by Various
Chelaki had glimpsed these daemons from his cockpit earlier, but this was the first time he had been able to get a good look at them. Like the zombies at the fort, they seemed to be in the throes of some virulent illness. Their limbs were wasting away, while their stomachs were horribly distended. They didn’t act as if they were ill, however; quite the opposite.
Each of them possessed a single, bloodshot eye, an ork-like snout and a slavering mouthful of yellowing, chipped teeth. They had horns too – a single horn each – growing out of the tops of their heads. They did their fighting, however, with massive, rusted swords, which they appeared to wield with supernatural strength.
Five daemons had outflanked a Space Marine squad on the edge of the melee. Their numbers were even, but the daemons were winning the encounter. In the time it took to reach them, Chelaki saw two Space Marines – and only one of their opponents – falling. He howled a litany of vengeance as he thumbed the activation rune of his chainsword.
Up close, the daemon creatures had a stink of death and decay. Swarms of tiny, black flies buzzed about them; their flesh was lousy with so many writhing parasites that it almost seemed to be alive. Most horrifically of all, their bodies were bursting open at the seams like old cushions, exposing their rotten innards.
Chelaki aimed for one of those exposed spots: a gaping rent beneath the shoulder blades of one of the daemon creatures. His chainsword bit into an overripe, black organ, but it was as if the daemon didn’t feel any pain at all. He staggered it, at least, with the force of his blow and it rounded on him, swinging its rusty blade at him. He dodged its thrust, but not the offhanded swipe that followed it. The daemon’s filthy talons sliced into his wounded side, and Chelaki was unable to bite back an agonised grunt.
Blood rushed to his head, his eyes failed him again and for a second he was blind.
He could still hear the daemon creature. It was chanting an unholy catechism in some ancient, unspeakable language. He felt as if the words were worming their way into his brain, like the infinite miasma of the warp, threatening his very sanity. At least the chanting told him exactly where the daemon was, and he threw up his sword and blocked its next attack.
He heard bolter fire, and, as his vision cleared, he made out the shape of the daemon creature lying dead at his feet. One of the Ultramarines – the squad’s sergeant – had finished it off. Chelaki could take pride, at least, in having been a useful distraction. The odds had shifted now: four to three in the Space Marines favour.
One burst of a heavy flamer later, and the odds were four to two.
The daemon creatures fought to the bloody end, surviving blows that would have parted an ork’s head from its shoulders. Inexorably, however, they were defeated. The last of them, backing away from Chelaki’s chainsword blade, fell onto the teeth of another and collapsed in a disgusting heap of steaming offal.
A gruff voice broke over Chelaki’s helmet vox-link, thanking him for his intervention. ‘Thank the Emperor,’ he replied, ‘for putting me here.’
He had guessed that the speaker was the Ultramarines sergeant, whose face was hidden behind his bright blue helmet. His guess was confirmed as the sergeant stepped forward and clapped him on the arm. ‘Beyus,’ he introduced himself. He gave Chelaki his squad’s vox-frequency, so they could talk more privately.
In the meantime his brother with the flamer was cremating the daemon corpses, along with the ticks, worms and insects still crawling over them, and any part of the trampled ground that they had touched.
Beyus noticed the jagged rent in Chelaki’s armour. ‘I’d see a Techmarine if you can,’ he suggested, ‘and get that patched up. The daemons’ swords are coated with deadly poisons and worse. It only takes the slightest scratch to–’
Chelaki nodded. ‘Yes, sergeant. I will. If I get the chance.’ He couldn’t bring himself to voice his darkest suspicion, almost a certainty now, that any such precautions would be futile in his case. It was already too late for him.
‘You’re a member of the Orath garrison? A Fist of the Fallen?’ asked Beyus.
‘The last of them, sergeant.’
‘I’d be honoured if you would fight with us, my brother.’
‘To the death!’ agreed Chelaki, knowing that his death could be imminent.
His words were almost drowned out by a sudden, bloodcurdling screech. He looked up as jagged, razor-edged wings passed above him.
