Jonah Kerne’s voice came back. ‘Acknowledged. Commissar Von Arnim, target those aircraft, priority call. I want the roadway protected for as far out as you can range.’
Fainter, Von Arnim answered from the citadel gun-caverns. ‘Anti-air-batteries retargeting now, my lord.’
They saw the bright flashes in the sides of the citadel as the heavy batteries opened out. But the Doomfires were flying nap-of-the-earth. They coursed overhead at less than fifty metres, and strafed the helpless vehicles below. A line of explosions rippled along the roadway, and Fornix saw one of the huge thirty-ton munitions haulers blasted onto its side. Another was set alight but kept driving, and the tiny living torches of its passengers leapt off in their dozens, their screams lost in the cacophony.
As the Doomfires pulled up at the end of their run, the guns of the citadel caught them, a wall of tracer and kinetic fire smashing into the Chaos fighter-bombers and knocking them out of the sky. None of the flight survived.
Fornix watched the sight in grim silence.
‘They’re on the move again,’ Brother Laufey said. ‘Squads feeling round our left now, first sergeant.’
They were in danger of being cut off. Fornix looked about him. The tactical feed in his display was full of red runes. They were even advancing through the burning ruins of the manufactoria, clambering over their own dead and shrieking like animals, firing their bolters into the air and sending blasts of promethium fire into every corner.
‘To the citadel,’ he said to the Space Marines about him. ‘There are altogether too many of these scum around for my liking. Brother Laufey, lead off.’
The Space Marines began running again, while behind them the Punisher thousands advanced over the ruins and the shattered city, and above the Armaments District, the immense smoke-pall rose thousands of metres into the air like some fearsome monument to the dead.
Up near the foot of the citadel, Jonah Kerne was in the front line with Septus Squad under Brother-Sergeant Corvo. On either side of them the eldar were fighting with lithe economy, and the air was full of the unfamiliar shriek of the shurikens. Te Mirah went from one of her warriors to the other, emboldening them, her farsight lighting up new or hidden targets for their weapons.
A blood-drenched squad of Khornate berserkers charged through the withering fire, and for a moment she held out a hand and the power streamed out of her, holding them in place, their feet digging uselessly in the dirt. She skewered one with her rune-bright spear, and her people cut the others down, the tiny shuriken wafers slicing them to dismembered meat and metal.
More leapt forward, bearing heavy power axes, gilt horns adorning their helms. Their armour was scarlet with paint and blood, bright and garish compared to the livery of the other Punishers, and they charged with a snarling savagery that eclipsed even that of their fellow traitors.
Jonah Kerne raised his ancient bolt pistol and carefully shot the first two through their eye-lenses, then shouldered aside a third, its axe fizzing near his head. He plunged the chainsword down into the thing’s neck, felt the blade grind its way through the vertebrae, and the head rolled free.
‘Target left,’ he said curtly to Corvo’s squad, and the Space Marines half-buried in rubble and almost unseen opened up with their bolters in short, savage bursts which tore up the assault. The Khornate fanatics died to the last, the red mania of their fury burning away all thought of retreat. They piled up like a crimson barricade before Corvo’s warriors.
‘Reload,’ Brother-Sergeant Corvo said calmly.
The big munitions haulers had arrived at the gates of the citadel. Out of a convoy of seven, three had survived. One was still burning half a kilometre short of the Dark Hunters position, and the Punishers swept around it in a black, yellow-flecked tide. Thousands were now closing in on the gates of the citadel from all points of the compass, iron filings drawn to the magnet of the Adeptus Astartes and their allies.
Fornix came running up with Laufey’s squad. He met Kerne at that mound of enemy dead and raised his power fist in greeting. His fingers dripped with blood. ‘Quincus and Sextius squads are coming in on the right, captain, and Orsus is bringing Tertius up from the east. We must hold here until they join us.’
‘I hear you, brother.’
Behind Kerne, General Dietrich made his way forward, leading a platoon of his own 387th, their uniforms in rags. A Leman Russ tank was barking out to one side, smoke leaking from battered holes in its armour, and off to the left the command Baneblade of Dietrich’s regiment squatted like an immense armoured toad, belching flame. The general was firing a laspistol and the gauntlet-blades glittered in his other fist. Kerne noted with approval the steadiness of his exhausted men. There was no notion of retreat in their eyes – the Guard was not yet beaten.
‘Fornix,’ Kerne said. ‘Let us see if we can make them pay a toll for this gate.’
Then he bent and opened the leather pouch at his waist, and drew out the company banner. The plasteel staff telescoped out, and the tattered material rose above his head. Mortai’s Cerebrum et Haliaetum rose above the battlefield of Askai for the first time, and as the surrounding Space Marines caught sight of that ancient banner, they sent up a roar.
The Dark Hunters rose out of the filth and rubble, and opened up on the approaching host with a blaze of furious bolter fire. Warriors from Novus Company set up their meltaguns and heavy bolters and flamers and poured streams of death into the oncoming ranks.
Kerne walked ahead of the line, the banner raised high in one fist, and he had to fight the impulse to charge headlong into the enemy, to deal out death with fist and sword, to break the body of the hated foe at close range and feel their life give out under his hands.
His brothers were seized by the same exaltation. They strode forward, still firing, still picking their targets with all the ferocious efficiency of their calling, but it seemed to Jonah Kerne in that moment that if he let them, they would gladly hurl themselves forward into the fray with no thought for tactics. Their blood was up.
Other squads joined them, there before the very gates of the citadel. Kerne saw Sergeant Orsus there, and Sergeant Kagan came up alongside with his squad, then Sergeant Rusei with his. As they assembled under Mortai’s worn banner, so their dogged spirits were uplifted by the wanton killing, the roar of war, the company of their brethren.
For a few minutes, the band of Dark Hunters advanced across the battlefield like tawny, dust-shrouded giants and dealt out such death with such glorious abandon that the carnage seemed almost to take unto itself a strange kind of beauty.
They were Adeptus Astartes, the finest warriors in the known galaxy, and nothing could stand against them.
But the moment passed. The exaltation faded. The Punishers advanced over heaped lines of corpses and kept on coming, bellowing like the beasts they were. And to the rear of the infantry the warped crab-like hulks of half a dozen Chaos Dreadnoughts were coming up. Jonah Kerne collected himself, and looked around.
‘Back, brothers, back to the gates. There are too many – we cannot hold them here.’
They fell back by squad, whilst the eldar and Dietrich’s forces covered their withdrawal. They dragged back with them the bodies of three of their own, and as they reached the gates, Brother Passarion was there, with Reclusiarch Malchai and Elijah Kass. The Apothecary at once went to work on retrieving the gene-seed of his fallen brethren.
‘Malchai,’ Jonah Kerne said. Even over the vox, such was the sound of the fighting that he had to fine-tune his auto-senses before he could hear himself. ‘Is everyone else in?’
‘Everyone who is still alive,’ the Reclusiarch said. ‘You are the last, captain. Commissar von Arnim has defensive fire-zones keyed in all around the gate and the lower defences. Once we are all inside he will signal the barrage to begin.’