The Plagues of Orath Read online

  Arkelius, nevertheless, met his gunner’s enquiring gaze. ‘Think you can hit that thing from here?’ he asked.

  Iunus looked at him, then past him at the ruined fort and the monstrous Daemon Prince and at the upturned Scourge. He nodded, ‘It’s well within the Skyspear’s range, sergeant.’

  Arkelius broadcast an urgent appeal through his vox-grille. He asked for assistance from the closest available units. A tank driver and gunner – having given up on coaxing their own vehicle back to life – responded to his summons.

  They were joined by a Techmarine too, clad in the red armour of the Adeptus Mechanicus. His servo-harness, with its mechanical arms and cutters, was exactly what Arkelius needed.

  Five brothers, all told, himself and Iunus included. It would be enough.

  He gathered his team beside the crippled Hunter. ‘I want this wreck on its wheels again,’ he announced, ‘and back in the fight.’

  Righting the Scourge proved to be no easy task.

  Not that Arkelius had expected it to be. The Hunter must have weighed something close to thirty tonnes, which was a lot of mangled metal for even five Space Marines to lift.

  The Techmarine helped. He employed his cutters to disentangle the Scourge’s tracks from the crushed Predator Destructor in which they had become embedded. He also braced the Scourge’s vital missile launcher with improvised wedges to protect it from any further jarring. He positioned each Space Marine along the Scourge’s hull and calculated the optimal angle at which his force should be exerted.

  Arkelius was grateful for the Techmarine’s input, and accepted that the work he was doing was worthy. At the same time, he chafed at the time it was taking.

  He could see his battle-brothers at the fort, fighting and dying in his stead, and he yearned to go to them. The Daemon Prince was hurling Space Marines away from it as if they were no heavier – and no more of a threat to it – than stalks of grain. Most of them got up again and leapt straight back into the fray, but it was wearing them down, slowly but surely.

  The Techmarine announced that, at last, his work was done, and it was time for his brothers to do theirs. The knees and shoulders of five suits of power armour bent and strained, and the back end of the Scourge of the Skies was slowly raised, though not without a protest.

  The most difficult part of the operation followed, as the Space Marines had to manoeuvre the cumbersome wreck around until its back end was clear of the Predator. Only then could they lower it to the ground, which they managed less gently than Arkelius had hoped.

  The Scourge landed heavily on its tracks – and, with a shudder and a wrench and a deathly groan, it settled there, if not exactly standing proud, then at least unbowed.

  The Techmarine climbed onto the Hunter’s roof. He tinkered at the base of the Skyspear’s missile tube with his servo-arms, making sure it was properly aligned. Iunus wrenched open the Scourge’s side hatch and retook his seat in the rear compartment.

  Arkelius dismissed his other two helpers – they hurried off to join the battle – and waited as long as he could bear before prompting his gunner, ‘Well? Damage report?’

  Iunus looked up from his monitors, shaking his head. ‘We’ve lost the targeting auspex, sergeant, which means I can’t–’

  ‘Don’t tell me what you can’t do, only tell me what you can.’

  ‘I could aim the Skyspear manually, sergeant – if I could see the target, that is.’

  ‘Or if someone told you where to shoot.’

  ‘There are too many battle-brothers between us. I’d fire over their heads, of course, but without a target lock, the savant wouldn’t know–’

  ‘The savant? The brain inside the missile?’ Arkelius scowled. ‘Are you telling me it couldn’t tell the difference between a Son of Guilliman and that warp-spawned–?’

  ‘I… I can’t answer that, sergeant. Perhaps.’

  Arkelius glanced towards the fort again. There were half as many Space Marines standing as there had been the last time he had looked. ‘What if we got you closer?’ he asked.

  ‘Without the targeting auspex, yes, the closer, the better,’ said Iunus. ‘It means less chance for the missile to veer off course or–’

  Arkelius didn’t wait for him to finish. He stepped back from the hatchway and barked at the red-armoured figure on the Scourge’s roof. ‘I need an answer, do we have a gun or don’t we?’ The Techmarine replied that he had done all he could and that the rest was in the hands of the Machine-God now. It would have to do.