More brothers were fighting and killing and dying to the north; to the west, he could make out an obdurate blue line of Imperial tanks. In the midst of the raging combat, he saw a Chaplain in jet-black armour, brandishing his holy symbol and fiercely mouthing litanies of cleansing as he swung his powered mace.
An Apothecary, in white, loomed out of the drifting smoke. He dropped to one knee beside the first of Beyus’s fallen men. Chelaki couldn’t tell if he was ministering to him or merely harvesting the precious gene-seed from his dying body.
A fresh wave of daemon creatures was surging towards them. There were more of them, this time, but Chelaki’s newfound squad was more than ready for them. Bolter fire sliced through the daemons before they could even get close; they shrugged off most of it, but not all. Three daemons fell and only one of them rose again.
Chelaki ignored the dizziness in his head and the sickness in his gut. He planted his feet as firmly as he could in the ground and swore to let no force on this blighted world move them. He set the teeth of his chainsword whirling and met the Emperor’s enemies head-on.
‘I saw Fabian’s face, at the conference table.’
Galenus was squatting in the belly of a flying Thunderhawk, with the other four members of his command squad gathered around him. Only one of them could hear his voice, however; the captain had his helmet on and was talking to Terserus over a private vox-channel.
He would never have spoken in such a way to anyone else. He would never have let anyone else hear the slightest trace of doubt in his voice.
‘He disagreed with my decision,’ Galenus continued. ‘He thought I should have been the one to stay behind and coordinate our forces from orbit. But, Emperor damn it, someone else can sit behind a desk, poring over tactical hololiths and waiting for the Librarians to divine some information we can use. Our brothers are fighting tooth and nail for the Emperor, laying down their lives in His service, and they need–’
‘They need to know their leader is with them,’ rumbled Terserus.
Galenus glanced up at his old sergeant, rather, at the hulking adamantium shell in which his scant remains were entombed. Sometimes, he forgot there was a vestige of a man inside that shell; a man whose face he hadn’t seen in over seventy-five years. Galenus’s oldest, best friend was just a voice inside his helmet.
‘You have the makings of a captain,’ said Terserus. ‘I always said so.’
‘I’ve been a captain for over forty years,’ Galenus reminded him.
The Thunderhawk’s copilot reported in from the cockpit. They had dropped beneath the clouds now, he advised, and were on their final approach towards Fort Kerberos. So far, they had encountered only minimal resistance. The Death Guard had committed most of their aerial forces to the north-west front, but now they had started to pull some of them back, too late.
The Thunderhawk swooped on the ruined fort from the east, and strafed it with lascannons and heavy bolters. ‘It’s no use, sir,’ the copilot voxed. ‘The creatures they have digging for them, it’s as if they have no minds of their own. They see us coming, but they don’t even try to run. It takes a direct hit – we have to kill them – to stop them from working.’
‘Acknowledged,’ said Galenus. ‘How long until we are in position?’
‘Estimating… Two enemy contacts approaching from the north-west and coming fast. I don’t know what they are, but… Almost within bolter range already. It’s going to be close. We’re coming around now, sir, and approac
hing the drop zone in…’
The copilot switched vox-frequencies so the rest of the squad could hear him. ‘Prepare for landing in twenty seconds, nineteen, eighteen…’
Galenus signalled to a battle-brother, who yanked open a hatch in the hull beside them. The Thunderhawk’s airbrakes had been applied, and Galenus braced himself in the hatchway’s circular mouth against the inertial forces that threatened to bowl him over. They were coming in low, so low that the ground was no more than a grey and black blur to him.
‘Hover mode engaged in five, four, three, two…’
Then Galenus gave the order, ‘On my mark… Go!’
He leapt through the open hatchway and simultaneously activated the jump pack strapped to his back. Its rocket engine fired and caught him at the apogee of his leap, sparing him an unceremonious landing.
He put down, almost gracefully, at the edge of Fort Kerberos’s ruins.
