The sound of its howling briefly changing timbre to a cry of rage at the trick, the Dreadnought turned on its axis and angrily moved its arm into a firing position. Levelling the plasma weapon at Kergis as he lay on the ground, it prepared to blast him to oblivion. In response, Kergis lifted a small, handheld remote detonator, making sure the Dreadnought could see it before he pressed the ignition stud.
Too late, the machine realised the White Scar had left something beneath it in his skidding journey underneath its body. Looking down, it saw the dark compact shape of a polyleather satchel lying on the ground at a point almost equidistant between its feet.
The contents of the satchel detonated with a roar that drowned out the Dreadnought’s howl of anguish.
The explosion did not penetrate its armour, but it was enough to fatally weaken the ground beneath the monster’s feet. With its arms flailing madly, the Dreadnought began to fall screaming as the floor immediately underneath it shattered and gave way, pitching it headlong into a suddenly revealed abyss of burning lava situated below the level of the chamber floor. For the first time in thousands of years the Dreadnought’s howls of pain and anguish were replaced by the sounds of fear as it tumbled into a lake of fire. It made a splash as it landed, sending droplets of hissing magma flying into the air as it sank into the red heat of a flowing sea of lava.
Nearby, luck had been on Kergis’ side. Although the floor had collapsed to within a few centimetres of his position, the ground had held firm underneath him. Rising to his feet, he saw that his sword lay on the floor barely a metre away. He reached over to pick it up. Behind him, the mouth of the newly created pit was obscured by a pall of steam and rising smoke, as hot air from the lava well met the colder air of the overflow chamber.
Casting a quick glance around him, Kergis could see that his men had followed his orders to pull back. He was the closest man to the edge of the pit. The remaining members of the squad were congregated twenty metres away, on the other side. As he leaned forward to grip the hilt of his sword, he raised his other hand to signal to his men that he was all right.
His presence of mind in immediately seeking out the sword saved his life as one of the Dreadnought’s arms suddenly emerged from inside the pit and lashed through the air beside him. Caught by a glancing blow, Kergis was knocked to the ground as the monster’s blindly groping claw latched on to his leg and began to pull him into the hole. From the other side of the pit he heard his men call out in horror as they rushed to help him. But they were too far away. With a remorseless strength born of a desire for vengeance, the Dreadnought began to drag him towards the edge of the abyss.
His free hand scrabbling at the floor as he tried to arrest his journey, Kergis turned on his side and attempted to bring the sword to bear. At last, his hand found purchase as the Dreadnought’s arm tugged him onto the crumbling lip of the pit. Digging his hand into the relatively soft surface of the floor, Kergis managed to create enough of a handhold to resist the monster’s strength.
He held on with all his might, his muscles aching with the strain as the Dreadnought fought mercilessly to pull him into the abyss. Suspended on the edge of the pit, he glanced down and saw the Dreadnought glaring up at him, its body half-submerged in burning lava. Flames and steam billowed from its body as the lava found a way past its defences through the crevices in its armour. The monster was being burned alive inside its own skin. Yet, still, it clung on to Kergis’ leg, intent on dragging him to hell with it.
At last, Kergis was able to twist around and bring his sword to bear. He slashed downward, the descending arc of his power sword trailing bright flashes of sparks as the energy field of the blade ignited tiny micro-pockets of flammable gas rising from the lava. Unlike the last time he had struck the Dreadnought, this time the blade hit its mark squarely. It cut through the lava-weakened armour of the Dreadnought’s arm, severing it at the elbow.
Its hold on his leg lost, the Dreadnought sank into the boiling lava like a tired swimmer. Its last sound was a final, despairing howl. Then, it was gone.
“Sergeant!” Kergis felt hands at his shoulder. “Quickly, take my hand! We won’t let you fall!”
