by Nick Kyme
All of this Numeon perceived in his peripheral vision and the frantic data inload from his retinal display. They all did.
‘To the ridge line,’ Vulkan shouted above the clamour, ‘and gain the higher ground!’
Artellus Numeon leads his warriors on Isstvan V
Withering fire hailed down on them from above, chugging from bunkers and murder-slits cut into the earth. Larger fortifications had been constructed farther up the bank, where it grew steep and was plugged with iron spikes meant for the disembowelling of tanks. In front of that was the first trench line, shouldered with sandbags and supported by jagged revetments, crowned with spools of razor-wire.
Shells pranging off his armour, the primarch took up the vanguard position, whilst his chasing Pyre Guard tried to keep pace. Numeon had no desire to see Vulkan’s back and would prefer to be his primarch’s shield than his rearguard. Roaring them to greater effort, he urged his six brothers to charge faster. They had yet to be measured against this battle’s fury, save for enduring its guns, and Numeon would have it that they close with their enemies before they were but smears on the black sand.
Behind the Pyre Guard, the stoic advance of the Pyroclasts struggled to keep up as they laid down sheets of burning promethium in front and to the flanks. The Terminator-armoured Firedrakes were also slipping back, unable to compete with the primarch’s speed, and Numeon began to see that there was a realistic danger of becoming estranged from the rest of the Legion.
But rather than suggest caution, he called in support to fill the gap instead.
‘Captain Nemetor,’ he rasped into his vox-feed, hoarse from shouting commands.
Above, the steady cascade of fire went on without cessation.
Two seconds of whispering static lapsed before Numeon got an answer.
‘Commander…’
‘Lord Vulkan makes for the ridge line intent on clearing these trenches in advance of our tardy brother Legions’ arrival. I would see him reinforced.’
‘Understood.’
Adding their strength to the spearhead the primarch was forging, the 15th Company reconnaissance took up fresh position. Their charge line would take them in alongside the Pyre Guard, able to maintain pace where the bulkier Firedrakes and Pyroclasts could not.
Numeon opened up a different channel. ‘Captain K’gosi, burn us a path to that first trench line. I want it aflame before we break it open.’
‘Much closer and you’ll be the ones lit up and aflame,’ replied K’gosi, but gave the order.
‘Fire above!’ hollered Numeon, prompting the Pyre Guard and Nemetor’s company to crouch, still running, as a wave of flame streaked overhead and spilled into the edges of the first trench-works. The trammelling revetments burned, their spikes reduced to molten slag along with the razor-wire.
Ahead of the charging legionaries, Vulkan finally drew his sword. It shone in the visceral light that had stained the clouds above, a tongue of flame whipping down its edge. As if sensing that his Legion was losing him, he slowed but a fraction as the fire-blackened lip of the outermost trench drew close.
Hunkered within the partially sundered defences, the legionaries of the Death Guard brought guns to bear.
‘Into the fires of battle,’ Vulkan cried as a second flame-salvo spat from the advancing Pyroclasts. ‘Unto the anvil of war!’ he concluded, caught in the backwash of the flame storm but barrelling through it and into the trench.
Vulkan’s words still ringing in his ears and echoing from his own mouth, Numeon saw a Death Guard section leader rise up to challenge the Lord of Drakes. A hefty power maul crackled lightning in the formidable warrior’s left hand.
Vulkan split him in two before the blow could fall and smashed through the still-flailing corpse into his next opponent. Three more Death Guard warriors met similar fates before the Pyre Guard charged into the trench alongside their lord.
The XIV Legion were hardy fighters – the Salamanders had fought alongside them at Ibsen, but those days were gone and now allies had turned into enemies.
The flame storm and the ferocity of Vulkan’s attack had scattered the defenders but they were rallying quickly and now counter-attacked from three separate channels. Although the trench network was wide enough for three legionaries to stand abreast, the fighting was thick and fierce. A glaive swing took the head off one legionary, the dirty-white Maximus-pattern helmet spinning away into the churned up dust and smoke. More advanced through the gloom and Numeon angled his glaive to unleash a focused beam from his volkite, cutting through the traitor ranks.
