Flesh of Cretacia Read online

  ‘Is this plan wise, lord? The orks may not have chosen the fourth planet through desperation alone. It could be lair to any number of the wretched things,’ Ismeriel continued, unaware of Amit’s rising impatience. ‘We don’t know what else awaits us down there. Let me take the Scouts, properly reconnoitre the–’

  Amit took a step so his face was a handspan from Ismeriel’s. ‘Do you think me a coward, brother-captain?’ The other Flesh Tearer opened his mouth to speak but Amit continued, pressing his forehead into Ismeriel’s. ‘I am not one of Guilliman’s pedantic tacticians.’ Amit raised one of his crimson gauntlets. The servos in its adamantium joints growled as he bunched his fingers into a fist. ‘I am armoured in blood, not the dark cowl of Corax’s saboteurs.’

  ‘Lord.’ Ismeriel held Amit’s gaze.

  Amit grinned, pleased by Ismeriel’s resolve. If the Chapter were to survive then it would take leaders like Ismeriel to see it through this bloody era. But Amit was too soaked in violence to change now. He could not deny the Blood; its call grew ever louder in his mind.

  ‘And you, Barakiel, what say you?’ Amit turned to the other captain.

  ‘I care not whether there are a hundred orks or a thousand on that world. We will slay them. But we would be better served resuming our crusade into the Sakkara sector. The Star Phantoms have already sent a request for aid.’ Barakiel spoke evenly, his face free of emotion. ‘Leave the auxiliaries to clean up here. There is blood enough to be shed elsewhere.’

  ‘No,’ said Amit, his jaw clenched tight, a cage against his mounting anger. ‘You are wrong.’

  ‘There is never enough. The Thirst endures.’

  The thought pushed unbidden into his mind. It was a sentiment he would not – could not – voice. If he, the strongest among them, lost hope then… Amit growled. ‘Look around you, brothers. Our warriors grow restless. Their frustration is as tangible as the deck we stand on. It has been too long since our blades tasted flesh. We attack.’

  ‘The Star–’ Barakiel began.

  ‘We do not answer to the Star Phantoms, and there will be time enough to cleanse Sakkara. We finish what we start.’

  Barakiel dipped his head in abeyance, his voice a whispered growl. ‘As the Blood wills it.’

  One hundred of the Emperor’s finest. One hundred warriors in crimson and ash. One hundred angels of death.

  Amit stood at their head on the muster deck, a giant among giants. He let his gaze drift over them, committing to memory each of the warriors he was about to lead to war.

  Serfs in coal-dark robes drifted between the serried ranks of Flesh Tearers, anointing their amour with lubricating oils and unguents of warding.

  To Amit’s left, Barakiel held aloft the company standard, a six-metre banner that bunched where it touched the floor. The thick fabric was torn and frayed. Amit knew there were those among his cousins who would lament the raggedness of the banner. Even the Blood Angels, their primogenitors, venerated their standards as holy relics, imbued with power and the weight of history. But Amit was content to let his colours bear the mud and blood earned on the field of battle. Each ruddy stain acted as a badge of honour in a way the intricate script worked into the fabric never could.

  A chalice, an angel in an executioner’s guise, a saw-toothed blood drop… Amit turned his eyes to the incongruous images adorning the fabric, joined by a ragged seamline. The banner had once been three. Each had been woven on Baal when the Flesh Tearers were first forged. Three banners, one for each company that had operated under his direct command, First to Third. But war and the Thirst had savaged the companies until only a scant few warriors remained in each. Amit had ordered the remnants banded together to form this, his company. It bore no name and no number. Its lineage was the Chapter’s, its banner an amalgamation of the three that had been.

  Undoubtedly, this disregard for the structures laid down by Guilliman’s Codex would not have sat well with the primarch himself. Amit smiled. He hoped not. That the master of Macragge saw fit to shackle the Legions was poor irony – he had been absent from the only fight that mattered, and Amit would not see his warriors suffer for the Ultramarines’ failure.

  ‘By His blood are we made.’ Amit smashed his gauntlet into his breastplate.

  The assembled Flesh Tearers echoed the verse, the sound of a hundred armoured salutes like a thunderclap hammering throughout the muster deck.

  ‘By His blood are we armoured.’ Amit knelt and the company knelt with him, the servos in their knees firing like pistons.

