by Ben Counter
The Soul Drinkers did not know the enemy. Their numbers, their firepower, even what they wanted on this world or how far they would go to get it. Cyvon felt the skin of his neck prickle with the sensation of anger mixed with frustration. They were fighting blind.
The Soul Drinkers would bring light to this place.
Tiridates’ Impulsor slewed to the side as gunfire sprayed off the roadway. Ballistic fire, multiple calibres, heavy stubbers and equivalent weapons of local manufacture. Shots rang off the front of Phraates’ vehicle and that Impulsor changed direction too, zigzagging across the road surface. A missile roared down and missed the column by a long way, impacting among the ruination of the razed camp and sending up a cloud of debris.
‘Move, perceive, execute!’ shouted Phraates over the engine. ‘We shall have no doubt, for we shall know no fear!’
Tiridates’ Impulsor skidded to the side, its thrusters keeping it from ripping into the road surface. The Intercessor squad leapt from the back, springing from opening hatches, with First Sergeant Tiridates himself sprinting for the base of the nearest watchtower. Fire poured down at them in a burning rain, and Cyvon’s sight of the battle-brothers was obscured by the bursts of debris and sparks.
Men would have died. They would have been ripped apart or, worse, would have baulked at the danger all around them and hesitated or run. Adeptus Astartes were not men. Squad Tiridates weathered the downpour, trusting in their armour and the certainty of their purpose, and reached the wall.
Phraates’ Impulsor slewed to a halt next. Cyvon followed Sasan out of the opening hatch and felt the auto fire crackling around him. Unsighted, imprecise. The Soul Drinkers had given no warning of their approach. Men were still scrambling onto the battlements, and sounds of dismay and alarm filtered down as the cultists saw for the first time they were facing not militia or Keprian regiments, but Space Marines. The Adeptus Astartes brought terror with them, and the first strike they made against the enemy sowed panic instead of shedding blood.
Every step closer the Soul Drinkers got to their enemy, the closer they were to victory. The safest place was eye to eye with the foe, because that was where a Space Marine could not lose.
If the gates had been open, if the defensive walls around Hollowmount had not been so well maintained, if there had been a viable approach from the air, the Soul Drinkers would have taken a much easier way in. But the only ingress was through one of the capital’s gates, and as soon as the lead Impulsor had reported the bronze portals closed, a direct assault had become the only way to access the city.
Cold and fast. Keep moving. Relent not.
Sergeant Tiridates slammed the first demolition charge onto the rockcrete of the watchtower. Squad Phraates was close behind and Sasan clamped his own charge onto the wall beside the gate, at the base of the tower. The demo charge was a disc-shaped device of ceramite that was packed with explosives, shaped to rip through whatever it was attached to. Cyvon crouched by Sasan as his squadmate turned the detonator handle.
One of the enemy on the walls was leaning clear of the battlements, trying to get a better shot at the Soul Drinkers far below. Cyvon sighted upwards, picking out the man’s central mass through the sights of his bolt rifle. His finger contracted on the trigger, the weapon barked once, and the gunman’s midriff exploded in a crimson spray. He toppled over and off the battlements, and seemed to fall for an unnaturally long time before the corpse slammed into Tiridates’ Impulsor.
The spray of blood clashed with the dusty purple of the Impulsor’s armour. The body, what remained of it, wore oil-stained overalls covered in strips of parchment pinned to the fabric. Each one was covered in writing.
Cyvon had seen similar before on the garb of Imperial pilgrims. They were prayers, but not to the Emperor. The dead man’s face had been pared apart and scarred with deliberate accuracy. The shattered autogun that landed nearby was a standard mark, probably manufactured in Hollowmount, a staple of Kepris’ home-grown regiments. The cult had emptied the armouries of the city’s regular military as they took over the city.
The weight of fire increased. Gun emplacements hammered heavy bolter and stubber rounds into the ground. Cyvon felt one ring off his shoulder guard, and another caught a battle-brother from Squad Respendial in the forearm as he fixed his own charge to the surface of the gate. Other Soul Drinkers were returning fire, but the enemy had the better position, shielded by the battlements and able to pick out their targets below.
