Blood Gorgons

CHAPTER FIVE

BARSABBAS WOKE FROM his sleep to an aching in his left primary lung. Abruptly uncomfortable, he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of his cot. Grimacing, he rubbed his lower ribs slowly. It was not real pain, not real damage, but it seemed real to him nonetheless.

‘Your lung is troubling you again?’ Barsabbas called out.

Sargaul appeared in the door frame, dressed in a bodyglove for early sparring. ‘The same. I feel it most in the mornings. The Chirurgeons were not thorough in purging the residual shrapnel.’

Barsabbas nodded thoughtfully. He was feeling the old wounds of his blood bond, a common experience between pairs. After all, it had been Barsabbas’s left primary lung they had excised and transplanted into Sargaul in their rituals of pairing.

Years ago, as a young neophyte, Barsabbas had not fully understood the rituals performed upon him. He remembered vaguely the surgical pain. The multiple waking horrors as the Chirurgeons sheared his bones for marrow and opened his muscles like the flaps of a book. There were not many memories from that time, but those were the ones he recalled.

Now, as an older, wiser battle‐brother, Barsabbas still knew little of the secret bond.

The process itself had become blurred with folklore and mysticism, to the point where effect and placebo became one. Paired with the veteran Sargaul, Barsabbas would become strengthened by their shared experience. He would inherit not only Sargaul’s genetic memory, but also his bravery and ferocity. There was an element of witchcraft in this, but whenever Barsabbas felt that twinge in his lung, he was convinced there was substance to their ritual.

‘How is your knee?’ Sargaul asked, flexing his own.

Barsabbas stretched out his right leg, the thick cords of his thigh rippling. ‘Better today,’

he shrugged.

‘I thought so,’ nodded Sargaul, flexing his own right leg. ‘They were ferocious, those tau.

Much better at war‐making than I expected.’

Barsabbas had almost repressed the memory of defeat but Sargaul’s words invoked the images back to wakefulness. Just ten lunar cycles ago they had deployed on the tau world designated ‘Govina’ – a planet targeted for its lush natural resources and relatively weak military presence. It should have been a simple plunder raid for Squad Besheba: hit hard and retreat with a mid‐grade quota of slaves. But they had underestimated the aliens, and the tau military presence proved entirely capable.

They engaged on the tundra, trading shots between dwarf shrubs and sedges, low grasses and lichens. By the hundreds, the tau had come, their firing lines disciplined and their shots overwhelming in sheer volume. Pulsating blue plasma hammered them so hard their armour systems had been pushed to failure, and Barsabbas’s suit had reached seventy per cent damage threshold within the first few volleys.

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The squad had fought with customary aggression and speed. They had burst amongst the tau infantry squares, ploughing through their chest‐high adversaries, splintering their helmets and bones. They had killed so many.

But it was the tau’s home and they did not flee. Squad Besheba had been driven back, overwhelmed by sheer numbers. In the end, they had fled, chased by ground‐hugging tau hoverers. They escaped, but without dignity and their wounds were many. Like Barsabbas’s disintegrated patella and Sargaul’s collapsed lung, the shame had stayed with them, agonising them for the past ten months.

THOUSANDS OF SLAVES woke to the pulsating itch in their left cheekbones, scratching their scarred faces. It was an urgent, pressing discomfort that could not be ignored.

Beneath each scar could be seen the outline of a flesh burrowing thrall‐worm. Agitated during sleep cycle, when the slaves were at a distance from their masters, the thrall‐worms bulged against their cheeks like distended tumours. With clockwork precision, at the six-hour mark, the parasites would rouse their hosts by feeding on the rich fat beneath their skins. Sleepy‐eyed, fatigued and forlorn, the slaves would wake to their daily work.

The workforce were of all kinds and pasts, both strong and feeble, soldiers and clerics, shift workers or merchants; here an artisan, over there a human Guard colonel, all of them slaves to the bonded brotherhood. Those strong and young set about the tasks of burden, carrying equipment lockers and hefty pallets. The old and feeble, those who had been branded many years ago, fanned out into the corridors to light the upper halls with sconce lanterns. Others fetched haunches of roast for their twin masters, for although the post-humans did not need such food for sustenance, they enjoyed the taste of rare meat.

