Book Three: The Heart of Yang Xiao Long
Chapter 97: The Grey Angels
"Though my oaths to the Deathwatch bind me from sharing all that I learned in my service, I can say with dread certainty that the stories regarding the Vylka Fenryka are carefully-woven lies. Lies of utterly necessary omission." - From "A Fist of Black-and-Silver", a treatise by 'The Laughing Titan', Chief Librarian of the Ultramarines.
Once more, Yang rode into battle with Gamma. They were her personal guard now, their matte-black flak helmets crowned with painted golden ivy. They carried improvements to their wargear as well, collected over the course of their campaign and donated by various regiments over White Horses. Mael wielded a meltagun, Lorl wore a full set of carapace armor, while Caolin's longlas bore some new cables and a larger optic. Asgeg's augmentic arm had been slightly refurbished in the hours since the Odallthing - it had been plated with interlocking pieces of fully-furnished chrome, its knuckles studded with armor-piercing spikes. It still bore the bullet-scrape.
The craft rattled and shook, as it always did. A furious silence filled the hold as Mael and Caolin retrieved the war paint. Even non-natives like Shen-se and Sparlich were brimming with blind fury, infected by the righteous anger of their Woadian comrades.
Bathing in the light of Yang's wings and halo, Gamma muttered prayers and checked their wargear. No one prayed for themselves, but for their kin on Woadia. Beside her, Amat caught her gaze and nodded. He carried her lasgun too, along with an oversized rig full of supercharged batteries.
They need this, he reminded her, though the words remained unspoken.
I know. I just wish they didn't.
"You skipped me," Yang said as Caolin made to cap the paint tube.
"I skipped you?" He asked.
"The paint, idiot," Yang said, grinning through her rattling teeth.
Caolin beamed. "As the Saint commands." Making his way to her, he paused, his fingers wet with blue.
"Same thing."
"Right."
He marked her. The paint was cold, familiar. Yang felt Gamma's hearts swell as Caolin did his work. They deserve nothing less. When he finished, the hold remained quiet, and it was clear what was expected of her.
Not my thing, but I'll do my best.
"Gamma!" She boomed. "You ready, boys and girls?"
"Àuh!" They bellowed back.
"Damn straight!" She called, fist ringing off her power armor. "Fuckers came for Woadia, and now they'll pay!"
"Àuh!"
"I'm proud of you all," she said. "I can't promise that I'll keep you all alive, but…" she searched for the right way to phrase it. "I know each of you has a place beside the Emperor. Gamma, my few." She said, eyes watering. "My friends."
"ÀUH!" They roared.
"Let's get it done!"
"ÀUH!" They cried their approval, "ÀUH!"
Yang grinned once more, this time for herself. Not terrible. A bit brief, but it would do.
She said nothing else. There was no need to further stoke the flames of their fury - this was not Elodia, when they were still green. It wasn't Jala Prime, where they walked into a slaughterhouse. It wasn't Ranshu, when they stood alone before an army of heretics. It wasn't Uriel, where they slogged through rivers of rust and choking industrial waste to bring Josephus' forces to heel. It wasn't White Horses, where they stood beside her as she became one with the Emperor.
It was their homeworld.
The red light flickered to life.
"Here we go!" Yang said. "Ready-up, Gamma!"
"Àuh!" They cried once more. The lander swung low - green light. The doors ripped open and Gamma poured out, Yang foremost among them, landing with an earth-shattering impact against the scorched earth.
In the light of Woadia's single, radiant moon, it was clear the planet had been despoiled. Where there were once rows of golden wheat and towering maize, there was little more than ashes and furrows, each meter of farmland stripped bare for heretic use. The air was choked with soot that fell like snow. The familiar cacophony of a furious battle raged in the distance, likely the location of heretic MOB. Flashes of light punctuated the booming, distant thunder, piercing through the night and revealing acre after acre of a ruined home.
But the LZ itself was silent.
Gamma was no different. Caolin's hand made a series of swift jabs, and the platoon spread out, covering each other, pulling full security as they inspected their landing zone. It was an open mass grave. A hundred bodies littered the earth, their warp-twisted weapons just as broken and mangled as their wielders.
Yang toed a sheet of discarded metal, uncovering a charred heretic corpse. In his skeletal hands, he clutched a brazen standard of the Blood God.
This isn't the LZ, Yang realized. This is the heretic base.
Caolin toppled a chuck of smelted, smoking iron. "This used to be a tank," he whispered. In the quiet, it sounded like a battle-cry.
