The Tactical squads that had dismounted to fight the Alpha Legion were now able to mount their bikes and in moments were by Kor’sarro’s side. The Assault squads screamed overhead, another thirty Space Marines adding their weight to the charge.
Bearing down upon the White Scars as they advanced, the Ironsoul’s turrets began to track individual targets. As one, the White Scars formation broke apart into individual squads, robbing the tank of a single victim. A secondary cannon mounted on the tank’s bow opened fire, but the bike squad it had been tracking had predicted the attack and swerved right as the shell split the earth apart. A huge cloud of black dust and smoke rose high into the air and showered soil for dozens of metres all around. Then the multiple heavy bolters mounted at the tank’s bow and upon sponsons along its flanks opened fire, filling the air with a storm of screaming metal.
The White Scars charged through the fusillade, heads down and shoulders set against the inevitable barrage. The armoured fairings of a dozen bikes were shattered under the weight of the fire but still the riders powered forwards. Heavy bolter shells exploded against the Space Marines’ power armour, and while most rounds were stopped by the blessed suits, some were not. In the intense few seconds of the charge, the battle became a kaleidoscope of war. A Space Marine biker was caught by a shell in the joint between chest and upper arm, the shell burying itself in his flesh before exploding and sending his arm cartwheeling off behind. Still the warrior rode on, his armour flooding his system with palliative combat drugs. Another warrior suffered a glancing blow that shattered his helmet’s optics. When the White Scar discarded his helmet his face was streaked with blood and one eye was a deep, gaping chasm, yet still the Space Marine continued the charge. Several others were not so fortunate, the weight of fire so great that not even their sanctified armour could withstand it. Their gene-seed and their bodies would be recovered later, Kor’sarro swore, once all this was over.
The Ironsoul let loose a blast from its main gun. The gunners had no clear target, for the White Scars were travelling so fast it was not difficult for them to avoid moving into the huge, long-barrelled gun’s arc. Yet still the beast could wreak bloody havoc even with an unaimed shot. Fired from a range of only fifty metres, the shell passed over Kor’sarro and his companions before he even had time to register the weapon had fired. The shell screamed a scant ten metres overhead, splitting the air apart with a deafening roar. Kor’sarro felt the air torn from his lungs and the pressure wave batter his body. Only his enhanced physiology kept his lungs from being ripped from his chest.
The shell screamed by Kor’sarro and passed straight through the dispersed formation of an airborne Assault squad. Several of its warriors were sent plummeting to the ground as their jump packs were robbed of air by the drastic pressure change. Moments later the shell struck the ground five hundred metres to the White Scars rear. The explosion was so huge it scattered debris for hundreds of metres all about, but was too far distant to harm any of Kor’sarro’s warriors. And then, the White Scars were upon their enemy.
As the bike squads converged upon the Ironsoul, they split apart to encircle the towering iron behemoth. At such close range the warriors were better able to avoid the traversing weapons, yet should any have been struck by the hurtling bolts they would surely have been blown to pieces. Drawing on tactics first developed many thousands of years before by the warriors of Chogoris for bringing down huge wild beasts, the White Scars undertook a series of bold charges, the bikers swooping in close to their prey and clamping melta bombs to its guns. Even as the riders slewed away from the still-moving behemoth, the grenades detonated, shattering the heavy bolters and other weapons spitting death from every quarter. Within minutes the Ironsoul was all but disarmed, with the exception of its turret-mounted main gun. Yet still it ground onwards, its sheer bulk deadly in itself.
The super-heavy tank would have to be halted, permanently. Gritting his teeth, the Master of the Hunt hunched over Moondrakkan’s handlebars and brought his mount alongside the thundering behemoth.
Though the tank was not moving fast, Kor’sarro was painfully aware that one slip would see him ground to a red smear beneath its wide treads or caught up in its running gear and torn to shreds. Tensing every muscle in his body, Kor’sarro waited a heartbeat and then rose in his mount’s saddle. Pushing off, he cleared the three metres between bike and tank and grabbed onto a handhold. As if the tank’s commander had seen the manoeuvre, the behemoth swerved hard to its left and Kor’sarro was forced to hold on as his body was thrown violently into the air. Yet his grip was true and the super-dense fibre bundles of his power armour lent him the strength to drag himself up and onto the tank’s upper deck.
