Wrath of Iron Read online

  Going slowly, silently, Valien crept forwards. He stayed low, almost on all fours, hugging the shadows. Semi-consciously, he withdrew his needle gun and switched the poisonous nerve agents in the syringes for paralysis inducers.

  His shoulder grazed against the low ceiling. The corridors around him were little more than service tunnels, tight and twisting. Valien knew he was inside the foundations of the Capitolis spire, though he didn’t know much more than that. He’d left the long transit tunnels behind, hugging their walls, diverting into the ancillary maintenance capillaries to slip past the huge armies that had been installed in the central caverns. After that he’d squeezed through a whole network of tiny feeder conduits, wrestling his stringy body through gaps that should have been big enough only for rats.

  The dark was almost total. His false-vision retina compensated, fleshing out the detail of his surroundings in lurid brightness. The nature of the structures around him had changed. Previously bare metal was covered with a thin layer of growths, many of which shone in the dark with a pale phosphorescence; others were painful to the touch, as if they harboured stingers under their pulpy surfaces. The air had become hotter and more humid; when Valien turned his environment filters off he could taste a trace of sweetness in it, like rotten fruit.

  Valien moved off, picking his way over pools of fluid on the floor. A few metres more, and he caught sight of the source of the sounds.

  The man had slumped against the tunnel walls, his head low and his hands hanging listlessly. The sobs that came from his open mouth were barely audible; just miserable accompaniments to his breathing. The mortal’s head was bare and he wore no night-vision visor. That made him practically blind, which was all to the good.

  Valien checked his proximity scanner for other signals, of which there were none. Then he sprang, leaping forwards and bounding down the tunnel like an animal.

  Amazingly, the man saw him coming. He pushed himself free from the wall and tried to stumble away. Valien caught him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him back. The needle gun fired once, twice in the dark, then withdrew.

  The man convulsed, shivering. His back arched and his hands clenched, then he went limp. He fell back into the position he’d been in before, his eyes staring and his open mouth slack.

  Valien squatted before him, and gave his prey a good look.

  The man wore Administratum robes, though they were so dirty and ripped it was hard to tell what his function had been. From the look of him, he had once been relatively handsome, with the smooth and hairless skin that only came with expensive rejuve treatments. He had thin lips, a high forehead and a hooked nose; perhaps aristocratic blood, or he’d just fancied looking like someone born to a high station.

  No longer. Even with the colour-distortion inherent in his augmetic vision, Valien could see that the man’s skin was almost pearl-white. Lesions ran from the corners of his mouth down to his throat. Pustules clustered at the edges of his eyes, and they glowed in the dark just like the spores that clung to the tunnel walls.

  The man’s eyes glared at him, held open by the paralysing agents coursing through his bloodstream. Valien was good at reading men’s expressions, a skill he’d honed carefully in his years in Talica, and he had no trouble working out what his victim was thinking.

  The man was deranged by fear. He was not just scared of Valien – he was terrified of everything. He had the look of someone who had been hunted for a good while, someone for whom the entire world had long been transformed into something utterly unrecognisable.

  Valien rolled his shoulders, relaxing muscles that had been held tense for a very long time.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  The man didn’t reply. He stared back, and a line of sweat trickled down from his temple.

  Valien adjusted his needle gun, and a fresh syringe slid out from the firing mechanism.

  ‘You have nothing to gain by not talking,’ he said. ‘Though you still have a few things to lose.’

  Valien reached forwards and pressed the needle into the man’s throat. The man winced, and tears of pain started from his eyeballs. His pupils were heavily dilated – unnaturally so, which perhaps explained why he’d been able to see Valien coming.

  Valien withdrew the syringe and rocked back on to his haunches.

  ‘You now have loquazine in your system,’ he said. ‘You will feel a compulsion to talk; do not fight it. I ask again, what is your name?’

  The man resisted for a moment longer. Then something seemed to crumble inside him. His eyes went dead.

  ‘Venmo Kilag,’ he said, speaking with some difficulty through stiff lips. ‘Master of Ledgers, class tertius, Capitolis.’

  ‘What are you doing here, Adept Kilag?’

  The man called Kilag shot out a despairing look. If his hands weren’t paralysed, he might have buried his face in them.

  ‘Escaping,’ he said.

  ‘You haven’t got very far,’ said Valien.

  ‘No.’

  Valien smiled.

  ‘Where were you trying to get to?’ he asked.

  ‘Anywhere,’ the man said. ‘Anywhere.’

  ‘Anywhere but the Capitolis?’

  ‘Of course the Capitolis.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  Kilag’s face creased up, despite the powerful dampening effect of the drugs.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked, still looking terrified.

  Valien lost his smile.

  ‘Just answer the questions,’ he said.

  Kilag’s eyes lost focus, as if he were drifting off into some kind of reverie. What little light remained in his fatigued eyes dimmed further.

  ‘We didn’t know,’ he said, hardly audibly. ‘We didn’t know. They looked like they always had done, right up until the end. Holy Throne, I–’

  Kilag shuddered miserably.

