Dante

by Guy Haley

  ‘My brothers! I have asked much of you these last days, and I must ask again.’ Dante turned to point at the battered control centre. Golden armour glinted. ‘In the port are brave men who fought hard to save this world. They could not hope to succeed, but in their attempt they delayed Hive Fleet Leviathan, allowing us to strike. We have reduced the numbers of its monsters and deprived it of much biomass that it would otherwise have used against Baal itself. We could depart now, and leave these mortal men to their fate. They are mayfly creatures compared to we, the sons of Sanguinius. What matter that they die a few thousand days early?’ He paused. ‘These are sentiments some others might counsel, but not we! We are the Blood Angels, and I will not see lives discarded to appease cold logic.’

  He swept his gaze over his warriors. Every helmet was turned in his direction.

  ‘These men and women of the Astra Militarum have honoured us with their sacrifice. We speak of the Shield of Baal, those systems that stand guardian over our home. I say to you that the shield is not a thing of suns and planets, but a barrier of flesh and blood and will!’ He shouted. ‘These men, who fell in the millions outside these walls, whose mortal remains have been consumed by the xenos horror that dares feed upon this system, they are the true shields of Baal. We will not allow the last handful of them to die in pain and horror. Instead they shall ascend with us back into the void, and they shall be honoured in their turn. We shall repay their sacrifice with our own blood!’ He raised the Axe Mortalis high and keyed its ancient rending field to life. Crackling blue lightning wreathed its brutal head. ‘Brothers, will you fight with me one final time upon these blood-slick streets? Will you fight with me, not for glory or for Baal, but for common humanity and the lives of these worthy soldiers?’

  ‘We will! We will! We will!’ answered the Space Marines as one.

  ‘For the Emperor and Sanguinius!’ shouted Dante, sending his war-cry out through his vox-grille so that it rang from the wreckage of the port.

  ‘For the Emperor and Sanguinius!’ responded the Blood Angels.

  Dante looked over his warriors. He could not have been prouder of them. Drawing strength from their determination, he turned to look out over the wasteland of dead beasts. The reflected light of fires danced across the death mask of Sanguinius, its mouth forever open in condemnation.

  ‘The pressure grows,’ voxed Mephiston. ‘The hive mind’s hunger can never be sated. We have its attention again. Beware.’

  ‘My lord, I have movement on my auspex,’ said Vorlois.

  Around a toppled statue a squirming disturbed the mounded alien dead. Broken purple-and-cream bodies were shouldered aside. A carnifex rose, screeching its hatred to the sky. Two of its arms were gone, yellowish ichor running from the sockets. Its carapace was scored with laser burns and mass-reactive impact craters, but it lived. It turned burning eyes upon the last outpost of mankind on Asphodex, and began a faltering advance.

  Alarms chimed in Dante’s helm.

  ‘Multiple contacts, all directions,’ said Vorlois. ‘Squad! Stand ready!’

  Boltguns were raised, energy weapons primed. Along the wall, the men of the Second and First Companies prepared for battle again. They were no less battered than their foe, honours and insignia obscured by carbon scoring and sticky alien fluids. The ugly, blistered lines of hardened shock gels marked out cracks in their adamantium battleplate. Many were missing parts of their wargear, or were injured. Vorlois’ backpack leaked coolant fumes. Another in the squad fought with his left arm bared, his gauntlet and vambrace ripped away, the interface ports on his forearm clogged with coagulated blood. His hands gripped his bolter no less steadily.

  The tyranids came tentatively at first, fragmented swarms of lesser weapons beasts emerging from the shattered Fabricae district, scurrying back and forwards mindlessly. Like a disrupted colony of ants, they reorganised themselves. Their random dashes became purposeful. Where leader beasts clawed their way out of the rubble or from under the heaped remains of the tyranid dead, the swarm coalesced all the quicker.

  ‘Lord, I have auspex input from the fleet showing a massive movement of life signs converging on the port. All surviving xenos organisms in this sector are diverting themselves towards our position,’ said Vorlois.

  ‘I feel great hatred,’ voxed Mephiston. ‘We have wounded it. The hive mind means to annihilate us all.’

  ‘The pressure is great,’ voxed Marcellos. ‘We are under its eye.’