The horde swarmed kilometres in every direction, the bulk pressing into the huge breach in the wall of the defence installation. The Alpha Legion traitors had fallen back, well clear of the rampaging tank, and Kor’sarro’s battle-brothers were pushing on, piling the pressure on the enemy to force them back still further. Kor’sarro noted with a savage grin the number of blue-green-armoured bodies littering the ground about and knew that even if the battle should be lost, the toll on the traitors would have been fearful.
Kor’sarro’s attentions were snapped back to the task at hand as a burst of fire stitched across the Ironsoul’s armoured flank, missing him by scant centimetres. He saw that the Alpha Legion’s heavy weapons squads were opening fire on him, reasoning that their weapons would not harm the huge war machine but could tear him to pieces.
Fighting for balance, Kor’sarro located the commander’s hatch atop the main turret. He activated his mag-locked boots, which were more often used in zero-grav boarding actions. One heavy step at a time, he worked his way across the bucking deck and up the side of the turret.
More shots thundered in from the traitors’ heavy weapons, sending up a riot of sparks and metal fragments which stung his cheeks. Ignoring the pain, Kor’sarro plucked a krak grenade from his belt and with a flick of his thumb set it to a three second delay and activated its mag-clamp. Kor’sarro thrust the grenade onto the hatch, and then ducked below the level of the turret.
The resulting explosion was near deafening, yet even before the smoke had cleared Kor’sarro had thrown himself back over the edge of the turret. Knowing that he would have no space inside the cramped innards of the super-heavy tank to bring Moonfang to bear, Kor’sarro bunched his gauntlets into fists and dropped down through the wrecked, smoking hatch, fully intent upon rending every traitor crewman inside limb from limb with his bare hands.
Kor’sarro dropped down through the opening, expecting his armoured boots to strike metal deck plating below. Instantly, he knew something was seriously wrong.
Instead of a metal deck beneath his feet, Kor’sarro felt his boots sinking into something soft and yielding. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he looked around for the crew. As he turned, a blur shot across his vision and before he could react a coiling limb lined with a million tiny, rasping hooks had enveloped his entire head and was soon constricting around his windpipe.
Kor’sarro roared his denial, refusing to yield to such a death. His mouth was instantly stuffed full with a hundred questing pseudopods seeking the back of his throat and forcing their way down his gullet. Reacting entirely by instinct, Kor’sarro bit down hard upon the writhing tentacles, severing them as he ground the vile flesh between his teeth. Despite the severing, the pseudopods still thrashed within his mouth, but he could not spit them out for the larger coil which had birthed them was still wrapped tightly across his face.
With a titanic effort of will and strength Kor’sarro gripped the coil in both hands and dragged it clear of his head, spitting out the smaller tentacles the instant he was able. As vision returned he saw that the interior of the tank was not at all what it should have been. Instead of machinery and instrumentation, the Ironsoul’s innards were a mass of writhing intestinal coils.
Fighting back a wave of sheer revulsion, Kor’sarro glanced upwards
and saw the hatchway above him sucking closed, the metal constricting like puckered flesh. All was plunged into darkness and a sickening groan assaulted Kor’sarro’s ears. The sound came from all about, the interior quivering and shaking with its droning. Kor’sarro spat, seeking in vain to clear his mouth of the vile taste the pseudopods had left there. He knew then that he had but two choices. Be consumed in the gut of a daemon-machine, or plunge for its heart and rip it out from within.
Pulling first one foot, then the other from the sucking mass of flesh of the deck, Kor’sarro pressed forwards. No battle drill or tactical meditation could have prepared him for this moment, but Kor’sarro knew the beast inside the Ironsoul must have a heart, and if it had a heart it must have a weakness. Judging that such an organ must be located to the rear of the vehicle where otherwise its engine should have been, he turned in that direction and pressed forwards.
