Defenders of Mankind - David Annandale & Guy Haley Read online

  ‘Then you should see why the Black Dragons provoke such anxiety. There is so much mutation in your ranks. So much potential monstrosity. Remember the Flame Falcons!’ Engulfed in fire that did not consume them, they, too, had embraced their mutation without fear or repentance. The Inquisition had sent them judgement.

  ‘That slaughter was justice, was it?’

  Lettinger wondered if he’d been mistaken. Perhaps there was no hope for the Dragons after all, if even Toharan couldn’t be brought to the light of reason and orthodoxy. ‘It was necessary. Their mutation was a sign of daemonic corruption.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I have no reason to doubt the sagacity of my superiors. And tell me, given the history you know so well, what does your Chapter think it is doing by not only welcoming, but encouraging mutation?’

  ‘You have no evidence–’

  ‘You , sergeant, are the evidence! Don’t you see? Mutation is not an inevitable fact of being a Black Dragon. Rather, it is being sought. Why seek something so unnecessary, so dangerous, and so likely to bring down scrutiny and shame?’

  ‘To be impure of body is to seek purity of action.’

  ‘But you are not impure of body. Are your actions any less worthy?’

  Toharan didn’t answer.

  Lettinger didn’t let up. ‘Doesn’t that argument sound like a rationalisation?’

  After another pause, Toharan sidestepped the question. ‘What exactly do you want of me?’

  ‘I would like you to ask yourself this question: is your leadership really acting in the Chapter’s best interests?’

  Toharan’s hand shot out. The movement was whip-fast, but stopped just short of Lettinger’s throat. Toharan leaned forward, his huge face filling Lettinger’s vision, his eyes dark with lethal fury. ‘I will not strike an inquisitor,’ he said. ‘This time. But if I ever again believe, or even suspect, that you have counselled treason on my part, then I shall defend the honour of my Chapter, no matter the consequences. Am I clear?’

  Lettinger didn’t back down. This was too important. ‘Your highest duty is to the Emperor,’ he said. ‘Remember that.’

  They locked stares, neither backing down. Then a voice in the courtyard called, ‘Brother-sergeant!’ and Toharan looked away.

  Melus stood down below. He was grinning, and if he had noticed the tension between Space Marine and inquisitor, he gave no sign. ‘We’re wanted in the council chamber,’ he said. ‘News from the field.’

  ‘Good?’ Toharan asked.

  Melus’s grin grew wider. ‘Hard to credit,’ he said. ‘But it guarantees we will fight for Antagonis.’

  ‘Then it’s good,’ Toharan said, and leaped from the wall. He landed beside his battle-brother with an impact that shattered flagstones. As they strode towards the interior of the keep, he glanced back once. His face was a mask of rage, but Lettinger was sure he saw something else there, too: doubt.

  CHAPTER 5

  SEEDS

  Volos left Lexica with Nithigg as backup. They used their jump packs to cross the gap where the bridge had fallen, then descended the path towards a valley floor that was not nearly as far away as it had been the previous day. Now Volos stood before the rising tide of bodies. From his vantage point, looking back across the valley towards the keep, he could see the full tableau of unwavering purpose and mindless, writhing horror. The new mountain heaved. It squirmed. It filled the air with a keening wail of desperation and rage. Avalanches of mangled corpses, some still twitching, slid down the slope, bowling over climbing figures, adding them to the chaos of snapping bone and tearing meat. Cascades of blood poured down the slope to feed the crimson river at the ever-rising base. The enormous mound settled, stabilised, crushing bodies to pulp and mortar, and then reached higher.

  The dead were not just marching through the pass into the valley. They were running, throwing themselves onto the hill of flesh, and then climbing to the top with the same frantic urgency, using handholds made of arms and legs. Once they reached the peak, they scrabbled at the sheer mountainside until they were crushed by those coming up behind. Every corpse that rushed past Volos bore the same expression. It was a mix of obsessive determination and what Volos couldn’t help but think of as religious terror. And the rushing horde ignored him. Utterly.

  None of it made any sense.

  His old mentor had been hanging back to provide covering fire as needed. Now Nithigg rejoined him. ‘Hardly the aggressive force they were on the other side of the pass,’ he said.

