Word Bearers

by Anthony Reynolds

  ‘Tech-priests, go forth and ready the plasma reactors of the Ordinatus. And bring the void shields up to full power,’ Magos Technicus Darioq said. The robed figures bowed their cog-bladed power halberds in compliance and left the command shrine.

  His cogitator units had judged the potency of the weapons of the enemy and calculated the likelihood of damage to the blessed Ordinatus. Any moderate risk of damage was to be avoided, thus spoke the tenets, and he had previously determined not to advance the giant war machine until the enemy forces had been pushed back by 7.435 Mechanicus standard units, back to the third defensive tier.

  Now he thought differently. He remodelled the algorithms of trajectory and manifest firepower, and a flurry of numbers scrolled down the screens lining the walls of the command shrine.

  If the energy of the rear void shields was redirected to the frontal arc then the probability of success rose exponentially the more power that he diverted there. Such a thing may be deemed heresy, for the STC explicitly stated the correct shield levels and to alter them was to ignore the teachings of the elders. But if his mission on planet c6.7.32 was compromised then it would be of no matter. He deemed the minor heresy a lesser evil than what would occur if the enemy breached the walls of the xenos structure, and he began the complex calculations necessary to adapt the systems of the Ordinatus to his will.

  Scores of Valkyries were being ripped apart by the relentless anti-aircraft fire that speared up through the roiling black clouds. Thousands of the Elysians drop-troopers were slaughtered as they plummeted down through the atmosphere at terminal velocity, but still others survived and Laron prayed that the other storm trooper platoons were amongst them.

  It was a baffling experience, to be falling alongside something so massive. They had launched from their Valkyrie above the tower and he had been falling past it for the last few minutes. That such a thing could be so high was inconceivable, the engineering impossible, but there it was in front of his eyes. It made him feel physically ill and he could hear strange voices in his head. The thing seemed to exert a gravitational pull of its own and he angled away from it, so as not to be drawn too close.

  ‘Keep your distance from the tower,’ he said into his micro-bead, but the thing merely fed back a blare of roaring, horrifying sounds in his ears and he doubted that any heard his order.

  He angled further away from the tower, hoping that his storm troopers would follow his lead, but even as he did so he felt something tugging at him, pulling him in closer, towards the hateful construction.

  He muttered a prayer to the Emperor and felt the pull slacken enough for him to angle as far from the tower as was feasible while staying on target. The surface of the tower seemed to pulse and waver, and he felt hot blasts of air spilling from it, disrupting his descent, bustling him from side to side.

  He was rapidly closing on the roiling, black smog clouds circling the tower and he was pleased to have his rebreather mask. As soon as he hit the smoke he felt terror rise within him. There were things within the oily cloud and they slashed at him with their claws, their red, glowing eyes burning fiercely in the gloom as he screamed past them.

  Wind whipped at him, drawing him off course, and he cried out as something raked a series of deep cuts across his arms and chest. It was more from shock than pain, for his heavy carapace armour ensured the wounds did little real damage, but such an attack startled him. He had the impression of insubstantial creatures flying alongside him.

  Pushing these thoughts from his mind, he turned into a steep dive, legs held together and arms clasped tightly to his sides, and prayed that he would escape the hellish clouds alive.

  Marduk chanted as he held his hands out towards the Daemonschage. As he bound each additional daemon essence within its structure, another tiny line from the Book of Lorgar flashed into existence upon its surface.

  The true names of the daemonic entities contained within appeared between each line of the holy script and the beings of the warp screamed in hatred as they were sucked from the Ether and sealed within. The bell was vibrating slightly, creating a low hum that would have been impossible to hear with mere human ears.

  His hands shook with the power of the summoning,and a bead of sweat rolled down his forehead from the exertion. He was vaguely aware of explosions in the skies above and of dark shapes falling around him, but his entire concentration was focused upon the Daemonschage, and its complex binding incantations.

  The pressure in his head increased and he felt the strength of the warp building within him. Still, his faith was unwavering and he bound the daemons of the warp to his will with the power of his word. The corners of his mouth rose in a smile as he incanted, relishing the feeling of sheer joy that came with control over the entities of Chaos.

