Pharos Read online

  ‘Bring up the auspex. Get me a full sweep of this room.’

  Another Ultramarine came in through the door, the forearm of his armour bulky with an integrated auspex unit. So this was their Gallivar. He would be no match for his own vox-master, Skraivok was sure. The auspex warrior’s brothers sheltered him behind their shields as he scanned the room.

  The station rumbled – the explosives Skraivok’s warriors had set in the far docking portal had been activated. Chatter from the XIII told of their increasing alarm. Skraivok was delighted. It was all he could do not to burst out laughing. He was reminded of his time back on Nostramo, lurking in the dark waiting for his victims. He had grown bored of hunting the poor and begun to prey on other nobles’ sons and daughters. He had never thought to experience that pleasure of hunting one’s own kind again.

  ‘What was that?’ one of the XIII said.

  ‘Hold firm. If they’re anywhere, they’re in here.’

  ‘I’m getting no readings, sergeant. Nothing but the energy patterns of the station.’ The babble of an active scan warbled in Skraivok’s vox-pickup. ‘Wait, I have a tightbeam link,’ said the auspex operator. ‘The main systems have been compromised. We have an intruder. Datalink origin is within this room.’

  Their leader cursed with a fluency that surprised Skraivok. Not so pure after all, he thought, but then, nobody is.

  ‘They could be staring right at us.’

  ‘We are,’ said Skraivok on broadcast vox. He was gratified to see the Ultramarines react in alarm.

  The station erupted into a blaze of activity. Unit icons blinked into life in Skraivok’s helmet as his men revealed themselves. They burst out from tangles of wire, boltguns blazing. The first of the breaching squad went down, spun around by the force of an impact to his neck. His blood misted the vacuum, drifting as a red cloud of ice globules. He remained standing, maglocked to the floor. The others weren’t so easily caught. The Ultramarines reacted quickly, forming up around their specialist with shields up, and returned fire with brutal efficiency.

  Vox-channels burst into frantic life as both sides dropped all attempts at secrecy. Orders and status reports flew between squads. Skraivok received notifications from his warriors as they attacked the Ultramarines from both sides of the circular corridor outside. Muzzle flash and propellant burn lit up the darkness. A plasma beam from Skraivok’s squad blazed through one shield, but the warrior behind was unharmed. There were four Night Lords on the lowest level; two of them were dropped in short order. The remaining pair retreated behind the communications column, trading inaccurate bursts with the Ultramarines in the doorway.

  ‘Throne! Forty-six hostile contacts confirmed and rising!’ shouted one of the Ultramarines.

  ‘Raise the Probity!’

  ‘Our vox is being jammed!’

  ‘Get out! Get out! Get out!’ yelled their sergeant.

  Boltgun fire from the catwalks clanged off the tall breaching shields, the bolts exploding against the metal or embedding themselves in the soft guts of the station, tearing the mechanisms to shreds. The light from a dozen miniature explosions strobed the room. Shrapnel peppered pipes. Clouds of gas roared from pressurised storage, filling the room with a fog of frozen air.

  Another Night Lord was hit square in the chest. The bolt penetrated deep with him, blowing out his lungs. He fell back with a bubbling cry, bouncing around the central shaft in the microgravity. Skraivok lost some of his good humour. The Ultramarines were defying the odds.

  The breaching squad disengaged from their dead brother. They closed shields again, and retreated out of the door with an infuriating cool.

  ‘Claw One, crush them!’ yelled Skraivok. He emerged from his hiding place, and looked down from the catwalk at the chamber floor.

  Six dead Night Lords to one dead Ultramarine. Pathetic.

  He slammed his hand onto his volkite serpenta pistol and pulled it free. He turned to the warrior nearest him, ready to order him down onto the first level to engage in close. The words never made it to his lips. A cluster of grenades detonated in the centre of chamber. Sparks fountained everywhere as the central data conduit was hit. Skraivok was slammed backwards as the room filled with short-lived fire and spinning, razor-sharp shrapnel.

  He picked himself up. His helm display was compromised, the screed on it jumping into incomprehensible smears, but he was unhurt.

  ‘Someone start killing those bastards, now!’

