Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1

by Warhammer 40K

  We are trapped.

  Falling back from the perimeter it became swiftly apparent that all other sections had failed to hold as I had. The Charnel Guard are decimated and many of my brothers have fallen. Palatine Sapphira and several of her Sisters remain, along with a small collection of Chapter serfs – including my own. Beyond that, only Excoriators survive. The sons of Dorn, who fought their hardest and made the enemy pay in blood for every retreating step. The remaining Angels of the Fifth Company, holding off impossible numbers, as they pair and group up. Brothers finding each other, protecting each other’s backs, knowing in their hearts that here in these tight ambulatories and posternways – in the shadow of Umberto II’s great Mausoleum – they are to die together.

  With a cultist army – even with an Adeptus Astartes contingent – we might have stood a chance. The Blood God sends us monsters, daemonic entities against which our weapons know limitation. And now, pushed back into the steep streets and narrow alleys, with the full force of the Cholercaust swallowing Obsequa City, we find our retreat compromised. From the sky they send us their best. Shock troops to finish off the most stalwart resistance. To end us quickly. The Eaters of Worlds. Now I know we are doomed.

  ‘What now?’ Skase calls above the din of battle. The air is thick with the chug of chain weapons, including my own, and Brother Boaz and Squad Whip Joachim are using the last of their grenades. The cloistrium is open but the cacophony bounces off the walls right back at us. We have heard nothing from the north-western contingents. Second Whip Etham and Brothers Lemuel and Zurion sighted Sisters of Battle in the St Gorgonia district and received some surviving support from Keturah’s Scouts. Nothing has been heard from any of them in over an hour, and drop-pods did seem to hit the far side of the city hardest.

  ‘The Mausoleum!’ I yell back, but my words are drowned by the whoosh of Sister Casiope’s heavy flamer. The good Sister has been doing the Emperor’s work with the weapon, using it to greatest effect in the cramped environs of the narrow city streets. Flame has gutted the alleys and archways of our uphill escape route, forcing back countless hordes of cultists baying for our blood or else flash-stripping them of their flesh and turning them into corpses dancing and flailing through an inferno. Sapphira and Sister Zillah finish off any warp-spawned malevolents creeping through the flames, while my absterge holds up her wounded brother, blasting the occasional cultist who makes it over a roof or through a building with her chunky laspistol.

  ‘What?’ Skase calls back, his gladius twanged back off the teeth of a World Eater’s chainsword.

  ‘Close quarters!’ Brother Simeon calls, dropping his empty boltgun. One of the Blood God’s armoured disciples falls before the last of the weapon’s wrath, only for another berserker to come straight at Simeon with an axe. Bringing his gladius out of its sheath, my battle-brother’s blade is smacked aside by the raging action of the Chaos Space Marine’s chain weapon. The last few bolt-rounds from my Mark II go into buying Simeon a few moments of time, my offering glancing off the World Eater’s pauldron and helm, knocking the Traitor to one side and off balance.

  ‘The Mausoleum roof!’ I yell to Skase. ‘It’s the safest place for a pick-up.’

  Brother Eliam dies horribly before me, the thrashing axes of several World Eaters brothers hacking his armoured body apart. With his blood across my face, I send the butt of my empty pistol across the faceplate of the nearest of his berserker killers, only to have the hallowed weapon smashed out of my grip with the flat of his axe. I turn. As I do, I unclip my chainsword and bring the flared blade to gory life. Bringing the blade around and up, I chew through the World Eater from the navel to the throat.

  ‘Novah can’t raise the Gauntlet,’ Skase insists, his gladius blade having found its way past the chainsword and into the madman’s neck. As he twists the gladius there is a crunch and the World Eater’s grip goes slack, silencing his weapon.

  ‘Still the best holdpoint,’ I bawl as my chainsword tangles momentarily with a World Eater’s axe. ‘Thick walls, and Sister Sapphira claims that the ceremonial gate is an adamantine alloy.’

  The bastard-sons of Angron are among us. World Eaters pour into the cloistrium, wolfishly drawn down on us by the stench of our loyalty. Bolt-rounds don’t stop them. Grenades don’t stop them. They push on fearlessly through our bottlenecks and gauntlets, stepping through the mangled corpses of their Traitor brethren to get to us. Each maniac Angel sustains the grievous wounds of two of his loyalist kind. They hear nothing but pain and see nothing but victims. They feel… nothing. Duty is not enough for them. They live for battle, but even that seems insufficient to satisfy the kill-wired berserkers. They want our blood. They want our skulls for their Ruinous lord and nothing, it seems, is going to stop them.

