Waking Dogs Part 4: The Butcher's Bill

(Previous installations of this story can be found at the following links: Part One, Part Two, Part Three.)

Explosions rocked the cratered boulevard, plumes of fire blooming in the dying light of the setting sun. Weapons discharge lit the night, the red beams of hot-shot las rifles punctuated by the searing light of plasma blasts. Grenades arced gracefully through the air, their blasts sending stone shrapnel and broken masonry flying in all direction. Through the smoke and ash came towering figures, their limbs pumping as they charged, roaring and laughing as they sought slaughter. They had the forms of men, but twisted, grown huge, and clad in blocky, bulky armor that was bare of any sigils or heraldry. Their weapons barked, returning fire as mass-reactive rounds stitched explosions across the buildings to either side of the main thoroughfare, and reduced many of those who thought themselves safely behind cover to little more than splatters of gore.

“Contact,” Kira grunted, the Catachan shifting the melta gun on her shoulder. She fired, baring her teeth in a snarl as the devastating blast of energy slammed into one of the figures, shearing off its arm at the elbow and reducing the armor on one side of its body to molten slag. The thing turned, brought up its weapon one-handed, and fired. Kira managed to duck out of sight fast enough that the shells meant for her head impacted the wall behind her, the ferrocrete buckling as if it had been hit by a giant’s hammer. “Biscopia, what in the Emperor’s name are those bastard things?”

“Initial hypothosis appears incorrect,” the tech priest said, their transmission interrupted by the high-pitched whine of a las cannon. “Subjects display incongruous traits. Further analysis required.”

“You can dissect one of them if we manage to kill them,” Hargrave snarled over the line, the inquisitor’s voice cold as ice as she triggered her plasma cannon. “Krieger, status.”

“Null, inquisitor,” Krieger said, the snap in his voice almost covering up the amount of pain he was in as he depressed the trigger on his hellgun. The hot shot las sent a bolt toward one of the power armored things, but instead of taking it through an eye lens, the target moved at the last second, the discharge scorching a groove along the side of its helmet. “Whatever is dampening my abilities... is still in place.”

Hargrave snarled, flicking the plasma cannon to the maximal setting and firing at the exposed fuel tank of a vehicle that had been placed as a barricade. It detonated in a chain reaction that caught several of the charging creatures in its blast radius, enveloping them in burning prometheum while the vehicle’s armor plating was turned into deadly projectiles. Several of the giants were thrown to the ground, but most were on their feet a breath later. Their armor was cracked and broken, and blood ran freely from visible wounds, but they took up their battle cry with renewed gusto before advancing once more.

The inquisitor glanced up, past the broken spires of the residential quadrant of the hab district where her forces had laid an ambush. Looming above them were the smog-choked stacks and thrumming machinery of the manufactorum that had been the subject of her investigation. She had known this was a gamble, but she’d thrown the dice anyway. And as she heard the screams of the troops she’d commandeered for this mission, she made peace with the fact that it seemed her luck had finally run its course.

It had all begun with incident reports, and a pattern. Drukhari raiders had been hitting fringe imperial worlds, killing anyone who stood against them and taking a harvest of humans from what was left of the population. It was devastating for those worlds, but the Administratum had performed the cold calculus of cost analysis, and the results were not good. The worlds were simply too far away, and provided too little to the Imperium, to justify the toll in personnel and munitions it would cost to replenish their planetary defense forces, to say nothing of the additional forces it would take to wipe out the slavers. It was a problem, and all of the incidents were recorded, but nothing had been done.

Until one of the ordos had taken notice.

An inquisitor named Quintus had sent a coded message to Hargrave, detailing what he believed to be a much larger operation. While some of the dark eldar ships had returned to their hidden cities, many others had instead taken various routes to a forgotten planet. According to imperial records, Delann-17 had been a mining world, but it had been abandoned centuries ago for unspecified reasons. Quintus had sent picts and scans, showing the main settlement on the world, a defunct manufactorum surrounded by rotting hab districts, was active again. More than active, it appeared to be the destination for the human cargo the drukhari had stolen. The final images in the communication showed what was clearly a dark mechanicus operation, but more than that, he’d captured several images showing multiple astartes in red armor bearing a distinctive helmet shape.

Quintus believed this planet was being used as a site to turn stolen children into converts for a World Eaters warband to replenish their ranks, and he thought it likely the humans found undesirable for the chaos-corrupted marines would be remanded to their mechanicus allies to do with as they pleased. Quintus had signed off with a unique call sign and passcode, instructing Hargrave to summon the Deathwatch kill team attached to that call sign, and to bring them with her to Delann-17 along with any other forces she could muster on the way.

Hargrave hadn’t wasted any time. She had few allies and fewer friends among the Inquisition, but Quintus had proven himself to be both over the years. That was why the inquisitor had opted for speed over firepower, taking the fastest ship she had access to, and sending messages ahead of her. Planets in her path had fuel and armaments ready, as well as detachments from planetary defense forces and regular astra militarum garrisons who had been all too willing to assist an agent of the throne. Kill Team Errant met up with Hargrave en-route to Delann-17, and the marines were rapidly briefed regarding their mission. Hargrave had been so determined to make planet fall that she hadn’t bothered with stealth, landing and deploying her forces in and around the abandoned hab district that had once housed workers. The plan had been for her to draw the attention of the traitors, giving the kill team a distraction so they could infiltrate the manufactorum, sabotage it, and locate Quintus… whatever state he happened to be in.

It had been a streamlined, functional battle plan… and like all battle plans, it stood no chance of surviving its first brush with the battlefield.

The first complication was the automated outer defenses, which managed to cripple one of Hargrave’s landing ships, sending it wildly off-course into a crash landing. Heavy barrages from the inquisitor’s gunships destroyed the weapon emplacements, but they took far more punishment than expected, eating through onboard ammunition. Down a prong in her approach, Hargrave had barreled forward toward the staging grounds she meant to claim and hold. That was when Krieger had started screaming, clutching his head as he strained against his jump harness. Biscopia had needed to sedate him temporarily, and when he’d swum back to consciousness they had already touched down, and begun digging into their position.

