Ferrymen (BL Submission - rejected)

[Mazer Rackham]

FERRYMEN

ADEPTUS ASTARTES: REVILERS CHAPTER

 

 

 

CONCEPT:

 

NARRATIVE SUMMARY (Max 100 Words):

 

Sergeant Ravyx Atton leads a Phobos Strike Team from the secretive Revilers Space Marine Chapter. When the navigators of a Torchbearer fleet are incapacitated by a psychic trap, becalming them in Magellan’s Crucible – a fluctuating passage through the Cicatrix Maledictum – Atton and his men deploy to the embattled world of Aluxan to sequester their psychic novices, in order to save the fleet and prosecute the will of Roboute Guilliman. Strike Team: Charon must infiltrate and evade the legions of rebels to effect a rescue, and thwart a deadly plot by the Alpha Legion, before time runs out

 

EXTRACT (Max 500 Words):

 

Racing to the door, Atton tore smoke grenades from his body webbing, hurling them down either corridor, before stepping out, sweeping the carbine left and right. Telemetry depicted where the rest of his team were, and they moved as fast as he, efficiently from room-to-room. His foot smashed doors in, then a shock grenade, followed by a sweep of the space with the carbine. He set the weapon stablight to strobe, for maximum disruption, erupting into the confined quarters at the same moment as the pummelling concussion thundered.

 

Heretics were blasted off their feet by the detonation, before the scene became a series of flash-picter images. Atton executed them with tight shots from the suppressed carbine, not a round wasted. He was grateful for the forward grip; the mobility of the weapon was exceptional.

 

Moving to another room, he repeated the sequence, and it sounded like a storm was battling to escape the temple. Great bolts of noise were quelled by the baffles in his auto-senses. Heretics reeled from his attack, hands pressed to cover popped eardrums, before Atton put them out of their misery with a wicked volley.

 

One of them, mutated into a hulking brute, crashed through the wall before he could ready his next bomb. It roared at him, grappling him from behind, in a slew of plaster and stonework. The mutant’s clutching claws snapped the strap on his bolt carbine, sending it spinning away, as the creature barrelled forward, trying to make him a permanent fixture within the opposite wall. The power of his foe was tremendous, muscle-corded arms wrapping his body, trapping his limbs, rivalling his Rubicon-wrought strength.

Anger spurred defiance. Atton pushed off with his feet, hurling both combatants back through the jagged gap the mutant had opened, and they tumbled together crunching furniture and ripping down hanging silks. The heretic-beast shifted grip, clamping its paw over his face, fingers fused into two long talons, hooking onto his skull mask and trying to wrench his helmet off.

 

The change gave him a chance, and he got his left arm free, seizing a broken table leg and thrusting it up behind him where his Lyman’s Ear discerned the enemy’s voice box. Clotted, guttural bellowing announced his success, and he twisted the stake, breaking it off, the pressure on his ribs vanishing as the brute grasped to remove the painful splinter. As they writhed, rolling across the floor, the mutant trapped Atton’s neck more by luck than skill, but even as the pressure warning indicator flared dangerous amber sigils, Atton’s hand closed on his heavy bolt pistol.

 

Four shots pumped into the brutal knot of twisted muscle behind him. He didn’t care where he was hitting, Atton trusting that the Emperor’s ordained tools would do the work. The mutant howled even as its organs were pulverised, a strangled human note to the plaintive cry, before Atton punched the barrel under its blubbery chin, and blew its mismatched, horned head off in a shower of red-grey gruel.

 

++++++++++

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by Mazer Rackham
Formatting, extract, summary, heading added.

[Mazer Rackham]

+ FERRYMEN +

 

FULL MANUSCRIPT (10,000 WORDS TO NEAREST 1,000):

 

With his giant hand clamped around the human’s mouth and nose, Ravyx Atton yanked the stupefied, staring wretch into the river. Panicked limbs thrashed in alarm, but the Space Marine simply closed his hand, bursting the man’s skull in a dull rupture of crimson slick. The body immediately stilled; a dead weight in the current, before he released it to vanish into the depths.

 

Now the sentry was despatched, five figures lingering in the watery dark broke formation, scrambling onto land. Atton had a moment to think of serrated maws in the deep, of their cousins, the Charcharodons Astra. The Revilers did not devour entire worlds, glutting on ruddy innards to leave only a carcass. Dismissing the thought, he returned to the matter at hand.

 

The command interface showed the displacement of Kill Team Charon, spreading out in defensive formation along the riverbank. His lips writhed mirthlessly beneath his grinning Reiver helm – this was a waste of his unit, but his duty was sworn. Hnh. It was not his place to question it. Stirring silt, powering through eddies and clinging weed, he finally broached the riverbank, hauling himself up to kneel in thick, metre-high Olyphant grass. Atton drew his suppressed bolt carbine into ready position, absently picking the augur-scope clear of festering insect larvae, while surveying the swaying stalks. He checked the pouches at his waist, satisfied they remained secure.

 

Rivulets of water streaming from his Phobos plate, he waited for cloud cover to shift above them, blotting out the moon. In an instant, they moved on the rebel-held encampment, to silence the traitors observed therein. A bonfire poured brightness into the preysense visor, as he stopped his squad at the edge of the village. Ramshackle huts built out of scrap sheet metal harboured a group of rebels making murder. Wrapped in ragged saffron shifts over crude armour, three heretics attended a makeshift altar with a struggling victim strapped to it with thick, rusted chains.

 

The meaty chop of a cleaver cut a scream short, and a head trundled down the dirt path running through the middle of the hamlet. Dark praises and raucous laughter erupted at the grim sport, voices carrying from further inside the village, where sentries preferred to witness the killing, as opposed to doing their job.

 

They would die for both transgressions.

 

Edging around the nearest hovel, Atton was joined by his second, Kaedros. His fellow Rubicon veteran offered a palm gesture, a tiny movement in the dark, but enough. The secret stalk-argot noises and Corspake hand sign lingered in the inheritors of Corax, but the Revilers revered it, the Chapter’s lineage bedrock for their church of vengeance.

Gently rasping through the long grass, his predators were unleashed to the hunt, stealth and guile the sacred values – Per victoriam, vindictam. Through victory, vengeance. He filled his palm with the grip of his long knife, drawing the darkened blade smoothly through the throat of the sheath. With a flex of his fingers and thumb, he split his team to take targets. Kaedros held, covering them with his marksman carbine.

 

Crouching, the Revilers made their way through the darkness beyond the fire and butchery. Not thwarted by the night, none cracked a twig or slipped in mud. As soon as each killer was in arm’s reach, they paused, waiting for Atton’s signal. Lacking any ceremony, or satisfaction, he drove his combat knife deep, the point jarring against breastbone.

 

Even as the victims fell to their blades, Atton quickly crossed the clearing, attacking the cages bound with chains, tearing the hated symbols of oppression from the rudimentary prisons. Unscarred villagers within gawped up at him. Heedless of their sudden joy, he ushered them out, scooping up cudgels and autopistols from their captors, pushing them into groping hands. The mortals hurried away from their grim saviour, something between gratitude and abject terror driving them on.

