Olivar snarled a curse and pulled a krak grenade from his belt, but the range was too far and the wind too high to have a chance of scoring a hit. Galleas pulled a grenade of his own and threw it into the room, but an eldar snatched it out of the air and flung it back at him. It detonated a metre in front of his faceplate, peppering his armour with shrapnel. Shots rang from his breastplate and pauldrons. The eldar advanced, but Galleas ripped through the front ranks with a burst from his boltgun. The enemy wavered briefly, but pressed forward once more. Whatever the diadem was, it was worth their lives to reclaim.
Galleas reached for Night’s Edge. And then a rising howl sawed through the storm wind as the gun cutter descended through the haze.
The ship was a lean, ugly and scarred thing with a bulbous nose that had been broken its share of times and a pair of thick blisters above its intakes. Its flanks were a faded green, lined with old scars and scabbed over with rusty hull patches. Against its rugged jaw the name Delilah was painted in curving, yellow script.
Delilah bellowed as she slowed to a hover, the dusty air trembling as her thrusters swivelled and went to full power. Below, the eldar weapon platform fired again, but the shot went wide, tearing a hole in the sky a dozen metres above the ship. A moment later, the cutter lowered her nose and let out a ripping snarl from the autocannons in her chin. A stream of burning tracers drew a line of fire across the courtyard until it intersected the weapon platform. The xenos weapon and its operator vanished in a bubble of absolute nothingness as its warp generator was breached.
Thrusters howled as the gun cutter slid smoothly up to the broken end of the bridge. A hatch clanged open along its side, revealing the ship’s red-lit interior. Galleas fired another burst into the room and then stabbed a finger at the hatchway. ‘Go! Go!’
Juno turned and sprinted for the cutter, leaping from the end of the broken span and across the intervening space into the bobbing craft. Olivar paused just long enough to unleash another long burst of covering fire before doing the same.
The eldar saw what was happening and surged forward, their guns filling the air with buzzing projectiles. Galleas fell back across the bridge, firing steadily, until the blister on Delilah’s shoulder swivelled about and brought her portside quad-bolter to bear. The heavy guns thundered, taking the veteran sergeant by surprise as shells chewed the archway and the aliens crowded into pieces.
Galleas recovered in an instant, ducking his head away from the storm of red tracers and running for the ship. The bridge was trembling beneath his boots as the bolters tore into the ancient tower. He could almost feel the old bone splintering with every step.
Delilah continued to fire as smoking shell casings fell in streams from the blister’s ejection ports. The recoil was great enough to shift the heavy gun cutter, widening the gap between it and the broken bridge. Galleas forced himself to run faster, telltales winking red in his helmet display. He leapt – and just as he did so the right knee actuator seized, spoiling his leap.
He wasn’t going to make it. Galleas saw it at once. The veteran sergeant plummeted, crashing hard against the lower edge of the hatch. Boltgun and power sword went skittering across the deck as Galleas scrambled for a handhold. The cutter rocked beneath the impact, as if trying to shake him loose. His armoured fingertips scraped along the tilting deck plate as he slipped back into space.
A hand closed like a vice around his wrist. ‘Where do you think you’re going, brother?’ Juno asked, jesting through clenched teeth. Another hand seized Galleas by the edge of his right pauldron, and as the cutter started to slide forward he found himself hauled up and through the hatch.
Olivar and Juno hauled Galleas to his feet as Delilah’s main engines roared and the cutter began to pick up speed. Old servomotors groaned, dragging the side hatch shut.
The forward compartment of the gun cutter was originally built to accommodate a full landing party of Naval ratings and their equipment, but now it was crammed with makeshift crew stations and salvaged survey gear. Basta sat with his back to the forward bulkhead, strapped into a jump seat next to the long-range surveyor station. The armiger’s dark blue Chapter livery looked black under the red interior lights, and gave his lean face an almost skeletal cast. As the cutter picked up speed, the young man let out an explosive breath and slumped in his seat. ‘Thank the holy Emperor,’ he said, his voice all but lost in the thunder of the engines.
