A/N: This is my first foray into the realm of 40K fanfic. It's proving to be good clean fun to write, muah ha haaaa... I claim artistic licence over some things, such as extra SpaceWolf successors etc. So with that in mind, please be gentle ;)
Disclaimer: The Dark Millennium was not invented by me. Anything you recognise belongs to GW, but I was just reading something that actually encouraged me to go off and write backstory/fanfic, so I guess they don't mind. The Night Reapers and the Iron Wolves are Chapters that I came up with a while back. I'm becoming rather fond of them.
Night Reaper Chapter 1: 'Fear Incarnate'
Master, they come. The mind-voice was young, and weary with months of unending battle. They have trolls.
Zakath was on his feet issuing orders before the sense of the neophyte Librarian's words had even truly registered in his mind. 'Hasdrubal! Flamers, front and centre. Imurresh, ready your men.'
Even in the almost absolute darkness of the manufactorium cavern, Zakath could clearly see the scarred, power-armoured form of Veteran Sergeant Hasdrubal, hauling his brothers to their feet, issuing orders, praising them in the Emperor's blessed name.
The Night Reaper Librarian smiled tightly, the thrill of coming battle threatening to wash away the weariness of unending toil. He drew his Force sword from its scabbard beside his armour's power plant, and activated his psychic hood. He felt alive, his power coursing through him, adding to the strength of his enhanced body and the fury within, ready to be released.
Withdraw to the barricades, he instructed Nyarleth.
A huge dark shape loomed before him, and resolved into the towering form of Brother Edmund. The Iron Wolf was light on his feet, for one armed in Tactical Dreadnought Armour. Attrition amongst the Iron Wolves stationed here on Hades Tertius had left the ancient brother in joint command of the remnants of his company, along with the Apothecary Canute.
'My squad will hold the first barricade.' Five other Terminators lined up behind him, their expressions grim. Edmund hefted the autocannon he held in one huge fist. 'This will slow them, a little.'
The Night Reaper considered his words. The autocannon and storm bolters of the veteran squad would undoubtedly give the beasts pause for a moment or two. A moment was all; Zakath doubted Edmund had even a full magazine in the thing. Still, the veteran warrior was an Iron Wolf, and not under Zakath's command at all. He nodded curtly.
Edmund held out one massive hand, and Zakath clasped it, his own armoured fist seeming tiny by comparison. 'Emperor's light on you, Librarian,' he said gruffly. 'Not that you need it, of course.' The Iron Wolf's craggy face didn't look any softer when he smiled, especially as it revealed the long canines that were the legacy of the gene seed of Russ.
'And you,' Zakath murmured. It had come to it after all, a last stand of the sort so beloved of the ancient sagas and tales. He determined to do his Chapter and his Primarch proud. These sons of Corax, although they may fall beneath the tide of filth and damnation that threatened to overwhelm them, these sons would fight until the last breath left their bodies. This he knew without a shadow of a doubt. That was all they asked, an honourable death fighting the foes of the Emperor, the foes of Mankind.
Beside the makeshift shrine, Brother-Sergeant Imurresh brandished the huge mace he had fashioned from a twisted girder, and howled the Chapter war cry. It was not a wolf howl like that of the Iron Wolves, but a weird, thrilling, terrifying shriek designed to put mortal fear into those that heard it. His warriors responded in kind, each man armed with whatever he could scavenge from fallen foes or the wreckage of the manufactorium itself. The ammunition was running out and many men had lost parts of their armour. Most of the battle plate they were wearing seemed more repair cement than ceramite these dark days.
Zakath himself had lost his helmet, and the ceramite of his breastplate and left pauldron was deeply scarred by claw marks.
The assault squads with their makeshift weapons followed Imurresh into the darkness and the labyrinthine mess of the factory floor. They had long since broken up the beltways and automatons to form a maze of barricades and ambush points against the waves of beasts that daily tried to sweep through this narrow, yet immense cavern.
An echoing bellow of rage announced the start of the new battle. Zakath could hear the distant crack of high velocity rifles as hidden snipers on the gantries above took aim and fired. He pushed out with his mind, seeking the bright spots of his battle brothers and oath-brothers at the first barricade. Edmund was almost incandescent in his fury, and after a second or two the powerful roar of the autocannon reached Zakath's enhanced hearing.
He needed a better view. With his sword in one hand, the Librarian bounded up onto a wrecked factory belt, and from thence up on to the turret of a smashed Chimera tank, destroyed before it had even truly come to life. His night vision, acute even by the standards of the Astartes, easily picked out the lumbering forms of the monstrous, Chaos-tainted beasts lumbering towards the first barricade. That they towered over even a Chimera tipped on its side said a great deal about their size. One swung a huge, spiked chain at the Iron Wolves who blazed away at them with holy bolter fire.
The chain caught one stalwart brother in the shoulder. Such was the strength of Terminator armour that he took it solidly, hardly flinching. The chain wrapped around his arm, and the troll hauled it back, actually dragging the veteran marine to his knees. The warrior howled in fury, bringing his storm bolter to bear on the beast. Explosive rounds stitched a pattern of gaping wounds across the monster's ugly face, blowing chunks of quivering, Chaos infused flesh away from the thick bone of the creature's skull. It shook its head, confused at the pain. The veteran kept firing, chips of bone and misting blood flying in all directions. Flame gushed over the thing, adding the blessing of searing fire to the punishing stream of bolter shells turning its flesh to shredded meat. Hasdrubal and an Iron Wolf grabbed the captured brother, trying to haul him away.
