The Unforgiven - Gav Thorpe Read online

  Remembering Tybalain’s demand that the leader of the group was to be taken alive, Annael slewed to a halt and dismounted. Corvus hammer in one hand, bolt pistol in the other, he advanced.

  The front hatch slammed open and a figure staggered out. A male in grey fatigues, some kind of bionic augmentation plugged into his left shoulder and neck. Obviously not the speaker on the vox-link. Annael fired and the bolt tore apart the traitor’s head.

  Annael heard the creak of another hatch and looked up as a figure emerged beside the turret. She was tall, muscles bulging with stimulants, white hair cropped to a peak. There was a vox-unit implanted in her face, replacing the cheek and ear, a short aerial jutting back from the cranial adaptation. Her torso was protected by a hauberk of overlapping black scales, heavy gauntlets with spiked knuckles on her fists, her feet shod in knee-length boots with metal banding and thick buckles down the side.

  Neira Kamata hissed and leapt at Annael from the roof of the transport.

  He moved back a step and swung his corvus hammer, using the haft as a weapon. It caught the descending traitor in the chest and flung her against the side of the transport with a loud clang. Dazed, she fell forward, into Annael’s rising boot. The cyber-implant shattered as she flew back again, crashing into the armoured vehicle. She slumped into the dirt, barely conscious.

  Annael noticed the growl of engines and turned to see the others slowing to a stop just a few metres away. Tybalain was quickly off his steed. Annael stepped back and allowed the Huntmaster to see the prisoner.

  ‘Neira Kamata, as you requested, brother-sergeant.’

  Tybalain hauled the woman to her feet. She spat blood across the face of his helm and was thrust hard against the transport as punishment.

  ‘Die, Imperial dogs! I will tell you nothing!’

  Tybalain holstered his pistol and grabbed Kamata’s head in one hand. His fingers squeezed and she screamed.

  ‘Far stronger foes than you have told us everything, Kamata. Your lord is dead, your army scattered, your fleet destroyed. All you can hope for is swift release.’ Tybalain moved his grip, taking his captive’s wrist in his gauntlet. Again he applied just the right amount of pressure and elicited a shriek of pain. ‘Tell me where you have the captive and you will endure no more.’

  Kamata looked at him and Annael could already see the defeat in her eyes. She sagged, eyes downward.

  ‘I never had him,’ she confessed.

  ‘I thought as much,’ said Calatus.

  The prisoner looked over at him and grinned savagely, bloodied teeth on display.

  ‘I said I did not have him. I do not know where he is, but my comrades will make him pay in suffering for the affront he has caused them. If the Dark Angels do not leave Tharsis within the hour, his remains will be returned to you.’

  ‘Where is he?’ growled Tybalain. Bones cracked in Kamata’s wrist. She drew in a snarling breath.

  ‘In the city,’ she gasped. ‘I don’t know where. Safe. Hidden.’

  There was truth as well as pain in her gaze. Tybalain nodded and extended his arm, pushing her against the hull of the vehicle, hand plunging through breastbone and internal organs. With a last wheeze, the traitor died. The Huntmaster ripped free his bloodied hand and let her body fall to the ground.

  ‘She believed there is a hostage,’ said Calatus. ‘There could be some truth to the story.’

  Annael looked down at Kamata’s corpse and for the first time in a long while he wondered who she had been. Normally he would not spare a second thought for the lives of traitors, but there had been something about her honest defiance that had struck him. Had she willingly joined forces with the rebels or been lured into servitude with false promises? She had clearly lied about being the new commander of the traitor army. An act of arrogance or desperation? Kamata had capitulated easily enough to Tybalain’s demands, it was likely she had been grasping for hope from the moment the Dark Angels had struck.

  ‘She was telling the truth, for sure,’ he said. ‘She hoped that we already knew about the hostage and was relying on us believing that she had him.’

  ‘She was mistaken,’ said Calatus. ‘Fatally so.’

  ‘A sentence merely commuted since she sided with anti-Imperial elements,’ said Nerean. ‘Justice has been served, vengeance has been enacted.’

