Hammer and Bolter Year One

by Christian Dunn

  ‘Did it work?’ said Vladimir, catching his breath. ‘Is it fallen?’

  By way of answer, Kolgo simply pointed towards the ruin where Vladimir had made his stand against the greater daemon.

  The winged daemon was slumped against the wall, its wings in bloody tatters and its armour torn. Another volley of heavy fire slammed into it, punching through its corded red muscles. One of its wings was sheared through and fell broken, tattered skin fluttering like the canvas of a ruined sail. Vladimir had brought the daemon into the open, forced it to stand proud of the daemonic host while it fought him. He had bought his heavy weapons the time they needed to draw a bead on the target and spear it on a lance of concentrated fire.

  The greater daemon was taking its time to die. Heavy bolter fire rippled up and down it. The daemon dropped its lash and tried to force itself back to its feet, leaning on the ruined wall for support. A lascannon blast caught it in the chest and bored right through it, revealing its gory ribs and pulsing organs. The daemon roared, blood spattering from its lips, and toppled over into the horde.

  The Imperial Fists cheered as the daemon died. Lysander led them, raising his hammer high as if taunting the daemons to respond.

  The sound was drowned out by the laughter that rumbled through the Phalanx. It was the laughter of Abraxes, observing the slaughter from the rear ranks. The object of his amusement lumbered into view on the Imperial Fists flank – a greater daemon of the plague god, the enormous bloated horror that had killed Leucrontas and broken the force holding the Rynn’s World Memorial. The daemon’s laughter joined Abraxes’s own as it was herded forward by its attendant daemons, and it clapped its flabby hands in glee at the prospect of new playthings.

  ‘Can we kill another one, Chapter Master?’ voxed Kolgo.

  ‘It is not a question of whether we can or not,’ replied Vladimir. ‘We will do so or we will be lost.’

  ‘Behold this icon of sin!’ shouted Aescarion to her Battle Sisters. ‘Witness the corruption it wears! In the face of this evil, let our bullets be our prayers!’

  The expression on the greater daemon’s face changed. Its enormous mouth downturned and it frowned, its eyes widening in surprise, a caricature of dismay and shock. Tiny explosions studded the rubbery surface of its flesh, not from the direction of the Imperial Fists centre, but from behind it.

  Vladimir jumped onto a fallen pillar to get a better view. He glimpsed the flash of a power weapon – power claws, slashing through the plaguebearers, illuminating the edges of purple armour.

  ‘It’s the Soul Drinkers!’ came a vox from the nearest Imperial Fists unit.

  Vladimir recognised Captain Luko now, followed by what remained of the Soul Drinkers Chapter. A bolt of lightning arced from the ceiling, earthing through the daemon, burning away masses of charred flesh – Tyrendian, the Soul Drinkers Librarian, marshalled the lightning like a conductor with an orchestra as the other Soul Drinkers ran into the fight around him.

  Vladimir paused for a second. The Soul Drinkers were the enemies of the Imperial Fists, rebels and traitors. But the daemons they both fought were a fouler enemy even than the renegade. The legions of the warp were the worst of the worst.

  ‘All units of the Fifth,’ ordered Vladimir. ‘Join the Soul Drinkers and counter to our flank! Third and Ninth, hold the centre!’

  The predator tanks emerged from the barracks they were using for shelter and rumbled towards the growing battle on the flank. Imperial Fists units broke from their positions and followed them. Vladimir watched as the Fifth Company and the Soul Drinkers caught the plague daemon’s force from both sides.

  ‘Dorn forgive me,’ said Vladimir to himself.

  Captain Luko looked into the eyes of the daemon, and he saw there everything that mankind had learned to fear.

  Something in those unholy eyes had tormented the sons of Earth ever since creatures first crawled out from beneath the mud. Humans had told tales of it, had seen it in their nightmares, before their species had finished evolving. It was the force that inspired the weak flesh to corrupt and rot away, the purest of fears, of death and pain and the unknown wrapped up into one faceless, malevolent will.

  Since there had been intelligent minds to contemplate it, the Plague God had existed, turning vulnerable minds to corruption and evil through the fear of what it could do to their flesh. But now there were no vulnerable minds for it to exploit, no kernels of doubt that could grow into desperation and surrender. A Space Marine did not have that weakness. Now, this avatar of the Plague God had to fight.

