Hammer and Bolter Year One

by Christian Dunn

  What are you reading at the moment? Who are your favourite authors?

  I’ve just read The Stone of Destiny, which was a great read and made me want to paint my face blue. It’s a story that beggars belief in the many mishaps, coincidences and downright nonsense that went into the Stone of Scone’s return. If it was fiction, you’d never believe it. My favourite authors are, without a doubt, David Gemmell, Clive Barker and Stephen King. In terms of the stories that influenced me and shape me as a writer, it’d be hard to pick any others.

  Which book (either BL or non-BL) do you wish you’d written and why?

  Going back to a previous question, the Eisenhorn books are amongst my favourite BL books (Malleus especially), and to have established so much of the lore of inquisitors would have been great. Beyond the realms of Black Library, I wish I’d written The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, as it’s the book that launched me into the worlds of fantasy (as I suspect it did for many kids my age at the time) and made me want to write my own stories. I still have my thirty-one year old copy and had Steve Jackson sign it last year, which was a real high point for me.

  PHALANX

  Chapter Twelve

  Ben Counter

  The daemonic horde hit the Imperial Fists line in a tide of flesh.

  It broke against barricades and makeshift bunkers, concentrated bolter fire chewing through the daemons as quickly as they could advance.

  In other places it swept through in a flood, swamping Imperial Fists in a mass of limbs and bodies. Some defences were denuded by pink and azure flame, blasted from the orifices of misshapen creatures dragged along on the tide of Abraxes’s own incandescent daemons. Others were outflanked by lightning-fast monsters with purplish skin and lashing tongues that swept around firepoints to strike from behind. A massive red-winged daemon, axe in one hand and lash in the other, strode at the head of its bloodletters and with vicious strike cleaved one of the tanks brought up from the Phalanx’s hangars in two, spilling flaming promethium around its feet.

  The Imperial Fists line bent under the weight of the assault, Space Marines vaulting their barriers to take up new positions closer to the Tactica before they were overrun. Bolter fire competed with the shrieking of daemons in the din of the battle. The whole deck seemed to bow and buckle under the weight of it, as the monastic cells and chapels of the Imperial Fists disappeared under the flood of Abraxes’s assault.

  At the heart of the line, Chapter Master Vladimir stood with the Fangs of Dorn in his hands. One of the Librarium novices stood before him, holding up a huge tome normally bound closed by chains and psychic seals. It contained prayers of purity and strength of mind, of which a commander had to be mindful when facing the corruptive forces of Chaos. Ahead of him, Lysander marshalled the strongest defences, a handful of tanks and several squads of Imperial Fists along with Kolgo’s Battle Sisters, holding position as the daemon army grew closer with every moment.

  ‘What manner of foe is Chaos?’ mused Vladimir. Beside him stood Lord Inquisitor Kolgo, ready for battle with a power fist encasing one hand and a rotator cannon on the other, each weapon engraved with prayers and wards of destruction.

  ‘Better men than I have gone mad seeking the answer to that question,’ replied Kolgo. ‘The question of Chaos cannot be answered.’

  ‘And yet we must seek an answer,’ said Vladimir. ‘For we must fight it. In ignorance, we fight as if in the dark.’

  ‘Better that than be corrupted by what we see,’ said Kolgo. He flexed the mechanical fingers of his power fist, and they crackled as the power field sprung into life around them.

  ‘I trust in the strength of my soul, inquisitor,’ said Vladimir. Ahead, Imperial Fists were scrambling into cover beside the second line as the daemons galloped and shambled closer, multicoloured flames dancing over the battlefield. The pale, lithe shape of Abraxes himself was just visible in the rear ranks, watching and controlling his battle, using up the lesser daemons under his command to buy his victory one death at a time. ‘I shall not become one with the enemy by understanding it. The more I learn of Chaos, the more I hate it, and the fiercer I fight.’

  ‘Overestimating one’s resolve is a more dangerous form of ignorance than fighting in the dark.’ Kolgo span the barrels of his rotator cannon, jewel-encrusted hammers clicking down on gilded chambers.

  ‘Then let us put our theories into practice,’ said Vladimir.

  ‘I concur,’ said Kolgo. Shall we?’

