Trial by Blood Read online

  To the front of the chamber, a communication serf spun round from his console to address Zuphias. ‘My liege. They have sent a request to negotiate over the comm-net.’

  ‘Vox silence, hold course.’

  ‘Liege?’ The comms serf had spoken without thinking. He felt his throat go dry as too late he realised his error.

  ‘We are not here to settle a dispute,’ said Zuphias, bunching a fist in anger. ‘We are not arbitrators. We are the chosen of Sanguinius, the Angels of Death, and we have come to deliver judgement.’

  Sweat glistened on the comms serf’s brow as he stammered through a reply. ‘Yes, liege. Forgive me.’

  Zuphias could have killed the serf for his insolence. He knew of several of his brothers who would have done so for less. But he needn’t expend the effort; the serf would not live long.

  He did not learn the names of his human crew; to do so would be a waste. Their time on the Cowl was short lived. It was a vessel unlike any other. Home to the bulk of the Flesh Tearers Death Company, it was tasked with but a single objective – to bring ruin to the enemies of the Emperor. The human mind was unable to cope with the miasma of anguish that saturated the ship. Most killed themselves within two Terran years.

  Appollus stared down from the gantry. Below, twenty ashen-armoured Death Company warriors stood in ranks of five. Each awaited the command to board the drop pods that stood on deck like giant black teardrops, ready to bring sorrow to the Stromarkians.

  Serfs drifted between the rows of the Death Company, anointing their armour with lubricating oils and unguents of warding. Appollus regarded the nearest serf as its body quivered. A neuro-cable threaded through the serf’s crimson robe, connecting its brain to its spinal column. The serfs were all lobotomised, little more than drones. Appollus felt his grip tighten on the gantry’s support rail. His warriors deserved better. But no sane man could be coerced to stand so close to the murderous Space Marines. The Death Company were cursed, the walking dead: their bodies intact, their minds consumed by the Rage. Without the burden of conscience, all that remained for them was to ensure that they didn’t enter death’s embrace alone. Appollus was honoured to lead them in their final charge.

  In the eaves of the chamber, the Chapter’s cherubs began intoning the prayers from the Iraes Lexican.

  ‘Our wrath shall be unceasing.’ Appollus echoed the choir, reciting pertinent lines. Uncoiling his rosarius, the Chaplain began the moripatris, the mass of doom. The service was traditionally held on the eve of battle, to draw out those among the Flesh Tearers whose rage threatened to take them and fold them into the ranks of the Death Company. Appollus had never needed the moripatris to identify his flock. Even before his induction into the Chaplaincy, he had always been able to look into the eyes of his brothers and measure their spirit. ‘Flesh is ephemeral, wrath eternal.’

  Appollus used the moripatris in his own way, combining it with the teachings of the Iraes Lexican to churn his warriors into a fervent rage. They would fight possessed of an unshakable purpose, ignorant of even the most grievous wounds. They would set about the foe with the strength and vigour of a Cretacian jungle terror. They would slaughter unto death.

  Searing spears of light flickered out across the void to stab at the Death’s Cowl’s prow as it powered towards the Stromarkian fleet. The vessel’s shields rippled and flared, failing under the vicious onslaught.

  ‘Status?’ asked Zuphias.

  ‘Shields collapsed, liege. Cycling again now,’ said the tactical serf.

  At range, the Stromarkians had the advantage. Their warships were studded with huge turrets, each housing quad-banks of energy projectors that spat concentrated beams of destruction. Such lance weaponry enabled them to easily outdistance the Cowl’s weapon batteries.

  ‘Helmsman, more speed,’ Zuphias snarled as the Cowl shook under another lance strike, and leaned forward in his throne. ‘Get us closer.’

  ‘Yes, liege. All ahead full,’ said the helmsman.

  Zuphias took a calming breath and sat back. ‘Follow this attack line, take us through them.’ Manipulating the hololith controls, he indicated a course that would bring the Cowl through the middle of the Stromarkian vessels. It was a bold, aggressive move, one that would expose the Cowl to a withering hail of broadsides. But it would allow Zuphias to close the distance quickly and prevent the Stromarkians from manoeuvring away.

