As I had anticipated, we stepped through the last one and were immediately inside the edifice, as if we had passed through the pearly walls.
Inside, there was a low radiance shed by some source inside the walls. It was warm, and the smell of liquorice was more pungent and intense. The floor, translucent and pearly, was concave and flowed up into the curve of the walls.
We moved forward, weapons ready. The corridor – and I use that word in the loosest sense – seemed to describe a spiral, like the inner form of agreat conch or the canals of a human ear, but at no time did we feel anything but upright.
Opening into a horn-like cone, the spiral gave out into a huge, almost spherical chamber. It was impossible to estimate its true size, or define its true shape. It seemed to be some kind of ornamental garden or even farm. Silver walkways, suspended invisibly by gravity or some other force, ran between curving tanks of liquid that formed beds for huge, multi-coloured cycads and other bulbous, primitive plants. The fleshy growths towered around us, dripping with moisture and swathed in creepers and climbing succulents. Ropes of vine and beards of flowering foliage hung from invisible fixtures in the air above the beds. There were insects in here, flitting between the swollen bell-shapes, crescents and columns of the gigantic vegetation. One landed on my sleeve and I swatted it, noticing with revulsion that it had five legs, three wings and no symmetry.
We followed the silver path. It passed through a tetragate, and at once we found ourselves in another garden chamber, similarly filled with glossy, abundant plant life thriving in sculptural tanks. The tallest growths in here – giant yellowish horsetails streaked with orange veins – rose eighty or ninety metres above the floating pathway.
Guilar called a word of alarm, and his storm bolter began to fire, raking across this second chamber from the silver path on which we walked. The shots burst gourd-like plants in fibrous bursts of sap and hacked shreds of leaf and tendril into the air.
Return fire came at us. Las-fire and the crack of autorifles. Through the sickly growths of this indoor jungle, the soldiers of the heretics moved against us.
TWENTTY-FOUR
Purge Two engages.
A silent revolution.
Dazzo's triumph.
They came through the plant growth, along the silver paths, blasting, men clad in the stained uniforms of the 50th Gudranite Rifles and the black armour of the naval security detail. Two of the Gudrunites in my squad toppled and fell from the path, their corpses disappearing into the oily waters of the tanks below. But most of the enemy gunfire was going wild.
Purge Two countered, lasguns barking. I moved to the front of the group and began firing my bolt pistol. There was precious little room for manoeuvre on the silver walkway, and even less cover.
My first shot went wide, so wide I wondered if the bolter was misaligned. Then I remembered the devious nature of the sarathi tetrascape and compensated. Two shots, two satisfying hits. Bequin and Midas both had the trick of it too, and Jeruss's boys were learning.
Guilar made a lot of noise, ripping through the gardens with his storm bolter. But it seemed to me he was still discomforted by the environment.
It was a salutary moment. To see one of the god-like warriors I have regarded with great awe ever since the day, thirty years ago, when I watched the White Scars take Almanadae, become fallible. For all his power, courage, superhuman vigour and advanced weapons, he was achieving nothing, whereas Yeltun, the youngest of the Gudrun boys, had made three kills already.
Was it arrogance? Overconfidence in his own abilities?
'Guilar! Brother Guilar! Adjust your fire!'
I heard him curse something about insolence, and move ahead down the path, detonating plant bulks with his shots.
'Why doesn't die bastard listen?' Midas complained, sighting his Gla-vian rifle and decapitating a heretic trooper at one hundred metres.
'Close up!' I ordered. 'Jeruss! Frag them!'
Jeruss and three others began to lob frag grenades over the thickets. Explosive flashes blew water ooze and vegetable matter up from the tanks, and the air became foggy with plant fibre and sappy moisture.
There was an abrupt change in tone in the enemy fire. The boom of a bolter rang out over the crack and snipe of the laser weapons.
I looked down the silver path in time to see Guilar jerk backwards as multiple bolter rounds struck his chest plate. With a cry of rage rather than pain, he went over, off the path, into the bubbling water of the tank behind us and vanished.
Thrusting the heretic foot soldiers out of the way, his killer came down the pathway towards us.
'Oh no!' Bequin cried. 'Please-by-the-Golden-Throne-no!'
Another of the Emperor's Children, the brother if not the twin of foul Mandragore. His scintillating cloak blew out behind him, and his steel-shod hooves shook the path. He was bellowing like a bull auroch. His bolter spat and the Gudrunite beside me burst apart.
The Children of the Emperor, shadowy sponsors of this entire enterprise, were here to protect their investment. Had they come, unbidden, after Mandragore's death? Had Dazzo or Locke summoned them?
I fired the bolter at him, joining the fusillade of desperate weapons blasts that Purge Two levelled in a frantic attempt to slow him down. Fear made the men forget the best of their training, and many of the shots were wild. He didn't seem to feel those few that struck his armour.
'Purge Two! This is Purge Two! The Children of the Emperor are here!' I yelled into my vox. I knew I would be dead in an instant. It was imperative that Fleet Command knew of this dire development.
A black shape burst up from the dark water, cascading froth and ooze in all directions. Brother Guilar slammed into the Chaos Marine, wrenching him over, and they both fell thrashing into the adjacent tank. Something, probably the heretic's bolter, fired repeatedly underwater and the side of the tank below the floating path splintered out in a rash of liquid. The soupy water flooded out, draining away into the gullies between the garden structures. As the fluid level dropped, the titanic combatants emerged, blackened with mire, wrestling and trading inhuman blows among the tangled roots and feeder tubes of the tank's murky bottom.
Ceramite-cased fists pounded into armour plates. Chips of plasteel flew from the impacts. The Chaos Marine's vast paws clawed at Guilar, tearing at his visor and shoulder guards. Guilar drove him backwards, his feet churning in the shallow, thick water. They slammed in the bole of a cycad. The enemy grappled, getting a better grip, stabbing a jagged gauntlet spike
through the armpit seal of the Deathwatch's imperator armour. Guilar staggered, and as he fell back, a massive backhanded slap knocked him over and tore his helmet off.
The Chaos Marine landed on the sprawling Guilar, tearing at his throat, driving fists like boulders into his face.
There was a bang of weapon discharge and a flash. His face destroyed and his collapsed skull burning from the inside, the Chaos filth fell back into the swamp water.
Guilar rose, unsteady, his storm bolter in his hand, blood pouring from the wounds in his face and neck.
It was a formidable victory. Jeruss and his men cheered and whooped and then renewed their advance on the remaining heretics. The enemy, resolve lost, pulled back and vanished into the dense thickets of the gardens.
Dripping, Guilar climbed back onto the path and looked down at me.
