by Paul Kearney
Sergeant Narmaticus’ voice came up on the tight-beam squad vox.
‘Secundus vox-check.’
‘Secundus optimal,’ Brother Huthor said quietly.
The quiet again, broken only by the cracking and groaning of the wreckage that composed the surface of the hulk, rising and settling under them as the light came and went and the metal expanded and contracted. It was so like slow breathing that it had been unsettling at first, but now they were used to it.
The light died as the terminator swept across Fury. Just as it dimmed, Brother Malthus thought he caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked into the scope again. Infra-red was useless in the floating dust that contaminated the thin atmosphere, but the high-powered magnification of his sights just caught a shadow, moving off to one side of the main approach.
‘See it?’ he asked Brother Huthor quietly.
‘Seen,’ Huthor replied. ‘I count two, three – six or more. Very low signature. Painting location now.’
Huthor pressed a button on the side of his scope and the location was logged into it and relayed to the sniper rifle Malthus cradled. In turn, that information was sent to the tactical readout of Brother Sergeant Narmaticus, some mile and a half to their south. He then flagged it up for Captain Ixion at the command post. All in a split second.
Heavy dark fell, the brief night of the hulk. The two Scout Marines switched to preysight one last time, but it was little use. They turned it off again, preferring to watch the darkness with their own unaided but genetically enhanced vision.
A click of metal ahead of them, louder than the groans and creaks of the settling wreckage.
‘Command, this is Secundus,’ Brother Huthor said. ‘Movement on my axis.’
‘Acknowledged,’ Sergeant Narmaticus said. ‘Perimeter will be notified.’
Looking down the scope, Brother Malthus followed the shadows, the outlines he had come to know so well over the last sixteen hours. This little patch of Fury was as familiar to him as his old dormitory in the Agiselus barracks; he had been filing away every detail of it in his mind.
And now there was something new. A silhouette that should not be there, not moving, barely visible – but it had not been present an hour before.
‘Twelve degrees left of axis, ninety yards out,’ he said to Huthor.
His spotter studied it through the scope.
‘Seen. Marking now.’
An invisible laser beam lanced out from the scope and targeted the shadow.
‘You are free to engage,’ Brother Huthor said.
Brother Malthus breathed out slowly, letting the stock of the rifle become part of his own musculature. He was hardly aware of the pressure his gauntleted hand was exerting on the pistol-grip. He did not hear the retort as he fired, only felt it as the barrel jumped slightly. At once, he was steady again, breathing in slow, scanning the placing of the shot.
‘Target down,’ Brother Huthor said. ‘Whatever it was. Command, this is–’
He stopped. All at once the darkness was moving, out ahead of him. Not one or two shadows, but a whole mass of them, the noise of their advance incredibly loud after the almost-silence.
Brother Malthus’ voice was still calm on the squad vox. ‘I have multiple targets advancing on my position.’ He fired. Once, twice, three times. A shrill howl went up, out in the night.
‘Ninety yards and closing.’
‘Command, this is Secundus,’ Brother Huthor called up his sergeant while aligning his assault shotgun. He ejected a shell from the breech and fed in a new one with a bright red casing.
‘Contact to my front, multiple targets – at least two dozen. Enemy closing fast. Engaging now.’
‘Do not stand fast, Secundus,’ Sergeant Narmaticus warned. ‘Identify, then exfiltrate.’
‘Acknowledged. Wait out.’
Brother Malthus was still firing. He changed the clip in his rifle, and at once the shadowed enemy came pouring forward. They fired no weapon, and could barely be made out, but were man-sized or smaller – humanoid.
‘Time to cast a little light,’ Brother Huthor said. He stood up, the tarp falling from his shoulders, and pumped off a round into the midst of the advancing enemy. It was an inferno shell, and as it impacted it sprayed phosphorous gel over the target and those next to it. Flames shot up, blue-white, and a tearing shriek rent the air. All at once, the entire front rank was illuminated, black silhouettes twisting and mewling in the glare of the fire.
