Sons of Wrath - Andy Smillie Read online

  Amidst a storm of rounds, Andras rushed up the steps to the dais. He took them three at a time, diving over the sacrament table at the top and pulling it over behind him. The ancient slab of wood shuddered under the attention of the heavy bolters. Its timbers would buy Andras only a moment. He scrambled forwards, reaching up to pull down the relic locker. The armourglass and steel cabinet toppled. Andras pulled it to him, striking the glass with a closed fist. ‘Sanguinius curse you, break,’ he snarled and struck it again. A hair-line crack snaked its way across the glass surface. Under the third blow, the glass broke. Andras snatched the boltgun from its housing and lunged forwards, throwing himself behind the pulpit as the sacrament table came apart.

  The cold adamantium was a welcome sensation against his back as he braced against the pulpit and steadied himself, regulating his breathing and slowing his heartbeats so that he could better hear the servitors.

  They had stopped firing and fanned out. He listened to the rumble of their tracks as they traversed the stone floor. A pair of them were advancing up the main aisle, while the other two were moving to flank him to the left and right.

  He turned the Phobos over in his hands. The ornate gun was a work of the highest craftsmanship, a hero’s weapon. Wielded by Blood Angels Chaplain Varaciel in the final battle for Terra, it had not been fired since. Andras tested its weight and smiled. It was fully loaded. The Chapter’s Techmarines had done more than restore the weapon; they had given it the chance to serve again.

  The snapping of wood sharpened his focus. The servitors had crossed over the prayer benches. He had to move.

  ‘I am His vengeance as He is my shield.’ Andras flanked left, twisting to fire on the two servitors in the centre. The hurried rounds hammered against their bodies, suppressing them for the moment he needed to reach the left-most servitor.

  His bold move caught it by surprise, its targeting laser flicking out as it tried to draw a bead on him. He dived into a roll as it opened fire, explosive rounds filling the air above his head as he came to a crouch. He sprung up, driving the butt of his gun into the servitor’s face. Bone broke as it met steel, and the servitor’s eye crumpled in its socket. Disorientated, the machine kept firing, dousing Andras in spent shell cases. Grabbing the heavy bolter in both hands, he pulled it around, guiding it towards the two servitors in the middle of the chamber. Caught in the open, the pair were shredded by the sustained fire, coming apart in a storm of flesh and metal.

  The remaining servitor had him in its sights.

  Andras leapt from the servitor he was tangling with as its counterpart fired. The damaged unit was caught full on by the attack, blasted apart by a slew of explosive rounds.

  He recovered quickly, shouldering his boltgun and putting three rounds into the firing servitor’s face. Its head vanished in bloodied mist.

  Alone, Andras dropped to one knee and caught his breath. He was bleeding from dozens of wounds, the worst of which was in his abdomen. He pressed a hand to his side, feeling the sticky wetness of his tunic. A metallic rumble drew his attention as another servitor pushed in through the doors. ‘Emperor,’ Andras sighed, and checked the ammo counter on his boltgun. A single round remained. He grinned, shaking his head and stealing a glance towards the image of Sanguinius worked into the chamber’s ceiling. ‘I had thought you without humour.’ Andras raised his weapon to fire.

  The servitor’s head and shoulders slid away, its torso bifurcated by a shimmering power blade. ‘Are you injured, High Chaplain?’ Menadel stepped from behind the servitor’s twitching corpse.

  ‘I’ll live.’ Andras ejected the magazine from his bolter and took the one Menadel proffered. ‘What in the Emperor’s name is going on?’

  ‘Ronja has lost her mind. She’s opened fire on our brothers on the surface and activated the Victus’s full complement of battle-servitors.’

  Andras snarled. ‘Then we had best go kill her.’

  Menadel ducked back behind a bulkhead as another torrent of rounds impacted around him. To his right, Chaplain Andras loosed another salvo at their attackers.

  ‘We need to find another way,’ Seraph rasped over the din of gunfire. The sergeant was just ahead of him, pressed tight against a protruding support column.

  He was right. Corridor by corridor, they had fought their way from the Reclusiam, only to be pinned a hundred strides from their objective. The central corridor leading to the Victus’s bridge was a fortified alley of automated gun turrets and defensible positions. Rank upon rank of servitors stood between the Flesh Tearers and the hulking blast doors, barring access to Ronja and command of the ship.