  Varnus crouched, unmoving atop the towering Gehemehnet wall, enthralled and horrified. The air at the top of the tower was electric and he could see dim, shadowy shapes of daemons being pulled screaming and clawing into the massive bell that hung over the endless drop of the tower’s chimney. The corpses hanging in the chains twitched and convulsed, and he reeled backwards in shock as a body fell from the sky to land upon that spider web of chain, crashing amongst the corpses with bone breaking force.

  The body jerked as the chains broke its fall and the man’s back, and the body hung for a moment before it continued downwards, spiralling madly, down into the depths of the planet. A moment later, a roar of hot air was expelled up the hollow shaft, and Varnus saw more bodies falling around him. He decided that he must truly have lost his sanity, if he was seeing men falling from the heavens.

  Still they fell, some tumbling down into the gaping maw of the Gehemehnet, as if it were drawing them to it, and others flashing past him, smashing into the outside of the tower. He jumped to his feet as a figure fell directly towards him, scrambling out of the way as it smashed into stone with a sickening sound. The man lay broken and very dead, his legs and arms bent beneath him, blood splattering out over the stones and across Varnus’s legs. He stood, looking down at the helmeted corpse dumbly. It was Imperial!

  Another figure landed beside him, though this one’s descent was slowed by a tech-device upon its back. He landed awkwardly, one of his legs buckling beneath him with a sickening, cracking sound.

  The figure cried out in pain and fell to one knee. He held a lasgun in his hand and Varnus could see his pale blue eyes behind his visor. He saw the twin-headed eagle symbol of the aquila pinned to the man’s chest and he felt a surge of recognition. This was an Imperial Guardsman! The Imperium had come to liberate Tanakreg!

  He shouted out in joy and dropped to his knees to help the man, but the man scrambled back away from him.

  ‘I am a friend!’ Varnus called out, holding his empty hands up, showing the man he was unarmed. ‘I am a citizen enforcer of this planet! Thank the Emperor you have come at last!’

  Guardsman Thortis cried out in pain and pulled the rebreather mask from his face. His leg was a shattered wreck beneath him, but he pushed back with all his force away from the vile figure. His heart was thundering in his head and his stomach churned with the absolute wrongness of everything around him.

  Insane daemon speakers blared a deafening, evil cacophony of hatred and corpses were strewn up in chains. A devil Astartes chanted vile words that made his skin crawl and things unnatural and maddening flickered at the corners of his vision.

  The wretched follower of the ruinous powers clawed at him, his eyes as red as a daemon’s and a burning eight-pointed star upon his forehead. His mouth was nothing but a grilled speaker-box amidst a tight fitting, black mask, and he spoke in the foul language of Chaos.

  Amid the hateful, guttural speech of the traitor, he heard the word Emperor.

  ‘Speak not His name, enemy of mankind,’ Thortis spat and levelled his lasgun at the hated foe.

  The spoken words of the Guardsman meant nothing to Varnus, the sound coming out of the man’s mouth little more than a garbled mess of childish soun
ds to his ears. In confusion he saw the hatred burning on the man’s face and he saw the lasgun lower towards him.

  A flash of anger burned hot within him, and he felt his blood pounding in his head. He had offered his hand in aid to this soldier, and he was turning his weapon on him! The shock of betrayal quickly changed to anger and his hand flashed out, knocking the barrel of the gun to one side. The lasgun blast seared across his shoulder and he hissed in pain. Without thinking, his survival instinct taking over, he drove the fingers of his other hand up into the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe. He stepped in close and slammed his elbow into his head.

  The Guardsman fell heavily, choking, his pale blue eyes bulging, but Varnus hauled him back to his feet.

  ‘I was trying to help you and this is how you repay me?’ he roared, weeks of repressed rage and shame rising to the surface. Holding onto the man’s jacket front with one hand, he thundered a punch into the man’s face, splattering his nose.

