[Word Bearers 03] - Dark Creed Read online

  Snarling in anger, Khalaxis recovered quickly and slammed a kick into the sergeant’s midsection, knocking him back into the barricade. His brethren were amongst the Devastators now, hacking them down without mercy, hot blood splattering across the White Consul’s alabaster armour plates. The sergeant lifted his chainsword defensively, but the arm holding it was hacked off as Khalaxis struck downwards with his chainaxe, the biting teeth of the weapon grinding through power armour, flesh and bone.

  Blood pumped from the wound and Khalaxis brought his knee up hard into the sergeant’s groin, cracking ceramite. With a backhand slap he knocked the plasma pistol from the sergeant’s hand, sending it spinning across the deck floor and planted the barrel of his bolt pistol against the White Consul’s chest plate, right over his primary heart.

  “See you in hell,” said Khalaxis, and he squeezed the trigger.

  It took three shots to penetrate the thick power armour and the bonded ribcage of the White Consul, but the fourth detonated within the warrior’s chest cavity, pulping the organs within. Still, the Consul was Astartes, and did not die. He continued to grapple with Khalaxis, who pounded his fist repeatedly into the White Consul’s helmet, shattering one lens and caving in his rebreather.

  With a wrench, Khalaxis tore the Space Marine’s ruptured helmet from his head, so that he could see the face of the one he was about to kill.

  The Consul’s face was noble and proud, and three metal service studs protruded from his brow. His genetic lineage was readily apparent, for he had the same arrogant cast to his features as had the despised Primarch Roboute Guilliman, making Khalaxis’ hatred surge all the more hotly.

  “For Calth,” hissed Khalaxis, drawing his fist back.

  “You did not win then, and you shall not win here, infidel,” said the White Consul, his voice defiant and haughty.

  With a snarl of rage, Khalaxis drove his fist into the Astartes’ face, killing him instantly.

  Breathing hard, Khalaxis rose above the now unrecognisable White Consul. He spat upon the corpse and gave it one last kick.

  There was a series of concentrated explosions as krak grenades were used to neutralise the automated turrets still peppering the warriors of the XVII Legion with heavy calibre fire, until the last of the guns were silenced.

  “Deck secured,” growled one his warriors.

  “We move,” said Khalaxis. “We have our orders.”

  With that, the warrior brothers of the XVII Legion advanced deeper into the hulking battle-barge, moving inexorably towards the main engine-core, their mission briefing explicit—bring the Sword of Truth to a halt.

  In the upper collegia decks, the push towards the plasma core was faltering. The Word Bearers Coteries were pinned down between carefully staggered lines of White Consuls defence, their lines of fire overlapping.

  Another Dreadclaw penetrated the hull, its talons piercing the inner skin of the ship and spitting the thick circular drilled core of the battle-barge’s armour. The bladed arcs of the assault pod slid aside, belching smoke, but before the Coterie cloistered within could launch itself into the fray a missile was fired into its interior. It exploded inside, fire billowing forth in a rapidly expanding cloud, and the survivors staggered out, their armour blackened and peeling.

  Concentrated bursts of bolter fire tore through the Word Bearers, cutting them down mercilessly as they fought to gain some cover. The last of them crawled across the deck, trailing blood in their wake, before carefully aimed shots took them in their heads.

  “Assault group X5.3, requiring assistance,” said Sabtec, champion of the exalted 13th Coterie. His voice was calm and measured. “We are at location P3954.23, facing heavy resistance. We are pinned down. Request heavy support.”

  “Acknowledged, Sabtec,” came Kol Badar’s voice, crackling through the vox-comms integrated into Sabtec’s helmet. The sound of bolter fire could be heard accompanying Kol Badar’s voice; the Coryphaus was currently marching his way towards the bridge of the Sword of Truth, accompanying the Dark Apostle himself with his Anointed brethren. “Secondary Dreadclaw launch initiated. Heavy support inbound.”

  “Received, my Corpyhaus,” said Sabtec.

  With a quick glance around the barricade, he saw that the enemy were flanking them, moving into position that would catch the pinned-down warrior brothers in a brutal enfilade. Assessing the situation instantly, he passed his orders with short, concise commands relayed through his vox-comms, shifting the position of three of the pinned Coteries under his command to counter the threat.

