Sholto

Brother-Sergeant Krajken of the Raven Guard and a young Cadian orphan meet up during Abaddon's Second Black Crusade.

As always, all comments are more than welcome.

The Killing

by Sholto

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PART 1

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It had come down somewhere close by, but where?

Beneath his bare feet, Ricardo Dukagjin felt the mat of pine needles give on their silent bed of moss. A steady, cold breeze slid down the forested mountainside, bringing the tang of promised snow to mix with the late summer sap of the trees.

The young musk-deer weighing down his back meant he and his father would eat tonight, and that Ricardo would be spared a beating. Probably. He allowed himself a thin smile at the prospect of riches looted from the crashed machine. Not even his father could find fault with fortune simply fallen from the sky.

A sound – a metallic sound – froze Ricardo in place. The faintest of scrapes, but it had been like a bell in the hushed solemnity of the pillared forest. Fresh pine needles rained softly down, flashing from shadowed emerald to gold as they dropped through the stray bolts of sunlight that dappled the forest floor. There it was again. Ricardo moved, his darting paces as fast and delicate as the tumbling pine needles around him.

He saw the splintered trees first, shattered like kindling under a giant’s axe, the yellow flesh of the trees stark as a wasp’s warning in the silent, green shadows of the forest. The angry ghost of the disaster still haunted the chill air. He skirted warily, moving further up-wind.

There it was. A house of the gods, fallen from the heavens, surrounded by the mounds of dirt and splintered trees its impact had thrown out. Like a seed pod from the valleys, great leaves of metal had collapsed outwards. Large sections were missing, but Ricardo couldn’t see any trace of them from where he crouched. The hand of fire had left its black mark both on the outside and what he could see of the inside. He crept closer, carbine held ready.

Another scrape, metal on metal. It was coming from inside. Ricardo stopped in the dark shadow of the pod, edged close to an opening. The scraping sound was the only warning he received. The massive armoured hand nearly crushed his skull as it fell. Ricardo froze rigid as the black gauntlet slammed into the iron casing of the pod inches from his face. The gauntlet swung lifeless. Ricardo swallowed his fear and breathed again, proud that he had not startled like some brainless grouse.

Once the gauntlet and the arm it belonged to had ceased moving, Ricardo looked inside the pod. Four giants, bound in matt black armour, white birds engraved on their chests, sat silent as statues. Stronger still than the smell of scorched metal and bubbling plastic was the coiling reek of burnt flesh and the coppery tang of spilled blood. These giants were not long departed and, looking closer, Ricardo saw the rents and gouges in their armour that had let in death.

The angels of war that scorched the night skies more than the dread Eye ever could had finally come to the wilds of Cadia. These, then, were the mighty Astartes his grandmother had sung of.

One seat was empty, and fresh blood like dark wine led away, out of the pod and into the forest to the south east. Ricardo followed it for only a few moments before he realised where it was going.

Both fawn and caution forgotten, he started to run.

#

Brother-Sergeant Krajken of the Raven Guard examined the body of the dead civilian, the symbols of cursed Abaddon stitched crudely onto the now blood-soaked rags the man had worn. The body stank of sweat, dirt and crudely distilled alcohol, just like the foul-looking, rough-hewn hut at the centre of the clearing the man had been coming out of. The traitor’s legions had kept their foothold on this far-flung world for only a few months, and even the backwoods population had been bent to their will in that time.

There could be no mercy for traitors, and it would only be a matter of time before they were all hunted down and killed, Krajken swore, especially the greatest of them all, hiding like the coward he was in the filth of the Eye.

As he dropped the broken body to the ground, he heard the soft sound of running feet echoing off the tree trunks behind him. For an instant - just the briefest and gladdest of moments, as he realised the direction the sound was coming from - he thought perhaps one of his Brothers had lived, and he started to smile. Then he registered how light the footsteps were, and stopped, the leaden grief returning all too quickly.

His bolter came up as the runner appeared out of the bracken on the far bank of the streamlet. It was only a boy and, although he was armed, Krajken could not see any mark of the traitor on his coarse clothing or his sweat- and dirt-streaked face.

When the boy saw Krajken, his pinched face drained of colour, and he fell to his knees.

Then the boy saw the body at Krajken’s feet.

“Father?” The boy’s voice was strangely flat. “Father.” He stood up, raising the carbine haltingly. It drooped for a moment, as if being pulled in two directions, and then it came back up, aiming straight at Krajken. The boy’s eyes hardened, icy anger over a deep lake of fear and awe. “Murderer.”

Krajken stared back at the boy through the iron sights of his bolter. How often was the son of a traitor a traitor himself?

“He served the forces of treason, and I have paid him his wage,” said Krajken in a low voice. “Tell me quickly where your loyalties lie, boy.”

The boy’s jaw quivered, and Krajken saw he was struggling to master himself enough to speak. “He – he – he was no traitor! He was partisan. He wore that to pass among them in Trader’s Halt. He – he - planted bombs - killed the collaborators.” The boy’s gun did not waver half as much as his voice.

“Prove your words.”

“The – the pack.”

The dead man’s pack lay open, its contents spilled on the dark earth. Krajken nudged it with his boot. Detonators and wire caps spilled out. His gun still pointing unerringly at the boy, he knelt beside the dead man. There was something about his neck – a symbol on a chain concealed under the clothes. It took him a moment to recognise the bloodied chalice of the Temple of the Saviour Emperor. His hearts heavy with sorrow, he closed the man’s eyes with the tip of one ceramic finger. He knew what it was to lose a father. “My apologies, comrade,” he said softly. “This day began with the death of the righteous. It seems that four were not enough.”

He looked back at the boy as he rose to his full height. “Lower your weapon, boy. There has been enough killing.”

The boy didn’t move. Krajken saw the fear, wrestling with the boy’s rage for control of his emotions, and he saw something else. Something that made him lower his own weapon, although it put him at risk.

“I said, ‘enough’. It was a grave and tragic error. I grieve for your loss, and will make recompense for my deeds but -”

“I don’t want your sympathies. I – I want your blood. You’ve killed my father. I – I claim blood-feud! The Kin Law must be heard and answered.”

Krajken nodded gravely. “Blood-feud is nothing but barbarism, but it is good to see the old Kin Law surviving this far from Terra. Your father taught you well.” He noticed the effect his last statement had on the boy, as if Krajken had slapped him. He shook his head. “But I must deny you. I am charged by my masters to bring death to my enemy and –“ a sad smile, “- a boy cannot hope to best an Astartes. Imagine yourself as a five-year-old trying to fight your father.”

Still the boy aimed the carbine at Krajken’s head. The bullet might put out an eye – not his augmentic one, obviously - but it had as much chance of killing the old Marine as the corpse at his feet. He saw the look in the boy’s eyes then, fear and anger and that something else – was it loathing? - coalescing with a snap in one onrushing impulse of action, and Krajken raised his bolter with blurring speed. The boy shifted and fired, but not at the Marine. The bullet buried itself deep in the dead man’s chest.

“I don’t have to imagine.” The boy slowly lowered the carbine. Facets of moisture glinted at the edges of his eyes.

Krajken put his bolter away. This was a strange, primitive world, and he was far from Deliverance. “The crash will bring the enemy in great numbers. You will not be safe here.” He turned to leave.

“You cannot deny me blood-feud!” the boy shouted, his voice strangled and near to breaking. “I am the - the eldest son. You must fight till one of us is dead. The strongest will survive.”

“I know the Kin Law, and you’re right - I must. But I will not. I am bound by a higher law, and there has been enough needless death today. Now, go to your family.”

“He was my family!” And then quieter. “He was the last.” The boy jumped over the stream and stopped amongst the swaying ferns, staring at the Marine, his chin held high. “And if they come, I will kill them all. I can hunt them till snowfall without being found. Then I will come and hunt you. I know what you are - you are His angel of death - but I am not afraid of you. You cannot deny me blood-feud.”

“Don’t be a fool, boy. With the numbers they have you would be dead an hour after I am gone. Run while you can.”

“And is that what you are going to do?” said the boy, scowling. “Murder my father, run away, and leave me to die?”

“I have taken another kind of oath. My path and my fate are my own. As are yours.”

“And you think they won’t catch you?” The boy dared, defiant before the armoured giant. “I could track you with a sack on my head; you reek of blood and fire and although you move quietly you crush the undergrowth like an auroch. When the sun tracks the next hour, like as not it will find us both dead.” Acid in his voice now. “Like as not I will have my blood-feud, after all.”

Krajken paused. The boy was right. It would be obvious to the traitors’ forces where he was going, and without knowledge of the landscape he could only walk a direct route. They would find him very quickly indeed – he had not come equipped for stealth. “Then you must come with me, and show me another way.”

The boy laughed, but it was harsh and mirthless. “And have you gut me in my sleep when you’re done with me? I have seen how you show thanks to the faithful.”

Krajken felt his skin flush as anger stirred within him. He loomed over the boy, fought down the urge to lift him bodily into the air. “Do not question my honour.” The boy did well, he thought, to hold his ground, although most of the steel in his young eyes turned to base metal. “I have wronged you and denied you blood-feud, so I give you this instead. My word in the service of the Emperor, which will bind me to the grave. I will see that you come to no harm.”

The boy tried to meet Krajken’s eyes again, and failed.

“Stay here and die,” said Krajken, “or come with me and live.” He remembered the way the boy had knelt on seeing him, and the cheap symbol of superstition his dead father had worn and, cursing himself for taking advantage of one so young, said, “Come with me and do the Emperor's work, boy.”

The boy looked away, his gaze touching on his father’s corpse, his mouldering home and back to the Marine’s smoke-blackened breastplate.

“Ricardo,” he said in a small voice. “My name’s Ricardo.”

#

The wet rock of the gully rose straight up on either side of them, the dark, dripping walls so close together in places that Krajken’s armour scraped the moss from the stone as he passed. Every rasping hiss, no matter how soft, made the boy walking ahead of him flinch, and Krajken could not miss the implied rebuke.

The gully, a deep and narrow slash in the living rock of the mountainside, bled groundwater on the pair in a continual drizzle as they walked, while the trees far above cut out much of the remaining day’s light, their roots dangling precipitously over the crumbling edge of the ravine. Neon-blue butterflies and silver-yellow moths flitted through the shade in great clouds, inscribing whorls and arcs in electric flashes of colour.

The thick, reeking clay that Ricardo had insisted Krajken plaster his armour with was kept damp and supple in the oddly warm, sulphurous air. Not only would the clay mask the scent of the blood crusting his armour, Krajken knew, but the heat and depth of this gully would screen them both from their aerial pursuers; heard faintly but not seen these past few hours, and growing fainter.

“We need to go faster,” Ricardo whispered, not for the first time.

“The pace is sufficient. They will stop hunting us at night and we will move faster then.”

Ricardo stopped dead, the scowl he gave the Marine a mix of surprise and scorn. “What? We don’t move at night! No-one moves at night!” He began walking again, his easy pace leaving no tracks in the thick, sodden moss underfoot. “Did they teach you nothing about Cadia?” Plumes of winged insects rose in his wake. “Other than how to kill civilians?”

Krajken let this comment pass. “I suspect I know more about your world than you do, but indulge me. Night is the best time for travel. Why do you object?”

Ricardo snorted, and jabbed his carbine upwards at the lacework screen of trees far above. Krajken resisted the urge to bark a direct order, and tried again. “Do the traitor’s forces present at night? Have they some nocturnal facility my Legion – my Chapter - is unaware of?”

“Don’t mock me! Even infants on Cadia know this. Am I to be your sport?”

Krajken quickened his pace, and was alongside Ricardo, reaching out to grab for him, when it came to him. “The Eye.”

Ricardo was silent, but he made a sign in front of his chest, one that Krajken recognised as that of the Temple of the Saviour Emperor. He was seeing it more and more among civilians, on more and more worlds. It would not have pleased the Emperor Krajken had known – if all too briefly.

“It’s the Eye, yes? It becomes visible at night, I know, but-“

“Stop saying that!” Ricardo hissed, making the sign with both hands again. “If you name it, it will see you - he will see you, even in the daytime. Even down here. You mustn’t let it look at you – it mustn’t see you. Ever. Or he will come for your soul.” He frowned at Krajken, his young eyes bright with agitation. “How can you – you of all people – not know that? You’re one of His angels. What if it sees you…?”

