‘Glory be,’ came the response from the warriors of the Host, led by Kol Badar.
‘And unto those who would do harm to your faithful servants,’ said Marduk, locking eyes with Kol Badar, ‘bring an eternity of torment and pain.’
The Idolator continued its descent until, after several minutes, the relentless g-forces began to ease and the transport started to level out. Flying low, it screamed across the frozen wasteland, kicking up a great turbulence of snow and ice in its wake. Powerful winds rocked the transport, jolting its occupants from side to side, as it roared into the face of a fierce ice storm. Sudden drops in pressure and blasts of wind made the Idolator rise and fall by ten metres at a time, threatening to slam the ship into the ice crust at any moment.
Marduk grinned fiercely, exposing sharpened teeth. Adrenaline pumped through his system.
Kol Badar had plotted the approach course that the Idolator was now following with keen tactical acumen. They had entered the atmosphere along the equatorial belt of the moon, four thousand kilometres from the closest Imperial listening post, and they were now approaching the northern polar cap on the lee side of the moon, under the cover of darkness. The Imperials were based solely at the extreme northern and southern tips of the moon, where they had mining colonies, starports and fortress bastions. Immense defence lasers protected these settlements, each of which Kol Badar had estimated consisted of between eight and twelve million people, living beneath the ice.
Virtually nothing lived on the surface, its conditions too severe to maintain life or even any permanent structures other than the bastions. Even the starports were carved into the ice. Reinforced titanium roof structures covered the circular starports, protecting them and the vessels within from the harshest of weather conditions, and those roofs would open like the petals of a flower to allow transport vessels and freighters to dock.
From the information garnered from the Adeptus Mechanicus archive on Kharion IV, the most recent location of the explorator who held the secrets of the device had been ascertained, and it was towards this bastion station that the Idolator was bound.
They would get as close as they were able to the Imperial bastion, flying low across the windswept landscape and using the sweep-jamming ice storms to conceal their approach. Kol Badar had factored in the swirling eddies of low pressure, continent sized cyclones that wracked the empty wasteland, in order to further conceal their approach, though he had loudly voiced his displeasure at such subterfuge.
Regardless of the Coryphaus’s misgivings, Marduk could not fault Kol Badar’s execution. They would be upon the bastion long before their presence was known, and it would be a simple matter of breaching its defences and locating the custodian. The portents had boded well, and Marduk felt assured that it would be a simple undertaking.
He freed the restraints that locked him to his seat, and stood up, easily compensating for the roll of the transport as it was buffeted by howling winds. Stretching out his shoulders, his gaze wandered up the rows of seated Word Bearers, assessing them each in turn.
Khalaxis’s teeth were bared, his aggressive nature mirrored in the expressions of his members of the 17th coterie. He jerked his head to the side, flicking his braided hair out of his eyes, concentrating on his knife as it carved into his flesh. He and his warriors had removed their left vambraces and were cutting ritualistic slashes across their forearms. Always the first into any breach, and the last to be extracted, his warriors were lethal combatants all.
Namar-sin, in stark comparison to Khalaxis, was composed and silent, though his one eye gleamed with a fervour no less passionate than Khalaxis’s. His Havocs were dutifully tending their weapons, apparently oblivious to the shuddering transport and the roar of the engines. They went about their duties with utter focus, silently incanting benedictions of the dark gods upon their revered heavy weapons.
Brother Sabtec’s face was serious, his stoic demeanour familiar and unwavering, and he led the hallowed 13th coterie in a low chant as they checked over their life-systems, and ensured that grenades, spare ammunition clips and devotional chapbooks were secured at their sides.
The final coterie, Kol Badar’s veteran Anointed, glared ahead blankly, their expressions grim. Their faces were covered in ritual tattoos and each in turn lowered his head in deference as Marduk looked upon them.
