The considerably more experienced, or perhaps luckier, Hyke performed a textbook evasive manoeuvre, banking sharply and rising to make use of a clear space at the centre of the newly arrived fleet. Neither experience nor luck could save him from what happened next.
Another, larger return pulsed on his auspex, almost filling the screen. Turbulence engulfed his Kestrel and the area around him undulated sickeningly. Giving the engines every last drop of power left in the cells, he pulled forward hard on the throttle, almost tearing the lever from its housing. The ghost image on his auspex stabilised and he looked over his shoulder in time to see a massive asteroid coalescing into realspace.
The vibration of protesting engines jarring his body as he coaxed them to perform far in excess of their capabilities, Hyke very nearly outran the magnetic pull of the new arrival but, just as he reached the terminator of the thing’s gravity well, his engines sputtered and died, no energy left in the power plant to drive them.
As the gargantuan rock sucked him in, crackling shields waiting to consume both man and starfighter, the last thing Barabas Hyke ever saw was a flotilla of torpedoes racing past him, the same green as the ten capital ships and sporting winged sword insignia on their hulls.
766960.M41 / Revenge, Pythos blockade, Pandorax System
His face a ruined mess, Kranswar regarded the Black Legionnaire with his one remaining eye as another blow rained down on him. His skull audibly cracked this time though his ability to feel pain had thankfully already deserted him. The Traitor Marine kept the human pinned to the engine room door with one gauntlet while he wound back his other, balled into a fist, preparing to strike a killing blow.
Two things happened then, neither of which made any sense to Kranswar in his current state.
Over the vox, a woman started laughing. Not the hysterical, maniacal cackle of one taken leave of their senses but the genuine, happy laughter of somebody experiencing delight. This was soon joined by other voices adding to the chorus, some cheering, others crying but all out of euphoria rather than fear or sadness. At the same time, a bright light bloomed out of nothingness in the corridor behind the Black Legionnaire forcing Kranswar to close his eye. He did not open it again.
‘We’re saved!’ laughed the chief vox-officer of the Stalwart. ‘They’ve come to rescue us all.’
Kranswar couldn’t hear her, just as he couldn’t witness Supreme Grand Master Kaldor Draigo materialise behind the Traitor Marine and strike down his assailant, taking its black armoured head clean off with a single sword swipe. Neither could he know that all over his ship, squads of Grey Knights were teleporting aboard and commencing the operation to cleanse it of the forces of Chaos. On board the asteroid that had been used to ram the Revenge, the entire Dark Angels Chapter had already deployed under the command of Lord Azrael to undo the dark magicks invoked to summon and sustain the aberrations of the warp.
He was not aware of any of this because Lord Admiral Orson Kranswar, captain of the Revenge and commander of Battlefleet Demeter, was already dead.
Chapter Nine
766960.M41 / Asteroid K27356NV213g (Malefus Murex), Pythos blockade, Pandorax System
In spite of the aches in his bones and muscles, and fatigue from the long hours of maintaining his incantation, Cholgar intoned the words with the same vigour he had the first time he uttered them. Thick black blood streamed from his nostrils and hoarfrost coated the hair on his bare arms, chest and face, but not his head which was entirely smooth save for the two nubs of horns at the point where temple became forehead.
Cholgar was the first of his line to be picked out by the gods to receive the blessing of mutation. His father, his father’s father, and every male in his family stretching as far back as anybody could remember, had served the Davinicus Lycae but none had ever advanced beyond the grade of footsoldier, their destiny to end their days by an Imperial Guardsman’s bayonet or Space Marine bolt shell. Since birth, Cholgar had been marked for greatness, schooled in the ways of sorcery even before he could talk. Nearly two decades on from the day when the tribal elders took him from the crib, he was finally fulfilling his destiny. His sorcery, combined with that of the hundred or so other cultists filling the hollowed-out chamber within the commandeered asteroid, was creating the right conditions for daemons to dwell within the material realm and assail the Imperial vessel.
