Iulus heard a cheer resound behind him as all the men of Damnos witnessed the necrons’ defeat. Like his battle-brothers, he was swept up in the moment. When he saw the Lions of Macragge arrayed around the slumped figure of his captain in a protective cordon his exultant mood ebbed. It was replaced by vengeance and the desire to vanquish the enemy utterly.
Stationed in the rear line of the army, alongside the Devastators, Iulus pushed his Immortals forward. He caught Sergeant Atavian’s eye.
‘Sicarius has fallen.’
Like Iulus, Atavian gave nothing away. ‘Is he dead?’
‘They watch over him like pallbearers.’
The grating rasp of Chaplain Trajan interjected. ‘Rites will be spoken if he is slain. Now we must let our bolters and blades describe our litanies of hatred.’
He led them into the fleeing masses, crozius swinging. Iulus followed a little way behind. Atavian’s advance was slower still with the heavy guns.
A gauntlet reached out and snatched Iulus’s arm. He turned about to strike, believing a destroyed mechanoid had self-repaired, but it was Praxor. He wasn’t wearing his battle-helm and his eyes were wide.
Iulus said, ‘Brother?’
‘He is dead. I saw him fall with my own eyes. Captain Sicarius is slain.’
Iulus’s expression went from grief to resolution. ‘Then we avenge him.’
For over an hour the Ultramarines pursued the retreating necrons, all the way to the far border of Arcona City. Thousands were destroyed in the rout, the mechanoids unable to mount a defence or any kind of useful tactic that might have spared their losses. Without their overlord they were less than automatons, little more than directionless drones. Even the elites appeared locked onto a single course of action – full-scale retreat.
The as-yet unseen phasic generator teleported some of the constructs back to the sunken tomb all the way into the northern polar wastes. No Ultramarine had laid eyes on the device, and it was likely withdrawn upon their arrival.
Only when the last of the necrons had either been teleported or damaged into instant phase-out did Agrippen call a halt, his fury sated. Then the Ultramarines began the long march back to Kellenport.
The sun was high in the ice-blue Damnos sky when Scipio reached the city. The edges of its walls were veneered in hazy umber from the light.
Led by the Thunderbolts, the Ultramarines from the Thanatos Mission passed through the Kellenport gates just as a viridian explosion lit up the distant hills. So large and destructive, the blast was even visible from the city. The pylons and gauss-obliterators would not return. For one they were buried, for another the Ultramarines had used enough explosive to level the mountainside.
‘Sergeant Vorolanus.’
It was Tigurius. Scipio stopped and turned to face the Librarian.
‘I will see to our captain,’ he said. ‘Agrippen has command.’
Scipio bowed, acknowledging.
As they parted ways, Tigurius stopped. ‘I saw courage on the Thanatos Hills and a desire for self-sacrifice. Now you know who you are, brother. Remember it.’
The Librarian was heading into the distant hubbub of the city. Already, preparations were being made for the arrival of the Ultramarines armour. Several squads stood watchful upon the battlements, alongside the Damnosian soldiery.
There was no sign of Agrippen or the Lions. Scipio assumed they were in council, planning the strategic defence of the city. At least two other sergeants were not present at that meeting. Leaving Brakkius in charge, Scipio dismissed the Thunderbolts. His gaze lingered on Jynn as she was carried to the nearest medical station. He banished the bleak thoughts from his mind as he went to meet his brothers.
Hugging Scipio firmly, Iulus said, ‘I am glad you’re alive, brother.’
Scipio laughed mirthlessly. ‘You sound like you had your doubts.’ He turned to Praxor. ‘Brother?’
He looked downcast, his shame obvious in his bearing. Praxor had believed Sicarius dead and become like the people of Damnos he had thought weren’t worth saving on account of that fatalism.
The captain was injured, badly, but lived. The truth of it was revealed later when the courtyard had cleared and Venatio announced to the Lions that their lord still drew breath. He was still in the Apothecary’s care, surrounded by his inner circle warriors. But Cato Sicarius would play no further part in the war on Damnos. As soon as possible, he would be ferried to the apothecarion aboard the Valin’s Revenge and allowed to recover.
