Dawn of War w4ow-1

by C. S. Goto

  “Brace for impact!” yelled Tanthius from the viewing hatch, preparing the Terminators within for the collision. Sergeant Ckrius linked his arm around a brace in the gun turret just in time; the Razorback crashed straight into the front of the rumbling wartrukk.

  The impact sent Tanthius flying out of the hatch and over the wreckage of both vehicles. He reached out his arms in front of him and let the powerful servos in his armour absorb his weight as he struck the ground on the other side. His momentum pushed him into a roll, and he was quickly back on his feet, unleashing the might of his storm bolter into the backs of the orks on the wrecked wartrukk.

  Ckrius quickly unhooked himself from the Land Raider and climbed up onto the roof, drawing the officer’s sword that he had salvaged from a battlefield corpse as he saw a huge greenskin slam its choppa into the side hatch. Only a couple of days earlier, Ckrius would have had no idea what to do, and would certainly never have dreamt of leaping off a roof onto the back of an enormous, massively muscled green alien. But today he was a seasoned ork-killer. Holding his blade firmly in his right hand, he dropped off the Land Raider directly down onto the creature’s back, driving his sword cleanly between the beast’s collarbone and its shoulder blade, letting his fall push the blade in right up to its hilt. The ork hardly even had time to shriek before the blade pierced straight down through its heart, killing it instantly.

  The other side hatch of the Land Raider burst open and a Marine in Terminator armour sprang out with a massive thunder hammer swinging around its head. The Terminator squad had re-equipped itself ready for the demands of this hill-top battle. The Marine stopped suddenly at the sight of the little human soldier tugging his brittle sword out of the greenskin’s shoulder. Then he nodded to Ckrius and leapt forward into the crowd of orks that were pressing towards the wreck, his hammer sweeping in lethal arcs. Three more Terminators stormed out of the Razorback in his wake, each stealing a surprised glance at the solitary storm trooper blasting away with his hellgun, before they opened up with their storm bolters and flamers.

  Disciplined volleys of fire riddled the greenskins that charged towards Ckrius, and he flicked a glance to his right. Pounding across the slick battlefield towards their sergeant came the rest of the storm troopers, leaving a couple of Marines to support the heavy guns of the Rhino from which they had spilled.

  Bolter shells flashed past her head, but she ignored them, trusting that the remnants of the Storm squad and the wraithguard would keep the shots away from her. At her side, the last of the Biel-Tan warlocks sent crackling blasts of warp energy jousting from his fingertips, cooking the flesh of Chaos Marines inside their armour and making their souls cry out in horror. The once pristine white armour of the Storm squad was now scratched and dull, coated in layers of dirt and blood. But they fought with a passion and determination known only to the eldar race.

  Skrekrea had been here before, on this very mountainside with her brother, all those centuries ago-and now her brother, Jaerielle, was gone. These daemons would pay dearly for his soul. She flipped and danced around the rain of bolter fire, rattling off shuriken from her pistol and slicing her power sword with immaculate precision. She plunged her blade straight through the green and black armour of a Chaos Marine, shrieking a cry into his face as she withdrew it, and watching his head shatter and explode as her rage was funnelled through the Banshee Mask on her own head, transforming it into a psychosonic blast. As her sword withdrew, she flipped it over and drove it blindly behind her, skewering another Alpha Legionary in the back of the neck as he tried to slip past towards the farseer.

  Macha held her arms up into the heavens and called down the lightning, forming it into spheres of pure, blue energy that revolved in the air in front of her chest. With a slight contraction of her eyes, she fired the energy balls searing through the dark, moist air towards the Chaos sorcerer on the higher island-peak. With his arms also raised to greet the storm, Sindri hardly even noticed the fireballs blazing towards him. But at the last second, one of his arms snapped out to his side, punching the blue flames and exploding them into showers of red fire, as the Maledictum stone in his fist flared with power.

  Turning his eyes to face Macha, Sindri glared through the hail, wind, and bolts of warp energy, his eyes burning with red and gold fires, daring her to interfere. For a moment, Macha felt like the sorcerer was breathing into her face, as his eyes seemed to fill her entire field of vision. But then he turned away from her again, raising his face and hands back to the storm, crying into its heart.

