Sons of Wrath - Andy Smillie Read online

  Nuriel tensed as the sound came again, his eyes searching for its source. It sounded again, clearer this time. A shrill squawking, the hateful scream of an incensed avian creature. He looked to the base of the gleaming needle as a pall of darkness formed. It spread out as the sound intensified, growing larger, speeding towards Nuriel.

  Pushing up to a crouch, Nuriel reached down and took up a fragment of bone in each hand. At that moment he would have traded a limb for the reassuring weight of his force blade, but he had killed with less and he would do so again.

  The darkness screeched and drove towards him in a final surge.

  Nuriel roared.

  The pall burst before him like black glass shattered by a hammer blow. The shards spun away, striking the ground to coalesce into blackened humanoids. Nuriel pushed to the balls of his feet, spreading his arms and shifting his gaze from one humanoid to another. There were six of them. Each was head and shoulders taller than he. Crystalline feathers covered their body like armour, and their arms ended in barbed talons. Save for their faces, they were the colour of darkness, a shade of black reserved for the emptiness of the void. Their faces were blank orbs that shone with the same radiance as the tower. Nuriel felt a wave of revulsion ripple through his core; rarely had light heralded so little hope.

  The humanoids attacked.

  Nuriel charged.

  He sprinted towards the one nearest him, knowing his only hope was to break through the cordon, to smash one apart in quick order and turn around in time to face the others.

  The humanoid met him head on.

  Nuriel drove his fists out in front of his chest, raising his elbows to guard against a counterstrike, and speared the shards of bone into the humanoid’s breast. His attack met no resistance, not the snap of armour or the reluctant yielding of flesh. Nuriel found himself falling, tumbling forwards. He dropped into a roll, rising in time to parry a talon arcing towards his head. Snarling, he pushed up, throwing his weight into a right cross. He connected with the thing’s face with enough force to shatter a bulkhead. The glowing orb sparked and crackled, and the humanoid vanished, reappearing on Nuriel’s flank.

  Nuriel cast his gaze around. The others were almost on top of him. Though the effort pierced his skull like a hot iron, Nuriel summoned his gifts, focusing his will into a bolt of energy and releasing it towards the humanoid. It broke apart under the blast, fracturing into dark shards. Nuriel let his head drop, fighting the urge to submit as the shards drifted on the wind, coalescing back into a whole.

  ‘Die!’ he cried out in frustration, and attacked. Rage was all he had left, all that would see him through. It lent power to his limbs and strength to his blows. He attacked and attacked, fighting in vain until he tired. The humanoids had continued to slip around him, insubstantial as ghosts. Their talons peeled him open, cutting him until his flesh was ragged and hung from his body in torn strips.

  Breathless, near death, Nuriel collapsed to the ground.

  ‘It is the oldest adage, is it not, Librarian? That all warfare is based on deception.’

  Nuriel looked up to see the Warrior standing over him, his blade raised defensively. Like Nuriel, the Warrior was devoid of his armour, but his skin was the same blood-red as his war-plate had been, and the slabs of muscle crowding his limbs seemed harder than any ceramite.

  ‘You…’ was all Nuriel could manage.

  The Warrior pivoted, bringing his blade round and down in a wide arc that bisected one of the humanoids. He darted forwards, delivering another cut that tore apart the thing even as it tried to reform.

  ‘They would have you believe them at your front, only to stab you in the back.’ The Warrior turned, slicing a talon off as it reached for his throat. ‘Yet they are not even behind you. Theirs is a far cleverer deception.’ He pulled a dagger from the hilt of his blade and threw it into the distance. The humanoids closest to him exploded in shrill torment.

  Nuriel heard a wet cry and a body slump to the ground. ‘How…?’

  ‘Do not look with your eyes, Nuriel. You were given gifts for a reason.’

  Nuriel clenched his fist against the pain wracking his body and focused his mind, casting his senses around him. The Warrior had been right. The dark humanoids were nothing but projections, psychic apparitions conjured by a coven of humans stood in the near distance. ‘Treacherous curs,’ Nuriel cursed, and got to his feet. They would hide in the darkness of the world no more.

  ‘Take my blade. It will replenish you.’

