by Nick Kyme
The venerable dreadnought twisted its torso around and fired a second pulsating beam from its multi-melta. Another of the ork machines was torn apart in a blistering explosion.
‘Only in death, does duty end.’ Agnathio’s voice, fed through the vox-coder built into his sarcophagus, was grating and thunderous.
Scipio stood, the earth shaking under his feet, as the dreadnought charged a greenskin war machine. The sergeant marvelled as Agnathio tore the last diminutive ork dreadnought apart. Crushing its can-like body with a blow from its massive power fist, Agnathio then wrenched the weapon free before thrusting it back into the cavity he’d created and churned the ork pilot within to bloody mulch.
‘For the Chapter, forward!’ roared the implacable dreadnought, breaking apart a huddle of gretchin clutching crudely-made bombs with his power fist’s built-in storm bolter.
‘Thunderbolts regroup,’ Scipio barked, recovering his chainsword from where it had jammed in the ork dreadnought’s cannon. Bereft of his battle helm’s comm-feed, he had to shout.
Mercifully, they were still at full strength. Garrik and Brakkius had recovered; Largo and Onus, chewed up by the dreadnought’s cannon, were also battle-ready, albeit with punctured power armour. Only Hekor staggered, the jagged chest wound having clotted thanks to the Larraman cells in his blood. The organ that generated them was a crucial part of a Space Marine’s genetically-enhanced physiology. Without it, Hekor would be dead.
‘Still with us, brother?’ asked Scipio.
‘On your lead, Sergeant Vorolanus,’ Hekor replied, biting back the pain, and cradling his flamer against his ruined chest.
Scipio nodded.
‘To the Chaplain,’ he ordered. ‘Form up on Brother Agnathio.’
THE DENSE CRUMP of the garrison’s artillery was deafening and sent violent tremors rippling through the earth with every discharge. Scipio’s Lyman’s Ear filtered out the noise, regulated it to tolerable levels, and maintained his balance with every resulting shell quake.
The north wall of Ghospora Hive was only a hundred metres away.
Once Agnathio had finished off the mob of greenskin dreadnoughts, the tactical squads had linked up with Chaplain Orad quickly. Like Scipio, Iulus and Praxor had escaped without sustaining any fatalities, though they were battered and war-weary.
Using the vox-unit in his gorget like a loud hailer, Chaplain Orad bellowed battle-prayers to lift the spirits of the Ultramarines and galvanise them. They would need to be girded – with the black walls of Ghospora at hand, the teeth of the greenskin elites were next.
The fighting was harder this close to the hive defences. The orks here were a different breed: bigger, with heavier armour; some encased in entirely mechanical suits replete with power claws and mounted heavy weapons. Their skin was darker, almost black, thick and ornery like flak armour. This was Zanzag’s mob, his inner circle, his clan.
‘For Marneus Calgar and the Chapter!’ roared Chaplain Orad, and Scipio echoed his cry as the Thunderbolts charged.
Hordes of lesser greenskins surrounded the core of Zanzag’s elite; the Ultramarines tore through them with bolter and blade. Scipio fought one of the scar-faced ork veterans. The beast was huge, clad in thick plate, its muscled arms augmented by a crude array of pneumatic pistons to enhance its strength. A plume of flame spilled out of the ork’s arm attachment, which was fended off by Scipio’s vambrace before he got close and hacked it off with his chainsword. It waded in with a snapping power claw that the Ultramarine barely dodged. Bolt pistol rounds exploded against its torso, but the smoking armour showed only dents and chipped paint. A second veteran loomed alongside it, and Scipio suddenly felt outmatched.
A fierce storm of promethium sent it reeling as Brother Hekor came up in support. But the greenskin endured, wading through the intense conflagration before letting rip with some kind of custom cannon mounted on one arm. Fat shells spat from the muzzle like metal rain, and Hekor was torn apart. The ork grunted in what could only have been cruel mirth.
The Ultramarine’s power armour was wrecked; it hadn’t even slowed the bullets.
Scipio took an involuntary step back, hacking at a lesser greenskin that got too close. Three of his squad fired in unison at Hekor’s cackling slayer. The sergeant added his own weapon to the fusillade, and the ork finally went down. The second stomped in, looking for a kill, when Chaplain Orad intervened and crushed the beast’s skull with a blow from his crozius.
