Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘Looks like you’re about to have company, chief.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll keep our feathered friend busy, you keep that Skullrender off our backs.’ The vox abruptly went dead.

  ‘Chief? Chief?’ No response. Thorne tried the open channel. ‘All wings. Is anybody receiving?’

  A string of affirmatives followed.

  ‘The other daemon has breached Olympax. We can’t let the Skullrender make it through as well. Break formation. Attack from all angles.’

  Engines screaming as Valkyries banked and rose, heavy bolter fire joined the multilaser and missile fire as the flyers presented their flanks to let the door gunners join the attack. Surrounded on all sides as well as above and below, the Bloodthirster was penned in and took dozens of hits, flame wreathing it as explosions blossomed across its armour and hide. It roared in pain but did not succumb.

  Cornered like a beast, it lashed out at the closest targets and, despite the best efforts of the pilots to dodge its wild swings, the daemon accounted for two more of the Valkyries. A third lost its tail to the axe’s backswing and spun to the ground trailing smoke in its wake.

  The Catachans poured on the fire, but the Bloodthirster soaked it up and returned it in kind. Having learned from the mistakes of their now dead comrades, the pilots were staying well out of the range of the daemon’s axe. It lashed out instead with its whip, raking the barbs across a dozen cockpits, collapsing them and showering those inside with lethal fragments of plastiglas.

  Thorne looked on helplessly as more of the flyers simply dropped from the sky, pilots dead at the controls or instruments wrecked. Every one of these pilots would fight to the death to ensure that Strike and the remaining Catachans had enough time to evacuate the base, and it was looking increasingly like that was what it was going to take to cover their retreat: the death of every one of them. Thorne made a decision.

  ‘All wings. Get out of here. Spread out across the planet and make for the outlying strongholds. We go underground, harry the enemy at every opportunity and wait for reinforcements. The Emperor protects!’ The vox channel swelled with affirmatives and repeated blessings.

  Through the crazed apertures of the cockpit, Thorne saw the remaining Valkyries peel off and speed away in all directions. The Bloodthirster hung suspended, momentarily confused and unsure which targets to pursue. The pilot by Thorne’s side made to pull back on the control stick and send the craft higher into the atmosphere, but the major’s hand stopped him.

  ‘Not us, son,’ Thorne said solemnly. ‘We have to cover their escape.’ He looked back down the interior and received nods of confirmation from the two door gunners.

  The pilot nodded in understanding and swung the Valkyrie sharply around, its weapons systems all trained on the daemon’s rear. The beast was about to beat its heavy wings in pursuit of a cluster of gunships when Thorne gave the order to fire. Las-rounds and solid shot impacted against the thing, followed by a direct hit between its shoulder blades from a hellstrike missile, the detonation briefly obscuring the daemon from view.

  When the smoke and flame cleared, the wounded Bloodthirster turned and bellowed in rage, its powerful breath violently shaking the craft and forcing the pilot to lower altitude to avoid the wave of turbulence. Sensing its opportunity, the daemon cracked its massive whip, wrapping it around the hull of the impertinent flyer and yanked back hard, veins the thickness of a man’s arm bulging in its bicep. The Valkyrie barrel-rolled, tossed like driftwood in a tsunami and the door gunners were thrown clear, their bodies smashed as they hit the rocks below. Righting itself, the Valkyrie hovered vulnerably before the thing from the warp.

  ‘What do we have left?’ Thorne asked the pilot. Receiving no response, he turned to see the slumped form of the Navy man, face caved-in from where it had impacted against the control facia. Quickly unstrapping the man from his seat, Thorne unceremoniously dumped his corpse on the cockpit floor and assumed the pilot’s seat. As part of their training, all Catachan officers were given simple instruction in operating Imperial Guard vehicles and though it had been almost a decade since he’d been at the controls of a Valkyrie, he’d spent enough time in the co-pilot’s seat these past three years to relearn the basics.

  The Bloodthirster lashed out again. Instinctively, Thorne pushed forwards on the control stick, entering into a steep dive that he barely pulled out of before making contact with a mountain. Now, facing away from the daemon, he spun the craft around in a one-hundred and eighty degree turn and squeezed the firing stud for the hull-mounted multi-laser, hitting the beast in the chest and scorching the brass of its breastplate. Unfazed, the Bloodthirster lowered its head and dived towards Thorne.

