The Plagues of Orath Read online

  ‘The forces of the Ruinous Powers are at work upon Orath,’ growled the Chaplain, ‘Disease and disorder go hand in hand where the enemies of mankind walk.’

  ‘It seems likely.’ Aeroth had seen the so-called ‘Plague of Unbelief’ before. ‘There is a taint that sweeps across worlds, killing the human populace only to raise them by infernal warp-magic to walk again as mindless beasts, roaming the shattered ruins of their former homes. They are drawn to those still living, and when they find them… they feast.’

  ‘Melodramatically put, sergeant.’ Lentulus’s tone was harsh. ‘But accurate. They are no longer human, Oenomaus. Remember that when they stand before you. Not that they will be likely to harm us in these fine warsuits, eh?’

  ‘Be not overconfident, brother.’ Sentina turned his deep stare on Lentulus. ‘The Archenemy have weapons to breach any battleplate, save the Armour of Faith alone.’ The Chaplain pulled his helmet from his thigh and stared into the lenses of the faceplate. ‘If our faith is found wanting, we shall fail. If it is strong, victory will be ours.’

  Lentulus’s face flushed. ‘I will not be found wanting, Brother-Chaplain.’

  ‘Nor I!’ exclaimed Oenomaus.

  Aeroth smiled behind his helmet. This was the young battle-brother’s first deployment in a Centurion squad. His eagerness was palpable. He turned to the final member of his squad.

  ‘And you, Iova?’

  ‘I will do what I always do, sergeant. Approach what comes with my eyes open, my weapons primed and my mind sharp.’

  Like Lentulus, Iova had forgone a helmet. Experienced Centurion operators often did so, preferring to rely on their own eyes and ears over the suite of auto-senses built into the warsuits’ headgear. Lentulus did so out of pride, Aeroth suspected, while for Iova it was a matter of making the most of the experience. Aeroth himself wore a helmet, painted the red and white of his rank. He had even allowed the ludicrous crest to remain attached, but only because he knew it annoyed Lentulus to look at it.

  ‘So say we all, brother.’ He paused, gathering his thoughts. ‘We don’t know quite what to expect below. We know that all contact with the garrisons at Forts Garm and Kerberos was lost months ago. Clearly, the situation on Orath is dire. Our orders are to secure Fort Garm, locate the Doom Eagles who were stationed there and report any enemy movements to the main force.’

  ‘Eight Centurions and a Chaplain to secure an entire continent.’ Lentulus’s tone was jovial, but with an undercurrent of bitterness. He would have preferred to join the battle at Fort Kerberos, on the other side of the world, and had made those feelings known, as well as his resentment of the reason why Squad Aeroth had been despatched on this mission. ‘I hope the enemy are ready for us.’

  ‘Captain Galenus believes that whatever enemy forces are on Orath are focused on Fort Kerberos.’ Sentina’s voice was steel. ‘The warp rift that now hangs above this world is above Kerberos, and orbital auguries detected a build-up of life signs there. Keeping Fort Garm secure is a precaution.’

  ‘A wise one,’ said Iova. ‘The two fortresses are the only notable defences this world has. If Kerberos has already fallen to the foe, Garm must be held.’

  ‘So why only us?’ snarled Lentulus.

  ‘Because the Fifth Captain is confident that he can retake Fort Kerberos from whatever awaits him,’ said Aeroth. ‘He has the bulk of three companies and half the Chapter armoury.’

  Lentulus opened his mouth to respond, but his words were drowned out by an almighty clang as something impacted hard against the hull of the gunship.

  Hell had come to Orath.

  That was not a fanciful description, not a metaphor for some abstract concept. Alia Blayke had no time for that sort of thinking. No, the hell that had come to Orath was quite real. It was dangerous. It was personal. And it was in her way.

  Alia swung her battered autorifle at the creature that stood before her. It, and another six of its kind, blocked the narrow alley between houses, her only way back to the ragtag group of survivors with whom she travelled. The heavy wooden butt of the autogun smacked into the monster’s jaw and she heard the satisfying crack of bone shattering. It stumbled back and she ran, pushing the creature to the side, feeling putrefying flesh give beneath her hand.

