Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1

by Warhammer 40K

  The shift in tactics had come so close to succeeding but the intervention of the Plague Marines had brought them to the threshold of defeat. Their forces already depleted, Dark Angels were dying in droves and still the Prisoner from the Emerald Cave persisted, his ever burgeoning offspring ploughing their way through the mass of zombies to help strike the final blows.

  There was one last option open to Draigo. He would probably die in the process, his soul given up as a banquet for those beyond the threshold, but it was the only chance they had.

  Sheathing the Titansword, Draigo closed his eyes.

  Chinks of emerald light filtered in through the roof of the Hellhammer, cracks forming in its armoured hull where talons and claws widened the gaps between plates, tearing away the outer layers to reveal the prey within.

  K’Cee worked furiously beneath the console, stripping out wires and fibre bundles, reconfiguring them and soldering them back in place with heat from one of the many rings that adorned his long, slender fingers. Strike and the others knew that the jokaero’s efforts were in vain; the daemons had crippled the engine and short of stepping outside their rapidly diminishing armoured cocoon and, getting under the hood, Traitor’s Bane was not going anywhere.

  A loud crunching sound was followed up by brighter green light flooding the crew compartment. Strike looked up to see that a hole the size of a man’s head had been gouged through the side of the turret, a pustule-riddled arm reaching experimentally inside.

  ‘K’Cee,’ Strike said, gripping one of the xenos’s furry knees and shaking it to get his attention. K’Cee shot out from the darkened recess, wrench raised threateningly.

  ‘We have to bail out.’ Strike pointed to the daemonic limb reaching around blindly above them.

  In sheer frustration, the jokaero bashed away at the console with the wrench then paused with a hopeful look on his face that his percussive maintenance had yielded results. When he was certain that even this hadn’t coaxed any final vestige of life out of the tank, he flung the tool at the flailing arm, screeching with delight when it struck the wrist with a satisfying crack.

  There was another crunch of metal and the red gloom of emergency lighting gave way entirely to the jade from without, but this breach of their confines was the planned opening of the rear hatch rather than the violent attention of the swarming Neverborn. Brigstone tossed Strike a lasrifle and the two Catachan officers, along with K’Cee, followed the rest of the crew out into the cavern.

  Seen through the tiny rectangular aperture of a tank viewslit, the Battle for the Emerald Cave had been a gruesome sight to behold. Exposed to the full panorama, the experience was soul-crushing. The screams of the dying were virtually indistinguishable from the howls of their daemonic killers, sounds that would keep the men and women who heard them awake at night for the rest of their lives. Corpses, both human and warpborn, festooned the cavern floor, the stone dyed a deep red from the blood and other matter that had leaked from the lifeless, the grisly by-product of war. Those wounded that lived on cried out for mercy, for their comrades to grant them a swift end and spare them from the virulent horrors eating away at their bodies, the lingering deaths that would wrack them with pain until they breathed their last.

  Smoke hung in palls over the battlefield, endless banks of promethium fumes from the burning wrecks of tanks and flyers. Strike was glad of it, not only to cover their retreat from Traitor’s Bane, but for the smell masking the rank odour of the Plague God’s servants and the four days’ worth of Imperial dead.

  Weapons fire, sudden and loud, drew the colonel’s attention. Through the smoke, muzzle flare from multiple heavy bolters and red beams of lascannon fire emanated from the silhouette of what was unmistakably a Baneblade. The daemons closing in on Strike and his crew collapsed under the barrage, the corpses convulsing under sustained fire as the tank’s rear hatch dropped to allow the fleeing Catachans on board.

  With K’Cee bounding along on all fours several metres back, Strike sprinted towards their saviour, a Mars-pattern super-heavy in the urban camouflage colour scheme of the Tenth Cadian Armoured regiment. He had just placed the first of his standard Imperial Guard issue boots on the metal ramp when a roar from behind him had him spinning, the butt of his lasrifle reflexively coming up to his shoulder.

