by Gav Thorpe
The first bullets zipped around Boreas as he subconsciously registered the thunder of more Space Marines coming up the stairs behind him. Sending another bolt into the gut of an ork, Boreas spared a millisecond glance to his right, across the nave where more orks had gathered.
He saw a blossom of fire and flung himself against the wall as a rocket spiralled towards him, the warhead smashing into the plascrete just behind him. The rosarius hanging on a thick chain around Boreas’s neck blazed with power as shrapnel engulfed the Chaplain; the rosarius’s energy field converted the mass of the shards into flares of bright light. Boreas heaved himself away from the cracked wall as more bullets skipped and screamed along the gallery. He headed straight for the orks, bolts from his battle-brothers whipping past either side of him, detonations cracking along a crude barricade the orks had built out of splintered furniture and bundled wall-hangings.
The Chaplain emptied the rest of his bolt pistol into the greenskins as he charged the barrier, sending them reeling back. He leapt as he reached the barricade, one foot atop the broken remnants of a cabinet, driving his other into the face of an ork swinging at him with a snarling chainsword. The alien’s head snapped back as Boreas’s momentum carried him into the thick of the orks, his crozius crashing under the upraised arm of another foe to liquidate flesh and bone.
Boreas landed and rolled, sweeping the legs from another enemy with his right arm as he regained his feet. Something hammered into his backpack and he turned on his heel, driving an elbow into the face of an ork, fangs splintering, jaw breaking. A heavy blade slashed out of the throng and caught him on the right side of his helmet, its serrated edge scraping through paint and chipping ceramite.
The ork backed away, just out of reach. Boreas hurled his empty pistol into the beast’s face, this distraction giving the Chaplain a moment to follow up with a bone-crunching kick to the knee that brought down the alien. The rosarius flared into life again as more blows rained down on the Chaplain, blinding the orks. Boreas smashed one across the face with his crozius, the wing of the eagle-head burying itself deep in a red eye. He chopped with the edge of his hand into the throat of another, lifting the beast from its feet, windpipe smashed.
Bolt-round detonations sprayed the Chaplain with gore as the following Dark Angels joined the melee. Bursting through the barricade, the Space Marines fell upon the orks with chainblade bayonets and monomolecular-edged combat knives.
The dozen or so remaining orks were not about to give up the fight, and hurled themselves at the squad roaring throaty war cries and obscenities. Four of them bore Brother Zepheus to the floor, stabbing at his face and chest, levering their blades into the joints of his armour, blasting away with heavy pistols, the ricocheting bullets as much a danger to themselves as the Dark Angels.
Boreas’s crozius smashed into the skull of an ork pinning down Zepheus, splitting it wide open. The ork reared up, still alive, dragging its serrated blade from a crack in Zepheus’s armour. It swung the weapon at Boreas and missed, spattering the Chaplain’s skull-helm with droplets of his battle-brother’s blood. Incensed, Boreas shoulder-charged the greenskin, tackling it at chest height to drive it into the wall with a snap of bones, plascrete exploding into dust around them. Boreas snapped the ork’s neck in the crook of his arm to be certain and cast the limp body to the floor. He turned to see Sergeant Lemael burying his chainaxe into the armpit of the last greenskin, the whirring blades spraying gobbets of flesh and shards of bone over the gallery rail.
Boreas pressed on to the archway at the end of the gallery, past which were found the inner chambers of the basilica. Lemael split his Space Marines into two combat squads, joining the Chaplain with Brothers Sarion, Dannael, Aspherus and Zamiel. The remainder of the Dark Angels took up overwatch positions along the gallery while they waited for an Apothecary to attend to the badly wounded Zepheus.
‘You might want this, Brother-Chaplain,’ said Aspherus, proffering Boreas’s bolt pistol, which he had evidently retrieved from the pile of ork bodies. The Chaplain took it with a murmur of thanks, slammed home a fresh magazine from his belt and darted a look through the archway, looking for foes. A corridor ran to the northern end of the basilica, shattered windows on the right-hand side, half a dozen doors leading into the scriptoriums on the left. There was no sign of the orks. Boreas switched off his crozius to conserve its power cell and nodded the Dark Angels forwards.
