The Beast of Calth Read online

  ‘Guilliman’s blood,’ sighed Luta. ‘I never get tired of seeing this place. No wonder Lorz always wants to drive.’

  ‘It’s an impressive sight, right enough, but keep your eyes on the road,’ warned Lerato.

  ‘Yes, sergeant,’ replied Luta.

  Jacen, Lerosy and Yelzar pressed themselves to the armaglas blocks of the flanking guns, but the field of vision was limited, and he doubted they would see much.

  Lerato stood tall in the cupola, revelling in the view his position as tank commander allowed him. As far as the eye could see, the Bakkerian plain was a vast swathe of iron and steel structures, and might have been mistaken for a city in its own right. Starships like enormous cathedrals or slices taken from the flank of a hive city sat in the rippling embraces of vast suspensor fields. Towering vessels of war were becalmed on the surface of Calth, which would have been a first homecoming for many of the vessels.

  Vast hulls soared like cliffs, and broadside batteries like fortress walls tapered to vanishing points beneath the cold blue of the sun. Angled prows adorned with the symbol of the Ultramarines rose hundreds of metres into the air, and enormous winged angels reached out into the void like titans of legend.

  The Mechanicus engineers had expanded the scale of the shipyards far beyond the walls of Highside City to cope with the vastly increased workload that had come to Calth in the aftermath of the war. The two Chimera were tiny specks tracing a course between these star-faring colossi.

  The shipyards were working at full capacity, repairing damage the Bloodborn ships had wreaked amongst the fleets of Ultramar. Numerous vessels had been lost in action and many more would forever bear the scars of the fighting, which was only right and proper. The grand dams of the fleet were ancient hellions of war, and historians could trace their lineage back to their keels being struck by the residue of battle damage cut into their hulls.

  ‘That’s the Octavius,’ said Lerato. ‘And I think that one is Fist of Macragge.’

  He reached up and idly traced the path of a scar that followed the line of his jaw from his chin to where his ear had been. A fragment of shrapnel from an ork grenade had struck him in the head and ricocheted along his jaw before exploding out behind his ear. The medicae had managed to save his hearing, but there had been nothing left of his ear, and a sergeant’s pay didn’t allow for much in the way of reconstructive surgery.

  The roadway traced a laser-straight course through the heart of this incredible array of vessels beached like great ocean leviathans on the blue sands of a treacherous shoreline. This roadway had been laid down in the time of Guilliman, and no amount of pleading by the adepts of Mars would sway the lords of Ultramar to divert its course in the name of temporary convenience.

  To be in the presence of so many legendary vessels that had fought in some of the most infamous engagements in Ultramar’s history was humbling, and Lerato nodded respectfully to those ships whose names he knew. It was a sobering reminder of the price that had been paid to drive the Bloodborn from Ultramar’s worlds and a fearful warning of how close its armies had come to defeat.

  Amid the awesome silence of this city of fallen starships, Lerato bowed his head and prayed to the Emperor.

  The approach to the cave was a bad one, full of places an enemy might conceal himself or rig traps that wouldn’t be obvious until they were triggered. Dante waved Ophion and Priyam forward into covering positions, while Kain kept his meltagun trained on the most likely spot from which an enemy waiting in ambush might shoot.

  Selenus waited beside him, pistol and sword in hand, and Dante was glad of his presence. Combat squads wouldn’t normally include an Apothecary in their roster, but given the nature of the incident at Pelasgia Theta 66, Selenus had chosen to accompany Dante’s warriors.

  The tunnel was a kilometre from Aries Pyros and wound through enough convolutions to make the heat tolerable, but only just. Hazing clouds of steam rippled the air, and scalding gases vented from cracks in the hot rock. It was a good place to hide, lots of rogue thermals and electrostatic flares from the highly magnetised facility below. Yes, it was a good place to hide, but not good enough to evade the Ultramarines.

  Inquisitor Suzaku and her three soldiers occupied an outcropping of rock to the east of Dante’s position, overlooking the cave the Mechanicus had assured them was the source of the signal guiding the drone. On Dante’s orders, the Martian adepts hadn’t shot the intruding drone down and risked alerting the drone’s controller that he had been discovered. Instead, it had been left unmolested until Dante’s strike team were in position. Back-tracing the signal pulses from the drone to its controller had been a simple matter of triangulation, but Dante had ignored the adepts’ explanation, knowing it was irrelevant.

