Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1

by Warhammer 40K

  It was a tactic Strike and the other tank commanders had been using to great success since the underground war had begun, albeit one discovered by accident when a Hellhound got a little too close to both a fire daemon and a boarded Baneblade.

  ‘Good work, Tindalos,’ Strike enthused through the vox. ‘Maintain position along the flanks of the column. You too, Fuego Diablo, Fire of Sanctity and Hell’s Fury. We’re getting close to the cave now and I don’t want you stuck in traffic if we encounter any more of those things.’

  Three more Hellhounds separated from the line of tanks running two and three abreast through the tunnels of Atika.

  This far down, the passages and caverns were enormous, generations of excavation having bored them large enough for heavy mining vehicles – and by default, tanks and Warhound Titans – to operate unimpeded. Scouts, both human and Space Marine, had reported that there were much smaller tunnels driving deeper towards the planet’s core and yet richer mineral deposits. These branches pre-dated the Imperial miners’ tunnels by many millennia and were so narrow and low they suggested they were dug by a diminutive race, long since disappeared from the face – and depths – of Pythos, perhaps even the Imperium.

  Tzula shifted position within the compartment, keeping her arms out alongside her lest the rocking motion of the tank take her feet from beneath her. K’Cee had improved the handling and suspension to such a degree that Traitor’s Bane could move at speeds close to two hundred kilometres per hour without the occupants being aware they were moving. Despite their urgency to reach the Emerald Cave, K’Cee had to limit his speed to much lower than that to allow the other tanks to keep up, much to the jokaero’s chagrin.

  ‘This is it, isn’t it?’ Tzula said, gripping tightly to the back of the command chair. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the rumble of engines and hard ground passing rapidly beneath them.

  ‘Feels that way,’ the colonel agreed. ‘One way or another, this is the final battle for Atika, for the whole of Pythos. For good or for ill, Lord Azrael is committing all of the Imperial forces to this assault, and if what we heard in the briefing is true, that still might not be enough.’

  Once the location of the Emerald Cave and the nature of its occupant had been revealed to the Grand Master of the Dark Angels, he had not hesitated in gathering all forces fighting the underground war, along with many of those tasked with protecting the lone entrance to the underhive, to rally on the threshold ready for an assault on the abomination and its spawn. Even when information reached Lord Azrael during the briefing that the location of the Damnation Cache had also been determined, he did not deviate from his course of action. To the surprise of all the human commanders present, Lord Draigo had been vehement in his support of the Dark Angel’s strategy. The denizens of the Cache had been contained to the planet, and the fleet in orbit could blast the planet to smithereens should that situation somehow change. If the Prisoner from the Emerald Cave were allowed his freedom, even Exterminatus would not guarantee its destruction.

  Close to a thousand Space Marines, a quarter of a million Imperial Guard and tens of thousands of tonnes of armoured vehicles might not be enough either, but to the two Space Marines leading the Pythos campaign it represented their best chance of victory.

  ‘Regardless of the outcome, colonel, it’s been a pleasure to fight alongside you. You have the gratitude of the Ordo.’ Tzula held out her unaugmented arm to perform the traditional Catachan salute.

  Strike smiled, locking hands and forearm with the woman. ‘Likewise. And the Ordo has my gratitude also.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tzula, taken aback. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because if you hadn’t shown up here like you did, I wouldn’t have thought a damn thing was wrong. When Abaddon arrived he would have taken the planet in minutes. And your boy, the astropath, he’s the reason reinforcements ever got here. If not for him, Emperor knows how many worlds would have fallen to the onslaught of daemons.’

  Tzula returned his smile and broke off the salute. She was glad that somebody else had recognised how vital Liall’s sacrifice had been. She was about to honour the valour of his men when a screech from K’Cee interrupted them. The jokaero was slowing the Hellhammer down and gesticulating in front of him. Strike clambered up to the turret and peered through a viewslit.

  ‘We’re here,’ he said.

