The Death of Integrity Read online

  The force of it was astonishing. The flames blasted into their confined space, jolting the heavily armoured Space Marines together. The hull tore further under the pressure of the firestorm, and Gallio was able to rip a doorway into it large enough to force himself through. He grasped Clastrin, and dragged him after him. The others righted themselves and followed, and so they made their escape from the alien ship and were into the derelict Imperial vessel.

  They ran, Voldo at their head.

  The Terminators jogged as fast as they were able, their movement helped by the active gravity in the ship. The corridor they followed passed deep into the vessel. Their radiation counters rattled, and the air about them became furnace-hot, baked dry by the roiling energies of the reactor. The corridor was whole, but the outer hulk was much fissured, entirely stripped of plating in places and reduced to bracing spars. The genestealers from the roost could therefore ambush them at any turn.

  ‘Not far now!’ shouted Eskerio. From behind came the racket of storm bolter fire as Gallio lay down covering fire, Astomar beside him ready to fill the corridor with promethium.

  Contacts pinged all over the map, coming down from outside and following corridors parallel to their own. Voldo stopped at an intersection and blasted three gene-stealers coming from the left to chunks. ‘Quickly! More are on their way.’

  ‘We are making for the outer lock,’ said Eskerio. ‘There should be a door ahead, then a short corridor, then access to the port.’

  ‘Let us pray to the Emperor that it functions,’ said Voldo.

  Astomar’s flamer roared. Genestealers screamed. A dozen motion positives backed away.

  ‘Thank the Lord of Man, there it is!’ said Voldo. ‘The door.’

  The doorway to the airlock access corridor was set into a wall in a hexagonal antechamber. Two more doors opened out from the either side. He ran to it, and stopped dead.

  ‘What is it brother?’ Alanius called. He was supporting Genthis, half-dragging him. Genthis’s suit’s heatsinks were being overwhelmed by the fierce heat of the reactor, his time was running out.

  ‘There is no control panel!’

  ‘Let me see,’ said Clastrin. He came forward. More bolter fire came from the rear. Three shots, an inhuman scream.

  Clastrin knelt by the door. The panel had been ripped free. Wires hung from it, their colours lost under the dirt of ages. He plunged a metal tendril from his harness into the mess. ‘There is power,’ he said, ‘but I cannot access the command circuits.’ His mechadendrite withdrew.

  ‘What of direct interface, can you not link with the door directly?’ said Nuministon.

  ‘No. It is all gone.’

  ‘Then cut it through!’ growled Alanius.

  ‘This is a major blast door of prime patterning,’ said Clastrin. ‘Time is needed.’

  Red dots crowded in from all sides on the map.

  ‘Time is a luxury we do not have,’ said Voldo. ‘And such a choice, Brother Gallio’s storm bolter there, or his chainfist here.’

  Clastrin cast about, rapidly scanning the walls. Conduits and circuitry showed up in his artificer armour’s displays. He caught sight of a hatchway.

  ‘There is another way,’ he said. He stood and pointed. ‘A crawlway. I can go through and attempt to remotely activate this door from the airlock’s inner portal.’

  ‘It is too small,’ said Azmael.

  ‘Not if I go without armour,’ said Clastrin in his twin voices. ‘Then I will fit.

  ‘Are you insane?’ said Alanius. ‘Genestealers descend upon us from every quarter.’

  ‘Then we will die whether I go or not,’ said Clastrin.

  ‘What of the radiation?’

  ‘I shall recite the fifteenth litany minoris, and bring my mucranoid into action. The coating it will give my skin will provide some protection.’

  ‘Yes, not to try, that is the insanity,’ said Voldo.

  Clastrin bowed his head. He reached for the first release clasp, and began the liturgy of disrobement.

  Genthis pushed himself upright from Alanius. ‘I will go with him,’ he said. ‘I am no use within my armour. Without it, I can act as an escort.’

  Voldo looked from Clastrin to Alanius. The latter hesitated, then stood back. ‘Agreed brother, you are a credit to our order.’

  Clastrin stepped forward, using his servo-harness to help Genthis from his crippled armour.

  Voldo acted, plotting positions for the remaining Terminators; Gallio and Astomar to hold the rear against the bulk of the genestealers, Alanius beside them to aid them if they broke through. Voldo took the left door leading from the chamber, Eskerio he directed to the right door.