No one else spoke.
"Emperor," Sparlich said after a minute of careful walking. They found more bodies. As the rest of the 111th landed behind them, they continued their march through the newly-made no man's land. A hundred corpses became nearly a thousand.
Each body was burnt to cinders, and each one crumbled when kicked, breaking into a cloud of ash that floated away on the soot-stained breeze that smelled like meat. Soon, the Imperials' greaves and boots were stained with grey smears.
In the distance, Aesborough sat waiting, an Imperial skyline choked with blinking lights and pillars of smoke. Memories of the city and Vadiik flitted through Yang's thoughts. It felt like decades since she last tasted Woadia, but it was all still there, ripped open like a stubborn wound. Her stomach churned at the sight laid out before her. At the smell of it all.
Rounds slammed into Gamma, snapping and hissing as they tore through the air. The platoon dove for cover among the corpse-middens, all unhurt. Lasbolts followed, baking the cinders into glass.
"Contacts!" Caolin cried.
"I thought they were all dead!" Lana screamed as a bullet struck the burnt corpse beside her.
"Where's it coming from?!" Asgeg demanded.
"No eyes!" Shen-se answered. But Amat was already unleashing a maelstrom of red death, emptying his battery in a handful of seconds. The Woadians watched in awe before scooping up their lasguns to follow his shots westward - enemy reinforcements arriving far too late to save their base.
"Come on!" Yang boomed, her voice echoing over the battleground, vox-enhanced by her servo-skulls. She stood tall, her wings buffeting her friends with a cleansing gale. "Face me!"
She rocketed forwards, following Amat's unerring lasbolts. She soared, the sound of her passing a ferocious roar of wind and fiery, hallowed power. Landing amidst a crowd of heretics, the first shell fired from Ember-In-Glory struck the earth, exploding into an inferno of golden flame and blessed shrapnel.
A squad of heretics burst apart, some liquefying, some catching aflame. Others fell to the ground, growling at Yang as they ignored the blood that poured from their wounds. Though their lack of uniforms and standardized weapons suggested these were not the professional regiment mentioned by the Colonel, they unmistakably hailed from the Eye of Terror. Their bodies were misshapen, mutated, over-muscled, plated with black-metal augmentics. But their eyes were most telling. There was no hope in them, no capacity for caring, no love for anything but bloodshed, no desire but to please their ever-thirsting god.
Those that could still stand clawed uselessly at her armor, their flesh sloughing as their sharpened nails scraped uselessly against ceramite. It didn't even slow them.
Yang killed them, a solid chunk of bile stuck in her throat. Fucking chaos. Fucking Khorne. Her fist lashed out and rent them into slop. Offal and red chum exploded out with each strike, painting the battlefield in broad crimson strokes.
She looked at her gauntleted hand. Moving in power armor was uncanny, almost forceful in its wrongness. Each joint moved like liquid, supercharged by ancient servos. Her strikes were so fast and forceful, she felt her balance shift, stumble, and waver.
A lasbolt hissed past her ear to decapitate a charging survivor of her wrath.
"Got your back," Amat hissed in her microbead.
"Knew I kept you around for a reason," Yang returned.
He grunted in acknowledgement.
A heretic champion stormed her, Khornate symbols etched into his chest, a terrible trophy rack hanging from his shoulders. An imperious frown split her lips.
His head remained intact, which meant Amat was letting her have this one.
Thanks, assassin-man.
The champion hefted a roaring chainaxe, thundered towards her. Yang decided she wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Thrusting Ember-In-Glory forwards, a single shell erupted from the barrel.
Everything above the champion's stomach vanished. The waist and legs tumbled onwards for a time before flopping over.
"Emperor," Caolin said, skidding to a halt beside her, longlas smoking. "I can barely hear myself think over the sound of that thing."
"Magos Tyrham knows his shit," Yang replied, smoke curling from her new weapons.
"That he does," Caolin said as he packed a fresh hotshot battery into his gun.
A cannon shell screamed over their heads, followed by a plume of dirt and ash a kilometer away. It had just missed a landing craft, one of the 111th's. The Woadians' meager Valkyrie support raked the enemy reinforcements with ripping bolter rounds and cooked what was left with multilas fire.
A chant surrounded them, the words from a black and blasted tongue.
"Contacts right!" Asgeg cried. "Coming out of the smoke!"
Gamma whirled to face the threat, emptying a thousand lasbolts into a spreading white haze. Screams followed, and heretics toppled out of the smokescreen, momentum sending them sliding through the mud and ash.
