Warriors of the Imperium - Andy Hoare & S P Cawkwell

by Warhammer 40K

  The maglev train was going no further. The Silver Skulls had delivered a potentially killing stroke to the Red Corsairs master plan. But as had been the case constantly since this had begun, Blackheart and his followers proved that they remained one step ahead of the game.

  Rising up from a natural hollow in the mountains, a small curved valley that had not featured on Daviks’s topographical map, several Corsairs gunships emerged. Six of them had been patiently hidden there, waiting for the moment they were summoned to the defence of their master.

  Unable to stand up to such a sudden assault, the Silver Skulls gunship opened fire, its crew knowing it was doing nothing more than biding its time. The rear ramp ground open and several Assault Marines from Daviks’s company dropped from it. The loss of the Thunderhawk was inevitable, but the warriors would live to continue the fight.

  A second or two later, two of the Red Corsairs Thunderhawks retorted by opening their own gunports. The Silver Skulls ship was blown apart in an instant, engulfed in white-hot flame. The Assault Marines were flung far off course by the blast, only their jump packs giving them any sort of control over where they landed. A few, whose proximity to the unfortunate Thunderhawk had been too close, were incinerated along with the vessel but the majority had managed to exit the craft before it was destroyed. It was a small mercy.

  The area immediately outside the tunnel was swarming now with Thunderhawks. The Red Corsairs who had been thrown clear of the train had landed heavily, but all of them were picking themselves up and climbing the rocks so that they could reach their Chapter’s ships.

  Even as they opened fire on the car that contained the remainder of the squad who had accompanied Arrun, there was a groan of over-stressed metal. A bulge appeared in the side of the maglev, distorting its shape until it ripped apart as though it were nothing more than old parchment. Two massive figures, one dressed in the gun-metal grey of the Silver Skulls, the other the unmistakable form of Huron Blackheart, tore through the train’s side and tumbled together down into the valley, locked in a struggle to the death.

  17

  Sum quod eris

  After the confines of the maglev, it felt strangely curious to have enough room to extend his arms fully. That was exactly what Daerys Arrun did the moment he rose once more to his feet. Standing on the side of the mountain with his arms outstretched and a growl in his throat, he cut an imposing figure. Arcs of lightning power crackled from his claws, a strange counterpart to the storm that still flickered on and off in the sullen sky. Despite the silver and hard-edged inhumanity of the skull-helm, the anger was evident in his stance, in the way he held himself.

  Once the pair of them had stopped rolling, he had disentangled himself from the other warrior and leaped backwards. Warning runes flashed urgently at him, their low, stubborn insistence informing him via his retinal display that his armour was seriously compromised in several locations. Fluid was leaking from two of the servos which gave him slightly limited movement in one shoulder but it was nothing he could not work around. There was an unpleasant taste of blood in his mouth, but he swallowed it down with a grimace.

  Behind him, his fusion pack hummed softly, occasionally changing pitch when he channelled extra power into his claws. He looked down at the Master of the Red Corsairs from his vantage point. Blackheart was even more hideously deformed than he had ever considered. More machine than man in many ways, he seemed to be less an Adeptus Astartes in power armour than a suit of armour with a man grafted permanently into it. It was a simplistic description, yet oddly accurate. He was offensive to Arrun’s sight, an abomination that should not be. A creature corrupted by the forces of Chaos.

  ‘Daerys Arrun.’ The monstrosity spoke in a harsh, grating voice. ‘This meeting has been a long time coming.’

  Blackheart unfolded himself to his full height. He was standing a little further down the rugged mountainside than Arrun, giving the Silver Skull the temporary advantage of the terrain. Despite the hatred he felt, Arrun couldn’t help but be briefly stunned at the full impact of the Tyrant’s appearance.

