Before the multi-melta could fire, a missile struck the ground beside the gunner and the concussive force of the blast knocked the warrior from his feet. Remus slammed into cover, grateful that at least one of Archo’s gunners had thought to keep a shot back for an act of 4th Company recklessness. He grinned. Not even a primarch’s tome could completely erase the spirit of the Troublesome Fourth.
Remus slotted home another magazine and scanned the killing ground of the courtyard, looking for rank badges or some other form of officer markings. He saw etchings of teeth, dragon amulets and various forge symbols, but nothing that resembled a logical progression of rank. He’d been briefed on the Salamander’s system of rank markings, but could see nothing that indicated any high level of commander lay among the dead.
Had their intelligence been flawed?
The thought was discarded immediately. The idea that Roboute Guilliman could be wrong about anything was beyond ridiculous. It was heretical, which, given this current engagement, was a rich irony indeed. He returned his attention to the battlefield, anxious that this mission be successful. So far the 4th Company had the foremost record of all the Legion’s battle companies, and he wasn’t about to blot their copybook with failure now.
The two Salamanders Rhinos were registering as out of action, their command and control facilities destroyed beyond repair, yet the mighty, cliff-sided Land Raider was merely crippled. Its weapons were disabled, and one of its track units had suffered a debilitating impact. It wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry, but whoever was inside it was likely still alive.
As if to confirm that fact, the Land Raider spun on its axis, its one functioning track grinding the flagstones to powder beneath the vehicle’s monstrous weight. The frontal assault ramp dropped and three figures emerged, titans amongst mortals, giants to their mere men.
Terminators.
Remus had seen Terminator armour during the battle for Calth, mighty suits of armour so colossal it seemed impossible that men could wear them. Such was the newness and complexity of the suits that only a handful of the Ultramarines 1st Company had been trained in their use. Nor were there nearly enough to outfit more than a few hundred of the 1st, for the initial Mechanicum mass conveyers had only just arrived at Macragge when news of the massacre at Isstvan V had arrived.
Hulking, armour-plated behemoths, each Terminator was a full head and shoulders taller than the Ultramarines, the thick plates of their armour shrugging off bolter fire like light rain. Remus had seen the effect these warriors had had on the Word Bearers, but to face one was a new experience, and not one he was keen to repeat.
One warrior bore a cloak of olive green mail over his left pauldron, and the vast skull of some unknown beast with elongated frontal fangs was affixed to his helmet, giving him the hideous appearance of some strange xenos barbarian warrior. In one hand, this warrior carried an enormous, oversized hammer wreathed with crackling energies, in the other a shield worked in the form of the honour badge that granted him the right to wear such terrifyingly powerful armour.
Two others warriors accompanied this brutish war leader – surely the commander of this force of Salamanders – each a humanoid fighting tank armed with a monstrously oversized fist and a bulky weapon resembling two bolters welded together.
Their bolters opened up with a ripping storm of fire, raking the courtyard from left to right in controlled bursts. Three Ultramarines went down, bracketed and gunned down by the commander’s two praetorians in concert. This was no random spray of fire, but a methodical slaughter. Shots flashed past Remus, but he ducked back into the cover of the Rhino as the streaking fire turned in his direction.
The enemy commander didn’t come at them, instead turning his vast hammer on the walls of the courtyard in the lee of the Land Raider. One swing of the hammer put a man-sized hole in the wall. Masonry and steel reinforcement bars were smashed aside by the lethal weapon. Two more blows at most would see the enemy commander break free of their surprise assault. It would be next to impossible to mount an effective pursuit through the streets of Idrisia. Remus’s armour was already registering the flurry of vox traffic coming from the enemy commander as he summoned reinforcements. Within moments, the target would be lost.
‘All forces, converge and close the net,’ he ordered. ‘Command target is on the move.’
Ultramarines warriors broke cover, moving in stepped overwatch patterns, but where any normal enemy would be forced to keep their heads down under such a fusillade, the Terminators walked tall through enough firepower to reduce entire squads to shredded meat.
