Chapter 6
The cargo hatch was wedged shut. Ashe kicked it until rivets popped and metal bent and the hatch gave way. It banged open into the night.
The first thing Ashe saw was the leaves. Not on trees. Not on the ground. In the air. They were illuminated by moonlight, floating and whirling weightlessly in the wind like silver fishes under lamplight. The ship had crashed minutes ago. If they had been lifted by the impact, they should already have fallen.
Ashe frowned.
“Ladder.”
The ladders were meant to allow people to traverse the ship's long corridors in the event of artificial gravity failure, but they would suffice as means of descent. Alvigol passed him the heavy bundle wordlessly; his eyes, too, were fixed on the weird night.
As he attached the ladder to the blackened hull, Ashe glimpsed two other Marines at points elsewhere on the slaver's surface. Vaans was at one; his ladder unfurled, clanking in the ghostly air.
Mordred's ladder was already down, and he was descending. Squad Mellorus' banner was lashed to his back. Ashe's throat tightened as the second clamp fired, biting deep into the slaver's hull. It was an honor Mordred had earned.
Ashe threw the bundle into the night; it caught the spectral moonlight as it spun away. Even as it fell he turned and started down.
“Ready.”
Alvigol nodded. Krytoleus' civilians were gathered at this point of exit. With hands that could rend steel and crush bone, Alvigol lifted a wide eyed young girl to his sergeant. Ashe received the child in his left arm with the same great restraint. He held her to his broad breastplate, checked his weapons one last time, and began rapidly to descend.
Impossibly floating leaves brushed against his armor. Ashe suppressed a chill.
---
The ground trembled. The air rumbled with mechanical thunder. A sapling quivered―and was smashed to tumbling splinters by the nose of an armored vehicle.
The column roared through the night, tracks throwing up tall plumes of dust. Four armored fighting vehicles were in the lead, a squadron of towed artillery bouncing and clanking behind them, and six halftracks sucking up all their dust in the back. Jend spat dust over the side of the halftrack, wondering for the thousandth time what was so Khorne-damned important about a crashing space ship that demanded the attention of the Prophets' Chosen.
Behind them, above them, around them, leaves swirled. The moon turned the dust plume into a silver-lined shadow that spread like ink through the bare-limbed forest.
The column finally growled to a stop below the crest of a low hill, and the captain climbed out of his vehicle. He stalked towards the crest, raising binoculars from his belt.
“Pile out,” barked Jend's sergeant. Jend hefted his rifle and dropped to the ground. His whole body ached from the vibrations of the halftrack. Jogging behind the sarge on the way to take up their defensive position, Jend allowed himself to hope that there would be a fight after all. It had been days since he'd last had the sacrament of bloodshed, and he was beginning to feel the displeasure of the Blood God upon him.
Maybe there would be a fight and some of them would get into rifle range. Perhaps even close enough for blade work. Jend could almost feel the heady sensation of hot blood on his hands. He smiled as he ran.
If nothing else, maybe he'd stab the sergeant afterwards. Never liked the bastard anyway.
For half a second there had been a pair of eyes glinting in the woods in the north, high up in the dead trees where birds had long abandoned their nests. Concentrating on fantasies of slaughter, Jend didn't see them. And nobody heard the quiet laughing that rippled from the darkness, mixing with the dust and swirling leaves.
---
Under the hurried guidance of several Space Marines, the group was forming into a loose column; the rest of Squad Mellorus scanned the hills and woodlands in silent vigilance. All the Marines were armed heavily, having taken all they could salvage from the Thunderhawk's old stores. Ashe could only pray it would be enough.
Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, he saw a little girl run from the line, chasing after a leaf that had flitted over her head. Ashe felt his stomach twist. He took two long strides and caught the child in one massive paw, so that her little hands closed on empty air, scarcely centimeters from the unclean scrap of plant matter. He repressed a snarl and set her down. The girl's lips trembled; she started to cry. Then the child's father was there, and he scolded her back into the line. No-one left the group after that.
The last of the freedmen to arrive was a woman with one arm in a bloodstained bandage. She was cradled in Tasman's arms; he had carried her down the ladder. Tasman set her down gently and she bowed. He nodded solemnly. She took her place in line.
Vaans' voice crackled over the vox. “Ready to move, sergeant.”
He almost missed the faint sound, covered as it was by the transmission. Almost.
Engines. From the west.
Tasman brought up his bolter: he had heard it too. The wind had brought it for a second, then turned again. Now there was nothing, only the murmur of frightened, exhausted people and the creaking of the cooling starship.
“Incoming,” Ashe hissed. “Get the freedmen out of the open. Now.”
“Your will, brother-sergeant,” Vaans said. Then he raised his voice and spoke: “Follow me. All haste. To the trees!”
For a moment, the freedmen stood stunned. Then they began to run. Vaans' and his two Marines moved with them, great dark angels shepherding the Emperor's people.
Six pairs of eyes fell on Ashe, waiting for his word.
He nodded.
“For the living, brothers. Follow me.”
---
The slaver had crashed on the smaller of Praven's two continents. It had wrought a miles-long trail of blackened destruction through the gently rolling woodland; smashed trees smoldered with residual heat. At the point of impact itself, the slaver lay at the base of a shallow, oblong crater. It was a crumpled, smashed remnant of its former self, barely recognizable as a starship. Already, it dominated the landscape, an angular black silhouette crouching malignly against the sky. Clouds of debris from its fiery descent spread ink over the eastern stars.
The ground sloped down to the south; distant mountains were just visible over the northern horizon. The bare-treed terrain was creased like the back of an aged, veined hand. A long, low hill cut close the horizon to the north. It was from the north that the engine sound had come.
“Anything to the south?” Ashe asked over the vox.
Vaans replied. “No.”
“Then the Emperor is with us. The ship will interpose against enemy fire.”
After far too many moments, the last of the freedmen entered the skeletal forest. Vaans issued instructions to Krytoleus and Tasman and they set off towards the south side of the kilometer-long wreck. They had been moving for six minutes when the thunder began.
---
The flash from the artillery piece threw the forest into stark relief. Then, as quickly as it came, the light vanished and darkness took back its throne.
Jend laughed.
“I guess they didn't answer the phone, ah?”
The captain had ordered his vox crew to contact the survivors: shapes that were unmistakably human had been seen leaving the wreck. For several minutes they had tried without success, but Jend was incorrect. After the fourth minute of frequency hopping, an answer came.
The accent was strange, and the voice was startlingly deep, but the information was sound. He was a sergeant, he said; there had been an attack; the captain was dead; the power core had failed; the ship had crashed.
But as the answer came, the captain had seen―just for a second, through his binoculars―a shape that he recognized. Suddenly the strangeness of the voice made sense, and the night felt cold. Before the dark shape had faded back into shadow, he had glimpsed the wide-winged aquila on the breastplate of a Space Marine.
He had fastened the binoculars to his belt with a grim finality, squared his spike-studded shoulders, and said, “Bracketing shots on target. Piece One, commence fire.” And the weapon fired; the impact location was relayed to it by the forward spotters; the angle was adjusted. The weapon fired again, reducing more trees to splinters, filling the air of the target zone with smoke and ozone and the pungent scent of broken oaks.
The trees suffered, but they would grow back. The darkness was broken in moments of fire, but each time it returned darker than before, as impervious to chaos as it has ever been to Man.
---
Overall victory could not be attained by winning this battle, Ashe knew. Something had conquered a fortified continent in the space of a week, and if the Enemy could work such a feat here, it could do it again. Ashe needed to know what had done so. How to destroy it. The fight that was to come had one purpose only: survival. Survival would allow the search to continue. Failure here, which was all too possible, would spell the end of all hope.
The enemy they faced was no disorganized rabble of hastily armed crewmen. Nor was the terrain the tight, close corridors of a starship, where reaction time and pure brutal power were key components of victory. The enemy was many, and Squad Mellorus was few and divided. Here, the enemy had armored vehicles easily the match of a Space Marine in speed, durability, and firepower. Victory would require great artistry... but war is man’s art. He has studied it for fifty thousand years. It is his greatest and most terrible accomplishment. And as war is an art, Ashe Mellorus was an artist.
In the minutes between detection of the enemy and their movement to the battlefield, he had devised a plan to render the enemy diffuse and demoralized, to destroy their cohesion and defeat them in detail. Improvisation and adaptation would be necessary, but he and his brothers were well prepared for those things. Constant training and careful study had given Ashe the skills he needed; the media were supplied by circumstance and the night.
It was time to paint.
The vox was shut down on all but one frequency, jammed by enemy electronic countermeasures. Ashe turned his radio to that band and deactivated its encryption, so that all could hear.
First, fix thou the attention of thine enemy.
“The blood of the wicked," he said, "shall flow like a river.”
Ashe’s next two strides took him over the rise, into range of the enemy. He drew a bead on his target’s torso and fired. Other bolters fired with him in perfect unison. Propellant trails traced spidery wisps of moonglow through the night. Heretics died.
