'Hang on,' Thaddeus told the boy in his arms, 'we're almost there.' As Kell thudded to the ground behind him, and Brandt and Takayo covered the approaches on all sides, the sergeant pulled out his auspex and oriented their present position. 'That way,' he said, pointing a few degrees off due west. 'Another hop or two and we should be there.'
They'd spent hours like this, completing prodigious leaps, using hellfire and chainswords to clear a patch of ground to land, then jumping off again as soon as they'd got their bearings. As they'd moved further west the numbers of tyranid they encountered had grown more and more concentrated, until now it was as though they were dropping down into an endless sea of the monsters. But at least their jump packs allowed them to leap over hordes that it would have been all but impossible to fight their way through on foot.
'Move out, squad,' Thaddeus ordered, glancing in Kell's direction.
First in the air and last on the ground, Brother Kell's calculated trajectory carried him slower and longer through the air, in deference to the vulnerable youth he carried in his arms. Thaddeus was next, for the same reason, leaving first Brandt and then Takayo to vault into the grey skies as soon as the other two were clear. Brandt and Takayo followed a shallower trajectory that brought them back to earth sooner, to once more use hellfire and chainsword to clear a swathe on which their battle-brothers could land.
As a result of his higher, slower trajectory, Sergeant Thaddeus reached a better vantage point from which to survey the surrounding landscape, and had more time to take in the detail. While he so far had seen nothing but the mined urban landscape of Meridian's eastern hemisphere, overrun by tyranid monsters, he kept careful watch in the event that he espied any enemy movements that might prove strategically useful to Sergeant Aramus and the others once the Seventh reached Zenith.
Thaddeus approached the apex of his trajectory. In his arms, the young Phoebus shivered as the cold winds whipped around them.
'Not much longer now,' Thaddeus said aloud to the boy, though he doubted his words could be heard over the whistling of the wind. 'Almost there.'
The sergeant's gaze scanned from south to west, surveying the land over which he jumped. The ground swarmed in places with tyranids, like an unbroken carpet of monstrous bugs. Had he been a mortal man, Thaddeus might have felt a shiver up his spine, a quail of terror looking upon such overwhelming numbers of the beast, but even with his system and emotional state carefully regulated by implants and long years of indoctrination he could feel a faint touch of disquietude, the slightest brush of something he might well name fear.
Up ahead, just this side of the horizon, he could see the defensive ring cut around the heart of Zenith. Another jump and they would be there.
He turned his head to the right, as he began to arc downwards to the ground, his gaze scanning from west to north. And there he saw something that caused the faint touch of fear to tighten in a vice-strong grip.
A monstrous creature, living engine of destruction, was approaching Zenith from the northeast.
'Holy Throne,' Thaddeus swore in a harsh whisper. He came down to earth, his bolt pistol still and cold in his hands, and if not for Brandt and Takayo keeping the surging tide of tyranid back he would have fallen before their talons as soon as his boots touched down. 'Emperor preserve us…'
'What is it?' Brother Takayo voxed over, hearing Thaddeus's muttered prayer.
'Just move!' Thaddeus said, immediately preparing his jump pack for a final leap. 'Don't ask, just jump!'
SERGEANT AVITUS PATROLLED the inner rim of the defensive ring, covering the eastern approaches. A trio of lictors from the far side lunged into the ring of flame, intending to race to the other side, and Avitus unleashed hellfire from his heavy bolter at them, slowing them enough to let the heat of the flames do the rest of the work.
The ring had contracted time and again, these last hours, as the inhuman monsters threw body after body into the gap, bridging the moat with their own burning dead. The area held by the defenders had shrunk by perhaps as much as fifteen or twenty per cent since the main assault had begun, and they were losing more ground all the time.
'Blood Ravens,' came a voice crackling over the vox-comms. 'This is Thaddeus. The Seventh approaches from the east, and will pass over the ring in moments.'
'Acknowledged, Thaddeus,' Avitus replied by vox. 'We'll hold the door open for you.' A clutch of warriors dived into the flames from the outer rim of the ring and Avitus opened fire on them, spraying hellfire from side to side indiscriminately. 'But don't tarry. We may have to fall back from this position soon.'