The enemy was a mass of hunched, contorted bipedal humanoid creatures. Once, they might have been men. But something had taken them and made them into a grotesquery of twisted nightmares. They had whirring blades for hands, transplanted limbs, glaring ocular implants. Their flesh had been sheared open, torn and burnt and stitched up again over crude bionics. In place of limbs and skulls there were the gleam of alloy and metal, and crests of loose wiring running down their spines.
They were burning now, screaming with mouths that had no tongues. The grind of shredder blades whirring on their bionic limbs rose to a high shriek.
Brother Huthor pumped round after round into them, choosing targets as they came forward, the dead entangling the living – if they were alive at all. When shot they barely bled, and their grey flesh looked already half putrefied.
Beside him, Brother Malthus dropped his rifle and swept out his bolt pistol. The sharp crack of bolt rounds whipped out into the thin, corrosive air. The enemy crawled forward over their own dead like grey maggots writhing in a wound. They screamed in rage and kept coming, even after losing limbs, after having huge holes blown through their torsos. Only headshots seemed to fell them swiftly. Malthus and Huthor dropped fifteen, sixteen – but the two Scout Marines saw now that more and more were pouring out of holes and apertures in the mounded wreckage behind the first wave. Fifty, sixty, eighty – there were too many to count, and movement off in the utter dark beyond the fight hinted at yet more.
‘We will be overrun,’ Malthus said. He had engaged his chainsword now, hacking at those of the enemy who got too close, putting round after perfectly aimed round into the skulls of those farther back, his arm aiming the bolt pistol without conscious effort – the merest squeeze on the trigger, and then a new target.
Brother Huthor blew the head off one squalling monstrosity that had kept coming despite having no arms. He racked in another shell, beat back one saw-handed foe with the butt of his assault shotgun, and blasted it to oblivion, viscera splattering over his vacuum helm.
‘Agreed. Time to leave, brother. Get the rifle and reload. I will cover. Fire and manoeuvre.’
Other voices were coming up on the squad vox now, the rest of their brethren from Tenth.
‘I have multiple contacts closing in.’
‘This is Decimus – large movement to my front. Am engaging.’
‘Command, contact with at least a hundred unknowns.’
‘Position untenable. We are falling back–’
Then the voice of Sergeant Narmaticus came up. ‘All teams, fall back to Seventh’s perimeter at best speed. Our positions are compromised. Captain, this is Tenth, code Firebreak. Our brothers will be to your front in a few minutes.’
‘We have you on tactical, sergeant,’ Captain Galenus’ voice came in. ‘All squads, stand-to.’
Brother Huthor snapped off shot after shot at the enemy, blasting them off their feet, kicking out at those who strove to grapple with him, crushing bone with his shotgun-butt.
Malthus grabbed the sniper rifle and dashed back twenty yards, reloaded his bolt pistol and took aim. The burning corpses were sputtering out, and it was growing darker again. He briefly cursed the tainted dust which shrouded everything and thickened the air into a shining fog, then sighted down his pistol barrel.
‘Now, brother,’ he said.
Brother Huthor swung out the
shotgun barrel like a blade, smashing to pieces the cranium of his closest attacker. He turned to run, and another of the foe leapt on his back. The jagged blade that protruded from its wrist stabbed into the Scout armour, bounced off, then on its third lightning descent it found a gap and went deep. Huthor knocked the monstrosity off his back, fell to one knee, reversed the shotgun muzzle and fired at point-blank range, disintegrating two more who came leaping upon him. Half a dozen lunged out of the milling pack. They grabbed the shotgun barrel and even as it went off again it was torn out of his hands. Huthor rose unsteadily, whipped out his bolt pistol and emptied an entire magazine into the howling faces of the enemy, then staggered away.
Brother Malthus took down four of Huthor’s pursuers with single shots, all to the head. His battle-brother joined him, falling heavily at his side.
‘Persistent scum, I’ll give them that,’ he said, breathing hoarsely. His armour was so stained with blood and gore that it was a shining vermilion clotted with shredded organic tissue, scraped and slashed and dented in a dozen places.
‘How is the wound?’ Malthus asked him, still firing.
