Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus

by Paul Kearney

  ‘Perfectly, captain.’

  Jonah Kerne looked down on the tight face of the human before him.

  ‘Your daughter died well,’ he said.

  Massaron looked away. ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘Be worthy of her life, and death,’ Kerne told him. Then he turned and left the shadowed room, and strode out into the grandeur of the Ogadai’s nave without a backward glance.

  The flight deck was frantic with activity. Jonah Kerne strode along it like a dark titan. The Thunderhawks were on their sleds, already warming up their engines, and the din was ear-splitting. Steam from the coolant systems hazed the air, and low-loaders piled high with shells were still pulling up to the rear of some of the gunships; Space Marines and human personnel alike were working steadily to pile more ammunition within the square-bellied craft.

  There was no telling when they would be resupplied, once they were on the ground, so every Thunderhawk was carrying extra pallets of shells and ammo and energy-packs as well as its flight crew and a squad of Space Marines. Safety procedures were being quietly ignored. A small gamble, amid much bigger ones.

  Kerne found Nureddin of Secundus supervising the loading of the transports. He was in a foul humour, having missed out on a place in the first wave because of the boarding casualties. Kerne thumped his shoulder-guard to get his attention. He had to shout to be heard above the clamour of the packed, echoing deck.

  ‘Wait for my word before you put down, brother – remember!’

  ‘I remember, Jonah. Try to land on your feet and not flat on your back.’ Nureddin grinned, and twitched his grey scalp-lock out of his eyes.

  They shook hands in the ancient warrior grip, grasping each other’s forearms, the metal of their armour clinking together.

  ‘Good hunting, brother,’ Kerne said.

  ‘Good hunting, Jonah. Leave some of the killing for me.’

  ‘Always.’

  He walked on down the deck. Out of the chaos, there was order coming. He nodded to Sergeant Rusei of Sextius, and Corvo of Septus, and they thumped their fists against the aquila on their breastplates. They had over a century in Mortai between them, and yet they looked as eager as new recruits.

  Down the dank shaft of the elevator, to the drop pod holsters below. Here, it was darker, and the noise was cut off. This part of the ship was newer than the rest, the result of a refit some fifty years before. The Ogadai had been reworked and repaired so many times that Kerne doubted there was much of the original four-thousand year-old metal remaining. Like the Chapter itself, the composition of the thing changed, but its function remained.

  The three lead squads of the assault had already embarked, and only the command pod still had one of the tall, leaf-shaped hatches open for entry. He clambered inside, thumping the door controls, and the ramp reared up and then hissed shut.

  Pods, he thought. They were well named. Inside, there was little room for manoeuvre, and the light was a low red glow. He found his place at the central stanchion, the spine of the teardrop-shaped craft, and snapped himself into the restraints, finding the vox-link and plugging it into his helm.

  They were all here. Heinos the Techmarine in his specially adapted harness. Fornix, his armour marked by the scabs of hasty repairs. He had never been vain about his appearance, but Kerne noted that his first sergeant had procured a power fist from somewhere and now his right hand ended in a mass of metal almost a metre across. No more chainswords then.

  Passarion was there in his white armour, and next to him Jord Malchai in his sinister skull-helm. And lastly Elijah Kass, the psychic hood above his own helmet glowing faint blue.

  Kerne touched the leather pouch he had strapped at his side. In it was a tattered rag upon which was woven a skull and weighing scales. Cerebrum et Haliaetum: Mortai’s banner since time immemorial.

  He would unfurl it on the ground. The Dark Hunters did not have specified banner-bearers. As the battle unfolded, the company captain would single out a battle-brother he thought worthy of the honour and bestow the company symbol upon him, to carry for as long as he was able.

  Kerne himself had carried that flag; it had been given to him by Al Murzim more than two centuries before. And Fornix had carried it through the first half of the Phobian battles, until promoted to sergeant. Then it had gone to three more Space Marines, all of whom had died carrying it.

  More would die carrying it in the days to come. But the banner would rise up again every time, as it always had.

  It endured. Mortai endured. The Dark Hunters remained, despite all the crises and wars of the last three thousand years.

