Confrontation Part 4

Zarathustra blinked his eyes open; the pain squeezed them closed again. For an instant the dust-mired gloom of the STC command station was as bright as blazing phosphor, bright as a sun. It burned past his eyes to the heart of his skull and to his credit, Zarathustra did not cry out.

His head was a crucible of pain, tender as flayed flesh, delicate as aether-crystal. He remembered the psychic force that had assaulted him and, despite centuries of psych-conditioning, still felt the flicker of fear in his belly. They would need another strategy, he thought.

He forced his eyes apart, just a fraction, and squinted into the light. He fought the nausea until the burning shapes resolved themselves into familiar objects, and figures. The glow faded to shades. He was laid out close to the command dais, Reverend Brother Galen peering anxiously down at him. The Sanguinary Priest was crouched at the Librarian’s side. There was blood on Galen’s instruments, and on his gleaming white armour.

“Welcome back Brother Master,” Galen said wryly, “you may be feeling some discomfort. I have been forced to relieve an excess of pressure in your skull, and stem some bleeding. Not my finest work, but given the circumstances, it will suffice.”

Zarathustra grunted and raised a hand to his face. Beneath the pressure of his gauntlet, the skin felt twisted, sore, and hot.

“You will be well, I think, for the battles soon to come…”

“Soon,” murmured Zarathustra, and then – “help me to stand.”

Galen frowned but did as he was bid. Zarathustra swayed a moment and then shook the Priest away. Already he could feel a flood of endorphins in his veins, alleviating his pain; the skin of his face tingled as his enhanced flesh set about healing itself.

“Speak to me of these battles,” he said. It was Auguste who answered, haloed by daylight as he filled the doorway.

“Our vessels have reported Astartes ships gaining orbit within the last two hours; more Wolves and Angels.”

Zarathustra nodded weakly.

“Searching for their twisted brethren, no doubt. Our cruisers remain concealed?”

“They do. But our brothers are not here for the abomination we encountered. We have monitored their augur scans. It seems they are hunting us.”

“You’re certain?”

“They are making planetfall to the east and west as we speak. We are under attack. I had your apothecary revive you prematurely –“

“Galen is a Priest,” Zarathustra snapped awkwardly. He was still confused, thoughts muddled by surgery and opiates.

He called for his axe. Three scuttling servitors hefted it to his hand and connected the thick power cord to the port in his armour.

“They have refused to respond to our vox-casts. The madness must grow stronger, drawing more of our brothers into its grasp…” Auguste mused.

“No,” said Zarathustra, “we have seen the madness, faced the madness. This is not that. This is something else…”

He stepped out onto the raised battlements of the command centre and surveyed the sky. Contrails feel to east and west, pale against the blue. Dust clouds stirred on the horizons, rising by the second.

About the dropsite Seraphim and Hawk Lord readied for battle, an armoured defensive square formation; guns bristled in the first rank, assault jump packs whirred to life behind. Zarathustra called to Auguste.

“Order your drop ships to make ready. Exactly half your units are to prepare for withdrawal. Ours also.”

Auguste stared at the Librarian as if he’d been struck.

“Half..?” he gestured to their mustered forces, “They will tear us apart!”

“A glorious death! Furthering the Emperor’s work! It’s what they were born for!” Zarathustra shouted, swaying a little unsteadily. “Retrieving the key is all, Auguste. Dying here will gain the Imperium naught. We shall fight with the vanguard, until the transports are ready to depart. Do you stand with me brother?”

The Hawk Lord eyed the Librarian warily, face wrought with uncertainty. He donned his gleaming helm and snapped the beaked visor closed; concealed, his eyes betrayed no more doubts.

“Aye brother,” he said quietly, “I stand.”

The vox-waves erupted with furious activity as orders were issued, battle-lines redrawn, units pulled from the fight. The enemy was visible. Heavy weapons dug in around the command centre. Snipers sought the high ground and tactical squads picked out the best lines of fire. Auguste and an honour guard of assault troopers ignited their jump packs and soared high, accompanied by half of Zarathustra’s remaining Sanguinary Guard. The ramps of Thunderhawks and Stormravens rang with the fall of boots.

