by Nick Kyme
‘You fire-born?’ Exor queried.
Zartath nodded. ‘We, us. I am fire-born now.’
Though it was but a brief glimpse, Exor saw the face of the savage give way to that of the man Zartath wanted to be but which his nature would not yet allow.
‘Get up,’ he snarled, the beast rumbling up to the surface again.
Zartath heaved the Techmarine onto his back, grunting at the strain.
‘Leave no one behind,’ he said and followed the trail left by Agatone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Sturndrang, the underhive of Molior
The scrap of light became an iris then an oval, getting wider and wider until it was a portal that led close to the surface of Sturndrang.
Agatone closed his eyes as moist, relatively fresh air from the world above washed over his face and body, cooling the underhive heat. He blind-loaded his pistol, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it, then secured his combat-blade and spare clips.
‘Are we going into battle again, Brother Agatone?’
‘Yes, we are,’ Agatone replied, opening his eyes but keeping them fixed on the portal of light.
‘I thought you knew him, this…’ he recalled the name, ‘Tsu’gan.’
‘It’s because I know him that I’m preparing for a fight.’ Agatone glanced down at the medicus to convey the seriousness of his next words. ‘Tsu’gan won’t go down easy.’
The light enveloped them and a bracing wind whipped around the lifter’s carriage as its two passengers were exposed to the elements. They had emerged into an expansive shipyard, one lost to decay and neglect but still usable for embarkation.
Ostensibly still very much a part of the underhive, the shipyard was situated at the bottom of an immense and long shaft that fed all the way to the surface of Sturndrang and the void beyond.
Wrecks of old vessels, their fuselages ripped open and gutted like animal carcasses, littered a flat rockcrete plain studded with snapped communication spikes and relay towers. Hangars and warehouses, their gates broken open and contents scavenged, colonised one small area of the yard and there were workshops and a freight depot. It wasn’t hard to imagine this place as once being inhabited but only ghosts lingered now and the echoes of old lives.
There were bodies, not of men but some indigenous prey-creature as far as Agatone could tell. Several corpses had been left out in the open to rot. What he first believed was metal reflecting off the ambient light above were actually eyes, blinking in the shadows. More of the prey-creatures, too afraid to venture closer with the bullet-holed bodies of their kin stinking in plain view. Agatone counted eight, most of which had been split by a heavy blade not unlike the one used in the archivium. Some had simply been blasted apart by some immense and unsubtle weapon.
‘Stay close to me,’ Agatone murmured, eyes scanning for threats.
‘Is he here?’ whispered Issak.
Agatone nodded.
‘How can you be–’ Issak began.
The dull throb of a turbine rotor cycling up interrupted him.
Agatone snarled, and spoke between clenched teeth. ‘No, not again…’
He ran, leaving Issak behind to fend for himself. He didn’t call back or tell the medicus what he should do. He just ran.
Bursting from behind a hangar and through a knot of ships, Agatone emerged into a sparsely occupied area of the shipping yard to see a gun-cutter rising in the distance. Comms traffic had started crackling in his ear and he assumed some of the towers retained some small level of function. He ignored it for now, intent on the figure waiting below the rising vessel. It was muscular, broad-shouldered and wearing strange armour. It was also bald with onyx-black skin.
Agatone ran harder, pumping his arms and urging his legs to greater effort. A large chasm split off the part of the shipping yard he was on and the spur currently occupied by the figure. He realised they must have scaled it. Glancing up, Agatone saw it was the only place that offered a clear run up the shaft. He could make the leap. If the figure could do it, then so could he.
A side hatch in the ship opened, sliding left to right, and another figure appeared. Smaller, human, male. Agatone locked the details away in his memory for later use. A line was lowered and the waiting figure grasped it as it came down. It still had its back to Agatone, heedless of his rapid approach.
