The Purge Read online

  ~ DRAMATIS PERSONAE ~

  The XVII Legion ‘Word Bearers’

  Sor Talgron, Captain of the 34th Company, and representative of Lorgar on Terra

  Jarulek, Chaplain and later Dark Apostle

  Ahraneth, 34th Company standard bearer

  Dal Ahk, Master of Signal

  Loth, Reconnaissance sergeant

  Telakhas, Line-breaker sergeant

  Urhlan, Apothecary

  Volkhas Wreth, Predicant, serving in the Crusader Host

  The XII Legion ’Ultramarines'

  Aecus Decimus, Chapter Master, 17th Chapter

  Connor, Sergeant, 170th Company

  Naxor, Techmarine, 170th Company

  Tillus Victorius, 171st Company champion

  Vau Agreghus, Veteran battle-brother, 171st Company

  Freia Solontine, Admiral, commander of the Righteous Fury

  Romus, Veteran battle-brother, 170th Company [marked]

  Paulus, Sky Hunter, 172nd Company [marked]

  Xion Octavion, Battle-brother, 174th Company [marked]

  Sio, Battle-brother, 175th Company [marked]

  Korolos, Former captain, 178th Company [marked]

  The Defenders of Terra

  Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists, and the Emperor's Praetorian

  Archamus, Master of Dorn's huscarls

  Tiber Acanthus, Custodian Guard

  Nathaniel Garro, Former battle-captain of the Death Guard

  'Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.'

  — attributed to the pre-Unity prophet Dhoyalle

  PROLOGUE

  456008.M31 — Percepton System, Ultramar

  The legionary writhed on the apothecarion's slab. Skinless, raw and bleeding, he more closely resembled one of the Dwellers Beyond than anything of human birth.

  His flesh had run like wax, giving it a wet, glossy-slick appearance. His features had melted and blurred together, making it look as though he wore a grotesque cult mask. His eye sockets were tortured red pits, burned tear trails all that remained of his liquefied eyeballs, and what was left of his mouth opened and closed in agony. Strings of melted flesh linked his lips - or at least where his lips had been.

  Servo-cutters, diamond-tipped drills and mono-saws cut away the smoking sections of his ruined Mark III plate. Each piece fell with a resounding crash, splattering blood and oil across the pristine white floor. The legionary's flesh had fused with his armour, and he thrashed and mewled as it was shorn away - peeled from him like the exoskeleton of a beetle, exposing yet more mutilation beneath. Hot vapours rose from the exposed, bloody ruin, stinking of acidic chemical fire and cooked meat.

  He was not alone; every slab within the apothecarion was occupied, and scores of legionaries had been dumped wherever space allowed it. The groans and roars of the dying and wounded blended with the background noise of frantic orders, bone saws, life support systems, hypo-injectors and synth-skin applicators.

  Needles, feeder cables and stims were rammed into his veins and spinal column and a re-breather tube shoved down his throat. He went into convulsions, his blood pressure dropped markedly, and alarms began to whine.

  With a burst of fevered strength, he tore free of the restraints holding him down. As medicae attendants rushed forward, he yanked the re-breather tube from his throat and clutched at the nearest Apothecary with a waxen claw-like hand, pulling him close. The abused muscles of his neck bulged like wet cables as he strained forward.

  He gargled something indecipherable, splattering blood across the Apothecary's faceplate.

  The attendants struggled to hold him down. Even wounded as he was, they were as children against his augmented strength. His grip was like iron.

  'Urhlan,' he snarled, eyeless sockets boring into the Apothecary.

  'Do... not...inter me.'

  In answer, Apothecary Urhlan pressed his wrist-mounted narthecium to the patient's neck, injecting more doses of powerful narcotics into his bloodstream. The legionary's grip went stack, fingers twitching.

  Apothecary Urhlan stepped back and the medicae attendants finally managed to secure their charge with new restraints. Blood coated his arms and chest - not all of it was his patient's. His white armour was acid-scarred and malfunctioning, sparks leaping from damaged joints and servos, and he moved with a pronounced limp. He had barely made it off-world himself, and he'd already been aboard his evacuation shuttle when everything had gone wrong.

