by Nick Kyme
Small motes of debris were shaking loose from the defences now. The Ark Guard in the gun nests had to hold onto their pintle mounts and tripods to prevent them moving and fouling their aim. Several troopers knelt, leaning against the wall for stability. Some prayed, making the sign of the aquila. Others locked arms with their comrades for mutual support.
‘Like ice in your veins,’ Iulus said to them, his abyssal voice carrying on the wind. ‘Your spine and will as steel.’
A conscript with a rocket tube gestured into the whiteout fearfully. ‘What if we cannot see them? What if they are already upon us?’
Iulus growled at him. ‘Get hold of your fear, seize it and lock it fast. I will see them coming.’
Except he couldn’t see them. Iulus saw no more than the frightened conscripts on the wall. How quickly a man’s insane courage could corrode in the face of inaction, when confronted with the unknown. There were no horrors in the universe that could compare to what a man harboured in his own mind. It was a place where daemons and monsters reigned, where blades and guns were no protection. And it was here that a Space Marine was armoured the most.
But still, the humans held.
A cry echoed across the battlements. It was followed by the crack of splitting stone as part of the wall collapsed. Huge plumes of dust, grit and snow spewed up into the air like a frozen geyser just under fifty metres from Iulus’s position. Men and materiel were swallowed in the cloud, their screams dampened by the crash of sundered stone.
In the other direction, another section of the wall fell, broken in two as if its foundations had rotted through or succumbed to rapid erosion.
Uncertain where best to turn first, Iulus reached for the vox. He was scanning the dust cloud for some clue of a necron attack, when Kolpeck left his position and raced for the ladder to the lower level.
Iulus shouted, ‘Trooper, stand and fight!’ He had no time to go after him. Something was happening to the wall but he was still ignorant of the cause. He eyed the third wall again, but the mines and explosives were intact. He heard no las-fire, no bolter bursts. Kolpeck had fled, climbed down the ladder and was racing down the stairs to the Courtyard of Xiphos.
So much for human courage, Iulus thought bitterly. Perhaps the war had broken the man. Cracks were usually hard to see until it was too late to shore them up.
At least the rest of the One Hundred were holding firm. He’d glared at them all when Kolpeck had run, defying them to move with sheer force of will. None did.
Putting the thought aside as he would a spent clip or blunted gladius, Iulus barked down the vox. ‘Aristaeus.’
He was the closest Ultramarine to the site of the second collapse. Iulus himself was in command of the wall section where the first collapse had taken place.
Aristaeus’s reply was riddled with static, the dust and grit muddying the signal even at close range. ‘Nothing, brother-sergeant. I see…’ The vox return crackled.
‘Repeat. I cannot make you out, brother.’
‘A hole, brother-sergeant. There is a vast hole opened up in the wall right down into the earth.’
Iulus heard screaming over the vox-return and could imagine the fates of those on the section when it collapsed. Aristaeus continued.
‘I can see into its depths. There is…’
There was a pause as Aristaeus consulted his autosenses and cycled through his retinal spectra.
Iulus’s patience was threadbare. They were under attack but he still had no idea by what or from where the next assault would come. ‘Speak, brother. What do you see?’
‘Darkness, only darkness.’
Crouched at the battlements, one eye on the dissipating dust cloud ahead of him, Iulus frowned. ‘Is your retinal display malfunctioning? Tell me what you see through infra-red and night vision.’
‘Nothing, brother-sergeant. It’s just black, like oily cloud. Visual filters have no effect.’
‘That can’t be good,’ said Kolpeck. The grizzled rig-hand was out of breath and clutching a strange device in one hand. He’d obviously gone to retrieve it after the attack. It was based on a long metal spike with some kind of data-slate at the top. Iulus had never seen one before but its design suggested some kind of seismological mining tool.
‘A soldier does not desert his post, Trooper Kolpeck.’ His voice was stern but now was not the time for a long reprimand. He wanted to know what Kolpeck had found.
