DEVIL’S TRAPPINGS

Nick Kyme

The Demetrion floated in a slowly decaying orbit. The space station was dead to the void. Its three docking arms were drawn together, where normally they would be extended to receive immense starships. The control hub at the station’s core had relinquished all autonomy to darkness, a heart resigned to its final defiant beats. A goliath in sheer size, laid low by numerous wounds. Even a machine could feel its own death throes and react. It clenched as soon as it was able to calculate its own end.

Its slow dying dance across the stars would not last long. Bereft of motive power, as soon as the Demetrion strayed into the gravity well of a passing moon or planet it would crash down onto solid rock and be destroyed. Its final death blow. After that, any attempts at salvage would be impossible.

Time, therefore, was a commodity Lorkar and his men could ill afford to waste.

As soon as the Demetrion’s identity was determined, the Vitriol was immediately dispatched.

A Colossus-class space station would be resource rich and fuel the Marines Malevolent’s ceaseless warmongering.

A vast and dense debris field surrounded it in a halo of wreckage. Sheaths of ablative armour plating, ripped from the hull of an Imperial starship; cathedra-like sensorium towers, broken off from the hull; fighters, their pilots flash-frozen behind the shattered glass of their cockpits. A battle had been fought here. Judging from all the debris, it was difficult to tell if there had been a clear victor.

‘Push through,’ said Lorkar in a grating baritone voice as he stooped behind the gunship’s pilot and crammed into its small cockpit.

None gainsaid the sergeant, despite the obvious danger. Just a sliver of wreckage, a broken spire or a shattered prow ram would be enough to pierce the gunship and send the warriors aboard to their deaths in the frozen void beyond its metal skin.

Lorkar was ruthless, even for a Marine Malevolent, and the promise of his wrath made any risk worth it. Moreover, Captain Vinyar favoured him and none would go against one of his ‘chosen men’. Rumours persisted though that Lorkar wanted a place amongst the Vilifiers, but his captain would rather kill him than give up one of his veterans to Kastor’s so-called ‘elite’. Vinyar’s threat didn’t stop Lorkar’s desire. Increasingly, he looked for ways to garner Kastor’s favour and attention; the ransacking of the Demetrion was merely the latest.

Thus far, his attempts had proven unsuccessful. It had left Lorkar hungry; some even said desperate.

‘Negotiating field now. Hold on.’

Regon took a firmer grip on the flight stick, transferring minor controls to his copilot Vakulus as he put the gunship through a series of evasive manoeuvres. Small flotsam from whatever battlefield they were flying through battered them but failed to penetrate the armoured fuselage. Everyone held their breath. It wasn’t until they had breached the outer ring of debris and the Vitriol was clear that anyone spoke again.

‘Bring up the auspex,’ Lorkar muttered.

Further debris loomed ahead. Saviour pods, jettisoned from the station in a rash attempt at escape. Men and women lined the grav-couches inside, their atmosphere suits partially on. It hadn’t been enough to save them. Engaging dorsal jets, the Vitriol swept over the massive barrel of a destroyed macro-cannon. More of the Demetrion’s sundered defences, armour and communications arrays drifted into view the closer the Vitriol got to the station itself.

As Bledok engaged the auspex, a series of glyphs and markers lit up on the Vitriol’s transparent glacis.

‘Closing...’ murmured the navigator. Beyond the last debris field, the vast and monolithic station dominated their view. ‘External systems, power, life support, all minimal.’

Silent as the void, still as a tomb and lightless as an ocean trench, the Demetrion turned languidly on its axis.

‘Weapons ready,’ said Lorkar, wanting to take no chances.

Hellox engaged the heavy bolters, the only armament that they still possessed power and ammunition for. The war had been hard of late. Its cost was measured in shells and power cells. The Demetrion represented the potential for an abundant harvest of both.

No craft emerged from the space station’s hard docking points. None of its dormant cannon cycled up. There was no reaction to the gunship’s presence at all, a minnow when matched against the sheer size of the station.

‘Showing signs of damage,’ uttered Bledok, his voice trance-like as he interpreted the auspex data. ‘Severe.’

‘I can see that...’ Lorkar peered through the glacis at scorch marks in the Demetrion’s outer armour. As the Vitriol closed, homing in on a landing vector towards one of the station’s hangars, other signs became visible. Las gouges from heavy batteries. Deep shell impacts that had demolished entire decks. Guttering trails of venting gas and flash-frozen liquid billowed out into the void from rents in the hull.

‘She fought before she died,’ said Hellox, gently panning the wing-mounted guns, sighting through the gunship’s picter.

Lorkar was typically dispassionate, his harsh voice well-suited to his grim demeanour. ‘Evidently not hard enough.’ He scowled behind the faceplate of his battle-helm. It was cracked below the left eye. His right vambrace was spot-welded across the forearm join and his cuirass was comprised of four different suits of armour, each as ramshackle as the last. They were badly in need of refit and repair. All of them. ‘Bring us in. Find somewhere that’s still pressurised and has power.’

‘And if there are life signs, brother-sergeant?’ asked Regon, focusing on guiding the ship through a sudden gas cloud that had manifest around the station.

Lorkar was in the process of leaving the cockpit and glanced over his shoulder to answer. ‘We’ll deal with that if and when we find any.’

The bolter strapped across his torso, with its ugly-looking sarissa-blade, suggested the sergeant’s intentions if the outcome of a bio-scan proved positive.

No one was getting between them and the bounty of materiel aboard.

The Vitriol’s ramp touched down. Metal on metal resonated around the small hangar.

Sixteen armoured forms tramped out, two eight-man squads, their boot echoes adding to the clamour. A tracked weapon-mount followed on behind them. Each warrior bore the black and yellow livery of the Marines Malevolent. They were looking tarnished. Even the winged bolt sigils had suffered attritional scarring.

Hardly glorious. Ragged angels indeed.

Lorkar went out in front, keen to show who was in charge. Discipline was not an issue for the Chapter but any weakness or reluctance of command tended to be set upon brutally. Leadership was respected but only if said leader was worthy of the honour. He was also in the presence of a rival.

Jerak Curhn and his squad came to a disciplined halt at the foot of the ramp.

Gorv, Vogan, Rygor, Morgak, Sketh, Ultonis, Fikas – all cold-hearted killers and campaign veterans.

Lorkar purposefully ignored them. Warning sigils, amber and red, flashed insistently on his retinal display. His armour wasn’t hermetically sealed; the crack below the eye-slit and the rough-soldered vambrace compromised its structural integrity. He assumed there would be others having similar issues.

‘Harkane,’ said Lorkar once they had disembarked and were arrayed on deck. ‘Seal this hangar.’

The Techmarine engaged with one of the hangar’s three terminals, accessing it through the haptic implants embedded in his gauntlet. He was able to raise the integrity field and then close the hangar doors so the deck could be re-pressurised. This took a few minutes, during which Lorkar monitored the status of his armour and silently appraised his own men.

Rennard, Vathek, Mauhl, Baroda, Fulok, Karvak.

The latter carried the Prime Helix of the apothecarion, and was part of Vinyar’s command squad. Venturing into the unknown, aboard a space station of the Demetrion’s size, even a warrior as harsh as Vinyar could appreciate the potential requirement for a medic.

Rennard, Vathek, Baroda and Fulok all had the same drum-fed bolters as Lorkar. Mauhl was a late replacement and stood in for Nemiok, who was currently languishing aboard the Purgatory, unconscious on a recovery slab.

