Part One, Chapter Two
As the drop-pod slammed into the ground with a bone-jarring crash, Terrion was already freeing his restraints and cycling through the last diagnostics of his power armour's internal systems when the doors fell away and flooded the interior with light. His ceramite boots crunching down on the broken rockcrete at his feet, the Chaplain swiftly took stock of the situation. The two drop-pods of his strike team had landed right at the entrance of the ancient city, the massive hive impossibly large and obscured from orbital scanners by thick clouds of dust and ash. It once had a name, but after hundreds of years of neglect, it had been all but forgotten.
"Form up! Watch your sectors!" called Sergeant Rios, assembling his tactical squad around him. Four battle-brothers of the Second Company took formation around their brother-sergeant, racking boltguns and checking equipment. Brother Pirius hefted his heavy bolter, its long ammunition belt jingling as he walked. Behind them, Sergeant Tremarus and his Terminator squad stomped into view, their mammoth suits of Tactical Dreadnought Armour making them easily twice as tall as a man, carrying double-barrelled storm bolters in their hands. This deployment was all Sophion could spare from the main force, which was even now moving to engage the greenskin infestation near the outskirts of the city.
"Chaplain." Rumbled the Terminator sergeant in greeting, his face inscrutable behind his broad, skull-white helmet. Terrion nodded in reply, gesturing for Tremarus' squad to take the lead.
The hab-spires of the ancient hive towered over them like grim sentinels, carrion birds cawing and fluttering around their hollowed structures to indicate an utter lack of life. Broken rockcrete littered the roads and every here and there was a pile of debris, masses of twisted metal where some of the smaller hab structures had collapsed after centuries of ill-repair. But Terrion immediately noted evidence of activity as he spotted a foul mark of the Fell Gods, the putrid sign of Nurgle, scrawled over one of the walls. Sergeant Rios knelt down, poking at a patch of broken rockcrete with his bolt pistol.
"Someone has come through here." The tactical sergeant remarked, leaning his considerable weight on his power sword as he looked up along the road, noting the distortions in the rockcrete that indicated heavy footsteps. "Not long ago, it would seem."
"Should we suspect an ambush?" voiced one of the Marines, brother Travok, of Rios' squad.
"We should always be suspecting an ambush." Replied brother Morghost, one of the Terminators.
"Brother Tremarus," said Terrion, raising his hand to silence further debate. "Take your squad and move down the centre of the street. If there is an ambush waiting for us, draw the cowards out of hiding. Brother Rios," the Chaplain drew his crozius arcanum, the ancient power mace crackling with energy. "Left side."
The Life Takers hastened to obey, the Terminator squad steadily advancing down the centre of the street, presenting the most obvious target to any guns that may be waiting. In their Terminator armour, the battle-brothers of Tremarus' squad were as tough as any battle tank, and could weather more than enough punishment to give the Space Marines time to bite back at their attackers. Rios led his men down the side over trails of broken rockcrete, his Marines staying to cover, ever watchful for any signs of danger.
"Contact." Rumbled Ishan, the Terminator's storm bolter rising to firing position and sighting down the street.
"Hostile?" voxed Rios.
Before any of the Life Takers could say anything more, a hail of gunfire flashed in and peppered them with what could only be bolter fire. Tremarus grunted as a bolt round struck his scarred chestplate, shifting the Terminator slightly on his feet. Bestial wails and foul chants resounded further down the road, coming from a ruined hab-unit. Reacting instinctively, the Marines returned fire with their own weapons, their bolters answering their assailants' shots in a percussive, rattling staccato. Auto-senses tracked movements and outlines brief shapes in the ruined apertures of the structure, highlighting the silhouettes of hulking, pustular figures in power armour.
"Evidently." Growled the Terminator sergeant as his storm bolter barked an angry reply to the shot that had connected with his armour.
"Brothers, with me!" Roared Terrion as he surged forwards to meet the foe, incoming fire zinging around him like a swarm of angry wasps, cutting the air with his ancient crozius, the relic hammer sparking with power. "By blood and honour!"
"We kill for the Emperor!" came the thunderous cry from the other Life Takers as they completed their revered battle-cry, their words punctuated by the sharp reports of their bolters.
