The Plagues of Orath Read online

  All of Sentina’s attention was on the rapidly spooling numbers on the altimeter. It took him almost a full second to realise that they were slowing. And if the numbers were slowing, so too was their descent. They slowed further as they approached zero. The rushing of the wind lessened and details began to resolve. He could see the ground coming closer, but as though they were falling through the low gravity of an airless moon. He didn’t know what was causing this, but he wasn’t going to complain.

  Oenomaus had obviously caught on, orienting himself so that his feet were to the ground. It was still going to be a rough landing, but the Centurion warsuits were made for combat deployment from a hovering gunship. They could survive this.

  The impact rattled every bone in Sentina’s body. He felt teeth crack as they ground together and his helm display flashed up with damage runes. He scanned and dismissed them. Nothing that would impair him too badly.

  He felt another impact as Oenomaus released his grip on him and he fell from the Centurion’s shoulder guard to the ground. For a moment, he lay there. His enhanced physiology allowed him to avoid the worst effects of dizziness and nausea, but his head spun nonetheless.

  ‘No weakness,’ he muttered and pulled himself to his feet, muscles protesting. He pulled up a medical analysis on his display. It reported some minor bone fractures, already healing, and some torn muscles and ligaments. He would be in pain for a while, but he would live. He looked up, and saw stars falling to earth. No, he corrected himself, not stars. The remains of the gunship. It was gone then. Isachaar was likely dead. The rest of the squad, though…

  He opened the vox. ‘Squad Aeroth, report.’

  There was an almost imperceptible pause before the responses came. Iova, Aeroth, Lentulus. They had been separated by the fall, landing some distance apart. Only Oenomaus was silent. Sentina looked around, taking in his surroundings. He was in a field, the crops rotting and dying. A green mist emanated from them, from the ground itself, rising upwards, obscuring vision beyond a few metres. Nothing his helm’s sensor suite wouldn’t be able to compensate for. The younger warrior’s Centurion suit stood silent and motionless beside him.

  ‘Oenomaus,’ he said, using his external vox-casters. ‘Brother, are you–’

  ‘Present and correct, Brother-Chaplain,’ boomed the Centurion’s voice. ‘My apologies. The impact reset my systems. The warsuit is powering up now.’

  ‘No apologies necessary, brother. Are you capable of doing your duty?’

  ‘I will be in a moment.’

  ‘Then do so. That is all the Emperor requires of us.’

  ‘And we can start now,’ came Iova’s voice over the vox. It was tinged with something unusual for a Space Marine. In a lesser being, Sentina might have called it panic. ‘Hostiles converging on my position.’

  Sentina was already moving as he asked for details, his helm display showing Iova’s location relative to his own. ‘Plague victims?’

  ‘Negative, Brother-Chaplain. I can confirm daemonic presence on Orath. Repeat, confirm presence of daemons.’

  Sentina broke into a run, sprinting in the direction of the heavy bolter fire that now echoed through the green mist shrouding the plains. That was where Iova was fighting. Daemons, he had said. The situation had obviously deteriorated rapidly on Orath if the immaterial servants of the Ruinous Powers were able to force their way across the veil. He activated his crozius arcanum, the crack of the energy field igniting and the hum of the generator as reassuring a sound as he could imagine. With the threat of daemons ahead, the eagle-headed maul was something solid he could hold onto. More solid than his faith in himself anyway.

  As he ran, he tried to raise the second Stormraven, which carried the other half of Aeroth’s squad. There was no response. Out of range or, more likely, destroyed. And with the rest of Captain Galenus’s warriors half a world away, Sentina’s small force of Ultramarines could expect no help now.

  He heard the slow, crashing footsteps of Centurion warsuits behind him, and the heavy bolter fire was so close he could almost feel the explosions of the mass-reactive shells. A horror from beyond nightmares loomed out of the mist before him, long, gangling arms clutching a wicked-looking cleaver in both hands, holding it in front of a hideously bloated stomach that seeped gases from several ruptures. One bulbous eye was set deep into the head that lolled atop a slender, bubo-covered neck, a head crowned with a single long horn. He swung instinctively, the crozius thudding into the daemon’s midriff and bursting through it, trailing rotting viscera. The creature staggered on, atrophied limbs reaching for Sentina. He pulled himself to the left and swung again, obliterating the daemon’s head. It fell.

