Xander and Memnes pushed through a back gate made of rain-warped pulp board and slid along a crumbling brick wall, thick with black moss and lichens. They were in a narrow back ditch behind the habitats where they backed on to the farm shops and the tractor shed.
The light was bad and the rain heavier. The swirling black clouds seemed to be right down low over their heads. Even with night vision optics, visibility was poor.
'There,' said Memnes, his visor still raised, pointing ahead. 'It's in that outbuilding.'
The structure was a single storey lean-to of corrugated iron. Xander and Memnes advanced and approached the entrance at the western end, furthest from the main street. Calignes signalled that he and Pindor were approaching the other end from the back of the tractor shed.
Xander tried the door, easing the handle down, testing for locks.
Something came out of the lean-to, taking the door off its frame and slamming it into Xander. The force was so great that the massive armoured warrior was thrown backwards and through the mouldering wall on the other side of the ditch. He took down a section of rotting bricks and ended up on his back in the yard of one of the terraced habitats.
Just behind him, Memnes braced and fired, raking a bright line of explosive bolts through the air that blew out the framework of the lean-to's left side. He tried to track the shape that had exploded out of the shed and floored Xander. It was all he could do to see it.
He glimpsed a quadruped, long and lean, twice the size of a man, it seemed. It was as blood-red as the rain. Memnes saw a suggestion of teeth, huge as scythe blades; of claws; of a whipping tail, as long and knobbed and gristly as a length of human spine.
All his shots missed, but they drove the thing back into the lean-to.
He charged after it. 'Calignes! For the love of Terra! It's coming your way!' he bellowed into his link.
At the far end of the shed, Calignes and Pindor tensed and trained fire, but were still too slow. A red blur, something they couldn't even see but knew must be there, burst out of the shed and leapt up over their blasting guns.
Calignes felt a hard impact and lurched away, winded and dazed, falling sideways and hard into a stack of tractor wheels. He heard Pindor exclaim over the vox. An utterance of surprise, roughly cut off.
Priad, Andromak and Natus, with Illyus close behind, came out of the rear of the tractor shop at a run. They found Calignes slumped against the rusting wheel hubs. Something had ripped through the front of his chest plating, making three jagged stripes in the ceramite. Blood leaked out of the torn armour.
There was no sign of Pindor except his fallen bolter.
IV
They regrouped at the Rhino. Scyllon and Natus carried Calignes in and tended to his wounds. The rents were deep and refused to clot. Blood wept out of him like rainwater. Xander was dazed but intact.
Priad tuned up the PJiino's main auspex and hunted for Pindor, chasing the tell-tale trace of his armour, the identifying signal. There was nothing. It was as if Brother Pindor had simply vanished.
Memnes could see how black Priad's mood was, and how spooked Damocles was as a whole. They were all used to the superiority of being Adeptes Astartes, and on the rare occasions they encountered something more formidable, it left them dazed. For himself, Memnes couldn't begin to account for the speed of the thing. It had moved so fast, so powerfully, he hadn't even seen it clearly.
'I must find him.’ Priad told Memnes quietly. Alive or dead, I will find Pindor.'
Memnes nodded. He expected no less of his brave sergeant.
'I simply won't accept that he's just vanished.' Priad cast a dour look at the Rhino's auspex unit. You felt life here, and we haven't found that on our scopes either.'
'I felt something, brother-sergeant. It may have been that thing.'
"You felt fear, old friend. That thing faced down four Iron Snakes and took one of them as a trophy. It was not afraid.'
'True. So we cannot trust the auspex.'
'No, indeed!' said Priad. 'Something's blocking it – something that's hiding Pindor, the locals... and that thing.'
'Except at close range. Xander drew us to it when he got a fix.'
Priad mused. Adamantium sometimes blocks auspex scans.'
'There's none of that here, I fancy. Nor do I know of any local substance that can kill Imperial scans. If the auspexes can't be trusted, it's because of... of witchery. The talents of the dark to lie and befuddle.'
