We were brothers on Cthonia, even with our enemies.
He couldn't grimace at the ugly parallel with the fighting here. The Contemptor mask that served as his visage scanned the area impassively, taking in the bodies of his comrades, the Harbingers his sword and claw had eviscerated and the Baneblade he'd reduced to scrap. Around him the warren of streets rang with the sound of isolated, desperate fights. His home world, rendered in fire and metal.
The Battle of the Forge had passed the time for grand strategy and formations long ago. Now squads or individuals fought to find allies and momentary refuge or simply to spill more of the enemy's blood. We wrought another Cthonia in just five days.
A gaggle of traitor soldiers sprinted round the corner and screamed when they recognised the dreadnought's colours. By then the great storm bolter had swung up, and seconds later they were a smear on the rockcrete. He headed in the direction his victims had come from. Sure enough, power armoured figures soon appeared, jogging towards him. A second of tension, then a shoulder guard caught the firelight. Iron Bears. True brothers. He stepped out of the shadows, displaying the amethyst hue of his carapace.
Their leader made the sign of the aquila as he drew to a halt. "Hail, venerable brother. Captain Roanoke, 28th Company."
"Ezekyle Abaddon. What news, captain? The vox has been no use to me the last two days." Radiation and enemy action had seen to that; he had been fighting alone for thirty hours before his chrono gave out.
"We are to make for the hangars, brother. Command deems the planet too badly damaged to be worth holding. We are ordered to seize all we can take and withdraw."
Abaddon had fought xenos, mutants and abominable intelligences. He had endured the breaking of his body and the unique trials of existence in a sarcophagus, but the import of Roanoke's words still rocked him. "We are to… retreat?" He grated. Not one step back had been the mantra ever since that last day on Cthonia. "Well, if every other certainty is being overturned, I guess it was only a matter of time. Which way, captain?"
The Warbringers and traitor skitarii who attempted to waylay them died messily, broken and thrown aside as an old warrior vented a kind of rage he had never felt before. The desolate fury of a man who, for the first time in centuries of war, has tasted the ashes of failure.
Even before being interred, Abaddon had never quite belonged as a Halcyon Warden. However much he relished the prospect of a new family after the exile of his youth, he was too choleric to fit in with most of his brothers, and he struggled to adjust to his gene-father's favoured tactics. The role of advisor which so many of the revered fallen occupied seemed wrong to him, and thus he remained a leader of terminator squads instead. Now those brothers were gone, lost to this treachery.
The Battle of the Forge had plunged him back into his old life, after a fashion. Alone, hunting through the tunnels of debris, fighting vicious battles in the dark, crawling over the dead. Now he could see more of his fellow Loyalists up ahead, assault Troopers flitting from rooftop to rooftop as they set off flares to attract any remaining allies. Transports were loading as the Loyalists prepared to abandon the planet.
The trouble with the flares, of course, was that the Insurrectionists could see them too. Sirens broke out as they reached the hangar, and as they turned to face southeast a booming warhorn sounded. "Titans" spat Roanoke. As if his statement needed confirming, white light suddenly engulfed a tower block about three kilometres away. Through the fire strode a colossus, an Imperator, surrounded by a retinue of smaller Titans and Knight walkers.
"We don't have anything that can even delay that thing," snarled an assault marine sergeant.
"Don't be so certain, sergeant." Abaddon strode over to a stack of munitions. Demolition charges, if he was any judge. "Do your jump packs have any life left in them?"
It was a mad plan, even he was willing to admit that. The upside was that, if he failed, no one would live to speak of it.
The Titans were a few hundred metres out of range when the assault marines opened fire with rocket launchers. As the Titans responded they fired their packs and shot away, pausing only to detonate the charges placed on either side of the concourse. To the Titans it meant little, but their crews were disorientated and their space marine escorts were buried in the rubble.
Now for the mad part. Abaddon burst from cover, storm bolter blazing and missile launcher hurling ordnance as he tore into the leg of the nearest Warhound with his sword. He'd placed himself right among the machines and aimed to cripple any within reach, not destroy them. Hopefully this would give them pause before they opened up with their ranged weapons. The terrain helped, the uneven ground providing a degree of cover and obstructing his attackers. Above him the Imperator turned ponderously, its princeps trying to bring its foot down on the irritant below. No doubt they thought him insane; even the mightiest dreadnought wouldn't stop them for more than a minute. If they did believe that, then so much the better. It would buy him a few more seconds. He could hear enemy Astartes getting closer. He would have to end this soon.
Fire engulfed him as another Warhound joined the fray with a flamer. Abbadon roared and crippled it with a missile to the knee. He tore into his attacker, armour scorched black and his helm's topknot aflame, bellowing war cries in Cthonian, damning them for their treacherous deeds. A canon tore chunks from his carapace, and he felt an unfamiliar sensation within his amniotic cradle. I bleed? Now there really was no going back. Time to finish it.
He switched to Low Gothic, bellowing a furious valediction. "I am Ezekyle Abaddon, son of Cthonia, warrior of the Halcyon Wardens!" As a Knight came at him, he made no effort to parry its huge sword, just twisting enough to avoid his organic remains being speared. As it was the blow was fatal anyway, destroying several vital components, but all that mattered was that his power claw remained functional and he stayed conscious for just a few more seconds. "I die for the living!" he snarled in defiance.
The Knight made to pull its sword out and deliver the deathblow, but Abaddon's talons sunk into its arm and he pulled himself further onto the blade, staring into its ocular sensors. "And I kill for the dead!" At the same time, he severed the failsafes on his reactor, sending it into overdrive. In his last moments he saw the walkers recoil as they realised what he intended, knowing it was too late. Within his cage of fluid, a shark's grin spread across his ruined features. "For the Emperor," he whispered. And the Battle of the Forge claimed a few more hundred lives.