"Keep up the rate of fire!" Caolin bellowed.
Amat did not take orders from the new sergeant, but he obeyed regardless, his steady deluge of crimson lasbolts scything down entire squads. A few Woadians on the firing line whistled in appreciation.
"I have no idea where you came from," Asgeg told him, "but Holy Terra, you're fucking incredible."
"Watch yourself, Asgeg," Yang chided, managing a grin.
Amat said nothing. There was only the battle. Aim, shoot, adjust. Aim, shoot adjust. A process that took microseconds, repeated endlessly. Yang doubted he'd heard them.
A lasbolt struck her aura, sizzling angrily. Grunting, Yang unleashed Ember-In-Glory, the blare of the bolter cannons ripping through the invaders. Still they came, drawn to her light like moths to a flame.
They emerged from the smoke, howling desperately. Yang met them, followed by her comrades' fire. Once she'd surrounded herself with targets, the servo-skulls equipped with lasblasters erupted. Steady, surgical blasts blew heretic chests open, cooked them inside their armor, melted their skin.
Yang danced among them, Ember-In-Glory pulverizing all that it touched. An ear-shattering boom echoed over them as another cannon round soared over their heads, this time striking home. The back of a Woadian lander burst in a shower of metal and flame. Crashing, it disgorged a handful of bleeding, disoriented Woadians.
"Enemy tank!" Caolin cried, pointing into the haze. "Saw the flash! Mael, get up here!"
"Not close enough!" Yang said, mulching another heretic.
Protected by the rest of Squad F, Mael surged forwards, diving into the wave of charging heretics. Yang overtook him, Ember-In-Glory hurtling her forwards. Her wings flared as her heels churned trenches into the earth.
Heretics swarmed her, driven mad by bloodlust and desperation. Roaring, she blew them apart, bellowing out walls of golden flame. The Emperor had granted her power, and she would not see it go unused.
Another cannon shell landed at her feet - high explosive. Beside her, Kalla fell, blood erupting from his mouth and ears.
"Fuck!" Sparlich cursed, catching him. He was still alive, but coughing up meat. Varl hurried to their vox-operator, covered by Lana at his side. But the casualty did not slow Mael.
"Fuck you!" He bellowed, leaping over a tangle of smoldering black bodies, meltagun braced.
"Mael!" Yang cried, rushing to his side.
Mael was faster. He shouldered his meltagun and fired. A spear of brilliant orange light sliced through the tank, melting through a dozen layers of rolled steel like they were papyrus. The tank erupted, its turret sailing into the air before clattering to the earth. Its ammo cooked off in a pillar of flame, filling the battlefield with snapping rounds and metal scrap.
Mael roared his approval, waving away the smoke that poured from his new weapon. Yang pushed him down, careful not to break every bone in his body.
"Get down you fuckin' idiot!" She cried. A lasbolt struck her back, splashing off her aura as if to prove her point. Yang didn't bother turning around - a servo-skull killed the offending heretic.
Mael looked hurt. Embarrassed. "Sorry," he said.
"I might be a Saint, but even I can't protect you all," Yang said. "What would I tell Soo?"
"I-" He was interrupted by a sniper, whose armor-piercing bolter shell struck Yang in the forehead.
Her head snapped backwards, pain exploded through her. But her semblance answered in kind - her wings soared higher, burned hotter, washed over the battlefield with renewed vigor. Righting herself, she pointed at the source of the shot.
Amat's lasbolt followed her gesture, melting the sniper immediately. Plucking the squashed, smoking shell from her forehead, she flicked it away.
Mael looked up at her, jaw slack, eyes wide.
"Leave the dumb shit to me," Yang told him. She couldn't let him know how much that hurt, or that she couldn't take hits like that all day. I know I have limits. All power comes at a cost.
Mael nodded.
Gamma pushed forwards, following Yang into the tumult. Tight firing discipline ensured that no heretic touched the platoon, even as a hell of bullets and lasbolts sought their death. Amat orchestrated their fire, superior senses wordlessly directing their efforts.
The battlefield smelled awful. Besides the usual miasma, there was an edge to it, something that smelled like putrefaction and ancient sulfur.
"Xenos!" Shen-se cried. Too late.
Caolin's breath exploded from him as a weight crashed into his chest and crushed his ribcage - a xenos had struck him, a horrifying parody of a living being.
