Warriors of the Imperium - Andy Hoare & S P Cawkwell Read online

  ‘Not yet, hunter,’ Nullus replied, with a mocking grin.

  ‘What duplicity is…?’ Kor’sarro began, as a tide of figures appeared behind the traitors, stepping out from the dark entrance to the storage depot.

  ‘Did you think it so simple, White Scar?’ Nullus crowed as the narrow street behind him filled with armed soldiers. Instead of the drab, rubberised pressure suits and rebreathers worn by those at the defence lines, these men wore an unfamiliar uniform of grey and black, with military-issue armoured jackets and lascarbines. A deafening crack of thunder sounded from the peak of the central tower, and Kor’sarro glanced in its direction.

  There, on a wide platform atop the rearing mass of tangled conduits, framed against the pulsating aurora, stood a shape as black as the void. Even at this distance and from the low vantage point, Kor’sarro could see the form of Voldorius. The figure was over two metres tall, and almost as wide across the shoulders. From his back stretched a pair of black, batlike wings, which cracked the air as they whipped back and forth. Kor’sarro’s blood rose, the feral desire to finally slay his nemesis all but consuming him.

  But first he would have to pass the daemon prince’s followers. And his slaves.

  In moments, over a hundred of the grey- and black-clad soldiers had emerged from the storage depot and lined up behind Nullus and his companions. The odds were now even.

  I have not time for this, Kor’sarro seethed, feeling his chance to close on Voldorius slipping away.

  ‘My khan,’ the company champion stepped beside him. ‘This may be a trap. You must continue.’

  ‘No, Jhogai,’ Kor’sarro interjected. ‘I cannot ask this of you.’

  ‘Then do not,’ Jhogai replied. ‘I take it upon myself. The duty is mine, by ancient law.’

  Brother Jhogai was invoking his right as company champion to face the traitor Nullus in single combat. And he did so in the intention that Kor’sarro might face Voldorius, even if the champion was cut down affording his captain the opening.

  ‘You are a man of honour, my friend,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘But our foe is a traitor to all that binds us to the Emperor and the Great Khan, honoured be his name.’

  ‘The others will hold the rabble at bay, my khan,’ Brother Jhogai said. ‘You must allow them to do so.’

  Before Kor’sarro could respond, the company champion drew his power sword and stepped forwards to stand a mere ten metres before the traitor. Nullus’s wicked grin widened as he understood Jhogai’s intent. Turning to his khan, the warrior said simply, ‘Go.’

  Another thundercrack sounded from the tower, and Kor’sarro knew he had no choice. He must face his enemy alone, and he must do so now, lest the daemon prince escape justice as he had so many times before.

  ‘Go!’ Brother Jhogai repeated, his voice proud, yet tinged by an undertone of anger or impatience.

  ‘Honoured be your name,’ Kor’sarro said, his words lost as Jhogai bellowed a war cry and launched himself forwards at his enemy. In an instant, the mass of soldiers was spilling down the narrow street and the White Scars were unleashing a devastating fusillade of bolter fire that scythed the first rank down in a storm of blood and fire. Kor’sarro caught a last glance of the company champion as he squared off against his opponent, the anarchic tide of battle sweeping around them both until he could see no more.

  A third peal of thunder rang out from the tower peak, sounding to Kor’sarro like an invitation or an announcement of coming doom. Resolved to face whatever awaited him, he set off towards the tower at a steady run, the sounds of the battle receding behind. He passed down narrow streets strewn with debris tumbled from the refinery stacks by the vibrations and quakes afflicting the entire plant, the tower looming before him all the way. Several times he caught sight of masked, pressure-suited defenders, and gunned every one of them down with his bolt pistol without pausing. He saw no more of the black- and grey-clad soldiers that had accompanied Nullus, but gave the matter no more attention, for he was rapidly closing on the base of the central tower.

  The tower was made of thousands of conduits and pipes, all bound together in an impossible mass that appeared to have been grown rather than built. Vents and flues studded its flanks, some belching noxious fumes, others searing gouts of flame. Enveloped around the twisted pipes and machineries was a series of interconnecting ladders, walkways and platforms, up which, Kor’sarro knew, he would have to climb in order to reach the peak, and his foe.

