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  “You are right,” Rafen retorted, over Cheyne’s howl of pain. “I could never smile so broadly as you do.” Taking the moment, he advanced and struck at his opponent, slamming it to the ground.

  The Blood Angel bent and grabbed a length of the leather wrapping, dragging Cheyne up. They were close to the edge of the ramp, and there was a good distance to the bottom. At the very least, throwing the androgyne off would break many bones, even if it were as hardy as an Astartes. Cheyne tried to stab him, and he caught the other blade, holding it away. Blood flowed where his fingers held on tightly.

  Then Cheyne’s cries shifted and became something else. Laughter.

  Rafen’s ire returned at the sound of the creature’s mocking tones. “You are amused? Make it last, freak! Your future ends here!”

  “Oh,” gasped Cheyne, “I think not.” When Bile’s warrior spoke again, it was a sound so unholy that Rafen felt sickened to his core. It was, if such a word could be used to describe so abhorrent a noise, a prayer of sorts. A summoning, an entreaty, a litany; but not one to the vile gods that this creature worshipped.

  The mantra was for the parasite. At the sound, the maggot erupted into violent life, and suddenly Rafen’s blood turned to fire. Every nerve ending in his body screamed at once, plunging him into the embrace of an agony that shredded all will. He released his grip on Cheyne, everything else forgotten. There was so much pain, such a galaxy of it within him, that Rafen could do nothing but stand in the core of it and try to endure.

  He heard howling, and knew that he was the first in the chorus.

  ELEVEN

  The hulking New Men dragged the Blood Angel into the tiered room through a heavy airlock door, and threw him hard to the floor. The hatch slammed closed behind them with a hissing whine and the Space Marine gasped in a breath as his eyes focused. The first thing he saw were the eldritch symbols etched into the grey tiles that spread out all around him, the curse-glyphs, warding runes and eight-point stars. He recoiled from them reflexively, disgust welling up in him, and the New Men laughed to see it.

  Rafen tried to moderate his breathing, but it was difficult. The action of the maggot in his chest was turning his enhanced Astartes physiology against him; the functions of the implants in his body warred with his base human biology. He fought to hold off the shaking in his hands caused by cell imbalances in his blood chemistry, blinked and tried to keep himself steady even as his normally perfect equilibrium was disrupted. The thing was pumping poison into him with every heartbeat. He glared at Cheyne, who returned the look with malice, the Chaos champion twitching with pain as the servitor trailing at its heels used bio-wire to stitch the cut sections of its face back together.

  Cheyne had done this to him, called the parasite to full potency with that strange mnemonic it had spoken. The pain ebbed and flowed, but only in small increments. Rafen now understood fully the insidious purpose of the implanted larva; it made chains and fetters obsolete. Any prisoner so tainted with one of these things was on an invisible leash; only a word need be spoken, and untold agony was let loose.

  “You wanted to come here, didn’t you?” slurred the New Man, flecks of blood and spittle issuing from the androgyne’s ruined mouth. “Do you like what you see?”

  Rafen glanced around, uncertain of why he had been brought into the tower after Cheyne had seemingly done so much to prevent his entry. He was immediately struck by the similarity between this room and the co-opted hospital his squad had found aboard the tau asteroid; there was more light in here, though, and on some level Rafen wished it was otherwise.

  Benches and worktables were arranged in neat rows, surrounded on all sides by circular tanks of murky fluids. Objects moved inside the tanks, and Rafen hesitated to peer too closely at them. Where the place of cruelty inside the tau colony had seemed abandoned and disordered, this laboratory was regimented and careful in aspect. A pair of servitors, their faces blank and sealed things with only eyes still open, moved around the edges of the room, performing tasks that Rafen could only guess at.

  Light struck from harsh biolume strips set into the ceiling, yellow colour falling upon the tiled floor and the metal-sheathed walls. The illumination glittered on cowled trays of bladed implements that were more wicked than any fighting knife. The warrior wondered if he would be able to make it to them before the pain came again.

  Overhead, racks made of clawed iron talons held polymer bags filled with splashes of liquid and matter that could only be human meat. On many of the operation tables, more plastic shrouds hid lumpy shapes made of pasty flesh. The smell of blood was constant; not the stench of a killing field, but the half-masked stink of a sanatorium, a place where death was brushed away as inconsequential.