  ‘Brothers!’ yelled Vladimir over the vox. ‘To the fore, my brothers, with me! Through hell and to victory, onwards!’

  At Vladimir’s words, the Imperial Fists broke cover and charged. The reserve force holding the Tactica ran from behind its map tables and the shelter of its archways. The Space Marines crouched behind their defences, muttered their prayers and leapt over the defences, bolters blazing and chainblades whirring. Vladimir led the counter-attack right into the face of the enemy.

  The twin blades of the Fangs of Dorn were not made for an elegant battle. They were not weapons for duelling or weaving a dance of feint and deception. They were made for this brutal and ugly fight, the press of bodies and the triumph of strength and resolve over skill, where they could rise and fall with every stab piercing a belly or driving up into a throat.

  Vladimir slew a dozen daemons in those first few seconds, and Abraxes’s horrors fell before him, opening up a gap in the daemonic lines. Imperial Fists charged in behind him and exploited the gap, forging in further.

  Kolgo stood atop a rampart and hammered volley after volley from his rotator cannon into the host. The Battle Sisters formed up around him, Sister Aescarion directing their fire with a gesture of her power axe. A pair of Predator tanks rumbled up from either side of the Tactica, each roar of an autocannon echoed by an explosion of flame and torn daemonflesh deep within Abraxes’s lines.

  Without warning the horrors seemed to melt away, dissolving into the rear ranks at a mental command from Abraxes. In the few seconds of respite, the Imperial Fists saw ranks of bloodletters marching out to replace them. In their centre was a greater daemon of the Blood God, allied to Abraxes’s cause by the raw slaughter that battle on the Phalanx promised. It stepped over the front rows of bloodletters and a massive cloven hoof slammed down among the Imperial Fists, crushing a battle-brother under its immense weight.

  ‘Onwards! Onwards! The warp fears us so, to place such horrors in our way!’ Vladimir’s voice, even amplified over the vox, was barely audible over the foul, shuddering gale of the greater daemon’s roar. Vladmir hacked through the first couple of bloodletters to reach him as he jumped up onto the half-fallen wall of a chapel, tumbled and scorched in the first assault, that brought him up above the level of the swirling combat around him.

  The greater daemon turned its shaggy, bestial head towards Vladimir. Imperial Fists were hacking their way through the advancing bloodletters to form up around their Chapter Master, but the greater daemon could simply step over the melee, and in moments its shadow passed over Vladimir.

  The Imperial Fist held the Fangs of Dorn out wide, presenting himself as a target to the greater daemon, taunting it with his refusal to flee from the monstrosity.

  ‘You dare walk into my domain, and shed the blood of my brothers?’ yelled Vladimir. ‘Who do you think you face here? What victory do you think you can win? All the fury of the warp will falter against the soul of one good Space Marine!’

  The greater daemon bellowed and raised its axe, already slick with Adeptus Astartes blood. The axe arced down and Vladimir jumped to the side, the blade cleaving down through the ruined chapel. Vladimir stabbed both the Fangs of Dorn through the greater daemon’s wrist and ripped them out again, snapping tendons and tearing muscle. The greater daemon pulled its arm back and howled in anger, following up its axe blow with a strike from its whip.

  The whip moved too fast for even Vladimir to avoid. Its barbs lashed around his leg and the daemon yanked him off his feet, into the air, and cast him down to
the ground in the heart of the bloodletters.

  The Soulspear was still in Iktinos’s hand. Its glowing black blade was being forced up under Sarpedon’s chin, towards his throat, to slice his head off. Sarpedon grabbed Iktinos’s wrist and fought the Chaplain, but death had unlocked some new fortitude in Iktinos and in that moment the two were matched in strength.

  Sarpedon could feel the skin on his face burning. Pain meant something different to a Space Marine compared to a normal man, but it was still pain and Sarpedon struggled as much to avoid blacking out as he did with Iktinos.

  The Axe of Mercaeno was trapped under Iktinos. Sarpedon tried to wrench it free, but Iktinos would not relent. He tried to roll over so Iktinos would be trapped beneath, but the Chaplain would not budge, as if he was anchored to the deck.

