The Surgeon advanced towards him, the bonesaw spraying blood from its whining edge. The alien’s face was a mask of crimson and his violet eyes were filled with hate.
Behind him, the shattered body of Almerz Chanda groaned on the slab, his bloody and raw flesh shuddering as the soporific effects of the Surgeon’s muscle relaxants began to dissipate.
URIEL BRACED HIMSELF on the rubble and whispered a brief prayer to the blessed Primarch that this attack would succeed. All along the line of Space Marines, men awaited his orders. Chaplain Clausel intoned the Litany of Battle, his stern, unwavering voice a fine example to the warriors of Fourth Company. Uriel knew that he had to provide a similar example, by leading this charge himself.
The PDF gunners were firing blind now. Dozens of smoke and blind grenades had gone over the top, and billowing clouds of concealing smoke were spewing from the grenade canisters.
When he judged that the smoke had spread enough, Uriel yelled, ‘Now! For the glory of Terra!’ and surged from behind the cover of rubble and debris.
As one, the Ultramarines roared and followed their captain into the smoke, bullets and lasers tearing amongst them in a deadly volley. Deadly to anyone not clad in suits of holy power armour, blessed by the Tech-marines and imbued with the spirits of battle.
Immediately the Space Marines fanned out, so a concentrated burst of fire wouldn’t hit them all. This was a gauntlet every man would run alone. Uriel sprinted through the clouds of white, lit by the eerie glow of flickering flames. He ran across burned bodies, patches of scorched ground, and piles of discarded battlegear. The whine of bullets and lasers surrounded him, the smoke whipped by their passing. His every sense was alert as he led the charge.
His auto-senses fought to pierce the obscuring fog of the blind grenades, the bright flashes up ahead the only clue to the distance left to cover.
One hundred and fifty paces.
Throughout the smoke he could make out the blurred shapes of his warriors, weapons spitting fire towards the rebel line.
One hundred paces.
Roars of pain sounded. Cold fury gripped him as he closed the gap.
Then the ground exploded around him, spraying him with stone fragments and flaming metal as heavy bolter fire hammered around him. A shell clipped his shoulder guard and helmet, spinning him from his feet. Another impacted on his power sword, the shell blasting the blade from the hilt in a shower of sparks.
Uriel fell, rolling into cover as his vision was obscured by red, flashing runes on his visor. Blood ran into his eyes and he wrenched the helmet clear, wiping the already clotted substance from his face. His rage built as he saw the damage done to the sword.
The hilt bore only a short, broken length of blade, the intricate traceries that contained the war-spirit within shattered and broken. His legacy from Idaeus had been destroyed, the one tangible link to his former captain’s approval of his authority was no more.
Uriel angrily sheathed what remained of the blade and rose to his feet.
The smoke was thinning and he could see he were less than a hundred metres from the bunkers. He was almost there, but this close, the fire from the slit trench was telling and their charge had lost its momentum. The weight of fire was simply too heavy to advance through and live.
A sense of utter conviction gripped Uriel and he walked calmly through the hail of gunfire and knelt beside the body of a fallen battle brother, prising the chainsword from his fingers. Bullets stitched the ground beside him, but Uriel did not flinch or even acknowledge that he was under fire.
‘Captain! Get down!’ shouted Pasanius.
Uriel turned to the sheltering Ultramarines and shouted, ‘Follow me!’ – A lasbolt struck him square in the chest.
Uriel staggered, but did not fall, the eagle at the centre of his breastplate running molten. Chaplain Clausel rose to his feet, crozius arcanum held above his head.
‘See, brothers! The Emperor protects!’ he bellowed, his voice carrying over the entire battlefield. The massive Chaplain shouted, ‘Up, brothers! Up! For the Emperor! Forward!’
Uriel pressed the activation rune of the chainsword, the blade roaring into life.
He turned back to the enemy line.
They would make it. There would be no mercy.
He began sprinting through the fire towards the foe.
