Close at hand, Garro fought hard, the lone warrior’s grey armour now smeared with blood and smoke-dirt. He was possessed of keen, intense focus, and every stroke of his sword, every bolt shell expended, was placed where it would do the maximum amount of damage. Rubio saw light glitter off the brass eagle-head on Garro’s ornate chestplate, and once again wondered who this man might be. He fought with the poise and cold lethality of a seasoned veteran.
Then Garro spun in place as something caught his sight. He stabbed out with his sword, towards a ridge in the middle distance. ‘There! This is only the precursor! Enemy incoming! Close the line!’
The Ultramarine heard a sound like the grinding of gigantic break-tooth gears, and from behind the ridgeline emerged a great construct of plasteel and cables, armour and brass. With a grating noise, with pistons spitting foul steam, it clattered across the stone on six jointed piston-hissing legs, crab-walking as it crushed the unwary in its path. An angular turret thrust up from the centre of the machine-thing’s mass, overloaded with gun cupolas and missile tubes in organ-pipe profusion. It had a main cannon made of black iron, the yawning muzzle dripping with penitent chains.
The mechanism moved like it was alive, its flanks daubed in arterial-red and dressed in the ebon detailing of the Word Bearers. It defiled the ground underfoot with every heavy step.
As one, the Ultramarines turned their fire upon it, but if anything the attack seemed to enrage the monstrosity. Rubio watched as it rocked forwards and broke into a skittering run, far faster than something of such bulk should ever have moved. Mass-reactive bolt shells, plasma rounds and short-range missile impacts all found their mark on the war machine, ripping into it. But on it came, catching afire, bearing down on the central barricade. And upon it, the captain of the 21st Company.
Rubio’s blood turned to ice. ‘Gaius!’ His shouted warning split the air, but too late, things fell into place. Too late, he saw the moment unfolding once again. The battle, red in blade and black in shell. Rubio broke off and threw himself into a heedless, headlong charge, swatting aside any enemy that dared to block his path. He had to stop it. He knew what was coming and he had to stop it.
Gaius’ helmet turned, as the captain registered Rubio’s cry and saw him come running; but then the battle engine’s cannon spoke and Rubio was ripped from the ground by the catastrophic shock of impact. He tumbled and spun, landing hard with a bone-shaking crash that brought the taste of copper to his lips. He tried to rise, and there before him, he saw a metallic leg collide with his captain’s chest and ram him down.
Garro turned as he heard Rubio’s cry of anguish. The shout was immediately lost in the brutal noise of armour cracking and snapping under a terrible, inexorable weight. Captain Gaius’ ornate chestplate splintered with a sound like the snapping of bones, and his dark blood spattered across the rail lines in wet splashes of colour, freezing instantly where it fell. Garro’s teeth ground behind the forbidding mask of his helmet, and he silently cursed the defiler-machine as it ended the life of another loyal scion of Terra.
It howled and grumbled as it half stumbled on legs damaged by sustained fire. One metal limb was hanging lifeless from oil-spitting hinges, but the construct still fought on, returning chugs of cannonade towards the defenders around the tunnel mouth. It reared up like an angry arachnid, and the legionary caught sight of Brother Rubio as he fought to drag the captain’s battered body into cover. The construct hooted and went for him, intent on ending the Ultramarine’s life as brutally as his captain’s.
‘No,’ snarled Garro, and he bounded from a tumbledown marble column, boots crunching on broken stones as he marshalled his strength to leap high. The warrior in storm-dark armour led with his sword and landed with a resonant clang atop the traitor engine’s turret. It rocked and twisted like a bear attacked by a wolf, trying to dislodge him.
Garro spun the length of Libertas around his gauntlets and plunged the point of the power sword into the apex of the turret, where a screaming skull-mask glared out with eyes of burning black. Oily fluids jetted from the savage cut and the machine shook, almost as if it were in agony. Ultramarines from the company’s Devastator squads were closing, heavy lascannons, plasma weapons and multi-meltas in their mailed fists. His close-quarter attack was enough to distract the machine, giving Rubio time to get clear and the Devastators the moment they needed.