  ‘I have seen terrible, terrible things,’ he said.

  ‘We all have.’

  ‘Months ago,’ Kilag said. ‘For a while, none of us noticed. We knew the governor’s staff had changed. Someone new had arrived – what was his name? But it was all so, so… routine.’

  Valien flexed his fingers idly. He toyed with the idea of jabbing his fingers into the man’s eyes, just for the sensation.

  ‘You were lazy,’ Valien said. ‘Corruption was among you for months, spreading from world to world, and you chose not to see it. You turned your faces away.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kilag, and another tear ran down his smooth cheek. ‘We did, we did. Oh, Holy Emperor, we were all to blame!’

  ‘Tell me of the Capitolis.’

  Kilag’s hands began to shake.

  ‘The walls,’ he said, his voice weak. ‘They have put… things in the walls. We were all changing, subtly changing.’

  He looked down at his hands. Sores were visible across his palms.

  ‘Something is happening in the Apex, right at the top,’ he said. ‘Men who go up there do not come back. We hear screaming, all the time, even when the nox chimes have gone off and everything is locked down.’

  ‘And the Guard regiments?’ asked Valien. ‘All corrupted?’

  Kilag tried to laugh, but couldn’t generate enough movement in his throat to summon up more than a croak.

  ‘Everything is. There’s nothing left.’

  ‘Who is in charge?’

  ‘I don’t know! I don’t know. But there are angels up there, and they laugh at us.’

  ‘Angels?’

  Kilag’s face took on a strange, almost demented, look of rapture.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said, and the foam trembled on his lips. ‘Angels. Those ones, they have hell in their eyes – layers of hell, all piled on top of each other. We scream, we scream, and they laugh at us.’

  Valien drew a fresh needle from its sheath, tiring of the m
an’s babble. Kilag seemed to see what was coming, and a broken grin cracked across his face. A film of blood collected under his nostrils.

  ‘Are you going up there?’ Kilag asked, looking eager to know. ‘Up into the Capitolis?’

  Valien nodded.

  ‘I’m going ahead,’ he said. ‘The Emperor’s armies are hard on my heels. Soon this whole place will be purged.’

  Kilag’s nostrils flared, and the shaking in his hands grew worse.

  ‘You have not seen what I have seen,’ he said.

  ‘Not yet,’ agreed Valien, filtering the toxins into the needle.

  Kilag moved fast. He should have been incapable of it, but still he moved. He sprang up, pushing himself free of the walls and straight at Valien.

  Valien nearly let himself be caught. He scrambled out of the way at the last moment, ducking under Kilag’s flailing hands. He felt the adept’s fingers snap shut just above him, clutching at air.

  ‘I will save you!’ screamed Kilag, coming after him.

  Valien crunched back into the wall of the tunnel behind him, cricking his neck against the curve of it. The narrow space hampered him, and his weapon arm caught under a jutting length of metal.

  Kilag’s face swooped after him. The man’s jaws were open, and his rotten teeth glittered in the dark.

  Valien shrank back, too slow to prevent Kilag’s hands gripping him around the neck. The adept’s thumbs pressed into his throat, squeezing hard. Valien gagged, still unable to free his arm. The adept’s strength was astonishing – he should hardly have been able to move, let alone wrestle with a trained killer of Valien’s calibre.

  ‘I will save you!’ Kilag shrieked again, clambering on top of Valien and pushing him down into the filth. His eyes blazed with fervour, and he squeezed harder. Valien recoiled as the man’s foul breath wafted across his face. ‘You will not go!’

  Valien relaxed the muscles in his arm, and his wrist came free. He snapped it round, punching the tip of the needle gun into Kilag’s back.

  For a few seconds, nothing changed. Valien felt himself begin to lose consciousness, and stabbed again. A terrible fear surged up within him.

  So strong! How is it possible?

  Then the grip on his throat relaxed. Kilag looked suddenly uncertain, then nauseous. Yellow fluid ran from his nostrils.

  ‘Do not go!’ Kilag cried, and his hands released Valien.

  Kilag rolled over, withdrawing into a foetal position like a crushed beetle. He started shaking violently.

  Valien shoved his way free, breathing heavily, keeping his gun in position. A sharp pain broke out behind his eyes.

  Throne, that was too close. What has been done to him? How is he so fast?

  Kilag stared up at him. The man’s expression was imploring.

  ‘Do not go there,’ he said.

  Valien stared back. Kilag’s voice had become lucid again, despite all the junk coursing around his bloodstream. The adept’s face was drained of colour, and a dreadful expression of warning hung over his harrowed features.

  ‘You have not seen what I have seen,’ he said, and his voice trembled with fear. ‘Your soul is intact. For the love of the saints, of the Holy Primarchs, of all the blessed souls of sacred Terra, do not go in there.’

  Valien remained silent. Something in the man’s pleading chilled him.

  Then Kilag’s face changed again. The horrified expression of warning melted away. Blood replaced the fluid weeping down his mouth and chin, and his hands unclenched into open claws.

