Red Hold
By Emperorbassexe
The large, clawed, fingers of the power fist flexed in anticipation at his side before the gauntlet lifted upwards towards his face. Idouma idly inspected his newly acquired weapon; his thoughts hardly straying to his chain-axe that rested in his cell back aboard the Burning Ire, which now hovered in low orbit above the ravaged planet where the Berzerker was headed. The wicked power fist wasn't his originally; Idouma had inherited it – as well as his position – when his original champion and squad leader, Keerax, had been ripped in half by a Minotaurs dreadnought on Cycelos III. He turned his wrist, letting his dark eyes settle upon the skull-rune of Khorne welded in bronze upon the back of the fist's hand; the Chaos Marine allowed his lips to twist into a brutal sneer. Keerax had led their Berkzerker squad across countless battlefields, it was a fitting end for him to incapacitate his killer with a melta bomb, thus allowing Idouma and the rest of the World Eaters to blast the dreadnought's sarcophagus open with their plasma pistols and then hack viciously at the remains of the veteran within.
The Khorne Marine clenched the pointed digits of the power gauntlet into a fist, silently vowing that the antique weapon would be soaked in blood this day. Idouma turned his attentions to the interior of the Dreadclaw; nodding to see that his fellow Berzerkers were deep in their pre-battle chants and preparations, slowing speaking the mantras that would unlock the restraints built into their modified minds, timing the mantra so that by the time they had impacted upon Dalaque VII's, they'd be deep under the psychotic rage of their legion and would emerge onto the battlefield as frothing maniacs.
His smirk returned, and Idouma lifted his head to regard the chronometer built into the ceiling of the Dreadclaw, his close-cropped black hair brushing against the restraint webbing of the back of his seat as he did so. They were close now, the shock of turbulence aiding the chron in expressing that knowledge.
"Squad, indicate status." He snarled, and despite his fresh induction into the rank, his squadmates responded their champion immediately, the nine of them sounding off their status as all clear and ready for glorious battle. "Acknowledged." Idouma replied before setting his ornate helmet upon his head, his grin turning feral behind the visor, "Blood for the Blood God!" he roared as a cocktail of combat stimms and implant-induced rage flooded his system, his regular gauntleted fist smacking into the thick steel of his seat, denting it.
"And Skulls for his Throne!" his squad chorused as their own fury overtook them. Moments later, their pod shook with a thunderous impact as it slammed into the surface of the planet. The hatches of the Dreadclaw slammed open like the petals of some obscene crimson flower, and torrents of water flooded into its interior. Undeterred, Idouma slapped the release button of his restraints; and the action was mirrored by his squadmates. As they waded through the flow, Idouma's helmet sensors detected trace amounts of chlorine in the waves, and emerged thigh-high in the deeper end of a public swimming bath for recreational use. The impact of the Dreadclaw had shattered the once-elegant tiled mosaic at the bottom of the pool like so much brittle glass.
They sloshed through the heated waters, their gristly helmets filtering out the sulfurous stink that betrayed the naturally occurring origins of the baths. Idouma tilted his helmeted head towards the cold twilight of the early morning, turning the snowdrifts in the plaza around them crimson with the light of the sunrise. Fat snowflakes settled languidly onto the 'T' shaped visor of his helm as troop deployments and the barked orders of Lord Arshavir flittered in through the vox feed in his helmet.
He wasn't surprised when a withering hail of las-bolts sliced downwards from the surrounding hab-blocks bordering and towering over the plaza where the Berzerkers stood, Dalaque VII's defenders having easily noticed the Dreadclaw's cataclysmic landing nearby. The shots blistered against the surface of Idouma's armour, doing little more than scorch away the crimson paint that the World Eater's favoured. The Berzerker Champion plucked his plasma pistol from its belt holster and returned fire at one of the nearby balconies.
The large, teardrop-shaped burst of violet energy streaked into the balcony, ripping through the balustrade to smash into the cluster of Imperial Guard crouched there. One managed to flee into the hab-block before impact, but the other guardsmen were too sluggish to duck back into cover. Their clothing and flesh ignited and were flash-burned before their forms were seared to ash-motes in the echoes of their dying screams.