Scipio put a hand on Praxor’s shoulder. ‘Neither of us was there, brother. We didn’t witness what you did.’
‘I should have known, but instead I gave in to doubt.’
‘All three of us have experienced much in this campaign. I confess I never thought this ball of ice would be a place for revelation.’
At this point, Iulus stepped in. ‘It’s not done yet, either.’ He held up a data-slate displaying the planet’s northern geography. ‘Necron forces are stirring in the north. Scans reveal massive tectonic activity.’
Exhaling, Scipio marshalled his anger. ‘So all we have done so far has merely set them back?’
Iulus nodded. ‘It would appear so.’
‘We have sacrificed much for little.’
‘And more is needed.’
Scipio was pensive for a moment before he straightened and clapped his brothers each on the pauldron. ‘Then by the glory of Ultramar, it will be given.’
Praxor nodded determinedly. Iulus even cracked a feral smile.
All three looked skywards as a large vessel silhouetted the upper atmosphere. The sound of the battle-barge’s engines was loud, even as far up as it was, and smaller ships were disgorging from it.
Valin’s Revenge.
The Ultramarines on the wall, those in the courtyard, all of the Damnosian infantry looked up.
The voice of Antaro Chronus, veteran Ultramarines tank commander, came over the feed. ‘The heavens are clear,’ he announced, shouting above the sound of heavy machinery in the background. ‘We are coming, brothers.’
Epilogue
Ankh had foreseen this outcome. Not through any form of prescience or sixth sense, but rather the cold logic of cause and effect. The Undying’s demise was inevitable; the necron retreat likewise. Tahek’s death he had engineered purposely – it meant the skies were open for the genebred warriors to bring their vessels and machineries to the surface. It would give them hope, make them believe that victory was even possible.
That thought amused the Architect. In the depths of the tomb his spyders and scarabs were revivifying in thousands, tens of thousands. The phalanxes in full retreat on the surface were but a fraction of what lay beneath, and there were things much more terrible in those depths. As the battles raged above, Ankh had been busy waking them.
He felt the touch of an ancient sentience in the emerald gloom of the under-caverns. It was a royal chamber where he stood. As Ankh contemplated the vast catacombs and their slumbering hordes, a pair of eyes ignited in the darkness in front of him.
Ankh took a step back and bowed almost to the floor.
‘My lord,’ he purred as the royarch’s gaze fell upon him.
Battle of the Fang
Chris Wraight
Prologue
Strike cruiser Gotthammar powered smoothly through the void, its vast engines operating at less than half capacity, its wing of escorts keeping pace comfortably across the ten thousand kilometre-wide patrol formation. The cruiser was gunmetal-grey against the deep well of the void, its heavily armoured flanks emblazoned with the head of a snarling wolf. It had translated from the warp only hours earlier, and the last residue of Geller field shutdown still clung, glistening, to the exposed adamantium of the hull.
The Gotthammar’s command bridge was located near the rear of the gigantic vessel, surrounded by towers, bulwarks and angled gun batteries. Void shields rippled like gauze over metres-thick plexiglass real space viewers, under which the bridge crew laboured to keep the ship
on course and with all its systems working at their full pitch of perfection.
Inside, the bridge was a huge space, over two hundred metres long, a cavern carved out from the core of the vessel. Its roof was largely transparent, formed out of the lens-like real space portals arranged across a latticework of iron. Below that were gantries ringing the edges of the open chamber, each of them patrolled by kaerls hefting skjoldtar projectile weapons. Further down was the first deck, across which milled more mortal crew. Most were clad in the pearl-grey robes of Fenrisian ship-thralls, though kaerls moved among them too, stomping across the metal decking in blast-armour and translucent face-masks.
The floor of the first deck was broken open in several places, exposing deeper levels below. Bustling tactical stations clustered down there, and rows of chattering cogitators, and poorly-lit trenches filled with half-human servitors. Many of these were hardwired into their terminals, their spines or faces consumed in a mass of pipework and cabling, with exposed patches of grey skin the only reminder of the humanity they’d once enjoyed. Their service was different now, a demi-life of lobotomised servitude, shackled for eternity to machines that kept them alive only as long as they performed their numbing, mechanical tasks over and over again.