  ‘They are coming!’ shouted a warrior down the wall. A single shot banged out, followed by the whooshing of the bolt’s propellant charge igniting. An explosion and a screech sounded as the round found its mark, blasting apart a termagant skulking around a blackened tank hull.

  The smoking remains of the creature fell to the ground. An all-encompassing hiss whispered out from the ruins, competing with the rush of the wind, and a thousand more weapons beasts rose up behind the corpse, flowed around the wreckage and bounded over the mat of corpses without impediment. They moved as one, switching direction with eerie simultaneity. As this brood leapt to the attack, so did many others break from cover and run towards the walls of Port Helos.

  For the final time, the ruins of Phodia echoed to the gunfire of the Adeptus Astartes as the Blood Angels opened up with every weapon at their disposal.

  Creatures boiled up seemingly from nowhere, converging on the Port Helos redoubt in scuttling hordes. The blazing suns of plasma cannons crackled overhead, blasting perfect round holes in the onrushing creatures that were quickly filled by more multi-limbed horrors. The creatures were mostly of the lesser sort, termagants, hormagaunts and their ilk, the majority of the larger weapons beasts and leader bio-constructs ruthlessly targeted and felled by the Space Marines in earlier assaults. There were still tyranid warriors present, but these higher species kept back, directing the onrushing wave of gaunts at the wall.

  The creatures neared, a hundred yards and closing, rushing through the smouldering residues of the promethium moat towards the walls.

  Dante dipped into the wider strategic overview of the theatre his sensorium offered him. Auspex-feeds from ground and orbit highlighted the streams of creatures coming at the port. The Blade of Vengeance moved to engage half-crippled hive ships before they could deploy yet more reinforcements, the flashes of its weapons showing as sheet lightning in the sky over Phodia. A system map showed him the blinking icons of Imperial ships as they converged, painfully slowly, on Asphodex.

  A roaring announced the arrival of the first Stormraven. Dante risked a look behind him. Livery discoloured by multiple re-entries and combat, the Stormraven wavered in the wind, assault ramp opening before it hit the ground. Battered men and women ran from the building. Dhrost sent out the wounded and near-dead first. Exhausted medics and non-combatant medicae carried casualty biers up into the waiting craft’s mouth. Dante’s hearts swelled at their bravery as these hale men re-emerged to make way for more wounded. A blinking light in his helm signalled the Stormraven to take off. The instant it was away the second took its place, the third landing nearby alongside it, slotting itself neatly into the tight gap delineated by the Astra Militarum tanks. The fourth, waiting to land, hovered overhead, sending screaming missiles and lascannon blasts into the enemy. Officers waved their men from the wrecked control centre as more ramps fell open.

  Beyond the landing zone, Karlaen’s Terminators opened fire at the enemy encroaching from the east. The sound of their guns was lost beneath the banging of bolters nearer to Dante and the cataclysmic booms of air displacement caused by the discharge of high-energy weapons as Devastator Squad Karos targeted those leader beasts foolish enough to show themselves.

  The clacking of claw and hoof on alien bodies drew Dante’s attention away from the evacuation. Outside the wall, the tyranids were coming into range of his perdition pistol. He dismissed the multiple overlays of runes and informational illuminations cluttering his vision. The wider battle would take care of itself. Now he had only time to
fight.

  The front ranks of the creatures were decimated by close-range bolt-fire, each Space Marine choosing his target and aiming carefully to conserve ammunition. There would be no more chances to resupply. Hammer of Angels carved deep and dripping furrows into the horde of creatures, slaying dozens with its lascannons and heavy bolters. The enemy exploded into collections of shattered exoskeleton. Strange organs burst in showers of colourful fluids as the bodies fell beneath the pounding hooves of the creatures behind, adding to the piles of the dead.

  The Red Thirst stirred in Dante, feeding on his outrage at this affront to the Emperor. He envisaged himself abandoning reason, jetting from his position and crashing among the enemy to slay and slay until none were left. He could sense the bloodlust in his comrades, the desire to abandon their position and kill. He saw it in their posture, in the tightening of hands upon gun grips. Dante gritted his teeth against the urge to charge. Such abandon often served the Blood Angels well, the shock of their charge enough to carry the day, but giving in to anger would be disaster. Today was a day for the Angel’s Graces, not the Warrior’s Virtues. He repeated the calming mantra of the Solus Encarmine in his mind. Another image of his solitary warriors being dragged down to their deaths filled his thoughts. He held it there, pitting the reality loss of control would bring against the need to slay.