As he straightened up, the ground shook with a series of heavy impacts. Three members of his squad – and all five members of another, who had jumped from the Thunderhawk’s port side – had landed around him. He glanced up to see the last of his brothers – Terserus – plummeting towards them like a meteorite.
No jump pack would have been able to bear his weight, nor, in his Dreadnought armour, did Terserus need one. Two battle-brothers had to leap aside or risk being crushed by him. He slammed into the earth in between them and the dust settled to reveal him crouched at the epicentre of a self-made crater.
In the meantime, their transporter was in trouble. Hovering above their heads, the Thunderhawk was a virtual sitting duck. Its attackers – the copilot’s two ‘enemy contacts’, presumably – had jagged, razor-sharp wings and grapple-like claws. Galenus couldn’t tell if they were creature or machine; more likely, he suspected, an unholy fusion of both.
The daemon engines had the aspects of mythical dragons, an impression only enhanced by the gouts of fire belching from their elongated maws. The Thunderhawk couldn’t pick up the speed it needed to evade them, and, blasted by infernal flames, its armour plating melted into so much slag and its engines burned.
By the time it could bring its weapons to bear, the damage had been done.
A sustained blast from the lascannon scorched a daemon’s tail and caused it to withdraw, momentarily, but the other had alighted upon the Thunderhawk’s wing and was tearing it to shreds with its metal talons. The best its crew could do now was stave off the inevitable crash, and keep the daemons occupied a while longer.
Galenus and his small team on the ground had troubles of their own.
The captain saw the Death Guard’s zombie slaves ahead of him, still shovelling rubble as if the firefight above them wasn’t happening. Any minute now, he feared – any second – they could break through to the underground shrine in which the first of the Great Seals was housed. They had to be stopped.
In his team’s way, however, were the Death Guard themselves.
There were seven of them, the Plague God’s favoured number: Plague Marines, kicking their way through mounds of rubble to intercept the new arrivals. In contrast to Galenus’s assault team, none of them were wearing their helmets. They showed off their scabrous faces, as if proud of them; proud of their flaking skin, disgusting boils and weeping sores.
Each Plague Marine wielded an equally scabrous knife and a gun that looked as if it might fall apart if he tried to fire it. Galenus knew, however – from experience, hard-won, a long time ago – that each weapon would work well enough.
He addressed his two squads over their vox-link. ‘Fewer of them than I expected. Ten of us should be able to take them down.’
He asked Terserus to take point. The fibre bundles that powered his armour had just accomplished the arduous task of lifting him upright, and not only was he the most powerful warrior among them, he was also the one most protected against infection.
The Dreadnought raised his left fist. It was wrapped in a gauntlet almost large enough to cover a man’s head. He called on the machine-spirits inside the glove, and it crackled with bright blue energy. He had no right hand or forearm; instead, a storm bolter – effectively, two regular bolters welded together, providing him with double the firepower – protruded from his right elbow joint.
Galenus was harbouring no illusions. He had the Death Guard outnumbered, but each of them was more than a match for the average Space Marine. The captain figured that Terserus made them even. As the Dreadnought stamped forward – and his battle-brothers fell in behind him with their chainswords drawn – he addressed them all out loud. He cranked his vox-grille up to full volume, making sure the enemy heard him.
‘We are the Ultramarines, the Sons of Guilliman,’ he bellowed, quoting the famous words of Chapter Master Marneus Calgar. ‘Whilst we draw breath, we stand. Whilst we stand, we fight. Whilst we fight, we prevail. Nothing shall stay our wrath!’
Sometimes, he forgot that he was no longer a field commander. Not that Galenus objected. Terserus had near-perfect recall of events from centuries ago; his grasp on recent days, on the other hand, was tenuous in the extreme.
Most likely, he had already forgotten his conversation with Galenus in the Thunderhawk – and that was just how the captain liked it.
Arkelius relayed the good news to his crew, who didn’t share his access to command frequencies: ‘The captain and his team have put down behind enemy lines.’
