Chapter 35: Vengeance of the Chosen
"Thirty eight, thirty nine, huh. Full forty." Hacari Amphoshe stares out the slitted armorglas panels of the stormbird as the last Word Bearer from Candor-Two strides through the airlock and into the depths of the Vengeful Spirit. Two full breacher assault squads had plodded inside, heavy slab armour and enormous shields mark them as unique among their companies, compared to the array of legionnaires in neat tightly packed blocks on the embarkation deck.
Once more the Colchisian flight officer turned his attention to the Sons of Horus and the half dozen storm eagle gunships slipping into the clearly marked loading zones. The green-plated legionnaires were impressive, they always had been. The Colchisian man smiles, lost in his thoughts. Despite the hectic pace, he'd watched the other company, the 13th if their banners Imperial Gothic had translated from the Cthonic scratch, was any indication. Now he was looking over the 25th, looking at the golden Eye of Terra and watching as neatly arrayed lines of legionnaires seem to strain against their formations to get into the holds of the smaller, nimble gunships.
The Word Bearers had so often felt rigid, regimented, awaiting the Stormbirds with calm detachment. But something in the tension and slight waver here and there as legionnaires were finally let loose to their transports set Horus's warriors apart. They were coiled springs, awaiting violence. The shades of pale green and black rimmed in brass and gold struck him as both barbaric and colorful compared to the drab grey of his own legion.
Again, all of this may have just been the Vengeful Spirit. The embarkation deck was a cavernous expanse, and everything from serried ranks of troopers to dreadnoughts, and even predator strike tanks were loading up into the holds of the bigger Apex landers. The Fidelis Lex and Chronicles of Ash must be the same, but he'd never been aboard the enormous Glorianna ships. It was a little ironic that the Vengeful Spirit was his first.
Hacari smiles, hanging on to the inert engine throttle toggle above the pilot's throne. With a sigh, his breath frosts the window as yet more troopers emerge from the lowest depths, apothecary crew by the white... but they were Sons of Horus, they might be specialists or drop troopers form all he knew.
The navigation servitor clicks, a little chime as it repeats some maintenance instruction to itself. "Begin." it murmurs in its deadened monotone.
With a garble rasp, a low shudder and guttural whine passes through the silvered decking and shakes Amphoshe from his revelry. "Hey, hey easy!" he huffs, looking down into the vestibule at the entombed servitor. But the slow whine of the turbofans sends another telltale judder through the flight deck.
With a sudden look of alarm, the flight officer looks up to the handle of the engine toggle he'd inadvertently grasped a moment before. He shoves it back with a worried stutter as another voice clicks through the flight cabin. "Hacari, stop screwing around!"
"It's not me!" he calls and looks out as the low tap of mag-rails scrapes. "I swear-"
The servitor gives a warning blurt from its alcove, and the vast aircraft slides to the side as the mag rail comes untethered.
Pitched from his feet Hacari skids a meter before crashing down into a navigation flight bank head first. His vision swims and ears thrum with the sound of hiss heartbeat. The flashing red warning lights pierce the foggy haze inside the darkened cockpit, and the man unsteadily pulls himself from the floor to slump across the instrument panel. With a groggy groan, he spits out a tooth and reaches up as blood spills down his lips and stings his eye from a gash on his forehead. His handhold slips as the ship tilts crazily to one side. "Hey, shut down. Emergency shut down! You hear that you stupid tin can!"
The servitor blurts out some nonsensical binary chatter. And with a low verbose growl, the main engines scream to life. Hacari scrambles across the uneven floor, pulling on the back of the pilot's throne as he sees flashing red glyphs and icons everywhere. Caught in the myriad of flashing red, he can hear the garbled speech, tinny and warbled through some static rasp.
"...TC si-... -bort engine sta... -peat, abort..."
Inside the hangar, the flight control signal was nearly completely unintelligible. That was impossible. For a second, Hacari looks up as the Stormbird Candor-one slides to its side and slowly yaws towards the long line of embarking troops as well as the golden light spilling from the tall aerial traffic control hub beyond. He could see the operators inside, their blurry shapes scurry back and forth through the wide semi-circle bay windows spewing light out as they oversaw the coming-and-going of attack craft all day...
