by Paul Kearney
But that was mere legend.
Kerne’s preoccupations were with the space he had to defend on the ground, and the time he had to prepare it.
Dietrich’s methods had proved sound in the initial invasion, and the Hunters would utilise his defences, build upon them, and strive to hold the same ground the Guard general had clung onto before their arrival, for the same reasons.
But there were certain changes.
The massive walls of the city, with their six gates, would not be abandoned as easily as in the first conflict. Squads of Space Marines and Haradai would be stationed at each gate, to make sure that the enemy did not capture them without warning.
Kerne did not hope to hold the circuit of the walls for long – they were simply too extensive for that – but if the invader wished to bring armour into the city, it would have to come through a gate, and that was something which had to be postponed for as long as possible.
The spaceport was too vulnerable, and the Thunderhawks could not be defended if they were lined up on the sole working launch-pad, so Kerne had the craft dragged into the citadel itself. Once inside, they were brought up through the bowels of the fortress on the great munitions elevators, stripped down, wings folded, and set in place in cleared-out gun-caverns which opened onto the sides of the man-made mountain. Here the craft were prepped for flight once more.
They could be launched only once from these armoured caverns, for there was no way that even Space Marine pilots would be able to fly back inside openings so narrow their wings had only a half-metre clearance on either side. But they would be protected behind the blast-doors until they were needed. They were a last reserve, and if it came to that, a last means of escape from Askai.
One Thunderhawk was kept separate from the others, stripped of all weaponry and most of its armour, made as light and agile as the servitors could devise. This craft was kept waiting on the launch-pad, ready for immediate take-off.
It was Brother Simarron’s mission, and he would crew the Hawk alone.
‘Make it quick, and make it quiet,’ Kerne told the pilot. ‘As soon as you appear on their augur, your life begins ticking down in seconds. Get yourself a good look at them, brother, send word back to us, and then–’ He could not find the words.
Simarron smiled. ‘And then die.’
Kerne looked him eye to eye. He and Simarron had known each other a long time. ‘You are the best pilot we have – that is why I ask this of you.’
‘I regret only that my gene-seed will be lost to the Chapter, brother-captain.’
‘Your name will endure, Simarron. I will see to that.’
The pilot extended his hand, and Kerne took it in the warrior grip.
‘In the end, brother, we all go into the dark together.’
‘Hunter One is leaving atmosphere now,’ the servitor intoned, skating its many-fingered hands across the control console.
‘Vox is good,’ Simarron’s voice echoed through the room. ‘The power-boost we jacked into comms is working well for now.’ Static, a rumbling sound.
‘Am now free of planetary gravity. Isolating forward turbofans. All systems green. Punching it.’
Another long-throated roar.
‘Coming up to twenty thousand kilometres off-world. Increasing power. Debris field–’
There was a crash on the vox.
‘Heavy debris field in low orbit, extending out some fifteen thousand kilometres.’
Jonah Kerne clenched his fists, listening in. Beside him, Malchai and Kass were standing, equally rapt.
‘Now, Brother Kass,’ Kerne whispered.
The Librarian’s psychic hood began to glow. He bowed his head, and closed his eyes. Behind the lids, the cerulean brightness of his eyes flared out through the skin, lighting up minor blood-vessels in scarlet lines.
‘I feel you, brother. I feel you in my mind,’ Simarron exclaimed.
‘Stay on target,’ Jord Malchai warned.
‘Onboard augur engaged, and recording. I hope you are getting this, brothers. I see one big capital ship thirty thousand kilometres to starboard, and am turning in a wide sweep to try and come around behind its stern. Emperor’s blood, but it is big, Jonah.’
‘Class?’
‘Oberon class, at a guess. It’s a traitor ship, no doubt of it. But the Ogadai did not go down without a fight – I see major damage in the bows and down the starboard side.’
‘Any other ships, brother?’ Jord Malchai asked.
‘Extending augur now. Interference is nominal. Yes, Reclusiarch. I am reading a major formation some eighty thousand kilometres out, coming this way. Brothers, there are a lot of ships out there. I see signatures equivalent to heavy cruisers and battlecruisers, plus what looks like a whole fleet of transports.’
