Victories of the Space Marines

by Christian Dunn (ed) - (ebook by Undead)

  The rest of the Imperial Fists formed up behind him, trooping after him into the hole, which was ten metres deep and more than six times that across, that had been carved into the ice of Ixya.

  Over the keening of the wind Sergeant Hesperus imagined he could hear another sound, like the echoes of the desperate cries and terrified screams of those who had met their end here. For there was no one left to find. They would not find anyone alive this day; of that fact Hesperus was certain.

  The nine Space Marines gathered before the looming pyramidal spike of alien metal, their weapons trained on the xenos structure.

  “You think they’re in there?” Brother Maestus asked. He and Hesperus had a unique relationship within the squad, since they had been aspirants together almost sixty years before.

  “I think that something unspeakable woke, walked from this tomb and took them.”

  “Do we attempt a rescue?” Brother Verwhere asked, his plasma pistol ready in his hand, trained at the curious spherical and hemispherical hieroglyphs etched into the otherwise perfectly smooth surface of the pyramid.

  “And rescue what, exactly?” Hesperus challenged his brother. “We would find nothing alive in there, I can assure you.”

  He took a step back from the towering structure.

  “This is only the tip of the iceberg,” he said, smiling darkly. “No, we pull back, return to the Aes Metallum facility. We send an astropathic message to our brethren aboard the Phalanx and the Fury’s Blade and we prepare for a battle the like of which I’ll wager this world has never seen.”

  “Sir, I have something on the auspex,” Ngaio announced, the adrenaline-rush detectable in his tone.

  “Range?” Hesperus demanded, scanning the ice-locked structure in front of him, searching for any sign that the sepulchre was about to open and disgorge its unholy host.

  “Sixty metres. Moving this way.”

  “Vladimir’s bones! Where did that come from?”

  “Nowhere, sir. It came out of nowhere!”

  “Direction!” Hesperus demanded.

  “Heading two-seven-nine degrees!” Ngaio stated, turning to face the approaching menace, bolter in one hand, auspex still gripped tightly in the other.

  “Squad Eurus!” Hesperus called to his companions over the sheet ice and howling gale. “Ready yourselves. The enemy chooses to show itself.”

  And then he saw it through the blizzard, a black beetle shape gliding towards the Imperial Fists through the whirling snow.

  More than twice as large as a Space Marine, the construct hovered over the frozen ground towards them, its flight unaffected by the powerful wind shear.

  Eight articulated metal limbs hung from the iron carapace of its body. The thing reached out with its forelimbs and with a ringing of blades the tips each ratcheted open to form three savage cutting claws. Multiple asymmetrical artificial eyes scanned the Space Marines, pulsing with the eerie green light of an unfathomable xenos intelligence.

  “Fire at will!” Hesperus commanded and a cacophony of bolter fire immediately filled the ice hole like the barking of angry hate-dogs.

  Mass-reactive shells exploded from the resilient carapace of the construct. The arachnoid-thing jerked and faltered, rotating wildly about its centre of gravity as the battle-brothers found their target.

  The spyder-like construct surged forwards again, closing the distance between the Space Marines and it. And was it merely the strange acoustics set up by the flesh-scouring wind keening through the teeth of the weird ice formations that clung to the pyramid, or at that moment did the xenos-construct give voice to a disharmonic shriek of its own?

  With a high-pitched scream, a pulse of rippling blue-white energy burned through the whipping winds of the ice storm and struck the soaring spyder. There was an explosion of sparks and one of the constructs fore-claws went whirling away into the storm. The limb landed in a wind-blown drift, still twitching with a macabre life of its own. As the spyder recovered and closed, Brother Verwhere stood his ground, his plasma pistol still trained on the construct as he waited for the weapon to recharge.

  Sergeant Hesperus strode forwards, ready to bolster Verwhere’s defence. If the spyder evaded the next shot from his plasma pistol, he would ensure that the thing did not escape the wrath of his thunder hammer.

  As the spyder construct closed on them, Brother Verwhere fired again, the shot making a molten mess of the thing’s head and sending it ploughing into the ice in a sparking crackling mess, bolts of green lightning arcing from its metal carcass.

