by C. L. Werner
‘We’re moving now, Sister Superior,’ Debdan’s response came back to her. The captain had already lost some of his men on the balcony when the genestealer forced its way inside, but Trishala wondered if he understood the devastating strength and speed of the xenos. By itself the creature had the potential to slaughter Trishala’s squad. The twenty soldiers in Debdan’s patrol would stand even less chance against the thing, even if they did have a flamer. It was some caprice of fate that it was the militia rather than one of the other Adepta Sororitas patrols that was in a position to support Trishala’s squad.
Soon after passing the sacristan, the Sisters suddenly found themselves at the back of the frightened throng. The last refugees streamed past them, leaving the way ahead open. Evidence of the unthinking nature of their retreat lay strewn about the corridor. Precious flagons of water and packets of hardtack taken from the cathedral stores to minister to the supplicants were littered about, trampled underfoot. Here and there the broken body of a hapless civilian who’d slipped beneath the rushing tide lay crumpled in a bloodied heap.
The Battle Sisters marched through the steeply angled halls to confront the xenos infiltrator. Boltguns were readied on the advance, Sister Archana moving up to join Trishala at the head of the squad. Archana was a stout, powerfully built woman and didn’t break stride with the others despite the bulk of the heavy flamer she carried.
‘Would this xenos be smart enough to take hostages?’ Archana asked the Sister Superior.
Trishala thought again of the shelter on Primorus. ‘Even if it has, there can be no hesitation. The genestealer threatens more than whoever is trapped with it in the Retreat. Everyone seeking sanctuary in the cathedral is at risk. The instant you see the creature you have to attack. Don’t underestimate how fast it can move. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, Sister Superior,’ Archana said in a chastened tone. The other Sisters echoed her, reaffirming their understanding.
Trishala knew the Battle Sisters would obey. Their discipline was too great to allow for anything less. What concerned her was them not reacting quickly enough when they found the xenos. The genestealer was swift enough to seize even the slightest delay and use it to its advantage – whether to escape or fall upon the Sisters with its rending claws. She had only to glance down at the white chestpiece that had replaced the one torn in the fight outside the narthex to remind her that even power armour wasn’t proof against those claws. She hoped that the mismatched section of ceremonial armour would act as a reminder to the rest of her priory that the least mistake could be deadly.
The screams ringing out from above swelled to a piteous crescendo, then were muffled by a loud whooshing sound. Trishala quickened her pace as the nauseating smell of promethium and burning flesh came spilling down the corridor. She’d endured such a stench before, down in the Cloisterfells.
A last turn in the corridor where the walls suddenly became much thicker and the way far narrower, brought the Sisters to the Gauntlet’s Retreat. Foul black smoke was spilling out of the door, streaming away into the miscellany of vents and ducts that pitted the high ceilings. Beyond the smoke, Trishala could see a soot-covered man in the uniform of Lubentina’s militia. Arrayed along the corridor were twenty of his comrades.
‘Here, Sister Superior,’ Captain Debdan’s voice called out. ‘Keep watching the door. Sergeant Kalidas, give it another blast.’ On his order, one of the troopers moved into the doorway, thrusting the blackened muzzle of a heavy flamer into the vestry. An instant later a stream of blazing fire was rushing into the room, sweeping it from side to side as the sergeant manipulated his weapon.
‘We cornered it in the Gauntlet’s Retreat,’ Debdan reported to Trishala. ‘I moved the flamer up before it could try to slip out.’
Another plume of smoke rushed out into the corridor as the sergeant cut off the blast of fire spilling from his flamer. The stink of burning flesh intensified, making Trishala’s eyes water. She kept any display of revulsion off her face, unwilling to indulge even so slight an expression of weakness.
‘What happened here, captain?’ Trishala asked.
‘We caught the xenos,’ Debdan reported. He tried to make his words sound bold and proud, but there was a tremble of fear behind them that undermined the effort. ‘Rather than engage us, it withdrew back into the Gauntlet’s Retreat.’
Trishala looked at the smoke-filled doorway. ‘You are certain it went inside?’
