Malodrax

by Ben Counter

  ‘It is the only one,’ said Lysander. ‘Anywhere else the grinders will chew us up and the gates are a trap. That is where we will break through.’

  ‘I feel I must thank you, Captain Lysander,’ said Kaderic with a grim smile. ‘I am used to being the least sane Imperial Fist around. But this plan to storm Kulgarde is crazier than anything I could come up with.’

  ‘Leaving our brothers unavenged is insane,’ said Lysander. ‘Letting Thul build his war engines and launch his crusade is insane. This? This is the sanest thing I have ever done.’

  Far below, among the siege tower’s engines, Techmarine Kho was driving the tower across the torn-up ground of Kulgarde’s hinterland, through the enormous shell craters and between the hulks of fallen war engines. The lookouts on the walls would have spied them by now and even if they had first thought the tower was another feral war engine wandering the proving grounds, they would have realised by now it was heading towards the fortress with a purpose. At Lysander’s instruction, Kho was aiming for the place where Lysander had driven the siege idol through the wall when he first escaped from Kulgarde – it had been partially rebuilt and workers scrambled through the rigging and scaffolding even now. The spiked roller at its base had not yet been replaced, which gave the siege tower a chance – just a chance, not a certainty – of breaching deep enough to let the Imperial Fists disembark into the fortress.

  This had been Lysander’s plan of attack. It was the only way into Kulgarde – use one of Thul’s war machines against him and hope the breach in the wall was still vulnerable enough for the Imperial Fists to get in the way Lysander had got out. It was, indeed, an insane plan, but on Malodrax it seemed the only thing that made sense.

  ‘Five minutes,’ voxed Techmarine Kho above the din of the engines.

  ‘Battle rites!’ ordered Chaplain Lycaon over the vox-net. ‘Let your prayers be your bullets! Let your faith be your armour!’

  The strike force was gathering in the upper levels, murmuring ancient prayers to the machine-spirits of their weapons and armour. Lysander spoke those words to his own wargear – his was new to him, for he had left his original wargear on Malodrax the last time he had seen Kulgarde. He prayed for the souls of their previous owners, for few items of the Chapter’s wargear did not have components previously carried by another Imperial Fist. The armour was from a Brother Kalithrax, who had been slain by corrosive tyranid spores in the crusade against Hive Splinter Karkinos, and had been altered to fit Lysander in the forges of the Phalanx. The bolter had been carried by Sergeant Thornas, who had replaced it with a storm bolter crafted by the Chapter’s artificers. The chainblade was built from components returned to the Chapter after the Imphalian Massacre.

  Lysander asked his armour to be resolute and bold. His chainblade he asked never to relent, whatever foe it might find beneath its teeth. His bolter he asked for accuracy and the smoothness of its action. He had said such words a thousand times before, and he felt his mind bedding down into the ways of war, the ways of the soldier taking him over as the world around him turned into a battlefield. He remembered the prayer he has spoken on the Shield of Valour, and for a moment he was back there in the chill recycled air of the ship, the Iron Hands about to launch their ambush from the warp.

  He looked up from the bolter in his hands. The other Imperial Fists were finishing up their own rites, Lycaon ministering to his crozius arcanum and Antinas to his heavy flamer. Only Halaestus was silent and still, crouched by one wall, eyes closed.

  ‘Brother Halaestus,’ said Lysander quietly. ‘We are at the eve of battle. We must observe our rites. I will lead them for you, if you wish.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Halaestus. ‘What benefit is there? War is war. Praying for a better outcome will not change it. If it wants us dead, we are dead.’

  ‘These are not the words of an Imperial Fist.’

  ‘Then I am not an Imperial Fist!’ snapped Halaestus. ‘What does it matter if my armour holds? If the Iron Warriors aim a bullet at my heart then I would be glad of it! I would beg for it! I would plead to Kraegon Thul to end me himself! Throne knows I begged for it often enough when the Bone Carvers had me.’

  ‘Then take revenge!’ said Lysander, grabbing Halaestus by the shoulder. ‘Thul must die. His Iron Warriors must die. Hold on to that if you care nothing for your own survival. Pray for your bolter! Pray for your blade!’