  ‘There is no other way.’ Menadel darted forwards, drawing level with Seraph. ‘Every other access way has been sealed. This is it.’

  ‘Blood. There are more coming from the rear,’ Pursun warned from behind them. ‘If we don’t advance more quickly, we’ll be overrun from both sides.’

  ‘Then we advance,’ Andras said, activating a refractor field. In response, a shimmering energy field flashed, enveloping him. ‘Get behind me and whatever happens, keep moving. We must reach the door.’ No one acknowledged the order, for they each knew as well as Andras what it meant.

  ‘We are vengeance!’ Andras broke cover. ‘We are fury!’ The energies of the refractor field rippled and flared as he pushed into the maelstrom of weapons fire. ‘We are wrath!’ He ran forwards, boltgun bucking in his hand as he fired.

  Seraph and Menadel roared their own battle-cries and ran out behind him. Seraph drew his pistol, lending its firepower to his bolter, as he targeted the gun turrets studding the ceiling. Menadel focused his attentions on the servitors, killing them with every pull of the trigger and sweep of his blade. Only Pursun held his position, securing their rear against the encroaching servitors, his sacrifice wordlessly acknowledged by the fervour of his brothers’ attack.

  Andras pressed forwards. Point-blank detonations blended with the fulgurant flash of his shield to obscure his vision. He fired on instinct, firing and reloading until his ammo was spent. The servitors seemed without number. Their relentless attacks hammered his energy shield until it flared azure and shattered. Within a heartbeat, rounds began impacting against his armour. ‘Cover!’ Andras cried out as he was punched from his feet, a barrage of rounds striking his breastplate.

  Seraph and Menadel reacted without pause, throwing themselves against the walls, sheltering behind what little protection they could find.

  Andras struggled onto all fours. He was close. The ceramite of his armour was split and cracked. His pauldrons were ruined, pitted and scarred like the surface of a moon. He gasped in pain as something pierced his lung and threw him onto his back. Blood filled his mouth as he rose and edged himself forwards. Rounds tore through his legs, shearing them from his body. His torso toppled. In the seconds it took the servitors to realise he wasn’t dead, he managed to gain another half metre, pulling himself forwards. Agony stole his voice as yet more rounds punched into his flesh. Close enough. He closed his eyes and detonated the melta charge he’d been cradling.

  A wave of super-heated air bathed the corridor around him, turning the nearest servitors to molten slag, washing over the others like a broiling tide. Burning. Disfiguring. Ruining.

  Menadel and Seraph were among the servitors before they could rally, attacking with all the strength they had left. Rage drove their limbs. It tore their blades through machine and pushed the noses of their boltguns into flesh. Knee-deep in tangled corpses, the Flesh Tearers were barely ten strides from the bridge. Still their cause was a hopeless one.

  With their ammunition exhausted, they would be easy prey for the remaining servitors, who were even now sighting their weapons towards them.

  ‘Sanguinius keep you, brother.’ Seraph turned to Menadel.

  ‘The Blood redeems.’ Menadel dipped his blade in salute.

  The pair bared their teeth in a murderous s
narl, defying oblivion to claim them, and charged.

  The servitors fired. Dozens upon dozens of high-calibre, explosive rounds zipped through the air towards the Flesh Tearers, more than enough to shred a platoon of men or crack open a light tank.

  Seraph and Menadel went unharmed.

  Not a round struck the Flesh Tearers. They stopped running, pulling up sharp a hand span before a wall of explosions. The servitors continued to fire, their rounds breaking against an unseen barrier.

  ‘This is not the hour when your duty ends, brothers.’

  They turned to find Chaplain Zophal advancing behind them. The Chaplain’s armour was caked in blood, smeared with lines of viscera. Menadel’s eyes narrowed as he glimpsed the red armour of Zophal’s companion. ‘Chaplain…’ He raised his sword, thrusting it towards the Thousand Sons legionary.

  ‘Brother Omari is with us,’ said Zophal, gesturing to the force barrier that was still flashing under a barrage of detonations.

  Menadel nodded. Zophal’s word was all the reassurance he needed. ‘And Pursun?’

  ‘He cannot stand but he lives. We will see to his wounds later. We are not done killing,’ Zophal snarled, and nodded to Omari.