Above all those levels, set back at the very rear of the bridge cavern, was the command throne. A hexagonal platform jutted out from the vaulted walls, ten metres in diameter and ringed with a thick iron rail. In the centre of that platform was a low dais. In the centre of the dais stood the throne, a heavy, block-shaped chair carved from solid granite. It was far larger than a mortal man could have sat in comfortably, but that didn’t matter much because no mortal man ever ventured on to that platform. It had been empty for many hours, though as the Gotthammar closed in on its target, that was about to change. Giant doors behind the throne hissed as brace-pistons were withdrawn. Then they slid open.
Through them walked a leviathan. Jarl Arvek Hren Kjarlskar, Wolf Lord of the Fourth Great Company of the Rout, massive in his Terminator armour, strode on to the dais. His battle-plate hummed with a low, throbbing menace as he moved. The ceramite surface was covered in deep-scored runes, and bone trophies hung from his huge shoulders. A bear-pelt, black with age and riddled with old bolter-holes, hung from his back. His face was leathery, glare-tanned, and studded with metal rings. A distended jawline was encased in two night-black sideburns, lustrous and predator-sleek.
With him came other giants. Anjarm, the Iron Priest, clad in forge-dark artificer plate, his face hidden behind the blank mask of an ancient helm. Frei, the Rune Priest, in sigil-encrusted armour, his stone-grey hair hanging in plaits across the neck-guard. The doors slid closed behind them, isolating the trio on the command platform. Below them, the decks hummed with unbroken activity.
Kjarlskar grimaced as he surveyed the scene, exposing fangs the length of children’s fingers.
‘So what do we have?’ he asked. His voice rose rattling from the vast cage of his chest like a Rhino engine turning over. He never raised it, so they said, even in the heat of battle. He never had to.
‘Probes have been launched,’ said Anjarm. ‘We’ll see soon.’
Kjarlskar grunted, and took his place on the throne. For such a giant, nearly three metres tall and two across, he moved with an easy, contained fluidity. His yellow eyes, locked deep within a low-browed skull, glistened liquid and alert.
‘Skítja, I’m bored of this,’ he said. ‘Hel, even the mortals are bored of this.’
He was right. The whole Fourth Great Company fleet was buzzing with frustrated energy. Thousands of kaerls, hundreds of Space Marines, all chasing shadows for months on end. Ironhelm, the Chapter’s Great Wolf, had kept them all busy pursuing the target of his obsession across the fringes of the Eye of Terror. Every system in the long search had been the same: abandoned, pacified, or home to conflicts too tedious and petty to bother with.
Running after ghosts was crushing work. The hunters needed to hunt.
‘We’re getting something,’ said Anjarm, his head inclined slightly as he checked his helm’s lens-feed. As he spoke, a semi-circle of pict screens hung around the command platform flickered into life. The incoming data from the probes emerged on them. A brown-red planet swam into view, growing larger with every second. The probes were still closing, and at such vast range the image was broken and distorted.
‘So what’s this one?’ asked Kjarlskar, not showing much interest.
‘Gangava system,’ answered Anjarm, watching the picts carefully. ‘Single world, inhabited, nine satellites. Final node in the sector.’
Images continued to come in. As he watched them, the Jarl’s mood slowly began to change. The thick hairs on the exposed flesh of his neck stiffened slightly. Those yellow eyes, the windows onto the beast, sharpened their focus.
‘Orbital defences?’
‘Nothing yet.’
Kjarlskar rose from the throne, his gaze fixed on the picts. The visual stream clarified. The planet’s surface was swaying into view, dark-brown and streaked with a dirty orange. It looked like a ball of rust in space.
‘Last contact?’
‘Before the Scouring,’ said Anjarm. ‘Warp storm activity recorded until seventy standard years ago. Explorator reports list as desolate. We had this one low on the list, lord.’
Kjarlskar didn’t look like he was listening. He was tensing up.
‘Frei,’ said Kjarlskar. ‘Are you getting anything?’