Idouma heard the staccato retort of his squad's 'Khorne's Teeth' pattern bolt pistols and the familiar screech of the two plasma pistols apart from his own. The cries of dying Imperials were absorbed by his helmet and Idouma grinned. He stabbed the index claw of his power fist forwards, towards the direction of their assigned objective and the Berzerkers waded through the sulfurous waters to reach it. Their boots cracked the steps at the baths edge as they stomped onto the plaza proper amidst the attempted suppressive fire from the guardsmen. Idouma only sparsely returned fire, his attention focused upon his assigned task of finding the Basilisk Artillery battery that prevented his fellows amongst the Warp Scars from establishing a proper beachhead to assault the palace of Dalaque VII's planetary governor.
They briskly strode down the war-torn boulevards of the hive-city, firing as they went; while the manufactoriums, hab-blocks and storefronts – in various stages of damage – framed their advance. Idouma's eyes flickered skywards as the shrieking form of a Warp Scars Dreadclaw fell earthwards a few blocks away. Idouma, Lord Arshavir, and his World Eater's warband would greet their Astartes brothers when they could; but for now there was killing to be done.
They continued onwards at a swift pace wholly at odds with their armour clad forms, the enemy guardsmen took pot-shots from the burnt husks of buildings as they went. This was usually answered by boltgun fire or and idly tossed frag grenade to silence their attackers. Idouma felt the faint tremours of other Dreadclaws landing in the streets nearby, and confirmatory blips sounded from his vox as battle was joined by these fresh marines against the planetary defense force and the Imperial Guard.
As the Berzerker Champion kicked aside a snowdrift in the shattered lee of an obliterated Leman Russ battle tank, a trace of movement was caught by the peripheral of his eye. Idouma turned; bringing the glowing muzzle of his plasma pistol up to meet the new threat. He paused upon seeing the filthy form of a street urchin clad in scavenged rags. The girl couldn't have been out of her teens, and regarded the Chaos marine with wide, frightened, eyes as she froze under his steely gaze in the middle of the cracked road.
Idouma snorted, letting his pistol drop. Lord Arshavir's faction found civilians to be incredibly poor combatants at the absolute best of times. Their occasional adrenaline surge and hysterical flailing with the nearest semi-harmful object of firearm could be momentarily amusing to be sure; but in his experience, the killing of noncombatants was unfulfilling. It always proved to be boring, lazy, work; and that was a feeling echoed by Lord Arshavir and the rest of their splinter faction of the World Eaters. Khorne deserved skulls that had to be earned in pulse-pounding combat between two foes; not harvested from the weak, pathetic fools who cowered in fear whilst their civilization collapsed around them.
"Flee, you little worm!" Idouma snapped in annoyance, his helmet vox turning his voice a deep, metallic, baritone. The girl started, breaking from her fear-induced stupor, and scrambled for shelter on the far side of the boulevard with a squeak of terror.
The sudden peppering of las-bolts against and around the Leman Russ wreck diverted the Berzerker Champion's attention to the far intersection of the street. Idouma stepped smoothly behind the cover that the tank afforded, the internal systems of his helmet of his helmet picking out the guardsmen with red icons on the lens-screen. Idouma flashed a feral grin, the fools had decided to try picking his squad off from the street rather than the upper floors of the nearby buildings. "They seek to gun us down at ground level, let us show them the wrath of Khorne!" he snarled over his squad's internal vox link as the energy field of his power fist crackled to life.
Spinning around the husk of the tank, Idouma sprinted towards the enemy position, his squad stomping along in his wake. The flurry of lasfire that answered their charge smacked against Idouma's armour, little of it managed to weasel past the hellish ceramite. A bolt hissed against the side of his neck; piercing the padding nestled there, it was a singe of pain amidst the thrum of battle and the berserker haze – Idouma welcomed it and the focus that pain gave.
A heavy bolter was sluggishly shoved into position adding extra weight to the firepower that stormed against the Berzerker squad. Idouma's helmet system beeped as a bolt clipped Adonis in the elbow joint of his armour, the resulting string of curses indicating that the battle-brother was more angry at his injury than in any real pain.
