by George Mann
He spun around, sliding his bolt pistol from its leather holster and squeezing off a single shot. A man-thing – a former Guardsman now bloated and scabrous from the plague – fell back from where it had been scaling the barricade just a few metres away, emitting a plaintive wail as its entrails slumped through the fist-sized hole in its belly. Daed listened as the creature toppled to the ground, just out of view. After a moment, the wailing stopped. Daed dropped his bolt pistol back into its holster.
He glanced across at Bast, the lamp affixed to his golden power armour picking out the glinting shape of his veteran sergeant, ensconced a few metres away amongst the heaped debris of the makeshift barricade. Bast was studying the battle below, his bolter trained on an enemy target that Daed could not discern in the gloom.
Daed watched as Bast opened fire, his bolter chattering wildly as he played it back and forth, showering his target with a barrage of screaming rounds. He heard something large and fleshy thud to the ground close by, and Bast released the trigger, easing himself back with a grunt of satisfaction.
‘I’m sure it’s getting darker,’ he said, over the vox-link. He was wearing his helmet, but Daed could imagine the expression on his face.
‘Yes,’ Daed replied, his voice low. ‘The enemy employs diabolical powers to maintain the gloom.’
Bast shrugged. ‘They die just as well in the darkness,’ he said, before turning back to his post and searching out another target.
Daed wondered how the Librarians were progressing. A kilometre behind the front line, in a ruined outpost building, two acolytes were furiously working their ministrations over the prone form of Theseon, the Chapter’s Chief Librarian.
Theseon lay deep in a sus-anic coma, having retreated inside his own mind as a means of protecting himself from the attempts of the Chaos psykers to pry open his thoughts. Theseon had been captured during the first wave of attacks on Plutonis, spirited away to the dead world of Kasharat, where the traitors had attempted to break his spirit, to crack him open and reveal his secrets. Despite their efforts, throughout his ordeal Theseon had remained steadfast and true, and Daed – with help from unexpected quarters – had been able to affect a rescue, extracting the unconscious Librarian from a subterranean mortuary complex and returning him to his brothers.
Weeks had passed, however, and Theseon remained locked in his unmoving slumber. Nothing more had been seen of the mysterious benefactors who had aided Daed on Kasharat, either, and he was beginning to think that the entire episode had been intended as a diversion, devised by the enemy as a means of keeping him from Fortane’s World, from where he was really needed. Now, he was making up for lost time.
‘Prove me wrong, Theseon,’ he muttered, glancing out over the top of the barricade at the gloomy battlefield below. He needed the Librarian by his side, countering the effects of whatever accursed psychic weapons were being deployed by the enemy to conjure up the impenetrable darkness.
There was a sudden, massive roar and the ground shuddered beneath his boots, causing him to reach out and grasp hold of a jutting spar of metal, once part of a Baneblade tank, but now just another fragment of the barricade. The entire planet seemed to tremble, and then a second booming explosion sounded from high above, followed by another, and another. Daed cursed, but managed to retain his footing as he lurched to the right, jolted by the impacts.
The vox-bead in his ear crackled to life, buzzing for his attention. ‘They’ve started the bombardments again, captain.’
‘So I’d noticed, Throle,’ replied Daed, dryly.
‘Shall I send orders for them to cease their attack?’
Daed considered this for a moment. ‘No. Leave them to it. If they wish to continue banging their heads against the wall, let them. It can only aid us if the enemy are rendered unsteady on their feet.’
‘Yes, captain.’
The vox-link hissed for a moment and went dead. Daed glanced up at the dark underside of the rocky carapace above. If the Imperial Navy thought they would be able to blast their way through this upper layer of the planet’s crust, they were clearly deluding themselves. Daed had already tried. The mushroom-shaped carapace would simply absorb or deflect anything they threw at it.
Soon enough, the sphincters on the crust would iris open and the enemy would return fire. Then the bombardments would stop for another few hours while the Navy ships took evasive action, before coming back in to resume their attack once the enemy weapons withdrew. The pattern had been the same for days. Meanwhile, scores of other Navy vessels were still locked in ship-to-ship combat with the Chaos vessels, drifting plague citadels squatting like crustaceans atop the shattered hulks of ancient barges.
