Word Bearers

by Anthony Reynolds

  The tracked units of the tech-guard unleashed the power of their arcane construction at the Chaos Marines as they backed away. The air crackled with energy as coruscating lightning leapt from humming bronze spheres to strike the foe. The ground was ripped up as bizarre weapons fired, causing great rents to rip along the ground, tossing the enemy into the air. Heavy, quad-barrelled cannons pumped fire into the foe, but the traitors, recognising the new threat, began to target the tracked units of the Mechanicus with missiles and other heavy weapons fire.

  Laron’s eyes flashed to the timer counting down in the corner of the head-up display in his helmet and he swore. The second wave of drop-troopers was about to be launched and the anti-aircraft fire from the palace had not yet been silenced. The first wave had been devastated and it looked as though the second would face a similar barrage.

  Time was running out.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Brigadier-General Havorn cursed as the pict-screen before him flickered, the detailed map-schematic shorting out. The Chimera bumped its occupants about as it rolled across the salt plain in the wake of the tech-guard cohorts. Sweat was dripping down Havorn’s face.

  Bestial roars and screaming mixed with hissing static blared out of the vox-unit suddenly, replacing the relayed chatter of the senior captains.

  ‘What the hell’s all that?’ Havorn snarled.

  ‘I don’t know, sir, but its been flooding the less powerful voxes for the past hundred metres or so,’ replied his adjutant. ‘I thought my set-up would be too powerful for it. Damn enemy’s jamming our comms somehow.’

  ‘Perfect. Looks like the rest of this war is going to be fought deaf, dumb and blind.’

  ‘Your officers are good men, sir,’ replied the man. ‘They know their orders.’

  ‘Move us up closer to the front, Kashar. I want to at least be able to see what the hell is going on.’

  ‘Is that wise, brigadier-general? You would be exposing yourself to unnecessary danger.’

  ‘What do you think is going to happen if we lose this battle, Kashar? We lose this battle and we are all dead men. Move us up closer. I want to be able to see the outcome with my own eyes.’

  Burias-Drak’shal hacked left and right, smashing the Skitarii out of his way with sweeps of his spiked icon. At the Coryphaus’s order he had remounted his Land Raider and led his warriors straight into the massed ranks of the enemy cohorts, meeting them within another of the slowly dispersing cloud walls. The vehicles had ploughed through the enemy ranks, crushing hundreds beneath their heavy tracks.

  The Rhinos disabled by the foe were left behind, the warrior-brothers within abandoned to their fate. They would kill many before they fell. It was an honour to die for the Legion.

  They had ridden deep into the heart of the enemy formation, until his Land Raider was finally brought to a halt, its hull pierced by countless melta-blasts, its tracks torn and ragged, and its engine reduced to molten metal.

  Even then, Burias-Drak’shal refused to be slowed, leading his coterie of warrior-brothers out of the ruined vehicle, roaring and screaming their battle-cries. He pulverised the enemy in his path, shrugging off countless wounds and gunshots that would have killed any other warrior-brother within the Host. The Word Bearers carved a bloody swathe through the Skitarii cohorts, urged ever onwards by the Icon Bearer, following the frenzied warrior deeper into the enemy formation. These were the regular troopers of the Adeptus Mechanicus, indentured warriors who had only minor augmetic enhancements: eye-piece targeters, altered neural pathways, enhanced lungs and such, and they died easily beneath the fury of the possessed warrior and his battle-brothers.

  Hissing ichor dripped from his wounds and his armour was cracked and blistering, yet Burias-Drak’shal continued on, ploughing through the enemy, bashing them out of his path. His warriors’ chainaxes rose and fell, and bolt pistols blasted as they followed behind him.

  Burias-Drak’shal blocked a swinging double-handed axe with the shaft of his icon and grabbed a hovering metallic tentacle attached to the red-robed Tech-Priest’s spine, pulling the adept towards him. He leant forwards, snarling as the priest stumbled, and ripped out his throat with a bite, tasting putrid oils and blood-replacement fluids in his mouth. Knocking the priest to the ground he continued to run, impaling a gun-servitor upon the point of the icon and hurling it into the air as its heavy bolter armament ripped chunks out of his shoulder pad.