  Lethicus heard the explosions of the grenades as quiet, flat noises in the thickening air. A spray of debris blasted out of the central chamber, hammering into the backs of his men. The gunfire from within ceased, leaving them a few precious moments to deal with Night Lords bracketing them at either end of the curving corridor. The atmospheric stores of the station were breached, filling it with air. Sound became louder, and Lethicus became aware of the wail of sirens. Lights flashed over doors. His men fired their guns on automatic, casting out a wall of death that kept the enemy back. It couldn’t last. They would burn through their ammunition soon, and Lethicus was out of workable theoreticals. There were over fifty Night Lords aboard. He had come aboard expecting to mop up a handful, and had walked right into a detachment.

  ‘We are boxed in! Second squad advancing from the rear,’ said one of his warriors, ice calm under fire. Another grunted out as he went down, his severed arm bouncing with grotesque slowness from the wall.

  ‘We must effect our escape,’ said Lethicus, ‘before they cut us down. Breaching squad, to the rear. Stay their advance.’ Lethicus thrust his shield at Brother Martius. ‘Push them back if you can.’

  Martius took the shield and joined the other three breaching squad Space Marines. Together they formed a wall across the corridor. Incoming fire boomed off the locked shields, a storm that grew more ferocious as the station filled with atmosphere. Back to back with their shield-bearing comrades, Lethicus’ other men made a second wall facing the opposite direction down the corridor. Their disciplined fire kept the Night Lords back around the gentle curves, but the Ultramarines were so densely packed the enemy could not miss and his warriors were dying one by one.

  ‘Dominicus, Scandis, Clovius, Batavian – with me!’ he shouted. ‘Close assault!’

  Lethicus drew his chainsword. The men called pulled out their gladii and bolt pistols.

  ‘For Ultramar!’ he called.

  ‘For Ultramar!’ they responded.

  His small group launched themselves into a bounding charge.

  There was an art to mounting a close assault in low gravity. Lethicus released the maglocks from his boots and boosted himself forward with a shove of his legs.

  He hurtled down the corridor, backpack nozzles venting at maximum. His thermal regulating fluids were depleted by such an extravagant burst, and he felt the deep chill of the station creep through his armour and mesh suit. But it lent him speed. Every round that impacted his thick armour slowed him, but only a little. The amount of firepower the Night Lords threw at them would have been frightening were he a lesser being, and two of his warriors finished their journey as corpses, but he, Batavian and Dominicus slammed into the Night Lords at full speed, their impact rocking the enemy back.

  The enemy recovered badly. Hampered by his maglocks, Lethicus’ foe rocked backward, arms wheeling for a balance he could not retain. Lethicus was not slow to exploit it. He punched hard with the guard of his chainsword, cracking eye-lenses gleaming from a painted skull. Air hissed from them. Lethicus jammed his bolt pistol under a second Night Lord’s chin as the first reeled. The recoil of the bolts leaving the barrel jarred his arm, and he needed all his power armour’s might to keep it in place. Three penetrated the neck seal and armour of the warrior’s breathing mask, hollowing out his skull.

  Lethicus reactivated his maglocks and slammed his feet down. He aimed a savage chop at the Night Lord with the damaged helmet, cutting throu
gh the grisly trophies the traitor wore on a chain around his neck. The severed fingers of murdered legionaries floated away as the teeth of Lethicus’ weapon ground up through ceramite and into the head beneath.

  The sword lodged, and Lethicus was forced to abandon it. The trick to survival, Lethicus reminded himself, was to use what you had. He embraced the dead Night Lord, using the corpse as cover and firing past him. The corridor’s span was choked with the floating filth of battle. Covering fire streaked past Lethicus from his men down the corridor, laying low Night Lords that attempted to engage him. Ejected bolt casings bounced from walls.

  ‘Caias! Caias! Respond!’ called Lethicus.

  There was no reply.

  A dreadful theoretical formed in his mind. The enemy had outwitted him. Despite his caution, the Night Lords had anticipated his moves. The rumble they had heard was certainly an explosive going off, a trap probably triggered by Caias. They were blocked in here. The only conclusion he could draw was that the enemy was after the Probity. Squad Lethicus was being pinned and slaughtered while a second group attacked the undefended vessel. He was certain of it, because that was the practical he would have chosen were he in their position.