Librarian Oxyath strode through the storm of bullets and raised his staff. Crackling power played around his hood like a frantic halo. ‘Have they not witnessed the Angels of Death?’ he said, his voice rising through the vox over the gunfire as if he spoke directly into the mind of every Soul Drinker. His pale face was illuminated purple by the energy fighting to escape his skull. ‘Do they not know that there are consequences to defying the Emperor’s will?’
He slammed the end of his staff into the ground. With a sound that cut through the gunfire, a bolt of purple lightning fell from the sky like a javelin and speared down through the battlements directly overhead.
An eruption of purple flame tore through the men on the wall. Their bodies were scattered into the air, split and torn. Red and orange burst a moment later as ammunition exploded. The air boomed as it was seared away and then rushed back to fill the vacuum, sucking the dust and debris onto the battlements before they were flung out again.
Even through his helmet’s filter, Cyvon could sense the greasy, metallic taste of the burned air. Chunks of smouldering rockcrete rained down. Body parts thumped to the dusty ground.
‘Our Epistolary loves to make an entrance,’ said Sasan over the vox. ‘And I believe he has given us our cue.’
‘Get clear!’ yelled Sergeant Tiridates. Phraates and his squad gathered around their Impulsor as the metallic pings from the demolition charges counted off. Three explosions boomed a moment later, strangely muted by the clamour of the lightning bolt that had just passed.
The charges ripped huge holes in the base of the watchtower and through the doors. The floors of the tower shifted as their supports were severed by the blast. Before the rubble had finished falling, Oxyath was out of cover and running for the opening.
‘Advance!’ shouted Phraates, brandishing his powerblade. ‘Cold and fast, and do not stop!’
The Soul Drinkers charged into the breaches. Tiridates and Respendial burst through the gate, Squad Phraates into the lowest floor of the watchtower. The confines were cramped, for they had been built for men significantly smaller than a Primaris Space Marine. Cyvon’s eyes adjusted rapidly to the gloom.
The lower level of the tower was an execution chamber, one wall scattered with bullet holes and the floor stained with the blood that had run off through a drain in the floor. The last thing the executed people of Hollowmount had seen here was a painting on the wall of a beautiful golden-haired woman on a throne, with the beams of the sun radiating from her.
It had been a grim and filthy place to die. It stank of heresy.
Survivors of Oxyath’s assault were hurrying down from the upper levels. Cyvon heard their booted feet and raised voices from above, and then behind a doorway to one side. He placed a burst of bolter fire through the door at chest height, and heard the familiar sound of bolt shells detonating inside flesh. The other members of the squad fired a volley, too, ripping through the wall and shredding the enemies beyond. A corpse tumbled through the splinters of the door and Cyvon could see its face was split open vertically. The white of its skull was visible through the pared-open forehead and the bone was carved with dense lettering. A few more shots from the squad shut down the movement visible through the holes in the wall.
The enemy had no idea what manner of judgement had descended on them. They had never faced a storm like the Soul Drinkers.
Sergeant Phraates charged straight at the back wall of the chamber and t
ore through into a mess hall beyond, where windows and doorways led to the other side of the wall. The strike force spread out and forced their way out of the watchtower onto the streets of Hollowmount, joining Respendial and Tiridates who were already outside.
The grand avenue leading to the gate was choked with barricades and fortifications, in anticipation of attack. From every post and lintel hung a gibbet, and in each was a corpse, bent over and bound. Hundreds of them festooned the fortifications around the gate, each with a wooden sign proclaiming the crime of the condemned inside.
IMPERIAL, read one.
KNELT TO THE EAGLE, read another.
DEFIED THE LADY, read a third, beneath a body speared through with metal spikes.
