Battle for The Abyss (2 page)

Such was the sight of it, like some creature born from the depths of an infinite and ancient ocean, that even Zadkiel fell silent.

‘Our spear is made ready,’ Zadkiel said at last, his voice choked with awe. ‘The
Furious Abyss
.’

This ship, this mighty ship, had been made for them, and here in the Jovian shipyards its long-awaited construction had finally reached an end. This was to be a blow against the Emperor, a blow for Horus. None could know of the vessel’s existence until it was too late. Steps had been taken to ensure that remained the case. The launch from little known, and even less regarded, Thule was part of that deceit, but only part.

Zadkiel turned on his heel to face his warriors.

‘Let us wield it!’ he extolled with vociferous intensity. ‘Death to the False Emperor!’

‘Death to the False Emperor,’ his congregation replied like a violent blast wave. ‘Horus exultant!’

Discipline broke down. The assembled throng bellowed and roared as if possessed, smashing their fists against their armour.

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Oaths of hatred and of devout loyalty were shouted fervently and the building sound rose to an unearthly clamour.

Zadkiel closed his eyes amidst the maelstrom of devotion and savoured, drank deep of the zealotry. When he opened his eyes again, he faced the archway and the landscape of the
Furious Abyss
. Smiling grimly, he thought of what the vessel represented, and he imagined its awesome destructive potential. There was none other like it in all of the Imperium: none with the same firepower; none with the same resilience. It had been forged with one deliberate mission in mind and it would need all of its strength and endurance to achieve it: the annihilation of a Legion.

IN THE DARKER recesses of the massive loading bay, now an impromptu cathedra, others watched and listened. Unfeeling eyes regarded the magnificent array of soldiery from the shadows: the product of the Emperor’s ingenuity, even perhaps his hubris, and felt nothing.

‘Curious, my master, that this Astartes should exhibit such an emotional response to our labours.’

‘They are flesh, Magos Epsolon, and as such are governed by petty concerns,’ remarked Kelbor-Hal to the bent-backed acolyte stooped alongside him.

The fabricator general had purposely taken the long journey from Mars to Thule aboard his personal barge. He had done so under the pretence of a tour of the Jovian shipyards, overseeing atmospheric mining on the surface of Jupiter, reviewing the operations on Io, and observing vehicle and armour production within the hive cities of Europa. All of which would explain his presence on Thule. The truth was that the fabricator general wanted to witness this momentous event. It was not pride that drove him to do it, for such a thing was beyond one so close to absolute communion with the Omnissiah, rather it was out of the compulsion to mark it.

One endeavour was much like any other to the fabricator general, the requirements of form and function outweighing the
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need for ceremony and majesty. Yet, here he stood swathed in black robes, a symbol of his allegiance to the Warmaster and his commitment to his cause. Had he not sanctioned Master Adept Urtzi Malevolus to forge Horus’s armour? Had he not also allowed the commissioning of vast quantities of materiel, munitions and the machines of war? Yes, he had done all of this. He had done it because it suited his purposes, the burgeoning desire, or rather intrinsic programming, within the servants of the great machine-god to gradually become one with their slumbering deity. Horus had unfettered Mars in its pursuit of the divine machine, countermanding the Emperor’s chastening. For Kelbor-Hal the question of his allegiance and that of the Mechanicum was one of logic, and had required mere nanoseconds of compu-tation.

‘He sees beauty where we see function and form,’ the fabricator general continued. ‘Strength, Magos Epsolon, strength made through fire and steel, that is what we have wrought.’

Magos Epsolon, also robed in black, nodded in agreement, grateful for his overlord’s enlightenment.

‘They are human, after a fashion,’ the fabricator general explained, ‘and we are as far removed from that weakness as the cogitators aboard that ship.’

Immensely tall, his ribcage exposed through the ragged edge of his robes with ribbed pipes and tendril-like servos replacing organs, veins and flesh, Kelbor-Hal was anything but human. He no longer wore a face, preferring a cold steel void implanted with a curious array of sunken green orb-like diodes in place of eyes. A set of mechadendrite claws and arms stretched from his back, like those of an arachnid, replete with blades, saws and other arcane machinery. His voice was devoid of all emotion, synthesised through a vox-implant that droned with artificial coldness and indifference.