The most unfortunate of all were those who formed the work teams – the delvers. They were given the impossible duty of clearing the encroaching bio‐flora that threatened to overwhelm the ship. Such teams often disappeared into the forgotten sectors of the ship, which had become a cavernous ecosystem. Those regions became wildernesses and the delvers with their hatchets and chain cutters could do little to stop their spread. Many were lost to the apex predators that flourished in the abyssal depths of the space hulk.

Slaves who had become favourites were allowed to rise one ship’s cycle later than the rest. The black‐turbaned sentries in their hauberks of brass, the gun ratings, the deckhands and pleasure pets were all among the number who enjoyed relative luxury.

But on this day, all the slaves, regardless of hierarchy, would forgo sleep or food for the Blood Gorgons mobilisation. It was not full Chapter strength deployment, but it would still be a time of solemn ritual and ceremony. The drop chambers would need to be cleaned and the vacuum locks cleared; weapons would be oiled and armour polished. Sacrifices would be made. There was much work to be done.

IT WAS NOT yet dawn cycle, but Barsabbas and Sargaul were already in the Maze of Acts Martial. Squad Besheba had set up a three‐point fire pattern in a little‐used section of the maze.

The ceiling of the tunnel had collapsed under the bacterial acid, forming a natural cave shelf. The collapse had also breached several water filtration pipes and the resultant fluid had allowed a host of micro‐organisms to thrive and grow. Through the thermal imaging of his helmet, the interior wilderness appeared to Barsabbas as a low‐lying pattern of fronds, reefs and fungal caps. He opened the vents of his armour and allowed the moist, external 39

air to creep into his suit. Tasting with his tongue, he judged seventy‐two per cent humidity in the air combined with a high blend of toxic carbon, likely released by the nearby floral growth. There was something else in the air too, the animal scent of sweat or something similar.

There was a flash of thermal colour to his left and Barsabbas turned to meet it, his ocular targeting systems already synchronising with his bolter sights. A human shape rose from behind a mound of viral lichen and opened fire. The first shot went wide, a ranging shot that left the searing after‐image of its trajectory across Barsabbas’s vision. The next one clipped him on the hip, ricocheting with a whine off the ceramite plate. His armour’s daemon spirit groaned sleepily in protest.

Before Barsabbas could return fire, the human was already dead. Sargaul had finished him with a clean chest shot. Bond‐Brothers Hadius and Cython shot him repeatedly, tearing him down to constituent fragments.

‘Cease fire!’ called Sergeant Sica, waving down their violent excess. Hadius and Cython whooped with glee.

‘That’s it, we’re done here,’ added the sergeant’s blood bond, Bael‐Shura. ‘Thirty kills.

That’s the last of them.’

‘No,’ said Sargaul, holding up the auspex. ‘Squad, hold. I’m getting ghost readouts on the auspex.’

A caged pen of thirty Guardsman captives had been released into the maze less than two hours ago. They had been a platoon of Mordians guarding a merchant vessel en route to Cadia. The men had put up a stoic fight, but by Barsabbas’s count, they had killed all thirty. There shouldn’t be any more targets within this section of the maze. Yet their auspex was pinging.

Barsabbas took the auspex from Sargaul and studied the tracking device. Whatever it was, the target was large and moved with expert stealth. Several times it moved so quietly that the auspex sonar reflection lost track of its movement. It closed in, only to disappear, then reappear, slightly closer than before.

‘A maul mouth?’ Sargaul suggested. He was referring to the apex predator that had evolved in the confines of the Cauldron Born.

Barsabbas shook his head. Maul mouths were light‐framed creatures, their slender, hairless bodies suited to hiding within circulation vents and underneath walkways. This was too big.

Abruptly, the auspex began to ping again. ‘Fifty metres!’ Sergeant Sica hissed urgently.

As quickly as the warning came, the auspex settled again.

The squad fell into interlocking arcs of fire. They couldn’t see any targets. Except for the bubble of a dimorphic yeast fungus as it corroded the tunnel walls, there was no sound.

‘Thirty‐six metres,’ Sargaul voxed through the squad link as his auspex caught a fleeting glimpse. The target was moving fast, darting between the auspex’s blind spots.

