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Battle for the Abyss – Extract

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ONE

Bearers of the Word
Let slip our cloaks
The death of Cruithne

Olympus Mons burned bright and spat a plume of fire into the sky. Below the immense edifice of rock lay the primary sprawling metropolis of Mars. Track-ways and factorums bustled with red-robed acolytes, pursued dutifully by lobotomised servitors, bipedal machine-constructs, thronging menials and imperious skitarii. Domed hab-blisters, stark cooling towers and monolithic forge temples vied for position amidst the red dust. Soaring chimneys, pockmarked by millennia of endeavour, belched thick, acrid smoke into a burning sky.

Hulking compressor houses vented steam high over the industrious swell like the breath of gods from arcane blasting kilns carved into the heart of the world; so vast, so fathomless, a labyrinthine conurbation as intricate and self-involved as its fervent populous.

Such innumerate, petty meanderings were as inconsequential as a fragment of coal in the blast furnaces of the mountain forges, so great was the undertaking of that day. Few knew of its significance and fewer still witnessed the anonymous shuttle drone launch from the hidden caldera in the Valles Marineris. The drone surged into the stratosphere, piercing cloud-like crimson smog. Through writhing storms of purple-black pollution and wells of geothermal heat that hammered deep bruises into the sky, it breached the freezing mesosphere, the drone’s outer shell burning white with effort. Plasma engines screaming, it drove on further into the thermosphere, the rays of the sun turning the layer into a blazing veil of relentless heat. Breaking the exosphere at last, the shuttle’s engines eased. This was to be a one-way trip. Preset tracking beacons found their destination quickly. It was far beyond the red dust of Martian skies, far beyond prying eyes and questions. The shuttle was headed for Jupiter.

Thule had orbited the shipyards of Jupiter for six millennia. Suspended high above the gaseous surface of its patron planet, it dwelled innocuously beyond the greater Galilean moons: Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and Io. It was an ugly chunk of rock, its gravity so weak that its form was misshapen and mutated.

Such considerations were of little concern to the Mechanicum. What place did appearance and the aesthetic have in the heart of the machine? Precision, exactness, function, they were all that mattered.

Though of little consequence, Thule was to become something more than just a barren hunk of rock. It had been hollowed out by massive boring machines and filled with conduits, vast tunnels and chambers. Millions of menials, drones and acolytes toiled in the subterranean labyrinth, so great was the deed that they were charged to perform. In effect, the dead core of Thule had become a giant factorum of forge temples and compressors, a massive gravity engine its beating heart. This construction extended from the surface via metal tendrils that supported blister domes, clinging like limpets to the rock, and pneumatic lifter arrays. Thule was no mere misshapen asteroid. It was an orbital shipyard of Jupiter, and one that had guests.

‘We stand upon the brink of a new era.’ Through the vox-amplifier built into his gorget, Zadkiel’s voice resonated powerfully in the gargantuan chamber. Behind him, the exo-skeletal structure of Thule shipyard loomed large and forbidding against the cold reaches of space. Here, within one of the station’s blister domes, he and his charges were protected from the ravages of the asteroid’s surface. Solar winds scoured the rock, bleaching it white, the inexorable erosion creating a miasma of nitrogen-thick rolling dust.

‘A red dawn is rising and it will drown our enemies in blood. Heed the power of the Word and know it is our destiny,’ Zadkiel bellowed as he delivered the sermon, animated and fervent upon a dais of obsidian. Scripture carved into his patrician features and bald skull added unneeded gravitas to Zadkiel’s oratory. His grey, turbulent eyes conveyed vehemence and surety.

His fists encased in baroque gauntlets, Zadkiel gripped the edge of the lectern and assumed an insistent posture. He wore his full battle armour, one of the first fledging suits of crimson ceramite yet to bear the scars of conflict. Replete with the horns of Colchis, in honour of the primarch’s home world and the symbol of a proud and distinguished heritage, it represented the new era of which Zadkiel spoke.

