Battle for The Abyss (37 page)

‘Move!’ ordered the Ultramarine captain, and headed upwards.

As Cestus led the way up the torpedo tube, the sounds of thundering guns and shell impacts echoed dimly through the structure of the
Furious Abyss
, a terrible chorus welcoming them onto the ship.

Cestus saw light ahead: the fires of a forge. He had his bolt pistol up in front of him, ready to fire. The light was coming through a thick armourglas window in a heavy hatch, sealing the far end of the tube.

‘Charges!’ he ordered.

Excelinor and Pytaron reacted quickly, planting a cluster of krak grenades around the weak points of the hatch. Charges primed, the Astartes retreated as one. A few feet from the entrance, Cestus bellowed, ‘Now!’

A muffled explosion radiated through the tube, echoing off the concave interior, and the hatch fell away in a shower of sparks and fire.

Combat protocols and stratagems learned when he was a neo-phyte and honed in countless conflicts throughout the Great Crusade cycled through Cestus’s battle-attuned mind. Bursting onto the ship, the Ultramarines found themselves amidst the massive workings of an ordnance deck: torpedo cranes, ammuni-266

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tion and fuel hoppers; cavernous spaces criss-crossed with gantries and crowded with gangs of sweating menials were all in abundance.

With tactical precision, the Astartes fanned out. Cestus drove forward with Lexinal, the punch of his battle-brother’s plasma gun backing up the ferocity of the Ultramarine captain at close quarters.

A group of deck hands came at them with a clutch of heavy tools. Cestus swept low through their clumsy attacks and rose quickly, cutting through two with a savage criss-cross strike and killing a third with a head-butt. Barking fire from his bolt pistol put paid to two more. An actinic flash sent the temperature warnings in his battle-helm spiking as a beam of plasma ignited a fuel hopper. Fire blossomed in plumes of orange and white, twinned with billowing smoke. A squad of rushing armsmen were incinerated in the blaze and the heavy stubber mount, hastily erected above, was thrown to oblivion.

Left and right, Excelinor and Pytaron let rip with their bolters, creating a deadly crossfire that shredded anything that dared to advance through it. They surged steadily into the deck, despatch-ing targets with brutal efficiency, but these were only ratings and armsmen. Cestus knew that the Astartes of the Word Bearers would be coming. They had to act quickly and disable the cyclonics before the real threat arrived. Without the destruction of Formaska, the Word Bearers could not fulfil their plan and get close enough to Macragge to unleash the viral strain.

His super-advanced mind skipping ahead to the tactical tasking to come, Cestus almost missed the scarred-faced officer flying at him with a power mace.

This one was Astartes, although he wore a half-armour variant of full battle-plate. Most of the bottom half of his face was destroyed and had been replaced with a metal grille. Deep pink scar lines ran like fat veins up his jaw and across his cheek bones.

‘Quail before the might of the Word,’ he bellowed, voice metallic and resonant through the augmetics.

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Cestus parried a deft swing of the mace with his power sword.

Arcs of miniature lightning danced across the two weapons as they were locked in a brief, pyrotechnic struggle. The Ultramarine broke away and brought up his bolt pistol, only for the grille-faced Word Bearer to smash it out of his grasp. Pain lanced through Cestus’s fingers, even though his armour bore the brunt of the blow, numbing his shoulder.

‘Lorgar will guide us to victory,’ snarled the Word Bearer, allowing his fervour to fuel his swings, though they dulled his ac-curacy.

Cestus wove out of the death arc from an overhand smash designed to finish him and brought his blazing blade onto the Word Bearer’s bare head. Slicing through flesh, bone and, eventually, armour, he sheared the warrior in two, the corpse flopping on either side of the blow.

‘Know that Guilliman is righteous,’ Cestus snarled, gritting back the pain to reclaim his fallen pistol. Rearmed, he drove on into the building firestorm, focused on the killing.

‘WHERE ARE THEY?’ demanded Zadkiel.

‘All over the gun decks,’ came the reply from one of Malforian’s subordinates. In the weapon master’s absence, Zadkiel assumed that he was dead or otherwise incapacitated. ‘Reports say they’re Astartes.’

‘They’ll be going for the torpedo payload,’ said Zadkiel, mainly to himself.

