Victories of the Space Marines

“I can’t raise the Slaughterhorn,” Lexicanum Raughan Stellan complained to his Librarian Master.

“We are far below the hive, my novice,” the Chief Librarian replied, his power armour boots crunching through the darkness. “There are a billion tonnes of plasteel and rockcrete between us and the spire monastery. You would expect even our equipment to have some problems negotiating that. Besides, it’s the season for starquakes.”

“Still…” the Lexicanum mused.

The psykers had entered the catacombs: the lightless labyrinth of tunnels, cave systems and caverns that threaded their torturous way through the pulverised rock and rust of the original hive. Thousands of storeys had since been erected on top of the ancient structures, crushing them into the bottomless network of grottos from which the Crimson Consuls procured their most savage potential recruits. The sub-zero stillness was routinely shattered by murderous screams of tribal barbarism.

Far below the aristocratic indifference of the spire and the slavish poverty of the habs and industrial districts lay the gang savagery of the underhive. Collections of killers and their Carcharian kin, gathered for security or mass slaughter, blasting across the subterranean badlands for scraps and criminal honour. Below this kingdom of desperados and petty despots extended the catacombs, where tribes of barbaric brutes ruled almost as they had at the planet’s feral dawn. Here, young Carcharian bodies were crafted by necessity: shaped by circumstance into small mountains of muscle and sinew. Minds were sharpened to keenness by animal instinct and souls remained empty and pure. Perfect for cult indoctrination and the teachings of Guilliman.

Navarre held up his force sword, Chrysaor, the unnatural blade bleeding immaterial illumination into the darkness. It was short, like the traditional gladius of his Chapter and its twin, Chrysaen, sat in the inverse criss-cross of scabbards that decorated the Chief Librarian’s blue and gold chest plate. The denizens of the catacombs retreated into the alcoves and shadows at the abnormal glare of the blade and the towering presence of the armoured Adeptus Astartes.

“Stellan, keep up,” Navarre instructed. They had both been recruited from this tribal underworld—although hundreds of years apart. This familiarity should have filled the Carcharians with ease and acquaintance. Their Astartes instruction and training had realised in both supermen, however, an understanding of the untamed dangers of the place.

Not only would their kith and kin dash out their brains for the rich marrow in their bones, their degenerate brothers shared their dark kingdom with abhumans, mutants and wyrds, driven from the upper levels of the hive for the unsightly danger they posed. Navarre and Stellan had already despatched a shaggy, cyclopean monstrosity that had come at them on its knuckles with brute fury and blood-hunger.

Navarre and Stellan, however, were Adeptus Astartes: the Emperor’s Angels of Death and demigods among men. They came with dangers of their own. This alone would be enough to ensure their survival in such a lethal place. The Crimson Consuls were also powerful psykers: wielders of powers unnatural and warp-tapped. Without the techno-spectacle of their arms, the magnificence of their blue and gold plating their superhuman forms and murderous training, Navarre and Stellan would still be the deadliest presence in the catacombs for kilometres in any direction.

The tight tunnels opened out into a cavernous space. Lifting Chrysaor higher, the Chief Librarian allowed more of his potential to flood the unnatural blade of the weapon, throwing light up at the cave ceiling. Something colossal and twisted through with corrosion and stalactitular icicles formed the top of the cavern: some huge structure that had descended through the hive interior during some forgotten, cataclysmic collapse. Irregular columns of resistant-gauge rockcrete and strata structural supports held up the roof at precarious angles. This accidental architecture had allowed the abnormality of the open space to exist below and during the daily thaw had created, drop by drop, the frozen chemical lake that steamed beneath it.

A primitive walkway of scavenged plasteel, rock-ice and girders crossed the vast space and, as the Space Marines made their tentative crossing, Navarre’s warplight spooked a flock of gliding netherworms. Uncoiling themselves from their icicle bases they flattened their bodies and slithered through the air, angling the drag of their serpentine descent down past the Space Marines and at the crags and ledges of the cavern where they would make a fresh ascent. As the flock of black worms spiralled by, one crossed Stellan’s path. The novice struck out with his gauntlet in disgust but the thing latched onto him with its unparalleled prehensility. It weaved its way up through his armoured digits and corkscrewed up his thrashing arm at his helmetless face.

Light flashed before the Lexicanum’s eyes. Just as the netherworm retracted its fleshy collar and prepared to sink its venomous beak hooks into the Astartes’ young face, Navarre clipped the horror in half with the blazing tip of Chrysaor. As the worm fell down the side of the walkway in two writhing pieces, Stellan mumbled his thanks.

“Why didn’t you use your powers?” the Chief Librarian boomed around the cavern.

“It surprised me,” was all the Lexicanum could manage.

“You’ve been out of the depths mere moments and you’ve already forgotten its dangers,” Navarre remonstrated gently. “What of the galaxy’s dangers? There’s a myriad of lethality waiting for you out there. Be mindful, my novice.”

“Yes, master.”

“Did it come to you again?” Navarre asked pointedly.

“Why do you ask, master?”

“You seem, distracted: not yourself. Was your sleep disturbed?”

“Yes, master.”

“Your dreams?”

“Yes, master.”

“The empyreal realm seems a dark and distant place,” Navarre told his apprentice sagely. “But it is everywhere. How do you think we can draw on it so? Its rawness feeds our power: the blessings our God-Emperor gave us and through which we give back in His name. We are not the only ones to draw from this wellspring of power and we need our faith and constant vigilance to shield us from the predations of these immaterial others.”

