Uriel watched with horror as the Thunderhawk spiralled lower and lower, its wobbling form growing larger by the second.
‘By the Emperor, no!’ whispered Uriel as the gunship smashed into the ground just before the bridge, skidding forwards and trailing a brilliant halo of sparks and flames. The wreckage crashed into the unoccupied bunker, demolishing it instantly, and slewing across the bridge towards the Ultramarines with the sound of shrieking metal. The remaining wing sheared off, spinning the flaming gunship upside down and tearing up the roadway. The gunship ground onwards, finally coming to a halt less than two hundred metres from the gun nests.
Uriel let out the breath he had been holding. Movement caught his eye and he saw more enemy vehicles rumbling through the swirling black smoke towards the bridge.
‘Targets sighted!’ he shouted. ‘Enemy tanks inbound. Mark your targets and fire when you have a clear shot!’
The lead rebel armoured column consisted of dozens of Chimeras, daubed in blasphemous runes. Uriel snarled as he recognised the winged skull motif of the Night Lords crudely copied onto the Chimeras’ hulls. There could be no doubt now. The taint of Chaos had come to Thracia. Each vehicle mounted a powerful searchlight, sweeping blindingly back and forth in random patterns across the bridge as they charged. Missiles and lascannon blasts pierced the darkness, and the night was illuminated by scores of exploding tanks. No matter how many the Ultramarines killed, there were more to take their place. Soon the bridge was choked with burning wrecks. Hundreds of screaming soldiers dismounted from their transports, working their way forward through the tanks’ graveyard.
Uriel fired shot after shot from his pistol. It was impossible to miss, there were so many. The darkness of the gorge echoed to the sounds of screams and gunfire. But Uriel was not fooled by the slaughter they were wreaking amongst the ranks of the traitors. Their ammunition was finite and soon the battle would degenerate into bloody close quarter fighting and, though they would kill many hundreds, they would eventually fall. It was simply a question of numbers.
He reloaded again and wished there was something else he could do, cursing Sevano Tomasin for dying and condemning them to this ignoble end. He pictured again the image of the Techmarine incinerated by the chain-reacting melta charge in his equipment pack.
Something clicked in Uriel’s head and he stopped.
No, it was insane, utterly insane and suicidal. But it could work. He tried to remember a precedent in the Codex Astartes, but came up with nothing. Could it be done? A frag wouldn’t do it and only the assault troops had been issued with kraks. He checked his grenade dispenser. He had one breaching charge left.
His mind made up, he grabbed a Space Marine from the firing step, shouting to be heard over the bolter fire. ‘I’m heading for the captain’s position. Give me covering fire!’
The man nodded and passed on his order. Uriel ducked out the ragged doorway and crouched at the corner of the bunker. Streams of las-blasts and bolter rounds criss-crossed the darkness causing a weirdly stroboscopic effect.
Volleys of sustained bolter fire blasted from the bunker and Uriel leapt from cover, sprinting towards Idaeus’s position. Instantly, lasgun fire erupted from amongst the burning tanks. Each shooter was silenced by a devastatingly accurate bolter shot.
Uriel dived behind the gun nest and crawled inside on his belly.
Idaeus, bleeding from a score of gouges in his armour, directed disciplined bolter fire into the traitors’ ranks. Two Space Marines lay dead, the backs of their helmets blasted clear, and Uriel was suddenly very aware of how much less protection there was in the gun nest than the bunker.
Idaeus spared Uriel a glance, shouting, ‘What are you doing here, Uriel?’
‘I have an idea how we can blow the bridge!’
‘How?’
‘The assault troops have krak grenades. If we can attach some to one of the melta charges on the bridge supports it could set of a chain reaction with the others!’
Idaeus considered the idea for a second then shrugged. ‘It’s not much of a plan, but what choice do we have?’
‘None,’ said Uriel bluntly. Idaeus nodded and hunkered down in the sandbags, snatching out his battered vox. Hurriedly, he explained Uriel’s plan to the sergeant of the assault troopers, receiving confirmation as to its feasibility of execution.
Idaeus raised his head and locked his gaze with Uriel. ‘You picked a hell of a time to start thinking outside the Codex, sergeant.’
‘Better late than never, captain.’
