Cassius entered the tenement and took the elevator up to the roof where sergeants Capilla and Therotius had prepared their squads, a battery of lascannons, missile launchers and heavy bolters pointed skywards while the bolter-armed brethren created a defensive circle around the heavy-weapons armed warriors. Looking to the west, the Chaplain could see Sergeant Xathian’s devastators doing the same on the gantries around the storage tanks in the depot.
Quickly reviewing the dispositions of his other force, Cassius made a few adjustments, moving some of the tactical squads south of the highway onto the roofs of the warehouses where they could be covered by the devastators of Therotius. Corilinus and his assault squad moved quickly up to the raised highway, their jump packs flaring in the dim light as they bounded up the slope. From there they would be able to cross easily to the roofs of the lower buildings to the north and south, in response to the tyranid attack.
Satisfied that all was well, Cassius recited a liturgy of battle over the vox, preparing his warriors mentally for the fight to come. As he spoke the words of the second verse, a distinctive crack announced the firing of the Thunderhawk’s main cannon. Directing his attention to the harridans, he judged the tyranids to be less than two kilometres away. Lascannon flashes seared across the grey skies as the Ultramarines targeted the lead beast, the pulses of white energy punching through the creature’s immense leathery wings. Losing height, the wounded harridan turned sharply, dropping towards the ground. The Thunderhawk circled and fired again, this time striking the harridan in its rear quarters with a battle-cannon shell. Flesh and chitin rained down from the exploding wound, causing the harridan to contort madly, its wings spasming.
A flutter of smaller shapes spread from the beast’s belly, scattering in the high altitude winds as the gargoyles detached from the mortally wounded harridan. Some were swept away immediately, disappearing into the clouds; the rest spiralled quickly groundwards, eventually gathering into a coherent mass as they descended into lighter winds.
The other two harridans were stooping into long dives, readying to disgorge their own living cargoes onto Cordus Via. The whine of power cells charging drifted across the rooftop from the devastators as Cassius finished the third verse of the litany and raised his crozius above his head, the gilded tyranid skull at its tip glowing from the power field generator concealed within. The tyranids were less than a kilometre away, swooping swiftly towards the rooftops.
‘Let forth your righteous anger in the name of the Emperor!’ bellowed Cassius.
Just as the words left his lips, the vox chimed in his ear, signalling a communication from Princeps Perthion.
‘Revered Chaplain, sensor reports show excess of three thousand enemy heading our way,’ said the Titan commander. ‘Distance of two kilometres. We will destroy as many as we can, but we cannot guarantee total extermination.’
‘Understood, princeps,’ replied Cassius.
Two missiles streaked skywards from the launchers of Squad Xathian. Their contrails cut a converging path towards the closest of the two harridans. The beast’s wings had ceased beating as it glided down on its attack course. At this range, Cassius could see the multitude of smaller creatures grappled to its underside: a swathe of quivering pale flesh and dark red chitin plates. As the missiles veered towards the harridan, the gargoyles stirred into life. Spreading bat-like wings, they dropped from the larger beast’s underside in a cloud, scattering from the path of the incoming projectiles.
Both missiles struck the armoured head of the harridan, cracking thick chitinous plates and sending organic shrapnel flying but doing little real damage. Divested of its brood, the harridan plunged onwards. Cannon-like growths at the crooks of its wings spat forth a volley of living ammunition. As dark blurs, the projectiles flew towards Xathian’s squad; Cassius watched their trajectory as the large slug-like bio-shells dipped across the highway.
Hitting the tops of the storage vats, the bio-cannon volley exploded with a cloud of organic acid, spraying several of the Space Marines with highly corrosive slime and razor-edged chitin shrapnel. Ceramite cracked and melted, the bio-acid searing through the armoured layers of the devastator’s pauldrons and chestplates.
There was no time to consider potential casualties: the gargoyles from both harridans were now descending in a dark cloud while the grotesque mother-beasts beat their wings to regain height, turning towards the circling Thunderhawk.