The squad leader didn't bother looking over his shoulder to survey Adonis' wound, his system status-feed showed its estimate of the damage by the link to the battle-brother's own armour system. It was an annoying little application of the irate machine spirit of Idouma's armour that he would've forced Dark Mechanicus officials to remove long ago if it hadn't kept him up-to-date on his squad's combat status. The estimate indicated that Adonis' armour was all that was keeping his forearm attached to his body. There was no blood, laraman cells clotted the arterial spurt as soon as it made contact with the outside air.
As long as Adonis was combat-capable, that was all that mattered. As if to make up for this development, the wounded marine in-question gave an extra burst of speed, entering the edge of Idouma's vision. The Champion noticed his battle-brother holster his bolt pistol and pluck the still-growling chainsword from the limp grasp of his injured arm.
Idouma fixed his attention forwards just as he reached the crumbling barricade the Imperials hid behind; he leapt over it to land amidst the masses of his hastily retreating foes, his squad followed suit. A bayonet scraped against his chestplate and Idouma turned automatically, his power fist swatting out and turning the offending soldier's ribs to powder and pulping his internal organs. The Berzerker Champion stepped over the corpse, the roar of his squad's chain weapons and the panicked cries the Imperials ringing in his ears. Idouma swayed away from a questing bayonet, seizing the lasgun with his fist and crushing it, the power-field melted the weapon into slag while the Champion brained its owner with the glowing bulk of his sidearm.
His eyes flickered through the melee, watching the nine Berzerkers under his command hack savagely at the guardsman platoon. Even as he watched, Adonis smashed aside an imperial with the chainsword gripped by his good arm, Karna crushed his fallen opponent under his boot, Alvar gutted the heavy bolter team with the whirling edge of his chainaxe, and many other scenes of glorious bloodshed. Idouma broke from his observation to search for a specific target, faintly understanding that it would be some of the first to die in this melee; and his eyes narrowed when he saw it. The shaven-haired platoon sergeant was trading blows alongside one of his fellows against battle brother Drusus.
Despite being outnumbered, Idouma's fellow Chaos Marine needn't any assistance, even as the Champion rushed over towards Drusus and his opponents, he could easily see that the fellow Astartes was toying with the sergeant and guardsman; his sweeps with the chainaxe he favoured were languid, almost mocklingly sluggish and yet still nearly eviscerated the Imperials with every pass. The sergeant evidently knew this, spouting strings of Imperial curses as he tried to shift his chainsword under Drusus' swift guard.
Idouma nodded to his World Eater subordinate as he neared, "Leave the squad leader, brother; I'll take it from here."
With a growled, reluctant, "Yes Champion" Drusus stepped forwards and snapped the trooper's neck with an elbow strike, then turned off to stomp to another part of the swiftly-ending melee, leaving the astonished sergeant in Idouma's shadow.
Sensing Idouma's helmet-hidden glare, the platoon leader spun to meet it, his eyes narrowed in fury and conviction before stepping back and bringing his laspistol to bear upon the Chaos Marine.
"For the Emperor!" he roared in conviction as he fired. The lasbolt gouged a vertical furrow at the brow of Idouma's visor, snapping his head back ever-so-slightly with a similar effect as if a hab-wife had decided to punch him in the face.
The Champion's glare intensified, "Blood for the Blood God." He snarled softly in retort before stepping forwards to meet his enemy. The sergeant's chainsword rasped across Idouma's breastplate, drawing forth a shower of sparks, before the Imperial swung in back on the return stroke. Idouma caught this next blow on the wrist of his power fist, and the imperial guard weapon sprayed broken and melting teeth upon impact. The World Eater batted the chainsword away with a sudden twist; and stepped within his opponent's reach to ram the index-claw of his power fist through the sergeant's sternum. The imperial gasped with the blow, his lips trying to draw air into his lungs even as they burned, making him appear like a caught fish. Idouma dragged the edged point of the index-claw upwards sharply, cooking the mortal's internal organs with the movement and a flare of the power field. The champion turned and hurled his slain enemy, the stiffening corpse slamming into the cracked, snow caked pavement with a bone-jarring crunch metres away.
The sounds of the briefly lived combat had ceased. "Skull count!" Idouma commanded as he strode towards the bodies of his victims, holstering his pistol as he went. The sheer ferocity of the Berzerker squad's charge had slaughtered a majority of the guardsman platoon in the opening seconds of combat, the Imperial's standard-issue flak armour doing little to turn aside the razor teeth of the astartes chain-weapons. Those few troopers who hadn't been slain outright after the initial charge fared little better than their fellows; managing to extend their miserable lives for a few seconds more by fighting for them.
