Planetfall, Plus Nine Hundred Fifty-Nine Hours Terran Sidereal
The Titan barge lifted off into the sky like a mountain breaking free of gravity's grip; the massive pillars of flame on its underside filled the air with a bass roar. Thunderhawks and Stormbirds darted past the immense transport. Flat on a black rock, Nex stared at the plateau filled with more transports, landers, and prefab temp structures. His autosenses pierced the dim light to pick out Legion insignias and details: Sons of Horus, Death Guard, Emperor's Children, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Night Lords, and Alpha Legion. Tens of thousands still left upon Isstvan's black sands, the reconsolidation slowed by the density of debris in orbit and slipping out of the sky.
From his vantage point Nex noticed an odd little detail in the disposition of the Legion camps. Each of them stood distinct from the other, Legion forces in their own unique camps. That wasn't uncommon, but these… some of the camps looked like they were positioned for hostilities against one another. The Night Lords and Death Guard had nearly as many sentries posted inside against the Emperor's Children as they did covering the outer approaches.
The Emperor's Children… the others said the Third Legion were exemplars of all facets of warfare. Nex didn't see that here; their camp was a riot of hedonistic activity that bore little resemblance to an Astartes Legion. It was also his way in. The bacchanalian camp had either neglected to post sentries or they'd been distracted and wandered off. Such a thing would have been grounds for severe censure in the Raven Guard.
Nex stole across the broken ground, crawling over volcanic soil and going from deep shadow to deep shadow. Screams, shouts, and some kind of… blaring music filled the air from the Emperor's Children camp. Nex was no aesthete, but the strange piercing tones carried an edge of wrongness that felt like narcotic claws scratching furrows across his mind. He veered away from the Third Legion positions; was this related to the phenomenon with the skull pyramids?
Either way, he decided to avoid the Third Legion camp. If there was anything like the skull structures he didn't trust his own control. Creeping through the gaps between the encampments Nex watched for an infiltration opportunity. If anything the Iron Warrior camp was too heavily fortified; the Fourth Legion's paranoia demanding no less even among allies. Night Lords – too far.
Nex found his opening at the Alpha Legion camp. Their camp was much smaller than the others; judging from the activity most of the Legionaries were already off-world. They even had regular human auxiliaries posted as guards. Whatever tasks the mysterious Legion was occupied with, they'd devoted most of their forces to them.
He slapped past a sentry line despite the evident professionalism displayed by the Army forces, resisting the urge to part throats along the way. Such actions would be counterproductive no matter how satisfying they might be. Deeper in sat rows of transports, Legion Stormbirds wingtip to wingtip with smaller Thunderhawks. Apart from the Astartes craft rested Army transports of various makes: fat-bellied dropships dwarfing shuttles and orbital landers.
A Legion vessel was too risky; Nex went for the Army ships. He passed several dropships. Too large, too crowded. He paused by a mound of Astartes corpses next to one rectangular transport perched above like a sated scavenger. Nex gave them a cursory look. The bodies belonged to loyal and traitor Legions alike, most of them sporting grotesque wounds of various origins. The ship caught his attention; dim ochre light came from the open ramp. The temperature readouts in his retinal display reported significantly lower temperatures than most humans were comfortable with.
Nex slipped up the ramp, knife in hand. His autosenses detected no voices, no activity. Avoiding the forward control sections he prowled towards the rear holding sections – following smeared trails of blood. He found the reason not long afterwards. What had once been a ready bay for arms and equipment was now a mortuary.
Nex looked down at the arranged Astartes corpses, stacked perpendicularly along both bulkheads like torpedoes readied for launch. Forty-some bodies, stuck into cryo tubes to the torso. Their armor testified to a variety of home Legions, most of them loyalist. Predominantly Raven Guard, actually. Some Iron Hands, a Salamander. Others belonged to the Warmaster's forces: Sons of Horus, Death Guard, Iron Warriors, a pair of Night Lords.
Each was unhelmed, most of them displaying the brutal wounds necessary to incapacitate a Legionary. Why preserve them? Nex inspected the closest corpse; it didn't look like a trophy. The Alpha Legion wasn't known for taking trophies… but then there was little the secretive Legion was known for. They were going to the trouble of preserving the corpses, so that implied some further purpose.
Nex left the frozen chamber and swept the rest of the ship. Empty. Humans could be so squeamish about corpses. Regardless, here was an opportunity – perhaps one he wouldn't get again. Nex went back to the cold storage and sought out one of the Raven Guard bodies wearing similar Mk IV armor. It wasn't a perfect match, but given that grime and filth coated both of them it seemed similar enough. He pushed the control rune for the cryo tube's tray and it extended with a soft hiss, sliding the body out.
Carrying the dead weight of another Legionary slowed Nex to a crawl as he hauled the armored corpse through the shadows out of the ship and to the pile of bodies outside. He slid the dead Raven Guard into the pile, then paused. Their faces were quite the mismatch. Nex thought about the likelihood of discovery. He'd heard that some mortals found all Astartes to look alike. An uncertain thing to trust an escape to.