‘Check and clear every room,’ Lemael told his warriors. ‘Be vigilant for booby-traps. There is no telling what these filthy greenskins have been up to.’
Sarion went up on point, kicking in the remnants of the first door while Dannael kept watch along the corridor. The Space Marines hurried into the room, bolters ready. Within, all had been upturned. Illuminating desks and low stools were broken, and tattered and soiled manuscripts were scattered across the floor. Digiquills and styluses lay in a snapped heap beneath the broken door of a storage cabinet and crude ork glyphs were daubed on the walls in black and red ink. Blossoms of green and yellow and purple and blue showed where pots of other colours had been dashed against the walls, floor and ceiling for amusement.
‘Scum,’ muttered Boreas.
He had expected such desecration, hardened his anticipation of it, but it was still something of a shock to see it wrought in rooms where only a few days before he had walked amongst the company serfs as they copied out the great texts of the Dark Angels Chapter. It had been an ordered, serene enclave in the midst of the bustling port-city, dedicated to reflection on the Lion’s teachings, the wisdom of the Emperor and the doctrine of battle.
His eye was caught by a scrap of plasti-parchment, edges wrinkled and melted from an attempt to set it alight. He hung his crozius from his belt and picked it up, recognising the partially obscured illustration in the margin. He gave an ironic laugh.
‘Page fourteen of the Contemplations of Castigation,’ he told his battle-brothers. He read the first lines out loud. ‘Blessed be the warrior that punishes the unclean. In his purgation of the Heretic, the Mutant and the Alien, the blessed Astartes proves his purity. Only he that is free of taint can uphold the role of Executioner of the Imperial Will.’
The rest was unreadable, but Boreas knew it by heart. His voice turned to a snarl as he continued from memory.
‘With the honour of that duty there comes the responsibility to prosecute such punishment to the utter lengths of possibility. No Heretic, no Mutant, no Alien is above the reproach of the cleansing fire of battle. If the Imperial Will is to extend to all corners and reaches of the galaxy, there can be no respite from the eternal pursuit for justice and the perpetuation of vengeance against the immoral.’
Boreas crumpled the sheet in his fist and dropped it to the ground. Pulling free his crozius, he thumbed the weapon into life, bathing the room with its blue glow.
‘The vilest of offences has been committed against us, my brothers,’ growled Boreas. ‘The orks do not simply attack a world of the Imperium, they attack a world under our protection. This building is not simply a strategic asset to be held against an enemy. This is a basilica of the Dark Angels, an extension of the Tower of Angels, a spiritual part of lost Caliban. An attack here is an attack against the Dark Angels Chapter. It is an affront to the Lion! It is not only our duty to bring righteous persecution against those who have sinned against us; it is our right!’
Sergeant Lemael answered, echoed by the rest of the Space Marines.
‘Kill the alien!’
The next two rooms were equally ransacked and equally empty of foes to punish for the act. As the Dark Angels left the third chamber, Lemael commanded them to stop. Boreas listened, his autosenses picking up what the sergeant had first detected: grunts and scrapes from the adjoining room.
‘An interesting development,’ remarked the sergeant. ‘Orks attempting an ambush?’
‘The strange subtlety of thought is not matched by their subtlety of action,’ replied Brother Sarion as the clatter of something dro
pped on the wooden floors sounded from the next room.
‘Teach them the lesson of their error,’ rasped Boreas, holstering his bolt pistol to pull a fragmentation grenade from a belt-pack.
‘Zamiel, do your duty,’ ordered Lemael.
The Space Marine lifted his flamer in acknowledgement, the harsh blue of its igniter reflected from his dark green armour.
‘Purge the alien!’ shouted Boreas, kicking open the next door.
He caught a glimpse of fanged mouths snarling at him as the orks rose from their hiding positions behind overturned lecterns and tables. The Chaplain tossed a grenade into the back of the room while four more arced past him, bouncing off the walls and ceiling. Boreas ducked back as simultaneous detonations filled the chamber with shrapnel, smoke and metal spilling from the doorway.