  Another Night Lord fell to his bolt pistol. The ammunition indicators on the weapon blinked red. He holstered it and took up his bolter again. More of the enemy were coming down the corridor, sending the debris into a seething, chaotic motion.

  Lethicus did not rate his small group’s chances. If they pushed forward round the station’s central corridor, they would be outside the reach of covering fire. If they stayed put, the Night Lords would pick them off at leisure. Dominicus was wounded, but fought on. Batavian wrestled heavily with a Night Lord, ramming his gladius repeatedly at the traitor’s neck seal as his opponent struggled to bring his boltgun under Batavian’s plastron. There was a flash as Batavian’s power cabling was destroyed and the Ultramarine died. His killer pushed the body away and turned on Lethicus. A bolt streaked by, propellant tail brilliant white, cracking the Night Lord’s helmet, exploding and killing him before Lethicus could raise his gun.

  Cries came from the men behind him. Night Lords had overwhelmed the two men blocking the door to the central chamber and were coming out into the corridor, splitting Lethicus and his assault group off from the others. The men to the back of the breaching squad kept the enemy from the shieldbearers’ vulnerable rear, but it could not last.

  The Ultramarines had lost, and the Night Lords knew it.

  With a triumphant roar, the Night Lords from the other end of the corridor charged. They banged into the breaching shields with a titanic boom. Suddenly, the Ultramarines’ breaching squad was engaged in furious hand-to-hand fighting. Lethicus’ men were better protected than the enemy by their shields, but outnumbered, and they were cut down.

  Lethicus fought on. Dominicus was attacked by two Nostramans. One pinned Dominicus’ arm, and a chainglaive blow from the other ended him. The fight was as brutal as any Lethicus had ever known. Despite his recent experience fighting other Space Marines, he was taken aback by the ferocity of it. The press of giant, armoured bodies was such that weapons were nearly useless. He cast away his boltgun and grappled with his assailants, slamming elbows and fists into faces, aiming to crack their vulnerable helm lenses, exposing the warriors inside to the thin air.

  His men’s signifiers winked out one after another. Then the foe were behind and in front of him. Someone grabbed at his arm. He shook off his attacker, but two more hands scraped across the plate, scrabbling at him until they held him firm. His armour whined with the effort of trying to free himself. He sent a Night Lord reeling with a final back-handed blow before his other hand was caught, then his legs, and he was grappled down. Lethicus bucked and kicked. Five of the enemy pressed on his limbs, still unable to subdue him, until something was slapped against his armour and a massive electro­magnetic pulse shorted out his battleplate, robbing him of its strength. Only then was he overwhelmed.

  Kellendvar and his brother slaughtered their way down the spinal way of the Probity. There were three thousand human crew aboard the ship, but they might as well have been infants for all the opposition they could muster. The brothers slaughtered them as easily.

  Rounds from the shotguns of the armsmen clattered ineffectually off their power armour. They would not run, so Kellendvar killed them where they stood, cleaving them in two with his great headsman’s axe. Kellenkir fought with his chainglaive, whirling the toothed head around in a blurred pattern none could penetrate.

  ‘They are not afraid, brother,’ said Kellendvar. Wind blew past them, howling out of the breach they had burned through the hull. ‘They are brave. It is almost praiseworthy.’

  ‘Their Legion spends much time among them – perhaps that is why they are not prone to the dread. But if they are brave to stand their ground, they are still afraid.’ Kellenkir saw it, even if his brother did not. He could smell it through his respirator grille. ‘Guilliman makes the lowliest serf think himself a hero!’ Kellenkir laughed as his chainglaive took the life from another armsman. The diamond-edged teeth shattered the faceplate of the helmet, carving through the man’s armour carapace and into his chest. ‘See how they die! Brave or craven matters not. They are weak!’

  A group of men were forming up across the corridor, all burly by the standards of their kind and armed with shock-mauls.

  ‘I see no weakness here. They fight with honour,’ said Kellendvar.

  ‘Honour or not, weakness is despicable.’ Kellenkir ran into the group. Their mauls bounced from his armour, followed shortly by their severed limbs. Arterial spray painted the corridor a dripping red. This finally proved too much, and the survivors turned and ran from Kellenkir.