  A phalanx of Alpha Legionaries strode around Sindri, repositioning themselves between the sorcerer and the farseer, as the islands of rock bobbed and swirled on the flood of fire around the mountain top. They braced their bolters, checking their aim against the motion of the ground beneath their feet, and then loosed a volley of fire down towards the eldar. Macha, with nowhere to go, raised her hand and a jolt of blue flame seared out to meet the bolter fire, detonating the shells in mid-air. The Marines fired again and again, and Macha was forced to contend with them rather than Sindri, despite the fact that he was so close. If only more eldar had survived. Then she realised that the eldar had failed: Gabriel… Gabriel…

  “Almost! Almost!” cried Sindri into the storm, his face convulsing with power and pain as tendrils of daemonic energy started to lash down at his skin. But he could not wait any longer; he had waited so long and been so patient all these years, even putting up with the humiliations of service to that cretin, Lord Bale.

  Raging with impatience, Sindri pointed the Maledictum towards a knot of Alpha Legionaries and Imperial Guardsmen on a floating mass of rock nearby. The stone blazed with power and a lance of red light flashed into the soldiers, exploding them into a rain of blood and disintegrating the rock beneath their feet.

  “Yes!” he cried as he felt the currents of power shift in the storm above him. “Yes! It is upon us!” he screamed, crashing the Maledictum into the hilt of the curved dagger, where it burst into flames as the stone found an empty socket. Streaks of purple lightning and tendrils of warp power whipped down out of the storm, lashing themselves around the body of the sorcerer and lifting him into the air. He screamed and wailed in ecstasies of agony, feeling the daemon prince tugging at the tendons of his soul from the other side of the breach in the immaterium, clawing at his mind, desperately trying to make the leap into the material realm and into the solid body of this devoted sorcerer.

  “Bear witness to my ascension!” bellowed the voice of Sindri, echoing with power into the ears of everyone on the mountain, resounding through the storm itself. For a moment, it seemed as though the entire battle ceased as all heads turned towards the levitating form of the Chaos sorcerer.

  Gabriel stood in the centre of a resplendent line of Blood Ravens, their crimson armour shimmering in the lightning flashes, their resolve unshaken by the daemonic fury that stormed around the mountain top. They were poised, ready to advance through the ring of warp energy that held a column of liquid fire on which floated islands of battle and damnation. They were unflinching in the face of a Chaos sorcerer, ascending to daemonhood before their very eyes. They were the Adeptus Astartes, and this was their purpose: to defend the Emperor’s realm against the unholy. In the fires of battle, they would test their resolve and prove themselves worthy of a place at the Emperor’s side.

  Bowing his head for a moment of silent prayer, Gabriel heard a delicate voice calling his name: Gabriel… Gabriel… It repeated over and over, gradually shifting into a beautiful rhythm and then, slowly, a chorus of other voices started up underneath it. The pristine, clear, silvery tones of the Astronomican soared into his soul, pressing the strength of the Emperor himself into his heart.

  He lifted his head, and raised Mordecai’s daemonhammer-the god-splitter-into the air: “For the Great Father and the Emperor!” he yelled, his voice carrying against the vicious wind. A tremendous call came back, thundering from the lungs of every Blood Raven, shaking the ground itself: �
�The Great Father and the Emperor!”

  With that, Gabriel strode forward through the curtain of energy, vaulting up onto the first island of rock and swinging the god-splitter for the first time. It erupted with power even before its arc was complete, spitting unearthly energy from its head as it approached the body of the first Alpha Legionary, before erupting into an immense explosion as it impacted, blasting the Chaos Marine off his feet and casting him into the sea of fire.

  Gabriel swung the hammer again, crashing it into the side of the next Chaos Marine’s head and knocking it clean off his shoulders. He let the arc continue, sweeping it lower as he spun his own body, pushing the hammer through the stomachs of two more Marines before hoisting it up into the air and screaming in a defiant cry: “I come for you, sorcerer!”

