Again, he tried to raise anyone within the fortress by vox. Again, he met with silence. He switched channels, attempting to contact Captain Dzansk.
He heard nothing but static.
‘Keritraeus,’ he voxed. ‘Are you in position?’
‘Almost, lieutenant,’ came the Librarian’s reply. ‘They mined the transitway and packed the buildings with Plague Marines. Pride of Talassar took some damage pushing around their flank, but the combined fire of the Repulsors and the Dreadnoughts is too much for them. They are falling back, and we will be in position in less than a minute.’
‘Make it sooner. If we haven’t heard from Sergeant Marcus by then, we–’
Cassian was interrupted by a flashing priority rune in his peripheral vision.
He blink-clicked it, and felt relief as he heard Sergeant Marcus’ voice.
‘Lieutenant, this is Marcus, do you read?’
‘Go ahead, sergeant,’ said Cassian.
‘We were delayed, brother-lieutenant. We had to cut through a bulkhead that wasn’t on the maps. Then, upon emerging into the cloisters, we came under heavy fire.’
‘Fire?’ exclaimed Cassian. ‘Have the enemy gained the fortress already?’
‘Negative,’ said Marcus. ‘ Lieutenant, everyone’s dead. The fortress… Some sort of plague has spread here. The garrison have been rotting for days.’
‘Then the gunfire…?’
‘Automated servitor protocols. I lost Brother Archimaeus to them before we were able to reach the overseer shrine and repurpose the guns.’
‘Primarch’s blood,’ cursed Cassian. ‘If plague has spread within the walls, then the astropathic choir is no more. We can’t contact the crusade.’
‘No sign of any dead astropaths yet, my lord. And we’ve only seen part of the outer cloisters – it is possible that there are survivors deeper within, quarantined against the contagions.’
‘Do we proceed?’ asked Keritraeus. ‘I’m in position, but I can’t hold here long.’
‘We proceed,’ said Cassian. ‘There is still hope. The Emperor would not abandon us so. Besides, if all else fails, we can use the fortress as a strongpoint while we plan our next move.’
And, whispered a traitorous thought in his mind, she said you would live to fight for Yme’Loc…
The voice of Chaplain Dematris came over the vox, addressing the entire
strike force. ‘With zeal and determination, we shall overcome the works of these heretics,’ he bellowed. ‘Believe in your primarch and the Emperor!
Make their strength yours! Strike now for Macragge and the Golden Throne!’
Keritraeus stormed out from cover with his force staff held high. His eyes flashed with power as he summoned the might of the empyrean, then unleashed it in a searing column of flame. The psychic blast leapt up the flank of the rubble mound and detonated at its peak. Blazing Plague Marines tumbled from behind improvised barricades; he snatched one up with the power of his mind, crushing the heretic’s armour before hurling his mangled body at two of his blazing comrades.
To the Librarian’s right, the two Repulsor tanks thundered forwards on pummelling cushions of grav-energy. They swept up the rubble, pounding it flat as they unleashed hails of bolts, shells and las-blasts. The Plague Marines guarding the enemy’s left flank fired back, but several of their number burst messily under the Repulsors’ combined fire, while others were left reeling as limbs were blown off and torsos torn open.
To Keritraeus’ left, the strike force’s two Redemptor Dreadnoughts advanced, servo-motors whining and generators roaring as they climbed the rubble slope. Brother Marius’ onslaught cannon screamed as it spat streams of fire into the Death Guard, while Brother Indomator’s macro plasma incinerator glowed and vented steam as it fired again and again.
‘Forward!’ ordered Keritraeus, gathering warp energies and using them to leap high into the air and sweep down atop the traitors’ blazing position. ‘Do not relent!’
Death Guard lumbered along the top of the rubble ridge, bringing their guns to bear against the Ultramarines’ flanking force. Blight-ridden projectiles rained down, chewing a blackened crater in Brother Marius’ sarcophagus and stripping the las-talon from Maximus’ Revenge.
A sudden storm of bolt rifle fire engulfed the traitors as, several hundred yards away, Cassian pushed his squads up in the centre. In their urgency to halt the flank attack, the Plague Marines had allowed themselves to be silhouetted atop the ridge. The Intercessors made them pay for their error, bolt shells and grenades blasting filthy chunks from the Death Guard. Some of the traitors fell dead. Others stubbornly fired back.