‘Eighteen metres.’

Barsabbas toggled between thermal imaging and negative illumination. Neither showed a target. He loosened the muscles of his shoulders and placed one hand on the boarding axe sheathed against the small of his back.

‘I’ve lost target,’ Sica voxed, his voice laced with frustration.

Without clearance, Hadius and Cython loosed a quick burst of their bolters. The distinct echo of the jackhammer shots signalled they had hit nothing.

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‘Cease fire, you soft‐backs!’ Sica barked.

Suddenly, Cython was flying backwards, as if struck heavily. Hadius lumbered to the aid of his blood bond, but he too was sent sprawling. It was happening so fast that Barsabbas cursed as he tore the hand axe from its casing and looped small circles to warm up his wrist.

Sergeant Sica aimed his bolter at a large dark shape that was suddenly in the middle of their position. Sargaul did the same while Bael‐Shura brought the squad flamer to bear. The shape was black, its negative luminescence making it appear colder than its thermal surroundings.

‘Hold your weapons, Squad Besheba,’ came a familiar voice through their squad’s direct link.

Sica lowered his weapon hesitantly. ‘Captain?’

‘Aye, sergeant.’

Spitting in relief, Barsabbas switched off his thermal imaging. It was dark and he blinked several times, rapidly dilating his pupils to increase visual acuity. The formless black shape immediately became that of Captain Argol. Even in the low light, he was unmistakable. Horn plates cauliflowered up his neck and the left side of his face, sprouting, branching and multiplying like saltwater coral. Argol was immensely proud of his gifts and seldom wore a helmet to hide them.

‘You caught us,’ Sica admitted. As if on cue, Hadius and Cython staggered back to their feet, their earlier bravado neutered by the ease of their dispatching.

‘Learn to adapt quickly. Never become comfortable with one kind of enemy,’ said Argol.

Barsabbas knew their captain was right. Space Marine armour was an insulated exterior of ceramite and adamantium, almost invisible to thermal or heat detection. Had they relied on their own hyper‐sensitive vision, perhaps they would have spotted their attacker.

‘That’s what makes us dangerous. We are the symbiosis of war machine and human ability,’ Argol continued. ‘Do not rely on gears and motors, remember that you have two hands and a brain.’

Sica unlocked his helmet to reveal a face of heavy cheekbones and long matted coils of hair. His heavy brow ridge was pinched in a grimace. The sergeant did not like being made a fool of, even by the venerable captain. ‘You didn’t come all this way to lecture us on battle theory, my captain. What do you need from us?’

‘Sergeant Sica. Your squad’s performance was less than notable on Govina.’

The mere mention of it made Barsabbas wince inwardly. He knew Sargaul would feel the same.

‘What of it?’ Sica snarled.

‘I know you fought hard. Post‐operation data showed pict evidence of heavy tau casualties. Have you had the pleasure of viewing the aerial surveillance? There is a pict-capture of a rock ridge lined with tau bodies in a neat little line. All of them, gunned down in a straight line just like that. Pop. Pop. Pop.’

Sica was not amused. ‘We faced almost five hundred tau foot‐soldiers. They are pliable and break open easily, but their guns are difficult to trade shots with. Even their basic infantry rifle cuts through a clear thirty centimetres of brick.’

‘The fact remains – you were defeated, beaten, driven back. It’s brought shame to your squad and, by extension, my company.’

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Barsabbas heard Bael‐Shura hiss, as if warming up the Betcher’s gland beneath his tongue. For the past ten months, Squad Besheba had become pariahs within the Chapter.

‘What do you need from us?’ Sica repeated warily.

‘I’m giving you a chance to redeem your performance. Five squads from Captain Hazareth’s First Company will be deploying to Hauts Bassiq. Sabtah and Muhr have, for once, agreed to this course of action.’

Barsabbas kept quiet, but his breathing quickened with quiet anticipation. Although it was left unsaid, there was no doubt Captain Argol had requested their presence on this mission. It meant the company, despite their misgivings, still believed Squad Besheba was an effective and dependable squad, but they would need an act to redeem their reputation.

