Armour of Faith Read online

  Here, Alandris the Deathshaper leaped high into the air, carving his way through the pilot of a flying chariot that burned with blue flames, before skipping his way across a flight of manta-like beasts that followed in the chariot’s wake, stabbing each with one of his paired mirrorblades as he bounded from their predatory forms.

  There, Althyra slipped from shadow to shadow, her skills defying mortal comprehension, bringing herself closer to a towering, disease-ridden warrior who directed the march of a host of smaller creatures ten thousand strong, each clutching a misshapen sword dripping with virulent fluid and oozing blood and pus from a dozen wounds across their bodies. The creature didn’t see Althyra coming. She appeared behind it, coming from the shadow cast by a great flapping banner marked with sigils that made Kharanath’s soul itch. With a single line of monofilament wire, Althyra took the enemy leader’s head from its shoulders. It was to little avail – there were a dozen more to take its place, and the march of the plagueridden soldiers continued unabated.

  And all the while, Kharanath slew, his spear driving through enemy chests, bursting from their backs in showers of corrupt blood and slicing limbs from bodies. And all the while, he waited for a response from Elthaenneath. But there came none.

  ‘Elthaenneath?’ he sent again, allowing concern and a touch of panic to colour the message. Still nothing. He spoke aloud. ‘Althyra, I have lost contact with my brother. We must get below. If he is lost, we all are.’

  She was suddenly at his side, clenching and unclenching the fist that controlled her monofilament wire spinner. ‘Then we go, my lord. The other Swords?’

  Kharanath hesitated. If the daemons had overwhelmed Elthaenneath’s guard, the Seventeen Swords would be of immeasurable use. Yet they were direly needed up here. He shook his head. ‘They stay.’

  Althyra nodded. ‘Then let us go.’ She bounded away towards the hidden entrance to the caverns, some kilometres distant, away from the bulk of the fighting. Kharanath followed. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t.

  THREE

  The wind rushed around Sentina, deafening and dizzying. There was no up or down as he fell, no sense of location, time or distance. He remembered – barely – an almighty explosion, immense heat and deafening noise, and the Stormraven losing control. He remembered dropping, and being grabbed by a great fist. Oenomaus. The young battle-brother had pulled him onto his huge shoulder guard. And now they were falling, the wind buffeting them as they tumbled through the mist. The Chaplain heard – barely – a bleat over his vox-link and blink-clicked the volume to maximum.

  ‘…ryone… ke it… plan…’

  It was Aeroth’s voice, and the Chaplain struggled to hear what the sergeant was saying. ‘Repeat, sergeant!’ he shouted, his voice booming but still almost lost to his ears as the wind rushed and whipped against his helm.

  ‘…aid…ve a plan…’

  Sentina growled. Aeroth had a plan. How very reassuring. He focused all his efforts on locating the other Centurions. His helm display blinked with their transponder icons, though it was clearly struggling to keep up with the pace of their descent, altitude markers flicking digits quicker than even his enhanced eyes could follow.

  He struggled to make sense of where they were in relation to him. Three-dimensional navigation was, he believed, something better left to pilots. As best he could tell, they were all within twenty metres of one another horizontally, but at differing altitudes. He shouted into the vox again.

  ‘Your plan had better be good, sergeant, or this is going to be a short and painful mission.’

  Aeroth couldn’t make out exactly what the Chaplain had shouted over the vox, but he caught the general idea. He muttered a quiet response, knowing it would never be heard.

  ‘I hope it works as well, Manet…’

  The plan was simple, but not exactly one that was Codex-approved. For some reason, the wisdom held within that mighty tome didn’t include what to do to survive a fall of several kilometres without jump packs, so some degree of improvisation was required. If the worthies of the Chapter objected, Aeroth would simply be glad to be alive to hear it. Assuming the plan worked and whatever waited for them on the surface of Orath didn’t kill them.

  With a thought, Aeroth brought the controls for his grav-amp up on his helm display. The arcane piece of technology that was built into his left arm had no function on its own; its purpose was to enhance and regulate the gravitational effects of the cannon slung under his right limb.

