Legion of the Damned

‘Bless you, my lord,’ Clemenz-Krycek said, kissing the Excoriator’s withdrawing gauntlet once again.

‘Squad Contritus, vigilance on the withdrawal. Proceed,’ Kersh voxed. From alcoves, gargoylesque wall flourishes and behind statues, fonts and chained heretics, the Scout squad emerged. They stepped lightly and with caution through the throngs of throne room onlookers, their cloaks about them and the long barrels of their sniper rifles lowered. As the Excoriators made their way from the chamber, escorted by a reforming Squad Contritus, Kersh bowed his head to the helmeted Sister Superior. ‘Sister, I leave you this mess to clean up,’ the Scourge told her. She stood impassive. He turned to leave.

At the great archway entrance the Excoriators came face to face with Arch-Deacon Schedonski and the swarm of Inclement Reserves summoned by the bells. The scrawny Guardsmen gulped and parted as the striding giants moved through their number. Among them, the armoured visitant stood, Kersh catching a glimpse of the darklight in one bony eye socket through the crack in the vision’s helm. Kersh stopped, looking from an uncertain Schedonski back to the bright-eyed Clemenz-Krycek and miserable Pontifex Nazimir, knelt in his own vomit.

‘Pontifex – where is your Emperor now?’ Kersh asked. He crossed his arms and extending a finger on each gauntlet, pointed at his twin hearts. ‘He is here. We shall deliver your cemetery world. I have given your cardinal my pledge. Let me give you another. I am Adeptus Astartes, mortal. If you or your mongrel priests ever attempt to issue ultimatums to me or my brothers again, you will hear my own, issued in the thunder of my bombardment cannon, as I wipe you and your palace from the face of this world with one righteous strike.’

The ecclesiarchs nodded their dumbfounded understanding.

Kersh turned and marched from the throne room. ‘Impunitas – this is Kersh. We are inbound. Prepare for take-off.’

PART TWO Oblivion is their gift…

Chapter Six Cemetery World

The Empyredrome was situated atop the bridge tower, commanding one of the best views the strike cruiser could offer. A large caged sphere of reinforced, psi-matrix-attuned crystal, it was known to the Adeptus Astartes and the bonded crew as the Magna-Cubile or ‘Great Nest’. This was understandable given that it was the private immaterial observation chamber for the Angelica Mortis’s Navigator, Alburque Ustral-Zaragoza III. It was all the more appropriate for the fact that the Navigator housed his psyber-eagle, Arkylas, in the drome.

The huge bird was a beauty of bronzed feather. Its wicked talons gripped a sturdy perch frame and its beak was a chrome-plated nightmare. Like the House internuncia who attended upon the Navigator in their claret hoods and robes, Arkylas was blind. The seeing were not tolerated within the chamber. With the Navigator’s warp eye open, exposing all in the Empyredrome to its lethal gaze, only those who had had their eyes removed were truly safe.

Zaragoza’s throne was set on a labyrinth of rails that took him – with the aid of internuncia muscle – to the crystal plate of the drome, where a perimeter of lens-arrays, specula, magnocular spyglasses and telescopes decorated the perimeter. The Navigator himself was neurally plugged into the chair and sat amongst a nest of runescreens, brass pict-monitors and hololithic displays, which his freakishly long digits and fingernails seemed to perpetually dance across.

‘Check me,’ Zaragoza instructed three calculus logi – lobotomised internuncia. The Navigator shot a stream of warp dilation and velocidratic equations at the hooded attendants. One by one, the internuncios confirmed the Navigator’s calculations as accurate. Satisfied, and not a little impressed with himself, Zaragoza settled back into his throne and clicked his spindly fingers. An internuncio came forwards with a polished metal platter and dome. Removing the dome, the servant revealed a dead rat, recovered from a trap in the vessel bilges. The Navigator picked the vermin up by its tail. With a pendular motion, Zaragoza tossed the dead meat at Arkylas.

Despite being blind, the psyber-eagle snatched the rodent out of the air with predatory grace. It never failed to give the Navigator a thrill. ‘Did you see that beak?’ he marvelled, pointing at the magnificent bird. The hooded vassal didn’t respond. Zaragoza grunted. ‘Of course you didn’t,’ he said to himself. He clicked his fingers to the other side of the throne and another blind servant came forwards with a tray bearing a decanter of amasec and a crystal glass.

The internuncio poured his master the drink and Zaragoza was about to take it when the deck about them began to vibrate. Trinkets and instruments fell from their racks and the servant spilt the amasec. Arkylas flapped its wings.

‘My lord.’ An internuncio came forwards. He wore a vox-headset arrangement around his darkened hood. ‘Corpus-Commander Bartimeus for you from the bridge. He demands to know the source of this turbulence.’

‘He’s not the only one,’ Zaragoza said absently. The Navigator screwed his eyes tight shut and opened the weeping slit of the third that sat in his forehead. The Empyredrome, like Arkylas and the internuncia, was still there – it had just faded to transparence. The Navigator drank in a vista of insanity. About him, with the strike cruiser and even the Empyredrome mere ghostly outlines, the sea of souls raged. A transdimensional medium, it appeared as a polychromatic ocean, viewed simultaneously from above and below. It was unrivalled in its expanse and drama, and through his third eye the Navigator could observe its deranged seascape.

In the ethereal distance Zaragoza could see the heavenly light of the Astronomican, a silvery beacon of serenity in the fermenting pandemonium of the warp. Its beatific beams reached out across the psychic universe, drawing the Navigator to them and filling his being with an angelic chorus of indescribable bliss. It was only by the good grace of the Astronomican that Zaragoza could navigate at all. Much closer, like a puce glower in the warpscape, the nightmarish region of the Eye of Terror broiled and spumed its malevolence, threatening to obscure the Astronomican and swallow the heavenly beacon whole.

Zaragoza looked out beyond the strike cruiser’s prow, beyond the existential static of the Geller field and the glint of warpreal entities impressing themselves on the bubble of reality enveloping the Excoriators ship. There was a psysmic tidal wave of raw immaterial energy rolling towards the Adeptus Astartes vessel for as far as the Navigator could see. The Angelica Mortis was heading bow-on for the monster with little hope of evasive course correction beyond dropping out of warp space and continuing at sub-light speed – which Bartimeus would not hear of. The vessel had encountered numerous smaller displacements on its journey to St Ethalberg. As they had pushed on to Certus-Minor, along the ethereal equivalent of the Andronica Banks and out into Hinterspace, the immateriology had grown increasingly agitated and unsettled. This was not what Zaragoza had come to expect in the region, which was usually relatively free of such stormy conditions.

Strangely, it was not the wave that bothered Zaragoza. The Angelica Mortis had been on the etherwave’s inclining approach for some time, and it was the Navigator’s plan to hold course and either have the sturdy Adeptus Astartes strike cruiser ride the beast out or punch straight through the maelstrom’s churning crestface. The Navigator had observed hundreds of vessels on their voyage seemingly lose their nerve and run before the gargantuan swell. Zaragoza had commented to Bartimeus, however, that such numbers and configurations appeared to him more like disbanded patterns of planetary evacuation than flotillas and convoys directed from their courses. In the presence of such evidence Zaragoza felt a little uncomfortable pressing on. He was an experienced Navigator from a House with long service record with the Adeptus Astartes. But he did not know what was causing such an immaterial phenomenon, and could have no way of knowing if an even larger wave