He shouted into his vox, struggling to hold on. ‘Kill this thing! Do it now!’
An inferno of white heat, las-beams and rocket strikes engulfed the traitor engine, and it recoiled. The legionary heard an echoing rattle that was almost a screech, before the spider-legged tank finally threw him off in its shuddering death throes.
Garro landed hard, still clutching his sword, and rolled behind a slab of rockcrete as the machine met its end. The tank-thing exploded in a blast of flame, sending a storm of cursed metal fragments clattering to the frozen ground. The detonation broke the lines of the few cultists still standing, and those not executed by bolt-fire from Rubio’s kinsmen died from the force of the explosive shock wave.
As Garro pulled himself to his feet, silence fell, the dead air leaden and threatening. He took a moment to climb atop the remains of the shattered barricade where Captain Gaius had briefly stood. From the vantage point, Garro could see out across the ridgeline to where the next wave of the enemy were massing. The optics in his helmet picked out targets at a distance, matching silhouettes to known threat vectors.
Word Bearers. The army of the primarch Lorgar, his most dedicated warrior-fanatics, and until recently, men considered kindred battle-brothers under the aegis of the Emperor of Mankind. Cold, repellent rage rose in Garro’s chest as he beheld them. Was there no end to the spread of traitors’ rot through the Legions? The Sons of Horus, the World Eaters, the Emperor’s Children, even his own Death Guard, all had taken the turncoat path against the will of the Emperor. Against His divine will.
And now the Word Bearers would be counted among the renegades, damned forever for their rebellion, their betrayal marked in the blood of the Ultramarines. His aspect grim, Garro stepped down and turned away. They were coming, and in a force far greater than the remnants of the 21st Company could muster. Gaius’ men would die defending the tunnel to Numinus, and the route to the city would be lost. It was inevitable.
But that was not his concern.
Garro’s objective lay elsewhere.
Brother Rubio’s head was bent over the body of Captain Gaius as he approached. The Ultramarine crossed the dead warrior’s heavy ceramite gauntlets over his chest in the sign of the Imperial aquila, and then saluted again, this time in the old pre-Unification manner, a balled fist to his chest. Rubio glanced up at him, and Garro imagined he felt the warrior’s angry eyes glaring out through the ruby lenses of his helmet.
‘My captain is dead,’ he said, at length. ‘He gave his life with nobility.’
‘Aye.’ Garro nodded, and framed his next words with care. It was time to make his mission plain. ‘That he did. But you could have prevented this.’
Rubio reacted as if he had been struck, stiffening in shock. ‘You dare–?’
‘I know what you are, brother, what you are capable of.’ Garro spoke quietly, so their conversation did not carry beyond them. ‘I know what you once were, before Nikaea, before you gave up your hood and your blade. A psyker.’ He gestured at the captain’s corpse. ‘You could have mind-spoken to him. You might even have been able to shield Gaius with a wall of psychic force. Yet you did not.’
Rubio’s manner shifted and he advanced on the other legionary, his armoured hands balling into fists. ‘I have my orders!’ He spat the reply back at him. ‘I will not challenge the decree!’
And yet, even as he spoke, Garro heard the conflict churning beneath the surface of Rubio’s words. The Ultramarine was caught between bonds of loyalty to brethren and company, and his oath to primarch and Emperor. What torme
nt must it be for him to know that one had been sacrificed to the demand of the other? It was a pain that Garro knew only too well.
‘My captain is dead,’ Rubio went on, his bitterness strong and dark. ‘Whatever you wanted with him, knight errant, you came too late.’
Garro gave a slow shake of his head. ‘I didn’t come to Calth for Gaius. I came for you, Tylos Rubio, under orders from Malcador the Sigillite.’ He let that statement register with the Ultramarine before pushing on. ‘Malcador has commanded me to gather a host of warriors from across the Legions and bring them to the Imperial Palace. You are the first of that number, and if my mission is to be fulfilled, we must leave now.’
Rubio’s anger ebbed and he shook his head, disbelieving. ‘What you ask is impossible.’
