The movement of so many colossal weapons could not go unnoticed, and the Imperial gunners bent their every effort into stopping them, but the Iron Warriors had done their work well. Where the covered ways were breached, battalions of slaves and bulldozers rushed forward to repair the damage and level the roadway. Where there was any danger of the Imperial defenders zeroing in on the artillery pieces, Adept Cycerin assigned extra firepower to suppress them. After a punishing five-hour journey, all six guns reached their battery positions without suffering any damage.
A mix of high-energy conversion beamers, conventional, direct-firing macro-cannons and mobile laser drills, the war machines went to work on the base of the Gauntlet Bastions with a vengeance. Using the wall’s mass against it, the conversion beamers blew open crater after crater in the structure, while the laser drills sliced through adamantium rebars with horrifying ease. A booming rumble, like distant thunder, signalled the first collapse, and a wide crack split the edge of the leftmost bastion, snaking violently from the base of the wall to the rampart in a matter of seconds. At the top, men scrambled to flee the disintegrating wall, but it was too late for many of them. Tank-sized chunks of rock and compacted stone tumbled down, carrying hundreds of men to their doom as the rubble crashed to the ground in a rain of debris.
Billowing clouds of smoke drifted over the Iron Warriors’ position and within moments it was clear that a practicable breach had been achieved. A vast section of the bastion had collapsed, spilling a sloping ramp of craggy rock and stone into the ditch before it.
The Rhino slammed down on the rock with a thunderous crack, and Honsou held onto the stanchion beside his head as the impact threatened to tear him from the bench seat. Acrid fumes filled the interior of the vehicle and red light from the driver’s compartment flickered through the grille that separated it from the troops.
He could hear the booming reports of artillery and the snapping fizz of lasers. Shrapnel and rock pellets pinged from the hull in a constant rain. Any normal soldier would fear venturing out into such a maelstrom of violence, but Honsou relished it. This was where he was meant to be, in the thick of the fighting, winning back the victory Horus Lupercal had let slip from his grip one body at a time.
No doubt Vaanes would have tried to talk him out of spearheading the assault, whereas Grendel and Etassay were only too happy for him to lead from the front. His death could only advance their prospects, and Grendel practically shoved him to the Rhino when the time came to launch the assault. Far from letting Honsou snatch all the glory, Grendel’s urge to kill and maim had seen him take his place in the storming of the breach also.
The Rhino suddenly rucked upwards, and hot exhaust fumes spurted into the troop compartment as it fought for traction in the loose rubble. Honsou pushed himself to his feet, and slid down the compartment to the heavy doors on the side of the Rhino. He hammered the door release, but something was preventing the doors from opening. He slammed his foot against the metal, tearing the door from its hinges and sending it tumbling down the slope of the breach.
Strobing light filled the Rhino’s interior and the noise of battle swelled to deafening proportions. A stray round spanked from the buckled frame and Honsou grinned at the thought of getting into the thick of such a furious battle.
‘Follow me!’ he shouted, leaping from the troop compartment.
A dozen Rhinos were staggered on the lower slopes of the breach, each with their engines revving furiously and belching thick geysers of exhaust smoke. Three were in flames, little more than blackened hulks, but Iron Warriors poured from the rest in a steeldust tide. Kaarja Salombar’s corsairs came with them, and a host of wiry kroot with rippling head spines vaulted from rock to rock as they climbed to the defenders above. Their skins exuded an oily residue that stank of burned fat and oil, but whatever it was it protected them from the vacuum and allowed them to breathe.
Behind Honsou, a pack of multi-legged battle machines, the daemon-engines of Votheer Tark, climbed over the rubble, vast iron pincer arms snapping and heavy rotary cannons spewing thousands of shells at the ramparts. Votheer Tark himself, a hybridised meld of automaton and flesh, rode into battle within an underslung pod attached to a spider-like creature with racks of mortars on its back like a nest of spines. Two of his machines exploded as they triggered buried mines, spraying razor fragments through the attacking horde. Another crashed down, its legs blown off as a volley of heavy fire from above tore into it.
