Astra Militarum

by David Annandale, Justin D Hill, Toby Frost, Braden Campbell (epub)

  The spell broke.

  Creed snarled and dragged the pistol from his forehead. He staggered to his feet. Too late, he thought, as Luciver Anckor stepped towards him, claws outstretched.

  Jarran Kell’s power fist sizzled as he back-handed a Volscani, obliterating his chest. The stench of super-heated flesh filled the air as he messily decapitated another. He drew his power sword and executed two more of the enemy as he pushed through the melee towards Creed.

  ‘For Cadia!’ Kell shouted. Luciver Anckor turned. Kell kicked him in the chest, sending him reeling, then stepped forward, power fist blazing with energy. Anckor’s black-masked face came towards him. The stench of his breath was overpowering and his hair was alive with writhing blue worms.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ the psyker hissed.

  Kell knew better than to engage servants of the enemy in conversation.

  He punched Anckor in the chest with his power fist, feeling it hit the man’s spine. Luciver Anckor shrieked as he fell with a wet slap onto the frost-covered ground.

  Kell turned to see Creed stumbling over towards him. ‘Is he dead?’

  Kell raised an eyebrow.

  Creed laughed weakly. ‘Thank you, Jarran,’ he said. He leant on Kell’s arm as the colour sergeant took the banner of the Eighth from its bearer and thrust it high.

  ‘Is it over?’ Castor asked, as a flight of Vendettas swept in from the west, strafing the fleeing Volscani.

  There was a clap of thunder. Great gouts of burning soil were flung high into the air. Burning objects fell from the sky.

  ‘It’s not over,’ Creed said quietly.

  Aldrad joined them, limping slightly. Kell glanced at him, and he nodded.

  ‘What is that?’ the commissar asked.

  Creed was looking up. ‘The real attack,’ he said simply.

  Pride of Cadia III was full of fumes. The plasma destroyer had overheated and sprayed liquid coolant through the cabin. Linday lay on the floor, groaning. Ibsic held his augmetic hands out. They were fused and smoking. He started laughing.

  ‘Shut it down,’ Lina said. There was no answer, so she clambered out and did it herself while Callen hosed Ibsic’s hands down with flame retardant. The steel tendons hissed.

  ‘Can you move?’ Lina asked. ‘Come on.’ She opened the top hatch and looked out. Before her was a scene of utter devastation: smoke, death, ruin.

  She ducked back down. Gannesh lay over his drive controls. Guts, blood and body fluids oozed from where a globule of plasma had burned a fist-wide hole straight through him.

  Lina put a hand to his neck and checked for a pulse, then let his head fall back onto the control panels and dragged Linday off the floor.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said.

  Ibsic nodded, still holding his fused metal hands out.

  Lina threw her hatch open. She slid through and helped Linday out. He was moaning. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she told him. His left leg had been seared to a shard of bone, blackened and blistered. The red marrow showed. She gagged. ‘Don’t look,’ she said.

  Something roared overhead and they ducked, but it wasn’t ordnance. It didn’t explode. It landed.

  It was like a metal flower. Petals opened, slamming down into the ground, and power armoured figures emerged. Callen stopped. He laughed and stood up. ‘Space Marines!’ he said, awe in his voice. ‘Space Marines!’

  Lina had never seen warriors of the Adeptus Astartes before. She stared in wonder as eight giants in ornate black power armour chased with bronze stepped towards them. Linday leant on Lina as Callen ran forward, waving his arms over his head.

  ‘Here!’ he shouted. ‘Here!’ Ibsic stumbled after him. One of the giants turned towards them. There was a noise and a flare from the huge boxy weapon he carried.

  Callen’s head exploded.

  Ibsic grunted as he flew backwards, his ribs exploding out of his body. Linday threw himself sideways, grunting in pain. Lina fell with him, and saw the black-armoured Space Marines turning away, moving towards the distant banner of the Cadian Eighth.

  ‘Traitors!’ she tried to shout, but Linday was on top of her, and her voice was muffled, and no one heard.

  Commissar Aldrad ducked down behind the wreck of a Chimera as Cadians were torn apart by bolter rounds.

  ‘Heretics!’ Kell shouted, the first to react. ‘Open fire!’