‘This is your chance. I have petitioned Captain Hazareth to augment his forces with Squad Besheba. Hazareth has accepted,’ Argol finished.

Beside Barsabbas, Sargaul slapped his palms in anticipation. A hush fell over the squad.

‘Second Company’s honour is at stake here, Sergeant Sica. There existed a long and violent history when I inherited this company, a reputation for being monsters in fables.

Bastion, Cadia, Armageddon, the Medina Corridor, the actions at Dunefall. I hope these wars mean as much to you as they do to me, but Second Company have never been found wanting. Good, noble men fear us. Soldiers of alien cultures know us by name and know of our brutality. We make their warrior castes feel inferior.’

They all nodded.

‘I won’t pressure you, Sergeant Sica. But you must know Squad Besheba carries our history on their shoulders.’

THE BLOOD GORGONS were deploying. Despite the nature of a scouting deployment, the entire Cauldron Born was thrumming with activity.

Muhr’s coven was coaxing the warp drives and daemon spirits. Alarm sirens were blaring, engine slaves were sweating. There was no rest, no pause in labour. Freight docks were ramped, shrines were tended to and everywhere was the synchronised stomp of boots as black turban patrols doubled.

Weaponsmith Linus knew he would not be sleeping for several rotations. The deploying squads had equipment that needed to be repaired and readied for war and already his apprentices were bowed in focussed work. Alcestis was stooped at her work bench, a portly woman in her fifties who had once been a respected dollmaker in her home hive of Delaphina. Her hands worked quickly, darting between whetstone, file and a Traitor Marine’s cutlass. At their benches, others were hammering the dents out of water canisters, re‐meshing buckle straps or cleaning trophy racks. These were not the sacred power armours or bolters of the Blood Gorgons, for no slaves were allowed to touch, much less be entrusted with, such artefacts. Rather, these were the various tools of the Traitor Marines.

The slaves worked by the light of small gas lamps and candle flame. It was slow, agonising work, but it was better than being a menial. Although their work chamber was a dark box in the ship’s dilapidated lower halls, they were allowed to sleep under their work benches after rotation and were rationed one and half standard meals per day. The walls were covered with old sheets and shredded waste to insulate against the sub‐zero space climate. Through an ever‐present haze, tabac smoke was chain‐lit to help them through their work shifts. Despite these conditions, the mending slaves had come to accept the 42

cubic little chamber as their home. They had learned to make the best of what they had become and even named their portion of the ship the smokehouse.

An entire half of the smokehouse was cramped with racks of axes, boarding pikes and gaudy blades that had been delivered there since morning cycle. Varied were the weapons in the collection, as no two Traitor Marines possessed the same arsenal. These were personal caches collected by each individual over their decades or centuries of service, a veritable history of their achievements. Each Blood Gorgon took great pride in their exotic collections, and any fleck of dust or slight damage would cost a weaponsmith one finger.

Already, Linus, meticulous with his work though he was, had lost a little finger and a ring finger, once for sharpening an axe blade against the grain and another for leaving carbon build‐up in the pommel of a sword that he could not reach with his tools.

‘There is a boarding axe which needs sharpening and rebinding,’ a young apprentice told Linus. ‘Would you like me to finish it, boss?’

Linus shook his head. The apprentice was a mere boy. In time he would learn the finer points of regraining and weave binding, but for now he was too clumsy to be entrusted with so dangerous a task. ‘Not now, lad,’ replied Linus. ‘Squad Brigand needs a half-hundred leather pouches to be oiled, you get along with that.’

Picking up the short‐handled axe, he ran a palm along its edge. Although the slaves were told nothing about the nature of deployment, Linus had been enslaved for long enough that he could judge, by the tools the Traitor Marines chose, what the nature of their mission would be.

This time, there was a predominance of light and concealable weapons. The absence of heavier weaponry such as halberds or polearms suggested that it would be no quick, frontal assault. There was no preponderance of boarding pikes to be re‐toothed as there often would be before a boarding raid. Lighter weapons meant utility.

Perhaps a long‐distance campaign?A planet of smouldering fields and ash plains? Linus remembered distant planets, exotic in plant life and fauna. He remembered when he was younger, the fields outside his hab had been covered in green grass and the swaying growth of trees. But try as he might, he could not remember what they smelled like or how they felt to the touch. He knew only the Cauldron Born now and nothing else.