The young lieutenant in command of the artillery squadron stumbled back with half his chest blasted away.
Automatic bolterfire and a brace of fragmentation grenades riddled an infantry platoon whose nightvision equipment had proved insufficient to detect brother Corvidae’s silent approach.
Precision fire from Alvigol reached across half a kilometer of tree-tangled darkness to strike the exposed ammunition stores of one of the artillery pieces. The bolt smashed through the nose of a 155mm shell and exploded, lighting off the powerful explosive within. The whole stack detonated, obliterating gun and ammunition, crew and chassis. A blinding fireball rose forty feet into the night, and the sound was deafening.
“We come to judge the living and the dead!” Ashe's harsh voice rumbled through the vox and from the helmet’s amplifier, thundering into the darkness. On cue, Corvidae and Alvigol stalked forward through the flickering shadow, firing as they moved. To the eyes of the Raven Guard, the moonlit night was as day, and as they fired men died.
---
A lesser foe would have broken and run, leaving the armored vehicles that were their center of mass unsupported and vulnerable. The battle would have ended in minutes. That would not happen here. The captain drew his pistol and sword, praying for victory to any god who would listen. He swallowed fear and stood tall.
“Hold fast,” he bellowed. “For the Dark Gods, you will stand and fight!” It didn’t matter who could hear him; his men would be looking, and they would see him. He raised his sword high, and it glinted crimson against the blazing flames. “Blood! Blood for the blood god!”
A vox officer next to him died in a spray of gore and the captain flinched back. A bolt seared through the night where his head had been, tearing at the peak of his hat. He stumbled left, still holding the blade aloft as he felt his force rally. Besh Platoon had sighted a target and opened fire; their autoguns rattled madly at something unseen in the darkness. If he was going to die, he welcomed it: here, in the welter of blood and the fires of war, was the only place for a man to meet his end. He bellowed defiance into the night.
A huge black shape rose up from behind him. He spun in time to see one of his men grab him by the collar and drag him up over the squealing track of one of the AFVs. Bolterfire slashed over the vehicle, catering armor. One shot hit the vehicle crewman who had pulled him up, and the man's head exploded. Bone fragments and scraps of shrapnel stung the Captain's face and neck, then someone pulled him into the vehicle and slammed the hatch over him.
The captain wiped gore from his face. Some of the blood was his own. He gazed amorously for a moment at the back of his glove. Khorne would be pleased with the bloodshed of the night, no matter who won.
---
Ashe crouched motionless, invisible, becoming as one with the forest. The platoon that had glimpsed him moved closer, firing as they advanced to keep him pinned. Their tactics would have been ideal against the conventional enemy for which they were trained. Against a Space Marine it was suicide. They were almost upon him. Three seconds. Two.
Ashe threw the flash grenade straight down and rose. Twigs and branches splintered against his broad shoulders. The first heretic glimpsed him, a giant rising from the shadow―and the grenade exploded. Pure white radiance seared away the darkness. Ashe fired.
Three hostiles fell flailing. Ashe sidestepped left, firing shot after shot, snapping back heads or blasting bloody craters in armored torsos. Autoguns chattered uselessly; shots flew skyward or struck splinters from trees; some spanged uselessly off of Ashe’s armor and others thumped into the bodies of comrades. Ashe fired the last shot in his magazine and was about to charge when a distinctive noise drew his attention. He backpedaled, reaching for his last magazine while bullets cut the air around him. Then an AFV soared over the crest of the hill, its sides glinting gray in the moonlight.
Ashe threw himself backwards towards covering shadow. Heavy autocannon fire tracked towards him, shattering trees and throwing up great gouts of dirt. Ashe ejected his spent magazine before he hit the ground, letting it fall away; he’d retrieve it later if they survived. A cannon shell split the air inches from his face. He hit the ground and rolled backwards, coming to a knee and slamming the magazine into the weapon.
Almost time.
Corvidae’s voice crackled over the encrypted vox; there was the sound of heavy gunfire behind his transmission.
“Pinned down by a heavy bolter platoon. Out of grenades. Minor wounds, but armor is field-reparable. The Emperor protects.”
Ashe tracked the running shapes of infantry and cut them down with a quick burst of fire that burned through a fifth of his magazine.
“May he guide your steps,” he said.
Almost time.
He stood tall, snapping shots towards the now-abandoned artillery position. One of his bolts found its target and another explosion shook the night.
Corax, guide my hand in battle, and grant confusion to thy foes. That they blunder, grant us aid. That they falter, grant us aid. That they die―
The remaining AFVs crested the low ridge, weapons searching for targets. One of thee vehicles was moving slowly with smoke pouring from its exhaust grille―Alvigol’s shots must have penetrated something valuable.
It was time.
When thine enemy is fixèd, bring forth the destroying force. Raise the hammer and crush the craven against the anvil of thy virtuous might.
“Now.”
The plume of fire from the burning artillery stood tall above the tree-studded hill, lighting the north side of the low ridge in orange and red. Infantry, deployed by platoon on the south side, fought desperate battles against the two Astartes who had revealed themselves, or scanned the woods for the source of the devastating pinpoint fire that Ashe knew to be Alvigol's handiwork. Even alone they might have triumphed with luck and discipline; the armored vehicles and reserve platoons just beginning to crest the hill would guarantee a swift victory. Would guarantee it, that is, were it not for the four Angels of Death approaching in secret from the north and the east.
---
New shapes perched in the desecrated alcove where once a saint’s statue had kept vigil. From the lofty rim of the arched ceiling they watched the goings-on below, as dark and silent in their cloaks as the birds whose name they bore.
There, above the cavernous and ill-lit hangar, the scouts had found the hiding place they sought, and used the precious moments granted them by Havacham’s sacrifice to evade the pursuing Chaos forces and scale the rough stone wall under cover of early-morning darkness. They had hidden in the saint’s alcove until the search moved on. Now the weary warriors waited for what fate would bring.
All three were wounded, more or less: one does not tangle with Chaos Space Marines and escape unscathed. But Vios’ injury was most severe. The bolt that had cratered his breastplate had fractured his ribcage and torn flesh, and even the iron constitution of a Space Marine scout could not keep him going for long. He was resting, now, sleeping intermittently. Ytrus and Justinian took turns praying and keeping watch. Their wounds did not impair their ability to fight and thus did not merit consideration.
Fatigue was another matter. The place was getting to them. It was better outside the mine, and much better in a place where once a saint had stood, but Chaos was seeping into them, leaving them empty rather than full. The vile symbols of Chaos daubed on every surface made their empty stomachs clench and stung their eyes to tears. They were all ready to drop.
Justinian blinked his eyes open with a jerk, horrified that he had dozed away while praying. It was a moment before he realized what he had heard.
“Preyp vor littov ye cargo zuttal,” the petty officer had said in the bastardized Low Gothic used by the work crews. “Prep the cargo shuttle for liftoff.”
Ytrus glanced at him from where he was on lookout, and he nodded. They couldn’t stay hidden forever, and the mine was crawling with enemy patrols. They had to get off the moon. That shuttle was the way out.
Justinian made the sign of the aquila and moved to wake Vios.
---
They waited for the period of total darkness between nightfall and the illumination of the lights to make their move. By then, the shuttle was fueled and ready to fly, and the last of the cargo was being loaded by flickering lamplight. The workers were robed against the chill. Their robes were dark blue, not black, but it was close enough.
The last sliver of rubberized wire coating fell away. Justrinian had a strand of fabric from the hem of his robe in his hand that he had rolled in fuel from a tiny spill. He held it gingerly near the wires, spread his cloak over the work, and crossed them. Sparks flew, making inevitable noise, until one caught his wick and burned. He stood, checking over his shoulder. No-one had seen. Hood up, slouching, he crossed the dark hangar at a steady walk.
One man was standing near the fuel hose when he approached. Justinian's knife flashed, opening the man’s throat from ear to ear. He reversed the blade and slashed back down, tearing a gash in the heavy rubber. Prometheum drooled from the cut. Justinian jammed the smoldering wick into the liquid fuel and ran.
Behind him rose fire and chaos, but he didn’t look back. With a wet ripping sound, the hose ruptured, spilling the burning prometheum across the floor, where it immolated the corpse and those hapless workers who had been too close. The fire would be out soon, but not soon enough.
While others gawked or ran to help, three robed shapes appeared from shadow and slipped aboard the cargo shuttle. One worker saw them enter, but lost interest as a sloshing bucket of suppressant foam was thrust into his hands. The efficient work crews had the fire out in two minutes. There had only been two fatalities and a half dozen injuries. All trace of the fire’s cause had been lost in the blaze, but that night two workers found in possession of cigarettes and matches would be scourged and condemned to the mines.