More missiles converged on the incoming mass. Their time-activated fragmentation warheads detonated inside the cloud of creatures, scything through the winged creatures with loud cracks. As several gargoyles fluttered bloodily to the ground, the rest came on, heading straight for the highest building where Cassius and the others waited.
Heavy bolter fire greeted the descending swarm, joined a few seconds later by a fusillade from the rest of the squads’ boltguns. Bodies exploded, spraying severed limbs and thick ichor into the wind. Undeterred, the gargoyles folded their wings and dived, approaching at incredible speed.
More bolt-rounds detonated through the flock, sending crumpled bodies down onto the highway. Cassius readied his pistol and took aim, fixing on the leering face of an onrushing gargoyle. A spiny crest jutted from the plate of chitin above its brow and its wings were edged with vicious claws. The creature had been created to spend its existence solely in the air. A barbed tail lashed back and forth, between two atrophied legs connected by wing flaps to the uppermost pair of limbs, acting like a rudder. Like the rest of the brood, the gargoyle’s middle limbs were fused with a symbiotic weapon – a distinct species of its own integrated into the tyranid’s bony hands.
The brood opened their mouths in unison, emitting a screeching wail. Cassius’s ears buzzed as his autosenses filtered out the noise, the thunder of bolters and missiles suddenly muted. Beyond the swarm, the Chaplain caught a glance of a large shape following in the wake of the gargoyles – one of the harridans angling towards the tactical squads on top of the warehouses to the south.
Cassius fired when the gargoyle brood was thirty metres away, their shadows flitting across the Minoran Gradient. The shot hit the gargoyle in its right shoulder, tearing through ligaments and muscle. The tyranid’s wing folded up immediately and it plunged down, crashing into one of the huge highway supports.
Aiming and firing again, Cassius’s next shot passed through the wing of a gargoyle, the bolt-round punching a small hole through leathery skin but nothing more. And then the flock was on top of the Chaplain.
Plasma-like fire spewed from the mouths of the gargoyles, bathing the Ultramarines with green flame. Their bio-weapons spat volleys of beetles that rattled harmlessly against Cassius’s armour, the spatter of their impacts obscuring his livery with thick ichor.
He swung his crozius back-handed, the blazing head connecting with the body of a gargoyle as it swept past. With a blast of light, the energy field tore through chitin and flesh, almost ripping the creature in half. A wing flap slapped across Cassius’s helm as the dying beast speared into his shoulder, claws raking spasmodically across his shoulder plate in a welter of paint slivers and ceramite dust.
To Cassius’s left, Sergeant Therotius was hacking through the gargoyles, the teeth of his chainsword hurling gobbets of eviscerated flesh in all directions. The devastators used their weapons as clubs and struck out with gauntlet-enclosed fists, sticky bio-plasma burning on their armour where they had been struck. One of the battle-brothers collapsed under the attack of four of the creatures, falling to his side as bio-plasma ate away at his armour seals and scrabbling claws punctured the joints beneath his shoulders.
Cassius was at the beleaguered Space Marine’s side in five strides, swinging his crozius in a wide arc. The Chaplain’s blow swept two of the gargoyles from the fallen Space Marine, chitin and bones shattered by the impact. The other two creatures clawed and bit in a frenzy, still shrieking wildly, driven by instinct to keep slicing and gouging
until their prey was dead. The Ultramarine’s armour held up against the assault for another couple of seconds, giving Cassius time to fire a shot into the head of one of the attacking creatures. Its skull exploded, sending the brow-horn spear-like into the side of the remaining tyranid.
Something hit Cassius in the back before he could despatch the wounded creature. Warning icons blinked in the Chaplain’s helm display, and his ears were filled with the scratch and thud of the gargoyle’s claws slashing at his backpack and helm. He turned quickly, trying to throw the creature off his back, but it had sunk its wing-claw into a heat exchange vent and would not be shaken free.
‘Brother-Chaplain!’ Cassius heard the warning over his external pick-up rather than the vox and swung around to see Sergeant Capilla with his bolter levelled at him. Cassius turned and dropped to one knee as a hooked claw scratched against the right lens of his helm.