  Sorcerous energies swirled around the pinnacle, the violet aurora twisting from the sky as if reaching down to envelop the tower. Bitter experience told Kor’sarro that Voldorius was a master of many vile arts, and had made bargains with powers too terrible to name. Whatever evil he was calling upon would be halted, on Kor’sarro’s honour.

  With a grunt, Kor’sarro pulled himself up to the first platform, and ran along its length until he reached a ladder. His armoured boots rang loudly against the corroded metal grille of the walkway, but the sound was all but drowned out by the atonal dirge emanating from overhead and the clash of unnatural thunder shaking the tower.

  With an effort of will, Kor’sarro filtered out the low drone, his genetically enhanced physiology granting him the ability where a normal man might be driven to madness by the deafening skirl. He hauled himself up the ladder, climbing twenty metres before he reached the next level. As he stepped out onto a swaying length of badly rusted tread plate, the entire tower shook as if the ground on which it stood was in the grip of an earthquake.

  Kor’sarro was now high above the mass of the refinery. Below, a thin line of White Scars unleashed round after round at the massed black- and grey-clad soldiers while two figures circled one another in their midst. He paused as the two warriors closed on one another, his desire to see his champion strike Nullus down winning him over for a second. But it was not to be. Kor’sarro suppressed a bitter cry of anguish as the Alpha Legionnaire scythed Jhogai down with contemptuous ease, cutting the noble White Scar almost in two with a single sweep of his black halberd. A moment later, both groups of warriors charged headlong into one another, mingled war cries rising above the sound of explosions.

  Kor’sarro buried his grief beneath his honour, and forced himself to continue his climb. As he rounded the tower he located the white-armoured figures of one of the flanking groups engaged in a bitter fight with a bellowing mob of the pressure-suit-clad convicts. But the sounds of battle were not confined to these two war zones, for the entire city-sized promethium refinery was gripped by conflict. Rearing processing stacks shook, entire lengths of piping peeling away to fall slowly to the ground where they crashed across the streets and crushed buildings. Explosions blossomed across the plant, and already great belching columns of black smoke were rising into the cold sky. It seemed to Kor’sarro that the White Scars had not brought war to this place at all, they had simply arrived at the same time.

  The tower shook again and lurched sickeningly to one side. Kor’sarro gripped the ladder to steady himself, before setting foot upon it and climbing another two dozen metres to the next platform. He was just about to mount the platform when a ten-metre length of conduit hurtled past, falling from further up the tower. Kor’sarro ducked backwards as it cleaved the air a metre from his head, pressing his back against the pipes behind. Then he leaned outwards to follow the huge chunk of broken pipe work as it plummeted, watching as it crushed an entire building with its impact.

  The next walkway was narrow and lacked a guardrail. Either the tower’s builders had given no concern for the safety of the convict-workers, or it had long since corroded and fallen away. Kor’sarro was forced to grab on to projecting conduits as he passed along its length, several coming away in his hand, belching fumes that stained his white armour. His filtering-out of the hellish drone from the tower’s peak was less and less effective, the mournful dirge penetrating his mind even as he fought to push it out.

 
Reaching the ladder at the end of the narrow walkway, Kor’sarro craned his neck to look upwards. The ladder ran all the way to the tower’s peak. Before committing his weight to the corroded steelwork, Kor’sarro tested it by pulling at a rung. The entire length of the ladder shook alarmingly, several rivets coming loose to fall past. Gathering his strength for this last climb and the inevitable confrontation at its culmination, he started upwards.

  Kor’sarro was now a hundred metres up and climbing. The refinery-city sprawled outwards below towards the ice plains beyond. The distant crystal towers the strike force’s gunships had flown through on their first approach loomed at the horizon. The entire plant was now wracked with ever more violent tremors, which Kor’sarro knew in his heart were the work of his nemesis. The climb became a race to defeat Voldorius before the entire refinery was destroyed. He cared not an iota for the plant itself or for its criminal workforce, but had no desire to see the bulk of the Third Company slain as it crumbled. As he neared the top of the ladder, the dirge became almost unbearable in its intensity, the discordant keening cutting through his body and permeating his very soul. It was the sound of a billion souls, wailing their lamentations at an eternity of damnation. It was every one of Voldorius’s victims, wallowing in eternal darkness and demanding retribution. He bellowed in denial, refusing to succumb to the overwhelming bitterness implicit in the wordless song.