  The major looked all around him to see dozens of craft disappearing into the distance, tiny pinpricks of light in the Pythosian dusk. Over the Bloodthirster’s shoulder, the lesser daemons were getting braver, swarming to launch a new assault. He had done enough to allow the Valkyrie wings to get to safety, but he could still buy Strike and the rest of the regiment more time. Priming the last of the hellstrike missiles in its launch pod, Thorne pulled back hard on the throttle and drove upwards towards the onrushing daemon.

  Thirteen tonnes of forge-world manufactured aerial troop carrier hit almost a thousand kilometres per hour as it flew inexorably towards a warpborn fiend of almost the same weight, flying at a near-identical speed. When they hit the point where neither could pull out, Thorne launched the hellstrike. The Bloodthirster’s eyes grew wide with realisation.

  ‘I’ll be with you soon, Mack,’ Thorne whispered as the flames and shockwave hit.

  From the command compartment of the Hellhammer, Strike watched his friend die.

  The orange bloom of an explosion filled the greying sky, followed shortly by the sound of metal rending through flesh and muscle. The Valkyrie had embedded itself in the Bloodthirster’s abdomen and they hung suspended in the sky, before dropping towards the ground in a fiery morass. The daemon howled as it fell, its grip on the material realm slipping rapidly, and by the time Thorne’s craft hit the jungle floor, all trace of the daemon-beast had passed from reality.

  Strike made a fist and slammed it down on the armrest of the Hellhammer’s command seat. The time for mourning would come later, not just for Thorne but all those of the 183rd who’d laid down their lives this day. Right now though, the colonel had bigger problems.

  Tucking its wings back, the feathered daemon landed in the hangar bay and turned to look back at the last faint traces of the explosion in the sky. It moved uneasily on its crooked legs as if unused to its own body. When it spoke, it did so with a thousand tiny voices.

  ‘Ah, Bellanoth. Ever the capricious beast. A shame really as I’m certain you would have revelled in the slaughter yet to come.’ Its beaked head darted this way and that, giving the impression that the beast had an acute nervous tic. Tendrils of ethereal smoke clung to it like ink suspended in water. ‘But where have all my toys gone? I was so looking forward to playing my little games.’

  In response, the Hellhammer’s main weapon came to life, a mighty boom echoing around the hangar bay as it spat one of its heavy siege cannon shells towards the bird-like monstrosity. Unperturbed, the daemon merely lifted its hand, stopping the shell mid-flight only centimetres from its palm and holding it in place. It tottered awkwardly around the immobile projectile, peering at it and tapping it with its macabre staff.

  ‘Such an ugly thing. Artless and utterly without grace. I imagine it is effective though.’ With a flick of its wrist, the daemon turned the shell on its axis and sent it flying back towards the Hellhammer. Missing the tank by some distance, it instead exploded against the wall of the hangar, collapsing part of the ceiling and turning to scrap the partly damaged Valkyries that had been awaiting repair. Chunks of Olympax thudded against the tank’s hull, tearing off an armour plate mounted over the engine housing, much to K’Cee’s consternation.

  ‘Back us up! Back us up!’ Strike ordered. The driver slam
med the Hellhammer into reverse and coaxed the war machine backwards, crushing debris under its enormous chassis. The brief shock and revulsion the crew had felt at being so close to a warp entity had soon passed, as if the hull of the tank was protecting their souls as well as their bodies.

  ‘No, no, no,’ the daemon said in its choir of tongues. ‘This game is far from over.’ It tapped the butt of its staff on the floor of the hangar three times and the Hellhammer came to an abrupt halt, its super-charged engine revving frantically, but its tracks locked as if frozen.

  ‘She won’t shift, chief,’ called the driver.

  ‘Are the weapons still operable?’ Strike asked the gunners. Each response was in the negative. K’Cee started banging instrument panels in frustration.

  A tapping noise sounded from on the top of the hull, the arrhythmic plodding of hooves over metal.

  ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are…’ the daemon said mockingly, strutting over the motionless tank. ‘Don’t make me come in there and get you,’ it added in a far more sinister tone, as if its thousand voices were all crying out in pain. It raised the staff above its head ready to smash open the Hellhammer’s turret.

  A single shot rang out, striking the daemon on the wrist and sending the gnarled rod skidding away across the hangar floor. It rubbed its wrist where it stung from the impact and arced its neck to ascertain the source of the gunfire.

  Within the tank, a ripple of confusion passed over the Catachans.

  ‘The rest of the lads should have evacuated. Somebody must have come back,’ suggested one of the gunners.

  ‘That was a bolter round. Must be one of the Valkyries coming back to evacuate more personnel,’ said another.

  ‘If it was one of the flyboys, he must have glided in because we didn’t hear any engine noise,’ added the driver, Tamzarian.

  Jumping down from the commander’s seat, Strike clambered up the ladder to the top hatch and slid back the cover of one of the spy slits. What he saw through it made his heart sing.

  ‘So, a new player enters the game and a Space Marine at that.’ The daemon’s beak peeled back in a smile and it rubbed a serpentine tongue over rows of razor-sharp teeth. ‘Hmmm, such sport, just like Abaddon promised.’

  ‘Abaddon?’ Epimetheus exclaimed. ‘He’s behind reopening the cache?’

  ‘The Warmaster granted us our freedom in return for our fealty the next time he leads forth a crusade. A small price to pay, all things considered.’ The daemon waved a hand and its discarded staff flew back into its grip. Casting it in a wide arc, a wave of boiling warp energy crackled towards the Grey Knight. Epimetheus moved out of its path, spun, and came around with his halberd in both hands. He jabbed it in the direction of the winged beast and unleashed his psychic fury in a concentrated blast, but it met a hastily erected kine shield and fizzled out harmlessly against it.

  ‘Your mindshields are strong, Space Marine, but I do not need to read your thoughts to know that you are not of this era.’ The daemon circled Epimetheus, sizing his opponent up like a pugilist looking for an opening. ‘You are from the time of the Great Awakening, when your brothers cast off the shackles of the Imperium and forged a new destiny as servants of the true gods.’

  ‘And you are a Lord of Change. Every word you utter is an untruth, every statement a trick.’ Epimetheus unleashed another blast of psychic energy but this too washed harmlessly over the daemon’s defences. ‘The time of which you speak was not one of awakening, it was one of death and dishonour, of treachery and heresy.’

  ‘Ah, the rich tapestry of history, ever to be woven by the victor except in cases where there was no clear victor.’ It tried a different prong of attack, darting forward almost imperceptibly quickly and striking out at the Grey Knight with its staff. Epimetheus parried with his halberd, sickeningly coloured sparks and the reek of sulphur emanating from where his psychic conduit came into contact with the raw stuff of the warp. ‘Of course, with the Damnation Cache open again, we draw ever closer to the final battle in the war we started ten millennia ago,’ the daemon added, pulling his staff away and drawing Epimetheus forwards under his own momentum. The Lord of Change swung again but connected with thin air as the Space Marine ducked under the daemon’s weapon, countering with his own thrust.

  ‘And what do you know of the Great Heresy? I expect you were cowering behind the veil, lurking in the warp and waiting to see which side won rather than taking to the field of battle. Your kind always do.’ He brought the force halberd around in a blue blur, narrowly missing the daemon’s head.

  The Lord of Change bristled visibly, its feathers ruffling at the slight. Its voices took on a higher pitch. ‘I was far from idle, Space Marine. I helped bring half a Legion under the sway of the Four True Gods and took part in the destruction of their home world when their faith was found wanting. I looked on while a primarch died, content in the knowledge that I played a part in his downfall.’

  ‘Yet somehow you still ended up imprisoned within the Damnation Cache. If you are so powerful, so clever that you could cause a schism among an entire Space Marine Legion, how did you come to be penned up among the ranks of lesser daemons? Does your patron no longer favour you?’

