Brother Marine Korsal activated his ancient chainsword and unholstered his pistol, releasing the handle bars of his bike, guiding the roaring machine skilfuly with his knees, the way he had done with horses on Mundus Planus before joining the White Scars chapter.
The massive treads of his wheels ground the strange alien vegetation beneath him into pulp as he sped along with his unit of bretheren over the surface of Behal-minor where the third brotherhood had made planetfall only hours earlier.
The colonists had had time enough for one warp transmission before their settlement had been wiped out entirely by the twisted traitor marines. Two of the three Imperial Guard garrisons had been destroyed, and the remaining emplacement, a Mordian Iron Guard outpost, was heavily besieged.
Brother Korsal's unit was to be part of a flank attack to draw the chaos scum from the gates of the castle-like garrison long enough for a counter attack from the Guard within.
A hiss from Korsal's vox-corder sounded inside his armour's helmet, and the rough voice of seargeant Jorkaile relayed his orders;
"Insurgents detected, bearing 076, intercept and strike; beta pattern."
Korsal veered off to the right in response, and felt his two hearts beat faster with adrenaline, today is a day for scars!
Rounding a low ridge Korsal saw the six dark traiter marines and joined with his brothers in the cry of the White Scars:
"For the Kahn and the Emperor!" as the battlecry ripped from his lips, the chaos marines turned and treid to bring their weapons to bear, but they were pitifully slow, and the bikers smashed ito them.
Even as Korsal rode down one of the power armoured marines he saw seargeant Jorkaile's power lance slice into the chest of the traitor champion.
Korsal spun the bike around on the spot as he boosted power to the arms of his armour with a thought, and swing his sword into the neck of the rising marine. The vicious teeth of the weapon ripped away the comparitavely weak neck armour, and the throat behind it, a gush of red-black blood spurting from beneath the horned helmet. The warrior clutced at his throat for a moment where new skin was already forming, but the wound was too great, and he fell to the ground.
Seeing all the traitor marines dispatched with only Brother Obal taking a wound in return, Seargeant Jorkaile ordered the bikes onwards towards their pre-planned objective; the massed Chaos force outside the garrison.
Topping a low hill, the grim fortress-like structure of the Imperial Guard garrison came into view just as a searing bolt of red energy smashed into the twenty foot gates, taking a chunk out of them, glowing red around the edges.
Korsal looked down on the scene with furious interest; dozens of chaos marines toting bolters or pistols and combat weapons, but worse than that were the dozens of howling world eater Khorne bezerkers and daemonic Bloodletters throwing themselves against walls. They attacked those few guard outside the garrison with inhuman ferocity and strength, slaughtering them with glee, but Korsal Knew No Fear.
On his left and right, and on the far side of the horde Korsal saw other bike squads from the third brotherhood readying themselves for the initial charge. Seargeant Jorkaile raised his power lance, its crackling blade glinting in the midday sun, and the commanders of the bike squadrans around echoed his movements. He lowered the lance and with the Battlery of the khans ringing in his ears, Korsal sped down into suddenly waiting horde.
The first charge, catching the traitor marines mostly by surrise was swift and brutal, Kosal plunging his chaiswod into the armpit of an undivided marine and blowing the face off of an unhelmeted bezerker with a well aimed bolt shell. Blood and dark ichor splattered aginst Korsals white armour plated shoulder and chest.
Korsal wheeled away and regrouped ready for the second manouver, a wheel of fire power arond the traitors to draw as many as possible of them out into the open and away from the gates.
As Korsal blazed away randomly with his pistol at the horde and waited for the command to charge in again. When it came, Korsal turned sharply and relayed an order via his armour spirit to his bike to fire the twinlinked bolters mounted in front of the handles. White fire blazed and the mass reactive rounds buried through armour and exploded inside the ceramite plates of a bezerker directly in front of Korsal.
This time though the charge was into a hail of fire, and bolter rounds ricocheting from the front plating of his bike. On his right battle brother Orphal hunched over with a curse, a hand to his stomach, blood gushing fromhis open mouth, and on his right battle brother Garak's chest plate exploded from an autocannon shot. His bike wheeled away, suddenly riderless and out of control.
Korsal smashed into the enemy once again but this time he was defending himself as much as attacking. Only a desperate last minute dodge avoided the front end of his bike and possibly his body being crushed into a pulp by the powerfist of a chaos champion, traceries of blue fire crackling over its tainted surface.
Left and right marines and cackling daemons died under bolter fire, screaming weapons or sometimes just brute force.
Korsal became seperated from his unit, and found himself inside the horde, which was rapidly thinning as units and individual crazed bezerkers charged off to innefectualy chase the hit-and-running white scars units.
