[Warhammer 40K] - Sons of Dorn

by Chris Roberson - (ebook by Undead)

  At this Peregrine raised his arm and shook a thick-fingered fist in rage. “The fools in the Planetary Defence Forces sooner died than reveal the access codes. But it is no matter. Once we have sacrificed the remaining members of the population huddled in the chambers above us to Slaanesh, we will quit the Bastion and the Holy Warriors of the Emperor’s Children will level this mountain to the ground.”

  Hilts drew his bolter, considering his options.

  “Sergeant Hilts!” echoed the voice of Rhomec down the passageway, while his words sounded at the same time via vox over the micro-bead in Hilts’ ear. “Enemy elements coming up the unblocked tunnels, sir!”

  Already Hilts could hear the mindless song of the Roaring Blades as they scrambled up the tunnels, the sharp bark of Rhomec’s bolt pistol as he fired down into the passages and the clang of metal on metal as Rhomec’s combat blade met the sabres of those already emerging into the corridor.

  “I can’t hold them off for long!” Rhomec added, his voice straining.

  “Scout du Queste!” Hilts shouted. “Go to your brother’s aid.”

  Du Queste didn’t waste time in acknowledging, but raced off down the corridor, his bolt pistol in one hand and drawing his combat blade in the other. With the rest of the Imperial Fists busy defending the above-ground approaches to the mountain, it would fall to the three of them—veteran-sergeant and the two Scouts—to defend the Bastion from within. Whatever the size of the force coming up the tunnels, Hilts, du Queste and Rhomec were all that stood in the enemy’s way.

  There was no time to lose.

  “So,” Hilts said, raising his bolter and aiming at the nearest of the three Vernalian cultists. “It is to be the quick and simple solution, after all.”

  “For Dorn and the Emperor!” Captain Taelos shouted, as he swung his power sword in a wide arc, catching the daemon’s right claw midway along its length. But while the coruscating edge of the power sword bit deep into the chitinous surface of the claw, it did not cut clear through and sever the claw in half.

  Not only maddeningly fleet of foot and swift of movements, the hellspawn were unnaturally tough, as well. Or at least the composition of their claws were, which was of principal importance. Had the warp-born substance of which the claws were grown been any less resilient then Taelos could have long before sliced both off at the arm, and then he’d have had the chance to see if the bone-white skin of the daemon’s torso was equally as resistant to injury. But as it was, he was forced to parry and block the daemon’s attacks, while trying to find an opening for his own killing stroke.

  “Scout Fulgencio,” Taelos voxed subvocally, raising his power sword to block the sweep of the daemon’s left claw in return. “What is the status of the fortifications?”

  A long moment passed, and Taelos was forced to leap to the left as the daemon suddenly surged forwards, scissoring her long claws together as she ran. If she hoped to catch Taelos between her claws, though, she moved too slowly, as fast as she was. Taelos leapt clear, and as the daemon whistled by at speed the captain was able to lash out sideways with a kick of one of his massive boots, catching her on the right hip and knocking her off balance.

  Before Taelos could seize the advantage, though, the daemon simply planted the tip of her left claw into the rocky ground, kicked her left leg up off the ground and spun around like a top on the claw. As she spun around, her goat-like feet lashed at Taelos’ head, and while he raised his power sword to bat them away he was only able to connect with the flat of the blade, rearing back out of reach as he did.

  By the time he righted himself the daemon had both her feet under her again, and was eyeing him warily from a short distance off.

  Taelos took advantage of the momentary lull to glance in the direction of the blockhouse, where Scout Fulgencio stood with his back to the cooling slag, holding off the onrushing daemons with his combat blade as best he could.

  “Fulgencio?” Taelos repeated, with growing urgency.

  “Sir,” the Scout finally answered, and from the corner of his eye Taelos could see Fulgencio kick sideways at the cooling slag with his boot. The boot rebounded without leaving an impression. “It has cooled, sir. They won’t be getting in this way. Not without more firepower than a few claws, at least.”

  “Good,” Taelos voxed in reply. Then he feinted a lunge at the daemon, and when she swung both her claws downwards to block, he shifted the blade and sent it sweeping in a wide arc directly at her head, wreathed in writhing purple.