In between ragged breaths, Krieger explained there was something deadening his psychic abilities... something that seemed to blanket the entire area. In a single moment, one of Hargrave’s most potent weapons had been reduced to nothing more than a foot soldier by a catastrophic miscalculation. Worse, before Hargrave could properly consider whether to retreat and regroup, hostile forces were en route to her position. They’d had no choice but to stand and fight… but as Hargrave squeezed the trigger again, and again, the plasma weapon’s whine growing more distressed with every shot fired, she had to wonder just what kind of abominations they were fighting against. Her battle lines were collapsing, and the colossal horrors had waded through every contingency she’d managed to put in place. Crack mines, auto turrets, and tripwire booby traps had slowed them, and even managed to kill a handful, but it wasn’t enough. Hargrave snarled a prayer to the God Emperor between her clenched teeth, and flung her weapon out the window she’d been firing from. The smoldering cannon arced, hit the ferrocrete below, and overloaded in an eye-searing blast. The inquisitor snatched her sidearm, but as she slitted her eyes against the exploding plasma core, she saw something else… something that hadn’t been there before.

A line of figures were closing on the rear of the enemy position. They were nearly as big as the things that had charged forward, and they were also clad in power armor. That was where the similarities ended, though. The giants that had first attacked the inquisitor’s forces were like a storm, howling and bellowing, firing their weapons and crashing into positions and vehicles for the sheer joy of the destruction they caused. They were untethered and undirected, which was the only thing that had allowed this many of Hargrave’s forces to keep drawing breath. These other warriors were different. Every movement was smooth and fluid, and they possessed an economy of motion that made them difficult for the eye to follow. Their pauldrons and helms were a dirty white, and the rest of their armor was painted a blue that was nearly gray. A rampant hound reared on their left shoulder guards, a bright blaze of red against their otherwise muted colors.

They were astartes. The inquisitor didn’t recognize their chapter badge or color scheme, and they let out no battle cries, but she knew the Emperor’s angels when she saw them with her own eyes.

Hargrave had barely had time to register the newcomers before they fell on the hulking brutes that had shredded the inquisitor’s forces. The space marines moved like an avenging wind, cutting through their targets with a swiftness and a savagery that was breathtaking to behold. Bolter rounds detonated, chainswords revved, and the stink of power fields searing flesh joined the smells of propellant and blood that filled the air. The roaring humanoid things wheeled to deal with the new threat, laying about them with fists and blades, their bodies a blur of motion that left splintered armor and sprays of blood in their wake. That was when Kira howled a war cry that could be heard over the exchange of fire, blasting into the backs of the ironclad monsters that had slain so many of her comrades. Those who were still alive joined her, and soon the invading force was caught in a pincer maneuver between the inquisitor’s vengeful forces, and the savage brutality of the mysterious astartes.

“Biscopia,” Hargrave asked, trying to clamp down on the hope fluttering in her chest as she aimed her weapon and fired at the rear knee joint of one of the enemy warriors. “Who are they?”

“Not enough data has been gathered, Inquisitor,” Biscopia stated, the discordant clacking of their injured legs loud enough to be heard over the transmission. “This hardly seems the time for analysis-”

“The astartes, Biscopia,” Hargrave growled, ducking return fire that splintered the windowsill she’d been standing at a moment previously. “Who are they!?”

The question was barely out of Hargrave’s mouth when everything went silent. The inquisitor touched her ears, looking to see if they were bleeding, but nothing appeared to be wrong with her. She inched up out of her crouch, peering through the hole that had been a window before the firefight had begun. The courtyard was full of smoldering fires, smashed vehicles, and corpses. Most of those corpses wore the unpainted armor of the mutant creatures that had first attacked, but Hargrave spied several astartes mixed in among the dead. The remaining space marines, perhaps a dozen of them, stood above their fallen foes, reloading their weapons, and scavenging the dead. Hargrave watched them redistribute magazines of ammunition, grenades, and more in total silence. They may have been using an internal communication network, but it was also possible they had simply fought together so long that they could read treatises in one another’s body language. It wouldn’t be the first time the inquisitor had seen such a bond among their kind. As Hargrave watched, a marine with a single red vambrace detached himself from the others. His armor was scarred, and blood spattered the side of his helmet. A bolt pistol was mag-locked to his armor, and he held a power sword in one, gauntleted fist, the power field still snapping and cracking like a half-tamed thunderbolt. He surveyed the survivors, taking them all in with a single sweep of his head.

“Who commands here?” the marine demanded. His voice was a low growl, tight with a barely-controlled emotion in it that Hargrave couldn’t put a name to.

“I do,” Hargrave said, her voice ringing out as she stood.

The inquisitor made a show of holstering her weapon before she tossed down a rope line. Hargrave rappelled down the cratered wall, reaching ground level in a handful of seconds. By the time her heels hit the ferrocrete, all the astartes had gone still. Each of them had their hand on a hilt, or their finger near a trigger, their bodies filled with a tension like hunting hounds waiting for their master’s command. Hargrave ignored them, closing the distance to the commander.

“Inquisitor,” Biscopia hissed through her microbead.

“Not now,” Hargrave said.

“Inquisitor, this is important,” the mechanicus insisted, pushing past Hargrave’s objections. “Those markings belong to the Twelfth Legion!”

Hargrave’s steps didn’t stutter, but her stomach clenched hard enough she could feel acid burning at the back of her throat. She had delved into the unredacted histories of the Imperium, and she had seen the records of the first traitors. She had read the accounts of their deeds, and seen the testimonies of Remembrancers allowed to travel on the Great Crusade. As she looked at the gathered astartes, she recalled the names they had been given that had not been spoken in ten thousand years. The Conquerors. The Teeth of The Bloody 13th Expeditionary. The War Hounds.