"Thirty skulls for the Throne!" Brother Kettil called out after a few moments of the squad comparing their kill-tallies. Idouma nodded, his lips curling into an evil smile; there had been no casualties amongst his Berzerkers, and no major injuries had been suffered apart from Adonis' arm. All-in-all it had proved to be a momentary distraction; though Idouma's squad hadn't turned their foes into gory paste as so many of their World Eater brethren would have across the stars, sadly enough.
"Gather the skulls and be prepared to move on." The champion commanded unnecessarily as he stooped over the corpse of the trooper he'd bludgeoned with his plasma pistol, the fool's skull may have been fractured, but it was still good enough for Khorne – any skull was. Switching off the power field of his gauntlet, he reached down to carefully seize the dead man's head between his fore-claw and thumb while his free hand tore the short, brutal, scimitar at his belt free of its sheath.
It proved to be short work, and minutes later the Berzerkers were marching onwards; their gristly trophies and offerings to the Skull Throne dangling from their belts. The minutes passed uneventfully in silence, the distinct lack of enemy combatants to stand against them grated on their enraged nerves. This led Idouma to believe that something was amiss as they navigated the shattered remains of the upper floor of a manufactorium, shafts of early dawn lancing down from the broken ceiling like ethereal pillars.
His inference proved correct as his enhanced superhuman hearing picked up a rising screech. Idouma didn't bother looking up but turned his jog into a full-blown run, "Ordinance! Forwards!" Even as the World Eaters ran in-step with their squad leader, the whistle of the incoming shells reached their peak the instant before impact. With an earth-shaking boom, the ordinance exploded, blossoms of fire bloomed – spraying thorns of shrapnel and leaving metres-wide craters in their wake. The manufactorium shook with the impacts, while what little remained of its ceiling crumbled down around the rushing astartes. Fist-sized chunks of jagged rockcrete rained down to batter upon the armour of the Chaos Marines, scratching the paint even further.
The tortured floor gave way in places, caving-in upon the floor below with the rattling crescendo of tumbling rockcrete. The artillery fire was obviously from their objective, the Basiliskbattery most likely being alerted to the encroaching threat that the Berzerkers posed when its layers of rearguard failed to periodically report in. Though alert, the suppressive ordinance was inaccurate; the Imperial Guard crews only having a vague telling of the coordinates for the Chaos Marine's position. Still, it proved an effective tactic, though not as oppressive as it would be if all of the Basalisks in the battery had opened fire upon them according to Idouma's pre-battle briefing. He wouldn't be surprised if the battery commander had ordered half of the artillery tanks to divert their attention towards the Berzerker's direction while letting the other half to remain in their efforts of trying to prevent the Warp Scars from establishing a beachhead.
The floor yawned a crevice ahead of him and Idouma leapt over it without pause, but the impact tremours and weakening floor caused the edge to collapse under his armoured weight. He gave a snarl of frustration, his power-fist clawing at the rockcrete for purchase. The clawed fingers carved grooves into the surface of the artificial stone, spraying sparks as they established a stable grip. The champion hauled himself upwards, rolling as he did so to swiftly stand and continue his sprint as if he hadn't been interrupted.
His squad continued onwards, the indiscriminate fire hammering the walls around them to rubble, the World Eaters passed mangled assembly machines as they neared the stairwell at the end of the immense room. Idouma tore the door off its hinges and descended towards the ground floor with his squad, their pauldrons scraped against the wall as they filed down four-steps at a time. They burst onto the ground floor, the chunks of the floor above raining down to add to the debris field of debris below. The horizontal shaft of light from the blasted entrance doors shone around thirty metres away and the Chaos Marines rushed to this exit with due speed.
Idouma and his berzerkers emerged into the sharp, white, glare of sunlight. The street they were on shook with the Basiliskfire that indiscriminately smashed into the buildings behind them. The champion checked the map on his lens-visor for the estimated position of their objective. "Status?" He snapped over the vox link.