Within the cargo bay, three scouts huddled in silence, praying that their diversion would be enough. When the hatch closed and the sensation of acceleration reached them, they gave a collective sigh of relief. Minutes later, they were asleep.
Emperor only knew when their next chance to rest would be.
---
High and hot above the body-strewn hill, the pillaring inferno raged and swirled, venting sulfurous smoke and casting spasming shadows across the blighted battlefield. Streamers of shrapnel spat from it, and long, twisted scraps of steel. Two shapes, man-like but huge, dark, and alive strode from it, shedding flame from night-black armor. Death flew with them.
The heretic reserves had advanced in support of the armored fighting vehicles, a long, disciplined line of heavy infantry to pin and destroy the Space Marines attacking from the south. In an unexpected hail of precious, irreplaceable bolt-shells, dozens of them were slain.
The infantry scattered and dove. Trailing smoke, one of the AFVs slammed into reverse, turning back north to face the new threat. Brothers Virtus and Bellor strode forward, bolters roaring with the Emperor's rage.
A thousand meters to the east, a narrow defile creased the side of the low hill. It was overgrown with bracken, far from the flames, pitch-black. A pair of midnight shapes sprinted up it, splintering undergrowth: Mordred and Icirus.
The heavy bolter platoon that had been rattling lethal rounds over Corvidae's cover had a moment to realize what was happening before the grenades landed with perfect precision on their position, slaying many with a double explosion. The bloodied survivors hastened to re-angle the guns, and long tongues of fire tore fom the muzzles of heavy bolters towards the new threat. Mordred caught a bolt in the leg that spun him around and off his feet. Bolts slashed through the darkness around Icirus, who crouched, grabbing Mordred's arm and dragging him behind cover.
Corvidae fixed his combat knife to the bayonet lug of his gun, and charged. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for. If they could crush the heavy bolter platoon anchoring the heretics' eastern flank, they could roll back the entire infantry in one swift assault. But seconds counted. Long, swift strides took him up the hill. To the northwest, someone saw him and opened fire. He tucked his head as bullets and shells shredded the air. Small arms fire flattened itself against his armor. Almost there. The prayer of protection coursed through his mind. A heavy bolter shell rebounded off the edge of his backpack and exploded, showering him with shrapnel; a centimeter closer, and it would have ripped his spine in half.
Ten meters. He opened fire, destroying lives with machine precision. The gunners of the bolter jerked back, spasming in death. One fell against the still-firing weapon, spinning it around seventy degrees and reducing six of his comrades to shreds of flesh and splinters of bone.
“Ave Imperator!” Corvidae leaped into the enemy, snapping the weapon forward and impaling a foe. Bullets smashed into his side, two of them digging through the armor mesh that girded his belly below the breastplate. He staggered, swung an elbow, smashed a skull. Someone hit him from behind just before he recovered his balance, and he went sprawling. He rolled, tearing his bolter free of his first kill and chattering off the last five shells in his clip to buy himself a second more life. He appealed to the Emperor, begging for more time to do His work. Corvidae's prayer was answered in a gout of white-hot prometheum.
Mordred limped into the low cover, flicking off the pilot light of his flamer to conserve fuel. Icirus moved swiftly, finishing off the screaming, burning bodies of the enemy with silent knife-thrusts.
“Go ahead,” Corvidae said, incising a thin slice along the side of his armor-mesh with his combat blade. “I'll catch up.”
Mordred nodded gravely. “Ancestors be with you,” he said.
“And with you.”
Corvidae gritted his teeth and cut the first bullet fragment out of his side as the other Angels melted silently into the darkness.
---
Alvigol had ceased fire half a minute before, when the last valuable target had perished or gone to cover. Moving from shadow to shadow, he had approached as far as he dared. Then Virtus' and Bellor's fire shredded the enemy infantry, and he had a moment to act.
He sprinted ahead, clipping his bolter over his back as he ran. A crewman glimpsed him, and the vehicle's turret tracked towards him. It was too late. He hit the swinging turret at a right angle, letting his momentum spin him up like a gymnast on the parallel bars. He landed in a hard crouch atop the turret and slammed a hand down, fingers rigid, with all his weight and strength behind it. The armor dented below the hatch. He gripped, planted his feet, and ripped the hatch off its lock.
Someone stood up out of the hatch, raising a bolt pistol. Alvigol made a fist and hit him atop the head, mashing him back down with a crunch. He dropped a frag grenade in after the corpse and rolled off the vehicle just as fire from another AFV blazed through the air in an effort to hose him off.
The grenade exploded with a dull crump deadened by the AFV's interior. It slewed left, smashed a mid-sized tree to kindling, and crawled halfway up an old oak before gravity won and flipped it over on its back.
Alvigol was already gone, vanishing into the night.
---
The enemy had proven its resilience yet again. Though now reduced to three, the Armored Fighting Vehicles had split into two groups: a pair swept south unsupported down the ridge, turrets and sponson guns blazing killing fire towards the suspected locations of their Space Marine foes. The captain's vehicle, though wounded and slowed by enemy fire, led a counter charge against Virtus and Bellor supported by the rallied remnants of the infantry.
The pair of Space Marines were pinned. Virtus went down, his arm blasted off at the elbow by a lucky autocannon shot. Bellor snapped hastily-aimed shots from cover, knocking back the charging infantry one at a time. The AFV ground closer.
The Angels had stopped their cursed chanting for now, the captain noticed. A thought flashed in his head: the loyalist devils weren't the only ones with speakers. AFVs were often deployed for crowd control, and this one mounted a powerful magnavox above the main gun.
He shoved the vehicle's lieutenant out of the way, crouching before the microphone grille.
“Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for his Throne! Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for his Throne!”
The battered infantry took up the chant, summoning the god of battles to their aid.
Out-gunned and pinned down, their momentum gone, their bodies wounded, and with time almost out, Virtus and Bellor did the only thing they could do.
They charged.
Trooper Jend had opened his mouth wide, bellowing the Incantation of Bloodshed. A bolt shell splintered his front teeth and was halfway down his throat when it exploded, reducing his head and neck to a drizzle of blood―one last, involuntary act of devotion to a mad god.
A shell struck Bellor in the center of his chest. He tumbled backwards and landed face down. Virtus broke left, blazing through his last clip on full auto, fighting to keep the barrel down with only one hand on the weapon. Infantry was all around him now; the captain's AFV ceased fire rather than risk hitting his own men. It bore down on the prone form of brother Bellor, seeking to crush him under the tracks. Outside and in, the chant was still roaring: “Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for his Throne!”
---
Corvidae, Ashe, Mordred, and Icirus hit the first AFV like a night-black whirlwind. Striking from the shadows in a move coordinated by combat vox, they emerged into the firelight just as the vehicles passed. Mordred sent a flame washing over the viewslit of the starboard sponson with a quick gout from his flamer; Ashe and Corvidae drew its attention to the north, spanging a handful of bolt-shells off its armored hull. Icirus planted the krak grenade the blew through into its fuel tank. The vehicle ground to a halt, already blazing. The Marines moved on to their next target.
The AFV's commander was skilled. He wove past a tree, smashing through a bramble of twisted, leafless new growth. Fire from the turret forced Ashe and Corvidae to cover, and Mordred and Icirus were too far away to reach it. More fire tracked Mordred, whose leg wound slowed him. The AFV was too fast, faster than the Marines.
It was also headed right for the defile Icirus and Mordred had attacked from. It landed nose down, tracks screaming and churning dirt. The Marines fell upon it, tore open the hatch, dragged out the crew and slew them one by one. The lieutenant was the last to die.
---
Virtus' bolter clicked down empty. He dropped it, asking forgiveness of its machine spirit, and freed his knife. Bullets spattered over him, chipping ceramite and concussing his head where they struck his helmet. He lunged forward, stabbing past a thrusting bayonet and through an attacker's sternum. Someone jumped onto his back, clawing at his face. Virtus twisted left to move him into line, then drove his elbow back in the same motion that freed his knife. The heretic flew back, his ribs cracked. Blood and bodies filled Virtus' vision as he hacked and slashed and kicked and bludgeoned against over thirty blood-crazed heretics. He felt a sharp pain in his left knee as a bayonet sunk in, and he dropped to one knee. The sheer weight of attackers was overwhelming. A falling body took his knife with it, leaving him unarmed.
Somewhere, a bolter roared on automatic. One misplaced round detonated against his pauldron, blackening the green paint of the rim. Blood had covered his eyeslits, and only infrared was making it through. Virtus struggled for air, reaching upwards through the slick of corpses.
A massive hand gripped his. Brother Alvigol pulled his wounded brother up and onto his back, firing one-handed into the last survivors of the heretic infantry. The chanting had stopped.
---
Bellor craned his neck and saw the shape of the AFV rushing towards him. His HUD showed a long trail of warning signs and error codes, and he could feel his lungs filling with blood. He thought momentarily that his gene-seed would return to the chapter―but then he made sense of the situation and put such thoughts behind him.
