More doors were kicked in as one by one the turrets of the tower were silenced and the occupants butchered or beaten to death.
The entire structure shuddered as the defence laser fired, and Marduk swore once more.
‘Khalaxis,’ he growled. ‘Why is the defence laser still active?’
Khalaxis stood amid a scene of absolute destruction, blood covering every surface of the room deep below the defence tower. The bodies and limbs of over a dozen adepts and soldiers were strewn around him. His chest was rising and falling heavily, and he was crouched over one of the bodies, his hands and forearms glistening with gore. His lower face was caked in blood.
Licking the blood coating his lips, the towering champion moved towards the humming power array.
He looked it up and down for a moment then swung his chainaxe around in an arc, smashing it into the controls with a satisfying crunch. He pounded his madly whirring axe into the panels again and again, smashing and ripping them apart amid a burst of sparks and electrical smoke, and the strip lighting overhead flickered and died.
Even in darkness, Khalaxis could see quite comfortably.
‘Better?’ said Khalaxis, establishing a link with his Dark Apostle.
‘Better,’ agreed Marduk. ‘Now get yourself topside. The enemy gather for a counterattack.’
Khalaxis slammed his chainaxe into the control panel one more time for good measure. With a nod to his Coterie, he led them loping out of the room, on the search for fresh prey.
Kol Badar watched as the Hosts’ assault screamed towards the surface of the planet, coordinating their deployment from his position atop the defence tower he had just conquered. Cannons fired as they descended, targeting the gathering enemy ground forces, and hunter-killer missiles were launched from beneath wings, along with hellfire bombs and streams of missiles.
Armoured columns of enemy Guard were moving swiftly through the city towards them, but Kol Badar was unconcerned. With all of the defence towers silenced within the fifty-kilometre radius he had designated as the landing zone, few of the Host’s shuttles were shot down on the descent. Those that had made the drop unscathed were barely touching down upon the boulevards, flyovers and colonnaded squares of the enemy city before releasing their deadly cargo.
Hundreds of the Legion’s warrior brothers streamed from embarkation ramps, taking up defensive positions in the face of incoming enemy ground forces. Rhinos and Land Raiders were dropped in, tracks skidding on marble when they ripped free of their couplings. Daemon-engines and Dreadnoughts stalked from transports as their binding chains and wards were loosened, roaring in fury and hatred.
And high above them, just visible in the upper atmosphere, were the immense mass transports housing the potent engines of Legio Vulturus.
Movement out of the corner of his eye attracted his attention, and he glimpsed boxy white shapes moving at high speed through the city streets towards the Word Bearers position.
‘Enemy contact,’ he warned. ‘Moving at speed towards the north-western cordon.’
‘Acknowledged,’ came the reply from Sabtec, the battle-brother in command of the strike teams controlling the location.
‘Coryphaus, we have additional inbound contacts sighted, approaching from the west,’ said a warrior brother nearby, an auspex held in his left hand. He was splattered with blood, and one of the horns had been shorn from his helmet in the recent gun battle. ‘They are coming down from the orbital bastion in force.’
‘Show me,’ said Kol Badar, and the Word Bearer passed the auspex to the hulking warlord.
‘It is hard to lock onto them,’ said the warrior. ‘They are coming in fast, below our scans, and they are actively jamming our signal, but you can see their ghost presence sporadically… there.’
‘I see them,’ said Kol Badar. ‘Look at the heat distortion. Thunderhawks.’
Kol Badar glanced up at the immense mass transporters slowly making planetfall. He gauged that it would be at least another twenty minutes before they were down safely. The Host’s warriors had to hold the towers until then.
‘White Consuls counter-attack inbound,’ said Kol Badar, patching through to all the Host’s champions and commanders. ‘Prepare yourselves. Dark Apostle, Sabtec, Ashkanez; they are converging on your locations. Re-routing reinforcements in your direction.’
‘Let them come,’ replied Marduk, his voice tinny over the vox-channel.
‘This location is our foothold in taking this cursed planet,’ said Kol Badar. ‘It is our beachhead. If we fail to hold it, then our entire attack will stall. We will not get another chance.’
