Dark Imperium: Plague War

by Guy Haley

  Through the tunnel, phlegmy battle cries echoed.

  The enemy emerged into a wall of death.

  Mortarion’s sons came in fighting. They pushed heavy shields in front of them, lobbing their poison grenades over the top and shooting with admirable discipline through firing slits. No protection mundane or divine could shield them from the blaze the Novamarines pumped into that breach. Dozens fell, their shields burned through by lascannons and melta beams. But there were so many, driven on by a boundless hatred for the Space Marines, and they kept coming, those behind forcing the bloated dead forwards. Bit by bit, death by death, the Death Guard gained the bailey. Behind interlocked breaching shields and wheeled mantels they spread out, then the shields opened, and they poured outwards. At that point many more fell, tumbling like the petals of a rotten flower, but every wave felled allowed those behind to advance further, coming closer to the First Company’s guns. The noise was tremendous, deafening to autosenses. Justinian’s systems damped out the din, leaving him with the muffled crackle of innumerable gunshots and a hiss of white noise.

  Squad Parris fired down on the inside of the gateway. The Death Guard were so tightly packed they could not miss. Ancient helmets were cracked wide. Beings that should have perished three hundred generations ago were finally ended.

  Perhaps all would have been well if the battle had continued in this way. But on the outside, on the killing fields, the enemy were coring their way through the wall unopposed. The defenders of the outer line were dead from disease and poisons or withdrawn to the inner surface. Death Guard Plague Marines were not the only warriors in the enemy’s army.

  ‘The wall is breached at holdfast rho-seven, requesting aid!’

  Justinian ignored it. Rho-7 was half a mile away, too far away to help. His battle was there by the gate. More pressing were vox-net reports of a breach closer to hand.

  ‘Get to the door,’ he ordered Maxentius-Drontio. ‘Cover the ingress.’

  No sooner had his second reached the portal than he shouted back into the room. ‘They are coming up the inner corridor!’

  Justinian swore and snapped off three more shots with his bolt rifle. He joined Maxentius-Drontio. A lateral corridor ran along the inside of the wall, linking the inner defences together. A set of reinforced doors was broken a hundred metres away, and Plague Marines were making their way along towards Squad Parris’ position, the last on the line. Men attacked them from the bunkers to the side, but they were swatted down as the enemy cleared the fighting galleries and redoubts one by one.

  Justinian opened fire, Maxentius-Drontio joined him. Their bolts peppered the lead warrior, a giant in putrid green whose armour ran with black juices. He danced a jig to the bolts’ impact, absorbing enough explosive force to kill a platoon of normal men, until he finally collapsed. His comrades took stock of the armoured, inset doorway Justinian and Maxentius-Drontio sheltered in, and withdrew.

  ‘Fourteen times we hit him before he had the manners to die,’ said Maxentius-Drontio, taking cover from the enemy.

  ‘Krak grenades,’ said Justinian.

  They tossed a handful up the way. The strangled bangs of implosions drove the foe further back.

  ‘Seal the bunker door. Michaelus, cover it.’

  The blast door slammed into position, its piston lock engaging with a solid thump.

  ‘We shall kill as many of those outside as we can, before those within the wall get in to our position,’ said Justinian.

  ‘Aye,’ said Maxentius-Drontio. ‘Because they will get in.’

  Justinian returned his attention to the outside. The situation in the bailey had taken a turn for the worse. The many breaches in the wall forced Dovaro to divert men holding back the foe at the gate. Alarms blared everywhere, barely loud enough to be heard over the endless roar of guns. Enemy were emerging from the wall corridors inside the defences. They were few at first, a mere distraction, but they kept on coming. Outflanked, the Novamarines took significant casualties. The Terminators stood firm, their weapons smoking as they fired and fired, but warriors in power armour around them were not so lucky. Many fell to plasma beam and bolt, while the serfs rushing to reload their masters’ weapons were annihilated, and guns starved for want of bullets. Justinian and his men fired from on high into the press of Heretic Astartes, but their weapons had little effect.

