Olivar ignored the jibe. ‘They’re an abomination in the eyes of the Emperor,’ he said. ‘We should be smiting the eldar in His name, not skulking up here like a pack of rats.’
‘Focus on the mission, brother,’ Galleas warned. ‘We didn’t come here for a battle. For one thing, we can’t spare the ammunition.’
There were many worlds in the Hebrides sub-sector that the eldar claimed as theirs – even planets like Parthus IV, which had been rendered lifeless in some mysterious catastrophe countless millennia ago. Since the invasion of Rynn’s World, the xenos had encroached into the sub-sector, striking with deadly precision at Imperial Navy bases and strategic settlements across the region. The sector governor had appealed to the Crimson Fists for aid, and Kantor had sent all that he could spare: Veteran Sergeant Sandor Galleas and what was left of his squad, their scars still fresh from the bitter siege of New Rynn City.
Galleas had spent nearly a month studying the eldar’s movements, and realized that the attacks on Imperial targets were only a means to the end. The xenos sowed fear and distracted the Navy while sending small expeditions to explore their former domains. The eldar were searching for something, and he meant to claim it. Then he would have a lever to bring about their defeat.
As Galleas watched, the blue glow from the dais began to pulse faster. The chanting of the xenos rose in pitch, and the ribbon of energy began to swell.
‘That’s it,’ the veteran sergeant said. ‘Olivar, get the detonator ready.’
Olivar fished a small box from his weapons belt. ‘The Emperor alone knows if this civilian rubbish is going to work,’ he grumbled.
Galleas frowned. ‘Tolwyn assured me the mining charges would function.’
The one-eyed Space Marine snorted in disgust. ‘You’re trusting a serf who’s barely learned the elementary Rites of Maintenance?’
‘Enough,’ Galleas warned.
Just then, the ribbon of energy flared from blue to silvery-white, and a figure emerged from its depths. It was an eldar farseer, his angular face uncovered and a long, black sword sheathed at his side. The farseer’s face was lit with triumph. His long, slender hands held a diadem of polished platinum, inset with a trio of brightly glowing crystals. As he descended the steps to the dais, the chanting fell silent, and the ribbon of energy began to fade.
Galleas permitted himself a smile of satisfaction. ‘That’s it, brothers,’ he said. ‘We move on my mark. Olivar, detonate the charges.’
The diversion was a key element to Galleas’s plan. While the Space Marines were making their way to the xenos temple, a squad of Chapter serfs had slipped into the eldar base camp under cover of the storm and planted a series of explosive charges in the vicinity of the enemy’s portal device. If the eldar believed the portal to be threatened they would rush to defend it, and during those moments of confusion Galleas’s team would strike.
Olivar raised the detonator and keyed the activation rune.
Nothing happened. Olivar snarled and jabbed the rune again, hard enough to crack the detonator’s casing. The one-eyed Space Marine glared at Galleas.
‘Athos and his so-called armsmen failed,’ he barked. ‘Or else the damned charges were no good to begin with. I told you–’
‘It’s the storm,’ Juno declared. ‘The signal’s too weak to get through the interference.’ He readied his bolter. ‘It doesn’t matter. We can still take them.’
Galleas was no longer listening. His mind had gone into overdrive, analyzing and discarding one tactical option after another. There were just over forty eldar in the chamber below, including powerful psykers and close combat specialists, plus close to four hundred more sheltering from the storm in the structures outside. A direct attack invited disaster.
Their best option was to avoid contact. Let the eldar return to their encampment, then withdraw and head for the pickup point. They’d gathered at least some useful intelligence, so the mission could not be considered a total failure.
The veteran sergeant reached his decision in less than a second. By that point, Titus Juno was already vaulting over the parapet, his bolter spitting death at the xenos below.
Galleas bit back a curse. There was no time for anger or recriminations. Without hesitation he planted a boot on the parapet’s curved rim and leapt into space, following his brother into battle.