  His mouth, puffy and bleeding, split into a wide smile. His eyes glowed pink, as if lit from behind.

  ‘Your soul is mine, assassin,’ came a voice from Kilag’s lips that wasn’t his – a throaty rasp, mottled with loathing.

  Valien moved. He drew a knife from a sheath on his thigh and struck out, flicking the blade back and forth across Kilag’s neck.

  The man’s face was smiling even as his decapitated head hit the ground. Kilag’s eyes stayed glowing for a few moments, dwindling like embers in the shadows. Then they died out, and the tunnel sank into darkness.

  Valien stayed poised for much longer, waiting for his breathing to come under control. His blood coursed around his body, pumped by his thudding heart. He could feel a film of sweat on the palms of his hands.

  For the love of the saints, do not go in there.

  Still he didn’t move. It felt as if his limbs had been given a transfusion of adamantium. His pulse remained high, his fingers trembling.

  You have not seen what I have seen.

  Slowly, the fear ebbed. Valien looked up ahead, along the narrow tunnels where his objective lay.

  The Capitolis waited for him. He had to find a way up to the top, a path through all the many hundreds of levels, avoiding the mutants and the filth and the living metal. He would have to remain hidden. He would have to be more careful, less arrogant.

  Valien looked down at the pool of blood collecting under the headless body of Kilag. Another time he might have stooped to drink, but he knew what the poisons in Kilag’s system would do to him if he did.

  He stowed the needle gun, brushed his suit down and recalibrated his visor. He was thirsty, hot and tired. Then he left Kilag’s body behind and began to lope soundlessly along the tunnel, stooping as before. His black-suited outline melted quickly into the endless dark of the underworld, disappearing like memory.

  Soon, nothing remained but the cooling blood of the adept on the floor, the faint bubbling of his body expiring, and a pair of red-rimmed eyes, open in death and still locked in terror.

 

  Lopi’s head jerked up, snagging on the cables in his neck. The inflections in Killan’s binaric shunt were minor-negative.

  he replied, only half focused on the conversation. Vindicta, still engrossed in the fighting around it, maintained its barrage of long-range fire throughout, acting semi-autonomously.

  replied Killan.

  Lopi felt suddenly uneasy. He’d granted Rauth operational control of the Warhounds on the understanding the three Titans would work as fire support platforms for the main body of troops. He hadn’t expected them to be taken into the front line.

 

 

  The dull rumble and crack of unleashed weaponry from below barely registered. His mind began to race.

  he canted.

  replied Killan.

 

 

  Lopi looked out across the wasteland ahead, his view mediated by the Warlord’s visual relays. By then the immense bulk of Melamar Primus was a long way behind him. Vindicta and Castigatio had made steady progress out into the industrial filth between the outer ring of spires and the central summit of the Capitolis. The northern face of the three Axis spires loomed closest, flecked with slow-burning fires and dotted with artillery placements. The last of Axis’s protective tank divisions was near destruction, after which Lopi had planned to advance into the spire complex itself.

  he asked. A nagging sense that he should have been more careful wouldn’t go away. Magos Ys had warned him, after all.

  Killan worked hard at his console for a moment, and Lopi felt the subtle shifts of power coursing through Vindicta’s transmission systems.

  he canted after a while.

  Lopi began to feel angry – with himself, mostly. It was a dangerous emotion to entertain while at the helm of
a god-machine in the full throes of war-fury.

  He said nothing. Yemos and Jerolf remained active, keeping an eye on Vindicta’s weapon status as it created more carnage at ground level. Lopi remained dimly aware of the fruits of their actions through the feedback mechanisms in the Manifold – crushed vehicle carcasses, demolished wall sections, torched bunkers full of cremated, half-mutated defenders.

  It took a lot to make a princeps feel vulnerable.

  he canted at last, realising that his fists had clenched.

  As he canted, he felt the dull rumble of Vindicta’s machine-spirit. It didn’t want to stop killing. It never wanted to stop killing.

  Jerolf looked up from his station quizzically.

  ‘We can’t,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

  Lopi unclenched his fists slowly.

  he canted.

  He summoned up schematics of the battle theatre, and they whirled up at him through the overlapping skeins of the Manifold. He saw himself at the epicentre of a huge map of interconnected trajectories. The lines indicating Rauth’s progress were faint, and trailed off at the edge of auspex range. For all that, it was clear enough where he had to be – he’d gone into the tunnels, and he would be somewhere under the wasteland between the Melamar spires and the looming edifice of the Capitolis.

  he canted, still part-immersed in the swathe of sigils and rune-clusters. Vindicta continued to mutter away at the back of his consciousness, and he ignored it.

  Jerolf looked for a moment like he would protest, but bit his tongue. Killan and Yemos kept their heads down, already busy with the calculations needed to extract them from the active firefight.

  Lopi felt the enormous treads of the Titan start to shift on to the new trajectory, and his growing sense of unease abated a little. Deep down, though, he remained angry – angry, and worried.

 

  Vindicta’s mood was getting to him. His face creased darkly.