  “We have multiple contacts,” Ngaio declared clearly over the comm, one eye on the blizzard of returns now painting the scope of his auspex.

  And then the snowstorm birthed a host of figures even more macabrely grotesque and yet, at the same time, hauntingly familiar. They possessed the form of hunched humanoid creatures and advanced at a gambolling gait, darting through the ice and snow, reaching for the Space Marines with hands shaped into glinting razor-sharp talons, as long as a man’s arm, dripping blood and sticky with gore.

  And as if the presence of such soulless, inhuman things was not bad enough, then the grisly trophies with which they had adorned themselves made their very existence all the more mind-wrenching. Their ghoulish garb—the shredded skins they had flayed from the bodies of their victims—eradicated any lingering doubt within the minds of the Space Marines as to the fate of the lost survey team.

  As the sinister silver and crimson figures stalked towards them out of the blizzard, Squad Eurus opened fire with their bolt pistols, the rattle of gunfire warped by the wind into something that sounded not unlike the drumming of iron bones on a taut skin of human hide.

  Metal bodies jerked and spun, clipped by the mass-reactive shells, or were thrown backwards into the snow when a direct hit was scored.

  Hearing a thrumming, insistent buzzing noise, Sergeant Hesperus’ attention was drawn away from the approaching alien automatons and onto the approach of another three of the hovering spyder-things.

  “Defence pattern gamma,” Hesperus commanded and the eight battle-brothers present reacted immediately, forming a tight circle of ceramite and adamantium armour between the pyramid and the Thunderhawk. With every angle covered, they lay down suppressing fire, dropping spyders and the flayed ones before they could even get close.

  “Sergeant,” Teaz’s voice came over the comm, “look to the pyramid.”

  Hesperus stepped forwards and dropped another of the skin-wrapped metal skeletons with his crackling thunder hammer and stared at the frozen structure even though he already knew what he would see there.

  Under its cladding of ice and snow, part of the pyramid’s solid surface appeared to have liquefied and now rippled like quicksilver. Defying all the laws of physics, the liquid surface remained at a slant, ripples gliding out from its centre as if a pebble had been dropped into a pool of mercury.

  All this happened in only a matter of seconds. His attention still half on the approaching xenos constructs, Hesperus turned and spun, bringing his hammer down on another of the spyder-things even as it reached for him with snapping pincer-claws.

  Something was emerging from the pool of liquid metal that had formed in the side of the pyramid. At the periphery of his vision, Hesperus saw a skeletal metal thing step out from the fluid shimmering surface and begin to stalk towards the Space Marines’ line. Its gleaming metal skull was hung low between its armoured shoulders, its crystal eyes glowing with a malign intelligence. In its gauntlet-like hands the inhuman warrior carried a bizarre-looking weapon of alien design, but nonetheless lethal for all that. Hesperus had read a treatise disseminated by the Cult Mechanicus that postulated how such weapons operated and recognised the glowing green rods that formed what could best be described as the barrel of the gun as a linear accelerator chamber. Beneath this, the firearm sported a cruel, scything blade—a lethal close quarters combat attachment.

  “We’re not prepared for this,” Hesperus muttered. It was not the way of
an Imperial Fists commander to readily give the order to retreat. The Chapter was notorious amongst the Adeptus Astartes for the stubborn determination of its warriors, who would stand and fight long after the brethren of other Chapters would have quit the field of battle. But nor was it the Imperial Fists way to waste such a precious commodity as experienced battle-brothers, by fighting a suicidal action which would not win them the day and which, in the case of Ixya and the Aes Metallum facility, would leave the Emperor’s loyal subjects open to attack, with no hope of victory in the face of the xenos threat.

  There was a steady stream of the skeletal warriors emerging from the quicksilver pool now, without there being any indication as to when the reinforcements might come to an end.

  Beside him Brother Ors’ chainsword bit through the spine of a warrior, sending chewed-up chunks of metal vertebrae flying and leaving shorn gold wiring exposed.