  He ran on, taking his crozius in a two-handed grip as he forged ahead through the greenish murk. He broke through the mist and came into a clearing, where the tall and bulky form of Iova was twisting left and right, sending bolt-shells scything through putrid flesh. Where the rounds exploded, gore splattered over more daemons as they shambled towards the Centurion. In the skies above, more of the daemons, one-eyed monstrosities wielding dripping blades of corroded steel, their skin rent and broken to reveal hideously rotten innards and oozing, unnatural fluids, clutched onto the backs of gigantic mutated flies. Sentina felt nothing but disgust for them.

  ‘Brother-Chaplain,’ boomed Iova. ‘I could use a hand dealing with the creatures above.’

  Sentina nodded, paused for a second, pulling himself back and deactivating his crozius, and then sprinted towards the Centurion, who ducked ponderously down. Nimbly, the Chaplain jumped onto the rumbling heavy bolter arm even as it continued to spit shells at the daemons massing on the ground. From there, he climbed up onto the broad shoulder guard and, gathering himself once again, made a massive bounding leap from the back of the straightening Centurion.

  The daemons didn’t see him coming. He grabbed the rear claw of one of the immense rot-flies. It was like sinking his hand into putrid meat, but he gripped onto the bone and bodily swung himself up, reigniting the power field on his weapon as he did so and driving the maul into the daemon’s gut. The swing brought him level with the one-eyed creature perched on the broad back of another fly. He kicked it from its mount and it plummeted to the ground below, landing with the sickly sound of flesh and bone being sundered.

  Sentina paused for a second as the fly bucked beneath him, almost losing his balance even as the immense weight of his power armour drew him into the warp spawn’s pallid flesh. He pushed down, hearing the crack of the beast’s spine breaking and launched himself off again. He passed another and thrust his crozius deep into the rider’s ribcage. And then he was falling – again. For a brief moment, he was staring upwards at the warp rift in the sky. Clearly, it was not confined to the sky above Fort Kerberos, half a world away. And, impossibly, it looked bigger than it had before.

  He landed on a plague daemon, gore and pus soaking his armour as it was pulverised by the impact. For a moment, he lay there dazed, sharp agony coursing through him, before his armour administered pain suppressants and his genhanced body began repairing the damage. He groped around for his crozius, ignoring the sickening mess in which he lay. His fingers closed around the haft and he pulled it towards him and rolled, activating it and battering it into the plague daemon that loomed over him, sword raised. He was rewarded with a low moan and a shower of stinking viscera. Shrugging it off, he pulled himself to his feet and looked around for more enemies. Seeing a knot of them in the distance, he began to sprint.

  Aeroth, Lentulus and Oenomaus advanced, laying down bolt-shells, las-beams and grav-blasts with every ponderous step. The warsuits were slow, but the firepower they could muster was formidable indeed.

  ‘This is the joy of life, Oenomaus!’ said Lentulus. ‘We are as gods of war in these suits, even more than we are with power armour and boltgun. Revel in the tally we reap of these unnatural fiends.’

  The younger battle-brother grunted, his attention on piloting the Centurion suit and maintaining a punishing
rate of fire. He wasn’t picking targets so much as spraying rounds across his field of vision, such as it was in the infernal murk. Aeroth’s voice sounded across his personal vox.

  ‘Careful, brother. You’ll exhaust your ammo reserves at that rate, and I suspect this won’t be the last fight we see on this world.’

  ‘Aye, sergeant,’ he replied, the words clipped and frustrated. ‘I shall endeavour to maintain fire discipline.’

  ‘It’s understandable, Oenomaus,’ said the sergeant. ‘Lentulus is pompous and overblown, but he’s not wrong. These warsuits are mighty indeed. As are their machine-spirits and their lust for battle – don’t let yourself be overwhelmed.’

  Oenomaus thought back to the first time he had stepped into the warsuit and placed himself in its embrace, both physically and mentally. He had felt the machine-spirit as a presence in there, both reassuring and somehow malignant. He knew that the sergeant spoke the truth.