He drew his knife.
Kaedes settled into position on the slab as it retracted into the cryo tube. Ignoring the cold, he turned his mind inward, slowing his heart rate and breathing to glacial rates. With each breath Nex slowed another of his body's functions, bringing himself closer to a Sus-an Membrane coma. His thoughts fluttered like heat shimmer from a melta discharge as he sank deeper – but not entirely into the coma. The suspended animation a Marine entered by activating the brain-meshed organ could be maintained nearly indefinitely, but required external attention to awake from.
With only a fraction of his senses alert to the world outside, Nex's mind retreated to the hazy zone between consciousness and coma. Part of it tried to plan ahead; if this shuttle did get offworld with him, what then? Boarding some capitol ship, most likely. Astartes corpses: that implied direct Alpha Legion involvement. A strike cruiser or battle barge then. Outnumbered thousands to one – and that was just the probable Legionary count. Ironically, the larger the vessel they docked with, the better his odds. A vessel on par with a battle barge was a veritable metropolis, a self-contained city powering through the stars. He could easily vanish into the depths of such a ship.
And then what?
He wondered how many he could kill aboard a battle barge before they cornered him. Perhaps start his way up from the menial crew; most ships had vital systems tended to predominantly by mortal serfs. Kill the weak ones; try to draw out Legionaries slowly. He'd need to-
"Why are you doing this?" the sweating man asked.
What?
It took Nex a moment to recognize this… another memory. An old one- the oldest, actually. Before the string of kills, before the title and the imprisonment on Lycaeus. Before the Primarch and the Transformation.
"Why?" The man held shaking hands up before a grease-stained tunic.
The handgun looked monstrously oversized in the boy's fist. He stared at the man for a long moment.
"Wait- no, please! You don't have to-"
The boy squeezed the trigger, wincing at how loud the report was in the little dwelling unit. The man staggered back a step, looked down at the red stain spreading across his chest. He looked back up, gasping in pain and disbelief. The boy fired again, putting another round through the man's chest, and watched the man stagger back another step, collide with the hab wall, and slide down. A final realignment of the rough sights and– the shot seemed to echo in the little room as blood and brains sprayed across the dull metal wall.
The boy lowered the smoking pistol while staring at the corpse. So that was what killing a man was like. So easy; stalking the factorum worker home unseen had been more challenging. The boy slipped back out through the window overlooking the smoggy, night-lit city as alarmed shouts sounded from the surrounding hab units. He'd need more practice soon. The gun was loud, perhaps too loud. Perhaps a blade next time. Much quieter, and he could see what it was like even closer…
The memory faded, cordoned and buried in Nex's near-comatose mind. Odd. He'd never recalled anything of his previous life so clearly. A side effect of the Sus-an Membrane? How long had he been killing for the Primarch now? Longer than most mortals had been alive, he knew. For all that the iterators attached to the Expeditionary Fleets had spoken of humanity united and ascendant, compliance was more often purchased by blood and death than freely given. War was the Imperium's foundation, the cornerstone of its growth. Slipping further into the coma, Nex's last sense of the outside world was the low rumble of engines cycling up.
Noise.
Movement.
Nex came out of the near-coma slowly, rigidly controlling his breathing. He sensed activity in the chamber with him: the hiss of cryo tube slabs and the thuds of ceramite-coated bodies on the cold deck. He listened for a minute, posthuman senses isolating and processing the information as his body returned to readiness.
Two sets of piston-augmented workers, organic components sustained by crude machinery Mono-tasked servitors hauling heavy Legionary corpses. No threat. Two other mortals, walking, inspecting, and making comments about individual states of the assembled bodies. One right next to him, the other… across the chamber. By the sound of the voices, standing by one of the Death Guard bodies – the one missing half his skull. The pungent, sharp scent of antiseptic filled the air, mixed with the rich copper tones of Astartes blood. And underneath it all… the atmospheric pressure had changed; they'd left Isstvan V.
"What does the Legion even want with these?" said an exhausted female voice – the serf across the chamber.
"Who knows? I didn't ask," said the serf standing close to Nex. "Don't think they'd tell us anyways."
"Rumor is we're heading for Ultramar, shadowing the Seventeenth and Twelfth."
"Really? I've heard we're moving to intercept a Space Wolf task force, but with this Legion, you never- What happened to this one's face?" Footsteps, coming closer.
"Probably what happened to all of them?" The other serf hadn't moved. "Astartes take a lot of killing."
"No, I mean…" The voice came from even closer now. "His face is… it's loose. What-"
Nex reached up and seized the serf's throat. Simultaneously his other hand pulled his old knife and hurled it across the chamber, directing it by sound. Nex tightened his grip as the female serf grunted and collapsed, hilt protruding from her sternum. He squeezed, crushing the windpipe as his victim clutched in vain at his arm. His fingers tightened more; bones crumpled in his grip and the frantic scrabbling at his forearm ceased. The whole affair had taken less than two seconds.
