The Crimson Fist

by John French

  The impact shook the Tribune and threw me to the floor. The armoured shutters blew in. Glass and metal spun through the bridge. Air howled from jagged holes in the hull. There were suddenly dead men and women everywhere, in pieces, bleeding in floods, gasping for vanishing air. My armour began to chime with atmosphere and pressure warnings.

  ‘Multiple hits,’ shouted Raln, still somehow at his dais. ‘Primary engines failing. Enemy battle-barge on boarding trajectory.’

  ‘Turn us to show our port flank to the enemy,’ I said as I got to my feet. ‘Order Imperial Fists elements into Stormbirds and transport craft. Get them outside of the ship on the protected flank.’

  ‘And you, lord?’ said Raln.

  ‘Tell the enginseers that we are coming to the machine decks.’

  The Contrador and Tribune met in an embrace of fire and punctured metal. The Tribune fired every remaining weapon at the closing Iron Warriors ship. Macro-shells, lance beams and plasma jets flicked across the narrowing distance and broke over the Contrador’s shields. The return fire blew out the Tribune’s gun decks and gouged a long wound in its side. The Contrador closed until it was drifting alongside the Tribune’s wounded flank. Assault pods and boarding torpedoes slid across the gap. A weak flurry of turret fire reached out to meet the swarm of assault craft and hammered a handful into wreckage. The rest came on, unconcerned and undeterred. They hit in a wave, punching through gold-plated armour and disgorging their cargo into the guts of the Tribune.

  I saw none of this but I felt each part in the dying trembles of my ship. The Iron Warriors were aboard the Tribune, hacking and bludgeoning their way deeper and deeper inside. The resistance was scattered but determined. Weapon servitors stood at junctions, filling the space in front of them with streams of bolter shells. Our human crew stood their ground with shot cannons and lasguns. Amongst them a handful of my brother Imperial Fists moved between the fiercest battles. That had been the hardest part, speaking to those who had to remain. All understood, both human and Imperial Fist alike; the Iron Warriors had to think we were resisting and that they were crushing us to nothing. The Tribune was dead, but I was going to claim its death price.

  ‘Ready?’ I said. Beside me Raln hefted a tall shield of scarred plasteel and glanced around at the remaining brothers of my company.

  ‘Ready,’ he said. I nodded and looked to the red-swathed figures of the Tribune’s enginseers. They bowed their hooded heads in a synchronised gesture of assent. ‘Thank you,’ I said, feeling the inadequacy of the words. The enginseers made no sign of having heard me. I nodded, locked my plough-fronted iron helm in place, and opened a communication channel. What remained of the Tribune’s signal arrays would transmit my words to any of the fleet that still remained and could hear them.

  ‘This is the fleet master.’ My voice sounded flat inside my helmet. ‘The Tribune is lost, remaining units withdraw and jump to Terra as ordered.’ I paused, wanting to say more but not knowing what to say. ‘Endure, my brothers. No matter what, endure.’ I cut the fleet broadcast, and let silence hold for a second before I spoke my last order to the Tribune’s crew.

  ‘Now,’ I said.

  On the external hull of the Tribune a hundred assault craft boosted into the void like a cloud of fireflies; the Tribune’s contingent of Imperial Fists leaving their fortress for the last time. The thirty members of my strike force were still beside me, waiting. I nodded to the enginseers. There was a flash of light and the Tribune’s teleport chamber vanished from around us. Precisely five seconds later the enginseers performed their last duty. They never questioned my order, never showed the slightest doubt or emotion at what I asked of them. I think I have never had more admiration for a human than I have for them.

  The Tribune’s plasma reactors overloaded. I never saw my ship die but in my mind I still see it, as if the event burnt itself onto the retina of my dreams.

  For a second the Tribune held its form, a golden fortress floating in black night. Then it detonated. The Imperial Fists still on board were vaporised and their Iron Warriors enemies with them. Tongues of plasma licked out from the sun-hot core. Vast lumps of armour plating rode on the growing sphere of hot gases. The blast wave hit the Contrador, and broke fields and burnt out its sensors and range finders. Our attack craft descended on it a moment later like the vengeful spirits of the dead.