  In the face of ever-increasing numbers, having no idea how many there might still be to come, Hesperus called the retreat.

  “Squad Eurus! Ignite jump packs and fall back to the Fortis. We are leaving—now!”

  He did not fall back lightly; it was not the Imperial Fists’ way. But Hesperus knew from bitter experience, that where there was one necron, a multitude might follow.

  “Brother-Pilot Teaz,” he called into the comm, once again. “Covering fire, now!”

  One after another, in quick succession, the Space Marines’ jump packs ignited with a roar and Squad Eurus rocketed skywards.

  A split second later searing laser light streaked over their heads and down into the excavation site, exploding spyders and warriors where it struck as the grounded Thunderhawks strafing fire found targets even through the obscuring blizzard.

  Pulses of sick green lightning burst from the weapons of the advancing warriors, chasing them from the depths of the whiteout, evaporating the falling snow and lending the snowstorm an eerie, otherworldly cast.

  Almost as quickly as the Thunderhawk’s laser barrage had begun it cut out again.

  “Brother Teaz!” Hesperus called into the comm as he began to descend again towards the waiting Thunderhawk. “We need covering fire, now!”

  He could make out the silhouette of the great adamantium craft on the ice beneath them now. What he could not hear, however, was the roar of turbofan engines running up to take-off speed and he could not see pulses of laser-light spitting from the Fortis’ guns.

  As he and his brother Space Marines dropped lower he understood the reason for the Thunderhawk’s unprepared condition. The hull of the craft appeared to ripple as if its adamantium plates had fractured and acquired some unnatural form of life.

  As they came closer still, Hesperus could see that the undulating surface was in fact formed from myriad beetle-like constructs that were swarming all over the Fortis, jamming its flight controls, clogging its propulsion systems and interfering with its weapon arrays.

  There were more of the beetling machines burrowing up through the ice to join the host already smothering the Thunderhawk. If the craft was to be of any use to the Imperial Fists in their flight from this xenos-cursed place, the silver scarabs had to be eliminated.

  “Squad Eurus, deploy grenades.”

  As well as being armed with bolt pistols and chainswords, each of the Space Marines also carried a number of grenades. Mag-locking their chainswords to their armoured suits, the battle-brothers of Squad Eurus slowed their rapid descent, dropped the primed frag charges where the swarm was thickest, training their pistols on the scarabs interfering with the weapons systems and the Thunderhawk’s engines, removing them with precision shots to free the more delicate parts of the craft from the xenos swarm infestation.

  The grenades detonated as they hit, sending fragments of alien artifice flying, turning the beetle-things into just so much more shrapnel, clearing a score of the creatures from the fuselage with every blast.

  As the Space Marines dropped the last twenty metres to the landing site, they opened up with their bolters, their own strafing fire clearing yet more of the insidious scuttling things from the stricken Fortis.

  Hesperus landed hard, the ice shuddering beneath his feet. He was up and at the swarm in the time it took him to rise from the crouch in which he braced himself as he landed, batting the scrabbling scarabs clear of the wings of the Thunderhawk, sending a dozen flying with every powerfully concussive blow of his hammer.

  But the Space Marines’ action against the Thunderhawk was making a difference now. Slowly, the flyer’s turbofan engines began to whine as the cockpit controls came online again and Brother-Pilot Teaz coaxed the great craft into life.

  Striding into the thick of the skittering beetle-things, Hesperus made his way to the Fortis’ hold access and, with well-placed sweeps of his crackling hammer head, he beat the scarabs clear of the hatch.

  “Brother Teaz, can you hear me now?”

  “Re—czzz—ving you now, s—czz—geant.”

  “Then open up and let us in.”

  With a grinding whine the embarkation hatch opened and Squad Eurus boarded the Thunderhawk. Brother Khafra, the last on board punched the switch to activate the closing mechanism as the Fortis lifted off, shaking the snow from its landing struts and sending the last of the scarabs tumbling from its surface where they had persistently clung onto the outer hull.