  'Will he live?'

  Urhlan glanced back to the one who had spoken; the Dark Apostle, Jarulek. He stood with arms crossed over his chest. There were a handful of other officers and legionaries clustered around the slab. All of them bore evidence of battle, and most sported wounds of varying severity.

  'I am surprised he is even alive now,' Urhlan said, making a vain attempt to wipe the blood from his helmet's visor lenses. 'I was surprised that he was alive when he got here.'

  'But can you save him?'

  Urhlan looked down at his patient, writhing on the slab before him.

  'No,' he said.

  'Then his fate is in the gods' hands,' said Jarulek.

  Urhlan turned back towards the now comatose, twitching mass of chem-melted flesh on the slab before him. It was hard to believe that this was his captain.

  ‘Get out,' he said over his shoulder. 'Let me work. I will do what I can.'

  ONE

  454008.M31 - Percepton System, Ultramar

  The war had, been won in twenty-seven minutes, though the battle still raged on one hundred and sixty—three days later.

  Twenty-seven minutes. That had been how long it had taken for his ships to cripple the Ultramarines fleet above Percepton Primus. The enemy had not yet heard about Calth, nor of Armatura, Talassar, or any of the countless other warzones targeted as part of the Shadow Crusade.

  The chronometer had clicked over, and he had given the order.

  The Word Bearers struck. Over half the enemy flotilla was lost in the opening salvoes, the rest in the hours and days after. The wreckage now orbited the capital planet, the heart of this system.

  Thus, the war for Percepton was won in twenty-seven minutes. In the months that followed, all that remained was to complete the cull.

  One hundred and sixty-four days after that initial strike, the world of Percepton Primus ended.

  132006.M31 — Terra

  From orbit it was possible to see the coastlines that once delineated the continents of old Terra. The vast ocean tracts that covered the globe were gone, vaporised during the long internecine nuke-wars that almost obliterated humanity in bygone ages, but the original shapes could still be vaguely discerned, like ghosts of the past — though most clearly in darkness.

  It was the lights that revealed them. While the entire planet shone like a beacon in the void, lit by the glow of the hives, megacities and highways, those lights were brightest upon the old continents, and the darker tracts of land marked where the seas had once been — or along the straight, unnaturally angular coastlines of the newer, artificial oceans.

  Ethereal green aurorae shimmered over the southern horizon, while great chem-storms shrouded the rad-scarred lands to the north, flickering with an almost constant strobe of lightning. It was not in those directions that the lander was headed, however. As its golden-sheathed wings unfolded and the glow of re-entry faded from its thermal shields, it angled its descent towards the very roof of the world.

  Within the enclosed cabin, Sor Talgron sat alone, looking out of the viewport. One immense grey-gauntleted hand shielded his view from the shuttle's interior illumination.

  'Refreshment, captain?'

  Sor Talgron glanced away from the port. The interior of the shuttle w
as all gently curved surfaces, subtle lighting and neutral tones. His synth-leather seat was large enough to accommodate his oversized bulk in considerable comfort. The remaining eleven passenger seats were unoccupied, though there were others on board. Even though he could not currently see them, he could taste their gene-forged scent in the recycled air — at once familiar and yet strange — as well as sense the faint hum of their armour.

  The attendant who had spoken was unnaturally tall and willowy, and her large, oval eyes were milky orbs, bereft of pupils. Gene-manipulation had given her this form, though for what purpose he could not fathom. Perhaps humans found her appearance pleasing to the eye. Perhaps they tampered with her genes simply because they could.

  'Sweet nectar? Amasec?' she said, gesturing languidly at the refrigerated cart that hovered before her. 'Something else?'

  He shook his head and turned back towards the viewport. He saw his own reflection there, frowning back at. him. While he was not sure what a human would find appealing in the soft, pale features of the shuttle attendant, he knew what they would find unattractive about his own.