  She should have been horrified. She should have felt fear, terror, panic. She had at first. Now, after months of encountering the shambling monstrosities on a near-daily basis, after hiding beneath piles of wet, rotten corpses to evade them, after smearing herself in their viscera to pass through a crowd when there was no other way, there was no fear left. No terror. No panic. Only numbness. Sometimes she wished she could feel again, but then she remembered the all-consuming mix of emotions that had seized her the first time she had seen one of them. Of course, it didn’t help that it had been… No. If she started to think about that, she would feel again, and it would all batter down her defences and come flooding in, and then she would be doomed.

  The others faced away from her. She put her head down and stormed through them, swinging her rifle to sweep them aside. She was strong, the result of years of labour on her father’s farm, and the frail, rotting bodies of the plague victims were no match for her brawn. She continued to run, churning up the mud. They would follow, and she had to get back to the group, to warn them that there were enemies here, that they weren’t safe.

  Right now, Alia didn’t think she’d ever be safe again.

  She barrelled round a corner, taking it too tightly and hitting herself on the wooden wall. Pain shot up her arm, but she ignored it. She’d felt worse. The impact killed her momentum, and she dared a look back. The flesh-eaters were nowhere to be seen, but she could hear them in the distance, the low moaning that followed them everywhere. It was almost musical, like a funereal dirge. Appropriate. They were dead, after all. She turned back to see a figure looming over her. Screaming, she lashed out, intent on dashing whatever brains the thing had left against the wall.

  ‘Stop, girl! What are you doing?’

  The burly figure before her was no monster. It was Keevan. He raised his meaty fists and grabbed the rifle before it hit him, pulling it roughly from Alia’s grasp. She fell, sprawling in the wet mud, and gasped for breath.

  ‘Keevan… I’m…’

  ‘Calm down, girl,’ said the big man, reaching down and pulling Alia to her feet. ‘What’s up?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘I was checking the buildings on the southern edge, and there was a group of… them.’

  Keevan tensed. ‘Did they see you?’

  ‘Yes. I had to fight my way through them. They’ll be following.’ She didn’t like the panic in her voice. How could she still feel panic, of all things, through the numbness? She knew the answer, of course. The things were the most dangerous creatures she had ever seen, ever known. They had laid waste to her world, to her entire life. What’s more, they went against every natural law. They were the dead, risen again to devour the living.

  ‘We have to get back to the priest,’ said Keevan, drawing his broad-bladed knife from his belt and giving it a quick kiss on the cutting edge. He claimed to have been a butcher in a farmstead on the east coast before the apocalypse had hit Orath, and that he had always kissed the blade before slaughtering an animal for meat. ‘It shows respect for the beast,’ he had told her when she had asked him about the habit. ‘And it’s a damn sight better than kissing the animal.’ His tone had been jocular, but the laughter hadn’t reached his eyes. He wore the same dull, blank expression now. The one they all wore.

  So much had changed since the plague had come to Orath. Their way of life was over. Alia knew that nothing would ever be the same. Not since… She stopped that line of thought before it wandered to dark places. Everything had changed. That was enough. Some things had fallen by the wayside naturally, like the Orathian custom of burying bodies to nurture the soil. The sheer scale of the casualties had quickly put paid to that.

  Of course, if they’d been able to continue doing
that, the dead would have a harder time getting up and killing more of their former friends and family members.

  Alia and Keevan turned and walked quickly through the warren of rough streets and alleys of the town stead they had been exploring. They didn’t know its name, and there was no one alive to tell them, or at least no one willing to announce their presence to strangers. No surprise there. In her months crossing the continent, Alia had discovered that not only the dead were to be feared. Her pa had always told her that some people were just plain bad, and waiting for a chance to unleash the evil within them. She had never really believed him, though he had darkly hinted that he had seen things that proved it.

  She wished he had been with her when she had come across a camp a few weeks after fleeing the family farm. The men had taken her in, been warm and friendly, given her food and a tent to sleep in. But then, that night… She pushed the thought away. That had been a long time ago, and she had been a different person.

