Daenyathos Read online

  My esteemed Brother Reinez.

  It is my fervent wish that I was writing to you again under more auspicious circumstances but alas, recent events have cast yet another shadow over those of us who lay rightful claim to being true sons of Dorn. The Soul Drinkers Chapter, long a thorn in the side of all loyal servants of the Throne, sit rotting in cells aboard Phalanx and preparations for their forthcoming judgement continue apace. I trust that as Chief Persecutor your case against them is also at an advanced stage and it is to this end that I felt compelled to contact you.

  What you now hold in your hands is a tome we recovered from a Soul Drinkers Chaplain, though it pains me greatly to use that term to describe one who has turned away from the Emperor, beloved by all. The wretch had sought to keep it concealed but upon confiscation of his power armour he was forced to give up the book along with the secrets it contained. I must warn you that this makes for difficult reading and only one with the conviction and purity of a true servant of the Emperor, beloved by all, should be allowed to cast eyes upon it. Manifold are their treacheries, and the revelations you will find within damn the Soul Drinkers utterly. What sickens me, and any other noble son of Dorn, is that these acts of sedition and murder were carried out in the Primarch's name.

  I am certain that you will share my view and make use of this evidence to condemn their entire debased Chapter as nothing more than heretics.

  Part 1

  313.M36

  Terra! Holy Terra, Mother World, Terra Most High! Cradle and Throne of Man! The Emperor's Watchtower, the Orb of His Majesty, the Eye of the Heavens! Sacred Earth Herself!

  So the chanson-serfs had sung as the Glory had first come into sight of Terra, a sphere of clouded gunmetal inlaid with the silver of orbital docks. So they had sung as the Thunderhawk gunships, their paths latticed with laser fire, had descended through the grey veil of cloud and glimpsed unobscured the glories of the Ecclesiarchal Palace. Hundreds of verses they had sung, their minds wired together through the comm-nets of the dozen Thunderhawks, extolling the magnificence of this storied and beautiful place.

  By any moral standards, the Ecclesiarchal Palace was an ill-starred place that day. It was infested with heretics and served as the lair for a madman. But it also possessed a sacred beauty more profound than petty concerns like morality. It was eternal. It would stand forever. Many believed it had already stood there, straddling a whole continent of ancient Terra, since the beginning of time - for the human race to exist was unthinkable without the mother of all cathedrals to venerate the undying Emperor.

  The Ecclesiarchal Palace stretched from one horizon to the other. Only the Imperial Palace, on the other side of the planet, was bigger. Huge swathes of Terra's surface were taken up by the two edifices. The Cathedral of the Emperor Deified was a titanic dome, as high as a mountain and as broad as a city, rising far into the distance. Endless warrens of naves, cloisters and gilded fortresses surrounded it in an ornate cityscape. It had canals and spaceports, mausoleums and crematoria, slums and mansions. It might as well have gone on forever.

  The serfs' chanson continued as the Thunderhawks left long burning contrails across the sky over the palace's eastern sectors. The song turned from the magnificence of Terra and the Ecclesiarchal Palace, as it always did, to the many glories of the men the Thunderhawks carried. They were not properly men in many respects, although they had once been, long ago. The Chapter serfs were men, but while they were less than they had once been - subservient, with body parts removed to make them more suitable for their tasks - the warriors aboard the Thunderhawks were more than human. It was their livery that could be glimpsed adorning the gunships from the battlements of the palace as they descended, vertical engines roaring columns of flame, towards the body-strewn courtyard marked out as their landing zone. A thousand men lay dead in the courtyard and the cloisters surrounding it. Columns had been toppled to clear the zone.

  Anti-aircraft fire spattered up from somewhere to the west. The serf-pilots, hard-wired into the controls of the Thunderhawks, wrestled their craft between the streaks of fire. The pilots were good. The Chapter had made them that way.

  Twelve Thunderhawk gunships descended, one at a time, hovering two metres above the courtyard. Their rear ramps opened and armoured figures far taller than a man leapt down, ready to fight the instant they landed. Each gunship's complement was an army in miniature - ten warriors, each one capable of any fight the enemy might throw at them, as willing to hammer the enemy from afar as they were to tear them apart face to face. Thunderhawks dropped their passengers, then roared up again to bank through the tracer fire and lend support from the air.

