‘Captain!’ screamed Pelaur, ‘Pull up! For the Emperor’s sake pull up!’
Pelaur’s shout snapped Morten from his visions of death and he took a deep breath, pulling back and hauling the Fury into a looping climb.
‘Imperator, captain! That was some real close flying,’ breathed Pelaur. ‘That’s the kind of thing I expect from Harlen.’
Captain Owen Morten didn’t reply, picturing a giant valedictory explosion.
PAVEL LEFORTO FIRED into the mass of aliens, terrified beyond thought at the scale of what he was seeing. Giant monsters lumbered through the charging mass of beasts, their snapping talons bigger than the claws on the lifting rigs that hauled girders in the smeltery.
The alien advance had faltered about ten metres from the trenches, the smooth ice coating the snow berm defeating their attempts to close the final gap. But already the smaller beasts were chopping into the ice to pull themselves closer. They died in droves, but following creatures used the corpses
to push even closer. The advance had stalled, but it had granted the Imperial forces only the briefest of respites.
The noise of battle was tremendous: roaring guns, explosions, screaming and the inhuman rasping of the tyranids. A huge mushroom cloud erupted in the centre of the aliens as the Capitol Imperialis fired again, throwing ice and alien bodies hundreds of metres into the air.
The platoon briefings told him to shoot at the larger tyranid creatures, the sergeants claiming that this would disrupt the smaller beasts. Quite how that would work was a mystery to him, but he had spent his entire adult life obeying orders and wasn’t about to stop now.
He ejected a spent power cell and slotted home a fresh one with trembling hands. Raising the rifle to his shoulder, he sighted along the barrel at a towering monster with a flaring bone crest rising from the back of its skull. Powerful, clawed arms held a long gristly tube that dripped slime, and surrounding the monster were dome-skulled creatures with bony protuberances growing from their upper limbs. He aimed a shot at the largest creature’s skull, his bolt ricocheting from the thick fringe of bone. A missile streaked from behind him towards the giant monster, exploding against the bony growths of one its chitinous protectors.
Realising there wasn’t much he could do to scratch this monster, he switched targets as a hissing alien, having finally climbed the carpet of dead, planted its claws in the top of the snow berm. He shot it full in the face, blowing its head off and leaving its body anchored to the trench by its long talons.
Soldiers all around him fired frantically into the masses of aliens, knowing that to survive they had to prevent them from reaching their lines.
But Pavel could already see they wouldn’t succeed.
URIEL SLASHED HIS sword through a hormagaunt’s midsection and kicked another’s head from its shoulders as it clawed its way over the snow berm. Beside him, Pasanius’s flamer seared a clutch of aliens as they attempted to scale their dead. Snow and ice steamed in the heat and droplets of promethium melted small holes in the ice.
Uriel saw a brace of monsters drop into the trench further along the line and shouted to Pasanius, ‘With me, sergeant!’
He dropped from the firing step and sprinted towards the breach in the lines, firing his bolt pistol as he ran. The explosive shells blasted apart a handful of the creatures and he burst amongst the rest like a thunderbolt, slashing left and right with furious strokes of his power sword. Aliens died by the score as the two Space Marines smashed their way through their hissing bodies.
Claws scraped at their armour, their speed blinding, but these warriors were the very best of the Emperor’s soldiers and none of the aliens’ blows could halt them. Uriel felt ancestral hatred of these beasts pound in his veins as he slew, attacking, always attacking, with no thought to his own defence.
A pack of hormagaunts landed atop him, driving him to his knees. Chitinous claws hammered his armour, one penetrating the joint of his breastplate and hip. Blood burst from the wound, clotting instantly as his enhanced bloodstream formed a protective layer over the tear in his flesh. He rolled, crashing several of the beasts beneath his weight and thrashed like a madman to dislodge the others. He slammed his elbow downwards, feeling bone break, and swung his arm in a wide circle, leaving severed alien limbs and opened bellies in the wake of his blade.
He clambered to his feet, spinning with his sword raised as he felt a powerful grip encircle his arm. He roared in hate, diverting his stroke at the last second as he saw Pasanius before him, hammering his sword into the packed snow of the trench wall.