“Yes, master.”

“Behind a wall of mirrored-plas the warp hides, reflecting back to us our realities. In some places it’s thick; in others a mere wafer of truth separates us from its unnatural influence. Your dreams are one such window: a place where one may submerge one’s head in the Sea of Souls.”

“Yes, master.”

“Tell me, then.”

Stellan seemed uncomfortable, but as the two Space Marines continued their careful trudge across the cavern walkway, the novice unburdened himself.

“It called itself Ghidorquiel.”

“You conversed with this thing of confusion and darkness?”

“No, my master. It spoke only to me: in my cell.”

“You said you were dreaming,” Navarre reminded the novice.

“Of being awake,” Stellan informed him, “in my cell. It spoke. What I took to be lips moved but the voice was in my head.”

“And what lies did this living lie tell you?”

“A host of obscenities, my lord,” Stellan confirmed. “It spoke in languages unknown to me. Hissed and spat its impatience. It claimed my soul as its own. It said my weakness was the light in its darkness.”

“This disturbed you.”

“Of course,” the Lexicanum admitted. “Its attentions disgust me. But this creature called out to me across the expanse of time and space. Am I marked? Am I afflicted?”

“No more than you ever were,” Navarre reassured the novice. “Stellan, all those who bear the burden of powers manifest—the Emperor’s sacred gift—of which he was gifted himself—dream themselves face to face with the daemonscape from time to time. Entities trawl the warp for souls to torment for their wretched entertainment. Our years of training and the mental fortitude that comes of being the Emperor’s chosen protects us from their direct influence. The unbound, the warp-rampant and the witch are all easy prey for such beasts and through them the daemon worms its way into our world. Thank the primarch we need face such things for real with blessed infrequency.”

“Yes, my lord,” Stellan agreed.

“The warp sometimes calls to us: demands our attention. It’s why we did not return to the Slaughterhorn with the others. Such a demand led me beyond the scope of the Lord Apothecary’s recruitment party and down into the frozen bowels of Carcharias. Here.”

Reaching the other side of the cavern, Navarre and Stellan stood on the far end of the walkway, where it led back into the rock face of pulverised masonry. Over the top of the tunnel opening was a single phrase in slap-dash white paint. It was all glyph symbols and runic consonants of ancient Carcharian.

“It’s recent,” Navarre said half to himself. Stellan simply stared at the oddness of the lettering. “Yet its meaning is very old. A phrase that predates the hives, at least. It means, ‘From the single flake of snow—the avalanche.’”

Venturing into the tunnel with force sword held high, Navarre was struck by the patterns on the walls. Graffiti was endemic to the underhive: it was not mere defacement or criminal damage. In the gang-lands above it advertised the presence of dangerous individuals and marked the jealously guarded territories of House-sponsored outfits, organisations and posses. It covered every empty space: the walls, the floor and ceiling, and was simply part of the underworld’s texture! Below that, the graffiti was no less pervasive or lacking in purpose. Tribal totems and primitive paintings performed much the same purpose for the barbarians of the catacombs. Handprints in blood; primordial representations of subterranean mega-vermin in campfire charcoal; symbolic warnings splashed across walls in the phosphorescent, radioactive chemicals that leaked down from the industrial sectors above. The Carcharian savages that haunted the catacombs had little use for words, yet this was all Navarre could see.

The Chief Librarian had been drawn to this place, deep under Hive Niveous, by the stink of psychic intrusion. Emanations. Something large and invasive: something that had wormed its way through the very core of the Carcharian capital. The ghostly glow of Chrysaor revealed it to Navarre in all its mesmerising glory. Graffiti upon graffiti, primitive paintings upon symbols upon markings upon blood splatter. Words. The same words, over and over again, in all orientations, spelt out in letters created in the layered spaces of the hive cacography. Repetitions that ran for kilometres through the arterial maze of tunnels. Like a chant or incantation in ancient Carcharian: they blazed with psychic significance to the Chief Librarian, where to the eyes of the ordinary and untouched, among the background scrawl of the hive underworld, they would not appear to be there at all.

“Stellan! You must see this,” Navarre murmured as he advanced down the winding passage. The Librarian continued: “Psycho-sensitive words, spelt out on the walls, a conditioned instruction of some kind, imprinting itself on the minds of the underhivers. Stellan: we must get word back to the Slaughterhorn—to Fabian—to the Chapter Master. The recruits could be compromised…”

The Chief Librarian turned to find that his novice wasn’t there. Marching back up the passage in the halo of his shimmering force weapon, Navarre found the Lexicanum still standing on the cavern walkway, staring up at the wall above the tunnel entrance with a terrible blankness. “Stellan? Stellan, talk to me.”

At first Navarre thought that one of the deadly gliding worms had got him, infecting the young Space Marine with its toxin. The reality was much worse.

Following the novice’s line of sight, Navarre settled on the white painted scrawl above the tunnel. The ancient insistence, “From the single flake of snow—the avalanche” in fresh paint. Looking back at the Lexicanum, Navarre came to realise that his own novice had succumbed to the psycho-sensitive indoctrination of his recruiting grounds. All the wordsmith had needed was to introduce his subjects to the trigger. A phrase they were unlikely to come across anywhere else. The timing intentional; the brainwashing complete.

