Iron Soul

Phil Kelly

Strobing lumens flickered in the vault like the pulse of a dying man. They threw shadows around the arches and pillars, illuminating a tableau of torn cadavers and shattered stone. Ambient light filtered from the ruined eye sockets of the monotask servitors installed in the walls. Their wiry tendons twitched an idiot code that no one would read, sending gibberish into the night.

Bolt pistol raised, Jathrac Leatherhand kicked through a shattered bulkhead and cast about for life signs. He sniffed as he strode into the gloom. The aftermath of the tyranid wyrm’s attack was easy for him to read, even with his symbolic lupine helm lost during the previous day’s drop raid. Two hundred long years spent as a Wolf Priest and still the sharpness of his senses was a source of pride for him.

The vault’s tiled white floor had been opened wide by a burrowing organism the size of a mag-train. The hole the beast had torn in the vault’s centre was surrounded by several slain battle brothers, Jathrac’s packmate Dvujac amongst them. The Wolf Priest shook his head to see his once ribald old friend lying mangled and pale in a lake of his own blood. Next to a fizzing bank of cogitators at the rear of the vault, the top half of a Dreadnought lay on its engine pack, mayday signals glitching.

The rest of the fallen were Iron Hands, by their heraldry. Two had been ripped bodily in half. Three others had been speared through with wide, triangular stab wounds that not even a Space Marine could hope to survive. Xenos blood was spattered about the walls and the smell of bolter cordite hung in the air, but of the tyranid war-serpent there was no sign. Subterranean ambush, thought Jathrac. Highly effective. Even the logic-prophecies of the Medusans couldn’t predict the movements of a worldwide tyranid infestation.

The Wolf Priest sniffed twice, his senses flaring. The smell of burned meat was not wholesome, like that of a roasted ice elk or cinderwolf, but rotten and sharp, a warning taint lingering under the tang of xenos bio-electricity. Servitor-flesh, thought Jathrac. Not good to eat.

Underneath that layer of scent, on the cusp of cogniscence, was the dull hormonal trace of progenoid glands. Jathrac activated the whirring blades of his Fang of Morkai. After carefully harvesting the gene-seed of his brother Dvujac, he made his way to the corpses of the Iron Hands. Machine-lovers they may have been, but they deserved the rites of heritage, the same as any other Chapter. A dozen burned-out servitors stared sightlessly down as the Wolf Priest went about the ritual of reclamation.

Something moved in the corner of the room. Jathrac spun round, bolt pistol raised and lips curled back. Tiny hairs stood up all over his weatherbeaten skin, but it was the Dreadnought, nothing more. The machine’s blunt fist spasmed open and closed with a growl of servos. Still alive, then, thought Jathrac. Systems burned out by bio-electric discharge, crippled beyond recovery and fading fast, but technically alive.

A hiss of static came from the fallen Dreadnought’s vox-grille. Jathrac finished flasking the gene-seed of the fallen Iron Hands and made his way over.

‘Are you awake, brother?’ he asked.

‘Reroute,’ fizzed the vox-grille of the Dreadnought.

Jathrac read the scrollwork on the burnished metal sarcophagus. One Brother Radamarr, of Clan Dorrvok. The Wolf Priest raised his armoured knuckles and rapped the giant’s front plate twice, as if knocking on a door. ‘Xenos war-serpent got you, by the look of it. Cut you in twain and killed the rest.’

‘Reroute complete. Those are ill tidings. We failed, then.’

‘Aye, you did that. No shame in it, though. Big bastards, those burrowers. Love to have a crack at one myself, but duty calls. Speaking of which,’ said Jathrac, tapping the flasks at his waist, ‘got the gene-seed from your kin. All intact.’

‘Eternal thanks, from clan and Chapter,’ said Radamarr, ‘though I am not fit to give it.’

‘Well, I reckon that depends on the manner of your death,’ said Jathrac. ‘You’ve a progenoid tucked away in there too, friend. If I get it back to your brothers, that’s you passing on the torch. You can dine at the All-Father’s table with your head held high.’

‘Negative. My flesh was found wanting.’

‘That’s not the way it works, old timer. Now open up.’

‘Status of sarcophagus clasp unit: disabled.’

‘Disabled, eh?’ said the Wolf Priest with a sigh. ‘Well, I’ve seen this done more than once.’ Jathrac pulled out his plasma pistol from its holster of walrus hide, pressing the maxis-node on the gun’s underside whilst intoning the chant of unbinding.

‘Do not open the sarcophagus, brother Wolf,’ said the Dreadnought sombrely.

‘Why not?’ growled Jathrac impatiently.

‘I am not worthy of the rite.’

‘For Russ’s sake. There are billions of voydwyrms out there, Radamarr. I have no time to play confessor. Let’s get you flasked.’

‘No!’ shouted the Dreadnought, its vox so loud that dust shook from the vaulted ceiling above.

Jathrac tucked the fat barrel of the plasma pistol under the lip of the sarcophagus. He shielded his face to avoid the blast of energy and the subsequent burst of amniotic steam that would leave the Dreadnought’s crippled pilot naked inside. Gritting his teeth, he pulled the trigger. The sarcophagus flew open with a deafening bang.

Nothing came out but a blast of warm, stale air.

Jathrac sniffed once, nose and forehead wrinkled in confusion. His horror mounted as he turned back to the yawning sarcophagus that had swung open before him. The Dreadnought’s interior contained a mass of wires, a few pitted bone cogs… and nothing else.

‘What in the name of Russ?’

‘Expediency,’ said the Dreadnought, its vox-tone flat.

‘Abomination!’ shouted the Wolf Priest, his plasma pistol whipping round with a whine of recharging power cells.

Suddenly the vault went pitch black. There was a whirr, a crunch of ceramite, and then silence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phil Kelly has been a devotee of myths, monsters and magic for three decades, the last of which has been spent working as a games developer in Games Workshop’s Design Studio. Over the years, Phil has made body parts as a sculptor, roamed the roofs of Nottingham as a free runner, played the stages of Glastonbury, dived shipwrecks in Thailand and discovered the time-saving joys of extreme ironing in his home county of Essex. Since meeting his future wife at a Los Angeles beach party, Phil has begun to settle down a bit. He now leads a nice normal life writing about fantastical armies, undead pirates and gribblies from outer space.

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