Daed turned to follow the progress of a howling missile as it whistled overhead, punched from one of the Imperial weapon emplacements in the direction of the enemy troops. He saw an enemy Defiler detonate in a ball of orange fire, scattering scores of militia troops and churning great furrows in the loam. He hefted his axe in salute to his brothers. Another hour, he decided, and they would push forwards again, claiming a little more ground. Soon they would be in range of the walls, and the real battle could begin. He would punch a hole in the wall with his fists if he had to.
‘Captain?’
Daed turned to see one of his brothers standing by his elbow, a data-slate clutched in his outstretched gauntlet. ‘Throle,’ he replied, his voice level.
‘I think you should see this, captain.’ Throle’s voice was edged with trepidation.
‘What is it?’ he asked, failing to keep the impatience out of his voice. He took the data-slate and peered at the grainy image on the screen.
‘The image is being relayed from the ruined outpost where we left the Librarians, sir.’
‘On the rim of the canopy?’
‘Aye, captain. That’s the view of the sky above the forest,’ confirmed Throle. ‘The image is hazy, but they’re clear to see. The data-slate is replaying it on a loop.’
Daed watched as three of the stars appeared to detach themselves from the ink-black sky, hurtling at speed towards the line of trees below. Each of the three glowing specks disappeared a second later, landing somewhere out in the vast arboreal forest that covered the bulk of the planet’s dry surface – or at least those parts of it that didn’t fall beneath the shade of the massive carapace.
Daed watched as the sequence reset and cycled again, and then again, over and over on a constant loop, the three lights streaming out of the sky and disappearing into the dark woodland beyond.
‘Falling stars,’ he said, quietly. ‘Drop-pods.’ He glanced at Throle, handing him the data-slate. ‘Either someone’s coming to help, or the enemy are bringing in reinforcements to pin us from behind.’ He turned, engaging his vox. ‘Drago?’
The response was faint, intercut with hissing static and the sounds of distant battle. ‘Captain?’
‘Can you confirm you’ve received no communiqués from the Navy regarding reinforcements?’ he asked, already knowing the answer.
‘Negative, sir,’ came the response. ‘No communiqués. But then the damn fog has been making it near impossible to raise a channel.’
Daed cut the link. He turned to Throle. ‘As I thought. We must assume the worst. Begin preparations. Within the day we’re to be ready to receive incoming enemy on both flanks.’
‘Aye, sir.’
Throle turned and marched off, already snapping out directives over the vox in order to muster enough of his brothers to begin erecting a second barricade. Fighting on two fronts would slow them down. It meant entrenching, consolidating, not pushing forwards. It meant time that they didn’t have.
Daed drove his gauntleted fist into the barricade, sending a shower of debris tumbling over the side. He grunted in frustration, grinding his teeth.
Could it be the sons of Corax? He had thought, after Kasharat, that they might further come to h
is aid. Could he even begin to hope? Reinforcements could alter the tide of battle and break the pattern of the siege. Most likely, however, the Death Guard were having exactly the same thoughts.
Something shifted on the other side of the heaped wreckage, and Daed leapt up onto the chassis of a downed enemy Helbrute, hefting his axe in one fist and bringing it curling around from behind his back in one, smooth motion.
The creature’s head parted from its shoulders and sailed away into the swarm of oncoming enemy troops, eliciting an answering hail of las-fire. The man-thing’s remaining torso shuddered and stumbled forwards onto its knees, before collapsing into the mud, spouting ribbons of blood and pus from the stump of its neck.
Daed grinned. Perhaps there was satisfaction to be had in despatching these heretical scum. He would spend some time searching for it while he waited.
Soon enough, he would know the nature of the drop-pods and what they contained. In the meantime, there were traitors to be killed.
Koryn
From orbit the planet appeared to be festooned with gaudy ribbons of orange and gold. They crisscrossed its pallid grey surface, flickering and rippling like shreds of tattered fabric in the wind.
