by Nick Kyme
Iulus’s drop pod had crash landed, three of its exit ramps incapacitated as it had dug itself into a sand bank and held fast. The sergeant’s armour was scorched from the fire that had obviously ensued, as was the armour of his squad as they moved to the Thunderbolts’ right.
‘Plasma detonation clipped us,’ he snapped. ‘Got caught in its blast wave. I told you this plan was reckless—’
‘You’re alive, aren’t you?’ countered Praxor, his own squad forging up on Scipio’s left.
Iulus fed a burst of static through the feed, and Scipio winced against the auditory assault.
‘We have our answer,’ said Praxor, adding ‘On my lead, brothers.’
Squad Moranion, the Shield Bearers, was the most experienced of the group, having been the vanguard of numerous Chapter-level assaults, and both Scipio and Iulus deferred to Praxor.
‘Sergeants Tirian and Atavian assure me they’re making us a gap,’ he continued, the three squads advancing at pace across the scorched earth. The last few torpedoes of the bombardment erupted deep inside the ork lines as they moved, shaking the earth beneath their booted feet.
Secondary eruptions came from behind them as the two devastator squads Praxor had mentioned spat torrents of heavy fire. Beams of las and plasma, melta-flare, heavy bolter fire and spiralling missiles streaked overhead. The barrage withered one section of the greenskin line, trucks erupting in explosive blossoms. Swathes of orks shredded and burned in the vicious fusillade.
With the landing site anchored by heavy weaponry, the objective of the more mobile tactical squads was to cut a wedge through the ork horde and reach the embattled Sable Gunner regiments behind it. With the solid defences of Ghospora at their backs, the Ultramarines would have an excellent staging point at which to launch a counter offensive, retake the walls and from there lift the siege. The task of locating the ork warlord, Zanzag, fell to Sicarius, and to him alone.
As if his thoughts had heralded it, Scipio looked skyward. The armoured hull of a Thunderhawk hove into view, descending through billowing plumes of smoke, grey tendrils clinging to its sweeping wings. Dust and ash clouds scudded across the umber plain as it closed, disturbed by the down-thrust of the gunship’s massive engines.
Scipio recognised the vessel’s markings as its landing beams strafed the ground.
It was the Gladius, so-named for the short blade wielded by the Ultramarines’ honour guard.
The vessel surged forward like a sword, cutting right into the heart of the greenskins massing at the north wall. Ork bodies were tossed into the air in the violent backwash of descent thrusters, crushed beneath slowly extending landing stanchions or hosed with sprays of fire from the Thunderhawk’s heavy bolters. Within seconds of coming to rest a hundred metres from the Ultramarines’ swiftly advancing battle-line, the embarkation ramp was down and then there he was.
Sicarius.
PHASE TWO
THE STORMING OF GHOSPORA
CATO SICARIUS STORMED out of the Gladius like Invictus reborn, hero of the first Tyrannic War, cloak flaring with the plasma winds kicked up in the wake of the bombardment.
He held aloft his power sword, the Talassarian Tempest Blade, and waded into the greenskin horde. Behind him a force disgorged from the belly of the Thunderhawk gunship. The Lions of Macragge fell upon the orks with fury, screaming the primarch’s name as Sicarius pressed his relentless assault. Arcus Helios led a phalanx of Terminators that drove indomitably into the ork ranks, storm bolters roaring. Squad Solinus followed them, the heroes of Telendrar forging a bloody path with bolter and blade. Finally there came Brother Ultracius, looming over all.
Having fallen on the battlefields of Pyra over a thousand years ago, Ultracius was now entombed in the cryo-sarcophagus of a dreadnought. The battle-brother was, in effect, a massive armoured war machine. It was no battle-suit Ultracius wore, nor a form of abladve armature; it was part of him. In this symbiosis of flesh and machine, the battle-brother dwelled in amniotic slumber within the dreadnought’s sarcophagus until it was called to war. One could not exist without the other. Man and metal were one.
Adamantium plate reinforced with fire-retardant ceramite bulked out an immense servo-driven frame, which was over five metres tall. The dreadnought’s brutal weapon mounts and ancillary combat systems could be tailored to a particular engagement prior to battlefield deployment. Stylised Ultramarines iconography bolted onto his armoured carapace declared his allegiance boldly.
Ribbed cables spanned Ultracius’s thick mechanical legs and arm mounts, providing the power to drive them. They hummed belligerently, the sound an extension of Ultracius’s own warrior wrath, as he stomped down the gunship’s embarkation ramp.