  ‘And what does revenge mean?’ Halaestus jumped to his feet. ‘What will I get from Thul lying dead before me? I feel nothing. I am hollow. Revenge is the right of every Space Marine, but what does that mean to me?’ Halaestus unhooked the clasps of his breastplate and pulled it away from his chest, revealing the tattered patchwork skin on his chest. He pointed at the long red scar leading from below his chin to the top of his sternum. In spite of a Space Marine’s accelerated healing the scar had not healed and was still livid and weeping.

  ‘I am not a Space Marine!’ shouted Halaestus. ‘I am not an Imperial Fist! I am not even a man!’

  Lysander could not look away from the scar. There had been the seat of the gene-seed, the genetic material of Rogal Dorn and the organ that had regulated the many augmentations when Halaestus was turned into a Space Marine.

  It was gone. The gene-seed had been cut out by the Bone Carvers and taken to Kraegon Thul’s armoury, to be implanted into a new Iron Warrior. And though none of them had spoken of it directly, every Imperial Fist in the strike force had known what that meant.

  The strike force had all heard Halaestus’s words. Their rites completed, they were silent now. Normally one or two would be swapping boasts about the kills they would take in the coming battle, or reciting a parable of the Chapter’s heroes, but Halaestus had stopped that.

  Lysander picked Halaestus’s chainsword off the floor of the siege tower and pressed it into Halaestus’s hand, and left anything else unsaid.

  ‘One minute!’ came the vox from Techmarine Kho. The walls of Kulgarde filled the murder-holes, hung with banners and corpses, streaked with old blood and pitted with bullet scars from a thousand failed sieges past.

  Bolter shots cracked against the armoured front of the tower, ranging shots from sentries on the walls. They would be no danger to the tower in themselves, but that was not the purpose. The Iron Warriors had the range. What followed would decide if the tower even made it to the wall.

  On top of the battlements, with a great grinding of metal on stone, emerged a hemispherical structure of rust-streaked iron. The dome slid open to reveal a huge and ancient weapon, a massive laser cannon such as might be found in the batteries of a warship or wielded by one of the Imperium’s Titan war engines.

  ‘They still think we’re feral,’ voxed Chaplain Lycaon, ‘and wish only to put us down like a rabid pet. But they will not believe that for much longer. This is where the battle begins. This is where we decide the fate of this world! Techmarine Kho! Do it!’

  The engine note rose as the siege engine accelerated, the whole tower juddering as the rollers crunched through the broken ground. On the huge siege gun scrambled dozens of labourers, menials of Kulgarde working to dial in the focusing lenses and check the connections to the fortress generators that would create the massive laser pulse. The cannon was large enough to spit the siege tower on a lance of laser, and its elevation was being lowered so the shot would go right through its engines and the axles of its rollers. The engine would be crippled in a single shot, and the subsequent shots would blast it apart floor by floor until it was one more heap of wreckage in the shadow of Kulgarde.

  The cannon was sighted. The siege engine kept accelerating as the Iron Warriors on the walls came into sight, hulking figures in their black iron armour, mutant labourers cowering from them wherever they went.

  Lysander detected another note in the engine din of the siege tower, a higher, rising tone like the buzzing of a giant insect. He saw the reaction of the Iron Warriors on the wall
s as the Land Speeders zipped out in front of the siege tower, emerging from their concealed positions hovering just behind the tower’s rearmost rollers.

  Brother Gethor manned Dorn’s Dagger with one of Squad Kaderic, Brother Glaven, on the multi-melta. With Techmarine Kho needed to drive the siege tower, the Talon Blade was flown by the strike force member that Kho judged most able at handling the controls – Brother Shovarn of Lycaon’s command squad, with another of his squad, Brother Kaelon, on the heavy bolter. The Iron Warriors opened fire as the Land Speeders hurtled towards the gun emplacement, sprays of bolter fire arrowing around them.

  Dorn’s Dagger swooped down level with the gun emplacement as its guns opened up, and bright fire stuttered around the emplacement. Broken bodies were blasted apart, mutants torn to pieces by the heavy bolter shells detonating against the gun housing. Bodies fell, tumbling down past the front of the wall. The Talon Blade swept around to attack from the other side, stitching its assault cannon fire along the top of the wall. An Iron Warrior threw himself out of the way as another fired a volley up into the Land Speeder’s underside.

