And over the past hour, he'd been mildly electrocuted twice, burnt his fingers three times and almost fallen thirty metres to the solid rockcrete floor. Hawke was not a happy man. He steadied his breathing and spoke into the vox.
'You might have bloody warned me!' he complained.
'Is it done?'
'Yes, it's done.'
'Very good, you have now armed the torpedo.'
Hawke pushed himself back along the gantry, suddenly very alarmed at the prospect of this armed behemoth being less than a metre from his head. 'It's armed. What next?'
'Now we have to inform the war-spirit within the torpedo the whereabouts of its victim.'
'Uh-huh…' shrugged Hawke. 'And how exactly do I do that?'
'You don't. I will perform that sacred task. Now, I need you to remove a red and gold cable embossed with the rune of telemetry, then—'
'The what? Just tell me what the damn thing looks like.'
Beauvais sighed. 'It resembles a winged triangle with a cog at its centre. It is connected to the war-spirit's seeker chamber. That's the gold box at the top of the panel. Once you have the cable, plug it into the vox-unit's remote triangulation output socket and wait. Once the lights on the vox stop flashing, reattach the cable to the war-spirit's seeker chamber.'
Hawke found the plug and pulled it from the panel. He swore as he saw it would only extend some fifteen centimetres from the torpedo. He lifted the vox unit to the edge of the gantry, propping it against one of the uprights. He slotted the cable home, watching as the front panel of the vox unit faded and the lights arranged around the dial flickered in strange patterns. As the sequence continued he propped himself up on one elbow, looking up at the top of the giant torpedo.
The top of the giant missile was rounded and strangely irregular. There was a serrated, spiral groove cut in the warhead and Hawke guessed that this was to help it burrow through the thick hull of a starship before detonating deep inside.
He waited for several minutes before the clicking sequence of lights finally stopped, then unplugged the cable and reconnected it to the torpedo. He thought he heard a noise below and glanced over the gantry. Dismissing it, he returned his attention to the torpedo as Beauvais came back on the vox.
'The war-spirit now knows its prey, Hawke. Now you must speak the Chant of Awakening to set it on the hunt.'
'Ok, Chant of Awakening… right. And after that, then what?'
'Simply strike the rune of firing upon the—'
Beauvais never finished his sentence as a hail of bolter fire ripped through the vox and blasted it to fragments. Hawke jumped in shock, grabbing onto the upright, very nearly going over the edge of the gantry.
'Emperor's holy blood!' he swore, grabbing his rifle and pressing his back against the cold metal grille in the wall behind him. His breath pounded in his throat and his heart beat wildly against his chest. What the hell was going on?
He risked a glance over the gantry and saw a giant in iron-grey power armour with a smoking gun and a mechanised claw snaking over his shoulder. Men in red uniforms clustered around the warrior, all carrying rifles aimed upwards.
A deep voice, rich and full of threat drifted up to him.
'You are going to die, little man. You have led us a merry dance, but now it is over.'
Hawke shut his eyes tight and whispered, 'Oh damn, oh damn, oh damn…'
Incandescent fire erupted from the first demolition charges, vaporising the chains and bindings holding the first daemon engine in place. Painstakingly wrought symbols of arcane protection were incinerated and the mechanical components of the war machine ran molten under the volcanic heat of the explosion. The scream of the daemon engine's death whiplashed around the battery as the terrifying creature bound within its infernal mechanisms was freed by the blast.
Those closest, even though well clear of the explosives' blast radius, were swatted to the floor of the battery by its shriek of release. A swirling hurricane of etheric energy, insane geometries warping through its daemonic form, tore through the Jourans with the power of the immaterium, turning men inside out and exploding others from within as it shrieked in the throes of its dissolution.
Honsou heard the screech of one of the creatures of the damned and cursed Kroeger again. Where were the men from his company tasked with guarding these precious beasts? Creatures that had required countless thousands of lives and diabolical pacts to conjure into being. The answer came easily enough: drunk on slaughter somewhere, slaking their thirst for blood in an orgy of butchery.
He ducked as a hail of bullets stitched the trench wall before him and a clutch of human soldiers fell, their bodies blown apart by the burst. He racked the slide on his own weapon, then paused as he realised the shots he'd heard were fired from a bolter. Honsou stepped over their bleeding corpses and jerked his head around the bend in the trench. He was stunned to see a Space Marine in yellow power armour firing down the trench. The length of the narrow earthen corridor was choked with bodies and there was no way through.
Hundreds of human soldiers gathered behind him, fearfully clutching their primitive rifles as they crouched in the shelter of this trench. They looked to him for guidance and Honsou snarled as he reached back and grabbed one by the neck, tossing him into the approach trench. The man landed hard and, as he rose to his feet, bolter fire shredded him.
Before the body had even hit the ground, Honsou spun low around the corner of the trench, firing controlled bursts at the Space Marine. His victim crumpled, his armour breached by his shots. Honsou's jaw hardened as he saw the clenched, black fist icon on the warrior's left shoulder guard.
Imperial Fists! The ancient enemy, source of his polluted blood and cause of millennia of misery at the hands of those who were not fit even to serve beside him.
Blind rage took Honsou and he roared in hate, charging through the body-filled trench, the desperate need to kill Imperial Fists driving him onwards. Another yellow-armoured warrior appeared at the entrance to the battery and levelled his bolter, but Honsou was quicker, pulling the trigger and emptying his weapon's magazine at the hated foe.
Sparks and earth flew as his shots ricocheted from the Space Marine's armour.
Honsou screamed in fury, throwing aside his bolter when the hammer slammed down empty, and drew his sword as the warrior before him dropped to one knee and took careful aim.
He felt impacts slam into his chest, but nothing, not even death itself would prevent him from reaching his enemy. Pain ripped through him, but he ignored it, hammering his boot into the Space Marine's breastplate. He reversed his grip on his sword hilt and drove it downwards through the chest of the fallen warrior, hate-fuelled strength driving it hilt-deep into his victim.
Blood splashed him as a flaring explosion thundered through the battery and another daemon engine vanished in a sheet of flames, its shriek momentarily drowning out the noise of the blast. Psychic Shockwaves buffeted Honsou and he felt the ancient malice of a being that was ancient before mankind was born roar through him. He rejoiced in its hate, feeling it consume him, pouring fresh vigour through his body as it took his unworthy flesh for its own. He spread wide his arms, actinic bolts of black lightning arcing from his hands.
Destruction ripped through the battery as the bolts lashed out, indiscriminately ripping apart banks of soil, machinery and groups of soldiers - both enemy and allied.
Honsou revelled in such carnage, though he knew that it was but borrowed power. Flaring purple afterimages seared across his retinas, but he laughed, hurling spears of warp energy into the confused mass of men and machines. His body swelled as daemonic power poured in. His armour buckled and he screamed as joints and sinews stretched, bones cracked and his jaw stretched wide in a soundless cry of agony.