Angron's Monolith - Steve Lyons Read online

  For the first time, Baeloch looked him in the eye. ‘What would the masters of the Ordo Hereticus say, if they saw what we have seen today? If you truly believe that you are doing the Emperor’s will, why then must your deeds be cloaked in silence and shadow? Why not confess your actions before the Inquisition and suffer their judgement?’ Tarryn shifted uncomfortably beside him.

  He is bitter, thought Decario, apart from any other reason, because he wasn’t entrusted with this knowledge earlier. Baeloch had cursed the late Inquisitor de Marche’s name ten years ago, for bringing disgrace upon his Chapter. Would he curse Decario’s name as vehemently now?

  The Chief Librarian lowered his heavy, armoured form into a seat. There was so much he couldn’t tell them, so much they weren’t ready to hear; and though Tarryn might yet have trusted blindly, Baeloch was clearly beyond that. He had to make them understand. ‘I want to tell you – the two of you – a story,’ said Decario.

  ‘It’s an old tale, but younger than I am. It dates back a century and a half, to when I was an Epistolary in a Chapter still known as the Fire Claws. It begins with a ship that dropped out of the warp and drifted into the Stygies System. The ship was a space hulk, known as the Captor of Sin…’

  It was going to be a long night.

  Eleven

  Captain Maegar assembled the Fourth Company in front of his command centre.

  Tarryn had wondered how much he would choose to tell them. He revealed that an unusual artefact had been discovered, but little more than that. Tarryn’s eyes roved over the rigid grey and black figures around him. How many of them already know the truth? he asked himself. Not many, he suspected.

  Few of his battle-brothers would ever know what they had fought for in this sweltering jungle. Fewer still would ever ask. He wondered what they would think if he told them. How many would turn a blind eye?

  The plan was straightforward enough. The company’s sixteen combat squads – some had been amalgamated, to bring them up to full strength after taking casualties – would march south-east, towards the artefact’s assumed position. They would fan out and surround it, and hopefully draw out any feral orks in its vicinity.

  A small elite force of Relictors, comprising Maegar’s command squad and Chapter Master Bardane and his honour guard, would wait until the inevitable skirmishes were in progress. Then they would strike out directly towards their prize – and, with the Emperor’s grace, encounter minimal resistance along the way.

  Decario addressed the troops next. He reminded them to be vigilant against the subtler wiles of Chaos, and he led them in chanted litanies of purity and protection.

  Brothers Tarryn and Baeloch had been reassigned. Sergeant Divolio had already given them their posting. They were to join the captain’s command squad, and would therefore be fighting beside the Chapter Master himself.

  Baeloch’s reaction had been predictable. ‘They want to keep us close,’ he had grumbled. ‘They fear we may not keep their sordid secrets.’

  They reported to Divolio dutifully, and waited with the command squad as the others filed out of the clearing ahead of them. Tarryn’s stomach tightened as Chapter Master Bardane joined them. He towered over the other Relictors, a palpable presence in his highly decorated artificer armour.

  A day ago, he would have considered it a signal honour to serve in his leader’s presence. It is an honour, he told himself firmly, one of which I must strive to be worthy. Bardane’s standard-bearer was unfurling his banner – I am marching into battle beneath my Chapter’s banner! – and that still stirred something, a fierce sense of pride, in his primary heart.

  ‘Do we serve the Emperor today?’

  Baeloch was voxing him privately again. Apparently, their old squad’s frequency was still active. Tarryn answered him confidently. ‘Yes. I believe we do.’

  He was still conflicted about much of what he had learned, but one thing he didn’t doubt. ‘I believe the Chief Librarian was sincere, in any case. He believes we are doing the Emperor’s bidding, and so who are we to question it?’

  ‘Decario is toying with forces he doesn’t understand,’ Baeloch retorted, ‘and what happens once they overwhelm him?’

  ‘That is why the Conclave exists: to keep vigilance against–’

  ‘But their minds have touched the warp too, and there is always a price for that. What if it is Maegar who succumbs to the corruption of Chaos – or Bardane himself? What if they have already succumbed?’

