The Plagues of Orath Read online

  It wasn’t the one he had been granted ten millennia ago, after the Council of Nikaea and the Chaplain edict. That had begun to decay and corrode like his armour after that dreadful period when the Lord of Plagues had stalked the Death Guard through their becalmed ships. No, that mask he had abandoned, unable to stand seeing it so corrupted. On Terra, he had hunted through the corridors of the Imperial Palace until he had found another Chaplain, of the VII Legion. He had killed him, and taken his mask. Pristine. Perfect.

  It hadn’t lasted long. It had been months, maybe, before the perfection of the helmet’s form had been marred in the same way as the first. Blood. Thin trickles of blood running from the lenses down the face of the skull. He couldn’t stand it. When he took the helmet off and hung it from the armour racks in his chamber, as the ships of the Legion fled the wrath of the Emperor’s forces, as they fled to the Eye, he couldn’t look at it. Yet when he closed his eyes, it was there, haunting him. He had to get another.

  In the Eye, as the Legions fought one another, none willing to take the blame for the loss, for the Warmaster’s fall, he had abandoned his brothers and hunted other fallen Chaplains across the impossible, insane vistas of the worlds they now called home. He became a dark legend, the Skull Hunter. And every time he took one, eventually, it would weep blood. Sometimes it took mere days, sometimes years. Sometimes he couldn’t tell, because time was different in the Eye.

  Eventually, he heeded Mortarion’s call and returned to the bosom of the Legion, what remained of it. They became bold, venturing back into the decaying Imperium. To Netesh’s delight, where once there had been just twenty Legions – eighteen by the end – there were now an infinite array of Space Marine Chapters, all with Chaplains. For millennia, he had sought them out wherever the Death Guard waged war and killed them, taking from each their skull masks.

  The last had been on Kulos, some whelp of Rogal Dorn’s bloodline, from a Chapter who called themselves Invaders. Netesh had taken great delight in stalking their Chaplain through the ruined streets of the city, picking off his comrades one by one until he alone remained. Then he had taken him, broken his limbs and tortured him. He liked to break them before he took their helmets. He liked them to see the power of Chaos. This one hadn’t broken, but he had died bloodily and messily, little resembling the warrior he had once been.

  His helmet adorned Netesh’s head now. And gazing down into the lenses of the Doom Eagle, he saw the thin trickles of blood running down the bone cheeks.

  He needed another.

  ‘You will not bring this world anything other than your death, traitor.’ The voice boomed through the chamber, echoing off the strange alien instruments that lined the walls. Netesh looked up and almost cried out with joy.

  The Ruinous Powers had brought him a Chaplain.

  The descent had been long, the spiralling stairs opening onto a cramped corridor that wound its way down deep beneath Orath’s surface. Sentina knew that whatever he faced down here, he would face alone. His brothers in their Centurion warsuits would not fit down the passageway, and once they left the cocoons of the suits, they would be unable to get back in them without the attentions of Techmarines and Chapter-serfs. With the growing threat, their firepower would be sorely needed.

  Eventually, the corridor opened out into a wide chamber. The first thing Sentina saw was a rough barricade made from pieces of power armour and ammo crates, crudely welded together. Next were the corpses. Three bodies, clad in the silver armour of the Doom Eagles, were arrayed behind the barricade. Sentina swore quietly to himself.

  Finally, his attention was drawn to the light. It was emanating from the other side of the barricade. He pulled himself over the makeshift fortification and stared into the half-orb of energy that emerged from a great circular depression. He could feel it as much as see it, a baleful aura of menace that gnawed at his soul, whispering to him of death, blood and carnage, offering him all the glories he could imagine. It would only cost his soul. Shaking it off, he looked around. Arrayed around the walls were alien devices, arcane and ancient looking, crafted from something that looked like bone and looking more grown than built. Sentina had seen their like before, artefacts of the xenos race called eldar.

  Then he heard a noise from the other side of the energy sphere. A voice, low and broken, gurgling as if coming from a throat filled with phlegm and other, fouler, things. Cautiously, pistol and maul in his hands, Sentina pulled himself into the shadows that shrouded the cavern walls and edged slowly along. He wanted to see what he was facing. As he came around the sphere, which was rippling with immaterial force, he saw the bloated, corrupted figure of a Chaos Space Marine standing over the broken form of a warrior in the colours of the Doom Eagles.