  His cry was drowned out by a wave front of cacophony, for before him stood its source. He had reached the tower’s peak.

  As Kor’sarro hauled himself onto the wide platform, he was confronted by the rearing figure of Voldorius silhouetted against the roiling skies. Actinic lightning arced from every surface, the pulsating, violet auroras twisting down from the cold skies to envelop the summit of the tower. Kor’sarro stood and drew Moonfang, steeling himself for the confrontation against the fiend he had hunted for the better part of a decade.

  Voldorius was clad in baroque power armour. His mighty, batlike pinions were folded at his back and he spread his arms wide as if to welcome Kor’sarro as an old friend. In one clawed hand Voldorius bore a writhing blade, twisting and mutating as if eager to rend and cut the flesh of its enemy. The other hand was coiled into a fist, ready to smash and crush Kor’sarro’s bones to dust.

  All the while, the hellish keening continued, blasting from the beast’s throat, threatening to push Kor’sarro backwards, over the precipice, where he would plummet to his death far below. With an effort, Kor’sarro took a step forwards, activating his power blade. This thing that stood before him was responsible for the damnation of countless souls and for crimes against the Emperor rivalling those of Horus, the Arch-Traitor himself. Since the great betrayal ten millennia ago at the dawning of the Imperium, this cursed being had led a warband of the Alpha Legion in innumerable wars. His deeds were so unutterably vile that few if any accounts had been committed to record. Only memory prevailed, but the White Scars had never forgotten. They had marked this traitor for the hunt, and Kor’sarro would have his head on a pole or die in the attempt.

  He took another step forwards, mouthing the words of an ancient Chogoran invocation against the evils that come upon the cold winds by night. Renewed strength flooded his limbs as the words emboldened him. Faith, in the Emperor and the primarch, honoured be his name, welled up within his heart, saturating him with the fierce, warrior pride of his people. He redoubled his grip upon Moonfang’s worn leather haft, and planted his feet wide, in the ready stance of a warrior.

  ‘I come for you, Voldorius,’ he bellowed over the droning of the beast and the raging of the storm. ‘I come for your head!’

  An arc of fell lightning blasted the metal decking between them, casting the daemon prince’s face in a white, hellish glow.

  At the sight of that face, Kor’sarro’s heart filled with rage. The daemon’s mouth was a yawning chasm, ringed with a million lamprey teeth. Above the vile maw bulged two imbecilic eyes, which radiated not hatred, but unadulterated terror.

  Cold anger flooded Kor’sarro’s soul. The beast that stood before him was not Voldorius.

  ‘Lies!’ Kor’sarro bellowed, feeling the urge to abandon himself to a berserker rage. The bitterness and frustration of ten long years of hunting threatened to overwhelm him, to wash away his discipline and wisdom and leave only a core of unreasoning anger. The Stormseers of the White Scars cautioned against such a fate, and their words came to Kor’sarro even now, in the cold storm of his rage. Those who trod that path never returned, they said. Turn from the Emperor’s light, and you will know nothing but the darkness of an empty soul.

  The beast lurched forwards, its steps clumsy and uncoordinated. It raised its writhing daemon-blade high, and brought it downwards in a crude motion that bore no resemblance to the swordsmanship Kor’sarro knew the true Voldorius possessed. It leaned forwards, the balled fist of its left hand dropping to the ground to support its weight, its vile sucker-mouth opening still wider as it redoubled the mournful dirge.

  The thing’s foetid breath blasted him, but Kor’sarro stood firm against the barrage. In an instant, all of the terrible threat, all of the doom and damnation in that siren wail was dispelled. As if the scales were lifted from his eyes, Kor’sarro saw the truth of the thing before him. This was no being of fell power, but merely some vat-grown monstrosity or a mutant ripped apart and reassembled to give it the appearance of the fiend Voldorius.

  The reason why would have to wait, for the thing was rearing upwards, both arms raised to crash down upon Kor’sarro. There was no skill or art in the attack and Kor’sarro avoided it with contemptuous ease by sidestepping the powerful arms as they smashed into the deck where he had stood an instant before. The decking buckled where the impact hit home, the entire platform shaking violently beneath Kor’sarro’s feet. The thing roared in anger as it realised that its left fist was ensnared in twisted metal, and Kor’sarro saw his opening.