It was Arik. Together with Gurban, the pathfinder had leapt across the pit to help rescue him. Soon, they had pulled Kergis away from the mouth of the hole. The three of them stood watching the smoke rising from the pit as the other men of the squad rushed to join them.
“That was a close one,” Arik said to Kergis, once he could see the sergeant had regained his breath. “For a moment, I thought we’d lost you.”
“For a moment I thought the same myself,” Kergis admitted.
He paused for a second to listen. From further ahead he heard the sound of a distant klaxon, echoing shrilly around the tunnels. Evidently, the fight with the Dreadnought had alerted the enemy to their presence.
It seemed they no longer had the element of surprise on their side.
Osol was dead. In the aftermath of the fight, it became clear the White Scars had lost two of their number in return for the Dreadnought’s death. Kergis had known Doshin had been killed, his head blasted to atoms by the thing’s plasma cannon, but the death of Osol came as an unpleasant surprise. He had seen the younger Space Marine fall, but he had still harboured hopes that Osol might have survived the attack.
As it was, those hopes had been swiftly dashed. The Dreadnought’s hammering blows had smashed through Osol’s helmet and crushed his skull like an eggshell.
The death of both men was a bitter loss to the squad, but Kergis found the death of Osol to be an especial cause for sorrow. The young White Scar had been rough around the edges, but he had showed great promise. Kergis knew he was not alone in expecting that Osol would one day rise high in the Chapter.
Sadly, that promise would never be fulfilled.
“We have lost our brothers,” he said to his men afterwards, once they had taken the weapons and ammunition from the dead men’s bodies, along with the explosives and their few personal effects. “But we know all that was good in them is not lost. They will be remembered in the tales we tell around the campfire, and in the annals maintained by the Chaplains. And their gene-seed has survived their deaths. Through it, they will serve as the forebears of future White Scars.”
His hands were slick with blood as he spoke. As the ranking warrior among his men, it had fallen to Kergis to remove the progenoid glands from Osol and Doshin. He had placed the harvested glands into a cryo-flask and given it to Gurban for safekeeping. In time, the progenoids would be returned to Chogoris where the Chapter Apothecaries would use them in the creation of more new White Scars. Osol and Doshin were dead, but their gene-seed would live on.
While Kergis had performed the bloody work of removing the progenoids, the other members of the squad had removed their helmets as a mark of respect. Now, Kergis looked around at their faces, one by one.
“Remember the teachings of the Stormseers,” he said to his men. “Even in death, our brothers are still with us. They sit at our shoulder. Their spirits guide us and watch us.”
“In death, their spirits are still with us,” the squad intoned quietly, echoing his words with their heads bowed and their voices as one.
It was a phrase and a sentiment taken from the ancient funerary rites still practised on the plains of Chogoris. The pressure of time meant that Kergis could do little except say a few words over the bodies of his dead brothers. If they had been on Chogoris, things would have been different. As warriors fallen in battle, Osol and Doshin would have been accorded the highest of honours. Instead, the current situation meant the best Kergis and his men had been able to do was to set booby traps to kill any enemy or scavenger who might try to defile their dead brothers’ remains.
“We should be on our way,” Gurban said, once their preparations were done. “The enemy will be looking for us, but they’ll have a hard time searching all these tunnels. We’ll have the best chance of reaching our objective if we push on now, before they
can get the search properly organised.”
“Agreed,” Kergis nodded. “But there has been a change of plan. I won’t be going with you.”
If he had claimed the Emperor had appeared to him in a vision, he doubted it would have had more of an effect on his men. Their faces looked thunderstruck.
“I cannot explain the whole of it,” Kergis said, lifting a hand to stifle the squad’s protests. “I can only say that there is more to our mission here than you were told. I was given a second secret task, to be accomplished alongside the main objective of our mission. I had hoped to complete the main objective first, but events have become our master in this. Now the enemy knows we are here, the only way to achieve both tasks is to split our forces. Gurban, you will lead the squad to the main objective and complete the sabotage as planned. As for the second task, I will continue alone and complete it by myself.”