  ‘Your brothers are dead,’ said the standing figure. ‘Your duty is over. You have failed. You have a choice. Join me and help me to bring this world to ruin… Or die.’

  Sentina stepped out of the shadows and activated his crozius arcanum. ‘You will not bring this world anything other than your death, traitor,’ he said. As the figure looked up, Sentina saw that he wore a skull mask like his own. Had this accursed Chaos Space Marine once been a Chaplain? Blood dripped from the lenses of the skull mask, as if the helm wept at being worn by one so corrupt. Anger flooded Sentina and he leapt to the attack.

  For all that the traitor’s armour was swollen and cracked and broken, he was fast. He kicked the Doom Eagle away, the Space Marine hitting the stone wall of the cavern with a resounding crack, and pulled his great scythe around to deflect Sentina’s blow.

  ‘A new toy, a new mask,’ the Chaos Space Marine gurgled. ‘How the Grandfather rewards me for my service. And soon the rifts will meet and a new eye will open in the sky.’

  Sentina ducked beneath a lazy swing of the scythe and lashed out with his crozius, smashing it into the traitor’s knee. The power field melted armour and flesh alike where it hit, but the Chaos Space Marine barely seemed to notice. Pressing his attack, Sentina swung upwards, catching the traitor a glancing blow on his helm. The skull on the mask cracked, a great fissure splitting it from jaw to forehead. Sentina’s foe reeled back.

  ‘You break this one, that’s fine, Ultramarine. I’ll have yours soon enough.’

  Sentina said nothing, continuing to press forward, blow after furious blow deflected by the Chaos Space Marine’s scythe or tearing into tainted battleplate and abused flesh that seemed to be one and the same. He was forcing the corrupted warrior back towards the great sphere of energy.

  ‘Lord Nurgle,’ screeched the enemy Chaplain, and at the sound of the infernal name, Sentina reeled, shaken as though he had been hit by a thunder hammer. The echo of the word crashed through his brain, bringing images of horror and decay. He felt his nose begin to bleed, and for a moment he lost control of his body as it shuddered in instinctive horror at the unnatural syllables and he fell to the floor. ‘Aid me!’ the traitor finished.

  Sentina coughed, tasting the iron tang of blood in his mouth. ‘You will receive no aid, traitor, only dea…’ He trailed off as he saw shapes begin to emerge from the sphere of energy. They began as motes of power, crackling and breaking off from the sphere. Hanging in mid-air, they expanded, and took on a form that resembled humans in the basest aspect, but a broken, degraded form. Long, withered arms and legs jutted at awkward angles from bloated and swollen bodies, and large heads crowned with horns sprouted above the torsos. ‘Emperor’s mercy,’ Sentina breathed as he recognised the forms of the plague daemons he had fought on the plains far above. Seven of them were created from the immaterial sphere.

  ‘Death, yes,’ gurgled the Plague Marine as the daemons advanced on Sentina. ‘But not mine, son of Macragge.’ He took a step towards Sentina, scythe raised. Each of the daemons raised their rusted, pitted blades in juddering, unsynchronised movements, ready to bring them down and end the prone and motionless Sentina, who was pinned to the spot in horror at his impending fate.

  A barking roar rang out and one of the
daemons fell, a smoking hole where its single baleful eye had been. Whatever infernal spell had affected Sentina was broken, and he leapt to his feet, bolt pistol spitting shells into the daemons. He glanced around and saw the Doom Eagle on the ground, bolter held in shaking hands, providing further support.

  The daemons fell, but more were emerging from the portal to take their place. The Traitor Chaplain moved forwards and bolter shells impacted against his armour, their detonations blowing chunks of ceramite from the plate. He crossed the chamber in a few slow strides and lifted the Doom Eagle bodily from the floor, batting the bolter aside with his scythe.

  ‘Think you can stop me, little bird?’ he screeched. ‘See how you fly in the Eye!’ He turned and hurled the silver-armoured Space Marine directly at the sphere – the warp rift.

