Confrontation Part 6

The Inquisitorial battlebarge ‘The Fallacy of Mercy’ surged forth through the warp, the strange and unreal energies of that other-realm buffeting against its Geller-sustained skein of real-space. The immaterium was in turmoil, roiling about the ship as though some vast and mighty hand stirred its daemonic currents from just beyond sight. The immense ship kept to its heading but the going was slow. Something was building, out in the deep. The ship’s crew laboured beneath an aura of dread.

Inquisitor Karstax reclined upon the bridge, his visage dark and brooding. The Astropath had never seen it otherwise.

“My lord, Interrogator-Chaplain Euphrayn wishes to advise you –“

“No,” the Inquisitor silenced him with the merest wave of his hand, “Word for word, if you will.”

The Astropath inclined his head in deference. He was leaning heavily upon his staff and the veins in his bald and bulbous pate were pulsing. The warpstorm around them was causing him no little discomfort. Still he forced his mind forth to communicate with their servants and allies.

“ ‘Inquisitor Karstax, it is my solemn duty to inform you that the heretics are dead; by your word and our deed.’ “

Karstax nodded. He continued the conversation as though their intermediaries were not there.

“You saw this with your own eyes Interrogator?”

The Astropath closed his eyes as he relayed the thought, and awaited his opposite’s reply.

“ ‘Yes my lord. I shared in the butcher’s work.’ “

Karstax nodded and rubbed his chin.

“Did you encounter resistance besides?”

“ ‘The Seraphim had allies, my lord. Astartes of the Hawk Lords chapter who fell beside them. We encountered Space Wolves, who aided us for a time, though I fear we have lost their favour; and a strange abomination, an unholy product of the singular madness in this sector. It too is dead.’ “

Karstax had moved forward in his seat.

“All dead? You are certain of the abomination?”

“ ‘We obliterated it from orbit. It seemed the only way to be sure.’ “

Karstax nodded.

“You have done well Euphrayn. I shall commend you to the Rock. Consider your duty fulfilled; I release you from your geas.”

The Inquisitor signalled again and the conversation was ended. A thin crimson line began to run from the Astropath’s nose towards his upper lip. His hand shook as he wiped it. Karstax sat back again.

“One more my friend, and then you may rest,” he said. The Astropath nodded weakly.

“Contact Brother Captain Barbarossa. Inform him to move in now. They are to scan for signs of an orbital bombardment – that is where they will find the Key of Assai. Upon retrieval it is to be transported and destroyed as agreed. The Palace of Woe must not be opened.”

The Astropath lowered his head and sent forth his mind; Karstax rubbed at eyes that were forever weary.

“Goodbye Zarathustra,” he muttered, soundless air on his lips, “goodbye my brothers. May the Emperor grant you the mercy that I could not.”

About them the vessel heaved and rocked. Through the punishing fury of a gathering storm, it sailed on.

The vessels hung in orbit, running silent, concealed in the darkness. From the shadows they monitored the dead world.

They watched the Lions Castellant vessel as it positioned itself, broadside above the planet’s skies; saw the Space Wolves craft move to intercept. They watched the atmosphere burn as the Lions unleashed a salvo of cannon-fire capable of toppling cities. Seismic ripples bloomed outwards from where the crackling light fell.

They listened to the frantic vox-bursts between the two ships, saw the Wolves warning shots streak across the Lions’ prow. The Lions’s ship fired again and then began to accelerate out of the planet’s gravity well, even as Wolf fire lit up their ship’s shields, even as the blasts of their cannon scorched across the plains below.

Pinpricks of light, stars falling in reverse, broke through the atmospheric envelope to rendezvous with the Lion’s cruiser. As the last transport docked, the enormous vessel lit its thrusters and made for the black gulfs of space. An instant later those black gulfs seemed to twist and glow, swallowing the ship whole as it transitioned to warp-space.

A minute passed, a minute of swarming activity as the Space Wolves left the world below and reunited with their ship. It swung ponderously about, accelerated at near-impossible speeds, and vanished into the warp in pursuit.

Only then did the Librarian reach out with his mind.

Zarathustra’s psychic response was immediate.

“Status report?” he prompted.

