by Paul Kearney
Kerne walked away from his brethren and stared up at the tall gates. They had been shored up from within time after time, and rockcrete had been poured around the massive hinge-supports, but outside the Punishers had brought up two colossus cannons and they had been pounding the citadel unceasingly.
‘It matters not,’ he said at last. ‘We can retreat all the way up to the summit of the citadel if we like, but eventually they will smash their way through every gate and barricade. As long as those heavy guns are out there, we can only postpone the inevitable so long.’
Four weeks of this, sitting like a rat in a trap, listening to the host baying outside, enduring the airstrikes, listening to those two damned siege guns hammering like great fists on the sides of the citadel.
Kerne looked up. Dust was trickling down from the basalt and granite of the chamber ceiling, thirty metres above, and the lights were flickering, dimming to yellow and then springing to half-brightness again.
This is not how I want to die: cornered in a cave.
Twenty-six days of this. They had beaten off raptor-landings on the very slopes of the upper citadel, had seen the governor’s palace reduced to ruin by endless bombing. The blast doors of the gun-caverns were plastered with fire every time they were opened, but they had taken a terrible toll all the same.
‘We must destroy those siege guns,’ he said aloud. ‘The enemy have not subjected us to orbital bombardment because they want the citadel intact, or as near as they can get to that. They want a way in – they don’t want to level the place. In that is our hope.’
He turned around, and looked at his brothers. Fornix, his red eye gleaming in the gloom. Malchai, pale, glabrous and severe as the skull-shaped helm he carried. Kass, his eyes dark, his face aged beyond its years by the continual psychic attacks of the last weeks.
‘We have one other asset they do not expect. The Thunderhawks are still intact, within this very fortress. We can use them to mount a sally. We will attack them from the air – they will never expect that.’
‘Their colossus guns are void-shielded,’ Malchai said, frowning. ‘Even our gunships would be unlikely to damage them, captain.’
‘I did not speak of gunship attacks, Brother Malchai. I intend to lead a team of our brethren outside in person to spike those guns.’
‘Jonah,’ Fornix said, ‘there is no way back from such a mission.’
‘I am aware of that, first sergeant.’
Fornix nodded, and smiled. ‘Very well. It will be diverting at least, after all these weeks of peace and quiet.’
‘Fornix, I will need you to stay here, to take over command of Mortai in my absence.’
Fornix scratched his head. ‘Brother, I am coming with you. You can, of course, order me to stay – but if you do, I will disobey that order.’
They looked at one another. It was not a test of wills, more a sharing of memories.
Finally, Kerne said: ‘Brother Malchai, you will command in my absence.’
The Reclusiarch bowed his head. ‘You really mean to do this thing, captain?’
‘I am set on it.’
‘Are you trying to atone for your misdeeds, Jonah – is that it?’
Kerne stared coldly at Brother Malchai. ‘You may ascribe to me whatever motive you wish, Malchai. It is a sound tactical move.’
‘Which any one of your sergeants should be able to carry out. Mortai’s commander does not have to risk himself this way.’
‘I will be needed on this mission, Jord. I know it.’
Malchai passed his gauntlet over his scalp, as though wiping it clean. He nodded. ‘Perhaps it is the best way,’ he admitted in a low voice. When he raised his eyes to meet Kerne’s there was real regret in his face.
‘I will see to it that Mortai survives,’ he said.
‘I know you will, brother.’
‘Captain.’ Elijah Kass spoke up. ‘I also will accompany you on this mission if I may. I believe that my abilities will be useful to you out there.’
Kerne considered the young Librarian. ‘The Chaos warleader, who directs all this – you can feel him, can’t you, Elijah?’
‘I think that you will need defences other than bolter and power armour to sustain you beyond the walls of this fortress, captain. That is my role, and I wish to fulfil it.’
‘All right then, Brother Kass, you and Fornix shall come with me. And Brother Heinos – we will need his expertise to sabotage the void shields and destroy the guns.’
‘Who else do you want?’ Fornix asked.