  Tarryn protested loyally, but Baeloch cut him off again. ‘They could lead us into the Eye of Terror itself, as de Marche would have done, and who would raise a hand to stop them? Who among us would dare question our orders, before it was too late and our Chapter was burning?’

  Tarryn wanted to say, It won’t happen. Our leaders, Artekus Bardane especially, are strong, incorruptible. But Inquisitor Halstron had strolled up to join their gathering, with the chained man in tow, and Tarryn remembered orks bursting into flames and a hand extended towards a battle-brother.

  He remembered the stink of Chaos, a flash of daemon eyes, and for the hundredth time, he felt his certainties crumbling into sand between his fingers.

  I believe we are serving the Emperor.

  By rights, their outward journey ought to have been uneventful. They passed only through areas of the jungle already cleared – and in force, an entire Adeptus Astartes company, enough to make any foe think twice about crossing their path.

  In the space of one night, however, those areas had been recolonised.

  The squads at the company’s vanguard took the brunt of frequent feral ork attacks. One sergeant remarked ruefully, over an open vox-channel, that the greenskins were multiplying faster than the Relictors could kill them.

  It wasn’t long before Tarryn’s squad was attacked too.

  The orks came at them from the west. The Relictors could hear them before they even registered on their auspexes. What they didn’t expect was for a missile to come streaking towards them out of the jungle. It was badly aimed, however, and thudded into an intervening tree.

  Around ten orks were bearing down on them, whooping eagerly. At their rear, an oversized brute dropped onto one knee, cradling a crude rocket launcher. It was greenskin technology, unmistakably, but whether it had been stolen from the invaders, salvaged from the previous war or lashed together by the jungle-dwellers themselves, Tarryn could not tell.

  Another missile erupted from the launcher’s black maw. It flew directly at the Chapter Master’s head; he just managed to duck beneath it. The rest of the orks were crashing towards Bardane too, barrelling past other potential targets between them. They must have identified him as their enemies’ leader.

  His honour guard intercepted over half of them, but that still left Bardane being rushed by four feral orks – and they only had to keep him pinned long enough for the next rocket to hit him. The rest of the Relictors, Tarryn included, hastened to his side. Bardane, however, had drawn a weapon from underneath his cloak.

  At first, it looked to Tarryn like a simple flail, and he wondered why a Chapter Master would wield such an unremarkable tool. He should have known better, as he realised just half a second later.

  As Bardane drew back the flail, the tips of its spiked chains flared. Suddenly, there was a shrunken daemon’s head upon each of them, formed out of roiling energy. Three shrunken faces contorted in anger and pain – and the daemons were screaming.

  The sound was like a rusty blade sawing at Tarryn’s nerves, but this was nothing compared to the flail’s effect on its victim. Its chains lashed across the first feral ork’s shoulder, cutting it to the bone, while the daemon heads burrowed deep beneath its tattered flesh, snapping their teeth like tiny carnivorous fish.

  Bardane whipped the flail back around and slashed the same ork across the chest on his backhand. It was doubtful whether this second strike was even necessary. The feral ork’s thick legs splayed out underneath it and it smacked into the ground, a bloody carcass with its
face frozen into an expression of horror.

  Its fate gave the other orks pause for just a moment, long enough for Bardane to wrench one of them into the path of the next, and final, missile. As the hapless creature died, so too did its inadvertent slayer. Tarryn charged the ork with the rocket launcher and carved it up before it could reload again.

  After that, the rest of the feral orks fell quickly.

  Bardane stood over the last of them, with his head bowed and his daemon flail clutched in both hands. He did not move until its angry screams subsided and its energy-formed faces guttered and spat and finally flickered out, receding back from whence they had been summoned. Then, he lifted his chain, tucked the weapon back into his belt and nodded to Captain Maegar, who gave the order to proceed.

  ‘We christened it the Artekus Scourge.’ Decario was suddenly looming over Tarryn’s shoulder, apparently having read his mind – though that wouldn’t have been hard in the circumstances. ‘It is one of the most valuable relics we possess and has turned the tide of more battles than either of us could count in the Emperor’s favour.’

