Monolith Read online

  Monolith

  Chris Dows

  ‘I repeat – this is Colour Sergeant Pedahzur of the Cadian 46th. Traitor Space Marines equipped with jump packs have overrun our position. We cannot offer any covering fire or assistance. We need reinforcements. Now!’

  Despite the rattling din of equipment and weapons, the colour sergeant’s voice was clear enough through Zachariah’s vox. It wasn’t panic in the Cadian’s tone, but the urgency of his delivery said it all – this was going to be a tough one.

  The briefing on the Obliteration had informed them that intelligence was ‘incomplete’, but it was clear enough that the situation had deteriorated.

  Somewhere below, on the surface of Ophel Minoris, the Cadians had lost control of an installation vital to security in the Arx Gap – a massive structure of unknown origin with, it was said, similar properties to the famed Cadian Pylons. With their experience of these mysterious structures, the Cadian forces had been the obvious choice to occupy and defend them.

  When the first distress call had come, the Obliteration had been the closest Imperial vessel, but it had still taken nearly a week to reach Ophel Minoris. Surviving an attack for so long under normal circumstances would have been a tough call for Cadians, who were amongst the hardiest fighters Zachariah had ever met. It was apparent these were far from normal circumstances, and if any had survived against a foe of such terrifying myth and legend then this only increased his admiration for them.

  ‘Chaos Space Marines… Emperor’s Throne,’ muttered Adullam.

  Over the years Zachariah had heard whispers about these dreadful creatures. Space Marines who had rebelled against the Imperium and turned to the worship of dark powers.

  He felt Beor shift uncomfortably in his seat, tightly wedged into the meshed metal bench he currently shared with the hulking brute to his left and Adullam to his right. Directly in front, the three troopers’ heavy boots almost touched the feet of veteran Guardsmen Sojack, Melnis and Coarto, the other half of Zachariah’s team, who sat quietly, conserving their energy for the mission. Their thoughts were drowned out by the roar of the Valkyrie’s twin engines as they hit the upper atmosphere.

  Zachariah nodded once, and within seconds respirators were connected to helmets and tinted visors flicked over eyes, each man moving expertly inside the straps and harnesses holding him in place against the violent shaking of the ship.

  ‘Drop point in two minutes. All ships are holding formation. Clear skies, Elysians – we’ll get you down in one piece.’

  The voice of the Valkyrie’s copilot warbled with the buffeting of the plunging ship and Zachariah acknowledged the message. Signalling his team to keep vox silence, he knew the other five squads somewhere behind them would do the same; comms would likely be monitored by the enemy and the last thing they needed was to give away their pitifully small numbers.

  It bothered Zachariah that they had been sent in with such little preparation and, for that matter, recuperation after the fighting on Rysgah, but they’d been assured that reinforcements would join his beloved 158th as fast as they could. Whether it would be fast enough was immaterial; they had a job to do, and despite his many years of service he still felt a flutter of excitement in his stomach.

  Slipping off the restraints from his shoulders, Zachariah reached below the bench and retrieved his grav-chute by its battered nozzles and heaved it off the deck. Sitting forwards, Adullam and Beor took a side of the pack each and lifted it up and over Zachariah’s head. He put his arms through the straps and began clipping them together. Leaning forwards to create more space, Adullam and Beor followed the same practised routine until all three were ready for the drop. Within seconds, Coarto, Sojack and Melnis had done the same. This was always the most uncomfortable part of any mission, trying not to clang and crash into everyone and the bulky weapons containers taking up the rest of the drop ship’s interior before making the way to the exit hatch. It was the very reason the veteran squad waited until the last minute of a drop, as well as one of a thousand things they had learned over countless missions.

  Wham.

  Zachariah looked sharply to the starboard side of the hold. He knew the normal clatter of orbital entry and that wasn’t it. Something had hit them, and hit them hard, brutally illustrated by a dent in the grey metal wall. A frantic shriek of metal on metal filled the hold, choreographing the movement of the six men as they writhed to free their strapped-down weapons.

