Fallen Angels

TWELVE Awful Truths

Horror and revulsion threatened to overwhelm Zahariel. He cried out in rage at the vision of evil before him - and then his senses shifted yet again.

Pale light bathed the corridor, swelling from the bodies of his brother Astartes and the twisted monstrosities that they fought. Between one eye-blink and the next, the world had slowed near to a standstill, transforming the desperate battle into a kind of grim tableaux. Zahariel could see through the bodies of friend and foe alike; he saw hearts beating and veins coursing sluggishly with hot blood. He could see the black ichor suffusing the bodies of the terrible worms, and the foul corruption that spread within them. One of the monsters had seized brother Attias, wrapping around his torso and clamping its mandibles about his steel-encased skull. Within the creature's mouth was a long, needle-pointed spike of bone, sheathed in a powerful bundle of muscle that propelled it forward with the force of a bullet aimed at the back of Attias's head. A hollow channel within the bony needle pulsed with foul venom.

Zahariel's horror was transformed into pure, righteous rage. He summoned the fury of the warp and swept his staff in a wide arc, hurling tendrils of searing white fire towards every creature he could see. Like thunderbolts, they sank through the monsters' flesh and boiled the liquid within. The Librarian felt his veins freeze and his hearts clench in agony, and the world snapped back into motion once more.

A dozen of the creatures exploded, showering the squad with shattered chitin and a mist of stinking ichor. Zahariel reeled backwards, stunned by the intensity of his vision. Terrorsight, Israfael called it. He'd only experienced it once before, when he'd fought the Calibanite Lion. For that one instant, he had extended his consciousness partly into the warp. The coils of his psychic hood were so cold they seared his skin. He shuddered to think what might have happened had he exposed himself to the tainted energies inside the passageway without the hood's protection.

The darkness within the corridor was lit with muzzle flashes as the squad rallied against the armoured worms' sudden assault. Chapter Master Astelan was still on his feet, blasting two of the monsters to pieces with well-aimed shots from his pistol and slicing another in half with a swipe of his chainsword. Brother Gideon leapt to his feet, shrugging off the body of the worm he'd killed and chopping apart another that had latched onto a fellow warrior's back. Attias charged forward to help free another fallen comrade, his fearsome skull-face lit by the hellish flames of pistol fire.

With a fierce cry, Zahariel hurled himself into the fight. He focused his rage on the force staff in his hands, wreathing it in a crackling aura of psychic power. Every worm he struck was incinerated in a flash of blue fire and a sizzling clap of thunder that hurled their shattered husks into the air. He destroyed a half-dozen of the worms in as many seconds, and then as suddenly as it had begun, the battle was over. The Astartes stood in a rough circle, facing outwards, their armour scarred and dented and their pistols smoking. The blue haze of bolt propellant hung in the thick air around them, and the smashed bodies of more than a score of worms lay about their feet. Several of the Astartes bore minor wounds, but none of them had fallen prey to the worms' fearsome stingers.

'What are these creatures?' Zahariel asked, probing one of the corpses with the butt of his staff.

'Reaver worms,' Astelan said, nudging one of the dead creatures with his boot. 'We used to hunt them when I was a child, but where I come from they never grow much longer than half a metre.'

Zahariel had heard of reaver worms, like most Calibanite children, but had never seen one. They were a menace to human settlements all over Caliban, transforming small animals and livestock into living incubators for their eggs. The worms would wrap themselves around their victim's neck, driving their stinger into the prey's spine and injecting it with a tremendous amount of neurotoxin. The venom destroyed higher brain functions, leaving the autonomic functions intact and making the victim's nervous system hyper-conductive. Still attached to the victim, the worm then secreted enzymes into the prey's spinal chord that gave it rudimentary control of its motor functions. The worm would then literally drive the prey back to its communal nest, where the still-living victim would be injected with eggs by the nest's queen. Occasionally the worms would find their way into fresh human graves and try to make off with the corpse, much to the horror of the deceased's relatives. His skin crawled at the thought of the worm that had clamped onto his helmet, and the dagger-like stinger that had tried to punch its way into the back of his skull.

'I think we know what happened to the Jaegers,' he said grimly. 'And probably most of the labourers besides.'

'Most of them?' Astelan said.

'A worm didn't send the radio transmission to Aldurukh,' Zahariel said.

'Emperor protect us,' the chapter master hissed in disgust.

'It's been done before,' Attias said. 'The Knights of Lupus turned their beasts on us, remember?'