‘Be advised,’ came Sergeant Marcus’ voice over the vox. ‘The plague
mutant numbers between you and the walls are thinning. We are repurposing half the wall guns to target the Death Guard.’
Keritraeus reached for the energies of the warp again, but snatched his mind back as he felt dark power surging beyond the veil. The warding circuits in his psychic hood glowed, and he let out a relieved breath as the danger passed. Conjuring psychic powers was dangerous at the best of times, risking the attention of hungry warp entities that sought to possess or consume mortal minds; now, with the empyrean churning with amassed ritual energies, it was hazardous in the extreme.
Still, he stopped for a moment, brow creased as he reached tentatively out with his mind.
‘Something…’ he muttered, questing with his senses.
There.
Keritraeus keyed his vox.
‘Cassian,’ he said. ‘The warp grows wrathful.’
‘More so?’ asked Cassian.
‘More so,’ echoed Keritraeus. ‘I sense malefic entities gathering to the slaughter. Whether this is what the heretics intended or no, it bodes ill for us if these warp predators pierce the veil.’
‘Understood. Their line is about to break.’
Ahead, Keritraeus saw the Aggressors of Squad Doras crest the other flank of the rubble rise. Their boltstorm gauntlets roared, spitting out a hail of fire that drove the Death Guard back and sent several of their number crashing to the ground.
Figures moved amidst a ruin at the centre of the Death Guard line.
Keritraeus saw the glint of light on tainted glass and drew breath to shout a warning.
Too late.
A hail of bulbous spheres sailed through the air, blight grenades plucked from the bone spines of a Death Guard alchemist and hurled by his comrades.
The spheres smashed down upon Squad Doras, drenching the Aggressors in
diseased slime. The Ultramarines roared in pain and shock as their flesh blistered and rotted, foul buboes rising and bursting across their bodies even as their armour rusted and corroded.
One by one, Squad Doras staggered and fell.
Aghast, Keritraeus summoned a surge of energy with which to exact
revenge, but the traitors were already gone, using the Ultramarines’ moment of horrified distraction to fall back.
‘The way is open,’ voxed Lieutenant Cassian. ‘But at a price. For our fallen battle-brothers, advance.’
Lord Gurloch stomped through the rain, his grip flexing and tightening upon the haft of his plaguereaper. His good cheer had evaporated, leaving a scummy film of anger in its wake. The Cadians had delayed him far longer than he had expected, and injured him sorely. His chest was rent and mangled, and the faceplate of his helm had cracked to reveal part of his pox-raddled face and one yellowed eye. The wounds done to his body by the Cadian captain’s grenades were closing as his flesh gouted layers of pus and blubber, but he could feel the ache of shrapnel still buried deep within him.
Blorthos was dead, and two of his Witherlings wounded beyond the abilities of their god-given gifts to heal. The Terminator champion had foreseen the danger at the last second, wrenching the Cadian from Gurloch’s grip just as the detonations triggered. Gurloch intended to ensure that the loyalists paid dearly for his death.
‘Lord…’ came Thrax’s voi
ce over the vox. ‘Our position… is overrun. They have… retrained the fortress’ guns.’
Gurloch’s foul mood darkened further.
‘Rot them all,’ he snarled. ‘Have they contacted the garrison? Do people still live within the fortress?’
‘Unclear…’
‘Thrax, do not let them through the fortress gates. Wringing misery and suffering from a human garrison before striking the killing blow, that is one thing. But attempting to overthrow such a fastness when Space Marines hold the walls? No – they may be weak loyalists, but even so they could sterilise the entire ritual.’
‘We may… not be able…to stop them… They have… numbers…
momentum… Our casualties are heavy and our position… poor.’
Gurloch stared through the rain towards the fortress, still a mile ahead. He looked around at the trudging advance of his warriors, relentless but far from swift. A handful of daemonically powered bloat-drones thrummed along in their midst, their rusted turbines droning like giant flies’ wings.
‘The drones could reach you in time,’ he said.