‘Closing. I’ll be fine. Are you ready?’
‘When you are.’
Now Huthor turned and began squeezing off shots at the advancing horde. The creatures yowled in a furious rage as he took them down. Brother Malthus retreated fifty yards at a swift sprint, then turned and began firing again. Brother Huthor followed more slowly. The blade that had stabbed him was broken off and jutted from between two plates of his armour up in the angle of one pauldron.
‘There is some manner of filth in this wound,’ he said, gasping as he joined Malthus. ‘The maggots have poisoned me, may they rot for it.’
‘Can you keep going?’
‘March or die, brother. Isn’t that what they told us in the Agiselus?’
‘Get going.’
‘I hate retreating before scum like this.’
‘What in Throne’s name are they?’
Huthor spat inside his helmet, a dark stain on the inside of the plastex.
‘Murder servitors. Adeptus Mechanicus minions.’
‘Well, there are enough of them to go round.’
Malthus took in the situation, darting glances left and right as he fired.
‘They have flanked us, brother. Not as mindless as they look.’
‘Or else something is controlling them.’
‘It is all one. We have to fight through them, charge as hard as we can back to the perimeter.’
Huthor raised his chainsword. It whined as the monomolecular teeth of its blade sped up into a shining bar of light.
‘You go. I am too slow. I will draw them off.’
‘No brother. We stay or go together.’
‘You were always a stubborn fool, Malthus.’
‘And you were always slow as a lame grox. Let us fight here, brother – it is as good a place as any.’
The two Scout Marines stood back to back as the enemy closed in, a great host of them now, hundreds strong. When their ammunition ran out, the pair fought on with chainswords, the blades screaming and whining like bars of angry light that sheared through their foes and chopped them to steaming pieces that writhed around their feet, lopped-off arms still wriggling on the ground, decapitated heads still gnashing and snapping at their boots.
Brother Huthor slumped as a servitor cut half through his knee with a sputtering chainsaw. He clicked out a frag grenade, tossed it into the scrum before him. It went off ten feet from the pair, blasting the ranks of the foe open but smashing the two Scout Marines off their feet with the concussion of the explosion.
Brother Malthus blinked, his head ringing. He climbed to his knees, and as he did, he heard a new, thunderous noise snapping and cracking through the air about his head. Looking up, he saw heavy tracer fire arc past his eyes and slam into the enemy that surrounded him. He hacked savagely at the snarling faces – flesh and bone and tainted metal, hanging cables that dripped with venomous ichor, pulsing green lights for eyes, shattered fangs of ceramite embedded in black, diseased gums, snapping against his visor.
And they were hurled back. Well-placed bolter fire was chewing up the enemy horde, and then the long, bellowing bark of heavy bolter volleys. Brother Malthus looked back the way they had been running, and saw five Ultramarines from Seventh striding up slowly, firing from the hip, a blazing hedge of light and fury, and the long streak from the heavy bolter lancing out like staggered lightning.
‘To me, brothers,’ the lead Ultramarine said on the vox. ‘We must be swift. There are too many of this scum to count.’
Huthor was lying motionless at his side. Brother Malthus seized his brother and dragged him away by one arm, towards the firing Ultramarines who now stood and laid down a torrent of covering fire. Malthus was standing in the path of it and the rounds passed close enough to scorch his armour, but none touched him. He reached his brethren and two of them clicked out a whole stick of frag grenades to throw into the yowling pack that was surging forward regardless of loss, advancing over hummocked mounds of their own dead.
‘Back to the perimeter,’ the squad leader said. ‘This is a full assault.’
Huthor was still breathing. The visor of his vacuum helm was black with vomited blood, but he clasped Malthus’ arm feebly as the Scout Marine dragged him along, and the five Ultramarines from Seventh backed away step by step, still firing, chopping up the enemy and blasting them off their feet – and yet more of the foe were piling into the rear ranks of those in front, slashing at each other’s flesh in their insane need to come to grips with the Ultramarines.
Malthus heard Captain Galenus’ voice on the company vox. ‘Ancients to the perimeter. Prepare for close-quarter combat.’