  Eskerio hefted his storm bolter. His ammunition was almost spent. ‘Give me his claws,’ he said suddenly. ‘Lend me your weapons, Brother Genthis.’

  Clastrin paused his hands, his servo-harness continued undoing retaining bolts and clasps on Genthis’s armour.

  ‘I have but twenty bolts remaining. Better I give my magazines to our brother-sergeant and let him fire longer, while I go better equipped for close melee.’

  ‘I did not think such fighting to be your preference, Novamarine,’ said Genthis with humour.

  ‘All things have their time and place, cousin Blood Drinker,’ said Eskerio.

  ‘Then you may gladly take them.’

  The gauntlets slipped from his wrists.

  ‘Hurry then!’ said Voldo. A wave of contacts were converging on them, far more than before. ‘The roost has awakened. We must fight now for our lives as well as the glory of the Emperor.’

  Eskerio took the lightning claws from the Blood Drinker. Voldo and Nuministon helped Genthis further, releasing the bolts that attached his breastplate to his cowling. With a hiss of air, his helmet came away, revealing his savagely beautiful face.

  ‘It is hot brothers! As hot as home!’ he shouted and smiled. With a twist, he depressed his belt clasp, and the two-part breastplate unclicked. Nuministon pulled it away, sealant cracking where it had covered over the joins between plates. The tech-priest, with Voldo’s help, next removed the cowl and the reactor within, and set to work on Genthis. Far more quickly than the Novamarine’s sergeant could have hoped, Nuministon had disassembled the armour and Genthis stepped free. What would have taken the forge serfs twenty minutes to achieve, the magos had done in a fraction of the time. Voldo hoped the armour was not offended. The components of Genthis’s battle-plate lay scattered upon the floor.

  Clastrin had replaced Eskerio’s storm bolter and power fist with the crimson lightning claws of Genthis. Despite the difference in marks between the two Space Marines’ armours, Clastrin connected the blades to the suit’s power source easily.

  Eskerio held the claws up in front of his helmet and activated them. ‘My thanks for your arms.’

  ‘Use them well,’ said Genthis. ‘Do not disappoint my armour’s machine-spirit.’

  Shouts came from the rear. Genestealers were prowling the perimeter. Azmael and Voldo moved away, leaving the naked Genthis and Nuministon to help the Forgemaster from his armour. Clastrin deactivated and detached what he could with direct commands via his spine ports, while the magos and Blood Drinker pulled his servo-harness away. They unclipped his backpack, helped him off with his gauntlets, and then he was bare headed, ice-blue eyes staring out from a face tattooed with holy blueprints and the cog of Mars under the Novamarine’s skull and starburst.

  ‘We are ready,’ he said as his breastplate came free.

  ‘Then go, and may the Lord of Mankind guide you,’ said Voldo, his voice hard and loud through his suit vox-grille. The sergeant lifted his weapon and fired. Genestealers were chancing the other corridor.

  Chapter 10

  The Power of the Machine-God

  The heat was intense, fifty-five degrees at least, but the touch of it reduced to a tolerable level as Clastrin’s modified sweat glands secreted an oily perspiration. The smell of the mucranoid’s secretions was sharp and somewhat u
npleasant. He wiped it away from his mouth, nose and eyes or it would seal them shut. Hibernation was not his aim today.

  Clastrin’s forte was machinery, but he knew a little of how his biological gifts functioned, for what was biotechnology but another manifestation of the glorious machine? He knew how the long-chain proteins in the mucous from the Weaver aligned themselves with one another, hardening to cover his body in a waxy coating. He flexed his hand, watching as the second skin wrinkled. Another benefit of the Emperor-Omnissiah, and the wisdom of ancient days. He had been Master of the Forge of the Novamarines for seventy years, but his wonder at the might of the Machine-God never diminished.

  ‘Blessed are the works of technology, blessed are the ways of the Omnissiah,’ he said.

  Nuministon, hurrying to unclip the remainder of the Forgemaster’s armour, did not respond.

  With his helmet off, Clastrin was exposed to the full noise of the ship. The unshielded reactor filled the space with a persistent roar, distant though it was. The derelict ship vibrated with it. All vessels hummed to the tune of their power sources, but this was a sick song. Clastrin possessed a deep affinity for machines, he could sense what ailed them often without removing their casings. He was surprised the reactor worked still.