 

Atton shrugged, unmoved. It wasn’t altogether altruism – if the enemy responded in force, the prisoners would generate enough distraction for his talon to reap more souls unmolested. He looked up into the hateful sky, broken clouds revealing the thick strings of red-purple blood in the void. His eyes slid from the abyssal lesion, thinking instead of the convoy, all hoping for a miracle, even as the noose tightened around them.

 

Kaedros joined him, sharing the silence. Even through the trials they had spoken fewer times than they had fingers, and when Atton stepped forward to leave the ranks of the so-called ‘Firstborn’, and undergo Primaris conversion, Kaedros had slammed into attention beside him.

 

They were so different, his friend hailing from the coast, and he from the mountains, but they were scarred with the same brand, and it had always worked. Integrating with the new blood was more difficult. Even so, the Strike Team had melded; an amalgam of old and new. Up there somewhere was a cargo of genhanced warriors, ready to carry the light of hope to an embattled and embittered galaxy. The chrono quietly ticked down in the corner of his retinal display. Time was wasting.

 

Sheathing the blade after wiping it, he whirled his left hand around his head, pointed in the direction of the city. They had to be away from here, chased by the dawn, following the darkness. Atton led them into the deep forests of Aluxan, and beyond, the city of Solara where they could find the Templum Navis. Arboreal animals whooped and screeched as the Revilers cut forward. Moving with consistent warrior-pace, the soft loam and fallen leaves were a carpet for heavy boots.

 

Atton dashed through the hollow of a lava tree, thick globules of orange sap coagulating along the mighty trunk, broken long before the tropical storm masking Strike Team Charon’s insertion. Angling to snake through the dark bole, he burst pale web sacs of some arachnid, spilling a torrent of fanged beasts in his wake. For a fleeting moment, he returned to the mountain caves, where his clan sheltered, using cobwebs to staunch the wounds of injured hunters.

 

Runic script announced they were closing on the city. Augur pings placed his team, spread out along the tree line, from where they could plan the next stage. He blink-clicked the command feed, accessing the squad’s visuals. One by one, the extra views sprang up, slaved to his. Orbital reconnaissance was all well and good, but the weather robbed a lot of definition under the clouds and smoke. Atton grunted in appreciation for the understatement. The whole city was alight, and not just with flames; he could hear the screams from human throats a kilometre away, carried on the cinder-laced wind.

 

He suspected they were too late.

 

***

 

They weren’t going to survive, she was certain. Marwen watched on in horror, as three temple guards were cleaved down by a brute with a single horn sprouting from his head, rusted bands of armour trussed about his scarred torso. A long, slavering tongue lolled from between filed teeth, to lick at sores sprouting from runes carved into his chest.

 

‘There isss a pretty one!’ the...thing half-shouted, pointing his bloody axe at her.

 

Piling in beside him, unwashed dregs in yellow robes roared and finished off the guards with a renewed torrent of blows and close-range shots. The powered lances of the temple warriors were smashed aside, and even their gilded carapace armour was of little use against such ferocity. The blades of the mutated horde stabbed forward, came back red.

 

Marwen took flight, slippered feet a light thrum against the white marble floor of the Templum Navis, a uniquely safe place for reflection and training for Navigators, sealed against the horrific predations of creatures beyond the veil. The forest world of Aluxan had been a refuge for centuries, continued to be so even after the Cicatrix burst open, turning the galaxy mad.

 

Bullets peppered ornate carvings, driving stone splinters across her path, and Marwen yelped as one cut across her brow, cheek and chin, threatening to dislodge the scarf carefully tied about her head. She ran on, shots following, chipping and careening. Turning the corner, Marwen slipped, the thick rug leading to the servants quarters and refectory shifting under her weight. She went down heavily, crushing her shoulder, piling into a heap that stole her breath.

 

It saved her life.

 

Something heavy smashed a fist-sized hole in the plasterwork fresco decorating the corner. A heartbeat sooner, it would have pasted her head. As it was, a seraph proved substitute, blown to powder; a cloud of dust she could use to play dead. In the pause as her senses recovered, Marwen could hear the temple being ravaged. Shots, shouts, and screams of her siblings, and elders. A wash of hatred and surprise assailed her senses as souls flashed into the aether. It had to be the Sanctum, where the elders convened. She could only hope the deaths were swift and painless.

 

Heavy, running boots and the growling motor of a chainsword drew her attention, as the Guard Captain joined the fray. An absolute brute of a man, Abraex Tyros, hero of Eddos, appeared in his golden cuirass, following a knot of the temple guard. Elation nearly spurred a cry to him in appreciation and relief – only for cold terror to choke her throat as she watched on, the hero ramming his revving chainsword through the backs of his own men, sawing them down in a blur of motion too fast to follow, carving streaming arcs of blood over the ornate walls and ceiling.

 

‘Massster,’ the horned mutant lisped, bowing. ‘Sssome fled.’

 

‘You had better resolve that,’ Tyros replied, deep voice impossibly calm after such a slaughter.

 

Marwen could say nothing. Tyros had betrayed them, and in chilling damp sweat, she knew that nowhere, no-one was safe in this temple any more, and she had to move. Clamping a hand over her mouth to staunch the urge to vomit, she scrabbled forward on her stomach, fingernails gripping the rents in smashed marble to give her purchase. The pale silks and satin finery of her robes robbed her of any traction – but at least they were silent.

 

Her pineal eyelids parted a fraction due to the emotional tumult, but she finally succeeded in gripping an overturned bust of her grandfather, the face of the old man ruined by stray bullets and lasbolts. With his help, she launched down the corridor, tears stinging her eyes, blind, bumping from one side of the passage to the other. In her desperate flight, Marwen toppled a tall vase, sending it crashing with a terrible peal of noise. Alerted, the mutants charged after her, began firing from the corner. One scarlet bolt seared her left arm, just below the shoulder, and she added to the din by screaming, letting out the pain and fear as she fled towards the servant’s refectory.

 

One of the Pages stood at the door to the kitchens, laspistol in hand. She hardly recognised Lucian, the fire in his eyes quite unknown. He’d been so shy in the orchards on their walks. Confusion and betrayal convinced her he would shoot, and she pulled up short, prepared to die with as much dignity as her dishevelled state allowed.

 

‘Come on!’ he shouted.

 

Raw urgency and lack of deference shocked her back into motion. Marwen hurtled into the dining hall past him, as he thrust the heavy wooden doors shut to absorb the rounds. The hollow thunk, thunk, thunk of the projectiles burying in timber sounded like old Leo’s tack driver when he was mending tables.

 

The big gun belched again, smashing the close boards apart, ploughing a furrow into the wall opposite. Sharp matchwood scythed into Lucian’s face, driving him back from the door, but the heavy bolt was thrown as he recoiled. ‘Emperor’s bones, you cut that fine!’

 

‘Tyros betrayed us!’ Marwen managed, gasping in effort and agony. She pushed herself up from the bench she’d tumbled onto.

 

‘The guard captain?’ Lucian gawped, caught himself, and swore instead. He jammed the laspistol through the hole made by the slug, pressing the firing stud of his pistol as quickly as his finger could work it. He was rewarded with sharp cries and grunts of pain. Marwen suppressed any satisfaction, such glee was unbecoming of a Lady, and led the heart to darkness all too willing with encouragement.