  The gaunts approached his own position. His Sanguinary Guard readied their weapons. Bright flashes surrounded power swords and axes as motes of dust annihilated themselves on disruption fields.

  The aliens raised fists bonded to lesser creatures. A storm of deadly quills spat from the symbiotic weapons. The enemy were close enough that Dante could see the peristaltic jerks of their weapons tubes, and the moist contractions of muzzle sphincters and exposed muscle fibres.

  The Blood Angels switched their weapons to fully automatic fire as the gaunts came within leaping distance. The Sanguinary Guard levelled their wrists and opened fire with their Angelus gauntlets. Specialised rounds exploded among the gaunts, sending out clouds of flechettes, and a vast swathe of the onrushing creatures was turned into a gory mist. A final volley of lascannon beams and plasma discharge blasted those behind to pieces, and then they were too close.

  ‘For Sanguinius!’ Dante bellowed. A single shot from his perdition pistol turned a galloping termagant into atoms.

  The gaunts hurled themselves at the Blood Angels, bounding up the heaps of corpses fronting the broken ramparts. Space Marines howled their anger as the first came over the wall. For a moment the warriors of the Emperor were swamped, the blood-red of their armour vanishing under a tide of dirty bone and purple, each Space Marine buried beneath a frenzied mass of slashing alien bio-weapons.

  The slaughter began. The Blood Angels burst free, hewing limbs with combat blade and chainsword, smashing oversized alien skulls with point-blank bolt pistol shots, crushing throats in armoured gauntlets.

  A hail of canid-sized attack beasts thundered into Dante and his honour guard, rocking him on his feet and obscuring his vision. With the practice of centuries, he dispatched them all, every move of his axe a paragon of efficiency. The Axe Mortalis’ rending field crackled, shearing off heads and limbs in a blizzard of disintegrating molecules. Around him his Sanguinary Guard fought with skill almost the equal of his own. Though pressed close, they moved around each other with the fluidity of dancers. They ducked and wove past each other’s weapons. Powered glaives, axes and swords were adroitly anticipated, the Blood Angels’ evasions not once breaking the rhythms of their own strikes. Angelus bolters barked razored death. The smoking bodies of termagants fell around their feet with meaty thumps. Spilled viscera and the unpredictable roll of severed limbs made the footing unsteady.

  Dante and his men found themselves climbing up over the level of the rampart on the bodies of dead creatures. The commander’s perdition pistol took another, then another, blasting the creatures to greasy vapour. Other beings learned to run from the building roar of his melta pistol, but not the tyranids. They weren’t mindless, as he had thought long ago, far from it. These were not individual beasts, but single cells of a greater beast. One might as well expect the shed skin cells of a man to feel fear.

  ‘My lord, the tyranids are overrunning our position. We cannot hold them here for long.’ Captain Karlaen’s rich voice intruded over the racket of battle.

  ‘Squad Forian, Squad Gerus reinforce,’ said Dante, sending his reserve Assault Marines to bolster Karlaen’s position. ‘General Dhrost, how many more men have you in the centre?’

  ‘One hundred and eighteen, including myself,’ replied Dhrost.

  Dante brought up another overlay, checking the status of his Stormravens. They were nearing the Blade of Vengeance. His pilots were skilled; it would take them only twenty minutes to drop off their passengers and return to the surface.

  ‘Hold the wall! We fall back when the Stormravens return. Sanguinary Guard, disperse, reinforce where you see fit.’

  His bodyguard split apart, leaping over the swarming gaunts. Where they landed, tyranids died, their blows often as not revealing an embattled brother.

  For a moment, Dante had a clear view of the field. Karlaen’s Terminators were ponderously retreating, faces to the enemy. Each step backwards was paid for by the tyranids with a toll of slaughtered horrors. The Blood Angels were inflicting great carnage. Where tyranids broke through the line they were met by the lasguns of the Astra Militarum and the punishment of heavy bolters. Leman Russ tanks hurled shells over Karlaen’s line, gouging out divots from the tide of flesh. The Baal Predator Sanguine Storm washed promethium flame over gaunt broods that broke for the landing zone.

