"In His name do we mete out fell justice upon the delinquent sons who would stray from the path of righteousness!"
Seeming only to accelerate with each syllable, Chaplain Ruckluss swung his crozius through flesh and bone, shattering the mindless cultists as they drove toward him. The golden metal crackled with a hot energy field, overpowering the smell of bodies and burnt flesh with ozone.
Twice the chaplain's bolt pistol fired, the fiery muzzle flash lighting his blood drenched death mask before returning him to shadow, death made manifest beneath the ill maintained lighting of the sub level's causeways.
"Without pity do we crush the enemies of humankind!"
Ruckluss' sword brothers struggled to keep up; the Templars' chain blades choked and sputtered, so clogged were they with gore; bolt pistols doubled as clubs once the mass reactive clips had emptied into the throngs of cultists.
Though merely fodder, to give their more heavily armed comrades an opportunity to set up, the corrupted citizens of Hive world Amanis martyred themselves zealously. With weight of numbers they were slowing the Templar advance.
"With fury and hatred do we strike down the betrayer's legion!"
Ruckluss peeled a blood crazed child from his, his black gauntlet uncaring of age or gender.
"He will know the innocent!" Ruckluss intoned, crushing the thrashing human's skull and casting the corpse back into the crowd.
"And the guilty will be judged!"
The whine of las fire caught the chaplain's attention, and with superhuman speed, he lifted an oncoming cultist up to catch the bolt. Not that he feared such a pitiful weapon, but to see the golden Aquila, the Imperium's ultimate symbol of faith, marred by such wretches as these was anathema to the chaplain.
"We will show no remorse!" Ruckluss continued, his bolt pistol snapping up and barking off a shot that killed the sniper before he could seek cover.
Simultaneously, the chaplain's crozius swung down upon a blade wielding woman, her flesh festooned with tattoos and piercings in dedication of her heathen gods.
Already thinking three swings ahead, Ruckluss was surprised to find his target still living and his swing deflected. The still deadly momentum crushed the life from two others, but neither the chaplain nor his foe seemed to notice.
The woman grinned maniacally, her teeth filed to points and her eyes jubilant with the prospect of impending battle. With his guard open, Ruckluss was too slow to prevent her blade from slicing down upon his vambrace.
Imbued with the energies of the warp, the chaos champion's iron muscles transferred far more strength than humanly possible. Her blade, cruelly barbed and still wet with the blood of the hive's human defenders, cut a gouge in the chaplain's armour nearly an inch deep.
Filled with a rage that even these drooling mad cultists would find alien, Ruckluss lifted his crozius over his head and brought it down with all the strength his gene-enhanced physiology could muster.
Again, the champion lifted her weapon with a speed that should not have been possible and stopped the crozius, but at the cost of her bones which buckled and broke beneath the fury of the Templar's assault. Like jelly, somehow holding its form, the woman quivered for less time than the eye could observe, and then the crozius fell again, reducing her grey flesh little more than a smear upon the ferrocrete causeway.
Encased in ceramite skin the bullets seem to lap like gentle waves. But the dreadnought's retort was tidal. The venerable Heimdallr's auto-canon flared into action, ejecting brass casings with such speed and volume that the shell rent divots and craters nearest his weapon soon brimmed with the smoking metal.
The rebels, their minds feverish with hate, swarmed forward, heedless of casualties even as the mag-rail trackway clogged with gore and bodies. Raking bursts of mass-reactive rounds pummelled their ranks, scything through dozens before detonating in the midst of the crowd.
In moments, the onslaught was ended and through the vox, Heimdallr's grating metal voice called to his brethren, "The tramway is clear."
"Sword Brethren, take your squads to the apex of the mag rail," Chaplain Ruckluss said, his steely voice made more so by the distortion of the vox.
"In His name," the brother sergeants replied, their heavy boots already thundering past the venerable dreadnought's frame.
Magnetically levitated ammo hoppers rushed forward. Driven by augmetically enhanced work servitors, they had waited on the fringes of the battle, awaiting the opportunity to rush forward and rearm the dreadnought. Their auspex linked directly to the old Templar, tracking his ammunition, gas levels and vitals.
Dangerous as it was critical, the work was beneath even neophytes of the chapter. So, the task fell to the lobotomized slave workers. Wreathed in cybernetics and cabling, the servitors peeled open Heimdallr's adamantium gun carriage and fed into him a fresh stream of ammunition.
"Ancient Heimdallr," the chaplain voxed, "Your skills are required to breach the Munitorum offices on sub level three."
"By your will, Ruckluss," Heimdallr responded, sounding slightly bored by the exchange.
Ahead, sword brethren Inrhich and Storr led their squads op over the mounds of reddish flesh and into the depths of the mag way. The black of their armour melted into the shadows and, save for the occasional flicker of a flamer gout.
"Thunderhawk Starfire will meet you at dock thirteen."
The brother-sergeants would handle whatever lurked in the darkness, Heimdallr knew, watching them go and wistfully remembering a time, hundreds of years ago, when darkness was tangible, and armour was a case, not a prison.