  The Dreadnoughts were made of dull metal, their curved torso plates marked by burnished iron skulls. Black and yellow chevrons slashed across their greaves, and amber light burnt in their eyes. They stood to either side of iron doors whose surfaces were mottled and pitted as if their slab faces had been hung while still hot from the furnace. Broken corpses and shell cases lay in heaps before them. This far into the Iron Blood the resistance was not just punishing, it was crippling. Of the thirteen hundred Tyr had brought less than forty stood with him now. A few still fought in the rest of the vast ship, buying Tyr’s force time. The rest were dead, their armour split, crushed or burned, their blood mingling with that of their enemies on the bare metal decks. But they were close, very close.

  There was supposed to be a second wave. A battalion of Imperial Fists, Dreadnoughts and Legio Cybernetica maniples. It should have lent strength to the final attack on Perturabo’s inner sanctum. That second wave would never arrive. Tyr knew that Polux would have withdrawn the ships carrying his reinforcements. Perhaps those ships would survive, but Tyr had his doubts. Withdrawal in the middle of a battle like this meant only one thing: a massacre. He understood Polux’s decision, but the cost… the cost was beyond imagining.

  Tyr was running, his mace held above his head. The first Dreadnought fired when Tyr was fifty paces from the door. The cylinder of glowing energy missed Tyr by inches and hit Timor in mid-stride. There was a high-pitched whine and the sergeant dissolved into an outline of bright light. The energy beam hit another Imperial Fist and reduced him to dust. Tyr’s helmet display blanked out completely. He could hear the shriek growing louder and louder.

  His display cut back in. The Dreadnought was still firing, the conversion beamer’s coils pulsing and sparking. Tyr focused on the Dreadnought and selected his first strike.

  The second Dreadnought raised one of its two hands and opened its palm. The graviton gun pulse hit Tyr and he slammed into the floor. He could feel metal distorting, servos and joints shearing under pressure as his armour crushed him. The Dreadnought with the conversion beamer kept firing while its brother moved forwards, its fingers flexing.

  A spray of glowing rounds hit it from the side. Tyr could hear the sound of Navarra’s assault cannon even over the scream of the conversion beamer. Gouged pits spread across the Dreadnought’s sarcophagus. It turned into the deluge of fire, moving like a man leaning into a gale. Its face plate buckled, the metal glowing hot under the impacts. The armour cracked and suddenly the machine giant was leaking blood. Chunks of pulped meat showered from the Dreadnought as it split open. The graviton hold on Tyr ended a second before the Dreadnought hit the floor.

  Tyr was off the floor, running, his crushed muscles screaming, his armour grinding. The Dreadnought with the conversion beamer turned to meet his charge. He brought the mace down on the conversion beamer’s barrel. The ribbed focusing plates shattered. Arcs of energy cracked through the air. Tyr’s second blow crashed into its right leg behind the knee joint. The Dreadnought brought its fist around as it fell, clenched iron knuckles swinging at Tyr’s head. He buried the head of the mace in the Dreadnought’s face. It collapsed with a sound of ringing steel and unwinding gears.

  Tyr stood, breathing hard. He looked up at the waiting doors. They looked like they could survive a kick from a Titan. He turned to the remainder of his cadre. There were fourteen brothers in Terminator armour, another thirty in void-hardened Iron Armour. Too few, he thought. Far too few. But was any number going to be enough to kill a primarch?

  ‘Melta charges,’ he called. Men began to ru
n forwards, unfastening charges as they moved.

  The first one was level with Tyr when the doors began to open. Tyr turned, his eyes locked on the widening split in the rough iron. The doors peeled back into the walls with a sound like the inhalation of a metal god. He could feel the hairs rise on his neck. Something buried deep under his gene-forging and training told him to step back from the dark opening, to run. Behind him the rest of the Imperial Fists had gone still. He could see inside now. He saw the figure clad in dulled battle plate sat upon the sharp-angled iron throne, hand resting on the pommel of a hammer.