Librarius Brother Malkin looked about the darkened bridge; he looked to the five bodies arrayed along the transept, Sanguinary adepts reverently harvesting their precious geneseed from throat and breast.

“I am the last,” he sent, “The cost was great but the deception successful. The enemy are gone.”

For a moment there was nothing. Then Zarathustra’s words again in his mind.

“Their sacrifice will be remembered. Our brother’s names will live evermore.”

“For Orlando,” Malkin thought, “for Sanguinius, and for the Emperor.”

It came automatically. Their chapter’s litany in place of actual thought, a mask for his inability to frame a response. His mind felt numb, the efforts of taking the ethereal dreamstuff that made men mad in this place, and manipulating rather than repressing it; to cloud the thoughts of psycho-conditioned warriors - steel-minded zealots like the Lions Castellant - and create living dreams for them…well. The cost lay there upon the floor.

The Lion’s Deathwing Librarian had pierced their hastily drawn veil, he knew. They had suffered in their efforts to remove him before he could lay bare the charade. Tearing open a portal to the warp had caused a psychic feedback loop to lash through their Librarius conclave – the Deathwing Librarian died but so did three of Malkin’s brothers, psychic hoods fusing and smoking about their heads. His remaining brothers had collapsed in their own turns, blood flowing brightly from eyes and ears.

All the while the Hawk Lords ship had shrouded the area with a static projection to interfere with enemy augurs; the Lions had been blind to their true enemy as they had wrestled with spectres. The projection concealed the ground forces still.

A thought occurred to Malkin then, and he supposed it worthy of sharing.

“I am the last of the conclave,” he told Zarathustra, “and the effort of keeping the madness at bay is great. In the Emperor’s name make haste my brother. Make haste.”

“We approach the strike zone now Malkin. Our trials are almost at an end.”

There was a subtle chiming across the darkened bridge, shrouded alarms that grew in number with each passing moment. Malkin sagged against the rail before him and looked to the viewports in despair as Imperial Fist and Black Templar vessels swam across them, sleek hunting predators silhouetted against the bright world beyond.

Filled with the sense of a nameless doom, Malkin wordlessly sent the image to Zarathustra…

All faces turned to him as the rage rose audibly in his throat, a primal roar that shook about the cramped transport’s bay. Auguste stared at him, unblinking. It took Zarathustra a moment to realise that the Hawk Lord’s captain was poised to strike him, if needs be.

The momentary loss of control spurred Zarathustra to bottle his fury quickly, forcing it deep into his chest. The anger had been thrilling, liberating; it had felt good to be free of his burdens and the increasing weight of ill fortune. It was a luxury he could not permit.

“There are others,” he spat, “Imperial Fists. Black Templars. They are closing on the strikezone as swiftly as ourselves.”

“What could have drawn them here?” Auguste asked.

“It is no coincidence. It is him. It –“

He blinked. Where was he? Where had he just been? The transport bay was around him, dull glow bulbs and oil streaked panels; not the warped gothic plasteel vaults of some daemon haunted battle barge… He blinked again, and the helms of his brothers took on their familiar visages once more, rather than the archaic crusade designs they had borne a moment before. The shadows were gone, there were no traitors coming for him.

No…

Sweat on his skin. He had performed the pre-battle checks upon his brothers not an hour before – for want of a chaplain the hunt for signs of the Black Rage fell to him. Their eyes had been clear, their minds in the present.

Unlike his own…

Auguste was speaking his name. Zarathustra wanted to silence him, to teach that fool the error of presuming to strike him; the error of forsaking their father and siding with the Warmaster…

No.

“We must hurry,” he croaked finally, “the Librarius conclave is all but slain and… and the madness is creeping in. Ready the men. Let nothing stand in our way.”

Auguste nodded and slipped away; Zarathustra sagged on his axe-haft and prayed for strength.

Strength and sanity.

The ground had been punched into a crater, a smouldering wasteland, miles across. Smoke floated lazily above it, spiralling gently as the super-heated air cooled to a temperature that would not sear flesh from bone. The ground slowly undulated towards the centre of the bowl-shaped scar, last traces of geological formations, hills and rivers, brooks and copses, that had stood for aeons until mere minutes ago.

Flames still smouldered in the cracked earth, deep beneath the ash drifts.