Brutish ogre creatures, abhuman freaks gene-bred for strength and blind obedience, lumbered alongside the attackers. Each was armed with a fearsome chain grapple and enormous cannons torn from the wrecks of fighter craft.
Notha Etassay’s warriors moved over the rubble as though it were no more an inconvenience to them than a gentle slope. Their movements were supple and their swords shimmered in the flickering light of battle. Etassay’s crimson bodysuit and golden helmet were surely a magnet for any enemy sniper, but the androgynous blademaster seemed to float through the hail of fire as though it moved in slow motion. The mark of a great warrior was to find the space in which to kill, space in which you could deliver a killing blow, but to achieve that in the midst of gunfire was simply incredible.
Though this horde of renegades, corsairs and killers was a far cry from the glory of an Iron Warriors army, it was, nevertheless, a vast wedge of force aimed at the hole torn in the defences. Toramino would have scorned to fight alongside such a rabble, but he was dead and all Honsou cared was that this army fought and died at his command.
The axe sheathed at his back hungered for blood, but until he reached the crest of the breach, this was a fight for guns not blades. He racked the slide on his bolter and clambered uphill. The ground was loose shale and powdered rock, slippery underfoot, but he had climbed breaches in the face of determined resistance many times. Solid rounds and lasers flashed around him, ricocheting from stone and steel and armour in equal measure.
A heavy impact slammed into his chest and he grunted, knowing that only a bolter round would have the power to stop a Space Marine in his tracks. He looked up and saw a pair of blue armoured warriors atop a precariously balanced nub of rock.
Ultramarines!
He’d known this star fort was manned by Ventris’s Chapter, but to see them so close fanned a fire of anger in his heart that had been building ever since he’d left Medrengard. He pulled his own bolter hard to his shoulder and squeezed off a short burst. One of the warriors spun away from the wall, but Honsou already knew he hadn’t killed him.
‘On! Up!’ he shouted, slogging up the slope at the head of fifty Iron Warriors.
Withering fire sheeted from the walls above, streaking bolts of hard light and whickering trails of bullets that left spiral holes in the smoke. Fighters less well armoured than the Iron Warriors fell back, torn up by the weight of fire, and hissing, venting bodies littered the rubble slopes as their suits equalised pressure, spraying fans of blood into the air. Honsou felt the ground below him begin to shake and dropped into cover as the slope ahead of him heaved upwards before sinking down rapidly. A concussive blast erupted as a subterranean shell detonated and sent a plume of fire and rock skyward. Avalanches set off by the underground blasts cascaded downwards, carrying debris and bodies to the base of the wall.
Hundreds were dying, but with every passing moment, the attackers were gaining metre after metre of ground. Honsou pulled himself upright and climbed onwards.
Something bounced on the rocks towards him, and he threw himself flat as the heavy disc of a melta charge spun towards him. It struck a hand jutting from the fallen masonry and flew over his head, exploding with a shrieking bang of superheated air. Honsou looked over his shoulder to see one of the ogre creatures staring dumbly at the space where its arm used to be. The entire right side of its body was torn open and the fused ends of its ribs smoked as its boiled innards slopped from its ruined body.
It toppled slowly to the ground, as though confused as to why its strength
was fading. Its fellows seemed to find its death greatly amusing, and guffawed and bellowed as they ripped what ammunition that hadn’t been set off in the blast from its body.
More grenades followed the melta charge, and while the rubble made for excellent shrapnel, it also provided a great deal of protection and few were felled by these desperate measures. Honsou and his warrior squads dodged from cover to cover, always moving up and pausing for snap-fire opportunities whenever a target presented itself. He saw flashes of blue armour, but never clear enough for a shot. More underground blasts sent whole swathes of the rubble slope crashing downwards.
Thirty metres to his right, he saw Grendel, the warrior’s armour unmistakable amongst the other Iron Warriors. A vivid red plume flew from his horned helmet, making him look more like a berserker than an Iron Warrior. Honsou was reminded of Kroeger, the last Iron Warrior to tread the path of the Blood God, and where it had led. Grendel fired his melta gun at the ramparts, vaporising sections of stonework and men where they stood. The warrior’s enthusiasm for the slaughter was infections and Honsou found himself laughing as he broke from cover.