  The red ceramite of his armour was fractured in places, ragged at its edges. Any Imperial devices it had sported in its time had long been torn from its surface and replaced with the eight-pointed star denoting where Blackheart’s true loyalties now lay. What little skin remained on the Tyrant’s face was a sickly, grey shade. He looked for all the world like nothing so much as a corpse. An augmetic eye, red and malevolent, glared up at him. Its fellow, the remaining organic orb, was so milky white that Blackheart could be blind for all he knew. Yet in its depths was an eternity of mind-numbing madness.

  ‘No more words,’ said Arrun, his voice growling from the mouth-grille of his helm and sounding every bit as artificial as Blackheart’s did without the aid of armour. ‘No more words. There is nothing you have to say that I could possibly care to hear.’

  ‘As you wish, captain.’ There was a wet, grating rumble, a vile sounding thing and Arrun realised with creeping disgust that Blackheart was laughing. The noise tore at his self-control, begged him to release his pent-up fury.

  He hated this traitor. He hated everything that he was, everything that he represented. He hated all that Blackheart had cost him during this incursion and most of all he hated the fact that the Tyrant of Badab had the temerity to have even lived.

  The warning that he had received from Inteus, what felt like several lifetimes ago, went unheeded and he allowed his rage and fury to resolve into a steely and undeniable need for vengeance for all the appalling wrongs this animal had committed.

  With a battle-cry that echoed around the mountains, Arrun screamed his company’s motto with every breath in his lungs and flung himself bodily at the Tyrant, his claws ready to tear and flay the rest of the whoreson’s face from his bones.

  Correlan had problems of his own. His mad scramble for the charges that had been set around the refinery had been hindered by a sudden onslaught of cultists. It had not taken much effort on his part to detach them from existence, severing their threads to mortality with a sweep of his combat blade. But even though he had made a remarkable pace, by the time he had crossed the refinery, he had been greatly delayed.

  The two bikers from Squad Malachite were already there and, having heeded his hastily-blurted out instructions via the vox had, with the additional assistance of the Assault squads, isolated the charges. There were no fewer than twelve of them, each one wired to a silo or tank and would create an explosion powerful enough to level the refinery completely. They were connected as a chain, but it would take a few more minutes for Correlan to identify the primary charge. If he could diffuse that device, then the trap would be rendered useless.

  It didn’t help the ill-tempered Techmarine that he was constantly being bombarded by questions from Daviks on the vox. In the end, he tore his helm off and switched off his vox so that he could better concentrate on the matter at hand. He ran a hand over his close crop of hair and stared at the bomb, desperately trying to fathom the illicit modifications that had been made to its sacred design.

  Screams and the rattle of gunfire from the doorway announced a fresh wave of cultists and Correlan’s battle-brothers were forced into a defensive position, kneeling at the entrance and laying down a curtain of fire. The slaves were only human and they didn’t stand a chance against the controlled bursts of deadly bolter shells that systematically picked them apart. They died in their droves, leaving a grisly pile of broken and dying bodies on the ground before the generarium building.

  Cool, clinical detachment took hold of the Techmarine as he concentrated on the blessed machine. He mentally filtered out the sounds of combat and the dying cries of the cultists outside. His mind focused, Correlan swiftly assessed the situation. The charges had not yet been armed. As far as he could tell it was the only thing working in their favour at this time.

  ‘If whoever did this for the Red Corsairs has
any skill at all, then simply wrenching them off the walls won’t be good enough. They will almost certainly have fail-safe triggers built into them.’ He spoke more to himself than to the two warriors currently defending their position in the doorway. Correlan withdrew an omni-tool from the forearm of his battle gear and two of the smaller mechadendrites on his harness snaked their way forward. The Techmarine’s precision control over the devices only began to hint at the sheer degree of concentration that he was employing. The metallic tendrils moved with as much purpose as his fingers as he carefully manipulated the arming plate.

  ‘I am going to connect to this one,’ said Correlan quietly to the two Space Marines kneeling behind him. ‘There is a small possibility that I will inadvertently activate it. I have no idea as to the detonation time. It could be several minutes, or it could be several seconds. You will know at the moment we are all welcomed by our ancestors to take our place alongside the Throne.’

