It was Brother Benizar that replied. ‘We’re at the vehicles my lord. We’re cutting their fuel lines now.’
‘Work faster,’ Cortez snapped back.
The flesh of Aldren’s legs was blistering. He kicked and screamed for all he was worth, but he was helpless against the strength of the ork boss. Soon, the flesh had turned black, and the flames crept higher, moving towards his torso.
The orks were still enjoying the show. The woman had turned away. She was holding the heads of her children down so they couldn’t watch the final, tortuous moments of their father’s life.
‘Done,’ reported Benizar over the link. ‘The bikes aren’t going anywhere.’
‘Get into firing positions, now!’ Cortez barked. ‘It’s time.’
So saying, he stepped out from the shadow of the silos and into full view of the enemy. He raised his bolt pistol, knocked the safety off, and braced it on the back of his power fist, almost as if he were about to take a competition shot in some tournament.
He lined his sights up on the ork boss, zeroing in on its oversized skull. The orks still hadn’t noticed him. They were too wrapped up in the torment of the human.
Cortez took a deep breath. With a single thought, he activated the vox-amp set into his helmet. His voice boomed like thunder, drowning out the last of Aldren’s screams.
‘You! Xenos scum!’
There was a moment when none of the orks moved, then, as one, thirty hideous, red-eyed faces turned to regard him.
Cortez fired a single shot.
It caught the ork boss in the throat and exploded, popping his helmeted head clean off his shoulders with a spray of blood so thick it was almost black.
The creature dropped Aldren straight into the flames. It didn’t matter. Aldren was already dead. The pain had killed him before the flames had climbed above his waist.
The headless body of the boss fell to the ground like a dead tree. The moment it crashed on the dirt, the other orks leapt to their feet and swept up their weapons. Cortez angled his pistol’s muzzle left towards the orks closest to the woman and her children. He put three rounds in three more snarling xenos faces. More bodies crashed to the ground.
‘Space Marines!’ he roared. ‘Engage!’
Bolter-fire sounded from multiple directions at once. Brother Delgahn lit the river of fuel that leaked from the ork bikes and buggies, and a wall of fire leapt into the air, penning the orks in just where Cortez wanted them. He would not let a single one survive this night.
Kantor would have heard the gunfire the moment it began. He would have seen the blaze. If he was trying to raise Cortez on the comm-link, then he already knew the captain had locked him out. There would be hell to pay later, but Cortez could live with that. Right now, all he cared about was blood and fury.
Ork dead carpeted the ground. Hate had been served.
‘Take your helmet off, Alessio,’ said Kantor. His tone was as hard as iron and as cold as the polar seas.
He and Cortez stood off to the side, by the east wall of one of the agri-commune’s raumas meat processing blocks. Dead xenos lay around them. The other Crimson Fists went among the bodies, attending to the grisly business of ensuring that none of their fallen foes were merely wounded. The quickest way to guarantee the xenos wouldn’t rise to fight again was to crush their skulls under an armoured boot, but ork skulls were incredibly dense. Even for an Adeptus Astartes in full plate, it often took a number of impacts to properly shatter the thick bone and pulp the pinkish grey tissue beneath.
Cortez lifted his right hand to the clasps and cables at his neck and did as his lord commanded. He pulled his helmet up over his head and placed it in the crook of his left arm.
Kantor’s eyes burned into him.
‘We spoke of this once,’ said Kantor. ‘After the judgement was passed on Janus Kennon, we spoke of this.’
Cortez nodded. ‘And I was honest with you then. You know me better than anyone. Did you really expect me to quell my rage until we reached the capital?’
‘I expected you to honour the ways of the Chapter, captain. I expected you to honour me. If not as your Chapter Master, then as your friend and brother.’