Remus saw Barkha hit, his armour struck by multiple impacts from the oversized bolters. Barkha cursed and loosed a string of Talassarian vulgarities before dropping to the ground and lying still. Pinned down and with a rapidly diminishing roster of warriors, Remus knew he had only one chance to win this fight. The tactical situation had only one option left, and he opened a channel to Sergeant Archo.
‘Archo, suppressive fire on the courtyard. Now!’
‘Captain, that places you in the kill zone.’
‘I know, just do it! Fill this place with fire!’
The order didn’t need to be repeated. Archo knew his place in the chain of command. As did Remus. The mission was paramount. The primarch’s writings made it clear that the lives of friendly combatants were of paramount importance, especially Legiones Astartes lives, for they were sure to be in short supply in the coming years of war.
But just as clearly, the primarch knew that wars were won by the blood of the soldiers fighting them. Sometimes the only way to win was to sacrifice everything for the victory.
‘Hurry, Archo!’ he shouted as the enemy commander finally tore down the wall between him and escape.
The courtyard erupted in fire and flame as missile after missile tore down into the courtyard. Heavy bolters raked back and forth, their fire brutally effective and lethally indiscriminate. A missile took the Salamander captain on the shoulder and the impact spun him around as another struck him full in the plastron. The force of the warheads drove him to his knees. Another missile streaked downwards, but the Salamander warrior brought his shield up to block it. The deflected missile corkscrewed into the courtyard, where it exploded in the midst of a knot of Ultramarines hunkering down behind what little cover remained.
An unending storm of gunfire filled the courtyard, and Remus lost track of everything as the deafening cacophony of sound rolled through him. He’d lost control of this battle, but he could regain it if he could only see what had become of the Salamander war leader.
He belly-crawled around the Rhino, his bolter crossed on his forearms as he skidded through the debris of battle. Shell casings, crushed masonry and bodies. The vox crackled and barked in his ear: nearby squads requesting updates, intercepted chatter from enemy units en route to the building, Thunderhawk pilots yelling warnings at one another. Remus blotted it all out, concentrating on moving at speed to fulfil his objective.
Remus reached the end of the Rhino and scrambled to his knees. He had no chance to weigh his options or consult his primarch’s words, and simply swung around the corner of the vehicle’s track units. The Salamander Terminator had found his feet, though Remus’s visor displayed numerous weakened points on his armour.
The Salamander war leader, perhaps sensing his presence, turned to face him. Remus met his gaze, eye lens to eye lens. Remus sighted along the length of his bolter, and though he couldn’t see beyond the snarling ceramite war mask, he felt he could see the warrior’s coal dark skin and infernal red eyes. Of course that was ridiculous, but there was a weak spot on the warrior’s faceplate, one that a skilled marksman could exploit…
Remus squeezed the trigger and the bolter spat a single shot. Though the weapon fired at supersonic speed, Remus felt he could trace its passage through the air. Even as fired, he knew the shot was true. It struck the Salamander square in the face a
nd Remus watched as his visor registered the kill. The Terminator didn’t fall; the armour was too massive to let the wearer collapse, even in death.
Remus let out a breath, rolling onto his back and letting the exertions of this latest engagement drain from him. Though it had been among the shortest, it had been one of the most demanding.
High above the building, roaring Thunderhawks descended like carrion birds circling in anticipation of a feast.
Engagement 314
A cold wind blew down the basalt canyon, carrying dust from the high peaks of Macragge. Remus smelled the pinesap of highland evergreens and the crystalline sharpness of mountaintop tarns on the breeze. He crouched low behind a marker cairn, a three-metre cone of stacked volcanic rock with ancient markings that directed travellers to safe paths through the mountains, locations of water and shelter. Cut in the ancient cuneiform of Macragge, these markings would be unreadable to anyone not native to this world, meaningless even to another citizen of Ultramar.
