Sup reader/s! Like I said in my review, this Fic needs engagement, reviews and powerstones, otherwise I'll drop it. Ik it's early but atleast give powerstones, thank you!
Chapter 20: No Need to Remember My Name, Commissar
Adrian Hock stood before the silver-grey alloy-steel wall and felt the heat coming off it in constant, steady waves. Behind that massive barrier was the geothermal plasma core, and the thermal output was sufficient to make the air above the metal surface shimmer and distort.
One step remaining.
He allowed himself the thought. Once the core's detonation energy was combined with the Warp ritual, which was within hours of completion, the veil between the Sea of Souls and realspace would tear open completely. It would not close again.
When that happened, he would leave through psychic translocation before the detonation consumed the square. And Heras, that city of Imperial worshippers, would be erased.
In the fire and the death and the breach, the servants of the Blood God would pour through. And Adrian Hock would stand as this planet's undisputed master, and after that, the Imperium would hear from him in a way it would not be able to ignore.
He let out a short, quiet sound that was not quite a laugh.
He had no concerns about Imperial interference. His primary force was operating on the northern continent, hundreds of kilometers away, pressing hard enough against the Imperial defensive lines to hold the Lord General's attention. What remained here was the core: several thousand of his most capable followers, and the Warband.
He knew the Imperial strength near Heras. The closest regiment to this city was the Ash Watchers 101st, approximately three thousand soldiers. He had spent some of them already through the ritual assault waves, sending his most expendable fighters against their lines, useful as blood offering material and adequate as distraction. The 101st was not a force that could interfere with what was happening underground.
The Imperial dogs had sent a reconnaissance team down into the tunnels a few days earlier. The Warband had dealt with them efficiently. One had escaped, likely carrying some intelligence. But whatever information had made it back, it did not matter now. There was no time left to act on it.
Adrian frowned.
That sensation had come again. A gaze, from the direction of the main tunnel exit on the far side of the square. He turned and looked. The slope of waste rubble was there, the rough rock walls, the dim light from the iron cages above. Nothing visible.
An illusion, perhaps.
But he trusted his instincts, and his instincts said otherwise.
He turned and walked toward the center of the square. The seven World Eaters stood there like statues of red iron, utterly still amid the movement of thousands of heretics around them. Their armour bore the accumulation of centuries of battle damage. Skulls decorated every spiked projection.
Adrian stopped in front of the lead warrior. The World Eater was a full half-meter taller than him. The armour's rebreather grille produced a low, constant hiss with each breath cycle.
"Check the main tunnel entrance," Adrian said. His voice was level, carrying the particular quality of a man who has learned not to phrase requests as requests.
The World Eater turned his head slowly. The optical lenses behind the faceplate focused on Adrian. Several seconds passed. Then a sound came from within the helmet, low and contemptuous.
"Get out of my sight, mortal. You have no authority to give me orders."
Adrian's expression did not change. He had long since calibrated his expectations for the attitude these beings directed at anything not wearing their armour.
He held the World Eater's optical lenses with his gaze and spoke without hurrying. "I am merely pointing out that if the ritual is disrupted, our lord may find the result unsatisfying."
He paused and let his eyes move briefly to the four black-robed figures standing at the cardinal points of the eight-pointed star, and to the star itself, drawn in blood across the plaza floor.
"I imagine you have no interest in watching offerings to the Blood God wasted by rats."
The World Eater was quiet for several seconds. The power armour's internal systems produced a low cycling sound as something in the suit's operation shifted up.
Finally, a grunt. "If there is nothing there, I will hang your skull on my axe."
Adrian smiled slightly. "If there is something there, leave a few alive. I want to know exactly how many they sent."
The World Eater did not acknowledge this. He turned and made a short gesture to two of his warriors. Three suits of deep crimson power armour activated simultaneously, the heavy footfalls beginning their rhythmic progress toward the main tunnel.
The sound of them carried across the square. The heretics cleared out of their path without being asked, the expressions on their faces a particular combination of reverence and the kind of fear that does not easily resolve.
The World Eaters entered the dark.
The Butcher's Nails worked without pause, every moment a constant pressure at the base of their skulls, the signal that could only be quieted one way. The desire for blood was a permanent fire in the veins, and the waiting had made it worse. If the mortal had not been the Blood God's chosen instrument, they would not still be waiting. They would have taken the skulls of everyone in this place long before the ritual was half-finished.