  ‘Stop,’ Keevan hissed at her, putting his arm out to halt her. She peered past him and saw a trio of shambling corpses, kneeling on the ground, heads buried in the guts of a poor unfortunate. Alia didn’t recognise the man, and he looked like he’d been dead a while. He had a hole in his head, and Alia didn’t need to ask why he hadn’t turned after death, rising to terrorise the living. Of course, if he’d shot himself here…

  ‘His gun might be around here,’ she whispered to Keevan. He nodded.

  ‘I had the same thought.’

  Guns – and ammunition for them – were in short supply amongst the survivors. Alia had her rifle, but she hadn’t fired it since leaving the farm, all those months before. She had one round for it, hanging in a small leather pouch around her neck, next to the crude wooden aquila on its battered silver chain. She wasn’t going to waste that round. She knew she might need it.

  ‘We have to see,’ she said. ‘I’ll distract them, draw them away and you find it.’

  Keevan turned and looked at her.

  ‘It’s too risky. We need to warn the others.’

  ‘And that’s what I’ll do. I can outrun them. I’ll get back to the square and we can form a defence. Just like the last ten times. But if there’s a weapon here…’

  ‘I know,’ sighed Keevan. ‘You’re right. Okay, go. But no unnecessary risks, girl. We need you alive.’ He lowered his voice, and she barely heard the rest of his words. ‘You’re the only one that bloody off-worlder listens to.’

  She smiled, reached up and pinched his cheek. ‘I’ll be fine, Keevan. You keep yourself safe as well.’

  He grunted in response and pulled his arm away. Alia stepped out and edged towards the group of flesh-eaters. A wave of foul odour hit her. She had become inured to the general stench of Orath, the rotting crops and the smell of the shambling once-people, but this layered something else on top, the stench of human innards, not yet rotten. She stepped closer to them, out into the open, scooping up a handful of mud, and cleared her throat.

  ‘You want something fresher?’ she shouted. Slowly, almost deliberately, they turned. Eerily, they did so in unison, as if some greater intelligence were guiding their actions. ‘Come and get me!’ she screamed, and flung the mud in the face of the closest. It wouldn’t impair the monster – it was guided by other senses than sight, she was sure – but it would certainly make sure that their attention was on her. With a last glance back at Keevan, she turned and ran.

  Two

  As he pulled the Fury of Gallicus level, Isachaar’s mental cortex processed a number of subroutines at once. He checked the augurs to ensure that the Fury’s sister craft, Aeonid’s Lament, was still with him. It was, but was veering away rapidly, pursued by something fast and dangerous. He queried the cogitator databanks for a match for the attackers. He opened the vox to the crew compartment, tersely informing them that the Stormraven was under attack.

  The response he received made him query why fully organic beings were so prone to raised voices and profanity. He dismissed that – in nearly two hundred years, he had never come to a satisfactory conclusion anyway – and focused on identifying the attackers. When he did, he checked the results and opened a channel to Chaplain Sentina.

  Sentina squeezed the haft of his crozius arcanum, feeling the leather of the grip. Beneath the black armour, his knuckles would be white with tension, he knew. He hated being out of control, and he was rarely more so than in a battle like this. His vox buzzed and the pilot’s voice droned into his ear.

  ‘Brother-Chaplain, the attacking force consists of two fighters, conforming to the Hell Blade pattern used by traitor forces.’

  ‘Keep them off us, Isachaar. We’ll open the hatches and lend some fire.’ Sentina turned to the Centurions. ‘Two fighters attacking,’ he told them tersely.

  Aeroth looked over at him. ‘Orders, Brother-Chaplain?’

  ‘We will engage them and destroy them. Do what you can to help. Put the weapons on those oversized battle-suits to good use.’

  A thrill went through Oenomaus at the Chaplain’s order. This was far from his first taste of battle – a decade in the Scout company and five more years learning to use the many heavy weapons of the Devastators had seen him in plenty of combat situations – but using the Centurion warsuit was a new experience. He felt the thrill being echoed by the suit’s machine-spirit, and shivered at the sensation, a momentary burst of timeless, ageless hatred and fury. He let go of the bar above his head and stamped over to the portside hatch, steady and stable despite the rocking of the gunship as Isachaar dodged and weaved around the attacking fire.