  ‘I curse you!’ Varnus shouted and landed another punch into the soldier’s face, ignoring the man’s feeble attempts to deflect the blow. He pulled the helmet off the man’s head with a sharp rip and threw it over the edge of the Gehemehnet tower. He saw that the man’s hair was sandy blond, and for some reason even this made him angry. He saw nothing but red, felt nothing but rising hatred, loathing and rage, and gripping the man with both hands, he smashed his forehead into his face, and let him fall to the stone.

  ‘I curse you,’ he screamed once more, kicking the soldier hard in his side. He knelt down on top of the man and gripped his head in both hands.

  ‘And I curse the False Emperor!’ he screamed as he slammed the soldier’s head into the stone.

  Laron landed smoothly, rolling to his feet and flicking the release of the heavy grav-chute with one hand, while he blasted his hellpistol into the face of an enemy Chaos Marine. His ornate plasma pistol appeared in his other hand and he fired it into the chest of a second enemy warrior, the screaming plasma searing through ceramite, flesh and bone. Super-heated air vented from the potent weapon, hissing like an angry serpent.

  Storm troopers were landing all around him, laying down a withering hail of fire from their overcharged, gyro-stabilised hellguns. All vox communication was jammed and Laron wondered how many of his soldiers had survived the drop even if their Valkyrie had not been gunned down on the approach.

  Thousands of drop-troopers were descending through the hellish clouds above and falling along the ridge of the second enemy embankment, just behind the long first line. Some squads of Laron’s storm troopers had been briefed to attack along the second tier, targeting the enemy’s static war machines with melta weaponry, but the majority of his elite cadre were targetting the bunkers along the first battlement.

  While Laron’s squad laid down a protective curtain of fire, one of his men knelt and stuck a melta charge to the thick door of the bunker.

  ‘Clear,’ yelled the man, stepping back, and the charge detonated inwards, melting the thick metal to liquid.

  A second storm trooper stepped forward, kicked the heavy, metal door open and filled the interior with a spray of roaring promethium from his flamer, before pulling back, allowing Laron to lead the hellgun-armed soldiers in.

  The walls were scorched black from the flames and the advanced auto-sensor systems in Laron’s helmet adjusted to the gloom instantly. He fired both his pistols into the massive shape of the first Chaos Marine and his soldiers’ hellguns shot down the next, even as the enemy swung their weapons to bear.

  A blast from a lascannon, blindingly bright in the confines of the bunker, ripped a head-sized hole through one of his men and tore the arm off another, before striking the bunker wall behind them. A pair of enemy warriors had thrown down their missile launchers and hurled themselves at the storm troopers, their armour blackened and still burning in places.

  Laron ducked beneath the huge slashing knife of the first and fired his plasma pistol into the giant Chaos Marine’s groin, followed by a sharp double-tap from his hellgun into the traitor’s head as he fell back.

  Four hellgun shots slammed into the second enemy warrior, but it did not slow him, and he barrelled into the storm troopers with a daemonic roar. The traitor rammed two men back against the thick wall of the bunker with the sickening sound of breaking bones and swung his fist into the face of another as he rose, shattering the bones of the man’s jaw.

  The lascannon-wielding enemy swung the heavy weapon like a club, sending Laron flying into a wall. He slid to the ground gasping for breath. Raising both his pistols from his prone position, he fired into the chest of the Chaos Marine, who twitched and fell.

  Laron pushed himself to his feet to see the last traitor fall to his knees. Even as the Chaos Marine died, he broke the neck of a storm trooper, before a trio of hellgun shots took him in the head.

  Four of Laron’s men were dead, but the bunker had been neutralised.

  ‘Out,’ he shouted. ‘To the next one.’

  Concentrated heavy weapon fire ripped through the Imperial armoured advance and the embankment was littered with scores of motionless and burned out vehicles. Battle cannons roared and the heavy siege shells fired at close range, obliterated dozens of bunkers.

  The south end of the embankment was overrun, armoured vehicles rolling up and over the defensive position. Hellhound tanks spewed sheets of flaming promethium, engulfing dozens of Word Bearers before heavy weapons pierced their fuel tanks and they exploded in rising balls of fire, sending the searing, flammable liquid spraying out in all directions.