  Omari stepped forwards and threw his arms out. The force barrier that was the manifestation of his unbending will shuddered, rippling like water, and shot forwards. The wave of charged energy dealt the servitors a hammer blow, stripping away their flesh and dissolving their machine parts. With a crushing snap, the energy barrier convulsed and was gone. Of the servitors, nothing remained.

  Omari grimaced and stumbled to one knee. Blood ran from his eyes and mouth.

  ‘Can you continue?’

  ‘I am fine,’ Omari snapped at Zophal, and pushed up to his feet.

  ‘How are we to breach the seal? Andras had our only charge.’ Seraph indicated the thick locking mechanisms sealing the bridge doors.

  Omari scoffed and stepped to the doors. ‘How you and your allies ever bested Horus and clung to life, I will never know.’ He ran his palm over the door’s surface and drew his blade. Whispering words that held no meaning to any save him and his weapon, he sent his will shivering along its length. The sword shone brightest azure in response, like a new sky born of clear fire and falling stars. Omari gripped it in two hands, and thrust it into the door.

  Fire. There was nothing but fire. Ronja stared through the real space window, mesmerised by the wrathful inferno consuming the Eagle Warriors strike cruiser. Her eyes widened as tendrils of blood-red flame twisted out from the wreck to burn in the blackness of the void. The new fire, she knew, would consume everything. Ship, planets, stars. They would all burn. The fire strobed in time with the beating of her heart, expanding, rolling ever outwards as the Victus showed her what would become of the galaxy. The doom she would bring upon it when they were finished with Amit and his cowards. Her mouth stretched in a wide smile as excited shivers raced down her spine. Caught in the throes of mad glee, she began to drool as the Shield of Baal limped before her guns.

  ‘Target–’ The gunnery serf’s words died in his throat as a bolt-round slammed into his back and tore him apart.

  ‘Who dares?’ Ronja roared, spinning to face the bridge’s entrance as more of her crew died, gunned down in short order. ‘Flesh Tearers,’ she sneered, enraged by the desecration of the Victus’s most holy sanctum. ‘Kill them. Kill them now!’ she screeched, her voice the wet spittle of a craven hound.

  Her armsmen roared with blood lust and engaged the Flesh Tearers, their shotguns spitting heavy slugs. The men were naked from the waist up, shoulders and sinuous arms rippling with muscle. Gifts from the Victus. A reward for their faith. Ronja smiled at the crude Flesh Tearers Chapter symbol daubed in blood on their chests. They were the true sons of the Victus. By their blood, it would be cleansed.

  Zophal cursed as a round impacted on his helm. He returned fire, shooting two of the armsmen through the head. He sighted on a third, denied the kill by the clack of an empty chamber. He tossed the weapon away. ‘Seraph. Menadel. Kill these wretches. Omari and I will deal with the witch.’

  The two Flesh Tearers were already moving, charging headlong towards the armsmen. Shotgun rounds hammered their armour, biting chunks from the ceramite. Seraph roared as a round claimed his left eye. Menadel felt teeth break loose in his mouth as buckshot struck his jaw. Neither stopped running. Another cacophonous bark, another hail of shells, and then they were among the armsmen. Seraph and Menadel were as nightmares unleashed. Summoning all their pain and anger, they carved into the armsmen’s flesh. Even driven by unnatural vigour, the armsmen were no match for the enraged Flesh Tearers. War-cries bubbled in their throats as they were hacked down, gutted, eviscerated, torn apart and broken, killed with ugly malice.

  Ronja was not as Zophal had last left her. Her eyes were suns burned bloody, her skin a ruddy bronze, stretched taut over muscles that swelled beneath it. Horns, slick and black, grew from either side of her skull, which itself seemed distended, almost canine.

  ‘You will die for this insult,’ Ronja spat, flexing her arms. Crimson fire leapt from her palms, coalescing into twin, flickering blades, her will made corporeal.

  Zophal and Omari swore oaths of vengeance and attacked.

  Crozius and force sword slashed out to meet Ronja’s daemon-spawned weapons. Her parries and counters were relentless, her blades cutting and scoring the Space Marines’ armour. A masterful thrust pierced Omari’s abdomen and dropped him to one knee. Ronja kicked him in the face, breaking his nose and dropping him onto his back. Zophal pressed his attack, working his way inside her guard, tangling his arms around hers.