  Arkelius clambered up onto the Scourge’s roof as the Techmarine jumped down from it. The driver’s hatch was still open, and he squeezed himself through the narrow circle and lowered himself into the driver’s seat. He voxed Iunus on the Scourge’s frequency.

  ‘All right,’ Arkelius growled. ‘For the Emperor!’

  The driver’s compartment of the Scourge was, if anything, more cramped than the tank commander’s compartment had been.

  Arkelius was hemmed in by equipment. He could barely move without bumping his elbows on something. He placed his hands on the U-shaped joystick and his feet on the brake and accelerator pedals. His main control console was a mess of blinking runes and burned-out panels. He could see light through several fractures in the prow in front of him, doubtless caused by the missile strike in which Corbin had been injured.

  As always, vox-chatter filled his helmet, keeping him up to date on the battle outside. He heard that Terserus had picked himself up and launched himself at the Daemon Prince for – what was that now, the fourth time or the fifth? He had staggered it with a series of energised punches, but had been beaten back again by the chains of its unholy flail.

  ‘Hold on,’ Arkelius muttered under his breath. ‘Just hold on one more minute.’

  He punched in the ignition sequence. The Scourge’s self-repair systems must have been hard at work – or the Machine-God was listening to Arkelius’s prayers again – because, for all the abuse that had been heaped upon it, the engine spluttered into life.

  Arkelius eased the accelerator pedal down, and the Hunter grumbled forward. The steering was still faulty, that pull to the left a lot stronger than he had anticipated. The joystick was large and sturdy – an unenhanced human couldn’t have handled it at all – but Arkelius feared that, under the amount of force he was having to apply to it, it might break.

  Still, he brought the Scourge around until he could see Fort Kerberos – and the Daemon Prince – squarely through the driver’s vision slit. His helmet’s range-finder supplied him with the monster’s bearing, height and distance, which he relayed to his gunner.

  ‘But don’t fire yet,’ said Arkelius. ‘Wait for my mark.’

  He stepped harder on the pedal and felt the Scourge’s frame juddering ominously around him. He eased up again and let the tank crawl forward at a fraction of its usual speed. As long as it was giving him something, he thought; as long as he was closing in on his target.

  The Scourge had reached the edge of the ruins now, crushing debris under its tracks.

  Terserus, unfortunately, had just gone down for what sounded like it might be the final time, and, from what Arkelius could see, the Daemon Prince’s flail was making short work of its remaining opponents. ‘That’s it,’ he announced to Iunus. ‘We’re out of time.’

  He stepped on the brake pedal and lowered the stabilisers. He updated his gunner on the Daemon Prince’s position: directly ahead of them and less than two hundred metres away. ‘Aim high,’ he added, ‘and fire at will.’

  ‘I’m still getting warning runes here, sergeant,’ Iunus cautioned, ‘and what with the damage done to the missile launcher when we–’

  Arkelius cut to the end of the explanation. ‘Blown sky-high. I remember.’

  ‘Perhaps you should bail out. I can take it from here, while you–’

  Arkelius interrupted him,
gruffly, ‘A tank commander stays with his vehicle, Iunus. My place is here.’ He had never expected to speak such words today. He was even more surprised to realise that he had meant them. The Emperor certainly did work in mysterious ways.

  The Daemon Prince had thrown off the last of its attackers, and its insect wings were beginning to vibrate again. There probably wouldn’t be a better chance than this. ‘Now!’ Arkelius screamed. ‘Now, Iunus! Fire that missile now!’

  The order had barely left his mouth when the Scourge of the Skies shuddered – but, by the grace of the God-Emperor, didn’t actually explode – and discharged its deadly payload.

  Iunus was already frantically reloading. In the meantime, the Daemon Prince had hauled its bloated carcass into the air. A lone Imperial Stormtalon had been circling and waiting for a clear shot at it, which finally it had. It swooped to engage the monster. On the ground, the pair of Predator Destructors that had advanced ahead of the Scourge had been waiting for their shots too, and they took them.