‘Then we had better hold,’ replied Marduk.
Kol Badar grunted. Leaving a skeleton defence to guard the defence laser he had claimed, he descended the wide stairs onto the square below, barking orders as he went and coordinating the deployment of the Host’s warriors. His personal Land Raider rumbled forwards to meet him. It was adorned with spikes, chains and crucified Imperial citizens. Some of the poor wretches were still alive. The huge machine rolled to a stop, its red headlights burning with fury before they dimmed in bestial servitude, the way a beaten dog would cower before its master. Kol Badar had no doubt that the daemon inhabiting the mighty war engine – it had had no need for a driver or gunner for over four thousand years – would turn on him the moment he let his guard down, but that day had not yet come.
With a submissive growl, the Land Raider lowered its assault ramp. Accompanied by his Anointed brethren, Kol Badar ducked as he embarked. The assault ramp slammed shut, cutting off the painfully bright light outside, and the immense war machine began advancing towards the location of the enemy attack.
In the red-tinged darkness within, Kol Badar smiled. The taking of the Sword of Truth had merely whetted his appetite. Killing pathetic mortals did little to raise his interest. Astartes, on the other hand, now there was a foe worthy of his attention.
CHAPTER TEN
The air was filled with the whine of incoming artillery, followed by the reverberating thump of explosions as they tore their way across squares and boulevards, demolishing statues, turning arboretums to muddy ruin and toppling gold-veined pillars. From his position on the crenulated battlements of the captured defence tower, Marduk could see the warriors of the XVII Legion in the streets below taking cover behind their Rhinos and in the lee of buildings as the Imperial artillery barrage began. He knew it would be a constant presence in the war from here on in.
Few of his brothers would fall in these attacks, but that was not the point: the barrage was chiefly designed to ensure the Word Bearers were pinned down, taking cover rather than concentrating on targeting the incoming enemy forces.
Marduk was unconcerned, confident that whatever the White Consuls could throw at his Host, they would emerge victorious.
‘There,’ said Burias, pointing.
The Icon Bearer had joined Marduk a moment before, his face and arms caked in drying blood, and he stood alongside his Dark Apostle, staring westward across the gleaming marble city. Marduk looked where Burias indicated, and the targeting matrices built into his helmet flashed momentarily as they locked onto fast-moving shapes, flying low and jinking around columns and statues, before he lost them again within the maze of streets.
‘Land Speeders sighted,’ relayed Marduk.
The anti-grav vehicles were moving at great speed as they roared through the city, closing the distance swiftly. They had split into two groups, one gunning their engines towards Sabtec’s position and the other moving towards Marduk’s.
Through the thick artillery smoke, larger shapes could be seen flying low over the rooftops, approaching fast – Thunderhawks, gleaming white and adorned with the blue eagle head motif of the White Consuls. Missiles streaked from beneath their stubby wings, and heavy battle cannons roared.
Marduk glanced up at the mass transports and heavy shuttles descending through the upper atmosphere. They were coming down painfully slowly, retros burning fiercely to co
ntrol their momentum, and he knew that they were at their most vulnerable now. The contents of those transports were incalculably valuable; ensuring their unmolested arrival was of paramount importance for the success of this war.
The enemy’s intention was obvious – take these towers back and blast those mass transports to pieces before they landed. They were not fools, clearly; they understood how much of an impact the precious engines held within those transports would have in the forthcoming ground war.
The Land Speeders appeared again suddenly, only a few hundred metres away, banking sharply around the corner of a domed cathedral and roaring towards the defence tower, heavy bolters barking. They were about twenty metres off the ground, and as soon as they appeared, dozens of bolters and heavier weapons began to target them. They jinked from side to side, avoiding the worst of the incoming fire, and Marduk was forced to duck as heavy bolter rounds stitched across the battlements of the tower, ripping out chunks of marble.
One of the enemy vehicles was struck by a lascannon, taking the driver’s head off and ripping a hole through its engines. The Land Speeder veered sharply and spun out of control, trailing black smoke, before smashing into a towering Space Marine statue atop a pillar, shattering like glass as it struck the stone figure at full speed.