  Umbra Sumus, Kerne thought. We are shadows.

  Nothing more than shadows and dust.

  ‘Launch in thirty seconds,’ the vox spoke into his ear.

  ‘Acknowledged.’ He raised a fist with three fingers out. The others strapped into the pod saluted him.

  Lord, in Thy glory and Thy goodness, send me worthy foes to kill.

  ‘Ten seconds.’

  The green light flicked on, and there was a tremendous jerk and crash as the drop pod was ejected from the hull of the Ogadai like a grape pip being spat out of a man’s mouth. Gravity faded, and Kerne rose in his restraints.

  Three seconds later, the onboard nav systems kicked in and the thrusters fired. The Space Marines within were jolted once more as the tapered craft was nudged towards the atmosphere of Ras Hanem. The details of the descent were fed into Kerne’s helm display, and he watched as the numbers changed almost too quickly to be read. The blinking sigils of the other three pods were steady and green.

  Then a series of other cursors flashed up on the display. The Thunderhawks were launching now. All of Mortai was in the air.

  Jonah Kerne was taking ninety-eight Adeptus Astartes to the planet below, and they were bringing hell with them.

  Part Three

  Wrath of the Hunters

  FOURTEEN

  Cadems in Terram

  The vox crackled and hissed in Kerne’s helm. ‘Captain, this is shipmaster Diez of the Arbion. Do you read me?’

  Thirty-six seconds to impact. The drop pod was shunting and rattling like a tin can rolling down a cliff face, and gravity had kicked in once more. The three hundred kilos of Kerne’s armoured frame were fighting the restraints and the G-forces were compressing the blood in his chest. It was no time for pleasantries.

  ‘Send, over.’

  ‘We have contact with the ground. Imperial forces are still in possession of the citadel and the Armaments District. The spaceport is damaged, but may be serviceable, though it is under fire. Do you read?’

  ‘I read!’ he snapped. He was already readjusting his tactical plans as the information was absorbed. His pods were en route to Sol Square, the largest open space in the city of Askai, and the ungainly craft were not designed to be navigable once they were in the atmosphere. It would be like trying to make an arrow change direction when it was in mid-flight.

  He would land south of the Imperial lines, if the information was accurate. He would have to begin fighting his way almost due north on landing. Well, it was something to know that the citadel was in friendly hands at least. The Arbion had been tasked with targeting the fortress, shooting in the assault from orbit.

  ‘Hold all orbital fire until further word from me, Diez,’ he said.

  But the vox was dead. They were on final re-entry now, and the pod was shuddering and growing hotter.

  And then there was a resounding crash – the pod arced sideways as though it had been kicked in mid-air. It spun and tumbled, and Kerne cursed within his helm and blinked again and again on the retro sigils, to no avail.

  ‘Anti-air,’ Fornix said on the squad net. ‘That was a direct hit.’

  Kerne ripped open the access panel at his head and peered within, all the while fighting the spin of the careering pod. The altimeter in his display was reeling off the descent with startling rapidity. They were at fourteen thousand metres, and falling like a stone.


  Another crash, and this time there was a white explosion which his auto-senses only just prevented from blinding him. One whole hatch in the side of the pod disappeared, and brown air thundered into the confines of the vehicle. Kerne felt the sucking decompression lift his body up in the restraints, and was thumped by Fornix and Heinos bucking and rattling in theirs next to him.

  He dug his hand into the wiring of the access panel. The cables were brightly colour-coded for eventualities like this, and he called up the sequence in his mind from decades-old training. The yellow wires. He yanked them free and stripped the insulation with a pinch of his armoured gauntlet.

  ‘Jonah–’ Fornix said.

  ‘I’m on it.’

  ‘Sooner rather than later, brother.’

  ‘Shut up.’ He gritted his teeth, fighting the wild gyrations of the pod, and held the stripped wires together in his hand. There was a flash, and outside a series of coughing explosions as the retros fired. The internal gyro sensed the erratic behaviour of the pod and fired thrusters from all angles to correct it.