Assault cannon whirring, the dreadnought scythed down greenskins with brutal efficiency. Brother Ultracius was a symbol, an immortal warrior of the Ultramarines destined to battle on in the name of the Chapter forever.
With Sicarius at their head, no ork horde could resist them.
‘All Ultramarines… advance!’ he roared into the comm-feed. ‘This day we see glory or death.’
The Thunderhawk assault force cleaved through the greenskin masses like a burning blade.
The captain’s voice inside his battle helm stirred Scipio to greater efforts.
‘Forward!’ he cried, in unison with Praxor. The three squads broke into a run. Pounding across the bloody sand, leaping over the tangled remains of greenskins slain in the bombardment, the rest of the Ultramarines smashed into the orks with righteous fury.
Scipio’s chainsword roared into life again, and, slamming a fresh clip into his bolt pistol, he struck as one with his battle-brothers. The deadly press was incredible. Scipio charged an ork to the ground with his shoulder before dispatching it with his chainsword. His blade still whirring in its cranium, he blasted apart the torso of another with his bolt pistol. The greenskin was biting a grenade between its teeth in some kind of kamikaze attack. As it fell, the grenade exploded taking three of the ork’s kin with it.
Scipio felt the heat radiation wash against his helmet. Temperature readings spiked for an instant then fell to normal again. He and his squad strode on through the dying firestorm, finding fresh enemy to engage as they killed in the name of the Chapter.
Scipio looked right as he forged towards his next target, and saw Iulus and his squad emerging through a shower of earth and shrapnel as an ork wagon exploded nearby. Overhead, Scipio heard the whip-spin of rotor blades. Shots were pinging off his armour as he took apart another greenskin and looked up. A rough squadron of copter-like ork attack craft buzzed into view, belching missiles. The single passenger vehicles flew in an erratic trajectory, thick smoke issuing from chugging engines. One of the machines broke off from formation, sweeping low over the Astartes ranks before it dropped an immense bomb that had been lashed to its undercarriage. Bolter fire from Squad Octavian punctured its fuel reserve and the copter exploded in mid-air, spitting debris.
Brother Castor – Scipio remembered him from their training in the scholar-houses – threw himself over the deadly ordnance to protect his fellow squad members.
A second later, the bomb detonated.
Scipio was flattened by an immense blast wave, his helmet lenses dampening the magnesium-bright after-flare. Despite this act of outrageous heroism, battle-brothers from Castor’s squad were flung outward from the terrible explosion. A fat mushroom cloud billowed up in its wake, and the Space Marines crashed down to the earth hard, swathed in dust and debris. Castor was immolated, his ragged body thrown up and buoyed by the blast wave, before spiralling down into a broken heap.
Another for Apothecary Venatio, thought Scipio bitterly as Brother Hekor helped him up.
The battle still raged above, though now Assault Squads Strabo and Ixion, jump packs screaming soared to meet the ork death-copters head-on and took them apart in a punishing hail of bolter fire and promethium. The vile engines fell like wounded fireflies into the packed greenskins, their explosive death thr
oes wreaking still further havoc in their own ranks.
With a nod of acknowledgement to Hekor, Scipio led his squad on.
‘Right flank tactical squads,’ a grit-gravel voice barked through the comm-feed. There could be no mistaking the iron-hard timbre of Chaplain Orad.
‘Converge on Secondary Command,’ ordered the Chaplain. ‘We go in support of Captain Sicarius.’
Through the melee of blades, bolts and bullets, the smoke-drenched sky lit by sporadic explosions and the staccato flash of muzzle-flares, Scipio saw the black power amour of Orad up ahead.
Orders delivered, the fearsome Chaplain spat litanies of hate and vengeance into the comm-feed on a battle group-wide frequency, urging the Ultramarines to smite the foe with extreme prejudice. His rosarius field flickered as ork bullets peppered it and fell away without causing harm. Striding into the heart of the horde, dispatching wounded greenskins with indiscriminate blasts of his plasma pistol, whilst cracking the skulls of the more able-bodied with his crackling crozius mace, the 2nd Company Chaplain was like a force of nature.
Scipio could see the lay of the unfolding battle. Sicarius had almost reached the outer bastion wall. Primary Command – consisting of the captain’s retinue, the Terminators, Squad Solinus and Brother Ultracius – were engaged in fierce fighting with the most battle-hardened of the ork mobs. The warlord could not be far.