The sight stirred ancient memories in Shadow Captain Koryn, recollections of a time before his indoctrination into the Raven Guard, of primitive rituals enacted in the wooded glades of Kiavahr. There, entwined around the branches, the ribbons had symbolised life and renewal, the blossoming of the forest. Here, in contrast, they meant only death. For these were not ribbons but funnels of flame, each a hundred miles long; splashes of searing plasma exploding from barrage shells; burning outposts and detonating warheads.
Such things as these now punctuated Koryn’s existence. He barely remembered that earlier life on his distant home world, although he clung to what memories of it he still retained. Kiavahr was the womb from whence he was born, and echoes of it still lived on in his unregimented thoughts.
The sons of Corax, however, had descended from the stars and granted him a new life. A life beyond the forest, its rituals and the daily toil for survival. They had instilled in him not only the physiological enhancements that had altered his body and sharpened his mind, but also a deep sense of purpose. Now, Koryn lived that life in devotion to the Emperor, smiting the Imperium’s enemies in His name.
A thousand battles had been fought and won in the intervening centuries. Consequently, Koryn’s time on Kiavahr seemed like an eternity ago. To a human, of course, it was. Not so to a Space Marine.
Koryn clutched a data-slate in his gauntleted fist, studying the planet’s ravaged surface as his drop-pod plummeted towards it, the thin shell trembling around him as it gathered speed and momentum. It was the planet, he knew, that was making him think of his old home.
He braced himself in his harness as the drop-pod struck the upper atmosphere and the howl of entry drowned out all other sound. The noise became a tortured, continuous scream, the whine of plasteel rending the air asunder. It was as if the planet was wailing in anger or pain, protesting as its boundaries were irrevocably breached.
Fortane’s World had already been breached, though, Koryn thought. This was a world consumed by death.
The Imperial forces here had dwindled in the face of overwhelming numbers and encroaching plague. Below, on the planet’s surface, the Brazen Minotaurs were locked in a deadly siege, a last ditch attempt to stem the spread of the Sickening. Koryn knew they were doomed to failure, just as they had been on Kasharat. Given time, he had no doubt their bull-headed tactics and sheer, brutal determination would prove successful; that no bastion wall, no matter how thick, could prevent Captain Daed and his brothers from attaining their goal. But time was a commodity they didn’t have, and the head-on tactics of the Brazen Minotaurs would soon come to nothing. All the enemy had to do was delay, and the foul traitors of Empyrion’s Blight were not beyond using their newly recruited human militia as collateral to such ends.
So it was that the Raven Guard had come to Fortane’s World: not to displace their golden-armoured brothers, but to aid them in breaking the siege and bringing the reign of the Death Guard in the Sargassion Reach to an end.
Koryn and his brothers would employ a different approach, a subtler means of warfare. He only hoped that Daed would welcome such intervention – the history between their two Chapters was long and complex, and grave debts had been earned and repaid by both parties. Time, he supposed, would tell. Koryn had made efforts to communicate with Daed in the preceding days, to warn him that the Raven Guard were deploying to Fortane’s World, but the miasmic fog summoned by the traitors was deadening communications across the surface of the planet. He supposed the Brazen Minotaurs would be expecting him anyway. On Kasharat, Daed had learned of the Raven Guard’s presence in the Sargassion Reach. He could not believe that Koryn would stand by now and refuse to assist him in his hour of need.
The drop-pod bucked and rattled around Koryn, gathering speed. He glanced across at the figure opposite him, strapped into a harness identical to his own.
Cordae. The company Chaplain.
Cordae stared back at him from the nest of his webbing, his gaze unflinching behind the strange, beaked mask he wore over his helm. Koryn couldn’t help thinking that in his full battle regalia, Cordae resembled an animal more than a Space Marine. His ancient power armour was older than even Koryn’s own, dating back to a time long before the great Heresy and bearing the pits and scars to prove it, but was now largely obscured by the skeletal fetishes with which it was embellished and adorned.