Burias was looking at his hand as the fingers fused and elongated into talons, before he forced the daemon Drak’shal back and his hand took on its natural form once more. Marduk realised that his control over the daemon was growing. Often the possessed would become little more than screaming wretches, their will enslaved to one of the myriad entities that inhabited the warp, but Burias’s mastery over Drak’shal was almost complete. Again, Burias let Drak’shal begin to rear within him, and his hand blurred into daemonic talons, before he reasserted his dominance and pushed the daemon back within him. Feeling Marduk’s gaze upon him, Burias’s eyes flicked up, and he winked at the First Acolyte.
Darioq stood apart from the brothers of the Legion. The corrupted magos could not sit even had he wished too; his mechanical body was not constructed to accommodate such luxury, and the bulk of his servo-harness would have made it impossible. The activated electromagnets within his heavy, augmented boots kept him locked to the floor, and his four mechanical servo-arms were braced between two bulkheads. Weighing well over a metric tonne, nothing was going to move the techno-magos.
‘You have a wish to converse, Marduk, First Acolyte of the Word Bearers Legion of Astartes, genetic descendent of the traitor Primarch Lorgar?’ said the magos. The timbre of his voice was different, a growling, daemonic presence underlying his usual robotic monotone.
‘Speak the word “traitor” once more when referring to the blessed daemon-lord of our Legion, Darioq-Grendh’al,’ said Marduk, ‘and I shall allow Kol Badar to rip your limbs off one by one, and no, I have no wish to converse with you.’
The Idolator made its way through the darkness across the featureless surface of the moon for two hours, and as they drew near the target, Marduk intoned a final benediction, and the warriors of the Host made ready to disembark. With his skull-faced helmet in place, Marduk ritualistically ran through his final diagnostics, checking his life-systems and those of his revered power armour.
At last, throbbing blister-lights warned of the final approach, and Marduk rammed a fresh sickle-clip into his bolt-pistol. Retro-blasters fired, slowing the Idolator, and the nose of the transport craft lifted as its momentum dropped.
Kol Badar relayed his debarkation orders with curt commands, ensuring that each of the four coteries knew their position.
Restraint harnesses were thrown off as the rear landing legs touched down, and the vacuum seals of the rear embarkation ramp were released with a hiss. Before the Idolator had even settled, the ramp was thrown outwards, and snow and ice blasted into the interior, swirling around in blinding eddies.
‘Get him moving,’ shouted Kol Badar over the screaming of engines and the howling of wind, pointing towards Darioq, and two members of Namar-sin’s coterie urged the corrupted magos towards the lowering ramp.
The first warriors were already pounding down the ramp, moving towards their allotted positions, filing off left and right. Marduk stomped down the assault ramp and stepped onto the frozen surface of Perdus Skylla. The enhanced auto-sensors in his helmet allowed his sight to pierce the raging blizzard, though mere mortal eyes would have seen nothing but a blinding sheet of white.
Marduk filed off to the right just as the Land Raiders, two tucked beneath each stubbed wing, were lowered onto the ice. They growled like angry war-beasts as they were released from their locking clamps. Their engines revved, and smoke billowed from their daemon-headed exhaust stacks. Marduk ducked his head as he entered the armoured hull of the closest Land Raider and locked himself into a seat. Burias slammed into the seat opposite, a feral grin upon his features. As usual, he did not deign to wear his helmet; his witch-sight easily the mat
ch of any automated sensors. Long strands of oiled black hair that had escaped their binding whipped around his head like a gorgon’s serpents.
Brother Sabtec and his esteemed 13th joined them, piling into the Land Raider and taking their seats, and the assault ramp was slammed shut. The frenzied wind died away instantly, and the shower of snow and ice settled on shoulder pads and greaves.
The Land Raider’s massive tracks spun on the ice for a second before catching, and the heavy assault tank lurched into motion. Less than thirty seconds after the Idolator had landed, the four Land Raiders, each filled with blessed warriors of Lorgar, were speeding across the surface of Perdus Skylla.
Marduk was shaken as the assault tank hit a bank of snow, and there was a moment of weightlessness as the front of the vehicle lifted up before crashing down again with titanic force.
‘Twenty minutes to target,’ growled Kol Badar over the vox.