What Mauhl lacked in Nemiok’s brutally, he made up for with firepower. He lazily panned a belt-fed heavy stubber around the deck. It was unconventional – but so were a lot of things about the Malevolents – and attached to a shoulder-mounted armature to steady recoil.

‘What are we hoping to find in this wreck?’ he asked, holding the bulky cannon at waist height.

‘Ammunition. Guns. Armour,’ Baroda replied flatly. ‘Materiel.’

Fulok’s response was more aggressive, betraying his eagerness to move out. ‘What does it matter? We have need of all of it,’ he said, scowling.

Vathek smiled thinly, amused at the mild dissension. Two serrated combat knives were sheathed below the pectorals of his chest, blade tips pointing up to make drawing them smoother. He caught Mauhl regarding them.

‘Neither runs out of ammo,’ he said icily, leaning closer, ‘but I’ll put out an eye with each if you try and take them from me.’

Mauhl smirked, the unimpressed stranger trying to look self-assured amongst already bonded warriors.

‘Keep them. I seek something with a little more stopping power than a dagger.’ He patted the heavy stubber’s long, perforated barrel.

Rennard laughed, cold and stark through his Corvus-pattern vox grilles.

‘I would settle for torch and solder,’ he said, gesturing to the ragged condition of his war-plate. Like Vathek, he carried a secondary too. His was a battered combat shotgun, looped around his belt and slapping gently against his armoured thigh.

‘Such is the price of attrition, brothers,’ uttered Karvak. ‘Flesh and metal, neither is everlasting,’ he added morbidly.

All his warriors spoke truth, but Lorkar kept his own counsel. Just before Regon had brought them in to land, two other vessels appeared on the Vitriol’s auspex. Both were sizeable and currently slaved to adjacent docking arms. If the station itself yielded little in the way of salvage then Lorkar was convinced both ships would prove eminently more fruitful. They had but to reach them.

Curhn spoke up. ‘Shall we get underway, brother-sergeant?’ It sounded more like a demand than a request.

Like his squad, Curhn was remarkably unsubtle and his choice of weapon epitomised his character. The MKII Ragefire he carried might be temperamental, but the sun gun could kill pretty much anything it was pointed at.

‘Momentarily...’ Lorkar said, holding back his anger at Curhn’s impudence.

The atmospheric warnings faded from Lorkar’s retinal display as the hangar’s life support and oxygen levels were normalised. He removed his helm, attaching it to his belt. Beneath his armour was a scarred, stubbled visage that had seen much of war.

‘Sergeant Amigdus,’ he voxed through the unit in his gorget, ‘the Vitriol is under your protection now. Defend it from any aggressors.’

‘Aye, Lorkar.’

Amigdus and a third squad of Malevolents would remain aboard the ship. It was the only way any of them were leaving the stricken Demetrion and Lorkar was adamant they would not be cut off from it. He trusted Amigdus. He was loyal and they had fought together before, to each other’s mutual benefit. And survival.

Lorkar cut the link.

With the hangar fully pressurised, Harkane fully opened the bulkhead into the Demetrion. As Techmarine, he wore red plate in sympathy with his Martian colleagues. It made masking blood easier too. The portal shrieked open as its damaged servos struggled to comply with the order relayed by the terminal.

Eyeing the shadows beyond, Lorkar imagined enemies within them and smiled darkly at the prospect of combat. Scalps and salvage – carve up enough and Kastor would recognise him as a Villifier.

‘Squad advance.’

Aftermath, not a battle, was revealed after several quiet minutes roaming the Demetrion’s corridors.

As the Marines Malevolent reached beyond the confines of the hangar and its access conduit, the space station proved to have a vast and complex interior. Its labyrinthine layout was further complicated by damage, which cut some sections off but also opened up others. From the narrow confines of the access conduit, the Malevolents spread out into an expansive gallery.

Acting as first recon, Rennard discovered the first bodies at an arched junction that led into a much larger hall strewn with more mortal wreckage.

‘At least thirty in here,’ he said, ‘another thirty further on.’

Lorkar nodded slowly, surveying the carnage.

He called out, ‘Karvak...’

The Apothecary was consulting a bio-scanner, sending a long wave-pulse echoing across the room in hazy green light.

‘They’re dead,’ he answered, disappointed.

Curhn met Karvak’s gaze. ‘That’s it?’ He sounded unimpressed.

Karvak gave the equivalent of a facial shrug. ‘Very well. Two types of lifeform, xenos and human. Specifically, from size and genetic coding, I’d suggest eldar and transhuman.’

‘I can see they’re Adeptus Astartes, idiot,’ Lorkar snapped. ‘What did they die of?’

From the layout of the room and what was in it, Lorkar had already discerned the eldar were engaged in some sort of defensive action. Makeshift barricades had been erected and the disposition of the mouldering corpses on both sides suggested the Space Marines had effected a breach, a successful one. Yet, there was no one alive to attest to the victory.

‘I’m assuming you’re not referring to the obvious bolt damage and fletchette rounds.’

‘Don’t test me, Apothecary.’

Curhn chuckled, prompting Lorkar to turn his ire onto him.

‘Something amiss?’

‘Nothing. Carry on.’

Karvak bowed his acquiescence to both sergeants. Evidently, he resented being under Lorkar’s command, much preferring the status afforded as part of Vinyar’s retinue.

‘Here...’ he said, stepping further into the room and gesturing to one of the bodies.

Rennard was stooped over a transhuman corpse, whose faceplate and torso were embedded with crystalline splinters and jutted out like spikes.

‘See?’ said Karvak. ‘Method of execution is clear.’ He left one transhuman to approach another. ‘But in this case...’ The warrior was lying on his back, not a scratch on him, not a mark on his armour, which was devoid of any Chapter signifier they could see in the station’s penumbral light. ‘An absence of bio-signature but the outcome the same. Death.’

‘Armour appears serviceable,’ offered Vathek, unsheathing one of his knives so he could use the tip to prize off a breastplate.

Lorkar cast a look around the room. Conservatively, there was enough power armour to refit and repair both squads.

Curhn saw it too and said to his men, ‘Strip every plate, every lock and seal.’

‘Hold a moment,’ said Lorkar, having raised his hand.

Something was missing.

‘Where are their weapons?’ he asked. ‘I see shell-casings but no bolters.’

Now the sergeant mentioned it, the others looked around too.

Mauhl held up a strangely curved pistol, showing it to the rest of the squad.

‘Xenos weapons are plentiful enough.’

‘Put that filth down,’ Curhn snapped, gesturing with the scorched muzzle of his sun gun.

‘I thought we were scavenging,’ Mauhl countered.

Vathek stepped into his eye line. ‘Do as he says.’

‘We only rob Imperial then, is that it?’ asked Mauhl, tossing the pistol.

Rennard answered emphatically. ‘Yes.’

Mauhl cocked his head, questioning. ‘A little close to defilement, isn’t it?’

‘No, brother, it’s survival,’ Rennard replied. ‘They have no need of them.’

‘Whoever “they” are...’ Karvak eyed the bare metal of Adeptus Astartes armour strewn around them.

Lorkar wasn’t listening, or didn’t care. He nodded, coming to a decision, then looked at Curhn.

‘Very well then. Every piece of plate that isn’t split, melted or studded with fletchettes gets taken. The rest we scrap, then move on.’