Next to the survey station was a plot table, its flakboard piled with sheets of yellowed parchment. Magos Urkart was bent over his maps, spidery metal hands splayed atop the parchment like the feet of a dusty old cyber-raven. ‘Was it there?’ he asked, the words gurgling up from his scarred lungs. ‘Did you find it?’
Seals popped with a soft hiss as Olivar pulled off his helmet. The Space Marine had a bald head and a rough-hewn face made all the more bellicose by the jagged scars that radiated from his crushed eye socket. The eye itself was gone, cleaned out by the Chapter Apothecaries and the interior lined with synth-flesh until a suitable replacement could be obtained. Passages from the Litanies of Hate had been tattooed in neat lines across his forehead and the flat planes of his cheeks.
‘Mind your manners, wretch,’ Olivar growled. ‘Take that tone with one of us again and I’ll tie that vox-unit around your ears.’
‘Enough, brother,’ Galleas said quietly. As he spoke, the hatch to the rear compartment grated open. Tolwyn, the tech-serf, stepped through the hatchway. He approached Galleas, head bent in shame. The mechadendrites fitted to the harness around his torso twitched in time to the wringing of his gloved hands.
‘Forgive me, lord,’ he said gravely. ‘I didn’t reckon on the storm affecting the detonator signal. I take full responsibility–’
Olivar was on him in two steps, his hand closing around tech-serf’s throat. ‘You imbecile,’ he snarled, shaking the young technician. Tolwyn writhed in the Space Marine’s grip, breath hissing through clenched teeth. ‘I ought to throw you out the hatch and leave you to the xenos!’
‘I said enough!’ Galleas crossed the compartment and shoved himself between Olivar and Tolwyn. ‘Put him down, brother. He and the others did their best.’
‘Their best nearly got us killed,’ Olivar spat. He shook his head angrily. ‘I told you this was a mistake, brother. They’re weak. Treating them as equals shames not only us, but the entire Chapter.’
Galleas reached up and unsealed his helmet. He was a study in contrasts compared to the craggy-faced Olivar, with a long, square jaw and high cheekbones framed by a full head of curly, dark hair. His eyes were a pale green, like polished jade, and seemed to glow in the red light.
‘We are all servants of the Imperium, each according to our gifts,’ he said evenly. ‘And were it not for them, we never would have made it to Parthus IV at all. They serve, and do so willingly, risking lives far more fragile than our own.’
A voice called back through the open access way between the flight deck and the forward compartment. ‘Anybody got a problem with this boat, sound off now,’ Sabina Lucan said. Delilah’s pilot twisted in her seat and craned her head around to peer at the Space Marines from beneath her leather flying cap. Her augmetic goggles were perched on her forehead, revealing her polished silver eyes. She gave Olivar a roguish grin. ‘I’ll be glad to turn around and put you back where I found you.’
Olivar dropped Tolwyn to the deck and started forward, but Titus Juno stepped into his path. ‘You heard the sergeant,’ Juno said calmly. ‘Stand down.’
For a moment it looked as though Olivar would press matters further, but at the last moment he thought better of it. He turned away from Juno and headed aft, glaring hard at Galleas as he passed. Tolwyn shrank against the bulkhead as Olivar went by, but the Space Marine ignored him, passing through the hatchway into the rear compartment.
Tension hung heavy in the forward compartment. Galleas spoke quickly. ‘How long until we can pick up Athos and his squad and dock with the Venture?’
Lucan’s
grin widened. ‘She’s on the far side of the planet just now. Forty minutes, give or take.’
The veteran sergeant frowned slightly. Forty minutes was disgraceful for a Space Marine pilot, but swift-going for a civilian ship, he was forced to admit. ‘Signal Master Voss and inform him that we will break orbit and make for Volcanis as soon as we are docked.’
Lucan’s expression darkened. ‘There’s been a word from Styros. An eldar fleet has appeared in-system. The governor is recalling all ships to defend the capital.’
Galleas considered this a moment, and then shook his head. ‘The attack on Styros is a diversion,’ he said. ‘We go to Volcanis.’
Lucan nodded and turned back to her controls. Within moments the signal was sent to the rogue trader, just beyond the planet’s terminator.
