[Warhammer 40K] - Legends of the Space Marines

by Christian Dunn - (ebook by Undead)

  “I cannot sleep, brother, not when there is still so much of His holy work left undone. And besides, I have slept for long enough already.”

  “Then what can I do for you, brother?” the Chaplain asked.

  “I would seek your counsel,” the Dreadnought said in a voice like the slamming of sepulchre doors.

  “From me, brother?” Wolfram asked, caught off guard for a moment by Brother Jarold’s honesty. Ancients were usually the ones who shared their hard-won wisdom with the rest of the Chapter; they were not the ones who came seeking it from others. “You are troubled?”

  “Yes, I am troubled, Brother-Chaplain.” The Dreadnought broke off.

  “Speak, brother. You have nothing to feel ashamed of.”

  “But I do!”

  “I see. You speak of the loss of Brother Ansgar.”

  “I do, brother. When the Emperor’s chosen one needed me most, I was found wanting.”

  “You have prayed about this?”

  “I have sat in penitent vigil ever since my return to the fleet. I have thought on Brother Ansgar’s fate and nothing else.”

  “I too have spent time in prayer and contemplation on the same matter,” Wolfram admitted.

  “You have, brother?”

  “I have. You cannot blame yourself for what happened. Blame the beast, the heretic xenos that blight the world below still. Purge yourself of your guilt in the crucible of war. Smite the xenos with bolter and fist and cannon, all in the name of vengeance. Use the rage that the Emperor has placed within your soul to bring down His wrath upon the greenskin. Show no remorse. Show the alien no pity and you will have nothing to fear.”

  Silence descended between Chaplain and Dreadnought as the latter considered the former’s words.

  “So you believe that this is all part of some greater plan? His divine plan for Armageddon? For our crusade? For me?”

  “I do not know, Brother Jarold,” Wolfram admitted with a shake of his head, “but what I do know is that no one has come forward since to take on the mantle of champion, having received His divine inspiration, and there are plenty who would be ready for such a role.”

  “So you believe Brother Ansgar is still alive.” The Dreadnought’s augmented voice suddenly sounded strangely like that of a young petitioner, yet to be admitted to the brotherhood, desperate for reassurance.

  “That is what I know. Somewhere, and perhaps only barely, but the Emperor would not leave us without a source of inspiration to lead us at a time such as this, with the conflict to decide the fate of this world still raging around us. And Brother Ansgar does not have to fight alongside us to inspire we of the Solemnus Crusade to great deeds.”

  Incense-smoke coiled about the motionless form of the monolithic Dreadnought. When Brother Jarold spoke again, the vibrations of his vox-casters sent ripples through the curling smoke, creating new eddying patterns within it.

  “Then my course is plain,” he said.

  Chaplain Wolfram looked up at the scrollwork decorations of Jarold’s Dreadnought-locked sarcophagus.

  “This day I vow that I shall not rest until Brother Ansgar has been found and we bear him back in triumph, or that we might lay his body to rest and reclaim the relics of our Chapter—the sanctified weapons that are the most potent symbols of his office. I shall petition Marshal Brant to muster an army that we might avenge Brother Ansgar and our Chapter against the orks of the Blood Scar Tribe,” the Dreadnought said. “And then we shall return to Armageddon.”

  Brother Jarold surveyed the wreckage that was all that remained of the Speed Freeks expeditionary force. The kult’s predilection for speed had proved their undoing. Stronger armour and better armament would have perhaps given them a better fighting chance against the inviolable armour of the Black Templars battleforce.

  Sensors that saw in wavelengths ranging from infra-red to ultraviolet scanned the devastation searching for life-signs. If any greenskin had survived the Black Templars’ rout they would not remain alive for long.

  The once pristine white wilderness was now befouled with the gouged ruts of tyre tracks, blackened mounds of snow and ice thrown up by the artillery shells of both sides, promethium spills and fossil-fuel slicks turning the ice desert black. Some puddles still burned, the oily smoke rising from them adding their own acrid pollution to the devastated wilderness. Impact craters pockmarked the glacier where some heavy shells had missed their targets; where others had hit, debris from large ork vehicles lay strewn across the snow.