‘You think there’s more?’ asked Curhn, not bothering to mask his greed.

Lorkar nodded.

‘There’s more, and not just armour.’ He rolled over one of the dead eldar with his boot. Having fought this xenos breed more than once, he knew a little of their culture, enough to realise there were variant clans and tribes. ‘Does this creature look like a poet or artisan to you?’

Curhn frowned, unsure what the other sergeant meant.

‘One dirty eldar is much the same as another to my eyes,’ he said.

‘Do you wade into battle blind, Curhn?’

Everyone except Harkane had paused to listen.

‘They are mercenaries. Slavers and soul traffickers. Shamanic war gear, totemic markings...’ Lorkar looked to his men. ‘What does it suggest?’

‘A tribe.’ Vathek eyed the bare-chested, tattooed creature beneath his sergeant’s armoured boot.

‘Hunters,’ said Rennard, ‘who fought a defensive action against a foreign aggressor.’

‘Cargo,’ uttered Gorv. ‘That’s why they were here.’

It was the first time Lorkar had heard one of Curhn’s squad speak. Lorkar nodded to him, respectful. ‘Indeed.’

‘Slavers take everything. Flesh and steel,’ offered Karvak.

‘Weapons,’ Lorkar told them all, ‘and whatever else they didn’t want to relinquish. This place has a secret. Two warbands fought for it. I want to know what they were willing to kill each other over. It wasn’t just enmity. There’s something else.’

After an hour of rapid welding and reattachment, Harkane had re-fitted them all with armour. Over the years, the Malevolents had become adept at scavenging and the solid plate came away easily.

‘Feels good...’ Vathek rotated his fresh shoulder cuff and adjusted his breastplate. His fingers flexed in a robust new gauntlet.

Every warrior, including Harkane, had jettisoned the parts of their old power armour that were beyond repair and adopted replacements from the dead Space Marines.

‘Like a second skin,’ Rennard agreed, jamming the extended stock of his bolter into the crook of his arm as he took up a firing stance.

‘Doesn’t solve our immediate problem, though,’ said Mauhl, lamenting at the shortness of the remaining belt feed for his heavy stubber.

‘Regretting not taking a knife now, brother,’ Vathek gibed, aiming an experimental thrust at an imaginary opponent.

‘I trust in bullets over blades.’

Vathek shrugged. ‘I knew a lot of dead men who said that.’

Rennard smirked at his brother’s casual baiting.

‘A pity we have so few of both.’

‘You forget, brothers,’ the voice was Rygor’s, who made a show of clenching his fist. ‘This, your Emperor-given might, and our unending hatred of our enemies will neither blunt nor run empty in the clip.’

Both Vathek and Rennard inclined their heads to Rygor at this wisdom, though Vathek muttered, ‘A little theatrical, isn’t he?’

‘Sage words, but words don’t fill ammo clips,’ said Baroda. ‘Our need stands, regardless of rhetoric.’ Re-armoured, he tramped off in search of Lorkar.

Rygor’s fists stayed clenched as he watched the other Malevolent go.

‘Pay him no mind, brother,’ Rennard said smoothly. ‘He is a bitter old cur, just as we need him to be.’

Rygor nodded, but there was an air of tension between the two squads. Everyone felt it.

Lorkar was adamant, as he stared Curhn down. ‘Harkane is staying here.’

‘We should at least take the track-mount,’ he argued.

Both sergeants and the Techmarine had been in close concert for the last few minutes, allowing the squad to adjust to their upgraded war-plate. Though in truth, Harkane was more of a spectator, and twisted his wrist periodically in his fresh vambrace, nodding every few seconds to indicate his understanding.

Lorkar shook his head slowly, prompting a second riposte from Curhn.

‘Its firepower may prove useful against whatever might be aboard the station.’

‘Only Harkane has the ability to operate it.’

‘Affirmative,’ said the Techmarine, nodding. ‘Its firing protocols are enslaved to my armour’s systems.’

Curhn’s frustration bordered on violent. ‘Then both come with us.’

‘We have almost twenty men, Jerak. How will this be insufficient?’

‘Have you ever fought aboard a hulk like this before?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘I have. Alongside the Vilifiers.’

Lorkar suppressed a twinge of envy as Curhn went on.

‘We had thirty, five in half-scavenged Tactical dreadnought armour.’ He tapped his breastplate hard just over the heart. ‘I alone survived. I always survive. Do you know why, Lorkar?’

‘I am sure you’re about to enlighten me...’ Lorkar sounded bored.

‘Because I don’t take foolish chances.’

Lorkar nodded, smiled.

‘Harkane stays, the Rapier too.’

‘You’ll regret this,’ Curhn warned him. ‘We all will.’ He stomped off to find his men.

‘Harkane has scanned the station,’ Lorkar declared to both squads. They were arrayed in front of him in the second hall in two semi-circular formations. Curhn stood to one side of the other sergeant, his own position obvious. ‘There’s one route from here that leads to a large laboratorium, according to the station schematic. Harkane will guide us to it.’

Behind Lorkar was a blast door. Another terminal was set into an alcove that faced an identical receptacle just outside the blast door’s threshold. The Techmarine was jacked into it and inloading data. A low binaric hum emitted from his vox-unit as the Martian aspect of his physiology started processing.

‘The laboratorium is a hub,’ Lorkar explained. ‘From there we should be able to gain access to one, if not both, of the docking arms.’

Curhn spoke up. Again.

‘Are we convinced the vessels are worth the risk? Why not take what we have, reposition the Vitriol and make ingress externally? Plasma cutters should get us through the fuselage. Our armour is void-sealed again.’

‘I am convinced. That’s all you should need to reassure you, Curhn,’ said Lorkar. ‘This is not a debate. These are my orders. Now follow them.’

Cleaving open a ship the size of either vessel on each docking arm would take time, exhaust precious power cells and needlessly endanger the Vitriol. Any of these reasons would have been sufficient to placate Jerak Curhn, but Lorkar had no desire to.

As Harkane opened the blast door into the next section of the Demetrion, Lorkar kept his eyes on the obstreperous sergeant.

‘Rennard and Gorv take recon,’ he said, sending a clear message by issuing a command to one of Curhn’s men. ‘The rest of you form up in your squads.’

From what Harkane had gleaned from the Demetrion’s schematic, the space station was vast and well-deserving of its Colossus-class designation. It had few fighter bays, though, and the dearth of armourium and barrack houses suggested its primary Imperial function was scientific and not military. It explained why the xenos had overwhelmed its defenders with a single ship, slipping through the Demetrion’s exterior cannon using craven stealth technology.

Despite the haul the wrecked station represented, the thought of its sacking left a bitter taste in Lorkar’s mouth. He had been conditioned to despise weakness and hate deviancy. The scenario that had unfolded aboard the Demetrion had both. What he could not fathom yet was what had happened to the Adeptus Astartes who had tried to save it. He considered they might still be aboard, holed up or wounded. That too raised questions, principle amongst which was what he would do if he found them.

He spoke into his vox, ‘Harkane. We’re approaching the next junction.’

Dingy tube lighting flickered along the decking spasmodically, illuminating a corridor half-choked with debris. Pipes and inert power cables draped from the ceiling like grey intestines. Several of the grates underfoot jutted up at awkward angles and made for uncertain footing. It was slow going. Fifteen booted feet tramped a dull, somnambulant rhythm against the deck plating.

