Brother Jarold stood firm, as ork bikes tumbled end over end past him, carried before the bow-wave of explosive force. He then turned his assault cannon on the surviving greenskins now running from the epicentre of destruction, holy wrath pounding through what little remained of him that was still flesh and blood.
“Brother Jarold,” Techmarine Isendur’s voice crackled over the comm-net, the interference caused by the orks’ unstable teleporter technology affecting even close range communications.
“What is it, brother? Report.”
“We have our objective.” Isendur declared with something dangerously like emotion tingeing his words. “The teleporter is ours.”
“Your objective is the teleporter; reconvene there,” Jarold commanded, his battle-brothers hearing him through the comm in their helmets, his words also carrying to them over the bestial roars and bolter fire of the battlefield. “Repeat, rally at the teleporter.”
The device was huge, on a monumental scale that even an ancient such as Venerable Rhodomanus had never witnessed before. It was too big a target to miss. The Templars had teleport technology themselves, of course, hidden within the bowels of the Forgeship Goliath where it was carefully tended and operated by the Techmarine Masters of the Forge and their servitors, but they had nothing approaching the size of this brutal piece of esoteric machinery.
Techmarine Isendur felt something approaching heretical awe on seeing the monstrous device arrayed before him in all its terrible, alien glory.
The Templars were brutally outnumbered by the thuggish orks, but by launching a surprise attack, the vengeful Space Marines had been able to penetrate far into the dig site; the either arrogant or idiotic orks having failed to post anything like enough sentries to create an effective defensive perimeter. They had probably not thought to be interrupted out here in the trackless frozen wastes of the Dead Lands for little could survive in these bitter wastes other than the alien orks. But then, from what Jarold had witnessed first-hand, it seemed that orks could survive pretty much anywhere.
The Templars’ fast-moving, heavy armour had been able to penetrate the ork crater that held the ice-locked stompa with ease, the Razorbacks and Rhinos ploughing into the aliens and their scratch-built vehicles as if sainted Sigismund himself were smiting the foul xenos from beyond the stars, where he now stood at Primarch Dorn’s right hand.
But now the initially bewildered orks had rallied and were mounting an effective counter-attack against the Black Templars’ lightning assault.
Despite the crusading Chapter’s prowess in hand-to-hand combat, even hardened fighters such as Brother Jarold’s avenging warriors would be hard-pressed to overcome when facing such impossibly overwhelming odds.
The best they could hope for was to sell themselves dear. They might not have found their lost Brother Ansgar or their nemesis the warlord Morkrull Grimskar, but they could end their crusade here, denying the ork host the war machine that the greenskins had fought so hard to win again.
Bikes—in both the black and white livery of the Templars and the scruffy red kustom paint jobs of the orks—roared past Brother Jarold as he stomped across the battlefield. He took aim and fired. The front wheel of a warbike that was pursuing a Space Marine attack bike—its gunner whooping wildly as it took pot-shots at the noble Templars—disintegrated in a hail of cannon fire. The wheel struts dug into the ice, halting the bike’s forward motion. The vehicle flipped over, hurling the ork gunner into the path of a hurtling land speeder—the surprised-looking greenskin bouncing off the hull with the unmistakable sound of breaking bone—while the bike’s driver was crushed beneath the great weight of the bike landing on top of it and crushing its spine.
Jarold turned his bolter on a gaggle of greenskins that charged him, large-calibre shootas and clumsy chain-bladed weapons in their meaty paws. A burst of flesh-shredding gunfire and then he was through. Nothing now stood between him and the ork teleporter.
And he wasn’t the only one to have made it to the objective. Sergeant Bellangere had led the men under his command by example—bolt pistol in one hand, chainsword in the other dripping with alien gore—and hadn’t lost a single member of his squad in the process. He and his troops were even now finishing off the last of the resistance being put up by the orks that crawled all over the vast gantries of the teleporter, an augmented mekboy falling to Bellangere’s gutting chainblade.