  His face was square and hard. Brutish. It was not the face of a scholar or a statesman. A lifetime of battle had flattened his features, and ugly scarring criss-crossed his face and scalp. His own role in the universe could not be mistaken. He was a warrior, a soldier, a killer. It was what he had been made for, a role he had been genetically altered to perform, and it was what he was good at. It was his purpose.

  Servo-motors in the joints of his armour whined as he leaned in close to the glass once more, blotting out the glare and his own grim reflection. His eyes scanned the world below as the shuttle's descent levelled. He saw the burning thrusters of golden interceptor escorts flying off the wing tip, guiding them in.

  Sor Talgron stared unblinking, absorbing all that he saw. It was still some time before he would arrive at his destination, flying over the single largest man-made structure the universe had ever seen. Even so, on the very outskirts of that immense continent-spanning mega-structure, it was apparent to Sor Talgron that it was being fundamentally altered.

  When he had left Terra the structure below had been a palace. He returned to find it well on the way to being transformed into a fortress.

  * * *

  Sor Talgron walked through fire, flanked by Ahraneth, his standard bearer, and Dal Ahk, master of signal. All three wore dark crimson armour, the colour of pooled blood. The heavy war-plate had received the new Legion colours while en route to Ultramar, but it did not sit well with him. It felt like a betrayal of the Legion's past.

  Around them, centuries of learning and wisdom were being destroyed, filling the scorched air with ash and the fluttering pages of burning books. Thousands of texts and codices were forever lost as librarium data banks were put to the torch, circuitry and silicon-based memory cores melting and crackling in the flames.

  Sor Talgron did not mourn this loss.

  The great chamber was filled with dust. Clearly, it had been abandoned after the Nikaea edict came into effect. It was highly probable that none had walked its halls since that time.

  Until today, when it had become a battleground.

  Flames licked at his pauldrons as he strode through the aftermath of the battle, coloured glass crunching underfoot. The immense glassaic windows that had looked down upon the cavernous Librarius atrium would have been an early casualty in the battle for the city of Massilea.

  Bodies turned to ragged meal by bolter fire lay splattered across the floor and against the walls. Four Word Bearers were dead, dropped by kill-shots. Several others were down, being attended by the Legion's Apothecaries. Two bore fatal injuries and were given release, their prayers dying upon their lips. The gene-seed of the dead was extracted, reductors whirring, spitting bone and blood.

  A number of the fallen Ultramarines were not yet gone, but there were no XIII Legion Apothecaries to come to their aid, nor any living battle-brothers to drag them to safety. In another battalion, perhaps, their lives would have ended in torment after countless hours of agony and ritual debasement — but Sor Talgron would have none of that, and they were dispatched without ceremony.

  They were the enemy, and he would do everything in his power to see them defeated, utterly and completely. But he could not hate them, and he would not see them tortured needlessly.

  There was much to admire about the XIII Legion. Their cohesion and discipline in battle was enviable, their execution beyond compare. They were without a doubt the most effective fighting force that Sor Talgron had ever faced, and he respected them greatly.

  'It is Erebus's wish that every enemy taken alive be sacrificed to feed the Ruinstorm,' Jarulek had stated at the outset of the system war. 'This is to be done across all the Five Hundred Worlds.'

  'Erebus be damned,' had been Sor Talgron's response. 'The snake does not command me. My orders are to kill this world. I will do it my way.'

  He walked from the atrium, past soaring white marble pillars peeked and cratered by bolter fire. Beyond was a broad semi-circular terrace, bordered by natural stone and immaculately maintained foliage now churned to ruin. A waterfall fell into a pool in the rock, where bodies floated face down. Sweeping marble stairs descended down to lower levels of the concourse.

  Sor Talgron walked past a towering white statue depicting a robed figure in a thoughtful, seated pose.

  An Ultramarines legionary lay on the ground. He had been cut in half by gunfire; his lower torso and legs were nearby. Blood had pooled beneath him, and his insides were spilled out onto the terrace, but he was alive. Legionaries did not die easily.