  “Brother Sabtec,” came the warning from one of his sub-champions. “I see them,” he replied.

  Moving up in support of the White Consuls were more Astartes, several of whom had heavy plasma cannons.

  “Brother Sabtec,” hissed another champion, his voice tense as the destructive cannons were brought to bear.

  Sabtec checked the flood of data being projected down the head-up display array of his helmet with a glance.

  “Twelve seconds,” he said.

  The plasma cannons hummed, powering up, but didn’t fire.

  They are waiting for more support, Sabtec assessed. Good. They were not the only ones.

  The seconds passed with painful slowness, then the battle-barge shuddered as more Dreadclaws struck home.

  As before, a missile speared into the yawning aperture of the first Dreadclaw that penetrated, but this time there were no warrior brothers stumbling from the flames to be cut down by bolter fire. No, this time there was a deep roar of outrage that reverberated deafeningly from the confines of the assault pod. As other Dreadclaws burrowed through the thick outer plating of the Sword of Truth to disgorge their lethal cargoes, Sabtec smiled in anticipation.

  The deck shook as the immense armoured form of the Warmonger advanced out of the Dreadclaw, emerging unharmed through the inferno unleashed by the missile fired into the assault pod’s interior, which had been modified to accommodate the hulking Dreadnought.

  “For the Warmaster Horus!” blared the Warmonger, the booming, sepulchral sound projected from grilled vox-amplifiers to either side of the sarcophagus that forever held his shattered body. Bolts ricocheted off the Warmonger’s armoured shell and the Dreadnought advanced through the weight of fire, seemingly oblivious.

  With an ungodly wail, a plasma cannon fired. Sabtec’s monochromatic auto-compensators reacted instantly to the painfully bright white/blue expulsion, dimming his vision momentarily so as not to blind him. The blast glanced off the Warmonger upon his armoured left shoulder, melting the outer casing of his thick plates but doing little substantial damage.

  The blow rocked the Dreadnought back a step. With a bellow of fury, the Warmonger set its clawed feet wide and began firing. Heavy-calibre cannon slugs tore across the deck, shredding barricades and several White Consuls. The White Consuls’ plasma cannon exploded with a sucking roar, spraying superheated plasma as its core was breached.

  With a bellow the Warmonger broke into a loping charge, smashing barricades aside. A missile glanced off its angled armour plates and veered up into the ceiling before exploding harmlessly. The heavy flamer slung beneath the Warmonger’s crackling power talons roared, pouring burning promethium. Pristine white plate blackened and peeled beneath the inferno.

  Sabtec rose from his cover and charged forward, his bolter bucking in his hands as he fired it from the hip. His 13th Coterie were with him, moving swiftly from cover to cover while laying down a blanket of suppressing fire, and other squads moved up in support.

  Several Word Bearers were cut down by bolter fire. One warrior brother screamed in anger when his left arm disappeared from the searing blast of a melta-gun. Sabtec slid his serrated power sabre from its scabbard and thumbed its activation rune, firing his bolter one-handed. Hot energy vibrated up the length of the blade, and the champion of the 13th Coterie closed the distance with the nearest White Consuls swiftly.

  The potent weapon had been gifted to him personally by Erebus afte
r the 13th’s heroics upon the stinking deathworld of Iagata VII, when the Coterie had brought down the defences of a war shrine of the Adeptus Sororitas, ensuring a crushing victory against the hated sisters holed up there. Every last sister had been stripped of their armour and their flesh ritually debased before being staked out around the outskirts of the defiled shrine, their bloodied forms affixed to crosses hammered into the earth. There they were left to perish, vast swarms of blood-sucking insects rising from the surrounding death-marshes and descending upon them. Their screams had been sweet music to Sabtec that night.

  The humming blade passed effortlessly through the power armour of a White Consuls warrior as Sabtec brought it slicing down into his neck. The sabre cut down through the gorget and deep into the tactical squad member’s flesh. Arterial blood pumped from the wound, an injury that would have been fatal to any but one of the Astartes. Sabtec planted a bolt in the White Consul’s brainpan to finish the job, and turned smoothly to deflect a stabbing combat knife aimed at his sternum. With a deft twist of the wrist Sabtec disarmed his attacker before running him through, sliding the blade of his power sabre through the Astartes’ body all the way to the hilt.