Now it was Krajken’s turn to frown. “It’s just a protrusion of the Warp, boy. It is a hiding place for criminals and traitors, it is a dangerous place in which to travel and it is a natural phenomenon, but that is all.” Superstition. A dangerous disease that had threatened to turn epidemic in the last few centuries, spreading cataracts of fear across otherwise rational eyes. Still, what could one expect when the Emperor sat wordless these last centuries, the Golden Throne labouring to cure his wounds, while throughout the Imperium fools and charlatans spread false worship as a panacea for worry and doubt. There were two wars encircling the world of men, Krajken knew, one he was equipped to fight and one, less tangible, that he was not. “Does everyone else on Cadia believe as you do?”

Ricardo scrambled past a fallen boulder. “Of course they do. Cadian’s aren’t stupid.”

Krajken sighed. “And this eater of souls – I assume you mean Abaddon? The Kin-Traitor?” He laughed softly as he saw Ricardo flinch again. “And you don’t say his name either, I suppose? Don’t worry,” he said, noticing that the gully was starting to slope back up towards the forest floor, “if he should turn up to eat your soul, I’ll rip his black heart out and feed it to the ravens. There is nothing I would like better in all the galaxy.”

As they walked on Krajken thought of Corax, the Primarch missing after he had abandoned them over a century ago to crusade alone into the Eye, and realised he had misspoken. Revenge against Abaddon and the others was the eternal chill in his bones, the encircling ice that deadened his passions and denied him even the semblance of rest, driving him on like blades in his back - but the missing, much-beloved Corax – that was the fire eating at his heart, a fire that burned nevermore brightly than when he and his Brothers found themselves once again beneath the lour of the hated Eye. Somewhere in there, somewhere there was Corax, father to them all, lost to who-knew-what fate.

He glanced up, realising now that he had been aware of the Eye’s baleful presence ever since he had landed, as if he had been seated with his back to an open door all day, but he saw only flecks of darkening sky amid the black canopy. Night was coming, however, and with it the Eye, in all its seething, hateful glory.

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PART 2

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When Ricardo stirred it surprised Krajken; the boy was so slight he had nearly forgotten he was carrying him.

Ricardo let out a low moan, the end of which was tinged with anger – and not a little pain – and Krajken carefully set him down on a fallen log as he started to struggle. After a moment’s thought he laid the carbine in the ferns and brambles beside him.

The boy gripped his head, and looked around sluggishly. “What – what happened? Where-?”

Krajken made his face a mask. “You fell.”

Anger replaced pain in the boy’s expression at a startling rate. “Liar! You knocked me down!”

“That depends on your point of view. You were panicking; shouting. You started to run.”

“Because you weren’t going to take cover before night-“ Ricardo stopped, suddenly aware of where he was. The enveloping darkness was not that of some unlit trapper’s lodge or sunken hunter’s hide; safe and reliable and comforting. This was the other darkness. The darkness in which only the Eye could see.

Ricardo had been swimming just once in his life, taken out from Cold Harbour at dawn in a dinghy and hoisted into the Sour Sea by his father, to sink or swim as He willed. He had splashed ineffectually, only just treading water, when he had felt something brush his leg. Only then had he become aware of the nightmarish depths unseen beneath him, hiding who knew what bloated, pale-bellied horrors. He had that same feeling now, exposed on the wet log, aware that it was only the fragile twigs and leaves above his head that stopped him from hurtling into the hideous gaze of the Eye. He could feel it looking at him as the forest rushed away on all sides.

He dropped behind the log as fast as he had once gained his father’s old dinghy, tried to wedge himself under it, his breathing hoarse and rapid.

As Krajken watched, the words of some prayer he had never heard spilled from the boy's lips. “Almighty Emperor; ever watchful and vigilant; Almighty –“

With one armoured fist he grabbed the filthy clothes on Ricardo’s back and hoisted him into the air. Krajken shook him until the boy stopped the prayers. “That’s better. You’ve been in the open –“ the other armoured fist took in the pitch dark forest around them, “-if that is the right word – for three hours now. Rejoice, for your soul is still your own. Abaddon, it seems, had other business to attend to.” He lowered Ricardo to the ground for a second time. “Look up.”

Ricardo shook his head vehemently. He was trembling. Krajken put a hand on the boy’s bony shoulder, softening his gruff voice. “Look up, and see what my Brothers are doing to Abaddon, right in front of his precious Eye.”

The boy glanced in Krajken’s direction in surprise, following the sound of his voice, unable to see him in the total darkness.

“Yes, look,” said Krajken. “Understanding is the key to liberation, child. Like all fears, the Eye lives ten times larger in the pit of your imagination. Look on it. Know it for what it is, and what it is not, for knowledge is the true enemy of fear. Now look.”

Ricardo took a few unsteady breaths and slowly craned his neck back, his whole body shaking with dread. A shuddering moan escaped his lips; the light from the suppurating wound in reality that was the Eye could be seen clearly through the treetops, oozing and melding in sickly whorls, and then – a gasp. Now Krajken looked too, martial pride heralded by a rush of adrenaline, knowing that even without an augmented eye the boy could still see the flashes and halos and lances of light cauterising the night sky far above, outshining the dread Eye. “My Brothers,” he whispered in the dark, fierce honour lending his voice the solemn resonance of a preacher in that arborial cathedral, “paying the traitors their dues, and more. They may have a foothold here on Cadia, but it will not last, not while my Brothers and I draw breath.”

“Are those…ships? Ships of the Imperium?” Awe now in the boy’s voice, as he watched the titans of childhood legend writing the name of Man in the heavens.

“Aye, indeed. A major fleet action, smashing the blockade. There! – a broadside of plasma lances. There! – a Devastator cannon. And another! But it will come to nothing unless everyone plays their part.” He paused. “Due to some drifting aerial mines, I have already missed my cue.”

“One day,” breathed Ricardo, “one day, I will command His dread chariots, and unleash Holy vengeance with a sacred word.”

Krajken shook his head, dismayed to hear such superstition, although he approved of the underlying sentiment. The boy watched in silence for a few moments longer and, as the trembling in his small body faded, Krajken took his hand away, picked up the carbine from beside the log and hung it on Ricardo’s shoulder. “Now, lead on.”

He was pleased to hear the brassy defiance return in the boy’s voice, delivered with the now-familiar scowl. “And break my neck after I’ve taken three steps? I can’t see a damned thing. I can’t see my hands in front of my face!”

Krajken unhooked the nightvis mask he had removed from his pack earlier, and slapped it into the boy’s outstretched palms. “It is far too large, even though I have adjusted the straps. But it will suffice for the few hours until daybreak. Now, commander of dread chariots, lead on.”

#

Sometime during the long, stumbling night a sonorous rumble echoed off the many peaks and cols that lay under the forest blanket. It came from all directions in a confusing welter of subsonics. Far behind them, the low, marching clouds that had closed over the Eye not long before were lit from below, glowing dull, angry red for a few moments.

Krajken stopped, turned, raised his weapon in silent salute.

“The pod.” whispered Ricardo. “That was a booby-trap, wasn’t it?”

The Marine did not answer as he walked on into the night, flakes of dried mud falling away as he went.

#

Just before dawn, Ricardo halted and fell to his knees in the leaf-litter, bowing his head. He began muttering prayers into the darkness.

“For the love of - on your feet, boy! There are people dying while we delay.”

Ricardo’s words caught in his throat. He did not rise, his voice incredulous. “You - do not pray?”

“Just because there are gods – even good ones - does not mean man should pray to them. That way madness lies. Up, before I pick you up. Again.”

Ricardo stood hesitantly, glowering his confusion.

“As you give your prayers, so you give your reason, too,” grumbled Krajken. “Best to keep both to yourself.” He put his hand in Ricardo’s back and pushed, gently enough. “Onward.”

#

The pre-dawn light made charcoal sketches of the trees, stark against a gunmetal sky. The birds had begun their scattered chorus when the pair reached the pass.

“You knew the Emperor?”

The voice was almost a whisper, but Krajken couldn’t help smile at the awe in it. “No, of course not. But when I was your age, he was not recovering in the Golden Throne as he is now. He walked among men. He spoke to us all, spoke for us all.” Krajken shook his head as they left the fading deer path and forged through dry, brown ferns that came up to his waist. “I was a Neophyte during the siege of Terra. Tell me you’ve heard of that? I wanted nothing other than to go to his aid. I wanted it more than I wanted anything before or since, but…” He stopped, aware they were heading for higher ground again. “The fastest route is through the lower pass, boy. We must make haste before the aerial patrols resume.”

Ricardo stopped, making the sign of the Temple again. “Not that way. They have sided with the Eye. They will betray us if they see us.”

Krajken glanced downslope, but could see nothing through the silver-tinged trees. “Collaborators?”

Ricardo spat as he walked on. “Even worse. Heretics. They have a shrine to-” he gritted his teeth, “-the Eye. My father said if I had been older we would have burned-“

Krajken was almost out of sight, a fleeting hulk between shadow-stained boles, before Ricardo realised he had gone. He started after him, tearing downhill towards the huts in the saddle of the pass, and the families who lived there.

#

The Marine was frighteningly fast. Ricardo couldn’t believe anything so large and heavy could move like that, and then he recalled the wings his grandmother had always said they had. Wings that only other angels could see. He listened for their feathered beat as he plunged headlong through the undergrowth, following the trail left by Krajken, but heard nothing but the birds, the hissing leaves above and his own heart, pounding out the footsteps.

The trail vanished and Ricardo crouched to a halt, his carbine ready. He crept forward until he saw the burn-line where the trappers kept the forest back from their huddled collection of plywood huts. Voices, unhurried and overlapping, reached him through the thick bracken. The clunk-clunk of a water-pump. The bark of a dog. And over it all a sticky residue of - wrongness. The air tasted of cruel whispers; the daylight felt like insects on his eyes; the-

For the second time in two days, a massive gauntlet whipped in front of his head, a single finger as thick as his own wrist stopping across his lips. He scowled, furious with himself for being surprised like that. The angel could be very quiet when it wanted too.

“Work your way round to the far side. When I am done, I will meet you there and we will carry on. Nod once.”

Ricardo nodded. “What are you going to do?” But even as he breathed the words against the cold, dark metal he knew the answer.

The sound of the bolter being primed stood out in the soft, waking forest like a scream in a monastery.

#

The first edges of sunlight were gilding the tops of the trees, and were turning the smoke from the chimneys into pale columns of gold. The dog was the first to see the Marine, but by the time its barks had sounded the alarm Krajken loomed tall in the middle of the settlement, menacing in his black armour, a pocket of night somehow untouched by the fast-rising sun.

Three men and four women were in the open, dressed in a mix of bright cloth from Trader’s Halt and rough skins scraped and cured by hand. The men were armed with hunting rifles. Ricardo had no idea how many others might be inside, but the women ran screaming for the dwellings, shouting names and wailing. Children inside, perhaps. Maybe elders. The Marine did not move. The men, perhaps, could not.

The dog stopped barking. Tightness, in the air, tension elastic.

Ricardo scuttled sideways through the ferns bordering the clearing, keeping low, keeping his carbine trained on the three men. The place smelled wrong, like water did when a stag died upstream. It smelled how Trader’s Halt made him feel whenever he saw it – uneasy in his own skin, angry like he had ants in his skull. His father had never let him go into Trader’s Halt once the heretics had taken over the church there. He had always gone alone, and when he came back black hatred burned within him, and no amount of woodshine would put it out. Ricardo would displease him, somehow, always, and greet the next morning with new welts, lumps and bruises. Nevermore, thought Ricardo, seeing for a jarring moment his father’s corpse lying unburied outside his home.

Then Ricardo blinked back to the clearing, saw with a shudder the hated symbols burned into the flesh of the three men surrounding the Marine. Then he saw the shrine; a hideous, tottering tower of bones from which hung carrion and worse. The Marine must have seen it at the same time, or maybe he had been waiting for Ricardo. His bolter came up, too fast to see, then a cart-crash bang rippled through the moist grass, morning dew dancing upwards in an outrushing crown. One of the three men vanished in a mist of red that the slanting sun sprayed with molten bronze.