Those thoughts raced through Hargrave’s mind in the half dozen steps it took her to draw even with the commander. The inquisitor drew herself up before the lead marine, clasped her hands behind her back, and raised her head to look into his red eye lenses. He looked down at her, and the inquisitor could feel the weight of his gaze settle on her like a set of cross hairs.

“Why are you here, Inquisitor?” the space marine asked after a pregnant pause.

“You know who I am?” Hargrave asked, internally wincing at the note of surprise in her voice.

“I know what you are,” the astartes said. “Just as you know what I am. Answer my question. I will not ask you again.”

Hargrave squared her shoulders. She cut her eyes to the remaining astartes, and recalculated her odds. She knew in that moment that her fate, and that of her remaining forces, hung on what she said next. She sucked in a sharp breath, and let it steep in her lungs until it began going sour. When she finally released it, the truth tumbled off her lips. Or enough of it, at least.

“A fellow inquisitor sent for my aid,” Hargrave said. “He followed a slaver route here, and found humans being trafficked to heretical mechanicus forces working in cooperation with traitor astartes. We came here to destroy their operation.”

The commander stared at her for one heartbeat, and then another. His vox crackled, and a series of short, sharp barks issued from the grille. After a moment, Hargrave realized the space marine was laughing.

“One inquisitor jumps into a dog pit, finds his teeth aren’t sharp enough, and sends for another,” he said, an edge of contempt in his voice. “And you rush in, half blind and cocksure. I expected better from the Sigilite’s lackeys.”

Bile rose up Hargrave’s throat, and she felt her upper lip drawing back from her teeth, but before she could unleash the invective brewing on her tongue, the astartes switched off the power to his blade, sheathing it in a single, fluid motion. The sudden silence was like cold water down the inquisitor’s back. The commander turned from her, and pointed to two of his men, then one of the enemy dead. Without question or hesitation the space marines slung their weapons, bent, and hefted the body between them. They carried it forward, then dropped it at the commander’s feet. He turned his head back to Hargrave.

“What do you see, inquisitor?” he asked. The mockery was gone from his voice, but in its place there was a low growl that made her think of the rumble of a chain blade just before it roared into life.

Hargrave tore her gaze away from the astartes, and looked down at the corpse that had been unceremoniously tossed at her feet. It was missing an arm and a leg, the armor melted in some places, and blown to scrap by heavy weapon impacts in others. A curtain of blood ran out from under the ruined gorget, the fluid a thick, bubbling black. The head lolled unnaturally, barely held on to the trunk of the body by a few remaining cords of gristle. The inquisitor sniffed, and crouched as she began her examination.

Up close, she could see the thing was even bigger than she’d thought from her shooter’s roost. Hargrave estimated the figure was just over ten feet tall, and the body alone likely weighed over a thousand pounds. Turning her attention to the armor, she found it looked oddly primitive. It had similar lines and structure to astartes power armor, but it lacked the finer craftmanship and obvious care of the suits created by the tech adepts of Mars, or produced on their forge worlds. Hargrave frowned, and knelt behind the corpse’s head. She gripped the helmet, fingers hunting for the locking mechanisms. She eventually found them, grunting as she forced them into place, and carefully removed the dented and abused head cover.

The face beneath the helm was a twisted, ruined thing. The skin was stretched unnaturally over a bulging skull, and the jaw had grown so large it could no longer close, the mouth stuck in a perpetual half-scream. The nose was a mass of scar tissue, and the forehead was crisscrossed with the purple lightning bolts of stretch marks as if the bone beneath had undergone rapid, unexpected expansion. One eye bulged from its socket, malformed and misshapen… but the other was a green the color of sea glass that stared unseeingly at the empty, blasted sky.

“He’s young. Difficult to tell how young. The armor is heavy, advanced in some ways, but outdated in others. It looks rushed. Mass-produced.” Hargrave laid the head down as gently as she could before she craned her head back to look at the commander. “I’ve never seen an astartes that looked like this. So what caused it? Gene seed mutation? Chaos corruption?”

The commander didn’t answer. Instead he lowered himself to one knee, and dug his fingers into a gap in the side of the armor. He pulled. Ceramic layers cracked, and the locking mechanisms twisted as the breast plate split, fractured, and came away. Hargrave raised a hand to guard her face, lowering it after a moment. Beneath the broken armor was an equally broken body. Masses of muscle bulged, stretching the skin until it was parchment thin. Dark veins tunneled beneath that skin like the roots of some bizarre plant, stretching in ways they shouldn't have. Tumorous growths distended the belly, crawling down over the hips. Bones jutted through the flesh like terrible teeth, growing in haphazard patterns as they pierced the body’s surface. The inquisitor’s gaze narrowed.

“What don’t you see?” the commander asked.

“There’s no body glove,” Hargrave said, sweeping her gaze over the exposed torso. She touched the wound in the neck, peeling the flesh aside. She blinked, her forehead furrowing. “There’s no armor ports. No black carapace beneath the skin. How the hell do they move that damned fast without it?”

“Raw power,” the commander said, spitting out the two words like they were a curse. “There’s no black carapace. No chaos sorcery. No gene seed.”

“How is that possible?” the inquisitor demanded.

“Because this is not an astartes,” the space marine growled.

“Then what, in the Emperor’s name, is it?” Hargrave snarled, leaping to her feet.

The commander stood once again, towering over Hargrave. He reached up to his head. The mag locks whirred beneath his fingers, and the gas ports hissed as the internal environmental systems disconnected. He removed his helmet, and met the inquisitor’s gaze.

Hargrave had encountered dozens of space marines during her service. She had beheld the beauty of the Blood Angels, the determination of the Imperial Fists, the nobility of the Ultramarines. Once she’d even witnessed the ferocity of the Vlka Fenryka. She had felt the power of these transhuman servants of the Emperor, and she knew first-hand the things they were capable of. But as she stared into the face of the astartes before her, Hargrave felt the steel in her spine start to buckle. It wasn’t the scars that seamed his cheeks and brow, giving silent testimony to a life of violence. It wasn’t the thick jaw, or the too-sharp teeth she glimpsed behind his lips. It wasn’t even the ragged mane of hair, and the glimmering strands of something implanted in his scalp. It was his eyes. They were the hard, cold blue of an uncaring sky above a war-torn world. They were eyes that had seen the death of dreams, and the murder of untold millions.