‘Not so. Time is against us and we must move quickly. If the Word Bearers launch their attack, we will be trapped here.’ He looked up into the tormented sky. ‘I need only transmit a machine-call signal to summon my Stormbird. We will recover to my ship, and then–’
‘No!’ Rubio spoke over him. ‘You would have me leave the side of my sworn battle-brothers in their darkest hour? I refuse!’
‘It is the Sigillite’s command,’ Garro repeated. ‘His word is the Emperor’s word.’
The other legionary stood silent for a long moment. Then he drew himself up. ‘The Sigillite’s command be damned. You give me no recourse, Garro. And so, on my honour as a son of Macragge, I choose to defy it. Even if it means I will perish here, even if you colour me a rebel like Lorgar’s turncoats, I defy it.’
It was not the answer he had expected. Garro looked down at the sword in his hand. The impassive reflection of his battle helmet was reflected in the sheen of the adamantine blade. The fire in the Ultramarine’s heart burned strong, and the other warrior felt the echo of it in himself.
If our roles had been reversed, Rubio’s words would be my own. He felt the flash of cold certainty at that, and he could find no fault with them. ‘Very well,’ said Garro. ‘If that is so, then I choose to stand with you… We will embrace defiance together.’
Rubio eyed him. ‘If you have leave to escape this place, you should take it. Remain and there will be only death. An honourable death, perhaps, but an end nonetheless.’
Behind his helmet, Garro smiled. ‘We shall see.’
Shoulder to shoulder, they met the advance of the traitors at the entrance to the vast stone tunnel with a clamour like unleashed thunder. The horde of armoured warriors stormed the barrier in unfettered wild array, their boltguns blazing and vile battle-cries in their throats. The absolute ferocity of the assault was a shocking, brutal thing, breaking in a wave of fire and blood across the barricades and the dug-in lines of the defenders. The Word Bearers threw themselves into the attack with a mad fervour that outstripped even the crazed offensive of the cultist hordes.
Every Ultramarine’s gun was discharged, but for each of them there were five times that number of Lorgar’s fanatic warriors, and the punishing momentum of their onslaught tore through the barriers, shattering the lines and riding forwards in a surge of blackened armour. The Word Bearers had always been known for their extremist, militant behaviours. During the years of the Great Crusade to reunite the lost colonies of humankind, many worlds that had fallen under the shadow of the XVII Legion had felt their wrath. Those who did not pay proper obeisance to the Emperor were punished mercilessly, so much so that the Master of Mankind had personally rebuked their primarch Lorgar, chastising him for fostering idolatry of his father, and violence beyond the pale. Some believed Lorgar and his Legion had heeded these lessons, but now it seemed clear that if anything, they had rejected their lord and found a new path. A path of cruelty and carnage, fuelled by raw hate and new gods.
Garro’s blade sang and his bolter roared as the battle lines crossed and recrossed. He silenced the inner voice that rebelled at the notion of fighting fellow legionaries and bore down, reminding himself that these turncoats were no longer worthy of that name. These were traitors of the basest nature.
The armour of the Word Bearers, usually a uniform ebon shade, was deliberately smeared with what could only be human blood. The Legion symbol of a burning book upon their pauldrons had been daubed over with an eight-pointed star and a crude rendition of a screaming face. This self-desecration only stoked Garro’s anger higher, and he fought with righteous fury, striking down traitors with sweeps of his sword and blasts of bolt shells. Close by, Rubio released bursts of bolter fire that blasted attacking warriors back in spiralling, bloody heaps. With each man they put down, more took his place.
Garro’s gorge rose as he saw a group of Word Bearers kill an Ultramarine with a hurricane of storm bolter fire. To his disgust, even when the legionary fell dead to the ground, they continued to desecrate his body, unloading round after round into the twitching mess of the corpse; and as they did so, he heard them laughing. The wicked malice was like nothing Garro had ever seen from another legionary. The Word Bearers took delight in what they were doing, savouring it. He felt sickened inside.
‘They keep coming.’ Rubio ground out the words. ‘Eyes of Terra, have they brought the whole Legion to fight us?’
Garro refused to flinch in the face of such odds. ‘This will not end well, but in His name we will make them pay for every step of their advance.’ He raised his blade and bellowed. ‘Ave Imperator!’ His battle-cry echoed and he killed another traitor-kin, but his words rang a hollow note.
