The Pilum slipped out into the darkness, lighting its engines and boosting free of the Light of Iax as the destroyer came to a halt a short distance away from the dark sliver of crimson that was the Excelsior.
As they drew nearer to the frigate, Shipmistress Rayhelm had been able to conduct an extensive barrage of augur scans over the Genesis Chapter vessel. Though its engines were silent, and its reactor cold, their sensor sweeps were unable to detect any significant damage, either to its hull or internal systems. The Excelsior simply hung in the void, appearing from the outside to be as quiet as a tomb.
Chaplain Helios intended to discover if the same were true for the vessel on the inside.
Of all the many Primogenitor Chapters born when the Imperium embraced the brilliance of the Primarch Guilliman and his Codex Astartes, the Genesis Chapter maintained the closest of ties to the Ultramarines. Many were the campaigns where warriors of the Genesis Chapter had stood side by side with their ancestor Chapter, crimson and cobalt working in flawless unity. In times of tragedy, they had even answered the call to serve within the very ranks of the Ultramarines, filling specialist roles for fallen Librarians, Techmarines or Apothecaries, or even brothers of the line.
Helios himself had fought alongside his cousins on more than one occasion. He knew them to be stalwart, zealous warriors, gallant in battle and unwavering in their adherence to the Codex. He had been proud to shed the blood of the God-Emperor’s enemies with them, and looked forward to rekindling their kinship anew here on Quradim.
But he would have to find them first.
Helios turned his red eye-lenses upon the Intercessor squad occupying the crew bay with him. Normally the hold would have resounded with the sound of prayers, last-minute entreaties to the spirits of their weapons and armour and pledges to be stalwart in the eyes of the God-Emperor, even on occasions such as this where no confrontation was anticipated. No such obvious signs of worship emanated from Seneca or his kin.
Sergeant Theron bore his own unease from the appearance of the Primaris Marines, from the uncanny nature of their forms and the inevitable comparison made by their very existence to his own. Helios’ discomfort, however, was of a different, deeper kind. It came from what lay within these new Space Marines. Physically, they were without peer, equipped with weapons and armour superior to all save the elite Terminators of the vaunted First Company. Their minds were equally impressive, honed with lore and training.
Such titanic efforts had been made in their creation, it was clear to see. So much attention to their bodies, to their minds, but what of their souls? What allowance had been granted to the spirit, deep within the secret vaults of Mars? What could the mechanical and soulless have ever hoped to impart of the true state of the Imperium, and of the enemies that threaten it?
Helios saw this gulf within the Primaris Marines. Flesh brought to its pinnacle yet treated as though it were nothing more than a machine. Absent was the righteous hate that could only come from confronting humanity’s foes first-hand and that was an inseparable attribute of the Angels of Death. These were no warrior monks; their experiences were so narrow, so ignorant.
They needed to be ready, when the time to stare in the darkness surrounding them came. And it would come.
Helios thought back to the losses on Meto. If these were the warriors that took the place of the fallen, how long before the Ultramarines he knew vanished away, the values and traditions that had sustained the Imperium’s foremost Chapter eroded to dust and echoes by their unenlightened blasphemies?
No.
Helios clamped down, refusing to give countenance to such despair. His faith was strong. He would not allow such a future to come to pass. The minds of the new would be shaped to become true defenders of the Emperor’s kingdom, and Helios would be His instrument.
Ascending to the Pilum’s cockpit, Helios peered out of the canopy. ‘Has there been any attempt to hail us?’ he asked the gunship’s servitor crew. ‘Or any response to our own hails?’
‘Negative,’ came the murmuring reply from the cyborg enmeshed with the communications array of the Stormraven.
The Excelsior now grew to fill the width of the Pilum’s viewing slit. Just as the scans had deduced, there was no sign of serious damage to its hull, other than the scars and carbon scoring earned by the frigate’s millennia of service.
‘Keep trying,’ said Helios. He looked to the pilot. ‘Search for any ingress points where we can land.’
‘Compliance.’
The servitor’s slack face twitched, spittle flecking from its blue lips as its truncated mind ran through a series of calculations to cross-reference the frigate’s schematics with the gunship’s active auspex sweeps. ‘Ingress point located.’
Helios looked over the readouts streaming down the servitor’s display. The starboard docking bay was open. ‘Take us in.’
‘Compliance.’
Helios and the Intercessor squad took their first steps aboard the Excelsior. Magnetic seals in their boots made their gait a stilted, plodding motion, like trudging through sucking mud.
The power was out throughout the frigate, and with it the hangar’s gravity, heat and the integrity field that closed it off from the void. Spilled promethium unfolded from a leaking fuel bladder in a frozen whorl of deep umber. Crates and tools floated around the Ultramarines, ticking softly against their armour as they crossed the deck.