Debdan shuddered. ‘That much I am sure of. Otherwise we wouldn’t have acted as quickly as we did. I saw what it did to my men on the balcony.’ He pointed at the heavy flamer Sergeant Kalidas carried. ‘The schematics for this section showed no other way out. We had to act before it found that out for itself and turned back.’
‘Did any of the refugees in there make it out?’ Though the question came from Archana, Trishala thought it was just the kind of concern Kashibai would express, regardless of protocol. It was a pointless thing to ask. Trishala knew the answer even before Debdan gave it.
‘I couldn’t risk the xenos getting out, and escaping again,’ he said. ‘We had to act fast.’
‘You’ve done what needed to be done,’ Trishala told him. ‘You can leave the rest to us. Once the room cools down, we’ll go in and verify it’s dead.’
Debdan shook his head. ‘We saw it go in there. By the God-Emperor, I wouldn’t have given the command if I wasn’t sure.’
‘But I have to be sure,’ Trishala told him. ‘Before I call off the hunt, I have to know.’ The smell of the slaughter filling her nose, Trishala looked back at the other Battle Sisters. Their expressions were pensive, their gaze grim. It was a gruesome task ahead of them.
The great archway that spanned across the boulevard, uniting the fresco-covered facades of two monolithic municipal buildings, came smashing earthwards. It shattered against the road-bed, disintegrating into a burst of rockcrete and plaster. Elaborate designs cut into the archway were reduced to jumbled wreckage, puzzles of limbs and bodies that no longer bore any semblance of their original shapes. The same could be said of the clutch of marksmen who’d taken position on the bridge, raining shots on the street twenty metres below until their vantage was rocked by the sustained impact of Gaos’ autocannon rounds. Supports blasted to dust by the brutal fire, the span broke free and hurtled downwards with its shrieking occupants.
For good measure, Rhodaan lobbed a grenade into the pile of wreckage. The explosion cast up fragments of rubble and organic debris. The Iron Warrior waited for a moment, watching the nearby windows and doorways. Such viciousness often provoked the False Emperor’s slaves into some foolhardy and reckless effort at retaliation. Spurred by some pathetic hunger for retribution, they’d expose themselves and soon join the very carrion they were trying to avenge.
As though flesh had any comprehension of what revenge truly was. They would never understand the Long War, how revenge could become the only thing that still gave life purpose. To have loyalty and service exploited and betrayed by the False Emperor. Only those like Rhodaan, who had been there, who had seen and heard and felt, only they could ever really know.
The retaliation Rhodaan expected failed to appear. Either the ambushers up on the archway had been alone or their comrades were too crafty to expose themselves. Fear could do that, but so too could discipline. He didn’t think the local defence forces would be of high calibre, but where training was lacking a fanatical zealotry could endow flesh with a degree of fortitude.
Rhodaan turned his gaze towards the gap between the municipal buildings. Beyond he could see the slopes of Mount Rama and the cathedral that was their objective. The peak was at once close and frustratingly far away.
‘Periphetes, advance,’ Rhodaan heard Captain Uzraal growl into the vox. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the warrior from the Steel Brethren stalking forwards. Periphetes was coming to understand his position in the Third Grand Company.
He was a utility to be harnessed and used, nothing more. He was twice a traitor, leaving the Legion with the other apostates of the Steel Brethren, then abandoning the other renegades. There was no reconciliation waiting for the prodigal Space Marine. He was a dog running with wolves and the least mistake would see the pack turn on him.
‘Brother Turu, provide cover for Periphetes,’ Uzraal ordered. ‘The rest of you form up on me.’
Following Periphetes’ lead, the Iron Warriors continued down the devastated boulevard. Rhodaan looked back and watched as Cornak followed behind the other Space Marines. Though the sorcerer maintained a good pace Rhodaan still noticed the way he used his staff to support himself. A pretence of infirmity or actual injury? If the former, then to what purpose? If the latter, then from what cause? The psychic assault? Cornak had boasted of his arcane powers often enough on Castellax, displayed abilities that even Rhodaan grudgingly had to concede as being impressive. If there was some enemy psyker who could inflict such a wound on the sorcerer then their mission here might pose some actual risk.