  The tech-thralls who had helped him to interface with the suit had whispered of joinings that went wrong, where the machine-spirit was too warlike and too powerful, taking over the mind of the novice pilot and rampaging through arming chambers, though such events were rare and the damage limited as a first joining was never attempted with live weapons on the warsuits.

  He had survived without that happening, though he fancied he had felt the spirit of the suit probing at his mind, seeing if it could push itself into him. He would have to remain wary of that happening in the field as well.

  ‘Thank you for your concern, sergeant,’ he said as he focused his targeting array on a group of shambling plague daemons and loosed a short burst of bolt-fire that scythed through them, tearing them apart with controlled explosions. ‘I shall remain wary.’

  Sentina rammed his crozius through the distended gut of a daemon, swaying aside to avoid the strike of another and tearing the mace out of the first. It slumped to the ground, acidic blood running in rivulets across the hard-packed dirt.

  This was where his strength lay, the Chaplain knew. In the heat of battle, facing the foes of mankind and bringing death with pistol and bludgeon. And yet, he knew that he fulfilled only half of his duty on the battlefield. His role was to lead, as well as to kill, to inspire his battle-brothers to feats of heroism.

  That had never been his forte. One to one with a battle-brother, he could divine what troubled a soul and provide an answer, but oratory, implacable leadership… He had been able to at least make the outward appearance convincing, though he had always felt his words to be hollow, but since Varos, he had been unable to muster the strength to even pretend.

  Another pair of daemons advanced ponderously towards him, their single eyes glowing malignantly. Their rusted swords were raised, ready to strike a blow. The fluids that coated the blades were virulent and corrosive. Sentina had seen warriors fall to such weapons and knew that not even the genhanced physiology of a Space Marine would be proof against the toxins and contagions that would spread through his system if he were to be so much as nicked.

  He twisted, swinging his crozius in a disarming blow. It struck one of the daemons on the wrist, shattering bone and pulverising flesh. The creature’s entire hand came off, sword with it. The plaguebearer continued its relentless movement, heedless of the wound, lunging for him with its intact arm and broken teeth. His backswing crashed through its neck and as it fell, Sentina was already moving towards the second. He swung low, rewarded with a satisfying crack as the mace struck its knee. As the fiend stumbled, he pulled his pistol from its holster and fired a single round into the daemon’s skull, ending its existence. As brains and daemonic flesh splattered against the earth, the Chaplain turned, looking for more targets. There were none.

  The sound of gunfire had ended. Sentina opened a vox-channel.

  ‘Are there any more?’ he asked.

  ‘Clear,’ replied Aeroth after a moment, swiftly followed by similar acknowledgements from the rest of the squad. The Chaplain ordered them to regroup on his position and pondered the attack.

  ‘It seems… convenient that they were so close to where we landed,’ opined Aeroth, echoing Sentina’s thoughts.

  ‘Our very presence may have summoned them,’ said the Chaplain. ‘They are creatures of the immaterium. If this world is in the grip of the Ruinous Powers, as it surely is, then the veil could be drawing thin.’

  ‘Why are there not more of them, then?’ asked Lentulus. ‘If we brought them here, why not an endless tide to overwhelm us?’

  ‘If there are daemons appearing across the planet, perhaps there is only so much energy that can be expended in one place,’ suggested Iova.

  ‘I wonder what Captain Galenus’s forces are facing on the northern continent,’ said Aeroth thoughtfully. ‘It may be that the enemy focus upon Fort Kerberos, as do our brothers. We are but a scouting party – perhaps our foes were also.’

  ‘It is not for mortals to try to understand the ways of Chaos,’ said Sentina sharply. ‘To do so invites madness and ruin. Let it be enough that we have defeated them. If we encounter more, we shall do so again.’

  ‘The Chaplain is correct,’ said Aeroth. ‘We must make for Fort Garm and secure it.’

  The Ultramarines set off, the ponderous footfalls of the Centurion warsuits shaking the earth with every tread.