‘ I doubt… they would be enough, ’ replied Thrax, breaking off for a moment as gunfire roared and explosions thundered. ‘ I am sorry… lord.’
‘Save your apologies – they’ll sicken no one. Just make their advance as costly as you can, Thrax. I will do the rest.’
Gurloch cut the vox-link, switching channels to address the trio of Death Guard sorcerers that served his forces. He disliked the muttering plaguecasters intensely, a trait he had inherited from Primarch Mortarion himself. He dealt with the plague witches only when he had to.
Now was such a time.
‘Noxgol, Shunngh, Scrofule,’ he said. ‘Heed the words of your lord.’
A chorus of replies came back to him: one voice droning, another wheezing, another sing-song and completely insane.
‘The suffering of this world has been magnificent,’ said Gurloch. ‘Much misery has gathered beyond the veil for our grand purpose. But if we wish to secure victory, then a little of Nurgle’s beneficence must be vomited forth.’
‘You wish us to open the Garden gates, my lord?’ asked Scrofule.
‘A mere crack – sufficient just to bog the enemy down and stop them from gaining sanctuary within the fortress.’
‘You ask much, lord,’ said Shunngh breathlessly. ‘The daemons of great Nurgle are no mere foot soldiers, for you to command at will. Once the way is open, they may force it wider. It could mean our souls to deny them.’
‘There are three of you,’ replied Gurloch scornfully. ‘A tri-lobe. Surely enough to do as I ask. Open the way, and retain control. I care not what it costs you, but understand this – if you throw the floodgates wide and waste the great bounty we have harvested here, then whatever torments you can imagine, I will show you far worse.’
His sorcerers chorused their assent, and Gurloch dismissed them with a thought. Ahead he could hear the clangour of battle, growing closer by the moment. Overhead the clouds roiled and churned like a dying man’s guts.
Victory here had been assured until the arrival of the damned Ultramarines, and Gurloch saw only too clearly that his own complacency had played its part in allowing them to upset his plans. He saw, also, that what his sorcerers said was true: tapping the powers of the warp could result in a swift and overwhelming victory here, but at the cost of all that he sought to achieve.
Gurloch had fought the Long War for ten thousand years, and he had not risen to lordship in that time by avoiding risk. He had faith, deep and
festering. He knew that Nurgle would smile upon his endeavours. He had only to be courageous, and true to his purpose, and victory would be his.
Gurloch felt his skin crawl as though touched by a million twitching flies’
wings. Thunder rumbled like the malevolent chuckle of a dark god, and emerald lightning danced through the clouds.
Cassian vaulted a toppled pillar and landed in the processional, barely a hundred yards from the fortress gates. He fired his bolt rifle from the hip, mowing down a gaggle of plague mutants, then drove his blade point first through the helm of a Plague Marine.
‘With me!’ he roared, his vox-amplified voice echoing over the battle.
‘Ultramar! Ultramar!’
Cassian’s battle-brothers surged around him, driving hard for the gates. The fortress loomed above them, a huge dark presence backlit by fierce green lightning. Its emplaced wall guns thundered, chewing lines of explosions through milling mutants and punching Plague Marines from their feet. Void shields thrummed, forming a protective dome that the loyalists now fought beneath.
The enemy still fought back, but it was a last gasp of defiance, nothing more. Plague Marines had dug themselves into the blasted ruins of hab-blocks lining the roadway, attempting to shoot at the Ultramarines while avoiding return fire from both in front and behind. It was not an enviable position, nor one that even the tenacious Death Guard could hold for long.
‘Marcus,’ voxed Cassian. ‘It is time. Open the gates.’
‘Understood, brother-lieutenant.’
A choral chime boomed out across the ruined city, and with a rumble of mighty engines the massive gates of the astropathic fortress began to swing open. As the gap between the slabs of adamantium widened, Cassian saw a sub-cloister beyond them, flanked by servitor guns and leading through to another set of gates beyond.
‘Truly, the architects of this place meant for their charges to remain safe,’
commented Dematris.
‘Let us hope that – against all odds – they were successful,’ said Cassian, gunning down another plague mutant.