‘Of course I–’
‘Quiet, damn you! You will hear me out. I cannot have you taking liberties like this. We both know how many battle-brothers look to you for their example. Would you have them disrespect my command as you have done tonight? I am your lord and leader. You think our losses at Arx Tyrannus change anything? They change nothing. The Chapter is mine to lead. You are mine to command. You, me, all of us… we will live or die by the decisions I make, and, in Dorn’s name, you will abide by them, Alessio. Remember your place. Be the Space Marine I need you to be, or so help me, things will change forever between us.’
Cortez did not want that. He had always thought their friendship a constant in an uncertain universe. How many times had each saved the other’s life? How many times during those first two centuries of service had they stood back-to-back, protecting each other as foes assailed them from all sides? Cortez missed those simpler days. Part of him envied his lower-ranking battle-brothers. Command was a great honour, but it was a burden, too, and it had changed things between them. He and Kantor were no longer equals. In fact, they hadn’t been equals for more than a century, but Cortez had never felt the gap as keenly as he did now. Naturally, he felt no remorse for the killing of the greenskins, but now he would pay the price for the satisfaction of cutting them down.
‘Tonight, I put vengeance before my duty to you,’ he said. ‘I have angered you, and for that, I am sorry, brother. I will accept whatever punishment you deem fit. But I do not regret the killing of the xenos. I stand by my actions.’ He gestured at the nearest of the meaty green corpses. ‘This filth had to die. The souls of our fallen demanded it.’
Kantor glared back in silence for a moment, then said, ‘The demands of the living outweigh the demands of the dead. You led four of my Crimson Fists into a battle we could have avoided. I’m initiating the Ceres Protocol. There are not enough of us left to risk losing any more in satisfying your damned rage. You will accept a penance from the Chaplains at the capital once all this is over. Perhaps they will help you understand your error, since it seems I cannot.’
He turned away from Cortez.
The other Fists, having satisfied themselves that all the orks were dead, now began carrying the heavy alien bodies to the fire where they threw them into the crackling flames. It was standard practice to burn greenskin bodies after combat, and it had to be done quickly. Orks multiplied by shedding spores. Within hours, the air would be filled with them, tiny cellular capsules dispersing on the breeze. Most would not find suitable ground, but a percentage would land in dark, damp places and take root. Fungal protrusions would sprout from the ground, and below, a new life, born to hack a bloody path across the galaxy, would begin to take form.
Slumped against the white plaster wall of one of the farm’s hab-blocks, the woman and her five children huddled together, still weeping, still unable to break free of the terror that had gripped them, unsure of what would happen next. They did not watch the burning of the foe. They had seen more than enough of burning bodies tonight.
‘Daybreak is but three hours away,’ said Kantor. ‘I had hoped to be much closer to the Azcalan by now. Tell the others we leave as soon as the last of the bodies is on the fire.’
With this, he left Cortez and strode towards the woman and her children.
Cortez watched him go.
With the ork dead now crisping on the blaze, there was only one more matter to attend.
‘The woman’s name,’ reported broad-faced Brother Galica as the Chapter Master stopped beside him, ‘is Jilenne.’
‘Jilenne,’ Kantor repeated with a nod. ‘Thank you, brother. Make ready to leave.’
Galica saluted, turned and strode off towards his squad who were running quick armour and weapons checks in preparation for moving out. Kantor looked down
at the cowering civilians. They were huddled together in a knot. Galica had given the woman a canteen of water and she was trying to coax her still-shaking children into taking small sips.
How wretched they looked. No child should see what they had seen. No Rynnite civilian was supposed to endure this. It was the responsibility of the Crimson Fists to protect mankind. How did this woman judge him? He had failed in that task. Her husband had been burned alive not five metres in front of her. The man’s own children had heard his screams. It seemed impossible to Kantor that any of this, any of it at all, was really happening. War had come to his world despite everything, despite the fact that his very presence should have prevented it. How much had his own decisions precipitated this?
The woman looked so small and fragile, and yet she held her arms round her children as if she might somehow spare them further horrors by her own meagre power. She did not look up at him, but whether that was out of fear or respect, he could only guess. Was she as terrified of the Adeptus Astartes as she was of the orks?