Ahead he saw what he thought was a guardsman seperated from those inside the garrison, but quickly realised was a rengade imperial guardsman, Catachan by the look of his "uniform". With a snarl Korsal ran him down, his body thrown several feet from his back tyre.
The last thing the traitor guardsman saw was an eight foot giant in blood spattered white armour gunning towards him, the embodyment of the emperor's wrath, an Angel of Death; a space marine.
Korsal fended off a clumsy stroke from a primtive stone-like weapon, the daemon holding it leering in oscene glee before Korsal crushed its face beneath a gauntleted fist. He grunted in pain and dropped his pistol as a chain axe roared across his left arm, gouging a considerable amount of flesh near the elbow, promising an excelent new scar if nothing else.
The air around him was suddenly filled with bits of flying armour and daemon as a huge battle cannon shell exploded about twenty feet from him. Looking round Korsal saw the two battle tanks of the IG that had rumbled out of the gateway, each of the Leman Russes covered with black coated guardsmen firing their lasguns at random into the traitors around the gate. The weapons were largely innefective, but the massed firepower of the dozens of guardsmen clustered around the gate brought eventual rewards, finding chinks in millenia-old armour or unprotected deamon flesh.
Ramrod straight, the discipline of the guards was admirable for mere humans.
The tide was turning, Korsal saw as the white scars rhinos and predators roared towards the now depleted army around the fortress, ringing and gunning them dowm.
A mighty chaos champion, the same one who had nearly ended the battle early for Korsal stood on a pile of dead marines and gurdsmen, roaring, holding a power lance in his hand. The same power lance sergeant Korsaile had carried only moments before. The body of the man who had been Korsal's sergeant for a decade lay broken at the disgusting traitor's armoured feet. Even as Korsal charged up to reclaim the lance and revenge his mentor, a heavy bolter round from a landspeeder hit the champion in the face plate, blowing a hole from the back of his head the size of Korsal's hand.
Hastily Korsal sheathed his sword and ripped the lance from the twitching grip of the chaos marine, pausing to kick the still-standing monster over into the dirt.
Korsal rode back to the main body of the army amidst the cheers of his bretheren, holding aloft the glowing blade.
A new sergeant would have to be chosen for his unit, and the surviving Catachan warriors left in the empty settlements would be executed for Heresy and traitorship in the interest of safety. After that there were the Dark Eldar pirates they had been chasing to deal with, but until then, as he rode over alien soil, over the bodies of foe and unamable gore, Korsal roared in celebration, in the name of the Khan and the Emperor.
Death is the servant of the righteous
The massive treads of his wheels ground the strange alien vegetation beneath him into pulp as he sped along with his unit of bretheren over the surface of Behal-minor where the third brotherhood had made planetfall only hours earlier.
The colonists had had time enough for one warp transmission before their settlement had been wiped out entirely by the twisted traitor marines. Two of the three Imperial Guard garrisons had been destroyed, and the remaining emplacement, a Mordian Iron Guard outpost, was heavily besieged.
Brother Korsal's unit was to be part of a flank attack to draw the chaos scum from the gates of the castle-like garrison long enough for a counter attack from the Guard within.
A hiss from Korsal's vox-corder sounded inside his armour's helmet, and the rough voice of seargeant Jorkaile relayed his orders;
"Insurgents detected, bearing 076, intercept and strike; beta pattern."
Korsal veered off to the right in response, and felt his two hearts beat faster with adrenaline, today is a day for scars!
Rounding a low ridge Korsal saw the six dark traiter marines and joined with his brothers in the cry of the White Scars:
"For the Kahn and the Emperor!" as the battlecry ripped from his lips, the chaos marines turned and treid to bring their weapons to bear, but they were pitifully slow, and the bikers smashed ito them.
Even as Korsal rode down one of the power armoured marines he saw seargeant Jorkaile's power lance slice into the chest of the traitor champion.
Korsal spun the bike around on the spot as he boosted power to the arms of his armour with a thought, and swing his sword into the neck of the rising marine. The vicious teeth of the weapon ripped away the comparitavely weak neck armour, and the throat behind it, a gush of red-black blood spurting from beneath the horned helmet. The warrior clutced at his throat for a moment where new skin was already forming, but the wound was too great, and he fell to the ground.
Seeing all the traitor marines dispatched with only Brother Obal taking a wound in return, Seargeant Jorkaile ordered the bikes onwards towards their pre-planned objective; the massed Chaos force outside the garrison.
Topping a low hill, the grim fortress-like structure of the Imperial Guard garrison came into view just as a searing bolt of red energy smashed into the twenty foot gates, taking a chunk out of them, glowing red around the edges.