  ‘No!’ shouted the Chaplain, rushing forward, but he was too late. The Doom Eagle vanished into the sphere of unlight, silhouetted for a moment against it like a bird against the sun. Then he was gone.

  The Death Guard laughed, and the daemons made a demented, otherworldly sound.

  ‘I will kill you, traitor,’ Sentina vowed.

  ‘You may try, Ultramarine,’ said the Plague Marine, insanity gurgling from every word. ‘Bring it–’

  He was interrupted by an indescribable sound from the warp rift. It was like nothing Sentina had ever heard, nothing that could exist in nature. Behind the Chaos Space Marine, the rift was expanding and changing, the colours shifting and warping, hues that defied the human eye to see breaking up and joining together to form patterns that sickened Sentina to the bottom of his soul.

  He tore his eyes away from the infernal sight and ran. If the rift was growing larger, he had to escape it. Behind him, he heard the Plague Marine’s rotten voice, squealing about revenge. He leapt the makeshift barricade and ducked behind it. Looking over, he saw that the sphere of immaterial energy had expanded to almost fill the chamber. Then, with a thunderclap, it shrank, going in an instant from dangerously close to Sentina’s position to a tiny sphere floating in the centre of the chamber, above a large hole edged by the broken remains of what looked like bone.

  Where the rift had expanded, the chamber was warped and changed. The alien devices had melted, strange materials running like water across the cavern floor.

  And the Death Guard Chaplain was gone.

  ‘Brother-Chaplain? Sentina, do you read me?’

  Aeroth’s voice crackled across the vox. ‘I hear you, sergeant,’ he responded. ‘Things have taken a turn for the strange here. There is more to the situation than we realised.’

  ‘Quite so,’ agreed Aeroth. ‘The rift in the sky has shrunk to almost nothing and we received a brief communication from Captain Galenus’s force. They encountered heavy resistance from Traitor Space Marines in Fort Kerberos, including a daemonically altered warrior of the Death Guard. He was defeated, but Galenus was wounded. And whatever was happening at Fort Kerberos, it seems that the enemy were denied what they wanted. They may try again here.’

  ‘I just fought a warrior of the Death Guard here,’ said Sentina. ‘And there is a warp rift beneath the fort to match the one in the sky. And I think I know what they want.’

  ‘What?’

  Sentina’s voice was grim. ‘To expand the rifts, to join them and create a new Eye of Terror in the heart of Ultima Segmentum.’

  Eight

  Within an hour, the rift in the underground chamber began to grow again, matched by the one in the dawn sky. It was obvious to the Ultramarines that the enemy would return, and likely in greater numbers, intent upon drowning the pitifully few defenders of Fort Garm beneath a tide of Chaos.

  ‘The plan is simple,’ said Aeroth. ‘We remain up here and stop anything from entering the fort. Chaplain Sentina stays down there and stops anything from getting out.’ He and his squad stood in the courtyard, the ashes of the fire still smouldering and the smell of burning flesh on the air. The civilians had been sent to the old serfs’ quarters, there to remain in safety, as long as the Ultramarines could keep the enemy away from that building. Not that it was likely to be a target as long as the Space Marines and the fort remained.

  ‘Simple indeed,’ complained Lentulus. ‘Also suicide.’

  ‘Do you have a better plan, brother?’ asked Iova, his voice the model of reason and moderation.

  ‘We leave. Abandon this place, abandon this world and bombard it from orbit.’

  ‘That won’t stop the rifts from expanding,’ said Aeroth.

  ‘I don’t see that anything will stop that,’ retorted Lentulus. ‘So if our mission is to fail, let us at least survive it, and we can face whatever comes with our brothers behind us.’

  ‘He who expects defeat will engineer it.’ They turned to see the Chaplain emerging from the fort’s cavernous entrance. ‘We shall prevail, Lentulus. And when we return to the Fortress of Hera, you will face censure for your doubt. Have you not faith in your brothers, and in yourself?’

  Lentulus eyed the Chaplain for a moment, and Aeroth wondered if the battle-brother would be fool enough to challenge the skull-faced warrior. The moment passed, and Lentulus nodded. ‘As you say, Brother-Chaplain.’