Idaeus smiled and nodded. ‘We’ll have about thirty seconds from the first detonation to get clear. If we’re not off the bridge by then, we’re dead. I’ve already called for another Thunderhawk, but it will not arrive before morning at the earliest.’
The captain opened a channel to the remaining Space Marines in his detachment and said, ‘All squads, as soon as the assault troops move, I want enough firepower laid down on these bastards to blow apart a Titan. Understood?’
Shouted confirmations greeted Idaeus’s order. He reloaded his pistol and motioned for Uriel to join him at the edge of the gun nest.
From the second gun nest, flaring jets of light erupted as the assault squad fired their jump packs.
‘NOW!’ YELLED IDAEUS and the Ultramarines fired everything they had. Volley after volley of bolter shells, missiles and lascannon shots decimated the rebel troopers. The swiftness of death was unbelievable. The Space Marines pumped shot after shot into their reeling mass.
It began with a single rebel turning his back and fleeing into the night. An officer shot him dead, but it was already too late. Others began turning and fleeing through the maze of wrecked tanks, their resolve broken in the face of the Emperor’s finest.
And then it was over.
Uriel could not recall how long they had fought for, but it must have been many hours. He checked his visor chronometer and was surprised to find it had been less than two. He knelt and counted his ammo: six clips, not good. Risking a glance over the top level of sandbags, their outer surfaces vitrified to glass by the intense heat of repeated laser impacts, Uriel saw the bridge littered with hundreds of corpses.
The tension was palpable, every Space Marine ready to move the instant they heard the first detonation of a krak grenade. Long minutes passed with nothing but the hiss of the vox, the crackle of flames and moans of the dying outside. Everyone in the gun nest flinched as they heard the crack of rapid bolt pistol fire. The shooting continued for several minutes before dying away.
Uriel and Idaeus exchanged worried glances. Both sides were using bolt pistols.
Uriel shook his head sadly. ‘They failed.’
‘We don’t know that,’ snapped Idaeus, but Uriel could tell the captain did not believe his own words.
WEAK SUNLIGHT SHONE from the carcasses of the crashed Thunderhawk and smashed tanks on the bridge, their black shells smouldering fitfully. The rain had continued throughout the night. Thankfully, the rebels’ attacks had not. There was no detonation of krak grenades and Idaeus was forced to admit that the assault squad had been thwarted in their mission.
Uriel scanned the skies to their rear, watching for another Thunderhawk or perhaps Lightning strike craft of the Imperial Navy. Either would be a welcome sight just now, but the skies remained empty.
A sudden shout from one of the forward observers roused Uriel from his melancholy thoughts and he swiftly took his position next to Idaeus.
He saw movement through the burnt out shell of the Thunderhawk, flashes of blue and gold and heard a throaty grinding noise. The sound of heavy vehicles crushing bone and armour beneath their iron tracks. Darting figures, also in blue and gold, slipped through the wrecks, their movements furtive.
With a roar of primal ferocity that spoke of millennia of hate, the Night Lords Chaos Space Marines finally revealed themselves. Battering through the wreckage came five ornately carved Rhino armoured personnel carriers, coruscating azure flames writhing within their fla
nks. Uriel was speechless.
They resembled Rhinos in name only. Bloody spikes festooned every surface and leering gargoyles thrashed across the undulating armour, gibbering eldritch incantations that made Uriel’s skin crawl.
But the supreme horror was mounted on the tanks’ frontal sections.
The still-living bodies of the Ultramarine assault squad were crucified on crude iron crosses bolted to the hulls. Their armour had been torn off, their ribcages sawn open then spread wide like obscene angels’ wings. Glistening ropes of entrails hung from their opened bellies and they wept blood from blackened, empty eye sockets and tongue-less mouths. That they could still be alive was impossible, yet Uriel could see their hearts still beat with life, could see the abject horror of pain in their contorted features.
The Rhinos continued forwards, closely followed by gigantic figures in midnight blue power armour. Their armour was edged in bronze and their helmets moulded into daemonic visages with blood streaked horns. Red winged skull icons pulsed with unnatural life on their shoulder plates.
Idaeus was the first to overcome his shock, lifting his bolter and pumping shots into the advancing Night Lords.
‘Kill them!’ he bellowed. ‘Kill them all!’
