False Gods

What are you talking about? What fate?'

'I saw it, Warmaster, the galaxy as a wasteland, the Emperor dead and mankind in bondage to a nightmar­ish hell of bureaucracy and superstition. All is grim darkness and all is war. Only you have the power to stop this future. You must be strong, Warmaster. Never forget that…'

Horus wanted to ask more, but watched impotently as the spark of life fled Eugan Temba.

His shoulder still burning with fire, Horus rose to his feet and marched over to the rewired consoles and die throbbing bundle of cables that reached up to the cham­ber's roof.

With an aching cry of loss and anger, he severed the cables with one mighty blow of his sword. They flopped and spun like landed fish, sparks and green fluids spurt­ing from internal tubes and cables, and Horus could tell that the damnable vox transmission had ceased.

Horus dropped his sword and, clutching his injured shoulder, sat on the deck next to Eugan Temba's dead body and wept for his lost friend.

Loken hacked his sword through another corpse's neck, dropping the mouldering revenant to the ground as still more pressed in behind it. He and Torgaddon fought back to back, their swords coated in the flesh of the dead mings as they were pushed further and further up the slopes of metal that led inside the starship. Their warriors fought desperately, each blow leaden and exhausted. The Titans of the Legio Mortis crushed what they could and sporadically raked the base of the rubble with sprays of gunfire, but there was no stopping the horde.

Dozens of Astartes were dead, and there was still no word from the forces that had entered the Glory of Terra. Garbled vox transmissions from the Byzant Janizars seemed to indicate that they were finally moving for­ward, but no one could be sure as to where exactly they were moving.

Loken fought with robotic movements, his every blow struck with mechanical regularity rather than skill. His armour was dented and torn in a dozen places, but still he fought for victory, despite the utter desperation of their cause.

That was what Astartes did: they triumphed over insur­mountable odds. Loken had lost track of how long they had been fighting, the brutal sensations of this combat having dulled his senses to all but his next attacker.

'We'll have to pull back into the ship!' he shouted.

Torgaddon and Nero Vipus nodded, too busy with their own immediate situations to respond verbally, and Loken turned and began issuing orders across the inter-suit vox, receiving acknowledgements from all his surviving squad commanders.

He heard a cry of anger and, recognising it as belong­ing to Torgaddon, turned with his sword raised. A mob of stinking cadavers swamped the top of the slopes, overwhelming die Astartes gathered there in a frenzy of clawing hands and biting jaws. Torgaddon was borne to the ground, and the mouths of the corpses fastened on his neck and arms were dragging him down.

'No!' shouted Loken as he leapt towards the furious combat. He shoulder charged in amongst them, sending bodies flying down the slopes. His fists crushed skulls and his sword hacked dead things in two. A gauntleted fist thrust up through grey flesh and he grabbed it, feel­ing the weight of an armoured Astartes behind it.

'Hold on, Tarik!' he ordered, hauling on his friend's arm. Despite his strength, he couldn't free Torgaddon and felt grasping limbs envelop his legs and waist. He clubbed with his free hand, but he couldn't kill enough of them. Hands tore at his head, smearing blood across his visor and blinding him as he felt himself falling.

Loken thrashed in vain, breaking dead things apart, but unable to prevent himself and Torgaddon from being pulled apart. Claws tore at his armour, the unnat­ural strength of their enemies piercing his flesh and drawing his precious blood. A grinning, skull faced monster landed on his chest, face to face with him, and its jaws snapped shut on his visor. Unable to penetrate

the armoured glass, rivulets of muddy saliva blurred his vision as its jaws worked up and down.

Loken head-butted the thing from his chest and rolled onto his front to gain some purchase. He lost his grip on his sword and bellowed in anger as he finally began to free himself from their intolerable grip. Loken fought with every ounce of his strength, finally gaining a respite and rising to his feet.

All around him, warriors of the Astartes struggled with the dead things, and he knew that they were undone.

Then, at a stroke, every one of the dead things dropped to the ground with a soft sigh of release.

Where seconds before the area around the starship had been a furious battlefield of warriors locked in life or death struggles, now it was an eerily silent graveyard. Bewildered Astartes picked themselves up and looked around at the inert, lifeless bodies surrounding them.

'What just happened?' asked Nero Vipus, disentan­gling himself from a pile of bludgeoned corpses. 'Why have they stopped?'

Loken shook his head. He had no answer to give him. 'I don't know, Nero.' 'It doesn't make any sense.' 'You'd rather they got back up?' 'No, don't be dense. I just mean that if someone was animating these things, then why stop now? They had

us,’

Loken shuddered. For someone to wield a power that could defeat the Astartes was a sobering thought. All the time they had crusaded through the galaxy there had been nothing that could stand against them for long – eventually the enemy's will would break in the face of the overwhelming superiority of the Space

Marines. Would this happen when they met a foe with a will

as implacable as their own?

Shaking himself free of such gloomy thoughts, he began issuing orders to dispose of the dead things, and they began hurling them from the wreckage, hacking or tearing heads from shoulders lest they reanimate.

Eventually Aximand and Abaddon led their warriors from the wreckage, battered and bloody from the ship's fall, but otherwise unharmed. Erebus too returned, his Word Bearers similarly abused, but also largely unharmed.

There was still no sign of Sedirae's men or the War-master.

'We're going back in there for the Warmaster,’ said Abaddon. 'I'll lead,’

Loken was about to protest, but nodded as he saw the unshakable resolve in Ezekyle's face.

'We'll all go,’ he said.

They found Luc Sedirae and his men trapped in one of the lower decks, hemmed in by fallen bulkheads and tonnes of debris. It took the better part of an hour to move enough of it to grant Luc's assaulters their freedom. On pulling Sedirae from his prison, all he could say was, They were here. Monsters with one eye… came out of nowhere, but we killed them, all of them. Now they're gone,’

Luc had suffered casualties; seven of his men were dead and his perpetual grin was replaced by a vengeful expres­sion that reminded Loken of a defiant young boy's. Black, stinking residue coated the walls, and Sedirae had a haunted look to him that Loken did not like at all. It reminded him of Euphrati Keeler in the moments after the warp thing that had taken Jubal almost killed her.

With Sedirae and his warriors in tow, the Mournival pressed on with Loken leading the way, finding signs of battle scattered diroughout the ship, bolter impacts and sword cuts that led inexorably towards the ship's bridge.

'Loken,’ whispered Aximand. 'I fear what we may find ahead. You should prepare yourself.'

'No,’ said Loken. 'I know what you are suggesting, but I won't think of that. I can't.'