  He caught the Warrior’s blade in a two-handed grip, feeling its power embolden him, and charged towards the psykers. The humanoids moved to intercept him, and he crashed through them and came face to face with one of the human puppeteers. The man was shrivelled, a shrinking wretch garbed in sodden robes marked by a burning tree. Nuriel killed him with a stroke of his blade, separating his torso from his legs. The sword sang as it tasted blood, and Nuriel grimaced as he felt his wounds knit together.

  He killed the second a moment later, cutting his head from his shoulders. The sword sang again, and his muscles felt refreshed, his bones hardened. The third human broke into a run, dying as Nuriel plunged the blade through his spine. His life granted the Librarian his armour. Re-clad in his battleplate, Nuriel drove the sword into the earth and butchered the final two psykers with his hands.

  ‘It is done.’ The Warrior retrieved his blade, and gestured to the glimmering needle-tower.

  Nuriel pulled his hand from a psyker’s gut and glanced up. The tower detonated, exploding in shattering brilliance, erupting in a wave of light that rolled across the land. Nuriel watched as the tide scoured away the darkness and bore down on him like vengeful fire. Closing his eyes, he braced himself.

  ‘Librarian, do you need aid?’

  Nuriel opened his eyes on Brother Sylol, his black gauntlet outstretched.

  Defeat stared at Ronja from every viewer, occulus and hololith on the Victus’s bridge. The Flesh Tearers were losing.

  The Merciless was dead. Sustained lance fire had torn open its belly, its innards gutted by bombardment fire. The Butcher too had fallen silent, reduced to a drifting hulk. Engine plasma bled from its mortal wounds, seeping into the void to leave a trail of azure in its wake. Close-range fire ravaged the Shield of Baal, cutting deep scars in its flanks. A glancing torpedo strike broke apart the ship’s prow armour, ruining its ablative plating.

  ‘Wrath of the Throne!’ Ronja cursed as the Victus trembled under another assault. The battle-barge’s shields were moments from failing. Breaches had opened across the ship’s hide in a dozen places. Air roared from barren decks into the void.

  She risked a glance at Amit. The Flesh Tearer hadn’t moved throughout the engagement. He’d remained still, his eyes fixed on the occulus, his grip tight on the rail bordering the command platform. She couldn’t imagine what was going through his head, but the twitch at the edge of his eye did not speak of an easy mind.

  ‘Have we killed any of them?’ Ronja asked, directing the question at no one in particular. She touched a hand to her temple, struggling to quiet the Victus’s machine-spirit. Its frustration was as palpable as the deck shuddering underfoot. Time and again its weapons had locked on to the Zurconian vessels, firing with all the anger the ancient vessel could muster, only to hit nothing. The accursed Zurconians seemed to displace out of harm’s way before reappearing and launching their own, perfectly angled attack.

  ‘Two of their warships are showing heavy damage. A further warship and four of the smaller craft have been crippled,’ her aide, Bohdan, answered.

  Lucky shots, all. Ronja’s face twisted in self-loathing. Luck was the crutch of the weak. It was not how she won wars. They had been forced to fire blind. Unleashing salvo upon salvo into the void in the hope of hitting something, anything. Hope… The sentiment stung her even as it fuelled her. If they could silence another warship, perhaps two, then
the battle might yet swing in their favour. ‘Helmsman, put our flank to the nearest moon. Limit their arc of…’ Ronja trailed off as the ident-icon representing the Merciless vanished from the hololith, the escort atomised by Zurconian lance batteries.

  ‘Mistress,’ Bohdan said before she could continue, ‘the other two Zurconian vessels will be in weapons range in less than one minute.’ He kept his voice low as he tracked the ships that had destroyed the Bleeding Fist and Redeemer.

  Ronja sighed in resignation and glanced at the innumerable warning sigils blinking around the bridge. It was hopeless. ‘Disengage.’ She tensed, expecting the crushing cold of Amit’s gauntlet around her neck. Retreat was not a strategy favoured by the lord of the Flesh Tearers. She felt her heart beat once, twice. On its third shudder, she relaxed. ‘Fall back to the system’s edge and make ready for warp transit.’

  ‘Stop! Wait! Do not disengage.’ Nuriel hurried onto the bridge, shouting in warning even as the doors opened. ‘Do not disengage.’

