'I found this... and six more like it. Khorne-dolls, if you will. I see the pun is lost on you Marines too. Whatever. Each one has been made according to the practices of various harvest townships, but the designs have been perverted to make them symbols of the cult.'
Mabuse let the thing drop back onto the table top as if he had no wish to touch it any longer, even with a hand made of metal.
And from that, we may infer that at least six of the outlying townships have been polluted by the cult. Though the main uprising here in Nybana has been quashed, it is vital that these outlying offshoots also be checked and, if necessary, burned and cleansed.’
'You can identify the relevant townships from the dolls?' Phobor asked.
'Yes.’ Mabuse said, as if such an arcane act of divination was child's play. 'You must send teams out at once, captain. Send them out to purge these places. Until that is done, Ceres must be considered unclean.’
There were eighteen farmships on Ceres outside Nybana. Mabuse and his aides had identified six positively from the loathsome dolls, but he insisted that all should be checked in turn. Phobor kept one squad with him to hold Nybana firm, and sent out the other three to undertake the purge.
Damocles squad had been sent north-west. Four townships lay in that direction: Nyru, Yyria, Flax and Hekat. Of these, only the most distant – Hekat - had been positively marked by a doll.
It took Priad and his squad a full day's hard drive across the rainswept land to reach Nyru, and a further day to confirm it was free of taint. Another day's trek brought them to Yyria, which also proved to be clean, though the fear and resentment of the townsfolk kept them suspicious and prolonged the search.
Another day and a half s drive through fallow uplands followed, and the wet season greeted them with low storms, squalls of bloody vapour and hard, red rain. They approached Flax on the seventh day after leaving Nybana. By then, reports had drifted in from the other two roving squads. Pliades squad had found cultists in the township of Broom, far to the south, and had been engaged in a running street battle for a day and a night. Manes squad had uncovered another nest of evil in a township called Sephoni, and had been forced to put it to the torch.
Damocles reached Flax farmship.
Flax was dead. A week dead, Priad estimated. Damocles squad moved out from their Rhino transport and fanned through the blood-wet streets, finding nothing but burnt-out habitat sheds, ransacked grain hoppers and rusting harvesters. Brother Calignes finally found the townsfolk. They had been harvested. Four hundred men, women and children, butchered with corn-scythes, their bodies and body parts piled in a corn silo to rot. The place was crawling with crop weevils.
Priad voxed the news to Phobor at Nybana. Inquisitor Mabuse himself came on the line and questioned Priad closely. Was it a cult centre that had chosen suicide? Was there any sign of true corruption? Had the place been sacrificed by cultists from another farmship, Hekat perhaps?
Mabuse relayed simple instructions as to what to look for. Priad listened carefully, and then dispatched his men to search. An hour later, he climbed into the back of the Rhino, removed his helmet, and spoke to Mabuse on the vox-link again. Outside, the bloody rain drizzled.
'Lord, I think it is the work of outsiders. There is no trace of a shrine or a cult fastness in Flax. The only signs we can find are the blasphemous sigils daubed in blood on the sides of the granary where they piled the bodies. My men have found tracks trampled in the cornfields around the township. I thought at first it might be the signs of the murderers' escape, but the tracks wind and overlap. From the top of the granary barns, you can see they make a pattern. The trampled lines are quite deliberate. They form a vast, unholy symbol in the corn, hundreds of paces across. Inquisitor, I pray I never have to look upon such a sign of the Ruinous Powers again.’
'You have done well, brother-sergeant. From your reports, I am sure that Flax was a sacrifice. A force of cultists, large enough to overwhelm four hundred humans and slaughter them, is loose in your region. They made a statement out of Flax, a declaration. You must hunt them down. From the evidence as it presents to us, I'd hazard Hekat is the most likely place to start.’
Damocles made ready to move on to Hekat, two days away. Priad had Brother Pindor take a flamer from the Rhino and torch the cornfields, obliterating the crop-mark. They also burned the dead, and made blessings over the vast pyre, consecrating the innocent and the fallen in the name of the Emperor.
II
Hekat farmship now lay before them, and the Rhino puffed and wheezed its way up the muddy trackway towards the cluster of barns, crop-silos, habitats and mills.