‘I’m sorry, brother-Angel, but I was acting on a hunch,’ he replied with a little less contrition than Iulus had expected. ‘I told you, I am a miner not a soldier.’ He brandished the seismological device. The data-screen was grubby with dirt and hoarfrost but a series of undulating lines were visible along three horizontal axis. ‘They are beneath us.’
The three lines were depth markers. The last, therefore the deepest, was jagged with activity. Iulus saw what the necrons were doing. Undermining was a common siege tactic, well-used and perfected over millennia of war. Here the necrons had added a fresh element – they were using the darkness as a way to conceal themselves.
Iulus seized the vox, nearly crushing it in his gauntlet as urgency overtook him. ‘Aristaeus, burn it! Burn the hole. The mechanoids have tunnelled underneath us!
‘Pour everything you’ve got into that bore hole,’ he shouted, running the battlements in long, metre-eating strides. ‘Turn the cannon emplacements, fill it with hell and frag!’
Iulus got halfway to the site of the first collapse when the ground beneath him gave way and he was falling. Another bore hole had opened up in his path. Several of the One Hundred plunged to their deaths, unable to move in time. It was a dishonourable end for such brave men. Iulus reached out, his survival instinct impelling him to grab a chunk of rock jutting from the broken rampart.
He stared down into the abyss below and saw the darkness there that Aristaeus had described. Unhooking his weapon, he could almost sense the presence of alien minds regarding him and fired.
The bolt pistol scream resonated inside the bore hole, magnified as it rebounded off its sides. With the darkness cloaking the advancing scarabs, Iulus didn’t realise he couldn’t miss. As soon as the first creature was hit, the illusion faded and the blackness receded to reveal a chittering host of the things. They scurried up the walls, which were ridged with the burrowing action of whatever monster or device had hewn them, in a swarm. Their eyes glinted like tiny emeralds in the natural shadows of the circular cavern, mandibles champing.
When Iulus’s bolt fire struck them, a stream of the scarabs exploded leaving burning contrails in their wake as they fell. He panned the pistol around, finger tight on the trigger, and left a muzzle scar across the open air. Still holding on one-handed to the piece of broken rampart, Iulus gave a wordless cry.
He could not kill them all. Even with the las-fire flashing down from above, the scarabs would soon breach the surface. He estimated there were hundreds of the things and for every one he destroyed, another four replaced it. His ammunition counter was burning to zero when Iulus noticed a large mound ripple through the undulating mass. Down to his last rounds, he switched targets and fired a close burst into the mound. The scarabs outside it were blasted apart like a piece of ablative armour revealing a much larger construct beneath. It moved slower than the others but its carapace was thick and absorbed the impact of the explosive bolt shells without pause. Iulus was debating whether to draw his chainsword and drop into the bore hole to kill the monster personally when it swung a gauss-blaster arm in his direction and fired.
The beam cut into the Ultramarine’s battle-plate and he cried out. Armour shed like snake skin as the flaying effect of necron technology went to work and Iulus’s leg greave was reduced to half-corroded mesh.
The pain was so severe he dropped his pistol. For a moment his grip wavered. Several more of the larger mounds were moving through the scarab swarm, which had almost re
ached him. Dangling off the edge of the precipice, Iulus realised it would mean his death to fall now. Eternal night reigned in the depths of those bore holes, as cold and unnatural as the creatures emerging from it.
A hand clasped around his wrist. Then another and another. Iulus looked up to see Kolpeck’s straining face above him.
‘Heave!’ he yelled to the other conscripts – all from the One Hundred – that were trying to rescue their captain.
‘At your side, brother-Angel,’ Kolpeck said again through gritted teeth.
It took the combined efforts of four men to lift the Ultramarine even a small amount. They were all rig-hands, all strong men used to back-breaking labour in the Imperial mines beneath the Damnos ice, but none had ever worked so hard to lift something such a short distance.
It was enough for Iulus to swing his free arm around and grip the battlements with both hands. He pulled himself up as another gauss-blast speared the rock where he’d been hanging a moment earlier. The conscripts fell back as he emerged back over the top.