  All he needed to know was where the Iron Warrior could be found.

  Tactical schematics of the cavern’s topography appeared on his visor, displaying the positioning of his squad, Suzaku and the cohorts of armoured skitarii and weaponised battle servitors in the tunnels behind them. Dante would not call on those units if he didn’t have to; this was a battle to be ended by Space Marines.

  A wealth of tactical options flickered past his eyes on the visor display. Too fast for mortal brains to process, his enhanced cognitive abilities considered them all and discarded one after another until he came to a Codex-mandated strategy that allowed for the greatest chance of success while minimising the potential for loss.

  ‘You know there is no way to approach the cave mouth without giving our enemy plenty of time to ready himself,’ said Selenus as he received the tactical schematics from Dante.

  ‘I know that,’ said Dante.

  ‘He has picked a good place to hide,’ said Selenus with grudging respect for their foe’s tactical nous. ‘Just as well I am here.’

  ‘I will try not to take that as a comment on the competence of my warriors,’ said Dante, fixing his helmet in place. ‘Otherwise you and I might have to have words.’

  ‘It was not meant that way, and you know it.’

  Dante nodded and watched as Ophion signalled his readiness with a short vox burst. Priyam followed a moment later, and Dante flexed his fingers on the hard grip of his sword.

  ‘Inquisitor,’ said Dante. ‘Are you and your men ready?’

  ‘Affirmative,’ answered Suzaku. ‘We go on your signal.’

  Dante nodded to Selenus and said, ‘Courage and honour, brother.’

  ‘And to you,’ replied Selenus, gripping Dante’s arm. ‘Remember, this is a combat action like any other, it is not a personal crusade.’

  Dante shook his head and met Selenus’s stare. ‘Fighting the Archenemy is always personal, Apothecary,’ he said. ‘You of all people should know that.’

  He racked the slide on his pistol and checked the action of his sword was clear, rolling his shoulders to loosen the muscles. It had been too long since Dante had seen action, and the prospect of sending this Iron Warrior to his death sent a thrill of excitement through his body. Though some considered it unseemly to take pleasure in combat for its own sake, Dante did not count himself among them. To face the warriors of the Ruinous Powers and destroy them was something to be enjoyed.

  ‘Brother Priyam, Brother Ophion, begin,’ ordered Dante, launching the assault.

  Both Space Marines leaned out from their position of cover and opened fire on the cave mouth. The booming reports of bolter fire echoed from the tunnel walls, the muzzle flares lighting up the gloom of the cave with stroboscopic flashes. Pockets of gas burst into flames and burst with sharp whipcracks.

  ‘Now, Apothecary!’ cried Dante, vaulting from cover and running towards an outcrop of rock on the western wall. Inquisitor Suzaku and her soldiers sprayed the cave mouth with a hurricane of las-bolts from rotary cannons implanted in their arms as Brother Kain stood and took a heartbeat to aim his meltagun. It fired with a thunderclap and the mouth of the cave vanished in a rippling haze of superheated air. Suzaku’s warriors moved forwards yet again, keeping
a steady stream of high-energy beams playing over the cave mouth.

  An explosion boomed high on the eastern approach and Dante saw one of Suzaku’s men go down, his leg missing just below the pelvis. Dante instantly knew the man’s injury wasn’t the result of a gunshot, but a buried explosive. A second of Suzaku’s men went down as his fallen comrade’s weapon chugged a series of convulsive blasts and punched a trio of holes through his chest and neck.

  Another blast rocked the tunnel and a slew of giant boulders tumbled from the western edge of the tunnel above where Ophion and Priyam were in cover. The explosion filled the tunnel with rock dust, but Dante could see clearly through the billowing cloud. Ophion had rolled clear of the avalanche of boulders, but Priyam was trapped beneath tonnes of rock. Only his head, shoulders and one arm remained clear of the fall, and Dante’s fury rose to a new pitch of incandescence.

