by Ben Counter
'Get away from here.' voxed Alaric to the Malleus pilot, possibly the last survivor of the Rubicon. 'Head west.'
The pilot didn't answer. The Thunderhawk swooped down as it turned, then its engines gunned and it shot off leaving the swirling trail of ash.
Alaric glanced at the runes on his readout. They pulsed brightly - the drop-pods were a short jog away.
'Genhain, Santoro, we're down.' voxed Alaric.
'Genhain down.' came one justicar's voice. 'Ready to move out.'
'Santoro down.' said the other.
'We're heading your way. Stay defensive and be ready to...'
Alaric was cut off as he saw a rose-red light burning through the gauze of dust. Something had punched through Volcanis Ultor's mantle of bruise-coloured cloud, burning red. It seemed to be falling incredibly slowly, its underside white-hot, huge sheets of fire trailing behind. Alaric could hear a roar like a hurricane and he recognized, stripped bare and melting, the shape of one of the Rubicon's engines.
'All Marines take cover!' yelled Alaric into the vox, and dropped down to the fractured ground.
A great white flash of heat burst like a wave. A roar followed, a Shockwave running through the earth like the blast from a huge bomb, a hot blast of air washing across the plain. The sound was appalling, like an army of daemons howling. Suddenly the fire in the sky was gone and a mantle of ash and pulverised rock was drawn across the plain like a thick black blanket, turning Volcanis Ultor as dark as night. The hot, dry storm ripped over Alaric's Grey Knights as they took cover, the Shockwaves rippling back and forth. The vox was a wall of interference, the feeble sun was shut out, the sky replaced by a grimy swirling mass of dust and ash Alaric yelled at the top of his lungs. 'To me, Grey Knights! Press on! Stay close!'
The Grey Knights could not stay where they were. They were vulnerable – man-to-man they were some of the best soldiers in the galaxy, but trapped in the open they were just so many targets.
Tancred lumbered out of the darkness, the sword of Mandulis shining so bright it seemed to be on fire. His Terminator-armoured battle-brothers followed him. 'At your side, brother-captain.' he shouted grimly.
Alaric gathered his men and plunged on into the storm, heading for Squads Santoro and Genhain, and Lake Rapax.
AN INTACT STRIKE cruiser at full speed would have been like a meteor hitting Volcanis Ultor, forging a winter decades long, exterminating whole ecosystems. The falling section of the Rubicon represented a fraction of its weight and it had decelerated dramatically to deploy its payload, and so it did not annihilate most of Hive Superior and a fair chunk of the plains surrounding it.
To the city's defenders, that was little consolation. The engine section landed towards the southern end of the line held by the Balurian heavy infantry and it hit with a force larger than a shell from one of the huge Ordinatus artillery pieces built by the Adeptus Mechanicus. A full orbital strike from a battleship would scarcely have done more damage.
The heat and shockwave released by the impact vaporised a good portion of the Balurian regiment, and hundreds of men drowned in the flood of ash and dust that coursed through their trenches. Three kilometres of trench were destroyed, from the front line to the rearward assembly areas. The command post was wiped out, killing the Balurian colonel Gortz and almost his entire staff. Sisters Hospitaller perished at their medical posts. Supply posts full of equipment and munitions were crushed, exploding into flat sheets of fire and shrapnel.
The Ordinatus deployed behind the Balurian lines was destroyed, its immense cannon barrel and titanic loader systems ripped apart by the flood of wreckage that spewed from the engine section as it disintegrated.
The engines did not explode, for the plasma reactors had bled their contents into the upper atmosphere when the Absolution Beta had torn the strike cruiser apart. Instead there was a terrible eruption of darkness, a pall of black ash and earth that boiled up almost as high as Hive Superior's outer spires and billowed out across the plain. It swept out over the no-man's-land beyond the front lines, down through the sections south of the Balurians and north to halfway across Lake Rapax. It boiled into Hive Superior's outer reaches. Some were buried, others suffocated, while others dug themselves out of drifts of ash that gathered everywhere.
The whole north end of the defences was buried under a blanket of blackness, as if night had fallen. Further south disruption was immense – communications cut, bunkers undermined by the shockwave, eardrums burst, unstable munitions and fuel dumps detonated. Confusion paralysed the defences, and only the most well-equipped and disciplined troops could hope to fight with anything approaching full effectiveness.
