by Nick Kyme
Iaptus cut the feed, leaving Va’lin to inform his brothers.
‘Naeb…’ he began, but was too late. Naeb and Dersius were almost at the summit of Victory Arch when two of the heavily armoured forms slammed down right in their midst.
The Terminators used their claws and fingers to grip the arch, tearing deep drag marks in the stone. Using the furrows like handholds, they proceeded to climb.
‘I see them, Va’lin.’ Naeb sounded pained, feeling his injury again.
‘Disengage, brother,’ Va’lin urged. ‘We can face them together on the ground.’
‘We’re pinned, Va’lin. Between the nests and these two, we would never make it down in one piece. You and Ky’dak have to take the gate with Iaptus as ordered.’ He cut the feed.
Another Terminator landed on the bridge after clambering down one of the minor arches. He was already priming a cannon slung under one arm. Two more hit the opposite side of Victory. The sixth missed its target and smashed straight into the road, splitting a freight-loader in half and carving a large crater into the rockcrete with the impact.
Va’lin was about to launch, when Ky’dak gripped his wrist.
‘What are you doing?’ Va’lin asked sharply.
‘What are you doing, brother? Naeb and Dersius are good as dead facing off against those things alone.’
‘I won’t disobey a direct order.’
‘I won’t leave two of our squad to die.’
‘What do you care about the squad, Themian? You fight as if you’re alone, heedless of squad cohesion and regard for others.’
‘We avenged Sor’ad. I don’t want to have to avenge Naeb and Dersius as well.’
Va’lin swore, before re-opening the feed.
‘Sergeant Iaptus. We cannot join you on the ground.’
‘Cannot? It’s an order, Va’lin. I am not giving you a choice.’
‘I can’t leave the rest of my squad, sergeant.’
‘We are also your squad, brother.’
‘That said, I cannot abandon Naeb and Dersius. Vulkan be with you, brother-sergeant.’ The link died and so did any standing Va’lin might have had with Iaptus. ‘I never wanted advancement, anyway.’
Ky’dak shook his head. ‘Neither did I.’
Together, they boosted for the east side of Victory Arch.
From his vantage point of his cupola hatch, Zantho saw one half of the Wyverns break off, headed for the barricade, whilst the other remained to take on the recently deployed Black Legion. The heretics infesting the two major arches were far from neutralised. It was a gauntlet from Victory to the edge of the barricade, threaded with solid shot and las-fire. As soon as the enemy saw what the Wyverns were attempting, they would be the focus of every cannon that had range and line of fire.
Zantho saw it for what it was: a suicide run. His fellow sergeant knew it and wanted to improve the odds of getting enough bodies to the barricade to make a difference. With half his squad cut out, selling their lives cheaply against the Terminators, those odds had just been slashed drastically.
‘Iaptus, you fool…’
Zantho ordered all secondary weapons on the arch to strafe and suppress, but even with twice the number of guns he knew it would not be enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Heletine, Canticus, Salvation Bridge
Iaptus was furious. He boosted beneath the towering Victory Arch with all haste, intent on reaching the barricade and fully aware of the storm that was about to come down on them. It began ahead of schedule as the Terminator on the ground opened up with his reaper.
‘Evade and into cover!’ he bellowed, as the distant muzzle flare roared.
The combat squad slammed down roughly fifty metres beyond the arch, hunkered down behind a clutch of drums and a wrecked loader. Solid shot stitched the metal, threatening to bore a hole right through it, as the Terminator fired and advanced.
From above, las-beams cracked against the road behind them. An errant missile from a hand-held rocket tube spun away to the left and exploded, its firer blown apart by a bolt round.
Arrok switched targets and released another burst. Vo’sha and Illus had joined him at rearguard as the five Salamanders formed a loose, protective circle.
‘We can’t sit here for long, brother-sergeant,’ Xerus reminded Iaptus unnecessarily.
‘I don’t plan to, brother.’ Peeking through a gap in the wreckage, Iaptus caught sight of the Terminator. He was advancing up the road, his sustained barrage on pause whilst he slammed a fresh clip in the reaper’s stock. Barely visible through the smoke, a second Terminator was slowly dragging itself out of a crater a few metres behind the first.
