Book Three: The Heart of Yang Xiao Long
Chapter 98: Heavy Metal
"Weapons are only as worthy as their wielder." - The God-Emperor of Mankind, as quoted in the Lectitio Divinitatus
Yang and Amat marched forwards, picking their way across the battlefield towards Aesborough, towards the Space Wolves. The astartes had paused their assault - not out of need for rest, but rather out of politeness owed to a Living Saint… or perhaps simple curiosity. It was impossible to tell behind the scarlet glow of their helmet lenses.
Seeing them up close solidified her initial impressions. They were enormous, the shortest standing a half-meter taller than her. Watching them move was watching the impossible happen, mountains of power armor and pure mass moving like river-rapids when they should be rooted to the ground.
Their armor smoked in silence, a hundred fresh scrapes and scorch-marks marking their storied ceramite plates. It was easy to distinguish the veterans from the fresh blood - the elder marines decorated their power armor with animal pelts, runes, knotwork badges, wolf-hair tassels, and necklaces lined with forearm-sized teeth, while the younger ones went unadorned. Each, however, was painted in blood. Not one carried a bolter.
The leader peered over his two-handed double-edged chainsword, silent as he watched the pair approach. His eyes were a stark and brilliant blue. No one spoke, but each astartes removed his helm as she approached.
They were some of the most haggard men Yang had ever seen, their faces pockmarked with scars, burns, and stapled wounds. Their hair was wild and matted, while three wore matted beards.
Only when Yang stood before them was the silence broken.
"Greetings!" The leader boomed. He appraised her, parsing her very being - a gaze that had seen a thousand battlefields. "I am Veteran Sergeant Torbrand of the Vlka Fenryka, wielder of the frost blade Vigriðrkonungr. These are my battle-brothers," he said gesturing to his squad. "Brother Jöm, my second-in-command."
Brother Jöm nodded gruffly, his mouth hidden behind a heavy, braided, white-brown beard. A broad-shouldered marine dripping with bear-pelts and grasping a thunder hammer, he was the shortest of the squad, but easily the broadest.
"Brother Vulkmar," Torbrand continued, nodding at an unarmed marine.
With a long facial scar pulling his lip into a permanent half-smile, Vulkmar was oddly handsome despite his broad, inhuman jaw and bright yellow-irised eyes. He wore short-cropped orange hair that blended into a sharp, well-trimmed beard.
"Lady," Vulkmar said, affording Yang a nod, his fist over his breast.
"Brother Ingvar," Tormund said, indicating the marine to his right. A dour-faced man with beady-black eyes and a mass of russet hair, Ingvar was unarmed like Vulkmar, his arms crossed as he appraised the saint.
"And this is my protege, Laukr." Torbrand rumbled at the youngest astartes.
Laukr huffed, a colossal chainsword leaning against his shoulder. By far the youngest of the marines, his face was lean, scowling, and unscarred, more at home in the Administratum than the Astartes... were it not for the gigantism and inverted blue 'L'-rune that marked his eye and cheek. His ink-black hair was tied into a short ponytail, while the sides of his head were shorn.
"And we," Torbrand said, chest swelling slowly with bellicose pride, "Are Holmbr Pack. We have the honor of serving the Blackmane's Great Company. You," he said, taking in the sight of her, "are the Allfather's newest servant we've heard so much about." His accent was rolling, yet grating and bitter like gargling rocks. It sounded Woadian.
"That's right," Yang said, extending a hand. "Yang Xiao Long. Beautiful. Badass. Beati."
Silence.
Uproarious laughter echoed across the battlefield, loud enough to rattle her bones through her power armor. Torbrand took her hand roughly. Without Ember-In-Glory, Yang suspected his hand would have engulfed her arm.
"Well met!" He said, a grin barely perceptible under his beard. "Haven't heard of a Saint that cracks jokes." He rumbled.
"Haven't met space marines that look like tribal bikers," Yang returned. "Or any space marines at all, really." Another short laugh rippled through the astartes - though Laukr remained silent.