 

The refectory was on the second floor of the temple, so that it could serve the menials but the three doors were all closed. It was a temporary fastness, but the reprieve was enough for Lucian to bind her wound with a torn sleeve from his tunic. It hurt like hell, and she grimaced against the pain, biting her tongue bloody. The wounded door was likewise suffering, as heavy fists pounded on it.

 

‘Come to usss childe. The giftsss will help you sssee.’

 

Promptly, a pus yellow eyeball appeared at the gap, rolling to view the room. Whether it could perceive them, Marwen didn’t care. Revulsion and fear drove her to grasp a fork, hurling it at the horrid, fleshy orb. It struck true with a sickening pop, the organ bursting into a runny egg mess over the door and tiled floor. The silver utensil vanished through the gap with a scream, to be filled by an autogun barrel.

 

‘Throne!’ Lucian took her to the ground a moment before the weapon barked, stitching bullets where they both had been standing. The barrel sawed with as much traverse allowed by the gap in noise and fury, then vanished. An axe blade replaced it. Driving into the splintered wood, it chopped frantically at the timbers. It was joined by a long-bladed cudgel, and they rapidly carved the way open. Lucian got his arm around Marwen’s waist, hurling her towards the large windows at the back of the refectory.

 

‘Go, get out!’ He turned around; firing his laspistol into the burly arms now trying to heave the latch open. Groans, seared flesh and singed hair the result of his shots striking home.

 

Torn between wanting to help, and needing to leave, Marwen hesitated at the window, opened her mouth to protest. He swore at her; put his foot on her rump, sending her onwards against the decorative glass. She crashed out into freefall, glittering confetti twinkling in the nuclear orange dawn. She had just enough time and wit to take a breath before she plunged into the river, the freezing current robbing her strength and sensation, pitching her about like a boat in a squall. After long seconds, she broke the surface catching the merest glimpse of a split in the tunnel, before the river pulled her to the right, and took her under the city.

She smashed her head against something hard, and went down into the darkness.

 

***

 

When dawn struck the city, so did the Revilers. The main bridge across the river was guarded by a throng of rebels, celebrating the fall of the Imperium’s hold on Aluxan. Atton reflected that was premature, but it wasn’t his mission to rescue the poor souls being dangled over the thundering torrent below, nor prosecute the war by wasting all his bolts on yellow-clad chaff.

If he could extricate the Navis acolytes, a whole conveyor of Primaris Space Marines in Tacticus armour could make planetfall, teaching these traitors some manners. We Revilers are more like vultures, than Raptors. He sighed under his helmet, resolved to keep any misgivings to himself. Vox silence was broken only once, the holographic feed shifting runes around his visor.

 

‘Proceed.’

 

‘A salvation strike, Scipéir?’ Solzsa asked, in the cant of the coast. It meant chief of the boat, a steersman who chose the course and carried the lives of crew in his hands. The Helix Adept looked his usual reserved self. It was not a bedside manner any mortal would find terribly comforting, but he was one of the Chief Apothecary’s best students.

 

‘No,’ Atton replied, simply. The village was a complication, but intervening here would be catastrophe.

 

Solzsa nodded, disappeared, decision accepted.

 

More Corspake hand signals drove Strike Team Charon from their perch, individually slipping down the long slopes of the tree line, hugging the gullies and boulder outcrops, where their disruptive light and dark grey camouflage functioned best. They headed for the Mechanicum bridge, which carried the power conduits out of the city to the smaller towns. Heavy gauge pipes, perhaps three times the height of an Astartes, were caged in the construction spanning a steep ravine, each large tube resembling a stretched constrictor, lazily digesting a meal.

 

This secondary access required a loop around the city limits, but Charon completed it swiftly, closing on the target structure with the firm intention of scaling it. Standing now in its shadow, Atton felt the actinic thrumming of high-voltage resonating from the cage. A deterrent for thieves and animals, it rendered a simple climb impossible.

 

‘There must be a fault, Sergeant. The power fluctuates wildly,’ Caio, reported. Equipped with the Omniscope, such dangers were easily revealed to him.

 

‘Auspex concurs,’ Helyan, Charon’s comms specialist warned. ‘I cannot guarantee our insulation is proof.’

 

Electrocution was an undignified end. Letting his carbine swing by the strap, Atton prepared his grapnel launcher. Searching the myriad smaller pipes snaking through struts above, he could discern no favourable anchor point within range of the loaded cable. Seating the clawed hook into the muzzle, he clipped the line to his belt.

 

He tracked an inspection gantry running through the bridge, followed cables to a junction box. The Primarch favoured him. Maybe he could kill the power, allowing his brothers to climb. Rapping knuckles against his helmet, he signalled for Kaedros to cover the ascent. His friend duly sat in the lee of a rock, the shadow eclipsing him and any reflection, bracing the augur-scoped carbine by trapping the sling with his forearm.

 

Atton nodded appreciatively, blink-clicking the icon for his grav-chute. It was a long drop, and he wasn’t going to put his new implants to the test – yet. When all systems reported ready, he pulled the trigger. A dull clunk recoiled in his hand, a thwip of the cable spooling from the cartridge in the launcher, and the tinniest, tiny clang of metal on metal inside the guts of the metalwork thirty metres above his armoured head.

 

The only way was forward, and Atton leapt out into nothing.

 

The line swung smoothly as his grav-chute flared, ready to break his fall if anything went wrong. The freedom was exhilarating, one of the reasons he volunteered for the Reivers. He could almost smell the mountain air of home, of the Revilers’ homeworld.

A crosswind threatened to pull him off course and send him spinning. He compensated by flexing an opposing grav-chute vane, but that wasn’t his only problem. Through the launcher, he detected trembling on the line, looking up to see two men in dirty coveralls. Arms outstretched, they frantically levered the jaws of bolt-cutters on the cable.

 

Winding the spool in, Atton flew up, closing on a broad, exposed flange joint securing two sections of the same tube. Getting his feet together, he bent his knees, anticipating the contact, engaging magboots to make the landing literally stick. Hollow, metallic thunder announced his arrival, and the reverberation through the structure made his visor flicker. Clad in coveralls augmented with metal plates, the men stared at him, with oddly vacant expressions, eyes wide from abuse of the senses and soul. Scraps of yellow cloth folded around their shoulders.

 

‘I have them, Scipéir,’ Kaedros voxed.

 

Zip-snap, zip-snap.

 

The two miscreants teetered, one spurting blood from the stump of a neck, another staring down with disbelief at a fist-sized hole through his chest. Both toppled to the deck, punched through by Kaedros’ stalker rounds. The bolt-cutters tumbled away into the ravine below. Atton leapt onto the gantry and examined the cable for damage. The durasteel shone from fresh notches, but was fine. He jerked the claw free before carefully re-holstering the contraption. Spinning on his heel, he followed the cables to the junction box, most of the controls meaningless. Spying a large red button, he pleaded with the power-endjinn to forgive him, and slapped it. The buzzing died, energy bleeding off. His team immediately scrambled up toward his eyrie. As an afterthought, he searched the corpses for anything of interest, but the menials were of little value in death. He regarded the poorly maintained pipes.

Or in life.

