Dark Apostle (word bearers)

by Anthony Reynolds

  Havorn banged on the top of the Chimera.

  'Go!' he shouted. 'Intercept them! And get some heavy support over here now!'

  The engine of the APC roared as the tank surged forward over the hard packed earth. The other Chimeras were already heading towards the foe, and Havorn saw one of them explode, oily, black smoke rising sharply above the orange conflagration.

  'Sir, you should come down here,' said Rachius from below, concern in his voice, but Havorn ignored him, instead grabbing the pistol-grip of the pintle-mounted storm bolter. He swung the powerful weapon in the direction of the Terminators and squeezed the trigger.

  Kol Badar roared as his combi-bolter barked fire at the enemy. He was in the middle of the foe's colonnade, surrounded, and he saw vehicles and soldiers rushing towards him from left and right. But the true target of his wrath stood before him: the massive Imperator Titan.

  Grand steps descended from arched gateways upon the foot of the immense war machine, and he strode towards them. Covering fire from reaper autocannons swept across the approaching vehicles and Skitarii units, and raking fire tore down the enemy infantry that ran across the salt packed rock to intercept their progress.

  Nothing would keep Kol Badar from his target, however, and he strode relentlessly forward through the increasing weight of incoming fire, driven on by steely determination and anger. The defensive batteries built into the Titan's leg bastion unleashed their wrath, engulfing the advancing Anointed, ripping through even mighty Terminator armour with the force of their detonations. Air bursting shells exploded overhead, scattering red-hot, scything shards of shrapnel down onto the warrior-brothers and Kol Badar hissed as a shard the length of a man's hand slammed into his helmet, cutting through his armour and piercing one of his eyes. Blood welled and congealed in the wound and he broke off the end of the piece of red-hot shrapnel with a swat of his power talon, leaving the tip embedded in his eye.

  Such a wound would not keep him from his prize and he roared wordlessly as he continued his relentless advance.

  Arched doors ten metres up the Titan's foot were thrown open and Skitarii warriors stepped out onto the steps, firing their inbuilt heavy weapons down into the terminators. Kol Badar aimed his combi-bolter into the throng of the enemy and strode on.

  Enemy Chimeras screeched to a halt and blue-grey armoured Guardsmen emerged, firing their lasguns into the mass of Terminators. Bolter fire ripped through the soft targets and heavy flamers roared as they engulfed swathes of them in deadly infernos. Combi-meltas hissed as they targeted incoming vehicles, and tanks were rendered into burning shells as they detonated, their crews screaming in pain as they died.

  A Chimera with arrays of aerials caught the Coryphaus's eye and he recognised it as belonging to an officer of high rank.

  'Take it down,' he ordered. Reaper autocannons swung around, spraying bullets from their twin barrels.

  Bolter shells struck Kol Badar, knocking him back a step, and he snarled and squeezed a burst of fire from his combi-bolter at the figure manning the pintle-mounted weapon, forcing him to duck back into the Chimera. He swung his heavy head back towards the target. Only twenty metres now. The Skitarii spilled steadily down off the steps of the Titan's foot as more emerged and others advanced around from the limb's three further assault ramps.

  'Keep on the target!' he roared, knowing that if the Anointed were held for too long, the Titan would simply walk away, leaving them horribly exposed.

  The Skitarii marched straight into the advancing clump of Terminator-armoured warriors, attempting to keep them away from their charge through sheer weight of numbers and the power of their guns. The steps were packed with the enemy and they unleashed a storm of fire upon the Anointed, each tech-warrior firing over the heads of their companions as they stepped slowly forwards.

  Rotating cannons tore through more of the Word Bearers, ripping through ancient plasteel plating and flensing flesh from bone.

  High above, steam and smoke was expelled sharply from pistons and locking mechanisms ground as they were released. Kol Badar recognised the signs of the Titan preparing to move.

  With a roar he smashed into the ranks of Skitarii, battering them out of his path with sweeps of his power claw and ripping through them with his combi-bolter on full-auto.

  'Forward, Anointed! For the glory of Lorgar!'