  The Cadians dropped to their knees, put their lasguns to their shoulders and fired, but the treacherous Space Marines were already in the maze of ruined armour.

  A black armoured giant turned the corner of a burning tank, roared, and ran towards the commissar, a chain-axe whirring in its hand. Aldrad knew this was his death and he stood alone, defiant, bolt pistol bucking. His shells only chipped the ornate ceramite.

  The teeth of the Space Marine’s chain-axe blurred as the engine revved and droplets of blood sprayed off in a fine red mist. Aldrad felt fear, but years of schooling had left their mark. He stood firm. He would not yield. He would not fail.

  ‘Faith in the Emperor,’ he said quietly. ‘By their deaths shall we know them.’

  ‘Fire!’ someone behind him shouted, and the air was suddenly bright with massed las-fire. The power armoured figure came on in slow motion. The bright beams had no more effect than rain.

  Aldrad could smell the stench of blood, old and new. His bolt pistol bucked three, four times.

  He half-acknowledged a squad of kasrkin who moved up, knelt beside him and added their hotshot rounds to the fusillade.

  The traitor Space Marine slowed. One leg dragged, then the figure stumbled. It slammed into the ground at Aldrad’s black-booted feet. He fired into the back of its helmet and heard the dull wet thud as the explosive round went off within the skull, throwing up a spray of blood, brain matter and scalp.

  Aldrad turned to face the kasrkin. The men about him met his gaze. No one spoke. Together they had killed it. Aldrad drew in a deep breath to say something profound. He felt a hand grasp his foot.

  ‘For the Emperor!’ he roared, and fired again.

  Four Chaos Space Marines hit the group of Cadians clustered around Creed. The Cadians fell back as the giants strode amongst them. Jarran Kell made sure Creed was safe, surrounded by a kasrkin guard, then led the counter-attack, power sword sizzling with traitor blood. Around him, men died bravely, throwing themselves at the massive warriors, firing point-blank las-rounds into armour joints, smashing at them with rifle butts, stabbing the weak points in their armour.

  The Cadian dead were two deep, but the living did not falter and numbers were on their side. One by one the enemy slowed, stopped, and began to fall back. Kell crushed a bolter with his power fist and ducked as the weapon exploded in its bearer’s hand. He spun and drove his power sword through a Space Marine’s chest. The massive warrior fell, before another was brought down by two squads of Cadians working together.

  The last two traitors made a stand, back to back, their bolter shells ripping men apart, but they were surrounded in a sea of ochre and green. Hotshot rounds burned neat holes through their power armour. Steel blades found the joints of their armour. The cost in Cadian lives was great, but eventually only one traitor still stood, its right arm useless.

  It pulled off its helmet to reveal a pale, hairless face, knitted with scars. It glared at Kell, hatred in its eyes. Its lipless mouth hissed, ‘Death to the False Emperor!’ as Kell charged.

  Kell drew his power sword from the fallen giant’s chest. He looked up over the dead body of the Space Marine, and his eyes turned towards the fens. There was fighting going on there as well.

  The earth started to shake.

  Creed looked around as one of the Volscani landing craft in the distance started to rock. Armour plates buckled and bent. The metal contorted like a living thing as it birthed something terrible. Creed watched in horror as a hulk
ing, twisted Warhound Titan stalked out onto Cadia with a baying howl.

  A Reaver Titan burst from another lander and started forward. Two more Warhounds joined it.

  ‘Titans,’ Creed hissed. As he spoke the sky went dark. More drop pods rained down upon Tyrok Fields. The true assault had begun.

  ‘Raise the crew of the Hammer of Mezanoid!’ Creed shouted. His hand was trembling, but his voice was steady.

  One of the Titans sighted something a kilometre to their left, and fired three stabbing pulses of bright energy. Creed put his arm up to shield his eyes. He felt the earth tremble and grabbed a vox-unit to start giving orders. The situation had changed and the plan had to as well.

  A signals officer stood next to him with magnoculars pressed to his eyes. He was giving Creed a running commentary and his voice was tense with thrill and expectation as an armoured column moved up in tight order about the Hammer of Mezanoid, shielding the Stormsword from fire.