How could he not hear them when he could SEE them?!
Slamming his fist onto the engine's automatic shut-down, the servitor gave a blasè blurt of machine code. And with a low croak, he heard the fuel pumps cycle to life.
In a single long glare, Hacari watched in mounting horror as a pair of entering Storm Eagles tried to pitch back and away from the neatly marked landing boxes. He watched the crowds of hundreds of legionnaires looking up at his Stormbird. He could see the Dreadnoughts slowly turning their towering weapons on him just as the throaty snarl of the afterburners kick in.
The servitor's disaffected mechanical growl spits out a series of codes before muttering in its detached monotone drone, "Glory to the martyrs."
The steady clap of armored footfalls echoes across the embarkation deck. Legionnaires in polished sea-green plate stride through the wide grey halls of the Vengeful Spirit, fresh from the armory and fully loaded for a combat drop. They weave among one another, talking in their closed channels while barely keeping back that pulse of nervous energy. The grey-clad crewmen stand nearer to the walls, making way respectfully for the living warrior-kings.
Hashutz knew it all. He could feel it.
Cthonic gang script on black pauldrons and polyn plates said they were assault units. The massive turbofan jump packs confirmed it, but their confidence radiates in waves from them in some mocking swagger; eager to kill, eager for their chance to die. They would have it. Delicious. He saw their leader, the small streak of red across his helmet the only indication of rank aside from the massive hammer. As his twenty breachers approach the elated knot of warriors, an innocuous Colchisian rune twinkles into existence in the corner of his helmet.
'Begin.'
The Cthonians would not move. They would not give way to the sons of the Urizen aboard their own ship. Hashutz nods, head tilting a bit as they feign giving way. Squad Bakkus back up against the interior wall, braced.
It was all as planned.
With a howling scream and a world shattering judder, a monumental impact tosses the warriors and plunges the world into utter darkness. A massive rocking impact picks them up and thrashes them against the hall like a petulant child does to their toys. Despite being braced, Hashutz slams against the wall and is thrown like a rag doll, bouncing his head from the wall and is sent skidding across the decking. It cracks an eye lens as he crashes head first into the base of a fallen plasteel stanchion, leaving him to stare up at the ceiling from the flat of his back. The grey interior is momentarily lit by sparks sizzling from blown out lumin orbs. But the red-yellow glow of fires and the howling roar of venting atmosphere sends a spike of adrenaline through his veins.
He calls softly into the com net, "Arise!" Hashutz laughs as his preysense casts intricate green wire-frame overlays and picks out debris, ruins, and the mangled corpses of the crew.
Like a flipped switch, the clean and ordered white-grey plasteel grating of the Vengeful Spirits starboard main embarkation deck corridors were plunged into darkness. The wall had buckled star-wards from a massive exterior impact, and even now, flames from electrical fires lick along the walls towards the scream of venting atmosphere sucked from the deep gashes. Exposed panels hang from the walls in tangles, still spewing sparks and gouts of rippling fire.
The klaxons hadn't even started when he spots the first movement in front of him. The Cthonic sergeant slowly lifts his head from the floor from where he lay splayed out in the middle of the hall. His jump pack sparks, one thruster hanging ungainly pointed downward. But dazed and confused, he was already reaching for his pistol, the shock wearing off in mere seconds.
Ages too late.
Hashutz' bolter stretches out as he takes careful aim, and with a single barking shot, sends a bolt through the sergeant's eye lens. The back of the Horusian legionnaire's helmet bursts out in a spatter of misted brain matter.
Here and there, bolt shots ring out, as does the guttural roar of a flamer unit as a sudden bloom of heat and light licks across the far wall. The Sons of Horus still left in the hall struggle to their feet, just like the Word Bearers. But cruel hooked blades and point-blank bolter fire pulls down the surprised Cthonians just as the shield wall begins to find some semblance of order in the broken hall.
"Arise, for the Urizen!"
Shaken by the blow of a god, the blackened corridor becomes an abattoir. The cries of stunned legionnaires and screams of wounded crew as the Word Bearers surge to their feet and start the push, backtracking the legionnaires. Hashutz plucks the hammer from the sergeant's corpse and follows the legionnaires straight towards the armory.