All around, the defenders were running low on ammunition, pacing each shot, making every bolt and beam count. Meanwhile, the Word Bearers were crazed in their abandon, strafing the barricades and filling the air with the stench of promethium and spent cordite. The press of death was close at hand, and finally, as a fresh surge of attackers pushed forwards, the cry went up among the lines of the Ultramarines.
‘Fall back!’ shouted Rubio. ‘To the tunnel, close up and fall back!’
Garro followed, silently cursing circumstance as he sprinted out of the icy air and into the gloomy, frost-rimed stone of the rail tunnel. Behind him, the Word Bearers screamed their hate and came running.
Rubio beckoned, and Garro’s blood ran cold as he dared to glance over his shoulder. He spied a gathering of hulking, angular shapes emerging from amid the howling lines of the traitors. The giant forms pushed forwards, shouldering their own men aside, bringing up heavy, multi-barrelled weapons bristling with firepower.
‘Terminators!’ The Ultramarine spat a curse at the enemy cadre, as they advanced in steady, iron-limbed lockstep.
The towering, thickset figures were twice the mass of any line legionary, and the suits of heavy powered armour lumbered forwards, effortlessly dismissing the rain of las-bolts and mass-reactive shells sleeting from their wargear.
Rubio ranged around, but it quickly became clear that there were not enough heavy weapons to put down the line of steel-ceramite leviathans. Krak grenades pushed them back, but only for a moment. The line advanced on, breaching barricade after barricade, while the rest of the Word Bearers fell in behind them, delivering a cascade of support fire. The Terminators tore open every target they chose. Lines of tracer from massed combi-bolters and the spinning muzzles of autocannons shredded the bodies of the defenders. Ultramarines fell dead, red ruins marring the flawless blue of their power armour. Rubio felt a hand on his vambrace and turned to find Garro pointing with his sword.
‘We cannot hold this line,’ said the warrior in ghost-grey. ‘We have only a few moments before the Terminators enter the tunnel. We must pull back.’
‘To where?’ snarled Rubio. ‘Do we keep retreating down this tunnel until we reach the gates of Numinus? We have no cover in here! If we show them our backs, we will be cut down.’ He shook his head. ‘The colours of Ultramar do not run.’
‘Then we will die here.’ Garro’s matter-of-fact reply only served to stoke Rubio’s annoyance further. ‘You wi
ll have defied one order to perish for another, and your battle-brothers along with you.’
The Ultramarine’s face twisted in frustration. ‘Damn you, Garro! You leave me no choice.’
Garro shook his head. ‘No, brother. You have already made this choice. It is only now that you understand that.’ He loaded his last clip into his bolter, and opened fire. Rubio watched the survivors of the 21st Company as they were forced back, deeper into the throat of the tunnel by the endless deluge of rounds.
What little daylight could enter the wide passageway was lost behind the lumbering shapes of the Terminators, as they crossed the railhead and entered the tunnel proper. The black shadows were illuminated by the cruciform muzzle flashes of their guns, stark light showing scowling, feral-faced helmets crested with horns and tusks. Rubio heard his comrades screaming as they fell. This was no longer an attack; it had become an execution.
Not again. No more. The flash of pain Rubio had felt at the death of Captain Gaius lashed through him once again. I will suffer this no more.
The Ultramarine let his spent bolter fall from his grip to the floor and sucked in a shuddering breath, raising his hands before him, curling them into claws. He let it happen, allowing himself to reach deep inside and draw out what was needed.
Immediately he felt the old, familiar crackle of eldritch power dwelling at the base of his skull, twisting and turning like a spear of lightning confined in a bottle. All the cantrips and the memes, the key-phrases and thought-forms he had banned from his mind after the passing of the decree, all these things he allowed to return to him. The tainted air around Rubio took on a greasy, electric texture, the sense of a force beyond human understanding dancing at the edge of awareness. Rubio saw Garro giving him the distance he needed, saw his battle-brothers shaking their heads, but it was too late to stop it now.
Garro Page 4