The admiral turned his attentions to his helmsmaster. ‘Sarkorov, are we in position to launch?’

‘Yes, my lord, but we cannot deploy the torpedoes while the deck is contested.’

Zadkiel swore beneath his breath.

‘Reskiel,’ he snarled into the throne vox with growing annoyance.

The sergeant-commander responded after a moment’s pause.

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‘I’m calling off the hunt for our interloper. Gather your brethren and head for the ordnance decks at once. Destroy any Astartes you find on that deck. Do you understand?’

Reskiel replied in the affirmative and the vox link died.

‘If the attack is to be delayed, I will return to my sanctum,’ said Magos Gureod, already blending away into the darkness.

‘Do as you must,’ Zadkiel muttered, his agitation obvious, the veneer of calm ever slipping. ‘Ikthalon,’ he snarled into the vox, a plan forming in his mind.

‘My lord,’ the sibilant voice of the chaplain replied.

‘Wake the supplicants.’

THERE WAS NO need to spare the supplicants. The
Furious Abyss
had reached its destination. The mission was over. Their role had been to help with the manipulation of the warp and fend off attacks against the ship. Zadkiel’s order meant using them to destruction.

The streams of nutrients were replaced with psychoactive drugs. Restraints snapped apart and cortical stimulators crackled, waking the supplicants from their comatose state to halfway between sleep and waking, where sensations and nightmares alike were real. Some of the supplicants, the ones whose mouths and throats still worked, moaned and mewled as they slithered out of their restraints onto the floor. Some convulsed as unfamiliar impulses flooded their muscles. One or two died, their hearts finally giving out.

As part of his chaplain’s attire, Ikthalon drew a heavy scarlet cowl over his battle-helm to prevent excess psychic energy from staining his mind, and moved carefully among the waking supplicants, inspecting readouts and checking for swallowed tongues. One by one, he switched off the inhibitor circuits, the loops of psychoactive material that kept the supplicants’ minds from feeding back into the
Furious Abyss
. The cogitators hooked in to the debased creatures’ consciousness fed them the image of the ship’s prow, the engineering works behind the plasma lance and the ordnance decks below.

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Finally, the supply of stupefying narcotics and soothing brain-wave instigators was cut off and the supplicants were given their last silent orders.

CESTUS SPRAYED A gantry with bolter fire. Bodies plummeted and crumpled against his fury. The Ultramarines had gained a foothold on the primary ordnance deck, but Cestus could still see no sign of the Space Wolves. He hoped that they had not shared the same fate as Saphrax. The schematic as witnessed in the vision bestowed upon him by Mhotep filled his eidetic memory.

The cluster of cyclonics destined for Formaska was at the end of the deck, doubtless in mid-transit to the torpedo apertures. The viral payload was secured in a drop chamber in the hull. There was no way to get to it.

They would have to hobble the Word Bearers’ plan at its first juncture.

Barking fire from a pair of pintle-mounted cannons set up on a loading platform above had the Ultramarines pinned for a moment. Cestus’s battle-brothers regrouped behind a pair of empty fuel bowsers and the housing of a torpedo crane.

Lexinal, plasma gun cradled in his gauntlets, slid in beside Cestus.

‘What now, captain?’ he asked as the barrage above them intensified.

Cestus memorised an open stretch of deck and then the huge metal cliff face of the
Furious Abyss
’s prow, broken by the loading mechanisms and the torpedo tubes. He visualised an industrial tangle on the other side, including giant hoppers stacked with further munitions and the rearing masses of arming chambers where yet more ordnance was stored.

‘We have to clear the deck and then get to the munitions store and deploy our melta bombs,’ he replied.

‘What about Brynngar?’ Lexinal asked, using a break in the fusillade to fire off a snap shot that bathed the loading platform in super-heated plasma. The screams died in the raging battle din.

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‘Once we take out the cyclonics, we link up with whoever is left and do what damage we can,’ said Cestus, once Lexinal had resumed cover.

The Ultramarine nodded his understanding.

Cestus relayed the same order through his helmet vox on a discrete frequency in Ultramar battle-cant to Pytaron and Excelinor.

The two battle-brothers flanked the captain’s position, heavy-duty munitions crates in front of them being chipped apart by persistent fire.

