by Andy Hoare
‘Explain,’ Voldorius growled.
‘It is as I reported to your equerry, my lord,’ said Morkis, his voice remarkably steady given the circumstances. ‘Defence installation South Nine has come under attack by a small but well-equipped enemy, seemingly intent upon the destruction of its surface-to-orbit missile batteries.’
Voldorius leaned in, his bestial face closing with the lord colonel’s. ‘Who are they?’
‘Initial reports…’ Morkis stammered as he looked for the aide who was nowhere to be found. ‘Initial reports suggest that the attackers are Space Marines.’
A deep growl sounded in Voldorius’s throat, his eyes narrowing into black slits. ‘Of what Chapter?’
‘My lord, I…’ Morkis began, fear writ large across his face. ‘I do not know…’
‘Then find out,’ Voldorius replied, pulling slowly back to scan the line of generals and lord colonels that stood before him. ‘There can be only one reason the Emperor’s lapdogs are attacking the orbital defences.’
‘The scarred ones?’ asked Nullus, his voice a sibilant whisper from behind the line of officers.
‘Who else,’ said Voldorius.
‘None could have survived Cernis IV, my lord,’ said Nullus. Malya imagined she heard a note of fear in the traitor Space Marine’s voice, though she had no idea what he referred to.
‘So you promised me, Nullus,’ Voldorius growled as he turned towards his lieutenant. ‘Well you know that nothing will stay the hand of Kor’sarro, so obsessed is he in his hunt. I should be flattered…’
‘I shall deal with him,’ replied Nullus, a note of defiance, or perhaps injured pride, entering his voice. ‘Give me the forces, and I shall crush him.’
Voldorius paused, casting a dark glance towards Malya before resuming. ‘Perhaps it is fitting that the scarred ones should return from the dead. Perhaps our resurrected prisoner might be of some use.’
‘My lord?’ said Nullus.
Voldorius stepped back, and scanned the banks of screens lining the militia command centre. His gaze fell on a depiction of the South Nine installation, the view captured by a spy-lens set in the city’s wall.
‘You shall face them, Nullus,’ said Voldorius. ‘Take half of the Legion and what militia cohorts you need. If this attack truly is a precursor to a full landing, it must be halted. But I shall face their main force. Do you understand?’
Nullus bowed his head to his daemonic master, and looking up with savagely glinting eyes, replied ‘I understand, my lord.’
Kor’sarro stood at the mouth of the caves, facing the north and the battle he knew was raging there even now. He was flanked on one side by the Storm Seer Qan’karro and on the other by the Chaplain, Xia’ghan. The three veteran warriors watched as a tall column of smoke rose in the distance, marking the destruction the Raven Guard were inflicting upon the defence installation.
‘Is all prepared?’ Kor’sarro asked, not taking his eyes from that distant sign of battle.
‘As prepared as it will be, huntsman,’ Qan’karro replied, his weatherworn face turning towards the Master of the Hunt. ‘The Brotherhood is at your side, as ever it was.’
Kor’sarro glanced sideways at the Storm Seer. He knew that the old warrior spoke not only of the company’s combat readiness, but of the men’s commitment to the cause of slaying the one they had hunted together for so long. ‘And what of the Ravens, old friend?’
Qan’karro’s lined face grew dark. ‘I was at the Fall of Kordon, huntsman,’ he said. ‘And at the Battle of the Ring of Night. I know they can fight, despite the… history between our kin.’
‘And do they… does he, hold the same view of us?’ Kor’sarro replied. ‘He voiced many grievances against our Chapter.’
Now the Chaplain interjected. ‘My khan,’ Xia’ghan said. ‘The sons of the raven are known to us of old, as well you know. Their souls are troubled, as touched by the spirit of their primarch as are we by our own, honoured be his name.’
‘Their souls are touched,’ said Xia’ghan. ‘Not in that manner,’ he added hastily at a sharp glance from the Storm Seer. ‘In the sense that they feel a great bitterness at the injustices of our times.’
‘Don’t we all?’ Kor’sarro asked.