These totems were the carefully preserved remnants of one of the giant rocs that inhabited the bleak crags of the Diagothian mountains back on distant Kiavahr, fashioned to resemble a grisly, humanoid exoskeleton. The bird’s ribcage formed a brace over the Chaplain’s chest-plate, while the finer bones of its wings fanned out across the bridge of his jump pack like two sets of spread fingers. Long, hollow femurs were held by clasps to each of the Chaplain’s black-armoured thighs, and smaller bones hung from tattered ribbons and chains, attached to every surface, from vambraces to pauldrons.
Most disturbing of all, the bird’s skull had been fashioned into a mask that covered Cordae’s entire head, the relic now incorporated into the very fabric of his helm. The ivory beak jutted forwards monstrously, accusingly, while its empty eye sockets seemed to peer directly into Koryn’s soul.
It was Cordae’s belief – so Koryn understood – that the spirit of the deceased roc still inhabited its long dead bones, and that this spirit, tied to his totemic armour, accompanied Cordae into battle, serving as both a guide and a stark reminder of the Chapter’s spiritual doctrines. Whether or not it was true, Koryn knew the impact it had on the morale of his brothers, and whatever the truth, Cordae was a fearsome, iron-hearted warrior with few equals. To hunt and kill a roc in unarmed combat was a task that few could achieve. The birds were rare creatures, eking out a harsh existence in isolation, high in the craggy peaks of Koryn’s home world. Cordae would have had to live off the land for weeks at a time, remaining unseen and unheard during his long search for the nest. Then there was the precarious approach along the precipice, not to mention the battle with the creature itself…
Most hopeful initiates of the Chaplaincy who set off with such a goal in mind never returned.
Cordae would be an asset during this mission. He would serve as an adviser to Koryn, and he would smite the enemy with a zeal that none of the others could even hope to attain. Nevertheless, Koryn couldn’t help feeling a certain amount of trepidation. Cordae’s presence might well prove to be a boon, but Koryn was still unsure if he could entirely trust the Chaplain.
Koryn’s head snapped to the left at the sudden, shrill cry of a warning klaxon.
‘Incoming!’ bellowed Argis, and Koryn braced himself as an enemy projectile slammed into the side of their falling drop-pod with a deafening explosion.
The vehicle went into a crazed, dizzying spin, turning end over end, and Koryn was thrown back and forth in his webbing as he struggled to remain orientated in the chaotic seconds that followed. He could hear the high-pitched whistle of inrushing air and caught stuttering, orphaned images of shredded plasteel and the dark night sky of the planet beyond. His brain hardly had time to register the sight of Borias – one arm and leg entirely missing, blood spraying generously from his ruptured torso, head lolling unconscious or already dead – before he was pitched forwards again, twisting in his harness and feeling a sharp tug on his left shoulder.
Koryn fought to stay conscious, focusing on making sense of what he was seeing.
Through the gaping wound in the side of the drop-pod he glimpsed trees; immense and gangly, receding into the far distance, clutching at the sky with thin, bony branches. Beyond that, looming over the distant horizon, was the dark, ominous shell of the planet’s carapace.
The drop-pod smashed into the ancient woodland, colliding with the boughs of several enormous trees, pulverising them into oblivion as it carved a path through their dense foliage. Millennia-old trunks toppled in its wake, cracking and rending with ear-splitting noise. The drop-pod rebounded, shaking Koryn violently in his harness, and then, with a jarring crunch, it impacted against the forest floor.
Koryn lolled forwards, dazed, as the drop-pod careened across the ground, churning great furrows of earth behind it. Mud and leafy mulch spewed through the ragged hole in its side, temporarily entombing what was left of Borias and piling up around the others’ knees. The air was filled with the fresh reek of damp soil.
Red warning sigils flared inside Koryn’s helm, but he blinked them away, choosing to ignore them. He could feel a sharp pain in his left shoulder, and glancing down he saw a spar of metal embedded in the ebon ceramite of his chest-plate. He had been speared by debris during the explosion. The broken strut had pierced clean through his shoulder, pinning him to the wall.
He allowed the webbing to take his weight and, a few moments later, the drop-pod finally shuddered to a stop. Koryn drew a deep breath, pulling himself upright.
