Warhammer - Ultramarines 02 - Warriors Of Ultramar (McNeill, Graham)

  Lord Magyar, for it could surely be none other, stood before his throne and bowed to the Ultramarines. His long, silver hair was tied in numerous crystal-wrapped braids reaching to the small of his back and his coal-dark skin resembled a lunar landscape, cratered and ridged with numberless wrinkles. A long, forked white beard fell to his waist, waxed into sharp points.

  His eyes were dark pinholes and though it was impossible to guess the age of the Chapter Master, Uriel was certain he must have been at least seven hundred years old.

  Lord Magyar sat upon his throne and said, 'You are welcome, brothers of the blood.'

  Uriel was shocked at the strength and powerful authority in the ancient warrior's voice, but hid his surprise as he stepped forward and bowed.

  'Lord Magyar, we thank you for your welcome and bring greetings from your brothers of Ultramar. Lord Calgar himself bade me convey his regards to you.'

  Lord Magyar nodded slowly, accepting Uriel's greeting.

  'You come with dark tidings, Captain Ventris. Our Chaplains have seen grave portents and they have seen you.'

  'Seen me?' asked Uriel.

  'Seen you drenched in blood. Seen you triumphant. Seen you dead.' proclaimed Magyar.

  'I do not understand, my lord.'

  'Long have we known of your coming to us, Uriel Ventris.' nodded Magyar, 'but not why. Tell me why you have come to my monastery, brother of the blood?'

  Pleased to be on a topic he could understand, Uriel bowed again to Lord Magyar.

  'We come before you in hopes that you will honour the Warrior's Debt and join us in battle against a terrible enemy.'

  'You speak of the oath Guilliman swore on Tarsis Ultra during the Great Crusade.'

  'I do, Lord Magyar.'

  'Such an oath binds your Chapter still?' asked Magyar.

  'Yes, my lord. As has been our way since the blessed primarch swore his oath of brotherhood with the soldier who saved his life, we are sworn to defend the people of Tarsis Ultra should their world ever be threatened.' said Uriel.

  'Is it so threatened?' asked Magyar formally.

  'It is, my lord.'

  'You are sure?'

  'Yes, my lord. A tendril of the Great Devourer is moving towards it and will attack soon. My warriors and I recently boarded and destroyed a hulk codified as the Death of Virtue that was bound for Tarsis Ultra. The accursed vessel was filled with genestealers and we fought them with courage. Upon returning to our ship, our astropaths detected the psychic disturbance known as the Shadow in the Warp moving towards us. The tyranids are coming, my lord. Of this I am sure.'

  'And what do you wish of me?'

  'My Chapter is honour bound to defend these realms and I call upon the blood that flows between us for your aid. The tyranids are a monstrous foe and we will be sorely pressed to defeat them. With your valiant warriors by our side, we would stand a much greater chance of victory.'

  Lord Magyar grinned, exposing brilliant white teeth. 'Do not think to appeal to my warrior's vanity, Captain Ventris. I know of this debt and the bond that exists between us full well.'

  'Then your warriors will fight beside us?'

  'That remains to be seen.' said Magyar, beckoning to Astador.

  Astador stood beside his lord and master, awaiting his command.

  'You will perform a vision-quest, Brother Chaplain Astador?'

  'Yes, my lord. As you command.' said Astador opening his robe and allowing it to fall to the tombstone floor. His armour was the colour of spilt blood, dark and threatening, the trims formed in gold. Obsidian skulls adorned each shoulder guard. He carried a golden-winged crozius arcanum, his weapon and a Chaplain's symbol of authority.

  He leaned down and removed one of Lord Magyar's gauntlets, placing it next to the bowl on the table. Next, he raised the razor edge of his crozius and slashed it across his master's palm, allowing the blood to spatter into the bowl. Lord Magyar clenched and unclenched his fist repeatedly to prevent the blood from clotting until the bowl was full.

  Astador lifted the bowl and offered it to Lord Magyar who accepted it with a respectful nod. The Chapter Master supped his blood and handed the bowl back to Astador.

  The Chaplain, lifted it to his lips and poured the blood over his face in a red rain. He drank deeply of his master's blood and Uriel grimaced in distaste. What manner of barbaric ritual was this that required the blood of fellow Space Marines to enact? Had the Mortifactors become so debased that they had fallen into rituals more commonly associated with the Ruinous Powers? He glanced over at Tiberius.

