[Word Bearers 03] - Dark Creed Read online

  “This is outrageous,” snarled Belagosa. “If I have to wait one more minute for Ekodas to grace us with his presence, I’ll—”

  His words were cut off as the blast-doors behind the domineering rostrum above them slammed open, venting steam and oily, incense-laden smoke. A procession of Terminator-armoured veterans stamped through the open portal. They stepped deferentially aide, and Ekodas walked forwards to take his place at his podium.

  Ancient and heavily augmented, Ekodas’ face bore the ravages of thousands of years of war; his features were cratered and cracked. There was nothing flamboyant or extravagant about his appearance. A simple black robe hung over the plain, austere plates of his armour. His only adornment was a handful of charms looped around his neck. These fetishes of bone and blood-matted hair were strung upon lengths of sinew, and Marduk recognised the characteristic style of the shamanistic priests of Davin. He carried no weapon or staff of office. It was said he preferred not to dirty his hands, preferring to let his underlings fight his battles.

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” said Ekodas. “I am most interested to hear what you have to say.”

  Ekodas looked down at Belagosa, his black eyes burning with contained fury. His sizeable entourage, vastly outnumbering those of the other Apostles, continued to file in behind him. It was an unsubtle display of military strength.

  Belagosa’s jaw twitched.

  Ekodas’ attention shifted and, as the full force of the Grand Apostle’s gaze struck him, Marduk fought the urge to kneel. He was a Dark Apostle of Lorgar, he reminded himself angrily; he need bow to no one but the Urizen himself. He saw amusement written in Ekodas’ burning orbs and his anger flared, hot and potent.

  There is great strength to be found in anger, said Ekodas, jolting Marduk as the words stabbed painfully into his mind. Ekodas’ lips didn’t move, but Marduk heard the words as if they had spoken directly, and he knew instinctively that no one else had heard them.

  An Apostle’s mind was like a fortress. It had to be so that he would not be overwhelmed by the crushing power of the warp, nor his sanity ripped apart by any of the billions of deadly entities that dwelt beyond reality. With walls erected by centuries of mental training and conditioning, with ramparts constructed of unshakeable faith and utter belief, an Apostle’s mind was virtually unassailable, yet Ekodas had torn straight through those defences as if they were nothing.

  Yet always be certain that your anger is directed at the real enemy, young Apostle, continued Ekodas, his voice pounding. He continued to hold Marduk’s gaze, his eyes burning with the fires of fanaticism, even as Marduk struggled to look away and reassert control.

  Ekodas broke contact suddenly and painfully. Marduk clenched the pulpit railing as a wave of vertigo crashed over him. He felt physically drained, and a dull headache throbbed behind his eyes.

  “Is everything well, my lord Apostle?” said Ashkanez, leaning forwards to whisper in Marduk’s ear. Ignoring the First Acolyte, Marduk glared up at Ekodas. He was angry at being taken by surprise, that Ekodas had so easily breached his mental defences.

  Had Ekodas gleaned anything of import? Had he learnt of Marduk’s promise to Erebus, of the shocking suspicion that the First Chaplain had?

  It was doubtful, for even the most talented psykers were generally only able to read those thoughts uppermost in an individual’s mind with any consistency. Even then it was difficult to gain any coherency amidst the bewildering array of random images and emotions. Still, there was no way of truly knowing what Ekodas might have gleaned.

  He realised then that he had misjudged the Apostle. He had always seen Ekodas as an unsubtle priest, a sledgehammer that overcame his opponents, both in war and in politics, through confrontation. Now, Marduk was forced to readdress his preconceptions.

  “You have nothing to say then, Belagosa?” said Ekodas, his attention returned to the other Dark Apostle. Who knew what silent communication was being conducted between them. “There is nothing that you wish to say to my face, brother?”

  “No, my lord,” said Belagosa finally, lowering his gaze.

  Ekodas flashed a glance at Marduk full of staggering, domineering force.