The air inside the vaulted space reverberated with the percussive double note of bolter fire. With a thought, Galleas switched the ammo selector on his boltgun. The Sternguard typically went to war armed with specialized ammunition tailored to the mission at hand, and Kantor had permitted the team to draw a small allotment of the hard-to-replace shells from the Chapter’s depleted armoury. As he fell, Galleas switched from silenced stalker shells to standard mass-reactive rounds and snapped off a burst at the warlocks standing at the foot of the dais. Two of the psykers were already down, their ivory war masks cratered by Juno’s deadly fire. A third staggered as Galleas’s burst stitched across his torso, the explosive rounds shattering the unnatural, alien armour and driving splinters deep into the alien’s chest. The warlock raised a hand, as if to lay a deadly curse upon the attackers, but his wounds overcame him in an instant and he collapsed onto the floor.
Galleas landed hard, cracking the polished stone beneath his feet. Pain flared behind his right knee as the damaged actuator failed to support his weight, dulling to a sullen heat in the space of a heartbeat as the suit’s systems injected a measured dose of neural inhibitor into his spine. Warning icons flashed. The veteran sergeant blinked the symbols away and charged after Juno, instinctively compensating for the reduced mobility in his right leg. He switched his bolter to his left hand and drew Night’s Edge, the ancient blade awarded to him by the Chapter Master himself nearly two hundred years before. Galleas thumbed the weapon’s activation rune as the power sword hissed from its scabbard, tracing an arc of blue fire through the dust-laden air.
Olivar’s boltgun thundered. The shots streaked over Galleas’s head and detonated amidst the ranks of the eldar warriors beyond the warlocks. The one-eyed Space Marine was using dragonfire shells, designed to eliminate targets in cover using a blast of superheated gas. The explosions were deadly to the lightly armoured xenos warriors, but more importantly the thunderous blasts in the relatively confined space were deafening and disorientating. A few eldar were slain, their bodies scorched by the intense heat, but many more were stunned by the flash and concussion.
Another warlock pitched backwards, felled by Juno’s deadly fire. The veteran sprinted towards the enemy, switching his bolter to his left hand and drawing a short, broad-bladed sword from a battered scabbard at his hip. The eldar were recovering quickly from the ambush and already the air buzzed with razor-edged projectiles and the crackle of psychic energies. Shots burst against Galleas’s breastplate and pauldrons, shattering into needle-like splinters against the curved ceramite plates. The veteran sergeant took aim at another of the warlocks and snapped off a burst, the heavy boltgun bucking in his hand. The rounds struck just as the psyker unleashed a seething bolt of lightning from her outstretched fingertips. Tendrils of energy lashed at Galleas, scoring his armour and sending hot daggers of pain into the flesh beneath, but the sergeant was spared the worst of it as the psyker’s concentration faltered under the hammering of shells against her own armour. The warlock staggered beneath the blows, runes flaring as the xenos war-plate managed to deflect the explosive rounds.
A heartbeat later, Juno reached the foot of the dais, where a warlock stood with spear levelled to receive the Crimson Fist’s charge. Behind the xenos, the enemy farseer swept down the shallow steps, robes flaring, his witchblade drawn and seething with eldritch power.
Juno never slowed. For all the world, it looked as though he were rushing to his death, intending to impale himself on the eldar’s outstretched spear. The warlock believed it, too, bracing herself and levelling the point of her weapon at the centre of the Space Marine’s chest. It was the moment the veter
an had been waiting for. His boltgun barked once, and a shell punched through the side of the warlock’s right knee. Juno spun as the alien toppled, the point of the spear sliding past his breastplate by mere millimetres and his blade flickering in an upwards cut that intersected the eldar’s neck as she fell. The blade’s monomolecular edge cut through the alien’s armour like cloth. Blood sprayed in a gleaming arc as Juno completed his spin and ran on, sparing not a glance for the psyker who toppled dead in his wake.
The farseer leapt at Juno with a howl of rage, his witchblade flickering through the air as he sliced at the Space Marine’s torso. The eldar was blindingly fast, but Juno had anticipated the blow and was already weaving to one side, allowing the blade to slip harmlessly by. His bolter came up and hammered out a burst, aimed not at the farseer but at the last warlock who was rushing to his aid. The three shells struck the onrushing eldar in the neck and head, blasting her from her feet.