  As the Thunderhawk continued to gain altitude, Brother-Pilot Teaz swung its nose round, pointing it back in the direction of the mining facility. Sergeant Hesperus, his hearts still racing within the hardened shell of his ribs, peered through the closing crack of the outer hatch and uttered a heartfelt prayer to Dorn and the Emperor. A multitude filled the excavation site before the frozen pyramid, the legions woken by the explorators’ innocent interference darkening the snow and ice with their innumerable host.

  “Brothers,” he said, “we return to the facility to prepare for a siege.”

  “What news, sergeant?” Governor Selig asked as the great and the good of Aes Metallum met the Imperial Fists again upon the adamantium skirt of the shuttle pad.

  Hesperus removed his helmet again before answering the governor.

  “Nothing good I fear,” he said, his face hard.

  “But did you find the missing explorators?”

  “What was left of them.”

  The governor stared at him aghast. Hesperus took a long, slow breath, carefully composing what he was about to say in his mind first.

  Selig blanched as Sergeant Hesperus told him what had befallen the explorator team and what would soon befall the mining facility. For those who had once claimed this frozen hell as their own had woken from the slumber of aeons to take it back.

  “Governor, were it not for our presence upon this world, I would say that the fate of this world was sealed, that Ixya was doomed. But you see here before you ten of the Emperor’s finest warriors, each one worth a hundred of those who fight within the Emperor’s inestimable armies, and as a result this world is not yet doomed. For as long as you have us to bolster your defence of this bastion, there is still hope.”

  “Throne be praised,” Selig gasped, making the sign of the aquila across his chest.

  “The Emperor protects.”

  Magos Winze’s circling mechadendrites formed the holy cog symbol in supplication to the Omnissiah of Mars, accompanied by a chirrup of machine code-prayer.

  “Captain Derrin,” Hesperus said, turning to the commander of Ixya’s planetary defence force. “What armour have you? Aircraft? Gun emplacements? How many men do you have at your command? What other defensive measures? I need an inventory of everything you have got at your disposal. You too, Magos Winze. Tell me everything.”

  When Captain Derrin had finished running through the PDF’s resources on Ixya—from the flight of Valkyries, through to Hades breaching drills, Sentinel power-lifters and Trojan support vehicles—aided by the tech-priest’s indefatigable augmented memory, Sergeant Hesperus looked at each of the three men and said, “Then we pre
pare for war!”

  “Permission to speak honestly, brother-sergeant,” Brother Maestus said over a closed comm channel so that only Hesperus could hear him.

  “For you, Maestus, always.”

  “Sir, it is not enough,” the battle-brother said, gravely.

  “I know that, brother,” Hesperus replied, “but what would you have me tell Selig and the others? Take away their hope and we take away the best weapon these people have at their disposal. As it stands, this facility may well be doomed, but if we can hold the enemy at bay long enough, then it is still possible that reinforcements may arrive in time.”

  He hesitated and then turned back, calling after the departing tech-priest. “Magos Winze, a word if you would be so kind.”

  Winze appeared to rotate at the waist and then glided back across the hard deck towards them. “How may I assist you, sergeant?”

  “How are the refined minerals you produce here transported to the forge worlds of this subsector?”

  “Why,” the adapted adept croaked rustily, “Mechanicus transport vessels arrive on a regular basis to transport the ores and isotopes we refine here to Croze, Incus and Ferramentum III.”

  “And when is the next shipment due to leave?”

  “Why, the Glory of Gehenna is coming in-system as we speak,” Magos Winze announced, augmetic nictitating eyelids clicking in quick succession. “Would I be correct in the assumption that you are now cogitating what I predict you to be cogitating, sergeant?”

  “Hail the Glory of Gehenna. We shall have need of the might of Mars as well as the might of the strength of Dorn’s legacy this day.”

  Like some leviathan void-spawn birthed in the cold, dark depths of space, the Mechanicus vessel Glory of Gehenna coasted in the exosphere of the frozen planet a thousand kilometres below, like some vast and ancient cetacean trawling the shallows of an arctic sea.

  The servitor bound from the waist down into the ordnance post of the nave-like bridge rotated to face the command pulpit and a string of machine code emanated from the speaker grille that stood in place of a mouth.