Flesh of Cretacia Read online

  Amit kept the vox channel open, listening to the hiss of static until silence killed the feed.

  ‘What now?’ asked Drual.

  ‘Keep firing,’ Amit ordered, his eyes fixed on the raktoryx as the Wrath’s weapons marred its hide. Had he been gifted with psychic potential, like the Chapter’s Librarians, his anger would have been enough to boil the creature from existence. He would have succeeded where the gunship’s weapons could not, and he would have gladly given his soul to do so. Not that it mattered. All he had to do was keep the creature in the valley. The killing blow was not his to deliver.

  Zophal swung his hand up and started to climb. Either side of him, the seven members of his Death Company did the same. Sixteen tribesmen were already metres above them, scaling the rockface with an ease born out of a lifetime of necessity. The Chaplain grunted in admiration. It was a testament to the humans’ spirit that they continued with such vigour even after what had happened in the forest.

  The march from the Flesh Tearers encampment had been brutal and punishing. The tribesmen had helped them to avoid the worst of the planet’s killer-fauna and mask their scent from the beasts roaming the underbrush. Still, the journey had claimed the lives of two of the Death Company and almost forty of the humans. But the real bloodletting had only begun when the fighting had ended, when the last of the squat creatures that had attacked them had been put to the blade. The tribesmen had been helpless against the blood-hungry fury of the damned. Zophal cast his gaze over the dried blood that crusted the Death Company’s dark armour, and sighed. The Thirst could not be denied.

  Pushing the massacre from his mind, he continued to climb. The tribesmen had extended their lead on the Space Marines, seeming almost ignorant of the scalding rock that blistered their skin and made him thankful for his power armour… though the warplate would offer him little protection from what was to come. Grimacing as a piece of rock crumbled away underfoot, leaving him hanging by his arms, Zophal wondered if the natives had any idea of what awaited them.

  ‘Incoming!’ Amit roared over the vox, breaking Zophal’s reverie.

  He looked over his shoulder to see a cluster of four-winged avians diving towards them. A stream of rounds flashed from the Mortis Wrath, cutting down a pair of the creatures and shredding the wings of a third, leaving it to spiral to the ground. The remaining avians let out a shrill cry and dropped into a steep dive.

  ‘Bring them death!’ Zophal cried, and kept climbing. He was not there to fight.

  The same could not be said of the Death Company. Their only purpose was to fight, to ensure the Chaplain survived to complete his mission. The frenzied Flesh Tearers opened up with their bolters, roaring in hate as the creatures began to bleed. The staccato bursts of their guns was like a rousing sermon, their guttural snarls a wordless litany of battle. Surrounded by the Curse’s chosen, Zophal felt renewed.

  He climbed.

  Spears whistled past him as the tribesman fought a desperate battle for their lives. Once again, the Chaplain found himself admiring the human warriors: they died with their honour intact. None screamed or cried out as they were torn apart by claws, plucked from the slopes and tossed to the crags below.

  He moved past a Death Company Marine who was pitting his chainsword against an avian’s beak. The Space Marine snarled, and dived towards the creature. It screeched as his chainblade tore through its wing, and tumbled from view.

  ‘The Blood keep you, brother,’ said Zophal as the Death Company Marine fell with it.

  ‘Cha-pla-in!’ shouted Asmodel. Like all the Death Company, the warrior’s vocal cords were ruined by constant snarling, and murdered the syllables, making his warning sound more growl than speech.

  Zophal heeded him none the less, rolling aside in time to avoid the bulbous tail that crashed into the mountain where his head had been a moment before. The quick evasion left Zophal hanging from one arm and without a foothold. He ground his teeth, searching for his next move as the beast prepared for another swipe.

  Before the Chaplain could react, Asmodel dropped down on the avian’s back. Howling, he punched his knife into the creature’s neck, using the blade for purchase as it tried to buck him off. He roared, snarling and spitting curses as he fired his bolt pistol into the creature’s back. Asmodel leapt from the avian as it began to fall, hands outstretched towards the rockface.

  Zophal found his footing and swung an arm out to grab Asmodel. He flexed his fingers, preparing to catch his battle-brother’s forearm.