  The Chimera slewed to the side as it took heavy incoming fire and one of its tracks was ripped to tatters. Armour piercing rounds tore through the shell of the APC and two officers within slumped in their seats, their blood splashing the interior. Havorn slammed his fist onto the glowing rune-plate and the release valves of the assault hatch hissed as the ramp swung down. He was exiting the Chimera even as the ramp was still falling and he flicked his plasma pistol into life.

  'Sir, let us at least take the lead, since you seem set on this course,' said Rachius in his concerned voice.

  Havorn's ogryn bodyguard emerged from the confines of the Chimera and breathed deeply, its eyes narrowing. It stepped protectively in front of the brigadier-general, shielding him from fire with its muscled bulk.

  'We must stop the enemies from reaching the Titan! Why in the Emperor's name hasn't it moved yet?' Havorn shouted.

  'Our units are converging on them, sir. You do not need to enter the battle!'

  'They are coming too slowly,' shouted Havorn. 'We move, now!'

  With that, the Elysian commander pointed the way and the ogryn began loping towards the enemy who were climbing the stairs on the Titan's leg battlement.

  They were too late, Havorn thought. The Terminators were already past them and his body was old and slow. He cursed the debilities of age and pushed himself on. Fallen Elysians and Skitarii lay strewn across the ground, as well as the occasional bulky form of a fallen enemy. Few of them were truly dead and they lashed out, grabbing and killing any foe within their reach. Even at the point of death they were more than a match for a Guardsman.

  The ogryn raised its heavy ripper gun, a thick finger pulling the trigger. Empty shells scattered in its wake. It did not roar or bellow as it charged. Such base, animalistic behaviours had been erased from its simple brainpan, but no amount of augmetics could improve the aim of the ogryn and the bullets from its ripper gun sprayed the area, hitting nothing.

  Havorn snapped off a shot with his pistol, the streaming blue-white bolt of plasma dropping one of the Terminators.

  Bolter fire raked towards him, striking the hulking abhuman, who grimaced in pain. Chunks of flesh were torn from its arms and chest, but the three metre creature that dwarfed even the Terminators did not slow. It lowered a shoulder and smashed into one of the enemy, knocking it from its feet. Raising the butt of its heavy ripper gun, the ogryn began caving in the helmet of the fallen warrior, smashing it down onto the prone traitor again and again.

  Skitarii and Guardsmen were all around Havorn, filling the air with las-fire and high-velocity bolts. The traitors were on the steps and held a tight defensive formation. More than half of the bastards had been taken down, most from the devastation wrought by the Titan's cannons and the powerful weaponry of the elite tech-guard warriors. It would be but moments before they breached the blast doors that led into the Titan.

  'Take them down, men of Elysia!' he hollered, his steely, field parade voice carrying over the din of battle.

  Suddenly, victory was snatched away as the Titan raised its massive foot high up into the air, carrying with it the traitor Terminators and hundreds of tech-guard warriors still fighting upon the steps. Many of them were knocked off as the Exemplis raised its leg, falling ten metres to the valley floor as the foot was raised higher and higher.

  'Damn it!' swore Havorn.

  'We are through, Lord Coryphaus,' reported one his Anointed brethren. The chainfists had made short work of the blast doors that had sealed the entrance to the leg bastion, carving through the thick metal with a minimum of fuss.

  'Into the breach!' roared Kol Badar as he crushed the augmen
ted, semi-mechanical skull of a Skitarii warrior and hurled it over the edge as the Titan's leg continued to rise. At his command, the Anointed entered the Imperator class Titan.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Flames roared up the spiralling metal staircase, clearing the way. Two abreast, the Terminators had been climbing for what seemed like an age, assailed from above and below by an apparently never-ending stream of Skitarii warriors. Inbuilt defence turrets were stationed at every second level, their hard-wired servitor controllers built into the heavy wall panels of the interior staircase, and they swung their weaponry upon the intruders, filling the cloying, hot air with shells and gunsmoke.