'But the Knights of Lupus are no more,' Astelan said sharply. 'And the great beasts driven to extinction. So where did these vile things come from?'

'That's not important right now,' Zahariel said, eager to change the subject. 'If the worms carried off the bodies of the Jaegers, it means they've got a nest and an egg-laying queen down here.'

Astelan nodded in agreement. 'The queens are much larger than the drones,' he warned.

'Then she must be up ahead, near the thermal core,' Zahariel declared. He checked the load in his bolt pistol, then holstered it and pulled a frag grenade from his belt. 'Grenades first, then we charge. I'll take the lead. Any questions?'

There were none, of course. The warriors of the squad had their orders. The Astartes returned to their formation and readied their weapons without hesitation. Zahariel took Astelan's place at the head of the group and set off down the corridor at a swift pace. As he did, he summoned his power once more and sent it questing down the passageway ahead. He sensed more worms waiting in ambush at the far end of the corridor and lashed the monsters with a wave of psychic energy. A hideous screeching filled the air, and powerful, armoured bodies burst from the concealing roots, thrashing in their death agonies. Zahariel struck them again, channelling every ounce of his rage into the blast, and the worms became shrieking pyres of purple and indigo flame.

Zahariel primed the grenade in his hand. 'For the Emperor!' he cried, and hurled it down the corridor. Nine more grenades followed an instant later, flashing past his head in flat, precise arcs to detonate just beyond the entrance to the core chamber. More shrieking rent the air as shrapnel scythed through the creatures hiding around the entranceway. Zahariel answered them with a furious shout of his own and broke into a run, his force staff blazing like a firebrand.

A swarm of reaver worms awaited their charge, ready to defend their nest. The Librarian hurled a torrent of psychic flame into their midst, immolating a score of the creatures and stunning the rest. He and his brothers crashed a moment later, and the battle was joined in earnest.

Zahariel swept his force staff in a crackling arc and killed two worms lunging at him from the right. Another monster struck from the left, fixing its mandibles about his ceramite pauldron; in one swift motion he drew his bolt pistol and decapitated the creature with a single, well-aimed shot. Around him, chainswords howled and bolt pistols hammered as the Angels of Death slaughtered their foes.

The chamber was a huge, man-made cavern that, rose to a curved, dome-like ceiling thirty metres above their heads. The huge cylinder of the thermal core itself dominated the centre of the chamber, rising from a bore that had been drilled more than five hundred metres into the bedrock of the planet and disappearing through an opening at the apex of the dome, where it carried geothermal heat to power exchange units that supplied the rest of the plant.

The air inside the cavernous space was gelid with heat and the stench of rot. The air around the thermal core shimmered like a mirage, and a powerful sense of dislocation threatened to overwhelm Zahariel. The cables of his psychic hood burned into his skull, and a spike of dull agony bore into his brain despite the effects of the dampener. The barrier between the warp and the physical world had been weakened here, and the sense of madness and corruption was almost palpable, like a layer of oil coating his skin. Sorceries had been worked here, his training told him, and the heart of it lay only a few dozen metres away.

At the centre of the chamber, right at the feet of the columnar thermal core, lay a massive pile of corpses. The top layer, Zahariel could see, wore bloodstained uniforms of forest green - the Jaeger relief force that had been drawn to the site. But there were hundreds more, the Librarian estimated - likely the entire labour force of the plant as well.

Hissing and screeching, the defenders of the reaver worm nest assaulted the Dark Angels from all sides. Zahariel blew one out of the air with a pair of shots from his bolt pistol and blasted two more into burning husks with a sweep of his staff. The Astartes kept their octagonal formation, facing outwards and slashing away with their chainswords at any monster that came within reach. The training of the Legion - and the rites of the Order before it - served the warriors of Caliban in good stead, and the bodies of their foes began to pile about their feet. But every time they slew one of the monsters, Zahariel felt the invisible energies swirling in the room grow more turbulent. Whatever dark designs had been set into motion here, their actions only served to energise it further.

'Press forward, brothers!' Zahariel cried, and the squad responded instantly, shifting their formation towards the thermal core one measured step at a time. The surviving worms redoubled their attack, leaping for perceived openings in the warriors' formation, but each attempt was met with a scything blade or the muzzle flash of a bolt pistol. The Dark Angels advanced relentlessly across the chamber, leaving a trail of broken, bleeding monsters in their wake. With each step, however, the air seemed to grow more and more charged. Strange coruscations crackled along the length of the core, and unearthly groans reverberated around the Astartes. As they drew nearer to the pile of corpses, Zahariel could see that they had been laid inside a vast spiral. The curving line was formed of a procession of carefully-shaped runes, each one carved into the floor by a plasma torch and filled with congealed blood. The symbols smote his eyes and sent jagged needles into his brain when he tried to focus on them, and the effect grew worse the farther along the spiral he stared.