Galleas watched the battle unfold with a cold rush of awe. Even amongst the Adeptus Astartes, Titus Juno’s skill in combat was nothing short of extraordinary. The swirling chaos of battle was as ordered and predictable to him as a game of regicide and, like a master, he was always two or three moves ahead of his foes. Now Juno had slain the last of the farseer’s bodyguards and placed himself between the eldar and the rest of his force, expertly creating an opening for Galleas to exploit.
The sergeant bore down on the farseer, battering the xenos with bursts from his boltgun. The xenos staggered beneath the blows, but by luck or design each shot was deflected by the alien’s runic armour. As he charged into range, Galleas struck with his sword, aiming a furious stroke at the farseer’s neck, but the eldar’s witchblade deflected it with a terrible ease. A return stroke cut across the sergeant’s breastplate, slicing a centimetre deep through ceramite and adamantium and leaving a glowing scar across the Imperial aquila. Galleas felt his hearts lurch as the alien’s psychically charged weapon left a glancing mark on his soul.
Undaunted, the veteran sergeant pressed his attack. Night’s Edge hammered at the farseer’s guard, seeking an opening, only to be turned aside again and again. Twice the eldar’s blade leapt at Galleas, but his superhuman reflexes kept it from piercing his chest.
Galleas’s mind raced. A change in tactics was required. With a thought, he switched the bolter’s shot selector again. The sergeant feigned a blow at the farseer’s head, then raised his boltgun and fired point-blank into the enemy’s chest.
The dragonfire shell burst in a flower of red and black, and the concussion smote Galleas like a hammerblow. Temperature readings spiked in his helmet display as the superheated gas washed over him, but he was prepared for the blast and the farseer was not. As the eldar reeled from the explosion, Night’s Edge fell, and the power sword’s energy field blazed as it cut through armour and the flesh beneath. Galleas’s blade struck the farseer atop the left collarbone and chopped deep into his chest. The alien fell with a shriek, blood pouring from the rent in his armour, and the diadem slipped from nerveless fingers, ringing like a chime as it bounced across the stone floor.
Wails of anger and dismay rose from the eldar as they saw their farseer die. Juno was already surrounded by the xenos sword-wielders, his armour turning aside blow after blow as he held his opponents at bay. As Galleas placed his boot on the farseer’s chest and pulled his sword free, Olivar came up beside him. The one-eyed Space Marine took careful aim and fired into the melee. He had switched from dragonfire rounds to deadly, armour-piercing vengeance rounds, which punched neat, glowing holes through the enemy’s war-plate. Two of the xenos fell. Juno impaled a third on his blade and the rest fell back in disarray.
Galleas deactivated Night’s Edge and scooped up the xenos diadem with the point of the blade. A storm of enemy projectiles enveloped the three Space Marines, ringing discordantly as they shattered or ricocheted from battered armour. The veteran sergeant keyed his vox. ‘Basta, the charges didn’t work!’ he said. ‘What’s the situation outside?’
‘Not good,’ the armiger said, his voice taut. ‘The xenos are leaving their shelters and converging on the temple. A large force has already made its way inside.’
As he spoke, a cacophony of hissing shrieks split the air of the temple chamber, and a volley of missiles struck the dais to Galleas’s right. The thunderous blasts sent a cloud of crystal shrapnel buzzing through the air in all directions. Galleas fired a long burst down the missiles’ flight path, and struck a pair of heavily armoured eldar advancing into the smoke-filled room. The skull-masked xenos shrugged off the mass-reactive shells as they prepared to fire another salvo.
‘Fall back!’ Galleas shouted to his brothers, and then switched channels once more. ‘Change of plan, Basta. We can’t make the pickup point. You’re going to have to come to us.’
‘We can’t…’ the armiger stammered, rattled by the tone of urgency in Galleas’s voice. ‘That is, there’s no secure landing zone…’
Juno fell back past Galleas, firing quick bursts at the growing alien force as he went. Olivar sighted one of the skull-masked aliens and fired a single shot that punched a glowing hole through the eldar’s forehead. The aliens’ reply was immediate – missiles tore through the air on trails of pale grey smoke converging on Olivar’s position, but the one-eyed Space Marine was already on the move, dashing through the thickening haze of propellant and ducking behind the dais.
