Grigor no longer knew that the ring signified the union between two lovers, and he no longer knew that it was he who was wed to the woman, or that her name was Katalina. He could not remember that they had met three years ago when she had joined his mining team along with a new influx of settlers from Gaea. He could not remember that the governor himself had presided over their union or that it had taken place on the Feast of the Emperor’s Ascension, revellers greeting them in the streets of the hive city and wishing them well for the future. He could not remember that in the weeks before Pythos fell they were talking of starting a family and of moving to Gaea where they would work on Katalina’s family farm to raise enough money to build a home of their own.
He could not remember any of this because Abaddon’s invasion had robbed him of everything he held dear, just as it had robbed an entire world of its liberty and its population of their humanity.
He heard another noise now, louder than the whip, and stopped. Everybody stopped. If he still had the faculty for description, he might have described the sound as a high-pitched whine but he did not so to Grigor it was only noise. He looked to the woman, some strange urge compelling him to do so, and she looked back. The noise became something different and he took his eyes off the woman not knowing it would be the last time he would ever see her.
When he looked up, the sky was on fire.
From orbit, the missiles rained down upon the capital of Pythos. The hive city that had stood for over five thousand years was reduced to rubble and ash in a matter of minutes. In the wake of Atika’s destruction, the fleet turned its attention to the surrounding swampland and jungle, burning away the forestation and evaporating the wetlands, leaving behind a glassaic plain that tanks could use to reach the ruins of the city now that the rains had come again.
Azrael had been true to his word about assaulting the city, but stuck just as rigidly to his assertion that it would be on his terms. Despite repeated petitions from Draigo, the Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels had continued to stall, prosecuting operations against enemy supply lines and concentrations of war machines before committing to the attack on Atika.
Strike was torn. Draigo’s aggressive stance had a lot of merit and it would have potentially neutered the flow of daemons from the Damnation Cache a lot sooner, but Azrael’s approach had virtually eliminated the threat of allies coming to the aid of the invaders now trapped in the tunnels beneath the rubble. It had also allowed fresh Imperial Guard regiments to make their way to the Pandorax System, along with elements of Legio Crucius who had deigned to send a complement of Warhound Titans to aid in the reconquest of Pythos. On a purely selfish note, Strike had been glad of the extra time to prepare for the battle as it had given K’Cee time to work on Traitor’s Bane and get the mobile fortress operational again.
Steam still rising from the incinerated ground, the Hellhammer rolled along at the head of an armoured column the likes of which had been very rarely assembled since the days of the Horus Heresy. An entire Cadian armoured division, supported by two mobile artillery divisions followed behind the remaining Catachan tanks, along with a similar sized detachment of Vostroyan tanks. Interspersed among the countless Leman Russ variants were the pride of any armoured regiment, the super-heavy tanks. Many sported the colours of the Cadians, Catachans and Vostroyans but by far the bulk of them were in the livery of the First Palladius armoured company, nicknamed ‘The Thunderers’ on account of their exclusive deployment of Baneblades, Doomhammers and other gargantuan armoured vehicles. The only things larger on the battlefield were the Warhounds striding along at their flanks.
In the skies over the tanks and walkers, high above the low-lying fog from the cooking off of the swamps, flew close to a thousand Valkyries ready to deliver infantry directly to the frontline. At a higher altitude soared the Thunderbolts and Lightnings of the Imperial Navy wings alongside the Dark Talons and Nephilims of the Dark Angels. Their brothers waited out in space ready to drop from the skies when the time was right but the Chapter’s entire complement of fighter-interceptors and bombers deployed in support of the Imperial Guard.
From the command seat of Traitor’s Bane, Strike listened in on the vox-traffic passing between the regiments, formations being coordinated and reports coming in from forward scouts. With visibility so poor, they were reliant on instruments and the eyes in the sky for navigation, but occasionally agitated messages were exchanged between crews who had inadvertently collided with one another. They were lucky they could communicate at all. Another benefit to Azrael’s delay had been the recapture of Hollowfal and an end to the enemy jamming Imperial signals.