The Vengeful Spirit's massive split command deck rings as a hub of continuous controlled chaos. Three tiers of petty officers and navy personnel chatter back and forth with the general din of wailing vox sets belching static and petulant machine code. Mortal figures of impressive stature stand in the lee of four enormous black and green tartaros wardens. The ship's guardians stare ominously from their ceremonial alcoves in a radius around the Warmaster's throne. They watch on impassively, like militant sphinx statues as the multi-limbed servitors hardwired into the niches quickly lock into cogitator banks. Their constant updates perpetually shift the array of meddlesome blinks and blobs that dot a small section of the holographic map.
Hektor Varvarus casts his weathered eye across the three hundred and fifty Imperial Navy crew as they work their stations, barely glimpsing over the sunken pits filled with hard-wired servitors that pry answers from lines of cogitator banks. But Varvarus looked even more gaunt and frayed than his hundred and fifty year old juvinant-treated form suggested. Still, the solidly build human still straightens his back and turns to survey the hololith projector that cast a green-blue pall over everything in the upper strategium enclave.
"Legion scramble orders are progressing exactly as they should. So far two companies have been deployed from the Spirit with six more en route, and nine more from the Judicature, Wolf of Cthonia, and Death Head are in transit. The Magna Tyrannis is poised to complete orbit and drop the next wave of heavy combat drops." Chief Dropmarshal Shelaize turns to Hektor Varvarus and folds her arms over her chest with a 'beat that' grin. "How are the Imperial Army deployments progressing, General?"
"You know exactly how well they're 'progressing', Shel." Lord General Hektor Varvarus grunts, ignoring Shelaize's gall. The Saturnine officer was one of the official envoys that would track and help coordinate the legion forces while his own marshals had to coordinate with Mechanicum and Aeronautic Traffic Control. Which, of course, meant his own bulk transports hadn't even been cleared with so many legion landers cluttering the voidspace.
Shelaize turns her green eyes from him and looks back to the map. Her smirk quickly fades, and she returns to chewing on the inside of her cheek. "Seriously, I wonder what they found?"
"Our illustrious First Captain called down the heavens, and without Horus to tel him 'no', he'll get what he wants." Varvarus mutters.
Shelaize looks over, but it wasn't her voice that interrupts the whirl-clack of a cogitator bank. "Do I detect a note of bitterness, Hektor?" Chief Voidsman Fahnaes looks up over the rim of a data slate before tapping his stylus on several points across the surface. Lean and fit, the grey fatigues of the 63rd expeditionary fleet looked suitably dull on him, had it not been for the gold epaulets and small row of valor pins along his lapel.
"Abaddon has certain tendencies which I find counter productive to aspects of our endeavors." Varvarus carefully speaks, casting a none-too-subtle glare at the Tartaros Wardens waiting in the wings.
"Ah, so you talked to Maloghurst already." Fahnaes nods and goes back to paying attention solely to his data slate.
"I can neither confirm nor deny." All Varvarus was left with was a snorting his defiance like a bull. He'd bring his list of grievances up with the Warmaster personally, the moment that he returned. A glance to the empty command throne of the Warmaster sends a chill through his bones. His absence had never been so acutely felt as it did right now, and Abaddon's shadow cast a truly horrific pall over the seat of power.
The deck cladding of the Vengeful Spirit's upper strategium trembles for a moment. But it was more than the slight roar of the plasma engines spooling up, though that itself would have been alarming. There's no sound, but another ripple trembles through the deck a moment later as steady red flashes dot a dozen instrument panels in the dim crew pits. A klaxon blares moments later.
"Sacred unity, the hell was that?" Fahnaes grumbles, looking up and around as if prodded from his position. The Saturnine fleet officer hop-skips the three paces to the strategium's rail and swings out to survey the rest of the bridge.
Varvarus feels a small growl forming in the base of his throat as he follows Fahnaes to the edge of the strategium's raised dais, already having a faint idea of what happened. Shelazi bites her lower lip as they exchange glances.
