Read Battle for The Abyss Online
Authors: Ben Counter
Tags: #000 - The Horus Heresy, #Warhammer 40, #Book 8
‘You are Zadkiel,’ Cestus said as if it were an accusation. ‘I thought the captain was meant to go down with his ship.’
‘That will not be my destiny,’ Zadkiel replied drawing his sword. Energy crackled down its blade too. It was longer and slightly thinner than the Ultramarine’s weapon, master crafted by some Martian artificer no doubt, the aesthetic flourishes added by a Legion artisan.
‘I have your destiny right here,’ Cestus promised him, and thought of Antiges slain in battle, his battle-brothers killed by the warp predators aboard the
Wrathful
; of Saphrax and his warriors smashed against the hull, their honour denied them; of Skraal and Brynngar sacrificed upon the altar of victory and hope. ‘This is where your words end.’
‘You are a fool, Ultramarine,’ snarled Zadkiel, ‘ignorant of the power of the galaxy. Gods walk among us, Astartes. Real gods!
Not ghosts or ciphers or interloper aliens, but beings of true power, beings who pray back!’ Zadkiel’s eyes blazed suddenly with fervour.
Cestus knew this was the religiosity for which the Emperor had once scolded Lorgar’s Legion. Zadkiel was a fanatic, all the Word Bearers were. It was all they had ever been. How could their duplicity and deception have gone unnoticed for so long?
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‘We have spoken with them. They hear us!’ continued Zadkiel.
‘They see the future as we do. The warp is not just a sea for ignorant space-farers to drown in. It is another dimension far more wondrous than real space. Our reality is the shadow of the warp, not the other way around. Lorgar and the intelligences of the warp have the same vision. For the warp and our reality to become one, where the human mind has no limits! True enlightenment, Ultramarine! Can you imagine it?’
‘I can,’ Cestus said simply. There was pity in his eyes. ‘It is a nightmare and one doomed to fail.’ Zadkiel sniffed his contempt.
‘You underestimate the power of the Word,’ he scoffed.
‘Talk is cheap, fanatic,’ Cestus snarled, casting aside his helmet so that his enemy could see the face of his slayer, and launched himself at the Word Bearer.
A massive energy flare lit the room in actinic radiation as the two power swords clashed: Cestus’s broad-bladed spartha versus Zadkiel’s rapier-like weapon.
Sparks cascaded as the two Astartes raked down each other’s blades before withdrawing quickly. Cestus let anger fuel his blows and crafted an overhead cut that would cleave into the Word Bearer’s shoulder. Zadkiel foresaw the attack, though, and rolled aside, thrusting the tip of his blade into the Ultramarine’s thigh. Cestus grimaced as the tip went in and recoiled, swiping downward to force Zadkiel back.
‘I am an expert swordsman, Ultramarine,’ Zadkiel told him, goading his opponent carefully, ‘as martially skilled as any of the sons of Guilliman. You will not best me.’
‘Enough words,’ Cestus roared. ‘Act!’ He smashed his blade, two-handed, against Zadkiel’s defence. The Word Bearer wove away from the blow, using the Ultramarine’s momentum to overbalance him, forging his parry into a riposte that pierced Cestus’s shoulder beneath the pauldron. A second stinging blow cut a gash across the Ultramarine’s chest and he staggered back.
Breathing hard, using the precious seconds his retreat had given him, Cestus sank into a low fighting posture and went to
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drive in beneath Zadkiel’s guard. The Word Bearer turned, casually avoiding the Ultramarine’s lunge and placing a fierce kick in his guts.
Doubling over, Cestus felt a sharp pain in his side. There was a flash of blazing light, and he felt heat on his exposed skin as Zadkiel’s power sword came close. Searing agony filled his world utterly as the Word Bearer plunged the blade deep into the Ultramarine’s leg. Cestus fell to one knee, dizzy with pain.
Another blow struck him in the chin. It felt like a punch, and he fell over onto his back.
Cestus brought his blade up just in time as Zadkiel launched himself at him, lashing his rapier down against the Ultramarine’s improvised guard. It hovered near to Cestus’s face, his power sword the only thing preventing it from cutting his head clean off. All the while, the shuttle bay and the
Furious Abyss
disintegrated around them.
‘Give it up,’ hissed Zadkiel, pressing the blade ever closer to Cestus’s throat.
‘Never,’ the Ultramarine snarled back.
‘Calth is dead, Ultramarine!’ shouted Zadkiel. ‘Your Legion is doomed! Guilliman’s head will be mounted on the Crown of Colchis and paraded all the way to Terra! Nowhere is it written that one such as you can change the Word!’