“But sergeant…” Arik’s expression was aghast. “You can’t leave us now. At least let us know what is going on. If you have to leave, let us know it serves some reason.”
“I’m sorry,” Kergis turned to Gurban. “The mission falls to you now. Remember the importance of what we were sent to do here. If the power supply to the void shield isn’t interrupted the assault on Chaldis may fail. Our brothers are counting on you, Gurban. I have every faith you will not let them down.”
“I will not allow us to fail,” Gurban nodded, solemnly. “But what of you, sergeant? When we are attacking the main objective, where will you be?”
“I will be hunting for the master of this place,” Kergis said. “He has business with the White Scars that cannot be allowed to go unfinished.”
The overflow chamber was a juncture point in the tunnels, so it was there that Kergis took his leave of the squad. Using the survey blueprint to guide him he chose a tunnel that brought him closer to the main body of the power complex while his comrades followed a path deeper into the bowels of the facility. Their objective was the control room overseeing the operation of the lava tunnels, while his lay in the higher reaches of the complex.
All through the journey the sound of the klaxon reverberated through the tunnels. Evidently, the sounds of the battle against the Dreadnought and the explosion that tipped it into the lava pit had stirred up a hornets’ nest of enemy activity. All too aware that this might make things harder for Gurban and the others, Kergis decided he would do what he could to ease his brothers on their path through the complex.
It was not difficult. The fact an alarm had been raised meant there were sentries and search parties moving throughout the area. Some of them would be in Kergis’ way. By killing them as swiftly and noisily as possible he could achieve two aims at once: clearing the pathway to his own objective while simultaneously drawing the enemy away from the rest of the squad. If luck was on his side every enemy in the complex would soon be chasing him, leaving Gurban and the others with a relatively clear path to the control room.
Given the sheer number of enemy troops now swarming throughout the facility, it was not long before he was able to put his plan into practice.
“We have found the intruder!” the search party leader screamed into his vox. “He is Astartes… wearing white armour like the blessed one… he…”
Kergis ended the man’s words with a shot from his bolt pistol, the round hitting him in the middle of his forehead and detonating inside his skull.
There were five other men in the group, one of dozens of such search parties currently scouring the Mons. They were armed with autoguns and wore robes indicating their membership in one of the many foul cults which had flourished on Tephra VII since it had fallen to Chaos.
Even by the standard of the scum that frequently attached itself to Chaos warbands, they were poor warriors. They were actively searching for an intruder, supposedly on their guard, but Kergis had been able to get behind them with ease. He had encountered them a little while after he emerged from the lava tunnels into the complex proper. By then, they were the sixth or seventh group of guards he had encountered. He had killed so many he had begun to lose count.
The rest of the search party quickly followed their leader into death. Armed with his power sword, he made short work of them.
“Search Group Nine, are you still there? Nine, can you hear me?”
The leader’s vox had fallen to the ground and continued to squawk long after its owner and his comrades were dead. Treading on it, Kergis crushed it.
Turning away from the carnage he had just wrought with barely a thought, Kergis hurried his steps and pushed on through the complex. Still guided by the survey blueprints he had been given as part of the mission, he travelled a twisting trail through the Mons, frequently punctuated by bloody encounters with small parties of the enemy garrison.
Wary of the danger he might be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers, he was careful to stay away from the main areas of the complex that were likely to feature the greatest concentrations of the enemy’s strength. Instead, he stayed to the byways, relying on a network of maintenance tubes and access hatchways to take him through the complex. In this, the facility’s very nature worked in his favour.
Inside, the power complex was a vast and uncoordinated maze of rooms and corridors, open spaces and storage areas. It had quickly become clear the enemy lacked the same blueprints that he possessed. Without them, they could only trail in confusion in Kergis’ wake while he journeyed unerringly to his target.