A trio of xenos projectiles rang off Galleas’s helmet. The veteran sergeant fell back, firing a burst of dragonfire rounds into the enemy’s ranks. His mind raced as he recalled details from Magos Urkhart’s hand-drawn maps. ‘The temple is connected to several of the surrounding buildings by sky bridges,’ he told the armiger. ‘We’ll head for the nearest one and await you there!’
‘Understood, lord.’ Basta said something more, but the words were lost in a sudden spike of interference.
‘On me, brothers!’ Galleas ducked around the dais and raced past his brethren, heading across the chamber towards an archway on the far side of the chamber. Juno and Olivar fell into step behind him without a word, firing bursts back the way they’d come. As they ducked through the archway a massive volley of missiles streaked across the chamber and slammed into the wall next to them, spraying the Space Marines with fragments and filling the air with dust and smoke.
Juno paused to set a pair of grenades on a proximity fuse and leave them just inside the archway. Angry shouts and eerie howls echoed in the great chamber beyond as the eldar leapt into pursuit.
‘How are we getting out of here?’ Olivar asked.
‘We find a staircase to the southeast and head up,’ Galleas replied, crossing the empty room past the arch and peering through the entryway on the far side.
‘Is this your idea, or Basta’s?’ the one-eyed Space Marine growled.
‘Does it matter?’
‘Of course it does!’ Olivar snapped. ‘Basta’s not one of us. We can’t depend on him. Can’t you see that?’
Galleas bit back an angry retort. ‘South-east through the chambers. Look for a staircase on your left,’ he ordered. ‘Go!’
For a moment, it looked like Olivar would protest. Then Juno dashed past, heading in the direction indicated, and the one-eyed Space Marine silently fell into step behind him. Galleas followed, covering their retreat. Not five seconds later, Juno’s grenades went off in the room behind them.
They found the staircase a few moments later and started to climb. The winding course of the stairs concealed the Space Marines from view and shielded them from fire. On the way up, Galleas sheathed Night’s Edge and hooked the diadem to a clip at his belt. As shouts echoed up the staircase, he pulled a couple of grenades from his belt and sent them bouncing down the steps to slow the pursuit.
‘Landing up ahead,’ Juno called over the vox.
‘Keep going up,’ Galleas ordered. ‘Three more landings, then work your way north until you get to the far side of the spire.’
The Space Marines kept
moving, as the sounds of pursuit grew louder and closer with every passing moment. At the fourth landing, Galleas left behind two more proximity grenades as Juno and Olivar moved north through more empty rooms.
He caught up to them less than ten seconds later. The room they’d come to had an archway on the far side, and past that a slender bridge whose far end was swallowed in the last vestiges of the storm.
Juno stood in the archway, staring out into the murk. ‘What now?’
Galleas could hear the sounds of pursuit as the eldar closed in behind them. The sergeant backed swiftly across the room and stared out at the ancient, weathered span. As near as he could tell, they were at least eighty metres off the ground.
‘Basta!’ He called. ‘We’re almost in position. Where are you?’
There was no reply.
Olivar tossed a grenade through the archway behind them. The eldar were very close. ‘Onto the bridge,’ he ordered. ‘Move!’
Juno went without hesitation, stepping out into the storm. The bridge was just a bit wider than they were, providing no room for error. Gusts buffeted the Space Marine as he edged across the span.
Shadows appeared in the archway. Olivar and Galleas fired as one. ‘Go!’ the sergeant ordered, and Olivar reluctantly obeyed.
Xenos burst into the room, armed with chainswords and firing pistols. Galleas switched to vengeance rounds and fired single shots, punching the first two from their feet. Olivar fired as well, shooting past Galleas as he edged onto the bridge. Juno was already a third of the way across, crouching low against the wind, when a black spot of nothingness flickered into existence five metres behind him. The spatial distortion lasted a fraction of a second, twisting the air around it into a knot and disintegrating a two-metre section of the span.
Juno’s blistering curse cut through the static over the vox. At the edge of the bridge, Galleas stared down into the haze, and could just make out the angular shape of an eldar weapons platform in the courtyard below. The cannon’s projector was raised to maximum elevation, its aiming point drifting as the hover platform was shifted about by the high wind.
The War for Rynn's World - Steve Parker & Mike Lee Page 49