False Gods

'Getting something,’ reported Cassar. 'Incoming sig­nal,’

What is it? I need better information than that, damn you,’ shouted Turnet.

'Aerial contact. Signal's firming up. Fast moving and heading towards us,’

'Is it a Stormbird?'

'No, sir. All Stormbirds are accounted for in the deployment zone and I'm not picking up any military transponder signals,’

Turnet nodded. Then it's hostile. Do you have a solu­tion, Aruken?'

'Running it now, princeps,’

'Range six hundred metres and closing,’ said Cassar. 'God-Emperor protect us, it's coming right for us,’

'Aruken! That's too damn close, shoot it down,’

Working on it, sir,’

Work faster!'

The dense mists made looking through the frontal wind­shield pointless; nevertheless, there was an irresistible fascination in looking out at an alien world – not that there was much, or indeed anything, to see. Thus, Petronella's first impressions upon breaching the upper atmosphere were of disappointment, having expected exotic vistas of unimaginable alien strangeness.

Instead, they had been buffeted by violent storm winds and could see nothing but the yellow skies and

banks of fog that seemed to be gathered around another unremarkable patch of brown swampland ahead.

Though the Warmaster had politely, but firmly, declined her request to travel to the surface with the warriors of the speartip, she had been sure there was a glint of mischief in his eye. Taking that for a sign of tacit approval, she had immediately gathered Maggard and her flight crew in the shuttle bay in preparation for descent to the moon below. Her gold-skinned landing skiff launched in the wake of the Army dropships, losing itself in the mass of assault craft heading to the moon's surface. Unable to keep pace with the invasion force, they had been forced to follow the emission trails and now found themselves circling deep in a soup of impenetrable fog that rendered the ground below virtually invisible.

'Getting some returns from up ahead, my lady,' said the first officer. 'I think it's the speartip.'

'At last,' she said. 'Get as close as you can then set us down. I want to get out of this mist so I can see something worth writing about.' Yes, ma'am.'

Petronella settled back into her seat as the skiff angled its course towards the source of the surveyor return, irrita­bly altering the position of her restraint harness to try to avoid creasing the folds of her dress. She gave up, decid­ing that the dress was beyond saving, and returned her gaze to the windshield as the pilot gave a sudden yell of terror.

Hot fear seethed in her veins as the mist before them cleared and she saw a huge mechanical giant before them, its proportions massive and armoured. Saw-toothed bas­tions and towers filled her vision, massive cannons and a terrible, snarling face of dark iron.

Throne!' cried the pilot, hauling on the controls in a desperate evasive manoeuvre as roaring fire and light hor­rifyingly filled the windshield.

Petronella's world exploded in pain and broken glass as the guns of the Dies Irae opened fire and blasted her skiff from the yellow skies.

Loken surged backwards in horror and disgust as the cadaver attempted to strangle the life from him with its slimy fingers. For something as apparently fragile as a rot­ted corpse, the thing was possessed of a fearsome strength and he was dragged to his knees by the weight and power of the creature.

With a thought, he flooded his metabolism with battle stimms and fresh strength surged into his limbs. He gripped the arms of his attacker and pulled mem from its reeking torso in a flood of dead fluids and a wash of brackish blood. The fire died in the thing's eyes and it flopped lifeless to the swamp.

He pushed himself to his feet and took stock of the sit­uation, his Astartes training suppressing any notion of panic or disorientation. From all around them, the bodies he had previously thought to be lifeless were rising from the dark waters and launching memselves at his warriors.

Bolters blasted chunks of mouldered flesh from their bodies or tore limbs from putrefied torsos, but still they kept coming, tearing at the Astartes with diseased, yellowed claws. More of the things were rising all around them and Loken shot three down wim as many shots, shattering skulls and exploding chests with mass-reactive shells.

'Sons of Horus, on me!' he yelled. 'Form on me.'

The warriors of 10th Company calmly began falling back to their captain, firing as they went at the necrotic horrors rising from the swamp like creatures from their worst nightmares. Hundreds of dead dungs surrounded them, mouldering corpses and bloated, muttering abom­inations, each with a single milky, distended eye and a scabrous horn sprouting from its forehead.

What were they? Monstrous xeno creatures with the power to reanimate dead flesh or something far worse? Thick, buzzing clouds of flies flew round them, and Loken saw an Astartes go down, the feeds on his helmet thick with fat bodied insects. The warrior frenziedly tore his helmet off and Loken was horrified to see his flesh rotting away with an unnatural rapidity, his skin greying and peeling away to reveal the liquefying tissue beneath.

The bark of bolter fire focussed him and he returned his attention to the battle before him, emptying magazine after magazine into the shambling mass of repulsive creatures before him.

'Head shots only!' he cried as he put another of the dead things down, its skull a ruin of blackened bone and slosh­ing ooze. The tide of the battle began to turn as more and more of the shambling horrors went down and stayed down. The green-fleshed things with grotesquely distended bellies took more killing, though it seemed to Loken that they dissolved into stinking matter as they fell into the water of the swamp.

More shapes moved through the mist as a thunderous roar of heavy cannon fire came from behind them, fol­lowed by the bright flare of an explosion high above. Loken looked up to see a golden landing skiff trailing smoke and fire wobble in the sky, though he had not the time to won­der what a civilian craft was doing in a warzone as yet more of the dead things climbed from the water.

Too close for bolters, he drew his sword and brought the monstrously toothed blade to life with a press of the activation stud. A ghastly thing of decomposed flesh and rotten meat hurled itself at him and he swung his blade two handed for its skull.

The blade roared as it slew, gobbets of wet, grey meat spattering his armour as he ripped the sword through from brainpan to groin. He swung at another creature, the green fire of its eyes flickering out as he hacked it in

two. All about him, Sons of Horus went toe to toe with the terrible creatures that had once been members of the 63 rd Expedition.

Rotted hands clamped onto his armour from beneath the water and Loken felt himself being dragged down. He roared and reversed his grip on his sword, stabbing it straight down into leering skulls and rotted faces, but incredibly their strength was the greater and he could not resist their pull.

'Garvi!' shouted Vipus, hacking enemies from his path as he forged through the swamp towards him.

'Luc! Help me!' cried Vipus, grabbing onto Loken's outstretched arm. Loken gripped onto his friend's hand as he felt another set of hands grip him around his chest and haul backwards.

'Let go, you bastards!' roared Luc Sedirae, hauling with all his might.

Loken felt himself rising and kicked out as the swamp creatures finally released him. He scrambled back and clambered to his feet. Together, he, Luc and Nero fought with bludgeoning ferocity, although there was no shape to the battle now, if there ever had been. It was nothing more than butcher work, requiring no swordsmanship or finesse, just brute strength and a determination not to fall. Bizarrely, Loken thought of Lucius, the swordsman of the Emperor's Children Legion, and of how he would have hated this inelegant form of