Recovering from its rolling blow, it unfurled. Standing at two-and-a-half meters tall, it was a headless, bipedal creature with backwards legs and four arms that had too many joints. Beneath a suit of glossy black armor, every inch of green-grey skin wriggled with thousands of glistening worms, rustling wetly.
It readied a blow to finish the job and crush Caolin's skull.
Ember-In-Glory roared as the creature's limb descended, and the Saint impacted against the xenos in a streak of golden flame, grinding it into the mud and dirt. Up close, the xenos was even worse.
The smell was overpowering, and she could feel it breathing through the thousand porous skin-holes in which the worms made their homes. It opened a sphincter-maw that sat in the center of its chest, revealing a gullet lined with razor-sharp teeth. A roar came forward unlike any Yang had ever heard, a gurgling screech that turned her stomach, assaulting her inner ear with subharmonic wrongness that flipped the world upside down, filling her stomach with ulcerous acid.
It did not save the xenos from her muscle memory. Ember-In-Glory struck, meeting what passed for the creature's face. Yang buried it into the earth, the ground cracking and breaking before her might, sending up a cloud of dirt, mud, and a wash of glowing yellow ichor.
The worms still wriggled.
Yang rolled off the corpse. Amat watched from the lip of the newly-made crater, unrelenting focus on hold. She climbed out of the pit, landing hands-and-knees beside him.
"Fuckin' Throne," she wheezed, feeling something wet and solid crawl up her throat. She vomited. Amat said nothing as she wiped her lips.
As Gamma reestablished fire superiority, a handful of Woadians gathered to check on Yang. Then they saw the xenos. Lana puked too, hunching over to retch horridly. Sparlich said nothing, plucking an incendiary grenade from his rig and tossing it onto the corpse.
It burst, a flash of promethium flame engulfing the creature.
The worms shrieked as they burned.
"Emperor," Caolin wheezed, "Fuck. Fuckin' xenos." He opened his mouth to say something else before his breath hitched and he could speak no more. Rattling, gasping, his face turned blue.
"Varl!" Yang bellowed, the sound carrying across the raging battlefield. Gamma's chirurgeon slid into place beside Caolin, Kalla still slung over his shoulder. Ripping out his knife, Varl sliced open the Sergeant's fatigues, revealing a torso that was entirely black. "Varl?" Yang asked. Quietly.
"Rib splinter pierced his chest cavity," Varl grunted. "Look at me Sarge," he said, grabbing his neck. With the other, he speared Caolin's flank with his knife. A hiss of wet air and blood followed.
"Guh," Caolin gasped. "'Anks,' he managed, clutching his chest as Varl pressed a bandage to it.
"Yang!" Asgeg cried.
She already knew - the smell hit her before anything else.
Ember-In-Glory roared, and Yang rejoined the fight, landing amidst a pair of maðkurgangr. They fired at her, wrist-mounted guns spitting out flecks of serrated metal that buzzed like eldar shuriken - yet nowhere near as precise. Each blast was a torrent of grouped projectiles, designed to turn targets into bags of perforated flesh. Whirring, screaming, grinding, the metal flechettes rattled off her aura, scored her armor.
Yang pivoted, driving a punch into its center. The accompanying bolter round split it open and detonated, showering the battlefield with wriggling, screeching worms. Spinning with the considerable recoil, she ducked under the fire of its comrade, felt the air fill with screaming flak. She clapped her force fists over the creature's sides, obliterating everything between her palms.
But it didn't die. Pressing its gun to her chest, it fired once more, arm shaking as it disgorged a flurry of metal shards. Deflected by her armor, they snapped and whistled as they tore through the air.
"Bastard!" She cried, leaping. Bringing her fists together, she slammed her arms down, liquefying the creature and spreading it over the earth in a fine, foul-smelling paste. A weight grabbed her hair - though little more than a handful of limbs attached to a crushed, paper-thin torso, the other creature had yet to die. The elbow of Ember-In-Glory connected with what remained of the xenos, punting it a dozen yards away. A chorus of scouring lasbolts spelled its final end. These things are fucking tough!
Behind her, the 111th established a perimeter, thousands of Rangers storming up from the LZ to join Gamma. The sounds of war surrounded them as the Woadians gave battle on their homeworld.
"Disgusting," Commissar Neuhoff spat as he joined them, his chainsword running over with blood and flesh.
"I'm more concerned as to why there's so many heretics," Yang said. Her eyes flashed red, and a pulse of aura washed over her. The grime and gore that painted her blackened and flaked away, smoldering until it was ash. "I thought it'd take them longer to get here."
