Flesh of Cretacia Read online

  Warhammer 40,000

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  ‘I am sorry.

  ‘We have failed you, brother.

  ‘It should not have come to this. You have stood against the darkness, a shield against the horrors that call it home. You have killed and you have bled. You have endured where your brothers could not. You have given all that you have, sacrificed all that you are, and now nothing remains to defend against the violence raging inside.

  ‘Yet you are still my brother, and you do not deserve this. This is not your failure to carry.

  ‘We are children of war, baptised in the ashes of victory. We are our father’s second sons, and we are all the fiercer for it. His pain burns sun-hot in our veins, undiluted by old honour or tithe. We are him at his purest, his most wrathful. We took our rage and tried to blunt it on the stars themselves, waging a crusade as bloody and vicious as any that had gone before. We bled the galaxy without mercy. We bled ourselves without respite, battling almost unto extinction. But still we were not cleansed, our actions not our own. Still, the Thirst endured.

  ‘Cretacia was to be our salvation.’

  ONE

  PLANETFALL

  Tamir let Kesef fall. Pressing himself into the rockface as the youth tumbled past, he didn’t spare the other warrior another glance. The weak had no place on Cretacia. It was better for Kesef to die than live to infect the tribe with his wretched blood. Tamir reached for the next handhold and paused. Kesef wasn’t screaming. The warrior had not allowed his death to expose Tamir and the rest of the war party. There was honour in that, at least. When the hunt was over, Tamir would have Harut find Kesef’s body and burn it. He would not leave the youth’s spirit to be consumed by the earth.

  Ignoring the blood seeping from his palms and feet, Tamir swung his hand up and climbed. Around him, the rest of his warriors continued the ascent, scaling the mountain with renewed care. Tamir knew many more would fall before they reached the summit. The ranodon had chosen its lair well. The four-winged beasts nested atop the mountain’s peak, laying their nutrient-rich eggs away from the hungry claws of predators. The rock of the mountain was ragged, spiked like the hide of a snarling barasaur. It tore at his flesh and bled his strength. Yet he knew the climb was only the beginning; worse was to come. The steppes ahead were searing hot, boiled from within by the mountain’s fire. They would have to move fast or be cooked to the bone. Tamir dug his fingers into a fresh handhold and pressed on, protected by the vines of knotted scar tissue covering his body. The suns had died and been reborn many times since his first hunt, and he longed for the stabbing pain of his youth, the agony that lent haste to his limbs. Now he felt little but the beat of his own heart.

  Movement to the left caught Tamir’s eye. Harut had stopped climbing and was motioning to the sky behind them. Tamir followed the tracker’s gaze as a hail of flaming debris peppered his skin. He clung tight to the mountainside, turning away from the sky as the fiery hail raked his back. The stench of burnt flesh attacked his nostrils, making him scowl. Three more of his war party dropped from the peak, their screams drowned out by the growl of the fire-rock as it struck the ridge around him. Panic sent a shiver through Tamir’s body. If they had angered the mountain it would spew forth its rage and wash them from its flanks in a tide of flame. He looked to the summit, but the mountain was still, unmoved by their presence. Tamir cursed himself for being so foolish. They had performed the necessary rites, smearing themselves in the terracotta mud bordering the foothills. There was no way the mountain’s spirit could have sensed them. The sky-fire was something else.

  Tamir turned towards the sky as a cluster of larger rocks burned downwards, crashing into the forest beyond the next ridge in a halo of fire and dust. Dread knotted Tamir’s stomach and sent a burst of adrenaline through his veins. His village lay beyond the ridge.

  ‘Baktu! Baktu!’ Tamir shouted, ordering the war party down, descending as fast as he dared.

  The village was gone. The falling rocks had burned great troughs in the ground, scouring the wooden huts from the earth. Malyai trees lay flattened under one another, knocked over as if by a mighty wind. Flames shivered on the edges of their weeping leaves, burning away what remained. The bodies of Tamir’s tribe were gone, lost in the smoke that drifted from the dark ash carpeting the ground and hiding all traces of life. Tamir’s angular jaw remained unflinching, his heart as hard as the muscles that crowded his chest like boulders.

  He felt no sorrow for any individual. The fates were not always kind, and such was the way of things. But with the women and children dead, it would be many passings of the sun before the tribe was able to replenish those killed in battle – to survive, he would have to claim warriors from the neighbouring tribes. This was to be only the start of the bloodletting that must surely follow.

  Buried in a mound of churned earth, a single, huge rock shone as the sun’s light touched it. Tamir ran at it, intent on revenge. He would break it asunder and fashion a club from its remains. He froze, muscles bunching in anticipation as the rock hissed and spat geysers of steam. A moment later a section of the outer layer slid away, disappearing into an unseen recess. Several of Tamir’s warriors recoiled but the warchief held his ground, snarling as a green-skinned beast stumbled from the opening.