Cestus glanced between the two bowsers. The
Furious
’s crewmen, in dark scarlet overalls and fatigues, had been hit hard by the shock of the assault. Dozens of them lay dead around the torpedo hatches or shot down from the gantries and cranes. The Astartes has exacted a heavy toll, but the enemy were regrouping and reinforcements covered their losses in short order.

There was no time to delay.

‘On me,’ Cestus cried, ‘battle formation theta-epsilon, Macragge in ascendance!’

He vaulted the bowser, bolt pistol flaring and lasgun impacts spattered his cuirass. Cestus held his sword in salute stance, in front of his face and the upright blade deflected energy blasts from his battle-helm. Twin bolters blazed, cross-shaped muzzle flashes glaring, as Excelinor and Pytaron moved in staggered battle formation to Cestus’s left. Lexinal took the right flank, firing his plasma gun in controlled bursts to prevent the deadly weapon from overheating.

Towards the last third of the deck, they broke up, each taking a channel into the industrial tangle of machinery. Troops of armsmen had mobilised and came at Cestus with shock mauls and lengths of spiked chain. The Ultramarine captain cut them down, Guilliman’s name a mantra on his lips. Amidst the killing, he noticed an access portal to the ordnance deck and wondered why the Word Bearers’ Astartes had not yet shown themselves.

‘Link up and force through to the cyclonics,’ Cestus ordered through his helmet vox as he moved into a labyrinth of munitions.

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His battle-brothers obeyed and together they converged on a pair of cyclonics, still harnessed in their mobile racking.

Shots spattered from gantries above, most of the las-bolts and hard rounds smacking into cranes and clusters of machinery.

Cestus saw a lucky shot ricochet from Lexinal’s breastplate and he staggered. A second burst from a heavy cannon somewhere above them raked his leg greave and he was down. Out of the corner of his eye, Cestus saw a group of armsmen converging on the prone Ultramarine. A las-bolt clipping his pauldron, Cestus twisted as he ran, slamming a fresh magazine in his bolt pistol and discharging a furious burst into the armsmen. Two disappeared in a red haze, another crumpled to the ground nursing the wet crater in his stomach. Cestus didn’t see the rest. Lexinal was getting to his feet when a round struck an active fuel bowser. The resulting explosion engulfed the Astartes in coruscating flame, the blast wave throwing him half way across the deck.

The Ultramarine captain averted his gaze, muttering a battle-oath, and refocused ahead.

‘Deploy incendiaries,’ Cestus ordered when they finally reached the first batch of cyclonics. Pytaron unclipped a melta bomb from his armour, disengaging the magna-clamp that kept it in place. Excelinor provided covering fire with his bolter.

‘Brynngar!’ Cestus shouted into his helmet vox, crouching beside Excelinor as he desperately tried to make contact. ‘Brynngar respond.’

Dead air came back at him. Either the wolf had been killed or he was in another part of the ship where they couldn’t reach him.

‘Charges deployed,’ reported Pytaron. As he turned to his captain, a heavy round struck him in the neck, piercing his gorget.

He clutched the wound with one hand, the melta bomb detonator in the other, and fell to one knee as blood streamed down his breastplate.

Larraman cells within Pytaron’s body worked hard to slow the bleeding and speed up clotting, but the wound was serious. Even an Astartes enhanced physiology would be unable to save the battle-brother.

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‘Take it,’ Pytaron said, gurgling his words through blood.

Cestus took the detonator, his hands around Pytaron’s.

‘You will be honoured...’ Cestus’s voice trailed away as the air around him suddenly turned cold, receptors built into his battle-plate registering a severe drop in temperature. For an awful second, he thought that the deck had de-pressurised and the void would claim them all.

With the cold came screaming: a thousand voices, echoing out from the inside of Cestus’s head.

It was not the void, reaching into the ship to freeze them solid.

It was something far worse. Prickling talons probing his mental defences like ice blades reminded Cestus of his earlier encounter with Mhotep aboard the
Wrathful
.

‘Psyker!’ he hissed with sudden realisation. ‘Psyker!’ he shouted this time to get Excelinor’s attention. ‘We are under attack.’

One of the
Furious Abyss
’s crewmen stumbled out into the open.

He clutched an autogun loosely in one hand, his arm hanging down by his side. With his other hand, he appeared to be trying to tear out his own tongue.