  For a few minutes, battle wavered on a knife edge. The Novamarines held back the Death Guard. Then a critical point was passed. No fresh ammunition was forthcoming for the First Company. Guns fell silent as they ran dry or their owners were shot down. Ground was gained by the sons of Mortarion. Without the sustained fire of the First Company, more Death Guard made it into the bailey. Soon the space was packed with a hundred. Howling madly, the enemy launched themselves into ferocious hand-to-hand fighting with the Terminators.

  ‘They are through!’ snarled Justinian, snapping off shots into the heaving mass of broken armour and diseased flesh beneath the bunker.

  Brucellus was rummaging through the crates upon the floor.

  ‘Brother-sergeant, we are running low on ammunition,’ he said.

  ‘Numbers,’ said Justinian, still firing.

  ‘Fifteen magazines,’ Brucellus said.

  ‘Divide them out. Now. No more pauses. We fire until all rounds are spent.’

  A banging started at the door, then the loud click of magnets locking into place. A fusion roar followed moments later.

  ‘Meltas,’ said Michaelus. He shifted his gun, though it was perfectly aimed before. Metal creaked. The door held.

  ‘Ceramite laced. They will be a while getting through that. They shall have to bring up something better to crack our shell,’ said Maxentius-Drontio, the grin audible in his voice.

  ‘They shall and they will.’ Justinian looked around at his men. ‘Until they do, we fight on.’

  An awful buzzing sound, loud as a hundred chainswords, imposed itself over the battle’s noise.

  ‘By the Throne, what now?’ said Achilleos. His wounded arm hung loose at his side, but his bolt pistol smoked in his right hand.

  Justinian turned back to the firing slit to see a fresh horror emerge. From the hole in the gate burst a roaring cloud of flies. They were winged, and had composite eyes, six legs and all the other characteristics and form of Terran insects, but the similarity was superficial. They were daemon-kind, a pestilence from the Plague God’s realm, and they carried death on their wings. They boiled past the bunker firing slit, obscuring the view for a moment, then swirled down and dived upon the defenders in the bailey.

  The daemon-flies swarmed the defenders. Where they touched, they killed. Armour corroded into flakes of nothing, the Space Marines within reduced to disease-riddled cripples. Out the swarm fanned, corrupting everything it touched, clogging the workings of those machines it did not outright destroy.

  Into the heart of this came a massive, one-horned figure, clad in ancient Terminator plate, an enormous scythe in his hands. From his back sprouted bony chimneys, and from them issued the flies in unending streams.

  ‘By the Golden Throne of Terra, that is Typhus, First Captain of the Death Guard,’ said Maxentius-Drontio. ‘If I had but the chance at him myself…’

  ‘Pray he does not hear you,’ said Justinian. ‘He will end us all.’

  The Herald of Nurgle and vector of the Destroyer Hive had arrived on the field.

  A Terminator moved to stop him. Typhus held out one hand, and the veteran sank to his knees, coughing up black blood through his breathing grille.

  Swinging his scythe, Typhus pushed through the line holding the breach, cutting Space Marines in half like they were armoured in paper. Behind Typhus were his personal guard of Terminators, all as bloated and unstoppable as he. They followed, engaging their estranged white and blue clad kin in duels, continuing a battle begun long, long ago. Justinian’s remaining men
blazed away at the traitor captain’s honour guard. Their bolts flashed to nothing on ancient aegis shields, or exploded harmlessly on gnarled armour.

  Typhus strode brazenly for the Land Raiders behind the Terminators. The amount of fire coming down from the wall’s inner surface slackened. Justinian continued to aim and fire methodically, his shots screaming off the cowlings of the enemy Terminators below. But he was unable to see far through the swarm of the hive, and the flies were spreading, killing everything. Shouts blasted across the main vox-channel. Pleas for help, panicked reports, all delivered to a background of weapons fire and the awful chants of the traitors.

