[Warhammer 40K] - Sons of Dorn

by Chris Roberson - (ebook by Undead)

  Destructive capability at a distance, capacity to inflict damage in close quarters and distance from the barricades—by all measures, the targets for Zatori to prioritise were clear.

  The Noise Marines.

  “The nearest is on your right, at the trailing edge of the enemy line,” Scout Valen voxed, sending a blast from his flamer at a group of Roaring Blades tempting the defenders by stepping onto the southern ramp. “Looks like he’s making ready to open up with his sonic weapon, too.”

  “Preparing to fire,” Zatori voxed.

  “Acknowledged,” Valen and Sandor replied.

  “Take cover,” Zatori voxed. Then, one fist around the grip and the other on the stock, Zatori leapt up from behind the barricade and swung the plasma gun around to the right, while his squadmates took cover. Taking only a slight second to sight the target Valen had spotted and to aim, Zatori squeezed the firing stud on the plasma gun’s grip and sent another blinding bolt of plasma lancing out towards the Noise Marine, a massive figure in power armour enamelled in bright pink and garish gold. At that exact instant, though, the Noise Marine fired his sonic weapon at the barricades, waves of devastating harmonics so loud they could be seen as a visible rippling in midair.

  Zatori fell back behind cover as quickly as he was able, letting the plasma gun swing on its tether while he clamped his hands over his ears, but even missing the brunt of the sonic blast he was still hammered enough that his brain felt as though it were vibrating out of his skull, his teeth buzzing like a swarm of angry bees.

  As Scouts Valen and Sandor leapt up from cover to lay down suppressing flames, Zatori pulled his hands away from his ears, and saw blood spotting the palms of either hand. He paused only long enough to wipe away the blood which oozed sluggishly down his ear-lobes, and to ensure that his micro-bead was still in place, then got a grip on his plasma gun once more.

  “The target isn’t down,” Scout Sandor voxed, the sound thankfully transmitting from Zatori’s micro-bead directly to the bones around his ears, bypassing his damaged eardrums entirely. Then he smiled, and added, “But he’s reeling. It was a glancing shot, but you appear to have cracked his helmet. One solid headshot, and I think we’ll have one fewer Noise Marine to contend with—”

  Zatori couldn’t hear the next sonic blast, but he could feel it, vibrating through the ledge beneath him and up his arms and legs.

  Sandor stood for a moment like he’d forgotten what he was about to say, a somewhat perplexed expression on his face. Then he began to shake back and forth, slight vibrations from his head and arms to begin with, then wider and wider movements of his neck and torso, until finally his entire body was vibrating like a pearl of water dropped onto a hot skillet. Sandor turned to Zatori for a brief, agonised moment, a confused look on his face, and then his eyes rolled up in his head as torrents of blood burst from his ears on either side. Then, as his body slumped to the ground, Sandor’s eyes burst from his skull, splattering in all directions.

  The next instant, Zatori felt Valen’s hand on his shoulder, and turned to see his squadmate’s stricken expression.

  “Another Noise Marine, centre of the enemy line,” Valen voxed, clearly trying hard not to look at the lifeless and ruined expression of their fallen squadmate.

  The sonic weapons used by most of the Noise Marines were deadly enough on their own, capable of unleashing waves of destructive harmonics at their targets. But the larger variety were even more devastating, focusing a throbbing bass note into an ever-climbing crescendo that could literally shake a target to death inside their own skin and skull.

  Zatori nodded, glancing from Valen to the rain of Sandor and back.

  “Target acquired,” Zatori voxed, and bent to consult the indicator on the plasma gun. The coils would be cool enough to fire in a matter of heartbeats. “Prepare to lay down suppressing fire.”

  Valen hesitated, hands clenched around the grip of his flamer. “But Sandor—”

  “Is dead,” Zatori replied simply, still looking at the indicator. “We are not, at least not yet. So do your duty.” He raised his eyes. “Coils check out. Preparing to fire.”

  Valen was silent for a moment.

  “Preparing to fire,” Zatori repeated, pointedly.

  “Acknowledged,” Valen voxed in reply.