It was quite the most beautiful thing Ricardo had ever seen.

His father grabbed his neck, forced his face into the blood-ruined flank of the crippled fawn that Ricardo had hidden in the forest, had tried to feed. “The weak live only to die.” His father put the knife in Ricardo’s hand, then squeezed, crushing the boy’s fingers against the bone handle. ”The strong see that they do.”

This was the Emperor’s holy work before him, Ricardo realised, and he would not be found wanting. He levelled his carbine and put a bullet in one of the men’s heads. The man fell as if axed. At the same moment he saw the Marine bring his arm around in a scything sweep and cave in the chest of the third man. A glance in Ricardo’s direction and then the Marine was off, moving into an avalanche of noise.

The bolter fired, the clearing shook. Two of the huts erupted in grey geysers of woodchip and dust, a hundred burning embers arcing through the air. The Chaos shrine vanished in a blizzard of splinters. Other weapons fire, sounding tinny and small, source unseen. The Marine spinning aside, impossible, needless grace, effortlessly avoiding the attacks. In the billowing clouds of sun-goldened dust he was a negative image, an absence of light that flowed rather than moved.

Ricardo hunted for a target but he may as well have aimed into a hurricane, it was all happening so fast. The bolter shattered the air again, deafening, debris peppering outward. Shouts, screams, cries. Ricardo let out a low moan, feeling the madness and the fear and the wrongness that was strangling this place. But this was the Emperor's work; He was watching. Swallowing his terror, he sprang up and loped forward.

More small-arms fire, maybe a rifle. He could see nothing, still hunting in the settling fountains of dust. Ricochets, off to his left. The unseen heretic's bullets were finding their equally unseen target. No word from the bolter, no noise from the Marine. More shots, more ricochets. The shots faster now, the ricochets simply echoes. And then the shots stopped, in a liquid emptiness. Silence stole back in, finding only the ringing in Ricardo's ears that spoke to him of blood.

Inky night moving within the greyness. His carbine came up, shaking. Krajken, his face as hard as his armour. The wrongness of the clearing, the terrible fury of the slaughter and the stench of death all rushed together in Ricardo’s head. Here was blood-feud, the ringing in his ears howled. Here was righteous death. He would not be denied again.

Ricardo fired at the graven bird on the Marine’s breastplate, and realised he was screaming out loud. The clearing screamed with him in an aria of death. The ricochet glanced past his ear, hissing a tunnel through the air. He racked the slide, clearing another round. Everything was very far away, and only the Eye could see him now.

A giant fist closed over the end of his carbine and his next shot rang off the metal and buried itself in the earth below.

“Enough.”

The word cut through the ringing and the pounding of blood like light through a cloud. Ricardo lurched back, then fell to his knees, bowed his head, holy terror filling his soul. Around him on the dust-stained grass myriad tiny fires flickered.

Sobs. Weak and choked, they came from one of the two intact huts.

“Return to the forest, boy. This is harsh business.”

Ricardo summoned the strength to speak, blood draining from his face. “Forgive me! Please! I was weak. Only the Emperor is strong. Everything is as He wills. I can be strong, too, I will show you. They are the weak ones. Let me finish them-”

“Enough! They are lost. Whatever else he wills, the Emperor did not will that. I said go!”

Ricardo opened his mouth and froze as Krajken looked at him with a face like thunder. He scrambled to his feet and darted for the treeline, not looking back until he was under the canopy. He saw Krajken stoop and enter one of the huts.

Nothing moved in the clearing. Ricardo trembled. His arms and legs felt alien to him, his carbine like an anvil. Stones grew in his gut. He realised the faint sobs and wailing had stopped, only an intermittent, keening cry remained. Krajken emerged from the hut and went into the last one. Ricardo closed his eyes. Moments later the crying stopped.

When he opened his eyes the Marine stood over him. Ricardo stared at his metal-shod feet, knowing his time had come. Death itself had fallen in that pod, and it killed everything it touched. He waited for the sound he would not hear, and for the Emperor's light to claim him.

The voice, when it came, was soft and old, and it was only then he noticed the accent, and realised just how far from home it was. “On your feet, boy. We have to be a long way from here before nightfall.”

#

To be continued...

Sholto

Innonexess

that was a long story good though very very very good

treeboy

very good indeed, thats twice todat i've lost a fair bit of time reading your storys =P

Richdog

Dude that was fantastic, I could have kept reading for another half hour.

Waterbizkit

More excellent work. You create amazing visuals, it's as though I can picture the scenes in my mind with picture-perfect clarity.

I look forward to the next installment.

~Bizkit

Imperial Dane

Great story Sholto. I can't wait to see more of it.

Sholto

Thanks for reading guys More to come soon.

Sholto

Cable

I second Bizkits comments, you truely are an amazing writer and you captivated me with this story.

Sholto

PART 3

The downward slope of the valley was gentle now, the air warmer, the trees thicker, darker and older than their alpine cousins. The tall crowns caught most the sunlight, leaving the darkened forest floor strangely bare of undergrowth. Only lush mosses, antlered lichen and scuttling bark beetles attended the pair’s passing, and if the aerial patrols from Trader’s Halt had been this way neither of them had heard it. It seemed that the savage echoes of the fight at the clearing had simply evaporated unheard into the emerald light of the new day.

“What is there at this place I'm leading you to?” said Ricardo quietly. “I’ve seen it – it’s nothing but a mountainside.”

“Who said my mission was a place? Best you don’t know.”

“I wouldn’t talk if I was captured. I’d die first.”

“No, boy. You’d die last.”

Ricardo climbed up onto a splintered trunk, its rotten flesh riven to its core, and walked along it, his head now level with the Marine’s. “You think I’m weak because of what happened back there. Well, I’m not. I’m as strong as any Cadian!”

“Stronger than those we just met, at any rate, although strength is often misunderstood by the very people who need it most.”

“You think I’m stupid, too. You think you can talk upwind of me. I know what strength is, giant. The Imperium is strong. It’s holy because it’s strong, just like the Emperor. All – all strength flows from Him,” Ricardo struggled to remember the exact phrase, “and – and the weak know not His Light and wither in the dark.”

“I see. And who taught you those words?”

“My fath-!”

Krajken glanced at the boy, saw the look of anger and pain that one so young could not hope to hide. He said nothing, and let the boy find his tongue.

“Everyone knows it is true.” Ricardo scowled, kicking at an outcrop of mustard yellow mushrooms jutting out of the bark. “It is taught at the Temple! Strength is the only thing that matters. Everything else is false. We have to be stronger-“

“Stronger than what, boy?”

“-than His enemies! They are hateful and cowardly and they will die by my hand.”

“Tell me, young soldier, does this make me strong?” Krajken hefted his bolter.

Ricardo looked at the weapon, longing to hold it, knowing he could barely lift it. “Of course.”

“And this?” He reached out, grabbed a fistful of the fallen tree Ricardo walked on and crushed it to rotten, splintering pulp in his gauntlet.

Ricardo nodded, his face sullen.

“And the things I did in that clearing?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Ricardo jumped silently down from the mossy trunk. “You mock me. You know why.”

“Answer.”

“You can kill His enemies with ease. I saw you do it.” Then in a smaller but defiant voice, “I tried to help.”

“You value brute force. Aggression. Destruction. Well, boy, those are the things the Great Enemy values. Those are the only things the Great Enemy values. It is why they are the enemy. We have to be more than that, or we count for nothing. Do you understand?”

Ricardo shook his head, and then sighted down his carbine at a spinestoat, wrapped almost invisibly around a moss-hung branch. “That’s not true. My father says the Imperium crushes everything in its path, and that is the way it has always been.” He took the shot in his head and smiled, knowing he would have hit it even without stopping.

“I said to you once that your father taught you well. I was sadly mistaken.”

Ricardo paused, turning first one way then the other. Krajken waited while the boy decided which way to go. The Marine could tell he was getting farther and farther from the forests he knew. With the enforced comms silence, he would just have to trust him to find the way. “Tell me – among your people how do you mourn your dead?

There was a long pause, and the response, when it came, was delivered through gritted teeth. “Why?” Ricardo stalked away, following some ruminant path Krajken could barely make out.

“On Deliverance the people rub ash on their bodies and knot twigs in their hair.” Krajken ran a glove over his leathery scalp. “If they have hair. Do Cadians do the same?”

There was another pause, not quite so long. “We use bones, not twigs.”

Krajken grabbed Ricardo’s shoulder, stopping him dead. He lifted the boy’s rags up, exposing his back. Ricardo struggled and grunted, but could not free himself. “I see bruises. Lots of bruises. No ash, except on your face and hands, and that’s just from back in the clearing.” Krajken let go of Ricardo’s shoulder and grabbed his head, peering at the filthy, knotted hair. “No bones. Lice, but no bones.”

Ricardo shook himself loose and pushed away furiously. “What of it?” he shouted, voice hoarse. “I heed the Kin Law in all things, but I do not mourn him! I mourned for my mother, and my grandmother when their time came, but not for him!” He turned and stalked away into the trees, kicking the gnarled bracken out his way.

Krajken stared for a moment, then turned and resumed his steady, ground-swallowing pace without a word. After a few minutes he heard the sound of Ricardo following just out of sight, faint rustles of the undergrowth that only a Marine would be sure he had heard. About ten minutes later he saw the boy on the path ahead of him, sitting as casually as he could manage with his bony, awkward limbs on a lichen-bruised rock, face twisted with his usual scowl. That had been impressive stalking, for a boy, and Krajken let a little surprise show in his impassive face. He smiled inwardly as the boy saw it and his young eyes lit up in triumph.

As he passed him, the boy jumped down off the rock and started walking alongside the Marine again. “That was well done,” said Krajken, “but take care at the streamlets. Sound travels along the water surface as if it were on a road.” Krajken caught the inadvertent smile forming on the boy’s face, and then saw it die a moment later as Ricardo glanced up at him. The boy’s anger was ever present, simmering just below the surface, and it fuelled whatever poison his father had put there. “At the clearing, I told you to stay in the forest. Why did you disobey me?”

“I – I don’t know. That place was wrong. They – I had to do something. You were doing His will, while I just hid there.” Ricardo walked on, fidgeting with his carbine. “Back – back there – why? Why did you not kill me? I shot at you.” He swallowed. “Are you going to kill me now?”

“Remember my oath, Ricardo Dukagjin. You shall come to no harm in my care.” The Marine waved one massive hand dismissively. “I should never have let you get so close to that clearing in the first place. It was tainted, and no place for the impressionable. In fact, you did well to recover yourself, but it was my fault.”

“Did – did you kill everyone?”

Krajken thought for a moment. “You mean, did I kill the children? The infants? The baby?”

Ricardo nodded.

“Yes. I did. They had been touched by Chaos, although they had no choice in it. That shrine had blighted everything.” They walked on. “It seems you approve.”

“Yes!” Ricardo’s thin voice soared to the treetops and startled grouse into flight. “They were His enemies, hateful in His eyes! I only wish it had been my knife that slew them.”

“The Great Enemy thinks nothing of death and killing, other than to rejoice in the slaughter. The blood of the innocent is simply wine for their table. You think they mourn for those children?”

“No, of course they don’t.”

“But we should. Because I can assure you the Emperor does.”

“But – the priests!” Ricardo spluttered. “If they hear you say that – heretics are hateful in His eyes – you’re an angel! How can-?”

“Enough! Don’t talk to me of priests. Men who sacrifice their reason for false hopes do not deserve your ears, or mine.”

Ricardo shook his head in wonderment. “You do not pray and you say things against the priests and you do not follow the Kin Law. Is everyone like this where you come from?”

Krajken was silent a long time before answering. “No,” he said, with a heavy sigh. “Let me tell you something of my home, boy. I went to the dedication of a new forge hall at Precinct 72 not long ago. Most of Deliverance is manufactories of one kind or another, and I am proud of what my people have accomplished on such a barren world.” He glanced at Ricardo. “There are many who think that odd - an Astartes being proud of the ordinary man and woman - but you have never been to Deliverance. They are a people to be proud of. We were slaves, long ago, but tyranny and oppression were bested by those I am honoured to call my ancestors. It was our finest hour, though I fear we may need the hearts of those times again.