The bark of Capilla’s bolter sounded over the screeching of the gargoyle; a shriek that ended abruptly with a wet spatter of ichor across Cassius’s vision.
‘Thank you, brother,’ said Cassius, pushing himself back to both feet, looking for foes. Only a few gargoyles were still alive, wheeling up into the air above the devastators, spitting bio-plasma.
Cassius took aim but before he could fire, an immense shadow fell across him. Looking up, he saw the massive head of a harridan, long claws trailing from its lower limbs. The Chaplain hurled himself face first into the rooftop as the metres-long scythe swept overhead, missing Cassius by a metre or less. With their focus on the gargoyles, the devastators did not react so quickly.
Even as Cassius shouted a warning, two of the Space Marines were lifted from the rooftop, speared through their torsos by the elongated claws. Capilla fired at the immense beast as it passed over, the detonations of his bolt-rounds appearing as small sparks against the bulk of the harridan. The creature was followed by a downdraught of air that swept up grit and dust from the streets and buildings, swathing the Ultramarines in a thick cloud. Cassius’s autosenses flicked to thermal in time to show the gargoyles dropping once more towards the devastators, hidden by the dust storm.
‘Enemy above!’ Cassius warned, but the cry was not needed. Therotius already had his squad prepared and the descending column of gargoyles were caught in a crossfire of heavy bolter-rounds and exploding frag missiles. The dust cloud churned with whirring bolts and ichor pattered down on Cassius like milky-white rain.
A shockwave rippled through the dust as the Thunderhawk screamed past, its nose spitting las-bolts at the departing harridan, each shot tearing chunks from its ribbed underside. The gunship’s main cannon boomed out, hitting the ascending tyranid on its dorsal plates, and then both were lost from view again.
‘Casualty reports,’ snapped Cassius. A wounded gargoyle flopped and flapped a few metres away. The Chaplain crossed the rooftop and brought his crozius down onto the creature’s head, crushing its skull with one blow. ‘All squads, report in.’
The devastators had not fared too badly: one Space Marine killed, three more too grievously wounded to continue fighting. Several had suffered minor injuries from bio-plasma and gargoyle claws but nothing that could not be ignored for the time being. The tactical squads stationed across the warehouses had suffered the wrath of the harridan and had lost five Space Marines to its bio-cannons and deadly claws before it had turned its attention towards the battle atop the dormitory building.
Apothecary Valion was already making his way from squad to squad in the southern outskirts, tending as best he could to those who had been injured. Sergeant Augustin was amongst those that had fallen, decapitated by the harridan as it had overflown his position. Cassius reviewed his mental list of the Space Marines under his command to find a suitable replacement.
‘Brother Tyrius,’ he announced over the vox.
‘Yes, Brother-Chaplain?’
‘You are now sergeant, Tyrius. We will speak the rites of promotion together when the current attack has been thwarted. Assist in the reorganisation of the tactical squads, brother-sergeant.’
‘Thank you, Brother Cassius.’
‘Do not thank me, Tyrius. Just do your duty. Service is its own reward.’
‘Of course, Brother-Chaplain. I shall bear the honour of the Ultramarines without faltering.’
‘Be sure that you do, sergeant.’
The wind was blowing away the dust cloud caused by the harridan’s passage, revealing the creature turning northwards, pursued by the Thunderhawk. Cassius was aware that he had received several reports from the two Titan princeps whilst he had been watching the harridans and fighting the gargoyles. He reviewed his communications log, listening to the contacts on fast-recall.
The next tyranid wave was still heading towards Cordus Via. The Titans had reaped a heavy toll with their weapons, but the foe were too numerous to destroy utterly. Several broods of tyranid warriors and smaller organisms had made it past the Titans’ bombardment and were heading down the highway and river.
The sun was barely above the horizon and the day would be filled with fighting.