  ‘But what of the possible hostage?’ said Annael.

  ‘A mystery easily solved,’ said Tybalain. He returned to his bike and gestured for the others to mount their steeds. When they had done so, Tybalain wheeled away from the wreck of the transport and headed back towards the highway depot.

  ‘Sword Four, Land Speeders, status report,’ the Huntmaster transmitted.

  ‘All enemy neutralised. Local forces are moving forward to secure the shipping yard.’ There was a pause and a touch of humour entered Casamir’s tone. ‘What’s left of it.’

  As the squadron emerged from the woods, Annael saw several columns of smoke rising from the remains of the cargo station. Several buildings had been levelled in their entirety and others were in flames. Tharsian infantry were advancing, supported by their armoured vehicles, but Annael knew that if Casamir reported that all enemies were dead, it was definitely so.

  ‘We shall uncover the nature of this hostage story, one way or the other,’ said Tybalain. The vox signal wavered as he routed his transmission through his steed’s systems to contact one of the strategion technicians on board the Implacable Justice. ‘This is Huntmaster Tybalain. I need a full force casualty notice, with reference to all lost personnel.’

  ‘Request received, Huntmaster. Compiling report.’ There was a pause while the information was collated from the battleforce data-stream. The Black Knights reached the highway and roared past the slowly moving armoured vehicles of the Tharsians, only stopping when they had moved half a kilometre beyond the burning waystation. Another minute passed before the strategion sent his reply. ‘Combined losses are seven Second Company battle-brothers killed in action, thirteen attended by apothecarion personnel. First Company casualties are as follows. Three slain. Two in apothecarion review.’

  ‘Report received, Implacable Justice.’ Tybalain turned in his saddle and looked at the rest of the squad. ‘No hostage. The whole story was a lie.’

  ‘That seems strange,’ said Annael.

  ‘Stranger than one of our brothers being taken alive?’ said Calatus. ‘I know which reality I think the more credible.’

  ‘The woman, Kamata, believed there was a hostage. We all saw it. Which means that someone else told her there was a hostage. What purpose does such a falsehood achieve? Why would anyone perpetrate such a mistruth to their allies?’

  The others were silent for a while, and Annael realised the awkward nature of the topic he was delving into. As Black Knights, they were privy to secrets from the history of the Dark Angels that had not been revealed even to other members of the Ravenwing. The majority of the battle-brothers were not even aware of the existence of the Fallen and their part in assisting Horus in the destruction of ancient Caliban.

  ‘Myriad are the deceptions of the enemy,’ Nerean said eventually. ‘If we were to expend thought in unravelling such mysteries we would be philosophers, not warriors. There are few enough hours in each day as it is, without pondering the imponderable.’

  ‘I think Brother Annael has a point,’ said Calatus. ‘Another thought occurs, also. We reported Sabrael dead, but as yet no body has been recovered. Perhaps there are others that were lost in the fighting, their demise assumed rather than confirmed.’

  ‘A possibility,’ conceded Tybalain. Again the vox crackled as the Huntmaster boosted his signal. ‘Implacable Justice, casualty report clarification needed. How many brothers killed in action have been visually or telemetrically verified?’

  ‘That will take some time to clarify, Huntmaster. We will have to contact the reporting
sergeants and analyse the tactical data-stream.’

  ‘I am a patient man,’ replied Tybalain.

  ‘Of course, Huntmaster. Apologies if I implied to the contrary. I will assemble the report for you as swiftly as possible.’

  While they waited, Annael watched the Tharsians taking possession of the half-ruined marshalling yard. Sword Four had departed to continue its air cover while the Ravenwing Land Speeders buzzed back and forth above the local troops, guns at the ready to provide immediate overwhelming firepower.

  There had been little contact between the armoured column and the Black Knights, and Annael wondered what the Tharsians thought of their superhuman allies. From their point of view it might seem as though the Dark Angels had brought this war upon their world, rather than arriving at an opportune time to help in its defence. Annael knew little of the strategy involved, but there had to be good reason Grand Masters Belial and Sammael had brought the task force here for the timely intervention. Doubtless it was intelligence gathered at the horrific daemon world, or perhaps even from the Fallen warrior captured by Sammael’s company on Thyestes.

