They reached the peak. Beyond them, a thousand kilometres away, the next ridge of mountains was on fire, a ring of active volcanos. Darkness seemed to have gathered above the next rift valley like a threat. Jagged and almost magical explosions rippled across the valley floor as spontaneous and random gravitational anomalies, like the one that had downed the Stormbirds, chewed up the ground and blew sub-crust magma into the air. Impact patterns of disruption on a seismic level travelled through the ground away from the explosions. At this sight, Daylight’s mind turned to other images stored in the books and paintings of the Imperial Palace: visions of the apocalypse, of the circles of the Inferno described by Dantey, of the imagined hell once thought to exist beneath the Earth.
The rift valley was a vast plain of smouldering rubble that shifted and flexed, exploded and shivered. Mountains had both been raised and had fallen, overnight. Valleys had uplifted into hills, fracturing the surface, and summits had plunged like avalanches into the bowels of the ground. Flames leapt up from the mangled earth in burning geysers, like signs or portents. Flammable noxious gases released from deep in the planet were burning with strange colours: purple, blue, green, yellow, as varied as the magnetic auroras that had wreathed their wings on their descent.
In places, the flames were black, and a mile high.
‘Has the Archenemy touched this place?’ asked Bastion Ledge cautiously. ‘Is that warpcraft?’
‘No,’ said Daylight. ‘This is just a planet dying. Strange phenomena manifest when a planet dies.’
Four or five kilometres from them, beyond the initial spill of rubble and rocks, there was a broad lake, silty and muddy, its surface stirred and chopped by wind and vibration. Daylight selected data from his helm memory and began to patch and re-patch quick overlays.
‘That’s the river,’ he said.
‘The river?’ asked Bastion Ledge.
‘The blisternest was sited beside a large river. The geography has been traumatically altered, but that is the river, I’m sure of it. There are just enough comparatives to make the connection. The river has broken its banks and overspilled, and then been dammed into the lake formation by the collapsing outcrops here and here. The blisternest will be partly submerged and, I think, partly covered by geological debris, but it should be in this position.’
He marked the proposed site on his optics and then copy-bursted the overlay to the visor displays of his two wall-brothers.
‘An objective, then?’ asked Bastion Ledge.
‘The blisternest was the last reported location of our shield-corps ground forces,’ said Daylight.
‘Ardamantua was the last reported location,’ growled Zarathustra. ‘I don’t think we can say anything more specific than that.’
‘We’ll head for it anyway,’ said Daylight. ‘It’s a place to start.’
He clambered back across the ragged top of the peak to vox-link to Tranquility and inform the secondary group what the new intention was.
Below, he saw the flash of lasweapons discharging. In the sunlit grassland, under an alien storm of ash, Tranquility and Nyman’s Asmodai Guardsmen were under attack.
Eighteen
It was a Chrome. Major Nyman knew this because he’d thoroughly reviewed the briefing packet that had been circulated among the officers of the reinforcement taskforce, and the packet had included helm pict-captures of the Chromes in action.
It came at him through the grass, claws raised and mouthparts snapping, making a most peculiar noise that he could only half-hear in the claustrophobic isolation of his atmospheric armour.
He shouted an order that he instantly realised no one except him could actually hear, brought his laspistol up and shot two bolts at the charging xenos.
It slowed it down, but didn’t kill it. Nyman had to snap off four more shots before it dropped a few metres short of where he was standing.
He looked around, having to turn his whole body to maximise the view through his narrow visor port. He could hear his own rapid respiration, as if he was in a box. He could smell the rancid bitterness of his sweat and breath, laced with adrenaline. Muffled noises came to him, as though through water. The dull bangs of weapons. Shouts. Sunlight shone into his visor. Glare.
There were Chromes all around them, most of them the glossy silver xenotype. He wasn’t sure where they had come from, but the odds were they were burrowers and had come up through the soil, clawing their way out. His men, without orders to give them structure, had nevertheless obeyed essential combat drill and were forming a box, firing out at the things rushing them from all sides. The Asmodai were fine soldiers, trained by the very best in the gun schools of the old Panpacific. Their proud boast to be the best in the Astra Militarum was not without merit.
Lasrifles flashed and snapped in disciplined volleys, the searing las-bolts ripping open organic armour and mutilating limbs. Puffs and squirts of ichor drizzled into the bright air.
One of the Chromes, a very large, dark variant form, survived the rifle-fire barrage and made it to their line. It got Corporal Vladen in its claws and tore him in half, the way a man would rip a sheet of paper when he was done reading the message written on it. Ribbons of bright red blood shivered into the air and covered the grass. Vladen’s armoured suborbital drop-suit split like overheated plastek wrapping.
Tranquility, the massive Imperial Fist, waded in, and drove the dark creature back, striking it twice with his power hammer. Leaking fluids through crush-splits in its shell, the Chrome reared back and launched itself at the Space Marine. There was no time or space for a defensive swing. Tranquility met the heavily built animal and grappled with it, gripping its chattering mouthparts with his left hand and tearing, while he tried to stave off its claws. As they broke again, Tranquility came away with part of a mandible in his hand. Ichor spurted down the Chrome’s throat and chest. Tranquility knocked it down with a hammerblow and then swung his power hammer down in both hands and finished it with a devastating overhead strike.
More Chromes tore up out of the ground, flinging soil and uprooted grasses in all directions. Some of them were big and dark like the thing that had murdered Vladen. The Asmodai redoubled their fire rate, snapping off shots to keep the creatures at maximum distance. Nyman kept shooting, directing fire by means of gestures.
There was no way of knowing how many more of the things lay under the ground.
Tranquility closed with another of the more massive forms, despatched it with two clean blows of his hammer, and then found himself beset by two more of the dark beasts. They clawed at him, fending off his attempts to swing at them. With a curse, he drew his boltgun and shot each one point-blank, exploding their carcasses in showers of meat, gristle and body fluid.
He’d cut them a path. Nyman could see that, and he could plainly see the Space Marine’s emphatic gestures. They had a path towards the hill slopes. In the distance, he could see the other Imperial Fists wall-brothers bounding down the hill to join them.
The hill slopes offered the protection of boulders and rocks for cover, and a small hope of staying alive until the other Space Marines reached them. Nyman knew his men would have to double time, and shoot as they ran.
He sent the signal, and most of them started to move, but visibility in the suits was so poor that some missed the gesture and found themselves caught out, alone. Nyman ran to them, grabbing them so he could look in through their visor plates and press his head against theirs, yelling so that the touching helms would transmit the sound.
‘Get moving! The hills! Move it, man!’