Feat of Iron - Nick Kyme Read online

  He clutched his rebellious wrist, held it with his other hand whilst the alien laughter grew into a tinnitus drone. Sweat beaded his face as the muscles in his neck and shoulder bunched with the effort of trying to restrain the foreign limb that was trying to kill him.

  Slain by his own hand, there was no honour in that. It was a despicable death, and the eldar looking on knew it.

  ‘Throne…’ he gasped. Even the squeal of the bionics sounded different, belligerent somehow.

  Fight it! he urged, but the link between machine and flesh was far from symbiotic. One was almost regarded as a contagion to the detriment of the other, but now that boon had rebelled and become a curse.

  The actinic smell of scorched metal filled his rebreather as the energised blade tips touched the edge of his gorget. Santar estimated it would take a single, determined thrust to pierce the armour and tear open his neck. At most he had seconds.

  Santar was hoarse from his roared defiance but his struggles were lessening.

  He closed his eyes and his voice shrank to a whisper in the face of the inevitable.

  ‘Primarch…’

  Ferrus was alone; there was only him and the storm. He had since donned his war-helm but saw no evidence of his Legion on the retinal display, so did not waste his time calling out to them. The last contact he’d had was from Gabriel Santar, a desperate plea for them to stay together.

  Onwards, drive onwards.

  The compulsion was too strong to resist. They were deep into it now. Whatever horror this desert was harbouring, whatever cruel truth he had been summoned here to witness, he could no longer deny it.

  This was no ordinary storm. Too redolent with the fabric of his dreams, it was awash with metaphors from his violent past and the figurative snares of his possible futures. He heard voices on the scything wind but no sounds of battle, no war cries.

  I expected a battle.

  Ferrus could not discern their meaning but sensed their words were important.

  The comm-feed was down. Not even static haunted its channels. He accepted that too, and kept moving. Whatever this was, whatever destiny or sliver of fate had delivered him here, he would meet it head-on.

  Eyes… slits like those of a serpent, watch me. I can hear the sibilance of its tongue like a knife on the breeze. It is the same knife I feel resting against my throat.

  A memory surfaced.

  After leaving the landship, he had spoken to Mortarion again, or rather his brother had spoken to him. The other primarch had left him with a barb that Ferrus could not easily forget or silence.

  If you are not strong enough, he had said. If you cannot finish it alone…

  ‘Help me?’ he roared into the uncaring storm. The wind was mocking in reply. ‘I need no help.’ He laughed, a cruel and terrible sound. ‘I am strong. I am the Gorgon.’

  Ferrus was running, though he couldn’t remember quickening his pace so drastically and without cause. But he ran as hard as his limbs would allow. The darkness of the sand plain only seemed to lengthen as earth and sky merged into one.

  ‘You cannot help me,’ he raged as a sensation of flying then falling overtook him.

  And in a much quieter voice, lost to his subconscious, ‘…no one can.’

  Two legionaries stood out on the golden sand bank, staring into a pall of darkness.

  In front of them, the black cloud surrounded the Morlocks like ink on water.

  Bion Henricos could scarcely believe what his eyes were telling him and wondered if his augmetically enhanced brethren were seeing the same.

  ‘What is that?’

  Brother Tarkan widened the aperture of his bionic eye, enhancing its focus with minute movements of his facial muscles. Every adjustment produced the same result.

  ‘Inconclusive.’

  ‘Nothing natural,’ Henricos replied, rising from a crouched position.

  Until he regrouped with Captain Meduson, one half of the battalion was his. Whatever the blackness was in front of them, he would have to deal with it on his own. He had tried opening the feed, but the link was foiled by whatever psy-storm was boiling in the desert basin.

  ‘It has claws, brother-sergeant,’ said Tarkan.

  Two hundred and fifty legionaries, just a portion of the Iron Tenth, awaited Henricos’s command. Bolter-armed and full of fury, yet here they were, stopped in their iron tracks by the dark. A pity they did not have any jetbike divisions to circumvent the storm and assess it more fully. Not for the first time, Henricos considered the lack of tactical flexibility in the Legion.