"I like this one!" Torbrand announced, a wide grin once more revealing his massive, metal-plated fangs. Yang swallowed. The Sergeant turned to Amat, his mirth fracturing. "You have an assassin in your retinue," he said, taking in the former Vindicare. "And no petty death cultist either."
"I'm her security detail, my Lord," Amat answered, as if discussing the non-existent weather.
Torbrand stroked his beard as he waited for Amat to reveal his name. When the assassin remained silent, he shrugged. "So be it." He turned to Yang. It was like watching a battleship fold on itself. "I heard you slew Josephus the Corruptor."
"Bashed his head in more like," Yang said, fist meeting a palm. "Got an STC to boot," she added, neglecting to mention specifics.
"We were on Cadia when the Lady's call rang out," Torbrand said, "We did not get word of Corruption's End until it was too late for us to assist you." His brothers muttered their disappointments, Vulkmar spitting a wad of phlegm the size of her naked fist across the floor. "However," Torbrand continued, "I understand the Iron Hands answered the call. If we are the first astartes you've met, I assume they were absent."
"Correct, Sarge," Yang said. "Just missed them." Torbrand's fanged smile took on an edge that matched his frost blade's.
"Be very glad for that," he said. "Our brothers of the Iron Hand aren't as… personable as us." Scattered, rumbling laughter from all but Laukr.
"Sorry for interrupting you," Yang said, gesturing at the carnage surrounding them. "Gotta say, you do lovely work."
"Kind of you to help out," Vulkmar barked, half-smile swelling into a full one.
"You had a handle on things," Yang replied, grinning as she nodded at the missing chunk of building.
"Hah!" Torbrand boomed, loud enough to flutter her hair. "I suppose we did."
"And we've been chatting long enough," Yang said, waving at Aesborough. "There's some heretics that need killing."
"Yes," Torbrand said. "Something foul awaits us in this city," he added, lips curling into a snarl.
"I smell it in the air," Laukr concurred, his voice a smooth, even growl.
"He speaks!" Yang noted, to scattered laughs from the astartes.
"I speak when there is something worth saying," the youngest astartes countered.
"Calm yourself, Laukr," Torbrand said. "We smell it too."
"Have you known any heretics that smelled good?" Yang said, half in jest.
"There were Those of the Pink Lotus," Jöm answered dutifully. "Adherents to She-Who-Thirsts," he continued. "Smelled like a summer day on Fenris, like the lovers we knew before the Takers."
"As if you knew lovers, Jöm," Vulkmar barked, jabbing his brother's cuirass. "Besides, the cultists shit themselves in the end, just like the rest!"
"Enough of this," Laukr muttered, revving his chainsword. "We have our duty. We've wasted enough time."
Vulkmar snorted, just like an ancient beowulf would. "The Saint asked a question," he deflected.
"And she's right," Torbrand said, peering over his titanic pauldrons to view the city, his eyes narrowing into cruel, feral slits. "Our task is not yet done." His marines donned their helmets once more, lenses flashing red as they activated.
They looked like daemons.
"Mind if we tag along?" Yang asked.
"Of course not," Torbrand said, steam hissing from his neck as his helmet sealed itself to his armor. "The more the merrier!"
"Fenris hjolda!" Jöm cried, hefting his thunder hammer.
"Fenris hjolda!" The Marines echoed, their voices shaking all of Aesborough.
They made their way into the city. Though Yang knew the heretics had only occupied Akuri for some weeks, rot suffused the Woadian city. The street lamps had been removed, the air was thick with fumes from ramshackle munition manufactorums, and an unnatural quiet hung like a miasma in the air. Most street corners had been bombed out, and piles of rubble filled the street, sometimes hastily bulldozed aside to allow for marching heretics or to serve as hasty fortifications.
She'd expected distant, horrid chants to Khorne, blood-drenched sacrifices lining the streets, the ceaseless churning of human-skin war drums, babies on pikes.
The usual heretic fare.
Yang frowned, contempt and wariness fuelling her aura, her soul. Her wings crackled and spat, and golden sparks danced across the desolate streets. Beside the stink of the maðkurgangr, the coppery miasma of blood and burnt metal filled her nose. The Space Wolves sensed it too.