  ‘Vile as thou art,’ he spoke the ritual Chogoran words, ‘I condemn thee.’

  Moonfang swept downwards in a glittering arc, but an instant before the blade would have struck the beast’s neck, it freed its claw and staggered backwards. Instead of beheading the creature, the sword struck its left arm at the elbow, severing it with a jet of brackish, black blood.

  For a moment, Kor’sarro found he was blinded as the thing’s blood gushed over him, the vile liquid burning his eyes and flesh. Suddenly vulnerable, he threw himself across the decking sightlessly, hearing the rending of metal behind him as he moved.

  The beast’s dirge changed to a plaintive wailing, rising in pitch and volume. Kor’sarro wiped his gauntlet across his face, clearing his eyes of the thing’s stinking blood and blinking as his vision returned.

  The mutant was staggering backwards, the stump of its arm flailing back and forth as it continued to gush a fountain of dark, steaming liquid. With its every step, the metal decking buckled and shook, sections at its edge shaking loose to plummet to the ground far below.

  Pressing forwards again, Kor’sarro raised Moonfang high to parry a crude overhead blow from the beast’s writhing blade. The two weapons clashed with a titanic ringing of steel, and for a moment the two combatants were locked in a terrible contest of strength. The thing bore down with all its power, its vile, lamprey mouth rasping less than a metre from Kor’sarro’s face. Row upon row of jagged teeth filled his vision, and he put all of his strength into pushing the beast’s sword clear. With a final effort, the two sprung apart, but before the mutant could recover, Kor’sarro swung Moonfang about in a wide arc.

  The blade hissed as it tore through the mutant-thing’s midsection, scything through armour, then corded muscle, then innards. The bellowing was silenced as the beast’s internal organs were pulverised by the energies unleashed at the blade’s tip. Kor’sarro stepped neatly backwards as a tide of gore spilled out from the beast’s gut, great loops of black intestine thrashing and writhing as they spread
out across the decking.

  The bulging, imbecilic eyes went dead even as Kor’sarro watched, the life fading from them as the beast collapsed onto its knees. With a deafening crash that cracked the metal platform in two, it fell forwards, its great, black wings falling across its massive form as a death shroud.

  Kor’sarro drew in a great gulp of air, tasting the taint of burning upon the winds.

  ‘My khan!’ Kor’sarro’s comm-bead came to life. ‘Kor’sarro Khan, do you read me?’

  ‘I hear you, Brother Temu,’ Kor’sarro replied, scanning the complex below for any sign of his warriors. ‘Report.’

  ‘Lord of Heavens has detected a signal, my khan,’ Temu said, as the tower beneath Kor’sarro’s armoured feet shuddered violently and lurched to one side.

  ‘What kind of signal, Temu?’ Kor’sarro replied, suspicion rising within him.

  ‘The Techmarines cannot be certain, my khan, but they have detected an energy spike deep below the refinery–’

  ‘A command signal,’ Kor’sarro interjected, bile rising in his throat. The tower… the thing disguised as Voldorius…

  ‘Pull the company out, Temu, now,’ Kor’sarro bellowed, turning for the ladder. ‘We have blundered into another of his deceptions!’

  Even as he spoke, Kor’sarro fought for balance on the shaking tower. A deep vibration travelled up its length, and then Kor’sarro’s stomach was in his mouth as the tower dropped several metres and came to rest with a jarring impact. More detonations sounded from across the refinery, several of the mighty processing stacks dropping straight downwards, as if their foundations had been vaporised in an instant. Smoke and flame blossomed at the base of each, and within moments great gouts of liquid fire were belching into the air from a dozen ruptured promethium conduits.

  Voldorius had lured the Third Company into a trap, using his own followers and the altered mutant-thing as bait. Bitter rage welled up in Kor’sarro’s heart as he stood at the precipice looking down at the burning city-refinery. Yet, even consumed as he was by hatred of the vile one, he knew too that his warriors needed him. Kor’sarro had made an oath to the Great Khan himself that Voldorius would be slain by his hand. He stepped back from the platform’s edge as fragments of it shook loose and fell away. He made for the ladder, and with one last look at the slain mutant, began the climb down. He would not be claiming the thing’s head, for there was no honour in doing so.