  “Take cover,” Zatori voxed, needlessly as Valen was already crouched behind the barricades. Then he leapt up from behind the barricade, eyes racing to find the Noise Marine with the deadly sonic weapon.

  Aiming the plasma gun at the target, Zatori whispered beneath his breath, though his ruined ears could not hear the sound of it. “For Dorn, for the Emperor and for Sandor.” And then he fired.

  Scout Jean-Robur du Queste held a fist up over his right shoulder, signalling Scout Rhomec who followed close behind to halt.

  “There’s someone ahead,” Jean-Robur subvocalised over the closed vox-comms.

  “Not possible,” Rhomec answered the same way, unsheathing his combat blade with the faintest whisper of metal as the blade slid against the scabbard.

  The two squadmates were making their final checks of the fortifications beneath the Bastion, where they had the night before blocked up and barricaded the several subterranean passages which led away from the mountain’s heart to points unknown through various tunnels.

  Jean-Robur and Rhomec had scavenged junked equipment and machine parts from the same storage bays that Scout Zatori and his team had drawn the equipment which had gone into making the barricades before the main hatch. But here beneath the Bastion, there was no need to leave gaps for passage, or to allow the Imperial Fists the option of passing back and forth. These fortifications were more in line with the demolition Scout s’Tonan and his team were performing on the northern blockhouse.

  The Imperial Fists didn’t care that these tunnels might not be useable after the battle was done. If they hadn’t been worried about the stability of the chambers and tunnels above they would have simply turned the entirety of each tunnel mouth to molten rock with a melta gun, or seeing that there was only the single melta gun at their disposal and it was currently in use by Taloc’s team, they would have at least blown the tunnels to rubble with demolition charges.

  But Veteran-Sergeant Hilts had determined that demolition charges or melting large quantities of the mountain’s underpinnings might serve to jeopardise the safety of those who sheltered in the chambers overhead, and had instead ordered Jean-Robur and Rhomec to cram the mouths of the passages with machinery and debris, creating impassable barricades.

  The work had taken most of the night, but it had finally been completed. Jean-Robur would have preferred to melt the barricades of debris into solid masses with a few blasts from a melta gun, but Scout s’Tonan’s team had not yet finished their work with the group’s sole melta gun. And so, however unlikely it might have been, while the slim possibility existed that an enemy might somehow be able to force their way through the barricades from the other side, Jean-Robur and Rhomec were required to make periodic checks of the passages, to ensure that the barricades remained in place. As soon as the melta gun was at their disposal they would address the matter once and for all, but for the moment precautionary rounds were required.

  So as they made their way through the catacombs, the two squadmates had anticipated the possibility that someone might be trying to force their way through the barricades from the other side, having crawled or crabbed all the way up the underground passages from points unknown in an attempt to break through into the Bastion. What they hadn’t anticipated, though, was the possibility that someone might force their way through the barricades from inside the Bastion.

  Jean-Robur trained his bolt pistol on the trio who were huddled around the fortified tunnel entrance, gracelessly pulling bits of metal and machinery out in the apparent attempt to dislodge the barricade, cursing one another in hushed voices. It was sabotage.

  “Halt!” Scout du Queste shouted.

  The three figures, indistinct in
the gloom, sprang upright. From their stances it looked like they might attempt to flee down the other end of the passageway.

  Jean-Robur’s bolt pistol rang out as he shot the ground a few bare centimetres in front of the nearest of the three, sending up an explosion of rockcrete chips and dust.

  “Stand fast,” Jean-Robur ordered. “Make a move and I will open fire.”

  The three straightened, looking to one another. Now that he had a chance to study them more closely, du Queste believed he recognised them.

  “Rhomec,” Jean-Robur called back over his shoulder without taking his eyes off the three saboteurs. “Continue up the passageway and check the next barricade.” There was another tunnel a few dozen paces up the corridor, hidden from view currently by the slow curve of the wall.

  Scout Rhomec hustled around Jean-Robur and jogged up the passageway, bolt pistol in hand, steering wide of the three saboteurs.