  A sliver of light became a ragged, gaping hole as two sets of razor-sharp talons punched inside, and the Valkyrie’s pressure warning alarm blared into life. A bulky bronze and scarlet figure gripped onto the entrance it had brutally torn open and stared impassively at the men. Buckles popped, webbing slid back and straps loosened, but it was all too late.

  The creature screamed.

  A fist of sound hit the men, smashing their senses into submission. Ducking down, the armoured monster launched itself inside, slashing talons cutting furiously through the racks and webbing. The ship lurched to one side, throwing the intruder towards Melnis, Coarto and Sojack, who were eviscerated in a scarlet flurry before Zachariah’s eyes. Facing the three remaining troopers, the massive figure raised a powered arm, but its swing was unbalanced by the Valkyrie, which shuddered violently and dropped.

  The shrieking Chaos Space Marine was thrown up onto the ceiling with a crunch, silencing its mind-splitting howl with the impact. The ship spiralled to starboard, throwing the traitor along the ceiling then back out of the hole it had made, taking a good part of the fuselage with it. Their reprieve was short-lived as Zachariah watched a fracture line run up and across the top of the hold, and with a mighty crack the vessel split in half.

  In a blink, Zachariah found himself in free space, still strapped to the bench between Beor and Adullam. Experience overtook shock as the freezing air cleared his head, and he began assessing how to free himself from the plunging rack. Pieces of the Valkyrie fell past: an angled wing section, torn plates of the container floor and the entire nose of the dismembered ship. Zachariah caught a whirling snapshot of the pilot and co-pilot clawing desperately at the jammed cockpit mechanism. Their escape would never come.

  Pulling his legs sharply underneath the bench, Zachariah fought the sickening gravitational forces and withdrew his combat knife from its sheath. Three slashing cuts across his restraints and a hard kick against the seat sent him tumbling into space, closely followed by Beor and Adullam, who had followed his cue.

  Zachariah threw out his arm to right himself with the horizon, sheathing and securing the weapon in a seamless movement. Spread-eagled to increase drag, the three men drifted into a classic fall position – just as a volley of bolts tore between them.

  Zachariah looked around – the traitor was plunging towards their position, firing with little thought for accuracy. Adullam and Beor saw the threat and split out of formation to provide two smaller targets instead of a single large one. Zachariah twisted and turned his body, pulling in his arms and legs to increase his drop, but he knew he was an easy target. The option of hitting thrusters and returning fire was futile because any reduction in speed would make things even worse, and he couldn’t free his chest-strapped lasgun without stabilising himself.

  He was in real trouble.

  The dark green blur of a Valkyrie filled his vision, its speed startling him nearly as much as the fierce, breathtaking push from its twin exhausts. In all the confusion he’d forgotten the other five ships of the attack group. The new arrival roared down to the falling foe. The hulking creature powered towards the approaching ship but was met with a searing lascannon discharge that lanced a perfect hole through its chest.

  Well, at least they can be killed, th
ought Zachariah as he watched the Chaos Space Marine plunge to the ground with broiling gore spewing from its back. An after-image appeared of Melnis, Coarto and Sojack’s horrified faces as they struggled in the Valkyrie and Zachariah shook his head to free himself of the dreadful vision. That creature had taken half his team. Half his friends.

  He would have to deal with that later.

  Just before he plunged into the thick blankets of cloud directly below, two shapes moved from either side into his peripheral vision. Surrounded by vapour-heavy whiteness, he felt a strong double pat on the fluttering arm of his jump suit. Through streaks of mist and drizzle on his visor, he saw Adullam nod once.

  Zachariah returned the greeting and, despite the comms risk, tapped twice on the side of his helmet.

  ‘We’re about three miles up. They won’t be able to see us in this, and once we get through it the remaining Valkyries should protect our backs. Keep an eye out for a landing spot when we–’

  ‘Sarge, look at that.’