  The Daemon Prince flinched – it actually flinched – as it was battered by cannon fire from above and below; the worst, the very worst, was yet to hit it.

  The Skyspear missile was flying dead on course. Arkelius watched, with a prayer on his lips, as it streaked towards its target, but the prayer turned into a dismayed groan as, at the last possible instant, the Daemon Prince saw its nemesis coming and twisted out of the way.

  It had been so close – the monster must have felt the fierce heat of the Skyspear’s backwash on its face – but, of course, close wasn’t good enough.

  Arkelius yelled to Iunus to fire again, along the same trajectory. The second missile missed its target too, and by a wider margin than the first one had. The Daemon Prince belched at the buzzing Stormtalon, engulfing it in another feculent cloud. The gunship spun out of its pilot’s control and smacked into a nearby hillside like a flaming comet.

  ‘Sergeant,’ said Iunus, ‘if these readings are correct–’

  Arkelius knew what he was about to say. He had been keeping a rough count of the Scourge’s ammunition in his head. He had known this news was coming, although he had prayed it wouldn’t come just yet. ‘How many?’ he asked, tersely.

  ‘One, sergeant. We have one missile left. It’s in the tube now.’

  He nodded grimly. He scowled as he fixed the hovering Daemon Prince in his helmet’s sights again. It had shifted somewhat to the left and climbed a little. He relayed the figures to his gunner in an unemotional tone. ‘…and fire at will!’

  Iunus fired.

  A third, a final missile, went blasting away from the Scourge. This time, it seemed that luck – and the will of the Emperor – was finally with it. The Daemon Prince had been staggered by an autocannon punch to the stomach – surely it couldn’t recover from such a blow and get out of the Skyspear’s way before it hit?

  Arkelius could hear movement in the tank commander’s compartment to his left. With no missiles left, Iunus must have scrambled forwards to see what was happening outside. Arkelius heard his voice, ‘Sergeant, look! Look over the daemon’s shoulder!’

  He pressed his eyes to his vision slit and saw it too. A second missile – one of the two that had missed its target, it had to be – had turned around and was swooping in for another attempt. Arkelius had been right: even without the benefit of a target lock, it knew its enemy.

  ‘God-Emperor be praised!’ he whispered.

  The Daemon Prince was effectively flanked. Perhaps it could have evaded a single Skyspear missile, but it had no hope of dodging both, and at least one of them would only have stayed on its tail if it had. It looked as if the monster was finished.

  Then there was a sudden purple flash of warp energy, bright enough – even at this range – to leave Arkelius dazzled. When his eyes had cleared, the Daemon Prince had vanished. Just like that, it was gone without a trace. He couldn’t quite process what he was seeing.

  The Skyspear missiles passed each other, flying through the space that their target had just vacated, while Arkelius was left staring in numb disbelief. It was over.

  ‘What happened?’ Iunus sounded dismayed too. ‘Where did it go?’

  It took Arkelius a moment to come up with an answer for him. ‘We fought our way past the Death Guard army,’ he said at length. ‘We sent their Daemon Prince fleeing back to the unholy realm it came from, with its tail between its legs. We recaptured Fort Kerberos – what remains of it. We accomplished everything we were tasked to do. That means we won.’

  It didn’t feel like a victory, though.

  Arkelius clambered awkwardly out of the Scourge of the Skies and jumped down from its roof. When no one was looking, he patted it affectionately on the prow.

  The Hunter had given its all – as much as any Space Marine could have given – in the Emperor’s service. After a refit, he knew it would serve again. When it did, he intended to be sitting in the tank commander’s seat.

  He hoped that Corbin and Iunus would be seated beside him. The first ships had arrived to collect the wounded, and casualty lists were being collated. He hadn’t heard Corbin’s name yet, which meant he was probably a survivor. The same was true of Terserus, whose fate was in the Techmarines hands. The news on Galenus, however, was less promising.