  It gave Annael some extra satisfaction to think that the latter might be the case. It was proof of the just cause of the Hunt. Capturing the Traitor Space Marine on Thyestes might have led to preventing the devastation of Tharsis. The Tharsians could never know the truth of how the Dark Angels had arrived at such a timely moment, that would be disastrous, but to return to a world that had been so ravaged by the crimes of one of the Fallen and see it guarded safe against the violent intentions of another…

  It almost made the disappointment of the failings at Piscina bearable.

  Annael’s downward turn of thought was interrupted by a reply from the technician in contact with Tybalain.

  ‘Huntmaster, four casualties reported as killed in action are as yet unconfirmed,’ said the serf. ‘Brother Sabrael of your squadron, along with Brothers Orius and Garbadon, and Sergeant Polemetus of the First Company.’

  ‘Gratitude, Implacable Justice. Transfer last known locations of the brothers and their beacon telemetry frequencies.’ Tybalain disconnected from the long-range broadcast and addressed his companions. ‘We shall see if Annael and Calatus are correct, and one of our missing brothers has been taken by the enemy. Brother Casamir, rendezvous at my position and relinquish your Land Speeder. Annael, you are coming with me. Let us see if you remember your gunnery training.’

  Teleport Strike

  The sensorium was alive with signals from the instant Belial materialised aboard the enemy ship. The white flare from the containment fields of three plasma reactors almost blotted out every other signature in the vicinity. Against this glare he could dimly perceive hundreds of life signs. The sensorium took several seconds to adjust to the proximity to the ship’s reactors and engines, during which time Belial surveyed his surroundings by more conventional means.

  The Grand Master and his Deathwing Knights had landed exactly where he had chosen, in a broad, high gallery that ran for several hundred metres between the port and starboard engine decks and intersected ahead with the reactor chambers. Everything was bathed in an orange glow from battle lighting.

  The plain metal decking and bulkheads were in considerable disrepair, corrosion and damage evident wherever he looked. Through the wide archways that ran the length of the corridor he could see banks of monitoring servitors – shrivelled half-humans wired into the myriad systems of the heavy cruiser’s engines.

  The sensorium gained some clarity, dimming the signal from the plasma shields so that Belial could see the crew in more detail. The rows of servitors were marked with lines of grey dots, stretching for two hundred metres behind him and three decks above and below. There were brighter spots from overseers and tech-priests walking the ranks, currently heedless of the enemy that had just arrived on their ship.

  ‘Onward to the objective,’ Belial told his warriors, pointing his sword at the two sets of high doors that ended the large passage. ‘Kill everyone we encounter.’

  The sensorium picked up a fresh spike of energy, a dozen decks above and to starboard. Another followed to port. These were the Deathwing squads tasked with inflicting as much damage as they could to the gun decks. A third and a fourth would be targeting the void shield generators above the plasma chambers, but it would be another half a minute before the teleporters had recharged.

  A siren announced that the crew of the flagship had been alerted to the presence of intruders. A reedy voice barked orders over an address system, in some argot that Belial did not recognise. He assumed it was from the pirates that made up the bulk of the fleet, though part of him wondered if the language had a darker origin, somehow connected to the daemons of Ulthor. There seemed no sign of obvious Chaos infestation, but he was prepared for the worst.

  The doors shattered beneath the blows of Barzareon and Deralus’s maces, revealing a tight knot of corridors and winding stairways around two open elevator shafts. Belial led the squad on, the body lamps of the Terminator suits bathing the confines of the ship in pale fluorescence.

  Suddenly a flood of signals boiled towards their position from the decks above and below, streaming along the stairwells like ants.

  ‘Barzareon, Galbarad, rear defence.’

  The two Knights peeled away from the advance and turned back. At the edge of his vision Belial could see the first of the ship’s crew coming into view through Barzareon’s link. They wore grimy grey, blue or green coveralls, barefooted. He saw only men, heads shaven to the scalp, red tattoos of interlocking circles marking the exposed skin.