  Ahraneth levelled his bolt pistol at him.

  'No,' said Sor Talgron, and his standard bearer lowered his weapon.

  The Ultramarine was of a centurion's rank — a fellow captain, as indicated by the insignia on his shoulder plates. He was clasping his innards with one hand, trying vainly to hold them in, while with his other he was dragging himself along the ground. A volkite serpena pistol lay nearby. He fumbled for it. Even in death, he sought a weapon to use against his enemies.

  Sor Talgron's boot crunched down on his wrist, and he stooped to pick up the serpenta himself. He turned it over in his hands.

  'This is a good weapon,' he said.

  The Ultramarine looked up at him. His helmet was in place. A Mark IV variant, some Ultramar-localised pattern. Its once-pristine cobalt-blue surface and gold-rimmed edges were splattered with blood, rich and bright. A golden wreath had been painted around the temples, some battle honour that Sor Talgron did not recognise.

  'Why?' asked the legionary. His voice was crackling and bled with static.

  Sor Talgron placed the barrel of the volkite pistol to the Ultramarine's visor lens, aiming it squarely into his left eye. 'Why what?'

  'Why do you do this?'

  Sor Talgron squeezed the trigger. The back of the Ultramarine's helmet exploded, and the floor beneath lit up in flame.

  'Because I am ordered to,' he said.

  TWO

  Chapter Master Aecus Decimus of the Ultramarines Legion, 17th Chapter, planted one heavy boot upon the traitor's chest and wrenched his blade free. The short sword slid from the fallen enemy's vox-grille with a wet scrape, and the red-armoured legionary collapsed, joining the blanket of others upon the blood-churned earth.

  Choking smoke clouded his vision, the chemicals and blinding micro-particles within it making his eyes sting and his throat burn. Visibility had been reduced to a matter of metres. Augury scanners were rendered useless by the shrouding fog. He had no notion of where the battle lines lay, but it hardly mattered. The engagement had completely lost its shape. The time for strategy had passed.

  Another enemy was upon him. He batted aside the legionary's screaming chainsword and pressed the barrel of his bolt pistol to the Word Bearer's chest. The force of the detonation hurled the traitor backwards, and he ended up on the ground four metres back, a deep crater in his ruptured gorget. Decimus's second s
hot ended him, taking him between helm and breastplate. The detonation almost tore his head from his body.

  The neck seal was one of the few locations in the newer marks of armour where bolt weaponry could achieve a clean kill from a distance. He had never seen the effects of bolt weaponry upon legionary power armour prior to this campaign - as far as he knew, no one within the XIII Legion had even considered such an eventuality. The mere thought would have been abhorrent. Now that legionary-legionary engagement was a practical, they had been forced to revise their tactics.

  Future marks of power armour would likely be designed to cover such deficiencies, the Techmarine Naxor had predicted. High gorgets, like those of the Cataphractii, would likely be integrated into line plate, he had said, just moments before he was dismembered by a Word Bearers legionary draped in human flesh. That these treacherous savages had ever been called their kin made him want to retch.

  The battle had devolved into a savage melee. All around him, legionaries in the crimson of the reborn Word Bearers and the noble blue of the Ultramarines were dying. The scale of the slaughter was galling. There would be no retreat, not from this battle. They would fight and die to the last. All that mattered now was to hold the enemy here long enough. What had started as long-ranged tank battles and lightning-swift assaults had been reduced to slogging through the mud and hacking at the enemy with blunted swords and toothless chainswords. He saw one of his veterans - Vaul Agregius, the Victor of Staxus — gun down a Word Bearer mouthing vile curses, silencing the wounded traitor with a final bolt to the head. Another veteran punched a XVII legionary into the smoking carcass of a desecrated Land Raider, pulping him beneath his energy-encased power fist.

  An Ultramarine nearby was dragged down into the mud, his attacker repeatedly stabbing a jagged-bladed knife into his throat until he was still. That Word Bearer was in turn ripped apart by heavy bolter fire, but there were always more, marching out of the fog and intoning their mournful chants.