  Four

  The group of men, women and children – around forty, all told, made their way through the narrow streets of the small town, moving as quickly and quietly as they could manage. At their head, Andronicus strode through the churning mud, murmuring under his breath. Prayers to the Emperor, Alia assumed. She’d never had much time for worship herself. She paid lip service to the Imperial creed, of course. Everyone did. But the farmstead had contained no temple – barely anywhere on Orath did, since the Ecclesiarchy of the Imperium chose to have no permanent presence on the world. But when wandering priests passed through – men like Andronicus – they would gather the folk and hold devotions in barns or out in the fields. Alia knew that she was supposed to find these events uplifting. She always hoped for a spiritual experience, to feel the love of the Emperor fill her and move her like in the old stories, but she usually just ended up wishing that she could get back to work.

  Andronicus had been no more inspirational. And for all that she liked the old man, Alia didn’t trust him. He was an outsider.

  And now, no rousing speeches about the light of the Emperor could make up for the fact that the sky itself had been torn apart, an oozing, cataracted eye staring down day and night, even through the hellish green fog that swathed the world. The… thing opened and closed seemingly at random, and it had brought death with it.

  Keevan pushed his way past her. He had been at the rear of the group, chivvying them along. Alia moved forward a little in his wake, eager to hear whatever he had to say to the priest. The group came to a gradual halt as the two men stopped to converse.

  ‘Father Andronicus,’ Keevan said. ‘We need to speed up. They’re getting closer, and I think they’re moving in from the sides as well.’

  ‘Yes,’ the priest replied quietly. ‘I can hear them, their infernal song, all around us now.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘All around us.’ Alia didn’t understand his point for a moment, then it hit her. The song. It was coming from in front of them as well. They were surrounded. Keevan realised it too.

  ‘Everyone!’ he shouted. ‘We need to get to defensible positions. Get up onto the roofs of the buildings, women and children first.’

  Like many men on Orath, Keevan was… old-fashioned. He believed that women were to be protected. Well, she’d be damned if she was going to be coddled. Anarchy followed his words, as people panicked, running for the buildings and trying to find handholds to climb up. Children started to cry. Alia saw one little girl – she didn’t know her name – standing alone, bawling her eyes out, a threadbare stuffed grox in one hand and a spreading puddle of urine around her feet, soaking into the mud.

  Alia ran over and scooped the girl u
p.

  ‘Shh,’ she soothed. ‘It’s okay, we’ll get you safe.’

  She carried the child to one of the buildings a short way back, where several children had already been lifted up onto the roof. A pair of men were helping to lift a pregnant woman up, struggling beneath her weight, and another pair leaned over the edge of the roof to pull her up, huffing and puffing as they hauled her upwards. When the men on the ground were free of their burden, Alia shouted over to them.

  ‘Little girl here to go up!’

  The men looked round, and relief filled the face of one.

  ‘Emperor’s mercy!’ he exclaimed. ‘Janae! I thought I’d lost you, sweetie.’ He ran over and Alia pushed the weeping, sodden girl into his arms. ‘Thank you,’ he said, his face expressing his thanks better than any words could. ‘She’s all I have left.’

  ‘Get her to safety then,’ Alia said, the words coming out harsher than she intended. The man bristled and pulled away, heading back towards the building. The child – Janae – screamed and thrust her arms towards Alia. Alia turned back to see if anyone else needed help and saw, about twenty metres away, half-immersed in the mud of the narrow street, the girl’s toy.

  ‘It’s just a toy,’ she muttered, but from behind her she heard the girl’s screams increasing in volume and ardency. She had a sudden flash of a family trip to the Holborn farmstead, dinner beneath the stars. Felip had been a baby, younger than Janae was now, she reckoned. He had a toy, a wooden horse that their pa had carved for him. They’d left it behind, and as he’d been asleep when they left, no one noticed. The next day, when he found he no longer had it, he screamed for seven solid hours, only stopping when he wore himself out and returned to his slumber. When he woke again, the screaming continued. Pa had ended up carving another horse for him just to shut him up.

  The girl deserved her toy. Alia ran towards it, stopping and bending down to scoop it up. She straightened, and looked down the street. What she saw stopped her in her tracks and grabbed her attention entirely.