'This had better not be my fault' both were thinking at the same time. That was definitely an impact... and pretty severe if it could be felt from here.
The group looks over the bridge of the Vengeful Spirit to the command throne four meters below them. The stiff backed form of the medal bedecked Master of the Fleet, Boas Comnenus tilts his head up just a fraction. His ancient exo-skeletal suit props his frame up, though it was still his own strength that clutched the arms of his throne. Despite his advanced age, the officer's voice booms through the bridge's vox systems as clear as if he were an omnipotent giant.
"Emergency situation detected and routed. Incident on the embarkation deck. All crew to stations."
It would be relayed through the entire ship, there was no doubt. He glances around at the dozen other navy armsmen in their black fatigues pacing around work stations, though it was more ceremonial given the presence of Varvarus himself. They could do little more than serve recaf and stay out of the way of the officers scampering from pit to pit collecting data slates to deliver to another station.
"Boas," Varvarus calls as he leans over the strategium railing, "Is there something we need to know?"
"I'm working on it, Hektor." The Fleet Master replies as a few sharp pings erupt on data pads at the same time that red glyph alight on the base of the hololithic projector. Shelazi and Fahnaes glance to their data pads, but Varvarus merely turns to look at the projector.
Red light bathes the wide strategium round, and the harsh bray of a klaxon rings in the enormous split-level compartment. The green wire-frame skeleton depicting Davin morphs into an enormous layout of the Vengeful Spirit, flashing red lit icons across the starboard hangars and embarkation deck and streaming along connecting hallways like veins. The general squints, the rough lines on his face creasing as he unfocuses his gaze from the projector to something just beyond it. A hand reaches down to his hip holster, unbuttoning the lock of his pistol as he spots something past the frame.
The tartaros wardens edge forward as a small wisp of blue-white light sputters to life between the Warmaster's seat of judgment and the hololithic projector. Varvarus's breath hitches as the smell of scorched ozone wafts through the upper deck, his mind kicks in and he throws himself at the projector dais while loosing his pistol.
"Teleport flare!"
After a blinding flash, the world erupts in the screaming chatter of gunfire. Ten immense frames of grey armored terminators blur into shape. Their combi-bolters blaze away and hide the sound, but not the smell, of the promethium pilot light on the the heavy flamer unit. Their enormous pauldrons and flowing pteruges mark the ancient cataphractii suits as something completely separate from the sleek beetle-like carapace of the Spirit's tartaros wardens.
"Arise for the Urizen!" the blare of cataphractii vox-amps comes rasping and harsh to Varvarus's augmented hearing. But the General took aim, staring at the figures, seeking an opportunity to make his shots count.
"Kill for the living!" One of the Warden's roars, almost unflinchingly sprinting from the alcove while his power axe flickers to life in a dull red glow. The roar of a half dozen combi-bolters chews the black armor to ruins, pitting the adamantium ablative plates and slamming into the Horusian terminator like a physical wall. It only slows his advance as pits and craters erupt across his battle plate, eyes still fiery and determined.
"Kill for the dead!" A second picks up the cry, closing in from another side. He's swamped suddenly by a gout of fire that flares through the strategium in a line of blistering white heat that melts the hair on Varvarus's brow. The roiling tide of fire would consume them all with impunity if it swept in their direction. But the Word Bearer sweeps the nozzle towards the throne, washing over another hesitating warden.
The first engulfed warrior wades towards them, paint blistered and sloughing from the flame blackened adamantium. The rounds cook off in his bolters, blasting apart most of his right hand as it drops in a mangled smoking heap. Closing in with the axe, an undulating Cthonic gang cry splits the air.
And Varvarus squints before his bolt pistol bucks once, slamming a round into the heavy flamer's fuel line, bursting the pilot feed. With a throaty stuttering 'whoosh' the fuel alights, consuming the cataphractii in an expanding fireball that flashes out in a miniature explosion. Varvarus's eyes water with the petrol fumes and he blinks back the tears streaming down his face.
Impossible. This was absolutely impossible.
He'd fired by instinct, but now that he was staring at them with eyes clear from sweat and heat, there was no lie. Word Bearers. Astartes, the Emperors own astartes were on the bridge!
