Soul Drinkers 06 - Phalanx

by Ben Counter

  It broke against barricades and makeshift bunkers, concentrated

  bolter fire chewing through the daemons as quickly as they could

  advance.

  In other places it swept through in a flood, swamping Imperial Fists

  in a mass of limbs and bodies. Some defences were denuded by pink

  and azure flame, blasted from the orifices of misshapen creatures

  dragged along on the tide of Abraxes’s own incandescent daemons.

  Others were outflanked by lightning-fast monsters with purplish skin

  and lashing tongues that swept around firepoints to strike from behind.

  A massive red-winged daemon, axe in one hand and lash in the other,

  strode at the head of its bloodletters and with vicious strike cleaved

  one of the tanks brought up from the Phalanx’s hangars in two, spilling

  flaming promethium around its feet.

  The Imperial Fists line bent under the weight of the assault, Space

  Marines vaulting their barriers to take up new positions closer to the

  Tactica before they were overrun. Bolter fire competed with the

  shrieking of daemons in the din of the battle. The whole deck seemed

  to bow and buckle under the weight of it, as the monastic cells and

  chapels of the Imperial Fists disappeared under the flood of Abraxes’s

  assault.

  At the heart of the line, Chapter Master Vladimir stood with the

  Fangs of Dorn in his hands. One of the Librarium novices stood before

  him, holding up a huge tome normally bound closed by chains and

  psychic seals. It contained prayers of purity and strength of mind, of

  which a commander had to be mindful when facing the corruptive

  forces of Chaos. Ahead of him, Lysander marshalled the strongest

  defences, a handful of tanks and several squads of Imperial Fists along

  with Kolgo’s Battle Sisters, holding position as the daemon army grew

  closer with every moment.

  ‘What manner of foe is Chaos?’ mused Vladimir. Beside him stood

  Lord Inquisitor Kolgo, ready for battle with a power fist encasing one

  hand and a rotator cannon on the other, each weapon engraved with

  prayers and wards of destruction.

  ‘Better men than I have gone mad seeking the answer to that

  question,’ replied Kolgo. ‘The question of Chaos cannot be answered.’

  ‘And yet we must seek an answer,’ said Vladimir. ‘For we must fight

  it. In ignorance, we fight as if in the dark.’

  ‘Better that than be corrupted by what we see,’ said Kolgo. He

  flexed the mechanical fingers of his power fist, and they crackled as

  the power field sprung into life around them.

  ‘I trust in the strength of my soul, inquisitor,’ said Vladimir. Ahead,

  Imperial Fists were scrambling into cover beside the second line as

  the daemons galloped and shambled closer, multicoloured flames

  dancing over the battlefield. The pale, lithe shape of Abraxes himself

  was just visible in the rear ranks, watching and controlling his battle,

  using up the lesser daemons under his command to buy his victory

  one death at a time. ‘I shall not become one with the enemy by

  understanding it. The more I learn of Chaos, the more I hate it, and the

  fiercer I fight.’

  ‘Overestimating one’s resolve is a more dangerous form of ignorance

  than fighting in the dark.’ Kolgo span the barrels of his rotator cannon,

  jewel-encrusted hammers clicking down on gilded chambers.

  ‘Then let us put our theories into practice,’ said Vladimir.

  ‘I concur,’ said Kolgo. Shall we?’

  ‘Brothers!’ yelled Vladimir over the vox. ‘To the fore, my brothers,

  with me! Through hell and to victory, onwards!’

  At Vladimir’s words, the Imperial Fists broke cover and charged. The

  reserve force holding the Tactica ran from behind its map tables and

  the shelter of its archways. The Space Marines crouched behind their

  defences, muttered their prayers and leapt over the defences, bolters

  blazing and chainblades whirring. Vladimir led the counter-attack right

  into the face of the enemy.