  They returned to the site of the ork massacre. Tarryn knew when they were approaching it because the stink from the untended bodies was riper than ever.

  Decario had fallen into step alongside him. He spoke to Tarryn quietly, telling him of a great victory won by Artekus Bardane over the Chaos cult of the Scarlet Vein. He had heard the tale before – of how Bardane had been the battle’s sole survivor and was named Chapter Master by his dying predecessor – but only the edited version.

  Bardane would have died on that fateful day too, Decario assured him, had he not been wielding the Artekus Scourge. The daemons in the flail had shredded the cultists’ souls and ultimately devoured them.

  They passed by the area where Tarryn’s old squad had been ambushed, where his battle-brothers had perished. Shortly afterwards, the other squads peeled away to the left and right ahead of them.

  For the first time, now, they were ploughing into virgin jungle. Thirteen Relictors remained: the captain and his command squad, the Chapter Master and his honour guard, Decario, Baeloch and Tarryn – and then, there was Inquisitor Halstron, too, and his chained prisoner.

  How many more of them had weapons like the flail, Tarryn wondered? Was Captain Maegar’s chainsword possessed by daemons – or Captain Harkus’s axe? And what of Angron’s Monolith itself? Decario had had little enough to say about that, only revealing that it was a source of incredible power. Unholy power.

  They took the same precautions that Sergeant Juster had taken a day earlier. They kept their eyes on their instruments, making sure they didn’t wander off course. They had regular sound-offs. They focused on maintaining the barriers around their minds. If the jungle – the monolith lurking in the jungle, rather – tried to turn them around again, they would know about it before they had taken two steps.

  They proceeded slowly, allowing the combat squads in front of them to fan out. The furthest two were already out of vox-range and their regular reports had to be relayed to Captain Maegar by squads in between them. When the first ork was sighted, and the first squad came under attack to the east of the monolith’s supposed location, the Chapter Master immediately raised a hand to halt their procession.

  Tarryn waited and listened for further developments. Another fight soon broke out to the west, and then another. The plan was working.

  Above his head, the Chapter standard rippled in the late-morning breeze. He raised his eyes to it, willing it to stir him again. But pride and duty were at war with the black forces of doubt in his hearts. Doubt is the bane of faith.

  The white skull on black had been everything to him before. It had represented the ideals to which Tarryn had devoted his life. When he looked at it now, he felt as if the skull were mocking him. Its ideals had been lies.

  He asked himself what that banner represented to him now. He prayed to the Emperor for an answer, but no answer came.

  Priority level: Magenta Alpha

  Transmitted: Imperial Command HQ, Hive Infernus, Armageddon Secundus

  To: Adeptus Astartes battle-barge Blade of Vengeance, Armageddon High Orbit

  Date: 3026999.M41

  Transmitter: Astropath Prime Rankor

  Receiver: Astropath-terminus Xhian-Ji

  Author: Commissar Marco Rickarius, 93rd Armageddon Steel Legion

  Thought for the Day: An open mind is like a fortress with its gate unbarred and unguarded.

  Ghazghkull is here. I repeat, I have confirmation that the ork warlord is leading the siege of Infernus personally. His assembled forces outnumber ours twenty to one. He has called down orbital strikes to shatter our anti-siege cannons. We have rioting on all hive levels. Many citizens have fled into the wastelands, despite the efforts of the local arbiters to stop them. The orks have slaughtered most of them. We cannot hold these walls for much longer. I beseech you, in the name of the Emperor, save us.

  Twelve

  The monolith was immediately ahead of them.

  They couldn’t see it yet, but they knew it was there. Apart from anything else, Tarryn could feel it. The mere presence of such a powerful Chaos totem caused his stomach to turn over and a dull ache to build behind his eyes.

  It had had a physical effect on the surrounding flora, too. Much of it was blistered, blackened and withered by sickness. Vines were oozing yellow pus.

  Bloody battles were raging through the jungle around them; they could hear the sounds of some of them in the mid-distance. The vox-net was alive with reports from squad leaders. For every enemy they killed, they swore that three more came at them through the brush, wielding ever more advanced weaponry.