The man beside him fell, dark blood trickling from every orifice, steam rising from his corpse as it cooled at an unnatural rate. The air around the dead man thickened and churned, and with a tear that sounded like raw meat being pulled from bone, a hole in reality opened through which stepped one of the Neverborn. An ugly hunched thing, it peered around furtively with bulbous green-grey orbs, before taking possession of the frozen cadaver. Running a fat tongue over the broken remains of crag-like teeth, it stepped back through the portal which crackled closed at its passing. That same fate awaited Cholgar, as it did all of the warlock cabal, though each would gladly embrace it when it came. There was no greater glory for a servant of the Davinicus Lycae than to die knowing their sacrifice allowed beings far more worthy than themselves to walk the materium.
Another cultist took the place of the fallen sorcerer and Cholgar felt a pang of jealousy. The newcomer was no match for him physically – he was shorter and weighed at least ten kilos less than Cholgar – but was the bearer of not two, but three vestigial horns, each longer than his own. Such obvious endorsement from the gods no doubt meant he had the pick of mates in the accommodation cells.
Pushing aside his envy, Cholgar returned his focus to the task in hand. His momentary lapse in concentration had caused him to slip out of harmony with the rest of the cabal, drawing the attention of the overseers who kept a stern eye on proceedings. He had just got his chanting back in time when something else distracted him.
The rime of hoarfrost melted, coating his toned body in a wet sheen and the hairs on his arm pricked up. A new smell rose up, overpowering the scent of blood and sweat emanating from the other cultists, the warm cloying of burning ozone stinging his nostrils.
At the very instant Cholgar figured out what was happening, the laws of physics he had been fighting so hard to rewrite punished him to their full extent.
Materialising several metres above the floor of the asteroid chamber, Brother Balthasar of the Deathwing braced himself for impact. He hit the ground with a moist thud and glanced down to find the remains of something that must have once been vaguely human beneath his feet. Alongside him, a scrawny mutated freak, a concertina of rings around its elongated neck and a trio of horns poking out from a pale, mottled scalp, stared at him wide-eyed. A single burst from Balthasar’s storm bolter separated the cultist’s torso from the rest of his body.
Around the chamber, similar scenes were being repeated. Scores of Terminator-armour clad Dark Angels blinked into existence over the heads of their targets; those not crushed under the impact of tonnes of ceramite and wargear were cut down by storm bolter, mace or flail. The noise of so many weapons being discharged in the artificial cavern was cacophonous and a rune blinked on Balthasar’s visor display to warn him that his armour’s noise filters were reaching the limits of their usefulness. It came as no surprise.
A single squad of Deathwing could cleanse an entire space hulk; two could prosecute a small war unaided; five squads – fully half of the Chapter’s First Company – would be sufficient to conquer a planet.
Today, for the first time in living memory, the entire Deathwing deployed on the same field of battle at the same time.
The battle, if it could truly be called that, was over in the space of seconds, but that too came as no surprise to Balthasar. Human wreckage lay at the feet of a hundred Dark Angels, the only evidence that any of them had seen combat the crimson smears sullying otherwise pristine tactical dreadnought suits. One cabal of enemy sorcerers lay dead, but many more awaited extermination deeper within the asteroid.
‘Onward,’ ordered Gabriel, Grand Master of the Deat
hwing. The sound of boarding torpedoes slamming into the asteroid echoed along the tunnels and punctuated his words. Soon, the rest of the Dark Angels Chapter would deploy alongside their elite brethren. Gabriel raised his Heavenfall Blade, the black sword in stark contrast to his ancient suit of bone-white Terminator plate. ‘Show them no mercy!’
766960.M41 / Revenge, Pythos blockade, Pandorax System
Where the Deathwing had not encountered any serious resistance on board the repurposed asteroid, Supreme Grand Master Kaldor Draigo and the Brotherhood of Grey Knights under his command had found the exact opposite on board the Revenge.
Warp rifts had opened throughout the ship and, maintained for hours by forbidden magicks, the Revenge was rife with foes drawn forth from the other side of reality. Entire decks now resembled hellish landscapes in mimicry of those worlds deep within the Eye of Terror. Metal transmuted to flesh, machinery shaped into organics, the laws of nature abolished and replaced by the raw stuff of Chaos. It was impossible to move more than a few metres without having to avoid a corpse, hideously broken, primal fear etched on every face.