  ‘By His blood shall we triumph.’ Amit removed a gauntlet and drew his knife through the flesh of his palm, squeezing a measure of the hot fluid into a thin channel worked into the metal of the deck. The other Flesh Tearers bled with him, spilling their blood too.

  The dark liquid trickled down through a drainage membrane, dripping into the Ortus Grail, the chalice of rebirth. The grail was suspended in a consecrated antechamber below them. At battle’s end, Amit’s company would sip from its gilded edges, so that the fallen might live on in their veins.

  Chaplain Zophal stepped from the ranks, uncoiling his rosarius as he made his way to Amit’s side.

  ‘We are vengeance made flesh.’ The Chaplain began the Moripatris, the mass of doom. His devotions would draw out those among the Flesh Tearers whose rage could no longer be contained. He would welcome them into the ranks of the Death Company and there they would at last find peace.

  Amit kept his eyes low as Zophal recited the mass, silently wondering how many warriors he would lose to the Thirst’s call. He felt his pulse quicken as the Chaplain’s catechism stirred his killer’s heart, and wondered if perhaps this time, it would be he who donned the black armour of death.

  Scarred blast shields and toothed hatches opened as the Victus prepared to send Amit and his warriors into the void. The massive launch tunnels were little more than dark pinpricks against the crimson backdrop of the battle-barge’s immense hull.

  Seven gunships boosted from the Victus’s flanks, the flash of their thrusters lost amongst the thousands of emitters and blinking sensors studding their parent vessel’s armour plating: three Thunderhawks – squat, airborne battle tanks that flew seemingly in defiance of their design – and four smaller, nimbler Storm Eagles. All were painted in crimson and ash, save one. A single Storm Eagle, its hull as dark as the void surrounding it, carried the Thirst’s chosen to war.

  The wing of gunships burned at full thrust towards the fourth planet. Stacked in tight formation, the Storm Eagles covering the unarmed bellies of the larger Thunderhawks, they drove straight through the last remnants of the ork fleet. The flicker of lascannon fire joined the harsh flash of turbo lasers as the gunships blasted a path through the debris field. Pilots bent on the quickest path to combat crashed stub-nosed prows through lesser obstacles, weathering the deluge of shrapnel and calcified space dust that showered their hulls and added fresh lesions to their glacis plates.

  Scout Cassiel grimaced and reached for a mag-harness, tensing as Baal’s Fury reverberated around him.

  ‘You won’t find a harness here, boy,’ Brother-Sergeant Asmodel said to the neophyte. ‘Training’s over. Time to stand on your own two feet.’

  The reprimand drew a grunt of amusement from Hamied. He sat opposite Cassiel in the Thunderhawk, hunched over as he ran a serrated blade across a silver-flecked whetstone. This was to be Hamied’s last mission before elevation to full battle-brother. The veteran Scout already bore many of the marks of his progenitor. His once dark skin had paled, his eyes had the piercing blueness common within the Chapter and his close-cropped hair was streaked with blond. Hamied regarded Cassiel coldly, his eyes far more vicious than the blade in his hand.

  Cassiel bit back a growl, but looked down. Of all his new-found gifts, the Rage was the one he found hardest to adjust to. His pulse was never quiet, and the hearts of the others drummed like thunder in
his ears. He pictured Asmodel’s face smashed against the bulkhead, and imagined the sound of crunching bone as he drove his elbow into the sergeant’s skull, pulping it.

  ‘Let peace beat in your breast and save your wrath for your bolter.’

  Captain Akrasiel’s words surfaced in Cassiel’s mind like a calming breeze. The Master of Recruits had spoken them after dragging him from the throat of another Blood Angels neophyte. Those three minutes in the duelling cages had cost him many hours of penance.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Melechk, gesturing to the heavy bolter he held. ‘Some equipment is more useful than others.’

  Cassiel grinned, glad of the distraction.

  Melechk took better care of his weapon than he did his own flesh. In the aftermath of a battle he would see to its maintenance and rearming before allowing an Apothecary to administer to his wounds, a habit that had left him with a patchwork of re-grafted skin covering his face and the faint light of a bionic in place of his left eye. Many of Melechk’s brother Scouts favoured the silent precision of a sniper rifle, but there was little he couldn’t sneak up on and throttle, or gut with his blade. When the time came to use a firearm, he would welcome the angry roar of the heavy bolter. ‘What say you, Izail?’ the hulking Scout asked the fifth and final member of the squad.