‘Do not falter,’ he roared, plasma pistol blazing. ‘We must reach Captain Sicarius. Let nothing prevent it. In the name of Guilliman, advance!’ A furious barrage of ork fire spattered against his rosarius field. Rounds exploded in front of his skull-faced visage, Orad didn’t even flinch. He forged in again, bellowing litanies of retribution and cleansing. Scipio and the rest of the Ultramarines followed him further into the horde. The sergeant could discern the hulking forms of the Terminators of Squad Helios ahead through the chaos.
The battle was a deadly grind now, but Zanzag’s officer cadre was as intractable as the bulwarks that they fought to bring down. Every metre gained was a blood-baptised struggle. The custom weapons fashioned by some inexplicable freak of greenskin science were proving effective, and taking a toll. Power armour, it seemed, was no proof against them. In the last few minutes alone, Scipio had seen three battle-brothers fall to the ork veterans wielding them.
The Ultramarines adapted, concentrating fire on these greenskins to take them down, using the heavy weapons advancing from the rearguard devastator squads to tear up the ork armour. Brother Agnathio leant his multi-melta to the barrage, the super-heated beam scything through the enemy, before crashing forward through the mass to stave in a veteran’s skull with his power fist.
Up ahead, Scipio saw a gaping crevice in Ghospora’s bastion wall where the greenskins had breached it. Scores of dead Sable Gunners, Black Reach’s human garrison, littered the rubble around it. Corpses piled high like macabre sandbags as the valiant but hopeless defenders pressed more men into the gap in a desperate effort to staunch it. Through the blood-soaked melee, Scipio caught sight of an even larger beast, its armour and trappings more impressive and ostentatious than the other greenskins. It too wielded a customised cannon and clutched a hefty axe, crackling with electrical energy, in its other mighty fist. A wall of densely armoured ork warriors surrounded it, even more scarred and leathery than the rest. A bodyguard.
Zanzag. It could be no other.
The snatched glimpse was fleeting lost in the pitch and yaw of the firefight. Scipio dug in, hewing with his chainsword as it growled for blood. His warriors were around him, fighting hard; Chaplain Orad too, hurling vitriolic rhetoric at the orks. If they didn’t understand his words, they felt the bite of his fury with every stroke of his crozius.
In a wash of blood and screaming death they had broken through. Scipio found himself alongside the massive Terminators of 1st Company as they released an explosive tempest with their storm bolters. Through the carnage, the battle din throbbing in his ears, the scent of sweat and flame filling his nostrils, Scipio thought he saw Arcus Helios forging a body-strewn path with his thunder hammer.
Then he saw Sicarius. The captain was at the vanguard of the attack, his Lions guarding his flank and rear as he pressed ahead of the main battle group, slaying orks with every blow. Faced with a mob of three greenskin scar-veterans, Sicarius dispatched them with impudent sweeps of his ancient power sword. The brutal act of bravura created a few metres of ground for the Ultramarines to exploit, allowing them to contest the breach itself.
Sicarius stormed into it without thought. Squad Solinus was at his heels, just like at Fort Telendrar. The captain’s iron-hard gaze was fixed ahead, Scipio catching snatched glimpses of him through the spraying blood and muzzle flashes as he fought to keep pace. The sergeant powered into the breach alongside Chaplain Orad, Squad Helios and his other battle-brothers, determined to cleanse it of greenskins and liberate the hive. The captain, though, had but one
enemy in mind. He wanted Zanzag, and he meant to get him regardless of the foes arrayed in his path.
‘Brothers!’ Sicarius roared, strafing a white-hot beam of plasma from his pistol into the greenskin ranks. ‘War calls. Will you answer?’ He thrust the Tempest Blade into the air like a beacon, the 2nd Company banner, held aloft by Brother Vandius, snapping as its backdrop.
The Ultramarines roared in unison, Scipio amongst them, redoubling their efforts. Fusillades of bolter fire and swathes of promethium pounded into the breach. Churning blades and crackling power weapons followed in the bloody aftermath as the Astartes closed again.