Still, they moved in perfect battle-order, storming block after block with careful, ritual alacrity. With three melee weapons between them, Yang noted. Why no bolters? In fact, she had several questions for the astartes. If they were supposed to cripple heretic command, why'd they land on the MOB? Why did you leave Cadia? Why did you stop to help the Woadians?
Questions for later. For now, she was content to follow them as they tore through the city. Though Yang suspected they were checking their speed for her sake, they still moved at a blistering pace. Amat kept up somehow, despite lacking power armor, aura expertise, or a massive frame. She was once more reminded to never cross the Officio Assassinorum.
Though that choice might have already been made for me, Yang thought as she watched her boyfriend soar over a concrete barrier. Emperor protect us both.
"Contact!" Laukr barked, moments before a wall of heavy-bore subsonic rounds pelted them all. Their reports were confusing, quiet, blending with each other, bouncing off the countless walls and fading away into the alleys.
"Where?" Yang called. Amat answered with her lasgun, suppressing a handful of shadowy figures that danced between window frames. She followed up with Ember-In-Glory, searing tracers punching into the buildings.
Still, the rounds came. They hissed and screamed as they passed, as they slammed into power armor and were rebuffed. Yang couldn't tell where the rounds were coming from, but she knew they were accurate. Like hornets, they sought out the joints in her armor, her exposed face. One caught her neck, whinnying off her aura. She coughed, already feeling a bruise developing.
Bellowing, she bathed the offending building in a gout of dragon's breath. The windows exploded and flaming figures spilled out of the empty frames, slapping at the warp-fire that consumed them. Their bodies broke against the street.
A flak cannon erupted from a nearby alley, filling the street with proximity-burst shells. It was a deafening maelstrom of steel and shrapnel.
An ambush.
Heavy fragmentation rattled through the streets, shearing metal from the abandoned cars, shredding concrete like paper. An IED detonated nearby, bathing Vulkmar in a tsunami of fire. He emerged unscathed, flames licking at his power armor.
Amat was nowhere to be seen - likely on purpose.
Shimmering forms danced between cover and window frames, loosing whole magazines and batteries before vanishing again - cameleoline cloaks. Crimson bug-eyes had been welded to their faces as well - IR or thermal goggles, mouths hidden behind skull-bandannas. Devotees to the Blood God or not, these heretics were professionals.
The Space Wolves ducked and weaved through the chaos, bursting through buildings to obliterate the heretics that took cover within them. Their progress was easy to track - follow the screams.
Yang marched down the street, her servo-skulls blaring lasbolts, supporting her as she drew the heretic's fire.
Click.
Click?
A mine erupted, lifting her a meter into the air with a blast of high explosive pressure and a jet of superheated copper. Her semblance drank it in, even as the feeling below her waist was torn from her. Only her aura kept her leg-armor intact. Feeling returned, in the form of an agonzing spear of pain that shot up her leg, angrily pulsing, demanding to be acknowledged. She pushed it down, adrenaline surging.
Struggling to her feet, her eyes turned red, and she roared, vox-enhanced voice shaking dust from the many walls of Aesborough, filling the heretics with fear. Pain throbbed in her legs, constant, aching, biting.
Growling, she continued her advance.
"Gun neutralized," Amat called as the flak battery was abruptly silenced.
"I'll take that," Vulkmar said, dashing over to the assassin.
"Forget your bolters?" Yang asked, biting her tongue to keep the warp-flame from spilling out between her lips.
"No ammo," Ingvar explained curtly as he leapt at a heretic stubber nest on a second story balcony. His impact alone slew them all.
A xenos rolled onto the street, bristling with weapons. Metal shards erupted behind it, whizzing as they zipped past her and scratched her power armor. A dozen more aliens followed the first, their skin writhing with worms.
"Bad choice," Yang snarled. Twisting her wrist, she dropped her spent drums and settled into a war-stance. "Let's do this."