“When I visited the forge-hall, it was the first time I had been on Deliverance for over two hundred years. War makes a stranger of your home, boy, never forget that, but I am still not sure what to make of what I saw.

“Understand – the work in the manufactories was never easy. My own father worked there for eighty years, man and boy-”

“You have a father?” Ricardo blurted out.

“Of course I do. Did you think I just appeared inside a suit of armour? Don’t interrupt again, or I will walk the next mile swinging you by your feet. They carried him out of the manufactory, as he always said they would have to. It was a tough place; unforgiving, dangerous and crude, but he said it was the finest place in the whole Imperium. He walked tall, he said, and there was no man whose eye he could not meet. I only saw him a handful of times after I became a Marine, and even though his son towered over him, he still walked tall. The Emperor built the Imperium on men like my father.

“But when I went there not long ago, there was no man or woman in Precinct 72 who walked tall, boy. Not one. Fearful eyes, hidden faces, bowed backs, totems and altars and damnable priests. I looked for anyone my father would have recognised, but instead I saw a machine. The biggest machine I have ever seen. A monstrously huge, noisy, stinking machine. And I saw what this machine did, and I despaired. The factory I was visiting made munitions, as it always had, but these were worthless - obsolete. They were of no use any more, hadn’t been for decades. I challenged the Magos, an arrogant man I disliked intensely. He told me they made what they were told to make, and I should not question the Mechanicus. No-one questioned anything, anymore. The munitions were packaged and sent and this fool cared not where they went. Understand - the machine I saw was not just this manufactory, but all of them, all across Deliverance. Everywhere I went; the machine. And the people – my proud, noble people – were now just the nuts and bolts of this foul machine whose only purpose was itself. The machine could do no more but slowly and inexorably wear itself out, and all the nuts and bolts too.

“That it ruled the lives of these people was not enough, it had occupied their very minds as well, just as surely as disease occupies a sick body. My father would have been horrified, boy, as was I. And the only way that machine could survive was to grow, and to keep growing, like a cancer of the flesh, hoping to stay just ahead of the ruin it brought on itself.

“I see that machine everywhere I go now, boy. It is killing everything the Emperor cared for or loved in Mankind. I can fight every enemy humanity has, but I don’t know how to fight this one. Or even if I can.”

“The Emperor will show us the way,” said Ricardo in a firm voice. “His strength will be ours. He will not dessert us.”

Krajken grunted. “Did the priests teach you that, too?”

“It is what they tell us to say every night, before the Eye comes, to stop us being afraid. I know you don’t get afraid, though.”

“I wonder, sometimes, at the wisdom of being without fear. Fear can cripple any man, but it also tells him when something is wrong, dangerously wrong. Being fearless can lead men to walk blindly into dreadful misdeeds, or stand motionless before an oncoming tide.”

“Men like you?”

Krajken looked sharply at Ricardo, but said nothing, and carried on walking through the forest.

Ricardo grabbed handfuls of fallen leaves and damp moss and started wiping the dust and ash from his hands and face. Then he looked up at the silent Marine walking beside him. His scarred face and bald head were covered in pale ash from the clearing also, making him look even more like a statue in motion. He had made no effort to brush it away. After a few moments Ricardo let the leaves and moss fall through his fingers.

“So, what is this place we’re going to?”

#

Krajken hunched down, keeping his massive form close to the wet, black rock. Rain, soft and persistent, fell through the dusk as it shaded to night, surrounding him and Ricardo in grey curtains of mist that swept down the bare mountainside. He pointed.

“A capacitance bank. Provides emergency power for the void shields at Ebber’s Reach. Essentially a huge battery. Without it the shields would collapse under any serious bombardment.”

“Where? I don’t see-“

“The entrance is kloms away, on the other side of the mountain, towards Ebber’s Reach itself. The enemy built it inside an abandoned Mechanicus outpost. Look there.” He pointed at outcrops of rock further up the scree-slope.

Ricardo looked, baffled, and slowly the tightly spaced horizontal lines on the rocks came into view. They were almost invisible. “Are they vents?”

“No. Those ones are deathtraps. The real vents are hidden much more convincingly, and are higher up. And, right next to them, is the Mechanicus’ emergency exit. Their secret emergency exit, a secret my Company Captain had to practically beat out of them. My drop-pod was supposed to land right on top of it.” Krajken slid around the rock, keeping low. “Come on. Not much farther.”

“Ebber’s Reach?” whispered Ricardo, following him up the slope. “But that’s just another trading-“

“Not any more. If Abaddon has a grip on this world at all, then that is where both hands lie. It is the main staging point for orbital reinforcement. Masses of ordnance, parts and slaves are dispatched from there every day. If we can take it, we can cut his forces in half and deny him the foothold he so desperately seeks.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Best you don’t know.”

“Won’t they see us? Out here?”

“We’ve passed three levels of sec-net already, boy. All they’ve seen is a dark, wet and very lifeless slope.”

“How did you fool the machine spirits? Or do they still answer to you?”

Krajken sighed. “No spirits, just local partisans. Very trusted ones. Some Mechanicus.”

“But - won’t the traitors know you’re coming anyway?”

“You ask a lot of questions, boy.”

“Well?”

Krajken sighed again. “They’ll have scoured the direct route from the crash site to here, and failed to find me, thanks to you and your detour. The explosion at the drop-pod probably left them wondering just how many dead Marines were in there when it went up. And how many bodies fell out before it hit the ground.” Krajken let the memory of his dead brothers wash over him again, grimaced and kept climbing. “You didn’t trigger it because you’re so small. It probably thought you were a large rodent - no offence, boy. If I’m lucky they’ll only be on heightened alert.”

“If you’re not?”

“Then that prickling sensation you’re feeling is a sniper’s crosshairs on your skull. Keep climbing. We’ll find out soon enough.”

#

“Let me come in with you!” Ricardo hissed. The downpour had grown heavier and he could only just make himself heard.

From within the camouflaged exit shaft that Krajken had torn open, the Marine looked out at him, raising one hairless eyebrow. “Is that the famous Cadian sense of humour, boy?”

“This is my world, Emperor damn it!” Rain thrummed on the exposed metal. “Let me-!“

“Enough. Let me see your carbine.” Krajken held out one huge hand. “Here, let me see it, boy. Quickly.”

Ricardo scowled, handed him the weapon, and then yelped in useless protest as Krajken removed the breech block, put them in a belt-box and handed the carbine back. “You wait here. I’ll come back for you. No argument. No discussion. No more mistakes.”

He turned and disappeared down the sloping, pitch-black tunnel, the few tiny sounds he made echoing metallically long after he had vanished from sight.

The noise of the rain against the overhang was like pebbles on a tin roof.

Ricardo retrieved his spare breech block from the pouch at his waist, made the sign of the Temple and padded silently after the Marine. Blood pounded in his ears. He had let Krajken – and the Emperor - down last time. He had been weak. He would not be found wanting again.

#

At first it sounded like a waterfall.

As Krajken moved silently down the pitch-black tunnel he stopped to listen, wondering if somehow there was an underground stream his briefing had failed to mention. He couldn’t make it out clearly and crept forward, his augmetic eye picking out the arching concrete bricks of the tunnel in stark relief. Pale green icons winked softly in his vision, showing him how far he had come and how much farther it was to the concealed hatch.

The sound grew louder, but still maddeningly indistinct. Like a hurricane, perhaps, a great wind blowing through the complex. It was as likely as the waterfall. It also had to be very close for him to hear it through the dozens of metres of solid rock. Either that or very loud indeed.

He came to the hatch, his eye rendering it in soft ochres that stood out against the false green of the bricks. He placed a hand on the hatch and readied himself. The Imperial Guard forces arrayed in the woods outside Ebber’s Reach were waiting for his signal that the void shield’s emergency power was down, a signal they had expected almost two days ago. How they had managed to still remain hidden for that time Krajken could not imagine, but so often in war the greatest feats went unsung and unnoticed. A huge assemblage of bombardment cannon, Earthshakers and Basilisks were waiting to pound the aerial defences of Ebber’s Reach. The instant they had finished his brothers would drop from orbit and carry out the pin-point strikes on the port that his Chapter were so renowned for - assuming their Battle Barge had survived the days-long confrontation with Abaddon’s fleet. It all depended on him, now.

The hatch was never intended to be opened from this side. It did not matter. Krajken braced himself, one hand on the hatch and the other on the opposite wall of the tunnel and pushed. Concrete fractured in explosive lines of dust, metal bent and shrieked and snapped, bolts sheared and whicked off into the dark of the tunnel like ricochets and then the hatch was lying on the rubberised floor of the complex, rocking gently back and forth.

He looked either side of the hatchway, seeing the deserted cable storage room, dimly lit by cold-glowing wall-strips. He leapt over the fallen hatch, landing crouched on the cushioned floor. The warm air rushed past him now the room was open to the outside, setting the dangling loops of thick cable swinging in their long rows and swirling the clouds of concrete dust.

The noise was louder now, deep and resounding, but still far away, like a continuous artillery barrage heard from within a deep-lying bunker.

He found the door to the storeroom, destroyed the lock with one finger and left.

#

He was in the maintenance areas. Small, neat corridors of dull, beige plastic that smelled of ozone and cleaning fluids. Strong, ubiquitous lights flattened every corner, vertex and edge into depthless uniformity, chasing every possible shadow back behind the flimsy walls. Darker sections of plastic panel showed where signs had been removed, but others remained, embedded, their machine-code triangles and lines illegible to Krajken. No matter. He knew his path.

As he walked, bolter at the ready, the same walls vibrated around him, quivering with the transmitted force of the growing noise. A steady stream of ultra-fine dust sifted down from the featureless polyfoam panels above, slowly coating Krajken’s wet armour, turning him dark grey.

He passed through low, empty halls where disconnected conduits and power cables jutted from grommets in the beige walls and wine-dark flooring like exposed bones or dried-up arteries. The physical pounding of the unending noise made them shiver in their long rows, as if dancing to some mindless beat.

He stepped carefully over trip-wires of invisible light, revealed to his augmetic eye in flashes of warning amber.

Still, Krajken saw no-one.

Then he left the maintenance areas through a bare-walled stairwell hewn from the living rock, unlocked a heavy blast door, slid it aside and entered hell.

The sound hit him like a titan’s fist. It was sound in its purest form; no longer mere vibration but sound as raw and primal as an earthquake or a supernova, sound as a living thing beating against the membrane of the world. Blood vessels ruptured across his face, blood weeping from his eyes, nose and ears. Electric nails hammered through his skull even as his aural receptors slammed barriers into place to protect his hearing. The sound receded from his ears as if behind a thick wall, but still sang and thrummed in his bones and his belly.

As he reeled from the assault, the smell hit him. It was like the clearing had been, only a thousand times worse. The actinic ozone from the battery towers barely registered over the reek of horror and desperation and despair. The smell of the Warp, and the stench of its victims’ fear.

His briefing had been woefully lacking. Instead of being defended by traitorous troops, there was something worse here. Far worse.

Good, he thought, as he recovered from the initial shock of entering the hall. His vengeance for his dead Brothers would be all the sweeter. He wiped the blood from his eyes.

He was on a metal lattice walkway, perched near the arching roof of a colossal hall. The walkway pulsed underfoot; the railings shook visibly under the aural assault. Before him an iron-frame cargo lift swung over a sixty metre drop to a white-painted concrete floor. To his left and right the walkway carried on, hugging the walls into the distance, dark openings leading off into the rock at regular intervals.

Straight ahead, beyond the lift, the hall was dominated by six enormous towers that receded into the distance, one behind the other, like mighty rockets ready for launch. Each stretched hundreds of metres to the bare rock ceiling, composed of alternating rings of copper and ceramics and framed in web-like scaffolding and support struts. The towers were alive with energy, seething with pent-up power. The scaffolding around them crawled with scuttling spiders of sparks, seemingly conjured out of nothing in a coral-blue flash only to vanish again in the blink of an eye. These towers stored the power for the void shield, but were also clearly the source of the hellish noise – a noise Krajken knew they should not – could not - be making.

