Ten more down. But they had scattered now; the target was dispersing, returning fire and feeling out around March’s squad for a flank.
‘Primus, break right. Terciel, cover fire,’ March barked.
The Space Marines got up and sprinted down the street some fifty metres. Even as they ran, they let off short bursts and single shots, all aimed at the targets they had logged into the auto-senses in their suit systems.
But one Punisher got lucky. A champion of their kind with the head of a human soldier hung lifeless and staring round his neck for decoration, he stood firing his plasma pistol after the running Dark Hunters in endless bursts until Brother Terciel cut him down.
One of those energy bursts caught Brother Arrun in the back of his leg, blasting through the ceramite and burning through fibre-bundles, flesh and into the bone. The Space Marine dropped, cursed, got up again and his leg buckled under him, the burned bone fracturing like charcoal.
The others dragged him into cover, bolter-rounds splashing up dust in the street at their feet, a few sparking and screeching off their armour. Brother Fallon took one in the side of his chest and merely grunted as it went through his armour and found a lung. Then he kept firing.
‘Terciel, join us, we will give cover,’ March said tersely.
The Dark Hunter from Novus Company got up at once, hefted his heavy weapon, and sprinted down towards them while the rest of Primus – even crippled Brother Arrun – kept the Punishers occupied with well-placed fire.
Terciel joined them. ‘They’re still working on the gates, brother-sergeant, and a fresh company is coming up from the south.’
‘Captain,’ March said on the vox, ‘this is Primus, do you read?’
Nothing. ‘Damn them and their jamming,’ March said. ‘I’ve never known it so bad, and I fought these scum first time around. Arrun, how is the leg?’
‘Healing, sergeant.’
‘Can you run?’
‘I will.’
‘Good. Fallon, what of you?’
‘Round in the lung, sergeant. It’s all right, I brought a spare.’
Finn March considered. His squad had slain perhaps thirty of the foe, but there were as many more still working on the gate, plus another company – say eighty – coming up on them.
Against six Dark Hunters, two of whom were wounded.
Good enough odds, March thought.
‘We are going to attack,’ he said.
Brother Terciel set down a base of fire, streaming rounds down the street and peppering the gatehouse. The enemy had gone to ground there now and a veritable storm of bolter fire was streaming from their positions, most of it wild.
March and his brothers kept moving. In the flashlit dark, with the cameleoline blending them into their surroundings every time they stopped, they could make staggered dashes through the ruins and then fade into near-invisibility again.
Arrun was dropped off to cover the approaches from the south, where they could already see a crowd of the enemy making their way up what had once been one of the main thoroughfares leading out of Sol Square. They were bunched up, firing at every shadow, yelling and bellowing like beasts in rut.
‘Delay them here,’ March told Brother Arrun. ‘Use grenades. When your bone has reknit, or they are within a hundred metres, join us. Remember what First Sergeant Fornix told us, brother – this fight is not for glory.’
‘Acknowledged,’ Brother Arrun said.
The rest of the squad moved up towards the gate, approaching from the south while Brother Terciel kept a heavy fire down on the enemy from the east.
March pulled back the cocking handle of his bolt pistol to peer into the chamber. He let it go forward again quietly, hefted his chainsword, and thumbed the power-button.
‘We go in hard. Grenades out first and then in close, brothers. We clear the gatehouse, set up there, and call in Brother Terciel. Then we make a stand. The enemy must not open this gate. Brother Kass has told us that they are forming up outside the walls in vast numbers, with vehicles and all manner of other filth. The longer we keep them out the better it will be.’
Not a word. March smiled bleakly inside his helm, and lifted the whirring chainsword. ‘Then let us be at it.’
He turned and sprinted across the open space leading up to the gatehouse, a tall, bulging pillbox of a building which guarded the lock mechanisms. The rest of the squad spread out to his flanks and began clicking grenades off their belt-dispensers. As they drew near, they were finally noticed as dark blurs of motion, and a shout went up from the enemy.
The Space Marines did not pause, but flicked out the grenades before them. Some arced with unerring aim into the gunslits of the gatehouse; others exploded so close to the charging Dark Hunters that the shrapnel kissed their armour.
They opened up with bolters from the hip at five metres, while March leapt in as silent as a ghost and with one swing decapitated a Chaos champion who had risen in his path.
A hedge of fire erupted around him as his brothers came up on either side. Above their heads, broken rockcrete began to rain down as Brother Terciel shifted the fire of his heavy bolter to the gunslits further up the gatehouse.
They cut down eight of the enemy, and then were inside, firing at point-blank range, booting the bodies of the dead aside, changing magazines again, tossing grenades around corners and then hurtling into the smoke and dust and hot shrapnel like weariless angels of slaughter. The enemy were startled, confused, but also numerous, and as the dead piled up, so more leapt forward to take their place.
The Hunters were grappling at close quarters now, fighting with bolter butt and blade, the fight slowing down. Warrior for warrior, the Punishers were almost as physically strong as the Dark Hunters Adeptus Astartes, and it took March and his chainsword to break the threatened stalemate. He slashed the enemy to the ground here, there, wherever one of his brethren was struggling, breaking up the fight again. The Punishers seemed stunned by the ferocity of the assault.
A grenade at his feet. March was blown to one side, red sigils flashing in his helm display. He saw that Brother Moshiri was down, badly wounded, and he clambered to his feet again and slew the Punisher warrior who stood over the fallen Dark Hunter, a snarl of pure hate leaving his mouth as he hacked the enemy warrior almost in two at the neck, the chainsword carving deep into the ceramite and flesh, finding the hearts within and tearing them to gobbets.
Then it was done. On the vox he heard Brother Fallon in the chamber above him.
‘Locking mechanism secure, brother-sergeant. Eleven enemy dead up here. A good accounting.’
‘Get back down here,’ March said. ‘Terciel, on my location. Set up in the lower chamber. Help Brother Moshiri. Brother Arrun, sitrep.’
The clatter and crack of close-range fire came over the vox, along with Brother Arrun’s voice.
‘Full enemy company about two hundred metres short of your position. All grenades gone.’
‘Can you exfiltrate, Arrun?’
‘Negative, brother-sergeant. They’re teeming around me like ticks. I will hold them here as long as I can. Mark my location for gene-seed retrieval, brother. Faces change, names change–’
‘But the flesh endures,’ March said, completing the ancient Hunters proverb.
‘Continue the fight without me, brother,’ Arrun said. ‘I mean to make them pay before they get by. Arrun out.’
March remained staring at the bloody floor of the corpse-strewn gatehouse for perhaps two seconds. Brother Arrun had been in his squad for thirty years.
Then he rose, and shook the congealed meat out of his chainsword.
‘Firing positions,’ he said. ‘Enemy company approaching. Let us be sure and welcome them, brothers.’
Primus Squad, or what was left of it, took up position at the firing slits of the gatehouse, while Brother Terciel barged through the doorway and then turned at once to set up the heavy bolter.