Incense wafted from one of the daemon-headed braziers, filling the air with its cloying stench.
Marduk snatched the data-slate from the Coryphaus, and looked where Kol Badar had indicated.
“What is this structure?” he asked.
“A mining facility, a hundred and fifty kilometres to the east. But there is a problem.”
“Of course there is,” spat Marduk. “Well?”
“The mining facility is located on the ocean floor. It is over ten thousand metres below the
surface of the ice.”
“Lorgar’s blood,” said Burias from the other side of the Land Raider. Blood still caked the icon
bearer’s lips and chin, and Marduk glared at him for a moment.
“On the ocean floor,” he said.
“That is correct, First Acolyte,” replied Kol Badar, “if the information the magos extracted can
be trusted.”
“It can,” said Marduk. He balled his right hand into a fist and slammed it down onto an armrest
carved in the likeness of a spinal column.
He quickly recovered his composure, and quoted from the Epistles of Kor Phaeron, the revered
Master of the Faith whom he had served under during the campaign on Calth fighting against the
hated sons of Guilliman.
“‘Through our travails we journey further down the blessed spiral,’” he quoted. “‘Through pain
and struggle and toil we prove ourselves before the true gods. Each new obstacle should be
welcomed as a test of faith, for only the strong and true walk the Eightfold Path of Enlightenment.’”
“Indeed,” said Kol Badar dryly.
“You have formulated a battle order?” asked Marduk. They had been back within the Land
Raiders for less than fifteen minutes, but he knew that Kol Badar’s keen strategic mind would have
already concocted a dozen plans to ensure victory for the Host, each one more complete than the
last.
“There is an access tunnel beneath the ice here,” said the Coryphaus, indicating on the schematic
map with one of his massive armoured fingers. “It runs for two hundred kilometres, connecting this
habitation base with a starport located to the west. Air recycling hubs connect the tunnel to the
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surface at intermittent positions,” he said, stabbing his finger into the data-slate at several points
along the line of the access tunnel. “This one is twenty-five kilometres from the habitation base. We
proceed to that air-recycling hub by Land Raider, across these ice flows here, and here, and
approach from the south. The wind will be behind us, and we should be able to approach without
detection, or at least neutralise any resistance before a defence can be established.”
“The defences of this world are pitiful,” said Marduk. “The majority of the standing defence
force has already been vacated. Darioq-Grendh’al picked up an incoming transmission as he
gathered the information. The xenos invasion is expected to make planet-fall within the next sixtythree
hours. Sixty-two hours now,” he corrected.
“Sixty-two hours,” said Kol Badar. “This foolish mission cannot be achieved in sixty-two
hours.”
“Find a way,” retorted Marduk.
“It cannot be done,” said Kol Badar hotly. “It could not be done even were we to encounter zero
opposition. I suggest that we vacate this place. There is nothing of value to our Legion here.”
“I am not asking for your council, Kol Badar,” said Marduk. “You are the Coryphaus. You enact
my will. I am giving you an order; make it happen.”
“The xenos will have commenced their invasion before we are back on the surface,” said Kol
Badar.
“Explain to me how that changes anything?” snapped Marduk, losing patience. “If they get in
our way, we kill them. It is not complicated.”
“You wish to be here in the midst of a full-scale invasion? With less than thirty warriors?”
“That is the voice of cowardice, Kol Badar,” said Marduk, his voice low and dangerous. “You
shame the Legion and the position of Coryphaus with your fear.”
Kol Badar’s eyes flashed, and he ground his teeth, clenching his power talons. Burias, sitting
opposite, grinned.
“You go too far, you whoreson whelp,” said Kol Badar, his eyes blazing with fury.
“Learn your place, Kol Badar,” growled Marduk, leaning in to the bigger warrior and snarling in
his face. “Jarulek is dead. I am the power of the Host. Me! The Host is mine, and mine alone. You
are mine, and I will discard you if you prove of no use to me.”
Kol Badar bared his teeth, and Marduk could see him fighting to restrain himself from lashing
out. With the fall of Jarulek, there was no question as to who was next in line. Marduk, as First
Acolyte, was rightfully the leader of the Host, at least until such a time as the Council of Sicarus
deemed otherwise.