‘Pilum,’ said Helios, looking back to the squat form of the Stormraven where it perched upon the flight deck. ‘Take off and remain on station. Interface with the Light of Iax and perform diagnostics over the Excelsior until we call for extraction.’
‘Compliance,’ the pilot servitor replied. The gunship’s engines spooled up, spitting tongues of blue flame that went eerily silent in the vacuum. The hovering detritus that littered the docking bay was sent spinning away as the craft rotated and shot out through the yawning opening and back into space.
Helios turned back as the Pilum disappeared from sight. The Primaris Marines had scattered, taking advantage of the zero gravity to scout across the hangar along the walls and ceiling.
‘Fall in,’ said Helios. ‘Discipline, my brothers. We function as a unit, and you shall wait for my command.’
The Intercessor squad withdrew immediately back to the Chaplain. They formed up instinctually into a five-pointed star formation, with Seneca at the lead point and Helios in the centre. They advanced, clearing the floating debris from their path as they made for the bulkhead leading into the Excelsior’s interior. The door was unsealed, and Seneca pushed the heavy slab on its hinges to allow them past it.
The corridors of the Genesis Chapter frigate leading out of the landing bay were just as dark and cold as the hangar. In the absence of atmosphere, the Space Marines breathed from the internal supply of their armour, sending whispering rasps from their helmet grilles. Helios’ auto-senses shifted across vision filters, compensating for the lack of light and rendering it as navigable as day. Everywhere he looked, form met function in perfect harmony. Amongst the triumphs of the Genesis Chapter’s own illustrious history, he saw the unmistakable artifice of his own Chapter present in the art and architecture, dating back ten millennia to the time when this vessel had served in the grand fleet of the Ultramarines Legion.
‘What happened here?’ voxed Kyros, the luminator fastened to his bolt rifle panning an extended cone of light across the walls.
‘Theoretical – this system is remote,’ said Caprico. ‘Records have documentation of recurrent pirate raids.’
‘And your practical?’ asked Seneca.
Caprico shook his head. ‘Unsatisfactory. If that is truly what had transpired, why leave a prize of such value behind?’
‘They wouldn’t,’ answered Seneca. ‘And this ship’s crew would not abandon it without a fight.’
‘No signs of battle anywhere,’ said Nicanor. ‘No blood.’
‘No bodies,’ added Ariston.
‘Keep moving,’ said Helios. ‘By the Emperor’s light, we shall reveal the truth of this.’
Hours moving through the Excelsior’s cold veins yielded no results. Finding nothing in the crew decks and after witnessing the sepulchral silence of the frigate’s gunnery decks, the decision had been made on where to proceed. The bridge was the most logical destination, where the ship’s flight recorders and vox-transcripts could be found to reveal what had befallen it, or perhaps even surviving crew.
The profound lack of life aboard the frigate cooled the latter expectation, and none of the command deck’s terminals or data log repositories would be functional without power. Thus, the squad of Ultramarines made its way to the enginarium, with the hope of rousing the dormant heart of the Excelsior to beat once again.
‘Brothers,’ called out Ariston. The squad gathered on his position, looking into the darkness of a storage chamber.
It was full of people. Arranged shoulder to shoulder in silent rows, they appeared to simply be standing there in the darkness. As the Ultramarines’ eyes adjusted to the lack of light, they saw that they were floating, and that they were dead.
Helios approached the nearest, a man clad in the carapace of a security armsman. The skin of his face had been cut away to the bone, save for one curved strip that ran from both temples down to meet along the jawline. It was a symbol, and one that the Chaplain knew well.
‘Ultimas,’ said Seneca as he looked from defiled face to defiled face, seeing his Chapter’s symbol rendered in tortured flesh. ‘These are ultimas.’
‘Who could have done this?’ asked Kyros, hands tightening around his bolt rifle.
‘This cannot be the entire crew,’ said Nicanor. ‘Where are the rest?’
‘Steel yourselves,’ said Helios. ‘From henceforth we move in full combat conditions, watch for traps and ambushes. An enemy of the Imperium is here, and these servants of the Emperor will be avenged.’
Passages of plasteel and adamantium adorned with Genesis Chapter sigils and gothic artistry were replaced with catwalks and cavernous spaces housing colossal machines as the Space Marines arrived at the enginarium, deep in the core of the silent warship. The weight of their footsteps rattled up from the gantries that hung over the Excelsior’s silent reactor core.
‘The control centre for the ship’s machine-spirit lies ahead,’ said Helios, referencing the schematic of the warship beaming across his right eye. The luminators of the Primaris Space Marines played down into the shadows, revealing the cylindrical bulk of the ship’s plasma core a hundred metres beneath them like some beached leviathan of ancient myth.
Seneca paused, holding up a closed fist to bring the rest of the squad to a halt behind him. He sank into a crouch, his eyes drawing him to a point in the distance. He could not be certain, but he thought for a moment that he glimpsed the slightest disturbance in the darkness, like oil slipping over oil.