The surviving worms had abandoned their frenzied attack, and were retreating away from the Astartes in a ragged circle, their swift, sinuous forms slithering across the damp ground as they lurked beyond chainsword range. The members of Zahariel's squad continued their bloody work, picking off the monsters with careful shots from their bolt pistols. The death energies added to the growing maelstrom, stoking the invisible fires further. Zahariel gritted his teeth at the mounting pain in the back of his skull and drove his squad forward a stubborn step at a time. They were ten metres from the corpse pile now; he could see that each body had been daubed with runes of its own and coated in a translucent slime that shimmered faintly in the strange energies flickering overhead. As the ball lightning flashed, Zahariel glimpsed a sigil of some kind that had been painted against the side of the thermal core, about a dozen metres above the mound of bodies. But before he could focus on what it was, the worms suddenly turned about and rushed at his squad.

A terrible sense of foreboding gripped Zahariel. Before he could shout a warning, however, nine bolt pistols hammered, and every remaining worm was blown apart in a single, simultaneous volley. Their death energies smote the ether like a hammer blow, and the pent-up forces in the chamber erupted.

Zahariel felt the sense of dislocation sharpen dramatically as the barrier between the realms began to unravel. He staggered as his psychic dampener threatened to overload, sending shooting spikes of agony into his brain.

Before him, the pile of corpses began to stir.

For a fleeting instant, Zahariel thought his overtaxed nerves were misfiring, playing tricks on him. But then one of the dead Jaegers drew back his arms and pushed himself clumsily upright, revealing the ghastly wounds that covered his torso and neck. The dead soldier's face was slack, his mouth agape and his eyes glowing an unearthly green.

Another corpse stirred, and another, until the entire mound was lurching into motion. Beneath the Jaegers were the bloated, rotting corpses of men and women in grey worker's coveralls, their slime-covered faces contorted in expressions of agony or horror. They were covered in patches of mould and colonies of squirming maggots; many were missing patches of skin or bore stumps of splintered bone in place of limbs. Yet what these horrors had concealed beneath their rotting bulk was more terrible by far.

As the hundreds of corpses began to shamble, stagger and crawl towards the stunned Astartes, they exposed a score of bloated, squirming larvae that once had been people. Their bones had softened and their muscles stretched until their shapes bore little resemblance to human beings; only their feebly contorting limbs and their distorted, agonised faces revealed what they once had been. Zahariel could clearly see the coiled, black shapes of reaver worms curled within the jelly-like torsos of the larvae, slowly feeding on the still-living bodies of their hosts as they grew to maturity.

The larvae recoiled from the open air, vainly trying to squirm beneath the armoured coils of the enormous worm that had lain at the centre of the chamber's sorcerous spiral. Daubed with blasphemous runes and glistening with slime, the worm queen raised her massive skull and screeched its fury at the grubs that had invaded its domain.

It was a sight that would have broken the courage of lesser men, but hard discipline and the bonds of brotherhood held the Astartes in place. Chapter Master Astelan took a couple of steps forward and stood by Zahariel's side. 'What are your orders?' he asked in a steely voice, as the horde of living dead approached.

Zahariel called upon the rotes Israfael had taught him and mastered the pounding agony in his skull before it could overwhelm him.

'Form a firing line!' he ordered.

The closest of the corpses was only five metres away. As the eight remaining Astartes rushed forward to stand shoulder-to-shoulder beside Zahariel and Astelan, the Librarian called out. 'Change magazines!'

As one, nine pairs of hands went to work, releasing nearly-empty clips from their bolt pistols and slapping fresh ones home. Charging handles racked home with a well-oiled clatter.

The shambling mob was two metres away, almost close enough to touch. 'Squad!' Zahariel yelled. 'One step back! Five rounds rapid. Fire!'

In lockstep, ten pairs of boots crashed upon the permacrete. Bolt pistols barked in a rolling volley. Green clad bodies jerked and blew apart in the storm of mass-reactive rounds. The first rank of corpses disintegrated under the fusillade.

'One step back. Five rounds rapid. Fire!'

The bolt pistols thundered again. Each round found its mark, and fifty more bodies were reduced to bloody fragments. The rest of the mob staggered on, their outstretched hands little more than a metre away.