  I am not your enemy, his voice boomed. A trickle of blood ran from Marduk’s nostrils.

  The conclave was short and to the point. Ekodas’ Coryphaus, Kol Harekh, ran through the final assault plans, his words spoken with the calm authority of one used to being obeyed.

  In the open space between the Apostles’ pulpits hung a three-dimensional hololithic projection of a binary solar system: the target of the crusade’s wrath. The image flickered with intermittent static, and flashes of warp interference occasionally overlapped the visual feed, showing screaming daemons and other horrific images.

  Ignoring these anomalies, Marduk stared intently at the hololithic projection. As the details of the attack were laid out, he watched the tiny planets and moons of the binary system slowly orbiting each other, revolving lazily around the two suns at its heart. One was a massive red giant in its last few billion years of life and the other, its killer, a small parasite that burned with white-hot intensity.

  Twenty-nine planets circled the two suns, as well as a handful of large moons. Streams of data scrolled down the screen of Marduk’s lectern, relaying geography, population, defences and industry for each of the planets as he tapped its surface. Eighteen of the planets were inhabited. Three of those were naturally conducive to carbon-based life forms, while others had been terraformed to create atmospheres suitable for human habitation. The populations of the other inhabited moons and planets existed within domes large enough to have their own weather systems, within hermetically sealed stations pumped with recycled air or labyrinthine subterranean complexes.

  An asteroid belt a thousand kilometres thick formed a ring within the solar system, dividing it into the inner core worlds and those beyond. The inner core worlds constituted the bulk of the inhabited planets, with only a few isolated mining and industrial facilities located on those celestial bodies in the cold outer reaches.

  “The Boros Gate,” said Ekodas, “staging ground of the End Times, according to the Rubric Apocalyptica. For ten thousand years Chaos has tried to take this system. For ten thousand years we have been denied. Until now.”

  Throbbing red icons overlaid the hololithic system map, marking warp-routes to and from the system.

  Streams of information bled across the data-slate of Marduk’s lectern, and across the lesser terminals accessed by Kol Badar behind him. Desiccated servitors hardwired into the control feeds coralled this constant flood of data with serpentine tentacle fingers.

  The information regarding the system and its defences was as accurate as could be obtained by the small, shielded drones that had been dropped out of warp-orbit into the outer reaches of the enemy system. Almost invisible to conventional scans and relay sweeps, they were currently hugging the system’s thick asteroid belt and sending back steady streams of valuable information. It was a delicate process: too much data-flow and the enemy would register the feed and be ready for them; too little and they would be blindly entering one of the Imperium’s best defended regions of space—only the Cadian Gate was more fiercely guarded.

  The system was not particularly rich in mining deposits, nor was it an agri-hub that fed other systems. No sacred shrineworlds existed within it that needed defending, nor did it house any forges vital to the Imperium’s ongoing existence. It was heavily populated and very rich, certainly, but that in itself was not enough to warrant such protection, nor the ferocity with which the XVII Legion desired it.

  The key to the importance of the system was its wormholes. They were the sole reason it was so hotly defended and so jealously regarded by the Legions that had been loyal to the Warmaster.

  Even for the Legions dedicated to Chaos, the warp-routes through the immaterium were often convoluted and difficult to navigate. Thousands of overlapping routes existed through the warp, twisting and turning in consta
nt flux. There were fast moving streams that wound their way through the immaterium, allowing remarkably swift passage from one area of realspace to another, but also stagnant areas of null-time where a fleet could become becalmed for years or decades at a time. Skilful Navigators were able to predict and read the warp like a living map. The best of them were able to remain fluid, adapting to the changeable flow of the immaterium and making the most of its fluctuating ways. Often, a fleet would be forced to slip sidewards across several streams, being buffeted to and fro, pulled months off-course by the malign forces that dwelt there before slipping into the warp-route that would take them to their destination.

