Tigurius obviously thought the reasoning was sound – Scipio agreed – and so charged his ‘scouts’ with finding the hierarch leading the cell defending the artillery. So far, they’d had little luck in doing so.
Largo was putting the magnoculars away when he asked, ‘How will we breach it?’
‘Not this way, that’s for certain.’ As he was returned to the present, Scipio brought to mind the densely thronged access routes through the hills to the necron artillery. As well as the ubiquitous raider constructs, there were larger elites and even semi-ephemeral ghosts patrolling the enemy picket lines. They’d formed concentric rings around the mass of heavy cannons in the centre. While the ghosts phased in and out of existence, the raiders and elites stood still and unspeaking like metallic sentinels. Scipio suspected they would wait like that until the galaxy burned and the universe itself ended, if commanded to do so. At least orks bickered, even the alien tyranid chittered and the Traitor hordes exalted and chanted: these soulless machines just stood in abject silence. Despite Scipio’s Adeptus Astartes hypno-conditioning, it was unnerving.
‘Perhaps a diversionary attack to draw out the bulk of their troops, allowing Strabo and Ixion to neutralise the guns.’
Scipio shook his head at Largo. ‘There are too many and they won’t move. That’s a defensive force. Whatever protocol it’s operating on will keep them from coming at us.’
He’d seen enough of the necrons, their mechanistic idioms, their logic-engine style tactics, to know that they couldn’t be coaxed or goaded. Only a certain and direct imperative would force the mechanoids to alter their battle-routines. Somehow, the Ultramarines attacking the Thanatos Hills had to find it. If executing the necron leader was the key to that, there was still a lot of work to be done.
His eyes narrowed when he spied a rocky promontory overlooking the artillery. ‘How does that look to you?’
Largo went back to the scopes, magnifying to enhance the view. He scowled. ‘Impenetrable.’
‘No route through the terrain?’
‘We need gunships and speeders,’ Largo replied.
‘A pity they are locked down aboard the Valin then,’ added Ortus.
With the necron cannonade still in operation, not only was Kellenport subject to constant bombardment but Antaro Chronus could not deploy his tanks and any aerial support was denied to the Ultramarine spearhead.
‘What are your orders, sergeant?’ asked Largo after the silence started to become uncomfortable.
Scipio’s expression was foul with frustration. ‘Return to camp. Then we go deeper. There has to be a way through those pickets without taking them head-on.’
Scipio found Tigurius alone, looking out onto an ice expanse. Snow flurries chased each other across the barren tundra like arctic devils, whipped into sudden frenzy by the wind.
There was a rime of frost coating the Librarian’s cheeks, nose and forehead but he seemed not to notice. Though his eyes were open, he was locked in a psychic trance. It took Scipio a few seconds to realise before he fell into respectful silence and waited.
‘The direct approach to the Thanatos Hills is denied to us,’ Tigurius said without even turning around, ‘and we have yet to locate the force leader.’
Scipio suddenly felt quite redundant in the face of the Librarian’s prescience. ‘Is it that easy to read my mind?’
Tigurius faced him, wiping at the crust of frost veneering his features. ‘Your mood anyone could read.’
‘Transparent too. I must attend to that upon our return to Ultramar.’
‘I admire your optimism, Brother Vorolanus. You think our victory here is certain?’
Scipio tried not to balk before the Librarian’s penetrating gaze. He didn’t think Tigurius was interrogating him psychically but couldn’t be sure. ‘Far from it. These creatures are like nothing we’ve ever faced. I also believe our sternest challenges are to come.’
Tigurius nodded. ‘Yes, I–’ He collapsed before he could finish.
‘Master!’ Scipio sprang to the Librarian’s aid. He was clutching his head and screaming in mental agony.
The air was filled with the scent of burning and Scipio noticed rivulets of arc-lightning spilling from Tigurius’s eyes. His power armour was hot with psychic energy. Tendrils of smoke were coiling off every plate of ceramite. Seizing his force staff, the Librarian tried to anchor himself and channel some of the energy away.
Even through his gauntlets, Scipio was feeling the heat. His fingers smouldered but he clung on to Tigurius in spite of the pain.
