A deep, wet laugh began in the creature’s throat. It sensed victory was close. Soon, it would crush the Space Marine to the ground, sit astride him, and snip off his limbs, one after another. It knew that humans were soft beneath their shells. Their flesh parted as easily as the flesh of a fruit. The ork liked the parting of that flesh. It liked the hot sprays of red that accompanied it. It liked the noises the humans made, the high screams and agonised roars they vented in their final moments.
Now was that moment. The ork thrust forward one more time with all its strength, piston-boosted legs lending it irresistible power.
Cortez’s legs started to buckle under him, but this was what he had been waiting for, the ork abomination’s final forward push. This was the moment the ork was most vulnerable.
Cortez twisted hard, shifting the direction of his own energy, not forward against the creature as it expected, but backwards and to the left, moving with it, adding his own momentum to his enemy’s.
It happened. The ork found its massive bulk off-balance, with no hope of recovery. It teetered forward on one tree-thick leg, desperate to regain its equilibrium.
Cortez was already behind it. He kicked out at the monster’s supporting leg, his ceramite boot connecting sharply with the back of its knee.
The creature went down hard, its armour cracking the rockcrete underneath it. It flailed, its claw slashing back and forth, frantic swipes intended to sever the Space Marine’s legs. But Cortez didn’t stay still long enough to get caught. He stamped down on the ork’s lower back with his left boot, raised his power fist over his head, and punched straight down into the metal plate, his knuckles passing through into the hot, bloody meat beneath.
The ork howled in pain.
Cortez found what he was looking for. He closed his metal digits around it and yanked hard, then raised his prize above his head and roared in triumph.
In his oversized, blood-drenched gauntlet, he held a large section of the monster’s spine.
Other orks turned away from the barricades, sensing something had changed. They saw Cortez standing over their fallen leader, the strongest of their tribe. They saw the massive body beneath his boot and the gleaming white bone in his upraised hand. Of all things, orks recognised strength most of all, and here it stood before them, a strength they could not overcome. Not here. Not now.
The mob split, turning from the Imperial barricades and racing back towards the cover of the ruined buildings nearby. Bolter-fire chased them and a score more went down with wounds in their backs the size of grapefruit.
Cortez watched them go and, finally, lowered his arm.
He cast the ork vertebrae to the ground.
Someone was calling him over the link. The voice eased him out of the battle-rush, soothing him, slowing his primary heart back to a steady beat and sending his secondary heart back into its sleeping state.
It was Pedro Kantor. ‘Well fought,’ he said simply.
Cortez could hear tension, not pride, in the Chapter Master’s voice. He was about to reply when another voice beat him to it.
‘Armour!’ It was Sergeant Tirius. The Devastator Squad leader was still on top of Jadeberry Hill. ‘Sergeant Grimm, ork tanks are pressing towards us from the streets to the south. I see twenty. We’ll not be able to hold this time. Our ammunition is almost out. Will you give my squad permission to descend?’
Grimm turned to the Chapter Master, immediately deferring to him.
‘We had human refugees with us,’ Kantor said to Tirius. ‘They were ordered to high ground during the fight. Are they with you?’
‘They are, lord,’ replied Tirius. ‘One died on the ascent. An old man. His heart gave out.’
Cortez winced. Surely it was Dasat. Kantor would take that hard, no doubt.
The Chapter Master paused only briefly, before ordering Squad Tirius to shepherd the refugees down the side of the hill at once. Then he addressed Sergeant Grimm. ‘I cannot tell you, sergeant, what it means that you held this passage open for us. I swear to you that you will be honoured properly when there is time.’
Grimm answered without hesitation. ‘Your words are honour enough for a dozen lifetimes, my lord. And seeing you alive is a reward even greater. We so hoped it would be you.’
‘How did you know anyone was coming this way?’
‘The Librarians, my lord. They felt it. Epistolary Deguerro ordered us to hold the underpass for as long as we could.’
Cortez was climbing over the barricades for a final time. ‘Deguerro?’ he said.