  The kult’s battlewagon had met its end when the machine-spirit of Techmarine Isendur’s personal Razorback transport targeted the battlewagon’s primary weapon power cell. A single, directed pulse from the Razorback’s twin-linked lascannon and the resulting detonation had not only taken out the gun-bristling battlewagon itself, but also a guntrukk, a warbuggy and three assorted warbikes.

  This had also been the turning point in the battle, a devastating blow from which the orks never recovered. All that was left of them now were piles of burning debris, blackened craters in the ice and piles of crushed and eviscerated carcasses.

  Brother Jarold stood at the centre of the devastation, amidst the splintered axle-shafts, buckled wheel-housings and twisted chassis of the orks’ ramshackle vehicles.

  Behind the imposing presence of the watchful Dreadnought massed the Black Templars of the Solemnus Crusade. That same crusade had set out twelve years before to avenge the atrocity perpetrated against the Templars’ Chapter Keep on the world of Solemnus by the greenskins that fought under the banner of the Scarred Ork.

  There were injuries among the crusaders, the most severe being the loss of a limb sustained by Brother Baldulf under the wheels of an ork warbike, although it wouldn’t stop him from marching to battle alongside his brethren, his chainsword held high. But there were no brothers to mourn that day, to be marked on the roll of the fallen, maintained within the battle-chapel at the heart of the Solemnus fleet’s flagship battle barge, the Divine Fury.

  The Emperor was truly smiling upon their endeavours that day; for sixty-three verified enemy kills not one Black Templar had fallen to the kult of speed. It was all the proof Brother Jarold needed to feel vindicated that their search for their lost champion was the will of Him Enthroned on Holy Terra.

  Brother Jarold gave thanks to the Emperor, the Primarch Dorn and Lord Sigismund, their Chapter-founder, that their sanctified boltguns had functioned fully during their battle with the greenskins and that not one of their war machines had been damaged beyond repair during the conflict.

  The Black Templars land speeder squadron had decimated the ork bikes and trukks, the Rhinos and Razorbacks finishing off what Typhoon and Tornado had started, while the Space Marines bike squadron and two-manned attack bikes had harried those orks that attempted to flee the battlefield.

  The bark of a storm bolter firing echoed across the ice field like the retort of a heavy artillery piece. It had a number of the Black Templars raking the mounds of debris and bodies with boltgun and flamer, seeking the source of the sound, ready to bring the fight to the enemy once again. Instead they found Brother Jarold, blue smoke coiling from the muzzles of his heavy storm bolter—a weapon so large it would not look out of place mounted on one of the fleet’s precious Predators or Vindicators. The body of a greenskin Jarold had targeted spasmed as it was blown in two by the mass-reactive rounds.

  Techmarine Isendur approached Jarold. The Dreadnought dwarfed even the crimson-armoured Techmarine, whose twitching servo-arm—which seemed to move with a life all of its own—made him appear even taller than the average superhuman Space Marine. Behind him, Isendur’s servitor team were making repairs to superficial damage sustained by the Razorback in the battle, or keeping an unstinting watch over those working on the machine, depending on their designation and degree of sentient programming.

  Sensing the Techmarine’s presence before he had a chance to speak Jarold asked, “Are our brothers ready to move on the objective again?”

>   “Affirmative, brother,” the other replied in that familiar emotionless way of his, that was so out of character when compared with the passion and zeal exhibited by the rest of the crusade’s fanatical warriors. “At your command.”

  “How far do you judge us to be from our target?”

  “Twelve point zero-seven-six kilometres,” the Techmarine intoned. It had been remarked upon on more than one occasion that Isendur was more akin to the machines to which he ministered than his brother Space Marines.

  “And the nature of the signal,” Jarold said. “Is it still as it appeared from orbit?”

  “More so,” Isendur said. “As hypothesised, the anomalous readings detected from orbit are indicative of some form of primitive teleportation technology.”