The city of Hollowmount rose around and above. Overhead, the lattice of the city’s industrial infrastructure supported tenement blocks and manufactoria, among them grand marble constructions of the city’s basilicae and places of worship. Banners hung everywhere, and scattered here and there were more clusters of gibbets or hanged bodies. Rings of elevated rails encircled enormous smoke-belching forges. A suspended tower clad in green marble was covered in golden aquilae that had been torn and defaced, with a forest of the dead in black Administratum uniforms dangling from the wings of the mutilated Imperial eagles.
It was an overwhelming mass of a city, stained with the marks of the horror that had come over it.
Every alarm in Hollowmount was ringing. Several industrial hauler vehicles burst onto the avenue three hundred yards away. Their ore hoppers were full of men, who leapt out and began taking up firing positions among the barricades and the low walls of the buildings lining the avenue. From this distance, Cyvon could pick out their jumble of uniforms and clothes – military uniforms, workers overalls, fine brocade and ruffs, penitents’ rags.
‘Every madman in the city is heading this way,’ said Brother Sasan.
‘Then we will go through every madman in this city,’ retorted Phraates, quick as ever to shut down any discouraging word from Sasan.
‘Taken under advisement, Phraates,’ said Sergeant Tiridates. His armour had the gold flashes of battle honours covering one shoulder guard, a concession to his status as First Sergeant. Oxyath outranked him, but the Librarian only invoked his authority when he had to. ‘I will not be held here,’ he growled. ‘We meet their fervour with brutality. They are no more than human. They will crumble.’
‘And there will be more,’ said Respendial. He went helmetless by habit, for he had the best eye of anyone in the company. His battered, shaven skull was the colour of varnished wood. ‘Ordinarily I would lengthen our reach and swap fire with these heretics, but not here. The more that arrive, the more we will be outgunned.’
‘For once, our brother-sergeant does not wish this battle to turn into a shooting contest,’ said Tiridates.
‘Nor I,’ said Phraates.
‘Then we charge,’ said Tiridates, with the finality of the First Sergeant’s authority.
More men were emerging from the streets leading into the avenue. They were armed with a mix of weapons looted from Kepris’ military, mostly autoguns but with a few heavy stubbers and missile launchers mixed among them. A cry went up from the northern side of the street, a baying and screaming that suggested something that had once been human but was no longer. The other heretics seemed to be keeping their distance from the source of the din as they hurried to firing positions among the barricades.
‘Onwards!’ yelled Tiridates, and vaulted the rockcrete barrier in front of him.
Cyvon followed Phraates in Tiridates’ wake. All three squads broke cover and ran as the first of the enemy’s fire fell among them. Cyvon fired on the move, and the ranging shots from his rifle burst near the closest heretics. The other Soul Drinkers did the same, and the heretics ducked the bursts of bolter shells exploding against the barricades or shrieking over their heads.
They were not the equal of Adeptus Astartes, but there were so many of them. Hundreds rushed into the avenue to face the invaders. Word of the Soul Drinkers’ arrival must have reached every corner of the city and everyone who was close enough, and had the means of transport, was streaming through the city to repel them.
The enemy trusted in their weight of fire to stop the invaders breaching their city, but the power armour and physiology of a Space Marine was something they had not planned for. The Soul Drinkers advanced through the fire, and autogun rounds pinged off their ceramite without even slowing them down. Cyvon felt the hot slugs cracking against his shoulder and greaves, ringing off his helmet, but the sleep-taught battle tactics took over and told him to ignore them. He kept up firing as he moved and the Soul Drinkers spread across the avenue in a solid, advancing line of purple armour that did not stop.
The Soul Drinkers would do here what they had done at the shrine: slam into the enemy with more force than they could bear, scatter them, force them to fight face to face and annihilate them. Soon the enemy would have to either break and flee, or fight the Soul Drinkers at a close range where a Space Marine’s strength and fury counted for the most.
The screams from the northern edge of the road hit a crescendo. From the grand marble mansions erupted a host of hundreds of what had once been men. They had the same split down their faces as the man Cyvon had killed at the watchtower, and they were armed not with guns or blades but with whatever had been grafted onto their bodies. They screeched and howled like animals. Going by their clothing they were drawn from every stratum of Hollowmount’s citizenry. Gang leathers leaped and scampered alongside ragged ballgowns. They bled and screamed as they ran right at the Soul Drinkers.