‘Outflank and engage,’ Iaptus told Xerus. He held up two fingers, indicating the number of targets.
Xerus nodded and peeled away, prompting the autocannon to start up again as soon as he was airborne. Iaptus did not wait. He boosted straight forwards, clearing the wreckage with a single bound and landing a few metres away from the reaper-armed Terminator. Caught between two potential targets, the Terminator started to back up, spreading his arc of fire as he moved.
His companion was on his feet, advancing rather than retreating, and swinging a crackling power axe. Xerus hit him with a bolt from his plasma pistol but took a few rounds in the chest from the autocannon in return. The soaring Wyvern veteran was unceremoniously plucked from the sky and sent earthward where he rolled and scraped across the ground.
Illus was at Iaptus’s back; he saw the battle-brother’s icon on his retinal display. Arrok and Vo’sha were on Xerus.
This was an ambitious plan, Iaptus realised, attempting to run a gauntlet of heavy guns whilst simultaneously taking on two Black Legion elite. But he was committed now, and so would see it through to whatever end.
Iaptus led with his shield, taking a desultory salvo from the reaper before his enemy was forced to disengage so his close combat-armed comrade could wade in. Iaptus tried to barge him, using the momentum of his jump, but the massive warrior just shrugged it off and threw him across the roadway.
Illus took over, landing just in front of the Terminator as Iaptus skittered half on his knees, digging the head of his thunder hammer into the rockcrete to slow himself down. The other Wyvern managed two swings before the Terminator severed his left arm and then took his head. Illus was falling back, neck gouting blood, as Iaptus squeezed a little thrust from his jump pack to smash into the Terminator from the side. This time his enemy was distracted, and staggered against the blow. Iaptus took the warrior’s return swipe against his shield, and saw the power axe’s blade chip the edge. Pressure building, Iaptus punched with the thunder hammer’s head and broke the Terminator’s armoured hip. As he sagged with the loss of support on one side, Iaptus hit the warrior again, this time across the shoulder. A burst of energy was unleashed with the blow, and the Terminator roared in agony as his face and torso were fried. He had enough time for one final wild swing, before Iaptus caved in his helm and skull.
Sparing no thought for Illus, Iaptus reengaged his turbine engines. Fire spewed from the twin jets, the dragon mouths venting their fury and carrying the sergeant across the open ground to the overhang of broken vehicles where the rest of his squad took cover.
Xerus was alive but so was the other Terminator, though it had been forced back and wide by the sudden assault, and resumed hammering against their meagre shelter with the reaper.
‘We should advance. Can’t stay pinned here,’ said Xerus. His armour was pitted and scored from where the autocannon shells had hit him.
‘Agreed,’ said Arrok.
Iaptus had his eyes on the road ahead. A hail of gunfire was chewing it to pieces. It would chew them to pieces as well. They had scarcely progressed a hundred metres. Surprise was no longer an asset at the Wyverns’ disposal, and now the enemy knew where they were, the threat they posed and t
hat they were pinned down by one of their dark lords.
‘We aren’t getting through that.’
Xerus sounded grim. ‘What are your orders, brother-sergeant?’
‘Fall back to the arch and regroup.’ Iaptus opened the vox. He had to tell Zantho. ‘Brother,’ he began, his voice heavy with the sound of bitter defeat and grief for Illus, ‘we won’t be able to breach that vehicle blockade.’
‘Armour is moving,’ Zantho returned, and Iaptus could hear the grind of tanks and the dull report of their turret weapons behind the other sergeant’s words.
‘What?’
From their vantage point, pinned down beneath the overhang of wrecked vehicles, Iaptus and the others could not see the barricade but according to Zantho it was open.
‘Our angelic Sisters obliged us.’
And now Iaptus saw it… saw them.
They were like angels, rising on wings of fluted steel, their black armour shining with reflected firelight. Serephim.
They brought fire of their own. It burned down heretics in swathes. The black armoured angels landed amongst them like a flock of murderous ravens, hacking and cleaving with their blades. Death screams, even the crash of bolt weapons and chainblades was rapidly eclipsed by a growing swell of bellowed prayer.
