by Guy Haley
‘Silver Templars duellist squads two and four, aid Brother-Techmarine Daelus,’ Felix commanded, and turned to confront the other machine.
The battle was confused. The squad transponder signums of his Chosen gave him little idea where his bodyguard actually were. The fighting was a mess of small melees and desperate rushes to plug gaps in the defence. Flying daemon engines exploited the Soul Grinder attack, dipping down to spit thick liquids from their guns. Felix registered all this as a series of micro-realisations harvested from his strategical inputs in the time it took him to cross the road.
A Space Marine struggled on the creature’s blade, impaled through the gut, his armour plates shattered by the blow. He pushed at the rusty metal with the flats of his hands in an attempt to haul himself off. The daemon backhanded one of his squad brothers into a wall, bringing it down in a tumble of blocks and dust. Its plague sprayer let out fans of liquid seemingly at random, sluicing down the broken buildings, and where fires burned it sizzled like hot fat poured into water.
Felix ran at it. No war-hymns issued from his voxmitter; his heavy Gravis armour crushed rubble to dust beneath his feet. He let off a burst of fire from his boltstorm gauntlet to catch the thing’s attention, aiming for the pair of bubbling flasks that fed the plague spitter from its back. The filthy glass splintered, and one of the flasks shattered. Acidic toxins coursed down the daemon machine’s torso, causing it to roar in agony. Felix drew back his fist to strike as it began to turn. His power sword would do little against the armoured carriage; indeed, he risked breaking it, so he left it sheathed. The boltstorm gauntlet’s power fist was another matter.
He hit the daemon’s left back leg as it turned to face him, putting all his momentum and all his weight into the blow. There was an explosion of shards that scored his battleplate, and the heavy joint snapped. The leg collapsed under the weight of the daemon machine as it was rearing up and coming round, a nightmare centaur of diseased flesh and metal. Now both its left legs were destroyed, it fell sideways heavily, throwing out its arms to catch itself. The sword, still with the Hellblaster impaled upon it, flew from its grasp.
The giant was brought low, eye to eye-lens with Felix, yet it still was not dead, and as Felix levelled the underslung bolter of his gauntlet at its faces it swiped at him, sending his shots wild, and grasped him about the waist. Its hands looked soft with rot, but they were strong and they squeezed hard. Warnings chimed in Felix’s helm. Ceramite creaked. His legs were crushed together and he could not move them. Flashing red runes warned of imminent armour failure.
The thing snarled at him with a mouth full of yellow tusks. Felix raised his gauntlet, and fired wildly into its chest. The thing shrieked, and slammed him down against the floor. Felix drew out his sword, but the thing wiped him across the ground like he was a rag, and the weapon went clattering away across the stones. It heaved itself over on broken limbs, bringing its shoulder-mounted gun to bear upon him.
Felix’s head rang. Ooze dripped from the gun’s barrel. Time seemed to run slow. Details leapt to the fore in confusing clarity. The black veins in the thing’s conjoined faces. Little scabs and pustules, the pattern of rust on its mechanical parts.
Behind it was a light of fire like the rising sun, shining brighter until it filled the sky.
A wall of flames descended. The daemon screamed – not a roar of anger, but a cry of genuine fear. Felix fell down, and saw the daemon’s arm had been severed at the elbow. The primarch was in front of him, the Emperor’s Sword roaring. Guilliman blasted out all the creature’s eyes with the Hand of Dominion, and as it blindly tried to drag itself away, Guilliman stepped in and beheaded it with a single blow. Beads of fat ignited under the heat of the sword, and the beast fell down, truly dead. No spirit would emerge from its corpse to go back into the warp. Another iota of spiritual poison had been cleansed from reality.
Felix managed to prise apart the dead fingers of the monster. Guilliman reached down to him with the gauntlet, the disruption field going out. Felix took it with his own powered fist, the weapon he bore seeming so dainty compared to that carried by the primarch.
‘I heard a call for assistance from this position,’ said Guilliman, as he hauled the armoured Felix to his feet. ‘I am glad to bring it.’