  When last seen, the captain had been in a healing coma, but his body had been lost in the rubble when the Daemon Prince had emerged. The warp storm over the ruined fort was still blowing, now purple in colour once more. Arkelius went to join the search for his captain, praying that he might still be saved.

  He was contacted on a private vox-channel by Captain Numitor. Arkelius’s actions, he insisted, had won the battle and had earned him an honour badge. He accepted the compliment, but he wished he could have done more. He wished he could have made certain that the Daemon Prince wouldn’t return.

  Arkelius didn’t understand everything that had happened here today. He knew, however, that a world – a once-fertile, populated world – had been lain waste by disease, and that an ancient, terrible power had been unleashed and was still on the loose.

  He knew one more thing, in his hearts: the war on Orath was far from over.

  ‘Clad yourself in full with the Armour of Faith, that you might take your stand against the foe. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the Ruinous Powers of the benighted warp and against the spiritual forces of evil in that infernal realm. Therefore, clad yourself in full with the Armour of Faith, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done all else, to stand.’

  – Codex Astartes, Book of Aephesus (attr.)

  One

  Silence, thought Darin Aeroth, was a thing to be treasured.

  It was all too rare that his life allowed him to experience true quiet. A silent battlefield was one where the fight was over, and that was no place for a Space Marine. A starship in the void was never quiet, the roar of engines and vibration of centuries-old – at the very least – hull plates a constant companion. Even on Macragge, in the Fortress of Hera, there was always the sound of Chapter-serfs scurrying to and fro, the distant echo of weapons drills and the low hum of the mighty void shield generators that protected the ancient edifice from orbital assault.

  No, silence was definitely a thing to enjoy, and this was the closest he was likely to get. The only sound was the roar of the wind outside as the Fury of Gallicus descended into the atmosphere of Orath. Muted by the thick plasteel and ceramite plates of the gunship’s armour, it sounded like the breeze on a summer day on Iax. Appropriate, he considered. The planet below, according to the reports, was similar to the Garden of Ultramar, verdant and devoted to producing food for other worlds in Ultima Segmentum.

  And it was protected by the Ultramarines. That was an important similarity. Aeroth glanced around at the other occupants of the Stormraven. Three members of his squad stood, as did he
, arms raised, the outsized fists of their Centurion warsuits gripping thick bars bolted onto the ceiling of the cramped cabin.

  The fifth and final Space Marine was clad only in a suit of particularly fine power armour. It was of ancient design, its deadly functionality augmented by baroque ornamentation. It was as black as the void, each plate engraved with passages from the Codex Astartes, the closest thing to a holy tome that the sons of Roboute Guilliman had. Where a battle-brother of the line companies might wear an aquila on his chest and battle-honours on his knee-pads and greaves, the black-armoured warrior had skulls. Each was tiny, carved from bone and engraved with a name.

  There were sixty-seven such skulls on Chaplain Manet Sentina’s armour.

  The Chaplain looked up and met Aeroth’s gaze. Sentina’s helmet was mag-locked to his thigh, the gleaming white skull of the faceplate staring at the floor. His skin was dark and his shaven head reflected what little light emanated from the lumen-strips running along the compartment’s ceiling. His eyes were set deep into a broad face, and they betrayed nothing of Sentina’s thoughts or mood.

  ‘Seventeen minutes to Fort Garm.’

  Techmarine Isachaar’s voice cut through the silence, blaring from the vox-caster set into the corner of the cabin.

  ‘Acknowledged,’ said Aeroth. ‘How do conditions look on the ground?’

  There was a pause before Isachaar’s emotionless burr, replete with mechanical undertones, answered.

  ‘No response from the fort. The main force on the northern continent reports infernal mists. Evidence of blight in the farmlands. Estimated millions dead. Unconfirmed sightings of civilians attacking one another.’

  ‘Attacking one another?’ cut in Brother Oenomaus. ‘What madness could make them do such a thing?’

  ‘Many things can turn brother on brother, young one,’ replied Lentulus. ‘Even within brotherhoods such as ours, civil war is not unknown. For undisciplined humans, anything is possible.’