They obliged, bearing down on her with unnatural, jittering speed. A storm of black-metal blades sought her face, lightning jabs that followed one another perfectly, repeatedly, unrelenting. She pushed them aside with swipes from Ember-In-Glory, batting away their cruel swords in a shower of shattered metal.
The aliens continued unabated. Her power armor ate the impacts, aided by her aura. She could feel them sinking into the ceramite. Roaring, she spun, Ember-In-Glory connecting with one of the xenos center-mass. It exploded in a shower of shimmering gore and worms.
Ducking under an attempt to tackle her, Yang lashed out and caught its leg as it passed. Mulching it between her fingers, she slammed the creature into the pavement, vaporizing it, turning its armor into yet more shrapnel.
One latched onto her back, bringing a blade around to bury into her chest. Oily and gleaming with green sickness, she wanted no part of it. Flattening instantly, she unbalanced it, digging her gauntlet into a mess of worm-hairs and hurling it away.
Jöm caught it handily with the brunt of his thunder hammer, an explosion of pure force splattering it down the street. He pressed on - he knew she could take them.
A pair of multilasers erupted, bathing the streets of Aesborough in blinding red light. The Space Wolves took cover, scattering through the alleys to avoid the searing hellbolts. One of the xenos caught a bolt in its back, which exploded wetly with a cloud of foul steam.
Pinning its legs with her foot, Yang grabbed its chest and bent it backwards until everything inside broke. She tossed the body away casually.
There were still a handful of xenos remaining. It was difficult to tell how many - they moved fluidly, exchanged positions constantly, flowed between aggressor and defender without a word or misstep.
They circled her, waiting for her to move. A classic mistake. Yang grinned. Priming Ember-In-Glory, she fired, bursting forwards with the momentum and crushing a xenos with the sudden force. Sliding to a stop through its steaming ichor, she rounded on the others, foot lashing out to catch one in its face. Everything above its neck disappeared. Pivoting, she dodged a vicious jab that sought to spear her throat.
Her fist erupted, and the xenos was no more.
The final two xenos rushed her, before they disappeared in a deafening, fiery blast. Upside went downwards-side, nausea filled her, and the air smelled like red. Yang stumbled, reeled, and fell to her knee, coughing and hacking as her insides roiled.
Thermobaric… but not Woadian. They're shelling their own!
"Spotter," Amat said over comms, still nowhere to be seen. He sounded out-of-breath, which meant he'd already slain a few dozen heretics. "Out of range of my lasgun."
"Where?" Vulkmar asked.
"Oh-one-two," Amat said, "Halfway down the minaret."
A flurry of AA shells arced through the air, their flight lasting two seconds before slamming into Amat's target, crippling the tower and sending the upper half of the building tumbling to the ground.
"Hot damn," Yang wheezed, leaning on her knees as she caught her breath. Her leg pulsed with impatient pain. The damage was probably bad but she wasn't ready to acknowledge that yet. "You guys don't fuck around."
"Not in our nature," Tormund said, emerging from a pile of rubble that used to be a heretic barracks. Every inch of him was pained in smoking blood. Seeing Yang, he paused. "Winded?"
"Thermobaric round," Yang answered, giving him the thumbs-up. "I'm fine." She vomited. No blood. I'm fine. Another round landed in the street, high explosive. She keyed her microbead. "How you holding up?"
"I'm fine," Amat said, the blasts of his lasbolts punctuating each word. "And you?"
"Okay. I taste blood."
"Me too."
"Any idea where heretic command is?" Yang hollered to Tormund.
"None," he answered. "The sooner we find it, the better." His head snapped towards the center of the city, towards the fallen minaret. Yang flattened, covered her ears.
It saved her life.
A tank shell roared centimeters over her head, where she'd been standing a second ago. It impacted ten meters behind her, punching them all with a vicious high-explosive shockwave.
"They're throwing everything they got at us!" Yang said, hopping to her feet, nearly toppling over from the sudden force of her movement, lingering disorientation, the insistent ache in her leg. Ceramite greaves don't look so hot. And I'm still getting used to the armor...
The Wolves of Fenris did not reply.