  ‘You obey,’ hissed Sarpedon. ‘Obedience only comes from one place.’ He saw his own features reflected in the eyepieces of Iktinos’s mask, the blistering wounds creeping up his face. ‘It comes from fear.’

  Sarpedon let go of the Axe and reached up to place his hand on the back of Iktinos’s head. He found a grip and tore the Chaplain’s helmet away.

  Iktinos’s face was charred and twisted by the heat. The bubbling skin was stretched tight over the skull, the eyes buried in scorched pits, the scalp coming apart. There was no dimming in the hate on Iktinos’s features. The pain made it stronger. There was almost no resemblance to the face that Sarpedon knew, none of the Chaplain’s calm and resolve, just the intensity of his hatred.

  ‘I know what you fear,’ said Sarpedon. His hand clamped to the back of Iktinos’s burning skull, and he unleashed the full force of the Hell into the traitor’s mind.

  The pain helped. Normally Sarpedon unleashed the Hell out wide, capturing as many of the enemy as possible in its hallucinations. This time he focused it until it was a white-hot psychic spear, thrust into Iktinos’s mind like a hypodermic needle loaded with everything the Chaplain feared.

  He feared Daenyathos. Fear, in some deep and unrecognisable form, was the only thing that could force a Space Marine to obey with such unthinking, unquestioning ferocity. Everything that Sarpedon knew about the Philosopher-Soldier was forced into the point of fire and turned into something appalling.

  Like a god of the warp itself, the form of Daenyathos loomed in front of Iktinos’s mind’s eye. Daenyathos appeared as he had in illuminated manuscripts of his Catechisms Martial, but vast in size and infinitely more terrible. Around his legs rushed a torrent of broken bodies, all the Soul Drinkers whose lives he had spent following his monstrous plan. His armour was inscribed with exhortations to death and torture, words of the Catechisms Martial twisted and devolved. Thousands of innocents were crucified against the armour of his greaves. His chest and shoulder guards were covered with the forms of the betrayed, sunk into the armour as if half-digested. The heroes of the old Chapter – Captain Caeon, Chapter Master Gorgoleon and the victims of the First Chapter War, manipulated into conflict to satisfy Daenyathos’s desire for a Chapter at odds with the Imperium. The dead of Sarpedon’s Chapter, from Givrillian to Scamander, Captain Karraidin, Sarpedon’s dearest friend Techmarine Lygris and all the others who had fallen.

  Around the collar of Daneyathos’s armour were clustered his allies in treachery. The cruellest of Inquisitors who had forced the Soul Drinkers into the extremes of exile. Aliens despatched by Sarpedon and his brethren, as Daenyathos watched on, satisfied that they had played their part – the necron creature who had almost killed Sarpedon on Selaaca, the renegade eldar lord of Gravehnhold, the ork warlord of Nevermourn, all gathered in celebration.

  Alongside them were the very worst of his allies. The followers of the dark gods – Abraxes, Ve’Meth, a host of Traitor Marines and daemons. The mutant Teturact and his legion of the dead. And Daenyathos himself, his face lit by the fires of wrath itself, laughing with the agents of betrayal of whose wickedness he had been the architect.

  Daenyathos looked down at Iktinos, pinned squirming below him like something trapped in a microscope slide. The vastness of his displeasure, mixed with a terrible knowing mockery, hammered into Iktinos’s mind as fiercely as any weapon that Sarpedon could have wielded.

  Iktinos screamed. In his mind, the sound was lost among the laughter of Daenyathos, who revelled in seeing one of his most self-important pawns being forced to understand his own insignificance. In reality, the sound was so completely unlike anything a warrior of the Adeptus Astartes should ever utter that Iktinos ceased to be a Space Marine in that moment.

  The Chaplain’s grip relaxed. Sarpedon threw him off and rolled out of the flames. He stood over the prostrate Iktinos.

  Iktinos’s mind had utterly shattered. Sarpedon’s psychic senses were not sharp, but even he could feel it, a growing void where once the Chaplain’s soul had been, into which were tumbling the fragments of his broken personality.

  ‘I own you now,’ said Sarpedon. ‘I am the one you obey. Tell me everything.’

  The faces of the daemons crowded around, twisted and jeering, the solid mass of their features broken by the black iron blades that cut down to finish off Chapter Master Vladimir.

