Reborn - Nicholas Wolf Read online

  Sergei had said not a word to me as he pushed passed me, not then, and not the countless times he’d gone out since then. Eventually his hunts had grown longer, bloodier. He started returning to the Sanctum changed, his body warped. Then he started returning with outsiders, warriors whose loyalty he’d won in blood-duels against their former masters.

  There are countless ways to worship the Pantheon, and murder is by far the most common, but still the unbridled glee Sergei took in inflicting suffering left me horrified. After Corvan III I felt like a hypocrite. After all, I am responsible for the deaths of more men than I can count. What made Sergei’s grisly hunts so different to the men I’d shot and stabbed and choked and strangled to stay alive?

  So I said nothing, because I didn’t know what to say, and he drifted further and further into the monster he was becoming. Worse, I sense more and more of the Reborn falling to the nihilistic, bloodthirsty madness that lurks on the edges of our enlightenment.

  I sigh as he swaggers into my throne room, his rotted-blood stench preceding him. I knew this day was coming. I wish it hadn’t come so soon.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Andrik,’ he sneers. His mouth stretches up to his ears, which he’s cut off. ‘I thought you might’ve been sleeping.’

  My honour guard rise at his voice, hackles raised, hands tightening on weapons. I extend a placating hand; I can’t antagonise him, nor can I show weakness.

  ‘Sergei,’ I nod warily. Slowly. Casually.

  His eyes narrow in annoyance, but it never reaches his lips. ‘I hear we’ll soon be deploying again.’

  I nod. ‘I relish the opportunity to bring the truth to another world.’

  Sergei flicks out his forked tongue. ‘I can almost taste the blood we’ll spill,’ he says. His warriors snigger. One, a wiry, rawboned killer, pulls out a knife and starts absently etching fresh runes into his skin.

  ‘You seek murder without purpose, brother,’ I say for the hundredth time, trying not to sound patronising. ‘Some may revel in slaughter, but that is not the way of the Reborn.’

  ‘And who says it’s not?’ he hisses.

  I set my brow, hoping he’ll back down. ‘I say.’

  ‘And why should what you have to say matter?’

  ‘Because I lead the Reborn.’

  ‘And why do you lead us?’ he spits angrily, neck-frills shaking.

  ‘Because I am your captain, Lieutenant Meglev,’ I reply, low, dangerous.

  Back down, you fool. Don’t make me hurt you.

  Sergei laughs, an ugly, choking gurgle. ‘Your captaincy was granted to you by the slaves of the False Emperor,’ he cries, lifting his voice for all assembled to here. ‘It’s worth less than dung here.’

  Nikyta, my fiercest and most fervent guardian, shoves himself in front of me. He’s changed more than the rest of us: not even a shadow of the scared boy he once was remains beneath his hunched, mutated bulk.

  ‘You dare insult the captain?’ he roars, tusks bared, swollen mass throbbing with rage. ‘I’ll tear your heart out for that, insolent wretch!’

  Sergei smirks. ‘You’ve always enjoyed licking his boots, haven’t you? I always thought of you as a dog, even before you looked like one.’

  ‘Captain Petrov saved our lives on Tarshish!’ he roars.

  ‘I would’ve done the same!’

  ‘But you didn’t!’ Nikyta barks, slamming his shaggy paw on the floor. ‘You would’ve stood there like the coward you are while Grudenov shot me, and then you would’ve died at your post.’

  Sergei flinches. Nikyta voiced what I’d secretly suspected was lurking in my old friend’s heart since Tarshish.

  ‘And what about you, you gutless cur?’ Sergei sneers. ‘I’m the one who shot Mikhail while you stood there pissing yourself!’

  Nikyta gives a chuffing laugh. ‘You only acted when you thought it was safe, just like now.’

  ‘Do you think yourself safe?’ Sergei hisses, drawing a knife.

  In an instant every gun in the room is trained, every blade brandished for blood.

  ‘Enough, Nikyta!’ I shout before it comes to violence. ‘Enough. If Sergei wants to settle this the old way, he’ll have his wish.’

  His tentacle slides a second rusted dagger out of his skin-belt. ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way, Andrik.’