BARZANO SWAYED ASIDE as the Surgeon thrust the bonesaw at his belly. He gripped his weapon arm and spun inside his guard, powering his elbow into the alien’s side. He rolled forward, avoiding the reverse stroke of the bonesaw, crashing into the table of surgical instruments beside the slab and dropping all manner of scalpels and drills to the floor beside him. He could hear Almerz Chanda groaning in pain above him and snatched up a long, hook-bladed scalpel as the Surgeon came at him again.
Barzano’s strength was failing and he knew that he could not last much longer. He pushed himself to his feet, the scalpel gripped tightly in his fist. The Surgeon swung the bonesaw at Barzano’s head.
The inquisitor blocked the blow with his forearm, screaming as the tearing teeth of the bonesaw sheared into the meat of his arm, shrieking along the bone towards his elbow. The whining edge of the saw juddered to a halt, the teeth caught in the bone of the inquisitor’s arm. Barzano swung his injured limb, complete with the embedded saw, away from his body and stepped in close, hammering the scalpel into the Surgeon’s temple.
The alien staggered. Blood burst from his mouth as his knees gave way, a full fifteen centimetres of steel rammed into his brain. He gave a last sigh before toppling forward, the rattling bonesaw pulling clear of Barzano’s arm.
Barzano slumped against the slab, fighting to stay conscious through the screaming agony of his shredded arm. A thick layer of skin and muscle flapped from his elbow and he forced himself not to look at the damage.
Fresh impacts slammed against the door and he bent to snatch a pistol of strange appearance from the Surgeon’s belt, his every movement causing supernovas of agony to explode in his skull.
He felt, rather than saw, movement beside him and he swayed, bringing the pistol to bear.
Almerz Chanda pushed himself into a sitting position, his ruined body making one last surge before death claimed him.
His features spoke of the most hideous pain imaginable and Barzano could sense the madness the Surgeon’s art had pushed the man into. But he also sensed his desperate need for atonement behind the pits of insanity.
As Barzano fought to remain upright, the door to the Surgeon’s chambers finally crashed open.
URIEL HAMMERED HIS fist through a guardsman’s visor, the man’s face disintegrating under the blow. A lasbolt scored his
breastplate, but the armour held firm and Uriel killed the shooter with a well placed bolter round. He swung his chainsword in a brutal arc, beheading another trooper and disembowelling a second. He fired his pistol into the face of a third and roared with the savage joy of combat.
The trench was a killing ground.
The wrath of the Ultramarines knew no bounds as they tore the men of the PDF to pieces, overrunning the trench with the fury of their charge. Bolt pistols fired, chainswords flashed red in the sunlight and gouts of liquid fire roasted men alive. There was no quarter given and within seconds the trench was nothing more than an open grave for the men of the PDF.
Before the impetus of the charge could be lost, Uriel yelled at his men to follow him, scrambling from the trench and sprinting onwards to the bunkers. Heavy calibre shells ripped a path towards him, but he jinked to one side, avoiding the hail of bullets. Firing as he ran, his charge carried him to within ten metres of the bunker. He could see Pasanius firing a long stream of liquid fire through the firing slit of the second bunker, the orange flames licking all around the giant warrior as he filled the enemy strongpoint with searing death.
Uriel dived and rolled to the foot of the bunker, narrowly avoiding being cut in two by a point blank burst of gunfire. His back slammed into its front wall. The bunker wa
s a squat slab of rockcrete, protruding a metre above ground level with narrow gun slits in every side. Grenades would be useless. The bunker was sure to have a grenade sump, a protected chamber where the troops inside could dump grenades in order to negate their force.
More shots spewed from the bunker and Uriel waited until he heard the distinctive sound of a heavy bolter slide racking back empty. He held his breath, straining to hear the double click of a new belt feed of shells being shucked into a hot breech.
Uriel roared and rose up in front of the bunker, driving his chainsword through the firing slit and into the gunner’s face. A bubbling scream and crack of bone sounded, and Uriel reached inside, dragging the heavy weapon through the slit.
He quickly spun the weapon and pushed the muzzle into the bunker, squeezing the trigger and working the bucking
gun left and right, filling the bunker with explosive shells. The screaming from inside was short lived, but Uriel waited until the last of the shells from the belt feed had been expended and the firing hammer clicked down empty.
