Battle for The Abyss (44 page)

With the Word Bearers occupied, Skraal had given his comrades the time they needed to cut their way into the reactor and finally end the
Furious Abyss
.

Cestus was on his feet and cleaved into the hatch with his power sword. The metal fell away with a resounding clang as it struck the deck. A backwash of heat flowed from the approach corridor sending the radiation warnings flickering on the Ultramarine’s helmet display to critical.

‘Bandoleers,’ Cestus cried, holding out his hand for the belt of melta bombs that Brynngar carried. ‘It’s a one way trip,’ said the old wolf. Cestus stared at Brynngar, nonplussed. ‘Yes, now hand them over.’

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‘Not for you,’ said the Wolf Guard and punched the Ultramarine hard in the battle-helm.

Cestus fell, half-stunned by the sudden attack, and through his blurring vision he saw Brynngar enter the approach corridor.

‘Both of us need not die here. Avenge me,’ he heard the Space Wolf say, ‘and your Legion.’

SKRAAL TOOK THE gantry steps three at a time. About halfway up his bolt pistol ran dry and he tossed it, focusing instead on his chainaxe. As he emerged into view, the Word Bearers fired. One round tore through his pauldron, another stuck his thigh, a third hit his chest and he staggered, but the fury was upon him and nothing would prevent him from spilling the blood of the enemy.

All those weeks fleeing like an animal, caged in the depths of the ship like a... like a slave. That would not be his fate.

Two more shots to the chest and Skraal struck his foes. A Word Bearer came at him with a chainsword. The World Eater swatted the blow aside and carved his enemy in two across the torso. A second went down clutching the ruin of his face where Skraal had caved it in. Another lost an arm and screamed as the World Eater booted him off the gantry to his death below.

Then Skraal faced the gilded captain, standing stock still before him as if at total ease. Bellowing Angron’s name, Skraal launched himself at Zadkiel, preparing to dismember him with his chainaxe.

The Word Bearer captain calmly raised his bolt pistol and shot Skraal through the neck. With a last effort, the World Eater lashed out.

Zadkiel screamed in pain as his bolt pistol was cut in two, three of his fingers sheared off with it through the gauntlet.

Smiling beneath his battle-helm, the World Eater felt his leg collapse beneath him. The spinal cord was abruptly severed and a terrible, sudden cold engulfed him, as if he had been plunged into ice.

Vision fogging, he saw Zadkiel standing above, blood dripping from his severed fingers as he drew a long, thin sword.

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‘I am no slave,’ Skraal hissed as the last of his vital fluid pumped out of him freely.

‘You have never been anything else,’ said Zadkiel savagely, and thrust the blade precisely through Skraal’s helmet lens and into the World Eater’s eye.

The dead Astartes shuddered for a moment, transfixed on the Word Bearer’s sword, before Zadkiel withdrew it with a flourish and Skraal crumpled to the deck. Wiping his blade on the corpse, and with a brief glance at his ruined hand, he turned to his sergeants.

‘Now kill the other two.’

CESTUS SHRUGGED OFF his disorientation and went for the hatch, but the barrage of fire resumed, cutting him off from the wolf.

‘Damn you, Brynngar,’ he bellowed, knowing that it was use-less.

Soon the engineering deck would be immolated by fire. The chain reaction that followed after the main reactor’s destruction would be cataclysmic. Cestus didn’t want to be there when that happened. Anger burned within him at the death of his battle-brothers, the base treachery of the Word Bearers. He wanted Zadkiel, and although there was little chance of reaching him on the engineering deck, the Ultramarine knew where he would find him. Cestus made his way to the shuttle bay.

BRYNNGAR POWERED THROUGH the access corridor, waves of radiation washing over him, and tore apart the first line of shielding that led further into the reactor core chamber. He pummelled a second bulkhead with his fists. The sense of descent into the beating heart of the ship enveloped Brynngar as he crawled on his hands and knees through the final access conduit.

Ripping away the last barrier of shielding, now several metres below the surface of the engineering deck, he passed the threshold of the reactor core’s inner chamber. A blast of intense heat struck him at once, his armour blistering before its fury, and for a moment the wolf recoiled. A deep cone fell away from a narrow
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platform over which the Space Wolf was perched. Hot wind, boiled up by the lake of liquid fire churning at the nadir of the cone, whipped his hair. Brynngar felt it burning, his skin too, as the intense radiation ravaged his flesh.