  Squad Whip Joachim fights for his life – a gladius in each gauntlet, a World Eater on each flank. One of the Traitors has been blessed by his merciless god with a bone-spiked club on one arm. He swings the flesh-weapon at the Excoriator but hits his mindless compatriot by accident. The Chaos Space Marine turns on his afflicted battle-brother with his axe, and moments later the madmen are fighting each other. This is a small mercy since already there is another of Angron’s supersons swinging his ravenous blade at the squad whip.

  I feel the moment. I feel the city slipping away on the regicide board, and then I feel the pieces swept from the board by an angry fist. It’s the heavy flamer. I hear it chug, gasp and run dry. I can hardly be surprised. Sister Casiope has roasted a legion of slave-soldiers in the alleyways leading into the cloistrium. As the flamer falls silent, the Sister unhooks the support straps and shrugs off the weapon, bringing the half-clip she has left in her boltgun to bear. We all feel the heavy weapon’s absence, the beginning of an end. Even though the alleyways are still flame-filled mayhem, cultists and Blood Crusaders sprint through the inferno – blades held high. Bubbling and crackling, writhed in orange tongues of hot fury, the slave-soldiers of Khorne make their doomed assault.

  The palatine and her Sisters drop the killers with merciful rounds, but as the bodies begin to trip, tumble and burn, others run the gauntlet of the firestorm alley. Blood-red daemons of the Ruinous pantheon sprint horribly through the flames. They look similar to the herald-thing I faced in the Obelisk, but no two of the monstrosities look truly alike. They leap and land on the Sisters with arachnid precision, gutting and stabbing the Adepta Sororitas with supernaturally frenzied thrusts of their hellforged blades. Flashes of light and the bark of Sapphira’s bolt pistols force the monsters from her prone form. As she blasts away, one of the things thrashes this way and that. Rounds tear off horn-tips, claws and a foot, but it doesn’t stop the beast leaping straight back on the Sister and savaging her again.

  Crackling energy suddenly leaps across the open space of the cloistrium. The searing soul lightning had passed through the bodies of several slave-soldiers crowding a side-alley. The mortals explode on contact, their torsos detonating in a fine shower of blood-spittle. The silver arc of warp-drawn power slams into the lesser daemon, as it huddles over the Sister of Battle, and throws it into the far wall. It struggles, thrashes and claws against the stream of power until it too is vaporised in an explosive gore-cloud of red mist.

  Epistolary Melmoch and Chaplain Shadrath burst into the cloistrium from the alleyway. Melmoch isn’t smiling. He looks tired and drawn – his eyes sunken and his talent a burden. He carries his force scythe in both hands, discharging another soul-scalding burst of energy at the daemons picking over the remains of the dead Adepta Sororitas. Second Whip Azareth is behind them, plugging the alleyway with single discharges from his boltgun. Priming his last grenade, the second whip bounces it down the alleyway at their rabid pursuers. The alleyway flashes and collapses in a rolling dustbank of masonry and pulverised rockcrete.

  My heart lifts at the sight of the three Excoriators, but the reinforcement is not enough to save us. More howling World Eaters barge into the cloistrium, their pauldrons clashing in an effort to push
past one another and get to us first. I choose my targets and favour manoeuvres for economy. My chainsword flicks and jabs, cleaves and slices. World Eaters get my attention for barely a moment. Just enough for the thrashing teeth of my blade to turn their own aside, take off a gauntlet at the wrist or excavate a hole in the chest. For a moment I imagine the horror before the walls of the Imperial Palace, the onslaught of the World Eaters and the lives they must have taken with their devastating combination of martial skill, fearlessness and bottomless hatred. Few of my opponents drop to the floor. I don’t have the spare seconds it would take to finish them, and before I have turned to face another Traitor Space Marine, his berserker brother – who had the attention of my chainblade moments before – is back on his feet and hacking away.

  The hellish melee has forced us back together. Skase and I find ourselves back to back, slapping aside angry blades coming for each other’s plate while at the same time negotiating the murderous thrusts and slashes of multiple World Eaters assailants. The moment that began with Sister Casiope’s flamer continues to unravel. I feel the bite of a chainaxe through my thigh plate. The teeth of some other unseen weapon glances off my shoulder plate, ripping up the ceramite but failing to reach flesh. Brother Simeon’s serf Amos runs before me towards the body of his fallen master. A hulking World Eaters champion steps on Simeon’s armoured form and pulls free the daemon battleaxe he buried there. I see Amos hacked cleanly in half by the soul-hungry weapon.