Stellan dribbled. He tried to mumble the words on the wall. Then he tried to get his palsied mouth around his master’s name. He failed. The young Space Marine’s mind was no longer his own. He belonged to someone else: to the will of the wordsmith—whoever they were. And not only the novice: countless other recruits over the years, for whom indoctrination hid in the very fabric of their worlds and now in the backs of their afflicted minds. All ready to be activated at a single phrase.

Navarre readied himself. Opened his being to the warp’s dark promise. Allowed its fire to burn within. Slipping Chrysaen from its chest scabbard, the Chief Librarian held both force blades out in front of him. Each master-crafted gladius smoked with immaterial vengeance.

For Stellan, the dangers were much more immediate than brainwashing. Stripped of his years of training and the mental fortitude that shielded an Astartes Librarian from the dangers of the warp, Stellan succumbed to the monster stalking his soul.

Something like shock took the Crimson Consul’s face hostage. The novice looked like he had been seized from below. Somehow, horribly, he had. The Librarian’s head suddenly disappeared down into the trunk of his blue and gold power armour. An oily, green ichor erupted from the neck of the suit.

“Ghidorquiel…” Navarre spat. The Chief Librarian thrust himself at the quivering suit of armour, spearing his Lexicanum through the chest with Chrysaor. The stink of warp-corruption poured from the adamantium shell and stung the psyker’s nostrils. Spinning and kicking the body back along the treacherous walkway, Navarre’s blades trailed ethereal afterglow as they arced and cleaved through the sacred suit.

Howling fury at the materialising beast within the armour, the Chief Librarian unleashed a blast wave of raw warp energy from his chest that lit up the cavern interior and hit the suit like the God-Emperor’s own fist.

The suit tumbled backwards, wrenching and cracking along the walkway until it came to rest, a broken-backed heap. Even then, the armour continued to quiver and snap, rearranging the splintered ceramite plating and moulding itself into something new. On the walkway, Navarre came to behold an adamantium shell, like that of a mollusc, from which slithered an explosion of tentacles. Navarre ran full speed at the daemon while appendages shot for him like guided missiles. Twisting this way and that, but without sacrificing any of his rage-fuelled speed, the Chief Librarian slashed at the beast, his blinding blades shearing off tentacular length and the warp-dribbling tips of the monster feelers.

As the psyker closed with the daemon nautiloid, the warp beast shot its appendages into the fragile walkway’s architecture. Hugging the snapping struts and supports to it, the creature demolished the structure beneath the Crimson Consul’s feet.

Navarre plummeted through the cavern space before smashing down through the frozen surface of the chemical lake below. The industrial waste plunge immediately went to work on the blue and gold of the Librarian’s armour and blistered the psyker’s exposed and freezing flesh. Navarre’s force blades glowed spectroscopic eeriness under the surface and it took precious moments for the Space Marine to orientate himself and kick for the surface. As his steaming head broke from the frozen acid depths of the lake, Navarre’s burn-blurry eyes saw the rest of the walkway collapsing towards him. Ghidorquiel had reached for the cavern wall and, pulling with its unnatural might, had toppled the remainder of the structure.

Again Navarre was hammered to the darkness of the lake bottom, sinking wreckage raining all about the dazed psyker. Somewhere in the chaos Chrysaen slipped from Navarre’s grip. Vaulting upwards, the Space Marine hit the thick ice of the lake surface further across. Clawing uselessly with his gauntlet, skin aflame and armour freezing up, Navarre stared through the ice and saw something slither overhead. Roaring pain and frustration into the chemical darkness, the Chief Librarian thrust Chrysaor through the frozen effluence. Warpflame bled from the blade and across the ice, rapidly melting the crust of the acid bath and allowing the Crimson Consul a moment to suck in a foetid breath and drag himself up the shoreline of shattered masonry.

Ghidorquiel was there, launching tentacles at the psyker. Hairless and with flesh melting from his skull the Librarian mindlessly slashed the appendages to pieces. All the Space Marine wanted was the daemon. The thing dragged its obscene adamantium shell sluggishly away from the lake and the enraged Astartes. Navarre bounded up and off a heap of walkway wreckage, dodging the creature’s remaining tentacles and landing on ceramite. Drawing on everything he had, the Chief Librarian became a conduit of the warp. The raw, scalding essence of immaterial energy poured from his being and down through the descending tip of his force sword. Chrysaor slammed through the twisted shell of Stellan’s armour and buried itself in the daemon’s core. Like a lightning rod, the gladius roasted the beast from the inside out.

Armour steamed. Tentacles dropped and trembled to stillness. The daemon caught light. Leaving the force blade in the monstrous body, Navarre stumbled down from the creature and crashed to the cavern floor himself. The psyker was spent: in every way conceivable. He could do little more than lie there in his own palsy, staring at the daemon corpse lit by Chrysaor’s still gleaming blade. The slack, horrible face of the creature had slipped down out of the malformed armour shell: the same horrific face that the novice Stellan had confronted in his dreams.

Looking up into the inky, cavern blackness, Navarre wrangled with the reality that somehow he had to get out of the catacombs and warn the Slaughterhorn of impending disaster. A slurp drew his face back to the creature; sickeningly it began to rumble with daemonic life and throttled laughter. Fresh tentacles erupted from its flaming sides and wrapped themselves around two of the crooked pillars of rockcrete and metal that were supporting the chamber ceiling and the underhive levels above.

All Navarre could do was watch the monster pull the columns towards its warp-scorched body and roar his frustration as the cavern ceiling quaked and thundered down towards him, with the weight of Hive Niveous behind it.