Twelve metres ahead, part of the ceiling had caved in. Rennard and Gorv had to stoop to bypass it along with a cluster of prefabricated rubble, shattered tiling plastek and empty fuel canisters.

A few metres beyond that, a cross junction.

There was a long pause before Harkane answered. Communion with a sundered machine-spirit was difficult. Accessing sensorium and auspex data took time.

Lorkar wasn’t ignorant of that, but his desire to reach the docked vessels quickly was making him impatient.

‘Harkane...’ he repeated, with implicit warning.

‘Recon takes the left fork,’ the Techmarine replied, any annoyance at being hurried masked by the machine-cadence of his voice. He went on, ‘From there a cargo ramp slopes up to a long gallery. Follow it and you’ll be at the laboratorium. Another terminal located there should allow me further access from this hub.’

‘Join us there, brother. Bring the track-mount.’ Lorkar tried not to smile when he thought of Curhn seething behind him.

Harkane signalled affirmative before cutting the link.

Karvak sat on his haunches before the armoured laboratorium door, scrutinising the hand-held bio-scanner.

‘I can’t be certain,’ he murmured.

Gorv and Rennard stood either side of the Apothecary, agitated at the delay but awaiting the Lorkar’s next order in silence.

Apart from Vathek, who had stayed with Lorkar, Curhn had the rest organised into defensive positions, watching every duct and alcove as if it would lurch forth an enemy at any moment.

‘Well?’ he asked over the vox.

‘Patience, brother-sergeant,’ Lorkar replied, privately amused at the irony.

He regarded the laboratorium door pensively, as if scrutiny alone could divine the secrets of what was beyond it.

‘No signs of life. Nothing,’ Curhn went on. ‘We’ve not encountered a single living soul since ingress. On a station this size...’

It seemed unlikely, but Lorkar deigned not to answer.

A wall panel mounted outside showed that the temperature within the laboratorium was sub-zero.

‘A cold room,’ Lorkar muttered to himself.

‘Emergency cryostasis?’ suggested Gorv. Tribal tattoos marked his face, suggesting his recruitment from some feral backwater or other. A hunter, Lorkar concluded, deciding Gorv would make a solid addition to his own squad.

‘Possible...’ said Lorkar. He had been considering the same thing. The chamber was large, at least two hundred square metres and comprised of several antechambers leading off from a central research area. The usefulness of Harkane’s report ended there, the only way to know for sure if any survivors had used it in extremis was to breach the door.

Lorkar looked down at Karvak. ‘Well, Apothecary?’

‘A murmur on the scanner,’ he said, rising. ‘Could be nothing. Heat residuals, flash-frozen bio-matter. This equipment is well beyond the Mechanicus definition of function.’

‘Perhaps we will find you another, Sawbones,’ uttered Vathek.

‘Perhaps,’ echoed Karvak, his tone suggesting he thought otherwise as he slipped his bolt pistol from its holster in preparation for imminent breach.

‘Shut but not locked down,’ said Rennard, pausing as he considered the access panel.

‘Can the Techmarine inload the runic signifiers to open it?’ asked Gorv.

‘I have them,’ answered Vathek, slipping out a knife and ramming it hilt-deep into the panel. He twisted, once, and the mechanism holding the door sealed shrieked in apparent agony.

At first, nothing happened. An abusive retort died on Rennard’s lips as the sound of gears and servo activation stole the opportunity for sarcasm.

‘Breach formation,’ ordered Lorkar, eyes on the split that had just appeared in the blank face of the laboratorium door. Like much of the station, it was battered and scorched with fire-damage sustained before the Demetrion’s retardation systems had kicked in and doused it, but it was opening.

Curhn hurriedly brought the others up, and the two squads formed three abreast as they faced the laboratorium door.

Harkane would not be far off. They could wait, but Lorkar’s patience was running thin. If the laboratorium granted ingress to the larger station dock then he wanted to be through it and to the promised materiel that lay beyond as soon as possible.

‘We are not the only pirates who trawl this part of the void,’ uttered Curhn, evidently of the same mind.’

Warriors from either of the factions currently putrefying in the hall the Malevolents had left behind could return at any moment.

Lorkar gave the order to advance and went in first.

It was dark inside and the two squads moved through squalls of venting gas, which further impaired visibility. Tendrils of liquid nitrogen curled and uncurled around the room’s immediate periphery. Lighting was low, and hoarfrost limning every surface cracked under the pressure of the Malevolents’ armoured boots.

Despite the gloom a sense of immensity impressed itself upon them. Cogitator banks, isolation chambers, racks of scientific paraphernalia and tracts of thick cabling both above and below were hinted at behind the shadows.

At what appeared to be the vast laboratorium’s central nexus was a large elliptical dais.

But for all intents and purposes, it looked empty.

Twenty metres in, Lorkar raised his fist.

No one moved. Only the machine-grind of armour servos with the slow turning of heads, and the ambient crack of gently warming ice intruded on the silent laboratorium.

‘Life signs?’ Lorkar hissed, producing a ghost of steam from his warm breath. He’d kept his helmet off. His auto senses were still unreliable and he preferred the evidence of his own eyes anyway. Ice particles were already forming above his brow and crusting his upper lip.

Karvak had the scanner in hand, but shook his head.

The others panned their weapons in slow, deliberate arcs.

A vault of ice glass stared back at them, possessed by their crude reflections in the ice. Twisted, malformed, the mirroring could only provide a poor simulacrum of the squad.

Lorkar’s gaze alighted on his own face. Stern, pitiless. Scar tissue smothered it like a mask. Dark circles haunted his eyes and a shadow eclipsed his chin and jawline in stubble.

Under Vinyar’s leadership he had been hardened, and honed to a level of brutality only reserved for the Marines Malevolent, but now he sought greater glories for himself. The Villifers were his path to them. He briefly wondered how Curhn had shared a joint mission with them.

‘Disperse,’ he said, watching how his lip curled with the word.

Hatred ran in his veins, articulated in every expression and deed. Lorkar knew he was an ideal candidate for the Vilifiers. Surely after this, Kastor would see the irrefutable truth of that.

The squad spread out. Four on either flank and up the middle, three acting as rearguard, including the Apothecary.

Darkness and arctic winter prevailed in the laboratorium. Sparse lighting focused on the stepped dais in the middle of the chamber, better illuminating a lozenge-shaped research station comprised of glass capsules and dormant consoles.

Ascending steps hidden by a low-lying nitrogen fog, Rennard approached one of the capsules.

‘Some kind of hydroponic,’ he said loud enough for Baroda to hear.

‘In need of ammo clips, brother. Not foliage.’

Rennard chuckled, wiping his hand across the capsule to get a better look at what was behind the glass. Frostbitten planet life. A pane of fluid crystallised on the inside. What Rennard saw reflected in it made him reach for his weapon.

‘Emperor’s blood!’

He gasped, stepping back and almost falling off the dais.

Mauhl was up behind him in seconds, the heavy stubber aimed squarely at the capsule. He lowered the weapon momentarily.

‘Leaf and vine,’ said Mauhl, a hand on Rennard’s back to steady him.

Rennard turned at the perplexed tone of the other warrior.

‘A little... anxious, aren’t we?’ asked Mauhl.

Snarling, Rennard smacked Mauhl’s hand away and tramped back to the capsule.

