The Vensine Crusade - The Thirds Alliance with the Fallen and Ssylth

[MolotovKraken]

Phoenicus Peak

The interior of the nidus was pitch dark, but Gydrael could see perfectly with his enhanced vision. The architecture of the monastery broke through the crusted mass of resinous matter that the xenos had used to build their nest. The mournful face of a female saint was almost buried in tendrils of alien secretion. Fragments of fallen chitin covered the floor. Gydrael kneeled down and picked up a smooth, pale shard from the debris. It was a fragment of an eggshell, the curve suggesting it had been the size of a man’s torso before it had broken. ‘They’re hatching already,’ said Gydrael. ‘Then we must be swift,’ replied Decurius.

The creature lurking in the makeshift shrine, its four brawny arms holding a pair of swords and a rusted autogun, was the first alert sslyth that Gydraelhad seen since entering the nidus. It wore a harness of leather straps that clamped crude armour plates around its shoulders, chest and abdomen, and a necklace of fingers and dried-out eyeballs on a strip of leather was tied around its neck. With its muscular tail coiled underneath it, it reared up taller than Gydrael. He could see strips of purple-dyed cloth tied around its four biceps, embroidered with golden thread that seemed at odds with the creature’s savagery. The ssylth stood before the altar of the shrine, which was little more than a heap of battle spoils – severed heads, captured lasguns, a silvery nest of ident-tags, a bowl of human hands – set in front of a carved wooden idol. The sensor-pits along the ssylth’s jaw line opened up as they registered the changes in air pressure and temperature that heralded Gydrael’s approach. It was impossible for anyone to sneak up on an alert sslyth – many men of the Astra Militarum on Kolagar had tried. The sslyth whirled around and hissed, opening its mouth wide. Twin crescent-shaped fangs glinted with venom in its upper jaw. By the time it raised its autogun, Gydrael had lunged across the shrine and was within sword range. The Dark Angel brought his broadsword around in a cut to the abdomen – the creature instinctively blocked with its gun and the blade’s power field lit the space up like a bolt of lightning. The sslyth spat and hissed as its weapon was reduced to a shower of metal shards.

Two of the sslyth’s hands thudded, severed, to the floor. The creature hissed, more in anger than in pain, as Gydrael focused on the third alien, which was lining up a shot at him with a boltgun. The bolter it carried was larger than those sometimes issued to the officers of the Astra Militarum. It was sized for transhuman hands, but was of an older mark than anything in the Dark Angels’ armoury. The alien was strongenough to wield it, but it had none of the marksmanship of a Space Marine. The first shot flew wide and Gydrael lunged at the sslyth, ramming the point of the broadsword home. These sslyth wore segments of armour salvaged from the Guardsmen of the Astra Militarum, sawn and hammered into shape and held in place by leather harnesses. They were no good against a powered blade. The armour split and the sword transfixed the creature through the stomach. Gydrael felt it sag as he withdrew the blade, knowing the alien’s spine was cut through and it would be paralysed before it hit the floor.

Gydrael studied the altar for a moment before moving on. The carving above the heap of spoils was of an obscene figure composed of mismatched body parts and orifices. It had a heavy, fleshy realism in spite of the crudeness of the wooden sculpture. In the centre of the sculpture’s face was a sigil – a circle and two crescents. Gydrael had seen it before, carved into the flesh of maddened cultists or scrawled on the walls of defiled places of worship. Gydrael picked the sslyth’s bolter off the floor. Though it was a Space Marine’s weapon it had a patina of filth and corrosion that no battle-brother would ever tolerate. It was a pattern that no forge world or Chapter armoury had produced for thousands of years, and its casing had once been decorated with golden scrollwork that was now peeling off. ‘I see evidence of worship,’ said Gydrael. ‘Devotion to a warp power. To the Lord of Unspeakable Pleasures.’ Hasdrubal snorted. ‘It is no surprise. The sslyth are predisposed to perversion.’ ‘And they have had contact with the Emperor’s Children,’ said Gydrael. ‘Then their resurgence is no coincidence,’ said Decurius. ‘The Emperor’s Children hope to seed this world with them and undo all that the Astra Militarum achieved. That is why this phylum must be exterminated, brethren. That is why we are here.’