  He charged straight to the cave, but before he had covered more than six paces, a thunderous impact barrelled him from his feet. He hit the ground hard and rolled as the air above him exploded in a searing flash of vaporised air and superheated oxygen.

  ‘Melta blast,’ he hissed, as Apothecary Selenus rolled off him.

  ‘I told you not to make this a personal crusade,’ said Selenus, climbing to his knees and aiming his pistol at the cave mouth. The Apothecary banged off a magazine of shells and reloaded without ever losing his aim.

  Dante rolled back to his feet, aware that he had only just avoided death.

  ‘My thanks, Selenus,’ he said.

  ‘I do not need your thanks,’ said Selenus. ‘Just kill him. I need to get to Brother Priyam.’

  ‘Go,’ ordered Dante. ‘This one is mine.’

  Selenus ran to where the wall of the cave had collapsed, and Dante moved on, keeping his pistol aimed at the darkness of the cave mouth. The heat in the cavern made it impossible to see what lay within, but all thoughts of tactical coldness were gone, replaced with a bright lance of anger that needed to be driven home into the flesh of his enemy. Inquisitor Suzaku and her remaining bodyguard reached the tunnel wall at the same time as Dante, and he saw the same anger reflected in her curiously glassy eyes.

  ‘He is mine to kill,’ said Dante.

  ‘Understood,’ replied Suzaku.

  Dante spun into the cave, keeping low and moving his pistol left and right as he searched for a target. The cave was utterly black, but once out of the heat of the tunnel, his vision swiftly adjusted. He felt something beneath his boot and glanced down to see a battered meltagun emblazoned with the star of the Archenemy and trailing a number of copper wires from its firing mechanism. He crushed it beneath his boot and moved on at speed.

  Suzaku and her bodyguard kept pace behind him, and Dante fought to control the anger that threatened to cloud his judgement. The explosions outside had all been traps, pressure triggered and sequential, so it was likely there were others within the cave. He slowed his rapid advance and altered the spectra his visor was displaying.

  Sure enough, an invisible laser trip-wire crossed the width of the cave.

  ‘Ahead two metres,’ he hissed. ‘Laser trip-wire in the non-visible spectrum.’

  Suzaku acknowledged his warning and they stepped over the trip mechanism. The cave narrowed, and Dante knew this was the perfect place for another ambush or trap, and stilled his beating rage with a breath.

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Suzaku.

  ‘No, it’s clear,’ said Dante. ‘Follow me. Stay close and speak up if you see more traps.’

  Dante followed the winding neck of the cave until it opened into a bell-shaped cavern that dripped with condensing water the colour of cloudy milk. A lone figure in battered war plate of tarnished iron and chevroned with yellow and black knelt with his back to Dante, hunched over a machine that hummed gently and upon which a series of yellow lights were blinking.

  Dante didn’t waste any words and put three shots into the back of the figure’s head. Each shot was dead on target and the Iron Warrior was punched onto his front, his helmet torn from his head in a smoking ruin of torn metal.

  ‘Spread out,’ he ordered, moving towards the downed enemy. His pistol never wavered, and he felt a calming righteousness settle upon him at the sight of the fan of brain matter and skull fragments spread over the wall. The enemy warrior was dead, no question.

  Dante kicked the body over onto its front with a grunt of satisfaction. Little was left of the warrior’s head, and though the back of his skull was a hollowed-out mass of glistening matter, the detonating bolt shells had left his face relatively intact.

  ‘By their countenance shall you know them,’ said Dante.

  The Iron Warrior had been hideously ugly, his face a mass of scar tissue and contusions as though he had been on the receiving end of a beating administered by a Dreadnought. Sunken black eyes stared up from a face that was slack and pallid, and a tufted mohawk of hair ran the length of his head.

  ‘It’s over,’ he said, holstering his pistol.

  Suzaku knelt by the dead man, and he saw the look of consternation cross her face an instant before he realised what was wrong with this Iron Warrior.

  ‘This warrior has been dead for months,’ said Suzaku.

  Dante knelt beside her and lifted the Iron Warrior’s head, feeling the play of bones floating in flesh and the greasy texture of dead meat.