  ‘Blood!’ Zophal roared as Asmodel’s vital fluid splashed across his armour.

  Another of the avians had swooped past and had ripped right through Asmodel with its claws.

  Zophal felt nothing but anger as another ident-tag blinked dark on his helmet display. He would kill every creature upon this world. He would spill their blood until the land was drowned in crimson.

  Climb. Climb. Zophal had to force himself away from the violence, resist the urge to help his brothers. ‘Climb, damn you,’ he snarled. Forgoing existing handholds in favour of creating his own, he smashed his fists into the rock, venting his ire and climbing as though altitude itself were his enemy.

  The summit of the volcano seemed to come from nowhere, jutting out from the cloud layer as unexpected as the glacial blue of the sky. Zophal crested the lip of the caldera and began his descent into its throat. He glanced back but could see no one following him. The Blood bring you peace, my brothers. Dropping onto a protruding slab of rock, Zophal scowled, blinking away the warning sigils that arced across his helmet display. The heat was so extreme that even the ceramite coating of his armour would not protect him for long. He grimaced as he felt his skin begin to blister under his armour.

  ‘Sergeant Manakel.’ Zophal opened a secure vox channel to the sergeant. There was still time for him to guide the fate of the Chapter one final time.

  ‘Chaplain?’ Manakel’s voice crackled over the comm, distorted by the thick walls of the volcano.

  ‘Seraph was a born leader. A gifted tactician. You are not him.’ Zophal paused a moment to let his words sink in. ‘He was a weapon, forged in the fire of battle. But weapons can never light the flame in the hearts of others. I have looked into your eyes, Manakel, and I saw braziers.’

  ‘I...’ Manakel stammered.

  ‘The tribesmen followed you because your fire ignited some primal belief within them. Channel your fury, Manakel, use it to lead the Chapter from the darkness, and to help those who cannot escape it to burn it away in the fire of battle. You must embody the Rage without ever succumbing to it. You must be a counterpoint, a deathly silence between each beat of the Chapter’s bloody heart. It is a task far less glorious than company command, and far harder. But there can be no victory without a tomorrow.’

  ‘I understand, Chaplain.’ Manakel’s voice was sombre, heavy with the weight placed upon him.

  ‘The Blood guide you, Chaplain Manakel.’ Zophal deactivated his comm and removed the front plate of his helm. He would look upon the volcano with his own eyes. Hissing lava licked the sides of the basin and spat up to threaten him. ‘You think yourself fierce, primal...’ Zophal coiled his rosarius around his clenched fist. ‘But you have no choice to be otherwise.’ A red light blinked on the fusion charge as he twisted the activation stud. ‘I choose to destroy, and in my destruction my brothers shall find salvation.’

  Zophal closed his eyes. ‘I am vengeance, I am wrath, I am death.’

  Sparked by the fusion charge, the volcano erupted in awesome violence. Rocks ripped from the mountain’s innards shot into the air on jets of superheated gas. Fire followed them, fountaining from the volcano’s tip and splashing down its flanks, a harbinger to the outpouring of lava: a tide of viscous magma thrust from the volcano by the explosions wracking its bowels. The bubbling fire-river burned down towards the valley and the raktoryx.

  ‘Rest well, brother. You h
ave earned your peace,’ Amit whispered, clasping his fist to his breastplate in a final salute to Zophal.

  ‘Get us out of here,’ Drual voxed Zadkiel as the Mortis Wrath shook under numerous impacts.

  ‘No!’ Amit snapped, his moment of observance shattered by the anger writhing inside him. ‘Hold our position.’

  ‘Chapter Master, we have to go.’ Zadkiel failed to keep the tension from his voice.

  The Wrath shook again, more violently this time. Thick ash and rock fragments choked the air, making it difficult for the pilot to keep the gunship aloft. The pyroclastic cloud was bleeding dust, cinders and pumice, blanketing the valley and staining the land ashen-grey.

  ‘No. We have come this far. I will see this creature die.’ Amit glared down at the raktoryx, ignoring the globs of lava that splashed over the Wrath’s hull.