Burias’s features shimmered like a faulty pict viewer, and the face of the daemon Drak’shal was momentarily superimposed over his features. Tall, uneven horns rose from his brow, and deeply slanted, hate-filled eyes blinked. Then Burias shook his head, pushing the daemon back within, and the image was gone.
‘Not long, Drak’shal,’ said Marduk in the guttural tongue of the daemons. Burias grinned at him once more.
CHAPTER FIVE
Hundred-kilometre winds whipped across the ice flow, and the roar of the storm was such that no human ear would have heard any shout or the staccato reverberations of gunfire. The darkness would have concealed anything from the naked eye, and the blinding swirl of ice, snow and fog was such that all but the most sophisticated sensor arrays were rendered useless. Still, Marduk was taking no chances as he elbowed his way cautiously forwards, edging nearer to the Imperial bastion.
He could see the dark shadow of the structure rising before him, though even his advanced auto-sensors and magnifier auspexes had difficulty piercing the blinding gale. It was built into a massive pinnacle of rock that pierced the thick ice, the first geological landmark that the Word Bearers had thus far seen on Perdus Skylla. Marduk snarled up at the hateful silhouette of the fortress. It had been constructed in the form of an immense aquila, the two-headed eagle that was the symbol of the Imperium and the Emperor’s rule.
It rose some three hundred and fifty metres above the ice plains, the highest point on all of Perdus Skylla. If the weather had been clearer, it could have been seen for kilometres all around, an immense structure that dominated the landscape. Doubtless it had been built to remind the populace of Perdus Skylla of the Emperor’s authority, to cow the people it loomed over and never let them forget who it was that ruled their lives.
To the ignorant people of Perdus Skylla it might have been a symbol of reverence, but to Marduk it represented all that he hated about the Imperium, all that he desired to see toppled.
What sort of empire would allow a lifeless corpse to be venerated as a god, and let pompous fools and bureaucrats dictate how a galaxy was to be run? For the millionth time, he cursed the holy warmaster for being laid low by the trickery of the enemy. Had Horus overthrown the Emperor, the galaxy would never have fallen into stagnation and torpor. The Great Crusade would still be underway, wiping all xenos and non-believers from the universe. Humanity would be united in faith.
Marduk froze, pushing himself flat to the ground as his keen auto-senses flashed a warning before his eyes. The massive gates of the bastion began to open, folding in upon themselves and sliding into a hidden recess within the rock. Four armoured vehicles emerged, the sound of their engines lost in the howling wind.
They were non-standard template vehicles protected by thick plates of white-painted armour. Marduk’s targeting arrays locked onto the foremost vehicle, and a flood of data streamed in front of his eyes. A heavy weapons sponson unfolded from behind the main engine block, sliding forward and locking into place, and the weapon panned left and right. They were light vehicles, roughly the size of Rhino APCs, and they were clearly built for traversing the ice flows, with heavy, thick tracks at the rear and a single upwards flaring ski as broad as the tank at the front.
If it came to it, they would easily be neutralised by his Land Raiders, but he had no wish for the enemy to know, prematurely, that they were under attack.
The vehicles moved up the steep ramp of ice and snow that led from within the bastion, heavy weapons turrets rotating with precise, mechanical movements.
They turned to the north-west, and soon disappeared into the storm.
‘Do not engage,’ said Marduk.
‘Acknowledged,’ came Kol Badar’s response, his voice blurred by static.
Resuming his advance, Marduk elbowed his way closer to the enemy fortification.
The aquila fortress reared up above him, its twin heads glaring out into the darkness. Despite his anger, disdain and disgust as he thought of what could have been, should have been, it gave him perverse pleasure to see how far the Imperium had fallen. This world was evidence of its failings. It was being abandoned, as was the entire sub-system, in the face of a xenos threat. He shook his head in mockery at such weakness.
The long, insulated barrels of defence lasers rose up behind the aquila structure, angled towards the heavens. He knew that the vast power source for the formidable weapons would be located deep within the rock below. They were weapons of awesome potency, though useless against an enemy that had already landed.