  Izail said nothing, lost in one of his brooding silences.

  Cassiel saw Melechk’s eyes narrow. He hated Izail with a purity only a brother could muster. The two Scouts vied for Hamied’s position as Asmodel’s second, and with his departure imminent the animosity between them had increased. Cassiel regarded them both. They were as different as fire and ice. Where Melechk was broad and prone to impetuousness, Izail was wiry and calculating. On their last deployment, Melechk had rallied a group of Karythian Irregulars and bolstered the line. Izail had done likewise further along the trench-line, but where Melechk had spoken of duty and honour, rousing the Irregulars into a fervent fury, Izail had executed them until the others got the point and stopped running.

  The Thunderhawk’s sixth and final occupant stood stock still in front of the exit ramp. Grigori had been the last passenger to board the gunship, but he would be the first to leave. His immense shoulders spanned the breadth of the transport hold. Each tooth of the metres-long eviscerators clamped in his fists were twice the size of a man’s head, yet his arms seemed untroubled by their weight. Scrolls of parchment and lines of golden scripture covered Grigori’s adamantium shell. He was a crimson monument to the glory of Baal. Cassiel looked away in deference. It was hard not to feel small and insignificant in the Dreadnought’s presence. A venerated hero of the Chapter, Grigori had walked with Amit on Terra itself and killed scores of the Archenemy in the final days of the Great War.

  ‘Keep your mind on the present, neophyte,’ said Asmodel.

  Despite the sergeant’s words, Cassiel found his thoughts turning to the fallen Space Marine whose gene-seed now resided within his own body. What great wars had he fought in? How many lives had he claimed? What fate had befallen him? Did he, Cassiel, deserve to carry such a legacy?

  Five minutes to entry

  The status update flashed amber on Manakel’s retinal display as he sat within the Spear of Sanguinius. He shifted position to accommodate the slight changes in pitch as the craft readied for atmospheric entry. For almost a decade, the Storm Eagle had carried him and his assault brethren into battle. The subtleties of the gunship were as familiar to him as the idle purring of his power armour.

  ‘Make ready.’ Manakel’s vocal cords had been severed by an ork cleaver, and he rasped the order through a mechanical vocaliser. He tugged at the scar tissue coiling around his throat, angered at the tortured parody of his voice, and mag-locked his helmet into place.

  ‘I am His vengeance as He is my shield.’ Manakel upturned Brother-Sergeant Seraph’s chainsword and pressed the tip of the blade into the deck, as was his ritual. The same ork who had robbed Manakel of his voice had also killed Seraph, ripping out his primary heart and leaving Seventh Squad under new stewardship. ‘We will deliver death to His enemies as He brings deliverance to our souls.’

  As his brothers followed him in the litany of battle, Manakel felt the weight of command rest like a Titan’s foot upon his chest. Until today, those words had always been Seraph’s to utter, and his own gnarled voice was but a crude echo of the revered brother-sergeant.

  Manakel was a warrior to the marrow of his bones but he knew Lahhel or Nanael would have made better leaders. He felt the two Space Marines watching him, and was certain they knew it too. ‘As the Blood wills it.’ Manakel tightened his grip on Seraph’s chainsword, finishing the rite and crushing his doubts between gauntlet and pommel. He would lead as he had been led, resolving to honour his mentor’s spirit or die trying. Seraph’s blade would taste blood again.

  Two minutes

  Amit flexed his fingers, sending a shiver of power arcing along the edge of his chainfists. Every minute inside the Thunderhawk felt like a helpless eternity as he stood impotent with his honour guard – nine of the greatest warriors the Flesh Tearers could muster, trapped inside the ceramite hull of the Vengeance, awaiting a malfunction or pre-emptive attack to send them plummeting to an ignominious death.

  ‘I see you have yet to visit the artificers, lord,’ Barakiel said to Amit over a closed channel, indicating the shell impacts and lacerations marking the Chapter Master’s armour.

  ‘My armour still functions,’ said Amit levelly. ‘It has no need of repair.’

  Barakiel bit back his response. Tactical dreadnought armour was more than a suit of warplate. It was a relic of the Chapter, an artefact from a time when mankind had the ability to create technological marvels. Its like would never been seen again. It angered him that Amit had forgone the proper ministrations. ‘As you say.’