An insistent beeping sounded from the vox denoting a priority one incoming transmission. Strike killed all other communications and switched channels.
‘Are your tanks in position, colonel?’ came Azrael’s voice, crackling over the ancient vox-unit.
Strike looked to one of the auspex operators who gave him the thumbs up.
‘Yes, Lord Azrael. We’ll be able to begin bombardment as soon as you are on the ground.’
‘Very well. Commencing deployment now.’
The Battle for Atika had finally begun.
Balthasar swung his blade, paring open the belly of the daemon leaping at him. The thing crashed to the ground with a wail, fading from reality before it had a chance to bleed out. He slashed again, taking the heads from a pair of pale svelte things with malformed claws in place of hands. They too disappeared, leaving no trace of a corpse behind.
‘Save some for the rest of us, brother,’ said Gabriel, fighting at Balthasar’s shoulder. The company master of the Deathwing blazed away with his storm bolter, allowing the younger Dark Angel to pick off any Neverborn that got too close to them.
‘Why don’t you tell that to them? There’ll be no glory left for anybody else at the rate they’re eliminating these things.’ Dragging his blade through the torso of a minor plague daemon, he finished the motion by directing his sword tip to a group fighting several hundred metres away.
Resplendent in their pristine silver Terminator armour, a squad of Grey Knights Paladins put the enemy to rout with their witchflame. Balls of white-hot fire launched from their fists, like heavy flamers given human form, but the devastation wrought by their psychic assault was far in excess of any mere weapon. Those caught by the full blast of the attack were incinerated instantly, ghoulish white outlines of their forms forever etched upon the ground. Even those on the edge of the blast area died quickly, the smallest flame soon spreading and engulfing the larger daemons arrayed against the Imperial forces.
‘If only we’d had a few of those at 2761/b then perhaps our losses would not have been so great,’ Gabriel said, taking aim at a daemon before blowing it apart with two well-placed shots.
‘That sounds like sedition to me, master. Questioning the tactics of the Supreme Grand Master,’ Balthasar teased. While their structure followed the Codex Astartes almost to the letter – ten companies, First Company granted Terminator armour, Tenth Company being the Scouts – the Dark Angels operated unlike any other Space Marine Chapter. Their First Company – the Deathwing – went to war exclusively in their Terminator armour and it was always painted bone white in contrast to the green and black armour of their brethren in the other nine companies. They were also privy to the Chapter’s darkest secrets and, among others of the Deathwing at least, were able to share their thoughts on all matters openly.
‘Lord Azrael and I have already had a full and frank debate about the merits of his tactics that day, Balthasar. Each battle, be it a victory, loss or grinding stalemate, teaches us all something, even the Supreme Grand Master. The day we stop learning is the day the Apothecaries apply the reductor to our corpses.’
Gabriel ceased firing, waiting for his weapon to reload. One of the pink, horned abominations saw an opportunity and leapt at the Dark Angel from his blindside. Gabriel brought his weapon up in a vicious arc, snapping the thing’s neck with a sickening crack. ‘
Besides, I think you’re jealous.’ His weapon barked to life.
‘Jealous? In what way?’ Balthasar asked.
‘I’ve seen the way you revel in the kill, the controlled fury with which you strike down our foes. You live for battle, Balthasar, and constantly seek better ways to wage war. Your body is already a finely-tuned killing machine, but you know how much more you could achieve if your mind was as potent a weapon too.’
Balthasar said nothing, instead bringing his own storm bolter to bear and ploughing through a throng of daemons, chopping away with the sword in his other hand leaving Gabriel wondering whether he had hit a nerve.
In the troop hold of the Stormraven, Tzula watched the pict feed of the battle taking place on the ground below.