  More Iron Warriors were arriving on the walls. The alarm had spread quickly, the discipline of the Iron Warriors’ chain of command kicking them into action. Already, a few seconds after the Imperial Fists played their hand, Kraegon Thul would know they were there. He would know Lysander had brought them.

  Thul must have been waiting for them to come back. He must have had a plan for when they arrived, a plan kicking into action even now.

  The Talon Blade’s multi-melta fired, a bright orange bolt of superheated particles ripping into the mechanism that controlled the attitude of the laser cannon’s barrel. Molten metal spat fire as the whole gun shifted to one side, old metal screaming in protest. Menials ran for cover. A power cable came loose, spraying sparks as it whipped out of control.

  Dorn’s Dagger banked around for another pass, more gunfire falling around the emplacement. Something detonated inside it and white-blue flames erupted as the whole emplacement fell back, collapsing into its housing within the wall. Fuel cells cooked off and lightning raged through the destruction, throwing rubble and bodies everywhere. Debris rained off the front of the siege tower and chunks of burning masonry crashed through the scaffolding cladding the front of the wall.

  ‘Ten seconds!’ came Kho’s vox through the din.

  ‘Positions!’ ordered Lycaon. The strike force stacked up behind the tower’s drawbridge.

  ‘I’m hit!’ came Brother Gethor’s voice over the vox. ‘We’re coming down behind the wall!’

  Lysander saw Dorn’s Dagger trailing smoke and flame as it spiralled out of control, disappearing behind the mass of burning wreckage that remained of the gun emplacement. The Talon Blade banked away from the destruction, keeping clear of the showering debris.

  The siege engine rode up alarmingly, tipping back until Lysander was sure it would topple over backwards. But the moment passed and it pitched forwards again.

  With a terrible impact, the top of the tower smashed into the wall. The sound was impossible to think through. Imperial Fists were thrown to the floor – Lysander kept his balance and saw the portcullis dropping open, crunching through the battlements.

  The siege engine was several metres too short to deliver its payload directly onto the wall. The downed portcullis formed a bridge that sloped sharply upwards.

  ‘Onwards!’ bellowed First Sergeant Kaderic. He had taken up position at the front of the strike force, and none had questioned his right to be the first through.

  Kaderic’s squad followed him as he ran up the portcullis and vaulted over the edge. Lysander went with Lycaon’s squad, who followed him and Squad Gorvetz followed up the rear.

  The bullets were already flying as Lysander ran up the portcullis. His vision was full of the plume of flame billowing up from the shattered laser cannon. He leapt over the edge and the top of the wall rushed up to meet him.

  He let his knees buckle under him and he dropped into a crouch. To his left was the enormous blocky structure of the gatehouse. Below it was the main way into the fortress, through the gates, and that structure could be filled with Iron Warriors pouring bolter fire into anyone who got past the outer gates and found themselves trapped below. To his right was the gun emplacement, still spewing flame.

  A squad of Iron Warriors had made the top of the wall before the siege tower had hit. He recognised that gnarled bare metal power armour of long-obsolete marks, with faceplates mirroring the iron mask symbol of the Legion. Kaderic’s squad had dived into them with fury that would be reckless in anyone else but which was a Space Marine’s most dangerous weapon, marshalled and unleashed as precisely as a sniper’s bullet.

  Kaderic bowled an Iron Warrior to the floor as one of his fellow Imperial Fists hammered a volley of bolter fire at point-blank range through the Traitor Marine’s chest. His armour burst open and hot blood rained up.

  The Iron Warriors sergeant, a monster a head taller than any other Space Marine there, waded into the fight, swinging a two-handed power maul to a brutal rhythm. Lysander saw Brother Givenar charging at the sergeant, rattling off bolter shells as he closed.

  Givenar crashed into the sergeant. The sergeant spun with impossible quickness for a man of his size, knocking the barrel of Givenar’s bolter away. Givenar’s combat knife was in his hand, blade aimed down to punch through an eyepiece or into the sergeant’s throat.

