'Sarpedon is the key.’ continued the Pilgrim. He walked slowly up the bridge until he stood between Aescarion and Vinn, and Thaddeus saw the repulsion pass over Aescarion's face. 'Sarpedon is their weakness, and he knows it himself. Without him there will be no purpose. Without him, even if he is the only one to die here, the Chapter will fragment to be hunted down one by one. All other targets are secondary.’
'I have command here, Pilgrim.’ said Thaddeus sternly, more as a show to the others than in any real hope of reining in the creature. 'We know there will be other key Marines. Any specialists or officers are to be considered vital targets. But agreed, Sarpedon is high on that list. At least he should be easy to spot.’ Pict-recordings from House Jenassis had been issued to every Sister and storm trooper -every one of them knew that amongst the Soul Drinkers was a monster with spider's legs who was to be destroyed at all costs.
There is a good chance the Soul Drinkers will be fighting another enemy when we engage.’ repeated kaddeus. This is the best advantage we have, and „j. will use it. They will not know we are coming and we will strike as hard and fast as the Soul Drinkers themselves. Have your troops pray, both of you, and never forget we are here to do the Emperor's will.’
The strikeforce's leaders left the bridge and suddenly the whole area was bathed in a red glow. The engines below roared into life, immense plasma turbines grinding into action as the primary engines fired.
v The motley flotilla tracking them was left behind as the Crescent Moon powered away from them. The thruster solutions took over and the ship began the descent to Stratix Luminae.
THE FIGHTERS SCREAMED into the planet's upper atmosphere, the surface a frozen desolation beneath them, Teturact's flagship a still vaster slab of pure rotting malice above them. The xenos fighters slid through Stratix Luminae's atmospheric envelope like knives through silk, forewings flowing into shining blades that cut through the strong, freezing air currents.
The ship - and it had to be Teturact's flagship,
«nothing else could radiate that aura of corruption and evil - didn't fire on them. Perhaps its crew and systems were too far gone to be able to track them jand fire effectively But it had certainly seen them - levery Marine, even those with no psychic ability, felt the dark eye of something within focusing on them as if they were samples on a microscope slide.
The ten fighters carried the whole of the remaining Soul Drinkers Chapter, down to barely six hundred Marines and a handful of Chapter serfs. Sarpedon along with Squad Krydel and Squad Luko were in one crafty with one given over entirely to Tellos and his Assault Marines who Sarpedon suspected wouldn't follow anyone else. Another carried the force that would strike directly into the facility - Squads Karraidin, Graevus and Salk along with Techmarines Lygris and Solun and Apothecary Salk.
Apothecary Karendin and the Chapter Infirmary took up a fighter craft along with Techmarine Varuk. Chaplain Iktinos had a craft of his own along with those Marines whose squads had lost their officers and chose to follow the Chaplain into battle. One fighter held Tyrendian, the Librarian who was effectively the Chapter's chief psyker after Sarpedon himself. The remaining three contained the squads earmarked to form a mobile reserve - Sevras, Karvik, Corvan, Dyon, Shastarik, Kelvor, Locano, Preadon and the Librarian Gresk.
When assembling the force it had been brought home to Sarpedon just what a state the Chapter was in. Less than half the Marines were still organised into squads along the old Chapter lines - Marines whose squads had lost their officers joined other squads or formed around leaders like Iktinos, Tellos or Karraidin. The Chapter had always had a more fluid organisation than the Codex Astartes had set out but it was now in a constant state of flux. There had simply not been enough time to organise it properly, not when every passing hour made their irretrievable genetic corruption more likely. Ц It was Techmarine Varuk who noticed the disintegration first. The scanner signature of the flagship above began to become more indistinct, as if there was some kind of interference covering it. Rapidly the truth became apparent - the ship was coming apart, shedding hull sections like scabbed skin. Whole decks peeled away and began to fall into the atmosphere, bloated hull sections rupturing and spilling clouds of debris. The rearmost fighters began to report near-collisions with chunks of debris streaking down from above. The scanners on the fighters, even though they were advanced xenos tech, were quickly blinded by the mass of signals suddenly pouring into orbit.
Teturact's flagship was coming apart above them. Varuk voxed Sarpedon to tell him, and Sarpedon knew better than to assume the death of the ship was good news.
TETURACT WATCHED HIS ship rupture and it tasted good. The ship had once been a mighty battleship, carrying enough firepower to raze a city to the ground. Teturact had not only corrupted it until it served him, but had proven he could destroy such a thing with a thought. A symbol of Imperial might had been captured, deformed, and then destroyed, all because Teturact wished it.
If anyone had needed proof that Teturact was a god, this was it.
He felt the plasma reactors overloading and breaking up, sending Shockwaves through the hull that fractured the stern and sent the engines spiralling downwards towards the surface. The tang of escaping fuel plasma was a metallic, chemical taste of Imperial doom.
Already sections of corridor and gun deck were falling, packed with the living dead. Some would not make it to the surface intact but enough would to disgorge an army onto the ground. He reached out with his mind and felt the wizards, held in a near-indestructible plasma conduit, waiting in the belly of the ship to be vomited onto Stratix Lumi-nae. Teturact, as was proper for the master of the dying ship, waited on the bridge. The bulkheads nearby had already failed and hard vacuum had turned the slave-bodies beneath his feet rigid and cold, but Teturact kept himself and his brute-mutant bearers intact with a barely-conscious effort. The hardness of space was a reminder of the purity of death he would leave at Stratix Luminae.
The gods were watching. Teturact could feel their eyes on him, both curious and jealous, and fearful that he would rise and join them. The gods were no more than ideas made real in the warp, and Teturact
1Ш
had created ideas of his own - servitude through death, purity and corruption made one, the subjugation of souls through suffering and deliverance. Those concepts would be coalescing in the warp even now, and when they became strong enough Teturact's mind would be divorced from his body completely and he would join the kingdom he had created in the warp as its god.
He could feel the universe flickering at the edges of his consciousness, like an endless harvest of souls begging to be enslaved, delivered from their suffering by the servitude and oblivion Teturact offered.
1 But there were matters closer at hand. He drew his mind back in, the sensation almost painful. He watched the first wave falling towards Stratix Luminae and the hard bright darts of the intruder craft flying through the first curtain of debris.
His army would be on the ground waiting when the intruders landed. If they ever got to land at all.
THE FIGHTER LURCHED suddenly, throwing Sarpedon against the curved metal wall. The instrument panels flared brightly as damage signals from the fighter's systems flooded into the controls. The viewscreen flickered and was suddenly full of debris shooting down past them, chunks of blackened metal and showers of torn corpses.