  A slew of warnings scrolled across his retinal display. Trajectory assessments, collision predictions and damage projections cautioned him against his course of action. He blinked them away with a snarl. He would trust to the discipline of his crew, to the Cowl’s speed and the metres-thick layers of armaplas and ceramite plating that wrapped its hull, to bring them victory.

  Zuphias growled as another barrage of lance strikes struck the Cowl, burning through the outer layer of ablative plating to scar the strike cruiser’s flanks. He stared out through the real space window, his eyes fixed on the distant outlines of the two Stromarkian vessels. More than ten thousand souls cowered inside each of their hulls. He would kill them all.

  ‘By the Blood,’ Balthiel snarled as the drop pod bucked in its cradle. He felt helpless as the Stromarkian guns continued to hammer the Cowl without answer. Mag-harnessed inside the assault craft, the Librarian was indebted to the capriciousness of fate. He hoped Zuphias knew what he was doing. Even from the bowels of the ship, Balthiel could feel the Chaplain’s anger, his desire to rend, to kill. It boiled through the ship like an inferno, smouldering at the edge of Balthiel’s thoughts.

  The Death Company could sense it too. Balthiel fought down the urge to draw his force sword as he thought of the five death-armoured killers who shared his drop pod. He had never been so close to a squad of the cursed. Under normal circumstances, only a Chaplain was considered to have the strength of mind and purity of spirit to accompany the Death Company into battle. A tangible air of mortality followed them. It drove even the soundest of warriors mad and dragged them into the Rage’s embrace.

  Balthiel took a breath and relaxed his muscles. He was no Chaplain, but he had little choice. Without the aid of his gifts, the Death Company would never make it through the air defence batteries guarding the skies above the governess’s palace. Deploying further out would allow the defenders valuable time to bolster their lines. Appollus had been clear: Stromark Prime had to die in a day.

  Craning his neck, Balthiel regarded the Death Company to his left and right. Their crimson optics glowered in the low light and, together with the incessant snarls that rumbled in their throats, reminded Balthiel of the Night Terrors. Figures of Cretacian folklore, the Terrors were said to stalk the darkness. They awaited the unwary, boiling away the soul of a man with a single glance before fading into the shadows. Balthiel’s unease grew as he thought again of the black-armoured daemon that haunted his dreams.

  Balthiel felt the Death Company grow angrier in response to each jarring strike against the Cowl. He sensed their desire to be free of the drop pod, to be vambrace-deep in their enemies’ entrails. They were the most terrifying warriors Balthiel could conceive. He had seen the sons of Angron humbled by their battle fervour, and borne witness to the terrible violence the enraged Flesh Tearers were capable of.

  But he did not fear them. He feared no one.

  Balthiel’s disquiet was rooted in the weakness of his own flesh.

  His burden was great. As a son of Sanguinius, he feared the Flaw, the blood lust and the madness, the promise of succumbing to the Rage and joining his brothers in the black armour of death. As a Librarian, he feared the moment of laxity that would see his soul devoured by the things that hungered in the warp.

  Balthiel growled in frustration. He was twice cursed, destined to succumb to the monster within or the daemon without. He focused on the Death Company, on their anger. He listened to their hearts beating, pounding in their chests, racing to thrust blood around their murderous veins.

  Balthiel felt his own pulse quicken in response. He cr
aved the charnel drumming of his twin hearts, the visceral immediacy of combat that filled him with a clarity of purpose and armoured him against doubt.

  He would kill until killed. Duty demanded it, but his soul willed it.

  Zuphias ignored the red warning sigils that flared across his console. If the Cowl was functioning well enough to complain, then they were far from dead. ‘Power the bombardment cannon, target the carrier.’

  The Cowl’s single, prow-mounted bombardment cannon was a mammoth weapon, accounting for almost thirty per cent of the strike cruiser’s mass. The heaviest armament carried by any Space Marine ship, it was designed to pulverise cities from high orbit but worked just as well against enemy vessels.

  ‘Yes, liege.’ The gunnery serf made the necessary adjustments to the targeting cogitators, gradually feeding power to the bombardment cannon’s firing cells. In the depths of the Cowl, a thousand indentured workers pulled on the metres of thick chain that lifted the magma shells from their housings and loaded them into the weapon’s breech, an onerous task that took them less than a minute under the stern direction of the gang-master’s neural whip. ‘Weapon ready. Target acquired.’

