The First Heretic

‘Cyrene,’ he growled, as much Raum now as Argel Tal.

‘This...’ Her voice was a child’s whisper, so breathless that it barely made a sound. ‘This was my nightmare.’ Blind eyes found his with unwavering ease. ‘To be in the dark. To hear a monster breathe.’

Claws closed around her frail form with possessive, protective strength, but the damage had long since been done. Her blood stung his fingers where it dripped onto them.

‘What have they done to you?’ Cyrene asked with a smile.

She died in his arms before he could answer.

He heard the voices, but had no reason to pay heed to them. The Other, yes, he heeded such chattering. The bleating of humanity: fleshy tongues flopping in moist mouths, and the gusting of lung-breath over meat to make a sound in the throat. Yes, the Other listened to the voices and replied in kind.

Raum did not. He barked a word of hate, drawn from the Old Tongue, hoping it would silence their nasal noises. It did not. Hngh. Ignore them. Yes.

He had sensed the need for the blood-hunt, and risen to the fore in a rush of release. The Other’s body – no, the body they shared – assumed the hunting skin with ease now.

He ran, aching with need, pained by the pursuit of prey without catching it. Humans in his way were dashed aside. Raum did not look back. He smelled them die, scenting their lifeblood and brainmeat spilling out onto walls and floors.

Frail things.

You are killing the crew.

The Other was returning? This was good. They were stronger together. The Other’s silence had been a cause for fear. As he returned, Raum felt his instincts shifting, adapting, made sharper by reason and the concept of past and future. Intellect, not mere cunning. Sentience. Better. He charged down the corridor, roaring at the humans to frighten them aside. As he passed, he did not slay them.

They are allies.

They slowed the hunt. He felt an itching reluctance to confess to his weakness of reason and forethought. We will kill no more. We are whole.

I... I am back.

Argel Tal drew in a breath, tasting the ship’s recycled air with its stale-skin tang. Like a thread to be pulled loose, he scented something snagging at the edge of his perception. His friend. Aquillon. That ozone smell of charged weapons. The oils used to maintain the golden armour.

He ran on through the hallways, moving past more corpses, ended by blades rather than claws. De Profundis was packed with the dead, with slain Euchar lining the corridors.

You were gone too long. The humans bleat and snort at us.

The vox. Argel Tal blinked at the flashing runes. ‘I am here.’

‘Where?’ Xaphen sounded as furious as Argel Tal felt. ‘The Emperor’s bastard sons have decimated half the Euchar on board. Where are you?’

‘I… I lost control. I have Aquillon’s scent now. I... Thirteenth concourse, at the port hangar deck.’ Argel Tal stormed through the great doors onto the gunship bay.

The Rising Sun’s aft thrusters flared before him, as it roared its way out through the containment field and into the void beyond.

Argel Tal’s scream echoed around the hangar.

‘Brother?’ Xaphen was shouting. ‘Brother?’

They run to hide. The prey goes to ground.

‘They flee us,’ Argel Tal raved across the general channel. ‘They’re running to the planet. Baloc! Track the Rising Sun. All batteries, track that ship and fire at will.’

‘No!’ Xaphen called. ‘Erebus wants them alive!’

‘I do not care what Erebus wants. Send them to the ground in flames.’

De Profundis came about in a ponderous arc. Along with most of the Astartes Legion fleet, it had suffered hard in the void battle, and was loath to respond to orders now. Signals and firing solutions flew between all nearby Word Bearers vessels, and seven ships let loose with their broadsides, spilling their immensely destructive firepower into space in the hopes of hitting the tiny gunship.

Less than a minute after it had blasted its way from De Profundis’s hangar bay, the Rising Sun cut through the atmosphere of Isstvan V, its hull aflame and its heat shields glowing molten orange with the stress of a spiralling, rudderless atmospheric re-entry.

The capital ship Dirge Eterna claimed the kill shot.

Argel Tal listened to the scramble of conflicting voices over the vox, and the fleetmaster’s description of the Thunderhawk falling in an uncontrolled descent, but not destroyed outright. There would come a time to dispute the Dirge Eterna’s attempt for glory, but that time was not now.

‘Gal Vorbak to the assault deck,’ he ordered. ‘Ready a drop-pod.’

The gunship lay on its side, the very picture of twisted, miserable metal.