The AFV was five meters away, now. It was a foolish move, inspired by blood lust rather than reason. The armor of an Angel of Death was more than a match for the weight of an armored vehicle. But he was already dying. Blood filled his mouth and his lungs refused to draw air. He plucked his last grenade from its place on his belt and primed it.
Shadow sheltered him one last time as the vehicle rumbled over his ruined torso. He planted the grenade against the exposed track of the vehicle, commended his soul to the Emperor, and smiled wistfully. His world ended in a blast of pure white light.
The Shadow War [40k]{ch8 begun}
Moderator: LadyTevar
I meant to have them take most of the contents of the original thunderhawk armory from the captured transport on the shuttle when they made their attack; I'll have to edit that in. As it is, they started this fight fully kitted-out (I'll have to edit that in too), but they're going to end it with very little ammunition and grenades left, in addition to other losses.
EDIT: edited chapter 3 to fix that.
EDIT and a HALF: and went over ch6 with the edit stick
EDIT: edited chapter 3 to fix that.
EDIT and a HALF: and went over ch6 with the edit stick
Last edited by Feil on 2007-05-08 12:28am, edited 1 time in total.
Very nice work, Feil. You have an excellent grasp of imagery and prose -- this reads exactly like a 40k fanfic should, and I daresay you've captured the quintessential Astartes personality, in all its militarized glory, perfectly. Throw in that characteristic dark/morbid humor of yours, and this works wonderfully.
And I've said it before, but I'll say it again: it's nice to read about non-psychopathic loyalist Astartes who have some shred of compassion for 'baseline' humans.
And I've said it before, but I'll say it again: it's nice to read about non-psychopathic loyalist Astartes who have some shred of compassion for 'baseline' humans.
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Vehrec
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*bows his head* There is no dishonor in your death, Brother Bellor. An auto-canon round will kill men and xenos with equal power. That you managed to rob your killers of their minor victory with a valient last stand (Death Or Glory!) is all the more amazing. May the Emperor honor you as your spirit joins him in death, honored amoungst all his angels of death.
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NecronLord
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- Joined: 2002-07-07 06:30am
- Location: The Lost City
I'm honoured. In any case, the reason I've not read this earlier, is because I was actually waiting until I started re-painting my Raven Guard army. They are indeed (along with the Salamanders) the sanest and most empathetic of psace marines.Feil wrote:Well, I appreciate the praise, but I have to say--you ain't seen much if this is the best you've seen. Check out this guy's stuff for starters. http://www.incunabulum.co.uk/ There's also plenty of good stuff on this site to check out. Kuja, Imperial Overlord, NecronLord, and Stravo are names to look for.
I look forward to more, and will have to get on with reviving my current 41K fic from the abyss where I left it.
Superior Moderator - BotB - HAB [Drill Instructor]-Writer- Stardestroyer.net's resident Star-God.
"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
-
Sholto
- Redshirt
- Posts: 1
- Joined: 2007-06-19 06:17pm
- Location: http://www.incunabulum.co.uk
Hi, Feil 
I was googling for your Shadow War story to catch up, and found this place! I will take a look at some of the writers you mention above.
)
Sholto
I was googling for your Shadow War story to catch up, and found this place! I will take a look at some of the writers you mention above.Then you might be interested in my Raven Guard story The Killing - http://www.incunabulum.co.uk/The_Killing.htm (a bit of self-pimpage never hurt, but I will leave your thread alone now, FeilNecronLord wrote:I was actually waiting until I started re-painting my Raven Guard army. They are indeed (along with the Salamanders) the sanest and most empathetic of psace marines.
)Sholto
40k - because hokey weapons and ancient religions are more than a match for a good blaster!
A repository of 40k stories - http://www.incunabulum.co.uk
A repository of 40k stories - http://www.incunabulum.co.uk
Chapter 7
There was a ringing in Justinian's ears. His skin crawled. The moment's hot hate dripped from his lacerated hand, leaving him icy and empty within. He braced the rifle over his bleeding fist, took aim, fired. Arachnoid shadows skittered from the muzzle flash.
One attacker staggered, screaming. The torch slipped from his grip and struck him on the way down; his screams grew more frantic as his cloak began to burn.
Justinian aimed, fired, missed, fired again. His shot took the last attacker in the mouth, and fragments of her teeth were momentarily visible in the spray of blood from the back of her head. He lowered the gun slowly and looked down. Time resumed its normal pace, and the pain of his wound throbbed with every beat of his young heart―but when he saw the face of the corpse at his feet, he froze.
This wasn't right.
This wasn't how it happened.
Why did...
How could...
Not...
Justinian gasped and woke, opening his eyes. He flexed his right hand: it was sound, and the self-inflicted scars from the razor-edged fragment of glass he had used as a dagger were not visible in the nearly lightless cargo hold. But Havacham's death-pale face stayed bright in his mind's eye.
I didn't kill him, he thought. Then, I dreamed.
He shouldn't have dreamed. Dreams were a weakness in the fortress walls of a disciplined mind, an avenue through which thoughts might enter the mind of an unconscious, defenseless sleeper without examination, without barrier. Thoughts beget heresy. Heresy begets damnation. And in a place like this, where chaos held sway.... Justinian shivered, and pulled his cloak tighter. The hold was silent but for the muted throb of the rockets and the sound of his brothers' breathing. The empty heart of the shuttle was dark and ice cold.
Ytrus and Vios were sleeping fitfully, curled against a crate. Vios moaned softly. Looking around for the source of light, Justinian glimpsed a flickering candleflame over the arched door to the crew compartment. Something about the candle disturbed him; he held a thumb against the light until it just covered the flame, and squinted. Visible under the burning wick was a small skull. A child's skull, filled with red wax that trickled down in thin rills over cranium and jaw. The wick protruded through a gap that must have been the anterior fontanel. The baby could not have been more than a few months old.
Justinian hissed a curse. Ytrus jerked instantly awake, opening his eye and reaching for his pistol even as the fog of sleep faded. Vios, feeling his brother's motion, raised his head weakly. It had been three hours since they had entered the shuttle. That would have to suffice. Justinian had woken them accidentally, but it was well. He had no desire to sleep in this place, under that tainted light.
---
Silence fell suddenly: the hissing of the vox-jammer vanished even as the last echoes of gunfire faded into the woods, leaving only the soft, low howl of wind in the trees, the distant metallic groaning of the fallen starship. Vaans paused in his prayer, dialing up the volume of his vox.
“Victoris,” radioed Ashe.
“Ancestors be praised.” Vaans paused, breathing deep. “The fallen?”
“I remember Brother Bellor,” Ashe said quietly. “As the Emperor's finest.”
Sixty years of service, brotherhood, and love, snuffed out in an instant. Bellor's noble face, his crooked, oft-broken nose, the mottled patch of burn scar that twisted the left side of his face into a perpetual half-smile, hung for a moment in Vaans' vision. It was the fate of all Astartes to die in battle, a fate they accepted and welcomed... but Vaans knew the sorrow in his brother-sergeant's voice.
It was in his heart also.
“I, too, remember,” he said. “Orders, brother-sergeant?”
“Move them out. Waypoint Prime. We shall meet you there.”
“Emperor be with you, my friend.”
“And also with you.”
---
With Vaans' permission, Krytoleus eased his helmet from his head, brushing sweat from his brow with the back of a gauntleted hand. He clipped it to the hook on his backpack, savoring the wide spaciousness of an open sky above him, and real wind on his face; it tickled the stubble standing out on his chin and neck, seductive and tantalizing where it blew cool over sweat-damp skin. He breathed.
Every forest has its smell; every planet has its odor. This one smelled strange. Bitter oak and sweet-scented fireelm he recognized, and from somewhere the medicinal smell of oil of wintergreen, which might come from any number of plants. But there was something else, behind the obvious. Something wrong. His eyes caught on the swirling glimmer of moonlit leaves above and around the moving column of frightened men and women and girls and he frowned deeply, tightening his grip on his bolter and sweeping the darkness for movement. There was nothing out there but darkness and trees and leaves swept up by the whispering wind. No sounds reached his ears but that of the freedmen's too-loud movement, the stealthy tramp of his brothers' feet, and the incongruously light and childish babble of a thin woodland brook just ahead.
Krytoleus' eyes narrowed. The brook.... He drew breath, flaring his nostrils and scenting the midnight air. The brook.... He swept the thin column of people they guarded. A scattered assortment of weapons, mostly laspistols and combat shotguns liberated from the slaver's crew, were held by people whose ability to use them clearly varied. At the van and rear of the five hundred were clusters of a dozen men and women holding carbines and shotguns like they knew how to use them: grim professionalism showed through their fear. Vaans' gray-haired woman sergeant was walking the length of the column, giving a word here and there, calming them. Krytoleus' eyes fixed at last on one of the small ones, her bright braid of golden hair illuminated by the moonlight. The brook....
