The Beast Arises

The Meratara’s ramp opened into a covering of powder soft as silk. The planet’s death scream played still as constant gales, and over the last millennium they had worn the debris of the world’s destruction to a fine loess. Kalkator donned his helmet before venturing outside, and bade his men do the same — the air would choke them by itself, but it was one peril among many. The ozone layer of Dzelenic IV had been stripped away, and the surface was bathed in stellar radiation from its parent star.

Behind the Meratara three other gunships squatted in the abiotic dirt of the dead world, engines cycling. The Iron Warriors had been caught too often recently to take any chances. Fifty Space Marines formed up beside the warsmith, a worryingly large proportion of his much diminished Great Company. They waited expectantly as Kalkator scanned the cliffs. The world was changed beyond recognition, its past topography a sketch in the dirt of its present. He could not see the entrance to the facility.

‘Are you sure it is here, my lord?’ said Caesax. ‘This place is deader than a tomb. The cache could have been destroyed, or looted, or buried in a million tons of dirt.’

‘Silence,’ said Kalkator sharply, for he was well aware all that Caesax said was possible. ‘You forget yourself.’

‘Yes, warsmith,’ muttered the other.

Caesax was close to what Kalkator might call a friend. Friendship was weakness. Brotherhood was all. Caesax’s familiarity had encouraged him to test those boundaries recently.

Kalkator needed to keep him under control. They were all looking at him. Since Klostra had fallen, the hostility of his Great Company had grown. Although none yet outright defied him, how many of them could he truly count on, should it come to it? Best not to consider that eventuality. Deliver them victory, and they would follow. The iron of their loyalty would not be tested.

He finally found the worn aquila carved into the rock face, defaced fifteen centuries ago and further worn away by the ravages of the raging atmosphere. It was not where he had expected to find it. Kalkator had lived long enough to know that nothing was constant, not even stone. Not even iron.

‘This way,’ he said. He pointed with his left arm, the bionic. Let them see the iron in him clearly displayed. He marched through the debris of the world, a mix of desiccated biological matter and coarse sand torn from the bedrock, this material not yet aged enough to lose its sharp edges. Dzelenic IV’s death was still fresh in planetary terms.

The sun came out from behind a flag of dirty yellow cloud, not vapour, but more detritus lofted high into the atmosphere. The star glared on them weakly, a sallow circle of light. Kalkator’s warsuit informed him of climbing radiation with a series of idle clicks.

His men were still watching as he reached for a piece of stone. Remarkable, how the craftsmanship had held. The block stayed seated in position, its secret unrevealed.

He grasped it with both hands and yanked hard. The stone came free from its place with reluctance. He let it fall into the soft regolith. A lifeless panel lay behind, sticky with ancient oils and caked in microscopic particles. Kalkator reached out his arm, an interface dendrite snaking from his vambrace and into the access port. The small screen embedded above the key panel flickered green, then went out.

Kalkator stood back as a section of the cliff ten metres broad by four high receded with an almighty grinding clunk, and began a slow tracking to the right. Behind was a dark hangar, the smooth rockcrete floor and walls kept pristine by the planet’s arid air. The door got halfway open before the power failed. Stacked pallets of transit crates covered in dirty plastek shrouds receded into the shadows in neat rows.

Dust was already snaking in from the outside when Kalkator issued his command.

‘Empty it. Take everything.’

Collustrax pushed his way through another corroded door. Away from the hangar the complex was in bad shape, exhibiting seismic damage from the world-death. He passed down a stretch of corridor whose walls were shivered by cracks, his suit lights picking out ribbons of dust. He paused by a dessicated corpse dressed in the Imperial Army uniform of a regiment a thousand years forgotten. The bones of the man were still cloaked in skin, but so tight and dried they appeared to have been wrapped for transport in flaking plastek. When he toed the corpse the head rolled free.

He looked at the skull a moment, then stamped it flat.

‘Section Lambda-8 clear,’ he voxed. ‘Nothing to report.’

The next door was jammed shut. He kicked it to pieces, his heavy boots powering through the corroded metal. It became loose, and he wrenched it free. An avalanche of dust poured out around his knees.