‘Master,’ he hissed through clenched teeth. Below them the Ultramarines assault force was readying to move out, unaware of the unfolding crisis.
Just as Scipio thought he could hold on no longer, the baleful energy that had gripped Tigurius slowly started to dissipate. In a few seconds it was over and the Librarian could stand unaided.
‘They know we are here,’ he gasped, a wisp of smoke escaping from his mouth into the cold air. ‘And what we intend to do.’
Scipio looked to the direction of the enemy cohorts, though they were far away. ‘How will they respond?’
Tigurius looked him in the eye. It disturbed the sergeant to see the obvious disquiet there. ‘Nothing. They will do nothing.’
Frowning, Scipio asked, ‘What?’
‘Because they believe our efforts are in vain, that there is no possible way for us to achieve victory.’ Tigurius licked his lips and for a moment Scipio thought he might stumble again when he gripped his shoulder. ‘I touched their minds. Fathomless, ancient, they think this world is their own. They want to reclaim it, to eradicate its population, to annihilate us. Damnos is doomed.’
‘You… you spoke to them?’
‘One of their number, part of the hierarchy, communicated with me. He called himself the Herald. But I saw something else, a fragment of the future.’ Tigurius’s respiration became elevated, and he clenched his fingers into claws as he fought for recall. ‘It’s like trying to grasp a wisp of cloud… The truth eludes me, brother. A dark pall is clouding my prescience. Another of their kind…’ The Librarian wrinkled his brow, seeking an appellation. ‘The Voidbringer. He is the one we are looking for.’
‘And this glimpse of the future,’ Scipio asked. ‘How does it bode for us?’
Tigurius’s voice rang with the forbidding timbre of prophecy. ‘Ill, brother. It bodes ill for all of us.’
Praxor was exultant. Fighting by his captain’s side, he felt empowered. His squad, the ‘Shieldbearers’, had fought hard to stay within striking distance of the Lions. Praxor had never seen such purpose and fury from the Second’s pre-eminent warriors and Sicarius’s retinue. To be counted one amongst them, to become one of the High Suzerain’s inner circle, was one of the brother-sergeant’s most fervent desires.
‘Guard against pride, brother,’ Iulus had once counselled him. He sounded like Orad. But the Chaplain was long dead and Praxor’s ambitions very much alive. It wasn’t pride so much as idolisation and that fact – one the brother-sergeant was ignorant of – was precisely why the senators of Macragge, indeed the Masters of the Chapter, debated Sicarius’s tenure so furiously. His apparent growing cult of personality was regarded as vulgar by some, as Invictus reborn and a return to the glorious golden age of the Ultramarines by others. Some in the Chapter, the oldest campaigners, felt the sons of Guilliman had been diluted by the breaking of the Legions. The many subsequent Founding Chapters all held allegiance to Ultramar but were autonomous otherwise.
Agemman, as captain of the First and with therefore the largest number of veterans in his company, was in the ironic position of recognising the importance of heroes like Sicarius but at the same time being wary of his popularity. He wanted the old days, just not ushered in by the Grand Duke of Talassar.
‘Advance with all speed, stay with the captain!’ Praxor was running and his squad ran with him. They moved in a ‘V’ formation, bolters blazing. Kill-shots were few, but the objective was to
burst through the packed necron vanguard and strike deeper into the mechanoid ranks like a spear.
They had bypassed the first defensive wall already. Sicarius had studiously ignored the pleas for help and deliverance from the stricken Guardsmen still battling to hold it, his face undoubtedly a mask of hard indifference, focused on his mission. To do otherwise, to give in to compassion, would be the end for all of them. At least, that was what Praxor believed.
A necron construct sprang out of the fog, seemingly materialising from the very air. It glided in tandem with three others; no, it wasn’t gliding, the moves were almost serpentine, like a snake reared to attack. It was supported by a long, segmented tail that ended in a broad barb like a scythe. Its torso was equivalent to the raider constructs Praxor had already dispatched on their charge through the breach in the first defensive wall, but its arms ended in razor talons. There was something incorporeal about it, as if it were only partially in the material realm or somewhere between solidity and necron phasal shift.