  Whipping the blade from the body of the White Consul, Sabtec turned and dropped to one knee. A pistol raised to blow his head apart fired over the top of his helmet harmlessly, and Sabtec swept his blade around in a low arc that sliced the legs of the warrior from under him.

  The Warmonger was in the middle of the enemy now, and the mighty Dreadnought backhanded one Astartes warrior into a wall with a sweep of its crackling talons. The sheet plating of the wall buckled inwards and the White Consul was crushed to pulp, his armour wrenched out of shape by the force of the blow. Another warrior was snatched up in the Warmonger’s grasp, lifted clear off his feet. His bolter barked as the warrior fired frantically, but it dropped from lifeless fingers a moment later as the Dreadnought clenched its bladed talons, the Space Marine falling to the deck in half a dozen separate pieces.

  The Dreadnought fired into the other members of the tactical squad as they pulled back in the face of the rampaging behemoth, knocking several of them off their feet and bathing the others in flame.

  More Coteries of Word Bearers emerged from Dreadclaws, heavy weapon toting Havoc squads bearing missile launchers and autocannons. Faced with the sudden reinforcements and seemingly unable to halt the enraged Warmonger, the White Consuls began to pull back, under the covering fire of Scout snipers located further back. It was no rout; the Consuls fell back in good order, moving from cover to cover and laying down fields of fire to allow their brethren to extricate themselves. Sabtec had to admire their coordination and discipline, even as he hated them with every fibre of his being.

  A final Dreadclaw gnawed its way onto the deck before disgorging its sole occupant. Immense and shrouded in black robes, the corrupted Magos Darioq-Grendh’al stepped heavily aboard the White Consuls battle-barge, mechadendrites waving excitedly and four heavy servo-limbs curving around from his servo-harness as if ready to stab anything that came near him.

  “Escort the magos to the central cogitation chamber, Sabtec,” said the Dark Apostle Marduk in his ear. “Let no harm befall him.”

  “Your will be done, Dark Apostle,” said Sabtec, motioning for a pair of Coteries to form an honour guard around the corrupted magos.

  He needn’t have bothered.

  Darioq-Grendh’al strode straight towards the retreating enemy, eschewing any form of cover. Each step was heavy and mechanical, accompanied by the grind of motors and the whine of servo-bundles.

  “My lord Sabtec?” questioned the champion of one of the Coteries he had designated to guard the magos.

  “Leave him,” said Sabtec, shrugging.

  A cough of a sniper rifle firing echoed through the deck, and a bubble of coruscating energy appeared around Darioq-Grendh’al, absorbing the force of the incoming shot and stopping it short of hitting home.

  In response, the corrupted magos’ four servo arms began to reform, the metal/flesh of his articulated limbs running like molten wax as they remoulded themselves. Oily, black blood dripped from the servo-arms as their skin split, but the magos seemed unaffected, continuing to stride with slow determination towards the enemy. The protective bubble of his refractor field flashed again as more fire was directed towards him.

  Mechadendrites attached themselves to the gun-forms manifesting on the magos’ four servo-arms, bulging and changing shape to become energy cables and power conduits. Gone were the grasping power clamps and las-cutters as four deadly weapons replaced them, their power drawn from the warp and the magos’ own potent internal powerplant.

  Darioq-Grendh’al began to fire, his servo-arms blasting in diagonal pairs, first one pair then the other. They fired blinding gouts of hellish energy drawn directly from the warp, and spitting red ichor dripped from the infernal barrels of his newly formed weapons, hissing and smoking as they struck the deck.

  “Somehow I think it might be the magos that will be protecting us,” said Sabtec.

  “Come, little brother,” growled the immense form of the Warmonger as he stalked by Sabtec, having slaughtered all the enemy within his grasp. “We must gain the palace walls. The cursed betrayer of the Crusade, the self proclaimed Emperor of Mankind, will fall this day.”