Sergeant Grimm faced him. His voice was heavy with grief as he replied, ‘Captain Alvez no longer leads us.’
‘You cannot mean…’ said the Chapter Master.
‘My lord,’ said Grimm, ‘the captain gave his life in battle two days ago. More than anything, I wish he could have lived to see you return. I don’t think he ever really believed you had perished at Arx Tyrannus.’
The link went silent. Cortez pushed a coil of razorwire aside and climbed over a cluster of concrete-filled drums before coming to a stop at Kantor’s side.
‘Drigo,’ said Kantor softly. ‘Dorn’s blood. Not him, too.’
Cortez could hear the aching sadness in his friend’s voice.
No one said another word until Squad Tirius and the refugees joined them at the mouth of the underpass a moment later.
A woman with matted blonde hair crossed to the Chapter Master and knelt at his feet.
The Space Marines looked down at her. The dirt on her face was streaked with tear tracks. ‘My lord,’ she sobbed. ‘Dasat is dead.’ She glanced fearfully in the direction of Sergeant Tirius. ‘He would not let us bring the body down from the hill.’
Tirius nodded to confirm this.
‘That is Jadeberry Hill,’ Kantor told the woman, bending to lift her to her feet. She was as fragile as a doll, her bones showing sharply beneath her malnourished flesh. ‘It has been a special place since the days Rynn himself claimed this world for the Imperium. Let Dasat lie there, at peace. When this war is over, his passing will be marked more appropriately, his and that of so many others. For now, though, we press on. Our journey is not quite over. You are not safe yet.’
Nodding obediently, stifling her sobs, the woman moved off to instruct the refugees.
Cortez detected the first sign of the approaching tanks, a tremor in the ground beneath his feet. Kantor must have felt it to, because he gestured to the cavernous mouth of the underpass and said, ‘Lead the way, Sergeant Grimm. We should hurry.’
‘This way, my lord,’ said the sergeant, and began his descent down into the tunnel.
The others followed. Behind them, the rubble-strewn streets began to shake.
Seventeen
Jadeberry Underpass, New Rynn City
Pedro Kantor was bone-weary, but, as he marched behind the men of Squad Grimm, he was determined not to let it show. He sensed they were all weary, the brothers that surrounded him, but he, more than any other, had to keep his exhaustion at bay a while longer. He was back among his own now. They would be looking to him for guidance, for answers, for a path into the future that would ensure the survival of their ancient brotherhood. It was up to him to provide all these things and more, no matter how impossible that seemed right now.
The tunnel was pitch-black. There were lights at regular intervals along the walls and ceilings, but their power came from a station outside the city limits, and it had fallen to the orks early in the conflict. The Crimson Fists moved easily enough in the dark, of course, their visors and gene-boosted eyes revealing every last detail to them, but the refugees needed light if they were to keep up. Thus, Brother Galica travelled at the rear, holding a lit flare for them to follow. Now and then, when their pace became too slow, he offered words of encouragement, or reminded them of the greenskins at their backs. The latter never failed to spur them on.
The underpass was broad, perhaps forty metres across with a ceiling twelve metres above the surface of the road. Pillar
s supported all that rock and earth, some of them sculpted in the likeness of hooded figures, the forty-two acolytes who had assisted the famed Imperial Reclamator, Saldano Malverro Rynn. The eerie red light from Galica’s flare cast sharp black shadows along the folds of their stone robes.
Kantor’s eyes picked out the boxy forms of two large trucks in the gloom up ahead. ‘Might we not travel faster in those?’ he asked Grimm.
‘They have another purpose, lord,’ Grimm replied. ‘Their carriages are packed with high-explosive. Once we have passed at a safe distance, I will arm them. The first orks to reach them will trigger a detonation that will bring the ceiling, and the Pakomac River, crashing down on their heads.’
Kantor nodded. ‘Let’s hope the orks give chase in staggering numbers.’
Cortez gave an amused snort.
‘I don’t doubt they will,’ said Grimm, ‘but Snagrod has numbers to spare. It shames me to admit it, but we’ve lost so much ground to the enemy already.’