"True," Neuhoff said. "Something's… wrong."
"Emperor," Caolin coughed, clutching his chest as Varl pressed a cotton pad to his flank. His voice was little more than a gurgling whisper, barely audible over the noise. "Commissar, sir, think you can take over?"
"Of course, Sergeant," Neuhoff replied, loading a fresh mag into his bolt pistol. "We'll hold here for now."
"Good idea," Yang said, as another tank shell whistled well over their heads, missing a lander by a meter. It hit a berm and skipped off into the horizon, a bright flash of green dancing into the night.
"Close one," Asgeg said. Kalla coughed up more meat, and Varl rushed to his side, injector in hand. "Fuck," she swore.
"Think we'll need the Space Wolves?" Neuhoff asked, bolt pistol barking.
"I'd certainly like them," Yang said. "But…" She shook her head. Something was wrong. Were we compromised? How? We were in orbit for twenty minutes! Barely! "The reinforcements must have already been en route…" She realized, trying to parse the situation. I really shoulda read that book Weiss was carrying around. Macharius' door-stopper.
"They hit from the west, right?" Neuhoff asked.
"Yeah," Yang confirmed, pointing with an oversized finger. "Came from there, tried to smoke off a counterattack."
"They were likely headed into Aesborough," Neuhoff reasoned. "Before our assault."
"Were they retreating?" Asgeg asked.
Yang kicked the corpse of a xenos over, saw the symbol of the Blood God seared into its vacated skin. "Unlikely," she growled, grinding it into the mud.
"Then the Space Wolves need you," Neuhoff said. "Something's up in the city, and the sooner it's liberated - and heretic command is crushed - the better."
"No faith in the astartes?" Yang asked, grinning. She could still taste vomit.
"More faith in the Saint that rose before me," Neuhoff replied. A long, bitter pause. "We both know that five space marines can turn the tide of a war, but they cannot stand against entire armies."
"Or worse," Yang agreed. "You're right." I wish I wasn't. Looking over the Woadians, they were recovering from the initial skirmishes, patching up the wounded, digging hasty defenses. "I'll push up," she said finally, loud enough for Gamma to hear her. "Take out that tank too," she added as another shell whistled overhead. "Everyone good?"
"We'll… we'll make our stand here," Caolin promised, still lying on the dirt. A rattling cough. "If we press up any more, we'll over-extend."
"Glad to hear it," Yang said. Amat's lasgun barked again, piercing a rolling cloud of dust. Alien screams echoed out, sources unseen. But the smell wasn't far behind. He looked at her and nodded.
I've got your back, the nod said.
Yang grinned. Then let's go kick some ass.
A shiver crept down her reinforced spine - her aura. She held up a finger. "One moment," she said. Crouching, she sprung five meters into the air, catching an incoming xenos grenade. Studded with spikes, it was covered in unintelligible writing and symbols - more dedications to the Blood God. She landed, her weight sinking her up to her knees.
"Return to sender!" She cried, hurling the grenade at a distant shape in the smoke. Such was the force of her throw, the grenade ripped a hole through its torso, detonating behind it with a rattle of shrapnel. A few pieces screamed past, one clipping Neuhoff's coat.
"Emperor," he cursed. "Thanks."
"No problem," she said, ripping herself free. In her power armor, it was effortless. Turning to follow Amat's advance, she looked back to the Commissar. "I'm counting on you," she said. Neuhoff only nodded. With that, she sprang after her boyfriend. Wings flickering with speed, she landed beside him, boots splashing through puddles of smoking gore.
"Space Marines did all this?" She asked.
"The 111th did its part," Amat answered. A flick of his thumb upped the lasgun's power to maximum.
"How you holding up?" Yang asked, hand on his shoulder. Under Ember-In-Glory, she engulfed most of his neck, shoulder, and bicep. The question seemed to shake him from a trance.
"I'm… okay," he said, using a word she taught him. "This isn't my style," he said, nodding at the carnage laid out before them. "Not what I'm built for."
"I know," Yang said. "Doing a hell of a job though."
"Thanks," Amat said, his voice neutral. "Never seen these xenos before. Or even heard of them. The warp is full of surprises."
"Nasty fuckers," Yang agreed, a snarl curling her lips.
A squad of heretics approached them, but Amat melted their brains through their eyes before Yang could launch herself forwards. I'm really blessed that he didn't kill me on Uriel. An explosion rippled in the distance, near Aesborough. The Space Wolves.