  ‘Looks like I wasted your time,’ Volos replied.

  Nithigg shrugged. ‘Which one looks good to you?’

  ‘This one,’ Volos said, and grabbed the next corpse that went by. It frothed and scrabbled against him, snapping fingernails on ceramite. It was like holding a handful of snakes. Volos tightened his grip, careful not to crush the thing. He and Nithigg turned and jogged up the path.

  They made the jump back to the keep, and the corpse’s struggles changed. It no longer tried to escape Volos’s arms. It didn’t even seem to notice him any longer. Instead, it reached for the keep, clawing at the air, howling and snapping its teeth. When he saw Setheno waiting just inside the gate, Volos muttered to the creature, ‘I wouldn’t be so eager to get inside.’

  Setheno nodded in approval as they approached. ‘Thank you, sergeant,’ she said. ‘Would you mind bringing it to the medicae centre? Then I believe your captain has a mission more worthy of your talents.’

  ‘The advance of the dead has been slowed,’ Vritras announced to his assembled squads, ‘for reasons that have nothing to do with our tactics, but that we will fully exploit. Brother Keryon reports, and Colonel Dysfield’s pilots confirm, that there are pockets of resistance within the mass of the enemy.’

  ‘Resistance?’ Volos asked. ‘Human resistance?’ As good as this news was, he couldn’t see how it was possible.

  ‘So it would seem,’ Vritras answered. ‘We are clearly not the only ones who refuse to surrender this planet to the Ruinous Powers.’ He spoke with grim satisfaction, his tone that of a commander eager to take advantage of a turn in the tides of battle. But Volos thought he saw, in the slight downturn at the corners of the captain’s mouth, the trace of uncertainty. So Vritras, too, could see the illogic in this development. Where had these fighters come from?

  ‘How much resistance is there?’ Toharan asked.

  Vritras gestured to Keryon, who answered, ‘More all the time. I saw at least twice as many instances on my return pass as on my way out.’

  ‘What form do they take?’

  ‘They’re like bubbles,’ Keryon said. ‘The survivors are surrounded by the dead, but at least some of them are expanding their perimeters. They’re managing to push back.’

  Volos studied the topographical map that Vritras had spread out on the table. The locations of the centres of resistance had been circled. ‘This is very odd,’ he said. ‘Never mind where these people have been and how they come to be present all of a sudden, but look at where they are .’ He tapped a gauntleted finger on the nearest circle, just on the other side of the pass. ‘This location makes some sense,’ he said. ‘Mountainous terrain, plenty of cover and defensible ground. But pretty much all the other sites are in the middle of low hills or prairie. The survivors should be overwhelmed in seconds. You say some are expanding their held ground?’

  Keryon nodded. ‘And some of those groups are in the flatlands.’

  ‘Where are they getting their ammunition?’ Nithigg wanted to know.

  ‘Brothers,’ Vritras said, ‘I understand and share your puzzlement. We will dispel these mysteries, and we will do so by destroying the enemy. Dragon Claws, you will deploy to the nearest resistance pocket, secure the area and block further access to the pass. Pythios and Nychus will insert at the mouth of the valley, fight through the pass to link up with Ormarr, and consolidate their gains. From that point, Ormarr will move to the next survivor group and reinforce them. The rest of Se
cond Company will arrive via drop pod from the Immolation Maw to support other pockets. Seize, hold, and link the territories. And so we reclaim Antagonis for the Emperor, with fire and bone!’

  The view from the Battle Pyre was very different from the last time Volos had flown out over the foot of the Temple chain. The land was still carpeted to the horizon by raging ghouls. But this time, the focus of their frenzy was not a disintegrating caravan. This time, the combatants he saw were holding firm. There were a few dozen of them, and they were not only keeping the dead at bay, but forcing them back. He thought about how he and his battle-brothers had been stymied in their efforts to do just that. The problem hadn’t really been the dead breaking through the Space Marine lines. It had been the total collapse of the Mortisian Guard, and the plague of undeath erupting within the perimeter. There was no sign of such spontaneous contagion below. There was, it seemed, hope on this battlefield.

