The Beast Arises

‘By the time we were down, we were blind,’ Severance continued. ‘The gravity storm had closed in. We’ve been scouring the surface for survivors or contacts ever since. We saw drop-ships. Stormbirds? That’s what brought us this way.’

‘You must have been in the vicinity already,’ said Zarathustra.

‘Yes,’ said Severance. ‘We managed to identify this zone, despite the geological upheavals, as the site of the original blisternest, so my wall has been section-searching the area to look for survivors.’

‘And ammunition,’ remarked Severance’s second-in-command, Merciful. His tone was mordant.

Daylight smiled. He was amused that both he and Severance had independently lighted on the same strategy. It reassured him that the core training of the Chapter was both profound and reliable.

‘Have you found anything?’ asked Zarathustra.

‘A few pitiful dead,’ replied Merciful. ‘Crushed by the tormented planet or overthrown by the Chromes.’

‘They’re not the real enemy,’ said Severance.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Tranquility.

‘The Chromes are just a hazard, and the cause of our undertaking here,’ Severance replied. ‘But there’s something else. Something that wasn’t here before. You can feel it. You can hear its voice on the wind.’

As if to underscore his remark, noise bursts echoed across the valley.

‘Substantiate that,’ said Daylight very directly.

‘I cannot,’ Severance replied. ‘It’s a gut feeling.’

‘The walls do not deal in gut feelings,’ said Daylight. ‘The shield-corps relies on what is verifiable.’

He looked at Severance uneasily. Perhaps the brother had been here too long, subjected to the extremities of the environment. Perhaps gravity, or one of the other natural or even unnatural forces being twisted and convoluted on Ardamantua, had affected his personality or his brain chemistry. Where Daylight had felt reassured by the overlap of their tactical decisions, he now felt a distance, as if the bond of the shield and wall did not connect them at all.

‘Have you seen the shape in the sky?’ Severance asked.

‘What? No,’ said Daylight.

‘Some things cannot be substantiated,’ said Severance. He rose from where he had been sitting on the boulders scattered at the shore and gestured Daylight to follow him. Daylight did so reluctantly. The pair clambered up an outcrop overlooking the dark mirror of the lake.’

‘Wait,’ said Severance. ‘Look.’

‘At what? What am I looking at? The sky?’

‘No, look at the lake.’

‘You asked if I had seen the thing in the sky—’

‘Be patient, Daylight. It comes and goes.’

They waited. Daylight felt he was wasting valuable time.

‘Look,’ said Severance.

The scudding, racing cloud-cover, moving across the heavens like a black lava flow, parted briefly, riven by the wind and orbital disruption. Sunlight speared through in a pale beam. The sky beyond the cloud was white and blank, like static. There was nothing to be seen.

But in the lake…

Daylight started. It was there and gone in an instant, but he had seen it. He reset his visor recorder for immediate playback, and then froze the image.

Therein, the clouds were parted, drawn like drapes to show a colourless sky where nothing resided. In the reflection below, however, trapped in the surface of the lake, the patch of bright sky did contain something.

Something large and ominous, an orb that seemed to press down on the wounded planet.

It was a moon. A black, ungodly, hideous moon.

Twenty-Five

Ardamantua

They had been walking around the lake edge in the company of Severance’s squad for several hours when they spotted the flare.

It lofted up in the distance, an incandescently bright pin-prick, then shivered as it hung in place, before fading and falling away, all effort spent.

‘One of mine!’ Severance cried. ‘Move!’

They began to make the best pace possible. As the leaders ran ahead, Captain Severance told Daylight that his subdivided wall had agreed to use basic flares and visual signals to stay in contact, given that everything up to and including short-range helm-to-helm vox was useless.

The ragged Asmodai troopers couldn’t keep up. Major Nyman had put his helmet back on, exhausted by the impure air, but rather more troubled by the constant noise bursts. Even those Asmodai who had kept the visors of their orbital drop-suits firmly sealed since planetfall were feeling the effects. The noise bursts echoed into the cavities of their helmets and armour, unsettling them. It was psychologically hammering them.

Severance pointed to four of his men and told them to stay with the Guardsmen and bring them along behind. Then he set out at full pace.

It took them half an hour to reach the origin of the signal flare. Daylight was beside Severance as they slowed to approach.

It was a second search party from Lotus Gate Wall, commanded by a sergeant called Diligent.

‘Good to see you, sir,’ the sergeant called out. He hesitated as he saw Daylight and the other Space Marines new to him.

‘I see you’ve made discoveries of your own,’ he remarked.

‘What did you find?’ asked Severance.