His heart lurched. The vanguard of the column was nearly to the brook. “Periculum,” he hissed over the vox, breaking into a sprint, flying ahead towards the danger he did not yet know. Tasman and Vaans became instantly alert, turning to cover all angles of attack. The smell of oak grew sharper, mingled with that other, musky odor he could not name. Freedmen paused to gape as Krytoleus passed. He shouted a warning over their sudden murmur, and the people straggled to a stop. The brook was thirty meters away. Dust flew from every footfall. A chill swept from his toes to the top of his bare scalp as he saw one woman, armed with a carbine, slip on the bank, step back to regain her balance... and plunge one foot into the stream.
No.
Oh, Emperor, no.
---
Startled.
Woken from dreams.
The wet peacefulness broken.
A foreign object intruded upon the delicate patterns of floating, current-stirred leaves on her surface.
Penetrated her.
Violated her.
Hate! Her essence flowed to the scene of the intrusion, drew fiber and flesh from the stones and wet, cool clay. She rose, screaming her rage from behind lank elf-locks of wet hair twined with twigs and rushes. Water flowed from her and to her as she formed, sprayed up in a geyser above her head. Dimly, she perceived shapes. Man-shapes. The shapes of the torment, of the evil things that had done―whatever they had done, such bad things, such terrible things. She howled, slashing forward at the man-thing that had penetrated her stream, slicing it with limbs that were oak and horn, flesh and hard amber crystal; it crumpled away in two halves, screaming in a voice that should have been familiar.
Revenge! She could feel the glimmer of their souls through the darkness; she shook the hair from her eyes, bared her fangs. Another strike split open a belly; she whirled, stabbing wooden talons through the ribcage of another. There was weapons fire, pain. Oh, pain. Pain she knew well. Knew too well. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair. How could they do this to her? What had she ever done to them? She advanced, great wings spreading and forming, flowing to her from the shadows as she strode forward in a welter of blood. Leaves swirled bright and silver around her head. Resistance wavered. She impaled a small manthing, piercing up from its abdomen and out through its collarbone; bright golden hair wisped in the air before her as she shook it off her claws.
Then something struck her center with devastating force. It wasn't fair. There were too many. There were always too many. And they were bigger than she was. They had armor and weapons. It wasn't fair. A triple burst of boltfire hammered her torso, blasting bloody chips of woodflesh from her slender frame. Someone with a deep voice bellowed a slogan she remembered dimly from before. Was her family here to save her?
But no: something sharp and unseen darted from the right, backed with the shout of “Invictus!” Searing pain flashed sun-bright in her eyes, and she felt sure one of her wings had been cut away. She had liked the wings. She spun to punish her assailant and found her blow smashed back just below the cutting edge. Another attacker drove a blade into her from behind, and it punched through her vine-knotted shoulderblades, through her chest, out her sternum.
“In extremis, Domine, garda nos!” The one in front pivoted, hauling her up off her feet and hacking at her arm with his blade. It hurt so much. The limb came off with a wet crack of protesting fiber. She screamed, landing hard on her back. Something unbearably bright and hot exploded in her face, again and again and again, until she couldn't cry any more.
The darkness gathered.
The shadows in her mind stirred.
She was so scared.
It wasn't fair.
“Strip the dead for weapons and food. Lay them straight, facing the sunrise. Then we leave.”
“Y-yes, my lord Astartes.”
“Krytoleus, see to their fears. They trust you, brother, more than me.”
“Brother....”
“Do it.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Tasman, bring wood. This... thing must burn.”
“In nomine Imperator, et Corax, et Spiritus Humani.”
“Amen.”
---
Justinian forced himself to reach out to the skull and push the wick down into the molten wax. His finger turned deathly cold where he touched it, though he could feel the fire's warmth through his glove. He jerked his hand back as the flame smothered itself in the wax, plunging the room into darkness.
A tiny triple click signified the activation of the three Scouts' night vision. If an enemy entered the room expecting light, it would be one more moment's advantage. And darkness felt less unclean.
Justinian moved on his own down the aisle, flicking his gaze over each sealed crate. All he saw were stamped with old Imperial codes for foodstuffs, medical supplies, and uniforms: supplies for the crew of the vessel for which they were bound. He fought off a shiver. Stifled a yawn. Resisted the heaviness in his chest, the pain behind his eyes.
“Blessed Corax,” Vios cursed. Justinian span towards the sound, reaching for his pistol, his heart racing.
“Look.”
Justinian threaded his way through the boxes. The older Scout had pried open the lid of a box conspicuous for its lack of any label. In his hand he held ammunition. It was .75 caliber, two and a half times as long as it was wide, packed into gleaming brass casings that his the flared rocket nozzle, and its radially fluted sides were etched with a bat-winged skull.
Bolter shells. Mars Pattern.
Traitor Marines.
Vios was frowning, but Justinian caught Ytrus' eye. Slowly, darkly, both smiled. Perhaps death was certain. They were three against many, and Chaos was seeping slowly through the barricades of faith... but there was hope in the nightmare. Hope of success―for with any luck the traitors would lead them to Squad Mellorus. Hope of vindication. A deeply-cherished dream of revenge.
Many minutes later, the shuttle clanged into contact with the starship of the Night Lords Chaos Space Marines.
Justinian felt the cleanest he had felt in a long, long time.
---
When he woke, there was laughter behind the darkness. Behind the curtain. Beyond his stolen sight.
He was troubled. Uncertain. Afraid.
He was alone. Alone, but for...
A memory: You are never alone, for―
“I am here,” said a voice, masculine and deep.
Who? he thought, and tried to ask. Pain shot from his lips. Something was holding them shut. All that emerged was a moan.
“I am here, but not to save you. No. Nobody will save you. You are all alone. I am the only other, and I will not save you.”
You, you, you. Who was he? And why he? He didn't know, but it felt right. He it would be. He was happy: he knew something, at least.
Sudden pain pierced his wrists, and he became aware of his arms. They were outstretched, spreadeagled, with the palms up. Agony flowed through them with every pulse of blood, screaming from the nerve cluster where radius met ulna as cruel iron spikes transfixed his wrists. He jerked, triggering pain from mouth and head and neck, from the webs between fingers and toes, where crude sutures bound his hands and feet to whatever lay beneath.
“Shh. Be still. Let them crucify to you. You cannot save yourself. I will not save you. Nobody can save you, my son. Nobody will save you, little boy. Nobody is coming. Nobody cares.”
The voice above him reverberated hugely, though it was quiet. Like the subtle thrum of a double bass below an orchestral hymn. Like the murmur of half-remembered artillery behind the sound of sharp gunfire. He felt very small. Very small to hold so much fear, such pain.
A memory: Gunfire. Screams and battle cries, some ringing with invocations of the God-Emperor of Man, others with strange, terrible slogans the mere memory of which twisted his stomach. The Emperor... he could almost remember. He had to remember. The Emperor...
“I am here, aye. But I will not save you. I do not care.”
The darkness laughed with a thousand awful voices. If only he could remember. If only he could remember. The voice beyond the curtain joined them. All raised in volume, cacophonous, grating, haunting, tantalizing. There was a clink and scrape of something metallic, and the air filled suddenly with heat and a woody, musky odor he could not place. Terror coursed through him, gripping his heart, hot in his throat. He could not see. Oh, God, he was blind. He jerked against the spikes holding him down, and new agony burned over the throb of his wrists. Something approached from above, prickling up sweat between his eyes. The needle touched down―tap!―leaving ink behind. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap: a line down his forehead, then another, at an angle to the first, and another. He screamed. Pain burned from his sutured lips. Clammy hands touched him, and awful half-seen visions danced in his mind. His forehead crawled. The shape of it felt familiar. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, a fourth line, crawling across from brow to scalp. He screamed, and the thread ripped through his lips. There was blood in his mouth. He saw it―actually saw it, with his sightless eyes, clear against the curtain. A star, unviewable, impossible to countenance, fire-red against the blackness. He squeezed shut his eyes, but the image remained. He screamed until he choked on his own blood, but the image remained.
A star.
An eight-pointed star.
“Sleep, my son,” laughed the voices behind the curtain. “Sleep. Dream.”
There was a ringing in Justinian's ears. His skin crawled. The moment's hot hate dripped from his lacerated hand, leaving him icy and empty within. He braced the rifle over his bleeding fist, took aim, fired. Arachnoid shadows skittered from the muzzle flash.
One attacker staggered, screaming. The torch slipped from his grip and struck him on the way down; his screams grew more frantic as his cloak began to burn.
Justinian aimed, fired, missed, fired again. His shot took the last attacker in the mouth, and fragments of her teeth were momentarily visible in the spray of blood from the back of her head. He lowered the gun slowly and looked down. Time resumed its normal pace, and the pain of his wound throbbed with every beat of his young heart―but when he saw the face of the corpse at his feet, he froze.
This wasn't right.
This wasn't how it happened.