  One of the Warhounds charged forward and crushed a tank with a stamp of its three-clawed foot. The remaining tanks turned their turrets onto it as it thundered towards them, the focal point of a hundred threads of tracer and weapons fire. Its void shields began to glow, then flared blue lightning as they approached overload.

  Creed’s knuckles were white about the vox-unit as he spoke calmly and quietly.

  The Warhound’s shields flickered once, twice and then popped with a dull boom that made the whole battlefield shake.

  At that moment the Stormsword surged forward, engines whining. The Titan came to meet it with all the swagger of a street brawler. Its giant gatling gun whirled. The hail of rounds thudded into the Stormsword’s forward armour.

  The massive tank paused and its siege cannon fired. It was built for levelling whole blocks in the tight and furious confines of urban warfare. As the round shot forward, its rocket fuel ignited and it accelerated. Its fire hit the Titan low in the belly, where legs and torso connected. It rocked the thing back, and then detonated with concussive force. The explosion tore through armour plating and mechanisms, and blew the Warhound Titan apart. The Warhound hung in the air for a moment then collapsed.

  There was a brief moment of joy, then almost casually the Reaver’s weapon stabbed down – a searing bolt of red – and the Hammer of Mezanoid exploded.

  A hail of drop pods fell onto Tyrok Fields and Chaos Space Marines stamped onto Cadia’s soil. Attack craft swooped down. Tracers arced up into the sky. The Leviathans – Cadian and Volscani – remained locked together in a stalemate. Along the fens, a battered and bloodied Cadian coalition stood about Creed.

  Commissar Aldrad looked to Creed to see what he would do. The general was standing and gesticulating wildly as he shouted into a vox unit. Aldrad felt the earth tremble again and looked up.

  A shadow fell over the battlefield. Creed looked up and dropped the vox-unit. Through the fens a shape appeared. Another maniple of Titans, dark against the sky. Around their feet swarmed a horde of blue-clad penal troopers.

  Aldrad pushed his way through the men to Creed in time to hear the general speaking to Kell in a low voice.

  ‘We’re doomed,’ Creed was saying. ‘How can the foe land such forces here, on Cadia itself, unless our own have turned against us?’

  Kell gripped his commander’s shoulder. ‘We shall fight here together. And die together.’

  ‘Well said, Colour Sergeant,’ said Aldrad. ‘If we are to die, we will die with our heads held high.’

  Creed looked at them both and nodded. ‘So it ends here,’ he said. He raised his voice. ‘Castle up!’ he ordered. The Cadians obeyed, forming a series of gunlines facing both the threat from the landing fields and the new arrivals as the first of the penal legionnaires broke the fens.

  All along the line officers gave orders and hefted their weapons. ‘Take aim!’ they shouted.

  Weapons were readied and the world seemed to pause in anticipation of the slaughter to come.

  ‘Hold fire. We need them massed out in the open,’ Creed said.

  More and more of the enemy broke the cover of the fens.

  ‘Hold fire,’ Creed said again, then after a moment, he started to push forward towards the approaching men. ‘Hold fire!’ Something in his voice was different. Aldrad followed him, trying to see what had caught Creed’s attention.

  At the head of the penal legionnaires strode a single warrior, carrying a banner. It didn’t bear the sigils of Chaos but the symbol of the Imperium: the aquila.

  ‘Darr Vel!’ Kell whispered from behind him.

  Creed stopped and raised his arms. ‘It’s Darr Vel!’ He laughed. ‘Damn me, Kell. It’s the Lost Hopers!’

  The man approached and planted the banner into the blood-soaked ground. He saluted Creed, who pulled him into an embrace and laughed as he slapped his back.

  ‘Darr Vel!’ Creed said. ‘We were about to cut you all down! What the hell is happening out there?’

  ‘I was going to ask you the same, sir. We woke this morning and there were heretics rampaging through the camp. The guards wouldn’t give us weapons. The whole place is swarming with them. We had to fight our way out. The guards wouldn’t give us weapons. We only have what we could capture. It was just enough.’

  ‘See what you can gather from the fallen.’ Creed had to shout to be heard over the thunderous footfalls of the approaching Titans. ‘What about your friends here?’