Hundreds of thousands of Imperial Guard marched across the Plain of Glass – as many of the regiments had named it – towards the ring of steel formed by the Imperial armour. With the tank bombardment as cover, they would soon move up to relieve the Dark Angels and Grey Knights forces already engaged with the daemonic horde, allowing the Space Marines to breach the tunnels beneath Atika and take the war underground. The entirety of the Dark Angels Tenth Company had infiltrated the tunnels over a week ago and, accompanied by Castellan Crowe of the Grey Knights and a squad of Purifiers, had sealed off all routes from the Atikan underhive to the surface bar one. The largest tunnel had been left open to allow the Titans and tanks access to the subterranean battlefield, the big guns needed to handle whatever horrors the enemy kept lurking in the deeps.
Thoughts of the underhive led Tzula to wondering about Epimetheus and Shira, and what fate had befallen them. The Grey Knight never had any intention of joining up with the main reconquest force for reasons Tzula believed she had figured out, but Shira’s failure to reappear was a puzzle to her. The Heldrake she was seemingly obsessed with had been spotted all over Pythos, and the junior interrogator thought the pilot would have jumped at the chance to get in the cockpit of a Navy flyer and renew the duel. She had a suspicion they had not been idle. Uncorroborated reports had been coming into Imperial Command for months of a mysterious silver ghost coming to the aid of besieged strongholds, appearing as if from nowhere – or, as one report dismissed on account of the eyewitness’s lack of sobriety put it, ‘out of an invisible spaceship’ – at the eleventh hour and helping to fight off the attackers.
‘To arms, brothers,’ said Draigo, taking his eyes from the same pict screen Tzula had been watching and locking his helmet in place. The other five Grey Knights seated in the troop compartment did likewise. Tzula fastened the last two clasps on her new bodyglove and checked over her plasma pistol, augmetic arm whirring gently as she did so.
‘Lord Azrael has kept you in orbit and out of the battle thus far for fear you would shame his Dark Angels.’ Draigo stood up. The other Grey Knights did likewise. The timbre of the Stormraven’s engines altered as it commenced its vertical descent. Still several metres from the ground, the rear hatch descended and Draigo moved to the rear of the hold. ‘Let us now make his fear manifest,’ he said, leaping from the back of the hovering troop carrier.
The five other silver-clad Terminators followed him down, each one slamming onto the superheated ground below, shattering it like porcelain. Tzula was the last one out of the Stormraven, waiting for it to get closer to the ground before leaping out and landing in a forward roll, pistol raised. She instantly squeezed off a shot, making ruin of a crimson doglike creature waiting to pounce upon her. Gunfire from behind her cut down the rest of its pack and she turned to see Imperial Guardsmen charging through the gaps in the tank formation. She was unable to suppress a smile when she saw it was the Catachans at the head of the charge, their jungle-green attire taking on an orange hue in the light of airbursts and cannon flare from the artillery.
In a manoeuvre that looked like it had been choreographed, the Dark Angels and Grey Knights disengaged from their daemonic foes and pushed on towards the only remaining entrance to Atika while their human allies vacated the gap they had left. The ring of steel broke apart, scores of Leman Russes moving in to supply armoured support to the Guardsmen while the super-heavies rolled in after the Space Marines, mowing down any foe too slow to get out of their way. The artillery continued to shell the area leading to the underhive, clearing the path of daemons for the Space Marines to pass unhindered. Missile batteries launched volley after volley at the airborne horrors, any they missed being picked off by circling Valkyries and Thunderhawks.
Behind Imperial lines, more shuttles and troop landers deposited Guardsmen onto Pythos before speeding back up to the fleet to repeat the process. Where Catachans, Cadians and Vostroyans already engaged the forces of Abaddon, troops from Krieg and yet more Cadians swelled their ranks. For the first time since the war for Pythos began, the forces of the Imperium outnumbered those of Chaos.
It would not last long.
Struggling to keep up with the massive strides being taken by Draigo and his brothers, Tzula had to break into a sprint, swinging her pistol from side to side, jetting plasma at anything unnatural that stepped within range. The Space Marine vanguard had already reached the vast opening that led down to the mines beneath the former hive city and were engaged in fierce combat with the entities still emerging from the depths. Azrael was at the head of the Dark Angels and quickly renewed his battle bond with his Grey Knights opposite number, the two Supreme Grand Masters picking up from where they had left off at 2761/b and throwing themselves into the fray with ruthless abandon.