"I'll keep advancing," Amat said. "I think you promised your friends a wrecked tank."
"Right," Yang said, beaming. Another shell screamed away into the night, a green streak that pointed her right towards her target. Gotcha. Settling into a starter's position, she counted from three and then rocketed forwards.
Each stride covered four meters, her power armor whirring and hissing as she ate up the distance. Her hair rippled behind her, her wings flared, and she couldn't suppress a smile - she was beginning to work out the kinks of her armor. It learned with each step, each punch, every rollicking blast from Ember-In-Glory.
The tank - once no more than a dark metal hulk in the distance - now stood tall before her, clearly of xenos make. Wide and low to the ground, six twisted spider-limbs stood in for treads. Black prehensile tendril-wires covered the chassis like sparse, shimmering hair. Besides its main cannon, a bevy of mounted turrets jutted out from its sleek, organic armor.
It spotted her. A tsunami of projectiles slammed into her, green-white tracers and long shards of metal splitting the air, ricocheting off her armor. They didn't even slow her. Bellowing, Yang's pace increased as she braced her shoulder.
She impacted against the hull, speed and semblance combining into a earth-shattering blow. Its armor crumpled and bent under the impact, a person-sized dent that nearly split it in two. Its crew screeched and spluttered within.
The tendrils lashed at her with enough force to rip a man in half. Grabbing a fistful, she ripped them loose, watched a green-metal oil gush from the wounds. Yang leapt to the top of the cannon, directly atop a hatch. Ember-In-Glory tore it open effortlessly. A hail of alien projectiles erupted from within. Despite its design accommodating the maðkurgangrs' massive frames, it was still too small to fit Ember-In-Glory.
Instead, she closed her eyes, cast her mind to the Emperor. He found her. Cramming her head into the hatch, she belched out a deluge of golden flame, flash-broiling everything inside. Flames spilled out from the rents in its armor, from its exhaust, from every pore until there was nothing inside but a thin black film and melted components.
Satisfied, Yang leapt off the tank. Its ammo caught a second later, a geyser of sparks erupting from the open hatch. Spitting a glob of warp-flame, she made her way back to Amat. He wasn't hard to find.
Alone amidst a swarm of heretics and xenos, he tore through them, the barrel of her lasgun burnt black and smoking. A xenos charged him, curling itself into a ball before tearing across the battlefield in a jittery, springing roll.
"Amat!" She called. He understood.
The xenos burst from its ball-form, a gargantuan black-metal axe braced to hew the assassin in half.
His aura flashed silver as he caught the blow with his forearm. He tore a frag grenade off his rig and rammed it between the creature's armor plates. Pressing his feet against the xenos, he launched himself free, a precise, mid-air lasbolt detonating the explosive.
Bits of xenos rained down around them as Yang rejoined him.
"Nice," she said.
Amat didn't respond. He was staring at his forearm.
"Yeah, these things are built like big, wriggling tanks," Yang said. "Wherever they come from, I really don't wanna visit."
She thought she heard a chuff, but she could've been mistaken.
Another grenade landed at their feet. Amat kicked it away. Yang covered him with her armor as it exploded, shrapnel ringing off her armor. A piece of it broke through her aura and sliced her cheek - a thin red line.
"'I'll take care of it," she said, bounding towards the thrower. She landed in a foxhole filled with warriors, and she raised Ember-In-Glory to smite them into oblivion.
Before she realized they were Woadians. Not Rangers - resistance fighters dressed in rags, their eyes sunken and hollow, their dark skin and white hair caked with mud, grime, and blood. They looked at her with rapturous awe.
"Did you just throw a grenade?" She asked them.
"Uh," one gulped. Shorter than the others, he looked to be seventeen standard - if one squinted past the battle fatigue. "Heard some xenos, so I tossed it."
"It's okay," Yang said, crouching to be eye-level with them. Amat knelt at the lip of the foxhole, unleashing hell with the lasgun. "What are you guys doing here?"
"We…" the leader said, a woman who wore more bandages than skin. "We were supposed to cripple a heretic column bound to Aesborough. The word went out, all across occupied Akuri." She looked at Yang. "So we went."
"Did you see the Space Wolves?" Yang asked. So the 'reinforcements' weren't reinforcements at all… they were already en route.
"Space Wolves?" the kid asked, confused. "We were attacking alongside the rest of our cell before…" He shook his head. "Explosions. Chaos… it all happened so fast. But then you..." He looked sheepish. "You're a Saint, aren't you?"