Linus sighed. He often wondered where these Traitor Marines went – even if they were horrifying warzones. Surely anything would be better than a lifetime of enslavement, subsisting on gruel and watery yoghurt?

BARSABBAS AND SARGAUL summoned their retinue sometime around mid‐cycle.

Situated in the Cauldron Born’s middle decks the Blood Gorgons’ interior citadels rose along the cliffs and numberless ramparts of the ship’s interior structure. Turreted proto-fortresses loomed along the dark rises and shelves of the superstructure, each housing one pair of bonded brethren. Lighting their way with lamps, the personal slaves went quickly and urgently, together in a hurried flock.

There were the two black turbans in their brass armour, Ashar and Dao, striding imperiously in their upturned and pointed boots. The helm bearers came next, little more than young boys in stiffly embroidered tabards. A train of munitions and armament servitors clattered behind, guarded by a trio of scale hounds. Behind them, appearing unrushed, came the litter of pleasure pets, collected from a double dozen planets, each of the women chosen on the nine Slaaneshi principles of exotic beauty.

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The fortresses remained unconnected; the chain‐link walkways that had connected them had been destroyed centuries ago and never rebuilt. The Blood Gorgons had not always been a unified Chapter before the reign of Gammadin. During the early stages of their excommunication, intra‐Chapter conflict had reduced them to little more than a band of thieves escaping together for survival. It had been a time of turmoil, during which the Blood Gorgons had turned upon one another and walled themselves up within their drifting fortress. Even after Gammadin united the Chapter after the Reforging, the citadels remained as a memorial of past failings.

The retinue of Barsabbas and Sargaul arrived at a grated walkway. Beyond them, spanning an abyssal drop, the walkway led towards blast shutters set in a wall that dropped away like a cliff edge. Swathes of rust honeycombed the citadel across the pit. Flat and imposing, it swept four hundred metres down into shadows and dim pinpricks of strobe lighting.

By the time the retinue had cleared the muzzled gun servitors at the entry shutters, they were already late. Barsabbas and Sargaul had begun their anointments and the seven rituals of predomination were about to begin.

Barsabbas met them at the draw gates, unarmoured and imposing. ‘Do not be late.

Tardiness erodes my efficiency. Entirely erodes it. Understand?’

‘Yes,’ the slaves said, bowing and hurrying to their positions.

Each slave within the retinue had a personal task in the pre‐deployment rituals.

Gammadin had coined them ‘the Sacrifices of War’, but Barsabbas had quietly referred to them as ‘the Tedium before Battle’.

With a dismissive wave from Sargaul, the sacrifices began without much fanfare. To Barsabbas, it was slightly deflating. The rituals grew tiresome to him. He attributed the tedium to the reverence in which the senior Blood Gorgons held the rituals. The veterans built up such a sense of solemnity and ceremony that when the younger ranks performed it, half‐hearted in youth, the sacrifices seemed to lose all meaning.

Barsabbas sighed wearily. First, he and Sargaul reswore their oaths of brotherhood. The Astartes implant known as the omophagea allowed for learning by eating. Through the implant they were able to ‘read’ or absorb genetic material that they consumed, the omophagea transmitting the gained information to the brain as a set of memories or experiences. The Blood Gorgons remembered a time when they had fought against one another. Although they had always been one Chapter, the Reforging was part of their Chapter history. The oaths reminded them of this, or so the veterans said.

Barsabbas could not remember the Reforging. That was before his time and no more than a curious relic of history.

Barsabbas cut a small piece of flesh from inside his cheek while Sargaul sliced open the meat of his right thumb. A tiny sample of blood and flesh was collected into a brass bowl and the bloody tissue was diluted with an alcohol solution. Apparently, the blood was traditionally mixed with fermented mead. These days, honey was a rarity for the Chapter and it was simply more efficient to manufacture an alcoholic solvent. Perhaps Barsabbas would appreciate these rituals if they were not some mere nuisance to be observed for the sake of tradition. He shrugged and slugged down the caustic mixture.