As Kelbor-Hal watched the phalanx of Astartes boarding the ship through the tube-like umbilical cords that snaked from the vessel’s loading ramps to the blister dome, their bombastic leader
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swelling with phlegmatic pride, the internal chron within his memory engrams alerted him that time was short.

Dully, the
Furious Abyss
’s thrusters growled to life and the great vessel strained vertically against the lifter clamps. A low, yet insistent hum of building power from the awakening plasma engines followed, discernible even through the plexi-glass of the blister dome. With the Astartes and their crew aboard, the
Furious Abyss
was preparing to launch.

A data-probe snicked from the end of one of the fabricator general’s twitching mechadendrites and fed into a cylindrical console that had emerged from the hangar floor. Interfacing with the device, Kelbor-Hal inputted the code sequence required to launch the ship. A series of icons upon the face of the console lit up and a slowly building hum of power resonated throughout the launch chamber.

Lead Magi Lorvax Attemann, part of the coterie of acolytes and attendant menials who had gathered to observe the launch, was permitted to activate the first sequence of explosions that would release the
Furious Abyss
. He did so without ceremony.

Lines of explosions, like stitches of fire, rippled along the side of the dock. Lifters, assembly arrays and webs of scaffolding fell away into the darkness, where magnetic tugs waited to gather the wreckage. Slabs of radiation shielding lifted from the ship’s hull. The last dregs in the refuelling barges ignited in bright ribbons of fire.

The plasma engines roared, loud and throaty, scorching a blue swathe of fire and heat across the surface of Thule. A new star was rising in the darkling sky, so terrible and wonderful that it defied expression. It was a thunderous metal god given form, and it would light the galaxy aflame with its wrath.

At last the
Furious Abyss
was underway. As Kelbor-Hal watched it lift majestically into the firmament and registered the heavy thrum of its engines, a single tiny vestige of emotion blinked into existence within him. It was an ephemeral thing, barely quantifi-able. Accessing internal cogitators, interfacing with his personal memory engrams, the fabricator general found its expression.

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It was awe.

THE DRONE SHIP waited deep within the heart of Thule, accessed through a series of clandestine tunnels and lesser-known chambers. As it made its approach, the still toiling menials and servitors paid it no notice, programme wafers ensuring that they remained intent on their work. So, the shuttle passed them by slowly, unchallenged, unseen. Once through the myriad tunnels, the drone waited for several hours docked in a small antechamber that fed off the vast gravity engine at the asteroid’s core.

An hour earlier, Fabricator General Kelbor-Hal’s personal barge had departed the station, the head of the Mechanicum leaving his subordinate, Magos Epsolon, to organise the clean up after the launch of the
Furious Abyss
. It was to be the last vessel that left Thule.

Pre-programmed activation protocols abruptly came on line in the servitor pilot slaved to the drone shuttle. A mix of chemicals, separated within the body of the servitor pilot became merged as they were fed into a shared chamber. Once combined, the harm-less chemicals became a volatile solution capable of incredible destructive force. A second after the solution became fully merged a small incendiary charge ignited their fury. The immediate firestorm engulfed the ship and spread out, the growing conflagration billowing down tunnels and through access pipes, incinerating labouring menials. When it struck the gravity engine the resultant explosions began a cataclysmic chain reaction. It took only minutes for the asteroid to break into flame-wreathed fragments. There was no time to flee to safety and no survivors.

Every adept, servitor and menial was burned to ash.

The debris field would spread far and wide, but the asteroid was far enough away, locked at the farthest point of its horseshoe orbit, not to trouble Jupiter. It would not escape notice, but it was also of such little consequence that any investigation would take months to effect and ratify. None would discover the thing that had been wrought upon the asteroid’s surface until it was much, much too late.