  However, there were some rare warp-routes that remained stable and unchanging through all the passing centuries and millennia. Highly prized, and violently defended at their egress points, the most favoured of these stable wormholes allowed entire fleets to be shifted from warzone to warzone almost instantaneously, utilising the routes like mass transit highways that bridged the gaps between distant sub-sectors. The Imperial system that the crusade was soon to descend upon was the hub of one such cluster of wormholes.

  In essence, the system was a transportation hub, a waypoint that allowed impossibly swift transference between almost two-dozen other, vastly distant locations. Anyone who controlled it would be capable of practically instantaneous travel to positions millions of light years away.

  One such location was only a relatively short jump from Terra, the birthplace of mankind and the centre of the Imperium itself. The very thought of what it meant should they take the system made Marduk salivate.

  Several Word Bearers crusades had tried to gain control of the region, but none had ever returned. In all, seventeen Hosts of the XVII Legion had been thrown against this system over the past centuries, and all had been wiped out. The Black Legion had lost double that number trying to find a way around the heavily guarded Cadian Gate. Other Legions too had suffered when attempting to strike at the region, most notably the Death Guard of Mortarion and the Iron Warriors of Perturabo.

  A substantial fleet was docked at a devastatingly powerful space bastion orbiting the system’s capital planet. That bastion alone had enough firepower to destroy half the Word Bearers crusade, but it was neither the fleet nor the bastion that was the system’s most formidable defence. Nor were the standing armies that protected each of the inner core worlds, nor their fortress-like cities, warded by potent defence lasers, cannons and orbital battery arrays. Nor even were its Astartes protectors and stewards, the genetic descendants of those that Marduk and his kin had once called brother.

  The true strength of its nigh-on impenetrable defences lay in the wormholes themselves.

  Allowing practically instant transportation between a score of other systems, they also allowed the full might of the Imperium to marshal at a moment’s notice. As soon as the system registered that an enemy fleet was attempting to breach from the warp, an alarm call would be sent out. Hours after an enemy fleet made realisation into the binary system’s outer reaches, an Imperial armada of truly titanic size would emerge from the wormholes to combat the threat.

  To go against this region was not merely to go against one system’s defences and its Astartes guardians, but rather to go against the fleet of an entire subsector. It was to go against the entire force of the Astartes Praeses—an order of Space Marine Chapters that permanently patrolled the flanks of the Eye of Terror, ever vigilant for incursions from within. Utilising the wormholes of this region, the Adeptus Praeses were a thorn in the side of the Chaos Legions, able to quickly manoeuvre their companies to wherever they were needed.

  However, with the Nexus Arrangement, the xenos device that Marduk had secured in his possession, that greatest strength would be completely undone.

  “The Boros Gate is a staging ground,” Ekodas confirmed. “As the gods will it, it will be the staging ground; the site where the fall of the Imperium begins.”

  Marduk felt a shiver of anticipation.

  “We, my brothers are the vanguard of the End Times, its heralds and harbingers. In consultation with the Warmaster Abaddon, the Council of Sicarus has appointed us to take the Boros Gate. Five cardinals of Colchis born, united in Brotherhood—such is the prophecy.”

  None of the Dark Apostles spoke. All attention was locked onto Ekodas, all petty grievances and feuding temporarily forgotten.

  “Others have believed that they were the chosen ones, that it was their destiny to fulfil the prophecy, blinded by greed and ambition. But where they failed, we shall succeed. For we have with us what the Apocalyptica foretold: the ‘wondrys orb of ancynt death’.”

  “The Nexus,” breathed Marduk.

  With a gesture, Ekodas turned the revolving hololith of the Boros Gate system into images of war. Word Bearers marched through crumbling shells of bombed buildings, bolters barking soundlessly in their hands. “And we know that the device works. The lifeless husk of Palantyr V is testament to that.”

  “Palantyr V was a poorly defended backwater, my lord,” said Belagosa, his tone noticeably more deferential. “The scale of what we attempt at the Boros Gate bears no comparison.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Ekodas. “Once the device was activated, Palantyr V was doomed. The device shut the region down completely. The effect will be the same at Boros.”