  They were Vernalians, of that Jean-Robur had no doubt. And he had seen these same three in their finery and robes talking to Captain Taelos when the 10th Company had first arrived at the Bastion.

  “Please, d-don’t…” said the one with the glowing tattoo inked upon his forehead, sounding on the verge of sobbing.

  “Oh, stop your blubbering,” said the woman who stood beside him. “Our Lord will not fail us, if we keep faith.”

  “Sergeant Hilts?” Jean-Robur voxed to his superior. “Du Queste here. We’ve found a group of locals attempting to remove the barricades.”

  Rhomec hurried back down the passageway towards Jean-Robur. “They’ve already unblocked the next two tunnels entirely!”

  The saboteur with a face like a weasel sneered, and the blood-red lips of the woman beside him curled up in an evil smile. “Soon,” she said with relish. “Soon.”

  “Sergeant,” Jean-Robur voxed, “I think you’d better get down here.”

  Scout s’Tonan reversed his combat blade in his grip, and just managed to block the daemon’s claw before it skewered him through the abdomen. This close to the creature, Taloc’s nose was full of its unearthly scent, a strange musk that was a bewildering mixture of intoxicating and repulsive, and his ears rang with its ululating song.

  Or rather, with her song. Though he kept reminding himself that these daemons were warp-spawned hellbeasts, it was all too tempting to think of the one he faced as a woman. They certainly resembled human females, in some details. They walked upon two legs, as humans did, with two arms and a head and neck rising above a torso with a very female-shaped silhouette. But the legs upon which the daemons stood were not those of a human, but had an extra joint between the ankle and knee, more like the hind limbs of the goats herded on the mountains of Eokaroe or the lower limbs of the birds who nested in the forest’s trees than the legs of a woman. And in the place of hands the daemons had long, dextrous claws, some of them as short as a combat knife, others as long as Captain Taelos’ power sword, but all of them capable of rending an enemy’s body to ribbons.

  The opalescent eyes that peered out from their bone-white faces were mesmerising, and Taloc had already got his attentions wandering when he foolishly allowed himself to meet a daemon’s gaze. Rhetoricus had taught that one should always look into the eyes of the opponent when duelling, rather than at their blade or body; the eyes would betray everything one needed to know about the opponent’s movements. But in facing the daemons it clearly wasn’t an option, if Taloc wanted to avoid being bewitched by that inhuman gaze.

  So instead Taloc kept his eyes on the daemon’s rending claw. The warp-spawned fiend he now faced had on its right arm a claw as long as his own combat blade, on its left one not much longer than the barrel of the bolt pistol bolstered at Taloc’s waist. He’d tried to hit the onrushing daemons with bolter-fire when they were first closing the remaining distance to the blockhouse, but their movements were simply too fast and too erratic for even the augmented reactions of a Space Marine Scout to track. And once the daemons had reached the ground on which Taloc and the others stood, it was clear that firearms would be of little use; the Imperial Fists had a better chance of hitting the enemy with bolt-fire from the closer range, but with the speed and strength of the daemons even the considerable stopping power of the captain’s bolter would not be sufficient to completely arrest the daemons’ forward momentum.

  It was all too possible that Taloc could score a fatal hit on a daemon with a round of bolt-fire, and then fall before its claws as the daemon’s inertia carried it forwards and drove its claws into his body. In his first attempt to parry a blow from one of the claws it became apparent to Taloc that even his augmented strength was not enough to block a succession of such blows one-handed, and so he had holstered his firearm and taken his combat blade in a two-handed grip.

  The daemon spun around, blurring into motion, and for an instant Taloc thought it was going to rush away to find another target. But instead it feinted with its longer claw, and as he brought his combat blade online to block the attack the daemon drove its shorter claw forwards, aimed directly at Taloc’s midsection. Only by dancing back out of the daemon’s reach was he able to avoid being disembowelled, and as it was his breastplate was scored by a long gash. A fraction of an instant slower and the blow would have punched through the gold armour and impaled him.