Pasanius ducked past Uriel and poured a tongue of fire down the length of the trench from his flamer. Duckboards caught light and aliens screeched as the fire consumed them. More were pouring over the top of the berm and dropping into the trench.
The Space Marines turned and fought with all the skill and ferocity the Adeptus Astartes were famed for, shrugging off blows that would have killed a normal man twice over and fighting beyond the limits of courage and endurance.
Then the tide of smaller beasts parted and a giant beast with massive clawed arms stomped across the mass of dead aliens towards them. Three metres tall, the warrior organism was all rippling armour plates and glistening organs, layered beneath
a bony exo-skeleton coated with an encrusted layer of fatty tissue. Its jaw opened, letting loose a terrifying screech as its scythe-taloned arms raised to strike. A drooling bio-weapon spat a phlegmy wad of slime.
Uriel dived aside, the sparkling slime blasting a huge chunk of ice from the wall behind him. He sprang to his feet as the monster smashed its way through the snow berm, standing at the lip of the trench. He fired his last remaining bolts at the huge creature, blowing off chunks of its chitinous armour, but failing to stop its murderous progress. Pasanius bathed the creature in fire, the insulating fat on its bones sizzling and filling the trench with a disgusting odour. Dozens of hormagaunts followed in its steps.
Uriel leapt to meet the monster, swinging his power sword at its thorax. A bladed limb swept down, blocking the blow as another slammed into his breastplate, cracking the ceramite and knocking him from his feet. He rolled with the blow and dove around the side of the beast, hacking his blade through its legs just above its giant hooves. The beast howled in pain, crashing to its knees and toppling forwards into the trench where it lay thrashing its clawed arms impotently.
Pasanius fought the hormagaunts back as yet more poured through the gap their larger sibling had battered.
‘Captain!’ bellowed Pasanius.
‘I know!’ shouted Uriel, leaping onto the bucking monster’s back. The giant tyranid beast struggled to right itself, but Uriel reversed the grip of his sword and drove the blade downwards through its skull.
Instantly its motion ceased and Uriel roared as he ripped his blade free in an arc of black blood. He jumped from the monster’s back as Pasanius cut his way through the suddenly dazed-looking hormagaunts. Uriel and his sergeant didn’t give the disorientated creatures time to recover their wits, hacking them down without mercy.
Uriel killed them without pity, hating them for driving him to this frenzy of slaughter. His blade rose and fell, its surface coated with blood as he waded in alien gore. The battle around him receded until he could see nothing beyond the death that surrounded him, the blood and the sudden fear of creatures that had no will of their own, having had the blanket of connection stripped away from them.
Thunderous footfalls shook him from his reverie of blood. He saw Pasanius hurled through the air and the shadow of another gigantic monster rear up through the mist of ice and blood.
Larger than a dreadnought, the carnifex shrieked with a rasping of plates deep in its shark-like maw. Its carapace was battered and cracked, alien blood pouring from numerous wounds punched through its body. Rearing up, it blocked the sun and four massively clawed arms reached towards him.
Then its jaw opened wider still and an emerald green torrent of bio-plasmic fire vomited from inside
it.
Uriel threw up his arms to ward off the energised plasma, but the force of the alien’s discharge smashed him to the ground.
He fought to stand, the hissing green ichor coating his visor and rendering him blind. He lashed out with his sword, feeling it bite through alien flesh.
The ground shook as the carnifex towered over him and Uriel felt the heat of its breath on his face.
ASTADOR FELT HIS grip on his ghost-self slip as he neared the cold fire at the centre of the swarm’s mind. A giant presence like the chill at the heart of a glacier bathed his soul in ice-water and he could feel its presence echo from the sides of the valley like a cavern-deep river. This was it, this was the control, this was the heart of the cold mind.
He could sense its awareness only as a fragment of something unimaginable vaster, and deep on the edges of its perception, he knew that it too was aware of him. Cold ripples of horror reached for him, but his ghost-self was already returning to his body.
Astador opened his eyes and smoothly rose to his feet.