‘By squads, overlapping fire!’ ordered Tiridates. His squad paused and fired volley after volley of bolt shells into the approaching madmen as the other two squads ran past them. The bolter fire erupted among the first rank, ripping bodies apart, limbs from torsos, spraying the grey marble a dark red.
The new horde of enemies did not falter. They jumped over the bodies of their fallen. More streamed from the buildings as Squad Phraates took their turn as the execution detail. Cyvon crouched behind a length of barricade, sighted and fired half a magazine of shells at full-auto into the mob. He could feel the impact of the chain of explosions through the flesh and bone of the enemy.
And he realised, even as they died in their dozens, that the enemy would reach them before they ran out of bodies.
Cyvon let his hearts leap inside him. When the enemy were as crazed as these were, when they were driven by madness or zeal to close with the Soul Drinkers, it was a strength to revel in the glory of the coming fight. He let the feeling swell. For the glory of the Emperor. For the survival of mankind. For the extermination of the heretic. That was why he fought.
Phraates shouldered his bolter and took his power sword in both hands. It had a short, wide gladius blade, and its power field leapt into shimmering life. Cyvon grabbed his own combat blade with his left hand as he squeezed off shots with his right, and the shock wave of the bolter shells exploding buffeted him as he brought down a madman that jumped at him.
This one wore overalls sewn with panels of leather in dark blue and red. What could be seen of its skin was tattooed with the marks of some undercity gang brotherhood. The shots ripped its torso open and the body thumped wetly into the barricade.
Then, the enemy were on them. A heretic dived at Cyvon through the mist of blood left from the one before him. Cyvon met him with a thrust of his combat knife and its monomolecular edge punched right through the man’s gut. The enemy had the uniform of a city official, dark blue with a white sash. His fingers were long metal spikes. Cyvon twisted the knife, tore it free, and drove the stock of his bolt rifle into the enemy’s sundered face. The kill bought him a few steps forward. The Soul Drinkers would not stop until they were dead. The enemy wanted to swamp them with bodies and pin them in place. The Soul Drinkers would not let them.
A flash of purple light engulfed everything, leaving behind the afterimage of a bolt of lightning lancing down from the sagging web of the city above. Bodies tumbled all around. In the wake of his psychic assault, Epistolary Oxyath dived into the melee beside Cyvon, ripping through the closest enemy with his force staff. With a burst of sound deadened by the echo of his lightning, his psychic power discharged through the staff and slammed the enemy into the floor.
The heretics surged into the gap Oxyath had opened up. The press of them weighed down on Cyvon and he shoved them back to open up enough space for his combat blade. Iron talons raked at him and he fended off a vibrating industrial blade that stabbed out of the mass towards his throat.
‘They’re trying to slow us down,’ said Oxyath, his voice oddly calm in the melee. ‘Trap us like animals in the snare.’
The other heretics, the hundreds-strong crowd growing further down the street, levelled their weapons and opened fire. They did not care that the throng of maniacs would be caught in the storm as well. For every Soul Drinker that died, they would sacrifice a hundred of these deviants. And they did.
Autogun fire rattled off Cyvon’s shoulder and elbow guard. He felt ceramite cracking and flashes of pain as the storm of fire found flesh and nerve endings. He ducked behind the barricade and one of the madmen dived over him. This one had sickles in place of hands. It landed on top of him and he fought with the snarling, thrashing creature.
The Thricefold, he remembered. That is what they had been called by the Hand of All, as they ripped apart the prisoners on the stage. Thrice-blessed by the prophet. These ones had their faces opened up to the brain, and it was either combat stimms, mutation or some surgical alteration that kept them alive in such a state. He rammed his knife into the split and twisted the blade through the brain matter beyond. The Thricefold shuddered and spasmed as it died.