The crest of the breach was just above him, and he roared to see a line of warriors in the blue and gold of the Ultramarines march to claim it. Fourteen of them. Warriors in gleaming blue battle plate edged in midnight black trims. A medley of Imperial iconography, eagles, skulls and silver halos adorned their pauldrons, and their winged, crested helmets were absurd with needless decoration.
A trio of tracked units, each with a heavy gun equipped with four barrels, sat alongside the Ultramarines, their barrels red and smoking from such rapid firing. A multitude of warriors in hostile environment suits and blue surcoats fanned out behind them, a solid wall of men that stood between him and his prize.
‘It’ll take more than you to stop me,’ hissed Honsou, swinging his axe from its sheath at his back.
Cadaras Grendel fired his melta gun until it bled empty and hurled the weapon away. Unlike many warriors, he had no sentimental attachment to the gun. If they won, he might go back and get it. If they didn’t then it wouldn’t matter anyway. He drew his pistol and combat knife, a long shank of steel with a monomolecular blade. Grendel was a warrior who liked his killing up close and personal.
He saw Honsou scrambling to meet the Ultramarines and picked up his pace, vaulting a fallen column and joining a pack of blood-maddened abhumans resembling hugely inflated sacks of meat draped in all-enclosing armour and carrying crackling chain grapples. Straggling bands of Iron Warriors followed him, grim warriors in skull-masked visors and dull, metal plates of armour. The industrial yellow and black seemed so bare to him now, save where the surfaces were coated in blood.
Honsou’s warriors were almost at the crest of the breach, and as much as he wanted to be there too, he knew it was best to let the master of this army have his moment of glory.
And… if he happened to get killed achieving it, then so much the better.
Olantor marched in perfect lockstep with his brothers to the edge of the breach. To see so grievous a wound in the majestic structure horrified him. It seemed impossible that so mighty a defensive bulwark could fall, but if any foe could tear it asunder, it was the Iron Warriors. Tales of these brutally efficient siegemasters were legion, yet Olantor had never expected to face such a foe in a place like this.
His bolter bucked in his grip as he fired into the charging mass of warriors. He shot from the hip, for it was impossible to miss. A pair of warriors were punched from their feet, but a host of others rushed to take their place. It violated his very soul to see such an abominable horde, a horrifying mix of traitors from an age long thought consigned to legend, and the very worst dregs of the galaxy. Renegades, xenos, pirates and mercenaries all gathered under one banner of damnation.
A vile-skinned kroot sprang from the rocks towards him and he put a bolt through its skull. Coloured spines and brain blew out the back of its head and a gust of spraying air erupted from where the sealant gel enveloping its skin was breached.
‘Fire discipline!’ shouted Decimus. ‘Target the heavily armoured enemy first!’
Volley after volley of bolter fire boomed in perfect unison and more blood and vented oxygen sprayed from ruptured armour. On this battlefield, even the smallest wound could be fatal. Grenades sailed over his head, demolition charges, and even heavy boulders were pushed from the ramparts.
The Thunderfire cannons boomed once again, throwing up geysers of rock dust as they pummelled the slope of debris with powerful shockwaves. The horde was close enough that the air between both forces was thick with gunfire. Astartes armour was amongst the most powerful in existence, but it could only take so much.
Brother Tanicus went down, his leg hanging from his pelvis by stringy ropes of ruptured flesh. He shuddered as his armour fought to close the wound and the last of the leg was severed by the integrity seals. Tanicus fought from the ground, still firing his bolter at the oncoming enemy.
‘Tanicus!’ shouted Brother Braxus, moving to help the fallen warrior.
‘Hold your position, brother!’ shouted Olantor.
Streaming gouts of fire licked down the breach and Olantor looked up to see Interrogator Sibiya atop the overhanging stub of rampart. Her Saurians raked their melta-lances over the enemy ranks. Flames leapt briefly over the enemy warriors before the lack of oxygen killed them, but the instantaneous superheating melted through armour plates and flesh with a flash of molten metal. The preacher was still with her, still reciting his unheard mantra, but all Olantor could think of as he looked at Sibiya was the cold, dormant thing lying like a living bomb in her ship’s hold.