  The twin blades of the Fangs of Dorn were not made for an elegant

  battle. They were not weapons for duelling or weaving a dance of feint

  and deception. They were made for this brutal and ugly fight, the press

  of bodies and the triumph of strength and resolve over skill, where they

  could rise and fall with every stab piercing a belly or driving up into a

  throat.

  Vladimir slew a dozen daemons in those first few seconds, and

  Abraxes’s horrors fell before him, opening up a gap in the daemonic

  lines. Imperial Fists charged in behind him and exploited the gap,

  forging in further.

  Kolgo stood atop a rampart and hammered volley after volley from

  his rotator cannon into the host. The Battle Sisters formed up around

  him, Sister Aescarion directing their fire with a gesture of her power

  axe. A pair of Predator tanks rumbled up from either side of the

  Tactica, each roar of an autocannon echoed by an explosion of flame

  and torn daemonflesh deep within Abraxes’s lines.

  Without warning the horrors seemed to melt away, dissolving into

  the rear ranks at a mental command from Abraxes. In the few seconds

  of respite, the Imperial Fists saw ranks of bloodletters marching out to

  replace them. In their centre was a greater daemon of the Blood God,

  allied to Abraxes’s cause by the raw slaughter that battle on the

  Phalanx promised. It stepped over the front rows of bloodletters and a

  massive cloven hoof slammed down among the Imperial Fists,

  crushing a battle-brother under its immense weight.

  ‘Onwards! Onwards! The warp fears us so, to place such horrors in

  our way!’ Vladimir’s voice, even amplified over the vox, was barely

  audible over the foul, shuddering gale of the greater daemon’s roar.

  Vladmir hacked through the first couple of bloodletters to reach him as

  he jumped up onto the half-fallen wall of a chapel, tumbled and

  scorched in the first assault, that brought him up above the level of the

  swirling combat around him.

  The greater daemon turned its shaggy, bestial head towards

  Vladimir. Imperial Fists were hacking their way through the advancing

  bloodletters to form up around their Chapter Master, but the greater

  daemon could simply step over the melee, and in moments its shadow

  passed over Vladimir.

  The Imperial Fist held the Fangs of Dorn out wide, presenting

  himself as a target to the greater daemon, taunting it with his refusal to

  flee from the monstrosity.

  ‘You dare walk into my domain, and shed the blood of my brothers?’

  yelled Vladimir. ‘Who do you think you face here? What victory do you

  think you can win? All the fury of the warp will falter against the soul of

  one good Space Marine!’

  The greater daemon bellowed and raised its axe, already slick with

  Adeptus Astartes blood. The axe arced down and Vladimir jumped to

  the side, the blade cleaving down through the ruined chapel. Vladimir

  stabbed both the Fangs of Dorn through the greater daemon’s wrist

  and ripped them out again, snapping tendons and tearing muscle. The

  greater daemon pulled its arm back and howled in
anger, following up

  its axe blow with a strike from its whip.

  The whip moved too fast for even Vladimir to avoid. Its barbs lashed

  around his leg and the daemon yanked him off his feet, into the air,

  and cast him down to the ground in the heart of the bloodletters.

  The Soulspear was still in Iktinos’s hand. Its glowing black blade was

  being forced up under Sarpedon’s chin, towards his throat, to slice his

  head off. Sarpedon grabbed Iktinos’s wrist and fought the Chaplain, but

  death had unlocked some new fortitude in Iktinos and in that moment

  the two were matched in strength.

  Sarpedon could feel the skin on his face burning. Pain meant

  something different to a Space Marine compared to a normal man, but

  it was still pain and Sarpedon struggled as much to avoid blacking out

  as he did with Iktinos.

  The Axe of Mercaeno was trapped under Iktinos. Sarpedon tried to

  wrench it free, but Iktinos would not relent. He tried to roll over so

  Iktinos would be trapped beneath, but the Chaplain would not budge,

  as if he was anchored to the deck.

