Ultramarines Omnibus (warhammer 40000: ultramarines)

by Graham McNeill

  'I see it,' replied Vaanes.

  The Space Marines of the warrior band struck the milling soldiers like a freight train, cutting down scores in the first seconds of their attack. Grimly they forced their way onward, hacking, cutting and slaying their way forward in an orgy of bloodshed.

  Caught unawares by the killers in their midst, the soldiers fought to get out of their way and Uriel soon found himself with a clear ran to the platform. Vaanes was there before him and had already killed them a path up to the approaching funicular car.

  Uriel took the steps up to the platform two at a time, glancing over his shoulder to see the rest of their warriors right behind him, keeping low to avoid the worst of the gunfire directed at them. The car docked at the platform with a huge, ringing clang and barely had it done so before the Space Marines swarmed over it.

  The car was empty save for a grey-fleshed servitor creature, fused with the mechanism of its controls, whose only function appeared to be pulling the levers that sent it up or down the mountain. Uriel and Pasanius, together with Kyama Shae, moved to the edge of the platform and fired into the approaching enemy soldiers whose courage now began to return.

  'Ventris!' shouted Vaanes. 'Come on, the car's leaving!'

  Uriel slung his bolter and slapped the shoulder guards of his two companions before running for the funicular car. Grinding cogs and wheezing engines lifted it from the platform, but it was slow to get moving and Uriel clambered aboard before it had climbed more than a metre. He turned to help Pasanius, gripping his silver arm and hauling him up, noticing with surprise that it was utterly pristine, without so much as a scratch on it. How could that be, when his own gauntlets were torn and battered to the point of uselessness?

  Pasanius moved past him to take up a firing position at the railings and Uriel turned to help Kyama Shae aboard the moving car.

  Small-arms fire spanged from the sides of the car and the railings, but as it rapidly picked up speed they were soon beyond the range of the soldiers' rifles.

  Uriel glanced over at Pasanius before transferring his gaze to the mountain above. Black, smoky clouds wreathed the higher slopes, lightning and explosions flaring in the darkness from the battle above.

  'Well, we're here,' said a breathless Vaanes.

  Uriel turned to watch the swiftly diminishing ground as they rose into the clouds and darkness swallowed them.

  'Getting here was the easy part,' said Uriel. 'Now we have to storm the fortress.'

  CHAPTER TEN

  'It would seem your attempt to antagonise Lord Berossus by shelling his pavilion was successful,' said Obax Zakayo needlessly, as another fluny of shells impacted against the walls. Plumes of flame and smoke soared skyward and Honsou laughed as he watched bodies rain down amid the rubble. Dust enveloped them, chunks of debris clattering down on the cobbled ramparts, and Honsou coughed as he swallowed a mouthful of ash. It was perhaps foolish to be this close to the front lines, but he was not so far removed from the sharp end of battle that he did not relish the cannon's roar in his ear.

  'Yes, it does, doesn't it? He's so predictable it almost takes the fun out of crushing him.'

  'But, my lord, he is within days of breaching the inner walls of Khalan-Ghol,' said Onyx, standing slightly behind Honsou. 'How can this be to our advantage?'

  'Because he is dancing to my tone, Onyx, not his own. Get an enemy to react to your designs and he is as good as lost, I almost have him exactly where I want him. But Toramino… Toramino is not so easy. He is the one we need to be wary of. I don't know what he is doing.'

  'Our scryers have seen nothing of note regarding Toramino,' said Obax Zakayo. 'It seems he waits, simply husbanding his warriors while Berossus grinds his men to dust against our walls.'

  'I know, and that's what worries me,' snapped Honsou, waving his arms at the carnage taking place on the walls below him. 'Toramino is too clever to simply hurl his men at us like this. He knows that Berossus has no other stratagems and is waiting for his moment to strike. We must anticipate that and pre-empt him. Or else we are lost.'

  Onyx leaned over the parapet and cast his gleaming silver eyes to either side of where he, Honsou and Obax Zakayo stood. Iron Warriors were ready to defend the ramparts should the bastions below fall, which if the projected strength of the assault below was correct, was entirely likely.

  'We are too close to the battle,' he said.