Instantly, Kor’sarro felt another writhing tentacle reach out to grasp him, this time about the waist. Though no natural light entered the interior and no artificial source illuminated it, Kor’sarro soon became aware of a lambent red glow emanating from within the very stuff of the coiling limb. That was enough for his genetically enhanced senses. He quickly got his bearings and located the thing that was assaulting him. Reaching for his belt with one hand, Kor’sarro used the other to hold off the coiling loop of flesh. He drew his combat knife and with a savage war cry hewed the flesh in two and the section that was attacking him dropped away with wild, thrashing convulsions.
Kor’sarro plunged onwards. A dozen more of the vile, questing limbs grew from the pulsating, fleshy interior of the tank. The Master of the Hunt felt the wild savagery of his ancestors welling up inside him, reason threatening to desert him as he threw himself forwards. Yet, some part of him was ever aware that to abandon himself to the berserk madness would be to unleash something terrible upon the galaxy. The Stormseers of the White Scars often spoke of the precipice the greatest of warriors sometimes walked along. Some warriors believed themselves strongest if they resisted the urge to look down, while the truly enlightened knew that to look and to face the truth is the mark of the true warrior.
As he forced himself forwards through walls of heaving flesh, Kor’sarro knew that he was well and truly walking that path right this moment, and to surrender to the berserker within would be to become one with the daemon beast itself.
Kor’sarro hacked all about him with his combat knife, the pulsing wet flesh pressing in against his face. His muscles strained against all-enclosing walls of meat. He bit down upon writhing pseudopods as they sought his throat. And then, with one last heave, he reached the core of the beast of muscle and iron.
In front of him, casting a hellish inner light, was the thundering heart of the daemon war machine.
Bellowing a prayer to Jaghatai Khan, the revered and lost primarch of the White Scars, Kor’sarro drove his combat knife deep into the flesh of the daemonic heart. As the blade penetrated, the heart exploded outwards in an eruption of blood and anger. Kor’sarro’s world turned in an instant to utter, all-consuming blackness.
Kor’sarro’s eyes snapped open and he was instantly awake. He was on his back looking up at the smoke-stained skies of Quintus.
For a moment, not a sound reached Kor’sarro’s ears. Then a high-pitched whine arose, turning into a muted roar just audible at the edge of his hearing.
The savage cacophony of battle returned, a torrent of sound breaking upon Kor’sarro’s senses.
Kor’sarro was battered but not badly wounded. He was lying on the black ground in front of the walls of the defence installation, and the earth was trembling with the footsteps of tens of thousands of combatants.
Turning his head at last, Kor’sarro’s eyes focused on a black form rearing before him, smoke belching from a dozen wounds. Pulling himself to his feet, Kor’sarro saw that the form was the blasted shell of the Ironsoul, the innards blown out at the instant he had destroyed the daemon within.
The act of killing the thing at the heart of the Ironsoul must also have thrown him clear, Kor’sarro realised as he shook his head in an attempt to clear it. Looking down at his white and red armour, Kor’sarro noted that he was covered in the viscous fluids exuded by the vile appendages he had fought to reach the daemon’s heart, and his armour was black with burns and riven with dents.
Now standing fully upright, the Master of the Hunt saw another figure standing atop the smoking wreck of the Ironsoul.
‘Spat you out, did she?’ Kor’sarro recognised the leering, sibilant voice instantly. It was unmistakably that of Nullus, champion of Voldorius. Kor’sarro reached his right arm across his body and took hold of Moonfang’s grip. ‘I knew you would come,’ Nullus continued. ‘I knew you would not let me down, not after my little message on Cernis. What a tireless bloodhound you are…’
‘Nullus,’ said Kor’sarro, knowing then that Nullus had planted the four-starred shoulder pad so that the White Scars would follow his trail to Quintus. ‘Let us end this. Now.’
Nullus’s scar-traced visage twisted as he scowled down at Kor’sarro. ‘Perhaps it is indeed time, White Scar,’ Nullus replied. ‘I have hated you for so long, I grow weary.’
Kor’sarro was struck by the depth of the bitterness the Alpha Legionnaire harboured for the White Scars. He had laid his trail, and the Master of the Hunt had followed, and all so that he could enact his bitter vendetta against the sons of Chogoris. The traitor’s eyes were deep wells of pure hatred, windows behind which something other than human lurked.