  Over the squad vox, he heard Sentina order the pilot to open the side doors, and then everything was drowned out by the rushing of air as the hatch before him opened, pulling smoothly to one side. Outside was anarchy. A green mist wreathed the sky, limiting visibility, but through it he could just make out contrails from the engines of multiple flyers. He activated the targeting systems in his helm and a series of filters fell across his display, scrolling information about atmospheric conditions, wind speeds and potential targets. He mag-locked his feet to the floor of the cabin and brought up his arms, willing the lascannons slung below each huge fist to power up. He couldn’t hear the characteristic whine over the sound of the wind, but his display flashed up both weapons with full charge.

  Oenamaus looked around for a target. Something flew past at amazing speed, the velocity too high for even his armour’s enhanced auto-senses to track. He pivoted in the direction it had been flying, and there it was – through the ghostly emerald hue of the mist, he saw the distinctive shape of a Hell Blade, long and slender, twin wings jutting out from a small central core with an elongated spike on the rear. The fighter had a bank of vicious looking cannons mounted below the cockpit that were spitting rounds at the Aeonid’s Lament. He locked on the craft and prepared to fire.

  The Stormraven lurched and turned, and he almost lost the target, but his auto-senses compensated and he was rewarded with the ping of a confirmed target lock. Taking a deep breath, he opened fire.

  Twin beams of ruby light lanced out from the long cannons mounted beneath his arms and struck the Hell Blade on one outswept wing. It sparked and the craft juddered. He adjusted his aim and prepared to fire again, this time targeting the cockpit.

  But he had drawn the attention of the craft’s pilot. It swung towards him and pulled closer through the malefic fog, revealing the unmistakable forms of autocannons mounted in two banks of two.

  Isachaar had obviously noted the Hell Blade’s approach, as he banked steeply and pulled the Stormraven out of the smaller craft’s arc of vision. As it swept by, Oenomaus caught a glimpse of the cockpit.

  It was empty.

  ‘Brother-sergeant, Chaplain,’ he shouted over the squad vox. ‘There is no pilot in that fighter.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ cut in Lentulus, who was at the starboard hatch, heavy bolters blazing at another enemy flyer. ‘They can’t fly themselves.’

  ‘Nothi
ng is impossible when we deal with the Archenemy,’ said Sentina, his voice sepulchral.

  As the Stormraven banked around once again, the Hell Blade came back into view, flying directly towards the Ultramarines vessel. A targeting solution crossed Oenomaus’s view and he opened fire, crimson lances spearing into the fighter’s prow as autocannon rounds impacted against the larger craft’s hull. One slammed into Oenomaus’s leg, but the warsuit’s thick plate was proof against the shot. As Isachaar accelerated the Stormraven out of the Hellblade’s path, Oenomaus noticed something else.

  Along the long, slender, spiked wing of the Chaos-tainted fighter were a cluster of grotesque, unlidded eyes. And they were staring at him.

  Aeroth gripped one of the rails above his head and fired another volley of shots from his grav-cannon out into the maelstrom. Iova stood to his side, back against the compartment wall, both heavy bolters blazing into the mist. They were at the rear hatch of the craft.

  ‘This is useless, brother,’ grumbled Iova over a closed channel. ‘All we’re doing is scratching the paint.’

  ‘Do you have any better suggestions?’

  ‘Not really. But complaining makes me feel better.’

  ‘I’m so happy for you,’ said Aeroth through gritted teeth as he let go of the rail and leaned out to follow the path of a Hell Blade, sending a pulse of gravitational energy in its direction. He saw the craft’s engine casing crumple with the impact, and it seemed to pause for a moment as one thruster ceased working.

  ‘I’ve killed the starboard engine on one of them,’ he put across the general vox.

  ‘I see it,’ answered Isachaar. ‘Tracking.’

  Isachaar slewed the Fury around sharply, following the damaged Hell Blade. It was slower, its movements easier to track, but even then the targeting cogitator was struggling to keep up. He hammered las-fire towards the stricken craft, scoring deep gouges in the hull. Absently, he noted that they looked like cuts in flesh, red-rimmed and leaking a fluid that might have been blood. The true horror of Chaos, he had often thought, was that it could take something with the purity of the machine and imbue it with organic weakness. Well, he would put the machine-spirit of this craft out of whatever misery it was trapped in.