The warriors who had loaned him their strength did likewise and he blinked as his normal sight restored itself. All around him battle raged, but he felt disconnected from it, his spirit resisting the imprecations of flesh and the limitations that imposed.
Mortifactors and members of the Deathwatch battled the tyranids all around them, fighting to keep the alien creatures from breaking his trance.
Captain Bannon marched towards him, his armour bloody. Well?’ he asked. ‘Do you know?’ ‘I know,’ said Astador.
PAVEL HURLED HIS last grenade into the mass of creatures, ducking as the concussive force of the detonation dislodged a section of the trench. He had passed beyond fear now, acting simply on adrenaline and training. So many things had happened to him that he could not function were fear to take hold. His body’s own sense of self-preservation clamped down on his fear and drove him ever onwards.
He shot, stabbed and hacked his way through the alien creatures, scavenging whatever munitions and weaponry he could find when his own ran out. He tripped, rolling over the dissolving corpses of two soldiers wearing Krieg greatcoats, slamming his face against the cold steel of their fallen weapon. Hissing slime ate away their flesh and Pavel recoiled, spitting blood as he pushed himself upright.
Jade light lit up the trench and he saw a hulking monster with a vividly patterned carapace smash its way through the trench barricades, green fire spewing from between toothed mandibles. Dozens of hissing beasts gathered behind the massive creature, ready to pour into the trench. An Ultramarines sergeant lay unconscious on the snow and the same captain who had saved his life from the gargoyles sprawled in a steaming pool of the creature’s green fire.
Pavel acted without thinking and lifted the Krieg gunners’ weapon onto his shoulder, praying that they had loaded the missile launcher before they’d died.
URIEL SCRAMBLED BACKWARDS, desperately wiping hissing bio-plasma from his visor.
He looked up and saw death in the black eyes of the carnifex. They were black, lidless and devoid of life, like a doll’s. He felt the wall of the trench at his back and knew there was nowhere else to go.
His sword arm came up, but he knew it was too late.
Then a blistering streak flashed through his vision and struck the carnifex square in the centre of its skull. A powerful shockwave buffeted Uriel and he felt bony shrapnel spray him. As the echoes of the explosion faded, he looked up
through the cloud of smoke at the massive organism and saw that its head had vanished, leaving nothing but a charred blood basin, oozing brain and skull fragments.
The carnifex swayed for a second until its body registered the fact that it was dead and its knees buckled. The massive creature collapsed and Uriel rolled aside as it fell, the impact throwing up blood-streaked bio-plasma and ice.
Further along the trench he caught sight of a soldier with the insignia of the Erebus Defence Legion stencilled on his helmet, a smoking missile launcher cradled on his shoulder.
He pushed himself to his feet as a tide of hormagaunts poured through the gap bludgeoned by the carnifex.
Raising his sword, he leapt to meet them.
PAVEL TOSSED ASIDE the smoking missile launcher and swiftly rolled over one of the Krieg gunners, searching for more weapons. He unholstered the man’s laspistol and drew his sword from a wide scabbard. The blade was toothed and heavy, and Pavel recognised a chainsword, though he had never used such a weapon before.
He searched for an activation stud, finding it on the base of the pommel, and the sword roared into life, the toothed blade spinning like a chainsaw. He rose and sprinted to where the Ultramarines captain was desperately fending off a horde of beasts that were pouring into the trenches.
He swung the heavy chainsword, feeling the blade judder as it tore through alien bones and sprayed him with alien fluids. He fired into the mass of creatures, blasting another to death and ripping his sword free in the same instant.
Pavel fought without the skill of the Ultramarines captain, but his fear and the desire to protect his home empowered him with fury and courage.
Together he and the Space Marine captain fought the aliens like heroes of legend. His arm ached from swinging the sword and he switched to using it two-handed when the laspistol ran out of charge.
He hacked a screeching beast in half as another giant figure in blue armour joined him and the captain, a sergeant with a gleaming silver arm. He grinned as he killed another alien, picturing the stories he’d be able to tell Hollia and Solan when this was all over.
He tried to pull the chainsword free from the creature’s chest, but the toothed blade was jammed in its bony exo-skeleton. He desperately tugged again as another monster bounded over the trench barricade.