Uriel shook his head, throwing off the spell of horror the spectacle of the mutilated Ultramarines had placed upon him and he levelled his pistol. Two missiles and a lascannon shot punched towards the Night Lords. Uriel prayed the tortured souls crucified on the Rhinos would forgive them, as two of the tanks exploded, veering off and crashing into the side of the bridge. The prisoners burned in the flames of their destruction and Uriel could feel his fury rising to a level where all he could feel was the urge to kill.
The Space Marine next to Uriel fell, a bolter shell detonating within his chest cavity. He collapsed without a sound, and Uriel swept up his boltgun, emptying the magazine into the traitor legionnaires. A handful of Night Lords were dead, but the rest were closing the gap rapidly. Two more Rhinos died in fiery blasts. Disciplined volleys of bolter and lascannon fire from the Ultramarines in the bunker kept hammering the ranks of Night Lords as they attempted to overrun the gun nests. But few were falling and it was only a matter of time until the traitors reached them.
The Space Marines across the bridge from Uriel and Idaeus perished in a searing ball of white-hot fire as Night Lord warriors unloaded plasma guns through the firing slit of their gun nest. The backblast of the resultant explosion mushroomed into the dawn, incinerating the killers. Still they came on.
Uriel yelled in fury, killing and killing.
An armoured gauntlet smashed into the gun nest.
Idaeus chopped with his power sword and blood sprayed.
Uriel yelled, ‘Grenade!’ as he saw what was clutched in the severed hand. He kicked the hand into the gun nest’s grenade pit and rolled a dead Space Marine on top. The frag blew with a muffled thump, the corpse’s ceramite back-plate absorbing the full force of the blast.
‘Thank you, brother,’ muttered Uriel in relief.
Another Night Lord kicked his way into the gun nest, a screaming axe gripped in one massive fist. His blue armour seemed to ripple with inner fires and the brass edging was dazzling in its brightness. The winged skull icon hissed blasphemous oaths and Uriel could feel the axe’s obscene hunger for blood.
Idaeus slashed his sword across his chest, but the blade slid clear. The warrior lunged, slashing his axe across Idaeus’s shoulder and blood sprayed through the rent in his armour. Idaeus slammed his elbow into his foe’s belly and spun inside his guard, hammering his sword through the Night Lord’s neck.
He kicked him back outside as more enemies pushed themselves in. Uriel fired his pistol and rolled beneath a crackling power fist. He drove his combat knife into the gap between his enemy’s breastplate and helmet, wrenching the blade upwards. Blood fountained and he yelled in sudden pain as the warrior fired his bolter at point blank range. The shell penetrated Uriel’s armour and blasted a fist-sized chunk of his hip clear. He stabbed his opponent’s neck again and again, stopping only when his struggles ceased completely.
Idaeus and the last Space Marine in the gun nest fought back to back, desperately fighting for their lives against four Night Lords. Uriel leapt into the combat, wrapping his powerful arms around one Chaos Space Marine’s neck. He twisted hard, snapping his spine.
Everything was blood and violence. The Space Marine fighting alongside Idaeus fell, his body pulverised by a power fist. Uriel dragged his blade free from the Night Lord’s helmet and beheaded the killer, blowing out another foe’s helmet with a bolter shell. Idaeus drove his sword through the last Night Lord’s belly, kicking the corpse from his blood-sheathed blade. The two Space Marines snatched up their bolters and began firing again. The gun nest stank of blood and smoke. The last Rhino was a blazing wreck, the prisoner on its hull cooking in the fires.
He tossed aside the bolter as its slide racked back empty and grabbed Idaeus by the shoulder.
‘We need to get back to the bunker. We can’t hold them here!’
‘Agreed,’ grimaced Idaeus. Grabbing what ammo they could carry, the two warriors ducked outside into the grey morning and ran back towards the bullet scarred bunker. The attack appeared to be over for now.
As they ran, Idaeus’s vox crackled and a voice said, ‘Captain Idaeus, do you copy? This is Thunderhawk Two. We are inbound on your position and will be overhead in less than a minute. Do you copy?’
Idaeus snatched up the vox and shouted, ‘I copy, Thunderhawk Two, but do not over-fly our position! The enemy has at least two, but probably more, anti-aircraft tanks covering the bridge. We already lost Thunderhawk Six.’