‘Aye, my khan. But each bears the burden in his own manner. We of Chogoris have our ancient ways to guide us in the universe. We have our honour and our oaths.’
‘And they do not?’
Xia’ghan sighed. ‘They turn the darkness of the world in upon themselves, my khan. Each of them walks their own path. Men such as Kayvaan Shrike bear the weight of the evils of the universe upon their own shoulders and allow none to share their load.’
‘I cannot claim to know men’s souls as you do,’ Kor’sarro slowly shook his head as he spoke. ‘But what you say has some meaning to me.’
The sound of a far-off explosion rumbled across the land. ‘And that is why you lead, my khan,’ said Xia’ghan.
‘Battle calls,’ Kor’sarro said, feeling himself filled with a renewed purpose. ‘Is the Brotherhood ready to answer?’
‘Aye, my khan,’ said Xia’ghan. ‘The brethren await only your word.’
‘Then it is given,’ Kor’sarro replied. ‘We ride to join our brother the raven, and together we shall crush all who oppose us.’
Malya stood absolutely still amidst the anarchy of the command chamber. Officers of every rank, from the most junior sub-lieutenant to the generals and lord colonels, bellowed curses and orders in equal measure, each competing to be heard and obeyed over the din. Lord Kline struggled in vain to coordinate the muster, while Quartermaster General Ackenvol oversaw the distribution of arms and ammunition to those positions in the most need. Staff officers tried in vain to relay coherent instructions into the command and control network and to report back the dozens of updates each was receiving every minute from a myriad of command channels.
Lord Voldorius had left the command centre soon after Nullus, and much to her relief, had not ordered Malya to attend him. He had gone to torment the prisoner, of that she was sure, though to what end she had no idea.
A huge pict-screen showing a view captured by a spy-lens mounted on the capital city’s wall dominated the centre of the command chamber. Defence installation South Nine was engulfed in flames, clouds of black smoke billowing from dozens of its bastions and gun positions. Yet, despite the effects of the smoke, a group of black-armoured warriors was visible holding a stretch of wall against scores of militia troopers attempting to recapture it. It had been established that this group was the second wave to have hit the installation. The first wave, entirely equipped with jump packs and armed for brutal close-combat assaults, had struck earlier and pressed onwards into the heart of the installation, towards the huge missile batteries at its centre.
Were these the Space Marines she had so briefly communicated with before the atrocity in the grand square? Had they really come in response to the pleas for aid the resistance had transmitted? She prayed it was so with all her heart, yet she dared not allow herself to believe that deliverance was at hand, for her at least.
In her heart, Malya now understood that should these attackers, the Emperor’s mighty Space Marines, succeed in defeating Voldorius and his Alpha Legion, she would surely be implicated as a traitor to her people. Could this have been part of the daemon prince’s despicable scheme? Her role as equerry had thus far been limited to liaising with the local administration and passing down whatever pronouncements Voldorius had made. Voldorius had kept her near, relying on fear to ensure she carried out his instructions. And that fear was very real, for Malya had witnessed others reduced to mewling imbeciles by the evil he radiated. Somehow, perhaps because of her faith, Malya had withstood it, though she felt it gnawing at the tattered fringe of her mortal soul whenever she was near her master.
Casting aside such thoughts, Malya tur
ned her attentions back to the massive screen. Nullus had mustered a vast force to sally out from the city walls and retake the defence installation before the missiles could be destroyed. A blue-green wave of Alpha Legion traitor Space Marines led the thousands-strong horde of militia. Malya had never seen so many of the warriors gathered in one place before, yet she knew that the three hundred or so marching forth represented only half of the total Lord Voldorius commanded. Behind the horde of militia came a ragged mass of the debased worshippers of the daemon prince. These were the lost and the damned, the dregs of society turned to the worship of the very being that had brought their own world so low. Many wore ragged habits as if in imitation of some noble mendicant order, but scourged their bodies with flails and chains and wailed the praises of their vile lord. Others wore just the torn remnants of their work gear, as if they had simply left their places of toil and joined the horde with no consideration of their own fate. Others still were naked, crude runes daubed in paint, or perhaps blood, across their bodies as they charged headlong towards what Malya could only imagine would be wholesale slaughter.