The Word Bearers Legion had been denied their true nature for too long. Now, they had shed the simulacra of obedience and capitulation, the trappings of compromise and denial. Their new power armour, fresh from the forges of Mars and etched with the epistles of Lorgar, was a testament to that treaty. Word had come from the primarch’s warp-borne heralds – whispers of new martyrs and monsters within the Legion’s proud ranks, and the time would soon come when all would know of their glorious sacrifice. The grey-granite suits of feigned ignorance were destroyed in the heart of Olympus Mons. Clad in the vestments of enlightenment, the Legion would soon be reborn.

A vast ocean of crimson and grey stretched before Zadkiel, as he stood erect behind his pulpit of stone. A thousand Astartes watched him dutifully, a full Chapter split into ten companies, each a hundred strong, their captains to the fore. All heeded the Word.

The legionaries were resplendent in their power armour, bolters held at salute in their armoured fists, clutched like holy idols. Zadkiel’s suit was the mirror-image of those of his warriors, although sheaves of prayer parchment, scorched trails of vellum writ over with litanies of battle, and the bloodied pages ripped from sermons of retribution were affixed to it. When he spoke, it was with the zealous conviction of the rhetoric he wore.

‘Heed the power of the Word and know this is our destiny.’

The congregation roared in affirmation, their voices as one.

‘We have our lance of vengeance. Let it strike out the heart of Guilliman and his weakling Legion,’ Zadkiel bellowed, swept up by his own vitriolic proclamations. ‘Long have we waited for retribution. Long have we dwelt in shadow.’

Zadkiel stepped forward, his iron-hard gaze urging his warriors to greater fervour. ‘Now is the time,’ he said, smashing his clenched fist down upon the lectern to punctuate the remark. ‘We shall cast off falsehoods and the shackles of our feigned obeisance,’ he snarled as if the words left a bitter taste in his mouth, ‘let slip our cloaks and reveal our true glory!

‘Brothers, we are Bearers of the Word, the sons of Lorgar. Let the impassioned words of our dark apostles be as poison blades in the hearts of the infidel Emperor’s lapdogs. Witness our ascension,’ he said, turning to face the great arch behind him.

A vast ship dominated the view through the armourglass of the blister dome. It was surrounded by massively over-engineered machinery, as if the scaffold supporting the hordes of menials and enginseers had been built around it, and thick trails of reinforced hosing bled away the pneumatic pressure required to keep the gargantuan vessel elevated.

Cathedra soared from the ship’s ornate hull, their spires groping for the stars like crooked fingers. So armoured, it could withstand even a concerted assault from a defence laser battery.

In fact, it had been forged with that very purpose in mind.

Its blunt prow, and the way its flanks splayed out to encompass the enormous midsection, spoke of strength and precision. Three massive crenellated decks extended from it like the sharpened prongs of a stygian trident. Twin banks of laser batteries gleamed in dull gunmetal down its broadsides. A single volley would have annihilated the loading bay and everyone in it. Cannon mounts sat idle on angular blocks of metal filled with viewpoints that hinted at the myriad chambers within. The rapacious bristle of the defensive turrets along the dorsal and ventral spines, and the dark indentations of the torpedo tubes, shimmered with violent intent.

Spiked antenna towers punched outward from multitudinous sub-decks, interspersed with further weapon arrays and torpedo bays. The ship’s ribbed belly shimmered like oil and was replete with dozens of fighter hangars.

At the stern, the huge cowlings of the exhausts flared over the deep glow of the warming engines, primed to unleash enough thrust to force the warship away from Thule. Like chrome hexagons, the engine vents were so vast and terrible that to stare into their dormant hearts was to engulf all sense and reason in a fathomless darkened void.

Finally, sheets of shielding peeled off the prow, revealing a massive figurehead: a book, wreathed in flame, wrought from gold and silver. Words of Lorgar’s choosing were engraved on the pages in letters many metres high. It was the greatest and largest vessel ever forged within the Solar System, unique in every way and powerful beyond reckoning.

Such was the sight of it, like some creature born from the depths of an infinite and ancient ocean, that even Zadkiel fell silent.