For a few seconds his tunnel section was clear. Above him, the battle still sounded. Under his feet, the earth shook with every Titan salvo. But it had dulled and become almost a step removed as a strange sense of muted submersion fell upon Numeon. It gave the Pyre captain opportunity to gauge the status of his brothers.
Atanarius was advancing down the right-hand channel, reaping limbs and cleaving bodies with his double-handed power sword, as deadly as any of Dorn’s praetorians. Varrun followed a few paces behind the swordsman, laying down covering fire with his bolter. Igataron and Ganne went down the left spoke, storm shields locked in an impenetrable wedge, thunder hammers swinging. Leodrakk and Skatar’var stayed close to Numeon, the three of them holding the breach.
‘Such death…’ breathed Skatar’var, horrified at the slaughter.
‘Not ours, brother,’ Leodrakk reassured him.
Numeon envied a bond such as theirs, one he had never known himself, but now was not the time for such thoughts.
As the Death Guard poured in more troops from other parts of the trench-works, the eerie solemnity broke and battle resumed.
‘Should we follow?’ asked Leodrakk, gesturing to where Vulkan stormed up the middle trench.
Wilting before his charge, the defenders sensibly chose to hang back and harry the primarch with a welter of bolter fire. Meeting it head on, the primarch shrugged off the shell damage as the brass casings broke apart against his near-inviolable armour.
Shouting a fresh challenge, Vulkan threw himself into them.
Numeon shook his head in answer to Leodrakk.
‘We hold here and keep the breach open.’
To the left and right, the others were already in a staggered retreat. With the initial shock and awe of the assault now spent, the Death Guard were showing signs of recovery and the mettle Numeon knew they had in abundance. Droves of them came down from the upper slopes, filing into the trenches with sterner weapons than bolters.
Ganne took the burst from a plasma gun against his storm shield and he staggered, until Igataron hauled him up off one knee. Atanarius looked hard-pressed as he swung in a wide arc to avoid being overwhelmed. Varrun was falling back and urged his brother to do the same as the swordsman finally deigned to yield. Only Vulkan was undaunted and released a burst of flame from his gauntlet to cleanse the middle channel for a few seconds.
Reading the relative positions of their forces on his retinal display, Numeon ordered the others to regroup and rejoin the primarch. In their wake came Nemetor and the 15th, who had held on for further support just outside the trench. Coming up behind them were the Pyroclasts, surging left and right as the reconnaissance company pushed up the middle and went after the Pyre Guard, where heavier resistance was amassing.
Behind a flak-board palisade, a gun crew hurried to bring a mounted Tarantula to bear.
Leaping the barricade, Atanarius ran the first gunner through. A second drew a knife, but Atanarius blocked that and punched the legionary so hard that it cracked his faceplate. A third he decapitated, hacking around in a circle that ended in a downwards thrust to finish the warrior he had only stunned. It was over quickly, the cannon and its crew silenced before they could act. Igataron and Ganne repulsed a second squad who were moving in to an enfilading position from a narrow trench tributary spilling off the
main course. Taking a flurry of snap shots against their storm shields, they then rushed the warriors and broke them with their thunder hammers.
The victories were bloody, but small and insignificant when compared to the larger conflict.
Across the entire Urgall Depression, hundreds of battles between legionaries were being fought. Some were company-strong, others were squads or even individuals. There was no scheme to it, just masses of warriors trying to kill one another. Most of the loyalist troops had moved on from the dropsite and were engaging Horus’s rebels at the foot of his fortifications, but a few still occupied this beachhead. Scattered groups of traitors had spilled out as far as the dropsite but were quickly destroyed by the troops holding it. These were skirmishes, though, and nothing compared to the greater battle.
Death Guard forces were spilling out of their tunnels now, and roamed down the slopes, bolters chattering. One of the reconnaissance company, pausing to sight down a sniper rifle, took a lucky shell in the neck and crashed back into a trench. Apothecaries moving amongst the Legion army were already hard-pressed, and the lone sniper was lost in the morass before help could reach him.