‘Thank you, my lord.’ Felix was forced to shout, for two dozen Space Marines of all types had surrounded the second Soul Grinder, and were blasting it methodically to pieces. Daelus gave a triumphant Martian war cry to see such a blasphemous construct brought down, and finished it off by burying his axe in its head.
Guns barked everywhere. The sound of battle receded. Reports crackled into Felix’s helm.
‘Now, Felix, please join me.’ Guilliman set off down the Spiral Way. His men flowed after him.
‘You go to draw Mortarion out?’ Felix followed, sending a wordless data-pulse order to the Chosen to remain at the battery.
Guilliman nodded. ‘All his army is committed. It is time to sally from the city and bring him into battle. He will meet me this time, because as far as he is concerned, everything is set to his plan. I am going to enjoy surprising him, and when his god’s favour is taken from him, I shall destroy him.’
‘What if the recon force has been detected and destroyed? What if the artefact remains whole? What then?’
‘It will be destroyed because it has to be, Felix, or all is lost. Have faith in your brothers. Let me worry about Mortarion’s schemes. Natasé assures me this is the best course to follow for victory.’
‘But how likely is it?’
Guilliman looked behind him, and did not answer his question. ‘If you can avoid getting yourself killed, I will be pleased. Having to choose another tetrarch so soon after reinstating the institution will make me look foolish.’
He turned back to look out over the plain. They were descending the Spiral Way rapidly. Warriors were moving into position from all over the city. In the barbican, tanks were preparing to move out.
‘We gather our men,’ said Guilliman. ‘We go out. The true test is out there, not behind these walls. There the final moves shall be made.’
Chapter Thirty
LAST CHARGE OF THE CADIAN 4021ST
‘Tanks, echelon right, advance!’ Colonel Odrameyer gave the order for his regiment’s final charge.
Ahead, hordes of daemons arranged themselves into formations fit more for a battlefield of spear, axe and shield than a war of shell and las, but Odrameyer had faced daemons before, and knew any confidence he had in technology was misplaced. Sure enough, when his Leman Russ opened fire, its shell vanished into the swamp, and produced only the sorriest spout of filth. The plaguebearers were hardly inconvenienced, jostled a little by the wave the explosion produced, and none fell. The three heavy bolters the vehicle carried alongside its main armament fired a burst that would have obliterated a hundred mortal men arranged in ranks like that, but only a couple of the fiends succumbed. The rest absorbed the bolts and their subsequent explosions with looks of mild irritation.
His other tanks did little better. A few holes opened up in the daemonic army, but for all the fire and thunder unleashed, Odrameyer gained little advantage. The tanks forged on regardless. His sole aim now was to live long enough to keep the enemy from the war train.
He turned back and looked behind him through fogging lenses. The breathing kit he wore was sweaty. The seal irritated his skin. The difficulty of drawing breath through the tube leading to the filtering unit made him feel forever on the verge of suffocation. It was a panic that could not be completely suppressed, but he took heart that Mathieu’s engine pushed on through the swamp like a ship in a shallow sea. It seemed brilliantly white against the browns and virulent greens of the corrupted marshland. It was an island of purity. In its progress Odrameyer saw the will of the Emperor manifest. For was it not so that its formidable weaponry was taking a toll on the daemons, where his did nothing? That its blessed beam w
eapons and lascannons were cutting paths of clear air through the clouds of flies that swarmed around the foe? He was half convinced that he saw angels riding the lightning of its voids, holding up shields of gold to turn back the sorcerous blasts hurled by the enemy.
His tank bounced, bruising his thigh on the hatch ring. He turned back to the front. His war machines were pushing through the swamp, toppling rotting trees and bursting through groves of soft, unnatural growths. The water was unevenly deep. Where he rode, the filth only grazed the bottom of his tank’s side armour, yet a hundred yards out to his left, Leman Russ tanks pushed through ooze that washed over their glacis, clogging the barrels of their bow guns. None had yet become mired, but it was only a matter of time.
The landscape only added to the danger posed by the daemonic host. They were all suffering from the rotting effects of the creatures. The hull of his tank was rusting before his eyes and the engine wheezed with mechanical maladies.
There was a cough and bang. A Chimera in the back line came to a shuddering halt.
They would not last long. They must press on and make every second count.