  Tyr could feel the black eyes of the enthroned figure looking back at him. He raised his mace. Behind him his brothers began to move. Bright lines of tracer fire split the gloom. Tyr began to charge as Perturabo rose from his throne to meet him. Chains spilled from the primarch’s layered war plate as he stood. Rounds sparked from the rivet-covered armour. His face was bare, his eyes oil-black. His hammer came up with him. Its haft was as tall as Tyr and its black head crawled with power at its master’s touch.

  Tyr was five paces away. He could feel his muscles bunching, his heartbeat slowing to a low focused rhythm. Behind Tyr his brothers followed, firing as they came, lighting his path, caging Perturabo in fire. Tyr gripped his mace with both hands as he swung it up above his head.

  ‘For Dorn!’ The shout began as the coiled power of Tyr’s strike unwound. The primarch stood still, clad in iron, and cloaked in detonations. Tyr met the black eyes and saw something move in their depths, like a lightning flash seen on a distant night horizon.

  Perturabo spun the head of the hammer low and brought it up in a curved arc. The blow hit Tyr as his last step fell. The hammer’s head crumpled his armour and crushed it into the pulped remains of his flesh.

  Reality snapped into place around us with a roar of gunfire. We stood at the centre of a wide chamber lined with dull metal and lit by unshielded stab lamps. The residue of teleportation rose from our armour in gauzy coils of ghost vapour and steam. Our target was good; we were in a primary chamber close to the Contrador’s bridge and main command sections. I had expected resistance but had hoped that most of the Iron Warriors would have joined the assault on the Tribune. Its death should have claimed them all, leaving their own ship open to our counter-assault.

  Like so many battles in so many ages, it was assumption that almost destroyed us.

  Fire hit us from all sides. I heard the rolling explosion of bolt-rounds impacting against armour. Three of my men died as shots found eye lenses and punched through helmet speaker grilles.

  ‘Shields,’ I shouted into the vox. My men brought their boarding shields together, their edges touching those of the men next to them. Together we formed an unbroken circular wall of plasteel. Volley fire, disciplined and relentless, lashed against the shield wall. I switched to the optical feed from the front of my shield and saw the muzzle flare of bolters firing from loopholes in sloped metal barricades. Iron Warriors, dug in and waiting. Not all of them had gone to attack the Tribune. Even with the scent of the kill so close the Iron Warriors were suspicious, methodical fighters and had held some strength back.

  I looked to my left. Raln stood close in to my shoulder, firing his bolter through the gun slot in his shield. He paused and turned his helmet to look at me.

  ‘This is not going to be easy,’ he said. I almost smiled.

  ‘We need to move,’ I said. The enemy did not intend to kill us with this fire, they intended to pin us in place. If we stayed where we were the Iron Warriors would wear us down and then bring up weapons that could break our shield wall. It was inevitable. It was what I would have done if I had been the Iron Warriors. Raln glanced through his gun slot.

  ‘Enemy barricades on this side are three metres high with firing points every two metres. Crossfire will not diminish on approach.’ He looked back at me. ‘Advance on one barricade, remove it and work sideways along the lines from there.’ It was a simple plan and under the circumstances the only one open to us.

  ‘They will be prepared for it,’ I said. Raln shrugged, a gesture that said everything about what we could do about that certainty. For a second I thought of what must be happening in the rest of the Iron Warriors ship. Our assault craft wave must have hit by now, and our brothers would be fighting for beachheads inside the ship’s outer hull. I opened a channel to the rest of my personal strike force. ‘Close formation, advance to starboard barricade.’ They needed no other instruction.

  Our formation reformed as we charged, shields rising and overlapping to form an armoured wedge that moved as a single body. The enemy fire intensified so that we were pushing against a wall of explosions, muscles and discipline straining for every step. We slowed, our synchronised paces becoming driving steps. I was grunting with the effort of holding my shield up against the hammering impacts of bolt-rounds. Fire washed us, billowing through the chinks in our shield wall; I felt a stab of pain as the flames found the elbow joint of my shield arm. I discarded the sensation, and forced my legs to push forwards. I could see the barricade only three paces away.

  ‘Meltas,’ called Raln. I heard the shrieking whine as air super-heated along the path of the melta beams. Two ragged, glowing wounds opened in the Iron Warriors barricade. The incoming fire slackened. This was the most dangerous moment, the moment when victory or slaughter was decided as much by luck as discipline. We charged, reforming into two spear-shaped packs that drove at the gaps in the barricades. I was at the tip of one, shield raised, my power fist sweating arcs of lightning.