  Volos distrusted it. But the Dragon Claws launched, and they descended in the midst of the survivors like the angels of darkest night. ‘Citizens of Antagonis,’ Volos bellowed, his voice amplified by his helmet grille, ‘we are the Black Dragons, and we bring you salvation by fire.’ After a moment of paralysis, the survivors cheered and attacked the enemy with even greater ferocity. As Volos opened up with his flamer and incinerated the front ranks of the dead, he took in exactly how the survivors were waging war. They were all armed with what he took to be scavenged weapons. He saw lasrifles and combat knives and a handful of chainswords. Only two of the rifles were being fired. The others appeared to have no ammunition. Those with bayonets were being used to slash and disembowel, and the others were wielded as clubs. The fighting was savage, as all combat was, but there was a frenzy to the way in which the humans threw themselves at the dead that struck Volos as being just a little too familiar. There were moments when he found it difficult to distinguish between the combatants, especially when some of the corpses were also armed, and there was a clash of steel.

  But there were differences. The survivors fought intelligently, shifting stance and tactics according to the second-by-second flow of war. And they dodged, which the corpses never did. The dead were so consumed by their hunger to destroy the living that there was nothing in what passed for their consciousness that cared for self-preservation. As recklessly as they fought, the humans were still, Volos thought, fighting to stay alive. Even so, as he reduced another phalanx of the dead to smouldering bone and ash, he used the momentary breathing space the gap created to speak to the woman at his shoulder. ‘What is your name, human?’ he asked.

  ‘Sanna Robbes, lord,’ the woman answered, proving to Volos that she was sentient. She came from manufactorum labourer stock, Volos guessed. She was in late, greying middle-age and stocky, her shoulders rounded from decades bent over machines, her limbs thick with muscle like knotted wood. She smashed at the enemy with the butt end of a lasrifle. She caved in the forehead of one corpse, ducked beneath the grasp of another, brought her foe down with a sweep that shattered kneecaps, then swung the rifle over her head to finish the corpse with a crushed skull.

  ‘You fight well.’ In the corner of his eye, he saw one of the dead reach for Robbes. With his finger depressing the flamer trigger, Volos stretched out his left arm, shot out a bone-blade and impaled the thing through the head.

  Robbes grunted her thanks and swung the rifle again. ‘I fight how I must,’ she said.

  The waves of the dead broke against the levee of Space Marines and dogged humans. Volos urged the counter-attack on, and the line moved forward against the dead. By promethium and bolter shell, by las and by blow, by fire and by bone, the advance moved to the mouth of the pass and inched across it, slowly cutting off the flow of the dead towards Lexica.

  ‘Volos,’ Nithigg said over the comm-feed.

  ‘Yes, brother.’

  ‘Did you happen to make an exact count of the humans before we began?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Because I think our mission might be going too well.’

  Without breaking the rhythm of his kills, Volos scanned the formation. Nithigg was right. None of his brothers had fallen, which wasn’t surprising, but none of the humans appeared to have, either. It was hard to shake the impression that there were more survivors than at the start of the engagement.

  Movement to the left caught his eye. A man was using a chainsword against the dead, but he wasn’t just slashing at them. He was brandishing it, weaving the blade through the air as though it were light as a rapier. He was shaping a distinct pattern.

  Lettinger walked into the medicae centre. The door to the surgery was closed. Two of the remaining Mortisians stood guard before it. In the antechamber, Dysfield was talking with Lord Danton, who was holding his daughter’s hand. Lettinger nodded vaguely at the group and approached the door. One of the guards stepped in front of him.

  ‘I’m sorry, inquisitor,’ the man said. ‘Canoness Setheno is at work in there.’

  ‘I know that. I’m here to examine the specimen.’

  The guard shook his head. ‘She gave explicit orders to admit no one.’

  Lettinger saw red. ‘Are you saying no to the Inquisition?’ he threatened.

  ‘I’m afraid she didn’t mention any exceptions.’ The guard was more frightened of Setheno than he was of Lettinger.

  The inquisitor felt himself deflate. He couldn’t blame the man.