  Honsou shook his head. 'No, I need to be here.'

  'I can protect you from an assassin's blade or a killer's bullet,' said Onyx, 'but I cannot say the same for an artillery shell. An eternity of torment awaits my essence should I allow you to die while under my protection.'

  'Why should I care about your eternal torment?'

  'You wouldn't, you'd be dead.'

  Honsou considered this for a second and said, 'You may have a point there, Onyx.'

  The daemonic symbiote nodded respectfully as more screaming shells exploded against the walls below. Honsou turned, content that the bastion here was as secure as he could want. The warriors he had chosen to accompany him into the camp of Berossus commanded this section of the walls, and there were no better warriors in his grand company.

  He had taken one step when a flash of dark prescience made him look up and he yelled, 'Down!'

  Whether it was by sheer luck or great artifice, Honsou would never know, but a salvo of shells from the guns below impacted on the edge of the ramparts upon which he and his warriors stood, shearing the rock clean from its supports in a cataclysmic ham-merblow. Honsou picked himself up and desperately scrambled for the safety of the esplanade behind the ramparts, but it was already too late.

  With a grinding crack of splintered stone, he and hundreds of his finest warriors were swept down the mountainside in a raining avalanche of rubble and blocks of sundered stone.

  Emerging from the smoke was like being born into hell, thought Uriel. At first he had been frustrated not being able to see their ultimate destination, but upon passing through the dark clouds of the mountain and seeing it up close for the first time, he soon wished for the sight of it to be snatched away from him.

  Stretching up to pierce the dead sky, the fortress of Honsou was a madman's conceit made real, stone laid upon stone so that each angle was subtly wrong and violated the senses on a deep, instinctual level. Its dark veined walls reared up in defiance of the laws of perspective, looming and huge with pierced garrets leaning from the wallhead and spiralling, lightning-sheathed spires. Blades and spikes stabbed from its glistening fabric, and black rain, like the very lifeblood of the fortress, spilled from where artillery shells had struck. Fast-flowing rivers of molten metal poured from glowing culverts and ran down the mountainside like streams of lava from an erupting volcano.

  Guns fired from daemon-visaged portals and burning, daemonic blood spilled from vast iron cauldrons onto the screaming soldiers below. Flames danced on the ramparts and in the mass of struggling soldiers. Death and destruction stalked the battlefield this day, and they hunted well.

  Tens of thousands of soldiers thronged the rubble-strewn reaches of the fortress, fighting their way up a rained screed slope that had once been a bastion. Explosions tossed corpses through the air as buried mines swept hundreds to their deaths and the monstrous forms of a pair of Titans straggled in the rubble, crushing men and machines beneath their great footsteps as they fought amid the flames.

  Uriel and the Space Marines watched the terrifying battle rage above them, the car grinding as it approached the upper platform where it would deposit them and begin the journey back down the mountain.

  'Emperor protect us,' breathed Vaanes. 'It's like nothing I've ever seen before.'

  'I know…' agreed Uriel, drawing his sword as the car clanged home against the platform and the bronze gate in the railings squealed open.

  'How can we hope to survive this?'

  Uriel turned to Vaanes and said, 'Remember what I told you: death and honour. If one brings the other then it is a good death.
'

  'No…' hissed Vaanes. 'No death is a good one. Not like this.'

  None of the Space Marines moved, too in awe at the terrible and magnificent spectacle of war on a scale few had ever experienced. Uriel realised he had to get them moving before the vastness of this battle and their impulse for survival overcame the newly-rekindled sense of honour and duty he had instilled in them.

  He was saved when Pasanius shouted, 'Come on, get moving! Everybody off!'

  Ingrained reflexes took over and the Space Marines swiftly debarked from the funicular car, chivvied all the way by a bellowing Pasanius. Only Uriel and Ardaric Vaanes remained on board.

  'Come on,' said Uriel. 'We have work to do.'

  Vaanes said nothing, but nodded and followed Uriel from the car, climbing up past the platform and unsheathing the crackling claws from his gauntlet.

  'What are you doing?' called Uriel.

  'Funicular cars work on the principle of counterbalancing one another,' explained Vaanes, slicing his claws clean through the thick cables that held the car.