Zarathustra stood and watched, warp energy crackling about his fingers. Then the wolves were upon them.

The huge, shaggy Thunderwolves stood taller than a marine, and marines were far taller than a man. The beasts were titans of muscle and tooth. Upon their broad backs the Space Wolves rode, grey armour draped in furs and fetishes, rune necklaces hanging beside trophies of tusk and tooth below wild shocks of hair and beard. They held vast double-headed axes that appeared hewn from jagged ice, swung them high above their heads as they sang battle-songs, and cried brutal oaths of violence. They were unique among the armies of the Imperium, and terrifying to behold.

Zarathustra’s forces held in the face of the charge. They fired.

The flash of las-beams, the snap of melta fire, the thunder of boltguns; volleys of ordinance crackled from the fields around the wild rider’s rune embossed storm shields and, unharmed, they came on. Two columns of them, they forked towards the ring of the dropsite, swift as a raging storm front.

A scout squad peeled away from their concealed position and unloaded bolter fire into a rider at point-blank range. Blood sprayed, but still the wolf came and the scouts went down amid blood, dust, and screams. Fang and claw split armour like tin, revealing the red beneath.

The weight of heavy weapons fire punched a Space Wolf, then his mount, to the floor. Storm shields and the swift loping of the huge war beasts frustrated careful sniper fire. Zarathustra grit his teeth, waiting for the attackers to come within range of his psychic fury.

And then they were in.

At the heart of the melee swirled an enormous warrior-lord, marked out by a mane of red hair and a grey wolf's head standard on his pack. He wielded battle-axe and shield with the grace of a fencer, and his Thunderwolf moved below him like the hind-quarters of a centaur. He bellowed with laughter as lilac-clad warriors were scattered before him.

On trails of flame and ebon wings the Sanguinary Guard descended, antique Blades Encarmine swinging for the Wolf Lord's throat, Angelus boltguns spitting death. The wolf-rider laughed as he side-stepped the veteran Seraphim; he laughed as he took their golden heads.

Zarathustra cried orders into his vox-caster, seeking to stymie the wounds that the wolves had torn in his ranks. He glanced behind him, anxiously seeking out the rest of the foe, but saw only dust. He sensed it - the wrongness of it - an instant before the warp-birthed illusion was stripped away. A twin-phalanx of bikers - cowled and clad in armour the deep black of ocean trenches, cycles adorned with tall, winged plumes and the ghastly glow of twin-linked plasma weapons - was upon them. There wasn't even time to shout.

The trap closed. The air erupted with rapid flicker-pulses of blazing plasma as the Ravenwing riders bore down. Explosions erupted on the battlements of the command centre, and amongst the Devastator squad beside him - powered ceramite as much protection as a damp jerkin against their guns. All around him his brothers died; glorious deaths, he thought with grim irony, to further the Emperor's work.

Brother against brother. The second phalanx ploughed into and through another of Auguste's tactical squads, only to be met by the Captain himself, and his honour guard, as they dropped from the sky. The Hawk Lords hacked at the Lions Castellant with a fury born of despair, and the dark riders fell where they did.

Zarathustra's fresh and livid scars seared pain deep into his skull as he struggled to harness the immaterium to his will. The surviving Devastators began to drop their cumbersome heavy weaponry, useless at this range, and reach for the bolt pistols at their belts. The Ravenwing came closer, never slowing, and then they were up - against all expectation, all reason, riding their howling metal steeds like daemons, they powered up the wall of the command centre and dropped down amongst the stunned marines sheltered there. Pandemonium erupted.

Pistol fire assaulted the ears, the roar of engines and the crumple of armour plates jostled for attention as the biker squad, banners flying in the wind, tore around the narrow gantry of the STC building, rolling over and through any who stood in their way.

Zarathustra found his storm bolter in his hand, squeezed off a shot. He swung his force-axe with his other hand, and all his strength, at the dark blur that bore down upon him, aiming for the hooded skull where a face should have been. His blade deflected in a burst of light from an ornate pauldron and he just had time to register the movement before the maul came in under his defences. It took him square in the chest, triggering his personal force-field too late, and sent him tumbling backwards, over the battlements and down to the floor.