Behind him, Iaptus heard two distinct heavy impacts as a pair of Terminators hit the ground.
‘Eye to eye, brother-sergeant,’ said Xerus.
Iaptus nodded, ‘Use your speed and manoeuvrability. Do not get pinned down and do not try to take these warriors on alone. They’ll kill you. It’s that simple.’
Message delivered and understood, Iaptus led them out. They would engage the Black Legion and then join up with the chorus of Seraphim sweeping across Salvation Bridge. Never before had it seemed so aptly named as in that moment. Behind the Seraphim, Zantho’s tanks crushed the lesser barricades underfoot. The vehicles were all ablaze, the lurkers within who had been carrying incendiary devices and other explosive armaments burning with them. A mass crematoria of the damned, a fitting end for traitors.
Dersius and Ky’dak held off the Terminator’s chainblade as the traitor tried to force it into Dersius’s face. Clinging to the arch with one gauntleted hand, the Terminator fought both Salamanders to a stand-still. His strength and brutality were almost overwhelming. Chainteeth ground against one another, releasing fits of sparks. Already damaged, Ky’dak’s weapon was proving unequal to the task and as the Terminator pushed hard, the rotating belt snapped and the teeth exploded from the Salamander’s weapon. Several embedded in the armour of all three combatants. One struck Ky’dak near the eye, shattering his left retinal lens. The helmet had only recently been repaired but the gouge was deep enough that it would require major work to restore again. That only mattered, of course, if Ky’dak still had a head to put it on. The impact threw him back, almost off the arch itself, and crucially left Dersius to fight alone.
Ky’dak had been right. Their brothers would be dead if not for his and Va’lin’s intervention. Despite their disadvantage, the Black Legion warriors had enclosed the exposed Assault Marines quickly, lurching hand over hand across the face of Victory Arch and making fresh handholds with their immense fists. They practically simmered with corruption, both warriors exuding a dark aura as palpable and real as the squalls of smoke rising up into the air around them.
The first was armoured head to toe. Curling tusks protruded from his faceplate and helm, which was shaped in the aspect of a ram. A soaring crest of lurid pink hair, its provenance likely human, arced from his brow to the nape of his neck. The other one was bareheaded with the broad, oddly symmetrical features common to most transhumans. His expression was almost obscenely benign in a face that exceeded the usual conventions that would regard it as ‘handsome’. The warrior was, in many ways, beautiful but it was a physical perfection born of Chaos and therefore wholly repellent. Disparate in appearance, both Black Legionnaires were united in their cause of destroying the Salamanders within their reach.
Chased by weapons fire, tracked by the tracer rounds of the deeply embedded snipers, Naeb and Dersius had found themselves back to back in one of the alcoves they had cleared, effectively pinned. Ky’dak had gone in hard, surging upwards from below on thick bursts of flame from his jump pack. His initial impact and impetus had staggered the ‘handsome’ Terminator, allowing Va’lin to find an opening. The Salamanders, however, were still boxed in, trapped in the empty gun nest and on the defensive.
Va’lin ducked a savage blow that would have taken off his head had he been any slower, and shot back with his bolt pistol. At such extreme close range, the flamer would do more damage to the Salamanders than the traitors, so he had switched to his sidearm. So far, the effect of his rounds had been negligible. In tandem, Naeb landed a solid hit with his chainsword against the monstrous Terminator’s breastplate but only managed to chew metal and further blunt the teeth of his weapon.
Behind him, Dersius roared with effort. The Themian was big, almost as big as Ba’ken, and clutched his chainsword two-handed, but the ram-headed warrior was incredibly strong and the battle was a losing one for the Salamander. Ky’dak was dazed, blinking the blood out of his eye and thanking the Throne he was not blind in it. He struggled to his feet, lurching unsteadily on the ledge on which they duelled. The heretic had managed to get one of his massive armoured feet onto the ledge and was using the extra purchase to lever more pressure onto Dersius.
‘Brothers…’ Dersius was in trouble. He had been forced down onto one knee, his enemy now bearing down on him.