'No worries on that count,' Thaddeus answered. 'Coming in fast and hot.'
As if to punctuate Sergeant Thaddeus's words, a Space Marine with a jump pack on his back came whistling out of the grey sky, passing just above the wall of flame and landing with a thud a few metres behind Avitus. The Space Marine hit the ground on his feet, and without pause turned and trained his bolt pistol back the way he'd come, his chainsword whirring in hand.
'Stand down, brother,' Avitus called over, waving his hand to signal the Space Marine to be at ease. 'We've got your back covered.'
Avitus's heavy bolter fired again down into the moat.
'All units on the eastern ring,' Avitus voxed on an open channel. 'Concentrate your fire into the moat and not at airborne elements. We've got Blood Ravens jumping in, and I don't want any of them shot down in error.'
The others, spread out to the north and south on both sides of Avitus's position, signalled their acknowledgement, as another Blood Raven came arcing down out of the sky. Like the first, this one had a bolt pistol in one hand and a whirring chainsword in the other.
'Stand fast, Brandt,' the first jump pack wearing Blood Raven called to the other as the newcomer hit the ground. 'We're covered.'
'You won't get any complaints from me, Takayo,' the other said, stilling his chainsword and bolstering his bolt pistol.
A third Space Marine whistled down out of the sky, this one carrying a human youth cradled in his arms.
'Picked up a passenger out there, did you?' Avitus called over.
The Space Marine set the youth down on the ground. The boy appeared no more than ten or eleven, and Avitus didn't fail to notice that he fit the physiognomy profile for a Blood Ravens aspirant.
'Two, actually, sergeant,' the Space Marine answered. He pulled off his helmet, and Avitus recognized the assault squad member known as Kell. 'We had a time getting them back here in one piece, though.'
'Clear the ground!' came the voice of Sergeant Thaddeus over the vox as a fourth and final Blood Raven came soaring out of the sky. Like Kell, Thaddeus carried a youth in his arms, this one a year or two younger than the first, but looking as much alike that they could be brothers.
Thaddeus hit the ground, but kept the youth cradled in his arms, protectively. Without a word, he went striding up towards Avitus, his eyes on the fiery defensive ring.
'It won't be enough,' Thaddeus said, peering down into the burning scar gouged out of the landscape. The last batch of warriors still writhed and burned in the fires below, having fallen just short of reaching the inner side. 'It won't be near enough.'
Avitus looked from Thaddeus to the moat and back again. He felt the skin of his face and neck itch where it joined with his augmetic, a long-familiar sign of impending danger. 'What is it, Thaddeus? What's the situation out there?'
Thaddeus had glanced down at the boy in his arms, and looked up to meet Avitus's gaze.
'It is bad, brother,' Thaddeus said, 'and it's about to get much worse.'
SERGEANT ARAMUS AND the other two survivors of the Third Squad had joined Chaplain Palmarius and the aspirants in their defence of the north-east quadrant. Two of the aspirants had fallen to the tyranid interlopers already - one of them scythed in half by the talons of a lictor, the other dying painfully when the corrosive maggot-like organisms of a deathspitter symbiote ate their way through the flesh of one shoulder and the side of his head, killi
ng him quickly but not, to the horror of the other aspirants, immediately - and a third was badly injured by a close scrape with a barbed strangler, but still able to stand and fight.
'Come along!' Chaplain Palmarius shouted to the dozen aspirants still on their feet, leading from the front with his crozius arcanum high over his head. 'For the Emperor and all mankind!'
A hormagaunt brood had broken through the defensive ring a short time before, more than two dozen strong, and begun ravaging the territory on the inside of the moat. Before Chaplain Palmarius and his aspirants arrived at the scene entire families had fallen before the talons and weapon-symbiotes of the gaunts - men, women, and children - but once the Blood Ravens Chaplain stormed into the vicinity, swinging his crozius arcanum as though it were a massive battle-axe, charging into the midst of the foul tyranids, no more innocent civilians had been lost. By the time Sergeant Aramus and Battle-Brothers Siddig and Cirrac arrived, the human refugees who'd been housed in the quadrant had fled screaming, deeper into the heart of the capital city.