Acting on instinct and too close to fire, Brother Vortigan swung at it with his bolter’s bayonet. The monomolecular blade should have carved into it, but slipped through the creature as if parting vapour. Like a whip, the tail lashed around and speared Vortigan in the neck. The talons found weak points in his armour between plastron and greave. The Ultramarine spewed a film of blood into his helmet that speckled the lenses before he fell.
Praxor cried out Vortigan’s name and swung at the same time. His power sword crackled, as if reacting to the creature’s nature, and he clove off a limb. Then he drove the point of the blade through the wraith’s gear-like intestine and it shuddered and phased out.
The other three were in amongst the Shieldbearers, whose charge had now faltered to a stop. Krixous was down, his forearm severed, but still lived. A melta-blast from Tartaron maimed another wraith, sending it back to whatever abyss spawned it. The other two weaved in and around the slow-moving Space Marines, who swung and fired with little effect. Praxor was reminded of the gorgons of old Calth, cave-dwelling harridans that could turn men to stone with a glance. Such was the necrons’ speed, it appeared as if the Shieldbearers were indeed petrified.
Praxor rallied them quickly, ordering them to corral the creatures and bring them to Tartaron’s meltagun. Another died with its living metal turned to mercury, the fourth the sergeant dispatched himself with a determined thrust of his power sword.
Agony lanced Praxor’s shoulder and he realised there was a fifth wraith he had not accounted for. Its barbed tail sent Tartaron sprawling before he could fire, whilst the creature jerked and twisted around the clumsy bolter shells railing at it. The troopers were of no consequence. It wanted Praxor. Only the sergeant’s blood would do. He’d dropped his bolt pistol. He heard it skitter across the ice before he lost it in the mist. With a grunt Praxor shrugged off the talons and managed to half turn before the tail barb cut his legs from under him. He fell hard onto his back, a flicker in his retinal display indicating the power to his armour had been briefly compromised. It returned with a whir of servos, and the piston-grinding swipe of his power sword was too slow for Praxor. A flick of the wraith’s talons sheared his vambrace and forced his fingers to part. Like the bolt pistol before it, Praxor’s blade spun away from his grasp and he was suddenly weaponless.
‘Shoot it!’ he growled, determined to show the mechanoid his unswerving hate before he died.
Bolter shells crashed around it, but were like exploding flares for all the damage they caused. The wraith phased through the bursts, advancing on the Ultramarines sergeant who was crawling away on his back.
‘You’ll have to work for it, scum.’
The necron seemed willing to oblige, darting forward on its tail with talons primed.
A shock of lightning bent its skull-head at an awkward angle. It tried to turn when the bolt hit again. Only it wasn’t lightning, Praxor realised. It was a power mace. A crozius arcanum.
Trajan bludgeoned the wraith until its restorative programming kicked in and it phased out. Where the necron’s face was skull-toothed metal, the Chaplain’s was gimlet-eyed bone studded with platinum service bolts.
‘Arise, brother,’ he said with a deep, silken voice utterly unlike his predecessor’s, ‘for the Chapter finds you wanting.’
Praxor ignored the Chaplain’s proffered hand. His power armour’s systems were fully operational again. ‘I can stand unaided.’
‘A pity your pride didn’t keep you on your feet,’ Trajan snarled. He regarded the Shieldbearers. ‘These creatures are fleshless abominations. They are an affront to the machine-spirit and cannot be allowed to live. Purge them all and let faith guide your holy bolters!’
Then he was gone, lost to the snow-fog as quickly as he’d arrived.
‘I can see why Sicarius wanted him,’ said Tartaron, his tone wry. It swiftly changed to contrition. ‘I’m sorry, sergeant. My aim should have been better.’
Praxor clapped his pauldron. ‘We live, don’t we? Your aim was sound. Get Brother Krixous and follow on my lead. Captain Sicarius is not far ahead.’
‘Are you still with us, Brother-Sergeant Manorian?’ It was Daceus through the comm-feed. The veteran-sergeant was only metres in front of them with the Lions, and waving the others on.