  He saw armoured personnel carriers through the press of bodies up ahead and roared as he sensed that the prey was close, sprinting on with renewed vigour. With a flick of his talons he decapitated another foe, and smashed another out of his way with the return blow, a brutal backhand swing that almost ripped the head of another Skitarii from its shoulders.

  The fighting between the first and second tier was brutal and bloody. The daemon engines of the Word Bearers unleashed countless barrages of warp infused shells into the no man’s land, killing thousands. The Skitarii warriors marched in perfect unison into the guns of the Word Bearers protected behind the fortified bulwark of the second embankment and hundreds of them were torn apart by the concentrated fire.

  ‘Ancients of battle,’ roared the Warmonger, ‘be released from your shackles and kill once more in the name of Lorgar!’

  Thirty Dreadnoughts roared and screamed wordlessly, straining against the inscribed chains that bound them. The chains were suddenly released and the bloodthirsty machines, all semblance of their sanity having long abandoned them, were unleashed on the enemy as they pushed up the second tier.

  They surged over the parapet, their ancient weapons roaring and booming, and they slammed into the enemy, hurling them into the air with great sweeps of their power claws and piston-driven siege hammers. Multi-bladed power gauntlets scythed through the front ranks of the foe, cleaving men and Skitarii in half, and screaming chainfists the length of two men carved down through the bodies of others, throwing blood and chunks of flesh in every direction.

  Dreadnoughts stood atop the bulwark, missiles firing from their inbuilt weapon systems, detonating amongst the foe in fiery blasts. One Dreadnought, screaming insanely, turned its rapid firing autocannons upon power armoured warrior-brothers, his ability to distinguish between friend and foe lost in the madness of battle.

  The Warmonger strode towards the machine and struck it to the ground with one mighty sweep of its arm. It kicked and screamed madly as it tried to right itself, and the Warmonger unleashed the power of its guns into the sarcophagus casing of the Dreadnought, seeking to put an end to its struggles. Its kicking ceased and its screams became a gurgled hiss. A cadaverous, jawless head could be seen within the cracked sarcophagus, the skull malformed and covered with bony, spiny growths coated in sickly pus.

  ‘You are released from your bondage, warrior-brother,’ intoned the Warmonger before it turned its guns once more towards the numberless enemy swarming over the barricade.

  ‘Coryphaus, the smoke-wall is abating. The Ordinatus is come,’ said Bokkar.

  ‘What?’ growled Kol Badar. ‘The Mechanicus would never risk the war machine until its safety was assured.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it is advancing across the salt plain, my lord. It will be in range of the daemon engines within the minute and will be ready to fire upon the palace within ten.’

  ‘A curse upon them! Pull out from combat, Bokkar. Take a Thunderhawk and slow the damned thing down! Get the daemon engines to target it.’

  ‘As you wish, Coryphaus.’

  My lord Jarulek, it is done. The Daemonschage is ready.

  Good, my acolyte, Jarulek replied. Everything is set in motion. I will join you shortly.

  Jarulek opened his eyes from the deep trance. He sat in the restoration chamber, blinking against the thick, viscous liquid that he was immersed in. His arms were bare, the script-covered, pale and heavily muscled limbs pierced by dozens of pipes and needles, pumping him with biologics and serums. He had no wish for his underlings to realise just how taxing the creat
ion of the Gehemehnet had been on his system, but the last twelve hours in the tank, deep in a trance and communion with the higher powers, had rejuvenated him.

  The thick liquid evacuated from the chamber, sucked into gurgling pipes, and he sank to his feet. Chirumeks clustered around him, pulling free the tubes and pipes inserted into his veins and muscles, and he flexed his fingers. The time to rejoin the Host had come. It was mere hours until the alignment of planets took place, until the Gehemehnet awoke.

  Techno-Magos Darioq stood impassively upon the secondary gantry deck of the Ordinatus as heavy-calibre anti-aircraft batteries directed fire towards the Thunderhawk. The enemy’s barrages had been as nothing to the Ordinatus, the incoming ordnance soaked up by flashing void shields, and its return fire darkened the air, overloading the gunship’s shielding with ease.