Why did...
How could...
Not...
Justinian gasped and woke, opening his eyes. He flexed his right hand: it was sound, and the self-inflicted scars from the razor-edged fragment of glass he had used as a dagger were not visible in the nearly lightless cargo hold. But Havacham's death-pale face stayed bright in his mind's eye.
I didn't kill him, he thought. Then, I dreamed.
He shouldn't have dreamed. Dreams were a weakness in the fortress walls of a disciplined mind, an avenue through which thoughts might enter the mind of an unconscious, defenseless sleeper without examination, without barrier. Thoughts beget heresy. Heresy begets damnation. And in a place like this, where chaos held sway.... Justinian shivered, and pulled his cloak tighter. The hold was silent but for the muted throb of the rockets and the sound of his brothers' breathing. The empty heart of the shuttle was dark and ice cold.
Ytrus and Vios were sleeping fitfully, curled against a crate. Vios moaned softly. Looking around for the source of light, Justinian glimpsed a flickering candleflame over the arched door to the crew compartment. Something about the candle disturbed him; he held a thumb against the light until it just covered the flame, and squinted. Visible under the burning wick was a small skull. A child's skull, filled with red wax that trickled down in thin rills over cranium and jaw. The wick protruded through a gap that must have been the anterior fontanel. The baby could not have been more than a few months old.
Justinian hissed a curse. Ytrus jerked instantly awake, opening his eye and reaching for his pistol even as the fog of sleep faded. Vios, feeling his brother's motion, raised his head weakly. It had been three hours since they had entered the shuttle. That would have to suffice. Justinian had woken them accidentally, but it was well. He had no desire to sleep in this place, under that tainted light.
---
Silence fell suddenly: the hissing of the vox-jammer vanished even as the last echoes of gunfire faded into the woods, leaving only the soft, low howl of wind in the trees, the distant metallic groaning of the fallen starship. Vaans paused in his prayer, dialing up the volume of his vox.
“Victoris,” radioed Ashe.
“Ancestors be praised.” Vaans paused, breathing deep. “The fallen?”
“I remember Brother Bellor,” Ashe said quietly. “As the Emperor's finest.”
Sixty years of service, brotherhood, and love, snuffed out in an instant. Bellor's noble face, his crooked, oft-broken nose, the mottled patch of burn scar that twisted the left side of his face into a perpetual half-smile, hung for a moment in Vaans' vision. It was the fate of all Astartes to die in battle, a fate they accepted and welcomed... but Vaans knew the sorrow in his brother-sergeant's voice.
It was in his heart also.
“I, too, remember,” he said. “Orders, brother-sergeant?”
“Move them out. Waypoint Prime. We shall meet you there.”
“Emperor be with you, my friend.”
“And also with you.”
---
With Vaans' permission, Krytoleus eased his helmet from his head, brushing sweat from his brow with the back of a gauntleted hand. He clipped it to the hook on his backpack, savoring the wide spaciousness of an open sky above him, and real wind on his face; it tickled the stubble standing out on his chin and neck, seductive and tantalizing where it blew cool over sweat-damp skin. He breathed.
Every forest has its smell; every planet has its odor. This one smelled strange. Bitter oak and sweet-scented fireelm he recognized, and from somewhere the medicinal smell of oil of wintergreen, which might come from any number of plants. But there was something else, behind the obvious. Something wrong. His eyes caught on the swirling glimmer of moonlit leaves above and around the moving column of frightened men and women and girls and he frowned deeply, tightening his grip on his bolter and sweeping the darkness for movement. There was nothing out there but darkness and trees and leaves swept up by the whispering wind. No sounds reached his ears but that of the freedmen's too-loud movement, the stealthy tramp of his brothers' feet, and the incongruously light and childish babble of a thin woodland brook just ahead.
Krytoleus' eyes narrowed. The brook.... He drew breath, flaring his nostrils and scenting the midnight air. The brook.... He swept the thin column of people they guarded. A scattered assortment of weapons, mostly laspistols and combat shotguns liberated from the slaver's crew, were held by people whose ability to use them clearly varied. At the van and rear of the five hundred were clusters of a dozen men and women holding carbines and shotguns like they knew how to use them: grim professionalism showed through their fear. Vaans' gray-haired woman sergeant was walking the length of the column, giving a word here and there, calming them. Krytoleus' eyes fixed at last on one of the small ones, her bright braid of golden hair illuminated by the moonlight. The brook....
His heart lurched. The vanguard of the column was nearly to the brook. “Periculum,” he hissed over the vox, breaking into a sprint, flying ahead towards the danger he did not yet know. Tasman and Vaans became instantly alert, turning to cover all angles of attack. The smell of oak grew sharper, mingled with that other, musky odor he could not name. Freedmen paused to gape as Krytoleus passed. He shouted a warning over their sudden murmur, and the people straggled to a stop. The brook was thirty meters away. Dust flew from every footfall. A chill swept from his toes to the top of his bare scalp as he saw one woman, armed with a carbine, slip on the bank, step back to regain her balance... and plunge one foot into the stream.
No.
Oh, Emperor, no.
---
Startled.
Woken from dreams.
The wet peacefulness broken.
A foreign object intruded upon the delicate patterns of floating, current-stirred leaves on her surface.
Penetrated her.
Violated her.
Hate! Her essence flowed to the scene of the intrusion, drew fiber and flesh from the stones and wet, cool clay. She rose, screaming her rage from behind lank elf-locks of wet hair twined with twigs and rushes. Water flowed from her and to her as she formed, sprayed up in a geyser above her head. Dimly, she perceived shapes. Man-shapes. The shapes of the torment, of the evil things that had done―whatever they had done, such bad things, such terrible things. She howled, slashing forward at the man-thing that had penetrated her stream, slicing it with limbs that were oak and horn, flesh and hard amber crystal; it crumpled away in two halves, screaming in a voice that should have been familiar.
Revenge! She could feel the glimmer of their souls through the darkness; she shook the hair from her eyes, bared her fangs. Another strike split open a belly; she whirled, stabbing wooden talons through the ribcage of another. There was weapons fire, pain. Oh, pain. Pain she knew well. Knew too well. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair. How could they do this to her? What had she ever done to them? She advanced, great wings spreading and forming, flowing to her from the shadows as she strode forward in a welter of blood. Leaves swirled bright and silver around her head. Resistance wavered. She impaled a small manthing, piercing up from its abdomen and out through its collarbone; bright golden hair wisped in the air before her as she shook it off her claws.
Then something struck her center with devastating force. It wasn't fair. There were too many. There were always too many. And they were bigger than she was. They had armor and weapons. It wasn't fair. A triple burst of boltfire hammered her torso, blasting bloody chips of woodflesh from her slender frame. Someone with a deep voice bellowed a slogan she remembered dimly from before. Was her family here to save her?
But no: something sharp and unseen darted from the right, backed with the shout of “Invictus!” Searing pain flashed sun-bright in her eyes, and she felt sure one of her wings had been cut away. She had liked the wings. She spun to punish her assailant and found her blow smashed back just below the cutting edge. Another attacker drove a blade into her from behind, and it punched through her vine-knotted shoulderblades, through her chest, out her sternum.
“In extremis, Domine, garda nos!” The one in front pivoted, hauling her up off her feet and hacking at her arm with his blade. It hurt so much. The limb came off with a wet crack of protesting fiber. She screamed, landing hard on her back. Something unbearably bright and hot exploded in her face, again and again and again, until she couldn't cry any more.
The darkness gathered.
The shadows in her mind stirred.
She was so scared.
It wasn't fair.
“Strip the dead for weapons and food. Lay them straight, facing the sunrise. Then we leave.”
“Y-yes, my lord Astartes.”
“Krytoleus, see to their fears. They trust you, brother, more than me.”
“Brother....”
“Do it.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Tasman, bring wood. This... thing must burn.”
“In nomine Imperator, et Corax, et Spiritus Humani.”
“Amen.”
---
Justinian forced himself to reach out to the skull and push the wick down into the molten wax. His finger turned deathly cold where he touched it, though he could feel the fire's warmth through his glove. He jerked his hand back as the flame smothered itself in the wax, plunging the room into darkness.
A tiny triple click signified the activation of the three Scouts' night vision. If an enemy entered the room expecting light, it would be one more moment's advantage. And darkness felt less unclean.
Justinian moved on his own down the aisle, flicking his gaze over each sealed crate. All he saw were stamped with old Imperial codes for foodstuffs, medical supplies, and uniforms: supplies for the crew of the vessel for which they were bound. He fought off a shiver. Stifled a yawn. Resisted the heaviness in his chest, the pain behind his eyes.
“Blessed Corax,” Vios cursed. Justinian span towards the sound, reaching for his pistol, his heart racing.
“Look.”