  The plaguebearers that attended the greater daemon were caught by surprise by the Soul Drinkers, who charged from the warren of the catacombs without warning. The daemons did not scatter or run as mundane troops might, but they did not have enough numbers in the right place and the Soul Drinkers had destroyed dozens of them in the first seconds. Luko had taken a worthy toll with his claws and bolter fire had done for the rest. Now Luko was face to face with the greater daemon, its burning and blood-covered form quivering with rage and pain, and everything they had earned in those moments would be lost if he faltered now.

  ‘I have killed your kind before!’ yelled Luko, knowing the daemon could hear him even through the battle’s din. ‘But you have never killed anything like me!’

  The daemon snatched up one of the chains its followers had used to drag it. It raised the chain over its head and brought it down like a whip, the links of the chain slamming into the deck. Luko threw himself out of the way, the floor beneath him buckling under the impact.

  Plaguebearers following the greater daemon shambled to its side. A dozen of them carried between them an enormous sword of oozing black steel, its pitted blade edged with bloody fangs that looked like they had just been torn from some huge beast’s jaw. The greater daemon bent down and took up the sword in its other hand, and the pits in the metal formed mouths that screamed and howled. Luko saw the souls bound into the blade, pitiful souls who had pledged themselves to the daemon in ignorance or desperation.

  The daemon raised the blade over its head, point down aimed at Luko. Luko got to his feet and slashed at the plaguebearers who tried to hem him in, the shadow of the blade falling over him as he realised he could not get out of its way.

  A bolt of blue-white light hit the sword and the whole weapon lit up, power coursing through it. The daemon bellowed as the flesh of its hand burned off, falling in charred flakes. Its fingers, stripped to bloody bone, let go of the sword and it fell to the deck with a tremendous clang.

  Behind Luko, Librarian Tyrendian leapt from the Soul Drinkers ranks. Lightning leapt from his fingers and played around Luko, burning away the plaguebearers who tried to close with him. A bolt struck the greater daemon, earthing in blue-white crackles of power through its skin and leaving crazed burn patterns across its bulk.

  Luko leapt over the fallen sword and punched forwards with a claw, spearing through the back of the daemon’s ruined hand. The daemon yanked the hand away and lashed at Luko with the chain again, as if it had been bitten by a troublesome insect and was trying to swat it before it could bite again. The chain whipped into Luko at chest height and threw him back into a pack of plaguebearers. Luko slashed in every direction, hoping that each wild strike would catch one of the diseased daemons closing on him.

  ‘Brother!’ yelled Tyrendian. ‘Fall back! We cannot lose you!’

  Luko flung the last plaguebearer off himself and rounded on the greater daemon again. Too late, he saw the daemon had loped a massive stride closer, the mass of its belly like a solid wall of flesh bearing down on him. Luko turned and tried to run but the daemon moved faster than its bulk should have allowed, hauling its weight off the floor on its stumpy back leg and stamping down next to Luko, bringing its weight down onto the Soul Drinker.

  Luko crashed to the deck, his lower half pinned under the weight of the daemon. The foul, oozing mass of muscle and flab was crushing down on him with so much weight Luko could feel the ceramite of his l
eg armour distorting under the pressure.

  Luko twisted around as best he could, lightning claws held in front of him in the best guard he could manage. The greater daemon’s face loomed past the curve of its belly, and it was smiling. Luko could feel the deep rumble of its laughter as it saw its prey trapped beneath it.

  ‘Here!’ yelled Tyrendian. ‘Here! You want to eat?’ Tyrendian put his hands together, as if in prayer, and thrust them forward, a twisting bolt of electricity lancing into the greater daemon’s shoulder. It bored through the flesh, charred layers flaking away to the bone.

  Tyrendian was walking forwards, every step flinging lightning into the greater daemon. He passed into its shadow, his face edged in hard white and blue by the power playing around his hands.

  ‘Tyrendian! No!’ shouted Luko, but Tyrendian did not back off. As the daemon’s gaze fell onto him he stood his ground, casting another lightning bolt up at the daemon’s face.