Throughout the Vensine Sector, a massive upwelling of separatism, inspired and coordinated by the traitors of the Emperor’s Children Legion, had gained a hold upon a dozen major Imperial worlds and almost a hundred lesser planets. The Inquisition suspected the Emperor’s Children had laid the groundwork for the uprising for generations, planting deviant weaknesses in the bloodlines of the Imperial aristocracy and seeding populations with folklore and prophecy that spoke of a bloody revolution. Heretic militias had seized planetary capitals. Saboteurs had scuttled Imperial battleships and assassins had murdered priests and lawmakers in their beds. The Emperor’s Children themselves had been seen leading sermons that devolved into rites of excess and pain. Inquisitorial agents had been turned, obfuscating the full scale of the Traitor Legion’s infiltration of the sector. The Imperium’s response was inevitable: a crusade that brought millions of Astra Militarum Guardsmen, dozens of ships of the Imperial Navy and a handful of Space Marine strike forces to the Vensine sector. Kolagar had been one of the first planets seized in a cruel and brutal campaign fought through its subequatorial jungles and across the steppes of its northern continent. The Astra Militarum had committed whole regiments to fighting the combination of corrupted native troops and cultist militias that infested the planet, and after a full year of fighting, Kolagar was subjugated. Its hastily constructed airfields were converted into a staging post for campaigns launched against the nearby rebel worlds, and the planet becamea link in the chain feeding men and starships into the front lines of what would become the Vensine Crusade

 

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It was no great surprise to learn the Emperor’s Children were working directly with the sslyth, fostering in them strange new forms of worship and supplying them with weaponry. A threat on Kolagar, a world already supposed to be conquered, would distract the Imperial forces from expanding the Vensine Crusade and pushing back the heretics from the edges of their domain. It would tie up whole regiments in a campaign of extermination to flush out the resilient sslyth warclades one brood at a time, and turn the campaign’s first victory into an unending cycle of massacre and reprisal. But there was another way to fight the xenos. Each nidus was too deep to be struck from the air, and too labyrinthine to be assaulted by a regular ground force. But one Space Marine, more than the equal of any sslyth and with the support of the Ordo, could reach the heart of the nest alone. And if he was equipped not just with gun or blade but with an infectious agent gene-keyed to the sslyth nervous system, he could wipe out an entire nidus.

There were well over a hundred eggs in the chamber. Several more chambers branched off, and others off them in turn – Nidus Tertiam contained tens of thousands of eggs, perhaps hundreds of thousands, each one a new enemy of the Imperium. The virus bomb would kill a good proportion of them instantly, but the infection cascade would wipe out every single one.