Justinian threaded his way through the boxes. The older Scout had pried open the lid of a box conspicuous for its lack of any label. In his hand he held ammunition. It was .75 caliber, two and a half times as long as it was wide, packed into gleaming brass casings that his the flared rocket nozzle, and its radially fluted sides were etched with a bat-winged skull.
Bolter shells. Mars Pattern.
Traitor Marines.
Vios was frowning, but Justinian caught Ytrus' eye. Slowly, darkly, both smiled. Perhaps death was certain. They were three against many, and Chaos was seeping slowly through the barricades of faith... but there was hope in the nightmare. Hope of success―for with any luck the traitors would lead them to Squad Mellorus. Hope of vindication. A deeply-cherished dream of revenge.
Many minutes later, the shuttle clanged into contact with the starship of the Night Lords Chaos Space Marines.
Justinian felt the cleanest he had felt in a long, long time.
---
When he woke, there was laughter behind the darkness. Behind the curtain. Beyond his stolen sight.
He was troubled. Uncertain. Afraid.
He was alone. Alone, but for...
A memory: You are never alone, for―
“I am here,” said a voice, masculine and deep.
Who? he thought, and tried to ask. Pain shot from his lips. Something was holding them shut. All that emerged was a moan.
“I am here, but not to save you. No. Nobody will save you. You are all alone. I am the only other, and I will not save you.”
You, you, you. Who was he? And why he? He didn't know, but it felt right. He it would be. He was happy: he knew something, at least.
Sudden pain pierced his wrists, and he became aware of his arms. They were outstretched, spreadeagled, with the palms up. Agony flowed through them with every pulse of blood, screaming from the nerve cluster where radius met ulna as cruel iron spikes transfixed his wrists. He jerked, triggering pain from mouth and head and neck, from the webs between fingers and toes, where crude sutures bound his hands and feet to whatever lay beneath.
“Shh. Be still. Let them crucify to you. You cannot save yourself. I will not save you. Nobody can save you, my son. Nobody will save you, little boy. Nobody is coming. Nobody cares.”
The voice above him reverberated hugely, though it was quiet. Like the subtle thrum of a double bass below an orchestral hymn. Like the murmur of half-remembered artillery behind the sound of sharp gunfire. He felt very small. Very small to hold so much fear, such pain.
A memory: Gunfire. Screams and battle cries, some ringing with invocations of the God-Emperor of Man, others with strange, terrible slogans the mere memory of which twisted his stomach. The Emperor... he could almost remember. He had to remember. The Emperor...
“I am here, aye. But I will not save you. I do not care.”
The darkness laughed with a thousand awful voices. If only he could remember. If only he could remember. The voice beyond the curtain joined them. All raised in volume, cacophonous, grating, haunting, tantalizing. There was a clink and scrape of something metallic, and the air filled suddenly with heat and a woody, musky odor he could not place. Terror coursed through him, gripping his heart, hot in his throat. He could not see. Oh, God, he was blind. He jerked against the spikes holding him down, and new agony burned over the throb of his wrists. Something approached from above, prickling up sweat between his eyes. The needle touched down―tap!―leaving ink behind. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap: a line down his forehead, then another, at an angle to the first, and another. He screamed. Pain burned from his sutured lips. Clammy hands touched him, and awful half-seen visions danced in his mind. His forehead crawled. The shape of it felt familiar. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, a fourth line, crawling across from brow to scalp. He screamed, and the thread ripped through his lips. There was blood in his mouth. He saw it―actually saw it, with his sightless eyes, clear against the curtain. A star, unviewable, impossible to countenance, fire-red against the blackness. He squeezed shut his eyes, but the image remained. He screamed until he choked on his own blood, but the image remained.
A star.
An eight-pointed star.
“Sleep, my son,” laughed the voices behind the curtain. “Sleep. Dream.”
Last edited by Feil on 2008-07-24 04:37pm, edited 4 times in total.
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NecronLord
- Harbinger of Doom
- Posts: 27379
- Joined: 2002-07-07 06:30am
- Location: The Lost City
Creepy candle , even by IoM skull-re-use standards, and poor woman. Chaos bastards.
Superior Moderator - BotB - HAB [Drill Instructor]-Writer- Stardestroyer.net's resident Star-God.
"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
What the hell was the brook?!
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.
"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
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Singular Quartet
- Sith Marauder
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- Location: This is sky. It is made of FUCKING and LIMIT.
Marvelous work as always, Feil. I commend you again on the writing here -- this really is top notch stuff.
As a final, parting note -- add me to the list of people who was confused/disturbed by the sentient creature inhabiting the brook. Given that Chaos holds sway over this apostate world, however, I really shouldn't be surprised if that proves the least of the Raven Guards' problems...
As a final, parting note -- add me to the list of people who was confused/disturbed by the sentient creature inhabiting the brook. Given that Chaos holds sway over this apostate world, however, I really shouldn't be surprised if that proves the least of the Raven Guards' problems...
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NecronLord
- Harbinger of Doom
- Posts: 27379
- Joined: 2002-07-07 06:30am
- Location: The Lost City
The nature of Chaos is lies. It's oft difficult to tell. I would guess it was some random victim they'd sent mad and bound to the land using warp-spawned magics.LadyTevar wrote:What the hell was the brook?!
Superior Moderator - BotB - HAB [Drill Instructor]-Writer- Stardestroyer.net's resident Star-God.
"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
Chapter 8
With the initial response force defeated and no means of repairing their spaceship, Squad Mellorus' course was clear: make contact with the resistence whose efforts to shoot down traitor spaceships they had observed from space; and then find a way to get back in contact with the Scouts, if they were still alive.
They were able to salvage grenades from the enemy, discarding those that had been profaned with heretical symbols and saying prayers of consecration over the rest, and Mordred refilled his flamer tanks with captured promethium, but bolter ammunition was a different matter. All told, they had spent over half of the squad's dwindling supply. By Ashe's calculation, there would be barely enough for three 30-round magazines each after redistributing with the team guarding the civilians. And then there was the matter of Brother Bellor... Ashe accepted his sorrow and moved on, speaking briefly to each Marine as they went about afterbattle tasks. He barely thought of the words: it was the act that mattered. He helped Corvidae adjust his armor, joined Icirus in prayer for Bellor's soul, complimented Alvigol for his precision fire. Mordred's leg would mend, he saw: the Marine's leg had been fractured above the knee, but the armor made it possible for him to move well enough, and the torn had already begun to stitch itself back together.
Virtus was more badly hurt. He had his helmet off, and was struggling with the battered armor of his left leg. Several jacketed bullets and a long sliver of shrapnel already littered the ground around him, where Mordred had helped to cut them out of his flesh: the full-metal-jacket rounds had punched through the heavy armored mesh that was enough to stop softer rounds or lasfire. His charred armor was still slick with blood, and Ashe knew some of it belonged to the Marine. "Combat effectiveness?" he asked softly.
Virtus grimmaced. "Seventy percent. Eighty, maybe ninety in a week." The battle brother glanced down to where he had sealed the tear in the armor mesh behind his knee with the tough rubbery putty every Marine stored in a compartment in the power-generator backpack for just such a purpose. "The tendon is damaged. If I sprint, it'll tear."
"You can walk without damage?"
"Yes."
Ashe nodded, laying a hand on Virtus' shoulder. "You fought well," he said. Before he realized that he had glanced in the direction of the fallen ship, his brother had read his intent and was reaching for his helmet.
"We go, brother-sergeant?"
"We go."
Brother Bellor's remains were little more than charred and molten fragments of ceramite. They paused to lay him straight, facing the east. His only epitaph lay scattered in bloody ruin for half a kilometer in every direction.
---
She watched with tremulous interest as the dark ones reformed themselves. At first she had thought they were like her: shadows, darkness itself, angered by the noisome intruders in their clattering contraptions of lifeless steel and cruel, burning fire. Would they play with her? So few of the spirits played with her. They were afraid, like she had been.
The leaves twisted and tumbled at her sudden, irrational mirth. She felt the dark ones tense as they percieved the flickering movement in the shadows that accompanied her emotion. What a time they had given her. The souls of the manthings lingered sour and brittle on the air, and she could feel, like pinpricks all along her skin, where they sifted slowly across the veil. She fancied she could hear them screaming, and shivered as she had shivered when light and thunder had crashed from the forces below, when the bolts and bullets had passed through her, sending tumbling cavitations of pain and pleasure through the air. There was a whisper on the night, dancing just beyond her hearing, and she did not know whether to seek it or fear it. The dark ones were leaving, moving with that strange, quiet grace that so perplexed her, and she felt herself drawing together.
Before she knew she had eyes, she was weeping. The beautiful patterns of the leaves in the air, the hard caress of dry branches, the infinite chaos of atmosphere that so delighted her, all vanished. Give them back, she thought. Give them back! She felt the fear again, and didn't like it, didn't like it one bit. Without thinking, she swept towards the dark ones - the angels, she thought suddenly. She tried to remember more, but all she could remember was pain, pain and fear and terror. The angels continued their southwards trek, watching the darkness with wary vigilance. Were they looking for something? Were they looking for her?