It had been many years since Remus had run through these mountains as a boy, staggering in an exhausted, near-death state from one cairn to another as he fought for his place in the Ultramarines. Of all the boys that had set off on that last run, he alone had survived; the others dying one by one of heat exhaustion, dehydration, or falls from high cliffs, or being picked off by the vicious, cave-dwelling mountain cats that stalked the high peaks.
Tumbling through the bronze gates of the Fortress of Hera, Remus had been met by Captain Pendarron, the heroic warrior who had fought alongside Roboute Guilliman in the untamed lands of Illyrium before Gallan’s betrayal of the Battle King Konor. The captain had picked him up, dusted him down, and sent him to the apothecarion with a curt nod of approbation.
Thinking back to that time brought a welcome flush of endorphins, but it was a short-lived pleasure. That was another life ago, and nearly two centuries of war separated that young boy from the Legiones Astartes Remus had become. Decades of training still awaited that young boy, but they had been years of intense pressure, tribulation and, yes, joy. Proving himself worthy of a place within the ranks of the Ultramarines had been his greatest honour, and he still recalled his mother’s pride at seeing him march through the streets of Macragge clad in brilliant blue battle-plate.
He had never seen his mother again, yet the loss did not touch him as deeply as he felt it should. His mind had been reshaped in myriad ways, and though the capacity for sadness and emotion had not been removed, it took extreme stimuli to trigger emotions connected with his previous life as a mortal.
A crackle on the vox-network brought Remus out of his reverie, and he shook off thoughts of golden days and concentrated on the present dark ones. This campaign had been the toughest of all, for the Sons of Horus had consistently outfought and outmanoeuvred them at every turn. In space, the Warmaster’s fleets had battered through their picket lines, and flanking forces of stealthy ambush vessels had appeared from nowhere to wreak havoc within the Ultramarines precise battle lines.
World after world had fallen. Tarentus, Masali and Quintarn were gone, the loss of the latter planet bringing a lump of bile to Remus’s throat after all the 4th Company had gone through in their struggle against the Salamanders. Prandium was now lost, the devastation begun by the World Eaters now concluded by a viral bombardment that stripped the ruined planet of all living matter in a viral hellstorm. All that was left of Prandium was a barren rock.
Iax had been firebombed until the Garden of Ultramar was an ashen wasteland. No two campaigns the Warmaster waged were fought the same way, and Remus had heard whispers in the higher echelons of command that the planners in the grand strategium were running out of ideas to fight him. Remus knew that could not be true. The primarch’s writings would have a solution to this assault on Ultramar, it was just too complex and overarching a plan to be comprehended by mortals, even ones as cognitively enhanced as the Legiones Astartes.
Roboute Guilliman had never yet lost a war, and he certainly wouldn’t lose this one.
Macragge could not fall.
It just couldn’t.
Remus didn’t know whether to think of that as fact or wishful thinking.
Barkha scrambled over the rocky ground towards him, keeping low behind the fangs of rock that sheltered this element of the 4th Company. Thirty metres below, the floor of the canyon twisted a serpentine path through the mountains, the ground flat and hard-packed. Well away from the battles being fought in the lowland approaches to the Fortress of Hera, it had been decided that it was certain the Warmaster would move flanking forces through these canyons to open a second front against the Ultramarines last bastion.
The 4th Company guarded the passes to ensure no second front was opened.
‘They’re coming,’ said Barkha. ‘Sons of Horus armour units, with speeders and bikes in the vanguard. It’s a pretty small force, but there’s bound to be others threading their way over the mountains.’
That was true enough, but numerous elements of the 4th Company were watching the secret paths through the mountains.
‘What’s their separation like?’
‘Sloppy,’ said Barkha. ‘They’re in a hurry. The tanks are labouring, and the bikes are slowing down to keep close.’
Remus looked down into the canyon, hearing the distant rumbling of the enemy vehicles as they approached the killing box. The mountains of Macragge were a different order of inimical environment to any the Sons of Horus would have encountered before. Time and time again, the enemies of Macragge had been undone by its hostile geography. The Sons of Horus would be no different.