A daemon skittered rapidly along the ceiling of the corridor towards Draigo, but with a single word he held it there in place, the squad of Paladins advancing behind him eviscerating the thing with sharp bursts from their storm bolters.
More daemons converged on their position, some loping on spindly, misshapen limbs, others blinking into existence among the ranks of the Space Marines. Regardless of how they got there, their fate was the same. Blades flashed, returning them to whence they came in a shower of gore and a chorus of hellish screams. Words of banishment, harshly spoken, took care of the rest, sucked back through the rents in time and space that had birthed them in reality.
Coming to a fork in the ship’s corridors, Draigo ordered the Paladins to take the left branch while he veered to the right, deeper into the belly of the ship.
Draigo would not normally lead a Brotherhood into battle himself, but the death of Grand Master Hasimir and the urgency of the situation on Pythos had left him with no alternative but to assume command of the Fifth. With the rest of his Chapter scattered around the Imperium in response to a myriad of daemonic threats, the Supreme Grand Master had not been able to wait for reinforcements from among his own forces, instead opting to enact an old oath sworn to the Grey Knights by the Dark Angels.
Azrael had initially refused to honour the pact, considering it to be tantamount to blackmail. His mind was soon changed when Draigo revealed an interesting nugget of information gleaned from interrogating a Traitor Astartes prisoner and the leader of the Dark Angels committed his entire Chapter to the Pandorax campaign, operational superiority the Grey Knight’s sole concession in exchange for cooperation. Though they were nominally allies, the relationship between the two Chapters had always been fractious, never spilling over into confrontation but coming near on more than one occasion. Being forced to operate so closely together would put that to the test once again, more so in light of the circumstances of their alliance.
Already Azrael had begun the politicking. Daemon hunting being their speciality, the Grey Knights were the logical choice to cleanse the nest of daemons the ship had become but, with only a single Brotherhood to face an entire daemon army, they would ultimately need reinforcing. The Dark Angels would make short work of the warlocks and cultists on board the asteroid before coming to fight alongside their psychic brethren, their superior numbers turning the tide of battle and winning the day. Who the glory covered was of no concern to Draigo. Liberating Pythos and resealing the Damnation Cache was all that mattered. Azrael could score all the points he liked against the Grey Knights as long as the mission was a success.
A noise from further along the corridor gave Draigo pause. The flickering red emergency lights sporadically illuminated a human-shaped figure, curled in the foetal position and weeping uncontrollably. The ball unfurled at the sound of Draigo’s thudding footfalls. A man, grey-haired and wrinkled, shivered in fear and looked about to scream when his eyes fixated on the purity seals and holy imagery adorning the Grey Knight’s armour.
‘You… you’re not one of them?’ the man said, wide-eyed.
Draigo nodded. ‘I am a loyal servant of the Golden Throne and I am here to liberate this ship and her crew.’
‘Praise the Emperor! We’re saved,’ the man said, getting uneasily to his feet. Even at full height he barely reached Draigo’s chest. ‘Thank you, lord. Thank you.’
Draigo nodded again. The old man set off at pace in the direction from which the Grey Knight had come. Draigo was about to continue his advance when a thought occurred to him, a piece of information he was missing that was not of operational import but useful to know nonetheless.
‘What is the name of this ship?’ he called after the old man.
‘The ship?’ the old man said, carefully picking his way through the bodies carpeting the floor. ‘It’s called the Revenge, lord.’
‘Of course it is,’ Draigo said with a wry smile, heading deeper into enemy territory.
766960.M41 / Asteroid K27356NV213g (Malefus Murex), Pythos blockade, Pandorax System
Balthasar’s power fist connected with the Black Legionnaire’s head, smashing open the faceplate to reveal the traitor’s visage. Ancient features stared back at the Dark Angel, a defiant grin peeling the lips back from bloodied teeth. Another blow from Balthasar’s powerfist quickly removed the smile. The body dropped limply to the ground to join those of his treacherous ilk already vanquished by the Deathwing and the elements of Sixth Company who had joined up with them on their warpath through the asteroid.