  ‘That it does,’ he said, scanning the horizon and the pillared rocks overlooking the shadow-choked valley. He was close enough to touch it and reached out with his iron hand. A tendril of swirling sand tinked harmlessly against the metal and as Henricos lifted his gaze he found what he was searching for above the storm. It orchestrated the darkness, a tall, thin figure in dun-coloured robes. It carried a witching stave, carved with alien runes and inlaid gemstones.

  ‘Brother Tarkan,’ he said in a grating cadence, thick with promised retribution, ‘remove that stain.’

  Tarkan was a sniper, part of one of several such squads in the Tenth, and he handled his long-barrelled rifle with a marksman’s grace. It was fashioned for his hands and carried a scope-sight that would connect to his bionic eye and forge an infallible link between firer and target.

  Looking down the scope, Tarkan lined the green crosshair over the witch’s helmeted head and fired. The expulsion of the shell rocked the weapon but Tarkan had compensated for that already. Still tracking through the scope, he grinned with mirthless satisfaction as the alien’s cranium burst open and it fell from the pillar without a head or much of its upper torso.

  He slung the rifle onto his back.

  ‘Target eliminated, brother-sergeant.’

  Henricos raised his fist and the rest of the half-battalion marched onto the bank.

  There was no sense in holding back at this point.

  ‘Forward, in the name of the Gorgon.’

  Together two hundred and fifty warriors waded into the dissipating storm.

  Something repelled Henricos as he entered the shadow. It was a stiffening of the mechanisms in his bionic hand, clenching it into a fist when he desired it to be loose and ready to unsheathe his blade. He forced it open as he closed on the stricken Morlocks, unclear as to its malfunction, and halted when he saw what they were doing to one another.

  One legionary had his own eviscerator lodged in his armoured chest. The teeth were red and churning. With one hand he was trying to prevent the blade from sinking deeper, but the cybernetic one was pushing it farther into him. Another lay prone and unmoving, his helmet staved in by his own power-maul. Crimson fluid was leaking from the cracks and pooled around his head. Some staggered, half-blind, or were rooted by bionic legs that would not function. Bionic hands wrapped themselves around throats of flesh and choked the life from their bearers. Grisly and terrifying, the evidence of machine-carnage was everywhere.

  The virtue of the Iron Hands’ creed was being turned against them.

  Henricos’s momentary pause was born out of self-preservation for his half of the battalion and a desire not to make a grievous situation worse, but whatever malady was afflicting the Morlocks hadn’t seized the Iron Tenth yet.

  ‘Captain!’ Henricos barged into the storm with renewed vigour. Behind him, his brothers fanned out, interceding where they could, stopping the self-mutilation from escalating any further than it already had.

  ‘I see it!’ Meduson replied. ‘By the Emperor’s sword, I see it… Bring them down, brother. Save them from themselves if you can.’

  The link went dead, the reprieve in communication only fleeting, just as Desaan blundered into Henricos’s eye line.

  A jagged combat blade was gripped in the captain’s cybernetic hand as he wrestled with some unseen assailant that was trying to ram it into his face.

  Henricos reached him as the monomolecular knife wa
s about to pierce flesh.

  His iron fingers clenched around Desaan’s wrist, holding it steady.

  ‘Hold on, brother!’ he cried, trying to bring the weapon under his control. As he struggled, Henricos saw faces inside the darkness. They were swift and incorporeal, like snatches of freezing fog given spectral form. A line of bolter fire chased one but the ghost dissipated before it could connect. A mocking, howling chorus followed that set the sergeant’s teeth on edge.

  Desaan’s voice was pained. ‘Bion, is that you? I cannot see, brother.’

  His visor was dark, like an iron blindfold wrapped around his eyes.

  ‘Fight it, brother-captain!’ Henricos urged, but Desaan’s bionic strength was incredible. Even together they were losing and the blade slipped a little closer, piercing flesh.

  ‘Gutted by my own combat blade,’ said Desaan with a pained grimace. ‘Not as glorious as I’d hoped.’