At Zahariel's command, the squad took one last step back and fired five more rounds into the press. Firing bolts locked back on empty magazines as fifty more bodies erupted into gory mist. The mob had been cut in half in the span of twenty seconds, but the remainder pressed their advance.

Wreathed in propellant smoke, Zahariel raised his crackling staff. 'Loyalty and honour!' he roared. 'Charge!'

With a furious shout, the Dark Angels leapt into the midst of the monstrosities, their chain-blades howling. Swung with superhuman strength, the swords split torsos and severed limbs with each blurring stroke. Corpses toppled at the touch of Zahariel's force staff, their rotting flesh sizzling under the lash of the Librarian's psychic power.

The undead surrounded the grimly fighting Astartes, clawing and grabbing at their armoured forms. What they lacked in strength and skill they sought to make up for in numbers, but the Dark Angels were masters at the craft of slaughter, and their ranks melted away like ice on a hot iron. Within moments the tide turned inexorably in the Astartes' favour - and then the worm queen struck.

A timely flash of lightning provided the only warning. The fickle light sizzled about the thermal core, and Zahariel saw the bulk of the great worm rearing up, like a snake about to strike. The Librarian hurled himself to the side just as the creature lunged into the squad's midst with the force of a runaway train.

With a shout, Zahariel spun to face the beast as the queen gathered herself together like a coiling spring and lashed out again, this time catching Gideon and two of the corpses in its wide mandibles. The curved pincers snapped shut like a giant scissors. The two corpses were bisected at once; Gideon's armour resisted a half-second longer before giving way as well.

Astelan and Jonas whirled on their heels and slashed furiously at the queen, but their chainswords left little more than shallow scars on the worm's thick armoured plates. Screeching in rage, the queen tossed her bony head and smashed Jonas aside, then lunged at Astelan with her bloody mandibles. The chapter master leapt aside at the last moment, hacking a divot out of one of the huge pincers before rolling nimbly away. The worm crushed another half-dozen corpses beneath its bulk as it drew its coils together for another leap. Three Astartes charged the monster from different directions, hacking at it with powerful blows that left only scratches on the worm's thick, black armour. One of the Dark Angels lingered within reach a moment too long and was struck from behind by the queen's lashing tail. The huge warrior was flipped head-over-heels by the powerful blow and landed heavily on his face. A bolt pistol barked; Gideon, lying in a pool of his own blood, had reloaded his weapon and was snapping careful shots at the worm's eyes. Two burst apart in a shower of ichor, causing the queen to thrash and shriek in pain, but the wounds didn't seem to slow the creature in the slightest.

Zahariel dropped his empty pistol and took a two-handed grip on his force staff. He had to end the fight quickly, before the monster killed or crippled any more of his squad. The Librarian channelled his will into the psycho-reactive matrices embedded in the force weapon's staff. Crackling arcs of violet light wound around the metal haft and created a blazing halo about the double-headed eagle at the staffs head. Raising the weapon above his head, Zahariel shouted a wild oath and charged straight at the creature.

The movement and the flickering light of the staff had the desired effect. The worm queen swung its bleeding head around and lunged at Zahariel, smashing into the Librarian in mid-charge.

The impact was tremendous, overwhelming Zahariel's senses. One moment he was racing towards the creature and the next he was flat on his back with the worm's mandibles locked about his waist. A score of flashing crimson runes blinked at the corners of his vision, warning of extensive servomotor damage and armour breaches. His vision came and went in bursts of distortion as the creature's scissor-like pincers cut into the feeds running from the power unit on his back. He heard the groan and pop of ceramite plates giving way beneath the terrible force of the worm's mandibles. He saw his battered armour reflected in the myriad facets of four black, soulless eyes, each as large as a dinner plate and close enough to touch.

Zahariel brought down the butt of his crackling staff on the queen's skull, right between its monstrous eyes.

The force staff punched through the thick bone with a flash of blue-white light and an angry clap of thunder as the Librarian channelled every erg of psychic force he could command into the creature's body. Nerves fried and brain matter boiled; the worm's remaining eyes burst and its armour plates cracked as steam erupted from its core. Zahariel snuffed out the monster's life force in a split second with the raging winds of the warp itself. It let out a rending shriek and tossed its head in a death spasm, smashing Zahariel to the ground hard enough to knock him unconscious.

When he came to, he found himself lying on his back a few metres away from the worm's smoking corpse. Astelan was kneeling beside him, twisting his legs back into their proper position. Dimly, he could feel the tingle of pain blockers blurring the edges of his mind.