One of the Vengeful Spirit's vaunted wardens was cooked alive in his shell, now entombed from next to the command throne, a forth was only now moving while ten bestial Word Bearers occupied the very seat of power vested to Horus Lupercal by the Emperor himself. His stomach churns as he sees the crippled Warden slam into a cataphractii and hacks his axe down. The swipe crashes into the Colchisian face, splitting it down to the torso before one of the Word Bearers rounds on him, swinging a power fist that shatters the Horusian warrior and spatters broken scraps of ceramite and pulverized tissue across the deck.
From his place next to the dais, Varvarus glimpses back at the others that had been with him seconds before. Shelazi was unrecognizable, a gore slicked pool split in half by combi-bolter shots with only the light green of her fatigues indicating if it was her or Fahnaes. But the Chief Voidsman was slumped over the rail, his back a grisly mass of protruding bone shards and slopping pulverized tissue down to the bridge below.
Under the auspice of the great Eye of Terra, Hector Varvarus grits his teeth and stands with a foot braced on the hololith. Underlit by crimson, and mostly deafened by the swell of klaxons, he taps his vox bead.
He holds his pistol, snapping off five more shots into the mass of grey and gold before it clacks empty. His voice echoes louder and more visceral as the realization hits him. "General Varvarus to all personnel. We are betray-"
With a low shine of capacitors spooling down, one of the two gravetic trams that runs the length of the Vengeful Spirit's twenty six kilometer spine, slowly eases to a halt. The knot of grey-clad fleet workers seated around the large boxy car was minimal, again, mostly due to the legion presence. Unlike the armory and garrison tram points which were more like plain unadorned ferrocrete plates, the utility tram along the upper spine of the Vengeful Spirit had the little seats, posts, and dangling hand held straps for work crews and staff officers. The open section at the stern would normally be marked off in yellow hazard paint and play host to utility tractors or servitor coffles.
Now, it was filled with three ranks of seven astartes, each in perfect parade formation behind Serhar Targost and his Colchisian aide. They look on impassively at the dozen or so grey-fatigued maintenance crews that had taken the row of seats butted up against the prow. Targost stands next to his silent adjutant, legionnaire Ulrahk. The tall Word Bearer keeps his bolter locked to his hip, but he carried himself with a certain stiff tension that betrayed his unease aboard the Vengeful Spirit.
Targost eyes him quizzically as he steps down from the lift platform when they reach the command section, the trio of lift elevator shafts shunted off to one side. Two were evidently in operation by the flashing yellow lumin-orbs flicking in the recesses along the conduit wires of the open expanse.
But he didn't need to take the main transverse mag-lift, but the smaller bridge lift just off to one side. For a moment, Targost looks back only to see two of the legionnaires of the final row remain on the tram. He casts a glance to his associate, and receives no explanation.
A vibration ripples through the deck cladding beneath Targost's feet. It's no more than an errant sigh but enough that the captain lofts a brow and looks down. His mostly silent companion had been quiet since Alkhar left, satisfied just pacing alongside him like a shadow. The Vigilator's calm and rather amiable mien had been replaced by stony silence, doing little for the lodge master's apprehension.
The squad of Word Bearers alongside seem just as unphased, just as they had since Ahlkar had borrowed one of Targost's data slates that had the location of Vaddon's body and the hidden lodge tome. Both weren't far away, both stashed inside the temple just off to the side of the bridge accessible from above and below. He couldn't afford to really move them.
A score of Word Bearers legionnaires, led by Serghar Targost, reaches the lift that would transport them up to the command spire. The elevator judders for a moment as the safety rails rise up along the outer edge of the mag lift. For an instant, Targost could swear he heard an echo come from one of the main mag-lift shafts in the control hub. The thought dies as the magnetic clamps of their lift release and they're shuttled upwards into the gathering gloom towards the command and control sanctums of the Vengeful Spirit.
Midway up, the steady white lumin orbs streaking by as they rise give way to flashing red and the steady bray of an emergency klaxon. Rather suddenly, the nominal leader of the squad, a crested sergeant that Targost hadn't been introduced too, nods.