Rhodaan was still uncertain of Cornak. Sorcerers were rare enough among the Space Marines of the IV Legion, and Cornak was even more of an enigma. He had all the traits of an Iron Warrior, all the knowledge of one who had fought the Long War. He spoke of Olympia only as one who’d walked the ground of their home world could and vividly he described the great tank battles of Tallarn. Yet still there was something there that provoked Rhodaan, something he felt but couldn’t describe. Perhaps it was the way Cornak always knew the right thing to say to allay the warsmith’s doubts, just enough prophecy to show the path ahead but not what lay around the corner.
The rattle of a heavy bolter rumbled down the street followed by the snarl of petrochem engines. Periphetes snarled an alert to the Iron Warriors across the vox. ‘Warsmith, the intersection ahead contested. Soldiers against some manner of irregulars.’
‘If they’re in our way, it matters little who they are,’ Rhodaan voxed back. At his command the other Iron Warriors advanced to the corner beyond which the sounds of gunfire emanated. Ahead was a broad intersection, slabs of rockcrete from the buildings around it strewn about the roadway. Between the debris was the damaged bulk of a tan-coloured Taurox, one of its wheels shorn from its axle. A second Taurox was nearby, partly protected by a jumbled pile of rubble. Around the two transports, a number of flesh in the same uniforms as those he’d seen at the spaceport were trying to fend off the attentions of the ‘irregulars’ Periphetes had cited.
Screaming down the boulevard were a number of stretch-cars. The civilian machines had been crudely adapted to a more martial role with sheets of metal bolted to their chassis, covering windshield and wheel-wells. Cultists stood upon the running boards, their purple robes and crimson coveralls snapping in the wind as the vehicles roared down the street. Shots poured out from the motorcade at the embattled soldiers. Slug-throwers, shotguns, lasrifles, even the glowing discharge of a plasma pistol were fired at the troopers, felling several of them. The heavy bolter mounted to the top of the undamaged Taurox blasted away, pitting the side of one of the vehicles and sending it crashing into one of the piles of rubble.
The loss of one of their comrades wasn’t enough to fend off the motorcade. The surviving machines were soon turning about to make another pass against the trapped soldiers.
‘Engage the irregulars first,’ Rhodaan ordered his warriors. Gangers or rebels, they were the more mobile of the two forces and therefore required the more immediate attention.
As the motorcade came screeching towards the intersection, the Iron Warriors opened fire on the stretch-cars. Periphetes peppered the lead car with his bolter, punching holes through the improvised armour and pitching the shooters from the running boards. Gaos raked another with his autocannon, smashing the hood of the vehicle and causing it to flip over onto its roof. Turu shredded the scattered gunmen before they could recover from their violent discharge from the hurtling car.
‘Iron within! Iron without!’ The war cry thundered from the speakers in Uzraal’s helm as he joined the attack. The blast of his meltagun spilled across one of the oncoming stretch-cars, immolating it. The shooters clinging to the machine’s sides were vaporised, the car itself now a charred hulk that slammed into the vehicle Gaos had upset. The collision turned the blackened mass into a shower of slag that sprayed across the street.
Rhodaan added his own fire to that of his warriors, spraying the hostile motorcade with his bolt pistol, felling the gunmen on the running boards. He noted their distorted aspect, the deformities many of them sported. Rebels then. Some mutant cult that had risen up against the Imperial custodians and plunged Lubentina into a state of riot and confusion.
Against the pathetic flesh of Lubentina’s defenders, the mutants would have prevailed. Against Space Marines they amounted to little more than an annoyance. In less than a minute, the intersection was choked with the wreckage of seven vehicles and over fifty cultists.
The embattled soldiers added their fire to that of the Iron Warriors, trying to extricate themselves from the trap that had snared them. When the last of the stretch-cars was turned into a smouldering wreck and only dead mutants littered the street, the men emerged from the cover they’d taken. Cheers of awed gratitude rose from many of them as they thanked their deliverers.