Uriel dropped the weapon, sweat and blood coating his features.
The bunkers were theirs and the prison complex lay open before him.
THE PRISON GUARDS burst into the torture chamber to be confronted by an apparition from their worst nightmares. Almerz Chanda threw himself forward with the last vestige of his strength, carrying the first men through the door to the ground.
Thrashing and screaming, the dying Chanda wailed in agony, the sound tearing at the nerves of everyone within earshot. Instinctively, the attackers fired. Lasbolts blasted Chanda’s ravaged body, punching through him into the men beneath.
Chanda’s death scream was one of release rather than pain.
The following troops tore their eyes from the horrifically mutilated man to the chamber’s sole remaining living occupant. Barzano swayed, one side of his body completely drenched in blood. Chanda’s death had bought him precious seconds he did not intend to waste. He aimed the Surgeon’s pistol at the guards and pulled the trigger.
A hail of dark needles fired in an expanding cone, shredding the closest guards and killing them instantly. The guards behind were not so fortunate and the venom-tipped needles flooded their bloodstreams with lethal alien toxins.
Barzano staggered to the door as the guards fell back, some spasming in their death throes as the poison did its evil work, others retreating as they saw the fate of those in front. The inquisitor pushed shut the door, sliding to the floor as his strength poured from him in the wash of blood from his ruined arm.
More screams sounded from outside, gunfire and explosions. He felt something push against the door and weakly
tried to hold it shut, but he could not prevent it from opening. He slumped to the floor, his vision blurring and attempted to raise the alien pistol.
Sergeant Learchus plucked the pistol from the inquisitor’s hand and hurled it aside as he and two of his battle brothers entered the torture chamber along with Mykola Shonai, Lortuen Perjed and half a dozen petrified scribes. One of the Space Marines carried Jenna Sharben and gently deposited the wounded judge on the Surgeon’s slab.
‘See to him,’ ordered Learchus, pointing at the unconscious Barzano.
Learchus activated his vox. ‘Captain Ventris, we have Inquisitor Barzano. He is alive, but badly wounded. We will need to get him aboard the Vae Victus soon if we are to save his life.’
URIEL CHARGED THROUGH the smoking remains of the prison complex gateway, firing as he ran. The blast had killed most of the defenders on the inside: over the ringing echoes of the gate’s destruction, only the moans of the dying could be heard.
His spirits had soared when Learchus had informed him of the inquisitor’s safety, knowing that he had made the right decision to have the sergeant remain within the palace and break into the prison complex from above.
Learchus had Barzano, but there were several hundred men below ground. They still had to reach their brethren and pull them to safety. Pasanius poured another sheet of fire down the rough-hewn stairs that led into the darkness of the prison.
Screams boiled up from below, and Uriel once more led the charge of the Ultramarines.
LEARCHUS FIRED ANOTHER blast of bolter fire through the door, felling two guards and wounding a third. Thus far they had held off three attacks, but ammunition was low and they were running out of time. There were another two entrances to this chamber and each of the Space Marines fought desperately to hold off the waves of attackers with bolter and chainsword.
Mykola Shonai and Lortuen Perjed desperately battled to halt the flow of blood from Barzano’s arm, but it was a fight they were losing. The Surgeon’s blade had cut him to the bone from wrist to elbow and this place had only instruments for the taking of life, not its preservation. Barzano’s flesh was ashen, his pulse weak and thready.
More and more guards hurled themselves through the doors, each time to be cut down by deadly bolts or hacked apart by shrieking chainswords. The stink of death filled the chamber.
Learchus dropped his bolter as his last magazine finally exhausted itself and charged the door as more enemies tried to force their way inside. His sword hacked the first men to death, before lasbolts hurled the sergeant from his feet. Status runes flashed red on his visor. He rolled and chopped the legs out from one man, thundering his fist into the groin of another. Bayonets stabbed at him, most sliding clear across his armoured might.
He stabbed and chopped, kicking and punching in all directions, feeling bones break with every motion of his body. Gunfire boomed as he pushed himself clear of his attackers, roaring with battle fury, a living engine of killing frenzy.
