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'What kind of creature has claws like that?' Qruze asked aloud.
The hatch crashed open off its broken hinges with a roaring displacement of air, and there before them was the answer.
THE ADJOINING CHAMBER was an open space crisscrossed by gantries and walkways, suspended in a steel web far above the open platform of a hangar bay several tiers below. Situated halfway up the side of the Somnus Citadel, the hangar was one of many tertiary landing ports designed for the shuttles deployed aboard the Black Ships. This landing port served the infirmary, allowing injured Sisters to be taken directly to the medicae centre in the event of a critical emergency. Normally it would be busy with servitors performing maintenance tasks on the landing grids, the ships or the airlock doors, but now it was the site of a pitched battle.
Garro saw the gold and silver of a dozen Silent Sisters engaged in close combat with a whirling, screaming mass of claws and green-black armour. It was difficult to get a good eye on what was happening. A foggy mass of smoke wreathed all the combatants; but no, not smoke. The cloud hummed and writhed with a will of its own, and he saw one witchseeker pitched over the lip of a gantry and sent falling to her death as the swarming mass of flies blinded her. The form barely visible in the midst of the insects, tall and shimmering, continued to send out savage attacks into the lines of the Sisters.
Hakur raised his bolter, but Garro waved him back. 'Careful! There are oxygen lines and fuel conduits in the walls. A stray round could set off an inferno! Blades only until I order otherwise!'
The catwalks were narrow and they forced the Astartes into single file movement. Garro saw Qruze split off with one of Hakur's squad and make an approach along a different gantry. He nodded and ran forward. The metal decking clanged and shook beneath the heavy boots of the Death Guard. It was hardly built for the weight of men in ceramite and flexsteel.
The swarm's motion was that of a single living, thinking creature. As the Astartes came close, it cut off portions of itself and sent them screeching through the air, separate and distinct clumps of dense, poisonous forms clawing at the eyes and skin of the warriors. Bolter fire would not harm this enemy. The tiny bodies resisted their attack, and the men were reduced to snatching at the air, pulping the serrated insects into messes of cracked chitin.
Blue light gathered along his blade. Swinging Liber-tas over his head, Garro cut a swathe through the thickening edges of the swarm and reacted swiftly as a figure in gold ca
To Garro's surprise, she made a quick string of word gestures in Astartes battle-sign. Nature of enemy unknown.
Aye,' agreed Garro. 'You know this tower better than we do, Sister. Block the escape routes and let my men deal with this mutant.' He had to raise his voice so it
would cany over the chattering squeals of the swarming bugs.
Kendel signed again, getting to her feet. Proceed with caution.
'That time has passed/ he replied and threw himself into the rippling mass of the swarm, the sword's power field crisping great clumps of black flies from the air around him.
THE SISTERS DREW back and followed Garro's command. There had been a moment, just the smallest of instants, when Nathaniel Garro had heard Keeler's cry and feared that the women had turned against them. His own battle-brothers had already raised weapons against him, and it was sad and damning that his first reaction was to assume it had happened once more, this time with Kendel's witchseekers out to murder them. He felt a measure of relief to learn he was wrong. To be confronted by another betrayal added to those of Horus, Mortarion and Grulgor... Was fate so cruel to curse him again?
Yes.
In his heart, in his soul he knew who it was he would find at the heart of the swarm even before he laid eyes upon him. The clawed, reeking monster spread the too-long fingers of his distended left hand in a grotesque greeting as Nathaniel fell into the eye of the swarm storm. The hexagonal steel decking beneath him squealed and moaned, shifting.
'Captain.' The word was a mocking chorus of rattling echoes, humming into his ears from all around. 'Look, I am healed.' For all the gruesome malformations of his flesh and bone, the aspect of the man beneath the changed body was clear to Garro's eyes.
He teetered on the brink of despair for one long second, the revulsion at what stood before him threatening to knock the last pillars of reason from his mind. A flash of memory unfolded. Garro remembered the first time he had seen Solun Decius, on the muddy plateau of the black plains on Barbarus. The aspirant was covered in shallow cuts, streaks of blood and a patina of dirt. He was pale from exertion and ingested poisons, but there was no weakness of any kind lurking behind those wild eyes. The boy had the way of an untamed animal about him, brilliantly fierce and cu
'Solun, why?' he shouted, furious at the youth's folly, his voice resonating inside his helmet. 'What have you done to yourself?'
'Solun Decius died aboard the EisensteinV thundered the rasping voice. 'His existence is at an end! I live now! I am the pestilent champion... I am the Lord of the Flies!'
Garro spat. Traitor! You followed Grulgor into his grotesque transformation. Look what you have become! A freak, a monster, a-'
A daemon? Is that what you were going to say, you hidebound old fool?' Callous laughter echoed around him. 'Is it sorcery that has renewed me? All that matters is that I have cheated death, like a true son of Mortarion!'
Why?' Garro screamed, the injustice hammering at him. 'In Terra's name, why did you give yourself to this abomination?'
'Because it is the future!' The voice buzzed and chattered. 'Look at me, captain. I am what the Death Guard is to become, what Grulgor and his men are already! Undying, living avatars of decay, waiting to reap the darkness!'
Garro's senses were heavy with the stench of corruption. 'I should have let you perish.' He coughed, faltering for a moment.
'But you did not!' came the scream. 'Poor Decius, trapped at the edge of mortality, wracked with such pain it would grind down a mountain. You could have released him, Garro! But you let him live in agony, tortured him with every passing moment, and for what? Because of your ludicrous belief that he would be saved by your master...' The creature took heavy steps towards him, the claw reaching out. 'He begged you! Begged you to end him, but you did not listen! He prayed to your precious gaudy Emperor for deliverance, and again he was ignored! Forsaken! Forsaken!' A slashing blow clipped Garro and he dodged away, falling through a haze of flies. The breathing slits on his armour locked shut, holding out the scrabbling, biting mandibles of the insects.
Garro had the brass icon and its chain wound around the fingers of his gauntlet. 'No,' he insisted, 'you should have survived. If you had held on, if you could give your spirit in the God-Emperor's service-'
'GodV The swarm bellowed the word back at him. 'I know god! The power that remade Decius, that is god! The intellect that answered him when he lay praying for the bliss of decease, that is god! Not your hollow golden idol!'