  The platform groaned and the cable snapped with a metallic twang, whipping around and sending the car plummeting back downhill through the smoke. The sound of screeching metal and showers of fat orange sparks followed it down.

  'No one will be coming up here in a while,' said Vaanes, climbing back to join Uriel.

  'Clever,' said Uriel.

  The two Space Marines jogged over to where the rest of the warrior band had sequestered themselves, hidden in a fold in the rock below an overhanging bastion where they could observe the battle in relative safety. Missiles and shells crisscrossed the air, and the noise of explosions and gunfire was deafening. The mountain trembled to the footsteps of the Titans, both of which lurched heedlessly through the battle as they grappled and struck at one another. Snarling daemon heads slammed together and massive blades tore at each other's armour as whipping, barbed tails brought down whole swathes of the wall.

  'Now what?' shouted Pasanius, barely audible over the cacophony.

  'Now we have to get in!' said Uriel.

  'You mean we join the assault?' asked Vaanes. 'Impossible!'

  'What choice do we have?' yelled Uriel.

  'We can get the hell off this mountain! I told you I'd help you get in, Ventris, but I also told you I wasn't going to get killed for your death oath!'

  'Damn it, Vaanes, we're here now! We have to keep going!'

  Vaanes looked set to reply when a salvo of shells streaked overhead and struck the lip of the overhanging bastion directly above them. Dust and debris showered them, rocks tumbling down the slopes as it split from the mountain with a splintering crack.

  'Look out!' shouted Uriel as the bastion crumbled and toppled, falling towards them in an avalanche of rubble and blocks of sundered stone.

  Honsou felt rocks pummelling him as he fell, battering him and threatening to crush him utterly. He tumbled end over end, his senses whirling in a kaleidoscopic flurry of noise and light. The breath was driven from him as he landed, and he rolled aside as huge, tank-sized blocks of rubble smashed down around him. Choking clouds of black dust and smoke billowed, and though he felt painfully battered by the fall, he didn't feel any broken bones or ruptured organs.

  'Onyx!' he yelled hoarsely. 'Zakayo!'

  'Here!' coughed Zakayo. 'I am alive!'

  'As am I,' said Onyx, 'but I require assistance.'

  Honsou struggled over to where his champion lay almost completely buried beneath a pile of jagged lumps of rockcrete with twisted iron bars protruding from them. Onyx's torso and lower body were trapped beneath a volume of rubble that would have crushed even a power-armoured warrior flat, but immaterial energies had saturated the daemonic symbiote's flesh and it was proof against such things.

  Honsou gripped the debris and strained against its massive weight, but it was too great even for one as enhanced as he. Obax Zakayo joined him, the hissing mechanical arms sprouting from the armature of his back to grip the reinforcement bars.

  Iron Warriors began picking themselves up from the rubble, those who hadn't been crushed beneath falling masonry or otherwise killed in the bastion's collapse lending their strength to freeing Onyx.

  Honsou moved out of the way and looked around him as glowing afterimages of the battle flashed on his visor. He shook his head to clear it and get a better idea of where their fall from the fortress had brought them.

  More rubble had been dislodged from above by the thunderous battle of the nearby Titans and Honsou saw that they would have little difficulty in getting back to the fortress. The lucky artillery strike had collapsed a good portion of the wall beneath the bastion that now formed a ready-made slope that led straight to the walls.

  That was if they survived to get back to the fortress, he thought, watching as blurry shapes approached through the swirling clouds of dust and smoke.

  Uriel tore off his helmet, its visor cracked and useless: the pressure seals that clamped it to his gorget smashed and irreparable. He muttered a prayer of unction for the helmet's spirit and placed it on the ground. Without his auto-senses, he could only see hazy outlines through the smoke and debris of the bastion's fall, but blinking away motes of dust from his eyes, he saw that the Emperor had blessed them once more.

  'There!' he shouted, pointing to the great gash torn in the side of the fortress where the bastion had fallen. A steep but practicable slope of rubble and rebar-laced rockcrete led upwards towards the ramparts. Uriel knew they would never get a better chance than this to penetrate the fortress.