 

***

 

His allies were useless, and he despised them. He consoled himself with the titles amassed by his cover identity: Abraex Tyros, Hero of Eddos, Major-domo of the Templum Navis. The latter elicited a soft grunt as he received reports from the operatives he’d chosen and painstakingly trained. His main forces were drawn from criminals, mutants and Planetary Defence Force deserters, rabble common throughout the Imperium, all too ready to throw off the shackles. Unfortunately, the absence of wherewithal to use such liberty was equally widespread.

 

The looting and pillaging were adequate cover for him to go about his business and hold off the security forces. The Arbites Precinct put up significant resistance, instilling grudging admiration for their spine and skill. The Proctor was currently held in the cellars, awaiting interrogation. Unfortunately, he hadn’t got the time.

 

Tyros dismissed his cadre, turning his gaze to encompass his new quarters. The chambers belonged to the Matriarch of the Nobilité Aluxana. Her apartments were exquisite though – plush carpets of thick scarlet, comfortable hide leather couches, expensive clothes from the other side of the galaxy. All meaningless now, since her headless corpse was spitted spread-eagle on the gates, signalling the old order was gone.

 

Leaning back to relax his neck muscles, Tyros sniffed. The opulent perfumes warred with the crisp-sweet stench of burning flesh, propellant, and thick black smoke from burning buildings. Screams outside meant little, his Lyman’s Ear filtering them out as annoyance. He swiped his face with a dress that cost more than a battle-tank, removing the caked make-up from his face and head. Piles of open books lay at his feet, diagrams and transcriptions reinforcing the threads of rumours and hearsay collected over half a century of planning. Out there, beyond the white walls and buildings of Solara – the City of Sunlight – were the remains of a xenos device designed to prevent a catastrophe. Instead, it would damn the Imperial Fleet to the warp. The psychic trepanning conducted by his confederates on the opposite side of Magellan’s Crucible rendered the so-called Torchbearer fleet blind, as well as stupid.

His thoughts circled.

 

Family hololiths and picter albums proved his allies had mistaken the only survivor for a serving wench, and the error cost them dearly. He executed some for incompetence, hurling their broken bodies from the top floor. If even one of the Navigators survived, and what he read was fact and not whimsy, it might prove disastrous. Carefully placed patrols to anticipate fugitives controlled the bridges, and villages within a ten-kilometre radius. Tyros drummed a tattoo with his huge fingers on the arm of the couch, thinking about the next step. He couldn’t wait any longer; every moment of delay was one which the Imperium could use to respond, if they hadn’t already. He could feel the galaxy laugh at him. The device was buried near Eddos, the site of his famous victory. Collated Magos Xenobiologis manuscripts codified it as a Nihilum Vortex – a depressingly typical human description.

 

The Aeldari named it the Luascadán. The Pendulum.

 

Peering down at his bloodstained breastplate, he decided to slip into something more appropriate to visiting a dangerous, ancient relic.

 

***

 

Marwen shivered, drenched. Even dry, her thin robes were no protection from the elements or the cold, congealed mud gluing her to the riverbank. Eyes wide, she fought to get onto hands and knees, the basic urge in her guts sudden and terrible, as her back arched and the painful retching began. Steam welled up from her pitiful breakfast.

 

Gasping, eyes squeezed shut against the sour odour; she scrambled away from it, floundering in the mud, until she grasped a lava tree branch, thereby inelegantly extricating herself. Marwen wiped her mouth of grotesque slurry, looking back at the city. Her discomfort paled compared to the devastation, the shining white buildings which once gleamed in the sunlight now only rubble, seared black by the licking flames. Violence carried on the wind and the scent of something infinitely more stomach-churning than an emetic.

 

Marwen cursed the guilt of wanting to be near those fires just to dry out, diverting her selfishness by considering her predicament. Her clothes were filthy, torn, her headscarf gone, and her long black hair was disgustingly matted. Removing the sleeve Lucian bound her arm with, she examined the wound. The las-burn underneath looked nasty, but at least it had stopped hurting. Taking the sleeve, she wrapped her head, protecting her third eye. Animals called from the forest, and she moved to join them under the canopy.

The enemy would be looking for her.

 

***

 

Commanding a halt, Atton scanned the ramparts and trellises of the Templum Navis from the city-end of the bridge. Normally, his visor could cope with the kilometre of distance, but there was so much pollution he was forced to borrow Kaedros’ magnoculars.

It was as he had expected. Bloodstains, burning curtains blown from the windows, and crystalline glass a carpet of diamonds over all the building’s mosaic grounds. Bushes were torn up and used in a bonfire, and the yellow-robed rebels were parading captured goods, clothes and severed heads.

 

Kill urge and disgust saturated him equally.

 

There were at least a dozen of the riotous mortals, but the lack of insurrectionists gave him pause. Maybe there was nothing and no-one left to desecrate? Searching, he found a column leaving the city by the north gate. Duty and opportunity wedded. The Revilers would check the temple, see what remained of the noble Navis family, or at minimum, record their fate. At that moment, something huge burst out through the front door; a bareheaded giant in mismatched power armour, Astartes weapons maglocked about him. Hatred stirred in Atton’s breast when he saw the tattoo slithering down the unknown Marine’s nape, of a scaled, twisting serpent. Fanged drake heads hissed and growled around his ears, even as a cadre of carapace armoured men flanked him.

 

‘Hydra,’ Atton seethed into the vox.

 

The psychic attack on the convoy stumped everyone, thinking it was a cruel trick of the Cicatrix, but now Atton wasn’t so certain. If the Alpha Legion were here, they were likely the hangmen plying out a deadly noose. It wouldn’t be the first time. Focus. One thing at a time. Needing a way in, he spotted a manse with a tall, circular tower which was close enough to leap across to the manse. He gauged the windows and roof terrace, turning to look at his team. Helmet grinning, he mimed the raven taking flight, pointing to the tower.

***

 

Sliding down the ladder from the bridge using only his palms and insteps as brakes, Atton did his best to prevent sparks showering in a giant firework. He let gravity and body mechanics take over, dropping from the ladder with ten metres to go, rolling into the fall, dissipating the brunt of impact. Coming up to his knees, carbine in both hands, he scanned his sector, hearing his men drop one by one, taking up position to form a perimeter. They quickly haunted an industrial zone, keeping to the now toppled buildings, collecting dust as they stalked through the choking miasma of a dying city. Atton hurried the team as much as he dared, before the grey clad killers finally reached the tower gates. A brace of rebels stood over a prostrate man, bloody clubs in hands. The victim shuddered, offering pleas to the Emperor, and his tormentors. Atton could answer both prayers. He signalled to Solsza and Erbin, both men moving forward with suppressed heavy bolt pistols, tapping off shots.

Stalker rounds made an odd hissing noise as they cleaved through the smoke and dust, snatching big, red, gaping holes in the five targets, splattering thick gore up the wall. Atton’s hand shot forward, and the rest of the Charon dodged out of cover with inhuman speed, vanishing into the tower like fleeting ghosts, leaving the poor victim wide-eyed and stunned as to what had just transpired.

Solzsa led the ascent upstairs, he and Erbin working the angles of the flights as they passed one another, covering as they raced to secure the landings. Once there, the team rotated the duty, until they stood at the top of the tower. Without hesitation, Atton leapt out, coiling his limbs the way he would to vault a gap in the rocks, trusting no-one would be looking up.