  The critically damaged Thunderhawk turned towards the Ordinatus, its pilot clearly fighting with its controls to guide it towards the target. It passed through the giant vehicle’s void shields as its left wing tore loose, sending the gunship spinning, and the concentrated, servitor aimed quad-cannons ripped the hull apart, tearing the bulky aircraft in two. The rear half was engulfed in flames and exploded as the fire reached its fuel lines. The front half of the gunship fell from the sky, plummeting towards the Ordinatus, propelled by its velocity and the force of the explosion.

  Techno-Magos Darioq calculated the trajectory and velocity of the incoming debris from his position and stood stone still as it slammed into the upper deck above. The metal grid was smashed asunder by the massive incoming weight and it skimmed along the metal, raising a shower of sparks as it ploughed through barricades and crane-structures. It screeched through one of the cannon batteries, instantly crushing a pair of ogryn servitor loaders, before careening off the edge and falling to the secondary gantry where Darioq stood.

  The front section of the Thunderhawk screeched across the metal latticework towards him, but he did not move, and it ground to a halt just metres from him, as he had calculated.

  Servitors rolled forwards on tracked units, dousing the flames with foam.

  ‘Life signs remain,’ said Darioq as he scanned the Thunderhawk, and the servitors retreated from the wreckage instantly. Heavy combat servitors rolled forwards, weapons raised, scanning for the enemy.

  Red-armoured Chaos Marines emerged from the flames and the servitors fired upon the survivors. Several of the servitors were ripped apart by bolt fire, but others rolled forwards even as their fallen comrades were dragged aside by tentacled scavenger servitors for re-manufacture.

  Darioq’s four servo arms unfolded like the legs of a gigantic spider, the weapons systems built into their design humming into activation. Four of the enemy warriors were ripped apart by the fire from his potent weaponry.

  With a roar, a bulky shape emerged from the wreckage, smashing through twisted, burning metal. Flaming promethium from this warrior’s heavy weapon system engulfed the servitors, turning their flesh to liquid and detonating their ammunition drums.

  Bokkar roared as he smashed his way towards the magos. Plasma pierced the reinforced plasteel plating of his Terminator armour and heavy bolt-rounds tore through his chest plate.

  He unleashed the fury of his heavy flamer and roaring promethium engulfed the magos, hiding him from view. As the inferno dissipated, Bokkar could see that the flames had washed harmlessly over a bubble of protective energy surrounding the cursed Mechanicus priest, and he powered forwards, intent on smashing the magos apart with the force of his chainfist.

  Bokkar stepped within the boundaries of the tech-priest’s protective field and swung his chainfist around in a murderous arc. The blow never landed, as one of the servo-arms, hanging over the magos’s shoulder like the barbed tail of a scorpion, snapped out and grabbed his arm, halting it mid-swing.

  The servo-arm over the other shoulder grabbed his other arm, and he felt his blessed Terminator armour crack beneath the immense pressure that the whining arms exerted. The servo arms pulled out to each side sharply and both of Bokkar’s arms were ripped from his body, spraying blood out in both directions.

  He stared down dumbly at his armless torso and was cut in half by the magos’s swinging power halberd, the cogged blade hacking through his midsection. He fell to the metal lattice floor.

  He had failed his Coryphaus, failed his Legion and only damnation awaited him.

  The air turned electric as the massive plasma reactors roared to full power in readiness to fire. Fashioned from the same STC templates from which the grand Ordinatus Mars was constructed, the giant weapon’s humming increased to painful decibels as it drew the reactors’ energy into its power drums.

  The pitch of the weapon rose beyond that of human hearing and the entire colossal structure of the Ordinatus began to shudder.

  ‘Dispose of this in the inferno chambers,’ said Darioq as he dropped the severed arms of the traitor Terminator beside the severed torso. The armour had been constructed by Mechanicus Forge Worlds over ten thousand years ago and he was loathe to destroy such a revered piece of artifice, but the enemy had long tainted it with its corruption.

  He registered the rising pitch of the sonic destructor cannon, and reran the trajectory algorithms. Satisfied, he waited until the warning beacon began to flash within his inner systems, indicating that the Ordinatus was ready.

  ‘Targeting locked, magos,’ said the mechanised voice of one of his Tech-Priest subordinates.