The moment the gates were wide enough, Marcus’ Reivers burst forth to join the fight. Now that stealth was no longer required, they entered battle as
Guilliman intended, their skull masks vox-amplifying their war cries into terrifying roars and their bolt carbines blazing. They pelted a band of Plague Marines with stun grenades, sending the traitors reeling as their auto-senses were overloaded by modulating blasts of light, sound and spiritual chaff.
Cassian charged up the roadway, leading his brothers to link up with Marcus’ warriors. Ahead of him, a twisted Death Guard alchemist emerged from amongst the ruins. The figure hurled a bloated projectile at Cassian, some kind of severed and stitched-up head. The lieutenant threw himself aside, and the projectile burst against the roadway where he had been. Slime sprayed, chewing deep holes in the ferrocrete.
Cassian rose smoothly into a firing crouch and put three bolt-rounds into the alchemist’s helm from twenty yards. The Plague Marine convulsed as his head deformed then detonated, much like the disgusting weapons he had flung at Cassian and his battle-brothers. His carcass slumped, shattering the last of the alembics on his back and engulfing the Plague Marines in a cloud of such virulent foulness that even they could not withstand it.
‘Victory!’ Cassian roared. ‘We have victory! Brothers, smash the last of them aside. Make for the gates!’
‘Lieutenant,’ said Keritraeus, and Cassian was pulled up short by the pain and alarm he heard. He glanced left to see the Librarian staggering and clutching his temples. His psychic hood was glowing brightly, wisps of smoke rising from its circuits.
‘Something is coming,’ said Keritraeus. The next instant, green lightning stabbed down from the heavens, a searing volley that struck again and again.
All through the ruins, foul green smoke began to billow up from wherever the lightning struck.
‘Move,’ ordered Cassian. ‘Get to sanctuary, now!’
But even as he gave the order, he saw that it was too late. The lightning speared down amidst Marcus’ Reivers, throwing them aside and raising billowing fumes that filled the gateway. Amidst the churning fog banks, Cassian saw cadaverous figures moving; he heard the clang of rusted bells, the drone of bloated flies and the miserable chant of endless counting.
Cyclopic yellow eyes stared out at him as the things trudged forwards to
attack.
‘Daemons,’ said Keritraeus in grim resignation.
CHAPTER NINE
Daemons.
Anathema things, warp spawn formed from the unnatural energies of the empyrean and given sentience by the Dark Gods. They were the hellish get of the Emperor’s ultimate foes, and for that, Dematris hated them more than all the traitors in the galaxy.
He hefted his crozius arcanum, checked the load on his absolvor bolt pistol and prepared to smite these unholy monsters in the Emperor’s name.
‘Dematris, Keritraeus,’ shouted Cassian. ‘We have to get inside the fortress.
Shipmaster Aethor reports the main Death Guard force closing from the east.
They’ll be on us in moments. We can’t let these abominations stop us when we’re so close to victory.’
‘Understood,’ barked Dematris. ‘I shall lead our brothers in a push on the gate.’
‘We cannot risk committing our full force to this,’ said Cassian. ‘We would be exposed to attack from the rear. I will retain a force of our brothers and block the road.’
‘I will join you, lieutenant,’ said Keritraeus. ‘The foe wields fell sorcery –
you will need my protection.’
‘In the name of the primarch then,’ said Dematris.
‘And of the Emperor,’ replied Cassian.
Dematris advanced up the processional towards the fortress gates. Plague-mutant corpses formed smouldering hillocks all around him, and unclean things were squirming out of the charnel heaps like maggots.
He could see what remained of Squad Marcus fighting furiously against the foul daemons that now surrounded them. The things were bloated monsters,
their sloughing flesh pale and rotted, their faces ghastly masks of pus and buboes each boasting a single eye and a single horn. They clutched blades of rusted iron that they swung in ponderous arcs, while around them the air boiled with flies and plague spores.
‘Aggressors, Inceptors, Brother Indomator – with me!’ cried Dematris, his voice a vox-amplified roar. ‘The enemy reveal themselves in all their foulness, yet these heretical filth-creatures are no match for the true defenders of humanity. Gather your hate! Gather your faith! These worthless things can withstand neither!’
Crusade & Other Stories - Dan Abnett Et Al. Page 9