The Oratorium swarmed with armoured command staff and their attendants. Clarifications and communications shot back and forth across the chamber amongst a hololithic representation of the Slaughterhorn fortress-monastery that crackled disturbance every time an officer or Crimson Consuls serf walked through it.

“They discovered nothing, my lord,” Baldwin informed Artegall in mid-report. “No High Chaplain; no Scout squads; nothing. They’ve scoured the Dry-blind around the Pale Maidens. They’re requesting permission to bring the Thunderhawks back to base.”

“What about Chief Librarian Navarre?” Artegall called across the Oratorium.

“Nothing, sir,” Lord Apothecary Fabian confirmed. “On the vox or from the Librarium.”

“Planetary Defence Force channels and on-scene Enforcers report seismic shift and hive tremors in the capital lower levels,” the Master of the Forge reported, his huge servo-claw swinging about over the heads of the gathering.

“What about the Crimson Tithe?”

“Patching you through to Master Lambert now,” Maximagne Ferro added, giving directions to a communications servitor. The hololithic representation of the Slaughterhorn disappeared and was replaced with the phantasmal static of a dead pict-feed that danced around the assembled Crimson Consuls.

“What the hell is happening up there, Maximagne?” Artegall demanded, but the Master of the Forge was working furiously on the servitor and the brass control station of the runeslab. The static disappeared before briefly being replaced by the Slaughterhorn and then a three-dimensional hololith of the Carcharian system. Artegall immediately picked out their system star and their icebound home world: numerous defence monitors and small frigates were stationed in high orbit. Circling Carcharias were the moons of De Vere, Thusa Major and Thusa Minor between which two strike cruisers sat at anchor. Most distant was Rubessa; the Oratorium could see the battle-barge Crimson Tithe beneath it. Approaching was Hecton Lambert’s strike cruiser, Anno Tenebris. The hololithic image of the Adeptus Astartes strike cruiser suddenly crackled and then disappeared.

The Oratorium fell to a deathly silence.

“Master Maximagne…” Artegall began. The Master of the Forge had a vox-headset to one ear.

“Confirmed, my lord. The Anno Tenebris has been destroyed with all on board.” The silence prevailed. “Sir, the Crimson Tithe fired upon her.”

The gathered Adeptus Astartes looked to their Chapter Master, who, like his compatriots, could not believe what he was hearing.

“Master Faulks,” Artegall began. “It seems you were correct. We are under attack. Status report: fortress-monastery.”

“In lockdown as ordered, sir,” the Master of Ordnance reported with grim pride. “All Crimson Consuls are prepped for combat. All sentry guns manned. Thunderhawks ready for launch on your order. Defence lasers powered to full.”

Captain Roderick presented himself to his Chapter Master: “My lord, the Seventh Company has fortified the Slaughterhorn at the Master of Ordnance’s instruction. Nothing will get through—you can be sure of that.”

“Sir,” Master Maximagne alerted the chamber: “Crimson Tithe is on the move, Carcharias bound, my lord.”

Artegall’s lip curled into a snarl. “Who the hell are they?” he muttered to himself. “What about our remaining cruisers?”

Faulks stepped forwards indicating the cruisers at anchor between the hololithic moons of Thusa Major and Thusa Minor. “At full alert as I advised. The Caliburn and Honour of Hera could plot an intercept course and attempt an ambush…”

“Out of the question,” Artegall stopped Faulks. “Bring the strike cruisers in above the Slaughterhorn at low orbit. I want our defence lasers to have their backs.”

“Yes, my master,” Faulks obeyed.

“Baldwin…”

“Lord?”

“Ready my weapons and armour.”

The Chamber Castellan nodded slowly, “It would be my honour, master.” The Crimson Consuls watched the serf exit, knowing what this meant. Artegall was already standing at the head of the runeslab in a functional suit of crimson and cream power armour and his mantle. He was asking for the hallowed suit of artificer armour and master-crafted bolter that resided in the Chapter Master’s private armoury. The gleaming suit of crimson and gold upon which the honourable history of the Crimson Consuls Chapter was inscribed and inlaid in gemstone ripped from the frozen earth of Carcharias itself. The armour that past Masters had worn when leading the Chapter to war in its entirety: Aldebaran; the Fall of Volsungard; the Termagant Wars.

“Narke.”

“Master Artegall,” the Slaughterhorn’s chief astropath replied from near the Oratorium doors.

“Have you been successful in contacting the Third, Fifth or Eighth Companies?”

“Captain Neath has not responded, lord,” the blind Narke reported, clutching his staff.

Artegall and Talbot Faulks exchanged grim glances. Neath and the 8th Company were only two systems away hunting Black Legion Traitor Marine degenerates in the Sarcus Reaches.

“And Captain Borachio?”

Artegall had received monthly astrotelepathic reports from Captain Albrecht Borachio stationed in the Damocles Gulf. Borachio had overseen the Crimson Consuls contribution to the Damocles Crusade in the form of the 3rd and 5th Companies and had present responsibility for bringing the Tau commander, O’Shovah, to battle in the Farsight Enclaves. Artegall and Borachio had served together in the same squad as battle-brothers and Borachio beyond Baldwin, was what the Chapter Master might have counted as the closest thing he had to a friend.

“Three days ago, my lord,” Narke returned. “You returned in kind, Master Artegall.”

“Read back the message.”