Chaplain Orad, given overall command of the remaining ground forces, led a second group with Squads Vandar and the remnants of Octavian. Scipio’s own battle group, with Iulus and Praxor, was only a hundred metres away. The devastator squads behind them advanced as a rearguard, whilst the assault squads gave lightning support wherever it was needed.
The Ultramarines controlled the field. This was the final push to the walls.
‘On my lead, sergeants,’ Praxor said through the comm-feed, closing the distance to Chaplain Orad on the left and slaying any greenskins that got in his way.
Scipio followed, hacking a bloody swathe through the foe, with Iulus on his rear.
A row of makeshift ork earthworks loomed ahead, death-pits and dense spirals of razor wire patrolled by cannon-toting battlewagons brimming with greenskins, and heavily-armed trucks acting as outriders. It stood between the three squads and Chaplain Orad.
‘A killing field,’ grunted Iulus through his battle helm, the rending sound of his chainsword muffling the words.
Scipio saw that Praxor, just ahead of them, had brought up his squad’s melta gun. Iulus had done the same.
‘Brother Hekor,’ he said, bolt pistol roaring in his grasp, ‘flamer forward.’
Praxor and Iulus would take out the armour; Scipio would burn the rest. Promethium expelled from a flamer at close range was incredibly hot, hot enough to turn the ork razor wire into molten slag. Still, the fortifications would be hard to crack.
‘Where is Brother Telion when you need him, eh?’ laughed Iulus, dispatching another greenskin.
‘I saw no sign of him in the muster, perhaps—’
A huge explosion lit up the ork earthworks before Scipio could finish. One of the battlewagons went up, leaping spectacularly into the air before crashing down on a second vehicle, crushing it. Chained detonations followed, ripping up the death-pits and razor wire, blowing the trucks to smithereens.
‘He’s here,’ said Praxor knowingly and bellowed, ‘Space Marines, attack!’
The three squads barrelled towards the breach, cutting down the disorientated orks swarming off it with barks of bolter fire and flashing blades.
Out of the carnage appeared Telion. Unhooded, the brother-sergeant stalked amongst the panicked greenskin ranks like a true predator. No battle cries came from his lips. He was stern and cold, killing swiftly and efficiently. A four-man scout squad followed his lead. Inexplicably, they had managed to emerge in the midst of the entrenchments, having somehow found a clandestine route through the rugged battlefield landscape to approach the orks unnoticed until choosing to act.
A few metres from the attack, a Storm-pattern land speeder hovered up and away, launching a salvo of frag grenades into the clustered ork forces to safeguard its rapid ascent.
By the time Scipio and his brother-sergeants had reached the devastated ork fortifications, Telion and his scouts were gone, drifting off like ghosts to some other part of the battlefield. Doubtless he too was moving in support of Sicarius.
A missile-strike from Brother Garrik widened the gaping wreckage of the earthworks. Scipio and the rest of the squad sped through it, Iulus and Praxor surging through other breaches in the battered defences.
Emerging through the smoke and dust, a metal monstrosity filled Scipio’s vision as a second wave of ork armour moved to impede them. The machine lumbered on thick, piston-pumping legs. A steel torso, not unlike a metal can riveted with ork glyph-plates and additional slabs of armour, swayed back and forth as the machine stomped towards them. An exhaust stuck out of its back like a spine, chugging acrid fumes. It was nestled alongside a crudely fashioned banner strung with bleached human skulls.
The ork dreadnought, a five-metre-high monstrosity, was festooned with weapons: a high-calibre cannon was bolted to its hip, a generous ammo feed trailing to the ground from its auto-loader; two long, hydraulic arms ended in a snapping power claw and a rotator-saw respectively. A green targeting eye whirred and clicked along the dreadnought’s thin vision-slit, through which Scipio detected the belligerent presence of a greenskin hard-wired into the machine itself.
It was not alone. A second machine stomped into view, cannon shuddering with recoil.
The rounds tore up the earth next to Scipio’s feet, but failed to find a target. A missile streaked overhead in retaliation and blew off the dreadnought’s cannon as well as most of its left side. Scipio saw the greenskin pilot through the cracked metal armour of its cockpit. It juddered and shook, the wires poking out of its plated skull sparking and on fire as the neural link to its dying machine was severed.