"Sergeant?" Targost gives a warning growl, "If you know anything..." he lets the unexpressed threat pass with a hiss.
With a pop-click, the sergeant replies in a smooth Colchisian accent even the harsh metallic grating of the vox amp couldn't completely erase, "The Hand of Fate likely triggered proximity sensors as it crossed the Spirit's flight path. Nothing to be alarmed about, captain."
Targost clenches his remaining fist, knowing it was a lie. His scarred and recently gouged face scrunches into a deep scowl as he chews on part of his lip that he'd inadvertently bitten off in his fight with Vaddon.
In moments, the lift slows and the platform rises to its very apex. The rails fold away as Targost spots the grand golden designs of the Command and Control deck, the uppermost transverse section that led to the most critical elements of the Vengeful Spirit itself. It was a masterful centerpiece for those that had not been inured to the grandeur of the Warmaster's Hall before. While nowhere near the pomp and ceremony of the Concourse of Memories, it was still grand. The rounded basilica in the middle of the command spire was an open space large enough to fit a company gathered around a single speaker. And that center was nothing less than the massive brass disk inlaid with the Luna Wolf head and crescent moon of the legion.
A wide dome furnished with frescoes and images of conquest rose up to four great stanchions, each of a stylized eagle head overlooking everything from the four cardinal directions above tall entrance ways at each end. Theirs was one, the mag-lift from the spinal transit hub. Another led left, aftward to the astrotelepathica relay, navigator seclusiam, communication enclave, and briefing rooms nestled deep behind the jutting bridge spires.
To the right, beneath another stern Terran Aquilla statue was the entrance to the Concourse of Memories that ran for more than a kilometer in front of the bridge, looking up through the armorglas bubble to the stars. It was the trophy room, the hall of wonder, and it was also a spot connecting them to the gathering halls, civilian quarters, and civil concourse occupied by the mortal chaff that infested the warhship. A few of the crew pass through the wide hall even now, not beyond contempt, but at least in service to the astartes.
And straight before them was the wide rising staircase to the command deck, bridge, and Strategium that was the heart of the Warmaster's efforts. Four tartaros wardens stand upon the wide steps leading to an intricately carved door sporting another sigil of the Wye of Terra, its immense inlaid garnet and onyx pupil watching over the whole of the Warmaster's Hall.
This was, in its way, the nexus of the Warmaster's crusade.
As the group of Word Bearers follows behind Targost, the klaxons wail and strobing red light alerts the tartaros wardens. They shift uncomfortably, reaching for combi-bolters by instinct as between flickers of light, the warriors of the seventeenth do as well.
One flash.
The Word Bearer sergeant's rounded pistol flashes up in the dark, leveled at the nearest warden.
A second flash of red mixes with a searing white-blue bloom.
With a growl of surprise, the terminator collapses forward, chest turned to sludge by the lance of plasma connecting them for one brilliant instant.
By the third strobe of light, the rancorous thunder of bolt shells illuminates the interior in a blaze of orange that glints like an inferno from the gleaming surface of the chamber's polished art deco murals.
Targost spins to see Ulrahk clutching a pistol and dagger, staring him down in cold resignation.
"Formation, wheel right!" Hashutz calls, ducking back behind the protective barrier as the whip-crack and belch of shotcannon slugs rattle off the thick adamntium slabs. The breacher shields keep well formed as Hashutz reaches for the bolter locked to the gunloop on the shields right and lines up a shot through the weapon's link.
Mortal soldiers in thick grey fatigued and unpolished black armor clog the hallway up ahead, their lamp pack illuminating their formation and sending momentary flashes through astartes prey senses. More than two dozen kneel along stanchions in the wide-mouthed hallway, firing into the mass of well protected astartes. Others stand and fire from behind their comrades, and keep firing as bolters stitch across their hiding spots, armor piercing rounds carving through the thin metal I beams and punching fist sized holes through human targets with impunity.
It had been like this for the better part of five minutes. The wide embarkation deck halls had been sparse, and the few Sons of Horus had been dealt with by overwhelming firepower while the mortal armsmen posed next to no threat at all. They fought in the pitch black at times, and bathed in red swirling lumin strobes in others. The dark would not hide them, the light would not save them.