Aye, I thought as much. All our instruments are blind. You were the only one who even glimpsed it.'
'My visor was raised.’ noted Memnes.
Priad opened his own visor and turned to the men. 'We hunt a great evil that is invisible to our instruments. Open your visors. Use your eyes well.’
It was... unheard of, but they all obeyed. They opened their helmets and made themselves vulnerable, so as to be less vulnerable.
'Search teams!' ordered Priad, his voice sounding strange and raw, unfiltered by the vox-link. 'Section the town and take it apart!'
The eight remaining active members of Damocles squad searched Hekat, basement by basement, attic by attic, barn by barn, silo by silo. They worked in pairs. Calignes, whose wounds had at last been staunched by skin-wrap sprays from Memnes's narthecium, stayed with the Rhino, watching the streets from the turret.
As he searched, partnered by Kules, Priad wondered if he should report in to Phobor and Mabuse at Nybana. He didn't know what he could tell them or what advice he could hope they would offer. In the end, he settled for a simple battle code message, saying they had engaged the cult and were pursuing its destruction.
Several urgent responses came from Nybana, promising reinforcement. Some were from Mabuse, demanding to know the nature of the cult.
Away from the Rhino, Priad ignored the chime of the vox messages. He would do this his way. He would find Pindor and salvage the situation.
In the Rhino, Calignes heard the beep of the vox-caster, demanding response. It would involve a great deal of pain to climb down into the cabin, so he screened it out.
Like Brother-Sergeant Priad, he was sure there was nothing the power of Damocles squad couldn't overcome. Besides, by the time help came, it would be days too late.
V
Illyus and Scyllon found them in the basement crypts of the Ecclesiarchy temple at the north end of the main street. Three hundred and fifty farmers and family members, cowered terrified behind locked and barricaded doors. Why the auspexes hadn't sensed them, none of Damocles could say.
Under Memnes's supervision, the civilians were brought out and taken to shelter in the farmstead's mess hall, a long, low building full of trestle tables and crude metal chairs. Medical aid was provided by the Apothecary, and Scyllon and Xander were set to guard them while Natus broke open the stores and made food for them on the mess hall's ranges.
Priad and Andromak questioned the farm leaders, three scared and emaciated men.
"We heard what happened at Flax, so we decided to hide. Some... thing came, killing dozens. That's when we hid in the crypt.'
'This thing... what is it?' asked Priad.
'For the love of the Emperor, my lord, we didn't even see it!'
'It came in! It slaughtered!'
Priad looked over at Andromak. 'So Hekat is to be made a sacrifice like Flax?'
'It seems so, brother-sergeant... and therefore the cultists are hiding out there in the corn fields.'
Priad got up and stalked the room. Something wasn't right. He could feel that as plainly as he was sure Memnes felt his 'scents'.
The doll back at Nybana clearly marked this place as a cult centre, or at least a place were cultists were active. Yet there was nothing here but townsfolk driven underground by some beast, and an attempt made to bleed the populace for the worship of some otherness deity.
Which was it? A cult centre or an innocent place? It couldn't be both.
And if it was innocent, what of the doll at Nybana? What had been its purpose?
> To... bring them here?
The leader of the farmers broke off his reverie. 'You will save us, won't you, brave Space Marine? For the love of the Emperor! Please!'
Priad nodded. He would. He swore it.
Illyus and Rules were searching the grain silos at the eastern edge of Hekat when the rains came down in a torrent. Flash floods of grain and squirming weevils burst from the sodden hoppers and washed around their feet. Illyus kept wanting to close his visor to shut out the blood rain, but Priad's instructions had been clear. He moved forward into the pelt, his gun ready.
Illyus had lost an eye on Eidon, and his bionic implant twitched and irked him. When he glimpsed the red shape flashing through the rain, he first thought it a ghost image, a phantasm conjured by his artificial organ.
Then he realised he could only see it through his real eye.
All that they had surmised was true. The thing that stalked Hekat was only visible to naked sight. Mechanics and bionics, auspexes and scanners were worthless.