The astropath’s knuckles whitened around his staff as he recalled the message: “…encountered a convoy of heavy cruisers out of Fi’Rios—a lesser sept, the Xenobiologis assure me, attempting to contact Commander Farsight. We took a trailing vessel with little difficulty but at the loss of one Carcharian son: Crimson Consul Battle-Brother Theodoric of the First Squad: Fifth Company. I commend Brother Theodoric’s service to you and recommend his name be added to the Shrine of Hera in the Company Chapel as a posthumous recipient of the Iron Laurel…”

“And the end?” Artegall pushed.

“An algebraic notation in three dimensions, my lord: Kn Ω iii - π iX (Z-) - Aα v.R (!?) 0-1.”

“Coordinates? Battle manoeuvres?” Talbot Faulks hypothesised.

“Regicide notations,” Artegall informed him, his mind elsewhere. For years, the Chapter Master and Albrecht Borachio had maintained a game of regicide across the stars, moves detailed back and forth with their astropathic communiqués. Each had a board and pieces upon which the same game had been played out; Artegall’s was an ancient set carved from lacquered megafelis sabres on a burnished bronze board. Artegall moved the pieces in his mind, recalling the board as it was set up on a rostra by his throne in the Chancelorium. Borachio had beaten him: “Blind Man’s Mate…” the Chapter Master mouthed.

“Excuse me, my lord?” Narke asked.

“No disrespect intended,” Artegall told the astropath. “It’s a form of victory in regicide, so called because you do not see it coming.”

The corridor outside the Oratorium suddenly echoed with the sharp crack of bolter fire. Shocked glances between Artegall and his Astartes officers were swiftly replaced by the assumption of cover positions. The armoured forms took advantage of the runeslab and the walls either side of the Oratorium door.

“That’s inside the perimeter,” Faulks called in disbelief, slapping on his helmet.

“Well inside,” Artegall agreed grimly. Many of the Space Marines had drawn either their bolt pistols or their gladius swords. Only Captain Roderick and the Oratorium sentry sergeants, Bohemond and Ravenscar, were equipped for full combat with bolters, spare ammunition and grenades.

With the muzzle of his squat Fornax-pattern bolt pistol resting on the slab, the Master of Ordnance brought up the hololithic representation of the Slaughterhorn once more. The fortress-monastery was a tessellation of flashing wings, towers, hangars and sections.

“Impossible…” Faulks mumbled.

“The fortress-monastery is completely compromised,” Master Maximagne informed the chamber, cycling through the vox-channels.

Bolt shells pounded the thick doors of the Oratorium. The 7th Company captain held a gauntleted finger to the vox-bead in his ear.

“Roderick,” Artegall called. “What’s happening?”

“My men are being fired upon from the inside of the Slaughterhorn, my lord,” the captain reported bleakly. “By fellow Astartes—by Crimson Consuls, Master Artegall!”

“What has happened to us?” the Chapter Master bawled in dire amazement.

“Later, sir. We have to get you out of here,” Faulks insisted.

“What sections do we hold?” Artegall demanded.

“Elias, we have to go, now!”

“Master Faulks, what do we hold?”

“Sir, small groups of my men hold the Apothecarion and the north-east hangar,” Roderick reported. “The Barbican, some Foundry sections and Cell Block Sigma.”

“The Apothecarion?” Fabian clarified.

“The gene-seed,” Artegall heard himself mutter.

“The Command Tower is clear,” Faulks announced, reading details off the hololith schematic of the monastery. Bolt-rounds tore through the metal of the Oratorium door and drummed into the runeslab column. The hololith promptly died. Ravenscar pushed Narke, the blind astropath, out of his way and poked the muzzle of his weapon through the rent in the door. He started plugging the corridor with ammunition-conserving boltfire.

“We must get the Chapter Master to the Tactical Chancelorium,” Faulks put to Roderick, Maximagne and the sentry sergeants.

“No,” Artegall barked back. “We must take back the Slaughterhorn.”

“Which we can do best from your Tactical Chancelorium, my lord,” Faulks insisted with strategic logic. “From there we have our own vox-relays, tactical feeds and your private armoury: it’s elevated for a Thunderhawk evacuation—it’s simply the most secure location in the fortress-monastery,” Faulks told his master. “The best place from which to coordinate and rally our forces.”

“When we determine who they are,” Fabian added miserably. Artegall and the Master of Ordnance stared at one another.

“Sir!” Ravenscar called from the door. “Coming up on a reload.”

“Agreed,” Artegall told Faulks. “Captain Roderick shall accompany Master Maximagne and Lord Fabian to secure the Apothecarion; the gene-seed must be saved. Serfs with your masters. Sergeants Ravenscar and Bohemond, escort the Master of Ordnance and myself to the Tactical Chancelorium. Narke, you will accompany us. All understood?”

“Yes, Chapter Master,” the chorus came back.

“Sergeant, on three,” Artegall instructed. “One.” Bohemond nodded and primed a pair of grenades from his belt. “Two.” Faulks took position by the door stud. “Three.” Roderick nestled his bolter snug into his shoulder as Faulks activated the door mechanism.

As the door rolled open, Ravenscar pulled away and went about reloading his boltgun. Bohemond’s grenades were then followed by replacement suppression fire from Captain Roderick’s bolter.

The brief impression of crimson and cream armour working up the corridor was suddenly replaced with the thunder and flash of grenades. Roderick was swiftly joined by Bohemond and then Ravenscar, the three Space Marines maintaining a withering arc of fire. The command group filed out of the Oratorium with their Chapter serf attendants, the singular crash of their Fornax-pattern pistols joining in the cacophony.