At the lowermost level of the nidus. Gydrael backed against the wall and glanced into the next chamber. The noise was coming not from a sslyth, but from a Space Marine. Gydrael sighted down his plasma pistol. Power armour could turn most mundane blows, but a well-placed plasma blast would bore through ceramite. Gydrael sized up the shot even as his mind told him that something was not right. Gydrael had been ready to face a traitor of the Emperor’s Children. They had been rarely sighted and even more seldom fought by Imperial forces, but it made sense for them to be here to watch over their xenos allies – the sslyth were, after all, rarely beholden to any master for long without the constant threat of punishment. But he was not looking now at the polished purple and gilt colours of the Emperor’s Children. Instead, the Space Marine ahead of him wore black armour with a bare steel trim. He wore a tattered cloak of scaled sslyth hide over his armour, and Gydrael glimpsed the remnants of the Imperial Aquila on one shoulder guard. The symbol had been gouged and defaced.
...
He was watching the Space Marine slowly turn to face him. He wore no helm, and his face was long and drawn, with greyish skin and sunken eyes. He had the appearance of both extreme age and strength, with the sallowness of a greatly extended lifespan. On his face was a charred handprint, running from the cheek to one temple and the edge of his half-shaven scalp. A smile spread across his face as he looked Gydrael up and down. Gydrael could have opened fire, but he knew the Space Marine wouldevade the shot and close in for the kill. Though he had never seen his opponent in the flesh, Gydrael recognised the heraldry of the enemy’s armour, and especially the mark on his face. The memory of them rose from the regimented archive of his mind, throwing his carefully ordered consciousness into disarray. ‘Well met, younger brother,’ said the Space Marine with a smile. Gydrael holstered his plasma pistol and drew his broadsword. ‘Then you’re not one for conversation,’ said the Space Marine. ‘A shame. I wait so long to see a familiar face, and they never want to speak of old times.’ ‘Brother Gydrael,’ came Decurius’ voice over the vox. ‘Report. What is your–’ Gydrael silenced the sergeant by cutting the channel link. Every part of him was focused on the figure before him. ‘Well?’ said the Space Marine. He drew his own weapon, a one-handed power sword with a long, slender blade. It was an archaic pattern that had fallen out of favour with the Chapter’s officers long ago. The air crackled and spat around it as the power field activated. ‘Are we going to do this?’

No one else would ever understand. Gydrael told himself that as he parried a speculative slash from the Fallen, circling around to put the restraining frame between himself and his foe. ‘I know what you are,’ said Gydrael. ‘Do you?’ said the Fallen. ‘Your mortal ancestors were not yet born when I learned the truth. What I have seen, you would have to dig through ten thousand years of lies to uncover. I think you know very little, younger brother.’ ‘I am not your brother, Averamus,’ said Gydrael. The Fallen smiled, distorting the scar on his face. ‘So, I’m famous?’ ‘You have the Mark of Scorn upon you,’ said Gydrael. ‘Where the Primarch laid his hand as you swore your first oaths of loyalty, there the mark of your treachery remains. How many times have you sought to use synthetic flesh or bionics to mask it? But it always comes back. I have learned of Averamus, and how he fled from justice. The shame of your survival besmirches us all. I will clean it away.’ ‘I had not credited my former brethren with so rich an imagination,’ said Averamus. ‘What fascinating tales they spin.’ ‘Do not speak of them, traitor,’ growled Gydrael, sizing up Averamus. The Fallen was an expert in his sword form, and Gydrael had never trained against it – fast, slender blades like Averamus’ were long gone from the Chapter’s armoury. He had faced foes with similar weapons and fighting styles, but never a Space Marine. The warrior grinned. ‘You do not know what treachery is.’ A cut to the head would be met with a slice to the gut. Gydrael might connect, but by the time his own blade hit home he would be disembowelled, even through his armour. A thrust could be turned aside too easily and answered with a close strike inside Gydrael’s guard. The broadsword could cut right through Averamus, but the Fallen was too quick to be caught in its arc. ‘You serve the Emperor’s Children,’ said Gydrael. He was buying seconds, goading the Fallen into defending his existence while he searched for a way to land the killing blow. ‘Are you just the nursemaid to the sslyth? Or did you broker their subservience to the Traitor Legion? You kneel to the enemies of mankind. I need no other definition of treachery.’ ‘You have no idea what is happening in this system,’ said Averamus. The two of them were still circling, Averamus looking for his own way in past Gydrael’s broadsword. ‘You think I am a blind follower of those deviants? I will bring down empires of the warp that your kind never even knew existed. I will send the enemies of every human screaming into the abyss. I do it from the shadows, from the very throne room of those I will destroy. You can try to stop me, little brother, but I have been on this path for thousands of years and my will is stronger than yours.’ ‘You lie,’ said Gydrael. ‘Maybe I do,’ said Averamus, ‘maybe not. But you are going to die here, so you will never know.’