"Fibula's fractured, knee armour is compromised." Boian replied with the same air of someone ordering a mug of recaff, he moved with a limp and the side of his greave was beset with a series of deep cracks.
Idouma grunted in acknowledgement, knowing that such an injury would do little to slow Boian down and wouldn't disable his fighting ability. "When you see the slaves of the False Emperor, return the favour."
Boian nodded, "Of course, Champion." He said with relish.
The squad leader returned his attention to the map, the position of the Basiliskbattery was close now, a few hundred metres at the most. H fixed his gaze to the skies and used his helmet system to calculate the trajectory of the offending shells, it confirmed the coordinates of the objective. They crossed to the other side of the boulevard and moved in the morning shadow of a hab-block complex that had been abandoned in the earlier stages of the battle. Idouma paused as they neared it, realizing that the ordinance had stopped. He flicked power-fist to the side, indicating that they circumvent the complex rather than waste time by navigating through it.
As the squad to do this, Idouma's helmet targeters blipped and bordered something in red in one of the broken upper-floor windows, he twisted his head aside in time for the sniper bullet to strike the branching Khornate fin on the side of his helmet rather than through his visor lens. His helmet rang and the text-scroll banks in his lens rattled briefly to static.
"Snipers!" Drusus roared, and the Chaos Marines opened fire as one, peppering the upper windows of the hab blocks with boltgun and plasma fire. Idouma joined in, eager to snuff out the coward who thought to end him. His effort proved fruitful, as the shrieking blast from his plasma pistol sliced through the window where he had first been alerted to movement. The window frame deformed and melted from the passing heat and the champion saw a fleeing silhouette the millisecond before his shot impacted. His helmet rewarded him by picking up the death scream and idouma nodded in satisfaction. The Imperials returned fire, but were unable to make accurate pinpoint shots in the firefight – they had overexerted themselves and the bloody impacts from the Berzerker's fullisade could be seen through the shadows of the habs.
Steadily, the Chaos Marines ceased fire as the enemy shots had stopped, Idouma saw one badly wounded sniper crawl to a crumbling windowsill and attempt to sluggishly raise his weapon – only to be struck by one of the Berzerkers bolt shells as they fired again, the dead man slumped to the side before his corpse slid to the floor, out of sight. The fool has actually attempted some form of glorious last stand , to the champion's amusement. "Onwards, our target is near!" he fanned out with his power-fist and the Berzerkers continued. At the junction after the hab-complex, they turned and marched down the boulevard in their original direction. Upon reaching the next street corner, Idouma signaled a halt as his helmet system's estimated distance counted chimed down, he edged around to peek.
There lay their objective, the Basilisk artillery unit was dug in at the remains of one of a city park. The snowy ground was churned up by the passing for tank treads, while sandbag emplacements flanked the mangled remains of the park gate. The artillery tanks were still firing, all of which were now aimed towards the city proper and away from the Berzerker's direction. The park had proved an excellent point in which to delay the advance of the Warp Scars and their allies from reaching the seat of government of the planet; it was a position they couldn't allow to become compromised. Even now, the guard platoon for the battery was mobilizing, behaving much like a colony of insects when their hive or colony is disturbed. Idouma would have to guess that they were agitated by the lack of hail coming from their snipers in the habs.
The Basilisk tanks, with their long guns angled to the sky, had been dug in their position in large trenches, the better to absorb their thunderous recoil upon firing. While a standard and somewhat viable practice, this left the battery vulnerable in that they had to twist and exit via side-ramp and as such cost them speed and time to flee. Idouma took all of this in at a glance before turning to address his squad. The orders he gave were curt and brutal, a tactic they had practiced on thousands of battlefields. They maximized the volume on their external vox-feeds and double checked their weapons.
They broke from cover and charged towards the ravaged park, "BLOOD! BLOOD FOR BLOOD!" the Berzerkers roared, the revving of their chain-weapons split the air as they rushed the artillery battery like a tidal wave of testosterone, rage, combat stimms and ceramite. Though shaken, the guardsmen of the battery were quick to react, and las-shots streaked towards the oncoming Chaos Marines. A lucky shot speared itself in Idouma's armpit as he raised his hand to snap off a shot with his plasma pistol; he ignored it – his aim remaining steady despite the impact. The plasma bolt took a trooper high in the chest, toppling him as a heap of charring ribs and burning flesh.