‘This will be short-range, dirty work. I want the best close-quarter fighters in the company, Fornix.’
‘Orsus then, and Finn March. How many others?’
‘How many of us are left?’ Kerne asked gently. He knew, but he wanted to hear it anyway.
‘We have thirty-two unwounded brethren remaining, Jonah. For this mission I would recommend taking out at least half of those.’
Fifteen Space Marines, give or take.
‘Three half squads then,’ Kerne said. ‘Under March, Orsus and yourself. I want them armed with chainswords and as many power weapons as we can find – flamers also.’
‘When?’ Brother Malchai asked.
Kerne paused, and listened to the unending sounds of war which rose and fell beyond the thickened sides of the fortress-mountain. ‘We will need time to prep the Hawks. I want three – one for transport, and two for ground-support. A Space Marine pilot for the transport only – we still have enough fleet pilots to man the others.’ He stopped again, turning it over in his mind.
‘The sun is going down outside, brothers. We will use the night to prepare ourselves, and attack with the dawn.’
The group of Space Marines was silent.
‘One last thing,’ Kerne said at last. ‘Have Dietrich and the eldar farseer meet with me at once. We had best keep our allies informed of our plans.’
Brother Malchai’s face twisted in disgust at the word allies, but he said nothing, and walked away.
‘I wanted to tell you both of the morning’s operation because it relates closely to both your commands,’ Kerne said to Dietrich and Te Mirah.
They stood a metre apart, the gnarled Imperial Guard General, and the tall, slender xenos. They did not look at one another, and Dietrich had one hand on the holster of his pistol.
‘If I am successful, then the enemy will have lost the most potent weapon in his armoury. The citadel will be able to withstand assault for some time to come – time which the relief forces still need to come to our aid.’
‘If your people took to the warp, they might be here already,’ Te Mirah said.
‘They would have had to gather together a fleet formidable enough to battle the one in orbit,’ Kerne told her. ‘The Dark Hunters alone do not possess that capability, but we have sworn allies in other Chapters of our Adept who do. I do not doubt that they are coming, but it would be a miracle for them to arrive so soon.’
‘Miracles happen because men make them happen,’ Dietrich said doggedly. ‘In any case, we will fight on here until the end, whatever and whenever it might be.’
Kerne set a hand on the officer’s shoulder. ‘I expected no less from you, general. Your conduct during this whole war has been of the very highest standard, and your men have added a worthy battle-honour to their colours. I know you and they will not let me down.’
Dietrich stiffened, and saluted.
‘And my people, captain?’ Te Mirah asked. ‘What do you expect of them?’
‘I am leaving a report with my Reclusiarch, for the eyes of the Chapter Master only,’ Kerne told her. ‘It details the part you played here on Ras Hanem, and the aid you gave us in the planet’s defence. I have requested that your people should be allowed to leave this system in peace, once reinforcements arrive.’
‘And will your superiors accede to your request, do you think?’
‘I do not know,’ Kerne said honestly.
Te Mirah smiled. ‘I suppose I shall have to
be content with that. In any case, my warriors and I are as much prisoners here as the rest of you, and the enemy which surrounds this fortress hates my kind almost as much as it hates yours. There is nothing else for it – we will remain here and fight, until the end.’
‘I thank you for that,’ Kerne said formally.
‘Your superiors will not thank you for what you have done here – you know that. Your association with me will seem close to heresy in their eyes.’
‘That is a problem for another day,’ Kerne said with a shrug. ‘My task is to preserve this fortress.’
‘Even at the cost of your own life.’
‘It is what I was made for,’ Kerne told her. And there was nothing more to be said.
The cold season was moving on, and the mornings were not quite as chill and dark as they had been. The colossus guns halted their firing for a few hours before every dawn so that their crews might perform essential maintenance and reset their aiming mechanisms, which the concussion of the endless barrage shook off target.
That last morning, as the Kargad star rose above the Koi-Niro Mountains in the east of the world, a series of massive portals opened in the upper slopes of the citadel, and from those openings there uttered the roar of Mars pattern turbofans spinning to full power.