All was red.
One of the troopers leans out of cover just far enough to reveal a rotary grenade launcher. Hashutz twitches his wrist to the right and snaps off a pair of hots, though with a ripple 'thump' two fragmentation grenades streak through the air before bolts bisect the trooper at the waist and drop him.
The pair of explosives sail into the mass of Word Bearers, exploding with the rattling patter of razor steel shards against durable ceramite. It scuffs and scratches, light bloom blinding the preysense lenses for a half-second and little more.
Brave, and foolish.
Hashutz didn't need to give the order to cut them down, prisoners were unnecessary for the time being. And the staccato clap of bolt rounds and interspersed roars of suffering was music to his ears now. Armsmen. They weren't cultists or the typical driven chattel soldiers of demagogues and false priesthoods, but true human warriors.
They were still children to him, and screamed just the same as the rippling wave of fire subsided as the last lamp packs slipped to the floor from nerveless hands. The wash of flamer fuel sprays across both left and right walls, again blinding the astartes as they trundle forward under the protection of their boarding shields.
Fifteen meters ahead, protected by the two squads of armsmen, was a single white blast door. It led directly to the main arterial way to the legion armory. Hashutz knew what that meant, as did the slackened legionnaire presence. Thousands had departed planetside, and he'd have liked to think that hundreds more would be dead by now. Personally, they could count a tally of fifteen Sons of Horus slain by the thirty-nine other Word Bearers he had at his beck and call.
Hashutz nods as he blink clicks the door, marking it to his squads with a breach icon. The wall of shields opens to permit a warrior laden with jangling melta bombs forward. He shuffles up, bolter still locked with his shield, and glances down momentarily to arm the heavy breaching charge. The ring of armor is loud but the breacher squad closes in.
His preysense suddenly blares a warning, and it's nearly too late as Hashutz sees a figure dart out from a hidden alcove up ahead. The body of a black and green monster sprints from the darkness, weapon flashing ruby red. Hashutz got only a single shot off before the Tartaros terminator plows into the breacher demolition expert, power axe hacking his head from his shoulders in a fluid arc.
The thick casement bounces back down the hallway as Hashutz looks at the grinning face to the Cthonian savage. The warrior's top knot sways from momentum, and he leans back, standing wide with his combi-bolter flicking up with a toss of his wrist. He'd damned well taken his helmet off and used his own senses instead of waiting for his helmet's preysense to come on line. His whole suit had been powered down to hide himself in his wait to ambush them.
'I'll give you this, Cthonian... that was clever.'
But unprotected, there was definitely a weakness that not even the raised gorget could hide.
"Flamers!" Hashutz grins as the rapid thunder of a combi-bolter meets a wall of boltguns. The slow thunder of terminator footfalls approaches, rippling through the deck as the experienced breachers shuffle, bracing one foot against the deck plate and leaning forward.
Shots rang off the tartaros, flickering away from the plates and bouncing into the surrounding enclosure. The shrill whine of the flamer units poured a deluge of fire into the lone figure thundering down at them like a landslide. But Hashutz's grin falters for a moment as the energy field seemed to deflect some of the incandescent fuel away from the suit, lighting the corpses and sticking to the armor plates, turning him into a burning avatar of Horusian anger.
Five meters.
...too late.
"Brace!" And with the sound of two colliding commuter trams, the terminator barrels into the formation. Slab-walls yield as he throws himself in to them. The power axe hacks down and splits deep into the clavicle of one of his troopers before he empties the combi-bolter in a wide, vicious circle to drive another two to their knees.
Hashutz quickly reaches for the grip of the purloined hammer mag-locked to his power-pack. But the Terminator was fast, faster than he expected. The combi-bolter lashes to the side, slamming the munitions drum hard into the side of his head and knocking him to one knee.
Bolters fire at point blank range, knifes flick from mag-locks or scabbards and thrust at the warrior. But they never manage to find the gap as the Cthonian's mocking laughter rings in their ears.
"I knew something smelled wrong with you sanctimonious gutter-trash!" He swipes his axe aside, felling another breacher with a burble of blood and shoving himself further among the formation. "I just didn't know how rancid you were!"