  Kerne looked at the altimeter in his readout. Six thousand metres.

  The pod had stopped spinning, but it was still coming down too fast.

  ‘Brace for impact,’ he said calmly. He leaned back against the central stanchion of the pod, even his armour’s senses almost blinded by the raging sandstorm that was now within it.

  ‘Next time, I’m walking,’ Fornix said.

  And then they crashed.

  He woke up.

  I’m alive, he thought, and he felt mild surprise.

  His helm display was sputtering and blinking, but the armour’s systems were doing their best to remedy it. Adeptus Astartes power armour was built with dozens of redundancies and fail-safes and, above all else, it was made to take punishment.

  The red sigils began to edge into amber. Good enough. Auto-senses were patchy – his hearing was coming and going – but no doubt that would rectify itself, given time. If not, then Brother Heinos–

  Where was everybody? Kerne knew that he had taken a bad blow to the head. There was blood inside his helm and in his mouth, but his body, as efficient in its own way as the suit which protected it, had already begun healing itself. Blood flow had stopped. He had bitten through his tongue, and longed to spit, but instead he swallowed the globs of blood that filled his mouth.

  His limbs worked. A line of pain burned along the woven bone of his ribs, but that was of no import. He sat up, reaching for the bolt pistol, but it was gone, knocked free by impact along with his chainsword. The ancient armour he wore was dented and scored, but it had suffered worse in its long career.

  He checked what was left of his wargear methodically, by touch. And a wave of relief went through him as he felt for the long leather pouch at his waist. Mortai’s banner was still there.

  He stood up. His hearing was returning, visual input settling down, and the armour was beginning to feel part of him again, not just a heavy carcass encasing his own.

  He looked around, and only in that moment, as the auto-senses righted themselves and came back to full operation, did the world’s aspect finally become clear.

  The drop pod lay on its side eighty metres away in a ragged hedge of rubble, broken open like the shell of a hard-boiled egg. By it crouched several Dark Hunters, firing their bolters. Kerne saw the white armour of Apothecary Passarion there, and the skull-helm of Malchai. The Chaplain was gesturing with his crozius.

  The roar of battle. Not a skirmish, or a boarding action, but a full-scale war. It enveloped the senses, sent his hearts racing, and sped the rush of adrenaline through his enhanced system. Artillery, salvoes of it, and delta-winged aircraft sweeping overhead, blasting out las-fire.

  Dust, in rolling clouds and walls, hanging all around like an ochre curtain, rippled through and through by kinetic missiles of every calibre and seared aside by the fire of energy weapons.

  Men screaming – no – things that had human voices, but they were not men. He saw them now, a black, boiling mass of them charging, las-fire spitting out as they came onwards, hundreds of them.

  Cultists. Kerne bared his bloodstained teeth. The only weapon he had was a long knife. He drew it and ran, staggering drunkenly as the suit systems readjusted and continued their self-repair.

  The wave of cultists rolled towards the Space Marines ahead like a black tide of bubbling tar. Dozens went down, blown to shreds by the bolter fire. The heavy rounds went through two and three of them at a time and blew them clear off their feet, but they did not falter. The sight of their ancient enemy had galvanised them beyond courage, beyond tactical sense – they came on with the remorseless determination of insects in swarm.

  The bolters chewed them up. The Dark Hunters stood their ground and calmly picked their targets, firing short bursts, wasting not a single round. When the surviving cultists burst through that withering barrage and threw themselves at the Space Marines, the towering warriors shifted grip on the weapons and began clubbing their adversaries to the ground.

  Kerne came up on the rear of the enemy line, and for a few minutes he allowed himself to forget that he was captain of a company, the force commander, the leader of an armada.

  For a few minutes he was a simple Space Marine, consumed by hate and bloodlust, lifting these creatures into the air and gutting them, crushing their skulls with his free fist, stamping on them as they went down.

  The blood ran in rivulets down the damascened patterns on his armour, and las-bolts careened off the beautifully worked ceramite, hardly felt or acknowledged.