Brother Scyllon drove the armoured transport. In the rocking, bucking rear section, the men of Damocles squad began a final weapons check and murmured private prayers of salvation and forbearance to themselves.
Priad sat in the chain-seat near the rear hatch, adjusting the fit of the hefty lightning claw around his right hand. The claw was the symbol of leadership for Damocles squad. Sergeant Raphon, hallowed be his memory and his rest, had worn it before Priad, and had bequeathed it to the young Snake on Rosetta when he fell four years before.
Before Raphon, it had decorated the fist of Pheus, heroic in battle. Before Pheus, it had honoured the might of Berrios, mighty Ithakan. Before that, great Sartes had made it wet with Irdol blood. Before that, Dysse had carved his way to the sleep of champions with its electric majesty, ripping his way through the cruel hordes of the pirate eldar scum.
And before that, a line of heroes whose every name and every deed Priad knew, and who were with him every time he donned the claw. Right back to Damocles himself, great Damocles, greatest of the great, generations before, who had first raised the claw and given his name to the fighting team.
Priad flexed the long, segmented fingers of the metal glove, and watched as blue sparks hissed from digit to digit. The claw weighed close to seventy kilos and was three times the size of a human hand. But even without the strength-enhancing mechanics of his Mark VII power armour, Priad would not have been tested by the weight. He was of the Adeptes Astartes. He was a post-human titan, gene-forged to serve the Emperor of Terra from birth to death. Stripped of his armour, he was still a force of destruction, many times a man. Armoured, his face hidden behind the expressionless visor of the Space Marine helm, his limbs encased in electric-motivated ceramite plates, his senses magnified a thousandfold, he was a god-killer.
Let the Foulness spew up its dark deities! He would face them and slay them!
Priad looked down into the open palm of the gleaming claw. He saw the nicks and dents of war that it wore as badges of valour. He knew them all. This deep scratch earned by Raphon in close combat with a daemon-thing on Brontax. This jagged scar made by Pheus when he killed a Chaos dreadnought. The missing digit tip
Dysse had left impaled in the chest of the warlord Grondal when he had torn out that fiend's heart.
Then he saw something else, looking back at him from the mirror surface of the steel glove. A face: pale, dark-haired, dark-eyed, resolute. Himself.
For a scant moment it looked far too mortal and vulnerable. Priad took up his helmet and locked it into place. What he saw now, through the lenses of his battlevisor, reflected back up from the polished claw, was a great deal more reassuring: a Space Marine.
'Ten minutes from the township.’ Scyllon called over the trooper to trooper headset.
Priad acknowledged and looked around at his men. One by one, he took in their power.
Kules, shortest of them all at just over two metres, was thickly set like a barrel, his long black hair braided up against his scalp as he put on his helmet.
Illyus, his handsome face scarred and sutured around his artificial eye, was loading his bolt clips. Xander was the youngest and tallest, his eyes golden and faraway. Pindor, with his deep-set eyes and hawk-look, was resetting his armour links.
Natus was easing the pistons of his bionic left arm and sliding his boltgun into its thigh pouch.
r /> Andromak, smiling as ever, was adjusting the weight of the massive plasma gun on his back-harness.
Calignes, sharp-faced, black-eyed, roguish, was cleaning the spine plugs in his neck before setting his helmet in place.
Memnes, the Apothecary, preserver of life, minister of death, grey-bearded and solemn, checked the contents of his narthecium before snapping it shut.
Scyllon was at the helm, stripped to the waist so as to manhandle the controls better, his taut, muscled torso blistered with plug-ducts and link implants.
Damocles squad, Priad thought. Praise be. God-killers, world-smiters, Space Marines, as great and as doughty as any band of Iron Snakes to use that name.
Priad looked over at old Memnes. The grey-beard took the sign and raised his voice, beginning the Litany of Approaching War, which the other men joined. Memnes took them through the Call of Ithaka and the Loyalty Oath of Karybdis, and each man answered the returns without hesitation.
All of those who had not yet donned their helmets now did so. Rules took the helm of the Rhino as Xander and Pindor helped Scyllon to armour himself. Each lock and twist of the armour seals was praised and blessed.