  Grav-weapons fired a focused graviton beam that created a temporary increase in the Newtonian force around a target, crumpling armour and mangling organic tissue. The grav-amp allowed the user to increase or decrease the power of the created anomaly.

  Or reverse it.

  Aeroth manipulated the controls with a series of gestures and blinks. What he was doing wasn’t quite what the weapon was designed for, but it would work. It would have to.

  As he completed the adjustments, warning lights blinked red on his display. He was sure alarms were sounding as well, and he silently thanked the Emperor that he couldn’t hear them. He dismissed the warnings and, with a grunt of effort, forced his right arm to move against the onrushing wind, pointing directly down. He did some calculations, aiming at a point past Brother Iova, who would be the first to know – in spectacular and messy fashion – if the plan failed.

  He closed his eyes and fired, holding down the trigger and sending a steady stream of gravitic particles towards the rapidly approaching ground.

  All of Sentina’s attention was on the rapidly spooling numbers on the altimeter. It took him almost a full second to realise that they were slowing. And if the numbers were slowing, so too was their descent. They slowed further as they approached zero. The rushing of the wind lessened and details began to resolve. He could see the ground coming closer, but as though they were falling through the low gravity of an airless moon. He didn’t know what was causing this, but he wasn’t going to complain.

  Oenomaus had obviously caught on, orienting himself so that his feet were to the ground. It was still going to be a rough landing, but the Centurion warsuits were made for combat deployment from a hovering gunship. They could survive this.

  The impact rattled every bone in Sentina’s body. He felt teeth crack as they ground together and his helm display flashed up with damage runes. He scanned and dismissed them. Nothing that would impair him too badly.

  He felt another impact as Oenomaus released his grip on him and he fell from the Centurion’s shoulder guard to the ground. For a moment, he lay there. His enhanced physiology allowed him to avoid the worst effects of dizziness and nausea, but his head spun nonetheless.

  ‘No weakness,’ he muttered and pulled himself to his feet, muscles protesting. He pulled up a medical analysis on his display. It reported some minor bone fractures, already healing, and some torn muscles and ligaments. He would be in pain for a while, but he would live. He looked up, and saw stars falling to earth. No, he corrected himself, not stars. The remains of the gunship. It was gone then. Isachaar was likely dead. The rest of the squad, though…

  He opened the vox. ‘Squad Aeroth, report.’

  There was an almost imperceptible pause before the responses came. Iova, Aeroth, Lentulus. They had been separated by the fall, landing some distance apart. Only Oenomaus was silent. Sentina looked around, taking in his surroundings. He was in a field, the crops rotting and dying. A green mist emanated from them, from the ground itself, rising upwards, obscuring vision beyond a few metres. Nothing his helm’s sensor suite wouldn’t be able to compensate for. The younger warrior’s Centurion suit stood silent and motionless beside him.

  ‘Oenomaus,’ he said, using his external vox-casters. ‘Brother, are you–’

  ‘Present and correct, Brother-Chaplain,’ boomed the Centurion’s voice. ‘My apologies. The impact reset my systems. The warsuit is powering up now.’

  ‘No apologies necessary, brother. Are you capable of doing your duty?’
>
  ‘I will be in a moment.’

  ‘Then do so. That is all the Emperor requires of us.’

  ‘And we can start now,’ came Iova’s voice over the vox. It was tinged with something unusual for a Space Marine. In a lesser being, Sentina might have called it panic. ‘Hostiles converging on my position.’

  Sentina was already moving as he asked for details, his helm display showing Iova’s location relative to his own. ‘Plague victims?’

  ‘Negative, Brother-Chaplain. I can confirm daemonic presence on Orath. Repeat, confirm presence of daemons.’

  Sentina broke into a run, sprinting in the direction of the heavy bolter fire that now echoed through the green mist shrouding the plains. That was where Iova was fighting. Daemons, he had said. The situation had obviously deteriorated rapidly on Orath if the immaterial servants of the Ruinous Powers were able to force their way across the veil. He activated his crozius arcanum, the crack of the energy field igniting and the hum of the generator as reassuring a sound as he could imagine. With the threat of daemons ahead, the eagle-headed maul was something solid he could hold onto. More solid than his faith in himself anyway.