Chapter VI
In the afternoon the clouds had burnt away, leaving Cordus Via baking beneath the hot sun. A haze of smoke drifted down the highway, the faltering winds bringing the smog from crop fields set ablaze by the guns of the Titans. Bounded to the north and south by the rivers, there was little danger of the fires spreading too far; in any case, it was no concern of Chaplain Cassius. He was not here to defend the cereal fields, but to ensure the safety of the people sheltering in Plains Fall.
In the settlement, the Ultramarines Rhinos were put to work clearing the tyranid corpses choking the streets. A mass of lesser creatures had tried to overwhelm the defenders with their numbers, and several hundred had survived the gauntlet of multiple rocket launchers, volcano cannons and gatling blasters to descend on Cordus Via throughout the morning, to be met by the unflinching fusillade of the Space Marines. With earthmoving blades, the armoured transports heaped the twisted and burnt bodies of termagants and hormagaunts into grisly barricades between the warehouses.
Cassius stood on the Minoran Gradient looking down at the aftermath of the morning’s deadly work. Heat haze shimmered from the rockrete highway and fire flickered amongst the outbuildings as the combat squads of the Ultramarines moved through the settlement with flamers, seeking out surviving foes that had managed to get inside the buildings.
The cataract foamed pale green with alien fluids, the pool beneath the thundering fall of water choked with hundreds of tyranid corpses washed down the river. Sergeant Dacia and his veterans were using fragmentation grenades to dislodge the bodies acting as a dam across the river, blowing holes in the wall of dead piling up where the cataract narrowed to ensure Cordus Via did not flood.
The reports from orbit and the patrols of the Thunderhawks indicated that the tyranids had relented in their assault for the moment, pulling back more than ten kilometres. Cassius knew better than to think of them as mindless drones. The tyranids were driven by a compulsion to devour everything in their path, but they were not all simple beasts; alien intelligence directed their actions individually and as a swarm. Though their hive ship was destroyed, the tyranids that had landed were not an unending horde descending from orbit, and their strategy was still evolving. The Chaplain had fought this menace on more than a score of worlds, and they had never acted exactly the same, though there were predictable patterns, as with any foe.
Having tested the defenders at Cordus Via, and found them unbreaking, the mind guiding the tyranid assault was now seeking a means to circumnavigate the waystation. The Thunderhawks had reported flocks of gargoyles seeking passage to the north and south, but here the terrain was in the favour of the defenders, as Cassius and Arka had known it would be. The rivers were impassable further west of Cordus Via, except perhaps by the harridans and gargoyles and a few of the largest constructs.
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If the mass of the tyranid swarm wanted to reach Plains Fall, it would either have to travel several hundred kilometres in a wide arc around the Ultramarines, or break through. There was little Cassius could do about the former strategy, and he was determined that the latter would fail.
The Chaplain received a communication from General Arka as he returned to the settlement along the highway access road. The Imperial Guard commander did not have good news.
‘The orbital surveys from your strike cruiser show three distinct lines of advance by the enemy,’ Arka told Cassius. The general’s tone was quiet and determined, though Cassius’s keen ears also detected an undercurrent of tension – a strain in Arka’s voice that a normal man might not hear. ‘To your north, the enemy have made progress along the Altaen Gradient and Messian Highway. I have reinforced the Astcarian infantry stationed at Nexus Via with several squadrons of Leman Russ tanks and Basilisk artillery guns, but they are being hard-pressed to contain the attack and I would not expect them to hold out more than a day.
‘To the south, I have established a fortified line across the Captian Highway at Matis Via, in anticipation of the tyranids finding a way across the river at the Serenin rapids. It’s fast-moving but narrow, and I would not put it past these creatures to make a bridge of their bodies if needed.’
‘In short, general, you cannot guarantee the security of either our northern or southern flanks,’ said Cassius. It was a statement of fact, not an accusation, and Arka was experienced enough to take it as such.
‘That is correct, revered Chaplain,’ the general said with a heavy sigh. ‘There is little point in reinforcing further at Matis Via or Nexus Via. I would just be lightening the defence on the city to send more men to their deaths.’
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