To his right, the walkway caught the light from a windowed control room. Krajken quickly reached the door and slipped inside.

Two men stood with their backs to him, working the brass control panels, seemingly oblivious to the hellish sound coming from the towers. Krajken paused, thinking for an instant his augmetic eye was malfunctioning, but there was no mistake. The men truly were blurred, as if they were vibrating in step with the noise, every edge and feature smeared and indistinct. Their skin, covered in the ubiquitous fine dust, was crazed with cracks like ancient porcelain. Some power of the Warp was allowing them to survive in conditions that should kill them in minutes. Krajken saw the symbols of Abaddon on the men’s overalls. Unlike the disturbingly out-of-focus men, the symbols were clear and crisp.

One of the men turned and caught sight of Krajken. In the instant before Krajken’s huge fist closed over the man’s smeared face, he saw the hungry light of madness in his eyes. In the deluge of noise the Marine neither felt nor heard the cranial bones splintering. He broke the second man’s neck as he passed, striding quickly to the control panel.

He sent the comms system into a damage-assessment loop, then did the same to the back-ups. The facility would be cut off from Ebber’s Reach for the next two hours - plenty of time to plant the charges. As he tore the control panels free of the wall to prevent the loops being interrupted, he noticed the alarm-strips strobe into life.

At first Krajken was perturbed – he knew he had not tripped any security systems. Still, there was nothing to be done about it now. He smiled ruefully, and then wickedly. So they knew he was here. Good, he would meet them in open battle. First he had to stop that noise before it started causing him or his armour some serious damage.

He quickly found what he was looking for, knowing it as soon as he laid eyes on it. At the back of the control room an array of large skull-drones were connected together with thick, sickeningly organic-looking cables. They all fed into an armoured conduit running the length of the control room. It had been hacked open and the cables rammed in; they looked like blood-worms feasting on an open wound. Krajken was no techmarine, but he could guess that the conduit led to the battery towers, and that somehow they were being used to amplify the sounds coming from these shackled skull-drones. He took a closer look.

Each skull was intricately engraved with the symbols of Chaos; whirls and loops that sought to replicate the maddening maelstrom of the Eye, coming together again and again into the ubiquitous eight-pointed star. Gold leaf had been pressed into even the narrowest of the carvings. Someone had spent a lot of time creating these delicate scrimshaws, Krajken realised, someone had taken a lot of care. Someone he was longing to meet, bolter in hand. The skull-drones were clearly precious; beloved perhaps, treasured certainly. They were also larger than any ordinary man’s skull, Krajken saw with an angry start, the bone too thick, too dense. They were more the size of his own head, he realised. He set his jaw and hammered his armoured fist down on them one by one.

As each skull splintered and burst the noise, although not lessening in volume, lessened in complexity. When there were only a few left, Krajken realised what he was hearing. The sounds of war, the din of the battlefield, the screams of carnage and the call of blood. Each skull must have held hundreds of recordings from a dark lifetime of war, and they had all been playing at once, over and over again. He already knew what manner of corruption would have so lovingly preserved such a thing, and his skin tingled at the prospect. Nauzagedyn was here.

The sound finally died as he pulped the last skull, and the complex seemed to gasp in the pleasure of release. The pounding ebbed away like breath from a dying man, the very air relaxed, the stone walls sighed in sudden ease. Krajken bowed his head towards the shattered skulls. “Be at peace, my brothers.”

Outside the control room windows, the towers crackled and hummed with latent noise, many-legged electric ghosts dancing across their scaffolded surfaces.

Krajken could hear the alarm now, hear echoing footsteps ringing on stone, hear far-off screams of fury. He loped out onto the walkway, hungry for traitors’ blood.

#

Ricardo froze as the bright, trembling corridor he was in suddenly fell still and silent. The far-off roar, like some iron giant screaming in agony, had ceased at the same time. Had the angel put it out of its misery? Had Ricardo missed his chance to prove his strength and his faith once again? He hurried onward, cursing his weakness.

Behind him, the invisible eyes of the trip-wires he had crossed sang their secret warnings.

#

PART 4

Krajken stood on the walkway, able now to feel the prickling of his flesh caused by the massive energy towers’ frequent discharges. The walkway still rang, just on the edge of hearing, with the last echoes of the battlefield noise.

He checked the magazine in his bolter and, calm in the eye of the coming storm, readied the rest for quick access.

The screams, far too many to count, were starting to get louder. One by one, the dark openings that led off the walkway for as far as he could see turned bright as lights came on. The nearest was almost thirty metres away, and still dark.

He took out his combat knife, inspected the diamond-carbide edge.

The light in the nearest opening came on.

He started to lope towards it, adamantium-shod boots hammering clang after clang after clang. Shadows appeared, moving in the light, both they and him getting closer to the doorway. If his guess was right, they couldn’t hear him. They couldn’t hear anything, not even their own screams. He ran faster. The bolts holding the walkway to the wall spat concrete dust with every step.

The shadows emerged onto the walkway just seconds before he reached them. Guards, most of them in overalls, some in flak armour, all armed with lasrifles or slug-guns. All of them blurred, too, and all of them screaming with pain-wracked throats.

He fired once into their midst, sending up a halo of blood and smoke, and then he was among them. With his first punch, he knew he had misjudged the situation. With his second, he knew just how badly.

When the warped men moved they blurred far more than Krajken had seen with the pair in the control room, making their exact location a matter of guesswork. Wherever Krajken punched, they weren’t there. He was just hitting air. And they were fast; much faster than any normal man. Krajken felt the blows rain on his armour; just ducked his head out of the way of a swinging rifle-butt; leapt back a step as a bayonet swept inches before his face.

It took him only a heartbeat to adjust. He had fought against enemies - xenos, machine and more - that were faster than these cursed men. He leapt back another step to prevent them getting behind him. They rushed forward, and he was on them like a whirlwind, knife scything so fast the blade was one long whisper of steel, metallic calligraphy shimmering in the air. His bolter was silent as he wrote in red ink the manner of their deaths, then the last man fell twitching and bubbling to the slippery walkway and Krajken put a single round between his mad-shrieking eyes.

He looked up as from every lighted doorway more blurred masses of the warped men poured out, their strained screams echoing throughout the massive hall. The walkway bounced and shook beneath him. The air suddenly warmed as lasfire lanced towards him and solid rounds chewed dust from the walls.

Krajken raised his bolter and returned the fire, explosive rounds unable to miss in the densely-packed walkway. The front of the charging column exploded in overlapping pulses of gore and bone as each round detonated in a fresh target. All too quickly his clip was exhausted, and he seemed to have made no discernable impact on the numbers charging towards him.

He rammed a fresh clip home, took another look at the nearest battery tower and then lined up four careful shots. Each round hit one of the fist-sized bolts holding the walkway to the cavern wall, shattering the steel. The walkway groaned, but only Krajken could hear it. The guards screamed as they charged, shots glancing off Krajken’s armour as he stood waiting.

They had nearly reached him when the long section of walkway he had weakened convulsed with a screeching of tormented metal. It sagged a few inches, and several of the guards were thrown clear to drop away like stones. Then the bolts gave way completely and the walkway vanished from Krajken’s sight in a waterfall of dust and screams, taking most of the men with it. Time-frozen moments later the crunching impact echoed around the vast hall.

Those guards who had avoided plunging to the concrete floor scrambled back from the teetering sections of walkway, still screaming. It seemed they were unable, or unwilling, to stop. Krajken sent a volley of shots in their direction, but his attention was elsewhere. He had to get to the floor of the hall.

One savage kick smashed the railing next to him, sending it spinning away. Then a step and a mighty leap, arms outstretched, huge, armoured body arcing through the greasy air. He fell, gathering speed, and then one hand caught fast on the scaffolding surrounding the nearest tower. It bent and then snapped under his weight, but his other hand had already found another tubular strut.

Momentum swung him into the scaffolding and he landed on a solid beam. The air around him fractured in neon blue as static discharge crawled past him, arms of lightning whipping and snapping around him, bringing the reek of ozone and burnt almonds.

A lasround exploded off a strut nearby, taking a chunk of the metal with it. Solid rounds zipped past and the scaffolding sang with the impacts. Krajken didn’t need to look to know the surviving guards had finally resumed firing. He started to drop, fast, boots slamming from beam to beam, hands barely braking his plunge, but it was a long way to the floor, and the guards were getting their range. Lasrounds took bites out of his armour as he fell.

Then he heard a sound he knew, a soft crack amidst the heavier sounds of enemy fire. He glanced up at the blast-door through which he had entered the massive hall. Ricardo, crouched at the railing, carbine unwavering, shot after careful shot dropping the guards one by one. Already they were returning fire, but at that range they had little hope of hitting him. Damn the boy, he thought, he has no idea what he’s getting himself into. And he’s almost certainly forgotten my oath. Good shooting, though, he conceded.

Growling his displeasure, Krajken stopped, planted his feet and emptied his clip at the remaining guards high above him - he couldn’t take the chance that one of them might hit the boy with a lucky shot. He aimed for the bottom of the walkway, counting on the shrapnel from the explosive bolts to make it through the thin lattice. The guards’ blood spraying against the rock wall told him he had succeeded. A solid round ricocheted off his shoulder pauldron and tore a bloody groove in his scalp.

He started to descend once more, nearly at floor level now. Above him, a series of cracks and then the end of the screaming told him Ricardo had taken care of the last of the guards. He dropped the last ten metres to the massive plinth on which the tower rested, his impact cracking the surface, then jumped and dropped again to the white-painted concrete floor. He couldn’t carry enough explosives to destroy even a single tower, but if his Brothers managed to re-take Ebber’s Reach, they would probably need the shield themselves anyway. No, the towers had to stand. All he had to do was destroy the couplings at their base and the power regulators in the basement, and those would be easily repaired once the fighting was over.

He knelt and started placing the first det-block.

#

The Marine had vanished out of sight at the base of the nearest column. As he disappeared, Ricardo had felt the hideous wrongness of this place close in on him once more, snatching at his very soul, clawing at his mind with promises both delicious and terrible. The clearing had been bad enough, but this was worse. Fearful of being alone, Ricardo ran along the walkway until he could see the Marine again, crouched and busy, his massive bolter on the floor beside him. Somehow just seeing the Marine made him feel better.

Ricardo kept away from the railing – he could actually see the machine spirits sparking and crawling across the framework of the towers like lightning, and had no desire to get near them. No doubt the angel had calmed them, but might they not lash out at Ricardo in anger at the horror this place had become? He kept his distance, ashen-faced and trembling.

There was movement at the far end of the awe-inspiring hall; Ricardo could barely see that far with the fine dust in the air, but already he could hear the foul screaming. He saw the Marine glance around, and then up at him. The message was clear. He nodded stiffly, throat tight.

Resting his carbine on the railing he took aim, trying to control his heart and his breathing with a prayer to the Emperor. Whatever the Marine was doing he needed time, and he needed Ricardo to be strong and faithful. The Emperor would see him through this. The words of the prayer came faster and more insistent, trying to drown out the scratching at his mind, and the thoughts of the carnage to come. As the screaming heretics charged across the echoing expanse of the hall floor towards the angel, he opened fire.

#

Krajken had placed the fourth charge when he realised Ricardo had stopped firing. He saw the boy waving his carbine frantically – no more bullets. Krajken left the fifth charge where it was and snatched up his bolter.

He pointed to the cargo lift. “Get down here, boy!” he shouted. “You’re no more use up there.” And I can protect you better down here, he added silently.

The guards were running at him from all sides, tearing across the open floor, using the control machinery and abandoned trucks for cover. They fired as they ran, which filled him with contempt as their wasted shots flew wide. Each of his bolter rounds took one of the screaming men apart in a welter of gore, but they kept coming, relentless in their warped mania.

He cleared a blood-strewn path for Ricardo and kept the guards from him as the boy leapt the last few feet from the shuddering cargo lift and raced across the floor towards him.

Barely out of breath, Ricardo slid to a halt beside Krajken.