  Sensing, rather than seeing their reaction to these words, Correlan turned his head to look at them and for the first time in a very long time, he smirked. ‘I am joking,’ he said. ‘I am familiar with these kind of charges. I have every confidence that they will be easy to disarm.’

  ‘Your attempt at levity is at best misplaced and at worst, inappropriate, Techmarine.’ Aviaq’s tone was less than amused.

  ‘Maybe. But it helped to focus my thoughts for a moment. And for that, you should be eternally grateful.’ Correlan shrugged and turned his attention back to his work.

  One of the snaking tendrils made a connection with a small aperture beneath the object’s front panel. There was a click. Correlan let out the breath that he hadn’t even realised he had been holding and fixed his eyes firmly on the runic display at the front of the bomb cluster. Nothing had changed, which was initially a good sign.

  ‘Commencing deactivation now,’ he said, providing a running commentary whether his companions wanted one or not. With meticulous care, he turned the inner workings of the device barely a centimetre to the right. Despite himself, he felt a creeping anxiety. Arrun’s words came back to him about the miracle he had wrought in the shape of Volker Straub and the anxiety faded immediately to be replaced by confidence.

  There was another click. It was followed by another release of breath and the smile on the Techmarine’s face broadened. His assessment had been right. He knew the device, knew how it worked and to deactivate it would take him only minutes. A sense of relief flooded through him and he reactivated the vox-bead in his ear.

  ‘Captain Daviks, the situation is under control.’ If Daviks was angry at his lack of contact, he had the grace not to let it show. Instead, he responded in his usual mild tone.

  ‘Excellent. How long until you can safely evacuate?’

  Correlan considered the question. ‘I would suggest perhaps fifteen minutes.’ His eyes were drawn briefly by a sudden flicker on the front of the device. A red rune had burned into abrupt, angry life. It winked ominously at him and he put a gauntleted finger to it. Every last drop of good humour drained out of him like someone had pulled a plug. He swallowed. ‘And counting.’

  There were no words spoken between the warring Adeptus Astartes as they pounded relentlessly into one another. Daerys Arrun’s sheer, unadulterated rage made him far harder to dispatch than Blackheart had estimated. The Master of the Red Corsairs had already been taken unawares by the fighting tactics of his opponent. Despite the anger that clearly drove him, Arrun was well in control of himself and that by itself made him unpredictable.

  Blue lightning spat at the traitor from Arrun’s claws and was matched by the roar of super-heated flame that belched from the Tyrant’s palm. The razor-edged talons of Arrun’s twin gauntlets frequently locked with Blackheart’s own power claw and the sound of the metal ringing out was clearly audible around the hillside.

  Using his left hand, Huron swung a wide arc with his battle axe. It crunched into Arrun’s armour-plated shoulder and whilst the bigger warrior was engaged with the necessary motion required to wrench the blade free, Arrun spun around, his claws flashing towards the Tyrant’s face. The tips of the four claws of his right fist connected with the flesh of Blackheart’s temple and he dragged them downwards, gouging savage track marks down his opponent’s face. Had he managed to strike deeper, Blackheart’s face would have been torn clean away from his skull.

  Blood flowed freely, only to clot seconds later. The deep, rich red of his Adeptus Astartes vitae contrasted sharply with the greyish hue of his corpse-like skin. The sight reminded Arrun of what he was fighting, that the Tyrant had once been a great warrior who had served the Imperium. It was good to be reminded. The thought of such betrayal drove him onwards and gave him purpose.

  With a bellow of laughter, Blackheart drew his head back and spat expansively at Arrun. The Silver Skull twisted as much as he could, given that Blackheart’s axe was still buried in his shoulder. The milky fluid hit the Imperial aquila proudly adorning his breast plate and the acid that had been introduced from the Betcher’s gland almost instantly began eating into it. It would take time to melt through the plasteel and ceramite composite, but if he didn’t get it cleansed soon, it would be time enough to more than compromise his wargear.