  A huge crowd of my warriors gather, baying for carnage; blood-duels are as common as bullets on the mortal decks, but I’ve done my best to limit them within the Reborn. I wonder who they’re cheering for. Out of the corner of my eye I see onlookers congregating near the bulkhead at the mouth of the sump. Sergei’s followers or otherwise, I can’t say.

  Maybe they’re just waiting to see who dies.

  I pull out my own weapon, a serrated Adeptus Astartes blade taken as a trophy from Corvan III. He circles me like a serpent, barbed tentacle twisting and curling, looking for an opening.

  ‘I have no wish to kill you,’ I say, and part of me, the part that remembers us enlisting in the Janissaries together, fighting shoulder to shoulder on Tarshish, means it.

  But the rest of me, the part that remembers Lord Jarak’s promise, doesn’t.

  Sergei’s lopsided face cracks in a drooling smirk. He kicks ash into my face and lunges. The Reborn scream.

  I blindly raise my arm.

  Snap.

  I stagger back and smear the burning chem-dust out of my eyes. As my eyes clear I see Sergei’s broken knife lodged in my armoured forearm. I barely felt a thing.

  ‘You’ll die for that, Sergei,’ I promise.

  I bellow and charge him before he can find another blade. Sergei is strong but the gods have made me stronger. I barrel him to the ground, but he slips away before I can grab him.

  I feel a knife stab into my shoulder, deep enough to notch bone. He’s fast. Faster than me.

  I slash wildly with my blade as he scampers away. His tentacle lashes at me like a whip. Barbs slice through my scaly flesh. I grunt through the pain. I have to get close.

  ‘I’ve waited a long time for this, my old friend,’ he sneers.

  I lunge forward to cut his throat. It’s the mistake he was waiting for.

  My hand spasms as Sergei stabs his knife deep through my bicep. He moved so fast I didn’t even see him dodge me. My blade clatters to the ground.

  His tentacle wraps around my neck.

  With a twitch of muscle it tightens. I dig my bloody fingers into the rubbery muscle but it’s tough as iron. Tighter. I gasp out my last breath. My chest heaves. I can’t breathe in. The sinews in my neck crack. My eyes darken.

  Misha makes me swear to the Emperor I’ll come back. I whisper it in her ear over and over again as we hold each other one last time.

  I power my chitinous fist into his shoulder like a battering ram.

  Bones crack. Sergei screams. His grip loosens enough for me to suck in just one more breath. I punch again, harder. He tries to stab me, but can’t. His tentacle spasms. I swing again. He drops his own knife and tries to block my fist.

  Fool.

  Every bone in his arm shatters with a wet crunch.

  Sergei’s eyes go wide with agony. His human arm is a bleeding, twisted wreck of ruptured flesh and jutting bone. I tear myself free of his barbed tentacle as shock overcomes him, then with a roar rip the mutated limb from its socket. His knees buckle. He tries to cradle his ruined arm with an appendage that isn’t there.

  The sump descends into silence, but for the wet flopping of his severed tentacle refusing to die.

  ‘It didn’t have to be this way, Sergei.’

  Sergei looks up at me, rancid blood leaking from his mouth. I can see the echo of my lieutenant in his watering eyes, but nothing more.

  ‘It can’t be,’ he gurgles out. ‘They promised… I was… I was promised the Reborn…’

  ‘The Reborn
are mine,’ I hiss as I slowly grasp his head in my mighty claw. ‘Mine!’

  My fist unhurriedly squeezes closed. Sergei’s defiant scream becomes a piercing squeal, then a gurgling crunch.

  ‘We are the righteous!’ I roar to my men as I lift Sergei’s corpse up for all his followers to see. ‘We are the vindicated! We are the Reborn!’

  The Reborn, and those who will soon call themselves the Reborn, erupt with cheers.

  ‘Hail Andrik!’ Nikyta roars. ‘Andrik Gorehand!’

  Thousands upon thousands pour into the Sanctum, screaming Gorehand, Gorehand, Gorehand. The whispers thunder in my ears. I thrust my hand upwards and howl in victory.

  Crackling power burns through my veins like envenomed needles. My body violently swells, raw muscles ripping through flesh before scabbing over in a chitinous shell. Bloody horns burst through my carapace, through my knuckles, through my forehead. My hand runs like wax and bursts apart in strings of writhing gore, becoming a barbed pincer. It hurts more than anything I can imagine, and it’s wonderful.