  A horned, one-eyed monstrosity had placed itself between K’Cee and the Baneblade, too close to be targeted by the tank’s weapons systems. Strike and the other Catachans opened up with their guns but their shots bounced harmlessly off the thing’s thick, rancid hide. It loomed over the xenos and bellowed again, its breath so heavy with stench that what came out of its mouth was the same grey-green as its flesh. Raising its crude, heavy blade above its head, it made ready to finish the jokaero.

  K’Cee didn’t flinch. Extending a single finger, another of his rings was revealed to be a lethal weapon, a vast fountain of flame shooting forth from it, engulfing the daemon. The creature thrashed and flailed as its mottled skin melted under the intense heat, dropping to the ground with a howl in a futile attempt to douse the cleansing fire.

  Seemingly oblivious to what he had done, K’Cee continued to lope forwards without any urgency whatsoever. He clambered aboard the waiting Baneblade which moved off at speed before the rear hatch had closed.

  While Strike remonstrated vociferously with the Cadian tank commander who believed the hairy orange alien who had just boarded his tank to be an enemy agent, K’Cee stared back at the rapidly disappearing Hellhammer, wiping the dampness away from the fur on his cheeks.

  In the long and storied history of the six hundredth and sixty-sixth Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, what Draigo was about to do had only been attempted on a handful of occasions, each time at great personal cost to the individual performing it.

  During the 33rd millennium, Supreme Grand Master Tethys had performed the feat and spent the next one hundred and twelve days in a coma. Upon awakening, his psychic abilities were so diminished that he had to pass over his mantle as Chapter Master and lived out the rest of his days tending to memorials for the fallen in the Dead Fields.

  Two thousand years later, a battle-brother of no small potential by the name of Hiermeno would attempt the same feat. His actions that day saved the lives of more than a billion souls who would otherwise have succumbed to daemonic predation but of the Grey Knight himself no trace was left, warp energy burning him out and consuming him entirely.

  Most recently, Brother-Captain Stern had pulled off the same feat on a much smaller scale than Draigo was attempting during the cleansing of a world recently emerged from the Eye of Terror. The captain survived his ordeal and ensured the mission was a success, but he and his Brotherhood spent most of the next year on Titan training new recruits while they recuperated from their psychic exertions.

  Reaching out through the mental storm raging around him, Kaldor Draigo spoke directly into the minds of his temporary charges, preparing them for what was to come. The Supreme Grand Master felt his resolve strengthen as each Grey Knight of the Fifth Brotherhood accepted what he was about to do unflinchingly and loaned him a small portion of their psychic might.

  His eyes firmly closed, Draigo began to chant. The sanctuary he had been maintaining dropped as he diverted his power elsewhere, and a cadre of opportunistic daemons charged him, scenting an easy target. Tzula blazed away with her bolt pistol, taking the first rank down before the gun returned the sound of metal striking metal, her last clip having run dry. One of the Neverborn leapt towards her, and she held her combat blade locked against her chest in both hands – if this was how her battle was going to end, she was going to take her killer with her – but the daemon was barely off the ground when it was torn to pieces by storm bolter shells. She turned to look upon her saviour, the battered form of Gabriel despatching another trio of daemons before tossing the junior interrogator a fresh bolt pistol that had been maglocked to the shattered thigh of his armour.

  With the Grand Master of the Deathwing alongside her,
Tzula continued to keep the horde at bay. Draigo’s incantation grew in volume and the temperature around him plummeted, blue-white frost forming across his worn Terminator plate. A wind blew up out of nowhere so powerful that it pushed and dragged corpses across the floor of the cave and generated tiny tornadoes that harassed both friend and foe alike. The Grey Knight’s body convulsed violently, and azure smoke trickled from the joints and cracks in his armour. He thrust his face skywards, muscles taut with warp energy coursing through them, and cried out the same phrase three times over.

  The litany he had chanted was in an archaic language, unfathomable by the layperson and difficult to hear. The final five words that he called out thrice over were in High Gothic and all who heard them knew their meaning.

  ‘Come to me, my brothers!’