  They were poorly armed, most with nothing more than lengths of pipe and tools to wield, a few with long, axe-headed boarding gaffs that they could barely carry. Some had knives, either crude but properly-fashioned daggers or sharpened splinters of metal with rag-woven handles. All were emaciated from lack of food, eyes sunken and dark, skin jaundiced.

  The moment the crew at the front of the wave laid eyes upon their foes, their impetus faltered. Seeing the armour-clad giants they had been sent to confront, the determination in their eyes quickly became desperation. The patter of feet on the metal grille of the deck slowed, and some tried to turn and move back but found their path blocked by those behind.

  From Galbarad’s point of view an overseer with a crackling electrowhip could be seen behind the first few dozen indentured crewmen. He snarled something, trying to urge on his reluctant charges with snaps of the whip.

  Barzareon did not wait for his foes, but ploughed forward, his mace smashing through a handful of bodies with one sweep. The protestations of the slaves became panicked screams as the Deathwing Knight carried on, pushing through the mass of frantic humanity, pulping their bodies underfoot, his shield crushing them against the walls of the corridor while his mace obliterated anything it touched.

  There was little enough for Galbarad to do except follow in his battle-brother’s wake, ready to exterminate any crewman fortunate to survive the onslaught.

  Belial’s attention was drawn back to closer matters when he reached a wide ferrocrete stair that led down to the causeway running around the reactor chambers. A fusillade of las-bolts and shotgun rounds met his descent, flickering and ricocheting harmlessly from his warsuit.

  His storm bolter barked in reply, the first salvo of rounds cutting down three foes. These were better equipped than the slave-fodder that had come up from the depths, formed into coherent groups around heretic tech-priests wearing stained red robes. The soldiers wore scarlet like their masters, their padded jerkins and scaled kilts in contrast to black open-faced helms, steel-banded knee-high boots and gloves that glinted with spikes on the knuckles. The crewmen stood and knelt along the curving corridor, using girders and columns as cover. Some bore chainswords, perhaps as a badge of rank, and a few had gilded stripes on their helms, which Belial took to mean they were deck officers of some type.

&nb
sp; The corridors opened out into a massive domed space at least a hundred and fifty metres across. In the circle formed by the surrounding raised platform of decking, the three reactors were arranged in a triangle, heavily reinforced egg-like structures whose top thirds were visible from this level. Several kilometres of cabling and pipes looped and coiled around the power plant and like the approaches to the chamber there were signs of poor maintenance everywhere. Exposed wiring let loose fountains of sparks and leaking connectors on coolant pipes and heat exchanges vented icy vapour and steam.

  The energy field projected from the Grand Master’s iron halo flared into life as another torrent of fire erupted around him. Zandorael moved past the Grand Master as Belial opened fire again, the stream of bolts ripping into a group of foes on the leftward curve of the causeway. Cragarion and Deralus followed just behind their master, shields lifted to deflect the incoming fire.

  Belial continued firing to the left while the Knights advanced to the right. The tech-priests were not so brutal, or perhaps unthinking, as the slavemaster had been, and the ring of red collapsed back from the advancing Terminators, still firing.

  Belial reached the bottom of the steps. He adjusted his focus to see what was happening with the rearguard, assuring himself that Galbarad and Barzareon had little to concern them. The corridor was awash with blood, choked with the bodies of slain deck-workers. Of the overseer there was no sign, his whip lost in the gory mass. Galbarad glanced across to his companion and for several seconds Belial could see Barzareon, the off-white of his armour almost lost beneath a sheen of crimson.

  The flagship suddenly thundered, the dome overhead buckling to send slivers of metal and ferrocrete raining down on the exposed reactors. Although the Terminators were unaffected, the ship’s crew were rocked by the impact, some of them losing their footing as they scrambled away from Zandorael and his companions.

  ‘Penitent Warrior,’ Belial snapped into the vox. ‘Cease firing at the aft section. Reactors are highly unstable. I am standing right next to them!’