  Grim satisfaction warred with Jarold’s overriding sense of guilt and barely-suppressed rage. The memory of the moment Jarold witnessed the mech-enhanced greenskin warboss teleport out of the devastated mekboy’s lab blazed within his mind as hot and red as the moment when he had been cut down by a rusting cybernetic claw, that had earned him the privilege of being encased within the Dreadnought shell that had formerly been the living tomb of Ancient Brother Dedric.

  The moment Emperor’s Champion Ansgar had been taken from right in front of him re-played itself through his mind for what seemed like the thousandth time…

  He saw himself closing on the alien tyrant again, a sphere of crackling emerald light surrounding the ork and his unconscious prisoner. He watched again as the green glare of the crackling shield intensified.

  And then, just as his crashing steps brought him within reach of the xenos brute, with a sub-sonic boom the sphere of light imploded, plunging the ruins of the laboratory into sudden darkness. Only a retina-searing after-image remained, trapped within the sensor-linked optic nerves of Jarold’s physical body, but of Emperor’s Champion Ansgar and the alien warboss Morkrull Grimskar there was no sign…

  “Then the command is given,” Jarold said simply.

  Wherever the orks were using their wildly unpredictable teleportation technology, there was the possibility that the re-constructed Grimskar, nemesis of the Solemnus Crusade, would be there too. And if the greenskin warboss was there, there was also the possibility that they would find Ansgar too.

  Isendur made an adjustment to the signum he held out before him in one crimson gauntlet. Servomotors whined as the Dreadnought turned to observe the Techmarine with its faceless sarcophagus front. “Brother Isendur? Is there something else?”

  “I am picking up another signal,” the Techmarine said.

  “Another teleport signal?” Jarold asked.

  “No. It is weak, like a resting pulse.”

  “What is its source?”

  “Bearing zero six-seven point three.”

  “And what would you hazard is the nature of this signal?”

  “There is a fifty-two per cent probability that it is electromagnetic interference caused by isotopes buried in the bedrock beneath the glacier,” the Techmarine explained. “But there is also a twenty-three per cent probability that it is interference caused by the disruption of the planet’s magnetic field by the teleportation matrix. One way or the other, probability tells us that it probably is not worth pursuing.”

  “But what of the other twenty-five per cent?” Jarold enquired.

  “There is a possibility that it is a signal from a dormant power source. But it is unlikely.”

  “What sort of power source?” Jarold pressed.

  “Like that of a dying power cell.”

  “As might be found inside a Deathwind automated weapons system. Or a Dreadnought.”

  “It is increasingly unlikely but still a slim possibility,” Isendur persisted, not prepared to have his logic refuted. “If our mission is to find the source of the teleport signal I would recommend that we move on that target forthwith and ignore this weaker signum reading.”

  The knowledge that there was a possibility—no matter how slim—that the signal was the last sign of a lost brother Dreadnought, whether Templar or otherwise, played on Jarold’s mind. Dreadnoughts were potent weapons of the Astartes Chapters and revered relics. An entire battleforce would willingly fight to reclaim a fallen Dreadnought brother. Only in the direst circumstances would a Space Marine commander abandon such a sacred relic to the field of battle.

  To recover such a potent treasure, whatever Chapter it might belong to, would be of incalculable value to the war effort. Just one Dreadnought could help bolster the Astartes forces on one of Armageddon’s numerous war-fronts, and who knew what impact that could have in the long term on the struggle for the contested planet.

  “I respect your opinion, Brother-Techmarine, you know that. You and your brethren of the Forge have tended to me on numerous occasions, but you see only the logic of variables and algorithms. I have the benefit of experience and the wisdom of years and I disagree. We shall investigate the source of this other signal and then, when we have resolved what it is, we will press on towards our primary objective.”

  “Very well, brother,” Isendur conceded. “As you wish.”

  The Dreadnought turned to survey the re-ordered ranks of the Black Templars’ strike force.

  “Brothers,” he declaimed, his voice booming over the burning battlefield, flurries of snow hissing as they melted in the licking flames of the promethium fires. “The word is given. In the name of the Emperor, Primarch Dorn and Lord Sigismund, move out.”

  “Is this the place?” Jarold asked, scanning the blizzard-scoured ice valley. The ice sheet rose up before them to meet the frozen slopes of a ridge of razor-edged peaks beyond which curious green corposant flickered and danced across the sky.