He had removed his battle helm before speaking with Cortez, and had left it off deliberately so as to make the woman feel more at ease while they spoke, but he wasn’t sure now that it would make any difference. With a conscious effort to soften his voice, he said to her, ‘Have you or your children suffered any wounds?’
The question sounded foolish to him the moment he said it. Of course they were wounded, though perhaps not physically. In their eyes, the universe had changed forever. No night would ever again bring peaceful, restful sleep. Vision of green horrors would torment every last one of them until the day they died. The Imperial records spoke for themselves. Many who encountered alien races went mad, no longer able to believe there was any safe place in a galaxy that tolerated such abominations. Others committed suicide rather than face the grim truth.
‘We will be leaving you soon,’ he told her. ‘My Adeptus Astartes and I have far to go. Is there anything you need before we depart?’
The woman murmured to her children, and slowly, reluctantly, they untangled their arms from around her.
Kantor watched.
When her children had drawn back, the woman crawled forward on her knees and, sobbing quietly, pressed her forehead to Kantor’s right boot.
‘You saved us, lord. By the Golden Throne, by the God-Emperor’s light, you saved us. I beg you, in the name of Holy Terra, don’t abandon us now. The beasts will come back, won’t they?’
I did not save you, thought Kantor. Alessio did.
She was right about the orks. More would come. Many more. It was as inevitable as the sunrise. The ork bikers often rode at the head of a much larger contingent. When that contingent arrived, there would be no saviours a second time. The woman and her little ones would provide a brief moment of entertainment before they were butchered like the livestock they had once depended on.
But if we take responsibility for these people, Kantor thought bitterly, where does it end? Are we to save every other man, woman and child we happen across? They will slow us down when our greatest need is to move quickly.
He grappled with the most human part of himself, fighting to lock it away behind walls of resolve. He needed to crush these feelings of pity. They would do him no good now.
The Chapter must endure, he told himself, repeating it like a mantra. The Chapter must endure. Nothing else comes close. Good intentions will undo us. They will lead to our destruction. If that happens, we might as well have died with the others when the missile hit.
It was hard to do, but he stepped back and pulled his boot from under the woman’s head. Only now did she look up at him, and her large brown eyes, wet with tears, sought his.
‘Please, lord!’ she cried out. ‘What hope do we have alone?’
What hope, indeed, thought Kantor. I could say the same for my brothers and I. What hope do sixteen have against a Waaagh?
He turned from her and called out to his men to make ready for their departure, then he marched towards the fire where his three squads had finished their checks. The sound of her weeping followed him, clawing at his resolve.
He heard his inner voice say, ‘Turn from those who need you, and you will lose everything that defines you.’
Master Visidar had spoken those words to him just a decade before his death.
Kantor cursed, knowing them for truth.
When he was ten metres from Jilenne, he turned and looked over his shoulder. He felt himself speak to her, heard the words in his ears as if they were someone else’s. They seemed to pass from his lips automatically.
‘I will not stop you from trying to follow us,’ he told her. ‘But you will not be able to keep up. Not for long. While you can, however, no greenskin will take you, nor any of your children.’
He turned his eyes forward again, adding, ‘This is the best I can do for you.’
To Jilenne, it was enough. The timbre of her sobs changed from sorrow and fear to gratitude.
Kantor heard her urge her children to stand and follow as she fell into step behind him. He continued towards the fire, not slowing his pace, but not increasing it, either.
All the same, as he and his Crimson Fists left the farming settlement with their gaggle of refugees in tow, Kantor couldn’t escape a feeling of deep foreboding. He had crossed a line. The woman would soon realise he had given her false hope. She and her children would tire quickly and the Adeptus Astartes would begin to pull ahead until they disappeared from view altogether.
What would she think of her saviours then?
And what would he think of himself?