  Behind the Terminators came more plague warriors, and daemons, and now they flooded in, pulling down the veterans of the Novamarines First Company, widening the gaps and letting yet more filth through. The disciplined volleys of fire from the back of the Novamarines line degenerated into local firefights as the enemy engaged them at close quarters. The Land Raiders’ engines growled, and they rolled backwards, putting distance between themselves and the attack, continually firing on the Death Guard as they formed a second line deeper down the main transit way. Typhus walked into their fire fearlessly. Lascannon blasts caromed off his energy shielding. He held up his hand again. Air rippled about his fist. Energy crackled around his fingers and he swung his arm violently aside. A Land Raider slammed into the wall, tracks squealing. Typhus squeezed closed his fist and the tank crumpled, shattered plates of armour banging off the walls and knocking loyal men down.

  There was a roaring of fire from the back of the Imperial line. Billows of violet-tinged flame burned through the daemon flies from left and right, clearing them from the air.

  A squad of the grey brothers armed with long-hafted force weapons and armoured in gleaming blue-silver Terminator plate moved to block Typhus’ path. With them came Chapter Master Dovaro of the Novamarines, and his honour guard.

  ‘Drive them back!’ called Dovaro. ‘Cast them out! We march for Macragge!’

  In wordless challenge, Typhus raised his scythe. Warp lightning cracked upon its blade.

  Justinian drew a bead on the first captain. He had rarely had a finer shot. He pulled the trigger, and the gun clicked empty. Cursing, he slammed home another magazine, but could by now find no easy target. The swirl of melee was too intense down there at the centre. Typhus moved with horrible grace, his enormous, diseased body no hindrance to his skill. His giant scythe was a weapon unsuited to combat. Typhus wielded it as if it were as carefully balanced as a rapier. Sickly light glowed around his hands and the blade of his manreaper. The warriors of the grey brotherhood jabbed and slashed at him with skill almost the equal of his, and their helms shone with a nimbus of pure warp power, but Typhus had been fighting for ten thousand years. He had been steeped in magic since he was a child. His mastery of blade and the warp were complete. One of the grey brothers fell to a spear of black light. A second was bisected by Typhus’ scythe. The halberds of the grey brothers could find no way through to the First Captain of the Death Guard. The slippery wood of his scythe blocked them when it should have broken. The corroded head foiled every thrust and cut. Three remained. Typhus forced them back, cutting the arm from one with a blurring sweep of rusty steel. The Grey Knight fell with a cry, black veins of corruption spreading from his wound and already marring the blue-silver of his battleplate.

  A cry went out.

  ‘Typhus! Traitor, lord of disease and filth! I challenge you! I defy you!’

  Bardan Dovaro, master of the Novamarines, stepped forward to fight.

  With a warlock’s might, Typhus swatted aside the last two Grey Knights. His bodyguard fell on them, their own scythes rising and falling through arcs of blood. Dovaro’s men moved to intercept the bodyguard, squaring off with the three warriors as their lords duelled.

  There was no posturing, no talk. The two attacked each other furiously. Both were armoured in Terminator plate. Dovaro’s was of the nimbler Indomitus type, Typhus’ of the Cataphractii mark, slower but equipped with powerful field generators. Dovaro committed to a series of punishingly fast attacks, his double-handed power sword crackling. Typhus stepped back, twirling his scythe about in both hands, deflecting blows that would have deceived and ended any other foe.

  ‘Dovaro is pressing the traitor!’ Brucellus shouted. ‘Victory is in sight!’

  It seemed it was. The Chapter Master fought with such skill that Justinian thought Typhus would fall and the day would be won. He watched, spellbound at the skill on display.

  Typhus retreated a few more steps, patient as time, until he saw an opening Justinian did not. His scythe moved with ruthless certainty, cleaving armour. Dovaro stopped with a jerk, his battleplate’s supplementary musculature twitched by confused sensory inputs. His sword fell. He reached up to grasp the scythe’s head buried up to the haft in his chest.

  Wet laughter boomed from Typhus’ white helm. He ripped the scythe back. The length of the blade burst through Dovaro’s ribcage, its disruption field annihilating ceramite, bone and flesh. What was left of Dovaro’s innards were hooked from their seat and scattered across the floor.

  The Chapter Master died immediately.

  ‘All is lost,’ said Brucellus.

  ‘Do not speak so!’ snarled Justinian. His reaction to the Chapter Master’s death was surprisingly personal. Dovaro was a man he could have followed.