Those troops were the Battle Sisters of the Adepta Sororitas.
ALARIC SAW JUSTICAR Santoro through the gloom, crouched with his storm bolter ready to fire. The other four Marines of his squad were in a tight formation around the drop-pod site, hunkered down behind the opened steel petals of the pod.
Alaric clapped Santoro on the back. 'Good to see you got down.'
Santoro nodded grimly. 'Night has fallen early. It looks like we're in the right place.'
Genhain loomed out of the darkness. Were it not for Alaric's enhanced vision he would not have been able to see the justicar at all. 'Lachis is hurt.' he said - the vox was still down so vocal communication was the only option.
'How bad?'
'Mangled a leg in the landing. He'll lose it.'
Alaric saw Brother Grenn and Ondurin helping Lachis along - the lower part of his right leg was severely mangled, bone jutting from the sundered armour plates. Anyone other than a Space Marine would have been unconscious.
'Marine, can you fight?' said Alaric.
'Always.' said Lachis. He was a relatively young Grey Knight, having been promoted from a novice into Genhain's squad just over two years before. 'But not run.'
'Your brothers will help you until we reach the front line. After that you move under your own power. We'll need your covering fire.'
'Understood, Brother-Captain.'
'We'll leave you behind. You won't survive.'
'Understood.'
Alaric looked through the dust storm. He couldn't make out the processing plant that marked the end of the line and the shore of Lake Rapax but he could sense it there, the centre of a web spun by Ghargatuloth, drawing them near.
'The vox is out and we won't be getting it back, so we stay close and stay in communication. The defences are manned by Imperial citizens but while Ghargatuloth lives they are the enemy. When we reach the Prince of a Thousand Faces, we will have our revenge for their deaths.'
With that Alaric ran into the darkness, his Grey Knights following him, every thought turned towards how many would have had to die before this fight was done, and how every death would be visited on Ghargatuloth.
CANONESS LUDMILLA CROUCHED down in the front line, feeling her filtration implants grinding in her throat as they cleaned out the dust and ash that would otherwise flood her lungs. Several Sisters had put on their Sabbat-pattern helmets, keeping the storm out of their eyes; Ludmilla rarely wore hers, preferring to see the enemy as plainly as possible the better to hate them.
Sister Lachryma, the leader of Ludmilla's Seraphim, hurried down the trench towards the canoness.
'It hit the Balurians!' Lachryma called out. 'They're in disarray. Gortz's staff is gone. It's just us now.'
'Did you see what it was?'
Lachryma was standing right beside Ludmilla now. The veteran Seraphim's face was streaked with sweat and grime, and the glossy red of her armour was dull with ash. 'It fell from the sky. Some Sisters think the Ordinatus crew has betrayed us. It looked more like a meteor. Some foul weapon of the Enemy.'
'With the Emperor's grace the Enemy will have died beneath it, too.'
'His plan is rarely so simple.' said Lachryma grimly.
'I have heard few words truer.' replied Ludmilla, drawing her inferno pistol.
Somewhere down the trench, ranging shot
s snapped from a heavy bolter, sharp gunshots stitching through the dim roar of the storm.
'Enemy sighted!' came the call down the trench.
'Give me range!' yelled back Ludmilla at the Sisters.
'Close! Visibility's nothing, but they're Marines!'
Chaos Marines. And with the visibility so bad, the Sisters would have to fight them toe-to-toe, without fields of fire from the Retributor squads at the plant.
'Lachryma, bring your Sisters forward. We can't fall back, the fight will be here.'
'Yes, canoness.'
Sisters Superior were calling out final battle-rites. Ludmilla could feel the tension, perceived not by her senses but by her years of battlefield experience - the tension before every battle, now about to break in a shower of blood beneath the darkness that had fallen over Volcanis Ultor.
Marine bolter fire erupted and heavy bolters opened up in return, snapping back at half-glimpsed targets. Marines had full auto-senses that would give them a crucial advantage here, when the Sisters couldn't make out targets at long bolter range.
'Sisters!' yelled Ludmilla. 'For the Throne and the end of time! Charge!'