Here and there a twisted heat sculpture, warped and wrought by inconceivable energies, dotted the barren ground; they loomed out of the smoke like pain wracked giants. There were several near to the epicentre, where stood a blackened pillar, stout and solid, some four feet high. No longer were there crests upon its helm; no longer were there wings upon its pauldron.

It was towards the pillar that Zarathustra and his allies raced. It had been minutes since they had entered the range of the newcomer’s sensor arrays – thanks to Auguste’s static broadcast - since blurts of vox-chatter had flooded their comms links demanding they identify their forces and state their intentions. They had not replied. There was no point, no time. It would be war, regardless.

Their own augur arrays tracked the drop ships and drop pods of the Imperial Fists and Black Templars – the Inquisitor’s Crusaders, Zarathustra thought snidely – as their trajectories bore them down on an interception course. They would strike at the very heart of the crater, around the pillar that Zarathustra coveted more than duty, more than honour, more than life itself.

He triggered his force’s closed-loop vox-comm.

“Brothers,” he began, with low solemnity, “it is a dark hour. Once more we face the most righteous, the most valiant, the most loyal servants of humanity; once more we seek their deaths. I ask you to look upon them not as brothers though, for they are afflicted by a malady that brings them lower than the xenos scum who cower between the stars; lower even than the heretics and traitors who would undo the blessed Emperor’s holy works through gross vanity and basest ambition.

“They are lower yet for their malady has placed them in our path, here this day, seeking to stay our work, and our work is the Emperor’s work. The fate of mankind may pivot upon the fulcrum of this dark hour and we must triumph or all else, all of it, will have been for naught.

“You have shown me bravery, and loyalty, and devotion since we struck out upon this holiest of endeavours – I beg you show me them one last time. Take to the field, and slay your enemy though he bears the face of your brother – he is not your brother. He may be the undoing of us all. Strike him down and crush him in the dirt; and then the next; and the next! Let nothing stay your fury, save death!

“And should you die this day, your soul may stand unbowed before the Emperor - knowing you have died in his name - and he will judge you well. To war brothers!

“For Orlando, for Sanguinius, and for the Emperor!”

A cacophony of voices responded, echoing the Seraphim litany, and surely there were Hawk Lords numbered among them. Zarathustra ended the broadcast and attempted to gather his thoughts. There were shadows building all around him.

The Templar’s drop pods slammed to the ground like comet strikes, billowing showers of spark-shot ash skyward where they fell. Ceramite petals thumped down and black-clad squads of astartes disgorged from each pod, labouring under the weight of the enormous cannons they bore. One of the pods struck home only feet from the black pillar – its squad deployed around the stunted artefact, stern faces underlit by glowing graviton coils.

Templar assault squads dropped on jump-pack burners to flank their devastator brethren while, seconds later, bright yellow transports swooped down; a huge, thundering land raider, hull bedecked with centuries of battle honours, and the personal heraldry of Captain Barbarossa, roared from the belly of a vast Thunderhawk and ploughed through the ash towards the oncoming Seraphim and Hawk Lords. Rhino and Predator pattern tanks rumbled into position across the Crusader’s battle-line.

The transports shook the ground with their thrusters and rose at the head of roiling ash-cloud as their pilots sought to evade and engage with the incoming Seraphim air-support.

Instants later the Hawk Lords joined the fray. Assault troops swept ahead, vox-casters roaring oaths and battle-cries, they braved a hail of bolter-fire to crash into the Imperial Fists infantry squads. Behind them scouts and devastators clad in the gold and crimson of the Stigmata Seraphim dropped to the ground and sighted targets amongst the Crusaders; heavy weapons fire lit the dust clouds from within like storm-tossed thunderheads. Hawk Lords tactical squads pressed forwards, bolt-guns spitting shells into the enemy ranks.

Armour shattered and crumpled; blood flowed and men screamed, and in seconds the crater was the very image of hell.

Templar scouts mounted a twisted heat sculpture and began to pick off Seraphim Devastators – their sniper fire was joined by heavy assault weapons mounted on the advancing land raider to tear up the ground around the Devastators and silence their guns forever. Seraphim snipers and Hawk Lord marines returned fire into the scouts, plucking them brutally from their perch.