‘Our spear is made ready,’ Zadkiel said at last, his voice choked with awe. ‘The Furious Abyss.’

This ship, this mighty ship, had been made for them, and here in the Jovian shipyards its long-awaited construction had finally reached an end. This was to be a blow against the Emperor, a blow for Horus. None could know of the vessel’s existence until it was too late. Steps had been taken to ensure that remained the case. The launch from little known, and even less regarded, Thule was part of that deceit, but only part.

Zadkiel turned on his heel to face his warriors.

‘Let us wield it!’ he extolled with vociferous intensity. ‘Death to the infidel Emperor!’

‘Death to the infidel Emperor,’ his congregation replied like a violent blast wave.

‘Horus exultant!’

Discipline broke down. The assembled throng bellowed and roared as if possessed, smashing their fists against their armour. Oaths of hatred and of devout loyalty were shouted fervently and the building sound rose to an unearthly clamour.

Zadkiel closed his eyes amidst the maelstrom of devotion and savoured, drank deep of the zealotry. When he opened his eyes again, he faced the archway and the landscape of the Furious Abyss. Smiling grimly, he thought of what the vessel represented, and he imagined its awesome destructive potential. There was none other like it in all of the Imperium: none with the same firepower; none with the same resilience. It had been forged with one deliberate mission in mind and it would need all of its strength and endurance to achieve it: the annihilation of a Legion.

And it was his to command.

In the darker recesses of the massive loading bay, now an impromptu cathedra, others watched and listened. Unfeeling eyes regarded the magnificent array of soldiery from the shadows: the product of the Emperor’s ingenuity, even perhaps his hubris, and felt nothing.

‘Curious, my master, that this Astartes should exhibit such an emotional response to our labours.’

‘They are flesh, Magos Epsolon, and as such are governed by petty concerns,’ remarked Kelbor-Hal to the bent-backed acolyte stooped alongside him.

The Fabricator General had purposely taken the long journey from Mars to Thule aboard his personal barge. He had done so under the pretence of a tour of the Jovian shipyards, overseeing atmospheric mining on the surface of Jupiter, reviewing the operations on Io, and observing vehicle and armour production within the hive cities of Europa. All of which would explain his presence on Thule. The truth was that the Fabricator General wanted to witness this momentous event. It was not pride that drove him to do it, for such a thing was beyond one so close to absolute communion with the Omnissiah, rather it was out of the compulsion to mark it.

One endeavour was much like any other to the Fabricator General, the requirements of form and function outweighing the need for ceremony and majesty. Yet, here he stood swathed in black robes, a symbol of his allegiance to the Warmaster and his commitment to his cause. Had he not sanctioned Master Adept Urtzi Malevolus to forge Horus’s armour? Had he not also allowed the commissioning of vast quantities of materiel, munitions and the machines of war? Yes, he had done all of this. He had done it because it suited his purposes, the burgeoning desire, or rather intrinsic programming, within the servants of the great machine-god to gradually become one with their slumbering deity. Horus had unfettered Mars in its pursuit of the divine machine, countermanding the Emperor’s chastening. For Kelbor-Hal the question of his allegiance and that of the Mechanicum was one of logic, and had required mere nanoseconds of computation.

‘He sees beauty where we see function and form,’ the Fabricator General continued. ‘Strength, Magos Epsolon, strength made through fire and steel, that is what we have wrought.’

Magos Epsolon, also robed in black, nodded in agreement, grateful for his overlord’s enlightenment.

‘They are human, after a fashion,’ the Fabricator General explained, ‘and we are as far removed from that weakness as the cogitators aboard that ship.’

Immensely tall, his ribcage exposed through the ragged edge of his robes with ribbed pipes and tendril-like servos replacing organs, veins and flesh, Kelbor-Hal was anything but human. He no longer wore a face, preferring a cold steel void implanted with a curious array of sunken green orb-like diodes in place of eyes. A set of mechadendrite claws and arms stretched from his back, like those of an arachnid, replete with interface nodes and other arcane machinery. His voice was devoid of all emotion, synthesised through a vox-implant that droned with artificial coldness and indifference.