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Much technology was lost in Thule’s destruction. It was a steep price to pay for absolute and certain secrecy. In the end, the fabricator general’s will had been done. He had willed the death of Thule.

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TWO

Hektor’s fate

Brothers of Ultramar

In the lair of the wolf

IT WAS DARK in the reclusium. Brother-Captain Hektor kept his breathing measured as he prosecuted another thrust with his short-blade. He followed with a smash from his combat shield and then twisted his body out of the committed attack to make a feint. Crouching low, blackness surrounding him in the chapel-like antechamber, he spun on his heel and repeated the manoeuvre in the opposite direction: swipe, thrust, block, thrust; smash, feint, turn and repeat, over and over like a physical mantra. With each successive pass he added a flourish: a riposte here, a leaping thrust there. The cycles increased in pace and intensity, the darkness enveloping him, honing his focus, building to an apex of speed and complexity, at which point Hektor would gradually slow until at peace once more.

Standing stock-still, maintaining control of his breathing, Hektor came to the end of the training regimen.

‘Light,’ he commanded, and a pair of ornate lamps flared into life on either wall, illuminating a spartan chamber.

Dressed in only sandals and a loincloth, Hektor’s body was cast in a sheen of sweat that glistened in the artificial lamplight. The curves of his enhanced musculature were accentuated within its glow. Indulging in a moment of introspection, Hektor regarded the span of his hands. They were large and strong, and bereft of any scars. He made a fist with the right.

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‘I am the Emperor’s sword,’ he whispered and then clenched his left. ‘Through me is his will enacted.’

Two robed acolytes waited patiently in the shadows, cowls concealing their augmetics and other obvious deformities. Even without being compared to the tall slab of muscle that was an Astartes, they were bent-backed and diminutive.

Hektor ignored their obsequiousness as he released the straps affixing the combat shield to his arm and handed it over along with his short-blade to the acolytes. He looked at the ground as his attendants retreated silently into the shadow’s penumbra at the edge of the room. An engraved ‘U’ was carved into the centre of the chamber, chased in silver on a circular field of blue. Hektor stood in the middle of it, in exactly the position that he had started.

He allowed himself a smile as he beckoned his attendants to bring forth his armour.

A great day was fast approaching.

It had been a long time since he had seen his fellow Ultramarines. He and five hundred of his battle-brothers had been far from their native Ultramar for three years, as they helped prosecute the Emperor’s Great Crusade to bring enlightenment to the galaxy and repatriate the lost colonies of man by fighting the Vektates of Arkenath. The Vektate were a deviant culture, an alien overmind that had enslaved the human populous of Arkenath. Hektor and his warrior brothers had shattered the yoke that bound their unfortunate human kin and in so doing had destroyed the Vektates. The human populace owed fealty to the Imperium, and demonstrated it gladly when they were free of tyranny. It had been a grim war. The
Fist
had been involved in a brutal ship-to-ship action against the enemy, but had prevailed.

Repairs had been conducted on Arkenath, as well as the requisitioning of a small tithe of men, eager to venture beyond the stars, to help replenish elements of the ship’s crew. Once the war was over, Hektor and his battle-brothers had been summoned to the Calth system and the region of space known as Ultramar. At long
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last, they would be reunited with their brothers and their primarch.

Hektor was full of pride at the thought of seeing Roboute Guilliman again, his gene-father and noble leader of the Ultramarines Legion. The deciphered messages from the
Fist of Macragge
’s astropaths had been clear. The Warmaster himself, mighty Horus, had ordered the Legion to the Veridan system. Guilliman had ratified the Warmaster’s edict and instructed all disparate Ultramarine forces to muster at Calth. There they would take on supplies and rendezvous with their brothers in preparation to launch a strike on an ork invasion force besieging the worlds of neighbouring Veridan. A short detour to the Vangelis space port to take on some more battle-brothers stationed there and the campaign to liberate Veridan would be underway.

FULLY ARMOURED, HEKTOR strode down an access tunnel and headed towards the bridge. His ship, the
Fist of Macragge
, was a Lunar-class battleship, named in honour of the Ultramarines’