Korsal looked down on the scene with furious interest; dozens of chaos marines toting bolters or pistols and combat weapons, but worse than that were the dozens of howling world eater Khorne bezerkers and daemonic Bloodletters throwing themselves against walls. They attacked those few guard outside the garrison with inhuman ferocity and strength, slaughtering them with glee, but Korsal Knew No Fear.
On his left and right, and on the far side of the horde Korsal saw other bike squads from the third brotherhood readying themselves for the initial charge. Seargeant Jorkaile raised his power lance, its crackling blade glinting in the midday sun, and the commanders of the bike squadrans around echoed his movements. He lowered the lance and with the Battlery of the khans ringing in his ears, Korsal sped down into suddenly waiting horde.
The first charge, catching the traitor marines mostly by surrise was swift and brutal, Kosal plunging his chaiswod into the armpit of an undivided marine and blowing the face off of an unhelmeted bezerker with a well aimed bolt shell. Blood and dark ichor splattered aginst Korsals white armour plated shoulder and chest.
Korsal wheeled away and regrouped ready for the second manouver, a wheel of fire power arond the traitors to draw as many as possible of them out into the open and away from the gates.
As Korsal blazed away randomly with his pistol at the horde and waited for the command to charge in again. When it came, Korsal turned sharply and relayed an order via his armour spirit to his bike to fire the twinlinked bolters mounted in front of the handles. White fire blazed and the mass reactive rounds buried through armour and exploded inside the ceramite plates of a bezerker directly in front of Korsal.
This time though the charge was into a hail of fire, and bolter rounds ricocheting from the front plating of his bike. On his right battle brother Orphal hunched over with a curse, a hand to his stomach, blood gushing fromhis open mouth, and on his right battle brother Garak's chest plate exploded from an autocannon shot. His bike wheeled away, suddenly riderless and out of control.
Korsal smashed into the enemy once again but this time he was defending himself as much as attacking. Only a desperate last minute dodge avoided the front end of his bike and possibly his body being crushed into a pulp by the powerfist of a chaos champion, traceries of blue fire crackling over its tainted surface.
Left and right marines and cackling daemons died under bolter fire, screaming weapons or sometimes just brute force.
Korsal became seperated from his unit, and found himself inside the horde, which was rapidly thinning as units and individual crazed bezerkers charged off to innefectualy chase the hit-and-running white scars units.
Ahead he saw what he thought was a guardsman seperated from those inside the garrison, but quickly realised was a rengade imperial guardsman, Catachan by the look of his "uniform". With a snarl Korsal ran him down, his body thrown several feet from his back tyre.
The last thing the traitor guardsman saw was an eight foot giant in blood spattered white armour gunning towards him, the embodyment of the emperor's wrath, an Angel of Death; a space marine.
Korsal fended off a clumsy stroke from a primtive stone-like weapon, the daemon holding it leering in oscene glee before Korsal crushed its face beneath a gauntleted fist. He grunted in pain and dropped his pistol as a chain axe roared across his left arm, gouging a considerable amount of flesh near the elbow, promising an excelent new scar if nothing else.
The air around him was suddenly filled with bits of flying armour and daemon as a huge battle cannon shell exploded about twenty feet from him. Looking round Korsal saw the two battle tanks of the IG that had rumbled out of the gateway, each of the Leman Russes covered with black coated guardsmen firing their lasguns at random into the traitors around the gate. The weapons were largely innefective, but the massed firepower of the dozens of guardsmen clustered around the gate brought eventual rewards, finding chinks in millenia-old armour or unprotected deamon flesh.
Ramrod straight, the discipline of the guards was admirable for mere humans.
The tide was turning, Korsal saw as the white scars rhinos and predators roared towards the now depleted army around the fortress, ringing and gunning them dowm.
A mighty chaos champion, the same one who had nearly ended the battle early for Korsal stood on a pile of dead marines and gurdsmen, roaring, holding a power lance in his hand. The same power lance sergeant Korsaile had carried only moments before. The body of the man who had been Korsal's sergeant for a decade lay broken at the disgusting traitor's armoured feet. Even as Korsal charged up to reclaim the lance and revenge his mentor, a heavy bolter round from a landspeeder hit the champion in the face plate, blowing a hole from the back of his head the size of Korsal's hand.
Hastily Korsal sheathed his sword and ripped the lance from the twitching grip of the chaos marine, pausing to kick the still-standing monster over into the dirt.
Korsal rode back to the main body of the army amidst the cheers of his bretheren, holding aloft the glowing blade.
A new sergeant would have to be chosen for his unit, and the surviving Catachan warriors left in the empty settlements would be executed for Heresy and traitorship in the interest of safety. After that there were the Dark Eldar pirates they had been chasing to deal with, but until then, as he rode over alien soil, over the bodies of foe and unamable gore, Korsal roared in celebration, in the name of the Khan and the Emperor.
Death is the servant of the righteous