  Each Thunderhawk bore the symbol of a golden chalice against its purple hull. The armour of the warriors was purple, too, trimmed with bone-white, and they all bore the chalice on one shoulder pad. They were Astartes, Space Marines, Angels of Death, and they were warriors as feared as Terra was holy.

  They were from the Soul Drinkers Chapter, and they had come to free Terra.

  GUNFIRE HAMMERED LOUD enough to deafen a man. Brother-Sergeant Daenyathos backed against a ruined gargoyle, a hunk of carved stone the size of a tank, that had fallen from the cliff-high walls alongside.

  'Cover!' he yelled into his squad's comm-net. His fire-team, four more Astartes under his command, ran across the processional through a rain of explosive fire and slid into the lee of the gargoyle.

  'Press on!' came Captain Garn's voice on the all-squads channel. 'Cover and move! Onwards! Onwards!'

  The gate up ahead had been attacked before. Six times the Imperial Guard of the 914th Sevayin Reavers had pushed along the processional, a wide avenue flanked by monumental statues, and six times they had been beaten back. The solid walls of the processional formed a valley that had funnelled them into the firing zones of the gate's defenders, and the road was strewn with bodies. The earliest attack had been long enough ago for bones to be poking through the rot-blackened skin and torn khaki fatigues. The newest bodies were still fresh, blood wet and glistening, skin yet to bloat.

  The Imperial Guard had failed. They had failed because they were men. Men ran away, men faltered, men fell back. Astartes did not. That was the difference. A man might have put on power armour - he might even have hefted the boltgun or the chainsword an Astartes wielded. But he would still be a man. He would still lose this battle. An Astartes would win.

  Daenyathos cheeked the positions of his fire-team. They were well-drilled - he had seen to that himself. Daenyathos did not have to give them the order to follow him as he ducked under a broken stone claw and into the open.

  Fire sprayed down in reply. Laser fire, mostly. Some heavy weapons, mounted up around the enormous gate towers and among the statues crowding on the gate's lintel. Daenyathos put his head down, bolter clutched to his chest, and sprinted through the fire. Shots impacted against his shoulder guards, one ringing against the side of his power armour's helmet. His autosenses swirled with static.

  Brothers Kalynos, Torlo, Yelt and Daggeran were behind him. They were the Astartes of his fire-team, his command. Each one had a human side - a personality, quirks and habits, things that would make them angry and things that would slide off them when other battle-brothers would spark to anger. But in battle, they were only Astartes. There was no room for human failings. They had a trust only an Astartes could have. Daenyathos knew Daggeran would be compensating for the bulk of his heavy bolter, barrelling along on Daenyathos's heels. Torlo and Yelt were joined at the hip, covering their rear and flanks. The fire streaking back up into the murder-holes studding the gate tower ahead was coming from Kalynos, Daenyathos's best shot.

  Daenyathos slid into hard cover at the base of the gate tower. The sheer surface was impossible to scale, even to the first level of murde
r-holes from which smouldering gun barrels protruded. The only way the Soul Drinkers would take the gate was to get inside, and the only way inside was through the front door.

  The rest of the Soul Drinkers force was advancing, too. Heavy weapons squads were set up among fallen statues and chunks of masonry, swapping fire with the Frateris in the gate towers. Astartes fire-teams were using their covering fire to converge on the various barricaded entrances to the gate towers. Demolition charges erupted in crumping explosions of black earth and flame as the first squads to reach their targets blew up the fortified doorways.

  The doorway closest to Daenyathos's team was his target. It was ill-defended compared to most. It had been used as a sally port in earlier battles, when the Frateris had emerged to cut down the Imperial Guard. Its plasteel surface was scored with las-fire.

  'In position,' voxed Daenyathos to Garn. He received an acknowledgement rune in reply, flickering against the back of his retina. Daenyathos looked back along the path they had come and saw Garn's command pinned down, sheltering in a series of massive craters in front of the gates as fire stitched through the road around them.