Marduk advanced a further two hundred metres, assailed by the relentless wind and biting ice. The brutal environmental conditions did not concern him. His archaic power armour, a bastard hybrid of marks IV, V and VI, was capable of withstanding far more demanding situations.
Within fifty metres of the enemy structure, Marduk hunkered down to assess the defences of the bastion. Snow began to settle on his power armour, so that he was almost completely concealed. Indeed, a human could have stood five metres away and not have seen him, blinded by the gale and the fog.
His gleaming, black, reflective eyepieces panned upwards, targeters locking onto autocannon turrets and demolisher cannons built into the sides of the rock face. Had the weather been less severe, the static defences would have taken a heavy toll on the Host as it approached. Such a thing was unacceptable, for Marduk had brought less than thirty warrior brothers with him on the mission to Perdus Skylla.
In ideal circumstances, he would have descended upon the moon with the entire Host, and the taking of the bastion would have been a simple thing. However, with the size of the Imperial blockade in the sub-system such an endeavour would have been folly, for the Infidus Diabolus would have been annihilated long before it reached the moon’s atmosphere. As such, he had chosen to lead just a small strike force onto the surface of the moon, and slipped unseen through the Imperial cordon.
It was not the way that he would have liked to have achieved victory, for Marduk, like Kol Badar, would have been more pleased to have laid waste the Imperial world, to unleash the full force of the Host and leave nothing but corpses and edifices to the great gods behind. Victory here was important, however, and the manner in which it was achieved, less so.
Pushing his extraneous thoughts aside, Marduk turned his attention to the task at hand.
Two twin-linked autocannon turrets guarded the approach to the bastion gates, and they panned back and forth across the open ground before them. Each was restricted to a ninety-degree firing arc, though the arcs of the two turrets, and the others nearby, were overlapping, ensuring that no enemy could approach the bastion from any angle without coming under fire. Heavier siege cannons protruded from the rock face above the gates, but they were of less interest to Marduk, for he was below their arc of trajectory. They were designed to fire upon enemy two hundred metres and further out, not at a foe already at the base of the bastion. Still, he opened up a visual feed with Kol Badar, allowing the Coryphaus to see what he did, so that the war leader was aware of what he would be riding into once the gates were breached.
‘Brother Namar-sin,’ said Kol Badar in a growled response to the visual feed. ‘Move your coterie into position and target the turrets. Fire on the First Acolyte’s command.’
‘So it shall be, Coryphaus,’ came the response. Somewhere behind Marduk, invisible even to his augmented sight, the Havoc Space Marines of Namar-sin’s coterie would be targeting the autocannons with their ancient heavy weapons.
Marduk again looked up, peering through the blinding ice storm.
‘Come on, Burias,’ he hissed in impatience.
Two hundred and fifty metres up, Burias scaled the vertical rock face, hauling himself up hand over hand. Kol Badar had identified one last possible escape route from the bastion, and it was the icon bearer’s duty to close it off.
He had allowed the change to come over him, bringing the daemon Drak’shal to the fore, and great horns rose from his head. Hellfire burnt within his eyes, and his teeth were bared, exposing a double row of serrated shark-like teeth. Impossibly, his darkly handsome, immaculate features could still be seen beneath the image of the daemon, as if both beings were coexisting in the same space.
Bunching his leg muscles, Burias pushed off from rock face, leaping upwards. He grabbed a rocky overhang with one hand, and for a second he hung there over the vertical drop. The ground could not be seen below, lost in the swirling storm, though the glow of lascannons could be dimly discerned. Hauling himself over the edge, the heat of his breath clouded the air around him, and feral eyes locked onto the hateful shape of the giant aquila that reared above him. He dug his taloned hands into stone carved in the form of feathers and continued his ascent.
Up above, roughly a hundred metres away, the twin eagle heads of the colossal stone aquila glared out across the landscape, one facing east, and the other west. A bright light shone like a lighthouse from the eye of the right eagle head, while the eye of the left head was dark and blind.
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