  Leading the way, he picked his way upwards, seeing indistinct, power-armoured forms also clambering to their feet. At first he assumed that these were the Space Marines of the warrior band, but as the dust began to settle, he saw they were not.

  They were Iron Warriors.

  Honsou watched a Space Marine emerge from the smoke, his blue armour dust covered and battered. His heart lurched as the warrior snarled and drew a shimmering blade. One of the False Emperor's warriors? Here? His surprise almost cost him his life as the blade sang for his neck and he was barely able to parry it with his axe, dodging away from the return stroke of the Space Marine's blade.

  His axe screamed as its warrior soul roared to life and Honsou saw that the attacking warrior's blue armour was devoid of all insignia or markings. A renegade? A mercenary?

  Was this Toramino's doing? Rallying the renegade scum that skulked in the mountains to his cause? But he had no more time to wonder at the warrior's origins as his blade stabbed for him once more. 'Iron Warriors!' he bellowed. 'With me!'

  Uriel slashed at the Iron Warrior again, but his every stroke was parried by a huge war-axe with a glossy, black-toothed blade. His foe shouted to his warriors and more shapes emerged from the dust, swords and axes raised and bolters piercing the smoke with barking muzzle flashes.

  'Emperor guide my blade!' he shouted as he attacked again.

  'He has no power here,' retorted the Iron Warrior as he spun his axe and attacked.

  Uriel sidestepped and brought his sword around in a beheading stroke, but his opponent was not there, rolling beneath the blow and swinging his axe for his back. Uriel hurled himself flat, the screaming axe blade slashing centimetres from his armour. He rolled aside as the axe hammered down, the earth shaking in fury at its impact.

  Uriel kicked out, driving the Iron Warrior to his knees and slicing his sword in a wide arc towards his head. The tip of his blade caught the Iron Warrior's helm and sent him tumbling down the slope. He scrambled to his feet as more Space Marines joined the fray and the vast shadow of the battling Titans engulfed them. The fury of the devil machines' combat dwarfed this one, but for all that, it was equally brutal and merciless. Vicious, short-range firefights and melees broke out, bolters roaring and grunts of pain and anger sounding as explosive shells cracked open armour and blades tore at flesh. He drew back his sword to gut an Iron Warrior, but a lashing coil of energy snaked out and ensnared his arm.

 
Pain roared up his arm and it was all he could do to keep hold of his sword as flaring bursts of agony coursed along the length of the energy coil. Uriel dropped to his knees as a giant, wide shouldered Iron Warrior drew near, massive mechanised arms snapping from his shoulders and the snaking whip of energy attached to yet another of his hunched claws.

  'You dare attack the master of Khalan-Ghol! You will die!' roared the warrior, his voice ugly and crackling. A wash of flame shot through the combat and Uriel caught the sickening stench of cooked meat. Once again the earth heaved and a gargantuan foot slammed down against the mountainside not three metres from Uriel, leaving a deep crater in its wake.

  He saw the massive Titans towering above them as he fought against the crippling pain lashing in waves from the energy whip. While the whip-armed claw held him immobile with agony, the lumbering Iron Warrior's free hands unsheathed a crude, brutal, but no doubt effective chainsaw-bladed axe.

  'Obax Zakayo!' screamed a voice, but Uriel could not see who shouted through the pain screeching around his nervous system. Gunshots burst against the Iron Warrior's armour and he lashed out with his axe.

  'You?' laughed the Iron Warrior. 'You were under my blade once, slave, and escaped. You will not do so again.'

  For the briefest second, his attention shifted from Uriel and it was all the distraction he needed. He swept up his sword, hacking through the energy whip, and the pain vanished, leaving him drained, but free of its incapacitating agony. Uriel pushed himself to his feet, seeing Colonel Leonid and Sergeant Ellard facing off against the Iron Warrior.

  Lasbolts hammered his bulky body, but his debased power armour could withstand such trifles and he roared, swinging his axe for Leonid's midriff. The colonel jumped back, stumbling on loose rubble, and fell to the ground. Obax Zakayo closed for the kill, but Ellard leapt upon the Iron Warrior, pummelling his fists against his head.