Knowing his men were taking fire, Nemetor had his company rise up to meet the counter-attacking Death Guard and the lower hillside was instantly swamped with clashing, armoured bodies. Close combat and short-range firefights erupted in their hundreds and the ridge practically undulated with their furious ebb and flow.
Tramping over the scorched remains of the Death Guard brought down in the inferno from Vulkan’s gauntlet, Numeon and his brothers kept to the middle trench and soon found themselves reunited with their primarch.
In a brief moment’s respite, Vulkan stared to his left in the direction of a distant battle where the Morlocks fought and died.
‘Ferrus drives hard up the centre,’ he said as Numeon drew to his side. The Pyre captain had followed his primarch’s gaze but could not discern Lord Manus amongst the embattled warriors.
‘It is as I feared, Artellus,’ Vulkan went on, lost briefly in remembrance. ‘He acts without thought or concern.’
Varrun gave Numeon a questioning look.
‘It is a private matter,’ he hissed curtly, making clear that was an end to it.
‘I would not have him fight alone,’ said Vulkan, ‘but nor should we give up what we have bled to obtain. Have K’gosi maintain position here. The Pyroclasts will hold the breach and this section of the trench. Relief is coming and we must be ready to clear the way for it when it does.’
Numeon gave a quick nod and saw it done. He also saw Nemetor and the 15th still driving up the ridge, becoming stretched. By now, the bulk of the Firedrakes were deep inside the trenches and coming up in support.
‘Nemetor,’ voxed Numeon, ‘you are pulling your company out of position. Regroup and return to the command battalion. Firedrakes are inbound.’
Nemetor was quick to reply. ‘The Death Guard are on the run. Have switched to short-scopes and blades. If we pursue now we can destroy them so they can’t regroup.’
‘Denied, captain. Pull your forces back.’
‘I can press the advantage, brother.’
Nemetor had ever been a fierce warrior. He drove his troops hard, leading by example, and smashed into the fleeing first defenders with irresistible momentum. Short-scoped, the legionary sniper rifle was deadly and incredibly powerful. It was a credit to Nemetor’s company that they could adapt their tactics so fluidly in the face of opportunity. At short or long range, the Reconnaissance Marines excelled, but if they kept pushing it would get them all killed or overrun.
Numeon was about to give the captain a direct order to fall back and regroup when he saw something in the distance that made the words catch in his throat.
Rolling down the slope was a dirty cloud, too thick and too low to be fog. It spilled into the myriad trench-works, funnelled by the conduits of hewn earth.
And it was fast. In seconds it had cleared the no-man’s-land between the previous trench and the next bank of fortifications and was hurtling at Nemetor and his warriors. It overtook the Death Guard first, who adjusted respirators before the miasma hit as if they knew it was coming.
Which, Numeon realised, they did. The retreat was a feint, a trap, and Nemetor’s company were in it.
‘Gas!’ cried Numeon, but by then it was too late. Though the other legionaries switched their respirators to maximum filtration, Nemetor and the bulk of his company were engulfed before they could act. Still chasing down the retreating warriors, they suddenly found themselves enveloped by a poison cloud and surrounded by rapidly regrouping Death Guard.
The Legion armoury was vast, and not all of its weapons were as obvious as a bolter or as noble as a sword. There were those who wielded devices of much more insidious potency – the slow and agonising ones, the weapons that forever scarred both the bearer and the victim. They did not discriminate and made no allowance for even the strongest armour. From the vaunted champion to the lowliest mortal, they were the great levellers and their works were terrible to behold.
Numeon saw them now and swore an oath that he would kill the one that had unleashed such terror on another legionary.
Whatever contagion the Death Guard had used, it was potent. Moreover, it had been designed to be specifically effective against the Legiones Astartes. Through the breaks in the cloud where the dirt-haze thinned to a sickly, sulphurous yellow, Numeon saw his brothers dying. Power armour was little defence against it. The few that had managed to engage their respirators would perhaps last a minute, maybe more, but the rest were dead men. Metal corroded against the cloud’s necrotic touch, rubber mouldered and split, flesh and hair burned. More than a hundred of the reconnaissance company collapsed, choking and spitting blood. Dozens more were hacked apart or shot down by resurgent Death Guard attacking in the confusion.