  The lord admiral's face was unreadable, but Uriel could see the muscles bunched at his jaw and took his cue from him. Astador groaned and reached out a hand to steady himself. The bony familiar perched atop Magyar's throne took to the air and flapped noisily towards the swaying Chaplain, catching the bowl as it fell from his slack fingers.

  Uriel could contain himself no longer and shouted, 'What is he doing? This reeks of impure sorceries!'

  'Be silent!' roared Magyar. 'He seeks guidance from our revered ancestors. Their wisdom comes from beyond the veil of death, unfettered by the concerns of the living. He seeks their counsel on whether we should join you in this fight.'

  Uriel was about to answer when he felt an iron grip on his arm. Lord Admiral Tiberius shook his head slowly.

  'The Devourer comes from beyond the galaxy, and even by naming it, men betray their ignorance.' groaned Astador. 'The immortal hive mind controls its every thought. So many beings... A billion times a billion monsters form the over-mind and there is none here who can comprehend its scale. It comes this way and seeks only to feed. It cannot be negotiated with, it cannot be reasoned with, it can only be fought. It must be fought.'

  Astador dropped to his knees and vomited a gout of glistening blood, but the winged familiar was there and caught the vital fluid in the bowl. It flapped towards Magyar and handed him the blood-filled bowl before resuming its perch above the Chapter Master.

  Lord Magyar locked eyes with Uriel and smiled, before drinking a measure of his returned blood.

  Uriel heard Learchus retch behind him, but forced himself to conceal his revulsion.

  The Chapter Master of the Mortifactors wiped a rivulet of blood from his beard and said, 'The omens are not good, Uriel Ventris of the Ultramarines.'

  Uriel's heart sank, but Lord Magyar was not yet done. He rose from his throne and crossed the floor of the dead to stand before Uriel. The Chapter Master of the Mortifactors leaned over Uriel and offered him the bowl. Saliva-frothed blood swirled in its bottom.

  'Will you seal the pact of our brotherhood, Captain Ventris?'

  Uriel stared into the bowl. The blood was bright scarlet.

  He felt his gorge rise, but took the proffered bowl from Lord Magyar.

  He raised it to his lips. Blood-stink filled his nostrils.

  Amusement glittered in Lord Magyar's eyes and Uriel felt anger flare.

  He tipped the bowl, feeling the hot blood fill his mouth, and swallowed.

  It slipped down his throat, and Uriel could taste a measure of Lord Magyar's vitality and strength fill him. The blood carried the weight of ages in its hot, metallic flavour and Uriel gagged as a powerful vision of slaughter suddenly filled his senses, redolent with an eternity of death. He saw a pair of alien, yellow eyes and once again he felt the touch of the Nightbringer stab into his mind.

  Lord Magyar took the bowl from Uriel's nerveless fingers and turned to face Astador, who nodded.

  'We will honour the Warrior's Debt, Captain Ventris. I shall give you a company of my warriors and Chaplain Astador to lead them. You shall fight beside one another as equals. The blood has spoken and you have renewed our bond of brotherhood.'

  Uriel barely heard him, but nodded anyway, sick to the pit of his stomach.

  But whether it was the blood or the memory of the Nightbringer, he could not say.

  TWO

  The vast city of Erebus shone like a bright jewel in the flanks of the Cullin Mount
ains. It was built in a great wound in the rock, as though a giant had taken a shovel and cut a gigantic oval scoop into the south-western flank of the tallest peak. Set within a steep sided, rocky valley, fully nine kilometres wide at its opening, the city cut deep into the mountains for nearly forty kilometres. Bisected by the River Nevas, and home to some ten million people, Erebus was a crawling anthill and the most populous city of Tarsis Ultra.

  Hab-units, factories, hydroponics domes, pleasure boulevards and other structures vied for space on the steep sides of the valley. Huge, teetering metal structures of glass and steel rose like metal flowers from the valley's side, and almost every square metre of rock was built upon or bolted to. From the valley floor to the soaring majesty of the luxury habs and exotic spices of the flesh bars, every available sliver of rock was festooned with girders, beams, angles and unfeasibly slender columns, supporting an architecturally eclectic mix of styles that clashed jarringly with the simple, marble elegance of the ancient structures built by the Ultramarines ten millennia ago.