  As Amos falls aside in two pieces, Chaplain Shadrath appears – his midnight plate glistening with the serf’s blood. Holding his crozius arcanum up like a religious icon he commands the hulk and his cursed weapon back. The monstrous World Eater seems uncertain for a moment – a trait I have yet to experience in my Traitor opponents. Suddenly furious with itself, the battleaxe comes up over its head and down on Shadrath. The Chaplain knocks it to one side with his crozius, which seems to glow with a spiritual luminescence, before smashing at the giant’s ancient plate with his sacred staff of office.

  World Eaters Space Marines continue to flood the cloistrium, each more blood-hungry than the last. I can hear the gunning of chainblades echoing in the ambulatory beyond, indicating even more of the Traitors, eager to cut up what is left of us. Epistolary Melmoch’s unnatural powers continue to be a boon, dwindling though they might be with the Librarian’s building exhaustion. Streaks of soul lightning keep a gathering horde of lesser hellions at bay, the furious monsters seemingly drawn down on Palatine Sapphira and her affronting badges of faith. Sapphira is run through and can barely get up, but Melmoch continues to fight over her struggling form, his force scythe sweeping the space about them, the psychically-charged weapon sparking off hellblades and lopping off daemon limbs.

  Brother Novah stands at the centre of the chaos. The Adeptus Astartes holds the company standard proud and high, a heart-stabbing provocation to the World Eaters degenerates roaring their way into the cloistrium. Novah clutches his boltgun in his other hand and appears to be the only Excoriator with any ammunition left for the bastard warriors of Khorne. They come at Novah – at the standard, really – screaming their obscene oaths and swinging their raging axes. Second Whip Azareth goes down under the blitz of blades, pieces of the Excoriator flying out of the frenzy. Novah puts bolt blasts into several Chaos Space Marines, but the irresistible draw of the standard drives the mindless warriors on, World Eaters running straight into the blazing path of the Excoriator’s murderous gunfire.

  It is a massacre. I don’t know what I expected. The carnage about me is all the Cholercaust came to Certus-Minor to do. The swift and bloody annihilation of the Blood God’s enemies. A world, dead in a day. The flames have died down in the alleyways and wall-to-wall cultist warriors race for our skulls. Red, reptilian hellhounds bound over their number. The beasts spit and hiss, their brazen claws tearing up the cobbles as the daemon mongrels run at us. A pack of the monsters spreads out across the cloistrium, the black leathery sail-skin of their neck frills erect and aggressive. They sink their fang-filled jaws into our ceramite, tearing at legs and hanging off our arms. Two of the beasts snap at Brother Boaz, causing the Excoriator to swipe at them with his blade. He slashes the first beast across its horn-buds and scaly face. The second is saved by the spiked, brass collar around its neck. As the gladius sparks off the collar, the moment’s distraction costs the Excoriator – a mangled World Eater getting back off the ground and to his berserker’s feet. I call out, but by the time Boaz turns, the Traitor Legionary’s chainsword has already taken off the Excoriator’s head.

  Fury builds inside me. I feel something dark and unseen wrestling for my soul. My anger and frustration feed it. A question without words chimes through my being like the clash of two blades. A proposal. A dark bargain. The unrivalled power of my enemies. The fearless, mindless instincts of a predator – with all the bloodthirsty prowess and indestructibility that comes with them – in exchange for my surrender. Not to my enemy, who deserves my enmity, my skill and my blade, but to my rage. I see the World Eaters – once the Emperor’s Angels – live the benefits of such surrender. I envy their power and certitude. I see their blades butcher the supermen under my command and wonder what I might be able to do with such fury. Might I, the Scourge, be able to turn the tide of battle? My boundless wrath and the desire to avenge my brothers, forged into a weapon. My body a raw lump of brazen metal – able to withstand anything the enemy might throw at me. My mind an instrument of vengeance. My arm the executor of divine will…