Igataron went to wade in, the cloud still creeping down the slope and less than fifty metres away, but Numeon stopped him.
‘We gain nothing by condemning ourselves too,’ he said, then voxed to one of the pilots riding strafing runs across the battlefield. ‘R’kargan, bring your bird in on our position to blow away some of this filth.’
R’kargan replied with a clipped affirmative before seconds later a throbbing engine sound came into sharp focus above. Several of the reconnaissance company looked up at their salvation as R’kargan brought the gunship low. Turbines burring, the Thunderhawk’s downdraught hit the cloud and spread it out, reducing its potency, if not dispersing it completely.
The gunship was rising again, returning to strafing altitude, when a missile caught its left wing and sent it reeling. A whip of black smoke unfurled from its damaged engine, coiling up and then back upon itself as R’kargan was forced to bank. He crashed into the side of the ridge a few moments later, the gunship’s fuselage torn up and burning. Scurrying from their holes, the traitors were quick to fall upon it.
There was no time to mourn. R’kargan had made his sacrifice and saved what was left of the reconnaissance company. Now those that yet lived had to make that worth something.
‘To your brothers!’ roared Vulkan and stormed up the ridge. He let off small gouts of flame from his gauntlet, burning back what pestilence remained to further weaken its effects. The Pyre Guard followed, ploughing into the slowly dissipating cloud, turning the scales back into the Salamanders’ favour and breaking their beleaguered company brothers out of the trap.
Many of the 15th didn’t wear battle-helms, preferring to be unencumbered for the stealth work at which they excelled. These warriors had suffered the worst. Skin sloughed away by virulent acids, ravaged by pustules and choking on vomit, eyes drowning in pus from the dirty bomb, there was almost nothing left of them but half-armoured carcasses. As he drove hard into the few remaining Death Guard who had attacked inside the cloud, Numeon heard something scraping at his leg. He turned, glaive angled t
o thrust downwards, expecting to face a desperate enemy, but instead saw a dying Reconnaissance Marine. Blood was trickling freely from the ruin of the legionary’s mouth, sticking to his chin and neck in a viscous film. The dying legionary grasped feebly at Numeon’s greave. His fingers had been reduced to stumps, the tips of his gauntlets eaten away, and he left ruddy tracks in the metal. He was trying to say something, but his vocal cords were all but liquefied and the sound that came from his mouth was an agonised gurgle.
‘I’ll grant you peace,’ Numeon murmured and thrust with his glaive to end it.
‘Such horrors…’ said Varrun after he’d just finished off an enemy that was still twitching, and casting around at his plague-eaten battle-brothers. ‘Tell me no such weapons exist in our arsenals.’
Vulkan did not answer. Numeon tried not to meet the gaze of either of them.
‘We’re not done with this yet,’ he said, jutting his armoured chin up the slope where a second Death Guard battalion had converged on the weakened reconnaissance company.
Amidst the carnage, several squads, including Nemetor’s command section, had become separated from the main battalion and were facing off against a superior force.
Despite his company’s mauling, Nemetor was still on his feet. His armour had been badly damaged from the gas attack, entire sections of it eaten through to reveal the seared mesh underneath. It didn’t stop him. With thoughts only of revenge, Nemetor and the survivors charged up at the emerging Death Guard.
Numeon and the others were still finishing off the remnants of the ambushers. The Firedrakes were close but would not be able to intervene. Even Vulkan could not reach the vengeful Salamanders in time.
A fire exchange lit up the slope, casting the acid-ravaged dead in grim monochrome. Where the Death Guard unleashed an indiscriminate bolter hail, the Reconnaissance Marines advanced in a staggered pattern, stopping and sighting with their rifles, shooting and then moving again. They were efficient, cohesive, but taking punishment.