Marduk knew Kol Badar well. They had fought alongside each other in a thousand wars since
the fall of the Warmaster Horus, and over that time he had come to understand, and despise, what he
was. The Coryphaus was a deeply regimented warrior, who clung to ordained command structures
and protocols with an almost holy fervour. Marduk had always seen it as a weakness, and had
goaded the Coryphaus regarding it, many times.
“You should have been born into Guilliman’s Legion,” he had said on more than one occasion,
drawing a parallel between Kol Badar’s stifling adherence to command structures and official
stratagems of the puritanical weaklings of the Ultramarines.
Doubtless, there was a certain strength in Kol Badar’s dogmatism. The Coryphaus had
commanded the Host in battle thousands of times, and his understanding of the ebb and flow of
combat, when to push forward and when to pull back, was second to none. In truth, Marduk had
come to value the keen, perhaps brilliant, strategic mind of the Coryphaus, though his refusal to
adopt more unconventional tactics was infuriating at times.
For all that, Marduk felt assured that if he pushed home his unquestionable position in the
hierarchy of the Host, then the Coryphaus would back down. After ten thousand years of adherence
to strict military hierarchy, Kol Badar would be lost to madness and insanity were he to abandon it.
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Respect can wait, thought Marduk. For now, it is enough that he does what I wish.
“I am the leader of the Host,” continued Marduk, still staring into Kol Badar’s eyes, “and you
will obey my will.”
Marduk felt the power of Chaos build within him, as if the gods of the immaterium were
pleased. Things writhed painfully beneath the skin of his skull, and he smiled as he saw Kol Badar’s
eyes widen.
“Never question me, Kol Badar,” said Marduk evenly. “Continue.”
Kol Badar’s thick jaw tensed, but he lowered his gaze from Marduk’s, and stabbed a finger
towards the schematic in his hands.
“We use that hub to gain entry to the tunnel, and proceed along the access way into the heart of
the hab-station. We secure one of the lifts located here,” he growled, pointing, “which will take us to
the mining facility on the ocean floor. This here,” he said, zooming in on the data-slate, through
dozens of floors and focusing on a specific part of the mining facility, “is the last recorded location
of the explorator. The hulk crashed to the ocean floor around twelve kilometres distant from the
facility. Here, the explorator boarded a maintenance submersible to investigate the wreck. He never
returned. I would surmise that the explorator fool is still within the hulk, or dead.”
Marduk nodded.
“Fine,” he said.
“I still say this is a fool’s errand,” said Kol Badar.
“Your opinion has been duly noted, Coryphaus,” said Marduk. “Now, pass the word. We move
on that air recycling hub.”
Approaching the air recycling station unobserved had been pathetically easy. The armed forces of
the moon were virtually non-existent, most of them having already been evacuated, and the one
patrol they had encountered on the ice flows had been destroyed with consummate ease.
It was insulting, Kol Badar thought as he had killed.
Clouds of steam rose from the turbine vents that cycled air into the tunnels deep in the ice
below, and the hub station had been protected merely by thick rockcrete walls and a reinforced door,
half buried in the snow. There were no guards posted on its walls.
There had been no sign of a living presence at all, cowering inside against the storm like
frightened rodents, Kol Badar had correctly surmised.
He had ripped the door from its hinges and hurled it away, before stalking into the interior of the
complex. The Land Raiders were situated half a kilometre away, hidden completely in the storm,
where they would remain until this fool’s errand of a task was completed.
He had been angry when the first shouts of warning from the Imperials within the complex had
reached his ears, and he stormed into their midst, ripping them apart with concentrated bursts of his
combi-bolter, tearing arms from sockets with his power talon.
It had taken only minutes to gain control of the facility.
It was strange, though; it appeared that the enemy had known they were coming, and prepared
some hasty defences. No, that was not correct. They knew something was coming, but they had not
barricaded the door out onto the ice, but rather, the entrance to the stairwell that led down to the
access tunnel fifty metres below, as if they expected an attack from there.
“Don’t try to understand them,” he reminded himself. “They are heathen, blinded fools. Their
ways are madness.”
Kol Badar levelled his combi-bolter at the last of the civilian workers. The man was breathing
hard, staring up at the towering Terminator-armoured warrior in abject terror.
A waste of ammunition, the Coryphaus decided, and lifted the barrel of his weapon from the
target. A flash of hope reared in the Imperial citizen’s eyes, but that was extinguished quickly as Kol
Badar stepped menacingly towards him.