Captain Phobor had conducted the Rite of the Giving of Water, the old Iron Snakes custom, at Nybana when the force had first arrived, but now Memnes solemnly carried out the Rite of Sharing, as was appropriate before a battle. The tubular copper flask containing precious water from the endless seas of their homeworld Ithaka was passed around, and each man anointed his winged snake chest-symbol with a drop or two as Memnes intoned the old words.
Brother Andromak took out the Iron Snakes standard – the snake crest, double-looped – and fixed it to his shoulders. Brother-Apothecary Memnes anointed it with water too. The water was clear, like liquid glass. How unlike the blood that rains on us here, Priad thought.
The Rhino churned into the open main square of Hekat and Rules slewed it to a halt.
The place looked deserted.
Priad popped the rear hatch, and Damocles squad fanned out in formation, weapons armed and raised, hunting for movements.
Nothing.
So very ominously like blood, the rain washed down over them all.
III
The fan of Iron Snakes spread down the main street of the farmship, scanning to all sides with their auspex units, weapons braced ready in armoured hands. Eight of them were on foot, with Priad at the head of the fan. Rules rolled the Rhino along after them, turbines idling, the main rig of floods and searchlights ignited to probe the stormy darkness of the place. Rain sleeted in dark stripes through the beams of hard light. Scyllon rode on top, in the open turret, his hands on the grips of the pintle-mounted storm-bolter.
There was no sound except the crunch of their footfalls, the low rumble of the transport and the beat of the rain.
Priad held up his left hand, showing three fingers, circled his hand and pointed.
Calignes, Xander and Pindor moved ahead on the left sweep, checking doorways and the dingy breezeways between building units.
Calignes signalled back 'clear' and the three Marines took up firing positions on the left side of the street.
Priad gestured again, his right hand this time, power-gloved. Another three fingers, crackling electricity.
Andromak led Illyus and Natus down the right side. There was a longer wait, as Natus checked an open side barn that the farmers had used to store broken machinery and trash. He emerged and shook his head in a clear, over-emphatic gesture.
Andromak checked the main entrance of what appeared to be the town hall. He turned back and made a gesture of clasping his hands together that Priad knew meant 'locked' or 'chained'.
Priad strode across to Memnes, who was gazing around the dismal place speculatively. Priad's massive armoured feet splashed through puddles of gore-like rainwater that had accumulated in the gouged tracks of the muddy street. It was like being in an abattoir that hadn't been cleaned in decades.
'Like Flax, you think, Brother-Apothecary?' Priad asked, his vox-burst punctuated at start and finish by a click of static.
Memnes shook his head. 'Something feels different, sergeant. Oh, we may find the townsfolk butchered in some corner, as Calignes did in Flax, but there is something else...'
Memnes snapped open the faceplate of his helmet and slid it up so that the red drizzle flecked his bare face. Had any other member of Damocles done such a thing without permission, Priad would have reprimanded him for presenting a target. But Memnes, old Memnes, had more experience than the others put together, and he could breathe in signs of danger. Sometimes, Priad knew well, it paid to let him scent the location.
'Fear, anticipation, anxiety... the air is heavy with it. There are living souls here, even though our auspexes don't show them.'
'Hiding?'
'I would think so...'
Priad wondered if he should open the Rhino's tannoy and hail the hidden people with a declaration of support and rescue. He decided against it. The quiet was unnerving but somehow he had no wish to break it.
Priad crossed to where Andromak and Natus stood by the doors of the town hall. Pausing only to allow the pair to raise their weapons ready he smashed the doors in with one savage kick. A broken trailer chain dragged across the floor from the splintered doors. Someone had locked themselves in.
The trio entered, guns chasing for targets. The room, a huge hall with wooden pillars, was dark, and the floor was scattered with debris. One massive skylight far above was shattered, and rain streamed in, flooding the floor. Natus tried the wall lever for the lights, but the power was out. They switched to night vision and saw the place in a ghostly green phosphorescence.
'The floor is flooded. Rain.’ Natus's voice crackled over the link.