In time, Aramus knew, there would be nowhere else for them to run. But for now, he was glad not to have the refugees underfoot for a moment, so that he and the others could fight the tyranids without concern for collateral damage.
'Behind you, Chaplain!' Aramus shouted, and fired his bolter at the gaunt who had rushed up at the Chaplain from behind. Then he shifted the power sword Wisdom in his fist, and brought its coruscating blade slicing across the thorax of another gaunt who was within arm's reach.
Aramus had always known that the defence of Zenith would not be easy, and that it would be only a matter of time before the defenders would be overwhelmed. But it appeared to him as if the intensity of the tyranid attacks had grown exponentially in recent hours. There were more tyranids at the barricades with each passing moment, their attacks even more vicious, almost desperate in character. Aramus knew better than to ascribe individual motivations to the tyranids, or to see agency in a creature that was merely a mindless extension of a distant and impassive hive mind, but perhaps instead it was the hive mind itself that was lashing out. Perhaps the hive fleet had been goaded into ever more violent action as a response to the actions of Admiral Forbes and her Aurelia Battlegroup, not in the conscious and calculated manner of a rational being, but more like the instinctual reaction of an aurochethere set to rampaging by the bite of a tiny insect.
Another hormagaunt raced towards Sergeant Aramus's position, and as it neared it shot flesh hooks out at him, a sharp muscle spasm propelling the chitinous sinews directly at the sergeant's head and shoulders. Aramus didn't delay, but brought Wisdom up in a tight arc, the blade of the power sword sweeping the sinews away while severing them from the body of the beast, so that they flopped to the ground like decapitated snakes, writhing and thrashing madly but unable to do any real damage.
Aramus took a single instant to admire the play of the fading sunlight of late afternoon on the blade, which crackled with coruscating energy. Could he, in the brief time given to him to wield the blade, do some little bit to restore the honour to the cherished relic that had been tarnished by the oily touch of the treacherous governor? If he survived the undertaking on Meridian, he would return Wisdom to the Secret Masters of the Chapter, who would bestow it on a worthy champion among the Blood Ravens, but until that time it was Aramus's duty to guard it well, and to use it to the greater glory of Chapter and Emperor alike. It still rankled to know that the holy weapon had been sullied by inclusion in a heretic's collection of forbidden relics, but every time Aramus drew the blade in battle and met tyranid chitin with honest Astartes metal, he could not help but feel that he was helping to cleanse the sword and restore it, if only in part, to its former glory.
'Aramus?' came a voice buzzing over the vox-comms. Aramus glanced at the runes on his visor display, and saw the transmission identified as coming from Sergeant Thaddeus.
'Thaddeus, have you made it safely within the ring?' Aramus replied, impaling a gaunt on the tip of Wisdom and then exploding its head with hellfire rounds.
'Within the ring, brother,' Aramus responded, 'but I can't say much for ''safely''.'
Aramus kicked the decapitated gaunt off the end of Wisdom, and then turned the power sword towards the next opponent. 'Clarify?'
'I'm approaching your position, Aramus,' Thaddeus voxed. 'You're about to need backup, and more than we have on hand to spare.'
'If this is one of your jibes, brother, it's in poor taste.'
Aramus could heard Thaddeus's ragged sigh. 'I've found precious little cause for jests of late, Aramus. And less still after seeing the beast currently trundling your way.'
Aramus fired his bolter at another gaunt, picking it off before it closed with one of the aspirants.
'It's a carnifex,' Thaddeus went on. 'And it's headed your way. Fast.'
Aramus was brought up short by the mere mention of the word. The carnifex was a living engine of destruction, a massive assault organism every bit as big and powerful as one of the Space Marine's enormous Dreadnoughts. For a force with heavy armour at their disposal a carnifex would still be a daunting challenge to face, but for an almost pure infantry force such as Sergeant Aramus's Blood Ravens were currently constituted, a carnifex would be an almost unstoppable opponent.