The tunnel air was thick and foul. The lead World Eater's helmet display shifted to thermal imaging, the pale green overlay showing the passage ahead as empty.
But not entirely.
On the ground, at that spectrum's resolution, disordered footprints showed as faint heat signatures against the slightly cooler stone. Many of them. Recent, no more than half an hour old.
There were rats in the walls.
The Butcher's Nails drove the killing urge up immediately. His right hand tightened around the chainaxe without a conscious decision to do so. The teeth on the blade began their slow rotation, the sound low and eager.
"Prey," he said through the internal channel to the two warriors behind him. The word came out with a quality that was not quite speech. "Many."
The three World Eaters quickened their pace. The crimson armour filled the narrow tunnel from wall to wall. They followed the heat traces on the ground, and it did not occur to any of them that they had already been detected.
It would not have changed anything if it had.
* * *
Duvette crouched in the shadow of the left fork, his back against the cold rock. He heard the footsteps coming from the direction of the main tunnel, growing heavier with each passing second.
"They're coming," he said, barely above nothing.
The two melta gunners behind him nodded. Both weapons were up at the shoulder. Fingers on the triggers. Their breathing was quick and deliberate.
This was what he had been able to put together when word reached him that the World Eaters were moving this way. The preparation time had been short.
The tunnel geometry ruled out the autocannons. Too narrow, the distance too compressed for effective use. Rocket launchers carried too much uncertainty in an enclosed space, the backblast and fragmentation in a sealed stone corridor as dangerous to his own soldiers as to anything they were aimed at.
Only the meltaguns made sense here. Short-range weapons, severe limitation on effective distance, but in exchange a degree of destructive power that could liquefy a heavy vehicle's armor plate. Sufficient, if the shot connected.
Which meant the World Eaters had to be within optimal range before the gunners fired. There was no margin for a missed shot at distance and a second attempt. And at Astartes neural reaction speeds, even a coordinated ambush from concealment could not guarantee both shots landing before the targets moved.
They needed something that would hold the World Eaters' attention completely for the fraction of a second the shots required.
Duvette closed his eyes.
In the right fork, the main force was already in position. Among them, a figure stood dressed in a commissar's uniform, very still. When Duvette closed his eyes, the face of the young soldier with the bitten arm came back to him clearly.
"Are you certain? Your sacrifice is not in question here. You understand that."
"Yes, Commissar. I understand."
A moment.
"Tell me your name." Duvette had looked at the young soldier and asked, though he already knew it. He wanted to hear him say it.
"Commissar." The young man smiled. White teeth. Not much older than Evan. "There's no need to remember my name."
Duvette had removed the peaked cap from his own head, the one bearing the golden aquila, and placed it on the soldier's. Then the black commissar's greatcoat. Then the red sash.
"I will remember you, Alek," he had said, looking at the young man's surprised expression, straightening the cap's angle, then patting his shoulder once. He had turned without saying anything else and walked with the two melta gunners toward the left fork.
He knew exactly what it meant for that young soldier to be standing where he was, wearing what he was wearing. He would draw the World Eaters' eyes the instant they cleared the corner. He would die for that. There was no framing of it that changed what it was.
Against Astartes, the only exchange rate mortals had was certain sacrifice against enemy death. That was the lesson every war involving transhuman opponents had written in blood.
And Alek had not hesitated. Had not bargained. Duvette had wanted to ask him why, had wanted to understand what it was that made a young man with a bitten arm and his whole life still ahead of him take a commissar's coat and stand in a tunnel waiting for something that would kill him. Was it loyalty? Faith in the God-Emperor? Hatred of Chaos?
He did not know. He could not ask. He was the commissar.
The footsteps were closer. He could feel the vibration through the rock. The power armour was heavy enough that each step sent a fine drift of dust down the walls.
He raised his left hand. The ready gesture.
The melta gunners adjusted their positions, bringing the barrels to bear on the predetermined point. In the right fork, the soldiers gripped their weapons.
Through the gap in the stone, Duvette saw the first deep crimson shape come around the corner.
The lead World Eater. Armour covered in old damage, profane runes cut into the shoulder guards. The chainaxe in his hand was already spinning, the shriek of its teeth filling the tunnel.
Then the second.
Two Chaos Astartes stepped into the line of sight of the soldiers in the right fork.
Duvette's hand came down hard.