‘What is it?’ asked Helios as he moved up and knelt beside the Intercessor.
Seneca blinked, cycling his visor feed to prey sight. The instant of interference over his retinal display covered something in the distance, something that could have been movement.
Seneca recoiled as a volley of bolter fire slashed over him and exploded against the mesh of the catwalk. The detonations were silent sparks of smoke and flame, sending tremors through the frozen air.
‘Contact!’ Helios and his squad took cover wherever they could find it. With no sound to carry the trademark bark of mass-reactive shells firing, the Ultramarines were forced to rely on their other senses to catch the shots knifing out of the shadows towards them.
‘Do we have visual?’ demanded Helios.
Seneca peered over the lip of the cargo container he had slid behind. He saw a dull glimmer of burnished metal in the distance, but ducked back as more bolt-rounds smashed silently against his cover.
‘Theoretical,’ said Seneca. ‘Incoming fire is mass reactive in nature. Partial visual identification does not correspond to that of Genesis Chapter power armour. Conclusion – we are under attack from an opposing force that includes hostile Space Marines.’
‘Practical?’ asked Caprico.
‘Attack!’ Helios charged forward, firing his plasma pistol and sending blinding smears of blue energy down the catwalk. The Chaplain ignited his crozius maul, its golden eagle wing blades wreathed in lightning as bolts split the air around him. With a roar he disengaged the magnetic seals in his boots and leapt forward like a missile towards the source of the incoming fire. ‘For the Emperor!’
Seneca gritted his teeth. ‘Suppressing fire! Nicanor, with me.’
Helios switched to prey sight in mid-flight. The darkness of the reactor vault softened into rippling waves of deep blue. Bolter shells appeared as stripes of white, traced back to muzzles that glowed a warm orange from their firing.
The Ultramarines Chaplain levelled his plasma pistol at the blobs of orange and loosed a burst of energy in their direction. Shapes were beginning to resolve themselves out of the escalating firefight. Helios caught a glimpse of two eyes blazing phosphor-white from a helm crested by curving bladed horns. His rage caught fire.
‘Traitors!’ Helios roared, rolling over his shoulder and using it to spring forward through the air again. Bolts hammered against his chest and shoulders, punching his momentum back as he fought to close the gap. A cluster of warning runes blared insistently from the corner of his visor as his armour’s integrity was ruptured by a detonating shell to his left side. Shrapnel tore through the fibre bundle musculature and slashed into his flesh, cutting down clear into his black carapace. A mist of blood sprayed out, freezing into a miniature nebula of ruby gems.
Helios felt none of it. A prayer booming from his death’s head mask, he finally came within striking distance of his enemy. They were twisted giants bedecked in armour of steeldust and gold, forged in the apocalyptic days when the Ruinous Powers first set the galaxy alight with the flames of civil war. Helios had seen their like before. He had witnessed the devastation they wrought in the name of treachery, and he had personally had the honour of sending more than one of them into the waiting arms of their foul patrons in the darkest corners of the warp.
Iron Warriors.
The lead traitor stepped back, raising an arm to block an overhead strike from the Chaplain’s crozius. Helios’ maul bifurcated the limb at the forearm, continuing down and splitting the horns framing the Iron Warrior’s plough-faced helm. Jarring impact rang up the Ultramarine’s arm as the flaring blades embedded in the Chaos Space Marine’s skull.
There were more of the traitor’s blasphemous kindred. They raised their bolters and levelled them at Helios. The Chaplain tore his crozius free from the dead heretic’s skull; a kick to his midsection sending the body smashing into his fellows.
A second Iron Warrior swept his comrade’s corpse aside, coming in low and lunging at Helios’ midsection with a chainsword. Helios parried the blow, the air around them filling with razor-sharp teeth as the edge of his maul cut along that of the sword’s blurring track. The Chaos Space Marine punched a bolt pistol into Helios’ chest and fired. The impact sent Helios spinning, his vision blurring as he crashed against the deck. The crozius flew from his hand, snapping taut on the chain binding the weapon to his wrist. Helios grasped for the heavy iron links, hissing in pain as a kick spun him onto his back.
The traitor loomed over Helios. Disgust twisted knots into the Chaplain’s gut as he beheld the horrific runes that squirmed across the metallic surface of his enemy’s armour, proudly displaying the corruption of Dark Gods that the Chaos Space Marine had willingly allowed to saturate himself. Helios watched his enemy take aim with his bolt pistol, levelling it at his head.
The Iron Warrior’s helm exploded into a hanging veil of blood, bone and armour fragments. Seneca and Nicanor charged forward from Helios’ right, bolt rifles flaring. The final heretic fell to their barrage, the corpse sent reeling away until it vanished into the shadows.