'Not all of it.’ answered Andromak. He had reached a far corner that was slick with red liquid though it was far away from the hole in the roof lights. 'That's rain. This is blood.'
He was right. It was impossible to tell where the rain ended and the blood began, but by any standards, there was a lot of blood. It splashed and smeared the walls, and there were smudges and occasional hand prints, but no sign of corpses.
Priad moved through to a council chamber behind the main hall. There was more blood here too, soaking the hessian rugs and the soft furnishings of the rows of seats. The far end wall was covered in framed placards listing the names of the town's mayors and the annual harvest yields in proud gold leaf. The boards were peppered and riddled with small-arms fire, punctured, holed and splintered. Priad realised there were thousands of spent shell cases littering the bloody floor.
'Quite a fight.’ said Andromak beside him.
'What were they shooting at?' Natus asked, moving forwards past them. He pointed, and to their expert eyes it was clear that the gunfire damage made distinct arcs and sprays across the wall, as if sustained automatic fire had been trying to chase and catch targets that had moved with frightening speed.
Andromak kicked open a door to the left, off the council room, and found store closets and filthy cloakrooms. Blood covered the grimy blue tiles in here too, and the wooden latrine stalls had been shot apart by frenzied automatic fire.
Behind the council room, down a long onyx tiled hallway, they found a chapel dedicated to the Emperor depicted as the provider of bounty and fruitful harvest. But the statue of the Emperor, holding a sword in one hand and a ploughshare in the other, had been decapitated, and the altar rails blasted into matchwood by more gunfire.
One of the loathsome daemon-form dolls, what Inquisitor Mabuse had called, as if it was some wry joke, a Khorne-doll, had been nailed to the statue's chest. Words composed of letters and symbols so foul they made Priad sick to see them had been daubed across the plinth.
Beside him, the sergeant heard Natus cough and gag in his helmet, choking on his rising gorge. 'Brother Natus?'
Natus, over the link, made a mewling noise. Even the strongest of the phratry could fall prey to the insidious horrors of Chaos, and
this abomination had them all stunned and revolted. To desecrate the image of the Emperor with these marks...
Priad knew he needed Natus sharp. Despite the horror that was in him too, he turned on his brother Snake. 'Natus!'
Natus couldn't form a coherent word. Priad raised his left fist and smashed the back of his hand across Natus's armoured face plate. The warrior reeled, his visor dented.
'Compose yourself, brother! This is precisely what the Darkness wants! This is why they performed this sacrilege! To un-man the likes of you!'
'I-I'm sorry, brother-sergeant.’ said Natus, stunned back into rational thought.
Priad raised his bolter, swung around and blasted the deformed statue and the corn-doll into fragments with a burst of explosive rounds. The noise was deafening. The vox-links exploded into urgent life. Weapons fire! We heard weapons fire!' 'Brother-sergeant? Respond?'
'What's going on in there?'
'Stand easy.’ Priad replied, exchanging the clip of his boltgun deftly. 'Just a little cleaning up. No targets. But the enemy is here. Be vigilant.'
Outside, across the street, Xander heard his brother-sergeant's words. With Calignes and Pindor, he held the positions on the left side of the thoroughfare.
A small white dot showed on his auspex suddenly, moving and jinking in a disordered pattern. Fifteen paces off, behind the row of agri-shops and smithies.
'Contact!' he reported.
Calignes and Pindor saw it too, and the trio swung around to address the buildings on the left side. Memnes crossed to them, readying his boltgun. Kules moved the Rhino up a little, with Scyllon sweeping the storm bolter.
Xander looked back at Memnes. 'Do we go in?'
'Brother-sergeant?' Memnes queried.
'We're coming out,' Priad returned over the link. 'Move in.'
Xander and Memnes moved off the street down a littered breeze-way, a side alley that took them along behind the store barns and smithies into the back yards of shanty habitat terraces. Calignes and Pindor broke open the door of a tractor shed and advanced through the gloomy interior, passing farm vehicles under tarpaulin wraps. Rusty chains dangled from the low beams of the roof. The pair made a parallel course to Xander and Memnes, marking the blue dots of the Space Marines on their auspex scanners. The white dot blinked ahead, between the two fronts.