They heard a warning klaxon sound over the vox.
‘They’ve spotted me. I’m reading major energy charges along the flanks of the Oberon. I’m going in closer. I see no fighters as yet, but he’s launching torpedoes, and his lasburner batteries have begun to fire.’
Jonah Kerne walked away from the vox console, hunching his shoulders as though he were expecting to be struck.
‘Simarron, this is Kerne. You’ve done enough – see if you can get away.’
A gap, during which the vox was still open. They could hear Brother Simarron breathing, and beyond his helm there were alarm-systems sounding monotonously in the Thunderhawk’s cockpit.
‘Negative, brother-captain.’ A pause. Simarron grunted. ‘I have eleven torpedoes locked onto me. I am going to try and lead them back on the traitors who fired them. If I can–’ A thump of breath escaping Simarron, as though he had just suffered a blow.
‘I’m taking the Hawk into the enemy ship. With luck, at least one or two of the torpedoes will follow me in. May the Emperor’s light be with you always, my brothers. Umbra Su–’
There was a high whine over the vox, a sudden snort of brutal static, and then silence.
‘Umbra Sumus,’ Jord Malchai said. And he bowed his head.
Kerne turned back to the others, his face set like flint.
‘Brother-Librarian Kass, what did you learn?’
Elijah Kass opened his eyes. His corneas were half-flooded with scarlet.
‘I saw it, captain. I saw the ship Brother Simarron spoke of. More than twice the size of the Ogadai, a battleship of ancient lineage. It is true that it is damaged, but not enough to cripple it. And the guiding intelligence of this enemy host is upon it, looking down on us even now.’
‘So the Oberon is the flagship,’ Kerne said. ‘What else?’
‘A mighty fleet is approaching us, brothers, only hours away. On board its ships are tens of thousands of the Great Enemy, and these are not mere cultist rabble. I sensed the minds of ruined Traitor Marines, twisted beyond sanity, and creatures worse than those.
‘What came before was a mere foray, a reconnaissance in force. This is the main body. It means to conquer – it is here to stay.’
‘Brother Kass, I want you to keep trying,’ Jonah Kerne said. ‘You must get a message through to Phobian.’
‘I have been trying, brother-captain. And I will continue to do so until I succeed.’
Kerne nodded.
‘Brothers, we have only a few hours remaining before the attack begins. It will be made in overwhelming force. I have often heard it said that the Dark Hunters have through their history proved themselves to be the most vicious in defence of all the Adeptus Astartes. We must hold true to that reputation in the days to come.’
‘The Kharne will take to the warp with everything he has, once he learns of this,’ Fornix said doggedly. ‘He’ll not forsake us, no matter the cost.’
Jord Malchai tabbed the butt of his crozius against the floor, so that it rang on the stone. ‘This is a task beyond the Dark Hunters alone, and the Chapter Master will realise that. The Kharne will try to reassemble our old allies in the other six Chapters who swore the oath with us. That will take time. In the m
eantime, we must hold on here, maintain a foothold. We must–’
‘Survive?’ Fornix interrupted him, smiling crookedly.
Malchai stared at him coldly. ‘That is our mission, brother-sergeant.’
‘At least now, Brother-Reclusiarch, I know that you can no longer send reports back on my misdeeds,’ Fornix sneered.
‘Enough,’ Kerne barked. ‘Malchai, what was the last report you sent back to the Kharne? What does Phobian know?’
‘My reports are confidential,’ the Reclusiarch said.
‘I am force commander of a company about to face overwhelming odds, upon the last surviving outpost of the Imperium within an entire system. You will tell me, Brother-Reclusiarch.’ Kerne’s black eyes were fixed on Malchai, unblinking. Even among Space Marines, there were few who could meet that gaze for long.
‘Very well. My last despatch was sent through normal channels by vox-burst, and it informed Mors Angnar that the planet had been retaken and that the Chaos taint, while not wholly expunged from the system, was now weak and would soon be eradicated.’