  They died to the last kicking, shrieking individual. That one had his face stove in by the blue-crackling crozius arcanum of the Reclusiarch, and when Malchai raised the weapon and badge of his calling into the sky the energy field within the device burned it clean again, the black, filthy blood and flesh of the Great Enemy withering away.

  ‘Captain,’ the Reclusiarch said, ‘you are well met!’ Kerne had never heard him sound happier.

  ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘They were thrown clear, as you were. Only Heinos, Passarion and myself were still inside the pod after it came to rest. I have not seen Brother-Sergeant Fornix or Brother Kass.’

  It was hard to see anything that was more than fifty metres away in the smoking storm of this place. The energy discharges all around played hell with infared. Kerne blinked on the company vox, but it was still recalibrating. His comms systems were ineffective, for now.

  ‘Well, we are on the ground, at least. Give me your pistol, Malchai.’

  ‘By all means.’ The Chaplain hesitated a moment and then tossed it over. ‘Be careful with it – it was Biron Amadai’s once.’

  Kerne cocked the weapon and raised it to the face-grille of his helm in a reverent kiss. ‘My thanks.’ He knew what it meant to Malchai.

  ‘What squad is this?’ Their pauldrons were covered in dust.

  ‘Tertius, sir,’ one of the other Space Marines said. ‘Beta section. Brother-Sergeant Orsus sent us to reinforce you when he saw that the pod had crashed.’

  ‘Good work. Take us to him, brother. We will consolidate on his position before pushing out.’

  ‘Are you injured, captain?’ This was Passarion, looking over Kerne’s battered armour with professional enquiry.

  ‘I’m fine, Apothecary, though my vox systems are still down. What about yours?’

  ‘The impact knocked them all out, likewise. But they are trying to come back online.’

  Kerne thought of Fornix – alive or dead? But that was not something he could dwell on now.

  ‘Move out. We’ll just attract another assault sitting here. We must get the drop-squads together and get back on comms.’

  The Dark Hunters gathered themselves together and began moving through the broken shards of plascrete and rockcrete and good old-fashioned stone, flowing around the taller obstacles, climbing or jumping over others. Periodically one of them would fire a single bolter round, and a shriek would be
sucked into the dust.

  Gradually, something like normality began to return to Kerne’s auto-senses. Blinking on the vox sigils, he started to hear fragments of speech over the net. Most of them were the clipped commands and status report of his fellow Adeptus Astartes, but there were other voices audible too, fragmentary as ghosts, but undeniably present.

  He skipped frequencies, trying to zero in on the strange voices, and finally, loud and clear through the clouds of static, a real, human voice was speaking in Low Gothic.

  ‘–you identify yourselves? This is General Pavul Dietrich, commanding officer 387th Armoured, leader of the Imperial resistance in the city of Askai. I repeat – will you identify yourselves and state your positions? This is coded Imperial Frequency five-seven alpha three, and you may speak in clear. I say again, this is Pavul Dietrich–’

  ‘General Dietrich,’ Jonah Kerne said. ‘I am glad you are still alive.’

  The vox hissed. Finally Dietrich came back on it. ‘Who am I speaking to?’

  ‘I am Captain Jonah Kerne of the Third Company of the Dark Hunters Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. I have three squads on the ground in Sol Square, and the rest of the company will be assaulting within the hour.’

  ‘Adeptus Astartes… You are Space Marines?’ Dietrich’s voice thickened with emotion.

  ‘That we are. As soon as I am able I will forward our company comms frequencies to you. At present, we are rather busy.’

  Dietrich cleared his throat. ‘My lord, you cannot know how welcome it is to hear your voice, or to know that the Adeptus Astartes themselves have come to our aid, at long last.’

  ‘Yes, yes – Dietrich, keep this frequency open and encrypted. I will be off it for some while to come, but will contact you again later to coordinate our efforts – just tell me quickly, where are the bulk of your forces and how many are they?’

  ‘My lord, we hold the citadel and about half of the Armaments District, and are scattered in a broken line between the two. My regiment has lost nearly all its vehicles and we have taken eighty per cent casualties. The Hanemite Guard is present in larger numbers, but is only lightly armed and much scattered.