The planet continued to grow as the probes took up geostationary positions. Angry swirls of cloud shifted across the surface. As the Rune Priest looked at the probe-relays, veins began to pulse at his shaven temples. His mouth tightened, as if some pungent aroma had risen, stinking, from the screens.
‘Blood of Russ,’ he swore.
‘What do you sense?’ asked Kjarlskar.
‘Spoor. His spoor.’
The clouds were breaking open. Beneath them were lights, laid out in geometric shapes, revealing a city, vast beyond imagining. The shapes were deliberate. They hurt the eyes.
Kjarlskar let slip a low growl of pleasure, mixed with anger. His gauntlets clenched into fists.
‘You’re sure?’ he demanded.
The Rune Priest’s armour had started glowing, lit up by the angular shapes carved into the plate. For the first time in months, the wyrd-summoner looked excited. Probe-auspexes continued to zoom in, revealing pyramids in the heart of the city.
Massive pyramids.
‘There can be no doubt, lord.’
Kjarlskar let slip a savage, barking laugh.
‘Then summon the star-speakers,’ he snarled. ‘We’ve done it.’
He looked from Anjarm to Frei, and his bestial eyes shone.
‘We’ve found the bastard. Magnus the Red is on Gangava.’
Part I:
Old Scores
Chapter One
Vaer Greyloc hunched down, keeping upwind, letting his naked fingers graze against the packed snow. Ahead of him, the plain stretched away north, bleached white, ringed by the peaks beyond.
He sniffed, pulling the frigid air in deep. The prey had sensed something, and there was fear carrying on the wind. He tensed, feeling his muscles tighten with readiness. His pin-sharp pupils dilated slightly, lost in their near-white irises.
Not yet.
Down below him, a few hundred yards away, the herd huddled against the wind, stepping nervously despite their size. Konungur, a rare breed. Everything on Fenris was bred to grip on to survival, and these creatures were no different. Four lungs to scrape the thin air of Asaheim of every last molecule of oxygen, huge ribcages of semi-fused bone, hind-legs the width of a man’s waist, twin twisted horns and a spiked spine-ridge. A kick from a konungur could take the head off a man.
Greyloc stayed tense, watching them move across the plain. He judged the distance, still down against the snow. He had no weapon in his hands.
I am the weapon.
He wore no armour either, and the metal-l
ined carapace nodes chafed against the leather of his jerkin. His mouth stayed shut, and only a thin trail of vapour escaped from his nostrils. Asaheim was punishingly cold, even for one with his enhanced physiology, and there were a thousand mutually supportive ways to die.
The konungur paused. The bull at the herd-head stopped rigid, its majestic horned profile raised against the screen of white beyond.
Now.
Greyloc burst from cover. His legs pumped, throwing snow up behind in powdered blooms. His nostrils flared, pulling air into his taut, lean frame.
The konungur bolted instantly, rearing away from the sprinting predator. Greyloc closed fast, his thighs already burning. His secondary heart kicked in, flooding his system with adrenaline-thick blood. There was no mjod in it – he’d been fasting for days, purging the battle-stimulant from his frame.
My pure state.
The konungur galloped powerfully, leaping high through the wind-smoothed drifts, but Greyloc was faster. His white hair streamed out over his rippling shoulders. He outpaced the slowest, tearing alongside the herd, fuelling its panic. The group broke formation, scattering from the bringer of terror in their midst.
Greyloc fixed his eyes on the bull. The beast was two metres high at the shoulder, over four tons of pure muscle moving at speed. He plunged after it, feeling his legs sear with the sharp pain of exertion. The fear of the beast clogged in his nostrils, fuelling the blood-frenzy pumping through his system.
It veered suddenly, trying to shake him off. Greyloc leapt, catching the creature’s neck with his outstretched hand and swinging round to grapple it. The bull bucked, trying to break the hold, kicking out with spiked hooves and bellowing a series of echoing, coughing distress calls.
Greyloc pulled back his free fist and sent a punch flying at the konungur’s skull. He heard bone crack, and the creature staggered sideways. Greyloc dug his claws into the ice-hard flesh, pulling at the cords within and dragging the beast to the ground.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 134