Then it came to Kor’sarro. Perhaps it was his recent proximity to the daemonic heart of the Ironsoul, or maybe it was simple intuition. Perhaps he had known it all along.
‘Daemon,’ spat Kor’sarro, drawing Moonfang as he hauled himself up a ruined track and onto the rear deck of the wrecked tank.
Nullus stood upon the twisted and blackened foredeck, the smoking hole where the Ironsoul’s turret had been blown away separating him from Kor’sarro. The warrior gave a low, guttural chuckle, a sound that no living throat could have issued. ‘You have no idea…’ Nullus growled.
‘And neither do I have any desire to know,’ replied Kor’sarro. ‘Your very existence condemns you.’
‘You really are an arrogant little runt,’ Nullus sneered, his black eyes mocking. ‘So typical of your kind.’
‘Speak not of my people,’ spat Kor’sarro. ‘Even the least of them is above you and your kind.’
‘If only that were so,’ said Nullus. ‘But I have seen your people, more times than you can imagine. I know them well. Better than you, perhaps.’
Heed not the words of the daemon, Kor’sarro told himself, reciting the teachings of old. Do not allow yourself to become entrapped in his web of deceit. ‘Enough!’ Kor’sarro shouted.
‘Your petty existence may well end, hunter,’ Nullus crowed. ‘Mine cannot. I am the whisper upon the night wind that your people call “djinnu”. I am the stealer of maidenhead the priestesses call the “ghall qan”. I am the taint of disease and the dry riverbed at summer’s height. I am all of these things, and many more.’
At Nullus’s words, ancient fears not felt since long before his ascension to the White Scars stirred unbidden in Kor’sarro’s soul. The Alpha Legionnaire was invoking the malevolent spirits of the Chogoran steppes, the beings the tribal shamans spoke of only under the full light of the midday sun. Were they to do so by night they might be dragged screaming into the shadows.
‘You are naught but a liar,’ Kor’sarro replied, raising Moonfang before him and activating the sacred weapon’s power field. ‘You speak plundered words and expect me to quake in fear at your false knowledge of my people.
‘I know thee,’ Kor’sarro spoke the opening words of the rite of exorcism, ‘filthy as thou art.’
Nullus hissed, his scar-laced features twisting into a hideous mask of anger and bitterness. He brought his black-bladed halberd across his body and whispered profane words of power that
Kor’sarro could barely hear, but recoiled from in disgust, to his blade.
The smoking chasm where the Ironsoul’s turret had once been yawned between the two combatants. Kor’sarro looked down at the hole, and knew that it was too wide for him to leap easily. He would have to work his way around its perilous edge to engage his enemy.
Nullus leapt high into the air, propelled by something other than mortal strength. The move took Kor’sarro entirely by surprise.
Kor’sarro barely had time to raise Moonfang to parry the inevitable downward blow. But Nullus powered through the air to land directly behind the White Scar.
It was all Kor’sarro could do to raise his blade over his shoulder, utilising by raw instinct a parry used by the steppes nomads of Chogoris when two mounted warriors pass one another at speed, each swinging at the other’s back. Kor’sarro made the parry blind, but instantly felt the jarring impact as Nullus’s weapon struck his own. Before Nullus could strike again, Kor’sarro twisted his body around and at the same instant leapt backwards, passing over the edge of the smoking hole and landing three metres away at its very lip.
Breathing hard, Kor’sarro raised his sacred blade. The weapon’s power field stuttered, as if part of it had been stolen by his opponent’s sorcerous blade, then flashed back to life. The otherwise flawless edge was notched by Nullus’s strike. He took a step backwards, seeking to gain space to manoeuvre, one foot coming perilously close to the hole’s edge.
Nullus pressed forwards, his halberd lunging towards Kor’sarro’s left shoulder. The strike was easily turned, but Kor’sarro found himself forced backwards still further while Nullus came on.
‘Not so sure now, are you, spawn of the cold steppes,’ Nullus leered.
Kor’sarro knew well that Nullus sought to anger him in order to gain further advantage. His pride and honour demanded he answer the daemon’s jibes, but he forced such notions to the back of his mind as he sought an advantage of his own.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 22