As the horde surged across the black plain towards the defence installation, Malya saw a sight that made her blood run cold. The super-heavy tank called the Ironsoul, the leviathan that had killed uncounted numbers of her people in the grand square, rumbled forwards on grinding tracks. Its multiple guns were trained upon the captured wall of the defence installation.
She had to contact the Space Marines. They had to know of the prisoner. But how to contact them amidst the churning anarchy of the strategium… she would have to wait until the attentions of the staff officers were distracted elsewhere.
Captain Shrike threw himself aside as a trio of heavy bolters opened fire from a concealed gun position in front of the fortified base of the surface-to-orbit missile silo. The launchers reared overhead, a dozen and more warheads the size of tanks trained on the skies. Ducking behind a rockcrete fortification, Shrike gritted his teeth as the torrent of fire passed close by.
Momentarily shielded from enemy fire, Shrike checked the status of his warriors. Runes showing the vital signs of those in the first wave blinked across his vision. Three of those runes were red, indicating a death or cataclysmic damage to armour systems. A dozen more blinked, telling of serious wounds.
Rolling onto his side, Shrike risked a quick glance at the missile silo, exposing only his helmeted head and that only for an instant. In that second, he saw that the three heavy bolter positions were dug into the black ground in front of the silo, and judged they could be taken with a concerted push.
‘Squad Morior,’ Shrike spoke into the vox-net. ‘Left flank, wide, thirty seconds.’
Sergeant Morior acknowledged the order and moments later the Assault squad dashed along the dead space between two burning fortifications, chainswords growling to life and bolt pistols scanning for targets.
‘Sohen, Enriso, stand by.’
Shrike counted down the seconds as Squad Morior advanced upon the gun positions from the flank, ready to give the order for the other two Assault squads and his own Command squad to attack from the front.
As the countdown reached zero the unmistakable sound of ten Space Marine jump packs gunning to full power filled the air, the Assault Marines of Squad Morior closing on the leftmost of the gun positions.
‘Attack!’ Shrike ordered, and emerged from the fortification he had been sheltering behind, activating his now bloody talons.
But before he could take a step forwards a burst of static followed by a scream of howling feedback drowned out the vox-net. Even as the warriors of Squad Morior descended upon the leftmost of the heavy bolters a blazing lattice of red beams powered into life all around their target. So tightly woven was the net of searing death that the Assault Marines of Squad Morior had no hope of avoiding their lethal touch.
Sergeant Morior, leading from the front as any of his rank would have been, was the first to be cut into pieces by the laser beams. The sergeant, only ascended to that rank six months before, passed through the net seemingly untouched, but as he emerged his armoured body disintegrated into a dozen chunks. Each tumbled bloodlessly to the ground, the precise cuts instantly cauterised by the intense heat of the beams.
Before any could shout a warning the three warriors following the sergeant suffered an identical fate to their leader, their remains scattering across the gun position they were attacking. Instead of a bolt pistol, the third warrior was carrying a plasma weapon and its fuel containment flask detonated with spectacular effect. The explosion engulfed the bearer in a roiling ball of pure white energy as intense as the heart of a star. The Space Marine’s body was reduced to seared atoms and the plasma ball expanded to catch one of the traitor’s ammunition hoppers. A thousand rounds of heavy explosive bolts detonated before the plasma shrank to a pulsating singularity and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
The gun pit was consumed in a torrent of lethal detonations as the ammunition cooked off, slaughtering the gun crew in an instant. Shrike saw his chance and charged forwards before the other two gun crews could recover from the anarchy engulfing their line.
Shrike’s warriors were now fuelled by an all-consuming hatred of the enemy that had decimated Squad Morior. The remnants of the Assault squad were even now recovering, two of their number dragging back those wounded but not killed by the laser beams while the others opened fire with their bolt pistols.