  With a deafening crack of reality being parted and a blinding flash of intense white light, the seventy remaining Grey Knights of the Fifth Brotherhood appeared at Draigo’s side. The displacement of air sent out a shockwave, a wall of concussive force that knocked all in its path to the ground. Daemons and plague zombies fell in droves, as did the Dark Angels. The Grey Knights sprayed the area with gunfire, slaughtering their prone enemies before they could rise.

  Castellan Crowe rushed to Draigo’s side, the stricken Supreme Grand Master still on his knees, wisps of blue smoke pouring from his mouth and nostrils. Ignoring the aid being offered him, Draigo stared right past the Castellan to where Tzula had come to rest alongside his Dark Angel counterpart.

  ‘The daemon…’ Draigo croaked before collapsing back into Crowe’s waiting arms.

  Reacting quickest, Azrael hauled himself to his feet before lifting Tzula to hers. Their path to the daemon clear, the inquisitor and the Dark Angel set off to finish the Battle for the Emerald Cave.

  157961.M41 / Forty-two kilometres north-east of Atika, Pythos

  Diving down into the ravine, scorching balefire licked the rear of the shuttle triggering yet more alarms in the crew compartment. The shrill wail quickly subsided as the heavy rain continued to pummel at the ship’s hull, stifling any fire before it could take hold.

  Jerking at the controls, Shira jinked the craft from side to side and erratically altered her altitude, sometimes coming within metres of the trees whizzing by beneath her, other times faking that she was pulling out of the gulley altogether. The Heldrake was hot on her tail, so close that every issue from its breath weapon scored at least a glancing hit. The only thing preventing the shuttle from becoming a fireball was Shira’s skill as a pilot and the torrential downpour. She didn’t know how much longer she could rely on either.

  The ravine bent sharply to the right and Shira was glad of the curve, her turn presenting the Heldrake with a smaller target. Practically on its side, the shuttle arced widely around the bend, levelling out high above a new valley. As if to let Shira know that it was still close behind her, the Heldrake sent another blast of blue flame in her direction; not as close as its previous attack but enough to raise the temperature within the craft by double digits.

  The combination of inclement weather and failing daylight meant Shira had to rely on her instruments to navigate, and as sensors fed their data into the navigational auspex, a pleasing sight resolved itself on a screen in front of her. The chasm she was in narrowed to a bottleneck, just wide enough for a single craft to fly through, before widening back out again. She was still several kilometres away and wouldn’t be able to manoeuvre the shuttle while aiming the missile but this was the opening she had been looking for.

  Throwing the shuttle around wildly, Shira called upon every trick in her extensive repertoire to put more distance between her and the faster flying Heldrake. Every extra metre she gained was potentially the difference between life and death, and she fought hard for each one of them. At one point, she flew so close to the trees below that the cover for the landing gear was shorn away and a grating sound echoed around the crew compartment as branches scraped along the undercarriage. Ragwing fared even worse, its claws snagging on canopies in its effort to match Shira’s altitude. By the time it had extricated itself from the tops of the trees, Shira was already spinning upwards in a controlled barrel roll.

  Coming out of her final flip she checked the auspex again. She had indeed lengthened the gap, but wasn’t sure it was enough to keep the Heldrake off her back for long enough to get her shot away. She had done all she could, the rest was up to fate.

  Sheet lightning lit up the sky and the outline of the narrow pass loomed large ahead of her. Activating the control to lower the missile into its firing position, she brought the shuttle steady. Under normal circumstances she would have engaged the hunter-killer’s guidance system and let that do the hard work for her, but that would tip the Heldrake off about her plan; this had to be done manually at the very last moment to maintain the element of surprise. Her finger hovered over the launch button.

  More alarms sounded and the temperature rose sharply, the otherworldly stink of warpfire and scorched paint forcing Shira to suppress a gag. She glanced at the auspex again to see the Heldrake had eaten up the distance she had gained and was now closer than ever. Whether it had been holding something back in reserve or had called upon whichever foul god it worshipped for its acceleration spurt, she would never know. The one thing she was sure of was that another blast like that would certainly finish her off.