A lightning flanking manoeuvre by bolter armed Seraphim scouts saw them appear behind a Templars devastator squad and rake their position with close-range fire; the return plasma-barrage lit up that corner of the battlefield like a spotlight – yet for a few vital seconds the plasma cannons were facing away from the battle-front.

On the right flank, Hawk Lords assault marines bludgeoned at their foes with abandon, but not without loss. They fell back, regrouped, charged once more into the Fists. Pistol fire and chainswords bit deep, shedding blood that blackened the grey ashes where it fell. The Imperial Fists fell too.

In the whirling centre of the battleground the land-raider’s hatches slammed open and a command squad of Imperial Fists disembarked ahead of their Captain, bolters firing into the tightly grouped clutch of Hawk Lords ahead of them. The side-sponsons of the land raider tracked about, heavy flamers preparing to douse the sons of Corvax in flaming promethium.

Smoke trailing it like a shroud, a gold and crimson Stormhawk roared out of the clouds; it hammered the ground with its turbine thrusters, engaged targeting arrays and drew up above the land raider’s flank, a hunting bird with claws gleaming.

The hulking, ancient tank made to reverse and the gunship let rip with lascannon, multimelta and stormstrike missiles; storied honours burned away alongside bold yellow paint. Ceramite cracked, buckled and bent under the remorseless fusillade. Deep inside the venerable warmachine a promethium cache was breached. Metal sparked on metal. The land raider exploded violently, raising from the ground and spinning ponderously as it arced and fell. It collapsed back to earth with a deafening crump, showering Barbarossa and his squad with flaming ash and debris. The Stormhawk forced them back further still, pummelling the veteran warriors with twin hurricane-bolter racks.

The surviving Hawk Lords gave a ragged cheer, drew targets along their boltguns and drove relentlessly forward. Still they were met with renewed fire, strobing the air around them and curving away overhead towards the hovering Stormhawk.

A lilac Stormtalon streaked in to rake the entire length of the left flank with assault cannons, sending Imperial Fists back behind their idling transport and Templar devastators diving for cover. Lasblasts from the Predator’s twin-linked turret danced around the nimble assault-ship.

The dust clouds behind the Crusader’s lines lit from within as jump packs flared in descent and a golden Sanguinary Guard unit fell to the earth, catching a Templar assault squad in the flank and halving their number with deadly Angelus boltgun fire.

The Templar devastators surrounding the pillar reacted immediately, falling back and spreading their firing line out to maximise shots against the golden interlopers; their gravcannons whirred, a high keening noise that built in pitch before exploding in a sub-sonic roar. The cannon’s graviton waves lashed across the Sanguinary Guard and crushed them where they stood. Vox-casters amplified nightmarish death-screams; golden armour crumpled in upon itself as though grasped by the gods themselves, and a rain of blood showered the ground for yards around.

A single Guard still stood. He did not run. He looked back blackly into the devastator’s eyes, triggered the thrusters of his jump pack and on ebon wings descended amongst them, Blade Encarmine swinging.

Behind him, a second strike force landed, Hawk Lords headed by Captain Auguste. They tore into the remaining Templar assault force with lethal efficiency, felling them to a man. Captain Barbarossa witnessed the butchery of his men and ordered his command squad to fall back and shore up their rear lines.

The enemy were closing on the key.

Ahead of him, in a stretch of open ground ringed by drop-pods and exhaust-belching war machines, a globe of air pulsed outward, wreathed in dust fumes and brilliant static discharge. As the teleportation flash faded, Zarathustra could be seen, blue lightning crawling upon his golden Terminator armour. Beyond him was the blackened pillar.

Barbarossa bellowed at his troops and bolter fire sang around the towering librarian. It sparked from his ancient armour to no avail. Heavy plasma fire rained around him but still Zarathustra stood. The Predator’s turret ratcheted about; a las blast seared past, inches from his face. A second triggered his armour’s defences, dispersing brightly against his personal energy shield. Roaring with disquieting laughter the librarian strode forward.

The key was ahead. He could feel it so keenly that it practically blazed from within the blackened pillar. The air around him was a strobing blur of incoming fire and he cared not. The key was screaming in his mind, clawing at him, yet without the captive librarians to amplify its voice the key was akin to a lone warrior battering at a fortress wall.