‘Shame be damned,’ replied Kantor. ‘You have fought more bravely than anyone could have asked. Who else could have stood this long against such a Waaagh? I’ll not hear you speak of shame again.’
‘As my lord wishes,’ Grimm replied. Turning back to the original subject, he continued, saying, ‘This underpass is the last open path into Imperial-held territory. With the destruction of this tunnel, we are effectively sealing ourselves in.’
‘Help will come,’ said Kantor. ‘The Crusader got away.’
‘That is something. I hope they bring aid soon. Captain Alvez placed our forces under the Ceres Protocol. Epistolary Deguerro also felt it wise.’
Grimm’s question was implied. Would Kantor’s famous sense of honour and his compassion for normal humans cause him to overturn Alvez’s decree?
‘The Ceres Protocol stays in place,’ said Kantor. ‘Drigo was right to put the survival of the Chapter first.’
He thought Cortez threw a glance his way as he said this.
‘Ironically,’ Grimm continued, ‘the captain gave his own life in violation of it. Thousands of Rynnsguard troopers and civilians would have died had he not made that final sacrifice.’
‘He surprised you,’ said Kantor perceptively.
Something in Sergeant Grimm’s tone suggested he was smiling as he answered, ‘Truly, he did.’
The Fists had come abreast of the two trucks now, and Kantor could see that they were very deliberately placed in the gaps between three thick pillars. The destruction of those pillars would undermine the integrity of the whole midsection. The weight of all that rock above would pulverise and bury even the toughest ork machine. The crashing waters that followed, the ice-cold Pakomac, would pound the xenos footsoldiers to a pulp against the walls, or drown them. Either way, they were dead.
The xenos needed oxygen just as much as humans did.
A part of Pedro Kantor wished he could see it, wished his consciousness could hover here to witness the deadly reprisal as a psyker’s might do. But it was only a small part. The powers of the witch-kin were as much a curse as a blessing. He knew all too well how Eustace Mendoza had wrestled with the daemons of the warp, the efforts he had made to deflect their malign intentions every single day of his long life. Such a thing was a burden Kantor’s broad shoulders, already weighed down with so much, did not need.
The Fists pressed on, Grimm apprising his Chapter Master and the others of all that had occurred in the days since the first alien ships made planetfall here. In turn, Kantor spoke of the tragedy at Arx Tyrannus. His psychological wounds were no better for the telling of the tale, but the brave Second Company sergeant and his men deserved to hear the truth from their leader.
The survival of the Chapter was gravely uncertain. There was so little of it left on which to rebuild.
Up ahead, the light changed. Dull daylight seeped into the darkness at a shallow angle, finally announcing the end of their journey through the underpass. It had taken almost two hours. Some of the refugees had slowed so much that Kantor had ordered the Fists in the rearguard to carry those on the verge of collapse.
He had no sooner set his left foot on the shallow ramp that led out of the tunnel than he heard a great rumbling noise behind him. Air began whooshing past, escaping upwards through the tunnel mouth.
‘They have triggered the explosives!’ called Huron Grimm over the rising noise.
The refugees began whimpering in fear.
‘Run!’ ordered Kantor. ‘Bring those people!’
The Adeptus Astartes scooped up the civilians and began pounding up the ramp towards the rectangle of daylight. The rumble behind them grew exponentially louder.
Kantor heard Alessio Cortez roaring over the comm-link at his battle-brothers.
‘Move, brothers! Dorn detests the slow!’
The noise behind them was deafening now. Any other words were lost in the cacophony. At the front of the group, Sergeant Grimm put on a great burst of speed, inspiring the others to do likewise.
They burst from the mouth of the underpass just as a great spume of water and loose rock exploded upwards from below, drenching them. The force of it knocked some of them from their feet. In seconds the momentum of the water was spent.
Kantor turned to see his Crimson Fists rising, many cradling the soaked, shivering forms of the refugees. ‘Is everyone all right?’ he asked, scanning them for signs of injury.