  Ignoring the now constant wail of klaxons, Shira hung on until the last possible moment before slamming her fist down on the launch control. The missile left its housing with a whoosh, but that sound was soon swallowed up by the louder roar of the Heldrake and the crackle of flame engulfing the Inquisition shuttle. Shira pulled back on the controls, hopelessly trying to lift the craft over the shower of rock and scree about to rain down from the mountaintops.

  The missile hit home and the twilight sky lit up brighter than a lightning flash, but Shira wasn’t paying attention. Her focus was on the two engine status lights that were flashing bright red on the console before her, telling her they were both dead. Debris cascaded down, bouncing off the outside of the powerless shuttle that was heading rapidly for the ground trailing fire in its wake.

  The boon of its sudden burst of speed instantly becoming a curse, the Heldrake was flying too fast to avoid the avalanche. Tucking in its vulnerable wings, it darted through the shower of stones and boulders like a rocket, debris bouncing off its form as it cried out in pain, still airborne as it emerged through the other side.

  Taking perch atop a nearby summit, the Heldrake looked on as its prey broke through the thick canopies down below before crashing to the ground in a blue streak. From thousands of metres above, the initial fire looked tiny, but moments later the crashed ship erupted in an explosion, a thick column of sapphire flame rising high into the darkening sky.

  Satisfied that nothing could have survived the blast, the Heldrake took wing, considerably slower than before thanks to the grave damage inflicted upon it.

  157961.M41 / The Emerald Cave. Atika, Pythos

  Lungs burning in her chest, lactic acid flushing through every muscle in her body, Tzula fought against her exertions of the past four days with the same determination she had battled whatever the Archenemy had thrown at her.

  Already outpacing her, Azrael ran on ahead, his sword lashing out from side to side, killing any foe with the temerity to try and get up. The Grey Knights and Dark Angels provided the pair of them with covering fire, any Plague Marine or daemon not dealt with by the Sword of Secrets ruthlessly mowed down in a hail of bolter fire.

  Reacting to the shift in the battle, the bloated horror yielded yet more facsimiles, sliding down its blubber to enter the fray and defend their progenitor. They too found Azrael’s blade and Space Marine bolters too much of a match for them.

  With just a few metres left to cover, half a dozen of the things detached themselves from the base of the host, putting themselves directly in Tzula and Azrael’s route. The Lord of the Dark Angels didn’t miss a beat
, sweeping out his sword to take out half of them before bundling into the remainder and slamming them hard to the ground.

  ‘Go! Go!’ he called out to Tzula as she sprinted past him.

  The distance to the Prisoner from the Emerald Cave eroded to nothing, and Tzula slid the athame out from her belt, gripping its crude hilt tightly. She blinked – just a standard, involuntary bodily response – and in that instant another of the horrific copies formed to bar her path. Fatty tendrils sprouted from its misshapen body, probing their way towards the inquisitor.

  Calling upon years of gymnastics training from some of the finest physical tutors at the Ordo Malleus’s disposal, Tzula pushed down hard on her back foot, launching herself over the top of the newly formed daemon. Her foot landed on what would have been its head, had the thing obeyed any basic laws of physiology, and sprang off again, stifling a scream as the toxic ooze coating its hide ate through the thick leather of her boots and stung her flesh. Somersaulting, she clasped both hands around the blade, stabbing down hard as she emerged from her flip.

  The point of the blade parted daemon hide as easily as paper, a long gouge opening up as Tzula allowed gravity to pull her downwards. Filth spilled from the wound and Tzula vomited violently when she reached the ground as maggots, flies and the gestational larvae of things best left unknown gushed from the slit.

  ‘Azrael!’ she yelled, arm around her gut to prevent any more of its contents from being expelled.

  From beneath the triumvirate of daemons attempting to subsume the Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels a gauntleted hand emerged gripping Lion’s Wrath, one of the most finely crafted combi-weapons in the Imperium and a veteran of even more battles than its current wielder. His hand steady, Azrael engaged the bolter portion of the weapon and squeezed the firing stud.

  When she looked back upon the battle in her later years, Tzula was never certain whether she actually witnessed what she saw next or whether the toxic stench from the daemon had caused her to hallucinate.