Vulkmar loosed a series of bursts from his appropriated cannon, perfectly controlled, perfectly on target. Though the xenos tank was three hundred meters away and peeking out from behind a warehouse, the rounds connected. Sparks and grinding metal engulfed the tank - not enough to penetrate, but enough to blind and disorient the crew.
The astartes were already moving. Scattering, they raced towards the tank on separate vectors, utilizing debris, fallen buildings, and Vulkmar's hail of fire to mask their approach. Tracers from the tank's boltguns zipped past them, wild, inaccurate.
Yang rushed to join them. She was too late.
Jöm slid under the tank's cannon, thunder hammer whirling. It struck the central body, shearing away the front half of the crew compartment. The tank's tendrils lashed at him, but found no purchase against his power armor. Vulkmar's shells struck the exposed crew, obliterating them in a shower of green ichor and wriggling worms.
"Holy Terra," Yang said, sucking wind, "I'm having a hard time keeping up with you guys."
"We step around the mines," Vulkmar noted, a feral grin hidden behind his helm.
"More shelling up ahead," Amat warned, his transmitted voice crackling - some kinda interference with the microbead. "A battle in the spaceport district."
"The Resistance!" Yang realized. "Hey," she said, slugging Torbrand's elbow - she couldn't reach much higher. "They should know where heretic command is."
"Yes," Torbrand said, revving Vigriðrkonungr to clear it of gore. "These heretics and xenos are well-entrenched. Veterans." A vox-tainted sniff. "Desperate. We must make haste."
"Directions, Amat?" Yang asked.
"To your oh-one-three," Amat said. A klick and a half."
"You're already perched up somewhere aren't you?"
The microbead hissed and popped.
"You can't prove anything."
"Anything that looks like heretic HQ?" Yang asked, pointing the Space Wolves towards the resistance battle.
"No," Amat answered. "Usually, heretics like occupying desecrated holy places. But Aesborough's main cathedral looks… sparse from here. They're likely plotting its demolition."
"Got it," Yang said. "Thanks babe."
"Watch your words!" Amat hissed, the ferocity of his tone striking her.
"They're already like two hundred meters away," Yang protested, noting the cloud of dust left in the Space Wolves' wake.
"Another hundred meters, then you'll be out of their hearing range."
A pause. "Well fuck me," Yang said. "Sorry."
"It is what it is," Amat explained as she picked up her pace.
"Never took you for a fatalist," Yang prodded.
"Never was," Amat said. Even over microbead, she heard his smile. "I'll RV with you shortly."
"See ya," Yang said, picking up her pace. Ember-In-Glory blared, and she rejoined the astartes in less than five seconds.
"No more mines?" Vulkmar asked, vaulting a few dozen meters over a tangled mess of wrecked cars.
"Ha-ha, funny-man," Yang said, beaming. Wincing as she put too much weight on her leg. Fuck.
Torbrand raised his fist, the sign to halt. Each marine obeyed, bringing their tremendous momentum to an instant halt. Their helmets bobbed a few times before they exploded into action, spreading out across the street.
"Ambush?" Yang asked.
"Yes," Torbrand said.
His words were confirmed a moment later by a torrent of stubber rounds that erupted from a nearby alley, enough to force Yang to cover. Laukr landed atop the camouflaged gunnest, crushing it all. Rounds pattered off his power armor before his chainsword made two precise cuts.
Ten nigh-invisible heretics splattered against the alley, painting it all in red. Lashing out, Laukr grabbed the final survivor and squeezed. He discarded the remains behind him, the red, pulpy mash flopping to a halt at Yang's feet.
Vulkmar emptied the last few AA rounds into the remnants of an apartment building. They ripped past the windows and detonated inside, flak-bursts mulching a squad of cameleoline-clad heretics.
Tossing the spent cannon aside, he was set upon by a squad of xenos, one exploding into its full form inches in front of him. It impacted, staggering the astartes for a moment. Long enough for Laukr to rip the creature off and eviscerate it, chainsword painting the concrete in worms.