  ‘Nuriel.’ Amit threw the Librarian a murderous glare as he strode up the ramp to the command platform. ‘I had you confined to your cell. Why are you here?’

  ‘Forgive me. I will seek atonement and discipline my flesh against my earlier actions, but now you must listen.’ Nuriel’s voice trembled with exhaustion as he spoke. ‘I know how to defeat the Zurconians.’

  Amit regarded the Librarian. He was breathless, his brow slick with sweat, and the skin of his face had taken on a reddish hue, as though all of the blood vessels in it had burst at once.

  ‘The Zurconians – I know how to kill them,’ Nuriel said strengthening his tone.

  ‘They have been fooling our sensorium but we will regroup and then look to defeat them.’ Ronja fought to keep the frustration from her voice, steadying herself as the deck shook underfoot.

  ‘No, you will not.’ Nuriel used his will to soften his voice. He didn’t care if Ronja’s pride was injured – there was no time for such petty considerations – but he needed her to act now, and to make no mistakes as she did so. Better she follow his course out of choice than fear. ‘You are a competent commander, shipmistress, but no tactic will see us triumph this time. It is by unnatural means that they elude us.’

  ‘Explain, quickly,’ said Amit, his gaze fixed on the Librarian as the Victus convulsed under another barrage of fire.

  ‘There is a psychic choir on Primus, a group of psykers working in unison to surround us with phantom projections. We cannot lock on to their ships because they do not really exist.’

  ‘Then who, in the Emperor’s name, is blasting chunks from our hull?’ Ronja sneered, looking up at the Librarian as though intent on striking him.

  Nuriel suppressed a smile; he admired her fire. ‘There is a small fleet out there, concealed by the darkness of the void and the will of the choir.’

  ‘How many?’ asked Amit.

  ‘I do not know. We won’t know for sure until we destroy the choir.’ Nuriel stepped forwards and tapped a series of digits into one of the command consoles. The image of Primus swelled to fill the tactical hololith, rotating until a small island-continent spun into view. He depressed another series of buttons and the continent drifted up from the planet to hang in the air. ‘Here.’ Nuriel indicated the northernmost part of the continent. A strobing orb marked the location as target coordinates streamed over the hololith. ‘It is our only hope.’

  Ronja glowered at the information. ‘Our sensorium show there is nothing there. That area is wasteland, desolate–’

  ‘Another illusion.’ Nuriel cut her off with a snarl.

  ‘Even if you are right,’ Ronja retorted, ‘an orbital shot that exacting will require synchronous orbit. We will be easy prey.’

  ‘As opposed to the position of strength we currently occupy?’ Nuriel’s jaw locked tight with anger as the Victus shuddered under another attack.

  ‘Forgive me, lord, but you are not listening. Hitting a target as small as a single building from this distance whilst under fire… Even if we match the planet’s rotation, we will be fortunate to land a direct hit with our first salvo, and the longer we wait in orbit, the longer we’ll be at the mercy of the Zurconian guns.’

  ‘This is possible,’ Nuriel rasped through gritted teeth, his patience gone. ‘I have seen orbital barrages used with near-pinpoint accuracy.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ronja fought to keep her voice level. ‘With the aid of marker-beacons or ident-tagging it is possible. But we would need someone on the groun–’ Ronja paused.

  ‘What?’ asked Nuriel.

  ‘The survivors. The squads from the Bleeding Fist… Comms-man, have we made contact with them?’

  ‘No, shipmistress, there is too much interference.’

  ‘The static shrouding this world is not natural. You will need my help to find them.’ Nuriel moved to the comms-man. The Librarian made to clasp a hand over the man’s head, and stopped, turning to Ronja. ‘You have another of these?’

  ‘I do,’ she said.

  ‘Good.’ Nuriel closed his eyes and gripped the comms-man’s head.

  The man screamed.

  Nuriel ignored him, letting his gifts take him inside the man’s mind, inside the disparate noise pouring from the brass cable plugged into the man’s ears. Nuriel grimaced as pain flared along his temples. He tightened his grip on the man’s head, ignoring the crack of bone as he pressed on. The noise was a cacophonous bluster, detail indiscernible, except… There, hidden beneath a wave of buzzing, wrapped in a dim humming, was a silence, a sound not meant to be heard. Nuriel latched on to the silence. He let it drag him through the noise, feeling his consciousness plunge through the cabling, deeper into the wash of sound. He followed the silence, riding the stream of data out through the Victus’s sensoria towers down to the planet. The silence spoke to him.