  The daemon attempted to retreat, or to block the stroke with one of her claws, but by then it was too late.

  “For Dorn!” Taelos shouted again.

  With coruscating energy dancing up and down the edge of the blade, Captain Taelos’ power sword swept clean through the daemon’s lithe neck.

  “…and the Emperor!”

  When the daemon’s head finally rolled to a stop on the flinty ground, the strands of purple hair which rose in a nimbus in all directions still writhing like worms, her body had not yet begun to fall. It simply stood there for a long moment, headless and unmoving, as though the body were trying to work out what had just happened, but lacking a brain was unable to draw any meaningful conclusions.

  “Scouts!” Taelos said, turning and surveying the scene. They had cut down a couple of the daemons, reduced to ichor and powder, but there were still several racing around them, slashing at them with their rending claws and singing their unholy song. And the victories the small band of Imperial Fists had won thus far had not come without a price.

  Like Captain Taelos’ armour, that worn by Scouts Taloc and Fulgencio were already gored and scared in places, and from the way he was holding his arm it appeared that Fulgencio had been injured. And Scout Jedrek had fallen, his head cleaved down the middle by a downward stroke of a daemon’s claw, his arms severed needlessly while his lifeless body had lain on the ground. A daemon, doubtless the one who defeated him, was still standing over Jedrek’s body, exulting in victory and singing some incomprehensible song of praise to its unholy master.

  Taelos did not hesitate, but drew and aimed his bolter in one swift motion, and planted a searing bolt directly between the dancing daemon’s opal eyes.

  “Scouts, form on me!” Taelos voxed on an open channel to Taloc and Fulgencio. “The blockhouse is secured, and our strength and our sword-arms are needed elsewhere.”

  “Acknowledged,” Taloc and Fulgencio voxed back, almost in unison.

  “There!” Taelos pointed towards the east, around the slow curve of the mountain. “We make for the main hatch!”

  When Scout Valen was hit full-on by a high-frequency blast from a Noise Marine’s sonic weapon, Scout Zatori didn’t have time to mourn. Instead, while the Noise Marine’s weapon was recharging, Zatori simply planted a plasma bolt dead centre on the sonic weapon itself, exploding it in the Noise Marine’s grasp. As fragments of the exploded weapon shot like shrapnel up into the face of the Chaos Space Marine, causing him to howl in agonised pleasure, Zatori didn’t pause but shot again, and this time the blindingly bright plasma bolt lanced right into the Noise Marine’s forehead, blowing the fevered remains of his warp-addled brain out the other side of his skull.

  “He should have worn a helmet,” Zatori said under his breath. If he survived this day and lived to become an Astartes, he would always remember that lesson.

  But while the question as to whether he would survive the day remained to be answered, Zatori’s chances did not look good. Valen had fallen to the rockcrete ground with his eyes burst from his skull and his organs liquefied within his body. He joined Sandor on the ground—had it really only been a few minutes since Sandor had fallen, as well?

  Now only Zatori was left to defend the barricades before the main hatch, with only the plasma gun in his hands and the combat blade sheathed at his side.

  “Scout Zatori to all Imperial Fists,” he voxed on an open channel. “Requesting assistance. The rest of the team has fallen, and I alone man the main h
atch barricades.”

  A pair of Roaring Blades were surging up the southern ramp, and Zatori potted them both in quick succession with plasma bolts.

  “…Hilts… overrun by incursion from below…” came the voice of Veteran-Sergeant Hilts, the vox-comm laced with static. “Roaring Blades infiltrating catacombs… Will send reinforcements… when able…”

  “Belay that,” cut in the voice of Captain Taelos, only slightly garbled by static. “My team and I are already en route. Hilts, you and your team deal with the incursion from below. Zatori, hold out. We’re almost to you.”

  Zatori nodded, for no reason, then checked himself. “Acknowledged,” he voxed in reply.

  There were a dozen Roaring Blades encroaching on the southern ramp, howling their ear-splitting song, and a Noise Marine following close behind. Zatori chanced a quick glance at the indicator on the stock of the plasma gun. He could fire it twice more, perhaps three times, but then the coils would begin to overheat, and he would be in imminent danger of a blowback and explosion.