‘Back! Fall back!’
Iulus turned towards the bore hole even as the conscripts started to retreat. He unclamped a pair of frag grenades from his belt just as the first wave of scarabs was spilling over the edge of the wall. Ignoring the smaller creatures, he tossed the explosives over the shiny bodies. A low boom came from beyond and below. The mechanoid spyder did not emerge and Iulus thanked the Emperor that his grenades had done their work.
He contemplated staying and trying to hold off the scarab swarm coming at him – he had already drawn his chainsword – but decided to fall back with the others.
Kolpeck was just behind him, waiting for his captain.
‘We need to get off the wall,’ he said, bringing his lasgun to bear on the smaller mechanoids.
Iulus pushed the barrel down. ‘Then do it. Marshal the One Hundred. Every man is to head for the Courtyard of Xiphos. We’ll stand a better chance of holding them there.’
Kolpeck nodded and ran. He was already shouting orders at the men, ushering them downwards, organising them into groups.
Unclamping his last pair of grenades, Iulus tossed them towards the scarab swarm and jumped from the wall.
The explosion blossomed behind him, kicking up debris and broken scarabs as the Ultramarine landed hard on the Courtyard of Xiphos. From there he could see the wall was breached in no fewer than six areas, each sunken by a bore hole and now swarming with scarabs. Gauss-fire cracked from the spyders, stripping men to bone and ash.
‘Heavy weapons, target the larger mechanoids. Bring them down!’
From across the courtyard, rocket tubes and heavy stubbers hammered into the spyders. They were tough and took a lot of killing, but they were falling. So too were the Ark Guard. A mass retreat was in effect. Even done in good order, the humans were still pressed on all sides. The walls were empty, apart from the dead. Several squads had been overwhelmed completely in the first few seconds of the breach, swallowed beneath the necron wave. Even their bodies were no longer there, the scarabs had stripped them from existence.
The first wall was behind him, and Iulus knew they would need to fall back to here if they had any chance of surviving, let alone repelling, the attack. A massive bore hole opened in the Courtyard of Xiphos, splitting flagstones and toppling shattered monuments. Men went with it, whole swathes of Ark Guard lost with a tortured scream. Iulus thought he saw something gargantuan surface from the depths. It looked segmented, almost centipedal, but was quickly swallowed by the unnatural darkness. Scarabs and spyders spilled forth in its wake.
‘Incendiaries into the bore holes,’ Iulus bellowed, pointing to the fresh attack point. ‘Burn it down. Cleanse their route of assault.’
He saw Aristaeus, a rack of three promethium flamer tanks rattling on his back. He reached the circular crevice in the courtyard and threw the tanks in. Bringing up his boltgun in the same motion, he fired off a single round and a jet of liquid flame as thick as the pillars of Hera’s Temple shot up from the bore hole.
The blast wave took Aristaeus off his feet but he was quick to recover and head for his sergeant. The other Immortals were doing the same, marshalling their troops with them, converging on Iulus as they sought to consolidate their forces.
Slowly, the squads came together. Stragglers were picked off easily by the scarab swarm but a concentrated wall of fire was ripping steadily from the Ark Guard now. At the orders of their Space Marine captains, they formed firing ranks and bathed the courtyard in hot las.
‘Brother-sergeant,’ Aristaeus reached Iulus’s side and held out his sidearm, ‘you seem to be without the Emperor’s wrath.’
Iulus punched his chest, the air filling with las-beams around him. ‘Here is where I keep it, brother,’ he said, but then smiled as he took the bolt pistol.
More Ark Guard joined the others massing outside the gates to the first wall – even the troops on the battlements had opened up with their weapons – and the rate of fire intensified. The scarabs and their larger, monstrous cousins had seemed infinite at first but now they were withering. None of them could penetrate the slowly retreating Imperial cordon. Even the spyders were pinioned by lascannon beams from the first wall battlements. But the necrons were tenacious and fed even greater numbers into the meatgrinder. Like a river of mercury swollen at its banks, they began to lap at the sides of the Imperial defences.