  ‘You’re not dead yet,’ promised Henricos. ‘Lean back…’

  Letting go of Desaan’s arm, he wrenched out his Medusan steel-edge and fed power into the blade. It took several seconds longer to draw than it should have, his iron hand resisting him.

  Soon it will take us too.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What I must.’ The shriek of hewn metal eclipsed the howling as Henricos began sawing off the captain’s forearm.

  As well as he could, Desaan tried to stand his ground and be still.

  ‘If you slip…’ he growled, teeth clenched.

  ‘You’ll lose your head,’ answered Henricos and kept cutting.

  Around them, the ghosts were receding, fading along with the storm. So too was the sorcerous grip on the Iron Hands’ cybernetics.

  The last of the cabling and mech-servos came away in a welter of oil and sparks, leaving just the armoured vambrace housing. Beaded with nervous sweat, Henricos pulled up short and the two Iron Hands exhaled in unison.

  Stuttering bolter bursts, increasingly more spread out with every passing moment, sounded on the breeze. The storm was dying and the ghosts were gone. Function returned to the stricken Morlocks but the cost revealed by the settling of the sand was dear.

  Several dead Cataphractii lay on the ground, impaled on their own blades or bludgeoned by their own mauls. At least three others were slain to the wraith-warriors. Many more were injured.

  Sight returning, Desaan winced at his sawn-off limb but gave nodded thanks to the sergeant.

  ‘Judgement of my humours is not always my strongest attribute.’

  ‘You spoke your mind, I spoke mine. No more needs to be said.’

  They each gave a cursory salute and the matter was settled.

  Desaan nodded again, and then looked around.

  Of the enemy casualties, there was no sign.

  ‘Was a battle even fought here?’ asked Meduson as he regrouped the Iron Tenth.

  ‘I struck one that could not have lived,’ offered Desaan.

  ‘As did I. Its head left its body,’ said Tarkan as he joined them.

  Desaan scowled. ‘Even their dead are craven. They are all gone.’

  Further discussion was stalled as a figure emerged from the dissipating darkness. He bore a brutal wound across his gorget and left pauldron, gouges that would have taken his head had they been a centimetre closer to his sternum. The four grooves were deep, scored by an energy weapon.

  ‘So is the primarch,’ said Gabriel Santar. ‘Lord Manus is missing.’

  WILL OF IRON

  ‘He could not have fallen.’

  Meduson’s tone carried a trace of doubt that made Santar’s jaw clench.

  ‘Stabbed in the back…’ Desaan muttered. They had all been horrifically exposed in the valley, but he dismissed the notion immediately.

  ‘The Gorgon is unkillable,’ he declared in a louder voice. ‘No treacherous coward’s blade could even pierce his skin. It’s impossible.’

  ‘Then where is he?’ asked Meduson.

  Though it had returned to its natural hue and geography, the desert valley was still rife with chasms, crags and scattered rocks. Even a cursory appraisal revealed over two dozen possible areas where the primarch could have fallen foul of enemy treachery.

  Desaan found he could not answer.

  Santar followed his gaze, and opened a comm-feed channel. Surely nothing as mundane as a pitfall could have undone the Gorgon.

  ‘Ironwrought?’

  Ruuman was still on the ridgeline, slowly directing his heavy divisions towards the basin now that overwatch was no longer needed.

  ‘There was nothing to be seen, first captain. Nor could I draw a bead on your spectral enemies,’ he admitted ruefully.

  ‘And now?’ asked Santar, as the rest of the officer cadre clustered around him listened.

  ‘A vast and golden plain, but no obvious sign of our primarch. Or his passing.’

  Santar cut the feed. His face was set like scoured iron.

  ‘Lord Manus is unkillable,’ he asserted with a glance at Desaan, ‘but I won’t abandon him. If the eldar do have him, if they have somehow ensnared him, then I pity the fools. They clasp a molten blade with bare flesh and will burn for it.’

  His glare found Meduson.

  ‘Captain, you have command of the battalions. Take them to the final node location and confirm its presence. I will remain with fifty warriors to commence a search for our liege-lord.’