  ‘You obey,’ hissed Sarpedon. ‘Obedience only comes from one

  place.’ He saw his own features reflected in the eyepieces of Iktinos’s

  mask, the blistering wounds creeping up his face. ‘It comes from fear.’

  Sarpedon let go of the Axe and reached up to place his hand on the

  back of Iktinos’s head. He found a grip and tore the Chaplain’s helmet

  away.

  Iktinos’s face was charred and twisted by the heat. The bubbling

  skin was stretched tight over the skull, the eyes buried in scorched

  pits, the scalp coming apart. There was no dimming in the hate on

  Iktinos’s features. The pain made it stronger. There was almost no

  resemblance to the face that Sarpedon knew, none of the Chaplain’s

  calm and resolve, just the intensity of his hatred.

  ‘I know what you fear,’ said Sarpedon. His hand clamped to the

  back of Iktinos’s burning skull, and he unleashed the full force of the

  Hell into the traitor’s mind.

  The pain helped. Normally Sarpedon unleashed the Hell out wide,

  capturing as many of the enemy as possible in its hallucinations. This

  time he focused it until it was a white-hot psychic spear, thrust into

  Iktinos’s mind like a hypodermic needle loaded with everything the

  Chaplain feared.

  He feared Daenyathos. Fear, in some deep and unrecognisable

  form, was the only thing that could force a Space Marine to obey with

  such unthinking, unquestioning ferocity. Everything that Sarpedon

  knew about the Philosopher-Soldier was forced into the point of fire

  and turned into something appalling.

  Like a god of the warp itself, the form of Daenyathos loomed in front

  of Iktinos’s mind’s eye. Daenyathos appeared as he had in illuminated

  manuscripts of his Catechisms Martial, but vast in size and infinitely

  more terrible. Around his legs rushed a torrent of broken bodies, all the

  Soul Drinkers whose lives he had spent following his monstrous plan.

  His armour was inscribed with exhortations to death and torture, words

  of the Catechisms Martial twisted and devolved. Thousands of

  innocents were crucified against the armour of his greaves. His chest

  and shoulder guards were covered with the forms of the betrayed, sunk

  into the armour as if half-digested. The heroes of the old Chapter –

  Captain Caeon, Chapter Master Gorgoleon and the victims of the First

  Chapter War, manipulated into conflict to satisfy Daenyathos’s desire

  for a Chapter at odds with the Imperium. The dead of Sarpedon’s

  Chapter, from Givrillian to Scamander, Captain Karraidin, Sarpedon’s

  dearest friend Techmarine Lygris and all the others who had fallen.

  Around the collar of Daneyathos’s armour were clustered his allies

  in treachery. The cruellest of Inquisitors who had forced the Soul

  Drinkers into the extremes of exile. Aliens despatched by Sarpedon

  and his brethren, as Daenyathos watched on, satisfied that they had

  played their part – the necron creature who had almost killed Sarpedon

  on Selaaca, the renegade eldar lord of Gravehnhold, the ork warlord of

  Nevermourn, all gathered in celebration.

  Alongside them were the very worst of his allies. The followers of the

  dark gods – Abraxes, Ve’Meth, a host of Traitor Marines and

  daemons. The mutant Teturact and his legion of the dead. And

  Daenyathos himself, his face lit by the fires of wrath itself, laughing

  with the agents of betrayal of whose wickedness he had been the

  architect.

  Daenyathos looked down at Iktinos, pinned squirming below him like

  something trapped in a microscope slide. The vastness of his

  displeasure, mixed with a terrible knowing mockery, hammered into

  Iktinos’s mind as fiercely as any weapon that Sarpedon could have

  wielded.

  Iktinos screamed. In his mind, the sound was lost among the

  laughter of Daenyathos, who revelled in seeing one of his most selfimportant

  pawns being forced to understand his own insignificance. In

  reality, the sound was so completely unlike anything a warrior of the

  Adeptus Astartes should ever utter that Iktinos ceased to be a Space

  Marine in that moment.