With Sicarius leading them, the Ultramarines were an unstoppable force.
Victory was near. Scipio could feel the spine of the ork horde slowly breaking as the punishment inflicted by the Ultramarines began to take its toll.
They just had to press a little harder.
Rushing into a gap made by the awesome firepower of the dreadnoughts that were consolidating the Ultramarines’ position, Scipio came within scant metres of the heroic captain. Scipio found his own prowess enhanced, his will like iron in the reflected glory of his leader. He saw Iulus and Praxor close by, similarly affected.
Chaplain Orad was intent on meting out death, smiting the orks with shots from his plasma pistol and arcing blows from his crozius.
Brother Agnathio, overtaken in the charge, was laying waste to the remaining greenskin armour from the rear of the Ultramarines’ spearhead contesting the breach. Brother Ultracius fought alongside him, unleashing hell from his assault cannon; two goliaths venting storm and fury.
Through sheer aggression and the rate of attrition being suffered by the foe at their vengeful hand, the Ultramarines forced the greenskins out of the Ghospora bastion defences. The Sable Gunners swarmed over recently liberated positions, taking up heavy weapon emplacements, pouring las-fire into the horde from behind ruined walls and shattered watch towers.
Scipio admired their bravery. Humans were brittle, weak even, compared to an Astartes. Their minds and mores were crude and undeveloped, but they had spirit.
The tide turning, and with the walls of Ghospora at their backs, Scipio and his other battle-brothers dug in for the final battle. Cutting his own name into the pages of glory with his chainsword, Scipio noticed Captain Sicarius finally catch sight of his prey. The ork warlord, Zanzag, had retreated from the breach further down the wall and was bellowing loudly at his troops in a rage, thick wads of sputum flicking from his maw. The beast was throwing everything he had at the Ultramarines, trying to retake the wall by hurling waves after wave of orks into the meatgrinder.
Zanzag’s death would end it all. No greenskin was as tenacious without its leader.
Sicarius sighted down his pistol, but the weapon was smacked from his grasp before he could fire by another scar-veteran. The captain gutted it with his power sword, and cried, ‘Daceus!’
The veteran sergeant of his Lions reacted instinctively and threw his bolter to the captain who caught it smoothly and fired one-handed. He roared as the muzzle-flash lit his face; Scipio thought he had never seen a visage so terrifying.
The explosive rounds rippled through the air, arresting Zanzag’s frothing tirade as his maw and most of his trunk-like neck were hit. Scipio saw blood spurt, and thick chips of tusk fly, but the beast did not fall. Instead, he retreated, allowing the remnants of his bodyguard to protect him. The other greenskins pressed, too, bullied into becoming flesh-shields for their warlord’s escape.
The fight, it seemed, had gone out of them. The orks were in full retreat.
Cheers erupted from the Sable Gunners in exultation of their saviours. The scattered cries of the defenders echoed around empty towers, eclipsing the plaintive moaning of the wounded. The garrison was down to bare bones after the beating they’d been given, but they could still muster some heart in the face of unexpected triumph.
‘Victoris Ultra!’ bellowed Chaplain Orad, lifting his crozius high.
The resultant response from the Ultramarines was a roar that resounded across the battlefield. Ghospora was won.
PHASE THREE
ORK HUNTERS
‘WELL MET, IULUS,’ called Scipio, seeing his fellow sergeant approaching through the ruins of the Ghospora bastion wall.
It was barely half an hour after the orks had been defeated, and engineers had already set about repairing the cavernous breach made by the greenskins. Demolition crews scurried in packs, trailing spools of wire as they fled behind the still-standing wall sections and pressed down the plungers of their crude equipment to set off explosives. A crushed tower collapsed a few metres away from Iulus, crashing down into the breach and partially filling it in.
The shaven-headed sergeant ignored it, ploughing through the dust cloud to reach Scipio on the other side.
‘Glad to see you’re still alive, brother.’ Scipio clasped Iulus’s hand in a firm grasp, and his fellow Ultramarine clapped his arm in return.
‘Aye,’ growled Iulus, wiping a bead of sweat from his shiny forehead, ‘though it looks like I should be saying that to you.’ He pointed a gauntleted finger towards the other sergeant’s forehead.
