Posted: 2007-04-10 08:33pm
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 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.
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.
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