His objective was situated in the higher levels of the complex, in the area the warband’s leaders had set aside as their quarters. As Kergis followed a twisting path through the tubes and hatchways, he noticed the sentries and guard posts appeared to thin in numbers as he rose higher through the facility.
To his mind it seemed curious that the enemy had chosen to leave their leaders’ quarters relatively unprotected. A small, quiet voice in his mind wondered whether he was missing something. It was almost as if the enemy had left the path to their leaders’ quarters clear, though any motive they might have had to do so eluded him.
Dismissing his thoughts as idle fancies, he continued on his journey.
Before long he found himself within sight of his objective. Moving quietly down a long corridor on one of the upper floors of the complex, he peered around a corner and saw two sentries standing outside a closed doorway. Based on the survey blueprints, and the intelligence gathered from Imperial refugees who had escaped Tephra after its fall, Kergis knew the doorway was the entrance to the private quarters of the leader of the warband responsible for garrisoning the Mons. Through those doors, he would find his target.
Watching the sentries from cover, he waited until their heads were turned away from him. Then, he struck. He ran towards them, all too aware of the sound of his footsteps as they boomed off the metal surface of the floor. It could not be helped. The time for stealth had passed, replaced by the need for quick, decisive action.
Hearing the footsteps running towards them, the sentries turned and raised their autoguns. Their response came too late. Having crossed the distance to their position in barely the time it took them to lift their guns, Kergis lashed out twice with his power sword. In those two movements, the sentries were dead.
Cautiously, Kergis tried to open the doors into the warband leader’s quarters and found them unlocked. Pushing them ajar as quietly as possible, he advanced silently into the chamber beyond. He saw a room decorated in a strangely Spartan manner. There were almost no furnishings, beyond a metal cot at one end of the room and a chair situated in the centre. Kergis noticed they were sized for Astartes rather than ordinary humans. The rest of the room was bare. There was evidence the walls had once been decorated with friezes and mosaics, probably Imperial in nature, but they had been roughly gouged and chopped from the surface, leaving a detritus of dust and plaster sitting on the floor.
His sword and bolt pistol at the ready, Kergis moved further into the room.
“Hello, arban,” a familiar voice said behind him.
“Borchu?” Kergis had said two days earlier as he stood with Jurga Khan in the strategium, staring at the reconnaissance pict of the armoured figure.
“Yes, it is him,” Jurga Khan agreed, nodding. “You see now why I thought it best to give you this mission? Borchu was in your squad.”
“But he is dead,” Kergis said, his voice disbelieving. “He was killed in the caverns of Nephis-Ra. I saw him die myself.”
“His body was never recovered,” the Khan reminded him. “I have read your battle report. His body was lost in a cave-in after he had been felled by enemy fire. That section of the caverns was destroyed three days later when the enemy unleashed a captured Deathstrike armed with a plasma warhead. It was assumed Borchu’s body was annihilated in the blast with everything else.”
The Khan’s expression darkened.
“It now seems that assumption was in error.”
“But he was dead,” Kergis said. “I saw him fall myself. He was hit in the chest by a lascannon. It was at close range and the beam went straight through him, emerging from his back. There is no way anyone could have survived it—otherwise, I would have tried to rescue him. But it was pointless. The heat of the beam would have cooked his internal organs instantly.”
At first, Jurga Khan did not answer. Instead, he made a gesture with his hand and caused another pict to appear. It was taken at the same angle as the previous one, but it showed a close-up of the armoured figure’s chest. Despite the grainy nature of the image it was clear the chest plate of the armour had been repaired by an unknown hand. The workmanship was poor and it was readily apparent to Kergis’ trained eye that the damage which had occasioned the repair work had been caused by something which had drilled a fist-sized hole through the armour’s ceramite surface. Even if he had not seen the wound inflicted himself, his decades spent on the battlefield would have told him precisely which weapon had created the hole.
Legends of the Space Marines Page 10