  Throughout the bloody history of the Imperium of Man, countless battles have been fought: first for the cause of expansion, then to counter betrayal and lastly for the sake of survival. Trillions of souls on all sides of these battles have perished, and the fields upon which their lives were laid down are as varied as the armies themselves. Death worlds. Craftworlds. Tomb worlds. Ice worlds. Desert worlds. Water worlds. Worlds ravaged by the inexorable hunger of the tyranids. Worlds warped by the malign power of daemons and their consorts. On board satellites, orbital stations and spaceships. Even in the void itself. But in all that time there was one battlefield that the Imperium had found itself waging war over less frequently than most.

  During the time of the Great Crusade, and Horus’s betrayal that followed, some of the largest and longest underground campaigns found their way into Imperium annals. In the deepest recesses of the Rock, the Dark Angels themselves retained scripture to the war fought in the mines below a planet called Sarosh, where the agents of the warp made themselves known before their true nature was yet fully comprehended. At Calth, the Ultramarines played out a decade-long war of attrition with the Word Bearers Legion after the once verdant planet’s surface was rendered an irradiated wasteland by traitor bombs and missiles. The ensuing guerrilla campaign neutered both armies for the remainder of the Horus Heresy and whittled down the strength of both Legions to a mere fraction of their previous strength.

  In more recent times, the Space Wolves had fought alongside the Inquisition across a system called the Hollow Worlds, a string of planets each interlaced by underground tunnel networks, while the Blood Angels, Exorcists, Raven Guard and Doom Eagles had all experienced subterranean conflict under the auspices of their current Chapter Masters.

  Never, in all that time, had a single underground battle been fought on the scale of the one about to be contested beneath the surface of Pythos.

  The entire strength of the Dark Angels Chapter, close to nine hundred Space Marines along with the various bikes, speeders and personnel carriers that had survived the war above, stood alongside eighty of their Grey Knights cousins. Behind them came the massed ranks of the Imperial Guard, the few thousand surviving Catachans at the head of a far larger force of Cadians, Mordians, Vostroyans as well as other less distinguished regiments and Pythosian miners who had taken up arms in defence of their home world. Intermingled with the infantry were the tanks and artillery, mobile fortresses and mobile missile platforms ready to rain death down upon the daemonic host that awaited them.

  The stale air above them was displaced by the engines of more than a hundred hovering Valkyries providing welcome relief from the stifling heat for the assembled human troops. Getting them this deep into the mines had been a logistical challenge but, with the caverns now the sizes of small nations, they could fly unfettered to provide much needed air support. Watching over all of this like dark sentinels were the Warhound Titans of Legio Crucius, stationary as they awaited the address of Supreme Grand Master Azrael but ready to explode into destructive life at a mere thought from their noble princeps.

  From the promontory where his command Land Raider was berthed, Azrael too looked out over the vast army at his command, all of them waiting to hear his words, to be sent into battle with the inspiration of one of the Emperor’s finest ringing in their ears. Although his vantage granted a view over the top of everyone and everything in the cavern – save the flyers and the Titans – he clambered atop the hull of the Land Raider to provide a focal point for the assembled masses and opened up his vox-link.

  ‘Loyal servants of the Emperor, today we commence the final battle for Pythos, the
last drive to liberate this world from the yoke of daemonic intrusion and banish the aggressors from this planet.’ He did not look upon the Dark Angels as he spoke, nor the Grey Knights. They needed no words of encouragement or comfort to face the horrors ahead. These words were for the human soldiers, those men expected to display the same courage as the Space Marines but without the physical and mental attributes to prevent fear from taking hold of them in the crucible of battle. As far as his enhanced eyes could see, the Guardsmen stood rapt on his every word, the external speakers of the hulking Legio war machines rebroadcasting his speech on their external speakers.

  ‘Some of you have fought this war for longer than others and have done so with a valour that has become the envy of your peers.’ He looked to the remnants of the 183rd. ‘By rights your war should be over already, and if not for your jungle fighting prowess it would have been long ago, but the Emperor must call upon you again. Will you answer that call, men of Catachan? Will you raise arms once more in the Emperor’s name and vanquish his foes in the name of the Golden Throne?’