‘Understood. We will set down half a kilometre south of the bridge,’ replied the pilot.
Uriel and Idaeus limped inside the bunker and dropped the bolter magazines on the floor.
‘Load up. This is all we have left,’ ordered Idaeus.
The Ultramarines began sharing out the magazines and Uriel offered another bolter to Idaeus, but the captain shook his head.
‘I don’t need it. Give me a pistol and a couple of clips. And that last breaching charge of yours, Uriel.’
Uriel quickly grasped the significance of Idaeus’s words. ‘No, let me do it, captain,’ he pleaded.
Idaeus shook his head, ‘Not this time, Uriel. This is my mission, I won’t let it end like this. The seven of us can’t hold the Night Lords if they attack again, so I’m ordering you to get the rest of the men back to that Thunderhawk.’
‘Besides,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘You don’t have a jump pack to get down there.’
Uriel could see there was no arguing with the captain. He dispensed the last breaching charge and reverently offered it to Idaeus. The captain took the charge and unbuckled his sword belt. He reversed the scabbard and handed the elaborately tooled sword to Uriel.
‘Take this,’ he said. ‘I know it will serve you as well as it has served me. A weapon this fine should not end its days like this, and you will have more need of it than I.’
Uriel could not speak. Idaeus himself had forged the magnificent blade before the Corinthian Crusade and had carried it in battle ever since. The honour was overwhelming.
Idaeus gripped Uriel’s wrist tightly in the warrior’s grip and said, ‘Go now, old friend. Make me proud.’
Uriel nodded. ‘I will, captain,’ he promised, and saluted. The five remaining Space Marines in the bunker followed Uriel’s lead and came to attention, bolters held tightly across their chests.
Idaeus smiled. ‘The Emperor watch over you all,’ he said and slipped outside into the rain.
Uriel was gripped by a terrible sense of loss, but suppressed it viciously. He would ensure that Idaeus’s last command was carried out.
He loaded a bolter and racked the slide.
‘Come on, we have to go.’
IDAEUS WAITED UNTIL he saw Uriel lead the five Space Marines from the bunker towards the jungle’s edge before
moving. He had a chance to do this stealthily, but knew it wouldn’t be long before the Night Lords realised the bridge was now undefended and the rebels drove their forces across. He would not allow that to happen.
He crawled through the mud and rubble, keeping out of sight of the enemy lines, eventually reaching the pitted face of the rockcrete sides of the bridge. He grabbed a handful of mud and ash, smearing it over the blue of his armour, then slithered onto the parapet. The river was thousands of metres below and Idaeus experienced a momentary surge of vertigo as he looked down. He scanned the bridge supports, searching for one of the box-like melta charges Tomasin had placed only the day before. He grinned as he spotted one fixed to the central span. Muttering a prayer to the Emperor and Guilliman, Idaeus pushed himself over the edge.
He dropped quickly, then fired the twin jets of his jump pack, angling for the central span. The noise of the rockets’ burn seemed incredibly loud to Idaeus, but he could do nothing about it. It was all or nothing now.
He cursed as he saw his trajectory was too short. He landed on a wide beam, some twenty metres from the central span and crouched, waiting to see if he had been detected. He heard nothing and clambered through the multitude of stanchions, beams and tension bars towards the central column.
Suddenly, a shadow passed over the captain and he spun in time to see dark winged creatures in midnight black power armour swoop down alongside him. Their helmets were moulded in the form of screaming daemons and ululating howls shrieked from their vox units. They carried stubby pistols and serrated black swords that smoked as though fresh from the furnace. Idaeus knew the foul creatures as Raptors, and fired into their midst, blasting one of the abominable warriors from the sky. Another crashed into him, stabbing with a black bladed sword. Idaeus grunted as he felt the blade pierce one of his lungs, and broke the Raptor’s neck with a blow from his free hand. He staggered back, the sword still embedded in his chest, taking refuge in the tangle of metal beneath the bridge to avoid the howling Raptors. Two landed between him and the melta charge as dozens more descended from the bridge. Three more swooped in behind him, their wings folding behind them and they landed on the girders. Idaeus snarled and raised his pistol as they charged.
The Ultramarines Omnibus Page 3