With Roderick’s precision fire leading the Lord Apothecary and the Master of the Forge down a side passage, Bohemond slammed his shoulder through a stairwell door to lead the other group up onto the next level. The Crimson Consuls soon fell into the surgical-style battle rotation so beloved of Guilliman: battle-brother covering battle-brother; arc-pivoting and rapid advance suppression fire. Ravenscar and Bohemond orchestrated the tactical dance from the front, with Artegall’s pistol crashing support from behind and the Master of Ordnance covering the rear with his own, while half dragging the blind Narke behind him.

Advancing up through the stairwell, spiralling up through the storeys, the Astartes walked up into a storm of iron: armoured, renegade Crimson Consuls funnelled their firepower down at them from a gauntlet above. Unclipping a grenade, Ravenscar tossed it to his brother-sergeant. Bohemond then held the explosive, counting away the precious seconds before launching the thing directly up through the space between the spiral stair rails. The grenade detonated above, silencing the gunfire. A cream and crimson body fell down past the group in a shower of grit. The sergeants didn’t wait, however, bounding up the stairs and into the maelstrom above.

Dead Crimson Consuls lay mangled amongst the rail and rockcrete. One young Space Marine lay without his legs, his helmet half blasted from his face. As blood frothed between the Adeptus Astartes’ gritted teeth the Space Marine stared at the passing group. For Artegall it was too much. Crimson Consuls spilling each other’s sacred blood. Guilliman’s dream in tatters. He seized the grievously wounded Space Marine by his shattered breastplate and shook him violently.

“What the hell are you doing boy?” Artegall roared, but there was no time. Scouts in light carapace armour were spilling from a doorway above, bouncing down one storey to the next on their boot tips, bathing the landings with scattershot from their shotguns. Bolt-rounds sailed past Faulks from below, where renegade Crimson Consuls had followed in the footsteps of their escape. The shells thudded into the wall above the kneeling Artegall and punched through the stumbling astropath, causing the Master of Ordnance to abandon his handicap and force back their assailants with blasts from a recovered bolter.

“Through there!” Faulks bawled above the bolt chatter, indicating the nearest door on the stairwell. Again Bohemond led with his shoulder, blasting through the door into a dormitory hall. The space was plain and provided living quarters for some of the Slaughterhorn’s Chapter serfs. Bright, white light was admitted from the icescape outside through towering arches of plain glass, each depicting a bleached scene from the Chapter’s illustrious history, picked out in lead strips.

Ravenscar handed Artegall his bolter and took a blood-splattered replacement from the stairwell for himself.

“There’s a bondsman’s entrance to the Chancelorium through the dormitories,” Artegall pointed, priming the bolter. Their advance along the window-lined hall had already been ensured by the bolt-riddled door being blasted off its hinges behind them.

“Go!” Faulks roared. The four Space Marines stormed along the open space towards the far end of the hall. The searing light from the windows was suddenly eclipsed, causing the Astartes to turn as they ran. Drifting up alongside the wall, directed in on their position by the renegade Astartes, was the sinister outline of a Crimson Consuls Thunderhawk. As the monstrous aircraft hovered immediately outside, the heavy bolters adorning its carrier compartment unleashed their fury.

All the Space Marines could do was run as the great accomplishments of the Chapter shattered behind them. One by one the windows imploded with antipersonnel fire and fragmentation shells, the Thunderhawk gently gliding along the wall. The rampage caught up with Ravenscar who, lost in the maelstrom of smashed glass and lead, soaked up the heavy bolter’s punishment and in turn became a metal storm of pulped flesh and fragmented armour. At the next window, Artegall felt the whoosh of the heavy bolter rounds streak across his back. Detonating about him like tiny frag grenades, the rounds shredded through his pack and tore up the ceramite plating of his armoured suit. Falling through the shrapnel hurricane, Artegall tumbled to the floor before hitting the far wall.

Gauntlets were suddenly all over him, hauling the Chapter Master in through an open security bulkhead, before slamming the door on the chaos beyond.

By comparison the command tower was silent. Artegall squinted, dazed, through the darkness of the Chancelorium dungeon-antechamber, his power armour steaming and slick with blood, lubricant and hydraulic fluid.

As Artegall came back to his senses, he realised that he’d never seen this part of his fortress-monastery before; traditionally it only admitted Chapter serfs. Getting unsteadily to his feet he joined his battle-brothers in stepping up on the crimson swirl of the marble trapdoor platform. With Sergeant Bohemond and Master Faulks flanking him, the Chapter Master activated the rising floor section and the three Crimson Consuls ascended up through the floor of Artegall’s own Tactical Chancelorium.

“Chapter Master, I’ll begin—”

Light and sound: simultaneous.

Bohemond and Faulks dropped as the backs of their heads came level with the yawning barrels of waiting bolters and their skulls were blasted through the front of their faceplates. Artegall span around but found that the bolters, all black paint and spiked barrels, were now pressed up against the crimson of his chest.

His assailants were Space Marines: Traitor Astartes. The galaxy’s arch-traitors: the Warmaster’s own—the Black Legion. Their cracked and filthy power armour was a dusty black, edged with gargoylesque details of dull bronze. Their helmets were barbed and leering and their torsos a tangle of chains and skulls. With the smoking muzzle of the first still resting against him, the second disarmed the grim Chapter Master, removing his bolter and slipping the bolt pistol and gladius from his belt. Weaponless, he was motioned round.