  ‘His neck’s broken,’ said Dante. ‘What in Guilliman’s name is going on here?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Suzaku. ‘It’s a bait and switch.’

  ‘A what?’

  Suzaku stood and began pacing the cavern. ‘Classic misdirection,’ she said. ‘He showed us something and we filled in the blanks. Of course, I should have known it the moment I heard there was a survivor. He fed Kellan to us, and we took the bait.’

  ‘What bait?’ demanded Dante. ‘What are you talking about? We have to protect Aries Pyros.’

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ said Suzaku. ‘Aries Pyros was never in danger. We said it ourselves, there was no way one warrior could hope to get in and destroy such a heavily guarded facility. Damn it, but I knew this was too easy. He gave me just enough, and I followed his breadcrumbs as though I was on rails! The attack on Pelasgia Theta 66 to draw me in, the barely-veiled threat he told Kellan, the timed explosion at the fuel depot. All designed to draw me down here.’

  ‘But why?’ said Dante. ‘Why go to all this trouble not to attack Aries Pyros?’

  ‘Because he just wanted us to waste our efforts by looking down here,’ said Suzaku. ‘He doesn’t care about Aries Pyros.’

  ‘Then what does an Iron Warrior trapped on Calth care about?’

  The answer came to them at the same instant.

  ‘He wants to get off-world,’ said Suzaku.

  Lerato coughed up a wad of pain and tried to pull himself along the cold floor of the vehicle hangar. His shoulder was a splintered mass of grinding bone, his right arm dragged uselessly at his side, and his neck was wet with blood. Yelzar was dead, her pretty face caved in by a fist that seemed to come out of nowhere, and Lerosy had been killed in the confused, panicked seconds that followed. He hadn’t seen what happened to Jacen, but the odds he was still alive weren’t good.

  They’d only just parked up in the vehicle hangar. Routine checks had seen them waved through the gates of Highside City, and coded catechism protocols gained them entrance to the temporary service yard where the regiment’s vehicles were being stored in hardened shelters on the edge of the landing platforms.

  Luta had brought the Azurite Fist to a halt, grateful to have reached home with no new dents or scrapes. They’d assembled at the rear of the tank, stretched and checked their weapons. Calth’s Light was parked up at the edge of the service yard, in the shadow of scaffolding hung with power couplings that sparked and flickered as rigging-borne artisans worked to refit damaged starships.

  They’d waited for Lorz to join them, but when he hadn’t shown, Lerato had walked over to the idling Chimera to tell him to
get a move on. The Chimera had been parked side-on to the wall, and as Lerato had rounded the vehicle’s flank, he saw the right-hand fuel drum was hanging open. Viscous fuel residue dripped from the gently flapping drum lid as it swung on its hinges and a huge handprint glistened on the side of the tank.

  Someone had been inside this fuel drum.

  But who could survive inside a fuel drum for so long without succumbing to the toxic fumes of vehicle petrochemicals?

  Even as the question formed, the answer immediately presented itself.

  A hulking figure in bare metal armour coated in oily residue appeared at the other end of the tank, one fist clenched and bloody, the other gleaming silver and mirrored. A pale blue augmetic eye stared at Lerato from a wide face that had once been cruelly handsome, but which was now simply cruel.

  The Beast of Calth…

  ‘Thank you for the ride,’ the Iron Warrior had said. ‘Not the most comfortable way to travel, but it got me where I needed to be.’

  Lerato had turned to run, but a thunderous impact hurled him to the ground with his shoulder exploding in pain. He’d fallen, his face slamming into the smooth rockcrete of the apron and cracking the cheekbone. Looking underneath the Chimera, Lerato saw Lorz lying at the front of the tank, his chest caved in and his mouth flapping for breath like a landed fish.

  He had to give a warning, but his right hand was useless. He rolled onto his side in time to see Yelzar, Luta and Lerosy die, bludgeoned into the ground without a moment’s remorse from their killer. He presumed Jacen was already dead. It was too much to hope the youngster had gotten away.

  It all happened so quickly there was little chance that anyone else had heard what had just passed. Lerato knew there was only one reason an Iron Warrior would willingly come to Highside City: to escape rightful retribution for his very existence.