  At this height the ground far below was a suggestion of detail painted by swathes of parched black earth and lush green forest. They’d seen variations on the pattern a hundred times or more, but the colossal, towering black stone monolith thrusting up to meet them was astonishing in scale and brutality. It had to be at least a mile high, terminating in a roughly triangular base. As it rose into the air, the weather-worn, pockmarked and partially eroded outer walls corkscrewed into an ever-narrowing spiral towards its summit. Thousands of randomly distributed outcrops, ledges and entrances suggested themselves thanks to the yellow-white gleam from Ophel’s sun. That’s how it attacked us, thought Zachariah. It jumped from the platforms on the top.

  Greater detail formed as they fell towards the structure’s peak. Perched impossibly on the apex was a series of massive cracked and broken angled stone pillars: two giant cupped hands cradling the network of makeshift Imperial structures comprising the Cadian command post. The whole thing rested on a triangular platform supported by metres-thick buttresses projecting from the structure’s narrowing sides directly below.

  How it stayed in place was beyond Zachariah, and his attention was suddenly drawn to flashes of colour from inside and out, pieces of debris and larger objects being thrown down to the ground. His jaw clenched.

  The objects were men.

  Zachariah unclipped his modified sniper lasgun and brought the telescopic site up to his visor, fighting the buffeting wind as best he could. The shaking image confirmed what he had feared. Through clouds of smoke and tongues of flame, he could see his Cadian brothers fighting, desperately and in close quarters. The crackle of static in his ear was replaced by the breathless, urgent voice of Pedahzur. They were close enough to pick up his short-range vox.

  ‘Regroup on the left of the – the left! Oranis, watch out for–’

  A huge explosion ripped out the far side of the listening post, its prefabricated plasteel walls spinning out and down the steeple-angled black rock parapets. Screams could be heard over the open vox, cries of fury and agony as Pedahzur’s men fought the traitors to the bitter end. At such close range, it would be a massacre.

  As if to confirm this, Zachariah’s razor-sharp gaze was attracted to movement within a ragged hole as he passed: a dozen men, perhaps more, backing out and firing repeatedly into the orange-black smoke. Despite unleashing withering fire, their unseen target kept at them until, inevitably, they tumbled off the ledge and fell to their deaths. Over a mile up, only a few would see out their doom to its bone-smashing end.

  Zachariah’s scope bloomed with a brilliant flash from above. Instinctively he snapped it away from his eye, but blobs of colour punctured his sight with every blink. He felt something searingingly hot streak past, and his vision cleared enough to see the burning remains of two disintegrating Valkyries cascading out towards him in a lethal curve. The reason for their brutal demise became clear some seconds later when another pair of Valkyries turned and climbed upwards and away from each other in the distance as two Chaos Space Marines descended towards them.

  ‘No!’ shouted Zachariah uselessly as one pilot made the dreadful mistake of opening the hold door, clearly thinking it best to disgorge his precious cargo before it became victim to the traitor’s frenzied attack. The six Elysian men presented instant targets on their exit, such was the proximity of the rust-red streak of fury to their fragile hold. They died within seconds.

  Despite its own relentless pursuer, the second Valkyrie swooped around to help its brother, whose port fin stabiliser had melted away. The traitor was torn into bloody confetti, but its crippled victim spun out of control towards its would-be saviour.

  The second pilot pulled up and away, but it was too late; the Valkyries smashed into each other, creating a tangled mess of engines and fuselage that spun furiously past Zachariah and the others to the ground.

  Zachariah looked in all directions, but he could only see empty space. Worryingly, the two other creatures were nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Head for that large outcrop at eleven o’clock. I’ll be damned if I lose all of you in one day. Move!’

  The three remaining Elysians dipped heads, pressed their arms to their sides and pitched downwards at Zachariah’s barked order, arrowing towards the scarred and pitted wall of the monolith. Streaks of weapons fire flashed past from above, forcing another break of formation.

  Zachariah twisted to try and find their attackers; the two monsters who had met the Valkyries were gaining on the Elysians, smoke belching from the underside of their massive jump packs. They must have landed then immediately launched, and Zachariah’s innate calculus told him they would intercept seconds before the Guardsmen reached the safety of the structure – unless he did something about it.