They were holding, but they could not continue to do so for long.
A BACKHANDED BLOW sent another enemy screaming into hell as Uriel and Pasanius pushed deeper into the prison complex. Uriel’s helmet lay abandoned on the battlefield above them, so he followed Pasanius, the locator augers within the sergeant’s helmet directing them towards Learchus.
He could hear the screams of dying men and furious battle from up ahead and sprinted round a corner to see scores of men pushing themselves forward through a wide door. Pasanius did not even wait for the order, simply engulfing the men in fire from his lethal flamer. Screams and the stench of scorched flesh filled the cramped corridor as the Ultramarines fell upon the prison guards from behind.
It was a massacre. The soldiers had nowhere to run to. Caught between the fury of Sergeant Learchus and this new assault, the survivors threw themselves at the mercy of
Uriel. But there was none to be had and every soldier perished.
Uriel pushed himself into the Surgeon’s torture chamber, breathing heavily and wiping blood from his face. Bodies littered the chamber and the stink of blood was overpowering. The silence was a sudden contrast from the screaming combat of moments ago and Learchus blinked, lowering his blood-sheathed chainsword.
Uriel marched to meet Learchus and gripped his hand.
‘Well met, brother,’ whispered Uriel.
Learchus nodded. ‘Aye, well met, captain.’
THE THUNDERHAWK ROARED upwards, chased by a few hastily converted shuttle-gunships and ornithopters. Designed to strafe slow moving ground targets, they were out of their element against the Space Marine craft and, after losing seven of their number, pulled back.
The rescue of Inquisitor Barzano had cost the lives of three Ultramarines and two of Barzano’s scribes who had been killed in the crossfire raging throughout the torture chamber. Lortuen Perjed was adamant that they receive full honours upon their burial.
Before attending to the wounded, Apothecary Selenus had removed the vital progenoid glands from the bodies of the fallen Space Marines. The recovery of the precious gene-seed took precedence over normal battlefield triage.
He stabilised the inquisitor and set up a live transfusion of blood from a scribe with a matching blood type. The man expressed his willingness to be bled dry in order to save the inquisitor
’s life, but Selenus assured him that such drastic measures would not be necessary.
He had treated Jenna Sharben’s wound and though she would be incapacitated for many days yet, she would live and suffer no long-term damage from her injury. Of the surviving Ultramarines, the majority of their wounds were largely superficial.
The battered Thunderhawk pulled into high orbit, finally making rendezvous with the Vae Victus and bringing her warriors home.
THE SENIOR OFFICERS of the Pavonis expedition gathered in the captain’s briefing room, assembled around a circular table hewn from the slow growing mountain firs that surrounded the Fortress of Hera on Macragge.
Lord Admiral Tiberius sat with his back to the wall, below a magnificent silken banner listing the victories of his vessel and her previous captains stretching back to a time centuries before his birth. To one side of Tiberius sat the battle-weary Ultramarines, fresh from their battles on Pavonis: Uriel, Learchus, Pasanius, Venasus and Dardino. On the opposite side of the table sat Mykola Shonai and Lortuen Perjed.
Between them was an unoccupied chair and as Mykola Shonai took a sip of water, the last member of the council of war arrived, cradling his left arm in a synthflesh bandage and walking with a pronounced limp.
Uriel watched Barzano hobble into the briefing room, noting the telltale gleam in his eyes that indicated heavy stimm use. The inquisitor was obviously using medical stimulants to block the pain from his wounded arm and shoulder. He sat opposite Uriel, his face ashen.
‘Very well,’ began Barzano, ‘I think it’s fair to say that the situation is grim. Kasimir de Valtos has control on Pavonis, and at any moment could have his hands on an ancient alien weapon capable of unleashing destruction on a system-wide scale. Would everyone agree that is a fair assessment of our situation?’
No one disagreed with the inquisitor.
‘What do you suggest then, Inquisitor Barzano?’ asked Tiberius.
‘What I would suggest is that you send a coded communication to Macragge and have a battle-barge armed with cyclonic torpedoes despatched to Pavonis.’