  ‘Why do you fight me, Flesh Tearer?’ Ronja licked Zophal’s faceplate, her tongue an oil-black snake. ‘This is what the Victus wants.’

  ‘It is not our ship who whispers to you, wretch. It is a seditious being of the Dark Gods.’ Sweat soaked Zophal’s brow as he fought to maintain a defence.

  ‘Lies!’ Ronja’s screamed, shouldering Zophal backwards and unleashing a burst of telekinesis that hurled him over the command rail, down towards the servitor pits.

  Omari got to his feet as Zophal disappeared over the edge. Leaving the Chaplain to his fate, he re-engaged Ronja. Again and again, she denied him an opening, parrying his blade with a deft skill she had not the centuries to have earned. He grimaced at each clash of their weapons, lances of pain stripping away his resolve as her will leapt from her blade, shooting through his to stab at his mind.

  Ronja smiled, mocking him. ‘You are weak, Omari of the Thousand Sons. A traitor even from your own kind. And the weak have no place in this life or any other.’

  Omari ignored her words, focusing on the space between them; the emptiness between sounds, between breaths. Hoarfrost sheathed his armour as he channelled his gifts. Pain cut him like a blunt knife as his skin tightened and split, his body withering and ageing as he asked too much of it. Far too much.

  Zophal grunted in pained effort. Ronja’s blow had driven the wind from him. Dark, arterial fluid oozed from the crack it had rent in his breastplate. Hanging from one arm, he dangled under the command dais, gripping the steel spar he’d used to arrest his fall. Below him, in cogitator-lined trenches, legions of servitors and serfs tore at each other like rabid animals. Gore stained their mouths as they clamoured to get at him. ‘I free you from the sin of your existence,’ he said. He unhooked a frag grenade from his belt and dropped it into the mass of braying flesh. The explosive detonated, barbed shrapnel tearing through the tightly pressed horde. Secondary explosions rippled along the length of the deck as urns of oil and electro-fluid ignited. The blast-wave showered him in fleshy gobbets as the roar of flame washed over him.

  Omari heard the explosion as a whisper. He stood in the still silence of nothingness. Seconds stretched to eternity as he fell between them. He focused, keeping the moment past and the moment to come on the edges o
f his horizon, careful not to fall too far. Ronja thrust a blade towards him. It was as a leaf caught on a far-off breeze, drifting with lazy intent. He stepped aside, slicing up with his sword to sever her arm above the elbow.

  A cruel growl sounded from Ronja’s throat. ‘That will not stop us. You cannot stop us.’ Her words were thick, stretched out like drowning echoes. She lunged again, her blade aimed at Omari’s heart.

  He parried the stroke, running his blade down the length of hers before cutting across to rob her of her other arm. Ronja gasped and stumbled forwards into the command rail.

  Time returned; a rush of the now that drove a stake of pain into Omari’s skull. Blood streamed from his eyes and his armour began to dissolve, spilling like thick dust onto the deck.

  Ronja convulsed, staring in horror at the stumps of her limbs. She twisted awkwardly, using the command rail to help her shuffle around and face Omari. ‘I am but flesh, the Victus is–’ she stammered, the words caught in her throat as Zophal clamped his hand around the back of her skull. The Chaplain pulled himself up, rising until his head was level with Ronja’s. ‘Vengeance,’ he snarled, nodding to Omari. The Thousand Sons legionary cut her in half, slashing his blade through her waist. Pain and defeat filled her eyes as they looked to Zophal’s skull-helm. The Chaplain said nothing, tossing what remained of her down into the fire of the pit.

  ‘It is done.’ Omari flicked her blood from his blade as Zophal vaulted back onto the platform. ‘You may kill me now.’

  Zophal’s jaw hardened, his muscles tensing for a fight.

  ‘I am not a fool, Chaplain.’ Omari’s eyes bore no malice. ‘I knew the minute you released me from the cell that it would come to this.’ He upturned his blade, and planted it in the deck. ‘The freedom you mentioned could only be the blessed release of death. I thank you anyway. You have at least allowed me to die in the Emperor’s service.’

  ‘Death may grant you peace, Omari Anat,’ said Zophal. ‘But I need your help bringing the same to another.’