‘I can make it…’ Agatone hissed between his teeth, psychologically preparing for the jump. It was at least twenty metres. The crackling in his earbead resolved into words. A distress beacon that was coming from the Forge Hammer. Agatone listened, scowled.
Ahead, the figure had wrapped the line around its wrist and was signalling for the vessel to take off.
Agatone could still reach it. The chasm loomed. One solid leap and he would be on him.
The message continued – Agatone began to slow, fists clenched in slow frustration. He skidded to a halt at the edge of the abyss and could only watch as his prey was pulled into the air and away from his grasp.
The Forge Hammer was under attack. He had no choice but to return. Agatone activated the locator signal that would summon the waiting ships to come and retrieve him. He set off another beacon for both Lok and Clovius so they would know the hunt was over. Comms might be patchy but the beacon would get through.
‘Tsu’gan…’ he uttered breathlessly.
The other vessel rose, the figure disappearing within, the turbine engines carrying it far away.
Agatone found his voice, and his fury.
‘TSU’GAN!’
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Heletine, Canticus southern district, ‘the Cairns’
Drakgaard watched his troops on the tactical display as they delved further and further into uncharted Canticus. For almost an hour, since the Targons’ fateful encounter, there had been no sign of the enemy and no word from the Adepta Sororitas, either. It was as if the heretics had retreated so far into their own lines that they had emerged out of the other side of the city and into the desert. Unopposed, Drakgaard felt increasingly like he was walking into a trap but his desire to grasp what he saw as a chance at a final victory overrode his better judgement.
Little was left in reserve, only a few Cadian infantry platoons, some light vehicles, any Stormtalons that could be spared: Drakgaard was betting almost everything he had on a single, decisive attack. Sergeant V’reth’s squad was too distant to recall, likewise the other Cadian regiments. Their engagements were skirmishes now, insignificant to this. The relics forgotten, Drakgaard had a taste of the enemy and was storming through a once unconquerable city in a belligerent mood. It didn’t occur to him that the ragged line of his formation was brutally vulnerable, that in a single, knockout blow his enemies could destroy him and his army.
That possibility didn’t occur to Drakgaard until he remembered something he had heard about Canticus, about the old districts where his enemy hid from sight, about the old tunnels, the world beneath a world, the city concealed as a bed of leaves would a huntsman’s trap.
Ahead, a ridge of high ground emerged through the darkness, the edges of its lofty buildings picked out by the Sentinels’ search lamps. They had strayed into an urban valley, a basin of land before the city rose up higher and more dominant.
Drakgaard was turning, his Chaplain reaching the same conclusion as his commander, their eyes meeting as a sense of impotent urgency filled them. The order to fall back was barely formed on Drakgaard’s snarling lips before a low rumble filled the valley, swelling to a bellowing crescendo and the world beneath the world rose up to engulf them.
Zantho felt the quake before he heard or saw anything. It rumbled up through the chassis of his Predator tank in subtle tremors that rocked his pintle mount and told him something terrible had just happened.
As he called down for the vox to try to establish contact with Colonel Redgage, he noticed the plumes of sm
oke and dust occluding part of the city. They came from the direction of the second armour column, the one accompanied by Kor’ad and his troops. The Dreadnought had been en route to link up with Captain Drakgaard’s forces and the bulk of the Salamanders martial strength in Canticus.
If the two had met as planned…
‘Oh, merciful Vulkan…’ Zantho whispered.
Both vox-links to Kor’ad and Colonel Redgage were non-responsive.
‘Drek’or,’ he called down to his comms-operator below, ‘establish a column-wide link.’
After a few seconds, Drek’or replied, ‘Ready now, commander.’
Zantho nodded, and addressed the entire column.
‘All tank commanders, change heading to east now. I repeat, all armour is to proceed eastwards immediately.’
A direct route would take them through the city. They would be vulnerable to ambush. They would lose vehicles to the terrain. Some, most, would likely not make it through. Desperation had forced the commander’s hand, robbing him of choice and sound tactics.