  A reverberating thrum shook the Cowl from prow to stern as its primary weapon cycled to full charge.

  ‘Fire,’ said Zuphias.

  The Cowl shuddered as the bombardment cannon unleashed its wrath, sending a salvo of magma warheads burning towards the Emperor’s Guardian.

  The Dictator-class’s shields flared like a new-born star, overloading as the first of the warheads struck home. The remainder rolled over the carrier in a tide of destruction, stripping the hull and destroying the superstructure. Secondary explosions erupted along the Guardian’s length, blanketing its outline in flame.

  ‘Target hit, liege. Shields down, engines disabled. Vessel crippled,’ said the surveyor.

  Zuphias kept his eyes fixed on the tactical hololith as the surveyor serf relayed the damage assessment. The Dictator-class was defenceless. Its engines were leaking plasma, a blue mist that bled away into the void. What little of the carrier’s crew survived the conflagration would soon die from exposure.

  The Cowl’s master snarled. ‘Fire again.’

  The Emperor’s Guardian was a drifting hulk. It posed no further threat to the Cowl. The mission dictated they expend their efforts elsewhere.

  The gunnery serf turned to Zuphias, his objection dying in his throat. The Chaplain’s scarred flesh was pulled drum-tight over his face, as though his bones fought to break free of it. The bionic ocular that sat in place of his right eye shone crimson, while his skin was cast into blue relief by the hololith. The serf swallowed hard. ‘Liege, yes, liege.’

  The deck shook under Zuphias as the Pride of Halka raked the Cowl with its lances. Zuphias growled; they should not have been able to fire again so soon. He consulted the data streaming across the tactical hololith. The Stromarkian vessel had diverted energy from their engines, decreasing the recharge time of their weapons. They sought to punish the Cowl for the damage wrought on the Emperor’s Guardian.

  Zuphias grinned. Such careless indulgence of anger would cost them.

  ‘Ready to fire, liege,’ said the gunnery serf.

  ‘Finish them.’

  Without the protection of its shields, the Emperor’s Guardian was defenceless against the wrath of the bombardment cannon. The magma shells slammed into its hull with fierce intent, pulverising its armoured skin. Secondary explosions erupted from within the vessel as fire consumed everything. It broke apart from port to starboard, shattered by the merciless barrage.

  The two pieces of the ship tumbled away from one another, falling towards Stromark Prime like flaming heralds of the fate that awaited the world. A wing of hastily launched bombers raced away from the dying carrier, their ident-runes flashing on Zuphias’s tactical display as they burned at full thrust.

  Zuphias grinned. It was a noble effort, but their flight was in vain. He watched with grim satisfaction as one by one they blinked dark. Bubbling explosions and secondary detonations had continued to wrack the aft section of the Guardian until the ship’s warp drive ruptured. The bomber wing was annihilated by a halo of expanding plasma as the Guardian’s death throes overtook it.

  The Cowl shuddered as a hail of las-fire and solid projectiles hammered its starboard side, forcing Zuphias to brace himself against his throne. Below him, a handful of serfs jerked back from their stations, killed by an electrical discharge. The shock had blackened their skin and left flames licking their robes.

  Five more willing servants stepped from the wings of the bridge to take over from their fallen comrades.

  ‘Liege, we are in weapon battery range.’

  Zuphias was pleased by the replacement gunnery serf’s dedication to duty. He seemed unperturbed by the blood that smeared his console or the smell of charred flesh. ‘So it would seem,’ said Zuphias. Broadside for broadside, the Cowl was outgunned. The Halka’s hull was pockmarked by gun ports and weapon housings, each ready to unleash a hail of tank-sized shells upon the Flesh Tearers vessel. ‘Helmsman, new heading.’

  The Halka’s directional thrusters faltered, emitting a guttering flare as they tried to react to the Cowl’s sudden course shift. With her engines running below optimal, the Stromarkian vessel was left to flail in the void like a beached sea mammal as the Cowl manoeuvred.

  The strike cruiser turned, presenting only its armoured prow to the Halka’s guns.

