He would land south of the Imperial lines, if the information was accurate. He would have to begin fighting his way almost due north on landing. Well, it was something to know that the citadel was in friendly hands at least. The Arbion had been tasked with targeting the fortress, shooting in the assault from orbit.
‘Hold all orbital fire until further word from me, Diez,’ he said.
But the vox was dead. They were on final re-entry now, and the pod was shuddering and growing hotter.
And then there was a resounding crash – the pod arced sideways as though it had been kicked in mid-air. It spun and tumbled, and Kerne cursed within his helm and blinked again and again on the retro sigils, to no avail.
‘Anti-air,’ Fornix said on the squad net. ‘That was a direct hit.’
Kerne ripped open the access panel at his head and peered within, all the while fighting the spin of the careering pod. The altimeter in his display was reeling off the descent with startling rapidity. They were at fourteen thousand metres, and falling like a stone.
Another crash, and this time there was a white explosion which his auto-senses only just prevented from blinding him. One whole hatch in the side of the pod disappeared, and brown air thundered into the confines of the vehicle. Kerne felt the sucking decompression lift his body up in the restraints, and was thumped by Fornix and Heinos bucking and rattling in theirs next to him.
He dug his hand into the wiring of the access panel. The cables were brightly colour-coded for eventualities like this, and he called up the sequence in his mind from decades-old training. The yellow wires. He yanked them free and stripped the insulation with a pinch of his armoured gauntlet.
‘Jonah–’ Fornix said.
‘I’m on it.’
‘Sooner rather than later, brother.’
‘Shut up.’ He gritted his teeth, fighting the wild gyrations of the pod, and held the stripped wires together in his hand. There was a flash, and outside a series of coughing explosions as the retros fired. The internal gyro sensed the erratic behaviour of the pod and fired thrusters from all angles to correct it.
Kerne looked at the altimeter in his readout. Six thousand metres.
The pod had stopped spinning, but it was still coming down too fast.
‘Brace for impact,’ he said calmly. He leaned back against the central stanchion of the pod, even his armour’s senses almost blinded by the raging sandstorm that was now within it.
‘Next time, I’m walking,’ Fornix said.
And then they crashed.
He woke up.
I’m alive, he thought, and he felt mild surprise.
His helm display was sputtering and blinking, but the armour’s systems were doing their best to remedy it. Adeptus Astartes power armour was built with dozens of redundancies and fail-safes and, above all else, it was made to take punishment.
The red sigils began to edge into amber. Good enough. Auto-senses were patchy – his hearing was coming and going – but no doubt that would rectify itself, given time. If not, then Brother Heinos–
Where was everybody? Kerne knew that he had taken a bad blow to the head. There was blood inside his helm and in his mouth, but his body, as efficient in its own way as the suit which protected it, had already begun healing itself. Blood flow had stopped. He had bitten through his tongue, and longed to spit, but instead he swallowed the globs of blood that filled his mouth.
His limbs worked. A line of pain burned along the woven bone of his ribs, but that was of no import. He sat up, reaching for the bolt pistol, but it was gone, knocked free by impact along with his chainsword. The ancient armour he wore was dented and scored, but it had suffered worse in its long career.
He checked what was left of his wargear methodically, by touch. And a wave of relief went through him as he felt for the long leather pouch at his waist. Mortai’s banner was still there.
He stood up. His hearing was returning, visual input settling down, and the armour was beginning to feel part of him again, not just a heavy carcass encasing his own.
He looked around, and only in that moment, as the auto-senses righted themselves and came back to full operation, did the world’s aspect finally become clear.
The drop pod lay on its side eighty metres away in a ragged hedge of rubble, broken open like the shell of a hard-boiled egg. By it crouched several Dark Hunters, firing their bolters. Kerne saw the white armour of Apothecary Passarion there, and the skull-helm of Malchai. The Chaplain was gesturing with his crozius.
The roar of battle. Not a skirmish, or a boarding action, but a full-scale war. It enveloped the senses, sent his hearts racing, and sped the rush of adrenaline through his enhanced system. Artillery, salvoes of it, and delta-winged aircraft sweeping overhead, blasting out las-fire.
Dust, in rolling clouds and walls, hanging all around like an ochre curtain, rippled through and through by kinetic missiles of every calibre and seared aside by the fire of energy weapons.
Men screaming – no – things that had human voices, but they were not men. He saw them now, a black, boiling mass of them charging, las-fire spitting out as they came onwards, hundreds of them.
Cultists. Kerne bared his bloodstained teeth. The only weapon he had was a long knife. He drew it and ran, staggering drunkenly as the suit systems readjusted and continued their self-repair.
The wave of cultists rolled towards the Space Marines ahead like a black tide of bubbling tar. Dozens went down, blown to shreds by the bolter fire. The heavy rounds went through two and three of them at a time and blew them clear off their feet, but they did not falter. The sight of their ancient enemy had galvanised them beyond courage, beyond tactical sense – they came on with the remorseless determination of insects in swarm.
The bolters chewed them up. The Dark Hunters stood their ground and calmly picked their targets, firing short bursts, wasting not a single round. When the surviving cultists burst through that withering barrage and threw themselves at the Space Marines, the towering warriors shifted grip on the weapons and began clubbing their adversaries to the ground.
Kerne came up on the rear of the enemy line, and for a few minutes he allowed himself to forget that he was captain of a company, the force commander, the leader of an armada.
For a few minutes he was a simple Space Marine, consumed by hate and bloodlust, lifting these creatures into the air and gutting them, crushing their skulls with his free fist, stamping on them as they went down.
The blood ran in rivulets down the damascened patterns on his armour, and las-bolts careened off the beautifully worked ceramite, hardly felt or acknowledged.
They died to the last kicking, shrieking individual. That one had his face stove in by the blue-crackling crozius arcanum of the Reclusiarch, and when Malchai raised the weapon and badge of his calling into the sky the energy field within the device burned it clean again, the black, filthy blood and flesh of the Great Enemy withering away.
‘Captain,’ the Reclusiarch said, ‘you are well met!’ Kerne had never heard him sound happier.
‘Where are the others?’
‘They were thrown clear, as you were. Only Heinos, Passarion and myself were still inside the pod after it came to rest. I have not seen Brother-Sergeant Fornix or Brother Kass.’
It was hard to see anything that was more than fifty metres away in the smoking storm of this place. The energy discharges all around played hell with infared. Kerne blinked on the company vox, but it was still recalibrating. His comms systems were ineffective, for now.
‘Well, we are on the ground, at least. Give me your pistol, Malchai.’
‘By all means.’ The Chaplain hesitated a moment and then tossed it over. ‘Be careful with it – it was Biron Amadai’s once.’