 A black, heat scorched drop pod stood between him and the pillar. Zarathustra reached out one warp-wreathed hand and contemptuously stripped the ancient assault craft down to its skeletal frame. Metal shrieked as it convulsed in his psychic grasp, rivets popping as panels sheared from the craft; he swept his hand to the left and the armour shards whipped across the battlefield to ricochet amongst the Templar’s plasma squad.

Behind the pillar, the lone Sanguinary Guard was busy in his work. The encumbered Templars had never stood a chance; breastplates did not slow his blade, nor pauldrons or helms, or even gravcannons. All parted beneath its powered edge and before too long the Guard’s golden armour was dripping with gore. The pillar secured, he cast about for fresh threats.

Overhead Auguste sailed at the fore of his men, plasma snapshots veering wildly about them. They slammed feet first into the Templars, scattering them with claw and sword.

The key howled at Zarathustra as he stepped forth and drew back his axe; it pleaded, cajoled and threatened him; it reached into the corners of his mind and dragged the Black Rage into the light, conjured twisted astartes in ancient armour and the gleaming eye of Horus to charge, screaming at him.

Zarathustra grinned past gritted teeth; he allowed the illusions to wash into and over him. He would not be denied. His armour rattled with incoming fire, his skin bled from a dozen minor wounds, and his axe fell upon the black pillar.

It sheared the carbonised figure in two, black crystals shattering into a fine rain that sloughed sidelong to the floor. Glittering at the heart of the pillar, the key was a tangled thorn of strange angles and endless curves, impossible forge-work that seemed to writhe beneath the eyes. Its voice was a continuous scream of terror and utter despair as he reached out and pulled it free.

Triumph swelled in Zarathustra’s mind. He was laughing, he knew, like a madman he was sure. The key withdrew from him, cowering, pleading to escape.

Auguste struck an opponent to the ground, turned to Zarathustra, screamed to him.

“Destroy it!” he cried, “Zarathustra destroy it!”

Zarathustra held the Captain’s gaze for a moment. He felt no guilt, no shame, no dishonour. His was holy work.

“Now Malkin,” he said with his mind.

He felt the strange disorientation, like falling inwards, as the telepotarium pulled him from the battlefield. The sound of gunfire, and Auguste screaming his name, faded blissfully away…

Zarathustra stumbled from the teleport dais, boots heavy on the steel gantries of the ship. He held the key before him like an especially weighty, venomous beast.

“I have it,” he voxed to Malkin, “ready the chamber. We’re leaving.”

“Yes my lord.”

The vessel trembled as its gun hatches rumbled open. Querying vox-casts from the Hawk Lords turned to cries of outrage and panic as a point-blank broadside battered their shields down and tore explosively through the ship’s engine chambers. The Seraphim were already moving, blazing away from their concealed mooring among the debris, leaving the ailing Hawk Lord’s vessel slowly spinning in the wake of crippling explosions.

Hatches rumbled closed across view and gun ports; the ship swung hard astern as the Crusader’s vessels first sighted, then moved to intercept them.

Deep in the ship Zarathustra bore the Key of Assai towards the sickly green light of a stasis chamber. It was fighting him again now, with fury and desperation, a wild beast in sight of its cage. Each step felt a league in distance. Each heartbeat was a season of war.

The key shrieked, vibrating through his mind, his body, his entire being.

“Silence,” he spat, and tossed the key into the chamber.

A servitor triggered the rune panel to the side of the portico, and the key hung, suspended in the glowing light of a single drawn-out moment. The key’s voice was gone from his mind suddenly, and Zarathustra collapsed against a railing and sank heavily to the floor. All his aches and weariness fell upon him at once. His triumph glowed like an ember in a cyclone of pain.

“Transitioning to the warp,” Malkin said in his ear, and the vessel shuddered in confirmation. It immediately began to roll in some immaterial tempest but Zarathustra barely noticed.

He spared a thought for the last of his Confrontation Conclave, and Auguste’s beleaguered force. The Captain was resourceful, his men skilled. They would survive, escape that forgotten world in time.

His own men would understand, he knew.

Zarathustra triggered his vox-comm to hail the bridge. His voice was a whisper in his ears.

“Malkin,” he said, “instruct the navigator to set a course.

“Take us to Galadrian. To Galadrian and the Palace of Woe.”

END