  When Erebus City, as it had been known then, was constructed, it was a model of the perfect city, but a lot had changed since those heady days. Where once the city had served as an example of all that was good about human society, ten thousand years of continued expansion had taken its toll on its Utopian ideal, bringing it closer to the grim reality of hives on worlds such as Armageddon or Necromunda.

  Zooming sculptures of steel rose steeply above the sides of the mountains, each wrapped in hab-units. As each structure climbed higher and higher, accidents became more and more common. Lattices of steel would give out under the horrendous loads imposed upon them, tearing free of the valley's side, to slide majestically down the rock face, pulling walkways, bridges and people with it until they crashed spectacularly to the valley floor in a jagged jumble of twisted metal, rockcrete and bodies.

  Yet even here at the bottom, amidst this constant turmoil of debris, people thrived.

  The brooding underbelly of the city - the Stank - held twisting baroque corridors and chambers of anarchic splendour that gave sanctuary to the skum gangs - the outcasts and the lawless. The Adeptus Arbites, known locally as the Bronzes, had declared some of the wilder zones of the Stank as no-go areas and even the toughest members of the Arbites Execution squads took care to travel in groups, combat shotguns locked and loaded. Feral gangs roamed the depths of the Stank, scavenging what they could from the ruins of collapsed habs, production towers and each other.

  Violent skirmishes would often break out as rival gangs battled for control of newly collapsed structures, eager to plunder their resources.

  Or sometimes they fought simply for the hell of it.

  Snowdog vaulted over the counter of the Flesh Bar. Bullets ripped towards him, blasting the wooden front to splinters as he rolled across it. He racked the slide of his shotgun and dropped behind the bar as bottles shattered and the mirror behind him exploded into reflective daggers. The barman screamed and collapsed next to him, clutching a bloody wound on his shoulder. Glass had cut his face open and red lines streaked his features.

  Snowdog winked at the weeping man. 'I guess this really isn't your lucky day.'

  The pounding music almost drowned the roar of gunfire. Six Wylderns carrying some heavy-duty weaponry had just walked in and hosed the bar, killing its patrons indiscriminately with bursts from automatic weapons. Who'd have seen that coming? Snowdog took a deep breath and crawled to the end of the bar. He shouldered his combat shotgun. Its blue-steel surface glinted like new, and now more than ever was he glad he'd killed the Bronze who'd carried it.

  Screams and panicked yells filled the bar as people sought to make themselves scarce, desperate to avoid getting caught up in another of the gang wars that were becoming an all too common occurrence in Erebus hive.

  Heavy blasts of gunfire echoed through the bar and more screams sounded. The music died as the speakers blew out in an explosion of sparks. People dropped, craters blasted in chests and bodies torn in two by heavy calibre shells.

  Snowdog risked a glance around the side of the bar. Tigerlily was pinned down behind an overturned table, a throwing knife in each hand, and Silver had found shelter behind a thick steel column. He couldn't see Jonny Stomp or Lex, but figured that one was too smart and the other too lucky to have been caught in the initial salvo of autogun fire.

  Damned Wylderns! Life for a fledgling gang leader was hard enough without these crazies making it even more precarious. It was bad enough that the Bronzes came down like an iron hammer on anyone who broke the law - which meant just about everyone in this part of the hive - from their grim and imposing fortress precinct on the edge of the Stank, the worst of the city's badzones. Not even the Bronzes would come in here without some serious hardware. But the Wylderns...

  He couldn't figure them out. He robbed and killed for money, and to be the top dog of the Stank, but these psychos just killed. There was no telling where or when they'd strike, bursting in with powerful weapons and blazing away until everyone was dead. Killing for profit he could understand, but he could see no reason for these massacres and that bugged the hell out of Snowdog.

  'Come out, come out wherever you are.' shouted a Wyldern in a singsong voice.

  Snowdog heard the snap of more ammunition being loaded and nodded to Tigerlily. Like a coiled spring, the young redhead rose and hurled a throwing knife with unerring accuracy. The thin blade plunged into the eye of the nearest Wyldern and he crumpled wordlessly.