With the crisis past for now, Juno shouldered past Galleas and found a place to sit and then began to intone the litanies of maintenance as he unloaded and stripped down his boltgun. Tolwyn crossed the compartment and furtively knelt beside the giant, adding his voice to the litany and producing vials of sanctified oil. The veteran sergeant stepped up to the chart table and unclipped the diadem from his belt. ‘This is what the xenos were after,’ he said.
Magos Urkhart stirred at the sight of the xenos relic. ‘The Diadem of the Celestial Spheres,’ he whispered, his mechanical hands twitching possessively. ‘At long last…’
Galleas studied the delicate object. ‘Are you certain?’
‘It can be no other,’ the magos said, his voice full of wonder.
The veteran sergeant nodded thoughtfully, and with a swift blow smashed the diadem against the chart table. The relic crumpled, hidden circuits crackling, and the crystals set into the diadem blew apart.
‘That should complicate the eldar’s plans,’ Galleas said, handing the smoking wreckage to Urkhart. ‘Well done, magos.’
He turned away from the stricken xenoarchaeologist and glanced over at Basta, who was bent over the surveyor display. The armiger’s expression was bleak. Olivar’s words had cut him to the quick. The sergeant could only hope that he could rise above the criticism and improve his tactical skills, like any battle-brother of the Chapter was expected to do. If he proved unfit, there was no way to replace him, and Galleas needed every member of his unconventional team to face the challenges waiting on Volcanis.
We few must do whatever it takes, Galleas thought grimly. There is no other choice. Our monastery is gone. Our relics are dust. Little more than a hundred of us remain, and the High Lords of Terra have abandoned us to our fate.
We must do more, and with far less, than any other Chapter in the history of the Imperium. Not for a year, or a decade, but for centuries to come. And we must not fail.
PEDRO KANTOR:
THE VENGEFUL FIST
by Steve Parker
Warm winds whipped and tugged at Chapter Master Kantor’s tunic. He stood on the balcony of his personal quarters, high on the south-facing side of the keep known as the Cassar. The sun was rising to the east. He turned his face towards its welcome glow.
The spires and domes of the Zona Regis, still intact as if the war had never happened, shone bright in the morning light. Beyond them, however, the view told an altogether different, and more truthful, tale. Even now, almost a standard Imperial year after the city had been returned to peace, most of the scars of those fateful months remained. The vast hab-towers of the residential zones stood with innards exposed, walls and roofs blasted away by the high-explosive bite of greenskin heavy artillery.
Home should have meant safety, a place for eating together, for sleeping and for the raising of children. But the millions who had lived in those towers had died in them, their lives snuffed out by an alien species that revelled in slaughter for slaughter’s sake.
His bare hands gripped the ancient stonework of the balcony.
It was our duty to protect them, to prevent all this.
But no, he was being unfair to himself and his brothers. The Chapter had been ruined just as completely as the city. It was against fate and all chance that the Crimson Fists had endured to stand victorious. Snagrod had fled. Reinforcements had arrived with no time to spare. Somehow, he and barely a company’s worth of his Space Marines had come through it all. The cataclysmic tragedy at Arx Tyrannus and the retaking of the planet had already taken on legendary status. Nobles had commissioned inspiring artistic works depicting the turning of the battle. Glorious statues had been raised. The people’s spirits, argued the councillors, must be rebuilt first if they were to rebuild all else that was lost.
There was sense in that.
Kantor looked down to the streets and scowled. Such minimal traffic. By now, the streets should have been filled with carts and the market squares filled with squawking merchants eager to make the first sale of the day.
For a moment, he remembered the sight of the lumbering ork Gargants and the wake of death and destruction they had left. Such ugly, ungainly machines, but no less effective for all that. He remembered skies filled with ork fighters and bombers, the tides of fire in the avenues and plazas below as they carpet bombed his people.
There was a soft clattering to his right. It brought Kantor back to the moment. He turned to see his new major-domo, Ordinator Velasco, bend down to retrieve the las-pen he had just dropped.
‘Forgive me, m’lord,’ said the man with a bow. He returned to scribbling on his data-slate.