Kerne sighed. ‘That’s what I was afraid of. They have no inkling.’
He took his helm from the table and stared a moment at the ugly, corvid beak of it.
‘Brothers, to your stations. Fornix, the Armaments District. Brother Malchai, the spaceport trenches. Brother Kass, you will remain with me in the citadel. I wish to liaise with General Dietrich.’
The other Space Marines gathered their wargear without a word. They began to leave, and then Kerne remembered.
‘Reclusiarch–’
Malchai turned, his skull-helm on his head, as unreadable as stripped bone.
‘I still have Biron Amadai’s pistol, Malchai. You may have it back now, and I thank you for the privilege.’ He held out the ancient, beautifully worked weapon to the Reclusiarch.
Malchai sawed a hand to one side, a gesture of refusal. ‘It is yours now, Jonah. May it bring you some of the faith and valour of Amadai himself.’
It was a princely gift. A gesture of truce between them, perhaps. Jonah Kerne nodded. There was no need to say more.
Night had fallen when the first landings began. There was no preparatory bombardment, but the clear star-spattered sky above Askai came suddenly to life with new constellations, dozens of afterburners firing in low orbit, and then the fiery contrails of craft making re-entry to the atmosphere.
As these invaders became clear on the augur systems of the defences, so the defenders puzzled themselves trying to fathom what exactly they were. Elijah Kass, who knew his history, was able to identify them.
‘Stormbirds,’ he told Jonah Kerne. ‘I did not think such craft still existed in the galaxy – the model is tens of thousands of years old. It was used during the Great Heresy.’
‘What do they carry?’ Kerne asked the Librarian.
‘A full company of Adeptus Astartes in each one, or the equivalent.’
They were standing in the command centre at the heart of the citadel. Scores of human technicians were already linking the augur-readings into the firing resolutions of the big guns.
Kerne turned to General Dietrich, who stood beside him.
‘General, when you are ready, I believe you may open fire.’
‘My lord,’ Dietrich growled, ‘it will be a pleasure.’
He spoke into the vox-receiver. ‘All batteries, engage targets at will. Fire for effect.’
Askai was lit up. From the gun-caverns of the citadel and hidden positions on the ground the fire leapt up into the night sky in skeins and streams of light. The enemy squadrons came out of orbit to be met with a hail of kinetic and energy weaponry.
The defenders looked up to watch a sea of flame erupt above them, turning night into day, the stuttered flashes of the explosions merging into one, the roar of the barrage a stunning thunder, something which could be felt deep in the chest, vibrating flesh and bone and shaking dust into the air in a pale haze.
They were on target. The first flight of enemy ships was smashed into oblivion, six of the huge craft impacted by missile and plasma beam, to be knocked into spinning fragments.
But more were coming. And now that the batteries had revealed themselves, others were peeling off to launch their own payloads in counter-battery fire.
A duel began. Stormbirds heavy with ordnance came lancing out of the upper atmosphere in near vertical trajectories, to drop heavy clusters of old-fashioned iron bombs on gun-batteries that had given away their positions. As they pulled up – and many did not, but hurtled to the ground in vast explosions – they launched missiles and sprayed out fans of flares and smoke to confuse the targeting arrays below.
The ground rippled in a staggered, shattering welter of destruction. But Kerne’s people had dug in deep, and while several of the gun crews were knocked out, most continued to fire as the Stormbird bombers hauled their huge hulls up into the sky again. Fire followed them relentlessly. The blossoming smoke was lit up by it so that it seemed a storm was hovering directly over the city, lit up by red and yellow and green lightning.
Out of this thundercloud the troop-carriers arrived. Close on the tail of the bombers, they came shrieking down at high speed, deployed thrusters at the last possible moment, and slammed into the rubble and broken stone of the city below them like slab-sided meteors hurled to earth. They dropped their ramps, and mobs of huge armoured figures boiled out of them like a tide of giant cockroaches, barbed, lit with hellish eyes, roaring.
