Hearing the hot roar of a jump pack above him, he looked up and saw Battle-Brother Maestus, shorn of one arm already, descend upon the necron from the sky like the wrath of Dorn himself.
As Maestus dropped on the necron, Hesperus could tell that something was wrong with his battle-brother’s jump pack immediately. The Space Marine was doing his damnedest to direct his wild plunge directly onto the target, rather than making a controlled leap across the ice-field. The trail of smoke trailing from the port gravitic thruster attested to the problem as well.
But Hesperus had no idea just how badly damaged Brother Maestus’ jump pack was until, preceded by a cry of “For Dorn!” from the plunging Space Marine, the pack’s power core overloaded, resulting in a detonation as powerful as that of a cluster of thermal charges.
Time suddenly slowed for Hesperus as he watched the scene unfold before him as if he were watching a pict-feed playing at half-speed.
He saw the jump pack rip apart like burnt paper as the blast consumed it. He saw Brother Maestus reduced to his component atoms as the resulting fireball from the sub-atomic explosion consumed him. He saw the necron’s tattered robes burn away to nothing on the nuclear wind. He watched as the skeletal lord warped, melted and disintegrated nanoseconds later. Then the hungry flames were washing over him and the Shockwave hit, sending him somersaulting backwards once more across the vaporised ice-field.
Sergeant Hesperus picked himself up for a second time and gazed in stunned shock across the ice-field, knowing what he would see there. Nothing at all.
Brother Maestus was gone. Of the necron master, there was no sign either. What there was, was the solidifying bowl of a melted crater focussed on the epicentre of the catastrophic blast. For thirty metres in every direction lay the fallen of the necron host: warriors and wraiths, scarabs and spyders, all obliterated by the blast, their cybernetic components fused into lumps of useless metal, the flicker of artificial automaton intelligence in their eyes fading to the black of oblivion.
The loss of Battle-Brother Maestus was a dolorous wound in the very heart of Squad Eurus, but his passing had dealt an even more dolorous blow against the enemy. Maestus’ sacrifice had taken down the entity that had led the necrons into battle. With the ancient’s passing the attacking force was as good as defeated.
“Squad Eurus,” Hesperus commanded. “Sound off!”
As the seven surviving battle-brothers under his immediate command signalled their condition to their sergeant and the rest of the squad, Hesperus stared in wonder at the debris littering the battlefield all around them.
Even as the remaining necron warriors continued to stride towards the mining facility over the ice with lethal purpose blazing in their incandescent eye-sockets, they began to shimmer, their armoured bodies becoming blurred and hazy. And then suddenly Hesperus was staring right through them until they weren’t actually there at all.
Even the battle debris of necron constructs besmirching the snow and the crater-gouged ice—up-ended spyders and sparking scarabs included—shimmered and phased out of existence. Soon even the spectral forms of the steel skeletons were no more.
If it had not been for the great smouldering wounds scarring the bulwarks of the base, the wrecked earth-movers, the devastated Trojans, the downed Valkyrie and the bodies of those who had died defending the facility, Hesperus could have believed that there hadn’t been an attack launched on the base at all. Of the enemy there was now no sign.
The Imperial allies had won. Aes Metallum had been saved but at a price, a price that had been paid in the blood and the lives of PDF troopers, tech-adepts and one battle-brother of the lauded Imperial Fists Chapter.
A leaden silence descended over the blizzard-blown wastes, falling across the battlefield like a funerary shroud, as autoguns, las weapons and the huge autocannon emplacements ceased firing.
Then, intermittently at first, Hesperus’ acute hearing registered the utterances of disbelief of the Ixyans. Many men had died, but Aes Metallum still stood and the enemy had been vanquished.
Gathering pace and momentum, like a snowball rolling downhill, the gasps turned to emotional whoops of joy and of relief, mixed with wailing cries of intense emotion and heartfelt howls of grief.
But, as the sounds of jubilant celebration increased, overwhelming all other expressions of emotion, ringing from the cliffs behind the base, the Imperial Fists remained silent. Their sergeant’s dour mood reflected how they all felt.