Seneca leaned over Helios, extending a hand.
‘My thanks, brothers,’ said the Chaplain, accepting the Primaris Marine’s aid and rising to his feet. The Ultramarines gathered around their Chaplain, a fresh tension in their postures. Helios knew that their blood was singing with combat narcotics, their inexperience keeping them from withholding the stimulants from their veins as they faced a true enemy firing with the intent to kill.
‘Look at this,’ said Helios, pinning one of the heretic corpses to the deck with his boot. Even to him, the command sounded strange, wrong. To gaze upon the slaves of the Archenemy was fraught with danger, a risk of allowing its taint to look upon your very soul, and leave it darkened. And yet he had given the command, seeing warriors around him who, no matter the risk, needed this lesson.
‘You were created to serve the Imperium,’ said Helios. ‘First and foremost, by killing His enemies in war. In your lives, you shall battle the greenskin, the aeldari, the endless swarms of the Great Devourer. And you will hate them. They shall deserve your hatred, because of their utter inhumanity, their fundamentally alien nature and the affront their continued existence represents. We will not rest until we have rendered them extinct.’
Helios looked down at the corpse of the Iron Warrior, the urge to spit spilling over his tongue. ‘And yet, of our manifold enemies, the xenos is not the greatest. The highest, most pure hatred of all we bestow upon those who were, long ago, human. Those who once knelt in service to the Imperium, and now, through weakness, taint and corruption, march to see it destroyed.’
The Chaplain raised his crozius, pointing it at Kyros. ‘Look at it. What do you feel?’
The Primaris Marine did not answer him, his eyes locked to the runes that still twitched and slid across the warrior’s burnished armour. ‘Our doctrine told us of the Great Enemy, they said–’
‘No,’ said Helios, his voice cold. ‘Do not tell me what you were told, tell me what you feel.’
‘I…’ Kyros struggled.
‘Anger,’ said Seneca quietly.
‘Sickness,’ said Ariston. He looked away. ‘A foul squirming in my stomach, like a poison.’
‘Tell me,’ said Helios, bringing his faceplate a hand’s span from Kyros. ‘What do you feel?’
Kyros turned his head, looking from the body to the Chaplain. ‘Hate.’
‘Hate them,’ said Helios, looking to each of his charges. ‘Hate them, my brothers. We have begun a crusade against this,’ he pressed his boot down hard, ‘and the Dark Powers that they have sworn to serve. They are everything, everything that we oppose, a blight upon the very spirit of humanity. It must be cleansed, by us. Are you ready for the task?’
‘Yes, Chaplain,’ came the response, hushed and distracted.
‘Together,’ snarled Helios. ‘In His name, for primarch and Imperium both, are you ready for the task?’
The Primaris Marines straightened, the tension binding their limbs snapping loose. ‘Yes, Chaplain!’
‘Training for such a foe is one thing,’ said Helios. ‘Experiencing it, tasting their corruption as you strike them down, that is very different.’
The squad was silent for a long moment, as the Chaplain allowed his words to take root.
‘You did well,’ said Helios finally. ‘Mind yourselves and your weapons, we must keep moving.’
Bolaraphon stopped as he heard his name. He turned in a clanking chorus of pistons and servos, watching as his lieutenant approached. Beniah bore an expression that the Warsmith had long believed purged of the veteran Iron Warrior after millennia of bloodshed and war.
He was anxious.
‘My Warsmith,’ said Beniah, halting and dipping his head in deference. ‘A ship has just translated in system from the edgeward jump point, and it has made all speed towards Quradim. It is an Imperial destroyer, Adeptus Astartes classification. We have just received word that they have despatched a boarding party onto the enemy frigate we disabled.’
Bolaraphon pondered this for a moment, silent but for the clanking thrum of his armour. ‘We have made contact against them?’
‘Yes, my Warsmith.’
‘Who?’
‘My lord, I–’
‘Who?’
Beniah’s face tightened. ‘It is the Thirteenth.’
Beniah was crashing through the air before the name had left his lips. The lancing pain of the backhanded blow writ large upon his face was twinned with another as he smashed against the wall of the passageway, sliding down into a heap on the deck.
Bolaraphon turned the full force of his glare down upon his lieutenant. The steel grey of his eyes smouldered with the threat of impossible violence, should Beniah’s word prove false.
‘You are certain of this?’ roared the Warsmith. ‘Speak lies to me and prepare for eternal silence.’
‘There can be no mistake,’ groaned Beniah, spitting a hissing glob of blood onto the deck as he pushed himself to his knees. ‘The sons of the Hated One have come to Quradim.’
Bolaraphon stomped past Beniah without another word. The corridor rang with the weight of his tread as he moved as quickly as his ancient Terminator war-plate could bear him.
‘My Warsmith,’ called out Beniah. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To the bridge.’