  Rafen shook his head to dispel the dizzy sensation in his skull. His thoughts were like mud, thick and slow. He took a few steps and became aware of a glass disc set into the floor beneath him. He looked down and his gut twisted in response. Through the thick lens, he could see into a misted nest of stringy, mucal matter; dozens of maggots of varying sizes writhed blindly over the top of one another, cilia grasping at nothing. He turned away in disgust, feeling the weight of his own unwanted passenger upon him. Rafen wondered if the parasite was gaining mass or if it were just his misperception. He felt a stab of dread; would it grow to consume him from the inside out? Or would it do something far worse, make his flesh its own?

  He forced himself to look again, and this time he saw something else. Down, under the wriggling carpet of maggots, drenched in wet ropes of gel… Something made of bone armour and pasty flesh, coiled in on itself, horribly bloated.

  “A tyranid zoanthrope,” said a dark, rich voice. “At least, it was at the beginning, before I took it, married its flesh with a biovore archetype, altered it to better serve my ends. Now it is both less and more than it was.”

  Rafen knew that voice. Knew it and hated it.

  He looked up to see a figure stride into the chamber through another hatch on the far side of the laboratory. As tall as any warrior-born of the Adeptus Astartes, the new arrival dominated the room with a black presence that was the very antithesis to warriors of noble character, such as Rafen’s master Commander Dante. The man—although in truth he had long since given up any claim to that appellation—wore a voluminous long coat that hung upon him like a cloak. Leathery and cracked, it was a patchwork thing sutured together from the flesh of the dead. The Blood Angel saw the still-screaming faces of Astartes stitched into the cut of the coat, flesh cut from men who had perished at this killer’s hands thousands of years before Rafen was born.

  This mantle was drawn tight over heavy power armour in the style of the aged Maximus pattern, but reforged and remade into something unholy. Once the armour had shown the colours of brilliant gold and imperial purple, but now the tarnished shell was the tint of dark wine, the ceramite sheath soaked in such tides of shed blood that the porous surface had taken on their shade.

  At his back, the hulking figure’s silhouette was unbalanced by a large brass construct that clung to him like a giant, predatory scarab beetle. Its claws and talons were hidden away, retracted, but atop it bulbous pipes and glassy tubes arrayed with skulls worked quietly, pumping resinous ichor with wet and breathy murmurs. With a solemn, heavy tread, the new arrival advanced into the light, showing a hard face of deep-set eyes to the Space Marine. White, wiry hair framed an expression of indolent interest.

  “What have we here?” he said.

  This man, this traitor, had once walked the stars as a soldier of the Emperor’s Children, but like the rest of his dishonoured Legion he had taken the coin of the heretic warmaster Horus and embraced the riot of the Chaos Gods. Some held that he had already been on that road even before Fulgrim’s warriors had broken their covenant with Terra, experimenting on his fellow Astartes during his service as an Apothecary. Once freed of any moral codes, those foul deeds had quickly spread wider, as he tormented and experimented on anyone luckless enough to cross his path; and the
n, even as Horus was defeated and Fulgrim hounded into the Eye of Terror, this twisted genius earned the traitor’s brand a second time, divorcing himself from the corrupted Emperor’s Children to go renegade—and all so he could delve ever deeper into the perverse possibilities of his dark flesh-arts. His catalogue of atrocities touched beings on thousands of worlds.

  The pain of the parasite seized at Rafen’s chest, but he ignored it as his rage threatened to ripple over the bulwarks of his self-control. If it had been possible to kill with the venom of words alone, then Rafen would have spat death. “Fabius Bile,” he growled, “by the God-Emperor, I name you traitor!”

  “Of course you do,” Bile replied, unruffled by the sheer force of odium that welled up from the Space Marine. “You and so many others. It’s tiresome. I sometimes hope one of you will say something different to me.” He showed a mouth of tombstone-grey teeth, amused at himself. “After a hundred centuries, I yearn for a break in the monotony.”