  Mordecai had said that this daemonhammer was constructed from a fragment of the weapon of an eldar avatar-the very weapon used by the eldar to defeat the daemon prince three thousand years before. He had entrusted the ancient artefact to Gabriel, pushing it into his hands before they had jumped down out of the Rhino to take their positions in the line of Blood Ravens. “Call it a premonition,” Mordecai had said, “and damn my unsanctioned soul, but I believe that you will end this fight, Gabriel, not me. You are the Emperor’s champion, and I am a mere servant. You, like your Captain Trythos before you… you must wield the daemonhammer on Tartarus and save us all from this daemon.” Gabriel had just nodded and taken the weapon, appreciating the inquisitor’s confidence, and knowing that he was right.

  The little platform of rock was swimming in the blood of Chaos Marines and strewn with their corpses; Gabriel stood alone. Looking around, he saw his Blood Ravens leaping from one island to another, hacking into the Alpha Legion with chainswords and power fists. Lines of Devastator Marines were punching out volleys of bolter fire, shredding those Imperial Guardsmen who had turned against the Emperor. And Matiel’s assault squad roared above the flaming ocean with their jump packs spilling fire, raining frag-grenades onto Chaos positions and spraying them with bolter shells.

  Gabriel vaulted up onto the next rocky island, heading towards the highest summit where Sindri was still held in the heart of the storm by the wild tendrils of energy. Beneath him, a phalanx of Chaos Marines was bunched into a firing line, loosing bolter fire across a chasm towards the eldar farseer, whose bursts of defensive flame seemed to be growing weaker.

  Crunching down into a crouch as he landed, Gabriel saw that this platform contained a knot of Imperial Guardsmen, each mutated and contorted into inhuman shapes. They were concentrating their fire against a squadron of Gabriel’s Devastator Marines, ensconced on a nearby islet, who ceased fire when they saw their captain suddenly appear amongst their targets. For a moment, the Guardsmen were confused by the unexpected turn of events, but then one of them caught on and turned. He yelled something to the other men, and they all turned at once, lumbering towards the Blood Raven with their shotguns barking, brandishing blades in the air.

  With a swift movement, Gabriel swung his hammer in a horizontal arc, scattering Guardsmen into the seething fires around the platform-he didn’t have time to waste on these heretics. But something made him pause before he struck the one who had told the others to turn. He stopped the hammer just next to the Guardsman’s head, and then dropped it to his side, staring at the officer while his brain rushed to put a name to the face.

  Then it hit him: Brom. It was Colonel Brom. His face was bright red, burnt, and covered with lacerations. His uniform was ripped and dirty, and parts of it were clearly soaked with blood. But it was definitely him.

  “Brom?” asked Gabriel, still unwilling to believe what he was seeing. “Brom? Is that really you?”

  “Ah, the heroic Captain Angelos-how good of you to notice me, at last,” hissed Brom, his voice distorted and barely recognisable. “I thought that this might get your attention,” he added, stabbing forward with his power sword.

  Gabriel parried the clumsy lunge with his gauntlet, catching the blade in his fist and pulling the weapon out of the colonel’s hand. “What are you blathering about, Brom?” he asked, casting the sword into the flames.

  “Do you know how long I have been on this planet?” asked Brom, apparently rhetorically. “My whole life-that’s how long. And then you arrive and it is as though I wasn’t here at all. You and that inquisitor-”

  A trickle of blood suddenly appeared out of a hole in the centre of Brom’s forehead, and he slumped to the ground, dead. His mouth was still open, ready to continue his list of grievances, and Gabriel was grateful that he had not had to listen to any more drivel from the colonel. He strode to the edge of the platform and looked down, seeing Matiel hovering between two islets on his jump pack, squeezing off bolter shells in all directions. Nodding his gratitude to the sergeant, he turned and jumped towards the base of the summit.

  Something had shifted within the warp field, and Macha cast her eyes around the fiery landscape searching for the source of the movement. She felt a familiar presence, one she had not felt for thousands of years. And then she saw it, flashing through the hail and pounding into the forces of Chaos like the tool of a deity. It swept and spun, crashing into Alpha Legionaries and fallen Guardsmen, as though guided to them by some ineffable power. It was majestic and effortless, wielding its wielder and gifting him with the illusion of control.