Hesperus’ helm comm crackled into life.
“Sergeant? Are you receiving me?” It was Brother-Pilot Teaz.
“Receiving,” Hesperus confirmed. “Where are you, brother?”
“Sir, I’m eighty kilometres north of the facility.”
“What news?”
For a moment Hesperus could hear nothing but the hiss of static over the helm comm. He knew immediately that the news was going to be bad.
“Reinforcements are moving in on your position from the north-east.”
Hesperus took a deep breath, trying hard to dispel the chill that had now permeated even his ossmodula-hardened bones. “Reinforcements, brother?”
“Well, no, sir, not really, I suppose. It would appear that the force that attacked Aes Metallum was only the vanguard of a much larger reaper force that has risen from inside the pyramid.”
“How much larger, Brother Teaz?”
“A thousand times, sir.”
“Their number is legion,” Hesperus breathed.
The remaining members of Squad Eurus met with Governor Selig, Captain Derrin and Magos Winze in the shell of a manufactorum temple. None of them had escaped the battle for the base unscathed. The governor had acquired a haunted, hollow-eyed expression. Captain Derrin’s right arm was bound up in a sling that was now soaked with blood. Even the magos showed signs of having played his part in the battle for Aes Metallum: a half-shorn mechadendrite convulsed spastically and there was no sign of his attendant cyber-skull.
“But the battle is won, brother-sergeant,” Selig protested, a haunted look in his eyes. “The necrontyr are defeated. I witnessed their destruction with my own eyes. You and your men bested them and in their rout the blasphemies quit not only the battlefield but reality itself!”
“The force we defeated was merely the vanguard,” Hesperus stated bluntly, “but a fraction of the legion of undying xenos constructs that is even now marching on this base.”
“But our hard-won victory cost us dear,” Derrin said hollowly. “We shall not survive another battle like it, I fear.”
“Whatever else happens, we must not despair,” Sergeant Hesperus told the Ixyans.
“You have been in touch with your brethren?” the magos queried, his croaking words washed through with a static buzz.
“We have reported our status but they are too far away to be able to relieve Ixya and are already on course for the Chthonian Chain. Even if they broke off from that Chapter-sanctioned campaign, they would not reach us in time. The only ones who stand between the necrontyr and their re-conquest of this world is us.”
“But Captain Derrin has made an accurate assessment of the situation. Those who remain cannot hope to win this day.”
“Perhaps not,” Hesperus admitted, “but that does not mean that the necrontyr shall either.”
“Please explain yourself, Astartes,” the tech-priest crackled.
“Magos, from where does Aes Metallum get its power?”
“We take our energy from the boiling heart of this world, deep, deep below the ice.”
“As I suspected, geothermally.”
“Your point being, sergeant?”
“Captain Derrin, you are right; I fear none of us shall see another dawn, but our deaths shall not be in vain.”
The governor’s shoulders sagged, his head hung low.
“We must prepare to sell ourselves dear. We shall die this day, yes, but we shall die as heroes all. For it is in our power to ensure that no more Imperial lives are lost. Through ou
r actions here, this day, we can keep the rest of the Imperium safe from the menace being birthed here.
“Magos Winze—broadcast a repeating signal via your satellite network that Ixya is Terra Perdita. Then do all that is necessary to ensure that you overload the geothermal grid. We shall use Aes Metallum’s very power source, the beating heart of this Emperor-given world, to split it asunder. This base, and everything in it, shall be destroyed in a volcanic eruption the like of which Ixya has not seen in ten thousand years. We may die this day, but so shall the undying legions of the necrontyr!”
Hesperus’ tone was all vehement righteousness.
“In time our battle-brothers will visit this world and our deaths shall be avenged. But for the time being we shall tear this planet apart and blow this place sky high, in His name!”
Sergeant Hesperus stood atop the inner curtain wall of Aes Metallum, with the battle-brothers of Squad Eurus at his side.