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“Please, no,” wailed the man, shaking his head as the Coryphaus loomed above him.
Kol Badar grabbed the man around one shoulder, power talons digging deep into flesh. Then he
slammed the pistol-grip butt of his combi-bolter into his face, splintering his nose. The man’s skull
was caved inwards by the shocking blow, killing him instantly, but the Coryphaus continued to
strike, until the man’s face was an unrecognisable mash of blood and flesh.
He dropped the Imperial worker to the ground, feeling a small amount of satisfaction, though it
did little to abate his simmering rage.
Why had Jarulek left him, allowing the whelp Marduk to assume control of the Host? For
months, he had raged at Jarulek’s failing. Long had he hated the First Acolyte, and long had he
waited to kill him, just as Marduk had killed Kol Badar’s blood brother so long ago.
He would have killed Marduk then and there had not Jarulek stayed his hand.
“Not now,” the Dark Apostle had said, though at that time he had been nothing more than a First
Acolyte himself. “He will be yours to kill, but not yet. He has a purpose yet to perform.”
It had been three hundred years into the Great Crusade, and Kol Badar had waited long and
impatiently for his time to come, but waited he had, through all the long spanning millennia, until at
last his time had come.
“If we both return, then you may kill Marduk, my Coryphaus. Your honour will be fulfilled,”
Jarulek had said, just moments before he had descended into the heart of the xenos pyramid on
Tanakreg. The pleasure of finally being given free rein to kill the whelp had been ecstatic. That had
been shattered when only Marduk had returned.
“Damn you, Jarulek,” said Kol Badar to himself.
“You should dispose of him,” said Burias in a voice low enough for none but Marduk to hear him.
“The insubordinate old bastard is long past his time. He is a weight hanging around the neck of the
Host, and he will drag it down, slowly but surely.”
“You still hunger for power, Burias?” asked Marduk.
“Of course,” replied Burias sharply, his eyes flashing. “Such is our teaching.”
“That is true, icon bearer,” said Marduk.
“He does not fear you,” said Burias.
“What?” asked Marduk.
“Kol Badar. He feared Jarulek, we all did, but he does not fear you.”
“Perhaps not yet,” agreed Marduk, “but he will come to. I am changing, Burias. I feel the touch
of the gods upon me.”
Burias sniffed, savouring the air. There was an electrical tang in the air that left an acrid taste
upon his tongue, a sensation he had long come to embrace and recognise for what it was: Chaos.
Jarulek had exuded a potent aura so strong that it made those of lesser faith bleed from their
ears, and this was the same, though admittedly less potent, force.
“If he does not learn his place,” said Marduk in a low voice, “and soon, then I shall allow you to
take him. I would enjoy watching you rend him limb from limb.”
Burias grinned savagely.
“But that time is not yet,” reminded Marduk.
“No life signs detected, Coryphaus,” said one of the members of the 13th, looking at the gleaming
red flashes on the blister-screen of his corrupted auspex, “though there are cooling heat signatures
ahead. Possible weapons discharge.”
“Understood,” growled the war leader.
Burias placed one hand upon the cold metal surface of the door and closed his eyes.
“The air within is rich with fear,” he said.
“Good. That will work in our favour,” said Kol Badar. “Burias, take point. Go.”
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Without ceremony, Burias kicked the door off its hinges, wrenching the reinforced steel out of
shape and sending it smashing inwards.
A steel landing extended beyond, and Burias moved forward warily, his bolt pistol in one hand,
the holy icon of the Host in his other. The landing was narrow, and a steel stairway descended from
it. Moving swiftly and silently, elegant and perfectly balanced despite his bulk, Burias stepped down
the steel stairs that led into a corridor. The hallway extended ten metres ahead, before turning
sharply to the right.
The walls, carved from solid ice, radiated cold, though he barely registered the sub-zero
temperature. Moving swiftly forwards, his every daemonically enhanced sense alert, Burias rounded
the corner and came up against a mesh-link fence that rose from floor to ceiling, barring the way
forward. A chained gate was set into the fence, and a frozen corpse was slumped outside it.
Curious, Burias moved forwards. It was the body of a man, wearing the same white plas armour
as the soldiers they had fought at the Imperial bastion. One hand was clutching at the locked gate.
Clearly, the man had been shot down while attempting to flee, but the locked gate had barred his