  Meduson said, ‘We could still consolidate, await the Army divisions and press them into the search?’

  Santar was emphatic. ‘No. If they reach us then I’ll use them accordingly. Otherwise, I want you to follow Lord Manus’s orders and find the node.’

  Nodding, Meduson went to gather the Legion as Santar drew close to his fellow captain and second.

  ‘Get me fifty of our very best. Bring Tarkan and his snipers, Henricos too. The others go with Meduson under his orders until I return. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, first captain.’

  Desaan lingered.

  ‘Is there something I have missed, brother-captain?’ asked Santar.

  ‘Where is he, Gabriel?’

  As the rest of the legionaries were mobilising, Santar looked around at the endless desert.

  ‘Out there, I hope.’

  ‘And if he is not?’

  ‘Then I’ll trust that our lord can find his way out of whatever trouble has befallen him. You should do the same.’

  ‘It was the storm, Gabriel. That was no natural thing we fought. There are unseen enemies abroad on the sand.’

  ‘The world around us is changing, Vaakal. You and I have seen it.’

  ‘Some things should be left to the darkness. I do not look forward to their return.’

  Santar’s silence suggested he agreed.

  The world, the entire galaxy, was changing. They felt it, all the Legiones Astartes did. Santar wondered whether that was why the Emperor had returned to Terra. He wondered what that meant for all their futures. Even his favoured sons did not know and Gabriel saw the trauma that had caused echoed in his own father.

  Waiting for Desaan who had gone to assemble the search party, he touched the self-inflicted gouges on his war-plate and had time enough to consider the Iron Hands’ reliance on bionics. Whoever these foes were, they knew the Legion’s strengths and how to undo them. Flesh and iron was a potent fusion but as with any alloy, the balance had to be right to achieve perfect forging. Their metal felt flawed at that moment. Perhaps Meduson had been right about consolidation.

  It didn’t matter now. They were stretched, but would overcome. That was the Iron Hands’ way.

  Fifty legionaries were standing in front of him, eager to act, and he met their gaze.

  Someone or something had taken the primarch. Santar needed to know where and he needed to know why. And if he had to kill every xenos that cowered under the rocks of the entire desert he would.

  ‘Quadrant by quadrant,’ he growled. ‘Leave no stone, brothers. You are the primarch’s own
praetorians. Act like it. Find him.’

  Ferrus Manus did not feel lost, yet this place was unfamiliar to him.

  It was a cavern, a vast and echoing space that went on into infinite darkness. A long, jagging scar split the vaulted ceiling above and he assumed he had fallen into an unseen chasm in the desert.

  Wan sunlight permeated through the crack, but failed to leaven the gloom.

  He had tried several times to raise the Morlocks, but the comm-feed was dead. Not even static. The retinal lenses offered little, coming back with a series of blank returns, so he removed his battle-helm.

  ‘How deep am I?’ he wondered out loud. There was no echo to the sound, despite the vastness of the cavern. The air was fresh and cool. He felt it against his skin like a caress, but there was the reek of oil and something else… perfume on the breeze. The scent was cloying, utterly anathema to what he was used to. It was decadence and hedonism; as far from solidity and the discipline of function as one could reach.

  Slowly, more details of his surroundings resolved as his enhanced sight caught up to his other senses. There were columns, the faded remnants of carved frescoes and sweeping triumphal arches rendered from the rock. He saw monolithic statuary. The subjects were all human but he did not recognise either their faces or their attire. The stone strangers glared at him from on high through time-ravaged features. One, a noble warrior bereft of his head, pointed down at him with an accusing finger.

  ‘I didn’t cut your neck, brother,’ Ferrus told him and started to walk.

  Like his voice, Ferrus’s footsteps did not echo and he assumed it was some quirk of geology. Ferrus had spent some time with his brother Vulkan who had illuminated him, oft at length, about the virtues and variances of earth and stone.

  ‘Show me how to craft it into something with function and purpose,’ he had replied, much to the other primarch’s chagrin. Otherwise, what’s the point?