 

The grav-chute cut in immediately, pulling him up short, saving him from Newton’s Grip. This time, he landed on shifting rubble, and skidded sideways from the pale cedar coloured ridge tiles. Magboots useless on ceramic, his knife was out in a blinding flash, reversed. He rammed it down, point chipping a gap, pinning him in place, the others following his example.

 

A moment’s work, he’d latched a grapnel line into the broken roof, anchoring himself. Stripping the cartridge from the launcher, he hooked it to his belt, before he braced over the side of the temple. Launching off it, he played the cable through his hands in a loose rappel. Swinging inside, his boots crashed through a ruined bookshelf, rendering it to splinters, but he landed squarely, ready for violence. Nothing illuminated his targeting reticles. ‘In position.’

 

One by one, the others reported the same.

 

Danger delayed, he surveyed his environment. Between the Occulobe and preysense filters, he pierced the gloom to reveal a librarium, the books torn to pieces. All that remained were spines, and scattered, burned leaves, the lives of the Scribes and serfs literally going up in flames. Large swathes of missing tomes made the place appear hollow. A strange tangle of remains caught his eye, and unable to discern them clearly, he ignited his weapon-mounted stablight. The brilliant beam played over a set of scorched slippers, fit for small, human feet.

 

‘Confirm three defiled Navis, my position,’ Solzsa said.

 

Like toppled dominoes, more reports tumbled in from Erbin, Halyan, Caio. Two dead...four dead...mutilated.

 

Sudden noise outside the door to the librarium drove Atton’s bolt carbine up, and a man in a yellow tabard hobbled through, accompanied by two others. They were instantly blinded by the stablight, and Atton fired a burst, reducing them to trembling offal. They had either seen him enter, or...were still searching for survivors. ‘Immediate action. Sweep and clear,’ he voxed. Caio would love that.

 

Racing to the door, Atton tore smoke grenades from his body webbing, hurling them down either corridor, before stepping out, sweeping the carbine left and right. Telemetry depicted where the rest of his team were, and they moved as fast as he, efficiently from room-to-room. His foot smashed doors in, then a shock grenade, followed by a sweep of the space with the carbine. He set the weapon stablight to strobe, for maximum disruption, erupting into the confined quarters at the same moment the bomb went off, in a thunderous, pummelling concussion. Heretics were blasted off their feet by the detonation, before the scene became a series of flash-picter images. Atton executed them with tight shots from the suppressed carbine, not a round wasted. He was grateful for the forward grip; the mobility of the weapon was exceptional.

 

Moving to another room, he repeated the sequence, and it sounded like a storm was battling to escape the temple. Great bolts of noise were quelled by the baffles in his auto-senses. Heretics reeled from his attack, hands pressed to cover popped eardrums, before Atton put them out of their misery with a wicked volley.

 

One of them, mutated into a hulking brute, crashed through the wall before he could ready his next bomb. It roared at him, grappling him from behind, in a slew of plaster and stonework. The mutant’s clutching claws snapped the strap on his bolt carbine, sending it spinning away, as the creature barrelled forward, trying to make him a permanent fixture within the opposite wall. The power of his foe was tremendous, muscle-corded arms wrapping his body, trapping his limbs, rivalling his Rubicon-wrought strength.

 

Anger spurred defiance. Atton pushed off with his feet, hurling both combatants back through the jagged gap the mutant had opened, and they tumbled together crunching furniture and ripping down hanging silks. The heretic-beast shifted grip, clamping its paw over his face, fingers fused into two long talons, hooking onto his skull mask and trying to wrench his helmet off.

The change gave him a chance, and he got his left arm free, seizing a broken table leg and thrusting it up behind him where his Lyman’s Ear discerned the enemy’s voice box. Clotted, guttural bellowing announced his success, and he twisted the stake, breaking it off, the pressure on his ribs vanishing as the brute grasped to remove the painful splinter. As they writhed, rolling across the floor, the mutant trapped Atton’s neck more by luck than skill, but even as the pressure warning indicator flared dangerous amber sigils, Atton’s hand closed on his heavy bolt pistol.

 

Four shots pumped into the brutal knot of twisted muscle behind him. Atton didn’t care where he was hitting, trusting that the Emperor’s ordained tools would do the work. The mutant howled even as its organs were pulverised, a strangled human note to the plaintive cry, before Atton punched the barrel under its blubbery chin, and blew its mismatched, horned head off in a shower of red-grey gruel.

 

The remains of a silver fork bounced across the floor.

 

‘Brother Sergeant?’ Solsza’s professional mien was haunted by concern.

 

‘I live. Enemy killed. Continue sweep.’ Atton groaned, stretching upright. He had to reply, otherwise Solsza would attend him, expecting a casualty. He cut the link, reloaded his pistol, and went to find his carbine. Losing it would be sinful. Once the temple was clear, and inhabited only by the dead, Strike Team Charon converged on his position, and they went down into the depths of the earth.

 

Whatever atrocities they encountered above ground, paled to the horrors below as they explored the cellars. The victorious slobs had gorged on the deep wine vaults, century old vintages smashed open and spilled down gullets inebriated on slaughter. Atton gave thanks his armour was sealed. Augurs reported the content of the air – bodily fluids and rancid fruit swam about him. Traitors lolled in a stupor. The Revilers cut throats; slit open bellies, adding blood stink and bile to the heady cocktail without. Makeshift cells replaced storerooms, and where grain once awaited, now only victims languished. Most were dead. Atton reached the last pen, seeing a tall man dressed in Arbites uniform, propped up against the wall. He signalled to Solsza to prepare for casualties.

 

‘Erbin. Door,’ Atton said.

 

The Judge lay in the corner, forehead bruised, crude bandages tied to his shoulder. Another figure lay beside him, unmoving. The sturdy oak door, buttressed and barred with thick iron, proved no obstacle to Erbin. Slamming fingers through the planks, he tore it off its hinges, his Astartes bulk suddenly massive in the cramped quarters. With an elegant sidestep, he allowed Atton and Solsza to cover the tiny cell with stablights, blinding the prisoners. The smaller figure, a young man, slowly put unbound hands into the air. A hint of defiance remained in eyes reddened by long hours of frayed nerves.

 

‘Identify yourselves,’ Atton said.

 

‘Lucian, lord.’ The lad licked chapped lips.

 

‘Proctor Janus Harcourt,’ the wiry Judge muttered. ‘You took your bloody time.’

 

With a bark of laughter, Atton released Solzsa to perform his sacred oaths, whilst the others secured the cellar – and, most importantly, an exit. The prisoners presented a chance for much needed information – and the advantages it brought.

 

‘He’s stable, Scipéir,’ Solsza said.

 

Atton clapped the Helix Adept on the shoulder, and went inside the cell. He carefully removed his helmet, to reassure them he was human – or related to them by biology, at least.

 

‘Have you come to liberate us, sir?’ Lucian asked.

 

‘No. We need the Navigators. A fleet lies stranded in the Crucible.’

 

‘Throne preserve us.’ Harcourt winced between rib-creaking breaths.

 

Atton nodded, but Lucian’s sudden interest at the mention of Navigators didn’t go past him. ‘Out with it, lad.’