Though Aramus had no reason to doubt Thaddeus's report, if he'd harboured any doubts they would have been squelched in the next moment as the massive creature appeared through the smoke at the far side of the defensive ring, beyond the wall of flame and the few interloping hormagaunts who still stood. The carnifex towered over the moat, a living engine of destruction as big - and as dangerous - as any tank, so tall that as it crouched and then leapt down into the moat, its forelimbs and head were still above the level of the ground on either side, the flames only lapping its lower extremities.
The carnifex lumbered forward, the pincer-like talons of its upper limbs scything up and down rhythmically, the weapons symbiotes fused to its mid-limbs swivelled up and ready to attack.
Aramus heard a roar from overhead, and looked up to see Thunderhawk One making its routine pass over the quadrant, scouting for any interlopers from the air and prepared to offer suppressing fire if need be.
'Thunderhawk One!' Aramus called out over the vox-comms. 'Target the carnifex in the moat and fire!'
'Acknowledged,' replied the pilot, and Aramus recognized the voice of Scout Tubach, who sounded eager to unleash the gunship's weaponry on such a massive target.
The dorsal-mounted turbo-laser on the gunship opened fire, as Whirlwind missiles screamed from beneath the wings, flying unerringly towards the carnifex who was just now climbing up the inner wall of the moat.
The las-blasts splattered over the carnifex's carapace, and the Whirlwinds exploded with concussive force against its thorax. For a moment, the carnifex was lost in the black smoke of the explosions, and it seemed to Aramus as though the beast might have been felled. Then the winds whipped the smoke away, and the sergeant saw the massive beast still standing, unmarked and unharmed, training the venom cannon weapon-symbiote bound to its right mid-limb at the Thunderhawk as it passed directly overhead.
'Tubach!' Aramus cried out. 'Evasive!'
But it was too late. The venom cannon discharged directly at the prow of the gunship as Thunderhawk One overflew the moat, lascannon still firing, and the highly corrosive poison crystals of the tyranid blast began eating right through the armour plating that very instant.
'Sergeant!' called out Scout Tubach. 'We've lost integrity, and there's some kind of…' The Scout broke off in a coughing fit as the poisonous vapours seeped into the cockpit.
The Thunderhawk began to veer off to the north, erratically.
'Tubach, can you read me?' Aramus voxed. 'Tubach, pull up. Tubach!'
The Thunderhawk slammed down into the tyranid-held territory to the north of the ring of fire, and immediately went up in flames as the promethium of its tanks ignited.
The carnifex spared the barest
of glances off to its right, at the column of smoke and flame that was all that remained of the gunship that had been to it little more than an irritant, and turned its cold eyes on Sergeant Aramus and the other defenders.
The carnifex opened its mouth wide, mandibles spreading, and uttered a deafening and inhuman shriek.
Suddenly their odds of surviving to see the arrival of Captain Angelos's battlegroup seemed far, far longer…
SERGEANT TARKUS FIRED the last of his hellfire rounds at the shambler who lurched towards him, and then his bolter clicked on an empty chamber as the magazine was finally spent. The hellfire did its work, the shambler collapsing at Tarkus's feet with a twitching spasm as the mutagenic acid ate through it, but there would be no other rounds to fend off the countless other creatures who prowled the arteries and chambers of the hive ship.
Tarkus bolstered his bolter, drawing his combat knife. He might have been tempted to simply toss the bolter aside, as there was no way for him to load it again - the others had run out of ammunition long before - but nearly two centuries of service in the Adeptus Astartes had taught him to cherish the rare and treasured weapon, and it felt to him like the worst sort of betrayal to leave it behind, even if it was of no further use to him.
'Come along, squad,' Tarkus called to Battle-Brothers Nord and Horatius. 'We gain nothing from lingering here.'
Brother Tane had fallen some time before, swarmed by the teeming bites who had brought him down and gnawed their vicious way through the ceramite of his power armour before his battle-brothers could come to his assistance. The defiant screams of Tane's death throes had echoed over the vox-comms, but Tarkus and the others had honoured his memory by eradicating every last one of the bites that had killed their brother, with hellfire and blade.
Now only a handful of grenades and their combat knives were all that stood between the three Blood Ravens and an equally grisly death, but they soldiered on. They had a mission to carry out, and would do so, even if it meant all of their lives in the attempt.
Dawn Of War II Page 27