  As he ran, he tried to raise the second Stormraven, which carried the other half of Aeroth’s squad. There was no response. Out of range or, more likely, destroyed. And with the rest of Captain Galenus’s warriors half a world away, Sentina’s small force of Ultramarines could expect no help now.

  He heard the slow, crashing footsteps of Centurion warsuits behind him, and the heavy bolter fire was so close he could almost feel the explosions of the mass-reactive shells. A horror from beyond nightmares loomed out of the mist before him, long, gangling arms clutching a wicked-looking cleaver in both hands, holding it in front of a hideously bloated stomach that seeped gases from several ruptures. One bulbous eye was set deep into the head that lolled atop a slender, bubo-covered neck, a head crowned with a single long horn. He swung instinctively, the crozius thudding into the daemon’s midriff and bursting through it, trailing rotting viscera. The creature staggered on, atrophied limbs reaching for Sentina. He pulled himself to the left and swung again, obliterating the daemon’s head. It fell.

  He ran on, taking his crozius in a two-handed grip as he forged ahead through the greenish murk. He broke through the mist and came into a clearing, where the tall and bulky form of Iova was twisting left and right, sending bolt-shells scything through putrid flesh. Where the rounds exploded, gore splattered over more daemons as they shambled towards the Centurion. In the skies above, more of the daemons, one-eyed monstrosities wielding dripping blades of corroded steel, their skin rent and broken to reveal hideously rotten innards and oozing, unnatural fluids, clutched onto the backs of gigantic mutated flies. Sentina felt nothing but disgust for them.

  ‘Brother-Chaplain,’ boomed Iova. ‘I could use a hand dealing with the creatures above.’

  Sentina nodded, paused for a second, pulling himself back and deactivating his crozius, and then sprinted towards the Centurion, who ducked ponderously down. Nimbly, the Chaplain jumped onto the rumbling heavy bolter arm even as it continued to spit shells at the daemons massing on the ground. From there, he climbed up onto the broad shoulder guard and, gathering himself once again, made a massive bounding leap from the back of the straightening Centurion.

  The daemons didn’t see him coming. He grabbed the rear claw of one of the immense rot-flies. It was like sinking his hand into putrid meat, but he gripped onto the bone and bodily swung himself up, reigniting the power field on his weapon as he did so and driving the maul into the daemon’s gut. The swing brought him level with the one-eyed creature perched on the broad back of another fly. He kicked it from its mount and it plummeted to the ground below, landing with the sickly sound of flesh and bone being sundered.

  Sentina paused for a second as the fly bucked beneath him, almost losing his balance even as the immense weight of his power armour drew him into the warp spawn’s pallid flesh. He pushed down, hearing the crack of the beast’s spine breaking and launched himself off again. He passed another and thrust his crozius deep into the rider’s ribcage. And then he was falling – again. For a brief moment, he was staring upwards at the warp rift in the sky. Clearly, it was not confined to the sky above Fort Kerberos, half a world away. And, impossibly, it looked bigger than it had before.

  He landed on a plague daemon, gore and pus soaking his armour as it was pulverised by the impact. For a moment, he lay there dazed, sharp agony coursing through him, before his armour administered pain suppressants and his genhanced body began repairing the damage. He groped around for his crozius, ignoring the sickening mess in which he lay. His fingers closed around the haft and he pulled it towards him and rolled, activating it and battering it into the plague daemon that loomed over him, sword raised. He was rewarded with a low moan and a shower of stinking viscera. Shrugging it off, he pulled himself to his feet and looked around for more enemies. Seeing a knot of them in the distance, he began to sprint.

  Aeroth, Lentulus and Oenomaus advanced, laying down bolt-shells, las-beams and grav-blasts with every ponderous step. The warsuits were slow, but the firepower they could muster was formidable indeed.

  ‘This is the joy of life, Oenomaus!’ said Lentulus. ‘We are as gods of war in these suits, even more than we are with power armour and boltgun. Revel in the tally we reap of these unnatural fiends.’