  ‘The way is clear!’ shouted Kellenkir. ‘They flee, they have begun to learn their lessons. So it should be. They are not fools like their fellows. Courage is no defence against suffering and death! Run, run little men!’ he roared through his voxmitters. ‘I will catch and kill you. Your pain will be over soon, I promise you faithfully!’

  More men came out through a hatch, and they met Kellendvar’s axe. There was a zealous joy in Kellenkir’s voice at the slaughter. At a fundamental level this troubled Kellendvar. He dwelt on it as he killed and killed. Killing was life. Killing was survival. As a child, he killed so that he might live for another day. As a Space Marine, he had killed for the Emperor so that mankind might persist. Now he killed for Skraivok, so that he might be free. Fear, specifically that of torture, pain and a filthy death, had ever been the weapon of his Legion. But it was a weapon. A weapon was a tool, to be taken up when needed and set aside when not.

  His thoughts went back to the Nycton, when he had gone to retrieve his brother from his makeshift torture chamber in the Hall of Trophies. What he had seen there disturbed him. Kellenkir’s actions themselves were not a concern. Kellendvar had performed similar mutilations and cruelties many times.

  But Kellendvar was not a sadist. He understood the utility of pain and fear. There were many sadists in the Legion who enjoyed using both for the sake of it. Kellenkir certainly was, but his drives went beyond a sadist’s petty desire to hurt. There was an evangelism behind Kellenkir’s urges.

  Another armsman died, chopped through from shoulder to crotch by Kellendvar’s axe. It was a clean cut, the death swift, and his axe came free easily. He hefted it, ready to strike again.

  There were none of the armed humans left. The corridor was empty. Screaming and boltgun fire sounded far off. Slaughtered men lay in heaps.

  ‘Listen to the joy of it! Come on, brother! Come!’ Kellenkir exulted. ‘To the bridge! It is the time for you to impress your master. Come with me and share my glory before I change my mind.’

  The joy of it? thought Kellendvar. Is this right?

  A vox-message from Vaiserkon, leading one group of six Night Lords aft, interrupted Kellendvar’s train of though
t.

  ‘Kellendvar, the engine rooms are secure.’

  ‘Casualties?’

  ‘Zakrash and Menon,’ reported Vaiserkon. ‘We encountered legionary resistance. We killed three, two fell back and disappeared into the lower decks. We shall hunt them down.’

  ‘Ignore them. They may attempt to damage the Geller field to prevent our escape into the warp. Bypass them if so. Chances are they’ve worked out they’re beaten and will try to destroy the vessel. Move on to the primary reactor core immediately. Preventing scuttling of the ship is your primary mission goal. We must take the Probity.’

  ‘Headsman,’ signalled his warrior. The vox cut out.

  Kellendvar had not sent his brother with the others for a very good reason. He would have tarried to kill and maim. Such propensity for bloodshed; for a long time he had thought Kellenkir insane.

  As he watched Kellenkir dabble his fingers in spilled blood and smear it across the plates of his armour, Kellendvar was beginning to think that was not the case.

  He was beginning to fear that his brother was simply evil.

  SEVEN

  Primary Location Alpha

  Inwit

  Visions of the father

  Primary Location Alpha – Warsmith Barabas Dantioch had never cared much for the name. It was suitable in many ways, identifying the tuning mechanism’s significance. It was direct, an efficient name that denoted its importance and its primacy. As an Iron Warrior, albeit a disgraced and outcast one, Dantioch approved of efficiency.

  But it did little to capture the sheer marvel of the Pharos, and that was why he found it inadequate.

  He stifled a laugh at himself, not wishing Polux to believe his efforts were being mocked.

  The Pharos had drawn out the philosopher in him, such was the scale of its power. The beauty of its construction was clean and unadorned in a manner that reminded him of Olympia’s great fortress-palaces. Being in the Pharos brought him awe, an emotion that Dantioch had enjoyed only occasionally. After so long an association, the deep thrum of the quantum-pulse engines was a comfort. A day did not pass when he did not uncover some other fascinating facet of the xenos array.