 

[MolotovKraken]

‘You cannot kill me,’ snarled Gydrael as the two grappled face to face. ‘Not while my duty is yet undone.’‘I don’t have to kill you,’ said Averamus. He smiled again. The Mark of Scorn was livid red against his pallid face. ‘He will.’ Something huge slammed against the other side of the chamber wall. Stones dislodged and a clatter of rubble fell. Gydrael let go of Averamus and rolled away, bringing his sword up to ward off the opportunistic slash that Averamus aimed at his neck. Gydrael jumped to his feet and put two long strides between himself and his enemy, ready to face the second threat. The wall of the chamber collapsed, spilling a drift of broken stone into the chamber. A massive, blocky shape stepped through, and Gydrael registered the purple colours of the armour plating, the gilded eagle’s wing worn in mockery of Imperial heraldry.

It was a Dreadnought of the Emperor’s Children. It was easily twice Gydrael’s height. Both its arms ended in massive fists and the armoured sarcophagus was as impenetrable as a tank. The Dreadnought’s heraldry was of a quartered human body, depicted with loving skill on the frontal armour. The quartered corpse was rendered in sculpted gold on one leg plate, and again on the left shoulder unit. Through a vision slit in the middle of the sarcophagus came a sickly green glow, and those parts of the Dreadnought not covered in gold plate were painted in an obscenely sumptuous purple. It looked as much a monument to excess as a war machine. The images of a profane feast were worked into the golden sculptures – plates heaped with human heads, chalices filled from the slit bellies of spitted bodies, bunches of severed hands and torsos hung like sides of cattle. Gydrael’s mind dissected and filed away every detail as he sized up this new and enormous threat. Most men would only see the Dreadnought’s huge size and brutal crushing fists, but Gydrael saw it all. The detail you miss will kill you. Therefore, miss nothing. ‘Ancient Xezukoth,’ exclaimed Averamus. ‘I promised you a new plaything! And this one will take some real punishment before it breaks!’ ‘Are you Ferrus Manus?’ said the Dreadnought, its voice a bass rumble blaring from the vox-casters mounted on its hull. Its power fists clenched and unclenched as its visual sensors focused on Gydrael. ‘No, I saw him beheaded by the Perfected One. Are you Guilliman? No, I saw his throat slit. But you are close enough.’

The Dreadnought advanced on Gydrael. It swung a power fist and Gydrael ducked it. The air was seared by the power field crackling above him. The second fist surged down and Gydrael rolled out of the way. A dark chuckling came from the vox-casters. ‘Run!’ said Xezukoth. ‘Dance for me!’ ‘Good luck, little brother!’ called out Averamus as he retreated from the chamber, leaving Gydrael facing the Dreadnought alone. Gydrael could have pursued him, but he would not have made it halfway across the room with the Dreadnought at his back. He crushed down his fury, denying it full run of his mind. He would find Averamus and kill him. That duty had not disappeared – it still burned as bright and weighed as heavy. But to fulfil it, he had to get past Ancient Xezukoth. The Dreadnought wheeled and crunched through the rubble, seeking to run Gydrael down and crush him underfoot. Gydrael ducked back through the hole through which he and the Fallen had entered, back into the hatchery. Eggs crunched messily under his feet. The nidus was full of sslyth wailing. ‘I taste the fires of Isstvan!’ cried Ancient Xezukoth. ‘I know the colours you wear. You are the Emperor’s vermin! You are he who would deny the galaxy its perfection! Do you see my Lord Fulgrim watching? I shall make of you a work of art worthy of his notice.’ The sarcophagus was armoured too thickly for the plasma pistol to penetrate. The eye slit looked like a weak spot but Gydrael knew something of how the Dark Angels’ own Dreadnoughts were constructed, and the slit was no more than a decoration to hint at the human being interred inside the machine. Ancient Xezukoth, the crippled and evidently insane III Legion traitor inside the Dreadnought, was well protected and without an obvious weak spot to reach him.