"What gave it away?" Yang asked, beaming. None of them returned her smile. They looked like they wanted to cry, but couldn't summon the tears. "Hey," she said. "Hey. It's gonna be okay." She pointed towards Aesborough. "That's heretic command, right?"
The leader nodded. "Last we heard. Some PDF remnants have been running sabotage ops there, but we haven't heard anything certain. We…" She blinked heavily, head nodding.
"Soldier?" Yang asked.
She coughed blood down the front of her farmer's clothes. Her squad looked away, grimacing.
"S-sorry, Holiness," she said, wiping her mouth.
"You're good," Yang said, licking her thumb and scrubbing away the last of the red that sat at the corners of the woman's lips. "You've done enough. See those lights?" She asked, pointing behind her. The 111th was solidifying its position, supporting fighters raking the scorched earth with bolter fire. "That's my personal guard. Woadians. Find the guys carrying the banner, ask for a medicae named Varl. Tell him Yang sent you."
"Yang?" The kid asked.
"That's me," Yang said, shooting him a smirk. "You'll be hearing a lot of it, try not to wear it out."
"Y-yes, Your Holiness," he said, bowing his head.
Yang kept her smile. "Awesome. Now go find Varl! Get the fuck out of here," she said pointing emphatically towards Gamma. "My friend and I will take it from here," she said, jerking her thumb at Amat. Amat did not reply. "You've done enough," she repeated gently.
"Thank you," the kid said. Reluctantly, he took his eyes from her. Muttering in Woadian Low, he recruited a larger resistance member to help him with their leader.
Yang stopped them as they tried to pick her up at the armpits. "Not like that," she said, scooping the woman up. "Over the shoulder." She draped the leader over the larger man's shoulders. Taking his arms, she looped one around the leader's leg while the other secured an arm. "There you go."
A salvo of rounds snapped overhead, and the Woadians winced, burying themselves further into the foxhole.
"No time for that!" Yang said. "Amat, give us suppressing fire!" He obeyed, reloading her lasgun and laying down a withering barrage of lasbolts. "There we go!" Yang cried, leaping up. "Now go, go go!" She shouted at the resistance fighters, patting their shoulders as they clambered out of the foxhole and onto the battlefield.
Bringing Ember-In-Glory to bear, she joined Amat in his deluge of firepower, the deafening report of her bolters booming across the battlefield like peals of thunder.
"Up a little," Amat said, "two degrees right, bearing two-two-seven."
Yang adjusted her fire, even though she couldn't see where her shots were landing. Her gauntlets belched out a shower of spent bolter casings, gathering into a pile of dark, smoking metal.
"Did I hit anything?" She asked, nearly screaming to be heard over her masterwork weapons and the clamorous whine ringing in her ears.
"Scratch eight xenos," he answered as he flushed her lasgun with coolant. "You got there eventually," he added, a hint of a smile in his words.
"All that matters," Yang said. She checked her ammo - only a dozen or so rounds left in the current belt.
"I'm simply thankful Ember-In-Glory fires explosive rounds," Amat said.
"Catty today, aren't we?" Yang asked, chuckling gently. "You hurt my feelings. My feelings are hurt now."
"Mhm," Amat said, joining her. An explosion rocked the city and a plume of fire shot into the night sky. "Munitions dump."
Yang let out a low whistle. "Looks like we're missing out on all the fun," she said, hands on her hips. "Wanna lift?" She asked.
"No." Amat said.
"Worried it'll look emasculating?" Yang asked.
"Worried the g-forces will turn my insides into slush," Amat answered her. "And no one has ever accused you of being gentle."
Yang laughed, a lonely sound on the battlefield. "Fair. Race you?'
Amat thought about it for a moment before vanishing, a blurry streak that rocketed over the battlefield.
"Bastard!" Yang cried. A burst from Ember-In-Glory sent her soaring forward, nearly bowling her boyfriend over in the process. She matched his stride, power armor whirring madly. "You got guts, dude."
"Surprise is an assassin's most powerful tool," Amat returned. His forehead was dry.
"You're using your aura pretty well," Yang said.
"Thanks," Amat replied. "It… saved my life."
"That it did," she said. "Be careful though. Using it like a crutch gets more huntsmen killed than if they didn't have it at all."
Amat considered that.
Aesborough neared with each step. Cathedrals and spires dominated a host of warehouses, granaries, and spaceports. All so hauntingly familiar. A red flag hung from the tallest minaret, one adorned with the eight-pointed star of Chaos. Nearly four stories tall, it flapped gently in the noxious fume-wind from a burning munitions dump.