Illyus began to fire – and to cry out.
Kules ploughed over to join him, his own gun blazing, in time to see the great bestial thing, with its whipping spinal chord tail, flying out of the rain to take Illyus down.
Kules emptied his clip into the monster. It was busy killing Illyus and thus formed a stationary target for an instant. If it hadn't paused to rip Illyus asunder, it would have been moving too fast for Kules to see.
He blew it apart with a dozen placed shots. Tissue and bloody matter exploded into the downpour.
Kules's sense of triumph was short-lived. Illyus had been decapitated and eviscerated by the thing in the blink of an eye. The dead Iron Snake lay sprawled beneath the exploded carcass of the daemon.
Kules opened his vox-channel and reported in.
We have slain the beast!' Priad exclaimed to the farm folk around him. 'Damocles, with me! You people stay here until we return. Your nightmare is at an end.'
Damocles squad formed up and left the mess hall.
None of them noticed the disquieted looks the farmers gave them.
Kules watched over Illyus's body and waited for the others of Damocles to arrive. He tried to imagine what the thing's purpose had been. To kill and terrify the township, that was certain. But what else? Why had it been here? What had it been protecting?
Despite his orders, Kules crept forward and entered a silo to the left of the alley. What he saw chilled him to his soul.
In the open metal bin of the silo's base, an altar had been arranged. Candles fluttered and hideous patterns had been inscribed on the walls.
Pindor hung, upended, on a crucifix made of baler twine and wire. He had been tortured and abused, his armour stripped off. The Children of Khorne, twenty of them, resembling those Kules and his Iron Snakes brethren had slaughtered in Nybana, stood around, performing a ceremony.
Pindor was clearly close to death.
One of the cultists turned and saw Kules. He cried out in alarm. In an instant, the twenty ritual heathens turned and pulled out automatic weapons, blasting up at the silo's entrance aperture that framed the Iron Snake.
Kules slammed down his visor and waded into the chamber, percussive rounds pinging off his power armour. He opened fire, swinging his boltgun, exploding one cultist after another.
When he reached the crucifix, he used his blade to cut Pindor down and pulled his naked, limp form into his embrace.
'I'll get you out of here, brother.’ Kules said.
It wasn't going to be that easy.
VI
As Inquisitor Mabuse later concluded in his summation of the Ceres outbreak, the main cult centre was Hekat township, and not Nybana at all. When the main uprising in Nybana was overthrown, the cultists had left deliberate traces to draw the Iron Snakes to the remote harvest town, where they intended to perform a sacrifice.
The beast that Kules had killed... that had just been a diversion, a guardian force summoned forth from the warp to keep the Marines busy. Hekat and its people, all converted to the Khorne belief, wanted an Astartes as a sacrifice. If they could ritually spill the blood of one of the Emperor's own, they could vouch a spell that would crack open the heavens and let loose an avatar of damned Khorne himself.
Priad led his detail through the streets to support Kules, and they found themselves attacked from all sides by the very farmers they had sworn to save. For the first time in his life, Brother-Sergeant Priad realised he was going to have to break a sworn pledge.
The cultists, who but minutes before had seemed to be ailing farm workers eager for help, came at them from all sides. They were feral, insane.
'Kill them! Kill them all!' Priad told his men as they fought towards the silo.
Their armour and their bolters were a match for the superior numbers of the cultists, but barely.
Andromak lost a finger to an auto-round.
Xander fell and was beaten half to death with ploughshares before Natus pulled him free.
Scyllon took a scythe blade in the arm and bled for weeks.
The rampaging cultists overwhelmed the Rhino in the main street. Calignes, weak from blood loss, had almost passed out. They set it ablaze and ripped him limb from limb.
Memnes fell, without a sound, a bullet through his exposed face.
Priad reached the silo and slaughtered the cultists around them. He was as red with blood as with rain. He reached Kules and helped him drag Pindor clear.