The Sacrifice of Armament followed. Barsabbas and Sargaul were stripped naked and lowered their bodies into a simmering cauldron. The water was hot enough to par‐boil the outermost layers of skin. Once bathed, the inflamed skin was then vigorously rubbed with 44

coarse‐grained salts. Lastly a thick white salve of woad – a mixture of animal fat, minerals and bio‐chemicals – was applied to toughen the skin, numbing it.

Again, Barsabbas found the process unnecessary. The skin was more prone to infection in humid combat zones. Yet they did not argue the procedure. It was something that had always been.

After the skin treatment, the Traitor Marine’s suit of power armour was fitted into place, segment by segment. The plugs, stem cords and synapse wires were connected from the armour to the black carapace. All present began to chant a simple, almost child‐like rhyme, in order to placate the armour’s spirit as it was coaxed from its sleep.

Fully suited and armoured, Barsabbas could not help but notice the subtle reaction from his servants. They shied away from him, afraid to be close. It happened often. It was as if normal humans had an instinctive fear of Space Marines, a deeply seeded biological aversion to being close to something so dangerous, so powerful.

Finally came the Sacrifice of Smoke. This was the ritual that Barsabbas found most pragmatic, despite its superstitious nature. While in warp transit, objects were likely to go missing. To a warrior‐mind, the phenomenon was unexplainable and oddly disturbing –

small items left unlocked or unbolted would disappear. Sometimes these could be vital pieces of wargear, or even the firing pin of a bolter. In order to prevent such warp poltergeist activity, most loyalist Chapters prayed and erected gargoyles.

The Blood Gorgons observed this superstition in their own way by discharging firecrackers and parading in their war helms. It was the Blood Gorgons’ belief that war helms needed to be terrifying enough to scare even the daemons of Chaos, or ill fortune would be invited. Barsabbas’s helmet was terrifying indeed, a screaming bovine sculpt with a narrow slitted vision lens and wide antlers like arms rearing up to frighten away mischievous spirits. He danced a strange, spasmodic dance, executing clumsy movements in his power armour. Their retinue beat drums and cymbals while singing.

With the final sacrifices complete, Barsabbas and Sargaul stood in their full finery of war. He stole a look in the gilded mirror in their chambers. The creature that looked back at him appeared monstrous – a broad framework of engineered bone and muscle. Theatrical yet pugnacious, his mask was strangely emotionless, its exaggerated scream frozen into the rigor mortis of sculpted brass.

He realised he was the most feared fighting unit in the universe. He allowed that thought to settle upon him for a moment. It was intoxicating. They were mobile fortresses, able to bull‐charge head first into a storm of enemy munitions unscathed. They were destructive, the firepower at their immediate disposal able to flatten urban blocks. With his bare hands, gloved in ceramite, he could crush and pry open sheets of metal, maybe even the support girders of a building.

‘Master,’ cried the slaves as the ritual preparations drew to a close. They mewled collectively, scratching pleadingly at their faces as if Barsabbas and Sargaul had forgotten.

Barsabbas watched Sargaul slide a black metal piston from a leather carrier at his thigh plate. The slaves lined up eagerly. One after another, Sargaul viced their jaws in his hand, turning their faces ever so slightly upwards. The piston punched into their cheek scars with a meaty thud. The slaves would wince, flinching away from Sargaul’s grasp with a weeping wound in their cheek.

They liberated the slaves in turn, extracting the larvae from their flesh. Sargaul hurried through the process without veneration, his movements deftly practiced, yet rough and 45

bored. A young girl with a graceful neck was next in line. Barsabbas had never learned her name. She was just a menial.

Sargaul trapped her timid face between the vice of his fingers. The black tube slid into her cheek like a monstrous syringe. She remained stoic as it retracted, leaving a neat incision below her cheekbone. A hard tap of the piston dislodged a tiny white larva onto the floor, oozing with fluid and pus. It trembled fitfully upon contact with the air, expanding rapidly, its membranous cocoon stretching and straining. As the egg skin peeled away, a fleshy nub of fingers and teeth emerged. The newly birthed creature resembled an arachnid, with a swell of bone‐shearing mandibles above its abdominal sac. Black hair, coarse and wet, sprouted wirily from its throbbing skin.

Sargaul set his heel down and crushed the skittering mess.