‘Brother-Sergeant Zantho,’ Drek’or began, ‘across that rubble and debris, we risk–’
‘I know the risks. If we have to bulldoze our way through this accursed city to reach our brothers then that is what we’ll do. We have no time left for caution. Warriors are dying, Drek’or.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Heletine, Canticus, inside the ravine
Redgage’s Chimera was on its side and trailing smoke. One of its tracks had been torn off and the front section was ablaze. Still groggy from the crash, he could feel the heat prickling his skin and smell the burning crewmen trapped inside. Mercifully, they were dead before the flames had taken hold but the fat of their bodies crackled and spat all the same.
Blood was leaking down his face from a gash in his forehead. No doubt his helmet had saved his skull, but Redgage couldn’t find it now and wasn’t about to look.
A ravine had opened up in the heart of the city, a yawning abyss that swallowed the allied Imperial forces whole at the exact moment they combined assets. The concerted push by Captain Drakgaard had ended in dismal failure. As far as Redgage could tell from his smoke-choked death trap, everyone in a Cadian uniform or drake-scale battleplate was fighting for their lives.
The enemy had been waiting, goading Drakgaard just enough to keep him eager. Weeks of bitter attritional fighting had led to this moment, though why the plan had been enacted now was anyone’s guess at this point.
Redgage struggled from the half-crushed cupola hatch, surprised at his own clarity. Perhaps his imminent death had ramped up his situational awareness in an effort to save him. Survival was really all that was left to him now, though judging by what was going on below the Salamanders weren’t ready to capitulate yet.
He had heard that said about them, that they refused to admit defeat, willing to fight in the face of impossible odds.
Though he could discern little through the smoke and heat haze, Redgage ventured only two possible outcomes: retreat or destruction.
He crawled out through the narrow hatch on his stomach, dragging his wounded leg behind him. It hurt like the damned Eye, but reminded him he was still alive and kept him awake so he could try to stay that way. Something snagged his belt on the way out and he reached down to find out what it was. He touched skin and looked back into the murky hatch to see what appeared to be Hansard’s fingers grasping at him.
Incredibly, Redgage’s gunner had survived.
‘Hold on, Hansard,’ Redgage told him. ‘I’ve got you,’ he said, grabbing the man’s wrist and heaving even as he lurched from the cupola himself.
Hansard came loose, but only from the elbow. The rest of the poor fool was still in the tank, severed from his limb in the crash.
Redgage gaped at Hansard’s forearm, distraught, before casting it down in disgust and muttering a prayer for the man’s soul as he reconciled himself to an uncomfortable truth. Of his crew, he alone lived.
Free of the wreck, coughing up black tar from his lungs as the smoke intensified, Redgage limped away into cover.
Dirt and debris from the collapsed city block was strewn all around him. Some of his comrades had been crushed by it. He had his back against a pillar and was trying to look up through the grey clouds at the summit of the ravine. It was a hard climb, but even with his leg it was doable.
Redgage started to move. If asked, he would not have described himself as a corpulent man. Several decades had passed since he had taken his physical training seriously, though, and he wished he had recently put more time in on the endurance yard.
Very few Cadian tanks had avoided the sinkhole. Those that did stood proudly on the edge of the ravine, speaking loudly through their cannons. Less than half the Thunderers and Demolishers Redgage had brought with him remained. The rest were broken and on fire like his Chimera. Clambering up the ruined slope, Redgage fixed a point in his mind where a stout wall of armour still resisted and aimed for it. So intent was he on reaching salvation that he failed to notice the cultist until it was almost upon him.
Dressed in whatever rags they had worn when forfeiting their immortal souls, cult worshippers had poured into the ravine like vermin. Driven to the point of desperate fanaticism, ordinary men and women had become murderers by the insidious promises of Chaos.