  “Affirmative,” Techmarine Isendur replied, consulting the signum in his hand once more.

  The hulking black Dreadnought and the crimson-armoured Techmarine stood before a wall of blue ice as solid and as impenetrable as rockcrete.

  “So where, precisely, is the source of the signal?”

  “Six point eight-nine metres downwards. If we are to discover the source of the signal we are going to have to dig.”

  “Then we dig,” Jarold stated bluntly.

  “Leave it to me, brother,” Isendur said. The Techmarine signalled the waiting column. “Brothers Larce and Nyle,” he said, summoning those two crusaders. Jarold understood what it was he had in mind.

  Larce, flamer in hand, and Nyle, bearing his thrice-blessed meltagun, joined them before the wall of blue ice.

  “Brothers,” Jarold said, “let the Emperor’s holy fire cleanse these xenos-blighted lands.”

  Techmarine Isendur directing their fire, Larce and Nyle hit the glacier with everything their weapons could muster.

  Initiate Tobrecan brought his bike up to join them and directed a series of searing blasts from the plasma gun mounted on the front of his machine at the glacier. When the steam and mist cleared, Brothers Larce and Nyle stepped up again, while Initiate Isen drove his attack bike forwards, Gunner Leax turning his multi-melta on the metres thick ice.

  The Space Marines’ flamers and plasma weapons swiftly melted a shaft through the ice to the source of the signal Isendur had located via his signum. Steaming geysers of cloud rose from the hole in the glacier as the boiling water bubbling at the bottom of the pit re-condensed as it came into contact with the cold air.

  “Now then, Brother-Techmarine,” Jarold said, standing at the edge of the cone-shaped shaft, “let us see what lies buried here.”

  Using his servo-arm to assist him in his descent, Techmarine Isendur clambered into the steaming shadows of the ice pit. The rest of the strike force waited in tense anticipation to see which would be proved right; the Techmarine or the Dreadnought.

  Bracing himself within the shaft Isendur looked down at the shadow still locked beneath one last remaining layer of ice.

  “You were right,” his voice rose from the bottom of the pit. There was no hint of annoyance or praise in its tone.

/>   “I was right,” the Dreadnought rumbled with righteous satisfaction.

  “Do we wake him?” the Techmarine asked, something like awe tingeing his words, as he stared down at the statuesque creation of frost-rimed adamantium beneath him. A faint red glow pulsed weakly behind the ice, and yet as regular as a heartbeat.

  “He is a brother Space Marine.”

  “He is a Crimson Fist,” the Techmarine testified.

  “But our brother nonetheless. So we wake him.”

  He remembered…

  Thunder rumbled over the ice fields and frozen, broken peaks of the Dead Lands. It was the crack and boom of heavy artillery fire. The iron-hard ground shook with the force of an earthquake, more so than it did at his own wrathful steps.

  He remembered…

  Rank upon rank of Space Marines, squad after squad of his fellow battle-brothers, marching against the enemy, their Chapter banners flying proudly above them. Magnificent in their regal blue power armour, their left hands blood-red—recalling the ceremony conducted at the initiation of new Chapter Masters in the former Imperial Fists Legion—their battle-consecrated boltguns cinched tight to their chest plates ready to deliver the Emperor’s ultimate justice to the enemy.

  And he remembered…

  The war machine. A stompa, the rank and file troops of the Armageddon PDF had called it. A mobile war-altar dedicated to the hated greenskins’ brutal heathen gods. An icon to thoughtless bloodshed and mindless destruction.

  He remembered…

  Marching to war across the bitter wastes, shoulder to shoulder with his battle-brothers, the ork host charging to meet them, the glacier’s surface fracturing beneath the greenskins’ advance, the freezing wind as sharp and as cold as a blade of ice slicing the air between them.

  He remembered…

  Faced with insurmountable odds, a new strategy had to be formed, shaped within the heat of battle.

  He remembered volunteering, proud that he should be the one to bring an end to this conflict. He remembered sound and heat and light. He remembered dying a second time.