  The psyker beasts the strike force had faced before were all gone, the bio-titans felled, the skies clear of winged tyranids, but still there were too many. The forces of the Imperium were dams of sand holding back the tide of the sea.

  Dante was attacked again, and the first mortis rune of that final engagement chimed into red life on his faceplate. Brother Arames, of Squad Barosian. His name flared red and faded away. Dante’s fury built. He fought and fought, the seconds becoming fleeting things. Were it not for the mission chrono running in the top right of his helm plate, he would have lost track of time. The Axe Mortalis was never still. His golden armour was smeared with the life fluids of extra-galactic monsters.

  The screeching calls of larger bio-constructs sounded out over the endless swarms of gaunts. The creature he was fighting was obliterated, not by an Imperial weapon but by a storm of acid. Its cargo of attack grubs recognised friendly flesh and fell inert to the rampart, but the medium that propelled them was enough to kill Dante’s opponent. He looked out from the port. Tyranid warriors had gathered in number, and were wading through their lesser kin.

  ‘They mean to finish us!’ he called. ‘They see our victory is near!’ He spoke fervently for the sake of his men, but his words were ashes in his mouth. He could see no true victory. All around him was a wrecked world, a valuable system of billions of people reduced to nothing in the course of days. Dante had seen too many planets laid to waste in his long life, the power of the Imperium eroded system by system. If a man held a handful of sand and let a single grain drop between his fingers once a year, still it would empty in time. ‘Fight them! Throw them back! There shall be no triumph here for the Great Devourer! Let it open its mouth to feed and we shall smash its teeth!’

  His men fought harder. Seeing them hard-pressed on the walls, the last Dreadnoughts of the strike force turned their attentions from the landing fields and strode towards the ramparts.

  A cry reached his ears. Sergeant Vorlois was staggering under a hormagaunt, one of its long, scythe-like talons buried in the weaker joint between his plastron and pauldron. Its slavering maw snapped at his helm’s muzzle. Dante advanced, sweeping aside gaunts with his axe. A deathspitter shot splashed into the plascrete of the rampart, showering him with squirming grubs. Their mouth parts gnawed fruitlessly on ceramite, their acid bodies ma
king it smoke.

  He aimed at Vorlois and fired, making a shot that would have confounded any other. In a welter of flailing limbs and bodies where Vorlois wrestled and twisted, he hit the hormagaunt square on. It exploded, leaving its twitching claw embedded in the sergeant’s armour.

  ‘Squad Vorlois, prepare to fall back. Squad Barosian, prepare to fall back. Captain Karlaen, status report!’

  ‘We have ceded the barricades, my lord commander. By the Blood, we are a wall that none shall pass.’

  ‘Hold in loose perimeter. Inner perimeter disperse more widely, clear more space. We need more room for the transports to land!’

  ‘We will be spread thin,’ answered Karlaen.

  ‘Speed is of the essence. Tanks prepare for extraction. We shall evacuate the armour first. Anvil of Baal proceed to this point.’ By nerve-link, he thought a location into his armour’s cogitator and sent it to the force’s second Land Raider.

  Commander Dante ignited his jets and rose over the swarm of tyranid attack beasts. He lined up his perdition pistol on one at random. A squeeze of his trigger finger obliterated it. Superheated steam roared out from the space the beast had occupied. Its brood brothers paid it no heed, but raced on, talons out to stab and rend. The tyranids poured over the wall like water. Behind them came larger creatures, nearly at the fortifications now. Further out, slower artillery beasts were ploughing through bodies. Once they were in range, their clawed subsidiary limbs slammed into the shattered pavements underneath to stabilise the giant living guns bonded to their backs. Larger and larger creatures were being drawn to the port from areas where they had not been extirpated. The Blood Angels were in danger of being overrun.

  Salvation came from the sky. Missiles and battle cannon rounds slammed into the hordes assailing the space port in tight clusters, tearing huge holes in the tyranids all around the Imperial-held ground.

  A pair of Thunderhawks banked round once, firing their weapons. A Thunderhawk transporter, the only one available to the task force, came after, escorted by Stormravens and Stormtalons.