He shook off the distaste he felt for such things and emptied the last of his magazine into the oncoming enemy warriors. In an instant he saw that the enemy were close enough that bolters would be no use.
‘Switch weapons!’ shouted Olantor. ‘Swords and pistols!’
Each of his warriors smoothly slung their bolters and charged to their close combat loadout in an instant. Normal codex equipment for men such as these did not include such a fit of weapons, but Marneus Calgar had granted Brother Altarion special dispensation to equip the defenders as he saw necessary. As strange as it was, Olantor was grateful for that unheard of leeway in the codex.
‘For Macragge!’ cried Sergeant Decimus, and the cry was echoed by a thousand throats.
The instant before the two forces clashed, a booming, stentorian voice cut through the chatter on the vox-net.
Instantly, the Ultramarines parted as the towering and mighty, powerful and unstoppable form of Brother Altarion took position in the centre of their ranks. His monstrous hammer was raised and sheathed in flickering arcs of blue lightning, his assault cannon spinning at an incredible rate as he took aim down the breach.
Honsou saw the towering form of the Dreadnought as the Ultramarines parted before it. This close to such an armoured behemoth was not a healthy place to be and he dived to one side as its enormous cannon opened fire. A blazing plume of white light roared from the barrel and a rain of copper-jacketed shell casings sprayed from its ammo hopper.
Three Iron Warriors behind him vanished in a sparking explosion of metal, flesh and bone. Blitzing shells sawed through the ranks of warriors packed tightly below the lip of the breach and ripped into the hull of one of Votheer Tark’s battle-engines. The machine shrieked a squall of binary as it died, collapsing into a pile of twisted metal and flames.
Weapons fire spattered from the Dreadnought’s hide, bolter shells and lasrifles useless against its armoured plates. Heavier shells rocked it back on its thick legs, but like a statue of some ancient god, it refused to be moved.
Once more its heavy cannon roared and yet more of Honsou’s warriors were cut down. Two of the hulking ogre creatures were hit, losing limbs, but carrying on without them. One even managed to snag the Dreadnought’s granite glacis with
its chain grapple, but a tongue of superheated melta fire from above finally brought it down. The links melted, leaving the grapple hook embedded in the Dreadnought and the chain swinging at its side.
The tracked gun units fired again, and the slope heaved and groaned. Rock and rubble streamed downwards from the underground blasts, but few men were killed. Honsou shook his head. A host of enemy warriors before you and you waste your guns firing into the ground. It made no sense until you factored in the Ultramarines slavish devotion to a book ten thousand years out of date.
Grendel and Etassay dropped into cover beside him as the Dreadnought’s cannon shot up a pack of kroot warriors seeking to outflank the defenders. Grendel was tensed and ready to fight, his muscles coiled and needing to kill something with his bare hands. Etassay leaned against a fallen carving of a great eagle, its wings shorn and its head pocked with bullet impacts. Though his golden helm obscured his features, Honsou could tell Etassay was enjoying this assault immensely.
‘Wondrous, Honsou, simply wondrous!’ cried Etassay. ‘The horror! The violence and blood! I’ve never known the like. It almost makes the tedium of waiting for a breach worthwhile!’
‘We have to go forward!’ shouted Grendel, ignoring Etassay’s rapturous delirium.
‘You think I don’t know that?’ replied Honsou, jerking his axe blade in the direction of the Dreadnought. ‘We can’t until that thing’s taken out.’
‘So get it taken out!’ snarled Grendel, scraping his blade over his breastplate.
Honsou recognised the criticality of this moment. If the enemy could hold them here long enough, the fire and momentum of the charge would be lost and they would be slaughtered only metres from their goal. But to go forward prematurely would see them cut to pieces.
‘Tark!’ shouted Honsou. ‘Get your machines into that breach! Take out that bastard Dreadnought!’
A frothing mix of scrapcode burbled in his helmet, followed by a swirl of static and corrupt binaric hash.
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