  The Fangs of Dorn were just suited to fighting this close, where they parried and stabbed as if moving in Vladimir’s hand by some will of their own. Perhaps Dorn himself wielded them in those moments, reaching from the Emperor’s side to lend his own skill to Vladimir’s struggle to survive.

  It would not be enough. There were too many of them, every one eager to be the one who carried the skull of a Chapter Master back to the warp, to throw it at the foot of the Blood God’s throne.

  Vladimir stabbed up into a daemon’s ribcage even as he turned another blade away from his hearts, and prepared to die.

  A streak of orange flame burned across his vision, swathing the contorted faced in fire. He was aware of glossy black armour embellished in red, and the blade of a power axe shimmering as it cut in every direction. Hands grabbed him and dragged him out of the mass. Vladimir looked up and saw the unfamiliar face of a woman above him, streaked with blood and grime, teeth gritted.

  ‘Not while we live,’ she hissed through her teeth, ‘shall they take such a prize.’

  She hauled Vladimir to his feet. He recognised Sister Aescarion, the Superior of Lord Inqiusitor Kolgo’s retinue. The jump pack she wore on her back smouldered, its exhaust vanes glowing a dull red, and the path she had carved through the daemons as she dived into the throng after Vladimir was closing as the bloodletters fought to swamp Vladimir again.

  ‘My thanks, Sister,’ said Vladimir as he found his footing.

  ‘Through me, the Emperor works,’ she replied.

  The two stood back to back as the bloodletters closed. Now Vladimir could let the Fangs of Dorn do their finest work, stabbing so rapidly up into the advancing daemon ranks that every moment another of them fell, ribcage split open or burning entrails spilling from a ruptured abdomen. Aescarion fought with her axe in one hand and a pistol in the other, quickly rattling off the pistol’s magazine and then taking the axe in both hands.

  A Sister of Battle could not match a Space Marine’s sheer strength and skill. Few unaugmented humans could approach a veteran Superior’s ability, but even so she was just that – human, without the extra organs and enhanced physiology of the Adeptus Astartes. But what she lacked in their physical superiority, she made up with in faith.

  It was not a Space Marine’s mental fortitude that Vladimir witnessed in Aescarion. A Space Marine was a master of his fear, his mind so strong he could face even the daemons of the warp and remain sane. Aescarion was different. It was not conditioning and strength of duty, raw bloody-mindedness, that fuelled her. It was faith. She believed so completely in the Emperor’s hand guiding her, in the place she had in His plan, that it was as plain to her as the enemy closing in around her. She did not fear them, because in her mind she was not a human being with human frailties. She was a hollow vessel that existed to be filled up with the will of th
e Emperor and used as He willed it. There could be no fear, when whatever end befell not her, but the Emperor.

  Vladimir led the way back towards the Imperial Fists lines, opening up a path as the Fangs of Dorn flashed as quick and deadly as the teeth of a giant chainblade. He had to force his legs out of the sucking mire of gore and entrails around his feet. Aescarion’s axe gave her reach and she swung it in great arcs as she followed, smashing falling blades aside and keeping a good sword’s length between her and the bloodletters.

  The mass parted and Aescarion’s Battle Sisters crowded forwards, flanking Vladimir and battering the daemons back with bolter fire. Vladimir could see Lysander atop a barricade, swatting aside one of the horrors with his shield and pointing with his hammer to direct the heavy weapons set up around the Tactica. Everywhere he looked, there was carnage. Here, the Imperial Fists launched forwards in a counter-attack; there, the line broke and leaping horrors or galloping fiends poured through the lines like air bursting from a hull breach.

  Vladimir made it over the altar of a shrine, used as the lynchpin of a barricade of chapel pews and statues. Inquisitor Kolgo was standing in the chapel, its columns fallen and its nave strewn with the bodies of daemons and Space Marines. With a moment to breathe at last, he turned to help drag the Battle Sisters following him over the altar into shelter. Aescarion leapt over the barricade on the exhausts of her jump pack, the gauntlets of her power armour smoking with daemon blood up to the elbow. Battle Sisters and Imperial Fists manned the barricade, pouring bolter fire into the bloodletters trying to follow.