His armour was heavy and it landed hard. He lay there stunned, in the dust and the sunlight, wracked with pain and shame. Only for a moment. He gritted his teeth, marshalled his thoughts, girded his will.

He looked to the transports. The last of their marines were aboard. He forced himself to his feet, forced his legs to carry him, to power the servo-muscles in his Terminator armour to a run. He fled the battlefield, heading for the open ramp of the Thunderhawk.

"Auguste!" he bellowed over the vox, "We're clear! Retreat!"

He pounded up and into the transport, felt it shudder and accelerate even before he reached the hold. With his free hand Zarathustra grasped a rail and turned, looked back towards the battle. Stray shots arced towards them, and away. A single figure rose in a graceful arc from the ground, gaining altitude alongside them, his winged jump-pack giving him the bearing of some noble bird of prey as he powered towards the still lowered ramp.

Captain Auguste swooped towards them and landed beside Zarathustra in the ship's hold, as gracefully as a hunting-hawk returned to the perch. The ramp rose and slammed shut, with a sound both final and cold. The vox-cast still whirred with the chaos of combat, the litanies of the doomed, and the screams of the dying. Less though, every second.

Auguste didn't look once at the Librarian as he strode past into the ship.

Zarathustra held the rail and stared at the ramp.

"For Orlando," he muttered, "for Sanguinius. And for the Emperor."

The last to die was a lightly armoured scout, a sniper, perched atop a transport crate. He fired his pistol at point blank range, screaming defiance at an Iron Priest and his wolves as they clambered up toward him. The wolf riders prowled about, looking on, laughing at the sport. Jaws closed around the scout’s boot; he went over screaming, and was dragged to the floor. An instant later the screaming ended, though the sounds that replaced it were no more pleasant.

The Interrogator-Chaplain looked on impassively. He had no taste for such barbarity, though he felt a certain satisfaction as he watched the heretic die. That feeling was dangerous, he decided, a shadowed doorway to darker impulses. He would flagellate himself for it later.

He looked about at the corpses littering the floor. Hawk Lords as well as Seraphim. Allies in heresy, or the bodies of the deceived, he wondered. Little matter. They would all need burning.

A padding figure loomed above him. He looked first into the red eyes of the slavering Thunderwolf, then raised his skull-faced helm to meet the gaze of the young wolf-lord, Thorun Guyyl.

“Grim business,” Guyyl grinned from behind his red beard, “when our brothers run to the bad. Still, yer Inquisitor’ll be satisfied, aye?”

The wolf snorted hot breath across Euphrayn’s robes; he pretended not to notice.

“So then. About our bargain…”

“They ran,” Euphrayn said, almost to himself, “Fully half of them escaped.”

Guyyl frowned, as if at a personal affront, nodded at the scorched earth of the landing site.

“Aye well, the' wouldn’t if yer man had shown up to cut ‘em off…” he stopped and frowned again, “Speakin’ o’ which, where is the big bastard?”

Euphrayn paused.

“Brother Tormont is…engaged elsewhere.”

A dark fury crossed the wolf-lord’s face then, and Euphrayn wondered if the priestly runes the Space Wolves wore to keep the madness at bay, as the Lions Castellant used psychic protection, were truly little more than superstitious trinkets. There was murder in Guyyl’s eyes.

“You…wee…little…” he turned his thickly maned head and spat, a long glistening string into the dirt.

“You swore to me! You swore! If you’ve harmed those wolves, you treacherous –“

“I did what I had to,” Euphrayn growled, even as the Thunderwolf snarled in his face and pawed anxiously at the ground. He couldn’t have afforded for his brother librarians to be discovered on this world, not if there was a chance they’d fallen. It had cost him his quarry here, but by now Tormont should have had the matter resolved.

Thorun Guyyl jabbed a finger at the ground, where his spittle trailed like an opaque earthworm.

“There’s yer damned honour!”

He spat again.

“There’s yer damned Inquisitor!”

He spat again.

“There’s yer whole damned chapter!”

A storm sounded at the back of the Thunderwolf’s throat, its black mood matching its master’s. Euphrayn was aware of prowling giants behind the wolf-lord, of the sound of engines gunning behind him. The insult couldn’t stand.