The remainder kept coming, and split smoothly into three distinct groups.
One group, using the buildings opposite the defence tower to protect them from ground fire, rose to be level with Marduk’s position and hovered in place, raking the walls with assault cannons and heavy bolters. Under this cover, a handful of speeders – their chassis longer than the others – rose and banked sharply, heading westward over the rooftops before lingering over a heavily defensible building nearby. As the sights in his helmet zoomed in, Marduk saw lightly armoured Scouts rappelling from them onto the building’s roof, sniper rifles slung across their backs.
The third group dipped low, and disappeared from sight.
‘Enemy snipers moving into position,’ Marduk said. ‘I have target-marked their last sighted location.’
‘Acknowledged,’ came Kol Badar’s reply. ‘Sabtec, be wary; that is near your position.’
‘Understood,’ said the exalted champion of the decorated 13th Coterie.
Marduk rose and snapped off a shot with his bolt pistol, which glanced off the armoured screen in front of an enemy gunner. One of his brethren nearby rose and fired a missile from his launcher that ripped apart a Land Speeder in a blinding explosion.
As if that had been a signal, the others dropped sharply, engines roaring and they disappeared from sight.
Marduk glanced over the parapet and saw White Consuls vehicles moving swiftly up the streets, having been dropped in by Thunderhawks. He also saw Rhino APCs, Predators and other vehicles that he had no name for, variations of the Rhino pattern that he had not encountered before.
‘Enemy armour, moving on my position,’ said Marduk.
‘Received and moving to intercept,’ replied Kol Badar.
Further communication was forestalled as hissing static interference suddenly washed the comms-network across all channels.
‘Curse them,’ snarled Marduk. ‘We are being jammed.’
There was a roar of engines close by, and a strong downdraft struck Marduk. He looked up to see a Land Speeder hovering directly overhead. White Consuls Scouts were rappelling from it onto the roof of the tower.
‘’Ware the sky!’ roared Marduk, as he began to fire. He caught one of the Scouts in the back of the head, killing him instantly, before the remainder ducked out of sight. He saw four Land Speeders veering away, just a fraction of a second before a hail of small projectiles were lobbed towards his position.
‘Grenades!’ roared Marduk, throwing himself back inside the tower. The concussive explosions of the frag grenades picked him up and hurled him inside, razor-tipped shards of shrapnel embedding in his power armour.
He crashed down, red warning lights flashing before his eyes. One of his brothers was nearby, armour blackened and filled with fragmentation shards. Marduk barked a warning as the warrior rose to his feet. Before the warrior could respond, his head was pulped by a shotgun blast fired at close range.
Burias was picking himself up off the floor nearby, snarling. The left side of his face was a blackened ruin of charred flesh, and he was about to hurl himself back out onto the battlements when there was a crash behind them, and a shower of plasglass.
Marduk spun to see a white-armoured Astartes figure on one knee behind him, smoke billowing from its bulky jump pack, plasglass surrounding it. Before he could fire, Marduk saw looming shadows appear outside, and more Space Marines suddenly crashed through the plasglass, jump packs and chainswords roaring.
Acrid exhaust fumes filled the interior of the control room, and Marduk rose to his feet, firing. He hit one of the Assault Marines in the chest, but the bolt was unable to penetrate the thick ceramite armour, merely knocking the warrior back half a step.
Marduk felt a surge of warp energy as Drak’shal rose to power within Burias’s flesh. Roaring in infernal fury, the possessed warrior leapt past him, bowling one of the Assault Marines to the ground, talons digging through power armour. A bolt hit Marduk in the shoulder, half spinning him, and he snarled, firing a pair of shots in retaliation.
Holstering the sidearm, Marduk took hold of his crozius in two hands and leapt forwards to meet the advancing Assault Marines head-on, bellowing his hatred. He ducked beneath a buzzing chainsword and slammed his crozius into the side of his attacker, the spiked head of the holy weapon penetrating ceramite and crackling with energy as it knocked the White Consul aside.