Behind them were gathered the remnants of the PDF, indentured miners and Mechanicus-mustered servitors, battle-weary but resolute the lot of them. The Imperial Fist’s rhetoric had lent them the strength they needed to face the end with courage and resolve. Every man, tech-adept and servitor was ready to sell himself dear if it meant they might deny the necrontyr this world and, through their own deaths, bring about the destruction of their hated enemy.
Bowing his head, Hesperus led his battle-brothers in prayer. “Oh Dorn, the dawn of our being. Lead us, your sons, to victory.”
Hesperus stared, his immovable gaze focussed beyond the limits of the ice-field. As far as his occulobe-enhanced eyes could see, to both left and right, the far horizon glinted silver. The ice storm had blown itself out at last, revealing the necrontyr in all their morbid might as they advanced in a solid line of living metal.
Hesperus hefted his hammer in his hand, the blackened storm shield already in place on his left arm, and heard the hum of Brother Verwhere’s energising plasma pistol, accompanied by the clatter of bolt pistols being primed and the growl of chainswords running up to speed.
“In the name of Dorn!” Hesperus bellowed, his eyes still locked on the seething tide of dark metal.
“And Him on Earth!” his fellow battle-brothers shouted, giving the antiphonal response, their battle-cry almost drowned out by the roar of turbofan engines as the Fortis roared overhead, to meet the enemy head-on and make the first strike against the xenos hordes.
Through the cockpit of the craft Brother-Pilot Teaz could see the advancing horde in all its terrible glory. Truly could the term innumerable be applied to the host. Where the Imperial Fists had faced hundreds of the mechanical warriors during the initial attack on Aes Metallum, here thousands advanced on the right flank, thousands on the left, thousands more forming the central block, an unstoppable mass of moving metal. From this height individual necrons looked not unlike the scarab swarms that now turned the sky black above them as millions of the beetle-form constructs took to the air.
Hesperus cast his eyes from the soaring Thunderhawk to the seething mass of silent metal warriors that stretched from the ancient sepulchre complex to the very gates of the devastated refinery, covering every centimetre of the ice wastes in between.
The planet’s ancient masters had returned: the necrontyr. Their number was legion.
And they would show no mercy to the servants of the Emperor—not that the Imperial Fists would have sought it—for their name was death.
And today, Sergeant Hesperus decided, was a good day to die.
That we, in our arrogance, believed that humankind was first among the races of this galaxy will be exposed as folly of the worst kind upon the awakening of these ancient beings. Any hopes, dreams or promises of salvation are naught but dust in the wind.
—Excerpted from the Dogma Omniastra
EXHUMED
Steve Parker
The Thunderhawk gunship loomed out of the clouds like a monstrous bird of prey, wings spread, turbines growling, airbrakes flared to slow it for landing. It was black, its fuselage marked with three symbols: the Imperial aquila, noble and golden; the “I” of the Emperor’s Holy Inquisition, a symbol even the righteous knew better than to greet gladly; and another symbol, a skull cast in silver with a gleaming red, cybernetic eye. Derlon Saezar didn’t know that one, had never seen it before, but it sent a chill up his spine all the same. Whichever august Imperial body the symbol represented was obviously linked to the Holy Inquisition. That couldn’t be good news.
Eyes locked to his vid-monitor, Saezar watched tensely as the gunship banked hard towards the small landing facility he managed, its prow slicing through the veils of windblown dust like a knife through silk. There was a burst of static-riddled speech on his headset. In response, he tapped several codes into the console in front of him, keyed his microphone and said, “Acknowledged, One-Seven-One. Clearance codes accepted. Proceed to Bay Four. This is an enclosed atmosphere facility. I’m uploading our safety and debarkation protocols to you now. Over.”
His fingers rippled over the console’s runeboard, and the massive metal jaws of Bay Four began to grate open, ready to swallow the unwelcome black craft. Thick toxic air rushed in. Breathable air rushed out. The entire facility shuddered and groaned in complaint, as it always did when a spacecraft came or went. The Adeptus Mechanicus had built this station, Orga Station, quickly and with the minimum systems and resources it would need to do its job. No more, no less.