  The Blood Raven has a fragment of the Wailing Doom-all is not yet lost. We must help him, said Macha, reaching out with her mind to the best of her warriors.

  Understood, replied Skrekrea as she somersaulted over the collapsing form of a dying Chaos Marine and brought her blade round into a vicious vertical arc in her wake, driving it down between the neck and shoulder plates of another. She turned to face the farseer, and sprinted up the slope towards her, pushing her foot hard into the ground as she reached the summit, next to Macha, and leaping out into the fiery space between their islet and the one above where Sindri levitated. She flew through the flames, her legs cycling and her back arched with the effort of the long jump.

  Macha sent out bursts of blue energy from her fingertips, incinerating the sleet of bolter shells that flashed out towards Skrekrea as she leapt towards the Chaos Marines. The warlock, just down the slope from Macha, power coruscating around his hands as he unleashed bolts of raw energy against the forces of Chaos that besieged their own island-summit, turned to assist the farseer, throwing blue flames across the chasm in support of Skrekrea. Macha nodded her thanks to the warlock and started to redirect her own assault against Sindri himself once again, forming revolving balls of blue energy and hurling them across the void towards the Chaos sorcerer.

  But the loss of Skrekrea and the warlock from her own defences left Macha vulnerable to the pressing forces of Chaos behind her. Bolter shells zipped past her head, and she could hear the wails of her diminishing Storm squad as they fought to keep the Alpha Legionaries and fallen Guardsmen off her back.

  The emerald-green wraithguard reorganised their positions behind the Storm squad, forming a solid shielding line between the enemy and the farseer, standing implacably with their wraithcannons a constant blaze. Aggressive fire zinged out of the Chaos forces, zipping into the wraithguard, and punching out great chunks of their psycho-plastic armour. But the un-living eldar warriors held their ground, unafraid of death, afraid only of failure.

  Without their leader, the Storm squad began to falter, pinned down under the relentless fire of the Alpha Legionaries, and engaged on all sides by lunging blades and hacking axes. The squad leapt and spun, their own blades blurring into torrents of violence, but they were outnumbered, and their own numbers were falling all the time. It would not be long before the eldar were overrun and the Alpha Legion would have a clear line to the farseer.

  You must hold the line-Kaela Mensha Khaine is with us, came the thoughts of Macha, filling the souls of the eldar with hope. The spirit of our avatar is with us in the mon-keigh’s daemonhammer.

  The Storm squadron
seemed to lurch with new energy, leaping and striking with inhuman speed, cutting a swathe through the Chaos forces, and an eerie chant flowed out of their diminishing numbers, filling the storm with a chorus of eldar magic: “Kaela Mensha Khaine!”

  ***

  The daemonhammer seemed to erupt into flames as Gabriel crashed down onto the rocky platform, and the strange alien music flooded through the hail and wind. The hammer pulsed with power, radiating energy into his body as he brandished it above his head and charged towards the phalanx of Chaos Marines that stood guard around the very peak of the dismembered mountaintop.

  As he closed, a group of Marines snapped round to face him, their bolters coughing with fire, while their brother-Legionaries continued to focus their shots elsewhere, to the other side of the pyramidal rock, where Gabriel could not see. The bolter shells flashed through the dark air, heading straight for Gabriel in a lethal horizontal sheet that threatened to cut him in two. But suddenly, the shots seemed to reduce into slow motion as the eldar chants rose into a deafening chorus, mixing with the silver tones of the symphony that still played in his mind. The daemonhammer glowed with power. With consummate and casual ease, Gabriel brought the daemonhammer round in a horizontal arc, sweeping it through the oncoming fire and detonating each shell as the hammerhead crunched into it. He didn’t even break his stride as he pounded onwards towards the shocked Alpha Legionaries, bursting out of the line of explosions unscathed by their vicious tirade.

  As he ran, Gabriel saw one of the Chaos Marines suddenly throw up his arms, casting his bolter to the ground, and then slump forward onto his face. Standing in his place, her curving blade dripping with blood as lightning flashed behind her, an eldar warrior paused for a moment, throwing back her head and letting out a cry of victory. The cry rose shrilly, gathering volume and power until it drowned out even the sound of the storm and the chanting of her brethren.