ALARIC SAW THE first defenders rising out of the trench in front of him, trampling through the razorwire, heavy bolter fire snapping in red-white tracers from behind them. He saw red armour and black cloth, an Imagifer's banner depicting the symbol of the Bloody Rose.
Sisters. Ghargatuloth had put them up against the Sisters of Battle. The foulness of the daemon prince's plan just got deeper - the Sisters were dedicated, faithful, noble, soldiers of the Imperial church who had fought under Inquisitorial command innumerable times.
There was no room for doubt. No mercy, not even here. Here, they were the enemy.
When the first bolter shells rang off his armour, Alaric broke into a sprint, charging headlong for the front line. Bolter fire opened up all around him and his armour was battered terribly, waves of shells ripping through the air. Alaric dived into the fray, Nemesis halberd swinging, smashing one Sister back and slicing off the arm of another. Hate-filled eyes looked through the darkness, and Alaric could hear prayers to the Emperor yelled over the howling of the storm and the drumming of the gunfire. Dvorn was beside Alaric and there was a flash like a lightning strike as his hammer swatted one Sister backwards.
Tancred battered his way through the Sisters who charged against him, swatting them aside. Brother Karlin's Incinerator sent a gout of flame out to clear a path and a Sister's flamer roared in reply, illuminating Squad Tancred in a sea of fire so they seemed to be battling the Sisters across the surface of hell.
Alaric's Marines were charging forward with him now. Brother Clostus was fighting, halberd to power sword, with a Sister Superior who yelled the Catechisms of Righteous Loathing as she fought.
She sliced down and cut deep into Clostus's chest, punching her free hand hard into his face and barging him back into the swirling ash.
Alaric couldn't stop now. He had to press on.
Fire was streaking from all sides. Heavy psycannon rounds punched through the air from Genhain's squad who were following Alaric in. Somewhere back there the wounded Brother Lachis was left by Squad Genhain, to cover his battle-brothers with storm bolter fire while he crouched down for cover on his shattered leg.
Squad Santoro, beyond Tancred, reached the lines first, leaping into a trench junction that would have been covered by heavy weapons Sisters had they been able to see him. Alaric saw the clusters of bolter fire like chains of firecrackers where a short-range firefight developed. Alaric himself was still out in the open and exposed, trying to follow the trail literally blazed by Squad Tancred. Alaric ran towards the glow of flamers and saw Tancred, wading knee-deep in burning promethium streaking from several flamer-armed Sisters firing from the trench itself.
Clostus's rune was gone from Alaric's retinal display - either the Marine was dead or he was too far away for his armour's life sign readings to get through the interference. Either way he was lost to them now.
Alaric saw one of Squad Santoro, probably Brother Jaeknos, on his knees, his armour pocked and smoking by a dozen bolter wounds. He was still firing but his Nemesis halberd was on the ground - Alaric saw the hand he normally used to wield it was reduced to useless bloody rags. The ash closed in on him as vengeful Sisters bore down on him, bolters blazing.
'Forward, Knights!' yelled Alaric. 'Forward!'
Shells ripped into his shoulder pad and hot pain blossomed there. Tancred, silhouetted in the blazing fire, kicked his way through a bank of razorwire and dropped into the trench, bellowing war-prayers as he did so. Alaric shook off the pain and followed - a Sister charged from behind the cover of the razorwire and ducked Alaric's first blow, grabbing one shoulder pad and smashing him in the face with the butt of her bolter.
Alaric grabbed the collar of her power armour, lifted her up, and pitched her into the fire at his feet. She scrambled to her knees, blazing horribly from head to toe, and Alaric swiped her head off with his halberd as she moved to fire.
Lesser men would break. Not a Grey Knight. For if Alaric gave in to despair at killing Sisters, then Ghargatuloth would win yet again.
He clawed through the razorwire and dropped into the trench. Bodies were already choking the trench section, battered with bolter fire or cut open by Nemesis weapons. Tancred was still fighting, the sword of Mandulis mirror-bright in spite of the dust, sprays of blood frozen in the strobing gunfire as Brother Locath plunged his halberd blade through the chest of a Sister Superior.
The trench was their best chance, away from the gunfire of the Sisters charging forward from the rear lines, where the Grey Knights' superior armour and close combat skills would help them the most.
'North!' yelled Alaric. 'North! Now!'