Yang joined the fray, driving a leaping punch into another xenos. Ember-In-Glory fired, and its top half disappeared. Her boots skidded through its remains, still alive, still fighting. Summoning up her distaste, her hatred, the hot coal that burned in her false stomach at seeing Aesborough so despoiled, she bellowed out golden warp-flame, washing the street in holy fire.
The astartes were unharmed. The xenos fought on, aflame.
Ingvar ripped one limb-from-limb before his fist descended, flattening what was left as it smouldered and burned. He was met with a blast of xenos projectiles, hurled from a distant cannon. It fired again, the fist of flatheaded metal chunks enough to dent his ceramite.
These heretics are tenacious motherfuckers, Yang thought as she joined Jöm and Torbrand's flanking attack. Pouring her aura into her feet, she launched herself forward, overtaking the Space Wolves.
Ember-In-Glory was first to strike the xenos cannon, a bolter shell breaking through the gunshield and exploding in whatever passed for the operators' faces. The gauntlet itself followed a microsecond later, a curled fist annihilating a xenos in a flash of raw force.
Jöm's thunder hammer struck its partner, mashing it into the asphalt hard enough to send a shockwave rippling through the block. Buildings shook, filling the street with roiling clouds of dust.
They pressed on, hounded by subsonic rounds - until a familiar chorus of rapid-fire lasbolts silenced them. Ingvar's head snapped to the right, and he dove into a granary. Shots and flashes of gunfire erupted from the building before he blasted through the other side of the building.
Efficient. Deadly. Unwavering.
Thank the Emperor they're being thorough, Yang noted as the Spaceport district neared. The thought of the 111th trying to clear Aesborough... She blinked away the unwelcome image.
A hundred meters out, the roar of battle resumed once more. Mortar rounds and clattering bolter-fire slammed into a landing center - a long, three-story concrete building that served as a place for ships to land, and their crews to rest, refuel, and restock.
Now it was a bunker.
Barbed wire wrapped around the entire first floor, the windows closed off with sandbags, studded with captured stubbers, multilasers, and AT cannons. Impact craters, blast marks, and bullet holes covered the facades like wallpaper. In the streets surrounding the launch pad, the heretics had dug trench lines from their dead.
Under renewed assault, the resistance members fired a brilliant crimson flare from the center of the launch pad. Long shadows flickered into being on the street their sources flickering and translucent - more cameleoline-clad heretic soldiers approaching in the cover of darkness.
The landing center erupted, and dozens of heretics rippled into view, riddled with holes, cooked under the heat of a dozen lasbolts.
Yang landed among the survivors, skidding to a stop and smearing blood down the block. The Space Wolves followed, descending upon the heretics like a force of nature, beating, pummeling, hammering.
Together, they smashed mortar emplacements, ripped apart IFVs with showers of sparks and the endless shrieking of grinding metal. They slew heretics, xenos by the dozens, crushing them, blowing them apart. Ember-In-Glory roared, bolter rounds wiping out entire squads.
In minutes, the spaceport district was empty of heretics. They still occupied it, but only as a thin layer of garish red paint and lumpy asphalt topper.
Yang's power armor smoked, still holding strong after an endless flood of bullets and labolts. Her aura sparked and simmered, semblance humming violently. She was hearing prayers again.
"Oi!" Yang called at the landing center-turned-bunker, cupping her hands around her mouth. "Anyone home?"
A gun port on the second story - fashioned from a sheet of hull-patching metal - fell open. From within, a spent lho stick sailed out, skittered to a stop at Yang's feet.
And Vadiik appeared in the window.
"Miss Long," she said, her voice low and raspy. Barely above a whisper. Her right arm was bound in a sling, her administratum uniform little more than a shredded tangle of threads. "Imperium's a big place, huh?"
Yang's eyes watered. Passing cloud of burnt ozone.
"Big place," Yang agreed.
"Nice duds," Vadiik said. "Killer hair."
"Thanks," Yang said, kicking over a heretic corpse. "Love what you've done with the place." At that, Vadiik's cracked lips finally broke into a smile.