  Already, three squads had had to join up with three others, to reinforce them.

  They were winning, though. They were keeping the feral orks at bay. Better yet, they were keeping them busy. The auspexes read approximately eighty greenskins still standing guard over the monolith itself. Still, eighty was a good deal better than eight hundred or eight thousand, and against thirteen Space Marines and an inquisitor, it amounted to reasonable odds.

  That was unless the orks were drawing power from the monolith itself. If only a handful of them were weirdboyz – like the one that had blasted Tarryn and his brothers four days ago – it might well tip the balance.

  We are wielding the powers of the warp ourselves, he remembered. He didn’t know if that made him feel better or worse.

  They let the feral orks come to them – they had made enough noise to attract them – and greeted them with a blizzard of bolter fire. They cut down a few, but the rest knew how to use the trees and their wounded for cover.

  Bardane yelled out the Relictors war cry, ‘Strength of will, courage of will!’, but his words were drowned out by the feral orks’ howls and the activation sputters and roars of almost a dozen chainswords. Tarryn might have released a deep-throated roar as well, as the greenskin wave crashed over him.

  There was no more room for doubt, then; not as long as he could look into his enemies’ eyes and see the murderous madness within them; not as long as he could hear the vile blasphemies that tripped off their slavering tongues.

  Not as long as the enemy’s foul xenos stink was in his nostrils.

  These creatures were obscenities in the Emperor’s sight, and for that they deserved to be eradicated. So, every time Tarryn slashed a feral ork with his chainsword blade or punched a hole through one of them with his bolter – every time he drew dark crimson xenos blood – he was doing the Emperor’s will. How could it be otherwise?

  His battle-brothers were doing the Emperor’s will too, and mostly with the tools He had provided them with. He could hear the screaming of the Artekus Scourge, however, even when he couldn’t see it; and he was always aware of the chained man’s presence behind him, thanks to the constant prickling across the back of his neck.

  Whenever Tarryn could risk it, he glanced over his shoulder to check what the inquisitor’s prisoner – a bo
und daemonhost, Decario had called him – was doing.

  In fact, he wasn’t doing much. He stood apart from the battle, apparently content to watch. He wore his hood up and his hands were tucked into the sleeves of his dark robes. Whereas before feral orks had fled at the sight of him, this time they hardly spared him a glance at all.

  He’s waiting, waiting for the inquisitor to break another link of his chains, thought Tarryn. Until then he refuses to act. He won’t even defend himself.

  It was left to Halstron, then, to protect his prisoner, and he was making an admirable job of it. He was showing the steel that lay beneath his mild facade. He was stronger than he looked. His hammer, swung two-handed, shattered bone and pulverised muscle wherever it struck.

  Halstron was fast too – faster than his heavy build and even heavier weapon had led Tarryn to expect. At one point, he took on a trio of opponents at once. He ducked and leaped and twisted out of the way of their ungainly lunges, and answered each of them with a crippling hammer blow.

  The next time Tarryn looked, the three orks were on the ground, broken. The inquisitor stood over them, his face shiny and red with perspiration. He raised his hammer to deliver the crushing, killing blow to the first of them, and Tarryn glimpsed a spark of madness in his eyes to rival that of the xenos themselves.

  Chief Librarian Decario fought with a chainsword and a force staff. The latter was almost as tall as its wielder was, crowned with the Relictors skull symbol against the Imperial eagle in burnished bronze. When Decario brandished it, lightning arced from the eyes of the skull and the eagle both, racing towards his target.

  The touch of any of the bolt’s three forks could deprive a feral ork of a hand or a leg below the knee. A triple-pronged strike could blast its victim to ashes.

  The staff likely had no power of its own, however. It was simply a conduit for Decario’s natural abilities. Like all Librarians, he was a psyker and could bend the unholy energies of the warp to his will. He had grown to adulthood and been trained by the Adeptus Astartes to control his curse, unlike the thousands of other young psychic mutants, carried away by the Black Ships to face an uncertain fate.