Jarold turned to survey the smoking craters and tight knots of fighting that characterised the battlefield dig-site. The crumpled wreckage of a devastated Rhino lay nearby, as did the smouldering remains of a bike. Most of the Templar armour had made it through to the objective, but not all. Jarold caught glimpses of scratched black and blistered white amidst the bodies of the slain between billows of smoke from burning wrecks strewn across the combat zone.
On seeing his fallen battle-brothers Jarold felt his blood boil. The machine-spirit that resided with him inside his Dreadnought body informed him of the names of each and every one of the fallen—Initiate Garr and Gunner Heolstor, Brother Derian, Brother Eghan and Brother Clust of Squad Garrond, Clust’s heavy bolter lying useless on the ice under his eviscerated body.
Brother Jarold was shaken from his enraged reverie by what felt like an earthquake.
The ground shook, splinters of ice twenty metres tall breaking free of the glacier as the stompa began to move. The orks had finally coaxed their idol into unnatural life once more.
Like Brother Rhodomanus it had lain locked in the ice for the last fifty years. Like Brother Rhodomanus it now had a second chance to finish what Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka’s hordes had started half a century ago.
At the growl of the effigy’s engines, filthy smoke poured from its chimney-exhausts, filling the cerulean blue sky with stinking black clouds.
The stompa’s wrecking ball attachment—the krusher itself looking like a huge rusted boulder—came whirling around over the top of its pintle arm mount, crashing down on top of a Rhino with all the force of a meteorite impact. The tank’s adamantium plates buckled under the force of the wrecking ball blow, sending the troop transport bouncing off the uneven ice-gouged bedrock that had lain buried beneath the glacier until the orks had dug it up.
As Jarold watched, what was left of Neophyte Feran rocketed skyward as an ork skorcha engulfed his body in flame, detonating the krak grenades he carried at his waist.
Raging to the heavens at the death of another battle-brother, and one who had not yet had the chance to prove himself in glorious battle to his brethren’s satisfaction, the Dreadnought turned his blazing weapons on the ork responsible.
The barrels of his assault cannon glowing red hot, his mind-linked machine-spirit informed him that his auto-loaders would soon be out of ammunition. But if today was his day to die a second death then he would make it his vow to take as many of the Blood Scar orks with him as possible.
Jarold surveyed the scorched glacier around him. The remaining Black Templar armour had formed a cordon around the teleporter, every vehicle’s guns pointing outwards towards the enemy now pouring over the ground towards their position. The aliens’ fury at the audacity of the Templars in taking the teleporter spurred them on, the savage brutes giving voice to harsh barks and hoots of wild abandon.
“Brothers!” Jarold declared, his voice echoing strangely from the derricks and hoists of the corposant-sheathed structure. “This day we show the xenos filth that Armageddon is not theirs for the taking. This day we show the orks that we will leave no wrong unavenged, no slight unchallenged. This day we will deliver the Emperor’s divine retribution upon the heads of the greenskin defilers of this world in the name of Primarch Dorn and his servant Lord Sigismund.”
Jarold turned his storm bolter on another charging ork and took its head off with one mass-reactive round.
“Brothers! Today we sell ourselves dear in the name of the Emperor that we might deny the orks another victory upon the shores of Armageddon. We have a new mission. We will not depart t
his world until we have ensured that they may never make use of their teleporter or their war-idol again. Today is a good day to die!”
With a scream of rending metal, lightning-drenched claws tore through the chugging engine of an ork wartrakk as its armour plating melted under the intense heat-blast of a multi-melta.
As the smoke and flames died back again, the Black Templar Dreadnought watched with grim satisfaction as the still more imposing and ornamented form of Venerable Rhodomanus strode through the devastation to reach the protection of the cordon of crusader armour, crashing a flailing ork beneath one colossal foot whilst snatching the mangled body of another from the wrecked wartrakk and quartering its head between the crimson talons of his colossal power fist.
“No, brother,” the ancient boomed. “I am sorry to contradict you, but today is not your day to die.”