‘Onward, brothers and sisters of lost Cadia! Now is the moment for vengeance! Now is the time for redemption! In the name of the Emperor, onward. He is watching us now. Do not fail Him!’
Odrameyer believed this as fervently as he believed he was about to die. He had seen the Emperor act in the living world, moving His servants to defend mankind. He knew no fear, but instead experienced a holy ecstasy at what he must do. He would die joyfully.
Over the roar of the engines and the thunder of guns, he heard a doleful tallying, endless conflicting counts performed in misery. A desire to stop it seized him. It was not a noise that could be silenced by the likes of him forever, but he could interrupt it awhile, and by the Emperor he would.
He banged on the tank’s roof. It accelerated. He didn’t need to give any orders to the other machines. The tank crews seemed to intuit his desires, increasing their own speed not in response to his acceleration, but along with it in perfect, God-Emperor-ordained simultaneity.
They hit the ranks of the plaguebearers a moment later. His tank ploughed into them, and then the creatures did fall, crushed under the tracks or blown apart. The heavy bolters fired so much they glowed red with heat. Daemonic faces burned on them as they pivoted about, raking everything flat within their field of fire. Daemons were obliterated into puffs of rotten matter that lifted up to swirl away in the fog.
Overhead, the storm grew, as if angered by the Imperial advance. Lightning raced in all directions from the medicae building. Thunder growled.
The tank charge crashed through the first five ranks of the plaguebearers. Odrameyer grabbed the handles of the tank’s pintle storm bolter and sprayed more rounds into the foe. Carpets of lesser imps crowded the feet of the daemons, and these exploded most satisfyingly. Streams of energy leapt between the corpses of the Neverborn, their souls raging, constrained by the storm their master had set about the planet, making them powerless to escape.
Odrameyer was singing the first verse of ‘Cadia In Eternum’, the most rousing part of the song, over and over again. When his storm bolter’s ammunition was used up, and he reached for fresh drums of bolts from the boxes tied down to the turret, he heard the words sung back at him over the vox, as the entire regiment gave voice. He reloaded, and recommenced firing, singing so loud now his throat hurt and his eye-lenses were entirely fogged up. But the enemy were so packed he could not miss. The tank slewed from side to side as the driver rammed his sticks back and forth, using the tracks as weapons to churn the daemons into the soil. Still, the charge was slowing. The enemy were crowding them, hooking leprous arms over the sponson guns to slow their traversal. Severed heads thumped into the tank, bursting like spoiled fruit, but none came near him, and though their loads of vermin turned plasteel into dust, he remained unharmed.
Blades of rusted steel, diseased bone and noxious crystal scraped on the tank, injuring it and poisoning its spirit, but it was indomitable, infused with the will of the Emperor as much as the men of his regiment were, and it heaved against their restraint. Another tank drove past, swinging out its heavy bolter and blasting the left side of Odrameyer’s Leman Russ free of attackers. Momentarily released, it surged forward, knocking its assailants sprawling.
The echelon forged on, cutting through the daemon horde as a mower fells a crop. Chimeras followed the battle tanks, their weapons creating brilliant cross-hatchings of light all across the battlefield. It was too perilous for infantry to fight on foot, but they manned the lasguns that bristled all along the fighting vehicles’ flanks, adding to the harvest.
Then they were through the leading enemy regiments, into a gap between the first and second lines.
More horrors awaited. More blocks of droning infantry. Greater beasts, more hideous Neverborn. Odrameyer remained stalwart. He had faced them all before. They could be killed.
‘Forward!’ he shouted. ‘Forward!’ The tanks accelerated again, weapons blazing.
Flights of horse-sized flies flew overhead, the beat of their wings a buzzsaw dirge. To his right, a Leman Russ exploded spectacularly, its turret lifted high on a pillar of bright flame. To his left, another died under the stabbing plague blades of daemons, its armour corroded through and engine rusted solid. One of the larger beasts made passes through the air with its staff, and a pulsing mist descended on a Chimera, engulfing it a moment. When the mist rose, the transport’s shape was a vague suggestion under a crowd of fungi, the largest of which bore the screaming faces of the crew. Feeble-looking Neverborn killed armoured vehicles with blunt blades. Vomited maggots burrowed through plasteel like it was mouldering cheese.