Yang frowned. She ground to a halt, armored legs scoring a trench in the burnt soil. Amat stopped too, chest rising and falling evenly.
"Everything okay?" He asked. She didn't reply. Her hand flexed, golden flame spooling between her fingers. Amat stepped back.
The Emperor answered.
A ball of golden flame burst into being in her palm, a frothing, bubbling gout of living fire that pulsed in time with her heart, in time with her plea for the people of Woadia. Its shape changed, morphing into a spear of churning heat.
"That their spark never dies," Yang said. Stepping back, she burst forwards and leapt, hurling her will towards Aesborough. The flame-bolt shot forwards, striking the base of the flag and washing the tower in gold. The flag caught fire immediately.
"It's still there," Amat noted.
"I want it to burn."
"Oh."
Another explosion, this one much closer. Leaping over a shattered trenchline, Yang beheld the main road to Aesborough. Where the city met burnt farmland was a nest of ruined fortifications. Sandbags, shoddy bunkers, gun emplacements, mortar pits. Each bathed in smoke and fire.
Tracers snapped wildly over the battlefield, and a storm of hissing red lances poured out from multilases as they raked through the darkness, desperate to find a target. Mortally wounded heretics crawled back to their lines, unaware most of their bodies were gone.
Mortar shells landed fruitlessly, spitting up clouds of dirt and shrapnel.
"What are they shooting at?" Yang asked. A flare screamed into the night, and she saw.
The Space Wolves were performing their duty.
Illuminated by fire and phosphorous, they cut a swathe of death through the heretics, streaks of grey-blue power armor that rendered all they touched into a hundred pieces. A deafening howl echoed through the city as their leader rushed a stubber nest. Heavy caliber rounds whinnied off his rune-etched armor, spinning off into the night. Leaping the final ten meters, he landed amongst them, his two-handed chainsword a blur of icy-blue teeth that spat out gore and offal by the gallon.
He backhanded a charging heretic laden with explosives, deleting the upper half of his body in a spray of red. A xenos tried to tackle him, wrapping itself around his armor, its long, distended blade seeking the gaps in his armor. Peeling it away, he pinned it to the ground and tore it limb from limb until he was certain it was dead.
Four Space Wolves followed, surging forward, overtaking their leader and bursting into the fray. They stomped through trenches, crushed weapon emplacements under their feet, batted away grenades, ignored the flood of rounds that begat a constant shower of sparks from their armor.
There was no movement wasted, no moment spared, no heretic in their path left whole. There was only the advance, a constant grind of shearing metal, whirring servos, ricocheting rounds, and silent, perfectly coordinated fury.
Watching them was watching the Emperor at work, His hand reaching through millennia to touch the present and visit His Judgement on the damned. It was like watching mountains move. They shouldn't budge under their own weight, yet they soared like huntsmen.
No... faster.
And Yang realized that Josephus' traitor marines were poor imitations. Pale, insufficient copies that were laughable parodies of the astartes form. Worse than that - they were so incomparably inferior, they were a naked insult upon the Emperor's design
The Space Wolves were war made manifest, war as mankind had always dreamed of waging.
Bolter fire erupted from a window in Aesborough, raking the Space Wolves with explosive shells. The leader pointed.
Seizing a shattered heretic cannon, one of the astartes spun it around like a toy before hurling it at the offending emplacement. It impacted moments later, ripping out a chunk of the building, debris and bits of heretic raining upon the streets below.
Now silence reigned on the battlefield, but even the quiet bowed before the Angels of Death.
Righting himself, the leader removed his helmet, revealing a tangled maze of scars that covered his bald pate before disappearing behind a short salt-and-pepper beard. Turning, he caught Yang's gaze a half-kilometer away.
He beamed, adamantium-plated fangs shining brilliantly in the light of a dying flare.
And Yang understood what it meant to be astartes.
A/N: Sorry this one took me a while! I hope that that this fic FINALLY adding some loyalist astartes action was worth the wait!
Once again, my thanks to MrDarth151 of Spacebattles for helping me out with this chapter, this arc, and Space Marines in general (not to mention his wealth of knowledge regarding the Space Wolves)! Without his help, these chapters would have been even longer coming out, and nowhere near as good.
Oh, and I should say this now - these xenos are OCs, not some crazy chaos-addled tyranids or other random flavor of existing 40k xenos.
Next time, we meet Yang's newest friends!