  But he had no choice. If he fell back behind the barricades and allowed the coils to cool and recharge, the Roaring Blades and their Noise Marine master could climb the rest of the ramp and be at the barricades, and then he would never be able to hold them all off at once. He glanced at the flamer that lay beside Valen’s ruined body. From its mangled appearance, it seemed that the flamer had been rendered inoperable by the sonic weapon’s blast, just as Sandor’s had earlier.

  There was no alternative. Zatori would have to continue firing until he could fire no more, and then see what fate had in store for him.

  A bolt of searing white lanced out of the plasma gun at the Noise Marine, glancing off his breastplate. Then another cut through the Roaring Blade in the vanguard, the bolt continuing on and searing through the Roaring Blade behind him. As the two burned Traitor Guards fell, Zatori let off another plasma bolt at the Roaring Blade directly in front of the Noise Marine, calculating that it would do the same; the bolt seared clean through the neck of the Roaring Blade and still had enough potency to burn through the greaves on the Noise Marine’s left leg.

  The Noise Marine still advanced, but he was slowed by a limp as his body struggled to cope with the plasma burn through his lower leg.

  Zatori’s eyes darted to the indicator on the stock. The coils were already dangerously hot. He could chance perhaps one more shot.

  With a prayer to the primarch on his lips, Zatori aimed the barrel of the plasma gun at the Noise Marine’s head, pressed the firing stud…

  …and missed. The shot went wide, not even striking one of the surrounding Roaring Blades, but instead lancing uselessly into the grey stones on the ground beyond the ramp.

  The indicator was flashing wildly now. The coils had heated too far, too fast. It was no longer possible to allow them to cool down, to recharge for another shot. The plasma gun was entering a critical state, and would explode at any moment.

  The Noise Marine, as if sensing Zatori’s dilemma, raised his sonic weapon and prepared to fire a deadly wave of sound at him.

  Zatori tensed, awash in the deafening sound of the Roaring Blades’ howls and shouts and the mounting whine of the Noise Marine’s sonic weapon. The sounds pounded at him like a physical force that he could feel in his bones.

  Then Zatori remembered the words of his former master on Triandr, Father Nei. He recalled the tactic that the Sipangish warrior-elites had called “Wordlessness”, which held that doing the unexpected was often the correct course of action.

  Even, in some instances, throwing down one’s weapon.

  With a final glance at the indicator, Zatori held his breath, and rearing back he hurled the plasma gun down the mountain like an overlarge grenade.

  The Noise Marine was about to fire his sonic weapon as the plasma gun hurtled end over end through the air towards him.

  Zatori barely had the chance to begin to fall back behind the barricades when the plasma gun erupted in a blinding ball of expanding plasma, engulfing the Noise Marine and the Roaring Blades entirely. The heat from the explosion singed the eyebrows from Zatori’s face before he could get to cover, and the sound of the blast was so loud it eclipsed even the deafening roar of the Chaos army.

  Zatori sat with his back against the barricade, dazed. He realised that he could hear nothing. Only silence. Whether the shock of the explosion had robbed him permanently of his hearing, or whether it was a temporary condition, he could not say, but for the moment he revelled in the sweet, blissful silence.

  But he could not rest. Some of the Roaring Blades or even the Noise Marine himself might have survived the explosion, and be already on their way to the barricades. With the plasma gun gone, the flamers destroyed, and his supply of bolts for his bolt-pistol exhausted, he had no ranged weapons to use. But what did Zatori care?

  He had been raised to view such weapons as base and crude, not fit to be carried by noble warriors.

  Zatori rose unsteadily to his feet.

  Still dazed, he found himself confusing the warrior-elites of his youth and the holy warriors he now aspired to join, but even so he knew that both held noble traditions of going into battle armed only with blades. If he were to die, it would be with a blade in his hand. Then, if he found himself in the land of spirits, he could present himself to his master with pride.

  But then, he had not yet avenged Father Nei’s murder, had he?