It was a rusting, dust-scoured place, squat and ugly on the outside, dank and gloomy within. Craft arrived, craft departed. Those coming in brought slaves, servitors, heavy machinery and fuel. Saezar didn’t know what those leaving carried. The magos who had hired him had left him in no doubt that curiosity would lead to the termination of more than his contract. Saezar was smart enough to believe it. He and his staff kept their heads down and did their jobs. In another few years, the tech-priests would be done here. They had told him as much. He would go back to Jacero then, maybe buy a farm with the money he’d have saved, enjoy air that didn’t kill you on the first lungful.
That thought called up a memory Saezar would have given a lot to erase. Three weeks ago, a malfunction in one of the Bay Two extractors left an entire work crew breathing this planet’s lethal air. The bay’s vid-pictors had caught it all in fine detail, the way the technicians and slaves staggered in agony towards the emergency airlocks, clawing at their throats while blood streamed from their mouths, noses and eyes. Twenty-three men dead. It had taken only seconds, but Saezar knew the sight would be with him for life. He shook himself, trying to cast the memory off.
The Thunderhawk had passed beyond the outer pictors’ field of view. Saezar switched to Bay Four’s internal pictors and saw the big black craft settle heavily on its landing stanchions. Thrusters cooled. Turbines whined down towards silence. The outer doors of the landing bay clanged shut. Saezar hit the winking red rune on the top right of his board and flooded the bay with the proper nitrogen and oxygen mix. When his screen showed everything was in the green, he addressed the pilot of the Thunderhawk again.
“Atmosphere restored, One-Seven-One. Bay Four secure. Free to debark.”
There was a brief grunt in answer. The Thunderhawk’s front ramp lowered. Yellow light spilled out from inside, illuminating the black metal grille of the bay floor. Shadows appeared in that light—big shadows—and, after a moment, the figures that cast them began to descend the ramp. Saezar leaned forwards, face close to his screen.
“By the Throne,” he whispered to himself.
With his right hand, he manipulated one of the bay vid-pictors by remote, zooming in on the figure striding in front. It was massive, armoured in black ceramite, its face hidden beneath a cold, expressionless helm. On one great pauldron, the left, Saezar saw the same skull icon that graced the ship’s prow. On the right, he saw another skull on a field of white, two black scythes crossed behind it. Here was yet another icon Saezar had never seen before, but he knew well enough the nature of the bein
g that bore it. He had seen such beings rendered in paintings and stained glass, cut from marble or cast in precious metal. It was a figure of legend, and it was not alone.
Behind it, four others, similarly armour-clad but each bearing different iconography on their right pauldrons, marched in formation. Saezar’s heart was in his throat. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. He had never expected to see such beings with his own eyes. No one did. They were heroes from the stories his father had read to him, stories told to all children of the Imperium to give them hope, to help them sleep at night. Here they were in flesh and bone and metal.
Space Marines! Here! At Orga Station!
And there was a further incredible sight yet to come. Just as the five figures stepped onto the grille-work floor, something huge blotted out all the light from inside the craft. The Thunderhawk’s ramp shook with thunderous steps. Something incredible emerged on two stocky, piston-like legs. It was vast and angular and impossibly powerful-looking, like a walking tank with fists instead of cannon.
It was a Dreadnought, and, even among such legends as these, it was in a class of its own.
Saezar felt a flood of conflicting emotion, equal parts joy and dread.
The Space Marines had come to Menatar, and where they went, death followed.
“Menatar,” said the tiny hunched figure, more to himself than to any of the black-armoured giants he shared the pressurised mag-rail carriage with. “Second planet of the Ozyma-138 system, Hatha Subsector, Ultima Segmentum. Solar orbital period, one-point-one-three Terran standard. Gravity, zero-point-eight-three Terran standard.” He looked up, his tiny black eyes meeting those of Siefer Zeed, the Raven Guard. “The atmosphere is a thick nitrogen-sulphide and carbon dioxide mix. Did you know that? Utterly deadly to the non-augmented. I doubt even you Adeptus Astartes could breathe it for long. Even our servitors wear air tanks here.”
[Warhammer 40K] - Victories of the Space marines Page 22