  Daenyathos would get no help from that quarter. With the antiaircraft fire on the top of the gate towers, the Thunderhawks could not support them this close in, either.

  'No wonder this was not breached,' said Brother Torlo, looking up at the stretch of gun-studded tower above them. 'The enemy has burrowed in deep.'

  'Is that desperation I hear, my brother?' said Daenyathos. 'You think we cannot enter this burrow?'

  'Nothing could be less true, brother-sergeant!' snapped Torlo, a little too quickly.

  'Then lend your words the strength of your arm!' said Daenyathos.

  Torlo took his combat knife from its sheath, holding his bolter one-handed like a pistol. He backed a pace away from the door and rammed a foot into the spot beneath the lock of the plasteel door. Torlo was strong - not as strong as Daggeran, but it was enough. The door boomed open.

  Torlo yelled a wordless war cry and sprayed fire from his bolter on full-auto. Gunfire lit the inside like bursts of lightning. Torlo dived in, knife held blade-down - an Astartes habit, to make it easier to stab down at an enemy who did not share his great stature.

  Daenyathos followed Torlo in. The fire-team did the same, Daggeran last, covering their rear with his heavy bolter. Images came to Daenyathos in a flash - the tangled confines were indeed like the inside of a burrow, narrow corridors choked with rubble and lengths of structural girders torn from upper floors. Crude spikes sprouted from the walls. Rolls of razor wire garlanded everything. The enemy wanted to make this a difficult place to fight through.

  Torlo simply kicked his way through it. Wire snapped against the ceramite of his greaves and rubble crunched under his feet. He put his shoulder down and put his whole bulk against a wall up ahead, crashing through it and sending its stone blocks tumbling into the room beyond.

  Daenyathos sized up all this in a moment. He saw the enemy, too, in the levels above, crouched among the stripped-out halls where once an army of scribes had kept the names of those who passed through this gate. Piles of scrolls were everywhere, illuminated parchments spilling through the holes in the floor opened up to turn the ground level into a kill-zone.

  'Daggeran!' yelled Daenyathos. 'Above us!'

  The enemy opened fire. Daggeran did the same. Laser fire fell as thick as rain and Brother Yelt fell under its weight, his armoured form slumping against one wall. Daggeran's heavy bolter slammed shot after shot into the floor above and what remained of the floor disintegrated, the explosive bolts ripping chunks from the walls and ceiling beyond. One enemy, already shredded by bolter fire beyond recognition, tumbled down in a wet red mess.

  One of the Frateris screamed. It was a signal. They leapt down, afraid of Daggeran's fire, hoping they could save themselves by fighting up close.

  Rarely, thought Daenyathos, had a sentient creature been more wrong.

  The man that leapt down at him was naked to the waist, his torso ornate with intricate scarification in the shape of the Imperial eagle, and the haloed skull that represented the Emperor Himself. He had a powerful, muscular build, built for athleticism rather than raw strength. His head was shaved and the lettering of a High Gothic prayer had been carved into his face and scalp. Around his waist was a half-robe of silk and velvet, embroidered with gold. On one hand was mounted a lasblaster, a rapid-firing, short-ranged laser weapon. In the other he held a sword with a gilded hilt and a blade of haematite.

  His image was shimmering as if through a heat haze. Daenyathos knew this was the effect of the energy shield that surrounded him, generated by a device grafted onto his spine.

  He was one of the Frateris, the army of the Ecclesiarchy. The Imperial emblems inscribed into his skin were works of heresy, for he fought for a corrupt church.

  All this Daenyathos saw and comprehended in the time it took the Frateris to fall to the ground level. Time slowed, as if the violence itself weighed it down. Daenyathos brought his bolter up and parried the first blow from the blade as it curved down towards him.

  The Frateris's teeth were each illuminated, carved with tiny devotional images which flashed as he opened his mouth to yell another war-cry. His tongue was tattooed with a prayer. His eyelids, too. Lettering spiralled up the inside of his nostrils and into his ears. He was a walking prayer book.