Turning, the dreadnought regretted letting his consciousness slip into such reverie, and drowned such thoughts with the clank of gargantuan feet against the permacrete hive.
"This is colonel Luriax of the Amanis defence force. Respond damn it!"
Still the vox was silent. Thinking their salvation was at hand, those few elements of the Amanis defence force had dared hope, dared believe that the space marines had descended upon their world as reinforcements, to bolster the surviving bastions of Imperial control and drive back the darkness.
And yet, not a word came through of their intent, their battle plans, their allegiance. For hours now, Thunderhawk gunships, signature of the Adeptus Astartes, had soared overhead, dropping squads of black armoured troops in the ruins, some so close that Luriax could observe them through a spotter's scope. But no word came through.
At the very least, the space marine's arrival had given the rebels something new to direct their rage toward. The assault upon Luriax's command post had gone on for well over a week. Seemingly inexhaustible numbers of blood crazed fanatics had thrown themselves at the compound's defenders with whatever makeshift weapons they could find. Without pause, their madness had continued until Luriax feared his men and supplies had reached the breaking point. But, like deliverance, when the first black winged drop ships had streaked past, those limitless hordes had slunk back into the ruins.
It was not to last. Already Luriax heard reports of renewed activity. Like a hive rat preparing to pounce on some live prey, it was as if the rebels were gathering strength for a new assault. An assault from which there could be no victory.
With the space marines so close, the colonel knew that he and his men could be saved. Though he'd never seen one first hand, he'd heard tales of the Emperor's angels. Of Salamanders and Ultramarines – the imperium's superhuman defenders. Angels of salvation.
These seemed closer to angels of death.
At first, Luriax thought it might be a failure of equipment or frequency that prevented communication. Perhaps some sort of interference thrown up by the rebels. But upon conferring with the auspex logs of those few aerial defence guns still intact, it was clear that the Astartes vessels could transmit imperial authentication, they just never bothered to make contact with the planet's surviving defenders.
It was as if they simply didn't care.
Luriax kept trying anyway. It was not as if there was much else he could do.
So spent were his men that they could do little but hold position. Nearly half of their number had turned coat at the beginning of the insurrection, joining with some nameless cult that had swept up from the lowest levels of the hive.
Those still loyal to the imperium were a miniscule minority, one in desperate need of aid. The squads Luriax had sent out to make contact with the astartes had never reported back, whether because they'd met the rebels first, or been mistaken for rebels themselves, the colonel couldn't tell. Neither notion bid well for those who still breathed.
"Sir, the rebels have renewed their assault!" the officer monitoring the base auspex said, barely quelling the trepidation in his voice.
As expected. Luriax breathed a sigh, hoping that he could hide his fear in a guise of exasperation. But his body language betrayed his emotions. Unconsciously, the colonel put a hand on the las-pistol at his side. Save one, he thought. If the Astartes did not come soon, he knew he'd need it soon enough.
"Crusade control, the rebels appear to be congregating at the location of the PDF headquarters. There appear to be human defenders holding out."
"Noted," Sergeant Jurgen voxed back, his voice monotone.
"Requesting permission to provide close air support."
A moment later, "Denied. Your orders are to collect Ancient Heimdallr and unite him with Chaplain Ruckluss."
"By your will," sword brother Alhuss replied, his teeth gritted. All of this ferrying his brothers back and forth grated at his nerves.
Though most Templars preferred the visceral feel of cutting into an enemy's flesh with chainblade and bolter, Alhuss had long ago discovered his love of the sky. To bring vengeance down upon the heretic, gun pods bristling and auto-canons alight was a feeling that the furious zeal of ground combat could not compare to. True, his brothers saw him as a an outcast for his preference for flight, but in the pilot's throne, the machine spirit of Starfire bucking and screaming to him through the throttle, Alhuss knew that he was where he belonged.
He couldn't resist dipping the nose of his beloved craft ever so slightly and unleashing a burst of fire down upon the cultist horde, relishing in the distant geysers of blood and body parts as the thunderhawk flew overhead.
Besides this brief foray, the trip to dock thirteen was uneventful. The cultists seemed uninterested in taking control of the sky, as if the destruction of the anti-aircraft batteries had been purely incidental.
Heimdallr clambered up into Starfire's hold, mag locking to the plasteel floor while his servitors strapped the dreadnought's venerable chassis in. Eager as he was to take flight again, Alhuss denied the machine spirit's rage, its need to charge forward. No, it would serve them all ill to have several thousand pounds of angry ceramite rolling around in the bowels of the dropship.
"Are you prepared for launch, Ancient Heimdallr?" Alhuss asked, making sure to at least offer a veneer of courtesy when addressing one as old and honoured as the dreadnought.
The sound of phlegmy metal grating against rock answered him for several long seconds. It might have been a sigh, for all Alhuss knew. "Do not bother with these honorifics, little one."
Encased in his armour, Alhuss stood nearly twice as tall as the average human, yet beside Heimdallr, he would indeed have seemed little. That did not keep him from twitching with exasperation.
"Of course, Heimdallr."