'Hold still for a few moments more, until the bones knit,' the chapter master said as he orientated Zahariel's right calf and began inspecting the servo-motors around the knee-cap. 'Most of your actuators are shot, but you should still be able to move about.'

Zahariel nodded, focusing his thoughts on accelerating his healing faculties and taking stock of his armour. 'The queen?' he grunted.

'Dead,' Astelan confirmed. 'And the corpses went inert at the same moment. That was well done, brother. Luther would be proud.'

'What of Brother Gideon?' Zahariel asked.

'Comatose. His armour is keeping his vital signs stable enough that we should be able to get him back to Aldurukh.'

Satisfied, the Librarian lay his head back against the floor and spent the next few seconds testing the strength of his muscles and bones. Armour plates grated and crimson runes flashed insistently in the corners of his eyes as he carefully flexed first the left leg, then the right. He would be weak for a few minutes more as his body worked to repair the damage, but he was functional. Astelan offered his hand and he took it gladly as he rose carefully to his feet.

The worm queen's corpse was wreathed in tendrils of black smoke. Zahariel walked slowly over to the body of the monster and pulled his staff from the creature's forehead. The corpses it had controlled were sprawled about like puppets whose strings had been severed.

Feeble motion across the chamber caught Zahariel's eye. The queen's larval hosts were squirming and writhing away from the carnage, drawn by some primal instinct towards the illusory safety of the thermal core. Zahariel limped slowly after them, drawing once more on the psychic power of the warp. The energy came reluctantly, flowing through the dampener and coursing along the staff. It was nothing like the wild torrent of power he'd felt before, and he was relieved to note that the sense of dislocation was receding. The oily feeling of corruption still lingered, however, staining the very stone of the chamber and pooling in the blood-soaked runes carved into the floor.

Zahariel slew the larvae one by one, using the power of the staff to slay the host and snuff out the life of the monster within. The last of the abominations had reached the very base of the thermal core, its distorted face and thin arms stretching upwards as though pleading for aid from some nameless, atavistic power.

The Librarian glanced upwards at the core as the last of the larvae burned. He was close enough now to see the symbol that had been painted on the side of the thermal unit. The image was comprised of hundreds of tiny runes that stung his eyes when he tried to focus on them, but the picture they formed was easy enough to identify: an enormous serpent eating its own tail. An ouroboros, Zahariel thought.

Suddenly a voice crackled over his vox-unit, stirring him from his reverie. 'Angelus Six, this is Raider two-one. Angelus Six, come in.'

'This is Angelus Six,' Zahariel replied.

'It's good to hear your voice, brother,' the driver of the Land Raider said. 'We're picking up signals from beyond the perimeter again. Seraphim is calling urgently for a status update.'

Zahariel took one last look at the symbol on the thermal core, then turned back to his squad. What he had to say to Luther couldn't be shared over the vox net. 'Inform Seraphim that we've secured Objective Alpha and we're returning to base. I'll deliver my report to him personally. We'll be back on the surface in ten minutes.'

'Raider two-one copies, Angelus. Standing by.' Astelan stood at what had been the centre of the sorcerous spiral, well apart from the rest of his brothers. He had removed his helmet and was studying the runes cut into the stone. The chapter master looked up at Zahariel as the Librarian approached. His expression was haunted.

'What are we going to do about this?' he asked quietly.

Zahariel knew what Astelan meant. He reached up and pulled off his own helmet, grimacing at the strange mix of ozone and decay that permeated the air. 'I'll see to it,' he said. 'Gather the squad. We've got to get back and report to Luther at once.'

The chapter master nodded and turned away. Zahariel followed, keying his vox-unit.

'Broadsword Flight, this is Angelus Six.'

This time the reply came in loud and clear; the unnatural interference had subsided completely. 'Broadsword Flight copies,' said the leader of the Stormbird flight.

'Objective Alpha is compromised; repeat, Objective Alpha is compromised,' Zahariel replied. 'We are withdrawing in fifteen minutes. Execute Plan Damocles at that time.'

The Stormbird Leader answered without hesitation. 'Affirmative, Angelus Six. Plan Damocles in one-five minutes.'

Zahariel quickened his pace, passing Astelan and the rest of his squad. The Astartes fell in behind him, carrying both halves of Brother Gideon's limp form between them.

They had little time to spare. In fifteen minutes the Stormbirds from Broadsword Flight would level Sigma Five-One-Seven, destroying any evidence of what had transpired at the site.

The Dark Angels alone would know the truth. Otherwise, Caliban would surely die.