Heavy bolter fire streaked down from ahead. Santoro yelled for his Marines to take cover in alcoves and dugouts as Tancred stomped forward to take the brunt of me fire on his Terminator's superior armour. Alaric, even with his enhanced Marine's senses, could barely see what was going on ahead - his superior hearing picked out the different sounds of storm bolter shells smacking through the air and heavy bolter fire thudding into the sides of the trench. Ceramite armour cracked. The sword of Mandulis cut the air and the low roar of burning promethium swirled from somewhere ahead.
A new sound suddenly cut through the din - engines shrieking in an arc overhead, plunging down towards Squads Alaric and Genhain to the rear of the Grey Knights' spearhead.
Alaric knew jump packs when he heard them. He knew the Seraphim would hit home before he saw them plunging through the black ceiling of ash, he knew their twin bolt pistols would fill the confined trench with a wall of shrapnel. He knew that the elite close combat Sisters were the hardest-hitting shock troops the Ecclesiarchy had, and that the Grey Knights would have to kill these brave, zealous servants of the Emperor if they were to survive.
The Seraphim Superior dived, power sword-first, streaking through the darkness. Alaric turned the point of her sword but the Seraphim slammed into him, her face against his, her breath hot through gritted teeth. Alaric stumbled and fell onto his back, the thrust of the Seraphim's jump pack driving him into the mud. He pinned the Sister's blade under his halberd arm but she got a knee down on his storm bolter hand. Her free hand pistoned up and slammed down an elbow into Alaric's jaw - the blow made him reel but he held on, trying to break the Sister's hold, throw her off him before the other Seraphim now battling Squad Genhain could come to her aid and riddle Alaric with bolt pistol fire.
'From the blasphemy of the fallen...' she snarled as she struck again and again.
'... our Emperor, deliver us...' gasped Alaric.
The Seraphim Superior paused for a split-second as Alaric spoke the words of the Fede Imperialis. In that moment Alaric wrenched his hand free and punched the Seraphim so hard she was flung against the side of the trench. He felt her jaw give way - had it not broken the blow would probably have snapped her neck.
Dvorn shattered a Seraphim's hand but the pistol in her other hand stitched heavy bolts into his breastplate, raising showers of sparks as he was battered backwards. Brother Lykkos, hampered at close quarters by his psycannon, kicked a Seraphim's legs out from under her only for her to squirm away from under his aim, so he blasted a crater of glowing mud out of the trench floor. Sisters were firing blindly into the trench from above, and gunfire was spitting in from everywhere. Squad Genhain was holding off another Seraphim squad - explosions sounded from the north as Tancred and Santoro faced heavy weapons from Retributor squads and dug-in tanks.
The air stank of blood, propellant and sweat. Ash was everywhere, the darkness lit from beneath by flame and muzzle flashes like the heart of a hellish thunderstorm.
The Seraphim Superior was dragging herself to her feet, blood running from her mouth.
'From the begetting of daemons!' shouted Alaric above the gunfire, his storm bolter levelled at the Sister. 'Our Emperor, deliver us!'
There was a commotion behind Alaric and he saw a figure vaulting over the razorwire into the middle of the Grey Knights - Vien tried to fend her off but the Sister was quicker, blocking Vien's halberd with a forearm and swinging him behind her to close with Alaric. Alaric swung his aim around but suddenly he himself was staring into the barrel of an inferno pistol.
'From the curse of the mutant...' said Alaric levelly He saw the Sister's armour was detailed in gold with the symbols of the Ecclesiarchy. High Gothic words were embroidered into the cloth of her sleeves and the red rose of her Order was tattooed onto her cheek. Her face was lined and bore several faint scars, left over from reconstruction by a good medicae, he guessed.
'Grey Knight.' said the canoness. 'Show me the book.'
Alaric let his aim fall and he opened up the small compartment in his chest armour. He took out the small volume of the Liber Daemonicum.
'Read from it.'
Alaric opened the book at a well-thumbed page. 'The nature of the daemon is such that righteous men may not know it, and yet know it we must to fight it...' read Alaric hurriedly, feeling the death around him, the storm bolters of his Grey Knights firing, the clash of blades on ceramite, the explosions from up ahead. 'And so the Enemy must be known not through direct discourse and study but through allegory and parable...'