A moment later Zamiel stood at the door, flamer spraying white-hot promethium into the scriptorium, the crackle of flames blanketing the harsh yells and panicked bellows of the orks within. He panned left and right, coating everything with the sticky fuel, setting light to wood and flesh and parchment. Only when every surface was burning did he release the trigger and pull up his weapon, stepping back to allow the others to enter the inferno.
Surrounded by flames, the Space Marines burst into the room, firing their bolters into the twitching, charring bodies of the orks. Boreas could feel the heat of the flames, but a glance at his power armour’s integrity display showed that the guttering blaze was well within tolerable limits. As the promethium burnt out, the Chaplain found himself standing inside a blackened shell, a few licks of fire flickering here and there. The bones of the orks lay in contorted heaps, stuck with chunks of burnt flesh, steam hissing from boiling marrow and blood, while pools of fat sizzled beneath them.
‘We must move on to secure the spire and dominate the city square,’ announced Lemael. ‘Haste is required before the enemy send reinforcements.’
‘Righteous is our cause,’ said Boreas. ‘We shall not fail the Chapter.’
Leaving the burned-out room, the squad moved on, continuing their sweep towards the apex of the basilica, where the main spire reached one hundred metres into the sky above Kadillus. This was their goal: the highest point in the city centre, from which the Dark Angels would be able to pour fire into the surrounding buildings and, more importantly, accurately direct the artillery fire of their allies against the ork army that had seized the harbour over the previous two days.
The ork attack had taken the people of Kadillus unawares, and with that surprise the greenskins had driven through the heart of the city, directly for the docks and wharfs. Nobody yet knew where the enemy had come from; there had been no warning from orbital arrays, nor the Dark Angels ship circling high above Piscina IV.
It was fortunate that the Dark Angels were here at all. The Chapter had arrived four weeks ago as part of a much-delayed visit to take recruits from the neighbouring world of Piscina V. The bulk of the Chapter had left six days ago, leaving the 3rd Company and a few auxiliary squads from other companies to oversee the last stages of recruitment. Had it not been for the swift reaction of Master Belial and his warriors, the whole city might have fallen within hours. The company commander had faced the ork warlord once already, and from what Boreas had heard, Belial had been fortunate to survive the encounter.
As it was, the orks were holed up in the waterfront district and along a line of buildings that stretched to the central square. In the close confines of the city and without a clear idea of enemy numbers or their purpose, even the Dark Angels were wary of facing the brutal orks head-on. Master Belial’s plan was to contain the aliens at the docks, whilst breaking the link with those in the city centre. The two forces could then be purged separately once the planet’s defence force, the Free Militia, had been fully mobilised.
The first stage was to secure the basilica, but that had proven easier ordered than accomplished. This was Boreas’s fourth attempt, and was showing the greatest success so far.
As the Dark Angels forged further into the press of rooms, resistance was sporadic and scattered; the orks had evidently split their numbers to avoid sharing the spoils, and so were easily overcome by the Space Marines. However, their progress through the three storeys of administrative chambers between the central nave and the spire did not go unnoticed by their green-skinned adversaries.
The orks counter-attacked as the squad gained the first landing at the base of the stairwells leading up into the spire. Lemael had his foot upon the first step when something clattered around the landing above, bouncing down to spin gently at his feet. It was a stick grenade.
As Boreas and the others turned away, the grenade went off, filling the enclosed space with a storm of metal shards. Everything went silent for a moment as the Chaplain’s autosenses cut in to block the concussive effect of the detonation. His rosarius blazed, engulfing him with its protective shield, but still he felt dozens of impacts on his armour as shrapnel swallowed the squad. When Boreas’s hearing was restored, the hallway was still ringing. Lemael lay slumped against the wall, his right leg armour cracked by the blast, his knee twisted at an unnatural angle.
‘Cover the stairs!’ snapped Boreas. ‘Protect your sergeant!’
Dannael and Sarion advanced a few steps up the stair as Zamiel and Aspherus slung their weapons and dragged Lemael down the hall, leaving a trail of dark blood.
More grenades clanged down from above. Most exploded harmlessly before reaching the Space Marines; Dannael threw two back up the stairs before they detonated, much to the surprise, and apparently some amusement, of the orks. Another buzzed and smoked just out of reach but failed to go off.