As Kelbor-Hal watched the phalanx of Astartes boarding the ship through the tube-like umbilical cords that snaked from the vessel’s loading ramps to the blister dome, their bombastic leader swelling with phlegmatic pride, the internal chron within his memory engrams alerted him that time was short.

Dully, the Furious Abyss’s thrusters growled to life and the great vessel strained vertically against the lifter clamps. A low, yet insistent hum of building power from the awakening plasma engines followed, discernible even through the armourglass of the blister dome. With the Astartes and their crew aboard, the Furious Abyss was preparing to launch.

A data-probe snicked from the end of one of the Fabricator General’s twitching mechadendrites and fed into a cylindrical console that had emerged from the hangar floor. Interfacing with the device, Kelbor-Hal inputted the code sequence required to launch the ship. A series of icons upon the face of the console lit up and a slowly building hum of power resonated throughout the launch chamber.

Lead Magi Lorvax Attemann, part of the coterie of acolytes and attendant menials who had gathered to observe the launch, was permitted to activate the first sequence of explosions that would release the Furious Abyss. He did so without ceremony.

Lines of explosions, like stitches of fire, rippled along the side of the dock. Lifters, assembly arrays and webs of scaffolding fell away into the darkness, where magnetic tugs waited to gather the wreckage. Slabs of radiation shielding lifted from the ship’s hull. The last dregs in the refuelling barges ignited in bright ribbons of fire.

The plasma engines roared, loud and throaty, scorching a blue swathe of fire and heat across the surface of Thule. A new star was rising in the darkling sky, so terrible and wonderful that it defied expression. It was a thunderous metal god given form, and it would light the galaxy aflame with its wrath.

At last the Furious Abyss was underway. As Kelbor-Hal watched it lift majestically into the firmament and registered the heavy thrum of its engines, a single tiny vestige of emotion blinked into existence within him. It was an ephemeral thing, barely quantifiable. Accessing internal cogitators, interfacing with his personal memory engrams, the Fabricator General found its expression.

It was awe.

The drone ship waited deep within the heart of Thule, accessed through a series of clandestine tunnels and lesser-known chambers. As it made its approach, the still toiling menials and servitors paid it no notice, programme wafers ensuring that they remained intent on their work. So, the shuttle passed them by slowly, unchallenged, unseen. Once through the myriad tunnels, the drone waited for several hours docked in a small antechamber that fed off the vast gravity engine at the asteroid’s core.

An hour earlier, Fabricator General Kelbor-Hal’s personal barge had departed the station, the head of the Mechanicum leaving his subordinate, Magos Epsolon, to organise the clean up after the launch of the Furious Abyss. It was to be the last vessel that left Thule.

Pre-programmed activation protocols abruptly came on line in the servitor pilot slaved to the drone shuttle. A mix of chemicals, separated within the body of the servitor pilot became merged as they were fed into a shared chamber. Once combined, the harmless chemicals became a volatile solution capable of incredible destructive force. A second after the solution became fully merged a small incendiary charge ignited their fury. The immediate firestorm engulfed the ship and spread out, the growing conflagration billowing down tunnels and through access pipes, incinerating labouring menials. When it struck the gravity engine the resultant explosions began a cataclysmic chain reaction. It took only minutes for the asteroid to break into flame-wreathed fragments. There was no time to flee to safety and no survivors. Every adept, servitor and menial was burned to ash.

The debris field would spread far and wide, but the asteroid was far enough away, locked at the farthest point of its horseshoe orbit, not to trouble Jupiter. It would not escape notice, but it was also of such little consequence that any investigation would take months to effect and ratify. None would discover the thing that had been wrought upon the asteroid’s surface until it was much, much too late.

Much technology was lost in Thule’s destruction. It was a steep price to pay for absolute and certain secrecy. In the end, the Fabricator General’s will had been done. He had willed the death of Thule.

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