  The creature emitted a low growl as it collapsed to its haunches. Thick blood ran from a wound in its side. Bunches of taut muscle strained beneath its flesh, and alluded to the violence the beast was capable of. Knifed teeth sat below devil-red eyes.

  Tamir circled the beast. It stank worse than the sump bogs. Had it been upright he had no doubt it would have been twice his size, though small in comparison to the great beasts who had tasted his spear. Harut and Koi stepped towards it. Tamir read the desire to kill in their movements, and spread his arms to stop them. It had been his village to protect; the right to kill was his and his alone. Grunting their assent, the two warriors fell back among the others.

  The green beast’s breath came in laboured gasps as it tried to drag itself up. Snarling, Tamir threw his spear through the beast’s forearm, pinning it to the ground. The greenskin roared in pain, saliva dripping from its maw.
Tamir skipped forward, slicing off its hand with his blade, the sharpened stone cutting easily through the bone. The beast’s roar died in its throat, its voice robbed by pain as it fell onto its back. Blood enough to bleach a man death-white ran from the stump of its wrist, congealing the ash around it into a thick sludge.

  On a hunt, such a sight would have driven Tamir’s war party into a frenzy, eliciting a chorus of triumphant calls and whistles, but now they remained silent. A vengeance kill brought with it no prize, no spoils worthy of the cost.

  Studying every tortured spasm of the beast’s face, Tamir unhooked his club from his waist. He wanted to remember the kill.

  Spitting its hatred, the greenskin tore its arm through the spear, leaving behind a chunk of flesh, and threw itself at Tamir.

  The warchief anticipated the move, but the beast’s size belied its speed. Springing back, Tamir avoided its snapping jaw, but was caught by a swinging right hook. The greenskin’s fist thundered into his face. Tamir heard his cheekbone crack, wincing at the sound, though he had yet to register the pain. The greenskin pressed its attack, punching its stump into his nose. He gagged as blood and the stench of alien flesh filled his mouth.

  The beast’s resurgence was shortlived. Even its seemingly indomitable constitution couldn’t contend with the blood leaking from its wounds. Tamir weaved under another strike, rising to smash his club into the beast’s head. The blow shattered the greenskin’s cheek. It toppled to the ground mewling, its yellowed teeth scattered beside it. Tamir straddled the beast’s chest and hit its skull again and again, spurred on by the gore that spattered against his body. He continued to smash the beast’s skull into the earth until its body ceased twitching.

  Tamir’s breath came in frantic bursts as he staggered to his feet. His limbs were soaked in the creature’s life fluid, dyeing the mud caking his skin a dark, visceral red. Tamir straightened, armoured in crimson, and raised his weapon to the sky.

  ‘Ruta, ruta namuna, ar-a!’ Tamir shouted.

  Tamir’s kinsmen echoed his cry. They were the tearers of skin, the eaters of flesh.

  Death in the void left Amit cold.

  The Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers stared through his flagship’s oculus at the spread of plasma torpedoes flickering in the darkness, streaking towards the last ork hulk. The vessel was crippled, ruined by bombardment cannons and broadside salvos. Though he couldn’t see them, he knew a squadron of Thunderhawks burned ahead of the torpedoes, clearing a path for the deadly payload of ordnance, thinning out the debris fields that had hours ago been the ork fleet. The harsh flash of turbo-lasers and the pulsating flicker of lascannon fire were the only visible markers of their position.

  This was not battle as he knew it. His pulse was at rest, his blood cool in his veins, his heart inaudible over the idle purr of his powered warplate. He felt misplaced on the bridge of a starship. Naval engagements were detached... things, tightly regimented, logistical processes carried out by innumerable souls at the behest of unseen masters. Most who died in space did so out of consequence: incinerated by plasma fires, drowned in coolant, sucked into the freezing embrace of the void; they died almost by accident. Amit saw little difference between that and how men met their end in times of peace. Burned as their dwellings caught fire around them, drowned by untamed rivers, taken by the night’s chill; men had died in such ways long before they had joined their gods in the stars.

  Amit turned from the oculus and let his gaze drift around the vaulted bridge. Banks of lumens hung from the distant ceiling like giant teardrops, their crimson light bleeding down to slick the floor. Dozens of serfs in grey tunics attended to the clacking consoles that controlled the Victus’s systems, their sun-starved skin cast into eerie blue relief by the myriad auspex and data-viewers. It had been weeks since any of them had left their stations. Snaking tubes of bio-fluid and stimulants nourished the serfs’ gaunt bodies and kept their minds alert, while others carried away their excrement. Amit doubted any would survive past the next few hours. Mechanical servitors shuffled across the iron of the deck, incense wafting from their altered skin as they mumbled blessings in strangled snatches of machine code. Stuttering hololithic arrays in arched vestibules displayed representations of the eight strike cruisers that made up the rest of the fleet. Yet the bridge felt almost silent, the noise of the unceasing activity drowned under the background thrum of the flagship’s growling engines.

  ‘Impact imminent, liege.’ A tactical serf rasped an update as the torpedoes slammed into the ork ship, his voice hoarse from over ninety hours of continuous combat.