  Below, the lumbering beast roared as tank-sized chunks of flaming rock punched into it. It turned to run from the encroaching lava, screeching as it lost its footing. The ground heaved upwards, displaced by the volcanic activity, trapping one of the raktoryx’s rear legs. The beast toppled forward, unable to keep itself upright.

  The burning river of molten rock wasted no time in claiming the stricken beast. The raktoryx bayed in pain and terror as the lava dissolved its legs from under it. Thrashing as if in the grip of a seizure, the beast fought in vain against the inevitable, tossing its neck from side to side as it sunk deeper into the flow.

  ‘Death is everything’s final limit,’ said Amit as the raktoryx vanished from view, swallowed by the volcano’s fury.

  ‘Let us not look too hard for our own limitations,’ Drual joked as he pulled Amit in from the ramp.

  Back inside the hold, Amit became aware of the shrill klaxon and the slew of warning runes flashing on his retinal display.

  ‘The engines are failing, the ash cloud is too dense. We need to pull back now, Chapter Master...’ said Zadkiel.

  ‘Go,’ Amit said.

  The volcano’s rage was brief but absolute. The lava soon cooled, leaving the landscape changed forever. The sea of fire had consumed the forest for kilometres in every direction, burning all organic matter. Only the highest peaks survived unscathed, protruding like miniature islands above the newly formed crust. Amit cast his gaze across the undulating vista of smooth rock. The valley looked as if it had been paved by an erratic madman.

  ‘At least now we have somewhere to land the gunships,’ Menadel spoke from behind Amit where he stood with Barakiel, Manakel and Drual.

  Amit grunted in amusement. He had come to expect such ill-timed comments from Grigori, and was privately glad that Menadel was there to fill the void left by the Dreadnought. ‘I’m sure it will make Captain Neta’s job easier when she comes to extract us.’ Amit faced Menadel. The sergeant’s expression was as calm and hard as the ground under their feet, leaving him unsure whether he had been joking.

  Amit looked to Manakel. There was a coldness to his eyes that Amit had seen in few outside the Chaplaincy. Not that it mattered... Amit paused, losing his train of thought as he glimpsed the ornate bolt pistol locked to the sergeant’s hip. Zophal. The Chaplain could read a warrior’s soul from behind a plate of ferrocrete.

  ‘Brother.’ Amit motioned to the standard clasped in Barakiel’s hand.

  The captain nodded and passed the Chapter banner to Amit, the motion-dampeners worked into its lining ensuring that, despite the high winds, it hung straight and true.

  Amit turned to face the rest of the Flesh Tearers. Thirty-eight warriors clamped their fists to their chests in salute. Victory had cost them over half of the company. The survivors stood shoulder-to-shoulder; their armour bore deep scars and had almost been scraped clean of rank and insignia. Behind the Flesh Tearers, a thousand indigenous tribesmen kept a respectful distance. They were sprawled out in loose groups but stood with as much martial dignity as the Space Marines.

  ‘I have fought the Emperor’s wars since we were legion. I have killed his enemies since our father walked among us. I have maimed and butchered every creature and xenos filth that has dared to stand before my blade. But this world...’ Amit spread his arms wide to encompass their surroundings. ‘This world is more primal and more violent than the rage in my heart. Yet together, brothers, we have conquered it.

  ‘We are wrath! We are death!

  ‘Our brothers’ deaths were not in vain. We will ensure that this world, this single world, will forever be free from the taint of the mutant, the xenos and the heretic. This world will embody our cleansing rage and stand as an example to all who would set foot upon it.’ Amit thrust the banner into the air, deactivating the motion-dampeners and letting it fly free. ‘You stand on Cretacia, birthplace of wrath. Now the home of the Flesh Tearers!’

  It took fewer than three days for the Flesh Tearers to bend the planet to their will. Orbital landers flocked to the surface carrying hundreds of Chapter serfs and auxiliaries. A small team of eight thousand Departmento Munitorum clerks began the task of cataloguing Cretacia’s assets and processing its populace. Over the coming months, thousands more would be ferried to the planet.

  ‘It is good to see you, master.’ Ismeriel clasped Amit’s vambrace, embracing him in a warrior’s greeting.