  Zuphias felt his muscles bunch in anticipation as the Halka grew to fill the real space window. At such close range, he could make out every detail of the ship’s gilded hull. Its armoured skin had been finely wrought into towering basilicas, pious bulwarks against the dangers of the void.

  Zuphias scowled. He had no intention of trading blows with the Stromarkian vessel. He was going to ram it.

  The shrill call of klaxons rang out as the Cowl bore down on the Halka.

  ‘Brace! All hands brace!’ The surveyor serf’s voice crackled through every vox on the Cowl, warning of the imminent collision with the Halka.

  The Halka’s shields hissed and cracked, overloading as the Cowl pushed into their embrace. The Stromarkian vessel’s guns fell silent, its crew dumbstruck by the insane manoeuvre and unable to adjust their aim in time. The Halka’s metal hide buckled and crumpled as the Cowl’s armoured prow slammed into it. Explosions rippled out from the point of impact, racing ahead of the Flesh Tearers vessel, heralds of the carnage to come.

  ‘Bring them death.’ Zuphias drove the Cowl deeper into the Halka, using the serrated armour of his vessel like a gargantuan chainblade to mutilate the Stromarkian ship. The Flesh Tearers ship continued forwards, ripping along the Halka’s flank until it was wedged in place, tangled in the mess of destruction.

  Breaches opened up across the Halka, its hapless gunnery crew sucked into the void like withered chaff. Fire washed though the ship, scrubbing entire decks and mushrooming out through lesions in the hull to illuminate the destruction.

  ‘Now. Fire.’ Zuphias slammed his fist against his console.

  With the Cowl’s weapons batteries pressed against the Halka’s ruined hull, every shot found its mark. A torrent of missiles, las-bolts and plasma rounds savaged the Stromarkian vessel, stripping its armaplas bonding and broiling its innards.

  The Halka’s hull fractured, breaking off in chunks under the unremitting onslaught. Internal detonations wracked the vessel from prow to stern, signalling its end.

  The weight of firepower ripped the Cowl free from the Halka.

  ‘Helmsman, full reverse. Shields,’ said Zuphias.

  The Cowl’s weapons fell silent, its shields flickering into life a microsecond before the Halka’s engines imploded.

  The Pride of Halka detonated in a blue flash. Adamantium blast shutters locked down over the Cowl’s real space window, protecting the bridge crew from the piercing brightness. The shock wave crashed through the shields, and broke against the hull.

  ‘Rep
ort?’ Zuphias sat forward in his throne.

  ‘Shield generators are disabled. Hull integrity failed on decks seven, eighteen and thirty,’ said the surveyor.

  ‘My brothers?’ asked Zuphias.

  ‘Assault bay is secure.’

  Zuphias nodded and looked out through the real space window as the shutters receded. Nothing but debris remained of the Stromarkian battleship. ‘Target the frigates. Kill everything.’

  Jurik walked as fast as he dared, weaving his way between the military and clerical staff that rushed past him in the opposite direction. It angered him that they paid the halls they moved through so little respect. The Primus was a palace like no other. A jewel of architecture and sculpture, it was founded by their forefathers and had been the seat of leadership on Stromark Prime for ten thousand years. Though the governor’s palace on Stromark Secundus was considerably larger and better defended, it could not claim the same grandiosity as the Primus.

  Jurik slowed as he reached the Hall of Remembrance, his soiled boots sullying the marble floor. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, glancing up at the stone sculptures that lined the walls. He stopped at the end of the corridor, smoothed down his tunic, and ran a hand through his hair. Taking a breath, he pushed open the vaulted glass doors and stepped into the royal receiving chamber.

  Soft, haunting music played on wooden stringed instruments wrapped the vaulted room in a blanket of calm. ‘Governess.’ Jurik bent to one knee as he addressed the ruler of Stromark Prime.

  Governess Agrafena stood with her back to Jurik, her attention fixed on the red-crested birds that fluttered between the trees outside in the palace gardens. Clad in a black bodyglove overlain with a mesh of refractive armour, she was not as Jurik had come to expect. Her long locks had been tied back, hidden in a tight ponytail that draped her back like a scabbard. Instead of the golden sceptre of her office, she carried a slender sword and rested her hand on its golden hilt. ‘At another time I would have had you flogged for this interruption.’