  ‘Brother-Sergeant Lior to the Victus, reply.’ Nuriel reached for the words, hoping to follow them to their source. ‘Brother-Sergeant Lior to the Victus, reply.’ Nuriel grimaced in frustration as they drifted from him, echoes snatched by a gale. He cleared his thoughts, thinking not of the words or their meaning, but of their speaker. He found a Flesh Tearer’s mind, saw glimpses of a hurried evacuation, a death-filled planetfall. He could taste the acrid tang of combat, of weapons fire and death. Nuriel felt the Flesh Tearer’s grief, his frustration, his anger. The anger burned within the noise, a simmering beacon that could not be drowned out or cast to the winds. ‘Brother-Sergeant Lior to the Victus, reply.’ The sound came again, a message of hope wrapped in anger. This time, Nuriel grabbed it.

  ‘Brother-Sergeant Lior to the Victus, reply,’ Lior repeated over the vox.

  Sergeant Lior. I am listening.+ Nuriel pushed his words into the sergeant’s mind. He felt Lior resist, tasted his hesitation. +Do not worry, brother. It is I, Librarian Nuriel.+

  ‘Brother,’ said Lior, relief elevating his voice. ‘We landed on a small island-continent. We are engaged on all sides. Where are you?’

  I am aboard the Victus. I do not have much time. We need your help.+

  ‘What are your orders?’

  There is a building north of your location, taller than all of the other structures.+

  ‘The needle. Yes, I saw a glimpse of it as we made planetfall,’ said Lior, shouting over the roar of weapons fire.

  I need you to mark it for orbital bombardment.+

  Lior was silent a moment. Nuriel sensed the turmoil in Lior’s mind as the other Flesh Tearer considered his fate. Lior and his warriors carried only close-range positioning devices, nothing that would allow them to escape the blast zone. To the sergeant’s credit, his hesitation lasted less than a second, the thought dismissed as quickly as it was formed. ‘All we have are teleport homers. Will they suffice?’

  If you activate a number of them, we should be able to detect the signal.+

  ‘Then by the Blood, it
shall be done.’

  Be swift, brother. Sanguinius keep you.+

  Nuriel opened his eyes and released his grip on the comms-man. The man slumped from his chatter to land dead on the deck. ‘It is done,’ said Nuriel. ‘Sergeant Lior will mark the target for us. Have your sensoria scan for a teleport homer.’

  As the Librarian spoke, another comms-man stepped from one of the many alcoves bordering the bridge to take the dead one’s place.

  ‘They will not clear the blast site in time,’ said Ronja.

  ‘Sergeant Lior is aware of his duty. Please get on with yours,’ said Nuriel.

  Ronja bit down a retort and looked to Amit as another set of damage klaxons began wailing overhead. ‘This is still far from a good plan.’

  The lord of the Flesh Tearers was silent a moment, his gaze fixed on the Librarian. What Nuriel was suggesting was not beyond the realms of possibility, but it would require a cohort of Alpha-level psykers, or worse, a herald of the Dark Gods themselves. He searched Nuriel’s eyes; they bore no sign of deceit or madness. ‘Do it.’

  ‘Lord.’ Ronja nodded, and exploded into motion. ‘Cease fire, full power to engines. Helmsman, get us to Primus maximum speed, shortest route.’

  ‘Mistress, there are a number of debris fields between here and there. A direct course–’

  ‘I am not blind, helmsman. But I’d wager your life that a scree of rocks and space junk is less likely to kill us than the Emperor-forsaken bastards raking our hull with plasma fire.’ Ronja shot the helmsman a murderous glare. ‘Comms-man, send the attack coordinates to the Shield of Baal and have them move to engage.’

  ‘No, cancel that order.’ Nuriel stepped to the forefront of the command platform.

  ‘With respect, lord Librarian, this is my bridge.’ Ronja kept her voice low so that it wouldn’t travel down into the crew trenches beneath them. ‘Do not countermand my orders. The Shield is far faster than us. It will reach Primus ahead of us and begin the attack.’