  The absurdity of the situation was staggering. A canoness was conducting what was, in effect, an inquisition, while the inquisitor was barred from the scene. Setheno had as little business studying the corpse as he had the absolute right and duty to do so. Yet she commanded, and all obeyed. If anyone else had been on the other side of the door, Lettinger would have ordered and witnessed her immediate execution. That even contemplating such a course of action made him break out in a cold sweat was a testament to her power. The being in that room was will incarnate. Though Lettinger’s rational mind rose in outrage at the slight to his real authority, his every instinct recoiled from the mere thought of moving against Setheno’s wishes.

  Danton gave him a face-saving out. ‘Inquisitor Lettinger,’ he said, ‘perhaps you can convince Colonel Dysfield that I’m right.’

  ‘About what?’ Lettinger asked, turning his back to the door and joining the trio.

  ‘About an evacuation.’

  Lettinger frowned. ‘I was under the impression that the war was still ongoing.’ Whatever dangers the Black Dragons represented were not the immediate threat. The Chapter was still, for the moment, following the Emperor’s will. There were other elements of the Ruinous Powers at work on this planet, and Lettinger didn’t plan to retreat before them any more than did Vritras.

  ‘I’m not seeking it for myself, you understand,’ Danton added hurriedly. ‘I was thinking of my daughter and the other civilians.’

  ‘Any evacuation is a retreat,’ Dysfield said, ‘and unacceptable.’ And then he walked off, leaving Lettinger to deal with the pleading.

  ‘I don’t like it here,’ Bethshea put in.

  Lettinger looked down at her. ‘Why do you want to run away from your home, child?’ he asked.

  ‘I…’ she began, but faltered.

  ‘Is this how you do honour to the Emperor?’

  ‘But I’m frightened.’

  ‘That’s when doing your duty counts the most, because that’s when it’s hardest. Do you understand?’

  Bethshea looked unhappy, but nodded.

  ‘Your family represents the hand of the Emperor on this planet. Do you think it would look good if you ran away?’

  ‘No.’ Spoken very quietly.

  Lettinger turned to her father. ‘I think you should stay,’ he commanded. ‘Don’t you?’

  Danton didn’t answer. He looked upwards, as if he could see the sky through the stones of the keep. Disgusted, Lettinger stalked away. He wasn’t needed here. He would watch the Pythios and Nychus operations from the ramparts. He was halfway there when it struc
k him that Danton’s eyes had been filled with a longing that didn’t seem to have anything to do with fear.

  Setheno waited while the three Mortisian Guardsmen she had selected as assistants secured the male corpse to the operating table. Its legs were spread, its arms held above its head, its ankles and wrists fastened by chains. It wailed and frothed, its eyes straining from their sockets in mad rage and terror. Setheno used a scalpel to strip away the last shreds of clothing from the body. It had taken several hours to reach even this preliminary stage of the investigation. Setheno had first had to sanctify the surgery with prayer, and then prepare a network of wards across the stone of the floor and walls, on the door, and around the table. She hoped they would be enough. She placed her helm on a bench, but she was otherwise in full armour.

  At first glance, the thing was a typical victim of a variant of the zombie plague. The flesh was grey, mottled with patches of green and black. The frame was withered; chest and cheeks hollow as if the skin were being sucked into the bones. It didn’t breathe, but putrid gases wafted from its mouth and nostrils all the same. Its gums had shrivelled, pulling back over teeth slicked with thickened saliva and bits of blackened flesh. The flecks of meat might have come from the bodies of others, or from the creature’s own dark, ravaged lips.

  The thing was a mundane abomination, but for the look in its eyes. The terror that Setheno saw there was all wrong. The walking dead known to the Imperium were too brain-dead to fear anything. And then there were the instances of weapon use the Black Dragons had reported. There was intelligence, and the agony Setheno saw in the monster’s expression was something more than physical. She leaned close to its face, while her aides tensed in alarm. ‘You fear for your soul, don’t you?’ she whispered.

  The creature stopped struggling. It stared at her. And then the worst thing possible happened, the thing Setheno had dreaded: a tear formed in the corner of the thing’s left eye and trickled down its cheek.

  Setheno took a step back. She watched the creature’s chest, waiting for the inevitable. ‘What are your names?’ she asked the Guardsmen.