The charge continued into the second line, but the numbers of the Cadians were dwindling fast, while the daemons seemed neverending. Odrameyer looked back the way they had come. It seemed such a short distance, for the war train was still large nearby, and yet a part of the enemy’s force was diverted from Mathieu. The train was close to mounting the hill, and he comforted himself that it had made significant progress towards the facility. The deaths of his men, his death, would mean something.
Now into the reserve blocks of the enemy’s army, the Cadians’ progress slowed. Odrameyer had his tanks re-form into a spearpoint. By dint of sheer weight of fire, they gained the base of the hills, and hauled themselves out of the quagmire. By then there were only a dozen left, and they were attacked on all sides.
Something huge was wading towards them. It held a great flail over its back, and a hooked knife in the other hand. A toad-like head with three yellow eyes and a single greening horn glowered at him from a cushion of chins. Strips of diseased skin hung like epaulettes from its shoulders. It was hugely fat, the preceding belly crushing its own troops when they were too slow in moving. A tiny replica of its head snapped and giggled on the end of a long, muscular tongue that danced in the air with serpentine menace.
‘Bring it down!’ Odrameyer ordered, just shouting, unable to use his data-net, hoping he would be understood.
A lascannon scored the daemon’s flank, and it grumbled, turned aside, and vomited a stream of bile towards its aggressor. The liquid dissolved the front of the tank, caving it in and carrying a torrent of worms inside.
The tank came to a stop, a smoking wreck. The giant daemon giggled so that its jowls quivered, and turned its eyes upon Odrameyer.
‘Oh, ho ho! If it isn’t Colonel Odrameyer! Your name is whispered in the garden by the singing, biting things. The coward of Kasr Balyn, they say, who fled the world of his birth. Judgement comes for you, the judgement of Torpus Spleenbelch!’ It barged its way forward, squashing plaguebearers beneath its belly. Unlimbering its flail, it began to spin it around its head, the hooks on the ends of the chains moaning through the air as they built up speed. ‘Treacher. Craven. Deserter,’ it crowed. ‘Know what you are before you die.’<
br />
Odrameyer’s tank was jammed in by milling plaguebearers. The facility was five hundred yards away. Mathieu’s war train was approaching with murderous purpose.
‘I am no coward,’ Odrameyer said. ‘We fought to the last. We watched our world die and we wished we could have fought a little harder to save it.’
He said his piece with hushed conviction. The daemon heard him never-theless.
‘Only cowards flee their responsibilities.’
A worm of doubt twisted and niggled at the back of Odrameyer’s mind, but he crushed it. They had been ordered to evacuate, and though it was a knife wound to his heart, he had obeyed.
‘If I am a coward, then the Emperor will let you strike me down.’
The beast neared. Its reek penetrated his breathing apparatus somehow, making him heave, but he spread his arms and looked to the heavens.
‘Emperor! Look upon me now!’ he called.
‘He cares nothing for you. Enjoy the next stage in the great cycle, in the garden.’
With a grunt of satisfaction, the daemon flicked its flail forward. The hooks sang.
Odrameyer prayed.
‘Oh Emperor, protect me! Oh Emperor, guard me!’
His prayers were answered. The air shimmered. A veil appeared to be drawn aside, giving him the briefest impression of a landscape both glorious and terrible. In that place were gods, and one reached out to him, to wrap him about in His protection.
Or so it seemed.
A brilliant flash of light shattered the flail into spinning chunks of metal, none of which hit the colonel. Odrameyer was left blinking, rapturous, mumbling pieties. The Great Unclean One stared in puzzlement at its sundered weapon.
Odrameyer’s crew were quick to take advantage.
Rusting bearings squealing, the battle cannon swung round, the barrel already depressing. It opened fire before it had finished moving, and the shell sank into the monster’s gut like a stone hitting thick mud. The daemon looked from its flail down at the wound, a comical expression of surprise on its face, then the shell detonated, exploding the thing and scattering it to the four winds. Wide flaps of rotting hide slapped down on the tank. Garlands of intestine sizzled on the bolters.