He was staring intently through the void in the frost made by his gauntlet as Lorkar and Vathek joined them.

‘I saw something,’ Rennard whispered, ‘mirrored in the glass.’

‘You saw yourself,’ Lorkar told him. ‘Your imagined enemy was a reflection.’ He told the others who had rushed over to stand down.

Rennard nodded, still staring as his sergeant descended the dais. Oblivious to Lorkar’s scorn, he tried to remember what he had seen.

Something monstrous. Rank with mutation. Tainted and grotesque.

His own reflection.

Suddenly agitated, he looked down at his arms and body for any sign of malformation.

‘Brother...’ hissed a strange, androgynous voice.

Rennard turned quickly, eyes over wide and alert, but it was just Vathek.

‘Brother,’ he said again, his cadence and timbre his own. ‘What is wrong with you?’ he asked. Weakness would not be tolerated. ‘You are veering close to sanction.’

Rennard shook his head, trying to throw off the disorientation, but had no answer.

Vathek ran out of time to press further. Karvak had found something.

‘Looks like some kind of bio-matter,’ he voxed, knelt by an ice-bitten carcass that was lying on the ground by the periphery of shadow encircling the room.

After briefly converging for Rennard’s false alarm, the squads had quickly spread out again. The facility was large, uncharted and abyssal dark. So dark in fact that prey-sight through the Malevolents’ retinal displays couldn’t penetrate.

‘Who cares? We should map this entire chamber first,’ said Curhn, keeping Vogan, Rygor and Ultonis close.

‘Describe it, Apothecary,’ said Lorkar, ignoring Curhn. He had maintained his previous course, content to let the others conduct dispersed recon as originally ordered. Whilst waiting for Karvak’s answer, he found another terminal.

‘Meat and bone. A carcass, but it’s frozen solid.’

‘Human?’ Lorkar had reached the terminal. Gorv, Fulok and Fikas maintained overwatch behind him. Judging by the terminal’s panel, it controlled environmental conditions within the laboratorium. ‘Why would they deep freeze this chamber?’ he wondered aloud, gauntleted hand poised over a temperature lever.

‘Not human... animal. Something big, or at least it was before it was cleaved.’

Karvak’s voice receded into Lorkar’s subconscious. He was vaguely aware of Rennard still moving across the dais, examining each capsule. Vathek was his shadow. Curhn was edging across the corona of light with his men, about to breach its border into the dark unknown. Lorkar felt a tingle in his fingers and looked down to see his gauntlet shine in the lambent glow of the sparse light. A perfect fit, as if fashioned for his hand and no other. Something rippled across the metal, like distortion in plastek when over-exposed to heat. He wanted to snatch his hand back, but didn’t. A sigil formed ephemerally, too fast for Lorkar to see or discern before it was gone again.

He frowned, then scowled as he tried to grip the temperature lever. It was as if his hand... resisted. Or was it the lever, stiff from lack of use. He could think of no other explanation. Pressure was momentary, before he overcame this resistance and initiated the sequence that would restore heat and light to the laboratorium.

With the dry hum of rapidly spinning thermal fans, the room’s temperature spiked immediately. All of the nitrogen vents shut down. With a simultaneous machine shunt, banks of heat lamps ignited in the ceiling above. In seconds, condensation began to form on the walls, on the capsules, on every surface that had been encrusted by frost.

Curhn had just stepped into the shadows when the heat came back on.

‘Still dark out here,’ he called, and looked up to the ceiling. ‘Lumens, even the heat lamps, it’s all been shattered. If I had to guess, I would say by–’ He stopped abruptly.

Karvak was still on the vox.

‘This flesh,’ he said, looking up to try and find his squad. ‘I only saw it because of the rapid thawing. It’s been gnawed...’

Lorkar blinked hard, as if surfacing from a particularly deep sleep.

‘Vathek, Rennard...’

Curhn answered first.

‘Something’s in here with us,’ he whispered, hackles rising as he levelled the sun gun at waist height.

Lorkar brought up his bolter and left the terminal. Gorv and the others followed.

‘Mauhl, Baroda!’ The others were coming, double-timing across the dais.

Lorkar could see it too, moving sinuously in the shadows.

Karvak was on his feet. ‘Restore all freezing protocols,’ he warned, drawing his pistol as he eyed the dark. Sketh and Morgak moved in close, protectively.

Curhn and his men were surrounded by the dark.

‘I think I have targets...’ he said.

A low, sibilant hiss answered.

Sllllyyyyyttthe...

Lorkar went back to the terminal but couldn’t reverse the warm-up sequence. The lever was disengaged until the process had run its course. Locked out, only Harkane could bypass it.

‘Techmarine!’ he barked down the vox, but got no reply. Forgetting the panel, he converged on Curhn.

‘There’s something here...’

Curhn saw monsters, their cold, ophidian eyes nictitating in the weak light.

Lorkar saw them too. Dozens, slithering towards the warmth of the lamps and the transhuman flesh of the Malevolents.

He roared, ‘Kill them, Curhn!’

A retinal-searing ball of light and heat burst from the sun gun. In the split-second before immolating its target, Curhn and the warriors with him experienced the true horror of what surrounded them in a collision of his senses.

Reptiles, immensely proportioned. Gelid skin with scale as hard as armour plate. The rancid stench of decomposing flesh, strung across glistening fangs. Four limbs, attached to a torso that terminated in a thickly-muscled tail.

Not dozens, hundreds. Put into hibernation by the extreme cold, but now slowly uncurling from slumber. Awake, hungry, enraged.

Curhn tried to fire again, as Vogan, Rygor and Ultonis unleashed their bolters, but the sun gun needed to recharge. He was backing up, going for his knife as one of the reptiles sprang–

‘Brothers...’

Light and noise split the room apart as four more bolters fired up. Four reptilians went down, vital organs exploded viscerally over Curhn and his men.

A fifth wrapped its mouth across Curhn’s forearm, jaw distending as it tried to dig in with its fangs.

Lorkar blew its body apart, before rushing in and sawing off its still shrieking head with his sarissa.

‘More behind us!’ Karvak sounded agitated as he loosed a snapshot into the shadows where further reptilian forms had begun to converge on the Malevolents. Sketh and Morgak were firing too.

Ultonis went down, his gorget and throat ripped open.

Then Sketh, seized by reptilian claws and dragged off, screaming into the darkness.

‘Up high,’ shouted Gorv, strafing the ceiling where the creatures had begun scaling the rafters. His warning came too late for Fikas as two reptilians dropped down on him and ripped into him.

‘They’re everywhere,’ snarled Rennard, using single round kills to conserve ammo. Having descended from the dais, he saw the four groups of Malevolents cohering into a defensive posture.

Vathek laughed, revelling in the slaughter, his weapon and combat tactics set to ‘burst fire’.

‘I forgot how much I missed a dirty cleanse and burn.’

Lorkar grabbed his shoulder.

‘We’ll be the ones burned if we don’t get out of this room.’

But the Malevolents were cut off from the exit and hemmed in, and as the temperature rose more and more reptilians shrugged off their dormancy to surround them. Those that were already awake and not shrugging off hibernation sleep were getting faster. A ring of scaly, saurian faces snarled and hissed at him from just beyond the dark.

‘Make for the dais,’ Lorkar rasped to Vathek, then louder for the others. ‘Get to high ground, then in aegis formation. Move!’