  The greater daemon dropped the chain, and reached a massive flabby hand over Tyrendian. Tyrendian did not move. Tyrendian had never picked up a scar in battle - never, it had always seemed, even been afflicted by the patina of grime and blood that covered every soldier. He always appeared perfect, less a soldier and more a sculpture, a painting, of what a Space Marine should be. Framed by the battling plaguebearers and borne down upon by the greater daemon, there could be no more powerful symbol of purity facing the very embodiment of corruption.

  The daemon’s hand closed on Tyrendian. Tyrendian gritted his teeth as the daemon lifted him off his feet, and the air thrummed with the power gathering around his hands. Crackles of it arced into the deck or into the daemon’s hand, but it did not seem to feel them. It licked its lips and its mouth yawned wide, showing the multiple rows of teeth that led down to the churning acidic pit of its stomach.

  ‘No!’ yelled Luko, his words almost lost by the force with which he shouted them. ‘Tyrendian, My brother. Do not do this, not for me. My brother, no!’

  The greater daemon flung Tyrendian into the air, and the Soul Drinker disappeared into its mouth.

  Luko screamed in anger, as if by doing so he could force the grief down and bury it.

  The daemon laughed. So pleased was it by its kill, that it did not notice for a few seconds the blue glow growing in the centre of its belly.

  Luko rolled back onto his front and covered himself with his lightning claws. He saw plaguebearers approaching to butcher him, or perhaps hack his legs off to free the rest of him so he could be fed to their lord. He had never seen anything so hateful as their one-eyed, horned faces split with rotten grins, gleeful at their master’s kill and the prospect of feeding him another Soul Drinker.

  The rising hum from inside the greater daemon told Luko he had only moments left. That was all the plaguebearers needed to get to him.

  ‘Come closer,’ he shouted at them. ‘Let us become acquainted, my friends. Let me show you an Adeptus Astartes welcome.’

  The hum turned to a whine. The greater daemon noticed it now. It groaned, and placed its hand to its belly, face turning sour and pained. It roared, and the terrible gale of it drowned out Luko’s voice as he yelled obscenities at the plaguebearers.

  The daemon’s belly swelled suddenly, like a balloon inflating. The daemon’s eyes widened in surprise. It was the last expression on its hateful face – surprise and dismay.

  The daemon’s belly exploded in the tremendous burst of blue-white power. Luko was slammed into the floor with the force of it. The plaguebearers were thrown backwards, battered by the wall of force that hit them. A great cloud of torn and burning entrails showered down, covering Soul Drinker and daemon alike. Lightning arced in every direction from the shattered body of the greater daemon, ripping into the plaguebearers surrounding it, lashing across the ceiling, boring through the floor.

  In the old Chapter, some had speculated on just how much power Tyrendian could gather. If collateral damage and his own survival were no issue, it was guessed by the Librarium that their bioelectric weapon could detonate himself with massive force, as great a force of raw destruction as a whole artillery strike. They had never been sure, and never sought to find out, for Tyrendian was too valuable a weapon of war to risk him finding out how much power he could concentrate within himself.

  Now, the question had been answered. Tyrendian could gather inside himself enough electric power to destroy a greater daemon of the warp. He had detonated inside the daemon’s belly with such force that all that remained, tottering above Luko, was a thick and gristly spine on which was still mounted the ragged remnants of the greater daemon’s skull. The shattered stumps of its ribs and a single shoulder blade, clinging by tattered tendons, alone suggested the bulk of its chest. Green-black brains spilled from the back of its ruptured skull, and across the front of it was stretched the daemon’s face, still wearing that expression of surprise.

  The daemon toppled backwards, the ruin of its upper body slapping to the deck. The weight on Luko relaxed and he dug a claw into the deck in front of him, dragging himself out from under the daemon. He looked back and saw that only the lower portion of its once-vast belly remained, its legs connected only by skin, the many layers of entrails and organs now just a charred crater.

  The plaguebearers nearby had been blasted back off their feet. Many had been burst apart by the lightning unleashed by Tyrendian’s detonation. The whole deck surrounding the daemon’s corpse was buckled and burned. Luko’s own armour was charred and bent out of shape, giving him only just enough free movement to walk away from the destruction towards the Soul Drinkers lines.