Before him stood two Black Legion officers. The senior was a wild-eyed captain with teeth filed to sharp points and a flea-infested wolf pelt hanging from his spiked armour. The other was an Apothecary whose once-white armour was now streaked with blood and rust and whose face was shrunken and soulless like a zombie.

“At least do me the honour of knowing who I am addressing, traitor filth,” the Chapter Master rumbled.

This, the Black Legion captain seemed to find amusing.

“This is Lord Vladivoss of the Black Legion and his Apothecary Szekle,” a voice bounced around the vaulted roof of the Chancelorium, but it came from neither Chaos Marine. The Black Legion Space Marines parted to reveal the voice’s owner, sitting in Artegall’s own bone command throne. His armour gleamed a sickening mazarine, embossed with the necks of green serpents that entwined his limbs and whose heads clustered on his chest plate in the fashion of a hydra. The unmistakable iconography of the Alpha Legion. The Space Marine sat thumbing casually through the pages of the Codex Astartes on the Chapter Master’s lectern.

“I don’t reason that there’s any point in asking you that question, renegade,” Artegall snarled.

The copper-skinned giant pushed the anti-gravitic lectern to one side, stood and smiled: “I am Alpharius.”

A grim chuckle surfaced in Artegall. He hawked and spat blood at the Alpha Legionnaire’s feet.

“That’s what I think of that, Alpha,” the Chapter Master told him. “Come on, I want to congratulate you on your trademark planning and perfect execution: Alpharius is but a ghost. My Lord Guilliman ended the scourge—as I will end you, monster.”

The Legionnaire’s smile never faltered, even in the face of Artegall’s threats and insults. It grew as the Space Marine came to a private decision.

“I am Captain Quetzal Carthach, Crimson Consul,” the Alpha Legion Space Marine told him, “and I have come to accept your unconditional surrender.”

“The only unconditional thing you’ll get from me, Captain Carthach, is my unending revulsion and hatred.”

“You talk of ends, Chapter Master,” the Legionnaire said calmly. “Has Guilliman blinded you so that you cannot see your own. The end of your Chapter. The end of your living custodianship, your shred of that sanctimonious bastard’s seed. I wanted to come here and meet you. So you could go to your grave knowing that it was the Alpha Legion that had beaten you; the Alpha Legion who are eradicating Guilliman’s legacy one thousand of his sons at a time; the Alpha Legion who are not only superior strategists but also superior Space Marines.”

Artegall’s lips curled with cold fury.

“Never…”

“Perhaps, Chapter Master, you think there’s a chance for your seed to survive: for future sons of Carcharias to avenge you?” The Alpha Legion giant sat back down in Artegall’s throne. “The Tenth was mine before you even recruited them—as was the Ninth Company before them: you must know that now. I lent you their minds but not their true allegiance: a simple phrase was all that was needed to bring them back to the Alpha Legion fold. The Second and Fourth were easy: that was a mere administrative error, holding the Celebrants over at Nedicta Secundus and drawing the Crimson Consuls to the waiting xenos deathtrap that was Phaethon IV.”

Artegall listened to the Alpha Legionnaire honour himself with the deaths of his Crimson Consul brothers. Listened, while the Black Legion Space Marine looked down the spiked muzzle of his bolter at the back of the Chapter Master’s head.

“The Seventh fell fittingly at the hands of their brothers, foolishly defending your colourfully-named fortress-monastery from a threat that was within rather than without. The Eighth, well, Captain Vladivoss took care of those in the Sarcus Reaches—and now the good captain has earned his prize. Szekle,” the Alpha Legion Space Marine addressed the zombified Chaos Space Marine. “The Apothecarion is now in our hands. You may help yourself to the Crimson Consuls’ remaining stocks of gene-seed. Feel free to extract progenoids from loyalists who fought in our name. Fear not, they will not obstruct you. In fact, the completion of the procedure is their signal to turn their weapons on themselves. Captain Vladivoss, you may then return to Lord Abaddon with my respects and your prize—to help replenish the Black Legion’s depleted numbers in the Eye of Terror.”

Vladivoss bowed, while Szekle fidgeted with dead-eyed anticipation.

“Oh, and captain,” Carthach instructed as Artegall was pushed forwards towards the throne, “leave one Legionnaire, please.”

With Captain Vladivoss, his depraved Apothecary and their Chaos Space Marine sentry descending through the trapdoor on the marble platform with Bohemond and Faulk’s bodies, Carthach came to regard the Chapter Master once again.

“The Revenant Rex was pure genius. That I even admit to myself. What I couldn’t have hoped for was the deployment of your First Company Terminator veterans. That made matters considerably easier down the line. You should receive some credit for that, Chapter Master Artegall,” Carthach grinned nastily.

A rumble like distant thunder rolled through the floor beneath Artegall’s feet. Carthach seemed suddenly excited. “Do you know what that is?” he asked. The monster didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he activated the controls in the bone armrest of Artegall’s throne. The vaulted ceiling of the Tactical Chancelorium—which formed the pinnacle of the Command Tower—began to turn and unscrew, revealing a circular aperture in the roof that grew with the corkscrew motion of the Tower top.

The Alpha Legionnaire shook his head in what could have been mock disappointment.