Nex released the corpse, then reached down and peeled the other Legionary's face off his own. Sitting up, he tossed the scrap of flesh and skin aside and reclaimed Melchar's helmet at his feet. The servitors continued their work of pulling corpses out of the cryo tubes, ignorant of the murders. Nex got off the slab, retrieved his knife, and proceeded to disable the servitors by tearing out their cortical processors. He tore a strip from the strangled serf's shirt and wiped the lingering viscera from his face and head.
The helmet went back on, sealed with a hiss, and blocked out the antiseptic smells. Nex left the chamber and swept through the transport, silently eliminating a pair of other crewmen. The view from the command module showed a busy hangar outside: a Legion vessel. The clustered vessels offered plentiful shadows and darkness to make his way out, but his work aboard the transport would be discovered before long – especially if Alpha Legionnaires were expecting the Astartes bodies aboard.
He could remedy that.
The transport possessed a standard Helios-pattern generator; it took Nex less than three minutes of careful modifications with the power dagger to destabilize it. He headed for the embarkation ramp, leaving a slowly growing puddle of coolant fluids dribbling from the generator. By his calculations, it would overload in ten minutes – maybe less.
Nex crept down the ramp into the hangar. Keeping to the shadows underneath the boxy transport, he worked his way back. He passed a servitor connecting a refueling hose and casually flicked a hand out, plunging his blade into the boxy implants controlling its limbs. The servitor twitched and shook, and the heavy hydraulic claw that was its right arm snapped shut from the misfiring signals – right around the refueling hose.
Stuttering in binaric, the servitor slumped over as processed promethium flooded from the ruptured hose. Nex kept moving, flowing from shadow to shadow towards the hangar edge. He looked for – there, the thick cluster of pipes running up into the ceiling. Each tube was larger around than a man was tall and ran up into the ship depths. The shadowy catwalks above would provide the best method to slip deeper into the ship, provided his distraction worked as-
A shockwave rocked the hangar as sabotaged generator detonated. Shouts and screams filled the air as crew and serfs moved frantically, some retreating from the growing blaze while others seized firefighting equipment and ran towards the wreckage. The closest ones had just started spraying down the edges of the blaze with suppressant foam when the promethium ignited. Two other secured transports went up in flames as the chemical fire spread along the deck, igniting people and equipment alike. Shouted orders turned to cries of pain as flames arched out from the ruptured hose, engulfing crew members and servitors.
Nex clambered up the back of the thick pipes, hauling himself up with Astartes ease. He stopped halfway up and secured his grip as alarm klaxons echoed through the hangar. The immense outer doors ground open moments later, venting the atmosphere to the vacuum. Secured gunships and transports rocked in their berths but otherwise stayed in place.
The people weren't so fortunate. Crew members flew out of the hangar, limbs flailing and mouths opened in silent screams. Still others managed to hold on, fighting through the trauma of sudden depressurization. No respite came for them as the Alpha Legion vessel ruthlessly vented its own hangar to stop the shipboard fire. The tug of venting atmosphere eased and stopped over several minutes and Nex resumed his movement, climbing up to the highest catwalks. Shadows danced as gentle starlight from the open doors flooded in and suffocated corpses collapsed to the deck like discarded cartridges.
The vast doors finally began sliding shut as those few crew who'd managed to reach void suits started moving through the hangar, linking up with other survivors and searching for the cause of the sudden catastrophe. Inner hatches opened and an Alpha Legion combat squad rushed into the hangar, bolters and grav-gun ready as they spread out, alert for any signs of an attack. More void-suited crew bearing flame suppressors and repair equipment followed them, heading straight for the transport wreckage once the squad sergeant nodded the all clear.
In the commotion none noticed Nex cut into a two-meter wide air grate in the highest reaches of the hangar. His power dagger sliced through bolts with effortless economy; pulling it back gently Nex slipped through the gap and pulled the grate back into position behind him. Not perfect, but under the circumstances it would do.
His autosenses lit the air duct in pale, washed-out green. Narrow and cramped, the shaft was one of the countless tunnels worming its way through a voidship's innards. In the darkness Nex heard the gentle current of moving air underneath the constant rattle and clatter of the myriad pumps and fans keeping air and water flowing through a void-borne city. Pipes and tubes filled the edges of the space.
Nex crawled forward in the labyrinth, putting distance between himself and the hangar. The darkness proved no impediment; the air sweeping through the cramped tunnel reminded him of some days during the Lycaeus uprising, dragging himself through hewn rock tunnels barely wide enough to fit an adolescent. Creeping out of prepared dead drop hatches to ambush Guild officials in their own offices and quarters.
Humans always let their guard down when they thought themselves safe in their homes. Nex watched for ventilation gaps and grills as he crept along, drawing upon senses of direction honed in dark tunnels to construct a mental map of his surroundings. The air duct would lead to a source of some kind eventually: a generator or large pump – Nex had never paid too much attention to these details. He would just look for anything that seemed important.
And then he would strike.