The teeming host of the Punishers looked up into the brightening sky to see three Thunderhawks erupt out of the side of the mountain above them like startled birds. They plunged down in arrowhead formation, the two wingmen opening up on the ground forces with sponson-mounted heavy bolters and lascannons, while the central craft extended its landing gear and touched down just within the encampment which housed the colossus cannons.
It came down with a roar of dust and fire, and the front ramp dropped at once. Out of the forward hold a group of Space Marines emerged, firing bolt pistols and heavy flamers as they came. When they were all out, the Hawk lifted off again, spraying bolter fire at the astonished denizens of the surrounding camps and dugouts of the enemy.
The other two gunships swooped round in a shrieking arc at low level, and dropped a series of iron bombs on the lines leading up to the colossus encampment, massive fountains of earth and fire erupting in their wake. They left a trail of chaotic destruction behind them, and then soared up into the sky once more to make another run.
But on their second pass the Punishers had collected their wits and began to return fire. The sky became alive with the fiery blossoms of anti-aircraft ordnance. Lascannon beams sizzled skywards, pale in the growing sunlight, and a hail of bolter rounds were flung up from the ground by hundreds of the foe.
The armour of the Thunderhawks shrugged off the light arms, but one was struck by a krak missile under its port wing and at once it jerked askew in the sky, trailing a thick tube of smoke. It still made its second pass, dealing out death and murder in a wide swathe, but it was slower now, and targeted even more fiercely by those below it. The belly of the craft was blown out by a second strike, and the Hawk shuddered in the sky and plunged to the ground in a spiralling cartwheel of massive secondary explosions. In its death throes it sent a Chaos Dreadnought flying through the air like a shattered doll.
The two other Thunderhawks were caught in a net of fire. They pulled up, still strafing the enemy on the ground, but so many rounds were impacting upon them that they were almost invisible in welters of smoke and flashing detonations.
The Dark Hunters forged towards their goal, ignoring the drama in the sky above. They burst through the scattered defenders of the colossus guns like a mailed fist punching through plywood, and were under the shadow of the massive siege weapons within minutes of landing. The surrounding Punisher companies were caught off balance by this wholly unlooked-for attack. Many were unaware that the Hunters were among them; most were still staring at the sky and blasting off tons of ammunition in feral rage.
Kerne caught the arm of a Chaos champion as the armoured warrior sought to brain him with a blow of his power sword. He stabbed his chainsword up, shunting it through the ceramite and fibre-bundles of his enemy until he found the vitals, and the labouring blade churned out the Punisher’s innards in a black spray of shredded viscera.
Around him, grenades were going off, and a promethium blast embroiled a trio of Punisher warriors in a wall of flame. They danced and wriggled in it blindly until Finn March’s squad cut them down with bolt pistol fire.
‘More coming up on the right,’ Fornix said on the vox. ‘Brother Pharnus, cover that arc with the heavy bolter.’
‘Heinos, find the void generators,’ Kerne told the Techmarine. ‘Hunters, give me a perimeter. We must hold them until the thing is done.’
The last Thunderhawk was finally shot out of the sky above them. It careered crazily through the air, but the pilot had enough control of its course to make sure it came down in a dense mass of the enemy. Its destruction wiped out half a Punisher company, and threw up a wall of flame to the south of Kerne’s position.
Brother Heinos’s servo-arm extended. He crouched close by the colossus guns and began tinkering with a series of corroded metal containers from which thick cables snaked. Sparks flew, and the blue flame of his fyceline torch blazed brighter than the sunlight.
‘Primitive,’ he said with contempt as he worked, utterly oblivious to the fighting going on around him.
‘How long, brother?’ Kerne asked him.
‘A few minutes, captain.’
‘Make sure that’s all it is. Brother-Sergeant March, watch your left. Enemy company closing in.’