The Dreadnought’s decoration was covered in the imagery of debauchery. It was suggestive of a foul ritual of consumption. Before he had been interred in the Dreadnought, Xezukoth must have partaken of such feasting. The Emperor’s Children were seekers of new and obscene experiences, as demanded of them by the worship of Slaanesh. It was through the profanefeast that this one had found such experience. And he still did. Gydrael glanced at the front of the sarcophagus even as he ducked another blow and leapt back from another. Would this traitor forgo the ritual of the feast, just because he was locked inside a ceramite-plated war machine? Of course not. Nothing would stop him from slaking his foul desires. And outside the Dreadnought his nervous system would not function – he would be blind and deaf, and stripped of all sense of touch and taste. There was a way in. Xezukoth had to be fed. He saw it then – a hairline seam in the gilding around the front of the sarcophagus. It described a square below the false vision slit, almost invisible among the sculpted visions of dismemberment. ‘You are not Ferrus Manus,’ growled the Dreadnought. ‘You are not Guilliman. I know the winged dagger on your shoulder. You are the Lion! You are the shadowed one! Oh what joy, for I shall feast upon the flesh of the Angel!’

Gydrael would have one shot before the Dreadnought realised what was happening. As insane as he was, Xezukoth was still a Space Marine and he would still know when an enemy sensed a weakness. Gydrael put his head down and ran at Xezukoth, leaping up onto the front of the sarcophagus. He wielded his sword one-handed, finding a handhold among the carvings with his other hand. He drew his sword back. It would be easier with a short blade, one designed to stab and punch, but his broadsword would have to do. All the lumbering Xezukoth had to do was reach up and grab Gydrael with his great power fist, ripping him off and crushing him. Gydrael had only seconds at most. Gydrael rammed the blade into the top of the section of armour. The blade slid into the seam, forcing it open with a burst of its power field. The hatch sprang open, creating a square black mouth in the centre of the Dreadnought’s front armour. The opening was lined with metallic grinding blades, still stained and clotted with gore. A whole body could be forced into there, reduced to sludge by the grinders. It was through this that Xezukoth could be fed his ritual feasts, churned up and siphoned directly down his gullet. Gydrael drew back his arm again, and drove the whole blade into the opening.He felt resistance as his sword stripped the teeth from the grinders. He rammed it home again and this time the blade slid all the way. Gydrael knew well the feeling of muscle and bone giving way beneath his sword’s blade. He felt it then as the sword punctured the flesh concealed by the sarcophagus. He felt organic matter parting, before the tip of the broadsword lodged in the power plant at the back of the war machine. A strangled, gurgling cry came from the vox-casters. Gydrael felt a wave of savage satisfaction as he twisted the blade. The Dreadnought sank down, hydraulics hissing. One arm fell impotently to its side, cracking against the rock of the mountainside. The other waved aimlessly before Xezukoth lost control of it and it fell limp and useless too. Gydrael pulled the blade out. He dropped to the ground and the Dreadnought slumped to one side. Blood trickled from the hatchway

 

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Many thousands of sslyth died in the assault on Phoenicus Peak. The two virus bombs wiped out most of the hatcheries and devastated the warclade that was using the mountains as its breeding ground and base of operations. The virus did not achieve the pandemic levels required to wipe out the sslyth population entirely. The sslyth in Nidus Tertiam escaped the worst of the infection and so a segment of the population remained uninfected before the fast-killing virus burned itself out. They fled into the jungle, and Imperial intelligence lost track of them among the river ways and swamps of the Blackwine Delta. The Deathwatch kill team was withdrawn from Kolagar. The task of exterminating the sslyth was given to the hard-pressed squads of jungle fighters drawn from the Astra Militarum’s death world veterans. The intelligence that the sslyth were allies of the Emperor’s Children was passed up the Imperial chain of command.

Gydrael watched the servitors on board the Inquisitorial cutter buckling down the sarcophagus of Ancient Xezukoth. The Dreadnought had been salvaged from the mountainside as the cutter descended to pick up the kill team, after helping to cover Thorne and Hasdrubal’s exfiltration from the other two sslyth nests. The Ordos could have much to learn from the Dreadnought, and if nothing else, it denied the ancient war machine to the Emperor’s Children.