It was the inquisitor who looked away first.

“A pale imitation of a forgotten time,” the commander said, practically spitting the words into the broken, blood-soaked pavement.

“A pale imitation?” Hargrave asked through numb lips.

“If these were what they appear to be, then a squad of them could have wiped all of us out without a single casualty,” the commander said, his lip curling as he looked at the corpses all around. “But these? They were raw, untested, half-trained, and diluted.”

Hargrave turned her head, surveying the devastation the monstrous mutants had wrought in the space of only a few minutes. She could hear the muted cries of the wounded in the damaged structures around her, their pain all the louder for the silence of the dead. Fear hung thickly in the air, and it tasted metallic in the inquisitor’s mouth. She looked back at the commander. He was already watching her, his expression inscrutable.

“And how many of these things are there?” Hargrave asked.

“Hundreds,” the astartes said, shrugging one shoulder. “Thousands. No way to know for certain without a head count.”

“And what was your plan to deal with them, exactly?” Hargrave asked, feeling the banked fire in her belly start to flare again. “Just you, and this pack of hounds, against an army?”

For the space of a long breath, Hargrave felt she’d overstepped. The space marines all turned their focus to her, the servos in their armor grinding. Her heartbeat spiked, and the skin between her shoulder blades puckered with gooseflesh. The commander’s eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared as he drew in a long, slow breath. A vein throbbed along his forehead, and his jaw creaked as he flexed it. Then he smiled, baring his teeth in a feral expression.

“What was yours?” the astartes asked.

“And why should I answer that, legionnaire?” Hargrave asked.

“Because we saved your hides,” the astartes said. “And because a second wave is no doubt inbound to this position. So if you would have us as allies then speak, and speak fast.”

The words had scarcely left his lips when a strident alarm screamed into the bruising, purple sky. The crying claxon was soon joined by the far-off roar of engines, and the rumble of heaving gates. Hargrave glanced toward the manufactorum, then back to the commander. She made a decision.

“Krieger,” Hargrave said, touching her microbead to switch the channel. “Attend me.”

The young man in the too-large greatcoat practically leaped out of cover, slinging his rifle as he broke into a crippled trot. He reached Hargrave’s side quickly, clicking his heels together as he stood ramrod straight. Veins pulsed across his forehead, and pain sweat darkened the hair at his temples, but he clenched his jaw, and refused to acknowledge the agony he was in. The commander looked at the dirty young soldier, evaluating him for a long moment. Krieger returned the astartes’ gaze without flinching.

“The inquisitor placed her trust in you?” the commander asked.

“She did,” Krieger said. The words were crisp, and measured, though the effect was somewhat ruined by a slow stream of blood that began to run from one of his nostrils.

“You’re a psyker,” the astartes said. It was a statement, not a question.

“I am,” Krieger replied. “How did you know?”

“It’s the only way a single soldier could make their commander this overconfident,” the astartes said. “Our enemy is prepared for psykers. Khorne’s hatred of warp witchery was one of the things that sent him into the embrace of the blood god in the first place.”

“If you can destroy the countermeasures, Krieger can bury the whole lot of them beneath that manufactorum,” Hargrave said.

The commander seemed to ponder that for a moment. He glanced back at his men, and at the screaming fortress that darkened the sky. He returned his gaze to Krieger. The young soldier had not moved so much as a muscle.

“How certain of this are you?” the commander asked.

“I wagered my life, and the life of another inquisitor on it,” Hargrave said.

“I was not asking you,” the astartes said without turning his head to the inquisitor. He inclined his head toward Krieger. “I want to hear it from your own mouth. Can you do what she says you can do?”

Krieger tilted his head back, and sucked in a breath. He stared at the commander with a gaze made of hammered iron, and in those eyes the astartes saw a will that was caged, but far from broken. The psyker sniffed back his blood, and spat it contemptuously to the ground.

“I can, and I will,” he said.

The commander said nothing for another, eternal moment. The silence was filled by the bellowing of activity, which was soon joined by the roaring of engines. They were far off for now, but that wouldn’t be the case for long. His men held their positions, communicating in truncated hand signals as they set a perimeter and kept watch both on their back trails, and on what remained of Hargrave’s forces.

“Do you have a name?” the commander asked.

“The inquisitor calls me-” Krieger started, but the astartes cut him off.

“I didn’t ask what she calls you,” he said. “I asked if you have a name.”

“No, sir,” Krieger said. He swallowed, and gritted his teeth as another wave of pain passed over him. “On my world, we are given no names until we earn them.”

The astartes leaned down, and rested his gauntleted hand on Krieger’s shoulder. It was a surprisingly gentle gesture, and would likely have been impossible for someone without the black carapace, and who hadn’t practically lived in power armor for centuries.

“If you live to see the end of this battle, I will give you one,” the astartes said, his voice low enough that only Krieger and Hargrave could hear him. After a moment he stood straight, and regained his former bearing.

“I need you to follow my lead,” he said to Hargrave. “You do not know the nature of the man who commands here. I do. Do what I say, when I say it, and we just might get through this alive.”

Hargrave felt her back bristling. Before her tongue could retort, she clamped her mouth shut, and jerked her head in a single, sharp nod. The commander slid his helmet on once more, sealing it in place. He bent, and picked up the discarded helm from the body at his feet, then turned, and tossed it to one of the other astartes.

“Audax, send a message through the command line in this helm, and patch me through to whoever answers,” the commander ordered. “Lions fall, hounds rise. He’ll know what it means.”