  The cheer in the affirmative that followed belied the depleted strength of the death world regiment, each man and woman raising their voice to fill the void of fallen comrades.

  Azrael turned his focus to the militia. ‘Others have a greater stake in the coming battle than simply eradicating the warpspawn, for some of you call this world home and seek vengeance for its occupation. Let me tell you, men of Pythos, vengeance is the purest of all reasons to wage war and where your lack of fighting experience may fail you, let your desire for retribution spur you on.’

  The bedraggled miners, some of them armed only with makeshift hand weapons rather than guns, chanted the name of their planet and the Emperor. A few even called out the Lord of the Dark Angels’ name.

  ‘A great many of you have experienced first-hand what the population of Pythos has had to endure for nigh on these past two years.’ Azrael’s gaze fell upon the Cadians and Mordians. ‘You know what it is like for the boot of the enemy to tread roughshod over the soil of your home world, to have your Emperor-given liberty torn cruelly from your grasp. Remember this as you fight. Carry that knowledge in your hearts as you drive these invaders from this world, lest next time it be your own that falls to them.’

  There were more cheers. More exaltations of the God-Emperor’s name.

  At last he regarded his own troops. ‘But know that you do not go to face this enemy alone. The Sons of the Lion will be among you and know that we will not falter, we will not break. When your courage deserts you, look to us to lead the way forward and just as we will not fail you, the same is expected in return.’

  As one, nine hundred Space Marines gave voice to their primarch’s honorific.

  Azrael’s eyes found the silver-clad figures in the throng. ‘Though many of you thought them nothing more than a myth, an order long passed into history or mere children’s tales, the Grey Knights fight alongside us all this day and their zeal and proficiency is very real, let me assure you of that.’ Draigo looked up from where he had solemnly been staring dead ahead and shared a nod with his Dark Angels counterpart. ‘Their psychic ability will shield you from witchery, and their blades and halberds will strike straight and true for the heart of the enemy.’

  Cries of ‘For the Emperor’ and ‘Titan’ followed in his wake.

  ‘And let us not forget the great Warhounds of Legio Crucius who have so graciously lent us their might. For millennia these noble war engines, these god machines, have routed the foes of the Imperium and struck terror in the hearts of all those that would oppose them. Truly are we blessed that they take the field with us this day to defend our lives and inspire us all.’

  War horns sounded in chorus, their atonal dirge forming the accompaniment for the cheers and chants emanating from below them. They were still blaring as Azrael concluded his speech.

  ‘Let us go now to battle. Let us go now to vengeance. Let us go now to the liberation of Pythos and let us go now to victory!’

  Leaping down from the hull, he boarded the Land Raider, the driver heading for the cavern exit while the rear hatch was still swinging shut. Behind the Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels, over a quarter of a million men followed into the daemon-infested hell that awaited them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  157961.M41 / The Emerald Cave. Atika, Pythos

  The Caducades Battalion of the Fourth Cadian Regiment had a fearsome reputation for warfare, justified time and time again by their valorous actions in the name of the Emperor. As with all Cadian soldiery, they were taken before puberty and forced to survive on the deadly island chain from which they took their name, but unlike their rank and file counterparts, the men and women of Caducades Battalion didn’t just survive against the wild landscape and horrors that dwelled there.

  They thrived.

  Eking out a wild existence well into their teenage years, eventually the call would come to rejoin the fold and take their place in the elite of the Fourth Cadian. Many answered that call and joined five hundred similar souls in the charcoal grey and tan camouflage pattern only their battalion were allowed to don by order of the Lord Castellan himself. Those who refused to take up the uniform were allowed to remain on the islands, yet another threat for potential Imperial Guardsmen to negotiate.

  The roll of honour for the Caducades Battalion could put that of entire Cadian regiments to shame. Their banner sported the iconography of no fewer than three Space Marine Chapters who had granted that honour after fighting alongside them, and the symbols of Battlefleet Cadia and Legio Astorum sat proudly among them. Before Pandorax, they had fought a brutal two year-long campaign to liberate a string of moons to the galactic east of their home world and, after their arrival on Pythos, were the sole non-Catachan force to suffer no casualties as a result of the lethal plant and wildlife, their formative years having left them in good stead for death world combat.