Salvation, status, vengeance, retribution, a man’s sins were varied enough that the gods of Ruin knew what to offer in return for eternal servitude. Moral corruption was, by its nature, a choice. Every cultist scrambling into the ravine had made theirs – some, Redgage noticed with disgust, were even wearing ragged Cadian uniforms.
One such traitor leapt at him now, combat knife already bloodied and hungry for more.
Redgage had enough time to throw up his arms in defence and managed to seize his assailant by the wrist before the frothing trooper bore the colonel down beneath his weight.
Hot breath, rancid with halitosis, washed over Redgage and he fought not to gag. The blade nicked his cheek like a wasp sting and he roared to push it back again.
Eyes sunken, hair falling from his scalp in clumps, the trooper looked like he was rad-poisoned. But it wasn’t radiation, it was the taint. Redgage barely recognised the man as one of his own. Only the uniform gave weight to the lie that all the Cadians had stayed loyal or died to remain so.
‘Traitor!’ spat Redgage, kneeing his assailant in the chest and using his anger to throw him off. Seemingly fuelled by unnatural vigour, the trooper sprang to his feet and was about to lunge again when Redgage drew his service pistol from its black leather holster and shot the man dead.
A second cultist a few metres away was lining up a rocket tube when the colonel spotted him. Steadying his aim with his free hand, Redgage killed him too. He executed a third who was scrambling up the slope below. He wanted to kill them all, to vent the anger and the horrific sense of frustration threatening to unman him. So many slain – no amount in return could balance those scales. The accountancy of war didn’t work like that and Redgage knew it.
His brief, but frenzied, bravura brought the attention of others and made the colonel regret his lapse in composure. For after the deluge of cultists had stormed the ravine, the genuine warriors of the heretic cause had shown themselves.
Black Legion, the name held terror for most who heard it. For the men and women of Cadia, especially those who stood watch at the Cadian Gate, it promoted a stern but resigned steadfastness.
Said to descend from Horus himself, the sons of old Cthonia were rightly feared throughout the galaxy, at their head a leader so venerable he could remember the days of the primarchs. Such history, millennia old, was little more than fiction for those who lived in the Time of Ending, but not by him, nor his sworn warriors.
Redgage watched as three hulking, armoured bodies muscled through the rubble. Each had drawn a chainblade, their impassive f
aceplate masks unable to convey their relish of the kill. Skulls hung from their breastplates on spiked chains. Human hair dyed red served as topknots for their horned helms. Eager, murderous fire blazed within their flat, rectangular eye slits.
Redgage knew he couldn’t outrun them. He did the only thing he could – he levelled his sidearm at one of the power-armoured monsters and declared with more courage than he felt, ‘Come on then, scum!’
Then fired.
The bright flare of laser discharge lit up the slope for a few seconds as Redgage drained the pistol’s power pack. Barring a few scorch marks, the warriors emerged undamaged and undeterred. More than that in fact, they were laughing at him.
Lost somewhere during the crash, Redgage had no close combat weapon so he picked up a length of pipe instead, and tried to prop himself up against the rubble so he could swing it.
‘Bernadetta, my love…’ he whispered to the wife he would never see again, ‘I am so sorry.’
The growl of hungry chain-teeth filled his senses as Redgage faced down the three traitors.
Uselessly brandishing the pipe, Redgage prepared his soul for the end. The prayer died in his mouth as the first warrior evaporated in a ball of actinic blue light. The others turned at once, recognising a worthy foe.
Huge, imposing and horrendously powerful, Kor’ad strode amongst them. His plasma cannon was recharging for another burst, but the Dreadnought still had his thunder hammer and smashed a second warrior aside with it.
The third went in close, shouting for reinforcements in his own crude language, aiming for the Dreadnought’s weak points with his chainblade.
Sparks spitting from a ruptured power cable in his casket, Kor’ad backed up and knocked the warrior down with a punch from his massive fist. Then he quickly stepped forwards and crushed the traitor underfoot.
Two more were coming, and Kor’ad shifted his massive bulk into their path.