Contrary to his initial beliefs, the point of the spearhead had been slowed to a man. Beyond the first wall, the battlefield was thronged with the necron vanguard. Praxor made out the black ceramite of Trajan nearby. The Chaplain was everywhere, it seemed, singing litanies of hate against the alien and the abomination, as he swung his crozius. Squad Solinus, ‘The Indomitable’, formed an honour guard around him.
‘He prefers his warriors to carry the Victorex Maxima,’ said Tartaron with disdain.
Praxor’s eyes hardened. ‘They are the heroes of Telrendar, brother. Would that the Shieldbearers be so vaunted.’
‘Apologies, brother-sergeant,’ Tartaron replied, head bowed.
‘Come on. We are missing the battle.’ Praxor ordered them forward, but within he was burning with envy at the honours garnered by Solinus. At Damnos then, that was where they would earn their laurels and perhaps even Elianu Trajan would find the Shieldbearers worthy of his company.
In the wastes, little more than rubble and accumulated ice, Agrippen had continued his irresistible advance. Spider-like constructs the size of attack bikes had impeded him, but the great warrior had battered them aside with his power fist, swathing the remains in glowing-hot promethium from the flamer attached to his wrist. A vast ball of plasma tainted the ice storm cerulean blue as the last of the spiders was engulfed and destroyed. After it was done he came to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Sicarius, the old juxtaposed against the new.
‘To the captain, for the glory of Ultramar!’ The Dreadnought’s augmented voice was lucid and powerful. Rare amongst the Chapter, he was one of few veterans of old that still remembered who he was and what time period he was fighting in. With Agrippen not being one of the Second, Praxor had been surprised to learn the warrior-eternal was part of the force led by Sicarius. Perhaps the captain desired to show solidarity towards the First or maybe he wanted Agemman to hear of his prowess from one of his most loyal and forthright warriors. None could doubt the word of Agrippen – it was spoken with thunder and the weight of ages.
The breaks in combat were brief, but a patch of open ground had formed at the site of the spearhead’s last victory. Sicarius occupied a half-ruined promontory overlooking the wastes. A shell of some manufactorum or perhaps a lectory – it didn’t matter. The structure’s blasted plateau, the burned-out remains of a second floor, was stable and expansive enough to allow the captain and all his officers the benefit of its vantage. It also offered a moment to take stock and reanalyse as the Ultramarines squads regathered for a fresh offensive.
‘We should hold here, my lord,’ advised Agrippen from the ground floor below. Broad and strong it might be, but even if the Dreadnought could have reached the second
floor his mass would have crushed it. ‘Our forces in the Kellenport plaza can reinforce us.’
Sicarius surveyed the distant battle lines, the drifting smoke and emerald flash of the necron guns. To his right, the Capitolis Administratum still stood. It was isolated but now ringed by a defensive cordon of Deathwind drop pods.
‘How long will their payload last?’
‘Another few minutes, captain,’ Daceus replied. ‘Guard forces are en route to liberate the acting governor and his staff.’
‘Largely irrelevant, brother-sergeant,’ said Sicarius. ‘The leaders of Damnos are spent, just like their armies, but without those missiles cleansing our flank we’ll become exposed and forced back.’ He shook his head, looking down on Agrippen. ‘Advice noted, brother, but we advance. Let the rearguard hold our lines.’
‘My lord.’
‘Yes.’ Sicarius had removed his battle-helm to wipe the sweat from his brow. His eyes were as hard as sapphire and belatedly Praxor realised it was he who had spoken and that the captain’s gaze was fixed on him.
‘The mechanoids have cut off our way back.’ He pointed east, to where the vanguard had flowed behind them like the living metal from which the necrons were infernally constructed. ‘Our forces are split in two.’
‘Then it is fortunate we do not turn back, isn’t it, sergeant?’
‘I–’ Praxor was wrong-footed. Sicarius already knew, and didn’t care. Vortigan was dead, Krixous at least was being tended by Brother Venatio – his stump in place of a hand was swathed in pinkish gauze and bandage. His Larraman cells had clotted the blood quickly but there was still some residual fluid. The casualties amongst the Second were rising, though. How many more would fall in this insane gauntlet they were running?
‘Do you know what a gladius is, brother?’
‘Of course, my lord, it’s–’
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