  The sergeant drove a knee up into Givenar’s midriff and threw him over his head, slamming him down onto the ground. He raised the mace, head downwards, and drove it into Givenar’s stomach.

  Lysander felt the shockwave of a power field discharging. In a burst of blue light, the mace’s head hammered down through Givenar and smashed a crater into the floor.

  ‘Givenar!’ yelled Lysander. ‘Brother!’

  Without seeming to will it, Lysander was running. He vaulted a fallen Iron Warrior as he sprinted for the sergeant. He thought he heard the sergeant laughing, a deep, metallic grating sound.

  Lysander ran within the arc of the power mace. Sure enough the sergeant brought it up and whirled it over his head, bringing it round to smack into Lysander at chest height. Lysander brought up his chainsword and the two weapons clashed.

  The power mace shattered the chainsword, sending its teeth flying in a steel hail. Lysander dropped to one knee as the mace was deflected over his head. He could feel the buzzing of the power field in his ears as it passed over him.

  His sword gone, Lysander rammed a fist into the sergeant’s knee. The Iron Warrior stumbled back and Lysander had his opening, leaping on the sergeant and knocking him onto his back. Lysander drew back his gun arm and slammed the butt of his bolter into the Iron Warrior’s faceplate, over and over, a dozen hammering blows striking home in a handful of seconds.

  The faceplate came apart. The face beneath had not seen sunlight for a long time. It was the colour of ash, of dead wood, dull and lifeless save for the black-irised eyes set way back in their scorched pits. Sharpened teeth were bared beneath a nose that had been cut away to a pair of slits. Another volley of blows slammed home, shattering jaw and cheekbone.

  The Iron Warrior got a leg underneath him and tried to force himself up. Lysander let him, using the sergeant’s own strength to bring him up and carry him higher, up over Lysander’s head. The mace swung at him but Lysander was already stepping towards the front edge of the battlements, where the crenellations gave way to the sheer drop to the shattered ground far below. Lysander roared with a final effort as he hurled the sergeant out over the edge.

  The Iron Warrior reached out to grab at a handhold on the wall’s edge, but Lysander kicked his hand away and the Iron Warriors sergeant vanished over the edge, his cry of anger and shock receding as he fell.

  Lysander turned. Their sergeant gone, the last Iron Warriors on the wall were fleeing through trapdoors and narro
w entrances to the interior of the wall, into the upper levels of the fortress where the Warsmith ruled. Lycaon’s crozius was smoking and well-blooded. Lysander counted three Imperial Fists dead – Givenar, one from Kaderic’s squad and another from Lycaon’s. He did not have time in the bedlam to name all the dead. With luck, the strike force would be back for them. Without it, the bodies would never leave Kulgarde. Nobody had leave to worry about that now.

  ‘We press on,’ said Lycaon, walking through the carnage towards Lysander. ‘Kraegon Thul marshals his defences even now. Can you lead us onwards?’

  Lysander paused to make sure of his bearings. Along the wall, past the gun emplacement, was a landing pad for a small spacecraft. It was now empty but Lysander recognised the landmark and pieced the structures below it together in his mind.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Lysander. ‘I know the way.’

  Any other military force in the Imperium, perhaps even a force from any other Chapter of Space Marines, would have been lost within seconds of entering the fortress of Kulgarde. Every corner led to a dead end, every intersection was a crossfire with murder holes and gun emplacements located to criss-cross the open ground with chains of gunfire. Each stairwell led not to the next level down, but to a pit without an exit where the defenders could pour fire down at the trapped attackers at will. Every trick that existed to bewitch invaders and lead them astray was employed among those cramped corridors of dark stone, the chambers of armouries and side chapels built to create killing zones at every turn.

  But Perturabo, the primarch of the Iron Warriors and their tutor in the ways of fortress-building and the art of the siege, was a contemporary of Rogal Dorn. The two had learned from one another as rivals, and then as blood enemies. The two primarchs were mirror images, using the same pool of knowledge to pit their warriors against one another. The Imperial Fists knew the siege as well as the Iron Warriors did, and every trick the Iron Warriors employed to keep Kulgarde inviolate, Rogal Dorn had taught to his Chapter thousands of years before.