Zakath knew it wouldn't be enough. Reaching inside himself, he sought the holy fury that he had kept pent up since the last encounter with the beasts of Hades Tertius. The Darkness was a part of him, and he welcomed it now, feeling it flow into being, a shimmering aura of energy that only he could perceive. He gazed fixedly at the mighty trolls, four of them, threatening to smash his oath-brother's line. His lips moving silently in a prayer to the Emperor, Zakath unleashed his power.
He could see the tendrils of absolute black that wrapped around the heads of the monstrous trolls, seeking their orifices, worming into their eyes, ears, noses and mouths. It cocooned their senses in nothingness, cutting them off from all sensation – except pain. The touch of the Darkness was agonising to the beasts of Chaos, burning out their eyes, melting eardrums and choking their throats with their own saliva turned acid. They howled, or tried to, voices ruined. He kept it on them, and they thrashed about blindly, stumbling into the jagged metal of the barricade. It surged inside him, wanting slaughter, wanting the utter destruction of the Emperor's enemies. It was hard to keep it contained at moments like this.
Brother Ennesh, Hasdrubal's chosen second, lobbed a handful of frag grenades amongst the trolls and the explosions tore wet gobbets of flesh from their huge bodies, melted tough hide and vaporised inner organs in an almost blinding flash of light in the dark cavern. The sullen boom rumbled over the battlefield, and Zakath was extremely glad that the Mechanicum Adepts who had dug this place out of the living rock knew what they had been doing. One fault in the rock, one grenade, and the whole thing could come down on top of them.
The roar of Edmund's autocannon petered out in a series of fitful stutters. The mighty warrior's ammunition had run dry at last. With an ululating howl, he cast the weapon aside and activated his chainfist. Climbing the barrier, he seized one of the stumbling beasts by the throat and drove the whirring chainblade into its melting eye. Black blood and brain matter slicked his iron grey armour, misted on his face and ran down his cheeks. He howled again, joyous with the lust of battle. His brothers followed suit, their own ammunition spent. The flamers of Hasdrubal's Reapers lit the furious melee with intermittent gouts of flame, illuminating more twisted forms beyond the trolls.
Zakath felt that lust too, the desire to get to grips with the enemy, to punish them for the mere fact of their existence. He was moving forward before he even realised, leaping from the turret of the wrecked tank. The instant his heavy boots hit the floor, he was running, ducking round the maze of barricades. He drew his bolt pistol, muttering the Reapers' Canticle of War.
'Purity through combat, blessing through faith, victory through fear...'
Twisted shapes ahead of him now, horned and bestial. They had bypassed the barricade, somehow. Zakath did not have time to wonder how, not yet. Ugly, malformed and brutal, these beasts were all the Fourth Company had found in the deep caverns of Hades. The population of the Forge Warrens had seemingly vanished from the deeps of the world, replaced by... these.
Crude axes swung towards him, the snuffling snarls and barking howls of the beastmen only serving to build his rage higher. How dare they walk like men, these vile creations of Chaos?
'I know no fear...'
He crouched, the powerful muscles of his legs enhanced by the properties of his power armour, and leapt over their bestial, horned heads. He spun as he landed, textbook, his Force sword describing a crackling arc of pure psychic energy that cleaved drooling heads from misshapen shoulders.
'For I am fear INCARNATE!' He heard his roar of hatred as if from a vast distance. It was almost as if he watched himself in the practice cages back in the House of Night. His bolt pistol kicked in his fist, spitting pure death at his foes, blasting twisted limbs apart. The explosive shells detonated inside the creatures, bursting them like wet paper sacks full of meat. He loved it, and screamed his rage in the face of one brute, firing point blank between its eyes. Its skull exploded outwards in a shower of grey matter and bloody mist. Blood from the slaughter was hot and wet on his face; he could taste its copper tang on his lips and tongue. It coated his midnight blue power armour, obscuring his heraldry and the symbols of his calling. It was right, and it was good.
To his right, power armoured figures pounded along a stationary factory belt, leaping over the useless power cables and wrecked automaton arms. Bolter shells whined past him, tearing apart their targets in a hail of fire. But the beasts kept coming.
Zakath ducked under one mighty axe and swept his blade up, burying it in the ribcage of the drooling creature. It screamed, a startlingly human sound, and Zakath kicked it off his sword. It went down under the hooves of its fellows.
Blood slicked the stone floor, twitching corpses and tangled ropes of entrails making the footing treacherous. Zakath found he had a clear space around him, and took the opportunity to centre himself, reaching out with his power. He could sense the fierce battle at the first barricade, Edmund and his Iron Wolves leading a vicious counter-charge against the beastmen who almost clogged the approach tunnel with their numbers. In the gantries above, his scouts fired upon any beasts that chanced within their sights. He could sense Nyarleth bolstering his brothers' efforts, sharpening their senses and their bloodlust beyond that of even a full Astartes.
Pride in his young Chapter, and the honours they would surely win swelled within him. The Ultramarines, the Space Wolves, the Raven Guard... Names that rang with a mighty history of battle. The Night Reapers, with less than five centuries of history to their name could not hope to be counted amongst the mightiest yet, but he knew that one day men would speak of the deeds of his Chapter with awe.
Around him battle raged. Zakath flicked filthy blood off his blade, and sought more foes. Where had the beasts got around his brothers at the barricade? Then he sensed it – something so wrong that his gut twisted in disgust. It was tainted, no, soaked in the power of Chaos, a foul blot in his perception. And it was coming this way.