  Amit felt a surge of anger at Barakiel’s tone, though in truth, he was grateful for the distraction; the exchange had brought them a moment closer to planetfall. His twin hearts grew restless in his chest, like beasts snapping as they strained at the end of their tether. He was desperate to unleash them, to have them beat at the resounding rate only combat required. Amit ground his teeth at their rising rhythm and watched the mission counter on his helmet display blink to zero.

  Entry achieved

  ‘Traitor’s blood.’ Brother-Pilot Raziel fought to hold his Storm Eagle steady as it speared into the fourth planet’s atmosphere. The muscles in his arms begged for respite as strong winds vied with him for control of the craft. They battered against the Spear’s hull and clawed over its wings, threatening to tear him off course. The Storm Eagle shuddered, rattling as though under fire. A blanket of jet-black cloud rushed up to meet the armourglass of the cockpit, drawing a further curse from Raziel. Even with the Storm Eagle’s bank of sensors, his armour’s autosenses and his own enhanced vision, he couldn’t see the nose of his craft. The diodes and instrumentation sharing the cockpit blinked in a quickening irregular rhythm as the gunship’s machine-spirit vented its own frustration. Struggling to maintain speed and trajectory, Raziel opened a vox channel to the nearest Thunderhawk in formation. ‘Spear of Sanguinius to Baal’s Fury, situation critical. Report.’ A raft of static screamed back in his ear. He tried again, snarling under another barrage of white noise.

  ‘Raziel, what in the Emperor’s name is going on? I’ve had smoother emergency drops,’ Manakel said over the internal comm.

  ‘Be thankful we’re still in the air, brother-sergeant,’ Raziel replied. ‘Atmospheric conditions are worsening by the second and the auguries are returning gibberish. We’re flying blind.’

  Asmodel growled as a bank of klaxons shrilled overhead, reverberating around the enclosed hold of the Thunderhawk. ‘Cassiel, find out what is going on. Izail, silence that alarm.’

  Izail pulled a handful of cables from the ceiling and severed them with his knife. The rumble of the Thunderhawk’s
engines returned, audible again as the klaxons fell silent.

  Cassiel scaled the ladder two rungs at a time and climbed into the upper hold. Pressing his palm to a waiting bio-reader, he bypassed the circular hatch barring access to the flight deck. ‘Brothers, why haven’t you answered Sergeant Asmodel’s status requests?’

  ‘A little preoccupied here, neophyte,’ said Orifiel. The co-pilot’s usual even tone was a clipped growl as he hunched over an augur array.

  ‘Tell Sergeant Asmodel to brace for engagement.’ Mikhaiel, the Thunderhawk’s gunner, was peering out through one of the armourglass windows. ‘There’s something out there. I can feel it in my blood.’

  Static growled from every vox channel, drawing a curse from Amit. He was unable to contact any of the other craft in the attack wing. The Thunderhawk’s external pict-recorders fed nothing but blackness to his helmet display. They were adrift, blind and alone, enveloped in a dark cloud.

  Amit rocked in place, the mag-clamps on the soles of his boots locking him to the deck as the Thunderhawk shuddered around him.

  ‘That was not wind,’ said Barakiel.

  ‘Agreed.’ Amit opened a comm channel to the Thunderhawk’s pilot as a resounding thud reverberated across the hull. ‘Zadkiel, report.’

  ‘The tail fin’s damaged and we’re showing stress fractures across the port-side armour plating.’

  ‘Source?’

  ‘Unknown contact, lord.’ Zadkiel sounded distracted. ‘Anjelo saw something, but we lost it again in this wretched cloud. Our auguries are blind.’

  Amit snarled as the Thunderhawk convulsed again, sending a shower of sparks cascading from the ceiling. ‘Whatever it is, kill it before it tears us apart.’

  ‘Forgive me, Chapter Master, but how can we fight what we cannot see?’

  ‘When in doubt, brother, kill everything.’

  ‘Master?’

  Amit was about to clarify when Barakiel grabbed his pauldron. ‘If we open fire, we risk hitting our own ships. Unless they’ve changed course, the Spear of Sanguinius, Baal’s Fury and the Mortis Wrath are all within our killzone.’