  Darr Vel looked up as an officer shouldered his way through the crowd of confused Cadians and handed a vox-unit to Creed.

  ‘Sir,’ the man said, awe in his voice, ‘Princeps Nakatana of the Legio Ignatum wants to talk to you.’

  Creed took the handset and as he started to speak the lead Titan turned towards him and dipped its head. Aldrad smiled at the odd image of Creed standing talking to this monstrous lord of war.

  ‘Princeps, yes, it is Lord General Creed. I do remember you indeed, from the Dreen Salient,’ said Creed. ‘Yes. I need two things from you, my old friend. Destroy their Titans and stop more of their troops from landing. If you can do that, we will do the rest.’

  The Titan dipped its head again, and then turned to look across across the battlefield to the enemy. It blasted its loudhailer and started forward, opening fire on the drop pods that were still falling.

  Aldrad turned his attention back towards the heart of the battle. The enemy were landing all about the Excubitoi Castellum.

  ‘The governor,’ he said. ‘They’re trying to kill Porelska. General Creed, we have to do something.’

  Creed nodded. ‘We are, commissar. Castor, get me a link to Admiral Elen.’

  It took almost a minute to raise the fleet. ‘Give it to me,’ Creed said as the men regrouped. He pressed the vox-unit to his ear. ‘Who is this?’

  He listened for a moment.

  ‘I am General Ursarkar E. Creed of the Cadian Eighth. I need to speak to Admiral Elen.’ There was another pause. ‘Admiral. There are heretics among us. You have to stop anything else from landing on Cadia. I repeat. We are under attack. Nothing must land.’

  His face became grim as he listened to the admiral. ‘I understand you have your own battle to fight, Admiral. But it is imperative that any more landings be prevented. On whose authority? On the authority of Warmaster Ryse.’ Creed spoke quickly. ‘Yes, of course you can speak to the warmaster.’ His face was pale as he turned to Kell, ‘Warmaster Ryse,’ he said. ‘The admiral would like you to confirm your orders.’

  Kell held out a hesitant hand. Creed nodded towards him and thrust the vox-unit into his hand. He took it, closed his eyes, drew himself up in the slightly pompous way Ryse had, and began to impersonate the warmaster.

  ‘I must protest!’ Aldrad said.

  Creed shook his head. ‘Commissar Aldrad, you are not hearing or seeing this.’

  ‘But I am,’ the commissar said, hand on his bolt p
istol holster.

  ‘Commissar, look about you. There is nothing between us and defeat here. If you think we have stopped the attack on Cadia, you are wrong. This is just the beginning. A decapitation assault, designed to cripple our resolve before the battle has begun. What did they teach you of Imperial History in the Schola Progenium? Did you ever hear of Horus?’

  ‘Yes,’ Aldrad said, but he sounded hesitant.

  ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘He was a traitor and nearly tore the Imperium in two. What has this to do with anything?’

  Creed stepped in close. His voice was low and deadly serious. ‘It has everything to do with what is happening now. Horus was the Warmaster. He was the primarch of a Space Marine Legion. The Emperor slew him. But his favourite son survived. His name is Abaddon, and you have heard of him. Yes, the Despoiler. He is twisted, evil, Chaos. This is his work. As we argue his forces are wiping out Cadian High Command. We must stop him! Now.’

  Aldrad took a deep breath and stepped back, taking his hand off the holster. He nodded.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The battle raged across the landing fields as heretic and loyalist alike fought and died. At its heart were the vast Leviathans, locked together. It was like the swirling vortex of a vast storm, the crack and flash of explosions like lightning and thunder on a summer’s day.

  It was into this dreadful conflagration that Creed led his men in a growing convoy of armour and transports. Creed himself stood on the back of a Cadian Chimera with Kell by his side, the banner of the Eighth flapping in the wind. All men who saw them flocked to their side, and soon he led a great army of scattered regiments across the battlefield.

  Creed was orchestrating the whole strength of the Imperium on Cadia to work as one. The last few heretic landers careened dangerously towards the earth as Imperial Navy vessels sped into low orbit, their batteries and lance platforms flaring in the heavens as they sealed the skies above the landing fields. The landers split apart under the sustained fire.