  As Taloc recovered his position, weaving a net before him with his blade to ward off another attack, from the corner of his eye he caught sight of Captain Taelos, who was in a pitched contest with the fastest and most fearsome of the daemon band, who had talons as long as the captain’s power sword growing from either arm and long purple hair that whipped like an anemone around her head. A short distance off Jedrek was contending with another of the creatures, while Fulgencio had slung the melta gun on his back and was wading in with combat blade in hand. The molten rock was cooling over the destroyed blockhouse, and the Imperial Fists could not retreat until the blockhouse was completely sealed.

  Taloc’s opponent rushed forwards again, and he managed to turn her longer claw aside, while at the same time driving his shoulder forwards against her upper arm to knock her off balance. In that split second before the daemon regained her footing, Taloc saw his opening and took it. He lunged forwards, driving the point of his combat blade towards the daemon’s side, and then plunging the blade up to the hilt in that warp-spawned bone-white flesh.

  As the daemon fell to the ground at his feet, a purplish ichor oozing from the wound, Taloc felt a momentary twinge of doubt. Fearsome and ferocious as they were, there was something seductively alluring about the daemons, and as his gaze travelled along the creature’s pale, smooth skin and slender curves, he felt the stirrings of strange feelings, deep within. But then he locked eyes with the daemon’s gaze, and felt his attentions wander, bewitched by those uncanny eyes even as the life fled from them. He blinked, eyes watering, and with both hands tightened on the handle swung his combat blade down in a killing stroke, cleaving the daemon’s head clean from its shoulders.

  Only when the creature fell silent did Taloc realise how far its ululating song had wormed its way into his mind.

  The daemon began to dissolve into powder and ichor, its very substance being drawn back into the warp. There was no time for self-congratulation, though. There were more of the creatures rushing them from all sides now, eager to mow the Imperial Fists down like overgrown grass and claw their way into the Bastion. Taloc simply picked another target, raised his blade and went to work.

  Veteran-Sergeant Hilts’ boots pounded against the rockcrete underfoot as he raced through the subterranean passageways which snaked through the heart of the Bastion. Only moments had passed since he’d received Scout du Queste’s vox about the Vernalian saboteurs. Who could be mad enough to remove the barricades and risk the forces of Chaos overrunning the mountain sanctuary? Had they been the ones responsible for the mysterious signal he’d detected, as well?

  Hilts rounded a corner and saw Scout du Queste covering the three Vernalians with his bolt pistol
. The suspicions he’d harboured since first hearing du Queste’s report were confirmed. The saboteurs were the three self-appointed leaders of the Vernalian refugees, the corpulent Delmar Peregrine, serpentine Meribet Ofidia and weasel-faced Septimus Furion.

  “Nice work, Scout,” the veteran-sergeant said as he came to stand beside du Queste.

  “Rhomec is trying to repair the damage done to the other barricades,” du Queste said, eyes fixed on his captives. “But I fear his efforts may not be equal to the task.”

  Hilts glanced from the three saboteurs to the partially unobstructed tunnel mouth a short distance off, and then back.

  “Why?” the veteran-sergeant said in outraged disbelief, narrowing his gaze at the three Vernalians. “What madness is this?”

  Overfed Peregrine lowered his eyes to the ground, while dour Furion merely scowled, but Ofidia glared at the veteran-sergeant with undisguised malice.

  “Our Lord, the Prince of Pleasure, the Despoiler Himself, is come to cleanse Vernalis of the stain of Imperial dominion,” Ofidia said haughtily, her head held high. “We give ourselves to Him freely, and will deliver the petrochem riches of this world for His holy uses.”

  Hilts tightened his jaw, repelled by what he heard.

  “It was you who summoned the Ruinous Powers to this world, wasn’t it?” he said, though he already suspected the answer.

  “Lickspittle,” Furion sneered, “gambolling fool for your parasitic ‘Emperor’. We entreated our Lord to dispatch His holy warriors to come to our aid. Too long has the mineral wealth of this world gone to prop up your dying Imperium. Now that wealth will service the undying glory of the Prince of Lust!”

  Hilts glanced at Scout du Queste, who was looking with disbelief on the three members of a secret cult of Slaanesh.

  “What happened?” the veteran-sergeant prompted. “Did your plans go awry when you failed to shut down the planetary defences?”