“We’ll discuss your disobedience later, boy. There,” Krajken pointed with his chin as he split a guard in half with a shot to the midsection. “Those grey blocks. Put three of them around–” he whirled, firing up at the concrete plinth behind them as two blurred faces appeared over the edge, “-around that metal half-dome there. No, there. Wrap the detcord round them tightly. Yes, that blue cable, wrap it round them.”

Krajken concentrated on keeping the onrushing guards back, shielding the boy with his body from any stray shots that came their way. After a few moments he glanced back. “Good. Take the silver ring and snap it over the detcord. Done that? Right, with me. Run!”

With Ricardo racing along beside him, Krajken jogged to the sixth and last tower, firing from the hip. As they passed a transformer coil that jutted from the concrete floor on massive iron legs, three guards leapt from atop it, screaming as they fell. Krajken took one of them apart in mid-air, his bolt round entering through the man’s gaping mouth and detonating inside his throat. The body, without head, neck or shoulders, landed with a meaty squelch on the floor.

The second man landed heavily on Krajken’s breastplate, driving the point of his bayonet into Krajken’s neck with the full force of his fall. The Marine didn’t flinch. He reached up and snapped the bayonet handle off, crushing the man’s hand in the process. Then he grabbed the man’s head and slammed it into the heavy iron leg of the transformer coil with every ounce of his armour-assisted strength. The guard twitched violently for a second, his limbs spasming furiously and then Krajken let go. What was left slumped lifeless and nearly headless to the floor.

He pulled the broken blade from his neck as he turned to deal with the third man. Already-clotting blood spilled onto his black armour as he saw Ricardo tug his hunting knife from the third man’s butchered corpse. The boy’s white face was splashed with crimson as he plunged the knife into the body again and again.

“Enough!” Krajken snapped. “Quickly, there are more coming.”

Ricardo looked at him with blood boiling in his eyes, crouching like a feral animal at its kill, and then he was up and running. Krajken jogged after him.

#

The voice boomed around the hall while the boy was setting the final charge.

“Is it one of Corax’s?” The voice was impossibly loud and discordant, as if speaking with dozens of tongues at once, a jarring choir of the insane. “I haven’t killed one of them in a while.”

Krajken could not see the source, and the sound seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. He blasted two more guards into bloody shreds, and crouched beside Ricardo. “Work quickly, then take cover. True corruption is coming, the dark heart of this place,” he said with a whisper.

“I can hear you, fool. I can hear your blood pumping fast at the thought of facing me. I can hear your runt panicking.” The voices had a mocking tone, dripping with contempt.

Still Krajken could see nothing but the last few guards, their screams sounding like tin toys now. He killed them with a trio of well-placed shots. Ricardo had finished, and he saw that the boy was utterly terrified, his head shaking, his knuckles pure white around the grip of his knife.

“Give that to me,” said Krajken, keeping his voice firm as he pointed to the unused detcord. Ricardo handed it to him, the boy’s eyes like those of a forest rodent in the shadow of a raptor. “When it comes, you run in the other direction. Run, and don’t look back. Find cover. I will find you there, when I’m finished.”

The voices boomed again. “Will I tell your runt why these men all scream, Brother? They are screaming for their Emperor. Their poor, poor Emperor. It is all they do, scream until it kills them, but he cannot hear them anymore. He cannot hear anything, anymore. Horus killed him, Brother, and they scream to his mouldering corpse for salvation.” Krajken wheeled as he finally located the source of the voices. “Salvation from me.”

The Emperor’s Child stood thirty metres away, massive in armour as purple as a bruise, the gold edging catching the light. The chrome vox-grille in his gorget had been extended to cover the entire front of his otherwise featureless, golden helm. In one hand he held a warhammer, it’s iron head shimmering in the same way the guards had, and in the other he held what looked like a bolter.

“You were once Nauzagedyn, of the Emperor’s Children,” said Krajken, hearing Ricardo’s footsteps pelting away behind him. “I had heard you were on Cadia. I am Brother-Sergeant Krajken, come to visit justice on those who betrayed their loyalties. Victory or death, traitor.”

“Do I get to chose?” laughed Nauzagedyn. Krajken realised with horror that the adamantium of the Emperor’s Child’s armour was covered in mouths, and it was they who were speaking. Then they growled as one, and suddenly bellowed, contorting in a myriad rictus of rage. The armour itself throbbed in an amethyst flash and a wave-front of noise raced outward, shattering the concrete floor and slamming into Krajken like a slap from a dreadnaught.

He staggered back, amazed that the warp-driven shout hadn’t set off the explosives behind him, but before he could recover his stance Nauzagedyn was firing at him.

The bolter he held barked a bizarre sound, a cross between an enraged bull-seal and a charging boar, amplified a thousand times. If Krajken hadn’t staggered the sonic bolt would have hit him dead-on; instead it caught his right shoulder pauldron and tore it apart. His bones and teeth screamed under the assault and agony burned through him.

Nauzagedyn was running towards him, firing again. Krajken danced aside and sprang forward, running at the Traitor Marine. Behind him the concrete plinth erupted in horizontal volcanoes of dust and debris as the sonic shots whipped past. Krajken’s bolter spat rounds at Nauzagedyn. The charging marine dodged all of them. The last one he swept contemptuously aside with his warhammer.

Krajken flung his bolter away, drew his knife and leapt, just as Nauzagedyn did the same. The two giants slammed together in midair, grappling furiously as they crashed to the floor together.

Krajken’s knife was inches from Nauzagedyn’s vox-grille, the slits just wide enough for a blade to slide between, but the Chaos Marine had a firm grip of Krajken’s wrist. Krajken twisted his hips and pivoted himself on top of Nauzagedyn, pinning him. As he strained with every enhanced muscle in his massive body to drive the knife home, his other hand was thrashing around trying to seize Nauzagedyn’s warhammer.

The tip of the blade passed agonisingly slowly into the slit of the vox-grille. Every mouth on the traitor’s armour screamed hatred at him. Krajken roared with fury and bloodlust and put his whole weight behind the knife, just as Nauzagedyn got his arm free and brought the warhammer crashing into Krajken’s left side.

There was no strength in the blow from such an angle, but the shimmering war-head shattered the armour on contact with a sonic blast, knocking Krajken flying, sending him sliding across the floor. Before he had even stopped he was on his feet, crouched low with one hand digging sparks from the floor to slow him down. Nauzagedyn was already charging.

Krajken rolled to one side as the warhammer scythed downwards, blasting a huge hole in the concrete with a discordant cry. The weapon was deadly, but it was cumbersome. Krajken might be injured, but he was still faster than his foe. Before Nauzagedyn could ready his warhammer for another swing, Krajken sprang to his feet and pounced, getting both arms around the giant’s waist. He heaved and lifted, then ran straight at the rough rock wall of the chamber. Nauzagedyn’s armour bellowed in ear-shredding fury and he tried to bring his weapon to bear but he was too slow. Krajken slammed the Traitor Marine bodily into the unyielding rock, putting his entire weight behind the impact.

He let go and Nauzagedyn slumped, the mouths momentarily quieted. Krajken delivered a swinging blow to the traitor’s head that would have dented ceramite. Rock-chips flew out from behind the golden helm, and the Emperor’s Child screamed in pain and rage. Krajken struck him again, both hands clenched in a hammer-blow, nearly knocking the helm flying. He drew back his armoured fist once more and Nauzagedyn head-butted him full in the face.

Krajken staggered back, blood pouring from his broken nose, only just ducking in time as the warhammer howled past his head. But Nauzagedyn had left himself open again, leaning back as the weapon swept off to the side. Krajken brought his knife slicing upward, aiming for the gap between gorget and helm. The blade struck true – and snapped.

Aghast, Krajken ducked the elbow and blocked the spiked knee that stabbed at his exposed side, but missed the warhammer. It caught him across the remaining shoulder pauldron and tore across his chest, rending chunks of armour free and sending Krajken spinning to the ground; breath knocked from his body and his head swimming.

He tried to rise, but Nauzagedyn’s huge boot slammed onto his chest, crushing him to the floor. The warhammer came smashing down and shattered the bones in Krajken’s left arm. He gritted his teeth against the overwhelming pain and tried futilely to rise again.

“The other arm next, then the legs. I have plans for you, black-bird,” sneered the mouths on Nauzagedyn’s armour, but some of the voices were muffled. Nauzagedyn looked down. Around his waist was the blue detcord. The Marine looked at Krajken and laughed with many, harsh voices. “No detonator.”

Krajken smiled through the pain. “Now, boy,” he said.

The lasround hit the detcord and the Chaos Marine’s midsection vanished in a ring of waxy, black smoke. Krajken felt the weight of the foot on his chest vanish, and then heard two solid thuds as Nauzagedyn’s body toppled to the ground.

Krajken climbed slowly to his feet, the pain in his shattered arm already receding as his body filled his veins with combat drugs. Nauzagedyn’s upper torso still twitched, and a bubbling sound came from the mouths on the armour. Krajken put one gauntlet on the golden helm and wrenched it off. The mouths fell still and silent, just lifeless carvings once again.

He looked on Nauzagedyn’s face, the lipless mouth stretched and enlarged beyond all semblance of human form, the black teeth stark against the deathly-pale skin. The pin-hole eyes of the traitor watched him even as they clouded with death.

Ricardo arrived at his side, holding the lasrifle he had taken from one of the dead guards. “How did you know I was there?”

“When have you ever obeyed me, boy?”

“Is it dying?” breathed Ricardo, staring down at the mutilated form.

Krajken re-set his broken nose as best he could. “It’s been dying for hundreds of years. I only mourn that it took so many souls with it in that time.”

Nauzagedyn’s mouth spasmed, and black blood gouted out. His eyes widened in surprise. “I…I made such a clamour…as would resound…the walls of heaven…itself.” His voice sounded strangely lonely all by itself, deep and dry, and very, very old.

Krajken knelt beside him, putting one hand on Nauzagedyn’s chest. “Die now, and be at peace. Your treason is forgiven only in death.” The eyes that were but points of darkness looked up at him, and he knew they saw not him but someone else.

“Why, father?” Nauzagedyn rasped. “Why? I called…and called…with all my voices. Why did you…not answer me…?”

Nauzagedyn convulsed, more blood spilling thickly from his ruined mouth. “Why did you…not answer me…” his face shuddered, and his eyes shone one last time, and it was a light that filled Krajken with wonder, “…before now?”

Krajken felt a shiver run down his spine. The traitor’s face fell still, and Krajken carefully closed his eyes.

“What – what did he mean? Who was he talking to?”

“I don’t know, boy,” Krajken lied. “I don’t know. I hope you find peace, Brother.” He stood, and retrieved his bolter. “Come now, we have but a few charges to set and we are done.”

#

Krajken hadn’t expected to find workers in the bowels of the complex, but he also didn’t expect Ricardo to do what he did.

The remaining handful of guards had fled after the death of their master, and Krajken had let them go. With comms down there was no way they could warn Ebber’s Reach in time. The pair wound their way down bare rock staircases deep below the battery hall.

As they descended, Ricardo blurted his question out as if unable to contain it any longer. “Was it the Emperor he was talking to? It was, wasn’t it? How was that possible? How?”

Krajken didn’t answer straight away. He was still unsure of what he had witnessed. It would require much thought. “Maybe, boy. He was dying and insane, so do not give his words weight.”

“But it was possible it was Him?”

“Yes,” said Krajken after a moment. “It’s possible. Or he may have simply thought he was hearing the Emperor’s voice, or the voice of Fulgrim, his Primarch. It does not matter now.”

“But it does! If the Emperor spoke to him, a fallen angel – the priests would – they could never accept that. Ever!” Ricardo smiled wickedly. “The very thought would drive them to foam at the mouth.”

“Then I wholeheartedly approve of that thought.”

The boy was deep in contemplation as they continued down the dark, stone steps. “Who’s Fulgrim? And what’s a Primarch?”

“I’m going to start charging you for questions, boy. Fulgrim is an arch-traitor. That’s all you need to know for now. As for Primarchs, do they teach you nothing but rank superstition here? Every Legion of Astartes had a Primarch – the father of that Legion and of every Astartes in it. Corax is my Primarch, one of the greatest of them all.” Krajken paused. “But he is lost to us now.”