‘We have just left the dais,’ Mauhl groaned, but he obeyed, swinging the heavy stubber round in a storm of tearing bullets and roaring muzzle flare.

Curhn was falling back with the others when Lorkar stopped him.

A second burst from the sun gun lit up Curhn’s features enough that Lorkar could see the annoyance in his eyes through his retinal lenses.

‘How many more shots has that plasma gun got?’ he asked.

‘Too few,’ Curhn replied tersely. ‘We are caught in a viper’s nest and you want an ammo count?’

Vogan and Rygor moved above them, mounting the platform with the others. From above the sergeants, the guttural retort of bolters sounded with desperate suppressing fire.

‘And tell me this,’ Lorkar added, acutely aware of the reptilians’ proximity. He fired one-handed to keep the closest at bay, his other hand occupied with doing something else, ‘How long did you think a craven, ineffective officer like you would keep a command? Your men deserve better.’

‘Wha–?’ Curhn didn’t have time to finish the question before Lorkar shoved him into the midst of the creatures and ran up onto the dais. Preoccupied with fighting for their lives, no one saw what had happened. Or if they did, no one spoke of it or acted against it. Lorkar like to assume it was the latter.

To his martial credit, Curhn fought hard and took a lot of wounds before he went down. It wasn’t the reptilians that killed him though. He had just cleaved a little breathing room when he sighted Lorkar staring down at him from the dais and turned his sun gun on the sergeant.

He bellowed, ‘An eye for an eye, brother!’

Curhn could not have known the fuel cell interface had been tampered with. In the chaos of the fight, he failed to notice the perforation Lorkar had made in the sun gun’s combustion chamber. It went up like a miniature super nova as soon as the trigger was pulled, and the blast wave hit like a sledgehammer a half-second later.

‘Burn, filth!’ Lorkar bellowed amidst the storm, standing defiant as the edges of the explosion buffeted him.

‘Was that Curhn?’ asked Karvak.

Lorkar nodded. He checked Vogan and Rygor, then Morgak and Gorv but all were too intent on survival rather than vengeance.

The blast had killed scores of the reptilians and mortally wounded dozens more. A breach, fire-blackened and still burning, led to the doorway.

‘He’s a dead man,’ said Karvak.

‘Is that your considered opinion, Apothecary?’ Lorkar replied.

Vathek started laughing again, but moved quickly when Lorkar ordered them to fall back again, this time out of the laboratorium.

Despite the mass casualties during Curhn’s destruction, the reptilians were everywhere.

Mauhl advanced eagerly, laying waste with his cannon until the belt feed jammed. He was trying to clear it when a creature tore open his side and the stubber almost in two. Mauhl staggered, spitting blood as his transhuman body fought to stymie the damage. He fumbled for his knife, attempting to shed the heavy weapon rig at the same time when the reptilian ripped off his faceplate, revealing Mauhl’s grimaced, bloodstained visage beneath. A third, insanely fast blow gouged open his left pectoral. Having impaled its prey, the reptilian lurched forward to wrench out Mauhl’s throat.

Two sharp blades punched either side of the creature’s throat and ended the assault.

Standing behind the reptilian was Vathek, his face alight with killing lust.

‘Blades not bullets,’ he reiterated, catching Mauhl as he fell forward and handing him off to Fulok. ‘He dies, I get his vambraces,’ he called to him, before glancing down. ‘Nothing personal, brother,’ he said to the half-conscious Mauhl.

Gorv and Rygor had found the insensate form of Fikas. He was badly shredded and bleeding profusely but the other two took an arm each, resolved to get him out of the laboratorium.

Morgak had Ultonis, hauling him across the deck by his ankle and firing blind with his free hand.

No one wanted to go back for Curhn – he was dead anyway – and Sketh was lost somewhere in the darkness, likely already half-devoured.

Halfway to the exit, the Malevolents found themselves surrounded again. As before, they moved as one, slowly and back-to-back. Their vantage might be lost, but they had a slim chance of survival because of Curhn’s ‘sacrifice’.

‘This is draining our ammunition,’ muttered Baroda, forced to switch to burst fire in order to keep the reptilians back. Darting ophidian heads snapped forwards like coiled springs, seeking to take lumps out of their prey. They twisted and undulated, writhing amongst one another in a foul amalgam of stinking snake flesh.

‘What use is a full clip to a dead warrior?’ said Rennard, jabbing with his sarissa.

‘Depends if we find his body,’ laughed Vathek, his mirth cutting short as his bolter chanked empty. ‘Scav.’

‘Shouldn’t be so profligate, brother,’ Karvak chided, one eye on the screen of his bio-scanner as he fired. It was lit up with an array of thermal signatures, increasing in intensity as the reptilians became more active.

Their sibilant voices crashed together in a crescendo like white noise. It was overwhelming, like an artificial silence in its intensity.

‘A knife doesn’t run out of shells, Sawbones,’ said Vathek. ‘I’ll teach you when we get out of this hellhole.’

‘We aren’t getting out,’ Karvak replied.

Rennard jammed, spitting fury as he tried to clear the malfunction. ‘Damn it!’ He gave it three seconds before letting the bolter drop and taking up his secondary.

Hard shotgun booms warred against the pummelling drone of susurration, but its shells lacked the stopping power of a bolter. Chips of shrapnel embedded scale carapace but often failed to penetrate.

A reptilian got close enough to lunge. Marginally faster, Rennard thrust the shotgun’s blunt-nosed barrel deep into the gullet and turned the thing’s head to vapour. It left him bloody, with gristle still hanging off the stock as he disembowelled a second cold-blood with a blast to its softer underbelly.

Vogan finished it with a precise head shot, and Rennard nodded his thanks to him across the carnage.

‘Adversity really brings out the best in our breed, don’t you think?’ Vathek asked of no one in particular, and got to cutting. Throats and torsos, any part of a reptilian’s physiology that might harbour a vital organ. He killed quickly and with an economy of effort he hadn’t shown with his bolter, keeping the creatures off both Fulok and Mauhl.

Lorkar was the only one with his head up.

Twenty metres lay between them and the doorway. Intent on their prey, still sluggish from hibernation, none of the creatures had strayed from the laboratorium so far.

Just twenty metres.

It might as well have been two hundred.

Lorkar panned his bolter around in a half-arc, firing off a dispersed spread. Shell counter said he was running low. The squad had barely moved in the last few seconds. They were getting bogged down, able to fend off the creatures but not break through their ever-thickening ranks.

‘We need another plan,’ snarled Karvak, as if reading the sergeant’s mind, and ramming his reductor spike into a reptilian neck. Blood jetted across war-plate and for a moment seemed to glisten and coalesce against the new sections of his armour.

‘I have one,’ Lorkar replied. The blood flecked Karvak’s bio-scanner too. It was still on, tracking heat signatures. A large one had manifested just beyond the door to the laboratorium.

Lorkar didn’t wait for the vox to crackle, he just gave the order.

‘Harkane, fire now!’

The rest of the Marines Malevolent hunkered down as one, years of fighting together on hundreds of battlefields honing their combat empathy to something that went beyond mere instinct.

A second later and a fusillade of las-beams raked through the doorway of the laboratorium and tore the reptilians in front of it apart. It lasted six seconds before a brief cessation in the Rapier’s fury urged Lorkar into motion.

He shouted to the others, ‘To your feet! Move!’