 

Caught, Lucian stammered a reply. ‘I...pushed Lady Marwen out of the window.’

 

‘You did what?’ Harcourt growled.

 

‘She fell in the river, my oath! It was that, or let them take her!’ The lad blushed. ‘What was I supposed to do?’

 

Atton smiled thinly. ‘Where did she fall in?’

 

***

 

Marwen was miserable. She stank, covered in grey-green mud. The berries she’d seen the birds nibbling were foul and the wad of roots she chewed were bitter cud. She wandered down the path, sharp stones vexing her bare feet, her dainty slippers long gone to the boggy riverbank, but she’d kept the long stick which pulled her free. One did not discard the Emperor’s providence. It helped her across puddles, and was sturdy enough to give anyone making improper advances a black eye.

 

She mused on the fate of Lucian, swallowing the bitter mush, finding the admission he’d saved her life more palatable through his noble act. One thing was certain, her eyes had truly been opened – the traitor!  Well, Tyros wasn’t going to escape. She would avenge her kin; drop him into the deepest hole she could find. Maybe even give him a jolly good thrashing first! ‘What do you say, old stick?’ She forced a chuckle as she addressed the cudgel. Peering at it, she suspected she’d need a bigger one.

 

‘Who’s there?’ a man called.

 

She nearly opened her mouth. Straining her ears and powers as much as she dared, Marwen sensed the presence of three strangers, one female. Some instinct choked her hope that it was a party of travellers, and so she carefully left the road, using her stick to test the depth of the grass, and to scout for holes. Stepping on clumps of moss to reduce noise and ease her feet, she was suddenly aware she may have to go a long way for help.

 

‘Hello?’ Same voice.

 

They were closer. She tucked in under a bush, jamming her hand between her teeth as she upset a spider, which tumbled in front of her, legs flailing in complaint. Closing her eyes, she recited the Rite of Protection. Lord of Terra, by your light, blind the darkness.

 

‘I heard someone!’ the man called. His voice travelled away from her.

 

Lord of Terra, by your light–

 

‘You’re hearing things...’ the woman chided.

 

Heavy boots crumpled thin branches. She heard a lasgun powering up with a tortured whine. Flashes of the temple came back to her. Marwen almost gasped, she could smell him! They were right on top of her! ‘The convoy will wait.’

 

Lord of Terra!

 

‘Fine. You tell Captain Tyros why we were held up,’ a female voice warned.

 

A sullen grunt in reply, a trample of leaves and twigs.

 

When the presence diminished, she dared a peek. A man in scruffy yellow robes made his way back to his comrades. Ignorant to her predicament, the spider was busy threading a gossamer web. Hardly daring to breathe, Marwen waited, counting seconds in her head before crawling out of the bush in the opposite direction to the rebels. Then her brain caught up with her ears.

It was madness to follow them, wasn’t it? Marwen eyed her stick. She’d promised. Maybe she could do...something. What choice did she have?

***

 

Without any other options, Charon waded into the river. Blending into the tunnels would keep them out of sight. Caio went first, splashing through the rushing water, his weight and strength modest proof against the current, which still threatened to barrel him along. At the tip of the spear, the Incursor’s Oculus bolter and Omniscope were perfectly suited to the hunt.

 

The river provided the first clue by the direction of its flow. Secondly, it hadn’t rained since the Strike Team made planetfall, so the water level was constant. The highest tidemarks on the plascrete spillways were dry, proving the river wasn’t swollen. At this speed, and Lucian’s description of her size, Lady Marwen would have shot down here like a bullet. They kept a loose column behind Caio as he searched, watching for blood spatter, telltale scrapes, or dents from an attempt to cling on, or get out. An hour passed.

 

‘Nothing yet.’

 

The search continued, with one single, yet frustrating interruption. The aqueducts split, one dark maw becoming two. Atton almost grinned, just like the Hydra. ‘Ciao, Solsza with me. Kaedros, take Erbin and Helyan.’

 

Nods of compliance – no arguments. There was nothing to add, no alternative to discuss, the head of the boat had spoken.

The group split, Caio leading on, sloshing through the waist-high water, Atton behind him, and the Helix Adept in the rear, heads bowed just enough so they didn’t scrape the ceiling. It wasn’t comfortable, and Atton decided anyone in Tacticus would certainly be unable to manoeuvre. The older, shorter Firstborn had advantages. He grunted, amused. Maybe they weren’t out of the game yet.

 

‘I have something,’ Caio called, pausing at a bend in the tunnel. ‘Blood, high on the swell.’

 

Solsza made use of the room provided by the curve in the pipe to present his bioscanner. ‘Genome sample has stable mutation. Chromosomes female. Leukocyte decay, only a few hours. It is our Navigator.’

 

Atton nodded approval, signalled.

 

Onwards.

***

 

Tyros kicked the driver’s throne in frustration. In taking the captured Chimera, he’d chosen protection over speed. He needed to get to Eddos, now. He thought of the battle, engineered to gain favour at court. Months of planning pitched the purists of the Ecclesiarchy against the Adeptus Terra and their Navis Nobilité slaves. That was a nasty little proxy war idiot Imperials wanted to wage all over, and in the middling grey area where doubt and mistrust thrived, Tyros turned the mincing handle.

 

Who would have thought something like the Pendulum sat beneath those old standing stones? The operation was all that mattered, and the focus soothed his ire. His precious operatives had already dispersed into refugee columns, clogging roads and stemming the flow of reinforcements. Once safe, they would foster trouble in other cities, buying him even more time. Where one head reared; many would follow, fomenting planetary rebellion, his escape, and the doom of the fleet trapped in the Crucible. Activating the device was the only problem, but the convoy behind them was carrying looted archeotech from the Templum Navis to get around that. The yellow-clad army of idiots alongside the convoy, chorused the praises he’d given them, little knowing they marched to sacrifice.

***

 

Dark chants and revving engines became louder as Marwen approached the checkpoint. Men in thick carapace armour guided large six-wheeled vehicles carrying blood soaked flagellants along the road, the correct turns marked. They were all heading north, away from the city. Except for the ruins of Eddos, there were but a few towns beyond – she’d even visited some of them with her grandfather. The image of his statue shot into ruin haunted her. She knew, without question he was dead, his spirit vanished from the conscious world. Navigators have eyes to see, childe. She bit her lip, fought back tears, pain flaring in her hands. She felt blood on her tongue, mixing with the bitter aftertaste of the herbs she’d been eating to survive. Her knuckles whitened on her stave. Too late, she realised not only was she too close to the checkpoint, but she’d also sobbed aloud.

 

‘Spying on us, eh?’ A man wrapped in defaced, black carapace armour approached, reaching for her.

 

Anger at her incompetence warred with dread. I’m an idiot, her brain told him, but different words came out of her mouth, as snooty and highborn as possible. ‘Keep your hands off me! Captain Tyros bade me here!’

 

The sentry faltered, confusion warring with ingrained deference.

 

Marwen used what she had, took it out on him. ‘Fool! I have spent the last hours debasing myself, and avoiding loyalist lackeys! I must join the Master!’