The thudding of boots on the bare plascrete warned of the descending ork mob. Sarion opened fire first, cutting down the first greenskins to come around the corner of the landing. Some of the following orks tripped on the bodies of the first, but others leapt over the corpses, ploughing down the steps with reckless disregard for balance. As Sarion stopped to reload, Dannael took up the fusillade, firing steadily into the press of green bodies rushing him, each shot blowing a fist-sized hole in flesh and bone.
Undeterred, the orks leapt to the attack, smashing mauls and blades into the Space Marines’ armour, the stairwell resounding with wordless yells and the crack of fracturing ceramite. Within moments Dannael and Sarion were swept off the stairway and back into the hall, battering at their foes with bolters, fists and feet.
Boreas joined the defence, bolt pistol spitting rounds, crozius leaving a trail of burning energy as he swept the power weapon into the orks. The hall was barely wide enough for the three Space Marines to stand abreast, Sarion to the Chaplain’s right, Dannael to the left. The orks were similarly hampered and could not bring their greater numbers to bear down the stairwell. A violent stalemate ensued: Boreas, Dannael and Sarion battered down any greenskin that reached them, but were unable to press further forwards.
‘Brother Boreas!’ Sergeant Peliel barked urgently through the Chaplain’s comm. ‘The orks have breached the catacombs from the sewers. Encountering extreme resistance. Three brothers lost. We are falling back to the central nave. Advise that your current position will become untenable.’
‘The Astartes do not retreat!’ Boreas snarled back. For two days possession of the basilica had constantly changed hands. The Chaplain was determined it would not fall to the orks again. ‘Fight to the death, sergeant!’
The comm crackled for a moment before Peliel replied. Boreas parried a saw-edged cleaver swung at his gut and fired a bolt-round into the gaping mouth of the ork wielding it, the back of the greenskin’s head spattering across those behind.
‘Sacrifice at this point offers no tactical benefit, Brother-Chaplain,’ the sergeant said calmly. ‘Enemy armed with portable heavy arms and powered weapons capable of penetrating Astartes armour. Last-stand scenario would not provide sufficient delay to their advance. We are executing a fighting withdrawal to the main basilica. Urgently suggest you perform same.�
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Boreas suppressed a snarl of frustration. Distracted, he did not see a gun muzzle thrust through the press of orks. Once again his rosarius saved him from the worst, enveloping him with light as bullets sprayed against his chest. He smashed aside the gun with the tip of his crozius.
‘Acknowledged, Sergeant Peliel. Will rendezvous in the nave in three minutes.’ Boreas heard the click of the intersquad channel closing and addressed the Space Marines with him. ‘Take Sergeant Lemael and reform your squad on the gallery. Brothers Dannael, Sarion and I will guard the withdrawal.’
Boreas concentrated on fending off another wave of orks as affirmatives sounded in his ear. He fired the last bolt from his pistol into the back of an ork clinging to Sarion’s left arm, the projectile shattering the creature’s spine.
Side-by-side, the three Space Marines back-stepped along the hallway. Sarion had discarded his mangled bolter and fought with his combat knife; Dannael fired his weapon in a long burst, cutting down half a dozen foes until the bolter was empty, opening a gap of a few metres between the Space Marines and their adversaries. They came level with a doorway that led into a narrow room at the front of the basilica, the outer wall dominated by a huge rose window.
‘Cover,’ Boreas told the other two, stepping back behind them. They closed shoulder to shoulder. He ejected his bolt pistol magazine and slammed in another: his last one. ‘Fall back to the gallery.’
Even as he issued the order, a larger ork shouldered its way through the mass, taller even than the Dark Angels. It swung a huge axe two-handed, blade crackling with forks of energy. The blow connected with Sarion’s neck, shearing off the battle-brother’s head in one sweep.
Boreas fired his pistol, the salvo of miniature missiles exploding across the breastplate of the gigantic alien. The ork was thrown back, dropping to one knee.
‘Full retreat, brother!’ the Chaplain told Dannael. ‘I shall protect you.’