“Where is he?”

“Somewhere in the Eye, boy. Somewhere in the Eye. He – he abandoned us. In our darkest, deadliest hour, he abandoned us.” Krajken shook his head slowly. “I would like to see him again, before I die. I would like that very much, of all things.”

“How can he be your father? You already have a father.”

“Every person has but one mother, boy, that can never change, but they can have more than one father. I had two; my real father on Deliverance I told you of, and Corax. Three, if you count the Emperor.” Krajken sighed. “One dead, one lost, one…”

“Do you hate him? Corax, I mean. For abandoning you.”

“Gods, boy, no! I don’t hate him. I…I love him, as any son would his father, but…” He sighed again. “Maybe, boy. Maybe a part of me is angry with him, for leaving all of us, for running away when we needed him the most. Maybe hate is the wrong word. It’s maddening, boy, not knowing if he lives or not, if he still cares what happens to us or not. I really don’t know how I feel anymore. Just that I want to speak to him, one more time.”

Ricardo was quiet until they reached the foot of the stairwell. “I know how you feel.” His voice was soft and old beyond his years, and echoed long after he spoke.

There was nothing Krajken could say to that, so he opened the doors and strode ahead. A few minutes later, as they both planted the remaining charges, they found the workers.

There were dozens of them, men and women, fearful and huddled, hiding in the farthest corner of the basement level. They shrank from Krajken when he appeared, though they were oddly silent. Not one made a sound. Ricardo stood behind the Marine, lasrifle at the ready.

They were terrified of Krajken at first, fearing he was another like Nauzagedyn, but he soon persuaded them to talk. They had come from Ebber’s Reach and other towns, given the choice of work here or slavery on the ships by Nauzagedyn. They had lived deep underground for months, working the machinery that regulated the battery towers, too far from the source of the noise to cause them any actual injury. Every day Nauzagedyn had selected two or three whose hearts beat loudest when he appeared – so he had claimed - and taken them away. They never returned. That was why they had kept silent when Krajken had appeared.

Krajken turned to Ricardo, lowering his voice. “They are your people, boy. Touched by Chaos, perhaps, but certainly working for the Enemy in this foul place. You can feel the taint of the warp here, not as strong as at the clearing, maybe, but still the same taint. They are your people, boy.” He hefted his bolter. He couldn’t believe he was about to do this, but something within him told him it was right. “You choose.”

Ricardo stared at him, and then past him, to the cowering throng. He too kept his voice low. “You are serious? You will do as I command? Kill these traitors at my word?”

Krajken nodded, wondering if he had taken leave of his senses. Once given, he could not go back on his oath. “Absolutely.”

“Then I say they are weak, and deserve only death,” Ricardo spat, his face contorted and dark. “They have shamed themselves and Cadia with their weakness. They could have refused to work and died with honour, not cowered like animals to protect their hides. I look and all I see is their cowardice and weakness!”

“Is that your judgement, boy?” Krajken set his face like stone and turned to face the men and women, levelling the muzzle of his bolter. These people had indeed served the enemies of the Imperium. Death would be harsh justice, but justice nonetheless.

The men and women stared at the gun. All they could hear was Ricardo, and all they could see was the gun.

Krajken could hear the boy’s heart hammering. Ricardo stepped forward, his head bowed. “Go,” he said, his voice painfully thin and weak in that dark place. He looked up at the men and women. “Get out of here.” They stared at him, and then at Krajken, uncertain and terrified. “I said ‘go’!”, Ricardo shouted angrily. “There has been enough killing today. Go back to your homes, all of you! Go, and think how you can earn the Emperor’s forgiveness!”

Krajken lowered his bolter and stepped aside, feeling pride and exhilaration. A man, clad in filthy overalls that were nothing more than rags, got to his feet and ran, stumbling, out the door. He did not look at either of them as he went. As soon as he left, more and more of the others got to their feet and soon they were streaming out the door, heading for the stairwell. None of them looked at the pair as they passed.

When they had all gone, Krajken retrieved the last of his charges from his pack. He was short - had probably lost a few in his fight with Nauzagedyn - but there were enough to finish the job. With his arm broken, however, he would need Ricardo’s help.

The boy’s face was angry and flushed, and his eyes shone, but for the first time since Krajken had met him, they shone not with fury or bloodlust. Ricardo kicked savagely at a pile of dirty, tin plates on the floor, sending them skittering away. He rounded angrily on the Marine. “I think I made a mistake! I - Did I choose well? Did I?”

“Only you know that, boy. Do you want to change your mind?”

Ricardo looked him in the eye for a long minute, and shook his head.

“Then,” Krajken held out the det-blocks, “help me set these.”

#

With the trees at their backs and the long, tumbling slope of the lush foothills ahead of them, Krajken and Ricardo sat and stared at distant Ebber’s Reach. It seemed to float on the morning sea of mist that hugged the valley floor.

Ricardo craned his neck back to look up at the mountain behind them, mostly hidden behind the trees. “We won’t see anything?” he asked Krajken.

“No.”

“The mountain won’t shake? Fire won’t shoot out? Smoke, even?”

“No.”

“Will we even get to hear them go off?”

Krajken laughed. “No.”

Ricardo looked deeply disappointed as he turned back to watch the sun rise beyond Ebber’s Reach.

Krajken could see the faint glow of the shield, still just visible. Once the sun was clear of the hills at the far side of the valley, it would be impossible to see in the daylight. He started coding the detonator.

“How does that work?” asked Ricardo, leaning forward.

“Each of the silver rings – which are tamperproof, of course - has a code on it. Feed the codes in here – see – and then when you press the button – here –“ Krajken mimed an explosion with his huge hands, puffed out his cheeks. “No more emergency power. No more shield.”

He put the last code in and pressed the actuator, which beeped sharply. He snorted in amusement as Ricardo quickly stood up to look back at the mountain peak. The boy sat down a few moments later, looking crestfallen.

Krajken put the detonator down on the dewy grass and keyed his vox. “Obsidian Wing. Obsidian Wing. The chamber door is open. I repeat, the chamber door is open. Out.”

“Is that it?”

“Hardly. See the woods?” Krajken pointed. “Just to the east of the town? The 31st Evidion Artillery Company are hidden in there, along with about five thousand Imperial Guard - elite troops arrayed in tunnels and dugouts around them. They’ll start bombarding the shield any minute. When that happens, the shield will seek emergency power, which won’t be there. The shield will fall in less than an hour. Then my Brothers will come – keep your eyes on the sky. A drop-pod assault by the Raven Guard is not to be missed. And it’s something I rarely get to see from ground level.”

“And then?”

“And then you and I will go and join them. If we’re lucky, they might leave us some of the enemy to mop up. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Who?”

“Enough questions, boy. All in good time. Now, amuse yourself, I have work to do.”

Ricardo got up and wandered away along the treeline, and Krajken began trying to mend his shredded armour as best he could. After a few minutes he looked up to see Ricardo watching him, a fearful and confused look in his eyes. Krajken stopped what he was doing when he saw the detonator in Ricardo’s trembling hands.

“What are you doing with that? Put it down, boy, it’s useless now.”

Ricardo shook his head stiffly, his lips pressed together into a single, bloodless line. “I – I don’t know. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Krajken felt ice trickle down his spine. “I think you should give that to me. Now.”

“You killed him. I hated him, but he was still my father, and you killed him. You hate your father too – Corax - you said so, but you love him as well. I don’t know what to do.”

“What have you done?” Krajken made to stand up, but the detonator came up in the boy’s hand and he froze.

“I never loved him, but he was still my father. He – he looked out for me. Gave me a place to stay.” Ricardo’s voice was faltering, but it grew stronger. “You said you were proud of the old ways.”

“No, I said I was glad to see the old customs, boy. Some of them remind me of home, but some of them are nothing more than primitive and dangerous nonsense. Like blood-feud, for instance. What have you done?”

Ricardo gestured with the detonator, his thumb poised above the actuator. “I kept one of the grey blocks and some blue cord when we were setting the charges. You didn’t see me. I kept one of the rings, too. I put its number in here, just now.”

Krajken knew it would take him three steps to reach Ricardo; two if he were uninjured. Even two wouldn’t be enough to get to him before he could press the trigger. His bolter was nearby, but facing the wrong way. He’d never bring it to bear in time.

Ricardo swallowed. “I – I put it on your pack when we were setting the charges in the basement.”

“I see. So you’re going to get your blood-feud after all? Tell me - is that what you want?”

“What?”

“A simple question, boy. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what I should do.” The boy looked away at the distant city, at the grey hills, seeking answers where there were none, then back to Krajken. “You refused to fight me, so I have to try and – and - kill you. Those are-“

“I know - the rules of blood-feud. Barbaric rules for ignorant people, Ricardo. Men of reason do not follow such nonsense. Who taught you those rules?”

“My – my father.” The boy looked as if he was about to either run or scream. Possibly both.

“And was he a good teacher, boy? Did he beat his lessons into you? Is he still here, boy, telling you what to do? Are you going to listen to him for the rest of your life?” Krajken snapped his Chapter badge from his breastplate. “Back in that place, I gave you a choice. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I would do it again. Here.” Krajken threw the badge to land at Ricardo’s feet. “Ask for Inductor Soten of the Raven Guard. It was he I wanted you to meet. I think you have what it takes, boy. You killed twenty men back there, and you didn’t run even from a Traitor Marine and the horrors of the Warp. More than that, though, much more than that - you can learn. You’ve shown me that. You spared those people-“

“I still don’t know if I did the right thing or not! You won’t tell me!”

“Exactly, boy, and I never will. You spared them even though you didn’t know. You didn’t wait for certainty. You didn’t wait until you knew, for sure, it was the right thing to do. You just did it. Your instincts told you what to do, and you stood by it. You have exactly what it takes.”

Ricardo glared at him, anger and confusion darkening his face.

“I’m going to stand up now, boy. Back off if you want, but I don’t want to die sitting on my arse.” Krajken stood, slowly. “You have the same choice now you had back there. I put those people's lives on the line - now I do the same with my own. I can’t tell you if it’s right or not, and I can’t take it for you. Only you can do that.” He took a deep breath. “Have your blood-feud, if that’s what you want. I’d say you’ve earned it. Now, make your choice, boy.”

Ricardo stooped to pick up the badge, and then stood, holding the detonator. He looked Krajken in the eye.

#

The morning light touched the tops of the trees cloaking the mountains outside Ebber’s Reach, the dawn chorus of the birds mingling with the soft sighing of the wind.

Suddenly, a thunderous noise rolled across the forest roof from the valley, sending countless birds flapping in panic into the chilly air.

The birds screeched and cawed in fright, wheeling in the air, hunting for the threat they could not see.

The rumble of the blast slowly died away, ghostly echoes lapping in from the peaks and cols. The birds quietened and began to settle.

Then another blast rent the air, sending the flocks into intertwining spirals of panic. Then another blast, and another, overlapping now, filling the valley with thunder and the air with maddened black-birds.

The shield over the distant city glowed bright in the gathering light, and grew brighter still as it struggled to cope. The bombardment of Ebber’s Reach had begun.

THE END

PS. Some lines from Part 3 courtesy of Václav Havel.

Sholto

MagosMechanicus

Loved it. Especially the ending. The fight in the facility and Nauzagedyn's (possible) redemption were also very very good.
Can't think of much to criticize but your spelling. Specifically, this bit: “His strength will be ours. He will not dessert us.”
I also believe the word is usually manufactorum (pl. manufactoria), not manufactory, but I'm not entirely certain about that one.

Waterbizkit

Perfect. I love it, and the ending was amazing. I assumed before I finished the first part that Ricardo would be offered a chance to join up, but that did not make actually reading it any less satisfying.

Thank you. Thank you for writing something so good to read.

~Bizkit

Sholto

Thanks for reading, guys

I knew I wasn't going to surprise anyone with that - it was too obvious, so instead I wanted to focus on why he would be offered the chance, not the fact that the chance was offered.

Thanks - the fight was really the big reward for reading that far - it wasn't as action-packed a story as some others. I'm glad you thought the Nauzagedyn sequence worked. Along with Ricardo's decision to free the workers and the ending I wanted to make the key moments of this story all about doubt and uncertainty - ie. things that have vanished in the 41st millenium world.