  Hulking, super-heavy Gorgon assault tanks roared up the steep embankment, their side-sponsons spewing flaming death and autocannon turrets raking along the ridge top.

  Streaking lascannon beams and smoking krak missiles zeroed in on the Mechanicus vehicles, but nothing was able to halt their advance. As they reached the top of the tier, their huge assault ramps were dropped and the heavy battle servitors within surged out, chainguns spinning and multi-meltas hissing.

  ‘The reserve is committed, my lord. Have engaged the enemy behind the second tier,’ said the growling voice of Bokkar, Kol Badar’s Anointed sergeant, across a closed vox-channel.

  ‘Understood,’ replied Kol Badar. The reserve had occupied the third tier, guarding against the enemy dropping in behind the main battle force of the Host.

  The Kataphractoi followed in the wake of the Gorgons, Skitarii warriors hard-wired into tracked units. They roared forward, heavy bolters barking and missile pods sending streams of self-propelled explosives towards the Word Bearers.

  Echelons of Thunderbolts screamed through the air, flying low, tearing up the ground with their strafing gunfire. Several of the fighters were blown out of the sky, lascannon fire and anti-aircraft cannons tearing through wings and cockpits, and they smashed down into the ground, carving burning furrows through the earth and killing all in their path.

  Still more drop-troopers fell from the sky, though for every soldier who landed ready to fight, another four smashed lifeless into the earth. Marauder bombers and Valkyries descended in flames through the wildly circling black clouds overhead to crash amid the chaotic battle.

  Kol Badar grinned at the spectacle of carnage around him as he gunned down dozens of enemy Guardsmen as they landed. There would be no break in the fighting until victory was achieved and all his enemies were dead or dying upon this field of battle.

  Flames washed over him, but he stepped through the conflagration and smashed the weapon out of a Guardsman’s hands, placing the barrel of his combi-bolter against the chest of the soldier, relishing the look of terror on the man’s face. He pulled the trigger and the man was smashed to the ground, his chest blown open.

  ‘Captains of the Legion, pull your warriors back to the second tier.’

  The evacuation of the first line of defence was methodical and organised. The Coryphaus had dictated his orders to his underlings and each enacted his designs with practised efficiency.

&
nbsp; Under the covering fire of the restrained Dreadnoughts and war machines of the Host, the warrior-brothers pulled back. They walked with unhurried, measured steps as they laid down overlapping enfilades of fire against the combat servitors emerging from their transports, specialist weaponry destroying vehicles and tanks.

  Kol Badar and his Anointed stood at the base of the second tier, clearing the area of incoming drop-troopers, their roaring weapons ripping easily through the lightly armoured foe. They were practically immune to the Guardsmen’s fire and carved through them with ease, though the number of the foe was starting to clog the open space with bodies.

  He saw the Warmonger stepping resolutely backwards, his roaring cannons ripping apart the foe, and the heavy flamer slung beneath his power claw engulfing dozens in flames.

  Laron dropped off the stepped rampart of the embankment, snapping off shots with his pistols at the retreating enemy, before taking cover behind the wrecked chassis of a Gorgon. They were masterful in their order and precision. Each squad that backed off was supported by angled lines of troops firing their bolters in controlled bursts. It was like attacking a damned fortification. The lines of the enemy were angled like those of the greatest fortresses, with the strongest points, the ‘towers’, being squads bearing heavy weapons. The Guardsmen were naturally drawn towards the apparently weaker points, veering away from the heavy weapons, but this brought them into the deadly killing ground where the enemy’s guns were able to assail them from both sides.

  ‘Where is that damned infantry?’ he snarled. He desperately needed the massed ranks of the Skitarii foot cohorts to arrive, for he had not the men to tackle the retreating foe, and the incoming Elysians were being cut down in swathes.

  As if on cue, the first ranks of the tech-guard cohort appeared over the edge of the battlements, tracked weaponry rolling forward at their side. They began to fire as they marched resolutely forwards.