The surge of daemons from below was relentless, and though the combined Chapters butchered many, it was not without cost. A Knight of the Flame found himself cut off from the rest of his squad, surrounded by bloodthirsty canids not unlike those Tzula had already encountered. His psychic abilities having no effect on the Khornate hounds, both his flesh and soul were devoured within their fangs before his brothers struck the beasts down in their vengeance.
Nearby, a Dark Angels sergeant in the black of the Ravenwing succumbed to the rampage of a daemonic chariot, its hideous rider chanting from a blasphemous tome atop a spiked disc drawn along by a pair of noisome serpents on a wave of warpflame. Trying to outrun the infernal vehicle on his bike, the chariot drew alongside, slamming into the Dark Angel and bucking him from the saddle. Before he had a chance to react and lift himself from the ground, the two screaming horrors bathed him in flame, turning him to nothing more than a pile of ash in an instant. Too fast for the Ravenwing, his murderer could not outrun the tank shell that blew it to pieces while the Space Marine’s corpse was still afire.
New combatants started to flood the battlefield from the tunnel mouth, a trickle that quickly became a surge. Moving slowly, their collective consciousness under the sway of a higher power, plague zombies joined the throng of daemons, the undead soon outnumbering the living. Whereas the thralls Tzula had encountered many months earlier in Atika had been benign, these possessed a malevolent aspect, clawing and biting at anybody who got in their way. Individually, it was a simple matter to avoid them, but packed together tightly in packs it was almost impossible to escape their clutches. Thousands of Guardsmen fell to the horde only to be reborn immediately as mindless soldiers intent on killing their former comrades. Grey Knights and Dark Angels too went down under the weight of numbers, armour torn away to allow the plague zombies access to the flesh beneath. Mercifully, the genetic enhancements that protected Space Marines from disease in life continued to function in death, preventing their corpses from reanimating and turning on their brothers.
The tanks turned their guns on the largest concentrations of undead, a ceaseless fusillade ripping open the walking cadavers and tearing up craters into which the mindless slaves fell, clambering over each other in their attempts to scale the sheer walls. Those not killed, who lost limbs or other body parts from the blast, simply carried onwards, crawling in some cases where legs had been blown off. The only ones that stayed down were those who had suffered cranial injuries or lost their
head altogether.
In the space of a few minutes, hundreds of thousands of plague zombies spilled out of Atika, the flow showing no signs of abating. In among them, larger figures emerged, firing upon the loyal Space Marines from behind a wall of the undead. Seemingly unnoticed in the melee, the Plague Marines killed almost at will, the little return fire they did receive soaked up by their shields of rotting flesh. But Tzula noticed them, just like she noticed the taller shape at the rear of the horde, giving out orders and guiding his slave army.
Casually shooting the head from a plague zombie, Tzula set off in the direction of her new target, muttering a single word under her breath.
‘Corpulax.’
085961.M41 / Piraeus Stronghold. 4,218 kilometres north-east of Atika, Pythos
Shira squeezed off her final shot, the laspistol power pack dying along with the cultist she had aimed for. His body slumped to the ground alongside the seven others she had picked off from her vantage point on a ledge several metres above the tunnel. She ejected the spent cell and slammed another one home before dropping to the ground in search of new targets.
Further down the mineshaft, Epimetheus finished his duel with the final Black Legionnaire, his force halberd bifurcating the Traitor Marine with a wail of sparking energy and the wrench of tearing bone. The two halves of the ruined body had not ceased twitching by the time Shira caught up to the Grey Knight.
‘Is that the last of them?’ Shira asked, swinging a boot at part of the corpse and kicking it derisorily.
Epimetheus knelt down and rifled through the pouches and containers strapped around the dead Traitor Marine’s waist. He pulled out a couple of grenades and a handful of bolt shells, adding them to his own kit. ‘That’s the last of anyone. I’m not detecting any signs of life, no presences registering in the warp.’
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 340