  Sentina returned the nod. ‘Sergeant, prepare yourself. The taint of the warp is in the air. It won’t be long now. I shall be below, awaiting whatever comes.’ Aeroth’s vox crackled as the Chaplain opened a private channel. ‘Lentulus was not wrong, Darin. We stand a strong chance of failure.’

  ‘Then we fight to the end, Manet. Don’t doubt this decision. You do your duty. We all do.’

  ‘Thank you, brother. Fight well.’

  ‘Courage and honour, Brother-Chaplain.’

  With a nod, Sentina turned and strode back into the fort, heading to meet his doom. Aeroth primed his weapons and prepared to do the same. And within the hour, the Chaplain’s prediction was proved correct, and the final assault began.

  It started with a ripple in the great suppurating eye in the sky, and a sound like reality itself tearing asunder. The noise ground at Aeroth’s soul as he ushered the humans into the serfs’ quarters. Some of them wanted to stay and fight, but the scale of what was coming would be beyond them. Aeroth had seen mortals trying to fight the creatures of Chaos before. At best, they would be driven insane by the abominations they would witness. At worst, they might be corrupted and turn on the Ultramarines. They would be little threat, but killing them would be an added complication the embattled Centurions simply didn’t need.

  As the rift waxed, daemons started to appear, singly and in small groups. The Centurions fought back to back in the centre of the courtyard, covering every angle, trusting in their augmented battleplate and heavy weapons to protect them. Grav-blasts, explosive shells and lascannon bursts hammered into the materialising horrors, but it was as a drop in the ocean. For every daemon that fell, its body blown apart by mass-reactive rounds, pulped by gravitic force or disintegrated by high-yield lasers, another half dozen appeared to take its place.

  They were more than just the plague daemons that had attacked the Ultramarines the day before. Aeroth knew a little of the Ruinous Powers, enough to know that their deluded followers believed in a pantheon of gods, each with their own orders of immaterial servants, greater and lesser. It seemed that all of them had come to Orath, intent upon wiping the defenders from the face of the planet and claiming it, and more, for their masters.

  There was no rhyme or reason to their ranks, no ordered procession or blocks of like infantry. Red-skinned beasts, their heads long crests adorned with twisted horns, marched on backwards-jointed legs. Each of them clutched a long, brass blade in their talons, and vile crimson hounds loped alongside them, beside lithe, athletic figures, feminine in form, but grotesque in aspect. A tide of gibbering horror came in their wake. Many-limbed pink creatures cavorted across the courtyard, an ethereal fire burning around them. And of course, the plague daemons came on in their droves, from the sky and on the ground. The ones in the air were accompanied by g
reat manta-like predators with long, lashing tails and fanged maws crowned by horns.

  The whole cavalcade was accompanied by the smell of blood, as though they were soaked in it. Certainly, as they were mown down rank by rank, those behind were splattered in the gore that flew from their fellows. Warping flesh and terrible corruption assailed the Space Marines as much as magical flame and long claws. Whispered temptations and snarled imprecations surrounded them, but they stood firm, untempted by the soft, yielding flesh of the daemonettes and unperturbed by the blood-soaked fiends and gibbering, flesh-spitting horrors.

  The Ultramarines were eventually forced to split up to avoid being overwhelmed by the sheer number of the foe. Lentulus and young Oenomaus stamped their way through the tide of seething flesh, crushing daemons underfoot as they fought their way onto the battlements to rain fire down upon their foes from above.

  ‘This is like fighting an ocean,’ grunted Oenomaus across the vox.

  ‘It is an ocean, brother,’ said Aeroth as he lashed out, punching a temptress-daemon from her sinuous, long-bodied steed and stamping on her head, crushing it. ‘An ocean of otherworldly malice.’

  ‘No, not an ocean,’ chimed in Iova as he fired a burst of bolter rounds over Aeroth’s shoulder, tearing apart a trio of shifting horrors that had been about to engulf the sergeant in flames. ‘The Chaplain had the right of it. This is a storm.’

  ‘Then we weather it,’ replied Aeroth, sighting on a cluster of blood-soaked daemons and crushing them with a bubble of high gravity.

  ‘For Macragge and the Emperor,’ roared Lentulus as he rained las-fire and missiles into the swarm. Every shot was a kill, for so tightly packed were the foe that it was impossible to miss.