Then, with his power claw blazing, he set about finishing the grim business, revoking his pledge and killing the traitorous farmers rather than saving them.
At dawn the next morning, he was done.
Memnes, Calignes and Illyus were dead. So were four hundred and seventy cultists.
A victory, of sorts. It didn't feel that way to Priad. He ignored Inquisitor Mabuse's attentions as he led his battered squad into its departure shuttle.
'You have done a fine job, Priad. The Emperor will laud you.' Mabuse's voice was lofty as ever.
'I walked my men into a trap you should have seen, inquisitor,' Priad replied as the hatches closed. 'Next time Emperor willing, you will do better.'
The hatches slammed. Bearing their noble dead, Damocles left Ceres and returned to the void of space.
Below them, unceasingly the blood red rain fell.
Part Five
Crimson Wake
Ithaka
I
Ithaka. Proud Ithaka. Ocean world. Cradle of Snakes. The armoured drop-ship turns like a comet in high altitude, streaming fire like a falling star. On its white-hot hull, the double-looped serpent insignia of the Iron Snakes Chapter glows, incandescent...
Priad unlocked his seat restraints and lumbered in full armour to the nearest porthole. He stood with his hands braced against the hull wall either side of the port. Beneath him, through the luminous streams of re-entry fire, he saw the oceans, the dark tumult of vast, cold water, the thrashing frenzy of the deep, Ithakan seas.
The drop-ship swooped, levelled and ceased to burn. It skimmed low over the ocean face, assailed by hurricane salt-winds and kilometre-high waves. Seunenae, the folding wall of iron, bane of every wyrm-hunter.
Priad saw the bright reflection of the racing drop-ship flashing off the dimpled, roiling darkness below. He saw marysae, the white water foam. He saw the boiling cauldrons of ulbrumid, the wyrm-spoor.
Ithaka. Proud Ithaka. Ocean World. Cradle of Snakes.
They would be making planetfall soon, in a minute or two. Time for the squad leader to unscrew the copper flask and make the Rite of the Giving of Water.
Priad had not been home for ten years. And this was home. This was Ithaka.
Salt-water ran from his eye corners. The Rite had begun. Removing his glove, Priad wiped the tears from his eyes and marked the emblem of the Iron Snakes on the bulkhead. His men watched him do it.
Sometimes the Rite was special. Sometimes, you didn't need the flask.
The drop-ship streaked west across the sky lik
e a tracer round, over the fishing villages and orub-groves of the archipelagos, basking in the sun, out towards the stilt-rocks of the Primarch's Causeway. These great towers of rock rose from the water like spines in a two hundred and eighty-eight-kilometre curve where the archipelagos met the open ocean.
Priad had already given the drop-ship's pilot instructions. The ship slowed, adjusted and hove down towards Sulla's Rock, a thirty-metre stack dominating the trailing western lines of the Causeway. Ocean faring hookbeaks and smaller littoral scale-birds burst from their roosts on the stack at the shrill sound of the dro-ship's downjets. They mobbed and circled, clacking bills and crying into the wind, the sunlight flashing off their grey flight-scales. White water boomed and erupted around the stack's base.
The drop-ship shuddered and settled on the flat top of the stack, its three landing claws extended and firm. The hatch opened with a clank, flooding the cabin with cold sea-air and the boom of the ocean.
They felt it on their faces. All of Damocles squad were un-helmed. Priad led them out into the buffet of the stack top. As one, they breathed in the clean metallic stir of the open water. It was overwhelmingly intense.
For long periods of time, their senses had been siphoned through the relay systems of their armour. Now they were exposed, raw, in the wind. The olfactory receptors built into their skulls amplified the scents of the place a millionfold. Priad sighed. He could smell the ozone in the fleeting wind, the lime-stink of the scale-birds guano.
He could detect the aroma of saline mucus in the bivalves clamped to the stack's base, the oil slick of a sounding rocaloe shoal ten kilometres out and the citrus in a glass of grain alcohol poured twenty kilometres away in a waterside tavern in the archipelago.