  A chainaxe buzzes past my head. There is blood. I think I might have just lost an ear. A World Eater, with a brass, mechanical claw for an arm, snaps out for my head. I retract, but the Traitor’s brazen pincer snaps closed about my chainsword – stopping it dead. The claw cuts through the weapon, rendering it a tip-sheared, chugging mess. I abandon the weapon, slipping my Scourge’s gladius from its scabbard. I spin the sword around the index digit of my left gauntlet before bringing the weapon down on the claw. The blade rings off the obscene bionic attachment. The World Eater’s axe comes for me again. Claw. Axe. Claw. Axe. Each time, the gladius drives them aside. I know I can kill this monstrous combat machine. I have seen his death flash before my eyes. I know the fury I will have to unleash in order to end him. In order to end all of them. I am a moment away from damnation and I know it. A scream brings me back to my senses.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Bethesda. My lictor, Oren, is on the floor, two of the daemon hounds feasting on the serf. A third has the tips of its teeth around Bethesda’s ankle, dragging the absterge away. My dark desire to kill the World Eater is greater than ever. Somehow I resist it. Instead of driving my blade through the gore-speckled degenerate, I turn in close and slam my shoulder into the Traitor’s chest. He gets my elbow across his faceplate before I grab the heavy metal claw and heave the Chaos Space Marine over my pack and pauldron. He crashes into the cobbles.

  I watch Bethesda screaming, her body dragged away through the gore, the whites of her eyes bright and pleading. Without ammunition and the serf too far away for my blade, there is only one thing I can do. Slapping my gauntlet down on my belt I find ‘the purge’ where I left it, coiled over the hilt of my other blade. Like my plate, the whip’s braided length is smeared in blood-drizzle. I crack the length of the leather flail. It fails to wrap itself around her wrist as I might have hoped and instead snaps against the cobbled floor nearby. This should not surprise me. ‘The purge’ is not exactly the weapon of choice for an Adeptus Astartes. In her desperation and fear, the absterge strikes out with her fingers and snatches at the tip of the weapon with her pale fingers. She yelps in agony as I pull on its length, hauling her back towards me. The fiendhound bites further up the serf’s leg and scrabbles against the stone floor with its brass talons.

  I feel an immediate pressure on my leg. Looking down at the World Eater on the floor I see that he has his claw around my knee. The bionic shears through my plate under hydraulic insistence and I feel its crushing atte
ntions on my flesh. Turning the gladius back around in my left hand, I stab down into the Chaos Space Marine’s shoulder. Slipping the tip of the blade between the monstrous bionic attachment and the warped flesh of the Angel, I thrash back and forth with the sword hilt like a gearstick, cutting through tendons and hydraulic piping. As the claw releases me I bring up my boot and stamp down on the World Eater’s extravagant helm. The helmet twists and something snaps. I hope it is the Traitor’s neck.

  I heave at the whip’s length, but two further daemon beasts have sunk their maws into Bethesda’s flailing legs. They drag at her, and my boots skid across the cloistrium floor. She screams again. The blood-smeared ‘purge’ begins to slip through my power-armoured grip.

  ‘Melmoch!’ I call. I hate to. Palatine Sapphira’s body has been snatched by fleet-of-claw blood-heralds. The Epistolary doesn’t even know, since he is surrounded by cultists and slave-soldiers, which he cuts down like a reaper with his force scythe. The psyker spots me and my desperate tug of war with the hounds. He angles the shaft of the scythe at the beast, and with his kindly face now a hollow mask of exhaustion, desperation and fury, the Librarian sends an energy storm of arcing power at the hounds.

  Impossibly the destructive stream deviates and crackles harmlessly about the savage monsters. Furious, the Librarian sends another blast of soul lightning at the beasts, but it too sears wide. The spiked collars the creatures are wearing glow with an unnatural energy, seemingly protecting the hellhounds from Melmoch’s psychic barrage. The whip slips from my fingers and the monsters drag the shrieking serf into a narrow alley.

  The terrible cacophony of battle grows. Skase, Chaplain Shadrath and I do what we can to prevent the storm front of mulching axes and Traitor bolt-fire from turning us into Escharan chum. Melmoch sweeps the sizzling blade of his force scythe repeatedly through the meat-grinding crush of the cultist crowds, slicing through torsos and daemonflesh in a desperate attempt to hold the Cholercaustians back. Novah drops his empty boltgun, and his gladius joins ours, the company standard held high above our heads. Only Squad Whip Joachim fights on alone in the centre ground, beating back three rapid World Eaters with his remaining blade and a steel nerve alone.