The breach had reopened, thronged by corposant mist and the noisome stench of half-cauterised snake meat.

Karvak went first, with Rennard and Vathek close behind. All three were carrying minor injuries but their restored plate had saved them from serious damage. They held the door as the others surged through, some dragging the bodies of the wounded with them. Lorkar was last, keeping any reptilian survivors at bay with single kill shots. A brief visual count, through actinic fog and the carnage, suggested there were still well over a hundred left. More could be lurking, yet to rise.

Backing up across the threshold, eating through his last few rounds, Lorkar saw an unexpected figure emerge from amongst the sundered reptilian bodies.

‘Curhn’s alive?’ Vathek articulated everyone’s disbelief.

Battered, scorched black, Curhn lifted his arm to hail them as he staggered through the settling blood mist.

Still breathing.

‘Impossible,’ said Karvak, hunkering behind the tracked weapons-mount.

‘We can’t reach him now.’ Gorv’s statement was as good as giving permission.

A single round remaining, Lorkar took aim and blew Curhn’s head apart.

‘Didn’t think you were capable of mercy,’ uttered Rennard as the reptilians closed in on Curhn’s headless corpse.

Harkane fed the creatures another burst from the Rapier, hot las chewing up any bold enough to venture within three metres of the doorway.

‘I’m not,’ Lorkar replied, as his Techmarine remotely accessed the door panel and began to seal the laboratorium.

The doors shut solidly, the process culminating in a hiss of locking hydraulics. Silence fell, interrupted only by the circadian rhythms of the Demetrion’s decaying systems. The station was dead, inhabited by ghosts and their echoes, it just hadn’t acknowledged it yet. Too late, Lorkar saw the futility of the mission. There was nothing of value here. The two factions they had found deceased had eliminated one another. Any survivors had fled, taking anything of value with them, apart from the reptilians. Though the value of such a horde was relative.

The Malevolents were alive, though. Barely. Lorkar also consoled himself with the fact he had weeded out a betrayer and assassin. Who knew the Vilifiers had intended this as an initiation? Both sergeants had been auditioning. It was brutal. It only increased Lorkar’s desire.

‘I’m out,’ breathed Baroda, bemoaning his lack of ammo.

Rennard locked wrists with Vogan, both glad to be alive.

‘What, by Throne, did we walk into?’ Rennard asked. ‘What did we miss?’

‘It wasn’t cryostasis,’ answered Karvak, ‘at least not for the Demetrion’s crew. I think they are long gone. Either dead or the playthings of the xenos. Those things on ice in the laboratorium are cargo, unique to the dead eldar hunters. They had been using this facility to keep it docile for later transport. Only, they were interrupted.’

‘The dead Imperials,’ said Vogan.

Karvak nodded, and the surviving Malevolents fell into a brief, contemplative silence.

Fulok crouched next to Mauhl who was still breathing but laid out supine on the deck. Ultonis and Fikas looked worse off. Gorv knelt beside them, shaking his head to Rygor and Morgak after he had checked the wounded warriors’ vitals.

Vathek slumped against the wall, sliding down to his haunches. His knives were still clenched in his fists, but some of the blood on his armour was his own. As Karvak went over to administer aid, he looked up at Lorkar.

‘He could not have lived, sergeant.’

‘Looked alive to me,’ replied Vathek, grimacing as he took off his helm. A reptilian’s claw had lodged in his gorget and was digging into his neck. Karvak needed to remove it to examine the wound.

‘Until you removed his head,’ said Rennard. He snarled at sudden pain in his arm, just beneath the vambrace.

Lorkar wasn’t listening. Instead, he focused on the Techmarine.

‘Where were you, Harkane?’ His tone shaped the words into a threat.

Rennard’s snarl grew into a roar of agony, interrupting any potential answer from the Techmarine. Rennard was clutching his vambrace, trying in vain to remove it.

‘Burning...’ he roared, a gauntlet clenched around his forearm. Something was materialising in the blank plate of his vambrace. At first they were runes, engraved in the metal. They quickly changed and became faces, twisting and coiling, locked in silent torment.

‘Throne of Terra,’ Rennard gasped, his voice reduced to a feverish rasp. He drew his combat blade, and the serrated teeth glinted in the half-light. ‘Cut it out,’ he said to Karvak, ‘or I will.’

The Apothecary was backing off and had drawn his pistol. He wasn’t aiming at Rennard, though. Vathek was beneath his sights, staring down the impassive maw of the pistol.

Tendrils were reaching up over Vathek’s face, extending from his gorget. He tried to clutch at them but his arms were held fast. He couldn’t even rise. Gorv, Rygor, Vogan, all the survivors were similarly afflicted.

Unlike the others, Karvak had only replaced a gauntlet and stared down at it now, flicking between it and what had become of Vathek, Rennard and the others. His gaze fell to Ultonis and Fikas who had begun stirring.

‘You said they were dead...’

Gorv spoke through a barricade of teeth. ‘They were,’ he snarled.

Lorkar’s eyes were wide with unaccustomed panic. ‘Harkane, can you remove the armour?’

He saw it now, too late again. Two traps they had fallen into. The first excruciatingly more subtle and insidiously deadlier than the second. Tainted armour, possessed of its own fell animus. Lorkar had felt it already, its abominable will. When he had tried to move the lever and was resisted. Arrogantly, he had believed he was the one with total autonomy of his body, that the armour’s systems had yet to completely meld.

The Techmarine shook his head, resigned.

‘I already tried. When you were gone, I ran a diagnostic and found... anomalies. It’s why I was late and out of contact. When I attempted to remove the foreign parts of the armour, they resisted. Nothing short of–’

A hard bang cut him off, resonating around the corridor with Karvak’s sudden scream. The Apothecary had shot off his own hand. Bone jutted from the stump of his arm, dripping with gore. He convulsed with agony, but managed to keep his weapon trained on the others.

‘That won’t work for me, Sawbones,’ Vathek snarled. Since he had stopped trying to remove it, his gorget had returned to normal.

‘None of this works, brothers. You are condemned men,’ said Karvak. ‘As soon as Vinyar hears about this–’

Lorkar incapacitated him with a blow to the head.

Every warrior slumped in the corridor drew a weapon and looked at his brothers with wary eyes.

Only Harkane remained still, though he did still have the Rapier slaved to his armour systems. Unless that too had become corrupted.

‘Stand down,’ Lorkar ordered. ‘Brothers...’ he warned when nothing changed.

Vathek was the first to capitulate. He laughed loudly, mirthlessly, and sheathed his bloodied knives.

‘Are we damned then?’

No one spoke at first, then Gorv uttered, ‘If we cannot remove the armour...’

The implication didn’t require further explanation.

Rennard sank to his knees. Somewhat redundantly, Rygor made the sign of the aquila.

‘Don’t be absurd,’ rasped Lorkar. ‘Damnation is a path, a creed. You choose to become enslaved to Ruin, it cannot be brought about through trappings.’ His refutation felt long, even to his own ears. Lorkar knew they had made a choice. They had put on the armour. Could he swear to the fact that he had not felt something in its formerly bare metal that had given him pause?

‘Are we not still Marines Malevolent?’ he asked.

Harkane’s answer was cold, as emotionless as only one sired to the Machine Cult could be. ‘We are bonded by more than brotherhood now, brother-sergeant.’