‘Beware of more traps,’ Shrike warned as he gunned his jump pack to life. In an instant he was high in the air, the remaining two gun positions beneath him.
A second scream of machine feedback filled the vox-net and Shrike knew that the other two gun pits were activating their own las-nets. Forewarned, the Raven Guard avoided the trap, and Shrike located the militia trooper who had activated the fiendish device as he attended to a machine terminal at the rear of the central gun position.
Shrike could not reach the enemy trooper, for the lattice of death formed a lethal barrier none of the Space Marines could charge through. But as he passed overhead upon the screaming jets of his jump pack, Shrike saw an opening. With a thought, he loaded a trio of frag grenades into the launcher barrels atop his jump pack, and diving head first towards the las-net, fired all three tubes at once.
The frag grenades burst from the launcher, one exploding as it hit a beam, the other two passing through the gaps in the deadly lattice to fall among the gun crew. With barely a delay, the two grenades exploded, shredding the gunners and wrecking the generator that powered the las-traps.
The power source destroyed, Shrike passed through the space which a microsecond earlier had been filled with the deadly las-net. He landed in the smoking remains of the gun position and saw that one of the traitor militia gunners was stirring and reaching a blood-soaked hand towards a pistol. With a swipe of a talon, Shrike severed the hand from the wrist, causing the man to scream out in pain.
Shrike looked down upon the traitor, bitter hatred welling inside.
Nodding his head towards the remains of the fallen of Squad Morior, he uttered: ‘You did this.’
The man’s face contorted in anger, and despite his wounds, he staggered to his feet to stand before the captain.
‘No,’ the gunner coughed, looking upwards to meet Shrike’s gaze. ‘I serve Voldorius.’
Shrike felt as if his soul would be consumed by the bitterness of a universe seemingly intent upon its own destruction. Before him stood not some barbarous ork, effete eldar, or slavering tyranid bio-construct but a man, once a servant of the Emperor. No words would come to him, so he simply beheaded the traitor with a callous swipe of his talons, and turned towards his advancing battle-brothers.
Before he could issue a further order, the voice of Sergeant Indis cut into the command channel. ‘Brother-captain,’ said Indis. ‘Enemy inbound.’
‘How many?’ replied Shrike.
‘All o
f them, sir.’
The air churned with the insane chants of ten thousand madmen as the horde surged across the open ground in front of the walls of defence installation South Nine. Gunfire and screams intermingled with frenzied devotions as Alpha Legion warriors imposed their brutal order upon the swarm of cultists and traitor militia, firing their boltguns into the margins of the vast horde whenever it needed to be steered towards the enemy.
The guns of the Raven Guard Devastator squads opened fire as the swarm closed on the walls of the defence installation. At first, only the missile launchers had the range, sending frag missiles slamming into the front ranks. The resulting explosions created ragged holes in the chaotic mass of traitors, but these were soon filled as the mob surged forwards.
As the range closed still further, those Alpha Legionnaires in the front ranks peeled off to the flanks, funnelling the anarchic horde towards the section of the wall held by the Raven Guard. The deluded servants of Lord Voldorius sang their master’s praises with all the more exuberance as the first of their number were scythed down as the Raven Guard’s heavy bolters added their fire to the defence.
Scores died in the opening minutes. Heavy bolter shells ripped through the first bodies they struck, tearing them apart in a welter of gore without detonating before striking the next target. Many shells passed through several traitors before finally exploding, reducing their last target to a ruin of twitching gristle.
The flesh of the slain was pounded flat as those behind pushed forwards, grinding the meat into the dirt. The deaths appeared not to dissuade the traitors but to spur them onwards, as if the slaughter of their fellows redoubled their perverted faith in their daemonic master. All distinction between those openly worshipping the Ruinous Powers and those merely swept along in the tragedy that had befallen Quintus was lost. Those forced to serve in the militias were so frenzied by terror and despair that they could not be told apart from those who willingly embraced their fate. Whether turned or led astray, it made no difference to the Emperor’s elite. Every one of the horde deserved death, and the Tactical and Devastator squads holding the wall granted it.