No-one will come for you. It was his voice, his voice, and why couldn't he leave her alone? She screamed, and the scream became a sob, which became manic laughter. Silence! She choked it off, unwillingly, unwittingly. The bond had grown stronger. She felt the puppetstrings, and fought them. She felt him looking through her eyes, and found herself unable to look away from the angels. A smile seeped from somewhere dark and unpleasant in her mind, twisting the remnants of her face, crackling leaves and stirring shadows.
Follow them. Watch. Be silent.
As suddenly as he had come, he was gone - gone except for that lingering weakness behind her eyes, which once more shed dark droplets to evaporate away into shadows and winds on the night. Yet even as she began to lose her form, to feel again the comforting patterns of leaf and wind, she swept silently onwards, drifting on tattered wings of purest shadow, trailing wisps of darker-than-dark, following the commands of the monster that had made her, and cherishing what she had so recently denied: the sullen ember of hate that was all that could drive back the terror and pain.
No further sound came from the night. The trees, momentarily interested in their sleepy nighttime way, drifted back to slumber. The air swept back, feeling and fearing the taint of darkest madness pursuing the Space Marines that moved so gently through the night. And in the mind of Ashe Mellorus, who had heard from Vaans of the daemon in the brook, the faint beginnings of understanding began to form.
---
With the initial response force defeated and no means of repairing their spaceship, Squad Mellorus' course was clear: make contact with the resistence whose efforts to shoot down traitor spaceships they had observed from space; and then find a way to get back in contact with the Scouts, if they were still alive.
They were able to salvage grenades from the enemy, discarding those that had been profaned with heretical symbols and saying prayers of consecration over the rest, and Mordred refilled his flamer tanks with captured promethium, but bolter ammunition was a different matter. All told, they had spent over half of the squad's dwindling supply. By Ashe's calculation, there would be barely enough for three 30-round magazines each after redistributing with the team guarding the civilians. And then there was the matter of Brother Bellor... Ashe accepted his sorrow and moved on, speaking briefly to each Marine as they went about afterbattle tasks. He barely thought of the words: it was the act that mattered. He helped Corvidae adjust his armor, joined Icirus in prayer for Bellor's soul, complimented Alvigol for his precision fire. Mordred's leg would mend, he saw: the Marine's leg had been fractured above the knee, but the armor made it possible for him to move well enough, and the torn had already begun to stitch itself back together.
Virtus was more badly hurt. He had his helmet off, and was struggling with the battered armor of his left leg. Several jacketed bullets and a long sliver of shrapnel already littered the ground around him, where Mordred had helped to cut them out of his flesh: the full-metal-jacket rounds had punched through the heavy armored mesh that was enough to stop softer rounds or lasfire. His charred armor was still slick with blood, and Ashe knew some of it belonged to the Marine. "Combat effectiveness?" he asked softly.
Virtus grimmaced. "Seventy percent. Eighty, maybe ninety in a week." The battle brother glanced down to where he had sealed the tear in the armor mesh behind his knee with the tough rubbery putty every Marine stored in a compartment in the power-generator backpack for just such a purpose. "The tendon is damaged. If I sprint, it'll tear."
"You can walk without damage?"
"Yes."
Ashe nodded, laying a hand on Virtus' shoulder. "You fought well," he said. Before he realized that he had glanced in the direction of the fallen ship, his brother had read his intent and was reaching for his helmet.
"We go, brother-sergeant?"
"We go."
Brother Bellor's remains were little more than charred and molten fragments of ceramite. They paused to lay him straight, facing the east. His only epitaph lay scattered in bloody ruin for half a kilometer in every direction.
---
She watched with tremulous interest as the dark ones reformed themselves. At first she had thought they were like her: shadows, darkness itself, angered by the noisome intruders in their clattering contraptions of lifeless steel and cruel, burning fire. Would they play with her? So few of the spirits played with her. They were afraid, like she had been.
The leaves twisted and tumbled at her sudden, irrational mirth. She felt the dark ones tense as they percieved the flickering movement in the shadows that accompanied her emotion. What a time they had given her. The souls of the manthings lingered sour and brittle on the air, and she could feel, like pinpricks all along her skin, where they sifted slowly across the veil. She fancied she could hear them screaming, and shivered as she had shivered when light and thunder had crashed from the forces below, when the bolts and bullets had passed through her, sending tumbling cavitations of pain and pleasure through the air. There was a whisper on the night, dancing just beyond her hearing, and she did not know whether to seek it or fear it. The dark ones were leaving, moving with that strange, quiet grace that so perplexed her, and she felt herself drawing together.
Before she knew she had eyes, she was weeping. The beautiful patterns of the leaves in the air, the hard caress of dry branches, the infinite chaos of atmosphere that so delighted her, all vanished. Give them back, she thought. Give them back! She felt the fear again, and didn't like it, didn't like it one bit. Without thinking, she swept towards the dark ones - the angels, she thought suddenly. She tried to remember more, but all she could remember was pain, pain and fear and terror. The angels continued their southwards trek, watching the darkness with wary vigilance. Were they looking for something? Were they looking for her?
No-one will come for you. It was his voice, his voice, and why couldn't he leave her alone? She screamed, and the scream became a sob, which became manic laughter. Silence! She choked it off, unwillingly, unwittingly. The bond had grown stronger. She felt the puppetstrings, and fought them. She felt him looking through her eyes, and found herself unable to look away from the angels. A smile seeped from somewhere dark and unpleasant in her mind, twisting the remnants of her face, crackling leaves and stirring shadows.
Follow them. Watch. Be silent.
As suddenly as he had come, he was gone - gone except for that lingering weakness behind her eyes, which once more shed dark droplets to evaporate away into shadows and winds on the night. Yet even as she began to lose her form, to feel again the comforting patterns of leaf and wind, she swept silently onwards, drifting on tattered wings of purest shadow, trailing wisps of darker-than-dark, following the commands of the monster that had made her, and cherishing what she had so recently denied: the sullen ember of hate that was all that could drive back the terror and pain.
No further sound came from the night. The trees, momentarily interested in their sleepy nighttime way, drifted back to slumber. The air swept back, feeling and fearing the taint of darkest madness pursuing the Space Marines that moved so gently through the night. And in the mind of Ashe Mellorus, who had heard from Vaans of the daemon in the brook, the faint beginnings of understanding began to form.
---
Last edited by Feil on 2008-07-29 11:13pm, edited 1 time in total.
Okay, folks, here's how it goes: Chapter 2 is rewritten from how it was on the old forums, hopefully increasing its quality, but I'll let you be the judge of that. Chapter 3 is more or less as I left it. Chapter 4 has a new scene which I hope counteracts some of the supersoldier syndrome that plagued this piece on the old forums. Chapter 5 has a new scene with the Scouts. Chapter 6 and 7 are more or less as they were.
You can safely skip all the changes except for the one in Chapter 5, which conveys information that was required to let the story go forward.
The first thousand words of CH8 are written and posted in the preceeding post. I wanted to write more tonight, but I need to crash. More tomorrow, Emperor willing.
Sorry for the long, long, long wait.
You can safely skip all the changes except for the one in Chapter 5, which conveys information that was required to let the story go forward.
The first thousand words of CH8 are written and posted in the preceeding post. I wanted to write more tonight, but I need to crash. More tomorrow, Emperor willing.
Sorry for the long, long, long wait.
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thejester
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1811
- Joined: 2005-06-10 07:16pm
- Location: Richard Nixon's Secret Tapes Club Band
Keep it up, mate, this is awesome.
Dynamic. When [Kuznetsov] decided he was going to make a difference, he did it...Like Ovechkin...then you find out - he's with Washington too? You're kidding. - Ron Wilson
Great stuff, as always.
Keep it up, Feil.
Keep it up, Feil.
"..history has shown the best defense against heavy cavalry are pikemen, so aircraft should mount lances on their noses and fly in tight squares to fend off bombers". - RedImperator
"ha ha, raping puppies is FUN!" - Johonebesus
"It would just be Unicron with pew pew instead of nom nom". - Vendetta, explaining his justified disinterest in the idea of the movie Allspark affecting the Death Star
"ha ha, raping puppies is FUN!" - Johonebesus
"It would just be Unicron with pew pew instead of nom nom". - Vendetta, explaining his justified disinterest in the idea of the movie Allspark affecting the Death Star
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Mr. Coffee
- is an asshole.
- Posts: 3258
- Joined: 2005-02-26 07:45am
- Location: And banging your mom is half the battle... G.I. Joe!
Goddamnit, you asshole. You made me think Feil has updated the story.
I never would have thought I would wholeheartedly agree with Coffee... - fgalkin x2
Honestly, this board is so fucking stupid at times. - Thanas
GALE ForceCarwash: Oh, I'll wax that shit, bitch...