  Tigerlily ducked back as gunfire blasted sparking chunks from the metal table she sheltered behind. Her black catsuit had been torn by a spinning shard of the table and Snowdog could see she was really mad now. As soon as the Wylderns were distracted, Snowdog rose from behind the bar and yelled, 'You picked the wrong bar to patronise, boys!'

  He put another Wyldern down with his first shot and winged a second before they reacted and sprayed the bar with fire. Snowdog leapt aside, hundreds of bullets turning the bar to matchwood as he rolled.

  Silver burst from hiding, a pistol in each hand. Her long, white hair was pulled in a severe ponytail and her ice-blue eyes were cold and unforgiving. She calmly double tapped another two Wylderns before spinning back behind the pillar, her long black coat billowing around her.

  'And then there were two.' he muttered, seeing the sudden fear and confusion of the remaining two Wylderns. He stood and walked from behind the bar, sauntering into the middle of the blood-soaked killing ground. Bodies littered the place and it reeked of gunsmoke.

  'Didn't expect this kinda welcome, did you?' asked Snowdog. 'We're the Nightcrawlers, and you interrupted our business here.'

  'We'll kill you all!' shrieked one of the Wylderns, but there was no conviction in his voice.

  'I don't think so, man.' said Snowdog, catching sight of Jonny Stomp and Lex on the upper balcony of the Flesh Bar, circling behind the Wylderns. He shook his head. Where else would (Jonny and Lex be but with the girls and sex drugs, sampling the wares before doing the job?

  'What do you say to you guys putting your guns away and letting us get on with this, huh?' said Snowdog.

  He could see their hesitation and knew he had to appeal to their sense of self-preservation before their stupidity or bravado could resurface. He said, 'Look, no one else has to die here, okay?'

  His voice was soothing and he slowly lowered his shotgun, taking in their high-priced clothing and coloured hair. Their faces were pierced with metal spikes and their full features spoke of healthy eating. Expensive looking electoos writhed up their arms and around their necks, throbbing in time with their racing heartbeats. These were rich kids on some narcotic high: he could see it in their eyes.

  And suddenly it all made sense. They were thrill killers. Rich kids who killed because they were bored and because they could. But now that the tables had turned, the killing frenzy had gone out of them.

  He continued to slowly walk towards the Wylderns and set his shotgun down on the bar. 'You just want o
ut of here in one piece.'

  The Wyldems nodded and Snowdog spread his arms.

  'I can understand that.' he said, 'but it ain't going to happen.'

  His eyes darted up towards the balcony.

  'Now, Jonny.' said Snowdog mildly.

  The Wylderns registered puzzlement for the briefest second before all one hundred kilogrammes of Jonny Stomp landed on them, smashing them to the ground. Jonny swiftly rose to his feet and dragged the first Wyldern to his feet, snapping his neck with a dry crack and rounding on the other as he tried to scramble away.

  'No, please!' he begged. 'My family's rich, they'll give you any-'

  'Not interested.' said Jonny and thundered his fist into the young Wyldern's face.

  Blood and teeth flew as Jonny beat the young man to death with his bare hands.

  Snowdog turned and lifted his shotgun from the bar, resting its barrel on his shoulder. He took a deep breath now that the fight was over, running a hand through his bleached and spiked hair as he leaned on the splintered bar. Flickering neon bathed his rugged features in an unhealthy glow and glass tinkled as it fell from shattered frames.

  He rapped his knuckles on the bar. The dazed barman rose to his feet, hands clasped on top of his bloody head.

  'Okay, man. Now where were we before all this unpleasantness?' said Snowdog.

  He grinned ferally. 'Oh yeah, now I remember. This is a raid, hand over all your money.'

  'Good takings?' asked Lex, eyeing the pile of cash on the upturned crate.

  Snowdog eyed Lex suspiciously. 'Good enough, Lex.'

  He pushed the money back into his small backpack and rose to his feet, flipping open a carton of bac-sticks and dragging one out. He pulled a brass lighter from his pocket and lit the aromatic stick, drawing in a lungful of smoke. He lifted the backpack by the straps and dumped it on his iron bed-frame.

  Snowdog sat on the bed and watched as Lex shrugged and sloped off to join Jonny Stomp in the front room of their current hideout. Night had well and truly fallen and the glittering lights of the valley sides shone in through the holed roof and windowless frames. There was a sharp chill and Snowdog could feel a harsh winter coming on the air.