The Berzerkers reached the park and Idouma swung as he moved to smash the section of stone wall ahead of him to pieces and charged inside. Like bloody waters bursting from a dam, the World Eaters flooded through the gap; shouldering aside bits of rubble, widening the gash in the wall. The Imperial troopers stood clustered ahead of them, still firing sporadically in the shadows cast by their tanks. Their efforts proved as effective as those of their late comrades, the las-fire clipping against the armour of the Chaos Marines and only occasionally causing a light, inconvenient, wound. One actually brought his lasgun up un a blocking maneuver as Idouma's shadow swiftly fell across him; if this attempt at a guard was born out of determination or fear, Idouma didn't care – his power-fist turned the fool to singed paste just the same.
The swirling hurricane of melee combat was joined, and the Berzerkers thrived; Idouma heard the frantic and agonized screams of the Imperials as his Berzerkers butchered them and he started chuckling, turning as he did so to backhand another trooper who attempted to stab him with a bayonet. Suddenly – Boian's name-rune on his visor turned flicked from healthy, throbbing, crimson to black, cold, dead. Idouma turned in time to see his fellow Berzerker's corpse crumple to the ground, headless; while his killer walked around it towards Idouma. The Imperial Commissar flourished his sabre-style power-sword, his ebon greatcoat flapping in the cold wind before lifting a bolt-pistol towards the Chaos Champion and fired.
Idouma flicked his weapon up, taking the shuddering impact of the shot on the crackling forearm of his bulky power-fist. He snarled and stomped forwards to meet his new adversary, and the Commissar responded in kind, his expression unknown beneath the rebreather mask that covered his nose and mouth. The Imperial Officer swung, forcing Idouma to block using the knuckles of his power-fist against the blade the discharge of their power fields crackling as the two forces met. The Commissar flicked his sword away and under, slicing horizontally through Idouma's breastplate to skip across his fused ribcage as the Champion danced back in an attempt to dodge. Idouma didn't shirk from the new wound, but rather curled the clawed fingers of his weapon around the blade as it completed its arc, ensnaring it in an adamantite grip. He then struck with his plasma pistol, angling the firearm so that it hit the Commissar's hand with the glowing, superheated, coils on the back of the weapon. The Imperial officer shrieked, his sword-arm heavily burned through his now-melting leather glove and greatcoat sleeve, relinquishing his grip on his sword.
Idouma let the sabre clatter to the earth, its power field melting the muddy snow around it as it landed, and seized the Commissar around the torso as he lifted his bolt pistol to fire at the Champion's visored face; trapping the gun-arm along with his midsection amongst the curling, clawed, fingers of the fist. Idouma clenched his weapon and the Commissar screamed as his arm and ribcage shattered under the pressure, blood coughing from the vents in his rebreather as shards of broken bone pierced his lungs.
Streams of superheated air shot inwards from the side of the park to repeatedly pound the sides of the Basilisks, melting their hulls to molten slag before they exploded in a spectacular series of fireballs that knocked the few remaining Imperial Guard flat with the resulting pressure wave. Idouma twisted the dying Commissar around in time to see the sinister, blue-armoured forms of the Night Lords Chosen squad emerge from the shadowy recesses of the nearest alley, the haze emanating from the barrels of the meltaguns they carried served as evidence as to who had killed the tanks. Idouma turned the officer to stare into his eyes from behind his helmet, "Yes, pitiful slave to the False Emperor," Idouma spat to the wheezing officer's face, "my squad and I were merely a distraction for you whilst Kurrnaz and his fellows could infiltrate to your position."
The Commissar's eyes clouded, his breath lessened and then ceased altogether as his form went limp in death. Idouma holstered his sidearm before unsheathing his scimitar to slice the officer's head off. He let the body drop into the snow to join the corpses of the men it had led in life. The Berzerker Champion lifted his offering to the skies as more and more Chaos Dreadclaws and dropships rained down from low orbit to aid in conquering the planet below. His squad mirrored him, their chain-weapons dripping gore from the freshly slain platoon; Boain's skull would be added to this offering as a testament for his own valour. After all, Khorne didn't truly care who he got his offerings from.
"Blood for the Blood God!" The squad roared.