Only a few of the refugees were a little the worse for wear.
Kantor saw Alessio Cortez gesturing at a point beyond him, signalling for his Chapter Master to turn around.
He turned…
…and saw a squad of battle-brothers in heavy Terminator armour stomping mechanically towards him from the street up ahead.
A deep, dry voice hailed him on the comm-link.
It was Rogo Victurix.
‘Welcome to New Rynn City!’
There was no mistaking the uncharacteristic jubilation in his tone. He was almost laughing with joy as he beheld his leader here before him, alive and well despite everything.
Victurix gestured down at his bulky armour. ‘I would take a knee if I could, lord. And I see Captain Cortez continues to live up to his reputation as unkillable. Heartfelt greetings, brother.’
Cortez nodded once and clashed a fist on his chest in salute.
Beneath his faceplate, Kantor found himself grinning. Victurix and his squad were the first living members of his Crusade Company that he had seen since the cataclysm in the Hellblades. And, by Terra, what a sight they were!
‘What are you doing here, Rogo? Surely you are needed on the walls?’
Victurix halted his squad about four metres in front of the others. The refugees had never seen Terminator armour before. They had thought the Chapter Master and his three squads of survivors massive, but they were not nearly as massive as these others.
They gaped unblinking at the great blue behemoths while the other Crimson Fists, those that had carried them from the underpass, set them down on their feet. None dared move.
Sergeant Victurix cast an eye over them, then returned his gaze to the Chapter Master. His tone became a shade heavier. ‘The walls we can hold are being held, my lord, but this very section will be lost to us presently, so we cannot dally here. I have four transports waiting in a square just to the west. It is only a few minutes away.
‘We,’ he said, spreading his arms, ‘are your escort.’
Part Three
‘Before such theories were labelled heresy by the Ecclesiarchy and made punishable by death, some men once believed in parallel universes, an infinity of them, physical places like our own universe where all possibilities were played out.
‘Though I consider myself a pragmatic man, it is not difficult to see the attraction inherent in such beliefs. Were those parallel universes to exist, after all, in many of them, the orks would never have come to Rynn’s World.
‘Every day, I wish I lived in such a universe.’
– Extract: Writing
s from the Ramparts: A Memoir Colonel (ret.) Portius Cantrell (948.M41-)
One
New Rynn City, Rynnland Province
Imperial libraries would, one day, come to be filled with great volumes covering the events on Rynn’s World. Millions of parchment pages would record the feats of great heroism and self-sacrifice that took place. The suicidal charge of the 16th Rynnite Women’s Militia against the orks that breached the Baradon Gate would come to be remembered, as would the further acts of bravery it inspired. Likewise, the brave but costly counterattack prosecuted by the Rynnsguard Third Garrison Regiment against ork armoured elements which shelled the Zona 2 Residentia to rubble.
Day by day, the last free citizens of Rynn’s World clung on, proving their mettle, holding always to the desperate hope that, maybe today, a great Imperial fleet would sweep down from the skies and decimate the alien besiegers. Every hour they held out against the uncountable hordes of the Arch Arsonist, Snagrod, was testament to their strength and faith, their courage and passion. Each hour of life was earned with blood and sweat.
For all the feats that went recorded, how many more were not? No Imperial document would ever tell of the noble death of Sergeant Pacalis Filian, a middle-aged infantry squad leader born on the island of Calliona. He led a night assault against ork forces camped outside his section of the wall, knowing they would overcome his section the following day. None of his men returned alive, but they took more than their share of the enemy down with them.
Nor would any living man or woman retell the last hours of Captain Golrid Prinas of the Ninth Rynnsguard Artillery Regiment’s Second Company. Prinas and his loyal gunnery crews fought to the last man against a tide of ork abominations before finally calling in an artillery strike from another company, guiding the shells in on their own heads when it was clear they were overrun. As death rained down, Prinas uttered the words, ‘My life for Rynn’s World, gem of the Imperium, second only to Terra herself.’
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 92