  It was hard going, the Word Bearers forced to fight for every step of the mammoth climb up the interior of the Titan's lower leg. Kol Badar's destroyed eye, still with the shrapnel shard jutting from the socket, was throbbing in his head, but he pushed the sensation away as he stamped up the heavy, grilled stairway, blazing away with his combi-bolter.

  He was at the front of the line of Terminators, the heavy-flamer wielding Anointed warrior Bokkar at his side. Between the flames of his comrade and the bolts of his combi-weapon, few of the Skitarii could stand against them. Those few that survived were ripped apart by the warlord's power claws and hurled over the railing to fall down the open expanse in the centre of the spiralling stairwell to join a growing pile of sparking, shattered corpses.

  The resistance from above slackened. Clearly the last of the Skitarii had been neutralised, leaving just the inbuilt, servitor-guided sentry guns to hamper their progress. The going was unsteady as the heavy Titan foot smashed down into the ground with devastating force and rose once more into the air.

  Kol Badar allowed a pair of cult members wielding reaper autocannons to advance past him, for their powerful guns were able to rip through the armoured plating protecting the sentry guns far more efficiently than flame or bolt. It was a torturous task, for they had to advance up through a barrage of gunfire before they could get a clear shot at the servitor housed just beneath the turret, but time was of the essence.

  Up and up the Terminators wound, under constant, desperate attack from the Skitarii climbing behind them and the sentry turrets. Ammunition was running low, and with a blast of fiery promethium directed down over the open stairwell to melt the exposed flesh of a dozen enemy machine-warriors, the last of the heavy flamer reloads was expended. Even if they had not a bolt shell remaining, Kol Badar would fight on and succeed. He would die, with all his Anointed at his side, before he would allow the bitch of a Titan to best him once again. He would rip it apart piece by piece with his bare hands if need be.

  The noise of turning machinery became increasingly loud as the Terminators neared the Imperator's knee joint. Abruptly, the last sentry gun was silenced, the milky life-blood of the servitor dripping down through the latticed grill to fall upon its brethren advancing from below. At Kol Badar's direction, blinking demolition melta-charges were attached to bulkheads where he indicated, as scattered gunfire roared up from below, shearing through the metal stairs. Scores of charges were placed, four times the amount that were used to blast away the mountainside. Kol Badar was taking no chances.

  He nodded as he studied the placement of the blinking charges.

  'Commence the descent,' he ordered and the Anointed warriors began to fight their way back down the staircase that they had just fought so hard to ascend.

  ' We are entering the range of the Imperator, First Acolyte,' hissed Burias. The massive Titan had already blasted every cult warrior apart.

  'If he's failed, this war is going to be over very quickly,' replied Marduk.

  He climbed atop a rocky outcrop, allowing the ranks of the Host to advance past him. Vehicles rumbled forward slowly, and Dreadnoughts and Defilers stalked across the broken ground. Burias climbed up behind him, planting the icon in the ground at the First Acolyte's side.

  The Imperator raised its leg for another step. A series of internal explosions suddenly burst out around its knee-joint. Flames and smoke erupted from the mechanical joint, a mass of detonation within ripping through the thick, reinforced metal. The bastion foot touched down on the floor of the ravine and a secondary flash of timed demolition charges erupted. For a moment it looked as though they had had no effect, until the knee joint gave way beneath the immense weight of the Titan and it lurched to one side as if in slow motion, thousands of tonnes of metal teetering over the battlefield.

  Its weapon arms flailed out as if trying to steady the toppling god-machine, but the Titan was falling, gaining speed as its weight bore it down on the ground. There was silence as it crashed to the ground, until the bastion of one shoulder slammed into the sheer cliff face, causing the mountain range to shudder beneath the impact, and an avalanche of rock was sheared from the cliff. Off balance, the impact caused the Imperator to swing towards the ravine wall and the leering head of the great machine smashed straight into the rock face with a resounding crash. The other leg of the Titan, bearing the entire weight of the colossal machine, buckled suddenly with a screeching sound of wrenching metal. The Imperator slammed to the ground with a deafening boom that echoed through the ravine. The impact caused avalanches of rock and rubble, and hundreds of Guardsmen and Skitarii were slain. A rising cloud of dust obscured the fallen, broken Titan.