  My war cry becomes a deep, wet, tumorous roar.

  V

  Another war, another world. I don’t know what it’s called, nor do I care so long as I help to kill it.

  I stare across the smouldering morass of churned earth and shredded corpses, razor wire and tank traps and blood-soaked craters, at the Imperial fortifications protecting their precious artillery. Row upon row of trenches stretch before me. Heavy weapons platforms stud the battle line. Armoured pillboxes squat at every switchback. Two companies of Guardsmen lurk within, armed with lasguns, grenade launchers and flamers.

  And looming at its apex is a brutal ferrocrete battlement, bristling with heavy bolter turrets and sensora to direct the Basilisks. For years that damned edifice has taunted me.

  Today it dies.

  ‘For the Pantheon!’ I roar, thrusting my sword high. ‘Death to the Imperium!’

  Twenty thousand throats howl for blood. Twenty thousand zealots scream their loyalty to the Dark Gods. Twenty thousand warriors roar bloody oaths of vengeance. I savour it all for just a moment, for I feel in my bones that it is the death knell of yet another world.

  The Reborn, ranks swollen by blood-duels beyond even my counting, charge the enemy trenches in an unstoppable tide of remade flesh.

  Gunfire slashes into us the moment we scale our trench, as it has countless times before. Hundreds are blown apart in seconds. Artillery rains down moments later, throwing shredded bodies into the air on wings of dirt. The Reborn scream in agony, in rage, in horror, in sorrow, as war punishes us. The weak flounder, scurrying for cover as they wail in terror. The strong surge forward into the jaws of death.

  But Lord Jarak’s command was clear: this line must break today, and his immortals are engaged in the void against the Imperium’s lapdogs.

  I will not fail him.

  The blood-soaked ground shakes as the riot of shrieking flesh thunders past me. The thing that was Nikyta, howling from a dozen fanged mouths, crashes headlong through the razor wire ahead of us. I remember the day he became a spawn of Chaos as clearly as though it were yesterday, the way he screamed as his body revolted against reason, and yet I’m still in awe of the Pantheon’s awesome transformative power.

  The charging Reborn cheer as the unleashed spawn hits the trench line like a meteor, smashing through a ferrocrete pillbox, spewing acid and warp fire. For a precious moment the fire slackens as every bolter, lasgun and flamer turns towards the towering storm of claws and tentacles and fangs and beaks and spikes and wings tearing through their line. I sprint for the narrow breach torn in the defences. A krak missile ploughs into Nikyta ahead of me. Stinking blood and shredded bodies rain down on me.

  The spawn buys us a few seconds before the deluge of gunfire finally blows it apart, but it’s just barely enough. I think I can hear Nikyta among the voices screaming in ecstasy as his mutated flesh dissolves into trashing sludge.

  I vault into the trench for the first time, one of only dozens to survive. My sword, a jagged shard of Chimera armour, rips into the stunned Guardsmen. They collapse around me, clutching ruptured bellies and spurting limbs, shrieking. I sprint down the trenches knee-deep in Nikyta’s writhing remains, killing enemy after enemy. Gunfire and shrapnel rattles off my chitinous blessings. Chunks of armour chip away but the Dark Gods’ gifts protect me.

  More Reborn drag themselves into the trenches, bloodied, bellowing with rage. I howl to them as I chop men in half, and they roar back.

  The Imperials are reacting, trying to plug the gap with heavy bolters like they have every time before. I tear krak grenades off my bandolier and hurl them as fast as I can in every direction. Detonations throw columns of mud and bodies into the air. More of my warriors pour in, hacking apart the fleeing defenders. The heavy stubber bolted to my arm roars until it clanks dry.

  I glance back over the trench. The horde is decimated. The killing field is choked with thousands of dead Reborn. Many are still braving the onslaught but the Imperial heavy bolters have turned the sole breach into a deathtrap. Maybe one in twenty has made it to the trench line.

  There will be no reinforcements.

  ‘To me! Rally to me!’ I shout to anyone who can hear me. ‘We go as one and take that command centre! Bleed them! For Chaos!’