‘Master Tigrane,’ said Gabriel. ‘The rest of your company have reached the hull breach and are engaged with traitor forces. Take your men and reinforce their position.’
Though the Master of Sixth Company, along with the three squads fighting alongside him, were already aware of their battle-brothers’ situation, Gabriel’s instruction was not meant as a slight against Tigrane’s leadership or tactical acumen. Both Dark Angels exchanged barely perceptible nods.
‘Understood, Master Gabriel,’ Tigrane replied, signalling for his troops to move out.
As the green armoured figures made their way out of the chamber, another entered, the dark armour he wore and the crozius arcanum he carried marking him out as a Chaplain. A single black pearl hung from his weapon of office.
Almost twenty Black Legionaries lay dead in the central chamber, joined in oblivion by at least ten times that number of cultists and sorcerers. Interrogator Chaplain Seraphicus moved among the corpses, kneeling beside those in black armour and applying a reductor to their throats to remove their gene-seed. Normally the tool of the Apothecary, when the Dark Angels went into battle against any Traitor Astartes, the brothers of the Reclusiam would also carry one on the orders of the High Interrogator. The fickle nature of alliances among the hordes of Chaos meant that any of the Fallen could have thrown in their lot with any of the countless warbands and armies that blighted the Imperium. Removing the gene-seed of any enemy Space Marine and taking it for testing on the Rock was the only way to be certain that another name could not be struck from the Roster of Caliban.
All across the asteroid, similar scenes played out.
Finding themselves isolated from the rest of Fourth Company, Sergeant Arion and Third Squad held out for over an hour against a much larger force of Black Legionaries and their daemonic allies. Without taking a single casualty, they killed over thirty Traitor Astartes and daemons before Master Boaz and a relief force showed up to help close out the battle. Such was the ferocity of the firefight that when High Interrogator Asmodai arrived once Fourth Company had moved on, he discovered new niches and alcoves had been torn into the rock from sustained bolt shell impacts.
Master Belial of Third Company, shoulder to shoulder with Ezekiel and three other brothers of the Librarius, fought off wave after wave of Khorne berserkers. Their rage heightened by the presence of psykers among the
enemy, they smashed ineffectively against psi-shields before being cut to ribbons by bolt pistols and chainswords. Even bolstered by daemonic servants of their master, they could not topple the Dark Angels’ defences. When Chaplain Boreas came later to extract the gene-seed from the dead, he found it hard to distinguish which body parts belonged to which dismembered corpse, the ferocity of the berserkers’ assault countered in equal measure by the ruthlessness of the defenders.
But for all the acts of selflessness and heroism, not a single member of the Fallen would be found among the numbers of the traitors that day.
Finishing his ministrations, Seraphicus carefully placed the metal cylinder containing the looted gene-seed into a pouch hanging from his waist. As he made to leave, no doubt to remove more progenoids from the slain, he nodded to Gabriel in the same manner as Tigrane had done, but brushed the first two fingers of his right hand across his left cheek just below the eye. It seemingly went unnoticed by the other Terminator-armoured figures but Balthasar furrowed his brow. Being a member of the Deathwing made him privy to all manner of Chapter secrets in excess of his non-ascended battle-brothers but he was still on the periphery of the inner circle. Had Seraphicus made some kind of clandestine signal to Gabriel? How much more forbidden knowledge did the Dark Angels have left for him to learn?
Gabriel turned to address the fifty Deathwing checking their gear and cleaning filth from their armour. Azrael had taken the other half of First Company onboard the stricken ship as soon as it had become clear that the battle to capture the asteroid would be swifter than anticipated and now, with the sounds of battle dying away, Gabriel would lead the remainder to join them.
‘Our work here is done, brothers. The Archenemy sorcerers lie dead and broken. Their spells are already fading and the horrors they enabled to gain purchase in this realm weaken by the second.’ Gabriel’s gaze lingered on Balthasar as he spoke. ‘Dozens of the vile Black Legion have been vanquished and their foul barbarism will never again strike fear in the hearts of the loyal. New names will be recorded in the Chapter annals this day, brothers, and we praise them all.’
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 327