Several soldiers at the outer edge where the Ultramarines presence was weakest were dragged screaming into the swarm.
Iulus tightened the cordon further still but his troops were already shoulder-to-shoulder with their backs against the gate of the first wall. He sensed the tide turning, the sheer overwhelming force of the necron constructs tipping the balance. What had started out as an organised defence of hold and repulse was turning into a desperate last stand.
Behind him, there came the churning of gears as the mechanism to the gate was activated. It did not open wide but it was enough to admit a towering war machine into the Courtyard of Xiphos.
‘The walls of Chundrabad shall never fall!’ Agnathio’s multi-melta tore a hot line through the scarabs. Men of the Ark Guard hurried from the Dreadnought’s path as he bullied his way to the front rank. ‘I serve the Chapter eternally!’
Though he moved slowly, his motive servos still spitting oil and steam, when Agnathio reached the necron horde it reeled. So indomitable, so utterly relentless, the venerable warrior’s example was followed by all. Together, they threw the scarabs back.
Agnathio had been joined by the rest of the Immortals and several platoons of Ark Guard who lent their fire to the Imperial barrage.
As if sensing the futility of their attack, the necron machines retreated like ants from a fire and withdrew to their bore holes.
The shooting from the Ark Guard was slow to relent. In the end it took all of the Ultramarines to bring the humans back down again. They had survived a terrifying ordeal and fear did not give up its hold on lasgun triggers easily. When the noise of the barrage died, a wintry silence swept through the Courtyard of Xiphos. Already, the drifts were covering the evidence that a battle even took place. There were only the half-flayed remains of dead Ark Guard, anyway; all of the destroyed necrons had phased out. It made for an eerie scene.
Iulus rested his hand on the still-hot shoulder casing of Agnathio’s multi-melta. ‘We owe you a debt, honoured one.’
Pride was not really amongst a Dreadnought’s limited emotional responses. Agnathio was typically matter-of-fact. ‘I am my Chapter’s servant. I seek only the glory of Ultramar.’
‘Well spoken, brother,’ Iulus murmured, humbled by such stalwart courage and loyalty.
Brother Galvia had been one of the Space Marines from the first wall to come and bolster the beleaguered defenders. ‘Do we return to the second wall and try to regarrison it?’ he asked.
Iulus shook his
head. The second wall was all but rubble now, the bore holes had seen to that. It would be indefensible. He turned to Kolpeck who was crouching nearby, breathing hard while some of the men around him were puking out their nerves.
‘Find as many of those seismographic staves as you can,’ said Iulus. ‘Plant them around this cordon, ten metres out.’
‘I could take them as far as the second wall,’ Kolpeck suggested.
‘No. Ten metres, no farther. Do it quickly.’
Kolpeck saluted, gathering up some men he trusted, and went about his orders.
Iulus’s face was grim as he surveyed the ruins in front of them. Aristaeus was by his side and must have seen his expression.
‘Something wrong, brother-sergeant?’
‘That was just a probing attack to test our strength,’ he said. ‘This isn’t over.’
Iulus did not intend his words to be prophetic but as he said them there was a flash of emerald light around the rubble of the second wall. A crack had opened in the air itself. The drifts did not fall there. It was as if something had interrupted the very ebb and flow of nature. The crack widened and became a pool of light that expanded again into roughly the size of a large doorway. Within it, the emerald light rippled as if something very deep down beneath the pool was attempting to surface. Shadows loomed there. Iulus could not be certain but he thought he could make out a long, glowing corridor with the shapes of necrons marching down it, growing more distinct with every step.
Another portal opened up a few metres away. A third followed swiftly after that. Down inside the bore holes a chittering clangour arose as the scarabs returned.
On the battlements, some of the Ark Guard were pointing beyond Kellenport’s walls. Officers were looking through scopes. Iulus could hear the larger guns rotating to fresh trajectories.