  Rafen took a step towards the tray of medical blades, but Cheyne was suddenly there, blocking his path, licking its lips in eagerness for another combat. Blood was still seeping from the gash on its cheek. The Astartes was aware of the other New Men behind him, taking up battle stances.

  Bile studied his minion and nodded. “You did that to him, eh? Even with the leech in you. Such fortitude.”

  “I’ll be more than happy to demonstrate my skill to you, turncoat.”

  Cheyne giggled at the idea of that, but Bile shook his head. “No fighting in here. Not today.” The twisted scientist stepped down, coming closer. “Not yet, at least. Not before my questions are answered.”

  “I will give you nothing,” Rafen spat, “nothing but your ending! You will not escape this time!”

  Bile examined him. “This time?” His brow furrowed. “Have we met before, whelp? I confess I do not recall.”

  “I was there when you fled Baal, like the coward you are!” snarled the Blood Angel. “You did not even have the courage to face us in combat!”

  The renegade showed no sign of recognition, and gave an arch sniff. “I have not lived so long by taking on fights I cannot win, not when another avenue is open to me. Your kind, on the other hand, seem to make it a point to engage in battles that are beyond you.” He gestured around. “Hence your internment here, yes?”

  “Send your dogs away, traitor, and we will see who is beyond who.” Rafen’s eyes flashed, the muscles in his hands tensing.

  Bile ignored the retort, glancing at Cheyne. “This is the one dragged from the ocean. Such a gift, but I am unwilling to accept it without due consideration. Where did he come from?”

  The New Man glared at Rafen. “Answer the Master’s question, or there will be pain, Blood Angel.”

  Rafen returned the angry look. “Don’t pretend you don’t already know.”

  “Perhaps,” admitted Cheyne, with a laugh. “But I want you to say it.”

  “I came from Baal,” Rafen replied. “I came here to kill all of you.” He looked back at Bile. “To give you the punishment you so richly deserve for your insult to my Chapter.”

  “He said he came alone,” added Cheyne. “Aboard the ship of that fool Zellik.”

  The Blood Angel said nothing; the androgyne had confirmed what he had known, every word spoken in the prison complex was heard by Cheyne’s spies.

  “Did he?” Bile mused. “A lone Astartes on a quest for vengeance, out to avenge an affront.” He drifted away, towards another lock-hatch. “What could he be so upset about?” The renegade spoke a whispered codeword and the hatchway ground open. Bile stepped through, gesturing languidly to his second. “Bring him.”

  Rafen felt a sharp impact in his back and turned to see the other two New Men, halberds with multiple blade-heads raised and pressing into his flesh.

  Cheyne followed his master, beckoning Rafen. “Come, come. I promise you, Space Marine, there are sights to see here that you would not wish to overlook.”

  As much as he hated to admit it, the Blood Angel’s interest was piqued. More than anything, he wanted to release the fires of his Chapter’s gene-curse, the dark berserker potential of the Red Thirst; he wanted to let himself become a whirlwind of death and tear this place apart. But there were the other voices in his mind, the remembrance of words from his trusted mentor Koris and his liege lord Dante. He could not unchain his rage, not yet. There was the mission first.

  Grim-faced, he followed Cheyne through the hatchway.

  “You are certain?” Noxx’s voice was pitched low so that it would not carry across the command deck of the Neimos. The Flesh Tearer leaned in and peered over the Blood Angel’s shoulder at the ornately-framed pict-screen.

  Puluo nodded gravely. “Wouldn’t speak up if I wasn’t. See for yourself.”

  Noxx’s eyes narrowed as he scrutinised the display; the image was of a zone of ocean in the wake of the submersible, a pie-wedge shape filled with rippling lines of grey and black static. It was a sonaric scope, a device that could scry though water using hypersensitive audial sensors that listened for minute changes in the thermocline of the surrounding sea. “I don’t see it.”

  “Wait,” said Puluo. He pointed at a blank sector of the display. “Look here.”

  After a moment, the screen flickered, and for a split-second, Noxx saw the ghost of a streamlined shape—something like a bullet trailing lines of wire. He froze the image and looked up at the other Astartes. “It came back?”

  “It came back,” Puluo said, with a grim nod.

  “I thought you killed that thing out there.”