As for the ending, I figured people would either love it or hate it. Doing alright so far!

Thanks again guys.

Sholto

Ikkaan

Good Story...but i hate you for the suspense...what happened to Krajken....niiaargh

Feil

Whatever you want to have happened. Sholto's part of the story is finished; the only future for Krajken is the one that exists in your mind for you to tell yourself.
---

Nice story (and holy Steve, it's a Sholto fic with Space Marines in it! Somebody check the temperature in hell!).

One issue I'd reccommend adressing is the age and physique of Ricardo.

I had an image of him of a boy in his middle teens, which is, of course, too late for the Space Marine selection process. Making it apparent that he's a young child (either indirectly through voice/stature or directly through description; I think I would favour the former) of perhaps 10 years, would be helpful.

Further, I would make it apparent that, despite his malnourished and oft-beaten state, Ricardo is a child posessing the skeletal structure and general appearance of a big boy who will grow into a large and powerful man. Making his father thus would help aswell. Before the process of modification and implatation even begins, the children who are to become Space Marines undergo extrordinarily difficult training, which a weak and fragile child, even one so skilled as Ricardo, would never survive.

I also point out the slight grammatical flaw here:



Namely, the 'too' should be dropped. It's a classy and memorable quote, and the 'too' detracts and is unneccessary.

Another issue: the scene with the drop-pod seemed somewhat awkward action-wise. Where did the fist come from? Why? How? You might consider rewriting it to make the [DANGER-FALLING OBJECTS] a piece of the pod (perhaps one of the door/ramp/things had not fallen open until Ricardo arrived?) and to make more sense in general.

I'd add another few words to the paragraph wherein Krajken removes the 'chapter badge' from his breastplate--namely, ones explaining just what the badge was. Say,

"Krajken reached to the raven-embossed disk fastened to his breastplate, and snapped it off with a sharp twist."

Since 'chapter badges' aren't routinely seen on Space Marine models/pictures, it'd help to explain what you're refering to.

Incidentally, you'd do well to bring up Krajken's oath in that scene aswell, probably while he's contemplating his (in)ability to stop Ricardo from killing him. Space Marines ability to accelerate things is insane, and Krajken is, by the time he has removed the badge, both in posession of a weapon and in a position to throw it with a single motion. Ricardo would be dead before he could have activated the detonator.

(Have you ever noticed that disarming a Space Marine is horrendously difficult?)


-Cheers,
Feil

--

EDIT: This, and a Heaven's Altar update... You are offensively prolific, d'you know that?

Marwynn

What an excellent story! Very vivid and fluid, I can almost taste the dust from that fight at the end.

Overall though I think Ricardo would spare Krajken like he did with the workers. It was his father's beatings, who himself was a victim of chaos, that indoctrinated Ricardo and it was Ricardo's instincts (and his conduct and bravery) that confirmed his potential as a Space Marine.

But that's just me wanting a happy ending. I love the way Krajken's actions were described throughout the whole story, his calculating mind, his sheer tenacity.

I've dug into Sholto's website and I'm gonna read all of those stories, wonderfully done sir!

Sholto

I should perhaps have addressed this. In communities like Ricardo lived in boys grow up quicker. He is 12 at the most. Somewhere between 10 and 12.
That's a fair point.
Good point - I'll have a think about that. And thanks
As I imagined it, the pod was broken up on the crash. The Marines sit with their backs to the outside of the pod, and the pod is quite small, so if there is a rent in the pod it would be possible for a Marine's arm to fall through it, as happened here. I wanted it to be a Marine's hand, and not just some bit of the pod, too. It made it more threatening and personal, and allowed me the line later outside the clearing.
Can you tell I don't write Space Marines much? :P I thought they would have a Chapter badge, but I never checked. Your suggestion is a sound one.

This is a good point. The first draft actually had Krajken, after he had stood up, noting that he was now just 2 paces from Ricardo. I took it out because I didn't want it to look like he might be able to end the stand-off himself - ie. I wanted to make it about Ricardo. Also, there is the matter of the oath, but I didn't want to remind the reader of it. I thought that few readers would accept the thought of an Astartes who would willingly sacrifice himself in that manner if I put it in such blunt terms. Maybe I was wrong.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you like the Heaven's Altar update

@Marwynn - thanks That's exactly the reaction I was hoping for - people making their own minds up about what happened based on what they knew of the characters. Suffice to say, the films Lost In Translation and Sideways were in my mind when I wrote this ending!

Glad you like the website - please post a message there if there is anything you like (or hate :smash: )

Sholto

Feil

It varies according to the chapter, really. A Marine Malevolant or Mortifactor, if he had somehow been doped-up enough to get into this situation, would kill Ricardo without a second thought. The Raven Guard, on the other hand, have a reputation for being honorable and loyal to a fault.

Sholto

And that's exactly why I chose them (plus there's the whole Edgar Allen thing - I squeezed "nevermore" into the story in two different places to see if anyone would spot it! And the code Krajken speaks at the end is from The Raven) Originally, Krajken was to be more of a samurai-type, but I find inscrutable people to be annoying and in need of deflating, so I made Krajken more scrutable; confident and capable but with hidden and not-so-hidden doubts.

If you're interested, this was the quote that started Krajken speaking in my head. It's from The 47 Ronin Story:-
I'd like to do something with that quote one day.

Sholto

Olgerth Istaarn

Too cool. I tried writing 40K myself, and I find myself wanting to write at least half as good as Sholto here. Thanks for a good read!

blueboy93

Breathtaking.

I'm surprised I took the time to read all that, that's how good it was. I didn't plan on reading it all but I was taken in.

Sholto

Damar/ blueboy - thanks for the comments - glad you enjoyed it

Sholto

fifth_horseman

Read it last evening... what can I say?

It's another Sholto.
Great concept backed up by flawless execution. I particularly liked how the real plot stays in the background most of the time and then snatches the finale right out of the blue.

The ending was expectable, but executed very well for that - and it's an open ending, too. Nobody said Krajken died for sure. :evilnod:

One thing I feel missing is the explanation what exactly happened with the pod that killed the other Marines and left only Krajken alive. For that matter, it's unclear how he could have survived that in the first place...

Nauzagedyn's end was touching, and thought-provoking.
And of course the skull-device was predictably shocking, haunting and repulsive in equal measure. :thumb:

Sholto

Cheers fifth_horseman

Heh - exactly what I was going for. Krajken's mission seems like the plot, but it isn't. It's just something to hang the real drama on.

In Part 2 Krajken mentions that 'some drifting aerial mines meant he had missed his cue'. That was pretty much it Blink, and you'll miss it! His drop-pod hit the mines on the way down and sustained a hit or two, killing his squad and injuring him (he is bleeding at the beginning, remember). The mines also knocked the pod way off-course.

Cheers - I was wondering how I could possibly take a character who gets such little screen-time in the story and give him a memorable death. His dying line just popped into my head on the bike home one evening, and that was him The name helps a little, too, I think. I just love his name!

Sholto

Olgerth Istaarn

I hope you don't mind me using the Noise Marine's exit quote as my sig for a while... it's just too cool to pass up.

Sholto

Hell, no! Go right ahead

Sholto

Innonexess

i finally got round to reading it and it was damned good...
but you already new that didnt you

Shoota Fodder

Jesus! That was amazing!

Great work sholto! Don't give up! Keep writing. I see great potentiol there. Now do something about it. Give it to someone up at the high ends of GW and see what they think.

2841981

it made for a very good read

my only gripe would be the part where he is offered to join, i found it slightly corny (i think it would have been more dramatic for the marine to kill him but i guess he couldnt because of his oath)

nath

sethgarrick

Nicely handled. No one seems to have much to say about the dichotomy between the 'modern' theocratic dogma of the IoM, and the first-hand accounts of the Space Marines who knew the Emperor hated the notion of people worshipping him.

The relationship between Krajken and Ricardo reminds me of Chico in 'The Magnificent Seven', particularly the scene where young, hotheaded Chico is trying to talk tough to the much more seasoned and hardened veteran gunfighters:



The story moves along nicely as the pair have, literally and figuratively, alot of ground to cover. I do have a couple of questions/thoughts of a more constructively critical nature, if you (hopefully) don't object?

1. Ric's relationship with his father/Blood Feud on a Space Marine . So Ric took daily beatings, and was sour enough with his old man to put a bullet into his dead corpse after Kraj popped him. Yet after going the entire distance with the marine, saving each other's lives several times over in the process, not to mention the useful knowledge and thought provoking ideas he gives the young man (being able to go outside at night, for instance) the old concept of Kin Law and blood feud reasserts itself enough for the boy to pull a sneaky on the big black angel? This is not to say father/son relationships are typically uncomplicated, but I think in this case the drive for vengeance would only persist if he had a deep and abiding love for his Da'. Otherwise, it would seem much more likely he would stick tight to his new, better father figure, and not threaten to detonate him.

2. Canon continuity/disbelief suspension: CC Chaos Lord or Aspiring Champ(?) (w/power weapon and bolt pistol) vs. Space Marine Sargeant (w/bolter and knife). I'm hardly a vocal proponent for sticking to game statlines to determine outcomes, but I am curious why you chose such a scaled-up (and very nicely detailed) noisemarine as antagonist for your seemingly rather vanilla SM protagonist.

3. Lots of strange talky-talk at the climax. Just an opinion, but I felt it kinda threw off the pacing at the end a bit. You tipped your hand early about wanting Ric to meet 'someone', then revisit the whole bad-father thing before announcing the recruitment offer. And its all Kraj talking, rather than letting Ric finally vent all his anger and confusion. And after all this time, Kraj is still calling him the diminutive 'boy', even after congratulating him for his performance. Compared to the rest of the story, which was really, really nicely paced and seemed to rocket along to its conclusion, this segment really seemed to slam on the piece's brakes.

My (very gentle) suggestion would be to edit the story after Ric tells Kraj about putting the explosives on his pack so that its Ric venting his grief and rage and confusion about everything the Marine has told him that has completely shattered his illusions about life on his planet, his relationship with his father, and his attempts at participation in the religious machine which is the Imperium of Man. Kraj's response would be to remain sitting, and toss Ric the badge, telling him tersely who to look for and where in order to join the Marines. This puzzles Ric even more, but Kraj should remain seated and calm, explaining in as few words as possible that either Ric will let him live (like the villagers), demonstrating his intelligence, or kill him, demonstrating his honor and dedication to tradition. Either way, he still makes a damn good marine candidate. Then cut back to the denoument sequence beginning 'The morning light...'

IMO, of course. The ending was the only thing that really troubled me, with Kraj spending alot of time explaining things the reader already understood, and Ric spending not enough time making the neccessary emotional breakthrough to close out the 'primitive borderline subsistence' portion of his life and move on to enlistment in the Adeptus Astartes.

Sorry to nitpick. Its my tragic flaw.

A very well written piece, with alot of interesting (some in the IoM might say 'blasphemous') bits that really make it a thinker as well.

sg

Sholto

Thanks sg; your comments are thought-provoking and very welcome

1. As far as Ricardo's relationship with his father goes, I don't want to get too far into the dynamics of abusive relationships for fear of going completely off-topic for this forum. Suffice to say that children can display a remarkable loyalty and attachment to the most loveless and violent of parents. The very exercise of tyrannical authority, if done 'properly', is usually self-perpetuating down the generations, thanks largely to this simple dynamic (if you've seen Pan's Labyrinth, you know what I'm talking about) I leave you to draw your own conclusions about what that says about the IoM.

2. I didn't see Nauzagedyn as being a Chaos Lord or Aspiring Champion, to be honest, but I probably pay even less attention to game stats than you do! His hammer wasn't (in my mind, at least) a power weapon. I just wanted him to have a sonic-based melee weapon to accompany his sonic bolter. I think I probably did some fluff-hunting around the internet and found that weapon, but that's all the thought I gave to its significance.

3. I really like your thought about the ending, and the possibility of giving Ricardo the burden of the dialogue at the end. I was particularly attracted to this:-

I may consider changing the ending in light of what you wrote, and seeing how that plays.

Thanks,

Sholto