Rhodaan didn’t allow them the opportunity to learn their mistake. A burst from his pistol tore open the officer who commanded the bedraggled force, hurling his body against the side of the immobile Taurox. Rounds from Gaos’ autocannon ripped through the other Taurox, demolishing its heavy bolter before the weapon could be turned on the Iron Warriors. The brutally efficient fire of the other Space Marines finished most of the soldiers before they could even think of diving to cover. The few who did only delayed the inevitable by a handful of seconds.
‘Uzraal, auspex,’ Rhodaan snapped the order.
Uzraal drew away from the smouldering mess of a human soldier and pulled the auspex from its holster. ‘Our current position is twenty-three hundred metres from the objective.’
‘Then your warriors should be moving,’ Rhodaan stated, ‘not dawdling over carrion.’
As the Iron Warriors started to march away the growl of massive engines and the rumble of heavy machinery announced a new threat. Roaring down the left branch of the intersection, a huge truck charged into view. A heavy stubber mounted in the armoured cab chugged away as the giant vehicle plunged straight into the twisted wreckage of the stretch-cars. The axe-like dozer blade riveted to the truck’s hood smashed into the destroyed vehicles, knocking them aside as though they were toys.
A few of the Iron Warriors opened up on the Goliath Rockgrinder, trying to smash the engine or kill the driver with their bolters. The slabs of ferrocrete and metal plates with which the huge mining truck’s chassis had been reinforced were too thick to penetrate from any great distance. Even a blast from Uzraal’s meltagun only slowed the machine, forcing it to drag the disfigured residue left by the immolating beam.
Rhodaan rushed straight towards the oncoming Goliath. Uzraal’s shot had done more than slow the truck. The melted armour had washed across the heavy bolter, locking the weapon in a fixed position and restricting its angle of attack. There was a blind spot, a weakness that the warsmith seized. He might be commander of the Third Grand Company now, but the habits of millennia serving as captain of a Raptor assault company were never far from his calculations.
Rhodaan sprang at the Goliath, leaping up onto its still smoking hood. The magnetic clamps in the boots of his power armour took hold, maintaining his footing as he stood on top of the speeding truck. He holstered his bolt pistol and drew the fat-bladed chainsword from his belt. The saw-blade churned into murderous life as he activated it. Leaning down towards the melted confusion of armour and chassis Rhodaan brought the weapon slashing across the Goliath’s cab. The shriek of tortured metal rang out as the chainsword bi
t into the Goliath, sparks and shreds of armour flying as he worried the blade back and forth, gouging a hole in the armour.
The Goliath lurched violently as Rhodaan’s attack caused a section of the melted armour to shear off, reducing the drag upon the truck. The Space Marine scarcely noted the change in momentum, the clamps in his boots keeping him securely fixed to the chassis. A final twist of his chainsword and he was rewarded by a dim electrical glow, the red luminance of the truck’s instrumentation panel. A brutish visage with oversized mouth stared up at him with an expression that had both rage and horror in it. Before the cultist could decide which impulse to embrace, Rhodaan took the decision away from him, dropping a krak grenade into the hole he’d made.
Disengaging the magnetic clamps, Rhodaan dived off the Goliath’s hood an instant before the grenade detonated. Flame and shrapnel exploded from the cab. The now driverless truck turned sharply to the right, glancing off the facade of a building before crashing against a rockcrete pylon and slamming down on its side in a cloud of dust.
Rhodaan gave only a brief glance at the crashed machine. A second Goliath was roaring down the intersection, blasting away with a lascannon mounted to its roof.
‘Brother Gaos,’ Rhodaan spoke into the vox, ‘put an end to this nuisance.’
At the warsmith’s command, Gaos swung around, aiming his autocannon not at the oncoming trucks but at one of the huge columns that flanked the intersection. A burst from the Iron Warrior’s weapon ripped into the base of the obelisk, disintegrating its carefully constructed balance. With a rumbling shudder, the column frayed away from its base, pitching downwards into the street. Tonnes of stone slammed down into the leading Goliath, flattening much of the truck.