  Sabtec shook his head. With every passing century it seemed that the Warmonger’s grip on reality slipped further. Often in the midst of battle the ancient warrior believed he was refighting the battle for the False Emperor’s palace, ten thousand years ago. The Warmonger had been amongst those within the palace when the battle had commenced in earnest, the fools unaware that there was an enemy within.

  Sometimes Sabtec wished that he too could lose himself in the dreams and delusion of battles long past. Perhaps in them the outcome would be different, and the False Emperor thrown down. It would be the Legions loyal to the Emperor that were hunted to the galaxy’s fringes, and the Great Crusade would be re-launched, deviants and xenos exterminated in glorious warfare that would set the universe ablaze. All of humanity would be united behind the teachings of his master Lorgar, and a new era of unity and rapturous praise of the Gods of Chaos would emerge. All who spurned the teaching of the primarch of the XVII Legion would be sacrificed. There would be war, of course, but without war humanity would become weak.

  Sabtec bitterly dispelled such thoughts, and ordered his Coteries on, plunging deeper into the belly of the Sword of Truth.

  Hate-fuelled battle erupted all across the Sword of Truth. Resistance was heavy, and equal numbers of XVII Legion warrior brothers and White Consuls fell in the brutal, close-quarter fighting. Nowhere was the fighting more fierce than upon the corridors leading to the bridge. Here, the loyalist Astartes were dug in, determined to defend the bridge until the last. Through them marched Kol Badar’s Anointed, carving a bloody path for their Dark Apostle.

  Wrenching his unholy crozius arcanum from the shattered skull of a White Consuls Scout, Marduk urged his brethren on with roared quotations from the Book of Lorgar.

  “We have reports that the Corruptus Maligniatus is advancing into close range,” said Kol Badar, speaking of the Dark Apostle Ankh-Heloth’s personal warship. Marduk alone heard his voice across the closed channel.

  The Dark Apostle activated his holy weapon, and the blood and brain matter that had gathered upon its spikes was burned off by the surge of power.

  Was this how it was to end then? Had Ekodas chosen to dispose of him and his Host while they were aboard the enemy battle-barge, ensuring that the Nexus Arrangement remained unharmed, safely ensconced aboard the Infidus Diabolus?

  “Does she target the Sword of Truth?” he said in reply, also using the closed channel.

  “Negative,” reported Kol Badar. “The Corruptus Maligniatus is opening her Dreadclaw tubes. Assault pods are being launched.”

  “Where?” snarled Marduk.

  “They are targeting the corridors higher up the command spire,
” said Kol Badar.

  “The bastard is seeking to take the bridge from under our nose,” said Marduk. “We draw the ship’s defenders, and he takes the glory of claiming the ship.”

  “Your orders?” asked Kol Badar.

  “We advance on the bridge, double speed.” You will not steal my glory, Ankh-Heloth, he thought.

  “It shall be so,” intoned the Coryphaus.

  “Come, sorcerer,” said Marduk.

  The Black Legion sorcerer, Inshabael Kharesh, looked up from where he was kneeling over a fallen enemy. He had his hands clasped around the Space Marine’s head. The sorcerer released the warrior, his hands still smoking with infernal power, and the Space Marine fell face first to the floor, dead, his liquefied brain oozing from his nose and ears.

  Marduk had wanted the sorcerer to stay aboard the Infidus Diabolus, yet he had little real power over him, and when he had expressed his desire to accompany the strike force he had agreed, albeit somewhat reluctantly.

  The sorcerer rose with a cynical smile on his lips.

  “Your wish, Dark Apostle,” said the Black Legion sorcerer, his tone mocking.

  Remembering Erebus’ words to ensure no harm befell the sorcerer, Marduk swung away, his First Acolyte at his side.

  He would take his anger out on the Space Marine captain.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Kol Badar snarled as the blast of a combat shotgun fired at close range struck him, peppering his armour. The powerful kick of the weapon was unable to knock him back even a step, and he continued on through the hail of fire, combi-bolter roaring.

  Another White Consuls Scout moved up from behind the barricade, combat shotgun booming. They were lightly armoured, their bodies not yet fully ready to bond completely with power armour. Doubtless most had only begun their indoctrination a decade or so past. To Kol Badar they were children, inexperienced and worthy only of contempt. His combi-bolter barked, taking the Scout’s head off.