Krieger turned toward Hargrave, practically swaying on his feet. She didn’t return his look. The inquisitor gritted her teeth, and schooled her face. For the second time that day, she’d cast fate’s die. Now it was time to find out if she’d managed to fling herself and her retinue out of the frying pan, only for them all to land in the flames.

***

They heard the encroaching force long before they saw them. The roar of big-bore engines echoed through the ferrocrete canyons of the abandoned hab blocks, the rumble of chewing treads occasionally punctuated by the sound of something being crushed under the weight of the armored carriers. Tremors ran through the ground as the company drew closer, weaving through the wide streets in a steel net to surround the rendezvous point, ensuring there was no possible means of escape, the bright eyes of their searchlights pushing back the night. A black cloud seemed to move with them, as well. It was something felt more than seen; an oppressive weight that smothered the soul, and left the body feeling like it was drowning.

When the support vehicles were all in place, panting prometheum fumes into the air, a flare went up. The bright, burning red cinder rose above the rotting structures like a damned soul streaking for the sky. It was soon joined by three more. As the magnesium sparks fell, and flared out, three vehicles entered the ruined courtyard. They were ugly things; tread-mounted metal coffins that were all sharp angles and hard planes, topped by half a dozen bright, staring lamps. Heavy weapons were mounted atop the vehicles, adding a silent, brute threat to their advance. They were big for rhinos, the pattern bulked up and modified… but if they were designed to carry troops even larger than space marines, that was to be expected.

The armor fanned out in a semicircle, staring down at the sight awaiting them. A triple-deep line of prisoners, all of them on their knees with their hands behind their heads. And knelt before all of them, like a sacrifice, was Hargrave. The astartes who had come to their aid now stood around them in a loose circle, bolters at the ready… all but the commander. He loomed over the inquisitor, his gaze focused on the force arrayed before him.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Tension filled the air like the pregnant calm before a storm. One of the prisoners whimpered. Another whispered fervent prayers to the God Emperor. Someone threw up, the meager contents of their stomach splashing against the stones. A vox grille crackled, and all three of the rhinos spoke in a singular, slithering voice.

“What bites harder than a hound’s teeth?” the voice asked.

“Nails,” the commander growled. He disconnected his helm, pulling it away with a frustrated jerk, glaring at each of the vehicles in turn. “Enough riddles, Verus! Either lay on your triggers or speak to me where I can see you.”

The commander’s snarl hung in the air, momentarily eclipsing the grumbling engines. Then the rear hatches of all three vehicles snapped open, locking into place as restraining bolts slammed home. Armored figures disembarked, their heavy boots leaving impact craters as they spread out. They wore the same unpainted armor as the strike force whose corpses still littered the ground, but these ones were different somehow. They were focused where the others had been wild, and disciplined where the others had been frenzied. Each carried a crude power weapon in one hand, and bolt pistols rode in heavy weapon belts slung around their waists. Several held boarding shields that covered them from chin to boots. Once the cordon had been established, a heavy thud sounded from behind the leftmost rhino, and a figure emerged from behind the wall of armored bodies.

A figure wearing Mark V power armor.

The armor was a deep, crimson red, with gilded accents along the edges of the plates. The open jaws of the World Eaters adorned the left pauldron, but within the jaws were a pair of crossed lightning bolts. The old squad markings and sigils of rank on the knee pads had been painted over, and while the helmet bore the unique, sweeping horns the legion had become infamous for, they seemed somehow elegant on his helmet. The figure stopped in front of his men, and regarded the scene before him for a moment.

“Crixus,” the armored figure said, the name a dangerous purr as it slid out of the vox grille. “I’d heard you were dead.”

“Many have tried,” the commander said, his lips twitching back from his teeth in an attempt at a smile. “And many have failed.”

“So I see,” the vox grille crackled. The figure turned his head, looking over the gathered prisoners, and the astartes who stood guard over them. The prisoners looked away, or bowed their heads. The figure’s gaze lingered on Krieger. The young man’s jaw tightened, and a tremor ran through him. He bowed his head, and even allowed a whimper to slide between his clenched teeth. A laugh slid out of the armored figure’s vox. It was a cruel sound, and it grated on the ears like a poorly-oiled wood rasp. “So what is this, then?”

“A gift,” Crixus said, gesturing with one hand at the gathered prisoners. “I heard you were trading for flesh.”

“I am,” the voice said again, the helmeted head turning back to regard Crixus. “But I had these run to ground already.”

“We saw,” Crixus said, sneering. He flicked his eyes to the giants arrayed to either side of the armored transports. “It’s been a long time, but I still remember Cerberus. These things you’ve made aren’t thunder warriors.”

“Not yet,” the armored figure agreed. “But with every new generation, they are closer. Stronger, faster, more vicious, and most importantly, a little more stable.”

“Is that your plan, then? The Unification Wars all over again?” Crixus asked.

Laughter crackled from the vox unit. It was a rumbling growl full of malice and madness. The figure’s shoulders didn’t move, and its helmet didn’t swivel. He just stared at Crixus. Crixus stared back, unflinching and unmoving.

“I remember your stories, old man,” Verus growled. “All those tales about old Terra. The early days of the legion, like they were some golden age. I listened every time you and the other War Hounds talked, and I kept it all in a place the Nails couldn’t touch.”

“And this is what you did with it?” Crixus asked, jerking his chin at the semicircle of mutated warriors that hemmed them all in.

“I went back to the beginning,” the snarling voice retorted. “The cruelty of the Age of Strife was the whetstone that sharpened weapons that could have conquered the galaxy! The primarchs, the warp sorcery, the dark gods… meddling with that was what tied a millstone around the neck of the Imperium!”

Crixus’s forehead furrowed, and a surge of pain made his jaw tighten. The engine drilled into his skull was beginning to whine, the blood he’d shed no longer enough to lubricate the Nails. He could feel the other astartes beginning to slip as well. Their violence was a nearly tangible thing, and it was held in-check only by his self-control. So he set his jaw, and focused his eyes on the red lenses of the horned helm before him.