  Anger took hold of the daemon. It lashed out erratically, putting Epimetheus on the back foot. ‘Pythos! It was to be our foothold in the material realm, the beachhead from which we could launch our assaults on the shattered Imperium and finish what we’d started while our enemy was still weakened. Bellanoth and I leading hordes of the damned against the remnants of mankind, worlds cowering in our shadow until… until…’ Its bubble of anger burst giving way to chilling laughter. ‘But you already know all this don’t you, just as I know who you are? Your armour may be the wrong colour through years of wear and neglect but I know who you are, Epimetheus of the Grey Knights, and your soul will belong to me.’

  The sweaty forms of Catachan tank crew peered out of every available aperture, watching in awe as the Space Marine duelled with the daemon. For over a minute they sat transfixed, watching one of the Imperium’s finest do battle with a thing that defied possibility, each evenly matched in the arena of psychic warfare.

  It was Strike who broke their collective trance.

  ‘Do we have control of the steering and weapons?’ he barked, his voice echoing uncomfortably around the confines of the crew compartment.

  Reluctantly pulling themselves away from the spectacle occurring outside, the driver and gunners retook their positions and tested their systems. The Hellhammer lurched backwards and the turret and weapons sponsons rotated as evidence of the daemon’s ensorcellment having come to an end. A series of affirmatives rang out through the tank.

  ‘Do we target the warpspawn, chief?’ asked one of the gunners.

  ‘Negative,’ Strike replied, looking out through a spy slit. ‘Just as likely to hit our green saviour.’

  The melee outside was taking place at breakneck speed, each cut, thrust and parry happening at a pace far outstripping that of any mortal being.

  ‘We bugging out, chief?’ ventured Tamzarian.

  ‘Affirmative, trooper. Let’s get her down to the east entrance and head for Khan’s Hold.’ He looked through the aperture again. The Space Marine struck the daemon a wicked blow that sliced the tip from one of its wings. It retaliated with a cannonade of blue flame which the armoured figure evaded. ‘I think our friend is more than capable of handling himself.’

  Manipulating the ancient control levers, the driver manoeuvred the super-heavy tank, turning it around so that they could descend the exit ramp and take the transit tunnel that ran deep within the mountain’s belly. Before they had moved more than a few metres, a banging sound issued forth from the roof.

  ‘What in the name of Terra is that?’ asked one of the gunners, the noise of the daemon stalking over the hull obviously still fresh in his mind.

  Strike looked out to where the daemon was locked in combat with the Space Marine. Off in the distance, beyond the hanga
r opening, the ominous black cloud of lesser daemons was drawing ever nearer, but none had yet breached the Imperial base. Switching to the other side of the turret, Strike pulled back an aperture cover to witness a dark-skinned woman’s hand bashing a rock against the armour plating.

  ‘Halt!’ he called to the driver. Still lurching forwards under the effect of braking, Strike popped open the turret hatch with a hiss of releasing pressure and the artificial light from the hangar bled into the poorly illuminated troop compartment. Moments later, Tzula Digriiz followed the light in. Still woozy from the trauma of losing her lower arm and almost at the point of exhaustion from following the Space Marine up through the warren of tunnels, she half-climbed, half-fell down the ladder.

  ‘What happened to your arm?’ Strike asked, lifting her from the cold floor of the Hellhammer and propping her up in one of the numerous unoccupied crew positions.

  ‘A Space Marine did it.’ Even in her diminished state, Tzula was careful not to use Epimetheus’s name or give away his Chapter affiliation. Strike looked at her sceptically, hand reaching unconsciously for his fang. ‘No, nothing like that. Brandd had a vial of contagion which she used to open the seal. I got some on my arm. He only did what was necessary.’

  ‘Looks like you made it back just in time. We’re the last ride out of here.’ Strike signalled to the driver to get moving again but Tzula stopped him.

  ‘No. We can’t leave without him. Didn’t you hear what I just said? He saved my life. I owe it to him.’

  ‘And I owe it to my men and the people of this planet to prosecute this war until support arrives to reconquer it. If your friend outside is any indication, those reinforcements are already on their way. His Chapter will–’

  ‘His Chapter will do nothing because they’re not here yet. He’s alone,’ Tzula snapped. ‘He’s been here longer than anybody. Longer than you, longer than the miners, longer even than the first settlers. He helped put the seals in place and, until the cavalry arrive, he’s the only chance we’ve got at containing the warp breach.’