‘They’re breaking left.’
‘Heavy flamer. Gad, take it out.’
‘Beta move right, down the stairs.’
‘Move on, move on. Push them back, brothers.’
‘Grenade!’
‘I’m down – keep going.’
‘Blow that console. Heinos, plug in and open those ports.’
And the rattling crash of bolter fire now, the whistling of atmospherics being sucked out. It was still spuming out of the entry hole in white clouds, and with it came scraps of metal and flesh and smoke, even discarded weapons and wiring, all entangled. A severed head still in its helm, circling as it blew out into space, crowned with horns.
‘It’s a long way off, but I can feel it now,’ Brother Kass was saying. ‘It gives them purpose and direction, else these things would devour each other in their madness. There is a single mind at work here, Brother Malchai, a power in it I have never known before.
‘It is not alien in any way – it is almost recognisable, the way it works.’
‘Careful, brother,’ Malchai warned. ‘If you look into the warp, the warp looks back at you.’
Elijah Kass shuddered as he stood there like a tree in a gale. Malchai clumped towards him and shook the young Librarian.
‘Brother! Look away! Come back to me!’
‘The bridge is clear.’ That was Fornix’s voice, clear and untrammelled by interference. ‘Brother Heinos has accessed the ship systems. We’re killing this thing, Jonah. We have her, by the Emperor’s light – the thing is going down.’
‘Set it to self destruct and get out of there,’ Kerne said. He was watching Kass and Malchai grappling together.
Another voice on the net. Nureddin of Secundus, on the other destroyer.
‘Captain, all enemy resistance on the bridge has ended. We’ve sealed the doors and are setting charges. We’ll cripple her. Request Hawk Two for immediate evacuation.’
‘You have it, Nureddin. Good work. Casualties?’
‘Brother Infinius. We have his gene-seed.’
He didn’t last long, Kerne thought. His first real fight, and he is gone. He said a quiet prayer.
‘Hawks One and Two, move in for pickup, best speed.’
He turned to the Apothecary, whose helm was configured for casualty readout.
‘Passarion?’
‘All told, we have three brothers dead beyond recall, captain, and six more with major trauma, but ambulatory.’
He did not want to know all their names, not yet.
‘A long enough butcher’s bill,’ he said quietly.
‘Augur sweeps indicate that there are at least eight thousand crew on each of these ships, captain,’ Passarion said. He was watching Elijah Kass, who was back on his feet and breathing heavily over the vox.
‘Three brethren for sixteen thousand of the enemy and two destroyers. I call that a good exchange.’
THIRTEEN
Ira in Caelum
When he unhelmed, there was a new element to the air on the flight deck. The familiar heavy reek of lubricants and sweat and the tang of bare metal and exhaust now had added to it the carbonised burned bitterness of battle damage, the thin acridness of cordite and the static aftertaste of las-fire.
And blood. His senses picked up the blood of his wounded brethren over all, that coppery, familiar element common to every fight he had ever known.
A low-loader drew near, and on it were six Space Marines, their power armour dented and broken and torn as though it were made of clay. He knew all their names, and they all raised their heads as it approached. They had that light in their eyes he knew well, and it heartened him to see it.
When a man looks into the sun, the after-image of that brightness stays with him. So it was with combat. These men who were more than men had been bred and trained for war, and now they had taken a taste of it.
They were Adeptus Astartes, and it had barely whetted their appetite. He saw it in their eyes, and it gladdened him. It was as it should be.
‘Try not to get shot next time,’ Kerne said to them. And looking at young Brother Gad and the blackened flesh of his face, he added: ‘Or burned either.’
‘This one is too eager,’ Finn March said, coming up behind him and gesturing towards Brother Gad. ‘Thinks that now he’s out of the Haradai and into some real fighting, he can just charge ahead and bull his way through. He’ll know better next time.’
‘I will,’ Gad said, and he grinned, the burned lips pulling back in a ghastly rictus from the blackened gums.
‘Get to the apothecarion before I give you all extra duties for carelessness,’ Kerne said, and he touched Gad on the shoulder.
The low-loader sped on down the echoing, busy deck, fleet crew scattering before it.
‘Brother-Sergeant March, I want a full report from you and Nureddin before the hour is out,’ Kerne said quietly.
‘You shall have it, captain.’ March cocked his head to one side. Another low-loader was trundling past driven by a servitor. Upon it were two massive prone shapes, mangled but recognisable as Dark Hunters. Apothecary Passarion was walking alongside, his white armour gleaming.
‘Brothers Arrimos and Gascan,’ Passarion said. ‘Infinius’s body could not be recovered.’
‘You know what to do, brother,’ Kerne said. ‘You and Brother Malchai must consign them to the stars with all reverence. But time is short. The main operation is about to begin.’
‘Understood, captain.’
Passarion was a cold fish, but as he spoke he set one hand on the broken body beside him with something like tenderness.
‘Their genes will live on. They will come again.’
‘Other faces, other names, but the flesh abides,’ Kerne said, in the ancient ritualistic proverb of the Dark Hunters.
These dead were only the first. There would be many more to follow; he felt it in his bones.
They were gathering around him now, the sergeants of the company, along with Fornix of course, and Brother Laufey of the Scouts and Nieman Stahl, the senior sergeant of the detachment from Novus.
The trio of March, Nureddin and Orsus were the most senior, but Primus and Secundus had been hollowed out by casualties. Until the wounded Space Marines were back with their squads, the two senior sergeants would take a back seat during the assault.
It went through his mind in a smooth succession of calculations, as it had a thousand times before.
‘Tertius will lead the next operation,’ he said, and big Orsus grinned like a dog just given a bone; if he had possessed a tail he would have wagged it.
‘Brother Laufey, you will attach three of the Haradai to Tertius, Quatris, and Quincus squads. Brother-Sergeant Stahl, you will do the same with your Devastators. Heavy plasmas and meltas, for preference – they’re more flexible. We do not yet know what we are about to face on the surface, whether it will be armour or infantry-centred.’
‘With respect, captain, I would much prefer to keep my warriors together. A full squad of heavy weapons–’
‘I have thought this through. You will be left with one squad intact, which you will command as company reserve. The others will serve with the line-squads.’
‘Sixteen-man squads, that will be,’ Fornix said and he pursed his lips in a soundless whistle.
‘For the first three, yes,’ Kerne said. ‘We must go in as hard as we can, brothers. It has been weeks – nay, months – since anything has been heard from the Imperial forces on Ras Hanem. There may be none left, or it may be that enemy jamming has stymied their attempts to communicate. In any case, we must be prepared to reconquer the entire planet from scratch if need be.’
They all nodded at that. He saw their faces harden, if faces so marked by decades and centuries of warfare could be said to have hardened further. He saw the anger in their eyes. That was good.
‘The drop pods are prepping as we speak,’ he said. ‘Brother-Sergeants Orsus, Greynan and Kagan, see to your commands. I will be dropping with you. The fleet personnel have been briefed and prepped.