Beautiful, he thought as he regarded the glowing reactor mass below: raw, incandescent energy that boiled and thrashed like a captured thunderhead.

Priming the melta bombs around his waist, the Space Wolf closed his eyes. It was a hundred-metre drop down into the reactor core. Its smooth, angled walls were bathed in light.

Brynngar stepped off the narrow platform and fell. The first explosion was like a thunderclap.

Storms ravaged the platinum sky as Brynngar stood upon the edge of the silver Fenrisian ocean. The tide was high and the waves crashed against the icebergs, shattering the ice-flows with pounding surf. He was dressed in only a loincloth, with his knife tucked into a leather belt and his baleen spear thrust into the hard-packed snow. Out beyond the glowing horizon, there was a keening echo. The great orca was calling to him.

Brynngar took his spear and dived into the ice-cold waters.

Light was rising on the horizon, the storm receding. As he swam, he felt a strange sensation. It felt as if he was going home.

THE SUDDEN RELEASE of explosive power rippled through the main reactor. The conical structure ruptured and the plasma roared out. It fell in a massive fountain of fire, drenching the whole reactor section in a monstrous burning rain. Bolts of it punched through machinery and walkways, and through the bodies of Zadkiel’s warriors. Secondary explosions tore up from the minor reactors as a terrible chain reaction took hold. There was a deep and sonorous
crump
of force as one of the engines shattered apart with the backwash of energy.

A chunk of reactor housing shot like a missile right through the main chamber of reactor seven, which echoed the explosion with a huge expanding flood of ignited plasma. Emergency systems
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slammed into place, but there was no way to seal the breach when plasma was free and expanding within the hull.

Reactors two and eight were breached, emptying their plasma into the reactor section’s depths. The hapless menials still at work in the labyrinth were devoured in the sudden flood. The level of plasma reached the base of reactor seven, which blew its top, throwing a second burst into the air like a vast azure fountain.

Heat-expanded air ripped bulkheads open. The hull gave way, the inner skins breaching and filling with plasma before the outer hull was finally torn open and a black-red ribbon of vacuum-frozen fuel bubbled out of the
Furious Abyss
’s wounded flank.

Zadkiel crawled away from the destruction as his ship began to destroy itself from within. He reached the portal, sealing it shut before the few survivors of his squad could get through. He watched, curious and detached, as a bolt of plasma fell like a comet and ripped the gantry apart on which they stood. Survival instincts got Zadkiel to his feet. Reaching the vox, he ordered the abandon ship and proceeded to head for the shuttle bays before it was too late.

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TWENTY-ONE

Eve of battle

Face-to-face

Still we’ll fight

THE BANNERS OF the Word Bearers, deep crimson with the emblems of the Legion’s Chapters, barely stirred in the artificial air of the Cloister of Contrition. Kor Phaeron knelt alone in front of the altar, which was crowned with the image of Lorgar, the Prophet of Colchis. The primarch’s image, carved from porphyry and marble, was brandishing the book in which he had first written the Word.

The arch-commander was praying. It was this faith that set the Word Bearers apart. They understood its power. Lorgar had been an exemplar of what a man could achieve when he realised his full potential. Indeed, Lorgar had become much more even than that. Each Word Bearer prayed to commune with himself, with the forces of the universe, to discover the means to unlock their latent strength so that they might use it to do the work of Lorgar.

On the eve of battle, it was prayer that made the Word Bearers ready.

Footsteps echoed through the cloisters. It was a place of worship large enough to house three Chapters of battle-brothers, or all of the
Infidus Imperator
’s crew, and the echoes lasted for several seconds.

‘I am at prayer,’ Kor Phaeron told the intruder, the powerful cadence of his deep voice exacerbated by the acoustics of the temple.

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‘My lord, we have received no signal,’ came the disembodied reply.

It was Tenaebron, Chapter Master of the Void.

‘Nothing?’ asked Kor Phaeron, incredulity masking his anger as he turned to look upon his subordinate.