As he reached the Templar line, Rhodomanus turned his multi-melta on an ork bike, igniting its fuel tank; the vehicle and its rider disappeared in a sheet of incandescent flame.
“It is not your destiny that you give your lives in sacrifice to stop this blasphemy,” the venerable went on, as if making his decree. “Your mission is not yet done. You must live to fight another day.”
Jarold did not interrupt, but listened, considering Rhodomanus’ words as he targeted the ork manning the flamethrower mounted on the back of a rumbling halftrakk.
“This is my battle, brother,” Rhodomanus continued. “It is up to me to accomplish what I and my brother Fists tried to fifty years ago.”
The ancient was right. This was not the Templars’ battle. The destruction of the ork war machine had never been their objective. Brother Ansgar still awaited them, somewhere. And it was up to Jarold and the others to find him. It was as they had sworn it.
But none of that changed the fact that they were severely outnumbered and completely surrounded, with little hope of being able to turn the tide of battle in their favour now, unable to even call for extraction by the fleet.
The superstructure of the incomparable ork device in whose shadow they now sheltered hummed and twanged as orkish hard rounds and crackling energy beams spanged off its pylons and girders.
“Do you think you can fathom the workings of this teleporter?” Jarold asked his Techmarine.
“All ork machines are primitive and alien,” Isendur replied, “but I would predict a seventy per cent chance of success.”
“Then set to work,” Jarold instructed. “By the Emperor, I want this thing operational and locked onto the fleet in orbit as soon as is humanly possible.”
* * *
With a dull crump the speeding guntrukk exploded, obliterated by the massed barrage of heavy weapons that pounded it.
Standing side by side against the horde, the Dreadnoughts Jarold and Rhodomanus locked onto a new target and a warbike disintegrated into shrapnel.
Only a matter of metres away, Brother Huarwar died as he was decapitated at close quarters by a heavily mekanised ork. Roaring in grief-stricken pain, Jarold broke from the circle, advancing on the creature responsible, litanies of hate spouting from his vox-casters like bile as he shredded the alien’s augmented body with raking bolter and cannon fire.
“Brother Isendur!” he bellowed over the howls of the orks and the savage chatter of their guns, ignoring the succession of hard rounds that rattled off his own adamantium body-shell as if they were no more than the stings of rad-midges. “Give me some good news!”
“I have subjugated what passes for the device’s machine-spirit, patching a link via one of my servitors and dominating it with a liturgical subroutine, and, through its transmitter array, have located the fleet in orbit and Forgeship Goliath—”
“Brother!” Jarold boomed, bisecting an ork from midriff to neck with a barrage of bolter fire. “Is it ready?”
“Aye, brother,” Isendur replied. “It is ready.”
“Then begin the evacuation.” As the two Dreadnoughts held back the press of the ork horde with bolter and fist, cannon and melta, at Jarold’s command the strike force moved back beneath the beam emitter of the huge gantry, never once turning their backs on the enemy, claiming a dozen ork lives for every step they took in retreat.
It was not the Templars’ way to retreat in the face of greater numbers of the enemy. But for the brethren of the Solemnus Crusade, this was their last action. They could not afford to sacrifice their lives so freely, not when their holy work remained undone. They were yet to recover Brother Ansgar’s body and repay the warboss Morkrull Grimskar for all the monster had taken from them when the orks of the Blood Scar tribe razed the Chapter Keep on Solemnus.
They had all sworn it—every crusading battle-brother, from neophyte to initiate, Techmarine to Apothecary, Dreadnought to Marshal, Chaplain to Champion—and they could not relinquish the fight until their vow had been fulfilled, not when a way out of this impossible situation had presented itself.
So large was the ork teleporter—it having been intended to beam something as gargantuan as the stompa to another arena of battle—that the entirety of the survivors of Jarold’s battleforce could fit within the circumference of the projection plate beneath the enormous beam emitter.