‘Pass the word. Fire on my signal. Target the lead tank and the rear tank. Trap them in the box and then work your way to the centre.’
‘Understood,’ said Barkha, and Remus heard the note of exasperation in the sergeant’s voice. The 4th Company had practised drills like these countless times, and didn’t need him to tell them how to run an ambush. Remus checked his bolter one last time and propped himself against a rock with a view through a knife-cut in the rocks before him. He could see down into the canyon, but the shadows and dark hue of the rock concealed him from view.
He overlaid a tactical schematic over the view of the canyon, seeing his warriors picked out in pale blue throughout the overlooking crags and gullies. There wasn’t an angle left uncovered, an escape route that wasn’t a death trap or a square centimetre of ground that couldn’t be reached by Ultramarines gunfire.
‘Easy meat,’ whispered Remus.
The noise of engines grew louder, echoing from the canyon walls. Remus heard the chugging breath of Rhinos, the deeper, throaty rumble of Predators and the roaring thunder of at least one Land Raider. The high-pitched bleat of bikes carried over the noise, and Remus kept his head down as a pair of speeders zipped into view.
Both were painted in the sea green of the Sons of Horus, their frontal glacis emblazoned with a flame-coloured eye. The speeders paused, like sniffer dogs hunting a scent, but Remus knew these mountains well and had placed his kill teams with perfect cover. No matter how sophisticated the speeders’ surveyor packages were, they wouldn’t find his warriors.
The speeders carefully eased their way into the canyon, swiftly followed by a five-strong squad of bikes, each one heavily armoured and fitted with forward-firing bolters. A black banner decorated with yet another eye symbol flapped behind the lead bike, and Remus fought the urge to open fire on these invaders.
Then the tanks came, a pair of Rhinos, swiftly followed by three Predators and the grumbling monster of a Land Raider. Another three Rhinos followed it, and yet another pair of Predators formed a rearguard. Barkha had called this a small force, and measured against the scale of warfare a Legion could put in the field it was, but this was still a formidable display of firepower.
The bikes and speeders moved off, and Remus knew they were never going to get a better chance than this. He
pushed onto his knees and sighted down his bolter at the pilot of the nearest speeder. He squeezed off a round, and was rewarded by a kill signal in his helmet. The vehicle slewed away as the pilot slumped over his controls. Remus’s shot was the signal to his ambush force, but before a single shot could be fired, a booming volley of gunfire sounded from higher in the mountains.
Remus saw his men die in droves from the deadly accurate fire, and spun to see dozens of muzzle flashes from the rocks higher in the mountains. Ultramarines icons were winking out on his visor, and his moment of paralysed shock almost cost him his life. His armour registered two impacts, both glancing and not serious enough to hamper him, but he dived into the cover of the stacked cairn.
‘Barkha!’ he yelled, returning fire uphill. ‘Do you have a visual?’
‘Affirmative,’ came the sergeant’s harried voice over the vox. ‘Sons of Horus infiltrators. Squad markings match those on the vehicles below.’
Remus was stunned at this turn of events. How could the Sons of Horus have gotten behind them? How had they known the Ultramarines were lying in wait for them?
Furious exchanges of gunfire flickered back and forth between the two forces, and Remus knew the vehicles below would soon be adding their own weight of fire to the fight. The ambushers had been ambushed, and there was no sense in continuing an engagement that was already lost. The primarch’s words on the subject were abundantly clear.
When they have the drop on you, don’t draw.
‘All units,’ ordered Remus. ‘Withdraw and regroup. Rally point Ultima Sextus. Go!’
Remus bounded from cover to cover, firing as he went. He had no time to aim, and just had to hope that his wild shots hit one of these Sons of Horus bastards. He heard the bark of gunfire all around him, punctuated by the roar of vehicle engines and the crash of artillery pieces launching arcing volleys of shells. A ragged group of Ultramarines ran with him, an amalgamation of three squads he’d gathered after the rout from Konor’s Gate further down the mountains.
Age of Darkness Page 4
