opponent’s strike pattern. He blocked and feinted, but could find no counter.

  Scipio was relentless. And silent, until saying, ‘What is there to speak about? He is dead. That is the likely fate of us all in the end.’

  He aimed a punch, which Iulus deflected easily with his meaty forearm. He could sense his battle-brother tiring. Anger, when misused during battle, was as much an enemy as a friend. He asked, ‘When did you become so fatalistic, Scipio?’

  Their blades locked, one pressing against the other. Scipio’s face was a mask of aggression.

  ‘I am merely being realistic.’

  He took a two-handed grip. It forced Iulus onto the back foot, but he then rolled on his heel and allowed Scipio to lunge forward into mid-air. Using the flat of his blade, he smacked Scipio hard on the back of his neck.

  ‘I don’t think you’re angry at me, brother.’

  Stung, Scipio turned with murderous eyes and flung his rudius like a throwing dagger. The move almost fooled Iulus, who was forced into a desperate block that sent the weapon spinning loose. It was a hair’s breadth from his neck and causing serious injury.

  Iulus threw down his rudius a second later and punched Scipio hard in the jaw. He recoiled but didn’t retaliate. Shame supplanted anger as he realised he’d broken a sacred trust.

  Iulus was breathing hard; they both were. ‘You want to fight for real, bring armour and chainblades next time, but don’t expect to walk out of this cage.’ He moved in close, his voice deep and full of menace. ‘You’ll need to be carried out.’

  Scipio’s face was a hard, defiant line.

  ‘Bout over,’ he said, and left.

  When Scipio was gone, Iulus sagged and wondered at how he had failed to see his friend’s degeneration and pain. He slammed his fist into the cage wall, stretching the metal into a perfect mould of his knuckles. Then he picked up the rudius and performed training rotas until he was sore and burning, and all the frustration had vented away.

  The wise say, just before you die, that your life and all its achievements pass before you in a blur of enlightenment.

  Iulus recalled the words of the ancient Macraggian philosophers he’d been forced to endure as part of his neophyte training. On his back in the dirt and bloody snow, he found issue with that belief. There was only an encroaching darkness and the dense thunder of pumping blood in his ears
. There was no epiphany, no glorious moment when a golden halo beckoned or cherubim sang of his deeds in archaic verse.

  It was copper-stink, it was hot fading breath and the futile knowledge that he had been found wanting in the face of his liege lords of old.

  As the necron’s grip tightened, Iulus railed against his fate, too obstinate to accept it. He wanted to scream his defiance but even that was denied him. He’d pushed the chainblade as deep as it would go, dragged it around organs that were not organs, but still the necron endured.

  Then the pressure lifted.

  First his sight returned, like a fresh dawn after a moonless night. The blood stopped rushing quite so loudly and mortally after that, and was replaced by a hard insistent clank. Something that looked like a spear-tip jabbed out of the necron’s left eye socket. Then it happened again and again. Before it phased out, Iulus was dimly aware of a human clinging to the creature’s back and hacking for all his worth. The ice-spike’s final blow punctured the necron’s forehead, dead centre, and it flickered from existence.

  The human, a conscript by the look of his uniform, landed heavily but on his feet.

  He grinned at Iulus. Behind him, there were other conscripts hacking with blades, picks and axes. ‘I have saved an Angel,’ he said, and offered his hand.

  Iulus got to his feet, ignoring the human’s aid because his weight would have toppled him and he didn’t want his saviour to suffer that indignity. ‘Who are you?’ he asked instead.

  The necron elites were defeated. The entire war cell had phased out, removed tactically from the battlefield by their masters below and abroad.

  ‘Kolpeck,’ said the human. He sketched a salute, but it was awkward and rough. ‘Falka Kolpeck.’

  Iulus liked him already.

  History would not remember the deeds of the Damnos Ark Guard in the liberation of Kellenport. They would fail to record the courageous actions of the four hundred souls who ventured beyond the western gate from the Courtyard of Thor to certain death. Sicarius and his glorious Second would be the heroes and for them alone the laurels of the battle attributed.