'Take those ships out!' yelled Loken as the craft, sleeker, more elegant Thunderhawk variants, turned their guns towards them once again.
The Astartes spread out as the under-slung gun pods erupted in fire, and a torrent shells tore through their position, ripping thick columns in two and sending up blinding clouds of grey dust. Two warriors ducked out from behind a fallen wall, one aiming a long missile tube in the rough direction of the flier while the other sighted on it with a designator.
The missile launched in a streaming cloud of bright propellant, leaping into the sky arid speeding after the closest flier. The pilot saw it and tried to evade, but he was too close to the ground and the missile flew straight into his intake, blowing the craft apart from the inside.
Its blazing remains plummeted towards the ground as Vipus shouted, 'Incoming!'
Loken turned to rebuke him for stating the obvious when he saw that his friend wasn't talking about the remaining flier. Three tracked vehicles smashed over a low ceramic brick wall behind them, their thick armoured forward sections emblazoned with a pair of crossed lightning bolts.
Too late, Loken realised the fliers had been keeping them pinned in place while the armoured transports circled around to flank them. Through the smoking wreckage of the burning bunker, he could see blurred forms moving towards them, darting from cover to cover as they advanced. Locasta was caught between two enemy forces and the noose was closing in.
Loken chopped his hand at the approaching vehicles and the missile team turned to engage their new targets. Within seconds, one was a smoking wreck as a missile punched through its armour and its plasma core exploded inside.
'Tarik!' he shouted over the din of gunfire from nearby. 'Keep our front secure.'
Torgaddon nodded, moving forwards with five warriors. Leaving him to it, Loken turned back towards the armoured vehicles as they crunched to a halt, pintle-mounted bolters hammering them with shots. Two men fell, their armour cracked open by the heavy shells.
'Close on them!' ordered Loken as the frontal assault ramps lowered and the Brotherhood warriors within charged out. The first few times Loken had fought the Brotherhood, he'd felt a treacherous hesitation seize his limbs, but nine months of gruelling campaigning had pretty much cured him of that.
Each warrior was armoured in fully enclosed plate, silver like the knights of old, with red and black heraldry upon their shoulder guards. Their form and function was horribly similar to that of the Sons of Horus, and though the enemy warriors were smaller than the Astartes, they were nevertheless a distorted mirror of them.
Loken and the warriors of Locasta were upon them, the lead Brotherhood warriors raising their weapons in response to the wild charge. The blade of Loken's chainsword hacked through the nearest warrior's gun and cleaved into his breastplate. The Brotherhood scattered, but Loken didn't give them a chance to recover from their surprise, cutting them down in quick, brutal strokes.
These warriors might look like Astartes, but, up close, they were no match for even one of them.
He heard gunfire from behind, and heard Torgaddon issuing orders to the men under his command. Stuttering impacts on Loken's leg armour drove him to his knees and he swept his sword low, hacking the legs from the enemy warrior behind him. Blood jetted from the stumps of his legs as he fell, spraying Loken's armour red.
The vehicle began reversing, but Loken threw a pair of grenades inside, moving on as the dull crump of the detonations halted it in its tracks. Shadows loomed over them and he felt the booming footfalls of the Titans of the Legio Mortis as they marched past, crushing whole swathes of the city as they went. Buildings were smashed from their path, and though missiles and lasers reached up to them, the flare of their powerful void shields were proof against such attacks.
More gunfire and screams filled the battlefield, the enemy falling back from the fury of the Astartes counterattack. They were courageous, these warriors of the Brotherhood, but they were hopelessly optimistic if they thought that simply wearing a suit of power armour made a man the equal of an Astartes.
'Area secure,' came Torgaddon's voice over the suit vox. 'Where to now?'
'Nowhere,' replied Loken as the last enemy warrior was slain. 'This is our object point. We wait until the World Eaters get here. Once we hand off to them, we can move on. Pass the word.'
'Understood,' said Torgaddon.
Loken savoured the sudden quiet of the battlefield, the sounds of battle muted and distant as other companies fought their way through the city. He assigned Vipus to secure their perimeter and crouched beside the warrior whose legs he had cut off.
The man still lived, and Loken reached down to remove his helmet, a helmet so very similar to his own. He knew where the release catches were and slid the helm clear.
His enemy's face was pale from shock and blood loss, his eyes full of pain and hate, but there were no monstrously alien features beneath the helmet, simply ones as human as any member of the 63rd Expedition.
Loken could think of nothing to say to the man, and simply took off his own helmet and pulled the water-dispensing pipe from his gorget. He poured some clear, cold water over the man's face.
'I want nothing from you,' hissed the dying man.
'Don't speak,' said Loken. 'It will be over quickly.'
But the man was already dead.
'Why shouldn't we be fighting this war?' asked Mersadie Oliton. 'You were there when they tried to assassinate the Warmaster.'
'I was there,' said Loken, putting down the cleaned firing chamber. 'I don't think I'll ever forget that moment.'
'Tell me about it.'
'It's not pretty,' warned Loken. 'You will think less of us when I tell you the truth of it.'
'You think so? A good documentarist remains objective at all times''
'We'll see.'
The ambassadors of the planet, which Loken had learned was named Aureus, had been greeted with all the usual pomp and ceremony accorded to a potentially friendly culture. Their vessels had glided onto the embarkation deck to surprised gasps as every warrior present recognised their uncanny similarity to Stormbirds.
The Warmaster was clad in his most regal armour, gold fluted and decorated with the Emperor's devices of lightning bolts and eagles. Unusually for an occasion such as this, he was armed with a sword and pistol, and Loken could feel the force of authority the Warmaster projected.
Alongside the Warmaster stood Maloghurst, robed in white, Regulus - his gold and steel augmetic body polished to a brilliant sheen - and First Captain Abbadon, who stood proudly with a detachment of hulking Justaerin Terminators.
It was a gesture to show strength and backing it up, three hundred Sons of Hours stood at parade rest behind the group, noble and regal in their bearing - the very image of the Great Crusade - and Loken had never been prouder of his illustrious heritage.
The doors of the craft opened with the hiss of decompression and Loken had his first glimpse of the Brotherhood.
A ripple of astonishment passed through the embarkation deck as twenty warriors in gleaming silver plate armour, the very image of the assembled Astartes, marched from the landing craft's interior in perfect formation, though Loken detected a stammer of surprise in them too. They carried weapons that looked very much like a standardissue boltgun, though in deference to their hosts, none had magazines fitted.
'Do you see that?' whispered Loken.
'No, Garvi, I've suddenly been struck blind,' replied Torgaddon. 'Of course I see them.'
'They look like Astartesi.'
'There's a resemblance, I'll give you that, but they're far too short.'
'They're wearing power armour… How is that possible?'