  Gunfire rattled sporadically. No longer able to access the extended senses of his helmet, Clastrin’s view of the combat was restricted to what his own eyes and ears could tell him. The corridors leading out of this small chamber were obscured by the massive bulk of the Terminator armour. He suspected that the genestealers held back, wary of the Space Marines’ firepower. They were savage, these xenos, but possessed of a cunning akin to true intelligence.

  Nuministon stepped back, holding the Forgemaster’s backplate. The neural interface spike slid free of the port in Clastrin’s black carapace, and his sense of his war harness departed him entirely. Clastrin still wore parts of his power armour, but he was to all intents already naked.

  Nuministon placed the plate on the floor, and helped Clastrin free himself of the rest of his plate.

  Astomar’s flamer whooshed. Firelight played around the chamber.

  ‘I am ready,’ said Clastrin. His own voice sounded odd outside of his armour. The mucous had hardened fully, providing some protection from both heat and vacuum. Useful under the current circumstances.

  ‘Go with the Omnissiah,’ said Nuministon. ‘I am not aware of the pattern for these portals, but such a simple thing as a door will pose no trouble to an initiate to the mysteries of Mars.’

  ‘Cousin Genthis! We go!’ Clastrin had to shout to be heard.

  The Blood Drinker nodded. His body was streaked with dried secretions, but he had no protective cover, and his own skin looked unnaturally dry. Genthis caught Clastrin looking at him, and shook his head.

  A loss of a para-organ, then, thought Clastrin. Some Chapters did not possess all of the Emperor’s gifts. ‘There is no atmosphere in the corridor beyond, cousin.’

  ‘Then I will trust you to work hard to free us,’ said the Blood Drinker. ‘I shall go first, Lord Forgemaster.’ He was thinner than the Novamarine, athletically proportioned, as lithe and hard-muscled as a statue. His face too, was beautiful, its angelic perfection at odds with the feral way in which Genthis bared his teeth as he spoke. ‘You are of greater worth here.’ He held a knife in his hand.

  ‘Take this,’ said Nuministon, handing over an ornate bolt pistol. ‘I am no warrior.’

  Genthis nodded in thanks. Clastrin picked up his own bolt pistol from the floor.

  ‘We must go now,’ said the Forgemaster. The sounds of gunfire were intensifying. He extended his two mechandrites from the housing below his shoulder blades, a gift of a different kind from the temples of the Machine-God. He reached up to the panel covering the crawlway and deftly unscrewed it with the dendrite tips, pulling the plate away. He turned to Genthis and indicated that he would boost the Blood Drinker into the space. Genthis was up and into the hatch easily.

  Clastrin took one last look at his brothers, their bone-and-blue armour standing shoulder to shoulder with the red of the Blood Drinkers, then turned, jumped up, grabbed the lip of the hatch and pulled himself in.

  He was in the machine, surrounded by cabling. He imagined himself a component in the grand scheme of the Omnissiah, a piece of the greater puzzle of the universe’s mechanism. His mucranoid film shielded him from snags and the sharp edges in the crawlspace. Genthis, not so protected, was already cut and scraped in a dozen places, leaving a trail of blood which dried on contact with the metal. It was punishingly hot in the crawlspace, the air stale and rank, and the other adept’s skin was raw with blisters.

  ‘How far?’ said the Blood Drinker. Wildness had crept back into his voice. He was enjoying this.

  ‘Not far, thirty metres. We pass alongside an access corridor to an outer airlock. There is a panel toward the end. From there I will be able to remotely open the door and let our brothers in.’

  Genthis made a noise of affirmation. ‘Good, good. I long to rejoin them. It is not our way to retreat from a fight.’ He moved forward some way as he spoke, then said, ‘Wait! We come to a crossways.’

  Clastrin brought up a copy of the map in his intelligence core. The cranial implant was another gift of Mars, another thing that set him aside from his battle-brothers. A vertical shaft bisected theirs. On the far side the way grew wider, two broad ways filled with power conduits leading at right angles away up and down into the skin of the ship.

  ‘Go on,’ said Clastrin.

  ‘Shh!’ said Genthis. ‘I hear something.’