 

The guard, pummelled by her cold outrage saw what he wanted to, a frayed slip of a girl, possibly insane, with a badly bandaged wound, carrying a stick to keep her upright. Wanting to rid himself of her, he waved down one of the vehicles and hoisted her up. The rank smell of her robed companions was more than bodily scent. Bad blood.

 

As she squeezed in on the bench, their animated faces were beginning to change to match the darkness they harboured within, reminding her of a horned mutant, and the gleeful murder he portended. She shuddered, alone with the guilt at feeling warm for the first time she could remember. They chattered about Eddos, and the weapon to end the world. The truck rolled on, going north.

 

***

 

Atton pulled a silk slipper from a sucking hole in the mud. A broken branch, gouges in the soft bank and a small-span handprint left signs a blind man could read. Spots of the same blood confirmed it; only the hairs found with it told them it was a head wound.

Solsza spoke up. ‘She may be concussed, or have damaged her eye.’

 

Caio nodded, bending himself to tracking on the run, picking up the crushed vegetation, and footprints of civilian issued boots. The invisible things provided answers. Riverbed clay on branches she’d scraped, and tiny blots of orange lava tree sap. They discovered the oil spills and multiple heavy tyre tracks mutilating the dirt road.

 

‘Fuel particulates thicken to the north, a convoy thirty-seven kilometres hence,’ Caio said, Omniscope slowly traversing the area.

 

‘We stretch our legs,’ Atton decided.

 

Keeping close to the road, he set off at a blistering run, relying on Caio to provide updates. Smashing through bushes and hedgerows using raw power, his mind turned to Kaedros, hoping he would surface, or at least die well. He kept the compass marker Caio set in the centre of his display as he ran, legs pumping, churning up the countryside, breaking down secondary forest. After an hour, the pip grew larger, Astartes speed defying the head start of the enemy, the quarry being run to ground at last.

 

Another twenty minutes, and the three Revilers had caught up with the convoy of old troop trucks, battling down the wide, rugged track in single file. Atton kept them in sight through breaks in the trees, four-hundred metres to his left, spurring past them until he came to a bend in the road. He could hear them rumbling toward him. His limbs were nice and loose now, and his blade keen. ‘Immediate action. Vehicle ambush.’

 

The three Marines wheeled to head off the convoy, taking up staggered positions with overlapping fields of fire. Atton’s breathing slowed to a gentle crawl as his geneforged body miraculously recovered. He tucked in behind a low tree bole, signalling that he was ready. Anticipation fired his kill-urge, the enemy coming closer...closer...now.

 

With perfect timing the bolt carbines hissed, spitting muted rounds at the three vehicles, as they made the ponderous turn. The first and last vehicle had their engine blocks smashed into scrap, before all the drivers were blown into chum. Smoke grenades followed, but Caio had marked all of the foemen with retinal tags. Preysense did the rest. Atton maglocked his carbine, drew pistol and blade, and loosed himself to the slaughter. With the vehicles stopped, the human cargo’s first enemy was confusion, but as they stood up with rifles and clubs, stalker bolts flicked at them, punching them off their feet, catapulting them into the road. Shouts began to organise the rabble, but Atton and his two brothers were on top of them; a Reiver, an Infiltrator and an Incursor joining the melee. He grinned, it sounded like one of Kaedros’ jokes. He began to laugh, amplified through external vox into a discordant keening, it lashed the rebels, and he scythed the yellow-clad scum down where they stood, transfixed by terror. He spotted a carapace-armoured goon, recognised him as one of the Hydra’s bodyguard.

 

The enemy brought up his shotgun, pulling the trigger. When Atton charged, the scattergun rounds pelted him with metal hail, some rattling his skull faceplate. Leaping before the enemy could pump the shotgun again, he used his bulk as a weapon, landing on the human, driving him to the ground and pinning him with his knee. Atton brought the bolt pistol down with blurring speed, slamming onto the hand holding the shotgun. A crack of bones rendered the limb useless, the weapon spinning away, bent in half. His prey squirmed in sudden agony, until the massive maw of the handgun screwed painfully into his left eye socket. He took a glance over his shoulder, at the heaps of dead traitors. Never enough.

 

‘Scipéir!’ Solzsa appeared, clutching a terrified girl by the shoulders. He smoothly stripped her head to reveal her third eye; lids parted a fraction, fluttering in shock and fear.

 

‘Have you joined this rabble, lady?’ Atton asked.

 

She gawped at the sudden carnage and rapid turn of events. She didn’t fight Solsza’s grip, nor even flinch at the harsh vox distortion. ‘Space Marines? To save us all?’

 

‘Just you.’

 

‘No. I can’t leave,’ she replied, hotly. ‘We must go North, to Eddos, and prevent the ritual!’

 

The man trapped beneath Atton’s knee laughed, the chuckle wet from bruised organs, cracked ribs. He spat a wad of bloody phlegm onto Atton’s chest. ‘You’re too late corpse-lackeys. Your fleet will die.’

 

Atton looked down at him, sneered behind the grim visage. Pulled the trigger.

 

The Revilers regrouped, commandeering the only working truck. The cabin was big enough to accommodate Atton behind the wheel, albeit he was forced to rip out most of the seat. Heading north, they passed several checkpoints, all abandoned. He frowned. Tyros’ force was regrouping to complete his objective. Marwen sat in the cabin beside him, in the least bloodstained coat they could find. She pulled it close across her shoulders and head, keeping the chill off. Her free hand gripped a gnarled wooden stave, the sap hardening into amber. ‘Tell me everything,’ he said, eyes on the road.

 

‘What will we do when we get there?’ Marwen asked when she finished. She explained what she'd heard, understood of the ritual.

 

‘The Hydra owes me a head.’

 

‘Won’t another one grow?’

 

‘One thing at a time, lady.’ One thing at a time.

 

He drove on.

 

***

 

They slithered into position on a bluff overlooking the ruins below. Behind him, Atton could hear the gurgling as Caio and Solsza finished cutting the throats of the sentries. He still had Kaedros’ magnoculars, and lent them to Marwen. She struggled with the heavy optics, until he steadied them for her.

 

‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

 

Atton said nothing, returning to his observations. There were foxholes and trenches, albeit not exceptionally well placed. Great gaps existed in the defences. Large, organic shapes sprouted from the ground, their strange off-white colour weathered by time and the elements. Forming a set of concentric rings, some were toppled. Fresh scrapes in the material showed frantic excavations.

Then he understood. The pits and fire points were archaeological in nature.

 

‘Sergeant...’ Marwen hissed. ‘I can see it!’

 

Staring, he noticed her third eye was open fully, but she looked up into the night. Was there a glow? Yes, his Occulobe caught it, a faint, dirty light hidden by the fires of the encamped force, and the starlight above. It fell towards the rings in a strange twisting vortex. He thought of eddies and whirlpools in the underground tunnels. His eyes fell on an armoured giant striding through the mud and aggregate of a wide pit cleared around the device. The Alpha Legion operative approached a casket-like trapezoid, engraved with ancient runes. His hand danced in the air above the flat, perfectly smooth surface of the stone, and blinding bright symbols lifted into the air, swirling around him. Atton recognised some of the runes, matching the casket and marking on the columns. Tyros continued to manipulate the Aeldari interface, provoking half of the wraithbone teeth sitting in their earthy gums to rattle free of their soil prison, stretching towards the stars, almost in supplication. The circle shimmered into a silver mirror, the planar sitting at a forty-five degree angle. The falling glow slowed, halted.