‘You are all free until our return,’ Sargaul said.

The slaves, some amongst them wadding their palms against bleeding faces, stared at them like a lost herd of particularly dull sheep. Most of them knew no other life than servitude. Some had been born into slavery, their ancestors having dwelt in the slave warrens for many generations.

‘But if we do not return, then you will all die with us, for this is the way the gods will it.

You serve only us, and live by virtue of our existence. Without us, you cannot be allowed to live,’ Sargaul announced. ‘It may not make sense to you, but it is only our way.’

IN STEAMING CAULDRONS and platters on carts, the food was served in the Hall of Solemn Supper. Teeming like colony ants, scullery slaves toiled, the patter of their steps strident across the ancient floorboards.

The Hall of Solemn Supper was a narrow, antiquated chamber deep within the ship’s furnished core, with great wooden beamed ceilings dating from a time when the ship was an abandoned drifter. Arched windows framed with sculpted mer‐maidens and harpies were spaced evenly, allowing the hall full view of distant stars and galaxies.

Here the Blood Gorgons came to feast before deployment and, as was customary, receive their pre‐mission assembly with the company commander. Although it marked the last stage of squad‐level planning and tactics, it was also a sombre time to gather and feast among brothers.

It was only a small deployment, with five squads. Many of the long tables, arrayed in one‐hundred‐man company lines, were empty, yet the food and wine were nonetheless bountiful. The kitchen crews had been diligent in their preparation of the Traitor Marines’

pre‐war nutrition. Loaves of fibre‐dense wholegrain breads steamed in baskets. Creamed soups from the vessel’s fungal colonies were wheeled out in cauldrons. Roast and furnaced meats of all kinds were hauled out in hand wagons.

The five squads sat together at the long table, with Captain Hazareth at their head.

Gathered were Squad Besheba, Squad Hastur, Squad Yuggoth, Squad Brigand and veteran fire‐team Shar‐Kali.

Barsabbas found himself sitting opposite a brother of Squad Hastur. He gave him a curt nod but nothing more. It was known amongst the company that Squad Hastur were

‘Muhrites’, supporters of Muhr’s ascension. Their sergeant, Brother Kloden, was an ambitious aspirant who hungered for conquest, and that did not sit well with the company.

The squads fell into silence as Captain Hazareth pushed back his granite bench with a scrape.

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‘I could not be more confident in the destruction you will cause,’ Hazareth began.

The squads stamped and clapped clamorously, spilling wine and bashing the basalt table with their fists. Barsabbas was so caught up in the excitement he crushed a brass dining plate in his hands and hurled it across the hall.

Hazareth motioned for quiet. ‘Our wards on Hauts Bassiq have signalled for our aid. It is our duty to our slavestock worlds that we answer their calls, so it has always been.’

He brought up a hololithic display from a vertical projector. ‘This is an aerial surveillance pict from the last time we harvested genestock. That was close to sixteen cycles ago, or almost eighty years, standard. As you can see, the terrain is largely open, flat country. The Adeptus Mechanicus blasted the land prior to settlement. In doing so, the ensuing firestorm depleted the atmosphere causing atmospheric temperatures to scale intolerable heights within years.’

Barsabbas took a sip of his wine and realised it could be the last time in months that his hydration levels would be optimal. The furious loss of sweat and Hauts Bassiq’s scarcity of water had driven the Imperial colonies away and turned the planet into a ghost desert.

Spilling a cartographer’s chart over the table and cutlery, Hazareth tapped the map with a blunt, armoured fingertip. ‘Of all our sixty‐two recruitment worlds, Hauts Bassiq breeds one of the hardiest stock due to its borderline inhospitable climate. Minerally, it is one of the richest in resources–’

Brother‐Sergeant Kloden frowned and rapped the table in‐between mouthfuls of beef tendon. ‘What use do we have of mineral resources? We have never been ones to hoard.’

Sargaul interjected tersely. ‘Warp‐iron. Kloden, do you know what warp‐iron is?’ he asked coldly.