‘Glory…’ whispered the handsome killer. His voice was like music, but the symphony was cloying and strangely discordant. Ky’dak struck him like a bullet, full-blooded and impelled by his jump pack on maximum burn. The backwash of heat and fire flooded the already scoured nest. It spilled over Va’lin and Naeb too. Rockcrete split apart at the point of attachment between Victory Arch and the traitor’s clenched fist. He still held a chunk of it as Ky’dak barged him off the structure and was borne down with him to the roadway below.
Va’lin clenched his teeth as the blazing promethium fire coursed over him. Ceramite was primarily designed to be flame-retardant and his power armour offered some protection, but he was not of Nocturnean blood like Naeb, so it still burned. It burned through the joints and the minute fissures. It burned with the sting of rapidly heated metal and seared mesh against his skin. He would have screamed but he did not want to give his enemy the satisfaction of knowing he was hurt.
Naeb recovered fastest from the flames. He aimed a thrust that skidded off the ram-headed warrior’s chestplate but bit through where two sections of his armour joined and released a thin gout of blood.
Now, the Terminator screamed or rather, roared. He smashed Naeb onto his back, opening up the Salamander’s wound but also overextending his reach. For a moment he poised to cleave down on Va’lin until the Wyvern shot the rockcrete he clung to and sent him flailing. Ram-head clawed as he fell, trying to find fresh purchase. Dersius had recovered and launched from the nest, small-arms fire from the lesser heretics cracking all around him.
‘Naeb,’ said Va’lin. He turned around, trying to see if his brother was badly hurt.
Naeb struggled back up and waved him on. ‘Go after him. I’ll follow Ky’dak. If we land through this sket storm and still have all our limbs, it will be a miracle, brother. If we die, I would rather go out on jets of flame as a Wyvern.’
Va’lin was only half listening. He stared towards the entrance of Salvation Bridge, where Zantho’s tanks had floundered. Only now they were moving, and in force. The streamers of gunfire hailing up at them had lessened considerably.
‘Miracle, you said?’ said Va’lin as dozens of glorious Seraphim soared like black angels out of the sky.
Stephina led forty of her Sisters, soaring at the head of a Seraphim chorus. The bridge was thick with smoke fr
om weapons discharge and rampant fires, but her battle-helm filtered out the worst of it and improved target acquisition.
Hordes of traitors were scurrying across the bridge, a ragged force of cultists and Imperial deserters. The sight of them sickened Stephina to her stomach. How easily man turned from the light of the Throne when the dark gods made promise. She wanted to personally smite every heretical one of them but had to satisfy her desire for righteous punishment vicariously through Sister Helia and her squad of ‘Exculpators’. It was an ironic cognomen. There was no forgiveness for these wretches, only death.
Helia’s warriors went about their duty with hand flamers, sending bright bursts of purging fire through the heretic ranks. As their growing conflagration soared, so too did Helia’s and the Exculpator’s voices, prayer and punishment as one.
‘Sister Avensi, Helia’s flock have cleansed the path,’ uttered Stephina across the vox-link. ‘Show our heathen brothers to the light.’ At her order, a second squad of Seraphim broke off from the chorus and landed on the roadway at the edge of the heretics’ barricade.
Stephina lost sight of Avensi and her ‘Shrivers’ soon after that, but knew her orders would be carried out to the fullest. She had to spearhead the remaining twenty Seraphim, Cassia’s ‘Sanctifiers’ and her own ‘Archangels’, and reinforce the stricken Adeptus Astartes fighting on the bridge.
Despite their obvious tribalism, their rough and brutal nature, Stephina found she admired the Salamanders in that moment. From the ritual she had witnessed out on the ridge overlooking the ruins, she had supposed theirs to be a base culture, one with little in common to the Imperial Creed but they fought with courage. She wondered then, as she drew blade and plasma pistol, if the Order had perhaps misjudged them. Simultaneously, she experienced a wellspring of guilt fount up within her.
‘My Sister,’ came Avensi’s voice across the vox-link, ‘the breach is made. We have begun a flood of wrath to wash away these traitors!’
The ‘Shrivers’ melta bombs had done their work. Now the Salamanders fighting on the bridge had tanks as well as avenging angels in support. Even with her Seraphim’s intervention but a few minutes old, Stephina could see the fight was over. There were just a handful of warriors left who would not die without a struggle.