‘Our complicity binds us, as well as this...’ Baroda held his vambrace up to the light. It had stopped burning, but the dark sigils were plain to see now. It was their manifestation that had pained him. He looked to Lorkar. ‘What do we do?’

Lorkar’s heart hardened. It was already iron, this was mere ablation he now applied to it. His mouth formed into a hard line, bereft of compassion, of hope. He plumbed the only depth of emotion he had left. Hate.

‘We are expected aboard the Vitriol,’ he told them. ‘Harkane, signal Amigdus. Tell him we have casualties and are returning to the ship for immediate extraction.’

‘Amigdus is no fool,’ said Rennard. ‘He will see what burdens us.’

Lorkar did find another feeling beyond hate in that moment. It was regret.

‘I know.’

Vathek laughed. He didn’t cease laughing until they reached the hangar. It echoed off the Demetrion’s hollow arteries, a cursed song, the refrain of condemned men.

The Vitriol’s embarkation ramp was already open when they returned to the hanger. Alarmed at hearing of the casualties, Amigdus was waiting with bolter held ready across his chest and his squad in tow.

‘Curhn and Sketh,’ he said to Lorkar. ‘Where are their bodies?’

‘Lost,’ Lorkar answered flatly, his own weapon by his side but in hand.

Amigdus noticed, but was wise enough to keep the fact hidden.

He knows...

It sounded like Rennard, but the voice hadn’t come through the vox and Lorkar was too far away from the other warrior to hear him whisper. Despite himself, his finger tightened on the trigger.

‘Captain Vinyar will demand an explanation for the deaths,’ Amigdus pressed, minutely shifting his stance in an almost subconscious act of battle-readiness.

Lorkar approached the foot of the ramp, the others trailing behind. His armour was as it should be, bile-yellow and coal-black, a winged bolt upon the shoulder guard. He barely noticed the change, the subliminal camouflage it adopted. When he reached the edge of the ramp, he placed one foot upon it and stopped.

Amigdus looked down at him. With the hanger still sealed, he wasn’t wearing his helmet. His already wrinkled brow, creased into a frown then changed into a scowl.

He knows...

He did know. Not everything, not the manner of the deaths, but he knew who had killed Curhn.

Disgust manifested on Amigdus’s face.

The armour’s subtle mask was slipping. It had betrayed Lorkar, driven by its own innate sense of paranoia.

Kill him! He knows!

Disgust turned to hatred, overwhelming disbelief and transforming it into action.

‘I had no choice...’ muttered Lorkar, meeting Amigdus’s vitriolic gaze and slowly raising his bolter.

‘You killed the–’

A single bolter-round discharge filled the hanger with its treacherous echoes.

The rest of Amigdus’s squad shaped to act but the raised weapons from the rest of the Malevolents gave them pause.

‘Amigdus was my ally. I don’t want to kill anyone else,’ said Lorkar, honestly. ‘Don’t make me, brothers.’

It took a few seconds of tense indecision, but Amigdus’s now former squad laid down their arms.

Lorkar nodded. ‘Take the ship,’ he ordered to the others, resolution tinged by sadness at the sight of Amigdus’s headless corpse lying supine at the summit of the ramp.

It came easier after that.

Vakulus, Bledok, Hellox and Regon did not resist. Like Amigdus squad, the crew of the Vitriol wanted to live and would follow the orders of their sergeant. Harkane had brought all of the salvaged armour. What could be spared was given to the others, a condition of their survival.

Lorkar was surprised they had submitted willingly, and wondered how far the Marines Malevolent had already fallen to choose such a fate. He told himself they did it out of loyalty and out of some mistaken belief that by sharing the burden it would be lightened and that much easier to be overcome.

The truth? It only intensified the curse they all now bore.

There was nowhere to flee to and Lorkar would not run to the Eye like so many other fallen renegades. He was not of that stripe. He was still loyal, just... compromised. He had but one road left to him.

Purgatory.

Captain Vinyar sat upon his throne in one of his ship’s many victory halls. The walls were shrouded in both shadows and banners. The heads of defeated enemies hung impaled on trophy racks. It was a reminder of the sheer war-mongering potential of the Chapter and its efficacy in what they regarded as an eternal crusade.

He was unhelmeted, revealing an ugly head with a slab-like jaw and a half-shaven scalp, but otherwise wore his full panoply of war. A cloak of black ermine sat about his shoulders. A chainsword sat across his lap. A bolter rested against the edge of the throne within easy reach. His partially deactivated power glove rested idly on one of his throne’s arms. Standing in a halo of light at the foot of a short stairway leading up to Vinyar’s regal seat was one of his warriors.

Sergeant Lorkar.

He was kneeling with his head bowed. They all were. And unarmed.

‘I should kill you,’ uttered Vinyar. His deep voice resonated, suggesting the size of the chamber. Callousness radiated from his eyes almost palpably.

Lorkar looked up. His own eyes were clear. He was ready to accept any punishment.

Vinyar leaned forward in his throne, and smiled.

‘But I have a use for you yet, Lorkar. I doubt Kastor will accept renegades into his ranks, I’m afraid.’

Lorkar bristled at this latest barb. His fists clenched, prompting subtle movement from the shadows and the twenty Marines Malevolent looking on with bolters primed and aimed.

‘My captain has only to speak it,’ said Lorkar, bowing his head again.

Vinyar told him what he wished of him.

At first, upon hearing it, Lorkar balked, but quickly warmed to the idea. Whether it was he that approved or the thing residing inside his armour, he did not know. All that mattered was his willingness to do it. He nodded, and Vinyar bade him rise.

‘I’ll need men I can trust...’ said Lorkar, fixing his captain with the hate boiling within his eyes. His humours would ever be choleric from now on.

‘You’ll have them. Those from the Demetrion as well as any dregs I can spare.’

At least Vinyar didn’t lie about his intentions. Lorkar could find some morsel of respect for that.

‘A debt is a debt,’ said Lorkar.

‘Indeed,’ Vinyar agreed. ‘They are owed this grudge. No one makes a fool of me, no one slights the Malevolents without being blooded in return.’

‘When do we leave?’

‘Immediately. You will need to ingratiate yourself with his fleet.’

Lorkar scowled at the thought of throwing in his lot with the renegades, but he could hardly do what Vinyar wanted alone.

‘And you are sure it will grant our salvation?’

‘Yes,’ Vinyar leaned back in his throne, an indication he was losing patience, ‘but you will have to kill him to get it.’

Lorkar’s face darkened, revealing more of animus’s desires than his own.

‘That won’t be a problem.’

Vinyar dismissed him.

As Lorkar made the lonely walk from the throne room, he thought about the warriors waiting for him beyond. He wondered what they would say when he told them the mission.

Nocturne.

The Salamanders.

Whether it was the armour or not, Lorkar smiled at the thought.

About The Author

Nick Kyme is the author of the Horus Heresy novel Vulkan Lives, the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, and the audio drama Censure. His novella Feat of Iron was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection, The Primarchs. For the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Nick is well known for his popular series of Salamanders novels and short stories, the Space Marine Battles novel Damnos, and numerous short stories. He has also written fiction set in the world of Warhammer, most notably the Time of Legends novel The Great Betrayal for the War of Vengeance series. He lives and works in Nottingham, and has a rabbit.

In the aftermath of a savage battle against vicious greenskins, warriors of the Black Templars find themselves at odds with their Marines Malevolent allies over the spoils of war.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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ISBN: 978-1-78251-519-7

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