The sky turned from blue to purple to red in the east. The Hellblade Mountains looked like black saw-teeth against the backdrop of the lambent dawn. Small puffs of pink cloud scudded overhead on a light westerly wind, but the season was changing and the clouds would be boiled off by mid-morning.
The Azcalan rainforest had been but a dark smear on the far north-western horizon when Cortez and the rest of the survivors from the fortress-monastery had set off on their journey towards the capital. Now they were closing on its south-eastern edge. The land was far greener here. There were crowns-of-gold and snap-thistles everywhere, and spiny cyclacore trees stood in groups of twos and threes, already starting to turn their blood-red plates towards the glow of the new day.
Cortez led the rearguard, following five hundred metres behind Kantor and Squad Segala, eyes alert for any sign of pursuit. Throughout the night, flaming streaks had continued to cut across the sky, a clear sign that the orks were still landing more of their number with impunity. It seemed there was nothing left to stop them. The global defence batteries were either spent or overcome. There was no further sign of Rynnsguard aircraft. Even if Scar Lake had been overtaken, surely there should have been something from the spaceport at the capital… unless that too had been overcome.
The thought of it chilled Cortez. If New Rynn space port was lost, the orks would be landing forces directly on the outskirts of the capital without challenge. He couldn’t imagine Drigo Alvez allowing that, but, if the spaceport was still in friendly hands, where in blazes was their air support? Where were the reconnaissance flights? Surely Alvez would have sent someone to discover why he had lost all communication with Arx Tyrannus?
Brother Fenestra’s voice broke over the link. ‘They are flagging badly, captain. We should abandon them now.’
Cortez turned and looked back the way he had come. Tired figures staggered after him. The woman and her children were falling further and further behind.
Damn it, Pedro, he thought. You should have left them at the farm.
But he could hardly absolve himself. It was his actions that had denied them a quicker death in the first place. Perhaps Pedro had been mistaken in giving the woman permission to follow, but it was he, Cortez, who had drawn out her suffering in the first place. Might it not have been more merciful to let the ork warboss kill her before he had intervened? She could have followed her husband into the Emperor�
�s light. It would have spared her the torment she was going through now.
He watched her for a moment, stumbling on weak legs while she desperately tried to carry her two youngest ones. The other three, between the ages of nine and thirteen, traipsed along in a line abreast of her, heads bowed with exhaustion, eyes fixed on the ground. None of them spoke. They had no energy for that. In the hours they had tried to keep up with the Crimson Fists, they had been forced to run for short periods to make up ground, and still they fell behind bit by bit.
Cortez was sure the woman would collapse soon. The children she carried were small, but even a small weight took its toll on a long hard march. It was a pity. He found that he respected her a great deal. Her arms and shoulders must have been burning with lactic acid, not to mention her legs and the muscles of her lower back. But she kept putting one step out in front of the other.
Then, just as he was about to turn around, he saw her left leg crumple under her and she went down, turning to protect her little ones from impact with the ground even as she fell. It looked like her foot had snagged in a clump of grass. Her other children shuffled to her side and crouched there, urging her to stand.
Fenestra had seen it, too. ‘It is over, then,’ he said. ‘About time. We can move at speed.’
Cortez opened a link to the Chapter Master. ‘Pedro, it’s me. The woman has fallen. I don’t think she’ll be getting up. I just wanted to let you know.’
There was a moment before Kantor replied. ‘She fought hard to hang on. Impressive that she lasted as long as she did, is it not?’
‘It is,’ said Cortez after a beat. ‘But it ends here. Her burden is too great to continue.’ Again he paused. ‘I… I should not have saved her, Pedro. I merely postponed the inevitable and prolonged her torment. Perhaps I should…’
‘…grant her the final mercy?’ said Kantor, finishing Cortez’s sentence for him.
‘Yes.’
There was such a long pause this time that Cortez started to think the Chapter Master had cleared the link. Then, finally, Kantor said, ‘Hold position and wait for me, but tell the rest of your men to keep moving towards the tree line. I want our squads in cover before the suns are visible.’
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 85