Barsabbas nodded to himself knowingly. Although he was too young to have ever visited Hauts Bassiq, he had researched the catacombs for archived intelligence. Due to Hauts Bassiq’s proximity to the Occularis Terribus, its surface was marked with warpstone impacts that had compressed over the ages into a compound similar to uranium. This warp‐iron was what kept the Cauldron Born’s fusion reactors running. Ever since the Chapter had claimed the ghost ship as its own, a piece of irradiated warp‐iron almost three hundred metres in length had powered the reactor core.

Before Kloden could respond, Captain Hazareth pointed at the map again. ‘Enemy threat disposition is unknown.’

‘Xenos, Khoitan?’ Sergeant Sica asked.

Hazareth shook his head and drained his wine cup before answering. ‘Entirely unknown. The signal beacon from Hauts Bassiq relayed no other information.’

‘Try not to retreat if shot at again,’ Sergeant Kloden snorted.

Sargaul stood up, clattering dishes and spilling a goblet. His naked blade was drawn.

‘Brother Sargaul! I will not have blades at my table,’ Captain Hazareth shouted, quick to quell the violence.

Slaves frightened by the outburst scurried from the alcoves to refill wine goblets and placate the warriors with loaded plates of cold meat and spiced offal. The squads fell back to eating, shooting hard glares at each other across the table.

Hazareth rotated the hololith and zoomed in close. ‘Your main objective is to reach the city of Ur. This is the last bastion of technology on Bassiq. The remaining Imperialists have sequestered themselves there, in a sealed city. They no longer maintain much contact with the nomads who we use as genestock. If any campaign were to be mounted, it would 47

commence here. There are few other strategic targets amongst the major continents. The plainsmen dwell in semi‐nomadic bands elsewhere.’

‘Why have our brother‐ancestors not conquered Ur already? Why leave an Imperial bastion to blight the landscape?’ Barsabbas asked.

‘Because we pick and choose our fights carefully. There is nothing to be gained from overthrowing the Barons of Ur. They are an isolationist cult. Yet they protect the world from xenos raids and minor threats when we cannot. They do not even know of our existence or our sovereignty over their lands.’

‘Also,’ Kloden said, sneeringly, ‘we would risk too much. Our Chapter would have a difficult time overwhelming even that little dirthole,’ he said to Barsabbas. ‘They use a fusion reactor much like our own to power void shields thicker than your skull.’

Captain Hazareth remained impassive, but Barsabbas could sense his Khoitan’s seething resentment for the Muhrites.

‘What you may not know,’ said Captain Hazareth, ‘is that Ur sits upon the largest deposit of warp‐iron on the planet. There’s estimated to be enough warp‐iron there to fuel the Cauldron Born’s fusion plant for no less than six hundred thousand years, standard.’

Nothing in the archives had mentioned this. Barsabbas craned forwards. ‘Why have we not claimed this warp‐iron as our own?’

Hazareth shrugged dismissively. ‘Because, as Sergeant Kloden has said, we are not hoarders. We have all the warp‐iron we need to feed the Cauldron Born’s reactor. We simply do not need more. We are free that way, and untied to the trouble of earthly possession.’

Kloden exhaled derisively. ‘We are a poor man’s Chapter. Peasant ignorant.’





Finally, Hazareth turned to Kloden. Only then did Barsabbas realise how imposing his Khoitan appeared. At well over two metres eighty, when Hazareth faced Kloden square on, he cast a shadow over Kloden’s face.

‘Sergeant Kloden. I will strip you of your rank and the skin from your sword hand if you cross me once more. I consider myself a tempered commander who judges his men not by the candidate of their allegiance, but by their merits as soldiers. If you befoul this mission with politics I swear I will eat your bones. You will go to Ur, you will report your findings, you will return here with all your men alive. Otherwise, Kloden, I sup on your marrow.’

Kloden nodded quietly and slowly, afraid to meet Hazareth’s level gaze. He threw down a half‐chewed haunch on his plate with a sullen clatter. His appetite, evidently, had gone.

Despite Kloden’s chastisement, Barsabbas oddly felt no better. He too put down his eating knife. They were supposed to be Blood Gorgons, joined in feasting, shoulder to shoulder before their battle. It was not meant to be like this. Barsabbas was too young to remember the Chapter wars, but the thought of internecine conflict disturbed him in the most intrusive manner.

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