  Trench by trench, yard by yard, we fight the Imperials. Those who can still hold firearms shoot until their weapons go dry. The rest stand in front, tearing through the enemy soldiers with claws and fangs. I lead the charge, my stubber empty, bathing in gore. We go fast, like a knife stabbing into flesh. We’re outnumbered dozens to one. We can’t let the enemy react.

  I steal glances back down the distant trench line below. There’s a second breach now. Maybe a hundred Reborn have made it through.

  ‘Keep going! To the bunker!’ I scream over the gunfire, pointing at the ferrocrete monstrosity presiding over our slaughter. ‘Murder the non-believers!’

  We push higher towards our objective. We fight like daemons born of pure rage, massacring the Imperials, smashing their bunkers, sowing chaos and fear. When they pin us down one of us offers our body to soak up gunfire while the rest advance. I hear the Dark Gods whispering to me as I tear men apart with the gifts they gave me.

  And finally, somehow, we’ve fought our way to the command bunker.

  I’m bleeding from a dozen wounds. My blessed claw is cracked and oozing. Less than a dozen of us remain, clutching spurting limbs and ruptured bellies.

  ‘We… made it…’ Sava grunts in pain.

  ‘By the grace of the gods,’ I nod. ‘Now we just have to get in.’

  BANG!

  Ears ringing I wrench aside the melted door. Las-bolts spew through the smouldering breach. I unhinge my jaw and vomit a stream of acid onto the stunned defenders. I relish their screams for a brief moment before we charge through and hack the shrieking survivors to pieces.

  Those of us still capable of holding weapons gather up their lasguns and explosives. ‘Gorehand?’ Sukov asks, ‘How many inside, you think?’

  I sling a bandolier of krak grenades over my shoulder. ‘Not enough,’ I grin.

  We charge into the heart of the command centre.

  I arm the krak grenades all at once. ‘Death to the Corpse-Emperor!’ I bellow as I hurl the bandolier inside.

  The fight is fierce, but quick. Tech-priests and vox-operators scramble to grab their weapons and crouch behind whatever cover they can, but cogitators and holo-terminals provide little. We sweep through the room like a wildfire, shooting, stabbing, ripping. The Imperials die at their posts, pleading for their dead god to save them.

  And suddenly, finally, there’s silence, but for the muffled chatter of gunfire beyond the bunker.

  ‘We did it!’ Sava exclaims. ‘The bunker is–’

  His horned face explodes into a gory crater, splatteri
ng me with brains and bone.

  I shake the gore from my eyes. An Imperial officer leaps from cover behind a burning cogitator. His bolt pistol barks out round after round into my three surviving warriors, bursting their bodies from within. His power sword slays the wounded before they can rise.

  My tongue roves over my dripping fangs. A captain, chest bedecked with medals. Truly the Dark Gods have blessed me.

  ‘Slave of the Emperor!’ I bellow, throwing my arms wide. ‘Come and face your death!’

  He tosses his empty bolt pistol aside and stalks towards me.

  ‘Prepare to die, heretic,’ he says. I see the cold anger etched in his face.

  I’m going to enjoy this.

  I scrape my sword across my chitinous fist, drawing sparks. He charges me. I swing to chop him in half, but my blade clangs against the ceiling of the bunker. He sneaks in close. Pain blossoms down my side as he slashes me.

  I grin, relishing it. ‘You’re fast, slave.’

  He says nothing, charging me again. This time I’m ready. I block with my shoulder. He cuts deep, reaching the meat beneath my bony armour, but the blade snarls. I swing at him again. I hit him in the face with the flat of my sword.

  He staggers back, but stays standing. He spits blood and a broken tooth.

  Then the pain hits.

  Somehow he cut me again. I look down. I can see my ribs poking from blackened, scaly flesh.

  I roar as I put every iota of my ascendant strength into an overhead blow. The captain raises his sword.

  My blade clatters to the floor, chopped cleanly through.

  The captain advances on me, power sword sparking. He thinks he’s won.

  But the gods have made me a weapon. My blessed right hand can crush a man, and flesh is harder than iron. I need no weapons but those that the gods have blessed me with.

  I vomit a spray of acid and charge. He ducks before a blow that would have splattered him. Ferrocrete rains down on us. He slashes me before I can wrench my fist free. Viscous blood leaks down my side.

  I charge again. Another wound. I throw another punch. Another cut. And another. And another.