  The Chaplain’s grip relaxed. Sarpedon threw him off and rolled out of

  the flames. He stood over the prostrate Iktinos.

  Iktinos’s mind had utterly shattered. Sarpedon’s psychic senses

  were not sharp, but even he could feel it, a growing void where once

  the Chaplain’s soul had been, into which were tumbling the fragments

  of his broken personality.

  ‘I own you now,’ said Sarpedon. ‘I am the one you obey. Tell me

  everything.’

  The faces of the daemons crowded around, twisted and jeering, the

  solid mass of their features broken by the black iron blades that cut

  down to finish off Chapter Master Vladimir.

  The Fangs of Dorn were just suited to fighting this close, where they

  parried and stabbed as if moving in Vladimir’s hand by some will of

  their own. Perhaps Dorn himself wielded them in those moments,

  reaching from the Emperor’s side to lend his own skill to Vladimir’s

  struggle to survive.

  It would not be enough. There were too many of them, every one

  eager to be the one who carried the skull of a Chapter Master back to

  the warp, to throw it at the foot of the Blood God’s throne.

  Vladimir stabbed up into a daemon’s ribcage even as he turned

  another blade away from his hearts, and prepared to die.

  A streak of orange flame burned across his vision, swathing the

  contorted faced in fire. He was aware of glossy black armour

  embellished in red, and the blade of a power axe shimmering as it cut

  in every direction. Hands grabbed him and dragged him out of the

  mass. Vladimir looked up and saw the unfamiliar face of a woman

  above him, streaked with blood and grime, teeth gritted.

  ‘Not while we live,’ she hissed through her teeth, ‘shall they take

  such a prize.’

  She hauled Vladimir to his feet. He recognised Sister Aescarion, the

  Superior of Lord Inqiusitor Kolgo’s reti
nue. The jump pack she wore on

  her back smouldered, its exhaust vanes glowing a dull red, and the

  path she had carved through the daemons as she dived into the throng

  after Vladimir was closing as the bloodletters fought to swamp

  Vladimir again.

  ‘My thanks, Sister,’ said Vladimir as he found his footing.

  ‘Through me, the Emperor works,’ she replied.

  The two stood back to back as the bloodletters closed. Now

  Vladimir could let the Fangs of Dorn do their finest work, stabbing so

  rapidly up into the advancing daemon ranks that every moment another

  of them fell, ribcage split open or burning entrails spilling from a

  ruptured abdomen. Aescarion fought with her axe in one hand and a

  pistol in the other, quickly rattling off the pistol’s magazine and then

  taking the axe in both hands.

  A Sister of Battle could not match a Space Marine’s sheer strength

  and skill. Few unaugmented humans could approach a veteran

  Superior’s ability, but even so she was just that – human, without the

  extra organs and enhanced physiology of the Adeptus Astartes. But

  what she lacked in their physical superiority, she made up with in

  faith.

  It was not a Space Marine’s mental fortitude that Vladimir witnessed

  in Aescarion. A Space Marine was a master of his fear, his mind so

  strong he could face even the daemons of the warp and remain sane.

  Aescarion was different. It was not conditioning and strength of duty,

  raw bloody-mindedness, that fuelled her. It was faith. She believed so

  completely in the Emperor’s hand guiding her, in the place she had in

  His plan, that it was as plain to her as the enemy closing in around

  her. She did not fear them, because in her mind she was not a human

  being with human frailties. She was a hollow vessel that existed to be

  filled up with the will of the Emperor and used as He willed it. There

  could be no fear, when whatever end befell not her, but the Emperor.

  Vladimir led the way back towards the Imperial Fists lines, opening

  up a path as the Fangs of Dorn flashed as quick and deadly as the

  teeth of a giant chainblade. He had to force his legs out of the sucking

  mire of gore and entrails around his feet. Aescarion’s axe gave her

  reach and she swung it in great arcs as she followed, smashing falling

  blades aside and keeping a good sword’s length between her and the