  Tilting his body upwards, Zachariah hit his port thruster a fraction before the starboard, spinning him on his vertical axis, halting his fall with a sickening jolt. The renegades roared on, unphased by this impudent human wretch levelling its feeble weapon at them, revelling in the midair carnage they were generating.

  Breathing deeply to correct his aim, Zachariah fired repeatedly at the lead traitor’s oncoming form, hoping to strike a vulnerable spot. The creature shook off the insect bites, but Zachariah kept on relentlessly, determined to buy the extra time Beor and Adullam needed. Somewhere inside the hideously decorated armour, he supposed the creature was laughing at his pathetic efforts as its own fire crept ever closer, but a flash of metal directly above had Elysian and traitor looking up as one.

  The final Valkyrie was belching smoke from its port engine. A good part of the starboard wingtip was missing, but its multi-laser was still functional. Wildly inaccurate fire spat from the weapon, forcing the two monsters to break off their attack on Zachariah. Turning to the crippled ship, they fired into the cockpit, quickly reducing it to glass and steel splinters.

  With the pilot certainly dead and the rear hatch gaping open, Zachariah saw his chance and aimed at the vessel’s underside. He struggled to centre his aim on the remaining Hellstrike missile, sitting proud on its pylon, but with the third shot the ship erupted in a ball of flame, engulfing the nearest traitor and sending chunks of metal into the remaining creature’s jump pack. One piece tore through the starboard nacelle, which disappeared in an oily bloom of brown and black smog, the port engine increasing its output to compensate.

  Caught off-balance, the traitor flipped and rushed towards Zachariah, who cut thrusters and dropped out of the way. As he watched the hulking red form streak past, horror quickly replaced his relief. Despite its damage, his foe had found another target.

  ‘Beor, above and behind. Peel off!’

  Zachariah’s warning was too late.

  Beor seemed to fold in half around the Chaos Space Marine’s armour, his back snapping from the sickening impact. Only just managing to avoid a collision himself, Adullam was consumed by the inky black plume marking the traitor
’s steep curving descent towards the enormous building. If the initial impact hadn’t claimed Beor’s life, the collision with the monolith’s side made certain of it.

  Zachariah watched in utter dismay as the trooper’s smashed body fell away from the traitor’s mangled form and down the side of the massive structure, all dignity lost as he bounced doll-like off protruding sills and ledges.

  Adullam became a shadow as he fell towards a huge triangular opening several levels below, his grav-chute deploying perilously close to the rough black wall. Stray fire darted from the still-raging battle from the listening post directly above, and Zachariah reached to hit his own thrusters as several Cadian bodies were expelled in a ball of fire. Most were dead, their lifeless forms taking on unnatural poses as they spun through the freezing air. But one clearly had some life left as he kicked and grasped at nothingness, one hand clutching a piece of flapping cloth. Even from this distance, Zachariah knew it was torn from regimental colours. Could it be Pedahzur falling towards him?

  The swoop was going to be tricky. Midair rescues were hard enough with two experienced Elysians, even if they had practised as both rescuer and rescued repeatedly. Catching a falling, untrained individual was far more difficult. The man had no idea he could be saved. Attempts at communication were pretty futile, as it was hard to hear a vox while you were screaming your lungs out. Besides, the colour sergeant’s headset was trailing like a useless streamer around his neck.

  Zachariah knew his thrusters had scant seconds of fuel left, so he would only get one attempt. Slowing his descent, the dead bodies passed in a ghoulish shower of khaki. The flailing Cadian plunged past as Zachariah’s pack began sputtering its own death throes. Taking a deep breath, Zachariah made some last-minute calculations before making his descent.

  Fleeting, hurtling moments passed and then Zachariah slammed into the man’s side, his momentum and line of travel throwing both of them into the gaping hole and onto the cold, wet stone of the monolith’s interior with a gasping thump.