  Zatori drew his combat blade and turned to look out over the barricades. Some half-dozen Roaring Blades were stepping over the fallen bodies of their comrades and advancing up the southern ramp.

  Stepping into the breach, Zatori raised his combat blade, preparing to meet them.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Scout Taloc s’Tonan did not dwell on the larger picture. He did not stop to consider the Imperial Fists’ chances of defending the Bastion in the long term with only a handful of Scouts and a pair of officers. He did not even pause to wonder whether he would survive long enough to reach the main hatch, or even the ramp leading up to the ledge. All such considerations were too far in the future for Taloc to waste time bothering with.

  All that mattered to Taloc was the present moment, the narrow slice of space and time which was “here” and “now”.

  There was a daemon’s long claw whistling towards his head. Taloc raised his combat blade in a two-handed grip and batted it away, sparing himself a fatal blow to the side of his skull.

  Taloc’s spatial awareness had narrowed to the area immediately surrounding him, and his situational awareness had shortened to the things happening at the present instant. He barely considered the ramifications of things that might possibly eventuate in another five or ten seconds. A full minute was too far in the future even to speculate.

  A daemon was whirling around, preparing to launch another attack, and for the briefest of instants her back was exposed and vulnerable. Taloc drove his combat blade forwards, point first, and buried it in the daemon’s back. The momentum of her spinning carried her a partial rotation further, so that Taloc’s blade sliced a ribbon of bone-white flesh from the daemon’s back before she fell to the ground, spine severed.

  Taloc had lost track of how much time had passed since he, Scout Fulgencio and Captain Taelos had set out from the ruins of the blockhouse, heading towards the main hatch. He had no clear notion of how much ground they had already covered, or what distance remained before they reached their destination. Such details had been lost in a blur of claws and blades, of attack and block, parry and thrust, a mindless dance that seemed to have no limit and no end.

  Scout Fulgencio was narrowly avoiding a collision with Taloc as Fulgencio fended off the attack of another daemon. Fulgencio had the melta gun slung over his back, the weapon rendered ineffective at such short range against so fleet a foe; instead, he battered at the daemon’s claws with his combat blade, wielding it like a club. Fulgencio’s gold Scout armour was spattered with blood, some of it the purple ichor of the daemon’s but
a considerable amount of it his own lifeblood.

  At some point along the line, Taloc had received a number of injuries ranging from minor nicks and cuts to fairly severe gashes on his exposed flesh, but the Larraman cells that flooded his bloodstream in response had evidently staunched the flow of blood, and already scar tissue was forming.

  A daemon was racing at Taloc with claws out and grasping. Taloc did not bother to prepare to block the attack, but instead lunged forwards unexpectedly, driving his blade up and under the creature’s claws, plunging the sword’s point deep into the daemon’s chest. He crouched low and rolled quickly to one side, avoiding the downward sweep of her claws that was the daemon’s dying act.

  Taloc’s combat blade was nicked in countless places along its edge, where it had met the hard chitinous surface of the daemons’ claws. And the blade, too, was gored with the purplish ichor from the creatures’ veins, a slow-drying ooze that slicked it from point to hilt.

  Captain Taelos was before him as Scout s’Tonan sprang to his feet. A pair of fissures marked the captain’s breastplate, his gold armour stained with the blood that had poured out from the wounds within. The injuries were to all appearances grave, the colour drained from the captain’s cheeks and the white nicks of his duelling scars all but vanished as the flesh around them were pale from loss of blood. But the captain was not wavering, but brandishing his crackling power sword as though he had snatched a lightning bolt from the sky to wield against all the enemies of mankind.

  Despite himself, Taloc thought of his father Tonan’s named sword, the fabled Lightning. And the naive musings he’d had when last he stood upon the green fields of Eokaroe, imagining that his own nameless ironbrand might win itself through valour in battle the name Thunderbolt. But while Taloc had not seen Eokaroe, or his father, or either of their ironbrands, named or nameless, since that day, the Scout could not help thinking that surviving this battle would surely cover him in more glory than the grandfathers of his warrior-clan had ever imagined possible. And even if his clan never recognised that he had attained his full manhood, Taloc would know in his hearts that he was no longer a child, but a fully blooded man.