Once, when Cestus was a mere aspirant, one of hundreds drawn from the valleys of Macragge to be judged before the sons of Guilliman, he had scrambled up the steps of the Temple of Hera. He’d defied the whips of the previous year’s failed aspirants, who lashed at the youths as they tried to be the first to reach the top. He had hunted through the forests of the Valley of Laponis. He had learned there, not just that the weak gave up and the strong persevered; he had learned that at a far earlier age, or he would never have been considered an aspirant at all.
He had learned that perseverance did not just make the difference between success and failure. It could change the test, and create victory where none had been possible. Will alone could
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change the universe. That was what made a mere man into an Ultramarine.
It was will alone that allowed Cestus to throw off his attacker in the shuttle bay antechamber, crushing the ruin of Zadkiel’s severed fingers in his fist to loosen the Word Bearer’s hold. It was will alone that brought him to his feet, and will alone that made him cut Zadkiel’s sword, hand and all, from his wrist as he hefted it.
Clutching the stump of his arm where Cestus had cleaved it, the Word Bearer got to his knees and bowed his head.
‘It means nothing, Ultramarine,’ he said with finality. ‘It is the beginning of the end for your kind.’
‘Yet, still we’ll fight,’ he said, and with a grunt Cestus cut off Zadkiel’s head.
The Word Bearer’s lifeless body slid to the ground, as the rest of him rolled across the deck. Cestus sank to one knee beside him and found that he could no longer carry his sword. It clattered to the floor and the Ultramarine pressed his hand against his side.
There was blood on his gauntlet. Zadkiel had struck him a mortal blow after all.
Cestus laughed at the ludicrousness of it. It had felt like nothing more than a sting of metal, so innocuous, yet so deadly.
The world was turning to fire around Cestus as he fell bodily beside Zadkiel. The sound of rending metal told him that the integrity of the shuttle antechamber would not hold for much longer.
The
Furious Abyss
was all but destroyed, the plan for it to cripple the Legion in tatters. The thought gave Cestus some solace in the moments before he died. As his cooling blood pooled around him, he thought of Macragge and of glory, and was finally at peace, his duty ended at last in death.
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‘THIS CONCLUSION TO the Word is no conclusion at all, for it shall go
on. The future as it is written is but the merest fraction of the wonders
that will be unveiled by my vision. When mankind and the warp are
one, when our souls are joined in an endless psychic sea, then the truth
of reality will be open to all and we shall enter an aeon where even the
most enlightened of us shall be revealed to have been groping in the
darkness for some truth to sustain us.
‘Yes, the wonders I seek are but the beginning, and for our enemies,
those who would defy the future and attempt to crush the hopes of our
species, the pain is only just beginning too. Our enemies will fight, and
they will lose, and destruction will be visited upon them, for it is written. Even beyond those first battles there is a purgatory of the soul that
the most tormented of our foes cannot imagine. Yes, for those who will
deny their place in the Word, these hateful birth pangs of the future
will
be but a splinter of their suffering.’
— The Word of Lorgar
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TIMELINE
Millennia
Age
Notes
1-15
Age of Terra
Humanity dominates Earth. Civilisa-
tions come and go. The Solar system is colonised. Mankind lives on Mars and the moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune.
15-18
Age of Technology
Mankind begins to colonise the stars
using sub-light spacecraft. At first only nearby systems can be reached and the colonies established on them must survive as independent states since they are separated from Earth by up to ten generations of travel.
18-22
Age of Technology
Invention of the warp-drive acceler-
ates the colonising of the galaxy. Federations and empires are founded. First aliens encountered and first Alien Wars are fought. First human psykers scien-tifically proved to exist. Psykers begin to appear throughout human worlds.
22-25
Age of Technology
First Navigators are born allowing
human spaceships to make even longer, quicker warp-jumps. Mankind enters a golden age of enlightenment as scientific and technological progress acceler-ates. Human worlds unite and non-aggression pacts are secured with dozens of alien races.
25-26
Age of Strife
Terrible warp-storms interrupt inter-
stellar travel. Sporadic at first, the storms eventually prevent any warp-jumps being made. The incidence of human mutation increases rapidly. Mankind enters a dark period of anarchy and despair.
26-30
Age of Strife
Human worlds ripped apart by civil
wars, revolts, alien predation and invasion. Human psykers and other mutants dominate some worlds and these rapidly fall prey to warp-creatures.
Humanity is on the brink of destruction.
30-present
Age of Imperium
Earth is conquered by the Emperor
and enters an alliance with the Mechanicum of Mars. Finally the warp-storms abate and interstellar travel is possible again. The Emperor builds the Astronomican and creates the Space Marine Legions. Human worlds reunited by the Emperor in a Great Crusade that lasts for two hundred years.
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