The Thunderhawks had done their job; the immediate area of the colossus encampment had been blasted clear of the enemy, and in the confusion the Punishers were still not entirely aware of what was going on. But many of the nearest warbands were close enough to see the hated Adeptus Astartes in their midst, and these formations surged forwards with a collective bellow of frenzied hate.
‘They are being directed,’ Elijah Kass said. ‘I feel the will that shapes them. It is very close, now.’
‘Incoming on all sides,’ Fornix said calmly, flexing his power fist. ‘Brothers, today is a good day, a glad day. On this bright morning, we will show this scum how the Dark Hunters conduct themselves on a battlefield. Umbra Sumus.’
‘Umbra Sumus,’ the chorus came back.
And then the first ranks of the Punishers slammed into them.
Instinct and training took over. The enemy warriors in their loathsome approximations of Space Marine armour crashed roaring into the Dark Hunters like an avalanche of unadulterated murder. So intent were the Punishers on coming to grips with their foes that they were getting in one another’s way.
The Dark Hunters shot them down as they closed, kicked them back, shot them again, and then swept out the snarling chainswords. The first wave died there, and their bodies became entangled with the feet of the second.
Grenades went off, bright flashes of deadly white-hot shrapnel that clinked and bit their armour. Out of the corner of his eye, Kerne saw one of Fornix’s pauldrons blown clean off his shoulder, but Mortai’s first sergeant never even paused. He reached out with his power fist, grasped a Punisher by the skull, his fingers sinking into the enemy warrior’s helm, and threw him into the faces of those behind them. He was laughing over the vox as though it were all some enormous joke. His bolt pistol was blackened with firing, and the cameleoline had been scored off his much-patched armour in a dozen places, to show both Hunters blue and shining ceramite beneath.
‘Do you remember me, you scum? I am Fornix of the Dark Hunters. I am your death!’
Brother Kass was beside Fornix in the line, fighting like a man possessed. The psychic hood above his helmet was glowing with blue light, and he wielded a chainsword two-handed, swinging it back and forth in a blur.
They fought with the absolute purity of certain death, something like joy in the knowledge that they were facing hopeless odds, but they were exactly where they were supposed to be, and there was nothing else to think about except that ac
tivity which they were best at: killing. They slaughtered the enemy with the vicious economy of veterans, cutting down the Punishers as though the charging foe were nothing but a crop to be reaped. The cameleoline paint on their arms ran dark with blood.
But they were not invincible.
First one, then two, then a third of Kerne’s brothers went down, swamped by foes that grappled them to the ground before their fellows administered the killing blows.
As the dwindling circle of Hunters was driven in towards the siege guns, so the melee grew ever more tight and murderous. Kerne saw Sergeant Orsus go down, swinging his chainsword to the last. The sergeant carved a tall Chaos champion clear in two and raised the bloody weapon to the sky with a gargle of triumph. Other Punishers closed in on him and bore the big warrior bodily to his knees. He disappeared in a squirming scrum of bodies. Two seconds later a grenade went off where he had been, and the struggling Punishers were blown apart.
The circle still held, but barely. Kerne stepped back from it a moment.
‘Brother Heinos!’
‘The shield is down, captain. I am laying charges in the breeches of the guns.’
‘Make sure of them, Heinos. There will be no second chances today.’
They fought on, half of them down now. The Punishers had to climb over mounds of their own dead to come at them, and the Dark Hunters took another step back and opened up with bolt pistol and flamer at point-blank range.
Elijah Kass held out one hand as though he were handing a gift to the foe, and from the fingers of his gauntlet there streaked blue-white veins of light. These sank into the Punishers in front of him, and the Chaos warriors stopped in their tracks and began to scream and tear at their armour. Smoke rose from cracks that webbed across the metal, and they toppled, stinking like burned meat.
Kerne fired off magazine after magazine from Biron Amadai’s ancient sidearm, the rounds streaking out to blow chunks off the oncoming enemy, red clouds of blood and metal erupting out of the struggling bodies before him. He bared his teeth in a rictus of hatred inside his helm.