Scipio touched it and felt a gash from a wound he hadn’t realised he’d sustained. He remembered the close call against the ork dreadnought.
‘Just a flesh wound,’ he replied.
‘Seven dead,’ remarked Iulus tersely, gazing out at the killing field beyond Ghospora’s north wall where a host of corpses lay, predominantly ork. Scipio saw Apothecary Venatio moving amongst the death-smog, poised with his reductor to extract the gene-seed from the fallen so that they might fight again, albeit in a new body with a different mind, their legacy preserved and serving the Chapter even in death.
A Space Marine combat squad accompanied him, retrieving the bodies of their dead battle-brothers so they could be laid to rest with honour and their equipment salvaged for re-use by the company.
‘Fifteen wounded,’ Iulus concluded, as he looked away.
‘It’s grim work,’ agreed Scipio. ‘Hekor was amongst the fallen,’ he added darkly.
‘He will serve the Chapter in death, just as we all will,’ offered Iulus, somewhat pragmatically.
‘At least victory is ours,’ said Scipio, watching as Chaplain Orad moved through the carnage too, sporadic bursts erupting from his plasma pistol as he executed any greenskins that still clung tenaciously to life. He was also there to provide last rites for any fallen Astartes that could not be saved. Apothecary and Chaplain worked in tandem. Orad knelt by the stricken body of one of Scipio’s battle-brothers, giving a final benediction before Venatio moved in.
The dreadnoughts Ultracius and Agnathio roved in the distance like terrible avengers, patrolling the dormant warzone for lingering greenskin forces, adding to the already considerable death toll.
‘Victory? I take it you have not heard.’
‘Heard what?’ asked Scipio, nonplussed, his attention back on Iulus.
‘The captain’s quarry eluded him. We press for the wastelands beyond the hive city, where the orks have made their transient camp.’
‘Brothers!’ The voice of Praxor forestalled Scipio’s response. The sergeant was jubilant as he made his way through the bustling humans and the Chapter’s Techmarines with their gaggles of mindless servitors. Every effort was being made to secure Ghospora Hive before the Ultramarines moved on.
‘The glory of the Chapter has swelled this day,’ he said, nodding proudly. ‘To fight at Sicarius’s side…’ he added, shaking his head in awe at the memory of it. ‘Did you feel his aura, Scipio? Never have I been so lifted. Never has pistol and blade felt as righteous.’
‘It was indeed humbling,’ Scipio said, bowing his head in reverence. The sight of Sicarius surging through the horde was the substance of legend, and here he had witnessed it first hand.
‘Heroic, I’ll concede that,’ countered Iulus, his slablike face turning to granite, ‘but reckless. My squad was lucky to
have reached the battlefront at all, as I dare say others were. To lead is one thing, to leave your charges behind in the pursuit of personal glory is quite another.’
Praxor’s voice hardened. Scipio thought he heard his fists clench.
‘Still fighting Agemman’s corner, I see.’ The glaring sergeant’s tone was even.
‘I fight no corner, save that of the Chapter.’ Iulus turned, and was about to walk away when the voice of Veteran Sergeant Daceus stopped him.
‘Sergeants,’ he growled, to none of them in particular. ‘The captain requests your presence in the prima-factorum.’
The Ultramarines, so divided by opinion, saluted as one and followed the Lion of Macragge as he led them away.
GHOSPORA HIVE WAS a vast edifice of sprawling industry. Much of that industry was now in ruins, but still the fact and the echo of it remained. Towers surged into the darkness of myriad levels above. Walkways and gantries criss-crossed each other like some infernal metallic lattice. Habitation blocks and worker tenements clustered together in ranks like bedraggled parade troopers huddling against the rough elements. Immense hexagonal stacks from the mineral-mining complexes bored into the sublevels vented smoke and gas in thick plumes. Cranes arched over open-topped ore silos like broken fingers. Immense gears, looping cables and lengths of track – constituent parts of the gargantuan mining engine that enabled Black Reach to function, export, trade and to live – pervaded over all. So vast, its population once numbering billions, the hive city was now reduced to a broken remnant of what it had once been.