  At the Battle for the Emerald Cave they lasted less than a minute.

  The mouth of the cave, and the tunnel leading to it, was more than wide and high enough to grant egress to war machines and flyers, but its girth was finite, allowing only one Warhound or two Valkyries safely through at a time. The infantry of the Imperial Guard could comfortably march through fifty abreast, but with two hundred and fifty thousand souls, along with artillery and armour rolling in support, to get into position the going had been slow. Almost four days into the battle, a fifth of the Imperial forces were still to deploy into the chamber.

  The Dark Angels and Grey Knights had been at the van of the assault, ploughing through the ranks of minor daemons at the fore of the enemy and establishing a beachhead from where their human allies could launch their own attacks. Impatient at the delay in getting into the fight, the Caducades Battalion had pushed their way to the front of the Cadian Fourth’s number in an effort to be the first of their regiment to reach the staging zone, their ingrained savagery coming to the fore as they clubbed aside their fellows with the butts of their rifles. It was this impatience that would be their undoing.

  Screaming battle cries and profanities, the thousand-strong force swept through into the Emerald Cave, lasrifles and autorifles raised to bring death to the enemies they had waited so long to smite. In spite of all Azrael’s fine words at the dawn of the battle and the horrors they had witnessed merely by dint of being citizens of Cadia, the first thing they did upon entering the chamber was freeze in terror.

  Where the army of the Imperium numbered a quarter of a million, the daemonic horde easily matched it. Bloated things the size of Space Marines shambled awkwardly across the cave, batting aside Guardsmen with pendulous, distended arms and raking at tank armour with broken claws, pestilence dripping from their tips. In among them skittered smaller horrors, emaciated husks with exposed ribs and patchy flesh, mouths stuffed full of multiple sets of crooked, rotten teeth. Their diminutive stature made them no less deadly, however, and their fearsome maws bit through both flesh and steel
with ease. Plague Marines too fought among the enemy host, their positions easy to spot by the masses of plague zombies they used as rotting meat shields, firing unimpeded from behind their undead protective walls. It was over all of this that the true source of the Caducades Battalion’s fear presided.

  Immense in its stature, the Prisoner from the Emerald Cave dwarfed all before it, including the black and white liveried Warhounds of Legio Crucius that were vainly unloading their guns at it. Its hide constantly shifting beneath the miasma of disease and filth that oozed from every pore, the daemon altered its form to respond to any threat ranged against it. A Valkyrie hovered in front of the thing’s chest – at least where its chest would have been had it allowed itself form – and prepped its missile batteries to let loose a salvo at one of the beast’s many spontaneously generated eyes. Aware of the craft’s intent, the area around the organ stretched and transformed becoming a grotesque approximation of an arm that lunged and grabbed the stationary flyer, gripping it so tightly that escape was no longer within its capabilities. With a crunch of metal, the Prisoner from the Emerald Cave wound in the appendage, swallowing the stricken Imperial flyer in a maw that an instant earlier had been the eye they were targeting.

  Whether by accident or design, it was the monster’s next act that would ensure the Caducades Battalion would never get to add to their roll of honour. The patch of blubber beneath the pseudo-mouth undulated and heaved violently, the roiling folds of fat swelling the pseudo-lips as if they were trying to contain what was within. With a guttural roar, the maw expelled its contents in a torrent of jet black vomit.

  The warpbred physiology of the blessed of Nurgle had taken the remnants of the Valkyrie – its mechanical components, its hull, its fuel, the organic matter of the human crew – and transformed it into something new, something horrific, something deadly. The shower of hot, dark filth cascaded across the Emerald Cave, over the heads of battling Guardsmen and daemons and engulfed the troops of the Cadian 4th’s elite battalion along with anybody else unlucky enough to be standing in proximity. The viscous bile clung to them like tar, eating away at the charcoal and tan they so proudly bore and the weak flesh and organs beneath, the battle cries and expletives of moments before giving way to the wails of the dying.