‘The supplicants on the
Furious Abyss
were activated,’ replied Tenaebron, ‘and some time after, a psychic flare was detected: very powerful.’

‘Formaska?’

‘Assuredly not, Lord Kor Phaeron.’

The arch-commander stood up. Bareheaded, he was resplendent in his prayer vestments and towered over the Chapter Master. ‘You must be certain of this, Tenaebron,’ he said, a warning implicit in his tone.

‘Formaska still exists,’ the Chapter Master replied. Compared to most Astartes he looked old and weak, and some who did not know the Legion’s ways might have thought he was a veteran, half-crippled in body, whose role was to advise and lead from afar. In truth, his small wet eyes and sagging, mournful face concealed a warrior’s soul, which he could back up with the force staff scabbarded on his back and the inferno pistol at his side.

Even that was of little significance compared to the horrible injuries that Tenaebron could inflict on an enemy’s mind.

‘Zadkiel has failed,’ he added unnecessarily.

Kor Phaeron thought for a moment, turning back to the altar as if the statue of Lorgar could advise him.

‘Follow,’ he said at length, and marched towards the great doors at the far end of the cloister. Kor Phaeron threw them open.

Hundreds of Word Bearers knelt in prayer, by the light of a thousand braziers, filling the cathedral to which the Cloisters of Contrition adjoined. Each one was deep in his prayers, seeking some greater self within him that could win this fight in the name of Lorgar and seal the truth of the Word. Almost the entire muster of the Chapter of the Opening Eye, that which was being
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transported by the
Infidus Imperator
, was assembled, with Chapter Master Faerskarel in the front row.

Faerskarel stood up and saluted at the arch commander’s approach. ‘Lord Kor Phaeron,’ he said, ‘is it time?’

‘Zadkiel has failed,’ said Kor Phaeron. ‘Soon the fleet’s presence will be revealed and Calth will be waiting for us. It is time. This will not be the massacre of which we have spoken. This will be a fight to the end, and Calth will not give up its victory easily. We must wrest it from the enemy as we have always done.’

Faerskarel said nothing, but turned to his Word Bearers, who stood to attention as one.

‘Word Bearers!’ shouted Kor Phaeron. ‘To your drop pods and gunships! Now is the time for war, for victory and death! Arm and say your final prayers, for the Ultramarines are waiting!’

CESTUS REACHED THE shuttle bay quickly. In the ensuing panic once the abandon ship had been declared, few enemies opposed him. Those that did were mainly zealous ratings or blood-hungry menials and he despatched them with bolt and blade.

The deck beneath the Ultramarine shuddered and lurched to the side and, for a moment, Cestus struggled to keep his feet. He heard the first of the explosions from the main reactor as they’d ravaged the ship. Now, further internal detonations were erupting across all decks as the chain reaction set in place by Brynngar’s sacrifice tore the
Furious Abyss
apart.

The rest of the crew, the cohorts of Word Bearers and the officers of the bridge, had yet to reach the bay. As plumes of fire spat up from the bowels of the ship like white-orange jets through the deck, and the infrastructure of the shuttle bay disintegrated around him, Cestus doubted that they ever would.

Crossing the metal plaza of the bay was like running a gauntlet, as vessels exploded in storms of shrapnel and debris fell like rain. Cestus saw a rating crushed beneath a hunk of fallen arch, the corpse’s hand still twitching in its death throes.

Hundreds of small antechambers bled off from the main bay, each housing a quartet of shuttles, racked in a two by two ar-323

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rangement. Cestus stepped into the first antechamber he could find that wasn’t wreathed in fire or sealed shut by wreckage.

Stepping over the threshold, he saw a solitary figure lit up by the warning strobes set into the shuttle runways. It was gloomy in the chamber, but Cestus recognised the livery of the armour before him.

‘Word Bearer,’ he called out.

The figure turned, about to step into the first shuttle, and regarded the Ultramarine coldly.

‘So you are the one who I am to thank for this,’ he said calmly, looking around the room as he opened his arms.

Cestus returned the Word Bearer’s contempt and drew his power sword. The arcing lightning coursing down the blade lit the Ultramarine in a grim cast.