But there were other matters to attend to.

“You will answer for that when next we meet, dog-lord,” Euphrayn called out for all to hear. Then he took one pace back.

The Space Wolf reared his mount around, signalled his brothers to follow him.

“Ah, go f-“ he began as his wolf loped away, but the wind took the rest of his retort.

The wolf-riders howled as they barrelled away from the dropsite, out towards the strange pack of man-and-beast that sat at the heart of this madness, and Euphrayn could not tell if it was mount or rider that cried the longest.

Brother Armistas approached, a techno-vox skull hovering at his shoulder. He eyed the departing wolves as he came, a lack of satisfaction at the resolution of their conflict writ upon his tattooed brow.

“My lord,” Armistas said, inclining his head with respect that Euphrayn could see he did not feel, “incoming communication for you.”

Euphrayn curled his lip inside his helm. He would address this lack of discipline later. So much to address later.

“Is it Brother Tormont?” he asked.

“No my lord,” said Armistas, “He says his name is Auguste.”

Brother Tormont looked on, wracked with fascination and disgust in equal measure. The writhing heap of flesh and armour smeared itself away, across the plain, baking and sweltering in the mid-day sun. Its stench rose above the unnatural flame that bathed the thing, to shimmer in the air.

He was watching two of his brothers, Deathwing elite in their bone-white Terminator armour, being dragged by their squad, twitching, away from the lip of the horde. The psychic effluence that permeated this place was staggering; a thousand tiny tendrils kept pressing at Tormont’s mind, seeking ingress, like a mask of mealworms on his face.

The abomination had shrugged off all assaults, both physical and immaterial, and only now seemed to be regarding their presence as a threat. Tormont had seen more than enough.

Their primary objective was to return the Librarians to the Rock for Interrogation; to try to piece together what had happened to them, to their ship and crew, their brothers, and ultimately this entire sector. Tormont was clear now that this objective was beyond them; whatever remained of his brothers was inseparable from this horror.

In such circumstances the contingency was brutally simple.

The sweating mound of bodies began a slow surge towards their position. Tormont signalled the retreat.

“This place,” Auguste said calmly, levelly, “is stricken with insanity. It has held me. It has held my brothers. It blinds you to reason and spurs you to murder. It turns brother against brother. It is this madness that has you.”

“No,” came the reply, deep and hollow as a tomb door closing, “it does not. You collude with heretics. You are heretics. I will end you also.”

“We are not heretics. We are loyal servants of the Emperor, sons of Corax and Sanguinius, as you are sons of the Lion. We are all servants of humanity, regardless of our livery and the legacies we bear. Do not let the hatred blind you.”

“Hatred is holy. Hatred is pure. Hatred of the alien, of the mutant. And hatred of the heretic. You are Heretica Execratis. I will destroy you.”

“Brother, that is the madness speaking.”

The Interrogator-Chaplain chuckled as he replied.

“Fool, that is the Inquisition speaking.”

A chipped scarlet gauntlet reached past the Hawk Lords captain and switched off the vox-cast. Auguste whirled on Zarathustra.

“What - ?” he began. The exhaustion on the Librarian’s scarred face stalled him.

“The conversation was ended. Our persecutor unmasked.”

“The Inquisition,” Auguste said, a crease of unease on his brow, “what business have you with them?”

“Even a body as…” Zarathustra paused, sneered, “incorruptible as them, can be seduced by the ruinous powers. One such paragon has pursued us for some time, and seeks to undo our very chapter. He would marshal the Imperium entire against us, were it to hand.”

“Why?” Auguste asked carefully, cautious cynicism abroad on his face, “To what end?”

A weary smile touched Zarathustra’s face.

“We are crusaders against Chaos, brother. They need no other reason.”

Auguste considered a moment.

“We are at half strength,” he said, only the hint of an accusation in his voice, “we cannot hope to stand against our pursuers.”

“The Angels do a zealot’s work. They will hunt us until we are dead.”

“Then what would you suggest?”

Zarathustra drew himself up, sloughed off his pain.

“It is clear brother,” the Librarian said, “that we need to die.”