Slowly, their foul enemy rose to meet them, emerging from the shadows in disorganised ranks as their slow, implacable footsteps took them towards the charging Life Takers. Their algae-green armour corroded and bloated with decay and rot, the very ceramite warped by disease, the Plague Marines came into full view, their own twisted boltguns steadily spitting bolt rounds at the Life Takers. Terrion felt his hatred rise as he beheld the foul traitors of humanity in the flesh, Chaos Space Marines that had given their lives and souls to the Plague God, Nurgle, and their very presence was sickening and repulsive. Putrid bile dripped from weeping sores on their armour, every Plague Marine leaving behind a trail of steaming ooze behind him as they advanced in a wall of diseased plate armour. Their answer to the war-cry of the Life Takers was a long, drawn-out moan of ruined throats and lungs, a wordless call to their dark god.
Terrion's wrist-mounted storm bolter was bucking wildly as the Chaplain fired a steady tirade of bolt rounds at the enemy, the heavy shots punching into one of the foremost Plague Marines who staggered as explosive impacts slammed into his own armour. Sickening vomit-brown fluid spilled from the few wounds that opened up on the traitor's body, but the Plague Marine didn't seem to feel it as it returned fire with its own gun, punching a trio of bolts into the Chaplain's shoulder plate, scoring the ancient suit and tearing a piece of prayer script from the night-black ceramite.
The distance closed to twenty meters, ten meters, five meters. Terrion could smell the stomach-churning stink of the Plague Marines as he closed in, his armour's respirators insufficient to cut through the Warp-ridden stench. Behind him, he could hear the steady roar of Pirius' heavy bolter battering at the traitor Marines with a relentless hail of death, knocking some of them off their feet, their armour perforated with holes from the heavy bolter's fury. The snarl of brother Riddic's chainfist powering to life cut the air just as the weapon's howling teeth cut the air, the Terminator charging in an unstoppable advance. Several of the Plague Marines drew short, heavy blades in response, cruelly-edged swords that festered with plague toxins that could overwhelm a Marine's enhanced physiology and kill him within seconds of infection.
The first Plague Marine falls to Terrion in a spray of gore as the Chaplain's blazing crozius crashes down on him like a blacksmith's hammer, the metal wings of the aquila on its head smashing through the ceramite of the traitor Marine's armour and turning his upper body to ruined biological pulp. Drenched in foul liquid the Chaplain whirls around and sweeps his mace in a backhand strike that knocks another Plague Marine's head from his vile shoulders, putrid gore fountaining from the neck-stump as the severed helmet lands several meters away. The body takes a while to fall over onto its back, until Terrion kicks it over as he riddles the enemy with gunfire from his storm bolter. Bolt-traces streaked between the two sides as they exchanged furious volleys of gunfire, but it was an uneven match. The massed firepower of the Terminators' storm bolters and brother Pirius' heavy bolter caught many of the Traitor Marines in a howling crossfire, bloated figures folding and coming apart in sprays of corrupted gore, shredded by bolter fire. The Terminators were right in the thick of the fight, storm bolters blasting at point-blank range while their crackling power gauntlets tore through the traitors' armour, rending them asunder. Terrion spotted Rios duelling with a particularly large, hulking Plague Marine, the sergeant's power sword a glowing blur of coruscating energy as it clashed again and again with his adversary's broad, corroded blade.
"Let them feel our holy fury, brothers!" roared Terrion as he knocked a Plague Marine's legs out from under it with a sweep of his power mace.
"No mercy for the traitor!" answered Rios as his opponent made the critical mistake of drawing its sword back in preparation for a two-handed stroke. Like a striking snake, Rios' power sword lanced forwards and punched through the Plague Marine's midriff, spilling noxious ichor onto the sergeant's metal boots as Rios twisted the blade, mangling whatever passed for internal organs in his enemy's gut. The Plague Marine, all but impervious to pain, brought its sword crashing down on the sergeant's helmet, but before the blade could connect a gladius flashed in and parried the stroke. Brother Jadin, one of Rios' Tactical Marines, grinned savagely as he threw back the Plague Marine's blade and drove his gladius straight into the traitor's rotted visage, the metal blade passing straight through the remains of the Plague Marine's brains as it burst from the back of its skull.
The fight did not last, and the final Plague Marine quickly disintegrated into a bloody heap as Pirius placed a dozen bolt rounds into its torso. All that remained of the enemy were lumps of foul-smelling gore and ruined husks of power armour. No victorious cheer rose among the Life Takers, no rousing calls to celebrate their triumph. Spent magazines were replaced and storm bolters were rearmed with cold precision, and the Life Takers pushed on, weapons at the ready.
There was nothing worth celebrating at that point. It was no victory, merely the first taste of battle that they would be soon plunging into as they advanced into the foul heart of the city. They would rejoice when they had finished their mission, and only then. For now, they had the Emperor's work to do, and none of them wished to be found wanting.