Marduk swayed backwards and a chainsword, roaring furiously, tore through the air where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier. He only just managed to get his weapon into the path of the return blow, his muscles straining against the strength of his opponent. The teeth of the madly whirring chainsword ripped at his crozius, threatening to tear it from his grip. Marduk kicked the White Consuls Assault Marine away from him, straight into the path of Burias-Drak’shal, who impaled the warrior upon the Host’s icon, lifting the spitted enemy warrior off his feet before hurling him aside.
A chainsword tore into Burias-Drak’shal’s neck, ripping at power armour and flesh, and blood sprayed out. He roared in fury and pain and spun, dropping to one knee and smashing the legs from under his attacker with a sweep of his bladed icon. Before he could leap upon the downed warrior and finish him, a bolt hit him in the back, making him stumble forwards, and he lost his grip on the icon.
A bolt pistol was levelled at the possessed Icon Bearer’s head, but with preternatural speed he swayed to the side, avoiding the shot, and as another chainsword roared in at him, Burias-Drak’shal merely grabbed the whirring blade in one hand, blood splattering as he pulled the wielder towards him. With the palm of his other hand he struck the White Consul under the chin, snapping his head back sharply and exposing his neck. Still holding the chainsword tightly in one hand, blood continuing to splatter out as its mechanisms strained to rip the flesh from his bones, Burias-Drak’shal lunged forwards and tore the White Consul’s throat.
A shotgun blast took one of Marduk’s companions in the back, knocking him forwards and into the path of the blue helmeted veteran sergeant of the Assault Marines, who used his full body weight to deliver a powerful punch with a massive power gauntlet. The blow sundered the Word Bearer’s chest plate and the fused ribcage within, pulping his twin hearts and sending him crashing to his back, flickers of electrical energy dancing across his exposed chest cavity.
Marduk deflected a swinging blow aimed at his head and risked a glance onto the battlements, seeing several squads of Scouts dropping down onto the area he had recently vacated, combat shotguns held in their hands. More Assault Marines crashed through the tinted plasglass, and another of his brethren went down, impaled on a chainsword that ripped and tore at his flesh, splattering hot blood across the room.
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‘Back!’ shouted Marduk, swallowing down his bitterness. ‘Pull back!’
With smoke spewing from its daemon-headed exhausts, the Land Raider smashed through the wall, rockcrete and marble crumbling around it. It came down hard, powering onto a quad-laned road, and with a sickening crunch ploughed straight into the side of a White Consuls Rhino. The smaller APC was slammed sidewards, tracks skidding on the rockcrete roadway before it was rammed at speed into the corner of a building and came to shocking halt.
Dust and rock crumbled from the building, crashing down upon the vehicle’s armoured roof. The Rhino’s engines spluttered and died, and smoke rose from its buckled chassis. The Land Raider roared, tracks spinning into reverse, kicking up rocks and dust as it spun around to face the other enemy vehicles in the convoy.
Two Rhinos had slewed to the side and ground to a halt, their occupants spilling from within. The White Consuls dropped into cover on either side of the road, bolters bucking in their hands. The Word Bearers Land Raider fired and its twin-linked lascannon struck one of the Rhinos as it started to reverse, punching a pair of gaping holes through its armour and engine block. Its heavy bolters chased the White Consuls as they ducked into cover.
The Land Raider’s assault hatch slammed down on the rubble strewn across the road. Kol Badar was first out, his combi-bolter blazing. He ordered his Anointed forward, while he strode towards the Rhino that his Land Raider had just rammed.
Smoke was rising from the wreck, and as Kol Badar reached the vehicle its side hatch slammed open. He grabbed the first White Consul to emerge by the head, his power talons closing around the Astartes’s helmet. With a wrench, Kol Badar dragged the warrior out and lifted his combi-bolter, spraying bolts into the crowded interior. Kol Badar twisted his power talons, ripping the head off the White Consul held in his clutches, and continued firing. When he had exhausted a full clip he switched to the flamer affixed to his combi-bolter and filled the inside of the APC with burning promethium.
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