“You always were afraid of witches,” Crixus said, his expression and his voice both losing whatever rough camaraderie he had tried to fill them with. The false brotherhood had never reached within striking distance of his eyes.

“They didn’t go far enough at the Council of Nikaea,” the vox hissed. “A single psyker can be more powerful than a siege engine. Truly potent ones can wreak more destruction than an orbital bombardment! But they’re unreliable, and unpredictable. Worse, if they fail spectacularly enough, the warp will flood in through their minds, and wash away everything before it… which is why I removed those abominations from the board entirely.”

A movement over the crimson figure’s shoulder caught Crixus’s attention, and his gaze flicked up. A silhouette was hauling itself out of one of the roof access ports, and looking down at them. It was a boy, with a ragged mop of dark hair hanging in his pale, vacant face. An ugly scar marred the skin next to his nose, just above his eye, as if an ice pick had been driven up into his skull. He was slightly built, and dressed in a threadbare jumpsuit that was several sizes too large. It was impossible to determine his age, but he was still too young to shave. Crixus saw all of those things in the space of a single beat of his twin hearts, but even as those facts registered, something else dredged itself from the depths of his brain. It was a snarling thing, growling with untold millennia of feral instinct, and atavistic hatred. That part of him looked into the boy’s empty eyes, and it knew without words what he was looking at.

“You understand now, don’t you Crixus?” Verus hissed over the vox. That voice snapped him back to himself, and Crixus realized he had his hand around the grip of the bolt pistol mag-locked to his hip, his thumb poised over the polarity switch. Half the honor guard had reached for their weapons as well, hands cradling the butts of their sidearms. Crixus sucked in a breath, and forced himself to let go of his weapon. Some of the gray-armored warriors did the same, but even those who didn’t seemed to relax somewhat. Crixus tore his eyes away from the hollow, soulless thing that stared down from atop the personnel carrier’s cab. He realized that Verus was still speaking. “I have built an army with the power to break worlds in ways you and I could only dream of. And then my allies found a way to mass produce a shield to protect them from the one force that could stop their advance.”

“How many of those soulless things have you grown?” Crixus growled, forcing the words out of a throat that had gone tight with revulsion.

“Enough,” that venomous voice said. “For now, at least. We are nearly ready to take the field, and to begin claiming the resources we will need to prosecute a full campaign. A crusade even… just like the old times you once reminisced about.”

“Is there an offer woven into all that wasted wind?” Crixus asked.

Verus laughed again, but this time it was a low, strangled sound; something akin to the buzzing of death flies on a maggot-riddled corpse. “You never changed, Crixus. The Crusade, the Red Angel, a galaxy on fire for ten thousand years, and even now you bark and snarl when you stand outnumbered and outgunned.”

“If you wanted me dead, we wouldn’t be talking,” Crixus said, a touch of his old smile twisting his lips again. “You could have blown this place to rubble, once you had a fix on our location. Which means you want something.”

“Maybe I just wanted to look you in the eyes before I pulled the trigger,” Verus’s voice crackled over the vox.

“And what do you see?” Crixus asked, his smile widening even further.

The moment stretched out as every eye stared toward the astartes, and every ear strained. Several of the kneeling forces held their breath. Even the idling engines of the transports seemed to quiet somewhat, as if their machine spirits were capable of sensing the tension building in the air. The only one who seemed unconcerned was the blank, sitting on the roof, idly kicking his bare feet as he stared up at the crumbling spires of the shadowed hab block all around him, backlit by the world’s rising twin moons.

“Potential,” Verus’s voice said. “You would be a great asset on the battlefield, Crixus. You and your dogs. But I’m not a fool. You’ve bitten the hand that feeds more than once, and quite a number of our brothers lie dead at your hands.”

Crixus sucked in a breath to reply, but before he could speak, a thunderous roar split the air. A cacophony of howls followed, each trying to drown the others in sheer volume. The earth shook beneath their feet, and the manufactorum bellowed as it bulged and split from within. Explosions sent islands of shattered ferrocrete and twisted plasteel into the sky on wings of fire, chased by plumes of black smoke that sought to swallow it all down again. For a moment, every set of eyes turned toward the destruction… all but one.

“What-” Verus’s voice roared over the vox, but it was cut off by the sound of Crixus’s bolt pistol. The first round slammed into the left eye lens of the horned helmet, detonating in a blast that ripped apart the layers of ceramite, charring the flesh beneath as half the helmet tore away in a cloud of shrapnel. The figure stumbled back half a step, awkwardly raising a hand while it snatched at the weapon on its hip. Through the hole Crixus saw a malformed skull, the skin puckered into scarred whorls like the bark of some ancient tree. Bald, raw, and pulsing, a single, milky eye stared out of the ruined wreck. An eye filled with fear. Crixus pulled the trigger a second time, and this time the bolt round slammed into the flesh of the head, exploding in a shower of gore and brains. As the body teetered, Verus’s voice was still shouting through the vox, cutting in and out of a shower of static. The serpent had put one of his experiments in his war plate, and sent him out as a decoy. The sniveling pup hadn’t even had the courage to come face Crixus himself.

Chaos erupted. The genespliced mutants drew their cumbersome weapons, firing at Crixus and his men. Crixus snatched the tottering body of the corpse, dragging it closer as he used the Mark V suit of armor as a shield. A volley exploded against the body, sending layers of reinforced steel flying as each impact detonated. Several shots went wide, tearing into the ranks of false prisoners, who were all scrambling to their feet and sprinting toward cover, and the weapons cached behind that cover. The War Hounds returned fire, advancing as they held down their triggers. Bolter rounds arced over Crixus’s shoulder, passing near enough to his pauldron that the propellant left a dark, greasy burn across its surface. As the steady rain of fire slackened, Crixus shoved the corpse away with enough force to send it hurtling through the air, his gaze locking onto the pale boy. He was still sitting on top of the personnel carrier, but he was looking down at the unfolding carnage now, his lips slightly pursed. He looked like he was watching a pict reel.