The Stormbirds kept coming. They lost one in three of their number, but never hesitated. Many careered through the sky, half shot-to-pieces, then belly-flopped in the midst of the city and were broken open like tin cans.
Incredibly, after these crashes, dozens of their occupants still crawled forth, and began fighting with whatever and whoever they found around them.
Perhaps five thousand Punisher troops were landed in that first wave. They fanned out, and began making for the gates in the surrounding blast-walls of Askai – the invincible adamantium gates which stood intact after all the months of warfare, and which had not been opened since the beginning of it all.
The Punishers assaulted the bunkers and strongpoints which guarded the gates from within the city, and began chewing them up, pouring over the terrified Hanemite Guard who manned them.
These unfortunates, the living and the dead, were dismembered, and the Punishers took their limbs and heads and gnawed on them, laughing, then daubed their black and yellow armour with the blood. They clambered over the locking mechanisms of the gates like lice seeking warmth, and began to hammer here and there in a bid to open them, ignoring the volleys of lasgun fire that sizzled in the air around them.
At the main western gate a group of six shadows, bulky but swift, flowed along the ruined street towards the gatehouse where dozens of the enemy stood, garbling amongst themselves, shooting at the sky, and bickering over the remains of the dead defenders like dogs quarrelling over meat.
It was Finn March and what remained of Primus. The wounded battle-brothers of his squad who had remained on the Ogadai for treatment were all gone along with that ancient ship, and it had seared his cold and bitter hearts to think of his brothers dying in such a hopeless, useless fashion. Now he meant to avenge their names.
The vox was cracking and slurring like a badly received wireless station, but March spoke anyway.
‘Captain, Primus at western gate. They are trying to open it. Will engage as ordered.’
No answer. It mattered not.
March did not need to look at his brothers. They fanned out around him in their cameleoline-daubed armour, as much a part of the darkened street as the corpses and the broken stone. Whatever noise they made was lost in the fighting which now was flooding the city.
‘Brother Terciel, go right and cover,’ March said. Terciel was from Novus Company, and carried a heavy bolter. Without reply he darted sideways and rested the weapon on an outcrop of rockcrete. He lifted the ammo belt, checked that al
l was in order and then said: ‘Ready.’
‘Fire after me. Targets left to right. Three-round bursts for the first two, then empty your magazines. Terciel, pick up fire as we reload.’
They crouched in the ruins, watching with dark hatred the cavorting, blood-painted ranks of their enemies ahead, only some hundred and fifty metres away.
Finn March picked his targets, blinking on them one by one so that they queued up in his targeting software. He aligned his bolter casually, and said not a word before opening fire.
At that range, even power armour could not withstand the heavy self-propelled bolter rounds, and the wargear of the enemy was not well maintained. March’s first burst blew off the head of a Punisher sergeant. His second opened up the intestines of another, the guts pouring black and steaming down the thing’s thighs as his belly-plate was blown open in jagged shards.
Then the rest of the squad came into line with their bolters. They did not speak. They did not utter a battle-cry. They chose their targets and obliterated them with serene detachment, as though it were an exercise on the range.
Terciel on the heavy bolter took up the fight as his brothers began to change magazines. The big weapon jumped against his shoulder as he hosed down the enemy, tracer spitting in bright fiery arcs across the street, bouncing off rockcrete and rocketing into the air, skittering along the ground like stones spun across water.
At least a dozen Punishers had gone down in the first instance, and more had collapsed as they took rounds in arms and legs. These were crawling, yowling like fiends until another round was sent through their brain.
Ten more down. But they had scattered now; the target was dispersing, returning fire and feeling out around March’s squad for a flank.
‘Primus, break right. Terciel, cover fire,’ March barked.
The Space Marines got up and sprinted down the street some fifty metres. Even as they ran, they let off short bursts and single shots, all aimed at the targets they had logged into the auto-senses in their suit systems.
But one Punisher got lucky. A champion of their kind with the head of a human soldier hung lifeless and staring round his neck for decoration, he stood firing his plasma pistol after the running Dark Hunters in endless bursts until Brother Terciel cut him down.