 

Streams cut the evening, as bright lights blossomed from tall staves planted into the dig site. Atton could see the overall shape now, the elevation of the tall, glass-topped staves describing a pentagrammic warding pattern. Time was short as ethereal winds stirred, buffeting the trees, and whipping across the dig site. ‘Caio, Solzsa, covering fire, I will take Lady Marwen to the control altar.’

 

‘Aye, Scipiér,’ the Helix Adept confirmed.

 

‘I can’t read Aeldari!’ she protested.

 

He ignored her.

 

‘Move!’ Atton barked, snatching Marwen into the crook of his arm, pistol in hand. As he barrelled down the bluff, he was confronted by two rebels. They hesitated, dying in a snapshot of bolts. A human shouted warning from his left as he ran for the altar, two-hundred metres away. Flares erupted, sailing high above, triggering a storm of bullets and lasbolts around him, most of which Atton evaded, only the odd shot stung his armour, rang his plate. In reply, those closest to his path or anyone who tried to block him, were reduced to a red ruin from accurate bolt carbine fire from Caio and Solsza.

 

The gun pits and trenches suddenly ripped upwards in torrents of flame, painting the after-images of flying, dismembered bodies onto Atton’s retina, quickly blinked away. It was no mistake, had to be part of the ritual. Atton shielded Marwen from the debris and projectiles, rolling his shoulders into the fire, lethal things spanking and clanging off his Phobos suit.

 

‘The warp bleeds through! The pendulum is swinging!’ Marwen gasped.

 

Explosive rounds slashed across them, finding Atton’s arm, blowing the plating off his left shoulder. Twisted around from the force, he lost his footing. Marwen screamed as the bolts detonated, searing them both with mass reactive shrapnel. Atton clutched the frail human, tumbling down into the spoil heaps of excavated sod, colliding with the Aeldari altar. The Navigator flew out of his arms, landing in a sprawling heap.

 

‘One of Cawl’s mongrels! Heat the Crucible, and the scum rises!’ He laughed.

 

The ground shook as something beyond began to yawn open. Pistol and carbine gone, but hatred demanding action, Atton primed and threw a shock grenade. The bomb exploded on impact, tearing the bolter from Tyros’ grasp, but the Chaos Marine didn’t hesitate, unlimbering his chainsword and revving it to screeching life.

 

Drawing his own blade, Atton advanced, rushing to close the gap. He came in hard left, slashing low, twisting it to try and stab up through the groin. Tyros deftly riposted, deflecting the blade before lunging in. The Reviler exploited the whirring saw’s encased spine, slapping it away with his right palm. They backed off, circling, measuring each other as the world shuddered around them.

Out of the corner of his eye, Atton spotted Marwen pull herself up to the altar. A throaty roar announced another attack, Tyros using the distraction. Atton parried, but the saw teeth hooked his straight sword, tearing it from his grip in a shower of sparks. Abandoning the weapon, he stepped inside Tyros’ reach, elbowing the traitor under his armpit as he recovered. Using his heavier bulk, the Alpha Legionnaire barged the Reviler away, following up with a vicious backswing. Atton caught Tyros at the wrist, the two men fighting for the chainsword, trading vicious, resounding blows.

 

Marwen wailed over the cacophony of wind and battle. ‘I’m just a novice! I don’t know what –’

 

‘Aluxan is just a ship!’ Atton boomed. ‘Navigator! Steer this vessel!’

 

‘Aye, Scipiér!’ Looking as though she was about to collapse, Marwen stared into the bulging, swirling void, xenos runes spinning about her like comets.

 

The circles of stone illuminated, matching each rune in sequence. Everything stopped. Total silence reigned for a heartbeat as the Reviler and Alpha Legionnaire struggled. The glass staves burst in concert, and suddenly, an invisible current battered them both to the ground, before sucking away, the dreadful pull of waves sucking at the shore, a whirlpool threatening to drag Atton into the depths, as the world began to roll, align. The pendulum was swinging back.

 

He weathered it, digging fingers and toes into the earth. Robed bodies and dismembered limbs bounced and flew past, trees sundered; spilling branches and soil. Small stones ricocheted from his armour with the sharp smack of hard rounds. He looked back, worried for Marwen, but the floating runes were a barrier, an anchor in the tide. The disturbing hollow crack of ceramite armour fracturing reached his ears as Caio shot over his head, flung brutally hard into one of the upright wraithbone pillars, spine smashed. He vanished. Searching for the Chaos Space Marine, Atton found him clinging stubbornly to a tall wraithbone column.

Driving his hands into the soft earth, Atton used them as flat, blade-like shovels to climb along the ground. He drew level with Tyros, likewise being pelted, and he leapt across, clinging to the enemy, tearing at the traitor’s grasp.

 

‘We die together, Corax spawn!’ Tyros seethed, spitting a wad of corrosive phlegm at his tormentor. It sluiced away in the hellish gale.

 

‘You first, you black-hearted bastard!’ Atton roared. His skull helm slammed forward with cannonball force, pasting the Legionnaire’s face into scarlet ruin. The traitor fell, laughing bitterly through ruined lips, vanishing into the impossible hole in the world. A moment later, Atton’s own hasty grip broke in hail of wraithbone marrow shards. In defiance of Tyros’ fate, his hand slapped onto his grapnel, got it on target – and loosed.

 

The hook looped the tall xenos-bone rib, arresting his flight with a jerk, but the claw worried at the damaged cable, and with a creak of straining wire, completed what rebel bolt-cutters started on the bridge. With a whip crack, the line recoiled, flailing him, and he hurtled towards the silvery vortex.

 

Despite armour, electric-fire burned through his body, prior to a resounding thunderclap, which shook him almost senseless. He got a vertiginous sensation, of falling – just like from a mountain – before he battered down onto hard earth. When the ringing stopped, he realised he was on his back. His armour was dead.

 

Gasping with effort, he tore his broken helmet off. Above, the wound scar of the Cicatrix briefly retreated across the veil of space, revealing the silver needles and fat ships of the Torchbearer fleet, before closing behind them. They had escaped Magellan’s Crucible.

Marwen slumped across the lifeless altar, her jet black hair run through with shocking white streaks. She lifted her lucky stave weakly, and he nodded. Long engine trails burned into dark skies as Revilers Chapter Thunderhawk gunships tumbled through the night, a vulture victory parade falling towards the planet’s carcass to collect the Navigator, and begin the pacification of Aluxan.

 

One thing at a time, Rayvx. One thing at a time.

 

Atton began to laugh, even though it hurt like hell.

 

***

 

END.

[Trokair]

Did you make some changes?

 

There were parts I remember and others felt new. Either way it was nice to read it in one go, and I am still imagining the entire planet braking orbit, off to parts unknown.  

[Mazer Rackham]

Your mind is not deceived! Yes, it went through another raft of revision.

 

In truth, when I started writing this, there was more to it than I bargained. There is probably enough raw material here for a whole novel. I had to edit down from 13k.

 

DO YOU HEAR ME GW?!

 

 

SPOILERS:

Spoiler

No, they were not entertained. Bah!