Before Crixus could raise his arm again, the lab-forged monstrosities had drawn their blades and closed ranks. A crackling power sword swung for his unprotected head, and the old War Hound danced onto his back foot. Before he could retaliate, a shield hammered into him hard enough to rattle his teeth. He rolled with the blow, turning, allowing the force of the strike to dissipate. Bolter fire impacted the enemy on his left, throwing the rushing brute off-balance. Crixus snatched his power sword from his hip, driving it into the gap in the mutant’s defenses. He stabbed deep, twisted the blade, and then wrenched it out in a spray of blood and broken armor weave, pushing the hulking body away from him. Another filled the gap in an instant, blade arcing for Crixus’s throat.

“The blank!” Crixus snarled, parrying the first strike, and then a second that streaked toward him so fast he could barely see it coming, slashing out on little more than reflex and experience. “Kill the blank!”

Crixus ducked his head to dodge another blow, but not in time to completely avoid the weapon’s power field. A sharp, burning sensation tore along one side of his scalp, but it was drowned out by the sweet, soothing song of the Butcher’s Nails. Battle had been joined, and they were being fed once more. He snarled, ramming his power sword into the gap beneath his new enemy’s arm, ripping into his body cavity. Blood boiled to steam in an instant, and the air filled with the tang of hot iron as Crixus bared his teeth in a menacing predator’s smile. Another body fell, but there were more to take its place. Many more.

For just a moment, in the fraction of a second between attack and defense, there was a moment where Crixus could see the sky. He saw the boy backlit by one of the personnel carrier’s head lamps. Crixus raised his arm, his finger already tightening on the trigger. Before his hand could obey his thought, though, he felt a searing pain, followed by a cold, empty numbness. Before his eyes, Crixus watched his hand fall away from his wrist, still clutching his bolt pistol. Between his transhuman biology, and the searing cauterization of the power weapon, though, not one drop of blood fell from his wound.

More blades sang through the air, a counterpoint to the frenetic beat of Crixus’s hearts, and the roaring of the Butcher’s Nails. He parried again, twisted away, and even hammered at the hands and guards behind the weapons, but there were too many of them. A low slash tore away the armor at his knee, crippling the joint beneath as flesh and bone ruptured. As he slewed to one side, he managed to catch another strike with his upturned blade. A moment later, though, Crixus felt white hot agony as his good arm was wrenched at the shoulder, and something inside his body and his armor alike tore with a rending shriek. Strong hands grabbed him, forcing him upright once more. He caught a glimpse of an upraised sword grasped in both his enemy’s hands, prepared to descend on him in an executioner’s strike.

Crixus drew a breath, and threw himself forward, spewing a hissing globule of disgusting, black ichor. It flew past armored brute’s shoulder, arced through the air, and struck the blank full in the face. The boy didn’t even have time to scream as the excretions from the Betcher’s gland ate into him. His skin hissed and bubbled, the acid digging through the thin layer of muscle and bone, into the brain beneath. The blank sat for a moment longer, his hands halfway to his face, as if suddenly struck by a curious thought. Then he pitched to one side, falling to the shattered ground with a sickening crunch.

That sound was the last thing Crixus heard before his world went white. The power sword plunged down, parting flesh and muscle, cracking the bone shelf of his ribs, and burying itself deep. Crixus’s legs gave out, and he fell to his knees, hitting hard enough to crack the ground beneath him. Before his killer could retrieve his sword, though, there was an impact in the air… a soundless thunder that raised dust from the ground, and shook all those present to their bones.

For a moment, the entire battlefield paused. And in the space between one breath and the next, a hammer fell from the heavens.

There was no warning. No streaks of light through the shadowed sky. No thunderclap. One moment the gray-clad warriors stood victorious, pressing their advantage, and the next they were crushed flat under a pressure so great it splintered the earth, and shook the entire hab block to its foundations. Their power armor, thick enough to withstand anything short of a blast from a tank, crumpled like a tin ration can beneath a guardsman’s boot. Blood and shredded viscera erupted in high-pressure jets, followed by burning jets of prometheum that licked along the ground like snakes with broken backs. The invisible pressure refused to relent, grinding everything beneath it into a fine slurry.

973854-667342-Euclid stood from where he’d knelt. An unatural wind made his greatcoat billow around his calves, and his lips were pulled back over blood-streaked teeth. His eyes blazed with power, but even more than the psychic storm blowing through him was the rage that burned in his gaze. It was a rage that flew like a whirlwind, gaining speed and momentum as its maker poured more of himself into it. The raw terror of being on the firing line, determined to make his life count for something before he was saved by the grace of Inquisitor Hargrave. His burning hatred for the voices from the Warp that had the audacity to try to touch his soul, and who had screamed as he’d burned them away in the night. The fervor of his determination to be a shining light for his world that would burn so brightly that the God Emperor himself would look across the cosmos and acknowledge how hard they fought for him. All of these things, and more, he unleashed.

The telekinetic tsunami swept everything before it. The line of armor that tried to roll forward from the rest of the kill box was flung into the air like toys in the hands of an enraged child, crushed into balls of scrap metal. Shatterproof windows that had weathered centuries splintered, and the buildings around them crumbled like sandcastles in a gale. The alarms tried to sound once more, but they were drowned out by the oncoming tide of raw force sweeping toward the corrupt manufactorum. The hammer fell again, and blue light flashed brightly enough to sear afterimages into the eyes of the onlookers. Debris fell to the ground, its momentum sapped, but the boy from Krieg let out a low, guttural snarl. Drool dribbled down his chin like a beast, and he took one step forward. Then another, and another, each one slamming another pressure wave of power against the defiant structure.

If the manufactorum had been pristine, it might have managed to hold. But the explosions that had ripped through the building must have damaged its capabilities, because the shields flickered. It was only for a moment, but that moment was all it took for the wave to crest, and bear down onto the smoldering structure. Support beams shrieked like a chorus of daemons, and Cyclopean blocks the size of main battle tanks cracked and crumbled. Fault lines extended out from the damaged roof, and even as the shields tried to come back online, the massive edifice collapsed in on itself.