Hashutz watches bolt shots ring off from less than a yard away as he twists and turns to keep the gorget up, head raised almost arrogantly but also to protect his vulnerable face.
"You're outnumbered forty-to-one, Son of Horus! Give up!" One of his corporals roars only for the tartaros warrior to stick the twin-barrels of his combi-bolter down into the elbow joint of another, then saws it off in a salvo of bolts. The shield falls from dead hands as the axe slices deep into the rim of another. Hashutz gets to his feet, hammer unlocking and thrumming with crackling energy.
"About thirty six-to-one now, right? Good odds!" He kicks the breacher shield free, sending two Word Bearers thundering back and swinging the axe at Hashutz. The shield blocks it, and a counter blow is deftly deflected aside, shattering the plates on his forehand in a flash of light. The stink of burnt copper circuits fills the air. The energy capacitor in the shield array had overloaded.
The warden shoves his bulk forward, sending Hashutz back as another breacher tries to get to grips with them, receiving an elbow to the face that cracks at least one of his eye lenses. Hashutz circles, trying to turn the Terminator's back to his squad, but the warrior barrels forward, axe cleaving through open air towards him. But the high knee and lunge would hit something.
It wasn't Hashutz, but the warrior behind him is struck and flattened into the wall, gouging out crumbling sections of decorative plastek sheeting. Another breacher received the axe straight in his chest. But the hammer fell, and with a thunderous bang, the terminator's right side gives way.
Scraps of plate and burning capacitor engines whirred in protest as the warden was thrown five meters up the hallway by the wide sweeping arc. He slides to a stop next to a few dead armsmen, but as Hashutz takes a breath, he can still hear the wet choking laughter from the Cthonian warrior.
With armor sparking and most of the distinct 'hunch' shattered into twisted wreckage, the terminator slowly begins to rise. His right arm, the one holding the broken axe, hangs from a few dangling clusters of synth-muscle fiber. Disarmed literally and figuratively, the Cthonic warrior struggles to get to his feet as the Breacher sergeant closes in with two others close by.
"How are you not dead?" Hashutz smirks a little as the warden pulls his shattered frame up to kneel.
"I wouldn't want to deprive you of the satisfaction of knowing something, bilge rat." The crippled Horusian turns to look at them. Hashutz holds a hand up, stopping his accompanying troopers from slaying the fallen terminator immediately.
A genuine curiosity runs through the Word Bearer. "Oh? And what would that be?"
This Cthonian was still grinning like a half-mad psychiatric patient. His face was a mask of crimson, blood from shredded adamantium cutting a deep furrow in his scalp, soaking his black top knot. Hashutz stopped within hammer-swing of him, but while crackling with lethal energy, he did give the warrior time to talk. Of course, he'd already blink-clicked a refreshed 'demolition' command on the door as one of his two troopers split off to plant the melta charge.
"You'll be dead within five minutes. And if all those heathen bastards were right, I'll look forward to seeing you in hell." he cackles, grinning in his wolfy way.
It pulls a grin from the Colchisian's lips. "Save me a spot, Cthonian." He slams the hammer down, the warden never looking away as it shatters his head and pulps the tartaros suit to scrap. The last few wet pieces tumbles down and stops at the foot of the door. It takes a few moments, but the demolition trooper latches two melta bombs to the blast door and hurries back.
"Why did he wait until all his armsmen were dead to confront us?" One of Hashutz warriors asks, staring down at the broken lump of a once-vaunted astartes killer.
"The same reason we do this," Hashutz grins, "To make a statement. Nothing would have changed the outcome, but now he has you thinking, does he not?" The legionnaire looks up at the door as the melta charge whines and activates in a whir, starting the atomic chain cascade.
Behind that door was the main concourse, the lifts, the armory, just a small stop from the Hall of Memories. Their enemy would be there, there was no question about that now. As the melta charge turns the wall to a white hot glowing beacon that reflects from the dull grey armor of the dozens of astartes awaiting their fate, the Word Bearer already knows what's coming.
"Glory to the martyrs, it is written."