  Amit watched his quarry through the oculus, taking a final look before it was delivered to oblivion. Even by ork standards the ship was almost unrecognisable as something befitting that description. It was larger than any other he had ever encountered, a lumbering mass of rock and twisted metal, whose haphazard construction gave it no right to exist. Rocket boosters, exhaust vents, sensor spines and weapon mouths jutted from every angle imaginable. Its hull was formed from the ruins of thousands of vessels. Some Amit recognised as having once belonged to the Imperium, others were xenos in origin, all were mashed together with the same direct brutality with which the orks waged war.

  Amit starred at its undulating flanks as the torpedoes struck, wondering at the history sealed within the drifting mausoleum, at what pieces of the past they were about to destroy forever.

  ‘All enemy contacts vanquished, liege.’

  Shipmaster Neta Pia stood up from her command throne and grasped the support rail. It had been a long pursuit through the Corythos system and she had not left the chair for fourteen cycles. She stood out of triumph, out of respect for the Chapter Master, and for a chance to let the blood back into her legs. Neta looked to Amit and felt a shiver run through her spine. She would never grow accustomed to his presence. More god than man, he was as broad as any bulkhead and stood almost twice her height in his Terminator armour, a full head taller than Brother-Captains Barakiel and Ismeriel, who remained immobile on either side of him. Amit’s ancient warplate was as pitted and scarred as the flanks of the Victus, his eyes as ancient as the stars she sailed among.

  ‘Survivors?’ Even without his helm and the metallic hiss of his vox grille, Amit’s voice was like the idle growl of a chainsword.

  ‘Surveyors, wide spectrum scan,’ said Neta. ‘If even one of those green-skinned brutes survives, I will know about it.’ She snapped the order to the chorus of surveyor serfs and their attendant servitors.

  The lobotomised slaves trembled as data coursed through their binary veins. ‘Processing,’ they uttered as one.

  Neta listened to the stilted machine idiom as the surveyors gathered data. She had heard that on planets less feral than her own, servitor babble was considered beautiful – movements of techno-composers and machine adepts grouped servitors of differing functions and logic cores together, orchestrating their garbled speech into something akin to art. Neta ground her teeth. The stuttered consonants of the servitors did little more than tear at her nerves.

  A blinking rune on her console demanded attention. ‘Plasma trails and heat flaring suggest several craft made landfall, liege,’ the fleet captain said.

  ‘Show me.’ Amit faced the tactical hololith that hung in the air above the command dais.

  System of seven worlds. Uncharted. The words scrolled across the hololith as the planets came into focus. A moment later, clusters of pulsating orbs lit up across three of the planets, indicating where the ork engine signatures had been lost.

  ‘Here, liege.’ Neta brought the fourth planet into sharp focus with a subvocal command, letting the others dissolve into the background. ‘The majority of the orks fled to this world.’

  The hololith shuddered a moment as the ship’s cogitators generated an analysis of the planet. Neta clicked her tongue in annoyance as a slew of negative returns came back concerning land mass, population, atmospher
ic conditions, climate and mineral density. ‘Surveyors, I need more information.’

  ‘With regrets, captain, the world is blanketed in electrical storms and thick cloud. Our auspex is unable to penetrate further.’

  ‘Cunning.’ Neta gave a wolfish smile. She had long suspected the orks were more than barbarous raiders. The survivors sought to hide within the shroud of the mysterious fourth planet.

  ‘Recall the Thunderhawks.’ Amit’s voice ground out from behind her. ‘Have the company assemble in the hangar.’ He was leaving.

  ‘Liege?’ Neta asked as the three armoured giants strode towards the chamber’s exit.

  ‘Assist Brother-Captain Azazel in hunting the other orks, shipmaster,’ Amit told her without stopping.

  ‘Yes, liege.’ Neta stiffened with purpose and went to her duty, rallying the helm and comms to contact Azazel’s strike cruiser in the Flesh Tearers flotilla.

  ‘Shipmaster Neta...’ Amit stopped in the doorway, turning to look at her. ‘You fought well. Even after this long century of war, the fire still burns in your blood. Secure the system and I’ll make sure the cartographers hear of your name.’

  ‘Liege.’ Neta bowed. When the Traitor Legions had reduced her world to a scorched husk, loyalty to the Imperium had been welded to her soul. When the Blood Angels had liberated the planet, she had sworn an oath of enduring servitude. Until that moment she had wanted nothing more from her life than the chance to kill the enemies of man. But to be immortalised on a star chart, to be remembered until the suns burned cold... ‘By His blood, it shall be done.’

  Ismeriel waited until the door had closed, its barrel locks hissing into place, and he stood alone in the corridor with Barakiel and Amit before speaking. ‘My lord.’

  Amit faced him, finding the red orbs of Ismeriel’s bionic eyes as unreadable as ever. The optics glowered in the low light of the corridor, casting a ruddy sheen over the metal plating covering the left side of his face. ‘Speak your piece, Ismeriel.’