  Luko’s ears rang, and the sound of gunfire barely registered through the white noise filling his head. He looked around, dazed, trying to blink away the fog that seemed to smother his mind. There was no sign of Tyrendian. Quite probably he had been vaporised by the force of the power he unleashed. There would be nothing to bury.

  Sergeat Graevus ran forwards and grabbed Luko, dragging him away from the reforming plaguebearers and thrusting him behind a fallen pillar for cover.

  Yellow-armoured figures came into view, approaching from the direction of the Imperial Fists centre. Without the greater daemon to anchor them, the plaguebearers wheeled in confusion, running in ones and twos into the bolter fire of the Imperial Fists, cut down and shredded into masses of stringy gore.

  Graevus held his power axe high and yelled an order that Luko couldn’t quite make out through the ringing. The Soul Drinkers vaulted from cover and advanced, bolters firing, even as the Imperial Fists did the same. Caught in a crossfire, leaderless, the plaguebearers seemed to dissolve under the weight of fire, as if in a downpour of acid.

  Luko’s senses returned to him as the whole flank of the daemon army collapsed, the servants of the Plague God ripped to shreds by the combined fire of the Soul Drinkers and the Imperial Fists.

  The two Adeptus Astartes forces met as the last of the plaguebearers were being picked off by bolter fire. Luko found himself looking into the face of Captain Lysander.

  ‘At last, we meet as brothers,’ said Lysander.

  ‘Thank the Emperor for mutual foes,’ replied Luko without humour.

  ‘Vladimir has requested that we fight now as one. Will you take your place in the line?’

  ‘We will, Captain,’ said Luko. ‘There are but few of us, and one of our best was lost killing that beast. But whatever fight we can offer, the enemies of the warp will have it.’

  Lysander shouldered his power hammer, and held out a hand. Luko slid his own hand out of his lightning claw gauntlet, and shook it.

  ‘They’re falling back,’ came Vladimir’s voice over Lysander’s vox. ‘But in order. All units, withdraw to the centre and the Forge and hold positions.’

  ‘Abraxes would not abandon the fight,’ said Lysander, ‘even with their flank collapsed.’

  Luko watched as the last few plaguebearers fled through the ruins of barracks and shrines, as if responding to a mental command to give up the figh
t. They were cut down by bolter fire, sharpshooters snapping bolts into them as they ran. ‘He has a plan,’ said Luko. ‘His kind always do.’

  ‘What are they doing?’ asked Kolgo.

  Sister Aescarion, crouched among the ruins of the front line’s barricades, watched through her magnoculars a moment longer.

  ‘They are building something,’ she said.

  The daemons had retreated a little under an hour before, but not all the way back to the cargo holds. Instead they had formed their own lines a kilometre away, almost the whole width of the deck. They had cut power to as many of the local systems as they could, resulting in the overhead lights failing and casting darkness across the battlefield as if night had fallen. Fires twinkled among the daemons’ positions, illuminating hulking shapes of iron with designs that could only be guessed at in the gloom.

  ‘Building what?’ said Kolgo.

  Aescarion handed him the magnoculars. ‘War machines,’ said Aescarion. ‘At a guess. It is impossible to tell.’

  Kolgo focused the magnoculars for himself. Daemons danced around their fires and tattered banners stood, fluttering in the updrafts, casting flickering shadows on the engines they were building. ‘Building them from what?’

  ‘Perhaps they are bringing parts through from the warp,’ said Aescarion.

  The Imperial Fists had rebuilt what defences they could and were now holding their makeshift line again, watchmen posted at intervals to watch for any developments among the enemy. The Space Marine losses had been tallied, and they were heavy. Leucrontas’s command had almost been wiped out, only a couple of dozen stragglers now joining the centre. Most other Imperial Fists units were little over half-strength. Borganor’s Howling Griffons, in the Forge of Ages, had fended off skirmishing forces that tested their strength, and were mostly intact save for a few felled by shrieking flying things that swooped down among them, decapitating and severing with their snapping jaws. The Imperial Fists now holding the line in front of the Tactica were crouched, much as Aescarion was, scanning the daemon lines for the first signs of an assault. The sound of metal on metal drifted across, along with strains of a grim atonal singing.