  The younger battle-brother grunted, his attention on piloting the Centurion suit and maintaining a punishing rate of fire. He wasn’t picking targets so much as spraying rounds across his field of vision, such as it was in the infernal murk. Aeroth’s voice sounded across his personal vox.

  ‘Careful, brother. You’ll exhaust your ammo reserves at that rate, and I suspect this won’t be the last fight we see on this world.’

  ‘Aye, sergeant,’ he replied, the words clipped and frustrated. ‘I shall endeavour to maintain fire discipline.’

  ‘It’s understandable, Oenomaus,’ said the sergeant. ‘Lentulus is pompous and overblown, but he’s not wrong. These warsuits are mighty indeed. As are their machine-spirits and their lust for battle – don’t let yourself be overwhelmed.’

  Oenomaus thought back to the first time he had stepped into the warsuit and placed himself in its embrace, both physically and mentally. He had felt the machine-spirit as a presence in there, both reassuring and somehow malignant. He knew that the sergeant spoke the truth.

  The tech-thralls who had helped him to interface with the suit had whispered of joinings that went wrong, where the machine-spirit was too warlike and too powerful, taking over the mind of the novice pilot and rampaging through arming chambers, though such events were rare and the damage limited as a first joining was never attempted with live weapons on the warsuits.

  He had survived without that happening, though he fancied he had felt the spirit of the suit probing at his mind, seeing if it could push itself into him. He would have to remain wary of that happening in the field as well.

  ‘Thank you for your concern, sergeant,’ he said as he focused his targeting array on a group of shambling plague daemons and loosed a short burst of bolt-fire that scythed through them, tearing them apart with controlled explosions. ‘I shall remain wary.’

  Sentina rammed his crozius through the distended gut of a daemon, swaying aside to avoid the strike of another and tearing the mace out of the first. It slumped to the ground, acidic blood running in rivulets across the hard-packed dirt.

  This was where his strength lay, the Chaplain knew. In the heat of battle, facing the foes of mankind and bringing death with pistol and bludgeon. And yet, he knew that he fulfilled only half of his duty on the battlefield. His role was to lead, as well as to kill, to inspire his battle-brothers to feats of heroism.

  That had never been his forte. One to one with a battle-brother, he could divine what troubled a soul and provide an answer, but oratory, implacable leadership… He had been able to at least make the outward appearance convinci
ng, though he had always felt his words to be hollow, but since Varos, he had been unable to muster the strength to even pretend.

  Another pair of daemons advanced ponderously towards him, their single eyes glowing malignantly. Their rusted swords were raised, ready to strike a blow. The fluids that coated the blades were virulent and corrosive. Sentina had seen warriors fall to such weapons and knew that not even the genhanced physiology of a Space Marine would be proof against the toxins and contagions that would spread through his system if he were to be so much as nicked.

  He twisted, swinging his crozius in a disarming blow. It struck one of the daemons on the wrist, shattering bone and pulverising flesh. The creature’s entire hand came off, sword with it. The plaguebearer continued its relentless movement, heedless of the wound, lunging for him with its intact arm and broken teeth. His backswing crashed through its neck and as it fell, Sentina was already moving towards the second. He swung low, rewarded with a satisfying crack as the mace struck its knee. As the fiend stumbled, he pulled his pistol from its holster and fired a single round into the daemon’s skull, ending its existence. As brains and daemonic flesh splattered against the earth, the Chaplain turned, looking for more targets. There were none.

  The sound of gunfire had ended. Sentina opened a vox-channel.

  ‘Are there any more?’ he asked.

  ‘Clear,’ replied Aeroth after a moment, swiftly followed by similar acknowledgements from the rest of the squad. The Chaplain ordered them to regroup on his position and pondered the attack.

  ‘It seems… convenient that they were so close to where we landed,’ opined Aeroth, echoing Sentina’s thoughts.

  ‘Our very presence may have summoned them,’ said the Chaplain. ‘They are creatures of the immaterium. If this world is in the grip of the Ruinous Powers, as it surely is, then the veil could be drawing thin.’

  ‘Why are there not more of them, then?’ asked Lentulus. ‘If we brought them here, why not an endless tide to overwhelm us?’