"Down in a sec, Miss Long."
"You know this woman?" Torbrand asked, his steps shaking the block. His Wolves kept watch for reinforcements. For a moment, the fallen city was quiet.
"I'd be dead if it wasn't for her." Or worse, very very lost.
A rope ladder fell out from a second story window. Vadiik followed, her pace slowed by her wounded arm. The instance she touched the street, Yang enveloped her in a crushing hug.
"Emperor," Vadiik wheezed. "Miss Long, you're crushing me."
"Sorry, sorry," Yang said stepping back. "Vadiik," she said, trying to push words past a lump in her throat. She failed. The tears came, and she pulled the old veteran into another hug. This one far more gentle. "The city," Yang whimpered into her shoulder. "It's… it's… Fuck!" She cursed, gathering the remnants of the woman's overcoat in Ember-In-Glory's fist. "I was too late. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"Shhh," Vadiik said, running her fingers through Yang's radiant golden hair. "It's okay. You're here now. Thank you, Yang." A gentle push was enough a signal to part for now. Yang released her friend.
Yang wiped her eyes. "Nothing to say about all this?" She asked, nodding at her panoply.
"Little overwrought," Vadiik said. She allowed the Saint a small grin full of missing teeth. "But slightly more tasteful than I expected from you." Inspecting Torbrand, she gave him a stiff bow, pained and awkward. She was hiding other injuries. "Lord Astartes."
"Ma'am," Torbrand nodded.
"My regiment fought alongside the Salamanders back in '75," Vadiik said. "Big green bastards. Fought like hell."
"An honored chapter," Torbrand rumbled, smile hidden behind his helm.
"They lacked your… panache," Vadiik said, lighting another lho stick. Her last one. "To what do I owe the honor?" She took a drag.
"The heretic command center," Torbrand said. "It must be destroyed. We lack the time to scour the city."
"Converted munitorum dump," Vadiik answered immediately. "Between the Cathedral and the Commercial districts. Place is like a fortress. We would have done the job ourselves, but we got cornered. Made the most of it," she said, flicking her ashes into a midden of heretic corpses.
"Are you…?" Yang asked.
"Last of the PDF on the continent," Vadiik confirmed, waving at her impromptu bunker. "And you're looking at its highest-ranking member."
Yang looked at the landing center, felt the souls that thrummed within it. There were less than two hundred. Most were civilians. A few poked their heads out from gun ports, straining against each other to catch a glimpse of Yang. Their souls swelled at the sight. She wanted to cry.
She smiled instead, waving at them with her massive gauntlets.
"Are you certain about their command center?" Torbrand asked.
"Absolutely," Vadiik said. "We broke their comms-code a week after they landed," she clarified. "That reminds me. Lotta chatter about the Cathedral."
"Amat said they're probably gonna blow it up," Yang said.
"Don't think so," Vadiik said. "Caught whispers about some sorta ritual." She sighed. "Same fucked-up shit as ever."
Yang's shoulder burned. "A ritual?" She asked.
"Yeah. Weird though. Usually they dump a few hundred thousand civvies into a pit. Or their blood," Vadiik explained. "But not this time. Brandt held the line long enough to evacuate most of the city to the Northern end of the continent."
The news should have flooded her chest with relief. There was something else instead, a crushing weight that squeezed the air from her lungs, set her soul to boiling. Her breaths came shorter and shorter.
"Miss Long?" Vadiik asked.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED.
"Daemon," Yang wheezed. "Big one."
For the first time, she saw something that looked like fear on Vadiik's face.
"Form up Holmbr," Torband rumbled, stomping towards the Cathedral. "Change of plans."
A/N: I hope you guys enjoyed some Space Wolves doing what they do best - tearing shit up! I promise Holmbr not having bolters isn't me memeing about how the Space Wolves love CQC. There's a reason for it, but I wasn't gonna bog this chapter down in exposition.
Once again, many thanks to MrDarth151 of Spacebattles, who helped me tremendously with the Space Wolves, as well helping me with much of this arc as a whole.
Next time, more Space Wolves and Living Saint action!