“Boy,” Crixus said, a wet cough sliding into the word. “Enough.”

973854-667342-Euclid stopped, and shook his head as if he’d woken from a dream. He wiped his chin, and stumbled as his focus splintered, and he let go of his stranglehold on the Immaterium. He turned toward the astartes, who should have been dead twice over. But Crixus was staring at him, blood running from his mouth and nose, his eyes boring into the psyker. He approached the astartes hastily, eyes darting over his injuries, inventorying everything.

“You live,” the psyker said, panting as he closed the distance. “Your injuries are serious. Hold on, if I can reach inside I may be able to stop the bleeding, and-”

Crixus’s arm shot out with blinding speed, and he cupped the back of the psyker’s head. Instead of squeezing, though, he drew the boy in closer. A fresh rivulet of blood ran down the War Hound’s armor, dripping from his breastplate to the parched ground.

“I have lived… long enough…” Crixus said, forcing the words from his dying body. “Your name… is… Sardane. It is the name… of a warrior… but not… a weapon.”

Crixus drew the boy closer to him, and pressed the psyker’s forehead to his own. His voice was quiet now, like an engine running on nothing more than raw momentum. There was desperation in his gaze, though, and the boy strained to hear him.

“Have the courage… to be more… than a weapon,” he said. “Do… what I… couldn’t…”

The boy reached up a tentative hand, and touched the back of Crixus’s head. Through the thick mane of dark hair, he felt the rough, leathery scalp, and something beneath it. Something ungainly and ugly that buzzed like a hive of angry, electric wasps beneath his touch. Crixus muttered something, blood spattering from his lips.

“What?” the psyker asked.

“Fight,” Crixus said, struggling to raise his head. His eyes were glassy, clouding over as death spread through him like frost, claiming all that was once warm and alive inside of him. “With… your… head. And… and…”

Whatever he had tried to say died in his throat. The space marine’s face went slack, and his jaw hung open. His blood flow slowed, then ceased as his two hearts went still. His fingers went slack, and his arm fell back to his side. The only thing that kept him upright was his power armor, and the downward-thrust blade pinning him in position.

The psyker slowly released the dead astartes, and stood before him. He straightened his back, drawing himself up to attention. He saluted, a gesture so rigid, practiced, and polished that it was sharp as a knife’s edge. He set his jaw, and refused to look away. Even as he felt his eyes sting, and told himself it was the dust of this world, he seared the image of Crixus into his mind.

“I will,” Sardane said to the old War Hound.

Hargrave’s microbead buzzed with an incoming message. The inquisitor tapped it, mastering herself before she answered. “This had better be good, sergeant.”

“Inquisitor Quintus has been recovered, and the facility was sabotaged,” Cadmus relayed. “Quintus is alive, but in dire condition. Two of my men are injured, but still able to serve. What in the Emperor’s name just happened?”

“Krieger did what I have trained him to do,” Hargrave replied. “Is your apothecary among the injured?”

“No, inquisitor,” Cadmus relayed, a slight frown in his voice. “Why?”

Hargrave surveyed the battlefield before her. She counted the number of dead astartes. Her lips spread in a tight smile, her eyes narrowing.

“Get to my position on the double,” she said. “I need him to harvest this gene seed before it becomes unusable.”

More Stories From Neal Litherland

If you enjoyed this tale, then please consider leaving a comment or a like, and sharing it with other readers! This is the latest installment of my Table Talk series, and if you wish to help me keep putting out new stories then consider becoming a Patreon patron, or just buying me a Ko-Fi as a way to put a tip in my jar for a job well done!

But if you're in the mood for more of my stories, check out some of the following examples!

- Old Soldiers: The Hyperion Conflict devastated the planet, but humanity survived. So, too, did the Myrmidon; genetically-engineered shock troopers who stood on the front lines of the war. Pollux has been trying to escape the horrors of that war for a decade, now, and he may be able to do so... until a shadowy conspiracy makes a move on him. Reassembling the remains of his old squad, he prepares to do what he was made to do, but there is a question in the back of his mind. Is this really happening, or is it all in his head?

- Where The Red Flowers Bloom: When Japanese forces sent a small garrison to an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, none of them expected to so much as see the enemy before the end of the war. But there is something on the island... something more dangerous than an entire fleet of American warships. Something that bullets simply will not kill.

- Broken Heroes: Rann was sent out to retrieve a lost weapon, but now he and the squad who came with him are surrounded by the colossal, insectoid creatures that claimed the forest. When a brave act crashes him through the ground and into an ancient bunker, he finds something far more potent than he could ever have hoped for... something that wants to finish the fight it started so long ago.

- Field Test: When Inquisitor Hargrave came to the world of New Canaan a few days ahead of an ork rok, she promised them a weapon that would destroy the greenskins. When that weapon was unleashed, though, none could have predicted just how powerful, or how dangerous, he truly was.

- Beyond The Black: The Emperor's Hand: Gav Smythe has fought daemons and traitors in the Emperor's name all his life... but this may be the greatest challenge the ogryn has yet faced!

- Gav and Bob Part V: Faith and Martyrs: The Imperium's bravest ogryn sits down to talk with a canoness confessor of the Adeptus Sororitas. She will weigh his sanity, and his soul, and Gav may just find some of the peace he didn't know he was seeking.

- Waking Dogs- A World Eaters Tale: For my fans of Warhammer 40K, this is a story I felt compelled to tell about one of the infamous World Eaters remembering who he once was.

- Broken Chains- A World Eaters Tale: The sequel to Waking Dogs, we see that Crixus is taking his personal crusade seriously. Word is beginning to spread of his deeds, and his old sergeant Atillus realizes that the time may have come for him to pay for the decisions he made so very long ago.

- Waking Dogs, Part Three: In this tale we see Crixus fight free of capture by his fellow World Eaters... and in the end, he becomes the leader of a pack of fellow renegades.