  As one, the Word Bearers roared victoriously at the sight of the mighty war god dying and Burias raised the Host's icon high into the air for all to see.

  'Advance and kill!' roared Marduk and the Host descended upon the shattered vanguard.

  After killing the traitor Pierlo, Varnus had expected to be slain by his captives, but if anything, his action seemed to have garnered a kind of hateful respect from the hunched, black-clad overseers. Oh, they had hurt him as they prised him off the corpse of the traitor, filling his body with agonising torment as the vile serums that filled their needle fingers assaulted his nerve endings, but he had been expecting far worse.

  But no, he had been dragged from the tower and placed on the chirurgeons' familiar, cold, steel slab. There was no Discord there and he felt naked without it speaking to him. There the spindly creatures had prodded and probed him. They seemed particularly interested in the symbol beneath the skin of his forehead, chittering excitedly amongst themselves. They drew blood from him and fed burning black liquid into his veins. Small, black leech creatures with orange patterns on their backs were attached to him and he howled as they burrowed their heads into his skin. They were pulled back out, bloated and fat, some time later.

  The joy of killing the man had filled him with warmth. The traitor had turned against the blessed, hated, False Emperor and had deserved death. Taking his life had been a great release and it made him feel strong and rejuvenated.

  The enemy had taken him back to the tower, transporting him back to the top, now hundreds and hundreds of metres above the ground. He was to work alone. Perhaps the overseers feared that he would kill again if he was teamed up with another slave, and perhaps he would have.

  The tower was above the level of the black pollution hanging over the city, and it swirled beneath him. The mighty winds that were building didn't seem to touch the tower; it was as if he stood in the middle of the eye of one of the dust devils that raced across the plains, spinning the salt up in twisting cones of wind. The noxious fumes whipped around the tower and it looked to him like a great, black, whirlpool that stretched out as far as the eye could see.

  He felt strange without the cover of the smog overhead. Now he could see the blaring white sun during the day and the stars by night. And always there was the red giant planet Korsis, drawing ever closer. It was so large that it almost filled the skyline and Varnus could see valleys, craters and channels criss-crossing its surface.

  The brightness pained his eyes and the lack of oxygen made them heavy and sore. Twice a day he was held down as red-black, stinging drops were inserted into the centres of his eyeballs. He screamed as the sharp needles pierced the aqueous h
umour of his orbs and injected the substance that squirmed and burned within him.

  Tirelessly he worked, doing the job of two men, but the toil no longer drained him as it once had. Indeed, time seemed to pass quickly and he was barely aware of the fall of darkness as the white sun disappeared over the horizon and rose again as he worked, smearing the blood mortar over the stones.

  A Discord seemed to favour him, if such a thing was possible, and it hung at his side for hours on end, pounding his eardrums with its blare. He could hear the voices talking to him, teaching him and bolstering him when he felt weak.

  Sometimes he shook his head as if waking from slumber and the horror of his predicament washed over him. He would cry out at such times, longing for the Emperor's soldiers to rescue him and his world. He would kick out at the Discord and it would retreat from him. But these moments passed quickly and Varnus would recover himself and be somewhat confused. He couldn't remember why he had been angry and he set back to work with vigour, the feel of the blood mortar familiar and comforting beneath his hands.

  The daemon speaker would hover slowly forward until it floated less than a metre from him once again. Sometimes its usually limp tentacles would reach forwards and touch him on the neck or the back as he worked. He would recoil in shock and the thing would retreat once again. Over time, he came to ignore the touch of the thing and in a way he found it almost comforting. He felt a strange, warm, buzzing sensation at its touch, but it was not unpleasant.

  The Discord told him many interesting things: what the other slaves were thinking, that the overseers were afraid of him and that his power was growing. It talked of the early years of an ancient hero who had been turned into an immortal godling and lived on in a great palace far away, and the warriors that he had trained to spread his word. He wondered if it was the Emperor, but his head had begun to hurt when that thought had crossed his mind and he quickly dismissed it.