  Puluo shook his head once. “Drove it off. Thought that would be enough.”

  Noxx examined the rangefinder dial next to the screen. “It’s far behind. Moving slower. Injured.”

  “Not that far behind,” added Puluo. “According to the cogitators, the kraken is more or less matching our speed. If we drop a cog for any reason, it’ll be on us in minutes.”

  “All the more reason for haste, then.” Noxx went to move away, but Puluo grabbed his arm. “What now?” The sergeant was irritated.

  The Blood Angel frowned and tapped the pict-screen. “Not done yet. Keep watching.” He tapped the control tab and the playback went on.

  There was a glimmer on the display, this time on the far side of the wedge, and Noxx raised an eyebrow.

  How had the tyranid moved from one side of the screen to the other so quickly?

  The image fuzzed with static and reset itself for another loop of passive scans; and this time the scope presented not one, but five distinct returns. Each the same bullet-shell profile, each trailing streamers of distortion out behind it.

  “It came back,” repeated Puluo once more, “and it’s brought some friends.”

  Noxx smiled thinly. “Perhaps we ought to be flattered. The bloody horror has to gang up on us just to make a dent.” He paused, thinking. “Tell the servitors to push this tub up to maximum velocity. We need every second ahead of those things we can get, because we’ll have to slow the moment we reach the island.”

  “If we don’t get out of the water quick enough, they’ll be on us,” said the Blood Angel.

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Noxx replied. “All the more reason for us to take the pace, cousin.”

  Puluo nodded again. “As if we needed another thing to motivate us.”

  He had expected to look upon another chamber of horrors; and in a way, it was exactly that.

  Pressed in by the angry shoves of Cheyne’s thugs, Rafen walked on behind the androgyne and its servitor into a long chamber that was more a gallery than it was a room. Set on racks lining the walls or hanging from chains that dangled from the low ceiling, there were trophies upon trophies.

  Pieces of ceramite armour, chest plates and pauldrons, gauntlets and helmets, all of them lay mute and broken like so much battlefield debris. On an upper tier, out of reach, there was an armoury of weapons, swords and guns.

  What struck Rafen dumb was the fact that every
thing here was Astartes-issue hardware. It was Bile’s prize room, the spoils stripped from every prisoner he had brought to this secret hell.

  He saw the red gauntlet of a Crimson Fist, knuckles cracked and broken; the skull-helm of a Space Wolf; shoulder pauldrons bearing the crests of the Black Dragons, the Salamanders, the Soul Drinkers, and more.

  “This is a lesson,” said Bile airily, walking towards a bubbling tank of fluid at the far end of the chamber. “I like to keep these relics close to hand to remind me of my steps along the road to success.”

  Cheyne eyed the Blood Angel. “He’s wondering how long this has been going on for. That’s always the first question.” The androgyne cocked its head. “Would it shock you to know that decades have passed since my Master began his work here?” Cheyne made an amused noise. “Now think, abhuman. How many battle-brothers have been declared missing presumed dead in the last ten, twenty, thirty years, hmm? Interesting to consider how many of them might have ended up here, don’t you think?” It traced long fingers over the cracked, bloodstained brow of an Ultramarines helm.

  Rafen tried to find his voice, but he could not. His eyes were locked on a red torso plate that lay as if discarded upon one of the racks. On it, there were wings of gold surrounding a ruby droplet. He moved to it, held it in his hands. For a moment, Rafen had thought the armour was part of his wargear—he imagined everything the splices had stripped from him on the boat had ended up in here somewhere—but cold shock ran through him as he realised this item did not belong to him. With reverence, he turned the plate over and found the roll of honour inscribed on the inverse face. The last among the lists of combat records and warriors who had worn this armour was smudged with soot.

  Rafen rubbed the dirt away with his thumb. “Brother Rear,” he husked, reading the name aloud. He did not know the man, but still his anger flared brightly to think that a Chapter kinsman had died in this place before him, alone and forgotten. “One more to add to the butcher’s bill,” he whispered, hoping that his dead comrade’s spirit might still linger to hear him. “On my oath, you will be avenged.” He turned and met Fabius’ sullen stare, his eyes aflame.