  Daenyathos stamped down with his front foot. It was a deliberately inelegant move, made against an enemy that did not deserve to die a handsome death. The Frateris's leg shattered below the knee and he fell forwards. Daenyathos grabbed the Frateris under the chin and hauled him off the ground.

  The energy shield was powerful protection against ranged fire. That was why the gate towers had continued to crawl with Frateris no matter how much fire the Imperial Guard had poured into them. But once an enemy got inside the shield, got face to face, it was useless. A Frateris had to rely on speed and skill at close quarters. He could not match an Astartes in either.

  Daenyathos drove the Frateris down into the floor, dropping to one knee as he slammed the man's head into the rock. The back of his skull caved in and blood spurted from between his illustrated teeth. Daenyathos hauled the body up again, dangling from its broken spine, and it jerked as laser fire sizzled into it from the other Frateris leaping down to engage.

  Yelt was on his feet again and plunged a combat knife into the back of another Frateris. The monomolecular blade's tip appeared in the centre of the Frateris's chest, sawing through his sternum.

  The gunfire halted. Half a dozen Frateris had died in a few moments. A body fell from two floors up, one arm blown clean off by Daggeran's heavy bolter.

  Yelt pulled off his helmet, one side of which had been blown apart by laser fire. He had a grin on his scorched face.

  More commotion came from above. More Frateris moving to engage.

  'Climb,' said Daenyathos. 'Push on. Push forwards.'

  The Frateris were fanatics. Their purpose was to die for the Emperor - they were grossly misguided, pledged to a maniac, and they had to die. All of them. They would not give up.

  So that, thought Daenyathos, is how it is going to be.

  The gunfire began once more.

  THE GATE FELL four hours after the Soul Drinkers had landed. Daenyathos had linked up with the other squads that had forced their way into the western tower and once they reached the top and silenced the anti-aircraft guns, the Thunderhawks had swooped in and riddled the east tower with more fire than even the Frateris could cope with.

  The gate was open shortly afterwards and the Sevayin Reavers marched through the vast doors before which their friends had fallen in their hundreds.

  A short distance away, a similarly sized force of Astartes had fought an action of their own in capturing an arena in which passion plays and devotional choirs had been performed for audiences of cardinals. These Astartes were not Soul Drinkers but Fire Hawks, from one of the other Chapters that had come to
Terra to end what some called the Wars of Apostasy.

  A man named Goge Vandire lived in the Ecclesiarchal Palace. Quite where no one was sure, because the palace was too huge to be properly mapped and much of it had fallen into ruins. But he was definitely in there. Every day, often every couple of hours, his words would shriek from vox-casters all over the palace as he ranted about the corruption of the Imperium and how only a man of his vision could guide it on the right path. The Guardsmen pulled down the vox-casters whenever they found them. They had plenty of nicknames for Goge Vandire, but his proper title was Ecclesiarch Goge I, 361st Master of the Administratum, Lord Protector Spiritual of the Imperium of Man.

  Goge Vandire had usurped the role of Ecclesiarch, and used it as the basis from which to become dictator over the Imperium. The Imperial Creed itself had huge military and naval power built up by previous Ecclesiarchs, and Vandire, for all that he was demonstrably insane, had a great skill for finding malleable commanders in the Imperial Guard and Navy. As a result, any whim that had come to him had been executed and there was no one to stop him. Vandire's ambition had grown within him until it surpassed the bounds of human logic and became insanity. It was that insanity he went on to inflict on the Imperium. The random executions, enslavements and orbital bombings he ordered had sparked such religious mania that more had died to self-enforced pogroms and apocalyptic suicides than Vandire could have inflicted with all the troops at his command.

  He was the propagator of a moral disease. He was an arch-heretic, an icon of sin. He had to be destroyed.

  The Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, had stood aloof from Vandire's reign. They cared nothing for temporal power. They had no interest in ruling the Imperium themselves. But enough was enough.

  The Fabricator General of Mars had sent Titan Legions and tech-guard to bring Vandire to task. Regiments of Imperial Guard, those not loyal to Vandire, had rallied to their banner. Then the Astartes had joined them, and Vandire's destiny was decided.