  Marduk nodded.

  “And if it fails?” asked Belagosa.

  “We’ll be dead,” answered Sarabdal.

  “It will work,” said Marduk. “It is prophesied.”

  “‘With fury of hellfire, truth, and orb of ancient death, the gate shall be claimed’,” quoted Ekodas.

  “We are committed to this now,” he continued. “The Warmaster Abaddon watches our progress closely. Already his envoys are gathering support, scouring the Eye and the Maelstrom for all who will fight under his banner. Rivalries and blood feuds are being put aside, for all can feel that the End Times draw near. Our triumph at the Boros Gate will herald the last Black Crusade. Because of us, the heavens shall burn and the Imperium of man will be dust.”

  A heavy silence descended. Ekodas glared, as if daring any of his Dark Apostles to oppose him. After a moment, he nodded to his Coryphaus, Kol Harekh.

  “We take these planets in turn,” Kol Harekh said, indicating the outlying planets of the system. “Once they have fallen—it should not take longer than a month—then we converge here.”

  He stabbed a finger towards one planet, five from the centre of the system.

  “Boros Prime,” he said, “is the lynchpin. It is the heart of the system. Take that, and we take the Boros Gate.”

  Marduk peered at the sandy-coloured planet, rotating on its endless loop around the system’s two suns. It appeared such a little thing. He need only reach out to grasp it. What looked like a silver moon orbited around the planet.

  “The Kronos star fort?” he asked.

  “A relic of the Dark Age of Technology,” said Kol Harekh with a nod. “Its size and firepower is prodigious. It serves as the docking station for the system’s battleships. It must be neutralised before planetfall can be achieved. We’ll use Kol Badar’s strategem for tackling it.”

  “Prepare the way for Abaddon’s Black Crusade,” said Ekodas, resuming his authority. “Glorify the Legion and bring about the end of mankind. Warp transference commences within the hour. Ready your Hosts. That is all.”

  Dark Apostle Sarabdal strode alongside Marduk as they marched back towards their shuttles. He spoke in a low voice so that only Marduk could hear.

  “We must talk, but not here,” he said. “Ekodas’ influence even spreads into my Host. Doubtless it also grows within your own.”

  “Impossible.”

  “It is not,” said Sarabdal. “Be wary. Things are moving beneath the surface.”

  “Ekodas—” began Marduk.

  “Ekodas is carving out an empire within the Legion,” said Sarabdal, interrupting him. “He seeks to bend us to his cause.”

 
; “‘His cause?’ I don’t see—” said Marduk.

  “Not here,” hissed Sarabdal. “I fear this is bigger than any of us could have imagined, perhaps bigger than Ekodas himself. I am close to uncovering its secret, but—” said Sarabdal. He fell silent as Ekodas’ veterans, providing an escort for the Apostles, closed in around them.

  “Be wary. Be vigilant,” he said after a minute, before boarding his shuttle. “We cannot act until we know. As soon as we make transference, we shall talk. Then you too shall understand what is at stake.”

  “Lorgar’s blessing upon you, brother,” said Marduk.

  “And upon you, my friend,” said Sarabdal. “We must speak, soon, you and I.”

  “It shall be so.”

  Turning away, Marduk strode up the embarkation ramp of his Stormbird.

  Back aboard his own battleship, the Anarchus, Ankh-Heloth knelt within his prayer cell. The doors were shut and sealed, and he had activated the null-sphere that would ensure that nothing that was spoken within could be heard from outside. He was alone in the room, and his eyes were tightly closed. A droplet of blood dripped from his nose onto the floor. His voice echoed off the bare cell walls.

  “I believe that Belagosa will turn, given the right leverage, my lord,” said Ankh-Heloth.

  I agree, pulsed Ekodas, his voice spearing through Ankh-Heloth’s mind, making the Apostle wince.