  ‘Captain. You have a huge task ahead of you. I will shortly return to the Victus, and carry on into the Sakkara sector for however long this damnable crusade may take. I am leaving you in charge of our future,’ said Amit.

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘We will no longer leave ourselves at the mercy of fate, plucking aspirants from the worlds we stumble upon out of war-born necessity. Any aspirant to wear our badge on his breast must have the same strength of character as these warriors displayed here under this sky.’ Amit indicated the tribesmen who had been organised into neat rows for processing. ‘I have declared the Right of Conquest. The future blood of the Chapter will be Cretacian.’

  Ismeriel nodded.

  ‘And captain, when the Munitorum have ceased being useful, get them off this planet. Their weakling blood has no place here.’

  Ismeriel smiled.

  Amit left the captain and ascended the temporary dais that had been erected to overlook the processing camp. ‘Warriors of Cretacia.’ The din of activity fell away as Amit spoke, his voice a gruff growl, projected through the harsh filter of the audio-casters that hung from steel poles around the encampment. ‘Each of you will be tested. Those of you found worthy shall be made of the Blood. Those who fail the trials, but who show great courage, shall be allowed to serve.’ Amit motioned to the Chapter serf standing by his side. ‘The rest of you will not survive.’

  Amit knew that the tribesmen could not understand him, much less the total change he was bringing to their world. It didn’t matter. His confessional was as much for his own soul as theirs.

  At a command from Amit, Manakel stepped from among the tribesmen. He ushered their war chiefs and elders forward, all except Tamir, who he instructed to remain where he was.

  Amit glared down at the group of barbarian leaders. ‘You fought bravely. The Emperor thanks you for your service.’ He paused, studying their faces for any sign of comprehension, and finding none. ‘You are too old to survive the trials, and there can be only one master of this world.’

  Manakel placed a hand on each of the barbarian’s shoulders in turn, forcing them to their knees, and handed his chainsword to Amit.

  Only then did the shaking chiefs grasp their fate. Amit saw the fear in their eyes. It filled him with peace. Weak men had no place in the Chapter; his judgment of them had been correct. Quicker than human eyes could follow, he beheaded them, tearing his blade through the sixth neck before the head of the first had toppled to the ground.

  Flicking the blood from his blade, Amit beckoned to Tamir.

  The war chief approached him without fear.

  ‘Sergeant Manakel has spoke
n highly of your courage and strength.’ Amit motioned to the Chapter serfs shuffling through their duties behind him. ‘You may yet serve.’

  Tamir glanced at the wretches and shook his head. He clenched his fist and held it firm against his chest. He would die as he had lived, a warrior.

  Amit smiled without humour. Killing the war chief would bring him no joy. ‘Very well.’ That future generations of Flesh Tearers would come from the same gene stock as men such as Tamir gave Amit hope for the future of the Chapter. ‘The Blood grant you a warrior’s peace.’

  Tamir took a knee, feeling his heart quicken. He drew a breath, quieting it. He would not enter the afterlife a coward. Tamir whispered a prayer to his gods and looked up into the fathomless eyes of the crimson lord. They were the most terrible things he had ever seen.

  ‘We thought Cretacia our salvation.

  ‘We were wrong.

  ‘Our efforts were in vain, our faith misplaced. We conquered that hell, that murderous planet we have come to call home. We slew its beasts and made trophies of their carcasses. We broke its people and made their strength our own. We built an empire from its rocks and renewed our conquest of the stars. But we did not sate the terror inside us.’

  ‘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. No amount of bloodletting will siphon his Curse from our veins.

  ‘I am sorry, brother.’

  Gabriel Seth turned to look upon the Death Company Marine strapped to the relic table. His helm was misshapen, eroded by the acid saliva that dribbled in a constant flow from his frenzied mouth. His suit of dark warplate was stained by battle. Bullet holes, scorch marks and deep abrasions covered its surface, the gifts of three centuries in service to the Chapter. Most who succumbed to the Rage and donned the black armour of death survived to fight one more time, a glorious final charge in the name of the Emperor. Those unfortunates who lived longer degenerated into little more than beasts, primal creatures who could no longer distinguish between friend and foe. Blood was all that mattered, and they would feast upon their own, given no alternative.