Kantor stood looking down at the top of Velasco’s shaved head for a moment, but it was old Ramir Savales whom he was thinking of. Velasco’s predecessor, Savales had died in the same explosion that had wiped out most of the Chapter, its relics and resources. Kantor felt a familiar twinge of sadness. Search and retrieval parties were still scouring the Hellblade Mountains for anything that might have been blown clear in the blast, but, after a year, there seemed little hope of recovering much. The loss of the Sceptre of the Sacred Blood was particularly hard to bear. The blood it had contained in its crystal sphere – the blood of Primarch Rogal Dorn himself, no less – was the holiest of icons and could never be replaced.
What crime did we commit that fate saw fit to deal us such a blow?
By way of answer, and not for the first time, Kantor’s mind landed unbidden on memories of the Marines Vigilant and of the terrible destruction the Crimson Fists had brought down upon them. That troubled Chapter, suddenly and inexplicably unwilling to fight even xenos forces, had not raised a single hand in its own defence while, on orders from the Adeptus Terra itself, the Crimson Fists had rained down death and destruction in growing grief and misery. It was the most distasteful act in the Chapter’s history. Despite the question, however, Kantor did not truly believe the universe operated along a system of moral laws and balances. Fate needed no excuses. Good men died, evil men prospered. It was mankind’s habit to seek reasons, to expect some kind of natural, universal equilibrium, but such a thing was false, a myth the species had stubbornly clung to since its earliest beginnings. Nothing more.
‘Squad Daecor returned just before dawn,’ Velasco read from his slate. ‘Squad Grimm is still in the field. Squad Victurix is due to depart within the hour.’
‘For the Harga Pass,’ said Kantor, his voice far deeper than the serf’s.
‘Just so, m’lord. Revised reports suggest an opposition force upwards of four hundred orks on foot. No armour or artillery that we know of. They continue to march south towards the border between Orpeo and Hellestro.’
‘And Victurix will deploy in full strength. Ten battle-brothers in Terminator armour.’
‘Indeed, my lord, unless you wish to issue last minute orders to the contrary…’
Velasco’s tone and meaning were clear. The Crusade Company’s Tactical Dreadnought armour was among the last of the precious Chapter relics and counted for much of the Fists remaining strength. The preservation of such a resource was crucial to the rebuilding of the Chapter. Should it be risked right now when that work had barely started?
Again, Kantor’s mind returned to those dark days of battle and bloodshed that had ravaged all he loved. He saw again the grotesque faces of the enemy, the tiny red eyes, the jutting teeth, the way they revelled in their butchery of the Rynnite people. His lips twisted into a snarl as he recalled his own righteous fury and the gratifying sensation of hot alien blood spraying his face as another foe fell to his power fist and storm bolter.
‘It has been too long,’ he murmured.
‘My lord?’ queried Velasco.
Kantor turned from the balcony and retreated into his chambers. The serf followed.
‘I have several appointments this day,’ said Kantor.
‘Indeed, m’lord. A reconstruction meeting in one hour with the nobles and senior agents from both the Administratum and the Adeptus Mechanicus. General Mir has an audience scheduled with you to discuss militia deployments in Deoz and Ijua. And Chaplain–’
‘None of these are pressing,’ said Kantor. ‘Cancel them all. I will deploy with Squad Victurix.’
Velasco gaped for a moment, but if he had even the slightest thought of protesting, it withered under a look from the Chapter Master.
‘Very well, m’lord,’ nodded the serf.
‘Alert the Armoury at once and have them prepare my Terminator armour. And contact Rogo Victurix. He and his squad are to await me by their Thunderhawk.’
Kantor strode towards the main doors and pulled them open, then disappeared off down the torch-lit stone corridor before Velasco could say another word.
The ordinator crossed to a comms panel on the wall, keyed it to the requisite channel and issued the Chapter Master’s orders.
Four hours later, the fighting was over. The Harga Pass was awash with blood, carpeted in the bodies of the dead. The battle had been fierce, but glorious. Eleven in ancient armour stood against four hundred and seventeen and taught them the meaning of the word revenge.
The War for Rynn's World - Steve Parker & Mike Lee Page 50