  An Iron Warrior met me as I stepped into the glowing breach. He was fast and skilled. His hand gripped the top of my shield, and yanked it downwards as he stabbed at my face with his chainblade. I rammed my weight forwards. He stumbled, the teeth of his chainblade biting across the armour above my left eye. I moved the shield to the side and punched into the gap. The Iron Warrior’s chest plate shattered. He started to fall but I had already hit him twice more, crushing and pulping his face and gut. I stepped over his body. Behind me my brothers came through the breach firing to either side, spreading down the line like water pouring through a broken dam. I turned, looking for the knots of resistance. That small movement, the slight turn and drop of my head, saved my life.

  The teeth of the chainfist carved across the top of my shield in a streak of red sparks. I started to turn, caught a glimpse of a shape, its bare metal armour bloated by augmetics. A kick stamped into my shield. The impact shot up my arm. I felt muscles tear in my shoulder. I was still staggering when the chainfist carved my shield and arm in two.

  I felt no pain, just a sensation of draining to the floor as shock flooded through me. Bright supernovas of light blossomed in front of my eyes. A tremble ran through me as my gene-forged physiology fought against the trauma. My vision swam. Something moved close to me, a simian shape of oiled metal that moved with a splutter of pneumatic hisses. I could hear a shriek of revving chain-teeth. The shape lunged. The chain-teeth hit the field of my power fist. I did not even realise I had blocked the blow. My vision snapped into focus.

  The clang of arms and the roar of bolter fire filled the space behind the barricade. Around me my brothers surged against figures in armour the colour of bare steel. Bolters fired at point-blank range. Shields battered into limbs and helmets. A dark gloss layer of blood covered the deck.

  The turning chain-teeth were inches from my face. My muscles and armour fought to hold it back. My enemy pressed the chainfist forwards. He was strong, monstrously strong. I could see the grey, pale skin of his face sunken into the collar of his armour. Pistons and cables bulged from his joints and dirty fumes coughed from the vents on his back. His eyes were pale, the pupils black pinpricks in irisless whites. A fragment of memory gave me his name: Golg. He had ordered the murder of my ship but had stayed on his own, not even coming to finish the deed himself.

  He raked his chainfist back and I hammered forwards with a
backhanded blow. He took a half-step back, the delicacy of the movement at odds with his bulk. The blow passed a hand’s width from his face, and as my momentum sent my arm wide he brought his chainfist across my chest. Thick blood and yellow armour fragments sprayed from the teeth. I felt their hooked points part the metal of my breastplate and open my flesh to the bone. Blood washed down my chest; I could taste it in my mouth. My breath bubbled thick in my throat.

  Golg gave a smile of relish. I stumbled back a step. Blood still flowed from the chewed stump of my left arm. I could feel the double beat of my hearts booming in my chest. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears. Strength was draining from me.

  My vision was a frosted blur, as if ice covered my eyes.

  The world turned dark and warm.

  The pain faded.

  The pain is how you know you are still alive.

  I grasped the pain and it pulled me back into the moment with a silent howl. Agony ran through my nerves, fresh, bright, alive. I could see.

  Golg was looking at me with emptiness in his pale eyes. The chainfist descended towards me, its blood-

  wetted teeth a pink metal blur. I brought my power fist up, palm and fingers open.

  I caught the chainfist and closed my hand with a crack of thunder. Shattered metal teeth spun through the air. I wrenched my fist back, pulling Golg forwards. His face met my helmet with a wet crack of bone. I let go of his ruined chainfist and pistoned my fist into his head. His skull vanished in a spray of red pulp. He collapsed to the ground, and lay still.

  My knees hit the deck but I did not feel it. Around me my brothers were pressing forwards, clearing the barricade spaces. Blood pulsed slowly from my chest and the severed meat of my left arm. There was a warm copper taste in my mouth. For a moment I knelt, a crimson warrior coated in my own blood and the blood of my enemies. Then the pain faded and the waiting abyss opened beneath me.