The remaining heretics looked just as astonished as we were for a few seconds. Those seconds were all they had left of life. The armoured figures smashed into them. One of them was lifted by the throat one-handed by one of the armoured giants and simply tossed away, dropping from the side of the Baneblade legs flailing. When he hit the ground below, he exploded, skull shattering, body reduced to shambles. Somehow, without me seeing it, the newcomer had slammed a grenade into his mouth before he fell. It was an action guaranteed to inspire terror in the heretics witnessing it and that was the intention.
When I looked back, the whole area around the newcomers was clear. Bodies were piled at their feet, limbless, headless, broken-backed and broken-boned. One man howled wordlessly as he flopped, his spine shattered. One of those massive armoured boots descended on his head, turning it to jelly.
Anton just stood there with his mouth open as if he was trying to catch flies in it. Ivan tilted his head to one side and studied them. I did the same, not exactly sure that what I was seeing was real.
They were big men, bigger than me by a long way, and their ceramite armour made them look bigger still. It was painted glossy black. White skull patterns were painted on their helmets. A similar pattern was emblazoned in white warpaint on the black face of the giant warrior facing us. I flinched for a moment as he raised his boltgun and fired. The shot passed between my legs and I heard a groan. I turned and looked and saw the heretic who had been sneaking up on me. How the Space Marine had known he was there in the chaos and having just sprung out of the drop-pod I will never know. How they had avoided killing us in the opening few seconds of the carnage I will never know either. If it had been me, I would just have shot everything in sight, but somehow in the heartbeat between evacuating the damaged drop-pod and entering the fire-fight, they had managed to tell friend from foe and killed every enemy, and spared our lives.
‘Thanks,’ I said stupidly.
The Death Spectre grunted what might have been an acknowledgment and then leapt off the side of the Baneblade, plunging into the heretics below. If I had tried that I would have broken both legs. He landed, weapons firing, and blazed a bloody path towards the priest with the burning head. When I looked back, all of those other massive armoured figures were gone, the only evidence they had been there being the piles of the dead.
‘It’s a bloody miracle,’ I muttered.
‘Space Marines,’ Anton said.
‘Macharius must have sent them to get you, Anton,’ said Ivan. Somehow, in the face of the awful reality, the joke fell flat.
The Death Spectres fanned out from their drop point, killing the psykers it turned out were concentrated all around us. Tanks did not slow the Space Marines down. They clambered up on to them, ripped off durasteel hatches as if they were made of paper and dropped grenades into the interior.
Sometimes they dropped in afterwards themselves and there would be sounds of awful violence and moments later a Death Spectre would emerge covered in gore. It was terrifying to watch. I have made war alongside hardened veterans, done more than my share of killing. I have fought orks and daemon-worshippers and monstrous xenos things and I would rather face any ten of those again than one soldier of the Adeptus Astartes.
They moved with a terrible combination of efficiency and ferocity that was oddly graceful. I saw a heretic sniper taking a bead on one of them from the top of a burned-out tank. He was too far away for my shotgun to hit. I shouted a warning but I was certain it could not be heard through the roar of battle. Just as it seemed he was about to be shot, the Space Marine raised his gun in a casual motion and blew the top of the heretic’s head away. From the position in which he was standing you would have sworn he could not have seen his target take aim and he did not even seem to look in his direction, merely pointed his bolter and fired then returned to killing the heretics closer to him. The shot was uncannily accurate for the range.
An enormous shadow fell on our position. The gigantic humanoid shape of a Warlord Titan loomed over us. I looked up, an insect confronting an angry god. The Warlord’s monstrous head scanned from side to side like a predator looking for prey. I sensed the ancient, terrible spirit within it. This was not some inanimate unthinking engine. It was a living thing, bred to war, intended to kill, and full of dreadful fury. Just the sight of it made me want to throw myself back into the wreckage and hide.
Massive pistons hissed in the Titan’s limbs as it moved. The god-machine’s huge Volcano Cannon swung around. The rush of the air it displaced ruffled my hair. The vibrations of the metal giant’s stride passed from the earth through the shattered hull and echoed through my body. My skin tingled from the halo effect of its void shields.
The Titan fired.
The smell of ozone and alchemicals filled the air. The high-pitched whine of the weapon’s capacitors hurt my ears. I ground my teeth in pain. A heretic Shadowsword went up in flames. There is ancient hatred between the god-machines and those tanks. It is said that the Shadowswords were built to kill Titans and the Titans return the favour any chance they get.
Ivan braced himself on a maintenance node in the shattered fuselage, pulled out his magnoculars and studied the destroyed vehicle, a thin line of drool dribbling down the rusted metal of his prosthetic jaw.
‘See anything interesting?’ Anton asked.
‘There’s an idiot standing beside me,’ Ivan said.
‘It’s not nice to talk about Leo that way,’ Anton said. ‘Best be quiet or he’ll hear you and he has a shotgun.’
That’s the way I like to remember them, chattering like loons while all around us what felt like the end of the world raged.
The battle stalked away from us. The Titans, our reinforcements and the Death Spectres tore through the heretics like a sandstorm stripping an unprotected man to the bone. We watched them killing as they went. They took no prisoners. They did not have the time. That was left to the Imperial Guard regiments who followed up. It’s not glamorous but it beats getting your head shot off.
We were left alone on top of the tank, looking at the piles of broken bodies and heaps of destroyed armour around us. Anton produced a flask of coolant fluid and we shared swigs.
‘Bloody hell, Space Marines,’ Anton said. ‘We saw Space Marines. They saved us.’
From the tone of his voice it might just as well have been the Emperor himself descended from the Golden Throne to save our lives. I understood that. Very few men in all the worlds of the Imperium can say they have stood in a Space Marine’s shadow or even talked to one, however briefly.
You hear about them. You hear their praises sung. You never expect to meet one. Somehow all of the stories had not prepared us for the reality.
Ivan took another swig and gazed into the distance. He was thinking about the experience, I could tell, but like me he was still trying to digest it among all the other events of the day.
Anton cackled and said, ‘We saw Space Marines today. They saved us.’
‘I noticed,’ I said.
‘You think they noticed us?’ he asked. His eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed. The scar tightened on his forehead. I was surprised that he sounded so serious.