They would go together. That was how Brother Jarold wanted it. Whether their plan worked, and the teleporter returned them to the Forgeship Goliath, or scattered their component atoms to the stars, they would go together. The only ones they would leave behind were one tech-servitor to initiate the firing sequence of the teleporter’s beam-gun, and Venerable Brother Rhodomanus of the Crimson Fists.
“Brother Jarold,” came Techmarine Isendur’s voice with something almost like urgency in his usually unexcitable tone. “Our departure now waits only on your presence upon the plate.”
Jarold turned to Rhodomanus, swivelling about the pivot of his waist bearing, as if he were about to address the venerable, blasting a leaping axe-wielding ork out of the air with a single, well-placed shot.
“Go, brother,” Rhodomanus said, before the other could speak. “Go to meet your destiny and leave me to face mine.”
“It has been an honour,” Jarold stated stoically.
“Aye, it has been that,” the ancient agreed.
“Die well, brother. For the primarch.”
“For Dorn. Now go.”
Rhodomanus directed another blast from his multi-melta into the press of the ork pack, the heat blast clearing ten metres around him in every direction.
Taking his leave, Brother Jarold defiantly turned his back on the orks and marched to join his battle-brothers at the heart of the humming teleporter, the venerable laying down covering fire behind him, like some colossal avatar of the Emperor’s retribution.
And as he did so, he began to intone Dorn’s litany of service.
“What is your life?” he began. “My honour is my life.”
An ork fell to scything fire from his storm bolter.
“What is your fate? My duty is my fate.”
Another was impaled on the crackling blades of his lightning fist.
“What is your fear? My fear is to fail.”
As he retreated behind Rhodomanus, Brother Jarold gave voice to the defiant battle cry in one last act of defiance directed at the alien orks.
“No pity!” Brother Jarold boomed.
“No remorse!” his battle-brothers responded, taking up his battle cry.
“No fear!” they bellowed in unison, clashing their weapons against their holy armour in a clattering cacophony of defiance.
Corposant crawled over and around the superstructure of the ork teleporter in writhing serpents of sick green light. With an apocalyptic scream like the sundering of the heavens, the beam-emitter fired.
Rhodomanus did not look back. He knew the Templars were gone.
“And what is your reward?” he asked, his voice rising like a challenge against the ravening greenskins. “My salvation is my reward!”
Three orks fell to a withering hail of bolter fire.
“What is your craft? My craft is death!”
The multi-melta put an end to another ork bike.
“What is your pledge?”
The venerable hesitated. He could see the stompa advancing on him now, and him alone, belching smoke into the air from its exhaust-stacks, its colossal mass shaking the ground with its every step.
“My pledge is eternal service!”
As the stompa closed on the teleporter at last, with heavy, purposeful steps that sent tremors skittering through the bedrock that lay beneath the glacier, an inescapable fact wormed its way into the spirit-linked mind of the ancient. This was to be his last stand, but even the glorious sacrifice of a venerable Dreadnought might not be enough to stop the stompa.
Rhodomanus and his brother Fists had been unable to destroy it fifty years before, during the Second War for Armageddon, only managing to delay the inevitable by trapping it within the glacier. And now, fifty years on, what hope was there for him as he stood before the devastatingly powerful war machine?
But still he kept firing, directing blast after blast of his multi-melta at the gun emplacements that bristled from the effigy’s carapace, at the stompa’s armour itself, and its crew, when his spirit-linked targeter could lock onto them.
The stompa loomed before him, blocking his view of the crater and the rest of the horde, the macabre god-machine filling his world. Nothing else mattered now. There was only the ancient and the idol, two relics from another battle for Armageddon, ready to make the final moves of a power play begun five decades before.
Sparkling emerald flame consumed the ork teleporter once more, power relays humming as the device came online again. Rhodomanus’ optical sensors homed in on the roasted remains of the tech-servitor fused to the esoteric device by its last firing. The servitor was dead, so how was it that the teleporter was powering up to fire at all?
[Warhammer 40K] - Legends of the Space Marines Page 15