“Missed it: that was your Slaughterhorn’s defence lasers destroying the strike cruisers you ordered back under their protection. Poetic. Or perhaps just tactically predictable. Ah, now look at this.”

Carthach pointed at the sky and with the Chaos Space Marine’s bolter muzzle still buried in the back of his skull, Artegall felt compelled to look up also. To savour the reassuring bleakness of his home world’s sky for what might be the last time.

“There they are, see?”

Artegall watched a meteorite shower in the sky above: a lightshow of tiny flashes. “I brought the Crimson Tithe back to finish off any remaining frigates or destroyers. Don’t want surviving Crimson Consuls running to the Aurora Chapter with my strategies and secrets; the Auroras and their share of Guilliman’s seed may be my next target. Anyway the beautiful spectacle you see before you is no ordinary celestial phenomenon. This is the Crimson Consuls Sixth Company coming home, expelled from the Crimson Tithe’s airlocks and falling to Carcharias. The battle-barge I need—another gift for the Warmaster. It has the facilities on board to safely transport your seed to the Eye of Terror, where it is sorely needed for future Black Crusades. Who knows, perhaps one of your line will have the honour of being the first to bring the Warmaster’s justice to Terra itself? In Black Legion armour and under a traitor’s banner, of course.”

Artegall quaked silent rage, the Chapter Master’s eyes dropping and fixing on a spot on the wall behind the throne.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Carthach informed him. “As I have all along, Crimson Consul. You’re pinning your hopes on Captain Borachio. Stationed in the Damocles Gulf with the Third and Fifth Companies… Did you find my reports convincing?”

Artegall’s eyes widened.

“Captain Borachio and his men have been dead for two years, Elias.”

Artegall shook his head.

“The Crimson Consuls are ended. I am Borachio,” the Alpha revealed, soaking up the Chapter Master’s doom, “and Carthach… and Alpharius.” The captain bent down to execute the final, astrotelepathically communicated move on Artegall’s beautifully carved Regicide board. Blind Man’s Mate.

Artegall’s legs faltered. As the Crimson Consul fell to his knees before Quetzal Carthach and the throne, Artegall mouthed a disbelieving, “Why?”

“Because we play the Long Game, Elias…” the Alpha Legionnaire told him.

Artegall hoped that the Black Legion’s attention span didn’t extend half as far as their Alpha Legion compatriots. The Space Marine threw his head back, cutting his scalp against the bolter’s muzzle. The weapon smacked the Chaos Space Marine in the throat—the Black Legion savage still staring up into the sky, watching the Crimson Consuls burn in the upper atmosphere.

Artegall surged away from the stunned Chaos Space Marine and directly at Carthach. The Alpha Legion Marine snarled at the sudden, suicidal surprise of it all, snatching for his pistol.

Artegall awkwardly changed direction, throwing himself around the other side of the throne. The Black Legion Space Marine’s bolter fire followed him, mauling the throne and driving the alarmed Carthach even further back. Artegall sprinted for the wall, stopping and feeling for the featureless trigger that activated the door of the Chapter Master’s private armoury. As the Chaos Space Marine’s bolter chewed up the Chancelorium wall, Artegall activated the trigger and slid the hidden door to one side. He felt hot agony as the Chaos Space Marine’s bolter found its mark and two rounds crashed through his ruined armour.

Returned to his knees, the Chapter Master fell in through the darkness of the private armoury and slid the reinforced door shut from the inside. In the disappearing crack of light between the door and wall, Artegall caught sight of Quetzal Carthach’s face once more dissolve into a wolfish grin.

Throwing himself across the darkness of the armoury floor, the felled Crimson Consul heaved himself arm over agonising arm through the presentation racks of artificer armour: racks from which serfs would ordinarily select the individual plates and adornments and dress the Chapter Master at his bequest. Artegall didn’t have time for such extravagance. Crawling for the rear of the armoury, he searched for the only item that could bring him peace. The only item seemingly designed for the single purpose of ending Quetzal Carthach, the deadliest in the Chapter’s long history of deadly enemies. Artegall’s master-crafted boltgun.

Reaching for the exquisite weapon, its crimson-painted adamantium finished in gold and decorated with gemstones from Carcharias’ rich depths, Artegall faltered. The bolt-rounds had done their worst and the Chapter Master’s fingers failed to reach the boltgun in its cradle. Suddenly there was sound and movement in the darkness. The hydraulic sigh of bionic appendages thumping into the cold marble with every step.

“Baldwin!” Artegall cried out. “My weapon, Baldwin… the boltgun.”

The Chamber Castellan slipped the beautiful bolter from its cradle and stomped around to his master. “Thank the primarch you’re here,” Artegall blurted.

In the oily blackness of the private armoury, the Chapter Master heard the thunk of the priming mechanism. Artegall tensed and then fell limp. He wasn’t being handed the weapon: it was being pointed at him through the gloom. Whatever had possessed the minds of his Neophyte recruits in the Carcharian underhive had also had time to worm its way into the Chamber Castellan, whose responsibility it was to accompany the recruitment parties on their expeditions. Without the training or spiritual fortitude of an Astartes, Baldwin’s mind had been vulnerable. He had become a Regicide piece on a galactic board, making his small but significant move, guided by an unknown hand. Artegall was suddenly glad of the darkness. Glad that he couldn’t see the mask of Baldwin’s kindly face frozen in murderous blankness.

Closing his eyes, Elias Artegall, Chapter Master and last of the Crimson Consuls, wished the game to end.