  In their dismay, the Novamarines stood firm, but the lesser men were losing heart. Such fear they had endured, such terror, that Justinian was surprised they had lasted this long. The loyalist line began to waver.

  ‘Target the traitor’s bodyguard! Rip away his protection!’ Justinian opened fire again, tapping into the coldness of his anger to keep his aim straight. His bolts blazed true, but every shot was turned aside by the traitors’ energy fields and heavy plate. Bolts exploded all around Typhus’ men as the remaining Space Marines within the wall and ranged between the tanks of the Land Raider line fired at them. A single warrior fell, an eyeless, carcharodon-toothed horror whose Terminator plate was held together by twists of rusting wire. The rest laughed, shrugging off impacts that would have blown apart a Dreadnought, and continued with their slaughter. They reaped a bountiful harvest of flesh for their lord. The floor of the bailey ran with blood and they pressed forward hard. The fire from the inner surface of the wall dropped to nothing. The enemy were coming through in several positions. Soon, the Death Guard would be in among the tanks, and the final line would fall.

  Justinian ran through his magazine rapidly. When he reached to his belt for a replacement, there was none.

  ‘Ammunition!’ he called.

  ‘We have none!’ said Brucellus.

  ‘Brother, something occurs outside!’ Michaelus jerked his head at the door.

  Hammers clanged. A brief silence was followed by the sound of a large object being dragged into place. Drill bits screeched into the metal. A series of ominous clunks sounded through the door.

  ‘They are coming through!’ shouted Maxentius-Drontio. He cast aside his bolter and drew his bolt pistol and combat knife. ‘Grenades when they breach. Knives and pistols after!’

  Justinian dropped his empty gun. Outside, a new challenger approached Typhus. One of the Grey Knights, a psyker lord. His armour was a startling silver. Light of uncanny source shone from the angles of his plate. Badges of complex heraldry decorated his pauldrons and aillettes. A nimbus of warp energy played about his head, and his great halberd gleamed with arcane power.

  The noises outside the bunker reached their culmination.

  ‘Stand ready!’ said Maxentius-Drontio.

  In the bailey, the psyker lord and Typhus fought, much as Dovaro had fought before. The psyker lord matched Typhus in sorcery, and the air was rent with daemonic screams and wails as they contested for their souls.

  A loud tolling sounded outside the door, distracting Justinian from the
duel in the bailey. When he glanced through the firing slit again, he saw the Librarian thrust hard.

  With an unearthly cry, Typhus staggered, the glittering spear of his foe run through his armour. Thin red blood leaked from the wound. Psychic power burst from the weapon, and the traitor reeled.

  He had time to contemplate victory before the door to the bunker exploded inward. The last he saw was red hot fragments of metal ripping Michaelus apart, then a blinding light as the explosion engulfed him, then nothing.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The fate of the world

  Iolanth took the girl out by Arvus lighter while her sisters sacrificed themselves to hold back the Astra Militarum.

  They were away before the men broke through, flying through the evening over the harbour narrows and down the coast to where a crimson Rhino waited.

  Iolanth cut off her vox and disabled her suit signum so she would not be tracked. The girl was catatonic, staring ahead with unblinking eyes. The lighter rushed away from Tyros, hugging the water surface. Out past the shelter of the island, the River Sea became choppy, and ocean spray slapped at the machine’s hull.

  The girl did not move once, but sagged against her restraints. Iolanth’s eyes returned over and over again to the melted remains of the hexagrammatic chains. The girl’s nightdress was scorched with heat. Long rips were scored through the cloth, lined with black. But her flesh was pure, no new scar on it.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Those were the only words she had heard the girl say. ‘I’m sorry.’

  It happened like this.

  Devorus’ murder done, Iolanth had come in through the door, her bolter trained on the Obsidian Knight. To fight one of the Emperor’s own handmaidens filled her with the thrill of blasphemy.

  ‘I come to take the girl in the name of the Emperor. She is needed to win this war,’ Iolanth had said, knowing she would not be heeded.

  The Sister of Silence was ready and waiting. Iolanth had her gun up and was shooting as she came into the room, but the woman was so fast her bolts did little but blow chunks out of the walls. The girl screamed. Then the Obsidian Knight attacked.