  Clastrin waited as the Blood Drinker inched forward to peer down the shaft, then up. He turned back to look at the Novamarines Forgemaster.

  ‘Movement. The enemy descends upon us.’ He scrambled forward, swinging his legs under him and dropping into the vertical shaft. He looked upward. ‘Hurry Lord Forgemaster, you must be quick! Crawl over the shaft and be on your way. I will hold them here.’

  Clastrin wriggled forward. The rattle of claws moving over metal came from above him, but he did not look up. He pushed past Genthis’s head, and went on into the further crawlspace. Genthis crawled in backward after him. Clastrin was four metres in when Genthis began shooting.

  Praying to the Machine-God and the Emperor for the Blood Drinker’s soul, he pushed on. The sounds of fighting intensified behind him, alien screeches echoing metallically in the confined space, the bark of the bolt pistol. The reek of genestealer blood thickened the air.

  Clastrin turned his broad shoulders awkwardly; these service conduits were designed for drones and unchanged men, not the giants of the Space Marine Chapters. His arms pinned to his chest, he worked with difficulty to free the access panel. Behind him, Genthis shouted the battle-cries of his Chapter. The noise of his weapon was overwhelmingly loud in the confined space. Shrieks and the thump of falling flesh signalled the demise of genestealers as they plummeted down the shaft, bouncing from its sides as they fell.

  Even through the noise, Clastrin heard the click as Genthis’s boltgun ran dry, the clatter as Genthis discarded it. The Blood Drinker began to chant, a Blood Drinker’s battle hymn Clastrin did not know. The Blood Drinker was preparing himself for his death.

  The panel popped out of its housing. Air blew from the crawlway into the vacuum of the airlock access corridor.

  Clastrin drew in a deep breath, filling the lungs he was born with and the third gifted him by the Chapter. With a twist, he wormed through the hatch, and dropped into the way.

  Brother Genthis chanted. ‘Lo! I see the wings of Sanguinius! They shield me from harm! They bear me up from battle!’ The genestealer attacking him crouched in the mouth of the crawlway, its body contorted in a manner impossible for a man. Scrabbling talons raked at Genthis, drawing lines of blood across his scalp. The Space Marine grabbed one of the upper claws in his left hand, yanking it hard over to the side of the crawlspace. The genestealer hissed and struggled, its other arms tangled behind its
pinned arm. Its tubular tongue flicked over its black teeth. Yellow eyes blazed. Genthis felt the power of them, felt them trying to subvert his will, but he was a brother of the Blood Drinkers and the wiles of xenos held no power over him. ‘Blood is life, the life is blood, through life we fulfil our duty, through blood we continue life!’ His voice became increasingly sonorous. ‘Take my blood, take my life, you will never turn me from my duty, though my blood lie thickening in the dust, and my life run out and be done!’

  He drove his combat knife deep into the glaring eye of the genestealer, twisted it until it ground on bone. The genestealer convulsed so hard it threw off Genthis’s hand. Its limbs rattled a drum roll of death on the metal.

  Wind sprang up, blowing down the corridor to where Clastrin had gone, and Genthis was glad that the Forgemaster of the Novamarines had made it into the airlock access corridor. He sang louder, against the howl of decompression. Leaving the dead genestealer blocking the crawlway, he backed further down. A pair of large purple hands grabbed at the corpse and pulled it away. The dead gene-

  stealer fell from sight as it dropped into the shaft. Three more alien faces regarded him from the end. Without pause, the next of the monsters crept into the narrow space. Legs bent up under it, it moved rapidly. Genthis laughed.

  ‘Come, come and fight me alien filth! Brother Genthis has not had his fill yet!’

  His body was electric with excitement, the joy of battle coursed through him, lifting his spirit and filling him with surety of purpose. At the back of his soul, he felt the dull ache of need, for his last Rite of Holos had been a week ago, and the Thirst had resumed its torments. He did not care. ‘Here is battle! In battle is true service! Service begets joy! Joy begets death!’ he shouted. Genthis felt this joy deeply. To him and his kind, there was no greater purpose in all the galaxy than to fight in the name of the Emperor.

  The genestealer scuttled at him, upper claws outstretched. Genthis batted one aside, and stabbed his knife point deep into the chitin of another. The genestealer made a strange, squawking protest and tore its arm back. Genthis’s knife was wrenched from his hand.