Its claws slashed for his head and he swayed aside.
But not quickly enough as a scything blade hammered into his helmet, tearing it from his head. A lower set of clawed limbs stabbed at him, tearing through his overwhites and hot pain shrieked along his nerve endings. Blood sprayed from the wound and he collapsed, feeling gore-melted snow slam into his face.
Pavel rolled, drawing his war-knife and, through a blur of red water and tears of pain, raised it in time to skewer the beast’s throat as it leapt at him. It claws scrabbled at him as it died. Pavel wrenched the knife upwards, impaling its skull on the blade.
Releasing the knife, he weakly pushed himself to his feet, using the side of the trench for support. His vision swam and he felt his legs turn to water as a wave of sick dizziness swamped him. He numbly peeled the sodden fabric of his torn overwhites from his shoulder. Sticky blood oozed wetly from a deep gash and a glistening black claw was wedged in the cut. Strange, he thought dreamily.
His wound didn’t seem to hurt. There was no pain.
He wondered why, but was saved from the answer by collapsing, face first, into the bloody snow.
He was unconscious before he hit the ground.
URIEL RAN THROUGH the twisting passages of the trench, racing towards where he could see a group of black armoured warriors mounting up in five Rhino armoured personnel carriers. Colonel Rabelaq was feeding in reserves from the second trench to stabilise the front and yet more troops were moving up from the third line. The defences were holding, but only just. If the tyranids kept up this ferocious assault, then it was only a matter of time until the front line was breached.
He vaulted mounds of the dead, hurrying past desperate combats to reach the southern salient, where the Rhinos growled as the drivers gunned the engines. He could see Captain Bannon of the Deathwatch and the bone-rimmed armour of Chaplain Astador as he made his way through his kneeling men, administering the Mortis Astartes blessing to each one.
Captain Bannon rose to his feet as he caught sight of Uriel approaching, and moved to intercept him.
‘What are you doing?’ demanded Uriel.
‘What must be done to hold the line,’ answered Bannon, blocking Uriel’s route.
‘You are taking the fight to the aliens, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. Chaplain Astador has located the beast he believes is controlling this element of the tyranid swarm.’
‘What? How?’
The spirits of his ancestors have guided him to it.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Deadly serious,’ stated Bannon. ‘I trust his judgement on this implicitly.’
Uriel was stunned. To hear a brother Space Marine place such faith in ritual and superstition was beyond belief, but it was happening right here in front of him. He wondered what Idaeus would do.
Uriel nodded, his expression hardening. ‘Very well then, I’m coming with you.’
Bannon’s eyebrows arched. ‘Really?’
‘Aye. If we can end this now, then you’ll need all the help you can get.’
Bannon searched Uriel’s face for any sign of an ulterior motive, but finding none, slapped a palm on his shoulder guard and said, ‘So be it. Find a transport and let’s go.’
Uriel jogged towards the Rhinos and, realising there would be no room for him inside, clambered onto the roof of the nearest one. Its every panel was black, fastened with rivets stamped with tiny brass skulls and a grinning skull topped each exhaust, blue oilsmoke jetting from each jaw. The engine roared and Uriel gripped the edge of the roof as the rest of the Mortifactors and seven members of the Deathwatch climbed aboard the five transports.
The Rhino spun as the tracks fought for purchase on the slushy ground, before lurching forward as they finally bit. Thick timbers had been laid across the trench and the Rhino reared upwards as it hit the edge of the snow berm, slamming down hard onto the ice on the other side. Uriel’s Rhino took the lead at the head of a wedge of transports, crashing those aliens not quick enough to get out of the way.
Alien screeches rose to new heights as they reacted to the interlopers in their midst, and a section of the swarm smoothly altered the direction of its charge to intercept the Rhinos. Scores of bounding, clawed monsters drew close and Uriel pulled himself along the roof as the front hatch opened and a warrior of the Mortifactors pulled himself up to man the pintle-mounted storm bolter. He snapped back the action and checked that it was equipped with a full load, before pulling the trigger and working the bucking weapon left and right, clearing a path for the Rhino to follow.
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