  ‘Initiate firing sequence,’ Darioq intoned.

  The palace that had stood upon Tanakreg since it was populated two thousand years previously shuddered as the focused sonic beams ripped through it, shattering its structure at a molecular level. Fully three kilometres long from one end of the structure to the other, and rising hundreds of metres above the low-lying salt plains, the structure began to vibrate as its rocky substructure was rent with hundreds of cracking faults and weaknesses.

  One section of the palace collapsed with a thundering roar that echoed across the battlefield as the cliff walls beneath it gave way. The fortified battlements atop the sprawling defensive structure were shattered and the anti-aircraft turrets and batteries ripped from their plascrete housings as more of the palace collapsed.

  The whole mountainous outcrop from which the palace was carved disappeared beneath a rising cloud, and the thunder of its collapse made the earth beneath the feet of the battling armies shudder. The potent guns of the palace were silenced as the entire structure smashed to the ground.

  A subterranean explosion rocked the earth and Darioq’s delicate sensors picked up the faint hint of radiation as the plasma reactor buried deep beneath the ground was breached. A secondary subterranean explosion roared as the palace settled, and rock and debris was hurled hundreds of metres into the air.

  A shockwave rippled out from the detonating plasma reactor, hurling tanks and men into the air as it whipped across the land before its power was spent.

  The enemy’s giant tower shook, dried mortar cracking and slipping from between its massive stone bricks, and a shudder ran up its length. Yet, denying the laws of the physical universe, it remained standing.

  ‘What in the Emperor’s holy name was that?’ asked Havorn as the Chimera ground to a halt. He scrambled out of the command tank, his blinking advisors and adjutant at his side, and the ever-present bulk of his ogryn bodyguard behind him.

  Putting his magnoculars to his eyes, he saw the rising dust cloud where a moment before the towering presence of the palace had been located.

  ‘Emperor be praised,’ he exclaimed.

  He laughed out loud in surprise and astonishment.

  ‘When’s our second wave of drop-troopers inbound?’

  ‘Now sir, they should be falling as we speak,’ answered his comms officer, who had been staring blankly at his useless machines since his vox communication had been silenced.

  ‘And now they are safe from the wretched fire from those air turrets,’ exclaimed Havorn’s young
adjutant. ‘This is a good day for the Imperium indeed! Victory is assured!’

  ‘Victory is never assured,’ said Havorn as his eyes fell on the red-armoured Chaos Marines fighting their way free of the tech-guard cohorts. His augmented, ogryn bodyguard growled menacingly and took a step in front of the brigadier-general.

  ‘Quick, sir!’ said his adjutant, urgently.

  ‘We have not the time,’ said Havorn flatly, seeing the enemy carve a bloody exit from the mass of bodies and begin hurtling across the salt plain towards them. He pulled his gold-rimmed plasma pistol from his holster.

  His entourage raised their weapons and sprayed the approaching warriors with gunfire. The ogryn roared as it planted its heavy feet and empty shells streamed from its ripper gun as it fired the weapon wildly. The Chimera behind them rotated its turret and multi-laser fire peppered the traitors, cutting several of them down. Only six Chaos Marines reached the brigadier-general’s command group, but it was enough.

  The first Chaos Marine ducked under the ogryn’s heavy swinging arm and leapt forwards, smashing its tall, spiked icon into the head of Havorn’s adjutant, pulverising his skull.

  A burst of fire tore apart another of Havorn’s men and the brigadier-general fired his plasma pistol in response, knocking back a chainsword wielding foe as the shot took him in the shoulder. He fired again quickly and despatched the traitor, streaming plasma engulfing his helmet.

  This was the end, he thought. An ignominious end to his thirty-seven years within the Imperial Guard, hacked apart by brutal warriors behind his battle lines.

  ‘Damn you, you traitorous whoresons!’ he muttered and fired his pistol twice in quick succession, felling another of the two and half metre behemoths.

  Two more of his entourage were hacked down and he backed further away.

  He saw the loyal ogryn fall to the ground with a bestial roar. He wasn’t a sentimental man by any stretch, but he felt pain as his faithful bodyguard fell to the ground, coughing blood from his lungs.