  The fact that his armour might be damaged was nothing compared to the insult directed at the Imperium and Arrun’s anger rose to near-unmanageable levels. A low growl came from the vox-grille of his helm.

  ‘What’s the matter, Silver Skull?’ Blackheart’s voice was taunting and even amused. ‘Do my manners offend you?’ He had pulled his axe clear now and was swinging it easily in his hand. He pulled his head back again, his voice sounding thick with saliva and another gobbet of acid struck Arrun, this time plastering the side of his helm. As he spun away, lightning claws sparking, the Tyrant opened out the digits of his claw. A huge gout of liquid fire spat from the nozzle in his palm, directed at his opponent.

  ‘It is not your manners,’ retorted the captain as he leaped to the side to avoid the rapacious flame. ‘It is you. It is everything you stand for.’

  Raucous laughter followed this pronouncement and Blackheart struck down again with his axe. ‘I was expecting more from you, Daerys Arrun. You disappoint me. Although you have provided me with substantial amusement.’ He turned the ravening tongue of flame towards his opponent’s head, but Arrun had already ducked away. The rock of the mountainside where the captain had stood barely moments before heated up quickly and then exploded under the shattering impact of the Tyrant’s battle axe.

  ‘Are you... running away?’ Blackheart spun about to see Arrun scrambling with comparative ease up the side of the nearest rockface. It was not a clear cut route – he needed to gauge his leaps from rock to rock carefully – but every jump he made took him higher than the raging Tyrant. Roaring in fury as he sensed his prey escaping, Blackheart spat billowing streamers of flame after him. But Arrun, who had grown to adulthood and received his earliest training in the mountains of Varsavia was as sure-footed as any of the cloven-hooved animals that roamed there. This was his terrain. He knew how to work it to his advantage.

  ‘Status update, Correlan.’

  ‘Busy. Can’t talk. Sorry, Captain Daviks.’

  ‘Damn you to the darkest depths of the warp, Techmarine, I need a situation report and I need one now.’

  ‘Situation report? Very well. A situation report.’ Correlan took a deep breath. ‘The current situation is that this demolition timer is counting down to the destruction of the Primus-Phi promethium refinery. There are presently two battle-brothers here with me preventing cultists from storming the generarium.’ Correlan cast a brief glance at them. ‘From the sounds they are producing outside of this facility, I would hazard a guess that they seem to be coping perfectly well. My own personal situation is that I would do a lot better at disarming it if I was allowed to work uninterrupted.’

  There was a pause.

&n
bsp; ‘Sir.’

  ‘Very well. I will continue with the extraction. You are remarkably insubordinate, Correlan.’

  ‘Yes, Captain Daviks. I am aware of that. I assure you that if I survive this current predicament I will answer for my poorly chosen words later. Should I fail, then I will consider my certain death penance enough.’

  There was a responding grunt and the vox-bead in his ear went dead. Smiling grimly, he resumed the task of attempting to disarm the bombs. It should have been a simple thing to isolate the detonation mechanism, but whoever had designed this particular device had clearly strayed far from the teachings of the Adeptus Mechanicus. His lips pursed at the thought of such heresy.

  Not for the first time since he had left the training halls of the Adeptus Mechanicus on Mars, Correlan pushed all of his knowledge to one side. He ignored the litanies and the rituals, although he promised himself he would be duly penitent for such blatant disregard later. Instead, he allowed his considerable mind to think around the problem instead of thinking at it.

  He had less than ten minutes remaining.

  A clattering shower of scree tumbled down towards Huron Blackheart as he scrambled his way up after his prey. Above the lip of the ravine into which they had tumbled, the sounds of a blistering gun battle could be heard. The Assault squads who had leaped from the Thunderhawk before its destruction were doing everything in their power to stop the Red Corsairs from loading the goods from the maglev onto their own transports.

  ‘You hear that, Daerys Arrun?’ Blackheart screamed the words so that he was clearly heard. ‘That is the sound of my victory on this world. It is a sound that will be heard all the way to Varsavia and your pathetic, weakling Chapter will shudder to know that its doom is imminent!’