‘I hope they leave a few Death Guard for the rest of us,’ Corbin grunted.
‘Meaning what, exactly?’ Arkelius asked, sharply.
‘No disrespect, sergeant. I just meant that Captain Galenus is well-known for leading from the front. When Iunus and I – and the Scourge – were with the Eighth Company, we heard–’
‘I have another target lock,’ Iunus interrupted him. ‘No, damn it, I don’t. It’s veering in and out of my range.’
Arkelius checked through his vision slits. The sky above his head was almost clear. Both sides in the aerial battle had taken casualties – he couldn’t tell which side had taken more – and the combat zone had shifted eastward. The daemon fliers, he imagined, were shying away from the Hunters and the Stalkers, having seen their capabilities.
He voxed Captain Numitor, ‘Permission to break formation, sir, and seek a better firing position.’
Permission was granted.
Arkelius ordered Corbin to pull up the stabilisers and advance slowly. As usual, his driver anticipated him, and barely had the words left his throat when the Scourge of the Skies juddered into motion again. He suspected that Corbin thought he could have commanded the tank himself, and Iunus probably agreed with him.
Arkelius had been warned that this could happen.
Tank crews spent a great deal of time cooped up together. The bonds that formed between them were among the strongest in their Chapters, and each crew tended to bond with its vehicle too, becoming almost like cogs in its machinery. When a crewmember, particularly a tank commander, was lost – in this case, reassigned to a less experienced crew – it could take a while for the others to learn to work with his replacement.
Arkelius had one advantage over his experienced driver and gunner. Between his extra vision slits and the vox reports in his ear, he had a broader overview of the theatre of war than either of them. Corbin had just one slit, which allowed him to see straight ahead, while Iunus couldn’t see outside at all, and he only had the readings on his various monitors.
Arkelius knew that his brothers were gaining ground against their daemon opponents.
He had also learned that Galenus’s Thunderhawk had crashed and burned. He was glad to hear a slightly breathless report from its pilot, confirming that the crew had bailed out.
The pilot described fire-breathing daemon engines, like dragons: two of them. There had been a few garbled reports of such creatures before – they had picked off a Stormtalon on the pe
riphery of the battlefield – but no one had got a good look at them until now.
They had circled the wreckage of the Thunderhawk once, but seemed uninterested in finishing off its former occupants. They had wheeled around and headed back north-west, the way they had come. A moment later, another Stormtalon pilot saw them, bearing down hard on his starboard side.
Arkelius told Corbin to alter their heading and increase their speed. ‘Forget the flies and their riders. We’re hunting bigger game now. Iunus, two targets, roughly four hundred metres ahead of us, larger than the others and faster. Let me know when you have them.’
Another pair of close explosions shook the Hunter.
‘Sergeant, we’re pulling ahead of the other tanks,’ Corbin advised over the vox-channel. ‘We’re making ourselves a target for–’
‘I’m told we’re fairly well-armoured,’ Arkelius snarled. ‘Let’s trust to that and take a chance, shall we? We have a pair of monstrosities tearing through our gunships out there. We’re loaded up with the best, the most accurate, surface-to-air weapons in the Emperor’s arsenal. I say we introduce the one to the other and–’
‘Sergeant!’ Iunus yelled.
Arkelius saw it for himself, on his own monitors: an auspex contact, growing larger, more insistent by the second; the tiny, flickering runes that accompanied it on the screen were blinking red, a warning that the object was approaching them on a collision course.
His gaze darted to his forward vision slit, and he saw it framed there too: one of the mutant flies, without a rider, spiralling out of the sky towards him. He thought it must be out of control as its wings appeared to be damaged. Then he realised that the insect was on a deliberate suicide run, and he saw the reason why: on its tail was a Skyspear missile.
‘Coming in too low, too fast,’ Iunus reported. ‘I can’t get a target lock on it.’
‘Abort that missile, now!’
‘I can’t do that either, sergeant. It isn’t one of our missiles.’