Its partner came on undeterred, advancing over the stricken ork pilot as it continued to spasm, crushing it to paste.
Suppressing bolter fire flicked off the ork dreadnought’s armoured hull, no more a deterrent than a stinging insect, as it swept its cannon around in a wide arc. Two of Scipio’s battle-brothers went down in a fusillade of high-calibre bullets. The sergeant himself took a shot in the pauldron and felt it bite.
Hekor doused the ork fighting machine with promethium from his flamer. The thing caught alight briefly before the fire died and it smashed the Ultramarine aside with its massive arm. Hekor lay prone on the ground, a wide crack in his ceramite plastron oozing blood.
The other two squads were faring no better as more ork dreadnoughts, and some smaller machineries of a similar crude design, joined the fray. Scipio saw one melted down by Iulus’s squad, another blown apart in his peripheral vision with krak grenades by Praxor’s Shield Bearers.
Right now, though, Scipio had his own problems.
‘Garrik, take it down!’ he cried, as the dreadnought came at them.
‘On your order, sir-arrggh!’ The battle-brother fell, a barrage of high-calibre shells tearing up his power armour and laying him flat. Brother Brakkius went to haul him out of harm’s way but was picked off by a flame-thrower attachment on the dreadnought’s main cannon. Tossed around one-eighty degrees, he collapsed into a smouldering heap.
Scipio gritted his teeth, eyed up the mechanical monster and charged.
First ducking another flame-thrower burst, he then weaved under a casual sweep of the dreadnought’s rotator-saw, though it caught the sergeant’s banner pole affixed to his back and cut it in half. Scipio replied with a swipe of his chainsword, ripping through a bunch of hydraulic cables that fed power to the rotator-saw. The weapon screeched at first, juddering as its servos protested, but then hummed back into life.
The bolter fire had barely dented its armoured trunk-like body and Scipio searched for any advantage. He hacked the barrel off the dreadnought’s
stuttering cannon as it swung round, but the chain teeth got stuck three-quarters through the metal, and the weapon was wrenched away. He tried his bolt pistol again, aiming for any weak points, but tossed it away when the dreadnought brought its rotator-saw down in a punishing arc. Scipio caught it two-handed. The impact resonated all the way down his arms and into his shoulders. The spinning blade was stalled just centimetres from his battle helm.
Muscles bunching, Scipio’s secondary heart kicked in and pumped blood more rapidly around his system in order to cope with the sustained exertion. Even though the severed hydraulic cable limited the dreadnought’s power, Scipio still felt his body being ground down slowly in the dirt. The rotator-saw was just millimetres from his helmet. He slipped and the blade chewed into the metal, spitting sparks. The left lens of Scipio’s battle helm clouded with static as the visual feed was cut. A second more and the battle helm disintegrated around his face. Scipio shrugged away the wrecked helm as the greater movement afforded by its absence allowed him to lean back a few more vital millimetres.
The battle din, the sights and smells of the bloodied field washed over Scipio in a wave as he was stripped of his broken helmet and its sophisticated filtration systems. The sensory disorientation was only momentary; his superhuman Astartes physiology compensated at once.
The adjustment didn’t help him in his current predicament. Scipio roared as the rotator-saw edged a little closer, determined to meet his end with defiance in his heart and the name of the Chapter on his lips.
‘Ultramarines!’ he cried, and felt a flash of intense heat against his bare face as the dreadnought was smashed aside. Rolling away from the machine and up into a battle-crouch, Scipio saw the dreadnought explode with a gaping hole of dissolved metal in its torso. Its legs crumpled and it fell into a smoking ruin.
‘Rise, Brother Vorolanus!’
Scipio turned at the booming, automated voice and saw the imperious form of Brother Agnathio.
The Space Marine dreadnought cast a huge shadow as it towered over his fellow Astartes. The mortally-wounded battle-brother entombed within its armoured sepulchre had been stirred into sentience when the final approach to Black Reach had begun. He was a Chapter relic, interred within his dreadnought sarcophagus over five thousand years ago at the Fall of Chundrabad. The war machine’s adamantium hull was girded by ornate layers of ceramite and emblazoned with the stylised iconography of the Ultramarines, all wrought by the Chapter’s artificers. Reliquaries were mounted on Agnathio’s broad machine shoulders, containing the bones of other noble warriors secured in micro-stasis fields. Purity seals and sheaves of parchment inscribed with oaths and litanies swathed his armoured form like holy vestments.