The surface of Fury erupted in a maelstrom of bright violence.
On the Octavius’ bridge, Chief Librarian Tigurius watched the layouts flash up scarlet on the tactical feed. The shipmaster, Varius Sulla, brought the battle-barge to full alert. Along the hull of the immense ship, the gun-doors opened, the plasma cannons nosed out, and the launch bays retracted their armoured blast shields, ready to send out the remaining Thunderhawk gunships. In the drive compartments the tech-priests brought more power out of the immense engines, and sent it towards the void shields and the bombardment cannon. Though that great, apocalyptic weapon was kept housed for now.
All through the angular hull of the Octavius, thousands of fleet personnel, human and otherwise, took their places. Convoys of grav-sleds began moving up from the munitoria, laden with missiles and charge-packs, while the elevators which served the great guns began thrumming up and down the superstructure of the ship, propelled by legions of mindless Chapter servitors and their sweating tech-overseers.
Across the fleet, the other vessels were following suit. The Rex Aeterna, the Spatha, the Mutatis Mutandis and the five escort frigates all came to full battle-readiness. There was enough firepower aboard them to obliterate a planet, but they held their fire for now, waiting for word from the flagship – waiting, also, for word from the ground, where Seventh Company was now fighting for its life.
‘Heavy contact all along my perimeter,’ Captain Ixion was saying, the roar of the fighting almost drowning out his words over the vox. The speakers relayed his voice across the nave; a vast, towering space which was otherwise serenely quiet, fleet officers glued to their posts, servitors murmuring in a low whisper, the Octavius holding orbit around them like a slumbering god.
‘First wave has been destroyed – it was composed of murder servitors, some three or four thousand. The enemy made it right up to the breastworks. They are equipped solely for hand-to-hand fighting. A second wave seems to be forming up farther out. We cannot see what their composition is.’
Tigurius shook his head, frowning. Murder servitors were thralls of the Adeptus Mechanicus, not servants of Chaos. He sen
t his own psychic enquiry lancing out of the Octavius, down to the corpse-heaped ring of rocks and wreckage that Seventh was defending, and met nothing there he could latch onto – no central directing intelligence, no sense of higher purpose.
And thus far, no Chaos taint.
‘I have detailed Penitent, Carenus and Victris for close-in fire support,’ Tigurius said, naming the three Thunderhawks. ‘They will maintain overwatch until further notice. Do you need resupply?’
‘Negative, brother. Lord Calgar saw to it that we brought plenty of ammunition down with us.’
‘Casualties?’
‘Nine so far. I am sending them up to the Octavius on Sinbreaker. The enemy’s weapons are envenomed with some potent kind of neurotoxin. Two of the nine are dead, the others dying. Apothecary Rannik has stabilised them, but there is nothing more to be done for them here. They need to be transported to the flagship’s apothecarion at once.’
A potent toxin indeed, if it could neutralise the enormous recuperative abilities of Adeptus Astartes physiology.
‘I will have the poison isolated and analysed,’ Tigurius said. ‘What word from the Chapter Master and Fifth?’
‘They are still in vox contact, about ten miles down. Lord Calgar intends to continue with his penetration of the hulk, unless things become untenable on the surface. Seventh’s situation will clarify very soon – a second assault is forming up.’
‘Identify the enemy, Captain Ixion,’ Tigurius commanded. ‘We must know what we are fighting. I am turning Fifth’s Thunderhawks over to your control. You may call them in at will.’
‘What about surface bombardment?’
Tigurius shook his head, grimacing. ‘There is too great a danger that it would destabilise the hulk. It will be used only as a last resort.’
‘I understand. I will send another situation report as soon as I have more information. Ixion out.’
Heavy weapons fire began to hammer on the perimeter, smashing into the breastworks that the Ultramarines of Seventh had thrown up. The defenders kept their heads down, consulted auspex and loosed off volleys of bolter rounds in reply. The Devastators of Ninth held their fire, for there were as yet no clear targets despite the ferocious barrage that was slamming into every portion of the line.